The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10 THE AGE, Saturday 4 May 1985 Wku do So mau4 Eeofrle, "TkfaW VwJr 1 1 Hjmafi 1 1 1 Fr" da'itu proqrai cfNws sCWenf AffVir bvougKf -h kraifLi fr? tV cfaf, rteHorwoHS Coherent Hawke sets tax boat on clearer course it -4 Afctft Kof-c(vi World's greatest "hills. Brsf, if bdash ftor- ok, bu-f fwo pkvfotenic. frent- i hi r) been remarkably vague about exactly what he is proposing. Richardson hitched his star to indirect tax, but said be would fight on against a new capital gains tax. That doesn't worry Paul Keating too much.

Never too keen on capital gains tax himself, he accepts privately that it will be an inevitable part of any package. He knows that for the NSW Right (obsessed by memories of the 1980 election and with the assets test), it is demonology, although he does not expect Richardson to seek blood when it comes to the point. Capital gains tax has receded into the background in the past few weeks, as the focus concentrated on the indirect tax battle. In Labor circles, Richardson notwithstanding, capital gains tax is among the lesser issues. With the Prime Minister carefully seated in the boat, and mate Graham perched on its edge but cheekily dangling his feet in the electoral water over capital gains, attention yesterday turned to that other most vital passenger, the ACTU.

ACTU senior vice president Simon Crean, fortuitously addressing the Fabian seminar just before attending talks with the Government on the tax isue, was demonstrably leaning from the pier. Crean gave the impression, while carefully qualifying the words, that the right "package" and argument could win the ACTU over, though how the ACTU would cope with more hardline unions remains to be seen. After the ACTU tax negotiating committee met the Government, Mr Keating emerged hopeful the unions might end up part of a common crew on the good craft Tax Reform. All this is very well. But we still have a month to go to the white paper; another month after that to the summit.

A lot of the detailed work remains to be done, though the material on how to compensate low income earners not caught by the easily adjusted welfare net has impressed the Prime Minister. One option being looked at is to expand the present family income supplement, which is available now to low income families not receiving other benefits. The tax debate was set back on a clearer course this week. Mr Keating's challenge now is to watch for and counter any fresh winds that blow it away again. BOB HAWKE last year agreed, a trine reluctantly, to hold a weekly press conference when he was in Canberra.

With a couple of minor slips, he has kept to his word. On Thursday the weekly meeting seemed like a real chore. Hawke was busy on the expenditure review committee, finalising those $1000 million cuts. His mind was on that for the afternoon. He had sat up nattering with dinner guests and staff the night before, and was tired.

He had no news to announce. His staff wondered whether he would even make the TV bulletins. By accident or design, this non-event press conference has become one of the milestones in the tax debate. To use the sort of nautical analogy favored by Paul Keating, the Prime Minister publicly climbed right back into the tax boat with his gung-ho Treasurer. What's more, he immediately started paddling vigorously.

Quite possibly, in doing so, he threw away the anchor. He has now left the Government with the choice of bringing in the new consumption tax or having the Prime Minister look as if he doesn't know what he thinks from one day to the next. Keating and Hawke had talked about tax nearly every day since the Treasurer's return from overseas. It showed in Hawke's performance. Mr Keating had inserted, or straightened, the iron in the Prime Minister's back.

Though his presentation was that of a man short of sleep, what he said was more coherent than other recent interviews. With one thing and another, this was quite a week in the tax debate. Eight days ago when Paul Keating flew in from his successful US trip, Canberra-watchers would have bet heavily against the big switch to indirect tax. Though his spoken words still favored a shift in theory, the Prime Minister was said to be looking for TKfr federal's oun oversea catresvodk jtf y. the-W0r-( from CrfSif to CrfSiS 1 Dairy dispute prompts a display Michelle Grattan the Cabinet which has not in all this, it should be remembered, formally considered the tax package yet think of this latest twist in a debate in which it is still waiting for the call? The factions, throughout the tax debate not backward in coming forward, sensed this was the week to talk.

As right-wing numbers man Senator Graham Richardson remarked, after the Lodge breakfast agreement in February to curb faction fighting, everyone went back to the time-honored practice of leaking. But this week they broke out Leaders of Left (Gerry Hand), Right (Robert Ray) and Centre Left (Peter Cook) appeared together at a Melbourne University seminar. The most spectacular contribution was Senator Cook's observation that the ALP was by nature a high taxing party. It was, he said later, one of those throwaway lines that unfortunately happen to be made for a headline. A day later Cook was casting doubt on the summit and calling on the Government to reduce expectations of the sort of reform possible.

His sentiments were not to be the flavor of the week. Senator Richardson was closer to the mood of the moment, by dint of his relationship with Paul Keating and a large phone bill. On Wednesday, as Hawke and Keating mulled over the tax task-force's latest figures on gains and losses, Richardson prepared bis speech for the ACT Fabian Society's forum. The Prime Minister and Richardson both addressed gatherings in Canberra on Thursday night: Richardson was the better draw card. Sixteen press people and 25 others packed into a small room to hear Paul Keating's mate.

They weren't disappointed. "The tax system has had it frankly; it's Richardson said in a vernacular translation of what Keating had been saying again and again. "Like others I've dillied and dallied, dallied and dil-lied. Tonight I'm getting to the church on time. I'm not 'iffy' (in response to a media jibe).

I support the package broadly outlined by the Treasurer and given broad support by the Prime Of course much of Mr Keating's "broad package" has come to us through the leaks, or deluges, of information from contenders, rather than by way of announcement. When you look at the public record, the Treasurer has so far in fte Crakes political ping up its efforts to bring the two warring dairy-farmer groups together in talks with Mr Walker, who had previously refused to deal with the rebels and had insisted on negotiating only with officials of the United Dairyfarmers of Victoria. On Tuesday night Mr Cain, Mr Walker, and the Industrial Affairs Minister, Mr Crabb, met a group of Opposition MPs led by National Party leader Mr Ross-Edwards. On the urging of Mr Ross-Edwards and Mr Crabb, Mr Walker agreed to meet both dairy-farmer groups. The next morning, Mr Cain, who had earlier said he would postpone bis overseas trip until the crisis was resolved, left the country with Victoria still in a state of emergency.

After two days of talks with both dairy-farmer groups, Mr Walker was able to annouce agreement on a plan to impose a one-cent-a-litre levy on milk to make lump-sum payments to dairyfarmers willing to surrender their licences. Although declaring that outstanding progress bad been made at the talks, Mr Walker said that even though milk supplies were almost back to normal the emer bizarre tional Party, Mr Eddie Hann, got into the act. Driving to a dairyfarmers' meeting near Shepparton, Mr Hann read the details of the Essential Services Act invoked by the Government and "discovered" that it could be revoked by a resolution of either house of Parliament Without consulting either his own party colleagues or the Liberal Party, Mr Hann aroused the rebel farmers by saying the Opposition parties would use their upper house majority to have the state of emergency called off. But before he returned to Melbourne, his colleagues had told reporters that Mr Hann had distracted attention from the weakness of the Government's reasons for invoking the legislation and raised false hopes which were now centred on the Opposition. They had also pointed out that Mr Hann's proposal would set off a massive constitutional crisis should an opposition with a temporary upper house majority usurp the authority of the elected government.

Mr Hann's threat did have one unexpected result in that it committed the National Party to step gency legislation would stay in force because he could not guarantee the safety of everybody in the industry. At the same time the most prominent representative of the rebel farmers, Mr David Everist declared he wanted the state of emergency to continue because it would help put pressure on the Federal Government to give Victoria a better deal under its proposed national marketing plan. How the trade unions, which have always opposed the punitive industrial clauses in the emergency legislation, will react to this endorsement of the legislation by the Government and the farmers remains to be seen. Now, with no apparent emergency affecting the state's milk supplies, Victoria remains in an official state of emergency. And if all that was not enough to confuse everyone, rumors were circulating again last night that the Opposition parties could reconsider their position in the upper house and revoke the emergency legislation as a symbolic gesture if the Government has not restored normality to the industry by next Wednesday, the last day of upper house sittings for three weeks.

IF SOME hint of sense and reason is at last emerging from attempts to solve the dairy industry mess in Victoria, it is not a moment too soon. Victoria has had a truly bizarre week of politics. The dairy industry crisis which threw Victoria into a state of emergency may have threatened to dry up milk supplies to Melbourne shops and jammed the refrigerators of panic-buying city householders but it also provided an extraordinary example of how fluid any situation can become when politicians get excited. Despite the television "poll" purporting to find overwhelming public support for "rebel" dairy-farmers and opposition to the Government's stand, the Cain administration appears to have scraped through the week relatively undamaged. But if Government ministers believe, as many appear to.

that they should have finished this week with much more credit than they have received, they have only themselves to blame. They should also realise that it was only the clumsiness and ineptitude of some members of the Opposition which stopped things becoming far worse for a Government that has found the going far from easy in its second term of office. The brief history of the state of emergency is riddled with contradictions and misunderstandings. The state of emergency was officially proclaimed by the Premier, Mr Cain, at 9.30 am last Tuesday after rebel dairy farmers had blockaded some dairy factories and threatened to pour milk on the ground. Seventeen hours earlier Mr Cain had said he was confident that Melbourne would have enough milk.

He announced the state of emergency had been declared to guarantee milk supplies and to preserve public order and to guarantee the safety of milk tanker drivers. The Opposition Leader. Mr Kennett, said the legislation was totally unnecessary. His deputy, Mr Tom Austin, said the Government had had no choice. As well as providing heavy fines and jail sentences for blockaders who threatened or hindered truck drivers, the state of emergency legislation provided the Agriculture Minister, Mr Walker, with the authority to issue directives necessary to end the emergency.

Mr Walker did not. and still has not, issued any directives, for the very good reason that there was David Broadbent no way he could order dairy farmers to milk their cows or to stop pouring the milk on the ground. The dairy farmers set up picket lines around the factories. This action allowed them to express their view without having to try to block the trucks and invite the heavy penalties of the emergency legislation. Meanwhile a number of union leaders started to condemn the Government for using emergency legislation which the Labor Party was committed to repealing.

By late Tuesday afternoon. Liberal Party MPs in the upper house were starting to argue that the Government had over-reacted by introducing emergency legislation which may have provided an impression of strength but was unnecessary because Mr Walker would not or could not use it to solve the real cause of the crisis which was the farmers' claims for a better deal. Then, just as it appeared that the Government was starting to have trouble defending its actions, the deputy leader of the Na alternatives. Keating, his opponents claimed, was isolated. His leader had been nobbled.

Little play was given to the section in Keating's New York speech, of a few days before, where he had said again that tax reform had to proceed and retreat was not an option. By the end of a week which opened with "Keating fights back' stories, even Paul Keating was probably a little shocked to find morning papers judging the battle already over, after Hawke said he believed the compensation problem could be met, and only a big alternative revenue source could finance income tax cuts. Keating knew he was doing OK but could victory be this quick? What would MM Corporate Fitness Services Pty. Ltd. 354ToorongaRoad, East Hawthorn.

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