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Tony Abbott taught the Liberals to talk in tongues about ‘taxes’ – forked tongues, that is

As Peta Credlin later admitted, the so-called carbon tax wasn't a tax at all, but painting it that way still destroyed Julia Gillard.

As Peta Credlin later admitted, the so-called carbon tax wasn't a tax at all, but painting it that way still destroyed Julia Gillard. Photo: AAP

In politics there are lies, like “the leader has my full support”, and then there are great big fat lies, like “the carbon tax will wipe out Whyalla”.

In election years, such as this one, the number of great big fat lies seems to increase dramatically. The lies aren’t always easy to pick, usually because they’re crafted around a grain of truth. But when it comes to the Liberal and National parties, the easiest way to know if one of their politicians is not being completely honest is if they claim something is a new ‘tax’.

Just this week, the Liberal Party and its MPs have been pushing out a social media campaign that claims “Labor’s Retiree Tax would punish over 900,000 Australians who have worked hard to save for their retirement.” The problem is that Labor’s election policies don’t include a retiree tax.

What Labor does propose, however, is to scrap cash ‘refunds’ made by the Australian Tax Office to shareholder retirees who actually pay no tax, making it a straight-out payment rather than a tax ‘refund’. Either way, scrapping the cash handout to retirees (pensioners are exempted) is nothing like a tax.

But that won’t stop the government from calling it one, because it has bought the line from former prime minister Tony Abbott that anything labelled a tax – even if it obviously isn’t one – will pinch the voters’ hip pocket nerve and turn them away from Labor.

We know this was Mr Abbott’s strategy with the Gillard Government’s ‘carbon tax’ because that’s what his former chief of staff and political strategist, Peta Credlin, divulged in 2017.

Ms Credlin exposed the great lie of the 2013 election when she explained to her Sky News colleagues that, “It wasn’t a carbon tax, as you know. It was many other things in nomenclature terms.

“We made it a fight about the hip pocket and not about the environment. That was brutal retail politics and it took Abbott about six months to cut through.

“And when he cut through, Gillard was gone.”

abbott gillard

Tony Abbott pounded what he called a carbon tax and unleashed a tsunami of contempt for Julia Gillard. Photo: Getty

In fact, the ex-PM must have thought the strategy was so good that he tried it again as part of his ‘not sniping or undermining’ campaign against successor Malcolm Turnbull during 2016.

According to The Australian, Mr Abbott put on “a masterful display of negative campaigning” while visiting conservative colleagues in Tasmania, where he described Labor’s proposed changes to negative gearing as a ‘housing tax’, increases in the capital gains tax as a ‘wealth tax’, and curbs on superannuation concessions as a ‘seniors tax’.

Mr Abbott even tried to stretch the analogy to its limits by including Labor’s proposed increases on tobacco excise, which he ridiculously described as a “workers tax”.

Two years later, as he reached the final stages of his anti-Turnbull campaign, Mr Abbott deployed the ‘call anything you don’t like a tax’ strategy against the then PM, claiming the Government’s proposed national energy guarantee was somehow a ‘a secret carbon tax’.

And true to form, this week the backbencher levelled a similar accusation at the female independent candidate who will put him under pressure at the upcoming election.

During a tabloid radio interview aimed squarely at the traditional Liberal base, Mr Abbott described his independent opponent Zalie Steggall as “the more-action-on-climate-change candidate”, and went on to claim “that means she’s the carbon tax candidate.”

Ms Steggall replied on social media that she didn’t support a carbon tax and that “The debate has moved on. For [Mr Abbott] to revert back to that old chestnut is desperate and out of touch.”

So if you happen to hear a Liberal or National politician warning about one of Labor’s “great big new taxes” between now and the May election, it will be worth checking to see if the policy is indeed a new tax. More likely, the Coalition will have dressed it up as one in the hope of scaring you away from Labor.

That’s not to say Labor won’t be telling its own porkies during the election – the Opposition also has a track record of stretching the truth. Lucky for Labor, however, it doesn’t have One-Trick Tony advising them to call everything a tax, which essentially just gives the big fat lie away.

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