It wears its heart on its sleeve and it preaches the worst form of economic hoax-that governments should be bailing out failed inefficient firms and that this is a solution to economic change. It is the stand of a party that has learned nothing and forgotten everything. If there is one lesson that Australia's political class should have learned, it is the folly of propping up failed firms with more taxpayers' money in the name of workers and families. Such bailouts don't work and they are a fraud upon the people in whose names they are invoked. Even worse, the impression must arise that Labor has little ability to handle the problems of the age.
Labor has yet to show the answer is yes.
This should be the main task of its policy review now under way. The party needs to address this question, not just frighten the horses. Labor is running an enormous anti-GST scare, assisted by a series of Howard government blunders. But, as much as we dislike the tax, by the time of the next election these interlinkages and relationships will be in place. By then it will not be possible to unscramble the GST egg.