Ignoring the art of the possible
AFTER a leak caused a hokey-cokey moment for this latest iteration of the Tax Review plan, otherwise known as the plan to introduce a goods and services tax, the moment has come for this Policy & Resources Committee.
That’s the committee that some would say is presiding over a ‘zombie government’, or almost certainly will be by the time GST is again rejected by deputies.
There is tinkering around the edges, but essentially P&R is returning to the States with the broadly the same message that it had at the beginning of the year. That the States is running out of money, and the only way out of this is to slash and burn services, or, preferably, introduce a consumption tax.
It’s a defiant approach, almost foolhardy, from a committee which got a bloody nose earlier this year. It appears to be so determined that its way is the right one, and that this is the only way for the States to get out of its demographic timebomb pickle, that it does not wish to engage in political ‘games’.
If politics is indeed, the art of the possible, then P&R doesn’t care much for the thoughts of Otto Van Bismarck. The talk about no great publicity campaign, from either side, might make it seem more like an exercise in going through the motions.
Unless P&R thinks it knows something the public doesn’t.