National Womens day on Monday saw the leader of the opposition make an extraordinary promise. 

    Under a Coalition government, he is proposing to tax the big end of town a bit extra (presumably because he thinks they can afford it) in order to create a 6 month maternity leave right for all female employees, at their existing salary levels, I am unclear about the impact of the proposal on paternity leave.

    Leaving aside the inequity, stupidity, and unique capacity to unite some unusual bed buddies, this proposal has three further profound failings:

  1. It clearly is a brain snap, not subjected to sensible costing and policy development disciplines, and therefore bound to be “binned” at some stage, so why go through the pain.
  2. Implementation would be a further huge distortion in the tax system, at a time when the system is breaking, if not broken, and with a major review about to be released to the public that has the objective of identifying, quantifying and removing the current huge inequities and distortions, where is the sense in adding another.
  3. Where is the evidence of a consistent set of values in the policy? Australians want to believe our politicians are leading us along a course that has at its foundation a philosophy, a set of values from which we can draw inspiration, and to which we can relate. Despite the evidence to the contrary, we appear prepared to give the politicians the benefit of the doubt in this regard. This policy proposal can only erode what little confidence we have in the foundation value system of the Liberal party, which is supposed to be about encouraging personal responsability, reward for effort, and the value of work, effort, risk, and personal integrity. 

Abbott had been doing pretty well since becoming leader, his aggressive, no compromise style has injected some life into a listless opposition, but he has just shot the pooch with this nonsense.