Spooner cartoon in The Age yesterday."All the same, from a political and an economic viewpoint, what Nelson had to say stank. His about-face on the increase in the tax on premixed alcoholic drinks could well turn out to be the decision that cruelled his leadership once and for all.
Here's the fundamental truth of it: you can't say on April 27 that you support a tax increase on alcopops and then declare in a nationally televised prime-time parliamentary speech 18 days later that you're utterly opposed to it and will block it in the Senate, and retain your political credibility.
This is what the Opposition Leader said only a little over two weeks ago, after Labor announced its decision to lift the tax on alcopops by 70%. "While we're not normally supporters of tax increases, increasing the tax on these alcopops, these mixers, that young people are in many cases abusing, if that is going to reduce the abuse of these alcoholic mixers then it's something that we certainly are prepared to support."
How can you go from accepting something as a reasonable preventive health measure to seeing it as a blatant tax grab? When you're desperate, you have no genuine new ideas, your political mortality is so strong you can taste it, and you're still not fully accepting that you've lost power, you'll do it."
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