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There is a simple reason Labor’s franking credit changes received more focus than the policies Labor was funding with franking credits revenue: the more money you have, the louder your voice in public discourse. This is all to do with power and class, as usual. A thread👇🏻
As I’ve already threaded about this week (below) there is a neoliberal structural bias in the media which aligns commentary with the interests of the capital class - the rich.
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This is why Labor’s franking credit changes were framed as crazy brave - because Labor were taking on shareholder retirees who hold much more power than pensioners or people on Newstart. That power is class based.
The round the clock coverage of franking credits changes included a noteworthy example of a man on the back of his yacht complaining that he would lose his govt rebate for tax he hadn’t paid.
There wasn’t such focus on people benefiting from Labor’s reinstatement of penalty rates, or pensioners receiving free dental plans, or poorer families receiving free childcare, or even low and middle income tax cuts. Why? Because of class.
The less money you have, the more hidden you are in the media. Newstart recipients don’t get interviewed on TV to find out what life is like on a pension - at best they get a spokesperson from a charity or not for profit to advocate on their behalf, at worse they get nothing.
When the media constantly do this with politics and economics - align their coverage with the interests of the rich and forget to mention the impact on the not-rich, the whole society tends to rate policies in the same way.
Why do you think 30% of voters were against changes to franking credits when only 4% receive them? Partly because of Liberal lie-campaign (Retiree Tax), but also partly because every time they turned on TV someone was complaining about the changes. Someone much richer than them.
Why do you think Clive Palmer’s voice was the loudest one of all during the campaign. It’s an obvious example when someone can literally spend their millions making their voice heard - full page ads every day in the newspaper is a fairly obvious example.
But same thing happened during major policy debates over other tax policies - where the richer you were the louder your voice. I studied the mining tax media coverage and found 75% aligned with Liberal anti-tax narrative, 25% with Labor.
There is another way to say that. 75% of the coverage of the mining tax aligned with the capital class interests and only 25% with the community’s interest. This stuff impacts on who gets elected, what public think of policies and how inequality is left to continuously grow. End.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
