Look at the policies: the Coalition wants to take from the poor and give to the rich.
It is simply wrong to claim only one side in Australian politics is engaging in ''class warfare'' when both major parties have policies that will shift resources between different income groups. What is surprising is the extent to which Coalition policies will result in a significant redistribution of wealth upwards rather than downwards. Consider the following Coalition policies:
¦ Lower the tax-free threshold from $18,200 to $6000. This will drag more than one million low-income earners back into the tax system. It will also increase the taxes for 6 million Australians earning less than $80,000.
¦ Abolish the low-income superannuation contribution. This will reimpose a 15 per cent tax on superannuation contributions for people earning less than $37,000.
¦ Abolish the proposed 15 per cent tax on income from superannuation above $100,000 a year. The combined effect of these two superannuation changes is that 16,000 high-income earners with superannuation savings in excess of $2 million will get a tax cut while 3.6 million workers earning less than $37,000 will pay more than $4 billion extra in tax on their super over the next four years.
¦ Abolish the means test on the private health insurance rebate. This will deliver a $2.4 billion tax cut over three years for individuals earning more than $84,001 a year, or couples earning more than $168,001. People on lower incomes will receive no benefit.
¦ Introduce a paid parental leave scheme that replaces a mother's salary up to $150,000. To put it crudely, this means a low-income mum gets about $600 per week while a high-income mum gets close to $3000.
¦ Abolish the means-tested Schoolkids Bonus that benefits 1.3 million families by providing up to $410 for each primary school child and up to $820 for each high school child.
These policies will result in low- and middle-income earners paying billions of dollars more in tax while those on higher incomes receive billions in tax cuts and new benefits. Rather than take from the rich and give to the poor, the Coalition policies are a case of take from the poor and give to the rich. And this remains the case even taking into account the flow-on effects of the abolition of the carbon price and the funding of the Coalition's paid maternity leave through a tax on big companies.
So who is waging the real class war? And why is it that Coalition MPs are the ones who most frequently level the accusation of ''class warfare''?
What we desperately need before the September 14 federal election is a debate that moves beyond the rhetoric and examines the real impact on people's lives of the parties' competing policy agendas.
