Democracies always lead to bad policy because the majority always votes for a minority to pay all the taxes. It's really just a bullying thing. It's virtually impossible to raise the GST, change Old Age Pension rules for huge numbers of pensioners or tax free status of millions of family homes and many other needed changes because there are so many people benefitting that will simply vote against it. Most people will scream poor and vote against something if means having to pay one cent more tax.
Which means that the only way to raise taxes is by picking off minority groups who have less voting power. These minority groups are "wealthy" superannuants (now being vilifying every day by Fairfax Media and others), off-shore multinationals (who don't get to vote), smokers (becoming more of a minority every day), foreign workers and many others. It's a coward's way of avoiding hard decisions.
It is a fact that we now have more that 50% of Australians paying no tax at all and the tax base will get much smaller.
The system will eventually collapse when a tiny tax base moves offshore.
