The ABC interviewed an older voter about the tax changes that would have made him worse off.
We live in an age of rage, so naturally, I expected him to be fuming.
But he said he didn’t mind losing negative gearing on his investment properties because he believed it was for the “greater good”.
I thought, now that’s a phrase I haven’t heard for a while.
Instead of complaining that he was losing out and that his personal situation would be diminished, this bloke was thinking of other people — people younger than himself who deserved a helping hand.
In an age of transactional behaviour, when it seems more and more people are driven by deal-making market behaviour and a “what’s in it for me?” attitude, I found this man’s reply refreshing.
Equally, in a recent article in The Age, entrepreneur and economist Tom Hird admitted he had done quite well out of tax breaks for “founders” or small-business start-ups.
He made use of family trust tax concessions allowed under the Labor government to reduce his tax and build up his business.
He said most of this was still allowed, and that people like him had prospered under the current system.
If your budget information is received through the funnel of the Murdoch propaganda machine, you would have heard none of this.
Mr Hird ended his May 28 article by saying the new tax changes might be bad news for some tax plans, but it was not bad policy.
Mr Hird and thousands of other ethically driven business people know that financial might isn’t always right.
If you want to make society a better place to live for all, then just voting for your own needs is delusional.
We all live in communities with families, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and, especially here in Australia, with people from across the world.
And we all depend on each other to help us get on in life.
It’s not just ethical to help others — it makes sense in a purely practical way.
Aspiration and getting on in the world should not be at the expense of those less fortunate than us.
Otherwise, the law of the jungle takes over, and we squander the best of our strengths in clambering over each other to get to the top.
The best policies will always be the ones that increase happiness and opportunity for the greatest number of people.
So voting “for the greater good” might mean putting your own aspirations aside for once, so someone else gets the benefit.
You can do this for ethical reasons, or for the entirely selfish reason that eventually you will benefit too under the “what goes around comes around” theory.
Yes, all this might sound a bit socialist.
But it’s fair, and isn’t a fair go something intrinsic to the Australian way of life?
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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