Labor has been caught taking a bet each way on the issue of Agribusiness Managed Investment Schemes (MIS) in an insidious example of the new style of political game playing under Kevin Rudd.
Today the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Chris Bowen, spilled the beans and revealed Labor has been holding out a false hope to Agribusiness MIS operators to score cheap political points.
For weeks now Labor’s Primary Industries spokesman Senator Kerry O’Brien and the Shadow Assistant Treasurer have criticised the Australian Taxation Office decision to end up front tax deductions for Agribusiness Managed Investment Schemes.
They have been holding out hope to Agribusiness MIS operators, calling for a full Senate inquiry into Agribusiness MIS.
They have been leading industry representatives to believe that Labor would restore the status quo. In a joint press release on the 8th of February 2007 stating:
“The changes announced by the Howard Government to the tax treatment of Non-Forestry Managed Investment Schemes…could potentially threaten jobs and investment in rural and regional Australia…there is now a question mark over the future of thousands of jobs in rural and regional Australia…”
In Parliamentary Question Time today the Shadow Treasurer revealed all Labor’s blustering over this issue as a complete facade:
“Yesterday in the other place, Senator Heffernan said in the House that I had given a commitment on behalf of the Labor Party to restore tax deductibility on Non-Forestry MIS…I have not made any statement vaguely approaching what Senator Heffernan has suggested.”
Labor has been caught out misleading and causing uncertainty among the Australian Agribusiness MIS Industry.
This is a reflection of the new Labor style under an inexperienced Leader of the Opposition.
They try to walk both sides of the street, all without making a single policy decision in the national interest and all in the hope of grabbing a few votes.
Imagine Labor running the country like that.