Hollowism

If I were elected to office …

I would eschew hollowness. An increasing trend I’ve noticed in recent years is politicians making promises for action so far into the future that they are essentially meaningless. A recent example is the Coalition’s promise to cut the company tax rate… in July 2013! i.e. if elected to office they would not have to do a single thing in their first term, which makes the promise feel a little hollow. Of course Labor is equally adept at this kind of hollowness – they’ve been promising to do something about CO2 emissions in 3 years’ time for the last umpteen years. Labor has even refined this long-term-hollowism to the stage of taking credit for things that haven’t happened yet!

“we will have returned the budget to surplus in 2013”

The tricky balance here is that politicians shouldn’t just be mired in short term policies in order to get elected. We want and need our leaders to have long range goals and targets, but I believe that there cannot be a meaningful long term goal without short term steps.

So for little steps towards meaningful goals, vote 1, Me.

Coalition plans company tax rate cut – ABC News

[This content was originally posted to Google Buzz, #49]

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