Would you pay a flood levy to help Queensland? Ditch the NBN?

Ah Canberra. Politicians were always going to be quick to rain on the parade of national goodwill, support and empathy that has seen more than $100m donated to the victims of the Queensland floods these past few weeks.  I first started to get uncomfortable when Tony Abbott seemed to misread the public mood (just as Julia had done the week before in her strangely wooden public statements about the crisis) by saying the government needed to be held to account for all its flood-related spending, before demanding they scrap the NBN to pay for the flood damage.

And EVERYONE seems obsessed with getting the budget back into surplus. Something that seems odd to me given the unprecedented enormity of the rebuilding that Queensland requires. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have lost homes and livelihoods (let alone those who have lost loved ones).

In his opinion piece at the weekend, news.com.au editor-in-chief David Penberthy wrote:

Julia Gillard has tentatively raised the prospect of introducing a one-off tax to help cover the floods damages bill, which could be as high as $15 billion. Working out the actual cost is obviously a massive task. Despite that, both Ms Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan have reassured us that somehow the budget will be returned to surplus in keeping with the existing timetable. The “somehow” part of the equation could just be a flood levy.

Labor will have to get around some pretty big hurdles if it is to introduce such a levy without a voter revolt. Under both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Labor has done a poor job of selling its economic message. Rather than winning unilateral kudos for helping us dodge the recession through a well-timed stimulus strategy, the Government has spent much of its time on the defensive over the more extravagant and, in a number of cases, misdirected spending in the second stage of its stimulus spending.

(you can read his full piece here)

This raises so many excellent questions I’ve been asking myself all week.

Was Tony Abbott too quick to politicise the situation by demanding the NBN (which it has vigorously opposed from the outset) be scrapped to help pay for the rebuilding on Queensland? Should Julia Gillard have taken a more bipartisan approach and invited Tony Abbott to tour evacuation centres with her and stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside Anna Bligh during media appearances at the height of the crisis?

Are the government right in floating the idea of a one-off flood levy to help with the infrastructure repairs? Is the obsession of both sides of politics with getting the budget back into surplus by 2012 the right way to go?

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What do you think? Would you be willing to pay a one-off tax? Would you be happy for the government to scrap the NBN?