Two massive issues are shaping the start of the political year: Stage 3 tax cuts and conflict in the Middle East

Governments, a politician observed this week, do a lot of stuff that most of the public doesn’t give a stuff about. They just want to know the issue is being dealt with in a way that means they don’t have to think about it.

Similarly, there are plenty of subjects that journalists persistently report on, and ask politicians about, which don’t hold quite the same fascination for many members of the public.

“Oh, why do they keep going on about that?” is a common complaint.

The 2024 political year is kicking off with two such issues that are actually important — and massively, personally important to some parts of the Australian community. But this is not necessarily apparent to everyone.

The one closest to home is the stage 3 tax cuts, due to be implemented for everyone earning over $45,000 from July this year.

Even before these tax cuts were legislated in 2019 they were controversial because of their cost and because of the largesse they would shower on higher income earners.

As this column has previously discussed, there are now more reasons to question them proceeding in their current form.

In short, economic circumstances — economic growth, inflation and wages, for starters — have changed significantly, which in turn means the impact the tax cuts will have on wage earners and whether they actually deliver the tax relief originally intended is now an open question.

The prime minister has made it an article of faith that he doesn’t break promises.

But it is not an article of faith that makes much political sense if sticking with Plan A doesn’t actually deliver a satisfactory outcome, particularly to middle income voters.

That’s why you see so many questions being asked of the PM and the treasurer, among others, about the future of stage 3.

Dunkley will be about the cost of living

That will only intensify now that we are effectively in campaigning mode for the Dunkley by-election after it was announced on Friday that voters in the Melbourne electorate, left without representation after the sad death of Labor MP Peta Murphy, would go to the polls to elect her replacement on March 2.

While the PM continues to argue that “we haven’t changed our position” on stage 3, his language and that of the treasurer has been subtly shifting.

Will the stage 3 cuts go ahead exactly as planned? Not clear at this stage but something seems likely to give reasonably soon.

There are always lots of options, including keeping the cuts as they are.

But there are also other ways of skinning a cat, for example, keeping the cuts but reintroducing the low and middle income tax offset — a tax rebate mechanism that handed lower income groups around $1,000 a year.

The Dunkley by-election will be all about the cost of living. And having something significant and material to say about what the government is doing to help — rather than rattling off a list of things it has done in the past — will be crucial.

Australia’s caution on the Middle East has been clear

It’s not clear the terrible conflict that continues to unfold — and spread — in the Middle East will feature in the Dunkley by-election.

Foreign policy definitely falls into the category of something most Australians don’t give too much of a stuff about most of the time, while hoping the government is handling it competently.

And traditionally most matters of foreign policy contention involve Australia knowing which side of a dispute it takes. There’s the goodies and the baddies, to paraphrase a former prime minister.

But that is not the case with the current Middle East conflict. We haven’t technically got a side (though local communities constantly contest whether the government is showing too much favour to one side or another).

It is an issue of intense personal interest to Australia’s Jewish, Islamic and broader Arabic communities.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the Middle East this week and it was hard not to think that much of the visit was focused more on how it would be consumed domestically than for expectations that it would have a huge influence in the region.

In fact, many of the news reports of the trip framed it that way.

One foreign policy analyst summed it up rather unkindly as “she said nothing, looked sad for everybody, smiled where that was appropriate for everybody”.

Penny Wong meets with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, after meeting Israel’s foreign minister the previous day.(ABC News: Haidarr Jones)

But there seems a hesitancy at the senior levels of the government to push Australia’s position any harder than that. That is, engaging in what Wong herself once described as the “constructive internationalism” aspect of Australia’s national interest.

Australia — and particularly Labor — has a long record of effectively inserting ourselves into international disputes and debates — from Doc Evatt in the United Nations to Malcolm Fraser in Apartheid to Bill Hayden and Gareth Evans in Cambodia.

Our preparedness to enter into uncomfortable discussions has even seen us prepared to call ourselves out on war crimes, let alone others.

But our caution on the current debate has been clear — whether that has been in the tardiness with which we approached debates at the United Nations on the conflict, to the fact we apparently have nothing to say about South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice for alleged breaches of the genocide convention.

That’s despite Australia’s role in seeking justice for victims of genocide in Cambodia and, more recently, becoming involved in the ICJ case by Ukraine against Russia.

LoadingPressure is growing – and now it has spread to the ABC

The caution stems in part from the worthy goal of trying to ensure the bitter conflict in the Middle East does not erupt here.

But it must also reflect the intense pressure being felt by MPs from local communities on both sides of the conflict.

That pressure has only been growing and spreading out in to all aspects of public discourse in the weeks and months since October 7.

There was the backlash against the Sydney Theatre Company over young actors wearing kaffiyehs during curtain calls, protests over an art installation in Melbourne, tensions about programming in cultural events, as well as more obvious disputes over the rights for people to publicly protest.

It has now spread to the ABC, which this week faced allegations that it had allowed outside interest groups to pressure it into sacking an on-air presenter, and the revelation of WhatsApp group messages that gave a rare glimpse into just how relentless the pressure on the national broadcaster is on any given day.

The matter of Antoinette Lattouf’s sacking three days into a five-day contract is now the subject of legal action.

But the broader problem for the national broadcaster was that it has been placed in the difficult world of confronting perceptions, whether well-based or not, created by these allegations of outside influence.

Managing director David Anderson said this week the ABC rejected “any claim that it has been influenced by any external pressure, whether it be an advocacy or lobby group, a political party, or commercial entity”.

“The ABC’s independence, enshrined in legislation, is of paramount importance to the role the ABC performs for the Australian public,” he said.

Whether we like it or not, the Middle East conflict already has massive ramifications for debate in Australia. That only increases the pressure on the government over how it conceives our national interest in the issue.

Laura Tingle is 7.30’s chief political correspondent. She is also the staff-elected director of the ABC.