Albo ‘wedged’ Dutton on stage three tax cuts. But what is a wedge and how does one work?

Much has been made of the government’s decision to change the stage three tax cuts, providing a bigger tax break for the majority of Australians at the expense of a smaller portion of people earning more than $180,000. Initially pummelled in the media as a backflip on Labor’s promise while in opposition that they wouldn’t touch the cuts, first introduced in 2019, the changes have since found broad public support, as shown by a number of polls, including Guardian Essential, Newspoll and one from The Australia Institute.

Much was made of the political strategy involved in the changes, as well as what was described by The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan as a “breach of faith [that] could prove to be politically fatal”, but very little was made in the national media of the actual impact of the policy. 

Crikey sat down with a senior member of the press gallery, who requested to remain anonymous, to break down the optics of “the wedge”, what the term actually means, and whether it matters at all. 

The “wedge”, a term invented by advisers to then-Republican US president Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989, was described by the reporter as “a way of leveraging things that were good for the social good, by basically convincing people that it was bad”. 

ANU academics Shaun Wilson and Nick Turnbull wrote in the 2001 Australian Journal of Politics and History that the “wedge politics” strategy was commonly attributed to a set of tactics used by Reagan staffer Lee Atwater, which “involved targeting unpopular or stigmatised social issues or groups as a way of defining ‘mainstream politics’ and linking political opponents to their support of these issues or groups”. 

“By doing so, the tactics of wedge politics deliberately aim at undermining the support base of key political opponents in an attempt to gain political ascendancy or to control the political agenda,” they wrote.

Atwater would be best remembered for devising these strategies to weaponise racism against African Americans in the southern states, but these tactics did not make their way to Australia until the Howard administration. 

“It was Howard who really utilised it,” the press gallery journalist said.

This reporter attributed much of Australia’s “social licence” changes to Howard’s politics and his use of wedges.

“He was a great student of conservative politics in general, in terms of messaging. When you look at Australia’s social licence history, we didn’t actually start properly demonising [groups] until around the Howard years.”

“[It] was effectively just pitting you against everybody else,” they said.

With the changes to stage three tax cuts also branded a wedge, and with popular support in a cost-of-living crisis (albeit this time utilised by the Labor Party), our friend said the Coalition was “suddenly faced with their own politics”. 

Wedge politics itself, as seen under both Reagan and Howard, took advantage of social division, and leveraged it for political gain. The journalist described the Labor Party in opposition during the 2000s as “trying to get out of this cycle of wedge politics, where they couldn’t be wedged on something because they voted for it”. 

Asked what it took to break the cycle, besides electioneering, the reporter said it was a reflection on the state of the nation’s media as much as anything else. 

“It would take journalists not to completely focus on the wedge, and hold that up as a political tactic as something that is completely brilliant, and actually focus on politics that can lead to changes in how people deal with wedge politics,” they said.

“And it might be [brilliant politics], but it isn’t necessarily brilliant policy. And our job is to explain policy to people.”

“I think we need to do more to tell people about policy … rather than just running over political tactics. I don’t think that serves audiences very well.”

Asked why the press gallery tended to focus on the strategy over the substance, the journalist mused that it is because “we are part of the machine”.

“We’re up close, we cover the ins and outs. And when you’re talking to politicians, a lot of the time the conversation is around political strategy. You’ll often hear about ‘all the polls say this is great’, rather than ‘these are the benefits for people’ … we don’t hear so much of that in daily conversations.”

Does the media focus more on political strategy than policy substance? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.