The late unlamented premier of Queensland Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen had an easy way with journalists, most of whom he perceived to be rabid pinkos. ‘Don’t you worry about that, my friend,’ he would say, when confronted with a hostile question. ‘You just leave it to me.’
In fact, he bequeathed Queenslanders quite a lot to worry about and nearly ended up in jail on charges of bribery and corruption. But his greatest legacy was a brilliant piece of gerrymandering which is still with us today, having been widely adopted by other states in Australia. I believe it could be of some use to whoever, by the time you read this, is ruling Italy and Greece — saving Europe and making us all a lot happier in our latter years.
In 1980 Sir Joh abolished death duties, or inheritance tax, in Queensland. This fitted in well with his philosophy of self-reliance for families living free of state interference, but the clever part was that it encouraged older Australians with money to move from other states to warmer sunshine climes for their retirement years. This was so successful that, after a while, all Australian states, even those with Labor governments, abolished inheritance tax to stem the flow of oldies to Queensland. Nowadays, no party, left or right, would dream of reintroducing death duties because this would lose votes.
My wife, who is Australian, has stronger views on this than I do. She has no intention of bringing the money she has inherited from her late parents to this country to have it stolen by the Chancellor and his thieving non-dom tax. In fact she told me about five years ago that, if I were to meet those nice young men David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague or even Boris Johnson, I should bend their ear and tell them about a sure-fire vote winner.
Well, blow me down, I met Dave and George at a party given by the former Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona when he launched a novel. Dave’s response was polite but George was quite enthusiastic. He listened carefully and respectfully, which is unusual in a politician. He told me to email his tax adviser Michael Forsyth, former secretary of state for Scotland. Lord Forsyth was also very receptive to my proposals, or pretended he was, and said he was giving them serious consideration.
Boris Johnson was in favour but what could he do, while William Hague was not so helpful. Addressing me and my wife as if we were a public meeting and looking over our heads one evening in Portcullis House, he said there would be a huge black hole if a Tory government were to do what we suggested. Black hole? My foot. We all know rich people employ accountants and other useless bean counters to ensure they don’t pay taxes and, more often than not, they send their money abroad where the taxation system is less pernicious. Sometimes they even live abroad, contributing nothing to their country’s economy. Those people who talk about inheritance tax offering a level playing field for all citizens are living on another planet.
The people who suffer from inheritance tax are ordinary hard-working people who’ve earned their own living and have already paid tax on it, probably several times over. All they want to do is to ensure their children have a little stability and are not pestered and tormented by the taxman at a time of despair and bereavement. Families who have suffered the loss of parents need comfort and reassurance and should not have to think of moving house and selling prized possessions at such difficult times.
Armed with these thoughts, I cobbled together an article for the Daily Express, which was campaigning against inheritance tax at the time. When it appeared I sent a copy to that nice Lord Forsyth, who once again responded positively. Now you may recall that in 2007, shortly after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he was on the crest of a wave and was being strongly advised to call a snap election to take advantage of his reputed big clunking fist and of the inexperience of Cameron and Osborne. Then the shadow chancellor startled us all, just before the Tory conference, by announcing that he would raise the threshold for inheritance tax to £1 million.
This was immediately recognised as a vote-winner and Alistair Darling announced he would bring in similar plans. Gordon was on the run and Dave never looked back. I felt inclined to take the credit for this reversal of Tory fortunes but no one agreed. Two years later, however, before the election, I spotted the shadow chancellor walking towards me in Bond Street. He was waving his finger and saying: ‘I did what you said, didn’t I?’ Oh, what flattery, at last.
Well yes, he did up to a point, but then the Conservatives went into a coalition with the Lib Dems and they had to backtrack. Abolishing inheritance tax was not part of the bright new economic plan, as envisaged by Cleggy and Cable. So we were back to square one.
Now that Greece and Italy are facing an economic abyss, maybe someone can persuade their leaders to take up where Cameron and Osborne have left off. They are the countries in the sun where all our old folks would like to live if they could afford it, just like Queensland was in the early 1980s. If only the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) would get rid of inheritance tax, and perhaps offer financial incentives for oldies to live out their days by the Mediterranean, we’d all invest our hard-won earnings in villas in the Peloponnese, the Algarve, the Costa del Sol, Sicily or wherever. Come on Greece and Italy, it’s your chance to emulate Sir Joh, to collect a little pocket money and make a lot of oldies very happy.