In my commissioned research activities, which are separate from the basic academic research that occupies most of my time, I come across interesting situations which bear on the way monetary systems operate and the type of constraints faced by different levels of government. In Australia, we have three levels of government: Federal (currency issuer), State and Territories (currency users), and Local government (currency users). Our constitution also confers the major spending responsibilities – education, health, transport, etc on the states and territories despite them having few legal means to raise revenue, which has been a major problem since Federation. If one then embeds that constitutional fact into the fictional mainstream economics narrative that says the currency-issuing federal government is financially constrained in its spending like a household, public debt becomes a media issue. After the pandemic, the federal and state governments were left with significant increases in debt liabilities that has led the state governments to impose austerity cuts and hike taxes. The Victorian state government has recently hiked a levy on land ostensibly to provide extra funding for emergency services. The problem is that the campaign against this tax hike is bringing together an array of anti-progressive elements who just want a change of government. Their campaign, which is roping in progressives who don’t seem to understand the issues, cannot answer how the fire services, which have been underfunded for years as a result of an austerity mindset and facing major equipment deficits and wage demands, will be able to provide adequate services with such a tax hike. The land tax is a progressive tax and the best source of revenue to improve the fire services which are essential to the community. Once again the buy-in to the anti-tax campaign is a case of progressives shooting themselves in the foot.