This piece was originally published on April 9, 2018.
How was your Newspoll 30 party? We had a Peter Dutton piñata at ours, which emitted a brown toxic sludge when hit, and we got a Scott Morrison lookalike anti-stripper, who arrives naked at your house and, to everyone’s relief, puts his clothes back on as ‘Bad To the Bone’ bangs out of a ghetto blaster.
All good fun and games until someone has an “I” out. That “I” of course may be Turnbull, but it may not be. There is no one else, and the notion that his failed leadership is to blame for the persistent 53-47/52-48 two-party preferred ratings is propaganda by the hard right, and a narrative by the meeja.
Turnbull is a failed leader of course; he wanted to be a Menzian figure, applying to the fractious world of politics his executive skills. Turns out he has none, and no political skills either. He lacks even the mediocre professional politician’s ability to read a political landscape, to know the terrain.
But the Turnbull hypothesis is the story being relentlessly spruiked by the right to cover up a greater truth: since 2007, a working majority of the population has been centre-left shifted, believing in a moderately proactive state, a notion of social “fairness”, and is sceptical of free-market and neoliberal approaches to social change.
Tony Abbott narrowly lost the 2010 election because he didn’t make a full commitment to that formula. He didn’t make that mistake in 2013, when he signed up to everything Labor was offering in terms of a social market state, diverging only on the carbon tax, and nipping them on refugee stuff.
The Coalition has been 52-48 or thereabouts since the 2014 budget, when that policy promise was welched on. In the five years since 2013, the conditions that turned people towards Labor — increasing inequality, the everyday life squeeze, the distinctly Australian mix of high income, high costs and high debt, which we call “prosperity” — have only got worse.
All around the world, people are turning back to modified forms of social democracy, and the idea that an interventionist government is a necessary instrument in a world run by Google, Billiton and Lendlease. The Australian right has, among right groups across the world, the least flexibility on this, because of the dominance of News Corp on the right’s intellectual terrain, and that organisation’s infestation with free-marketeers.
With a bit of luck, they can lose the right the next election, by bellowing “class envy” any time anyone proposes even the most modest correction to the accumulated mix of political kludges we have accumulated over 20 years, and which now constitute a policy suite. And, of course, by undermining Turnbull.
The reality of Turnbull’s performance is, of course, the opposite of what Newspoll is saying. He’s a terrible prime minister, but he won the 2016 election at a time when state Liberal and Coalition governments were falling as first-term wonders. The problem is not the leader per se, the problem is the party, and the problem is not the party per se, it’s the party’s politics.
Australia is a centre-left social democratic country; in the past two decades that has become overlaid with a hyper-individualistic culture, which has fooled some people into believing that that social democratic base has been dissipated. It hasn’t, and any party that doesn’t honour it — as has every successful non-Labor government from Lyons’ to Howard’s — courts failure, and a role as history’s piñata.
Agreed. Name a single Liberal cabinet minister who has the potential to follow through on a reasonable policy that would have a positive outcome for this country as a whole. Yep, zip.
Worse than zip. Most, if not all, of their policies and ‘reforms’ will have a negative effect on the majority (large) of Australians. Catering to wealth and economic bullies is not what the mob wants and they can only be conned for so long. Ask Tony and the biggest bludger in the known universe, Joe fucking Hockey.
Thank GR. Saying much the same thing in different words, I put it all down to the ideology that underpins everything else. The right is hampered by the policy to have no policy, that is, for government to get out of the way when everything around us points to the fact that ‘the market’ requires constant intervention.
Add to that the intellectually and actually bankrupt idea that cutting taxes solves all problems (lack of revenue, chapped lips, sore hips, other blips) and the permanent victim mentality that sees any debate about the vacuity of their policies lead to name calling – political correctness and politics of envy.
They have nothing to sell, and yet still a large sector of the public buys it.
This is what I don’t get, either, DB – after repeated failures of economic management, voters still cling to the shibboleth that conservative governments are better managers of the economy. This has been disproved repeatedly in the time series within Australia or the cross-section across countries (or the panel across time and countries!) That’s why the Coalition’s only election mantra will be the negative “We’re not Labor, who will wreck the economy” and people will nod their heads and vote for bigger debt, bigger deficits, lower wages, more protection, more boondoggles and so on. It beggars belief.
It doesn’t beggar belief. This is the story sold to voters by virtually all sections of the media. It is presented as unquestionable fact. And it lingers in the voters subconscious despite any evidence to the contrary.
“They have nothing to sell, and yet still a large sector of the public buys it.”
Well, they have just taken full control of the Snowy Hydro, so there is that.
And whatever passes for the NBN now.
The coalition love to intervene in the market though, just not in the way people want.
turnbull is a lacker, he lacks ethics, integrity, political morals and most of all he lacks credibility, as a merchant banker he even lacks their usual rat cunning, rat cunning is what howard has in spades, morrison is also a lacker, he lacks any economic commonsense and fiscal ability and above all, he lacks electoral honesty, these types think that all people are still as gullible as their rusted on supporter base and fail to realise the changes going on around them and will pay the price for their ignorence, most of the coalition front bench`s political careers are finished come polling day, a few of the moderates may survive but the day of the trickle down, flat earth climate deniers is over, like the dinosaurs their time has come.
“since 2007, a working majority of the population has been centre-left shifted, believing in a moderately proactive state, a notion of social “fairness”, and is sceptical of free-market and neoliberal approaches to social change.”
Guy, I’d like to believe this is true, but what I’ve seen since 2007 is a public who turned on climate change action and empathy towards refugees as soon as the economic sunshine dimmed, who turned on the Labor government’s plans to redistribute mining profits,who elected Tony Abbott, who despite Turnbull’s involvement in Abbott’s cabinet and everything else re-elected the Coalition in 2016, and who despite the complete shitshow the Abbott and Turnbull governments have been, they seem to have a hard floor of around 46% of the 2PP vote.
And from that you’re telling me the population has had a centre-left shift since 2007? Marriage equality aside, I just don’t see it.
When Abbott became prime minister death camps were bipartisan policy. Don’t blame the bloody voters for this mess. The ALP did it mid term after the rest of the political class yelled at them about it, and refuse to listen to any branch members who hate their policy.
Arky I have to agree, sadly. The rural people I meet are quite often Hansonites and readers of the Daily Telegraph. Depends on education level usually.
I hope that you are right, Guy. Perhaps the world has turned? BK keeps on saying that neoliberalism has run its race. I look forward to something more concrete as evidence that it has.