Always bet on self-interest: at least you know it’s trying.
— Jack Lang
There’ll be plenty of commentary in the weeks and months ahead suggesting Scott Morrison’s election shock win has a Trumpian quality. After all, he too, defied the pollsters to deliver a win for the right. He too made blatant and enthusiastic lying a key part of his campaign. He too was endlessly sneered at by elites, only to throw their condescension back in their faces on behalf of what he called “quiet Australians”.
It’s a useful analogy, but misleading. Morrison was the business-as-usual candidate in this contest, the one who promised to keep a system that was failing to deliver for voters ticking over. It was Labor that was promising to change the system, to make it start delivering for people who believed it had stopped delivering for them. It was Labor promising major change, offering to make a political-economic system devoted to servicing powerful vested interests instead operate for people who felt behind: workers who hadn’t had a pay rise for years, families struggling with health care costs, people who wanted a good education for their kids, taxpayers angry at a tax system in which they paid full freight while the rich and corporations got a discount, citizens who believed politics was corrupt, Australians who wanted action on climate change that had been stymied by powerful interests for too long.
It was Labor, not the government, that was accused of populism, of breaking faith with the neoliberal consensus.
But the electoral reaction to Labor’s program was hostile. Labor’s vote went backwards in every state except Victoria and South Australia, where both major parties recovered from the Nick Xenophon assault of previous elections. The result was worst in Tasmania where Labor fell (on current numbers) 3.9%, and Queensland, (3.4%). The Queensland result was an utter disaster for Labor, where it could be left with just five seats — a bad performance off an already low base.
The shift to the far-right there, with over 12% of voters going to Hanson or Palmer, was echoed in WA — 5.1% to One Nation and 1.9% to Palmer, and parts of regional NSW: One Nation picked up over 20% of the vote in Joel Fitzgibbon’s seat of Hunter and sent preferences to the Nationals, turning a safe Labor seat into a marginal (UAP picked up 4% too); One Nation picked up 14% in Paterson, and UAP picked up another 3.6%, slashing Labor’s majority. It continued, in part, a theme of the NSW state election, where One Nation prospered in coastal regional seats.
Voters who switch to Palmer and Hanson are typically driven there by disaffection with the political system, by a conviction that it’s no longer working for them, that they’ve been left behind by an economic and political order that serves others ahead of them. That is, the people whose interests were best served by Labor’s rejection of business-as-usual, and ostensibly most turned off by Scott Morrison’s promise of perpetuating the existing system, opted for the far right fringe first, and then preferenced the Coalition. It’s a devastating rejection of Labor and its program.
How Morrison — who gets full bragging rights for his amazing win, given its solo nature — achieved that will obsess psephologists and the now-discredited pollsters for a long time to come. But a working theory is that his relentless scare campaigns around Labor’s agenda of redistributive tax changes frightened voters away from Shorten, while the Coalition with its disunity and division made for only a second-best option after the appeal of Hanson and Palmer, who promise to entirely upend politics.
Whatever the case, the outcome is the maintenance of business-as-usual politics, the politics in which vested interests and influential groups will continue to get their way, in which the system will continue to deliver for the powerful at the expense of ordinary voters.
Are we getting three more years of business-as-usual politics? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your full name to let us know your thoughts.
The idea of egalitarian Oz was a little bit of a strong streak once upon a time ..It’s been a mere sentimental marketing ploy smudge for decades now…
So the rorts and illegalities will be swept under the AFP logo’d carpet. The expenditure on franking credits will rumble along in the background growing like the jealous twin of the National debt. Climate change will no longer be a thing. The APS will see a new round of redundancies and the hiring of well connected consultants. The rivers will run dry and V8 utes will rule the road.
Does anyone have the inside running on whether aussies can buy property in NZ?
Can’t see that ICAC happening now…unless by some miracle Morrison ends up in minority government.
Business as usual, an economic and environmental crisis heading our way, Trump likely to win the Presidential election in 2020 despite losing the popular vote again, and a govt chockful of grifters and no-hopers, it’s hard not to think we are doomed.
Is “losing the popular vote” analogous to the possibility of an Australian Government winning a majority of seats without winning nationwide a majority of individual votes, like because seats are won on an individual basis? Like, bloody hell Seano, what an affront to democracy!
We could change our system, of course, but the existing system is already perverted to the benefit of the major parties. Any change they agreed on would make it even more so.
If you feel all, like, twittery about Trump “losing the popular vote” last time round in the US, do you understand that the national-basis surplus votes you protest over were entirely accounted for by California – so you’re really saying that the border-busters’ haven state should dictate to the whole of the US? Good luck with retailing those cookies to regional Oz, inner-city Seano person.
Someone once asked why John Rawls’s major work ” ‘Social’ Justice as Fairness” – where Rawls argues a very detailed and very well crafted case for making changes for a more egalitarian and fair society, has not been implemented in any nation. The answer came back that Rawls simply asks to much of us. In other words we are all happy to talk about fairness and greater economic and social equality but find the price too high to pay. In other words, talk is cheap when it comes to having to make some sort of self sacrifice to achieve a fairer society for all. Self -interest and greed are the payoff for the foregoing of a fairer society. The old good ‘I’am right mate’ rather than what might be good for a better world for all. The funny thing is that all the small-minded people who voted for Morrison, Hanson or Palmer could be so deluded as to think that the wealthy and powerful, at their own expense would enact serious change to benefit the less advantaged . Just note how fast your pay packets have increased in the last decade or the abundance of part-time casual positions. These are invariably advantaged to the top end of town so where is the concern for the ‘little guy’? And you have asked for more of this !!!. Don’t come to me with your crocodile tears in days to come you are victims of your own making.
Morrison and his mates cry out ‘politics of envy’ and ‘class warfare’ when the little person dares to ask for a bigger/fairer slice of the pie. Its instructive to listen to the words of Warren Buffet. In a moment of honesty and of relevance to Australia. Buffet (world’s 3rd richest person Forbes Magazine 2018) calls out the wealthy and powerful elites by stating that the wealthy have been waging class warfare for the past 20 years and moreover they are the ones who are winning as their tax burden had been reduced most dramatically. Sound familiar?
> The answer came back that Rawls simply asks to much of us. [snip : my edit] .. talk is cheap
> when it comes to having to make some sort of self sacrifice to achieve a fairer
> society for all.
On the one hand the Winston Peters de-railing the capital gains tax in NZ is a case in point.
Prancing about in a hijarb cost nothing but the girl rolled over when a matter of politics
became real.
Actually, ole son, Rawls makes a distinction between what he calls deontological and teleological theories. That we have different values (on a host of topics) is a fact of life regarding his conception of things. So in that sense, he’s like Mill. (1) We’re not going to resolve our disagreements of value. (2) We’re not going to agree on what the good society is.
The all too obvious conclusion is that “people are not going to agree on what the ‘good’, in any sense, might be”. Moreover, its not morally defensible if we’re going to be Kantian about the matter. Rawls debunked Utilitarianism so there is no exit in that direction either. End of (ridiculously idealistic) discussion mate (I’m rather sorry to say)!
Odd that Rawls recommends distributive rights in society without reference to what the good society is – but be that as it may. Thus, to be teleological (in this context) is to be goal-directed to produce the good society. Nice try (for Rawls) but the arguments of Rawls, at best, are circular!
Rawls (and his devotees) are denied the question “is xyz a good principle” because his method (and hence their’s) is comparative. One assertion has to be compared to another assertion and the “rules” or criterion (or plural : criteria) are by no means (1) clear or (2) delineated. The best that Rawls can offer is to make as few assumptions as possible regarding good societies and that is the deontological motive.
To expect a society to make decisions from the perspective of the worst off (or most under-privileged) which is the Rawlsian imperative – aint going to happen.
> Morrison and his mates cry out ‘politics of envy’ and ‘class warfare’ when the little
> person dares to ask for a bigger/fairer slice of the pie. Its instructive to listen to
> the words of Warren Buffet.
It is considerably more instructive to read Rousseau where he goes to some trouble to describe
just how the rich indoctrinate the poor into (1) believing, fundamentally, in the interests
of the rich and (much more to the point (2) how the poor are “encouraged” to protect the assets
of the rich! ‘nough written.
Labor must take part of the blame for agreeing to a wall-to-wall covering of Murdoch and similar-minded Media, who helped Morrison greatly with his lies and fear. Clive Palmer did the rest. The complexity of things like dividend imputation and other issues doesn’t help. So the future belongs to the party that can keep a small target and put out a lot of bullshit and lies.
And the failure of polling (all the pollsters), didn’t give any indication that voters were going to embrace the far-right in Queensland. I am not sorry for those voters. Most of them will get what they deserve, in spades.
How would you suggest Labor approach the meeja where the election campaign is concerned? They cant refuse to participate.
I don’t know the answer to this question. But do know that Labor needs to get the leadership right this time.
Shorten went to the election against Scott Morrison’s nothing with a big agenda he couldn’t sell like Hawke or explain and lost.
I also think that Labor has to stop being Liberal-Lite and stand for something on climate and jobs. Labor will be up against the meeja once again but the govt won’t be any better, likely worse if they control both houses as they did under Howard.
Another three years of neoliberals kicking Australia in the teeth should do it you’d think..but then Labor are the masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
It’s a bit dismaying to think that people choose to be cargocult voodoo followers of leaders & all that smoke n mirrors ‘chutzpa/bullshit’ charisma stuff ..but hey , if Scomo is defined as ‘charismatic’ what would I know about the behaviour of talking primates…
Selling nothing with stunts I guess resonated more strongly than selling a complicated agenda with pre-rehearsed and clunky zingers.
Liberal-lite? Given the policy platform they took to the election, I wonder what you wouldn’t disparage as liberal-lite.
Apart from that, you’re stringing together tired old accusations that never meant much when first created, and didn’t age well from there. Masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – and what do you think they did to achieve that? Obviously *something* went wrong given the result, but also obviously, nobody knows what that is, given that everyone seems to know it was this or that or the third thing, or maybe actually something else entirely. So your critique amounts to saying that they lost because they suck, and what sucks about them is that they lost.
Brilliant analysis, thanks for the contribution.
I’m stuffed if i can see how dividend imputation is complex. Have explained it to many people. But i agree not enough energy was spent in spelling out the benefits of all that money to the rest of us who do not benefit from this blatant con.