Australia’s political system is sick. Voters don’t trust it, they’re losing their faith in our democracy, they think it’s run for vested interests that wield too much influence. That’s the grim evidence of the Australian National University’s 2019 Australian Election Study. And its results come at an apposite moment in political debate, when it has become clear that policymakers are unwilling to protect Australia from catastrophic climate change.
It’s been apparent for a long time that trust in government in Australia has declined in the electorate, but the ANU results showed things have reached a new nadir. Trust in government plumbed new depths in the 2016 election, with 74% of respondents saying “people in government look after themselves” and 26% saying people in government can be trusted.
That worsened slightly in 2019 to 75% to 25%. Satisfaction with democracy itself has reached 59%; a new low in modern politics. The proportion of voters who think government is run for a few big interests remained at a record 56%. The perception that big business has too much power reached a new all-time high of 76%.
This is despite the government reluctantly embracing interventionism and heavy-handed regulation of big business in two key areas — banking and energy — in the 2016-19 parliamentary term. It wasn’t enough to make voters think the system was working in their interests. Not nearly enough.
The ANU results also show that 68% of voters think climate change is a serious threat, up from 62% in 2016 and 55% in 2010. In the last nine years, Australia’s political class has retreated from climate action, with the Gillard government’s effective carbon pricing scheme repealed, market mechanisms to reduce emissions abandoned by both sides of politics, and disastrously unambitious emissions abatement targets (which won’t be reached) made the national objective.
As Australians have become more and more aware of the need for climate action, their government has done less and less.
That was neatly summed up by the way the catastrophic east coast bushfire event dropped off the political agendas of the major political parties in parliament’s last sitting week of the year, a raised middle finger from the political class to communities immolated by fire, cities forced indoors by blankets of smoke, and voters worried about the industrial-scale destruction of flora and fauna.
The narrative from many credible and authoritative political analysts (i.e. who don’t work for News Corp) is that the failure of the governing class on climate action is the result of some quirk of Australian politics, a consequences of extremism on both sides — climate denialists on one side, climate action extremists on the other — that has wrecked the possibility of “sensible centrist” policies like the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
One senior press gallery journalist argued last week that the level of extremism on the climate issue meant people wanting climate action were wasting their time protesting. If only we had civil discourse and less extremism all round, if only we could all get along and compromise, we’d have reduced our emissions by now.
But the ANU survey suggests voters have got things sussed better than political commentators (which might suggest why the ANU survey shows a long-term collapse in the proportion of voters following election campaigns in the media).
Australia’s lack of action on climate change has been bought and paid for by vested interests, using a political donations system that enables them to buy access to decision makers and guide policy without any kind of transparency. Big business does indeed wield too much power (as more than three-quarters of voters believe) and has used it to stymie climate action.
Even businesses that profess to believe climate action is important do this — the top big business lobby group, the Business Council, has assiduously worked to undermine all climate action policies, while professing to support carbon prices and other abatement measures.
While we have a political donations system that allows vested interests to buy access and influence in secret, with little or no transparency about that process, big business will continue to wield too much power and voters will continue to have no reason to trust government, or recover their enthusiasm for our democracy.
It’s true that Labor has long pushed for greater donation transparency and practices it voluntarily, and in the last three years has accepted the need for a federal ICAC. But we’re a long way from mainstream acceptance of a proper set of transparency reforms: tight limits on donations, greater accountability for third-party bodies, real-time donation reporting, real-time reporting of meetings with those seeking to influence policy, and radically expanded freedom of information laws to open up the workings of government to public scrutiny.
Without these, our federal democracy is unable to function effectively. Inaction on climate change isn’t some political accident, but an inevitable result of a corrupted system that is no longer fit for purpose. And voters have worked it out.
What would it take for the government to win back your trust? Let us know by writing to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication.
Have a look at Robert Reich in the Guardian for an indication of where we are headed. The dollar numbers quoted are staggering.
It is a great article Mr Hellespont, but such reports fall on deaf ears in our voting consciousness, as witness the last election.
We have a crisis of stupid in this country, and I blame commercial TV for that.
And I blame Rupert for the quality of our TV.
And I blame the ABC for not making greater efforts to cut through the bullshit and reveal the neoliberal truth in all its ugly nefariousness…..
Why don’t you blame the people for watching TV in general. Perhaps the solution is to put the TV on eBay.
I think you’ll find that the origin is dissatisfaction with regard to representation extents beyond what you suppose.
People need knowledge and information Kyle, and the TV is not a bad way to get some.
I think you would concede the ABC does some good work, and has exposed plenty of corruption and malfeasance – just not enough, now that bald-faced lying has taken off so dramatically here, as well as the in other supposedly exemplary democracies of the USA and UK.
The concept of “balanced reporting”, combined with funding strangulation, severely inhibits the ABC, while commercial media effectively have no impediments to broadcasting lies and mis-information.
Climate action extremists? You are kidding, surely.
https://theconversation.com/its-the-10-year-anniversary-of-our-climate-policy-abyss-but-dont-blame-the-greens-128239
Peter van Onselen pretty much covered it on Insiders when he vehemently stated (twice!) that recent governments, especially this Government, just don’t answer questions when directly asked by the media.
A nice change of heart from Van Onselen, that Kelly seemed keen to gloss over.
Morrison, like Trump, has twigged that if you have uncritical support from mass media then you can lie and dodge and obfuscate to your hearts content with complete impunity.
Murphy too has twigged that Morrison is quietly trashing Parliament as an institution with his relentless Canberra Bubble crap.
Our democracy is deep in doo doo, and the LNP and their wealthy backers are gleeful about that.
I might add that Bernard can’t help using some of his old bias to subtly imply that Labor is as bad as the LNP in this downward spiral in our politics, when in reality the LNP from Fraser to Howard, and then to this ugly crew, have made an art form of trashing political standards.
And Whitlam still gets little credit for his valiant efforts to get the politics back to a genuine social improvement space. We will wait a long time to see his likes again.
You can always count on Van Onselen to daub both sides of politics with blame as it arises (mitigating fall-out for his side).
But if it’s only Labor caught short, he’s loathe to raise similar examples of embarrassment from his Limited News Party.
Not that he’s alone in that – just about everyone else at Limited News does it and quite a few at the ABC (Sales, Baird, “Feathers” Fanning, Karvelas for starters).
I don’t read News Limited any more cause…well…it’s limited. I used to buy a copy several times a week till I noticed even their IT section was basicaly editorial/opinon. News Limited is exactly what it is…
Yep, I was caught offside too. There must be something personal going on…
Why should they answer questions? In such instances, the media is passive and servile.
Journalists now complaining about the obsessive secrecy attached to “stopping the boats” having expanded into the wide open spaces they left vacant have largely themselves to blame – their servility and deference if not fawning in fact allowed then Border Generalissimo-MP now PM morrison enormous latitude.
Why should the media expect exemptions from the terror laws when they show so little capacity to use it?
What the ANU survey of only 2,179 respondents does not explain: If 68% think climate change is a serious issue, why did the electorate vote for the coalition as (laughably) the better economic mangers who have made it plain it is opposed to effective action on atmospheric pollution. Is the electorate really that stupid? Probably yes.
At least, after the deliberate policy-free campaign of the coalition, it is now amply demonstrating to those paying attention that what matters is the prejudices of its donors, not what the Australian electorate thinks. That hubris will be the undoing of this incompetent, dishonest and secretive government. But that’s what I thought in May.
I think the reason ( and I use that term loosely) why people say they vote LNP because of their alleged superior economic management stems from The Dismissal. Back then the Libs did a great job couching that aristocratic born-to-rule move as being necessary because Gough was endeavouring to govern without a budget. I remember my parents saying this at the time and I remember thinking as a 12 year old “but he had no budget because the Libs wouldn’t pass it”. However I think it set the Libs up as the “economically sensible” party and Labour as the party responsible for radical change that we can’t afford. You know, Public Schools, Medicare, Free University, Floating the Dollar, Surviving the GFC, NDIS, Carbon Pricing silly stuff like that. But people are scared and they confuse governmental economic management with personal financial security and so they vote LNP without understanding why.
I agree about the dismissal in 1975. I also think that since then in some (many?) voter’s minds a Labor government is seen as somehow illegitimate and not to be taken seriously – just an aberration to be tolerated until the next coalition government can be elected.
There are still a lot of (older) voters who can’t forgive Labor for letting interest rates get to 17% while they were paying their mortgages. Perhaps those people wouldn’t vote Labor anyway, but I know a couple of otherwise working-class men who have expressed that opinion to me. People hold long grudges. Many don’t differentiate between federal, state, local (and sometimes even international) issues. And all any of the non-government parties have to try to change those opinions are random 10-second grabs in news media.
It is worth remembering that those high interest rates were a global phenomenon. Mortgage rates peaked at 17% in the UK under Thatcher and at 19% in the USA under Regan. Could our local Labor government have done better? I don’t know.
Voters say they want action on climate change but baulk at the prospect of paying more or having their lifestyle compromised in any way shape or form.
We are much closer to the dam breaking on climate change than the selfish pigs in the coalition realise. When it does they richly deserve to be washed away like the flotsam and jetsam they are.Paying mealy mouthed lip service to an existential problem, when you have received the best scientific advice, is evil.Certain Christians haven’t read the New Testament or are frauds.
The other thing is – if they’re really so fed up with politics – why did they return this governmant at all : rather than vote for change? To clear out the deadwood with which they’re so fed up?
[Watching ABC coverage of the UK election –
“Labour strongholds” neglected and ignored for years (and can’t remember England before the EU?) are saying they’ll swing from Labour and vote for the government that has ignored and neglected them for years ………. FFS seriously, what insanity?]
I’d believe these numbers more if politicians didn’t have such good job security. Until politicians are routinely thrown out of a job by their electorate, all it suggests to me is that we’re collectively outraged by the democratic choices made in seats outside our own.
Politicians get a performance review every 3 years, and it seems our suggestion is that although we think they’re doing a terrible job, we should persist with them anyway.
There was a time when Parliamentarians were not remunerated and Heads of Sections paid for their own stationery.
And wasn’t it great to have unremunerated Parliamentarians, drawn exclusively from a pool of people who could afford to not have to work or who were taking money under the table? Such a great time, pre-Federation: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/ParlBaseSal2018#_Toc522103173
Do you dismiss events over centuries such as the Magna Carta to the abolition of slavery or even the Factor Acts of the 1830s; the Education Acts of the 1870s come to that?
Given the advent of post truth and fake news can “democracy” be defended as an achievement? That politics has (not will) descended to the LCM is hardly a surprise. At least, pre franchise, the newspapers directed comments to the (more or less) educated.
Not really relevant to the predicament we face now, though, is it? We as voters express a much greater dissatisfaction than we express when it matters. Suppose that makes sense for a nation that hates the major banks with a passion while the overwhelming majority of people stay with them.