On your marks. Get set. And we’re off on another election campaign, even before the starter’s gun is fired.
Already it’s tracking like those past campaigns, where small visions are matched by big-spending promises. Expect that to play on loop over the next few weeks. And on both sides the effort will be put into a chunk of marginal seats that might deliver gold on election night.
But is that a vision for Australia? Or a race to the Lodge? What should we expect in terms of inspiration and innovation for the future? That question is crucial, particularly at a time when a pandemic has stolen lives and jobs and hope from so many Australians.
Yesterday my colleague Bernard Keane articulated how voters are entitled to transparency and integrity, strong debate, limited adverting, cost-effective campaigns and a vision to meet the big challenges our nation faces.
So what are those challenges, and what party will address them in a substantial way?
China
This is one of our biggest challenges — politically, economically and security-wise. It’s the rising power in the world and we are joined at the hip with the other major power in the world, the United States. China appears to be treating Australia as a proxy for the US, imposing unfair trade sanctions and spycraft against us. Conflict isn’t inevitable, but it will take delicate leadership to navigate between these two powers, all the while protecting our sovereign interest. What party will best address this challenge? And how crucial of an issue do our leaders see it? Watch this space.
Climate change
It’s time. And this comes down to a competition between the parties to come up with a course of action that is acceptable to the other, which demonstrates real progress, doesn’t smash the economy, doesn’t turn out the lights, and protects those parts of the country particularly vulnerable to climate change (i.e. northern Australia). It’s easy to talk about, but concrete action is needed, and voters have to believe promises will translate into genuine commitment.
Reconciliation
Could this be the last generation able to achieve real reconciliation? Future generations made up of a more culturally diverse society may lack the same impetus to change the status quo. We talk about closing the gap. It is not closing. And we need to do more. Let’s see how much oxygen is given to this issue during the campaign, particularly in marginal seats which will determine what party ends up in government. How much of an issue will it be for our leaders in those seats?
Mental health
Medicos say up to 80% of their waiting rooms are made up of patients who will require some assistance with mental health. COVID-19 has left a long and ugly tail. Young children have not learnt to share. Others turn toddler before seeing smiles hidden behind masks. Queues for teen psychologists climb to more than a year, as eating disorders, self-harm and suicide rates rise. Our aged, trapped in isolation for months, are lost. Others have closed the door on their businesses and their futures. And a few million here and there will not help this looming tsunami. Let’s see if either party really understands the depths of this crisis, and offers leadership to see our way out of it.
Education
For decades we’ve been arguing that we need match-fit school graduates who can take on the world. And for decades we’ve fallen short. Why? And how can we say the current curriculum is what is needed when it is not delivering what it should — clever, curious, well-adjusted, articulate school leavers, who can think critically and work as part of a team. This isn’t a problem with a quick fix, but billions has been spent over decades tinkering at the edges. It’s got to stop. Our children deserve that. And so does our nation.
Yesterday Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in Victoria telling everyone how good his party was economically. Labor leader Anthony Albanese was in Queensland, saying how crucial that state was to the nation’s future. And the vision for our future didn’t rise above political argy-bargy and promises to fix congested roads.
King on “a history of lost opportunity while playing political argy-bargy”? Seriously?
“The power to disappoint” and that race to The Lodge never turned King and her Limited News Curry or Maul off pimping the Coalition no matter what – from Hewson’s “unloseable election” and through Honest John’s reign – including “Children Overboard” when that was beginning to unravel just days before the 2001 election, urging a vote for Howard as doubts about his, Ruddock’s Downer’s Hill’s and Reith’s et al veracity was wafting down-zephyr. When tax-cuts, negative gearing and other middle class welfare was touted as being great : ignoring the opportunity to try to sell the using of the proceeds of the mining boom to invest in infrastructure, for rainy days….
Right up until Rudd looked like routing Howard, with Rupert’s face to save on the line too.
This latest ‘loss of opportunity’ has gone missing from under almost 9 years of end to end of her pet Limited News Party government – while Limited News has run a protection racket for the Limited News Party…. how about that story?
To anyone with a clue, not taking sides is taking a very particular side. When we are suffering under the most corrupt and incompetent government this nation has ever had, this alleged journalist’s equivocation is tantamount to brazen cheerleading. How did this guff make it onto these pages? The crappy grammar is the insult on top of the injury.
This isn’t what I’m paying a subscription fee for.
You both put it more strongly than I would but fully agree with thrust of your points. To cry out for “leadership” on these topics during an election campaign is at best naive and perhaps is just cheerleading wrapped in a faux naivety.
First, because the structure in which elections take place will not allow for balanced discussion, discussion in good faith, and the sorts of statements this utopian vision aspires to. Moreover, the structure is biased towards conservative positions. The Murdoch press campaign not report. The commercial media generally focuses on gotchas and caters to market segments that are broken up by single issues comprehended within short attention spans. The ABC does slightly better but is often whacked for doing so. Parties organise their campaigns accordingly.
The utopian ideal asked for here would be a recipe for a disaster within the current structure. Might work in an episode of the West Wing perhaps. Even in conditions of unfolding disasters (especially since 2019) the system still lacks the ability to call forth debates about vision or in-depth policy. Shorten, believing he was unbeatable got close, and look what happened.
Second, it is quite clear to anyone paying mild attention that Labor will do better addressing every issue raised here. More talent, a better track record, more policy work, less compromised and ideologically predisposed to be concerned with solutions. Labor therefore doesn’t need “statements” in an election campaign that will likely just provide pretexts for attacks and scare campaigns aimed at ruling out action that might compromise vested interests benefiting from the status quo. The voters Labor will get already understand its superiority in these areas. The votes they want will not be garnered by complex statements that can be muddied and verballed.
Whereas the Coalition by definition and practice stand for the status quo, except in areas where further benefits to vested interests might be engineered. So they have no interest in making in-depth commitments either strategically or tactically. Though experience already teaches them they don’t need to follow through anyway. But lies and scare campaigns are easier.
Interesting, but disturbingly Jane Mayer of ‘Dark Money’ fame described the ‘architecture of influence’ and claimed it is not just about political agitprop for media content, but using media and content to change ‘the way people think’.
She did not elaborate further but suggests ‘engineering of consent’ (Adam Curtis) or ‘manufacturing consent’ (Noam Chomski) to lead society to the desired outcomes, especially electoral?
Yes different parts of the same elephant. The question of sources of consent, construction of hegemony, is crucial and complex. My (not so) short take inspired by the issue and your comment…
At the level of specific issues and the contest for government we have a structure of media and communication bias relating to presentation of content that frames both how it can discussed and what it means, that is, filtering interpretation. This is all done pretty consciously as propagandists and editors and journalists make decisions.
More broadly, general ongoing discussion of policy and more is constantly presented in media and by authority figures in narratives that apportion presumptions about what is true, false, possible v impractical, dangerous and safe and so on. Overall, presenting what is in the interests of the powerful as being in the interest of all and vice versa, a threat to the powerful is a threat to all. A construction of “common sense” that is impervious or at least highly resilient against evidence and analysis. Moreover, psychologically creating an identification by those taken advantage of, with those who take advantage of them.
This general “common sense” is drawn on by the campaigning media during election contests. It also infects the opinions offered by the more “balanced” media.
The need to deconstruct the dominant narrative and the identity it builds, just to get to the point where meaningful discussion of the world can take place, can be exhausting..
However, we don’t live in a totalitarian state so many people are engaged in counter narratives to undermine this manufacturing. However, they are not on Skynews. Indeed, while they can get a run in some media, most media doesn’t even have a form that’s friendly to such counter narratives. And for the most part commercial imperatives keep media well within the bounds of the common sense. The odd radical view for seasoning, but always presented as odd.
However, as another cause for optimism, it is also the case that there are many people whose experience of the world makes it clear that much or all of the manufactured common sense is bogus. Indeed I suspect it is usually at least 40 per cent of the population. They may not have a coherent counter narrative but they are clear on what is BS. Which is an important part of the battle.
The years spent at the Curry or Maul under husband editor Dave Fagan, and on ABC radio mornings, churning out pro-Coalition propaganda selling the joys of Coalition government, while railing against Labor and the Greens. And pinin’ for the fiords of Bjelke-Petersenland while under the yoke of a Labor Qld government.
The lost years – of such Coalition cheerleading sycophancy.
We’ve had 4 years of Morrison government – YTF would anyone think he and his blame-shifting, lying, uber-rorting mob are going to change their spotty m.o? Unless the observer was hoping they will change and are trying to sell that hope on?
We may not know what Albanese/Labor would do given the chance : but after 4 years we damned-well know what Morrison will – he won’t take a lead, and he won’t do anything, but leave it up to others to do. And, if it works, take the credit. If it doesn’t, stand in condemnation and blame.
And if he does do anything that doesn’t come off he’ll want to blame anyone else for how things panned out.
They wouldn’t be able to have gotten away with what they have if they were faced with a media that actually “held the powerful to account” rather than the present status quo of that dominant lump of our alt-right conservative media (Murdoch, Costello and Stokes) that prefers to play favourites and the politics of trying to crush the ideologically left, opposition – without that cabal’s unbalanced media clout.
That won’t touch certain embarrassing issues for the Coalition but will hang their opposition from the battlement walls for similar, or less egregious transgressions, trying to inflate them to Coalition scale.
When are we going to get a piece on that partisan, subjective politicised media’s role in helping deliver us to this state of bedlam – lamented in this one?
“The ghost of campaigns past are haunting this one. How about something different?”.
No Chance. The donors to both political parties want more of the same – that is to say, for the rich to get richer and the rest to get what’s coming.
So instead of turning debate towards a vision of the country’s future, the interests of the wealthy are better served by pouring fuel on the culture wars. The left gets a full load of identity politics, wokeness and virtue signalling The right gets a full load of blaming minorities and unloading on an assortment of sinners for everything that isn’t working right.
The end result is some heat, a lot of smoke and little if any light.
Politics is the entertainment division of big business.
Kudos for the last line.
And any party that makes a coherent case for long term future benefit will be slaughtered by idiot questions from a lazy media, like ‘what will cost’ as if that is ever relevant. You can’t bemoan an absence of policy rationality when your profession was front and centre in destroying that.
Couldnt agree more, BA. That’s why I keep geting piss_d when they keep asking albo to say where the money’s coming from fo rAged care. well it’s about a tenth of what the LNP has piss-d up against wall and given to their mates . . . Shorten had some great policies, but between Murdoch and Scomo’s beligerence (now recognised for what it is) it failed (mind you he bit off just a bit too much wiht the franking credits thing at the last minute which was the killer
Um. The mental health crisis predates COVID by a long way. Climate change inaction is part of it, but inequality is THE major cause.
Education. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “ Who stacks the shelves?” Just to reiterate, rising inequality is the major cause of the mental health crisis. Little things like trying to side step homelessness and keep food in bellies.
I hope this isn’t the last word, Crikey.
Too many potential lib voters are too dumb to make a reasoned assessment of policies so modern election campaigns cant be run on any rational basis. It has to be lowest common denominator theatrics, finger pointing and name calling with a BIG LIE in the dying days.
Wont change till people start thinking things thru. Could be a while.
Yeah. From here to eternity.