After three years, a huge proportion of voters — more than one in four — cannot make up their minds about who they want in government. That’s a damning indictment on both major parties.
This indecision comes after a merry-go-round of scandals and botched decisions, broken promises and poor judgment by the Morrison government. But still the verdict is murky, and that’s almost difficult to believe.
After a Hawaiian holiday while the home front burned, to how his government dealt with sexual misconduct allegations, to a delayed vaccine rollout to ministerial misconduct, Scott Morrison is still preferred prime minister.
And one in every four voters — according to Resolve Strategic polling for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — remains uncommitted. In fact, that number jumped even over the past fortnight.
Labor has to take the blame for some of that, and Anthony Albanese, if he wants the top job, needs to do better and know the answers to simple questions like the unemployment and cash rates. They weren’t “gotchas”, unlike many of the questions that followed, and he’s paid the price for an unsteady first week.
But perhaps more telling is that over the past three years, as one stuff-up followed another, Albanese and his party have not been able to build a narrative for voters on the Australia they would lead.
As ministers resigned and promises, like a federal integrity commission, came and disappeared, Labor has not been able to capitalise on voter disenchantment with a government that prioritises spin, at every opportunity, over policy.
That is almost as damning an indictment as Morrison’s leadership. Shouldn’t we be able to expect more of both our government and the opposition? Shouldn’t we expect a contest of ideas where we can vote for a clear-cut vision?
Neither party seems to want to inspire us. Neither party wants to provide a vision for what comes after the election. And that means neither party has a plan for complex issues that run beyond the election cycle — such as research into cancer, dealing with long-term mental health problems like youth suicide, or lifting our education system to deal with sticky diplomacy beyond our shores.
So far the Coalition is hell-bent on turning every question into a monologue on the economy (and every now and again, defence). That’s because it thinks it has the upper hand there.
But what has the Coalition given us, the voters, over the past three years? Where has it filled us with a hope for the future, or a legacy to be proud of, after a pandemic? Why hasn’t it helped “disrupt” the way we educate our children after COVID, or created a national health offensive, one that could have long-term impact?
Imagine if we ran our businesses or schools or families like that — without any consideration to their health beyond the next couple of years. Morrison’s government has only been interested in short-term fixes that peak at election time. In between it has bounced from mediocrity to mediocrity.
Albanese, on the other hand, just wants to win power. Full stop. A first-week gaffe won’t be fatal for his ambitions. But an inability to show up the government and to provide a compelling picture of what we are investing in with a change of government might be.
Scaremongering over Medicare won’t work. We’re more intelligent than that. Neither will taking to the stage at Bluesfest. Or cuddling umpteen babies.
A lacklustre offering on both sides is the reason why the independent vote is up. It is why Clive Palmer’s expensive advertising campaign is gaining traction. It is why good, decent people, including mayors, are putting up their hands to run.
Morrison doesn’t deserve another term. Many Coalition supporters would agree with that. But what’s stopping that one in every four undecided eligible voters from decisively turning towards Labor?
There can be only one answer: Labor. Who knows if Tanya Plibersek or Jim Chalmers could “perform” better on the campaign trail? That’s academic. What is not academic is the challenge between Albanese and a very average incumbent competitor.
And the fact that Albanese is not streets in front, and that so many voters are not sure if they want him as a leader, means this is a disappointing race for a lot more than one in four voters.
So 25% of Australians – which ones “normally” Liberal / Female? Labor / Greens? Who?
Labor are suffering majorly from “well we better not do that again” as far as setting out a vision. They also can’t go full throated about dumping fossil fuels and embracing renewables because of the CFMEU drag anchor.
Albo may be a nice guy and even a good leader once the “vaudeville” of media performance is over. But he’s not Penny Wong or Julia Gilliard or even Malcolm Turnbull (aw yeah he’s LNP) …
Morrison deserves to lose and lose really badly but with Murdoch poised to attack anything and everything Labor we’re getting the Starmer/Biden/Beazley small target strategy.
time to be rid of the evil murdoch empire; ship them and their willing accomplices to an offshore processing centre and seize their assets!
I’d like them to pay some tax before they left
That’d be nice but the immense benefit of their just being gone would suffice.
Look, it’s hard to disagree that the ALP is singularly uninspiring. (Full disclosure: paid-up Greens member for 25 years now.) But I think it would also be worthwhile to look at how this polling was done. Pollsters arguably haven’t kept up with the increasing sophistication (and cynicism) of the people who respond to polls. They often don’t tell the truth (and the people who don’t tell the truth about their intentions may not be randomly distributed). Moreover, one can no longer rely on older methods for finding a truly random sample. There are people who simply won’t deal with pollsters and those people are plausibly not distributed evenly between voting intentions on a 2 party preferred.
Much of the general public (perhaps not implausibly!) regards pollsters as just more vermin infesting the party-political complex. Nasty creatures, like branch-stackers, factional warriors, and PR firms. If public cynicism with politicians extends to a cynicism with pollsters, then you can’t believe either of them.
Speaking of the national character as a whole, Australians don’t deserve a big vision. They have the attention span of a gnat, and the foresight of that buffalo at the water hole that has just avoided being eaten by a croc, only to return five seconds later because the crocodile was so five-seconds-ago and “hey…water!!”
The media landscape, again speaking in general, (and not including Crikey) is a corrupt sh*t-pile, driven by the Murdochratic empire. And it’s not just the Disney villain shouty-faces on Sky, it’s the mewling middle-of-the-road, along for the ride, p*ss weak journos who are happy to copy and paste whatever gets handed to them every morning, while keeping on a tape-loop the insidious background messaging that becomes the sub-conscious base for every low-information voter out there. You know how, on election day, the news will usually bail up a few victims waiting in line to vote, and ask them who they’re voting for and why? They look stunned, they don’t know, they reach for a response, and then…it comes to them…from the dark recesses of their minds, imprinted there by a thousand repetitions….”I’m voting Liberal because, you know, they’re the better economic managers.”
And that’s how mind control works, people.
Would Tanya or Jim be having any more luck against the tidal wave of bias? Is any non-LNP pollie safe from the perfidy of the Murdochrats? I doubt it. Labor announces plans, “how are you going to pay?” comes back the cry. Labor focus on Morrison’s nasty character traits, the media analyse the meta-narrative of Albo and Labor who are desperately searching for a way to get back in the race. Meanwhile, there’s no meta-analysis of Morrison, or any requirement for him to justify any of his lavish spending announcements. “There’s money put aside” he assures us.
It is like playing a game of football where you’re only allowed half the players, have to wear blindfolds, and the other side can use barbed-wire baseball bats.
Ages ago i joked that some terrible calamity, like a super strain of Covid, or a huge hike in interest rates, would have to happen just weeks before an election, otherwise the voters would forget by polling day. Now I think that it’s minutes. Maybe five minutes before entering the polling booth, a voter’s home has to burn down, get washed away by a flood, then they get hit with an interest hike before having to spend their week’s pay putting petrol in the car to get to the school hall to vote…
…and even then, they might still reply, when being interviewed in the polling line…
“Well, better to stick with the devil-you-know….I mean, the Libs ARE the better economic managers…”
Enough of them, to keep us stuck in the mud, won’t vote for a big vision. They’ll wait ’til it’s too late to shift.
Nailed it.
Big pictures didn’t appeal to many (or enough) people in the last Federal Election. Is there a reason, other than hope, to expect it to be different this time…?
It was more a grab bag than a big picture. I wish Labor would say something like we intend to make Australia fairer and this is how we’ll get there. Not Albo’s small-minded statements like that he likes “fighting Tories.”
Totally agree – would love to see a high level strategic vision statement such as “making Australia a fairer society” (I am no marketeer) and then “and this is how we are going to do it” Aged Care, NDIS reform, etc. These small announcements of $38M for disaster relief mean nothing and are not linked back to the bigger vision (plus – $38M is nothing in the big picture – Clive Palmer ash tray change).
Smirko claims he is making Australia fairer!
It is fair to allow people to die because they can’t afford to eat well and pay for medication!
Smirko thinks it is god’s will, just as he doesn’t think he has to do anything about mitigating Climate Change.
Isn’t it exciting being governed as if we all believe that everything is ordained and all we have to do is make lots of money to donate to the church.
The “big picture” we need articulated is one where the unfair gravy trains end, but this upsets the status quo, and the many powerful benefactors of these gravy trains. Its then sooo easy to shoot down “big picture” policies with simple-minded scare campaigns that are simply just broadcast for free in favour of the incumbents.
So ALP have intentionally gone small-target, as they can see this is the only way through a hostile media landscape. Now ALP will get criticised for not stumping up anything too ambitious. They are willing to take that critique and see how it goes. Crikey!! What a basket case we have become!
You’ve got it Milkman.
In the last Election Labor put forward a big Agenda – and got hammered for it by the Coalition and the MSM.
This Election, they’ve undertaken a fair bit of “me too”, so as to create a smaller target, and only announced a handful of much smaller reforms – But again, they’re getting hammered for it by the Coalition and the MSM.
In between Elections a very large proportion of the Voting Public switch off from Politics, and apart from the number of Political stuff ups they hear and see on the News during the years, they are written off as “all political parties do the same thing”.
It is only when an Election comes around that people switch on because they realize they have to Vote.
The MSM has a lot to answer for, because these days they don’t just report the facts of News, they distort it with the multitude of Opinion pieces that are often tainted with Political Bias.
I seem to recall when the Labor Party was the Labour Party,and the policies favoured the Workers.No wonder they fail to convince now.
I think the fear is the ALP has a big picture and the NLP pounces with a fear campaign (dodgy Wilson style).
Then the ALP runs away as they don’t have a strategy to counter fear and lies.
i.e. they lack bravado and confidence. Also topical examples such as last time when Shorten was confronted by the fellow from the mine on 250k (from memory) who winged about -ve gearing. Shorten just ran away which seemed to support Wilson.
No ticker. Go teal. Even one policy is one more than the majors have. (no, smash and waste is not a policy)
Yes….. I’m one of the 1 in 4 Australian voters – searching and seeking out, a suitable political party, that is ethical and visionary and not tainted and corrupted by political donations by multi national corporations/companies.
Bring on and implement a Federal ICAC and with retrospective powers and watch former and current MP’s, squirm and crawl back under their rocks!
The Greens don’t accept corporate political donations so what stops you from voting for them? And don’t say that you don’t want to waste your vote on a party that can’t win – you do know how preferential voting works, don’t you?
Also, if everyone who says they don’t vote for the Greens because the Greens can’t ever win voted for the Greens the Greens might have a chance. That’s how elections work – more votes mean higher probability of a win.
Not only t5hat, they already play a key role in the Senate, and in the event of a hung parliament, they could bargain for a lot of their agenda.
Yep.
It really is that simple and plainly sensible.
Vote (as if) your future depended on it!
Albanese should keep it simple & with stark differences ie:
-a hard-nosed federal ICAC
-significant action on climate change
-Medicare to include dental
The public’s attention span is short, the less complicated the policy the better. They remembered Kevin Rudd promising a computer to each student.
There was a scaffolder last week who remembered that KRudd left a debt of 3 billion dollars, so couldn’t vote for Labor again. What chance does anyone have when there are these idiots around?
Somehow the detail of the Coalition’s record-setting debt has slipped through News Corp’s information net.
The Coalition’s approach – “Debt and Deficit Disaster” they cried – Then when it was their turn with the purse strings, they went very quiet!
And look what has happened – the Debt has been extremely enlarged, and that was before the Pandemic.
My elderly auntie’s comment was “ You can’t vote Labor. They come in and wreck EVERYTHING!” This is a woman who relies on an aged pension.
As has been noted earlier, the media environment prevents Labor from getting too big picture (they’d be asked to provide all the details) and getting too far ahead of where the public are currently (they’d be criticised as being radical leftists).
Which means a smaller narrative –
ICAC, accountability and less waste of taxpayers money
Renewable industry jobs and training/skills (and some climate change action)
Child care/Aged care/Medicare
What else would reasonably be expected of Labor under the circumstances????
Fund Medicare properly!
And include basic dentistry.
And show the private health insurers the door. No more two-tiered system. That’s what put us here.
The Greens get double the national vote of the Nats , yet pick up one seat versus the ten for the Nats