Boy oh boy, the honeymoon sure is over, ain’t it? Remember those delicious weeks at Surfers after the election, Laborists and progressives and radicals in an ocean-view suite, banging one another, then getting an ice cream, then banging again, the waves crashing in the distance. We didn’t even get out to see the Elvis show at the casino.
Now look at us. Back in the new flat, back at work, we’re starting to learn each other’s habits — Labor stinks out the bathroom, progressives want to keep telling you how their goddamn day went. (Gendered? You’re gendered). Despite promises made, Labor has ordered that 30-episode series on WWII it said it wouldn’t, and progressives are talking about going back to finish their master’s in dance. All of these items have an exact analogue and I could go on. We still love each other — but three years? Living together? You don’t get that for selling meth… well, under a certain weight.
But, hey, this is what we wanted, right? Labor said it would make our dreams come true, now it makes that clicking noise with its mouth every time we buy a bottle of wine. And another thi-
OK, OK, we always knew this was coming. Labor wilfully boxed itself in during the election, with a commitment to no new taxes, to debt reduction, and with the wobbly element being the actual promises to do stuff.
Very wobbly indeed. The new global situation is coming on faster than many imagined, or were willing to recognise. With interest rates rising, Labor doesn’t have the option of extending debt any further. Then, the memory of how profligate the Coalition was will be instantly wiped, and the old judgments — Labor can’t handle money — will be reasserted. But at the same time, we’ve crossed a redline in capitalist history with COVID, and a new level of involvement of the state in propping up market demand. If Labor thought it could just put its stern face on and withdraw COVID isolation payments without pushback, it was surprised by the reaction. It will have a lot more of that to come.
The inevitable political recourse will be to sell out on commitments made on the environment and on the leftish side of social issues, and then blame the Greens for pushing them. This allows Labor to be the party of the suburbs while simultaneously presiding over a decline in their conditions. If this is a marriage, it’s Dita Von Teese and Marilyn Manson.
That would create a sort of permanent dissatisfaction, in which government perpetually fails to deliver what people want but gives pleasure by visibly denying to progressives what they really want, thus creating an identity-defining political split and affirmation.
This puts the Greens in a position where there can be no grand strategic plan possible — merely a series of strategic and tactical initiatives, based on their Senate position. Labor’s support, especially among youth, will collapse towards the Greens, but the Greens would lose some of their increased support gained in the election if they launch an immediate attack on the 43% cutoff. For the Greens, it’s not an attractive prospect: as the party that represents both the coming ruling class, and the necessary ethical demands on future action that we all know to be necessary, they are the ones everyone gets to hate. The abstract ethic that underlies Green politics is directly in opposition to the more concrete ethic that Labor wants to connect itself to.
The Greens can only really respond to that by doing on a national level what the Queensland Greens did at a state level: join a very visible and real activism to their electoral role. Senators and MHRs need to be seen at protests, need to be organising them, skirting the very edge of illegality. The Greens did this once; they could do so again.
Would that lose them some of the new voters they’ve gained? I don’t think so. They’re more likely to be irritated by political obstructionism than by political determination.
The dilemma for Labor is that while the economic crunch is coming at it fast, so is increased ethical demand in regards to new coal and gas projects, and the increasing refusal to give them consent. Labor has a blindspot regarding the emergence of this politics — even as it sees its vote falling, while Greens and teals rise, it still can’t quite believe that such commitments are real, and lived. In the end, it always believes it’s virtue signalling. So it always thinks it will drift away before elections.
Labor’s smartest, boldest move would be to announce that things are much worse than it was led to believe, and that it will need to introduce a federal mining superprofits levy to deal with deficit, debt and social obligations. If Labor were to do that, the marriage would be saved. But it won’t, and unless something spectacular and unusual happens, we’ll be in for a scrappy and frustrating political time. The honeymoon is over, baby, it’s never gonna be that way again.
Labor needs to take stock of the times. Global warming has shouldered its way into the party, and it will catch up with any middling, mediocre, timid delaying conservative action and simply flatten it. Take a stand on new coal mines. Get a superprofits levy going. Get some real action on the housing crisis happening. Have a look at the current heatwaves in Europe. If you have to introduce this kind of legislation in two years time due to environmental/social factors making it an absolute necessity, you’ll lose the election, and Christ help us all. Endure the pain and the News Corpse rubbishing now, and get it done.
Agree. Just. DO. It! And if the electorate goes again for another ‘axe the tax’ deal (hands up who got their $500 electricity bill reduction!) then we are all doomed. At the moment there is still a chance of manageable adaptation – not for much longer as the CO2 and methane content in atmosphere has already passed tip-over point.
And so it begins.
Agree with you Frank and Grundle.. Super profits tax is
only way to go.. With financial crunch no other means to enable some freedom of action. Labour with Albo ( and his cabinet) never going to show nerve needed for bold action these times require. Its going to be so frustrating to live through half measures, usual tokenism greenwash and no meaningful action.. We so provincial it seems Europe’s summer is rendered non existent or irrelevant… never mind Greenland melting etc
Why oh why the incessant moves by both parties to lower taxes. Blind Freddy can see that if we want truly progressive social policies, and an improvement in equality, then taxes will have to go up.
first on the free-riding milieus of our natural resources, and then on the wealthy, and then on the “upper middle class” who enjoy plenty of govt largess in their negative gearing etc.
Taxes buy civilisation – if in doubt compare the high tax/welfare/happy Nordic countries with the hellhole that is low tax USA.
If government revenue is reduced then the services which it can best provide – health, education, infrastructure – will be cut. The populace who need those fripperies can pay private providers from their bulging wallets resulting from the tax cuts.
Quite simple really.
Because neoliberal orthodoxy, because neoliberal orthodoxy. We’ve swallowed this class war koolaid so hard in this land of mugs.
Two guaranteed pain-free money makers: a mining superprofits levy & pruning a couple of those new submarines off our order invoice. Both these measures would excite News Corp but the general public (aka voters) would be strongly supportive.
A couple?
As Hugh White, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU said when asked about “the wisdom of cancelling another submarine contract” – “What contract? All we’ve had is a press release, a glean in an exPM’s eye.”
Repudiate USUKA now!
If Labor does the same old LNP-light shoe shuffle on climate change that we’ve become accustomed to it’s done for and so are we. The urgency for radical action nationally can no longer be hidden …
Too many believe the bumber sticker slogan “No Environment without a strong Economy” – it might as well be on the flag above Parliament Hill.
“Labor’s smartest, boldest move would be to announce that things are much worse than it was led to believe, and that it will need to introduce a federal mining superprofits levy to deal with deficit, debt and social obligations.”
Agree would be smartest but not scarily bold. Conservatives nearly always run this line when taking office to excuse reneging etc. Labor are currently at their strongest, Newscorp is as weak as it’s been and the Coalition are a rabble. Now is time to seize the day. Goodness only knows the PS could provide an avalanche of stats on just how bad it is, cue Tanya P and Environment report.
Re climate change, the important strategy for the Teals, Greens and those in Govt serious about it, is to make sure 43% is the floor not the ceiling. The market is tilting to renewables investment. As transition gets going it yields multipliers that speed it up and increasingly strand the fossil fuel economy. It would expected that a proper effort by government will see us overshoot 43%, the aim is to overshoot it by as much as possible. We can do this by strategically joining policy decisions to incentives to market forces movements, resulting in a pincer movement with its own momentum. It remains an uncertain battle but at least the pro-planet forces are now led by generals who are not fifth columnists. Or so we hope…