This campaign’s enough to make a policy purist put their head in their hands and weep.
The current round of electoral bribes started with the government’s expansion of the education rebate to uniforms on July 13. Cost over four years: $220 million.
Eight days later the Coalition declared that wasn’t good enough and threw open the rebate to any expenses faintly related to a vague concept of education, including after-school music lessons. Cost over four years: $760 million.
Yesterday the government returned fire. Obviously hampered by the limits of a rebate related to education, it has gone straight out for an increase in Family Tax Benefit for families with older kids. Cost over four years: $670 million.
Under Family Tax Benefit A, households earning more than $100,000 a year will be eligible for this assistance. It’s classic middle-class welfare.
Australia has a structural budget deficit, don’t forget, in addition to its actual deficit. Both sides are ignoring it, telling us their promises won’t cost the budget a cent, but banking on the resources boom sending tax revenue soaring again and erasing the deficit.
That’s why this would be such a terrible election for Labor to lose because, having watched the GFC wreck the budget, it knows the resources boom is going to send revenues soaring back to the sort of levels we saw in the last years of the Howard government. At this rate, it’ll be happening on the Coalition’s watch, allowing them to claim yet again they’re the party of surpluses, despite having done nothing except sit back and watch the miners send in their cheques.
It’s cover for the remorseless growth in middle-class welfare, even as Julia Gillard attacks welfare as damaging and Tony Abbott promises to crack the whip on the unemployed. If you’re young, poor, or Aboriginal, or live in a remote community, welfare is terrible. But for Family Tax Benefit A recipients, it’s a rolled-gold path to electoral bribery.
Right on the money, Bernard especially about welfare issues. We’ve got a bizarre situation in which neither party can promise anything for those who need it most – working age unemployed carrying all sorts of social and economic disadvantage – but will make huge outlays to those who, relatively speaking, don’t need support. My teenage stepson frequently asks why they’re doing this and adding to the injustice of the society as a result. All I can say in return is that the pollies are not talking to us, they’re trying to appeal an amorphous amalgam of swinging voter characteristics in marginal seats. The resultant face of that collective voter seems to me to be pretty ugly.
You are so right this time BK – but don’t worry. Wayne Swan has decreed that it is OK to rip $300 million out of Medibank Private and there is probably some more in the Reserve Bank and Australia Post so there is plenty for him and Julia to spread around, as long as the Opposition don’t think they can do it too. What a dipstick Wayne Swan is!!!
SOME OF you older members might remember my article (published in the Sun-Herald at the time of the Republic Referendum) headed: “20 REASONS WHY AUSTRALIA WON’T BECOME A REPUBLIC”. It caused quite a stir.
Yet, in the event, I was proved right. So I thought I might give the format a reprise, for it seems to me that there are just as many reasons now why Julia Gillard won’t win the present election. I think she is unelectable. So here are (in no particular order) my 20 reasons…
REASON 1. The Australian electorate won’t elect a self-confessed atheist as Prime Minister. I mentioned this a week or so ago, when Julia answered a reporter’s question on the subject of God. She said she did not believe in God. Nor do I – but I am not standing for Prime Minister. As I remarked at the time, her commendably frank answer cost her the election, there and then. In matters of religion, honesty is not the best policy (for an aspiring PM).
REASON 2. This stems from Reason #1. She doesn’t have the Catholic vote (that’s in Tony’s back pocket), and she’s probably lacking the Asian, Jewish and Muslim votes too. Kev’s mandarin won him a lot of Chinese support last time (and probably cost Howard Bennelong), but there’s not a lot of votes in Men of Harlech. Even Malcolm was canny enough to see the upside in a conversion. I fear that God (and Allah) will not be voting Labor this time round.
REASON 3. It is a truism in politics (if not an iron rule) that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. An election has a democratic purpose, which is for the people to pass judgement on a government that they have elected. That is what democracy is all about. But Labor has a big problem here. It has deposed a leader because, it claimed, he was buggering things up. Therefore Julia and Labor cannot stand on Labor’s record, for that record belongs to Kev. Hence the fatuous “Going Forward” mantra. But a government that cannot stand on its record is a government doomed.
REASON 4. One of the main lessons of Australian history is that electorates tend to give new governments two terms. No first-term Federal government has lost an election since Scullin – and that was in the middle of the Depression. This tradition was one of Labor’s biggest plusses. But they stupidly threw that advantage out with Kev’s midnight mugging – a decision that they will come to regret.
REASON 5. If there is one distinctive Australian national characteristic, it’s the principle of the fair go. To cut down a PM before he had a chance to lead his party into an election is an obvious and egregious violation of the fair-go principle. Australians don’t like that. This will rebound on the party that has denied Kev the fair go they feel he was entitled to.
REASON 6. Julia came to the leadership – and into the hasty election she then called – promising to fix the three big-ticket issues that supposedly led Labor to change leaders…the boats, the Great Big Tax, and climate change. But Julia and Labor have not fixed these three supposedly fatal flaws in the Rudd Government. The boats are still coming, more numerous than ever. Her answer to climate change – a people’s convention – has fallen flat on its face. And her mining deal is beginning to unravel. She is left with almost no platform on which to go to the people. Policy-wise, she is up a well-known creek in a barbed-wire canoe without a political paddle.
REASON 7. She is in the hands of, and at the mercy of, Labor’s internecine left-right factions. She is just as much a puppet as NSW Premier Keneally is. She was put into power by the factions, and is beholden to them. The electorate does not like Labor’s arcane factional power struggles. In particular, the spectre of the NSW Right hangs over her like a black cloud. Labor will do badly in a NSW disgusted by the local Labor bosses – Sussex Street. It’s not much better in Queensland. Senator Faulkner kept the factions at bay for Kev, and that largely won him the last election. But Kev shuffled him off to Defence, and now he’s retiring to the back benches in disgust. Without his protection, Julia is as lonely and exposed as a lost dog in no man’s land.
REASON 8. Around the world, there’s an increasing drift to the right. Political correctness – as represented by Tony Blair in Britain and Obama in the US – is on the retreat, politically. Conservatism is on the rise almost everywhere. The baby-boomers are moving into retirement homes. Their day has passed. The influence of their 1968 “progressive” agenda is waning. Already the tide is turning in the various Australian States. It will be very difficult for Julia and Labor to buck this general demographic trend.
REASON 9. Outback Australia – the “country” – will not vote Labor, no way. The rural and mining communities have no reason to feel warm and cuddly about the left. Rudd’s mining super tax lost Labor a lot of votes in Queensland and Western Australia in particular. There has not been time to forgive and forget. (And the cockies like Barnaby Joyce.) Outside of the big cities, Labor is on a loser.
REASON 10. Yet the Balmain basket-weavers and inner-city squattocracy aren’t keen on the cut of Labor’s jib either. The cafe-latte set didn’t appreciate the backflip on climate change, nor do they like Labor’s new immigration stance, and they don’t warm to the Simon Creans of this world (“old Labor”) either. A lot of them will vote Green, and some may even direct their preferences away from Labor as “punishment” for what they see as Labor’s betrayal on the boats and climate. The Greens will make a strong showing, and will probably win Melbourne, plus a swag of Senate seats. Not a happy prospect for Julia and Labor.
REASON 11. Australia will not vote for a prospective PM with no orthodox family life to speak of. The latte set conceivably might, but the “Mums and Dads of Australia” certainly won’t. Social mores have changed, but the prospect of having a woman and her de facto in the Lodge does not sit right with most Australians. Who is Mr Gilliard anyway? How and when will he be wheeled out? At the campaign launch? Tony’s ostentatiously uxorious family life sets a model and image that Labor can’t match (quite the contrary). Note how Mrs Abbott is now joining her husband on the campaign trail. This became a major factor in the campaign this week, and is something that will keep haunting Julia.
REASON 12. Then there’s Tony’s overt Australianism…budgie-smugglers, lycra, etc. I detect a swing back to “Australian values” in the community. There’s nothing Julia can do to match that ostentatious Aussie masculinity. While Tony’s iron-man ears are flapping in the breeze, Julia’s staying indoors having a bad-hair day. Imagine what she’d look like at the AFL or NRL final. Like a shag on a rock. No wonder the bloke vote is going against her.
REASON 13. Labor is also squandering the outer-suburb vote. Julia is offering the Kath and Kims of our cities nothing but more congestion, more immigration, more neighbourhood angst (and probably higher mortgages in the offing). Part of John Howard’s success was to win this vital – perhaps the most vital – sector of the electorate. Julia and her lacklustre, inner-city sisterhood hold little appeal to this part of Australia, whose votes will almost certainly determine the outcome of the election. (Note what a fish out of the water she looks like – her obvious affectation – in the shopping malls of Western Sydney and outer Melbourne and Brisbane.)
REASON 14. The Media is turning against Julia and Labor. For Gawd’s sake, that Yellow-Dog* Labor stalwart Phillip Adams has turned in his membership card in protest at the way Kev was knifed. Even Mungo McCallum is sticking pins in the wax dummy now. (Who next? Bob Ellis? Pilger?) As a Media groupie, I can tell you there is a distinct change of mood in the commentariate. The reptiles loved Kev, who fed them juicy leaks as if they were seals in the Taronga Park pool, and they don’t like the way he has been taken away from them. (Besides, he might still have a few sardines in his pocket.)
REASON 15. Labor and Julia have a major ideological dilemma. Their traditional Labor constituency is crumbling. Labor historically is supposed to be the political wing of the union movement. But the role of unions in Australia is, If not disappearing, then weakening to the point of irrelevance. No longer is Labor ruled by its big national conferences, where policy is made from the floor. Increasingly, Labor’s parliamentary ranks are being filled by ambitious, middle-class Labor blow-ins straight out of university Young Labor clubs. Labor is losing touch with its working-class roots, and becoming an inner-city party, while the coalition’s underpinnings in industry and business, rural Australia, and the ever-more-conservative suburbs are, if anything, looking more secure by the day.
REASON 16. This election is not going well for Labor. They are reeling from one bad day to the next (yesterday was a horror day). With the Media beginning to turn against them, they can no longer rely on the reptiles to give them a good public image. Also, Julia is looking more harassed every time she fronts the cameras. She is not rolling with the political punches, which keep on coming. Her Media defence of her alleged remark in Cabinet in there being no votes for Labor in old people is a dream come true for the Coalition. And the damaging leaks – like the boats – show no sign of stopping. Did you see Wayne Swan on TV last night? He admitted glumly that Labor couldn’t stop the leaks. What’s coming next? This campaign is becoming a nightmare for Labor.
REASON 17. Then there’s the Kev factor. He’s hanging around like a bad smell. Every shot of him on TV is another reminder to the electorate of Julia’s perfidy and disloyalty. He’s the Coalition’s trump card. Graham Richardson on Q&A this week had it right. Nothing would make Kev happier than for Julia to lose. And that’s the expression written all over Kev’s smirking features. This is a very bitter man, intent on revenge. Can you imagine his happy, smiling face at Labor’s traditional campaign launch (maybe next to partner Tim)? The way things are going, he won’t even get an invite.
REASON 18. Labor is in front at the moment solely because of Julia’s “honeymoon period”. The electorate, in its innate decency, also likes to give a new leader a fair go, especially if she’s a fresh face and a woman. The female vote in particular initially liked the idea of a female PM. But this is wearing off. And that alone is not enough to re-elect Labor. The ice they are skating on is very thin – and getting thinner by the day. If I am right, the honeymoon factor will not last through to August 21.
REASON 19. This is why the polls are wrong, or misleading. The polls that mattered were the ones that told Labor’s factional bosses that they were going to lose the election unless they did something. Which is why they panicked. The recent polls, favouring Labor, mainly reflect this honeymoon factor (notice that Julia’s poll lead is almost entirely due to the female vote – male voters do not like her.) The underlying anti-Labor trend is still there, waiting to rise up and reassert itself. Mark my words – watch how the polls start running against her in the countdown to election day.
REASON 20. However, the main reason why Labor will lose the election is that they have made a terrible, ghastly mistake. Their main hope of winning the election was to keep Rudd, and to campaign on Labor’s economic record (which is solid and defensible). Maybe the Australian electorate would have given them the customary second term, with another good Faulkner-directed election campaign. But they’ve thrown away their best – and only – chance. (Look at how many of the above reasons would not have applied had Rudd remained PM.) Now, over the next few weeks, you will see the tide, inexorably, turn against Labor. The paint is already starting to flake. Soon, the recriminations will start.
So there you are. Agree with it, or not, as you will. My Labor friends won’t like it, and I’m truly sorry for them. They deserved another Labor term of government. Of course, I could be wrong (as I have been in the past – for example, I thought Howard would win the last election). But come August 22, I suspect my former Bulletin colleague will be packing his bags for the Lodge…
…for does anyone seriously believe that the Australian electorate will readily vote for a Godless inner-city feminist who rubbishes old folk and pregnant mothers, who stabbed her leader in the back, is living in sin, and has been put there by Joe Tripoli and Labor’s Sussex Street bosses and their ilk?
I fear that Julia is, electorally, dead meat.
R
* ”Yellow Dog” – an American political term stemming from “Yellow Dog Democrat”, referring to a rusted-on Democrat voter who would prefer to vote for a yellow dog than a Republican candidate.
Michael, I’m pretty certain people tend not to vote on religious lines. I frankly don’t think people care that much. Also, those who do care probably weren’t going to vote for the ALP anyway. I agree about the mistake of dumping Rudd though, I also think they went to early. I also agree that Labor is bewildered ideologically. I think that there are also some positives – even if only the counterveiling negatives on the Coalition side.
Well Michael – we all know where you are coming from and who you are going to vote for. Heaven help us if we end up with Tony Abbott and the rest of his mostly unelectable hangers-on. I still have faith in the voters to have a little more sense than that.
I too agree that dumping Kevin Rudd was utter stupidity, and have believed that since the beginning of this saga. For me, the best possible outcome now is a hung parliament, with Labor forced to govern with independents and/or greens members. Maybe that might just teach them a lesson – you move too far from Labor ideals and values at your peril!
Having said all that, I fear we are moving quickly down the path of government by corporations, and if the Coalition is elected that will become reality. What price democracy? Look to the USA for the answer.