Voters, it seems, are deeply unhappy. They’re certainly unhappy with the government, and judging by opinion polls prepared to throw it out with sufficient force to cripple Labor for a the best part of a decade.
But they’re also deeply unhappy with Tony Abbott. The recent Australian tradition has been that successful opposition leaders have high approval ratings from voters in the lead-up to winning office. Abbott is every bit as unpopular as the widely loathed Julia Gillard. The Prime Minister can at least reflect that she has earned her unpopularity through some substantial economic reform; Abbott’s unpopularity is derived purely from his negative, wrecking style.
They’re unhappy about other things, as well. They’re unhappy about a lot of the economic reforms of the past three decades. They’re convinced, against all evidence, that they can’t keep up with the cost of living. They think Australia is becoming less fair. An angry sense of entitlement, an expectation that government exists to hand out much-deserved money to voters, pervades political debate.
One result is a kind of Fantasy Football in which people speculate whether other leaders, most particularly Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, would do a better job of actually providing leadership. This overlooks that both men had stints as leaders, and both alienated voters — although Rudd’s polling never came close to the dark depths to which Gillard has sunk in voters’ esteem. Another result is the effort by independents such as Rob Oakeshott to somehow improve parliamentary standards and the quality of debate, an effort fiercely resisted by both major parties.
The party, or the leader, that finds a way to respond to voters’ discontent in an intelligent way that resolves many of its internal contradictions stands to benefit from potentially massive support. But such a task may be beyond our current generation of politicians, or any previous ones, for that matter.
This may be the politics we’re stuck with. We better make the most of it.
With no name attached to this story, I do not know who to rail at. I’ve just come back from the local pool, after having an extended conversation with a large group of people where we were discussing politics. 9 out of 10 would vote for Ms Gillard, 1 would vote green. None would vote for the mad monk. As for the tossing of Bligh’s government, 5 out of the 10 regretted voting against Labor. I don’t know where you get your ideas, but they are wrong…sharpen up your pencil and for the sake of science, put a name on your article. The reason I pay my subscription to Crikey is because I loathed the quality of the news sold by our only newspaper, the Courier Mail. Don’t become the Courier Mail, own up to what you print, please, or I will drop this subscription and take my money elsewhere.
Over the past three decades, health and education have been substantially privatised in Australia, leaving public schools and public hospitals under-resourced, neglected and decrepit. This is the lived experience of the majority of working families in this country.
Thirty years ago, we had free tertiary education, and public schools and public hospitals that were the envy of the world.
Now, we cannot afford a mere $5B for the Gonski plan, we cannot afford to built very fast trains, we cannot afford to build public housing to take people off the streets, and we cannot afford to provide decent care for the elderly. Young single mothers are lashed into cheap mindless labour, and the unemployed cannot afford to eat.
We are experiencing the biggest mining boom in history, with around $80 billion in profits going offshore every year, and we are importing cheap labour.
Please explain?
“This may be the politics we’re stuck with. We better make the most of it.” Where do you get these odd ideas?
Perhaps we can have something completely different, something that actually works. That would be a refreshing change.
We’re never stuck with the status quo unless we decide to be.
I’m not surprised in the slightest that the Mad Monk leader of the lieberals is unpopular.
Remember back a few yrs when said person was health minister. he blocked the instruction of RU486 (morning after pill) because & he said this “it didn’t sit well with his belief of the right to life & his christian values” Damn the rights of women to choose. I can’t see how he would get any female voters, maybe his mom SB.
As a male I can tell you women don’t tend to forget things like that.
I’m cheap – they can have my vote when they put the interests of the greater public before party, business interests, foreign interests, self-interest, political media commentator’s interests and any other interests not in the public’s?