Your correspondent’s first ely* of the year was courtesy of AM — that programme that comes through our half-waking, half-sleeping moments, the whisperings of our hopes and fears.
Mathias Cormann had been on the previous day, in both attack dog and John Howard-bot mode, snarling that Labor can’t be trusted with the economy. The next day it was Chris Bowen’s turn and, man, if he wasn’t smoking a pipe and tapping it on the leather patches of his tweed jacket, he sure sounded like he was: ‘Well Fran, I think it’s pretty clear that when you take the doobie ratio into account on the franking credits, the valutron you’ll find the potrezebie ratio…’ and OK it was less jargonistic than that, but it didn’t sound like it.
Bowen had already given the Coalition a moment, with a rare outbreak of political honesty — ‘well if people don’t like it, they don’t need to vote for us’ — on clawing back this free money giveaway to self-funded retirees, and now he was taking the high ground against the Coalition’s big fear. I can see the point of doing that, I can understand not starting the artillery barrage too early, etc etc, but nevertheless, I was having an ely, and that tinkling ely was saying “2016. 2016. Democracts. Democrats”.
There is a complacency that has settled across the land: that this is in the bag for Labor, that we’re just playing out time, that can we get to May and get this over with. And it reminds me exactly, exactly of Hillary V Trump in 2016. I’m not saying Morrison is like Trump — nothing is worse than those “X is Y’s Trump” pieces — but I am saying that there is a disjuncture, an asymmetry between Labor and the Coalition that is leaving a gap for the latter through which a path to victory or a messy draw could be made.
The simple version of the 2016 US election is that Hillary went — or stayed — high in the pompous and pretentious language of US politics, while Trump went low. He mobilised the sensibility and ethical framing of reality TV, to hole the Democrat campaign below the waterline. But that’s an oversimplification. Hillary going high only failed because she presented no encompassing vision within which individual policies, or her exhausting personal narrative, could be set. Obama had that vision, expressed in big policies, and could thus go to the heights of oratory.
Sadly, I’m getting the same vibe off Shorten-Bowen Labor. The point is surely that if you’re going to have the courage to put in some big tax policies and seek a mandate for them; you’ve got to make them part of a bigger argument. You’ve got to yoke it to national development, combined with the battle for equality of opportunity and the universality of the means of life. You’ve got to name the mix of sadism, rentism and denialism of the Coalition government for what it is: a refusal to face up to the real challenges that a nation and humanity faces, the absence of an idea of the good society.
Absent of that, the franking rebate take-back looks arbitrary; there will be people who will dip to a significantly lower standard of living. To explain your move simply by saying that you’re removing an anomaly that rebates people for tax they didn’t pay in the first place is a technocratic rationale, posing as a moral one. Labor had the same screw-up with the mining superprofits tax under Rudd: they never sold the whole package of re-investing in a nation with money that was its by right. They looked high-handed and disdainful. They were doing government, while the Opposition was doing politics.
This disjuncture of orientations — fairness vs headbanging — means that Labor, unless it curbs its own instincts, will find itself on the petitioning defensive. Thus freedom boy creates a sleazy little website under government seal, to build a virtual movement against Labor’s tax reforms, and Labor… complains to the speaker. The horror.
Well maybe I’m wrong, and the whole five-month campaign has been broken down into 14,721 response stages. But I fear that the fatal complacency of progressivism — that because we respect knowledge, reason and basic science, we should win — may have fused with a sense of inevitability. Labor’s got to tell us what it’s all going to be for. The schadenfreude of watching Labor’s centrists stuff this up would be small compensation for handing the Coalition a decade of power, the nightmare to which we would wake.
* For newbies: ely, from The Meaning of Liff, is “the first tiny inkling that something has gone terribly wrong”, and as I have noted before, the only term from that book with a chance of making it into common use.
Is this 2016 all over again? Send your election predictions to boss@crikey.com.au.
All reasonable comments, but unlike Trump with Clinton, the Coalition probably can’t win with a minority of the vote. No Electoral College racket.
john howard won a majority in 1998 with 49.1% of the vote. If he’d lost, Australian history would be quite different
That was probably the most interesting election in the last 20 years Guy, but it was a unique set of circumstances that won’t repeat this year. In 1998 the public voted Labor in large numbers in safe Labor seats, but voted for the Coalition in most marginals, which was the reason for the 49% win. I remember thinking at the time that it was as if they were saying
“We’re not prepared to have the ALP back so soon after we’ve turfed out that prick Keating, but we don’t want the GST either, so we’ll give the Coalition a scare but return them to the lower house while voting for the Dems in the Senate, so the GST (which we think is shonky) will be blocked”.
However, the public hadn’t reckoned with Meg Lees breaching their trust on that one.
First time I agree with with what Rundle has written. Australia cannot survive another three years of the Coalition. Hope ALP does not drop the ball.
Me too, but Labor generally does something stupid and gives the lnp fodder.
I agree too. No point in Bowen pointing out that financial advisers have advised people how to game the system with a loophole created by PM Tweedle Dee and Treasurer Tweedle Dum unless you can explain what you are going to do with the windfall to make things better for the nation. And “things” is not just the usual “schools and hospitals” fallback – we are looking for some inspirational nation-building project or enterprise, not just business as usual but slightly better business.
Do something useful with the money like cutting HECS by 40%, or an almighty globe-leading renewable energy project. Jesus – even set up a national “People’s Bank” run by a govt statutory authority in homage to the lamented Commonwealth Bank sold off by Keating when he was in neo-liberal mode.
If Bowen wants to get all policy-wonk nerdy on us, he could at least repeat 20 times a day until the end of March the fact that the ATM govt has a higher tax take than did the RGR govt. Just keep saying it – eventually no-one will be able to ignore it. Nice, simple and easy to understand.
Scary isn’t it, with the snake oil salesman out selling. Makes you want to advise the advisers to invent three word slogans or something. For me, there are a lot of us who can’t get a full age pension because this mob with the greens reduced the assets test, and we don’t have lots of money, definitely not lots of super. Surely this would be a starting point to argue against all the wealthy wingers and their franking credit cash refunds.
Comparing the two strategies.
The rules have been made by the priviledged for the priviledge… thats the price of inequality .Joseph Stiglitz
Don’t disagree that Labor needs to explain the measures better but I have trouble thinking of an example of your statement that ” there will be people who will dip to a significantly lower standard of living “. To be affected you must surely have a substantial share portfolio and have reduced your taxable income to zero. Most likely you are taking a largish tax free wedge our of your super each year.
Labor has so many drone clones like Bowen. If they get into power then a decent opposition will eat them alive.
You mean the sorry mob that is currentiy devouring itself?
Yes. Quite possibly. They’re pretty much the same crew as last time.
Attempts by the far left to retain some sort of relevance seems to consist of bagging Labor.
Attacking the Libs is way too hard
We are not far left. We simply see the danger of a Labor that is too similar to the coalition. If you cannot differentiate, why would people vote for you? And the reason they cannot really differentiate is that they have swallowed the neoliberal Kool-aid about macroeconomics, wherein “surplus budget” is the epitome of “good economic management”. Until they jettison this nonsense, they can’t get any real traction. To jettison this trash they have to start understanding simple things like the 3 sector financial identity, which only requires simple accounting algebra, but they don’t seem to get it. Truly amazing.
Yeah totaram Labor are too similar to the coalition. On what planet is that occurring.
Picking off soft Labor voters is easier for the careerists in the Greens Party. Never mind it let’s in the Libs.
Yes, there is an uneasy feeling around the place – don’t assume that the Banking Royal Commission release will be the death blow to the Coalition – at the moment the Coalition are winning the political war – and talking in a lofty fashion above listener’s heads doesn’t work.
It is a long way to a May election – come down to earth Chris Bowen and don’t assume that you have the moral high ground (scare campaigns – they haven’t even started yet!) – don’t hand power back to these climate change deniers and right wing conservatives!