Listening to Anthony Albanese’s victory speech on Saturday night – promising to be a better, more inclusive leader than his predecessor, to help the needy as well as the party heartland, to work hard fixing as many of our problems as humanly possible – my inner accountant came out. Yes, but how will you pay for it all?
If ever there was a case of oppositions not winning elections but governments losing them, this is it. Much more than usually, this election result was voters rejecting not so much the Liberal Party and its policies, but the party’s leader and his divisive, often disrespectful way of conducting himself and his preoccupation with clinging to a fossil-mining past rather than striving for a future as a renewable energy super-power.
What motivated all those people – particularly women – in the most prosperous parts of Sydney and Melbourne to break the habit of a lifetime and vote for a teal independent rather than the Liberal member they had no special gripe against?
It was their overwhelming desire to see and hear no more from the most un-Christlike Christian they could imagine. A bulldozer, indeed. It’s significant that the people they voted for were well-educated, successful businesswomen. Female equality was also a big motivation for the Liberal revolt.
So too, Scott Morrison’s puzzling resistance to the obvious need for a federal anti-corruption commission “with teeth”. If he had nothing to fear, what was his problem?
But it wasn’t just the teals. What about the resurgence in the Greens’ vote, and all the Liberal and Labor voters in Brisbane who switched to the Greens? It’s obvious from the two separate revolts against both major parties that the need for more urgent action against climate change was the election’s single biggest issue.
This despite the majors’ desire to avoid talking about climate change – which the media meekly accepted. It’s significant that both the Greens and the teals were promising much earlier and bigger reductions in emissions. Albanese ignores this message at his peril.
The one issue the majors were happy to debate was the cost of living. So, with the media’s willing acceptance, this became the central issue of the campaign. The great cost-of-living election, with the Reserve Bank making a guest appearance.
Really? Where’s the evidence of that being a key influence on the result? Well, I guess it’s the main reason Labor – the party promising to increase wages – did take a number of seats away from the Libs, in the way the two-party textbook says elections should work.
But we’ve yet to see whether Labor won enough of those seats to form a majority government.
The notion that minority government is a recipe for instability bordering on chaos is a self-serving lie spread by the two majors.
Look at the record – federal and state – and you find that the deals the majors have done to guarantee “confidence and supply” not only achieve stability, they allow the crossbenchers to achieve valuable reforms – often to do with transparency and accountability – that neither of the majors fancies.
With the Gillard minority government, the main gain was a tax on carbon – which, had it survived the depredations of Tony Abbott, would have left us much better-placed today.
We seem to have moved to a non-praying prime minister, but if I were Albanese I’d be praying to be left in a position where I had to let the Greens or the teals impose on me a much more adequate policy on climate change – consistent with the electorate’s now-revealed preference.
This election is no ringing endorsement of Labor, Albo and his small-target policies. The new government has won with an amazingly low primary vote. Timid Labor was not the nation’s first preference.
The election is a step-change in the public’s long-running move away from the two-party system. It was the voters’ message to the Lib-Lab duopoly: “Stuff you and your how-to-vote cards, I’m doing it my way.” If Labor thinks it’s just the Libs with a problem, it’s not thinking.
Albanese’s other problem is that his small-target strategy involved tying one hand behind his back. What he thought he had to do to win government is the opposite to what he now must do to prove himself worth re-electing.
He has inherited a big budget deficit and massive public debt, and will be under great pressure to get that deficit down.
How? He’s promised to deliver the Liberals’ hugely expensive and unfair tax cut in 2024, while promising no tax increases. By cutting spending on health, education, welfare and the NDIS? They’re the things he’s promised to spend more on.
You want to do something about unaffordable homeownership? That requires increasing the tax on home-owners and investors. Where’s Harry Houdini when you need him?
