I guess I'm not the only person a little perturbed by the polls suggesting a win by the Coalition on the 7th. Pleiades sent in this link that pretty much sums up the consternation:
The electoral atmosphere is surreal. We have a government on the back foot over its economic record - which has been outstanding when the global economic environment is taken into account.
And we have an opposition that appears to have successfully undermined the government's credibility, based on the government's record of fiscal debt and deficit, which has, in fact, been the foundation of the nation's success in avoiding the global financial crisis.
The Coalition tactic recalls the 1996 election. At every outdoor political event the opposition's debt truck would be lurking in the background, showing Australia's foreign debt ticking over at an alarming rate. Immediately after the election the truck was put way, never to be seen again. Nor was any policy - serious or otherwise - advanced by the Howard government to reverse this alarming growth in debt.
So it will be this time unless Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are silly enough in office to ride roughshod over their advisers in Treasury, Finance and the Reserve Bank and impose austerity policies involving massive cuts in government spending. Such policies have proved spectacularly unsuccessful elsewhere in reducing deficits or unemployment.
The article goes on to say that climate policy is getting short shrift as a result of the major parties dumbing down their pitch. Well, climate policy itself is in danger of being obliterated if an Abbott-led Coalition wins. I'm a little surprised that the swinging voters who voted in Kevin Rudd with a mandate to put in an ETS, then turned on him when he couldn't get a deal in Copenhagen and decided to kick the can down, are now seriously contemplating voting in Tony Abbott who is clearly on record as a Climate Change Denier. I mean, really? Is that where we're headed?
But That's Not All! There's The Boats!
Here's another one from Pleaides... Out in Jakarta, they're a little alarmed that we're about to vote in Tony Abbott with his turn back the boats slogans.
The Australian opposition’s plan to disburse millions of dollars to Indonesian fishermen, which is partly to stem the flow of asylum seekers, is an insult to Indonesia as a nation, an international affairs expert has said.
Hikmahanto Juwana of the University of Indonesia criticized the plan and called it “humiliating” because it made Indonesian fishermen just “look like mercenaries who did dirty jobs.”
“I think the government should voice protests to the coalition’s very insensitive plan which clearly shows their poor knowledge about the situation in Indonesia,” he said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post over the weekend.
The Australia’s opposition coalition has unveiled its plan for more regional action to stop people smuggling, pledging A$420 million for policy measures that include paying Indonesian villagers for information about smugglers and buying unseaworthy boats, according to Australian media.
When you spell it out like that, why yes, it is patronising and reeks of Colonialist Paternalism. Of course Tony Abbott would be tone deaf (pardon the pun) to such sensitivities. Though, it gets me that in this day and age that a leading politician from Australia basically has this kind of witheringly contemptuous outlook on Indonesia. How the hell is he going to get Indonesia to play ball with his idiotic plan if he's already starting on the "you're bunch of money-grubbing yokels" foot.
Not to mention that fact that the Coalition is going to do this on taxpayers' money having harangued the ALP government about bad management of funds. I guess that's Chutzpah for you.
The ALP's Just Losin' It All By Themselves
I'm sort of detached from the daily coverage of this election because a) I've made up my mind I'm not voting for Tony Abbott and the Coalition and; b) I hate being lied to so brazenly and c) I'm satisfied Julia Gillard isn't part of the equation; I'm happy not to go into the nitty-gritty of what's being said. Occasionally Clive Palmer makes me laugh with his handout of DVDs that has a bonus video of him wanting to make the Titanic II with people referring to him as "Professor Palmer". Yes, it's side-splittingly funny - so much so that I laughed so hard I hurt my intercostal muscles.
So it takes me by surprise that the ALP is doing so badly in the polls. What drugs are people on? Peter Hartcher's explanation is that Tony Abbott hasn't changed one bit; it's the ALP that's just going about losing support.
But most politically telling was the fact that Abbott's big speech was substantially the same one he gave on the same Brisbane stage at the same event three years ago. This conveys four central realities of Australian politics.
First, it tells us that this election is a case where the opposition is not winning, but where the government is losing. Australia is not rushing gleefully to embrace Abbott's Coalition but is instead rejecting Kevin Rudd and Labor.
You can tell because the main difference between the Abbott pitch of three years ago and his pitch on Sunday is that last time he wasn't winning the election campaign, and this time he is. Abbott is standing in the same place. The electorate is moving to him, not the other way around.
Second, it tells us that Abbott's Coalition has held its nerve, an unusual thing in a high-stakes contest. Instead of seeking to ingratiate itself by offering new goodies, the Liberal leader announced no new billion-dollar bonanzas, only some modest new help for apprentices, self-funded retirees and dementia research.
While John Howard's campaign launches were laden with billion-dollar offerings, the only billions in Abbott's speech were references to Labor deficits.
Third, this also tells us something about Australia. Abbott is appealing to a country disillusioned with politicians and their promises. The only credible promises are modest ones.
Abbott explicitly warns Australia ''don't expect miracles''. A Coalition government would ''respect the limits of government as well as its potential''.
At core, Abbott's promise is limited to uprooting much of Labor's legacy, while preserving work on a national disability insurance scheme and enlarging Australia's parental leave scheme.
Fourth, Abbott continues conspicuously to avoid the great, glaring problem at the centre of his policy structure: his budget. It was a mess at the last election, and remains unsolved to this day.
Be patient, and wait another week, the Liberals tell us.
What a joke, and we're falling for it like the fascists we are.
I've been thinking a bit about this and I imagine that there are basically a lot of old baby boomers who are unhappy with being shackled with the carbon pricing in their old age, translating into higher power bills when they don't even believe climate change. One also imagines a lot of Gen X people who are neck deep in mortgage hell wanting to punish the ALP government for the GFC and its aftermath. And I can well imagine there are quite a few misguided Gen Y types who -being Gen Y - want a laissez faire arrangement and they don't care how much they pay for their education. I meet these types now and then and it always strikes me that democracy is wasted on the free world. They have the vote; the right to vote in a free country in the first world and they want to waste it on a sloganeering blowhard.
Of all the things people could do, the worst thing would be to vote for Tony Abbott's coalition. His government is not going to do anything but widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor and make us an even more hateful, self-possessed, mean-spirited country. He will be a Prime Minster you'd be ashamed to show anybody. But then, he did learn from the master of that sort of thing in John Howard.
No comments:
Post a Comment