Opinion & Commentary
Australians hung-over post election
Australia has its first hung parliament since World War II and the Aussies are going troppo.
Unlike New Zealand, the usually predictable two-party oligopoly is not used to the horse trading that is involved with forming a stable minority government. This has led many commentators, the independents and the Greens to say this shows a thirst among voters for real choices and greater diversity.
The argument goes that the major parties offered no variety to voters, were light on policy, and pandered to the lowest common denominator. Does this remind you of New Zealand?
The election was also a referendum on Labor's gap between promise and delivery. In 2007, Kevin Rudd promised the electorate that he was a fiscal conservative and that his government would responsibly handle the nation's finances. However, when the global financial crisis hit, Rudd revealed himself as an old-fashioned, big spending Keynesian social democrat.
Rudd's government reasserted the sort of centralised economic planning that went out of fashion 25 years ago. It set up massive stimulus schemes such as the disastrous insulation scheme, which resulted in house fires, electrified roofs, and deaths across the nation – and will cost a billion dollars to clean up. It also set up a school building programme run by state bureaucracies – the cost of the widespread rorting has run into the billions. Work has also started on the $A43 billion ($54b) government built and run national broadband network – a government-run monopoly.
Then PM Rudd also famously called climate change 'the greatest moral challenge of our time' before a resurgent Liberal Party under Tony Abbott called the tax for what it was – 'a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised handouts run by a giant bureaucracy'.
After the Copenhagen conference Rudd looked at polling, lost any hint of conviction, and delayed (read: shelved) the scheme.
On top of this was the proposed Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) – a tax grab of 40% on 'super profits', which were defined as returns over the government bond rate (risk free rate of return) – 6%. The proceeds were supposed to plug a budget deficit and fund other commitments.
After the RSPT debacle, the polls went toxic very quickly for Rudd, and the Labor Party installed Julia Gillard as the new prime minister.
As a result of these failures, the election campaign was largely negative, tightly scripted and rarely answered questions. If the Coalition was going to return the budget to surplus, where would it cut spending? If Labor had been doing such a good job, why did the unions and factions get rid of Rudd? This was not helped by the empty slogans employed by both parties – the Coalition's 'Real Action' and Labour's 'Moving Forward'.
Perhaps all this helps explain the high percentage of informal votes, which some commentators have called the 'Latham effect'. This is named after former Labor leader Mark Latham's call, shown on 60 Minutes, to spoil ballot papers as a protest against the two big parties. (Despite the label, there is no evidence that Latham's low-grade docu-drama had any effect whatsoever.)
Although informal votes were higher than usual, as was the Greens vote (11%), it still does not amount to any sort of 'new politics' or a push for MMP (yet). The two main parties still won 82% of the vote, the three major parties 93%, and independents only 2.5%.
The Greens will hold the balance of power in the senate. Whether they can maintain their support when faced with the realities of government, rather than just moralising, is another question. Also, positively, and unbelievably from a New Zealander's point of view, Australia now has (subject to final confirmation) its first indigenous member into the House of Representatives, Liberal Ken Wyatt in Western Australia.
New Zealanders can draw a couple of lessons from the Australian election. The first is that despite sloppy talk of a sea change in politics, Australia will continue to be dominated by two parties and the country will benefit from that stability and accountability. Minority parties have their moment in the sun, but fade away – which is exactly what appears to be happening in New Zealand.
The second is that sticking to principle and mounting a relentless case about the gap between rhetoric and reality can win elections. Abbott may not be prime minister next week, but he transformed the Coalition's fortunes by arguing that an ETS was a pointless big new tax, that the RSPT was a tax on jobs and prosperity, and that the budget should not be in deficit for no good reason. Labor was punished for not delivering on promises, and for having few demonstrable beliefs about anything.
It is this second lesson that the National government here should take seriously. And unlike the Aussies, we have MMP – John Key and co should be going troppo.
Luke Malpass is a policy analyst with The Centre for Independent Studies.
