australian politics

The national policy agenda which nobody voted for | Article | The Punch

 

Well silly old me. There I was thinking the 2010 federal election was about economic management, border protection, broadband and leadership.

Either, either, neither, neither…Kudelka in The Sunday Tele

Turns out it was about light rail for north Hobart, the reintroduction of tariffs for the banana industry, an hourly limit on poker machine betting, new rules governing the length of answers during Question Time and the urgent introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

For all the talk about who has the biggest mandate, a separate and more compelling point should be made about the emergence of a raft of left-field side issues as bargaining chips in the battle to form government. And that is – none of these independents has any mandate at all to use them as conditions for supporting the major party.

The general election was not fought on these issues.

It was fought on the issues outlined in the opening paragraph.

As the horse-trading drags on, the apparently burning policy issues of the day are being determined not by the will of the people as demonstrated in some 145 electorates, but the single-issue obsessions of five men who have suddenly found themselves holding the nation by the nether regions.

You can read that both metaphorically and geographically.

If you’re Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie, you can be so audacious as to issue both sides of politics with a series of pissant demands - a new hospital for Hobart, publicly-funded light rail for the 128 people who live there, new poker machine restrictions – miniscule stuff which should be the preserve of state governments, not a bit of low-rent blackmail aimed at the federal government of the day.

And if you’re Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott, you can be so desperate to form office that rather than brushing someone like Andrew Wilkie as a provincial can-rattler who wants to pillage state coffers to pay for his Christmas list, you’ll instead clear the diary and invite him in for a cup of tea.

The “consultations” which have been going on over the past few days should not engender the voters with optimism, but alarm.

If, as even its participants have argued, this election showed the public is sick of spin and sloganeering, why is Labor lobbyist Bruce Hawker one of the first people seconded to advise independent Rob Oakeshott on the parliamentary deadlock?

Who voted for Simon Sheik from the left-wing ginger group GetUp? Why are the independents talking to him at all? 

The most farcical moment in 11 days (and counting) of farce was Julia Gillard’s effort at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

With her breathy new intonations, all consensus and conciliation, rather than the excellent buzzsaw-voiced Socialist Left junkyard brawler we know and love, Gillard turned in a performance which fell short of being a compelling argument for government, but may have her in line for an Oscar.

Sounding like some daisy-chained girl in a sunfrock in May-June 1968, Gillard rabbitted on about “the new paradigm” of Australian politics and how we’re on the cusp of what could be an exciting and meaningful renewal of democracy. 

(Whoever uses the word “paradigm” while claiming to be in touch with the voters is probably dreaming, but there you go.)

But as The Daily Telegraph’s Sue Dunlevy pointed out in her excellent question to Gillard, all the PM’s talk of inclusion and openness and participation is blown apart by the fact that the parliamentary changes she has been proposing to the independents to sweeten them up have all been canvassed in secret.

The Prime Minister may have grudgingly revealed some of the contents of her plans, such as an independent speaker, and supplementary questions in Question Time, but the guts of it remains a mystery.

In fact the whole sham operation remains a mystery – whether the independents will be ministers, and if so which independents in which ministry, and which of their policies (or demands) will be embraced by the major parties in order to win their support.

Ms Gillard’s answer that the public would find out about all this once it’s been resolved is seriously inadequate.

But the more ludicrous feature of this process is this – for all the Summer of Love atmospherics about a new politics, what we are really witnessing, from both sides, is alpha politics, capital P politics, politics at its most brutal, cut-throat and raw.

What we are witnessing is a tawdry process where both sides of politics try to seduce, bribe, cajole, bludgeon or sweet-talk the independents into backing them as the government of the day, and the process is being kept secret from the people.

The re-emergence of the Emissions Trading Scheme is the icing on the cake.

The ETS has killed not one but two political leaders in the past eight months. It destroyed Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership of the Liberal Party. And it was one of several large and nasty nails in Kevin Rudd’s political coffin, once he shelved the issue he’d once described as the greatest moral challenge of our time, cementing himself as a lame duck leader.

Ahead of the August 21 election, both the Coalition and the Labor Party had correctly read the mood of the public about an ETS and backed away from it.

The Coalition wasn’t proposing one at all; Labor was trying to buy itself time by fobbing off the ultimate decision to a citizens’ advisory panel.

The new-found ambivalence of both parties was hailed by some as a victory for climate change skeptics. It’s more accurate to say that it simply reflected a widely-held conviction that while majority scientific opinion points to the existence of man-made climate change, it doesn’t automatically follow that Australia must implement an ETS. Especially when the bigger polluting nations aren’t doing so.

Especially when the Copenhagen Summit ended in farce. Especially when it would jack up our cost of living, and potentially result in the loss of hundreds of jobs in mining communities.

Now, because of the crude, power-grabbing politics being played out in Canberra, Labor has formally joined forces with the Greens, and Julia Gillard has acquiesced to Bob Brown’s demands for a parliamentary committee to examine the best way to introduce an ETS.

Sorry, can’t remember voting for that either.

If this is the new democracy you can keep it. I used to live in Latin America. I might move back there for the stability and the margaritas.