What Should Labor Do?
The State of Play
The LNP are on the eve of their first year in office. In terms of
performance, how will they be judged? They have shown contempt for the
very constituency that elected them in good faith, the Prime Minister
has been proven to be a liar of catastrophic proportion, and secrecy has
been at the centre of its tenure.
‘’When a political party deliberately withholds
information that the voter needs to make an informed, balanced and
reasoned assessment of how it is being governed. It is lying by
omission. It is also tantamount to the manipulation of our democracy.”
JL
They have governed with an ideological intensity not seen in this
country for a very long time;every decision seems to have the stamp of
American Republicanism. The Treasurer has brought down a budget of
incredible unfairness that has received universal disapproval, and on
top of that a biography about Joe Hockey reveals he felt it wasn’t tough
enough.
So draconian and punitive has been their treatment of those seeking work that they have opened themselves to ridicule.
Try this, for example:
“Miraculous job creation scheme.
100,000 youth producing 40 applications per month means 4 million
applications per month. The remaining 620,000 unemployed (20
applications per month) would deliver a further 12.4 million
applications each month, giving a grand total of around 16 million
applications per month.
With those kinds of numbers each month, the private sector and
government will urgently need more staff to process, sort and respond to
those applications, as well as keep records in case of Centrelink
checking on the individual unemployed. It’s a veritable miracle of job
creation.
We can expect the vacancy rate to increase markedly as these
requirements hit the private and public sectors. Furthermore if all
applications (or even most) were required to be sent by mail, Australia
Post and the pulp & paper industry could be saved overnight! If
electronic lodgement was used then that would represent a huge business
boost for the NBN. By a stroke of Kevin Andrew’s pen.
To review, 16 million applications per month is 192 million
applications per year (remember the actual number of vacancies doesn’t
matter, what’s important is that there are plenty of unemployed to send
applications). If we allow that one person could reasonably review 50
applications per day (less if replies had to be written) or 12,500 per
year that would result in a need for over 15,000 people just to process
the applications!!! Each of them would need supervision, management,
training, quality assurance, safety and human resources leading to total
employment of around 25,000!”
It’s simple. If the PM would come good with all the jobs he promised
there wouldn’t be any need for the draconian work for the dole measures
he is undertaking (sarcasm intended).
In terms of policy implementation their performance has been abysmal.
In a corresponding period, Julia Gillard’s hung-parliament passed 127
pieces of legalisation. To date, Abbott’s has passed approximately 8,
with much legislation not even written. It has been a Government of
punishment and undoing rather than doing.
It has lied about the state of the economy, painting it in terms of a national disaster when in fact it isn’t. To top it off,
in an interview last weekend with the New Zealand political current affairs show, The Nation, Joe Hockey had this to say.
“There is no crisis in the Australian economy, nor is it in trouble.”
He also made no mention of the “budget emergency” he and his
government refer to when justifying their unpopular budget to
Australians;
“The Australian economy is not in trouble.
There’s no crisis at all in the Australian economy.”
All this of course has been reflected in the polls.
Crikey’s “Poll Bludger”, which aggregates all major
opinion polls, records that a large and persistent shift in the
two-party preference occurred as budget details began leaking in about
April this year. It seems clear that voters don’t like the budget. The
Abbott government has never explained why the “lifting” must be done by
people who are already missing out, while it continues giving tax
concessions to wealthy individuals and profitable businesses.
Entrepreneurs and economists are calling for the government to tighten
these concessions rather than raise the top marginal tax rate – which is
effectively what it did with its levy on high-income earners earlier
this year.
And as work becomes more insecure – there are now ten jobseekers for
every vacancy, and many in work are on casual or short-term contracts –
the government intends to impose a strict and punitive regime for the
jobless, as if their unemployment is their own fault. Despite its drive
to “cut red tape”, the government intends to make Newstart recipients
apply for 40 jobs every week on top of their work-for-the-dole
obligations. The Business Council of Australia’s new president, Telstra
chair Catherine Livingstone, makes the obvious point that this would
most likely inundate prospective employers with masses of unwarranted
applications. Senator Eric Abetz admitted the same on Lateline last
night.
- Russell Marks, Politicoz Editor, The Monthly, 29/07/14
What should Labor do?
Where did all the voters go, and why?
Indeed, where did they go? Mysteriously, 3.3 million eligible voters
went missing at the last election. That is a whopping 15% more than the
previous one.
There is something fundamentally wrong when, despite a huge
recruitment drive by the Australian Electoral Commission, 1.22 million
citizens failed to enrol to vote, and 400,000, or one third of the
non-registrants, were aged 18 to 24. Additionally, 760,000 House of
Representatives ballots were informal – about 6 percent – up more than
0.3 percent from the 2010 election.
Who carried the loss? Our democracy did.
Unlike the US and the UK, who both have voluntary voting systems, we
have a compulsory one. We shouldn’t need to entice voters to the polling
booth, but something has changed. It seems that in increasing numbers
our citizens are walking away from their obligation.
Are they just morons who we should ignore anyway, or are there other
reasons? I don’t in the least subscribe to that moronic theory. I
believe that most of these people made a conscious decision not to vote
because they have become disenchanted with the system. Who can blame
them?
In 2010, 93% of eligible people voted in Australia. In the US, about 60% of the population vote, and in the UK it is about 65%.
What would happen if the lost voters returned? Recent analysis of the
election result suggests that fifteen of the Coalition’s new seats are
held on very thin margins. Eleven seats have margins of less than 4000
voters. In essence, the election was a lot tighter than was first
suggested. Effectively, this means that it would only take about 30,000
people to change their vote to change the government.
Answering the ‘’what if’’ question may be complex, but simply put, it
lies in a worldwide dissatisfaction with the practice of traditional
Western politics – left vs right. People who once saw politics as tuff
but with an ability to compromise now see it as tuff but indecent. It is
now an institution of power that drives self-interest and ignores the
common good. If we look around the world, wealth has become the measure
of success and the rich are becoming weather at an alarming rate. In the
history of this nation the rich have never been so openly brazen.
Something will have to break or there will be a revolution. Even
Americans no longer believe the dream that has been instilled in them
since birth, that they all have an equal opportunity of success. It
simply doesn’t exist.
Before going further we need to establish why Labor lost the
election, but I don’t propose to elaborate on this point. They lost
firstly because of infighting over leadership and the perception of
dysfunction. Secondly they lost because of a right wing dominated media
that was under instructions to get rid of them, and thirdly because the
then opposition had the most negatively persuasive liar of a leader the
country has ever known.
What should Labor do?
There is no doubt that the Australian political system is in need of
repair but it is not beyond it.Labor has taken a small but important
first step in allowing a greater say in the election of its
leader,however it still has a reform mountain to climb. Besides internal
reform that engages its members, it needs to look at ways of opening
our democracy to new ways of doing politics: ways that engagethose that
are in a political malaise so that they feel part of the decision making
process again.
Some examples of this are fixed terms, and the genuine reform of question time with an independent speaker. Mark Latham even advocates (among other things) its elimination in a new book. In fact he has many suggestions of considerable merit.
Labor needs to promote the principle of transparency by advocating
things like no advertising in the final month of an election campaign,
and policies and costing submitted in the same time frame. You can add
reform of the senate into this mix, and perhaps some form of citizen
initiated referendum. Also things like implementing marriage equality
and a form of a National ICAC. Perhaps even a common good caveat on all
legalisation.
Labor has to raise itself above and overcome its preoccupation with
faction power struggles. These struggles preoccupy, and erode the
ability to be creative. In a future world dependent on innovation it
will be ideas that determine government, and not the pursuit of power
for power’s sake.
If the Labor party is to convince the lost voters who have left our
democracy to return (and I am assuming that most would be Labor), it has
to turn its ideology on its head, re-examine it, and thenreintroduce it
as an enlightened opposite to the tea party politics that conservatism
has descended into.
It must promote and vigorously argue the case for action against
growing inequality in all its nefarious guises, casting off its
socialist tag and seeing policy in common good versus elitist terms. The
same fight must also be had for the future of the planet.
It must turn its attention to the young, and have the courage to ask
of them that they should go beyond personal desire and aspiration and
accomplish not the trivial, but greatness. That they should not allow
the morality they have inherited from good folk to be corrupted by the
immorality of right wing political indoctrination.
It might even advocate lowering the voting age to sixteen. An article
I read recently suggested the teaching of politics from year 8, with
eligibility to vote being automatic if you were on the school roll.
Debates would be part of the curriculum and voting would be supervised
on the school grounds. With an ageing population the young would then
not feel disenfranchised. Now that’s radical thinking; the sort of thing
that commands respect. It might also ensure voters for life.
Why did the voters leave?
How has democracy worldwide become such a basket case? Unequivocally
it can be traced to a second rate Hollywood actor, a bad haircut, and in
Australia a small bald headed man of little virtue. They all had one
thing in common. This can be observed in this statement (paraphrased);
“There is no such thing as society. There are only
individuals making their way. The poor shall be looked after by the drip
down effect of the rich”
Since Margaret Thatcher made that statement and the subsequent reins
of the three, unregulated capitalism has insinuated its ugliness on
Western Society and now we have an absurdly evil growth in corporate and
individual wealth and an encroaching destruction of the middle and
lower classes.These three have done democracy a great disservice.
Where once bi-partisanship flourished in proud democracies, it has
been replaced with the politics of hatred and extremism. Where
compromise gets in the way of power, and power rules the world.
3.3 Million Australians have tuned out of politics because of the
destabilisation of leadership,corruption on both sides, and the
negativity and lies of Tony Abbott. The propaganda of a right wing
monopoly owned media and the exploitation of its parliament by Abbott.
Somehow the lost voters must be given a reason to return. A reason that
is valid and worthwhile. A reason that serves the collective and engages
people in the process, and a politic for the social good of all – one
that rewards personal initiative but at the same time recognises the
basic human right of equality of opportunity.
We need a robust but decent political system that is honest, decent,
and transparent, and where respect is the order of the day. A political
system where ideas of foresight surpass the politics of greed and
disrespect, and truth, respect, civility and trust are part of vigorous
debate and not just uninvited words in the process.
“The right to vote is the gift our democracy gives. If
political parties (and media barons, for that matter) choose by their
actions to destroy the people’s faith in democracy’s principles and
conventions then they are in fact destroying the very thing that enables
them to exist.”
JL
“The misuse of free speech may have contributed to the decline of our
democracy but it is free speech that might ultimately save it”
