Ryan is Australia’s Florida. I’ve dredged up what I wrote about that result (The Gorey Truth – democracy’s got no clothes, Webdiary November 15).
It has to be significant that the world’s richest nation, which has grasped most of its spoils, does not know which direction to take in policy terms, or, if you see the USA election as a personality contest, is unhappy with the men thrown up by the political establishment to embody American values.
This is a core lesson of the election – that the two political parties which run America have become so detached from the people that they are unable to present them with a choice that inspires them.
If you accept that USA public opinion is at a crossroads on huge questions which will shape our future – such as whether to implement the Kyoto agreement on global warming – how does this translate to Australia?
We have a totally different political system, where the leader is chosen by his colleagues, who are chosen by the people. But my instinct is that Australian voters are as equally polarised as their American counterparts.
We don’t like the package of policies resented by either party, and we do not have confidence in either leader to represent us.
To me, that means an escalation in the splintering of the vote from the majors to minor parties and independents.
It could also mean that one of the three major parties – ALP, Liberal, National – could do something dramatic before the next election to break the sterile deadlock in public opinion by choosing a new leader with the capacity to excite and inspire.
I suppose it’s another way of saying that Australians, like voters in so many “democratic” countries, want a third way.
So what’s happened in Ryan?
First, for the third straight election this year, voters have delivered the the political and media establishment a surprise. In Western Australia, the Libs were supposed to crawl over the line. A substantial Labor win ensures. In Queensland, Labor was supposed to fall over the line. It won in a landslide. Labor was supposed to win Ryan in a landslide. It’s too close to call. Why oh why does the media keep getting it wrong? When will we address our endemic disconnect from the people? And how can we do it?
I’m confident my prediction of a Liberal win will stand up. Why did I think that? Here’s the reasoning (Don’t kick me, I’m down mate, Webdiary March 9)
Eyes straight ahead, total focus on Ryan, John Howard is unashamedly doing everything possible to win it. He’s become a Keynsian overnight, just one element of his spectacular humiliations over the last month. In my view he’ll do it.
What’s the psychology of true-blue Liberal voters of the Mosman/Toorak of Brisbane at the moment – the professional types who did the unthinkable last month in the Queensland election and voted Labor for the first time?
They made their point last month in voting Labor. They said that rather than risk the disarray of the right, they’d find refuge in the relative stability of the left. It was a vote for self-interest, their own and the State’s.
Of course federal issues played a part, but in my view State issues were paramount.
We’re heading for a byelection where Liberal voters can hardly swing to Labor in protest at an arrogant, out-of-touch government. Howard didn’t do as Keating did after the Canberra by-election shock before the 1996 election wipeout and sneer at the nappy valley dwellers upset their house prices weren’t rising.
On the contrary, Howard succumbed to his core constituency’s demands and simplified the Business Activity Statement and postponed a tightening of the taxation of trusts. He then gave back 1.5 cents a litre of petrol tax and abolished automatic indexation of the excise completely, saying, quite simply, that he was wrong to say it couldn’t be done.
This week, when it was revealed that the economy contracted substantially in the December quarter, he said sorry again, and today doubled the $7,000 grant to first homebuyers if they built their home. It’s kickstart time, and all of a sudden, it’s the people’s surplus, not the governments’.
Now it’s Labor’s turn to smirk. They’ve got everything going for them except that when you have a good look, there’s no policy or vision to latch onto. Kim Beazley said today that “the economic managers have become the economic manglers, and basically what it is all related to is the election in Ryan – this is the most expensive by-election in Australian history”. By the way, he supports the homebuyers decision.
So what does a Liberal in Ryan do? Kick a man when he’s down and begging for mercy? If so, the wreckage of the Liberals, with Howard impotent and his only viable replacement, Peter Costello, equally tainted by the GST mess, would be complete.
Is that what a Liberal voter really wants? I don’t think so.
I think Howard is playing this the right way. He will win Ryan, and when he does, he will have drawn a line under the Government’s descent into chaos. That means this longest of election campaigns will take another turn.
There are more turns to come, but I just can’t believe voters in a Liberal seat like Ryan will not want to given their party a ghost of a chance at the federal election.”
The big swing back to the Liberals in the last day or so of the campaign (the Newspoll taken Wednesday and Thursday nights had Labor roaring through Ryan with a 16 percent swing) is partly due, as I said last week, to the collapse in the dollar. Voters are scared. They don’t want to wipe Howard and the Liberals out until they’re convinced Labor has some answers. Beazley would have been better off staying out of Ryan last week for one simple reason. He had absolutely nothing new to offer. Instead he smiled and smiled and smiled, joked about how the voters would be glad when the circus left down, and made the most of the negative positives that kept raining down on him. Dollar collapse, negative growth, share market collapse etc etc. Given that Ryan had taken on the significance of a real election, mot just a byelection, for both parties, Beazley needed to get out of town or march in and make a vision speech or flesh out the principles of a big-ticket policy like education or innovation.
To me, Ryan voters kept Howard in the game, not because he’s respected or trusted, but because the alternative is offering nothing to get excited or inspired about.
Howard produced his brand of leadership in the Ryan campaign. He threw his credibility into the mix, explicitly, with that letter late in the week. Beazley, as usual, played safe. Safe is not good enough. Without positive positives, he was, as usual, an ineffectual bloke with nothing to say.
I watched a debate on the 7-30 report late last week between Tony Abbott and Wayne Swan, on Ryan. It was horrible. It was empty. It parrotted lines worked out in advance. It was dead. It was sad. I watched the new Labor national secretary Greg Sword, the man who overthrew a man of ideas who’s proved way ahead of his times, Barry Jones, in a post election interview on Network Ten yesterday morning. He said nothing. He waffled. He denied Labor had any structural problems. It was sad. It was dead.
So the game is in stalemate. A couple of weeks ago, a senior political correspondent berated me for even contemplating a Liberal win in Ryan. The swing to Labor in the State seats comprising Ryan was 16 odd percent. Sure, there were strong State factors at work, but he insisted that because Ryan was a byelection, not an election, that swing should at least hold. It didn’t.
So Howard is not finished, nor is Beazley. Stalemate is where it should be. Neither side has given us reason to believe either can do it for us, or with us.
Today, Simon Crean announced that Labor would work out the exact amount of the windfall the government gained from its initial refusal to ensure that the price of petrol not rise because of the GST, and return it to taxpayers. Think about it. Howard has given back the 1.5 cents already, so Crean is talking about the value of the money kept till then, and perhaps money gained by indexing the excise in the rise early this year. But Howard has given back much much more. He’s frozen indexation forever, carving a terrible hole in the revenue Labor needs to rebuild education, research and health. Crean’s announcement is sickening.
You can just about bet your house both parties will go for populism from now on. I’m just waiting for Howard to let the social nasties out of his backpocket, just to make sure we get even sourer than we are now, with ourselves and our politicians. Gee it would be great if someone, anyone with power in politics surprised us.
OK, it’s easy to carp. What can we do? I’d like us to build a revolutionary election web site which is fresh, constructive,innovative and (relatively) uncontrolled. I said last week I want it to be the people’s site. Let’s do it. I”m still after your ideas. Here’s an open invitation to two regular contributors who’s work makes me think. To Don Arthur, please consider writing a regular column in the lead-up to, and during the election campaign. I thought I’d call it ‘The politics of ideas”, or “Ideas in Politics”. To David Davis, I’d love a regular expats view on our campaign, maybe to lead off a section on views from abroad. For pungent media analysis, where are you Jack Robertson? I’d love a member of all the groups that make us up – in Matthew Pearce’s analysis progressives, radicals and conservatives, or in Peter Parker’s terms, social liberals, social conservatives, economic liberals and economic conservatives (see Webdiary March 9 and earlier) – to regularly comment on the political advertising we’ll start drowning in from now on. I’d love people who work in health, education, research, the money markets etc to start debating policy and directions online. Robert Lawton’s idea last week of coming up with policies for the majors is great, if ambitious. I’m still looking for marginal seat reporters. I’d like to begin a gossip site, and get titbits on politics from where you live.
Today, we’ll begin with some hard-core spleen venting, then early reaction to the Ryan result, the view from Ryan on that Bob Tucker video and Cathy Bannister,in constructive mode, advising John Howard how to play the game from now on.
SPLEEN VENT
1. MD
I wish some politician would “come out” and say it – the Australian public is not a clever mob; in fact we are a unsophisticated, unsuspecting, witless lot. Australians swallow and regurgitate the press headlined without digesting.
The Beazley bloc KNOW that world petrol prices have nothing whatsoever to do with Howard government policy. The KNOW that the Australian economy is largely a hostage to the US and Japanese economies. They KNOW they can’t Roll Back the GST. They KNOW they have no answer for unemployment. Yet they spew their flaky hoodwinking platitudes like snake oil salesmen for cheap instant thrills.
Labor will win, they KNOW the public is dumbed down and easily seducable. We voters insist on our inalienable right to be bamboozled by dodgy policy. And here’s a bet. Beazley will not be able to do a thing about any of these issues, unless Roll Over means he will now roll-over in his sleep.
When Beazley puts his parliamentary pension and salary on the line, IF he EVER points out a policy, and links these with the success of those unmentionables, even I will vote for him.
2. JUSTIN KOEK
I’ve been wandering the streets lately thinking I’ve gone utterly crazy. I keep hearing this faint circus music wafting on the breeze, but the other day I realised what it was. It was the neurotic tunes of Carnivale Ryan, the most farcical show on Earth.
If our fearless political correspondents are to be believed, Ryan will signal the end. The end of the Libs if they lose, the end of Beazley’s leadership if the ALP lose, and we might throw in the end of civilisation for good measure. The significance of the result makes me think the Ryan electors might be a tad nervous, considering they’re being told the fate of the government, or the government-to-be, rests in the way they fill out their cards.
But let’s face it – we are at least six months away from a general federal election, and, in the event of a defeat in Ryan, you can rest assured Howard will drag his time in office out long enough to wipe the ugly stain from the electorate’s memory.
And, we’ll be honest – the electorate’s memory is poor. Take petrol excise, for example. It was reduced, the indexation gone, half a billion axed from the budget for one and a half cents a litre. And the excise issue has vanished. Now the burden is on oil companies to cut prices, on whose shoulders it rested all the time anyway.
What about BAS? Fixed. No more quicksand pits of red tape for small business. For weeks, griping about the GST was pretty much absent from the media.
It was great strategy by the government. Most proclaimed them backflips, but I thought it was smart. Remove the problems and the electorate will forget in time for the polls. So what, a bit of egg on the face at the beginning of the year. No one will remember come November.
But if everyone’s going to get angry about something, can’t we at least stay angry until the time when it actually counts? Who would have guessed the Beattie government would be returned to office during the electoral rorts affair, when it seemed his slimmest of margins would be swallowed whole by the opposition. What about Carr and the tolls? What about Menzies, given a second chance years down the track even after selling iron to Australia’s wartime enemies? What about Kennett, period?
I don’t want to see anger wasted by bad memories. If, once you’ve filtered the spin and come to the conclusion that you despise Howard and his government, or any government for that matter, don’t forget the minute you walk through the polling booth doors.
3. MARIUS BALOGH in Perth
God save the Queen, but nothing will save John Howard at the next federal election. The arrogant, heartless and stupid economic rationalism will destroy the Liberal Party at the next Federal election, and they will be lucky to end up with any seats at all.
The GST was the biggest confidence trick on the ignorant electorate at the last election, but sadly the Liberals believed in their own con on the GST. The GST is more destructive than most people realise even now. It stops a lot of individuals to go onto business and to set up new small businesses ventures, that in turn stops creating more employment. Also a lot of small businesses have closed their doors since the introduction of the GST.
But what the GST did is to wipe out the so called “Cash Economy” that had billions of dollars circulating untaxed adding to lots of economic activity. Now that’s all gone and is trapped by the new “tax system”. It might be ideologically rational to tax everything that moves but not very smart from an economics point of view.
4. RAEWYN GILCHRIST
As I really don’t think either Liberal or Labour have a clue on what is right for our wonderful country I would really like to see neither win but unfortunately that is not going to be the case. Whomever wins will still try to sell our great land down the gurgler. Have a great day
5. JEFF ARNOLD, an “Aussie Biker in USA”
From a globalization point of view, Australia must be just about the best bargain on Earth; not only are we putting up everything for sale, but the falling currency is like a constantly increasing discount. Now we even give access to Ministers for a paltry $7,500 – a far cry from the $US100,000 + it costs in the United States. Perhaps this should be the new measure of our economic worth. (Margo: The $7,500 refers to the price being asked by the Liberals for players in information technology to buy a seat at the Libs policy table, as exposed in the Herald last week.)
6. JAMES McALISTER
We here in the Mountains never get the opportunity to touch Kim Beazley’s hem, to seek shade neath his shadow. Next time you’re granted an audience with him, I’d be most appreciative if you could pose the following questions on behalf of an elector who’s never voted for the Coalition in his life, but is deeply troubled about giving the nod to Labor come the
next Federal election:
1) Why should I vote to install a millionaire in the Lodge? How could such a wealthy man understand the plight of those trying to make do with $10,000 a year unemployment benefits, less than one sixth of what you get via super, let alone your wage?
(Answer: I’m not a millionaire, dadedadadah.)
2) What is your Parliamentary superannuation worth?
(Answer: I don’t know, dadedadadah.)
3) The taxpayers’ contribution is now more that $1m,
isn’t it?
(Answer: I don’t know, dadedadadah.)
4) Well, try this simple arithmetic, Kim. How many years have you been in Parliament? Okay, now multiply that by $60,000. There you go, you’re in the money, son.
(Answer: I never bothered to calculate, dadedadadah.)
5) Don’t you think it’s a bit rich for you to become a millionaire on the public purse while preaching tightened purse strings for everyone else?
(Answer: It’s out of my hands, dadedadadah.)
6) Will you guarantee here and now that you’ll change Parliamentary super contributions to bring them into line with those paid by everyone else?
(Answer: We may have a look at it, dadedadadah.)
RYAN REACT
MIRCO DRACA: Congratulations, it appears that your March 9 prediction of a Liberal win in Ryan could eventuate against the odds described by last week’s opinion polls. I just re-read that column: clear line of argument, a complex structure and totally logical. Hey, could you pick my lotto numbers for me? And christ, that Howard guy can fight.
HENRY HU: Are Aussie serious about politics? Aussies choose losers as their leaders .
BARRY SUTERS: I tried to vote but could not find my informal party.
THE VIDEO PLAY
PAUL EWING
As a Ryan voter, I was out of town earlier this week and came home to 2 letters from John Howard, one from Kim Beazley, one from Jim Soorley (Brisbane’s Labor mayor) and one hand written from a neighbour who wanted to say how nice a man Bob Tucker was. On top of that there was the usual political fliers so it was a crowded mailbox. Last week Senator John Herron sent the same letter twice, Peter Beattie sent one, and so did Bob Tucker. Talk about overkill!
I did manage to get hold of a few copies of the Tucker video which were left in a common area of my place (there was one for everyone but I figured nobody would be that interested) and decided to focus group it with my work colleagues. Personally I couldn’t get past the background muzak and the nervous to camera delivery by Bob Tucker, but others thought it was a pretty impressive package so maybe I just wasn’t the target audience.
In five minutes (it seemed longer) he talked about raising children and being on P&Cs so that gave him insight into youth, how he would fix the Moggil road problem (I don’t live on it so I didn’t understand the problem), looking after small business, families and seniors. There were photos of his wedding (in black and white – which made me wonder does he pre-date colour??), a messy office (at least that was something I could relate to), and various shots of young children, all the while accompanied to this awful Kenny G-style backing track.
Whether it was worth the effort or not, at least it was novel. It would have worked better if he put it out three months ago to raise his profile and awareness. Back then we Ryan voters didn’t have our “voter-cynic vision” installed either. By putting it out this week, along with John Howard writing two letters to you in one day, it does look a tad desperate, (disorganised?) and insincere.
ADVICE FOR JOHN
CATHY BANNISTER
Howard asks, what should he do? (Webdiary last Thursday) Here are quite serious suggestions (and none of them rude).
For God’s sake John, stop panicking! Howard’s terror is what is driving down the dollar. The market is both manic depressive and neurotic, the slightest whiff of uncertainty makes it a-flutter. The whole construct is confidence trickery, after all.
He should play down Ryan. If he can, he should try to look confident, honest, and reassuring. This means, no more promises ’till after it’s over. If he can’t get it together, he shouldn’t say anything. (It might not make things better, but it sure as hell won’t hurt.)
Simplify the GST. The BAS is a nightmare because of the exclusions. Therefore, he should drop these and compensate low income earners directly with tax breaks and benefit increases. (No, I don’t know how he’d get it through the Senate.)
Point out that “rollback” probably means more exclusions, which means an even worse administrative nightmare. Labor never had any intention of removing the GST.
Explain that after any large reform, some period of adjustment is to be expected. Drag out other countries’ post-GST figures and prove that it always is worse immediately afterwards, and it always improves five years down the track. (It does, doesn’t it John?)
Just an idea, but while he is being populist how about offering some sort of golden handshake deal to farmers to get out of unprofitable, unsustainable farms? It would solve a lot of problems in the long term, despite being way expensive.
Howard’s rhetoric and policies contradict. He’s playing to the wrong end of town. He’s trying to get low end support while the policies, at least in the popular conception, are for the top bracket. This has lost the Liberal Party support across the board.
Finally, if he wants a market survey, he should hire a consultant. He shouldn’t just do it spur of the moment on talkback! Not a good look.
Why am I stating the obvious? Because I can’t stand to see someone so patently distressed, and I hate seeing an unfair fight! Make Labor sweat for it.
Now, where’s my $7.5K? Or does it work the other way around?