For as long as I can remember, first term governments seeking re-election have had a clear agenda to take to an election and seek a mandate to implement. But this is not the case with the modern Labor Party. Labor seems to have delivered Australia its first post-modern government, where there are no measures of success or failure and outcomes do not matter as much as contrived empathy.
This past week Julia Gillard repeated a meaningless slogan, “Moving Forward,” ad nauseum, to the point where it has been subject to ridicule. Its use more than 20 times in her opening press conference even provoked former Labor speechwriter Don Watson to accuse Labor of treating people like imbeciles.
But behind this slogan lies a much more manipulative agenda. It is a linguistic trick to attempt to put distance between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her seemingly unrelated twin, Deputy Prime Minister Gillard. For the simple truth is that Julia Gillard was part of every decision made by the Government over the past three years.
Why does this matter? Because elections matter. Elections do not just determine the government for the next 3 years, they set the tone of politics over that period and the agenda for national debate. In this regard Julia Gillard and the modern Labor Party have been exposed – for no-one could possibly determine what their agenda is as they seek re-election and a second term in office.
In 1998 we had John Howard and Peter Costello seeking a mandate to implement the most comprehensive reform of our tax system since the Second World War. Notably, unlike Labor’s mining tax grab, this was the product of nearly two decades of public debate and extensive consultation prior to the release of the Government’s policy.
If we go back further, to 1984, the Hawke Labor Government was seeking a mandate for economic and tax reform and the implementation of Medicare. And these are but a few examples of the agenda of these governments.
There was no doubt which direction Howard or Hawke sought to take Australia. Their policy platform was clear and winning popular support through an election campaign was part of the challenge of implementing significant and enduring reforms.
But this Labor Government is different to those that have come before it. It is Australia’s first government where contrived empathy is more important than policy detail and subsequent outcomes.
At the last election ‘working families’ was the slogan of choice. But for all the concern about the cost of living, mortgage stress and access to childcare, very little has been achieved to address these issues. Of course there were websites (fuelwatch, grocerywatch) and promises for childcare centres later repudiated under the cover of changed circumstances, but we know today that these pressures are even greater.
The likely result of focus groups and political research, feeding on the disillusionment in politics (which is not new) and learnt from their state government counterparts, the Labor Party feels your pain, but proposes nothing to actually stop it.
More importantly, Labor does not want to propose anything that they can actually be held account to when these problems continue. There are few specifics about what will be done, what will be achieved and when. After all, they undoubtedly want to continue to express such contrived empathy at the next election too.
The latest example of this is in relation to climate change.
Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, who only last year said “delay is denial” and “We can’t afford any more inquiries, reports or investigations into climate change,” is unrelated to Prime Minister Gillard who today announced our first national focus group to simply discuss the issue further. For nothing is sacred in channelling the zeitgeist and attempting to empathise with the concerns of Australians at any given moment.
Rather than have these issues determined by the people of Australia, voting every three years for their own representatives, it seems as if a hand-picked group of 150 people will play a leading role in making these decisions. This takes the Labor Party’s belief in focus groups and opinion polling to a new level – apparently we will be governed by it as well as fund it.
Do we really want to have our national priorities determined by a selection of 150 people based on their racial, gender, geographic and demographic characteristics, or are elections the way we go about it?
This not government, it is market research in its place. In an attempt to convey the illusion of activity, a new process is proposed – but no outcome promised. Indeed, it is an attempt to avoid one. Rather than subject the details of policies to the scrutiny of the people, Labor hopes to win the election – then decide what to do next.
After all, the zeitgeist might be different in a few months’ time.