Friday, November 23, 2007
Hi ho, hi ho, it's to the polls we go
The punditocracy has been reluctant to call it. Perhaps they have experienced too many 11th hour Labor meltdowns. They seem wary of Howard’s tactical genius in wedging victory from the seeming defeat.

Labor has been ahead and steady in the polls for 13 months. Only now, 1 day out, is the media even tempted to suggest a Labor victory.

And not without a fight. The government gazette (The Australian) has suggested its latest NewsPoll offers considerable hope to Howard. Rather scurrilously, these results will not be published until tomorrow, when voters are en route to the polling stations: rather like advertising at the point of sale for maximum effect.

(However, it seems likely that this is just desperation advocacy from The Australian and there is nothing-at least for Howard- in the story anyway.)

Back in the real world, the latest AC Neilsen poll points to a massive Labor win (57:43 on preferences), with several Ministers loosing seats, including Howard. Galaxy puts it much, much closer (52:48), but that’s still enough for a Labor victory.

Where has it gone wrong? Howard’s great skill lay in his ability to speak the voice of the people: simple, rhetorical and pitched with the right level of parochial bigotry. This time round his ability should have been even more powerful, running against a measured technocrat like Rudd.

But latterly Howard’s rumbustiousness has transmogrified into shrill, implausible repetitiveness. The people became more discerning; Howard still thought he was talking to Pauline Hanson’s constituency.

If the Coalition goes down, it will go down in the midst of an economic boom; almost unheard of. And we haven’t been able to forget it. The Coalition campaign has not once strayed from “The Economy” : at risk from everyone’s nemesis “Union Bosses”. These scourges are invariably depicted as intimidating, ill-dressed nightclub bouncers, crashing through doors of some hapless small business.

The message is not very complicated. And herein lies Howard’s strategic error.

Most people’s experience of a trade union is that of a far more inclusive organisation that has fought a lengthy ideological battle that benefited virtually everyone in paid employment. Paid leave, occupational health and safety, maternity leave et al have transpired not through the benign goodwill of business, but as a result of the demands of organised labour. (“What have the unions done for us?).

The Coalition’s demonising and undermining (through WorkChoices legislation) of trade unions is seen as affront to the legendary “fair-minded” Australian. But if union bosses aren’t so scary in real life, why has The Economy not swung the voters around to the Coalition?

Most people don’t see their jobs at risk. For starters, we are continually told there is a skills shortage by the very people who say we are gambling with the economy with Labor. And besides, Australians don’t necessarily see the long period of economic expansion as:

(a) a result of this government’s policies; or
(b) Unambiguously a good thing.

The prolonged boom in minerals (driving much of the economic expansion) is not thanks to John Howard. It is a result of liberalising economies in South East Asia. Nor is the continuing surge in population. It would have occurred anyway.

In addition, GDP expansion has been accompanied with a virtual collapse in housing affordability, rising interest rates, inflation and an erosion in the quality of life (from congestion, pollution and crowded infrastructure).

Australia has also been afflicted with the “Dutch Disease”. The minerals boom has pushed the value of the Aussie dollar through the roof, devastating exporters of manufactures and produce and reducing the volume of tourist spending.

So with the Coalition’s trump card effectively negated, it had very little left to offer. Howard flailed about for policy issues to stake out a position for his government; his henchmen blithely assumed people would eventually wake up and go with Howard; key ministers were late for live TV interviews. We got left with ill-judged reactionary rhetoric and incoherent threats of centralisation.

Howard was beaten everywhere else.

Anyone that cares one iota about the environment has all but abandoned Howard. With his calculated sabotage of global action on climate change he has betrayed Australia, future generations and the natural environment.

On social issues, Howard is seen as a monster by (small-l) liberals; nothing less than the advanced guard of the radical religious right seeping in from the USA. The social divisiveness more or less openly advocated by the Howard government has even turned away the socially ambivalent heartland of Howard battlers.

And hanging over all this has been the leadership issue. No one likes Howard’s anointed successor, Peter Costello. Socially he his more part of the current century than the last, but his threats to take industrial relations reform to new ideological heights has been an easy target for opposition groups.

After 11 years in government, the dishonesty, erosion of government accountability, lies and spin Howard has presided over has caught-up. For years, Australians have been quite willing to ignore it and get on with buying another investment property or new lifestyle furniture during the good times. But slowly, surely the shit sticks too thick to survive.

Issues such as the war in Iraq, the lies over WMD, David Hicks, the Australian Wheat Board scandal, greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear ambitions, children overboard and treatment of refugees, unwavering support for GW Bush’s world missionary program, immigration department stuff-ups, the GST and Dr Haneef’s political imprisonment have all sapped at Howard’s credibility.

And it is these issues – rather than the economy – which have progressively turned people away. Howard is too deep in the filth of modern government to survive.

Labels: election, politics

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