politics

First it was Josh Frydenberg’s “Back in Black” now it’s Peter Dutton’s “Back on Track.” Frydenberg came nowhere near to delivering that promised surplus but voters believed his boast and the Coalition won the election of 2019.

Now Peter Dutton is promising to get us ‘back on track’, except, this time unfortunately he’ll do just that. We’ll have inflation back to 6 per cent, eye-watering debt, 5 per cent unemployment, tax cuts for top income earners, no credible climate change policy, remembering they had 22 plans but were did not implement any of them because they were terrified of the likes of Dutton and Barnaby Joyce. There will be no compassion for the poor (remember Robodebt) and no tax cuts for low-income earners.

Now Dutton beats the Donald Trump drum. The wealthy will wallow in the spoils, the less fortunate will be left behind.

There is also much talk of Peter Dutton’s secret weapon of focussing on crime. The thrust of this line of attack is to evoke doubt and fear. It is, in essence, also a criticism of our judiciary. Former Liberal attorney-general, George Brandis, once stated that Dutton always found the judiciary “an inconvenience”. This tactic of amplifying crime worked in the Northern territory and in Queensland which is federally Dutton’s strongest state. It worked for Donald Trump who said thousands of murderers had crossed US’s open borders and that illegal Haitian immigrants were eating the cats and dogs of the citizens of Springfield, Ohio.

But it backfired for Dutton in Victoria when he demonised African Australians as making it difficult for others to go about their normal lives. Labor premier Dan Andrews increased his majority in the subsequent election.

The real issue is cost-of-living. Many are doing it tough but there have been more than a million jobs created which helps more people to pay their bills. Average unemployment is at 3.9% which is far better than the 5.6% under Tony Abbott and 6.3% under John Howard.

While opposing every cost-of-living measure introduced by the Labor government, the Coalition beats the well-worn drum of excessive spending. But its own record of blatant pork-barrelling via sports rorts and car parks and handing millions of dollars to companies that were already making huge profits, is hardly glowing.

Dutton may think crime is his trump card (pun intended) but when it comes to the broader Australian community, he’ll need to propose viable alternatives to all the policies he has opposed, especially those on housing, cheaper medicines, child care and tax cuts for all Australians.

Qld LNP Government off to lacklustre start

Winston Churchill is reputed to have said “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

It seems constitutional experts need to refine a precious gift given to those who believe in freedom of the press, speech and religion and on how those freedoms are interpreted by those who wish to push the envelope.

While we do have the separation of powers, conflict between the judiciary and politicians still clearly exists. David Crisafulli may say “Adult time for adult crime” as much as he likes, but the reality is effective policies need more than a slogan. He has already bungled with omission of the crime of “attempted murder” in his reckonings. Nor is the evidence reassuring that youth crime is coming down. If anything, from daily press and television reports it is increasing.

As we await the belated release of the Mid-Year Financial and Economic review by treasurer David Janetski next week, eminently respected economist Saul Eslake says it will be difficult for him to explain how he is going to lower debt by promising not to sell assets, cut projects, raise taxes and/or reduce public service numbers. New infrastructure minister Brent Mickelberg has already been called out for embellishing Labor’s debt by unprecedently including maintenance costs. Janetzki will need to realise that simply blaming the previous government will not cut the mustard.

Democracy in Queensland has chosen a ‘Newman Mark II’ government whose key personnel are a chip off the old block. Regrettably, they don’t appear to be much of an improvement on the old model.

Federal Coalition still failing on key issues

The usual cry comes to bring on the election. I also cannot wait for the federal election in May. The real issues are cost of living, housing, health and climate change.

As the federal government bends over backwards to alleviate cost- of- living pressures with electricity rebates and tax cuts for all including the real battlers in the lowest tax brackets (those whom the Coalition left out of their tax cut package altogether), the opposition complains of over-spending, this from a government whose 3 leaders gave us 9 deficits in a row. I’ve hardly needed to pay an electricity account in months. I’ve just received my car rego and was pleasantly surprised to see it had a 20% discount.

We all know that Australia has one of the most expensive housing markets in the world and we know the main reason why. Coalition PM John Howard, made capital gains tax changes to cater to his home-owning base. The true acceleration of house prices began in the early 2000s and apart from a brief slowing down during the pandemic, took off again right up until now. No wonder that voters up to the age of 34 have angrily turned their backs on a party that puts power before people. They have had the housing door slammed in their faces.

As for health the Coalition has a long history of trying to undermine Labor’s health reforms. In 1974 Billy Snedden pledged to fight Medibank till it was defeated. In 1984 John Howard said he would “stab it (Medicare) in the guts.” Later he and successive Coalition governments gave up on abolishing it because they finally realised that was a losing tactic in an election.

But once they regained office in 2013, they made subtle attempts to undermine it. Health minister Peter Dutton regarded then by the Australian Doctor magazine poll as the worst health minister in 35 years took the cue from Tony Abbott to introduce a $7 Medicare co-payment to be inflicted on even the poorest Australians (so much for his much-vaunted battlers) before an outcry led him to opt for a $5 cut to doctor rebates a measure met with the full fury of the AMA.

In 2016, after three years in power they had effectively gouged health funding to the tune of $50 billion and were ready to cut back on bulk-billing incentives affecting pathology and imaging. They also continued to freeze the GP rebate much to dismay of the AMA.

When it came to effective climate change action, they opposed any policy that would impact fossil fuel companies the owners of which are their elitist benefactors. Consequently, Australia became an embarrassing laggard in the eyes of the international community. Dutton continues to do that by vowing to scrap 2030 emissions targets, and flying a kite on nuclear energy with all the hidden costs that would land on taxpayers.
Is this really the future which Australians wish to see?