Politics
The Liberal Party’s fading light
Optimists may have hoped that the Coalition’s poor showing in recent elections – Western Australia, South Australia and federal – may have encouraged the Liberal and National parties to reflect and re-think their policies and political strategies, but instead they seem to have hardened in their ideological dogmatism.
As we have pointed out in these roundups, in 19 of the 20 federal and state elections over the last eight years the Coalition vote has gone backwards. Federally its current polling is abysmal – a 30 percent primary support according to the latest Resolve Strategic poll, which William Bowe calculates to a 58:42 TPP lead for Labor. Its prospects for next month’s Victorian election, the state once considered to be the Liberal Party’s heartland, are less than promising, where the Coalition is polling at about 32 percent, down from 35 percent in the 2018 election, even though they are running against a state government that looks weary after 8 years in office.
Frank Bongiorno’s Conversation contribution – The Liberal Party is in a dire state across Australia right now. That should worry us all – offers an explanation for the Liberal Party’s poor electoral record. He paints a picture of a party whose sole purpose seems to be to keep Labor out of office. When it is in opposition (as it is at present in 7 of our 9 jurisdictions), it fits right into that mode, focussing entirely on opposing, while ignoring the task of constructing an agenda for the next election. (If you know you’re right there’s no need to reflect or re-examine your policies.)
William Bowe has a link to research that examines the relationship between age and support for the Coalition. It has long been accepted political wisdom that older people tend to vote for conservative parties: as people age they shake off their youthful radicalism and swing to the right. That relationship has certainly held in the past, but it seems to be weakening. As Coalition-supporting baby boomers die they will not necessarily be replaced by following cohorts of supporters.
Labor stalwarts may be heartened by these trends, but while it is more adept than the Coalition at learning from defeat, its levels of primary vote support are also low. And who wants to live in a one-party state? Political renewal is an important aspect of democracy.
Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech ten years on
It’s hard to realize that last Monday, October 10, was the tenth anniversary of Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech. As she says in a short interview on ABC Breakfast “I think it’s impossible to imagine a woman in politics today being called some of the things that I was called without a huge wave of public reaction and backlash.”
That is not to say all is now well: she goes on to remind us that “social media continues to be a kind of vile sewer of misogyny”.
The full 15-minute speech is available on YouTube. Considering the conditions in which she came to deliver it (described in the Breakfast interview) it was an extraordinary performance.
Brazil election – another round to go
In the first round of presidential elections Brazil’s strongman president Jair Bolsonaro did much better than opinion polls had suggested, securing 43.3 percent of the vote, against 48.3 percent for Lula de Silva. Lula will get another chance in the runoff at the end of this month, but Bolsonaro’s supporters have done well in the parliamentary elections.
Jon Henley, writing in The Guardian, speculates on reasons pollsters underestimated Bolsonaro’s support. Voting turnout isn’t one of them because Brazil has compulsory voting. Maybe there was some “shy voter” influence: many people would be embarrassed telling a pollster that they intended to vote for Bolsonaro.
In spite of their possible bias, polls are looking promising for Lula in the runoff. The Economist poll-of-polls has Lula leading Bolsonaro 53 percent to 47 percent, and Simone Tebet, a centre-right candidate who came third in the first round, has endorsed him for the runoff, as has former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Brazil’s election is important to the world for at least three reasons. First, is the future of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest, which to date has been a carbon dioxide sink but with the clearing encouraged by Bolsonaro and his cronies is becoming a source of emissions. Second is Bolsonaro’s support for Putin. And third is the signal his political survival or otherwise sends to strongmen in Hungary, Turkey and other weakened democracies.
Government advertising
It is reasonable that governments should encourage us to do certain things – to wear seat belts, to be vaccinated, to install solar panels – and not to do certain other things – to smoke cigarettes, to litter, to drive after drinking. All but the most zealot libertarian would agree with these encouragements and admonitions, and would see a role for governments to use advertising as a nudge to change their behaviour.
But why is it that government advertising picks up markedly just before elections?
This is one of the findings of a Grattan Institute research project: New politics: depoliticising taxpayer-funded advertising. It finds that “over the past 13 years about $630 million, or a quarter of all federal campaign advertising, was spent on campaigns that spruiked government achievements”.
The problem is not just the waste of that $630 million. It’s also that such propaganda “undermines trust in politicians and democracy, and creates an uneven playing field in elections”.
The report’s authors recommend that there be formal independent scrutiny of any proposed government advertising before it is presented to the public.