Politics
Boondoggles – Labor continues a Coalition cronyist tradition
With help from the Greens, independent MP Helen Haines has drafted a private members’ bill to bring some discipline and Parliamentary oversight into discretionary funding – aspects that were clearly missing during the Coalition’s time on office, when we saw a string of boondoggles that lacked any justification for Commonwealth funding – sport club change rooms, commuter car parks, shooting ranges.
Karen Middleton, writing in the Saturday Paper – Labor’s grants revive pork-barrelling criticism – notes that the Albanese government is following in the Coalition’s footsteps, with mobile phone black spot projects and grants for community batteries. She even mentions a project in her own electorate, Morrison’s promise for a road overpass.
Most of these projects, Coalition or Labor, are probably worth funding by benefit-cost-criteria, but why should the Commonwealth be funding them when their benefits are local rather than national? And if the Commonwealth does fund them, it should be made clear to the public why they have been chosen, particularly when the minister concerned has used discretion to override recommendations made by public servants guided by objective criteria.
The Saturday Paper article is paywalled, but you can hear Haines discussing her bill on the ABC where she calls for “transparency, accountability and enforceability” in her push to end pork barrelling, covering much of the same ground in 6 minutes. We might recall that Haines was one of the main movers in getting the government to establish an anti-corruption commission. The Commission’s role is to investigate and deal with corruption that’s already occurred; clamping down on pork barrelling is about stopping corruption before it occurs.
Even better, perhaps, would be for the Commonwealth to confine itself to only those discretionary programs that could not be handled just as well by properly-funded state governments.
Polling – worrying signs of a Coalition recovery
The most recent Essential Report shows a TPP lead of 48:47 to the Coalition, the first Coalition lead since the 2022 election. (It does not allocate the “undecided” voters.) Because it is based on respondent-allocated preferences it is more reliable than TPP calculations based on preference flows in the 2022 election.
I say it is “worrying” not because of attachment to any political party, but because the Coalition’s economic policies on renewable energy, on wages, on public investment and generally on economic structure, would leave Australia on a path of slowly declining prosperity and widening division. They have no economic policy to meet the challenges and opportunities faced by our country.
That TPP result is within the margin of error. But the more reliable primary vote data also suggests that the Coalition’s support has improved since the 2022 election, as has the Greens’ support. The graph below shows the primary vote support recorded by the main five regular pollsters (coloured) compared with the 2022 election (black).
This fortnight’s Essential Report covers many aspects of public political opinion. The full survey with disaggregations by voting intention, age and gender are available on the website.
Some of the more significant findings are listed below. They generally indicate growing support for the Coalition’s policies, regardless of their alignment with economic princiles.
Leadership attributes: Both Albanese and Dutton are seen to be “playing politics” (that’s their job after all). Albanese is seen as more likely than Dutton to “change opinion depending on who he thinks is listening”, but on the crucial attribute “out of touch with ordinary people” there is no difference: both get a poor score of around 60 percent. The only attribute on which Dutton scores a clear (20 percentage point) lead over Albanese is “aggressive”. Behind these figures there are significant age differences: older people are much more positive towards Dutton. There are also consistent gender differences: women assess Albanese more positively than they assess Dutton.
There is a novel set of questions around the theme “Which party leader would you …”, followed by 10 situations. We think Albanese would be more likely than Dutton to stop and help if our car is stranded. We would certainly prefer Albanese to babysit our children – Dutton’s good at making up stories, but he makes them all so scary.
The last situation presented is to ask which leader one would turn for advice in investing money. This is the only situation in which Dutton comes out ahead of Albanese. That means we would be more likely to seek advice from someone suggesting we go further into debt to buy our third negatively-geared speculative property investment, than to seek someone likely to suggest we invest in equity in Australian companies to share in our collective prosperity.
Changes for the Coalition parties. Respondents are asked if they think the Coalition has changed for the better since Dutton took over. Most people don’t think there has been any change, but most of those who do think there has been a change believe it has been for the better, suggesting we prefer Dutton’s Trumpian divisive politics to Morrison’s crony capitalism.
Support for Dutton’s key decisions. There’s a mixed bag of responses to various policy stances Dutton has taken. His best score is 44 percent approval for his campaign against the Voice (18 percent disapproval). His worst is only 20 percent approval for his opposition to reformed workplace laws (35 percent disapproval). Notably there is 32 percent approval of his opposition to renewable energy targets (31 percent disapproval): on this question there are strong and predictable differences depending on respondents’ age and voting intentions.
Better party on issues. On two important economic dimensions, “Supporting higher wages and better working conditions” and “Addressing climate change”, Labor comes out well ahead of the Coalition. But the Coalition has the edge on “Reducing cost of living pressures” (even though it has no policies that would reduce people’s expenses). On “keeping Australia’s borders secure” the Coalition is way ahead of Labor: 41 percent to 23 percent.
There are two further survey sections on asylum-seekers. One is about awareness of the recent arrival of 43 people by boat, and the other about the 149 people released from detention following the High Court finding. We are well-aware of those events. (Perhaps Essential should have asked people if they were aware that Dutton, when minister, allowed more than 100 000 visa overstayers to remain in Australia.) A majority of respondents, between 51 and 59 percent) agree with the statements “The government is moving too slowly to place former detainees back in detention”, “Australia does not have suitable policies to deal with asylum seekers”, and “The Albanese government is losing control of its borders”.
These responses suggest that few people are aware of Dutton’s dreadful neglect of border security when he was Minister for Home Affairs, and that opinions are being shaped by Advance Australia’s scare campaign in Dunkley, where there will be a by-election today.
If Labor loses this by-election because of Advance Australia’s scare campaign it will have itself to blame, for its tardiness in responding to independents’ demands for electoral reform. We need truth in advertising laws, we need to know who is funding campaigns, and we need instant disclosure of political advertising.
Writing in Renew Economy Michael Mazengarb names some of the donors to far-right front organizations: The network of conservative think-tanks out to kill the switch to renewables. But we need much more transparency, particularly to keep control of our own politics.
We are reasonably confident, for example, that the Russian government tried to influence the UK Brexit vote and the 2016 US election – perhaps successfully in view of the small winning margins in both cases. There is no easier way to do so than through donors who pass funds on to right-wing think tanks.
ASIO Director-General, in presenting the annual threat assessment, warns of foreign interference:
Australia is facing an unprecedented challenge from espionage and foreign interference and I’m not convinced we, as a nation, fully appreciate the damage it inflicts on Australia’s security, democracy, sovereignty, economy and social fabric.
Nothing would suit our enemies better than to see Australia’s economy weakened by a Dutton government – a government determined to halt the transition of our economy to deal with climate change, to underinvest in human capital and physical infrastructure, and to promote class division.