Peter Martin has a nice piece today:
What were they thinking? On Monday three members of cabinet called a press conference to pressure the Senate to cut the dole. That’s right, to cut the dole. At just $13,750 per year plus an $8.80 per fortnight energy allowance, it’s already so low the Business Council believes it “presents a barrier to employment and risks entrenching poverty.” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the research arm of the world’s richest economies, says Australia’s unemployment benefit has reached the point where it may no longer be effective in “enabling someone to look for a suitable job”.
Even a Coalition-dominated inquiry found a “compelling case” for boosting it.
The government’s omnibus savings bill has met with resistance, with Senator Nick Xenophon declaring his party won’t vote for the legislation.
…Rather than spend time arguing the merits of cutting a benefit already so low it can barely be lived on, Treasurer Scott Morrison, Social Services Minister Christian Porter and Education Minister Simon Birmingham delivered instead what amounted to a threat: if the Senate didn’t cut the unemployment benefit, they might not fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
But not at first. In a burlesque twist, they opened the press conference spruiking the case for an unfunded massive company tax cut.
Why is there political mileage in this? The fair go that underpins Australian identity does not sit well with it. Neither basic human compassion nor economics does, either. Entrenching poverty is not efficient. So why does the Coalition have a reflexive impulse to bash the victim?
The first reason is obvious enough. When you’re running an ideology based upon individual endeavour, supporting “lifters” over “leaners” makes great press and policy sense.
Second, if you’ve pinned your stripes to budget surpluses then cutting back on the single biggest area of expenditure – welfare – is a perennial temptation.
But, there is more going here. This is a form of virtue signalling that is peculiarly Australian. The “fair go” is not a simple as it appears. It is coloured by a myth just as powerful, the “battler versus bludger” animus.
In Aussie identity, the Battler is a creature of utmost virtue. He is the toiler, the digger, the plodder and the working class man. The Bludger on the other hand is our most profane and fallen idol. He is dissolute, takes handouts and is undeservedly wealthy (even if poor).
These are Australian archetypes that operate across class boundaries. One can be a poor bludger (the Hanson kids) and one can be a rich battler (Gerry Harvey).
Likewise in politics and media, the real battle for hearts and minds is to control who is the battler and who the bludger in any given circumstance. John Howard was masterful at exploiting it, for years occupying traditional Labor territory in the Howard Battlers, the aspirational bogan that speculated on property while loathing the class he had escaped.
Basically, the battle for moral superiority in Australian discussion is a struggle for entitlement, who has it and who does not. The entire false binary is highly reductive and destructive.
Generally, the Coalition understands this more intuitively than does Labor. And that is the source of its downward envy today. It’s just that today’s Coalition is much more ham-fisted than it was a decade ago.
