Wheelie Bin in Breakwater (Geelong) photographed 9 April 2022
Australia’s May 2022 election is a poisoned chalice for voters. A vote on the most reviled political leader in Australia’s history, leading the most spectacularly discredited government any living Australian has ever seen, on the one hand. On the other, a ‘small target’ opposition shying from examination of what it stands for like Dracula from a stake, completely unprepared to look the nation in the eye and have the nation vote for them because of what they stand for on issues central to the nation’s concerns.
Australia’s public faces a mainstream politics choice between two forms of contempt that are largely indistinguishable. One of them will certainly control the government the other side of election day. The tragedy for contemporary Australia is that almost no Australians want that government to have the ability to govern, that almost all Australians can readily identify what negative consequences for them, and for Australia, in what either side of mainstream politics will have as policy, in office as government, and that for almost all Australians the overriding sentiment about the election will be the chance to wield a vote as a pickaxe on a polity which has largely ceased to embody their aspirations and hopes
In Australian politics nobody can hear you scream
All voters should vote carefully, and should vote on issues of substance in their lives, and for our families and children, in the hope that somehow we may deliver a better future for Australians of the future. For this reason vote against the mainstream parties, and vote for independents in every seat and the Senate, except in such circumstances where representatives of major parties are prepared to recognise and address the major issues of people, and emphasise that within the mainstream parties they will work to have such concerns recognised and acted upon. For the most part those representatives from within mainstream political parties will not be in a position to do this.
For the countless Australians who will know essentially nothing about the people on their ballot papers – either what they say they stand for, who funds them, and what their life circumstances, or party allegiance, may shape as a response to the parliamentary imperatives of the nation – this election should not be about hope for a least worst outcome, informed by the catchy jingles or half informed sentiments from the past. This election should be about expressing their thoughts about Australian politics and the ‘leadership’ Australia has had over the course of a generation.
Australians should use their vote to express their rage.
Not because expressions of rage are the basis for making Australia’s future better. But because of the substance and belief that Australia’s mainstream politics has ceased to be able to hear anything other than that rage – and that knowing the rage that is afoot in the suburbs towns and cities of Australia the parties at the core of Australian politics have determined the appropriate response is the evasive promotion of half truths steeped in glibness, speciousness and ideologies unrepresentative of Australia, and the avoidance of detail, data, intellectual bravery and integrity which would steer Australia towards that better future Australians aspire to, while addressing the concerns of contemporary Australians.
ScoMo does gravel voiced Australiana too, and still doesnt look as though he could be believed
Satan’s spawn and The Government of Eternal Damnation
No words could ever do justice to the sheer loathing Australia’s current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison and the Liberal National Party he leads, have come to embody for the Australian public. From the top down it encompasses everything any nation would find shameful and embarrassing.
For a nation which prides itself on easygoing egalitarianism, a bible bashing blame apportioning misogynist compulsive liar with the social skills of gnat has been the nadir of a succession of political leaders, from both sides of mainstream politics. His address of a series of events throughout his tenure has underlined a blatant inability to engage with, comprehend, be honest with, and admit self-fault to the ordinary Australians he would claim to represent. He is representative of the dismissive, condescending, solely self-knowledgeable, incapable of error, resentful and vindictive towards any observation less than glowing praise, and reward entitled, mindset of a disturbingly large sections of Australia’s corporate, bureaucratic, academic, and social organisational ‘elites’.
For many he is, like many of that ‘elite’, an utter fraud who has been exposed for his failings as national leader, and the people of Australia are those who will pay for his retirement, in both a financial sense, and in the sense of the vast policy holes his government has left the country. Suffice it to say his public responses to, inter alia, climate change, parliamentary misogyny, refugees, bushfire and flood victims, the Covid pandemic, banking sector fraud, housing costs and renters, precarious employment, utility costs, multinational tax avoidance, and his own personal religious views and activities will ensure that he remains the subject of scorn and ridicule long after he cleanses parliament of his presence by departing for whatever sinecure awaits him. His overt religiosity, in a nation long suspicious of religion being worn on the sleeve of any of its leaders has, descended into the electoral damnation of association with behavioural and financial misconduct at his church of choice. Most Australians rightly assume there isn’t a morsel of bullshit he won’t apply at the drop of a hat.
He leads a party and a coalition partner dripping with toxic incompetence, avarice, self-entitlement and an ongoing inability to be honest with Australians. From whiteboards and carparks or sports rorts, to contracts inexplicably awarded and the ever changing blame apportionment, to covering for sexual harassment in politics, and on to the endless array of politicians departing parliament one day to take up consulting roles the following and maximising their impost on Australian taxpayers as well as maximising their influence for their new employers prior to leaving politics, Australians have seen much to question over the life of not just this parliament but the entirety of what is now a 9 year old government. Most Australians are desperate to see the end of this government, and will be glad to see it gone, if not for policy reasons then surely for the sense of what is right.
The Opposition of the Worm Tongued
Australia’s opposition is poised to be the prime beneficiary of the national revulsion with its own government. Despite the revulsion and the almost omnipresent reasons for it the opposition has run a ‘small target’ lead in to the election. Against a government which has now been in power for 9 years that small target strategy suggests little change and minimal address of issues central to the lived experience of Australians. It bodes alarmingly for many Australians
The opposition ALP, headed by Anthony Albanese remains suspect for a large number of Australians. There are concerns it may be more focussed on promoting social justice interpretations upon them – notably regarding race and gender – than addressing socio-economic reform. While its leadership can be assumed to have better engagement skills and the current opposition leader less likely to be a psychopath, it too has cultural and behavioural issues, and the genesis of suspicion that some of the people in its ranks may not be the most pleasant of people. It has links and public perceptions of financial ties to China, which have never been satisfactorily explained, and a past in which members of its rank have engaged in self-serving, deceitful behaviours and of regularly disrespecting the people they represent too. When last in government, they too embodied behaviours facilitating incompetence, straight out lies, glib condescension and an avoidance of the issues Australia faces.
They need to return, but they need to be better than Australians have seen them in more than a generation. They need most of all to be better at engaging with and being honest with Australians, and offering a data informed logical narrative about where their policies in government are taking the nation. They need to be able to bring the electorate with them, and to do this they will need to be able to go to the electorate, understand where the electorate is, and bring the electorate with them. It should not be laying claim to power and subsequently driving the electorate before them, without any ability to question the dynamics unfolding behind the momentum. If the opposition returns to power and fails to address societal concerns, while smothering expressions of that concern with specious assertions of progress, then the public will look for the ‘eject’ button quickly.
Is Albo any more credible than ScoMo?
The Issues – the great unmentionables Australian politics doesn’t really want to touch
The major issues requiring policy address for Australia are the issues which have been allowed to atrophy behind political impasse or fed to vested interests for a generation while Australian politicians have abrogated responsibility. They include.
The lived experience and economy – Australians are amongst the most heavily indebted people on the planet. They pay more for their housing, energy, fuel, education, water, childcare and internet than almost any other society. They work in an economy with higher rates of casualization and temporary employment than any other nation in the OECD. The travel times in the major cities have ballooned over the course of a generation, with crowding levels for nearly every form of social service – from education to medical care. The majority of Australian households are double income households but despite this more Australians are living with financial stress due to costs, or social and family stress resulting from their work needs outweighing their time to engage with loved ones.
Neither the Government (after 8 years in power, and having been in power for 20 of the last 26 years) or the Opposition are proposing anything to touch this dynamic.…….
Your politicians dont want to talk about why net migration trebled after 2005, or why they deem it essential to return to the volumes of 2019 as soon as possible.
The great intergenerational sellout – Australians are traditionally optimistic and by default look to create a better world for their children. Australians of the past observably sacrificed so that their children could have a better future. In contemporary Australia however, anyone under the age of about 50 can rightly assume that, for the most part, they are being sold out. They pay more for housing and educations, and often find themselves outbid by the older, get worse outcomes from superannuation, and are more exposed in the workplaces they can enter to either exploitation from employers who see this as some form of ‘right’ (be it straight pay ripoffs, super ripoffs, unpaid work requirements through to straight out theft and sexual harassment in some workplaces, against a backdrop of more employment they do enter being temporary and instantly disposable for many employers). On top of that it will be through taxing them that the benefits to those older are paid, while they will get to stave off retirement for longer.
Neither the Government or the Opposition are addressing this issue.…….
The macroeconomic policy framework – in 2022 Australian society represents an economy which earns an income almost solely through resources exports. Australia is a giant quarry or feedlot, and that is it. All the education ‘exports’, the services, and the retail is essentially funded by a government which rakes off proceeds from the sales of those commodity exports and redistributes these through the economy to create the appearance of economic ‘diversity’. But that appearance of economic ‘diversity’ – the high tech industry, the arts, and cultural sectors and the professional services and academia – is essentially about farming the proceeds of that government redistribution off what it takes from the resources revenues. Anything other than resources exports is not ‘pulling its weight’. A generation ago Australia engineered ‘competitiveness’ as the underpinning of Australia’s economic future. Any prosperity forward of the late 1990s has been underpinned by the forfeiting of that competitiveness to the prioritisation of those resources exports, and the government driven redistributions they enable. These have enabled the faux ‘prosperity’ of house price inflation, superannuation and wealth concessions, business tax concessions, and the dubious benefits of ‘free trade’ which open the doors to Australia for nationals of other nations while creating minimal opportunity for those in most need of it within Australia. If all we are ever going to do as an economic model is dig stuff out of the ground, or grow things on top of it, (employing about 2% of the population), and offload it somewhere else, then that may be fine – but why would we be flooding the place with immigrants if that is where our economic narrative is taking us?
Neither the Government or the Opposition want to discuss this issue in any sort of detail.…….
Tax Avoidance and what is or what isn’t ‘wealthy’ – Tax avoidance is at the heart of ‘wealth’ in contemporary Australia. You can avoid tax on the sale of real estate, you can avoid tax by salting away funds in Superannuation, and you can avoid more tax by taking out the world’s most obscenely feeble private health insurance. Almost every small business in the country is an exercise in tax farming ‘investment’ offsets, ‘employment’ support payments, and ‘writing down’ items off revenues which can deliver quality of life gains (the power, the internet, the cars, and the trips or ‘educational’ expenses). There are whole industries revolving around providing advice for individuals to structure their assets and incomes so as to maximise their entitlement to social welfare payments.
At the same time the common PAYE tax payer has little ability to write off anything. Households on average incomes – facing an inordinate grilling the moment they try to claim for any concession in their tax returns – who have been forced to take on ever larger volumes of debt for a generation, are annually greeted by news that corporate Australia is not paying any tax in 30% of instances, and in numerous others is paying as little as one percent of revenues with countless legitimate and legal taxation concessions.
Neither the Government or the Opposition are overtly addressing this issue.…….
Why are Australians experiencing such feeble incomes growth over a generation? When you get canvassed in the coming weeks, see what sort of answers you get when you ask.
China and India – and the United States – For the better part of twenty years we have offshored our manufacturing capacity in order to focus on selling mining commodities to China. We looked the other way as Chinese money made its way into our political system (on both mainstream sides), and watched on as politicians from both mainstream sides took on sinecures funded by China. We asked no questions about the corruption in China and the remotest possibility it was buying housing in Australia, and adding to the great housing divide, while questions about the phenomena were treated with contempt and derision. Similar questions about ‘Special Investor’ visas and the actual value for Australians from selling off Australian citizenship were met with claims of racism, while concerns about the ‘exports’ of Australian education to Chinese students, and whether they implied a ‘dumbing down’ of content and a focus on group activities in courses designed to ensure fewer fails, have been met with accusations of racism – even when Chinese security officials were heavying student protests at Australian Universities.
In recent years the same questions have arisen with regard to some aspects of Indian relations. Indians are now filling the Universities, and anyone near a bureaucracy will have seen numerous Indian contractors working on their IT, with the Indian Free Trade deal signed off last week seemingly offering bugger all for Australians, with India long a bastion of protectionism, while enabling large numbers of Indians to come to Australia – adding to housing and wage growth concerns. But at least India isn’t laying claim to and militarising reefs in the South China Sea.
Finally some sort of clarity about our relationship with the United States may be in order. Australia has done the Donald experience and stuck closer to the US than many others, but what does this imply for particularly the ADF, and for the nation overall?
Neither the Government or the Opposition want to talk much about this .…….
Immigration volumes – The Great ‘unspoken’ of Australian socio economic policy is the numbers of migrants we take each year and why we take that number. Employer groups talk about ‘skills shortages’ when all of them are essentially inward facing and have no identifiable skills shortage that couldn’t be addressed with more training. Some of those ‘skills shortages’ being touted include Baristas, waiting staff, Yoga instructors (check the latest Indian FTA) with ample evidence the people coming to Australia to study are primarily interested in migrating here rather than studying here. Despite exhortations from both mainstream sides of politics that Australia has a ‘targeted’ skills migration program numerous occupations on the ‘skilled’ list are occupations which Australia has an oversupply of people already here to fill, and where migrants are overtly undercutting incomes.
That all goes on top of the complete disinformation about why we want or need migration – ranging from ‘to pay the pensions of tomorrow’ to ‘a larger domestic scale of production’ – and comes before even considering the costs, impact on service provision (schools, medical facilities and public transport for starters), the implication an oversupply of labouir has for productivity, and well before thinking about social cohesion concerns (should we have an immigration programme comprising more than 10-15% from one nation? What social attributes do they bring with them? Will they get on with us?).
Both the government and opposition have blatantly lied to us on this subject for a generation, and avoid discussion of the issue whenever it is raised.
Housing – The other great unmentionable of Australian politics is housing. For both buyers and renters. It is still unmentionable although it has become so prominent that it cant really not be mentioned any more. What it gets now is a meaningless throwaway expenditure sum, or another meaningless inquiry. Jason Falinski come on down, but don’t feel too bad because we can be sure there will be an ALP housing twat thrust into the spotlight sometime soon, we can be sure.
The house price inflation Australia has experienced since the early 2000s, which currently prices entire generations from Australians from the prospect of ever meaningfully owning their home – as opposed to holding it in fief for a bank, while ‘renting’ the capital – and the treatment of renters best epitomised by the Prime Minister’s obvious inability to recognise their plight is at the core of an intergenerational disgrace which will haunt Australia for generations to come.
The simple fact of the matter is that in the 1980s the average mortgage was approximately 4 times average incomes. The average full time income in Australia in 2022 is approximately 80 thousand dollars per annum and 4 times that brings us to circa $320k. See what you get for that anywhere in the country.
Both the government and opposition have blatantly lied to us on this subject for a generation, and avoid discussion of the issue whenever it is raised. They both specialise in trivial addresses of the issue, which perpetuates the problem it represents on mainly younger and poorer Australians.
Australia’s politicians – both mainstream sides – dont want to talk about why first home buyers are taking out mortgages the sizes they are required to. And they certainly dont want to talk about what they plan to do about it.
On countless other issues Australia’s government and opposition are very close to being in lockstep. Employment (particularly Australia’s casual and temporary employment), The Public Service, and The Universities in particular – All need major reform. Neither side of politics wants to talk about it.
So when you go to the ballot box do not simply write a 1 or tick above the line, and give your preference to either the organisations of our larger political parties or to ‘preference whisperers’. Do your country a favour and number every candidate in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and number them quite deliberately to work against the preference of the major parties. The more independents and the more non-mainstream candidates that can be got into parliament the less likely we are to be treated with contempt by our parliamentarians after the election. The more they are made to sweat the more likely it is they will open up and tell you what they really think and what they are really going to work for.
Prime Minister Morrison will call the election within hours. ‘No Prisoners’ is the mindset to carry the next 6 weeks. Do not let the bastards bullshit you, and make it hard for them.
ScoMo’s car on the way to Yarralumla