Alarm bells must have rung at ALP HQ this week, and Australians got a clearer view of the political and economic miasma they are sailing into with some of the heaviest mortgages on the planet.
Some of the most wedded-on ALP voters in the country voted to tell the Victorian State government to get stuffed. Jacinta Allan’s government had negotiated what it must have assumed was a sure thing with a 28% pay increase over 4 years and additional student-free days.
Think about that for a moment. Teachers in the public system voted no to a 28% pay deal over four years.
Now, in fairness, these were Victorian public system teachers, and they have observably seen a gap open up between themselves and their colleagues interstate over about 20 years in terms of remuneration and conditions.
Mainly under governments, they have been influential in maintaining power. But you would have thought the IR types would have tapped their noses and slipped a wink while exuding sentiments of ‘just a sign of things to come’, and everyone could have moved on.
But they haven’t.
Australians aren’t moving on. They are sheltering in the deepest mortgages on the planet, or the most extortionate rents in Australian history, wondering when the barrage of bills will come close enough to cave things in.
Will it be an electricity bill? Will it be a kids’ school camp or dentist trip? Will it be a medical condition that arrives one day?
Moving, in any sense of the word – be it moving jobs, moving house, moving schools for kids, or going to see a specialist – is often the high-risk option. The percentage play is hunkering down where they are and toughing things out. But it’s only a percentage play until they get the direct hit. Then its idiocy.
Our polity has delivered subpar outcomes for a long time.
While sheltering from the bottom of those mortgages, praying that the next bill doesn’t take them out, they get angry. Where is our side? Isn’t that the government one we voted for? What are they doing for us? That union we pay fees to each week represents our interests. Are they on our side or the government’s? That management that sends us monthly emails about how much they value us and want to help us. Do they really want to help us or do they want to harvest us? Do they really care about what we do or do they want us to quit so they can get in a cheaper option and act like a psychopathic hair shirt to nudge us out the door?
Are there any review processes or ‘integrity’ functions that our concerns can be taken to? Or are they all about upholding a right of management to do whatever they can get away with? Is ‘integrity’ solely about what we can get away with?
For a lot of people in the burbs, these are serious questions. Just who is on their side?
And it runs far deeper than just the teachers employed by the state. How many doctors or GPs are reliant on the Medicare fees for the bulk of their incomes? How many healthcare types only have clients because the government is paying half? How many lawyers spend a large chunk of their time dealing with government in one guise or another? How many consultants are working anywhere outside of a government somewhere?
We are carrying a lot of non-market employment
Even for those observably funded by the government, questions abound. Why are so many academics on casual and short-term contracts? Aren’t they providing the service driving demand for our education system, and not the administrative staff so safely ensconced and well-remunerated for their efforts? Why would they be going through restructures involving reapplying for their jobs?
Then there are actual public servants, Commonwealth and State. Federal government pay negotiations start in less than 6 months. Victoria gets a new government before Christmas. The NSW government goes to the polls in about 9 months. Between them, those three public services employ circa 900 thousand people. The uber-echelons of all three include some of the best remunerated people in Australia, but the lower levels are hunkering down in the same mortgages as the rest of Australia.
Most of those Victorian teachers would be appalled by the idea, but their experiences and their credible responses are not far removed from the driver of the electoral shift towards at least considering One Nation.
One Nation, having been ridiculed for a generation, benefits from the complete failure of Australia (and both mainstream sides of politics) to do something meaningful with the mining boom which accompanied the rise of China.
They benefit from the largesse shelled out to affluent Australia during the Covid era in comparison to ordinary people. But most of all, they benefit most from the clear position they have had on immigration volumes over the course of a generation, in comparison with the specious casuistry and barefaced lies of the ALP, Liberal National coalition, and the Greens over that same period.
Australians think that we import far too many people for the economy; we have to sustain them and those here already. The only job growth that has meaningfully occurred in a decade has been government-funded, paid for by taxpayers, and in some instances shortchanging those paying the taxes.
To fit those immigrants in, we deprive some of our own of housing and cement in a tax-and-spend economy which delivers no joy to the many. It isn’t about race or culture or anything other than that we would prefer to have those jobs available for our kids or partners rather than have them soaked up by people who live amongst us desperate to sustain themselves. Their desperation gives our toxic leadership a lever to bully ordinary Australians with.
When it comes to immigration volumes the unexplained or even acknowledged jump in immigration volumes by the ALP and LNP after circa 2006 is central to why voters would even consider One Nation.
Australians think they need to jolt the system. And the system resists being jolted. They think the system is delivering outcomes for other interests in the system and fobbing them off with outcomes they consider irrelevant or lacking substance.
And they have reached the point where voting out of the system better represents their interests than voting in for a glib, specious assertion that their interests are being represented or a warning that the ‘other’ will fail them too.
They are past the point of caring and are now at the point of ‘taking a punt’. They may well think One Nation is incoherent in a policy sense and is committed to doing some things which may not help working Australians all that much. But their desperation for something to represent their interests gives them a lever with which to threaten their toxic polity.
Both sides of mainstream Australian politics have ceased to be credible with the people they once relied on to vote for them. Both sides of mainstream Australian politics have ceased to offer a plausible path to a better future. Both sides of mainstream Australian politics are selling themselves as defenders of a faith or interest in the here and now, rather than asking the electorate to consider their vision and understand the milestones and achievements along the path to that vision.
Both sides of mainstream Australian politics are positioned for strategically failing their voters. The ALP had better pull its fingers out.