By Jonathan Singer
Hot air fills a vacuum as well as anything else, but it dissipates more easily than something solid. This has been demonstrated most recently in the political arena by the ALP.
Labor's rule is: maximum posturing, minimum commitment. This is how it has handled workers losing their entitlements when companies collapse, the goods and services tax (GST), tax rebates for private health insurance and employment.
Labor has made its main cause a campaign against government lies about the GST, and there are plenty of them. Shadow treasurer Simon Crean says it would be better if the GST was not introduced at all, according to Paul Kelly in the February 19 Australian. "But there's a catch — Labor intends to keep the GST", Kelly says, even though "the ALP, of course, doesn't have to keep the GST".
Labor has promised only to "roll back" the GST, to remove the tax on health, education and charities. After a meeting of federal and state party leaders on February 18, it also said that commonwealth grants to the states, which are now tied to GST collections, would be maintained.
Federal leader Kim Beazley was then asked if Labor would therefore increase income taxes to maintain the government budget surplus or if it would run deficit budgets. Squirm. Neither are ruled out, nor are they "ruled in", Beazley replied.
It's not difficult to believe that the same people who don't want the GST also wouldn't mind if income taxes on the wealthy were increased and corporate taxes were raised and enforced, even to the point where the GST could just be abolished.
Labor had a policy a little like this before the last election, when it won a majority of the two-party preferred vote. Since then, though, it has supported cuts to company tax.
Special case
Labor heavily criticised John Howard's handling of the National Textiles case. But its criticism was only that the PM was guilty of favouritism towards his brother, National Textiles chairperson Stan Howard, in offering a package which would pay the workers their entitlements.
However, Labor accepted the government's claim that assistance to the National Textiles workers was a "special case". It was only after Howard's offer to the company that Labor put forward its plan for a national insurance scheme for workers' entitlements.
The ACTU is normally happy to follow Labor's political path, but even it abandoned the ALP on this issue. At a February 22 meeting, the union body decided to favour a public fund supported by a levy (0.1% of wages and salaries) on all employers, except for those participating in industry trust funds or with suitable insurance arrangements, and to campaign for an end to the arbitrary January 1 cut-off for assistance.
Labor has labelled the health insurance rebate — in reality a more than $2 billion subsidy to private health insurance companies — a monumental failure. The rebate's purported aim was to draw a large number of people back to private insurance and to the private health system, relieving pressure on public health services. The rebate has produced only a slight increase in the proportion of people privately insured.
However, Beazley told ABC radio's AM program on February 23 that the rebate "is impossible to scrap, because now premiums have risen as a result of some relaxation in the ability of people who are privately insured to pay".
"You've got thousands of elderly people out there who, if you suddenly ripped the rug out from under them, would find themselves in a situation where they could not afford private health insurance", Beazley opined. "You'd collapse support for the private health funds."
Beazley's concern is to support the private funds. Elderly people would get the health-care services they need if the money presented to the funds through the rebate was spent instead on direct public provision of these services.
Labor's long-term employment policy was announced on February 23 with much fanfare. It concentrates on raising educational qualifications and retraining workers before they lose their existing jobs. Greater skills are posed as the way to overcome structural unemployment.
But improved skills in the work force does not guarantee more jobs — no more than the government's drive for lower wages. However, both shift the burden for employment off bosses and the government and onto workers.
Labor shuns moves for a shorter working week. In fact, its policy is based on modelling which assumes that three in 10 new jobs will involve working 50 hours or more a week, while four in 10 jobs will be casual or part-time.
Again, there's a lot of hype from Labor and little substance, and what substance there is is neither groundbreaking nor progressive.
Appearances
The parlous state on both "sides" of Australian politics is understood even by most of the establishment media. Kelly, for example, is incredulous, since the country is experiencing the "strongest economic expansion of [a] century".
But this economic growth is a false sign of health; the long-term crisis of the economy continues, and both the major parties, supporting business, must pursue restrictions on social services and democratic rights.
Labor's traditional role in the political stage play means that not only must it appear to care about working people, it must also appear to uphold their interests. At the moment, even this is beyond it.
The contradiction for Labor between rebuilding its appearance as pro-worker and its pro-business politics is striking.
People are angry about the GST and the closure of the companies in which they work. They're angry about unemployment and the state of the health system. There are even small protest movements forming around some of these issues.
If Labor were to put forward policies which oppose what the government is doing in these areas, it would give this anger coherence and a national impact. But that isn't what Labor will do. It hopes to win government without causing any pain to the big end of town.