BY ALISON DELLIT
According to Prime Minister John Howard, the defeat of the Country Liberal Party in the August 18 Northern Territory election was governed by the "It's time" factor. But why NT residents set the "it's time" alarm clock for 26 years is anybody's guess — it's hard to see why 22 wouldn't do as well, and 30 is such a nice round number.
Howard also claimed that the Liberal Party's massacre in the February Western Australian election was due to local issues. The Brisbane swing towards the incumbent Labor government a week later was put down to Premier Peter Beattie's personal popularity and the shock defeat of the Liberal government in Victoria in 2000 was, of course, all Jeff Kennett's fault.
What the prime minister seems to be unable to admit is that the reason that state and territory conservative governments are falling like dominoes is because elections nowadays seem to be dominated by the "anything's gotta be better than this mob" mentality.
The clear trend in recent state elections and by-elections is a collapse of the Coalition vote that is not directly picked up by Labor. Instead, the vote for minor parties and independents has sky-rocketed — in the NT it went from 6.9% in 1997 to 13.8% in 2001.
There are now 25 seats in Australian state or territory parliaments held by independents or minor parties — 19 of them are outside metropolitan areas and 21 were previously safe Coalition seats.
Sick of the merry-go-round
This indicates what anybody who talks politics on the streets has known for some time: People are sick to death of the Liberal/Labor merry-go-round that just seems to leave them working longer hours, with worse public hospitals and schools and higher stress levels.
Even the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concedes that income disparity has grown in Australia faster than ever during the last 10 years. These years have been dominated by "neo-liberal" (or economic rationalist) economic policy — less government protection of workers, less tariff protection for local or small industry and privatisation of public services.
According to the OECD, Australia's economy is veritably chugging along. "The bottom line is that all the indicators that are good are up and all those that are bad are down", commented Ken Courtis, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia. "If I were Howard, I would take [the recent OECD report on the Australian economy] away and use it as part of my election manifesto."
Howard is not so foolish. In the same week as the NT election, a Bulletin-Morgan poll indicated that 34% of Australians believe they are worse off now than a year ago — up from 22% in August last year. Few people will put up with being told that this is as good as it gets, particularly with a world recession looming around the corner.
Even the OECD admits that the last decade's growth has been at the expense of the majority of the population.
While private investment into infrastructure declined, public subsidies to large corporations increased but public spending per capita on public health and education has declined. A larger share of the tax base is coming from workers than ever before, and less is coming from business. Australian workers are thus paying less for more, while business mops up the difference (and still isn't creating jobs).
It's not just workers who have copped economic "reform".
On August 22, the former Country Liberal Party member for Johnston, Steve Balch, told the Sydney Morning Herald: "Down in Canberra they talk about small business but they don't mean the micro-small business people like I have — the Chinese takeaway shop, the mum and dad businesses ... All they know is they're spending more money than ever before."
Not only are these businesses squeezed by multinational competitors, but the shift to a consumption tax has hit all those with a low disposable income.
In rural areas, potato growers and dairy farmers find themselves forced into collective bargaining with the big monopolies that purchase their goods. Faced with only one or two buyers, the concept of using the market to drive up their prices is a joke.
Where's the Opposition?
The ALP has provided no real opposition to the direction of "economic reform", instead opposing only the most immediately unpopular aspects of it, like the GST. In 13 years of government, Labor began the process of attacking wages through the Prices and Incomes Accord and started the wave of public sell-offs.
These conditions have created the basis for a growing anger against super-rich businesses, politicians and the media. Voters are flocking to anyone not identified with the existing power structures — independents and minor parties. And they are putting the Liberals, who have presided over the worst of the economic pain, last.
The revelations, beginning on August 23, that the Liberal Party has systematically claimed GST rebates on functions for which no GST was paid just confirms what most people already suspect — politicians have one law for themselves and another for the rest of us.
In the face of mass anger against the government and the rich, the Liberals' election strategy is focussed on redirecting that anger — which means we are facing a very ugly election campaign indeed. The Liberals have already begun to play the politics of racism and union bashing.
Showing no compassion for refugees or any concession to the humanitarian sympathy their plight is increasingly invoking, immigration minister Philip Ruddock has pulled more rhetoric out of Pauline Hanson's pocket, warning of a "flood of refugees" and those who cannot "assimilate".
Proposing to build yet more detention centres, Ruddock has reiterated his dead-set opposition to considering alternatives.
It's a pretty tired "divide and rule" concept. Unable to convince people that the Liberals are on the side of the poor, instead Howard wants to convince them that they are on the side of white Christians, against crime-ridden, lazy, violent Muslims. This is scapegoating at its ugliest.
On the Monday after the NT election, Liberal Senator Amanda Vanstone told the press, Australians "are getting much closer to coast-to-coast Labor control and they know that means coast-to-coast union control".
Industrial relations minister Tony Abbott has already begun a series of high-profile verbal attacks on militant unionists. The enactment of a royal commission into the building industry is designed to highlight the strength of militant unions in construction and smear those unions with claims of violence and corruption.
The Liberals hope to scare some of the "mum and dad businesses" and less union-conscious workers back into the fold by convincing them that it is high wages for some sectors protected by the unions that is driving everybody's income down.
The ALP's election campaign seems to consist of promising some small adjustments to government spending to make things a little fairer — less GST but no less income tax, more funding for hospitals and schools — while saying as little as possible.
Opposition leader Kim Beazley has ruled out increasing corporate taxes, and no-one is even speaking of re-nationalising already privatised services.
The ALP has ridden out the attacks on the unions mostly from the sidelines. Its position seems to be more pro-industrial relations commission than pro-union.
Far from condemning the stirring up of race hatred, the ALP has enthusiastically participated in blaming refugees and migrant communities for everything from unemployment to crime and poor maintenance of city streets.
It is extremely likely that the pattern of voting in state elections will be repeated in the federal election later this year.
In Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland the swing against the Coalition parties was much bigger than any political pollsters had predicted. It seems clear that even many of those who mistrust the alternatives cannot bring themselves in the privacy of an election booth to endorse the policies pursued by this government.
The challenge for the left is to convince these disaffected people that right-wing independents, parochialism and racism is no alternative to the current system and to give those who oppose economic rationalism something to support.
This will be the first federal election contested by the Socialist Alliance, but the results in the Northern Territory indicate that there is an audience for these ideas like never before.
We need to tell Howard that he's right, "it's time" — time for him to go and time for a real alternative.