The seesaw system
The federal Liberal Party is marking a half century since its founding. "Celebrating" would be far too strong a term to describe the party's attitude towards its birthday. Their mood suggests that the Liberal leaders have taken for their own the slogan used by campaigners against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund: "Fifty years is enough".
After nearly 12 years out of federal government marked chiefly by internal disputes, with a leader who publicly parodied his own policy "directions" statement (the stupidities that splatter), the Liberal Party almost seems bent on turning Australia into a single-party state — the single party being the ALP.
The Liberals' problem, of course, is not that Australia is approaching a single-party system. What we have is better described as a seesaw system: Tweedle and Dee sit on opposite ends of the seesaw; when one is up, the other is down. The real losers are working people, whose back provides the fulcrum of the seesaw, but that doesn't make Tweedle, or Dee, really like being down.
A string of Liberal leaders have looked inept simply because Labor has been so successful — in appropriating the program that used to be considered the exclusive property of the Liberals.
The Hawke and Keating governments have put through the economic "rationalist" program of slashing social welfare measures and transferring income from workers to capitalists. In other countries that usually required an openly right-wing figure like Thatcher or Reagan to carry it out. No wonder that all the would-be Thatchers of the Liberal Party wear the expression of the dinner guest who arrives just when everyone else is going home.
Enough of Paul Keating's arrogance has rubbed off on the rest of the Labor Party to make it believe his assertion that Labor is now the "natural" party of government in Australia. But being the "natural" government in our parliamentary system only means being the party favoured by most of the capitalists — for the moment. It wasn't so very long ago that Labor was also the "natural" government of the states.
The more far-sighted Liberals, while impatient, are rightly confident that their turn will come again. The very "success" of the ALP in reducing our living standards will eventually convince a majority of voters that the Liberals can't really be worse. That's what the seesaw system is all about: giving us a choice that doesn't change anything very much.
For changing things, Dee, Tweedle — or any other party whose main concern is its position on the seesaw — isn't much use.