One of the hardy post-poll adages politicians routinely defer to is that the voters are never wrong when it comes to returning or rejecting governments at democratic elections.
It’s a statement of the obvious, really: the punters hear what they hear and vote for the party or candidate or leader who best appeals to – or influences – their sympathies.
With the major-party primary votes comparatively low (measured against many previous federal elections), and amid the rise of centrist “teal” candidates in blue-ribbon seats, a significant Green and undecided vote, a constant refrain in voter vox pops seems to be “there is no major difference between the big parties”.
Despite an astounding absence of detailed argy-bargy between the Coalition and Labor on several critical policy areas (read climate crisis mitigation – about which there is significant policy difference – and fossil fuels, school and university funding, and foreign and defence strategies), the democratic choice between the major parties – let alone the independents – presents to me, contrarily, as pretty stark.
After covering federal politics off and on for the best part of 20 years, these days I dedicate little attentive energy to the daily race-call ins and outs of opposing strategies and tactics. I invest trust in just a few professional political observers. I watch some TV news and alternatively eye-roll or curse the front pages of my city’s daily newspapers on my suburb’s front lawns when I exercise my dogs.
Yes, I’m distracted by every single AFL match each weekend and by reading novels and foreign magazines and stuff on the internet about cooking and collie-cross dogs and how to teach them to catch Frisbees and about big-wave surfing and Sean Penn’s performance in Gaslit.
But even then, the many stark differences between the Coalition and Labor are apparent to me – as black and white, if you like, as the coat of my collie-cross-bitzer, Olive, who just WILL NOT play Frisbee.
1. Advancing reconciliation
Starting with the dignified call in the Uluru statement from the heart for a voice to parliament. Labor has committed to a first-term referendum to enshrine the voice in the constitution. The Coalition opposes it. “It’s not our policy to have a referendum on the voice, so why would I be doing that?” Scott Morrison has said.
The major parties are poles apart on this issue that is central to Black and white conciliation in Australia and which is the first step in a voice, treaty, truth process determined at Uluru (on this front the Greens’ position – which prioritises truth and treaties ahead of enshrining a voice – also contrasts markedly with Labor’s, as pointed out here by Thomas Mayor, a signatory to the Uluru statement).
2. Countering corruption
Another major issue – and critical difference – between the major parties is their policies on public integrity and a federal commission to deal with corruption. Labor has, if elected, pledged to establish a powerful national integrity commission by Christmas. The Morrison government introduced to the last parliament an exposure draft (not the same as putting forward finished legislation) for a largely toothless commission. It blamed Labor (which wanted a more powerful anti-corruption watchdog and refused to support it in full) for its failure to meet its 2019 election promise to create a federal anti-corruption body.
Morrison has repeatedly derided the New South Wales anti-corruption commission – the template for tough public integrity enforcement, which has scalped both Labor and senior Liberal figures – as a “kangaroo court”. That’s all pretty different – in tone and intent – when it comes to pursuing federal corruption.
3. Social policy ambitions
Amid the ongoing arm wrestle about who is best able to manage a faltering economy (the government’s message seems to be: We are, however on our watch it’s actually gone to shit in a bucket so you can’t trust them to deal with the consequences; but what would I know – I failed introduction to formal logic in second year!) in the past week alone significant differences have emerged on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (Labor would cut the price of a PBS medicine from $42.50 to $30, the Coalition, $42.50 to $32.50), housing, the gender pay gap, support for the introduction of electric vehicles and related infrastructure, and recommitment to manufacturing in Australia.
4. Caring for our elderly
One of the biggest and most influential social policy differences between the major parties is on nursing homes. Many have experienced the distressing nightmare of finding appropriate care for parents or other loved ones. For others it is an unpalatable contemplation of what, may, personally lie ahead not too distantly. It affects most of us one way or another and Labor has, correctly, identified it as an electoral slow burn. The differences relate to the cost of dignity and greater levels of care.
5. Who could best lead a minority government?
Now to the glaring same-same that will rapidly become illusory should the Greens, teal and other independents hold the keys to government formation post-21 May. It is the vow by Morrison and Labor’s Anthony Albanese not to form a minority government in the event neither wins an outright majority.
Morrison is an experienced prime minister, albeit one whose governmental, interpersonal and empathic capacities frequently fall hopelessly short. Albanese may be the lesser campaigner but he is a far more temperamentally adept negotiator and conciliator, as his success as manager of government business in the Gillard minority government (which remarkably passed 561 pieces of legislation) attests.
And that looms as a really significant contrast – one that might count the most in a little over two weeks’ time.
Amid all the tedium, the off-putting endless chatter about tactics and strategy and who’s ahead and what voters really want, that is the compelling political thought that keeps competing with all the distractions in a mind largely detached from the weeds of this election campaign.
Paul Daley is a columnist for Guardian Australia
