Last week, seven Coalition MPs were given prominence in The Age to make an evidence-free claim that voters don’t care about a federal integrity commission.
I say evidence-free because polls have consistently shown otherwise. In November 2020, Guardian Australia’s essential poll reported 81% of Australians back the need for an integrity body, and Nine’s own Resolve Poll last October showed that 70% are supportive of one.
So why report such tripe at all? Is it to underscore a fact known all too well by Australians who don’t live in a marginal seat? That our needs, beliefs and passions as citizens of this country don’t matter? This contrasts mightily with swinging voters in marginal electorates, whose needs, beliefs and passions are at least fielded by their MPs long enough for a winner of the federal poll to be declared before being kicked to the curb, as happened to the federal ICAC after the last election. Easy come, easy go.
But the cynicism this Nine Entertainment yarn represents doesn’t stop there. Because anyone with political savvy knows that process issues — of the “how should we govern ourselves” type — are the hardest for all voters to get their heads around. This contrasts with tax, family or climate policy, the relevance of which to a voter’s life is easier to grasp. This is even more so the case for swinging voters who are typically less engaged in politics and tend to view party ideology and offerings through the lens of how they will affect them.
So, here’s my question: in what world does a government, one that knows how badly the absence of accountability impacts the fiscal and personal integrity practices of its ministers, insist that the only way it will heed its corrupt ways is if the most apathetic voters in a few marginal seats say they must?
The answer? Our world. A world in which the current government actually has even odds of winning a fourth term despite so many integrity breaches (robodebt, sports rorts, car-park rorts, stacking the AAT, grants stacking), and multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, it’s easy to lose count.
In fact, it’s worse than that, because a Coalition win in 2022 will reinforce what Coalition MPs are so busy telling Nine Entertainment because they are so eager to believe it themselves: that voters in marginal electorates don’t care if their representatives twist the rules, or ignore the dictates of probity all together, as long as they reap the benefits of their crooked MPs.
And in 2022, the needs and interests of those swinging voters are the only ones that matter.
