Tim Soutphommasane Political philosopher and regular columnist
February 11, 2013
Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.
Sometimes our politics seems to exist in a parallel world. No, I haven't succumbed to tabloid populism. I'm not about to rant about politicians being hopelessly out of touch with ordinary battlers. Rather I mean that the tone of Australian politics seems radically disconnected from reality.
It is a case of 2013 taking up where 2012 left off. A September election date may have been announced, but nothing significant has changed. The Gillard government, so we are told, remains in deep trouble. The vicious cycle of bad polling and leadership instability has resumed. And there is an air of inevitability about it all. If you read or listen to media coverage of Canberra, it's as though the country is being suffocated by a crisis of political leadership.
Which is where reality should enter the picture. If this is what a crisis of government looks like, we're not faring too badly as a result. Australia, after all, is in a prolonged patch of prosperity.
There is a paradox at the heart of Labor's current woes. It may be politically weak, but Labor in fact has a solid case for re-election. On any objective measure, the Rudd-Gillard governments have been good governments. They have been competent economic managers. They have achieved significant legislative reforms. And while they have had their missteps, no government is immune from error or miscalculation.
Let's look at the evidence. The economy continues to grow at 3 per cent, and for the 22nd consecutive year. Unemployment remains at 5 per cent. Compare this with the economic trauma in Europe or the sluggish recovery in the US. Labor can claim credit for our rude economic health. Without its stimulus package in response to the global financial crisis, we would likely be in a different place.
Beyond this, there has been the establishment of a carbon price, the building of a national broadband network, the beginnings of a National Disability Insurance Scheme. Not to mention the introduction of paid parental leave and plain packaging on cigarettes. Julia Gillard had a point when she told journalists last year to look at the legislative scoreboard.
That much of this has been done by a minority government, in the face of a relentlessly negative opposition, only adds to the achievement.
The trouble for Gillard is that the political scoreboard has barely ticked over. Ordinarily, the economics alone should just about be enough to return an incumbent government for another term. Yet last week's Newspoll showed that Labor trails the Coalition by a significant margin (28 per cent to 50 per cent) in voters' ratings of the party best able to handle the economy. This, in spite of the Coalition offering little so far about how it would fund its promises.
Perhaps it's because any Australian exceptionalism at the moment extends to our political mood. For all of our economic buoyancy, the public sentiment is one of anxiety. Economic debate is distorted by a hysterical, nonsensical concern about the cost of living. This has no sound empirical basis given that wages growth has outstripped the rise in prices (something confirmed time and time again by the Australian Bureau of Statistics).
But once more it is the disconnect that is important. The popular sense of economic wellbeing is no longer anchored in anything objective; it has become something increasingly subjective and impervious to the facts.
This points as well to some of Labor's deficiencies. If Labor hasn't been able to receive credit for the economy the way it should, it is because it has failed in its political salesmanship.
Good policy and good politics aren't the same things. Labor's political execution and judgment have been left wanting.
Much like many progressive parties elsewhere, Labor also has a tendency to be too technocratic. Ministers chant the mantras of productivity and economic reform, but only rarely do they remember that they must be connected to some sense of a good society or a nation-building mission. Or that they must appeal to more than just economists in the Treasury or analysts in trading rooms. The triumph of policy wonkery over social democratic ideology has limited Labor's ability to convey its strengths.
Nothing has distracted from Labor's achievements more, though, than its leadership convulsions. With hindsight, it is clear that removing Rudd from the prime ministership was a mistake. The move prevented a sitting prime minister from facing the electorate, and made it difficult for Labor to campaign on its own economic record.
The past fortnight has nonetheless revealed that Gillard and her ministers will concentrate on making an economic pitch based on jobs and growth. On paper, they should have an attractive proposition.
And yet, this can take them only so far. After all, voters make decisions based not just on what governments do in the legislative realm, but also on how they look and act in the political.
Age columnist Tim Soutphommasane is a political philosopher and has worked as a Labor adviser.
