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What we must learn from our 'worst' election campaign · Inside Politics

0:01
S1: From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
0:04
S1: This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Tuesday, April 15th.
0:10
S1: Today we're bringing you something very special because this week
0:13
S1: our revered economics editor, Ross Gittins, wrote an essay for
0:15
S1: The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, in which he
0:17
S1: lamented the state of this election campaign in particular and
0:21
S1: Australian politics in general. The essay was titled They Treat
0:25
S1: us like Mugs. And Ross did not miss with his
0:28
S1: critique of the timidity and the cynicism of the two
0:31
S1: major parties. Campaigns. As a special guest today, we have
0:35
S1: Ross in the studio to talk us through his searing critique. Welcome, Ross.
0:38
S2: Thank you.
0:39
S1: It's really nice to have you. You're a first timer
0:41
S1: on this podcast and we welcome you warmly. Ross, you
0:45
S1: really do not mince words in this essay. You start
0:47
S1: by saying of the current election campaign that it's been
0:50
S1: neither interesting nor edifying and hasn't got to grips with
0:53
S1: the big issues. That's a pretty big statement out of
0:56
S1: the blocks. Can you elaborate on that?
0:58
S2: Yes. Well, I mean, what they've done is, is show
1:02
S2: us all these trinkets. We've got this tax cut and
1:05
S2: we've got this cut in petrol. Something else over here.
1:09
S2: Something else over there. All this stuff that might help, uh,
1:13
S2: might or might not help first home buyers. And it's
1:17
S2: like walking through a shopping center and picking what you
1:21
S2: want to buy. Well, that's not very edifying, even, uh,
1:26
S2: trying to compare them. Most of the time you're comparing
1:28
S2: apples and oranges and it's not all that easy. And
1:33
S2: but it's also not very informative.
1:37
S1: And why do you say that? Because, I mean, there's
1:39
S1: plenty of information out there about the variations of the
1:42
S1: different policies, the housing policies. I mean, there's interviews, there's
1:45
S1: podcasts like this one. There's reams and reams of newspaper
1:48
S1: articles about how all these schemes might work. Why do
1:51
S1: you say it's not informative?
1:52
S2: I guess because I doubt whether most people are dedicated
1:56
S2: enough to read much of that stuff. I think one
1:59
S2: of the things is that political campaigns mainly happen on television,
2:05
S2: and both sides put an enormous amount of effort into
2:10
S2: just making sure they get on to the evening television news,
2:14
S2: and that's where they show that they're out and about.
2:17
S2: You can have a look at them and they're doing
2:21
S2: this and they're doing that, and they've got this policy
2:23
S2: and they've got that policy, but there's nothing deep and
2:27
S2: meaningful goes on in a TV bulletin. If you want
2:32
S2: to look for the good stuff, you can find it.
2:36
S2: You can even find mine. But the.
2:39
S1: Very.
2:39
S2: Best stuff. How many people do that? I'm not sure.
2:42
S1: Sure. I mean, there'd only be a smallish chunk, I suppose,
2:44
S1: of the voting population. Who are that engaged? You do say?
2:48
S1: I mean, this is a big call that you make
2:49
S1: as well. You say in your 51 years as a journalist,
2:52
S1: and this is the 20th election campaign that you've witnessed,
2:55
S1: you say that they're getting worse.
2:57
S2: I don't doubt that. And they really started to get
3:01
S2: worse after the 2019 election. That's the one where Bill
3:09
S2: shorten thought he was going to win. Everyone thought he
3:12
S2: was going to win, but he didn't. Why? Because he
3:15
S2: had very carefully costed promises. He had a lot of
3:18
S2: generous promises and his economic people had gone through and said, well,
3:24
S2: if we increase that tax a little bit here, it won't.
3:27
S2: It won't affect many people. And the people it affects
3:30
S2: can afford it. And a little bit over there. And
3:33
S2: by the time the election campaign had finished, the Labor
3:40
S2: Party's opponents had turned that into an enormous scare campaign
3:45
S2: where everyone thought taxes are going to go up under labor.
3:49
S2: I'm not a mug. I wouldn't vote for them.
3:51
S3: He's the only one talking about a death tax.
3:53
S4: A death tax, death taxes, death tax.
3:55
S5: There is a plan for a death tax.
3:56
S3: A secret plan for a death tax.
3:58
S4: Death tax. Death tax. Death taxes.
4:00
S6: Labor. It's the bill Australia can't afford authorised by Ahern's
4:04
S6: Liberal Party of Australia, Canberra.
4:05
S2: And that hugely changed Anthony Albanese's attitude to elections. And
4:12
S2: so when the Labor Party came back for another go
4:15
S2: in 2022, they did this small target thing where they
4:22
S2: promised very little and they had the list of promises
4:26
S2: of things they wouldn't do was longer than the list
4:29
S2: of things they would do. They wouldn't introduce a new tax,
4:33
S2: they wouldn't increase any existing tax and they wouldn't touch
4:38
S2: the stage three tax cuts. They were already legislated. They'd
4:43
S2: let them go through. They wouldn't interfere with them. Now,
4:46
S2: that was the one promise that Albanese broke. But basically
4:51
S2: he was saying, I've tied my hands together. I've tied
4:55
S2: my hands behind my back so that I can't do
4:58
S2: anything much. If you elect me but elect me.
5:01
S1: And I mean, I suppose he had the the massive
5:04
S1: advantage of a very unpopular incumbent prime minister and a
5:08
S1: government that had been in power for nearly a decade.
5:09
S1: So perhaps a lot of people thought it was time
5:11
S1: for a change. You just touched on, you know, television
5:14
S1: and how election campaigns are really run on television, or
5:18
S1: the traditional model for, I don't know, maybe the last
5:20
S1: 50 years it's been it's all about getting on the
5:22
S1: nightly news. But in the essay you say that that's
5:25
S1: changed now because our media consumption habits are so fractured.
5:29
S1: Young people, you know, I guess anyone under the age
5:31
S1: of about 35 is not really necessarily reading newspapers. They're
5:35
S1: not necessarily watching free to air TV at the time
5:38
S1: that it's on. So everyone's attention is fractured and splintered.
5:42
S1: But and you talk about how that's basically narrowed political
5:46
S1: campaign messages into scare campaign advertising that can go on TV,
5:51
S1: but can also be, you know, all over your social
5:53
S1: media feed.
5:54
S2: Yes. So the main way election campaigns are conducted these
5:59
S2: days is through advertising, whether they're advertising on free to
6:02
S2: air or they're advertising on other mediums. These days, a
6:06
S2: lot of advertising on social media, which is actually very
6:11
S2: if you're not actually a watcher of all these things,
6:13
S2: it's a bit hard to know what what's happening.
6:16
S7: Living costs are up, bills are up, inflation is consistently
6:20
S7: higher than any major advanced economy. And we've had the
6:23
S7: biggest fall in disposable income in the developed world. We
6:26
S7: can't afford three more years of labour authorized by a
6:29
S7: Liberal Canberra.
6:30
S2: If the best you can do is get most of
6:34
S2: your opinions from advertising, then you are likely to have
6:41
S2: a very jaundiced view of what's happening.
6:45
S8: The money for Peter Dutton's $600 Hundred billion dollar nuclear
6:48
S8: plan has to come from somewhere under your tax goes
6:52
S8: up under Dutton, your HECS debt, childcare, medicines, TAFE fees
6:56
S8: go up, he cuts you pay.
6:58
S6: Authorised Erickson, ALP Canberra.
7:01
S2: Even if there weren't people using those ads for scare campaigns.
7:06
S2: When I tell you about my policies, I tell you
7:09
S2: about the good bits. I don't tell you about the
7:10
S2: bad bits, especially not in an ad. So you don't
7:15
S2: end up being very much informed unless you go out
7:19
S2: of your way to make sure you are. I mean,
7:21
S2: you can go on the party sites and you can
7:23
S2: read reams of their speeches and their policies and this,
7:27
S2: that and the other, but I'm not sure many people
7:29
S2: do know.
7:30
S1: I think what you're saying is true. I mean, you know,
7:33
S1: I'm thinking about the most disengaged or the least interested voters.
7:37
S1: They might be looking at Facebook, Instagram, they might be
7:40
S1: listening to a podcast or doing something like that. And
7:42
S1: political ads will pop up for them.
7:44
S9: An election is approaching soon. Replace your independent teal MP
7:48
S9: with one that works, reduces costs and will not disappear
7:51
S9: when you need them. Most.
7:52
S10: Authorized by Julian Symons Australians for prosperity.
7:54
S2: That is the way a lot of people do their homework.
7:58
S2: They think. I'm not really interested in politics, but I
8:01
S2: know I've got to vote and the election campaign is on.
8:04
S2: So in a week or two I've got to decide
8:06
S2: who I'm voting for. And so I'd better start doing
8:09
S2: some homework. I know I'll watch the ads. Yeah. While
8:12
S2: I was watching something else, I saw these ads. They're
8:16
S2: they're what I remember and know about the campaign.
8:19
S1: Yeah. It's the information you retain when you're making your vote.
8:23
S1: You also discussed Ross, the professionalization of politics. You sort
8:27
S1: of say that previously the men and they were pretty
8:29
S1: much all men who entered politics often had, quote, real jobs.
8:34
S1: That's my scare quotes, not yours. And careers. And, you know,
8:38
S1: out in the real world, in business, in the law, um,
8:41
S1: as a train driver, you know, perhaps in a, in an.
8:44
S2: Or as a policeman.
8:46
S1: That's right. In an honest profession. And then in middle
8:49
S1: age or even later, they switched to becoming members of Parliament.
8:53
S1: And now politics is a very different affair. It's a
8:55
S1: whole of life, career and a whole of life profession
8:58
S1: for a lot of people in Parliament. How has that
9:01
S1: changed the nature of politics and particularly the nature of campaigns?
9:04
S2: Well, what it's done is changed. The people who end
9:08
S2: up in Parliament and people who end up at the
9:11
S2: top are they are people who really started on a
9:15
S2: political career. Soon after they finished schooling university, they went
9:22
S2: to work for a union, or they went to work
9:24
S2: for a minister, a shadow minister, and they worked their
9:28
S2: way up the system. Now, what that does is it
9:32
S2: teaches them a lot about how the political game is played,
9:37
S2: how to play politics, because that when you're in the
9:41
S2: minister's office, that's what you're helping the minister do. In theory,
9:46
S2: you might. You might be helping the Minister for health
9:50
S2: work out what we should be doing about Medicare. But
9:53
S2: a lot of the time, whatever you think about Medicare
9:58
S2: and do about Medicare is very heavily oriented to what
10:02
S2: do we need for the next election? What have we
10:05
S2: got to fix? And so I think that's changed it
10:08
S2: a lot. And I think when you have a long
10:11
S2: career of 20 years, say, before you get to be
10:15
S2: a minister, if you started out with the idea that
10:19
S2: I'd like to be a politician because there are things
10:21
S2: that need fixing that I feel very strongly about, you
10:24
S2: get a lot of that beaten out of you.
10:26
S1: Mhm.
10:27
S2: More so than in the old system where somebody in
10:31
S2: their 50s decides the rest of my time I'm going
10:34
S2: to go to I made my pile, I got, I
10:38
S2: got the kids off my hands. I'm going to go
10:40
S2: into politics. I'm going to try and do something worthwhile.
10:44
S2: In the last part of my career, that's the way
10:46
S2: it worked in the old days. It doesn't work anything
10:48
S2: like that. And so it's now much more professional, and
10:53
S2: it's about advancing my career. I've I've been working up
10:59
S2: for 30 years, and what I care about is getting
11:04
S2: the top job.
11:05
S1: And you link that directly to the incrementalism of campaigns
11:10
S1: or the sort of small target nature of the policies
11:13
S1: that are announced in campaign. They're piecemeal, you know, they're
11:16
S1: all little treats for the voters, but there's no overwhelming narrative.
11:20
S2: People have politicians have always wanted to win elections. Yeah.
11:24
S2: I mean, in the past they've been juggling between I
11:27
S2: want to win the election. I can't do anything unless
11:30
S2: I win the election, but I don't actually want to
11:32
S2: be there and do something. Now it's much easier to say, oh,
11:37
S2: I'll make sure I stay in power and I'll think
11:40
S2: about what I can do.
11:42
S1: Once I've gained power. Yeah. Um, what was it that
11:45
S1: George Orwell wrote in 1984? The party seeks power for
11:48
S1: power's sake. You talk about campaigns being much more scientific now.
11:53
S1: Less based on intuition, less based on, I suppose, an
11:56
S1: ear for what the voters might want or need. Yes.
12:00
S1: And you say that parties spend so much money now
12:02
S1: on focus groups and private polling to really hone their
12:05
S1: message and to appeal to different constituencies? But why would
12:09
S1: that be a bad thing if if parties are trying
12:12
S1: to serve the electorate?
12:14
S2: Well, because if my objective was to learn how I
12:21
S2: could sell an unpopular policy by emphasising this bit rather
12:26
S2: than that bit, that wouldn't be too bad. But what
12:29
S2: they end up learning is on what not to say.
12:33
S2: If you listen to politicians, people can say the silliest
12:38
S2: things to them and they don't say, I'm sorry, that's
12:40
S2: not right. They not they don't say that. They don't.
12:43
S2: They don't want to tell any voter anything that the
12:47
S2: voter doesn't want to hear. And they know what the
12:49
S2: voter wants to hear, because that's what all their polling
12:53
S2: and their focus groups have told them. What you can
12:56
S2: say that people will agree with.
12:59
S1: Yeah. And I mean, I'm just wondering how that's changed
13:02
S1: from the past. I suppose now that the vote is
13:04
S1: so splintered, we have a lot of people who are
13:06
S1: voting for third parties, nearly a third of the electorate.
13:09
S1: The major parties need much broader coalitions of voters than
13:12
S1: they used to. So they do have to promise a
13:14
S1: lot of things to small interest groups or smaller groups
13:17
S1: of people, like moms or working dads or tradies.
13:20
S2: Yes. They try. They try to have they try to
13:23
S2: have something for everybody. And and they do. How worthwhile
13:27
S2: those things are. For example, they've got any number of
13:31
S2: policies that are they've announced just this week about what
13:35
S2: they're going to do to help first home buyers. They
13:38
S2: sound great until somebody who knows a bit about it says. Actually,
13:43
S2: they're just as likely to make it worse rather than better.
13:47
S2: Sounds good, but doesn't actually do good.
13:50
S1: This is a little sidebar, but because we have got
13:52
S1: the economics editor in the studio, I want to ask you, Ross,
13:55
S1: what you made of those big spending promises on housing
13:59
S1: that both Labour and Liberal announced that their party launches
14:02
S1: last Sunday.
14:03
S2: I think that all of them are quite bad and misleading.
14:08
S2: They sound like they are helping you afford an unaffordable house,
14:14
S2: but that is actually a contradiction, because if I can
14:18
S2: help everybody afford the unaffordable, guess what? The unaffordable goes up.
14:25
S2: That doesn't solve the problem.
14:26
S1: I mean, the coalition has said that its scheme to
14:30
S1: make mortgage interest payments tax deductible for certain buyers. And
14:35
S1: they've you know, they've obviously they're going to impose means
14:38
S1: testing on on that measure. But they point out that
14:41
S1: it's only for first homes. So it will actually provide
14:44
S1: an incentive for developers and builders to have a pipeline
14:47
S1: of money, I suppose, to build those first homes to
14:50
S1: build more houses.
14:51
S2: I don't agree with that. I don't think that's right
14:53
S2: at all. What that's saying is if we can increase
14:57
S2: the demand, the supply will rise to meet it. That's
15:02
S2: what that's what the first page of an economics textbook
15:05
S2: tells you. But it's not what's happening. If that was happening,
15:09
S2: if we have a lot of demand, we get a
15:12
S2: lot of supply. If that was happening, the price of
15:16
S2: houses wouldn't have kept rising for the past 2 or
15:19
S2: 3 decades. It's because supply does not respond quickly and
15:26
S2: easily to increase demand that we've got the problem that
15:30
S2: we've got. So the answer is not I'm going to
15:34
S2: increase the demand for more supply and that'll fix it.
15:38
S2: The answer is actually to increase the supply. And and
15:41
S2: that's why the one policy of those that were bandied
15:47
S2: around this week, the one I like most, is the
15:52
S2: government's policy of spending $10 billion through the states to
15:59
S2: do a lot of their own building and then sell
16:03
S2: those off to first home buyers and to do it
16:07
S2: on a non-profit basis. This is actually a huge amount
16:11
S2: of government intervention that says we won't try and get
16:15
S2: leave it to the private sector to build these things.
16:17
S2: We're going to organise it all ourselves. We're going to
16:19
S2: organise the land, the whole bit, because it's happening through
16:23
S2: the state governments who have so much say over where
16:27
S2: you can build and where you can't build and how
16:29
S2: you can build this is this will work. The one
16:34
S2: qualification is that we've neglected the building industry. And one
16:39
S2: of the things that's been neglected is to have apprenticeships
16:44
S2: so that we train up lots of building workers, electricians
16:48
S2: and plumbers and all the rest of them. We don't
16:51
S2: have a lot of those. So you can have huge demand.
16:54
S2: And they say, well, yeah, I'd love to, but I
16:57
S2: can't get the workers. And that's what they're saying right now.
17:00
S2: And if the one weakness in the Labour Party's scheme
17:04
S2: is that until they can produce enough workers, they can't
17:09
S2: build a lot of houses. So part of the problem
17:11
S2: is the bad functioning of our housing industry.
17:16
S1: Yeah, I do. I do think they have an apprenticeship
17:18
S1: program for that worker pipeline problem, but it's probably not
17:20
S1: going to be, let's face it, anything that's fixed before
17:23
S1: at least a decade away. These promises on housing and
17:26
S1: everything else cost costs money. That money has to come
17:30
S1: from the federal budget somewhere. But we don't hear a
17:32
S1: lot about that side. Um, or at least we haven't
17:35
S1: so far. You say in your essay that the laws
17:37
S1: of economics have been suspended and that, you know, both
17:40
S1: parties don't really address how they're going to pay for
17:43
S1: their promises.
17:44
S2: Yes. They tell you about all the extra spending they
17:47
S2: can do. They tell you about the taxes that they're
17:50
S2: going to cut various proposals to cut taxes permanently, temporarily.
17:55
S2: This tax, that tax. Well that's fine, but how does
18:00
S2: that add up? What is that? What? Where does that
18:02
S2: leave the the budget deficit? You would have thought that
18:06
S2: it's going to leave the budget deficit much worse, unless
18:10
S2: they've figured out ways to pay for it. If they
18:13
S2: figured out ways to pay for all of this stuff
18:15
S2: they haven't told us yet, maybe they will tell us
18:20
S2: before the election's over. I hope that's the case, but
18:23
S2: I have a fear that the government and the opposition
18:27
S2: are really hoping to get through it without having to
18:30
S2: answer any of those kind of awkward questions. But the
18:34
S2: other thing is, this is one of the my main
18:37
S2: criticisms of election campaigns. No one is ever again game
18:44
S2: to say I'm actually going to increase a few taxes,
18:48
S2: because they know that the other side will just tell
18:52
S2: lies about it and scare people.
18:54
S1: Yeah. And I mean, I think we've already seen a
18:56
S1: little bit of that with Labour saying very much that
18:58
S1: the coalition's going to cut without any hard evidence. It's
19:02
S1: just a sort of an allegation that they're making at
19:05
S1: this point. You do. Right at the sort of conclusion
19:08
S1: of your essay that the voters are really on to
19:10
S1: this malaise of the major parties, and the democratic system
19:14
S1: has found a way to address it, which is that
19:17
S1: people are increasingly directing their votes to third party candidates.
19:20
S1: There's a demand for them, and the supply has popped up,
19:22
S1: you might say.
19:23
S2: Well, yes. In that case it has. Yes. The first
19:27
S2: preference vote for neither of the two major parties at
19:32
S2: the last election was the highest it's ever been, almost
19:35
S2: about a third. So 1 in 3 people didn't vote
19:39
S2: for either Labor or Liberal. I won't be surprised if
19:43
S2: that's a bit higher this time. Mhm. That I think
19:48
S2: is really the answer. What worries me is that the
19:52
S2: two sides have been boxing it out for so long
19:55
S2: that they've actually fought each other to a standstill, where
20:01
S2: neither side is game to say anything. But I've got
20:05
S2: a few lovely trinkets and that's my policy that I'm
20:08
S2: going to do for you.
20:10
S1: Yeah.
20:10
S2: I mean, we have a lot of serious problems, and
20:14
S2: that involved controversial changes, some changes that are nasty, some change.
20:20
S2: All changes That can be misrepresented by your opponent as
20:26
S2: being much worse than they really are. And I think
20:29
S2: the two parties have fought themselves to a standstill, where
20:34
S2: neither side is game to do anything, much for fear
20:37
S2: of what the other side will say. But I also
20:40
S2: think that the tendency for people to say, I'm disillusioned
20:44
S2: with both of them, I'm going to vote for somebody else,
20:48
S2: a good independent or the Greens or the teals. I
20:54
S2: think that could break this standstill that the two big
20:59
S2: parties have got themselves to. Because and especially if if
21:04
S2: neither side gets a majority, one of them will have
21:07
S2: to do deals with the independents and the minor parties.
21:12
S2: And when they do, those parties will say, well, we'll
21:17
S2: give you our support provided you do a few few
21:21
S2: important things. You can see this with Julia Gillard's Labor
21:25
S2: government in 2010, but you can see it all around
21:29
S2: the place in various states. Minority governments are quite common
21:33
S2: at the state level, and when they come in, they
21:37
S2: really do things. When the people in the middle have
21:43
S2: power to extract commitments from either of the big parties,
21:48
S2: they do.
21:48
S1: Yeah. So the idea that the third party intervention or
21:51
S1: the third needing to negotiate with the third parties, basically
21:54
S1: takes both of the major parties out of their comfort
21:57
S1: zones and pushes them forward into some new and possibly
22:01
S1: exciting area of policy. I love that idea or your
22:04
S1: analysis there that both the major parties are almost in.
22:06
S1: It's almost like a toxic co-dependency or something, and there's
22:09
S1: mutually assured destruction if either of them tries to do
22:12
S1: anything with outside certain parameters.
22:15
S2: Yes.
22:16
S1: Yeah.
22:16
S2: Well, that's the way it seems to have been.
22:19
S1: Yeah. Ross, that has been such a fascinating chat. I
22:23
S1: recommend to listeners to go and read Ross's essay on
22:26
S1: The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald websites, if you
22:28
S1: haven't already. It's a really cracking read and, um, very perspicacious,
22:34
S1: I think. Thanks so much for being with us, Ross.
22:37
S2: My pleasure. Jacki.
22:41
S1: Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel with technical assistance
22:45
S1: from Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
22:48
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23:13
S1: for listening.