There is an underlying misconception by both the Federal Government and Opposition in their tussle this week over the “”battlers”. Both sides take as their misconception that the Federal Government is responsible for, and therefore can control, the totality of economic and social life in Australia. They assume that if anything is not going well, it is the Government’s fault and if anything is going well the Government can take the credit. The illogical leap here is that if the “”battlers” _ whoever they might be _ are doing badly, then the Federal Government is to blame.
The danger in both major parties adopting this assumption is that it engenders an attitude of dependency and almost helplessness. We must hope the leaders engage in a more sophisticated debate in the lead up to the election than: “”The “battlers’ are doing badly it’s the Government’s fault” vs “”Not true. The “battlers’ are being helped by the Government and have never had it so good.” In the past week both sides have engaged in idiotic accounting exercises that purport to show that people on average incomes are X dollars better or worse off than when Labor came to office in 1983. The calculations are meaningless and so are the reasons for doing them. A myriad of non-government factors help determine Australia’s economic performance and therefore the income of the “”battlers”. A more refined debate would isolate what precisely it has been about government policy and administration that have made Australian life better or worse _ both economically and socially. At present that exercise carries more danger for the Liberal Party than the Labor Party. The Labor Party can easily point to specific benefits its policies have given specific groups.
The Liberal Party has the harder task of explaining how governmental favours to these groups overall have worsened Australia’s economic efficiency and therefore lowered the standard of living that might otherwise have been available. The Liberal promise of better economic performance based on less government spending carries several dangers. First, the benefit is nebulous, unproved and not guaranteed. Secondly, there is no guarantee that any benefit will be distributed evenly or whether the rich will scoop the pool. Thirdly, the Liberals will have to identify those areas of spending they intend to prune if they are to be credible and this will invite fury from those interest groups affected. To date Opposition Leader John Howard’s strategy has been not to identify specifics until the campaign starts. His party seems paralysed with policy fear caused by the debacle of the experience last election when premature detailing of policy resulted in electoral failure. But it would be a mistake for Mr Howard to think that the early timing of policy detail was the main cause of that failure rather than the radical nature of the program being presented.
The real lesson of that election is that an Opposition must be a credible alternative and it cannot assume an unpopular Government will be rejected automatically. To do that the Opposition cannot present a raft of policies at the last minute. It needs time to persuade the electorate of their merit.