The battle for the battlers in the phoney election campaign continues. The battle highlights some significant differences in the two major parties, despite the popular view that the ideological divide has narrowed. The narrowing has been exemplified by the end of the cold war, extensive privatisations and support by both sides for user pays and competition policy. In the past year it is also manifesting itself in the Coalition softening some policies that cost it the 1993 election … notably in industrial relations.
None the less, the fundamental philosophic differences remain and Opposition Leader John Howard’s headland speeches, if anything, highlight them largely because of their absence of specific detail. The Coalition still stresses the importance of the individual. Labor still emphasises the importance of collectivity and a greater role for the state. Nothing that Mr Howard has said in his headland speeches, including his speech on social security yesterday, indicate a change of philosophy.
Labor, in its 13 years has established many government programs for employment and social security. Its approach to industrial relations … despite the rhetoric of enterprise bargaining … is one in which the state awards wages through the arbitration system. The Coalition still thinks individuals and families should prima facie provide for themselves, with the state only providing a safety net if this fails. It has, however, agreed that the level of existing benefits will not be affected.
The Coalition believes that individuals and families provide more efficiently than governments and that use of too many government measures will therefore reduce overall wealth. Labor believes that without significant government input, society will inevitably give a significant number of people a raw deal … only government can equalise it. The Coalition argues that under Labor this has not happened; that both equality and overall wealth have been reduced to what they might otherwise have been.
Both sides, of course, assert that their way is best for Australian society. In some respects, however, it is more difficult for the Coalition to prove its case. Labor can point to specific programs and actions it has put into place or will put into place. The Coalition can only say, without empirical proof, that Australians as a whole would be better off without some of the programs … a hard argument to win when appealing to specific beneficiaries.
Both Labor and commentators have asserted that Mr Howard has not wanted to spell out detailed policies for fear of having Prime Minister Paul Keating pull them apart. However, an equally valid observation is that it would be self-denying for Mr Howard to compete on Labor’s ground … offering lists of detailed programs and benefits because that is precisely what the Coalition is setting out to reverse … large amounts of government spending on detailed programs and government being seen as a solution to societies ills, so he has stuck to expressing the broad view.
The challenge for Mr Howard is to convince voters that Labor is bribing voters with their own money and that they will overall be no better off, indeed worse off because it is very costly to get government bureaucracies to administer the spending. A present the campaign may be phoney, but the philosophic differences are still real.