Penalty for defending the indefensible

A big key to what has been happening in Australian politics recently is respect.

The major parties have become so hopelessly beholden to corporate interests that they have to defend the indefensible.

For the 18 months since the parliamentary committee (headed by the late Labor MP  Peta Murphy) recommended curbing the scourge of ubiquitous and iniquitous gambling advertisements, Labor has been shuffling about denying the obvious. The gambling advertisements addict people to gambling and exploit the already addicted, resulting in untold human financial misery and suicides.

Some of the gobbledegook, dancing-on-coals responses from the Prime Minister and other Labor Ministers defy comprehension. The people they are supposed to represent and look after – people on wages – are shovelling those wages into gambling for the profit of big corporations, and Labor is sitting on its hands. It is a moral collapse.

But the corporations say sport and media will be ruined if there are any curbs on gambling advertising or poker machines. Rubbish. Sport flourished and the media survived in the decades before the rapacious talons of the gambling advertising widened their grip. And in Western Australia there are no poker machines outside casinos – and media and sport flourish.

Every Labor Member of Parliament knows this. Every Labor Minister knows this. And they do nothing.

So here we go. Forget the “decent bloke” stuff. Forget the “doing his best stuff”. Because of the above, I no longer have any respect for Anthony Albanese.

Further, apply the above to climate change. The place is burning. The stats are in. Species are going extinct. The seas are rising. People are dying from heat stress.

Yet all the Coalition offers is nuclear energy so it can keep profitable fossil industries going with subsidies for as long as possible. The CSIRO has comprehensively shown the nuclear option is prohibitively expensive.

For those reasons, I have no respect for Peter Dutton and have had no respect for Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott. Any so-called political leader who stares incontrovertible evidence in the face and denies it and concocts lies, dissembling, and misinformation against it for the sole purpose of pandering to donors loses my respect. And I guess loses the respect of many other voters. 

Journalists should not apply a “he-said, she-said, everyone-is-entitled-to-their-view” perspective to this. When journalists cover murder or drug trials, they do not insert a few “balancing” paragraphs saying that, on the other hand, murder and drug dealing have their place. So why give credence to the obviously flawed view that gambling advertising and fossil-fuel burning are harmless.

The lack of respect is testable. Voters are slowly leaving these dissembling, circumloquacious servants of big corporations.

We are blessed with preferential voting in Australia. It was instigated by conservative parties in 1918 to stop the spitting of the conservative vote. But it is now a boon against both major parties.

Trends in the past few elections point to a permanent and radical transformation of the Australian political system. Before the 1989 election, fewer than 40 per cent of House of Representative seats were decided by preferences. It has steadily increased. 

It is now a whopping 90 per cent. In only 15 of the 151 House of Representatives seats did a candidate get more than 50 per cent of the first-preference vote. It was 70 per cent in 2019. The trend is obvious, and we know why.

The trend bespeaks a massive lack of respect for the union- and corporation-beholden major parties that prevent decent tax, heath, anti-corruption, and education policies.

Coalition MPs say a there is a left-Green-Teal conspiracy to steal Coalition seats. Well, they are only stealable if the Coalition’s hard-right policies are unpalatable to many city voters.

My lack of respect for Albanese and the climate-change denying Coalition leaders is reinforced by how cheaply they have been bought off. The gambling industry gave Labor just $250,000 last year and they have got the result they wanted: open-slather gambling ads propping up an industry with a $224 billion turnover and $32 billion in profit.

The asymmetry is astonishing. It is contemptible.

It is the same with the Coalition on climate change. The fossil industries gave the Coalition and Labor a little over $1 million last year. Both have caved in to permitting the fossil industries to push dangerous carbon into the atmosphere to the detriment of all so the fossil industries can earn more than $100 billion a year.

Again, the asymmetry is astonishing. How cheaply have they been bought off.

Big corporations have captured the major parties and are demanding and getting policies which move money from the vast mass of employees, small businesses, and carers into their maw.

What is to be done? A complete cynic would say that if the major-parties can be bought that cheaply, maybe charities, crowd-funders, and community groups should raise the money themselves and say, hey, Labor here is $250,000 a year for you to do the decent thing on gambling. Hey, Coalition, we have raised $500,000 for you to do they decent thing on climate.

But that is probably not realistic. What is realistic, though, is something I will call bottom-up voting.

I urge voters to get the ballot paper and be true to their underlying politics and put the major party they favour second last and the major party they do not favour last and then mark the rest of ballot paper as they see fit.

If enough people do this, whichever major party forms government will have to deliver policies and programs for consumers, small business, and carers not to their corporate mates. Or lose the numbers on the floor of the House and be thrown out of office.

Staying power drives their every move. Voters have to ensure that pandering to corporate demands will deny them power not give it to them.

Voters are slowly recognising that voting for the other lot will not solve the long-term rot. Vote Bottom-Up.

And by the way, the Coalition’s demand that Teal candidates state before the election which party they would support if there is a hung parliament is facile. Surely, the composition of the new Parliament and what the majors are offering after the election should influence or indeed determine that.

Crispin Hull

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 10 December 2024.