Australia may vote for change

UNLESS the opinion polls are drastically off-kilter, it’s all over bar the shouting as far as the result of Australia’s general election on Saturday is concerned.

The only suspense relates to the scale of the devastation that faces the Australian Labour Party (ALP), which has been in power for almost six years and has switched prime ministers twice during that period.

Back in 2010, it toppled Kevin Rudd on the eve of that year’s election, having panicked in the light of opinion polling that pointed to a defeat for the party. In the event, the election result was ambiguous, yielding a hung parliament, but Rudd’s successor, Julia Gillard, was able to cobble together a minority government based on support from the Australian Greens and a couple of independents.

That was an unusual outcome for Australia, although it’s par for the course in most European democracies. Thanks to Gillard’s negotiating skills, it also turned out to be a remarkably productive parliament in legislative terms.

However, Gillard, Australia’s first female head of government, never quite succeeded in endearing herself to the populace, partly because she all too often felt obliged to strike a prime ministerial pose that undermined that passion that had characterised her political interventions as an opposition front-bencher and as an activist deputy prime minister under Rudd.

The “real Julia” occasionally shone through, not least when she aimed an internationally applauded anti-misogynist diatribe at opposition leader Tony Abbott. More generally, though, her carefully scripted interventions grated on the public consciousness, amid ostensible policy failures whose extent was routinely exaggerated by a broadly hostile media.

Faced yet again with the prospect of electoral defeat, the ALP clumsily dumped her earlier this year, reinstating Rudd, whose ambition of returning to the helm had never been in any doubt.

Labour’s tactic was always a gamble, and it is now all but certain that it will not pay off.

This is not a consequence of Abbott’s overwhelming popularity, mind you.

Many of those inclined to vote for the conservative side of politics dominated by the permanent coalition between Abbott’s Liberal Party and the rural-based Nationals  entertain lingering doubts about his potential as a national leader, given his relatively antediluvian mindset and his startling inadequacies as a communicator.

The fact they nonetheless view the side he represents as the lesser evil is an excoriating indictment of the ALP’s failures arguably more so in the realm of words rather than actions.

After all, the conservatives have been able to convey the popular impression that the Australian economy is perched on the edge of a precipice, whereas in fact it has fared rather better than most Western economies in the wake of the capitalist meltdown known as the global financial crisis, thanks in large part to the ALP government’s generous stimulus packages.

Labour’s inability to capitalise on its sporadic but by no means inconsequential  successes has aided a broadly hostile media, spearheaded by the substantial proportion of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Long-time observers are convinced that the level of bile spat out by influential Murdoch titles is unprecedented.

Partisanship by sections of the media is, of course, not uncommon, and it’s generally acceptable for newspapers to take sides, but the degree of bias in this instance has transformed at least a couple of tabloids into propaganda sheets for the conservative cause.

Of course, the extent to which voters are influenced by the press is open to question. Yet, as Joseph Goebbels realised, even a blatant untruth can be transformed into received wisdom if it is repeated often enough. And in some Australian state capitals, there are no alternatives whatsoever to the Murdoch press. It’s also notable that some of the more unbalanced columnists have been falling over themselves not only to rubbish the ALP’s record but to subtly warn Abbott, even while absurdly projecting him as a great-leader-in-waiting, that he could lose their affection if he does not go far enough in promoting the neoliberal ideal of small government. This in effect means removing all restrictions on big business.

In fact, big business has had considerable leeway in Australia for more than two decades under both sides of politics a reflection of the broad Western trend whereby the left and right are distinguished more by personalities than policies, with the left notionally leaning towards a centre that has shifted inexorably to the right, and the right in turn staking its claim to the extremist fringes where certifiable lunacy once held sway.

It’s hardly a wonder, then, that Australia’s younger generation is generally disenchanted with politics, and a large segment of its members vote only because it’s a legal obligation.

Rudd has lately sought to appeal to young people’s social progressivism by upholding the cause of gay marriage, despite the fact that in confessional terms he is almost as much of a Christian fundamentalist as Abbott, who once intended to be a Catholic priest. But it is unlikely to get him very far. In fact, opinion poll projections suggest Rudd could even lose his own seat, just as John Howard did in 2007.

That could ultimately serve as a trigger for the ALP’s renewal, although the prospect cannot be rated too highly, given the party’s internal divisions and the ascendancy within it of personalities who instinctively lean to the right notably on issues such as asylum-seekers even while trying to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.

The prospect of a well-deserved Labour defeat on Saturday does not, however, alleviate the dread of a solid Liberal majority in both houses of parliament. However unlikely it may seem, a hung parliament again might be the least worst outcome for Australia.