Last week, Adam Creighton posted a piece in the Punch, titled It Doesn’t Actually Matter Who Wins the Election. In the piece, Creighton argues that the differences between the two major parties are so minute now that the election result will have little impact on most people’s lives. As he says:
“Political campaigns are about fostering the illusion of difference where sameness abounds. For instance, the two biggest policies standing between the Labor and Opposition parties are the mining tax and the carbon tax. Excising both may well be a good idea, yet their combined tax revenue is only a few billion dollars a year, barely 1 per cent of total federal government revenue each year.
The two parties would appear to agree on the vast bulk of existing regulations and taxation arrangements. The mere suggestion of a bolder (yet very modest in any absolute sense) reform to health or welfare – such as trimming family payments for instance – typically prompts silence from both major parties.
As far as business decisions are concerned, the issue would appear not to be sovereign risk but sovereign relevance. A senior Australian equities analyst, who understandably wants to remain nameless, tells The Australian foreigners don’t care less which of the major parties was in power federally.”
Creighton’s piece raises a really interesting point about modern Australian (and to be honest, global) democracy. It is clear, that in many areas, the two major political parties have merged.
Firstly, Creighton is right that in terms of business regulation, trade, and taxation have become very similar. Since the 1980s both major parties have adopted a neoliberal economic approach, meaning that over the past six years in particular we’ve seen a growing fight over who can produce the smallest Government. Despite the differences on the carbon and mining tax, that means that on the environment the two parties are becoming the same too. The ALP have now become a champion of ‘cutting Green tape’, and approvals for new coal mines are happening on what feels like a weekly basis. On social issues, both parties have moved far to the right on asylum seekers, are both cutting welfare to single parents, are both extending the intervention, and both have a leadership team doing whatever they can to stop same-sex marriage.
Yet, despite all of this, there are two major areas where I disagree with Creighton’s analysis.
Firstly, I think it’s too simple to say that there aren’t important differences. The mining and carbon tax are important ones (and in particular the lack of the Coalition’s policy on climate change at all), but there are many other issues. For example, we know there are major differences in the way the different parties treat our universities (the Labor Party got rid of HEWRs on the first day of Parliament sitting in 2008). The Coalition is still determined to stop building the National Broadband Network and public servants will also face a very different future if they are elected, with many more job cuts coming from an Abbott Government. There are many issues like this across a range of policy areas that will have an impact.
But, Creighton is still right. In reality, when compared to the similarities, these issues are now few and far between. They are somewhat technocratic differences in approaches – how can we manage neoliberalism differently. But this is where I have a major problem with Creighton’s piece. Further in the article, Creighton says:
“Federal government by contrast is remote from people’s lives, providing very few real services beyond defence and immigration controls.”
Creighton seems to draw a conclusion, that not only doesn’t it matter now, but it never really matters who wins the election. With the lack of real ideological debate between the two parties, I can see how someone comes to this conclusion. But that is the real problem – because whilst it may not actually be important who wins in September, it really SHOULD be important who wins in September. Despite what Creighton says, the Federal Government isn’t actually remote from people’s lives. It has a daily impact, and one that is worth noting.
For example, the Federal Government, in providing funding and regulation, has an impact on everybody’s access to healthcare, education and essential infrastructure. It plays a role in environmental regulation, potentially being the difference between you having a coal mine in your backyard or not. It provides everybody a welfare safety net. It plays an essential role in Indigenous affairs, at the moment through managing the Intervention. It funds much of our Universities, impacting the lives of every student, academic, and university staffer. It sets much of our industrial regulation, impacting everybody who has a job.
These are huge issues. What the Federal Government does impacts everybody, every day. And it’s not like when it comes to these issues, we’ve simply solved the problems we are facing and just need to tinker around the edges. Access to education and healthcare are always an issue, we continuously need to be upgrading our infrastructure, climate change continues hardly halted, there are many who still live in poverty, and the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people continues to stay very wide.
And that’s a problem with where our democracy sits at the moment. There are so many different potential ways to deal with these issues, so many different ideological framings we could use, yet we are only testing one. We have two potential Governments who only want to use neoliberal approaches – two parties with the same ideological framing. In a system such as ours, this presents a rather limited democratic choice. Whilst we may not think it matters who wins the next election therefore, it really should. There should be more options, a broader ideological discussion, and broader political choice, and instead of just thinking it doesn’t matter, we should be making that happen.