The parliament has risen. The political Christmas parties are almost over. And what have we got to show for 2016?
The global political class has woken up with a hangover and what the recently late great writer AA Gill might call in his drinking days a “morning pocket” – full of unexplained objects.
The big disruption, as people call it, is that people are not voting as they are supposed to. The tribes, insiders and outsiders, social justice warriors and rightwing nut jobs, are manning their ramparts, pouring buckets of bile on anyone who dares to knock at the castle door.
Pity the poor soul in the centre. If you do not belong to the tribes at either end of the political spectrum, you may feel like the person astride two tippy canoes. You end up wet. The centre is gone. “On the other hand ... ” is so last century.
In the year of Brexit and Trump, outsiders rule. People outside power. Outside or on the edge of the cities. Outside education. Outside employment or underemployed. People are harried, they are treading water or losing ground financially.
I am an insider living in an outsider world and I can’t reconcile the two worlds.
My regional townsfolk complain they have to make do with less while working harder. That government isn’t listening. Town progress associations work to attract people and fill classrooms. Towns reinvent the wheel, to attract the economic diversity to insulate people from global shocks or the big employer shutdown. House prices are low. Internet is crap. Shopfronts are empty, waiting for the tree changer with a pocketful of cash to recognise a good coffee and a quieter life.
Meanwhile MPs on the city fringes report constituents complaining they have to make do with less while working harder. Government isn’t listening. They are pressed by congestion, long commutes, high house prices, jobs on the other side of town, high childcare costs, overflowing schools, long waits in hospitals and in some cases changing demographics. The faces in their suburbs are changing and some don’t like it.
How political parties respond to those forces will be, in my view, one of the most interesting political trends to watch in 2017.
If you consider those two worlds – the urban and the regional – you could throw them into a policy machine and come out with some solutions that might improve both. Less pressure in the cities and more dynamism in the country. It requires political will, money for infrastructure – not just roads and dams – and it requires political agreement, which is the hard part. But there are signs policy is shifting within the Coalition.
Decentralisation, the new-old black
The Nationals deputy leader, Fiona Nash, gave a little-publicised speech late in November trying to build the case for rebalancing the cities and regions for the sake of both.
She quoted Victorian government figures which showed housing 50,000 new people in Sydney cost government $4bn in infrastructure while housing those same people in regional New South Wales cost just $1bn.
“This means for every 50,000 people who choose to live in the country, governments save roughly $3bn in infrastructure costs,” she said.
“Considered investment in regional Australia could help fix the overcrowding of capital cities, particularly Melbourne and Sydney. Both these cities take on around 100,000 extra people per year through immigration alone, and infrastructure cannot be built quickly enough to keep up with this growth.
“This results in clogged roads, huge amounts of time spent getting to work or grocery shopping or taking kids to sport, more pollution and reduced quality of life ... We should invest in our regions and make them so good that city people are dying to get there.”
Decentralisation is resurging in the Nationals – notwithstanding the left-field decision by Barnaby Joyce to move the pesticides agency from Canberra (insider) to his own electorate of New England (outsider) during a bare knuckle election fight against Tony Windsor.
What was missing in Joyce’s much-criticised decision was process. We never did find out why New England was the best place to move the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.
Nash’s speech put some much-needed evidence around the broader issues. And the treasurer, Scott Morrison, could provide a little more.
Regional indicators, a little red flag for political parties
This week, the treasurer made a fairly quiet referral to the Productivity Commission – minus Nats – to examine the transition of regional economies following the mining boom.
The treasurer wants the commission to address six terms of reference, including the intriguing idea of an economic metric for regions most struggling with the transition – a regional battler index, if you like.
“Establish an economic metric, combining a series of indicators to assess the degree of economic dislocation/engagement, transitional friction and local economic sustainability for regions across Australia and rank those regions to identify those most at risk of failing to adjust,” the terms say.
In a policy sense, the ranking will point to those in most need of regional development and/or assistance. In a political sense, the ranking will act as a little red flag on those voters most likely to turn on governments. You can see the possibilities.
Inputs will include both economic and social data. That could be Australian Bureau Of Statistics data like jobs figures but also school enrolments, unemployment benefit movements, retraining program numbers, local government ratings bases and housing price movements.
The difficulty will be drawing the boundaries. Local government areas are smallish; larger regions are patchy. Richer regional cities are next to poorer small towns and the issues creep into the fringes of cities.
The danger is that it could turn into a My School-style regional ranking or the Biggest Loser. Who will win the title of Australia’s worst ranked region? I am told it will be more nuanced.
In the normal orderly Productivity Commission process, it will be rushed. There will be no issues paper to chew on, just an initial report in April (prior to the budget) and a final report in December. Assumptions are that the government will base its funding decisions on the report. In time for the next election.
It will be a worthwhile process, in the hands of the Productivity Commission, to provide evidence and policy process, something that has been lacking in this government.
Hanging in the balance though, is the political response.
Can politics solve anything any more?
What rocked me most about 2016 was the thought that maybe very little reform can be achieved in politics any more. Maybe politicians don’t lead any more, they are dragged by forces outside – but close to – the political process.
I am working on the cabinet release for 1992-93. In those years, Paul Keating steered the Native Title Act through the minority Senate, having wrangled the National Farmers’ Federation under Rick Farley and the Indigenous leadership under Lowitja O’Donoghue, Noel Pearson and Pat Dodson among others. It was divisive and ugly at time, but it was done.
In 2016, the big Senate battle was over whether a backpacker tax would be 32.5%, 19%, 15%, 13% or 10%.
Here’s hoping that something bigger comes from 2017.
