The 2016 Australian election campaign began with the hope that big ideas and bold positive policies might mean voters would be able to choose the party that inspired them the most rather than the one they despised the least.
The eight long weeks have been better than the vitriolic battles of 2010 and 2013. But the election hasn’t entirely delivered on its promise. Ideas seem to have shrunk in the explaining and the campaign has too often descended into scares and misinformation and high-handed, self-serving demands that disillusioned voters should reconsider a vote for the Greens or minor parties because those democratic choices would somehow create “chaos”.
It soon became obvious that just eight months after he ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister and Liberal leader to widespread national relief and sky-high expectations, Malcolm Turnbull was planning a small-target campaign. He promised to respect the intelligence of the electorate but has been seeking the Coalition’s re-election on the calculation that voters were fed up with political upheaval and weren’t ready to write him off just yet, certainly not in favour of the Labor leader, Bill Shorten.
Turnbull’s agenda is thin. His centrepiece $48bn company tax cut, unveiled in a pre-election budget, was modelled as delivering a 0.6% boost to gross national income in a decade, but there are not convincing answers to questions about how much of the tax relief would flow offshore or the extent to which growth would fill the budget hole left by the revenue forgone. When the tax cuts for big corporations proved unpopular, he shifted to the more general claim that only a Coalition government could deliver “jobs and growth”. His budget included a progressive superannuation policy but he also talked about that less as a backlash in the Liberal heartland grew.
His agenda has been weighed down by the often regressive “zombie” spending cuts, still lingering in the budget from 2014 but never legislated, cuts to government payments to the poorest Australian families and a four-week wait before young people could receive the dole. His climate policy and marriage equality plans are deliberately opaque to disguise unresolved conflicts with the Coalition conservatives; by his own admission, Turnbull would prefer a parliamentary vote to introduce marriage equality (the policy of both Labor and the Greens) but he took the leadership with an internal agreement to keep Abbott’s unnecessary and expensive plebiscite. His childcare policy would leave many families better off, but its future is uncertain because he continues to insist it must be paid for by the family benefit cuts. And, astonishingly, he goes to the poll with no policies at all on higher education, vocational education, industrial relations or the arts.
It’s as if his re-election pitch is fuelled mostly by the sheer force of his confidence, because he hasn’t been in the job long enough, or exerted his authority over his own party sufficiently, to come up with a fully considered plan.
Bill Shorten, by contrast, began the campaign with a braver, clearer and more progressive set of ideas than we have seen from recent oppositions. Voters were far more attracted to them than the Coalition had expected. Labor had already announced ambitious policies to wind back the generosity of superannuation concessions for the wealthiest and to limit negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions – a policy that would both save money and go some way to slowing the price rises that are putting home ownership out of reach for so many Australians. The party had the courage to oppose the company tax cut and to offer slightly higher near-term budget deficits as the price of its health and education agenda and smart structural savings that would take some years to mature. It promised to fully fund the “Gonski” plan for schools, to more than reverse the Coalition’s university spending cuts, and Shorten argued the case for marriage equality with conviction. Tying the “putting people first” message together was a noticeable shift from the 1980s economic consensus, an acceptance that reducing inequality was important for ensuring economic growth as well as a fair society.
But Labor’s full policy offering hasn’t quite lived up to its vision. After spending years attacking the Coalition for cutting $57bn from public hospitals over the next 10 years, it topped up Turnbull’s additional spend in the short term but offered no more money over the decade. It quietly accepted some of the “zombies”, including some cuts for new recipients of deeply inadequate welfare payments. It sketched an ambitious climate policy and had the political courage to state clearly that it would need to involve emissions trading schemes, but it also fudged crucial details to avoid another carbon tax scare campaign. It abandoned parts of its superannuation policy mid-campaign and said it would come up with something in government that saved as much money as the Coalition’s version. Despite deep disquiet inside his party, Shorten persuaded Labor’s national conference to mirror the Coalition’s policies to turn back asylum boats and send any arrivals to offshore detention.
As the long campaign proceeded Labor seemed to balk, to be unwilling to back its departure from the political and economic orthodoxy. It lacked a coherent economic story that tied together its policies. It appeared diverted by trying to minimise the difference between its near-term deficit and the Coalition’s, as if it doubted its own ability to argue the case against the inevitable charge that Labor posed a risk to the economy.
Perhaps those fears were justified by Brexit, an international earthquake that has quickly reverberated across the world and on to the Australian hustings. The Coalition is sure it will benefit, both from incumbency and the traditional advantage the Coalition has in perceptions of economic management competency. It took Shorten days to mount the obvious alternative argument, that Australia has avoided the extremes of social division precisely because it retains a reasonable social safety net, but that even so, inequality is growing. Then he cut across his own arguments by being loose with the truth in some of his own last-minute scare campaigns.
The stampede to non-mainstream parties and candidates is not as fast in Australia as in other countries but an increasing number of voters are choosing someone other than the majors. The Coalition has effectively told those voters their choices are dangerous for the country’s political stability – which can only be assured by a Coalition majority. Given no major party has had control of both houses of parliament since 2004, that’s nonsense. Indeed, both major parties have let themselves down with scare campaigns and a ridiculous vilification of the Greens and some independents.
The Greens have released a full suite of progressive, costed policies. They are backed – according to the polls – by about 10% of Australians. And they have a track record of responsibly exercising a balance-of-power position. They are also the only significant party to represent the views of Australians who reject the offshore detention regime. The Greens would also keep up the pressure for crucial reforms to laws governing political expenditure and the disclosure of political donations, changes backed by Labor and Turnbull “in an ideal world”, but which never seem to happen, despite a steady stream of scandals and the increasingly unsustainable task of attracting sufficient donations to pay for election campaigns.
The major parties have also attacked Nick Xenophon and his candidates. The Nick Xenophon Team’s policies are not as detailed as those of the Greens, but Xenophon, powerful in South Australia, has a responsible parliamentary track record. So do Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, although many other independents have views so extreme and platforms so sketchy it should give any voter pause.
Guardian Australia readers are able to reach their own conclusions. But in our view the Coalition’s offerings are thin, Labor’s go a long way towards a progressive program, and false threats of looming “chaos” should not deter voters from choosing the Greens, or other candidates with a plausible, fair agenda.
