As a foreigner observing our first Federal election we can't help but wonder if John Howard and his merry band of liberals and nationalists are going to pull this election out of the bag. We can't stand politics and have a healthy loathing for the men and women that practice it. But politics is a great spectacle, and you can learn something about a people by how much scorn they have for their elected officials.
On the left, you have thinly veiled socialists who threaten to turn over the nation's labour policy to the unions. They seem to be popular chiefly because they are not John Howard, whose face and eyebrows have become a bit too familiar to Australians over the last few years.
On the right, you have a government riding a China-boom without any real apparent plans to liberalise an economy that's as regulated as any we've seen in Europe. Both parties support a strong government role in national life.
And the public seems to accept this. Indeed, the public, like a well-fed farm animal on a bright summer day in a field full of grass, appears remarkably content, not particularly fussed with anything really, except maybe climate change and the price of petrol and property.
A lunch companion assured us yesterday that Howard is a clever campaigner and that the election is still very much in doubt. Still, one of the signs of the late stages of a boom is a complete indifference to political issues. People simply can't be asked to care when there isn't much to worry about.
This lack of attention to politics is a good thing, we admit. If fewer people meddled in public affairs - telling us where to smoke, how much water to bathe with, and what kind of car to drive - the world would be a better place. As it is, we sense Australia becoming more like America each day, full of restrictions, taboos, and lame-brained politicians proposing incremental degradations in freedom. But we could be wrong. We barely understand Americans, and are still getting to know Australians.
Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia
Who will you be voting for? Does it matter? Leave a comment below.
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About the Author
Dan Denning is the author of 2005's best-selling The Bull Hunter (John Wiley & Sons). He began his financial publishing career in 1997 and has covered financial markets form Baltimore, Paris, London and, beginning in 2005 Melbourne. He’s the editor of The Daily Reckoning Australia and the Publisher of Port Phillip Publishing.
Comment by Adrian Liston on 13 June 2007:
Well that was about as superficial insight as I've ever seen. The ALP is hardly socialist, while Australia in general believes in social support (such as universal health care), the ALP does not (unfortunately) propose pushing it much further than it already is. One wonders if you have read the ALP policy on Industrial Reforms, from the false Union soundbite it sounds like you relied on John Howard to read it for you. One also wonders if you have been awake the past decade - Australians do have very good reasons for wanting Howard out, and they are not based on his eyebrows.
Finally, it seems like you miss the entire point of government. We as a society have to make society-wide judgement calls. We control government, they are making our value calls, not their own. You complain about the government "telling us where to smoke, how much water to bathe with, and what kind of car to drive" and postulate that the world would be a better place. Yeah, a place where children would be forced to suck in second-hand smoke and develop cancer, where water would be rapidly used up by greedy corporations to leave us thirsty, and where car manufacturers have unlimited pollution, covering our cities in soot.
Libertarians complain about government imagining that anarchy is such a wonderful place. Save your complaining for bad government instead.
Comment by Chris. Fulker on 13 June 2007:
Of course they don't care! There is no "working class" anymore, anywhere in the West. There might also be little or no distinction anymore between "white collar" and "blue collar": they make about the same pay, do similar sinecures of jobs...
There is only the Consuming Class. Well-fed farm animals - maybe sheep! - are only concerned about what's in front of their noses and what's for dinner. Their time horizon extends no further than tonight's prime-time TV slot offerings. So all the political parties offer this - no change, life-goes-on-as-ever-before soporifics, reassurances and now and then, guarantees that life will be secure with nothing scary under the bed. Maybe free money helicopter drops for those deemed in need. Depend on the government! Long Live Consumerism! The government. My government. It's always there to help those in need...
So modern politics is merely administrative. Authoritarian when stability is threatened. Or the threats are imagined. Or conjured up. The dominant ideology might best be termed "authoritarian consumerism".
Comment by TechnoFreak on 13 June 2007:
I concur with your observations about Oz. We are engulfed in a comfort zone that seems to have no end. A deep luscious couch that we laze on at the end of every day and accept our programming.
It worries me that our apparent wealth is in the hands of a global movement rather than good management. I dont for one minute believe that our current leaders of Oz are responsible for the wealth that pours into this great wide (dry) land.
Unlike you fine chaps I am not in finance yet I know what a rat smells like....
Comment by kage on 14 June 2007:
Terrible current account deficit, towering foreign debt and money supply in flood mode. The nice fat farm animals are being enslaved (via housing bubble and mortgage),and can't even feel the shackles tightening.
Economically Oz is a pimple on the backside of the world. The lenders of the world will soon own a lovely strip mine and nuclear waste dump, formerly known as Australia. The faunal emblem of the ACT, where our federal capital Canberra is located, is the Gang-Gang Cockatoo. A less polite name is Galah (a byword for really stupid). Pretty appropriate.