Removing the policy impasses

The Independent Member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, argued this week that the best result for Australia at the next election would be a hung Parliament.

Hear, hear. Spender argued at the National Press Club that a hung Parliament would break the paralysis that has overcome Australian politics and that a crossbench could and would demand serious attention to major problems in Australia’s society and economy that have been ignored for more than two decades.

When you look at Australian politics since 2001, we have had nearly a quarter century of do-nothing scared-e-cat politics. The only exception has been the National Disability Insurance Scheme, but that has been marred by a grievous administrative failure: not doing much about the reality that wherever government money is handed out there you will find charlatans, crooks, and spivs circling like crows over a stricken lamb.

After a raft of sound economic reforms under Hawke-Keating we had two excellent Howard reforms: guns and the GST. Since then, politics has gone to paralysis, other than hand-outs for the richly undeserving.

The major parties in Australia now stand indicted of a litany of utter failure. Why anyone would vote for either of them if a sensible Independent is on offer is beyond me.

Let’s look at the indictment.

The Howard Coalition Government after guns and the GST: It ramped up the first-homebuyers grant. It put fuel on the fire. The fear of missing out meant thousands of new homebuyers armed with the grant ramped up demand and prices, putting homes even further beyond reach – the opposite of the intention.

It halved capital-gains tax. Investors flooded the housing market so they could covert income (highly taxed) to capital gains (lightly taxed).

It handed out cash rebates (in lieu of tax rebates) to people who received franked dividends from companies, even if those receiving the cash were paying no tax in the first place.

Its biggest sin was ramping up immigration to provide cheap labour to its business mates while diluting the power of unions.

It legislated for the casualisation of the labour force, replacing secure jobs with the gig economy.

It reneged on the Kyoto climate treaty.

The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor Government: It did well in the face of the global financial crisis with public works and immediate cash-back tax relief. But it did nothing to reverse the Howard immigration-housing crisis. It melted at the tiniest opposition to its resource rent tax. It gave up when the Senate knocked back its carbon tax instead of going to a double dissolution.

Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison: Failed to reverse past idiocies. Refused to do anything about increasing corruption. Continued huge subsidies for fossil industries. Legislated for massive tax cuts for the rich. Ramped up immigration further. The knight and dames were exemplified idiocy even if largely harmless.

Albanese: Other than reversing the manifestly unfair Stage 3 tax cuts, did nothing to reverse the egregious policies listed above. Introduced an integrity watchdog that does little more than flap wet lettuce leaves around in secret.

Worse, the Albanese Government has never attempted to regain control of Australia’s borders. You would expect that a government which controls all the levers of power could tell us what net immigration would be in any year.

Look at the loss of control. Labor’s initial forecast for the year ending June 2023 was 255,000. This was the first full post-pandemic year. That number was insanely high in any event compared to the pre-Howard average of around 70,000. But what happened. In the year ending June 2023 net immigration to Australia was 528,000.

And despite that catastrophic lack of control which has worsened the housing crisis, congestion, Medicare blow-outs, and a great list of infrastructure shortfall, the same thing is about to happen again.

Parliament should set a population policy and a net immigration limit. It does not matter if they are black, yellow, white, atheist, Hindus, or Jains. It is the absolute number that matters. 

The Albanese Government has failed on even a simple thing like legislating the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into online gambling (headed by one of its own) to ban online gambling advertisements. But no, once again in the past quarter century a major party is more interested in kowtowing to its donors than doing what is right for the nation and its people. Same for bank fees and scamming.

It seems only balance-of-power independents could force their hand.

The only reason the Albanese Government should not be thrown on the electoral scrapheap because of that weakness, incompetence, and lack of control is because the other lot would, overall, be worse.

Dutton in Opposition: He offers nothing more than froth-at-the-mouth confected outrage on the social front and economically insane “solutions” on housing and energy/climate. 

He has taken a leaf from the Costello handbook and proposed that people throw their meagre retirement nest eggs into the maw of the housing market – increasing demand and increasing prices. This is a really moronic policy, condemned by every sensible economist. 

Dutton’s nuclear-energy option can only be rationalised as a ruse to keep coal and gas electricity generation going beyond their used-by date to prop up fossil profits and reward its donors. Every sensible economic analysis says that nuclear electricity in Australia is a delusional folly.

Governments of both persuasions have turned our universities into short-term businesses where the prize is not an education and degree to be used in their homeland but a gateway to permanent residence and where the Vice Chancellors have become overpaid chief executive officers.

Spender is right. Both major parties have lost whatever credibility they ever had. And if you want references for that look no further than their own. In the past week, two former major-party figures have spelled it out: Labor’s Kim Carr and the Liberals’ Michael Yabsley. What they have written accords with much of the above.

The problem for Australia is not the list of must-fixes set out above. It is not rocket science to deal with them. Rather, Australia’s No1 problem is the systemic paralysis of the political machinery – big corporate donations and centralisation of power in the leader’s office.

The stagnation of the past two decades suggests that democracy in Australia would be better served by a swag of independents resetting our dysfunctional duopoly.

Crispin Hull

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 29 October 2024.

www.crispinhull.com.au