Unless there’s a sudden turnaround in the polls, Tony Abbott will become Prime Minister of Australia. This will be the third time in my life that a Federal Labor government has been defeated, the other two occasions being 1975 and 1996. On both those occasions, despite substantial and enduring accomplishments, the government had made a mess of macroeconomic management, and the electorate, unsurprisingly, wanted to punish them. And, despite my strong disagreements with them (and with the way Fraser came to office), the incoming Prime Ministers had serious views on how best Australia’s future could be managed. Fraser has only improved since leaving office, making valuable contributions on the national and global stage. My evaluation of Howard, following his defeat, starts with the observation that he was ‘the most substantial figure produced by the Liberal party since the party itself was created by Menzies’.
Nothing of the sort can be said this time. The case put forward by the LNP is based entirely on lies and myths. These include the claims that
* Labor has mismanaged the economy and piled up unnecessary debt and deficits
* Australian families are ‘doing it tough’ because of a soaring cost of living
* The carbon tax/price is a ‘wrecking ball’, destroying economic activity
* The arrival of refugees represents a ‘national emergency’
None of these claims stands up to even momentary scrutiny.
Then there’s Abbott himself. After 20 years in politics, I can’t point to any substantial accomplishments on his part, or even any coherent political philosophy. For example, I’m not as critical of his parental leave scheme as some, but it’s totally inconsistent with his general political line, a fact that his supporters in business have been keen to point out. On climate change, he’s held every position possible and is now promising, in effect, to do nothing. His refusal to reveal policy costings until the second-last day of the campaign debases an already appalling process. He treated budget surplus as a holy grail until it became inconvenient, and has now become carefully vague on the topic.
Obviously, the fact that such a party and such a leader can be on the verge of victory implies that the Labor side has done something dreadfully wrong. It’s the oldest cliche in politics for the losing side to claim that the problem is not the policies but inability to get the message across. In this case, however, I think it’s true. Gillard lost the voters early on with stunts like the consultative assembly, and never managed to get them to listen to her for any length of time. Rudd was doing well in communicating his vision from his return to the leadership until he called the election. He then wasted three weeks on small-bore stuff apparently aimed at Katter party preferences. He seems finally to have rediscovered his voice, with the launch speech and his Q&A appearance, but I fear it’s too late.
Still, in the unlikely event that any undecided voters are reading this, I urge you to take a serious look at the alternative government, and place the LNP last on your ballot in both houses of Parliament.
John Quiggin 
@Ikonoclast
Well yes there are many. To take one example. “Commercially useful knowledge is diffused everywhere across an economy”.
Read “Free Market Economics” by Steve Kates.
Go the Austrians !
@David Allen
Over 4 years, Yes, left out that one out. So much for the budget emergency. Just saw the avuncular one on the telly. Seriously, if this guy is going to be treasurer for the next few years I’ll be wanting Swan back.
@Fran Barlow
Thanks for your thoughtful and detailed responses Fran.
But it’s been a very long day, so if I may respond briefly…
You believe all are capable of learning, but are all capable of choosing to not learn. Specifically (to get all theological) would you concede that if some people repeatedly and emphatically chose not to learn, and to focus on themselves and reject what they see as good forever, could they actually do that, to the point of non-existence?
I was going to tie this back to my original political point, which was that Labor is better than the Libs because Labor is just pretending to be horrible to refugees (“Their hearts aren’t in it” said Scott Morrison who apparently really enjoys being cruel rather than pretending to enjoy it as he accuses Labor of doing).
Your comment “Accordingly, our government officials from both sides sing from fundamentally similar songsheets” suggests that would be a reasonable conclusion. But your other, detailed posts suggests that such a conclusion over-simplifies your arguments.
@Mark
Kates is a classical or neo-classical economist whose magnum opus “debunks” Keynes. Enough said. I won’t be wasting my time with Kates.
Kates is clearly part of the Great Leap Backwards in economics which Ernestine Gross has referred to in this blog.
@James
I can see why it happens that interviewing of political leaders is handled most often by political journalists, and since their subject is politics it doesn’t necessarily cover any of the policy issues. But there are journalists who specialise in policy issues. There are, for example, journalists who specialise in economics, finance, and business: how often, I would like to know, are they the ones interviewing the ministers and shadow ministers for treasury, finance, industry, and employment? How often are the journalists who specialise in science, or the arts, or education, or law, or the environment, or even sport the ones who get to interview the corresponding ministers and shadow ministers? Would Ross Gittins like to interview Joe Hockey, and would he get the chance if he did?
The great campaigner turned out to be captain chaos. No consistent postive message.
@Sad Sam
In theory yes, but in practice no. That would imply a degree of intellectual coherence which is typically absent in those who choose not to learn. It requires insight even to focus purely on oneself, if only to define one’s boundaries. Any fuzziness and you start getting confused. We humans are social animals.
I set only minor store by mental states as precursors to acts. While these can be a guide in how to deal with those guilty of bad acts, they really tell us nothing about their ethical worthiness, nor elevate then in ethical terms above those who are malicious. In the end, one’s acts define one, at least until one repudiates not only the acts themselves, but accounts for the casual chain that led to them and why others should guard against it. People can reinvent themselves, but this has to come from them.
If one knows one is doing wrong, yet does it, it doesn’t really serve any legitimate interest that those doing it feel conflicted. They ought to stop immediately. If they don’t they might as well enjoy it for all the difference it makes.
Perhaps I haven’t been looking hard enough, but I haven’t seen too many signs that journalists have taken the Libs to task over labelling their “trimming” of public service spending as cutting the “waste.” You’d think that at least a few journalists would make inroads on challenging the presumption that public service expenditure is somehow “waste.” Research grant money for crying out loud? Efficiency “dividends?” It is pretty lazy when the big newspapers don’t at least offer a swipe at the Libs for using loaded words like that.
As some alternative money saving policies, what about ditching first home owner grants, negative gearing, income tax work expense deductions for PAYG, salary sacrifice arrangements, baby bonus schemes, and plenty of other non-essential costs to the government. Trouble is, all these things are entrenched, except possibly the FHOG scheme.
As for asylum seeker policy, there is not a sliver of light between the Lib and Labor positions, morally speaking.
Due to problems with WordPress, I’m unable to post at the moment.
I’m still posting on Crooked Timber and on my Facebook Public Page
https://www.facebook.com/JohnQuigginPublicPage
@Ikonoclast
A previous poster asked how does the lay person become informed on economic issues. Your comment highlights the conflicting views amongst the heavyweights. On one hand we have Kates and Davidson types promoting principles that seem poles apart from the Quiggins and Gross’. It is indeed very difficult to decide which is more correct.
@John Quiggin
Good luck with that, and as hopefully somebody is tackling that problem would it really be impossible to get fixed the bug that sees everything with more than one link in it sent to moderation or worse? – asking for others because it’s annoyingly braindead behaviour by software that doesn’t stop spam, does upset honest users. If it can’t be fixed then at least a warning notice above the comment box would help.
Still, in the unlikely event that any undecided voters are reading this, I urge you to take a serious look at my web page link and the stench that is the ALP, and place the LNP first on your ballot in both houses of Parliament
In Norway, we have a general election on Monday, and the political situation is roughly the same as in Australia. But the similarities seems to end there. Maintaining the budget balance has unfortunately become very much a Labour Party issue, while the right-of-centre opposition parties don’t shy away from promising increased spending on road and rail construction, mass transit, health care, education, research, and lots of other popular issues.
If the government promises increased spending on something, you can be sure that the opposition will find this inadequate and promise to spend even more. When they at the same time promise tax cuts, it isn’t hard to see the populist appeal. Hardly any voter ever cared about the size of the budget surplus and macroeconomic management in general!
@phoenix Undecided rednecks for the Abbottalypse! http://www.monbiot.com/2013/09/05/abbottalypse-now/
@phoenix
Looks rather enterprising of her really. How many opportunities come up just because they’re Johnny on the spot.
@phoenix
How pathetic… as if the claims there, even if mostly true, could incline a p[erson interested in equity and socialinclusion to vote for Abbott. Neither Hockey’s non-declaration of his wifes commercial interests in super nor Ms Rein’s business interests me. Politics is principally about policy — or at least it ought to be.
This is just a cheap attempt to win votes by getting people to give Abbott a pass on public policy even against their judgement that he has failed.
I believe both parties have failed the test of policy and that suffices for me — though in terms of personal integrity and conduct, the LNP is clearly far worse.
@phoenix Aptly named website phoenix. A kangaroo court: “a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted”. There is absolutely nothing there mate.
Anway peeps, offline for the weekend, but just remember, it’s not the end of the world, Tony Abbott as PM wont kill us. He will kill a few more refugees and people needing Aussie aid, but taht’s the people’s choice. At least we’re given a choice.
@wilful
Yes, Tweedle Dee replaces Tweedle Dum
Don’t forget the Great Barrier Reef, which, having already been Campbelled, is unlikely to survive the addition of a thorough Abbotting. Coal all the way. It does all probably seem worse from the perspective of a State that already has a troglodyte in charge.
I’ll personally shed a tear or two for the NBN.
@ phoenix
See, this is where simple logic and reasoning appears to desert people (with a very high correlation to their political stance). What exactly did anyone think was going to be the outcome of the increased privatization of government services? It is necessarily going to involve some kind of wealth redistribution and must necessarily result in the creation of a few new wealthy people. People with the right connections and skills universally get government contracts, and shedding a few crocodile tears and attempting to whip up some kind of outrage over the end result because, gasp, the winners aren’t the right kind of winners is pathetic.
Oops. Automod troubles.
Again without link andexpletive:
The Libs have made an early start to harassing their critics. They called up the ISP hosting this ranty, slightly amusing site:
http://dontbeaf*ckingidiot.com/ [the actual site name has a ‘u’ where the asterisk is]
and demanded the author’s personal details, and have begun sending him threatening messages.
At last a succinct summary of the issues. Yay!
I’m taking a cheat sheet with me to vote below the line on the Senate paper. Half the boxes could be joined together under the heading ‘Rooters and Shooters’. I suspect the rural folk in my area will vote LNP above the line. Geez what if the retailers tell us late December that people aren’t spending? I guess there’s always the double dissolution next time to brighten the mood.
Er that will be Libs only for the Senate with no Nats in some states.
thanks for sharing that nugget Norwegian Guy, its intriguing & know i wouldn’t have heard of it otherwise. i will be scouring the net for news about the result on our tuesday. -a.v.
Having i) taken too many maths and stats classes over the past two decades and ii) having a personal and professional stake in the mathematics of probability and iii) very much living in the real world, this one is all over excepting the Abbott victory party hangovers. Given that Labor has already done the hard yards and earned an A-grade for crisis management (marked down from A+ by the MRRT) the best we can hope for is benign macroeconomic conditions over the next few years to lessen the temptation on the Coalition to do something fiscally inane/counterproductive/destructive.
@alfred venison
Ditto. Thanks Norwegian Guy.
Will Rudd stay on as Opposition Leader?
If Abbott was caught eating a baby for breakfast tomorrow morning, he’d still win.
@Michael
He has to win his own seat first. If he did scrape in I don’t see how he could stay on. Trouble is, who takes over ?
@crocodile
If the ALP think they can win the next election, it will be a rightwing male. If they think they can’t, it could be a woman, possibly one with a slightly left constituency.
The ALP will be thrown out today because they have been a shambles for six years and have fundamentally misunderstood their role in governing the country.
There are three fundamental pillars to Australian society – government, business and the judiciary. No one of those pillars can operate without the support and cooperation of the other two. Kevin Rudd (and to a lesser extent Gillard) doesn’t seem to get that and has lurched from one policy error to another by springing surprises on business and the judiciary rather than run a consultative process.
The last great ALP government (Hawke/Keating) understood how to govern. Rudd does not.
I’m not particularly happy about the prospect of Abbott as PM – but he’s the lesser evil.
The other thing going on in this election is that Australians are tired of the uncertainty and unholy alliances associated with the minority government. Mainstream Australia doesn’t like or trust the Greens and the ALP has work to do to distance itself from that naive extremism. This will be a landslide Coalition win… which is not a good thing. The ALP needs to use its time in opposition to work out how to be fit to govern again.
If it doesn’t, then to paraphrase your host (who in 2007 predicted the Coalition would never govern again!) – the ALP will never govern again.
@Fran Barlow
I doubt that the ALP even think they would win next time if it is a bloodbath today. They would no doubt claw back a few seats. Still, an obvious choice for leader does not stand out. If they had any brains they would pick an attack dog who would say no, no , no to every bit of legislation that comes before the house and let Tony deal with the mixed bag of senators. Do unto thee I say. Doesn’t help the country much but seeing as I don’t particularly like either choice it may the best way to clean both of them out.
“Lesser evil” is ludicrous. The fed LNP has been quite open about its willingness to conspire with troglodyte Newman and the fossil fuel mafia to destroy the Great Barrier Reef. That’s just the most manifest symptom of their general headlong rush into environmental vandalism on a hitherto unprecedented scale (and this in a nation that, per capita, has the world’s worst environmental record). We were making tentative steps towards being a member of civilisation. It’s a tragedy that Tea-party Tony and his band of merry rednecks will cut us off at the knees. QLD, as a good warning for the future, is going backwards at a terrifying pace.
Crispin – if you want to be taken seriously you really need to stop using red flag phrases like ‘Troglodyte Newman’, ‘merry rednecks’ and ‘Fossil fuel mafia’…. It sounds like you’re a 21yr old student activist.
@Andrew Andrew – 2 of those phrases stand up to scrutiny. One is hyperbole. I don’t accept that using cool ‘professional’ language is an indicator of maturity. Rather it points to the kind of mild-seeming collective psychopathy that allows people to accept torture of refugees, global climate experiments for the sake of corporate profit, etc, whilst pretending to themselves that they are ‘reasonable’. “Racist” once sounded adolescent to many middle-class white South Africans, whereas ‘separate development’ was mild and acceptable-seeming.
@Andrew
It’s true that the ALP have been a shambles. It must be very difficult to govern with an opposition that just says no to everything regardless of the efficacy of the policies and the continuous trashing of the countries economic position. I really hope Tony cops it the neck when the boots on the other foot. Whether the ALP have the goolies for it remains to be seen.
I repeat my suggestion that Abbott could be a oncer, defeated by bigger issues and his own intransigence. LTG theory says that the world will slow down in the early 21st century due to several negative feedback mechanisms. If that is correct the ‘million new jobs’ may not materialise, that is to say decent secure jobs. China may need fewer boatloads of our rocks. An extreme weather event may jolt the public into wanting climate action. A riot on Manus Island with innocent casualties could be sickening.
I expect much of this could happen before any ill advised double dissolution late 2014. That will paint Abbott into a corner of needing to compromise to survive yet also needing to be a hard man. The ALP will then only require a plodder to win back the public.
Just read Peter Hartcher’s column in the SMH, and he quotes Abbott as asking that the ALP respect his mandate to repeal the “carbon tax” should the Libs win. Talk about front! Did his mob respect the ALP’s mandate to bring in CPRS/ETS policy after the 2007 election? Nope! Turnbull at least negotiated with the ALP, only to be tossed out of the opposition leadership position—to install Abbott—and, that was on the eve of reaching agreement on the CPRS/ETS! Remember how Andrew Robb came back from extended sick leave, just to cast the deciding vote in favour of Abbott as the new opposition leader? Sick…sick…sick—not sick—sick…sick…sick.
If you want a bunch of back-stabbing power-hungry political weathervanes in power, voting Liberal is even more effective in that regard than voting Labor. What a great country we live in; just a pity about our political players of the moment.
But Donald, the Australian public is demanding exactly the kind of political players we have. Imagine the fate of a party proposing policies approximating what the moment really requires. It’d get nowhere! A good part of the reason for Labor’s dysfunction is the requirement that it panders to so many of the citizenry’s idiocies, despite its better judgement. The requirement’s real, nonetheless, so the dysfunction is inevitable.
@Crispin Bennett
Maybe you are right. However, I just want politicians to give me the straight answer on how they see the issues, rather than giving a glib one-liner for the TV. The media spend much of their resources simply reporting on tit-for-tat opinionations, and far too little on explaining a proposed policy to the point where people can understand it.
Today the ABC reported on how there are many people who are still undecided how they’ll vote, even while they are queuing at the polling booth. If people haven’t worked it out by that point, it would seem likely that they are too ignorant of the relative merits of the parties to make an informed decision. Okay, perhaps a few are genuinely unable to decide between two parties they think have equal merit, having already assessed them, but I sincerely doubt that’s the general situation.
On another note, I think that parties should be obliged to release all of their policies—including costings—well before the media blackout. A fortnight before the election would be good, as it would provide journalists and voters with time to assess and digest the proposed policies and their implications. The Liberal’s move had a tad of the single digit salute to the mug voters; I certainly hope that they are the last party to get away with it.
This includes the bare-faced lie that the Carbon tax will cost average families $545 per year, completely ignoring the income tax cuts financed by the Carbon tax.
Shame on them.
@crocodile
That’s the thing to do if the only thing that matters is winning. It’s working for the Liberal Party.
@Hermit
” LTG theory says that the world will slow down in the early 21st century due to several negative feedback mechanisms.” – Hermit.
These mechanisms have probably already begun. There are elements to both the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and EU crises which indicate that resource limitations are already playing a role, initially via higher prices.
Oil prices and food prices are again close to the levels that generate regional turmoil. Scarcity is behind these high prices. A strong correlation can then be observed between high prices for food and other necessities and civil strife.
MENA and the general Mediterranean zone are one part of the world where the LTG crisis has probably already begun to impact. It is mixed up with the extra unnecessary economic turmoil and damage caused by neoliberalism and pro-cyclical “austerity policies”. This complex of problems makes it difficult to assign clear causes at this relatively early stage. By 2020 the picture will be much clearer, although I probably will lose my 2020 bet with Prof. J.Q. (That 2020 world income will be less than 2010 world income. For $100 2010 inflation adjusted.)
At first the conservatives sneered at the progressives for voting for the party with perceived poor economic policies. Ok, fine, whatever. Now, there is a progressive government with an exemplary economic record……..and the goalposts have been shifted, and voting Rudd out is justified because something something total shambles. Head, meet desk.
The common thread between fear of high immigration and carbon taxes is losing some of what we take for granted. The middle class dream is finely poised, more or less as LTG predicts. I spent 15 minutes filling out the Senate ballot below the line (even with a cheat sheet) while my fellow bumpkins waltzed in and out of the polling booth. I’m confident most of them voted Liberal for the Reps and Liberals above the line in the Senate. These people will be crushed if things don’t go well as well as they hope.
There’s the rub…I think Abbott’s first year will be a nightmare. I think there will be a degree of nastiness in public discourse we haven’t seen since the 1970s. We will hear terms like cruel, ignorant, deluded, regressive and anti-science. We live in interesting times.
Liberal democratic senator likely in nsw, 2 nick no pokies senayors, labor must beat geeens for last seat in sa to have a SECOND SA senator. National tally room has senate counts.