Timid Or Terrible: Australia’s Choice

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Leadership on the national stage is no easy thing. In a largely two party political system it is not a dualist situation like that between good and evil. More is the pity, in the opinion of some. No, rather there are similarities and mutual understandings in Australia between the Labor and Liberal Parties. Timid or terrible: Australia’s choice is the description given to the current selection of leadership candidates on display. The former is, oh so careful, not to create a political rod for his own back by any moves too willing to be offensive to anyone. The latter refers to the opposition candidate’s proclivity for alarmist rhetoric about everything under the sun. He is quick to condemn those falling outside of the propertied white male category.

words are the weapons of choice in realpolitik

A Ballot Box Selection Between Timid & Terrible

Decidedly different campaign strategies can be ascertained from these behaviours. This is, perhaps, where style over substance comes in, with neither candidate wishing to change the economic settings too much. These settings favour older wealthier Australians at the expense of younger Aussies via the capital gains tax discount and negative gearing. Income tax is the main drain on private lives in this country, whereas taxes on wealth or capital are far lighter. A third of all corporations in Australia don’t pay any corporate tax at all. The two main political parties receive campaign donations from wealthy donors and business sectors like the fossil fuel and mining companies. Currying favour with the political class is well established downunder. This form of corruption has long historical roots in Australia dating back to colonial times.

These Timid & Terrible Monikers Hide Their Similarities

Politics impacts most important things in Australia and can hold up progress for decades on this basis. Things like energy policies can become political footballs to be kicked back and forth impotently. Ideologies can stymie the progression of important policies for the nation, whilst the power dynamic battles it out in Canberra. Currently, the nation has a housing crisis with a lack of long term accommodation driving up rents and property prices. Residential housing has become the major investment asset in the lives of millions of Aussies. No longer is shelter a basic human right downunder – users pay through the nose here. Former PM John Howard and his capital gains tax discount increase, combined with negative gearing for investors, has driven property prices through the roof- now they are 13 times the annual income for most folk. Houses are about making serious money and not just a roof over your head. Both leaders support the status quo when it comes to economic policies and housing. They tinker around the edges, whilst promising to build more housing stock.

Getting The Balance Correct

Timid or terrible: Australia’s choice. The important differences, however, are Labor’s traditional support for increasing wage growth for the lowest paid workers in Australia. Meanwhile, the Coalition invariably favour the wealthier end of town and that old neoliberal scam called the ‘trickledown effect’. Give tax breaks to the wealthy and employers and a few shekels may fall down into the hands of those at the bottom of the food chain. This has been shown not to be the case and 10 years of LNP federal governments oversaw the largest increase to the wealth divide in history. Every time a billionaire is made it deprives millions of ordinary Aussies of a fair share of wealth. Privatisation in Australia has seen a huge transfer of public assets into the hands of the 1%. They promise cheaper prices but these never eventuate either.

“Nearly half of all wealth is held by the top 10% of households, worth an average $5.2 million each. They hold 15 times the wealth of the lowest 60% ($343,000 per household).

Over half of the wealth (53%) of older households was owned by one-sixth of older people. They had an average wealth of $5.6 million, comprise 4% of all households but hold 18% of all wealth.

The average over-65 household is 25% wealthier (with $1.58 million) than the average middle-aged household (with $1.26 million) and almost four times as wealthy as the average under-35 household (with $410,000).”

(https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/04/wealth-gap-widening-new-report-acoss)

Do No Evil

The old Google credo was ‘Do No Evil’ and, perhaps, that fits with the timid approach, whereas the terrible bloke is quick to blame and scapegoat powerless groups like refugees, international students and immigrants. The political game is to identify an enemy of the dominant cohort. To create an ‘other’ that folk can pile shit upon. Right wing populist politicians invariably identify villains that they further demonise for electoral success. Negative attack ads appeal to a base human desire to see folk pulled down. It cannot be denied that a section of the population enjoy watching the boot put in to their perceived enemies.

Culture Wars

The culture wars, the anti-woke campaign is predicated on a section of the dominant cohort, white men, who feel that the status quo has been threatened by diversity and equity public policies and its political correctness. These, mainly men, do not want to see and hear virtue signaling by governments and the corporate sector. They are sick of the high profile visibility of LGBTQI concerns and of female focused issues in the public sphere. The Right have seized upon this emotive groundswell and run with it for all they are worth.

Trump’s Impact On The Federal Election

Timid or terrible: Australia’s choice. Donald Trump has thrown a curve ball (to use an American sport’s analogy) into the Australian federal election. This was even more pronounced in Canada, where the ‘dead in the water’ Liberals just won their election on the back of Trump’s attacks on Canada. The imposition of tariffs and disparaging comments upon and about a loyal ally has flipped the political situation in both countries. The LNP Coalition in Australia has long been inspired by conservative US politics. Sharing the ‘strongman’ tag with Donald Trump was previously seen as a positive in the current clime until Trump was returned to power.

Since then, after 100 days of extremist emergency executive powers, the global economy has slumped like it did prior to the Great Depression in the 1930s. Illegal sackings and dismantling of civil servants and government services by DOGE has rocked America. ICE has illegally grabbed Americans off the streets and transported them to a gulag prison in El Salvador. Judges have been arrested. Students have been arrested and deported en masse without due process. Indeed, due process, in the judicial sense, has been missing in action, across the board in Trump’s America. Australians, generally, do not like extremists.

Treading the middle road has been our special sauce over many decades.

This has not been a good thing for Peter Dutton and the LNP. PM Anthony Albanese may well be characterised as too timid in the minds of some Australians on both sides of politics, but in a period of uncertainty, born of extreme right wing actions and the starting of a global trade war by Trump, keeping your powder dry may be a prudent strategy.

Timid or terrible: Australia’s choice. What will you decide?

“Most people know that far right politics are nasty, when you get down to it. Populist moaning and blaming others when given power turns into fascism and authoritarianism. We are seeing it in America, where the Trump regime is flouting the law and stripping people of their basic human rights. The Right is on the nose, at the moment, as folk realise the damage being done to the economy and international goodwill. Losing trust in your public institutions, when corrupt billionaires go after your Social Security, Education and Food Safety, to name just a few, spells the end of government for all the people.”