End Game?

The election is over. The likely result is a hung parliament.

As we said previously:

The presence or absence of a national broadband network, an absence of a mining tax, temporary protection visas and the extension of unfair contract laws to small business are the only real areas of difference – most other things are differences in emphasis and timing.

(Although more on the NBN, anon.)

For all of that, both Abbott and Gillard are representatives of their respective strands of thought.

Gillard is very much, as Trevor Cook put it, one of Whitlam’s grandchildren:

Throughout his political career, Whitlam pursued a philosophy of “positive equality”, and he sought to change the national debate and the role of the national parliament. Positive equality is not about the old battles between capital and labour, it is about removing barriers to self‐improvement and overcoming disadvantage and deprivation through national approaches to policy areas like health, education and transport that emphasise universal access. For Whitlam, positive equality was also about community‐building and social cohesion. In many ways it is a middle‐class and gradualist reform agenda which envisages the use of government to ensure the benefits of economic prosperity are used to create better opportunities for individuals and communities.

Hence, however constitutionally iffy the proposals are in a post Pape world without a section 96 agreement with the States, Gillard was always at her strongest when she was ‘educational Julia’ promising improved teaching and schooling standards.

Conversely, Abbott is very much from the ‘Christian democrat’ (or Catholic Liberal) wing of the Liberals, with a focus on traditional social values and a respect for individual effort, whilst mindful for the need of social solidarity and more comfortable with a greater level of regulation of market forces than some of his colleagues – hence support for things like substantial tax rebates for education expenses and paid parental scheme paid for by big business whilst wanting to ‘stop the boats’ and remove ‘big new taxes’ (etc).

It was therefore unsurprising when Abbott said in his last address to the National Press Club for the election that he wanted to ‘transform Australia from ‘welfare state to opportunity society’ by linking new workforce initiatives to his economic agenda:

My ambition is for us to make the journey from welfare state to opportunity society ... which preserves the comprehensive safety net but which eliminates the cancer of passive welfare.

(Why this wasn’t said by him more often when the Liberal campaign was criticised for having nothing to say in the middle weeks of the campaign is beyond us.)

However, that said, despite different starting points the practical end point is that the policies of the two parties constitute a welfarism that differs only in emphasis as to the manner of implementing outcomes in broadly agreed areas.

This absence of shade and light led to state issues (particularly relating to government competence in NSW and Queensland) having disproportionate influence in the election.

The net result: a draw in the number of seats.

It may well be that the ALP will form government.

However, the large Greens vote could mean that they become Labor’s ‘new Country Party’, pushing them leftwards and away from the ‘Sussex Street’ Labor model of representing the ALP as being solid, conservative managers of the economy, moving to the centre on traditionally weak areas such as law and order and encouraging development whilst evincing a general (but not overwhelming) concern for the environment.

This leftward push could be paradoxically assisted by having to deal with the ‘Old Country Party’ – the three independent country members holding (at time of writing) the balance of power, with views on issues such as transfer payments to ‘worthy’ recipients being surprisingly similar to city progressives.

It would be something if perhaps the only significant difference between the parties – the national broadband network – is the thing that will settle who will form government.

This Parliament could inadvertently mark the commencement of the political paradigm of the 21st Century, as the ‘labour/capital’ divide of the 20th century is replaced by one block representing a ‘secular humanism’ (typically found in voters in inner urban Australia), balanced by a block representing small ‘n’ nationalist and ‘aspirational’ values found more commonly in suburban and provincial Australia.

We live in interesting times.