However, that does leave open the question of whether we’re witnessing an ideological conjunction between Labor and Liberal.

To some degree, ideology is in the eye of the beholder.

For instance, some Greens supporters will agree with some libertarians that there’s little difference between the two major parties, though for ostensibly different reasons. For the Greens, they’re stuck in the same paradigm and for the libertarians, they’re both irredeemably statist.

Similarly, some Labor lefties will agree with small l liberals that immigration is a good thing, and the rhetoric about a ‘Sustainable Australia’ damaging. There are nuances here, but the same argument is being made by those who like the idea of cosmopolitanism for cultural and political reasons, and those who have an attachment to freedom of movement and think economic growth is best served by population growth.

Most of these folks are looking at the parties from a similar social and class location – professionally educated, often eschewing religious belief, and working in relatively comfortably paid jobs in the public or private sector, depending on political and cultural orientation.

If you’re working with the homeless, or the unemployed, or you are yourself homeless or unemployed, you’re likely to have quite a different take on what the social outcomes of a Labor or a Coalition government would be.

I remember reflecting, when I was a university student in 1993, that the election of a Hewson government would be in the self interest of people like me – the white male middle class. For me, with my politics, that was a reason to resist the pull.

But it’s easier to make political decisions based on self interest when your circumstances are reasonably comfortable or your prospects promising.

So, while we all like to think that we think for ourselves, a confluence of factors to do with our geographical location, our occupation, our gender, our education, and a host of other stuff is likely to give us a powerful predisposition to vote one way or another, or conceive of the purpose of politics one way or another.

That implies we should be wary of the condescending sneers at swinging voters in marginal seats whose vote is purportedly driven only by what the government can do for them personally.

What we can conclude is that the actual conduct of this election, and the campaigning style which has shaped its conduct, appeals to the lowest common denominator in terms of both recognising the real choices at stake and framing the issues.

That’s a great pity.

Where are the leaders in all this?

I have no doubt that Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are all actuated by genuine convictions, among other motivations.

And while a leitmotif of early commentary about Gillard’s leadership was that it was difficult to discern the nature of those convictions, that’s not the case.

The Prime Minister’s speech on July 15 to the National Press Club, ‘overshadowed’ by Laurie Oakes’ leak, actually repays careful reading. The transcript can be found here.

Gillard’s political beliefs are a form of social liberalism – perhaps more in the Deakinite Liberal tradition than might be thought – the emphasis on nation building, on the horizontal value of care and concern for others, and her strong belief in equality of opportunity are all hallmarks of this style of thought.

‘Market design’ and agnosticism as between the state and the private sector as vehicles for service delivery are themes which resonate strongly with New Labour practice in Britain. There’s a tendency in Gillard’s practice towards a species of social neo-liberalism.

Of course, ideological consistency is not something that exists outside the philosophy books, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the pull of perhaps misguided electoral pragmatism overpowers what are probably Gillard’s instincts on social policy such as same sex marriage.

But it would be quite wrong to say of Julia Gillard that she stands for nothing.

What’s more telling is that what she stands for is not really the same thing as traditional Labor social democracy – the emphasis is more on equalising opportunity than remedying inequality.

Tony Abbott, on the other hand, is less easy to place.

He seems to waver between statist instincts – more akin to those of the conservative advocates of the welfare state in continental Europe’s Christian Democracies than what we normally see in Australia – and a skepticism about the efficacy of state action which is more conservative than liberal.

There’s an internal tension in his thought between activism and the time-honoured conservative style of governance where keeping the ship of state afloat is much more important than what direction it’s pointed in.

There is also no doubt whatsoever that his instincts are socially conservative, and that’s demonstrable in this campaign through the sotto voce appeal to the ‘traditional family’.

But it’s more than possible for Abbott to be a conviction politician and not have a strong sense of how he would like to transform Australia – John Howard was at his least conservative when he succumbed to the vision of the largely former leftists among the culture warriors commentariat.

So, aside from real social and economic differences in outcome which can be anticipated from the result of this campaign, whichever way the choice goes, the ideological heritage and instincts of the two leaders will make a significant difference to the way the nation is governed over the next three years.

The big problem with this campaign is not an absence of differentiation, but the wrong sort of differentiation. In other words, the softly softly approach of electoral strategy has obscured what’s at stake, and will leave neither major party with a strong mandate to do what, in other circumstances, they might be inclined to do.

Cross-posted at The Drumroll.

Both major parties have announced policies that will be difficult to implement after the election, writes Ben Eltham in Inside Story.

BARRING a hung parliament, by Sunday morning we should know whether Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard will occupy the Lodge. Given how negative this campaign has been, it’s fair to ask whether either really knows what the first item on his or her agenda will be.

Sure, Gillard has said she will get on with the job and move forward, whatever that means, and Abbott has said he’ll install a boat phone. But in a broader sense neither leader or major party has outlined a particularly comprehensive plan that explains what they will do in government. And many of the promises they have made will be tough – if not impossible – to implement.

Let’s start with the Liberal Party’s twelve-point “action contract.” Point four is “stopping the boats.” It’s a slogan of populist xenophobia which makes many Australians cringe, although it seems to play well in the outer suburbs. But how plausible is it, really?

To accept that Abbott can “stop the boats,” you need to believe a number of things.

Read more on what Ben has to say about this and other major party policies here.

British historian Tony Judt died last week. CPD fellow Ben Eltham turns to Judt’s monumental career to find out what’s missing from this federal election campaign.

As Judt argues in Ill Fares the Land, the stage-managed and media-centric nature of modern election campaigning is not just the product of a televisual and multi-mediated society. It’s also the result of a fundamental suspicion amongst voters about whether modern elections actually mean anything. With the end of the Cold War and the exhaustion of the great political conversation of the second half of the 20th century, politics in Western democracies has settled down a smaller, more modest and more pragmatic affair. As left-leaning governments like those of Tony Blair and Bob Hawke and Paul Keating implemented privatisations, tariff deregulations, industrial relations liberalisations and other pro-market, pro-globalisation reforms, many of the really big questions about how we should structure our society went by the wayside.

Read the whole post here.

Ben Eltham – CPD Fellow – asks what really happened now that climate change bills are dead in the water on both sides of the Pacific.

Published in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed on 29 July 2010.

Who killed the climate bills?

John F. Kennedy, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, once said that “victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.”

Not so climate change legislation, which has now failed in both the US Congress and the Australian Senate.

Both defeats can claim many parents: climate change skeptics, conservative politicians in opposition, well-funded lobbyists, vested interests in industry, the complexity of the proposed bills, the failure of international negotiations, and the complacency of ordinary citizens.

To read more click here.

Ben Eltham writes:

Schools policy is back as an election issue. In the past week, both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have promised parents tax breaks for education expenses. Labor’s policy was relatively modest, allowing parents to claim for school uniforms on top of their current allowances for things like laptops and schoolbooks. The Coalition’s announcement was more generous, allowing parents to claim for government and private school fees.

It is the tax break for private school fees that has generated much debate. Understandably, independent and religious schools welcomed the announcement. Public education advocates were aghast, seeing Abbott’s policy as the beginning of a new Coalition attempt to privatise education or, even worse, as an attempt to introduce a type of voucher system for the public funding of schools.

Meanwhile, conservative education commentator Kevin Donnelly has claimed that Labor will renege on its pledges to maintain support for private schools. Donnelly wants more Commonwealth funding for these schools, not less.

For those seeking genuine public policy discussion in this election campaign, the re-opening of the schools debate is a welcome development. It gives us the chance to revisit the current arrangements for federal funding of schools, and to examine whether there is a need for reform. This is sorely needed because, on any rational analysis, schools funding is a mess.

The way the Commonwealth and state governments fund schools in Australia is poorly understood. That’s not surprising, because the current system is complex, opaque and politically charged. There is a maze of different policies and formulas, as this excellent policy paper by the Australian Council of Educational Research’s Andrew Dowling points out. Funding is fragmented between the Commonwealth and states and territories, and across the system, with different formulas and policies in place for government, independent and Catholic schools.

Public schools are chiefly funded by state governments, while the federal government shoulders the bulk of the responsibility for private schools and universities. State governments also fund private schools, however, and the Commonwealth contributes smaller amounts of funding to state schools – and there are many quirks and inconsistencies in the way the various formulas are calculated and applied.

But sound policy has rarely been the primary motivation when it comes to Australian schools funding policy. As Andrew Dowling observed in his ACER paper, despite the many different systems for channelling funds to schools in this country, “none operate in unison and none calculate their combined effect.” Dowling concluded “there is no unified system for gauging the existing resource levels of schools” and that “consequently, there is no understanding of the real levels of need that exist at individual schools.”

If the funding system is complex, the results are all too clear. Elite private schools boast gleaming new classrooms, libraries and sports facilities, while government schools are increasingly run-down and dilapidated. And yet, such is the level of public debate about schools policy in this country that the Rudd government’s highly successful schools stimulus program was viciously attacked by the Opposition and many parts of the media for being wasteful and unnecessary – despite findings by the auditor-general that principals of primary schools (the focus of the audit) were overwhelmingly pleased with their new buildings.

The huge dollars now flowing to non-government schools in Australia means that the increasing privatisation of schools in Australia is actually a kind of accounting trick. While many independent schools look, feel and claim to be private, they actually receive the vast bulk of their funding from the taxpayer. As Lindsay Connors has argued: we really have two public school systems: one with some hefty co-payments by parents, and an under-funded version run along traditional lines. The result is an increasingly inequitable and unfair education system.

What hasn’t had much attention in the campaign so far is the fact that schools funding is up for review if Labor returns to government. Although the party is desperate for funding not to become an election issue, the very fact that the Review’s terms of reference – released earlier this month by the education minister Simon Crean – will “draw from the best available evidence from Australia and around the world” must have wealthier independent schools worried. If the aim of the review really is, as the Government says, “to be fair and transparent and not advantage one system over another,” then almost by definition they are in for some reduction in their funding.

In the meantime, with analysts like Kevin Donnelly dominating the schools debate in this election campaign, the media has focused almost exclusively on the interests of private schools — which teach just 30 per cent of Australian students.

This is an edited version of an article which first appeared on Inside Story. Read the original article here

The fact that the Coalition have chosen to focus in on these concerns is not a reason not to discuss them (for fear of giving some sort of aid and comfort to partisan enemies, as some would have it) but just a reflection that opposition politicians can read the public mood as well as Government members. We do have a real problem of democratic legitimacy in this country, at a time when the social bases of parties has atrophied and they have turned their backs on participatory democracy, choosing rather to privilege a narrow range of members of a political caste, whose reward for failure is often a highly paid corporate gig.

I myself would like to see both primaries for candidate selection (trialled at state level by the Nationals in New South Wales and Labor in Victoria) and an electoral college for the Leaders of the major parties. I think that there is no doubt that a narrow basis for selection within caucus and party room leaves leaders more vulnerable to the shifting sands of polls (often misinterpreted by the media) and to campaigns mounted by powerful vested interests.

It may well be, as Guy Rundle argues, that – as in the case of Gordon Brown – a model such as UK Labour’s makes it unduly difficult to remove a leader who’s proved to be a failure. But Brown’s problems stemmed as much from the fact that his legitimacy suffered because he had been anointed in an uncontested leadership election. One could easily envisage a less complex method of revisiting a leadership decision which nevertheless still enjoys greater legitimacy. And, crucially, I’d argue, making the electorate for party leadership broader and less reliant on the climate created by the media noise machine and by the fears and herd mentality of MPs would reset expectations of leadership, and create a different political situation.

I believe it would be a better system.

Julia Gillard could leave a lasting legacy by moving to involve the Australian people and party supporters in a much more direct way in the grave question of who leads us.

The UK Labour Party’s electoral college processes are outlined in this House of Commons Library research brief.

I think these matters are worthy of serious discussion, at some remove now from the extraordinary events of last Wednesday and Thursday. As an additional prompt for debate, I’ve excerpted some of a piece by Ben Eltham published at The Drum today, which I think encapsulates nicely what’s at stake. Read on over the fold.

If you need a snapshot of where politics is at in Australia in 2010, consider this: while top mining executives have the phone numbers of senior government ministers, ordinary voters don’t even get to vote on who the Prime Minister is.

You can of course quibble with my analysis by pointing to Australia’s Westminster tradition, in which the convention holds that Prime Minister must enjoy the support of a majority of the Parliament. On this measure, Julia Gillard clearly has a constitutional right to hold office.

But this ignores the fact that Australian election campaigns get more presidential every term. Political parties might reserve the right to change leaders at their whim, but when it comes around to election time, they campaign hard on the leadership qualities of their key figurehead. In 2007, it was the Australian Labor Party that created and championed “Kevin07″, and it was Labor who made much of the ambiguity created by John Howard’s announcement he would step down for Peter Costello sometime before 2010. Hypocrisy is often taken for granted in politics, but we should remember that every lie and every deception subtracts a little more trust in our democracy.

It’s a point made well recently by Jeff Sparrow, when he writes that “ordinary people are more disenfranchised from the political process than in any time in a generation. The institutions and structures that once allowed Joe and Jane Sixpack a degree of policy engagement beyond a few minutes in a ballot box have been atrophying for years.”

While the grassroots of political parties wither, the vested institutional and corporate interests within them continue to flourish. The Constitutional role of the Senate, for instance, was originally framed as a chamber of states’ rights and executive review. Nowadays it is the easiest path to power for machine politicians from the major parties, who can scheme their way to an unassailable spot on a Senate ticket, thus giving a Nick Minchin or a Mark Arbib a six-year seat in Parliament without the tedium of representing a district in the House.

If last week’s events show anything, they show the need for renewed efforts towards constitutional and electoral reform in Australia, particularly the need for primary elections for political candidates and more opportunities for direct democracy. Whatever the other flaws of US democracy, at least there voters have the right to directly choose their head of state. Registered voters can also participate in primaries to select their party political candidate for a particular election. It’s a far cry from the branch stacking and backroom machinations so favoured by the New South Wales Labor Party.

Reviews have been underwhelming.

The debate was apparently difficult to follow under the hashtag #penrithdebate, and the filtered stream shows that it wasn’t particularly illuminating.

A number of points can be made about this ‘innovation’:

(a) Twitter has a very small footprint among Australian social media users, and various surveys have demonstrated that most people who set up a Twitter account rarely or never use it. It’s also very far from being the micro-blogging or messaging platform of choice for teenagers, despite all the usual misunderstandings about “digital natives”. In Australia, as far as politics goes, it’s been taken to heart by political tragics and journos, whose widespread distaste for the blogosphere has been overcome by a medium where their ‘brands’ ensure that they’re easily able to hoover up the most followers.

I very much doubt any considerable number of Penrith voters were watching, or participating. To the degree that this sort of thing will have any electoral impact, it will only be insofar as it feeds into media and political perceptions.

(b) Although techno-utopians and the more excitable will claim that this is some sort of harbinger of the future, politicians are always much more likely to see social media aspects of campaigns as add-ons rather than core vehicles for messaging. For this reason, and because those who are Tweeting are a very select portion of the electorate, claims about direct democracy are also radically over-blown.

(c) Again, despite the stereotypical way various media platforms are discussed, newest isn’t always best. Anyone who’s followed any of Crikey’s election live blogs, which use software which enables the panel to be highlighted, and which update in a more elegant fashion, and which provide for a more detailed and focused discussion, might well conclude that an online debate might be more productive on a blog than via Twitter.

Elsewhere: Stilgherrian and Ben Eltham.

Go read!

It’s being billed as an opportunity for Wayne Swan to save Kevin Rudd, which I think is pretty hyperbolic (and it’s always interesting to contrast the journosphere’s attack on the government for hyperbole with their own commentary). But there is no doubt that what’s anticipated to be a “no frills” statement is now of more political importance given what’s been happening recently in the polls. While the concept of the “Budget bounce” is now somewhat discredited – given the public disinterest in the latter years of the Howard era in responding positively to the ritual handouts – the ALP will certainly be hoping that tonight is the first step on the road to political recovery.

Wayne Swan will be hoping both to cement Labor’s reputation as economic managers (and the current turmoil in world markets and in the Eurozone will no doubt be used as a point of contrast with Australia’s fiscal and economic position) and to use the opportunity of a set piece speech which has a large unmediated audience to convey a message which will concentrate minds on the case for the Government’s return. So there probably will be no huge surprises, but it’s being tipped that some major announcements in skills and training will supplement what we already know about the Government’s intentions in health and super and other policy areas.

The Budget will also shift the dynamics of the political debate, leaving the opposition with no further wiggle room on policy and finance, unable any more to say “wait til the Henry Review and the Budget”. The former excuse has also run out of steam, with the previous suggestions that the opposition itself would use a resources rent tax as a pot of gold for promises falling victim to their jumping on the cynical mining industry bandwagon (along with the corporate cheerleaders among Labor premiers).

Similarly, the Government will be trusting that an improved fiscal outlook will defang a lot of the rhetoric about “debt and deficit”, and enable Labor to get back onto the front foot. A virtue will be made of austerity, with Swan no doubt about to claim that he’s eschewing the big ticket spending that Costello/Howard budgets sought to lure votes with in election years.

It will be interesting to see whether Wayne Swan, as I suggested he should, also addresses the question of what the Government can do to maintain living standards for electors, and in this context, the personal tax cuts and lifting of thresholds and the Low Income Tax offset may feature prominently.

Tony Abbott will be under great pressure in his reply on Thursday night, because we’re about to get to that part of the electoral cycle where the negative message has been pushed about as far as it can go, and he has to come through with some sort of idea of what sort of Government he would lead.

There’ll be a surfeit of instant commentary, no doubt, and you might like to take a look at Crikey’s live blog, whose cast of thousands includes John Quiggin, or the Twitter hashtag #budget. Ben Eltham also has a worthwhile preview at New Matilda.

I’ll save my further thoughts on the Budget for a more considered look some time over the next few days.

Elsewhere: John Quiggin in Crikey [paywalled].

Update: Peter Martin says that Swan will announce a return to surplus in 2012-13.

Tim Dunlop has a great piece at The Drum [h/t Lefty E], arguing that:

Such a negative response to those issues points to a deeper problem in Mr Abbott’s general approach. It is no secret that — to some extent as result of his own hubris — the PM is not well-liked amongst the media that covers him. Thus, Mr Abbott’s aggressive, mocking approach to Mr Rudd has played well to that audience. Mr Abbott has, understandably, revelled in it.

What he should take away from today’s debate, though, is it is not the media he has to impress. What he has to realise, is that if he is really going to cut through and win the trust of the voters — rather than merely consolidate his so-called base — he is going to have to do more than dispense good one-liners on a beach somewhere wrapped in red cling film.

That nails it, I think. Throughout this term, the Liberals have mistaken public support for the adulation of the commentariat, and much of the ‘media narrative’ reflects nothing more than the navel gazing of the opposition/journosphere. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that constant carping, arrogance and rudeness are turnoffs with voters, how ever much op/ed writers want to cheer on the ‘pugilistic’ Direct Action Man and his supposed mad debating skillz.

Trevor Cook is also on song, starting by recording his amusement at the somersaults and permutations the press gallery have executed to explain away The Worm, and going on to characterise Abbott’s style aptly:

The fact is that Rudd was better prepared and better disciplined. His messages were better targeted (let’s fix the problem) and he never got flustered. Abbott appeared to have nothing to say, except a few lame one liners about Rudd. Rudd looked relaxed and on-song, Abbott looked like he was forcing it, working too hard for a laugh (they all back-fired) and waiting for the moment to throw his killer punch (never happened).

Abbott’s so-called great debating skills amount to nothing more than a sneer and a shout from a schoolyard bully. We saw it with Nicola Roxon and Bernie Banton in the last election campaign, and he tried to do it today but it just didn’t come off. Like all bullies, Abbott is just bluster.

This debate revealed, again, the main flaw of Abbott’s make-up as a politician – he lacks policy substance. He has none of the grasp of Rudd, Howard, Keating or Hawke. He just hasn’t spent much time wrestling with ideas and issues. Policy development can’t be done in a surf contest or a bike marathon. That’s why he can come up with a crazy idea like the parental leave scheme which taxes business to pay the salaries of people on $150,000. He just doesn’t ‘get’ what his party stands for.

Please add any interesting links in comments, and I’ll add them later on.

Elsewhere: Bernard Keane at The Stump, Ben Eltham in New Matilda.

Update: The Drum wraps the opinions of health policy experts on the debate.

Update: Croakey, with more health policy experts finding the debate underwhelming. I’m not sure all those in the thick of the policy debate really understand political communication. The point of an exercise like this is not to convey every aspect of the detail, or respond to any conceivable operational or technical question. Indeed, if Rudd had gone into policy wonk mode, as Abbott perhaps expected him to (forgetting the ‘Kevin from Queensland’ style from 2007), it would have been a disaster. This debate was about politics, and also about explaining the basics of the plan to the public in terms which resonate. That’s an absolutely basic step in securing wide support for any complex reform, as the negative experience of the ETS should demonstrate. I think some of the wonks need to get outside the wonksphere a bit.

Update: John Quiggin predicts Tony Abbott will be the new Lara Bingle.