Politics

The clear message of the 1990 election was that disunity is death in politics. Bob Hawke easily capitalised on this truism to win a fourth term in office. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, had been torn apart by the leadership contest between John Howard and Andrew Peacock and this rancour followed them all the way to their loss on polling day. We arrive some 30 years later with no lessons learnt.

The election campaign is off to an early and intense start. There was no need to wait for the governor-general to dissolve the house – Morrison stopped governing months ago and has been swamping the media with taxpayer-funded ‘government’ ads that are blatantly about returning the Liberals to power.

A triumvirate of longstanding party operatives, apparently representative of the left, the right and the soft-right, has been legally empowered to bypass democratic preselections, anoint a few favoured sitting members, and appoint candidates in a plethora of outstanding seats. Two of these people happen to be the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the premier of NSW, Dominic Perrottet.

The priority is simply winning. And it is not even about winning to lead, it is about getting the position and power but with little or no commitment to creating a meaningful future for our nation and its people.

In fact, the Coalition is in such a spiral of self-destruction that earlier this year Labor pulled back on its social media spend. The explanation was simple: ‘The government is doing all the work for us. ’

Talk about mixed messages on the economy. The government deliberately politicised the budget by moving it forward to March 29, so it could be delivered before a May election, and having set aside $16 billion in the most recent midyear economic statement for pre-election spending.

The equivalent of a political nuclear bomb hit South Australia last weekend and its shockwaves are reverberating through the nation. Blown to smithereens are the notions that the Covid-19 pandemic is a guarantee for the survival of incumbents or that opinion polls are not tracking the real mood of the nation.

Have you heard of the five-by-five rule? Whenever something gets you down, you’re told to ask yourself a series of questions: Will it matter in five hours? Will it matter in five days? Five months? How about five years?

We have now entered the territory where governments throw policy integrity to the wind. That is, we are in the final days leading up to the so-called caretaker period, which starts from the point that the election is actually called, and during which governments are prevented from making any policy decisions.

There’s not much doubt about it: Labor’s Anthony Albanese is messing with Scott Morrison’s head. The prime minister knows he has the fight of his life on his hands – and so far, he’s losing it.