Politics

As politicians look to exploit the fringes, and governments are reluctant to implement reforms, what chance do Indigenous issues have? Yet these questions are fundamental to who we are as a nation, as a people: identity, the legacy of history, the challenges of diversity and pluralism, whether government can be truly representative.

Labor has been the frontrunner in the published opinion polls for the past three years. This week was no different, with the tightening since the election was called reaching a plateau. But Bill Shorten has supplied a powerful campaign moment in an otherwise lacklustre affair. He spoke emotionally about his mother Ann’s life and its key motivating force for him. It was in response to an attack on him, and her career, in several Murdoch papers. And it is a development that has rebounded badly on his opponents.

In any other election, Australia’s headline economic figures would have the incumbent popping champagne corks. Twenty-eight years of uninterrupted economic growth, unemployment at 5 per cent, record-low interest rates and a budget in balance are close enough to a beautiful set of numbers. But the disconnect between the economic data and people’s sense of economic wellbeing has rarely been larger. And this economic ennui is proving fertile ground for both parties to push very different visions for the Australian economy and what the government’s role in it should be.

How much easier would life be for Scott Morrison if he was a Liberal prime minister seeking his third term in government? He could point to the delivery of an agenda outlined back in 2013 and his leadership of a united, cohesive team of senior ministers who have mostly delivered and become household names. Sadly, for Morrison, that is not his reality, and it is showing. He dare not mention the war.

Where once ‘the environment’ was just one political issue among many, years of inaction have brought on a state of paramount urgency. As David Attenborough put it recently, ‘If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.’ Change is coming. Every election is now a climate change election.

Just when many of his troops were beginning to believe Scott Morrison’s Easter prayers might be answered, their hopes were shattered by Barnaby Joyce. The New England MP has form in derailing Liberal prime ministers when they appear to be making headway – just ask Malcolm Turnbull. The $79 million water buyback imbroglio had been simmering for more than a week, ever since The Project on the Ten Network picked up the work of business journalist Michael West in a major report.

The nation will soon head to the polls with public integrity a higher-profile issue than perhaps ever before in Australian history. The two major parties, however, seem to be the last people in the country to realise this. Trust took a dive not only because citizens suddenly felt unsure that their vote mattered. It was also the flip side – concern about the failure of due democratic process and the role of undue influences over the decision-making in Australia’s highest office. This is the message the major parties seem to have missed.

Peter Dutton’s war chest to save his seat is believed to be in the vicinity of $1 million. He refuses to say how much he is spending but his face is splashed across every billboard in Dickson. A Labor insider says, ‘We are delighted to see his visage everywhere.’

Of all his holdings, Murdoch has always loved his papers the most, even if some are money pits. His empire began with the inheritance of his father’s papers, Adelaide’s The News and its Sunday edition, The Mail. Now he controls two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation in Australia. He publishes the only national broadsheet, The Australian. As in the US, and in Britain too, he has used his papers in Australia as political bludgeons.

The prime minister seems to have decided the best way to win over voters is to treat them like mugs. ‘Their problem,’ one Labor strategist says of the government, ‘is the voters aren’t as dumb as they think.’