- The Guardian
- Issue #2133
Australia will have an election very soon. It could be as early as 12 April. So what’s on offer?
As this edition of the Guardian, the Workers’ Weekly goes to press, we don’t know exactly when the election will happen, but of course the ‘race calling’ – speculation about who’s going to win over any consideration of policies – has already started (for some media outlets, it never ends).
Both major parties have started work on the beauty contest that is Australian bourgeois politics. The Liberal-National Coalition and its media allies are engaged in an attempt to make their leaders look more relatable, with a sprinkling of stories about Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s marital difficulties when young, and frontbench Jacinta Price’s struggles with addiction.
Labor, on the other hand, seem to feel that not being Peter Dutton will get them over the line, so they’re talking about him a lot. Our Weasel Words writer has had a gutful of ‘We’re not Peter Dutton’ emails. Stand next to Dutton, Labor thinks, and you’ve won the beauty contest.
The Guardian knows better than this. We know that it’s not about how relatable or charismatic our politicians are. What’s on offer as far as policies go? We’ll start with the differences (it won’t take long).
From Labor, we are offered better messaging on Climate Change, and some photogenic attempts to ‘greenwash’ a party that has expanded fossil fuel output more than the three Liberal PMs that came before it. There are also some improvements in worker conditions, to measure against Labor’s attack on effective unions like the CFMEU (see page 3 for an update there).
From the Coalition, there is a nonsensical commitment to developing nuclear power, an obvious delaying tactic which will see more use of coal and gas. The planet can’t afford that, but Coalition donors will be happy. There are also what’s being nicknamed ‘Temu Trump’ efforts from Dutton – opposing pro-merit Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies and encouraging more discrimination against trans athletes. For people interested in policies that actually affect the majority of working people – you’re out of luck. Oh and there is the prospect of tax breaks on lunches only the very wealthy can afford. Dutton seems to hope that we won’t notice that this policy only helps the very wealthy and vote Coalition because we think big lunches are good.
The Coalition’s policies could be summed up as “nasty nonsense,” the ALP’s as “nowhere near enough, if not actually bad.” On some issues, they’re on a unity ticket. Either major party will guarantee really expensive subservience to the USA. Both the ALP and the Coalition will place the interests of large corporations ahead of those of the majority of working Australians.
The Communist Party of Australia knows that democracy is not something that happens once every three or four years. It’s something that has to be engaged in and fought for. This paper will continue to report on the real issues that the beauty contest leaves out. If you support our work, write in, subscribe, donate to the Press Fund.
The beauty contest will go on, but there’s a lot of real work to do.
