The Australian federal election of 2016 is by far the most boring I’ve seen. By a long shot.
It’s a vapid squabble over the middle ground, a contest over which flaccid version of “fiscal contraction” is more believable, more moderate.
No wonder the political centre is collapsing. Closed due to lack of interest.
Centrist politicians are no longer relevant to the battlefronts of politics, which out in the community are drawn along social and cultural lines, no longer economic.
Sometime after the 1970s, both sides of Australian politics settled on free-market liberal democracy as the backbone of our economy. And so did the vast majority of Australians.
The state-ownership left lost control of the Labor party and the agrarian socialists were increasingly marginalised on the right.
Now politicians of the economic centre – such as Turnbull and Shorten – struggle to disagree, and their attempts look disingenuous.
Who believed the Shorten-Bowen “tough decisions” routine this week? It wasn’t tough, it wasn’t even a decision and the only thing remarkable about it was how obviously the press conference announcing Labor’s cuts to welfare had been engineered.
It was a response to a focus group: “We need to say something about ‘tough decisions’”, a party pollster would’ve said. And Shorten and Bowen really looked like they were spinning a message. But in campaigns, you can’t hide. People get it, sooner or later.
On the other side of the election, Turnbull is struggling. It’s hard to drum up a groundswell of positive public sentiment with a mantra of business innovation lifted from an episode of Silicon Valley.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Mandurah Mail last week: “...I think the real Malcolm Turnbull is a middle-of-the-road person”. Faint praise that wasn’t entirely praise.
These days, practitioners of the do-or-say-anything centre just aren’t conviction politicians.
Those on the left and right at least look like they believe in something, which to many is more important than what they believe in.
People are sick of political charlatans. This partly explains the phenomena of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the United States. People have flocked to both men because they believe whatever it is they say. Building a wall to keep Mexicans south of the border might be crazy, but at least Trump believes it.
It seems centre politicians are doomed, unless they can say something relevant and believable.
Unless they can, people better get used to Penny Wong and Cory Bernadi being the most relevant Australian politicians.
Nathan Hondros
Senior Journalist for the Mandurah Mail, Australian Community Media, and Fairfax Media.
Senior Journalist for the Mandurah Mail, Australian Community Media, and Fairfax Media.
