Pearls and Irritations

It must be so disappointing to be in the left faction of the Australian Labor Party.

First, its guy, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, is not being very left of anything. Second, a progressive agenda seems to have popped off the list of anything important. Third (wimps), members of the left faction aren’t criticising their guy, at least not in public.

For a team which loves pouring shit on everyone (OK, OK, that’s not exclusive to them), they are remarkably, silently, silent. They have given up their ability to critique their leader and surrendered that privilege to the Greens and to the Coalition. Honestly, it’s much better to do it from within because the target is less defensive then. I think.

Instead we have a cranky, controlling — and yes, conservative — prime minister who is not living up to the hopes and dreams of his constituents. He’s even made a few captain’s calls. That’s not very — ah — progressive.

Why does this matter for Labor in both the short term and the long term?

Young people are progressive. That might irritate their ageing parents and grandparents, but that’s just the way it is. And here’s the other thing. Young people aren’t ageing the way their parents and grandparents did. While Boomers, Gen X etc became more conservative the older they got, this lot aren’t doing that. If Labor wants to stay in power (which it barely is now because of the Senate), it needs to get a wriggle on in the progressive department.

Just ask the ANU’s Ian McAllister, one of the wranglers of the Australian Election Study, a national survey of political opinion conducted after each federal election. He explains it so clearly. The electorate is moving to the left. That’s the trend – and that’s driven by younger people moving to the left. Moving to the left and staying there. Those younger people are soon to be middle-aged (soz, it happens to the best of us and the rest of us).

But McAllister says they are staying in their (left) lane.

“Younger people are getting into their 30s and are not shifting through to the centre and the right. A lot of that is driven by less secure employment and housing. They can’t get their foot in the housing market,” McAllister says.

So it’s hard to nail exactly which of these is the most irritating area of a lack of action, but let me give you a shortlist – feel free to add anything I’ve missed. Also I can’t expand everything because apparently I have word limits. And sure, the list’s order will vary depending on who you are but let’s start here:

• Negative gearing, capital gains tax, housing and the whole damn mess
• Gambling
• Taxing gas exports
• AUKUS
• Census

I’d like to think I’d have been a good landlady, but considering it takes me a year to get a bung stovetop fixed in my own house, I’m not all that confident. While I’m constantly getting emails from people who tell me they are outstanding landlords, I’m sure they could still be outstanding without negative gearing (or at least not to the extent it currently exists). Let me point out that people who have investment properties still have their investments and they will still make money – just not at the expense of first home buyers. I asked Hal Pawson, professor of housing research and policy at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, if changes to negative gearing would make housing more affordable. Prices wouldn’t shift much, he says, but there would be a progressive, cumulative impact on the housing market over time because it would reduce the advantage investors have at auction.

“One person bidding now has a big tax advantage and the other doesn’t,” he says.

There are so many ideas to fix this problem and all Albanese says is nope, nope, nope. Which I’ve heard elsewhere.

Now you know how the government keeps telling us it needs to be fiscally responsible. Here’s something the left of the Labor Party could do – tax the people who are stuffing the environment.

As Dan Cass, executive director of Rewiring Australia, says: “The gas industry is in a death spiral and, if left to its own devices, will use every trick in the book to suck public subsidies and ride on the back of people who don’t have enough upfront cash to invest in superior rooftop solar and household electrification.

“We need to tax gas fairly and properly but also give households — especially poorer ones — the financial means to get off gas and share in Australia’s renewable energy bounty.”

Speaking of issues where the left of the Labor Party seems to have barely raised a whimper? My God, AUKUS. So much money for nothing.

“We don’t need nuclear-powered submarines and we are not going to get them, anyway,” says Emma Shortis, senior researcher in international and security affairs at The Australia Institute.

Gambling? Peta Murphy told the government what it needed to do to protect Australians. We don’t need a single other authority than that singular homegrown Labor pathfinder to understand what we need to do.

Oh, God. Nearly forgot the captain’s call, the complete embarrassing fiasco of the census. Of course, we should count the needs of the rainbow along with the straight bow and everything in between. People need specific services just as old grandmas need specific services. Sending out poor old Andrew Leigh to take the hit and then backflipping. Truly pathetic.

Why isn’t the left of the Labor Party having an absolute meltdown about all these issues? It (they) should be because otherwise, at this rate, your bloke won’t last. That’s not an idle threat. It’s what the data on voting trends says. And if his own fam won’t step up, it will mean everyone else has to. That won’t be pretty.

Republished from The Canberra Times, September 27, 2024

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