James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree

Yes it’s odd, isn’t it? I read as many as 28% preferred him as PM ???????
I understand the top 1% supporting coalition government objectives (i.e. Murdoch, Rinehart, Triguboff, Lowy, Forest, Packers, Pratt, Lew & other executives, etc.). They are after all a party of primary support for the wealthy. I can comprehend the top 10% on the economic scale supporting the government financially (i.e. Property & Land Developers, Construction groups, Software & telecommunications, Media, Betting, Agriculture, Food, Banks, Mining & Oil companies, large Retailers and even large right-wing churches, etc), assuming they have no social conscience. As this is a government that pays back its supporters by supporting their financial interests. Look at the intricate web of scandals with ICAC over Developer’s bribes to Liberal party members. So this support for Abbott reaching in the top 10% financially enriched of the population, holds some degree of objectivity from a self-interested perspective. There are people associated with or in this group who, rightly or wrongly, believe there is a trickle-down effect, or have aspirations of becoming part of that 1% demographic, whose financial interests would be served, were they to reach that point. Again, self-interested parties predominately. Understandably perhaps they believe in Tony Abbott’s Australia.

Conservative following

There is a portion of people either from the aforementioned families or belonging to a conservative ideological perspective, who follow in their family’s footsteps and are largely influenced – for reasons little else then – this is the way they have always voted. There is no particular strength of intellectual inquiry involved in that decision. They are more probably disengaged with politics completely, and some take pride in doing so. Of course, this latter type of group belongs to both sides of the political divide. And speaking of the political divide, there are they that swung their vote to the Liberals because of the dysfunction and corruption within the Labour Party. (Given the size of the swing against the Liberals in the last few State Elections, it is probably safe to assume the vast majority of these have regretted their choice.) It’s hard to guess what percentage these disengaged voters are represented by, that still support Liberals but most polls show ambivalent and undecided voters as small single digit figures.

Economic under-performance

It is hard to imagine what other elements of the population that the liberal party serves. Their record after one year of the “Adults” being in charge, is dismal. It is, in fact, severely under-performing. Economically, consumer and business confidence has slumped as Westpac continues to advise. The decline in the Aussie Dollar (the lowest since 2010) and the “weak pace of growth momentum” and “sharp declines in the term of trade” still concern our Bankers such as Westpac. The value of the all ordinaries on the Australian Stock Exchange has fallen and consumer confidence has collapsed. Unemployment is at the highest level in a decade and the government debt has doubled. Let’s not even discuss the false budget emergency or the cuts suffered by everything from the ABC to our children’s education or the removal of major revenue streams (mining & carbon taxes – around 6.5 billion) including the failure to collect taxes from 30% of the countries largest companies. The Hockey budget wanted cuts suffered by everything from the ABC & SBS (despite promises to the contrary) thru CSIRO and science funding (which contribute 145 billion to our economy each year), our aged pensioners and all the way down to our children’s education, medication, disability and legal protection. Of course the continued UNCUT subsidisation of mining & fossil fuels, wealthy superannuation packages, negative gearing, religious organisations (Catholics) could have killed off the “emergency deficit”.

Having a quick look at the list, there are lots of areas we can whittle a bit off here or there to find some slack that doesn’t involve penalizing the poorest amongst us:

• excessive tax cuts to richest –> $15.8 billion (per year unless stated otherwise)
• fossil fuel subsidies –> 10 billion
• superannuation tax concessions –> $36 billion in FY15
• capital gains tax discount on home –> $19 billion to FY18
• capital gains tax discounts for individuals and trusts –> $28.3 billion in FY18
• imputed rent exemptions –> 9.6 billion in FY12
• mining industry subsidies –> 4.5 billion (fuel $2 billion)
• negative gearing –> 6.4 billion
• first home vendors grants –> 1 billion
• private education –> 7 billion ($36 billion over 09-13)
• private health insurance rebate –> 5 billion ($2 billion in 1999)
• housing 2500 boat asylum-seekers overseas instead of in Australia –> 4 billion.
• religious organisations –> 40 billion (2008 best estimate of $31bn + CPI)

Instead, Abbott removes the much smaller subsidisation of the car industry which generated 200,000 jobs and $30 billion into our economy, to allow the Chinese & Japanese vehicle manufacturers to dominate our transport markets – which oddly Abbott is so fond of as a means of transportation.

Who’s left to vote?

So the quandary one has to ask oneself is, why is there close to 28% of the population (aside from certainly the top 1% and maybe as much as 10% of income earners, which I do understand) feel the need to vote against their own best interests. What is the intellectual process – if there is any – that occurs for these people that encourage them to continue in their current voting pattern, given the manner in which the political process has mismanaged the social & financial economy this year. Is it merely a matter of ignorance about the state of the nation or misdirection by right wing oligopolies that control the media? (i.e. Murdock) Surely they can’t all be fascists, OR racist OR angry unemployed bogans raging against the perception that jobs are being taken by foreign nationalities & refugees OR the pretentious bourgeoisie of prosperity doctrine bound right-wing church demographics that rage against the sins of left-wing thinkers who support gays, indigenous people, refugees, disabled folk and the rights of women. Is this from what the remaining approaching 18% of Tony Abbott’s support is constructed? Is this a situation resolved by education & rational discussion or are these entrenched values of this group beyond the possibility of rethinking their values? As higher education grows more swiftly beyond the reach of the hoi polloi because of progressive deregulation of the education market, is entrenched ignorance and resilient attitudes of folk who feel the need to “Reclaim Australia” the future support of the Liberal Party?

White Australia as people appear both hedonistic and politically disengaged and strangely proud of the fact. Being apolitical as a point of pride is not allowed by our oversea’s brethren.  People from without who have had to struggle, face discrimination and encounter death and torture in the political process are less willing to be so complacent.  Australian by in large have no real experience and little sympathy with that struggle as evidenced by their unsympathetic reaction to refugees.  While I have lived overseas in the midst of a political revolution, I am a multigenerational Australian and a bit of a rarity I suspect.  My wife and I were both educated at Private schools, brought up by Conservative families. My wife has an MBA to add to her other four degrees, (I’m less educated with only three). We are self-employed although both have significant histories of working for the private sector and public sector employers (in Transport, Banking ^{{-me only}}, Insurance ^{{- her only}}, Finance, Mining, Education, Health), own our own homes and are not impoverished.  In many respects a middle-class nuclear church going Anglo family and yet despite being a potential LNP voting demography, we find ourselves at odds with the political climate in Australia.

Australians are often found following the example of conforming with the un-thought-out voting position of one’s family.  They are more often intransigent in their voting position, regardless of the situation or the facts available so readily in this contemporary age of internet access to information.  The “writing was very obviously on the wall” for what sort of a leader Abbott would be well before the election, so there is no excuse for this level of intellectual laziness other than to protest that for some inexplicable reason, one believed his lies.  Or that of Murdock’s papers which we swallowed uncritically and without considered thought.  So how do you engage this intellectually lazy population? Unfortunately, it would have to be suffering the leadership of an inherent sociopath/fascist like Abbott and experiencing the consequences.  A harsh lesson which our society will undoubtedly suffer from now and well into the future, as Abbott and his colleagues continue dismantling the infrastructure of our once egalitarian society.  Sadly, it is probably only in experiencing this pain, which we will generate engagement in politics.  Providing any of them a second term will most surely be irretrievably damaging as everything that provides a buffer against poverty and hardship is dismantled.

Okay, so you’re considering voting for the Coalition based on their policies? They are seeking a second term. How have you been thinking about this? Hope you don’t mind if I ask but which one of Abbott’s grand policies (that Malcolm hasn’t changed) was it that has maintained your desire to have either or any of them as your Prime Minister?

What could it be?

• Was the opportunity to drive up and down the new roads being built between and in our cities, despite the trend away from it in other western nations, while incurring higher petrol prices to do that?
• Was it that folks continue to enjoy prosperous employment opportunities, assuming of course you are not a public servant or work in manufacturing  or education or nursing, or public broadcasting, or air transport, public communications authorities or anything to do with conservation or climate management, because the Government “cuts” (of efficiency dividends) might put you at risk?
• Perhaps it was the opportunity to live a very cheap and free-spirited life on the streets for months of the year, should you be one of the increasing numbers of these unemployed people that Australia has now close to 2 million (or 800K if you follow the tightly statistically controlled measurement the government prefers you reference) people?  (Roy Morgan’s Stats preferred)
• Perhaps it was the opportunities available to you to get a higher education complete with a higher debt level for the rest of your life?
• Perhaps, if you’re a woman, you’re encouraged by their sensitivity and support for women’s issues in his role as the Minister for women, such as over 60,000 domestic violence cases, reduction in Shelters, fair & equal pay, misogyny and his support for you while you’re ironing your husband’s clothes?  Giving back $100M after you have taken $300M doesn’t count.
• Perhaps if you’re gay, you’re conscious of their awareness of homophobic considerations, and what support Abbott/Malcolm will – as a devout Catholic – provide for you?
• Perhaps if you’re a journalist, or blogger or involved in any information sharing role, it’s the extra security you feel knowing that you only have to write in support of “Team Australia” and that you don’t need to worry yourself about matters pertaining to the grubby issues of abuse of power and political corruption?
• Perhaps you’re a property developer or in construction, and you know that the money you donate to that third party organisation,  will unexpectedly turn out to be generous in passing on your largess to members of the Liberal Party?
• Perhaps you’re in the Mafia, and you know you have the best political party money can buy.
• Perhaps if you’re an artist, of any kind, you’re encouraged by the realisation that you have to go out and get a “real job” (perhaps in retail)  because there is no party policy or increased support for the arts from this government?
• Perhaps if you’re not an Australian born, you are aware of his stand on racist fear-mongering over wars in countries far across the sea, and his humanitarian bombs he is dropping on your relatives to forestall the tides of war that apparently intimately threaten us?
• Perhaps if you are a true Australian born – whose ancestry originates before white settlement – you’ll be aware of how conscious they are of your existence, and that of your ancestors in the wild Bushland that constituted the Australia Abbott talked of, before 200 years ago?
• Perhaps it was the chance to continue working far beyond what you once thought was your retirement age, and the increased insurgency of medical costs due to the increasingly diverse means of extracting a co-payment from you, that you will no doubt face as you get older?
• Perhaps it’s because of the preservation and conservation concerns his government has towards the ageing population of “copper infrastructure” that makes up our national network and ensures that we will never have to worry about being competitive with Third World countries like India and their high-speed Internet?
• Perhaps it is the opportunity he is giving other country’s companies to direct how we can legislate to protect our country’s interest, and in sure that we do not hinder their trade embargoes on cheaper medicines and the like?
• Perhaps it was from some perverse curiosity of just how far and how large the deficit could grow while the “adults” were in charge and perhaps to curiously observe whether the Treasurer will give yet another $9 billion away to the RBA in the hope that the Australian dollar does eventually collapse?
• Perhaps it’s because you know you don’t want to have those bastard refugees coming here and stealing your job, with the sure knowledge that they will be beaten and abused until they go back to where from they came?  Unless of course, they have a 457 Visa and then you are happy for them to compete with you for the 160,200 jobs that you and 800K (or 1,186K depending on which stats you follow) Australians have to compete with along with over 103K 457 Visa entrants?
• Perhaps it’s because you have a fluid relationship to things like reality, truth and lies, such that it doesn’t matter to you whether there is any truth in anything that Mr Abbott or Mr Turnbull says?  Perhaps you’re invigorated intellectually by the adroit and concise manner in which either of them inspired you in his speeches?
• Perhaps it’s because you had (even for a year) the opportunity to acquire a knighthood or be referred to as Dame so-and-so as you walk down the streets in your robes?
• Perhaps it is the international recognition he gives to important foreign dignitaries when he hands over our knighthoods to British Royalty and our “Order Of Australia” to Japanese generals.
• Perhaps it is his keen and scientific intellect that can find the minuscule faults in the science promoted by 99% of the world’s scientific community and with his sharp and insightful mind declare Anthropomorphic Climate change as “crap” or – in Turnbull’s case – only of “direct action” despite having previously thought that was “crap”?
• Perhaps it is his support for jobs in the Mining sector, which – even though it employs less than 2% of the Australia population – enjoys the benefit of the largess of billion in subsidies by this government?
• Perhaps his great concern over this minority Mining group losing their jobs is seen as indicative of his over all concern for industry labour markets that have the potential to employ far greater numbers.  For example such as the Renewable Energy sector that he is set on reducing!??

How fair is any of that?  I must admit, I am very curious to know which of these aspects have so captured over 40% of the population’s imagination and enthusiasm for Tony Abbott/Malcolm Turnbull that they are keen to give either another go at leading our country in the next term?  Perhaps some of you can help me out in understanding the issues?