Saying the quiet bit out loud

The LNP’s current member for the seat of Flynn in the federal parliament is Colin Boyce, formerly the LNP member for Callide in Queensland’s state parliament, He is aligned with the National Party. Boyce has recently been in the news for telling

a group of climate science deniers that blackouts were “a big political opportunity” and that he had urged fellow MPs to adopt a “do nothing strategy” that would allow power outages and build opposition to net-zero policies.

on YouTube. He went on to say

“The ‘do nothing’ strategy is a tough love strategy where people will not understand what’s happening until the lights go out.

“When the lifts in the building stop working and the supermarket shelves are empty because the refrigerators aren’t working, that’s when all of a sudden people start to realise.”

Later, Boyce was asked a question about potential power outages and he responded by saying: “It’s a big political opportunity for that to happen.”

The Coalition’s climate policy seems to be prolonging the use of coal fired power stations as long as possible and likely beyond their economic life, propping up a failing system with what is the most expensive form of power generation – gas – until the potential introduction of nuclear power in the 2040’s. There are a number of logistical problems with the introduction of nuclear power. Australia doesn’t have a lot of ‘corporate’ knowledge in the construction and regulation of nuclear power plants, there are lengthly timeframe and cost of construction challenges as well as just a few legal issues. On top of these hiccups, there is also the problem where scientists are telling us that we need to reduce emissions now – not in 20 years time.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton doesn’t seem to be a big fan of renewable energy. There are doubts if he actually believes the science around climate change. Surely a backbencher letting the cat out of the bag on what could really be the Coalition climate policy probably isn’t what the LNP powerbrokers really wanted to hear.

If the opinion polls are to be believed, the Coalition will not be forming the next Australian federal government. No doubt tens of thousands of words will be written and spoken about why the ultimate result occurred after the event. It is interesting to note that Dutton’s Coalition were competitive or even winning opinion polling until a few months ago. Is the change because the Coalition has released very few detailed policies? Are they expecting us to ‘trust’ them (telling us how they intend to govern after the election) or is the reality that they have developed nothing different to the policies that Morrison took to the 2022 election? 

Dutton’s policy light approach should be compared to then Coalition Opposition Leader John Hewson’s Fightback! 650 page manifesto for the 1993 election where he was soundly trounced by the ALP’s Paul Keating. In a similar way, former ALP Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s complex web of policies contributed to his loss in the 2019 election won by Scott Morrison. Since then it has been noticeable that political parties have been reluctant to present detailed policies as it gives the other political parties ammunition to shoot the messenger. Has Dutton gone too far the other way?

If so, it’s a shame really. In the last day or so, Dutton expressed an aspiration to legislate to eliminate ‘bracket creep’ in our income tax rates. Tax rates are currently based on income levels so if your wages go up, there is a chance you’ll move to a higher tax bracket and your wage increase is swallowed up in additional tax. Apart from the unfairness to almost all wage and salary earners over time, the policy would go some ways to enforce some financial discipline on governments as there wouldn’t be an automatic increase in revenue as peoples wages increased but the tax brackets didn’t. The theory of creating fairness in the taxation system didn’t worry Dutton too much last Wednesday night during the Leaders Debate on ABCTV. One of his more successful attacks on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was if the government had asked for or received modelling around alterations on altering the currently unfair capital gains tax legislation and the ability to negatively gear unlimited investments in certain classes. Another one for politics over good policy.

It’s probably a disadvantage to all of us that the quiet bits aren’t said out loud. Given Boyce’s audience at the time, his viewpoint was probably received well until someone leaked it into the wider community. At a bare minimum, the rest of us need to be aware that members of the Coalition still think that coal is the future in electricity generation. If Dutton had developed a policy to eliminate tax creep and sold it well over the past three years, is it possible he would have better polling numbers with two weeks to go to the election? Likewise if Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers had developed a policy to reform taxes on investments, why not admit it last year when Chalmers claimed he sought ‘a view’ rather than ‘a proposal’ from Treasury about the proposal?

Arguably Hewson and Shorten were more courageous than Dutton to their ultimate detriment- they said the quiet bit out loud and didn’t reap the benefit. However Prime Minister Howard’s ‘never ever’ GST was taken to a subsequent election (which he won) and was implemented. The Australian public is clever enough to work out good versus bad when policy is well developed and explained. Maybe we should be given the chance to actually hear what the various contenders for power intend to or would like to do, rather than the sanitised and stage managed campaigns where each day has a theme, designed solely to win points from ‘the other guys’.

 

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