What went wrong (Part 4)

Continued from What Went Wrong? (Part 3)

Part 4 – The Present

At the beginning of this series, I asked a simple question:

What went wrong?

I began with the optimism I felt when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and Kevin Rudd became Australia’s Prime Minister.

I thought perhaps the world was changing.

Then came the years of Abbott, Morrison and Donald Trump’s first presidency.

The optimism disappeared.

Institutions were weakened, international cooperation was questioned, and science became politicised.

Government increasingly seemed concerned with political survival rather than the long-term public interest.

Then came Joe Biden and Anthony Albanese.

For a while, it seemed as though the reset button had finally been pressed. Perhaps democracy had corrected itself. Perhaps governments had remembered what they were supposed to do.

And then Donald Trump returned.

Trump – the second time around

Trump’s second presidency is different from his first.

During his first term, there were still people around him who believed in the traditional machinery of government and the importance of institutions.

This time, the assault on those institutions appears much more deliberate.

And that brings us back to the central question running through this series:

What happens when a government decides that the institutions designed to restrain its power are obstacles rather than safeguards?

We are beginning to see the answer.

Tariffs and the cost of living

Trump’s economic philosophy has been built heavily around tariffs.

The argument sounds attractive: Make imported goods more expensive, encourage Americans to buy American products and bring manufacturing jobs home.

But economics has an annoying habit of refusing to obey political slogans.

A tariff is essentially a tax on imports.

And someone eventually pays that tax.

It may be the importer.

It may be the manufacturer.

It may be the retailer.

But some of the cost can ultimately find its way to the consumer.

The problem becomes even greater when America’s trading partners retaliate.

American farmers and exporters can find themselves caught in the middle as foreign markets become more difficult to access.

The irony is difficult to miss.

A policy intended to protect American workers can end up making life more expensive for American consumers.

And once again I find myself returning to a principle that has run through this entire series:

Good government should make people’s lives better.

It shouldn’t merely give people somebody to blame when they become worse.

Health care

Then there is health care.

America has some of the world’s finest medical facilities and professionals, yet millions of Americans have struggled with the cost of obtaining medical care.

The Affordable Care Act improved access to health insurance for millions.

The Biden administration subsequently expanded subsidies for people purchasing insurance through the ACA marketplaces.

Those enhanced subsidies have now expired, increasing insurance costs for many Americans.

The question isn’t complicated.

Who pays when government withdraws assistance?

If the answer is ordinary families already struggling with the cost of living, then we need to ask whether government is solving a problem or simply moving it somewhere else.

The environment

Climate change provides another example.

America cannot negotiate with the atmosphere.

Neither can Australia.

Neither can China.

Neither can Europe.

The atmosphere doesn’t recognise national borders.

Yet Trump’s administration has again moved away from many environmental policies established under previous administrations.

That concerns me because climate policy requires continuity.

Building a clean-energy economy isn’t a four-year project. Neither is adapting infrastructure to a changing climate, nor is protecting water supplies, agriculture, forests and coastal communities.

These are problems that require governments to think beyond the next election.

That was one of the lessons I learned during my years in the public service. Some problems cannot be solved within a single political term:

• You prepare.
• You plan.
• You build.
• You maintain.

And you allow those who come after you to improve what you started. That is what government is supposed to do.

When the power of the state comes onto the streets

Perhaps the most disturbing developments of Trump’s second presidency have involved immigration enforcement and the increasing visibility of federal power on America’s streets.

ICE has become a highly visible presence in American communities.

Immigration laws must, of course, be enforced.

But democratic government has another responsibility: ensuring that the exercise of state power is lawful, proportionate and accountable.

When enforcement operations result in people being killed, those questions become unavoidable.

The issue is no longer simply:

Are they legally entitled to be here?

It becomes:

What limits should exist on the power of the state?

That is a question every democracy should take seriously.

And then there is the National Guard.

Thousands of National Guard personnel have been deployed in American cities, including Washington, D.C., as part of the administration’s efforts to combat crime.

The administration says these deployments make communities safer.

But if soldiers are being placed on the streets of American cities, we should expect evidence that their presence is actually solving the problem.

Because there is a difference between being seen to act and actually solving a problem. A very big difference.

And perhaps that is the lesson we should have learned from history.

Democratic governments possess enormous power, and that power must always be accompanied by restraint.

Otherwise, the machinery designed to protect citizens can become machinery used against them.

Meanwhile, back in Australia

And now we come home.

It would be extraordinarily hypocritical of me to spend three parts of this series examining governments in America and Australia and then pretend that the Albanese Government is beyond criticism simply because it is Labor.

It isn’t.

In fact, this is where the story becomes more complicated.

The Albanese Government has achieved things I support:

• It has made medicines cheaper.
• It has invested heavily in renewable energy.
• It has expanded TAFE opportunities.
• It has introduced measures aimed at reducing the cost-of-living burden.
• It has legislated climate targets.
• It has increased wages for some of the lowest-paid workers.
• And it has achieved a number of things that deserve recognition.

But achievement isn’t the same thing as adequacy.

And that is where my concerns begin.

The problem of urgency

Australia’s housing crisis is perhaps the clearest example.

The government has set an ambitious target of building 1.2 million homes over five years. But targets don’t house people. Houses do.

For a young Australian unable to afford a home, the housing crisis isn’t an economic statistic.

It is their life.

For a family paying enormous rent, it isn’t an abstract policy debate.

It is whether they can put food on the table after paying the landlord.

For older Australians watching their children and grandchildren struggle to find somewhere affordable to live, it is deeply personal.

And yet governments continue to speak about housing as though the solution is always just another announcement away.

The same applies to productivity. Australia needs to build things.

• We need infrastructure that works.
• We need reliable and affordable energy.
• We need housing.
• We need skilled workers.
• We need an efficient public service.
• We need long-term economic planning.

And we need governments prepared to make difficult decisions rather than simply announce another program.

The problem isn’t that the Albanese Government has done nothing.

It clearly hasn’t.

The problem is that the scale and speed of some of Australia’s problems seem to be greater than the government’s response to them.

The disappointment

And that is where my disappointment with the Albanese Government comes from.

It isn’t because Labor has done nothing: It is because I sometimes wonder whether it has done enough.

Too often, government seems to move at the speed of politics rather than the speed of the problem.

Housing is urgent, productivity is urgent, energy is urgent, and the cost of living is certainly urgent.

And Australia’s strategic circumstances are changing rapidly.

Meanwhile, the public is expected to have patience, but people who cannot afford a home cannot pay their rent with patience.

People struggling with their electricity bills cannot pay them with patience.

Young Australians carrying enormous student debts cannot pay them with patience.

And people waiting for essential government services cannot be told indefinitely that reform is coming.

Government exists to govern – not merely to announce.

Where does that leave us?

And so here we are.

Four parts into this journey.

I began with the hope I felt when Obama and Rudd were elected.

I watched that hope disappear during the years of Abbott, Morrison and Trump’s first presidency.

Then Biden and Albanese came along and gave me reason to believe that perhaps democracy could correct itself.

But now Trump is back.

And Australia has its own problems.

The reset button may have been pressed.

But pressing a button doesn’t necessarily repair the machine.

Perhaps that is the real lesson.

Changing governments is not the same thing as changing the system.

A new president or prime minister can change policies, they can change priorities, and they can repair some damage.

But the forces that influence politics don’t disappear simply because an election produces a different result.

The corporations remain.

The powerful remain.

The media remains.

The vested interests remain.

And, increasingly, so does the anger of people who feel that mainstream politics has failed them. That anger matters, because when people lose faith in their government, something has to fill the vacuum.

And history tells us that it isn’t always something benign.

There are political movements waiting to tell angry and disappointed people that the problem isn’t merely a particular government. The problem, they say, is the whole system.

They promise simple answers to complicated problems.

They identify enemies.

They offer someone to blame.

They tell people that the institutions of democracy are corrupt, that experts cannot be trusted, that immigrants are the problem, that minorities are the problem, that elites are the problem.

And sometimes they tell people that democracy itself is the problem.

Perhaps that is where we should go next.

Because if we really want to understand what went wrong, we need to understand what happens when ordinary people stop believing that the political system represents them.

And that brings us to the next part of this story.

The rise of the far right.

Continued tomorrow…