There are some things that haven’t been ignored this election: babies, old Julia, new Julia, Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, pretty much all past Labor leaders, maternity leave, Alexander Downer, John Hewson, Peter Costello, debates, the seat of Lindsay, asylum seekers in the seat of Lindsay.
You may have also noticed that, despite this campaign being anything but boring, it has also not been about many things. Here’s a few to ponder:
1. Childcare: The debate around childcare seems to have been sucked up by that of parental leave. But we shouldn’t forget that children will need somewhere to go when their parents go back to work and, short of running for the LNP in North Queensland, they may have to be put somewhere. Labor rolled out Kate Ellis to try and sell their broken promise on this earlier in the year. But despite the Government going back on their promise to build 260 new childcare centres, the Coalition haven’t talked much about it either except playing with the indexation of the rebate.
2. Indigenous policy: Well what’s new you say? Nobody ever much cares about indigenous policy? I don’t see you writing about indigenous policy so don’t be such a hypocrite you tell me. All true. But for a Government that came in and apologised to the stolen generation and made promises on closing the gap, they are strangely mute on this issue. This may be because it could involve using footage of Kevin Rudd doing something worthwhile. There’s also something called the intervention still going on which nobody much talks about anymore.
3. Carbon price: There was a chance that back at the beginning of this year there was going to be an election fought on this issue. Then there was a deal on a CPRS. But the Coalition then held their own little election on this point and Malcolm Turnbull was dumped. Now Tony Abbott says he’s not going near one and Julia Gillard just mumbles it under her breath when talking about stupid citizens’ assemblies:
Journalist: “Did you just say you would like a carbon price?”
Gillard: “No, I said ‘I really like basmati rice.’ This press conference is over.”
3. Foreign affairs/International relations: Has anyone heard about foreign policy this campaign that doesn’t include dumping the boat people in Timor or Nauru. Granted it’s not an issue that really matters for domestic votes, but with Keating, Howard and Rudd there was some discussion of Australia’s standing in the world with regards to foreign policy. You’d usually expect something on national security, Asian engagement or this little war in Afghanistan we’re currently in.
4. Internet filter: This is an odd issue. If you just hung around the internet all day you’d be excused for thinking that all you had to do was advocate the abolition of the proposed filter, the public quartering of Stephen Conroy and you’d win the election in a landslide. Most people however do have lives beyond their concern for internet freedom and frankly couldn’t care less; especially when its primary task is to stop child porn. Conroy was obviously concerned enough to announce pretty significant concessions to the filter prior to the campaign. Hockey said recently that the Coalition would dump the filter, but hasn’t made too much noise about it lest he be labeled a big soft freedom loving hippie. Which also indicates he realises this is pretty popular with a lot of the Coalition’s constituency.
5. Cost of living: Remember how Kevin was going to help with the cost of living? Then he invented GroceryWatch and PetrolWatch? They were then massive dogs of policy and they both got scrapped? Well that may indicate why both parties are keen to distance themselves from the cost of living debate, because when you talk about it you are now implying you can do something about it.
6. Hospitals: For a while we were told this was an issue Kevin Rudd would stake his re-election on. Then we found out Kevin Rudd wasn’t to be re-elected. Now you hardly hear Julia Gillard talk about the monumental health deal that Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon struck. Maybe it’s because they realised that nobody understood what the hell Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon were talking about. Tony Abbott released a hospital plan of his own, but it was really pretty aspirational stuff, the same thing he used to slam Kevin Rudd for.
7. Housing affordability: Despite the fact Wayne Swan and Joe Hockey are continually comparing the size of each others interest and inflation rates, there seems to be an incongruity between the concern about housing affordability amongst voters and how often it is discussed in this campaign. Housing affordability was mentioned in passing during the treasurers debate, but there’s been no discussion of the usefulness of doing anything with market mechanisms like the first home owners grant.
8. The homeless and socially disadvantaged: In the lead up to the last election and during his first term of Government Kevin Rudd made homelessness a personal crusade of his. Now any discussion of the homeless and socially disadvantaged has completely disappeared from the campaign. And what about the poor and uneducated people who are euphemistically referred to as “lower socio-economic groups”? As an editorial in The Australian pointed out yesterday “entrenched intergenerational, social and economic problems in indigenous communities and other welfare-dependent sections of society have been largely ignored in this election.”
Anyway this is just a eight, what do you think?
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