There’s a high-risk derivative of the time-honoured “Secret Santa” that has become quite popular in recent years. All the carefully (and not so carefully) selected gifts are pooled and one by one participants get to select and open a present. They then face a choice: keep the present they’ve just opened or forfeit it and go for another, the contents of which are unknown but with which they will be stuck.
Ornately wrapped, carefully presented gift boxes adorned with bows and baubles are, unsurprisingly, first picks. But they don’t often yield the best results.
However, it’s human to be tempted by the promise of something better, to be lured by the illusion of a grander prize.
And it’s exactly what many Australians experienced just a few months before Christmas in 2007.
Here was a shiny new ballot box option – polished, presented and tempting with a literal cornucopia of promises. Each grander than the next. Rudd was political tinsel at its shiniest.
The Howard Government by contrast was so practical, so familiar – like a brown paper package tied up with string (and who apart from Julie Andrews finds that alluring?) Besides, Australians were generally comfortable enough with the personal bounty of gifts under their own trees – the risk of the electoral Secret Santa did not seem too great. Hey, why not, they might get something better?
Two years on, having scrambled through the mass of tinsel, shiny bauble promises and tissue paper spin, it’s become apparent to many Australians that the box is actually empty. It was all about appearances. It was all about being new and glittery – not actually offering anything substantial.
While list-making is a seasonal sport, I won’t go into Labor’s litany of broken promises, economic failures and lack of action. It would be much longer than Santa’s list – and heavier on the naughty than the nice.
So I’ll just give you a few examples from the portfolio I held for the past 14 months, Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth.
Remember the highly-publicised pre-election promise to build 260 new childcare Centres and end the dreaded “double drop off”? Despite building thousands of “Julia Gillard Memorial Halls” in schools around the country (even those that didn’t want or need them) only one of these Centres is operational, only 38 have been budgeted for and the promise to build the other 222 has disappeared as quickly as a stash of batteries on Christmas morning.
Before the election Rudd shouted from the chimney tops that vacancy data on childcare be released publicly, so the industry would know where there were shortages. Not once has this information been released on Rudd’s watch – despite the fact it is now collected every single week (it was last released in April 2007 under the previous Government). Hmmm…not exactly what those who reached for the shiny Rudd present would have expected.
Ditto on the promise of “universal access” for preschool – which we now learn does not mean free preschool…but means handing close to a billion dollars to Rudd’s Labor mates in the States and Territories who created the problem in the first place.
OK – but what about that promise of making childcare more affordable? That was a biggie. That had a lot of parents saying “I’ll take the political tinsel”. Well, Labor’s ideologically driven changes being forced on the industry mean that childcare is expected to actually rise substantially – some estimates say as much as $40 per week. And the Minister has admitted that parents will foot the bill.
These are the same parents who probably found the promises of cheaper petrol and cheaper groceries very appealing as well. And that’s worked out, hasn’t it?
I could go on – but it is the season to be charitable. And I ought to point out that the shiny Rudd box was not completely empty – oh no – underneath all the packaging was a substantial bill for each and every taxpayer. Like a dodgy Christmas marketer, Rudd has been the master of the “spend now, pay later” mentality.
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