How many doughnut days is it now? Former Victorian premier Dan Andrews could tell the prime minister a story about how quickly treats turn to flab. The premier, who won the dubious honour for his state of world’s longest cumulative months in lockdown during the pandemic, celebrated days with zero new COVID cases by posting triumphant pictures of glazed pastries. A minute on the lips, forever on the hips. The grinning premier left the state groaning under debt incurred in achieving those sweet nothings.
It’s a salutary tale of misplaced positivity from a mate our prime minister used to room with. You can tell a jolly story and sell a jelly bun, you can’t hide the consequences of economically damaging decisions behind spin, debt behind accounting trickery, or dodge accountability forever.
That’s a lesson Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to take on board as he pivots towards positivity. Albanese wants to tell an optimistic story about the economy based on how he feels about the policies of his government. At every opportunity, he rattles off his government’s list of achievements. But the prime minister’s optimism isn’t infectious. The overwhelming majority of voters believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Albanese can tell people his government is setting things right, but they can feel we’re going wrong.
This leaves the prime minister trying to emote with the electorate’s pain, while at the same time implying it’s mistaken. As anyone who’s ever told an irate spouse that they’re overreacting can tell you, that’s an extremely dangerous opinion to venture.
He presses on, nonetheless, telling voters they have no one to turn to. One Nation is, he says, all over the shop – and he’s got a point when he tries to co-brand the entire other side of politics as a “coalition of chaos”. But he’s missing what the continued strength and accumulating victories to One Nation say about him and his government.
Voters aren’t stupid. They are not blind to the fact that One Nation isn’t a fully fledged political contender. The incoherence of the party as it tries to morph into something nationally competitive in real time is on display every single day.
From the South Australian One Nation MP Jason Virgo who tearfully declared that he is gay, has a Muslim boyfriend and “loves migrants” in his maiden speech after winning the seat of MacKillop, to Mike Newman, the former finance industry executive and trade bureaucrat who broke into fluent Japanese (to Pauline Hanson’s great consternation) while announcing his candidacy for the NSW seat of Cessnock, One Nation’s search for candidates is taking the party away from its traditional base.
Its staffing decisions are counterintuitive, to put it mildly. It sensationally hired Chris Taylor, a former Liberal staffer and long-time policy wonk at the Australian Banking Association as Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff and policy lead, bringing a deeply institutional sensibility into a key strategic role of a party whose voters hate institutions and big corporations.
And since becoming One Nation’s first elected lower house federal MP, David Farley has regularly strayed into flirtations with both the Liberals and Labor.
Ask three One Nation representatives what the party stands for and you’ll get five different answers.
At this point, One Nation doesn’t even know itself any more. Nobody really knows who it is. And yet voters are happy to vote for an empty chair – an electoral cipher – over the establishment parties.
The party might be incoherent, but the message voters are sending is not. If you can’t trust the government to govern effectively, there’s no cost to electing someone voters know can’t for sure.
Victorian Labor was able to go on digging itself into debt and scandal for as long as it did because the Liberal Party in that state couldn’t hold it together to mount an effective opposition. So it dug so deep that holding it together was no longer a prerequisite for being considered an alternative.
Now the voters of Secret Harbour in Western Australia have picked “dangerous, divisive and dishonest” – as Labor describes One Nation – over government by positive affirmation. And the only way Albanese can make sense of it is to blame it on social media algorithms.
It’s all the more extraordinary that Albanese is choosing a sprinkles-side-up approach to glazing over problems at the very same time as the Victorian Labor government is being forced to own up to its follies, which are so similar in many respects to the direction its federal counterpart has taken.
The dire state of Victoria has been shaped by the economic theory that Albanese is now rolling out for the nation: a debt-fuelled charge into heavily centralised government, public service growth and lashings of Big Union.
Since stepping into the role of Victorian premier, Ben Carroll has put the state on a diet. He announced a royal commission into corruption and misconduct in the state’s building sector – effectively an investigation into the construction union. Ministers who have stepped down have not been replaced. The responsibility for transport infrastructure and the Suburban Rail Loop are back in the broader roads and public transport portfolio. Agencies full of bureaucrats have been cut to save the state some money. He’s abolished a secret tax on commuters. Public servants have been ordered to be more careful with money. Perhaps most symbolically, Carroll has scrapped plans for a bronze statue of the master of the positive narrative, doughnut king Dan Andrews.
It probably won’t save Victorian Labor at this election. It certainly won’t save enough money to pay down the debt Victoria is carrying. But it may be the start of a reputational repair job that will have to take place before Labor can ever be considered a contender in future.
Instead of patronising Australians with political positivity, federal Labor might try some of the same. Chaos isn’t an alternative to voters who are confident that their government is up to the job of guiding the country. Upbeat words are just the icing on top.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She is also an advisory board member of Australians For Prosperity, which is part-funded by the coal industry.
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Parnell Palme McGuinnessis an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She is also an advisory board member of Australians For Prosperity, which is part-funded by the coal industry.
