It is all too easy to get stuck in ways to think about how the world works, often without even realizing the suspicions that frame our reviews of the world.
Sometimes a series of shifts in the underlying substance is needed to shock us from the tracks, sometimes only one seismic shift.
There are many of these well -known traces in the way we think about Australian politics, and about how it is reported. And the same often applies to economy.
A very obvious political rut is that the “two” party system is an inevitable characteristic of our politics, and that those “two” parties are the Australian Labor party on one side of the fence and the federal coalition of the liberal party and nationals on the other.
There are other ideas that you can still feel in the dynamics of politics, even if they are not said aloud as often.
These include the idea of the “natural party of the government” (the coalition); And that labor is a bad economic manager.
These ideas really took effect during the long 23-year-old reign of the coalition until 1972 during a benign economic period, and then in the often chaotic days of the Whitlam government that followed, amidst the oil shocks of the early 1970s.
But they are still resonating today.
The election loss of the coalition means that political assumptions must be evaluated again. ((ABC News: Matt Roberts))
The seats paint a grim image
Wrapping in the package are associated assumptions such as: The coalition represents a wide range of voters from the cities and the bush; that it is a “broad church” in the center of politics; And that it has ties with the business community that suggests that it is part of the “location”, for those voters who feel reassured by that idea.
And now, in 2025, what do we see?
A group of parties that are almost wiped out in our capitals in terms of parliamentary representation, which is challenged by independent in the bush because voters do not feel that they are being well represented; This has not only rejected membership, but also major structural problems in its organizations that have been adopted by religious and other groups in some states; That is pushed to the edge of conservative law; And that has a broken relationship with the majority of the business community the sector of the resources (and even that was torn by a thought -bubble gas policy during the election campaign).
But it has taken a certain kind of self-induced idiocy in the past week to really show people the coalition for the broken beast it is.
Consider the figures in the House of Representatives as posted by the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday (with the nail biting for the seat of Bradfield between a liberal and an independent to a margin of only four votes).
Labor has 94 seats and the coalition 43.
But within that coalition total, the liberal party has only 18 seats, the merged Queensland – the LNP – has 16 seats and the Nationals (NSW and Victoria) nine seats.
That is, the Liberal Party has only a few seats more nationally than the Queensland party (a completely different beast) and the NATS have the same number of seats as the collective independents.
The coalition has less than a third of the seats in the House of Representatives.
We have experienced a long period of very thin majorities and even minority governments. But given the balance in the number of seats waving wildly, so that you can never assume that it will always be that way.
But the last election campaign exposed the true decline of the quality and capacity of the parliamentary coalition – as well as its underlying party machines – to do politics and to do policies in a way, which cannot be assumed that this is only a temporary meat wound.
Nevertheless, the representatives seem to keep talking as if the problem is about tracing the loot of the office and power when they are largely irrelevant for at least the next three years.
Will the coalition provide useful input in policy discussions in the following parliament? ((ABC News: Matt Roberts))
The death disorder of peripheral parties
The Nationals argued this week that they took a position according to a high principle – or at least about four requirements. These were: support for nuclear energy; a fund of $ 20 billion for the regions; the breaking of the forces of the large supermarkets; And improved regional telecommunications guarantees.
Think about the origin of some of this policy. We can never be grateful enough for LNP senator Matt Canavan for setting up the public report that the support of the coalition for nuclear energy was only designed to get them from a tight place on emission reductions while it continued to support the power-fired power.
And the “Die on a Hill” support for this noble principle had disappeared this week to a possible Fallback position of “It would just be nice to get rid of the moratorium on nuclear” at the end of the week.
As a coalition source noted this week, nobody had heard from the regional Future Fund of $ 20 billion until about four weeks ago (although a similar fund was promised by Scott Morrison in the government as a way to sign up the NOTS for Net Zero … which they naturally also spoke about dumping).
The forces of supermarkets? Yes, well, that has been going on for a while as a problem without being clearly solved, despite countless parliamentary and regulatory studies about this.
And improved regional communication? Real? Yes, it can be important. But it was something that the Nationals – and in particular Barnaby Joyce – John Howard blackmailed about 20 years ago with some success, in terms of pushing Telstra to lift his game.
But does anyone remember the nns who talked about this problem about this issue at a recent time?
Customs in the media mean that the overwhelming focus of a lot of reporting since the elections is the future of the coalition as if it really mattered, and as if the disputes about matters of serious policy substance were rejecting instead of the Vechtingen as the death shoes of what is now effectively a group of small peripherals.
After the landslide profit of Labor, the parliament looks very different and it can be the crossbench independent, not the coalition that the government prints. ((ABC News: Brendan Esposito ))
The government has major problems in dealing with
Very little attention has been paid to what a government with a large majority could or should do.
The decision of this week’s reserve bench emphasized how different the underlying dynamics of the political and policy discussion will be in this government period, even before politicians, and changing parliamentary figures.
We have already been introduced in the “shock of the uncertain” that comes from the United States.
But the rates decision – and perhaps even more importantly the language of RBA gouverneur Michelle Bullock – shows the economy at a pivot point that will transform what we are talking about.
The first term of the Albanian government was framed by the need to tackle a global inflatoid shock, and the need to re -build an administrative sector of the government that often not only failed voters, but also the government capacity to set policy measures.
What is often overlooked or mocked, in those policy restrictions the opinion of both the government and the reserve bank was that they wanted to minimize the costs for the service of inflation, and the government also tried to tackle the long decrease in real wages, especially for the lowest paid.
This was always an ambitious cluster of goals, to say the least.
The decision of this week’s reserve bench confirms that they have reached the collective, not just broken the back of inflation.
“The strategy of the board has been to bring up inflation for quite some time, while a strong increase in unemployment is avoided,” Bullock said this week.
“This corresponds to our double mandate of price stability and full employment.”
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Although inflation has been the dominant challenge, the government’s chamber to maneuvering is limited and it has been the RBA that has had the most power over the economic levers.
That now changes. That does not mean that the government is getting wild with expenditure. But the risks that will be the most for the mind will be different: the risk of a slowing economy; The need to maintain stability and self -confidence – and to convey, especially considering what else is happening in the world.
The Pradep Phillip from Deloitte Access Economics told 7.30 am this week: “What we see now is a pivot of managing the cycle with things such as inflation to deal with the structural issues of the economy.”
There is also the question of what is happening elsewhere in the world. As the Bullock of the RBA noted: “There is now a new series of challenges that the economy is confronted with, but with inflation and the unemployment rate relatively low, we are well positioned to deal with it.
“How the rates will influence the world economy will depend on a few things: where the rates will settle after negotiations between the United States and its most important trading partners; how the other trading partners react; the extent to which global supply chains are disrupted by the enforced obstacles to the trading and the extent of trade and the extent can be trade and trade and trade can be trade and trade and trade can be trading and trade, and the extent of trade can be trade, and the extent of trade, and the extent of trade can be dealt with trade, and the extent of trade, and the trade can be dealt with trade, and the extent of trade, and the extent of trade can be dealt with trade, and the trade and the trade and the trade can be dealt with. and household tension. “
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Habits have to change
There is some legislation for the government to pass in the coming months. But there are major individual problems that need to be tackled, from a new net zero target to a revision of environmental processes and reform the energy market.
Many of the systemic changes that have started in the last term must be embedded or taken into action: from childcare to old care.
And finally, many people will want to see whether the slow process of increasing housing is finally bearing fruit.
Will the coalition offer useful input in one of these discussions? Or will the crossbench independent be the more thoughtful ginger group to press the government?
We were all shaken from the ruts of habit through these elections. Let’s hope our parliament can think outside them.
Laura Tingle is 7.30’s political editor.
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