The Aussie Election: a response

One of my favourite blogs is written by my brother in Singapore. If you want an intellectual critique on the politics and culture of south east Asia, in particular Singapore, then this is one of the best. In response to a post of his about the just completed Aussie election (which can be found here) I wrote the following response:

To an extent I think you are correct however 2 important things to note are:
1. In Western Australia the liberals won 10 compared to 4 for Labour with 1 seat remaining undecided (SWAN which is 50.01% to Labour as I write this). WA is the powerhouse of the Australian economy and the region where the benefits of macroeconomic growth has been best felt. Additionally it is where the AWA's (WorkChoice) were best utilised as the Mining Companies has to negotiate favourable terms to keep running. This flowed on to other industries so that in the NW school cleaners, who are on AWA's, can earn more than the teachers who are on EBA's negotiated by the Unions.

2. This was not an issues based election. There were no defining issues that separated the parties. Some will note climate change as an issue but didn't try to understand the Liberal policy which was very similar to Labour if you take out signing Kyoto. Some might say the IR laws was the defining difference however again the Labour policy has shifted so far from it's pro-union roots it is closer to former Liberal policy than not. The election was won by taking the emphasis away from the party and onto the individual. Australians are weary of Howard/Costello more than they are of the Liberal party policies. For this reason the Labour party ran a presidential style election campaign where the focus was on Kevin Rudd and not the Labour party. The advertisments were always a comparison of the two leaders - young and fresh versus old and stale. That this election was the "Me too" election bears out this fact. "Me too" on policy but "Look at me" on personality. People were weary of Howard/Costello and the only way to change was to change government. With the opposition saying, "We'll keep doing what they were doing," it made the decision easy for a lot of people. The proof will be in the coming months as we will see if the Labour party really has moved to a centrist position or whether it was simply using Rudd as the acceptable face of a still union dominated party.

You talk about the same fate befalling the former BJP dominated Indian government. I wrote about this at the time and noted that the economic upswing certainly improved the lives of many people, but the majority of Indians were still not middle or upper class. They were/are rural villagers or urban slum dwellers. They could see the impact of the upswing around them (fashion, increase in cars, increase in costs, etc) but they have not experienced it. They are the majority voters. In Australia's case most people are better off than they have every been at any time in the past. Unemployment is down, interest rates are still relatively low, people are living longer and generally get bored more quickly than ever before. It will be interesting to see how long Rudd's sheen lasts. I wish him well.

NB:AWA - Australian Workplace Agreement (individual); EBA - Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (collective)