The Politics Of Small Differences

Cassandra Wilkinson is a columnist with The Australian. She is also an author, strategy consultant and co-founder of FBi Radio and a regular commentator for Sky News Agenda, The Bolt Report and ABC TV’s The Drum. On Tuesday13 August, Cassandra Wilkinson joined Brad Orgill in a discussion for The Sydney Institute over the ideas to challenge the next generation.

THE POLITICS OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

                                                                   Cassandra Wilkinson

There is a popular narrative at the moment that all social progressives should put aside their differences and collaborate to beat the conservatives.

I would like to challenge the idea that there are any conservatives – as we traditionally understood that term – in this race at all. Equally there are no serious progressives, in that there are no significant parties committed to large scale reform of government, the economy or society. Labor, Liberals and the Greens are all social democrats. There is no large party in the nation which supports a fully planned or fully free market.All support a mixed economy; a substantial role for the public sector in key services especially health and education; ad hoc industry subsidies in particular for the automotive industry; and a National Broadband Network.

None enthusiastically support the free movement of labour and capital, as their various commitments to limiting immigration, foreign investment and property ownership by foreign nationals attest. None propose major changes to the tax and transfer system.

There is no party that proposes major changes to get the government out of private life or insist on more personal responsibility. All major parties to varying degrees support: the growing influence of the public health lobby on food, drink and recreation choices; restrictions on personal risk taking in sport and play; post GFC rules to curb business risk taking.

No large party will significantly change the welfare state. All are committed to extending Medicare into dental care; introducing Disability Care; the so-called Gonski funding increases to primary education; a growing role for taxpayers in aged care.

Given none have proposed significant changes to Medicare, that’s 40 per cent of the business of government quarantined from change. Depending on your view, that’s either proof that all parties are pretty conservative or equally convincing proof they are all pretty progressive.

None have plans to substantially change defence or foreign policy. So what we are left with is what a cleverer wit than me recently called the narcissism of small differences:

–     Small changes to some recipient’s jobseeker requirements and increments to payments

–     Final mile changes to the NBN

–     Disputes over the value of parenting and childcare payments but no party promising less

–     A junk food policy being reported as a health plan

And a few people on boats dominating the headlines that are mysteriously devoid of coverage of the 27 per cent youth unemployment rate.

A two speed politics

In my better moods, I see the convergence of political agendas as a fitting reflection of the cohesion of our nation. We are a united people with broadly shared goals. The parties’ unanimity reflects the shared values of the population.

In my darker moods, I think there’s an element of truth in this, but it is starkly at odds with the broad view that the parties are out of touch with voters.  Surveys of voters suggest they crave a better kind of politics. One explanation for this is that just as we have a two-speed economy, we have a two speed politics.

There are those for whom the basic economic problems of life have been solved – they have homes in the inner cities; jobs; good quality public hospitals and schools. Their Maslow’s hierarchy needs are for a politics of identity. For these people gay rights and asylum seekers matter more than tax policy.

At the other end are people in the hour commute zone; people with disabilities; people on the unemployment line. For these people the cities feel full; the jobs feel taken; the services are manifestly inadequate. These are the people:

– who can’t pay the rising price of inefficient monopoly rents in electricity;

– who can’t pay the additional parent contributions to public schools; and

– who can’t pay for the desalinated water that wasn’t needed.

For these people, business-as-usual government is not working. These people need reform. These voters, these citizens, don’t need a new political narrative or a vision or a charismatic leader. They need government to get much better at the ‘business as usual’ activities which have been absent from political debate.

Business-as-usual government

What do I mean by business-as-usual needs to be better?

The health budget has grown by the size of an entire state budget over the last decade. But we still haven’t resolved whether it makes sense for the Commonwealth to manage GPs while the states manage hospitals given how this distorts access and affordability. Or given the expensive substitutions between GPs and emergency departments which see patients who can’t afford a $20 co-payment roll up to a crowded emergency room; or the growing costs of co-payments which have made our out-of-pocket expenses twice as high as in England or France.

In education, billions more are being promised by all parties with very little detail about methodology.

One example is the issue of reading, which has been a highly contested area of policy and on which none of the parties have a clear position. Methods such as phonics-based learning or reading immersion have a large literature associated with their efficacy. The recent decision of the New Zealand government to discontinue Reading Recovery hasn’t been widely debated – even though the parties and the media have devoted thousands of hours to the Gonski funding packages.

If there is a superior method for learning to read, thousands of children would benefit more from a change to business-as-usual practices than from marginal increments of additional public funding.

Meaning versus method

I am sympathetic to the view that we need values based politics. I am also sympathetic to what is often called progressive politics. I have written many paragraphs in support of the carbon tax, gay marriage and asylum seekers.

However, I am despondent about the relative profile of these issues versus the large tasks that remain fundamental to delivering dignity and opportunity for the majority of Australians.

First and foremost are jobs. A job is the fundamental condition of economic and social participation. The Australia Institute says it’s the biggest issue for young people in this election. Which goes to show they know more than we often give them credit for. The unemployment rate is now at its highest level since September 2009. The rate for youth is 27.3 per cent, the highest it’s been for 15 years.

Australian governments have been spending money on employment programs for a century. There is a large body of expertise in economics and policy fields about what works and what doesn’t and yet no party has a clearly articulated theory of the problem accompanying a detailed set of reforms with clear goals and KPIs.

Questions that bear more discussion include the role of apprenticeships and training, readiness programs, vocational education policy and school retention schemes. At the other side of the debate, what barriers to employment can we remove, from business regulation to taxes, that discourage people from relocating their homes.

The second most pressing policy challenge from a social equity perspective is the unaffordability of housing. There are now no affordable suburbs within a half hour commute of our major cities. Over the last ten years, NATSEM figures show house prices grew by 147 per cent while household income rose just 57 per cent – housing is the key reason people feel they are not benefiting from years of economic growth.

Housing costs are influenced by lots of factors – not all can be influenced by government policy but some can. An incomplete list includes planning laws that add months and often years to development time adding cost and uncertainty which makes finance more difficult and final prices higher. Land supply has been a problem, with many sites sterilised to win approval from existing residents.

Failure to fully develop our transport corridors is raised every time there is a major infrastructure inquiry but remains largely unaddressed. Standards creep from environmental rules like BASIX to aesthetic guidelines all impact price.

Yet no party – large or small – has a plan to restore affordability to the housing market. No party can claim to be a champion of either equity on the left or opportunity on the right if average income earners can’t live within a reasonable distance of jobs and services.

Conclusion

I propose that a genuinely progressive agenda should focus on the people in the second speed politics. They need us to do better on the boring basics of growing jobs, reducing the cost of housing and bringing down the price of essential services like health care, transport and electricity.

It’s easy to give a big speech about equity, children and justice and then announce a hike in mining taxes to pay for a better future. It’s much harder to chart a course for what Sir Michael Barber called, “the relentless pursuit of incremental change” – which is the daily business of reforming governments.

Indulging the politics of small differences is a recipe for the continuing growth of big problems.