AUSTRALIAN POLITICS IN THE LEAD UP TO THE FEDERAL ELECTION – TWO VIEWS GEMMA TOGNINI

In 2024, Australians appeared deeply divided with the two-party system reflecting widespread discontent. Independents and minor parties were affecting the preferential system as never before. Issues, however, seemed to be hardening – immigration, energy, the housing crisis and inflation adding to the cost of living crisis. On Tuesday 2 July 2024, Peter Van Onselen who is the political editor at Daily Mail Australia joined Gemma Tognini, consultant, social commentator and Sky News presenter, to offer their views on what sort of politics might influence voters in the lead up to the coming federal election.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS IN THE LEAD UP TO THE FEDERAL ELECTION – TWO VIEWS

GEMMA TOGNINI

I’m going to invite you to come on a little bit of a journey with me tonight – a game of compare and contrast. In this environment, everything that can be shaken and is being shaken. And you can apply that lens, and that view, to everything from the economy to our belief systems, in fact, everything that forms the mundane and the meaningful of our daily lives.

Come back with me two years, to September 2022. I was on holiday in Italy. Lucky me. I was on holiday, initially, for the first time after COVID, seeing my family. And it just so happened that the Italian elections were being held. I actually didn’t realise the elections would be on when I was there and happy days, because I spent that week, sort of semi on holiday, wandering around a little Italian town on the Tuscan coast called Lerici. Now, the history of Italian politics is a wild ride, but Tuscany is traditionally a left-leaning zona or a left-leaning region. The Italian resistance, the far left of the Italian resistance, was born in Tuscany. It’s still very much centre left and far left today.

I was wandering around Lerici the week of the election. I was talking to people –  once a columnist, always a columnist, even on holidays. I asked people what they thought of the economy, and how they thought things would go. The answers were really surprising. They were conversations that could easily be conversations happening in Australia today, in this pre-election season, whether it’s this year or next.

I happen to agree with Peter’s view. Anthony Albanese is very well wedged. He doesn’t want to go early because it’s risky, but the further he pushes it out there’s a conga line of manure heading towards the bloke. Some of it his own making, some of it is inherited, but it’s all heading in his direction. And he wears the hat that says Prime Minister, so everybody holds him accountable.

We all know the history of Giorgia Meloni, her Fratelli di Italia coalition was elected in 2022. And it was so interesting to watch the pearl-clutching and the hysteria from media outside of Italy. The Atlantic, for 22 September, had the headline, “The return of fascism in Italy”. Brilliant. The world Socialist Website, perhaps less surprising, reported “Neo fascist Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli D’Italia wins the general election”.

It was hilarious here in Australia. One glass of chianti and everybody seemed to be a geopolitical expert on Italian politics. People were saying the most ridiculous things, even in very respected mastheads. I was in Italy because my father was born there, and I went to both kindergarten and (briefly) university in Italy. The premier left-leaning masthead in Italy is called La Repubblica. It’s a left-leaning masthead. It’s probably not The Guardian, but it’s probably somewhere between the Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian. I’m trying to be accurate. This an Italian publication dealing with Italian politics in its own country. La Repubblica refers to Meloni as centre-right. She’s well-established as a centre-right politician. The doomsayers, who predicted she would outlaw abortion and roll back same-sex marriage and so forth, discovered she did none of the things they predicted. Meloni is a survivor and a populist. None of such policies would have been electorally palatable.

Why am I bringing all this to your attention? Simply because, just as at the time in Italy, the issues that saw Meloni elected could very well be the things that we are talking about here. Immigration for starters. At the time in Italy, you could literally rock up on a beach in Lampedusa, walk into the country and go take a job. There was no system of immigration management. I’m not saying our immigration system is perfect, but at least we have a degree of visibility over who’s coming to our shores. For all that, we are increasingly talking about a need to moderate immigration intakes.

The economy was stressed in Italy in 2022. People were doing it tough. A big part of that was the cost of energy. My cousin told me not to visit in summer. She had gone away up the mountain, because that’s what many people do. We’re from the north of Italy and, when it gets over 30 degrees, everybody panics and heads up the mountain. She’d gone to her mother’s place in Switzerland and left nothing but the fridge running in her house. Even so, her power bill went up. She’s a single mother on not far off the minimum wage. So, multiply that out, and that’s the kind of vibe you’re getting there. Social cohesion was a huge issue in Italy at the time.

These issues are being mirrored in our conversations in Australia today. If you look at what’s happened, in the two years since Meloni was elected, it is most interesting. Regulated household energy prices have fallen by 20 per cent. I have a cousin who is a paid-up member of the Socialist Party. I cannot believe we have the same DNA. And he told me last year, “I think she’s doing a really good job. And he wasn’t being sarcastic.

This all speaks to a generation in Australia who do not really like the Coalition parties, and are drawn to the left, but say, heck, I can’t buy a house. It all comes down to individual agency. This is happening right across Europe from a factual basis in elections, local and at a national level. What I want you to consider tonight is whether it is so much a march to the right as a march away from the left? Is it a march away from governments that cannot deliver social cohesion, that don’t show leadership, that it’s the ultimate “let them eat cake”.

Then there are the Teals. It’s ironic that the Teal seats are high net worth and absolute privilege, in the truest sense of that phrase. And their policies are so regressive and they hurt the most vulnerable. You cannot tell me that our current energy policy, if you can even call it a policy, is going to deliver anything other than energy poverty for those who are already most vulnerable. Renewables has a place in the energy mix. But I drive a Tesla, and I hate it. Anyone who wants to buy it, talk to me afterwards. The whole idea of the left as being a caring, socially responsible outfit is disabused by the evidence. And I don’t think you can ever, for an elongated period of time, fool the electorate. You might be able to for one electoral cycle, maybe two. But no longer.

The factors that I was talking about in Italy are now in Australia. Look at immigration – the boats have started again. The minister in charge is completely out of his depth. Our economy is a difficult, highly regulated, expensive and prohibitive place to do business. Social cohesion, particularly since October 7, is worrying. And I’m not making a political statement about two states and whatnot. But, morally, there is a line in the sand, and there is no justification for defending or supporting what was enacted on the Israelis on 7 October 2023. The Albanese Government and the governments of New South Wales and Victoria have not done what they should have to deal with behaviour that in any other context would have been stamped down. If you had a Christian minister standing up and preaching “Death to all …”  that Church would be shut down. Let’s not pretend that’s not the case.

Scott Morrison didn’t own or invent the notion of the quiet Australians. It just simply worked for his narrative. In 2019, the polling on election trends was out and nobody expected him to win. Quiet Australia, that’s just who we are. We line up. Covid showed us that we line up. We follow rules, but we will quietly seethe and smile and then vote differently in the polling booth.

These factors are not unique to Australia. You can look across Europe to any jurisdiction that you care to examine and see common threads. Does that mean there will be a similar outcome here? I actually don’t know. I’m going to jump in the same boat as Peter in terms of saying, I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t be completely shocked if there was a flipping of this government. When the Albanese government was elected, I thought they were a bunch of one-termers. I was just being cranky because it’s not my team. But I also said on air that if Albanese and his government did well, then we’d all thrive. That’s something everybody wants.

Yet, my observation now is that there’s a sense that the government hasn’t yet worked out it’s in government. They haven’t yet worked out that there are things they can do and could do. They’ve been so distracted by things that are beneath the office of people who are elected to make our lives better. I’m in furious agreement with Peter on Treasurer Jim Chalmers – he seems to lack experience. He has no real life experience, professionally, outside of academia and politics. And that shows when you’re trying to balance the books.

Then we have Opposition leader Peter Dutton. I’m actually a Dutton agnostic. I didn’t dislike him, but I just didn’t have a view on him at all. But one thing I know from people in Canberra is that you can’t get a job in his office. There’s very low churn. And, as an employer, when people stay around, it means you’re doing something right, particularly in a political environment. For me, the first time I looked at Dutton performing, was after the Voice referendum vote came in. I was watching the media conference he did with Jacinta Price. I looked at him and thought, “Ah, okay, there’s something.” It was something there that I hadn’t seen before. And if Australians can see that side of him – a low key, heartfelt address, off the cuff – that’s something. So, I am actually hopeful that, given time and perhaps the right strategy, people will get to know Peter Dutton. And, at the end of the day at the next election, there will be no Scott Morrison to despise. The Labor Party has lost that issue. The Teals will also be an interesting case study. I’m in the electorate of a Teal in North Sydney who is ineffective, absent, and a complete waste of space. That’s my true view as a voter. But that seat is to be abolished.

These are desperately uncertain times. Australian elections have, historically, always been won in the centre. In that context, I think of my niece and nephew, who are in their early 20s. The challenge for the Liberal Party is that generation, and probably up to the age of 30-35. That’s a generation that conservatives have not considered for a long time. And that’s a rod that we’ve made for our own backs. We need to engage with that generation – and I put myself in that bucket too, because sometimes I find myself shaking my fist at the sky.  My nephew said to me recently, “Oh, I don’t know how I’m ever going to afford a house.” And why was that important? Because he’s now 24 and in his first post-university job, living a real life, seeing how much, he’s being taxed and looking down the future. He has started to think, “Maybe need to understand these policies better than I do”.

So, what is the tipping point? There’s always a tipping point. Is the tipping point, something like the Governor General’s pay rise in this environment? Everyone I know in the last week or so has been talking about that, ordinary people not in the media or politics. It’s like, mate, everyone I know is on a budget, every business I know is on a budget, and that’s a $200,000 pay rise. But, who’s to know what will be the tipping point?

Everything, as I said, that can be shaken is being shaken. And we should all buckle up for the ride. More importantly, we should be open to important conversations. If we don’t fight for the things we believe in, we will settle for the choices and the lifestyle and the values that other people are prepared to fight for.