Minor parties reap the rewards of voters who think the system sucks
Turns out you lose people's trust if you keep transparently lying to them for long enough. Who knew?
Today's Fairfax-Ipsos poll had some results that should have lovers of stable politics quaking in their boots, whilst also vomiting in pure unadulterated terror.
For a start, it showed that public support for Malcolm Turnbull continues to erode – he now has an approval rating of zero, which isn't great for a PM whose entire argument for taking in the job was to reverse his party's lousy polling – which puts enormous pressure on him to get some big results in the final sitting week of parliament.
And that could be tricky, since South Australian senator Nick Xenophon has him over a barrel on the Nationals' changes to the Murray-Darling plan, not to mention the annoying problem that the Attorney-General may allegedly have attempted to influence the then-solicitor general to assist the Liberal state government of Western Australia at the expense of the Australian taxpayer, which is a bit of a bad look.
But the Coalition's loss used to be Labor's gain, and that's not the case any more. While Bill Shorten is slowly gaining some ground, and Labor have been consistently ahead in two party terms since the election, it's not like Labor are seeing a mighty tsunami of support surge their way.
Treasurer Scott Morrison demonstrates the sort of quiet dignity that has so endeared the public to literally any political alternative whatsoever.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The polls are showing that an ever-increasing number of people are deserting the major parties altogether – 34 per cent, to be exact. This is the highest "other" vote ever, but also entirely consistent with results over the past two decades. We might want to dismiss it as an artefact of some burst of Trumpthusiasm, but this is following a long term trend.
In other words, we're moving away from politics being a struggle between The Left and The Right and into a much weirder one: a struggle between belief in the political system as being capable of benefiting people, and belief that the system is broken and politicians are an integral part of the problem.
And this is going to be massive issue to resolve, because history would suggest that transparent, democratic government is a genuinely excellent way to run a stable, peaceful nation. And demolishing it in order to repair its faults is as wise as shooing a spider from your kitchen by burning the entire place to the ground.
However, the professional political class haven't exactly endeared themselves by gleefully giving the electorate the impression that they consider politics to be a merry game where lying for short term gain is perfectly reasonable, even commendable.
Making up rhetorical distinctions ("non-core promises", anybody? "Efficiency dividend" ring any bells?) as to why a PM or treasurer or minister is doing the precise opposite to what they promised doesn't actually fool anyone watching - and the electorate have long memories.
It's also why the frenzied fantasies of former PM Tony Abbott – that the Liberals need to move further to to the right to be a "true conservative" party, with the bonus implication that he's just the man to do it – are doomed to fail. Voters aren't supporting One Nation because they've soberly weighed matters up and decided that Pauline Hanson has a more sensible suite of policies; they're voting for them because they're not seen as politicians.
The problem, of course, is that politics is genuinely complicated and requires very specific skills, and leaving it in the hands of non-politicians makes exactly as much sense as refusing to use one of those elite, establishment surgeons to remove one's tumour and deciding instead to go with a mechanic that has exciting theories about how cancer can be cured by thumping it with spanners. The problem will remain, but the process will be a lot messier, more painful, and feature a deafening amount of unnecessary screaming.
And it's not as easy as making some noises about restoring trust to politics. That ship sailed long ago (and looked awfully like a Norwegian freighter called the MV Tampa).
That trust thing is a genuine problem outside of politics too. AGL are reportedly struggling to get community support for wind farms in the former mining town of Silverton, since the community are coming up with all sorts of downright silly objections for a development that would seemingly help the community, provide some much-needed local employment, and offset the region's high-polluting past.
The community are voting against their own best interests – but who could blame them for not trusting that this high-polluting corporate behemoth has come over all community-minded all of a sudden, even if they genuinely have? And AGL probably have more brand loyalty than the Coalition or Labor right now.
And maybe it'll be a good thing to have a government created by minor party alliances, where careerist politicians have to find common cause with opportunistic parasites determined to line their pockets or push a particular agenda to satisfy their own weird desires.
We may as well be optimistic, because that's appears to be what we're going to get.
Andrew P Street's new book The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull: the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat is out now through Allen & Unwin.