By Dave Lambert
Labor – under Anthony Albanese – should come out swinging! They need to stand up and fight for ordinary Australians. Other countries are declaring climate emergencies, moving away from coal and enacting bold legislation to protect the poor. If Labor did this and showed they were very different from the Liberals, they would appeal far more to swinging voters.
Labor’s current soft policy approach is leading us nowhere except into oblivion. The latest Newspoll offers proof of this.
They should be shouting that they lost a close election, not because of their policies, but because many were hoodwinked by LNP lies about death taxes, pensioner taxes, no utes available for tradies etc which was supported by a $60M ad campaign by Clve Palmer. They should not walk back from their present socio- economic policies. Those on $200,000 + per annum are the top end of town – nothing wrong with that but they don’t require tax breaks!
They should be shouting for legislation re “Truth in Campaign Advertising”; a federal ICAC; reform to political donations; and ending RoboDebt and the scam that is the Indue card.
Their socio-economic policies such as negative gearing, building more housing etc were excellent – any review should be quickly done, and any minor changes made ASAP. Any major changes or deletions will be seen as a flip-flop spineless policy back-down.
If they must persist with their silly ‘review policy’ about Newstart allowance, then it should be completed within 30 days from today! Otherwise they should join the $75/week campaign now. They should also reverse Gillard’s legislation and put single mums back on the pension. I believe their failure to push for an defined increase at the last election was a critical to their losing the election – it led to claims that they had not costed their budget properly; and it made it appear that they were more concerned about tax cuts for working Aussies rather than helping our most disadvantaged folk. This caused swinging voters to vote for the LNP; pushed others to vote for the Greens; and some to despair, give up and not vote at all.
They should be shouting that they will accept New Zealand’s offer to settle 150 refugees within a hundred days of getting into office and that they will negotiate with Canada and others to do the same.
Their ‘we’ll work within the law’ policy re Adani is bland and virtually meaningless – of course the government must work within the law. If they can’t stop Adani due to sovereign risk and a threat of losing a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit, they should say so; they should promise ‘never again’; and be pointing out the negative impacts and risks for so few jobs. They should also promise to enforce all environmental laws without fear or favour.
They must continue with an even stronger focus on the environment (eg advocating strongly for a Royal Commission into the Murray Darling fiasco). However, their decision at the last election not to cost their environmental policies was foolish and it cost them many votes as it played perfectly in the LNP’s attack ads!
They should be more amicable to working with the Greens – the best way to reverse the flow of left-wing votes to them is to embrace more of their policies!
Last but not least, they must better prosecute the myth that the LNP are better economic managers. They need hard hitting ads etc that outline: a) the dollar has devalued by about 5% in the past year; b) our jobless rate of 5.24 per cent now ranks 75th in the world and it went from 8th to 19th in the OECD since 2013; c) the average time the jobless spent looking for work has risen from 37.7 weeks in 2013 to 50.9 weeks; d) The percentage of Australia’s population aged above 65 now working increased from 12.4 to 15.1%; e) our gross debt of $542 billion is the second highest debt blow-out of all OECD countries since 2013; The IMF reports that our annual growth rate has fallen from 6th position in 2013 to 18th last year. All these facts are well known to a small handful of people who read alternative/left-wing media – the ALP needs to devote more resources to make these facts known to middle Australia, eg more memes, ads, articles and door stops.
They need to stand up and fight for ordinary Australians! When other countries are declaring climate emergencies, and previous polls have shown a large concern, they should also come out swinging against weak actions, and must be making noises about transition away from coal plans. They must be very different to the Liberals, or else the swinging voters – who don’t go into issues deeply – will see no difference, and not even consider changing. Many, many of us either voted Labor first, or second, and expected them to be strong.
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Dave is a retired manager of a renewable energy company and is currently an Admin for the LNP – THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN MISTAKE Facebook group.
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