By Denis Bright
Australia is quite vulnerable to political instability associated with future downturns in global trade and investment. Despite the current affordability crisis, market volatility is currently quite low in Australia largely because of our ties with dynamic Asian economies. Still, periods of market correction every 10-15 years challenge the policy skills of each generation of policy movers.
Even in times of low official unemployment levels, the latest polling from the Freshwater Group (AFR 15 April 2024) shows that Labor’s primary vote has dropped to 31 per cent after just two years in government.
This is a crucial loss of 1.8 per cent in Labor’s support base or 2 per cent after preferences. Only Peter Dutton’s flat preferred prime ministerial ratings are keeping Labor two-party preferred vote at 50 per cent within the usual margin of error in all responsible polling.
The key issues identified in the Freshwater Polling are cost-of-living (74 per cent), followed by affordable housing (41 per cent), health and social security (27 per cent) as well as economic management (26 per cent). Environmental management comes next on (19 per cent).
Voters are still playing a wait and see game with key voter priorities as shown by the large numbers of unresolved issues in these threads of public opinion.
Conservative lobbying groups have emerged to wedge public opinion in these indecisive times when interest in mainstream politics is not a popular past time. Voters have more narcissistic interests even in financially stressful times and tune-off against too much negative political rhetoric.
Mainstream political parties must stay ahead of these subversive framing and agenda setting games by offering policy solutions to the problems raised by minority groups to erode the remnants of Australia’s two-party system. The most important response is to promote policy solutions on those emotionally charged issues such as shortage of affordable housing, price increases for essential items, increased immigration and crime.
Introducing the Advance Conservative Lobbying Group
Advance uses its financial resources to assist in destroying the appeal of progressive spectrum of Australian politics.
The Guardian has covered the links between Advance and the Whitestone Strategic Group (Ariel Bagle and Sarah Basford Canales 1 March 2024). As a political player which espouses self-proclaimed mainstream values, Advance should be more open to public scrutiny relating to its sources of finance, local steering committees and national leadership coordinators.
A similar interpretation could be made of mainstream political parties in receipt of substantial amounts of public funding in proportion to the votes obtained at previous state or federal elections. Too much subterranean factional intrigue as well as excessive use of lobbyists and consultancy firms to keep political elites informed of community needs erode the primary votes of mainstream parties to add more fracturing to Australian politics.
Labor too needs to improve its current primary vote which was 32.6 per cent at the last successful national election to become less dependent on preference allocations from the Greens and progressive independents. Labor’s national primary vote in 2022 was 6 per cent lower than in 1996 when the LNP won by a landslide. It was 0.8 per cent below the landslide against Kevin Rudd in 2013.
Lobbying expenditure by Advance in 2022-23 was than campaign expenditure from GetUp!. This expenditure amounted to $7.8 million. These donations average eighteen dollars to raise $5.8 million from 19,288 donors in the last year to April 2024 (GetUp! web site). This campaign expenditure from GetUp! is crucial to the maintenance of a thriving democracy.
The AEC currently has limited control over less transparent third-party networks. These networks are required to submit returns of campaign expenditures but sanctions against offering misinformation to voters are less clear-cut. The AEC’s own media network did report action on complaints by two independent candidates at the 2022 Australian elections over signage authorized by Advance on trucks near pre-polling booths.
Yet another grey area relates to the harvesting of Postal Vote applications with individually addressed mail-outs to constituents particularly from the LNP.
Harvesting Of Postal Votes
Long before the arrival of Advance as a conservative lobbying group in 2018, dodgy strategies were used by the LNP at all levels of government to harvest postal votes in Queensland using Postal Vote Application Centres (PVAs). These are post office box addresses operated by the LNP to assist constituents to make use of the postal vote system. At the recent Brisbane City Council Elections, the PVA Centre was located at Post Office Box 938 in Spring Hill. Similar post-office box addresses paraded out at state and federal elections without sanctions from the AEC or state electoral commissions.
Having the various electoral commissions supplying the relevant form by mail-out to registered users of postal votes in the past is the best option to avoid coercive controls by well financed postal vote harvesting strategies.
Professor Emeritus John Wanna at Griffith University has criticized the use of PVA centres as a front for the LNP in the harvesting of postal votes (Enlighten Newsletter at Griffith University):
“This practice is not illegal under current legislation, but is it open and transparent? Does it observe the necessary proprieties of impartial electoral administration? Do electors know that their personal information is going to political parties before the form goes to the AEC?
This interference with the postal vote application process is nudging us down the Americanisation of electoral administration. The various systems of electoral administration used across the USA are fundamentally not impartial and operated by party political officials often for partisan advantage.
Voters should be worried about the transfer of their personal information to party headquarters without their consent. The new practice of re-routing the postal vote application process in Australia reflects an objectionable drift towards the Americanisation of our electoral process. It will tend to lessen the confidence Australians have in the impartiality of the electoral system, which is all important to our trust in democracy.”
The return of political autocracy has no place in potentially enlightened times through the spread of misinformation and dodgy harvesting of postal votes through PVA centres which are merely a front for a more right-wing LNP.
Gilbert & Sullivan lampooned the excesses of political intrigue in the HMS Pinafore musical long before the arrival of a more deceptive AI era in contemporary political manipulation. Queen Victoria’s empire was still in its ascendency. Neoliberalism offers new empires of power and influence with promotional avenues for aspiring leaders who still enjoy polishing the handles of big front doors to rewarding leadership paths with options of corporate board positions or new opportunities with lobbying and consultancy networks after retirement from politics.
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Thank you Denis for this important information.
The poisonous effect of lobbying has all but destroyed any lingering aspects of representative Government.
For those interested, the online publication Pearls & Irritations has excellent references on this subject – from present day and going back a few years. Highly recommended reading.
https://johnmenadue.com/?s=LobbyLand. (Search parameter).
And yet the perceptions as indicated by the poll are not borne out when the actual performances are studied. It’s not just lobbying, the well has also been thoroughly poisoned by MSM.
Explains much and that slippery slope to US style voting and politics… and lack of transparency
Interesting on postal votes as there had been issues reported offshore with the Federal election 2022 inc. Canada and parts of Europe; ALP Abroad were going to looking into it…..and had been preceded by calls for Koch Network ALEC Voter ID to suppress younger voters.
Voters registered with AEC to vote offshore did not receive voting papers from AEC by post, which had reported the papers were being transferred to Oz Post, but then some individuals (with a whiff of RNWJ’ery or RW leanings) received papers direct by courier?
Only logical explanation anyone could think of was anyone a member, subscriber and/or registered with LNP received VIP AEC voting papers delivery vs. none for others?
I like this support for Needs Based Politics.
Thanks Denis for your research work.
Reform now keeps progressive governments in office. This is a high point in leadership by the Labor Movement but it is on a very low primary vote base. A stitch in time can erode the influence of Advance and other Trumpite influences.
A well thought out summing up of the state of political play, Denis
Trump is on the wane in the USA but his populism is alive in regional Australia where watching Sky News is a substitute for political involvement
In the spirit of this article, there was good consensus today in news clips relating to the reports of horrific events at Bondi and at the Assyrian Church. Few Australians want Elon Musk to be given the freedom to tear Australia apart with fractious posts and videos on the X Network. Thanks to Peter Dutton for supporting criticisms from the Labor Governments on this issue. Terrorism and crime are problems that Australians should share collectively. Consensus too from the new Police Commissioner in Queensland for his commitment to the management of crime in those disadvantaged suburbs of our major cities up here.
Agreed Even Stephen. Let’s hear more consensus from Peter Dutton even if this consensus annoys Pauline Hanson.
Musk, I’d imagine, has no nuanced comprehension of the Australian social psyche. As an American and embedded within a land where everyday violence is the norm; mass shootings, outrage between political opponents, misinformation and lies fundamentally replacing truthfulness, fear and anger dominant emotions, constant threats against others with whom one disagrees, social media awash with tsunamis of abuse and images of the car-crash social landscape that passes for a land of freedom and civilised discourse… how could he possibly have any sense of what Australia is like?
And along with all the above, he carries the baggage that comes with extreme wealth; hubris, arrogance, eccentricity, the full disaster.
For what it’s worth, ban the bloody platform from this country, just as the Chinese have wisely done in theirs.
Perhaps political hype is not working in areas of disadvantage: There are no Labor federal seats between Rankin in Queensland and Newcastle. I see many disadvantaged communities along the road. WA Labor showed everyone the way forward out of the COVID-crisis and was rewarded for this leadership
Denis, thanks for an interesting article on the issue of lobbyist in the Australian political environment.
We need all sides of politics to work together to make Australia a cohesive society that benefits all of us and leaves no one behind.
I envy nations like Australia and New Zealand for their proportionally representative elections thus governance. To have genuine representative democracy, there first and foremost needs to be a truly democratic electoral system for the citizenry.
The First Past The Post [FPTP] ballot largely masquerades as real democracy. And, of course, many voters get to wait in long, bad-weather lineups to participate.
While the FPTP ballot may technically qualify as democratic within the democracy spectrum, it is the PR system thus governance that’s truly representative, regardless of political ideology.
FPTP does seem to serve corporate lobbyists well, however. I believe it is why such powerful interests generally resist attempts at changing from FPTP to proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate influence.
Low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country’s populace is actually electorally represented, are likely the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or ‘buy’.
It can and often enough does enable the biggest of businesses to get unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting mass consolidation.
As a good example, in Canada corporate lobbyists actually write bills for governing representatives to vote for, albeit perhaps with some amendments, and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time.
“If voting changed anything [in favor of the weak/poor/disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.”
‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, Our Brand Is Crisis
[Cont.] The more that corporations make, all the more they want — nay, need — to make next quarterly. It’s never enough. Maximizing profits at the expense of those with so much less, or nothing, will likely always be a significant part of the nature of the big business beast. And our corporate news-media mostly deems that reality ‘unfit to print’.
Still, there must be a point at which corporate greed thus practice will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests. Perhaps the unlimited-profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible. It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
Meantime, corporate officers shrug their shoulders and defensively say their job is only to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. The shareholders also shrug their shoulders while defensively stating they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones to make the moral and ethical decisions.
And the common yet questionable refrain incredibly still prevails amongst ‘free-market’ capitalist nation governments and corporate circles: It claims that best business practices, including what’s best for consumers, are best decided by business decision-makers. But that has been proven deadly false numerous times.
Thanks Denis,
Your last two paras sum up the current situation well. In addition to Gilbert & Sullivan, I would add that long ago, Shakespeare masterfully reminded all of the wiles of political intrigue, and also that we are common in being prone to the vicissitudes of the existence of man and woman from the depths of darkened hearts and ability to enact tragedy, to enlightenment and the beauty of nature’s creation.
Democracy has always been blighted by vote manipulation by MPs, putative MPs and political parties. It goes to their own mistrust of the ability to understand by the voting public, and also their own inability to formulate and implement properly considered representative policy. So at the base of representative democracy, there is corruption wrought by lack of faith and ability, and the wiles of political allegiances, and party / power broker interference and control of candidature.
On top of those matters, there are other more sophisticated matters that affect the operation of representative democracy, such as preference dealing, and paid preference consultants, like the ‘Preference Whisperer’ – Glenn Druery, debt to donors, MP’s and officials harvesting for their own enrichment information on proposed legislation, MP’s disguised pecuniary interests, covert influence by professional lobbyists and other organizations, covert influence by religious organizations, divisive abuse of parliamentary privilege, and the spread of misinformation / disinformation by both politicians and organizations having vested interests.
And those matters of affect are not bounded by regions, states or Oz overall, but are subject to the tentacles of international interest. This has always been the case, with the intention of betterment, but could upon reflection, be for the better or worse.
There ought be little doubt that humanity will seek to affect betterment by elevating influence to the greatest critical mass. But within humanity, the question remains, who will be best positioned to weigh the influences and the ‘weirding way’ to betterment? Seems once it was via the hoped-for benevolence of religions, kings / queens and royalty, but for the advancement of modernity and equity, it became predominated by representative democracy. And despite the never-ending advancement of laws and rules, this does not mean that criminals and gamers (parasites) of the system are eliminated, because they too evolve.
The advent of the ‘internet of everything’ and social media, all at light-speed, means that there is little now to be concealed from the madding crowd. That they can absorb, understand and reconcile the the path to betterment through the rapidly increasing complexities of science, environmental protection, ecology, industry and economy is doubtful. Those complexities, along with the huge power and wealth accrued to those incorporated should reveal that the driving of ethics, equity and safety should remain the domain of representative democracy as a hub where all matters can be more readily accessed and assessed, rules made and corrections and adaptions affected.
The operations of politics, parliament and executive government should not be circumscribed in the way in which they obtain information for consideration, even if it means hearing vested interest influencers. It should not be seen as corruption unless it is concealed or outside the rules of probity. Perhaps those operators ought have more faith in themselves and the system, and be more transparent about the way it best operates. Labor appears to be doing a much better job of that than the LNP, albeit there is a way to go. And it appears now that the deranged LNP, even if coupled with all cross-benchers do not have the depth to affect functional alternative executive government.
In this world of the apprehension of tipping-points, the criminals and system gamers (parasites) are running amok from the shadows with misinformation, disinformation and sensation seeking, so as to engorge themselves by divide and conquer of the madding crowd, the destruction of representative democracy, and replacing it with kleptocratic authoritarianism. It would seem the main offenders are the drug barons, fossil-fuel cartels, the demagogic mainstream media, the industrial behemoths of AI, the free-wheeling targeted hackers of totalitarian regimes, and the faithless opportunistic political cling-ons.
It doesn’t seem to matter to the parasites that their existence is dependent on the health of the system upon which they prey. Through a potentially more vulnerable multi-ethnic-origin madding crowd, that the parasites target them ought be no surprise. But whether the madding crowd is participating in the destruction of representative democracy, or only taking it to the perilous edge to obtain its better operation remains the question. It will surely be based upon where their perception of strength lays, as there is a persistent tendency to abdicate responsibility to those that demonstrate strength in whatever guise.
I guess these are the age-old swings and round-abouts of certainty, and the quandaries of predicting the future.
For a multitude of reasons, it appears the search goes on for benevolence, and the path to betterment.
Egads! Does that mean all these years we’ve only had amateur lobbyists in Australia?
Nah, GL. Just fabulously wealthy ones.