The Federal Government needs to start listening to voters

AUSTRALIANS clearly hold some strong views on many pivotal topics in the public arena — climate and asylum seekers being perfect examples — and the Federal Government appears tone deaf to their concerns, writes Dennis Atkins.

A WEEK ago the electors of Wentworth delivered an emphatic message to the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government.

A number of issues swirled around in the message, as they always do in elections, especially by-elections which give voters greater licence to exercise a protest or express a particular grievance.

Many Wentworth voters were angry about losing their local member and former PM Malcolm Turnbull — after all for a large part of the electorate he was just like them — but they also wanted to shake an angry fist at our national politicians.

Sick of leader changes at an indulgent whim and the refusal to listen to the wishes and concerns of the people — those who should own the choice of a prime minister and should have a say in what is done about matters of great importance.

Two policies that did matter to a majority of the voters of Wentworth were climate and asylum seekers.

There was a visceral cry for our politicians to listen to the mainstream — the silent majority as they’re often called — and not the so called “Liberal Party base”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Kym Smith

In truth the Liberal Party base — members of many local branches and the devotees of hard right columnists and commercial radio shock jocks — is no more in touch with mainstream Australia than a large proportion of the Labor base, which has always been well to the left of both the Parliamentary Labor Party and an overwhelming majority of Labor voters.

For too long a majority of Liberal MPs have listened too much to this “base” on climate and asylum seekers, making the pursuit of sensible and sustainable policy all but impossible.

The recent failures on climate and asylum seekers have infuriated voters and not just in the moneyed and genteel suburbs of Wentworth.

When Josh Frydenberg, then energy and environment minister, managed to steer what was thought to be an impossible compromise through his party room and got the states to all but agree, voters felt a great relief.

That turned to fury a week later when the troglodytes of the Liberal Party stomped around and forced Turnbull and Frydenberg to scrap the key part of their policy — that dealing with the global issue of emissions control.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: AAP/Lukas Coch

Five days later Turnbull was gone and Frydenberg was deputy Liberal leader and Treasurer.

The public remains furious but nothing is even being considered, despite a united front from the business community to have some action on genuine climate policy.

In fact, a group led by the Business Council is getting together with other groups to devise and enact their own policy — going as far as they can without any national legislation.

This is a damning indictment of our national political class. It’s true but the politicians don’t care.

The Australia Institute did an exit poll after last week’s Wentworth by-election, testing the opinions of 1049 respondents, of whom 78 per cent said it had some influence on their vote, 49 per cent said it influenced them a lot and 33 per cent said it was the main thing in deciding how they’d vote.

Any pollster will tell you these are significant results and should be taken notice of. Our Liberal and Nationals politicians can’t see the significance and are ignoring the views of the public.

An asylum seeker child on Nauru.

For many members of the Coalition there’s a blind wilfulness towards asylum seeker policy and the fate of the poor souls left to slowly go mad on Manus Island and Nauru.

A few Liberals have been quietly urging Morrison and senior ministers to show some compassion towards these poor blighters, especially the 52 children remaining on Nauru.

As well as these children there are 652 adults, 541 of whom have been granted refugee status — although that will do them no good at all.

On nearby Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, there are 626 men.

It’s reckoned that the overwhelming majority of these men, women and children suffer from mental illness, the result of having spent five or six years in what is known as an offshore regional processing centre.

The processing is charade because it’s harder to get off Nauru and Manus than it is pick the Lotto numbers two weeks in a row.

While the failure on climate policy is an act of national stupidity, the failure on asylum seekers is a national shame and disgrace.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor.

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