Young, wealthy and flirting with disaster

HISTORICALLY, it was always the wealthier, better-educated young men and women at the best of the Western world's universities who were suckers for socialism. These groups even flirted with Communism as leftist philosophies paralysed intellectual and economic progress across the world.

It's not that surprising therefore that after a decade of unparalleled economic success in which Australia's unemployment rates slumped to historically low levels and the frequency of industrial strife dropped to almost zero, the polls are showing that a majority of voters want to experiment with the stultifying side of the political spectrum.

After the grim days of World War II, it took 17 years of Sir Robert Menzies' Liberal government and six years of his Liberal successors Harold Holt, Sir John Gorton and Billy McMahon, before most Australians felt prosperous enough to give Gough Whitlam's Left-wing government a go in 1972.

That was a short-lived flirtation and, despite the now mythologised drama of the dismissal of that dysfunctional administration at the hands of Whitlam's own appointee Sir John Kerr, most Australians flocked to the ballot boxes at the first opportunity to hammer down the coffin nails and prevent any resurrection of that government in 1975.

The nation subsequently gave Bob Hawke's Labor government eight years, and Paul Keating's administration five, before turning to Liberal John Howard to restore the economy wrecked after 13 years of Labor hands on the levers of power.

If the polls are to be believed, and there is doubt about how focussed voters are even with an election likely within the next four months, the punters are now confident enough to express a desire to again tango with a Labor federal government.

Or, they may have become susceptible to the dog whistle warnings from Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and his shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan and have succumbed to their relentless warnings of the threat of rising interest rates.

As the sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, once noted: "The whole art of politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

In recent months, Rudd and Swan, and their friends in the media, have relentlessly warned those who have prospered under Howard that all they have gained is at risk and could be lost if interest rates rise a point or so.

That the economy is in far greater danger of being damaged by Labor's reckless rejection of the Howard Government's industrial relations reforms and the threat by Rudd and his industrial relation's spokeswoman Julia Gillard to dump the reforms as a matter of priority has been ignored by the newly prosperous.

The imagined threat of interest rate rises is possibly far scarier to the average voter than any danger posed by the potential for mayhem in the economy which would be unleashed by dumping the industrial relations reforms, because interest rate increases have an immediate impact on self interest.

Rudd has preyed upon the anxieties of those who have taken advantage of over-generous and irresponsible lending policies, grabbing no-deposit, or low-deposit mortgages. There is nothing Labor could do to rewrite their contracts in the event of a crippling rate rise of course, but that is not the point.

The aim has been to create doubts and Labor has certainly achieved that goal.

What the polls reflect is Labor's ability to create fear but they don't reveal Labor's inability to offer solutions.

This was illustrated quite dramatically by Nine Network veteran Laurie Oakes in an interview on the Sunday program with Opposition Treasurer Wayne Swan this week, whom he asked three simple questions: ". . . can you guarantee that if Labor wins the election home prices will fall?"

Swan replied: "No, of course I can't guarantee that. . ."

"Can you guarantee if Labor wins the election grocery prices will fall?"

Swan's response: "No. . ."

And to Oakes' final question: "Can you guarantee, if you win government, petrol prices will fall?" Swan was again forced to reply: "No. . ."

But none of that appears to be affecting those whose views are being reflected in recent polls.

If the polling continues to trend in this way, it is likely that the Howard Government will follow the Menzies government into history, but with a longevity and success denied by the envious Malcolm Fraser.

Australians may then be forced to watch as Labor destroys the economy that has been built up over the past decade and wait for the cycle to return the conservatives and for the damage to be repaired.