Federal election 2019: Why I’m voting Labor

After voting Liberal for 18 years, Scott Warren is supporting Labor at this year’s federal election — here’s why.

COMMENT

I can’t put my finger on when exactly it happened, but we turned a corner when people started letting their politics dictate their values rather than vice-versa.

It’s a dangerous change, and one I’m not sure we can ever get back.

With the cavalcade of disasters, offences and indecencies it has presided over, the Morrison Government shouldn’t have the faintest hope of re-election next weekend, but some commentators (and not just the Lib cheer squad) assure us it’s no done deal.

But how?

The old maxim holds true (they usually do, that’s how they become old maxims): Always back self-interest, it’s the best horse in the race.

“OK, so maybe the Libs are going to demonise entire races and religions, marginalise women in their own party, prey on the least well-off to generate negligible revenue and then spend $180m on a cynical stunt reopening a vile detention centre? But I’m $47 a fortnight better off under them, and they won’t take away my negative gearing …”

It would defy logic if we didn’t see it happen time and time again.

I am doing the only thing I can do: I’m voting Labor for the first time in a state or federal election — after casting a Liberal vote at 11 elections over the course of 18 years.

After 18 years of voting Liberal, Scott is giving Labor his vote this year. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England, Mick Tsikas

Parenthood changes everything about you, although I was told it would make me even more conservative. I think it actually helped me find my decency.

How can I look at a group of people who have presided over Manus and Nauru with such a devastating lack of humanity and even begin to care that I might be a few grand a year in front if I support them?

How can I trust my children’s future to people who paraded a lump of coal through parliament and laughed like the planet’s greatest challenge in documented history was nothing more than a fun way to mock lefties?

How can I believe these people are genuine about being our representatives in parliament when the country spoke so unequivocally in favour of marriage equality and, like children who didn’t get their own way, they refused to walk into the chamber and communicate their electors’ will when it came time to make history?

And that’s just to cherrypick three examples. I didn’t even get to Adani, Barnaby, the “It’s OK to be white” vote or the passionate defence of George Pell that was mounted by several Liberal MPs.

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And not that any of this is entirely new because, to be fair, there wasn’t all that much decency in what happened with the Tampa way back when, but maybe we overlooked it because at least John Howard was a leader in the capital-L sense of the word: someone with a vision for the country who fundamentally knew what he stood for and understood how to communicate it to his countrymen.

Former Australian prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott. Picture: AAP Image/Jeremy Piper

And just as some of my friends in the United States now find themselves wistful for the George W. Bush years now that they’ve lived through a Trump presidency, the faults of John Howard’s reign seem superficial when you look at this embarrassing cadre of wreckers who consciously destroyed their best hope at re-election in the name of an internal square-up and then have pinned their re-election on trying to make us all scared of something, anything, everything.

“But Bill Shorten knifed two prime ministers, he’s as bad as any of them …” Yep, and these blokes made him seem downright likeable and electable by comparison. A slow clap for the members for Cook, Warringah and Dickson.

Because as much as I object to their fundamental lack of decency, perhaps even more so I can’t reward such monumental stupidity as they demonstrated in executing their number-one donor and fundraiser six months out from an election with the thinnest of majorities to work with.

And ultimately, if you earn enough to be better off under a Liberal government, you earn enough to make a small investment in a more decent direction for Australia and — I still can’t believe I’m saying this — make Bill Shorten our next prime minister.

Scott Warren is a freelance writer. Continue the conversation @scott___warren