Anna Caldwell: Voting for the vegans, not farmers, a mistake for Labor
The state opposition has backed itself into a corner, voting against laws that would punish greenie farm invaders just to protect the unions. Hardworking bush families will not forget this, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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When laws to slap militant so-called “vegan vigilantes” harassing our farmers with the toughest penalties in the country came before Parliament this week, NSW Labor voted against the bill.
You heard right. The party trying to claw back middle NSW and remind the state it is the party of the people stood against support our farmers have been crying out for.
The problem of activists trespassing on farms and cruelly harassing farmers has been so well documented that people all over this state are fed up with deluded hippies bothering folk already on their knees in the drought.
Labor’s vote not only left the party looking like it was siding with far-left activists but obliterated an opportunity to remind ordinary voters that it stands with them.
What’s worse, they handed the government the gift of being able to say that Labor made the decision for their union mates — because part of their reason for voting against the anti-activist laws was that they might impinge on industrial action.
Now don’t get me wrong. Labor had some valid reasons for opposing the bill.
Shadow Minister for Primary Industries Jenny Aitchison explained to me that she had concerns that the breadth of the laws left them open to high court challenge.
She assured me she still believed in penalties for activists trespassing on farms but did not believe the bill tackled the problem properly. And she wanted industrial action protected.
She said on Thursday Labor would introduce its own bill to tackle the issue.
“Labor won’t sign up to sloppy, badly drafted laws that could leave our farmers mired in legal uncertainty in the middle of a drought. We should get this right the first time,” she said.
Her intentions are right.
But good intentions don’t get you by in politics.
Politics is a game of tactics and shifting voter sentiment, and on that front Labor failed.
Labor quite simply cannot win the politics of a problem it made for itself when the party voted against the toughest penalties in the country for activists who are making farmers’ lives a misery.
Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said Labor had committed the “ultimate betrayal”.
Deputy Premier John Barilaro said, “if you can’t stand by our farmers during the worst drought on record, when can you?”
Ouch.
Aitchison might come back with another bill — some might even think it’s a better drafted bill — but it will never have the numbers to become law and the political damage is done.
This is not the first time Labor has made a tactical mistake on legislation. On a federal level, Anthony Albanese did the same thing when he threatened to oppose tax cuts.
He had valid reasons for his position, but again at the end of the day the voter only saw the so-called party of the people trying to stand between them and their own money.
Labor must take some serious stock of what it needs to do as an opposition.
Crucially, it must win back the trust of middle Australia. But the problem Labor faces is bigger than trying to draft better legislation than the government.
The party is standing at an ideological crossroads.
The challenge of trying to hold on to inner-city electorates that it risks losing to the Greens while at the same time winning back suburban electorates it lost to the Liberals appears to be doing its head in.
State Labor has made some truly strange decisions on what policy issues to tackle since losing the election earlier this year.
On Thursday, for example, they were out banging a drum on banning plastic bags. Leader Jodi McKay’s first announcement when she took on the top job was one about homelessness.
These are important issues, no doubt.
But what successive recent elections have told us is that life is tough enough for average mums and dads trying to scrape by on their own bottom line and they will vote with their hip pocket.
They care about social issues like the environment and homelessness, yes. But they won’t prioritise this at their own expense.
Indeed, they could well look at McKay’s ban the bag announcement and wonder what it will cost them at their local servo.
As for the anti-vegan activist legislation, it is likely to pass the Parliament even without Labor’s vote. It passed the lower house, where the government has the numbers anyway, and will likely pass the upper house too.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party leader Robert Borsak told me he intends to support the bill but will introduce amendments to make it “even tougher”.
Labor, take note. This is much wiser politics from a party adept at stealing the bush vote.
And one more thing.
Bad sport of the week goes to Health Minister Brad Hazzard, who told McKay in Question Time, “the higher pitched you get, the more irrelevant you get”.
Attacking a woman over the pitch of her voice is lazy and pathetic — particularly when Labor has more than enough policy fronts to target. Physicality should be off-limits in our Parliament.
Surely the Minister would not expect his relevance to be judged on his own physical attributes.