Enough partisan talking, people want real action

The truth is nobody in the real economy cares about words like moderates, conservatives, left faction, right faction, writes Gemma Tognini. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Australians have just under two years to go, give or take, until the next federal election. Such tidings of comfort and joy, am I right? It’s a thought few wish to entertain, but it’s one that struck me last week as I returned to Australia after a stint overseas for reasons of work and family.

It’s always instructive to get out of your own, familiar space. There’s nothing like a change in environment to shift perspective and reveal things that have been hidden in plain sight.

Arriving home to a sort of full-immersion experience in the quagmire that is Australia’s political discourse, two things happened. First, I was struck by how comparatively trite, almost provincial, our level of political conversation is. Second, I found myself asking a couple of questions.

Eighteen months into this new government, just over the same to go, and what have we, the electorate, learned?

Moreover, what have our political overlords – those who ostensibly work for us – learned?

By way of a handy recap, both major parties were punished with historically low primary votes. Let’s be clear: the Labor Party, in bed with the Greens, formed government but nobody can claim to have won.

And when I ask what have they learned, this is what I’m coming back to.

I spent eight days in Israel and a couple of weeks in Italy – vastly different societies and economies, facing significant challenges on several fronts. Israel seems to be teetering on the brink of a third intifada. In Italy, the EU’s third largest economy, the government of Giorgia Meloni is starting to deliver positive economic news amid what the EU describes as persistent challenges, at the forefront of which is the cost of energy.

Unsurprisingly, nobody in either country was talking about hurt feelings or arguing over pronouns. Nobody was whining about having to go to work to do their jobs rather than stay at home.

There, the focus is on what lives and communities look like; how much better off they actually are. In Australia it often feels like the partisan classes are happy to see it all go up in flames so long as it’s their team lighting the match.

We obsess over the cosmetic and gloss over the substance; all the while Australia has become a country where the new sign of financial largesse is putting your heater on in the cold of winter.

Respectfully, much of the political media and the party leadership in various forms focus on machinations that have little impact on or hold little interest for the average Australian. People like you and me who, this past week, breathed out as interest rates stayed put for a month.

The truth is nobody in the real economy cares about words like moderates, conservatives, left faction, right faction. About backroom wheeling and dealing, the heart of which is about one thing only: power. We don’t care about who has the numbers, who owes who a favour or who’s next in line.

Walk down the main drag of Paramatta, the local shops in Noosa, Dunsborough or Broadmeadows, and give it a go. Ask someone their thoughts on the moderates in the Libs or on the various factional and union alignments of Anthony Albanese and his cabinet. Just see what kind of response you get.

That’s just one level of disconnect. One reason, in my view, that primary votes have bottomed out in successive years. Yes, there have been generational shifts but, as with most things, the rot starts internally.

Another reason is the fundamental disconnect from reality about current cost-of-living pressures. Politicians love to talk about it, but talk is cheap – unlike the travel bill of member for Kooyong Monique Ryan, who spent nearly $30,000 on business-class fares between Melbourne and Canberra during the past year. That is a one-hour flight. Our taxes at work?

Again, what have they learned? It would seem not a great deal, which surprises me because on the back of the electoral equivalent of being given the middle finger by most of Australia, federal Labor continues to primp and preen as if it were sitting on a 50 per cent primary. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and various members of cabinet have been energetically torpedoing the voice through a lack of leadership and haven’t seemed to notice they are on borrowed time. The opposition at least appears to be engaged in soul searching and reform, which is an appropriate response to an electoral wipe-out.

The next two years, give or take, will go by in a heartbeat. So, who’s going to be the first to work it out? While nobody can dismiss the obvious attempts to erode commonsense centrist values in this country, nobody asked for a culture war. Let’s instead have a war on the economy. On the cost of living. On getting governments out of our homes, churches, mosques, sporting clubs and family lives. Let’s have a war on bloated bureaucracies, overreach and over-regulation. Let’s have a war on anything that seeks to divide us as a community and as a country.

One thing I’ve learned in life, relationships and business: you get what you tolerate. And that’s certainly true of the governments we elect. What have they learned? Perhaps the better question is: when will they ever learn? And when will we?