The taste of burnt flesh must be ambrosia for the old pollies of the venerable Australian Labor Party, shocked by the failure of the NSW Branch to make a dent in the authority of the Liberal-National Coalition in the state. The by-election on the weekend furnishing material for a hundred editorials on Monday morning. The online commentariat has launched a thousand arrows of hatred at journalists who’ve fed the beast they themselves create in aggregate.
It started a couple of weeks ago with an editorial by old Labour blowhard Tony Blair, the UK’s prime minister before the Tories got their hands on the reins of power a decade ago. It’s been a decade in NSW for the LNP (the conservative coalition) as well. Years of pent-up anger at a fate that has served to bring to power in the United States a Democratic Party that seems confident of years of success. But their success is an index of Labor (and Labour) banishment because the Dems are as left-wing as a UK conservative party. Or an Australian one, for that matter.
The rise of Joe Biden to leadership Stateside is part of the same trend that will see the LNP win again at the next Australian federal election. The Twittersphere will double down at such a suggestion, taking courage from apparent numbers and from opinion polls (where everybody lies, however) that show Labor to be in the lead – though marginally. The centre-right consensus that has served Germany and France so well is also doing favours for citizens in many other countries. It’s just the zeitgeist speaking in its fabled tongues.
You wouldn’t know it if people didn’t tell you but Angela Merkel was a right-wing warrior though with a European twist that also applies Down Under. If the Brits have their NHS, we Aussies have Medicare. The last guy on the right who tried to fiddle with Medicare – Tony Abbott in 2014 – lasted a few months more then was dumped unceremoniously by his party. The Tories on the home front know that people in the community like to go to the hospital when they want without paying for the privilege. But they also like the tax breaks that the Liberal Party fosters for older people. The number of ways that people of retirement age can benefit financially due to generous extra-welfare payments is an indicator of how important this demographic is to the LNP, and in the Budget passed in May their ranks were supplemented by additional measures, for example the ability to sell the family home and put part of the proceeds directly into super.
This helps to pay the bills. Younger people will also be becoming more familiar with the tax regime surrounding equities, as since the virus took hold more and more Millennials have been putting money into managed funds in an effort to gain a return on savings outside term deposits – where income is low due to historically low interest rates. Australia’s tax system with regard to shares is partly the reason why dividends are so generous here compared, say, to in the US. Share prices go up and down a lot slower in Australia but income from owning shares is higher than it is Stateside.
One of the measures Labor took to the last election – which has now been reversed – is the reason for this bounty. You might even be able to retire without needing the pension. The LNP wants this as much as you do, and they have been consistent on this issue whereas Labor have been all over the shop, worried that they might lose the radical and vocal extreme end of their base if they are soft on Capital. But middle Australia is too busy thinking of where they’re going to spend their vacation dollars, or else dreaming up a renovation at home, or considering whether to try that new Thai restaurant that everyone’s been talking about. That’s Labor’s base, but they’ve lost sight of it.
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