MK’s Views - Down under on the right side

This evening on the way home, I was listening to the radio when I heard some bloke from one of the nation’s newspapers assuring us of a Howard defeat, he was careful to say it wouldn’t be a landslide, but then a landslide is what is needed for a defeat. Well, the polls consistently say he will lose and I’ll admit, I’m not 100% confident, but there are indications that he will pull it off in the end. Labor also admit that they have a huge task ahead of them, they need to win 16 seats and they cannot lose any of their own. Let me get a couple of the things out of the way, the traditional Labor voter is not going to change and many in the young generation are too mesmerized by Rudd and his talk of revolutions and what not. They’re also still under the spell of their loony left teachers who insisted through their school years that anyone-but-Howard will usher in Utopia and social justice. Let me outline why I believe John Howard still has a fighting chance.

The grey vote, the older folks will surely vote for Howard, they carry the scars of past Labor governments and just recently Howard announced a utilities allowance increase for pensioners and Carers. He has always looked after them as best he could, not so much the Carers but I have a feeling he’ll be pulling one out of the bag for them very soon. About this allowance, we’re are talking an increase from around $110 to $500, it’s almost four times the current allowance and this will benefit around 2 million older Aussies and around 120,000 Carers. In 2006 the Howard government announced that those over 60 will not be taxed for their super when they receive it if they have already been taxed on it. Previously our super was taxed on the way into the fund and then also on the way out when you retire.

With an aging population, John Howard has targeted that important vote and that has to count for something, so far the opposition only supported the increased allowance plan but refused to take it on if they win, another instance where they have been caught off guard on policy, in other words, they weren’t thinking about it. There was also an incident this week where Kevin Rudd gate-crashed some seniors club event and a couple of them stormed out, the thing that stood out was when one of them said out in the parking lot that John Howard would never have done that. They’ve known John Howard for the past 11 years and you don’t build that sort of name easily.

The next bunch of voters are the working families that Rudd is always talking about, supposedly they are doing it tough, struggling to put food on the table and all that, but still there is hope. The other day when I left work I happened to walk with someone who I really thought was a Labor voter, this person has expressed anti-American sentiments in the past and I tend to steer clear of politics at work. So I steered the conversation towards mortgages and when I heard about the home and paying it off and all that I thought, oh there you go, definite Labor voter, we’ve had 4 or 5 interest rate rises since the last election and Howard’s copping it stiff over that. If anyone would be hit by this, I present exhibit A to the court. To top it all off this person bought after the nightmare 16% interest rates under Labor and when they bought it was around 5%. After hearing all that I didn’t even want to go near politics, I was expecting a ‘Not happy John’ bumper sticker and all that, but guess what this person told me, completely unsolicited. Never vote Labor, vote Liberal and that’s John Howard’s party.

On a personal level, since I started work, under the Howard government, I’ve only paid less and less tax. It’s only a few dollars here and a few there, but I’d rather get $6 extra every week than $0 extra and there are promises of more to come. I don’t tend to consider myself the average Aussie, I never grew up here so I’m not used to the level of comforts and services Australians are used to, you lot in western countries have no idea how good you have it here. Regarding these new IR laws that were supposed to bring the end of Australia as a nation, I personally believe you’re lucky to get so many rights but put aside my views on it, the opposition and Unions told us the world was coming to an end we were all going to be vaporized. OK I’m exaggerating, they never said anything about being vaporized, just that working conditions would become much worse and the world as we know it would come to an end. Since these IR changes were introduced I always thought it would be extremely difficult for a government to sell to the public that by making it easier to fire them, it would actually give them more job security and more jobs.

Well the sky hasn’t fallen in and the world hasn’t ended, what I have noticed is in the back of the local paper, since these ‘terrible’ IR laws were introduced, I have noticed an increase in the number of jobs advertised and this has affected me on a positive note. About two years ago, someone close to me had to look for work for about 3 months before getting one that they had to travel to and from every day, the hours weren’t that much but at least it was extra money coming in. After leaving this job and since the ‘terrible’ IR laws that person was looking for work again, within about two weeks a job was landed with more hours, more pay and about 10 minutes away by bus. And 10 minutes, only because of the wretched traffic that our incompetent state Labor government is responsible for. In my view, there is more work out there if you want it and it’s a lot easier to get it. And it cannot be just a few of us noticing this, after all more jobs have been created since the ‘terrible’ IR laws and all those people who are now employed will surely remember those jobs were not there previously.

The other thing that Labor may have underestimated are the Unions, with the sacking of Joe McDonald, a person quite high up in one of the Unions here, they may have greatly angered their Union supporters. As we know the Unions contribute a lot of money to the Labor party and a lot of the Labor candidates have strong Union ties, so I don’t see them taking this lightly, Kevin Rudd has disciplined them ruthlessly in a way that has also humiliated them. I heard one of them on the news saying that Kevin Rudd would sell his own mother to win the election. Rudd may have gone too far in his attempts at distancing himself from the Unions and showing he’s the head honcho, he needs them just as much as they need him.

I also listen quite a bit to talkback radio, granted many of the listeners are of a Conservative bent, but I’m just not hearing people calling in to complain about the Howard government. I’m not hearing what is being reflected in the opinion polls, that Labor is going to wipe the floor with John Howard’s ass before putting the boot to it. Many of the people I hear also have the view that the opposition lack depth and are not well known and this is true, Kevin Rudd has all the slogans and one-liners to hide his lack of substance, but his shadow ministers are all keeping a very low profile. On numerous issues they keep trotting out the line that the Howard government has failed for the past 11 years, yet on many policies their lack of detail or copying of the coalition’s policies or an actual position begs the question, what exactly have they been doing for the last 11 years?

The campaign is about to hit its third week and often I wonder where is the shadow ministry, I only see and hear a few of them at a time and very often, they’re still going to release policy and they remind us that it took John Howard a while to release policy back in 1534, yet they’re supposed to be better than him, go figure. At least with Howard’s front bench, they’re in the news, making statements, copping it, dishing it out, making gaffes, releasing policy, explaining detail etc. They are not out of sight and out of mind. I think the public have caught on to this, I don’t think they feel John Howard has let them down, quite the opposite in fact and I think they want to know a lot more about Kevin Rudd and his team before they seriously consider throwing out what’s reliable and not broke.

I think many of us are still fond of the old man, some of us marvel at his energy levels, I remember watching a program a few weeks ago when some journalist tagged along with him, the poor fellow was completely run off his feet while the PM was banging away from place to place, dishing out funding and announcing new policies. I’m telling you, by the end of it all we’ll all need a good lie-down and whatever he takes everyday. Rest assured, if he makes it, we can all go to sleep knowing he’ll be back there the next day beavering away as usual.