Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm!
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, dad.
Homer: Why thank you, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Hmm. How does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work; it’s just a stupid rock!
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Hmm... Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
***
Often we're told that a Labor Government will send us broke. Spend, spend, spend. Indeed, the voters have seen that very thing this electoral cycle. The current Government has taken a once healthy surplus and has turned it into a frightening deficit. Quod erat demonstrandum.
What is missing from this elegant proof are two very telling variables. First, Howard et. al. governed during a period of tremendous growth, propelled by the resource boom. It was precisely this situation that allowed such a surplus to be accumulated. Indeed, Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has since stated that only a fool could ruin the economy in such circumstances.
Second, the current Government, in its spending initiatives, was trying to avoid the same fate that had befallen other advanced economies the world over. The opposition has used the current deficit as political ammunition - you can't trust Labor with the economy. I really do wonder what the Liberal Party would have done if faced with the same financial turmoil. Maybe the same. Or maybe not. We'll never know. I guess it's easy to throw popcorn from the cheap seats.
What I hope the preceding discussion illustrates is that too often we attribute government successes or failures to circumstances well beyond anyone's control. It is far too glib an analysis to point to any one factor as determinant of a Prime Minister's (or opposition leader's) credentials. The world is too complex. Yet that is precisely how election campaigns are run.
Exhibit B, Your Honour - refugees. Abbott professes that he will 'stop the boats'. He claims that the number of boat arrivals has risen under the current government. Yet he ignores that refugee arrivals everywhere have increased. He also ignores the tremendous complexity of the refugee debate, preferring to reduce it to a series of fear-inspiring buzz-words (as I have written previously).
Does that mean that politics is meaningless? Maybe, but probably not. Rather, it means that there is more to this campaign (and indeed to public policy) than meets the eye. It means that there is a little more thinking that should be done before siding with a candidate. Unfortunately, time-poverty, cynicism and apathy are all great foes in the battle for the public's imagination.
So instead we vote on a whim. We vote for the better haircut, the better name, the better chef. We vote for the least-bad-candidate. I'm not entirely sure that this democracy, our democracy, lives up to its ideals. But, hey, it's still the best-system-that-doesn't-work that we have.
Just some food for thought.
Marty Bortz
Masters Student
School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Melbourne