Ashes ads underscore fear of being hit for six at ballot box
RUNNING
television advertisements during the Ashes cricket series is not cheap. Yet the Liberal Party has been doing just that during the Channel 9 coverage of the just-completed Melbourne test match. Three months out from the state election and the predictable scare campaign against Labor and the Greens has already begun.
What does the timing of these advertisements tell us? One, that the Liberal Party has plenty of money — and no doubt its friends in Clubs Australia, Tasmanian Hotels Association and Federal Hotels will be throwing more
Greg Barns
largesse given the Hodgman Government’s defence of gaming machines; and two, the Liberals are frightened of losing majority government.
The advertisements themselves, cheap, nasty and insulting to voters, are examples of what turns so many in the community off politics. They simplistically portray the years of 2010-2014 when the Labor Party and Greens were in office as being the manifestation of incompetence and doom. Rebecca White, the advertisements tell us, was part of that government. So don’t go back. The Liberal Party has brought economic sunshine and nirvana to the island state is the theme.
Police Minister Rene Hidding tries to defend the advertisements against the justified charge they make a mockery of Premier Will Hodgman’s statement he wants to run a positive election campaign. According to Mr Hidding the advertisements are about comparison of records. If you believe him then you also think Elvis works at this newspaper’s reception desk.
If Mr Hidding’s claim is to be taken seriously then a fair and accurate advertisement portraying the records of the Labor-Green years versus the Hodgman government would focus on one fact — the GFC.
Mr Hodgman and his government have been seriously lucky. They have not had to govern during the immediate aftermath of the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s Depression. And remember that Tasmania is a tiny economy in the global context so it could not possibly insulate itself from the GFC or for that matter, the 1990-91 recession that hit Australia.
When David Bartlett and Lara Giddings were leading the state after the 2010 election the Australian economy was flatlining. Economic growth was between 1.7 and 2.7 per cent between 2010 and 2014. Furthermore, this figure would have been lower but for mineral exports.
The Reserve Bank’s February 2014 Statement on Monetary Policy outlined just how difficult life was for any Tasmanian government during that period.
Employment growth remained soft, budget deficits were blowing out, business investment was subdued and the economy, while showing signs of picking up after being flattened in the GFC of 20082009, was still performing below par.
These economic conditions were exaggerated in states like Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia where mining exports were not a dominant
feature of the economy.
Since 2014 the Australian economy has grown in line with global growth. The Reserve Bank’s latest pronouncements have noted the pick-up in employment growth, although in Tasmania that is mainly part-time or seasonal jobs, and the fact that the Australian economy is growing at a more consistent clip than during the GFC years.
Mr Hodgman and his government will tell you there has been an increase in business confidence since he was elected in 2014. He and his colleagues seek to portray this fact as a consequence of their election. Such a claim is arrant nonsense. There was a decline in business investment across Australia in the Labor-Green years of 2010-2014. Tasmania was not an isolated case.
The advertising campaign of the Tasmanian Liberals is not comparing apples with apples. It is simply misleading voters. What is remarkable is that, as noted above, the Hodgman government feels the need to resort to a cheap and deceitful scare campaign three months out from an election. One has to wonder what its private polling is telling it about the softness of its support. Equally however one has to question whether voters, relaxing after Christmas, are taking any notice of the advertisements. One generally watches cricket as a form of escape from the stresses of life, which includes for most voters, politicians.
Perhaps Mr Hodgman and his team are fretting that Labor’s sensible and much needed reform to the scourge of gaming machines in low income areas is hitting the right note among swinging voters. Or is it that the obsession on tourism as some form of economic salvation is being seen for what it is, the creation of more part-time and seasonal jobs at the whim of fickle consumers and the Australian dollar. Perhaps it is the ridiculous law and order campaign that is not biting. Why would it, given the crime rate in Tasmania is so low.
Voters are not idiots. The Liberal Party appears to think otherwise if the advertising campaign is any indication. They may rue the exorbitant cost of these advertisements come election day.