The unedifying dash for the middle ground

POLITICAL parties are getting more like supermarkets every year. Politics used to be the art of compromise, where the parties did deals to get results. Often each party had to lose something to achieve an overall bigger result.

But advances in data management and a rise in the frequency of polling led to better knowledge of people’s intentions. So now politics is the art of marketing based on those results. If the party tweaks this policy, puts that spin on another, the suckers will vote us in.

John Howard rode it to a long term. Then Labor used the same tactics to unseat him as prime minister and even more spectacularly unseat him as a member of parliament.

And way back, just as supermarkets were different, parties were so dissimilar you could easily pick Lib from Lab. Labor catered to a leftish unionist market with a few concessions to the party’s right wing. The Liberal-National Coalition catered to a rightish market with a few concessions to the centre wing.

But things are different today. Delivering results to the electorate has gone the way of the corner store. Who needs results when you can market your promises to a bunch of suckers softened up by the supermarkets?

If supermarkets can market sameness as difference, so can the party. And like the big two supermarkets, parties are hard to pick apart. One has brought your company tax down, down, down. You do own a company that will benefit from this, don’t you? The other party is the fresh ideas people who have a different spin on most things.

If you can’t tell your supermarket apart without all the branding and advertising, you probably can’t pick the parties apart if you read their policies. You do read the policies before voting, don’t you?

“Roads, dams, flood mitigation works, firefighting equipment. Yes, we have promises to bring all of those to your area. And our promises are definitely better than theirs.”

Parties may promote their policies as better than those other policies, but the reality is “me too, same, same.” And the call is, “Pick us, pick us! We won’t rock your boat. But we will stop those boats full of undesirables.”

“We’ll promise jobs for your children at the same time as we make you do your own checkout so we don’t have to hire any more staff.” That self-checkout is whether you’re in Centrelink or buying a tin of soup to warm your heart and body.

And next election day if one party has won government, the leader will face the cameras to say, “Thank you for voting for the fresh idea down down down party. And have a nice day.”

But as parties left, right and centre have found in Australia and overseas, ordinary people are increasingly checking themselves out of the party’s support crew. We’re waiting for the Aldi of politics, the disruptive mob that puts a firecracker under the smug super marketing parties.

“Reality check in aisle three.”