Pre-poll missing half the message
SCOTT Morrison revealed his superannuation rabbit with a flourish and bad timing at his weekend campaign launch.
More than a million Australians had already voted when they heard him promise first-home buyers could dip into their super savings to fund a deposit.
“The best thing we can do to help Australians achieve financial security in their retirement is to help them own their own home,” he said to a diminishing, swinging electorate.
This is not a small thing, to promise something big to voters who can no longer vote for you.
Many will be dismayed that the super spigot might be turned on for young, fundamentally homeless people fearing it will lead to yet another overheated property market and an erosion of super’s permanence.
Many others scratching for a house deposit now don’t have the choice to change their vote and give Morrison another go, because it suits them financially.
Electoral promises are meant to attract voters, differentiating one political movement from another and delivering clear benefits for those who are not rusted on.
Fast-forward to Saturday when half of the nation will have already picked a team and politicians will start talking about mandates to do this or that with our taxes.
That’s if they get elected, of course, rather than hanging together in a minority marriage of convenience.
How, then, can a government claim a mandate when so many people cast their vote before major policies have been announced?
And why are the people voting without listening to what is being said?
Surely they can’t claim later that they were misled, that they didn’t know what their vote meant?
Clearly, there’s a level of disenchantment with the political process, proven by historic broken promises and scandalous behaviour that diminishes public trust in politicians.
So much so, that cash-splash election promises are now not to be believed, replaced by cult-like personal conviction or activism that captures the reactivity of the disgruntled.
News Corp local journalists spoke to almost 7000 voters in the first three days of the pre-poll and found hand-to-hand combat in tight booths where minority parties now account for 25 per cent of the vote.
This trend towards more European-style horsetrading will lead to even more distrust in the political process, make no mistake.
We’ve seen it all before in local government, where soapbox councillors and their pet projects are tolerated so that the big stuff of running the place actually happens.
When all that wheeling and dealing gets out of hand, as it does from time to time, these fractured councils that harbour more opinions than common sense get sacked.
They become toxic and dysfunctional.
They become a joke.
The clamour to vote early is an extraordinary phenomenon, fuelled by Covid queue fears as much as impatience to get the election over and done with.
In 2019, the pre-poll swelled by more than 1.5 million votes.
This election, in a more condensed voting period, the Australian Electoral Commission expects up to five million people will vote before Saturday.
It will be a defining moment for our democracy and change the nature of electioneering as we approach the tipping point where the number of people who actually vote on election day won’t matter.
The government will already have been decided on whim.
WHY ARE THE PEOPLE VOTING WITHOUT LISTENING TO WHAT IS BEING SAID? SURELY THEY CAN’T CLAIM LATER THAT THEY WERE MISLED, THAT THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THEIR VOTE MEANT?