We look aghast at turmoil in America, UK and elsewhere and need to ask ourselves if this nightmare could come to Australia. For example, the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point is setting up in South Australia to target young voters.
Murdoch media trumpets that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party has now reached 12 per cent in the polls, the same level as the Greens, while the party of septuagenarians, the Liberals, slowly crumbles apart.
One Liberal complained that, as the median age of Liberal members is 72, a meeting of party members deciding on policy would come up with solutions more suited to mid-last-century, when the White Australia policy was still in force.
While that evil policy ended when Gough Whitlam passed the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, it didn’t end racism.
Some old timers remember and yearn for the ‘unwoke’ days when Labor’s Arthur Calwell could say in parliament, ‘Two Wongs don’t make a white’, and MPs would simply laugh.
They want to curtail immigration and tacitly prefer white migrants.
Racism has raised its ugly head once more. Migrants and asylum seekers are being scapegoated by the far right and blamed for the housing crisis, as rents reach ridiculous levels and buyers in Sydney need an income of $300,000 pa to buy an average home.
The irony is Australia and America are both nations of immigrants, built on the genocide of First Nations people.
Without immigration, Australia’s population would age and decline. Populations of countries like China, Japan and South Korea are already dropping.
There’s a severe shortage of workers needed to build homes. Australia urgently needs skilled migrants for housing and other industries.
Our ageing population has created a boom in the care industry while manufacturing steadily declines. People live longer thanks to modern medicine and need to be cared for in their dotage, often by migrants.
The turmoil is not just about migrants. Many are feeling the pinch of rising costs, particularly home insurance that is inextricably linked to the climate catastrophe unfolding like a slow-moving bushfire.
Heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and wild weather are causing global spikes in food prices – coffee, rice, corn, cocoa, potatoes and other food items.
Insurance costs are through the roof, and many can no longer afford to insure their homes. When catastrophe strikes, they are devastated and lose everything.
There used to be a Government Insurance Office in New South Wales until it was sold by the Fahey government in 1992. Conservative governments have a nasty habit of selling off public assets and letting the private sector solve problems, which they don’t.
As the climate crisis worsens governments need to act decisively to protect citizens and their assets.
Meanwhile those corporations mining and selling products that contribute to climate catastrophe are raking in billions and paying no corporate tax. Gas giant Santos has just racked up its tenth year of paying no corporate tax on a turnover of $48 billion. They pay a miserly few million in resource rent tax but nowhere near as much as they should for the global damage for which they are responsible. Likewise, Darwin’s Ichthys LNG paid no tax for the sixth year in a row from takings of $43 billion. Petroleum resource rent tax has fallen to a miserly $1.5 billion a year.
A ten per cent per annum turnover tax on corporations like Santos exploiting Australia’s natural resources would pay the entire annual insurance claims of everyone affected by floods, droughts, fires and hurricanes, with money left over for climate mitigation.
These billions could flow to a newly established federal Government Insurance Office.
The New South Wales one was set up by Labor Premier Jack Lang in 1927. The Albanese Labor government should establish one nationally by 2027. That would be a winner.
The move to the right by disgruntled voters needs to be tackled with bold imaginative new policies to tackle the root cause of their very real discontent.
It’s not impossible that by the time the next election comes around, the far right could be a lot more established, assisted by misleading propaganda luring in gullible voters.
Andrew Hastie’s departure from the Liberal front bench was carefully calculated. You can guarantee he, and others on the right of the Liberals will move against Sussan Ley well before the next election and attempt to establish themselves as an effective and viable opposition.
Voters are desperate and hurting and if they believe an opposition can turn things around, they will vote in extreme governments, as happened in America and Argentina. The populist right is well-funded by billionaires and working feverishly behind the scenes to gain credibility. They won’t let up.
The Albanese government simply cannot afford to rest on its laurels and assume it will coast back in. They must listen to the concerns of voters and address them courageously and urgently.
Richard Jones is a former NSW MLC, and is now a ceramist.
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