Six months is a long time in Australian politics, especially when the people who decide our elections are non-interested swinging voters who have little or no idea of what is really going on.
For all of the logic and reasoning that says Labor can’t win, due to their blatant lies, corruption, incompetence, and waste, none of it matters because the people who determine our election outcomes don’t have a clue. All they see is what’s on the surface, and Labor knows it.
Labor knows that provided they keep attacking the Liberals and Tony Abbott, and defending themselves as if they’re the victims, they can maintain an election-winning image. They can literally fake it until they make it because the people who decide who governs Australia aren’t really paying attention.
Disengaged voters don’t know Abbott’s not sexist – they haven’t watched him closely enough for long enough. As far as they know, his whole attack could be based on sexism and greed. After all, they think he looks sexist and people know he fancies big business.
It’s hard to imagine Labor winning in the face of the type of ads the Liberals will run, but if Labor retaliates hard and it turns into a brawl – a campaign of fear and smear based on lies and sensationalism about workers rights, misogyny and boat people, the melee that ensues will be lost on the swinging voters. They’ll switch off and say ‘they’re all as bad as each other’, and this is a battle Labor knows how to win.
Remember that under our system of compulsory voting, almost anything is possible. Policy doesn’t matter, substance doesn’t matter and truth certainly doesn’t matter because the people deciding our election outcomes aren’t really paying attention.
The reason they aren’t paying attention is because our leaders rely on force to motivate people to vote. They don’t need to inspire or motivate anyone with good ideas, all they need to do is be a little less repulsive than the other guys and compulsory voting does the rest.
If the ALP gets close before the next election and then gets another bump in the polls from a leadership switch, the new 1.5 million voters thanks to automatic voter enrollment could be enough to get them over the line.
The ALP knows this, which is why they’ve introduced automatic enrollment. The Liberals know it too, which is why they oppose it.
Unfortunately, opposing automatic enrollment is not the answer. The Liberals must oppose compulsory voting. But they’re too stupid to realize it.
They’re too stupid to realize that they would hold the moral high ground if the oppose compulsory voting, but look like fascists when they oppose automatic voter registration.
Jason Kent
