Labor and the Coalition united three times to defy the expressed desire of the voters; on gambling, on disability and on the power of the tech companies
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If you need any more evidence that the two-party system is cooked, look no further than the not so grand coalition that came together to preference power over people in the federal parliament last week.
These days the Liberal and National parties have taken to condemning modern Labor as “socialist” and some of its policy “communist”.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has labelled the three parties of the right the “Noalition” as the Liberals and Nationals increasingly align with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
They hate each other. Yet apparently, needs must.
And in plain sight this last week, we have seen a more profound and perhaps permanent realignment as both government and opposition prioritise political survival over community concern. They could choose to better collaborate to meet the moment. Instead they choose to swallow their hatred of each other to safeguard their collective mediocrity.
In at least three instances Labor and the Coalition united to defy the clearly expressed desire of voters; on gambling, on disability and on the power of the digital companies.
On the recommendations of the Murphy report, on the NDIS and on media diversity, Anthony Albanese chose to deal in the dark with Labor’s nominal “enemy” rather than with a crossbench that had proposals better reflecting what the public want and could have provided an alternative pathway to a majority in the Senate.
On gambling, Labor purports to have done more than any other government before it.
You don’t get to skite about something being better than nothing.
Voters across the spectrum remain sickened at the literal death toll from gambling harm, the women and children hurt, the money sucked out of their communities into the coffers of largely multinational gambling companies, big sport and big broadcasting.
They know this deal made between the major parties provides a half arsed ‘solution’.
What we are witnessing, as the vote share of the major parties continues to decline is the emergence of a new political pragmatism that could ultimately compound the very loss of trust, and voter support that the legacy parties are trying to subvert.