WELL, let's be straight on this one: 27 per cent is on the verge of minor-party status. Any lower and you are close to being able to name all of your supporters.
The Labor Party is a serious organisation think Fisher, Curtin, Chifley, Hawke and Keating so how did it get to this? The answer must come from Labor itself. Last month senator Michael Forshaw gave his valedictory speech, after 17 years of service as a senator from NSW. He recounted that his father worked at the Kurnell oil refinery, and that for him life was made up of three things: "Faith, family and the Labor Party."
Labor's moves of late have desecrated these principles. Labor luminaries have been listening to the loudest voice at the bookstore coffee shop, not to those around the kitchen table. On the nation's fridge, under the holiday magnet of a sunny day at Nambucca Heads is a $190 billion bill for Australia's gross federal debt. That amounts to more than$15,000 for every Australian taxpayer. Apparently this is not a problem. As an accountant I have heard that before, and seen the tears flow freely later.
Then we have a carbon tax, this so-called price on carbon. What on earth is this rubbish? Our relative advantage in the global economy is determined by the cost of wages and the cost of other inputs such as electricity. If we are aiming for dear power, will we tolerate lower wages?
We live in, and rely on, a Southeast Asian economy, but we seem to lack the capacity to grasp the realities of both the economic fundamentals and the cultural realities of our area.
Labor is inspired by a well meaning Radio National conscience but, as seen with the live cattle fiasco, this can cause real diplomatic problems.
We appear to be doing everything in our power to remove Australia from the manufacturing sector. We believe that long-term prosperity can be based on the export of coal and iron ore, and a service sector to spread the wealth back to the urban capitals.
We affirm that our miracle economy is the lights of Sydney, but a small hiccup in the mining sector after the floods early this year saw Australia endure the biggest fall in GDP in 21 years. The fact is, we need hard currency from product that goes on the boat if we intend to surround ourselves with product that comes off it.
As far as faith goes we have, under Labor, and at times the Coalition, decided that it is politically incorrect to state the bleeding obvious: without a social code society becomes rather uncomfortable. We pine for a formless freedom but then are shocked at the result of the formless outcome. Our Judeo-Christian code has delivered a fairly admirable outcome of personal freedoms, so why are we so dismissive of it?
Family is the most affordable social policy on offer. Family structure is better at enforcing law than a police department, and family love provides better support than social security. The family house is still the aspired fundamental economic security blanket. But the loudest voices in Canberra push for a world in which the family is either passe or is degraded to a term that means anything, and so means nothing.
Labor has desecrated these principles in the quest for a feigned mystical constituency, one that does not query moving unaccompanied children to Malaysia yet at the same time believes in a total ban on all live cattle exports to Indonesia; and one that relies on the export of coal while embarking on a crusade to stop carbon emissions.
The live-cattle issue has turned into an economic and diplomatic fiasco in which the only losers will be us. Faith, family and the Labor Party: you don't see them hanging around together much these days.