VALE, ALP - WE LOVED YOU WHILE YOU LIVED

A former union organiser and, until the second term of the Carr State Government, a lifelong member of the Australian Labor Party, my father is wont to say: ‘I used to be proud to mix with the cream of the working class; these days you’re associating with the dregs of the middle class’.

I too have voted Labor all of my adult life. The present government, however, is rapidly stripping me of any argument I might use to persuade myself – let alone anybody else – to re-elect them.

Forget the appalling sleight-of hand whereby they’ve removed Mainland Australia from our migration zone; that’s merely symptomatic of a sickness with which we, the community, have infected successive governments of either stripe.

Populist xenophobia notwithstanding, it has been possible to mount other defences of Labor: elect the Coalition, you could say, and they’ll gut tertiary education, and slash funding for training and research. “The Education Prime-Minister” and her government have now sacrificed that line as well.

In the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), the Government have held on to Howard-era middle-class welfare such as the Child-Care Rebate (not means-tested), and the “Baby Bonus” (cut from $5000 to $3000 for a second child, but still means-tested to $150,000 of annual family income).

Meanwhile, they’ve cut $500 million* from research funding to universities, $82 million from income support to some undergraduate students, and a further $167 million from some master’s students, all over four years; and all in the same week where they released a White Paper urging the country to skill-up and engage with the “Asian Century”.

Tourism Australia estimates that, by 2020, between $7.4 billion and $9 billion a year will be contributed to the national economy by Chinese tourists: perhaps we can all serve them drinks and clean their hotel rooms. I hope they tip well.

The Hawke-Keating Labor Governments dragged this country by the scruff-of-the-neck out of its nineteenth-century economic mindset; remodelled the hidebound system that doomed the Whitlam and Frazer Governments; and set the scene for a decade of prosperity under John Howard.

This Government is ready to hamstring us for the next century, and all to protect a theoretical budget-surplus that barely a breathing economist believes is essential or even advisable. They’ve thrown away Labor’s economic credibility, and trapped themselves with their own political sloganeering.

But what’s the alternative? The Abbot-led Coalition is no better. The Greens? They were borderline crazy even under Bob Brown’s calming hand.

I’ve never been a fan of informal voting; always saw it as individuals evading their responsibilities. If I was Clive Palmer, however, and looking for insane ways to spend a fortune that didn’t involve a replica Titanic, I’d fund a national campaign:

Next year, leading up to the Federal Election, I’d do my level best to persuade the entire country as one bloc to vote informally. Not one single vote for any of these bastards. Send them back to try again.

Maybe then they’d get the message.

*All figures – The Sun-Herald, 28/10/2012.