Every few years our political class goes looking for the “quiet Australians.” In 2019 they found a flattering fiction…..the aspirational mortgage-belt couple, the franking-credit retiree, the tradie worried about his ute that was being threatened by EVs. It was all BS. There was zero data behind any of it. But it told us exactly which Australians our political and commentariat class are willing to lend agency to. It’s almost never the people who actually are the real quiet Australians.
The real ones don’t read the opinion pages. They empty your bins. They wipe your parents in aged care. They clean the office after you’ve gone home. They work the night shift at the meatworks. And the political class treats their labour as the one cost that can always be squeezed and the one claim that can always be deferred.
Watch what happened when 7,000 ASU members stopped Melbourne’s bins this year. The councils blamed the state’s rate cap. The state said the councils were sitting on healthy surpluses and crying poor. Each side pointed at the other, and the garbo, a human being who just wanted to stop picking up weekend shifts to break even, dissolved into the gap between two institutions. That’s the bet our political class makes again and again: muddy who’s responsible, and the public will shrug and move on.
But voters aren’t fooled, and this is where the political class keeps getting it catastrophically wrong. In Hume, the council that told 17,000 households their bins were a casualty of state stinginess is the same council that found $24 million to restore the Broadmeadows Town Hall. The money is always there for the building, the precinct, the plaza, their own renos. It’s the people who keep the suburb from drowning in its own waste who are told the well has run dry, that there is no money to help them feed their kids.
This is why the system is being turned over. We keep telling ourselves the revolt against the major parties, the surge to One Nation, is a story about culture or grievance or misinformation. A moral failing in the voter to be fixed with better messaging. It is nothing of the sort. It is an entirely rational response from an outer-suburban, mortgage-stressed working class that has watched its political class find money and agency for everyone except people like them.
My article on why Garbos are just as important as health workers - below.
Truth bombs incoming. 💣🔥💣🔥💣🔥
The Australian’s Editor at Large Paul Kelly argues that Pauline Hanson is completely unequipped to be Prime Minister, urging voters to use common sense and look closely at her political limitations.
#auspol
@RobPeffer@MsCarriggofreal@nate_nugent@JaneCaro “Most feminists”? Really? I’ve been a feminist since I was a teenager and so have most of the women I know, and not one of us wants anything of the kind. I think you’re getting your “information” about feminism from other men who are as ignorant about it as you are.
@grayphil27@jk_rowling@IWF It’s excellent that your sister is happy, but did you even read the story? If you did, are you assuming that this girl is lying? Or do you think her voice should be silenced? And why can’t you see that these good and bad outcomes can exist side by side?
@3AWNeilMitchell I am a boomer. My wife and I own our home and everything in it.
We paid tax all our working life and in retirement are not rich but comfortable.
I fully support the Governments efforts to level the playing field.
@Matt__Cooper__ And the rest of us (who are happy to do it, because this is how taxes work; they are there for the benefit of the whole population) are paying a lot more in tax than that to support and educate your ‘seriously awesome kids’. How is that different?
Angus Taylor just said he’s not going to be lectured to by Paul Keating. Oh Angus, Angus, Angus. Don’t take on Paul Keating. It can only end in tears (yours). 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@AntonioFreePR@JaneCaro When you say ‘people will see through it’, oh Media Pro, I take it that by ‘people’ you mean ‘squalid men like me who think that all women and all women’s behaviour is to be judged solely by their fitness as a commodity for the use of men.’
@kellythe4th@julianblacks_ Especially the special occasions that are about the woman’s achievements. Double if it’s a degree, a promotion or a raise that put the woman ahead of them.