Mediaboss Marketing

2019, it must be said, has been a pretty poor year for progressives, and given the need for action on climate change and to counter racist nationalism, it was a pretty poor one for the planet and for humanity.

The recent loss by Labour in the UK election has everyone scrambling to look for lessons that can be translated elsewhere such as to Australia and to the US for next years presidential election.

Mostly this involves very little logic and a lot of confirmation of previously held beliefs.

For Australians looking at the ALPs loss in the 2019 election things are pretty grim, and the standard talk about needing to reconnect with the centre is thrown around pretty easily. That Bill Shorten was never actually a left-winger or ever had a reputation for being overly progressive is just dismissed with a shrug. The centre shall hold!

For my part, the election only reminded me of the two rules of Australian federal elections governments win the close ones, and when a party starts trying to make it a contest between opposing frontbenches, they are lost.

Since the 1949 every time the opposition won whether Menzies, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Howard, Rudd or Abbott they won big.

Aiming to win 76 seats might seem to be the way to victory, but it never has been the case for an opposition no opposition has ever won power with less than 54% of the seats (or at least 80 in the current parliament).

If youre not hearing the words the swing is on early in the broadcast, every time since the second world war that has meant the government has been re-elected.

And if you need to give your leader cover by trying to compare ministers, you are dead because barely anyone outside their immediate family knows who the minister for health is, let alone the shadow minister.

So get a leader who people like, and who has policies people like, and who is able to sell those likeable policies well.

Maybe that means go for the centre; maybe that means embrace an issue which has the most passion and which gets people excited.

But among the many problems for progressives is the need to also deal with the river of racism that now flows through our politics.

Conservatives here and in the UK and the US have decided white nationalism is the way forward and so devoid of soul are those within the conservative side of politics in the English speaking world that for the most part they care next to nothing that such an approach has racists viewing them as the best suited to lead.

For the philosophy of the conservatives is no longer of free markets or even traditional values; it is of annoying the left.

Ram a bill through parliament without debate? Use parliamentary committees to pursue a fraudulent partisan campaign? Do we care that such things are contrary to all established conventions that conservatives purport to hold dear? Pfft. If it annoys the left, then go for it. Even better if it involves picking on the powerless.

What this year has made clear is that there is no longer an actual political debate in this country, and barely one in the UK or US.

Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

This years election was not a contest of ideas, it was a contest of the ALPs polices and the Liberal partys lies about them.

Donald Trump showed that the media is helpless against a bald-faced lie proudly stated, and the Liberal party under Scott Morrison has applied the lesson so well you would almost suggest that lying was an innate ability of those within the party.

Tim Wilson told the ABC that it didnt matter that the ALP did not have a policy of a death tax, it was fair game because there are people within the party who want that policy.

The conservatives have realised such lies will be spread by the media, ever worried about being balanced, where every claim, no matter how discredited, deserves some debate even if it just to let it be debunked.

All the while on Facebook the lies are being spread, as some powerful journalists think their balance will provide any sort of counter.

And so, for example, we ask not which policy will best address climate change but which will cost the most, regardless of the impact on emissions.

To be honest, when you look at this year, you can understand why lying is a key part of the conservatives armoury it makes up for a lack of ability and achievement.

Take the now ongoing lie about best economic managers.

This past year the economy has been an utter cesspit. Just six times out of the 110 quarters since the 1990s recession has annual GDP growth been below 1.8% and half of them occurred this year.

There has not been a quarter of GDP trend growth above 1% since December 2011. That is nearly eight years. Before 2011 we used to average five such quarters of strong growth every three years.

Under the Liberal party, mediocrity has become the average, and previous averages have become mythical sighting ever over the horizon, like wages growth over 3% something we havent seen since March 2013.

The April budget did promise wages would get back to 3% growth by June 2021 but, as with every wage prediction made under this government, that was again pushed out, in this weeks midyear economic and fiscal outlook, to June 2023.

But hey, theyre going to deliver a surplus.

Woo. Hoo.

This year, real household incomes did not grow at all. OK, Im exaggerating they grew 0.05%. Enjoy.

Yes, household disposable income grew 0.9% due to the tax cuts. But that one-off hit is done, and given household consumption grew by the slowest amount since the GFC, its pretty clear were not feeling all that confident that the good times are about to start rolling.

And given the prospects for next year are so poor that the market currently is factoring in a 40% chance that by this time next year the Reserve Bank will have needed to cut the cash rate twice to 0.25%, people are right not to feel confident.

But we will probably have a surplus.

And we will endure yet another year of being told that the surplus matters, even as our living standards barely rise at all.

But let us not be too down-hearted. The fight continues. We shall continue to call out the lies, and we must remain willing to keep up the fight for better wages, better share of the national income and for action on climate change.

The 2010s were not a decade that will be looked back on fondly as a time of economic joy. Progressives must in the decade ahead be strong in acknowledging that this meagre allocation of joy is a purposeful outcome of the conservatives economic policies. They aim for weak wages growth, they prefer a larger share of income going to company profits and they continue to pretend a budget surplus matters, when really it is all about trying to reduce government services.

The 2010s was for the most part a decade lost for progressives in Australia, but we cannot allow the next decade to be surrendered.

Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia

Read more here:
It's been a lost decade for progressives and for the planet but the fight goes on - The Guardian