From the moment then Prime Minister Julia Gillard uttered the words ‘tax’ when explaining Labor’s carbon pricing model in February 2011, the political walls began caving in around her. Her statement in the lead up to the 2010 election that, ‘there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead’ was then wheeled out ad nauseam by her conservative opponents. It was seen as a breach of trust. The actual merit of a market-based pricing mechanism to tackle climate change was rarely discussed. The reality of a minority government similarly ignored. Shock-jocks, commentators, and newspaper headlines alike focused on the ‘lie’.
The thing is, it was never really a ‘tax’. The use of the word ‘tax’ in 2011 by the PM was merely to make for greater ease of understanding of how the fixed pricing mechanism worked. It wasn’t - and still isn’t - a tax and any economist or tax specialist worth their salt will tell you the same thing.
But the political damage was done. The next day, Alan Jones coined the ‘Juliar’ moniker and the rest would become political history. Gillard recently admitted in her much-discussed piece in the Guardian that the use of the word ‘tax’ had been the wrong choice, and one that politically injured here.
“I erred by not contesting the label “tax” for the fixed price period of the emissions trading scheme I introduced,” she wrote. “I feared the media would end up playing constant silly word games with me, trying to get me to say the word “tax”. I wanted to be on the substance of the policy, not playing gotcha.”
But for the large part, substance is often overlooked in current political discourse in favour of "gotcha" political journalism. Context, nuance and quality of interpretation fall by the wayside in the pursuit of a headline. Radio and television commentators and hosts - I deliberately avoid the term journalists here - appear more concerned about tripping politicians up than discussing the ins and outs of how policies and commitments will or won't work.
This raises question about what promises we can expect politicians to keep. In particular, it raises questions about what promises a new Coalition government can be expected to keep and what we, as the public, will give it permission to get away with. The Coalition campaigned heavily in opposition on the basis of trust. Now, the Coalition government is only a few weeks old, and already we are witnessesing it shift from its promises.
Our new PM has spoken of his desire to ‘stop the boats’ for years. For some time, Abbott proclaimed that a Coalition government would ‘stop the boats’ in its first term. Now, the rhetoric has shifted and he talks of stopping the boats as soon as possible. Whether that is in a first term or not, no-one really knows. Is that a broken promise?
For years, Tony Abbott, supported by Scott Morrison, took every chance to talk of ‘illegals’ arriving on our shores. They spoke of it like we had an armada of boats swarming our shores. This was never the case, but merely a scare campaign in its most appalling form. Now, as Minister, Mr Morrison is choosing to close ranks and reveal as little information as possible, claiming ‘it’s not the government’s job to run a shipping news service for the people smugglers’. This coming from the very same side of politics whose senior members posed for photos in front of billboards that kept a running tally of ‘how many illegal boats have arrived since Labor took over’. This hypocrisy is worthy of serious question. Mr Morrison and others should be taken to task over it.
The Coalition campaigned hard on its ability to manage the economy and by implication Labor’s mismanagement of it. In particular, the Coalition spoke of the need to rescue Australia from a ‘budget emergency’. Listening to or reading anyone in conservative politics, and many in certain sections of the media, and you would think we were all doomed to suffer a fate similar to that experienced by Greece, Spain and a string of other nations in legitimately tough budgetary positions.
The truth however, and the facts - yes, those pesky things - pointed to no such emergency. Australia’s budgetary position is sound and remains the envy of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the ‘emergency’ narrative stuck, and many voters no doubt went to the ballot box thinking that we needed some sort of budgetary buoy to avoid drowning. The many vox pops and opinion polls on the matter confirmed this.
Now, in government, the Coalition has already begun stepping away from it, performing a subtle, yet merry, dance away from its previous position. On election night itself, the now Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos spoke of an economy that was in ‘good shape’, a description that certainly would not have been forthcoming from the Liberal Party only 24 hours earlier -and certainly at odds with an Opposition which had talked down the economy for years.
In January 2013, Joe Hockey spoke of bringing the budget back into surplus in the first term of a Coalition government. Now, we are told this won’t happen until 2016-17, and the budget emergency is seemingly nowhere to be found. How did things improve so quickly? Were the Australian people fed a lie? Is that a broken promise?
Then back in August, on a hot Saturday morning in the middle of the campaign, Tony Abbott visited north east Arnhem Land, delivering a speech to a packed key forum at the Garma Festival. Garma is the biggest indigenous festival of its kind in Australia, with indigenous and non-indigenous people alike coming from across the region, and indeed the country, for four days of what is a truly remarkable cultural experience.
In his speech, Abbott talked up his claim that over recent years, he’d spent at least one week in an Aboriginal community. He then went on and said: ‘And why not, if you permit me, why shouldn’t I, if you will permit me, spend my first week as Prime Minister, should that happen, on this, your country.’
Two weeks after the election, and a week after being sworn in, this has not happened, nor has there been any suggestion that it will be happening any time soon.
Are these broken promises? Or is the new government just allowed to play to a different set of rules?
Elliot Giakalis is a lawyer turned communications adviser and is a member of the Australian Labor Party.
What do you think? Join the conversation on our Facebook post now.
