For those who ARE interested, this is an introduction to Australian politics and the history of the modern Australian Labor Party (ALP) - the party that lost the election on the back of bitter internal politicking, multiple leadership coups, an inability to balance the budget, unprecedented multi-billion dollar wastage of money, and multiple tax hikes to try to recoup the loss.
In Australia, the ALP is the "progressive, left wing, big government party", while the Coalition (between the Liberal Party and the National Party of Australia) is the "conservative, right wing, small government" party. These parties are roughly similar to the Democrats and the Republicans with a crucial difference - Australian politics is far less conservative than US politics, such that even the Democrats are more conservative than our "conservative" party. You guys would think that the ALP are like communists, whilst the third force in Australian politics (the Greens) actually ARE communists.
The ALP is split into factions. There is nominally a "right" faction, which represents Labor's core constituency of unions. These voters are typically unionised socially conservative working class types (i.e. churchgoing, anti-gay marriage, anti-immigrant) who have a class warfare mentality and want to tax the rich. The "left" faction consists of socially progressive inner city bleeding heart Chardonnay socialists who want to save the world. As you can see, neither side has any concept of money - the right faction thinks that they can get money by taxing the rich, the left faction simply thinks that money grows on trees.
Because of this genetic inability to manage money, Labor governments always leave us in debt, and Liberal governments always have to repay the debt. When the ALP treasurer Wayne Swan was mocked by a young parliamentarian who said that Labor governments had never delivered a budget surplus in his lifetime, Swan and then-PM Julia Gillard swore that they would deliver a budget surplus in 2012/13 and that it was "the responsible thing to do". They predicted a $1.1b surplus. Of course it was never going to happen. The predicted surplus turned into an $18b deficit, which then turned into a $30b deficit four weeks later when Swan and Gillard were given the boot.
Part of the reason is because of multiple big spending commitments and failed initiatives. They instituted a Carbon tax which is meant to transition into an Emissions Trading Scheme, but they set the price of Carbon at six times the price of Europe - the nett effect is to increase the cost of doing business and manufacturing in Australia, such that a number of industries either went broke or had to go begging to the government for money. They introduced a mining tax which they completely botched - it only raised $126m in the last financial year, half of which was swallowed up in administrative costs. But this did not stop them from going ahead with their spending promises which were supposed to be funded by this tax. They are trying to build a National Broadband Network (effective renationalizing the telecommunications industry) at an astronomical cost. Nobody knows how much the NBN is going to cost, because it has no budget. It will cost what it will cost, and it will take however long it takes.
This only scratches the surface of Labor's inability to spend money wisely. Here are a few more examples - they decided that every pensioner in Australia should have a new set top box, so they arranged for one to be delivered. The cost of these set top boxes was more than four times what you could buy in your electronics store. They decided that every eligible house should have free housing insulation. After billions of dollars and multiple deaths from electrocution, the scheme was dropped. They decided to hand out $900 to everyone at the last GFC. Most of this money went into plasma TV's or was wasted at the pub - meaning that the money went to China or was pissed into the toilet.
As a result of this, they converted a $22b budget surplus they inherited into a $300b net debt. The interest payments alone on this debt is close to $7b a year. These numbers may seem small to you (US debt is measured in trillions) but bear in mind Australia is much smaller, our economy less diverse, and we rely mostly on exports to a major trading partner whose economy is slowing.
If the fiscal irresponsibility were not enough to make your eyes water, there is also the circus that is the Australian Labor Party. After Rudd won in 2007, he had record high polling. In 2009, after a series of mis-steps he was stabbed in the back by his deputy, Julia Gillard, who then ascended into the office of Prime Minister. She immediately called an election to capitalize on the goodwill, but her campaigned was sabotaged by Rudd who started leaking against her. She was portrayed as a disloyal Lady Macbeth. As a result the election of 2010 resulted in a hung parliament. Gillard was forced to cobble together a minority government with the Greens (i.e. Communists) whom most Australians are deeply skeptical about. Gillard had a difficult time as Prime Minister, facing a competent and ascendant opposition leader in Tony Abbott (now our PM) and being haunted from within by Rudd's political ghost.
Where she was no different from her predecessor was her propensity to spend, spend, spend and continue to botch everything. As part of her agreement with the Commies (sorry, I meant Greens), she had to break her solemn election promise that "there will be no Carbon tax under a government I lead" and introduce a Carbon tax. From this day on, she was finished. Everything she did from then on - from appointing a misogynist bully whom the Liberals were in the process of disendorsing to the role of Parliamentary speaker, to that of defending one of her backbenchers who was caught using his union credit card to pay for prostitutes, to shafting an independent by abandoning her pledge to regulate "pokies" (gambling machines) - was done in a vain effort to shore up power.
Eventually, her government was reduced to a complete shambles. Everyone could see that they would suffer a landslide of massive proportions, similar to election losses in Queensland and New South Wales, where there were not enough ALP parliamentarians left standing to fill a Toyota Tarago. Yet they continued to sleepwalk their way to defeat, despite several challenges by Kevin Rudd - including one fiasco where a senior government minister challenged on his behalf, but Rudd refused to step up. He was eventually drafted in with months to go to the election.
The result, as we can see, is what they deserved. Abbott inherits a country with a budget deficit of $30b, a net debt of $300b, multiple ongoing failed projects. To say he has a challenge ahead is an understatement. He is at least pragmatic, not prone to grandiose promises in the style of Rudd and Gillard, and has his feet firmly on the ground. I, for one, am thankful.
