Other campaign stuff
Scare campaigns and nuclear energy
In a two-party system it’s easy to mount a scare campaign. Scrutinize the other side for an opportunity – a slightly ambiguous answer to a journalist’s question, something the party did when last in government, or even something that’s generally in line with the party’s historical ideology.
Outrageously deceitful scare campaigns saved the Morrison government from defeat in 2019, providing a powerful demonstration effect. Now the Coalition would have us believe that if Labor is re-elected the CFMEU will run the construction industry, hordes of illegal immigrants will terrorize the community in a crime wave, and the Chinese navy will conduct live-fire exercises in Sydney Harbour.
Labor too is having a go. The ABC’s Jake Evans reports how Coalition finance spokesperson Jane Hume has gave Labor an opportunity to run a scare campaign on working from home, and Dutton’s promise to reduce the Commonwealth public service by 41 000 has let Labor speculate about which services the Coalition’s DOGE plans to cut. (In saying that it would decide on cuts only after coming to office the Coalition seems to be politically clueless.)
These are simple examples. A cleverer tactic is to draw attention to a scare campaign run by some group with no political affiliation, and to accuse one’s political opponents of running it – a variant of astroturfing.
Such it has been with nuclear energy. The Coalition has been goading the traditional opponents of nuclear energy to embark on a campaign warning about the deadly risks of nuclear radiation. The Coalition has been ready to respond with firm data demonstrating that in comparison with fossil fuels and hydro, nuclear energy is very safe and is becoming safer in newer reactors. In fact it’s because the public insists on high safety standards that nuclear energy is so expensive.
Labor did itself no favours when last year some of its zealots in the Victorian branch produced a ridiculous anti-nuclear attack featuring blind dogs and three-eyed fish. And the Coalition has dug up a social-media post from last year, attributed to the Labor Party, pointing out the health risks of nuclear radiation. Yes, nuclear radiation is dangerous: we’ve known that for more than 100 years.
The prime minister has dismissed that social media post, pointing out that he does not share those concerns about safety. His focus is on the cost of nuclear power. But the Murdoch media persists in calling Labor’s opposition to nuclear energy, a “scare campaign”.
Is pointing out that nuclear energy for Australia is ridiculously expensive, that it would necessitate extending the life of CO2-emitting coal and gas, and that it would overstretch our water resources a “scare campaign”, or is Labor simply drawing attention to bad policy?
If it’s a “scare campaign”, how come 60 economists have put their professional reputations on the line by publishing an open-letter: The Coalition’s nuclear plan doesn’t add up – spend the money on household clean energy instead? If it’s a partisan campaign, how does Dutton explain away the case against nuclear energy run by Liberals Against Nuclear?
What would Ming have thought?
The existence of a Liberals Against Nuclear group illustrates the way Dutton has been pushing an issue that is quite at variance with the Liberal Party’s values. It was strange in the Albanese-Dutton debate to hear Dutton arguing for a massive government-owned enterprise while Albanese was arguing for a market-led approach to energy.
Labor, too, has been mounting a somewhat disjointed campaign against nuclear energy. It appears that some Labor campaigners decided to attack the Coalition’s nuclear plans from as many aspects as they could. Opinion polling finds that older people, and people who missed out on a solid scientific education, are afraid of nuclear power. Because that same demographic group is also an important part of the Coalition’s support base, it makes political sense to chip away at it. But that multi-fronted approach has tended to detract from the main message about the Coalition’s nuclear policy: we don’t need this expensive form of energy when Australia is already on track with a far less costly way of getting to net zero.
The economists’ letter is worth reading. Its points are in plain language. It summarises flaws in the modelling the Coalition used, including a failure to use proper net present value analysis – a fault which would result in a fail grade if it were in a first-year accounting student’s term assignment. It’s strange that a firm with a reputation to protect has not used a standard method of costing.
Liberals Against Nuclear also have a paper on the water requirements of the nuclear proposal. Of the Coalition’s seven sites, three are already experiencing water shortages, and two are likely to be experiencing water shortages in future years. Most countries construct their nuclear power stations on the coast, but most of our large old coal-fired stations, which the Coalition wants to replace with nuclear plants, are inland, in a dry country, where water has a high opportunity cost.
William Bowe’s Poll Bludger reports on a Redbridge poll, conducted earlier this month, revealing that 51 percent of respondents agree with the government’s assertion that Dutton’s nuclear plan “will cost $600 billion and he will need to make cuts to pay for it”, while only 13 percent disagree.
The ABC’s Vote Compass also covers people’s attitudes to nuclear power: 47 percent are opposed, 38 percent are in support. There are predictable partisan divides, with at least 70 percent of Greens, Labor and independent voters opposed to nuclear power. There is also a strong gender divide – women don’t like nuclear: Coalition's nuclear power pitch falling flat with some voters.
That same article, by Isabella Higgins and Claudia Williams, reports on Lowy Institute surveys on nuclear power, which finds that over time “the reflexive anti-nuclear stance of many Australians has fallen away”. That means we would probably support nuclear power if we didn’t have a lower-cost option, but unlike those countries in higher latitudes and those countries that don’t have our abundance of renewable resources, we don’t have to resort to high-cost nuclear power.
Largely missing in political arguments around energy is discussion of the influence of the coal lobby. It is hard to believe that the nuclear industry sees Australia as a great prospect: they will have done their sums, and have worked out their best bets are in countries that have little choice other than nuclear if those countries are to meet their climate change obligations. They seem to have plenty of work lined up in other countries, as the Coalition keeps telling us.
The real beneficiaries of the Coalition’s policies would be the coal lobby. They too will have done their sums, and have worked out that even if the Coalition were elected, its nuclear plan would probably never be realized. Their interest is not just the opportunity to keep coal in Australia’s energy mix. It’s also the Coalition’s promise to end expansion of renewable energy, because Australia’s steady path to 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation could have a worldwide demonstration effect.
Dutton’s tough-on-crime stance
If you’re going to Victoria be careful. Be very careful. Everyone knows that over the last three years there has been an outbreak of serious crime in Australia, but it’s even worse in Victoria, where people are huddled in their houses, terrified even to go out shopping.
This is Dutton’s foray into crime as an election issue.
If you look at the ABS data on crime victimisation you can be assured that in most categories of crime, victimisation rates have been falling over the last ten yours. The only category to have seen a rise is sexual assault, but that is probably influenced by an increased tendency by victims to report cases. The same site has a section where one can look at data state-by-state. Unsurprisingly the pattern in Victoria is much the same as the rest of Australia.
The authors of that linked article – David Crowe, Marta Pascual Juanola and Olivia Ireland – are understandably sceptical about Dutton’s claims, but they find some Victorian data on criminal offenders, where there have been increases in the number of recorded instances. The trouble is that while data on victimisation(the ABS data) gives a reasonably good picture of trends, data on offenders is subject to many influences. When a police force cracks down on crime, or when bail laws are toughened, there can be a sharp rise in recorded offender numbers even if there has been no change in victimisation. Be careful with politicians’ use of data.
For some truly ridiculous statements about crime you can turn to the Liberal Party’s document, Our plan to make communities safer. It reads like a Department of Foreign Affairs travel advisory for Mexico or Haiti, with the risk of anti-Semitic violence thrown in for good measure.
As a scare campaign it’s on another level from Morrison’s “end the weekend” campaign against electric cars, and the anti-Voice “they’re coming for your property” campaign, because it has consequences. If people believe this gibberish they will stop going out at night, they will stop using public transport, they will waste large amounts in an arms race to install the latest in security systems. Businesses will close because of a loss of custom, and deserted railway stations will become places people don’t want to go.
And imagine how that portrayal may be read by a tourist seeking a destination or a professional person thinking of migrating to Australia.
In any event dealing with crime is mostly an issue for state governments.
Dutton and Netanyahu
A Coalition idea getting little intention is Dutton’s proposal that a Coalition government, following Donald Trump’s example, would defy the International Criminal Court by inviting Netanyahu to visit Australia.
The story itself is behind The Australian’s paywall, but the firm Sydney Criminal Lawyers covers it in detail: Dutton’s determination to host Netanyahu reveals his Trumpian agenda is still on. Obviously that would mean that Australia, like Hungary, would be ignoring the ruling from the ICC that he should be arrested.
A foreign policy realist would understand why Trump invited Netanyahu to the USA, but why would an Australian government stick its neck out and invite him to Australia?
The only plausible explanation is that Dutton would see it as an opportunity to accuse opponents of Netanyahu’s conduct of the war against Hamas of “anti-Semitism”. It would be a re-run of his behaviour in the Voice campaign, setting Australian against Australian.
More confirmation that Dutton is not a fit person to hold office in a democracy.
Gender – a widening gap between young men and young women
Over a long period women were more likely than men to vote for the Coalition. The social conservatism of the party shaped by Menzies appealed to women, while the politics of the party that stood for the interests of the male working class appealed to men.
Even while more women entered the workforce and broke through glass ceilings, these voting patterns lived on until around the turn of the century, when the pattern started to reverse. The difference in men’s and women’s voting patterns was most notable in the 2022 election. Unlike Menzies, Morrison must surely see women’s suffrage as a burden on the Liberal Party.
Two factors seem to have been at play. One is the reaction to particular Coalition “leaders”, most notably Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, who had their own ways of making themselves unattractive to women. The other is a demographic effect as women with more education and more participation in the workforce become more liberal and progressive in their political attitudes.
Two recently published articles cover these longer-term trends. One is by Bri Lee, writing in the Saturday Paper about The Coalition’s troubled relationship with women. The other is by Michelle Arrow of Macquarie University, writing in The Conversation, who notes that gender played a significant role in the 2022 election and asks if it will do the same in this election.
Arrow notes three factors that could be at play in turning women towards Labor, or at least away from the Coalition. One is the strong probability that a Coalition government would cut funding for health and education and abolish working-from-home. Another is the attention the Albanese government has given to wages in female-dominated industries. (Bri Lee also mentions child care in this context.) And third is the way the Coalition is associated with strongman masculinity.
This last point is taken up by Blair Williams of Monash University in another Conversation contribution: Strongmen, daggy dads and state daddies: how different styles of political masculinity play into Australian elections. Albanese is the “state daddy”, Morrison was the “daggy dad”, and Dutton is showing himself as the “strongman”. To quote:
Dutton positions himself as the traditional masculine protector of the nation. The mobilisation of fear of a threat, real or imagined, is core to this identity. Dutton vows to protect Australians by being tough on crime, immigration and “wokeness”.
She goes on to write that his strongman persona and conservative policies “do not resonate with women”.
Much of the comment on the gender gap is about women being turned off the Coalition because of female-unfriendly policies, or the behaviour of their top men. The gap may also be opening up because a significant number of young men are turning towards the Coalition, attracted by its specific association with Trumpian masculinity.
Peter Lewis of the communications and research company Essential, whose polls are a regular feature of these roundups, has an article in The Guardian revealing a two-way breakdown of attitudes to political issues, one by gender, the other by age.
To quote Lewis:
Trump’s more muscular form of government sits well with our archetypical lad, who embraces his rugged individualism and sense of grievance egged on by American podcasters laced with a machismo nurtured by UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship].
When Australian respondents are questioned on the impact of Trump’s presidency there is a gender division across all age groups, but the division is particularly strong among those aged 18-34 (“Gen Z” + the younger half of “Gen Y”) , shown in the table below:
Then there is a question on respondents’ approval of Dutton, with a similar age breakdown:
But for the female franchise, Dutton by now would be way ahead in the polls, particularly among young men, and he would not have reversed his prohibition of working from home:
This division is confirmed in a separate survey conducted by e61: Gen Z men emerging as an outlier on gender norms. They look at men’s and women’s beliefs in traditional gender norms over this century so far, using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.
The general trend across all age groups and both genders is towards more liberal or progressive attitudes. But Gen Z males (up to around age 28) have broken away from this trend in the last few years. Their attitudes are now much the same as those of men aged 65 or more.
The e61 report has wrung a large amount of information on gender issues out of the HILDA data. There is evidence of a demographic effect: a person of age N now is more liberal than a person of age N ten or twenty years ago. There is also evidence of changing attitudes within cohorts: people are changing their attitudes.
It is tempting to believe that this hardening of attitudes among young men is confined to those with least education, but the researchers could find no relationship with education, or with other variables.