Mutterings in 07'

An older gentleman sits next to me at the office in St Leonards. Currently in the most stable time his life, he is part of a substantial yet fading population - the old caucasian Australian male. A man of decorum, charming and funny in the most inoffensive manner possible, he has earnt his place as the most lovable fellow in the office, and he's brilliant at what he does. He is a local North Shore boy, shielded by a life of prosperity and distance from the inner suburb experience. He speaks earnestly (and without any sense of superiority or haughtiness) of holiday houses, frequent flyer miles, stocks, bonds, and various financial securities which make me drift off to my happy place. He has lived through the conversion from imperial to metric systems, and through at least 15 governments from Menzies to Howard (the last bastion of hope for his generation). He is, with the watered down profile provided, a liberal voter.

Slightly out of touch with the complexities of modern Australia, he turned and said to me with the innocence and sincerity of tone he has become well known for, 'I wonder why Howard is dropping so much in the polls when he's done such a good job'. This is the group which the Howard government has known all along would support them thanks to economic luck and a healthy tax cut for their end of the spectrum. For the most part blunders such as Tampa, Cornelia Rau's wrongful detention, hesitation to sign the Kyoto protocol, and the farce that was the Dr.Haneef debacle (among other incidents) slip through their collective consciousness. It's the same conservative mentality that believes the Howard governments' arguement against the development of nuclear power plants. They mustve forgotten how far nuclear technology (and safety) has come since Chernobyl.

However it's also true to a large extent that they are not to blame, that they are a product of their generation and their environment: one of prosperity and a much more homogenous population, perhaps that which it seemed the Coalition strived for in its later years. The point is, scathing and hissing at liberal voters is useless, better instead to opt for a silently patronising tone and recognising the irony of what they stand for: Howards 'better Australia'. Multimillion dollar tax-payer funded campaigns advertising a new 'citizenship test', funded largely by people who wouldnt pass it themselves. Call an election, then call a tax cut, people imagine Costello standing on the corner of George st handing out $34 million. Part of the coalitions success then, is appealing to individuals' base attractiveness to money and the undeniable appeal of seeing a few more dollars next to their name. This makes it extremely difficult for the layman to see through and realise the ironically conservative nature of the current government. The prosperity they promise cannot come from holding onto our old ideas, pass strict laws on immigration (read: terrorism), regress from current trends in nuclear and environmental policy, and generally not move in the direction of the rest of the world.

The Liberal government, by and large, is like the old man sitting next to me, just without the charm. They stand defensive, eyes weary and ragged, legs shoulder width and palms stretched outwards in 'stop position', in the hope that time somehow runs counterclockwise. They speak dreamily of material prosperity without actually noticing that the rest of the world speaks another language. So i'll continue to enjoy the company of the silvertail next to me, and hope that with a new government both our generations will be better off, only he might not know why.