Today’s editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald says it much more eloquently than me about the State election tomorrow. If you live in NSW, make your vote count and DON’T VOTE LABOR.
Editorial
The election campaign has been an undistinguished contest between two lacklustre leaders manoeuvred by teams of image managers. If the public have been excited at all by the battle or inspired by either of the antagonists, they are disguising it well. Every state election is said to be of vital importance; it is a cliche of politics. But cliches are worn out through overuse for a reason: they are true. When electors enter the ballot box tomorrow, they must weigh up which side is best equipped to run NSW for the next four years. That is no small matter. Despite the fog of competing claims and spin-doctoring, and the general air of resigned indifference in which the contest has been staged, this election matters. And we believe the choice for electors is clear.
The Government managed to blitz the airwaves as the election approached, both with publicly funded political advertisements spuriously called information campaigns, and with legitimate party-funded advertising. The first have attempted to lend an air of optimism and renewal to a tired 12-year-old Government; the second have attempted to smear the Opposition as incompetent and a risky choice. These are not arguments, of course. Advertisements rarely are. They are image management. But opinion polls have suggested the images of Labor as sometimes fallible but basically reliable, and the Coalition as inexperienced and therefore risky, have stuck in many voters’ minds. Those voters should think again.
The government of states in the Australian federation is about management. It does not deal with visions of national destiny, but with nuts and bolts – the provision of services, the upkeep of infrastructure. In the Australian political spectrum parties of the right philosophically tend to reject government action, fearing it may lead to oppression and the reduction of individual liberty; parties of the left foster government as a way to limit the distortions of capitalism and promote equality. Labor being, notionally at least, a party of the left, it might be assumed that it would bring vigour and talent to the task of managing this state in government. Under Morris Iemma, Labor has done neither. Its record has been little short of appalling. Government services are in disarray. Trains are slow, late and prone to breakdown. Buses and ferries are in poor condition. Roads are pitted and holed through lack of maintenance. Government schools and hospitals are dilapidated, with a long wait for funds to patch them up. Queues for elective surgery are long.
If maintenance has been neglected, so has investment. Off Newcastle, scores of ships lie at anchor, awaiting their turn for the inadequate port facilities where they can take on cargo. Essential road links such as the Pacific Highway remain largely primitive and dangerous single-lane corridors. The Government has tried to build infrastructure with public-private partnerships but its record is poor. While the M7 has succeeded, the Cross City Tunnel has been a disaster – a model of how not to run such enterprises, and a deterrent to private investors across the world. NSW is feeling the effects of this second-rateism. It languishes near the bottom on the states’ economic league table.
Moreover, as the Herald has repeatedly shown, this Government is addicted to secrecy. The cracks in the edifice of management may be wide and getting wider, but attempts to reveal or inquire into the true state of affairs meet denial and obfuscation at every turn. While pretending to support freedom of information, the Government does little to foster a genuine culture of openness. Only this week, we have reported on attempts to suppress documents on safety risks to the rail network, and on the maintenance backlog in state schools. They are two of many examples. These are not the actions of supporters of freedom of information, but its opposite. The Government’s stated position is straightforward hypocrisy.
SUCH hypocrisy is one of the diseases that over-long incumbency brings. Another is the politicisation of the public service. The Government has no time for independence in the executive. Those who refuse to toe its line are removed or bullied into submission. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, has cited the fate of the former heads of the Roads and Traffic Authority, Paul Forward, and of Transgrid, Philip Higginson, as examples. To these may be added, at a lower level, Labor’s attempt to bully the nurses who revealed problems at Camden and Campbelltown hospitals. They are all examples of a Government grown arrogant after too long in office.
If the Government’s attempt to disinfect its record is faulty, what of its campaign against the Opposition?
As the Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam has run a disappointing campaign. Outgunned by Labor in advertising firepower, he has been defined by the Government as inexperienced and therefore risky before he has had a chance to define himself. His team has not been in evidence around him. Yet on the Coalition benches sits a core of talent that could form the nucleus of a good government. In Victoria, Steve Bracks came to power with a similarly small pool of front-bench talent to draw on. By concentrating power in that restricted group, his Labor Government was able to run that state effectively – to the point where, with fewer natural endowments its economy now outperforms NSW. Given the same opportunity, the Coalition could be expected to do the same here.
As for inexperience – the argument has no force. In any democracy it stands to reason that a new government will be less experienced than the one it replaces. So what? In any case, Labor’s experience of government has been of repeated and widespread failure. Its supposed experience should be seen, if anything, as a liability.
Labor’s best talent resigned soon after Bob Carr. When Michael Egan, Craig Knowles and Andrew Refshauge also quit the scene, Labor lost its edge in ability. Labor and the Coalition now face each other as equals in talent.
It is, we admit, an uninspiring choice for voters, but when they enter the ballot box a choice must be made. As voters look from Labor after 12 years – tired, talentless and arrogant – to the Coalition’s untried and patchy team, they must assess the risks each represents. We believe the re-election of Labor is simply one risk too many.
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