Labor’s Unlosable Election

I’m on the road again in South Australia; enjoying the people and landscape of my home state.

It’s always a joy to chat with locals and tourists who often have wonderfully different perspectives of similar experiences. No doubt the mental health professionals will be able to explain it much better than I but I suspect our response to any given circumstance is impacted by our mindset before it happens.

Hence when you are outside your daily routine the glass is much more likely to be half-full than half-empty. What to a resident is a daily grind becomes a new and exciting experience for the visitor.

It just demonstrates how perspective is so important and how having external counsel in big decisions often leads to better outcomes.

The adage ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ springs to mind. It is all about perspective.

One can say the same about election results. The reasons Labor lost the ‘unlosable’ election (or did the Coalition win it) depends on whom you talk to.

It is a time-honoured wisdom that elections are lost by governments rather than won by oppositions. Under any conventional metric the Coalition deserved to lose – and were expected to.

Labor went the other route, detailing a radical policy agenda, making themselves a massive political target in the process.

It didn’t work and it will be a long time before an opposition displays such ‘courage’ again.

Perspective is also gained through the passage of time. Any event can trigger an initial emotional response which is usually tempered as the days pass.

My parents always told me to count to ten before responding to certain situations as it lets the initial emotional surge settle into a more measured response.

Unfortunately, the cut and thrust of major party politics often doesn’t allow for the introspection needed to make the wisest long-term decisions.

Labor have rushed to install a leader who will get straight onto the hustings to put forward his vision for the country. That this agenda may be starkly at odds with his enthusiastic spruiking of Labor’s previous policies will be lost on few.

In fact, for Labor to be the party they should be (and once were) their leader will have to virtually jettison a lifetime of class warfare.

His inner-city pale-green shtick doesn’t carry with the working people in the ’burbs. They care more about their jobs, their families and their future than craft beer and almond-milk decaf lattes.

That’s where Scott Morrison really shone during this election. Sure, he was labelled a daggy dad but most of our kids will have said that about their Dad at one time or another. In fact, what was initially targeted as a criticism became a strength that many families could identify with.

And there is the nub of it. Many Australians want to identify with the people who represent them. They want someone who understands their issues and the very real challenges they face every single day.

They’d rather save their job and their house than be told to stop Adani by hypocritical Labor lefties and greens.

I have no doubt that most Australians want to do the right thing whenever they can but doing the right thing means looking after your family responsibilities first and foremost.

That’s a lesson the Coalition has heeded but I suspect it will be lost on Labor for a while yet.

Things that make you go Hmm…

With sexist air-conditioning units and exploding global migration, you might consider escaping to the Sunshine State. Political correctness gone wild and multi-lingual messaging have Brazilians waxing lyrical about discrimination.

A greedy bride and some council hoopla make tax hacks look appealing. As Texan pipeline protestors get prison, and a taxi tariff is a tad taxing, cauliflower cultivation is conflated with colonialism. While privilege lessons are having a counterintuitive effect.