IF LABOR wins the upcoming federal election, it will be in the city, not the bush. Poll results aside, the gaps in Labor’s policies where rural Australia is concerned are important ones.
While some aspects are sensible, such as Labor’s promise to keep Medicare public and to invest in TAFE, other areas, such as foreign investment, its backing of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and its plans for over-riding the states on clearing regulations will only raise the ire of rural voters.
Both sides have under performed on drought policy – low interest loans have been difficult for a lot of farmers to access.
A bright spot is the Coalition’s promised $60 million for mobile black spots, even if it is only a fraction of what is needed.
The big “black spot” in Labor’s communications promise (to fix gaps through deals with telcos), is that the telcos need to be on board first, and even if they were, the infrastructure will for some time limit the amount of data they can deliver, regardless of what packages they are selling.
However, Labor’s fibre to the home instead of to the node would benefit a lot of rural areas.
The Coalition’s stance on its back packer tax, meanwhile, will remain a sore point for some voters and seems to go against the government’s overall direction of business tax incentives. The Opposition, however, has only promised it would talk with the industry on the issue, and nothing more.
Labor is out of touch with the average Joe on Foreign Investment Review Board scrutiny. While the Coalition hasn’t fully delivered on it’s 2013 election promise of a transparent register, it has lowered the trigger level to $15m, a figure Labor wants to increase to $50m. Labor also goes against the grain on live exports, an area the Coalition has generally performed in so far as opening and maintaining markets.
With the Coalition and Labor both having done little more than pay lip service to concerns over mining and gas developments, there could be some support emerge for the Greens on the back of this issue.
Malcolm Turnbull, meanwhile, appears to have realised he needs to pander to the right of his party. In doing so he has left behind his more left-leaning views to follow his ambition of being Prime Minister. Because of this, we have the clearest split between left and right at a federal election in some time, which could bode well for the Coalition at time where the state of the economy is dominating debate.
