After an exhausting 2020, most of us are hoping for a much calmer year in 2021. The new COVID outbreaks are worrying but a vaccine is on the horizon, which helps keep the focus on recovery rather than fear of repetition. The other factor that will keep us all focused on recovery is the looming federal election, which has to occur sometime between August 2021 and May 2022. So, this year, in addition to everything is, is also going to be dominated by an unofficial election campaign.
Morrison’s white male dominated government is starting the year in an enviable position, but that is no guarantee they’ll end the year the same way.
The economy will be, as it always is, the most important factor in the election. Climate change will inevitably still be muddying the electoral waters, but the key will be the economy and the government’s ability to guide the nation out of the COVID recession.
It would be stupid to think the economy is a simple matter of jobs. It has far too many moving parts. International trade and domestic manufacturing will have to adjust to an increasingly bellicose China and roiling global markets.
The economy, however, is not just about international relations. It is, in fact, mostly about people. The people who make and consume goods and services, and all the complex factors that drive their choices about those goods and services.
It’s the questions we ask ourselves that matter: Should I retire this year or work a few more years to boost my superannuation? Should I save money or take a holiday? Can I afford to buy new shoes for the kids or should I save every cent in case things get worse? Should I go out for dinner or stay home and eat left-overs? Should I take the risk on starting the small business I’ve always dreamed of, or stick with my secure but unfulfilling job? Should I renovate the bathroom or put that money into super? Should I buy a luxury car or pay extra off the mortgage? Should I rent a tiny flat and spend more money on going out, or pay higher rent and spend more time at home? Should I pay most of my salary on childcare so I can stay in the workforce or take a few years off to look after the children myself? Do I invest in a risky new venture or play it safe with proven but lower yielding stocks? Do I make an effort to buy Australian made items or just whatever is cheap?
The aggregate of all the choices made by millions of people every day are one of the moving parts of the economy. Which is why economics is part science, part psychology and part blind guesswork.
Economic theory and what we would like to believe about ourselves says we make these decisions rationally, based on what the facts tell us about the optimal outcome. Reality proves that we base our decisions on what we feel, as much if not more than what we know.
Effective economic policy has to have a reasonably good understanding of those choices. If governments can’t predict, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, who will make those choices and why, they can’t use the levers at their disposal to encourage optimal decision making and discourage choices that will slow economic growth. (Economic growth by the way, doesn’t have to mean the traditional expectation that we must have more people spending more money on more shiny things they don’t need. It can also mean growth of economic security for a stable population. But that’s a digression for another time.)
This is where we come back to the white male dominated government and their perspective on people’s economic choices. Or, to put it another way, how they define the economy.
The Morrison government is overwhelmingly made up of privileged white men. Cabinet, where policy is set, is 73 percent male and Ken Wyatt is the only member who isn’t white. Just over 80 percent of the Coalition seats in the lower house are held by men, again, almost all of them white. This is not just a matter of symbolism or a woke wail about the message that it sends. It’s about the way the people making economic policy perceive and define the economy.
We don’t need to speculate about what this might be. They’ve already clearly shown their hand.
The JobKeeper program, the policy specifically designed to protect the economy from COVID-19 shock, excluded casuals (mostly women and young people), education (Australia’s fourth largest export), and migrant workers. A brief interlude of free childcare was abruptly cancelled, and childcare workers were also excluded from JobKeeper. The childcare industry employs over 150,000 people (almost all of them women) and is also one of the lowest paid professions in the country. The service they provide is still one of the primary factors in decisions women make about remaining in the workforce. The Grattan Institute recently found that a $5 billion investment in childcare would result in “an $11 billion-a-year increase in GDP from the boost to workforce participation – and $150,000 in higher lifetime earnings for the typical Australian mother”.
The ‘blokecovery’ budget, with its focus on apprenticeships, construction and tax breaks that almost entirely benefited rich white men, gave us even more evidence of their perspective. The economy, in the Morrison government’s view, is made up of people like themselves (who get tax breaks) and the tradesmen who work for them (who get incentives). Women, migrants and young people exist outside the economy, supporting and aiding certainly, but not at the centre of it.
The government is starting the beginning of the election year with a COVID bounce. Voting intention and support for Morrison swept upward in March 2020 when everyone needed to believe that someone was in charge. This year, as we become accustomed to COVID-normal, the issues that will matter most are about recovery. The economy will vote for someone who will aid that recovery and the economy is people. All people, including the 51 percent of us who are women and the increasing percentage of us who are not white.
Given the composition of Morrison’s government, it seems unlikely they have the ability, let alone the will, to change their perspective on the economy before the next election. Perhaps his only hope will be that the Opposition, despite its far wider perspective, will continue its inability to mould that into a cohesive and desirable alternative. Whatever happens, the choices we make this year will have consequences that last for many years to come.
Jane Gilmore was the founding editor of The King’s Tribune. She is now a freelance journalist and author, with a particular interest in feminism, media and data journalism and has written for The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Daily Telegraph, The Saturday Paper and Meanjin, among many others. Jane has a Master of Journalism from the University of Melbourne, and her book FixedIt: Violence and the Representation of Women in the Media was published by Penguin Random House in 2019.
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