Australia’s general election: Why Parramatta matters

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

TWO notable apologies came from the political leaders invited to the India Australia Friendship Fair on August 25th. Kevin Rudd, the Labor prime minister (pictured, above, left), was called to Canberra for a briefing on Syria so could not attend. Tony Abbott, the opposition leader (above, right), flew to Brisbane to launch his campaign for Australia’s general election on September 7th. Opinion polls suggest Mr Abbott and his Liberal-National coalition will end six years of Labor rule.

The two federal leaders missed a colourful day of Bollywood music, Indian food and speeches from across Australia’s political divide. Anglo-Celtic politicians who did show up mingled with a 15,000-strong crowd of Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and Chinese. Understanding the jamboree’s importance, Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott each sent along their minister and shadow minister for immigration.

The fair happened in Homebush, a suburb in the heart of western Sydney. Australia’s biggest city is a chief battleground for the election. Its sprawling western suburbs, home to almost half of metropolitan Sydney’s 4.7m people, will see some of the closest contests. Over the past three decades immigration has transformed what were once white, working-class Labor heartlands into modern Australia’s new frontier. Some 27% of Australians were born overseas. In some parts of western Sydney, the proportion is more than half.

Parramatta, one of the oldest suburbs, has drawn many settlers from India, now Australia’s biggest source of immigrants. Cabramatta, about 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) to the south-west, is home to thousands of boat people and their descendants who fled Indochina after the Vietnam war. Political allegiances have swung unpredictably. Chris Hayes, who holds the constituency around Cabramatta for Labor, predicts a lot more volatility in how the west votes this time.

It was partly in the hope of containing that volatility that Labor Party barons dismissed Julia Gillard in June as leader and prime minister and reinstalled Mr Rudd. Under the less popular Ms Gillard, Labor faced big losses in Sydney and other parts of New South Wales, the most populous state. At first the gamble seemed to work, with some opinion polls showing Labor neck-and-neck with the opposition. But they now point to a coalition win. Mr Rudd has had trouble selling to voters the government’s strongest story: its success in keeping the economy growing through the global financial crisis and holding unemployment down to 5.7%. Instead, voters are put off more by Labor’s turmoils since it came to power in 2007: two leadership changes, from Mr Rudd to Ms Gillard and back again, and bitter personal rivalry between the pair. An opinion poll the day before the Homebush fair suggested several Labor-held seats in western Sydney could fall. Labor will also struggle in Queensland, Mr Rudd’s home state; he may even battle to hold his own seat in suburban Brisbane. A senior Labor parliamentarian at the fair thought that “people have stopped listening to Kevin”.

Mr Abbott has played ruthlessly on Labor’s troubles. He asks Australians if they can “afford another three years like the last six”. A junkyard dog by his own admission, Mr Abbott once had a reputation for gaffes. He has run a disciplined campaign on this occasion, however. The big question is over his sprawling spending plans, which put him at odds with the Liberal Party’s pro-market, small-government stance. He has failed to explain convincingly how he would fund them, especially after the Treasury recently cut forecasts of government revenues over the next four years by A$33 billion ($29 billion).

If he wins, Mr Abbott promises that his first act will be to abolish Labor’s carbon tax, introduced last year. In place of a market means of fighting climate change, he offers “direct action”: spending more than A$3 billion over four years on inducements for big carbon-emitters to clean up their acts. Critics argue that such a scheme would be open to abuse.

But Mr Abbott’s most controversial policy involves the federal government giving maternity leave to women earning up to A$150,000 a year at full salary for six months. He plans to cover half the cost with a 1.5 percentage-point rise in the corporate tax rate on high-earning companies. Mr Abbott hatched the maternity-leave idea as a bid to improve his poor standing among women voters. Several prospective ministerial colleagues disapprove of it, and economists have slammed it. Saul Eslake, of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Australia, calls it a “dreadful policy” that would not bear out Mr Abbott’s claim that it would raise productivity. Mr Eslake says Mr Abbott’s “dubious view of markets” and “greater enthusiasm for government intervention” could dull any business and investor confidence that might follow a coalition win.

Mr Rudd started his campaign’s last stages on August 27th with a speech on foreign policy, a field in which Mr Abbott has shown minimal interest. Hugh White, a thinker on foreign policy, reckons Mr Rudd’s ideas on Australia’s international standing are “incomparably better informed” than either Ms Gillard’s or Mr Abbott’s. But they are less likely to swing votes in regions such as western Sydney than the strong anti-Rudd campaign from the two-thirds of Australia’s big-city newspapers run by News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s vehicle. National polls still show that Australians would prefer Mr Rudd to Mr Abbott as prime minister, but they are fed up with Labor. A last-minute Labor win would take a miracle.

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