Australia’s business elite and right-wing press are gunning to end Victorian Labor’s twelve-year reign and install a Liberal government. They’re pushing for harsh cuts to services for working-class people. Victoria’s Chamber of Commerce published a wish-list for the election, demanding exemptions from the payroll tax, reversing Victoria’s state debt, and drawing in data centre investment. The Murdoch and Channel 9 media conglomerates have helped the Liberals make crime and debt central election issues.
They’re pushing at an open door because both major parties are helping the bosses to generate a harsher right-wing political climate. Under Ben Carroll’s leadership, Victorian Labor has attempted to appease business. In his four months as premier, Carroll has launched a Royal Commission into the CFMEU, increased police funding, tightened bail laws, and cut services for kids with disabilities. Both Carroll and his predecessor Jacinta Allan attempted to suppress the wages of teachers during their recent enterprise agreement campaign.
But for Australia’s business elite, this isn’t enough. They want a change of government. And if the polls are to be believed, they’re going to get one.
Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson has, for now, stabilised her party after years of embarrassing internal strife. Her campaign relies on heavy fear-mongering about youth crime and presenting Victoria as drowning in debt. Wilson is often described in the press as a moderate Liberal because she appears less socially reactionary. She matched Labor’s pledge to make abortions free, neutralising Labor’s attempt to make it an election issue.
But Wilson is a blue-blood, ruling-class figure. She was raised in the Liberal Party and was backed by the hard-right Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) while head of the Young Liberals. Before being elected to the blue-ribbon seat of Kew, she served as executive director of policy at the Business Council of Australia. Her husband works for the IPA, and hard-right Liberal powerbroker James Paterson is a close collaborator and godfather to her children. In power, she’ll serve the interests of big business.
The Liberals have pledged to return Victoria’s budget to surplus by 2032. They also plan to lift the threshold for the land tax and payroll tax and cut the metropolitan payroll tax rate. These are all measures which would hand money to businesses and large landowners. They’ve also pledged to hire 3,000 new police officers.
To pay off the debt while taking these measures would require drastic cuts elsewhere. While the Liberals have mostly avoided outlining where they would make cuts, they’ve already pledged to increase the workloads of civil servants through a hiring freeze covering thousands of positions. It’s likely they will propose further cuts that will affect social services and undermine working-class living standards.
Alongside cuts, the Liberals want to create a more authoritarian political climate. Wilson has pledged to ban the slogan “globalise the intifada” and introduce move-on powers to crack down on protests. She will scrap the Victorian Treaty process. And she plans to introduce legislation that expands the list of offences for which children will be subjected to adult courts and adult sentencing.
It’s not just the Liberals. One Nation is also doing a service to the bosses by shifting the debate even further to the right. Despite the media’s portrayal of the party as “populist” disruptors, they’re on board with the agenda of reshaping Victoria in the interests of business.
The bosses have faced little resistance so far in making their concerns central to the terrain of the election. This only serves to entrench a feeling of resignation about the impending right-wing wave. But if significant forces were prepared to launch a fightback, they could likely get a hearing. Only a small minority agree with the Liberals’ plan to scrap Treaty, but there have so far been no rallies to defend it. Progressive NGOs have not led marches against racism or to defend migrants. Nor have unions organised mass meetings or strikes to resist the bosses’ offensive. Instead, when Victorian teachers fought to improve their pay and working conditions, their union’s leadership encouraged them to back down and accept crumbs.
The institutional weakness of the left and the decline of union militancy put the bosses and their backers in a powerful position. They’ve set the tone for this election, and the most likely outcome is a harsh Liberal government. Labor has failed to defend any modicum of a progressive agenda. They’re no solution to the sharpening attacks on workers that the coming period is likely to usher in.
The left needs to gear up for a serious fight. Our side will need to organise against attempts to slash services, defend the right to demonstrate, push back against racism and resist a likely offensive against government-employed workers. We will need not just defensive campaign groups and broad demonstrations, but a socialist vision of how our society could instead be run. Victorian Socialists is running candidates across the state, and we’re in with a chance to get one or more candidates elected. If elected, they will use their platform in parliament to champion struggles against cuts, attacks on wages and working conditions and the racism and bigotry of the Liberals and One Nation. Everyone who wants to see a real response to the right-wing turn in Victorian politics should put Victorian Socialists first on their ballot paper on 28 November.
