We deserve better than what Labor and Liberal offer

Another day, another round of baby kissing, hi-vis vests and soirees with rich potential donors for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Meanwhile, the string of crises and injustices affecting the lives of millions—from the rising cost of living to global warming, genocide in Gaza, inequality, military build-up and the fascistic rampage of Trump—is studiously avoided in this election campaign.

There has been a marked turnaround in the polls from late 2024 to the election campaign. From Labor being well behind Dutton and hoping at best to cobble together a coalition to form government, some polls now suggest it could win a majority. Either way, there has been a clear swing away from Dutton’s Liberals. While this could all change by 3 May, it does partly reflect something positive—the unpopularity of Donald Trump in Australia.

It is not just that Liberal policies failed to land (or in some cases even to exist), but also that the association of Dutton with Trump, who even before the tariffs chaos was unpopular in Australia, has hurt the Coalition.

And Trump is indeed very unpopular here. Australia Institute polling released on 4 March showed that more Australians (31 percent) saw Donald Trump as a greater threat to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping. Half of Australians think Trump’s election is a bad thing for the world, double the number who think it is a good thing.

It has taken the Coalition quite a while to recognise this. Initially, the Dutton camp made some minor gestures of differentiation from Trump; hence Dutton’s early disavowal of attacks on abortion rights and assurances that trans issues will not figure in this election.

But like a dog returning to its vomit, Dutton couldn’t quite keep away from Trumpiness, whether promising our very own Musk-style DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) headed by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, or nominating health, education and the ABC as targets for its cuts. On the assumption that everyone was dying to drain the Canberra swamp, Dutton offered the mass sacking of 41,000 public servants, with those who survived being denied the right to work from home.

Since the election date was set, Dutton has been trying to pivot away from the Trump connection, largely by being an echo of Albanese. For example, ahead of the so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, Albanese announced Australia’s pharmaceutical scheme, online news payment and biosecurity protocols were not up for negotiation. “Not on my watch”, he said, and was immediately echoed by Dutton.

Then, in the face of the unpopularity of mass sackings, Dutton backflipped on attacking public servants. One after another, Liberal candidates and campaign managers who turn out to be women-haters, Islamophobes and cookers of all kinds have had to be disendorsed or sacked.

While it is positive that there is no appetite for Trump’s far-right, billionaire-first style of politics in Australia, the focus on Trump has given the major parties breathing room when it comes to their shared do-as-little-as-possible approach to the issue that matters the most to people in this election: the cost-of-living crisis.

The 3 percent cheaper energy bills Dutton claims will be delivered by the Coalition’s energy policy equals a saving of roughly $50 to $70 a year for most east coast families according to the ABC, almost exactly the miserly household savings Labor has pledged through its tax cuts. Neither of these policies will make a significant difference to the difficulties facing working-class people.

Meanwhile, both parties are determined to hand $176 billion to corporate landlords and property investors over the next decade, and there is seemingly limitless bipartisan largesse available for military spending and subsidies to fossil fuel companies.

Even though one or other will win the election and form government, the increasing decline in support for the major parties is likely to continue in this election. An aggregate of current polling produced by the Guardian showed the primary votes share for Labor and the Coalition at 68.5 percent, an all-time low and the continuation of a long-term decline since the two parties claimed 98 percent of votes in 1951.

Nonetheless, both Labor and the Liberals have ruled out minority government or even negotiations with the Greens, something which only emphasises how right-wing Labor is, not that the Greens are some radical threat.

The Greens’ policies are better than Labor’s, especially on housing, renters’ rights and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But they’ve also gone to water again and again in parliament, eventually waving through the useless Housing Australia Future Fund housing program and Labor’s meaningless emissions reduction target.

Worse, there has been a shift in the Greens’ messaging as the election has got nearer. This was really summed up in their press release of 28 March 2025: “Greens hit go on biggest ever national campaign for minority government”. Their electoral positioning—“Greens will keep Dutton out and get Labor to act”—has seen a marked reduction in attacks on Labor in favour of praising them for adopting some aspect of the Greens’ policies.

One sign of this shift is the Greens’ new defence policy, which, although it involves an overall reduction in military spending and the scrapping of AUKUS, nevertheless represents a shift within the party towards greater commitment to military spending and legitimisation of the Australian military and the future conflicts in which it may be a part. Why are the Greens suddenly doing this, having never before released “a formally costed policy to fund new military programs”? With electoral possibilities in the air, parties like the Greens that see parliament as the place where change is made need to prove their reasonableness as a potential partner in government. Showing that they accept a range of capitalist non-negotiables, such as the military, is part of that. It also fits in with the growing tide of Australian nationalism in response to Trump.

In this new era, revived Australian nationalism will likely come in a variety of forms. One will involve the attempt to rehabilitate the myth of an “independent” Australian military that only ever acts in self-defence, ignoring the history of Australian imperialism and the capitalist logic that underpins its alliance with the US.

Another will take the form of patriotic consumption of locally made goods. The budget committed $20 million towards the government’s “Buy Australian” plan. Western Australian Labor Premier Roger Cook last month launched a “Made in WA” campaign, which he said would “put manufacturing back at the heart of the economy [and help] make more things in WA”.

Yet another will take the form of overt class collaboration as Labor and union leaders promote sacrifice of wages and conditions for the salvation of Australian industry in a more hostile world market.

An inevitable accompaniment to rising nationalism during a drive to rearmament is repression and the demonisation of dissent. This has already been evident in relation to anti-democratic attacks and vilification of Palestine campaigners, as well as in the politically motivated claims about the supposed rise in antisemitism. Even the revelation that almost all the Sydney graffiti, arson and the infamous caravan were not the action of antisemites but a cynical attempt by organised criminals to try to reduce their sentences, has done little to dent this narrative.

A raft of new anti-protest laws has been passed federally and by some state governments. This is occurring in the context of a McCarthyite-style witch-hunt of Palestine supporters across media and educational and cultural institutions. The message is clear: if you are on the wrong side of Australia’s imperialist interests and those of its allies, you will be treated like a criminal.

This both builds on and fuels the wider law and order beat-up that is a feature of politics in almost every state. This offensive is directed first and foremost at Indigenous children, such as Queensland’s “adult crime, adult time” laws, as well as immigrant youth.

All this cries out for resistance. Given that unions, even at only 13 percent membership, still have great social power to take a stand on these issues and many more, it is criminal that the union bureaucracy reduces them to foot soldiers for Labor in its various marginal seat campaigns.

On the campaign trail the only positive has been the left-wing hecklers who both leaders have faced, from campaigners against fossil fuels to opponents of the genocide of the Palestinians to Indigenous people keen to proclaim that Jacinta Nampijinpa Price does not speak for them.

And whatever the result of the election, the issues that animate the hecklers, and the desire to fight those issues, will remain. The hostility to Trump is important not just for its effect on the elections, but for its potential mobilising power in Australia as Trump’s and Musk’s outrages in the US strike a chord here.

The cost of living remains for very good reason the main election issue for most workers, with the election coming on the back of a steep decline in living standards over the life of the Albanese Labor government. While prices are not rising as fast as they once were, workers and the poor are still burdened with the increases of the past two years. And for most, the prices of housing, food and health care have risen much more than their wages. Wages rose just over 10 percent between March 2022 and December 2024, while inflation rose more than 12 percent and many goods, including essentials such as housing and food, increased even more.

When even Peter Dutton can do it, it’s not enough just to acknowledge that “working families are doing it tough”. Neither major party mentions inequality, let alone offers to do anything about it, because that would draw attention to the fact that those they actually serve—Australia’s capitalists—are raking it in.

The wealth of the richest 200 Australians has risen from 8.4 percent of GDP in 2004 to 23.7 percent in 2024. Australia Institute research shows the gas corporations have paid zero royalties on over half (56 percent) of all gas exports. In fact, the government collects more revenue from HECS than it does from the petroleum resource rent tax.

There’s nothing inevitable about any of this. What’s on offer at the election isn’t a reflection of popular sentiment. Genocide, destroying the environment, far-right crazies and being ripped off by the rich aren’t inherently popular. Better funded health care, decent public housing and climate action are. But sentiment alone isn’t enough. Even voting for Victorian Socialists once every three years isn’t enough. Those sentiments and those votes need to be translated into socialist organisation that persists day in and day out, animated not by “put Liberals last” but by a desire to wipe out the whole profit-driven, crisis-ridden system.