As the election campaign draws towards its end, and those of us who live in Victoria brace ourselves for a state election, I am reminded of the Italian hunting season. There it becomes dangerous to go out of doors when so many guns are pointed into the air. Anything that flies is at risk. Sparrows and dragonflies head for the Alps.
Elections are like the shooting season except that high fliers are safe. Wingless birds are picked off.
In the Federal election asylum seekers and wives or children of refugees have been made fair game. So have the young unemployed. And although Indigenous Australians have not been directly targeted, they have seen guns occasionally turned in their direction.
In State elections it is usually open season on prisoners and marginalised young people. Election policies, like Christmas stockings, are stuffed with more jails, longer sentences, more deprivation of rights, and greater police powers. These things don't make Australia a better or safer society, but they are held to win elections.
The targeting of the deprived is not new in Australian politics. Unpopular minority groups like communists and foreigners have often been the focus of political campaigns. So it would be simplistic to blame this phenomenon on changing media patterns or on preoccupation with the polls.
Nevertheless, this election campaign does seem to have had some distinctive features that encourage brutality. They have been widely recognised and do not need dwelling on.
The first is the lack of almost any kind of moral content. Neither party has offered any vision or story of where they will lead Australia and of what would constitute a healthy or happy society in the face of the challenges we face as a nation. As a result they have also been silent about the strategies by which they will reach these wider goals. Their silence is dispiriting in itself. It also means that they have no coherent framework from which to respond to the demands of special interest groups.
Offering neither national goals nor strategies by which to meet them, the parties appeal only to conventional economic wisdom that is divorced from the social and national goals that economic prosperity should serve. Given the discredit which conventional economic wisdom brought on itself during the financial crisis, this appeal lacks any authority. It has been further undermined by the promises made to voters in strategic electorates during the campaign.
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