In theory, the stage is set. An election could be as early as August, more likely October. Strictly it could be as late as March next year, but there is little chance of it following the US presidential election in early November. John Howard is rolling out cheques to two million households; the budget will deliver tax cuts for the administrative and professional classes. Medicare, he hopes, is neutralised as an issue, if not turned into a positive, and further taxpayer millions are spent promoting it in a partisan way. The Treasury is looted for sectional programs designed to square off sugar farmers, the roads infrastructure lobby and any environmental swinging vote capable of being garnered. A bit of symbolism is put up—on access to the Medicare records of adolescents for parents, the banning of homosexual marriages, and denying prisoners a vote at the election—not seriously, but so as to remind everyone that the Liberal and National Parties are the parties of god and conservative values.
Mark Latham seems to be travelling fairly well. Polling evidence suggests that the budget give-aways did not do much for the coalition. Labor is still the party of choice on domestic government entitlement issues, particularly health, education and community services. No-one has a clue what Labor will do in such areas: it simply has not spelt out its approach, even if it has tried to make it clear that it is aware of the financial bottom-line.
Labor is deliberately silent on an array of core emotional issues—immigration numbers, refugees, Aborigines, and justice and human rights—because it believes that voters instinctively know that Labor is on the decent side of such debates. Raising the profile creates the risk of the coalition using such matters as a wedge through appeals to Hansonism, or creating the false impression (already used by Howard to some effect) that core Labor is nothing more than a collection of busybodies with special, un-Australian interests, privileging access to lesbians, wogs, Abos, tree-huggers, dole-bludgers, union heavies and human rights lawyers, who divide the cake while ordinary decent working men and women miss out. Since Mark Latham has no record of pandering to such groups it’s the Government which runs the risk of the grenade blowing up in its face. At least Latham’s strategists believe and hope so.
This leaves two pots boiling on the stove. One is Peter Garrett whose significance may lie more in