Are they ignorant fools? Thirty-eight per cent of One Nation voters blame the government for the fuel crisis and only 39 per cent of them blame Trump. Fourteen per cent of voters at large blame the government, according to a poll in The Australian Financial Review.
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Sure, the Israeli-US attack on Iran, not notified to any US allies, was the immediate cause, but we have known the dangers of concentrated oil dependency on the Middle East for more than half a century. The ease with which the Strait of Hormuz could be blocked by hostile forces or even a maritime accident has been known for longer.
The effect of a Middle East oil squeeze on fuel prices in Australia was experienced more than half a century ago.
If you add actual knowledge of damaging climate change for at least all of this century, maybe it is not so ignorant or foolish for people to blame "the government" or successive governments for the plight we are in. In fairness, maybe some of the foolishness should be sheeted home to those governments.
But that foolishness is much less excusable precisely because it is not coupled with ignorance, but with actual knowledge of what should and could have been done: a massive reduction of oil dependency.
But do we get an apology from former prime ministers? From Scott Morrison for his 2019 election campaign reply to Labor's new-car target of 50 per cent electric vehicles that "Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend"?
Well, whose weekend is destroyed now? Not some hypothetical weekend, but holidays this very Easter weekend have been destroyed by the failure of successive governments to reduce our Middle East oil dependency.
If more of the fleet had been electrified, there would now have been more fuel to go around to those who want to tow vans and boats and camp this weekend, and quite a few weekends into the future.
Do we get an apology from Kevin Rudd for not having the courage in 2009-2020 to go to a double dissolution when the Coalition and Greens egregiously ganged up to defeat the carbon tax - his response to what he called the greatest moral challenge of our generation?
Do we get an apology from Tony Abbott for repealing the carbon tax?
Or from Malcolm Turnbull for failing to stand up to the anti-climate-action right-wing of his party when he was leading in the polls?
Do we get any sounding of any regret from any of the Coalition or Labor governments that did not tighten vehicle-emission standards and did not do enough to electrify the fleet while taking millions in donations from the fossil-fuel industry?
Trump is an easy scapegoat. But a quarter century of governments in Australia have failed us.
Energy policy and many other policy areas have been bedevilled by complacency, inertia, laziness, risk-aversion, ideology, and the outright corruption and conflict of interest in taking donations and giving special access to the very industries that benefit from inaction.
It has led to a bitter irony for the major parties. Their inaction stemming from a fear of upsetting their donors who might rally voters to protest against any government that might act has now led to the greatest protest vote against the major parties since 1944.
But it is not against just the governing party. And not in the form of voting for the other party. Rather it is a plague on both your houses. And a crisis for both of them.
And who could blame them? It is no good dismissing One Nation voters as ignorant fools who will come back to their senses. Nor can the major parties take any comfort that the preferential voting system will bring votes back to the majors. To the contrary. One seat won by One Nation in South Australia was won on Liberal preferences. Another was so far ahead of the Liberals on primaries that Labor preferences could not save the Liberal candidate. Others are likely to follow.
Also, on today's polling One Nation would get at least six seats in the Senate.
The fuel crisis should spur the major parties into delivering what has been missing in Australian politics for decades: serious, detailed policies which have been stress-tested for adverse consequences, and which are regularly revisited. No more quick fixes. No more sugar-coated poison for the voters.
But what do we see? Opposition Leader Angus Taylor very quickly going for the quick fix. Halve the fuel tax, he says. One Nation agrees. Bring in fuel rationing, One Nation leadership aspirant Barnaby Joyce says. The government then had no choice and was wedged into agreeing with the quick fix or risk looking mean in front of voters.
If the government is serious, it should make sure the reduction is temporary and that it goes back on.
Labor has a chance to look serious with the coming Budget to demonstrate a capacity for long-term, detailed policymaking. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has indicated he will make some changes to tax. He has hinted at capital gains, negative gearing, and perhaps windfall gas profits.
But he will have to resist pressure from big players who are also donors. And pressure there is.
Business Council chief executive Bran Black opposed increasing the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT), even if it allowed for tax cuts to boost business investment elsewhere.
Master Builders chief executive Denita Wawn and Property Council CEO Mike Zorbas (supported by the Housing Industry Association and Real Estate Institute of Australia) said (with "evidence" from a report they commissioned) that changes to capital gains or negative gearing would reduce the supply of homes.
The property and construction industries have donated $110 million to the major parties over the past 25 years, according to the Centre for Public Integrity. The conflicts are self-evident. The big lobby groups - representing big money in property, food, gaming, energy, retail and elsewhere - will infest Parliament House like ants in the lead-up to the federal budget.
It is asymmetric lobbying. Hitherto, the major parties have been bribed by just a few million a year to retain tax breaks worth billions a year to these industries.
The fuel excise is Australia's only significant carbon tax. It should not be related to road use, but as a disincentive against using unhealthy polluting carbon and be also applied to off-road use by the mining industry as an incentive to electrify.
A new road-use charge based on distance, place and time of travel for all vehicles should be in addition to a fuel tax, not in place of it.
And the windfall extra profits the gas industry is reaping from this war should go to the people who have been hit hardest through general income-tax relief and free public transport not to the mainly foreign gas company shareholders who pay little tax and employ very few people in extracting our resource and selling it overseas.
- Crispin Hull is a former editor of The Canberra Times and regular columnist
Crispin Hull
regular columnist.
