While it’s easy, and understandable, that you should be pessimistic about this government, everyone should be optimistic about our country.

Our health researchers have saved hundreds of millions of lives through breakthroughs in everything from infectious diseases to cancer vaccines to ulcer treatments.

Our military personnel stand ready to protect people in some of the world’s worst trouble spots.

Our universities are educating the future leaders of our region.

Our musicians, artists, actors and film-makers are making their mark all over the world.

Our resource exports have helped hundreds of millions to move from the third world to the middle class.

And, with the right product, our manufacturing, too, is capable of competing with the best in the world, even with the high dollar – as demonstrated by Cochlear, Blackmores, Murray Goulburn and RM Williams, whose boots I’m wearing tonight.

We are a great country and a great people let down by a bad government.

Bad governments always pass.

What should never dim is our faith that Australia’s best years are ahead of us.

So my purpose tonight is to assure you that a Coalition government will do what’s needed to restore the hope, reward and opportunity that should be your birth right.

Our Real Solutions Plan will build a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia.

Margie and I know the pressure that every Australian – that each one of you – is under.

We’re not crying poor but we run a household with power bills, rates, health and education costs to be paid all the time.

Margie runs a community-based occasional care centre which has to live within its means just like every small business and every family.

Governments’ first job is not to make your life harder.

But this government has – with its carbon tax, broken promises, and skyrocketing debt.

Australian families are paying for this government’s mistakes yet all you ever hear from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are excuses and promises to do better next time.

Should the Coalition win the election, there will be no nasty surprises and there’ll be no lame excuses.

No surprises and no excuses.

The Coalition’s Plan has two objectives: first, to take the budget pressure off Australian households; and second, to strengthen our economy so that, over time, there’s more to go round for everyone.

Only by delivering a strong economy can government deliver a sustainable National Disability Insurance Scheme and better schools.

You need certainty to plan your future and you need cost of living relief.

So tonight I announce a major initiative to ease the financial pressure on Australian families.

A Coalition government will keep the current income tax thresholds and the current pension and benefit fortnightly rates while scrapping the carbon tax.

The carbon tax will go but no one’s personal tax will go up and no one’s fortnightly pension or benefit will go down.

So with a change of government, your weekly and fortnightly budgets will be under less pressure as electricity prices fall and gas prices fall and the carbon tax no longer cascades through our economy.

This will strengthen our economy – because there’ll less tax hitting Australian businesses but not their overseas competitors.

And it will help families – because you’ll have tax cuts funded by smaller government, not by taking money out of one pocket to put it in the other.

Our plan starts with recognition of economic reality.

Government doesn’t create wealth; people do.

Government doesn’t spend its own money; it spends your money.

This year’s spending is either this year’s taxes or it’s this year’s borrowing – that’s next year’s taxes.

Government spending is not a free gift but something that everyone is paying for, now or in the future.

That’s why good governments are at least as careful spending the money they hold on trust from the people as you are when making decisions that affect your family’s budget.

Parents don’t mortgage their children’s future and neither should government.

Last year, the Treasurer began his budget speech declaring, and I quote: “the four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the…success of our policies”.

Well, surpluses would have been a vindication.

But there are no surpluses.

Not this year.

Not next year.

Not the year after that.

The Treasurer now says that there will be a surplus in four years’ time.

That’s four years after the Treasurer and the Prime Minister said that it had already actually been delivered and spent tens of thousands of your dollars boasting about it in letters to their constituents.

If a public company made these sorts of claims its directors would most likely face serious charges rather than asking to be re-elected.

If this had been the only dodgie promise, they might have got away with it but this government never gets it right.

It got the mining tax numbers wrong.

It got the carbon tax numbers wrong.

And last year’s budget commitments to boost family payments and to cut taxes didn’t even make it to this year’s budget.

This year’s supposed revenue shortfall went from $7 billion, to $12 billion to $17 billion in just two weeks – so how can ministers possibly predict a decade ahead?

The Prime Minister guaranteed there would be no carbon tax – but there is.

She guaranteed there would be a surplus – 165 times she guaranteed there would be a surplus – but there isn’t and there never will be under the government.

After seven deficits totalling $220 billion, the Treasurer can hardly congratulate himself over an almost invisible surplus, if nothing goes awry, if he’s still there, in four years’ time, in his ninth budget.

The government originally said that the deficit was “temporary”.

With seven in a row, the Second World War was more temporary than this government’s deficits.

The government promised a surplus over the cycle but this isn’t a cycle – it’s a spiral, deeper and deeper into debt which is now surging towards $400 billion even on the government’s own figures.

The last time a Labor Treasurer stood in this parliament to deliver a surplus was way back in 1989 so it’s hardly surprising that this year’s Labor surplus promises are no more believable than last year’s.

In the second line of this week’s budget speech the Treasurer said that it was a budget for jobs and growth.

In fact, unemployment increases and growth decreases.

The Treasurer spent much of his speech complaining that he was the victim of a sudden collapse in government revenue.

In fact, revenue is up 6 per cent this year and will be up 7 per cent next year.

Next year, revenue will be up $80 billion on six years ago.

That’s right, the Treasurer has $80 billion more to balance his budget than Peter Costello ever had – yet Costello delivered surplus after surplus.

We have a $20 billion deficit now rather than the $20 billion surplus then not because revenue is down but because spending is up: by $120 billion.

Madam Speaker, in 121 days, there will be an election.

It will be a tipping point in the life of our country.

The choice could hardly be more stark: three more years of broken promises, nasty surprises and weak excuses.

Or change for the better with an experienced team that will not just rebuild the economy but also the bonds of trust that should exist between you and your parliament.

The last Coalition government grew GDP per person by well over two per cent a year – under this government it’s limped along at well under 1 per cent.

The former government grew jobs by two and a quarter per cent a year – or enough to create over 2 million new jobs within a decade.

Since then, they’ve grown by just 1.6 per cent a year.

With the Coalition, you could trust government to save.

With Labor you can be sure government will spend which is why worried households are saving at the highest rate in a generation.

During the Howard years, real wealth per person more than doubled – since then, it’s actually declined thanks to weaker growth, subdued house prices and lower share prices.

Change won’t come overnight but a Coalition government will do what’s needed to strengthen economic growth and prosperity.

All the Coalition’s main policies are designed to make it easier for you to get ahead and for businesses to be more productive.

We will abolish the carbon tax – because that’s the quickest way to reduce power prices and take the pressure off cost of living and job security.

Let me repeat: We will abolish the carbon tax – because it’s a kind of reverse tariff that hurts local businesses but not our overseas competitors.

There is no mystery to how this will happen.

What one parliament legislates, another parliament can repeal and the carbon tax repeal bill, should we be elected, will be the first legislation that a new parliament considers.

We will reduce emissions with targeted incentives, not clobbering business with the world’s biggest carbon tax.

We will abolish the mining tax – because that’s the quickest way to support investment and jobs.

We will cut red tape costs by at least $1 billion a year – to give small business a much-needed break – and we’ll have parliamentary days dedicated to repealing laws, not passing them.

By cutting tax and regulation, we will boost productivity.

That will give Australian manufacturers the more level playing field they need to remain at the heart of a five pillar economy along with services, education, agriculture and resources.

We will have a once-in-a-generation commission of audit so that government is only as big as it needs to be to do what people can’t do for themselves.

We will set up a root and branch review of competition policy to ensure that small business gets a fair go and small business will be a cabinet portfolio within the Treasury department.

There’ll be an affordable and responsible Paid Parental Leave scheme because women should get their full wage while on maternity leave just as men should get theirs while on annual leave.

We will revitalise work for the dole because people who can work, should work, preferably for a wage but, if not, for the dole.

Within three years, the Coalition’s NBN will deliver broadband speeds at least five times faster than the current average for $60 billion less than Labor’s version.

We will start work within 12 months on Melbourne’s East West Link, Sydney’s WestConnex, Brisbane’s Gateway Motorway upgrade, Adelaide’s South Road, and Tasmania’s Midland Highway, as well as key roads in Perth and parts of the Bruce Highway,  because when you’re stuck in traffic jams, you aren’t at work or at home with your family.

We will duplicate the Pacific Highway, finally, well within this decade.

We will establish a one-stop-shop for faster environmental approvals so that new projects can get up and going more quickly.

We will re-establish a tough cop on the beat, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, to deliver (as it previously did) $6 billion a year of productivity improvements in a troubled industry.

We will return the workplace relations pendulum to the sensible centre, under the existing Fair Work Act, with fairer rules for right of entry and for new projects.

And we will establish a new, two-way street version of the Colombo Plan taking our best and brightest to the region as well as bringing their best and brightest here.

It will be part of a foreign policy that’s focussed on Jakarta, not Geneva.

All these commitments are affordable and deliverable.

We will deliver them in our first term of government, if we win, and will provide all the funding details after the pre-election fiscal statement is released.

But tonight, I set out specific savings to cover keeping tax thresholds and pension rates without a carbon tax to fund them.

The Coalition has already announced that we will rescind the increase to the humanitarian migration intake because – until the boats are stopped, and we will stop them – it’s the people smugglers who are choosing who comes to Australia.

We’ve announced that we’ll reduce by at least 12,000, through natural attrition, the size of the Commonwealth public sector that’s now 20,000 bureaucrats bigger than in 2007.

We’ve also announced that we’d scrap Labor’s green loans scheme for projects that the banks won’t touch.

Tonight, I confirm that we won’t continue the twice a year supplementary allowance to people on benefits because it’s supposed to be funded from the mining tax and the mining tax isn’t raising any revenue.

As well, we won’t continue the low income superannuation contribution because that’s also funded from the tax that isn’t raising any revenue.

I announce that we will delay by two years the ramp up in compulsory superannuation because this money comes largely from business – not from government – and our economy needs encouragement as mining investment starts to wane and new sources of growth are needed.

These measures alone will produce nearly $5 billion a year in savings which is more than enough for tax cuts without a carbon tax.

The Coalition won’t shirk the hard decisions needed to get the budget back into surplus.

Living within your means is not mindless austerity – it’s simple prudence.

It’s recognition of the reality that you can’t spend what you don’t have.

Households know this and it’s time governments did too.

At least for a first term, until we’re on an honest path not just to surplus but to re-paying debt, an incoming Coalition government will resist new spending commitments that aren’t fully funded, nearly always by offsetting expenditure reductions.

As far as the Coalition is concerned, the next election won’t be an auction.

Talking to people all around the country, the last thing you want is more “historic” announcements or so-called “revolutions” that never justify the hype.

Let me be clear.

Many of the measures in this budget are objectionable, the attacks on Medicare; the abolition of the baby bonus which the government had promised never to touch; robbing Peter to pay Paul on education; and forcing more businesses to do the tax paperwork monthly, not just quarterly.

But thanks to Labor’s poor management over five years, there is now a budget emergency.

Hence the Coalition may decide not to oppose any of them; doesn’t commit to reverse any of them; and reserves the option to implement all of them, in government, as short-term measures to deal with the budget emergency Labor has created.

Far from cutting to the bone, we reserve the right to implement all of Labor’s cuts, if needed, because it will take time to un-do all the damage this government has done

By keeping, if needed, all Labor’s budget cuts – and – by not implementing any of their budget spending measures unless specified, we will achieve the first duty of every government: namely, to preserve the nation’s finances.

We will keep the announced spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and we’ll ensure that the scheme reflects the Productivity Commission’s recommendations rather than becoming just another big government bureaucracy.

I would not have ridden 1000 kilometres, the week before last, to raise money for Carers Australia if I was half-hearted about the NDIS and would never claim for just one side of politics this reform that should be an achievement for our whole nation.

On the other hand, the key to better schools, at least as much as more money, is better teachers, better teaching, higher academic standards, more community engagement, and more principal autonomy.

So that’s what we’ll work with the states to deliver.

We won’t back a so-called national education system that some states don’t support especially as this government has a history of spending more while schools’ performance actually goes backwards.

Regardless of normal political allegiance, Australians are sick of leaders who play politics ahead of governing the country and who blame everyone but themselves when things go wrong and the numbers don’t add up.

You want a grown up government like the ones that John Howard and – yes – Bob Hawke too used to run.

As soon as people know there’s a government with an economic strategy to build the country rather than just a political strategy to save its own skin, confidence will start to return to our economy.

Tax reform starts with immediately repealing the carbon tax and the mining tax and giving a modest company tax cut as soon as it’s affordable – but it doesn’t end there.

Within two years, an incoming Coalition government will consult with the community to produce a comprehensive white paper on tax reform.

We’ll finish the job that the Henry review started and this government squibbed.

We want taxes that are lower, simpler and fairer and will take proposals for further tax reform to the following election.

Right now, the blame game between the Commonwealth and the states that Kevin Rudd promised to end has become worse than ever.

Typically, over the past three years, the Prime Minister has announced massive new programmes in areas that are the states’ responsibility so she can claim the credit but the states have to pay.

It’s no way to run the country and it’s no way for adult leaders to behave.

Within two years of a change of government, working with the states, the Coalition will produce a white paper on COAG reform, and the responsibilities of different governments, to ensure that, as far as possible, the states are sovereign in their own sphere.

The objective will be to reduce and end, as far as possible, the waste, duplication and second guessing between different levels of government that has resulted, for instance, in the Commonwealth employing 6000 health bureaucrats even though it doesn’t run a single hospital.

Again, a Coalition government will seek a mandate at the subsequent election for any proposed changes.

One of the best ways to ensure that governments don’t make mistakes is to have a proper cabinet process.

That’s how Bob Hawke and John Howard ran their governments but that’s not how government is run now, as the four former ministers now sitting on the backbench have testified.

My ministers won’t need to learn how to be a good government because they’ve been one before.

Sixteen members of the Coalition shadow cabinet were ministers in the last government that actually delivered surpluses, as opposed to just promising them.

Those surpluses weren’t just John Howard’s and Peter Costello’s.

They were my surpluses and Joe Hockey’s surpluses and Julie Bishop’s and Warren Truss’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s because we were all part of the last government that Australians knew was competent and trustworthy.

Unlike the current government which never makes an announcement that isn’t supposed to be the most important thing ever, what I’m proposing is not unprecedented and shouldn’t even be remarkable.

I’m offering what should be normal: careful, collegial, consultative, straightforward government that says what it means and does what it says.

That would be change for the better.

The next election, to which this budget is a mere prelude, should not be about who becomes prime minister.

It should be about who can do more for our country – because our country is more important than any of us in this parliament.

My colleagues and I have a Plan to build a strong and prosperous economy for a safe and secure Australia.

It’s not about us.

It’s about you, the Australian people.

We pledge ourselves to your service.

[ends]

The clip of Howard’s pratfall was tagged “John Howard trips and takes a funny fall”, but  Imran Khan’s fall from a platform as it was being raised by a crane during an election rally in Lahore was too close to causing serious injury to generate much in the way of immediate “lols”. Along with his bodyguards, Khan fell seven feet to the ground and was taken to hospital with serious injuries to his head and back. Party spokepeopls say that while Khan has regained consciousness, his doctors have advised him to suspend campaigning for two weeks – well after Saturday’s poll.

Given the high death toll that has marred the electoral campaign, it’s surreal to see one of the most high profile candidates hospitalised by unsafe set design rather than violence. Khan’s outspoken stance in opposition to US drone attacks has insulated him against the Taliban violence that has targeted other political parties, both religious and secular. And Khan has already run a highly visible and energetic schedule of rallies over the past several months. It remains to be seen whether the stunning turnout at the rallies for Khan’s Tahreek-e-Insaaf (which uses a cricket bat as its party symbol) will translate into support at the ballot box. However, the governing Pakistan People’s Party seems almost certain to spend the next electoral cycle in opposition, and the once despised former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is favoured to return to office.

In the years since the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan has been riven by violence. The circumstance’s surrounding Bhutto’s death have returned to the spotlight in recent days, with the shooting of the prosecutor who was leading the case against former military dictator Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf, banned from standing in the election and held under house arrest since his ill-judged return to the country in April,  is accused of failing to provide Bhutto with adequate security as she campaigned during a previous election. Other politicians as well as hundreds of their supporters have died during this election. Yet the bloodshed in very far from the only issue in the campaign. Day to day issues such as unemployment, electricity load-shedding and the corruption which permeates Pakistani society are also highly relevant issues for many voters.

And also noteworthy is the low profile that the military and the security services have played throughout the campaign, despite the return of Musharraf. The Interservices Intelligence Agency (ISI), once considered all-knowing, has yet to recover its standing since the United States assassination of Osama bin Laden in the military town of Abbottabad. Regardless of the outcome on Saturday, this election marks the transition of one civilian government to another. The outcome is likely to reflect Pakistan’s heightened politicised religious conservatism, with disturbing implications for religious minorities and gender norms. But it remains  an achievement.

“No – no. New York is not like Kabul. What happened was terrible, but it was only one day. In Kabul, this has happened over and over again. For years.”

I thought of that exchange when visiting the 9/11 memorial in New York last week, and then again as I absorbed the news from Boston. There can be no memorial to the dead in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long as the bloodshed continues, day after day after day, generating less and less interest from the Australian and American media as time goes by. The memorial in New York ought to prompt us to remember all those who died and continue to die in the wars generated by that event, as well as on the day itself. In the wake of Boston, we need to pay attention to the potential consequences of this home-grown terrorist attack, even as we pay our respects to the dead, the maimed and the bereaved.

As Green says, the obvious explanation for the differing degrees of media attention is that “a bomb blast in Boston is a shock. In Iraq it is commonplace. The more disturbing but no less obvious answer is that we instinctively put a greater value on familiar American lives…”

To Green’s explanation, I would add the observation that deaths in Boston or New York have a disproportionate impact on the lives of those far from the scene. The tragic stories of the casualties of 9/11 – the final phone calls to friends and family, the victims who plunged to their deaths rather than burn in the flames – were the rationale for the maelstrom of violence unleashed upon Afghanistan and Iraq over the subsequent years. The Boston attacks seem unlikely to trigger a similar cataclysm, but the disproportionate media coverage is likely to be reflected by the political response.

The Tsarnaev brothers choreographed their violence to maximise its publicity and the number of terrorised. In contrast, the message of US violence is structured to reach a more selective audience. Drone attacks, Guantanamo Bay prison cells, even the details of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, are kept out of view, lest we should grow squeamish. We should undertake the hard work to protest this hidden war even as we grieve for an eight-year old boy killed as he waited for his father to cross the finish-line in Boston.

Thanks for the invitation this evening. Tonight I thought I’d talk about the coming federal election, and of course it may come sooner than previously expected, through the prism of policy, by looking at the major challenges facing the Australian economy and use them as a guide for an assessment of the major parties’ positions. I’ll also be throwing in several non-challenges for the same purpose.

The key short to medium term challenge for Australian policymakers at the moment is to engineer the transition from the peak of the mining boom to a more business-as-usual economic growth pattern. As the peak of the mining investment booms arrives, which may well be happening as we speak, the RBA is trying to make sure the pick up in domestic demand from a recovery in construction arrives roughly at the same time to start replacing the easing demand from the resources investment boom. That’s the challenge for policymakers in Martin Place and Canberra.

Yes, the boom still has a long way to go and will still be outsized compared to historical levels in three to five years time. Mining investment will total an estimated $105.1 billion this financial year, up from $82 billion in 2011-12, and $46.8 billion the year before, and the first estimate for 2013-14 is a still solid $100.2 billion. But once the peak has passed, the long tail of the boom will in effect be withdrawing its powerful stimulus from economic growth. RBA monetary policy has been aiming at this transition point in the economy to try and kick start housing and commercial construction to pick up the emerging slack in the non-mining sectors of the economy.

But the problem for the RBA is that the monetary policy loosening it has driven since late 2011 has yet to work its way through the wider economy, so it can’t really do much more by way of stimulus.

The signs about the extent of its success are mixed, and have been for some time. For every poor indicator in investment, participation or construction activity or company profits, there’s a good indicator on car sales or employment or wages and salaries.

This means the transition to the post-mining boom is in the balance, and that takes us from Martin Place down to Canberra, and what role fiscal policy can play in managing the transition.

A too loose fiscal policy could accelerate the stimulus from the RBA and reignite inflation and wage pressures. But the greater risk is the opposite. All state governments, including Tasmania’s, have been cutting back on spending and, despite Wayne Swan’s disappearing surplus, the federal government is also engaged in an aggressive fiscal contraction. We’ve already seeing the impact of that mutually-reinforcing contraction in areas like public sector and health employment in Queensland.

Now, in the good old days of spendathon election campaigns and “budget bounces”, the RBA could have relied on a Budget just a couple of months out from an election to provide some domestic stimulus. But both sides are instead trying to convince voters the other can’t be trusted on spending.

The focus of the beleaguered Gillard government is to use the May budget to construct the “structural savings” needed to pay for its Gonski education reforms, and the national disability scheme. Both will take heroic efforts of long-term budget cutting and rebalancing, and I’ll have more to say about that later.

That focus is appropriate in the long-term, yes, but the May budget also needs to complement the RBA’s focus on kickstarting a housing-led recovery and lifting the performance of the non-mining economy. The Government would argue its recent ‘manufacturing package’ will help boost investment, but, that package, where it will be effective, is more about making our manufacturing sector more innovative and competitive in the long-term.

And the Coalition’s fiscal policy is a bizarre mix of magic pudding and ferocious discipline. If you listen to Joe Hockey, a new Coalition government will be slicing a huge whack of demand out of the domestic economy with further big spending cuts. If you listen to Tony Abbott, everyone will somehow come out ahead.

There are certainly plenty of fiscal disciplinarians around to urge Hockey on, despite Australia’s low level of debt. Indeed, there’s a righteous tone of self-flagellation that many austerity advocates adopt, as though voters should be punished for electing politicians prepared to pander to their wishes and engage in unsustainable spending. Maybe that’s legitimate, if rather self-defeating, in places where fiscal laxity has indeed been the order of the day, like Greece. In Australia, where government of all persuasions have been reasonably disciplined and public debt is low by international standards, it’s absurd.

What’s remarkable is the number of commentators who have failed to learned the lesson evident from Europe’s embrace of austerity: that as a debt management tool, it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work at the same time as inflicting serious economic damage in the form of socially-disruptive rates of unemployment.

In the early 1990s, another Labor government was tasked with managing the climb-down from a period of unsustainably high growth brought about by the unleashing of Australia’s finance sector by the Hawke-Keating reforms. “Soft landing” was the mantra from the Hawke government as the RBA ratcheted rates up and the government applied the brakes and embraced further reform. But there was no “soft landing” — policymakers both in Martin Place and Canberra botched it, badly, and gave us a recession that people now joke about as “the one we had to have” but which cost hundreds of thousands of Australians jobs and left many unemployed for years. That’s the sort of stakes policymakers are playing for.

The next challenge is decarbonisation. And I say that word full well knowing how ugly it is.

Australia has the most carbon-addicted economy in the developed world, and regardless of the current state of play internationally, at some point in coming decades we’ll need to address that. Criticism that we shouldn’t take unilateral action on climate, or “lead the world”, apart from being wrong about the lack of international action, misses the point that Australia has a considerable way to go before it achieves only the same level of carbon dependence as other developed countries.

The carbon pricing package, which originally looked like a rather half-baked pricing scheme supplemented by a significant direct action renewables investment policies, has in nine months of operation turned out to be characterized by two features. First, its impacts on business and consumers look to be slightly less than predicted by the government’s modeling. Second, in conjunction with the RET and the unexpectedly rapid fall in the cost of renewable energy, it appears to be having a more rapid impact on carbon emissions than skeptics like me expected.

The Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy was released in early 2010 after being cobbled together by Greg Hunt over the previous summer following Tony Abbott taking over the Liberal leadership. Significantly, it has not been updated in terms of costings in over three years. Structured around a massive grants program for big polluters and farmers, the proposal relied heavily on biosequestration via soil carbon, or what Lenore Taylor  called “soil magic”.

The policy itself is grossly underfunded for what it is proposed to achieve — a 5% cut in emissions by 2020. Originally costed at $1.2 billion per annum or around $10 billion to 2020, it relies, according to the Coalition’s own policy document, on 60% of its carbon abatement task being achieved via soil magic for $8-10 a tonne, and the rest delivered at higher prices, for an average cost of around $11 a tonne.

When the policy was released, independent experts estimated soil carbon at more like $20-40 a tonne. This has been backed up by on the ground experience. In August 2011, when Hunt visited a Victorian farm to promote the policy, the farm owner, who had already undertaken soil carbon initiatives off his own bat, said that the Coalition’s scheme wouldn’t provide enough incentive for farmers. Experience of Direct Action-style carbon abatement grants programs under the Howard and Rudd governments was that they delivered abatement for an average of $168 a tonne.

Direct Action makes even less sense since the government announced it would be linking Australia’s pricing scheme, once its trading phase starts, to the European emissions trading scheme, ensuring that the cost of permits falls substantially, and possibly even as low as $7 a tonne i.e. below even the cheapest abatement that the Coalition on its own admission can achieve.

Tony Abbott’s blood oath to repeal the carbon price thus has a high risk of increasing the cost we’re paying for carbon abatement while eliminating a scheme that appears to be delivering abatement already.

There’s also the short to medium term challenge of the high dollar.

The strength of the Aussie dollar has been a decidedly mixed blessing.

It’s certainly been bad for politicians. The dollar’s strength and stubborn refusal to respond to the factors that have traditionally seen it weaken, has been a persistent handbrake on corporate profits both in the mining and non-mining sectors, and as a result on tax revenue.

But it has also helped keep inflation low, which along with the government’s tight fiscal policy has given the Reserve Bank room to keep reducing interest rates.

And, more subtly, it’s sent a shock through the trade-exposed sector, particularly in manufacturing, that has forced lazy managers and unions to focus on cost-cutting and productivity.

Perhaps that’s why manufacturing, supposedly at death’s door in Australia, has actually contributed to GDP growth for several quarters.

The challenge posed to the trade-exposed sector by the high dollar is one to which the government has come a little belatedly, at least in rhetorical terms, but it is now front and centre in Labor’s economic policy and the narrative for the remainder of its term. It provides a handy public spur for reform in an economy otherwise dominated by good news, in the same way Keating used the current account deficit and talk of a “banana republic” to focus Australians’ minds on the need for reform in the ’80s.

In dealing with the problem, the government declined to take advantage of the advice offered by various parties. It has rejected the suggestion from both unions and conservative commentators like Warwick McKibbin that direct currency intervention should be undertaken to lower the dollar.

It rejected the protectionist arguments of unions and the Greens that it should simply order large companies to use more Australian content. And it has rejected the galahs in the national papers and in business who think just cutting wages  can make up for a high dollar. As the prime minister has noted, average wages would have to fall from nearly $70K to $50,000 pa to offset the recent strength of the dollar.

The government’s manufacturing policy announced in February is instead a mixture of red tape and some shuffling of incentives to encourage greater use of Australian content, without mandating it, and encourage genuine on-the-ground innovation. It’s a package that, unlike the other options urged on the government, is unlikely to cost much or do much harm while manufacturers get on with the challenge of improving productivity themselves – and I’ll come back to that.

We’re less clear on what the Coalition will do about the high dollar. It seems likely that their fiscal policy will be tighter than Labor’s, reinforcing our “safe haven” status but also giving the RBA more room to move on interest rates – although it doesn’t have a whole lot more room to move downward currently. A key Coalition theme is that they have governed successfully before and will therefore naturally do so again. But they governed pre-GFC, and when the Aussie dollar was in the 80s and 90s US cents, and in the first stage of mining boom when mining companies simply upped production to take advantage of higher mineral prices without the accompanying investment that we’ve seen since 2009. One suspects that Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb may be in for a rude shock when they get into office and discover economic management is much harder than simply calling a press conference.

Longer-term budget issues

Let’s come back to the structural Budget issues. As I mentioned, Labor’s fiscal policy is a commitment to identify “long-term” or “structural” savings in the May Budget to pay for the extended (decade-long) roll-out of its education funding reforms and the establishment of the full National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) from 2015. These savings will not be immediate, and probably will have no short-term impact, but should be of the kind that reduce the long-term growth of large spending programs or tax expenditures, thereby freeing up funding to switch to NDIS and Gonski. Superannuation, where high income earners continue to enjoy significant tax breaks, is said to be in the gun for savings.

The quality of these savings can only be assessed once they are revealed, but some of them are likely to have only limited impact over forward estimates, meaning a proper assessment would require a 10-year forecast from the government of the kind it initially provided for its CPRS (but not for the subsequent version that was adopted).

This is something to watch out for on Budget night – do we get a long-term look at the structural savings. If we don’t, the government isn’t being fair dinkum.

But Australia has a structural budget problem. Or, rather, several of them.

We have an ageing population that will drive a massive increase in health and welfare spending in coming decades, with a proportionately smaller workforce to fund it. We have a tax base that, courtesy of cuts to personal income tax and the flaws of the GST, is more heavily dependent on corporate profits and therefore more pro-cyclical, than it used to be before the mid-2000s. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars via taxation concessions, often to conflicting policy purposes. And as Joe Hockey has accurately argued, we have a strong sense of entitlement as voters.

And all of our governments are currently dealing with the impacts on revenue of a high dollar, low inflation and the structural shift in consumer spending towards services.

Labor has shown a reluctance to come to tax reform – we saw what happened with the Henry Review. It also has paid little attention to the revenue problems facing state governments and the future shape of GST; further reform in this area looks to be off Labor’s agenda. But the GST needs to be reformed and restructured. Both sides need to get to grips with whether exemptions such as food should continue, or whether the rate should be increased (with appropriate compensation packages). Both sides could use it as an opportunity to redo Commonwealth-State financial agreements, or in Labor’s case sort out problems with the mining tax.

The reason we can’t tell is because the Coalition refuses to offer anything concrete about its fiscal strategy, and won’t until, probably, just days out from the election.

I want to talk now about some non-challenges, the myths of our economic debate that may well end up getting more attention in the election campaign than the real issues.

Productivity

For a couple of years now business groups and the two national newspapers have been insisting there’s a productivity crisis in Australia, and it was the fault of Labor’s Fair Work Act IR laws. Some days you could barely open a copy of the Fin review or The Australian without being told that Something Needed To Be Done or Australia’s future prosperity would be destroyed by greedy unions, lazy workers and an indulgent Labor government. Indeed, one mining industry lobby group claimed there was a “tsunami of consensus” that Fair Work was killing productivity. What was needed was more workplace flexibility.

There was just one problem with this argument: the data didn’t support it. As each quarter’s national accounts emerged through 2012, labor productivity grew, and sometimes grew strongly. The business and media campaign in favour of productivity-driven IR reform began to falter. The government-appointed external review of the Fair Work Act of mid-2012 found

“Over the two decades labour productivity growth was slowest under WorkChoices, which arguably imposed the fewest constraints on management decisions. Of the four frameworks, the FW Act is most similar to the IR Act post-1993. While productivity flourished in the IR Act post-1993 period, however, it has grown only slowly under the FW Act. Differences between the legislative frameworks evidently do not explain the differences in productivity growth over those periods.”

Indeed, as old hands might note, Australia managed very strong productivity performance during the tightly-regulated 1960s and 1970s.

Moreover, some of our policy goals in other areas directly contradict the goal of lifting productivity. We’re all in agreement that we need to lift Audtralia’s participation rate, particularly since the strong surge of recent years has faltered. But bringing the long-term unemployed, or those who have chosen to withdraw from the workforce because of parenting or retirement, back into the workforce will mean poorer labour productivity, given the relative skills of such workers compared to the current workforce. That’s why Workchoices saw a slump in labour productivity, as Treasury predicted.

The OECD reached the same conclusion as the government’s review. “the Fair Work Act has made the system more employee- friendly — in terms for example of a slightly higher relative minimum wage and unionisation rate — with little effect so far on labour market performance and productivity… major changes do not seem warranted at this stage”.

What is widely agreed is that Australia’s multifactor productivity performance had been poor in recent years. But as the OECD noted, about half of that has been due to the mining investment boom and associated lags, lags in energy infrastructure investment and drought.

I suspect it’s no coincidence that Australia’s labour productivity has improved at the same time as we’ve been hit by the high dollar. Nothing drives productivity like competition, and Australia’s trade-exposed sectors have faced intensified competition since the dollar reached and went over parity. Indeed, we may look back on the strong dollar as another key moment in Australia’s micro-economic reform history.

I suspect it’s also no coincidence that the Coalition has now gone very quiet indeed on IR. It’s not just fear of the scare campaign Labor could run on Workchoices, it’s an acceptance, whatever the rhetoric, that a return to Workchoices isn’t going to provide any economic benefits. Indeed, as the data shows, it might actually send Australian labour productivity plummeting again.

All this is related to my next myth, that of the cautious consumer. It’s true that Australians are saving much more now than they were before the financial crisis. A household savings rate of 10% means tens of billions of dollars a year not going into consumption. Is that necessarily a bad thing? When I grew up in the 1980s, we were constantly told that Australians didn’t save enough. Now, of course, retailers complain that we save too much.

But Australia’s retail “woes” aren’t quite what they’re made out to be. For a start, all the advocates of the “cautious consumer” keeping their wallets shut never explained facts like how Australians were still holidaying overseas in droves and buying new cars faster than ever (up 23%!), or why food retailing was continuing to enjoy strong growth. Traditional, non-food retailing has been subdued, but it has survived and local retail businesses started the painful process of structural adjustment in an era where, even if only 2-3% of retail revenue goes to foreign websites, the competitive threat of online demands changes to how Australian retailers operate (note that Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew, the two main moaners about the internet, have fallen silent). Local retailers have started attacking their cost bases, reducing inventory and getting smarter with their suppliers. And all that’s a good thing for consumers and for retailers.

Tony Abbott argues that the big problem with Australian consumers is a Labor government, that his election as Prime Minister will send a jolt of confidence through consumers and spark a return to strong consumption growth.

That view I suspect says more about what I call Tony Abbott’s nostalgianomics, his apparently conviction that the moment he is elected, Australia will snap back to 2007, government coffers will fill up and consumers will empty their wallets as fast as he can fill them with tax cuts. As we know, that period ended with high inflation and high interest rates. It was unsustainable. Indeed, there’s a strong case to argue that the financial crisis was critical to slamming the brakes on an overheated Australian economy.

Australia, the high-cost place to do business. This has been another staple of the national newspapers and Australian business: Australia is too expensive to do business. Even the proponents of such a theory accept that the problem is partly caused by the strong dollar. But another key reason for the rise in business costs has been directly in the control of businesses themselves.

Cost pressures in resources and associated areas are now easing for the same reason they built up in the first place: Rio Tinto, Fortescue, BHP and a host of other miners have been curtailing expansion spending, and got serious about cost control and monitoring spending. The headlong charge to expand mines in WA and Queensland, plus the LNG investment boom, drove up the cost of supplies and labour. It wasn’t unions, poor labour relations or any of the other reasons trotted out by business, it was an uncontrolled investment splurge from miners, all trying to spend billions of dollars a week on similar projects, demanding the same resources.

Where does that leave us? I suspect that the outcome of the election is likely to make little difference to the Australian economy. That’s not to say there aren’t risks. Both sides could duck the problem of addressing our long-term budget issues. A re-elected Labor govt could turn protectionist, as it has begun doing on 457 visas. The Coalition could believe its fiscally hairy chested rhetoric and rip billions out of the Budget without heed to the actual state of the domestic economy. But our history since 1983 tells us that despite the vituperation levelled at both sides by their opponents, they’re likely to do a pretty reasonable job of managing the economy.

Well, if you want an example of a government imposing direct control on journalism, look no further than the Howard government’s 2006 media ownership laws.

In 2006, as part of the price for securing the support of the National Party to free up media ownership laws, Communications Minister Helen Coonan added amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to the media ownership package affecting both regional television and radio news services. In the end, Barnaby Joyce was the only National to vote against the package; Ron Boswell was believed to be intending to do until a last-minute intervention by John Howard’s office that scared Boswell back into the fold. The package passed, with the vote of Steve Fielding, who entered the Senate to vote on the bills on a mobility scooter, because of an injured leg.

The regional media amendments were dictated by Queensland National Paul Neville, who had previously conducted an inquiry into regional radio issues, and who was considered to be the Coalition’s expert on local media content issues.

For regional television, ACMA was made to impose a licence condition on regional television broadcasters to broadcast “a minimum level of material of local significance” regardless of whether that material would be watched or was wanted by audiences.

For regional radio, ACMA was made to impose a licence condition on any radio licensee that changed ownership, containing a number of requirements:

• to maintain an “existing level of local presence” relating to staffing levels, studios and production facilities;
• to require at least 4.5 hours of local content
• to require a minimum number of minutes of local news – 12.5 minutes a day; and
• to lodge with ACMA a “local content plan” to explain how licensees would meet local content requirements.

Moreover, the Minister was given a power to direct ACMA about how it was to oversee all these requirements, and given an unrestricted power to direct ACMA to impose more conditions on licensees about local content.

The commercial radio industry was outraged about these additional requirements and powers, and long complained about them. In 2012, the current government passed legislation that removed the more onerous radio licensee local content requirements.

The impact of the amendments passed by the Howard government was to dictate to broadcasters what material they should broadcast, give the government-appointed regulator the power to directly dictate the nature of news material on threat of losing a licence, and to give the Minister power to directly dictate the same matters. Under these amendments, a communications minister had the power to tell ACMA to impose a licence condition on radio broadcasters requiring them to shape their news content in a particular way.

What did News Ltd, which claims to be the only media company in Australia genuinely concerned about free speech and the importance of a free press, say about the Howard government giving itself the power to dictate news content to radio broadcasters?

Well, News Ltd made a submission to the 3-week Senate inquiry into the legislation (that’s the inquiry that Stephen Conroy angrily complained was too short to be effective). News Ltd was opposed to the package, but only because it would allow television broadcasters to multichannel while keeping the same anti-competitive restraints on Foxtel in relation to sports, via anti-siphoning. Nowhere in its submission is the issue of a free press mentioned and there is no mention of radio at all in the submission.

It’s not as if this was an arcane issue that no one was aware of. The Commercial Radio Association in its submission expressed particular concern about the wide powers of the minister, and raised the possibility of ministers “punishing” broadcasters for issues other than their compliance with their licence conditions.

So, when the Howard government gave ACMA the power to dictate to television and radio broadcasters the kind of content they should be broadcasting, and gave itself the power to dictate to broadcasters what kind of news broadcasters should put to air, News Ltd was entirely uninterested and expressed no concern about free speech or a free press. And the Liberal Party cabinet and backbench waved through these draconian powers as the price of securing National Party support for other media law reforms.

When the Gillard government proposes that the newspaper industry’s existing self-regulatory model, which the industry claims is highly effective, be demonstrated to be so, without any direct role for government of any kind, it’s Stalinism and Stephen Conroy is compared to worst mass murderers of history by News Ltd, while the Coalition claims it’s the worst attack on a free press since WW2.

Go figure that one.

Bernard Keane worked in the Department of Communications from 2000-08 and worked on the 2006 media reform package.

Of course, women had to fight for the right to vote and for every step along the road to parliamentary representation. And our various “first female Premiers” achieved their leadership as a “poisoned chalice” when their parties were already well on the road to defeat. But that was not Gillard’s story. Any poison in her political chalice has been the product of her own leadership.

The circumstances of her leadership battle with Kevin Rudd are not particularly relevant to feminism as a movement. Her actions as Prime Minister, on the other hand, are very much so.

No one could expect any politician to immediately transform the social and political landscape of the country into a feminist utopia. Gillard, however, has not just failed to overturn existing barriers. She has taken steps to “discipline” other women (single mothers, asylum seekers, women living under the Howard era intervention) supposedly for their own welfare. In reality, she has just shoved those on the margins further towards the brink.

Many women (myself included) watching Gillard’s famous “misogyny speech” in Parliament saw in Tony Abbott every patriarchal male who had ever engaged in sexist domineering behaviour towards them. But when many women outside the supposed “mainstream” look at Julia Gillard, they see every woman who has ever undermined them through acts of micro (or marco) aggression of racism and socio-economic privilege (see policies from the Return of the Pacific Solution to the entrenchment of the Howard era Intervention to the sweeping up of “grandfathered’” single parents into the shift to Newstart).

So let’s look towards next International Women’s Day, and to feminism after Gillard. And acknowledge that her political loss (if and when it comes) will be no loss for feminism. What matters, of course, is what comes next. And of course what comes next may well be even worse. But we must not allow ourselves to act as apologists for Gillard just because she isn’t quite as bad as Attila the Hun (or whoever). That will only discredit feminism in the eyes of the women and girls who need it the most.

There is still another two years to go before the British general election, but the British media are already stating that the results from Eastleigh indicate that the Tories have a very long and hard fight ahead of them. And the results of last week’s by-election are troubling for the Tories for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the Lib Dems were able to retain this seat despite the fact that this by-election arose from the resignation of a Lib Dem MP caught up in a sex scandal, and Eastleigh was initially a seat that was predicted to go to the Tories in 2015. And while yes, the Lib Dems did lose 14 per cent of their vote compared to 2010, their resilience spells trouble for the Tories.

Not only could it rob the Tories of the majority that eluded them in 2010 (the Tories need to snatch twenty seats off the Lib Dems to reach a majority), but also it makes the possibility of a Labor/Lib coalition more real. And more troublingly for the Tories, it appears that the UKIP has been able to capitalise on David Cameron’s program of modernisation isolating traditional Tory support bases.

The UKIP seems to have moved beyond continually pushing its isolationist platform on the EU and more towards traditional Tory policy areas such as immigration and its pressure on the public sector and employment. With Cameron being viewed as being “too soft on Europe and too cuddly on gays” (The Guardian‘s words, not mine) it seemed Nigel Farrage and the UKIP were able to pick up votes from disillusioned Tories.

Farrage even went as far as stating that traditional Tory voters in Eastleigh did not view Cameron as a Conservative and that’s why the Tories lost Eastleigh. Cameron now faces a dilemma that could potentially undo his work towards making “Cameronism” happen; does he dare take a sharp turn toward the right to woo lost Tory voters and abandon his program of modernisation?

As I wrote earlier this year, Cameron’s EU referendum pledge could easily be viewed as a rather cynical grab for votes from the UKIP support base, but to take a far greater step towards the UKIP’s policies would be seen as disingenuous. After all, one of Cameron’s strengths is his reputation for being a strong, decisive leader, and his focus throughout his time as Prime Minister has been on bringing the Conservatives closer to the Centre (or as one analyst put it, it would just make him look like Ed Miliband).

However, Cameron clearly underestimated the appeal of a party he once branded as being comprised of “loonies” . But at the same time, it is worth noting that an exit poll from Eastleigh recorded UKIP voters as being driven not by policy but rather anger and disillusion with the British political system at large. The fact remains that the relief felt by the Lib Dems and elation of the UKIP is momentary in the grand scheme of things.

But what can be taken away from the Eastleigh by-election is a greater sense of disillusion with the British political system as well as a reminder that disillusioned Tories and Labour voters have other alternatives and are not afraid to vote for them. Britain’s three major parties have their work cut out for them if they want that majority government in 2015.

Bressington declined to accept my Friend request on Facebook, thereby preventing me from responding to the anti-fluoride folk on her page — on the basis that she if she couldn’t comment on my Twitter, I wouldn’t be allowed to comment on her Facebook. She actually said this to me in a comment to me… on Twitter. Yes, this woman votes. Not votes in the normal sense — she votes in the South Australian upper house. On legislation.

Anyway, as I was thwarted from responding on Bressington’s Facebook page, I thought I’d offer this open letter to anti-fluoride campaigners:

Dear Anti-Fluoridians

Firstly, let me say that I was delighted to hear the venerable anti-fluoride movement is still going. I thought you had died out sometime in the Nixon years, but to discover that you’re still alive in the dark undergrowth of the internet has cheered me as much as discovering that a rare and exotic species thought extinct has been rediscovered in dense forest rarely trodden by humans.

Second, I wish to relate to you what happened this week when I was attending one of my busy roster of conspiracy meetings. As a member of the all-powerful Ruling Élite (Media Division), naturally I sit in on regular committee meetings that oversee some of the major global conspiracies. Keeping global conspiracies running is a lot of work, and you probably understand that it has to be divided up amongst a lot of committees that have oversight of individual conspiracies.

As you can imagine, this can be fairly demanding of the time of attendees since we all have day jobs to do, and it’s only recently that I had to reluctantly beg off my participation in the Chem Trails Conspiracy oversight committee due to a clash with my growing responsibilities on the 9/11 Truth Committee and a new role on the Overarching Illuminati-Masonic Conspiracy audit subcommittee. Also, the Barack Obama Conspiracy has recently had to be split into two because the work of maintaining both the birther conspiracy and the Obama-is-a-Lizard-Person conspiracy was becoming too much; accordingly, my (admittedly small) role in the public affairs subcommittee there was eliminated.

However, I was participating in one of my long-term commitments this week, a Fluoride-Conspiracy committee meeting held here in Canberra. At the end of the meeting, I turned and said to Tanya Plibersek “you know Minister, I’m really worried about Ann Bressington, I think she’s really close to blowing the lid right off this whole conspiracy and revealing that fluoride is a dastardly plot to poison people.”

“But Bernard,” the Minister said, “that’s very alarming. What are we going to do?”

Tory Shepherd, who’s also on the committee, joined the conversation (the idea that News Ltd and Crikey are enemies is just a facade — in fact we all work closely together to protect the New World Order). “We need to undermine and discredit the movement with our powerful media presences,” she said.

“Well,” I corrected her, “your powerful media presence, and my not-so-powerful media presence. What we should do is, contact Ms Bressington’s office and ask her about the anti-fluoride poster she’s circulating that accuses you of crimes against huge manatee.”

I waited a moment. “Crimes against huge manatee,” I said again. After several seconds and repeating “geddit?” a couple of times, I gave up waiting for either of them to laugh and continued “that will undermine and discredit the whole anti-fluoride movement.”

Ms Plibersek considered this for a moment, sipped her glass of water, (distilled, unfluoridated — because that’s what we Ruling Élites drink), and then agreed. “Yep. Go for it guys,” she said. “And see you at the Chariots-of-the-Gods remuneration telecon next week.”

“I just wish they’d circulate the papers for that one a bit earlier,” I said.

Unfortunately, I confess, our lame ruse, our paper-thin, indeed wafer-thin, tactic, a tactic so thin you can’t even see it when it’s turned side-on, was soon seen through by anti-fluoride campaigners. No sooner had I contacted Bressington than she was onto me and exposing my attempt to perpetuate the conspiracy. As one of her commenters insightfully observed, “Must be so bored they need to create They story’s these days what do you expect from Mainstream Media Reporter’s who act like children (Bernard Keane ) to get noticed it would take a lot more grown up professionalism to be able to report REAL STORY’S.”

But — and kudos — Bressington herself was clever enough to see the real agent behind all this – Tanya Plibersek. After Shepherd contacted Bressington, the MP divined the hand of the Health Minister in this appalling attempt to silence her. “ They want this poster removed because Tanya is afraid it incites violence,” said Bressington. Commenters agreed that Plibersek was behind both Shepherd and myself. “I’ll bet she doesn’t drink bloody tap water…thats only for the poor to drink,” one said.

So, my message to you all is, I’m big enough to acknowledge when I’m beaten. I’m sorry, so very sorry, that we thought you wouldn’t see through such an obvious ploy to silence Bressington and destroy the Anti-Fluoride movement. I have tendered my resignation to the Fluoride committee in the hope that new input and fresh ideas can once again extend the dark veil of this global conspiracy over all minds.

Yours sincerely

Bernard Keane

(Illuminati name: Putresco Incitatus)

Wilders’ Australian tour will presumably help fulfil his New Year’s resolution for 2013, which as he told the Dutch TV channel NOS is that “Next to all things about Europe and the economic situation, the people will hear from our resistance against the Islamization of the Netherlands. I will intensify this battle, both in the Netherlands, but also internationally from Australia to America to Switzerland, or anywhere else.”

As outlined in an op-ed by Paul Sheehan, the Q society is highlighting the controversial nature of their event – the elaborate security measures, the cancelled venue bookings, the failure of most politicians to accept their invitation to meet their guest. Even Cory Bernardi, who met with Wilders last year during a visit to the Netherlands and promised him a warm welcome Down Under, has found himself otherwise engaged. This, Sheehan claims, underlines Wilders point by “illustrat[ing] the double-speak, double-standards and fear that exists when it comes to the subject for which Wilders is notorious – confronting Muslim extremism.”

However, the consensus response from Muslim community leaders in Australia has been muted by a reluctance to grant the attention-seeking Wilders the kinds of alarmist publicity on which he so clearly thrives. The Australian reports that while Muslim community leaders expect a some “hotheads” to speak out against Wilders’ visit, no formal protests are planned. The report quotes prominent educator and community leader Silma Ihram as saying “The general line from our community is ‘no response’…the guy’s a nutcase, he’s losing popularity, so why give him something to respond to?” Non-Muslim politicians and commentators have also attempted to calm apprehension with reassuring remarks about how Wilders’s racism is unlikely to generate a receptive response in Australia. Australian multiculturalism has been far more successful than its European counterparts, enjoying support across the social and political spectrum. All Australians (well, most of them) loves multiculturalism – even if some of them (yes, I’m looking at you, Scott Morrison) add “but”.

I agree both with the tactics of the major Muslim community groups and with the assessments stating that the Australian far-right holds far less support than its European counterpart – yet I find myself adding some “buts” of my own. The centre of Australian politics has shifted so far to the right that the tiniest step further has you rubbing shoulders with Genghis Khan. With a rising death-toll of asylum-seekers en route to Australia, the stop-the-boats slogan has been reconfigured as a humanitarian rather than a security issue. However, reports emerging from Manus Island and Nauru are making it more and more difficult to see the Pacific Solution #2 as a compassionate policy. And while the anguish of some of those who now advocate the removal of the incentive to make such a dangerous voyage is undoubted, for many others the concern for the safety of asylum-seekers provides only a thin veneer for the type of invasion-fear mongering on which Wilders has built his career. “Beastly Bernardi” may have been shifted to the backbench in the wake of one too many embarrassing remarks, but it serves his party’s interests to keep him on board to mop up the demographic that might otherwise find itself another Pauline Hanson as an outlet for their disaffection.

As for the current sentiment among Muslims in Australia, it’s difficult to assess whether we are really experiencing a lower level of discrimination and harassment or whether we’ve become so inured to it that it’s just become background noise. Anti-Muslim racism has become the acceptable form of racism because (as we are endlessly informed) Islam is a religion, not a race. According to Geert Wilders, it isn’t even a religion – it’s a dangerous political ideology whose holy book is on par with Mein Kampf.

The resilience to withstand sensationalist media coverage and opportunist political vilification is a necessary survival skill, but there is a price to be paid. The level-headed response from community leaders is the type of advice given to children in the face of schoolyard bullying. “They’re only doing it for attention. Just ignore them until they get bored and go away.”

It’s often sound advice. Certainly, physical threats and attacks on Wilders and his ilk have only added to their credibility. But Muslims are caught between a rock and a hard place. It is difficult to urge restraint without contributing to the marginalisation of “hotheads” who for the most part are only exercising the free speech that Wilders proclaims to be a prime virtue. There are limits to the benefits of quietude. The challenge lies in challenging Wilders’ toxic views without providing him with further ammunition.