Jim Chalmers warns progressives not to ‘mock’ One Nation voters

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned those on the progressive side of politics not to “scold” or “mock” potential One Nation voters but instead to take seriously the task of persuading them away from the insurgent party.

By directly acknowledging the seriousness of One Nation’s support and advancing a strategy for tackling it, Chalmers is underscoring that the party is a threat to Labor, not just to the Coalition.

Delivering the Bernie Fraser Oration, sponsored by the Australia Institute, a progressive think tank, on Tuesday night, Chalmers also had a sobering message for straitened households. Reserve Bank and Treasury forecasts did not expect economic conditions to get much better in the next three months, he said, although they did expect things to get “a bit better” over the next year.

Chalmers said the combination of near term pressure and transformational change had made people feel more disconnected from opportunity, and “mourning a loss of control as change accelerates around them”. This was fuelled, politicised and catastrophised by “algorithmic rage bait”.

“In our system One Nation has been the most obvious beneficiary of all this but the political ramifications are playing out across the world,” he said.

He pointed to political churn in Japan, South Korea, Germany and France. In Australia, One Nation’s support had doubled in a year. Three in ten people now said they’d vote for them and they were getting a foothold in the House of Representatives and state parliaments. Nobody expected the polls to change soon.

The far right strategy is to divide people and it’s working; their goal is to talk down our economy so that their endless negativity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Their core message is often clear and sometimes very appealing: let’s just go back to a more nostalgic version of the world we remember.

We have all the facts to push back on this, but facts don’t beat feelings. Feelings are as real as facts.

The past will always feel safe and familiar and desirable because by definition we understand it better than we understand the future. That’s normal. That’s human.
When a significant swathe of our fellow Australians find that message of returning to an idealised version of the good old days appealing – we shouldn’t turn on them.

The role of progressives “is not to scold those who see appeal in that message. It’s not to mock them or ‘cancel’ them or talk down to them”.

Rather, “serious progressives” should adopt a two-pronged strategy, Chalmers said.

One half was to persuade people that returning to the past, appealing as it might seem, was not possible.

The other half of our mission is this: to persuade working people that the path we advocate, the path we haven’t walked before, is actually the safer, more secure and more prosperous path for them and their loved ones.

And you do that by starting not from a place of smug moral superiority – but from a place of genuine respect and understanding.

Chalmers admitted “a desire for the past is rooted in dissatisfaction with the status quo”.

It was important to point out One Nation and the Coalition would make people worse off, not better off.

What they offer is just culture war camouflage for cutting wages and attacking workers.

Their superannuation policy would make people much poorer in retirement; their wages policy would eat away at take home pay and living standards; their unfunded commitments would blow a hole in the budget; their migration policy would smash the economy.

But it was not enough to point to the risks posed by the threat from the right. Delivery of government policies was essential, said Chalmers, listing what the government had been doing in various areas. Also essential was reform, that the government was undertaking on a number of fronts.

Stability and the status quo are not the same thing, nor is longevity and legacy, but they are very closely related because you can only properly change this country from stable political foundations.

Perhaps a key mistake made by parties of the left is that in their defence of democracy and institutions they’ve also inadvertently become the party of the status quo. We are not making that mistake, we are reforming the status quo in tax and housing and in other ways, in the interests of working people.

Hoping the far right goes away or implodes again is not actually a strategy. But acknowledging and acting on the pressures people are under, delivering better and more tangible outcomes for them, and reforming the status quo in their interests is, and that’s our approach.

Looking to the economic prospects over the next year Chalmers said of official forecasts:

Their expectation by the end of next year is for inflation back in the target band, with 20 of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg expecting interest rates to ease by around that time as well.

They expect unemployment under 5% and the return of real incomes growth, and high levels of investment.

And we expect the tax reforms will be bedded down and legislated by then too.

But Chalmers added a qualification. “So much of the next year will be hostage to decisions taken in Washington, on Wall Street, in Tehran”.

Chalmers said these difficult times tested Australians and their governments.

But they’re also a test of whether a country’s character falls to the level of its critics, whether we turn on each other, or reach for the most comforting culture war, or whether we are capable of doing the harder thing, to change and adapt and reform and prosper together through uncertainty.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.