Issues Monitor March 2014: Victoria
As the Government, Opposition and other parties prepare to draw swords and charge towards November’s state election, Victorian citizens are delivering their politicians a rich river of concerns and will be looking for a response in the lead up to 29 November.
Top Issues Facing Victoria
‘Healthcare’ continues to be the most important issue facing Victoria. Anxieties have proven constant, are most likely to be felt by those close to or beyond retirement age, and are fuelled by concerns about access and affordability of services, rather than quality. The challenges Australia and Victoria will face in meeting citizen expectations regarding ‘Healthcare’ will only become more acute in the coming years as the nation ages, becomes less healthy, and the costs to deliver the high quality services with which we have become accustomed become too much for the public purse alone to bear. To this end, expect to see ‘Healthcare’ as the most or close to the most important issue facing Victoria ongoing.
The next four most important issues facing Victoria: ‘Crime’, ‘Transport’, ‘Unemployment’ and ‘Cost of Living’ are all of equal weight, with ‘Unemployment’ the only issue to emerge into prominence during this government’s term; having trebled since November 2010. Given the clustering of concerns, each party would do well to design and communicate policies that address at multiple issue-points.
The Protective Services Officer (PSO) policy from the then Opposition party in 2010 achieved this beautifully. The now Government’s PSO policy was well timed, well framed, continues to be well implemented and has delivered a return, with commuters reporting feeling safer on and around public transport in the evenings at stations where PSOs have been deployed.
Critically, the PSO policy issue-linked two of the greatest concerns of the day: ‘Crime’ and ‘Transport’. The most obvious issue-link opportunity relates to Victorians’ concerns around ‘Transport’ and ‘Unemployment’. Both issues are high on the agenda for Melburnians, Regional and Rural Victorians, and more important to our state relative to the balance of Australia. The major parties have shown some cards in this space, with the Coalition closely aligning job creation to the delivery of East-West Link and the ALP doing the same, albeit with a more local focus, in their Project 10,000 policy.
From here, the challenge will be to bolster this line of communication through a diverse platter of phased, credible, costed and creative projects that serve the dual purpose of stimulating immediate job-creation and economic growth which deliver longer-term, equitable benefits for the entire state.
Top Issues Facing Australia
As the Coalition prepares to deliver its first budget, ‘The Economy’ continues to be rated by Australians as the most important issue nationally, selected by over two in five (41%) as one of the top three issues facing the nation. ‘The Economy’ has been the nation’s greatest concern since November 2013, and, as such, it is safe to say we are well entrenched in a new paradigm of concern, largely driven by a final and perhaps overdue recognition that the global economy runs in both directions.
If the Coalition is to prepare a budget that forces Australians to really tighten the collective belt, this will be the most likely time in their first term to do so. Subsequent budgets closer to an election will need to reward the voter, but if hard sacrifices are to be made, the time is probably now. However, if the Coalition is to do so, they must be aware of two unique factors.
First off, Australians’ concerns about ‘The Economy’ and ‘Unemployment’ have never been more acute. Twelve months ago, two out of every ten Australians reported that ‘The Economy’ was one of the top three issues facing the nation. Concern has since doubled. Similarly, national anxiety around ‘Unemployment’ has risen, and now sits as the fifth most important issue facing the nation (26% selecting), relative to twelve months ago, when it placed seventh. To this end, it’s likely that more Australians will be more engaged, critical and personally invested in this coming budget relative to those in recent memory.
Secondly, the Australian public decisively relayed that the Coalition were more capable to manage ‘The Economy’ than the ALP all through 2013, peaking at 1.7 times more capable in September. Move forward six months and while Australians are still most likely to cite the Abbott Government as best credentialed to deliver, the proportion who actually feel this way has dropped since the Federal Election. In March of this year, 37% of Australians reported that the Coalition was the political party most capable of managing ‘The Economy’ compared to 41% in September 2013. Importantly, the ALP does not benefit from this decline, as the proportion who previously selected the Coalition are now choosing ‘Don’t Know’; proving that early policy wins are harder to deliver than promise, and that the ALP is still not credible in this space.
Irrespective of what the Coalition puts forward in May, Australia’s political, business and social leaders all carry the responsibility for re-positioning our economic identity beyond mining resources in the north and the west and macro-manufacturing in the east and the south. We do, and can do, so much more. While the responsibility to halt and begin to push against the narrative of economic doom requires many hands, Australia’s situation and Abbott’s opportunity broadly reflects a quote from Steinbeck’s famous novel, The Winter of Discontent “intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There’s luck or fate or something else that takes over”.
