I haven’t been privy to the Coalition review of its near-death experience at the last federal election, but judging from the leaks breathlessly reported by News Corp this week it appears the government has learned nothing.

The report by former frontbencher and campaign veteran Andrew Robb seems to focus on the mechanics of campaigning, from long-term research, negative framing of the opposition and the development of clearly articulated choice propositions.

And while lip service is paid to the notion of “community sentiment”, these are framed as issues to be exploited rather than the fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the government that it has become.

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Because as this table shows, across a range of different issues, “community sentiment” has become radioactive.

Do you think things are getting better or worse for you and your family in terms of the following:

* based on people working

While there is nothing novel about people thinking things are bad even in the face of evidence to the contrary, the difference is today’s discontent has an evidence base.

Housing affordability

As the treasurer throws out thought bubbles while refusing to address tax concessions for investors, the cost of housing grows, widening the gap between the older land-owning class and those who were born too late to capitalise on the property bubble.

Cost of electricity and gas

After promising to bring power prices down by axing the carbon tax, the Coalition is exposed to the reality that rising prices are the product of their fetish with privatisations of public assets and the operation of the monopoly energy network.

General standard of living

Half of Australian families see their general standard of living getting worse, which surely should be read as a cry for help to any incumbent government.

Income

We know real wages growth has flatlined in recent years, with government policy dedicated to making it harder for workers to bargain for collective increases. But one-third of workers feel their incomes are heading south. Meanwhile the government pushes for penalty rate cuts while opposing meaningful minimum wage increases, even as economists warn that wage stagnation is stifling consumer spending.

Job security

Where jobs are being created they are twice as likely to be part-time or contract positions than secure, steady jobs. Three in 10 Australians in the workforce feel their jobs are now less secure than they were in the past, impacting on their ability to plan for the long term.

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Work-family balance

This is a difficult indictor to quantify but if there is a sleeper issue in the national political debate it’s the squeeze so many workers feel between their work and family responsibilities, not just to their kids, but to their partners and parents as well.

Overall quality of life

And here’s the sum of these pressures: one-third of Australians think their overall quality of life is declining, even as our prime minister tells us “there has never been a more exciting time to be Australian”.

And herein lies the real problem with the Coalition’s approach to running the country. It’s all about business as usual (with business being the operative word).

An agenda premised on “jobs and growth” is more than an asinine tagline, it is an assertion that trickle-down economics, driven by free market principles, is the government’s sole operating model.

When faced with these myriad community concerns, the government’s response is to point to a corporate tax cut, which it asserts will stimulate the economy by giving employers the impetus to hire more workers.

But a separate question in this week’s Essential Report shows the public flatly rejects this premise.

Which brings us back to the Robb review. It’s not the packaging that is the problem, it’s what’s in the package.



Assuming there is not a sealed section that deals with the fundamental failure of trickle-down economics to improve the lot of voters, then the review merely comes down to mechanics and cosmetics.

Because at the centre of our political debate right now is a question about the very role of government, a desire for it to intervene in markets and tame the excesses of business, not give them further scope to operate unfettered.

As the final line in our nuclear chart shows, of all the things that are going to the dogs, political representation is up there with the worst of them.

If there is a common thread running through housing and power prices, income and job security, it’s that the trends in all these areas is less control – fewer rules to enforce the public interest all under the guise of market liberalisation.

Dealing with these problems by doing even less seems nothing more than a recipe for further disappointment.