Part 1: Australian Values - Who we are & Who we like to think we are.

Don't buy into the advertising. Don't buy into our cultural dreaming. Aussies [pronounced oz-ees - not oss-ees] in no way resemble the artists or art we export.

Now I'm not slagging off or bagging the place, I'm stoked in OZ - all I'm saying is that you can't buy into the advertising if you want to understand us. America is Starsky & Hutch in the same way as OZ is Crocodile Dundee. Americans are not The Brady Bunch, and similarly, what we Aussies project into the world - what we strive to project - is just advertising. It is not who we are. In our art and advertising we encapsulate our aspirations. These are collective dreams reflected in a media looking-glass.

The real Australia is not a long stretch of golden beach, a tropical island paradise, or a dusty outback vista.  In the main we are middle-class and suburban.

SOME FACTS & FIGURES

We have a small population: On 21 November 2007 at 00:11:36 (Canberra time) the resident population of Australia was projected to be 21,143,947.

We are affluent. Our average wage in August of 2007 (private & public sectors) was $1 103.60 p.w.

And more than in any other country Aussies live a suburban life. At the start of the current housing boom, in August 2001, 4.6 million or (69%) of households in Australia already owned their own house (with or without a mortgage). Homes that are, in the main, three or four bedroom bungalows in front of big backyards, nearby a strip of shops, a library, park, sports oval, and several schools.

So our few but massive cities are sprawling places encompassing mile upon mile of quarter-acre blocks. With mile upon mile of suburban lawn. And, as you get further out, cities meet satellite cities - and more miles of suburban sprawl. But we don't do slums. It's all very neat. This is the mortgage belt. The heartland every Australian politician strives to win.

Three out of five Aussies live on a suburban block. One in five lives in a small town nearby the coast. Again, usually on a quarter acre block. Rural-urban rather than suburban splendour, but still very urban.

Only one in five lives in the sticks. In the genuine outback. Somewhere beyond the black stump. On a mine site. A farm. In a distant roadhouse. Or on a massive station.

We are as complex as any other modern society but also oddly uniform. For all the vastness of our continent, our cities and lifestyles are remarkably homogenous, as are our mythologies.

However statistics and the reality of an everyday Aussie lifestyle are not what our dreams are made of. Here it is time for a polite warning: any voyage into a cultural psyche is chokka full of paradox, and with Australia it is no different. Who we are, in reality, in our lifestyle, and GDP - and who we are in our pampered self-image - are two very different things.

OUR MYTHOLOGY

It is possible to generalise about an Australian ethos in a way that is difficult with more populous, diverse, and older nations (like America and England). We have only a relatively short and largely uncomplicated history and we agree on most things. So most suburbs in OZ, be they in Melbourne or Perth, Brisbane or Hobart, are all remarkably similar in both cultural and architectural detail.

Australia was born of arbitration and negotiation. Following the discovery of gold in 1852 a very small population doubled, then doubled, and then doubled again: all in five years. Then in the following forty the diggers demanded and gradually won the right to vote, taking over the reigns of power peacefully. There is little history of civil discord in our country - Australia had no founding civil war - the closest we have is the Eureka Stockade incident where a group of diggers on one Victorian field rebelled at the idea of paying for digging licenses. The traps (police) went in, shot up the stockade, and lost the ensuing political war. (Despite losing an arm Peter Lalor, one of the ring-leaders, eventually entered into the Victorian Parliament where he stayed until a ripe old age.)

We are a peaceful people and we don't like a lot of guns hanging about the place. We have strict gun laws and, oddly enough, our society remains relatively crime free. (America boasts 483 prisoners per 100 000 residents while in Australia we gaol just 153.)

Yet, despite the fact we are mainly urban and peaceful, Aussies still idealise the outback. Much of our mythology is focussed on the taming of the bush. On the soldier-settler battling the odds to clear and farm a block. On fighting drought and bushfire. On larrikins shearing and droving and cutting up rough. On digging gold from the earth and waltzing your Matilda. Felling giant trees, fencing huge stations, taming impossible horses, and telling impossible tales. We like to think of ourselves as being humble, self-effacing, rugged outback types. With a dry laconic sense of humour. So despite an undoubted middle class urbanity, these mainly rural themes still encompass the motherlode of Australian folklore. Unlike other first world countries, our heroes are working-class heroes, and our history and mythology are bound to the egalitarian aspirations of the working class.

Part 2: ‘It's not the economy, stupid!' - the heartland and the fair-go.

Due to a remarkable social uniformity and a tendency towards conformity, wedge politics has become a feature of the Australian political landscape: but you cannot understand what ‘the wedge' is, or how it bites, unless you have a little background on who Aussies are - and who we like to think we are. And then reflect a little on the tension between these conflicting identities.

Fair-go: noun:- to give some one an equal opportunity or equitable treatment. See also "Fair crack of the whip"- http://www.aussieslang.com.

Every Aussie is steeped in the mythology of mateship from birth and at the heart of that mythology is the belief that no individual is better than another. An acute sense of the fair-go We are vigorously democratic.

As we hate standing in queues, waiting at a counter to get served in Aus is usually a jumbled affair. Yet despite a seeming chaos, when the person behind the bench asks "who's next" - everyone will defer to the person who arrived before them. The majority will have formed a mental queue as each and everyone had arrived, and many will be more than ready to jump in and say "no, they were here first" should a mistake occur.

And it would only happen by mistake - queue jumping is an abhorrence to an Aussie. Deep down in our cultural bones we feel it to be very wrong. The moral imperatives in our folklore bespeak a rural egalitarian working-class utopia. So we all expect and know that everyone should and must wait their turn - regardless of social position, charm, wit, or weight of wallet. But we also know that it can't happen in an unmediated capitalist environment. So a tension exists between the realities of a capitalist system and the egalitarian longings of our mythology. And the resulting stored discordant energy is the very stuff of Australian politics.

For example: we expect a Prime Minister will be approachable and willing to talk to everyone, and we do not expect, or want, the little Aussie Battler to be polite. Our current Prime Minister goes out on a one hour walk every morning escorted by only five security guards. This little posse nips out every day just after dawn, day in, day out, regardless of where he might be. And as Aussies we expect we will be able to approach him if we encounter him. During non-election periods this little morning wander causes little or no fuss. During election campaigns it becomes a bit of a farce - but our current PM daren't change his common practice or it would look as though he was avoiding the common Aussie - and in voter-land that would not go down well. We don't like people taking on airs and graces. Especially not politicians.

Think about the never-ending suburban sprawl and the avowedly middle-class nature of our society - the pressure on the average Aussie to conform can be immense, especially when the norm already encompasses a vast amount of personal autonomy and social mobility. Yet while you can be successful in Australia,  don't expect to be celebrated or feted for that success. We gleefully cout down our tall poppies. If you think you're being overlooked and start singing your own praises we'll piss on you from a great height.

As a result your average Aussie battler professes he is proudly egalitarian to the point where the word ‘egalitarian' has wide currency in our land. As a breed we have an anarchic streak; we don't like a stuffed shirt, blowing their own trumpet. Being up yourself simply won't rub. Because our cultural imperatives are all proudly working class and we have a tendency, almost a drive, to cut down tall poppies.

This, of course, has serious implications for the way that politics works in OZ. Certain topics and ways of characterizing oneself are entirely out the window. Most of the right wing populist rhetoric so endemic in other nations doesn't work at all well in Australia. And you have to appear humble and competent or you won't get a look-in. And don't dare contradict the fair-go.

For example: two years ago John Howard brought in what was, for Australia, considered draconian Industrial Relations laws which, in effect, allowed workers to be paid less than they are now. The idea was to open the Australian wage market up to market forces. Fair-enough you say! But it isn't. There are winners and losers based on the whim of the markets - and that offends the Aussie sense of the fair-go.

Instantly there was a howl of protest and the fair-go principle was used to bash the legislation at every turn. Soon, with an election looming, the government introduced the ‘Fairness Test'.

This was a pragmatic response dictated by the need to claw back support. The Liberal Party, to their credit, realised that breaching the fair-go was a step too far for Australia. So The Fairness Test promptly and entirely negated the intended effect of the original legislation by guaranteeing that anyone who signed an Australian Workplace Agreement could not lose any pay or trade off any currently enjoyed conditions without just compensation. But it wasn't stalemate - the Australian public felt wounded by this attack on the egalitarian principles we share, and it might yet cost the Government an election.

There are few if any other reasons for the sudden shift against the Liberal party in all the national polls. The economy is booming and we have near thirty year lows in unemployment. And the two parties agree on virtually everything. And it's a very liberal agenda down-under.

Any American would consider our right-wing to be almost socialist! Both major political parties support Medicare (incorporating free medical and hospital treatment): State control and subsidy of medicine: A broad and generous social security safety net for pensioners, the unemployed, and the invalid: A generous first home owners grant ($14000): Rent subsidies: A reasonable minimum wage (currently $13.74 per hour or $522.12 p.w.): compulsory superannuation savings (matched dollar for dollar by the employer) - etc etc.

A majority of Aussies believe that the current conservative government are undoubtedly the superior economic managers, but still intend to vote them out. It can only be explained by differences in the ideology of each party. The Labor Party has played the fair-go card and wedged the Howard Government by adopting the guise of being fiscal conservatives. And this has shifted a huge chunk of Howard's traditional support base over to the Labor Party.

Part 3.The fair-go wedge.

Now, with Labor ahead in the polls and within striking distance of the election, the fair-go wedge is being applied with a vengeance. By the time Labor are finished, any Aussie who votes for the Liberal Party will suffer bad dreams for years.

The wedge: first negate any perceived differences between you and your opposition except on some very particular cleavage points. Labor first adopted a very careful public persona in relation to fiscal prudence and matching the current governments spending and demeanour, right up until within two weeks of the election, then deliberately underspent the Liberals at the campaign launch. (Labor went out onto the stage clad in just an economic loincloth and preaching budget restraint.) And it worked a treat. Interest rate rises and Reserve Bank warnings conspired to create a perfect storm of woe for the Liberals during the second last week of their campaign. Labor's stunt sucked the oxygen out of their operation. Their marginal momentum was entirely lost. Then you apply your populist wedge. (In this case the egalitarian principle that nobody should be worse off in an economic boom. ‘The fair-go principle'.) And If the voters endorse the wedge, and also agree that there are little or no other discernable differences, they jump ship. They have been wedged.

Or the wedge works in reverse - further reinforcing distaste for the government in voters who have already jumped ship, ensuring they are not budged by the scare campaigns flying about thick and fast.

The following is an example of the wedge in question being applied by a master politician:

Applying the fair-go Wedge

Ex-Labor PM (1983-1991) Bob Hawke inThe Age

Today - three days before the election. (November 21, 2007)

JOHN Howard has advanced three arguments why you should not vote Labor, each one based on a gross misrepresentation of the truth. I will now demolish those arguments, not with opinions but with facts.

First, the trade union bogy. Every working Australian, and those dependent on them, is indebted to the trade union movement. Everything they take for granted that largely makes up their standard and quality of living - their pay structure, paid annual leave, long-service leave, sick leave, penalty rates, equal pay - was fought for and won by the trade union movement.

I can speak with authority on this because for many years I presented before the national Arbitration Tribunal the union case for improvements in wages and conditions. On every occasion when I walked into the court I was confronted with an array of bewigged senior counsel representing the Coalition governments in the states and Canberra, lined up with the employer organisations, to oppose the improvements that trade unions were fighting to obtain for working Australians.

So whose advertisements on industrial relations and WorkChoices are you going to believe? The employer organisations and the Coalition that have consistently used the independent tribunals to deny you any improvements, and who have now neutered those tribunals and the protections they provide for the most needy - or Labor and the trade unions who have argued the cases from which working Australians continue to be the beneficiaries?

As to TV advertisements and the trade unions: what an insult to voters' intelligence is Howard's "union thug" scam. The fact is that in an organisation as vast as the Australian trade union movement there will be some bad apples. (You may remember that when I was prime minister I finished off Norm Gallagher, a union bad apple of his day; Kevin Rudd has shown his readiness to be just as tough.)

But ask the question: what would Howard say if Rudd, in the context of attacking employers' support for WorkChoices, authorised a TV advertisement with a photograph of a businessman, jailed for criminal behaviour for defrauding thousands of senior citizens of their life savings, with the caption "Employer Crooks"?

I conclude my observations on this first Howard misrepresentation, by saying that no institution in this country's history has done more to flesh out and give real meaning to the concept of the "fair go" than the trade union movement.

Second is Howard's economic management myth, that only he and not Labor can be trusted with the economic management of Australia. Again, let me use facts to destroy this grotesque misrepresentation. Who, as treasurer, had responsibility for economic management for more than five years before I was elected on March 5, 1983? John Winston Howard. I knew that he was handing me the worst legacy in terms of unemployment and inflation in Australia's history; both were at 11%. But I didn't know exactly how bad the projected budget deficit was, because he had refused to come clean on this during the campaign.

On Sunday, March 5, I called in the secretary of the Treasury, John Stone, who told me that the projected figure for 1983-4 was $9.6 billion, the largest in our history; equivalent today as a percentage of GDP to more than $40 billion. Stone pointed out that "the budget balance is projected to deteriorate from near zero to more than 6% of GDP in a two-year period. The speed and magnitude of that deterioration is almost without precedent among the major OECD countries in the postwar period". Stone was no Labor stooge - he went on to become a Nationals senator - and his written judgement was that Howard's performance was virtually the worst anywhere in the developed world since 1945.

My government had to rescue an economy wrecked by Howard. We made the tough economic management decisions he had shirked - we reduced tariffs, floated the dollar, introduced competition into the financial and banking sectors and massively stimulated funding in industrial research and development. Central to all this was a great act of institutional self-sacrifice: the trade unions, in return for improvements in health, education and welfare, agreed to forgo increases in wages, and thus increase the competitiveness of Australian industry.

It is the judgement of economists here and in the relevant international institutions that it was the economic management and structural reforms of Labor and the restraint of the trade unions that laid the foundations for the strength of the Australian economy today.

Prime Minister Howard has squandered it again. With the strong economy we handed over and the enormous surge in demand for our resources from Asia, his Government has had unprecedented surpluses to invest in our future, particularly in education and training. But he has utterly failed to do so and thus our future is hamstrung by shortages of skilled tradesmen and professionals.

Third, and in some ways the greatest Howard myth, is his claim about foreign relations and security. Again, look at the facts: joining with his pal, George Bush, in Iraq (described by Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of the US-led forces there, as "a catastrophic failure"). It is the unanimous view of the Australian, US and UK intelligence agencies that the war in Iraq has increased the threat of a terrorist attack in our country. Thank you, Prime Minister.

When the facts are examined against the panicked rhetoric of Howard, I suggest there is only one conclusion to which you can come: it is time for him and his Government, with all their misrepresentations of the truth, to be gone.

Google has a great site with all sorts of widgets gizmos and links to help soothe any pre-election tensions.

Anyone interested in politics or polling will find the ABC Election site fascinating. The coverage is easy to digest, relatively unbiased, and updated constantly. On the night they will be the site to watch as they always do a terrific job. Also I recommend, use, and abuse, Anthony Greens Election Calculator.You can plug in your choice of polls going back for the last year and track the changes indicated. You can even tweak it on a State by State basis.

SkyNews Online has a site devoted to repackaging their more conservative leaning television coverage for an on-line audience. Interesting and worth a look. They will probably provide a streaming video link to their coverage on the night.

FederalElection.com.au is a private mob with plenty of streaming video related to polls and polling, with a good seats breakdown etc.

For general information on a particular query regarding the wider topic of Australian Elections I recommend Australianpolitics.com

3days 3hrs 24min till close of polls

(but who's counting?)