 Welcome to the fourth episode of Off the Hill where we catch up on the latest and greatest of the federal election campaign. I'm joined this week by my colleagues Ryan Goss, constitutional law expert and Andrew Hughes, a political marketing expert. If you missed any of our previous episodes or any of the vote election forums on Tuesday nights, jump online at anu.edu.au forward slash news to catch up. Now a couple things have surprised me this week. I was watching the news and I was wondering how can the ATO make this announcement about reviewing the MP's allowances and then how can the government make this dairy package announcement. We're supposed to be in caretaker convention. What's going on Ryan? Yeah well Jill, we operate under our constitutional system, under a system of what we call responsible government and that means that our ministers are responsible, accountable to the parliament. But that process doesn't work when parliament's not sitting, when parliament's not in session. So over the years we've got these caretaker conventions that we've evolved and basically they say from the time the election is called until the time we have a new government ministers shouldn't be making major policy changes or major policy decisions. They're not law, they're just rules and so when you have a situation like this week where we had Barnaby Joyce announcing a package for dairy farmers, he consulted with his opposite number which is what the rules require him to do. He contacted Joel Fitzgibbon, he said we're doing something about dairy and Fitzgibbon agreed as he's required to do but the question is these aren't laws, these are just rules and so there's a lot of wiggle room there and Labor certainly thinks that Barnaby Joyce has taken advantage of that wiggle room in the caretaker conventions. Yeah okay so why would the ALP agree to this? You know you're the opposition in election campaign, the government comes to you to say we're going to splash some cash around and the opposition says yep go for it. Why do that? Well I think messaging wise it sounds good, it sounds as though you know as an opposition you can't oppose everything all of the time. They're not to mention too they want to sound business friendly and they haven't sound a business friendly so far in this campaign and that's really important you know stakeholder groups win over in any election in this country are the business groups small, medium and large and Labor have not done much of a job at doing that at the moment so maybe this is an olive branch out to the industry groups as well saying look we're understanding where you're coming from we're understanding the economic situation but also we're understanding that you may have some unique cases in the years ahead which we want to help out with so this could be the start of one of them. That's very generous Andrew, I'm a bit more skeptical I think where does the money end right? Exactly yeah this week it's Dairy Farmers who next? Yeah look and this is one of the issues too which governments in the past have had let's not forget Tony Abbott's decision to support SPC in Shepparton got a lot of backlash within his own cabinet because of the reason this is seen as being against free trade and protectionism in the way as well because under what Liberals really believe deep down is that free trade is everything we don't protect anyone what comes is what happens so and we just have this uncertainty as to what to expect from this government they won't support cars they will support submarines they will support dairy farmers I mean supporting these industries may well be a good thing for those industries a good thing to do but it's really unclear to be able to predict and remember too their message is certainty yeah that's right can you say again get back to the core message they talked about at the budget certainty in how we govern you don't have that if they're gonna you know flip and flop between industry groups all the time. We're seeing very little certainty this week black holes what do we make of this? Well we've seen haven't we I think we've seen the government and the opposition trying to put their black holes up against each other and measure them and argue over whose black hole is greater and whose black hole is deeper and all these sorts of arguments we've seen this week I think it's a real shame I find it very frustrating that the arguments are about essentially accounting problems now absolutely promises need to be paid for one way or the other but what we're having here are not arguments over big picture stuff they're arguments that are about exactly precisely how we add up some sums and surely that's what we have the charter of budget honesty and the parliamentary budget office that we've implemented over the last couple of decades to try and break Australian elections out of this cycle where it's just a debate about maths essentially rather than a debate about the picture challenge many times and yet we're still talking about it right yeah exactly and I mean it gets back to the fact maybe in election campaign this long we have the chance to go into these policies in more details and depths than a normal four or five week campaign but now we've seen policy black holes emerge I mean our boss that you know upstairs he's very good at understanding about black holes in space but we have policy black holes emerging all over the place and different parties are walking straight into them and you think we need the time now in this campaign to go over some of these issues and some of my colleagues in my college where I come from really concerned about this lack of depth going into some of these policy announcement they can drop four or five million dollars in one day and yet there's little detail about how it's going to be spent or how it's going to be enacted in practice it's causing concern yeah exactly right yeah and I think people in business in general because they want certainty and that's why half the message from the budget night was about certainty it was again speaking to the business groups out there saying look you're sick and tired of uncertainty in Australian politics we'll give it back to you it is a strong message yeah it is and it's a strong message for everyone but in particular business groups are screening for certainty out there from politicians they want to know what's going to happen the next three to five years so they can plan for it now the problem is of course that voters aren't that worried about certainty yeah what I've found lately is we've done a lot of polls on this right we commonly ask would you prefer tax cuts or would you prefer more spending on social services and what I've noticed just since the last the last change of government 2013 is that this is tracking who's in government yeah right so ALP governments are in power and all of a sudden voters want tax cuts yeah coalition governments come to power and we go oh I feel like we've had enough tax cuts but it now is more spending so there's there are very very strong I guess incentives at play that don't always work nicely together you know business groups what my thing voters want another and I think we saw that played again on budget night too and in that whole week where Bill Shorten pitched that message about social investment and social capital and Malcolm Temble was the other side of the coin on financial capital and economic investment and it really you know highlights how we see each party in this election campaign and Andrew I think one of the great shames of this election campaign is that we could have had both parties given the context given the budget we could have had both parties set up a full suite of policies at the start of the campaign just like they do in the UK just like they do in many other countries and then campaign on that basis there's no reason Australia needs to get stuck in this cycle of day-to-day announcements every day it's not how elections work in other places there's no need for them to work here and we're just stuck in this death cycle of one announcement after another and debates over maps in those countries they have campaign manifestos right yeah exactly documents and we don't really have them here what a cool manifesto manifesto is a great name right yeah uh now what I really want to talk about is some of the stuff because that we're not talking about anything other than jobs and growth yeah maybe Medicare and a few slip-ups yeah what are some of the things that that you think are sort of sleeker issues and I know we've talked about one uh in advance of today that Ryan do you want to introduce yeah well I think we've seen this week um led by four corners but also more generally debate over the role of political donations in Australia and whether or not there is room for change in the way that political donations work in Australia whether we need more transparency more accountability looking at this as a as a constitutional lawyer who spends time thinking about the constitution I think one of the great things about Australia is that we can take steps to make political donations more transparent more accountable our constitution in our high court allows us to do that and that's great compared to for example the united states where under the US understanding of free speech speech is money as they say and so you can't regulate that spending in the money anywhere near the way that we can in Australia so I think one of the great things the foundations of our constitution is that we can do that the question is will there be sufficient demand for that now you think there should be demand yeah there should be because I mean you think about the role of stakeholders and politics it's increasing every single year in terms of concern by most ordinary voters out there because they're thinking well they hear these stories about okay let's go back to the industry group example we talked about just before why does one industry group get more you know more deals another group out there people might say well the farmers hang on they're the national party and that's a lot of power in parliament for a small minor party the most powerful party we have of their size in Australia and they have a lot of weight to bring and people start thinking where's this connection same with Labor if you say Labor to people what's the first thing they think about in their head in terms of connect brilliant coalition business and government and so people suddenly get concerned over how this could be affecting their long-term opportunities as people in society and why not because if you think about it you know you don't have much money to give Bernie Sanders campaign in the US is a prime example of running on small donations hardly any big stakeholders involved and hence why it's got a really big viral filter a real buzz to it in a way and transparency and accountability the key here up yeah exactly right because how do we know someone out there isn't making a policy up because they've been paid to basically or been supported by a huge donation to their party we don't we're never going to know everything though I think we need to have some trust we do but yeah we're doing a lot better than America compulsory voting you know really damns that you are much more cynical on this than I am I think we can do better I think we can be going okay I'm I'm very sanguine about this I'll sleep very well tonight final thoughts for the week I'll let Ryan go first oh well it's um it's state of origin week of course in the in the eastern states and we've got two Queenslanders on that panel so on this panel so we're very excited I think given the overlap between the state of origin and the election it's worth noting for the I think for the first time in history we have a Senate ticket at this election that has a veteran of the New South Wales team and a veteran of the Queensland team running together that's the Glen Lazarus ticket in Queensland it's a reminder Jill that the things that you know does are greater than the things that divide us that's beautiful right Andrew my final thought for the week on the save origin thing go Queensland but also um let's not forget the role of the Senate as a state's house of becoming more noticeable again I think this because of um Nick Xenophon Glen Lazarus in Queensland Jackie Lambie in Tasmania all of a sudden we start hearing a lot more talk about state's issues at a national level and I think it's one of those bubbler sleeper issues on the side there but yet I think I have an important role in the Senate and how it's decided you might be right the return to Harideen type days yeah exactly I was thinking the same thing I mean Brian Harideen I mean he's he's from the far right but yet at the same time known as a big statesman and a labour man originally yeah very true my my thought from this week is really the the Nova Peres decision is I think opening up a whole can of worms about what it means to be a parliamentarian um you know it can be really frustrating and I think a lot of these candidates running at the moment might be looking at her decision and thinking oh what have we got ourselves in for good point we'll see how these play out and until next week enjoy the campaign