 Hello, and welcome to this live-streamed event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the conversation. I'm Caroline Fisher, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Canberra. To mark this 10th birthday, the conversation has published a book of essays that put the website on the map, and it's called No You're Not Entitled to Your Opinion and 49 Other Essays That Got the World Talking. Now to launch the book, Michelle Gratton, Professorial Fellow with the University of Canberra, joins me. And Peter Martin, the Business and Economy Editor of the conversation, who's also a Visiting Fellow with the Crawford School at the ANU. We're going to be discussing the highlights and lowlights of 2021, and maybe they'll take a punt at what 2022 might be like as well. But before we get started, can I acknowledge that we are holding this event on the lands of the Ngunnawal people, and I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you all are watching this event today. Now we will also be taking questions from you. So please, if you have a question, type it into the Q&A section on your screen. So with all of that introduction done with, hello, Michelle and Peter. Hi, and hi to our audience. That's all right. So 2021 has been an enormous year, dominated by the COVID pandemic, lots of issues surrounding climate change, trust, integrity, China, now a looming election. So there's a lot for us to talk to in a short hour. Let's start with the most recent events. Michelle, the Prime Minister has returned from the climate change talks, COP26 from Glasgow, with a very bad report card, ranking last for climate policy. Is this deserved, and will he be worried about it? I think it is deserved to a fair extent. The government tried to dress up its climate policy, and of course we saw that rather agonising negotiation with the nationals to get to the net zero 2050 target commitment. But nevertheless, because in particular Australia hadn't improved its ambition for the medium term for 2030, I don't think anyone abroad anyway was deceived about the fact that Australia remains a laggard in climate policy. But that was over there. And I think it's interesting that in these last few days, the Prime Minister has plowed on and really tried to say, well, we've got the answer. Everyone will know it's technology, not taxes, even though quite a lot of the policy in fact is paid for by your taxes, because the government's investing all sorts of money. Yesterday announced 500 million for a new fund to promote new technologies. And it's interesting that in this first hit the ground tour that he's been doing this week, he's actually been playing on the climate issue. He's been to the coal area of the Hunter, and he was in Melbourne in marginal leafy seats. And so he's trying to take what would be objectively by commentators described as a weakness and turn it on its head, turn it into some sort of positive or at least a neutral. And that shows that when it comes to campaigning, Scott Morrison is bold and brazen. And of course, he is therefore a threat to his labor opponents for that very reason. OK, so this is Australian way, the the the Australian way. That's right. I mean, is it going to get us to zero by 2050, Peter? I can trust where we are now. Well, I suppose it's similarity with the war, the Second World War. In that time, it's the only time before now when people were locked up in the houses, right? There was a curfew, same, right? Different reasons, but we were on a war footing as we've been on and off for the last two years. In that time, the government planned the motor industry, it planned that Holden was going to start making cars in Australia. It planned all sorts of things. It managed to do two things at once, right? We've also been doing two things at once. And yet they've been the sort of things a student would do the night before an essay was due. You know, they would work out what they were going to announce or maybe just get through their party room a day or two before they were going to deliver a speech at Glasgow. And they're coming up with slogans. And there are many of them. I suppose they're road testing them. They'll probably narrow them down to one or two by the election. But it is such a contrast. The last time we had a national crisis, we were able to plan for the future. The future that followed the Second World War was absolutely wonderful. You saw Australia's economic growth take off in a way that... Well, in a way it hasn't since, in a way that it didn't before. I wonder what's going to happen after this. Now, you asked the question, you know, what are we going to get to by 2050? Essentially, it's sort of a Clayton's policy. We don't know, of course. They haven't released the modelling. They've released four dot points saying that don't worry, the economy will be rigid-edged and this won't cost us anything. I don't know whether that's right or not. I suspect they haven't done their homework. I suspect they haven't done the detailed work. My even greater fear is that it's the same with labour. But we don't know yet because they also haven't told us the details of what they're announcing. I think they might be hoarding it back. They might have been working on it. Well, they have been working on it. But waiting for the last quarter, I think it is, you know, kicking into the wind was the... Something like that. But I think they have to start fairly soon kicking into the wind because there's not much wind behind there back at the moment in terms of broad policy. I think that... Climate change is... Well, climate change will probably come out early December, something like that. And it's perfectly reasonable for labour to keep back its policy till it sees Glasgow. Now it's saying till it sees the modeling. But it needs to get it out before Christmas. But more generally, I think that labour is taking a bit of a risk because it thinks that let the government's faults be on display. And of course, on some fronts, that's a good strategy. But you can be a small target. But people, especially in uncertain times, tend to feel, well, why change? So I do think that labour needs to get into a gallop pretty soon. This is very important, by the way, on uncertain times. In a way, the times are not uncertain. There's a piece I wrote about this in the conversation this week. If you look at the typical Australian kind of person that Morrison is focused on, the kind of person who will decide the election, completely unexpectedly, if you go back to when COVID began, they've kept their job, their investments if they had them, or their superannuation, or their house price has been going crazy. There are more jobs available for them. That is, there are more vacancies than ever before. We had just before the lockdowns, which temporarily, from the middle of the year, cut things back in the two biggest states. But just before those, we had more hours worked than ever before. And by the way, that's not people working long hours. That's people in jobs working reasonable hours. We had a greater proportion of the population working. than ever before. These are the kind of situations where people don't feel uncertain. They don't think they're at risk of losing their job. Wages are picking up. Wage growth is picking up. Not as high as it needs to be. But what people notice is that they are not under threat. Now, there has been a threat from house prices. They've actually been climbing so fast, 21% in the last year, that it's been frightening people because of actions to the Reserve Bank and the Prudential Regulation Authority have taken their likely to ease off to also be less threatening. Interest rates are unlikely to climb. The Reserve Bank says for some time, maybe another two years. So you've got a situation where I don't think people feel uncertain. I think they feel, to use that awful phrase of several elections ago, you know the one 25 years ago, relaxed and comfortable. It's uncomfortable. And in that kind of situation, now they could certainly toss the government out because you can feel relaxed and comfortable and not thank the government for it. But it's not a period of uncertainty where you're frightened. You could go the other way though, Michelle. I mean, we've had this, you know, deep period of upheaval because of COVID and things are looking better than perhaps people had forecast. So they might reward the government for managing the situation very well. I think I take a slightly different view to Peter. I think it's a bit more granular because I do think a lot of people feel really stressed about what they've been through in the last couple of years. The macro picture is very good. And the outlook, as Peter has said, is also very positive. But nevertheless, if they've been homeschooling, if they've had doubts about the employment, if they've been trying to work from home themselves while three kids are racing around a relatively small house. And that's a gender thing. Let alone an apartment that is stressful. And I think people were worried about their health and worried about the extended families, health, their parents and so on. So I think at least among some people, the stress level has been quite high in terms of the outlook. My feeling is that people are somewhat over Scott Morrison. I think they're starting to see through the slogans. And just to come back to the climate issue, it's interesting that this week he's become this great convert to electric cars. And at the press conference, people were saying, well, what about what you said last election? You said it would end the weekend when you were condemning Labour's policy. You said people would have cords outside of apartment buildings to charge them. In other words, they were pointing out that he'd done this great turnaround without good cause, particularly because everyone knew electric cars were coming even back in 2019. So I think they're critical of Morrison. On the other hand, I think they're not that impressed with Anthony Albanese. Nice bloke, but what is he offering? So we sort of get the feeling that regardless of the polls, we're sort of in this status quo position, which could even end with a hung parliament with just a few seats going one way or the other or crossing over some seats going one way, some the other and almost a random result. Now, that is not a prediction. We all know it's very dangerous. You heard it here first. Very dangerous to predict elections. But as we sit here today, you get that feeling that and also I think people, because they've been through a rough time, have turned off politics. They really feel there's too much shouting. There's too much noise. There's too much hypocrisy. Everyone's talking a great deal more than the listeners want to hear. And therefore, the general population are tuning out till they have to, thanks to compulsory voting, tune in. Oh, I'm wondering whether, in fact, that might be the prime minister's strategy, which is to start his campaign. The week that we're doing this live, he essentially started his campaign, visiting marginal seats, making... Well, he hasn't been able to. I mean, you know, lock down, et cetera. He started his campaign. What if his plan is to continue it day by day so that people get so turned off that by the time they vote, say in May, they don't care anymore and nothing the opposition says, nothing the opposition announces in the last quarter can get through because he has bored them with anything to do with politics? Or at least, you know, wallpapered, you know, just, yes, dominated the coverage. Look, there's a lot of issues raised there, you know, and let's try and go back to some of them individually. If we go back to the slogans issue, and this sort of the U-turn, I guess, on the electric vehicles that we've witnessed this week, this kind of speaks, though, to a bigger question around trust, I guess. And when we look at, say, the prime minister just recently, he was accused of being a liar by the French president over the, you know, the handling of the tearing up of the submarine contract with the French, for instance. There's been a lot of commentary about the fact that he has perhaps a history of telling untruths, et cetera. Is this going to be a problem for him, do you think? I think it's somewhat of a problem. I think on the French issue that the ordinary voters would take the side of the Australians rather than the French for ordinary nationalistic, patriotic reasons. But that feeds into the wider narrative that he's been slippery, and it really came through again yesterday when he was confronted with these things that he'd said on electric cars. And someone said, hey, how can you possibly, you know, be supporting this policy now when you campaigned against electric cars? And he said, no, I didn't, you know. It wasn't the electric cars. It was Labour's policy. Now, if you go back to his quote's last election, that might be literally true. There is a line where he says, I've got nothing against electric cars as such. But in substance, everyone knows that he was campaigning against electric cars. And it's just a small example of the wider problem that he will say things that are not ground that wouldn't pass the fact check. And he will also never say, look, I got that wrong and now I'm going to do this. Or I have changed my mind, but here are my reasons for doing so. The Peter Beattie principle of apologizing. Now, maybe that was just a tactic too. But nevertheless, I think that a politician's failure to be able to do that to admit fault is not a positive. On the general question of trust, it was interesting during the pandemic, initially politicians and governments and other institutions saw an increase in public trust, which had got down to very low levels. But now I think that the trend is again towards distrust. So I think that we go into this next election with a very skeptical, cynical electorate. And that's going to be hard for both sides to deal with. On the other hand, he sort of proved to himself or the coalition proved to itself that it could perform an extreme about face and own it with the COVID response. So during the global financial crisis, it attacked those $800 checks and so on. It attacked going into deficit, attacked all of that, sent out bigger checks, right? Sent out a level of public support, which was greater than Russia, that is to say we had more people employed or their employment funded by the government than did Russia, although not China for that period, and was able to own the about face as, look, things are far too important to concentrate on what we said before when Labor was doing it. This is the right thing and we're doing it. And that worked. So maybe he's figuring it can do with smaller things as well. Well, that's interesting. So that's right. So there's the commentary that there might be an untruth or an inconsistency or a lie, but is it going to lose votes or is it sort of the Boris Johnson-Brexit sort of effect of, well, he might be a liar but he's my liar. And so I don't, he's lying in my interest. Well, I think it's whether it reaches a tipping point, whether the narrative becomes so strong that a politician doesn't tell the truth, isn't Frank, or whether it's below that as it were. And it's hard to tell at this point, but I must say I do think that people are becoming more alert to this than they were a few months ago. And also you've got to again factor in the reality that elections are two horse races with a few ponies on the side running, Senate races and so on. But the two main contenders are against each other. So people are saying, what do I think of Scott Morrison and the government? What do I think of Anthony Albanese and the Labour Party? And it's how that balance comes out. And perhaps, you know, you might be able to trust everything that I say, but you can trust me on the economy. Is that the line they're going to run? Yes, but also they'll run any line. I mean, the problem, and Michelle and I talk about this in the office we share, the conversation office in Parliament House is whenever Labour does say something, it doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's quite inoffensive, quite reasonable. It will be attacked as the greatest threat, a housing crisis we're going to collapse. Remember, if Labour's policies, which are probably the kind of policies that are needed and probably wouldn't hurt if housing prices came off a bit, but everything he has this way, this very effective way of building everything up into a crisis. Now, and also doing the opposite. So for instance, Morrison, the Prime Minister, was the Treasurer. When he was the Treasurer, he said maybe there was a case for winding back the number of houses that people could negatively gear. He seemed to have forgotten that. And when Labour suggested something along those lines, he went all out on them as being the worst thing ever. So the real danger is that, not the danger, but whatever Labour says, and it will have to start saying things, it's a real risk. You're putting your head up to be kicked. Now, if your head is kicked by someone people don't trust, maybe, you know, that's not so bad, but he's quite forceful with it. Well, he's not called Scotty for marketing for nothing. And I think he can deliver a punch with lines. So this new line is, can do capitalism. Is that what came out just today? Was that at a... Yes, he's now, this week, stressing that when it comes to climate policy, the coalition is facilitating the private sector, facilitating work in technology companies, doing things and so on. Whereas Labour wants to tell you what to do, i.e. regulation and so on. He actually said, we heard it in the office and went, oh, the other day, this week, he said, Labour wants to tell you where to drive. It's talking about electric cars. Now, that was obviously a momentary overreach, but it's an example of the kind of exaggeration. I don't think Labour does. But he's setting up this, I guess, going back to traditional coalition positions of facilitating private enterprise, as opposed to more control. That's the debate he seems to be trying to set up. So where does this leave Labour? Not just with climate change, but, I don't know, it seems to me that they are being wedged, that there is action on climate change now. How will Labour try to position themselves around this? I think it's really difficult. And the climate policy illustrates that. At the moment, there's been an internal debate going on in Labour about whether it just virtually matches the government policy, very little ambition beyond the government policy, or whether it goes for a bigger hit, thinking that that issue is going to be important to the vote in certain areas. And that really is a microcosm of where it's placed on all sorts of issues. It's big theme is jobs, but jobs is very important. Jobs is the wrong theme, by the way. We've got a lot of jobs. And everyone believes in it. That was the case earlier on. No, but it's the case in the... Going into the election, jobs is the wrong theme. No one is concerned about jobs. Maybe in a few years' time, they will be. They're not. It's not going to work. And also on climate change, I think Labour had this problem, which we all know about last time, between different messages in the South and in the North. And now the government's got that problem. And on the Northern Front, the Queensland Front, there's no doubt that the Nationals are getting some blowback about the 2050 thing. But Labour will also have that same problem, perhaps to a bit lesser extent this time, because the emphasis is on the government's difficulty. But Labour, if you're running Labour's strategy, I think you would be scratching your head, because it's very hard to find room to move, room to position, especially as Anthony Albanese is in this small target, no risk. So what about the issue of integrity and not the slow movement on a federal integrity commission? Well, I think that's an important issue. I think it is something that people care about, and we're seeing currently integrity questions in both the Victorian Labour Party and the Victorian Liberal Party, and they've brought in federal figures with the accusations and on the Labour side admissions. I think the independent candidates will run very hard on integrity. Whether it will turn out to be a vote changer for Mr and Mrs Parramatta, Ms Moody Ponds, is another question, though. So with the economy, you're saying is strong, there's not a problem with jobs. I think there is one potential problem. One problem Labour could zero in on, and that's housing. It's not that houses are unaffordable once you've got one. Mortgages are easier to look after at the moment than they have been. Rents on the whole are not, depends on the city you are, but Rents are not doing anything out of the ordinary. It's the ability to get a house and the fear that your children, people you know can't do, if you've got a house, can't do what you did. I think that's very, very potent. I liken it almost to the concern people had over drugs years ago when all sorts of people's children were becoming drug addicts. You know, it could happen to someone you know they might never be able to buy a house. If Labour was able to harness that, that would be great. Unfortunately, Labour was two elections early, really. It's tried to focus on that in the last two elections. Now it really is a problem. High house prices really would turn votes. I think that's something. If you ask sort of an economic weakness for the government, something that needs to be fixed, it's that. I agree it's a big issue and an obvious issue. On the other hand, like so many issues, there are various stakeholders, aren't there? Because if people have a house and they feel prices are going to be contained or rises are going to be contained, then they become defensive. I think it's moved beyond that. And I think it moved beyond that just this year. Let's go back to the beginning of this year. House prices were not moving and that was the expectation, the conversation every six months, surveys economists. That was the expectation, no moves in house prices. From about January, they've shot up by about one-fifth. In Sydney, prices were increasing at the rate of $1,000 a day, right? Melbourne prices, $600 a day. I think that the calculus that the on the part of people who own houses, who have mortgages changed. You know, you could almost feel it changing this year in conversations. And this is a conversation piece everywhere, wherever you go, people are dismayed about what's happening. And the people who have houses are no longer feeling predominantly pleased about it. They're feeling bewildered and frightened. This was not the case a year ago. It certainly wasn't the case two elections ago. I think they've sort of banked that. Okay, house prices have risen. That was nice, undeserved, unexpected, but we've got this real problem. And that's a classic psychological thing, or if you like, behavioural economics thing. We notice problems much more than we're very ungrateful people that I think people are more concerned about people being locked out of ever being able to afford houses than they are grateful for some increase in the value of their house. It was my understanding earlier in the year too that Labor was potentially banking on, you know, the shambles of the vaccine rollout that that would sort of have... There was a shambles at the time. ...that would continue to have sort of negative flow on effects that perhaps once the borders opened and things relaxed that the death toll might end up being a critical issue for them. So where do you think they are now with that? Is that a card that they can play or has that been neutralised as well? No, I think that in terms of the shambles of the rollout that's probably passed in most people's minds. Whether the transition to a more open community society is going to produce new pressures on hospitals and cases and so on. It doesn't seem to have been as severe as expected so far, but COVID is very unpredictable. We thought if we were doing this a year ago, we would be thinking that we were coming out of the pandemic, right? And then we had this terrible 12 months. So you can't be sure what's going to happen on the COVID front. But so far, touch wood, we seem to not be having those transition problems as severely as some anticipated. Okay, so look, before we go to some questions from the audience and they're coming in, which is wonderful, when do you think the election is likely to be called? Asking you to put your reputation on the line, Michelle. Well, what the government is talking about now is having an April budget so that it gets another chance to dance on the stage, as it were, and show off some good- We'll show off those good figures and good forecasts. And that would mean a May election. So that's what people are saying internally in the government. Now, the other option is a March election. And with elections, you can never rule out a change of mind, but that was being talked about a few weeks ago, but now the emphasis appears to be moving to May because of the budget opportunity. Again, don't hold me to it when we see an election in March. Okay, I promise not to. Actually, a budget is perfect because a budget is like a campaign launch except it's compulsory. Every TV station covers the speech, special programs that night, wrap-around edition of newspapers. It's the opportunity to spell out your program. So it's pretty worthwhile to use. It's a free kick, a big free open. I believe there's, I'm joking, I know there is, a budget in reply speech a few nights later that no one watched. So it's a very good way to launch the campaign. And the news will be good economically. The news will be very attractive. Especially when the government really does not seem to have any great, bright, shiny program. A budget does frame, as Peter says, what appears to be very good news coming. And also just... They can use it to launch a program. Yes, just puts it all together and makes more of it than might be actually there. Making it harder for labor and narrowing their campaign, I imagine. Well, it means that labor has to then reply, and I don't mean just in the budget reply, but reply, react to the budget. So it's not necessarily on the offensive at that point. However, the budget speech in those circumstances can be used quite productively by labor. But its task would be a bit more difficult. That's provided the budget doesn't flop, in which case its task becomes not so hard. Good, look, there's lots of questions coming in. We might just return to the housing issue just for a second. So there's a question from Alan. Could it be that a crash in housing is also coming? It's highly likely. It's not likely right now because the authorities are fully aware of this. So the Prudential Regulation Authority, APRA, has written to the banks telling them to prepare borrowers for a 3 percentage point increase on top of what they're paying now. So in other words, what's 3 plus 3? 6% mortgage can new borrowers cope with a 6% mortgage instead of a 3. And that's designed to take the heat out of it slowly. That cuts the maximum amount someone can borrow. The Reserve Bank has done a measure which has ended those ultra-cheap 3-year fixed mortgages. You can't get one now. So they're aware of this. The authorities are aware of this and are trying to take the heat out slowly. Now, after jumping 20% and maybe a bit more before it turns down, could something fall of that order? Yes, we've seen falls of 10% just a few years ago. Might it be worse? They'll do everything they can to make sure it's not. And they've already started. So it's the act of slowly deflating the balloon. And hopefully they'll succeed. They won't, eh? Yes. Well, I mean, my teenage children are for very few. They'll never own it. You're an example. Or your family. My family, that's right. OK, there's a question from Janice. We started the year raising the important issue of gendered violence and gender inequality but don't seem to have made any progress. Have we, she asks. I mean, that issue seems to have really kind of dropped off, hasn't it, dropped off the agenda? I think yes and no. I think in terms of dropping off, I think that it's much more in people's minds than it was. And one big question will be how women voters react, particularly to the government and to the prime minister. He's obviously made efforts to appear to be empathetic on this issue, but I think most people would think that those efforts have not succeeded certainly as much as the government would hope. So we don't know yet how it will affect people's voting. On the issue itself, there's been a lot of money poured into this area, but it's a bit like Indigenous affairs. Somehow the answers are so difficult to find and we're certainly a long way from dealing effectively with domestic violence in particular. That of course is not just at one government level but states and federal government. And it's one of those in what the political scientists would call wicked problems, I guess. It just does not seem to respond adequately to the policies that governments bring forward. But I definitely think that the role of gender issues is a very pertinent one at this election. It's not at the moment on the front line of issues, but it is there in people's minds because of everything that's happened this year. And by the way, it's something Labour could do, which is more or less impervious to attack. You could not imagine Scott Morrison wading in and saying what you are preparing to do, even if it's something big about gender violence, will create some problem. I've been looking at the statistics for all kinds of health measures since the Institute of Health and Welfare has put them together since COVID. And almost all of the bad things that people expected didn't happen. There weren't more suicides, there were fewer and so on. The one thing that rose during the COVID lockdowns was domestic violence. That is the one clear negative effect. Aside from COVID itself, of COVID, nothing else, you know, deaths from flu were way down, deaths from everything else were lower than usual, but domestic violence increased in the last two years. Now, if Labour, it seems to be almost a guaranteed successful thing to do, to put up a serious policy about that, and I think it's one of the few areas where the Prime Minister won't be able to jump on it. But it has to find the policy solutions that people haven't thought of or tried already. It just seems such a difficult issue to grapple with because it really goes to a whole lot of other issues. It goes to people's housing and living conditions and family structures and all sorts of laws about looking after children in separated families and all sorts of things. But, you know, closer to home, your workplace, I mean, you're up at Parliament House. There's a lot of focus on the culture within Parliament House itself. Has it changed? Has there been progress this year? Well, certainly, I think that people have become much more aware of the fact that the need to be better structures in place for staff when they're... And staff have been away from the bill. Yes, hardly anyone's there. So... That's right, you chance for harassment. Well, that's right. But I think that there have been structures put in place there. But in a sense, while we all concentrate on Parliament House, the real problems are out there in the community, in the suburbs, among ordinary people. And those are the things that governments and opposition should be concentrating on in their policies. You said that domestic violence is one of the only sort of areas that we saw problems rising. Wouldn't you add youth mental health to that? Well, it depends how you measure it. Well, almost, however, you measure mental health, there's nothing to see on the stats. Now, that doesn't mean that there won't be problems. You know, you would expect mental health problems to rise during lockdowns. It hasn't happened. Totally amongst young people, as a mother of teenagers again, I guess I raised that, it's very common. Yeah, well, you know, the saying is that data is not the plural of anecdote. No, that's of course. One of the insurance companies, Clearview, was asked about this in Senate hearings, and they said, they prepared for a big increase, the most extreme manifestation of mental health problems is suicide. They prepared for a big increase, and in fact, they got a decrease. And then they went searching for answers. Why? And what they found was that there was a feeling, this is about the first lockdowns last year, there was a feeling that, yeah, things might be awful for me, but they're awful for everyone. We're in this together, far from physically alone, but far from alone. So you would think there would be those problems, and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up, and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up with a delay. But the domestic violence has happened without a delay, right? Okay. But to the extent there are problems with youth mental health, more generally, not just with the pandemic, that of course feeds into the domestic violence problem in the future. Because if people are in a bad state when they're teenagers, when they're young, they're more likely to not be able to cope, in some cases, to become violent, to react so badly, to stress later on in their lives. So it just shows the interaction and the complexity of these problems. Indeed. Going to now another question from the audience. This time it's from Sue. It's returning to this discussion that we're having about trust and honesty and truth. So can Albanese cut through by campaigning on honesty? Or, as you suggested, Michelle, is the electorate perhaps too cynical? Do all politicians lie? Is it not possible for a politician to campaign on honesty? Well, I think people have come to the view that all politicians, most politicians are dodgy best and untrustworthy at worst. But again, it comes back to this tipping point thing. I think that there is some fertile ground for the opposition there, but I think that it's just one of a number of things that they have to move to. They can't just rely on this. And also I think that there are levels of this. People can think, well, I regard such and such a politician as dodgy, but I think he or she would be a strong economic manager. So it's where people place the trust in terms of the hierarchy of issues. And if they believe that on the things they regard as big issues, the person is competent or the government is competent, then the other things tend to be pushed down a bit. However, I wonder when the campaign formally comes, whether the prime minister will be invoking the word trust so much in terms of, say, even the economy. I know Josh Freidenberg in particular is doing this at the moment, but maybe the government will feel that the word trust is a bit difficult, a bit overused and that there's a problem not just with Morrison, but this wider perception of politicians and trust not really fitting together. Interesting. It was also very effective to use against Shorten because the previous Labour leader had been part of the knifing in the back of Rudd, then Gillard, then stood before the people asking for trust. So happiness is in a better situation. Yeah, indeed. So all right, now we were talking about polling earlier. Harold has asked a question. He says, given the result of the last federal election, can we trust any polling for the next election? Whose polling is likely to be more believable? Party internal polling or public polling? Have you got any thoughts on this, either of you? Well, I think what happened at the last election has been a good lesson. It was a debacle. The polls were wrong. Not to over, really wrong. Not to over trust polling. That, you know, we tend to report it in terms of a point here, a point there. Well, anyone who's done any statistics knows that that's not a very good way to go and you wouldn't get through a statistic exam if you did that. But nevertheless, polling is, frankly, all we have. So don't rely on it too much. Know that sometimes it's going to be wrong. Know that politics is incredibly volatile at the moment and therefore, you know, things can change really, really quickly, but also parties these days particularly rely on focus groups. But small groups, three times the number of people here, four times, and they chat about things and parties pick up things from that. So that can be more enlightening than quantitative polling in certain circumstances. I think that there is a kind of poll that you can trust. It's a long-term poll. It's the ANU poll of what matters to voters. What this shows is terribly important for a political party to take notice, and I'm sure they do. So take two issues, tax being one. Remember when everyone was concerned that their taxes were too high? That was in the 1980s, 1990s. Back then, 23% of people nominated tax as the most important issue. Only 9% nominated health. Go forward today. The lines have crossed over. 22% of people, same proportion, really. Nominate health as being the number one issue. 12% of people are worried about their tax. So the, and this is partly a result of growing affluence, partly a result of getting older. This is pre-COVID, but it shows that people's views have changed away from the what's in it for my pay packet toward will I be looked after? That's an important, and it's polling, that's why I mentioned it, but that's an important sort of long-term change that, you know, assuming the answers are right and you can see the graph moving over time. So, you know, I guess it's right. And I assume it's not because people are lying because there's no reason for people to lie more than they did in the past. People are no longer as concerned about the hip pocket as they were, they're more concerned about being looked after. And you can see this in the government's response to COVID, right? The government's not talking about getting the budget back in the black. It realizes that really doesn't matter to people when people are concerned about their health, which is sort of number one. So that sort of polling, I think, has real lessons in it. That's attitudinal polling, I guess, you know, taking a pulse of the attitudes in the community. Well, what matters to you is the question, what matters most. Right, what matters to you. But when it comes to yes, predicting the outcome of an election, then the polling is less reliable. Well, because there's such a mix of things in the way people vote. And some people will just be in a bad mood with life and the government and vote just on that ground. Others will vote more specifically on issues. Others will think about the leaders. It's a mix of issues for individuals and among individual voters. Of course, there's a different mix of issues. Well, among those issues, right at the center of voting, will be, can you please show us your ID card? If the government succeeds. Now, people have written about this in the conversation this week, asking the standard question, is there a reason for it? But you can think if it does happen, you can think that someone who is a bit miffed at being asked this, when they've been compelled to go to the place and vote and have queued up might be in a nag row mood. Well, there was a whole election centered on an ID card, which could never be implemented because the legislation was stuffed anyway over the basis of it. Unconstitutional, yeah. And the future of this change for ID? I don't know how it'll go in the Senate. The government is very anxious to put it through but there's not a lot of time. There'll probably be some Senate inquiry, I guess, over the summer and assuming that the parliament comes back, that goes back to the male election, could go anyway in the Senate. Okay, there's a few questions coming up about Labor and its position. And I guess we've talked, it's come up several times that Labor's been playing this small target. Janice is asking, having been burnt last time with an ambitious vision for reforming the nation, do you think Labor will be prepared to show any vision this time, Michelle? Well, I think it's looking for vision and vision is very elusive. We saw vision in the 72 election with Whitlam. We saw vision in 83 with Hawke reconciliation coming together and so on. Vision is elusive, if you know of any and you want to help Labor ring Athneal, I think you need to be the person. You mentioned those people, right? Not everyone is Hawke, right? Not everyone is Whitlam and not everyone was Rudd who had this vision of endorsing the climate policies and so on. You almost need to be a particular person rather than just happen to have vision. But if you mean vision in terms of policy, then I think small target, modest policies, a couple of showstoppers, but not too much in the way of garish lights about them. Okay, now, Joan would love to see Labor campaign on a real anti-corruption body. Again, we talked about this a little bit earlier, for example, with Royal Commission powers. Do you think it could happen? I think Labor will campaign on a robust body. We don't know what will happen to the government's legislation, which we haven't yet seen, but it'll be, its body would be a weak body, very blunt teeth, and Labor will make that a point of differentiation. And I think that'll go down quite well with people. Okay, and Alfred is asking, the Prime Minister's message seems to be, now we're going back to climate change early on in the discussion, the Prime Minister's message seems to be that technology for action to combat climate change will solve everything. Do you agree with that, Peter? Oh, definitionally. There's got no real content in it. I mean, yes, the solutions will be people doing things differently, which will involve different technology, the electrification of almost everything we can, and you're getting to the situation now with South Australia in the last month on several occasions has been 100% powered by solar, something that people thought was impossible. So technology will, the question is whether, well, how do you achieve that? I'll tell you how you probably don't achieve it. You don't achieve it by doing one of the things the government is talking about doing, and that's funding research into new technologies. The concept that a country of Australia's size could, with all due respect to university researchers, could come up with a breakthrough and that that's an efficient way to spend taxpayer dollars, whereas what you could do is spend taxpayer dollars encouraging the use of something which other people have come up with, or you could impose, okay, this government doesn't like carbon prices, fair enough. You could art law beyond a certain date, the import of petrol-powered vehicles as a number of other countries are doing. That would speed the adoption of technology. So, yeah, obviously technology is going to do things. Economists would say that the best way of getting that technological change, technological adoption at the least cost is a carbon price, but I don't think either party will be, or we know that neither party will be proposing that. Is this the technology solution though? I mean, is that attractive to voters? It sort of relieves them of the responsibility to have to take personal action. Technology will solve it. It sounds good, but I think those who, for whom climate change is about changer, will believe, and I think rightly, that you need more than technology, and that you do have to pay a price, not necessarily a formal carbon price, but it's a big change and it will involve, in the shorter term, some people paying a price and the community generally having to pay some prices, but most people, majority of people would think that that's worth it. It's a question of how high that price is, I guess, which determines people's attitude. Now, one issue that was big on the agenda throughout the year was Australia's relationship with China. Where are we now at the end of the year in relation to that? We've had diplomatic problems, obviously, with France. So I guess just reflecting on our diplomatic relationships at the end of this turbulent year. I think China is real well to state the obvious is really an incredibly challenging issue, not just in the immediate term, but in the decades ahead, and that involves not just reading how China is now, but trying to read how it will be in the future. We've seen over the decades changes in the regime in China and its position, and so the pessimists would say, I guess, that it's just going to become more and more assertive and on some fronts, aggressive. The optimists might say, well, eventually, there will be a swing back to a somewhat more liberal regime, even if it's not in the terms that we would understand small liberalism as it were. But in terms of policy, we're in a not good position, obviously, with China. We've got various trade blocks. We are trying to prepare our defences to buttress our position, and that goes to the sub-argument, but that's going to be a long way away, the delivery of those nuclear-powered submarines. So I think China is a dilemma for the forward policy thinkers and an immediate problem in terms of our response and our trade. And we are going to lose our trade with China. The big thing we saw China is iron ore. China wants to move away from Australian iron ore as soon as Brazil gets its house in order and they've already stopped buying a lot of other things. But we have, and we're going to lose our coal exports anyway for the climate reasons, we have an opportunity to sell sun cable, selling solar power to Singapore and so on. We have an opportunity to do an awful lot to replace China, selling to a whole range of countries, which is probably a safer situation to be in. I'm going to have to cut you off right there, hold that thought. Thank you. We have run out of time. Thank you very, very much, Michelle and Peter, for all of your insights. Throughout the year, not just for today, it's fantastic to have you there commentating with such expertise for the readers of the conversation. That's wonderful. Thanks very much. But before we go, I did also want to thank you, the audience, for participating and for the excellent questions that came through. And there are many more there that we weren't able to get to. So I'm sorry about that. But thanks very much for your participation. If you would like to get a copy of the book that has been launched today by The Conversation, you can find it at all good bookstores and also through online bookshops. So thank you very much again for your participation. See you later.