 Hi and welcome to episode 5 of Off the Hill, the ANU's weekly look at what's been happening in the federal election campaign. As always I'm joined by my colleagues, constitutional law expert Ryan Goss and political marking expert Andrew Hughes. If you missed out any previous episodes you can just go to anu.edu.au to catch up and if you happen to be in Canberra on Tuesday nights you can head along to our weekly public policy forums, the vote. This week we're talking about social policy. Again all the details are on the website. This week we've asked our Twitter followers and our Facebook friends what they think is the most important issue that we haven't discussed or haven't heard about yet in the election campaign. I think what was really interesting is that we found on Twitter people really want to hear about the environment and on Facebook people really want to hear about indigenous issues which is another issue that we'll set aside for now. But let's get stuck into these. What do you think Andrew? Look the environment is a great issue, I mean it's so emotive too as an issue and in years past it's been a desidering campaign particularly in places like Tasmania where you've got to go with me on this one. Yeah no no, Tassey's fair. Yeah I mean it's the images too although sort of like emotive images we've seen in past campaigns we cannot forget the rivers campaign of Tasmania, old growth logging of course has been issued not just in Tasmania but also in other states like Queensland for example, New South Wales and of course Victoria. So you've got all these like emotive campaigns you can run on the environment and we're not seeing them. I mean modern campaigns for example on public transport, on cycling, cycling is always a hot issue. Always a nice wedge issue cycling, well I've been a cyclist by the way. I've got some issues on this, we'll go to Ryan first. Well I think that's right and what Andrew says is of course right but the last 10 years I suppose have been the story of trying to take action on things like climate change but reconcile that with a need, a perceived need to protect the economy and to ensure that jobs and growth as the Prime Minister would say aren't compromised and so Kevin Rudd said that's the great moral challenge of our time. I think the last 10 years have shown that it's a great political challenge trying to particularly for the Labor Party but also for the Liberal Party to reconcile on the one hand taking action on climate change with letting people understand and realise that that may involve changes to our economy over the long term as well and that's very hard for the parties to negotiate it seems. There's a lot going on here right because images are so nice as you say you know it's such a nice sort of positive thing to talk about the environment but then as you've observed this week Ryan it's all being couched in jobs talk. Yeah that's right so I think the Labor Party has stuck to its guns on climate change in many senses it's going to this election with an emissions trading scheme but a more tailored focused emissions trading scheme it's going to the election with schemes for the Great Barrier Reef and so on that are designed to appeal to people for whom the environment is a key issue but they're framed in terms of protecting jobs and providing opportunities for jobs and economic growth in renewable energies for example. Well I'm going to sort of throw my cynical hat in here we know for whom the environment is an important issue and it's green voters. So since 2008 we've asked 26,570 Australian voters what they think is the most important issue facing the country at that time right so this is over you know seven years overwhelmingly coalition voters always worried about the economy and jobs which is exactly as would imagine ALP voters split they're more sort of I guess heterogeneous you know to use the academic sort of jargon. Greens voters absolutely concentrated on the environment don't care that much about about the economy and jobs and the big three I call them immigration economy and better governance. But there's nothing wrong with that I mean green voters. There's nothing wrong with that I'm not judging them. Exactly the Greens appeal to the Greens right but yeah but the thing about as a strategy of political party that they can't appeal for everything. Yep they have to go after something where they can get their core behind them and get elected every single time they go up. So if they go to mainstream they run the risk of diversifying too quickly and all of a sudden you think oh Greens but are they really Greens anymore. Yeah absolutely and it also reflects I think the Labor Party's slightly tricky position at this election of having to run defensive campaigns in Sydney and Melbourne perhaps in a Brisbane to a lesser extent against the Greens while at the same time ensuring that they don't alienate voters on questions of carbon tax and emissions. Which leads us very nicely into Indigenous affairs because it's exactly the same problem. Exactly right yeah I mean you think where is the action where are the where is the real measures we need to take as Australians particularly white Australians we need to do more on the reconciliation front we need to make the steps we need to say sorry we need to make sure it's clear we need to put the money behind the words we need to put the action behind the words but the rhetoric aside it should be bipartisan why isn't it bipartisan why don't I ever feel bipartisan on about this issue why don't I have that sense that all the parties should believe in this every political party in this country should believe in this. Because you're gloriously optimistic Andrew. I am I'm a marketer come on that's what we do. I want to back this up with some nice evidence please. You know also optimistic evidence so we asked people about this in 2014 44% of Australians want more support for Indigenous communities we overwhelmingly believe that it's it's a combination of factors that have led to entrenched Indigenous disadvantage and only 19% have said we've gone too far in supporting Indigenous communities so there's something there's there's appetite I guess for change. There certainly is and I think there is bipartisan support for notions like closing the gap I think what's missing perhaps is bipartisan support for the measures that really make a difference underneath those overarching umbrella labels and I think for me as a constitutional law specialist I think what comes to mind here is that we are expecting in the next term of the parliament a constitutional referendum on recognising Australia's first peoples in the Constitution. Will it get bipartisan support? And the question is whether it will get bipartisan support at the moment it's both parties are on board huge polling majorities in favour of recognising the first Australians the problem is no one knows what that will mean yet there are multiple competing versions of what that amendment could look like and as soon as we have a proposal on the table that will begin to cause divisions within the major political parties within political discourse potentially within Indigenous Australian communities and there are people doing great writing on this at the moment Megan Davis at UNSW is doing some terrific work and I think it's yet to enter the mainstream political discourse that this is actually really a contested debate in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia and it will be a really tricky issue to navigate potentially in the next term of parliament for the government Yeah absolutely and that's grim we're optimistic and now you've really pulled it down a notch Yeah but it's also worth saying of course that constitutional recognition is and should only be part of the picture that closing the gap is will be assisted by constitutional amendments but it's only part of the picture Yeah that's right Now the minor parties are everywhere this week all over the news Xenophon's going to cause all kinds of trouble if he gets the balance of power Why this campaign? What do they do so well? Richard Branson this is this is what he's put himself on to I mean it's really similar campaign strategy to what Richard Branson did which was disruption disruption disruption Nick Xenophon is the disruptor of Australian politics right now Oh this isn't just random words Andrew The marketing is going to go no shenanigans to that Stop being so hard and scientific all the time Live a little like hope that life to the campaign They do run good campaign They do And he's been disrupting South Australian politics for decades He's not new to this he's just taken to the national stage South Australia I think way back in January if we can to when he put his candidate launch for Waringo Tony Abbott's seat right when it was dead in the media space he had the entire airspace to himself at that time when he launched that candidate now they got it wiped away in this election there's no question or they're going to have any chance in that seat but what he did do was get our media you know attention and awareness on him and his campaign for that day at a really quite spot of the year Now we come at this from different perspectives you think Xenophon in particular is a master of mind Look I'm not saying he's the best I've seen but he's definitely up there and I look it's backed up by what his campaign is about too like submarine cakes outside the front of parliament house who could forget that Everyone could forget that Yeah of course they can but there's those stunts which get our attention and the attention's about getting an awareness and that changes your perception of him and all of a sudden you think this guy's got a lot more power behind him know what maybe he does at the moment he's one person in parliament one but he certainly captured a lot of attention and engagement in South Australia his polling numbers are incredible and that's it and that's what it matters in politics you get that attention awareness equals momentum momentum equals people get behind you perception seems like you've got to be more powerful than what you are let's get on this person because he's a winning team he's a breath of fresh air compared to the two majors who become complacent and spin doctrine as we saw last Sunday night now I think you've hit the nail on the head there and this is the problem Xenophon is able to leverage off I think what we're not picking up in opinion polls yet but what is a really underlying dissatisfaction with the two major parties and I don't think people have worked out quite how to express that yet or how to put that into words but I think the major parties in Australia have been really really sloppy really lazy on the back foot haven't really innovated in the way that we would have expected now I'm using the jargon but I think this is chickens coming home to roost for the majors and I think in 2013 what we talked about as being a kind of electoral anomaly was actually maybe not in the case of Lionholm because there's good evidence to suggest that he benefited from being on that you know that number one spot that donkey spot on the New South Wales Senate ballot but I think there is a genuine a genuine interest in minor parties and that's right and I think it's worth emphasising that we did have these Senate voting reforms this that were passed earlier this year that High Court has signed off on they were really designed to stop the micro parties swapping preferences behind the scenes but it by no means at all does that mean that we should count out the minor parties they weren't designed to do that the Greens, the Xenophones potentially the Pauline Hansons the Glenn Lazarus, the Jackie Lambies and there's every reason they'll do well out of this particularly when we take into account the double dissolution and the fact that you need fewer votes to get into this time the lower quota I think will hit harder than a lot of us are ready for I and it was a lazy response I think changing the laws in response to this threat from the minor parties now final thoughts for the week parliamentary budget office have been doing their work and this week they revealed a blowout in one of the government's costings on company tax rate I think it was so went from 48 to 51 billion dollars huge numbers three billion dollars a black hole of quite significance so raises the question and it was raised during the week too choose that up for him on the economy about how we're doing our costings and how long-term they need to be and the consensus there was on terms of the economy it needs to be a lot further ahead we need to have longer-term costings introduce all kinds of error but if you want more details on that that's all on the ANU website from last week's policy forum and Ryan my thought for the week is that we had the leaders debate last Sunday it was I think we can all agree a pretty dreary affair if we have future debates or so-called debates I think we need to take a leaf out of the Americans book in how we ask the questions and take a leaf out of the Brits books in terms of who's on the stage and how they're organized yep get more up there my thought is that the ALP and vote compass and the ABC more generally going toe-to-toe it's a subject very dear to my heart and I can't wait to see how it plays out thanks everyone for watching and we'll see you again next week