Point of View is written and spoken by Bob Santamaria for the National Civic Council, 254 Queen Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000.
Here now is Point of View, an independent news commentary by Mr Bob Santamaria on behalf of the National Civic Council.
How do you do? The Federal by-election in Oxley, Queensland, Mr Hayden's old seat, witnessed a swing of 12.5% against Labor.
In his elegant fashion, the Prime Minister admitted that his Government had been given a kick in the backside.
The Oxley electorate had evidently come to the conclusion that the similar chastisement inflicted in every by-election since 1984 had had very little effect.
But the vote, I suggest, reflects the underlying distaste throughout the country, not for the Labor Party as it was, but as it has become today.
The fact that in the Oxley campaign, the Prime Minister used his alleged magic quality, election-winning populism, to the full,
demonstrated that many voters are no longer charmed by TV charisma, publicly funded media units, and party propagandists disguised as political journalists.
Oxley, I suggest, merely reinforced the lesson of the Victorian state election of the previous week,
that the one factor on which Labor can ultimately rely is the Liberal Party's own ineptness, which goes much further than the question of state or federal leadership.
It is that ineptness which deserves discussion, particularly in the context of the Victorian election.
When one looks at that result in the light of the massive swings against Labor in Adelaide, Port Adelaide, New South Wales and Gold Coast,
one could only conclude that almost any party should have been able to defeat the Victorian Labor government.
Even if one excludes every other issue, one basic argument to have been exploited passed totally unmentioned until after the election.
With a keen victory, Victoria would finally hand over to a government of the socialist left,
which would inevitably have over 30 votes in the new Labor caucus, it's turned out to be 34 and a majority,
would be a solid block in the cabinet and which already controls the party machine.
The Liberals didn't even try to mention this. Having for 20 years run away from the issue of communist influence in the ALP, they not merely keep running.
It is doubtful whether today they could even explain what it means if they tried.
The lessons of the defeat however I think go far deeper.
While Mr. Kennedy did show some improvement in general approach during the election campaign,
compared with a mediocre performance over the years, it was only in comparison.
On the issue of a coalition with the National Party, the Liberal Party's PR experts programmed him into talking transparent nonsense.
During the campaign he stated that he expected the Liberals in their own right to win some 15 seats,
and that therefore no coalition with the Nationals would prove necessary.
Anybody who believed that would believe anything.
In the immediate aftermath of the elections, in the period in which a hung parliament was possible,
he committed himself to just such a coalition but only after the election when it was far too late.
Yet in a sense Mr. Kennedy is not to blame at all.
The programming, particularly of leaders of conservative parties like Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the United States, is now uniform procedure.
Their minders, whoever they may be, apparently believe that if their respective candidates open their mouths to express their own opinions,
they will drop sufficient clangers to be sure of defeat.
What this implies for the democratic system is either frightening or laughable.
The concept that a political leader who can't be trusted to open his mouth should be trusted to govern a nation
deserved to have been immortalised by P.G. Wodehouse in one of the Jeeves series.
That, however, is how it is.
So the Liberal campaign was slanted exclusively to assuring Victorian voters, and I quote,
that life will be better with the Liberals.
How or why was not explained.
Nearly no celebrated advice, sing a muck, could hardly have been better exemplified.
So with a night of the future, the exposed nerve to which every government, regardless of party, is vulnerable,
with electorates which are now overwhelmingly urban, lies in the cumulative weight of three sets of charges on every voter,
heavy taxes, heavy interest rates on mortgages, and heavier interest rates on consumer credit items.
Almost 50% of homes in the cities are in receipt of two incomes,
yet 28% of total disposable family income goes in paying off the mortgage.
Another 14% goes in paying off consumer credit on contracts, and some 20% goes in taxes.
So that, at the beginning of the week, family income already pre-empted amounts to approximately 60% of the total.
An enormous burden falls on members of lower wage groups attempting to buy their own homes.
The critical need, of course, in the end, is to begin to refashion the social system,
away from the wastefulness of the consumer society, financed by consumer and mortgage credits,
which fatally attract people into debt.
It is the failure to introduce a system of compulsory savings before marriage,
which leads to the plague of high interest rates, which are squeezing ordinary people to death.
A more rational financial system could be achieved if there was sufficient political will.
After all, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, work on less than 5% basic interest rates.
It's because they have a rational financial system, and we haven't.
The reason why the Liberals don't attack along the lines of this exposed nerve
is that their policymakers don't experience the problems themselves,
don't understand what ordinary people think, and are concerned only with the free market nostrums of large corporate enterprises,
but not so different, come to think of it, of the Labor leadership.
If the Federal and Victorian Liberals proceed along the present lines,
I would think that they'd never win an election, although Labor can lose one, and thus put them into office.
But is that all that politics is about?
Winning and then doing nothing whatsoever to change the total situation.
Good battle next week.
For a free copy of the text of this telecast, write to News Weekly, Box 66A, GPO, Melbourne.
Point of View, the independent news commentary you've just seen, is presented by Mr. Bob Santamaria on behalf of the National Civic Council.
Point of View is written and spoken by Bob Santamaria for the National Civic Council, 254 Queen Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000.