The male voter has not only awoken from their afternoon nap but is ready to mow down some progressive ‘Woke’ weeds if the trend observed in the most recent elections in the US and Germany is an instructive guide to oo by?
In the coming days, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will likely visit Governor General Samanth Mostyn AC to ask for the 47th parliament to be dissolved and the writs issued for a general election.
Yes Australia, strap yourselves in, because the battle of the sexes is the narrative, while for those looking at actual policy this will be one the most lifeless elections in living memory.
The last decade for progressive politicians around environment, equality and inclusion policies has arguably been a golden one.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and outgoing Canadian leader, Justin Trudeau, were lauded on late night talk shows and enjoyed favourable coverage in the mainstream media.
For conservatives, a perception of overreach on such policies is now bracketed as ‘wokeism’ and poked a very big electoral bear, men.
The male voter backlash against ‘wokeism’ is real and conservatives know it.
US Vice President JD Vance’s recent appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in a fireside chat on 5 February delivered a line that was always going to go viral, hitting its intended target of legacy media especially hard.
“I think our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge, you should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place.
“And I think that my message to young men is, ‘don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you’re competitive.”
In the Australian context, popular culture and an endless stream of arts degree PHDs have helped perpetuate the idea of a Daggy Dad who is rather clueless next to his incredibly capable female partner.
Television shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons are the fodder for the Daggy Dad caricature and while accepting of the jesting, when the joke wears thin, the eruption that follows tends to clear the room.
The male voter on the proverbial warpath is not what any progressive politician wants to know about.
Painting a picture where the father of the house feels he is paying for the cost-of-living crisis citing the ‘out-of-touch’ madness around renewables, for example, is not and his own business ‘forking out’ more than ever, then the bear has well and truly been poked.
In addressing Australia’s economic challenge, the major parties have moved away from serious taxation reform for example and given the nation yet another Seinfeld style election of talking about nothing substantial.
Already the parties have descended into a familiar pattern of personal insults and investigations into shares and property ownership.
Australia, a country reliant on its mineral and agriculture exports in terms of selling its economic story, has little to show on the domestic front and when the headlines around the need for reform are replaced with those associated with diversity, equity and inclusion policies, then the anger only grows.
Politics since the Labor Party came to power has focused on dealing with inflation under the phrase of our time, ‘cost of living’, and unlocking a solution for a housing crisis in a country with a lot of available land.
In the greatest of Labor traditions (and one the Liberals are also keen on) a bizarre suite of payments along with tax concessions to households to counter the inflation threat was the strategy that was executed.
Yes, spending on the part of government in a bid to cool expenditure by households.
A very expensive exercise that the business community, specifically the resources sector, has contributed generously towards in terms of tax revenue.
Federal and state governments called upon the industry to “help out” during this cost-of-living crisis and continue to levy profit-killing taxes on Australia’s best performing export sector.
Funding generous pay rises to help fund initiatives largely viewed as non-core priorities by the electorate has in all likelihood stretched the friendship.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld should be paid a royalty every time an election about nothing is the headline.
When there is nothing on offer to the voting public and policies viewed as non-core but a large tract of electorate, the inevitable bickering among tribes is the result.
Dan Petrie is Mining.com.au’s Head of Data, a former data editor at Bloomberg LP, analyst at Macquarie Bank and contributing data expert to Google Digital News Academy.
Write to Dan Petrie at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au & iStock
