Tuning into the Contrast
RedBridge Group's Director of Research and Reputation, Simon Welsh, asks "how much are we paying for those subs again?"
It’s a question that has been coming up with remarkable regularity in our focus groups of late. It’s also a marker of some deeper shifts that are occurring in public political opinion.
As the cost-of-living crisis continues to gnaw away at the savings, credit cards and quality of life of Australians, the financial stress endured by many is fostering a greater focus on resources. Both their own resources and public resources.
One of the things we observed early in the current crisis was a greater reliance on public services. As people had less money to spend, they relied more on public health, education, transport vs private options. That reliance, coupled with concerns about government debt – or rather who is going to pay for that debt, is now breeding a sense of resource competition.
As far as forces to shape public opinion go, there are few as powerful as resource competition. It fosters sharp in-group vs out-group distinctions, promotes a “zero sum” outlook (i.e. the gains of out-groups necessarily cause losses for my in-group) and feelings of relative deprivation (i.e. sensitivity to who is getting more than me, regardless of just how much I’m receiving myself).
All of this means that we find that real attention is now being paid to both sides of the government accounts: what are they cutting and what are they spending on? Participants are scrutinising both from within this frame of resource competition: what are they taking from me and who are they giving it to?
However, the results of that scrutiny are playing out in ways that are possibly unexpected.
That is, what we don’t see among ‘middle Australia’, persuadable voters is any real sense of ‘kicking down’ – a response that historically you might expect in this context. It’s not about cutting welfare. It’s not about limiting immigration. It’s not about stopping the boats.
Rather, this resource competition is being played out against a backdrop where empathy and compassion are key political drivers for middle Australia. In part, this is a legacy of a pandemic that broadened out our in-groups to include the vulnerable and the disadvantaged – people who suddenly didn’t seem so far removed from ‘me’. In part, this is about the rising influence of Millennial and GenZ voters, with their high-levels social progressiveness. Whether this will change in time – whether there is some tipping point that will swing public opinion in the oppositive direction – is uncertain. However, it certainly doesn’t seem to be coming in the immediate future and, right now, most voters we talk to want to government to look after people first and foremost.
It's for these reasons that we see strong levels of support for policies/proposals like the Voice, NDIS funding, “raising the rate” or restitution of single parent payments. Middle Australia wants to see government extend a helping hand, not the boot, to those less fortunate than them. In fact, they don’t just dislike the idea of ‘kicking down’, they actively want to see government ‘punching up’. They want to see big corporates and the very wealth pay more of their “fair share”. A corporate CEO is more ‘out-group’ now than a jobseeker recipient.
It’s here that the way in which voters are juxtaposing government spending becomes important – and politically risky for the Albanese Government. We can’t afford to ‘raise the rate’, but how much are we paying for those subs again? We can’t afford to fund GP bulk billing properly, but how much are we paying for those stage three tax cuts? These are the contrasts that are being raised by participants in the focus groups. In this context of resource competition, they speak directly to questions about who you are taking resources from and who you are giving them to, from which many voters are drawing conclusions about the values of governments. If those values don’t share a foundation in empathy and compassion, trouble lay ahead. Indeed, we may be seeing here the next nudges in young middle Australia’s drift away from the parties of government to progressive minor parties/independents.