An open letter to the ALP and LNP

After last night's shock Federal election results, the two major parties are coming out today and making all sorts of comments on why things turned out the way they did. But the more I listen to them, the more I think they are missing the point.

To the ALP, stop making excuses for your loss. You didn't lose because the LNP made preference deals with the UAP and One Nation. You didn't lose because Bill Shorten was unpopular. You didn't lose because the LNP ran a great election campaign. You lost because your tax policies were abrupt, extreme, and had alienated too many people. You could not ignore generations of people who had been working hard to build their personal wealth to secure their future without relying on the aged pension under a policy that had been in place for the last 30 years (ie, negative gearing) and just pulled the rug from under them if you won. Yes, you were going to grandfather the negative gearing changes but your radical policy could literally reduce the price of every house in Australia and undo the wealth many people had built through the equity in their home. In other words, any policy that is radical and polarising against one group of people in the community ('the rich' in this case) could easily backfire. Last night was case in point.

To the LNP, stop being smug. You didn't win because Scott Morrison was popular. You didn't win because your policies were credible (far from it). You didn't win because of a miracle and god was on your side. You won because the ALP's tax policy was unpalatable. Adani didn't help. But make no mistake - you won by default. The election results signalled that people wanted economic and financial stability but they were not saying your other policies, eg, climate change, had merit. In fact, a number of independent and Greens wins signalled Australian's united voice in crying out to you to do something positive about climate change in a meaningful scale. Giving you the win does not give you a mandate to ignore climate change and wallow in policy incoherence and inaction. What Australians are saying is - ensure that the country continue to create and accumulate wealth to safeguard our future but use some of that wealth to implement meaningful and well resourced policies such as the wholesale shift to renewable energy. With great power comes great responsibility. Don't squander your political capital.