Letter to the Editor: politicians and fear campaigns

DEAR News Of The Area,

IT IS apparent that the most effective way for a politician to attract votes is to run a fear campaign.

This is, in large part, due to the way our brains work.

Change creates uncertainty and uncertainty creates resistance.

Amplify this through traditional and online media and people can be quite effectively persuaded to vote against their interests.

Take the housing crisis.

Housing has become increasingly unaffordable for many, particularly young, Australians.

The ever increasing ratio of the average house price to the average wage started when the Howard government made changes to Capital Gains Tax and Negative Gearing that turned housing from being a necessity to being a speculative asset.

The modest proposals of the current government to revert these harmful policies has been met with a barrage of misleading propaganda.

Personally, I am tired of rich people complaining about how much tax they pay.

Honestly, how do we expect the situation to change if we do not act?

At the same time, the empty shells of the Liberal and National parties have chosen to run a scare campaign about migrants.

At a time when they have warned themselves that they need to “change or die” they appear to have chosen the latter. They seem to forget that they lost office because they alienated so many parts of the electorate.

The “One Notion” party has always been openly and unapologetically racist and their voting record has been largely to support the LNP.

For myself, a politician who is sponsored by Australia’s richest person, and who puts forward taxation proposals to do with the gas industry that is heartedly supported by said industry, is not a figure that I would trust to act in the interests of the majority.

The most important feature of a scare campaign is that facts do not matter.

Migrants are a vital part of our economy and community.

Taxes collected from the gas industry are woefully inadequate, especially during this period when they are making windfall profits because of the American/Israeli attacks on Iran.

This matters nought to the current crop of conservative pretenders.

If a news story or a Facebook post makes you angry, take a moment to ask yourself, why?

Is it true, or is it feeding your confirmation bias?

Is it a genuine grievance and, if so, does it suggest a positive path forward?

Does it present an argument as black and white, or does it present nuance and depth?

Nowadays, a lot of the information we receive is generated by “Artificial Intelligence”.

This makes it even more imperative for all of us to exercise critical thinking and the double checking of sources.

Just because it is on the internet does not make it true.

 

Kind regards,

Peter SOBEY

Valla