The Stats Guy: Australians can handle harsh truths. Why aren’t politicians sharing bad news?
Government claiming voters can not handle reform conveniently lets politicians off the hook but the story is fundamentally wrong, Simon Kuestenmacher argues ahead of this week’s federal budget.
Last week I fantasised in this column about what I’d do as treasurer.
I spoke about reforms that I would confront the Australian public with.
This isn’t an easy task at all. Every treasurer, premier and prime minister must eventually realise that reform is easy to announce and almost impossible to deliver.
The standard excuse of politicians is familiar – voters won’t accept difficult change. Australian voters, we are told, love the idea of reform in theory, but resist it in practice.
Fix the budget, sure. Improve housing affordability, absolutely. Create a sustainable economy, by all means. Just don’t touch my taxes, my superannuation, my property value or my entitlements in the process.
Voters are seen as a collection of political NIMBYs by our political class.
It’s a neat enough story as it conveniently lets politicians off the hook and cements the status quo. But the story is also fundamentally wrong and misreads the collective Australian psyche.
Australians have repeatedly shown that they are capable of absorbing serious pain when they understand the stakes and believe in the outcome.
Think back to the early days of Covid. Governments imposed restrictions that would have been politically unthinkable just months earlier. Borders shut, businesses closed, daily life paused.
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And yet for a crucial period, most Australians went along with it. Why? Not because the policies were painless. But because the narrative was clear – protect lives now to return to normal later.
There was a shared sense of purpose. When did soldiers willingly go to war? When they believed in the higher purpose of the mission.
The higher purpose, the clearly defined goal is the missing ingredient in today’s reform debate.
Instead, we get a steady stream of small technocratic announcements. Tweaks to super. Microscopic adjustments to housing policy. A small change to tax brackets. Savings measures dressed up as efficiency gains.
Each reform is explained in isolation, often defensively and almost always framed in terms of what must be cut, tightened or delayed.
What’s missing is a compelling answer to a simple question – what does Australia look like if we get this right?
Our demographic profile makes this gap even more dangerous – Australia is ageing rapidly. That changes how politics works.
Older voters are more numerous, more engaged, and understandably more focused on protecting what they have built.
Younger voters, meanwhile, are being asked to carry a heavier load, from housing costs to tax burdens to future care obligations.
In that environment, any reform that looks like a loss today in exchange for a vague gain tomorrow will struggle. Not because voters are irrational, but because the trade-off is poorly communicated.
This is where behavioural economics offers a useful lens.
As Nobel prize-winning behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman showed, people feel losses far more intensely than gains.
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Tell voters what they will lose and they will resist. Right now, Australian politics is almost entirely obsessed about losses.
Housing reform? It might dent the price of my asset. Tax reform? It might remove my beloved concessions. Super reform? It might limit my benefits. Budget repair? It will require me to restrain my spending.
All true. And all politically toxic when presented like that.
Compare that to what’s needed.
Housing reform should be framed as the pathway back to home ownership for the next generation. Tax reform as the foundation for a simpler, fairer system that rewards work and investment. Super reform as the guarantee that retirement incomes remain viable without crushing younger taxpayers.
Budget repair as the precondition for funding healthcare, aged care and defence in an ageing world.
Same policies. Completely different framing.
The deeper problem is that Australian politicians are reluctant to make promises about the future. Not because they lack ideas, but because they fear being held accountable if those promises fall short.
They retreat into caution and explain, model and hedge. They tell voters what’s necessary, but not what’s possible. The lack of utopian visions about what Australia could be is astonishing.
Voters become bored and switch off. We don’t mobilise around spreadsheets – we mobilise around stories.
Australians don’t need to be shielded from bad news. We can handle it. We get up and rebuild when our cities are ravaged by floods or bushfires; we keep tending to our herds and fields in times of drought; we don’t chicken out and give up.
What we want is honesty about the trade-offs and clarity about the destination.
If you ask us to accept higher density in our suburb, show us what kind of city we are helping to build. If you ask us to pay more tax, show us how this money pays for a fairer and safer society.
If you ask us to work longer or save more, explain what our lives in retirement will look like.
Reform is not failing because Australians are unwilling. It’s failing because the political class is unwilling to make the case properly.
The irony is that the country’s long-term challenges are becoming more predictable, not less.
We know the population will grow. We know it will age. We know housing demand will rise. We know the fiscal pressure will intensify. None of this should be a surprise.
Which means the real test of leadership is not whether you can design the right policy. It’s whether you can persuade millions of people that short-term pain leads to long-term gain. Right now, that persuasion isn’t even attempted.
Australians can handle the truth. What we are waiting for is a government that tells us a story worth believing in.
Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, or LinkedIn.
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