The Politics of Fear

 

Image courtesy AAP - Russell Freeman

It's pretty obvious, gentle reader, that the best way to get many voters on side is to scare the living daylights out of them.

In the recent Queensland election, both major parties used fear as a potent strategy and spent a great deal of money on spreading it.

Reasoned debate and presentation of facts were abysmally absent from the campaign. It worked for the LNP, and less so for Labor, although the emergence of abortion as an issue late in the campaign may helped them avoid a 2012 style wipeout.

Pic courtesy ABC

The irony remains that youth crime statistics have collapsed in Queensland despite both parties claiming that we are in the grip of a youth crime crisis. The only crisis visible is the hysteria spread by both legacy and social media about crime.

A couple of tragic high profile incidents have been cynically exploited as clickbait through online media, and social media has amplified the phenomenon.

The abortion issue also fed into a scare campaign, but there is uncertainty about how the current legislation will be treated if, as Robbie Katter promises, he is successful in getting a vote to amend the current law to the floor of parliament.

As usual, what happens across the Pacific always has ramifications in Australia, and the rise of abortion as an issue here after the reversal of Roe Vs Wade in the US is further evidence of the tendency for American issues to seep to the West.

I long for the day when we have members of our state parliament driven by the issues in their constituencies rather than the party line as promoted by public relations "experts".