Why the Coalition is a better, stronger alternative

Strong opposition is important so voters don't lose faith in the political process.

WITH more seats and more primary votes than Labor, the Liberal and National parties won the election but couldn't quite form a government. Even so, ''we wuz robbed'' would be precisely the wrong reaction. The public are more interested in good government than they are in which party is in power. More than ever, voters want the opposition to hold the government to account rather than complain that the system is unfair.

As long as the Gillard government limps on, the waste will continue, the debt will pile up, the new taxes will keep coming and so will the boats. To the government, all that counts is staying in office, so these failures won't matter. They will matter to Australians, though, because we will have to pay for them.

The fact that Prime Minister Gillard had to make at least 10 changes to her ministry between its announcement and its swearing in suggests the next term of Labor government will be just as confused and as incompetent as the last one.

This is why Labor's spin doctors are already trying to lower expectations; to survive will be to succeed, they say. This government's job is not to solve problems or to build on Australia's strengths, they say; merely to last for three years.

A government that tended to be all talk and no action when it had a parliamentary majority will be even worse without one. It will be a ''do nothing'' government partly because it lacks a majority, but mostly because it fundamentally lacks convictions. To accommodate the Greens, it's already ditched its commitment to a citizens' assembly on climate change and its commitment not to have a carbon tax. It will need a carbon tax, in one form or another, to keep funding its spending spree, but it would clearly prefer a stealth version, such as an emissions trading scheme, so that it can avoid admitting that reducing emissions in this way comes at a high cost to consumers and their jobs.

When a government lacks authority and has no mandate, a strong opposition is even more important so that voters don't lose faith in the political process. Someone has to have potential solutions to the country's problems when the government doesn't. The Coalition will continue to oppose the mining tax because it threatens the goose that's laid Australia's golden egg. We will oppose a go-it-alone carbon tax because it won't help the environment but will inflict enormous damage on our export industries.

We will oppose the national broadband network because there are better, cheaper ways to improve telecommunications services. Unlike Labor, the Coalition's instinct is not to see bigger government and more public spending as the answer to every problem. Government's job is to empower individuals and communities, not just to take on more responsibilities itself.

No responsible government would spend $43 billion on a nationalised broadband network without a cost-benefit analysis. Because the government is buying and switching off Telstra's existing network, all Australians who want fixed-line access will have to use the new system regardless of whether they want it, need it or can afford it. At $5000 per household, the government intends to spend at least five times the amount per head invested by New Zealand, Korea and Singapore, which have the best regarded broadband plans. In an instructive contrast, the Coalition proposed to spend just $6 billion filling the gaps that the market couldn't address.

It's true that ''oppositions don't win elections; governments lose them''. Still, an opposition that's only a couple of by-elections or two independents' change of heart away from government has to be more than just a critic. The Coalition took strong, positive policies to the election. The first task of government is to respect taxpayers' funds, hence our determination to return to surplus by the high road of reducing wasteful spending rather than the low road of imposing new taxes.

We wanted direct action to improve the environment rather than new taxes dressed up as environmental benefits. Above all, we wanted to foster an opportunity society rather than a welfare state by providing incentives to seniors and young people to move off welfare and a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme to help families and to keep mothers in the workforce. Noel Pearson intervened with the independents to support a change of government because he understood that we were serious about rights and responsibilities, including overturning the Wild Rivers laws now locking up Aboriginal land.

These policies will have to be refined and improved in the time ahead but not abandoned, because they are an intelligent response to serious social issues based on mainstream community values. The task of an opposition is to defeat the government but this is hard to accomplish unless the public think that the alternative would be better as well as just different.

SOURCE: The Sunday Age