In October 1980, before almost half the people voting in this election were born, US president Ronald Reagan posed what became one of the defining questions of modern politics:

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Reagan would go on to beat Jimmy Carter in the election that year and, along with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, usher in the neo-liberal era to western democracies.

It’s been a standard in campaigns ever since.

Peter Dutton has revived it for the 2025 Australian campaign, asking voters to think about if  they are better off now than they were three years ago. 

He has deployed it with increasing frequency (with four references in the most recent leaders’ debate alone) confident that the retrospection will fall his way, because the rear-vision mirror is always a safer bet for a politician than the windscreen.

But it’s the wrong question. It always has been. In this current context, the question is asking you what? Are you better off now than you were before a global pandemic rocked your entire foundation? Are you better off than before you survived the global inflation crisis that followed that pandemic?

Are you better off than before you watched Israel carry out a genocide against the Palestinian people while your leaders pretend it’s not only not happening, but they have no role to play?  

Are you better off than before Donald Trump was elected? Were you better off before you saw the worsening impacts of climate change continue to........

© The New Daily