With an election a couple of months away in Victoria, the promises have started. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, Jeremy Cordeaux held up the latest one, Premier Ben Carroll’s pledge to build ten free walk-in dental clinics, and asked the question that, in his view, answers itself: what will he use for money?
Sugar On The Table
Jeremy saw the promise for what he believes it is: an election sweetener. Re-elect the Carroll Labor government, the offer goes, and ten free dental clinics will follow. It is, in his phrase, a little sugar on the table, laid out for voters as polling day nears.
The trouble, he argued, is the state’s finances. Victoria, in his telling, is broke, carrying the largest debt in the country. A government with no money promising costly new infrastructure struck Jeremy as either fantasy or deception, and probably both.
The Dentists Do Not Exist
Even setting the money aside, Jeremy pointed to a practical wall. The Dental Association, he noted, says there are simply not the dentists to staff such clinics. Only about 5 per cent of dentists currently choose to work in the public sector, and that figure, he suggested, tells you plenty about how realistic the plan is.
You cannot run ten free dental clinics without dentists willing to work in them. A promise that ignores that basic supply problem is, in Jeremy’s view, not a serious policy but a headline built to last until the election.
Can People Be Bought?
The deeper question troubling Jeremy was about voters, not just the politician. Are people so easily fooled, he asked, that they can be bought with promises like this, knowing full well the government lies and does not have to deliver?
His fear is that the tactic works precisely because there is no penalty. If a government gets away with breaking a promise once, he argued, it will get away with it every time. The dental clinics, on this reading, are not really an offer of dental care at all; they are a bet that voters will reward the promise and forget the delivery.
Free Stuff, No Accountability
For Jeremy, the episode fit a pattern he sees before every election: a government throwing around as much free stuff as it can dream up, confident it can tell all the lies it wants and never be held to account.
His warning to voters was to look past the sugar to the substance. A broke state, a workforce that does not exist, and a record of undelivered promises add up, in his view, to a pledge that cannot be kept. The real test, he suggested, is not whether the clinics sound good, but whether anyone will remember to ask, after the election, where they went.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
