Wilkie’s pokie saga shows money trumps passion

Who is Andrew Wilkie trying to bluff? Does he think he can really force the Gillard government into passing his pokie reforms, or is he just trying to save face?

Whatever he's doing, the pokie saga has become a fascinating study of power.

The anti-pokie crusader demanded yesterday that the government set a legislative framework for mandatory pre-commitment by May, as per the original timetable, and then add the details later by regulation, in 2014. 

Julia Gillard is saying absolutely nothing about the talks she and Wilkie have had in the past few days, but The Power Index would be amazed if she agrees to such a proposition, even if it were technically feasible.

Wilkie must know he was a weak hand—not least because the reforms probably wouldn't get through the House of Reps in any case—but he's playing his cards well. Yesterday, he told ABC Radio in Hobart: "If I was to walk away the government wouldn't necessarily fall over." But then he warned: "It would be a terrible blow to the government, and some people would accuse it of breaking another promise. So there's political reasons why this government still needs to honour this agreement with me."

Sadly, there are also powerful political reasons for Gillard to kill the whole pokie debate, so that Clubs Australia stops its campaign against Labor MPs in marginal seats. Which, of course, is why Wilkie's reforms have been dumped. Sorry, delayed until 2016.

But that's not Wilkie's only problem. It's long odds against his latest idea salvaging anything. Come 2014—which is his revised timetable—Gillard will almost certainly be on the opposition benches, and Tony Abbott's Coalition government will have a big majority. In such circumstances, it would make no difference whether Labor had introduced a legal framework for the reforms or not.

Even if it were there, the framework would never get filled out.

Full marks to Wilkie for trying, but The Power Index suspects he's still going to have to face that decision: to ditch or not ditch Labor when Gillard breaks the promise she made to him after the 2010 election and misses that 8 May deadline.

Whatever happens, it lays bare how power works in Australia in the current political climate, and perhaps at any time. When the government tries to legislate against powerful vested interests, or tax their profits, it faces multi-million dollar advertising and PR campaigns that threaten its re-election. Typically, these will focus on marginal seats where pressure is most easily applied. And typically, they succeed.

We saw it with the mining tax and we've seen it in spades with these pokie reforms.

Nor does it depend on there being a minority government. We saw the same political expediency in the fall of Kevin Rudd and in Labor's tougher approach to asylum seekers (both of which were driven by poor polling in marginal seats). We saw it too with the carbon tax, where Rudd and his advisers were so afraid of losing votes that they backed away from what Rudd had identified as this generation's most important moral challenge.

The guiding principle for this government still remains that they will do whatever it takes to survive politically. Even when they're dead as dead. Or even when they're leading by miles.

And that gives vested interest groups—with money and PR at their disposal—far more power than they should have.