Australian politics
“I’m not racist, but …”
There is a great deal of media interest in Morrison’s path to nomination for his seat of Cook in 2007. It is on the record that in a Liberal Party preselection ballot Michael Towke won 82 votes and Morrison won 8, that the state Liberal Party executive invalidated Towke’s victory, and that in the subsequent re-run preselection ballot, which Towke did not contest, Morrison won.
The rest is subject to a battle about who said what, questions of why the state executive intervened, who pushed for their intervention, and, most important, why there was an intervention. Was it because of Towke’s Lebanese background, and if so, was it outright racism? Or was it a concern that although the gentlefolk of the Liberal Party aren’t racist themselves, there are enough racists in the Cook electorate who would vote against someone of Lebanese background, believing him to be a Muslim, thereby jeopardizing the Liberal Party’s chances of winning the seat?
The claims and counterclaims are covered well in an article by Karen Middleton in the Saturday Paper“Actually a Moslem”: the true story of Morrison’s ruthless preselection”. David Crowe has a shorter version in the Sydney Morning Herald: Morrison accused of using race in bid for seat.
There are many aspects to this issue – yet another accusation that Morrison is a liar, its domination of media space just weeks out from an election in which the Liberal Party wants to talk about other issues, and bitter pre-selection conflicts in the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party.
Another issue, so far overlooked in most commentary, is the question of “reaction qualifications”. Even if the allegation that the party elders knocked back Towke because they felt that the electors of Cook were too racist is true, surely it is reasonable for a political party to choose a candidate most attractive to the electorate.
Or is it?
The term “reaction qualifications” emerges from an important 1983 paper by philosopher Alan Wertheimer Jobs, qualifications and preferences, which goes into the issue of meritocracy in appointing people to jobs, and by extension, nominating political candidates. When appointing people to a job we seek people with the appropriate technical qualifications, but for many jobs we necessarily seek to find how well they will deal with others with whom they will come into contact. A company would not appoint someone who is surly and rude to a sales position, for example. Such criteria for appointment, based on other people’s reactions, are “reaction qualifications”.
A consideration of reaction qualifications does not necessarily conflict with the principle of meritocratic choice, but the situation becomes morally difficult when we’re considering people’s reactions to gender, sexual preferences, race, physical appearance, or other properties over which the individual has no control and which are technically irrelevant to the duties of the job. (Yes, we can still insist that the actor to play Othello is black and male.) For a reasonably concise outline of these issues in reaction qualifications, with references to Wertheimer’s original work, see the entry “Equality of Opportunity” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, particularly section 1.1 “Being qualified for a position”.[1]
It is a sad reflection on the state of public ideas in Australia that we have been through an acrimonious debate about the rights of religious movements to appoint staff without engaging in the ethical framework developed by Wertheimer and his followers.
Most moral philosophers argue that we should not yield to people’s prejudices when making appointments, because to do so is to legitimize those prejudices. Some argue further that yielding to them is also a sin of omission because such appointments offer opportunities to send strong messages to communities. In fact if a political party with a less than exemplary reputation on matters of race nominates someone from a racial minority group, it may even be a savvy move politically.
Semantically there remains the question whether people who yield to reactions in making appointments can claim that they are not racist, on the grounds that regretfully others are racist. Perhaps it’s not technically “racism”, but it certainly falls into the category “I’m not racist but …”.
1. Unfortunately, because of copyright laws designed to support publishers’ profits rather than the dissemination of publicly-funded research, Wertheimer’s work is not freely available. ↩
How to wipe out Labor’s chances in Queensland
It’s easy. Arrange a convoy of protestors from the southern states to drive up to the Queensland coal regions, carrying the message that coal miners and the people in their communities are a bunch of environmental vandals and ignorant dickheads. It worked a treat for the Coalition in 2019.
Labor holds only 6 out of Queensland’s 30 seats, all in or close to Brisbane. Of the other 24 seats, 23 are held by the LNP, and 1 by Bob Katter. Opinion polls now show that while the Coalition is still ahead of Labor in Queensland, there has been a significant swing back to Labor. Writing in The Conversation – The polls look grim for the Coalition. Will Queensland buck the trend again? – Anne Tiernan explains why Queensland is different electorally from other states, analyses Labor’s prospects in marginal seats, and speculates on factors that may work for or against Labor this time around (assuming there isn’t another convoy of southerners helping the Coalition).
The future of Queensland’s coal-mining regions will still be an election issue, but it is difficult to predict how it will play out. On the ABC’s Background Briefing Mayeta Clark helps listeners understand the perspectives of one community bearing the brunt of adjusting to climate change: The end of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant. It’s about the planned closure of the Liddell power station, now scheduled to shut down in April next year. (The program was made in April last year.) It could also be the story of workers in the Latrobe Valley who have already lost their jobs, and the story to come for coal miners and the communities they support in more remote regions in Queensland. (Liddell is only 40 km from Newcastle while the Queensland coal mines are remote from other population centres.)
Miners and others in these communities know that climate change is happening, and that their lives face massive economic disruption. But it’s a hard reality to face, particularly when they feel disregarded and disrespected by other Australians. It’s not only the loss of income; it’s also the loss of the supportive team in a workplace where all have pride in their expertise, and a devaluing of people’s pride in their work and the confidence that they have been doing something useful for society – providing electricity. To them it’s a job more meaningful than making coffee, selling real estate, or giving people fancy haircuts.
The program contrasts Australia’s comparative neglect of those who will bear the costs of structural adjustment with the carefully-planned transitions in Germany’s once coal-based industrial heartland, the Rhurgebeit. We haven’t learned from German experience because Australian governments seem to be terrified about anything that involves “planning”. And we seem to have forgotten our own success in phasing out tobacco growing in the 1990s.
Morrison’s parting glass
One reason Morrison has kept delaying the election date, in disregard for the economic cost of such uncertainty, has been to give him time to appoint his most loyal mates to boards of government agencies. In part this is reward, with taxpayer-funded jobs paying up to $0.5 million a year, for loyal service to the Liberal Party’s interests. And in part it is a move to govern beyond the political grave, because some of these board positions, such as the Australia Council, the SBS, the Reserve Bank and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority are influential in shaping public policy.
Paul Karp, writing in The Guardian, comments on appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. SBS News makes similar comments. Both articles draw particular attention to Pru Goward’s appointment to the AAT. There are many others: the ABC has a list of former Liberal politicians and staffers included in government appointments.
In a ten-minute interview on ABC Breakfast Senator Rex Patrick discusses the appointments, and calls for an investigation by the Auditor-General. Commenting on the politics he says:
You’d think that a government that was on the nose due to lack of trust wouldn’t be inclined to remind voters of their loose moral tendencies just before an election.
He mentions particularly Keith Pitt’s appointment of former Liberal-National Party MP John McVeigh to chair the Modernising Murray River Systems Technical Panel, and the appointment of a former fossil fuel association advocate as CEO of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. These would be of particular concern to the people of South Australia, living in the downstream state of the Murray-Darling system.
He also draws attention to the appointment of people without legal qualifications to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
In the last four minutes of the interview Patrick comments on the mess of defence planning and purchasing, all subjected to the extra confusion of rapidly-drafted announcements just before an election.