Other politics and public policy
Media bias or media manipulation?
In any democracy there are media with political bias. For the most part that comes from commercial decisions about market segmentation to do with holding readership in particular demographic groups. And it is almost a defining feature of democracy that the media will be perceived as having an anti-government bias: that’s about the media holding government to account.
In her Saturday Paper article How News Corp captured the Liberal Party Nyadol Nyuon of the Sir Zelman Cowan Centre writes about something much more sinister – a party controlled and manipulated by a multinational media company.
In her view “the Liberal Party is no longer a ‘normal’ political party capable of shaping its policies in response to the world as it is. Rather, it is an organ captured by the corporate and ideological interests of a global corporation.” She concludes that “the Liberal Party is making policy decisions to satisfy News Corp rather than voters”.
As compelling evidence in support of her case she notes that two former prime ministers, including the Liberal’s Malcolm Turnbull, have accused News Corp of ousting them from public office.
As a thought experiment she asks readers to contemplate the outcome of recent federal elections had News Corp been treating the Liberal Party in the same way as it has treated the Labor Party.
She warns that this relationship has not only undermined our democracy; it is also threatening our vital economic and military security interests.
Nazis in Australia
Many Australians were shocked by a gathering of neo-Nazis on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House giving the Heil Hitler salute.
But we shouldn’t have been shocked. Even though the Nazi salutes and Hakenkreuze were absent, the same ugly sentiment and behaviour was present in anti-lockdown-anti-vaccination rallies in Victoria during the Covid crisis. And for many years the Liberal and National parties have given oxygen to parties on the extreme right.
On the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report Andrew West interviews Avril Alba of the University of Sydney about ways we can protect against a resurgence of Nazism. (13 minutes)
Alba stresses that historical education is a starting point, not only about the facts of Nazism but also about the reasons Nazi symbols are so deeply offensive to those who understand their full meaning and context. There is now only a tiny handful of people with personal memory of the Hitler regime.
As a comment in support of her point, the German press reported widely on the death of Traute Lafrenz, the last survivor of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance, on March 6, but the passing of living memory of Sophie Scholl’s White Rose movement and her brutal execution seems to have gone unnoticed by the Australian media.
It is easy to dismiss the events of last weekend as the behaviour of a tiny handful (30 by most accounts) of people in a city of 5 million, but we should all be aware of the history of Germany’s National Socialists, who were initially ignored as a tiny fringe movement. Alba uses the analogy of a virus that suddenly mutates into a more virulent form to describe the process. An understanding of German history would remind us not only about the Holocaust, but also of the consequences when a country’s democratic institutions are too weak to resist the determination of a populist thug.
In January, before these events occurred, Josh Rose of Deakin University wrote in The Conversation about moves by Australian governments to ban Nazi symbols, similar to long-standing laws in Germany and some other European countries. Such laws are hard to enforce, but they carry important messages.
Ridding Australia of such hateful symbols is important, but we need to be mindful about the social conditions that have motivated the behaviour we witnessed. As Rose writes, “to the often alienated and angry young men attracted to far-right ideologies, photos of groups of men making the Nazi salute offer a sense of a collective and belonging”.
Josh Rose has some useful guides for young people to learn about the rise of Nazism in his Conversationcontribution: Teaching the Holocaust through literature: four books to help young people gain deeper understanding.
Australians are happier than Afghans but not as happy as Finns
In case you missed it, Monday March 20 was the International Day of Happiness.
The 2023 World Happiness Report has been published. It is a serious contribution to our understanding of wellbeing, with support from prominent universities, and contributions from leading economists and social researchers. It is rich in data, in cross tabulations between people’s subjective responses about happiness, and possible explanatory factors, including indicators of economic conditions, health, benevolence, loneliness, violence, social trust and cohesion to name a few.
As we may expect, Nordic countries top the rankings – Finland takes first place, followed by other Nordic countries, and Afghanistan comes in last at position 137, just behind Lebanon and Sierra Leone. Australia is in position 12.
These rankings correspond roughly with per-capita GDP rankings, but the authors draw attention to many situations where economic indicators and well-being do not align.
The report also has a rough indicator of the distribution of happiness as shown by the happiness gap between the top and bottom half of countries’ populations. Strangely Afghanistan comes out as the least divided; implying that almost everyone is sharing in misery. But otherwise the highest ranks are in the Nordic countries (i.e. the lowest gap). On this measure Australia slips to position 22, and the USA is down at position 34.
In case anyone believes that governments can do little for our well-being, the report’s authors show strong correlations between the capacity of governments and indicators of happiness.
How Australia became a multicultural nation
The path from White Australia to multiculturalism has been one with many turns and setbacks, but it has covered a tremendous distance. Although there is still some way to go, we can truthfully claim to be the world’s most successful multicultural nation.
The ABC’s Rear Vision, in conversation with five academic experts, traces this path, from the time of mass European immigration in the postwar period to the present day: Harmony Day—does it truly reflect the history of immigration and multiculturalism in Australia? (30 minutes).
It has been a difficult journey from blatant racism, to assimilation, to multiculturalism and “harmony”, while avoiding tapping into deep wells of racism that are still to be found in Australia.
The program’s participants remind us that there is not a binary choice between “assimilation” and “multiculturalism”. Because we have required immigrants to adhere to established values and norms, our society is best described as one of “limited multiculturalism”, where we live in harmony and enjoy our diversity, while hoping that racism quietly fades away.
Credit goes largely to prime ministers Whitlam and Fraser – Whitlam for the legislative change to abolish White Australia and to Fraser for his opening to Asian immigration. Credit also goes to our economic structure: in comparison with other countries we have been fortunate in not having regions of a concentrated immigrant underclass.
The Rear Vision team has a short summary of the program on the ABC website, with some marvellous pictures illustrating our immigration history.