Other politics
Making sense of Europe’s elections
The short story about the elections for the European Parliament, picked up in Australian media, is that there was a strong swing to the right, particularly the far right. This movement, manifest in all democracies, is encouraging for right-wing populists contesting elections in the next twelve months, including Nigel Farage in the UK, Donald Trump in the USA and Peter Dutton in Australia.
That’s a gross simplification.
The slightly more nuanced story is that traditional European parties on the left and centre-right lost support. Their representation, in terms of seats, has fallen from 74 percent in the 2019 elections to 69 percent in this year’s election. Parties clearly identified as on the far right have increased their representation from 17 percent to 19 percent, and there has been a strong rise, from 9 percent to 12 percent, in seats won by representatives described as “non-attached” or “not allied with political groups”, many of whom can be described as on the far right.
The official results are on an EU Parliament website, which includes a link to a comparative tool allowing you to see how representation has changed between the 2019 and 2024 elections. It also has a link to a description of the various political gatherings as they have written about their own ideologies and platforms. And there is a concise graphical summary of the results on Politico.
The far right seems to have done well in France, Germany, Netherlands and Austria, but elsewhere it has not done so well, and seems to have suffered some setbacks in Hungary and the Nordic countries. But overall the largest and most successful bloc is known as the European People’s Party, who hold 38 percent of the seats. This is a gathering of Christian Democrats, whose policies are more or less in line with our federal Liberal Party pre-Howard, or the Liberal Party until recently in government in New South Wales and South Australia. Think Angela Merkel for a European model or Malcolm Turnbull for an Australian model.
A straightforward summary of the outcome is given on TLDR News. This includes a brief description of the electoral system and the way nation-based parties assemble in European-level groups comprising like-minded parties in other EU countries. Although parties on the far right did well, they are fragmented. But so too are the traditional European parties: they are less cohesive than they once were. Natasha Lindstaedt, writing in Social Europe, suggests that the far right may find some support from Putin in pulling themselves together: Populists back Putin with anti-Ukraine positions.
Euronews also has much the same information in its report Meet the winners and losers in Brussels and across Eorope, supplemented with a map of outcomes and charts of trends in the parliament. Traditional parties have been losing ground all this century so far. (The latest figures are influenced by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.)
The World Economic Forum is fairly relaxed about the outcome. The European parliament is still largely in the hands of centrists, it reports. Centrist parties are working to form a coalition to support a second term for Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission.
A less complacent analysis is provided by George Monbiot on our ABC’s Late Night Live. His election commentary is in the first 13 minutes of his discussion on the invisible forces behind neoliberalism. Monbiot sees the swing to fringe and far-right parties as a rejection of the neoliberal consensus – a failure of democratic politics, reflected in support for anyone who will kick the system over.
Also going into the influence of the far right is a 30-minute Al Jazeera podcast What is behind the rise of the far right in Europe, with Katy Brown of Ireland’s Maynooth University and foreign policy analyst Janine di Giovanni. Brown sees support for the far right largely as a protest vote, while Giovanni warns that Europe’s far right has changed over the years. We need to cast aside the image of loud-mouthed skinheads: the far right of today are superficially articulate and respectable, and there are many young people in their ranks. (Videoclips of their rallies always show a crowd of young, enthusiastic supporters.) They agree that the far right gets its popular support from those who feel they have been left behind by mainstream politics.
The general policy conclusion from these observations is that there is resistance to the EU’s policies on climate change, most noticeably among farmers: parties on the far right seem to be mobilizing around fear campaigns about climate change. This is reflected in a poor outcome for the Greens, particularly in Germany. There are strong anti-immigration movements: as one goes south from the Nordic countries down to the Mediterranean countries the anti-immigrant sentiment strengthens. There are peripheral movements seeking to weaken the EU, but it seems that there is still strong support for NATO and for Ukraine in its struggle against the Russian invaders.
Besides these specific issues, there seems to be a general swing against incumbent parties. As with by-elections in Australia, voters tend to see EU votes as not very consequential, but European elections do give voters a chance to lodge a protest.
Lessons from Poland for social democrats
In October last year Poland’s electors turfed out the hard-right Law and Justice Party. That party had held office for ten years and had become emblematic of the idea that Eastern Europe, after a brief experiment with democracy, had reverted to illiberalism and authoritarianism.
One of our readers has drawn attention to an Inside Story article Winning for Democracy by US academics, explaining how in Poland Donald Tusk and his democratic Civic Platform was able to win office, in spite of a rigged electoral system designed to keep the Law and Justice Party in power. The authors write that “Poland’s triumph of democracy did not rely on any secret sauce but on elements that can be replicated when animated by gifted leaders and energetic movements”.
That can appear to be too glib an explanation of Tusk’s victory, but it has a lesson for all social-democratic parties competing against parties on the right. These right-wing parties have built a block of support among disaffected voters who once formed the base of support for social-democratic parties. As the authors explain, the Law and Justice Party had
… wrested control of the state by appealing to a coalition of the ailing working class, union members, the old, religious people and inhabitants of small towns and rural areas – often those who have not benefited from economic liberalisation and European integration. It used its time in office to violate norms and reshape institutions to create an “illiberal democracy” that promoted what the party termed as “Polish,” “anti-Western” and “Catholic” values.
But social democrats can win them back.
Tusk and his campaigners went out of their way to engage with these voters, acknowledging their concerns, listening rather than campaigning, taking on their suggestions for improving their lives, and framing policies in terms that resonated with their social conservatism, for example by reference to policies for “families”. They did this without compromising their commitment to liberalism, secularism and democracy.
The Inside Story piece includes a link to an article by the same authors giving a fine-grained analysis of people’s vote by education level, age, and urbanisation. Tusk’s Civic Platform didn’t achieve a clean sweep, but it did do well enough in the conservative rural regions of eastern Poland to secure victory, and it did particularly well among younger age groups. By contrast, because the Law and Justice Party’s vote is concentrated among older and less-educated voters, its longer-term outlook is not promising.
It’s a reminder that the political divisions of the twentieth century, which were defined primarily in terms of economic class, have given way to divisions around urbanisation, secularism and education – divisions evident in countries as diverse as USA, England, Hungary, Iran, and Australia.
Ban political advertising?
A world source of electoral reform – the SA Parliament
South Australia has an enviable record in election reform. In 1857 it was the first colonial-era government to extend suffrage to all adult men, including Aboriginals – a right they were to lose upon federation. In 1894 it led the wold in extending suffrage to all women. More recently it led the country in truth in political advertising legislation.
In that tradition the state government has drafted a bill banning almost all political donations. “Almost” because there would be limited carve-outs for new entrants.
Writing in The Conversation – South Australia’s plan to ban political donations raises big risks as well as benefits – constitutional expert Anne Twomey explains the proposal’s workings and the legal and constitutional issues around political donations.
A ban on donations could prevent the escalation of political funding arms races, but it would be impossible to enforce in relationship to lobby groups and campaigners outside the formal political structure, such as GetUp! and Clive Palmer, and it may violate the High Court’s finding that our Constitution implies a freedom of political communication.
The other major issue is whether such a ban would work to entrench established political parties.
The Australia Institute’s Bill Browne has given the proposal qualified support warning of the risk of unintended and unimagined consequences.
Premier Peter Malinauskas would know that this proposal faces challenges, both in his own state’s Legislative Council and more seriously in the High Court, and that it could be seen as a dirty deal between the two main parties. Maybe his proposal is better seen as a way of getting the influence of money on to the public agenda, rather than as a proposition for immediate legislation.
The case for an Australian bill of rights
Australia is the world’s only democratic country that does not have a bill or charter of rights. Three jurisdictions – the ACT, Queensland and Victoria – have their own human rights laws, but we have no national constitutional or legislated bill of rights.
In a Conversation contribution Bruce Chen of Deakin University, and Julie Debeljak and Pamela Tate of Monash University, direct our attention to the work of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has recommended that the Commonwealth introduce a Human Rights Act: Report finds “clear need” for an Australian Human Rights Act. What difference would it make?. The committee’s work builds on work of the Human Rights Commission, initiated in 2019.
Martyn Goddard, in his Policy Post, writes that a bill of rights is now tantalisingly close. He provides details of many cases, mainly to do with immigration, where Australians’ rights would not have been violated if we had a bill of rights.
But he also reminds us that it would take political courage for the government to put the bill on the legislative agenda. Coalition members of the committee have written a minority report, arguing that a bill of rights would constrain the powers of lawmakers and law enforcers (that’s its very intention!), and, in any case, we don’t need a bill of rights because so far we’ve all gotten by without one.
Albanese’s advisers are probably reminding him of how the Coalition mounted a savage and deceitful attack on a Hawke government set of referendums to extend specified rights in 1988. All four proposals initially met with strong public support, but the Coalition ran a savage and deceitful “no” campaign, resulting in all four proposals being soundly defeated. None even reached the 40 percent support achieved by the Voice referendum.
That campaign, run by Peter Reith, was in a pattern to be repeated by Dutton in the Voice campaign 35 years later. Don’t engage with the policy issues – you don’t want voters to think Labor is interested in public policy. Rather, portray Labor as manipulative and devious, invent horror scenarios about Labor’s secret agenda, don’t be constrained by the truth, and make sure your mates in the far-right media are with you. It worked in 1988 and it worked in 2023.
Any possibility of democratic reform probably has to be deferred until the Liberal Party either reforms or consumes itself in rancour and bitterness.
Shorten and Churchill compared
Winston Churchill wrote his own speeches. Perhaps that’s why we remember them so well and why his fight them on the beaches speech is still presented to students in universities and military staff courses. He didn’t write many speeches, and those he wrote were carefully scripted, with advice from public servants and military commanders.
Bill Shorten clearly outperforms Churchill: he has delivered at least 170 speeches, written by a professional speechwriter, employed by Services Australia, on a two-year contract valued at $620 000. Services Australia explained to the Senate that although it currently employs 201 media and communication staff, including two speechwriters, it also needs the talent of a particular speechwriter.
Exposure of this expenditure gave the opposition the chance to express its disquiet, but its outrage has been constrained because a generously-funded propaganda outfit is seen as one of the spoils of office. The opposition doesn’t want to devalue a political asset from which it hopes to benefit.
Economists can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the cost of all these resources, and ask in what way the public benefits from such expenditure. A program like NDIS does need to spend a great deal on communication, but how does the public benefit from 170 ministerial speeches? Why is it that as the resources governments devote to “communication” have grown, so too has public mistrust in government?
For a clue to answering this question, go to any minister’s website, and look up “speeches”. Pity the people who have had to listen to them, and the public servants who have been tasked with writing them. As the Senate Clerk has acknowledged, in relation to Parliamentary questions, staff are directed to be vague in the answers they provide for politicians.
But the game goes on as it has for years – opposition politicians ask questions that will never be answered, and public servants write speeches, laden with spin and sophistry, that no one will bother reading. It’s the white-collar equivalent of digging holes and filling them in again.
The speechwriter employed in Shorten’s contract has written scripts for A Country Practice and Sons and Daughters, and speeches for prime ministers Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull. She is clearly talented as a versatile fiction writer.
Wouldn’t we all be better-off, in line with the economic principle of comparative advantage, if that $620 000 were paid as a subsidy to the arts to employ creative fiction writers for public entertainment and enlightenment, and if Bill Shorten, a well-educated minister on top of his portfolio, emulated Churchill and wrote his own speeches?