Politics


The Greens and the ABC help launch a far-right political movement

Three forces – the Labor Party’s rigid rules on party loyalty, the arrogance of political journalists, and the naivety of the Greens –have come together to help launch a political movement on the far right.

Although these have become interlinked, they can be addressed in turn.


Labor Party Rules – solidarity forever

Writing in The Conversation, Emily Foley of La Trobe University explains the Labor Party rules about solidarity. Fatima Payman breached “caucus solidarity”. What does this mean and why is it so significant?

She explains the particular context of Labor’s policy towards Middle East affairs: the party’s platform calls on the Australian government to recognize Palestine as a state. On that basis one might believe that Senator Payman was on solid ground in voting with the Greens, but as Foley explains, decisions on whether to bring forward policies is a matter for the Labor Parliamentary caucus, which was not prepared to go so far at this stage.

The solidarity rule dates back to the party’s infancy in 1891. Although the media has presented Senator Payman’s breach of the rule as a major incident, she is not the first to have done so. There have been others, but not as many as in the Coalition parties, which do not have such rules. A history of “floor crossing” from 1950 to 2019 is on the Parliamentary website.

The relative age of the main parties has some relevance. In 1891 the newly-formed Labor Party was involved in a clearly-defined class struggle. The Coalition parties have shorter histories. In an article on SBS NewsFatima Payman crossed the floor: why is it so controversial? – Bob Manwaring of Flinders University explains that while the Labor Party’s model of democracy is based on delegation, the Liberal party’s model is based more on representation.

The difference should not be overstated: practically it’s degree rather than a categorical distinction, because party discipline is almost as tight in the Coalition parties. Australia stands out among other democracies for the strength of parliamentary party discipline. The growing political success of independents suggests that the public is tiring of the idea of delegated democracy and strict party discipline. The Labor Party seems not to have caught up with this broader political movement.


Journalists wo think they’re blessed with divine wisdom to define agendas

The general media narrative of the politics of last week is that the ructions in the Senate around Payman’s vote and her statements on The Insiders have robbed the government of the opportunity to spruik its initiatives to help people deal with cost-of-living problems, particularly the tax cuts and higher award wages that started on July 1.

It is as if God has descended from the heavens and has spoken to the multitudes to set the agenda for the week. Those journalists more prone to agnosticism or atheism may believe in some Jungian phenomenon of spontaneous outbreaks of changes in collective consciousness. They use the passive voice, as if agency is untraceable: “The government has been robbed of its opportunity …”.

Bullshit! It’s journalists, particularly those who hang around the Parliamentary press gallery, who take it upon themselves to set the agenda. Stories about defections and disloyalty are easy to cover, particularly when the actors are in the same building – much easier than stories about marginal tax rates, consumer spending, monetary and fiscal policy – even though the latter are much more consequential in people’s lives.

This arrogance was in full display when the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson interviewed Prime Minister Albanese on Tuesday night. In the 15-minute interview Ferguson consistently kept trying to turn the discussion to Senator Payman’s behaviour, missing an opportunity to call the government to account for doing no more than tinkering with the Coalition’s tax cuts. Why has it not dealt with the inequitable treatment of trusts, capital gains and “negative gearing”? Why has it retained tax privileges for wealthy “self-funded” retirees? Why are “Jobseeker” recipients largely neglected in the cost-of-living initiatives?

Albanese wasn’t challenged at all on these matters, and when it came to questions about Senator Payman’s behaviour, he was able to list a number of initiatives that go some way, but not very far, towards relieving the suffering of Palestinian people.

More basically, ABC’s journalists have not explained why they have given Senator Payman’s resignation from the Labor Party so much more prominence than they have gave the resignations of Andrew Broadbent and Andrew Gee from Coalition parties and Lidie Thorpe from the Greens.


The Greens’ naivety

The Greens’ behaviour in this episode is reminiscent of its behaviour in 2009, when its obstruction of the Rudd government’s Carbon Reduction Scheme was instrumental in pushing action on climate change back ten years, and contributing to the election of the Abbott and Morrison governments.

Once again, the Greens seem to be rejecting the idea of incremental reform: if you can’t have it all, take nothing. Or maybe they are adherents of the old revolutionary idea, that it’s better to deal with a hard-right government than with a centre-left one, because a hard-right government’s policies will precipitate a strong reaction, upsetting the established order.

Many Australians are disappointed by the government’s timid approach to the conflict in Israel, and are no doubt hoping that the Greens and independents can keep heat on the government to be a little politically braver.

On Palestine and on many other issues, Labor seems to be guided by the political theory that all it has to do is to sit a little to the left of its rival, the Coalition in this case, because voters to the left of the Coalition have nowhere else to go, particularly when there’s compulsory voting. It’s a solid theory for a two-party contest, but not for the complex political landscape Australia has developed over the last 80 years. Voters have many other places to go.

The Greens, however, with help from media who have overblown the importance Senator Payman’s defection, have energized a movement that will run candidates in a campaign against the government, and are unlikely to support the Greens.

Senator Payman has said in an ABC radio interview that she does not want to make her defection a religious issue. She’s a senator, representing all electors in Western Australia, but the political situation in western Sydney and parts of Melbourne is quite different, where people with their own political ambitions are framing her defection in religion-based terms.

In these regions there has been the emergence of the Muslim Votes Matter movement. Note the name, and the statements by Sheikh Wesam Charkawi. It’s not about support for the victims of Israel’s aggression, or the interests of immigrant communities politically overlooked by Labor (the latter being the approach of Dai Le). Imagine how we might perceive a “Catholic Votes Matter” movement, or, in light of developments in India, a “Hindu Votes Matter” movement.

We don’t need a religious-based movement in our landscape. We’ve been there, and don’t want to go there again. There was the 20-year phenomenon of the DLP, a socially conservative party backed by hard-line Catholics, with roots in European fascism, but for the last 30 years our political landscape has been effectively secular. Outfits such as Family First have tried to avoid disclosing themselves as faith-based movemnts.

Religious-based movements tend to line up on the hard right, and there is no reason that an Islam-based movement would not follow in this tradition, because such movements are guided not by a religion’s nominal followers, but by a hard core of its most dogmatic adherents, usually male, as was the case with the DLP. Also we might recall that Tony Abbott tried to woo conservative Muslims to his socially-conservative policies, recognizing that within the Australian Muslim community there is a hard-right minority.

Even if a Muslim-based movement failed to have any candidates elected – it may not gain much support among women – its preferences would probably favour the Coalition, particularly in the light of the Coalition’s history of doing preference deals with movements on the far right. It's notable that in this case the “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery is heavily involved: his political influence has been one of disruption, particularly in the direction of ensuring that Labor faces a difficult Senate. And in any event the people who swing elections tend to be those who take the attitude “if the government is bad, the other side would surely be better”.

This is dangerous territory in our democracy, having been made so by the Coalition who categorize any criticism of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and by what may be called the “kindergarten left”, to use an old Marxist term. These are well-meaning people whose legitimate sympathy for the people of Gaza has become merged with support for the political movement Hamas, an authoritarian misogynist movement on the hard right, properly described by most governments as a terrorist organization.

Between them, the Coalition and the kindergarten left have allowed the conflict to be seen in religious terms, rather than in terms of territory and sovereignty.

For the people of Gaza nothing is gained when the Greens put up motions that go beyond the government’s timid stances. Even if the Senate did pass such a motion, it would be lucky if it were reported on Page 50 of Haaretz.

Diggers
Fortunately for the Greens they aren’t loaded

The only plausible explanation for the Greens’ behaviour in the Senate is that they were putting Senator Payman in a position which would lead to her defection from the Labor Party.

They have succeeded, but it’s a pyrrhic victory. Senator Payman is not joining the Greens, and Sheikh Charkawi has explicitly ruled out backing the Greens.

We now know that Muslim Votes Matter is targeting two specific seats in western Sydney, Blaxland and Watson, both held by Labor (Ministers Jason Clare and Tony Burke) on around a 65 percent TPP vote. Blaxland has a 32 percent Islam population, and Watson has a 25 percent Muslim population.

Some commentators, including ABC’s Tom Crowley, have likened the developments in western Sydney as a “Teal style” campaign, but that’s a poor analogy, for the Teals have been representing mainstream secular values. A movement emphasizing religion will struggle to get its candidates elected. The percentages of Muslims in these electorates look impressive, but it’s a fair guess that many have embraced secular values and would be wary about a religious-based movement. People of other faiths, or with no religious belief, will be turned off by a religious-based movement.

The real damage, however, is with the re-emergence of religion in our political landscape, and for this there are many who have done their part: Peter Dutton above all, who re-framed the Voice in terms of race and has similarly re-framed the Gaza war in terms of religion; journalists who have elevated one politician’s defection into a major issue; and the politically naive left, which clearly includes the Greens.

The Greens’ kindergarten left credentials have been clearly on display in Adam Bandt’s performance on the 730 Report, where he refused to criticize Greens colleague Senator Jordon Steele-John, who had not supported a motion from Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie condemning those who had vandalized war memorials on Anzac Parade.


Can we stop the development of a hard-right religion-based movement? Perhaps we can if the Labor Party becomes less rigid, if parliamentary journalists practise a little professional humility, and if the Greens in Parliament think before they try to be clever.


Is the media to blame?

How should journalists go about their work in a post-truth world, where the personal qualities that make for good journalism – education, expertise and experience – are devalued?

In their Saturday morning Global Roaming program, Geraldine Doogue and Hamish MacDonald put this question to Marty Baron who until 2021 was Editor of the Washington Post, and was previously Editor of the Boston Globe: Is the media to blame?

Baron’s response does not deviate from the traditional model of professional behaviour. The journalist’s task is to find and reveal the truth, relying on evidence and reason. He or she is not to stand as moral guardian: it’s up to the reader to pass judgement. He admits that this discipline has been tough for journalists covering Trump over the last eight years.

His advice to political journalists covering Trump, and by extension other demagogues, is to focus on their policies, rather than on their personal character flaws and uncouth behaviour.

Baron is enthusiastic about investigative journalism. Many may recall seeing him portrayed by actor Liev Schreiber as Boston Globe Editor in the 2015 movie Spotlight, about the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese.

Much of the interview is about the financial stress under which all traditional media operate. There is also discussion about the way people are turning off news. Perhaps it’s because people see the media as an elite, lacking interest in people’s everyday struggles.

My own comment is that ABC journalists are frequently out in the streets, conducting quick interviews about people’s concerns – access to health care, the price of groceries, rental distress and so on. But these grabs seem to be disconnected from the bigger stories that can explain to the public why there is a shortage of medical staff, why food prices have risen, why there is a housing undersupply problem. Such issues are covered elsewhere in high-quality documentary programs but these programs are directed to an already-informed audience.

Geraldine Doogue mentions the way a society gripped by a feeling that everything is going wrong provides fertile ground for a demagogue offering simple solutions to difficult problems. We see this sentiment in Europe and the US, and in Australia we see polling by Essential that most of us believe Australia is heading in the wrong direction, without any indication of what the “right” direction may be.

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Perhaps ABC journalists who repeatedly talk about “a cost of living crisis”, or a “housing” crisis, should check the way they use this language so loosely, framing our economic problems as crises.

A crisis is something calling for immediate action, and the populist always has an easy solution, even if it involves making a few things up. But our economic problems stem from long-term shortcomings that aren’t going to be solved in one electoral cycle.

In fact our so-called “cost-of living” problem and our housing problem are both matters of wide inequities: most Australians, particularly the two thirds or so who are well housed, are doing very well economically.

It’s unfortunate that journalists so easily reach for the word “crisis”, fertilizing the ground for populists, rather than looking at evidence such as the work of the ANU Centre for Policy Research, revealing that for most Australians real incomes are back to or above the standards they enjoyed before the Covid pandemic

If journalists frame these problems in terms of equity, the policy debate has to shift to difficult issues of intergenerational equity, the distribution of wealth and opportunity, and the structure of our economy. These are all matters for which there are no quick and easy answers, and the solution to which requires some immediate sacrifice in order to realize this country’s extraordinary opportunities.

Baron is author of the 2023 book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post.


What the failure of the Voice referendum reveals about our political landscape

There was about 60 percent support for the Voice when the government announced that it was going ahead with the referendum. A year later, at the referendum, the “Yes” vote came in at just under 40 percent.

A reader has brought to our attention an analysis of the failure of the referendum by Tim Rowse, of Western Sydney University, published in Inside Story: Why did Australia reject the voice? It’s a review of three books and three journal articles by people generally sympathetic to the sentiment of the Uluru Statement and who have analysed the referendum failure with a degree of detachment.

When so many contributions by people with well-informed opinions are reviewed, it’s unsurprising that there is no consensus on the reason for the failure.

One view is that the Albanese government was naïve, or even arrogant, in not seeking a bipartisan consensus. It was possibly lured into a false assurance by the strong early polling, and by its reading of the views of previous administrations.

The contrasting view is that the Coalition would never have turned down an opportunity to frame the referendum as an Albanese-Labor initiative, and therefore an opportunity to work for its failure as a means of inflicting a political blow on the government. (In this regard the Coalition’s approach to the Voice referendum was remarkably similar to the successful campaign it ran in 1988 against four referenda about political reforms, all of which had strong initial support.)

The evidence put forward in these contributions is more to the latter view: there was no way the Coalition was going to support the Voice, particularly after the National Party laid down its opposition early in the process. Even if there wasn’t to be bipartisan support, however, there were still ways the government could have handled it better.

In the works that Rowse reviews there is much more than these contrasting perspectives. One is a rich discussion on the basic question of rights, and whether one group should be given special consideration, even if they have unique claims, such as 60 000 years of prior settlement. (During the campaign the “No” advocates diverted attention from this issue by deliberately confusing “race”, whatever that means, with indigeneity.)

Then there is the question of the meaning of a political “settlement”. There may be agreement about an issue across the traditional partisan divide, but if one side, usually the conservative side in relation to Aboriginal matters, has been brought along by election calculations rather than by conviction, is that a “settlement”?

An issue, just touched upon, is whether our Constitution is simply a document about the smooth administration of a federal government, or a place where people’s rights should be set down.

Revealed in Rowse’s review are several considered reasons the “No” case could have mounted in support of their campaign. But apart from a little discussion about the relationship of the Voice to executive government, the “No” campaign didn’t engage in a rational argument. Instead it ran a scare campaign, drawing on lies and a public lack of understanding of the Constitution. In doing so the issue at stake – the voice of indigenous Australians – became subsumed by the issue of whether there is any place for arguments about public policy.

The ABC’s Tom Lowrey reports that Uluru Dialogues Chair Pat Anderson is urging the government not to be disheartened by the defeat of the Voice: Indigenous Voice architects back Greens push for federal truth and justice commission.

Maybe the government believes that it is on a hiding to nothing if it puts up any proposal for constitutional reform while the Coalition remains in the hands of hard right populists. But that’s a short-sighted view. It is reasonably clear from the works Rowse cites that the case for the Voice needed a much better understanding of our history and of the Uluru Statement. That takes a long time, and a great amount of explanation. By the time the community achieves that understanding Dutton will be long gone from public life, and the Liberal Party will either have reformed, or been replaced by a competent centre-right party. It would be a good idea to start that process now.


Polls – independents rising perhaps, and women turning off the Coalition’s policies

The general impression from the media is that the government is being hammered in the polls, but in terms of voting intentions, the situation has been fairly stable over the last few months.

A dig into William Bowe’s Poll Bludger reveals that the most recent Newspoll suggests that if an election were held today the outcome would be exactly the same as in 2022, while an average across six polls suggests that the Labor vote is down by about two percent, with the gains going equally to the Coalition and the Greens. On those numbers Labor may lose its majority, but the Coalition, particularly the Liberal Party, would still be in the political wilderness.

For those interested in the Electoral Commission’s draft boundary changes, Guardian Australia has a 4-minute video which includes maps of changes in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Resulting from these changes Labor may pick up a seat, the Coalition may lose one.

One poll result that seems to have escaped media attention is the voting intention in the most recent Essential political insights polls. Support for “Independent or other party” (other than Coalition, Labor, Greens, One Nation, UAP) has been rising strongly, particularly among women. Among women support for Labor is holding up, while support for the Coalition continues to slide.

The most recent Essential poll has regular surveys on people’s perceptions of Albanese and Dutton on the qualities described as “Trustworthy”, “Visionary” and for the first time, “Decisive”. They score equally poorly on trustworthiness – reflecting the tit-for-tat nature of political contests. Dutton leads by 7 percentage points on vision – strange, unless you could classify the idea of fiscal austerity leading to poverty and class division as a “vision”. Perhaps he hasn’t really explained the consequences of his policies.

On decisiveness Dutton is ahead of Albanese by 10 percentage points. This perception is consistent with his presentation as the populist demagogue with simple answers to difficult problems: reduce immigration, reduce taxes, ditch renewable energy, break up Coles and Woolworths … (It’s strange that Essential classifies decisiveness as a “positive” leadership attribute.)

In the same round of polling Essential has a number of questions about people’s attitudes to climate change and energy policies. The age and voting intention differences are pretty well as one may guess. There are strong gender differences: women are particularly turned off by Dutton’s nuclear fantasies. And women are much more concerned than men about the impact of climate change on the next generation.

One promising finding is a growing awareness that nuclear energy is more expensive than energy from renewable resources. Eight months ago respondents ranked nuclear as cheaper than renewables, but that ranking has reversed.


European elections

So far there isn’t much conclusive analysis of the French elections. Romain Fathi of ANU, writing in The Conversation, gives an account of the first round in the parliamentary elections: The far-right has surged to the lead in France’s elections. But forming a government remains a tall order.

To put the results in an Australian context, it would be as if the Electoral Commission has just announced all first-preference votes, but has told us to wait a week before it distributes preferences.

Clock Museum d'orsay
Time will tell the Assembly outcome

There is a difference, however, in that in sequential voting, most people get a second go, as Fathi explains. In most countries’ runoff elections only the two top parties are on the ballot, but France, having to be different, allows more parties to join the ticket, effectively retaining some of the shortcomings of first-past-the-post systems. In order to leave voters with only a binary choice – the hard right or others – many candidates are pulling out of the run-off. If the run-off is mainly a two-party contest, we should be able to assess whether the strong vote for the far-right in the first round was support for their policies, a protest vote against Macron’s party, or maybe simply a chronic feeling of discontent that infects the French.

For now we do know that in a reasonably high turnout (67 percent), Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has won 34 percent of vote, the broad left coalition calling itself the Popular Front has come in with 28 percent, and Macron’s centrist coalition has 20 percent.

The issues on which parties stood are summarized in a Le MondeEnglish language article: French elections: What we know about the policy platforms. The strongest part of the National Rally platform is a highly restrictive immigration policy. It seems to have backed off a little from its earlier pro-Russian policy on Ukraine, and from its promise to restore the pension age to 62 (Macron raised it to 64 a year ago). Included in its platform are policies which could be classified as “progressive” or “left”, including higher minimum wages and a wealth tax. It’s easy for political movements without a track record in government to make promises.

On Friday our time there was another European election, this time the British – one of a handful of democracies with a first-past-the-post voting system. There should be some analysis by the time the next roundup is prepared.


We have a new Governor-General

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Sam’s new digs

Sam Mostyn AC was sworn in as our 28th Governor-General on Monday – an event largely overlooked by a media obsessed by the voting pattern of a junior senator. Her speech has the requisite formal content in an established pattern, but it also has much of her own contribution.

In view of her background it’s not surprising that she gives some weight to issues of particular concern to women, including domestic violence. She also gives mental health coverage. There is acknowledgement of Australians’ concern with “growing inequality in a country that has always held equality dear”.

Those looking for any hint of her beliefs about the office itself, and what it might look like when we sever our ties with a foreign monarch may be disappointed, but they may read something into her statement “I will remain alive to changing expectations and needs, whilst holding fast to respect for the role and its place in our peaceful democracy”.

It will be through her behaviour that she will exemplify the role of an Australian head of state.