Politics

Political attitudes – we’re satisfied with our institutions but not with the government

We might soon find ourselves in heated political discussions over Christmas gatherings, but the main message from the ANU survey Perceptions of democracy and other political attitudes in Australia is that Australians are remarkably centrist.

For those content to read a quick overview the ANU Reporter has a summary: Young Aussies satisfied with direction of country amid voter power shift. That finding on satisfaction is newsworthy because it contrasts with high levels of unrest observed among young people in other countries, and with the impression conveyed by right-wing media that Australia is heading in the wrong direction. In fact Australians of all ages are generally satisfied with the direction of the country. As for the voter power shift, it’s minor. The survey finds that if an election were held today the outcome would probably be very similar to that of the 2022 election. Support for the Labor Party is down a little, but respondents rate Albanese more favourably than they rate Dutton.

We get some hint of the national political mood from its summary on confidence in the government:

… confidence in the Federal Government is now [October] higher than it was in the last few months of the Morrison government (January and April 2022) as well as the Black Summer Bushfires (January 2020), however confidence is lower than not only the COVID-19 peak in April-November 2020, but also the relatively high level of confidence seen just after the election of the Albanese government.

That pretty well confirms what is found in the regular Essential polls.

By and large the survey confirms established patterns of political attitudes and voting preferences. Age, education and financial security are strong predictors of attitudes and preferences. Young people and those with university education tend to support parties nominally on the “left”, and to have confidence in our political and social institutions. Those who are struggling financially and those who are lonely are more likely to be disenchanted, dissatisfied, and disconnected from political life.

This survey asked respondents to rate themselves along a left-right spectrum, on a 0 to 10 scale. The result is a distribution with a strong peak in the middle. Women are somewhat to the left of men, although the gender difference is not as strong as has been observed in some other surveys. Those with only high school education tend to be on the right of the spectrum.

At first sight this looks like an unexciting and inconsequential finding, but it is important in two aspects. One is that it suggests that Australians are not particularly politically polarized: the 0 and 10 ends of the spectrum are close to empty.

The other implication is that if a party finds it cannot get enough seats for a majority in the House of Representatives, it would serve the public interest well if it sought a deal – a coalition, a no “no confidence” deal perhaps – with parties or independents whose ideologies are around the centre. This is an established pattern in some European democracies. The standout contrast is in New Zealand, where the centre-right National Party last year formed a coalition with two parties further on the right, an outcome that has led to conflict and instability, as reported by Richard Shaw of Massey University, in a Conversation contribution.

Although respondents showed general support for our democratic institutions, there is a general belief that politicians are corrupt and that they do not make decisions in the interests of ordinary people. People showed more trust in “parliament” and “the federal government” than they did in “the political parties”. Religious institutions and social media were rated poorly on the trust scale.

As is the case in other federations, and in earlier polls, respondents reported more confidence in state and territory governments than in the Commonwealth government (although both scored badly), but they had more confidence in the public service than in either tier of government. “The government” has different meanings to people, depending on whether it refers to politicians and political parties, or to service delivery.

Those who have been following opinion polls will have noticed that in comparison with the 2022 election, primary vote support for the Coalition is up about 3 percent, but support for Labor is down by only 1 percent, while support for the Greens is unchanged. The ANU survey sheds some light on this movement, with a chart and a transition matrix of flows of voting intention. There has been a significant flow from Labor and “other parties” to the Coalition, while Labor has picked up some support from the Coalition, the Greens and “other” parties.

What this means for next year’s election, however, is unclear. If the Coalition’s gain from “others” is from the “teals” it puts the Coalition in a strong position, but if it is from One Nation and Palmer’s UAP, it simply shows that the far right is coming back to the Coalition – as happened in the 2020 Queensland state election.

The survey’s questions on financial stress should put an end to the stupid assertion that we are all bearing the burden of a “cost-of-living” crisis. Two thirds of Australians are doing OK, one third are not. To quote the survey’s finding:

In October 2024, it is estimated that about one-quarter (23.7 per cent) of Australians were living comfortably on their present income, a little under half (46.4 per cent) were coping, more than one-in-five (21.4 per cent) were finding it difficult and a little under one-in-ten (8.5 per cent) were finding it very difficult.

Because “race” is a social construct what does racism mean?

Racism is tricky territory for policymakers. How can we have a public policy around a phenomenon that has no basis in reality, around a concept that arose only around the time of colonial expansion, and that was scientifically debunked more than a hundred years ago?

But as an enduring concept guiding individual behaviour and some collective behaviour, racism is an evil that cannot and should not be ignored.

The Scanlon survey on social cohesion (linked in the roundup of November 23) revealed that over the last six months 17 percent of Australians experienced discrimination because of their skin colour, ethnic origin or religion. That figure is even higher – around 45 percent – for people born in India or sub-Saharan Africa.

First Nations Australians are particularly likely to report such discrimination – 50 percent or more according to Diversity Council Australia. Of course this is not “racial” discrimination, but the idea that First Nations Australians – aboriginal people – constitute a “race” is so deeply ingrained in our way of thinking that Peter Dutton was able to portray the proposed Voice as a form of racial discrimination.

It is in this context that the Australian Human Rights Commission has launched a comprehensive plan aimed at eliminating racism in Australia, as stated in its press release (from which you can link to the full report). To quote:

The Framework contains 63 recommendations for a whole of society approach to eliminating racism, with proposed reforms across Australia’s legal, justice, health, education, media and arts sectors as well as workplaces and data collection.

Fethi Mansouri and Amanuel Eilas of Deakin University summarize the Commission’s plan in a Conversationcontribution: Can we end racism in Australia? Yes, according to the first-ever national plan. They see the plan as having the potential to drive “transformational change” in Australia. It has come “at a time of intensifying hate speech and exclusionary nationalism”. (Gripped by a caution that infects so many academics, they do not call out those who have been causing those divisions.)

We get a view of the Commission’s approach from its list of eight principles guiding the plan’s implementation. Our policymakers should develop policies that:

The emphasis on First Nations Australia is understandable, particularly in light of the wilful damage done to social cohesion by the Voice “No” campaign. In its specific mention of truth-telling the Commission is sending a strong message to the Albanese government, that has gone to water over the Uluru Statement programs, and to the newly-elected Queensland government, that has vindictively shut down that state’s truth-telling inquiry.

At the same time it has strong messages about discrimination directed at or experienced by immigrants, asylum-seekers and students.

Unsurprisingly the report has trouble with language. The document’s last three pages are dedicated to key terms around racism, including some of the terms of critical race theory, such as intersectionality and structural racism.

The idea that racism is “systemic and structural”, listed in the first of those dot points, should be useful in alerting us all to instances of behaviour that may pass unnoticed. But the trouble with the theory of structural racism is that almost by definition it is not visible. It’s close to a non-refutable theory, useless for any guidance for public policy, and it contradicts its sixth point about setting measurable targets.

The document’s most difficult entanglements are with language about racism itself. Its attempt to define “racism” is a tautology.[1] A more useful concept it defines – and uses – is “racialisation”. That is “a process by which people are treated, and understand themselves, as belonging to distinct racial groups”.

We might wonder if raising awareness about “race” advances social cohesion, or if it even distracts from other, clearer forms of unjustifiable discrimination. In the US an obsession with “race” has distracted from the need to deal with the terrible legacy of slavery and its spawning of a disadvantaged “underclass”. It has also elevated in people’s minds the idea of a “white” identity, and the idea of “replacement”.

By contrast, in Australia we were able to get rid of the ghastly “White Australia Policy” quietly in a number of steps, that were hardly noticed at the time. Would we have arrived at our present ethnic mix if reformers had tried to precede it with a formal discussion about  the meaning and definition of “white”? Peter Dutton seems to have demonstrated how such a public debate would have turned out, and it isn’t pretty.

We may do well to be living in a country where the boundary of “who’s in” and “who‘s out” of our tribe has been slowly shifting towards inclusion, rather than being determined by an announced policy change.

More broadly a focus on “race” distracts from unjustified discrimination based on country of ancestry, appearance, religion, and can lead to the idea, prevalent in the US, that “people of colour” bear some intolerable burden, even if they are card-carrying members of the plutocracy.

The difficult issue that is somewhat outside the scope of the Human Rights Commission’s document, is about the extent to which our public policies are assimilationist. In fact brutally strong assimilationist policies are often defended on the basis that they are anti-racist. It’s a weak but superficially plausible argument. We do justifiably insist on assimilation in certain domains of our life, such as voting and getting a driver’s licence. But to what extent do we subtly try to enforce assimilation in other areas, simply because we are uncomfortable with people who don’t look and behave like us?

1. The document’s definition: “Racism is the process by which systems and policies, actions and attitudes create inequitable opportunities and outcomes for people based on race”. ↩

Does Dutton have to run a scare campaign on immigration?

Can Australia actually have a sensible debate about immigration? asks Laura Tingle on the ABC’s 730.

She covers ugly stories about politicians vilifying immigrant groups and indigenous Australians. Most of her article, however, is about the less racialized aspects of the immigration debate – claims that we have lost control of our borders and claims that immigrants are responsible for everything from the cost of housing and congestion on our roads through to the price of Tim-Tams in our supermarkets.

Ship
Tom Roberts “Coming south” 1886 (NGV)

No, we haven’t lost control of our borders. In fact in a move condemned by Human Rights Watch, and by the Refugee Council, in its rushed Parliamentary sitting last week the government enacted three harsh pieces of legislation – approving the government to pay other countries to take people forcibly removed from Australia, authorising the government to ban visas from countries that do not accept involuntary removals, and allowing administrators of migration detention centres to confiscate cell phones.

Not to be outdone, and buoyed by Trump’s success in making immigration an election issue, Dutton is pursuing a line that Labor has been soft on immigration.

Tingle describes the political manoeuvring around the bill to cap student visa numbers. Although the proposal is in line with Coalition policy, the Coalition refuses to support it, because they want to sustain the story that Labor cannot control immigration. That’s straight out of Trump’s playbook. That bill didn’t pass the Senate.

As Tingle explains, and as was explained in the roundup of November 16 covering the application of Trumpist politics in Australia , both the old parties are making promises about immigration that they cannot honour. There are many aspects of immigration we cannot control, such as Australian citizens returning home from countries that have become less welcoming. There is a flow of people, New Zealand and Australian citizens, coming across the Tasman to Australia, repelled by New Zealand’s far-right coalition government, and we can expect a flow of Australians returning home from the US once Trump takes office.

And our immigration issues are radically different from those in the US, where people are pouring across the Rio Grande to take up work in businesses avoiding already weak minimum wage laws. Somehow students working in cafes and supermarkets and living in student digs aren’t quite as scary to the Australian voter as the prospect that your kids will have to learn Spanish to get a job.

Our immigration issues are also very different from those in Europe, where immigration has been far less controlled and has involved the influx of people with minimum skills and language difficulties, turning up in countries already struggling with an oversupply of unskilled labour, as Sheri Berman writes in Persuasion: Europe’s center is losing on immigration. Europe has the added problem of Ukrainian refugees and Russia weaponizing immigration by pushing immigrants across Schengen borders in order to support far-right populists.

That doesn’t mean Dutton will not try to run a scare campaign, as he unashamedly did when he was Home Affairs minister, claiming that Victorians were afraid to go out because of African gang violence.

An immigration issue escaping our attention is the growing numbers of climate refugees, writes the ABC’s Gareth Hutchens. His article is mainly about climate refugees from Pacific nations. Their numbers will look like a rounding error on our net numbers, but that’s not the issue. Rather it’s that we are using immigration as a lazy and cheap way to deal with the consequences of climate change, ignoring the serious problem of physical destruction of their communities. He also documents problems with programs that have brought in “temporary” migrants from the Pacific to work in agriculture, horticulture and meat processing. Many of these people have been subjected to exploitative treatment – close to slavery in cases. “It should be obvious to anyone that our treatment of temporary workers under this scheme is at odds with our need to build closer bonds with our island neighbours” he writes.

Gambling ads – sorry Albo, it’s not going away

Action on gambling advertisements was not included in the frenzy of legislation at the end of last week. The government, or Albanese at least, seems to have put it into the “too hard” basket, hoping it goes away.

But it isn’t going away. Tim Costello, interviewed on Radio National, assures us that the Alliance of Gambling Reform has already put Peta Murphy’s proposal for a ban on gambling advertising on the agenda for 2025 (6 minutes). The alliance is broad-based, comprising religious spokespeople (Christian and other), unions, and domestic violence advocates.

They will keep up pressure on Albanese. In fact they will provide an opportunity for the Coalition to wedge Labor. The fact that it is not doing so says something about the extent to which the gambling companies and the football codes have both the old parties on their side. The issue is also about Albanese’s fear of backlash from media companies if one of their more lucrative funding sources is blocked.

Jason Koutsoukis, writing in The Saturday Paper, gives us some more insight into Albanese’s reluctance to deal with the issue: “Don’t do it”: The man calling the shots on gambling reform. That man is Peter V’landys, chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission and chief executive of Racing New South Wales. The issue isn’t just about a fear of a political backlash: it’s also about mates – not only V’landys but also Gillon McLachlan and Andrew Dillon of the Australian Football League.

Koutsoukis goes through the full story of the government’s hesitation, from Peta Murphy’s committee recommending a complete ban, to the present situation, on Schwartz Media’s 7am: The NRL’s influence on Albanese’s gambling reforms. At one point Koutsoutkis suggests that personal relationships with football executives may be more important in influencing Albanese’s position than concern for commercial media’s fortunes. He also points to some of the initiatives the government has undertaken to limit sports betting.

He points out that in fact Albanese did have a compromise worked out. It was weaker than a complete ban but significantly stronger than the Opposition’s proposals, and probably would have gained Parliamentary support. But in what looks like a “captain’s call”, Albanese pulled it from the legislative agenda.

Koutsoukis gives a thorough account of the politics of the issue. But the question no-one is asking is why a government, particularly a national government, should have any policy towards spectator sport. There is a public health case for all governments to have policies on sports participation, and for city governments to have policies around stadiums: they’re big buildings attracting a lot of traffic. There is no case, however, in terms of the economics of public goods, for national governments to support spectator sports. In economists’ terms, they are “excludable”, and therefore private goods. Yes, people enjoy football, but they also enjoy beer and barbeques. Football, beer and barbeques can all be provided in markets without the need for public subsidies or other support from government.

Labor will probably lose support over this issue, but it should not be to the gain of the Coalition, who are even more in the pockets of big sport and old media. Independents have the strongest Parliamentary voice on this issue.

Political donations – will independents get a look-in?

The government’s proposed changes to political donations didn’t get up in the end-of-year legislation panic. As pointed out in last week’s roundup, this means, if the government takes the opportunity, that they have more time to negotiate with independents.

From a Conversation post written by Michelle Grattan – Liberals argue Labor’s electoral reform package should stand or fall as a whole in any court challenge – it appears that the government is willing to negotiate with the Greens if they get nowhere with the Coalition. They would have to get support from other Senators, but they could still leave out Andrew Wilkie and David Pocock, two Senators whose values closely align with those of the teal independents.

The issue blocking a Labor-Coalition deal is the Coalition’s insistence that donation caps and spending caps should be linked, so that if a High Court challenge negates one, the other goes. The Coalition, whose donors include some of Australia’s more unlovable oligarchs, and representatives of powerful foreign interests, are particularly wary about disclosure reforms, which are associated with donation caps.

Demonstrating that donation reform is possible, the South Australian government is putting forward a bill on electoral reform. At its core is a ban on donations to registered political parties. Its initial proposal would have simply resulted in heightened protection for incumbents. It has since revised that bill. The ABC’s Harvey Briggs explains that the revised bill has widespread support, because new candidates and newly-registered parties are exempt from the ban.

Another important aspect of the revised bill is a cap on third-party spending. Relevant to this provision is the 2018 campaign by the Australian Hospitality Association, who spent heavily to thwart gambling reform – as the hotel lobby has done in Tasmania.