Politics
The values and purpose of a liberal party
As the Liberal Party tears itself apart in a pitch to the extreme right, Crikey’s Bernard Keane reminds us of work already done to re-establish a liberal party in the Menzian tradition.
Fourteen years ago a group of politically-involved Australians, dismayed by the direction our public life was heading, came together to take the first steps in forming a new political party.
They believed that:
… the established political parties, as if in a corrosive grand alliance, have repeatedly failed Australians on the big issues and the country is looking once more for intelligent and enlightened leadership, inspired by a belief in justice, integrity and a sense of a fair go. These are values that need to be better enshrined in a modern, independent and progressive political party of national purpose.
They sought to change the way we do politics in Australia:
We believe it is important for Australia to conduct its political life differently from what has prevailed now for some time: less rancorous, more ethical, and more focused on reform and dealing with the challenging social and economic issues facing the country.
They saw the need for an independent Australia:
We want an Australian head of state: our location in the Asian region, with our economic future tied more strongly to emerging regional economies, highlights starkly the anomaly of having a head of state who sits on the British throne on the other side of the world.
That necessarily would involve Australia forging a more independent and regionally-based foreign policy:
… above all we should not cede to any foreign country the capacity to decide whether Australia is at peace or goes to war, nor will we participate in war just because our traditional allies go to war.
Their domestic policy platform was liberal:
We intend to advocate for a cohesive, diverse, secular, multicultural, fair and free Australia, to initiate reform of the key institutions of our democracy where deficiencies exist.
They believed that public policy should be more directed at those who were missing out on enjoying the full benefits of our prosperity, noting the conditions of indigenous Australians, young people and women. They emphatically sought fair treatment of refugees. And they sought a fairer taxation system:
… we want to achieve greater fairness through more balanced contributions from corporate and individual taxpayers to government revenue raising.
They were particularly critical of the concentration of media ownership, and of the way our universities had become “more like trading corporations”.
While the tone of their Statement of Values and Purpose is liberal, its economic priorities would put it on the centre-right of the political spectrum. They believed that “private enterprise has to be at the centre of the country’s economic activity”. But it is free of the idea that the public sector is some unproductive and wasteful overhead, as expressed in the Liberal Party’s Statement of Beliefs. Rather than denigrating the public sector, they acknowledged its value:
We value and uphold the importance of a guarantee to defend effective public administration. Hence, we will seek to revalue the role, independence and contribution of a robust and efficient public service, one resourced and supported to the highest standard, and emboldened to give frank and fearless advice.
They took an economically responsible attitude to climate change:
Despite the un-extracted riches in Australia’s coal reserves, the imperative of moving to a post-carbon economy is clear, and the urgency of government intervention to achieve it is compelling. We believe that calibrated, evidence-based policies – introduced in good time with appropriate price signals and investment clarity and certainty for industry – will yield the necessary emissions reductions without up-ending our economy.
That statement on climate change is from the 2015 (and last) draft of their statement, when the Abbott government had demolished the Gillard government’s carbon price. They drivers of this movement stated that:
Australia once led the world in confronting the threats posed by climate change. We can and should do so again.
Over the following ten years, to the present day, these arguments have become stronger, as we realise that the damage posed by climate change is more severe than scientists were warning, and as renewable energy has tumbled in price. In fact, the urgency of most reforms the authors of this statement call for has increased.
In case you have not guessed the identity of the instigator of this movement, it was Malcolm Fraser, who died in 2015, having resigned from the Liberal Party in 2009 after Abbott had won the party’s Parliamentary leadership.
Henry Hasler has brought this movement to our attention, noting that in the last few days Crikey’s Bernard Keane has reminded us of its relevance. His post – Malcolm Fraser’s vision for a new centrist political party could be just what voters (and the Liberals) need – concludes with reference to lacunae on our political landscape. Referring to the statement, he writes:
It’s a vision of a different kind of centre-right party than the one we’re currently allowed to imagine, one both conservative and liberal as the Menziean Liberals were – pro-market, fiscally disciplined, preferring smaller government, backing the rule of law and basic freedoms, pro-migration and asylum seekers, strongly supportive of equality, strongly for the agency of First Peoples, one committed to intergenerational equity – and committed to an Australia that recognises its changed strategic context.
It is particularly relevant today as the Liberal Party and the National Party try to reconcile their differences. Writing in The Saturday Paper – Barnaby Joyce’s collision path with the Coalition – John Hewson suggests that in the short-term at least the National Party should go its own way and let the Liberal Party get on with the job of developing its own policies, positioning itself “as a genuine reform party, willing to honestly address issues such as climate change, tax reform and fiscal responsibility, and take the electorate into its confidence as to how these issues can best be tackled and the likely outcomes”.
Maybe, but this dispute, that has captured media attention, is not about climate change policy. Anyone who has written a speech for a politician could easily write the vague and meaningless words that pass for policy agreement. As the Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss said about the National Party’s rejection of net zero, it’s about political strategists in the National Party seeking to harvest support from One Nation voters, either through gaining back ground or at least obtaining a tight flow of preferences.
Bernard Keane writes that it would be foolish for the Liberal Party to follow the National Party in trying to consolidate right-wing support: Chasing One Nation is a dead end for the Liberals – and would guarantee a split.
But a permanent split and re-constitution of the Liberal Party may be the best outcome for those who, like Hewson, seek to see a party on the centre-right take a respected place on the Australian political landscape. In Fraser’s statement there is already a set of values and principles, and guidance towards liberal policies such a party could endorse.
What we’re experiencing in Australia is possibly a local manifestation of worldwide trends in multi-party democracies, where parties on the right have to decide whether to form or join centrist coalitions, as is the case in Germany and will probably be the outcome in the Netherlands, or to pull together coalitions on the right, including the far right, as has been the case in New Zealand.
The thinking of our politicians, and of the political commentariat, has still not caught up with the reality that our politics is slowly but inexorably developing into a multi-party system.
Gambling – too big to fail, too powerful to regulate?
A new book reveals the extent to which the gambling industry has enmeshed itself into our political movements, particularly the Labor Party.
Gambling is to Australia what gun ownership is to the USA. The vast majority of the public seek reform, but in both cases powerful and well-resourced lobbies are able to thwart reform through political processes – scare campaigns, control of political donations, and through gaining influence within political parties.
The broad issues have been covered in these roundups – most recently on September 27. More recently on Late Night Live David Marr has interviewed Quentin Beresford of the Sunshine Coast University about How Australia’s politicians got hooked on gambling.
Beresford describes in detail how we have come to be the world’s biggest gambling losers, and how, with 0.25 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of the world’s poker machines.
These aren’t any old generic machines: they’re Australian designed and built, cleverly incorporating the most up-to-date inducements designed to keep gamblers hooked. When we exploit the vulnerable, we do it thoroughly.
Beresford’s story is about political deals, court decisions that override governments’ attempts to regulate gambling, broken promises to electorates, cosmetic “reforms” designed to fail, and above all the power of the lobbies representing licensed clubs, hotels, football associations and commercial media. He calls out Labor and Coalition politicians, federal and state, for their failure to regulate this industry, but it seems to be the Labor Party that’s most at fault for political gutlessness and for having put out the welcome mat to gambling lobbyists.
Part of the story is about the common practice of lobbies pitting one political party against the other, but Beresford points out that in the case of gambling there has been the unusual situation of bipartisan support for reform. He’s referring to the 2023 Parliamentary Committee report You win some you lose more, now known as the “Murphy Report” after the late Peta Murphy who chaired the committee. In spite of this backing from Labor, the Coalition and others, in spite of accumulated evidence of the cost of gambling, in spite of cases of money-laundering in gambling venues, and in spite of community pressure for reform, the Albanese government is still ignoring the report’s recommendations.
Beresford is author of Hooked: Inside the murky world of Australia's gambling industry. He acknowledges the strength of the lobbies, suggesting they are too big to fail and too powerful to regulate, but he sees the possibility that some event, or a particularly confronting story, will mobilize the public to demand reform.
As a prod to the government Roy Morgan has released a report on gambling trends in Australia. The total proportion of Australians classified as “gamblers” has fallen a little over the last three years – from 65.6 percent of the population to 62.9 percent. But at the same time the proportion of the population classified as “problem gamblers” has risen sharply, from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent (from 392 000 to 622 000 people). There has also been a rise in the proportion of “moderate risk gamblers”, from 5.3 percent to 5.8 percent.
Problem gambling is concentrated among people aged 18 to 34 and among people at risk of mortgage stress.