Today, four brilliant pieces on the tragedy of our two nations from Tim Dunlop, Nardya Colvin, Graham McPherson and Dave Green.
First, several readers are interested in John Howard’s comments on the culture wars, reported in the Australian by Paul Kelly on October 27. This is the relevant extract:
“For five years Howard’s prime ministership has been plagued by the legitimacy issue. It’s something he feels. It originates in Howard’s initial tolerance of Pauline Hanson’s racial chauvinism and continues through his refusal to apologise to Aborigines, his campaign for the Queen against the republic, his assertion of Australian values against Asian engagement, his championing of social conservatism and in his dramatic election-eve stance against the boat people. The intelligentsia is unforgiving. It damns Howard as a racist, or a manipulator of race politics, or as a leader prepared to split the nation for his own gratification, or as guilty on all counts. In short, as unfit to lead.
“When I ask Howard where his legitimacy problem is these days, he replies: “In limbo.” That is, it awaits final judgement on November 10. Howard ruminates and talks about himself as an outsider might, slipping into the third person. The legitimacy issue was “alive and well when we were doing poorly in the polls early in this year. There were people, and I don’t just mean Phillip Adams and Robert Manne (he gives me a steely sideways stare) who were saying, you know, `He’s got no world view and he’s a cheap opportunist’. So that’s why I say it is in cold storage. I mean, if we win this election it is academic. If we don’t win the election I think it will become, in the eyes of some of these people, the wisdom that we lost the election because `he never really had a world view and because the only reason he won in 96 was because people were desperate to have a change of government and didn’t like Keating and took the attitude that Howard would do and they voted for him and he has gone backwards ever since.”
“Yes, Howard knows the mind of his opponents. As a professional, he knows his enemies and their critique. He’s a media junkie, always has been. Howard’s paradox is that he has turned the critics’ hostility into an electoral plus for himself, yet he still wants the ultimate recognition of his achievement and legitimacy.”
TWO NATIONS
1. Tim Dunlop
Change through engagement
Whoever wins Saturdays election, those who support a progressive agenda have to start thinking seriously about how our democracy actually works.
Progressives the people John Howard disingenuously calls the elites have lost the ability to talk to ordinary Australians. This is because they hate them.
Howard and his numerous conservative apologists pander to peoples fears, which is bad enough. Progressives denigrate those fears, dismissing them as unworthy.
Any whiff of concern ordinary Australians express about immigration is instantly interpreted as racism. Any apprehension about a person’s intention in coming here is cited as evidence of the White Australian mentality baked into our bones. When people express views that question hot-button progressive issues like a treaty with Indigenous people, the republic, or multiculturalism it is defined as ignorance. If such people actually organise themselves into interest groups or political parties and try and have a say in public debate, it is defined as a crisis of democracy.
There is a case – an utterly compelling one – to be made against the Government’s approach to the Tampa incident, its use of Pacific islands as a dumping ground for asylum seekers, its failure to engage with Indonesia on the issue, its treatment of people in detention centres, and all the related issues. There is an equally compelling case to be made in favour of the hot-button progressive issues I’ve just mentioned.
The trouble is, the progressives (the left, the educated elite, call them what you will) don’t know how to make it.
They have no language that addresses people as equals, no language of solidarity with the everyday aspirations of ordinary Australians, and they have no story to tell that doesn’t cast ordinary Australians as ignorant bigots.
Thus Labor finds itself endorsing the nonsense and over-reaction of border protection legislation and a war on terrorism because it lacks confidence in the ability of ordinary people to follow another line of argument. It simply can’t find the words to tell another story.
Progressives are so busy testing people for the purity of their opinions that they fail to engage with them at all. Frankly, youre not even in the game unless you can say three-bedroom-brick-veneer-on-a-quarter-acre-block without sneering; unless you can say rural without instinctively thinking redneck; and unless you can say ordinary Australian without reaching for the sick bag.
A central problem is that key institutions do not allow sufficient interaction between the different strata of society.
Whether it’s the composition of the major parties, or the courts, or the federal bureaucracy, our institutions are unrepresentative. They actively exclude the voices of ordinary Australians. And having been relegated in this way, such people are then insulted and vilified when they do take advantage of the forums that are left to them, like letters pages and talkback radio. Their use of these outlets, especially the latter, is seen as evidence of why we kept them out in the first place.
Occasionally, however, an opportunity comes along for ordinary people to be taken seriously. When it happens, the results contradict the popular wisdom of progressives who insist that ordinary people are ignorant, disengaged, and wedded to a backward-looking, fortress Australia mentality. It puts the lie to the simplistic notions of the two nations theory and the elite/popular divide.
One such event was the deliberative poll held on the topic of Australia becoming a republic.
A deliberative poll brings together a representative sample of the population with a range of experts for and against a topic. The sample citizens are provided with information about the issue (six weeks in advance), and are divided into small groups to talk about it all. They then come together with the experts in a number of joint sessions (over two days) to ask questions. They are polled before and after the event and the results compared. The experts, who through better knowledge and more experience in that sort of forum would normally dominate such a discussion, are restricted to answering questions from the floor.
Contrary to those who maintain that there is an unbridgeable gap between so-called elite and popular opinion, the deliberative poll found the opposite. In fact, the ordinary people, the representative sample of Australian voters, lined up with the elites on every question asked. Whether it was the way the President was installed or Australia’s future role in the Commonwealth, the citizens were at one with elite opinion. It was such an overwhelming repudiation of the No case and their tactics that proponents like Kerry Jones came out and bagged the whole process, even though they had collaborated in its design and execution.
What was even more extraordinary than the alignment between so-called elite and popular opinion was the effect on citizens themselves. Having for once been taken seriously, and having been allowed to ask their own questions and form their own opinions, they thrived. They didn’t need a university degree; they didn’t need some leader to inspire them and point them in the right direction. They learnt on the job and they learnt well. They picked up inconsistencies in arguments and openly scoffed at the attempts by some experts to spin the facts.
To quote one participant: “Can I just say that as an elder citizen that I’ve been tremendously informed and stimulated by this gathering. I would just like to say how wonderfully I’ve seen the democratic process at work. On Friday there were only one or two spokesmen [but] by this mornings session everyone of our fifteen delegates was speaking vociferously and strikingly at times.”
The lesson? Change comes from engagement.
If so-called progressives spent less time bagging the ever-baggable John Howard; spent less time congratulating themselves on their superior insights and tender sensibilities; spent less time listening out for evidence of moral depravity amongst their fellow citizens and spent more time addressing the institutions of our democracy that so obviously disenfranchise the vast bulk of the people from meaningful political engagement, then they might just start to get the sort of country they think they so richly deserve.
Comments and criticism welcome to Tim at tinota@primus.com.au
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2. Nardya Colvin in Armidale, NSW
I always knew, deep down
I’ve always known that many Australians would act in the way they have towards the refugees but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
I teach multicultural studies to year 12 TAFE students. The majority are from disadvantaged backgrounds, and have come to TAFE for a second chance to get their year 12. At our first session each semester I ask them to write down their thoughts on multiculturalism and their perception of an Australian identity. The vast majority respond with positive comments about a multicultural society and how all Australians, no matter what their background, are valued. It’s easy and comforting to accept their statements.
But this comfort zone was shattered when Hanson gave her maiden speech. They had found a voice which articulated their deeply held fears. I walked into the classroom to find the majority of my friendly, thoughtful students fully in favour of her pronouncements.
After a long discussion they admitted to their opposition to immigration – not so much in racist terms but in economic ones. They pointed out that I could afford to see immigration/multiculturalism as a positive aspect of Australian society. It held no threat for me. I had a job, my kids were either at uni or were employed.
But it was the opposite for them – they believed increased migration equalled increased difficulties in finding employment for themselves and for their kids. The fear of being swamped by cheap labour has a long history in Australia.
It’s true that there are strong elements of racism in terms of the opposition to the refugees but we should never forget the economic factor. From my student’s viewpoint, refugees are viewed as yet another potential threat to their livelihood.
Labor can’t win on this issue (although God knows it could have made an effort to articulate a more reasoned stance) and the Liberals know that to show any weakness/compassion would allow Hanson to move back into centre stage (not that I believe the Liberals have any compassion).
It seems that any change has to come from a grassroots level. Our town had a candlelight vigil on Sunday and is holding a forum on refugees in a week or so. You’re right in saying that it will be a long struggle but we have to do something.
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3. Graham McPherson, disillusioned citizen
Titanic mess
Here is a quote from you in Us obscurantists. I thought I might have a go at responding to the implied question.
“And here’s an irony. Several contributor supporters of the policy have suggested a failure of assimilation fuelling resentment from white neighbours as a reason. Yet the States most in favour of the policy are virtually homogeneous – Queensland and Tasmania (83 and 84 percent) whilst the most multicultural states, Victoria and NSW, show significantly less support (68 and 73 percent).”
I think that there is a simple answer, and that is that the current refugee policy stands as a symbol of the retreat from the bipartisan immigration policy of the past 50 years. This is the essence of its popularity and the root cause of Howard’s impending electoral success.
Large scale immigration, except maybe in the late 1940s and middle 1950s, has never enjoyed majority support in this country, because it has never been supported by the working class people it most intimately affected.
Immigration has had two major effects, social and economic, but the only effect that was ever given political consideration was the economic. Social effects, at least upon the pre-existing working class population, were ignored. The middle classes on the other hand were entirely insulated from the social impact of immigration and could see nothing but advantages to be gained from its economics. The figures in your quote show not so much the relative popularity of the refugee policy in NSW and Victoria, but the relative strengths of the middle classes in those states, and their relative weakness in the other states.
What the refugee debate has done is to cause ordinary people to ask themselves whether immigration has done anything for them personally, for their families or for their country. This is a question of self-interest, which is perhaps why someone like Howard has found it so easy to put it to them, albeit in an indirect manner. The poll results show what answer most people came up with.
The current debate is like a shadow play in which the characters themselves are metaphors for larger forces. The single central question of the election should be whether Australia is splitting down the middle, and if so what to do about it.
But all the debate is about symptoms, not causes and certainly not solutions. When the refugee policy is reversed after the election, as it inevitably will be, it will be interesting to see how Howard will rationalise his old position or whether he will even bother. It will also be interesting to see just how such a move will play out in an increasingly alienated and frustrated electorate. Perhaps we could see the resurgence of One Nation, or of something even darker.
Refugee policy is to this country what the tip of that iceberg was to the Titanic before it struck. It showed that there was something to worry about, but it gave you no idea of just how deep your troubles really go.
MARGO: Graham’s first piece, a Westie’s fairytale, is a class analysis of the boat people issue published in Resigned to our fate.
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4. Dave Green
Time for questions, not answers
Something occurred to me tonight heading home on the train. The main gripes of the anti-Howard/anti-Hanson forces are as follows, not in order of preference:
(1) An intense dislike of the direction this country is taking internationally. The way we’re treating asylum seekers looks appalling, is deeply embarrassing for those of use who have to interact with persons in other countries, and has, quite frankly, shocked many citizens in other western nations who always thought of Australia as being a relatively warm and open nation. To many older, foreign westerners its simply reconfirmed a much older stereotype that had nearly been killed off, of “white” Australia. Bummer. Twenty five years of work by governments from both sides of politics down the tubes.
(2) A deep and very real concern for Australia’s economy. I don’t think the message has been made clear – this isn’t a bunch of people bitching that arts funding hasn’t been doubled, it’s mums and dads deeply concerned about the sort of country we are leaving for their kids. Already, over the last two years, the value of the Australian dollar has suffered due to the perception overseas that we are a commodity-based economy. The Labor party should have been up front about this in the election – do you want your kid to work in biotechnology, or a factory? Look at the economic history of places like Argentina and the result of their dependence upon commodities. It really is that stark. Things can go down very quickly, and probably more so in a global economy.
(3) The Republic. Reconciliation. Multiculturalism. These issues speak for themselves. Howard seems to view Multiculturalism as some extended form of “tolerance”. Tolerance has nothing to do with it. People in a western nation have a fundamental right to speak any language, observe any customs, and worship any religion they desire. And that’s it. No provisos, nothing. You don’t tolerate someones rights, you respect them, just like you respect their physical property. Simple.
In my mind these issues are all focussed upon identity – where we want to be in the world – and this impinges upon the sort of national directions we take economically, socially, and culturally. Ultimately, this is the sort of discussion that happens when new nations are created, and have no doubt, that is what is happening here.
It’s the Republic, stupid!
Please people, don’t give up. The Australian road to independence was never going to be an easy one. Thankfully we haven’t had to fight a foreign power or host a revolution to establish ourselves as a nation.
But we have to do something that is in many ways far more challenging. To achieve our independence we have to look at ourselves honestly look at ourselves. We have to see in the mirror of contemporary reality what we really are warts and all, and from there, consider what we’d like to be.
We need real leadership, and not just from our politicians. Certainly, when politicians display clarity, humility and foresight, it helps things a great deal. But ultimately we must lead ourselves, in dialogue with one another. This movement must be grassroots – if you want an Australian Republic stand up now. It won’t happen sitting down.
An Australian Republic is a unifying force around which our hopes and desires can be clarified. I am not suggesting for one minute that we define a Republic along political lines. By its very nature, a Republic is as much about debate as it is about direction – it is in the same instance powered by ideological friction as it is by the desire for fusion and consensus.
But consider this. Our nation will be our gift to the world. It is, by its essence, an element of the future – a hopeful entity. For all those who have had a gutful of negativity and fear, and want to push on into the next chapter, this is it.
This is what we do. What such a process will give us is something we are lacking in the here and now – not answers, but questions. What do we stand for, why are we here, and where are we going?