How are we to account for the overwhelming successes of the Liberal Party under prime minister John Howard? For a decade he has dominated Australian politics like no other leader in recent memory, using his electoral mandate to forge a new consensus on issues of national security, economic management and climate change. In frustration, some Left commentators have turned their ire on the Australian electorate, arguing that only a nation that was self-centred, racist, xenophobic and lacking compassion could constantly elect a government that many of them see as mendacious, anachronistic and inhumane. But while such assumptions may assuage the pain of electoral defeat, they explain nothing. With a federal election looming, it is more important than ever that the analysis is directed inwards. Instead of focusing attention on Howard the progressive Left should be asking a more searching question: Has it at any time provided a coherent – and popular – alternative?
This new volume, collecting some of the most significant Quarterly Essays of the past five years, is a timely contribution to the debate. At a time when uncritical Howard-bashing is in the ascendancy, each writer provides a welcome reminder that the success of the Howard government is not solely a product of spin and right-wing populism, but also a product of the far-reaching economic, cultural and demographic shifts that have marked the postwar era. David McKnight argued recently in Arena that the strong and vocal opposition to Howard is reason for optimism, but that alone it does not suggest a viable and coherent alternative to neoliberalism. Divided between an economic socialism that adheres to anachronistic notions of class struggle and a ‘cultural’ Left that makes a fetish of cultural identity and diversity, the contemporary Left lacks the ‘unifying social vision’ necessary for its revival. In particular, McKnight argues, the Left must engage once more with ‘values’ and strive to articulate the moral concerns of middle Australia. Why the Left have been unable to adapt to this shifting political landscape as well as their conservative opponents is one concern of these four essays; how they might do so in future is another.
In ‘What’s Left? The Death of Social Democracy’, Clive Hamilton, author of Affluenza and executive director of the Australia Institute, takes issue with some of the core assumptions of social democracy. In his view, the traditional struggle between capital and labour – which animated socialist and social democratic parties in past generations – is no longer a workable framework for a progressive Left alternative. In times of widespread affluence, material deprivation has become a minority concern. The overwhelming affluence of the majority of Australians may itself be the key problem: witness the spike in levels of depression – a key form of ‘affluenza’ – and the obvious strain on the environment.
Hamilton is eloquent and persuasive in pointing out the faults of the Left – he argues that ‘progressives have… abandoned to those on the political right the most fertile grounds for social change’ – but like many commentators, he offers no clearly feasible alternative. He does advocate a party platform of sorts, a veritable wish-list of progressive policy prescriptions, but betrays his utopianism in his vision for their realization. Since he rejects the Greens as a viable alternative party, one wonders what Hamilton has in mind here: a ‘new’ progressive party to supersede the old? Or a cleansed, reinvigorated ALP? While he falls short on particulars, Hamilton’s argument that non-monetary values such as family and community should be reclaimed by progressives is a valuable recommendation, given the firm grip the political Right has long had on debates about ‘values’.
Each of these essays is in some measure about political ‘values’, but none so much as Judith Brett’s, on the success of the Howard government. Brett, a political historian, begins with the idea that many on the Left have misunderstood the appeal of the Howard government. Where some have seen the expression of a latent racism or xenophobia, she sees a canny manipulation of national symbols and a mastery of the rhetoric of the Liberal tradition – of promising to govern for the ‘whole nation’ rather than for a few ‘vocal’ interest groups. Rather than viewing Howard as some sort of reactionary aberration, Brett places him squarely in the tradition of Robert Menzies. The following words, spoken by Menzies at the height of the Second World War, demonstrates the continuities in political discourse between the Liberals of then and the (neo)Liberals of today:
I do not believe that the real life of the nation is to be found in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of the so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised.
This appeal to the silent majority, over the heads of the labour unions and what we would today term the ‘latte left’, is classic Howard.
One of Brett’s most revealing insights concerns the reaction of the major parties to the countercultural movements of the 1960s. Only in retrospect, Brett points out, do we see the movements for women’s, queer, indigenous and ethnic minority rights as belonging to the Left. It is possible that the Liberal party under Don Chipp would have provided a ‘congenial home’ for such movements, just as Labor under a conservative Catholic like Arthur Calwell would have been less than hospitable. Where the ALP under Whitlam and Keating – dominated by the labour unions and the new social movements – set out to supposedly ‘divide’ society along lines of class, gender, race and sexuality, the Liberals promised to govern for ‘all of us’, and celebrate ‘our’ similarities rather than ‘our’ differences. ‘Where Keating spoke to the nation’, Brett argues, ‘Howard spoke from it – straight from the heart of its shared beliefs and commonsense understandings of itself’. This was less a case of Howard outflanking his opposition through xenophobic appeals than an ability to utilize more appetizing political language and manipulate Australian political symbolism to effect.
Amanda Lohrey’s essay, from 2002, shifts the focus away from the mainstream, presenting the Australian Greens as an authentic alternative to the major parties. The story of the green movement, first in Tasmania and then nationally, is an unusual one and told with evident passion by Lohrey. Emerging in the truest sense from the grassroots, the green ‘palimpsest’ – as political analyst Tim Doyle has described its disparate, grassroots constituency – has today transcended the single-issue campaigns of the 1980s to become a durable political force in Australia.
Whether the Greens can win over voters on issues other than the environment is perhaps the glaring question. Lohrey, unlike Hamilton, sees the Greens as ‘more’ than just a single-issue environmental party; for her, they represent political authenticity and, in the phrase of Hugh Mackay, the only true ‘moral compass’ in Federal politics. Some claims – for instance, that the Greens are the ‘heirs of the Enlightenment’ – jar with the quasi-religious ‘sin and redemption’ rhetoric today dominating debates about climate change. Still, support for the Greens is still increasing nationally, the party’s primary vote rising from 2.3% to 7.2% in the 2004 election. How Bob Brown and his successors handle their continued success will be vital: Making the transition from a party of opposition to a party of the mainstream is never accomplished easily. Just ask the Democrats.
Philosopher Raimond Gaita’s contribution stands somewhat apart from the others in the collection, a philosophical meditation on morality and politics that achieves breadth at the expense of focus. Gaita sets out to reclaim the social imaginary of middle Australia from those conservatives – John Howard and Andrew Bolt – who claim to speak for it. Describing his experience growing up in country Victoria in the 1950s, Gaita depicts a socially conservative society, but one guided by engrained values of honesty and integrity. Although not perfect in every sense, the depiction shows up Howard’s white picket-fence view of the 1950s as the political fabrication that it is.
Again, this is an issue of values. Gaita argues that patriotism, widely present in his childhood community, is not irredeemable. While the so-called ‘history wars’ trumpeted two opposed views of Australian history – an uncritical paean to Australian achievement on one hand, a guilt-ridden negativity on the other – Gaita argues that shame for historical events is part and parcel of a healthy affection for Australia, its land and its people. However, ‘the wish to be proud without sometimes acknowledging the need to be ashamed is that corrupt attachment to country – I will not call it love – that we call jingoism’.
Gaita makes an implicit call for Indigenous reconciliation prompted not by guilt – since, as he points out, it is impossible to feel guilt for something we didn’t personally have a hand in – but by shame and national pride. The distinction is important, and well overdue. Even economic self-interest, so often derided by progressive critics such as Hamilton, is seen by Gaita as intimately bound up with notions of family and community. The importance for progressives to once again engage with the moral concerns of middle Australia should open up a new front in the attempt to loosen Howard’s grip on the Australian imagination.
The increasing meaninglessness of the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ – not least for those who adhere to them most fervently – is becoming a fact of politics in Australia, especially at the Federal level. In the media, political analysis too often is used as an opportunity to recite a loyalty oath or quote a party press-release. This collection of Quarterly Essays is a timely reminder that nuanced political writing is still being produced. It is vital reading for anyone concerned about our nation curious as to where it may be heading.
[Published in Farrago, August 2007]
