A plea to the left: push back harder
The Drum
Tim Dunlop
Photo
Hundreds take part in a Bust the Budget protest march in Brisbane on July 6.
Audience submitted: Navin Sam
The undying budget backlash suggests that there are
limits to what a reactionary government can do when the people push
back, writes Tim Dunlop.
Normally you have to wait
for a government to reach its third or fourth term to see it fall into
the sort of disarray that the Abbott Government is currently
experiencing.
But less than a year into its first term,
the Coalition is looking like a tired, out-of-ideas bunch of third-term
incompetents heading for either defeat or a leadership change.
I'm not predicting either, but the vibe is unmistakable.
As
the walls come tumbling down, the schadenfreude on the left is
palpable. Having seen the Rudd/Gillard governments fall victim to the
excesses of the right-wing media in full anti-Labor, misogynist mode, it
is hardly surprising that some are feeling a little bit vindicated.
The man the media christened the "best opposition leader ever" has turned out to have feet of tofu and can't stand up for falling down.
Putting particular schaden into the left's freude is the matter of honesty and election promises.
After
the fuss Tony Abbott made over Julia Gillard's alleged lie about a
price on carbon, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to
assure the public that he would - to paraphrase King Lear - never, never, never, never, never
wilfully mislead them, it is hardly surprising that his political
opponents are rubbing his supporters noses in the fact that, when it
comes to breaking promises, this prime minister makes the last one look
like an amateur.
Still, it is worth noting that as understandable as the left's glee is, schadenfreude will only get you so far.
It's not as if Labor wasn't the architect of many of its own problems. They actually did
change leaders in their first term of government, and then spent their
second term flaying each other via leaks to a complicit media.
And
it's not as if the Shorten-led Labor Party is stepping into the breach
created by the current Abbott misery with anything like a positive,
nation-rallying agenda that makes victory in 2016 inevitable.
Labor
mightn't be in favour of the sort of capitalism-without-a-safety-net
that the Coalition is trying to install, but to most people, Bill
Shorten looks pretty much like Tweedledee to Abbott's Tweedledum.
And this is where the real problem starts.
The
elite consensus around matters such as privatisation, trade
liberalisation and the various programs of deregulation may have
delivered increased national wealth, but they have also stripped
governments of key aspects of their sovereignty as well as upsetting
social relations in ways that fracture hopes and expectations of a
decent, fulfilling life.
Throw in the rising inequality that seems
to be part and parcel of the current economic dispensation, and it is
not hard to understand people's concerns.
In other words, for all
of our good fortune as a nation, we are suffering through a period of
massive dislocation and ill ease that goes beyond the ability of a
merely successful economy to even touch, let alone heal.
Thus we see popular disquiet reflected in various opinion polls, including a recent survey by the ANU.
They found that our faith in democracy as a form of government has
declined from 86 per cent in 2007 to 72 per cent now, and that only 43
per cent people thought it made a difference as to which party was in
power.
A similar poll by Lowy Institute
found only 60 per cent of people think democracy is the best form of
government, and that figure drops to 42 per cent for those aged between
18 and 29.
More telling are actual voting figures. As was reported on Lateline on Monday night:
lack of authority within the political mainstream has real
consequences, not the least of which is the tendency of incumbents to
try and assert relevance by attacking the most vulnerable in the
community and by attempting to rally national unity in the face of
enemies real or concocted.
Tony Abbott's pathetic evocation of "Team Australia"
in regard to data retention is a classic case, but others are easy to
find: the whole disgusting cruelness of our asylum seeker policy; the
near-abusive treatment of the unemployed mooted in the budget; the
unseemly grasping of the destruction of flight MH17 as a national
rallying point; the income management being imposed on Aborigines in the
Northern Territory, a system that some want to extend to all welfare
recipients - all of these are symptoms of a political class who mistake
authoritarianism for authority.
Still, despite all this, reaction to the budget has been instructive, and maybe we can claim it as a glimmer of hope.
The difficulties the budget is having don't arise, as leading voices in the media suggest, from an "unruly, populist Senate"; nor are they caused by the "decline of mass media" which "weakens the ability of leaders to carry opinion".
It certainly has nothing to do with the business community failing to cheer hard enough in support of it, as the Treasurer has complained. I mean, good heavens, Joe, how much more onside could business be?
No,
the real problem the budget faces is that it violates the unwritten
rules of fairness that are as close to the essence of a national
identity as we have. (As I've said before, it feels like WorkChoices for
everything.)
In so doing, it has reminded people that we live in a
society, not an economy, and that it is simply not enough for a
government to screech "balanced budget" ad infinitum as a cover for what
amounts to an attempt to dismantle social programs people consider part
and parcel of a civilised nation.
Don't get me wrong, there is a
long way to go. The neoliberal consensus still rules, and certain elites
still have way too much sway over government policy. But the budget
backlash suggests that there are limits to what a reactionary government
can do when the people push back.
The lesson we should learn is simple: push harder.
Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum and a number of other publications. You can follow him on Twitter. View his full profile here.
limits to what a reactionary government can do when the people push
back, writes Tim Dunlop.
Normally you have to wait
for a government to reach its third or fourth term to see it fall into
the sort of disarray that the Abbott Government is currently
experiencing.
But less than a year into its first term,
the Coalition is looking like a tired, out-of-ideas bunch of third-term
incompetents heading for either defeat or a leadership change.
I'm not predicting either, but the vibe is unmistakable.
As
the walls come tumbling down, the schadenfreude on the left is
palpable. Having seen the Rudd/Gillard governments fall victim to the
excesses of the right-wing media in full anti-Labor, misogynist mode, it
is hardly surprising that some are feeling a little bit vindicated.
The man the media christened the "best opposition leader ever" has turned out to have feet of tofu and can't stand up for falling down.
Putting particular schaden into the left's freude is the matter of honesty and election promises.
After
the fuss Tony Abbott made over Julia Gillard's alleged lie about a
price on carbon, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to
assure the public that he would - to paraphrase King Lear - never, never, never, never, never
wilfully mislead them, it is hardly surprising that his political
opponents are rubbing his supporters noses in the fact that, when it
comes to breaking promises, this prime minister makes the last one look
like an amateur.
Still, it is worth noting that as understandable as the left's glee is, schadenfreude will only get you so far.
It's not as if Labor wasn't the architect of many of its own problems. They actually did
change leaders in their first term of government, and then spent their
second term flaying each other via leaks to a complicit media.
And
it's not as if the Shorten-led Labor Party is stepping into the breach
created by the current Abbott misery with anything like a positive,
nation-rallying agenda that makes victory in 2016 inevitable.
Labor
mightn't be in favour of the sort of capitalism-without-a-safety-net
that the Coalition is trying to install, but to most people, Bill
Shorten looks pretty much like Tweedledee to Abbott's Tweedledum.
And this is where the real problem starts.
The
elite consensus around matters such as privatisation, trade
liberalisation and the various programs of deregulation may have
delivered increased national wealth, but they have also stripped
governments of key aspects of their sovereignty as well as upsetting
social relations in ways that fracture hopes and expectations of a
decent, fulfilling life.
Throw in the rising inequality that seems
to be part and parcel of the current economic dispensation, and it is
not hard to understand people's concerns.
In other words, for all
of our good fortune as a nation, we are suffering through a period of
massive dislocation and ill ease that goes beyond the ability of a
merely successful economy to even touch, let alone heal.
Thus we see popular disquiet reflected in various opinion polls, including a recent survey by the ANU.
They found that our faith in democracy as a form of government has
declined from 86 per cent in 2007 to 72 per cent now, and that only 43
per cent people thought it made a difference as to which party was in
power.
A similar poll by Lowy Institute
found only 60 per cent of people think democracy is the best form of
government, and that figure drops to 42 per cent for those aged between
18 and 29.
More telling are actual voting figures. As was reported on Lateline on Monday night:
NearlyThe
20 per cent of eligible voters effectively opted out of last year's
election. That's about three million Australians who either didn't enrol
to vote, didn't show up to vote or voted informally.
lack of authority within the political mainstream has real
consequences, not the least of which is the tendency of incumbents to
try and assert relevance by attacking the most vulnerable in the
community and by attempting to rally national unity in the face of
enemies real or concocted.
Tony Abbott's pathetic evocation of "Team Australia"
in regard to data retention is a classic case, but others are easy to
find: the whole disgusting cruelness of our asylum seeker policy; the
near-abusive treatment of the unemployed mooted in the budget; the
unseemly grasping of the destruction of flight MH17 as a national
rallying point; the income management being imposed on Aborigines in the
Northern Territory, a system that some want to extend to all welfare
recipients - all of these are symptoms of a political class who mistake
authoritarianism for authority.
Still, despite all this, reaction to the budget has been instructive, and maybe we can claim it as a glimmer of hope.
The difficulties the budget is having don't arise, as leading voices in the media suggest, from an "unruly, populist Senate"; nor are they caused by the "decline of mass media" which "weakens the ability of leaders to carry opinion".
It certainly has nothing to do with the business community failing to cheer hard enough in support of it, as the Treasurer has complained. I mean, good heavens, Joe, how much more onside could business be?
No,
the real problem the budget faces is that it violates the unwritten
rules of fairness that are as close to the essence of a national
identity as we have. (As I've said before, it feels like WorkChoices for
everything.)
In so doing, it has reminded people that we live in a
society, not an economy, and that it is simply not enough for a
government to screech "balanced budget" ad infinitum as a cover for what
amounts to an attempt to dismantle social programs people consider part
and parcel of a civilised nation.
Don't get me wrong, there is a
long way to go. The neoliberal consensus still rules, and certain elites
still have way too much sway over government policy. But the budget
backlash suggests that there are limits to what a reactionary government
can do when the people push back.
The lesson we should learn is simple: push harder.
Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum and a number of other publications. You can follow him on Twitter. View his full profile here.
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