The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Fixing Politics: in the wake of the 2020 Summit
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Crikey isn’t alone in thinking Australia’s political system is having difficulty coping with the 21st century. It was a big issue at the 2020 summit as well. It’s fair to say the summit consensus was that Australia’s biggest governmental problem lay in the federation, which pretty much everyone stressed needed urgent and major reform. The Rural group actually came close to recommending the abolition of states, and the Governance stream invested considerable time and energy in developing a process for fixing our federal structure. But one of the most striking aspect of the summit as a whole was the sheer centrality of government to the thinking of the delegates. It wasn’t so much a summit about what Australia should be like in 2020, as about what Australian governments should do between now and then. This of course begged some big questions, but no one was asking them that weekend. It’s not exactly surprising. The cause of small government is a lonely one in this country. There’s no political constituency for it, for a start, and certainly not in the Liberal Party, which continues to pretend to be for small government. The Howard Government, after some early promise, became the most profligate government in our history, churning vast revenues into electoral bribes masquerading as welfare. The Hawke-Keating Government did more for the cause of small government, introducing means-testing to curb welfare and reducing the level of government intervention in the economy, but it also adopted a “social wage” model centred on the Accord as a social justice and inflation-fighting tool. Only the Kennett and Greiner Governments successfully, if briefly, implemented a small-government agenda. In the meantime, voters’ sense of entitlement has grown. There’s no strain of rugged individualism in the Australian character. We like our governments, and always have, and can’t really picture life without them. But in recent decades, voters seem to have become convinced they’re entitled to consistent government support. It’d be convenient to blame the spendthrift Howard Government for this, but one suspects longer-term forces are at work. Since the economic reforms of the 1980s, voters, and especially middle-income voters, have become obsessive about the level of government support they receive and fiercely resentful of any support they can’t obtain, no matter how deserving the recipients. It’s almost as if, rather than adjusting to the more competitive economic environment ushered in by the Hawke-Keating reforms, Australians came to believe they were entitled to compensation for being made to compete in the marketplace, regardless of how much their incomes have increased as a result. Perhaps it’s less a sense of entitlement than a psychological balm, a comforting reassurance that in an era of open markets and global competition, government will always be there to hold our hands. No wonder Australians want their politicians to Do Something about petrol prices. A conviction that government was the answer was also central to the 2020 summit. The agenda that emerged from the governance stream – bill of rights, constitutional preamble, republic, reform of federation, more participative democracy – had a similar sense of making sure government would be there for us. And while it’s a bit of a stretch to compare petrol prices and a bill of rights, it might suggest that the summiteers, while more elitist in their concerns, were rather more reflective of ordinary Australians than their critics might’ve made out. Of course, it also suggests there were too many lattesippers from GetUp at the summit, and not enough small-government types from the IPA, who might’ve made the Governance stream less productive but a helluva lot more interesting. Interestingly, there was no discussion in the Governance stream – at least that I heard, and I spent my time running around all the sub-groups – about non-compulsory voting, despite Australia’s status as one of the few countries that compels its citizens to vote with the threat of gaol. In fact, the only suggestion along those lines was automatic enrolment at 18. But as Crikey reader Jeff Wells noted to me last week, the issue of fixing our political system can’t be kept isolated from the impact of compulsory voting. While I tend to the libertarian view that compulsory voting is an outrageous imposition and the Left should stop clinging to it just because they think it favours Labor, its impact on the ability of Australia’s political classes to address challenges like climate change, rising global demand and housing affordability is unclear. It might encourage lowest common denominator politics and vote-buying by the major parties, sinking complex debates in a mire of populism. But voluntary voting could also lead to US-style polarisation as parties seek to secure their base rather than govern from the middle, leading to gridlock and a dialogue of the deaf. The fact that the issue wasn’t even considered at the 2020 summit gives a clue as to how traditionalist in thinking that event was about the entire role of government in Australia’s future. |
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11 Comments
Pardon my ignorance: what/who are the IPA?
We need to break the cycle of gross dependence on government. Three basic things need to happen: 1. We need smaller government focussed on doing what government(s) should be doing (law & order, defence, education). 2. We should probably abolish the states. 3. Only taxpayers/those who have made contributions should be allowed to vote. After all, why should the freeloaders of society be given any say in the running of the country?
IPA - India Pale Ale
Characteristically bitter, with a heavily florid nose. When shaken from comfortable resting place, tends to fizz a bit, but not really spectacularly.
Used sensibly, can provide a refreshing, cleansing sensation on the palate, especially in counterpoint to more substantial fare. Traditional accompaniments include the intensively gas-producing pickled onion and similar.
Overindulgence in IPA can lead to nausea, vomiting, antisocial behaviour, unreasonable outbursts (see pickled onions, above), headaches and very fuzzy thinking.
Compulsory voting should definately stay. I would rather see parties and candidates focus their efforts on policy, than spend time and money cajoling people to get out and vote. How about giving optional preferential voting a go in federal polls. It works ok in QLD. QLD got it thanks to post Fitzgerald reforms. It means voters are no longer captives of the major political parties. Imagine the message it would send to the major parties if enough people decided to exhaust their vote. Surely a more potent message, than if a large percentage of voters simply failed to turn up and vote.
It’s nice to see you occasionally taking the opportunity to transcend the day-to-day political grind. I am sympathetic to the libertarian case against compulsory voting (although I don’t believe its international rarity is a compelling argument against it); if political expression is truly free, shouldn’t that also include the freedom to stay the hell away from the ballot box without writing a pro forma “my goldfish died” excuse every couple of years? But practically speaking I am inclined to think it would be a nightmare. Not because compulsory voting necessarily advantages Labor - the Howard government was plenty good at appealing to low-motivation, low-information voters - but because our political culture is already interest-groupy enough without the added need to mobilise people to vote.
Narelle asks, what/who are the IPA?. Narelle, IPA stands for Institute of Public Affairs. Impressive sounding title isn’t it. Maybe the following would sum up what they’re about, - a conservative - right wing - free market - libertarian - industry funded - think tank. Oh and they’re also into climate change denial. Much of the commentariat in this country gets their inspiration from this august organization.
Had I been at the summit, I would have argued for compulsory voting at local government elections. And I might have been convinced that states are pointless and should be abolished.
Does this count?
consider a publication “The Wisdom of crowds” by james Surowiecki…in it the premise that a diverse well meaning group can produce better more successful outcomes that (so-called) experts or self selected elites.
Group think with people with similar experiences and orthodoxies has demonstrated spectacular failures over many years. All recent innovations are the result of diverse cross disciplinary teams.
the summit may well have been inspired thinking to trust untrained people who have the best interests of the country at heart, as such they will ‘think outside the box’, not be contrained by orthodoxy or historical precedent. in short, the basis of a 21st century democracy where the strength of the idea is more important than the vested interests who have entrenched positions.
to be able to trust the collective decision is simpler than blaming the traditional single point of power, as the value of expertise is no longer the single determining factor.
the perception of i know, those others don’t, discounts the diverse points of view to be considered in making an accepted decision and implementing it.
we can no longer have extremes of politics swinging every two election cycles…21st century demands better consistency and better community building than that
it looks like the 2020 summit may just about have it as best as it can be.
not ‘right’ , not ‘wrong’…but acceptable to all players. so we can all move on together.
Bernard: political systems are specifically designed to have difficultly coping with their current systems…..that’s the dynamic that democratic politics promotes. In the context of your discussion, compulsory voting is simply a red herring. Also you fail to mention the constitutional hurdles to structural change.
You’re piece is baffling to say the least.
It may be that Australians look too much to government to solve their problems, as Keane concludes from observing the 2020 summit.
However, I think there is another partial explanation. If you get a group of people together to draw up some proposals to bring about improvements, they will need some sort of agency to implement them. Government already exists, it deals with policies and policy implementation as its daily business, and it is the easy choice of agency to take action. Not nearly as easy, for instance, for the summiteers to decide something needs to be done and then form themselves into an action group to do it. Not necessarily easy, either, to find existing organisations or companies to take the actions, unless they might be profit-making.
The other side to this coin is that maybe in such a context that is looking to a general improvement, we direct out thoughts to government as the natural agency for the big picture stuff. For instance, we tend to think of business as causing problems rather than solving them, and expect that it will behave better only if forced by government. We don’t really have another way of disciplining business.
I think compulsory voting should be abolished. Why force someone to vote if they don’t have a foggy idea who they’re voting for? Half of the people I’ve spoken to recently don’t even know who our premier is.