The slow bicycle race that is Australian politics has had an early breakout with Scott Morrison’s Lowy Institute speech announcing his opposition to “negative globalism” and expanding the notion of a “promise of Australia” aired during the election.
The speech has raised the question as to whether this represents Morrison going in a Trumpian direction. It does of course, but only insofar as Trump is going in a general direction of the right in a very particular manner. Looking for “country X’s Trump” is a category error; Trump is, in part, a product of the unique nature of the American presidency, an elected God-emperor. As Boris Johnson’s fraught few weeks show, you can’t be even a bit like that in the Westminster system. One can see a certain idea of “the right” shining through Morrison’s speech, but what is happening is part of a deeper global process.
Morrison’s Lowy speech has a dual character. Even the least fair-minded person would have to acknowledge that it is reasonable in a way quite different to one of Tony Abbott’s deranged on-stage rummages inside his own head. It sets out a balance between the individualist (as represented by global rights liberalism) and communalist (the nation, the collective), coming down more on the side of the latter than the former. That is best expressed by saying that the right’s double-headed designation is now on the conservative side of liberal-conservative, rather than equally balanced.
That is partial of course. Stuff about “negative globalism” is used by the right in the same way they screech about “multiculturalism” — as a way of masking their continued support for very-high volume immigration, with no regard for the effects such immigration has on the particular local communities.
There’s also little objection to the real process of globalism, the global market, which has an anti-democratic power that puts the fiddly-widdly UN to shame. Once again, objecting to, say, a UN ruling that electronic cable ends should have no heteronormative gender designations is a good way of diverting attention from the failure to stop, say, the drift in agricultural ownership, in which increasing amounts of our produce is directly supplied overseas as part of extended supply chains of vertically integrated corporations, cutting out local workers and generally making people feel like strangers in their own land.
One could supply numerous other examples. For the right, “positive globalism” is letting your country be drawn so far into the global market that its capacity for self-sufficiency is radically undermined. Thank God it has the UN as something to blame.
The third part of it is foreign policy, of course. As China and other powers become varying degrees of competitor to a weak, divided and badly-led US, a system of global control is slipping away — confirmed this week by the pitiful sight of Turkey’s Erdoğan more or less dictating terms to Trump.
As their global power weakens, the US and the UK will be increasingly disposed to unilateral action and Australia will be there. The shout-out also reaffirms our support for Israel in the UN — we are the only non-drowning island who will line up to support its disregard of UN resolutions.
The fourth part of Morrison’s new schema is genuine, religiously-directed and something of a departure from Howard-Costello secular liberal conservatism. This is the Morrison government lining up with the “right international”: Russia and eastern Europe/western Asian countries keen to retain strong anti-LGBTIQ laws; Indian chauvinism in Kashmir; homicidal anti-abortion laws in Latin America; Saudi misogyny, and so on.
Ultimately he wants to join their number: roll back LGBTIQ rights, extend the most repressive “free speech/whistleblower” regime in the Anglosphere, and reject any criticism of such as “globalist rights talk”.
There is no reason to suppose the religious dimension of this is purely strategic. Morrison is a campaigning Pentecostal before he is anything else. Multiple times he’s taking the opportunity supplied by a PM’s duties and power to proselytise.
And the fifth part, the local? Well that is directed to the challenge of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation of course, and the ongoing collapse of Coalition electoral hegemony, as independents eat into their vote in some places and the PHONies do elsewhere. Regional Australia is in permanent social decline, and only a trillion-dollar, decades-long policy would reverse capital-regional imbalance, and that ain’t happening.
Where there’s a grassroots movement — e.g. Indi — actual democracy flourishes. Where it’s absent, conspiracy theories cloud the horizon. If you think mutterings about the UN, George Soros and gender fluidity ain’t good for votes in some places, you need to spend more time in country pubs.
Morrison set the course for that in the Lowy speech, while also elaborating the “promise of Australia” image and connecting it to that right nationalism/communalism, which I think resonated greatly in the election and which Labor’s geniuses (with their killing slogans of… [404 file not found]) sneered at.
Morrison and his team have crafted a global vision for local people, and in so doing renewed centre-right politics with a new mediation between populism and establishment liberal-conservatism which is right on the money. The only tiny problem is that it’s all a national pseudo-consensus based on our hugely leveraged and highly-sectionalised prosperity, which demands relentless growth.
The whole thing will come apart very quickly if there’s any sort of serious faltering, and “the promise to/of Australia” will be a broken one. I’d take some political hope from that, if Labor weren’t tucking into the slipstream behind the Coalition hoping to glide to a narrow victory, and thus be even less likely to see the bump in the unquestioned “road ahead”, or the gap where it falls away entirely.
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Gosh that is a depressing read. Accurate of course and very well put together but depressing none the less.
I’m moving to Tassie and going off grid.
You’d best hurry Hammy. I heard of a 50acre chunk of land selling recently sight unseen for half a million to someone from Switzerland.
Switzerland you say ? Shit ,that’s no good . I’d rather a local home grown Aussie contribute/benefit to/from the speculative real estate bonanza that should help keep me poor or homeless the rest of my days..
Yes I’ve been watching the prices rise in Tas, at almost as fast a rate as they are falling in dry as a bone central NSW.
You may want to consider the below average rainfall in northeast Tasmania and recent unprecedented bushfires. There’s no escaping what we’ve done to the planet.
Watching the harvest of hope shrivel on the vine, under desiccating myopic populism.
Say hello to the Exclusive Brethren when you get there!
I doubt our paths will cross.
Viva Il Duce! Still basking in the cherry-picked after-glow of that audience with Trump.
Of course another up-side of ‘positive globalism’ is the chance to be able farm-out blame when things go wrong.
Don’t you mean “cherry-plucked” rather than “cherry-picked”?
Think he might be beginning to regret super-gluing his lips to Trump’s arse?
Yet for all of that, there’s really nothing nation-building in Morrison’s vision. Nothing to genuinely appeal to every member of our community. It may offer a bit of ‘Yay! Bonzer! Let’s all wave the flag” jingoism to the lower orders to distract them but, at its core and by happy coincidence, the details of his vision happen to dovetail with the best interests of his party’s wealthy donors. An excellent example of this is his tax cuts package: a few crumbs dished out to the proles, but far and away the major beneficiaries being the ultra rich.
Morrison’s pitch may be a bit more nuanced than Abbott’s but it’s the same underneath. I think the difference reflects Morrison’s Pentecostalism versus Abbot’s Catholicism. The former is fire and brimstone, the latter authoritarianism. Of the two, I fear the first most. Authoritarianism may be intransigent and inflexible, but it is of this world. There is at least some chance of reasoning with it. Fire and brimstone comes directly from God, just like election victories. Question it at your peril.
Beware the man who thinks he occupies a special place in God’s sight that rest of us don’t share. Of such stuff is fanaticism made. A man like this is dangerous.
Interesting piece published at Ninefax a coupla hours back, Graeski, and it goes to some of Rundle and the respondents are on about.
The author is Shane Wright, and it’s headed;
“Gap between rich and poor parts of Australia some of largest in world”
The key paragraph has us celebrating another top 4 performance, and making the semis;
“Special research by the International Monetary Fund released on Thursday found that, of the world’s 22 most developed nations, Australia was ranked fourth in terms of the gap between well-off regions and those that are struggling. The top three countries are the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Canada.”
Canada’s the interesting one, particularly within the context of Rundle’s mention of;
“……..the drift in agricultural ownership, in which increasing amounts of our produce is directly supplied overseas as part of extended supply chains of vertically integrated corporations, cutting out local workers and generally making people feel like strangers in their own land.”
I say that because Canadian Pension Funds and asset managers are some of the biggest buyers of Oz agricultural enterprises (and infrastructure), and it is only accelerating.
A headline in the Thin Review, a week ago;
“Canadian pension fund swoops on Webster in $854m bid”
“A Canadian pension fund manager is emerging as a major force in Australian agriculture with a $2 billion-plus spending spree that now includes a bid for Webster Limited and its extensive portfolio of irrigated farmland and water rights…………”
The Webster board is chaired by Chris ‘Patrick on the Waterfront’ Corrigan, and he is also a substantial shareholder. The deal will shunt a swag of the assets to the Canucks, and the rump will be ‘taken private’ by Corrigan & Co.
Did you know Corrigan now resides in Switzerland?
Another excellent article, Guy.
There`s no question that scomo is full of bullshit, its the depth that matters.