tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/griffith-review-fixing-the-system-23438/articlesGriffith Review - Fixing the System – The Conversation2016-06-21T20:12:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/551612016-06-21T20:12:08Z2016-06-21T20:12:08ZListening but not hearing: process has trumped substance in Indigenous affairs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112638/original/image-20160223-16416-ja4lr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia has rejected self-determination as being fundamental to Indigenous humanness and development.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Marianna Massey</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Debates around Indigenous affairs and constitutional recognition of Australia’s first peoples have reared their head in the election campaign. This article was originally published in <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review’s</a> January 2016 edition, <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">Fixing the System</a>; it was written in September 2015 before the Referendum Council – which begins its consultations in the coming weeks – was constituted. It is republished below with permission.</em></p>
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<p>Aboriginal affairs – once the subject of innovation in policy and law reform attended to by the routine scrutiny of an informed and inquisitive Fourth Estate – are no more. </p>
<p>Gone is the sophisticated knowledge of the William Stanner, Barrie Dexter and H.C. “Nugget” Coombs academic-technician-bureaucrat and, dare one say it, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), replete with high-level career public servants of the calibre of trailblazer Pat Turner, who understood the complexity of the community they served – because it was them.</p>
<p>Contemporary policies, erroneously characterised as “nudge” politics, are by and large brutally and unapologetically straitjackets: choking communities to death, removing autonomy and choice from the individual and collective lives of a profoundly unhappy polity.</p>
<p>Public policy no longer requires the imprimatur of the Aboriginal people; Aboriginal participation in the decisions taken about their lives is negligible. It is a distraction, an indulgence even. Desperate pleas for a renewed emphasis on Indigenous design and Indigenous participation is met with the unexamined refrain, “we tried that and it didn’t work”.</p>
<p>A mostly uncritical mainstream media cheers from the sidelines, dutifully promoting prime ministerial <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-19/tony-abbott-should-have-visited-real-arnhem-land,-clan-leader/5757488">remote-community fly-bys</a> as policy and gushingly retweeting images of unnamed natives: state-funded junket as the coming of the light.</p>
<p>The post-ATSIC exodus of Aboriginal people from the public service created a knowledge-and-skills deficit and crippled the quality of advice to government decision-making and outcomes. </p>
<p>This is not to diminish the career service of the Indigenous public servants who continue to specialise in the field; it takes a special kind of person to persevere with dedication and commitment to their mob. And they are true heroes of the movement – for in the place of Aboriginal drivers now preside the all-powerful, all-knowing, risk- and innovation-averse career bureaucrats. </p>
<p>These faceless, unnamed drivers of my people’s destiny shrewdly resist a carefully crafted alternative policy approach of community autonomy, conceived of by eight unempowered Aboriginal communities at the frontline of the failed state that would, to be frank, put them out of a job. How dare Aboriginal people conceive of solutions to their own problems?</p>
<p>This is the harsh and unavoidable truth of liberal democratic governance for Indigenous peoples. Contemporary liberal democracies are minimalist democracies, whereby citizen participation is primarily funnelled through the ballot box at periodic, multi-party elections. This means that the procedural aspect of democratic governance drives legitimacy, and less scrutiny is paid to the quality of the decision-making between ballot boxes. </p>
<p>For small or powerless groups, particularly culturally distinct or ethnic groups, this poses an insuperable challenge. It is sheer numbers that can move the political leaders and policy makers to act. Might is right.</p>
<p>The issue of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility">fungibility</a> of native title or compensation for state theft of wages while living under compulsory racial segregation laws – these things do not move a nation.</p>
<h2>Self-determination falls by the wayside</h2>
<p>Most Western and non-Western liberal democracies have, over the years, found ways to ameliorate the harsh tendencies of ballot box-induced majoritarianism on their Indigenous populations. </p>
<p>These innovations are many and varied, and the best practices are captured in the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples-1">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>. Yet, while the world was adopting them as the gold standard for Indigenous populations in the 2007 General Assembly in New York, Australia was abandoning them. Completely.</p>
<p>Most destructively, Australia has rejected self-determination – freedom, agency, choice, autonomy, dignity – as being fundamental to Indigenous humanness and development. This is at odds with the evidence base on economic development collated each year at the UN’s <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/">Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues</a>. My experience at the UN has been that member countries with significant Indigenous populations have a threshold of self-determination above which Australia does not rise.</p>
<p>The rejection of the right to self-determination does not attract the scrutiny it should. The term itself is pilloried – by the non-technicians who control the Aboriginal domain – as a wishy-washy, pie-in-the-sky, lefty concept. This is despite its lengthy pedigree in Western liberal philosophy and the Enlightenment, and in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/">UN Charter</a> and its three primary human rights covenants – to all of which Australia was not only a signatory, but a leading drafter.</p>
<p>The Australian polity – this does not include Indigenous peoples – has proven incredibly trusting and unquestioning of the government’s rejection of the value of Aboriginal participation in decision-making. Self-determination has been conflated with ATSIC. </p>
<p>Mind you, there is next to no academic analysis or evidence base of what ATSIC achieved and did not achieve and whether it actually failed. It is mostly anecdote. Importantly, there is virtually no interrogation of whether ATSIC, in the minds of Indigenous Australians, was self-determination.</p>
<p>The extension of the right to self-determination from the individual to the collective transformed the concept in international law and was eventually adopted, by consensus, in the UN General Assembly. UN member countries now agree – based on evidence and what their Indigenous populations were telling them – that a people’s economic, political, social and cultural future can and must be jointly charted by the individuals who belong to that group.</p>
<p>This is precisely what Aboriginal people have been conveying to the state. The Aboriginal polity – if the Hansard transcripts of the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Constitutional_Recognition_of_Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Peoples">Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples</a> count for anything – is telling the democratic representatives that they have no voice. They feel like they have no control over their lives. </p>
<p>This testimony is not, mind you, coming from a committee on dislocation or dispossession or disempowerment of First Peoples. Ironically, it is being filtered through a process for the “recognition” of Indigenous peoples in the Australian Constitution.</p>
<p>The joint select committee, created to conduct a second round of deliberations to build on the work of an initial round that came via a prime ministerial <a href="http://www.recognise.org.au/about/expert-panel/">expert panel</a>, visited mostly remote and regional communities during 2014. </p>
<p>Despite being peppered with technical, legal questions about section this and subsection that, the witnesses spoke of the realities of life in their communities using the language of hopelessness, abandonment and despair.</p>
<p>These transcripts frequently brought me to tears. Yet their views – their perceptions of the unfreedom that defines their existence – was not adequately reflected in the reports and not captured at all in the mainstream media. How can this be of no concern to anyone in positions of power? What kind of system blithely ignores these perceptions?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112640/original/image-20160223-16464-qtkzlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Luke Jackson</span></span>
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<h2>What’s informing the recognition debate?</h2>
<p>To that end, the advent of social media has been an important dissemination point for distinct Indigenous viewpoints.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sosblakaustralia.com/">SOS Blak Australia campaign</a> created to protest the closure of remote communities in Western Australia was spearheaded through social media. It <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/rally-against-closure-of-aboriginal-communities-disrupts-inner-city-20150626-ghyoke.html">galvanised activism</a> in many cities across Australia and did the only thing a polity with no power can do to attract the attention of a disinterested nation: disrupt.</p>
<p>Social media has enabled communities to express opinions on recognition and broader public policy. It captured the overwhelming rejection of the campaign for recognition, and the growing resistance to being “recognised” by the settler state. </p>
<p>Oblivious to this or not, the mainstream media, by and large, uncritically report on referendum momentum and mostly obsess over any chinks in the bipartisan order of things. The subjects of recognition are all but erased from the process.</p>
<p>The recognition project is a perfect example of a broken system; the dissonance between the policy on the ground and the preference of the political elite for the mystical and magical over the hard-headed. Aboriginal activism for amending the Constitution – to address the potentially discriminatory effect of the <a href="http://www.recognise.org.au/wp-content/uploads/shared/uploads/assets/html-report/5.html">“race power”</a> as amended in the <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs150.aspx">1967 referendum</a> – has now been reduced to simply removing the word “race” from the text because it is odious or a construct.</p>
<p>It is true that “race” is a construct. But Aboriginal advocacy for reform (not recognition) has its genesis in a much more complex legal problem. Less discussed is this: replacing “race” with the word “culture” or “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” in the absence of some additional discipline on federal power presents us with precisely the same situation as we have now. The power can still enable racially discriminatory laws.</p>
<p>This is why the expert panel recommended deletion and replacement of the race power and a racial non-discrimination clause: to provide some additional safeguards for Indigenous peoples because parliament does not provide it and the media no longer provides it – and the judiciary cannot provide it without the explicit approval of parliament.</p>
<p>The “how-low-can-we-go” approach to constitutional reform means it is referendum statistics driving reform, not an actual problem that requires a solution.</p>
<h2>Recognition mis-steps</h2>
<p>The recognition process, in and of itself, has been long and drawn out.</p>
<p>We’ve had an expert panel – a year-long deliberative process in 2011 – an <a href="http://www.indigenous.gov.au/act-of-recognition-passes-the-senate">Act of Recognition</a>, a joint select committee that handed down an interim report in July 2014, a progress report in October 2014 and a final report in June 2015, and another contemporaneous process of review headed by John Anderson, who delivered a final report of the <a href="http://www.dpmc.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/publication/final-report-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-act-recognition-review-panel">ATSI Act of Recognition Review Panel</a> in September 2014.</p>
<p>Add to the mix, for the first time in Australia’s disastrous referendum history, a public relations campaign to lobby for a “Yes” vote, despite there being no reform to vote for. In the absence of an actual amendment, the campaign arm has had to prosecute arguments in favour of a referendum based on some of the simplistic messages I have described. It has no other choice.</p>
<p>It was predictable that the campaign would attract the ire of an impecunious Aboriginal sector, gutted by ruthless funding cuts. A <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-vows-to-sweat-blood-for-indigenous-referendum-20141211-125a19.html">recognise gala</a> saw then-prime minister Tony Abbott commit more taxpayer funding to the campaign. </p>
<p>This was contemporaneous with the government’s marquee policy, the <a href="http://www.indigenous.gov.au/indigenous-advancement-strategy">Indigenous Advancement Strategy</a>, which had the brutal impact of laying people off, while organisations lost frontline services, programs and policies ranging from women’s and girls’ empowerment – on-the-ground, fit-for-purpose domestic violence measures – to Aboriginal cultural events.</p>
<p>The campaign has galvanised a resistance movement. Still, political leaders, commentators and policymakers seem blithely unaware. On a fundamental level they need to acknowledge that a model is a necessary prerequisite to Indigenous people forming a reasonable opinion on the matter. </p>
<p>In response to many of these concerns, in July 2015 Abbott and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2015/jul/06/abbott-shorten-and-indigenous-leaders-discuss-recognition-referendum-live">met with</a> 40 Indigenous people at Kirribilli House to discuss a way forward. </p>
<p>We were not told who was on the invitation list as it was “top secret”. No agenda was provided. The purpose of the meeting was to consider the best approach to the proposed referendum and key principles for change and a process. The Indigenous leaders spent all Saturday and Sunday preparing. </p>
<p>It is important, in understanding the Indigenous approach to recognition, to know that Indigenous peoples view any forthcoming referendum on a trajectory starting with Captain James Cook and Governor Arthur Phillip’s conciliation phase, then the era of frontier killings, compulsory racial segregation or “protection”, assimilation, then self-determination and back to the current day, which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda has described as “protection-era-like policy”.</p>
<p>The recognition project is occurring against this backdrop.</p>
<p>On the day of the historic meeting, people shared their thoughts. Forty people in three hours. No structure. We requested Aboriginal conventions. Our mob were lost, we said. Resistance was strong, we said. The <a href="http://www.rqi.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/15-07-06-Joint-Press-Release-with-The-Hon.-Bill-Shorten-MP.pdf">press release</a> indicated that although they seemed to be listening, they did not hear.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112644/original/image-20160223-16422-r5giee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mick Gooda describes the current state of Indigenous affairs as ‘protection-era-like policy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
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<h2>How process has become substance</h2>
<p>Thus, prior to the change of prime minister we were heading down a road by which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities would host a series of conventions culminating in a final convention at Uluru (subject to traditional owners’ agreement). 150 concurrent town hall meetings would be conducted across Australia.</p>
<p>Noel Pearson’s <a href="http://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/news/process-of-recognition/">account of that meeting</a> at Kirribilli House was entirely accurate:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Set-piece photo opportunities, choreographed handshaking, perfectly executed meetings, commissioning and receiving official reports … The semblance of public conversation, democracy and debate: the reality of pre-prepared statements and pre-determined outcomes has long been part of politics. </p>
<p>But process today is not like process yesterday. We are now in the era of the reification of process. Process entirely disconnected from the real policy and political substance. Indeed the process itself has become the substance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That “process has become the substance” is an apt way to describe the outcome of the parliamentary steps. The joint select committee produced three reports, all variations of the first expert panel’s recommendations. The testimony and submissions show overwhelming support for a racial non-discrimination clause reflecting the identical public sentiment that the expert panel found. </p>
<p>Of the expert panel recommendations in 2011, only one proposal polled by Newspoll was high enough to succeed at a referendum: Section 116A of the Constitution, the racial non-discrimination clause. Fixing the race power, adding settler “recognition” – these recommendations would not withstand, we were told, a “No” campaign.</p>
<p>The drawn-out process of recognition – four processes in five years – is informed by the political paralysis of a rights-reluctant culture – to avoid the difficult task of telling a community that are supportive of a racial non-discrimination clause that, despite the overwhelming support for it, it is a captain’s call. </p>
<p>This is dissonance between the political class and the people. This is not uncommon in representative democracy but is discomforting enough to drag out, setting up process after process until, finally, someone decides to dump it. Government outsourcing leadership.</p>
<p>In some ways, this was meant to be the task of a joint select committee: to dump the “back-door bill of rights”. Except it couldn’t, because there is overwhelming community support for it. The arguments against it are mostly political, not legal. On this, Pearson <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/august/1438351200/noel-pearson/process-recognition">has been scathing</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A few days after the Kirribilli meeting, Ken Wyatt was in the Australian admitting that a non-discrimination clause is unlikely to succeed because it is opposed in his own party. Tabled with hugs and congratulations, the joint select committee’s report was dead within three weeks. </p>
<p>The scope of the options on the table had not been narrowed at the Kirribilli meeting. And yet by the end of the week, the ink not yet dried on the committee’s report, already it was being dismissed as unviable by its primary author.</p>
<p>The reaction? Nothing. The inexorable caravan of process moved on as though nothing happened. Never mind a parliamentary committee recommends something one week and its chairman rejects it three weeks later. Clearly Wyatt felt it was more important to have a unanimous report than an honest one. The perception of proper process was paramount once again.</p>
<p>Of course there needs to be process. But there must be public engagement and debate. We either win on the strength of our ideas and arguments, with integrity, truth and rigorous debate, or we do not win at all. From here, either the recognition process is managed to a destination worked out by the pollsters and official “reconciliationistas”, or they take a back seat until the policy and political dialogue is properly had.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112645/original/image-20160223-16451-7j32k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In July 2015 Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten met with 40 Indigenous people at Kirribilli House to discuss recognition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Moir</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Listening but not hearing</h2>
<p>The Aboriginal resistance to recognition can be explained in a number of ways. </p>
<p>There are no Aboriginal drivers and the rhetoric of recognition jars with the draconian policies and decimation of a sector wrought by funding cuts. Also, worryingly, there is a near absence of pragmatic, hard-headed debate. Where is the disagreement? </p>
<p>As Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus correctly said of referendums, there should be bipartisan agreement on the final proposal but it does not mean there can’t be constructive tensions on the journey there. </p>
<p>The fear of a contest of ideas is at most a broken system and at least a little creepy. There is, however, loads of sentimental gush that has raised the suspicion of a politically savvy mob accustomed to being on the arse-end of democratic compromise.</p>
<p>To be fair, the constitutional calculus that only eight out of 44 referendums to amend the Constitution since 1901 have been successful is intimidating. Therefore, the bottom line for those driving the recognition agenda is that of the eight successful referendums each had bipartisan support.</p>
<p>Thus it is this that is repeated ad nauseam and has been the only driver of public debate. Not what is the best option for reform? Or, what is legally and technically sound? Not even, what do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want?</p>
<p>These questions are not asked because the system has gotten used to forging ahead without us. Indigenous views are not a necessary precondition to constitutional recognition. That is the kind of country we have become.</p>
<p>The routinely cited “eight from 44” conundrum means huge pressure will be placed on the mob to accept something they don’t want, for fear of disappointing the settlers. </p>
<p>This emotional blackmail is embedded in the statements I hear: something is better than nothing; symbolism is better than nothing; go for something now and get what you want in 20 years; go for minimalism and bargain for more off the euphoria of a win; if you walk away you risk race relations; if it fails it risks race relations; symbolism will close the gap; symbolism will improve health and wellbeing; recognition will complete the Constitution; recognition will create a unified and reconciled nation.</p>
<p>Indigenous leader June Oscar has <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/indigenous-funding-model-disastrous-says-june-oscar/news-story/4af15ddc55568f5d53e144828081a495">called on</a> Malcolm Turnbull to abandon Tony Abbott’s streamlined Indigenous funding, describing it as a disastrous policy that had brought many child welfare and family centres to the brink of closure.</p>
<p>Former Aboriginal affairs minister Fred Chaney <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/bonfire-of-regulation-fizzles-out-before-it-gets-to-the-bush/news-story/0c7e45d6e52a2811777a7343d09a0c6a">warns that</a> remote parts of Australia “increasingly resemble a failed state”. Gooda <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/28/indigenous-australia-reeling-from-policy-changes-and-cutbacks-commissioner">has described</a> the funding and policy situation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… we are now witnessing one of the largest scale “upheavals” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In his 2014 Annual ANU Reconciliation Lecture, Chaney <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/news/is-australia-big-enough-for-reconciliation/">argued</a> that the recognition project will be hampered by the Commonwealth policy approach. There is a problem with the narrative of “recognition”, apropos of contemporary chaotic and discursive public policy across the federation. The main message politicians are getting is “it’s a distraction”. They are listening but they are not hearing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112646/original/image-20160223-16451-12vq07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fred Chaney has warned that remote parts of Australia ‘increasingly resemble a failed state’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Hugh Peterswald</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving ahead without support</h2>
<p>Why forge ahead? Why not take stock, show leadership and slow things down? Why present a referendum as a forgone conclusion and then, if it does not proceed, frame it as a failure or disaster and search for those to blame? </p>
<p>One of reasons may be that political leaders, participants and commentators, not Indigenous peoples, are unwittingly or begrudgingly on this journey. As prime minister, Julia Gillard created an expert panel because that was part of the agreement with the Greens and independent Rob Oakeshott to gain their support in a hung parliament. They asked her to operationalise the multi-party support for constitutional recognition. </p>
<p>Gillard never responded to the expert panel, and so Abbott inherited it. He had a different problem. With his carefully crafted image as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-tony-abbott-be-a-prime-minister-for-aboriginal-affairs-17985">prime minister for Indigenous affairs</a> he found it hard to manoeuvre. Of all the inert policy areas he oversaw as prime minister, this was the one journalists routinely singled out as a success. He had no choice but to give the appearance of momentum despite the fact he knew there was overwhelming opposition in his partyroom and a nascent Aboriginal resistance movement.</p>
<p>The word “recognition” has also been problematic. It has given both succour and grief to politicians. For reluctant politicians, the language has helped because it presupposes something easy to do, a no-brainer that will attract bipartisanship and public support – rather like the use of the word “reconciliation” a generation ago.</p>
<p>The term is simultaneously delivering grief because it is commonly used in political theory to frame minorities’ claims for structural accommodation. Charles Taylor famously wrote an essay called <a href="http://elplandehiram.org/documentos/JoustingNYC/Politics_of_Recognition.pdf">The Politics of Recognition</a>. Australia’s Elizabeth Povinelli <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-cunning-of-recognition">has written</a> exceptionally and presciently on this. </p>
<p>There is voluminous literature on “recognition”. Legally it must be viewed on a spectrum. </p>
<p>There is weak recognition: a few words of recognition of a fact, preoccupation, dispossession and survival. </p>
<p>There is strong recognition: treaties, constitutional recognition of treaty rights or Aboriginal rights or Indigenous parliaments. In its most minimalist symbolic incarnation it has never been a significant part of Aboriginal advocacy.</p>
<p>The preconceived sentiment that this iteration of recognition means minimalism is most likely a legacy of John Howard and the 1999 republic referendum. In that referendum, First Peoples cultures were mentioned in the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp9900/2000RP16">proposed preamble</a>, which Howard crafted first with Les Murray, and then with Aboriginal senator Aden Ridgeway. It is a concept <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s2057317.htm">Howard revived</a> just before the 2007 federal election, months after his emergency intervention in the Northern Territory.</p>
<p>Too often overlooked in the revisionism that accompanies the transparently conservative-pandering rhetoric – recognition is Howard’s idea so please vote Yes! – is that the democratically elected members of ATSIC and many other land-council chiefs and leaders did not support the preamble. They described it as offensive and inaccurate. Howard moved ahead anyway, despite overwhelming disapproval.</p>
<p>This is important: the state moved ahead anyway, without the approval of the subjects of the recognition. Will this happen again?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112647/original/image-20160223-16422-7kvvgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Howard had a testy relationship with Indigenous Australia as prime minister, culminating in the Northern Territory Intervention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Involving the communities</h2>
<p>In the absence of any effective, legitimate democratic voice or body, the Indigenous affairs space is filled with freelancers. This explains Pearson’s proposal for a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/pearson-proposal-at-odds-with-reality-20150614-ghngc3.html">parliamentary advisory body</a> and Tony McAvoy’s proposal for a <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/presentations/assembly-first-nations-and-treaty">First Nations Assembly</a>. </p>
<p>These proposals are designed to bring leadership authority, decision-making and consultation back to the polities who constitute Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities nationally and are, for the most part, land-based groups. They have authority.</p>
<p>Put simply, decisions about the many and varied discrete communities across Australia should be made by those communities, the Indigenous individuals who reside there, in the decision-making structures that they trust or desire.</p>
<p>Pearson’s proposal has been drafted to accommodate conservative objections to the racial non-discrimination clause. In many ways, both proposals are two sides of the same coin. One is to provide a check and balance on majoritarian parliament that can never truly represent the interests of a distinct cultural polity. This is not to say liberal democracy is bad.</p>
<p>It is to accept that, like most liberal democracies, we can do better. To accept this, there needs to be some mechanisms built into the legal and political system that provide greater scrutiny of the laws and policies considered and passed between the ballot box. A few more safeguards. </p>
<p>This is uncontroversial. Our common-law cousins New Zealand, Canada and the US do this well.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112648/original/image-20160223-16444-1lyx7an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noel Pearson has proposed a parliamentary advisory body for Indigenous affairs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What form can recognition take?</h2>
<p>University of Melbourne doctoral student and researcher <a href="http://www.ilc.unsw.edu.au/staff/dylan-lino">Dylan Lino</a>, who is based at Harvard, argues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We must be careful to acknowledge that while symbolism – if that is what it is – is nice and may have some salutary benefits, the pursuit of wholly symbolic recognition in written constitutions often neglects valid grievances about how power is wielded by the state over the group in question.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Redressing this legitimate grievance is what the expert panel’s Section 116A and the proposal for a parliamentary advisory body are trying to do. They are clever, widely consulted, carefully constructed ideas for structural reform from the Aboriginal polity. </p>
<p>And yet, even though Pearson’s proposal responds to all the concerns about a racial non-discrimination clause, those with political power still say no. My suspicion, based on years of meeting politicians who mostly have not read the expert panel report or the three joint select committee reports, is that they are not interested in reform. End of story.</p>
<p>Why else would you pursue a project favouring reform at its most limited, and therefore likely to have a negligible impact on the very measures you are monitoring to close the gap? Is the reason simply that no-one is reading, no-one is paying attention, that no-one really cares?</p>
<p>For Indigenous Australians the system is broken. When self-determination was abandoned it was replaced by a seemingly benign, upbeat and eternally co-operative bipartisanship. But bipartisanship is deceptively simple. Intuitively it makes sense, but it does not always sit well in a parliamentary liberal democracy whose institutions are based on the mediation of disagreement. </p>
<p>And when a policy area involves 2% of 23 million people, it becomes a significant problem for the scrutiny of decisions between the ballot box.</p>
<p>This is why the two primary proposals for constitutional recognition – an amendment to entrench the principle of racial non-discrimination in the Constitution and the proposal for a Indigenous parliamentary advisory body – are so important. They are rigorous proposals that have emerged from extensive consultation over five years. </p>
<p>Section 116A is to provide a discipline on parliamentary power. And when the expert panel discussed with communities that it might enable intervention-type laws or it might not, the overwhelming response was they trusted the High Court as an independent institution to consider the facts fairly and make a decision without the politics. As <a href="https://law.anu.edu.au/staff/asmi-wood">Asmi Wood</a> from the ANU has argued, Aboriginal people don’t trust parliament.</p>
<p>Take the expert panel’s recommendations on Section 51A, to amend the “race power”. The amendment was drafted to address the uncertainty of its racially discriminatory pedigree, as postulated by the High Court in the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/IndigLawB/1998/48.html">Hindmarsh Island Kartinyeri judgment</a>, by placing within the section preambular recognition language that would do two things: constitute “recognition” and provide some (non-binding) guidance to the High Court in its interpretation. </p>
<p>This was a clever solution to a complex problem, conceived of by some of the best constitutional minds at the NSW Bar and then road-tested with the legal profession in consultations over three years.</p>
<p>Yet, when we spoke to Abbott four years after the work of the expert panel, he suggested a preference for three lines at the beginning of the Constitution: an Indigenous past, British heritage and multicultural character. It was clear he had not been briefed on the expert panel’s report and was unaware that constitutional thinking had advanced since the 1999 referendum. </p>
<p>The legal consensus is now that you cannot simply place words at the beginning of the Australian part of the Constitution. It would put a gloss on each and every provision of the text. A non-legal effect clause or non-justiciable clause, as Howard anticipated, provides no relief because, again, as the expert panel’s legal analysis shows, the High Court is likely to read down that clause.</p>
<p>So why, five years after the expert panel handed down its report, have so few of the decision-makers read it? Why are people still suggesting recognition in a preamble when it carries legal risk?</p>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>The soothing infantilism of minimalist recognition declarations intrigue me. As does the reification of process, as Pearson puts it. </p>
<p>Why do Aboriginal people continue to pursue substantive recognition when the perfunctory constitutional calculus trotted out renders substantive amendment insurmountable? Aboriginal people can read. We can retain information. We do not need to be lectured to by people who find it virtually impossible to change their own Constitution.</p>
<p>Put simply, the grandiose pretension of symbolism is not enough. It is fudging the art of law reform. It is naive of Australian politics. It would be a principled decision of the mob to decline the offer of recognition. This is a decision for the Aboriginal people through the conventions.</p>
<p>I have reflected on this, the decision not to proceed if the reform is too weak, because it will predictably cast a shadow or reveal a bleakness that the public sector and the <a href="http://www.reconciliation.org.au/raphub/about/">Reconciliation Action Plan</a>-heavy corporate sector eschews. </p>
<p>They seek positivity and positive measures and tales of Indigenous entrepreneurialism: individuals done good. They are useful anecdotes to the tribalism of the collective. Time and time again, we have heard that the Australian public wants happy stories, good stories, positive stories.</p>
<p>When I was reading some of the overbearing critiques of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/220290/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/9780812993547/">Between the World and Me</a>, I noticed this anxiety for positivity too: Where is the hope, they excoriated him.</p>
<p>A useful Twitter tip saw me scampering off to read Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has written on this contemporary condition. Brueggemann taught me that it is not we, the First Peoples, who bear the responsibility of providing hope to white Australia. A functioning liberal democracy should be providing hope to all its citizens. </p>
<p>On this account, Australia has failed the First Peoples. In the face of indifference, hope arises from within ourselves; perversely, it is the resistance to recognition that springs hope. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97827.The_Prophetic_Imagination">Brueggemann says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hope, on the one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. </p>
<p>On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question. Many leaders I have worked with have said that if they need to they will leave it to another generation. The protracted recognition project has antagonised a politically astute polity fluent in the betrayals of political leaders more interested, as Chaney said, in re-election than they are in reform.</p>
<p>Whatever the result of the Aboriginal conventions, I am sensing a renewal of hope in the community because for the first time in a long time we have the opportunity to come together, to talk, to laugh, to fight, to sing. In the meantime you can continue on without us, as you always have.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read a longer version of this article and others from the Griffith Review’s Fixing the System edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Davis receives funding from the ARC. She is on the Referendum Council.</span></em></p>Public policy no longer requires the imprimatur of the Aboriginal people; Aboriginal participation in the decisions taken about their lives is negligible.Megan Davis, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/524922016-02-09T19:06:44Z2016-02-09T19:06:44ZBirth of a nation: how Australia empowering women taught the world a lesson<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108501/original/image-20160119-31824-r0uml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C39%2C409%2C307&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Suffragette Vida Goldstein became the first Australian to meet an American president at the White House.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>After five prime ministers in five years, many fear that Australia’s political system is irrevocably broken. The Conversation, in partnership with <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>, is publishing a series of essays exploring the problems surrounding, and solutions to, <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">Australia’s current political malaise</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In February 1902 – just 13 months after the Australian colonies federated to become the world’s newest nation – a tall, slender woman from Portland, Victoria, was standing outside the door to the Oval Office in Washington DC. She had been summoned to the White House as somewhat of a curiosity. </p>
<p>Intelligent, inquisitive, and quite often irreverent, the young woman waited until she was bidden to enter. When the door opened she saw President Theodore Roosevelt, sitting with his feet up on the desk. He rushed to greet the elegantly attired woman, grabbing her hand and pumping it up and down in his vice-like grip. He shouted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am delighted to meet you. You’re from Australia; I’m delighted to hear that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And with that enthusiastic embrace, Vida Goldstein became the first Australian to meet an American president at the White House. Goldstein was in Washington as Australia and New Zealand’s sole delegate to the International Woman Suffrage Conference. Goldstein addressed huge American audiences on one of the most controversial global issues of the day: Votes for Women.</p>
<p>Campaigning for women’s suffrage was what Goldstein termed “the policy of concentration”. The parliamentary vote was, in Goldstein’s words, “the right that covered all other rights”. She decried:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the futility of working piecemeal for the emancipation of women, without the vote. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only the vote, Goldstein argued, would ensure “the protection and prevention of degraded womanhood”. Only the vote would unravel the vast web of legal, economic and social disadvantage that ensnared women and girls the world over.</p>
<p>Furthermore, Goldstein ardently believed that women should enter parliament, as Australian women alone in the world were entitled to do. She argued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have always maintained that wherever there are women’s and children’s interests to be considered, women should be thereto consider them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a simple premise; such a revolutionary idea.</p>
<p>Goldstein’s six-month US lecture tour was met with a diva’s reception. Though prim in fashion and chaste in manner, she was both enfant terrible to the established order and darling of the avant-garde. Daily newspapers across the country covered her sold-out lectures on the topic of “The Australian Woman in Politics”.</p>
<p>Goldstein held no doubt about her subject’s international importance and interest, or her country’s political superiority. But why, in that second northern winter of a new century, did the commander-in-chief of the United States of America seek an audience with a charismatic activist from the deep planetary south?</p>
<p>The simple answer is that Teddy Roosevelt was a political progressive. Goldstein was the most fully enfranchised woman he could yet hope to meet and he was keen to see what a member of this new breed looked like. While Roosevelt was a steadfast believer in votes for women, the American Congress would not abide it.</p>
<p>US congressmen put up the <a href="https://www.federationpress.com.au/bookstore/book.asp?isbn=9781862874602">same arguments</a> as conservative opponents to universal adult suffrage the world over, including numerous anti-suffrage women. In the words of one Australian politician, if women could vote, what would prevent them from seeking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… to assume to themselves the functions of men?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the woman now taking tea with the president was decidedly feminine, despite the fact that she came from the country where women had more political rights than anywhere else in the world.</p>
<p>In 1893, New Zealand had become the first country to give women the right to vote in national elections. But in 1902, the newly federated nation of Australia became the only country where white women could both vote and stand for election on a universal and equal basis with white men. This dual right – the complete electoral franchise and eligibility to sit in parliament – was what political philosopher John Stuart Mill <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jsm/women.htm">termed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… perfect equality, admitting no power of privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the very moment of its creation, Australia had instantly become a world leader. And Roosevelt, as he told Goldstein at their meeting, would be “keeping [his] eye on Australia”. He considered its experiment in equality “a great object lesson”.</p>
<h2>Comparing Australia and America</h2>
<p>Australia’s geopolitical claim as one of the oldest, most stable, and most inventive parliamentary and social democracies has been <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/history/australian-history/concise-history-australia-3rd-edition">well established</a>. The secret ballot, the eight-hour day and the wage arbitration system are <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/sitecore/content/Home/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/pop42/hirst">regularly touted</a> as democratic landmarks with Australian origins. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108508/original/image-20160119-31831-1ta44a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1201&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet Australia’s inimitability with regard to women’s political equality has barely entered conventional studies of political history. The women’s suffrage movement is more commonly treated as a discrete topic of investigation: a picturesque mainstay of the equally niche field of women’s and gender history, as if the achievements and legacy of the suffrage campaigners and their supporters are merely a quaint nook in the colossal edifice of nation-building.</p>
<p>But at the turn of the 20th century, Australia’s world-leading status as a democratic freedom fighter was no secret. In her opening address to the Washington Conference in 1902, American Suffrage League president Carrie Chapman Catt was unequivocal, if somewhat bemused, in locating Australia at the apex of women’s political liberation. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The little band of Americans who initiated the modern [suffrage] movement would never have predicted that…the island continent of Australia, then unexplored wilderness, would become a great democracy where self-government would be carried on with such enthusiasm, fervor and wisdom that they would give lessons in methods and principles to all the rest of the world. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Catt then specifically referred to Goldstein as the bearer of these unexpected lessons. Australia, said Catt, was “associated in our memory of childhood’s geography as the abode of strange beasts and barbarians”. Yet remarkably, this bizarre land now:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… sends us a full, up-to-date representative woman, widely alive to all the refinements of life, and fully cognisant of all the rights of her sex.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein was both the literal messenger and a representative of the feminist ideals that Catt associated with Australia. Goldstein was fully aware of the leadership role she had been asked to play. She told a packed house during her address to the 34th American National Suffrage Convention in Washington in March 1902 that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Woman suffrage is with us to stay, and that our success may hasten the day when you American women will stand before the world as political equals of your menfolk is the earnest desire of the countries which have sent me here to represent them at this great conference.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it was not always a relationship of mutual admiration. Goldstein was critical of her host country. She told Australian audiences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of us regard America as the most democratic and advanced country politically in the world. Instead it’s as conservative as a country can well be. A democratic form of government does not necessarily mean that the people rule. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein offered an analysis of the root cause of the hypocrisy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[America’s] written and hidebound constitution [has] played directly into the hands of moneyed and unscrupulous politicians.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What’s more, Goldstein argued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… an abnormal material individual prosperity has contributed towards keeping [Americans] in that hypnotic state under the political machine. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In general, Goldstein was a fan of Roosevelt, but she was not a sycophant. Never one to be patronised, she cheekily parroted Roosevelt’s own words to her. She wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The [Australian] Federal Franchise Bill is the greatest step in the direction of political equality that we have yet seen, and must be a splendid object lesson [her emphasis] to every civilised country in the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With this line, Goldstein managed both to cock a snook at the US president and highlight her own country’s political superiority.</p>
<h2>Changes at home and abroad</h2>
<p>If America was slow to take the Australasian lead, by 1908 Finland and Norway had joined Australia and New Zealand in enfranchising women. But imperialism connected British suffragists more closely to the Australian electoral experiment, providing inspiration and example. </p>
<p>In 1911, Emmeline Pankhurst, on behalf of the Women’s Social and Political Party, recruited Goldstein to address the legions of women who were engaging in mass demonstrations and participating in targeted acts of property destruction. Thousands filled lecture halls and theatres to hear Goldstein’s speeches in support of the militant British suffrage campaign. </p>
<p>By this time, unconvinced that gentle persuasion would make a jot of difference, the suffragists were bombing politicians’ residences, setting hedge fires, breaking windows, staging mass street protests, going on hunger strikes and being force fed through nasal tubes by prison guards. The British experience of suffrage advocacy could not have been more different from Australasia’s peaceful struggle for women’s rights.</p>
<p>While in England, Goldstein formed the Australian and New Zealand Women Voters Association (London):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… with the hope that women of enfranchised dominions would help the women of England in their fight for political freedom. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein also compiled a pamphlet, The Political Woman in Australia, widely circulated in the UK, Europe and the US for propaganda purposes. She was always at pains to point out that, lo, the sky had not fallen and women had not been unsexed by their new political identity as equal citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=869&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108507/original/image-20160119-31804-1k9r7o6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1092&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
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<p>By 1910, Australia had become known around the world as a “social laboratory” celebrated for its pioneering welfare legislation. Some commentators <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314617908595615">attributed Australia’s capacity</a> for experimentation to “a new land like ours, with a restless go-ahead population”.</p>
<p>Suffragists, however, were keen to stress the gendered nature of Australian progressivism, and were quick to note how crucial votes for women had been in igniting the flame of social change. It was the “woman citizen”, claimed first-wave feminists, who <a href="https://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:4595">mobilised trade union support</a> for equal pay and other measures of social equity.</p>
<p>There were other concrete markers of the impact of female citizenship rights on women’s living conditions. Prior to winning the franchise, the infant mortality rate in Australia was 111 deaths per 1000 babies. A decade later, the rate had dropped to 77.</p>
<p>Goldstein attributed the decline in infant mortality to the introduction of pure food laws and raising the age of consent. South Australia, the first Australian colony to enfranchise women in 1894, was also the first legislature in the world to require an “illegitimate father” to recognise his financial obligation to the mother of his child through a law called the Affiliation Act, passed in 1898 after lobbying from women’s groups.</p>
<p>Further examples of progressive and protective actions initiated by women were pensions for invalids, pure milk laws, early closing hours for pubs and technical education for girls. Goldstein called these and other measures the “social reform legislation for which Australia is noted”. </p>
<p>Goldstein directly attributed the success of reformist legislation to the mobilisation of female voters – many of whom would sit in the galleries of the parliament when any bill affecting women and children was debated and then interview members of parliament to urge alterations and amendments.</p>
<h2>Suffrage as part of a wider movement</h2>
<p>In Australia, the suffrage dream was <a href="http://www.melbournebooks.com.au/products/henrietta-augusta-dugdale-an-activist-18271918">closely aligned</a> with other utopian visions of social and political transformation. </p>
<p>Sparked by the gold rushes of the 1850s, a potent amalgam of socialists, spiritualists, dissenters, eclectics, theosophists, pacifists, feminists, unionists, Unitarians, vegetarians and garden-variety liberal democrats all converged on Australia in a remarkably non-volatile brew of ideas and optimism. </p>
<p>By the late 19th century, Australia’s utopian dreamers were not fringe-dwellers. They were bona fide members of Melbourne’s legal, political, religious and social establishment. Like future prime minister Alfred Deakin, most of this clique were civicleaders, sometimes referred to as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fryer-jane-12931/text23365">“the honest doubters”</a>.</p>
<p>As many women’s rights activists realised, federation was the ultimate test tube in which the experimental social and spiritual optimism of the honest doubters would be crystallised.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108506/original/image-20160119-31804-1dw4mwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The birth of the Australian Commonwealth was channeled through a series of constitutional conventions held in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide from 1890 to 1897. The issue was never really whether the six Australian colonies would federate, but how. This would require diminishing the power of the colonies or expanding some of their laws to benefit all citizens across the new Commonwealth. </p>
<p>This jurisprudential reality meant that, just as the mobilisation of the international women’s movement was reaching its apex, there was suddenly a high-profile public platform on which activists could argue the case.</p>
<p>With spitfire efficiency, women’s suffrage organisations around the country <a href="http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=658926">lobbied delegates</a> to the federal conventions. The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales (WSL), an association founded by Australian newspaper editor Louisa Lawson, submitted a petition to the Australasian Federal Convention in 1897. It was one among the hundreds sent by women’s groups to convention delegates, lobbying for women’s voting rights to be enshrined in the new Australian Constitution. </p>
<p>Leveraging the precedent of South Australia, which had already given women the right to vote and to stand for parliament, the <a href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/image.aspx?id=tcm:13-21351">WSL’s petition</a> urged delegates to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… consider whether or not such franchise shall be uniform throughout all the colonies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was this question of uniformity – whether all women would now achieve federally what South Australian women had won locally in 1894 – that set Australia on its course to democratic distinction. The rampart was raised for a showdown between colonists’ rights versus federal rights, with woman suffrage as the battering ram.</p>
<p>Frederick Holder, a keen federalist and treasurer of South Australia when women won their historic victory in 1894, insisted that any agreement honour the existing rights of individual colonists. At the 1897 convention in Adelaide, Holder and Charles Kingston, South Australia’s premier, proposed that full voting rights for all white adults should be written into the Constitution. </p>
<p>Holder moved to add a clause that read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No elector now possessing the right to vote shall be deprived of that right.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other delegates were horrified. Edmund Barton, who would become Australia’s first prime minister, saw the writing on the wall. He railed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I understand the suggestion, it means that if the federal parliament chooses to legislate in respect of a uniform suffrage in the Commonwealth, it cannot do so unless it makes it include female suffrage. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If South Australian women could not be stripped of their hard-won electoral rights, then the rest of Australia’s women must perforce gain them. Barton’s conclusion was inexorable:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It ties the hands of the federal parliament entirely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the clause were not approved, Holder and Kingston threatened that South Australia would vote against joining the Commonwealth. Despite Barton’s protests, a poll was taken and the ayes won by three votes.</p>
<p>Two men from South Australia, backed by every progressive woman’s organisation on the continent, had effectively made white women’s suffrage the precondition of a federated Australia.</p>
<p>The racial qualifier is key. The earlier legislation that entrenched the White Australia Policy – the <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/immigration-restriction-act/">Immigration Restriction Act of 1901</a> – was also the crucial prerequisite that made Goldstein the freest of the free when she visited America in 1902. </p>
<p>Further, in preserving the existing rights of colonists and extending them to all white adults, the <a href="http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-88.html">Franchise Act of 1902</a> had stripped Indigenous Australians ofvoting rights. As historian Susan Magarey <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Passions_of_the_First_Wave_Feminists.html?id=CTuwsR6a4YgC">has argued</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Citizenship, as defined by the right to vote, could be sexually inclusive, because it had just been made racially and ethnically exclusive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Race, not gender, defined the new Australian citizen. Historian Marilyn Lake <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5263/labourhistory.102.0055">has argued</a> that in an international context, the federal female franchise ushered in an era of unprecedented political power for women. But what did people at the time make of the opportunistic alignment of feminism and federalism?</p>
<h2>Spreading influence</h2>
<p>The majority of political pundits reckoned that the social laboratory had not spawned a monster. “Votes for Women: Australia Satisfied – Letting the Empire Know”, trumpeted a newspaper headline in 1910, following the Senate’s decision to communicate to the British prime minister that Australia had “found [the] experiment a success”.</p>
<p>Wrote another journalist:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The result has not produced either a heaven or a hell. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Australian suffrage campaigners were correct to see federalism as their ticket to public influence on the grandest scale. Leaders like Goldstein readily adopted the role of international ambassador for the enlightened dawn of a new century. </p>
<p>On April 12, 1907, Goldstein wrote to members of the parliaments of Australia as President of the Women’s Political Association. “Dear Sir,” her letter began – for there were as yet no female parliamentarians, despite Goldstein’s own efforts to become a senator in 1903:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We Australian women who have had our right to political liberty granted by the national parliaments and by every state parliament save one [Victoria], have been appealed to by the International Woman Suffrage Alliance to help our less fortunate fellow women in other lands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The appeal was most forthcoming from nations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… where it is urged by those in authority that the enfranchisement of women means social and political disaster.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein pressed the statesmen to write testimonies to the successful workings of complete adult suffrage in Australian political life. She was obliged with an avalanche of letters, including responses from Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, as well as testimonies from the attorney-general, postmaster-general and state premiers. </p>
<p>Even former opponents to women’s suffrage like Thomas Waddel, the colonial secretary of NSW, testified that women:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… exercise the franchise wisely and I feel sure that their influence in public life will be all for good. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein was able to forward a thick stack of letters of endorsement from respectable and influential men to the campaign leaders of her “less fortunate fellow women” abroad.</p>
<p>On November 17, 1910, the Senate went one step better in touting Australia’s democratic credentials when it unanimously passed the Votes for Women Resolution – a confidence motion in its own first decade of nationhood. The motion read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because [universal suffrage] has brought nothing but good, though disaster was freely prophesised [sic], we respectfully urge that all nations enjoying representative government would be well advised in granting votes to women.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If this sounds fresh, there was more hubris to come.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our young Australian nation is bound to achieve greatness. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why such a glorious destiny? Because Australia was, in the words of the senators, “the first nation to make justice the foundation of its constitution”. And it was not just women who thought as much. The motion concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Woman suffrage has done for Australia all and more than its leaders claimed for it. No self-governing country can prosper without the political aid of women. It is a necessary factor in securing the moral and spiritual progress of the individual and of the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The senators were highly aware of the inherent role reversal in the colonies giving political tuition to the Empire. One claimed that Australia – though the child – had every right to give advice to Britain – the mother. His rationale? </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are, in politics, the pacemakers of the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Copies of the Senate’s bumptious resolution were circulated and published abroad.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108505/original/image-20160119-31811-161ohfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
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<p>Judging by the 1910 Senate’s vote of self-confidence in its own destiny, the auspicious occasion (if there must be just one) when Australia overcame its self-doubt and believed itself to be a nation, in fact occurred prior to any military battle on foreign soil.</p>
<p>Five years before Gallipoli, the Commonwealth of Australia asserted that it was “bound to achieve greatness” because of its democratic agility and proficiency, its sociopolitical courage and grace. </p>
<p>It might even be that the establishment of the Anzac legend and the trumpeting of a distinctive, world-leading constitutional equity were two sides of the same coin. “Both the feminist/reformist/federation story and the masculinist/digger/Gallipoli story” assumed that Australia could create a new imperial nation that would simultaneously embody racial superiority while rejecting the political inequalities and hierarchies of the old world.</p>
<p>Though not all first-wave feminists agreed, militarism and maternalism were <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Gates_of_Memory.html?id=E91mAAAAMAAJ">not necessarily</a> mutually exclusive. The belief that Australia had something valuable to contribute to the world continued beyond the disastrous landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.</p>
<p>In 1917, six years after Goldstein’s sold-out lecture tour of Britain and at the height of the Great War, the Australian Commonwealth once again agreed to send a message to the world. While ostensibly a message of hope to King George V, it was not a felicitation for his newly named House of Windsor, nor a pledge of solidarity for the war effort. It was, instead, an appeal for political reform, bordering on a taunt to keep up with the precocious Australians.</p>
<p>The parliamentary missive began:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Appreciating the blessings of self-government in Australia through adult suffrage, we are deeply interested in the welfare of the women of the Empire and we again humbly petition Your Majesty to endow them with that right of self-government for which they have petitioned for nearly three-quarters of a century.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps this can be read as the trademark tactic of an adolescent, cutting an arrogant parent down to size with evidence of her own incompetence. But more likely, Australians were deeply aware of the unique contribution they had made to the advancement of democratic principles and institutions – a profound sense of commitment to the international cause of political equality, spurred on by confidence in their own social experiment of change and reform. </p>
<p>Maturity was not simply tested by readiness for war. And “growth” was not measured in imperial pencil marks on a military doorframe, but by more <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Identity-and-the-Life-Cycle/">psychosocial notions</a> of human development. Australia was justly proud that its first success had been the peaceful negotiation of the transnational need for women’s political emancipation. </p>
<p>As Bishop JE Mercer argued in his contribution to Goldstein’s cache of support letters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australia was reaping the reward of having responded to the unanswerable appeal to justice.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Selling the campaign</h2>
<p>In the decade that followed the Washington International Suffrage Convention, the Australian press was also keen to herald Australia’s landmark status on the American political landscape.</p>
<p>“American Suffragettes. Praise for Australia”, screamed one newspaper headline, when a deputation of American women’s rights activists appeared before the Home Rules Committee of the House of Representatives in December 1913. The Australian experience of women’s suffrage was “quoted in favour of the proposal” by the deputation.</p>
<p>The Melbourne Argus similarly reported American suffragists’ disappointment and disgust when Woodrow Wilson failed to mention the American women’s suffrage campaign in his Congressional Christmas address in December 1913.</p>
<p>Why would a Melbourne newspaper consider this seemingly immaterial aspect of American domestic policy relevant to its readers, other than as a tacit nod to Australia’s continued primacy in progressive legislation? Pride in Australia’s democratic superiority endured. Australian newspapers consistently reported Wilson’s inability to get a universal suffrage bill through Congress throughout the war years.</p>
<p>As historian Hilary Golder has argued, though many Australian feminists in the Federation era were strong nationalists (as well as pacifists), they <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/pubs/pops/pop41/caine.pdf">leapt at the opportunity</a> to become involved in international suffrage campaigns, lending guidance and advice as well as participating in “performative activism”.</p>
<p>It was possible to be both proud Australians and loyal “women of the Empire”. In June 1911, Australians Alice Henry, Dora Montefiore, Nellie Martel and Murial Matters joined with Goldstein and Margaret Fisher, wife of Australia’s then-prime minister Andrew Fisher, to march in the Great Suffrage Petition in London. </p>
<p>Goldstein and Fisher carried a banner on behalf of Australia and New Zealand imploring England to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Trust the women, Mother, As I Have Done. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The banner, painted by the Australian expatriate artist Dora Meeson Coates, dripped with symbolism. It depicted a young woman bearing a shield of the Southern Cross, humbly petitioning a maternal Britannia to listen to her cause. Maiden Australia’s hand is upturned in supplication; Mother England stares diffidently into the distance. </p>
<p>The image is not one of cross-gender antagonism, but of intergenerational conflict and negotiation. In the <a href="http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1861561091.html">mother–daughter dyad</a>, the psychic health of the daughter requires that she go her own way, but not antagonise or hurt the resentful mother, who needs her to remain a beloved friend and comrade.</p>
<p>The antipodean suffrage banner can be read as a symbolic cutting of apron strings. Mother England gives her colonial daughter the cold shoulder; the nubile offspring must stand her ground. This feminised coming-of-age story, implicit in Australia’s critical role in the British suffrage campaigns, provides an alternative to the androcentric underpinnings of Gallipoli’s enduring “birth of a nation” mystique.</p>
<p>If the philosophical and practical leadership of women in stewarding Britain through a time of political upheaval focused on women’s transnational relationships, as Goldstein herself noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… one feature in the Suffrage Campaign in Australia makes it radically different from that in any country – the readiness of our men to admit that our cause was a just one, and entitled to immediate recognition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein may be overstating her case, given that the <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200812634;res=IELAPA">Australian suffrage campaign</a> began as early as 1869 and thus lasted 33 years. Also, other suffragists described Australian men as behaving like pompous benefactors or as surrendering reluctantly to the inevitable. In April 1902, Jessie Ackerman bemoaned the number of politicians who put themselves on a pedestal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… halo in hand, to anoint himself high priest, and claim the glory touch of shepherding the women into the kingdom of federal citizenship. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ackerman was quick to point out that the Commonwealth parliament enfranchised its women because it had no constitutional choice. She concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is, therefore, little credit due to an “unbounded generosity” on the part of men. There was no alternative.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Goldstein believed that in Australia, the political faultline lay not between men and women, but between conservatives and progressives. She also criticised Australia’s self-styled “new women” for their own failure to fulfil the promise of their early electoral equality. </p>
<p>Returning to Australia after the intense fellowship and purpose of London’s mass demonstrations and overflowing lecture theatres, Goldstein began to despair that after a decade of voting rights but no elected female representation, Australian women seemed to have lapsed into an apathetic status quo. “Enfranchised women of Australia,” she beseeched her sisters from street corners, copies of her Woman Voter journal in hand, “rise to your responsibilities, to your potentialities”.</p>
<p>Though the absolute numbers of female voters almost doubled between 1903 and 1910, Goldstein was not convinced that women were doing enough to prove that female political power was a force for good. Goldstein had an evangelical vision of Australia’s global mission that was not dissimilar to the male advocates of the federalist movement, who viewed Australia as a salve to old world ills.</p>
<p>The Brisbane Worker had declared in January 1901:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From the first to the last keynote of Australian provincial progress has been democracy, this is Australia’s manifest destiny if she is to fulfil any nobler destiny than the nations decayed and decaying.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australian suffragists benefited from a timely alignment between the ideals of international feminism and the historical coincidence of federalism – a sense of providence about the role that a new country <a href="http://www.clarewright.com.au/pdfs/%C5%92New%20Brooms%20They%20Say%20Sweep%20Clean%C2%B9%20Women's%20Political%20Activism%20on%20the%20Ballarat%20Goldfields,%201854.pdf">could play</a> in the worn-out routines of global political housekeeping.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108503/original/image-20160119-31804-4w832o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vida Goldstein as part of a delegation on a visit to London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Where are we now?</h2>
<p>So what has happened since then to shift the national conversation from Australia’s youthful, maverick mission as a global innovator to a country of <a href="http://apo.org.au/node/3505#sthash.YJyPhvi7.dpuf">politically timorous conformists</a>?</p>
<p>One cultural trend stands out. Australia’s collective memory of the international achievements of its homegrown suffrage movement has faded in inverse proportion to the popularity of the Anzac legend. Militarism has won the public relations campaign for the “birth of a nation” mantle. Most Australian feminists believed as fervently in disarmament as suffrage. It was indeed the latter that should, in theory, have produced the former.</p>
<p>Yet Gallipoli also represented the heady, irresistible triumvirate of militarism, empire and race. But in the wake of a world war, any idea of Australian isolationism seemed increasingly untenable given, as the historian Audrey Oldfield has put it, “the historical imperatives of Australia’s geographical position”.</p>
<p>Most Australian suffragists, including Goldstein, believed whole-heartedly in the wisdom of a White Australia. As the British Empire crumbled under the weight of its own racial pecking orders, American global dominance took hold under Franklin D. Roosevelt. </p>
<p>Underpinned by the same imperialist subservience that ultimately fuelled the Anzac legend, with its heroically active men and patriotically domestic women, the transnational potential for feminists to take a leading role on the world stage was impaired. Australia’s relevance as a youthful ambassador for change diminished as its acquiescent ties to Mother England remained stubbornly tangled.</p>
<p>In October 2011, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser <a href="http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/refugees/sensible-solution/its-time-for-a-sensible-solution">expressed his anxiety</a> at Australia’s lack of political pluck when he addressed an open letter from prominent Australians to Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the issue of the humane processing of refugees. Fraser exhorted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Seize the opportunity to exhibit leadership, not just at home, but also on the world stage. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fraser gave a concrete example of the form such moral courage might take: why not implement measures that would “serve as an incentive and an example for members of the UNHCR Working Group on Resettlement, which Australia currently chairs”.</p>
<p>Channelling the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt, Fraser concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Make no mistake, the world is watching. Australia has a chance to not only salvage our reputation but set an example for our friends and allies around the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In October 2012, Gillard took up the challenge, though not on the issue that Fraser pre-empted. “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man,” Australia’s first female prime minister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihd7ofrwQX0">fairly roared</a> at a smirking opposition leader, Tony Abbott. And the world was watching. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ihd7ofrwQX0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Julia Gillard excoriates Tony Abbott in parliament.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Via the internet, millions viewed “the misogyny speech” in a global fascination with Australia’s female pluck. World leaders rang Gillard to congratulate her on calling out the entrenched prejudice towards women in public and professional life. International journalists used the Australian precedent to focus attention on their domestic politics. As Amelia Lester <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ladylike-julia-gillards-misogyny-speech">wrote in The New Yorker</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After his performance last week, supporters of president Obama, watching Gillard cut through the disingenuousness and feigned moral outrage of her opponent to call him out for his own personal prejudice, hypocrisy, and aversion to facts, might be wishing their man would take a lesson from Australia. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>US President Barack Obama <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/prime-minister-julia-gillard-wont-reveal-what-us-president-barack-obama-thought-of-her-sexism-speech-where-she-called-tony-abbott-a-misogynist/story-fndo20i0-1226514104998">reportedly mentioned the speech</a> to Gillard when she rang to congratulate him on his 2012 election victory.</p>
<p>Thus, more than a century on from Goldstein’s historic visit to the Oval Office, a hint of antipodean evangelism has recently re-entered the sphere of international politics. </p>
<p>Perhaps, with the global challenges of the 21st century, Australia can reassert its erstwhile youthful exuberance and once again be proud to call itself a trailblazing leader – a nation where justice serves as the foundation of its moral constitution.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>A longer version of this essay was published in the Journal of Women’s History.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read a longer version of this article and others from the Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Australia’s inimitability with regard to women’s political equality has barely entered conventional studies of political history.Clare Wright, Associate Professor in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/524932016-02-02T19:05:03Z2016-02-02T19:05:03ZRuling, not governing: what to do about our lost confidence in the body politic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108237/original/image-20160115-2368-yg13sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott sought to rule rather than govern, in much the same way that Kevin Rudd did. Both unravelled.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>After five prime ministers in five years, many fear that Australia’s political system is irrevocably broken. The Conversation, in partnership with <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>, is publishing a series of essays exploring the problems surrounding, and solutions to, <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">Australia’s current political malaise</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Ruling is a consequence of professional politicking. Yet it has also created unmatched instability in modern Australian politics. Professionalisation of political operations has come to dominate the way major Australian political parties function, and diminishes government and opposition alike. </p>
<p>Tony Abbott sought to rule rather than govern, in much the same way that Kevin Rudd did after Labor was returned to power in 2007 – and both unravelled.</p>
<p>The blame for the state of modern politics lies not just with the politicians, but with journalists, commentators and voters as well. The political culture in Australia is sick and in need of treatment. The throwaway culture of consumerism has transferred into attitudes towards politicians. The selfishness of voters is only matched by politicians’ selfish grab for power. And journalists, while not entirely to blame for the way they cover politics, share the blame for the lack of focus on policy.</p>
<p>In our view, there are three relatively simple solutions to help improve the situation, and return politics to the art of governing rather than ruling: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>tighter regulation of political parties; </p></li>
<li><p>recognition that Australia has outgrown the two-party system and must reform institutions to remake it; and </p></li>
<li><p>the need to institutionalise consultation within the law-making process.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Small targets</h2>
<p>Australians are not happy with the state of politics and they largely blame politicians. And why not? We have record numbers of politicians who have been <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/160961">trained in the arts of politics</a> through employment in central party, ministerial and MP offices. </p>
<p>The present generation of leaders has expert knowledge about communicating, campaigning and focus groups but <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-political-amnesia-how-we-forgot-how-to-govern-50596">little time or respect</a> for the best traditions of government: the patient development of policy formulated with the assistance of a professional public service. So determined are they to present small targets to the electorate that concepts like platforms and mandates have almost dropped out of the vocabulary of politics.</p>
<p>Where the notion of a mandate does surface, it’s as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-will-of-the-people-its-the-bastardisation-of-democracy-29540">simplistic demand</a> by government that the Senate pass its proposed bills, ignoring the check-and-balance role the second chamber was designed to provide. Too often, governments don’t even have the popular mandate for the legislation they demand gets passed, given the scant details on offer during election campaigns. </p>
<p>As South Australian senator Nick Xenophon told us for our book <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/163731">Battleground: Why the Liberal Party Shirtfronted Tony Abbott</a>, the former prime minister had “a reverse mandate” for much of what was contained in his first budget, having explicitly ruled out during the campaign many of the cuts Treasurer Joe Hockey announced on budget night.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108238/original/image-20160115-2343-1xwisb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull’s elevation to the prime ministership brought with it hopes of a raised tone of debate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The small-target strategy the Coalition adopted in 2013 while in opposition was a symptom of the professionalisation of politics, where the drive for government for the sake of power outweighs the purpose for achieving it. The result has been the opposite of what the professionals must have expected – a period of instability unparalleled since the first decade after Federation. </p>
<p>Politicians who understand how to count but who barely contribute a single idea to the public square are damaging voter perceptions of political leadership, increasing the degree of difficulty to break out of this situation and present substantive debates and policy ideas.</p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull’s election to the prime ministership by his colleagues promises to rebalance this situation, but it is early days and such promises have been made before. We wait to see if the rhetoric will be matched by genuine changes. </p>
<p>Given that Turnbull’s elevation came as a result of the erosion of confidence in the system and the willingness to remove a leader when unpopularity pervades, even just over halfway into a first term, it is far from certain he won’t fall victim to the same panic and cutthroat assessment.</p>
<h2>A lack of diversity</h2>
<p>The permanent campaign is a concept American political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann <a href="https://www.aei.org/publication/the-permanent-campaign-and-its-future/">first wrote about</a> 15 years ago. It involves the professionalisation of politics to a point where the political participants become involved in a permanent election campaign: using the media and the routines of politics to the direct goal of re-election, throughout an entire electoral term.</p>
<p>As a direct result of this professionalisation there is a loss of diversity in representatives, which narrows the intellectual outlook of the body politic, and in turn has removed the ideological drive of modern politics. This leaves voters with limited choices. </p>
<p>In Australia, the major parties are dominated by careerists, for whom election is the goal rather than the means of achieving goals. Retaining power has become more important than using incumbency to achieve goals. This has many impacts – on leadership theory, public policy and political stability, as we’ve seen recently with the removal of multiple prime ministers by their partyrooms.</p>
<p>Where once Liberals would accuse Labor of ideological and professional narrowness because of the large number of former union officials in their ranks, now both sides are heavily laden with ex-staffers. The Liberal Party rarely pre-selects small business owners – partly because of more rigid factional groupings and partly because those small business owners have stepped back from political engagement. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-26/north-sydney-preselection-a-stitch-up-say-insiders/6886606">recent pre-selection process</a> for Joe Hockey’s seat of North Sydney saw a controversial move to truncate the selection process, which helped deliver the seat to Trent Zimmerman, a factional player for the moderates with only limited “real-world” experience. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108239/original/image-20160115-2362-1sbu20g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor’s parliamentary ranks are dominated by ex-union officials such as Bill Shorten.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Andrew Taylor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To the extent that we read about diversity in the backgrounds of MPs in their parliamentary biographies, such career markers have been strategically embarked on for the purpose of a future tilt at politics; for appearance rather than life experience. Too many MPs with backgrounds in larger organisations have worked within the media or government affairs divisions, rather than at the heart of the business.</p>
<p>On the Labor side, while ex-union officials <a href="https://theconversation.com/class-warfare-would-shorten-pass-the-test-that-ed-miliband-failed-34652">continue to dominate</a> parliamentary ranks, alongside ex-staffers, they are career union officials rather than those who have moved from the factory floor into official roles and then into parliament. </p>
<p>The working-class diversity that once made up for the narrowness of union domination with Labor‘s ranks is no more. Isolated exceptions prove the rule.</p>
<h2>Dominance of polling</h2>
<p>The most concerning aspect of the professionalisation of politics is the disconnect it has facilitated between politicians and those who vote for them. Our leaders know too much about politics and not enough about life. Just because you can tear down a first-term prime minister doesn’t mean it is a good idea.</p>
<p>Did the Labor functionaries who removed Rudd stop to think about why a first-term prime minister had never been treated that way? Now Abbott has suffered the same fate. </p>
<p>For all the faults of the Abbott government – many of which were accentuated by the professionalisation of politics – we can’t be sure that Abbott’s faults in his two years in office wouldn’t have been corrected over time, as was the case with other prime ministers. Like Rudd before him, Abbott wasn’t afforded the opportunity to grow in the job.</p>
<p>Bob Hawke had a messy beginning; John Howard even moreso. Had either of these highly regarded former prime ministers been voted out of office by their colleagues so soon after becoming prime minister, their legacies would have been as unimpressive as Abbott’s will certainly be. </p>
<p>If you doubt this historical reality, consider Howard’s polling numbers just over three months out from the 1998 election. His Coalition‘s primary vote was at just 34%; Abbott’s government’s primary vote never fell below 35%. Howard’s net satisfaction rating had dipped to minus 31 – territory Abbott traversed only once, and had recovered from by the time he was deposed.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108245/original/image-20160115-2372-1ftuvru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Howard made an art of trailing in the polls until the time that it mattered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Abbott was wrong to <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-attacks-febrile-media-culture-that-rewards-treachery-47570">blame</a> the proliferation of polls, the media and white-anting as the causes of his demise, they did play a role. The need to stay competitive in the polls is stronger now than it has ever been, and there are more polls than ever before. </p>
<p>During his 11 years in power, Howard made an art of trailing in the polls until the eve of elections, before narrowing the gap and – with the notable exception of the 2007 election – overtaking his rivals when it mattered.</p>
<p>The erosion of stability caused by professionalisation isn’t only the fault of politicians. The media culture in response to it and the cultural realities of modern society are also contributing factors. Journalism is more poll-driven than in the past, more informed by backgrounding and commentary because of the expense involved in chasing down genuine news. </p>
<p>On the supply side of political news, public comments from political leaders are so scripted and predictable that journalists compete to seek out their real thinking. They celebrate the “gaffes”, which American journalist Michael Kinsley <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/michaelkin399281.html">defined as</a> an accidental utterance of the truth, produced by politicians because they puncture the images that leaders and their advisers seek to project. </p>
<p>Even politicians resent this charade. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop provided an insight into this thinking when government talking points were leaked – <a href="http://www.juliebishop.com.au/doorstop-interview-parliament-house-canberra-4/">she commented</a> that this would save her the trouble of having to parrot them.</p>
<h2>A throwaway media culture</h2>
<p>Voters today are part of a consumer throwaway culture, which we argue has harmed the way we see our politicians. If leaders err, just replace them. This attitude is shared by their colleagues. </p>
<p>There must be more to the problem than what Abbott called a “febrile media culture”. When New Zealander John Key <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-17/turnbull-promises-key-he-will-speed-up-nz-deportation-appeals/6862768">welcomed Turnbull</a> in October 2015, he was meeting his fifth Australian prime minister. Other parliamentary systems – the UK and Germany – are enjoying periods of relative stability. So too was Canada, until conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-election-idUSKCN0SD17X20151020">was defeated</a> while trying to secure a fourth term in power. </p>
<p>These countries are not without their problems. But Australia’s problems seem to be rooted in systemic and cultural issues that we can do something about.</p>
<p>Governments know everything about what voters want, but seem unable to satisfy them. While the published polls have impacted on the political contest we see in the media, internal party research has decided what comes first. Where previously such research was used to inform how to sell policy scripts, or occasionally ward off policy moves that are patently out of touch with the electorate, today the research determines policy choices. </p>
<p>This shift is supposed to endear the political class to voters, but we see through many of the attempts to reflect our wishes rather than lead. It is a twist on the delegate and trustee representational theories.</p>
<p>Not long ago, political scientists wondered whether this <a href="http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:135359">“PR state”</a> gave undue advantages to incumbent governments. The overflow of media advisers and access to resources seemed to offer incumbents powerful advantages against their political opponents. </p>
<p>Some sort of threshold was passed in the late 1990s, when the number of trained journalists working for governments surpassed the number working for newspapers. We realise now that journalists, even as their numbers declined, were tiring of being managed by their former colleagues turned media advisers and found ways to fight back – revelling in getting behind the spin and highlighting the re-announcements, backflips and backdowns. This leaves readers and viewers more cynical than they were to start with.</p>
<p>At the same time, as veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes has pointed out, journalists are remarkably reticent in defending the traditions of their own profession. Governments collect data and restrict access to immigration detention centres with ease. For a profession that loves to talk about itself, this is a remarkable omission. </p>
<p>Yet the Gillard government’s failed attempt to regulate newspapers shows the limits of politicians in using their institutional power. This in turn brings us back to the lack of trust, and therefore authority, that we place in our elected representatives.</p>
<p>The public needs to take its share of the blame. We’ve all watched the leadership speculation stories climb to the top of the most clicked-on stories of even the quality news sites. Journalists who seek to be well read – at a time when online data reveals all regarding how may readers journalists truly have – play to their readers’ preferences. </p>
<p>Canberra gossip (as Abbott was <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-14/abbott-not-playing-canberra-games/6772696">fond of calling it</a>) serves as clickbait. During Abbott’s two years in office, stories with his chief-of-staff’s name in the title invariably sat at the top of the most-read articles on websites. Readers want to feel like they have been taken inside the political contest, and stories that achieve this but nonetheless focus on policy over politics lose reader interest.</p>
<p>It is the politicians who need to disarm in the contest with journalists and voters: get out from behind the consultants, spin doctors and minders and tell us what they think. It will be interesting to see how long Turnbull refuses to play the game of ruling measures in or out before they have been properly debated.</p>
<p>One of the reasons that parties felt obliged to take the seemingly radical step of removing two first-term prime ministers was that their own campaigns have convinced voters that prime ministers are no longer <em>primus inter pares</em> (first among equals). Instead, we expect this single figure to have solutions to the most minute of problems, and an opinion on everything from tax reform to football results. </p>
<p>This prime ministerial government can be successful, as it was under Howard, when co-ordination is smooth, but it also risks going awry when the prime minister cannot replicate that success. The same political actors who encouraged us to respect the power of the prime minister refused to do so when they had the opportunity to increase their own influence.</p>
<p>The most effective period of governing since Howard was during the hung parliament (2010–13), but voters didn’t reward the incumbent party. The capacity of oppositions to paint chaos as the way we see government operations is made easier in the news age we live in, and helped along by social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Abbott in opposition was a successful proponent of this approach, before himself falling victim to it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108246/original/image-20160115-2372-z1k7lg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Journalists are remarkably reticent in defending the traditions of their own profession.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The way forward?</h2>
<p>Enough complaining, though. We are not revolutionaries, but if leaders are unwilling to release themselves from the straitjacket that professionalisation has imposed on them then some parts of the system could be improved if the public really lost patience. </p>
<p>Other Westminster systems have been much more innovative than Australia in reform and adaptation. Australia is almost unique in lacking a bill of rights; New Zealand and the UK have remade their respective systems in quite different ways. </p>
<p>Constituitonal change is notoriously difficult in Australia. None of our suggestions necessarily require constitutional change, although such entrenchment could be useful. We offer three principles that would make the system more democratic and fair, and focus political parties on their underlying purpose of improving the lives of their constituents instead of occupying office.</p>
<p>Australian political parties have promoted increasingly complex governance standards for public and private organisations without applying these standards to their own organisations. There is only one passing mention of parties in the Australian Constitution, giving courts few opportunities to limit their activities. </p>
<p>Historically, Australian political parties have avoided court action to resolve internal disputes or to disadvantage the other party, to retain their unique status as neither entirely public nor private organisations. They justify some elements of their privileged legal status (such as their exemption from the Privacy Act) because of their public role. </p>
<p>Political parties are indeed unique actors, which join ordinary citizens with organisations whose power reaches into the highest decision-making organs of the state. On the other hand, exemption from the Commonwealth Freedom of Information Act is justified on the non-government status of parties. The Australian Law Reform Commission has <a href="http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/report-108">long argued</a> for removal of the parties’ exemption from the Privacy Act on the basis that “public confidence in the political process” requires all actors to be on the same legal footing.</p>
<p>To the extent that parties have been regulated, it has tended to be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282276482_The_Law_Governing_Australian_Political_Parties_regulating_the_Golems">in their own interest</a> – for example, registering party names to prevent competition. Not all regulation is desirable and there are always unintended consequences. Candidate selection varies a lot in Australia, but the system of primaries in the US enforced by state law is by no means a better system. Not that this truth has prevented Labor and the Nationals discussing moves towards just such a system.</p>
<p>Political parties are too important to the way we are governed to be excluded from oversight. This is arguably more urgent now that party membership has fallen. Parties with deep roots in civil society could at least claim to be representative of the community. The shells of those organisations that exist today retain legal privileges that accrue mainly to the handful of self-interested actors who control them. </p>
<p>In the past, Turnbull has <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/turnbull-backs-call-for-cap-on-donations/2008/01/28/1201369038314.html">indicated an interest</a> in banning both corporate and union donations. In NSW, the attempts to ban union donations were <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nsw-political-donations-case-the-implied-freedom-of-political-communication-strikes-again-after-21-years-21676">struck down</a> by the High Court, but other regulations have been upheld. Many politicians resent the arms race that fundraising has become.</p>
<p>Ministerial staff must be directly accountable to the parliament. The concept of ministerial responsibility has <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-unwritten-rules-shape-ministerial-accountability-50515">fallen away</a> in modern politics, and the use of staffers to shield them from accountability is rampant. These unelected staffers have close proximity to politicians, but without the oversight of the public service. </p>
<p>Scholars have for some time understood power within the executive branch as more complex than the traditional division between the permanent bureaucracy and the shifting fortunes of the government of the day, or between leaders and factions within the cabinet. Instead, <a href="https://www.anzsog.edu.au/media/upload/publication/127_Rhodes-From-PM-Leadership-to-Court-Politics-in-Strangio-et-al-2013.pdf">“court politics”</a> is understood as alliances of various actors within government, including party political advisers who try to achieve or block proposals.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108248/original/image-20160115-13678-16y3n98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Abbott’s chief-of-staff Peta Credlin copped criticism for her command-and-control approach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If, as is often argued, the chief-of-staff to the prime minister is more powerful than some cabinet ministers, that status should be recognised in methods of public accountability, starting with a few appearances before parliamentary committees. While this has been Labor policy since 2004, it <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/145252">hasn’t been tested</a>.</p>
<p>Political fundraising is also something that has very little oversight, and has numerous loopholes for parties to hide donors from the register. The conflation of party political roles and their duty to the state see ministers using their power to raise funds for private organisations – the political parties they represent. </p>
<p>Money buys access to these decision-makers. While it might not buy outcomes, the perception that it does – or the potential that it might – should see major reform to party fundraising enacted.</p>
<p>Buying time with a minister at dinners or roundtable discussions at state and federal party conferences is akin to the prostitution of our democracy, and the players themselves don’t like it. Ministers are already under intense time-pressure to attend party events, engage with the media, position themselves with colleagues and perhaps even get across policy details. The last thing they want is be rolled out as the bait at expensive fundraisers. </p>
<p>But party officials who run election campaigns, and have no accountability in political institutional frameworks, demand that ministers attend such events and have the authority to insist on it.</p>
<h2>Change is possible</h2>
<p>The major parties that benefit from the electoral system aren’t likely to change it, but change does happen. </p>
<p>New Zealanders were deeply unhappy with their much more centralised system, and they were offered a choice of electoral systems. The complexities of the multi-member electorate, which better balances local representation with proportional representation, didn’t frighten voters away from electoral reform.</p>
<p>The principal advantage of Australia’s system is supposed to be stability, but we have seen that stability reduced because of the two-party model it sustains in the lower house. Now that the Senate has seen a widening of the representatives who might secure election, the major parties, in conjunction with the Greens, have come together to support reform that will knock out microparties. </p>
<p>But such a change would only trade one problem for another. It risks entrenching the Greens in the Senate alongside the majors, reducing the width of representation. </p>
<p>Since the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/%7E/media/02%20Parliamentary%20Business/24%20Committees/244%20Joint%20Committees/JSCEM/2013%20election%20final%20report/Consolidated%20report.pdf?la=en">recommended changes</a> to Senate voting, some Liberals have become more circumspect as to what they were contemplating supporting. They are concerned that changes establishing the Greens as the third force might make doing business for conservative governments harder than it already is. </p>
<p>This surely goes to the heart of the problem: change is suggested to solve a practical problem in the moment, rather than being grounded in a structural and strategic assessment of what might enrich the representative nature of parliament.</p>
<p>While the dominance of the two-party system itself restricts input into the policymaking processes of government to select parties, the decision-making processes are even narrower. Partyrooms jealously guard their power to select leaders because it is one of the last powers they retain. </p>
<p>Policymaking hasn’t just been restricted to the executive arm of government, it has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-political-amnesia-how-we-forgot-how-to-govern-50596">narrowly cast</a> within the office of the prime minister. Again, we see the role of unelected political staffers with limited accountability at the heart of modern governments. Where ministers are able to exert influence beyond their role in cabinet, informal groupings such as Rudd’s <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/the-rudd-gang-of-four/story-e6frg6z6-1225795556696">gang of four</a> widen the rule of government a little beyond the Prime Minister’s Office, but not enough.</p>
<p>Voters feel they are ruled and not governed by their politicians. Backbenchers feel similarly about the executive, and the executive is increasingly ruled by one office – that of the prime minister. It is an irony that so much power rests in one place, yet its stability in maintaining long-term continuity has diminished.</p>
<p>Another advantage of proportional representation – either introduced into the lower house or once again respected in the Senate – is that it would necessitate consultation and bargaining between powerful actors in the political system. This bargaining is already a feature of the current system, but it is opaque: the Liberal–National coalition itself and the factions within parties make deals without regard for the public interest. </p>
<p>One consequence of the hung parliament was a package of reforms to parliament, including independence of the speaker and a Question Time less dominated by the executive. The hung parliament itself was relatively productive, but not popular with the public because some of the policies that arose, such as the carbon tax, were not foreshadowed.</p>
<p>Institutionalising this bargaining, though, will change public expectations of elections, and in turn change the political culture away from adversarialism.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=289&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/108250/original/image-20160115-2368-ghyrlv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senate reform to limit the number of microparty senators remains on the agenda of both major parties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s on us to create change</h2>
<p>There are aspects of Australian political culture that we take for granted, such as the theatre of budget night. Why should the contents of the government’s budget, its most important document, be dripped to the media over weeks and months, only for the treasurer to pull a rabbit out of the hat with a flourish. </p>
<p>British governments release a budget “green paper” prepared by the Treasury with a number of taxation and expenditure options. This is a much more mature approach to policymaking.</p>
<p>One of the reasons for the failure of the two-party system is that society is simply too complex. Recent history is littered with occasions where narrow consultation produced poorly thought-out policy that was reversed after a public or interest group-led revolt. </p>
<p>Governments tend to have a static view of consultation. Parliament has set up useful organs for investigating legislation and abuse of power, which are subject to the demands of the major political parties.</p>
<p>Another limitation is the contrast between the methods of mass-media control described above and the more egalitarian sprit of the internet. The role of social media in reducing politicians to actors in an ongoing political satire is a more recent phenomenon in this arms race. It has caused a lot of cynicism among older politicians in particular, such as Abbott’s dismissal of Twitter as <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-tony-abbott-you-cant-dismiss-social-media-as-electronic-graffiti-36819">“electronic graffiti”</a>. </p>
<p>Because political life is so tightly managed, few politicians are prepared to take the risks that genuine engagement with social media entails: spontaneity, openness and dialogue. While we should be wary of which socioeconomic groups are dominating these new forms of interaction, that is no reason to avoid exploring ways for government bodies – not just parties and the parliament – to seek public input into their activities. </p>
<p>For the most part, though, we get social media as public relations rather than engagement.</p>
<p>Some of these measures can be institutionalised, but only citizens can change the political culture. We should demand a higher quality standard of debate from media, interest groups, leaders and parties alike. </p>
<p>Despite more ways to directly engage with politicians, those who represent us have never been more out of touch. Despite more opportunities for voters to access their politicians – if only fleetingly via social media – few want to, and fewer still pay attention to the political contest. </p>
<p>When we do pay attention, we are voyeurs into the theatre of politics, rather than the policy debates that matter. The professionalisation of the political system has counterintuitively led to a less stable environment. Prime ministers are all-powerful when it comes to setting the policy agenda and running government, but they are weak when colleagues lose confidence in their capacity to win elections.</p>
<p>The notion of backlash has become a dominant theme in Australian politics: partyrooms exerting what limited power they do have over prime ministers; a backlash in the electorate; and among journalists against the spin of politics and the lack of consultation that we see. Institutions designed to provide checks, such as the Senate, are now seen as roadblocks by governments that want to rule rather than negotiate. </p>
<p>Only when systems change and cultural adjustments occur will the political class return to governing rather than ruling.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read a longer version of this article and others from the Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only when systems change and cultural adjustments occur will the political class return to governing rather than ruling.Peter van Onselen, Foundation Professor in Journalism, The University of Western AustraliaWayne Errington, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/523092016-01-26T19:19:29Z2016-01-26T19:19:29ZThe good old days: how nostalgia clouds our view of political crises<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105926/original/image-20151215-23186-1pjx7h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are today's politicians more cynical and power-hungry than their predecessors?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Sam Mooy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>After five prime ministers in five years, many fear that Australia’s political system is irrevocably broken. The Conversation, in partnership with <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>, is publishing a series of essays exploring the problems surrounding, and solutions to, <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">Australia’s current political malaise</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It’s not cricket. In the old days, sometime in the distant past, cricketers played by the spirit of the game – no sledging, no cheating, no questioning of the umpire’s decision. Now it’s all different: dominated by financial demands, professional in its cynicism. The spirit of the game is endangered.</p>
<p>All that wishful thinking is nostalgic nonsense. Even if the participants then were divided into gentlemen (amateurs) and players (professional), the sport was <a href="http://www.booktopia.com.au/never-a-gentleman-s-game-malcolm-knox/prod9781742701936.html">never a gentleman’s game</a>. It was fierce, often ruthless, highly contested, politically riven, with players looking for every advantage and potential pay-off. It is just that we like to think, looking at what we see now, that it could once have been somehow different and better.</p>
<p>So, too, with politics. Generation by generation, we look back with nostalgia to a time when common sense ruled, when issues were determined by the agreed national interests, when politicians were positive, when abuse was less personal. All those aspects that we now regret were, we believe, absent in more reasonable and harmonious times.</p>
<p>But when were those times? Identifying them becomes the problem. If we believe today that it once was better, then when? During the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-might-the-dismissals-legacy-mean-for-an-australian-republic-push-50299">constitutional crisis</a> of 1975? The <a href="http://petrov.moadoph.gov.au/the-split.html">Labor split</a> of 1955? The campaign to <a href="http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mumble/index.php/theaustralian/comments/communism_referendum/">ban the Communist Party</a> in 1951? The <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs161.aspx">conscription campaign</a> of 1916 and 1917? </p>
<p>The NSW parliament of the 1890s was <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/67803167">described as</a> the “bear garden” of Macquarie Street because members ambushed each other outside the chamber with horsewhips. In every instance, we can see the same characteristics that we identify as regrettable today – a negative, kneejerk, personalised, vitriolic, take-no-prisoners approach. That’s politics. And not just Australian politics, even if they are played here without the veneer of false politeness that covers the stink in other systems.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105939/original/image-20151215-23182-dxcj5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gough Whitlam had a sharp tongue when describing his political enemies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An American professor of political science, visiting Australia in 1975, was horrified by the vigour of the language: Prime Minister Gough Whitlam called Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/The-sayings-of-Premier-Joh/2005/04/20/1113854243533.html">“bible-bashing bastard”</a>. </p>
<p>In the US at the same time, the political scene was wracked by the revelations and chicanery of Watergate, although the bad language was restricted to President Richard Nixon’s private tapes. But is there any real difference?</p>
<p>Nostalgia can be politically or rhetorically useful only if it is not specific; and then it is not defensible. So if we want to describe our current discontents – to charge that the modern incumbents have let us down, that democracy is in terminal gridlock – we need to be far more precise in our definition of the diagnosis. </p>
<p>Let me ask three questions: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Are politicians more cynical and power-hungry than their predecessors?</p></li>
<li><p>Are the institutions inadequate?</p></li>
<li><p>Have society and technology irreversibly changed the ways politics are pursued?</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Have the prime ministers changed?</h2>
<p>Over the last 30 years, I have sought to explore how our top political executives exercised their power, whether they were prime ministers, ministers or departmental secretaries. Perhaps inevitably, when current circumstances are compared to – and placed in the context of – past leaders, it is the continuities rather than the differences that strike me as the most significant.</p>
<p>First, then, have the prime ministers changed? The fundamentals of the job barely have. All prime ministers need to act as:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>head of the cabinet, to provide policy leadership to a cabinet by setting the tone and providing a narrative;</p></li>
<li><p>party leader, to maintain the cohesion of the cabinet and the party beyond;</p></li>
<li><p>federal leader, to ensure the systems of government work;</p></li>
<li><p>narrator-in-chief, to explain to the people what the government is doing and why; and</p></li>
<li><p>national leader, to represent the country abroad.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In all these responsibilities, there are real challenges for national leaders.</p>
<p>All prime ministers want their own way – how else would they have got there? From Alfred Deakin on, they want it to be their government. That is really not surprising. Ambition is the core of politics. Its story can be traced through all societies, and at times the cost of failure has been deadly – Rome, the Tudors – now it is primarily the loss of position. </p>
<p>But any leadership position is fought for long and hard, through buckets of blood, to use Neville Wran’s colourful expression when explaining why he would not seek his party’s federal leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105927/original/image-20151215-23179-ks947m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Menzies left the prime ministership of his own accord.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once elected, few give it up readily. Prime ministers almost never have. In the last 100 years only Sir Robert Menzies, after 17 years in the job, left at a time of his own choosing. For most, resignation is contrary to all they strove for. They would not be there long if they showed a lack of desire.</p>
<p>Not one has been prepared to sit back and merely preside; that is not the nature of the job. Prime ministers each define the job for themselves and, in turn, it will shape them as circumstances change. Their style will vary. Some want to direct and lead from the front, consulting only when they feel they must. Others will spend time ensuring that support is locked in behind them. </p>
<p>The tactics they use range from non-consultation on the issues they care about (Whitlam), to conciliating alternative views before identifying their choices (Bob Hawke and John Howard), to consultation by exhaustion until agreement is achieved (Malcolm Fraser), to making unilateral decisions under the rubric of “<a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/prime-minister-tony-abbotts-10-disastrous-captain-picks/news-story/897d022cb79668a653aaca2761a31744">captain’s choices</a>” (Tony Abbott).</p>
<p>The purpose is always the same: prime ministers want to ensure that, when they can, they put their imprint on the government. Some are better at the internal politics than others, whether or not we agree with the outcomes. Jim Chalmers, Wayne Swan’s chief-of-staff, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/127765">argued that</a> in Australia, prime ministers are “big dogs on a short leash”. If they are good, they will succeed; if not, they go. There are no certainties.</p>
<p>If tactics vary from person to person and time to time, what cannot be identified is a common trend showing that each prime minister is more ambitious or controlling than their predecessor. Billy Hughes gave way to Stanley Bruce – different styles, but each wanting to be assured they knew all that was going on. Joseph Lyons to Menzies was a shift from a softer to a more strident leader, particularly in Menzies’ first term. </p>
<p>Menzies gave way to Harold Holt, the one effortlessly in control, the other struggling. Hawke and Paul Keating saw the tasks very differently. Howard <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-avoid-relegation-turnbull-must-restore-an-authority-missing-since-howard-47492">maintained a cohesive cabinet</a> by ensuring constant internal commitment; Abbott generated discord.</p>
<p>Prime ministers are always on notice. They need, at a minimum, to advance policy objectives, ensure party support and maintain electoral standing. Fail in any of these and their positions will be in doubt. </p>
<p>Hawke and Howard initially did all three well. Then Hawke ran out of ideas and the party revolted. Howard overreached on policy; the party stayed with him but the electorate deserted him. </p>
<p>Kevin Rudd was never sure of the party. Julia Gillard never connected with the electorate. Abbott lost both party and electorate. They all had agendas and their own way of pursuing them. Some succeed; others did not.</p>
<h2>Bitter rivalries</h2>
<p>False nostalgia does not only apply to Australia. It’s everywhere. There are complaints in most parliamentary democracies that prime ministers have become too powerful. </p>
<p>In Britain, observers look back to the days when cabinet government “really” existed. Nowadays, they point to the 1970s. In the 1960s, by contrast, Richard Crossman and John Macintosh declared that cabinet government was dead, but looked back to some unspecified earlier period. </p>
<p>As academics Andrew Blick and George Jones <a href="http://www.imprint.co.uk/product/premiership/">illustrate</a>, the problem with this analysis is that the same critiques were launched against prime ministers decade by decade back to the very first one, Robert Walpole, of whom it was said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He did everything alone … while the ciphers of the cabinet signed everything he dictated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… this minister, having obtained sole influence over all our counsels, has not only assumed the sole direction of all our public affairs, but has got every officer of state removed that would not follow his direction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was 1741. Does it sound familiar?</p>
<p>We are also told that relations within governments are made dysfunctional by internal rivalries. Sometimes they are, although these days such disputes are not potentially fatal. </p>
<p>In 1809, the British foreign secretary (George Canning) and war minister (Viscount Castlereagh) <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/uk/history/28936/the-two-cabinet-ministers-who-fought-a-duel">fought a duel</a> when the latter accused his rival (accurately) of conspiring against him. They both missed and both resigned! </p>
<p>In 1804, Alexander Hamilton, the former treasury secretary and one of the architects of the new republic, was <a href="http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/nation/jb_nation_hamburr_1.html">killed in a duel</a> with vice president Aaron Burr. That is taking politics seriously. And they were meant to be on the same side.</p>
<p>Bitter rivalries between prime minsters and their potential successors are nothing new, in Australia or overseas: James Scullin and Ted Theodore, Lyons and Menzies, John Gorton and Billy McMahon, Fraser and Andrew Peacock, Hawke and Keating, Howard and Peter Costello, Rudd and Gillard, Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull – they all co-existed. In Britain, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in Canada Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, were just as vicious in their rivalry. </p>
<p>Sometimes, the tension was creative, managing to succeed in government; other times, not. There are no assurances of what will happen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105928/original/image-20151215-23166-4rt4h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bitter rivalries between prime minsters and their potential successors are nothing new.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dealing with the Senate</h2>
<p>Nor have the institutions changed much. One innovation, the ability to vote above the line in Senate ballots and thus follow party preferences, was <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/electoral-system/senate-group-voting-tickets">introduced in 1984</a> as a means of reducing the number of informal votes; electors had to number every square without a mistake, up to 60 or 70 or more, before the vote became formal.</p>
<p>Many made a mistake that wouldn’t have affected the outcomes, but it still disenfranchised them. So parliament laudably made it easier to reflect the will of voters. </p>
<p>In the true example of the sour law of unintended consequences, the change led to a multiplicity of small parties <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-04/'preference-whisperer'-in-demand-as-fresh-wa-senate-poll-likely/5068428">exchanging preferences</a>. This has made it harder for governments, but governments also need to explain why voters no longer vote for major parties.</p>
<p>When a quarter of the electorate votes for the Greens and microparties, it seems reasonable in a proportional representation system that they win a quarter of the seats. On the other hand, which microparty wins seems to be a lottery; most voters will have no idea where their votes will be going. But someone gets there. </p>
<p>These are important questions about democratic values embodied in electoral arrangements. Choices do exist for change: should the current system be retained? Should the larger minor parties (Greens, or Xenophon in South Australia) be advantaged by introducing a minimum level of votes (say, 3%), before any preferences are distributed? Should there be only an option to vote for just three or four parties? </p>
<p>The major parties don’t like the uncertainty of a Senate they cannot control. Evidence from elections suggests the people don’t agree.</p>
<p>The current <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-micro-parties-or-the-senate-update-an-archaic-system-36758">furore over Senate obstruction</a> makes it sound unusual. It’s not. Past prime ministers have often had problems with the Senate. In the Scullin government and after the Depression hit, the opposition-dominated Senate blocked every proposal of the government for change until the government collapsed. </p>
<p>The Whitlam government had 36 pieces of legislation blocked by the Senate in 1975. These were the same bits of legislation that Fraser used to call a double dissolution. In those times, there was no chance to negotiate: the opposition just said no.</p>
<p>Abbott had to negotiate with a medley of crossbenchers. There always was a chance that he could construct a majority piece by piece, but it seems he lacked the skill, the flexibility or perhaps, the inclination. Nevertheless, after two years there were only one or two double dissolution triggers, with bills defeated twice. Compare that to the 35 triggers created by Senate opposition in a mere 15 months in 1975.</p>
<p>Negotiating is hard, but not as impossible as in 1931 and 1975. Whether Turnbull does better will be interesting.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105929/original/image-20151215-23166-196ybtj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The major parties do not like the uncertainty of a Senate they cannot control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The media’s role</h2>
<p>What, then, of the broader circumstances? What have certainly changed are the means at prime ministers’ disposal to do the job and the society in which they do it. </p>
<p>Technology shapes politics and provides new means for their disposal. Hughes was in Britain for 18 months. Cables informing him of cabinet decisions had to be coded, telegraphed and then decoded. His replies went through the same process. When, as he often did, he announced government policy without telling his colleagues, they learnt about it from the newspapers.</p>
<p>Lyons organised a difficult phone link-up to the cabinet room, a forced conversation with technology at full stretch. Fraser used a satellite phone with little security. And they weren’t able to be in constant touch: prime ministers in the air or on ocean liners used to be incommunicado for hours or weeks on end. Now, they can comfortably talk to colleagues 24 hours a day, wherever they are. </p>
<p>Turnbull, an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-03/malcolm-turnbull-uses-secret-messaging-app-instead-of-sms/6276712">aficionado of new technology</a>, may develop their possibilities to the full. But it is just different; modern communications will always change politics as telephones, television and faxes did in their own time.</p>
<p>Technology has its downside, though. Political leadership requires faster reactions; a 24-hour media demands 24-hour responses. The voracious demand for comment creates a system that can feed the beast. The measured pace of the Fraser era – what do AM, PM and the late news have to report? – is now impossible. The media both demands immediate responses and accuses prime ministers of being too media-sensitive.</p>
<p>Social media, too, has become all intrusive through pictures and tweets, looking for an instant story, a scandal, or simply something embarrassing like eating a bacon sandwich. Ministers can never be off guard in what they say and in what they do. Everyone is now a press photographer, with the ability to immediately post on the internet. We can complain that our politicians “spin”; we crucify them if they don’t get the story straight.</p>
<p>This is because the electorate too has more choice, more potential access to information, greater means to communicate and to organise. Demonstrations can be advertised on social media, such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-border-is-everywhere-the-policy-overreach-behind-operation-fortitude-46860">anti-border protection rally</a> in Melbourne; in the past it was harder (but not impossible) to rally the numbers in so short a time. However, at the same time, misinformation can become embedded.</p>
<p>The certainties of old party politics have become unsettled. Contested policies crosscut former groupings, as coalitions form and re-form issue by issue. If parties were once the means to aggregate diverse voices, that role of mediation is no longer required. Every group can give voice. Indignation can be constructed in hours; issues can become a source of division and demand immediate responses.</p>
<p>Global issues affect us too. What other countries do more immediately shapes what we try to do. We may be a power in our region, but, on the international stage, we remain a useful middle power and not to be ignored, perhaps.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105930/original/image-20151215-23210-v6urqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull is an aficionado of new technology.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Governments can’t win</h2>
<p>Change is not recent. Society and technology always change political practices. We would not want to be governed with the attitudes and methods of a century ago. But technology is politically neutral: it both empowers leaders and threatens them.</p>
<p>Yet amid all the woes we need to be careful not to underestimate the capacity of governments when the need is there. Sometimes there’s consensus between party leaders – on the Vietnamese boat people or microeconomic reform – when oppositions do not confect outrage. </p>
<p>Sometimes governments succeed. Australia got through the global financial crisis less damaged than other countries. The inner core of the government worked hard to identify the fundamental issues and introduce solutions. Australia stayed out of recession.</p>
<p>But the global financial crisis provides a cautionary lesson, too. Once the immediate crisis was over, politics as usual kicked in. The opposition agreed that government intervention was needed, but argued they would have spent less and done it more effectively. That would have been the response regardless of what was done. </p>
<p>It is like an exchange my young son had with a friend on the golf course at the completion of a hole:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What did you get? </p>
<p>One less than you. What did you get?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In one respect, the carping response appears absurd: no-one really knows the answer. From another angle, it’s what we expect. Governments cannot win, and whatever they do will be criticised. Everything they do, others would have done differently.</p>
<p>That’s the system of adversarial politics that has lasted in Australia for more than a century, seldom ameliorated even for a few months.</p>
<h2>Doomed to misunderstanding</h2>
<p>Has there really been a sudden change? The Abbott defeat led to an exchange of views in The Australian. Niki Savva <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/niki-savva/yes-were-not-a-banana-republic-and-no-the-system-aint-broke/news-story/f8ac87260d7928186801b14a65ef703f">argued</a> the system was simply working to eject poor leaders and was not broken.</p>
<p>Four days later, Paul Kelly continued to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/paul-kelly/negative-politics-the-biggest-enemy-of-reform/news-story/d1fce455619fe8b03455bb2cc4c9705e?login=1">mount his case</a> that there were fundamental differences from the past and the system was not working. He argued that just to say Australian politics was always like this was “misleading and trite”.</p>
<p>I disagree. Unless we understand history, we cannot know what is systemic and what is temporal.</p>
<p>History tells us we have been here before and that we have recovered before. There were five prime ministers from 1966 to 1975 (one died and one was a caretaker), but in the ten years leading to the cataclysmic Whitlam dismissal, there was a constant air of crisis and inadequacy. </p>
<p>From 1975 to 2007, there were just four prime ministers; the system was manageable and often effective. Howard proved to be the second-longest-serving prime minister in federal history.</p>
<p>There had been crises and instability before – 1915–17, 1929–31, 1939–42 – when it was possible to ask whether the political system could cope. In each case, crisis was followed by stability.</p>
<p>Is the instability since 2007, with five prime ministers in eight years, so very different from those earlier circumstances that it cannot recover? We do not know, but past experience suggests we should not attribute to the present a uniqueness, an irreconcilability that has never existed before. </p>
<p>Can we argue confidently that a system which, a mere eight years ago, allowed Howard to dominate politics is now irrevocably broken? That is to take a very dismal view.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105931/original/image-20151215-23210-al2y1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Howard dominated the Australian political system for more than a decade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What for the future?</h2>
<p>We need to distinguish between the core of the political system and new phenomena such as social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Of course, they create problems. In their turns, radio, television and the internet all altered political dynamics. But can these new technologies be absorbed if leaders have the ability to identify the best ways ahead? </p>
<p>We have had some appallingly mediocre leaders in the past and survived them. We can but hope we will survive such challenges again. Because that is democracy: contested, cranky, incoherent. Sometimes it works well, but even in crisis the need to balance short-term political demands with long-term consequences is hard.</p>
<p>Sometimes it seems to fail us. But be cautious of the proposed solutions: when outsiders ask that the parties get together to solve a problem, it is almost always to angle for the particular course of action that they support. Anything else, they will argue, is a case of government failure. </p>
<p>But too often they are not prepared to run for office themselves. It is a reminder of Weller’s Law (not mine, unfortunately):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything is possible for the person who doesn’t have to do it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s cheap wisdom.</p>
<p>Democracy is adversarial. Oppositions oppose. Stop the boats. Axe the tax. Deciding what not to do is the easy part; building coalitions of support for alternative strategies that lead to winners and losers is hard.</p>
<p>It is, by no means, the first time that there have been complaints that politicians do not get it, and if only someone else was in charge (often, by implication, the speaker) it would be better because they would not be “political”. Anti-political political thought has a long history in Australia, with observers arguing that politicians are out of touch. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105933/original/image-20151215-23202-1rq31fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clive Palmer is just the latest manifestation of anti-politics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All we need is that they be replaced by people who have the national interest at heart. But then, the national interest as espoused turns out to be sectional. Clive Palmer is just the latest manifestation of anti-politics. </p>
<p>What happens? When they (whoever they are) must tackle intransigent problems, in the face of objections that are sometimes valid and often not, they too must decide. What is better: mining or agriculture? Cost of living or climate change? These must be political decisions made by elected politicians. There’s no right answer on which everyone agrees.</p>
<p>Governing was not meant to be easy. It never has been either. Wars, great depressions, oil crises, the collapse of communism, Bali bombing and the global financial crisis: no-one finds governing easy in the midst of such uncertainty. </p>
<p>Ben Chifley and Fraser agonised as much as Rudd and Abbott over the best strategies and compromises. Expectations that problems are readily solved without anyone having to lose anything remain common, but are as misguided now as they always were.</p>
<p>I do not underestimate the problems that our governments now face. They are pressing, complex and often diabolically hard. Doom and crisis may be the currency of opposition and commentators but we are in no worse a position now, and the political system is not more dysfunctional, than we have been on several occasions in the past. We muddled through.</p>
<p>Appealing with nostalgia to some imagined past may make for more pointed commentary or provide comforting images of those good old days, but it’s unlikely those active at the time were as convinced that everything then was as easy and uncontested as we imply in retrospect. In fact, we know they weren’t. So let us also keep a sense of perspective. </p>
<p>Democracy is messy. But really, what is the preferred alternative?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles from the Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/fixing-the-system/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Weller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Governing was not meant to be easy. It never has been either.Patrick Weller, Professor Emeritus, School of Government and International Relations; Adjunct Professor, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.