tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/quarterly-essay-3859/articlesQuarterly Essay – The Conversation2024-03-17T19:01:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2203272024-03-17T19:01:55Z2024-03-17T19:01:55ZOutrage is a key performance indicator for Peter Dutton, the ‘bad cop’ of politics. But what does he value?<p>Lech Blaine and Peter Dutton are both from Queensland, where the political culture is tough and masculine and politics south of the border always good for a spot of confected outrage. </p>
<p>So Blaine, author of <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2021/09/top-blokes">Quarterly Essay 83: Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power</a>, is a good choice to try to make some sense of the federal Liberal Party’s current leader. </p>
<p>Who is Peter Dutton? What drives him? Why did he choose politics? What does power mean to him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government? </p>
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<p><em>Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics: Quarterly Essay – Lech Blaine (Black Inc.)</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/bad-cop">Bad Cop</a>, Blaine’s second Quarterly Essay, mixes straightforward narration of events in Dutton’s life with perceptive interpretation and one-liners like: “Politics would enable Dutton to be the bad cop without fear of physical injury.” </p>
<p>Dutton’s first job was as a policeman, which exposed him to the worst of human behaviour. He took from this experience a suspicion of the legal system’s presumption of innocence and its strict rules of evidence, disdain for those who try to understand human criminality and transgression, and no compassion at all for the criminal and depraved. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/kitchen-cabinet/series/7/video/FA2211H002S00">on Kitchen Cabinet</a>, Annabel Crabb put to him his wife Kirrilly’s description of him as black and white, without shades of grey, he agreed. </p>
<p>But, as Blaine shows, we know much more about the black in Dutton’s world than the white: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/peter-dutton-says-victorians-scared-to-go-out-because-of-african-gang-violence">African gangs</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fake-refugees-dutton-adopts-an-alternative-fact-to-justify-our-latest-human-rights-violation-78175">illegal immigrants</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/feb/25/kristina-keneally-calls-for-bettina-arndt-to-be-stripped-of-australia-day-honour-politics-live">Islamic terrorists</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/22/peter-dutton-lebanese-muslim-comments-dismay-security-services-labor">Lebanese criminals</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-peter-dutton-most-deported-kiwis-arent-paedophiles-and-youre-hurting-our-relationship-with-nz-120655">paedophiles</a>, <a href="https://nit.com.au/19-10-2023/8231/this-is-not-what-first-nations-people-want-coalition-of-groups-attack-peter-duttons-call-for-a-royal-commission">Indigenous sexual abusers</a>, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/one-in-five-a-dole-cheat-minister-20050305-gdzq37.html">welfare cheats</a>. </p>
<p>It is a richly peopled world, compared with the bland suburbia and regional Australia he wants to protect, with much more energy expended on blaming and punishing than on praising. Compared with John Howard, with whom he shares aspects of political style, we know little about Dutton’s heroes and what he values about Australia. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bdPM6nKuMJU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">We know little about what Peter Dutton values about Australia.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>In his interests to stoke fear</h2>
<p>Dutton is a boundary rider. As a politician whose main offering is the promise of safety, it is in his interests to stoke fear. </p>
<p>He thrives on conflict and when he is not fighting the criminals and depraved, he is fighting those who are not as alert as he is to danger: human rights advocates, inner-city elites, bleeding hearts, the welfare lobby, the Greens, and of course his arch enemy in our two-party Westminster system, the Labor Party. </p>
<p>Mostly, it seems what he wants is a reaction. For Dutton, says Blaine, outrage from Labor, the Greens and on Twitter is a key performance indicator. Hence his political strategy of abandoning the inner city to Labor, the Greens and the Teals – and winning government from the outer suburbs and the regions. </p>
<p>The big question facing Dutton’s political future and his electoral strategy is whether Australia is quite as fearful and homogeneous as he imagines, or whether, as Blaine argues, he is forever riding a time machine to 2001.</p>
<p>Dutton resigned from the police after he crashed his car during a chase. He shifted into property developing with his father, and then into politics. In 2001, John Howard’s Tampa election, Dutton won the seat of Dickson, which he still holds. </p>
<p>It was, says Blaine, a fateful moment for an ex-policeman with authoritarian tendencies to embark on a political career. But compared with Howard, we have little sense of what else, besides safety and not being Labor, Dutton is offering. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-liberals-lost-the-moral-middle-class-and-now-the-teal-independents-may-well-cash-in-182293">How the Liberals lost the 'moral middle class' - and now the teal independents may well cash in</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Style over substance</h2>
<p>Howard had enduring policy interests – in economic policy and industrial relations. Does Dutton have any policy interests, besides law and order? He was not even especially competent in his <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-becomes-national-security-ministerial-tsar-in-portfolio-shake-up-81186">supersized ministry of Home Affairs</a>, where his obsession with keeping out asylum seekers at any cost distracted him from the border incursions of organised crime and the systemic rorting of the immigration system, together with problems with the award of contracts. </p>
<p>As Minister for Home Affairs, concludes Blaine, “His bad cop act was a triumph of style over substance.” His championing of nuclear power to reduce Australia’s emissions, despite all the <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/">expert evidence</a> it is much more expensive than renewables and will take too long, shows that opposing Labor rather than solving problems is his primary motivation.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-a-mature-debate-about-nuclear-power-by-the-time-weve-had-one-new-plants-will-be-too-late-to-replace-coal-224513">Dutton wants a 'mature debate' about nuclear power. By the time we've had one, new plants will be too late to replace coal</a>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Lech Blaine gives ‘a compelling account of Dutton the strong man’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc.</span></span>
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<p>Blaine gives a compelling account of Dutton the strong man, but he also claims that if you watch him for a long time, you see a man who is small and scared. The <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo27832683.html">pioneering political psychologist Harold Lasswell says</a> politicians like Dutton, preoccupied with the management of aggression and with provoking reaction, are driven by low self-esteem and a compulsive need for deference. </p>
<p>This fits Blaine’s observation, but I needed more on this side of the man. What is he scared of and why? Of being ignored and irrelevant? Of inner demons that need to be kept under lock and key? Of a world that is changing? All of the above? </p>
<p>Writing about the moving target of a politician seeking power is a tough gig. Some learn as they go, some don’t. It’s too early yet to tell is Dutton is a learner or not – but Blaine has told us what to watch out for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judith Brett 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>In his second Quarterly Essay, Lech Blaine tries to make sense of former Queensland policeman Peter Dutton. Who is he? What drives him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government?Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2190012023-12-10T19:07:54Z2023-12-10T19:07:54ZAustralia’s ‘deeply unfair’ housing system is in crisis – and our politicians are failing us<p>“The fact that one of the least populated countries on Earth contains the world’s second most expensive housing is a national calamity, and a stunning failure of public policy,” writes Alan Kohler, in <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2023/11/the-great-divide">the latest Quarterly Essay</a>.</p>
<p>He doesn’t mince words. We are in a housing crisis – and it is a public policy failure of the biggest kind. This crisis is about more than housing: it is a social and economic crisis, creating a society defined by inherited wealth. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Quarterly Essay 92: The Great Divide – Australia’s Housing Mess and How to Fix It by Alan Kohler (Black Inc.)</em></p>
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<p>This has not happened overnight. Kohler maps out 70 years of housing public policy in Australia, starting with changes to the Commonwealth and State Housing Agreement in 1954, when the program was redirected to support home ownership by forcing the states to sell much of what was being built.</p>
<p>By 1971, approximately 40% of the houses built by the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement – which had included 96,000 in its first decade, from 1945 to 1955 – had been sold.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564403/original/file-20231207-21-xo2nvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">After 1954, Australia sold much of its public housing. This public housing in Brisbane was built around 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Housing_Commission#/media/File:BrisbaneSuburbanOuthouses1950.jpg">John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland</a></span>
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<p>These changes have led to a generational fracture in housing pathways and a breakdown in one of the key pillars that defined Australia’s welfare state in the 20th century. </p>
<p>Somewhat refreshingly, Kohler captures a sentiment many of us with newly minted mortgages or stuck in private rental know, deep down: Australia’s housing system is in crisis, it is deeply unfair and our politicians are failing us. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-policies-favouring-rich-older-people-make-young-australians-generation-f-d-199403">Friday essay: how policies favouring rich, older people make young Australians Generation F-d</a>
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</em>
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<h2>‘Housing is a human right’</h2>
<p>Kohler argues the seeds of the problems we now face were established not long after the second world war, when, as he points out, the Australian government was directly funding the delivery of over 50,000 dwellings annually. Over half a century, the decline in government support for the development of new housing – and in particular for new public housing – underlies the current crisis.</p>
<p>In 1947, just 53.4% of Australians owned a home. By 1966, this had risen to 71.4%. Robert Menzies, prime minister from 1949 to 1966, claimed the credit. Now, in 2023, it’s dropped to around 66%.</p>
<p>But, Kohler says, the credit Menzies claimed for expanding access to housing is “unjustified” – instead, he and his Minister for Social Services, Bill Spooner, “destroyed” public housing and “set the scene for decades of mistakes by their successors in the Coalition”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564166/original/file-20231207-17-kvs0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 1966, 71.4% of Australians owned a home. Now, it’s around 66%.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom Rumble/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>The subversion of the public housing program from the mid-50s onwards, reflecting the conservative and nationalist agenda of the Menzies government that instigated it, shifted the policy position on public housing from being a key plank in the building of a modern nation, to one of residual welfare. Kohler makes the case that “housing is not welfare, it’s an economic right”. </p>
<p>Housing is more than that: it is a human right. The wider point though, is that housing and housing policy is integral to the economic welfare of all Australians – and only considering it in terms of social welfare, a policy space that has suffered from malign neglect over half a century, has consigned housing policy to the wilderness. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/insecure-renting-ages-you-faster-than-owning-a-home-unemployment-or-obesity-better-housing-policy-can-change-this-216364">Insecure renting ages you faster than owning a home, unemployment or obesity. Better housing policy can change this</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<h2>Tax reduction and capital gains</h2>
<p>While the conditions may have been set long ago, the key changes that culminated in this affordability crisis began around 2000. Discounts on capital gains, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/revenge-bloodymindedness-and-gullibility-the-untaxing-of-capital-gains-20150810-giv8zg.html">introduced by the Howard government</a> in 1999, lit the fuse on this housing bonfire. </p>
<p>The tax and wealth advantages of property investing were so beneficial, it unleashed a tidal wave of demand in housing. High-income-earners in particular could reduce tax on their income, then get a kicker on capital gains later. Kohler notes that these changes have meant:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>whereas in the rest of the world investing in real estate is all about getting rental income from tenants, in Australia it’s about getting an income tax deduction and then capital gain.</p>
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<p>The charts presented in the essay can almost pinpoint the exact moment these changes passed through parliament (see below). Dwelling prices detached themselves from income growth. </p>
<p>Since 2000, there has been a 6% component growth in dwelling values, compared with only 3% for incomes. Prices are so detached from incomes, it is no longer possible for the average earning household to afford the average house. </p>
<h2>Housing now defines class</h2>
<p>As the essay’s title suggests, Kohler makes the case that over the past 30 years, public policy has created a society increasingly defined and divided by inherited wealth. Wealth is now determined, he argues, by two things: where you live, and the house you inherit from your parents. </p>
<p>There are two important dimensions to this. The first is that wealth (and wealth creation) has been deeply embedded in housing ownership. Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings at the University of Sydney have termed this the <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Asset+Economy-p-9781509543458">“asset economy”</a> and argue new class positions are being defined through housing assets. </p>
<p>Traditionally, class was often defined through the type of job you did. Now, it is increasingly defined by how much property you own. Renters of course, don’t even get a look-in. This change really got underway from the mid-1980s, led by the then-Labor government through financial deregulation, broad privatisation of urban services and residualisation of welfare. </p>
<p>Secondly, opportunity is now no longer tied to education and hard work: it’s now inherited. The simple arithmetic on the historical trends Kohler presents exposes how the scale of the problem has shifted since the 1990s. The median price of housing has grown from around three times the median income in 1990 to around eight times in 2023. </p>
<p>For housing to be affordable, house prices would need to halve, or incomes would need to grow at 4% per year for 20 years, while house prices stayed the same. Neither is likely. As <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.18408/ahuri7327301">our recent research</a> has shown, the problem is so extreme that in places like Sydney, the only pathway to ownership is through inherited wealth and the bank of Mum and Dad.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564160/original/file-20231207-15-tzvzwq.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In places like Sydney, the only path to home ownership is inherited wealth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Housing: ‘a cartel of the majority’</h2>
<p>Many of the broad threads of this essay were on point. They lay out how policy has not only failed to address housing problems, but actively created them. There were, however, some contradictory moments. </p>
<p>The first was around housing supply. After noting the key historical threads, Kohler points the finger at recalcitrant planners for blocking development. But planners, as he points out, “do not build housing, developers do”. Moreover, he acknowledges the whole “property development business model favours selling apartments to individual investors who can pay more”. </p>
<p>Blaming planners is not new, but it ultimately misses the point. <a href="https://osf.io/r925z/download">A recent analysis</a> suggested there were over 100,000 approved but unbuilt dwelling units in Australia between 2012 and 2000. The supply system itself is now thoroughly geared to capital flowing from investors. If developers cannot sell to them, or simply cannot make enough profit, the banks won’t lend and developers won’t build. </p>
<p>As Kohler notes, the politics of this is simple:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>housing is a cartel of the majority, with banks and developers helping them maintain high house prices with the political class actively supporting them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if financing constraints could be overcome and developers could build what they liked, <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2019/2019-01.html">the Reserve Bank Australia itself</a> noted this would only drop prices by about 2.5%. When prices rose by 25% in 2021, this hardly seems revolutionary. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564174/original/file-20231207-19-ktq6on.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The real issue of supply is exposed in the essay, but unfortunately not returned to in the resolution. <a href="https://cityfutures.ada.unsw.edu.au/social-and-affordable-housing-needs-costs-and-subsidy-gaps-by-region/">Our recent analysis</a> showed Australia would need to deliver around 45,000 social housing dwellings per year for 20 years to meet the current backlog in demand. </p>
<p>When Commonwealth and state governments managed to create over 50,000 dwellings in 1950, when the population was one third what it is today, meeting today’s need should not be a problem. But the current government ambition is just 30,000 over five years – which is woeful. Even if those numbers are delivered, the share of social housing will still be going backwards. </p>
<p>There is much to like in this essay, which clearly demonstrates that the current housing crisis is about so much more than the shelter it represents. </p>
<p>Housing is deeply implicated in the very idea of what it means to be Australian and the egalitarian values many Australians hold dear. Unfortunately, the inequalities that are emerging are cementing new class inequalities – now, your chances in life will be completely dependent on the family you were born into. </p>
<p>The sooner we realise this, the sooner there can be a collective reflection. We need to ask: is that what we really want?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurence Troy receives funding from the the Australian Research Council (ARC), and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). </span></em></p>Alan Kohler’s Quarterly Essay lays out how the policies of successive governments have not only failed to address housing problems, but actively created them.Laurence Troy, Senior Lecturer in Urbanism, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2133482023-09-26T04:17:00Z2023-09-26T04:17:00Z‘I want to get bogged at a beach in my wheelchair and know people will help’. Micheline Lee on the way forward for the NDIS<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549914/original/file-20230925-25-ipljpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C314%2C4985%2C3008&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">myphotobank.com.au/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you have read anything about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the last few years, you will have encountered many metaphors. The NDIS is the “lifeboat in the ocean”, “an oasis in the desert”, “a plane being built mid-flight” or a “limitless magic pudding”. </p>
<p>I research disability policies and services and confess I’ve used more than a few of these in my work. Who doesn’t love a metaphor? They are a way of explaining complex concepts we might not be familiar with and helping others to make sense of the world. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Lifeboat: Disability, Humanity and the NDIS; Quarterly Essay 91 –
Micheline Lee (Black Inc)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>But I worry whether these metaphors give those without experience of disability or the NDIS a sense of what the real issues are. If I were stranded in an ocean a lifeboat would be welcome. Even if it lacked a few essential items, it would meet my immediate need. But why was I in the ocean in the first place? Are others in a similar situation? How we will decide who gets to come aboard the lifeboat? And why does the ocean exist in the first place? All this is important because the ocean in this metaphor is a creation of social systems and attitudes, not a geographical reality. </p>
<p>The latest Quarterly Essay <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2023/09/lifeboat">Lifeboat: Disability, Humanity and the NDIS</a> written by author <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/authors/micheline-lee">Micheline Lee</a> weaves together personal testimony and detailed analysis of history and policy. It illuminates the reality behind these metaphors for the lives of disabled Australians and considers what needs to happen to realise the original intent of the NDIS. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ndis-has-a-parent-problem-changes-could-involve-parents-more-in-disability-support-and-reduce-stress-212099">The NDIS has a parent problem. Changes could involve parents more in disability support and reduce stress</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The deficit model of disability</h2>
<p>Lee grew up in a world prior to the NDIS, when disability support and services were highly rationed, subject to significant waiting lists, inadequate, disempowering and crisis-driven. She writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a lottery whether you would receive a service. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before the NDIS (pre-2013), disability supports such as a hoist or a wheelchair could be unaffordable even for individuals like Lee, who at that time was a government legal adviser living with her partner and son. The policies and services a society develops reflect how we view those they serve. As writer and disability activist El Gibbs <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/09/11/ndis-lifeboat-micheline-lee-quarterly-essay-review/">argues</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>this lack of support wasn’t accidental; it’s the end result of centuries of seeing disabled people as unequal, as wrong, as not really human. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550138/original/file-20230926-15-v6hjvr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Micheline Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph: Susan Gordon-Brown/Black Inc</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Lee and three of her siblings were born with spinal muscular atrophy. Family lore was that this was the result of an ancestral curse. On migrating from Malaysia to Australia her parents became born-again Christians and the congregants of the church would implore Jesus to remove the “Demon of sickness” from the siblings. Disability was firmly seen as being a problem or deficit within the body of an individual who needed to be cured.</p>
<p>Lee’s discovery of the social model of disability challenged how she had been raised to understand it. The social model sees disability as produced by </p>
<blockquote>
<p>social and environmental barriers such as discriminatory attitudes and policies, inaccessible buildings and transport, and inflexible work arrangements.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Disability is not a matter of deficit in the individual. Society has a responsibility to remove these boundaries. Disability activists, such as Rhonda Galbally, have documented the rise of the <a href="https://library.bsl.org.au/jspui/bitstream/1/9353/1/Galbally_Genesis_of_NDIS_Sambell_Oration_Dec2016.pdf">disability rights movement in Australia</a>, which fought for the establishment of the NDIS. </p>
<h2>Citizens or consumers?</h2>
<p>The promise of the NDIS was significant. As Lee describes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Disabled people wanted more than just survival, getting out of bed, showering and eating, and maintaining basic health. They wanted support to participate and to create the lives they chose – to come out of isolation, to live in the community, work, make friends and pursue interests like other people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet, inherent within the design of the NDIS are two competing logics: citizenship and consumer rights. The former sees the role of the scheme, in collaboration with others, as enabling and empowering people with disability to engage with the community and broader society. </p>
<p>The latter provides funds to people with disabilities to act as empowered consumers within a market, exercising choice and control to ensure private providers deliver the services individuals demand. So far in the implementation, this logic has won out. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549912/original/file-20230925-15-n5neh6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc</span></span>
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<p>But the market has not worked as expected. As the <a href="https://www.ndisreview.gov.au/resources/speech/ndis-20">NDIS Review</a> notes, too often NDIS plans (which provide the basis for funding and services within the scheme) are not well-designed and are inflexible to the needs of individuals. Across the country, either services are not available or providers are not willing to work in a way that meets the needs of the individual. </p>
<p>All too often consumers find they do not have power in working with providers. NDIS participants are often expected to act as the “ideal consumer”, writes Lee, someone who is compliant with the demands of the provider, doesn’t ask for things to be done in their own way and doesn’t display behaviours that are considered too “difficult”. The theory of the empowered consumer is far from realised.</p>
<p>But the major limitation of the first decade of NDIS implementation, I’d argue, is a lack of action to make society more accessible. This isn’t just an issue of ramps or Auslan interpreters (although of course both are important facilitators for some people with disability). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-on-the-ndis-has-had-triumphs-challenges-and-controversies-where-to-from-here-208463">A decade on, the NDIS has had triumphs, challenges and controversies. Where to from here?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is also about the kinds of attitudes society holds towards people with disability. Lee describes a discussion with a friend about NDIS supports potentially helping a person with disability get a job. Her friend responds, “But what can they do if no one wants to give me a job?”. </p>
<p>This is the crux of the challenge for the NDIS, we can build the best lifeboat in the world. But who wants to spend their life adrift on the ocean?</p>
<p>Not only has there been little action here, writes Lee, but the existence of the NDIS may have served to make day-to-day life outside the scheme more challenging. Her essay contains several testimonies from people with disability who are now expected by (non-disabled) strangers to always have a support worker accompany them when travelling, attending medical appointments, or even going to the supermarket. </p>
<p>People within the broader community, she writes, are less willing to offer support to get items off a shelf at a supermarket or lift a bag from a wheelchair to be screened by airport security because they now regard this as the job of the NDIS. Disability is seen by many as something specialist professionals and services should handle, not a facet of the human condition. </p>
<p>This is the opposite of what many disabled people want, as Lee explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t want to be confined to my own little lifeboat. I want my community to be open to all and inclusive. I want to get bogged at a beach in my wheelchair and know people will help. I want to push into a crowded, heaving mosh pit and join the other dancers.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Draining the ocean</h2>
<p>Lee charts how, over the course of the implementation of the NDIS, the voice of people with disability has been eroded. It has been replaced by those of non-disabled people, often with corporate and profit-motivated interests.</p>
<p>Repeated narratives about the NDIS being a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-budget-sounded-warnings-of-an-ndis-blow-out-but-also-set-aside-funds-to-curb-costs-and-boost-productivity-193315">cost burden</a> – pushed by the media and federal opposition – have led to short-term cost cutting that make it difficult for the scheme to work. The market-based system is not operating as intended and changing attitudes outside the scheme have been neglected. The current <a href="https://www.ndisreview.gov.au/">NDIS Review</a> is hearing about all these issues, but none are surprising to disabled people.</p>
<p>It is incumbent upon those of us within the non-disabled community to listen and act to create a more inclusive society. </p>
<p>Lee is still hopeful for the scheme, which has at its heart “the Australian ideal of the fair go”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first step to bringing the NDIS back on course is to be aware of the deeply entrenched biases that lead people to act in ways that disregard the dignity and equal value of disabled people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lee argues we need to change the way people with disabilities are seen – as equal and and capable of making significant contributions. Only when this happens will society be willing to take steps to include people with disability.</p>
<p>The NDIS also needs a culture change. The voice of people with disability needs to returned centrally to the scheme, not just through the <a href="https://www.ndis.gov.au/understanding/what-ndis/whos-delivering-ndis/national-disability-insurance-agency">National Disability Insurance Agency</a> but via providers of disability services, who tend to be non-disabled people lacking insight into the lived experience of disability. Being active in the scheme is more than just being able to make choice about services, it is about disabled people being listened to and their experience valued. </p>
<p>Making the NDIS work as intended, is a job for all of Australian society and not just disabled people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA.</span></em></p>The new Quarterly Essay weaves personal history and detailed policy analysis, examining the unintended consequences of the NDIS, and how we can best realise the scheme’s original intent.Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1684642021-09-28T04:32:02Z2021-09-28T04:32:02ZThe larrikin lives on — as a conservative politician<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423447/original/file-20210928-25-hr8nog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Scott Morrison cheers in the sheds after a NRL match between the Cronulla Sharks and the North Queensland Cowboys in Sydney, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Craig Golding/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Quarterly Essay 83 Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power by Lech Blaine (Black Inc)</em></p>
<p>The top blokes seem to be everywhere. There have been top blokes protesting lockdowns. Labor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/16/labor-rank-and-file-angry-at-captains-pick-for-preselection-of-joel-fitzgibbons-key-hunter-seat">preselected a top bloke</a> to run for Hunter at the next election. A well-known top bloke from the 1980s, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/properly-shakespearean-john-elliott-s-fall-from-grace-came-after-greatness-20210924-p58uj5.html">John Elliott</a>, has left us for “that better place”. Top blokes can be found in board rooms, cabinet rooms and locker rooms across the country. And Lech Blaine, author of the <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2021/09/top-blokes">Quarterly Essay 83, Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power</a>, says we also have a top bloke running the country.</p>
<p>But then it gets complicated. Blaine argues there are some top blokes — particularly politicians — who present themselves as larrikins in the finest Australian tradition but who aren’t the real McCoy.</p>
<p>The original larrikins of the 1870s and 1880s were young urban louts and sometimes serious criminals. By the first world war, the larrikin had become a rather cuddlier national type of the kind Australians use to flatter themselves: an anti-authoritarian with a heart of gold. It would be many years before larrikinism would come to be much associated in public discourse with businessmen or politicians, probably as late as the 1980s.</p>
<p>The modern varieties are descendants of this larrikin. The rest of us are invited to admire rather than condemn, to shake our heads in admiration and amusement at their witty piss-taking and daring mischief.</p>
<p>Kerry Packer was a rich top bloke and although he liked gambling, sport and meat pies rather than cordon bleu, he wasn’t, Blaine suggests, a real larrikin. Paul Hogan was another rich top bloke, but Crocodile Dundee was only a pale imitation of the real bushman he was modelled on — who met his end in a shootout with police. So Hogan wasn’t a real larrikin either, especially not when he complained the tax office wasn’t giving him a fair go. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423453/original/file-20210928-27-1s58116.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Hogan: a faux larrikin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Boland/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bob Hawke was a top bloke who might almost have been a real larrikin but with his middle-class upbringing (the son of a clergyman), he had to put some work into being a champion pisspot and rooter. And then Hawke became a reformed larrikin.</p>
<p>You can generally identify a real larrikin, says Blaine, by his favourite football code, although the test only works north of the Barassi Line in the Rugby League-playing states. Real larrikins are are born-and-bred League men. Top blokes who are pretenders go for Rugby Union. </p>
<p>Scott Morrison, whose faux larrikinism is at the heart of Blaine’s essay, is a Rugby man who now pretends to be a League man. He <a href="https://junkee.com/scott-morrison-rugby-afl-teams/309077">picked up the Cronulla Sharks allegiance</a> rather in the way Liberal National Party Senator from Queensland, Matt Canavan, has acquired a striking resemblance to a coal-miner (belying his university education and career in the public service, consulting and political advising). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-larrikin-as-leader-how-bob-hawke-came-to-be-one-of-the-best-and-luckiest-prime-ministers-91152">The larrikin as leader: how Bob Hawke came to be one of the best (and luckiest) prime ministers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>His colleague, the latter-day “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dad_Rudd,_M.P.">Dad Rudd</a>” Barnaby Joyce, went to Sydney’s posh Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview before qualifying as an accountant. Blaine believes there is a grand political confidence trick at the heart of this cosplay. Conservative political parties who govern consistently to increase inequality and do over ordinary folk are populated by leaders who pretend to be ordinary folk.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423450/original/file-20210928-17-petj4n.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">Barnaby Joyce: went to Sydney’s Riverview.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Blaine locates the phenomenon in both a long cultural history — the veneration of the noble bushman explored brilliantly by Russel Ward in his 1958 book <a href="https://readingaustralia.com.au/books/the-australian-legend/">The Australian Legend</a> — and in a more recent past. In particular, the aggressive and largely successful bid by conservative parties since John Howard’s victory in 1996 to win over blue-collar male workers has been achieved by the expropriation of a national iconography of white male virtue, vigour and victimhood.</p>
<p>At the same time, Labor became more white-collar, less attractive to what remained of the old working class, and more appealing to university graduates — the very kinds of people who had once voted for the Liberal Party. Some of these people skived off to the Greens, and some of the blue-collar conservatives have headed into the camp of One Nation. </p>
<p>But the key point is that the Liberal and National parties are led by men who have found it necessary to “pass” as ordinary blokes and sometimes even as beer-swilling larrikins when they are really — well — Rugby Union types or churchy puritans of the Morrison kind.</p>
<h2>Class</h2>
<p>Blaine is a fluent, insightful and often amusing essayist who, like several younger cultural commentators in Australia, is willing to talk seriously about class once again — a habit that is stronger in Britain. His approach is often anecdotal. There is some family memoir — much of it moving and evocative — and we are regularly returned to a working-class foster brother John whose attitudes become a kind of litmus test for many of Blaine’s claims. </p>
<p>This is naturally problematic: how representative is John, a Liberal voting “battler” all his life, of a wider body of thought, feeling and electoral behaviour?</p>
<p>Working-class conservatives always have been, and always will be. Menzies would not have won a single election if he hadn’t attracted the votes of blue-collar unionists. Howard, probably for the first time in Australian political history, gained a majority of blue-collar votes in 1996 but he quickly lost many of them again. (<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10361140701320018">Murray Goot and Ian Watson have suggested</a> that only in 2004, the Mark Latham election, was Howard able to bring most of them back).</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-obedient-nation-of-larrikins-why-victorians-are-not-revolting-145675">An obedient nation of larrikins: why Victorians are not revolting</a>
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<p>Blaine also has little to say about where their mothers, wives, girlfriends and daughters fit into this psephology. At Scott Morrison’s “miracle” election, <a href="https://australianelectionstudy.org/">as the Australian Election Study</a> pointed out, 48% of men voted Liberal or National, but just 38% of women. </p>
<p>Of course, such a gender gap — it has been opening up since the 1990s — supports the thrust of Blaine’s argument, although cause and effect here are hard to disentangle. Male politicians are performing a style of masculinity calculated to appeal to a group of voters they hope will be attracted to it; the shift of men to the conservative parties motivates such role-play to keep them there and gather more members of the fraternity of mates. But this also highlights the vulnerability of such a strategy: can “Go the Sharkies” cosplay of the Morrison kind make further incursions on the male vote when it is aleady so high?</p>
<p>Blaine gives Anthony Albanese a show at the next election. With his working-class background and long involvement with the South Sydney Rabbitohs, he has better claims to the larrikin tradition, according to Blaine, even while showing few signs of identifying openly with it. That is another of the ironies at the heart of Blaine’s case. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423451/original/file-20210928-21-unn2rh.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">Anthony Albanese: has better claims to the larrikin tradition but is reluctant to claim it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Himbrechts/AAP</span></span>
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<p>Blaine thinks Labor must do more to appeal to coal-miners. A striking feature of this essay is that in line with much analysis of the 2019 election, coal has come to carry the heavy baggage of standing in for the entire old economy and its working class. It is perhaps an equation too easily made, and one that might be broken more easily than some have imagined. </p>
<p>Top Blokes sometimes skates over historical complexities too easily and occasionally gets things wrong, but it is a serious effort to come to grips with the modern political exploitation of a long-standing Australian male image, that of the larrikin. </p>
<p>Reading it, I recalled an astute early 1960s observation from the late Peter Coleman: academic, author, editor and Liberal politician. Australian “democratic innocence”, said Coleman, kept company with “the snarl of the collectivist bully”, “the open smile” being joined by “the broken bottle”. </p>
<p>Scott Morrison, I’ve often thought, has a nice, friendly and open smile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno 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>A new Quarterly Essay explores the modern political exploitation of a long-standing Australian male image, that of the larrikin.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095712019-01-10T18:25:00Z2019-01-10T18:25:00ZThe art of distraction: Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253151/original/file-20190110-32142-1kwm4p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In his Quarterly Essay, Smee laments the erosion of 'inner life' thanks to digital technology. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Quarterly Essay, Net Loss, by Sebastian Smee</em></p>
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<p>Guilty as charged. Yes, I spend too much time on social media. Yes, I have become more easily distracted. Yes, I have given up too much personal information to various apps and websites over the years. And yes, I have read a number of articles that articulate precisely how foolish, or at least, misguided this behaviour is. </p>
<p>And so when I opened up Sebastian Smee’s Quarterly Essay, Net Loss: The Inner Life in the Digital Age, I was primed to feed my own anxiety as I read his confessions: first, about how much time he spends on his phone, checking messages, listening to podcasts, watching videos, keeping an eye on Twitter and the news; and second, how conscious he is that he has given over various degrees of information about himself to the various interfaces and apps that relentlessly market this information on to other agencies in order to market other products back to the reduced versions of our selves we willingly project online. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/addicted-to-social-media-try-an-e-fasting-plan-56804">Addicted to social media? Try an e-fasting plan</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253150/original/file-20190110-32130-1ry82e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Quarterly Essay</span></span>
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<p>If these were Smee’s confessions, I could easily make them my own too. Indeed, this is one of the ironies of contemporary digital life: the more Facebook, for example, extends its global reach, the more people can become instantly aware of discussions on Facebook about Facebook’s use and sale of the data it accumulates through our global conversations about why and how we use it, and its affects on our sense of self.</p>
<p>Smee is concerned with the fate of the “inner life” in contemporary culture: how we can any longer preserve the illusion that we each have a private inner core of being or selfhood that is untouched by the dispersal and dissemination of our public selves across a wide range of media. Has not that “inner life”, he asks, become weakened and thinned out, as a result of our perpetual, seemingly uncontrollable engagement with the algorithms and formulae of digital life and the surveillance cultures and technologies of late capitalism:</p>
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<p>Once nurtured in secret, protected by norms of discretion or a presumption of mystery, this ‘inner’ self today feels harshly illuminated and remorselessly externalised, and at the same time flattened, constricted and quantified. </p>
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<p>Smee argues that we have become complicit in this process of our own commodification and “reduction”. We are, he writes,</p>
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<p>betrayed … by ourselves — by our willingness, what can often seem our eagerness, to make ourselves smaller</p>
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<p>He claims, sometimes directly, sometimes more cautiously, that human nature is changing: “Today, being human means being distracted. It is our new default setting”. </p>
<p>This kind of claim is not new, of course. Anxiety about the contemporary age and its difference from the past dates back at least to medieval culture. More recently (but over a century ago), Virginia Woolf famously suggested that human nature changed “on or about December 1910”. Indeed, Smee’s machinic metaphor — “our new default setting” — demonstrates the extent to which industrialisation naturalised the idea of humanity as something that can be programmed. This metaphor would have been impossible, say, in the renaissance.</p>
<p>Nor is distraction a new phenomenon. In Fanny Burney’s <em>Evelina</em> (1778), a well-educated young girl, brought up in the country, is astonished to find how little attention is paid to the music and singing at the opera and other London entertainments: </p>
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<p>There was an exceeding good concert, but too much talking to hear it well. Indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for, though every body seems to admire, hardly any body listens. </p>
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<p>Smee is not particularly interested in history, though. He offers many instances of what he sees as the problem: the way social media and our digital selves offer us only diminished, impoverished versions of ourselves that threaten to displace our inner lives. These lives are “tangled knots of narrative, with feelings and hurts and elaborate, fantastical dreams, which can be as enduring as mountains or as fleeting as clouds”, he writes. </p>
<p>To help us register what he thinks we are losing, Smee takes us through a range of examples from literature and art. Chekhov looms largest in his intellectual landscape, as a writer who most eloquently dramatizes the schism between the inside and the outside of the self, between a “true core” and a “sham exterior”. Cézanne, too, offers a vision of the self and “life” that is “fluid and multifaceted, like a rippling mosaic”. Smee insists that these rich and intense visions of human life are increasingly lost to us.</p>
<p>Yet his essay is itself a powerful demonstration of the inner life at work. It is not structured by argumentative sequence, empirical data or any theoretical work on contemporary digital culture; if anything, Smee defers judgments, sets problems aside, asks questions and refuses to push further.</p>
<p>Net Loss is a classic essay in Montaigne’s sense: experimenting and testing ideas (the French word <em>essai</em> comes from Latin <em>exagium</em>, “weighing”: itself appropriate to Smee’s astrological identity as a Libra, another account of the self he toys with then sets aside). </p>
<p>At one point he is tempted to read another story by Chekhov as “a prescient commentary” on the envy-inducing affects of Facebook. “I won’t go there,” he says. “But I will say two things that strike me about it now”. </p>
<p>For all his fear about loss, or losing the inner life by giving too much of it away through panic at our own mortality, Smee’s own choices, questions, worries, recollections, selections from books still structure his essay, which juxtaposes memories, quotations and descriptions of works of art, music, cinema and literature. The essay is a mosaic of cultural allusion that is meaningful precisely because it is held together by the narrative self that analyses and makes these connections. It is an example of distraction as an art form.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Trigg has received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Smee insists that the rich and intense visions of artists such as Cézanne or Chekhov are increasingly lost to us.Stephanie Trigg, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English Literature, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/983862018-06-18T20:11:03Z2018-06-18T20:11:03ZPartially right: rejecting neoliberalism shouldn’t mean giving up on social liberalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223528/original/file-20180618-85863-ra58wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Richard Denniss’s Quarterly Essay, “<a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2018/06/dead-right">Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next</a>”, is a thought-provoking call to arms against an array of perceived ills – economic rationalism, market forces, small government, tax cuts, incentives, even corporate sponsorship.</p>
<p>Denniss provides a useful provocation for a much-needed debate in Australia about the proper role of government versus markets, and the interests of firms versus workers and consumers. </p>
<p>But he risks throwing out what is good about liberalism in attacking neoliberalism. One wonders whether, in his heart, Denniss doesn’t actually recognise this. </p>
<p>His conclusion seems eminently sensible. He talks of “a society with some markets” rather than “a market society”, of Adam Smith seeing “both the virtues and limits of free markets”. We – and mainstream economists – couldn’t agree more.</p>
<h2>Markets and competition</h2>
<p>For Denniss, “neoliberalism” is anti-regulation and anti-competition, and pro-crony-capitalism. Mainstream economics, however, is none of these things. </p>
<p>There are, of course, market fundamentalists who despise regulation and seek monopolies for themselves. Others want the Australian government to build new coal mines and inland rail lines and to deny climate change. </p>
<p>Mainstream economics, in contrast, not only understands but emphasises that there exist “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp">negative externalities</a>” like pollution that should be taxed or regulated. Mainstream economics not only understands but celebrates competition, and many economists have <a href="http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/richardholden/assets/ahrnetworks-4-10-18.pdf">voiced serious concerns about a lack of competition in markets with network externalities</a>, such as social media and two-sided marketplaces (e.g. Amazon).</p>
<p>Mainstream economics deplores crony capitalism. Indeed, the <a href="https://research.chicagobooth.edu/stigler/">George J. Stigler Center and the University of Chicago</a>, the cradle of free-market economics, is:</p>
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<p>…dedicated to understanding the interaction between politics and the economy. It is an intellectual destination for research on regulatory capture, crony capitalism, and the various forms of subversion of competition by special interest groups.</p>
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<p>In criticising neoliberalism, therefore, we should be careful not to throw out markets and market-based competition. </p>
<p>The market is not an end in itself. Markets need to be harnessed, and regulated, to achieve social goals. But markets also offer a means of achieving a set of goals in an efficient way. </p>
<h2>Tax, incentives and unintended consequences</h2>
<p>Denniss argues against a neoliberal conception of tax and taxes as a “burden”, rather than a critical source of revenue needed to create a fair and decent society. </p>
<p>Again, he is right to point to the importance of tax to a just society, and of justice or fairness in our tax system.</p>
<p>But Denniss does not acknowledge the potential trade-offs between fair and efficient taxation, and the need to keep both goals in mind if we are to achieve both a progressive tax system and one that can sustain progressive social investments.</p>
<p>US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was right when <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-quotes">he said</a>: “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” But so was President John F. Kennedy when, in <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-042-021.aspx">his 1963 State of the Union address</a>, he said: </p>
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<p>… our obsolete tax system exerts too heavy a drag on private purchasing power, profits, and employment. Designed to check inflation in earlier years, it now checks growth instead. It discourages extra effort and risk. It distorts the use of resources. It invites recurrent recessions, depresses our federal revenues, and causes chronic budget deficits.</p>
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<p>If personal tax rates are too high then people won’t work very much and tax evasion will be rife. If company tax rates are too high then capital will move overseas, shrinking business and jobs. </p>
<p>In both cases tax receipts will be reduced.</p>
<p>The challenge is therefore to set taxes at a rate that can maximise equity between taxpayers – and achieve the tax receipts needed to pay for hospitals, schools and bridges.</p>
<p>One of us <a href="http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/richardholden/assets/mckell_negative-gearing_a4_web.pdf">has previously suggested that tax changes, such as a cut in negative-gearing concessions</a>, pass this dual test of equity and efficiency. </p>
<p>But Denniss also seems to support proposals, like profits super-taxes, that are highly distorting and discourage profitable companies from locating and investing in Australia.</p>
<h2>Pro-business v pro-market economics</h2>
<p>Denniss likewise raises a number of examples of governments favouring big business over the interests of workers and consumers. </p>
<p>These are instances worthy of criticism. Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. In many areas the pendulum has swung too far toward business rather than markets – and thus inadequate regulation of private contractors and firms that pollute and fail to pay taxes in Australia. </p>
<p>The answer, however, is for Australia to regulate the role of big business in politics, and not to move away from market-based approaches to a range of issues. </p>
<p>Australia should reintroduce serious national campaign finance regulation and limit the growth of US-style political lobbying. But it should also embrace market-based policies to major social and economic challenges like climate change. That means a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme. Not “direct action”, which is a gift to big business at the expense of the environment and the taxpayer.</p>
<p>Insisting on a government that serves people, rather than corporations, does not mean giving up on markets. Indeed, doing so would be a major mistake. </p>
<h2>Privatisation and public v private provision</h2>
<p>Denniss further raises questions about the retreat of government in many countries from the provision of core public services or goods, including in Australia. </p>
<p>We agree that there are a range of public goods that the government must guarantee and pay for in a free society. </p>
<p>There is a core set of services that a political system must guarantee its citizens. In certain areas, like shelter, clothing, food, health care and education, government must ensure that all individuals achieve a minimum threshold that affords them dignity.</p>
<p>But the government does not always need to provide these services in order to guarantee them – think of clothing. We do not have a government clothing bank, but rather a set of income guarantees that allow individuals to obtain the minimum clothing they need for a dignified existence. </p>
<p>The key is to insist on government provision where issues of quality or public values are at stake, and where it is hard for the private sector to supply the right level of quality – or in the right way.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-embracing-the-market-a-necessary-evil-for-labour-and-labor-81612">Was embracing the market a necessary evil for Labour and Labor?</a>
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<p>Denniss rightly highlights the despicable treatment of some of the most vulnerable Australians in aged care, mental health facilities and foster care. These things rob people of a basic level of human dignity and have no place in Australian society. Period. </p>
<p>But these are also examples of where outsourcing should never have happened – even on mainstream economic understandings. These are contexts in which it is impossible to contract for quality. Mainstream economics realises this, even if neoliberal ideologues do not.</p>
<p>The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economic Science was shared by Oliver Hart, of Harvard University, whose major contribution has been to analyse economic arrangements when contracts are incomplete. An important application of this approach is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951268?casa_token=uCj_c2THJpMAAAAA:BJx0JRLXe33hsDSZDJKkHlelbTizwsnBIMYBuyY2QE8VWALRSgjUEq1k5VkU-cI6su_qI4cE1RW3MZ5Jhnm8UfXb-HRYOQKsmvv9Bpr8fOyFEaqUukI&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">a celebrated paper (with Andrei Shelifer and Rob Vishny)</a> that highlights that the “quality” of service provision can be hard to measure and contract on in a range of areas, meaning that government ownership will typically be optimal. </p>
<p>In other areas it might be desirable that the government pay for certain things, but it will not be sensible to own the assets involved.</p>
<p>The private sector is typically better at cutting costs and achieving efficiencies. But they will do that even if it is not in the public interest. </p>
<p>Private prisons are a classic example. Privately owned prisons have lower costs but often underprovide services that aid rehabilitation and help reduce recidivism. Those things are extremely important, but hard to measure and monitor. Because of their importance, relative to cost cutting, government ownership of prisons is often optimal.</p>
<p>In rejecting neoliberalism and its emphasis on privatisation, therefore, we should not necessarily reject all forms of privatisation or public-private partnership – but only ones that threaten to undermine the quality or values-based dimension to public provision.</p>
<p>On this test, we certainly would reject <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-16/liberal-members-vote-to-privatise-abc-move-embassy-to-jerusalem/9877524">privatisation of the ABC</a>. Quality and values-based programming is part of the core function of the public broadcaster. </p>
<p>But we might well let private contractors help build major public infrastructure projects, such as rail or stadium upgrades. Or let them help pay for it – providing that, in doing so, they don’t get a disproportionately large credit for a small gift.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-we-are-reaching-neoliberal-capitalisms-end-days-what-comes-next-72366">If we are reaching neoliberal capitalism's end days, what comes next?</a>
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<p>Denniss points to a number of questionable deals that Australian governments have struck when it comes to private sponsorship of public infrastructure and goods. Suncorp got its name on a stadium but may or may not have paid very much for the privilege. The same goes for the Westpac rescue helicopter, and corporate sponsorship of the Australian War Memorial. He’s right. </p>
<p>If the government pays for the lion’s share of an essential service but gives away most of the credit to a private company, that’s bad – and it de-emphasises the important role government plays.</p>
<p>Similarly, as treasurer, Wayne Swan was responsible for cutting a terrible deal on the mining tax. But incompetent negotiation doesn’t make any of these things a bad idea in principle. </p>
<p>If the government can get a large amount of money in sponsorship for something – like the entire cost of a stadium – which frees up scarce public funds for other uses, that’s great.</p>
<h2>Throwing out neoliberalism, but keeping market-based democracy</h2>
<p>There’s a lot that Denniss gets right. Neoliberalism clearly has an array of problems. </p>
<p>And Denniss is right to remind us that we have choices as a democratic society about the size and role of government, and are not locked into a one-size-fits-all view of the state. </p>
<p>But there’s also a fair bit Denniss gets wrong. His essay leaves us with little guidance about what we should keep as we move away from neoliberalism. It is important to be clearer, in this context, about what remains valuable about markets and market-based approaches – as we attempt to move toward a more “social” approach to liberalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98386/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>There’s a lot that Richard Denniss gets right. Neoliberalism clearly has an array of problems. But he risks throwing out what is good about liberalism in attacking neoliberalism.Richard Holden, Professor of Economics and PLuS Alliance Fellow, UNSW SydneyRosalind Dixon, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/809572017-07-18T23:56:30Z2017-07-18T23:56:30ZTwo new books show there’s still no goodbye to messy climate politics<p>As <a href="https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/">atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise</a>, so too does the number of books telling us what the consequences are, and what we can do. Two more have been released in the past few weeks – Anna Krien’s brilliant Quarterly Essay <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2017/06/the-long-goodbye/extract">The Long Goodbye: Coal, Coral and Australia’s Climate Deadlock</a>, and the worthy <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522871685-climate-wars">Climate Wars</a> by Labor’s shadow environment minister Mark Butler. Both deserve a wide audience.</p>
<p>Krien, author of <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/woods">Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests</a> has a sharp eye for the right anecdote and a brilliant turn of phrase. Her reportage can be spoken of in the same breath as Elizabeth Kolbert’s seminal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/12/scienceandnature.features">Field Notes from a Catastrophe</a>. She has read extensively (I for one was not familiar with the <a href="http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/06/peak-fish-and-the-age-of-slime.html">Myxocene</a> – the age of slime) and in researching her latest essay has clocked up thousands of miles as she dives on the Great Barrier Reef and travels inland to areas that will be affected by the proposed coal mine developments in the Galilee Basin. </p>
<p>Krien offers valuable insights into issues such as coal firm Adani’s negotiations with traditional owners, the battles over coal seam gas, and Port Augusta’s rocky transition from coal to – possibly – renewables. She talks to “ordinary” people, weaving their perspectives into the story while not losing sight of the climate deadlock in her title – the ongoing fight within the Liberal and National parties over climate and energy policy. </p>
<p>In one of many telling phrases she writes of the “Stockholm syndrome built on donations, royalties, taxes and threats” that bedevils Australian politics, pointing out that the fate that befell Kevin Rudd still looms large in the collective political memory. In the end, she returns to the Great Barrier Reef, and her final paragraphs pack an emotional punch that will stay with the reader for a long time.</p>
<p>My only quibble with Krien’s fastidious reporting is that, unlike previous Quarterly Essays, there are no footnotes. But maybe that’s only really an issue for nerds like me.</p>
<p>This is Quarterly Essay 66. Number 33 was Guy Pearse’s equally alarming <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2009/03/quarry-vision">Quarry Vision</a>. In years to come, perhaps Quarterly Essay 99 might explain how we continued not to take action, as the consequences of climate change piled ever higher around us. Or how – alongside unexpected technological breakthroughs – we began finally to race against our nemesis, our own hubris. Time will tell.</p>
<p>Mark Butler is aiming to do something else besides just telling us about climate politics: as a shadow minister he is setting out Labor’s stall for the next federal election, whenever that might be. </p>
<p>Butler was climate minister in Rudd’s second, brief, government. In 2015-16 he undertook extensive consultations with business, community groups, academics and other “stakeholders” (surely everyone in the world is a stakeholder when it comes to the climate?). His book is essentially an extended advert for that process and its outcomes.</p>
<p>Butler’s prose is solid, and occasionally stolid, as he throws fact after report after statistic at the reader. However, he generally seeks to strike a constructive balance between “problem” and “solution”. There are only a few short chapters on the climate policy mess, with the bulk of the book concentrating on what a future Labor government proposes to do about it. </p>
<p>Inevitably, Butler is more critical of his political rivals, the Liberals and the Greens, than of his own party. You wouldn’t know from reading this book that it was Paul Keating’s Labor government who first began to use economic modelling to argue against emissions reductions, or that it was a Labor government who, in 1995, refused to institute a small carbon tax that would fund renewable energy. </p>
<p>Butler is also, oddly, flat-out wrong when he writes that former Labor minister Graham Richardson persuaded Prime Minister Bob Hawke to agree a 20% emissions reduction target before the 1990 federal election. It was actually his colleague <a href="https://theconversation.com/25-years-ago-the-australian-government-promised-deep-emissions-cuts-and-yet-here-we-still-are-46805">Ros Kelly, in October 1990</a>, and the “commitment” was carefully hedged. </p>
<p>These historical details matter, because we need to be able to hold politicians (and even ex-politicians) to account over their climate pledges. But many readers will nevertheless be more interested in what Butler says a Labor government will do, rather than what previous Labor governments didn’t. </p>
<p>Butler obliges, giving us chapters on “Labor’s clean power plan”, “Manufacturing and mining in a low-carbon world”, and “Low-carbon communities”. Occasionally he raises thorny problems (refugees, the coal industry) without really grappling with them. Given the ugly history around these issues (and the political Stockholm Syndrome identified by Krien), this is perhaps unsurprising. </p>
<p>Curiously, both books make a similar omission: they contain very little on the failures of policymakers and social movement organisations in the period from 2006 to 2012. In 2015, at the Labor Party’s national conference, I asked panellists – Butler was one – what had gone wrong during this time, which encompassed Kevin Rudd’s first prime ministership – in light of the fact that we had known about climate change since the late 1980s. </p>
<p>The other panellists gave thoughtful, sometimes self-critical answers. Butler kept schtum. Yet the question is worth asking if we are to avoid history repeating itself, this time as farce. We need smart people – and Krien and Butler are among them – to be asking how citizens can exert sustained pressure on existing governments and to build capacity to keep holding governments’ feet to the fire until they really and truly take climate policy seriously instead of just using it to score points and kill careers.</p>
<p>Ultimately, anyone interested in the future of Australia – and the future of climate policy – should read both of these books carefully. While Krien’s has some immediate use, its greater function will be something we can pull out of a time capsule to explain to young people 20 years hence that we knew <em>exactly</em> what was coming and what we had to do. It will help them understand why we didn’t do it. </p>
<p>Butler’s book will serve well over the next five years, as citizens try to hold a putative Labor government to its fine (if still inadequate) promises on the great moral challenge of our generation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
What future the Great Barrier Reef? What future energy policy? Two new publications on the ongoing battles of climate politics deserve close attention.Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/621632016-07-07T07:57:55Z2016-07-07T07:57:55ZWhen Australia goes to war, public trust depends on better oversight<p>The world is absorbing the implications of the long-awaited release of the <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/">Chilcot inquiry</a> into the United Kingdom’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Australia, however, has spent comparatively little time learning lessons from the deployment of thousands of troops to fight overseas in recent years.</p>
<p>An official war history has just been commissioned; if past form is any guide, it will be at least a decade before it is completed. In any event, its brief is to recount what took place, not to reflect on whether it was the best course of action for Australia.</p>
<h2>Australia’s path to war</h2>
<p>My new Quarterly Essay, <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2016/06/firing-line">Firing Line: Australia’s Path to War</a>, argues Australia needs a National Security Council to guide any decision in the future to go to war. </p>
<p>It is also important to restore public trust in the decision to go to war. For this, better democratic accountability is essential. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc</span></span>
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<p>This is not just about giving parliament a vote on military deployments; after all, a prime minister will always command the approval of the lower house of parliament. Instead, democratic accountability means developing a system capable of exercising genuine oversight of the national security agencies and departments, particularly Defence.</p>
<p>Currently, that oversight takes place in a few ways: through overly adversarial and hasty questioning at Senate estimates, abridged discussion in the lower house when prime ministers and their cabinets deign to allow discussion of national security or defence issues, and in the committee system.</p>
<p>Here, it is telling to compare Australia’s parliamentary committees for defence and national security with their counterparts in Canada and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-say-do-our-elected-representatives-have-in-going-to-war-51860">the UK</a>.</p>
<p>Australia’s oversight of national security is underdone and weak: one joint standing committee covers <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade'">foreign affairs, defence and trade</a> as a whole. A separate joint committee was established to cover <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security">intelligence and domestic security</a> after the Hope royal commission into intelligence in the 1980s.</p>
<p>It is extraordinary that so little infrastructure is dedicated to parsing the issues of war. </p>
<p>The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), on which the government will <a href="https://myplace.ndis.gov.au/ndisstorefront/news/statement-bruce-bonyhady.html">spend A$22 billion each year</a>, has an <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/National_Disability_Insurance_Scheme">entire committee</a> dedicated to its oversight. The <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/WhatAustraliaisdoing/Pages/NationalSecurityAgencies.aspx">national security apparatus</a>, which accounts for <a href="http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp4/html/09_staff.htm">more than 100,000 Commonwealth employees</a> and will soon absorb more than <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1516/Quick_Guides/Budget1617">$45 billion each year</a>, is entirely under-scrutinised. And it shows.</p>
<p>If one scans the list of issues examined, they pale by contrast with the omissions, which include the strategy underpinning the acquisition of Australia’s submarines, defence white papers, military education and defence diplomacy.</p>
<p>The next parliament needs committees dedicated to assessing each of the Australian Defence Force, the Department of Defence, national strategy and foreign affairs. This expanded committee system will require trained staff and political advisers with the necessary experience and judgement to grapple with the world of strategy and the opaque language of war – skills that are currently in short supply. </p>
<p>The problem extends to the military itself. Australia’s military gives priority to tactical rather than strategic excellence, and the ability to do battle in the realm of ideas has been more of a liability than an asset.</p>
<p>That is starting to change, but only slowly. Our military colleges are not yet universities for the study of war and our universities still view war as a morally tainted activity. </p>
<p>Furthermore, when so much defence decision-making is based on classified assessments and considerations routinely unavailable to members of the opposition, there is a role for a body that can equip parliamentarians to discuss national security policy. </p>
<p>For these reasons, it might prove necessary to create a parliamentary defence office, which seeks to improve the security debate in the same way as the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office">Parliamentary Budget Office</a>, established in 2012, has in the area of economics.</p>
<p>The need for full parliamentary approval before any substantial military action by the prime minister would inhibit an effective response to a crisis. Successive prime ministers have rightly resisted this. But there is a compelling case for parliament to review whether a military deployment is in the national interest within a period of, say, 90 days. </p>
<p>Here, we have a model in the way the Australian parliament deals with foreign treaties. It is the executive’s role to sign treaties with other countries and, in the past, it was entirely up to the foreign minister to present these treaties to the parliament for domestic legislation. But, in 2005, reforms were introduced that require a new <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Treaties">joint committee on treaties</a> to prepare a statement on whether a treaty is in the national interest or not, and table it before the parliament. </p>
<p>A similar system could be applied to the decision to go to war.</p>
<h2>Ten questions to guide decisions on war</h2>
<p>When should Australia go to war? The more we can think through the circumstances in which this question might arise, the less likely we will be to err in our calculations. Here are ten questions to be asked the next time our leaders want to commit Australian forces:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Are our vital national interests threatened?</p></li>
<li><p>Is there a clear political objective?</p></li>
<li><p>Are our military aims linked to this political objective?</p></li>
<li><p>Can the case be made to the Australian people that this campaign is in their interests, and can their support for the campaign be sustained through casualties and setbacks?</p></li>
<li><p>Do we understand the costs – to the country, to civilian victims, to the enemy and to our veterans?</p></li>
<li><p>What new dangers might this campaign cause?</p></li>
<li><p>What proportion of the Australian Defence Force will it commit?</p></li>
<li><p>What options will close to us if we take this action, and if we don’t?</p></li>
<li><p>Will the opposition remain committed, should it form government?</p></li>
<li><p>How does this end?</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from Quarterly Essay 62 – <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2016/06/firing-line">Firing Line: Australia’s Path to War</a> – by James Brown.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Brown is a member of the Liberal Party.</span></em></p>It is important to restore public trust in any future decision for Australia to go to war. For this, a system that provides better democratic accountability is essential.James Brown, Adjunct Associate Professor and Research Director, US Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/505962015-12-02T00:04:32Z2015-12-02T00:04:32ZReview: Political Amnesia – How We Forgot How To Govern<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103811/original/image-20151201-26559-1nilm54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of Tony Abbott's first acts on coming to office was to remove Martin Parkinson (left) as Treasury secretary.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Saeed Khan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The importance of history and memory is at the heart of Laura Tingle’s stimulating new Quarterly Essay, <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2015/12/political-amnesia">Political Amnesia: How We Forgot How To Govern</a>. Tingle’s central claim is that a lack of historical knowledge is one of the main problems in contemporary Australian politics. </p>
<p>This “growing political and policy amnesia”, Tingle writes, is a key reason for Australian politics becoming:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… not only inane and ugly but dangerous.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why has this happened?</h2>
<p>This amnesia is the result of a variety of institutional changes, including the declining influence of public servants on policy formulation and the increasing power of ministerial advisers. </p>
<p>Tingle points out that the presence of ministerial advisers is not in itself a problem. In the Hawke government, for example, advisers had an important role. But the relationship between ministers and the public service was more balanced and effective:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hawke insisted his ministers should have bureaucrats in their offices, specifically as chiefs of staff. It kept open the links with the public service in both directions. Ministers’ offices understood the public service. The public service understood their ministers.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103814/original/image-20151201-26549-7oswg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc</span></span>
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<p>However, various other developments have upset the balance between ministers and public servants. Senior public servants do not enjoy the security of tenure they previously did. Tingle suggests that the Howard government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-and-the-public-service-where-now-on-department-heads-18465">“night of the long knives”</a> – when the new prime minister sacked six departmental secretaries – was a crucial turning point.</p>
<p>In addition, public servants now more frequently face attack in parliamentary committees. The end result is a “toadying culture” in a “cowed” public service.</p>
<p>Even if public servants were in a position to be giving “frank and fearless” advice, though, it seems unlikely that ministers would welcome it. Tingle quotes a former senior public servant who describes the Howard government’s approach to the public service in its later years as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ll do the thinking, you just implement it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The result is that ministers make decisions without the benefit of proper advice.</p>
<p>These developments have been exacerbated by a loss of expertise and institutional memory in the public service as a result of cutbacks, redundancies and contracting out. One indication of this is that “the median length of service of ‘ongoing’ public servants in mid-2014 was 9.4 years”. </p>
<p>This means that governments – and younger and less experienced public servants – lose the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of senior figures who can remember what happened not just under the last government, but governments before that.</p>
<p>Changes in the media have also contributed to the problem of political amnesia. Tingle is at pains to emphasise that partisan coverage and populism are not new features of the media landscape. However, the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and the speed with which information can be communicated have led to a focus on immediacy and getting the “inside story” rather than in-depth reporting of policy issues. </p>
<p>This problem is exacerbated by the tendency for press gallery journalists to be generalists, rather than specialists concentrating on a particular policy area.</p>
<h2>What effect has it had on politics and policy?</h2>
<p>Many of the institutional developments Tingle highlights will be familiar to followers of Australian politics. But her essay demonstrates an impressive ability to tie these developments together to explain recent political events.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103818/original/image-20151201-26559-1yu77n1.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>
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<span class="caption">Kevin Rudd was criticised for a highly centralised policymaking approach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the essay’s most welcome features is its focus on the deeper structural forces at work. It is easy to blame the leadership instability and sometimes-chaotic approach to policymaking in recent years on the personality faults of the key figures involved – Kevin Rudd’s focus on control, Tony Abbott’s unrelenting oppositional stance.</p>
<p>The greater worry, though, is that our leaders’ personalities are not solely responsible for these developments; deeper structural forces are contributing to these problems. That leadership instability has also occurred at state and territory level, which Tingle does not cover in her essay, seems to add support to this view.</p>
<p>As with any essay on contemporary political events, there are some points of contention. In particular, Tingle argues that commentators were misguided to draw parallels between Julia Gillard’s challenge to Rudd in 2010 and Malcolm Turnbull’s challenge to Abbott five years later. </p>
<p>Tingle highlights important differences between the two cases. This includes the role of relatively inexperienced factional chiefs in the move against Rudd and the speed with which he was replaced, in contrast to Abbott’s more drawn-out demise and that senior Liberal frontbenchers primarily drove his ousting. Turnbull was also able to explain immediately why he had challenged.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there are also clearly important similarities between the two deposed first-term prime ministers. Given Tingle’s overall argument, these similarities may well be more important than the differences. Both Rudd and Abbott adopted highly centralised approaches to government and were criticised by colleagues for failing to follow proper processes.</p>
<p>These problems reflect the broader trends Tingle highlights, which pre-date both leaders. However, the problems seem more pronounced in the cases of Rudd and Abbott than they did with John Howard and Gillard. </p>
<p>This is not to claim that a thorough policy process was always followed under Howard and Gillard, or to deny that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) wielded enormous power under both leaders. But their approach to the procedural aspects of policymaking did not seem to attract the same degree of criticism as Rudd and Abbott faced. </p>
<p>This might be regarded as a small positive. It suggests that the personal approach adopted by individual leaders can still make a difference to the way government operates, despite the structural forces Tingle outlines.</p>
<p>The demise of Rudd and Abbott also highlights the political dangers facing prime ministers as a result of these structural changes.</p>
<p>Prime ministers now have the ability to dominate the government’s policy agenda in a way they previously did not. However, this power is highly contingent on their personal popularity. Colleagues are likely to put up with a highly centralised approach if a prime minister has recently led the party to a major election win and is doing well in the opinion polls.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103819/original/image-20151201-26582-rskezu.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull has promised a more ‘consultative’ approach to governing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But once a leader’s popularity drops, this ceases to insulate them from their colleagues’ resentment. Their control over the government also means they are likely to bear the brunt of responsibility for major policy failures.</p>
<p>It is worth pondering whether the problems resulting from the structural changes Tingle identifies extend beyond political amnesia to a basic failure to properly think through policy in advance and expose ideas to debate. </p>
<p>The centralisation of power in the PMO, insecure tenure for senior public servants and increasingly superficial reporting in the mainstream media have made it easier for those in positions of power to avoid engaging in serious critical discussion and debate over the policies they are putting forward.</p>
<p>The problem is therefore not simply about a lack of institutional memory. It is a broader failure to recognise the value of debate and dissent.</p>
<p>Debate, serious discussion and deliberation are valued highly in a democracy not just for their own sake, but because they are considered essential to testing the quality of ideas and arguments. </p>
<p>Increasingly, decision-makers in Canberra and beyond seem to have forgotten this age-old lesson of democratic politics. The quality of policymaking in Australia may be strengthened if they begin to remember it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Barry 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>Debate, serious discussion and deliberation are valued highly in a democracy not just for their own sake, but because they are considered essential to testing the quality of ideas and arguments.Nicholas Barry, Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/477522015-10-12T03:00:01Z2015-10-12T03:00:01ZReview: Faction Man – Bill Shorten’s Path to Power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97416/original/image-20151006-7371-14ik2bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What do we learn about Labor leader Bill Shorten from David Marr's new Quarterly Essay?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Andrew Brownbill</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>David Marr’s <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2015/09/faction-man">Quarterly Essay</a> on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten – entitled Faction Man – has come out at just the right time. Malcolm Turnbull’s recent ascension to the prime ministership has <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/what-should-shorten-do-now-20150924-gjumu0.html">sharpened the focus</a> on Shorten. </p>
<p>Marr struggles to get to grips with his subject. In part this reflects Shorten’s own ordinariness, but it is also because of Marr’s position as a sceptical Sydney intellectual.</p>
<p>Faction Man is a product of Black Inc, the incarnation of high-minded Victorian left liberalism. Its patron saint is <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/authors/robertmanne">Robert Manne</a>. From their perspective, Shorten – and his fascination with grimy Labor machine politics – is an alien figure.</p>
<h2>What do we learn about Shorten?</h2>
<p>Shorten’s personal story is a familiar one of a strong mother and an absent father. Also significant is the simple fact that Shorten never doubted his allegiance to the Labor Party. In this he reflects many Australians. A substantial portion still regard themselves as “rusted on” Labor voters. </p>
<p>This inertia contrasts with the milieu of the Quarterly Essay “brand”. Manne went from <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/Left-right-left/2005/05/13/1115843320453.html">right to left</a>. Left intellectuals once agonised over Labor and the Greens before siding firmly with the latter. Even Shorten’s left-wing rivals in the Monash ALP club fretted over the Hawke-Keating Labor Party before nerving themselves to make a final commitment. </p>
<p>Shorten is unencumbered by doubt, whereas the certainty of <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2010/06/power-trip">Kevin Rudd</a> and <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2012/09/political-animal">Tony Abbott</a> obscured a private uncertainty. Thus, Shorten is a “people person”, unlike most intellectuals. He is undaunted by knockbacks and disappointments.</p>
<p>Shorten is, Marr notes, the master of the small room and inherited his father’s knockabout skills. Often those skilled in one-on-one politics struggle to appeal outside a small group environment. Julia Gillard exemplified this, while Rudd appealed to the masses. Shorten faces the dilemma of balancing both.</p>
<p>The downside for Shorten in Marr’s description of his political faith is the absence of any intellectual basis. This is perhaps unfair. Marr has clearly interviewed many people and sifted through trade union royal commission testimony, but he has not examined Shorten’s parliamentary speeches.</p>
<p>Marr is not a historian of ideas. It is true, however, that Shorten’s political philosophy has never been expressed with the coherence of Rudd’s <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/february/1319602475/kevin-rudd/global-financial-crisis">musings</a> on social democracy or even Gillard’s clunky neolabourism. </p>
<p>The only significant intellectual figure that Marr identifies for Shorten is a high-school history teacher. In conversation, Shorten evokes lessons of military strategy rather than political philosophy. Progressives despair at this lack of curiosity, but it also insulates Shorten from the clunky exercises in “social conservatism” of some of his party colleagues. </p>
<p>Shorten’s critics <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/public-doesnt-know-what-bill-shorten-stands-for-or-what-he-thinks-20150924-gjtryp.html">evoke</a> the mystifying concept of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/upshot/hillary-clintons-authenticity-problem-and-ours.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1">authenticity</a>, but all politicians are strategic.</p>
<h2>Shorten, Labor and the unions</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97535/original/image-20151007-7371-lniwen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc</span></span>
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<p>Marr treks with bemusement through the intricacies of union politics but rather misses the key issues. Shorten represents the modernising Victorian Labor right, whose approach was pioneered by future ACTU leader Bill Kelty’s Storemen and Packers in the 1970s. Shorten reshaped the moribund Australian Workers Union in this image. </p>
<p>Despite all the wheeling and dealing and personal battles within the Victorian right that Marr lovingly describes, the faction has, in the end, re-unified, as it expresses a coherent political project. The NSW Labor right remained trapped in a Cold War hostility to the left and a faith in the industrial arbitration system with its strategic implication of a hostility to strike activity. All of these bulwarks collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s. </p>
<p>The NSW right has since become so <a href="http://www.pipingshrike.com/2008/09/rip-nsw-right.html">disorientated</a> that it has had to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/luke-foleys-long-journey-from-faceless-factional-man-to-media-tart-20150121-12ux3o.html">recruit parliamentary leaders</a> from the party’s left. Victoria’s modernising Labor right knew how to use union militancy in a globalised and deregulated economy. Yet this has costs – in the <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/77qay8fg9780252036866.html">US</a>, unions have increasingly become dependent on the support of sympathetic governments and employers. </p>
<p>The wheeling and dealing with employers that Marr discusses at length is a product of this. It has preserved a niche for unionism when many anticipated its collapse, but it also offers little prospect of an upsurge of union membership.</p>
<p>Shorten is comfortable with history. It is no coincidence that the intellectual he is closest to is Labor historian Nick Dyrenfurth. In a <a href="http://billshorten.com.au/launch-of-mateship-a-very-australian-history">speech</a> to launch Dyrenfurth’s <a href="http://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/mateship/">Mateship</a>, Shorten evoked the ideal of a modern non-racial mateship of inclusion and fairness. </p>
<p>Abbott, in the words of William F. Buckley, too often aspired to stand aside history, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-history-look-upon-abbott-and-his-prime-ministership-47491">yelling “stop”</a>. Labor had an easy task against him, but in Turnbull it faces a leader comfortable with progress. </p>
<p>The history of Australia is not just the tale of mateship Shorten absorbed in high school history but a story of capital and power in the world’s first globalised state. In 1984, the ANU’s Kosmos Tsokhas <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8471205">noted</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… those concerned with the introduction of radical reforms in Australia … [would] come against … [a] stubborn yet flexible system of power. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the past 30 years that structure has developed remarkably. And Shorten, along with Marr, has little idea of how to make an effective challenge to it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Robinson 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>Faction Man is a product of Black Inc. From their perspective, Bill Shorten – and his fascination with grimy Labor machine politics – is an alien figure.Geoffrey Robinson, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96272012-09-18T04:29:08Z2012-09-18T04:29:08ZMuch ado Abbott nothing: Marr’s Quarterly Essay misses the mark<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15530/original/pp6zvk63-1347849969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's conduct as a student politician is under scrutiny after the release of the new Quarterly Essay.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a limit to what any writer can do in 20,000 words, so not too much should be expected of the essays in the Quarterly Essay series. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, a number of them have been influential, including QE 37 by David Marr, the now infamous <a href="http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/power-trip-political-journey-kevin-rudd">Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd</a>. That essay’s revelations of Rudd’s darker side played its part in undermining the Prime Minister prior to his removal in June of that year.</p>
<p>This context may have made Tony Abbott, the man likely to become prime minister next year, wary of being too open with Marr when he was researching his latest essay, <a href="http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/political-animal-making-tony-abbott">Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott</a>. He did give Marr an interview but only allowed one skerrick from it to be made public.</p>
<p>“Political Animal” is a good read in typical Marr style, but it falls short of making any startling insights into the making of Abbott. It is also quite distracting, as it moves quickly backwards and forwards between historical analysis and contemporary snippets. It doesn’t quite hang together.</p>
<p>His starting point is abrupt: “Australia doesn’t want Tony Abbott. We never have.” </p>
<p>His main theme is that the opposition leaders is torn between “Politics Abbott” and “Values Abbott” and that eventually, “Politics Abbott” will win out. </p>
<p>He concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Abbott that matters is Politics Abbott. That’s the one who got him where he is today: an aggressive populist with a sharp tongue; a political animal with lots of charm; a born protégé with ambitions to lead; a big brain but no intellectual; a bluff guy who proved a more than competent minister; a politician with little idea what he might do if he ever got to the top; and a man profoundly wary of change.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is sparkling writing and I agree with Marr’s conclusion, which is at odds with the wilder claims made about Abbott: that he will as prime minister he will let his Catholic values rule in some undemocratic way. But Marr doesn’t really get very far in explaining Abbott’s Catholic values. </p>
<p>He does go over fairly well-known ground in detailing his Jesuit school background and his admiration for Bob Santamaria and the Democratic Labor Party, but only begins to explore the implications of all this for Abbott as prime minister. It is not enough just to say that he is a “profoundly Catholic man” with an “intense faith”. Individuals that fit that description have appeared on all sides of Australian politics.</p>
<p>One way his faith has influenced him is that he is no market ideologue and values the role of the state more than many other Liberals. This is recognised by those in Catholic agencies that deal with him. </p>
<p>As Marr puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Abbott’s default position is that governments are there to act, to solve problems, not to withdraw and leave things to the cut and thrust of market forces. He was clearly not one of those conservatives who loved the market. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was and is one reason for Peter Costello’s scepticism about him.</p>
<p>What we need to know more about is Abbott’s years as a minister and here the essay does offer some insights and praise. Over a decade as minister Abbott survived with “no great catastrophes, no personal scandals”, though there certainly were controversies. Marr reports that bureaucrats rated him highly, “among the better ministers”. As Health minister, the AMA liked dealing with him because they generally found him “sharp and refreshing”.</p>
<p>Abbott also appears to have made a useful contribution as a cabinet minister because he applied himself to contributing broadly and in an open-minded way to discussion of national affairs in that context. Helen Coonan remembers him favourably as a Cabinet minister “capable of thinking beyond the square”.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that Marr’s portrait is not critical. Abbott comes across as an affable bully, a description that has also been applied to one of his mentors, Cardinal George Pell. He also seems to be a man very much in the Graham Richardson style of “whatever it takes”. But the essay does help us understand the secret of why he is such a good campaigner. Although he has a divisive persona that created many enemies, especially in university politics, “Abbo” does have a personal style away from the arena of politics that allows him to cut through with many people.</p>
<p>My final observation is that once again this essay reveals the complete failure of academic writing to be taken seriously in this genre. </p>
<p>Political scientists, including Kate Gleeson on abortion politics, have written about Abbott but you would not know it from the research referenced on this occasion. It is also strange that Michael Duffy’s book on Abbott and Mark Latham did not prove useful.</p>
<p>But with only 20,000 words to describe a lifetime, it’s perhaps not surprising the academic community did not get a mention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Warhurst 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>There is a limit to what any writer can do in 20,000 words, so not too much should be expected of the essays in the Quarterly Essay series. Nevertheless, a number of them have been influential, including…John Warhurst, Adjunct Professor Australian Politics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.