tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/cory-bernardi-2050/articlesCory Bernardi – The Conversation2020-09-07T20:11:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396542020-09-07T20:11:54Z2020-09-07T20:11:54ZIs ‘cultural Marxism’ really taking over universities? I crunched some numbers to find out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355726/original/file-20200901-20-13sqv1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4256%2C2816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Cultural Marxism” is a term favoured by those <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/cultural-marxism--the-ultimate-postfactual-dog-whistle-20171102-gzd7lq.html">on the right</a> who argue the <a href="https://theconversation.com/defunding-arts-degrees-is-the-latest-battle-in-a-40-year-culture-war-141689">humanities are hopelessly out of touch</a> with ordinary Australia. </p>
<p>The criticism is that radical voices have captured the humanities, stifling <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/you-protest-you-pay-education-minister-s-bid-to-bolster-free-speech-at-universities-20180921-p5057h.html">free speech</a> on campuses. </p>
<p>The term has been used widely over the past decade. Most infamously, in former senator Fraser Anning’s 2018 “final solution” speech to parliament he <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/both-sides-slam-anning-over-final-solution-speech-that-praised-white-australia-policy">denounced</a> cultural Marxism as “not a throwaway line, but a literal truth”. </p>
<p>But is cultural Marxism actually taking over our universities and academic thinking? Using a leading academic database, I crunched some numbers to find out.</p>
<h2>The back-story</h2>
<p>The term “cultural Marxism” moved into the media mainstream around 2016, when psychologist Jordan Peterson was protesting a Canadian bill prohibiting discrimination based on gender. Peterson <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/jordan-peterson-capitalism-postmodernism-ideology">blamed</a> cultural Marxism for phenomena like the movement to respect gender-neutral pronouns which, in his view, undermines freedom of speech. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-jordan-peterson-the-philosopher-of-the-fake-news-era-91308">Is Jordan Peterson the philosopher of the fake news era?</a>
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<p>But the term is much older. It seems first to have been used by writer <a href="https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=29456">Michael Minnicino</a> in his 1992 essay The New Dark Age, published by the Schiller Institute, a group associated with the fringe right wing figure <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/12/29/lyndon-larouche-obituary-conspiracist-with-a-well-connected-following-086493">Lyndon LaRouche</a>. </p>
<p>Around the turn of the century, the phrase was adopted by influential American conservatives. Commentator and three time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan targeted “cultural Marxism” for many perceived <a href="https://documentarylovers.com/film/cultural-marxism-the-corruption-of-america/">ills facing America</a>, from womens’ rights and gay activism to the decline of traditional education. </p>
<p>The term has since gone global, sadly making its way into Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik’s <a href="http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/7/23/8287/32273/Front_Page/Anders_Behring_Breivik_Soldier_in_the_Christian_Right_Culture_Wars">justificatory screed</a>. Andrew Bolt used it <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/cultural-marxism--the-ultimate-postfactual-dog-whistle-20171102-gzd7lq.html">as early as 2002</a>. In 2013, Cory Bernardi was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504630.2020.1787822">warning</a> against cultural Marxism as “one of the most corrosive influences on society”.</p>
<p>By 2016, the year the Peterson affair unfolded, Nick Cater and Chris Uhlmann were blaming it for undermining free speech in <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/inquirer/there-was-a-time-when-journalists-backed-free-speech/news-story/4704bea05341f9f674cb526470260601">The Australian</a>. The idea has since been adopted by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5aVm7nwHTM">Mark Latham</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/malcolmrobertsonenation/posts/1644812038996003?comment_id=1645216642288876&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D">Malcolm Roberts</a>.</p>
<h2>So, what is cultural Marxism?</h2>
<p>Insofar as it goes beyond a fairly broad term of enmity, the accusers of “cultural Marxism” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/19/cultural-marxism-a-uniting-theory-for-rightwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim">point to</a> two main protagonists behind this ideology. </p>
<p>The first is Italian Marxist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci">Antonio Gramsci</a>. Writing under imprisonment by the fascists in the 1920s, Gramsci argued the left needed to capture the bureaucracy, universities and media-cultural institutions if it wished to hold power. </p>
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<img alt="Colourful array of notebooks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355939/original/file-20200902-14-u5uuy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A collection of notebooks in which Antonio Gramsci developed his ideas while in prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>The second alleged culprits are “neo-Marxist” theorists associated with the <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/frankfur/">Frankfurt School of Social Research</a>. These “critical theorists” drew on psychoanalysis, social theory, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics">aesthetics</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy">political economy</a> to understand modern societies. They became especially concerned with how fascism could win the allegiance of ordinary people, despite its appeals to aversive prejudice, hatred and militarism.</p>
<p>When Hitler came to power, the Frankfurt School was quickly shut down, and its key members forced into exile. Then, as Uhlmann has <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/inquirer/there-was-a-time-when-journalists-backed-free-speech/news-story/4704bea05341f9f674cb526470260601">narrated</a>:</p>
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<p>Frankfurt School academics […] transmitted the intellectual virus to the US and set about systematically destroying the culture of the society that gave them sanctuary.</p>
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<p>While Soviet communism faltered, the story continues, the cultural Marxist campaign to commandeer our culture was marching triumphantly through the humanities departments of Western universities and outwards into wider society. </p>
<p>Today, critics argue it shapes the “<a href="https://spectator.us/whats-wrong-cultural-marxism/">political correctness</a>” that promotes minority causes and polices public debate on issues like the environment, gender and immigration - posing a grave threat to liberal values.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-fake-free-speech-crisis-could-imperil-academic-freedom-144272">How a fake 'free speech crisis' could imperil academic freedom</a>
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<h2>What the numbers show</h2>
<p>If the conservative anxieties about cultural Marxism reflected reality, we would expect to see academic publications on Marx, Gramsci and critical theorists crowding out libertarian, liberal and conservative voices. </p>
<p>To test this, I conducted <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43199791/The_Specter_of_Cultural_Marxism_">quantitative research on the academic database JStor</a>, tracking the frequency of names and key ideas in all academic article and chapter titles published globally between 1980 and 2019.</p>
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<img alt="Nietzsche with a very impressive moustache." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355703/original/file-20200901-20-dp7je9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">By 1987, more academic articles were being published about Nietzsche than Marx.</span>
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<p>In 1987, Karl Marx himself ceded the laurel as the most written about thinker in academic humanities, replaced by Friedrich Nietzsche – revered by many fascists <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Fascism-and-the-Masses-The-Revolt-Against-the-Last-Humans-1848-1945/Landa/p/book/9780367893064">including Benito Mussolini</a> – and Martin Heidegger, another figure whose far-right politics were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegger-black-notebooks-reveal-nazi-ideology-antisemitism">hardly progressive</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past 40 years, the alleged mastermind of cultural Marxism, Gramsci, attracted 480 articles. This compares with the 407 publications on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek">Friedrich Hayek</a>, arguably the leading influence on the neoliberal free market reforms of the last decades. </p>
<p>The “Frankfurt School” featured in less than 200 titles, and critical theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse">Herbert Marcuse</a> (identified by Uhlmann as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/22/chris-uhlmann-should-mind-his-language-on-cultural-marxism">a key transmitter</a> of the cultural Marxist “virus” in the US) was the subject of just over 220. </p>
<p>Over the last decade, the most written about thinker was <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/">the neo-Nietzschean theorist</a>, Giles Deleuze, featuring in 770 titles over 2010-19. </p>
<p>But the notoriously esoteric ideas of Deleuze - and his language of “machinic assemblages”, “strata”, “flows” and “intensities” - are hardly Marxist. His ideas have been a significant influence on the right-wing Neoreactionary or “<a href="https://breakermag.com/heres-the-dark-enlightenment-explainer-you-never-wanted/">dark enlightenment</a>” movement.</p>
<h2>Cultural, not Marxist</h2>
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<img alt="Book cover reading 'The force of non-violence'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355706/original/file-20200901-18-13oghow.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Post-structuralist thinkers like Judith Butler are today more prominent than Marxist scholars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House</span></span>
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<p>The last four decades have seen a relative <em>decline</em> of Marxist thought in academia. Its influence has been <a href="https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/25/39717444/jordan-petersons-idea-of-cultural-marxism-is-totally-intellectually-empty">superseded</a> by “post-structuralist” (or “postmodernist”) thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Deleuze. </p>
<p>Post-structuralism is primarily indebted to thinkers of the European “<a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780333650141">conservative revolution</a>” led by Nietzsche and Heidegger. </p>
<p>Where Marxism is built on hopes for reason, revolution and social progress, post-structuralist thinkers roundly reject such optimistic “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Postmodern-Condition-Knowledge-History-Literature/dp/0816611734">grand narratives</a>”. </p>
<p>Post-structuralists are as <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm">preoccupied with culture</a> as our conservative news columnists. But their analyses of identity and difference <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Turn-Selected-Postmodern-1983-1998/dp/1844673499">challenge the primacy Marxism affords to economics</a> as much as they oppose liberal or conservative ideas.</p>
<p>Quantitative research bears out the idea that “cultural Marxism” is indeed a “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/cultural-marxism--the-ultimate-postfactual-dog-whistle-20171102-gzd7lq.html">post-factual dog whistle</a>” and an intellectual confusion masquerading as higher insight. </p>
<p>A spectre of Marxism has survived the cold war. It now haunts the culture wars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe works for Deakin University, in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalization.</span></em></p>An examination of academic publications since 1980 suggests the status of ‘cultural Marxism’ has been greatly exaggerated.Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1191862019-06-20T10:42:27Z2019-06-20T10:42:27ZCory Bernardi to disband Australian Conservatives<p>Senator Cory Bernardi will wind up his Australian Conservatives party, after its abysmal showing at the election.</p>
<p>Bernardi, who defected from the Liberals and formed the party in 2017, said on Thursday: “The inescapable conclusion from our lack of political success, our financial position and the re-election of a Morrison-led government is that the rationale for the creation of the Australian Conservatives is no longer valid.</p>
<p>"Accordingly, I will shortly begin the process of formally deregistering the Australian Conservatives as a political party.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-south-australia-heads-to-the-polls-the-state-is-at-a-crossroads-93265">As South Australia heads to the polls, the state is at a crossroads</a>
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<p>There has been speculation that the South Australian senator - who is making it clear he wants to do all he can to help the Morrison government - may seek to rejoin the Liberals.</p>
<p>He told The Conversation: “I have not thought about it. My focus has been on the future of the [Australian Conservatives] party and will now consider what role I may or may not play in the next parliament”.</p>
<p>In his statement he said, “the Morrison government victory and policy agenda suggests we are well on the way to restoring common sense in the Australian parliament. That is all we, as Australian Conservatives, have ever sought to do.”</p>
<p>The Australian Conservatives attracted some disillusioned Liberal supporters while Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister.</p>
<p>The party swallowed the small conservative party Family First, which briefly gave it two South Australian state parliamentarians. It also briefly had representation in the Victorian parliament, with the defection to it of a Democratic Labour Party upper house member.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bernardi-split-is-symptomatic-of-a-fractured-political-system-here-and-abroad-72721">Bernardi split is symptomatic of a fractured political system, here and abroad</a>
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<p>Bernardi said times were “very different” when he launched his party in early 2017.</p>
<p>“Malcolm Turnbull was leading a Labor-lite Coalition into political oblivion. As they abandoned their supporter base in pursuit of green-left policies, major party politics became an echo chamber rather than a battle of ideas.</p>
<p>"The fact that over 22,000 people formally joined the Australian Conservatives in our first year demonstrated just how badly the Coalition were haemorrhaging supporters who wanted their enduring values and traditional principles upheld.</p>
<p>"However, the decision to make Scott Morrison prime minister truly changed the political climate and our political fortunes.</p>
<p>"Rather than punish the Coalition for another new leader, many Conservatives breathed a sigh of relief that a man of faith and values was leading the Liberals back to their traditional policy platform.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bernardi-should-have-resigned-his-senate-seat-heres-why-72581">Bernardi should have resigned his Senate seat: here's why</a>
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<p>Bernardi said that at the election the party polled “a tiny fraction of the votes” required for success. </p>
<p>“We can make all the excuses in the world for the result but it is clear that many of our potential voters returned to supporting the Coalition when Malcolm Turnbull was replaced by Scott Morrison.</p>
<p>"Although we made it clear in the lead-up to the campaign that we were only running in the Senate so as not to be the catalyst for a change of government, our message didn’t get through.”</p>
<p>He said that while he had been urged to “deliberately court controversy” during the election to win attention, this “would have undermined the very premise of what we offered to the Australian people – a credible and principled alternative to the political fringe.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately steady and sensible didn’t work and it was frustrating that some single interest parties gained more votes than we did.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Bernardi said that at the election his Australian Conservative party polled “a tiny fraction of the votes” required. He said potential voters returned to supporting the Coalition under Morrison.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932652018-03-15T19:09:23Z2018-03-15T19:09:23ZAs South Australia heads to the polls, the state is at a crossroads<p>Uncertainty is nothing new to South Australia. Over the past decade, the state has faced a range of economic and political unknowns. </p>
<p>In 2014, BHP’s decision not to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/bhp-changes-its-tune-on-olympic-dam-project-20140802-zzp9d.html">expand its Olympic Dam site</a> triggered a period of economic uncertainty. A year later, South Australia had the highest unemployment in the nation. Further, the state was hit with the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-08/holden-closure-australia-history-car-manufacturing/9015562">closure of the Holden plant</a>, the uncertainty over the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-22/billion-dollar-whyalla-plan-unveiled/9282706">steelworks in Whyalla</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-caused-south-australias-state-wide-blackout-66268">the blackouts of 2016</a>. </p>
<p>The incumbent Labor government, seeking a record fifth term in office, has been active. Premier Jay Weatherill, and his indefatigable treasurer, Tom Koutsantonis, are keen to birth a “new economy” in South Australia. In effect, the government is trying to diversify and strengthen the state since the decline of the resources boom. </p>
<p>As South Australians head to the polls on Saturday, it remains unclear which vision of the state’s future will most likely attract their vote.</p>
<p>Labor is gambling big by spending big. Following classic Keynesian economics, its stimulus agenda includes a A$2 billion infrastructure spend, high-speed internet, extending the tram network, and a bold target of 75% renewables by 2025. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-would-pokies-reform-in-south-australia-wipe-out-many-of-26-000-jobs-93189">FactCheck: would pokies reform in South Australia wipe out 'many' of 26,000 jobs?</a>
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<p>In contrast, Steven Marshall’s Liberals favour cuts to payroll tax, cuts to electricity bills, and less ambitious infrastructure spending (40,000 homes with solar and batteries, compared with Labor’s 50,000).</p>
<p>In addition, the Liberals have focused on improving electricity inflow from interstate, and new agencies to improve productivity and infrastructure development. They were also pointing to Labor’s policy problems in TAFE, health and – most notably – <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-28/icac-report-on-oakden-aged-care-home-released/9492008">child protection and mental health</a>.</p>
<p>Marshall has been more sure-footed in his second tilt at outwitting Labor’s formidable electoral machine. He has seemingly put to bed internal party divisions that haunted previous campaigns.</p>
<p>The Liberals are also hoping they can capitalise on a favourable <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2017/sa/index.htm">electoral boundary redistribution</a>. The Liberal vote has long been concentrated in rural seats, and Marshall is seeking broader appeal with his vision for a “Strong Plan for Real Change”. </p>
<p>What was looking like a relatively classic Labor versus Liberal fight was thrown into confusion with Nick Xenophon’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/xenophons-shock-resignation-from-senate-to-run-for-state-seat-85322">return to South Australian politics</a>. An initial honeymoon saw a surge of support for his SA-Best party, now running 36 candidates across the 47 seats in the lower house.</p>
<p>In December, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nick-xenophon-could-be-south-australias-next-premier-while-turnbull-loses-his-25th-successive-newspoll-89290">a shock Newspoll</a> result had SA-Best’s primary vote at a huge 32%. Subsequent polls seem to suggest this might have deflated.</p>
<p>Xenophon is seeking to capitalise on what he perceives to the “broken politics” of the old two-party axis, with a tired Labor government and the Liberals with a leader whose personal popularity has rarely exceeded the premier’s. </p>
<p>Xenophon has managed something that Australian politics has not seen since the late 1990s, with a centrist challenger posing an electoral threat to the major parties. The vote for the two major parties has been in decline for some time in Australia. The 2016 federal election produced the largest-ever vote for the minors. </p>
<p>South Australian politics, likes its economy, is also in transition. </p>
<p>Ironically, the surge in support for the SA-Best candidates seems to have had a negative impact on the other minor parties. Polling suggests the vote share for the Greens is down from about 10% to 6%. In the Legislative Council, Kelly Vincent, the Dignity candidate, looks set to lose her seat. Limited media space means the other minors are struggling to get heard.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-australian-soft-voters-inclined-to-change-their-government-but-not-impressed-with-the-alternative-93198">South Australian 'soft' voters inclined to change their government but not impressed with the alternative</a>
</strong>
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<p>The other striking development is that this is the first election to test the electoral strength of Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives since their merger with Family First (another party with South Australian origins). The Australian Conservatives have taken up one of Labor’s abandoned causes: to establish a nuclear waste facility in South Australia.</p>
<p>With an electoral race this uncertain and with no clear front-runner, many close seats will come down to preferences and pre-polls. </p>
<p>Remarkably for a leader, Marshall has already cast his vote. Indeed, the Liberals are wagering that like-minded voters will also vote early, and they hope to capitalise on the release of the <a href="https://icac.sa.gov.au/content/oakden">ICAC report</a> into the abuse at the Oakden mental health facility. The report damaged Labor’s campaign a fortnight out from the polls.</p>
<p>Labor, ever-savvy, is playing a clever game with preferences, splitting the ticket across the state between SA-Best and the Liberals. </p>
<p>Intriguingly, Labor has done a deal with the Australian Conservatives to secure their preferences in three marginal Labor seats (Light, Lee and Newland), in return putting the Conservatives third on their Legislative Council ticket. </p>
<p>On Saturday night, the focus will be on the seat of Hartley – a microcosm of the election. Nick Xenophon will be seeking to beat Liberal incumbent Vincent Tarzia and fend off former ALP minister Grace Portolesi. The outcome of this three-horse race is still uncertain, much like the state’s wider economic and political future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring is a member of The Fabians. </span></em></p>Much is in play for South Australia in this weekend’s state election – politically and economically.Rob Manwaring, Senior Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/905242018-01-23T03:58:42Z2018-01-23T03:58:42ZMoral rights, artistic integrity and Cory Bernardi’s Australia Day playlist<p>Amid the debate over changing the date of Australia Day and Triple J’s announcement of moving the Hottest 100 countdown, Senator Cory Bernardi, leader of the Australian Conservative political party, has sparked criticism for arranging his own <a href="https://www.conservatives.org.au/celebrating_australia_day_listening_to_the_ac_100">Australia Day playlist on Spotify</a>.</p>
<p>The “AC100” includes such classic choices as Men At Work’s Down Under and John Farnham’s You’re the Voice, as well as iterations of Waltzing Matilda and the national anthem. Odder inclusions are perhaps Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky and Iggy Azalea’s Trouble. </p>
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<p><a href="http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2018/01/18/darren-hayes-leads-backlash-against-cory-bernardis-hottest-100-protest-playlist/">Artists such as Darren Hayes</a>, Spiderbait and the Hilltop Hoods have objected to being included in the playlist. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/cory-bernardi-launches-alternative-hottest-100-playlist/9338566">Bernardi responded on ABC radio</a> that these objections amounted to “intolerant censorship”. </p>
<p>A lawyer acting for You Am I frontman <a href="http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2018/01/20/tim-rogers-threatens-cory-bernardi-with-legal-action;-another-aussie-act-defends-protest-playlist/">Tim Rogers has said</a> that he may seek legal action to have the band’s song, Berlin Chair, removed from the playlist. Michael Bradley, managing partner of Marque Lawyers, told The Herald Sun: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not about adding his song to a playlist, big deal. The critical point is that it is being used for a political purpose … it is being co-opted for a cause which is the opposite of what he believes in.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rogers’s argument rests on relatively obscure legal provisions known as moral rights to protect his integrity as an artist. </p>
<p>There has been little attention paid to moral rights in Australia, mainly due to the fact that successful cases are normally tacked on to copyright claims and the damages awarded are normally quite small. </p>
<p>Rogers may have a case, however, if he can prove that being on the list was damaging to his honour or reputation - that people are likely to falsely associate his music with the Australian Conservative Party.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"953593077716860928"}"></div></p>
<h2>What are moral rights?</h2>
<p>Moral rights were introduced into Australia’s Copyright act in 2000, but they are very different to the traditional rights authors have over their work. They are retained by an author or artist even when copyright is signed over to someone else.</p>
<p>The moral right provisions in the Copyright Act give musicians such as Rogers the right not to have their work subjected to derogatory treatment. Derogatory treatment, in relation to a musical work, is defined in the act as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the doing, in relation to the work, of anything that results in a material distortion of, the mutilation of, or a material alteration to, the work that is prejudicial to the author’s honour or reputation </p>
</blockquote>
<p>or, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the doing of anything else in relation to the work that is prejudicial to the author’s honour or reputation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question then is: can the “doing of anything else” be as simple as including the title and artist on a list? The explanatory memorandum to the bill explains that this part of the definition refers to where work “is used in an inappropriate context”, which could be argued here.</p>
<p>Rogers would then have to prove that including his song on the playlist is prejudicial. There is an argument for capacity for harm in that people would then associate the musician with that particular “brand” of politics. Even if a musician’s reputation is heightened by being included on a playlist - with perhaps more people listening - it could still be prejudicial if the association is personally offensive. </p>
<p>In the past, the very few Australian cases involving moral rights have awarded no damages or only minimal damages to artists. Often, cases involving moral rights have been part of a wider copyright breach.</p>
<p>For instance, in 2006 a <a href="https://www.communicationscouncil.org.au/public/content/viewCategory.aspx?id=748">photographer, Vladas Meskenas</a>, won a case against the magazine Woman’s Day after it mis-attributed a photo to another artist. The court found Meskenas’s moral rights had been infringed because he wasn’t properly attributed, even though he didn’t hold copyright to the portrait. Meskenas was awarded just under $10,000 in damages. </p>
<p>More recently, in 2012 the US musician <a href="http://www.davies.com.au/ip-news/sample-leaves-dj-in-red-for-damages-for-infringement-of-rappers-moral-right">Pitbull won a case against an Australian DJ</a> after he added an introduction to one of Pitbull’s songs. Pitbull was also awarded damages of $10,000. </p>
<p>An untested question in Australia is whether being included on a political party’s playlist without permission could be derogatory treatment under the moral rights provisions in the Copyright Act. </p>
<p>If Rogers were to seek legal action, and he was successful, the court could order an injunction to have the song removed from the playlist, damages for any loss, removal of the playlist and a declaration that moral rights have been infringed. It could also order Bernardi to make a public apology for the infringement.</p>
<p>But with very few cases litigated in this area the prospects of success are uncertain. It will be interesting if the case does go ahead to see the limits of moral rights and the limit of artists’ control over their creations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Sarah Hook is not affiliated with nor receives any funding from any political association, industry association or other relevant bodies in connection with this article.</span></em></p>Tim Rogers has threatened to take legal action after one of his songs was included in Cory Bernardi’s conservative Australia Day playlist. Rogers’s case rests on obscure legal provisions known as moral rights.Sarah Hook, Lecturer in Law, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825062017-08-17T20:20:54Z2017-08-17T20:20:54ZFinding balance on marriage equality debate a particular challenge for the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182363/original/file-20170817-16211-tq67ce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi's views on same-sex marriage may be crude and ignorant, but the media are nonetheless obligated to report how he uses his power.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Covering the same-sex marriage debate presents the media with an acute ethical dilemma: how to give effect to people’s right of free speech while taking into account truth-telling, offensiveness, and the risk of doing harm.</p>
<p>While this is a balance that conscientious journalists always have to strike, it is obvious from the nature of the debate so far that the same-sex marriage issue is capable of generating unusually pernicious and potentially harmful material. This marks it out as a case requiring especial vigilance.</p>
<p>The starting point is to separate the two basic questions that arise from the government’s decision to hold a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-with-no-free-vote-for-now-where-next-for-marriage-equality-82156">voluntary postal plebiscite</a>.</p>
<p>One of these is a question of opinion: should same-sex marriage be supported or opposed? It is in relation to this that the ethical dilemmas arise.</p>
<p>The other is a question of fact: is the voluntary postal plebiscite methodologically defensible as a way to <a href="https://theconversation.com/using-the-abs-to-conduct-a-same-sex-marriage-poll-is-legally-shaky-and-lacks-legitimacy-82245">obtain the opinion</a> of the voting public?</p>
<p>This can be disposed of swiftly. The fact is that while the plebiscite might be politically useful, it is scientifically worthless. It is what researchers call a SLOP – a <a href="http://methods.sagepub.com/reference/encyclopedia-of-survey-research-methods/n524.xml">self-selecting opinion poll</a>.</p>
<p>It is no better than a dial-in survey about some piece of football trivia – should Toby Greene be suspended for kicking an opponent’s face – dial X for yes and Y for no.</p>
<p>There’s only one kind of poll that’s worse – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/upshot/push-polls-defined.html?mcubz=3">push polling</a>. This happens where the question is asked in such a way as to push the respondent toward a particular answer.</p>
<p>The one thing we will be able to say at the end of the plebiscite is that it shows the opinions of those who chose to take part. It will tell us nothing statistically valid about the opinions of the voting population as a whole.</p>
<p>Scientifically speaking, the government would be better off asking a reputable polling outfit such as Newspoll to do a stratified random survey of 2,000 voters for about A$122,000, rather than the $122 million the postal vote is going to cost.</p>
<p>However, the ethical issues are complex and not so easily disposed of.</p>
<p>First, the issue of harm minimisation. We know from people like former High Court justice Michael Kirby, who is homosexual, and from <a href="https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/bw0258-lgbti-mental-health-and-suicide-2013-2nd-edition.pdf?sfvrsn=2">a lot of research</a>, just how vulnerable adolescent boys and girls are when they discover they are attracted to people of the same sex.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1007/BF00942151/full">research article</a> published in the American Journal of Community Psychology as far back as 1993 found that first awareness of sexual orientation typically occurred at the age of ten. Yet typically, the young person didn’t tell anyone until they were about 16. That’s six years of private struggle. Suicide attempts were acknowledged by 42% of the sample.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, these vulnerabilities are a matter of common knowledge. It follows that there is a risk of foreseeable and avoidable harm associated with public debate on this topic.</p>
<p>This imposes on journalists an ethical obligation to identify foreseeable risks of harm arising from this debate and, where possible, avoid them.</p>
<p>Avoidance is not always possible. If someone like senator Cory Bernardi <a href="https://theconversation.com/bernardi-slips-down-the-political-slope-with-bestial-comments-on-marriage-9685">likens homosexuality to bestiality</a>, journalists have no choice but to publish it, because although what he says is crude and ignorant, he is a public figure and needs to be held to account for how he uses his power.</p>
<p>Minimising harm dictates that harmful statements like this be repudiated by a voice of at least equal authority.</p>
<p>But if something similar just goes viral on social media and comes from no public or authoritative source, are journalists justified in ventilating it further?</p>
<p>Often it will come down to a choice between exploiting some sensationalist remark or exercising responsible restraint.</p>
<p>Similarly, statements such as that by the Australian Christian Lobby saying children of gay couples <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/senator-wong-condemns-christian-lobbys-stolen-generations-comment-20130521-2jyn3.html">were a stolen generation</a> need to be published because they come from a major participant in the debate.</p>
<p>But when people base their arguments on false facts, journalists have a duty to put the true facts into the story. For example, some people say that the children of homosexual couples have poorer life outcomes than children of heterosexual couples. That simply isn’t true.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x/abstract">meta-analysis</a> of 33 studies worldwide, including a study by Jennifer Power of La Trobe University, found that while there are methodological limitations to all studies in this area, it seems clear that children raised by homosexual couples do <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-and-their-children-what-does-the-evidence-tell-us-55565">at least as well</a> as children raised by heterosexual couples.</p>
<p>How journalists report and comment on the debate will affect its quality. That applies whether they work in commercial media or public-sector broadcasting.</p>
<p>The Guardian Australia <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/12/we-wont-be-giving-equal-time-to-spurious-arguments-against-marriage-equality">has already declared</a> that it will simply not publish what it regards as spurious arguments against same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The ABC does not have this luxury. It is obliged to give both sides a fair go, but that doesn’t mean the ABC is obliged to republish known untruths or offensive or harmful material.</p>
<p>Its editorial policies require its journalists to be impartial. The elements of impartiality include factual accuracy, fairness and balance. Balance requires that the main voices in a debate be heard, but it also requires that journalists follow the weight of evidence.</p>
<p>For instance, in the vaccination debate, the weight of evidence is clearly on the side of the science that says vaccination is safe. To <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2017/08/16/one-nation-says-abc-should-air-anti-vaxxers.html">give equal weight</a> to the anti-vax movement is false balance.</p>
<p>It follows that ABC journalists and ethical journalists everywhere have plenty of scope to decide whether and how to publish material that carries a risk of doing harm, or that is offensive or misleading, while at the same time giving effect to people’s right to free speech.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller 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 the marriage equality debate as in any other, media outlets must balance the right to freedom of speech with the balance of evidence.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813552017-07-20T12:42:40Z2017-07-20T12:42:40ZGrattan on Friday: Abbott shapes up in Liberals’ fight over their ‘internals’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179024/original/file-20170720-24021-bekdqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott is showing no sign of backing off his continual challenges to the government in his public commentary.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brendan Esposito/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cory Bernardi, the senator who defected from the Liberals to found the Australian Conservatives, sits like a crow on a fence as those in his former party fight bitterly over its directions and organisation.</p>
<p>Whatever the future holds for the Australian Conservatives – and it will inevitably be an uphill battle – Bernardi could not ask for more auspicious circumstances in which to recruit.</p>
<p>Bernardi’s party has nearly 13,000 members nationally – the youngest 15 and the oldest almost 102 – with around 4,000 in New South Wales. The NSW figure compares with a Liberal Party membership in that state said to be about 11,000, although some internal critics claim the number is much smaller.</p>
<p>The Australian Conservatives have three state MPs: two South Australian upper house members as a result of its absorption of Family First, and a former DLP member of the Victorian parliament.</p>
<p>Bernardi says about 40% of Australian Conservative members were formerly members or active supporters of the Coalition parties. Some former Liberals probably see the Australian Conservatives as “the party they joined originally”, he says.</p>
<p>Bernardi might have an eye on potential pickings following this weekend’s NSW Liberal convention.</p>
<p>The issue at the special meeting is the rules – for which read the distribution of power – in the party’s NSW division, which is controlled by a tight factional combination of moderates and soft right.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott and other disgruntled conservatives are trying to win support for reform in how candidates are preselected and party officials are chosen. A motion from Abbott’s Warringah federal electorate conference (FEC) proposes plebiscites for all candidates and direct election for the party positions. Although other states have plebiscites, in its sweep the Warringah blueprint is radical change on steroids.</p>
<p>Some predict a loss of members to the Australian Conservatives if there is not significant change. Bernardi already has a following within the NSW Liberals – he has been invited to appear at its Roseville branch next month.</p>
<p>While the possible implications for Bernardi’s party are an intriguing aspect of the weekend’s debate, the immediate focus will be on its consequences for the Abbott-Turnbull conflict, in which – despite disclaimers – it is being seen as another episode.</p>
<p>The party’s open wound has been on full display again this week. On Sunday new Liberal federal president Nick Greiner warned of the damage being done and called for the two men to resolve things “face to face”.</p>
<p>“If we are not able to present a compelling unified face to the Australian public we won’t win the election in two years time – I think it is as simple and as stark as that,” Greiner said.</p>
<p>He’s right, of course. But highlighting the problem is only useful if it helps get a solution – otherwise it just draws more attention to it, putting Turnbull in an awkward position.</p>
<p>On Thursday he was asked by 3AW’s Neil Mitchell: “what’s wrong with picking up the phone and saying, ‘Tony, green tea, my office, let’s talk about it’?” Turnbull replied: “I look forward to catching up with him again soon when parliament gets back if not before”, adding that he’d been going to say he’d known Abbott “for a million years – it may feel like a million years – it’s about 40 years”.</p>
<p>Indeed. Even right back in those early days, these two were on different pages, as recalled in a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/yung-tone?utm_term=.enAJlZMAk#.asDBrw1Xg">BuzzFeed article</a> this month. Turnbull, writing for The Bulletin in 1978, disparaged student politician Abbott’s “rather boisterous and immature rhetoric” and argued that his “conservative moral views” were too much for the general student constituency.</p>
<p>Turnbull can’t fix his Abbott problem. Even if he brought him into cabinet, which he won’t, it would likely eventually end in tears.</p>
<p>Abbott, for his part, is showing no sign of backing off his continual challenge to the government in his public commentary. His latest criticism was of this week’s decision for a home affairs department; he said the advice to his government was that such a “massive bureaucratic change” wasn’t needed.</p>
<p>Abbott has invested a great deal in his push for party reform, and so has a lot of credibility at stake in the convention’s result. No-one is sure how it will unfold. Open to all party members, and subject to “stacks”, about 1,400 have signed up to attend. Its outcome won’t be the end of the matter – decisions rest with the state council.</p>
<p>Turnbull, squeezed between factional allies who want to limit reform and militant rank-and-filers, addresses the convention on Saturday morning. He has previously indicated he is in favour of plebiscites, but looks for measured changes rather than Warringah’s full monty.</p>
<p>Compromise positions are being pressed by backbencher Julian Leeser and assistant minister Alex Hawke.</p>
<p>Among the restrictions proposed for plebiscites are a longer qualification period (three or four years membership rather than two) and an “activity test” before party members could vote, as well as “grandfathering” electorates with sitting members to the current preselection system.</p>
<p>In an email this week to party members Walter Villatora, president of the Warringah FEC, and Jim Molan, the retired major-general who helped devise the Coalition’s border security policy, denounced the compromise positions as “window dressing”.</p>
<p>“The Hawke/Leeser reforms will cement in factional domination for another generation,” they said.</p>
<p>The Warringah supporters are arguing an all-or-nothing line. That leaves Abbott in a corner if there is a compromise, making it harder for him to claim any ownership of more limited change. Not that he worries too much about the odd contradiction, as we’ve often seen.</p>
<p>If he fails to get what he wants and seriously kicks up the dust, that is likely to encourage some disgruntled members to pay their A$25 to Bernardi – who incidentally is holding a meeting for his party’s NSW members next Friday.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the Warringhites have a victory, Turnbull will suffer yet another bout of bad publicity, with more trouble to come from a much-emboldened Abbott.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Even if Malcolm Turnbull brought Tony Abbott into cabinet, which he won’t, it would likely eventually end in tears.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/766932017-04-27T20:06:06Z2017-04-27T20:06:06ZMerged minor parties chase votes on the right as identity crisis grips Coalition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166919/original/file-20170427-1843-1ujl1qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives party has amalgamated with Family First, which shares similar social conservative values.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cory Bernardi entered a new phase of his political career by <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/family-first-takeover-cory-bernardi-looks-for-more-mergers-after-great-day-for-conservatives-20170426-gvstv2.html">announcing this week</a> that his nascent Australian Conservatives party was to merge with Family First.</p>
<p>The merger makes sense. Both parties advance a socially conservative agenda; both have origins in South Australia. And the merger is a savvy response to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/senate-voting-changes-pass-so-how-do-we-elect-the-upper-house-now-55641">changes to the Senate voting system</a> that were introduced in 2016.</p>
<h2>Benefits of minor parties merging</h2>
<p>The changes to the Senate voting system abolished the group voting ticket. So, parties can no longer <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2013/09/the-preference-deals-behind-the-strange-election-of-ricky-muir-and-wayne-dropulich-.html">make the same preference deals</a> they had in the past. </p>
<p>Merging, however, will provide like-minded minor parties with benefits.</p>
<p>First, they will be able to consolidate their human and financial resources for election campaigns and the party’s day-to-day operations.</p>
<p>Second, by merging into a “super” minor party, they maximise their chances of winning Senate representation: they pool their electoral support.</p>
<p>This sense of electoral fragmentation has been a greater problem for minor parties on the right of the political spectrum. The Greens, after decades of evolution, appear to have consolidated their role as the lightning rod for voters from the left who are unhappy with the choices provided by the major parties.</p>
<p>No such party, however, exists on the right, where myriad minor parties with competing agendas are clamouring for attention.</p>
<h2>Social conservatism</h2>
<p>The Australian Conservatives and Family First shared similar policies on a range of issues. In particular, they opposed same-sex marriage and abortion, and expressed deep suspicion about the role humans have played in climate change.</p>
<p>Both parties also sought to advance “traditional” family values and have been sceptical of the socially progressive policies promoted by the likes of the Greens.</p>
<p>But their opposition to same-sex marriage contrasts with others on the right of political spectrum – such as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/new-senator-david-leyonhjelm-says-samesex-marriage-is-a-liberty-issue/news-story/3153dbcbb7b2fbd61958ca72e8a35c9f">Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm</a>, who supports it.</p>
<p>In 2016, Family First <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2016/results/senate/#snational">won a national primary vote</a> in the Senate of 1.38%. Its best performance was in South Australia, where Bob Day – who is to be <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-05/lucy-gichuhi-to-relace-bob-day-in-senate/8417598">replaced in the Senate by Lucy Gichuhi</a> – won a seat after polling 2.87% of the statewide primary vote. Gichuhi, however, will <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-26/cory-bernardi-unwilling-to-wait-for-gicuchi-for-amalgamation/8472754">sit as an independent</a> – not as an Australian Conservatives senator.</p>
<h2>Race and immigration</h2>
<p>Pauline Hanson’s One Nation <a href="https://theconversation.com/defiant-hanson-will-test-a-coalition-government-61985">made a remarkable return</a> to the Senate in 2016, almost 20 years after it first emerged. Reflecting an approach common to right-populist parties in other liberal democracies, One Nation was deeply concerned about race, migration and religion.</p>
<p>Led by the charismatic Hanson, the party sought to advance the interests of “ordinary” Australians in a political system that it believed was over-run by professional politicians and political elites.</p>
<p>At the 2016 election, One Nation won a national primary vote in the Senate of 4.29%. Its best performance was in Queensland, where 9.2% of the statewide vote garnered it two Senate seats. It holds four seats in the Senate.</p>
<h2>Libertarian</h2>
<p>In 2013, Leyonhjelm led the Liberal Democrats to an unexpected triumph when he won the party’s first seat in the Senate. Since then, he has built a high public profile by advancing his party’s agenda, which focuses on individual liberties and freedoms.</p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats advance free trade, freedom of choice, and winding back the welfare state. The party supports euthanasia, the use of cannabis, and same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>It is also <a href="https://ldp.org.au/policy/">in favour</a> of citizens having the right to own firearms as well as ending prosecutions for victimless crimes, which it describes as illegal but not threatening the rights of anyone else. These <a href="https://ldp.org.au/policy/victimless-crimes/">include “crimes”</a> such as abortion, public nudity and the consumption of pornography.</p>
<p>However, Leyonhjelm differs from One Nation’s positions on some economic issues. For example, he supports cuts to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/pauline-hanson-backflips-on-weekend-penalty-rates/news-story/b9ed205701fb26d7ef8db01cc1ea8e12">weekend penalty rates</a> and the <a href="http://davidleyonhjelm.com.au/is-pauline-hanson-a-communist/">privatisation of state assets</a> – in contrast to One Nation’s opposition to both of these measures.</p>
<p>In 2016, the Liberal Democrats won 2.17% of the national vote in the Senate. Leyonhjelm held onto his seat after winning 3.1% of the statewide vote in New South Wales.</p>
<h2>Liberal-National Coalition</h2>
<p>While the minor parties mentioned above are advancing specific policy agendas, the major right-of-centre force appears to be grappling with internal divisions about the direction of its policies.</p>
<p>The belief that One Nation, Family First and the Liberal Democrats are chipping support off the Coalition has prompted some MPs to agitate for the party to promote more <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/good-weekend/leader-of-the-oppositionwhy-its-time-to-take-george-christensen-seriously-20161130-gt1cu0.html">socially conservative policies</a>. Former prime minister <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-fivepoint-plan-for-the-winnable-next-election-will-infuriate-malcolm-turnbull-20170223-gujkft.html">Tony Abbott</a> has continued to advocate for the Liberal Party to shift to the right.</p>
<p>As a major right-of-centre force, however, the Liberal Party risks alienating socially progressive voters who have supported the party in the past. And the sense of a growing threat from minor parties on the right may be overstated. </p>
<p>As the electoral performances demonstrate, these minor parties were successful in 2016 thanks primarily to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-how-did-the-new-senate-voting-rules-work-in-practice-63307">double-dissolution election</a> making it easier to win seats in the Senate. These parties would struggle to have as much success under the new electoral system at an ordinary half-Senate election.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding these elements, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s recent announcements of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-20/migrants-to-face-tougher-tests-for-australian-citizenship/8456392">changes to citizenship laws</a> suggest the Coalition leadership is responding to demands of the right from within the partyroom. Whether these will be enough to placate those seeking greater shifts to the right remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zareh Ghazarian 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>While minor right-wing parties are advancing specific policy agendas, Australia’s major right-of-centre force appears to be grappling with internal divisions about its policy direction.Zareh Ghazarian, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/743662017-03-15T19:15:47Z2017-03-15T19:15:47ZThe case for holding politicians to the same disclosure standards as company directors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160626/original/image-20170314-9606-5epyhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi was recently caught up in a dispute over whether he had correctly disclosed a property he owns.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/cory-bernardis-1m-secret-show-why-the-parliamentary-rules-are-broken-20170308-gut9jo.html">Recent commentary</a> on the rules governing politicians’ declaration of financial interests has highlighted the ease with which they are circumvented and the laxity with which they are enforced.</p>
<p>Senator Cory Bernardi was recently <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/cory-bernardis-1m-secret-show-why-the-parliamentary-rules-are-broken-20170308-gut9jo.html">caught up in a dispute</a> over whether he had correctly disclosed a A$1 million commercial property he owns in South Australia. He denies any wrongdoing and says he complied with the rules.</p>
<p>There are differences between the regimes governing politicians and directors of public companies; the former relate to assets whereas the latter govern transactions. But they both serve the same end – ensuring transparency and reducing the risk of conflicts of interest.</p>
<p>Why, then, are the rules so lax for politicians?</p>
<h2>Why MPs aren’t pursued</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Members/Register">Parliamentary rules require</a> MPs declare a broad range of interests. They must also declare interests they are “aware” are held by their spouses and dependant children. </p>
<p>Politicians file interests late – sometimes only after media exposure. They frequently disregard the rules relating to minor assets and <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/cory-bernardis-1m-secret-show-why-the-parliamentary-rules-are-broken-20170308-gut9jo.html">defy the rule</a> relating to reporting spousal assets. The requirement of awareness in relation to family assets makes ignorance an easily available defence.</p>
<p>However, the chief problem is enforcement. The <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ppa1987273/s16.html">relevant law</a> says events occurring within parliament, which would include breaches of financial disclosure rules, cannot be judged by the courts. </p>
<p>This rule is important because it protects free debate. But it ultimately makes the enforcement of internal parliamentary rules subject to political forces rather than purely legal considerations. This is because of how parliament’s internal processes work.</p>
<p>The initial decision on whether an MP has acted in contempt of parliament – for example, by failing to declare assets – is made by the relevant house’s privileges committee. </p>
<p>The government has a majority on the House of Representatives committee, so there is obviously little chance it will find against one of its own MPs. And even if a committee does make an adverse finding, it amounts only to a recommendation. It is up to the entire house (in which, again, the government has a majority) to make the final decision as to whether contempt has occurred and, if so, what punishment to impose. </p>
<p>Where an opposition MP is under the spotlight, a finding of contempt is theoretically more likely. But the reason this is only theoretical is that a party with a majority is aware the time will come when it will lose that majority. For this reason, it will not want to establish a precedent that can later be used against it. </p>
<p>So, it is in the interests of both major parties not to pursue contempt matters too vigorously.</p>
<p>This was strikingly illustrated in 2002, when former defence minister Peter Reith <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/31/1027926912621.html">refused to appear</a> before a Senate committee investigating the “children overboard” affair. On the face of it this amounted to contempt. Also, the Coalition parties did not hold a Senate majority. But Labor <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/23/1034561546910.html">refrained from compelling</a> Reith to give evidence or face contempt proceedings. </p>
<p>The upshot is there is no real likelihood MPs will face punishment for breaching financial disclosure rules. All that happens is they are allowed to “correct the record” – which makes failure to disclose essentially risk-free. </p>
<h2>Company directors face stringent requirements</h2>
<p>Contrast this with <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s208.html">the requirements</a> imposed on directors of public companies. </p>
<p>If any <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s228.html">“related party” of a company</a> – including a director, their spouse, child, parent or other company that any of these parties controls – wants to enter into a transaction with the director’s company, the shareholders’ permission has to be obtained in advance.</p>
<p>So, for example, if the father of a director wanted to purchase a vehicle owned by the company of which she was a director, the shareholders would have to approve the transaction before it took place.</p>
<p>Most importantly, any person involved in a breach of the rules is <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s209.html">subject to</a> a <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s1317g.html">civil penalty</a> of up to A$200,000 if the breach is not dishonest (that is, if it is unintentional), and <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/sch3.html">faces</a> criminal prosecution and a fine of up to A$200,000 and/or imprisonment for five years if the breach is intentional. </p>
<p>The consequences of MPs breaching financial disclosure rules could easily be toughened by amending the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ppa1987273/">relevant law</a>. Breaches should be subject to normal court proceedings, rather than being left to parliament’s dubious procedures. There should also be a penalty regime mirroring that applicable to company directors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bede Harris 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>Politicians should be subject to a penalty regime similar to the far more stringent one that applies to company directors.Bede Harris, Senior Lecturer in Law, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/728432017-02-27T19:09:15Z2017-02-27T19:09:15ZAs the Liberal Party continues to fracture, we may be watching its demise<p>The Liberal Party is riven by internal bickering, with various camps claiming to speak for its “true” values and traditions. The contest is leading not to any prospect of unity or discipline, but to the party’s fragmentation. The war is fought in the guise of a contest over leadership appropriate to the party’s soul and to the national interest.</p>
<p>In the process, the party is <a href="https://theconversation.com/coalition-trails-45-55-and-turnbulls-ratings-sink-in-newspoll-73666">incrementally diverging</a> from popular opinion on issues essential to future electoral success. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is currently in the crosshairs. But whether or not he survives to fight another election, whoever leads the party next time is unlikely to be the saviour of the party or Coalition government.</p>
<p>The predicament is best understood by analysing what is at the heart of this struggle: the pragmatic liberalism that was the Liberal Party’s foundation; the divergence of the party base from majority opinion; and the contemporary obsession with “the leader” as solely responsible for the party’s fortunes.</p>
<p>All exponents of Liberal Party values lay claim to the “Menzies” tradition. The most vehement contemporary claimants are on the party’s right wing. Their plaint is that the commitment to individualism, private enterprise, small government, lower taxes and free trade has been forgotten. Cory Bernardi <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-06/cory-bernardi-to-split-with-liberal-party/8243414">split with the Liberals</a> to establish his own party, Australian Conservatives, “to reconnect with voters and restore traditional Menzies-era values”. </p>
<p>Others of like mind remain in the fold — and threaten Turnbull’s leadership. The most prominent is his predecessor, Tony Abbott. <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-fivepoint-plan-for-the-winnable-next-election-will-infuriate-malcolm-turnbull-20170223-gujkft.html">Abbott continues to advocate</a> more extreme budget austerity, climate change scepticism, immigration restriction, market fundamentalism and regressive taxation reform than even Turnbull (who has compromised on everything he once promised in an attempt to mollify the right) has yet conceded.</p>
<p>Such claims depart from Menzies’ principles in two core texts. The first is his famous <a href="http://menziesvirtualmuseum.org.au/transcripts/the-forgotten-people/59-chapter-1-the-forgotten-people">“Forgotten People” broadcast</a> in 1943. The second is his essay on “The revival of Liberalism in Australia” in <a href="http://menziesvirtualmuseum.org.au/books-overview/afternoon-light">Afternoon Light</a>.</p>
<p>Menzies championed thrift, self-reliance, private enterprise, individual responsibility and freedom, and the family as the bastion of our best instincts. He warned of the danger of an “all powerful” state. But he pitched his appeal to the middle class, excluding the rich and powerful (who did not need his help) and the “unskilled people” (protected by unions and with wages safeguarded by common law). Thus he mobilised an election-winning constituency between what he saw as the extremes of exploitative financial power and the incipient socialism of the organised working class.</p>
<p>Yet Menzies insisted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no room in Australia for a party of reaction. There is no useful place for a policy of negation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He never claimed that his was a conservative party. On the contrary:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise, and rejecting the Socialist panacea.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Still, the state had its part to play. Menzies supported protection, not free trade. He “did not … [believe] that private enterprise should have an ‘open go’. Not at all.” </p>
<p>He identified the state’s obligation to address unemployment, and secure economic security and material well-being through social legislation. He advocated fierce independence, but the difficulties of those who fell through the cracks were to be ameliorated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… we have nothing but the warmest human compassion … towards those compelled to live upon the bounty of the state.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This philosophy served Menzies well. Not until the late 1980s did the party change, when it “torched its traditions” as it sacrificed ameliorative liberalism in the interests of economic reform. Only then did the split between “wets” and “drys” lead to liberal moderates being increasingly marginalised. And only then party did hardliners begin to assert their claims as “conservatives”, a term that had never been indigenous to Australian anti-Labor politics, but was appropriated from the US culture wars of the time to serve the same purpose. </p>
<p>The bipartisan commitment to neo-liberal reform did what was intended. It increased prosperity, but at the cost of increasing employment uncertainty and astonishing inequity in the distribution of rewards. Inflation was defeated, but some communities were devastated as industry disappeared.</p>
<p>By the early 2000s, <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/135505">surveys revealed</a> that the “new consensus” had not won popular acceptance. By 2016, there was <a href="http://www.australianelectionstudy.org/trends.html">pervasive distrust</a> in the institutions of the new order and an unprecedented loss of confidence in the leaders who had brought this about.</p>
<p>It is a collapse that has impacted both major parties. Pointedly, for the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott, after election, reverted to policies that mirrored the party’s base — now <a href="https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/pub?pid=csiro:EP158008">increasingly divergent from majority opinion</a> on social issues, especially climate change.</p>
<p>Unable to garner public support, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-defeats-tony-abbott-in-liberal-leadership-spill-to-become-prime-minister-20150914-gjmhiu.html">Abbott was supplanted by Turnbull</a>, whose initial popularity depended on a progressive liberalism akin to a contemporary adaptation of Menzies’ stipulations.</p>
<p>But the “broad church” was gone. Progressive liberals have given up; the hard right has claimed Menzies’ mantle and threatens retribution if Turnbull “offends” against the much diminished and now atypical membership base. He is besieged on both sides: an uprising if he confronts those who claim to speak for the party; and a loss of popularity (and electorate support) as he compromises on the more progressive liberalism he promised the public.</p>
<p>It is not, finally, an argument about who is more and less Liberal, but a manifestation of the unravelling of the party. Who could break the impasse that looks likely to defeat Turnbull? Schisms between liberals and self-proclaimed conservatives will continue within, potentially with more splintering of populist, libertarian and hard-right fringe parties.</p>
<p>Any new leader would need to be a master tactician and negotiator without peer to achieve consensus across this morass. No-one currently in the ranks demonstrates such skills. And a return to Abbott or any of his ilk guarantees electoral oblivion. We may be witnessing the end of a once great party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walter receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Riven by dispute about the idea of liberalism espoused by Robert Menzies, and increasingly at risk of fracture, a once great party is in turmoil.James Walter, Professor of Political Science, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/733502017-02-21T19:11:00Z2017-02-21T19:11:00ZTax and dividend: how conservatives can grow to love carbon pricing<p>In some political circles, hostility to climate policy has become a way of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/20/sweltering-aussies-rightwing-climate-of-fear">showing off one’s conservative credentials</a>. But a suggestion for pricing carbon, grounded in classic conservative principles, has now emerged in the United States. </p>
<p>It has come not from the populist Trump administration, but from an eminent group of Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials, several of whom served as cabinet secretaries in previous Republican administrations.</p>
<p>Last week they published a <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/TheConservativeCaseforCarbonDividends.pdf">manifesto</a> entitled The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. In a nutshell, the proposal is for a carbon tax – yes, a tax – with the proceeds to be returned to all citizens as a “carbon dividend”, every quarter. More details in a moment.</p>
<p>The group accepts that climate change is real and that, regardless of whether it is human-induced, a human response is urgently needed. Moreover, they say: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now that the Republican Party controls the White House and Congress, it has the opportunity and responsibility to promote a climate plan that showcases the full power of enduring conservative convictions.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Tax and dividend</h2>
<p>The plan envisages a tax on fossil fuels at the point at which they leave the refinery or coal mine and enter the economy. It would start at US$40 a tonne and increase over time. This would force up the price of many commodities – most obviously petrol – and might be expected to anger consumers, were it not for the dividend strategy. </p>
<p>The dividend would be paid to all Americans, via the social security system. A family of four might expect a dividend of US$2,000 in the first year, rising over time in line with the tax.</p>
<p>The manifesto’s authors include eminent establishment Republicans, including James Baker, Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State for George H. W. Bush; and George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration and a former member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet. They are certainly sensitive to the political unpopularity of new taxes.</p>
<p>Their response is that this is not a tax that will accrue to the government, because it will be “revenue-neutral”: all of the money will go back to citizens. The carbon-pricing scheme introduced in Australia under former prime minister Julia Gillard was also revenue-neutral but returned money to consumers partly through income tax relief, which is less visible than a direct dividend.</p>
<p>The high visibility of a carbon dividend to the consumer arguably makes this a more politically palatable policy. For this reason the manifesto’s authors call their proposal a carbon dividend rather than a carbon tax. They calculate that the dividend would leave 70% of the population financially better off, particularly among working-class taxpayers. As they put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…carbon dividends would increase the disposable income of the majority of Americans while disproportionately helping those struggling to make ends meet.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The group argues that this proposal is consistent with conservative principles in various ways.</p>
<p>First, it is a market-based solution to the problem of climate change which maximises freedom to consumers and producers. Second, it will facilitate the rollback of Obama-era regulations such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/obama-builds-legacy-on-climate-change-with-epa-clean-power-plan-45641">Clean Power Plan</a>, which conservatives regard as the epitome of heavy-handed regulation. As the Congress has discovered with relation to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/15/politics/trump-obamacare/">Obamacare</a>, it cannot simply repeal unwanted Obama legislation without replacing it with something widely seen as better.</p>
<p>Finally, they argue that the repeal of heavily bureaucratic regulations would eliminate the need for a bureaucracy to enforce them. This would facilitate smaller government, one of the abiding aspirations of conservatives.</p>
<p>Apart from these matters of principle, the group points to several other political advantages – not least the chance to bring the Republican Party back into the mainstream on climate change:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way, forfeiting the policy initiative to those who favor growth-inhibiting command-and-control regulations, and fostering a needless climate divide between the GOP and the scientific, business, military, religious, civic and international mainstream. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The manifesto’s authors point out that climate change concern is greatest among under-35s, as well as Asians and Hispanics - the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic groups. A carbon dividend policy would enhance the appeal of the Republican Party to all of these groups.</p>
<p>They acknowledge that it may be an uphill battle to win over the anti-establishment Trump White House. But, they say: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>…this is an opportunity to demonstrate the power of the conservative canon by offering a more effective, equitable and popular climate policy based on free markets, smaller government and dividends for all Americans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Back in Australia, many conservative politicians such as Senator Cory Bernardi – who this month <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-07/cory-bernardi-formally-quits-liberal-party/8247402">defected from the government</a> so as to promote more freely his <a href="http://www.corybernardi.com/">conservative principles</a> – still decry carbon pricing. Bernardi <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/cory-bernardi-slams-liberals-carbon-pricing-on-power-companies-idea/news-story/60cbcadb271acba5d978aed9237238e6">described the idea of returning to carbon trading</a> as “one of the dumbest things I have ever heard”. This is hardly a conservative response given the ramifications for our climate.</p>
<p>Conservatives like Bernardi continue to equate carbon pricing with socialism. Yet for these establishment US Republicans, taxing carbon is entirely consistent with their conservative principles. Bernardi and his like-minded colleagues in Australia would do well to consider the possibility that there is indeed a conservative case for a carbon tax.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Former Republican congressman Bob Inglis will speak about the conservative response to climate change at Australia’s <a href="https://npc.org.au/speakers/bob-inglis/">National Press Club on February 22</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Hopkins is affiliated with The Australia Institute</span></em></p>Taxing carbon has always been a tricky political sell for conservatives. But a group of establishment US Republicans is touting the idea of a carbon “tax and dividend” as a way to break the deadlock.Andrew Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725772017-02-13T03:26:39Z2017-02-13T03:26:39ZWhy big data may be having a big effect on how our politics plays out<p>The first week of parliament for the new year was a noisy one. Cory Bernardi’s decision to leave the Liberal Party has created a flurry of speculation about whether this is the “splitting” of the political right or an indication of the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-06/cory-bernardi-liberal-split-chris-uhlmann/8243680">end of business-as-usual politics</a>.</p>
<p>There is much of media and public interest in the dazzling party machinations at hand. But what may be of greater significance and yet receiving less attention is the deployment of big data technologies to manipulate political margins to world-changing effect. This may have <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump">been the case</a> in Brexit and Trump’s rise, and needs to be considered in terms of the current political movements in Australia.</p>
<p>To an extent, none of the factors at play are new. The playing of political margins through demographics and targeted political messaging is a strategy as old as the hills. Election after election sees voters in marginal seats massaged with promises. </p>
<p>Those promises are tailor-made according to assumptions about voter concerns based on demographics, focus groups and think tanks. There is also careful consideration of how far particular local concerns can be pandered to without losing the support of the larger voting public.</p>
<p>Likewise, there is nothing new in using data to work out which issues to play where, and how hard. What seems to be new, and creating the monumental events that we have witnessed, is the type of data being used, and how it is being used. Recent developments suggest that the combination of “big data” and voter disillusionment can be stirred into a pretty potent brew. </p>
<p>It goes something like this:</p>
<p>It has become almost hackneyed to say that we live in a digital world. Most individuals who are frequently online leave enormous trails of data about themselves. </p>
<p>Individuals’ awareness of the size and scope of their so-called “digital footprint” varies immensely. But think about all those likes on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and so on; all the retweets and shares. Then add in all the personal and demographic data from the user profiles on those platforms. Then for good measure, there are all the credit cards, loyalty cards and apps, the places and stores where you’ve checked in, the amassed purchase histories and Google searches that are logged to your oh-so-convenient multi-platform user profiles.</p>
<p>The scale of this starts to get a bit unsettling, and these are just some of the databases that fall under the umbrella term of big data. It is an inconceivably vast mass of information, which at first glance would seem a giant mess; just white noise.</p>
<p>Unless you know how to decipher it.</p>
<p>According to a story first published in Zurich-based Das Magazin in December and more recently taken up by <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win">Motherboard</a>, events such as Brexit and Trump’s ascendency may have been made possible through just such deciphering. The argument is that technology combining psychological profiling and data analysis may have played a pivotal part in exploiting unconscious bias at the individual voter level. The <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win">theory</a> is this was used in the recent US election to increase or suppress votes to benefit particular candidates in crucial locations. It is claimed that the company behind this may be active in numerous countries. </p>
<p>The technology at play is based on the integration of a model of psychological profiling known as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/big-five-personality-traits-2016-12?r=US&IR=T">OCEAN</a>. This uses the details contained within individuals’ digital footprints to create user-specific profiles. These map to the level of the individual, identifiable voter, who can then be manipulated by exploiting beliefs, preferences and biases that they might not even be aware of, but which their data has revealed about them in glorious detail.</p>
<p>As well as enabling the creation of tailored media content, this can also be used to create scripts of relevant talking points for campaign doorknockers to focus on, according to the address and identity of the householder to whom they are speaking.</p>
<p>This goes well beyond the scope and detail of previous campaign strategies. If the theory about the role of these techniques is correct, it signals a new landscape of political strategising. An active researcher in the field, when writing about the company behind this technology (which Trump <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win">paid for services</a> during his election campaign), <a href="https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2016/12/22/need-control-psychological-targeting/">described</a> the potential scale of such technologies:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Marketers have long tailored their placement of advertisements based on their target group, for example by placing ads aimed at conservative consumers in magazines read by conservative audiences. What is new about the psychological targeting methods implemented by Cambridge Analytica, however, is their precision and scale. According to CEO Alexander Nix, the company holds detailed psycho-demographic profiles of more than 220 million US citizens and used over 175,000 different ad messages to meet the unique motivations of their recipients.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So what does this mean for Australian politics?</p>
<p>If the claim is true, it means that voter disillusionment with mainstream political parties, and fears about a range of societal and economic issues, have been carefully identified, mapped and nurtured to bring people’s hidden, unconscious biases into political play. This includes those subconscious leanings that we generally know better than to act upon, but which our data tracks minutely and which, in the right hands, can be deployed to shocking effect.</p>
<p>Witness the phenomenon of regret among many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/11/the-promise-of-regrexit">Brexit</a> and <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/article/2017/02/03/trump-voters-are-starting-regret-their-decision">Trump</a> voters as they emerged from the seduction of their baser desires and realised they never actually meant it.</p>
<p>Australia may not be beyond the reach of this. The company behind the technology claims to have <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win">fielded enquiries from Australia</a>, so we may already be being played. </p>
<p>Bernardi is being portrayed as a renegade and the far right as marginal. But Brexit and Trump show us how easily and finely the numbers can be played and how we can be fooled into thinking our desires will be met. While we might think we are above all that and that business-as-usual politics will inevitably moderate the extremes, our data silently amasses the tools for us to be played by whoever can buy and decipher its code. </p>
<p>Ultimately, whether this is actually steering elections will be impossible to determine until research is undertaken. However, the circumstantial evidence seems to imply the technology combined big data, behavioural science and targeted advertising to enable Brexit and Trump’s rise. </p>
<p>Regardless, as <a href="https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2016/12/22/need-control-psychological-targeting/">Sandra Matz argues</a>, the bigger question is whether such fine-grained analysis and manipulation can be steered in more ethical and transparent directions, in ways that engage and inform the public. There is also then the question of whether regulators have the will and capacity to make it so. </p>
<p>The technology is clearly among us, to an unknown extent and to unknown ends. But that extent and those ends do not need to remain unknown.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72577/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Crabtree receives funding from public and private organisations including non-profit organisations, and is a member of the Regional Development Australia Shared Equity Working Group. </span></em></p>Strategies that exploit what our online data trails reveal about us can be used to fool us into thinking our desires will be met. Brexit and Trump show us how politics at the margins can be played.Louise Crabtree-Hayes, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/702652017-02-09T02:39:13Z2017-02-09T02:39:13ZGod bless the footy: dissent and distractions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150226/original/image-20161215-2529-10jzqkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Before the AFL, there was the much better, much cooler, much more local SANFL.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/heatherw/15303946066/in/photolist-pjmHZ5-grh2p4-8FVYjk-dhN86T-pm7wMM-p4TLxy-dhN83u-grgZEH-grggR4-dhN5bd-dhN3SL-dhN5ZU-dhN2Rc-dhN7EJ-grgGUb-8FZ9YJ-p4UAgX-dhN6UW-dhN6DY-grfKH7-dhN8gE-8FZaod-dhN49u-8FZ9MA-dhN3Z8-dhN4DT-dhN75u-dhN4qK-dhN5qX-pm7pQv-p4UarY-8FZ9G3-8FVY2n-dhN7t5-dhN7yF-dhN3pw-grgi9p-p4UesU-dhN6rm-grgFw1-pmmYyQ-grgttJ-dhN3yN-grgzfU-dhN3Gb-dhN5VK-grgDqY-grgaFi-8FZazq-grgC1U">heatherw/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from State of Hope, the 55th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When it comes to colourful and controversial views, the long-time mayor of Port Augusta, Joy Baluch, set elite standards. She <a href="http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/archivaldocs/oh/OH862.pdf">said in 2008</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hate sport.</p>
<p>I’ve never had time for it, been too busy looking after a family, you know, surviving. It’s a waste of time. I hate football and tennis and golf … and if ever the Asians are going to come in it’s going to be on grand final day … And they’ll just take over peacefully.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m not sure exactly which Asians she imagined would swarm South Australia on grand final day, destroying our white-bread, white-skinned way of life. Perhaps all the Asians – the Chinese and the Indonesians, the Japanese and the Koreans, the Vietnamese and the Thais – slaughtering innocent women and children with nothing but the power of kung fu, riding their Suzuki motorbikes, eating butter chicken and guzzling Chang beer after a solid day’s conquering.</p>
<p>The term “Asians” – whether she used it here thoughtlessly, provocatively or jokily – is symptomatic of Baluch the plain-speaking dissenter. But so too is her attack on sport. Few things are more shocking and inexplicable to huge numbers of South Australians (<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/08/1062901996932.html">weird murders notwithstanding</a>) than someone willing to have a dig at the footy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.saints.com.au/news/2013-05-29/the-man-with-the-killer-approach">Alan Killigrew</a>, a Victorian who came to Adelaide in 1959 to coach the Norwood Football Club, offers a more <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=my-4EKn2SiEC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75#v=onepage&q&f=false">conventional and comforting view</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After all, what is a football club? It is grass in the middle, posts at the ends, and bricks and mortar. It’s people that give it soul. A football club is a living body.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve heard family and friends describe their church in exactly these terms. Footy isn’t just the dominant spectator sport and topic of conversation in South Australia. It’s a salve. It’s a community binding agent. It’s the best entertainment going, even in the digital age. </p>
<p>It’s a mass obsession, especially when one of the local AFL teams – the Crows or the Power – sits high (or low) on the ladder.</p>
<h2>A love for Norwood</h2>
<p>Before the AFL, there was the much better, much cooler, much more local SANFL.</p>
<p>When I was nine years old and living in the lead-smelter city of Port Pirie, not too far from Baluch’s Port Augusta, Norwood made the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_SANFL_Grand_Final">1978 SANFL Grand Final</a>. Never mind Asians: little green men from outer space could have landed their spaceship while Dad and I watched the last quarter on the TV in our lounge room on Three Chain Road.</p>
<p>Norwood – the mighty Redlegs – were 29 points down at three-quarter time against Sturt, who had only lost once all season. The ’Legs were only so close because Sturt had kicked poorly in front of goal. </p>
<p>Norwood’s then coach, Bob Hammond, <a href="http://www.redlegsmuseum.com.au/ON_FIELD/PREMIERSHIPS/1978.aspx">told his players</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can win it if you believe you can win. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Inspired – enraptured, perhaps – the players surged. In the chaotic final minutes, umpire Des Foster awarded Norwood’s Philip Gallagher a mark – or was it a free kick? – the legitimacy of which Sturt supporters still dispute. On a tight angle, “Gags” kicked the winning goal.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8q3u_7YN_h4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The ending to the 1978 SANFL Grand Final.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the nearly 40 years that have passed, I have never strayed far from that spot in front of the TV, too tense to breathe as the clock ticked down: nothing could have mattered more. </p>
<p>I can still feel the disbelief, the ecstasy, as the final siren went and Dad lifted me off the ground and over his shoulder. Most especially, I will never lose my righteous fury at Mum and Dad, who had refused to let me get the train down to Adelaide to go to the game. My older brother Matt witnessed history that day from the concrete terraces of Footy Park, and that’s the reason he has done so well in life.</p>
<p>Norwood’s 1984 premiership was even more memorable, although I wasn’t even in the country. By then, I was a painfully shy teenager living with my parents in Logan, Utah, in a valley between two stunning mountain ranges and surrounded by Reagan-hugging Mormons. </p>
<p>That year, Norwood came from fifth, winning three knockout finals to make the grand final against Port Adelaide. On the Monday after the final, the family back home mailed us a VHS tape of the game. While we waited for it to arrive, nobody would tell us whether we’d won. Finally, Grandma Allington, under extreme pressure from her loving son and grandson, muttered down the phone in her faux grumpy way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I promised I wouldn’t tell you who won. But if I did tell you, you’d be very happy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the tape finally arrived in the mail, we couldn’t play it because the US used the NTSC television display system. At a friend’s place – we had no video player ourselves, although we had access to something like a billion TV stations – we fast-forwarded the tape and, with electronic snow for vision, listened to the commentator’s distorted voice call the final seconds, his voice slow and deep:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Theeeeere … itttttt. Issssss … it’sssssss … alllllll … ovvv-errrrrr.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a couple of weeks before we found a kind stranger with a set-up that allowed us to watch the game.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mzU06TU781U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Highlights of the 1984 SANFL Grand Final.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Footy embedded itself in my childhood life in deeper ways than winning games and the occasional premiership. I researched everything about football. More importantly, I felt everything. I cried one night in 1980, when Port Adelaide’s Russell Ebert won his fourth Magarey Medal and so deprived Norwood’s Michael Taylor of what was rightfully his.</p>
<p>I wasn’t only consumed by the season in progress. One day, Dad took me to meet an old man called “Wacka” Scott, who let me hold his two Magarey Medals (1924 and 1930). </p>
<p>Another time, I traipsed around a suburban cemetery to find the grave of “Topsy” Waldron, who played in Norwood’s first year in 1878 (Norwood were premiers on debut). In his book commemorating the centenary of Norwood, <a href="http://www.blaqbooks.com.au/index.php?route=product/product&path=64_129&product_id=600">Red and Blue Blooded</a>, Mike Coward wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Waldron died a pathetically lonely man. He believed only his Norwood Football Club loved him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But perhaps most of all my love for footy and for Norwood was about family. I loved reading old newspaper clippings of my grandpa’s football exploits. Harold Allington was a defender who played 56 games for Norwood between 1931 and 1935; he won the 1934 best and fairest; he played for the state; he had a clean pair of hands.</p>
<p>He was also – and this was the part I loved the most – injury-prone. The Advertiser reported on May 17, 1935:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This year he is still the shuttlecock of misfortune. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He broke his collarbone, missed ten games from a single concussion, did an elbow, badly bruised his hip, and more.</p>
<p>My favourite clipping detailed the day Grandpa cut off the middle toe of his right foot while chopping wood in the backyard: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Allington, who was wearing slippers at the time, limped into the kitchen unseen, and despite great pain prepared some hot water in which to bathe his foot.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How he managed to chop off one toe – why not two toes? why not half his foot? – was forever a mystery to me.</p>
<p>I was almost as proud of Dad, who played a couple of trial games for Norwood in the early 1960s. He could have made it – or so I’ve always believed – but he was at theological college at the time. One day the coach, Alan Killigrew, spoke to Dad after training. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’ve got to choose between football and God.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To my everlasting regret, Dad chose God.</p>
<p>It’s been several years since I’ve been to a Norwood game, although I occasionally watch them on television. I have followed the Crows, the made-up club <a href="http://www.afl.com.au/news/2014-02-05/crows-to-don-sa-jumper">“for all South Australians”</a>, since their first game in 1991, but never with the same messianic fervour with which I followed Norwood. </p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, being a Crows fan allows me to retain my culturally embedded and familial hatred of Port Adelaide. I go to the occasional game at the cathedral otherwise known as the new Adelaide Oval (South Australians will line up to tell you it’s a “world-class stadium”), and I watch replays of high-quality matches. </p>
<p>But despite my fading fervour, I retain a version of a football-is-everything mentality. Partly, I’m nostalgic for my childhood. Partly it’s because it’s still, on a good day, a magnificent spectator sport. And partly it’s because I miss my grandpa.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150224/original/image-20161215-2539-5m3fbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In South Australia, you’re traditionally either a Port Adelaide fan or you hate them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The off-field reigns supreme</h2>
<p>These days, though, I find myself more interested in footy analysis, rumour and realpolitik than in actual games. </p>
<p>The AFL is a legitimate and sometimes compelling space in which to consider a range of political, cultural and social issues, including racism, reconciliation, sexism and misogyny, the deification of the alpha male, the profile of elite women’s sport, the use and misuse of “team first” philosophies, the carnivalised meaning of Anzac Day, the sanctity of Good Friday, performance-enhancing drugs, illicit drugs, gambling, the proliferation of sledging in public and workplace discourse, and more. </p>
<p>The AFL’s own approach to these issues is sometimes awkward, sometimes PR-driven and sometimes tokenistic. But, at other times, they display some sophistication. Often, it’s a bit of both – and in any case, footy fans are hardly the only subset of Australian citizens who struggle to engage constructively with complex issues.</p>
<p>But my interest in off-field matters goes deeper still, by which I mean shallower still. The AFL’s trade period in 2016 threw up its usual mix of players trying to leave clubs and clubs trying to push players out. For a week in October, I was transfixed by <a href="http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-10-10/carlton-star-bryce-gibbs-requests-trade-to-adelaide">the possibility</a> that Bryce Gibbs might leave the Carlton Football Club, even though he has three years to run on his contract, and come home to Adelaide. </p>
<p>I worried about what player or draft picks the Adelaide Crows would give up to get him. Not Mitch McGovern, surely, who could be anything; not Charlie Cameron – please, no – who Eddie Betts has taken under his wing. In the end, Gibbs <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/afl-trades-2016-bryce-gibbs-stays-at-carlton-after-adelaide-trade-falls-through-20161020-gs6v0p.html">stayed put</a>, with the Crows <a href="http://www.afc.com.au/news/2016-10-20/crows-decline-to-meet-carltons-demands">announcing</a> they “were not prepared to meet Carlton’s unrealistic demands”.</p>
<p>These are the sorts of footy issues that capture my interest: which coach is about to get sacked? Which player has filmed himself snorting a white substance and whacked it up on the internet? Was Norwood’s 1984 premiership – coming from fifth when the finalists came from a top five only – a greater achievement than the Western Bulldogs’ <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-01/western-bulldogs-break-the-drought-with-22-point-win-over-swans/7895386">2016 AFL triumph</a> from seventh to premiers?</p>
<p>Only parochialism can deal with an unanswerable question: Norwood is by definition better than the Western Bulldogs or Footscray or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, and South Australia is by definition better than Victoria.</p>
<p>All this is harmless fun, innocent downtime. But think back to Joy Baluch, who suggested that we’d be too distracted on grand final day to notice an Asian invasion. </p>
<p>Leaving aside Asians, Baluch is onto me – but the situation is more insidious than she suggests. Footy chat doesn’t <em>distract</em> me. I don’t find myself wondering why I am listening to Trade Radio – yes, for a couple of weeks after grand final day, there’s such a thing as a digital nine-to-five talkfest on club negotiations over player movements, real and imagined. </p>
<p>I seek out Trade Radio, specifically seek it out to avoid confronting other, harder, messier things. I’m a political junkie who can’t bear to hear things I don’t want to hear, just as a kid I couldn’t bear to watch Norwood lose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150033/original/image-20161214-18914-vp1glh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carlton’s Bryce Gibbs (right) requested a move home to Adelaide in the recent AFL trade period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politics and footy</h2>
<p>As Cory Bernardi, senator for South Australia, has grown in prominence, he has begun to remind me of the giant Christ the Redeemer statue that looks down on the city of Rio de Janeiro. </p>
<p>But chiselled Cory is fully animated. He is a faith-fuelled greed-is-good humanoid who invites and incites ridicule, allowing him cover to get on with the business of saving souls; bringing the national budget back into balance; keeping heathens offshore; <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/cory-bernardi-to-be-sent-to-united-nations-20160301-gn7al2.html">fixing the UN</a>; making his (now-former) Coalition colleagues appear more centrist and moderate than they are; and scaring people silly.</p>
<p>As political activism goes, whinging about Bernardi is an increasingly lame act. This is a bloke who offers his opponents fresh ammunition every time he aggressively expresses his unpleasant and anachronistic ideas. </p>
<p>But when, say, Jacqui Lambie <a href="http://theaimn.com/day-day-politics-house-shambles-no-just-chaos/">tees off at Bernardi</a> – “prostitutes are far more honest, sincere, humane and compassionate, and better bang for buck than Senator Bernardi will ever be able to deliver” – I laugh, but then I cringe (and not only because sex workers can surely be humane and compassionate human beings).</p>
<p>Taking a stand against Bernardi means – or might mean – taking a stand against family, neighbours, friends, colleagues. It means being willing to scratch at a veneer of community conviviality and solidarity.</p>
<p>At a certain point, I want to get through my day in a good mood, without feeling the need to scream “Who the hell did you vote for?” at the bloke in the car next to me at the lights. I want to deny Bernardi’s public existence, just as I want to avert my gaze from youth unemployment rates, just as I want to pretend that the bodies in the barrels murders didn’t happen in a suburb in the city I call home. </p>
<p>Instead, I want to think about something truly unjust, like why Norwood never got its own team in the AFL. And so – very often – that’s exactly what I do. It’s a free country, after all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150032/original/image-20161214-18885-1dmaxm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As political activism goes, whinging about Cory Bernardi is an increasingly lame act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>South Australia and dissenters</h2>
<p>Privilege, distractions, parochialism, state pride, complacency, conformity, passivity: these are natural resources that South Australia has in abundance. We can put a positive spin on them too. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=207">Drawing the Crow</a>, his book about South Australia in the 1950s and ’60s, academic Adrian Mitchell says that Adelaide’s long-time moniker as the City of Churches:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… identifies not a freak nor architecture nor a rampaging wowserism, either current or in the past, but a lifestyle of civic steadiness, regularity and propriety, the values of its founding settlement, in both its English and German constituency.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I recognise my Adelaide – I recognise myself – in Mitchell’s description. And it leaves me deeply uneasy.</p>
<p>In 1957, the year Port Adelaide beat Norwood by 11 points in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_SANFL_Grand_Final">grand final</a>, historian Douglas Pike published <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10713883">Paradise of Dissent: South Australia, 1829–1857</a>. Pike’s book – at times riveting, at times dense, at times tedious – opens with these resonant lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Australia was settled in 1836 by men whose professed ideals were civil liberty, social opportunity and equality for all religions. Though each of these ideas was moulded in England, each was a protest against English practice. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first colonists, Pike says, arrived harbouring dissatisfaction with the pace of reform in England: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only the impatient departed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The South Australian self-perception of exceptionalism – a “sense of difference”, as historian Derek Whitelock puts it – emerges from these origins and this origin story. </p>
<p>And South Australia has indeed had its fair share of dissenters. There is Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist, electoral reformer, social activist, preacher and writer. Spence thought:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My work on newspapers and reviews is more characteristic of me, and intrinsically better work than I have done in fiction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maybe, but her politically charged fiction resounds still, not least a foray into science fiction in which her terminally ill protagonist trades the last couple of years of her life for “one week in the future”.</p>
<p>South Australian dissenters, including Baluch and Bernardi, have often operated within the political sphere. My favourite colonist is <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/finniss-boyle-travers-2044">Boyle Travers Finniss</a>, who, in 1856, was the first premier of South Australia under responsible government, when the local Legislative Council revised South Australia’s constitution to achieve self-government. </p>
<p>In 1864, Finniss led an expedition to select a site for the capital of the Northern Territory. After he insisted on surveying a swamp, some of his men sailed for Singapore, while six others acquired a seven-metre boat and floated all the way to Champion Bay in Western Australia. </p>
<p>Finniss straddled a line between dissenter and misguided visionary, between principled outlier and dogmatist, between self-confidence and delusion. </p>
<p>American legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues that democracies need dissent; he warns against an excess of conformity. But he also condemns “political correctness” – which he calls “squelching those who reject left-wing orthodoxy” – while acknowledging, correctly but unhelpfully, “we do not need to encourage would-be dissenters who are speaking nonsense”. </p>
<p>Is Bernardi speaking nonsense on behalf of South Australians? It depends who you ask.</p>
<p>And then there is the grand political dissenter of the 20th century, premier and superhero Don Dunstan, who dragged the state – and, to a lesser extent, the Labor Party – into the modern world, and towards something much more resembling a just world, a fair world, a diverse world, a creative world, a food-loving world.</p>
<p>But in time, the phrase “paradise of dissent” has become a slogan, detached from the complex and messy history Pike told. We don’t need Pike’s observation that conformist tendencies kicked in early in the new colony. We don’t need to think about the practical limits of the religious, cultural and political freedoms imagined by the new establishment.</p>
<p>And it’s best, still, that we don’t think too deeply about our treatment of the land’s original inhabitants. In our complacency, we need only know that South Australia was planned (like a kit home), was convict-free (at least in theory) and that it has produced a bumper crop of dissenters (like a tomato plant in a Mediterranean climate). </p>
<p>We need only bask in the afterglow of the Dunstan era, not protect and extend its legacy. We need only know, or believe, that we are exceptional. According to Mitchell:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What South Australians have done, perhaps more doggedly than those in any other region, is to veil or reserve their own regional identity – not because of any sense of inadequacy or unfitness, but because that is the particular character of the South Australian. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, I recognise this South Australia; again, I recognise myself in this South Australia. But such recognition offers us a hole to crawl into that is deep and deceptively warm. </p>
<p>It offers us the chance to pretend that South Australia, in its distinctiveness, is merely the sum of its better parts. It offers us the chance to imagine that South Australia, a place that exports uranium and has a long association with defence industries, stands aloof from the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/150223/original/image-20161215-2509-rf3ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As premier, Don Dunstan dragged South Australia into the modern world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery/Anthony Browell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The best dissenter of all …</h2>
<p>In the end, in the neoliberal and memed world we have created, everything’s a competition. So I’ll call it: the best-ever South Australian dissenter isn’t Catherine Helen Spence or Don Dunstan or Cory Bernardi. The best South Australian dissenter is also the best footballer ever. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_McIntosh">Garry McIntosh</a> was a small, muscled, goateed, hairy, unkempt rover who threw himself into packs, didn’t mind a bit of violence for a good cause, and who changed the course of history with his hardball gets and his handballs: premierships, Magarey Medals, an altered perception of the Norwood Football Club.</p>
<p>In 1982, the North Melbourne Kangaroos drafted “Macca” into the VFL, but he stayed home. When the Crows were formed, eight years before Macca eventually retired, he still wouldn’t shift from the SANFL. </p>
<p>Did he shun the AFL out of love of the local, out of parochialism, to make a stand against a national league, or as a lifestyle choice? Or did he understand his own limitations: was he just too slow to play in the best competition in the land?</p>
<p>When Macca was added to the SA Football Hall of Fame, <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/loyal-macca-in-a-league-of-his-own/story-e6freckc-1226445148911">he insisted</a> he had no regrets because he’d got to play for Norwood:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But if I were an 18-year-old kid now – with the mentality there is now – things would be different. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Macca hasn’t yet been inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Now there’s an injustice, or a distraction, worth protesting about.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>A full version of this essay, along with others from the Griffith Review’s latest edition, is available <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/state-of-hope/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70265/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Allington 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>Footy isn’t just the dominant spectator sport and topic of conversation in South Australia. It’s a salve.Patrick Allington, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/727212017-02-09T00:50:10Z2017-02-09T00:50:10ZBernardi split is symptomatic of a fractured political system, here and abroad<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156117/original/image-20170209-17341-1ej73a5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When political parties splinter, the consequences can linger for generations. Consider the Labor “split” of the 1950’s between the Catholic right and the Labor centre and centre-left.</p>
<p>In those days, the word “progressive” to describe a political tendency was not in general use, but those who remained in Labor’s ranks were forerunners of today’s “progressives”.</p>
<p>The Labor “split” kept the party out of power for a generation and reverberates in Australian politics to this day. It can be seen in elements of an old Labor working class constituency gravitating towards the populism of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and now, potentially, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bernardi-exits-stage-right-mayhem-now-obscurity-later-72489">South Australian maverick Cory Bernardi</a>.</p>
<p>It would be a stretch to compare Bernardi’s defection this week from the Liberal Party to establish his own “conservative movement” with the Labor split of the 1950’s. But combined with Hanson’s One Nation, these are perilous developments for the major parties.</p>
<p>Are we, as it seems, observing a further crumbling of the political centre with unpredictable consequences for the country’s direction? Or will we revert to the norm in which the major parties – aided by a voting system that favours the status quo – reassert themselves?</p>
<p>In the short term, I doubt that we will return to status quo politics.</p>
<p>If there was a detail writ large by <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll-hanson-on-the-rise-as-coalition-support-dives/news-story/7e0b701bfa1fcd912a3ef44dd1fa1b37">this week’s Newspoll</a> it was that one in three Australians were attracted to non-mainstream parties of left and right. </p>
<p>On top of that, a shrinking Coalition primary vote – which is down seven percent from the election to 35% – will have been especially worrying for a right-leaning alignment.</p>
<p>This far out from the next election due in 2019, polls are snapshots of the electorate’s mood. They are in no way prescriptive, but there is an unmistakable trend: support for the Coalition is continuing to bleed to movements of the right.</p>
<p>Just as Labor support has, over many years, bled to the populist Left in the form of the Greens, so is the conservative mainstream suppurating to Hanson’s One Nation and others on the right.</p>
<p>What makes all of this even more concerning – and less controllable – for the mainstream is that whatever is happening here is part of a global trend that is manifesting itself across Western democracies.</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s election on a populist anti-status quo platform in which he emphasised an inchoate antagonism towards outsiders – accompanied by nativist America First theology rooted in a need to build walls, economic and otherwise – is echoed by Hanson and now Bernardi, along with others.</p>
<p>Bernardi tells us he wants to “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-27/cory-bernardi-wearing-a-make-australia-great-again-hat./8217030">make Australia great again</a>”.</p>
<p>Expectations Trumpism will crash and burn sooner rather than later may prove to be misplaced. Assumptions on which a rules-based, liberalising global order rests are being revisited, and risk being torn apart.</p>
<p>In France, for example, likely standard bearers in the forthcoming presidential election are espousing a form of anti-status quo populism of left and right as they compete for an army of disaffected voters across the political spectrum.</p>
<p>Historians and political scientists are scrambling to explain a populist phenomenon whose waves have crashed across the political landscape in the past year. It began with Brexit, followed by the Trump earthquake and accompanied now by indications German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader – in the abdication of a US president – of liberal Western democracies, is in deep trouble with elections pending.</p>
<p>At home, Malcolm Turnbull, who has burnished his progressive credentials over many years, is himself a victim of a global antagonism towards identity politics and progressivism.</p>
<p>Turnbull can seek to reinvent himself by yielding ground to the right, but in the process he is squandering a valuable commodity – authenticity. And indeed inviting questions about whether he believed in anything in the first place, separate from acquiring power.</p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXSiCM5C9mQ">give ‘em hell speech</a> in parliament this week – in which he eviscerated opposition leader Bill Shorten over contradictions inherent in Shorten’s criticism of the prime minister’s elitist pretentions – is unlikely to be the game changer his supporters crave, unless it is accompanied by a marketable political narrative, and there is not much sign of that.</p>
<p>So, where is all this leading?</p>
<p>Margaret MacMillan, professor of history at Oxford and one of this generation’s more perceptive commentators, contributed a characteristically <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/the-new-year-and-the-new-populism-by-margaret-macmillan-2017-01?barrier=accessyef">thoughtful assessment</a> of where we stand now in the development of populist movements.</p>
<p>She makes a good point about what distinguishes the present from the past when she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Protest movements throughout history have furnished ideas and leaders that have eventually become part of the political mainstream. The populist campaigns that gained so much ground in 2016, most notably in the UK and the US, are different, because they categorically deny the establishment’s legitimacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MacMillan reminds us that populism was first described in the late 19th century by American farmers railing against banks and railroad monopolies. These days, populist movements decry an establishment represented by the media, industrialists and politicians.</p>
<p>When Trump talks about “draining the swamp, these are his targets, especially a media that questions his word and his integrity, since his world is built on make-believe.</p>
<p>As MacMillian writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Political orientation is unimportant in populism, because it does not deal in evidence or detailed proposals for change, but in the manipulation of feelings by charismatic leaders.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unlike traditional conservative or socialist parties, the new populism does not appeal to a socioeconomic class, but to identity and culture. Populists’ target audience is anyone who feels economically threatened by globalisation, worries that immigrants are taking jobs and changing the composition of society, or is simply unhappy with a perceived loss of status (a sentiment reflected in hostility, especially among white men to "political correctness”).</p>
<p>MacMillian’s essay describes the condition, but is less sure about what might be done to counter a trend that is upending the status quo.</p>
<p>Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal Party this week is less important in itself than what it says about a wider trend towards a fracturing of Australian politics. We have entered a new phase in which a split in conservative ranks risks proving the harbinger of an unsettling political environment unseen since the early days of Federation, and more recently the Labor split.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal Party this week is less important in itself than what it says about a wider trend towards a fracturing of Australian politics.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/726502017-02-08T02:07:21Z2017-02-08T02:07:21ZPolitics podcast: Cory Bernardi on why he spurned the Liberals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155982/original/image-20170208-11433-1exlj4h.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pat Hutchens/TC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A day after moving to the crossbench, Cory Bernardi is feeling the heat. The media, former Liberal colleagues and South Australian voters all have a view on his defection, especially coming only months after he was re-elected under his then party’s banner. </p>
<p>“People will say what they’re going to say. And I’ve tried to be consistent. I’ve been accused of many things in my time in politics but I’ve looked to be consistent and principled in my approach to policy areas. </p>
<p>"Strangely, many of the people calling me an opportunist are the ones that exploit, you know, a momentary weakness to grasp power or influence, or promotion for themselves,” Bernardi says.</p>
<p>A lot of the people who look favourably on his decision: “are disillusioned Liberal Party sympathisers that said ‘I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the Liberal Party at the last election’ or ‘I wasn’t intending to vote for them but at least now I can give you my vote knowing that our values will be upheld’.”</p>
<p>As interest focuses on whether billionaire businesswoman Gina Rinehart will donate to the Australian Conservatives, Bernardi leaves the door open.</p>
<p>“Gina’s a pal and I never ask my pals for money directly. If people want to offer support or resources to what I’m doing then I wait for them to raise it. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because, you know, friendship is valuable and I’m not prepared to put people in an uncomfortable position if that’s not what they want to do.”</p>
<p>“It’s an enduring friendship. I have great admiration for her [Rinehart]. You know, she’s a very private person and I like my private life to remain private too and we’re friends,” he says. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Music credit: “Albiero A”, by Dlay on the Free Music Archive</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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 day after moving to the crossbench, Cory Bernardi is feeling the heat. The media, former Liberal colleagues and South Australian voters all have a view on his defection.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725812017-02-07T23:21:59Z2017-02-07T23:21:59ZBernardi should have resigned his Senate seat: here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155979/original/image-20170207-14532-suj32v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi speaks to the media after announcing he had quit the Liberal Party.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Senator Cory Bernardi’s decision to <a href="https://theconversation.com/bernardi-says-his-new-party-will-offer-a-principled-alternative-for-disillusioned-conservative-voters-72582">quit the Liberal Party</a> comes as no surprise to most political observers. For quite some time, and certainly since Malcolm Turnbull’s elevation to the Liberal leadership, Bernardi’s resignation from the party was always a distinct possibility.</p>
<p>However, his decision to quit the party without resigning from the Senate has sparked (the inevitable) condemnation from his former party colleagues. While he might well be feeling “reluctant and relieved”, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-dutton-barnaby-joyce-slam-cory-bernardi-betrayal-20170206-gu6we5.html">many Coalition MPs are savage about this decision</a>. </p>
<h2>The perils of ratting out the party</h2>
<p>Parties have little mercy for those in their ranks who quit the party but continue to occupy their seat in parliament. Such persons are often decried as “deserters” or “rats”. </p>
<p>In this case, the displeasure with Bernardi runs even deeper. From the Liberal Party’s perspective, it believed it had gone to some lengths to accommodate some of the senator’s policy concerns. Yet the efforts to appease Bernardi ultimately proved insufficient to prevent him from tendering his resignation only seven months after the federal election that granted him a six-year Senate term. </p>
<p>On a more practical level, Bernardi’s resignation makes an already complex Senate even more so for the Turnbull government. Once the vacancies triggered by <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/high-court-rules-disqualified-senator-rod-culleton-was-ineligible-for-election/news-story/d1900ac338ab7335381e3449309e164d">Rod Culleton</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-17/family-first-senator-bob-day-leaving-australian-senate/7938776">Bob Day</a> are filled, Bernardi will be among a 21-strong cross bench. The Turnbull government’s numbers have been reduced to 29 senators, 10 votes short of the 39 it needs to transact most business in the chamber.</p>
<p>High-profile, senior Liberal Party ministers, such as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-dutton-barnaby-joyce-slam-cory-bernardi-betrayal-20170206-gu6we5.html">George Brandis and Christopher Pyne</a>, have argued that Bernardi should resign as senator to give rise to a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_vacancies_in_the_Australian_Parliament#Senate">casual vacancy</a>. This would enable the party to select a replacement senator.</p>
<p>The problem for the Liberals is that Bernardi does not believe he is under any particular obligation to do this. For Bernardi, the decision to resign from the Liberal Party is <a href="http://www.corybernardi.com/australian_conservatives_launched">a matter of principle</a>, and therefore justified and imperative.</p>
<p>In constitutional terms, Bernardi is not obliged to quit the Senate just because he has resigned from the Liberal Party. The party can do little to force his hand, except to hope that he might eventually fall foul of the Constitution’s various <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution">eligibility requirements</a> to serve in the federal parliament. This would be unlikely.</p>
<h2>Should Bernardi resign on ethical grounds?</h2>
<p>While there is no constitutional basis for Bernardi to resign from the chamber, there is a compelling ethical case for him to do so. </p>
<p>Before I outline my reasons, I must clarify the scope of my claim. First, the argument is not directed exclusively at Bernardi. This is an argument that should apply to any senator who quits his or her party, short of reasons of their party imploding, or being fired by the party. </p>
<p>Secondly, this argument is not one that I would extend to members of the House of Representatives who resign from their party. It is particular only to party defections when the member was elected in a seat through proportional representation.</p>
<p>My argument is essentially tied to two particular features of the Senate electoral system: the statewide basis of that system and group ticket voting. In combination, these elements greatly heighten the importance of the party label to the electoral success of major party candidates.</p>
<p>The statewide basis of the electoral system creates a geographical obstacle for all but a rarefied group of candidates to build a sufficiently strong personal mandate to secure a Senate quota. For this reason most independent candidates choose to contest lower house electorates rather than nominate for the Senate, where campaigning is conducted over a much wider, often more diverse electoral terrain.</p>
<p>Group ticket voting has further elevated the importance of the party label to the election of Senate candidates. Known colloquially as “above the line” voting, it allows parties to predetermine their preferred order of election of their candidates. While voters are permitted to vote for any candidate in any order that they wish, most do not. Only a very small proportion of voters cast their vote within the party list. </p>
<p>The combination of these features of the Senate electoral system means that most major party senators would struggle to make a convincing case that they were elected on the basis of personal appeal and support. </p>
<p>If we use Bernardi as the case in point, of the 345,767 votes cast for the South Australian Liberals at the 2016 election, he attracted just 2,043 of the first preference vote. Bernardi’s re-election had almost nothing to do with his personal vote and almost everything to do with the Liberal Party label and the favourable number two Senate spot that South Australian party officials awarded him on the party’s ticket.</p>
<p>Established parties can legitimately claim, therefore, that the single most decisive factor that accounts for the election of their senators is the power of the party label. For this reason, senators who quit their party under the current rules should feel compelled on ethical grounds to resign their vacancy, so that the democratic will of the party’s supporters is fulfilled.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta 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>While there is no constitutional basis for the former Liberal senator to resign from the chamber, there is a compelling ethical case for him to do so.Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725762017-02-07T10:52:01Z2017-02-07T10:52:01ZPolitics podcast: Arthur Sinodinos on the government’s headwinds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155834/original/image-20170207-30925-1fifdfs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pat Hutchens/TC</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the beginning of the parliamentary year, the government is beleaguered on several fronts. But Arthur Sinodinos, one of the Coalition’s most experienced operators and the newly appointed minister for industry, innovation and science, is determined to be optimistic.</p>
<p>“You can’t rule any possibilities out, including the possibility that the government actually goes from strength to strength as we go forward,” Sinodinos says.</p>
<p>“Yes, there are testing headwinds, including the international environment, but we’re going to be very keen to prosecute the case for economic growth, for jobs, for why international trade is a good thing for everybody, not just one country.”</p>
<p>Speaking with Michelle Grattan on the day of senator Cory Bernardi’s exit from the Liberal Party, Sinodinos has a sharp observation for his former colleague.</p>
<p>“What I’d say to senator Bernardi is that if you want to influence the party, you’ve got to be inside the party. You can’t do it from outside.”</p>
<p>Assessing Bernardi’s prospects as a force outside the Liberals, Sinodinos says “we’ll wait and see what happens”. “But he’s got some pretty formidable players out there, like Pauline Hanson, who has a very high profile and a lot of street cred as an outsider.”</p>
<p>“I would expect on most things that he would support Coalition policy. He was actually elected on a Coalition platform and I think if he’s going to keep faith with those voters, he should support Coalition positions.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>At the beginning of the parliamentary year, the government is beleaguered on several fronts. But Arthur Sinodinos is determined to be optimistic.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/724892017-02-07T03:09:10Z2017-02-07T03:09:10ZBernardi exits stage right: mayhem now, obscurity later<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155801/original/image-20170207-27214-mugpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi leaves the Senate after quitting the Liberal Party.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether it be due to hubris, courage or vanity, South Australian senator Cory Bernardi has decided to forsake the Liberal Party under whose auspices his political career had been nourished. </p>
<p>He will instead seek to create his own political party, <a href="http://www.conservatives.org.au/">Australian Conservatives</a>. According to the conventions of Australian political science, Bernardi’s new party will be categorised as a “minor” party. This means it will be expected to win a minute share of the vote at the next election, that its only prospect for representational success will be in the Senate, and that it will be expected to last no longer than one turn of the Senate electoral cycle.</p>
<p>The current excitement surrounding Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal Party arises because of the deleterious impact it has on Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership. It also adds to the complex situation in the Senate that is already under the influence of a diverse and often erratic crossbench.</p>
<p>This is a situation that could last for some time. Bernardi, who was the second-placed candidate on the South Australian Liberal ticket in the 2016 double-dissolution election, is what the Constitution defines as a “first-class” senator, and thus entitled to a six-year term. </p>
<p>Even though he was elected as a Liberal candidate, Bernardi is under no constitutional obligation to relinquish his seat, so he will now doubtlessly start work on forming his new party. Somewhat ironically, he will be doing that under <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-how-did-the-new-senate-voting-rules-work-in-practice-63307">elections laws recently changed</a> by the Turnbull government designed to make it harder for new parties to be formed, and restricting their ability to trade preferences with each other in future Senate contests. </p>
<p>If Bernardi does succeed in finding the requisite number of at least 500 bona-fide financial members in each state, and is able to put a national party organisation together, he will find himself in a crowded field.</p>
<p>Much has been made of the extent to which voters have been aligning their support away from the major political parties as a sign of drift to the right in Australian politics. This is true. But right-of-centre politics in Australia is a lot more complicated than the opinion polls indicate. </p>
<p>Most significantly, the rise in the total vote for right-of-centre candidates in the 2013 and 2016 Senate contests occurred alongside an exponential increase in the number of political parties being created.</p>
<p>In 2010, there were 13 parties advocating socially conservative and/or economic nationalist and/or anti-climate change sentiments, and who cross-preferenced each other in the half-Senate election held that year. This collection of parties won a national Senate vote of 3.8%. </p>
<p>In 2013, the number of right-of-centre minor parties had grown to 34, and the vote had increased to 15.7%. In 2016 the number of parties fell to 33, but the total national Senate vote rose to 16.9%.</p>
<p>This national figure includes some major state variations. It does not, though, include the impact of Nick Xenophon in South Australia which, by the 2016 election, had become very significant. In both the 2013 and 2016 elections, only a handful of the many right-of-centre parties won a primary vote above 4% – at which a political party becomes entitled to receive public election funding.</p>
<p>These parties included the Palmer United Party in 2013 (which imploded soon after the election), the Liberal Democratic Party in New South Wales again in 2013 but not 2016. In the 2016 election, there was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the Jacqui Lambie Network, and the Derryn Hinch Justice Party. Everyone else polled 3.9% or less.</p>
<p>In other words, the right-of-centre minor party vote is very thinly spread across a large number of competitors. Bernardi’s party would just be another one of these minor players.</p>
<p>Presumably, South Australia would be the organisational focal point for any party Bernardi would seek to create. The problem with that, however, is that Bernardi’s fellow South Australian, Nick Xenophon, has something of a monopoly over voters disillusioned with the major parties in that state. </p>
<p>South Australia is also the home base for the Family First Party. Its vote might not be great, but it seems to do well out of preference flows and usually manages to secure a Senate position. It might be six years before it happens, but Bernardi himself will struggle to hold on to his Senate seat.</p>
<p>The 2013 and 2016 election data do sustain the claim that there has been a swing to the right in the Australian electorate. But they also show that this has caused by a proliferation of right-wing parties, the vast bulk of whom secure a very small share of the primary vote (somewhere around 1%, on average). </p>
<p>The dominant players in the phalanx of right-wing minor parties have been those with high profile leaders or candidates (such as Clive Palmer, Jacquie Lambie, Derryn Hinch and Pauline Hanson). Bernardi may hope that his infamy could match the profile of these leading lights of populist anti-establishment politics.</p>
<p>But the reality is that a new conservative minor party headed by Bernardi would simply be adding to a political arena already saturated with conservative, populist, nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-environmental parties. </p>
<p>Bernardi’s actions do have some short- to medium-term implications, especially for the operation of the parliament, and the standing of the Liberal Party and its current leader. But the prospect of him being an influence beyond his current Senate term is very remote indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Economou 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>Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives joins a crowded field battling for the relatively small right-of-centre vote.Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725152017-02-06T09:03:47Z2017-02-06T09:03:47ZCory Bernardi leaving Liberal fold without parliamentary followers<p>When maverick Liberal National Party backbencher George Christensen opens his mouth it’s usually bad news for the government. But on Monday, his comments were a relief to it.</p>
<p>Christensen said he would not be following Liberal senator Cory Bernardi out of the government ranks. This is despite his “sympathy” for Bernardi.</p>
<p>“I’m loyal to Barnaby Joyce, I’m loyal to the National Party and the LNP, I have been a member of that party now for over two decades, and I’m loyal to the rank-and-file members who preselected me to be the candidate that got elected to come down here to Canberra.</p>
<p>"So … I’m here in the government, as long as the government holds true to the values of the people that put us there,” said the man who combines the position of Nationals’ whip with chief troublemaker. He urged that “we need to re-engage with our conservative base”.</p>
<p>Apart from anything else, the loss of Christensen would wipe out the government’s one-seat majority and make its management of the House of Representatives more difficult.</p>
<p>Conservative senator Eric Abetz was also quick to rule out jumping ship. “Whilst there is some speculation about the possibility of the formation of another conservative party I remain committed to the Liberal Party and its founding principles,” the former minister said in a statement.</p>
<p>Bernardi, who has kept a low profile for weeks and went into virtual hiding on Monday – although he put up stories on his website about his coming defection – will make the announcement on Tuesday.</p>
<p>His departure to the crossbench is not a surprise. He has been working up to it for a long time, ever since he set up his own conservative movement last year, although he often said he wanted to stay within the Liberal Party.</p>
<p>Colleagues on Monday noted pointedly that it was only last July that he was re-elected as a Liberal, for a six-year term. Treasurer Scott Morrison said: “At the last election he was elected as a Liberal senator by Liberal voters to support the Liberal Party in this parliament and be part of our team.”</p>
<p>Some will be glad to see the back of him. “It’s like having a baby – the sooner he’s out the better,” as one put it rather graphically.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Victorian Liberal Tim Wilson – whose views on same-sex marriage are totally at odds with those of Bernardi – tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"828471524017332224"}"></div></p>
<p>Bernardi is not expected to take any parliamentarians with him – and probably has not expected to do so.</p>
<p>While obviously this reduces his potential power as a crossbencher, it is also in character with his lone-wolf personality, and the nature of what he is doing.</p>
<p>Bernardi is about setting himself up as an intellectual leader of conservatism in Australia. His is very much an ideological quest.</p>
<p>His exit is part of the fragmentation of the right, of which the re-rise of Pauline Hanson is the most spectacular manifestation. But while Bernardi has policy positions in common with Hanson, there are big differences between them in ideas and as political phenomena.</p>
<p>One Nation is populist and Hanson is pragmatic, with her hodge-podge party. She is protectionist and happy with big government when it suits her cause.</p>
<p>Bernardi is the economic rationalist and the policy purist, with stances that would be in line with those of the conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs.</p>
<p>Hanson is on an electoral surge, that seems set to get a further boost in the Western Australian election in March.</p>
<p>The appeal of Bernardi’s new party, Australian Conservatives, to the electorate is likely to be quite limited. He is not a big name outside his home state of South Australia, where the “disgruntlement” vote is already tied up in the hands of Nick Xenophon, a populist and more centrist brand.</p>
<p>He’ll have appeal to some in the Coalition conservative base, but only a narrow band is likely to be attracted. One important (to say nothing of super wealthy) fan, incidentally, is Gina Rinehart.</p>
<p>ABC electoral analyst Antony Green predicts that Bernardi “is not going to have a significant electoral impact on the Coalition. The electoral problem for the Coalition is the re-emergence of the populist right in Pauline Hanson.”</p>
<p>But the big danger for the Turnbull government, apart from the appearance of disorder, is that Bernardi will turn up the volume of the hard ideological line coming from the right, including its commentators in the media, who will ensure he receives plenty of publicity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72515/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
When maverick Liberal National Party backbencher George Christensen opens his mouth it’s usually bad news for the government. But on Monday, his comments were a relief to it. Christensen said he would…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/654222016-09-19T19:59:09Z2016-09-19T19:59:09ZRecognition: Yes or No? The ABC asks the wrong questions of the wrong people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138177/original/image-20160919-17029-1qabdw4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The format of the ABC program Recognition: Yes or No? is problematic, and the choice of voices particularly so.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC Publicity</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tonight the ABC will broadcast <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/recognition-yes-or-no/">Recognition: Yes or No?</a>, a program following the joint travels of federal Labor MP Linda Burney and conservative commentator Andrew Bolt as they debate whether Indigenous peoples should be “recognised” in Australia’s Constitution.</p>
<p>Viewers are told at the outset that they will be asked to vote in a referendum on constitutional reform. The program claims this referendum “could unite or divide our nation” and asks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How will you vote?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Whose right to speak?</h2>
<p>The program assumes that a continual butting of heads between two people who are strongly opposed on the question at hand takes us somewhere on the road to understanding. But this format is problematic, as is the choice of voices.</p>
<p>Burney is continually challenged to respond with reason to the deeply held views of demagogues. When Bolt brings Burney to meet Cory Bernardi, the Liberal senator rejects the idea of constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our Constitution has given us everything in terms of a legal framework and has provided opportunity for every Australian.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Burney must then remind an abashed Bernardi that the Constitution had to be <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs150.aspx">reformed in 1967</a>. Until then, the Commonwealth had no power to make laws in relation to Indigenous peoples or count them in the census.</p>
<p>The program privileges Bolt’s voice in the recognition debate, even though – or perhaps because – he is known for <a href="http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2011/2011fca1103">racially discriminatory commentary</a> against Indigenous people. Bolt rejects the value of Indigenous identity and also <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/racism-at-the-university-white-australians-arent-indigenous-too/news-story/cd9bf55c7b65127b4f39bb93a6ea4201">claims to be Indigenous himself</a> – because he was born in Australia.</p>
<p>The ABC need not have looked far for alternative voices. The producers might even have centralised the voices of Indigenous people. </p>
<p>Some well-known Indigenous speakers are consulted briefly – for example, the then social justice commissioner, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-21/doubts-cast-on-indigenous-australians-referendum/7434780">Mick Gooda</a>, who believes constitutional recognition can give Indigenous people a sense they are valued as a part of Australia. </p>
<p>Journalist <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-06/stan-grant-challenged-at-forum-over-constitutional-recognition/7391832">Stan Grant</a> also features in an odd exchange during which Bolt says that we need “less us and them”, and Grant says that is what “we” want too. </p>
<p>Australia’s Constitution is reflective of a legal system that has dispossessed and discriminated against the First Peoples since colonisation. I am drawn to Gooda’s sentiment that recognition would <a href="http://www.recognise.org.au/about/expert-panel-report/">acknowledge the truth</a> about Australia’s foundations. </p>
<p>But who am I – or any non-Indigenous Australian – to say what Indigenous people want or need?</p>
<p>The ABC has missed a rare opportunity to deeply engage with the <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/164623">diversity of views</a> among Indigenous Australians about whether and how they should be “recognised” – or whether recognition is the <a href="http://indigenousx.com.au/treaty-vs-recognition-the-importance-of-self-determination/#.V986Mfl95D8">most important thing</a>.</p>
<h2>What are we being asked, anyway?</h2>
<p>The recurring theme of Bolt’s contributions to the program is a rejection of group identity and an emphasis on the value of the individual. </p>
<p>Bolt asserts recognition of First Peoples effectively divides Australia by race. Instead: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We must find a common, overarching identity or set of values and give people an equal sense that this is their country. There is [sic] no first Australians, and second Australians and third and fourth; it is ours and everyone can feel a passionate bond with this country equal in depth of emotion as that that you [Burney] feel.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bolt’s insistence that constitutional recognition will divide Australia along racial lines is rejected by several Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors to the program. Particularly strong critique emerges in the scenes reflecting on how New Zealand has <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/48HansS_20080304_00001030/wall-louisa-maiden-statement">addressed its history</a> and acknowledged the culture, identity and <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wairarapa-times-age/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503414&objectid=11671044">language</a> of Māori people. </p>
<p>But, throughout the program, Bolt’s view persists as a challenge to the value of acknowledging the distinct status, rights, culture, identity and lived experiences of Indigenous peoples in Australia. </p>
<p>A visit to Yirrkala in Arnhem Land sees Bolt challenging elders to explain what economic prospects their children can hope for if the community insists on keeping “your culture going”.</p>
<p>This outcome could have been avoided if the producers had taken greater care to explore the intricacies of the debate. The program gives insufficient time to the range of possibilities for a referendum question. </p>
<p>It also contains some assertions that are up for debate – for example, that the race power in the Constitution is the legal foundation for <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html">native title</a>, and that native title is “<a href="http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_2.html">also known as land rights</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138184/original/image-20160919-17005-o1ljey.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Bolt (right) asserts recognition of First Peoples effectively divides Australia by race.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC Publicity</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Treaty, yeah?</h2>
<p>Most crucially, the program suffers from the weak premise that Burney and Bolt are debating the main game. The program makes cursory mention that “<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/in-historic-gathering-nations-indigenous-mps-reject-hate-and-vow-to-work-together-20160915-grhjde.html">some Aboriginal leaders</a>” are calling for constitutional recognition alongside treaty, while others demand treaty instead. </p>
<p>The essential question of where treaty fits in this debate is addressed by reference to Bolt’s claim that a treaty will create <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-15/murrumu-jeremy-geia-recruiting-drive-for-yidindji-nation-profile/6395544">separate Aboriginal nations</a>. History and comparable situations in other countries tell us how unlikely this is.</p>
<p>The program provides no meaningful insight for viewers as to what either constitutional recognition or treaty might contain or deliver. Its design fails to reveal what law professor Megan Davis has called the “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/july/1467295200/megan-davis/seeking-settlement">unwavering aspiration</a>” of Indigenous peoples in Australia:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a settlement between Aboriginal polities and the state.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Elsewhere, the ABC <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/nayuka-gorrie's-call-for-an-indigenous-treaty/7363280">has acknowledged</a> that some Aboriginal people oppose constitutional recognition. For example, Nayuka Gorrie rejects the idea of asking white Australia for <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/fuck-your-recognition">recognition within the colonial system</a>. Gorrie calls instead for treaty to recognise ongoing Indigenous sovereignty. </p>
<p>Journalist <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2016/08/11/the-timing-of-a-recognise-referendum-is-not-what-matters/">Amy McQuire</a> has criticised the recognition debate as an:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… incredibly white, government-driven, media-manipulated process that has alienated a great section of our community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>McQuire has <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2014/12/12/recognising-artful-con-constitutional-reform-debate/">previously argued</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The belief that acknowledgement as “First Australians” in the constitution is “sufficient” to deal with the trauma that stretches back 226 years is as offensive as the term itself.</p>
<p>Aboriginal people are not the “First Australians” – we are members of nations that have never ceded our sovereignty, despite government doublespeak offering the concession we were here “first”, while disassociating us with our individual nations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://blackfeministranter.blogspot.com.au/p/about-black-feminist-ranter.html">Celeste Liddle</a> has likewise noted the “anti” constitutional recognition position has been dominated by <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/correspondence/333">conservative white men</a>. Oppositional views among Indigenous communities have not received funding, unlike the government-backed <a href="http://www.recognise.org.au/">Recognise campaign</a>. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/confusion-surrounds-push-for-indigenous-recognition-constitution/7360084">evidence</a> exists to undermine the claim that the vast majority of Indigenous people would support the as-yet-undefined recognition referendum. </p>
<h2>Maybe this debate is too hard for us</h2>
<p>Like Bolt, former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott have long rejected treaty as <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/monographs/pratt/practisingreconciliation.pdf">divisive and impossible</a>. They claim treaties are <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-and-john-howard-warn-against-a-treaty-with-indigenous-australians-20160907-grbc5x.html">only made between countries</a>. </p>
<p>But if “recognition” is to be subject to actual debate, then the potential of treaty must be engaged with. Outright rejection reflects a narrow and colonial understanding of “nationhood”.</p>
<p>It also ignores historical fact. Australia was not settled according to international law, even as it was understood at the time of colonisation. The British sought to impose an expanded doctrine of terra nullius, which the High Court later rejected. Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded. </p>
<p>Perhaps the current quality of Australian public discourse is too poor to manage complex and important debates about rights and identity.</p>
<p>As the recognition debate continues, voters also face the prospect of a plebiscite to <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-same-sex-marriage-plebiscite-65218">gauge opinion on same-sex marriage</a>. In both cases, the people whose lived experiences and rights claims are at the heart of the debates struggle to have their voices heard.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Recognition: Yes or No? screens Tuesday, September 20, at 8.30pm on ABC and iview.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Maguire is a member of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Amnesty International. </span></em></p>The ABC has missed a rare opportunity to deeply engage with the diversity of views among Indigenous Australians about whether and how they should be ‘recognised’ in the Constitution.Amy Maguire, Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648592016-09-04T11:28:29Z2016-09-04T11:28:29ZLiberal Party ‘internals’ have a bad attack of acid stomach<p>Both Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese and Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi were in the business of stirring expectations in interviews on Sunday. And if those expectations take hold, that’s particularly bad for Malcolm Turnbull.</p>
<p>Albanese predicted the parliament wouldn’t run a full three years, saying “it could run for a year. It depends on their internals.”</p>
<p>If Turnbull thought he was going to be defeated in his partyroom, he would think about going to an election “rather than having what occurred to Tony Abbott happen to him”, Albanese told Sky.</p>
<p>Bernardi, also speaking on Sky, held out the prospect that the government next year would probably say that it was a good idea to address Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.</p>
<p>Albanese is trying to fan feelings of instability and uncertainty; Bernardi is seeking to raise anticipation that on a key policy issue Turnbull will have to come round to the way of thinking of the Liberal “base”.</p>
<p>Despite his wafer-thin majority and the shambolic events of last Thursday, and putting aside the possibility of death or defection, objectively there should be no reason why the Turnbull government could not run its term, just as the Gillard minority government did.</p>
<p>But if the perception takes hold that the government is in chaos, and the leader’s hold on his position is uncertain, that becomes highly destructive internally, just as happened in the Gillard years. It affects backbench morale, feeds into the polls, makes governing difficult, works against taking hard decisions. </p>
<p>In the longer run in such situations, questions about leadership do arise – not that there is any alternative to Turnbull on the horizon.</p>
<p>When a government is seen to be on the ropes, that is the frame through which everything is viewed.</p>
<p>The opposition, instead of being the side that mainly has to react, is able at least in part to set the agenda, as for example Bill Shorten is doing in prosecuting his case for a royal commission into the banks.</p>
<p>And when everyone is talking about the incompetence of the government, the opposition can get away with less scrutiny.</p>
<p>Bernardi’s confidence that Turnbull will ultimately accept the need to change 18C reinforces the perception he is not in control of his followers – which at the moment is also the reality.</p>
<p>That Bernardi was able to collect signatures from all but one of the Coalition’s Senate backbench for his private member’s bill to amend 18C was remarkable, given Turnbull’s stated position against change. Rarely do we see such an extensive and formalised revolt in a party on a policy issue. </p>
<p>The more momentum Bernardi can generate, such as by foreshadowing an eventual win, the greater the chance of attracting support for his cause.</p>
<p>Yet if Turnbull were forced to give way, he would not only be in a heap of trouble with ethnic communities, but he’d be seen to have capitulated on another of his personal positions.</p>
<p>Two other examples show the internal trouble besetting Turnbull.</p>
<p>One was Saturday’s story about Tony Abbott’s attack on the government’s superannuation reforms, made at a meeting attended by Treasurer Scott Morrison, Revenue Minister Kelly O'Dwyer and Coalition MPs last week.</p>
<p>The leak to the Weekend Australian, reporting that Abbott argued the government was wrong to offer superannuation concessions to low-income earners, and quoting one MP suggesting he’d got out of bed on the wrong side and another saying he’d arrived cranky, was more damaging than helpful to the former prime minister.</p>
<p>But it highlighted that Abbott remains an active irritant for Turnbull, because he is pursuing stands on a range of issues both internally and in public.</p>
<p>Indeed, Abbott’s recent speech line that the government has been “in office, not in power” is one of the most cuttingly accurate observations that has been made. He was talking about budget repair, but the analysis applies more widely. Albanese’s comment on Sunday that “it’s a matter of whether they can actually govern” was a sort of reprise.</p>
<p>A particularly egregious party slap for Turnbull came after Friday’s Liberal federal executive meeting where he had questioned why dumped minister Jamie Briggs, who lost his seat of Mayo, had not been disendorsed.</p>
<p>According to the Sunday Telegraph, which claimed “multiple sources” for its account, Turnbull told those at the gathering their challenge was to ensure his remarks did not make it into a newspaper.</p>
<p>That party heavies had little inclination to meet that challenge says a lot about the Liberals’ “internals” at the moment. The leader has a respect deficit.</p>
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Both Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese and Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi were in the business of stirring expectations in interviews on Sunday. And if those expectations take hold, that’s particularly…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646602016-09-01T03:57:56Z2016-09-01T03:57:56ZExplainer: what is Section 18C and why do some politicians want it changed?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136195/original/image-20160901-26179-t9lnlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Bernardi is leading the push for changes to Section 18C.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politicians who regard <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rda1975202/s18c.html">Section 18C</a> of the Racial Discrimination Act as a serious threat to “free speech” are again pursuing a range of strategies to discredit and repeal or water-down Australia’s national racial vilification law. </p>
<p>Earlier this month, senator David Leyonhjelm <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-section-18c-protect-angry-white-males-like-david-leyonhjelm-63944">lodged a complaint</a> with the Australian Human Rights Commission, alleging he had been the target of conduct that breached 18C. And, just this week, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/cory-bernadi-leads-coalition-push-to-change-18c-race-hate-laws/7796356">has led a push</a> to introduce a private member’s bill that would curtail 18C.</p>
<p>So what is 18C? And why does it make people like Bernardi and Leyonhjelm so agitated?</p>
<h2>What is 18C and why do we have it?</h2>
<p>Section 18C was added to the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rda1975202/">Racial Discrimination Act</a> just over 20 years ago, with the passage of the Racial Hatred Act. Under Section 18C:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:</p>
<p>(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult,
humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and</p>
<p>(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of
the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is important to note that under <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rda1975202/s18d.html">Section 18D</a>, conduct that prima facie breaches 18C will not be unlawful if it is done “reasonably and in good faith” for artistic, academic, scientific or other public interest purposes (or in reporting on any such conduct).</p>
<p>The original Racial Discrimination Act was (and still is) primarily concerned with situations in which racism produces a material disadvantage for someone. That might be, for example, denial of a promotion in the workplace context, or rejection as a potential tenant of a residential property. </p>
<p>In 1995 federal parliament recognised racism can also manifest in other ways and cause other sorts of harms. These include the harms that can be done by what is often referred to colloquially as “racial vilification” or “hate speech”.</p>
<p>Thinkers, writers, politicians, journalists and others have been arguing for many years about whether words alone can harm – or harm to such an extent that the state should take an interest in discouraging such behaviour. Anyone who has really listened to people who are frequently vilified because of their (actual or perceived) identify knows that the harms are not trivial.</p>
<p>In my own research with <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/katharine-gelber-108702">Kath Gelber</a>, we heard numerous accounts of the damage that is done by racist comments, including feeling hurt and angry, fearful, intimidated and paranoid. It can crush people’s self-esteem, leave them feeling paralysed and silenced, and excluded from the wider community. </p>
<p>It may also cause people to modify their behaviour in undesirable ways, such as avoiding going out in public to avoid abuse, being unwilling to identify with one’s ethnicity in the workplace so as not to risk ridicule, or speaking only English in public.</p>
<h2>So who has a problem with it, and why?</h2>
<p>No-one pays much attention to the majority of cases in which Section 18C is invoked – to signal that the behaviours that cause such harms are unacceptable in a multicultural liberal democracy.</p>
<p>The heat is always at the margins – stoked by media interest because of the identity of an alleged perpetrator (the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1103.html">Andrew Bolt case</a> from 2011 being a prime example), or because the case is regarded as linking up a wider agenda around “political correctness”. </p>
<p>This appears to be, at least in part, why The Australian newspaper and Bernardi are so interested in <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/18c-case-student-cleared-by-queensland-university-of-technology/news-story/a86f5c3d65d1c1df5289bcd44bc354d2">a pending case</a> triggered by controversy over a computer lab provided to support Indigenous students at the Queensland University of Technology.</p>
<p>It is much harder to perpetuate the myth that 18C threatens the foundations of Australian democracy (and so must be repealed), if the more typical cases that <a href="http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/392-2.pdf">we have discovered in our research</a> are considered. These included: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>cases involving holocaust denial and anti-Semitism; </p></li>
<li><p>a case in which Aboriginal youths killed in a car accident were described as “criminal trash” and “scum” that should be used as “land fill”; and</p></li>
<li><p>a case in which an Aboriginal women and her family were subjected to an torrent of abuse, including being called including “niggers”, “coons”, “black mole”, “black bastards” and “lying black mole cunt”.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There was also a case in which a man who was simply doing his job as a security officer at a public building was called a “Singaporean prick”, and echoing the classic retort of xenophobic exclusion that has been slung at numerous immigrant communities: “go back to Singapore”.</p>
<h2>Why 18C should not be amended</h2>
<p>The wording of Section 18C, and the inclusion of exemptions in Section 18D, represent a genuine attempt to set some parameters for civil and respectful communication, and for making a declaration that, as a society, we recognise the human dignity of all, irrespective of colour, ethnicity or country of origin. </p>
<p>Bernardi and Leyonhjelm, and other campaigners for the rollback of 18C, tend to focus on the words “offend” and “insult” that form part of the key phrase in the legislation (“offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate”). However, this approach misunderstands the harm threshold in 18C. </p>
<p>The courts have consistently held that the bar is not a low one. To fall within 18C the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2001/1007.html">speech must have</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… profound and serious effects, not to be likened to mere slights. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2011/1103.html">Eatock v Bolt</a> the Federal Court explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The definitions of “insult” and “humiliate” are closely connected to a loss of or
lowering of dignity. The word “intimidate” is apt to describe the silencing
consequences of the dignity denying impact of racial prejudice as well as the use of threats of violence. The word “offend” is potentially wider, but given the
context, “offend” should be interpreted conformably with the words chosen as its partners.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Finally, there is another point that often gets lost in the debate over 18C. As far as <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-australias-laws-on-hate-speech-work-in-practice-26105">legal regulation goes</a>, the regime contained in the Racial Discrimination Act is one of the more modest forms of state intervention. The Human Rights Commission is a neutral facilitator, not an enforcer. And, wherever possible, the aim is to resolve things via conciliation. </p>
<p>Only a very small number of cases ever make their way to the court system. Even where a complaint is upheld, the remedies are hardly draconian. Damages are rarely awarded (and if they are, the amount is modest), and no-one is convicted or goes to prison – because 18C does not create a criminal offence.</p>
<p>Section 18C alone can’t “fix” the problem of racism that continues to exist in Australia. It would be wrong to see it as a magical panacea. But it is equally wrong – and unsupported by the available evidence – to regard 18C as a threat to Australia’s liberal democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke McNamara received funding from the Australian Research Council to conduct research on which this article draws.</span></em></p>The debate around amending Section 18C is a furphy: the law is there to guard against the most-damaging vilification, and very few cases end up in court.Luke McNamara, Professor of Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646252016-08-30T10:19:07Z2016-08-30T10:19:07ZMalcolm Turnbull surrounded by trouble – left, right and centre<p>The government is “approaching this term with optimism”, according to the governor-general’s speech opening parliament. This is good to hear, because a more pessimistic character than Malcolm Turnbull surveying the outlook might be in deep gloom.</p>
<p>Labor, the Greens and some other crossbenchers are muscling up against the same-sex marriage plebiscite. Bill Shorten is set to make trouble on most fronts whenever opportunity knocks.</p>
<p>The non-Green Senate crossbenchers, who will be crucial to many of the government’s legislative efforts, find themselves – thanks to their potential power as well as the 24-hours news cycle – receiving continuous attention and publicity.</p>
<p>In a dramatic backbench revolt, conservative Liberal Cory Bernardi has signed up all but one of the Senate Coalition backbenchers and seven crossbenchers – a total of 20 – to a private member’s bill seeking to amend Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act to remove “offend” and “insult”. The only backbencher who didn’t formally endorse the bill was new Victorian senator Jane Hume, who has indicated she will support it.</p>
<p>This is a highly provocative jab at Turnbull – who has said changing 18C isn’t a priority – given the timing and number of Coalition backbenchers involved. It’s also said that some ministers, who were not asked to sign, have expressed private sympathy with the bill.</p>
<p>Parliament has started against the background of a Newspoll – the poll Turnbull invoked as a measuring stick when he challenged Tony Abbott – showing dissatisfaction with Turnbull on 52% compared with his satisfaction level of 34%, and Coalition and Labor on 50-50 in the two-party vote.</p>
<p>Not that people are enamoured of Shorten – 36% were satisfied with his performance and 50% dissatisfied.</p>
<p>The ratings for the leaders reflect the public’s general feeling of discontent.</p>
<p>And why wouldn’t people be sick of politics as it is being played?</p>
<p>Take a couple of indicators thrown up by polls published on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Newspoll asked people to say which items from a list they thought the government had a mandate to do.</p>
<p>The results were: maintain border security, 76%; reduce debt and deficit, 75%; meet Australia’s carbon emissions reductions target, 58%; restore the construction industry watchdog, 56%; introduce the superannuation reforms announced in the budget, 54%; resolve the gay marriage debate, 53%; amend Section 18C, 51%. All except the last were election commitments.</p>
<p>Yet despite majorities thinking the government has mandates on these issues, some are still being highly contested. Labor continues to resist bringing back the construction watchdog, and Liberal conservatives are trying to change the superannuation measures.</p>
<p>Admittedly “mandate” theory is a vexed area, and can be argued every which way. The Senate, where governments can rarely get a majority, can legitimately claim its own mandate. Crossbenchers often insist they have (mini?) mandates from those who have elected them, especially now that so many people are disillusioned with the major parties.</p>
<p>This is all very well. But if the mandates of all players are effectively seen as equal, and the numbers and will to routinely block measures are there, this threatens a gridlock that is likely to reinforce public cynicism.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of degree. No-one would expect that a government would get everything through just as it wanted. The Senate has an important checking and reviewing role. But it is reasonable to think a government should be allowed to pass key measures it took to a just-held election.</p>
<p>In some circumstances – such as after the 2014 budget – the public will be pleased when there is obstruction. Other times, people are likely to conclude that parliamentary games are thwarting the public’s will.</p>
<p>Same-sex marriage is a case in point. The Essential poll asked several questions, the results of which collectively said people wanted the issue decided by a plebiscite and would vote yes.</p>
<p>Asked how they would vote if the question in a plebiscite was “Do you approve of a law to permit people of the same sex to marry?”, 57% said “yes” and 28% “no”. Interestingly, 48% said they would definitely vote even if voting was not compulsory, while another 24% would probably vote. On whether the vote would pass, 47% predicted it would, 24% thought not, while 30% were not sure.</p>
<p>People were also asked whether the issue should be decided by parliament or a national vote – 59% said there should be a national vote and 25% wanted it decided by parliament.</p>
<p>Yet the public’s preference is not getting much of a look-in during the current debate. The establishment of the plebiscite will be torpedoed unless the opposition does a U-turn from its very strong rhetoric against it. Labor is trying to force a parliamentary vote – Shorten will bring forward a private member’s bill. Three lower house crossbenchers – independents Andrew Wilkie and Cathy McGowan, and Green Adam Bandt – are also putting up one.</p>
<p>Is trying to frustrate the plebiscite different from, say, the Senate refusing to pass some of the 2014 budget measures? It can be argued that it is. There was not a mandate for measures seen to breach promises or for which there had been no pre-election notice. </p>
<p>The plebiscite was Coalition policy. It might not be the best way of resolving this issue – indeed, I don’t think it is – but it was what Turnbull pledged and what the people favour.</p>
<p>Abbott got into trouble for breaking promises, and now Turnbull is being condemned for attempting to keep one.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/v6jnr-622f76?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/v6jnr-622f76?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The government is “approaching this term with optimism”, according to the governor-general’s speech opening parliament. This is good to hear, because a more pessimistic character than Malcolm Turnbull…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/634052016-08-03T04:21:52Z2016-08-03T04:21:52ZThe traditionalists are restless, so why don’t they have a party of their own in Australia?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132882/original/image-20160803-17183-cmpe3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liberal senator Cory Bernardi claims his 'Australian Conservatives' movement has recorded more than 50,000 registrations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Sam Mooy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1985, B.A. Santamaria <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1538743">speculated about the possibility</a> of a new political party in Australia that would be composed of the Nationals, the traditionalist section of the Liberal Party and the “moderate and anti-extremist section of the blue-collar working class”.</p>
<p>Today this combination of groups would probably be referred to as “conservatives”, but the Santamaria term “traditionalist” seems more appropriate. Despite the changes that have occurred over the past 30 years, the traditionalist section of the population is still there, even if technological change and the decline of manufacturing industry has had a massive impact on the blue-collar working class.</p>
<p>Two things are interesting. One is this hypothetical party has not come into being. The second is the 2016 election results indicate these three components of such a party still exist, even if they have not coalesced.</p>
<p>The election saw a <a href="https://theconversation.com/defiant-hanson-will-test-a-coalition-government-61985">resurgence of One Nation</a>, a <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-20499-NSW.htm">significant increase</a> in the vote of the Christian Democratic Party in New South Wales, a very good showing for the Nationals, and a massive repudiation of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by western Sydney.</p>
<p>Liberal senator Cory Bernardi now claims his “Australian Conservatives” movement <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/cory-bernardis-australian-conservatives-group-signs-up-50000-people-online-20160801-gqin07.html">has recorded</a> more than 50,000 registrations since its founding after the election.</p>
<p>The elements of Santamaria’s “traditionalists” remain fragmented, but could be potentially powerful should they come together. The central question is: why have they failed to come together in a new party?</p>
<h2>Why has it never happened?</h2>
<p>One answer is John Howard. Howard, who <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780730499640/">admires Santamaria</a>, understood the need to reconcile this section of the Australian population who would be tempted to vote for such a party. If John Hewson had been elected in 1993 the story might have been much different.</p>
<p>Faced by the threat of One Nation after 1996, Howard sought as prime minister both to neutralise One Nation’s impact and appeal to those who supported Pauline Hanson. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Aust%20Pol/Brent.pdf">“Howard’s battlers”</a> were succeeded by <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3078988/Tony-s-Tradies-Prime-Minister-s-small-business-owners-ll-able-claim-20-000-tax-expenses-new-utes-photocopiers-coffee-machines.html">“Tony’s tradies”</a>. It is worth remembering that Tony Abbott was one of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/one-nation-co-founder-suing-tony-abbott-for-15m/story-fncynjr2-1226622032265">Hanson’s fiercest foes</a>.</p>
<p>In the last 12 months, under the leadership of an eastern suburbs small-l liberal, the Liberal Party has decided it wants to look more like the party of Hewson than the party of Howard. In so doing, it has seriously risked alienating its “traditionalist” support.</p>
<p>Another answer to the failure of a “traditionalist” party to emerge lies in the fractious nature of right-wing politics in Australia. This form of politics <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/16368192?selectedversion=NBD2541336">has its roots</a> in the 19th-century ideal of the independent member who votes according to conscience and dislikes being told what to do. This makes collective action quite difficult. They find it hard to accept party discipline.</p>
<p>One Nation <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-10/timeline-rise-of-pauline-hanson-one-nation/7583230">disintegrated as a single entity</a> when it had 11 members elected to the Queensland parliament in 1998. Something similar <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-clive-palmers-personal-party-is-doomed-to-end-in-tears-38772">occurred to the Palmer United Party</a> in the federal parliament after 2013.</p>
<p>Politicians who value their independence tend to have strong personalities, which makes it difficult for them to work with other strong personalities. It is difficult to see how this problem could be resolved.</p>
<p>This lack of unity is a real problem for “traditionalists”. It will not be resolved unless they can find a mechanism that allows them to work together.</p>
<p>However, what the 2016 election result does indicate is that when the Liberal Party becomes too liberal it will alienate a significant part of its electoral base. It did so in 1993 and it has done so again in 2016. </p>
<p>If the Liberals cannot reconcile their conservative elements, then they will fail to win those seats in rural and regional Australia, especially in NSW and Queensland, they need if they wish to form government. </p>
<p>The Liberals will also surrender seats in the Senate to “traditionalists” who have the capacity to make their lives a misery. If, however, they alienate some of their liberal vote, all this will mean will be a reduced majority in safe liberal seats.</p>
<h2>Could it ever become a reality?</h2>
<p>What, then, are the prospects of Santamaria’s “traditionalist” party becoming a reality? Two conditions need to be fulfilled for it to happen. </p>
<p>One is that the Liberal Party adopts ultra-liberal policies in both economic matters and social and cultural policy. The other is that a figure emerges among the traditionalists who possesses sufficient charisma to enable them to unite. None of the current “traditionalist” leaders appears to have the capacity to unite the various groups.</p>
<p>Neither of these conditions seems likely to be fulfilled in the short term. Instead, the Liberals will continue to limp along, caught between a rock and a hard place. </p>
<p>If they become too liberal, they will risk alienating “traditionalist” voters who they need if they are to retain power. If they become too “traditionalist”, they will be denounced in sections of the media. </p>
<p>The Coalition won the 2016 election by the barest of margins. If there is a message in that near-death experience it is that the Coalition cannot continue to be the government of the day if it claims the ultra-liberal mantle of <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/1993/01/15/liberal-party-video-fightback.html">Hewson and Fightback!</a>. This is the danger of having a leader who comes from the seat of Wentworth.</p>
<p>There is a significant number of “traditionalists” out there in the electorate, and the Liberal Party cannot take their support for granted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Melleuish receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Menzies Research Centre.</span></em></p>In the last 12 months, under the leadership of an eastern suburbs small-l liberal, the Liberal Party has decided it wants to look more like the party of Hewson than the party of Howard.Gregory Melleuish, Associate Professor, School of History and Politics, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/626262016-07-20T20:05:26Z2016-07-20T20:05:26ZEarning influence: what power might Bernardi’s grassroots lobby have?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130997/original/image-20160719-2122-s1lg4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has reportedly devoted himself to mobilising a conservative lobby in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Inspired by the successes of American conservatism and motivated by a disgust with the moderate <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/knives-out-for-turnbull-after-election-disaster/news-story/9020ba449c110e57cbc9ebf76edf505e">Malcolm Turnbull</a>, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/cory-bernardi-conservative-warrior-all-about-cory-sally-neighbour-4327">has reportedly devoted himself</a> to mobilising a conservative lobby in Australia – to be called, rather straightforwardly, the <a href="http://www.corybernardi.com/uniting_australian_conservatives">Australian Conservatives</a>. </p>
<p>While he may have overestimated the interest in such a movement in Australia, Bernardi fundamentally understands the potential impact of grassroots lobbying. Mobilising and organising large numbers of voters makes for a powerful political force. And, as a tool for change in democracies, its use is not limited to “elites”. </p>
<p>Bernardi’s movement, if it is to succeed, will borrow its methods from America’s grassroots political organisations. There, such dedicated groups can be as powerful as corporate and elite special interests. They make a profound social and economic impact by harnessing “people power” and contributing to the all-important <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23559183?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">“marketplace of ideas”</a>.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the US</h2>
<p>Conservatives in the US realised the power of grassroots lobbying when, following Pat Robertson’s unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988, he used his campaign funds and resources to form a Christian lobby – the <a href="http://www.cc.org">Christian Coalition</a>. </p>
<p>While Robertson never became president, he and Christian conservatives were still able to find their way into the White House. In return for their financial support and votes, George W. Bush’s administration was initially defined by its pandering to the Christian “moral majority”. </p>
<p>Soon after taking office in 2001, Bush pushed for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1531">anti-abortion laws</a>, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/president/faithbased.html">state funding of (mainly Christian) religious groups</a>, and a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901570.html">“war on porn”</a>.</p>
<p>Despite being known for their individualist ideologies, conservative groups now dominate. Lobbies of the left, such as unions, are no longer the most prolific organised groups in the US. It is the Tea Party, the Christian right and the National Rifle Association (among others) that seem to have disproportionate sway over Congress – but not, at least to the same extent, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/gay-marriage-supreme-court-politics-activism/397052/">over the Supreme Court</a>. </p>
<p>The Bush-era policies, the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/issues/government-shutdown.htm">government shutdowns</a> and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/guns-and-gun-control">proliferation of gun rights</a> are evidence of the extraordinary success of collective action by so-called “individualists”.</p>
<p>Their victories have often come despite being representative of minority public opinion. Americans are <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/147635/tea-party-movement.aspx">more likely to be against</a> the Tea Party and its policies than for it, in favour of <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx">increased gun control</a>, and for a <a href="https://today.yougov.com/news/2012/03/09/41-34-americans-think-separation-church-and-state-/">separation of church and state</a>. And yet, the views of the active minority are proving more powerful than the placid majority. </p>
<p>These minority groups get their way because they lobby effectively and are generally unmet by equally well-resourced, organised and populated opposition. </p>
<p>As with Bernardi’s proposed conservative movement, many will not like the message, but unless the critics are willing to work with others and coalesce around a cogent political platform of their own, complaints from the other side of politics – while potentially therapeutic – can become indolent and petulant.</p>
<p>The concern, then, becomes how groups of concerned citizens of all political stripes can have their own voices heard and – if their message is well-conceived – acted on.</p>
<h2>Making grassroots work</h2>
<p>Lobbying is generally effective for one reason: self-interest.</p>
<p>While there are altruistic politicians, the cynicism that defines modern politics – politicians gaining, maintaining and leveraging power – appears to be the principal cause of the steady, and generally unhealthy, pervasiveness of <a href="http://republic.lessig.org">lobbying in democracies around the world</a>.</p>
<p>In its most insidious form, this self-interest can <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/06/louisiana.congress/index.html">manifest as corruption</a>, but in most cases, politicians are concerned with winning elections. This is where grassroots lobbies <a href="http://apr.sagepub.com/content/37/2/327.short">become so effective</a>.</p>
<p>How a lobby engages in the political sphere, and not just the size of its membership, significantly defines its success. Organisations that offer public information campaigns can make a big difference to the standing of a candidate or party. </p>
<p>Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton depends on such organisations to <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Latino-Political-Elite-and-Grassroots-Split-on-Hillary-Clinton-20160229-0016.html">maintain the important “Latino” vote</a>. In Australia, groups like Rosie Batty’s <a href="http://www.neveralone.com.au">Never Alone</a> helped create a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-25/outgoing-australian-of-the-year-rosie-batty's/7112356">royal commission</a> and secured millions of dollars in funding for the campaign to <a href="https://ministers.dpmc.gov.au/cash/2015/new-funding-community-projects-reduce-violence-against-women">end violence against women</a>.</p>
<p>When well-organised and persistent, small groups can get their way. Such advocacy groups have made major changes to corporate policy via social media. They can similarly effect political change if they are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ritusharma/power-of-social-media-dem_b_6103222.html">able to generate enough interest</a>. </p>
<p>Letter-writing, phoning, or emailing, too, can have a meaningful impact, and lobby groups of all sizes <a href="http://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/NewsNow/?blogid=10737418615&id=10737430280">have often succeeded by concertedly contacting</a> their representatives. This is why American corporate lobby groups so often use ads to try to get the public to pick up a phone or a pen.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.securefamily.org/about-us/">financial planners lobby</a> is trying this approach in the US. It is resisting the move to require planners to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own (<a href="http://ris.dpmc.gov.au/2012/12/21/future-of-financial-advice-best-interests-duty-and-related-obligations-%E2%80%93-regulation-impact-statement-%E2%80%93-australian-securities-and-investments-commission/">much like in Australia</a>).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UQ0pvQ7d1zc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Secure Family’ ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But non-profits do it effectively too. Amnesty International often harnesses its membership base to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/02/write-rights-prisoners-freed-following-largest-ever-letter-writing-campaign/">secure all manner of important outcomes</a> – Amnesty even <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/uan_guide.pdf">provides a guide</a> to do it.</p>
<p>Small-scale lobbies can also have a big impact by enlisting a “champion” to their cause – having <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/05/the-oprah-effect-winfreys-influence-extends-deep-into-politics/">celebrities</a>, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/03/talking_turkey.html">noted public intellectuals</a> or <a href="https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/farewell-to-forbes-va-congressman-allied-with-the-religious-right-loses">politicians</a> onside can make a big difference.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A vitamins industry ad starring Mel Gibson.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, if the organisation is sufficiently large, its influence can be purely democratic; voting cohesively makes an organisation powerful. Bush’s election win was in part the result of the Christian lobby <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230607354_2">coming out to support him</a>. </p>
<p>The American Association for Retired Persons (<a href="http://www.aarp.org">AARP</a>) wields tremendous power in this way. It is no coincidence that many of the most die-hard “small-government” Republicans <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-tea-partyers-support-social-security-and-medicare/">won’t touch Medicare and Medicaid</a>, which the AARP <a href="http://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/about_aarp/aarp_policies/2015-05/AARP-Priorities-Book-2015-2016.pdf">holds sacrosanct</a>.</p>
<p>Australia has no such near-monolithic voting blocks. But Bernardi wants to change that.</p>
<h2>Buying influence?</h2>
<p>Corporations and the super-wealthy have long recognised the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lobbying-101-how-interest-groups-influence-politicians-and-the-public-to-get-what-they-want-60569">importance of lobbying</a>. In turn, the fruition of that recognition has led, over decades, to the gradual degradation of democracies around the world. </p>
<p>Corporate and super-wealthy special interests can access the “pay to play” of campaign donations, offer quid-pro-quo inducements and use professional lobbying services.</p>
<p>For some, then, political influence can be bought. This becomes particularly invidious when said purchase of such influence brings a reward that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/the-real-welfare-cheats.html">proves greater than the cost</a>. In that sense, there is no real effort, no great sacrifice, nothing morally redeemable – an externalised cost, a privatised profit.</p>
<p>Most people have no such advantage. But the imbalance can be overcome by sheer numbers and a willingness to speak, listen and act. Lobbying is, therefore, both the cause of democratic failure and the only viable solution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Rennie 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>Mobilising and organising large numbers of voters makes for a powerful political force, and as a tool for change in democracies. Its use is not limited to ‘elites’.George Rennie, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/619682016-07-03T06:44:51Z2016-07-03T06:44:51ZTurnbull stands solid against returning Abbott to frontbench<p>Malcolm Turnbull has slapped down the prospect of Tony Abbott returning to the ministry, as both he and Bill Shorten talk to crossbenchers who could determine their fate in a hung parliament.</p>
<p>“I am not proposing to bring back any particular individuals,” Turnbull told a news conference when asked about the pressure to put Abbott on the frontbench.</p>
<p>His hard line will further anger conservatives in his party, who are already starting to flex their muscles after the election debacle. The push for Abbott’s post-election return began during the campaign. But the belief in Turnbull quarters is that Abbott is toxic in the electorate.</p>
<p>Abbott kept his comments on Sunday careful, though they were pointed. Asked whether he would have won if he had been leader, he said: “I just won’t speculate on that. That is for people to reflect upon.”</p>
<p>He said there were “a lot of people who have got much to reflect upon as a result of what has happened”.</p>
<p>“It is not for me to start trying to sum up a long and difficult campaign,” he said. </p>
<p>“All we can do today is take stock, think, reflect, rather than just come out with a whole lot of snap judgements. I certainly won’t come out with snap judgements.”</p>
<p>Conservative senator Cory Bernardi said the election had been “a disaster for the Liberal Party. It shows that treating our base with contempt or dismissing their concerns in favour of Labor-lite policy has very real consequences.</p>
<p>"The conservative revolution will either begin within the Liberal Party in an attempt to save it, or will manifest itself outside the Liberal Party,” Bernardi said. There had been a small taste of the latter on Saturday, he said. </p>
<p>Turnbull continued to say he was “quietly confident” the Coalition would reach a majority in its own right. Turnbull said the postal and other votes still to be counted were likely to favour the Coalition.</p>
<p>Despite Turnbull’s prediction, a hung parliament is equally likely, with about a dozen seats in doubt.</p>
<p>Turnbull and Shorten confirmed they had spoken to some of the lower house crossbenchers, as each leader is anxious to open lines of communication in the event of a hung parliament.</p>
<p>Turnbull spoke to independents Andrew Wilkie and Cathy McGowan and to Nick Xenophon, leader of the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT). The NXT has won three Senate seats in South Australia and one lower house seat.</p>
<p>Xenophon said a hung parliament was “increasingly likely”, but would not say which side his team would favour. “We will support the side that can form a stable government and that can listen to us in respect of key concerns which we think reflect the wishes of middle Australia.”</p>
<p>The NXT is also in the hunt for the SA Liberal seat of Grey which Xenophon described as being on a “knife-edge”.</p>
<p>Shorten dismissed speculation in Labor circles that he could face a leadership challenge from Anthony Albanese. The leadership is automatically open after a defeat. “For myself, I have never been more certain of my leadership,” he said.</p>
<p>Both leaders played down the possibility of another election. </p>
<p>Saying he had spoken to some crossbenchers, Shorten said: “They want to be constructive, they don’t want Australia rushing back to the polls, I certainly don’t. I think we owe it to the Australian people to make the decision of the Australian people work.”</p>
<p>Turnbull said: “We are committed to ensuring that the parliament, as elected, will work effectively and constructively for the Australian people.”</p>
<p>Turnbull sought to reassure people ahead of the hiatus before a definite result is known.</p>
<p>“While the count will take a number of days, probably until the end of next week, I can promise all Australians that we will dedicate our efforts to ensuring that the state of the new parliament is resolved without division or rancour. The expectation is on all of us, especially me as prime minister, to get on with the job.”</p>
<p>When the count was completed the Coalition would work constructively “to ensure that we have a strong majority government and we will work across the crossbenchers as well, if we need to do so”, Turnbull said.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Malcolm Turnbull has slapped down the prospect of Tony Abbott returning to the ministry, as both he and Bill Shorten talk to crossbenchers who could determine their fate in a hung parliament.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.