Posted on 08/12/2005 4:43:20 PM PDT by naturalman1975
JOHN Howard's control of the Senate has provoked tensions in Canberra and an political experiment in the country under the title GetUp!, a web-based grassroots movement that has recruited nearly 10,000 members in less than a fortnight and aims to revive the progressive Left in Australia.
GetUp! is the most serious effort so far in Australia to tap people disillusioned with the party system and change elections by the application of information technology techniques. It seeks to mobilise the frustrated middle-class progressives who are hostile to Howard and frustrated by his grip on the political process.
The GetUp! experiment will test whether a grassroots IT movement that is constantly speculated about can materialise.
Still in its infancy, GetUp! seems a strange blend of energy, idealism, savvy and naivety. It represents a political movement, as distinct from a political party. With the ambitious goal of changing the political culture, it will create trouble for the Coalition, from Howard to Barnaby Joyce.
"We expect to have at least 100,000 members by the next election," say its founders David Madden, 30, and Jeremy Heimans, 27, young Australians who graduated from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government several years ago.
"Our long-term objective is to build a mass movement of progressives who can be mobilised to take political action and who, through small online donations, will fund national campaigns to change the way people beyond the progressive base think and vote."
Madden and Heimans are duplicating the model they created in the last US presidential election. They started an independent campaign against George W. Bush in 12 battleground states that raised $5 million off an average donation of $50 to finance a television campaign with their self-produced ads (no advertising agency, thanks). Their most effective ad juxtaposed Bush joking about finding no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with an American mother saying her son was killed looking for those same WMDs.
They plan to operate in the US and Australia and will re-gear for next year's US mid-term elections.
Their first Australian TV ad has gone to air (again self-produced) featuring ordinary Australians talking about their fears of the Coalition's Senate control. But the bigger reaction has come from their email mobilisation - "I am sending you this message because I want you to know that I'm watching" - that flooded into the computers of Coalition senators. It announced the arrival of GetUp! but alienated a lot of Coalition politicians.
Liberal MP and former federal director Andrew Robb told me: "I think their first foray was undergraduate. Hundreds of emails arrived in Coalition offices all saying the same thing. That's not a dialogue, it's just irresponsible and it's spam."
Explaining their purpose, Madden and Heimans say: "Over the past nine years Australian progressives have mobilised in large numbers at critical moments, including the campaign against the Howard Government's refugee policy, the walk across the [Sydney] Harbour Bridge, the anti-war protests of 2002-03 and, in recent weeks, in response to the Government's proposed industrial relations changes.
"These campaigns, however, have easily dissipated and have not been part of a broader strategy to expand and consolidate the progressive base. As the Government takes control of the Senate for the first time in a generation, a significant new effort is needed to revitalise progressive politics in Australia."
GetUp! wants to break down party discipline in the new Senate.
"The idea is to support people in the Coalition partyroom [who] want to push the Howard Government to a more principled and progressive direction," Heimans says. "Petro Georgiou's stand on detention is an example. In this new era our aim is to peel away those Coalition members more likely to support progressive agendas."
The GetUp! team nominates Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks and the industrial relations reforms as potential campaigns in coming months.
Neither Madden nor Heimans belongs to a political party. Their policy is to take donations from individuals, corporates and unions but not parties.
"Our political parties today are so stale and calcified that few people want to go anywhere near them," they say.
"We believe this experiment can work. Thousands of people are signing up and donations and feedback are pouring in. The long-term aim is to build a political movement with the ability to influence election outcomes. Our philosophy is to bring together the progressive elements in this country and see them expand."
Their mission is manifest: lifting the unity and profile of the progressive forces to defeat Howard, his Coalition and his philosophy.
The board of GetUp! encompasses the political spectrum from the Greens and the Labor Party to John Hewson. Still being constructed, it includes ALP technology entrepreneur Evan Thornley, prominent trade union leader Bill Shorten, former Liberal leader Hewson, NSW environmentalist Cate Faehrmann and union and community activist Amanda Tattersall.
Thornley and Shorten are high-profile aspirants to the ALP's Canberra caucus. Hewson, as a former Liberal leader, is under strong public pressure to quit such an anti-Howard, anti-Coalition movement.
Robb believes the chink in GetUp! is that, despite its IT innovation, its political content is old-fashioned and, ultimately, content will determine success.
"Theirs is a Left agenda," he says. "It is the same as I hear from the other side of the house. And they have two want-to-be Labor leaders on their board [Shorten and Thornley]. It is, in effect, a Labor front."
The ALP will be ambivalent about GetUp!. The Labor Party wants to shape the anti-Howard agenda for the next election, not to have it stolen by a new Left progressive movement. Kim Beazley will welcome supporters but hold reservations about an agenda-setting movement from the Left. Beazley's aim, after all, is to carry the nation, not the Left progressives.
Robb identifies the core strategic question. "In the end it is their message that counts. The Left progressive message has failed for Labor for years. It hasn't worked in the US against Bush and it hasn't worked in Australia against Howard.
"There is also a problem with its tone, the patronising suggestion that the Australian people aren't educated enough and don't know what they're doing."
Howard has thrived for years by exploiting the Left progressive attacks on his Coalition over refugees, indigenous policy, national security, economic reform and individual responsibility. The Madden-Heimans project is a double experiment: a test of whether they can expand public participation in our politics and whether the fire they ignite among the progressives will hurt or help Howard's dominance.
What do you know/think about this bunch, GetUp!?
This sounds like the story here in the U.S., last week or so, of a new effort to fund "progressive" think-tanks to rival those of the conservatives. It is all about solving the left's unpopularity by coming up with a new institution. It won't work. People in the U.S. and Australia are supporting conservatives because they are learning more about conservatism, and are recognizing that conservatism serves their interests. Steady on, folks.
""The GetUp! team nominates Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks""
Well they are more honest and forthright than MoveOn, at least they admit to being on the side of terrorism.
""The ALP will be ambivalent about GetUp!. The Labor Party wants to shape the anti-Howard agenda for the next election, not to have it stolen by a new Left progressive movement. Kim Beazley will welcome supporters but hold reservations about an agenda-setting movement from the Left. Beazley's aim, after all, is to carry the nation, not the Left progressives."
This is precisenyl why GETUP wont only fail, it will help the Coalition win yet another election
BTW for 23 years from 1949-1972 the Liberals won every election in Australia. Australian being a nation of Scotch-Irish decendants, much like the USA, are fundamentally a conservative nation
In Australian, it's pronounced: Giddap!
Did you see the new book by James Webb about the Scots-Irish? I think it was just released here in the States. Review in Weekly Standard.
yeah, that is why i posted.
Australia is a red neck country just like th e US
And probably why I would love the Australians. They remind me of my cowboy roots.
Hi there. I'm an Australian who's participated in both of GetUp's campaigns so far.
I don't know about Australia being fundamentally conservative. I do know the Howard government's messages play to the worst in people: fear, hate, greed. I also know most people find it gratifying to exercise the worst parts of themselves, especially when a leader encourages them by setting an example. It's an ancient story. I don't think it has anything to do with people learning more about conservatism.
The people I know who voted for the Howard government admitted even before the election that they didn't like Howard or his policies but they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the alternative, Mark Latham. Most of them have been appalled at how mean the government's agenda has become since the election. I think that's an indication of how little the voters knew beforehand, not how considered they were in their conservatism. If a viable alternative candidate for Prime Minister can't be put forward before the next election, the current government will win that election by default too.
I don't know where you've gotten the idea about the Scots and Irish being conservative. I'm of pure Irish descent myself, and the only conservative Irish I know are priests. The Scots I've known have been particularly feisty. Maybe British colonisation does something to a people. Didn't the US begin along those lines?
Cheers.
""'Most of them have been appalled at how mean the government's agenda has become since the election. I think that's an indication of how little the voters knew beforehand, not how considered they were in their conservatism.""
typical leftist response: The voters were stupid and easily scared
Look around the world at the nations that are scotch-irish, they are fundamentally conservative. Australia is a nation that respects free markets, put the individual over the ethnic group, isnt self-loathing unlike the germans, and believes in western civ
"typical leftist response: The voters were stupid and easily scared"
I didn't write that. That's your response.
"Look around the world at the nations that are scotch-irish, they are fundamentally conservative."
Which ones did you have in mind? The Scottish Parliament is dominated by Scottish Labour which describes itself as a democratic socialist party. In Ireland, there's Sinn Fein, of course, and the fact that every Fine Gael government has been a coalition with Labour, as was Fianna Fail in 1992-94.
"Australia is a nation that respects free markets,"
- except when the government is participating in our mixed economy...
"...put the individual over the ethnic group,"
- except when it comes to our multiculturalism...
"...isnt self-loathing unlike the germans,"
- except when it comes to cultural cringe...
"...and believes in western civ[ilisation?]"
- except when we're drunk in front of the footie. :)
I feel a chorus of the Bruce's Philosopher's Song coming on. Cheers!
I think perhaps you're displaying the self-loathing of someone who lives in a country that includes many different cultural groups (unless you've emigrated to Monaco or the Vatican). I think maybe you could benefit from a sense of humour, particularly with respect to yourself.
Cheers.
no, no self loathing here.
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