Head in the clouds

The ALP is risking its credibility over terror but the Coalition has its own voter gap, writes National political editor Dennis Shanahan

THERE is a great disconnection in Australia between many of our politicians, academics, lawyers and journalists and what the Australian people believe and want. In part, it is a matter of declining trust in our leaders and institutions, but it is also deeper than that, with enormous ramifications for the political landscape.

This week's arrests of terror suspects and the fierce political recriminations and allegations that took place before and after them are a stark example of the disconnection, the lack of trust and public debate that swirls without representing or engaging the public.

John Howard was accused of a political stunt over the urgent legislation passed before the police raids this week and Kim Beazley was accused of meekly complying in a manipulation of public fear.

Legitimate, solid and decent arguments about government, executive power, national security and individual freedoms are buried or deflected by those in denial about real threats to Australian society, those who refuse to look for the redeeming features in popular opinion and those who are intent on triumphalism and intellectual nicety.

The disenchantment is such that there is a nagging yearning in the electorate for something new, a yearning that helped Mark Latham attain record levels of satisfaction as Labor leader and now fosters calls for a new political party; a yearning that undermines Beazley's authority as Labor leader yet cannot replace him with a credible alternative. Even Howard, who has drawn from the inherent conservatism of the Australian electorate most successfully, is showing an ideological alacrity on industrial relations that is out of step with working Australians. The Prime Minister's campaign on workplace change, something he admits being wedded to for more than two decades, has faltered in the face of public scepticism about the need for it.

As Howard said this week in his parliamentary defence of industrial relations reform: "I have been accused of having an ideological obsession with workplace relations reform." Ideology is a complete turn-off in modern Australia, regardless of its direction.

There is evidence that Labor, as a centrist party with a Left leaning, is the party most at risk from this disconnection. The Australian Candidate Study 2004, a university survey of candidates and their attitudes at each federal election, demonstrates the division between ALP candidates and the electorates they sought to represent. A comparison of the views of the Labor, Australian Democrats and Australian Greens candidates with the concerns and priorities of the public clearly shows a wide gulf, evidenced through polling and the election results.

Using the traditional descriptions of Left and Right, candidates were asked to classify themselves on a scale of zero to 10 and to do the same for their electorate. Two-thirds of ALP candidates, 62.2 per cent, rated themselves on the extreme one-third of Left while they rated 7.6 per cent of their electorate in the same category. The Right Labor rating was the opposite, with only 6 per cent rating themselves in the equivalent spectrum while the Right of Centre electorate was estimated to be 62.7 per cent of the electorate.

Specific issues showed similar gaps between the candidates and the electorate: one-third of ALP candidates ranked the Iraq war first on a scale of four and asylum-seekers got top support among 14.3 per cent of candidates. No Liberal-Nationals candidate rated either as a top priority and consistent public polling has shown the electorate is overwhelming supportive of the Coalition on asylum-seekers.

When asked to choose between four priorities in two separate questions, the Labor candidates had a remarkable divergence from Coalition candidates and popular opinion.

Asked to rate the priority of a stable economy, progress towards a less impersonal community, progress to having ideas count more and the fight against crime, more ALP candidates (48.2 per cent) nominated progress to a less impersonal world than a stable economy (38.6 per cent). Given that the community rates the Coalition better able to handle the economy by three to one, it is not surprising to find 91.3 per cent of Coalition candidates nominated a stable economy as the top priority.

Labor candidates also preferred to protect freedom of speech by a four-to-one margin over maintaining order. National security was where the Coalition also had a three-to-one advantage over the ALP at the last election. They are the two basic areas where Labor must make advances if it is to have any hoping of winning the next election.

These attitudes are epitomised by the comments of ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the ACT Labor Party in Canberra. Stanhope, the only Labor leader to oppose the new counter-terrorism legislation as part of his campaign for a bill of rights, decried the difference in views between the ALP and the public.

"[Seventy-five] may be an age at which the ticking clock seems far louder and far closer. But it is also an age for resolving to return to things we have neglected, remembering things we have forgotten, reminding ourselves of the ideals that once so energised us that we came together in this great and historic political party," Stanhope said. "This is a perplexing period in our history as a party. At one level, we are in power in every state and territory in the country. Here in the ACT our membership has grown by 35 per cent in the past three years and we have achieved the first majority government in the history of the Legislative Assembly.

"Yet in our newspapers and on our television screens we see reflected back at us a society that is beginning to look out of kilter with those values and beliefs that brought us banging on the doors of the Labor Party, and [that] have kept us here." For Stanhope, however, the disappointment is that it is the people who are out of kilter with the party because of shifts in society "occurring in such minuscule increments that sometimes we risk dismissing it as the work of our imaginations".

For Beazley, standing nearby, the message from the leader of the most left-leaning jurisdiction in the country was that the ALP had to act to stop the change in society and public attitudes, not change itself.

This is the enormous challenge for Beazley, who is accused of being too right-wing, too conservative and too much like Howard to be a successful leader of the Labor Party. Yet Beazley's position on supporting the urgent amendments to the counter-terrorism laws to give police more certainty when pursuing terror suspects without a specific target was crucial to Labor's credibility this week, a point he made to his caucus colleagues when he said he was sick of point-scoring on extraneous issues.

Labor's defence spokesman Rob McClelland tells Inquirer that some of the debate on security is out of touch because "it's all right to talk about policy while sitting at the pointy end of the aircraft with the elite but it's a completely different thing if you are catching a peak-hour train with workers and schoolchildren".

As one of the few Labor candidates who described himself in the electorate survey as right-wing, Melbourne's Michael Danby, parliament's only Jewish MP, has hit out at critics of Beazley and Howard over the counter-terrorism laws.

Putting his finger on one of the main distractions in the security debate - and many others for that matter - Danby tells Inquirer that "some things are true even if John Howard says them".

"There is a terrorist threat to Australia," he says. Admitting in parliament that he has some regard for the Prime Minister, Danby warns that he still believes Howard's time is running out and he thinks Howard is out of touch on industrial relations. In a spirited defence of his support for the anti-terrorism amendments, Danby says: "I willingly voted for the bill, not because I was afraid of being wedged by John Howard but because I trust Kim Beazley and the integrity and professionalism of the security services. We are seeing at the moment a strange state of affairs in Australian public life, in which the politicians and the people are in broad agreement both on the nature of the terrorist threat and on what ought to be done about it, while a large slice of the intellectual class is in furious disagreement." For Labor, the danger is that the intellectual class to which Danby refers represents a large slice of the party members and their supporters who want a new direction away from Beazley's conservative approach. Labor president Barry Jones often faces plaintive pleas to form a new party as he keeps in touch with the grassroots of Labor at town hall meetings and keeps alive the view there should be more of a contribution from the membership and public.

But there is furious disagreement with the Danby and Jones views of the world. Former Australian ambassador to Washington Michael Thawley has warned there is a tendency towards knee-jerk anti-Americanism that plays down Australia's true role and strength in the US alliance. "I have been working for the past five years or so in the world's richest, most powerful and most competitive society," Thawley said in his Menzies Lecture last week.

"But far from finishing with the feeling that Australia does not measure up and far from feeling conscious of Australia's lesser wealth, size and power, I left [the US] more convinced than ever of Australia's success as a nation. We have the capacity - if only we choose - to be a truly great and powerful nation.

"The question is: Can we apply to our future the pride, optimism and confidence felt by the overwhelming majority of Australians?"

This furious disagreement between the public's views and public discourse is part of the "Williamson effect", where ordinary people, labelled as middle class or aspirational, are scorned by commentators such as playwright David Williamson for having mundane interests and made the fodder for unrelenting satire. As in the case of the characters on the ABC's Kath & Kim, they are never given redeeming qualities, although even the beer-swilling oaf Homer Simpson is allowed redeeming qualities by his satirist creators. Homer's general wisdom and virtues - fidelity, family, work ethic - as markers of the hoi polloi are raised and praised. This is the strength of a chronicler of the ordinary people, not a sneering put-down.

Yet that large slice of the commentariat to which Danby refers does not give such concessions. This is not to suggest that the disconnection is only Labor's problem. Howard and the Coalition have survived their first great schism and, through a combination of more conservative policies and sustained economic and jobs growth, have attracted back those who were flirting with One Nation. The one million votes that One Nation received at the 1998 election forced the Coalition to recognise the disenchantment among its supporters and to address their concerns.

Yet it is Howard's commitment to, and lack of preparation for, the industrial relations changes that poses the greatest threat to the Coalition's connection with the electorate.

Howard has not done the same job of preparation he did with the GST and his standing has suffered as a result, with his highest dissatisfaction rating in Newspoll for four years. There is no conviction within the electorate that workplace change is necessary to maintain economic growth and there are fears for the future of employees.

While Howard has time and scope to reconnect with the electorate on industrial relations before the next election, Beazley faces a stiffer challenge on economic management and national security.

Time to ponder...can there be a Kim Beazley in the Liberal Party of Canada? I'm afraid the answer is no, despite the fact that the Australian Labor Party is officially a member of Socialist International and classified as socialist while the Canadian Liberal Party is not a member and classified as centrist and therefore in theory should be less leftist than the ALP. Some may tout Michael Ignatieff as Canada's Beazley but I remain sceptical as to what he will do if he goes back into Canadian politics.

Will the grassroot leftism make the ALP look like a clone of Canadian Liberals in the years to come? Time will tell for sure but to everynyone who don't want to see an Australian version of Carolyn Parrish (the ex-Liberal MP for Mississauga, Ontario) should take notice of what Parrish did around this time last year:

Carolyn Parrish stomping on a George Bush action figure as part of a This Hour Has 22 Minutes skit. (Source: CBC News story 18 Nov 2004: Mixed reactions to announcement of Bush visit to Ottawa)

According to teh CBC news report, and with no doubt approval of the journalists who took the interview:

...one Liberal MP will find it difficult to hide her distaste for the recently re-elected U.S. president. Carolyn Parrish didn't even try on Monday, playing along with CBC-TV's This Hour Has 22 Minutes by stomping on a George Bush action figure.

Parrish has been outspoken in the past, calling Americans "bastards" and mocking the U.S. plans for a missile defence shield by calling countries that follow the U.S. a "coalition of idiots." ...

Yes, in the world according to Parrish, Australia consists of "idiots".

<< Whitlam, Hawke, Keating were all to the right as is Beazley. >>

"Right?"

Rubbish!

The power-crazed Whitlam, who illegally, unlawfully and un-Constitutionally attempted to maintain his hold on The Lodge despite being denied Supply, the habitual drunkard, Hawke who despite having always been a moderate earner has become enormously and conspicuously wealthy, as has the boorish Bankstown bully-boy, Keating, are all Marxists who simply talked out of the Right sides of their mouths to those too stupid to know they're being lied to and/or too mean spirited and/or greedy to care.

Every one of them willingly and cynically misused the Commonwealth's treaty powers to usurp Australians' individual, local and states' interests. And every one and every other of the labor's gangsters posing as politicians [Witness, eg, Peking's new Peking/Li-owned Labour-party gangster-enriching Cross-City Sydney Tunnel] -- has stronger ties and loyalties to and links among Peking's predatory pack of lying, looting, thieving, mass-murdering gangster bastards than he has to - or even knowledge of - the residents of Abba River, Abbey, Abbeyard, Zeerust, Zetland or Zillmere.

The hapless Beazely, whose lot it was to inherit the wreckage of the feral Labour Party and the detritus of the Australian Constitution left after their opportunistic savaging, raping, ravaging and rooting by the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating gangs, is no less an un-and-anti-Australian ideological socialist - or at least a wannabe one of those - but is also simply inept.

The poor dumb bastard's just a boy in a man's job.

Cultural Marxists, most definitely. Fascisociallists. And as with every other practical "Marxist" from Mao to Pol Pot, Lenin to Stalin, Hu, Ho and Hitler and Jiang and his gang to William Jefferson Billy-Bubba Blythe, scratch any one of them and underneath is just another racketeer. Just another looting lying thieving and as often as not raping and mass-murdering bloody gangster posing as a politician.

Defamation? Surely you jest. Truth is not defamatory. Not even under the tyranny of preemptive libel. And, back to his student days, Hawke's habitual drunkedness is a matter both of his own admission and of public record.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.