The New Politics - An Australian Story
By Mark Latham

How to Address the Malaise in Australian Democracy

With a new century and a new millennium just years away, a great deal of attention is likely to turn to the challenges facing our society and its system of governance. It is interesting to reflect on how this process was handled at the end of the 1800s. The American historian, Arthur Schlesinger, has recorded how:

It is difficult to replicate this optimism in Australia in 1998. Our democracy has never seemed weaker – riddled with public distrust and cynicism and the politics of populism.

The three pillars of progress in Australian society this century – market economics, technological advances and the nation's integration with the rest of the world – everywhere appear to be under question and even abuse.

The decency of our society is also under pressure – not just from the politics of downwards envy, but from the loss of social capital and trust. Public mutuality has given way to a scramble for scarce public entitlements, plus a public bidding war on law and order.

Our national debate now focuses more on the demonisation of change – whether through so-called economic rationalism, political correctness or information elites – than the necessary reform of public policy. If not by rational thought and the power of information and reason, how else can a nation address its problems?

The difficulty with the populist genie is that, once allowed out of its bottle, it takes a very long time to overcome its impact on the political system. This is because the populist appeal is always pitched at the worst fears and prejudices of human nature.

The recent experience in Australian politics has shown how policies aimed at economic isolationism simply reflect the flip-side of social racism. Each encourages Australians to think poorly of people from other countries and believe that we would be better off locked away from the rest of the world. Yet our national interests unquestionably lie in pursuing for Australia the benefits that arise from the international exchange of goods, services, ideas and culture.

The New Politics

The most worrying aspect of our political system is the way in which the public appears to have lost its faith in the capacity of governments and parliaments to solve problems. Politicians now need to regain the trust and confidence of the electorate before they can even begin to persuade people of the merit of their policy ideas. The core tasks of public life have become doubly difficult: with our leaders first needing to comprehend the complex economic and social changes of recent decades; and then needing to overcome the public's scepticism about the capacity of the democratic process to produce real solutions.

These frustrations have led to speculation about the need for a new type of politics. The Australian pollster, Rod Cameron, for instance, has spoken of the 'feminisation' of party politics. Social democrats like Tony Blair have tried to stake out a 'new radical centre.' Across the political spectrum, faith in the old ideologies of governance appears to be eroding. This has become an era of voter de-alignment – a time in which party loyalties are weakening and citizens are seeking out new sources of political identity.

The global mobility of investment and steady march of economic restructuring, for instance, has given rise to a political divide between economic nationalists and economic internationalists. So too, the advent of an information-rich society has provided a more diverse set of social values and aspirations. In political terms, this represents a contrast between voters who see themselves as part of a cosmopolitan global village and those who still look inwards on insecure, working class communities. To take Australia's geography, it might be understood as Paddington versus Ipswich.

We have moved well past a simple binary system of politics. We have moved towards multiple points of political identity and interest. While people might still position themselves along the old Left/Right spectrum, they are now just as likely to take a position as either economic nationalists or internationalists; as conservatives or progressives in their social values; plus seek to redefine their political identity amid the widening spread of life's responsibilities. The Secretary of the Queensland Branch of the ALP, Mike Kaiser, expressed it well recently when he described modern politics as like a Rubik's cube.

This process has led to the fragmentation of traditional party structures and interests. In New Zealand, for instance, it has broken the two-party system into four distinct groupings. Dr Kanishka Jayasuriya from Murdoch University has identified a similar pattern in Australia. In the Australian Financial Review (15 June 1998) he outlined a new politics based on 'attitudes towards social and economic modernisation,' as follows:

I subscribe, of course, to this last approach: the belief that a rejuvenated social democratic project can reconcile economic internationalisation with the basis of a good and fair society. (See Latham 1998b for an outline of this new radical centre in Australian politics.)

The Acceleration of History

Australia, as with each of the Western nations, is experiencing the acceleration of history. Whereas the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were absorbed over several generations, the information age seems to have arrived in just one generation.

We now live in a world with far fewer economic boundaries and limits on the transfer of information. Global companies have the capacity to produce things anywhere and sell them everywhere. The communications revolution has allowed ideas, information services and cultural values to move seamlessly across national boundaries.

In response, governments of all kinds have found it difficult to keep pace with the acceleration of economic and social change. The institutional making of public policy has fallen well behind the pace of change. Accordingly, politicians are left to respond more to specific events (especially those that make the news) than long term trends. This problem is aggravated by the short term nature of the electoral cycle.

Electoral politics, particularly in economic policy, now follows a pattern of global action and local reaction. The tension between global capital and nation-based politics has made the tasks of government more complex. While competition policies and other micro reforms may assist with international competitiveness and benefits for consumers, they are also intensely unsettling for producer interests.

Interests on the production side of the economy – such as business groups, farmers and trade unions – tend to be better organised politically, more vocal and more visible than the dispersed interests of consumers. Moreover, the electronic media – with their reliance on conflict as a form of popular entertainment – tend to give greater attention to those interests disadvantaged by economic restructuring than the many citizens advantaged by the change process.

A significant number of politicians have come to resemble boundary riders: vainly trying to patch up the integrity of national borders against the growing flow of international exchanges in trade, investment, information and cultural property. Increasingly, however, these politicians face the problem of having to make a sensible policy distinction between the interests of national and international capital, plus national and international culture. More and more, as the distinction can not be made, their policies have taken on a populist dimension – appealing more to nostalgia than reason; more to economic nationalism than rationalism.

More than ever, our political leaders need to think laterally and strategically about public policy and administration. In a world with fewer boundaries and limits, the big picture can never be big enough.

The Australian Legacy

The Australian political system is not coping well with the challenges of internationalisation. The Hawke and Keating Governments, while not without their shortcomings, made outstanding progress in opening up the economy and discarding the last remnants of the post-Federation settlement. The dismantling of tariff walls, deregulation of the financial system, significant industrial relations reform, product market rationalisation and expansion of the education and training systems aimed to not only make the economy more competitive, but to fundamentally change its culture.

Recent events have shown, however, that this needed to be much more than a 13 year project. Changing the economic culture of a nation like Australia – with its century-long relationship of dependency between business and government – is a task in perpetuity. As soon as the government allows one part of the corporate sector to avoid the market-based discipline of competition, every other industry can legitimately seek similar treatment.

In this fashion, the political momentum has lurched back towards the old Australian way. That is, an expectation that governments will eventually buckle under the weight of special pleading – that subsidies and protection will be made available to secure profits, thereby allowing firms to avoid the need for product innovation, workplace upgrading and export expansion. The Howard Government has again demonstrated one of the iron laws of public life – policy vacuums are inevitably filled. In Australia's case, this assisted the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party.

The Hanson agenda represents a revival of the Australian cultural habits of sameness – the idea that all Australians should look the same (once expressed through the White Australia policy), have the same economic opportunities (via tariff protection) and be treated the same way by government (irrespective of their starting point in socio-economic status). Even though Hanson uses the rhetoric of small business entrepreneurialism, the economics of sameness relies heavily on the practices of state paternalism. That is, the use of business welfare as a response to the incidence of business failure.

The greatest impediment to the growth in the Australian economy lies not in the quantity of government interventions, but the quality of corporate management. The long term pattern of corporate dependency on the public sector, combined with Australia's weak stock of social capital, has produced a risk-averse corporate culture. Notwithstanding the delusions of many politicians in their capacity to mould or even remake the market, the key to economic progress lies in entrepreneurialism and innovation. Dogs bark, markets rely on risk-taking.

This was why the reform direction of the Hawke and Keating Governments was so important. It kept the pressure on the private sector to meet the challenges of open competition by continually upgrading its products, services and management skills. The recent easing of reform pressures has severely set back the promotion of a risk-positive culture in the Australian economy.

The other major legacy of the post-Federation settlement lies in the way in which Australia has under-valued the importance of education. Our nation can no longer afford to assume that economic growth primarily comes out of the ground – from mining, agriculture and property development. In the new, information-based economy, wealth is generated more from knowledge and the quality of a nation's education system. Throughout the Western world, jobs relying on repetition and muscle power are disappearing. They are being replaced by industries and employment reliant on creativity and the processing of information.

This highlights the need for all parties and politicians to give greater emphasis to the value of education investments and reform. Indeed, national sovereignty is now best expressed through the skills and insights of the nation's people. The only long term answer to the challenges of globalisation and economic insecurity lies in preparing people for change – helping them develop new workplace skills, helping them to understand the nature of social change, helping them to view the change process more as an opportunity than a threat. This identifies the central failing of the Howard Government – it never talks about the possibilities of the future; it seems uninterested in helping people prepare for the inevitability of economic and social change.

The Crisis in Democracy

The end of the Cold War confirmed the economic virtues of capitalism – if not as the end of history, then certainly an historical end to state socialism. It also confirmed the political virtues of a free society. For the first time in human history, more people live under democracy than dictatorship. Yet this triumph has brought with it a worrying paradox: while democracy has spread across the globe, its standing in most Western nations appears to have weakened.

The modern system of representative democracy is being eroded from two sides. As the sphere of capital has shifted to the global arena, so too has political power. Part of the sovereignty of the nation state has moved towards supra-national forms of governance, such as the European Union, NAFTA and APEC.

This upward shift has been complemented by demands for a more direct and participatory type of democracy within nations, regions and municipalities. This is part of the backlash against sectional interest group politics – the widespread public feeling that only organised groups and 'peak' bodies have access to the decision-making processes of central government. In Australia, the policies of the major parties are yet to shift from the conventional representative model of democracy to direct, participatory forums.

These two trends – the loss of national sovereignty and centralisation of political decision making – have diminished the electorate's faith in the theory and practice of democracy. Many citizens feel that their input to the democratic process has become futile.

This sense of disenfranchisement has been heightened by the inadequacies of modern political communication. A large gap has emerged between the skills required for effective policy making and the skills needed to successfully convey information in politics. As political issues have become more complex and social problems more entrenched, the popular method of political communication has become more temporary and artificial.

This is a product of the way in which the focus of public debate has moved progressively from the parliament to the airwaves. In most respects, we have become an electronic democracy. Complex issues like globalisation and the changing nature of production, work and social institutions are being dealt with through seven-second TV grabs and the simplicity of talkback radio. Australian politics suffers for the way in which most politicians have given up on explaining things to the electorate and instead simply joined the culture of complaint. It is locked into a frustrating cycle of inadequate information, political opportunism, broken promises, public cynicism and apathy.

Ironically, this mass disillusionment with politics has taken place at a time when political messages predominantly represent a recycling of opinion poll messages. This is, in fact, a form of direct democracy, albeit flawed in its motivation and practice. It reflects the way in which political leaders use the findings of sophisticated opinion polling to mould their own communication with the electorate. Election campaigns have come to represent a contest between the major parties in telling the public what they think the public wants to hear.

This, in turn, has created a paradox of its own. The more the electorate hears from its politicians the things that they themselves have already told the pollsters, the more cynical they seem to become about the political process. Most likely, the public has been able to sense the insincerity of it all: the way in which politicians talk about leadership and principle when, in fact, their methodology is to simply follow public opinion.

Some Answers

Irrespective of party politics, Australia's parliamentarians have no more urgent task than to address the crisis in democracy. The worsening cycle of electoral manipulation and public distrust needs to be broken. Otherwise our politics will continue to deteriorate into the worst aspects of sectional pleading and populist ranting. It is simply not possible to deal with dynamic issues like globalisation and the information revolution without structural reform to the institutions by which our democracy makes and communicates public policy. Economic and social restructuring must give rise to political restructuring.

This agenda for change needs to turn the following ideas into practice:

Now a whole new framework for political life is needed. A framework can be built only by imagination and perseverance. It requires looking less at focus groups and exit polls and more at the nation's and the world's problems. Above all, it requires that individuals, political parties and public institutions develop the fortitude to hold fast to new convictions, even in the face of initial unpopularity and rejection. If no serious proposals are put forward, the voters' choices lose their meaning and public opinion turns to mush (Schell 1996).

 

I believe the Australian electorate is ready for this approach. It has grown sceptical of the elaborate tricks of machine politics and modern campaigning – slick advertising, spin doctoring, staged managed events, intensive opinion polling, marginal seat manipulation and the buying off of sectional interests. The new politics needs to discard the techniques of coalition-building and rhetorical positioning. It needs to deal much more in solutions than images, even if this means abandoning the conventional wisdom and promoting radical policies.

Public appeal across all parts of the electorate is more likely to be found in the politics of conviction and problem-solving. Recent experience in Australian politics has thrown forward some interesting examples of how politicians can win support – not necessarily by the content of their beliefs – but because they have them. A significant proportion of the electorate has been able to see through the artificiality of modern politics, and is now prepared to reward leaders with convictions and punish those without genuine beliefs.

2. The upward shift of power to supra-national forums needs to be balanced by the devolution of other aspects of social and political power. This is a logical response to the process of globalisation. It ensures that just as people are able to identify with the benefits of international citizenship, they are able to find new forms of participation and identity in their local, regional and national citizenship.

Part V of Civilising Global Capital (Latham 1998a) sets out proposals for the devolution of health and welfare entitlements to self-governing associations at a community level. These measures in social policy need to be supplemented by the devolution of political power. The potential of the information revolution needs to be harnessed as a way of giving citizens direct input into the decisions of government. Interactive forms of information technology can be used to efficiently conduct public plebiscites on any number of local, regional and national issues.

Ongoing improvements to the level of education and information access inevitably add to the public's demand for direct political participation. An information-rich citizenry needs to be accommodated by a participation-rich polity. In the old politics, the doctrine of the separation of powers concentrated on the relative responsibilities of the executive, the parliament and the judiciary. The new politics will need to define a fourth head of power – those issues and outcomes determined directly by the people. The health of our democracy now depends on the growth and success of direct democracy.

3. Measures are required to improve the information flow between politicians and the public. This highlights the importance of civics education, not just in schools but all parts of society. The citizenry's enjoyment of democratic rights needs to be matched by the responsibility we all hold for understanding the processes of governance and our participation in them.

This is where lifelong learning has a critical role to play. Citizens should be expected – perhaps even obliged – to participate in adult and community education programs which foster a better understanding of democracy and government. In the Scandinavian nations, for instance, this is achieved through the 'learning circles' approach to civics. Unfortunately, Australian public policy has given little weight to the social responsibilities of a strong democracy.

4. Australia's tendency to under-value and under-invest in education has also weakened the level of civic participation. Surveys in the United States have shown that a person's access and use of information is likely to correspond with their faith in democracy and civil society. A 1997 study of 'connected citizens' – that is, regular users of electronic information delivery – found that:

 

They are knowledgeable, tolerant, civic minded and radically committed to change, plus profoundly optimistic about the future. They are convinced that technology is a force for good and that our free market economy functions as a powerful engine of progress. They are highly participatory in society and view our existing political system positively. They believe in democracy, drawing their political values heavily from humanism and social tolerance. Moreover, they are the first generation to truly embrace diversity as a healthy, positive aspect of American life (Katz 1997).

The information age holds hope for the revival of democracy. An information-rich population is likely to be both prosperous and participatory. In the new economy, the more people learn, the more they earn. So too, the more they learn, the greater their commitment to democratic values and social tolerance. Investments in education now stand as the one public policy with the capacity to deliver both economic efficiency and social cohesiveness.

5. The reform of democracy needs to have regard for broader issues of social trust. The distrust of politicians is yet another sign of Australia's weak stock of social capital. Australia carries the characteristics of a low-trust nation, both in civil society and the system of governance. The rebuilding of social trust requires the devolution of social policy. People need to be able to find things to do in common, thereby helping to build the habits of public mutuality and trust. The various forums of lifelong learning – especially adult and community education – have an important role to play in this process.

Policies aimed at social capital also bring into question the usefulness of positive discrimination programs. These measures are based on special categories, quotas and funding for citizens according to their personal characteristics (such as gender and ethnic background). Difficulties arise, however, from the way in which these programs encourage people to rely on a single source of identity for their citizenship.

In the new politics of multiple points of identity and citizenship, positive discrimination is often interpreted as a form of tribalism, especially among those people excluded from its benefits. This resentment is generally associated with a part of the electorate described as 'angry white males.' Tribalism of this kind is very damaging to the level of social trust and cohesion. Despite their good intentions, positive discrimination programs now create more harm than good in the public arena.

6. Finally, reforms are needed to enhance the existing institutions of parliamentary democracy. The artificiality of question time and second reading procedures in the parliament need to be replaced by a more genuine, interactive type of debate. Consideration also needs to be given to a loosening of Australia's excessively rigid party system. Party disciplines have been allowed to smother the sincerity and performance of the parliament as a deliberative forum.

Once effective forums of parliamentary debate and public participation have been established, other reforms need to concentrate on helping national governments to actually govern. The Federal Parliament, with its short electoral cycle and hung Senate chamber, has run into the problem of legislative gridlock. This impedes the capacity of governments to rebuild a tradition of problem-solving in public policy, and thereby restore the public's faith in parliamentary democracy.

References

Katz, Jon 1997, 'The Digital Citizen,' Wired, December.

Latham, Mark 1998a, Civilising Global Capital, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

Latham, Mark 1998b, 'The New Radical Centre,' paper presented to the Sydney Institute, 29 April.

Schell, Jonathon 1996, Atlantic Monthly, August.

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Mark Latham is the federal member for Werriwa in New South Wales. A longer version of this paper was presented to a board meeting of the Centre for Independent Studies at Moss Vale in August 1998.

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