Australia’s political winners and losers of a year of uncertainty

As 2017 began with the resignation of a Cabinet Minister, you would have been forgiven for thinking that might have been a defining moment of the political year. Forgiven, but wrong all the same. 2017 revealed more of how the titanic changes of 2016 will continue to unfold — for example Trump’s presidency really is proceeding much like his idiosyncratic campaign.

Yet, while the import of many events remains unknown, some clear winners and losers emerge.

While many have been critical of the postal plebiscite, and for good reasons, same sex marriage is now legal in Australia. While many people deserve — and have rightfully received — credit for this, no resolution would have been reached this year without courageous action by Liberals such as Senator Dean Smith, Tim Wilson and National Director of Liberals and Nationals for Yes, Andrew Bragg.

In today’s transient political culture, where tomorrow’s government promises to sweep away the actions of today’s, enduring change is rare.

Another winner — paradoxically, given the scrutiny it faced — was the High Court of Australia. When confronted with a number of deeply tricky decisions with severe political outcomes, in the marriage equality and citizenship cases, the Court came to thoroughly defendable conclusions based on legally sound reasoning.

Particularly, it must have been tempting for them to read down Section 44, resolve the rapidly escalating citizenship crisis, and effectively remove the Court from centre stage. Yet they gave effect to the clear meaning of the words “subject or citizen”.

Of course, given the nature of politics, there were many more losers than winners this year.

First and foremost were the mob dubbed ‘the Citizenship Seven’, though their ranks have swollen so rapidly that at some point early next year it may be quicker to name MPs who haven’t been the subject of Section 44 issues than those who have.

That some have subsequently been re-elected in no way detracts from the fact that a sizable minority of those who write our nation’s law gave so little thought to the rules that they were evicted from Parliament.

In truth, it is the citizen taxpayer who is the loser here.

Perhaps it is this perpetual status as loser that occasionally makes the ordinary citizen irrationally lash out at a couple of favourite targets … and boy oh boy, did the banks cop it in 2017. Politicians on both sides were lining up with steel-toed boots: new taxes, restrictive codes of conduct, public shamings — all culminated in a royal commission.

Now as we all know, disparaging the boot is a bootable offense. But it’s not at all clear that the public will benefit from this process, however cathartic it may seem.

Nor is the trend towards greater use of royal commissions, and star chambers like ICAC, a positive one. The wielders of righteous fury have ever sought to abrogate natural justice — after all they claim if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear — yet time and time again this has proved to be a vehicle for injustice.

We should not be so quick to abandon the protections against tyranny developed over hundreds of years. As it has famously been put “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Of course, given the merry-go-round of political leaders in recent years, Turnbull and Shorten might well be thinking eternal vigilance is the price of leadership. After all, neither could be said to have had an unequivocally good year.

Until the end of the year, Shorten would have comfortably felt a clear winner. Yet in quick succession he was made to appear two-faced on the citizenship issue, lost a Senator in Sam Dastyari and then underperformed in the Bennelong despite the recruitment of a star candidate in Kristina Keneally. Labor maintains a sizeable lead in Newspoll but Shorten himself isn’t popular and polls mean less this far out from the election.

Turnbull didn’t have a great year but in many respects finished on a high — history is more likely to remember him as the Prime Minister who delivered marriage equality than to remember the circumstances in which it happened. And Bennelong was another reminder that polls aren’t everything.

While the volatility in the current political environment makes predicting the political future a mug’s game, it seems clear at least that the current uncertainty will continue into 2018. The citizenship issue is far from played out, the ideological cracks on both sides of politics are more likely to widen than shrink and the global landscape is hardly a bedrock of stability. In such circumstances we can only wish each other a merry Christmas and hope for a happy new year.

Simon Cowan is Research Manager at the Centre for Independent Studies.