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August 24, 2010
A recent editorial in The Australian --Nation sends a message to its political class--- calls for a renewal of politics based on its standard talking point of equating minority governments with uncertainty and instability. How then does The Australian understand and conceptutalize the new politics?
Like others it understands the new politics in terms of a tectonic shock to the two party system. It says:
the election has delivered a severe shock to the predominantly two-party system that has served the nation well since federation. In itself, the breaking down of rusted-on, tribal voting patterns of the past is no bad thing. A modern, technically savvy and more politically literate nation is always going to question the old verities. But both major parties are paying the price of underestimating voters and for taking their loyalty for granted.
Most commentators agree on that. What then, given the emergence of the three country Independents, the big electoral shift to The Greens, and the refusal of both major parties to acknowledge and accept that ''good economic management'' also means devising the best way to tackle climate change?
The Australian's editorial is crystal clear and direct as to what the 3 Independents must do in the national interest:
It would be tempting for the three independents from regional areas to enter a Dutch auction or to allow past bitterness with the Nationals to sway their judgment. They must act purely in the interests of their voters, who have overwhelmingly rejected Labor. All other things being equal, common sense, not to mention the national interest in stable government, would lead them to back Mr Abbott.
That is clear. Labor must be tossed out of office. The Coalition, which represents authenticity, understands Australians much better than both the dysfunctional Labor machine men and the urban elites who have lost touch with the world beyond the inner cities.
This sounds like the old politics to me. The Australian's message is clear: Power is within the reach of the Coalition and Blue Australia must rule. The implication is that the Coalition's task is to cement power in 2013 or earlier, thereby consigning Labor's 2007-2010 government to a mere interlude across two decades of conservative rule. That is how things should be and the role of the 3 country Independents is to ensure that.
What of Labor then? What does it do when the Coalition entrenched in power for a decade or more. Well, The Australian has a clear message for Labor.
Labor's political class has paid a high price for losing touch with its heartland. The hemorrhaging of votes from both ends of the party is now confirmed and creates a Waterloo moment for Labor. It is being pushed to the Left by its Green wing but its future rests with its capacity to move more comprehensively to the centre-right inhabited by the new, aspirational, often self-employed enterprise class that wants competent service delivery, a tax system that rewards hard work, and a government that maintains a light touch over their lives.
Labor must move to the centre-right and so isolate the Greens. What is needed from Labor in The Australian's version of the "new politics" is to block the formation of a pro-climate action balance of power in both houses of parliament that would see progress on climate policy.
The Australian's scenario implies the Coalition has shifted even further to the Right, if Blue Australia is to rule the nation for another decade or more. So how are the conservative's going to fracture the left-of-centre Coalition (ALP + Greens) that is in formation to ensure that the ALP moves to the right-of-centre?
Update
The Australian has another go in sorting out its understanding of the new politics in its ALP has no reason to lurch Left. It says:
The ALP vote fractured in favour of the Greens on Labor's far Left, not on the mainstream centre-right. Were Labor to lurch to the Left, its would alienate its middle Australian base, courting electoral disaster. It would surrender the mainstream centre of politics to Tony Abbott, whose leadership saw the Coalition make major inroads on Saturday among the former Howard battlers, who later became Kevin Rudd's working families. Labor has nothing to gain by wasting political capital wooing Greens voters. Under Australia's compulsory preferential voting system, the ALP gains the lion's share of Greens preferences anyway.
The Greens will implode just like One Nation and the Democrats:
The Greens will not survive as a political third force if they stray from the values of their voters and must occupy the ground between the major parties...In the long run, the Greens will not capitalise on their "doctors' wives" base in some of Australia's most prosperous electorates by clinging to tomato Left economics, pursuing policies to increase taxes, reintroduce death duties and ban uranium mining and new coalmines.
So Labor would be foolish to overreact by lurching to the Left at the expense of vacating the centre ground.
Update 2
Guy Rundle in Crikey observes that with this election the political question has come to the fore after it had been taken over, and submerged, by economics since the 1970s. He says:
The political question who leads, how and through what institutions has barely been regarded as political at all, or cynically manipulated, as in Howard's handling of the Republic debate. ...What's happened in this election is that the process of parliamentary electoral politics which is minimally democratic and the party-based politics of interests, which isn't democratic in the slightest, have come into contradiction, in a situation where the system usually silently serves the interests. The profound cynicism and mild fear of the commentariat have caused them to back the interests against the system.
The mere process over the last three days has made visible the invisible structures of power, and their potential (if not straightforward) transformability. The political apparatus has been put into question by the regional independents whilst the business-as-usual Canberra Press Gallery is trying to play catchup.
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Would you expect different of the reactionary press? The Oz typically, is about obscuring the human cost of neoliberal extortion and misappropriation.
The mining industry will no longer pay rent for social infrastructure and there is the clawback on social infrastructure to be anticipated, also.
The notion of sustainability is the maimed corpse they want to bury, hence the return to strict neolibealism.
Bligh, for one, has heeded the call, arrogantly announcing just days after a diastrous election based on neoliberalism, that Queensland will perservere with its discredited privatisation push, despite the damage this bad faith has done to the country and to labor.