One Discontented Nation "A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded." Abraham Lincoln "I am the most afraid of the weakest reasonings, because they discover the strongest passions." Edmund Burke In Australia in 1998 there have been two elections of great importance for our future (Apologies to Tasmania, but yours is not one of them). The first was the Queensland state election and the second was the recent federal election. Queensland’s election was important not because of its great influence over the direction of the country as a whole, but because it saw the ascension of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. That election signalled in a concrete political sense, just in case no one had yet noticed, that a major group of people were, in the cities as well as in the bush, thoroughly disillusioned with the status quo. The election of 11 One Nation parliamentarians represented the first time in Australia since 1901 that many electors have, in a lower house election, voted for a rebel party with virtually no political experience (and probably the most inarticulate political leader since Clau-Clau-Claudius), against the established alternatives with their decades long heritage and records. The reaction was generally: Left-wing bleeding-heart: The people are revolting. Right-wing dry: Yes, I know. Actually, the Establishment response to One Nation is remarkably similar to the Establishment’s response to the rise of the Labor Party in the 1890s. As Judith Brett, author of Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, writes: "[In the 1890s and 1900s] scorn was poured on the cloth-capped heads of those ill-educated, poorly spoken men, inexperienced in handling quantities of money greater than the weekly wage packet or occasional race track win, who were presuming to challenge the power of those trained in the skills and art of government, who thought that ordinary people should be able to govern as well as be governed. Labor’s legitimacy as a political party was challenged and, just like One Nation, it too was accused of bringing conflict, division and hatred into the heart of the national government, of turning Australian against Australian, worker against boss, neighbour against neighbour. In the end, the ALP forced a realignment of political forces . . ." The federal election was important because of more than just tax reform. The results show two things. The most obvious is that One Nation achieved but one seat in the Parliament, a senator from Queensland. This is the result of both major parties using the compulsory preference system directly against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which simultaneously lowered the vote PHON could expect and removed it as an election issue, and of performances by PHON members in Queensland’s parliament that spanned the whole spectrum of imbecility. But while One Nation may be diminished, the discontent it sprang from remains. Almost 20 percent of Australian voters put a minor party at the head of their ballot paper – the highest amount since 1934 at the height of the Great Depression. The Liberal Party achieved its worst primary result since 1972. The swing against our government was larger than that which delivered Paul Keating his well deserved humbling in 1996. Luckily for us, the swing occurred in seats that were not marginal. The resistable rise of One Nation and of minor parties and independents generally is not just a dagger aimed at the heart of genus politcianus. It is also a vote for a fundamental change of policy direction. After all, if it was primarily an anti-politician vote, what did we – the politicians – do to create this huge chasm between the people and their elected representatives? Some say it is politicians’ lies and broken promises, others that it is their perquisites or the bipartisanship on some policies. Perhaps. The public support for the Howard Government after the 1996 Budget shows that, with cause, the public will understand breaking a promise it would be unwise to keep. Meanwhile, the travel rorts and conflict of interest sagas began after Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech. And there has been bipartisanship many times before in our history without thoroughgoing disillusionment – interventionism, unionism, Empire, White Australia and postwar migration all had cross-party support. More importantly they also had popular support. This through and through cynicism is the result of 15 years of effort by the leadership of the major parties’ to put their policy visions into practice. It is the result of those leaderships breaching a fundamental faith of democratic government – the faith that those with power will wield it in the public interest. The bleeding of this artery of democratic governance has directly contributed to the discontent with the major parties and the endurance of minor-party politics. That endurance comes from three main areas of public policy where the bleeding has been most severe. *** Multiculturalism is the most divisive public policy issue since Vietnam. Since the early 1980s, few issues have stirred deeper passions, for and against, or created more controversies than this. (Unfortunately, multiculturalism is one of the few things Malcolm Fraser actually did in office and it’s a shame to criticise the action of a man more properly criticised for inaction.) The purpose of an immigration program is to strengthen the welcoming nation with the talents, skills and other qualities of the immigrants. To succeed it must be supported by the broad mass of the people, into whose community the immigrants will move. The immigration policy following World War II succeeded in this regard, whatever we think of its moral flaws and the hardships New Australians endured then. It succeeded because the Australian people - not just the parties - believed it was necessary for the nation’s good. More people were needed if the nation was to be defended or if the economy was to expand. This is despite the fact that, except for a time during the 1960s, Australians have usually said there are too many migrants. Yet there was never then such division and incendiary debates over immigration as there have been since 1984. Why? One-eyed fools see the change as a ‘retreat from tolerance’. But this is to assume that ordinary people’s minds are as inconstant as the political climate and will follow the intellectual wanderings of their elite’s wheresoever they go. That just isn’t so. Two factors forced this attitude change. Until the mid-1970s, Australia’s economy could generally provide a job for anyone who wanted one. By the 1980s that was no longer true and it remains so today. At economic times such as these, Australia has traditionally slashed, if not stopped, immigration. During the Great Depression, more people left Australia than came in. This was not out of hatred or fear or a desire to scapegoat – most of the migrants then were from the UK or "Home" as we called it then. What Geoffrey Blainey said in 1984 was as true of the 1930s as it is true today: "the unemployment in the cities, more than any other factor, causes the present unease about the increasing rate of . . . immigration". Secondly, the actual policy changed to multiculturalism. Actually, this is more accurately a post-settlement policy for immigrants rather than an immigration program itself, however the latter has been swallowed by the rhetoric of the former and so far all intents and purposes they are the same thing. Essentially multiculturalism is about easing the entry of immigrants to Australia by providing government support services. Yet unscrupulous, narrow-minded politicians who wanted a faithful bloc of votes hijacked it. These politicians also encouraged ethnic leaders to use their communities as political chess pieces. Multiculturalism illustrates the high importance of perception and language in democratic politics. Though it was not the policy’s intention, multiculturalism is now a byword for special favour and ethnic separatism in a nation proud of its long heritage of equality and unity. The ALP government tried to rescue this policy by defining its dimensions and limits, which may be summarised as the right to be treated as an individual and the duty of allegiance that Australian citizenship contains. However this was done in 1989, years after the policy had achieved popular infamy and begun to destroy Australian public life. And while the Australian people more and more opposed the policy, the multiculturalists first, last and only line of defence was to divide the nation into Us and Them. As with all elites whose policy was not founded in the public interest, they could not be legitimately criticised. They were shocked that someone might disagree with their a priori truths and the policies that flowed from them. Their response to criticism, like all elite’s without popular legitimacy, was to "discourage, even to frighten off the questioner, by implying that he is uninformed, inaccurate, superficial and, invariably, overexcited", as John Ralston Saul said. Their only means of persuading people to give support for multiculturalism was to convince enough influential people that those against it were The Enemy. Racists and neo-Nazis. A retarded minority with a sinister agenda to purge Australia of its mixed bloodlines and kebab shops. They turned it into an ideology of many nations within our continent and to shore up their shaky position presented it not as practical policy but as a stark moral choice. The choice was between their Multiculturalism and White Australia. Nothing in between. Multiculturalism was Right. If there was still lingering "racism" it was because there was not enough multiculturalism. If people complained then it just meant to a multiculturalist "We need to do more". Never was it entertained that ordinary people, who probably do not have university educations, might have difficulty seeing the benefits of multiculturalism through the army of unemployed at the local CES. Or that the ability to choose between an Italian, Thai or Chinese dinner on a given night (on those nights when they can afford to go out) outweighs having university graduates flipping meat patties for the first five years of their working life. Immigration probably does help job growth. But the people didn’t hear that. Would you keep listening to someone after they had just called you racist swine? Neither would the people. *** Aboriginal affairs suffer much the same problem. The 1967 referendum demonstrated the eagerness of Australians to do right by our indigenous population and that eagerness remains today. No one denies that Aborigines have serious problems. The only difference of opinion is over how the nation’s helping hand might best be extended. The advocates of one method of helping – welfare, special rights, international abasement for Australia and professional victimhood – wore their "enlightenment", "tolerance" and "generosity" on their sleeve. This served to shame more discreet and modest people into following, or rather acquiesce in, their lead, lest they be seen as ignoble, selfish and worst of all racist for not ‘supporting’ Aborigines 110 percent. The word racist has suffered, through overuse and abuse, from inflation. It originally applied only to people who ranked from high to low humans of different colours and ancestries. Since the 1980s in Australia its meaning and application has grown. Once again an elite whose policy did not coincide with the common good retreated to division, stereotyping and delegitimising their critics to preserve their position and advance their agenda. Anyone who questioned the integrity of ATSIC or the worthiness of its policies was racist. Thus it came to pass that when a new minister in 1996 sought to audit the expenditure of public monies by the indigenous organisation he was labeled ‘racist’ and the apparent leaders of the Aboriginal people vowed they might boycott the 2000 Olympic Games if this sort of ‘discrimination’ continued. With the inflation of the number of racists out there, the adjective became, like inflated money, worthless. Its moral strength has been sapped by relentless exploitation. Now that millions of Australians are ‘racist’, those people who really are racist according to the old definition are more difficult to define and the people are more receptive to their arguments. But the word racist is not the only part of our vocabulary that has had its meaning expanded and its force diluted. The apologists for this current system of Aboriginal affairs ape the language of equality yet defend policies that that spirit opposes. For example, Noel Pearson - surely one of the most intelligent and erudite Aboriginal spokespeople right now – has said: "My frustration has been that we just can’t seem to penetrate with the idea that any racial discrimination is obscene [My italics - JBK]. You wouldn’t dare pass a special Act that takes away the property rights of Jewish Australians or Italian Australians, and there would be a horrendous outcry if there [were] a Cambodian refugee property acquisition act". Even though Pearson is assuming that before 1992 there actually were property rights in Australian law determined by race and ethnicity, what he says is very admirable. He goes on to say that if the 10-Point-Plan is passed "[we] will return to fantasies of separatism and that kind of social separatism will one day translate into a political movement that I dare not contemplate, [one] not interested in conducting itself within the parameters of the rule of law". Pearson’s acknowledgment that official separatism will eventually lead to political separatism is perceptive and again welcome. Yet in the same article (Weekend Australian, 8-9.11.1997, p. 26) - and presumably at the same interview - Pearson declares unequivocally: "You would have to be absolute racist scum to be contemplating returning to racial discrimination at this stage of our history". He doesn’t seem to see the gulf between his horror at "any" racial discrimination and the existence of such things as ATSIC and native title. Or that separatism is what he is defending, not attacking. Or that the 10-Point-Plan lessens the amount of racial discrimination and separatism that existed under the old native title act. Or that there is more governmental discrimination and separatism now than 10 years ago. Certainly some amount of collectivism – which inherently means discrimination between races - is required in indigenous policy given the Aborigines’ unique status in Australian society. But this should be openly recognised and used sparingly. Collectivism should not be equated with equality and colour-blind policy. Perhaps this demonstrates why indigenous people face such difficulty achieving justice in tandem with the rest of the Australian people – the confusion not only we but they also have between their leaders’ goals and their rhetoric. And so, faced with mounting popular criticism, the nominal leaders of the indigenous people frightened off questioning with torrents of indignant, righteous rage and condemned the uninformed, inaccurate, superficial, overexcited and racist people who dared question their raison d’état. It never occurred to the indigenous leaders that ordinary Australians, who usually have not had a higher education, might be amazed to discover that equality is synonymous with rights, government agencies and benefits specific to Aborigines. Or that they might question the worth of spending $16 billion dollars since 1986 on indigenous welfare if the beneficiaries seem only to be a select group at the top while the rest are possibly even worse off than before. Australians are a generous people and will give assistance if it actually does good according to standards they believe in. Their generosity – both spiritual and material – will fade if they believe they are helping only a small group while simultaneously that small group attacks them for not extending their hand far enough. *** The third cut across the artery of the democratic faith that the powerful will act for the common weal is the Liberal Party leadership’s own favourite – economic rationalism. Whereas the last two lacerations listed above the Liberal Party opposed the Labor government too little, with economic rationalism we supported them too enthusiastically. This now prevents us from preserving the popular dominance we gained over the ALP in 1996. Economic rationalism is an ideology in the classic sense of the word. Like Marxism it presents a general scheme of human improvement that will work for all people in all societies. This general scheme revolves around an omniscient, omnipotent free market (or rather, society’s operation must be a constant open struggle). Like all such ideologies, it ignores the peculiarities of local history and local social tradition and enforces a uniform method of social organisation. This method is neither based on practical experience nor respective of current local circumstances, which as Edmund Burke declared "render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind". Like Marxism economic rationalism looks on individual men and women as abstract economic units. Although the latter is slightly more complex than the former because under economic rationalism individuals are factors of production and of consumption. Just as Marxism relied on self-sacrifice in every sector of a human’s life, so economic rationalism depends on, praises and encourages ravenous self-indulgence, irrespective of social obligation and long term prudence. It ignores individuals’ very real role as citizens in society. "There is no such thing as society" might just as easily been said by Mao or Lenin as by Thatcher. Speaking of Lenin, he did say that Bolsheviks recognise as morality only that behaviour that helps them impress their abstract economic theory on the world; anything that hinders it is immoral. The same could be said by any safe, orthodox graduate of an economics course today (or to be blunt, any safe, orthodox member of the Liberal Party too). Other considerations – human considerations, designed by and for civil society – must, at best, be tolerated, but preferably minimised. Economic rationalism is, also like Marxism, historically and economically determinist. Human action is powerless to stop, slow or otherwise affect this inevitable flow of history. Just as Marxist history is an ineluctable progress from a master-slave society to a communist one, so rationalist history ends, inevitably, in a deregulated and open world-spanning economy. But this is to deform economics from a practical discipline about a particular aspect of human behaviour into Revelation. As if God said "Let there be light, earth, water, a free market and now I’ll create Man". Humans invented the market as a mechanism to serve our needs and wants. Therefore to present economics as having one true shape, to which we humans and our societies must conform, is not just an assault on human dignity but also pernicious intellectual trickery that denies the central idea of Western civilisation. That idea is that we can affect our own destinies. Not in spite of circumstances or in isolation from them, but we can do something. Presenting globalisation as an irresistible force of history also quashes open debate about the measures needed to adapt to it by denying an ability to reasonably resist it. Marxism and economic rationalism should not be compared too much. Marxism is a one-line ideology: for any problem the answer is Socialisation. Economic rationalism, as an ideology for consumer choice, has three lines: for any problem in society, either privatise it, deregulate it or open it up to international competition. All three at once is preferable. Once that is done new vistas of hitherto unseen production, prosperity and employment will in theory result. But that is where economic rationalism fails, because it succeeds only in theory. The propeller-hats at the Chicago School – the high priests of neo-classical economics – test their theories on abstract mathematical models of perfect competition as if that was a basis for making realistic policy. And what is worse the actual policy-makers treat the models as if they were realistic policy recommendations. It is understandable then if policy-makers consider the fact that a company makes a profit, employs hundreds of people and efficiently manufactures goods for Australia less important than the question of whether it can compete internationally. Or the fact that our overseas competitors use ‘unfair’ trade practices is not as important as our conforming to neo-classical orthodoxy. The recession of the early 1990s was the direct result of rationalist thinking. After the ALP came to power in 1983 the foreign debt ballooned. When the debt reached over $100 billion Keating finally decided to do something. When Menzies was in a similar situation, he intervened in the economy, fixing the problem surgically and effectively. But government controls are Wrong according to rationalists. So what did Keating do? He did the rational thing and used the market’s mechanisms against itself. He reduced demand across the economy by raising interest rates, thereby eventually slowing the growth of foreign debt. But he also threw the rest of Australia into recession. The only reason we had to have it was because Treasurer Keating was an economic rationalist. Not that the alternative government offered much hope. In 1991 Hawke announced an accelerated timetable eliminating tariffs by 2000. Robert Manne says it best: Will not future generations find it bewildering the actions of a government which was prepared, during a foreign-debt induced recession, to lift the barriers to imports, or find astonishing the fact that the chief criticism of the opposition concerned the failure of the government to dismantle protection swiftly enough? We have already seen that we will not have to wait another generation before bewilderment sets in. Faced with little popular support, the rationalists divided the nation into Us and Them. As with all elites whose policy was not founded in the public interest, they could not be legitimately criticised. They were shocked that someone might disagree with their a priori truths and the policies that flowed from them. They responded to criticism of putting all our eggs in the market basket by discouraging, even frightening off questioners, implying they were uninformed, inaccurate, superficial and, invariably, overexcited. It should be remembered the first and, before the Queensland election, only time our federal leader criticised Pauline Hanson was not about racism but protectionism. Their only means of persuading people to give support for rationalism was to convince enough people that those against were The Enemies of the Nation. A clique of interests with a sinister agenda to rid Australia of its unbounded prosperity and who don’t care about putting thousands of people on the dole queues at a go. The rationalists turned the debate into a question of principle. They debased two types of economic policy – free marketeering and protectionism – from practical tools of government that if applied with balance and good sense can benefit the nation, into free-standing religions and presented it as a choice between Good and Evil. There was no alternative. Australia is either one or the other and the elite knew which one was right. If the people still didn’t support the rationalists it only meant, "We need to do more". Never could they conceive that ordinary people, who probably do not have university educations, might have considerable difficulty recognising the benefits of economic rationalism through the legions of unemployed wandering Australia’s cities and towns. Or that sacking thousands of people at a time in relentless privatisations and deregulations actually helps reduce unemployment. A free market has benefits while also serious drawbacks, just as a totally protected, regulated economy does. The alternatives should be applied with balance, common sense and for the good of all society. Criticism should be treated as legitimate and answered with persuasion and facts, not indignant passion. After all, in a democracy the people are the ultimate source of political authority, so the people ought be treated as anyone with such high stature would be. *** The good of society as a whole must be the end of all politics. If policy is treated as a practical tool for securing the common good rather than as a religion - to question which is to blaspheme - then our public life will be opened up to serious participation, and the people would welcome their elected community leaders, not shun them as an enemy. The rise of One Nation is the shout of the people to their leaders that their opinion and interest must be given more than triennial formal recognition. If Pauline Hanson’s statements seem outrageous to the elite and their supporters it is because destroying shibboleths is never a neat, polite sport. Public opinion is not so uninformed or parochial that it will ignore its best interest if that interest is put with a desire to persuade and govern, not dominate and rule. Thomas Jefferson divided all humans into two parties. For too long Australia has been governed by the first party who, "fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes". It is high time we in the Liberal Party return to our popular roots and offer candidates of Jefferson’s second party who "identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests." by Justin Kerr