Saturday 4 December 2010

The landscape, post-Brumby.

This isn't intended to be a post mortem of the recent Victorian election: there are many reasons, most of which have to do with Labor losing control of the narrative and considering its opponent to be unelectable and thereby a threat. (You'd think we'd have learned that one after the federal election.)

But this is will be an examination of the structural changes facing both parties.  There's big differences between both the LNP and the ALP's standard voter in Victoria and federally, from the halcyon days of Jeff (1992) and John (1996) to Julia, Ted and Tony (2010).  For all the whinging about Labor's problems, the shifting patterns of voters - and the type of voter who tends to 'die in a ditch' to support a particular party has affected the future of LNP, ALP and Greens.  But it's the ALP who is disproportionated affected by the changes.  With an increasingly divided electorate, the growth in consumer lifestyles and a corresponding trend in education, health, and social justice being viewed as 'lifestyle concerns' for those middle class types who can afford them, the ALP is finding itself increasingly and cleverly wedged by both the LNP and Greens, reduced to a bolted-on primary vote of 35% - and even that I'd imagine would reduce in time.

After all, there are still 25%-30% of voters willing to give their primary support to the ALP in QLD and NSW, no matter the state parties' problems there, so we can possibly consider that to be a 'low water mark' that the ALP should watch out for.  With the recent federal election and Victorian election giving an ALP primary vote in the high 30s, we have to start considering if this is the new norm - and why this might be so.

This post continues on from my pre-election analysis of the split in the Left between the ALP and the Greens (which can be found here), recasting and emphasising some of the points, and raising a few new ones.  I don't think it should be a shock to anyone who is really engaged with politics, but I do find it odd the amount of self-denial there appears to be among the ALP over the appeal of the Greens, in the Greens over how limited their appeal is, and over the state of the Lib-Green voter.  I'll also try and respond to some of the criticism I got on that post and through Twitter - I have a lot of Greens friends!

The thing I think we can take away from the Bailleu victory, and the four successive Howard victories, is how the rise of consumerist culture has broken a lot of the traditional political affiliations. We can see through Howard's loss in 2007 that your average voter and family doesn't want basic rights at work taken away, but with the fracturing of employment security being taken as normal, and the understanding by Gen Y that they'll have how-ever-many different careers in their lives, the value of unionism has plummeted.  It's not really about what benefits the workplace gets, as what benefits you individually get, and we react as a united front against evil management types or workplace deregulation only if the attack on the group is seen as an attack on the individual.  In other words, "I don't really care that they screwed over Employee X, but I worry it means they can screw over me, too."

Education, like good health and social values, is increasingly being seen as a utilitarian pursuit.  As a former teacher, I was very conscious that over the past decade it's become far less about 'What Will Help You Be a Better and More Well Rounded Individual' and 'What Will Help You Fit In and Get A Job.'  English Curriculum in Victoria speaks about how the student should better understand the structure of society so they can better fit in and achieve; ten years ago the curriculum talked about how the student should better understand the structure of society because that way they can critique/rework it for the betterment of everyone.  That's a pretty big jump.

In some ways, I think that's because we're victims of our own success.  In an increasingly affluent society in which your job is relatively safe, secure and stable (and employers held to standards by government and regulators), we can afford to think about the short-term.  About the new car, new house, better suburb, kids going to a private school, nice clothes, etc.  If we lose our jobs, it's shitty, but hopefully they'll be something else out there, and well, what did we expect?  Capitalism isn't supposed to be nice to people, is it?  The previous core base of the ALP's support, the working and industrial 'class' are those people in factory or manufacturing or industry work (mining, forrestry) where organised labour and class struggles decades ago mean they don't have to worry about work fatalies or being abjectly used.  The growth of the service industry and of lower-level management positions has also swollen the ranks of those who may previously have supported the ALP for job projection and regulation, but now with their growing affluence, and a lifestyle in which they are judged based on wealth and possessions, they increasingly opt for the short-term advocate of their financial gain.

Tje LNP has been brilliant at that under John Howard and now Tony Abbott, and under Ted Baillieu at a state level.  Suburban voters might like gays to be married cos it's fairer, and they might want environmental issues, but when push comes to shove it isn't a priority.  As a group who are largely up to their eyeballs in debt trying to sustain a certain middle-class lifestyle that's no longer about the quality education or connections but is about the house, plasma TV and the location of the house and kids' school, they'll plump for whoever can give them the best deal on stamp duty concessions, cost-of-living increases, etc etc.  And that's perfectly understandable - if your priority is basic government services and just keeping your head above financial flooding, there's little room to be thinking of the gays or the refugees or the environmental movement.  That's doubly so when the LNP wield the threat of systemic change like a cudgel: if we settle all the refugees, won't they take all YOUR jobs, and won't all YOUR taxes be used to take care of them rather than allow for tax cuts/rebates/transport?  If they're all concerned about the gay marriage, why aren't they fixing your suburbs/planning/hospitals?  If they give everything to the Greens, won't all the factories and industries shut down and everyone lose their jobs?  WON'T NAZIS AGAIN RIDE ON DINOSAURS?

Fear and insecurity is a great tool to use, and appealing to the hip pocket nerve is a guaranteed victory.  The problem around social issues, and the big systemic changes that both the ALP and Greens tend to advocate these days is that they are forging into the unknown.  We don't know how moving to a low-carbon economy will affect costs of living and job security; we don't know what accepting more refugees may do to already stretched social services (which isn't a reason to NOT do so, but we have to admit that if we are going to settle more boat people as we should, we have an obligation to make sure they get good counselling/mental health support/English language education/job skills/etc); and we can't even sell people on the benefits of the NBN because most of them involve changing the paradigm more than the first telephone did.

Just how the goalposts have shifted is something the ALP Right is very aware of, which is keen to talk about 'bread and butter' issues like job creation, economic management and low government debt.  The Right often derides the Left for trying to pander on environmental and socially progressive issues, as often those socially conscious voters are seen as bolted on Green or even Liberal, who may never vote Labor.  (See the washup post-Brumby amongst the Victorian Right, which sees social policy and environmental issues as opposed by working families who want trend conservatively, economically speaking, and therefore fall increasingly into the LNP camp.)  To the ALP Right, appealing to the inner city set is self-defeating: they either want you to go further cos they support the Greens or although they are socially progressive, as many inner city voters are, they are also Liberal and distrust ALP connection with government waste and union thuggery.

But there's a flip side to that: traditional voting patterns are shifting, and even as the ALP vote fractures between the 'working family' mob for whom low taxes and middle-class welfare are priority and the higher-educated, progressive type who is swerving to the Greens, the LNP vote has also shifted in turn.  More and more inner city voters trust to a lack of Government regulation and free market principles (Lib), but yet believe due to their social circles and their education in social equality and environmental action.  Just as there's a growing hub of Leftists in the ALP who are going Green, there's a swelling group of small-l Liberals who dislike the current trend towards authoratative conservative fundamentalism. They'd never vote Labor - that way lies union dominance, crap governance and waste - but at some point like those of us on the Left they'll be ask to consider their priorities - economy versus environment.  At that point things will get interesting.

I do think that the Greens will hit a 'high point' of 20% of the vote though, barring some ecological catastrophe which wakes the populace up.  This is not to say most voters are stupid, easily led or trapped in some sort of class consciousness.  It's just that increasingly both ALP and LNP have to appeal to short-term outcomes - and in doing so, long term policy and systemic concerns such as infrastructure, transport and the environment gets pushed off the political radar, or is seen as a 'barrier' to getting quick action on tax cuts, home prices, cost of living, etc.  The reason why the Greens will hit 20%-ish and not go up is because essentially the Greens ask most voters to take a giant step into the unknown by making huge systemic alternations to the current state of the economy, education system, career path, style of living and infrastructure.  They are the sorts of changes which can be a bit scary, and certainly it's why the LNP and the ALP Right tends to play the 'But the Greens will end up making you pay more in power bills!!!11' card.  As said above, though, the fear works: and I doubt more than one fifth of voters have the capacity, education and upper middle class income to not think about themselves and their immediate short term prospects.  As a upper middle class wanker, I can afford to think long-term, and also to support hitherto unparalleled changes to the Australian economy - no matter how many factory workers it puts out of a job.  As I've said before, a green economy with decently paying and secure environmentally derived jobs can't just spring up over night.  As a member of the ALP Left, I'm torn about action on climate change, because it's the largely limited-educated outer suburban types, the workers that the ALP was created to help advocate on behalf of, who will get fucked over by progressive change.

Now, if the 'wet' wing of the Liberal Party somehow rose again, then at least we could get something happening...maybe not with the moral certainty and bravado of the Greens' advocacy, but it would least remove the issue from being 'Greenies vs Normal People With Threatened Jobs.'

So the great lesson from the Brumby result is that voters increasingly care about short-term capability in Government, in 'wins' on the board, and disdain anything seen as too radical and unsettling.  Make sure the voter knows what they'll get from you, and you'll probably romp home.

Which is why we're pretty stuffed, really....

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Purpose of the Postings.

So hey, now the first post is up, I should say a few things:

I'm a former academic and current public servant.  I've also been a teacher and educator.  I have an interest in good public policy that promotes social equality, but mostly, I really just appreciate competence.

This blog will feature sporadic musings on the nature of Australian politics and policy making, culture, queer issues (I'm a gay) and the inside of political culture as well (I'm a member of the ALP Left, with a ton of Greens friends.)

The words do not constitute any official statement b the Australian Public Service, the Government of the day, the Australian Labor Party or any affiliated organisation or union, or any academic institution, body or association I have worked for, undertaken research on behalf of, or been published by.

It's not easy being Greened.

One of the most important rivalries in modern Australian politics is between the ALP and the Greens.  It is a tussle for the socially progressive values of inner-city and well-educated voters, the mindset of those suburban and regional voters who wish to do an unspecified 'more' about the environment, and the protest vote contingent who previously embraced the Australian Democrats or Independents due to disgust at the two major parties.

Certainly it is a rivalry that has come into the spotlight following the collapse of the ALP primary vote federally and the disaffection of many of those progressive voters as they have swung firmly, and possibly permanently, behind the Greens.  With the election campaign for the Victorian State Election almost done, Gillard's embrace of the Greens federally left sticky questions for both the state ALP and LNP to resolve - which the LNP did by backing its base in choosing to preference the Greens last.

The unabashed vitriol by many on the ALP towards the Greens, and vice versa, often takes the uninitiated by surprise.  After all, we're all dodgy intellectual touchy-feely inner-suburban Lefties, and we both hate the LNP - why can't we just get along.  Certainly as a relatively new ALP member (Disclosure: I'm a member of the Left faction), I was astounded to hear the ways in which ALP members and Greens members talked about each other.  In addition, as a gay bloke and yet an ALP Left member, my Greens friends often saw me as deluded, self-harming, or abjectly pathetic - the gay who supports the homophobes.

Issues of same-sex marriage aside, my discussions with friends from both parties have made me think a lot about this breach in the Left vote, the future implications, and what it says about the state of politics in Australia.

Short answer: It's a breach that can't be healed.  The ALP will continue to slowly lose voters to the Greens, with the Greens vote solidifying around the 15-20% mark.

Longer answer: As an ALP member, I'm very used to critiques of the Greens.  "It's just a protest vote," used to be the catch-cry, or "It's a one-issue party."  "No-one there is serious about government,"is the current trope, with the Greens tendency towards big sky, uncosted, world-changing thinking an indication that they're not ready to be serious about governance and compromise like the rest of the Left. Certainly both the ALP Left and Right views the ideological purity and conviction of the Greens with a certain faint distaste, the way we look at relatives who've gotten all evangelical and ask if we've brought Jesus Christ into our life as our personal lord and saviour.

The initial belief was that the progressive voters who voted Greens will eventually wake up, realise you can't remake the capitalist world in an election, recognise that the choices the Greens demand of the electorate are impossible, and go back to supporting the responsible adults (ALP) in the Leftist room.  Now as the Green vote seems to be not only surging, but solidifying at a low water mark of 15% and thereby dangerously fracturing the Left vote, ALP criticisms have become more shrill.  There's accusations of delusions, wilful and deliberate, of an active fantasy on the Greens behalf, of a disengagement from the real world and the necessity of forming government in a country where 40% of the electorate is probably bolted on LNP.

There's some value to those criticisms - the Greens are more ideologically devoted than the ALP, less willing to compromise on core issues and therefore 'get less wins on the board.'  At both a federal and state level (as seen most recently in the Victorian campaign), the Greens prefer to map out end points and political directions, but aren't as concerned with the nitty gritty of implementation and funding as say, the ALP and LNP.

But those tendencies are exactly why they appeal to a core of progressive voters looking for inspiration and principled politics.  The Greens might not spell out the funding needed to transition to a green economy, or to properly support public education, but who really cares?  A century ago the emerging Labour movement was accused of reckless economic vandalism because it wanted to support jobs, education and organised workers, and eventually provide universal healthcare - all of which would come at a cost, frequently a cost that couldn't be calculated in the terms of the day.  Because the Labour movement was talking about changing the world in which the worker lived; and that's hard to put a realistic price on.

In a similar way, the Greens' appeal is because that put principle above pragmatism, and their adherence to key issues demonstrates to their supporters a convinction, values-imbued politics.  The ETS may not have gotten up, but to Greens supporters it shouldn't have.  To Greens voters, the fossil fuel industries are essentially long-term serial killers, from a practical and moral viewpoint.  After all, they know they are slowly destroying the environment and seem to be pretty much continuing to do so.  Sure, there's improvements in fossil fuel tech, but they are still polluting - killing say, one species a decade isn't really an improvement on killing five.  The Government's ETS from a moral viewpoint then was equivalent to having a tradeoff with a murderer, paying them to kill less people.  As such, it couldn't be countenanced morally or ethically.  That the ALp tried to do a deal with the dodgy fossil fuel industry is to a more committed environmental voter an indication of the ALP's complicity, that the ALP's hands are dirty and they don't deserve primary votes due to their abandonment of ethics.

Of course, the ALP would say it's getting the job done as best it can - and certainly it is.  But muddying through and winning a victory at almost any cost to get runs on the board isn't what inspires people.  That's probably what over time has cut the 'wet' faction in the LNP down - the more conservative members could be counted on to get out the vote and support an increasingly conservative parliamentary party, because an unwillingness to compromise is seen as principled and strong.

So by that benchmark, Julia Gillard is trying to be Malcolm Turnbull - and Bob Brown is the left's equivalent to Tony Abbott (although a lot more principled and actually knows his shit.)  But the centre doesn't hold when there's an appealing movement for values voters to go to, as the bolstering of the LNP under 'unelectable far right Catholic monk dude' Tony.

The ALP knows this, deep down - and doesn't know what to do about it.  It can cry all it wants about pragmatism, but to a good third of its primary vote, pragmatism looks like giving up, and it also weakens the general message of what the ALP stands for.  The ALP, because of its history, can't lurch to the Left on environmental and social issues.  It's the bloody Labor party, not the Greens.  It was created to promote the cause of working labour, the sort that now is found in manufacturing, power generation, mining, logging and industry - the sorts of working lower class and middle class voters who are too consumed with short and medium-term concerns like 'living' and 'paying the mortgage' to worry about the planet in 50 years time.  The ALP's focus has to be on short and medium term outcomes, because its base and its principles (which it still has, trust you me) emerged out of concern for those sorts of workers who generally get screwed over by big business, globalisation - oh, and environmental concerns.

The Greens are right to take a longer view - if we have no planet in 75 years it doesn't matter if no-one has a job.  But the ALP has to take the shorter-term view, because that's what it's there for.  Even in the ALP Left, there's a lot of angst about the sort of environmental action and policy the Greens would like to put in practice, because it would decimate the working class suburban poor.  Those members of society who have lower educational attainment and can't easily 'transition' to some mythical low-carbon economy when those jobs magically spout out of nowhere with all that funding for training the Greens can't be bothered adding up.  ALP Left meetings on climate change are fraught with 'Yeah, but this motion on addressing climate change needs to emphasise that the working poor must be supported and not left out of pocket due to industrial change.'

So imagine the Right's response to the Greens, considering the strong industrial union power base of the ALP Right.

Labor's priority is workers; always has been.  If we give that up, we have nothing left.  Since the 1980s it's been problematic to articulate it, because largely the ALP bought into a centrist economic agenda under Hawke and Keating and now hasn't got Keating's nous or smarts in distinguishing itself.  The Greens sprang up in the 1990s as the ALP gave in during the Howard years on social issues (gays, indigenous disadvantage, multiculturalism, the environment) and as a result, the Greens have a broad appeal on such issues, whereas the ALP is terrified it might be accused of being an elitist bastard like Keating and fights all its arguments on the LNP's terms (and therefore loses.)

With the structural split between a socially progressive left that imbues gay marriage and environmental action with a moral impetus, and the ALP which has to continue to engage and protect industrial labour for its own moral reasons, it's tricky to see how the ALP can ever regain a broad hold over the Left vote. To agree with the Greens on environmental issues would be to damn its base to entrenched economic dislocation; to continue to forge pragmatic environmental policy which supports manufacturing/power production/mining/etc looks to the environmental left as a sell out, and a demonstration of why the ALP can't be trusted.  As well, due to economic and work stress, the core ALP voter wants the bloody party to help make sure they have a job and can afford the mortgage, not piss about voting for gay marriage.

As a gay bloke I'd rather they did, but I recognise that my social justice agenda might not square off with someone who's got four kids, a mortgage, a partner with gambling or health issues and the likelihood of being laid off because they make it cheaper in China or it pollutes too much.

The ALP and the Greens represent two entirely antithetical branches of the Left, for all their forced common cause.  The 'wet' Libs already met their match in John Howard, the Nationals got assimilated, and the Country Party only exists in Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter these days.

If Julia and Kevin are lucky, they might be remembered in the future as the more progressive ALP leaders, a la Malcolm Fraser is seen compared to Howard and Abbott these days.  For all the smoke and fury coming out of the Left these days about its ability to influence the new paradigm ALP, the core Greens voter won't trust the ALP even if it does agree to gay marriage.  That's the problem.  The moral, values-based politics of the Greens left means that they look at the ALP on refugees, on gay marriage and on the ETS and see the ALP as unprincipled, ethically defunct.  The ALP has blood on its hands, and why the hell would you return to the fold when you think that?  So the ALP Left will make noise, try some things, maybe score a few points on gay marriage - but the cynicism which Greens supporters view the ALP will not fade, and more on the progressive Left will come to realise that the ALP because it works through the current political paradigm is not able to free its from its assumptions and change the world.

Meanwhile, the ALP Right has given an indication of how it might address the Greens vote in the longer term - in Victoria, Fiona Richardson is facing down the Greens threat in her state electorate by bucking the tide.  In other Greens' targeted seats, the ALP is talking up its environmental cred and sending the members to Equal Love rallies.  But you can't beat the Greens on their own turf, in the same way you can't beat the LNP in arguements about the 'debt'.  You have to change the discourse.  So Fiona, very smart member of the Victorian Right, is campaigning on 'traditional Labour values' - the cost of living, support for industry and workers, and basic services like health and education, as well as local issues.  She is saying very loudly that the Greens agenda is irresponsible and will harm the working classes-

And if it works (and it probably will), you'll find the educated middle class squaring off against the organised working class, as one attempts to plan for an unknown future, and the other just wants security for today.

And long-term, the LNP will be very, very happy.