The politics we deserve

The Nationals, who still have something like a mass membership, have maintained some sort of connection with their members and thus their constituency. However, the structural changes in the national economy (read: globalisation) has them fatally weakened in coalition, their parliamentarians caving in on issue after issue.

The Democrats, who were specifically devised to mediate between the major parties, made an attempt to ensure input by the general membership, but this eventually failed as the federal leaders made their various grabs for power. The Democrats quickly turned into a rabble, which showed the limits of the Democrats model of accountability.

The Greens have “grass roots politics” as a pillar concept, and consensus as a methodological core. These are nice ideas, and if they work they can promote inclusivity, activism and accountability. They can also give undue power to idiots and the ill-informed, who clog up the process with stupid or self-serving obsessions and drive the doers to distraction. The Greens, now on the rise, have a tricky time ahead dealing with this internal issue.

Ultimately the best protection against media influence is to not have media specialists and to discourage personality cults. The best defence against rampant factionalism is to devalue secrecy through open communications. The best way of devaluing careerism is to promote according to demonstrated ability through fair process.

These things - politics as a collective activity aimed at openly arrived at and accepted goals - directly contravene current political practice. The result is a growing perception among the public that politics itself is corrupt and pointless, which provides further justification for the political opportunists.

This sense of despair of course suits the Liberals, who represent the entrenched structural powers happy to see minimal political activity - they can just get on with doing what they want with little or no oversight. And it does not seem to bother the Labor mechanics either, who are in it for the personal power and the money.

So it is just too bad that appalling Indigenous health, harsh immigration detention, environmental decline, and so on, go unchecked, while a global environmental and energy crisis looms. Maybe we do get the politics we deserve, in which case we are in big trouble indeed.

Mark Latham has come and likely gone as a political figure, but his strange journey shed light on the shadowy contours of our political culture. In his own way, albeit not without a certain amount of self-justification, he tried to tell us what he experienced. We can either take note and demand something better, or we do indeed deserve what is coming to us.