The Kelly Gang and Australia's public intellectuals

It is easy to see that many of the publications that we come to associate with the Left in Australia pitch towards an audience composed by the inner-city intellectual and artistic classes, both of which are relatively affluent and have a degree of reliance upon funding by the state. They do not have a natural affinity for those of us on the wrong side of the Maribyrnong River. They thereby seek to cultivate a discourse of greater public funding while subtlety ignoring working class issues.

Surely this exclusive obsession with "rights-based" or culture-based politics is responsible for one of the most interesting, yet hardly discussed, features of Australian politics. That is, the Left wing of the ALP has never enjoyed the same level of institutional power as it now does. It played a very important role in bringing Kevin Rudd to the leadership, it boasts a Deputy Prime Minister with real influence, the Minister for Finance is one of the main driving forces in Cabinet. The Minister for Finance surely has greater gravitas than the Treasurer. Yet as the Left has acquired this institutional power, so it has fallen into line with the dominant neo-liberal consensus and the wider consensus on the "Alliance" with the United States. Astute observers might see this as a positive correlation rather than a mere coincidence.

There was a time when the Left of the ALP formed one of the most critical institutions in Australian politics with intimate connections to social movements, providing a means for these movements to influence the parliamentary agenda. Figures such as Jim Cairns and Tom Uren were not only noted political leaders, but also our most prominent public intellectuals. Nobody can really say that about today's Labor Left, which has become a self-perpetuating coalition of sub-factions more interested in acquiring power and dispensing patronage. The only difference between the Left and Right of the ALP is their respective core constituencies.

Although Kelly's continuing obsession with the intelligentsia has some absurd components, it is important to take note that there is an important grain of truth in his observation about some of the narrow concerns of the academic Left. These arise from some of the more dubious features of intellectual culture and the economic interests of the intelligentsia as a social class.