Class, privilege, ideology

Ideology is often overlooked in Australian politics, with debates as to the “good society” abandoned in favour of the obsession with teams critiqued by Aly. There are exceptions: earlier this year, Joe Hockey made a speech to the Grattan Institute in which he defined the Liberals as “the only political party … established to advance the cause of liberty”. In keeping with Hockey’s reputation as a moderate, he emphasised “environmental sustainability”, stressed the appropriateness of the sunset clause for the more “draconian elements” of Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation, and critiqued Western Australia’s proposed “stop and search laws”.

Central to the speech was a critique of the expansion of government. The Shadow Treasurer contrasted the Liberals’ focus on the “power of the individual” with a “philosopher kings” model in which citizens are ruled by “people who believe they know what’s best for us”. The speech is silent, however, on the increasingly powerful corporate sector: implicitly, the State alone is seen as a threat to liberty.

More troublingly, Hockey’s speech rings hollow in light of Abbott’s recent promise of a return to harsher policies on asylum seekers, a move described by retiring Liberal MP Petro Georgiou as the reopening of a “dark chapter in our history”.

The sidelining of moderates such as Malcolm Turnbull and the departure of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser from the Liberal Party suggests that the Party’s ethos contrasts with Hockey’s emphasis on “genuine freedom”. The kind of liberty cherished by the Liberals seems restricted to the removal of regulations; “freedom in the workplace”; and the inalienable right to profit from non-renewable resources. We are all, it seems, to be liberated from “red tape” except those desperate people who arrive on boats and whose fate it is to be mired in bureaucracy and excluded from the free-thinking nation Hockey celebrates.

For a system in which voters often complain about the need to choose between “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”, the 2010 election sees an unusually clear delineation of “teams”. This election will challenge the received wisdom that Australians generally give governments a second term; or that (as tested in 1998) a government proposing a “great big new tax” will necessarily fail. At a deeper level, the contest is likely to bring long-muted questions of class, privilege and ideology to the fore.