Group think politics: while the bemused look on ...

A good education sets up Australia’s children for a rewarding life, while helping us to build a high productivity, high participation economy that can give all Australians the opportunity of rewarding and satisfying work.

Why did Julia Gillard say something which was a self-evident truth and blindly obvious to everyone? It was because she wants us to associate her with good thoughts. Then immediately after being softened up by the good thoughts we get the rubbish - her education policies.

Let’s go back to the morning of June 24, 2010. Within seconds of facing the nation as prime minister, and with cameras and microphones waiting, Gillard’s spin was launched. With shoulders back and chest forward, she stood ramrod straight at the lectern and looked out at her audience with the stony expression of a born commander. “I stand for government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

She was invoking a line which was said on a bloody battlefield when the future of a great nation was at its most historic turning point. Mercifully, Gillard did not finish off with Abraham Lincoln’s: “shall not perish from the face of the Earth.” That would have been a bit too much theatre for anybody to take.

The objective of the politicians currently campaigning in this country is to either appease or make anxious a general population which is so self-absorbed as to be almost disconnected from the planet.

How disconnected?

Just one example:

In this country we pay about $1.80 a tonne for unpolluted drinking grade water. A speculated price “slug” of 20 per cent on our water bill was recently an issue for the tabloids.

In Nepal I watched a woman carry on her head a 10 litre metal bottle of polluted water up a long and very steep hill to her family. That was their supply until she does the trip again the next day. The average annual income for an Australian is 320 times more than it is for an average Nepalese.

And yet we were informed that “ordinary” Australians are to be victims of another arrogant and heartless grab at their money. That’s the intellectual level of the readership that the media sells its message to and the intellectual level of the electorate Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are attempting to sell their messages to.

A two-pronged strategy

The strategy is two-pronged. One prong is to keep claiming that the other side is in chaos. This is done over and over during the term of government so as to elicit a conditioned response - just as Dr Pavlov did to his dogs. That continues through the campaigning. The other is introduced into the campaigning. This is to paint a glowing picture of what life will be under the government of the party being spruiked.

The public-at-large does not ask why Julia Gillard’s policies on such basics as health and education, which are plainly so good, were not implemented many months ago. They don’t deduce that a policy grabbed out of the air only days before an election is the fantasy required for the occasion.

One would think that election promises would have lost all credibility long ago. But the promises flow-on at election time because our politicians are aware of the size of the electorate’s radius of vision. And the whole business of the media is also built on an awareness of the average person’s radius of vision.

Whoever controls the collective consciousness - is simply in control

Sitting at the same dinner table with Kerry Packer and with fidgeting hands and a nervous grin was an Australian prime minister. The disdain on Packer’s face in the presence of the groveling by this person who was supposed to be in the nation’s top job had to be admired.

Then there is the king of tabloid radio, Alan Jones, who Chris Masters in Jonestown claims has the power to turn wimpy the most haughty prime minister.

The Packer and Murdoch dynasties know that the average person’s grasp of the world is built on symbols rather than ideas. Such a mind can be taken by a tabloid to where it wants to take it. By exploiting our primal tribalism, the modern mass media is able to take the group-think it has created and make it into a spectator sport. By exploiting the natural fascination we have for celebrities, the media is also able to take another group-think it has created to spectator politics.

Politics is a type of soap opera. Rather than lovers betraying lovers, political animals betray political animals. Gillard and her grasping colleagues disposed of Kevin Rudd and it is she who is now facing the unlikely benefactor of another coup. Gillard sneered at Tony Abbott: “Game on!”

The banal banter on such programs as Q&A almost becomes tabloid television. Q&A generates the delusion in the audience that they are informed and engaged in the direction the country is heading. Many religiously watch interviews of politicians conducted by Kerrie O’Brien and Laurie Oakes - even though the interviewees have never delivered anything but rhetoric into a living room.

On July 17, Gillard announced the date of the election. The show was on the road and it reached its ludicrous pinnacle on July 25. The timing of the debate had to be clear of MasterChef’s timeslot: a program apparently too crucial to our culture for any debate on the fate of the nation to risk competing with. As in all previous political debates, the participants said nothing of substance and could only be judged on style.

Conclusion

On the night of August 21, millions of eyes will be glued to the telecast of the tally room. And when the results come through the champagne corks will pop as if the gate to Utopia has been opened.

The bemused will look on knowing that in the great scheme of things it does not matter one iota what party wins an election. The bemused looking on can write the script for the next three years. It will be the same old story; the government will twiddle with the knobs and then get a shock when the system fails to respond as expected. After all, the same senior public servants will be still there oiling the machines they like the look of and putting sand in the machines they don’t.

So, after the election, life will drift on as always. The general public vastly overestimates the influence of government and vastly underestimates the power of drift generated by the combined activities of 22 million people. Whatever the current situation in any public service or social situation, it is the equilibrium point of forces coming from so many directions as to be beyond any political party’s understanding.

Our one chance of lifting the game is to replace the National History Curriculum (which is now compulsory up to year 10) with one that is written by people who can see a much bigger picture of human behaviour than the “big” picture that our education ministers and education departments imagine they see.