Politics for a Facebook world

As our hung-parliament hangover looks set to continue across the next several weeks, the question begs to be asked: how did it come to this?

On election day we weren't even being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. There really was no significant difference between the two major parties on key issues, including those that had previously proven to be election winners.

A checklist of both the Labor and Liberal Parties’ policies looked something like this:

• Offshore processing of asylum seekers and keeping children in detention? Check.
• Complete silence on Indigenous issues? Check.
• Ineffective policies to deal with climate change? Check.
• Potential of both leaders to bring strikebreakers in to settle industrial disputes? Check.
• Opposition to gay marriage? Check.
• Funding for chaplains in state schools? Check.
• Keeping our troops in Afghanistan? Check.

Ultimately the difference appeared to boil down to a mining tax (tick for Labor), disparities between parental leave schemes (tick for the Liberals), and the Internet, where quality, high-speed broadband (tick Labor) had to be weighed up against killing off the Internet filter (tick Liberal).

Australia’s newest antihero, Independent MP Bob Katter, got it right when he described such a political landscape as “a Coles-Woolworths democracy”. Both were selling us the same products, there was just different corporate ownership.

Fitting, then, that in an election where there was no meaningful difference between the two major parties, that there was no meaningful difference between them in the ballot.

This was Australia's first real social networking election, which allowed voters to be active rather than passive participants in consuming the campaign. We tweeted to each other, the politicians tweeted to us, and the #qanda hashtag became a part of our vocabulary.

Political discussions previously limited to dinner parties and BBQs in the suburbs were suddenly transferred onto the gated-community of Facebook, where all our “friends” were invited to join us in dissecting the political issues of the day. We reposted media articles, YouTube parodies and invaded each other’s “statuses” to debate our friends (and theirs) about the merit of the candidates.

In the so-called privacy of our “News Feeds” we said the things that couldn’t really be said in the public sphere. We debated the ethics of voting for Julia Gillard for no other reason than electing Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, and we pointed out that - political rebirths aside - Tony Abbott was still just, well, “creepy”.

People changed their profile pictures to pledge support to a Green vote on election day, while Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama “Hope” image was remixed and reshared to message “Abbott: Nope”.

The Greens must have been gleeful when the ABC refused to release The Gruen Transfer pitch ad, knowing that the public broadcaster had unwittingly guaranteed them a much wider audience (and at no financial cost to the Greens) as we mass shared the ad in a Facebook frenzy on their behalf.

Suddenly advertising political brands in our News Feed was a democratic act, allowing us to self-represent particular political interests in turn.

Because everyone knows that who we are on Facebook isn’t “real”. It’s a collection of individual self-representations, where we construct “profiles” of ourselves to be consumed and commented on by others.

The sad thing is that in an election devoid of any political difference we are left only with the transcendental, which manifests as an apolitical choice equivalent of “liking” one Facebook profile over another.

The homogeneity of the effectively bipartisan policy offerings is much more condemning of the ALP than the Liberal party. Abbott did not betray the history of his party or the principles of conservatism in what he promised the Australian people. He remained loyal to his brand.

But the ALP's continuing step-to-the-right is a massive betrayal of the progressiveness that historical forces tell us they are meant to offer. The only “closing the gap” they’ve been doing is between themselves and the Liberal party, both in policies and - unintentionally, no doubt - votes.

The ALP, it appeared, hoped that Gillard herself would represent the appeal of progressiveness her policies didn't, and this alone would be enough to satisfy voters, or at least distract us. So the Gillard-sign was meant to signify difference and progressiveness relying on her gender, union-lawyer past, atheism, an association with the history of the ALP brand (cue Bob Hawke, stage Left), and ultimately the fact she was not-Abbott. The “real Julia”, it turned out, was nothing more than simulacrum.

Which isn’t her fault alone. She inherited this history of politics-by-symbolism that was part of Rudd’s initial appeal. The uncritical romanticism surrounding Rudd apologising to the Stolen Generations and signing Kyoto has done nothing to improve the lot of our Indigenous population or produce real action on climate change. Important gestures, yes: real politics, no. The ALP sells summits and citizens’ assemblies so we can talk about change, rather than offering change itself.

It’s politics for a Facebook world. And who will ever forget that Rudd - who only months ago was uber celebrity Prime Minister with unprecedented popularity ratings - could be deposed of as quickly and as easily as deleting a Facebook friend.