Is Labor the least worst?

No one should be very surprised, because Liberal Party philosophy is clear: it does not acknowledge egalitarian values. There is no recognition, either in principles set out in its constitution, or in the summary of ‘beliefs’ posted on the official website, of any general principle of fairness.

This is strange and puzzling. It is as if, because ideals of freedom and fairness often compete, they must be seen as incompatible, such that a fair society must sacrifice the freedom to live a life of value and dignity. It means the party supports fairness if there are clear social benefits, as in equal access to education, but not out of concern for those who suffer through no fault of their own; it is a means to ends rather than an end in itself.

By contrast, at the heart of egalitarian theory is the idea that each member of a political community has equal value, such that the community has a duty to treat all citizens with equal concern for their interests and equal respect for themselves as individuals. It does not dictate equal treatment, because in many cases this will be unfair, but it does mean discrimination must be justified consistently with this idea of equal worth.

The inability of the Liberal Party to accept this simple idea is exacerbated by a doctrine of unity which requires elected members to commit themselves to policies they may neither understand nor agree with, on serious moral issues posed by the apology, Iraq War, same-sex marriage and the use of poker machines. It meant the Party could support an apology as soon as Brendan Nelson replaced John Howard - it had no more moral consequence than a change of hair-style.

This is dishonest as well as opportunistic because all members of Parliament know morality is not a matter of counting votes or political expedience; it is, in the end, about the requirement of shared community values, whose interpretation and comparative importance will always be a matter for discussion and debate.

What our values require is also as much an affair of the heart as the mind: we test our political judgments against our moral intuition and we confirm our intuition by reason. We often rely, as elsewhere in the social sciences, on a method some philosophers have described as a process of ‘reflective equilibrium’, seen in the idea that we learn about ourselves by studying others, and about others by studying ourselves.

With no deep commitment to fairness, Hockey could not see the insult and with no coherent political theory, he saw no need to justify the discrimination. Does anyone seriously doubt that, if Tony Abbott were replaced by Malcolm Turnbull and this in time saw a change of Liberal policy, Joe Hockey would not be the last member of the Party to change his mind on same sex marriage? And is the position of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard really any better?