Political impasse

Australia's political system no longer works. Politics is always messy, but the growing irrelevance of the main political parties, the failure of the Greens to find a definite role, and the rise of populist and single issue parties all indicate that national politics is becoming dangerously volatile. The complete failure of this system to properly deal with core structural challenges, such as sustainability generally, the increasingly fragile global geo-political situation, immigration and long term development, indicates that basic changes are needed.

Voting patterns suggest that although the overall dominance of the main parties remains, voters increasingly vote against a party as opposed to for the opposition. Similarly the rise of smaller and single issue parties suggests a growing lack of confidence in the major parties. Our national constitituion says nothing about political parties as such, but diminishing confidence in the major parties must represent a growing questioning of the system itself.

Political parties and the political system they both support and are supported by only ever represent in an approximate way the varied interests of a society. However, a case can be made that Australia's political system and related institutional forms, such as parties and parliaments, have been relatively successful in representing the country's broad socio-economic concerns, given that the realities of democratic politics tend to result in two camps.

In Australia, as in all developed nations, the party political structure was initially based in socio-economic class. In essence, Labor represented the working class and segments of the middle classes, while the Coalition represented the upper class and some of the middle classes. Over the years, what these parties stood for became increasingly clear to all and elections pivoted on swinging voters, mostly elements of the middle class.

For all its faults, most people recognised this situation and what it meant. Although national development occurred in an international context, politics in Australia was driven by Australian issues and had a definite Australian flavour. The main issues were maintaining social stability (including industrial relations and race issues), trade conditions and international relations (especially in relation to Asia, Britain and the US). There was a broad social and political consensus that both sides basically supported.

The big shift came with the spread of neoliberalism in the late 1970s and 1980s. Emerging out of certain European thinkers and then developed in US universities (especially Chicago University) it was further propelled by the then powerful corporate sector, entered into the political mainstream and achieved formal political success with the election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Becoming the accepted doctrine in key Australian institutions, especially some university economics departments and then national and state treasuries, neoliberalism conceptually challenged prevailing political orthodoxy. This was in part because it offered a new way of understanding the manifest challenges represented by the economic, political, social and technological changes collectively known as globalisation.

The Fraser Coalition government encountered pressure from these ideas, especially as championed by then Treasurer John Howard, but Fraser continued to opt for more orthodox nationalist policies. It was the new Hawke Labor government that decided to allow neoliberalism a foothold, albeit one in which working and lower middle class interests were protected to some degree by maintaining a strong union presence, known as the Accord.

Neoliberalism in effect undermined the class positions of both major political parties, and both have spent the subsequent years trying to find a new role even as the now global socio-economic system presented ever more thorny problems. Among these problems was the scientific evidence for global warming, the rise of an ever more comprehensive global finance system, politico-military hegemonic changes (including the end of the Cold War and the rise of China) and mass immigration.

So a major problem has been the decline of our national political system as various global forces have continued to rise in importance. The institutional structures riding the globalisation wave, especially transnational corporations, global finance companies and global media firms, have been increasingly influential in creating change within Australia.

This has been particularly true of mining companies, financial companies (including ratings agencies) and global media interests (especially the Murdoch organisations). These bodies control resources that dwarf national assets, and can set agendas and pursue long term projects in the face of just about any local interests.

At the same time national politics was going through a fundamental shift, in large part due to the relative socio-economic stability of the 50s and 60s, and even into 70s and 80s. Due to the basic agreement that national politics was primarily focused on maintaining certain key indicators (basically, employment rates, interest rates, inflation rates and foreign exchange rates) politics became centred on a few percentage points in each of these areas. This allowed for higher influence by Treasury (now dominated by neoliberal ideology) over other departments, the rise of financial specialists (not to mention lobbyists) in terms of policy-making, and a general narrowing of debate. Within political parties increasingly young (and thus otherwise inexperienced) staffers with understanding of the latest polling capabilities came to prominence.

Neoliberalism seemed to work relatively well in Australia because there was a confluence of some of the important global forces and national political trends which happened to coincide with the rise of rise of China and the associated increase in demand for Australian minerals and energy resources.

Neither major political party gave the electorate any alternative to what was ultimately a classic neo-liberal programme. The policy convergence of the Liberals and Labor eventually squeezed out the always limited Australian Democrats and the rise of wider environmental issues generated the Greens. The Greens soon became a genuine third force but have since stagnated somewhat.

The more recent development is the rise of populist and single issue parties. The most important populist party has been Clive Palmer's organisation, which now holds power in the Senate. This is mostly an Australian version of US populist politics: funded by a billionaire presenting ideological dispersed policies with an overall intent of optimising conditions for certain business interests. This has been matched by the other most prominent proponent of big business in Australia attempting to more directly influence the mass media, that is Gina Reinhart's move into Channel 10.

Notwithstanding Palmer's capacity to generate sometimes quixotic political media attention, these initiatives, which reflect the growing colonisation of Australian politics by American politics, further damage the chances of creating a mature national political landscape.

The power of the emergent political power structure was well illustrated by the collapse of the mining tax and the demise of Kevin Rudd. The mining tax was not really a belated attempt by Labor to recapture some sort of nationalist development initiative but more an attempt by the Treasury to rationalise taxation generally in Australia. Even so, it was easily shot to pieces by mining interests presenting a populist case.

As a result of all these changes Australia no longer has a political system capable of facing the hard issues and developing big solutions. It has gone from a leader to a laggard in dealing with global warming, has no humane answer to the migration problem, and once the mining boom winds down will become a plaything of global financial sharks (although our national energy resources will not depreciate in an increasingly energy-starved world, as long as we can maintain control over them).

What then are the possibilities for the short to medium term? Americanisation, especially as the US 'pivots' militarily against China, may increasingly produce the kind of dysfunctional politics the US currently suffers where rabid partisanship undermines all attempts at meaningful policy change. Or alternatively some overtly global dynamic, such as a UN or G20 centred effort to respond to the emerging environmental crisis, might swamp any real political process in Australia. Both developments would represent a basic loss of national sovereignty.

Perhaps the best option is to try and open up political debate and policy formation within Australia, and here the fragmentation of political parties and voting might help. Within the party system the ALP actually tried to be innovative (but in essence following the lead of the Australian Democrats) by bringing the rank and file into the leader-choosing process. This was then negated by the politicians opting for Shorten when the rank and file had preferred Albanese. It was telling that Shorten was no more than another ALP machine man, while Albanese was one of the last of those who had some principled positions.

But what is really needed is an opening up of the whole process so that politicians and parties no longer feel safe to present a fake image at elections and then do what expediency demands once elected. Of course, it was supposed to be the job of the mass media to maintain communication between the public and the political system, but the established media have utterly abrogated this role in recent decades and a new internet–based media has not yet consolidated itself. Thus far it is too fragmented to play a role in generating an effective information base for ongoing discussion and debate. It is coming, but it needs a capacity to integrate different viewpoints to enable effective policy making.

There are two changes to aim for, at least initially. One is to get more talent into the formal political process. The major parties are replete with hacks seeking nothing than their own promotion and focused on internal party machinations. A refocusing on issues, which small parties can do, should bring in more competent staffers in terms of knowledge of issues.

The second change is to make the whole process more generally accessible. Previously this was difficult to do simply because it took too long to achieve genuine consultation and integrate feedback. Now, the general acceleration in information flows and capacity for instant feedback presents new possibilities. So called e-government has a mixed record, and certainly effective use of new technology is only part of the solution, but if there is serious intention to developing greater participation then we can do a lot better.

If we can't make such changes to the formal system itself, perhaps we could establish a parallel process of discussion to pressure politicians to think more creatively. Perhaps an annual 'people's congress' , a sort of summit of experts and activists, where the big issues are thrashed out and possible alternative policies put forward could be tried. Websites could maintain the discussion so that the summits work towards a consensus. There is increasingly effective software for this sort of thing. The production of a final policy document would provide some discipline, and hopefully elicit a meaningful response from government.

Of course the degree to which this works would ultimately depend on the willingness of more people to participate in a useful way, otherwise any new structures and processes will be taken over by the same old vested interests. The electorate has been switched off for decades, and getting decent numbers to take the political process seriously (and thus provide legitimacy) would not be easy. Further, an engaged electorate would require a new media to provide information and analysis, which should promote the development of such outlets. And of course the only real response to the partisanship that has all but wrecked the American political system is a better knowledge base and more sustained debate in relation to the big issues.

This all seems pretty idealistic but if we don't make some big changes we'll stagger along with ad hoc decision-making that can't address underlying issues and we'll ultimately lose any national independence as the big global issues roll over us.

Our national politcal system began well enough, got us through two world wars and a global depression reasonably well, then went into cruise control as we settled into a comparatively stable post-war development model. It is all but moribund, and we need to renovate it to deal with the big problems facing us now. It is no longer a matter of a few percentage points here or there, but getting the fundamentals right in an increasingly threatening global context.