The dark horse: Kevin Andrews and modern Australia

The 2015 Liberal leadership challenge saw the champion of the conservative wing of the party defeated by the most prominent liberal. The Minister of Defence and veteran of the Howard government Kevin Andrews stood for the position of deputy with no prospect of victory but to demonstrate the existence of a strong conservative core in the party of Robert Menzies.

Kevin Andrews is not a well-known face in Australian public life but he has been around for as long as Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten. More often than not, what little people know about him is usually associated with his strong Christian conservative views on marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.

Craig Emerson once described Kevin Andrews as the Liberal Party's chief policy architect. The Guardian columnist David Marr in 2013 disparaged Tony Abbott's decision to include Andrews in his cabinet as Minister of Social Services, one of the most complicated portfolios. Michelle Grattan described him as 'modest' and a 'bit of a loner'.

Andrews became the intellectual champion for the Liberal Party's renewed commitment to economic liberalism and industrial relations reform. And it is these issues that have most defined Andrews' experience in government. The counterintuitive thing about Andrews is that the public emphasis on his socially conservative positons goes wholly against what he has achieved in politics.

His focus has been on economics where he drove workplace reforms, advocated in favour of immigration, established the Australian Building and Construction Commission and proposed an extensive simplification of the welfare system. When it comes to social and moral issues Andrews was not only not successful but he rarely made any push to change laws in favour of a conservative ethos.

Andrews is often mischaracterised as being opposed to the social and economic agenda of the Australian Labor Party. Andrews' actions in government demonstrate that he has absorbed much of the neoclassical economic revolution that drove the economic reforms of the 1980s.

This demonstrates the essential mistake made by critics of Kevin Andrews, they essentialise a socially conservative agenda that hasn't eventuated as the most telling description of the man and his impact.

Paul Keating deviated from much of his own party by recognizing the un-competitiveness and unviability of Australia's large industrial units, where trade unions were prime placed to maximise support from employees. Andrews likewise did not see a sure future in these sorts of industries and favoured more competitive smaller scale operations that were more individually driven and more profit conscious. The Pauline Hanson faction was noted mostly for its racial and communitarian rhetoric but it's largely forgotten that it shared much in common with the anti-economic rationalism of the DLP.

Something that distracts from the substantive record of Andrews is the conflation of his beliefs and those like him with rather dubious external forces. In article after article decrying the conservative faction of the Coalition, political commentators draw specious comparisons with the American Christian right and its relationship with the Republican Party. This also occurs in conversations about conservatism in Canada and the United Kingdom.

We have seen this with references to the Tea Party in Australian politics with figures like Mike Secombe declaring that the 'far-right' of the Liberal Party is effectively an Australian Tea Party. The Tea Party is a coalition of Republican conservatives who have organised so effectively that they shifted the GOP to the right and created a running battle for scores of primary contests that have seen masses of moderate Republicans replaced by more conservative challengers. Now none of that has occurred on the right of Australian politics. But it suits the agenda of certain non-conservative commentators to cast politicians with whom they disagree as equivalents of extreme and ludicrous figures in the United States.

Kevin Andrews does not oppose immigration or the provision of state benefits to recent arrivals. He merely wants to lessen the amount in total. Unlike in America, government provided healthcare is a long established part of Australia and no one is calling for its abolition or even serious reductions in healthcare spending. Extending tax concessions to private insurance providers is one thing but it is not the same as the scrapping of Medicare. The American populist right is strongly in favour of access to guns and the socially conservative Lyons Forum supported tougher gun laws. And if Secombe sees an equivalent of the anti-abortion, pro-creationist, anti-immigration rhetoric of the Tea Party and Christian right in Australia he has yet to point out where this has overturned the present consensus.

In his maiden speech to parliament after his election in 1991 Andrews emphasizes the scourge of unemployment and the underperforming economic conditions of the time but little if anything on moral issues. Tellingly he affirms the free trade agenda of the government of the day and the importance of Asia to Australia's economic future. By comparison ultra-conservative figures in the United States tend to be hostile to free trade and strengthening economic partnerships with Asia.

Kevin Andrews' first substantive achievement in politics that gained him nationwide attention as well as significant levels of scorn, was the 1997 Commonwealth Euthanasia Act that overturned the decision of the Northern Territory government to legalise the practice of euthanasia.

Andrews' private members bill which overturned the NT legislation was inevitable owing to the fact that it is near impossible to craft a legal framework that is beyond abuse. The Australian Parliament acting cautiously, was not confident that a system of rules and procedures for euthanasia could be established that was zero risk to vulnerable people making a potentially wrong decision to terminate their own lives or the lives of family members or legal guardians.

That is after all why the overturning law received overwhelming support in the House of Representatives and why no state governments, which are empowered to legalise it, have done so. This fear is demonstrated by the fact that the Labor party when in government at the state and federal level has been reluctant to reverse Andrews' 1997 law.

Hawke-Keating created the more decentralised economy and expanded labour force of today through their neo-liberal policy mix. The economy transformed from a more regulated less dynamic economy to one that was deregulated and more dynamic with the associated costs of income inequality and employment insecurity for some. Andrews clearly supported the deregulation agenda to make the economy more dynamic and decentralised.

The introduction of Work Choices at a time of economic prosperity and low unemployment ensured its political destruction. However the deregulation of the labour laws in 2005 were part of a continuum across decades of Australian politics. It began with the Hawke government's efforts to bring harmony to the relationship between unions and the private sector by encouraging industrial moderation. It then led to the liberalisation reforms of the Keating government that sought to bring into the industrial relations framework the reality of the new economy and labour market.

During the Work Choices debate Andrews followed Howard's line in framing his IR changes as the next stage in the Hawke-Keating economic legacy. In what was likely a tongue in cheek remark Andrews said of his IR legislation 'in a sense it's not that far away from what Paul Keating set out' in his 1993 reform package.

Aside from the public service the growth industries of Australia since the Hawke-Keating reforms have been in smaller scale retail firms such as cafes and restaurants, high skilled contract labour, financial services, private service providers and self-employed small business people. The trade union movement is not especially strong in these areas because this new more mobile more dynamic workforce, has a different set of economic interests to the workforce employed in large scale industries of the post-war years. That component of the Australian economy has declined and so have the numbers of workers predisposed to trade unions.

Labor's history of labour market reforms spurned John Howard to pursue evermore radical measures to liberalise Australia's employment laws. But Howard's drive took him too far too fast down this path and a sharp public reaction pulled him and his party back from the edge in 2007. Just like Whitlam's temptation to exercise the power of the federal government without first considering the fiscal consequences. Whitlam had gone too far and the Australian political system through the Fraser and Hawke-Keating governments reigned in the excesses of the Whitlam period.

Just as the Hawke-Keating governments had to jettison past Labor practices to tackle the problems of the 1980s. So too did Andrews formulate policies designed to address the new environment that Australia faced after the 1990s. And although ideological speaking Andrews expressed general discomfort with the social environment of modern Australia his actual policy agenda was far more targeted to specific problems. Andrews repeatedly said that extra injections of resources into the social services system in the short term were vital to bring about an eventual reduction in the welfare budget in the long term through successful employment and social mobility policies.

Far from being a captive of the past Andrews has stated that women have been unduly obligated in previous years to their traditional roles 'at the expense of their individual development'. In economics he favours the Keating model of a deregulated internationally competitive economy over the ossified one of the 1970s. It was the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Pauline Hanson's One Nation who favoured the old protectionist model and at present the Greens and the hard-left who reject the economic model that has made Australia so prosperous since the 1980s.

Andrews' political views form a coherent and focused program of economic liberalisation and cultural traditionalism. His influence has been less effective on the latter, though it is overemphasized by his detractors.

Whereas other figures like Bronwyn Bishop, Cory Bernardi, George Christenson, Sophie Mirabella who receive more media attention than Andrews lack his considered approach. Though regarded as strong conservatives, hard-right and culture warriors they do not demonstrate a coherent political position or much interest in the business of passing legislation. They have failed to influence policy or achieve high office. As such they cannot claim to have influenced the direction of Australian political life as Kevin Andrews has.

For all the talk of a resurgent socially conservative right-wing liberal party it is interesting that its effects on Australian politics have been far from effective. Public support (including within the Liberal Party) for same-sex marriage has steadily increased since Howard was elected in 1996. Despite public airings critical of abortion by Liberal Party figures the consensus in favour of its legalisation has not been shaken. Marion Maddox's claim of a rising 'moral repressiveness within the Howard Cabinet' was clearly not 'repressive' enough.

Andrews has emerged as perhaps the Liberal Party's most substantial source of ideas and practical policies because of his under recognised modesty in public political life. Andrews clearly understands that he will never be the Liberal leader or Prime Minister. And it is that recognition which allows him to concentrate on crafting laws and reforms instead of constantly working on a leadership bid. Australian politics would benefit from more parliamentarians who shared Kevin Andrews' depth of knowledge, seriousness in policy debates and unwillingness to vault into the impractical and extreme.

Though his conservatism is anathema to many opponents and less than favourable commentators it is intellectually coherent and grounded in the political realities of Australia. Politicians who know what they're about are more likely to succeed in government and make a difference. Kevin Andrews offers future political leaders an example of someone who combines seriousness of purpose with the necessary faculties to put ideas into action. His story should be one more widely read.