One of the favourite political books from my young days was The Deep North by Deane Wells. It was published in 1979, the year I started university, and Wells was a Lecturer in Philosophy at my university. His book analyses the political philosophy of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who at that time was Queensland's Premier. Joh was a figure who loomed large over our State, an authoritarian pro-business leader who outlawed political protests and set the police onto protestors. During his reign the Police Special Branch spied on activists and union leaders and kept secret dossiers on them, trying to find ways to implicate them in crimes.
Could it really have been? I was convinced at the age of 20, even though the proposition, in hindsight, is a little absurd. Joh was certainly authoritarian and, as it turned out, also highly corrupt, as was the government he led. But fascist?
Many years later I read Nikki Savva's The Road to Ruin, a detailed analysis of how Tony Abbott, aided by his high-profile Chief of Staff Peta Credlin, went from stellar Opposition Leader to woeful Prime Minister, running his government into the ground before finally being shafted by an insurgency that installed Malcolm Turnbull in his place.
I enjoyed it but 35 years later I was, if not wiser, then at least more skeptical. In her telling of the tale Credlin was a workplace psychopath who bullied staff and MPs, had tantrums if she didn't get her way and wrapped her boss around her little finger. Abbott, meanwhile, was incompetent, stumbling from one stupid statement and foolish decision to another despite the advice of his senior ministers, who he resolutely ignored. Finally his colleagues had no alternative but to boot him.
Once again, it's a good story but is it true? Or is a convenient tale to make the now-departed Abbott and Credlin the scapegoats for a dysfunctional government?
Kelly's conclusion, although he doesn't use the term, is that Morrison is a hollow man. It is difficult, even impossible, to get a clear sense of who he is or what he stands for because he stands for nothing. In his youth he acted in amateur theatre and he continues to act to this day. His political philosophy is like the famous/infamous 'Where the Bloody Hell Are You' tourist advertisements he oversaw as the CEO of Tourism Australia - a series of comforting, stereotyped images that do not tell any kind of coherent story. Like that advertisement they are strangely effective but ultimately empty.
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None of these books is to be trusted.
At one level, this is because their authors are partisan players, pursuing a definite agenda.
In 1979, Deane Wells was a lecturer in philosophy. By the end of 1989 he was Attorney General in the newly elected Goss Labor government, installed in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and tasked with the job of turning the Queensland Government from a corrupt oligarchy into something more closely resembling a modern democracy. Wells was, I assume, honourably motivated in wanting to rid the State of a corrupt government, but he was also politically ambitious on his own behalf.
In 2016 Nikki Savva was a columnist with News Ltd, the unofficial PR arm of the Liberal Party. Before this, she served for many years as the press secretary to Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello, whose long rivalry with Tony Abbott was a feature of the Howard Government. Her column in The Australian was often used by Abbot's enemies in the party to spread gossip and fuel the fires of division and dissatisfaction in the Liberal Party. She had a personal interest both in Abbot's downfall, and in the success of his replacement.
Kelly, likewise, is now a journalist with Nine Media, whose papers have long been the preferred outlet for Labor politicians, and previously served as a media advisor to both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. He may not be angling for a similar role with a future Prime Minister Albanese, but he sure would like to see him installed.
These biases colour their writing, influence the quotes and incidents they choose from the daily public utterances of their subjects and the spin they put on them. They also influence what inside information they have. Labor politicians are much more likely to talk off the record to Kelly (and Wells in his day) than Coalition ones. Turnbull's supporters would feed Savva gossip, but she wouldn't hear as much from Abbott's supporters. Some of these briefings might be unguarded, shared unwisely after a few drinks, but many are purposeful and strategic. When we read these books, we need to remember that we are reading sophisticated, well crafted propaganda.
But that's not the biggest problem here....
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Historians have long abandoned the Great Man Theory of History, but political analysts have yet to catch up. We constantly hear about the doings of the leaders of the various parties and take polls on their popularity. If parties are struggling in the polls they change their leader. Morrison talks about 'his' government as if it was different from the governments led by Turnbull and Abbott, even though these governments were made up of the same people, just with the chairs rearranged a little.
No human being can rule a nation of 26 million people on their own. Even the most ruthless of fascist dictators rely on the support of key parts of society for their success. Adolf Hitler, that archetypal dictator, never killed a single Jew, nor fired a single shot in the war his regime started. His minions did it all. For he and his gang of psychopaths to rule Germany and create the carnage they did they required the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the key institutions of German society. The industrialists backed them in the hope of economic recovery. The military backed them on the promise of massive increases in military spending. A significant proportion of the population (although not the majority) bought the nationalist propaganda and voted for them. Once they were in power the army, the public service, the industrial and commercial sector, even the mainstream churches all fell into line. The population, on the whole, either cheered on or kept their heads down. It's all very well to blame Hitler, but a lot of other people were in on the act.
Turnbull always accepted the findings of climate science and has recently presented himself as some kind of champion of renewable energy, but in his time as PM the government pursued precisely the same climate policies it has followed during the tenure of Abbott, the climate skeptic, and Morrison, the man who accepts and rejects the science at the same time. He took his turn at blaming renewables for the SA blackout, bullying AGL into keeping the Liddell power station open despite its state of decrepitude. He leaked disinformation to News Ltd with the best of them.
The Robodebt scheme, which stole a billion dollars from low income Australians via an automated debt recovery mechanism identified as flawed as soon as it was launched, was designed by Morrison as Social Services Minister under Abbott, implemented under Turnbull and only discontinued during Morrison's term as PM when it became clear the government would lose a class action. Meanwhile, all three have combined to give massive tax cuts to rich people.
Abbott oversaw the imprisonment of thousands of asylum seekers (with Morrison as Immigration Minister) and neither of his successors has seen fit to release them. Turnbull joined in the chorus of lies about the Uluru Statement, saying he would not agree to a third chamber of parliament when no such thing was proposed. Under Morrison poor old Ken Wyatt has been forced to sell a model that no-one wants to members of his own community still angry at being misrepresented.
But lest you think I am on the 'Vote Labor' bandwagon, let me say this clearly - voting Labor will not solve the problem. Changing the party in power changes more things than changing the figurehead and leaving the party in place, but nowhere near as many things as progressive people would like. Labor has promised to review (but not necessarily increase) the rate of Newstart, has been very critical of Robodebt and has promised to implement the requests of the Uluru Statement. On the other hand, it has remained pointedly silent on asylum seekers in detention, a policy they initiated (distracting us by promising to release a single family), has confirmed the tax cuts for the rich and has produced a climate policy which is is slightly improved version of the Coalition's, with slightly larger emissions cuts measured through the same dodgy accounting mechanism and a pledge of their eternal love for coal and gas.
Labor supporters (who are out in force on social media as the election looms just over the horizon) urge progressive people to support Labor because that is the only way we will get change. They tell us Labor policies are pragmatic, acknowledging political reality, the best we can do in the current environment. This is absurd. It asks us to accept a version of 'reality' in which the rather conservative projections of the IPCC and the International Energy Agency can be safely ignored, in which asylum seekers who have been imprisoned without charge for nine years can just be left to languish forever, in which tax cuts for the rich are inevitable so there is no point talking about them. It asks us to accept failure as the price of success.
This is because there is a lot more to governing a country than the political party in power. Parties have donors, and the same wealthy people and corporations dominate the donors to both major parties. They are reliant on the same media outlets to get their word out and form the public opinions on which people will base their votes. If you really want to change the government you need to do a lot more than change the party in power. You need to change the structures around them.
It would help to change political donation laws, but this is a Catch-22. In order to change political donation laws we have to elect a party that is willing to change them, but with the laws as they are none of the major parties are willing to upset their donors by doing so. So we also need to change the donors. We need to find favourable media coverage for progressive policy, but this is a similar problem so we need to change the media, or invent new media that is resistant to being subverted in the same way. We need people to vote for progressive policy and advocate for it, which means we need to educate and convince them. We can't rely on our political leaders to do this even though they are the ones best placed to do it, because they are the ones currently being shaped to resist it.
You get the picture. Elections are only a small part of political change. The big part is creating an environment in which such change becomes possible. That takes hard work, over many years, with many setbacks. You can't achieve it with a single protest, even one involving civil disobedience. You can't do it through a single campaign, even a suberbly organised one. You have to do the hard yards over many years, build support, analyse the problem/s, crystallise the answers in ways ordinary people can relate to, fight disinformation, have those awkward conversations with family and friends. It's OK to get tired, check out for a break and leave it to others for a little while. It's OK - indeed essential - to not take on every fight. But it's not OK to give up.
Got to kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight.
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