May 31 saw a debate at La Trobe University regarding what had gone wrong (or ‘right’) with the Rudd government. Respected and influential journalists Paul Kelly and Lenore Taylor and professors Judith Brett and Robert Manne offered an extremely critical account of the performance of the Rudd government over recent months. As has become common in the media, the verdict was unanimous and commentators, despite their different political sensibilities, agreed on the Labor government’s loss of credibility. From extreme popularity after his 2007 victory against Howard, Rudd had reached a point of complete distrust.

Criticism during the discussion was centred on what we have all witnessed: Rudd’s inability to stand up for anything real or keep even the most emblematic promises made before and after his election. The failure of the insulation scheme and of the educational revolution, the withdrawal of the Emission Trading Scheme, the failure to prepare adequately for the tax on mineral resources, the return to extremely inhumane politics in terms of refugees and many more back flips were raised in the discussion. Despite some interesting points, very little debate followed as it seemed clear to all that the government could no longer be trusted: it had gone back on most of what it had promoted and promised, sometimes in a matter of mere weeks.

The failure of the Rudd government was mostly attributed to Rudd himself. The prime minister was accused of concentrating power around his own persona and of making amateur mistakes, notably by refusing to allow experienced politicians to join his ranks. It even seemed fair to blame Rudd, as he had himself promised that the ‘buck’ would stop with him. Interestingly, what might at first have seemed a brave move was central to most critiques. As the prime minister appeared to take many decisions unilaterally, his self-centred stand became a self-fulfilling prophecy as the failure of his government became, in the eyes of most, his own personal failure and responsibility.

While these accusations have their merit, it is futile to throw the blame at Rudd or attack a singular politician. Yet central to my point is this ‘personalisation’ of politics which has played a crucial part in the state we find our democracy in. This dramatic state was best highlighted when all participants but Robert Manne (who chaired the session), made known of their own accord their belief that Rudd would win the coming election. Brett, Kelly and Taylor all recognised the opposition’s lack of credibility and the extremely controversial figure that is Abbott. Therefore, the 2010 electoral battle was to involve a distrusted prime minister and a leader of the Opposition who had recently admitted he should not be trusted when ‘put on the spot’. In this game, the Labor cabinet appeared more convincing to the participants than the opposition, if indeed convincing at all.

 

This situation shows how the individualisation of elections, and of politics in general, has become problematic in the past decade. Of course, this is not new; leaders have always played an important part in voters’ choice. Yet it is striking to see the shift in the balance between party ideology and leadership in the run-up to a major poll. This has had two clear consequences. The first is that ideology and convictions have been relegated to the background and the more superficial side of a politician has become increasingly important. It is common nowadays to see many leading politicians across the world attacked by both journalists and adversaries on the grounds of their private life rather than on their platform.

The second, maybe more important point is that this focus on individuals has led to a lack of questioning, a lack of criticism of a system which is enjoying an incredible benevolence among the media, academia and – possibly as a result – the people. This was obvious in the discussion on May 31. Everyone freely admitted that Rudd had a terrible record, to say the least, and that yet, with a much worse opponent, he would still win the election. As expected, candidates other than those of the two major parties were not mentioned, as if they merely represent token candidatures. On the other hand, while these leading political commentators gave an honest and harsh description of the situation and acknowledged that the choice between the bad and the worse would be extremely difficult, there was a complete absence of reappraisal of the system as possibly responsible for this dead end. Rudd and Abbott and their advisors are to blame; the system itself remains unquestioned. At no point during the discussion was this coming election portrayed as what it will truly be if one follows the logic of the commentators: a travesty of democracy.

For Paul Kelly, Rudd’s lack of conviction and numerous back-flips were the product of a new generation of politicians whom he compared to men like Paul Keating and John Howard. Contrary to his predecessors, Rudd was ‘obsessed with political tactics’. While the editor-at-large of The Australian was correct in his evaluation of Rudd as an opportunist, even a ‘brilliant’ one, Rudd was not as original as Kelly made him out to be. On the contrary, the now former prime minister was a direct consequence of the drift democracy has suffered over the past three decades and more particularly since Howard was elected in 1996.

Dishonesty in politics is hardly new and has proven time and again to be an incredible skill come election time. However, it can be argued that a new trend emerged in the 1980s once the communist model began to fail, or more precisely as its failure became increasingly obvious. With the fall of the USSR, the Western democratic model became hegemonic and unquestioned to the extent that we were grandiloquently promised the ‘end of history’ and the victory of the capitalist model. The result of both the failure of the communist alternative and the acclaimed, albeit exaggerated, victory of capitalism led to the narrowing of the offers on the political spectrum. Individualism and the ‘victory’ of neo-liberalism the world over imposed a vision of society where individuals should fend for themselves and where the state should no longer be relied on to provide some hope for a better day. It imposed further what French philosopher Jacques Rancière called a ‘hatred of democracy’.

In Australia, Howard was the culmination of this trend, and his eleven years in power entrenched the use of populism as a central part of electioneering. It made demagoguery yet another means to dominate what is democracy only in name. No longer are the people either central or sovereign. No longer are they even treated as the beneficiaries of a system which, it was once dreamt, would be by the people, for the people. Instead, the individual has become just another customer to whom parties have to appeal to sell their product and win over the market. Consumer satisfaction comes only second to the increase in profit; the quality of the product can be neglected as long as it sells. What was expected from giant corporations has now become the ethos of governments and politicians. The world might be facing its biggest challenge yet with global warming, and even very limited reforms seem out of reach. Profit remains central to the agenda and despite alarming reports, the two major parties in Australia appear completely unwilling to offer anything but superficial, even ridiculous measures.

The 2010 election was to consecrate one of two parties which have both made the conscious decision to put the health of the planet itself in jeopardy. Whatever happens as a result of global warming, be that something or nothing, the lack of foresight and the complete and conscious disregard of hundreds of scientific injunctions should send a signal to the people of Australia as to the state of their democracy. To put it simply, if Australia was a house with defective wiring and our politicians its owners, they would decline calling an electrician for the ‘common sense’ reason that the house had never burnt down before. Once faced with the consequences of their careless behaviour, they would justify their decisions by claiming what they did was in the name of the people, in the name of democracy.

And that is where the heart of the matter lies and where democracy took yet another turn for the worse. With populism and demagoguery becoming central to electioneering in the 1990s, the concepts of the people and of democracy itself have become increasingly perverted. This became clear when Pauline Hanson gained incredible appeal between 1996 and 1998. As most extreme right leaders across the world, the  racist  leader of One Nation claimed to be  the voice of the silent majority, the ‘voice of the people’. To this day, it remains unproven, and frankly unlikely, that this silent majority agreed with her. It remains to be proven that Australians felt ‘relaxed and comfortable’ under a multicultural Australia; it remains to be proven that had disinformation not been central to the actions of the Howard government, the population would not have rejected the measures taken against indigenous people and asylum seekers and the Howard government not been re-elected.

If a politician ever made opportunism and populism central to his politics in Australia, it was not Kevin Rudd, but John Howard. While Howard had the convictions Rudd lacks, he also had no qualms about misleading the people and playing on their basest instincts. Just like Rudd today, Howard showed in his endeavours very little respect for those he was supposed to represent. Howard deliberately perverted the ‘common sense’ of the Australian people and used it to push contestable and contested politics even further. By portraying Aborigines as privileged, Howard was not stating what a majority of Australians thought, he was instead borrowing ideas from a bygone era that most Australians had realised were irrational and harmful. By presenting a few boatloads of asylum seekers as invaders, Howard turned what was a serious humanitarian issue into a question of survival for Australia. He turned what deserved a pragmatic answer into what triggered emotional and unfounded fears in the population. With no less than five election victories despite blatant disinformation and misleading of the public, Howard became an extremely successful model in which Australian politicians could find inspiration.

Rudd was not original, he was only the most successful to this day. In 2007, he beat Howard at his own game. Rudd understood that to win the election, he had to depict himself as the holder of ‘common sense’, he had to reclaim hegemony, he had to reclaim the mythical people. This did not necessarily mean that he had to believe what he said; Howard may not have believed Aborigines were privileged or that asylum seekers would invade Australia. As Howard had done to Beazley on the asylum seeker issue, Rudd played on Howard’s weaknesses and magnified them to the extreme. Howard’s stubbornness in refusing the principle of an apology was an incredible gift to Rudd. So was his stance on climate change. If Rudd enjoyed two years of honeymoon, his opportunistic brilliance played a major part.

That 2010 was a nightmare on the other hand, can be blamed on his short-sightedness. Rudd was elected at a time when the Howard government was running out of steam. Even by doing nothing, Labor would have seemed a breath of fresh air; by following in Howard’s economically conservative footsteps and promising at the same time token progressive measures, Rudd was allowed to take what seemed to be a convincing victory. To many, the signing of the Kyoto protocol and the apology to the indigenous people of Australia were a good start, even though it soon became clear these were for the most part only symbolic measures. Yet they allowed Rudd to enjoy early extreme popularity. Once real challenges arose, it did not take long for Rudd to show the limits of his commitment to progressive reforms and to fall back into what appears increasingly to be a parody of Howard’s politics.

Instead of standing strong and fighting crucial battles such as climate change and refugees, instead of facing the disinformation the opposition and lobbies would send his way, Rudd backed down even before the first blow. He recoiled in the face of the challenge of convincing the Australian electorate a progressive path was the only way. To remain in power, Rudd withdrew all he had so ostentatiously promised; the only way to win the next election was to break the trust the people had placed in him.

As this article was finalised, Julia Gillard became the first female Prime Minister of Australia. There was no showdown, but what had appeared unlikely a few weeks earlier became inevitable as Rudd proved unable to bounce back. The first hints of a new Prime Minister made me feel that my concerns might have been exaggerated; the system might work to some extent. Maybe Gillard, despite having played a major part in Rudd’s failures, would prove more credible, more original, more democratic than her predecessor and her opponent. However her first speech on June 24 only confirmed my thoughts. Undeniably, her speech was a good, ‘pragmatic’ speech. While some were worried Gillard would be ‘too left’, the speech made clear her leadership had been granted by the right-wing factions of the Labor party. Rudd had not been the most radical Labor leader, and yet Gillard would move further right to fill the gap between her and Abbott.

Howardesque, one minute into her speech, she promised she would ‘reward those who work the hardest, not those who complain the loudest’. Gillard would reclaim the battlers, ‘the people who play by the rules, set their alarms early, get their kids off to school, stand by their neighbours, and love their country’. This conception was, almost to the word, that offered by populist Nicolas Sarkozy in France in 2007, hardly by a progressive left-wing leader. References were only made to those who accept the system, those ‘who do not complain’. Credit was given to Howard and Costello for ‘continuing’ Labor’s reforms, a clear sign to the right-wing electorate and something unthinkable only three years earlier. Gillard mentioned the importance of the carbon tax for the future, not before a vague ‘community consensus for action’. On the resources tax, Gillard dropped the advertising campaign, asking in return for the mining industry to do the same and to ‘negotiate with its mind open’. Further, in what was perhaps a telling slip of the tongue, Gillard thanked Australian soldiers for ‘honouring the US’. Another reassurance for the right, Wayne Swan would guide Australia back into surplus, back into the black. On the asylum seeker issue, Gillard ‘understands that Australians are disturbed by that’, she ‘understood the anxiety’. ‘This country is a sanctuary’, words no longer reminiscent only of Howard but of the White Australia policy. Symbolic of the personalisation of politics, this change of leadership was enough for Labor to reclaim 7 points from the Greens, who fell ‘to a more normal level of 8 per cent’ (my emphasis).

Therefore, despite the change of leadership, it is hard to imagine anything will change in the next few months, or even elections. It seems the Rudds and the Howards are here to stay. Thanks to compulsory voting, Australia is spared the acknowledgement of the flagrant disinterest the increasing level of abstention has highlighted in other Western countries. Yet it seems hardly conceivable that a majority of Australians will go to the booths and vote because they retain some faith in the system, nor hope for a change in their leadership. Voting, and as a result democracy, has become for many little more than a formality. One has to vote because one will be fined otherwise or because ‘that’s just what you do’. Such a development will most probably lead to the further ‘deresponsibilisation’ of the people, to people caring less and less about the state of politics and about the future of their community, let alone about the future of the world in an era when most decisions taken by our leaders affect us all.

Written in July 2010

 

This ‘deresponsibilisation’ is in fact further entrenched by a system which prevents alternatives from arising and vilifies those who choose another path. The protest-type vote which increased in the 1990s in many Western countries was commonly termed the ‘revolt of the excluded’. At the time, its incarnation in an extreme right vote led it to be stigmatized and denied any credibility. In fact, this protest vote can and should be apprehended as the legitimate cry for recognition by a vast proportion of the population, as it is rarely an ideological vote. Rather than being excluded as such, this part of society found itself ‘included out’: it had the semblance of being part of society through the democratic vote and system, yet had no opportunity to have its ideas and interests truly represented and, more importantly, defended. The 2010 elections are likely to show a similar trend, albeit with the Greens as the new beneficiaries of the protest vote. As has been witnessed in the past, the conservative press will make sure that this option becomes as discredited as the one incarnated by One Nation. Again, those who will not vote for the main party will be categorised as angry, bitter voters rejecting the great bipartisan achievement central to Australian politics and prosperity.

 

It is possible that in order to stem the flow of voters growing in the Greens’ ranks, Labor and the Liberals will attempt to appeal to some of its electorate by offering token measures. Yet it seems that the vilification of the Greens will appear a better option to keep those electors who have been radicalised by over a decade of extremely exclusivist politics; by 14 years which have made many progressive struggles appear undemocratic; by a decade which has transformed the idea of popular sovereignty and discredited universal goals and values. Since 1996, populism has allowed conservatives like John Howard to reshape the idea of ‘the people’ to their own image. This process of legitimisation was not only allowed, but even facilitated by many commentators and political actors. Instead of being apprehended as the creations of the populist, the success of the populist extreme right, and in turn the radical exclusionary measures taken by the successive Howard governments, were twisted to represent the ‘true will’ of the people.

 

Yet if populism is apprehended as the creation of the populist, the will of its electorate can be read in a different light. Far from being undemocratic, the protest vote, a somewhat clumsy, most likely desperate, gesture becomes the demand for the renewal of democratic ideals. It is only when understood in this manner, that the term ‘populism’ does not lead to dramatic generalisations which not only stigmatise some categories of the population, but also legitimise the ideas of parties on behalf of a fantasised representation of the ‘true will of the people’ – whoever the people are. In turn, this allows the winner of an election between candidates with little or no credibility to claim to be the representative of the population as a whole and of their destiny.

Written in June 2010

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