One Nation’s rise to the top of the polls has occasioned more than panic among many people. With its triumph, whether it be brief or enduring, has come a fundamental demoralisation among some. Boomers, Gen Xer and older on the left and progressive side are seeing a repudiation of the long arc they have lived on and by, from the great social and cultural revolution of the 1960s, through its vicissitudes, to now. Not only are there now a phalanx of people who, as per Brueghel’s Icarus, do not care that a lot of this has fallen, or ever even noticed it was there. But they now have the revolutionary energy that the left abrogated to itself and ran on for some time. Then progressives took state-cultural power, and began to determine, in myriad ways, how people should think and what values they should hold. The steady resentment from the ruled and shaped has been building for decades. But so too has the failing ardour and energy of the ruling knowledge group. The initial seizure of state-cultural power from the 1980s onward was exciting. After the 70s, with the rise and fall of more anti-systemic radical hopes and their meagre gains, as former radicals, and a rising cohort returned to law school and the bureaucracy, the chance to wield real power under sympathetic governments was a source of energy, pure gratification of the will to power. With a view to do genuine good, as they saw it, usually accurately enough, but a will to power nevertheless. Now? Now, that progressivism is on the defence, and has been for some time (even as a left class politics renews its energy, to a degree). There’s no dividend of pleasure from defence. Defence is just slowed loss. Acknowledging that you’re on defence, in order to strategise more accurately, involves an admission that you’ve peaked. All that’s left is decline.
You can feel the energy in the room at any One Nation public event one attends. It has a quite different timbre to meetings, launches etc one would attend (as media) when they were perpetually at 5 to 6%. Then the cheers and applause, the forthright opinions from the floor, had the negative energy of stalwart ressentiment, the proud assertiveness of the ‘not-fooled’. But it felt itself to be marginal, resistant, disregarded. Now it is a little frightening - as one can also see in the Belfast ‘riots’, this complex of protest, disorder, manipulation from afar. The exuberance of mass success is carrying them along, from spectatorship to activism, from humble leaflet dropping to more. Such activities become infused with meaning once success beckons, vastly increasing capacity.
That this has happened in both the UK and Australia at the same time, would appear to be an expression of the general global political wave, whose specificity relates to our electoral systems.
The two old party duopolies in single member electorate systems have locked out the expression of growing discontent more efficiently than anywhere else in the anglosphere. New Zealand went to proportional representation in its single house two decades ago; the US primary system allows for insurgent campaigns within broad umbrella parties. Canada seems calmer from the outside. But the fact that a secession movement by Alberta, the oil rich western late frontier province, is becoming a serious proposition, suggests that it is being subject to the same movements beneath.
In the UK, first Brexit, then Boris, served as vessels for this rebellion. When both were revealed as projective fantasies, a vacuum was created. When Labour did not fill it with a simple positive programme for steady recovery, but instead became the party of regulation and light austerity, the anger released has become near unlimited. Here, the Coalition’s failure to truly commit to greatly lowered immigration targets in September October last year, gave One Nation its in. Had Labor, at the time, done a leap across, and made the admission that yes, people wanted a significantly lower net immigration figure, and that social imperatives would simply have to recognise this demand, and then made a number offer, they might have been able to release the energy of it, and even gain some support. An audacious leader, an audacious team could have done that. But that is beyond the current leadership.
Immigration, immigration, immigration…to progressive boomers/Gen X, the word has a positivity to it, the modernisation of a hide-bound anglo-celtic people with new ideas, cultures etc. To younger millennials and Z progressives, global flows of multicultural people just….is. In that sense both see it as a part of the ‘lifeworld’, the everyday texture and process where meaning sits.
But to the various classes and groups who now find the volume of such and its transformative powers to be oppressive, immigration is part of the system, the power structures that come from outside, to tell you what life will be. Some people assessing this are confused by the fact that many One Nation supporters talk about ‘cost of living’ first and foremost. They do not realise that most such supporters see cost of living as so wholly tied to immigration that to talk of one is to speak of the other.
So there is a powerful asymmetry in how people are hearing these words, arguments, and this gap accounts for much of the powerless rage, and stunned mullet-y nature of the response to this event. In a couple of years, we shall either observe that One Nation could not break the ‘magic 33’ [%], whereby the preference system suddenly tilts your way across dozens of seats. Constrained to a minority of seats, its cannibal habits will reassert themselves, and the Coalition will begin to regroup. Or their run will hold, because it is the expression of a deeper shift, the Liberal party will more or less die before John Howard, right before his eyes - hi ho silver lining! - and we will acknowledge that we lived through the greatest transformation of Australian politics since Protectionist-Free Trade party Fusion, and really, since Labo(u)r party formation. And work from there…..
The chorus calling for the Teals to form a part continues, with the latest voice to add being that of Bob Brown, in last week’s Saturday Paper. Bob is one of the most politically savvy leaders the Green movement ever produced. But he’s wrong on this one, and the way in which he’s wrong is indicative of a certain blind spot, of a certain type of liberal politics.
Bob has always insisted that the Greens should grab power whenever it’s offered, and do their best with it. The entry into coalition with Labor in Tasmania, the agreement with the Gillard government. The strategy was a long haul one, with every awareness that it could be a disaster in the short run. Show them the Greens are willing and able to take and wield power in every opportunity you get.
That worked brilliantly in the agreement with the Gillard government; it was a shambles in Tasmania, and lost the Greens their status as the de facto Opposition and anti-system party, capable of getting five seats in the 25 seat parliament.
But the situation with the Teals is something else altogether, and the urge to party status implies a relation between party and power that is far from definite. The confusion comes from a paradox of liberalism - and the teals are the true liberals in the political system. Liberal politics believe in the supreme capacity of rationality to overcome false conflict, misunderstanding, bad information, and…well, irrationality, the ‘ol crooked timber. But liberals also believe in the motivating power of the conscience, as a political driver. Parties of liberals are always to some degree a paradox, which is one reason why the Liberal Party has a looser demand on caucusing and whipping than Labor.
So the one thing that can really stuff up that delicate balance is forcing a contradiction between the two dimensions of liberalism. Which is exactly what a party form for the teals would do.
Here’s the thing that the Teal Party party don’t seem to be recognising. The teals currently have unity. They’re the most unified force in the parliament. Labor and Liberal are permanently two factions - in our era, the Libs factions have real content, where Labor’s now have no real distinction - and the Greens have had departures and defections. And have two factions.
The teals? The teals have visible, total respect between each other, and a commonality of purpose, despite significant differences of policy, which relate to the different nature of their electorates. There is no intrigue, no intra-politics, no personality clashes - not for public consumption anyway. They should have, as I’ve argued, slowly inched up the common branding over the past four years. But they all but one managed to get re-elected, and keep an alternative force in parliament.
Forming a party would instantly throw both the liberal foundations into contradiction. The party, to be a party, must to some degree, override the call-to-conscience. The discussion/argument between a network of people, who make no absolute claim on each other, suddenly becomes a struggle to define and impose a party position. So the party, created to manifest unity, becomes a source of division, because the ‘position’ is now an abstract real object, and not simply the overall centre of gravity.
That then creates the second problem: rational discussion becomes its opposite. With something being fought over, the party has become factions. That then draws up all the less creditable parts of human collective labour: personality conflicts, suspicion, the attack advantage, and the will-to-power, and to not be dominated.
The idea that this latter blight can be avoided if everyone is aware of it, is the supreme illusion of liberalism.
The Teal Party is proposed as a way of gaining outreach to new seats, and a Senate team. But the thrashing out of positions required, and the sudden turning-inwards of teal politics, would destroy whatever claim the teals have, to doing politics differently. It would sap their energy, draw energy away from being in their electorates as independent members, and burn them out. There are very few other seats to get, as Teals. There is ample scope for independents across the country. But they have to be a different sort of independents in different regions and types of seats. Helen Haines and Cathy MacGowan, are and were not teals. They built a movement from the rural sector by using ‘kitchen table’ conversations and the Voices movement, in a way that affirmed rural ways of debating issues. The teal party proposal is, in some sense, a regression from that. Nor would viable independents in rusted-on Labor seats - very much needed - would not be teals. Turning a movement into a party would create all the problems of a party and none of the gains. Quite the reverse.
The political party arose with modernity, capitalism and class. Parties cut with the grain of pre-existing social unities, usually as multiple factional ensembles under single party lines. Labor’s splits were always down the line of the Catholic lower middle class/industrial working class split. The Liberals were united in 1944, by creating a party that genuine liberals - pre-teals - could join, rather than sitting, as many had previously, as independents.
The Greens are the party of the knowledge group/formation, but their core is the humanities-trained, with a left political slant. Even the party’s most moderate period saw it unable to really extend that. But there is enough sense of shared purpose and worldview, and collective leftism within its base, to ensure that it does not split in the way its predecessor - and the teals’ predecessor - the Australian Democrats did.
The teals support base is made up of electorates composed of the old liberal bourgeoisie, and younger members of the knowledge group/formation. Both these groups are the social groups who are going to have the greatest anathema to partyism, to its habits and shadows, the ghastly kitsch of thrashing out the manifesto, organising against sub-group X, Y, and Z, and so on. Several teals have already said that they won’t join a teal party. So there is already a split, over legitimacy, before the party is even founded. The non-party teals, once the party was founded, would have no option but to define themselves ‘against’ the party, by insisting that they too were ‘teals’. The party, by contrast, to make itself the representative agent, would have to, maybe subtly, but nevertheless, insist that it was the concretised expression of realism.
This would all be happening amid the momentous social-cultural changes we are going through. The teal movement’s younger base - the larger part - are children of the network. They have arrived at a time when a party is starting to feel like a strange and specialised activity, not a natural expression of civic participation. Party formation would be a supreme error, that arises from liberalism’s - and the non-red Greens are liberals, radical perhaps, but liberals still - inability to fully factor in the nature of categorical social change. The teals have created an alliance that mirrors the networked lives its supporters live. That network sustains relations of high trust, mutual respect, common purpose when required, and autonomy when necessary. Why on earth would you throw that away for the wheezing anachronism of the political party?
Of course One Nation can be a political party. Its policies are a concretised myth of national fall, offering redemption of it through details yet to be worked out. But the teal movement only emerged by asking its supporters to think for themselves, peel off from existing parties, support evidence-based policies, and value the pursuit of truth as a virtue in politics. What they have created is extraordinary - and could be lost by a very few false moves. At
They need to use what they have - an alliance and a network - to further innovate in politics within that form, to see how networks, alliances, political branding can be used in different combinations without a party form, in a manner that is responsive, agile, and points a virtuous spiral upwards. They’re smart people - often in fairly instrumental professions like doctoring and lawyering - who aren’t as smart as the world and its vicissitudes, because no-one is. So these liberals need a bit of Burkean prudence. Because otherwise they could really really stuff this up.
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Albania had to go three years in the 1920s without a monarch, before Ahmed Muhtar leveraged himself into the slot as King Zog I. The Guardian Australia appears determined to make him eat dust, as their interminable search for a new editor heads towards its first anniversary. So far, they have rejected all internal candidates, toyed with a new UK or international transplant, and generally pfaffed around. An international candidate option was rejected reluctantly. A month or so ago, the net was thrown open again, and half a dozen Australian non-Guardian figures were invited to apply. None have been accepted to date, though a couple are still in limbo. The in-house candidates have been re-interviewed. But some in the Oz operation’s Oxford Street bunker believe what they really want to do is leave current acting editor David Munk in place. A senior managing editor at the mothership/deathstar apparatus, Munk has done every sort of senior section editing-managing job on Fleet Street, for multiple papers. It’s the sort of record that London thinks of as the minimum to run a major title, to ensure the ‘top’ of the paper has intellectual and political heft, and to prevent the petty factionalism that brought former editor Lenore Taylor’s tenure to a crashing halt. The problem? Munk is an Englishman, late middle aged, and so white you could paint the inside of an art gallery with him. He may as well wear a pith helmet, for what it would say. Perhaps, to vary the geopolitical metaphor a bit, they are hoping to do a Belgium, and run 500+ days without a government, with no-one noticing? Keep an eye out, you may be called in for an interview (actually, some of you may have been)...
The State Library Victoria moves fast: or its subcontractors do. A week after the Mr Tulk cafe closed, without replacement, leaving library users with a small coffee cart in the foyer, Spec noticed a whale of a party going on in Hansen Hall, the space to the left, as you come in. Big corporate gig with salsaish doof doof music echoing out, everytime the door was opened by a public-employee security staffer. The gig, and many more like it, is possible, because events company ‘The Big Group’ now have control of the Mr Tulk cafe space large kitchen, to directly cater the hall. So, the library has no cafe, no meeting place - but Big Group has its kitchen. Whether it will ever re-open as a cafe at the library is surely an open question. What total contempt shown by library management for the library’s users, and for the whole idea of a library itself. Party on.
The Age’s Naked City crime chronicler takes time off to give personal advice
Dear Silv
My partner and I are expecting our second child in a few months, and we’re overjoyed. But our little five year old boy is having some complex feels about a new sibling coming along, and Im worried my partner is being too indulgent of that. Our son does need to accept that things will change. I’m worried my partner responding to some childhood feelings of his own. How do I raise this with him?
Yrs, Expecting
Dear Expecting
Stevo ‘Gums’ Mallatt was a petty thug, a bookies runner, a B&E man, a standover guy, a pathetic broken down junkie with a gambling habit that had put fifty in hock to sharks. He didn’t deserve to die, Brian ‘The Collector’ Prentice thought as he pulled the sawnoff from the boot of the Monaro now parked in Gums’s driveway. But he didn’t deserve to live either and a job was a job - even with the hoodied nuff-nuff theyd given him as a driver. Forty minutes later, the nuff’s head would be spread over the dashboard, Gums was lying bleeding across his doorstep one leg short, and The Collector, cursing his luck was in the wind, running for his life. Sorry, what was the question again?
Dear Silv
My work colleague and I were fast friends from the moment I arrived. We’ve worked on projects together, our families have holidayed, we’ve shared a lot. She’s grown cold to me in the past six months, after I got a slight promotion. Now I think she’s undermining me. I wonder if she was ever a true friend. Do I try and save this, or revise my views of the past?
Yrs, Perplexed
Dear Perplexed
All former detec inspector Stevo Willis wanted after retirement from Homicide was to put a tinny out on the bay and do some serious fishing. But he couldn’t shake loose ‘Raincoat Woman’, the rape murder of Amy, a suburban mum, the cold case he was working the day he got the gold watch. Re-opening those battered files would draw him back into a world of madness and violence, of cover-ups, beatings handed out, wading in the blood of a degenerate underworld - and a tempestuous affair with Amy’s daughter, Madison, an angry and entrancing 16 year old, the purest flower of the whole squalor, that he besmirched. Years after his twelve months for unlawful carnal, in Barwon special unit, having lost everything, Stevo would say he was going to hell, but it was the great love of his life. In the squalls on the bay, he still hears Amy’s voice, ‘why haven’t you brought me justice!’ and he knows he must return to the inferno of vengeance, and will be destroyed. Sorry, what was the question again?
Dear Silv
My adult daughter says she’s engaged, but I’m yet to see the proof from her boyfriend. This bloke’s a layabout, he’s cruel to her, takes money, and I think he’s cheating. But she’s besotted, so I have to make it work with him not to lose her. But am I wits’ end. Got any ideas?
Yrs, Generational
Dear Generational
What might help is one of my John Silvester Life Institute short courses held over long weekends in the Gippslands. There, in leafy mulga settings, the three of you will do sessions in trust and openness, with touching and confession exercises, river swimming, mindfulness and small arms training, pressed flower journaling, forensic procedure, and Fight Club. Day two, you’ll go on hikes, cry, and kill a retired police dog with your bare hands. Refreshed and clarified, the two of you will return to the city knowing what you want, and that the world is just a little cleaner, a little more pure than it was three days earlier. Just tell her he moved to Cairns. Sorry, what was the question again?
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Legendary Aussie store Gazebos Gazebos Gazebos goes into liquidation with 58 Gazebos Gazebos Gazebos stores to close. ‘Gazebos Gazebos Gazebos thanks the Australian gazebo buying public for being part of the Gazebos Gazebos Gazebos experience’ noted a spokesperson for Gazebos Gazebos Gazebos, before just saying ‘Gazebos gazebos gazebos. Ga-ze-bo. Gaaaaazebo.’
UK defence minister quits hours before he was due to meet Richard Marles.
Forty per cent of Western fertility decline attributed to Guardian Blind Date section’s inability to match straight couples
House speaker Milton Dick visits the Munsters House at Universal Studios theme park and isn’t allowed to leave
Greg Craven’s GP regrets joking that technically, any procedure he has is a prick test.
Till next week…
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