The Crap Constituency
There is fresh blood in the corridors of parliament. According to one recently elected One Nation Senator there is a new stench permeating through the Australian Taxation Office. “It starts with toilets and ends up costing us our Australian way of life” exclaimed Pauline Hanson recently.
Waleed Aly feels that Hanson’s quote is the political quote of 2016 (1). He may well be right. It certainly is a cracking opening to a blog post. I’d recommend reading the rest of Ali’s piece, my effort will certainly pick up on some of the points he discusses.
The nation is still somewhat reeling from the knowledge that we somehow elected numerous One Nation Senators. Despite strongly disagreeing with One Nation’s political views I don’t think that the situation is some kind of unmanageable disaster.
One Nation espouses many policies which strain incredulity. Zero net immigration, unless your Muslim in which case you will never be let in. One can only wonder how you can ‘prove’ someone isn’t a Muslim?
Given our aging population, and the corresponding reduction in our tax base that will increase as the population ages, I’ve no idea how a zero net immigration policy can result in any other than the gradual reduction in services and living standards of all Australians.
If zero net immigration doesn’t trash our economy One Nation’s review and revoke existing trade agreements policy should finish off the job. After all, foreign goods and services are all hugely over-rated. We can just make everything better and cheaper over here can’t we. Can I get a hell yeah!
Last, my personal favourite, the introduction of citizen initiated referenda. One wonders if there is a need for politicians if our citizens can simply do all the legislating. House of Review I hear you say? Clearly over rated. Who needs to worry about all those details, it’s not like we’re changing the law.
It’s particularly frustrating that some commentators seem to be suggesting that this phenomenon is somehow new. It’s like Clive Palmer never existed. It’s like One Nation hasn’t wielded political power in the past.
In the recent past there has almost always been some type of small party pursuing a limited agenda. For quite some time that was the Democrats. The Greens began as a party of protest. It took twenty years before they gained a semblance of political power when the Democrats fell out of favour.
What seems to have changed is that the current smaller parties seem less reasonable. Their solutions seem more extreme. They offer simple solutions to complex problems and those solutions are often based around a populist approach.
There is however a kernel of truth in the concerns of the people who voted for One Nation (2). There is genuine fear in the community about the links between Muslims and terrorist organisations who identify with the Islamic faith. There are concerns about globalisation and loss of local manufacturing jobs. One Nation, offers a solution to these concerns.
Even though the solution itself would not fix the underlying issues it gains traction for two simple reasons. One, it’s what people want to hear. Two, there is a significant portion of the electorate which is ignorant enough to believe in the solution and pissed off enough with the repeated failings of the mainstream parties.
Both mainstream political parties have failed utterly to address these concerns. In some cases, they fail to acknowledge them at all. The end result is larger groups of people who are pushed to explore an extreme solution because the extreme voices are the only people talking about the very real concerns of some voters.
It seems as if the mainstream parties have forgotten that we live in a democracy and because of this, half of the voters will be of less than average intelligence. Those voters, the crap constituency if you will, are susceptible to flawed solutions. It’s up to the major parties to consistently explain why simplistic solutions such as banning all immigration are neither appropriate or effective.
Tom Elliot has an interesting solution (3). He suggests a fixed period of benign dictatorship. I tend to agree with Elliot’s view in that if the period of this ‘dictatorship’ was limited to just five years the outcome couldn’t really be much worse that the partisan bickering which has become the norm.
Elliot’s solution also requires Australian’s to agree on the core issues which need to be addressed. Seeing as Australian’s can’t even seem to agree on something as basic as a plebiscite on marriage reform I’m pessimistic about our chances of agreeing on the countries core problems.
I don’t think a dictatorship however benign is the answer. As I’ve said a number times now I not convinced the current make-up of the Senate is unworkable. Despite a sluggish start it seems the government is in fact governing quite effectively.
They have been able to strike a remarkably bipartisan deal with the opposition to pass most of their proposed budget changes. The amendments insisted on by the opposition were quite reasonable. It was a good first step on what I fear will be a long path towards budget repair.
If the government is to continue to be successful it will need to accept that some of One Nation’s agenda will need to be addressed. I very much doubt we need a royal commission into Islam yet some kind of authority tasked with educating people about Islam might provide some useful outcomes. At the very least it would force local Imams to better explain their positions on contentious issues such as sharia law and how they envisage it interacting with our existing secular legal code.
The government will also have to accept that some of the Greens agenda will need to be addressed. Transitioning from an economy powered by finite fuel to a sustainable one is vital to our nation’s future prospects. We’d all like to protect the vast natural resources of our nation. The Government needs to buttress this vision with pragmatism to make the kind progress which is important to Australia’s long term, overall sustainability.
What the government must not do is pander to one of these extreme parties in the same way that the Gillard government pandered to the far left after the 2010 federal election. If they fall into that trap the opposition may be tempted to indulge in some of the same questionable tactics which the Liberal Party under Abbott regularly rolled out.
That kind of negativity doesn’t help anyone. It’s no way to govern. We should remember that good government is often accompanied by good opposition. If Labor is to return to government the path back is through the centre. It’s as much through those in the constituency who are a little less educated as it is through those more educated.
Embracing all comers. Pushing back on those who would marginalise people who are a little different. That’s the Australian way of life. Listening to the disenfranchised, explaining why the simple solutions won’t work and offering inclusive solutions are the best way to flush the toilets on those who actually threaten our way of life.