The recent Coalition leadership storm was full of sound and fury. It signified both more and less than appeared. Less, because the lament from many business and media figures that Australia had squandered the opportunity to fix its economy was trivial and self-serving.
And more, because the turmoil revealed a deeper cause for concern. The priority that culture and politics give to individual will and power over reason and community ultimately cripples good politics.
The focus on power can be seen in the emphasis on the leader, and in the association of leadership with strength and power. The country is thought to be in good hands when it is ruled by a strong-willed leader who is effective in pushing through his chosen policies. All leaders enter office with high hopes of being this chosen one.
This focus on will and power is also reflected in culture, with its emphasis on the freedom of the individual to choose, not only what to do, but who to be, and on the insistence on being economically competitive. People’s worth is created by the choices they make as competitive individuals. The defining mark of citizens is the choice they make between candidates and parties at elections. This choice is usually presented as the choice between leaders, each exuding power and promising strong and effective leadership. And many people are guided in their choice by the appeal of the image rather than by argument.
The difficulty with choice, will and power is that they are blind. Strong leaders choose their programs without having to signal, explain or defend them. The slogans and spin with which they adorn them are not arguments to support them but weapons with which to implement them. In current public life it is increasingly clear that the definition of problems and the policies chosen by leaders reflect the will of wealthy individuals and corporations in order to protect and expand their wealth and privilege. The appeal to the good of Australia made in their defense is rightly seen as spin.
When politics is based on will and power, it is inherently competitive. In a democracy the power of leaders to carry through their chosen policies is subject to the will and the power of the people who can choose another leader, and the will and power of the other party members who can dump them. Those decisions can be made as arbitrarily as the choice of policies that leader strives to push through. Effectively the leader’s power to implement his chosen policies is limited by the people’s power to reject his government. So in a democracy the cult of power ends in powerlessness. So be ready to hear for calls to neuter democracy.
In the case of Mr Abbott and Mr Newman the people chose to turn against them after discovering that what they promised to do before the election bore no relationship to what they chose to do when in office. People did not like what was chosen for them, and recognised that it reflected an economic ideology whose effect was to protect vested interests, not the interests of the community.
So where to from here? It would clearly not be in the interests of all Australians for Governments to be deposed routinely after three years or to be rendered impotent half way through each term. But neither is it desirable that unfair and unpopular policies about which people have not been consulted should be pushed through by being identified with the national interest. The present crisis gives space to imagine a better way.
In particular a better form of politics means moving away from the understanding that political virtue is centrally to be sought in virile leadership, untrammelled choice of policy, strength of will and total control over implementation. Political virtue should be defined instead by full consultation, transparency in communicating with the public, consideration of the common good and particularly that of the most vulnerable members, reasoned argument, reflection on the assumptions on which economic orthodoxies are based, and humane implementation of policy. It is primarily a community and not an individual activity.
This is to give the exercise of reason priority in politics over the exercise of will. Leaders would do what has been shown to be reasonable not what is chosen as expedient. In the current challenge of the need to increase revenue and reduce some expenditure, this means promoting a coherent view of Australian prosperity that economic policy serves but does not determine, and proposing the policies that will develop Australia in an equitable way. Voters will then be encouraged to do more than choose. They will reflect on the values and arguments held up before them. We need a politics in which voters are consulted and trusted to reflect on what is proposed, and politicians can be trusted to speak honestly of what they propose.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.