The most interesting feature of the events that led to the defeat of Malcolm Turnbull was how diminished the actors were. They seemed more like children squabbling and back-stabbing for leadership of their in-group than adults about serious business.
That lack of gravity, displayed in the rhetoric, the promises broken, the lies, the resignations not carried through, the public commentary on the event and the rhetoric of the main actors deserves reflection.
Many will ask why we should expect anything else? After all, Australians have always called politicians bludgers. That is true, but even the abusive rhetoric shows that they expect something more of their political leaders, more gravity in their dealings with one another.
It is instructive to set these events against Shakespeare's treatment of the deposition of a ruler. For him it is a momentous event: 'There's such a divinity that doth hedge a king.' The actors may have flaws that prove fatal, but their fall gains tragic weight because they rule a nation that places on them great responsibilities with cosmic dimensions and divine endorsement. Witches, prophecies, portents and dreams emphasise the seriousness of taking out a ruler.
As the plot to kill Julius Caesar gets underway the portents lead Casca to remark: 'Either there is a civil strife in heaven, or else the world, too saucy with the Gods, incenses them to send destruction.'
We may be grateful for the more mundane atmosphere of Australian politics — it guarantees that even if prime ministers lose the throne they keep their heads. Nevertheless, the public diminishment of people who exercise power evident in the deposition of Malcolm Turnbull is concerning. It is yet another sign that those entrusted with political and financial responsibility do not take their position with due seriousness.
We should set last week's events alongside the revelation provided by the royal commissions into the financial industry. There the senior leaders and boards of financial institutions and their regulators who were once hedged, if not with a divinity but at least with a dignity and solidity, appeared as helpless and hopeless.
"These assumptions shape the language of politics and inevitably diminish the way in which politicians and financial leaders act and come to see themselves."
It is now a commonplace to blame the lords of government and of the economy for neglecting their responsibility to the nation and its people, for not focusing on policy and on good governance, and for pursuing individual or sectional gain to the neglect of the national good. It should lead us, though, to move beyond denunciation to ask why they have come to be so diminished and what would need to change if they are to do what we expect of them.
The answer to both questions is to be sought in the received assumptions about the scope of government in institutions and in government itself. These presuppositions inevitably lead to diminishment of the people who work in them. Governments, financial institutions and most commentators on them accept that their priority is to serve economic growth, and that this is best achieved by the working of a free and as far as possible unregulated market. Of itself economic growth will then shape a better society.
These assumptions shape the language of politics and inevitably diminish the way in which politicians and financial leaders act and come to see themselves. Once they accept a diminished view of their role as stokers of the economic engine, they no longer need to reflect on the human qualities of their policies or their actions. The most telling phrase in public reflection on the deposition of the prime minister was its 'transactional cost'. The scope of the enterprise was stripped of solemnity and human significance. It became an accounting entry.
In this diminished view of politics and of governance, policies are effectively reduced to labels and slogans. They have no intrinsic connection with human values and the common good. Some slogans are designed to conceal the human costs of economic settings designed to increase inequality. Excluding people who are disadvantaged from participating in society by cutting benefits, for example, is called self-reliance. In other areas where human relationships are central, such as education, governance is based on gathering quantifiable evidence. Understandably, the diversion from teaching to harvesting numbers is unsuccessful.
If human beings are diminished, they usually respond badly. When politicians are not engaged with shaping a better society they quarrel about slogans that are detached from any larger goals, or about goals that they have abandoned in pursuit of economic purity. Where they veer from competition to endorse cooperation, as in the case of climate change, they are met with blind fury. Then they turn on one another or splash out on initiatives that defy their principles. The animus and inconstancy evident in parliamentary conduct should be seen as an index of human frustration rather than of malice.
To call for policies in the national interest, for respect in parliament, for stability of government and for public trust, is proper, but there is little chance that will come from change in Liberal leadership. The obstacle is that the leaders of the party, and perhaps of the Opposition, are still wedded to principles that have magnified inequality, and are governing in a time when the effects of inequality on prosperity have become clear. They build snowploughs for a land turned into a desert.
The path to a proper esteem for leaders of government and of financial institutions is to act as adults responsible for their enterprise, and to measure their performance by directing the economy to shaping a humane and sustainable world.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.