That’s the title of my latest piece in The Guardian. Opening paras:
Throughout his first year as opposition leader, Bill Shorten has adopted a “small target” strategy, which has been the subject of considerable criticism. “Missing in action” has been among the kinder phrases used.
The criticism has only intensified with Shorten’s endorsement of the Abbott government’s commitment of troops to a new Iraq war, and Labor’s support for a slightly amended version of the government’s anti-terror laws, explicitly sold as reducing our freedom.
Much of this criticism misses the point, harking back to a largely imaginary past in which the big issues of the day were thrashed out in parliament, and particularly in the presentation of alternative policy platforms by party leaders.
In reality, some version of the small target strategy is effectively forced on the main opposition party by the way in which our political system and media now operate. This in turn means that serious criticism of government policy must come from elsewhere.
John Quiggin 
I’ve never understood why Labor has become such an unquestioning supporter of America’s global reign. To hear Julia Gillard boasting to the US Congress that Australia had joined America in wars which her own party had opposed at the relevant time was just weird. The ALP should have been able to make significant political capital out of Simon Crean’s principled position on the Iraq invasion, but both Rudd and Gillard seemed determined Never to Mention the War.
I thought a couple of Royal Commissions would’ve been in order, Ken, but no such luck. Hopefully they’ll do better next time.
John, if Labor had remained principled and the party of the workers and the low and middle class majority, then there is no way they would be ignored or could be ignored. Instead, they chose to betray the classes and the ideals they were meant to represent. They chose to become Clayton’s Neocons, aping everything the Neocons do. This why they have no profile and no credibility. Why would any news outlet, even an unbiased one, choose to report “Me-too” Shorten in anything he says when he servilly supports the Liberals on every substantive point? Labor are weak, unprincipled and traitorous. They are contemptible and deserve to be destroyed at the ballot box.
What you are really saying in your article is that parliamentary democracy ceases to be properly functional once we have a two-party / one-ideology system as we now see in the US and Australia. Of course, it has occurred because of the capture of democracy by the oligarchic interests. Our democracy was never more than a bourgeois democracy and the proof is in the final capture of it by monied interests and the rollback of the Keynesian-Welfare era policies. Without workplace democracy and worker onwership of the means of production, pariliamentary democracy on its own is token and prone to capture. The proof is in the pudding. It is captured.
If parliament fails to express the will and needs of the people what then? You say “But the days when the House of Representatives was the natural forum for such a debate, and when the two main political parties were the obvious protagonists are gone, for good or ill.”
Well, clearly it is ill that we have become a one-ideology state. Why hedge in your conclusion? What do you propose if, as you clearly conclude, the two-party / one-ideology system and our pariliamant are now ineffective? I will say it. We need a revolutionary change. I am against violent revolution for a number of reasons. The main reason is that peple get hurt, the results are chaotic and predictable only in that even worse system usually seems to result from a violent revolution.
We need a peaceful Gandhian style revolution. Mass non-violent protest and refusal to act when the government makes laws against the popular will and humanitiarian principles. Australians are not there yet. I expect such movements to take hold when the lower classes and middle classes in Australia collapse into poverty as is already occurring in the USA. I mean the collapse of the lower classes and middle classes in the USA is already happening. Protest and even peaceful resistance in the USA will prove very difficult. The US authorities will react with extreme violence to any popular movement which threatens oligarchic capitalism. We see it now in Ferguson, USA. Australia has a better chance of a peaceful change.
Actually, I disagree with the small target strategy, because it effectively leaves it to the government to set the agenda. We already know that the Abbott Government is comfortable with dissembling to us mug voters, so much so that we are hardly in a position to know what information is solid and what is confected bulldust. If the major opposition party refuses to step up and to counter the government—even on matters of national security, especially on matters of national security—then we poor voters simply don’t know what the government is getting us into, in terms of policies, and in terms of the various wars overseas.
I hate to say it, but Bill Shorten’s public announcements of being with the government on the national security issues too often come across as obsequious. Surely a competent opposition party can establish some principles they abide by, and in light of those principles, tear into the government’s continuing practice of massive overreach in the security bills they present. Where’s the confidence in yourselves, ALP members of parliament? Simon Crean had it right the last time ’round, and his own party caned him for it.
If I were to take to heart the Abbott Guvm’nt’s blandishments on terrorists, I’d be quaking under the bed along with the old Reds. Goodness.
Katharine Murphy berates the media ie journalists for being MIA too,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/the-acid-test-australian-journalists-must-ask-what-agenda-they-serve?CMP=twt_gu
@rog
The comments on that piece are telling.
A large proportion are along the lines: “Too little, too late. Good points, but the media failures mean we have no sympathy left for you.”
Also telling, last week while Ludlam and Xenophon were desperately trying to make the Senate function the way it’s intended – as a house of review – and questioning the new laws that further criminalise journalism, the press gallery was empty.
I have no sympathy left for either the ALP or the Establishment Media. They can go to hell together.
The rest of us will have to reclaim our democracy alone, these dead-weights are just going to hold us back.
@Ikonoclast
You write that ‘if Labor had remained principled and the party of the workers and the low and middle class majority, then there is no way they would be ignored or could be ignored’. Does that mean you think there was a period when Labor was (a) principled and the party of the workers and the low and middle class majority; and (b) never ignored? That’s not the way the history looks to me. On the one hand it seems to me that accusations of Labor having failed to remain true to its principles and its supporters have been pretty much a recurring phenomenon since the party was founded; on the other hand it seems to me that general ignoring of positions taken by Labor has also been pretty much a recurring phenomenon since the party was founded.
J-D
It’s a lovely thought — the idea that in an age only half-recalled, things were better, the people more authentic and community-minded, our parties composed of folk who were exactly what they seemed — decent chaps who looked after the common man or woman.
Our memories are selectively Panglossian, because most of us prefer to dwell on happy recollections rather than painful ones. The ALP was never a socialist party, though it is true that it was substantially a union-based party and substantially more communitarian in its ethos, though also racist and sexist and ageist and to some e tent Catholic, with all that accompanied that.
It also tolerated more avowed socialists in its ranks — largely because of the union connection, and because for a time, there were quite a few avowed socialists outside the party working the same side of the street. That allows people today to look back with rose-coloured glasses on what once was.
That’s not to deny that today’s ALP pays far less lip-service to social justice than did the ALP of Evatt and Chifley and Curtin. It is worth recalling though that only one PM has called the troops out against striking workers, and he was an ALP man.
@Fran Barlow
This kind of selective reading of the past doesn’t just affect the way people discuss the ALP, and it doesn’t just affect the way people discuss parties in general. Also, I don’t think it arises only or even primarily from people preferring happy recollections to painful ones. I think when people want to draw emphatic attention to something they look for contrasts, and when they can’t find them they imagine them — and not just in the past, either. As well as being prone to emphasise an interpretation of Now by inventing a version of Then to provide contrast, people emphasise an interpretation of Here (this country, Australia) by inventing a version of There (some other country which they imagine to be more different than it really is) to provide contrast.
See how John Quiggin begins his column by acknowledging that the past in which parliament was a place where ideas were thrashed out is a largely imaginary one, but ends it by saying that the time when parliament was the forum for national debate has passed, as if it did exist once, as if he too still has some belief in that imaginary past?
Of course, things do really change. Nothing stays the same. Parliaments have changed and parties have changed, Labor and the rest. However, if one of those changes is that Labor is ignored now more than it was in the past, as Ikonoclast suggests, I haven’t seen the evidence.
John,
I’m sympathetic to your argument and on account of that rarely criticise oppositions who have to basically carry on like pork chops, oppose everything, including things they supported yesterday when they were in government and hope that the government loses the election.
But I don’t accept that the ALP couldn’t have made a principled stand on the new laws removing civil liberties in a pretty simple way. It could have allowed the legislation through subject to a six month sunset clause serving notice that we needed debate and expert input in the meantime. Or if it didn’t then want to be wedged during this term of government, it could have simply waved things through subject to a three year or five year sunset clause and simply refused to budge beyond that point.
I couldn’t agree more than with Ikonoklast above. The irony of a call for Ghandian revolution is that, at the moment at least, it is farmers, rural residents and and the broad environment movement who are leading the way in the practical application of NVDA principles. As I write the people of Gloucester are scrambling to greet a police escorted CSG drill rig and the bravehearts up at Maules Creek, as well as a lone individual in Newcastle, have peacefully interrupted coal exports:
https://www.facebook.com/FrontLineActionOnCoal
In many ways this is a training exercise for the near future. It is astonishing that Lock the Gate should be responsible for training cadre but that is what is happening. The interaction between bushies and eco-radicals has included exposing the bushies to radicals of all sorts. Camp Wando, Camp Quoll, the Pilliga mob and Bentley adopted a policy of radical inclusion such that any kind of negative -ism was rejected in favour of a very sound policy of democratic participation for all.
This means, among other things, that the bone heads of the union movement have effectively excluded themselves from potential future leadership roles of what will be a truly historic movement for liberation. As a lifelong union member and activist within the NSW Nurses Assoc and the NSW PSA I cannot tell you how pleased I am that the dead hand of bureaucracy has stayed away because I’ve had it up to the back teeth with what Bea Campbell once described as the ‘butch and baronial’ attitudes of union leaders (she was addressing Doug Campbell at the time).
In the meantime, don’t fret over the USA where Indigenous Americans have taken a leadership role in opposing the Keystone Pipeline and where the courts still practise the law such that, for example, two people who used an old crayfish boat to block a coal ship from leaving port, in Bristol, had charges against them dropped by the prosecutor who said:
“Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been gravely lacking. I am heartened that we were able to forge an agreement that both parties were pleased with and that appeared to satisfy the police and those here in sympathy with the individuals who were charged.”
http://tinyurl.com/lf42xrl
I know I’ve a track record here at JQ’s and elsewhere of urging people to get some fresh air into their lungs by getting out there and participating but I’ve never been so blunt before: stop gnawing on the bones of old grievances, put away your Alexandra Kollontai, even if she was the best of them, get some Marge Piercy or Le Guin up you and act.
Now is the time.
Things can never change until they do. I would have thought that now is the perfect time to stand up and differentiate himself and Labor from Abbott’s morass. He needs to make sure a discredited Abbott government becomes an irretrievably broken one.
The danger is if he doesn’t he is tacitly accepting the Abbott government’s lies about the last Labor government, and Abbott will soldier on (pun intended) and win the election he doesn’t deserve to win, like Howard in 1998.
He should certainly have opposed the new security legislation. With war in Iraq III he could simply he said he supported American and British efforts but he wouldn’t support Australia’s involvement because he didn’t think Abbott had good enough judgement.
F
@ck bipartisanship.
‘A visit to Shorten’s website reveals a near-daily output of speeches, press releases and media interviews. The vast majority of these go virtually unreported …’
By itself, that doesn’t add up to a ‘small target strategy’. The part about not being reported is obviously not Shorten’s strategy.
But what’s the content of those speeches, press releases, and media interviews? how much is endorsement of government stances in a spirit of bipartisanship? how much is purely negative denunciation of the government’s performances? how much is detailing of affirmative Opposition proposals?
I broadly agree with you Prof. Quiggin. I do slightly disagree though. Here’s why.
Does Shorten have a profile? Yes.
Does Shorten have a profile as an Opposition Leader? No.
Here, he needs to introduce a personality, hopefully one that is well received and well liked.
Once that is done Shorten can implement the small target strategy.
I also broadly agree with Nicholas Gruen – a stand of some sort needs to be made that makes the mass media to distinguish itself from the Liberal Party. (LOL)
I would disagree with this:
The invasion was late March 2003 and the next election, with Latham as leader of the ALP, was November 2004. That wasn’t long enough for the reality to really sink in that there never were any WMD and, more importantly, that Howard knew it all along.
Howard’s capacity for “Truth” was however becoming an issue. That’s why he infamously announced the election by saying it was all about “Trust” – as in ‘Who do you trust (even though you know we’re lying through our teeth) to keep the housing boom rolling?’.
At the next election in 2007 – when the ALP was promising to start withdrawing troops and the LNP was saying they wouldn’t – they received and banked the political credit.
If it’s true that ‘the general unpopularity of politicians … has grown over time as politics has become professionalised and poll-driven [and] pushes opposition parties towards a strategy of risk-avoidance and negativity’, doesn’t that suggest that parties have become too professionalised and poll-driven for their own good, and that there does exist the possibility of success through a different strategy, one that involves trying to be a little less professionalised and poll-driven?
It seems to me that there’s not much chance of success in politics by ignoring technique, but there’s also not much chance of success by relying purely on technique.
As usual, Iconoclast speaks for me and much better than I could.
The ALP no longer has any core values and principles on which to base it’s responses to the rapidly changing political situation and must therefore stay a small target until the issues facing them coming into the next election become evident.
The issues of the news cycle current at the time leading up to an election then become the germ of policy vaguely influenced by the dim memories of progressive party history, as long as it’s going to get them elected.
Here’s what’s on Shorten’s website right now:
26/9 “Open Letter to the Islamic Community”: ‘ISIL is a bad sick twisted ideology’
25/9 “Rosh Hashanah”: ‘The Australian Jewish community has made its mark in so many aspects of public life, from business, the arts and philanthropy through to the legal profession and politics.’
25/9 “Doorstop – Submarines”: ‘Labor will honour any contract to manufacture submarines in Japan or anywhere else, but we’d rather they were made here. Or Germany.’
24/9 “UN Summit shows need for action on climate”: ‘Labor hopes the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reports back to Prime Minister Tony Abbott that his sceptic views are not shared by any of the 120 world leaders at the Summit.’
24/9 “Cities Appointment”: ‘I am pleased to announce I have appointed Anthony Albanese Shadow Minister for Cities to sharpen Labor’s focus on the importance of urban Australia to the national economy.’
23/9 “Labor Backs Korean Free Trade Deal”: ‘Labor will support legislation implementing the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA)’ – not to be confused with their full support for the LNP’s Legal Reforms: ‘Kafka’.
23/9 “3AW”: ‘Federal Opposition has promised support for air strikes and the anti-terrorism measures’ – ‘the principle of working with the Government on National security, I don’t need a focus group or to think twice, when it comes to this, there is no alternative.’
23/9 “Endeavour Hills Statement”: ‘In a complicated and uncertain and complicated, fundamentalist extremism gives the illusion of certainty and simplicity.’ [sic]
That’s not presenting a small target to Abbott. It’s behaving as his suppository.
It might be decades before Shorten accumulates sufficient gravitas to be taken seriously.
@Megan
Quite right Megan. It’s even worse than I’d have imagined. It’s hard to imagine why he bothered releasing them at all. Perhaps a general ‘me too’ would have been more efficient and ironically, less committal.
His 23/9 on ‘terr?r’ implies that he needs focus groups and to think twice on most things. Candour I suppose.
‘The less that the parties engage in an issue, the greater the alienation of the public from the political process, and the greater the payoff to negativity.’
If that’s true, then doesn’t it follow that the more the parties engage in issues, the less the alienation of the public and the less the payoff to negativity? And if that’s true, doesn’t it (again) suggest the feasibility of an alternative strategy?
Ken L:
On what planet does America have global reign?
The Australian public overwhelmingly supports the US alliance. From the SMH:
Interestingly, 48% of Australians are worried about CHina becoming a military threat.
Australia already has an infantile Left party called the Australian Greens which appeals to about 10% of the electorate. I can’t see much point in Labor moving much further to the Left and making themselves electorally irrelevant.
@Gaius X
Moving away from reflexive grovelling to Washington towards a more independent foreign policy would not be a move to the Left, Gaius X, if that was what your somewhat disjointed comment was meant to imply. Well unless you regard people like Malcolm Fraser as part of the “infantile Left”.
It’s hardly surprising that a majority of Australians think the alliance is important, given most politicians and pundits have been telling them so incessantly since 1942. That doesn’t make it true. In fact Australia is far more likely to be dragged into wars in support of American interests than to need American protection.
@Ken_L
And recall that the one time Australia tried to invoke the special ‘relationship’ (2005, Timor, John Howard sought US military involvement), the US told us to get stuffed.
Not that I want the US militarily involved anywhere, but the point made by Fraser is that it’s very much a one-way street.
Fraser has been estranged from the Libs for many years and on some issues is now well to the Left. Infantile anti-Americanism is mostly associated with Green’s voters and the tiny blink- and-you’ll-miss-it Marxist left. America has made many foreign policy mistakes but most Australians realise we need to support the alliance.
ps Great to see Q&A running Islamic State propaganda last night. Hopefully Abbott will have the guts to sell off the ABC before it does more damage to the national interest.
@Gaius X
I thought from your earlier comment that you were a Labor person attacking the Greens, now it seems you are probably an LNP supporter or such.
Either way, using terms such as “infantile” to describe the Greens says more about you than them, but I can see how it fits with the Abbott ‘adults are back in charge’ discourse. I suspect that’s a coded patriarchal discourse, drawing on association of women with children and a women are childish/frivolous stereotype. It would be really interesting to see if it is particularly levelled against parties with female leaders.
Oh I keep seeing all these wonderful bits of research that I don’t have time to do!
But while I’m analysing discourse, can I suggest that what ProfQ really ought to do is start a campaign to replace Shorten with Plibersek, instead of trying (vainly I think) to defend Shorten. It would establish his (ProfQ’s) credentials as an even-handed commentator, who first campaigned to have a female, slightly left of centre (only in some ways, L know, people, don’t get too exercised about this) Labor leader with a slightly more right wing male leader, then later campaigned to have slightly more right wing male Labor Opposition leader replaced with a slightly more left wing female Labor Opposition leader. Total balance!
Bill could do well to pick this battle; its without external consequences and he has grass roots support
@Val
I don’t think the LNP would be nearly right wing enough for Gaius X. But in the absence of his preferred party I guess he has to make do with voting LNP.
I am a Labor voter Val but I care more about policy than tribalism.
I can see how an unhinged bunny boiler might leap to such a conclusion but not someone who is intelligent and capable of reason. I also called the Greens infantile when Bob Brown was the leader. I never mentioned Christine Milne.
If I was grand poobah, I would make it a constitutional requirement that both houses of Parliament have a 50:50 gender split. I think the evidence is pretty clear that societies with more even gender power realatioins are more peaceful and prosperous.
Oh gawd I do hope you aren’t going to start another round of Fatal Attraction antics like you’ve done both here and at Larvatus Prodeo with poor John Quiggin and Mark Bahnisch as your respective victims. Can’t you vent your misandry elsewhere.
Some expounding of values and direction – if Labor cannot bring themselves to expound alternative policy – would be welcome. As would be some attempt to make Middle Out economic growth as an alternative to Trickle Down a familiar concept, some attempt to promote perceptions of a nation as family rather than a business, compassion as an alternative to resentment of those who are recipients of welfare or aid, calling out of the LNP for their misleading and deceptive pretense of taking climate seriously as they treat elimination of it as a consideration a crusade, calling out of their baiting the Senate into being their tool for driving the final nail into the Direct Action coffin that hands them the clean sweep of climate action whilst claiming that was everyone else’s fault…
I don’t see much to like from Shorten or Labor.
@Gaius X
so now I’m a “bunny boiler”. Enough said on this I think, no point in engaging further.
But I do like to republish these comments on my own blog at times, just as a record of the ridiculous things that some men (I assume you are a man, please correct me if I’m wrong) say to and about women online, so this will be a good one to add to the collection.
@Gaius X
I call concern troll on that. None of us can be sure how you vote, and really, it is irrelevant. What you’re saying here on the ABC is simply murdochratic nonsense.
The idea of having a 50-50 gender split enforced in parliament is a classic piece of misdirection/cover though, so well done on that one.
That Gaius X can be a (claimed) Labor voter with such clearly reactionary views, really settles the case. Modern Labor is a middle-right party along with the LNP. In some policies Labor and LNP are closer to the far right; viz. imprisoning men, women and children refugees in substandard territorial and extra-territorial concentration camps and in waging and/or supporting illegal wars.
@Gaius X
ah I just re-read and noticed that you claim to be a Labor voter. So I have seen this ‘attack the Greens’ thing elsewhere, including in stuff I receive from my local Labor federal MP.
Just out of curiosity, and speaking as a former Labor researcher/adviser, what is the point of this strategy? What is it supposed to achieve? Because I’m damned if I can see it. Maybe in Vic electorates like mine, which are actually under threat from the Greens, there is some point, trying to persuade Labor voters not to switch to the Greens. But in broader Australia I can’t see the point.
Labor is being wedged, with the LNP on one side and the Greens on the other. In Australia generally (not in electorates where they are actually under threat from the Greens), the strategy of getting into bed with the LNP and joining with them in calling the Greens names, seems to me deeply misguided. It’s like saying we don’t want to be taken seriously as a political party any more, isn’t it? Or am I missing some major strategic point here?
@Ken Fabian
Yes I think there is a lot in what you suggest Ken. Certainly Labor needs to think very carefully about how they are different from the LNP and how they will differentiate themselves in policy and image. In Victoria when I worked for the Labor party, back in the Kennett era, the positioning was as a party that cared. However now it does seem to me that Labor is so focused on fighting the Greens (it’s not just our self-described Labor voter here, though he does take it to extremes) that they have forgotten how to differentiate themselves from the LNP.
@Val
Sadly Val we have seen the same thing in the union movement, where so many Labor apparatchiks learned their political craft. As union membership and power declined, the focus in most unions was on protecting their turf from other unions, even while their ability to do their core task of representing members to employers and governments was withering away. Shorten, of course, comes from the AWU, which many would say stopped representing the interests of workers decades ago in favour of creating a career factory for officials.
Gaius X, please take a week off. When you return, no attacks on other commenters.
I think Val and Ken are substantially correct. Labor’s strategy makes no sense. They have ceded the discourse to their opponents. Labor have basically conceded that the neoconservative framing of particularly the economic debate is “irrefutable” so Labor will only seek to debate the neocons within the neocon framework.
If the neocons claim to be represent “fiscal responsibility” then Labor must say they are even more fiscally responsible. No attempt is made to decode and unpack what fiscal responsibility means other than to say it represents a balanced budget or leaves “fiscal room”. Fiscal responsibility (as fiscal austerity) has played a major role in giving Greece and Spain 20% plus unemployment rates and all the human and social misery that entails. Fiscal responsibility taken to the extremes of counter-cyclical austerity protects the wealth of the rich at the expense of the poor (and many more who are soon made poor under austerity).
Accepting your opponent’s chosen ground for the debate when that chosen ground is in fact fallacious (and won by propaganda not by truths) is a strategic error. It condemns you to attempt winning debates by telling bigger lies and making bigger distortions that your opponent. That is the only way to win a debate of falsehoods.
The correct strategic procedure is to work to shift the debate to true grounds. This might well lead to tactical reverses in the short to mid term. Lies are simplistic and emotive. Truths are complex and logical. It is a longer and harder path to win an argument with truths. But if the ground-shifting strategy is successful you can finally win debates by telling the truth. Wouldn’t that be radical? Winning political debates by telling the truth! The thing about sets of truths are that they are consistent with each other. A political party attempting to win with truth must be patient and wait for the public to start perceiving the consistency of truth sets and the inconsistency of mish-mashes of lies.
What if you can’t win with truth? The answer is simple. It is better to lose with truth than win with lies.
@Gaius X
Be interested in hearing your own arguments that justify Australia’s slavish adherence to US foreign policy. Most of what you write seems to be motivated by a dislike of the left (you quickly consign Fraser as a lefty because he happens to disagree with you, patently infantile move).
What, for instance, is the benefit to Australia in adhering strongly to the US position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I can’t see any benefit at all, just downside. That isn’t to say we should oppose the state of Israel but I do think that we could take a more moderate position and show some empathy for the Palestinians.
I assume you’re also able to mount to strong cost/benefit case for the last Iraq war? We were among the few who freely decided to join the US in that conflict and we must have done so hoping for a benefit. I mean we couldn’t be so naive as to commit people and money without a quid pro quo could we? So, can you tell me what we have gained, are there trade benefits perhaps? Has the US given us a grant of land that I’m not aware of? Perhaps they have donated some cash to help us pay for the cost to us of the war. I mean it’s not like we were actually threatened by Iraq and were thus motivated by self defense.
The ALP needs to move further to the Left this is the only way it can make itself electorally relevant.
@Ivor
When you say that moving further to the Left would make the ALP ‘electorally relevant’, do you mean that it would get the party more votes, or do you mean something different from that? I’m not sure what you mean by ‘electorally relevant’, so I’m forced to guess. (I don’t know what Gaius X meant by ‘electorally irrelevant’, either, but can’t ask now — at least, there’d be no chance of an answer for a week at a minimum.)
@J-D
It is probably best if you resolve your own difficulties.
@Ivor
In this case, sadly, I lack the power to resolve the difficulty. It is possible that you also lack the power to resolve the difficulty, but it would be sad to think so. On the other hand, the alternative possibility is that you have the power to resolve the difficulty but lack the will, and it would be sad to think that also.
@rog
Even as a pantheist (which maybe is what I am) I can’t help but love that Anglican Gosford church. Certainly if Shorten could get them on the team, he’d have much better lines!
@J-D
Strictly speaking, Ivor didn’t claim that moving to the left would make the ALP electorally relevant. He merely claimed that this was the only way it could mate itself electorally relevant. This could include believing that one path (moving to the left) creates an opportunity for the ALP to be electorally relevant or clears away some impassable obstacle to relevance without guaranteeing that it will achieve electoral relevance.
Clearly though, the ALP is already ‘electorally relevant’ since it regularly contests elections in which it wins either slightly more than half the seats in parliament or slightly fewer. At the moment, polls put it ahead of the existing regime on 2PP and though this is not a warranty of victory at the next election it is certainly a warranty of electoral relevance.
Gaius proposed that moving “much further to the left” (the language here is perverse, as it implies the ALP has already moved somewhat to the left when clearly, the trend, if there is one, is to the right) will render it electorally irrelevant (by which I assume he meant to assert that the ALP would be in a position from which it could not hold out realistic hopes of leading a governing regime) but of course he offered no argument in support of this assertion nor even what ‘much further to the left’ would in practice entail. Polls do tend to show that while we Greens are supported by only about 10% of the populace policies that most would associate with us tend to attract support comparable to or greater than the primary support of the ALP, and yet we Greens have been described by Gaius as an infantile left party.
What I think may be said is that while the ALP is indeed electorally relevant as the alternative conservative party to the preferred party of Murdoch and the dominant fractions of the business community, it’s politically unpalatable to varying degrees to much of the populace and in particular to those who feel they have no choice but to give it their effective preference. Every victory is pyrrhic. The anti-LNP group get a moment of happiness when some LNP leader has to admit defeat, and then have to become cognitively dissonant with increasing intensity as the ALP in power disappoints them by ruling very much like the party they defeated. Imagine going out to a club and trying to get rid of so e sleazy chap without success, being rescued by some apparently more upstanding and appealing man who upon walking you home turns out to have almost all the unappealing features of the chap he rescued you from — and to be his wingman! It’s a nasty thought. Dissonance is easier.
It seems to me quite likely that if the ALP argued cogently and with apparent conviction for policies much like ours, that they would in due course not only destroy us but wedge the LNP as well since a fair slice of their rural base aren’t all that keen on the neoliberal paradigm, on the TPP, on banks or mining companies and much else. A large slice of the vote for PUP would be sliced off as well. Most importantly, the ALP would be in charge of its politics rather than the LNP
or Murdoch. That would make their faithful a lot more excited about prospective victory.
@J-D
Oh! The humanity, so much sadness, so much condescension. It is to cry, sob …
@Fran Barlow
As I said, there’s no chance of confirming what Gaius X meant for a week at the minimum. There’s also no chance of confirming what Ivor meant if Ivor won’t condescend to clarification. Just because they used the same words doesn’t guarantee they used them equivalently.
It seems clear enough how you understand the expression ‘electorally relevant’, but there’s no guarantee that your usage is equivalent to either or both of the others.
I agree with you that it has been and will be possible for the ALP to gain votes and to win elections without moving to the left. Whether Ivor’s view is consistent with this or contradicts it is not clear to me.
It also seems that you would probably prefer it if the ALP moved to the left and that Ivor would also prefer it if the ALP moved to the left. On the other hand, Gaius X probably would not. All that’s clear enough (and obviously the real crux of the disagreement between Ivor and Gaius X), and it seems to me better clearly and simply stated instead of dressed up in obscurities. If Ivor simply stated plainly ‘I would like it better if the ALP moved to the left’, it would be much less mystifying (than the remarks Ivor actually makes). For what it’s worth I too would prefer it if the ALP moved to the left. For that matter, I’d prefer it if the Coalition moved to the left.
I think I’ve mentioned before that one way I seem to differ from a lot of people is that a lot of people seem to think that a party that adopted their own personal views would profit from it in electoral terms. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t give a farthing for the electoral prospects of a party that adopted my (highly idiosyncratic) personal views, and so have no difficulty distinguishing between my preference for the ALP to move to the left (on the one hand) and (on the other) predictions about the electoral effects this might have (which I don’t pretend to be able to estimate).
While I doubt that if the ALP adopted all my views it would gain electorally i suspect it would gain electorally from having the kinds of processes that would allow views such as mine to be canvassed and reconciled with other views that might also have some merit. I am a member of a party whose views I don’t entirely share, but which respects me and other party members enough to listen respectfully, and which, importantly, I don’t see as fundamentally ethically flawed. I can have a dialog with other members and put ideas and have realistic prospects of having them taken up.
In a community, we are happiest when we are amongst people who respect us and whom we respect. One can differ with others in such a community over what is best and shrug one’s shoulders if one is in the minority on some question. If the ALP were such a community they would perform significantly better electorally even if their policies were only a half step in my direction, and they rid themselves of their most egregious policies.
Even without expounding alternative policies it seems there is so much room to go on the offensive that failure to do so is lost opportunity or worse. Worse being seen as weak and ineffectual and unfit to be a credible replacement. Saving it all up for later? Isn’t one of the lessons from Abbott’s success as opposition leader that being relentless works? Failure to go on the offensive can be interpreted as Abbott’s failures not being that significant.
Abbott’s achievements are remarkable – getting elected based on being misleading and deceptive, successfully blaming others for changing policies post election, and for the failures since, baiting opposition and cross benches into voting down the policies they put up that they never really wanted… As Ikonoclast said, better to lose with the truth than win with lies – absolutely agree; I sincerely hope that the lessons Labor learn are not how to do similar.
Meanwhile there is so much that can be turned against Abbott and his government; those free overseas trips in luxury jets owned by mining magnates who stand to make billions by favorable decisions the government makes: words meaning what Mr Abbott wants them to mean, rather than the meaning the public was intended to take from them: ICAC: Abbott’s slush fund for attacking One Nation: Pyne, Brough, Ashby and Slipper. And the extraordinary extent to which they mislead and deceive and dance around the truth of their rejection of climate science and are engaged in a crusade to eliminate all consideration of it from government policy. And etc, etc.