Quite a few commentators have argued that the leftward shift I have described on economic issues in Australia has been matched by a shift to the right on cultural issues. The strongest proponent of this claim has been Jack Strocchi, but the same point has been repeated here and elsewhere. The problem is that culture is a big field, and it’s not clear exactly what we are talking about. So I’ll try to discuss some more specific points.

I’ve previously discussed multiculturalism and republicanism and see no reason to change what I’ve written on these topics.

Next, as argued below, I don’t think we are seeing a great religious revival, particularly a fundamentalist[1] Christian revival. Still the census figures give marginal support to the idea of a shift to the right. By far the most significant development in Australia in this respect is the gradual shift away from nominal Christianity, represented by growing proportions of people declaring “no religion” at the census. After rising steadily until 1996, this proportion fell slightly in the 2001 Census, a fact recorded with some satisfaction by George Pell, who apparently sees Satanists as preferable to atheists (I guess there’s just a trivial change of sign involved).

fn1. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m not too concerned with theological distinctions here. I’m using “fundamentalist” as shorthand to refer to religious groups with a strong emphasis on traditional sexual morality, little concern with social justice, and a willingness to get involved in the conservative side of poltiics. If anyone can suggest a better one-word description, I’ll be happy to adopt it.
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Now that the prospect of Family First holding the balance of power in the Senate has receded (though not in a good way!) there are a few questions I’d like to raise. Reading all the stuff about the rise of movements like Family First, it struck me that I’ve been reading and hearing about this kind of thing for a long time, in two forms. The first is with reference to the growth of conservative/fundamentalist/pentecostalist/evangelical[1] church groups either within or at the expense of mainstream denominations. The second is the idea that these groups will exert increasing political influence, as they do in the United States.

I’ve been hearing the second claim at least since Fred Nile was elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 1981. Even before that, the Bjelke-Petersens drew heavily on support from conservative church groups. And, while the base for the DLP was within the Catholic Church, it had a broadly similar policy position. It’s my impression that there’s a fairly reliable support base of 5 per cent of the population for this kind of politics, and that this proportion hasn’t changed much in many decades.

On the first question, I don’t have any good information, but my impression is that the news stories tend to focus on dynamic and expanding churches, ignoring the fact that there is contraction as well as expansion going on. I don’t think the census gives the kind of breakup that is needed here, but maybe readers are better informed than I am.

While I’m on this topic, Don Arthur has raised some more general issues of interest, to which I hope to respond soon.

fn1. For my purposes, the distinctions here aren’t critical except as they bear on attitudes to political activism or quietism

Looking at the discussion following their election, there are few points I think still need to be made or restated.

First, although the outcome came as a surprise, it’s about what would have been expected on the basis of historical experience in the absence of any knowledge about the parties, their leaders and so on. Particularly at the Federal level, Australians don’t tend to change government in the absence of a recession or other policy failure[1]. The realists like Ken Parish who predicted Labor’s defeat on this basis were right. I noted the general pattern, but thought that the government’s weaknesses were enough to give Labor a good chance. As it turned out, Howard’s decision to match Labor on health and education, combined with the messup over forest policy, wiped out any gains Labor might have made.

Second, over and above the benefits to an incumbent government from economic growth, I think the Liberals have benefited from the real estate boom. Even allowing for a fair bit of ideological crossover, it’s clear enough that the Liberals are more likely to act in ways that help property investors and encourage rising property prices for homeowners. More generally, in all the English-speaking countries, there has been a big expansion in debt-financed consumption, reflected in large trade deficits and supported by high and rising property values. The question of whether this is a sustainable model is a critical one. I’m on the record as saying it is not, but there are plenty of highly qualified people who take the opposite view, most notably Alan Greenspan. Among Australian bloggers, Stephen Kirchner has been most supportive of this view and critical of reference to the property price boom as an unsustainable bubble.

Third, it follows from this that I don’t think the election represents some sort of terminal crisis for Labor. Although several of the Labor state governments have hit rough patches at present (and this hurt Labor federally), Labor still looks like the natural party of government in most states. And, as I’ve already noted, Howard had to move a long way to the left to win, promising to preserve Medicare, assist state schools, expand the TAFE sector and so on.

It will be hard for Labor to win Federally in the absence of a recession or slowdown. But that’s a fact about Australian politics, not a fact about Labor.

fn1. Labor’s defeat in 1996 is sometimes presented as a counterexample. But it’s clear that the 1989-90 recession and the interest rate policy that caused it had not been forgotten then – as Howard showed, it hasn’t been forgotten even now. Labor should have lost in 1990 and 1993, but the Liberals mucked things up both times. 1996 was a referendum on Keating’s whole career, not the period after 1993.

For once, there has been a little bit of encouraging news coming out of Iraq. I’ve also been encouraged by some of the reactions I’ve seen.
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As Tim Dunlop notes, the government has already started the process of repudiating its election commitments. This Age report quotes Costello casting doubt on the forecasts used to justify the spending spree, and the Fin (subscription required) gives an even clearer indication that election commitments are likely to be broken, yet again, saying

His comments raise the possibility the coalition may seek to rethink some of its election campaign promises, and the $65 billion of promises since the May budget.

Mr Costello’s warning comes after The Australian Financial Review revealed that without consultation with him, Prime Minister John Howard had opted to announce at his campaign launch all of the $6 billion in spending promises that had been proposed by the Liberal Party campaign office, rather than just one or two as was expected.

it’s safe to say that this leak could only have come from Costello or his office.

I’ll be very interested to see what government supporters have to say about this, and what it implies with respect to the swinging voters who (presumably) took the government on trust as it asked them to, and voted for them on the basis of their stated policies.

Note: Post updated to include AFR quote

I didn’t do much for my reputation as an election tipster with my assessment of the Australian election. But I was just about spot-on in my pre-election prediction, posted at Crooked Timber that,

Whatever the outcome, I expect it will be treated in the international press as something of a referendum on the Iraq war

whereas, in reality, the issue barely came up.

On cue, here’s Glenn Reynolds complaining of inadequate coverage of

an Australian election that was run in no small part as a referendum on the war

Admittedly, Reynolds isn’t “the international press”, and, as he complains, some papers got the story right rather than printing the fantasy he would prefer, though many others have taken the “referendum” line. But his words are so close to my prediction that I feel entitled to a bit of a gloat. Heaven knows, we haven’t got much to gloat about in Australia this week.

More on this from Tim Lambert .

I’ve seen various assertions in the last couple of days claiming that cuts in the top marginal rate of taxation have been blocked in the Senate (so, by implication, can now been introduced). I don’t recall this happening, though there have certainly been occasions when the Senate blocked spending cuts or increases in other taxes that were supposed to finance cuts in the top marginal rate. But my memory on these things is not 100 per cent reliable.

Can anyone advise me whether there has in fact been an occasion where the Senate has voted against a reduction in income tax rates (on its own, not as an element of a package)?

It seems likely though not certain that the government will get exactly half the seats in the Senate, and that the Family First party will get at least one, largely due to preference deals with Labor[1]. As with all new parties, there’s something of a lucky dip quality here. Certainly, it doesn’t appear that FF are the hardline religious rightwingers that they have been represented as. I don’t have any particular knowledge about this group, but I will offer a few thoughts.

First, as I said in relation to Pell and Jensen, the idea that religion and politics ought to be kept separate is in general a silly one. It’s based largely on a misunderstanding of the doctrine of separation of church and state. What this doctrine prohibits is action by the state which favors one religion over others or over those without religious belief. In this context, claims that FF is closely associated with one particular church (Assemblies of God) are troublesome. It seems, however, that even if a lot of its leaders have been associated with AOG, the party is broader than this.

Separation of church and state does not mean that there is anything inherently problematic about people holding, and acting on, political views that are derived directly from their religious beliefs. The problem, where there is one, arises from the content of the beliefs and views. Although I don’t share the belief that we are morally obligated to follow the teachings of Jesus, I am often in agreement with the political views that follow from that belief. On the other hand, I rarely have much sympathy with policy beliefs derived from the Old Testament, for example, those condemning gays.

From what we’ve seen so far, it looks like FF have a mixture of policies, some of which will be appealing to me and most readers of this blog and others not. On the positive side, they are sympathetic torefugees and may help in restoring some much-needed decency in this area of politics. More generally, family values are, in large measure, those of the left. Co-operation rather than self-seeking competition, equal sharing rather than incentives and so on. That hasn’t stopped plenty of poltiicians espousing family values and pursuing anti-family policies, and we will have to wait and see whether FF lives up to its own rhetoric.

The obvious negative is that, for FF, the traditional family is the only option. I imagine the realities of life impinge to the extent that plenty of FF members and supporters have experienced divorce, blended families and so on, but there will obviously be no sympathy for ideas like gay marriage. But this was never going to come up, given that Labor had already opposed it. In general, this is not an area where governments have a lot of direct impact.

Overall, then we shouldn’t despair about FF holding the balance of power in the Senate, though I’m not optimistic they will do much more than blunt the sharpest edge of government policy.

fn1. In addition, there are the Democrats, of whom Andrew Murray is most sympathetic to the Meg Lees view of seeking negotiated improvements to government legislation. This means that, most of the time, the government will be able to get legislation through, perhaps with amendments.

I’m surprised no-one else seems to have mentioned the impact of state-level problems on Labor’s vote in the election. Right across the country, state-level issues ran against Labor. This partly reflects the fact that Labor is in office in every state, and in some cases, has been in office too long. But mostly, it was idiosyncratic stuff, that could have gone either way, but happened to go against Labor – even popular Labor governments ran into strife. Here’s my list

* In Queensland, the CEO of Energex committed suicide during the campaign. Although it was a complex story, it was tied to the failure to prepare properly for the blackouts that followed storms in January, which hurt the government

* In NSW, there were a string of hospital crises

* In Victoria, there was the broken promise over tolls on the Scoresby Freeway

* The Tasmanian forests were a state issue that split the general alliance between Labor and Greens

* The Gallop government in WA seems to be unpopular, though I don’t know the details of this

I don’t think these factors were enough to swing the election, but they could easily have added up to a 1 or 2 per cent swing, making the difference between an easy win for Howard and a narrow one.