Recent discussion has led me to start on a post I’ve been meaning to do asking the question: to what extent are the major parties and their leaders responsible for the resurgence of racial and religious prejudice in Australia, as represented by Pauline Hanson and the treatment of asylum seekers.
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The most plausible argument against a directly elected president is that a nominee of one of the major parties would almost certainly get up. If the President and Prime Minister were of the same party, the President would be even more a rubber stamp than the GG. If they were of opposite parties, there would be an increased risk of partisan deadlock. This is certainly undesirable, but is it a likely outcome?

This argument depends on the assumption that a large majority of Australians would vote for the candidate of their preferred party. How large a majority is needed? The evidence suggests that no more than 30 per cent of voters are ‘rusted-on’ Labor voters who would vote a straight Labor ticket in all elections, and similarly for the Liberals/Nationals[1]. That leaves 40 per cent who can be swayed either way.

This means

* An appealing independent candidate could win in a three-sided contest

* If one party chooses not to run a candidate, the other party’s candidate would almost certainly lose

So, given a widespread belief that the President ought not to be a partisan, I think it is unlikely that the major parties would run candidates and win the first time around. Once the norm of an independent presidency was established, it would be almost impossible for either major party, acting alone, to break it.

Ken Parish has more, repeating the point that we can, if we choose, have direct election without, or prior to, a Republic. He also has some nice points about experimentation in a Federal system. It’s fair to say we’ve been experimenting with different gubernatorial models lately, and not having a very high success rate.

fn1. In the last Senate election Labor got 34 per cent of primary votes, and at least some of these must have been swinging voters. Similarly for the coalition in 1998.

The recent departure of Tasmanian Governor Richard Butler has let the monarchists, long embarrassed by the antics of our hereditary ruling family, get a bit of their own back. Lots of people see prominent republican Butler’s (alleged, I should observe) arrogant and erratic behavior as a prototype for a Malcolm Turnbull presidency.

I’d suggest that the real lesson here is Churchill’s – democracy is the worst system apart from all the others. Perhaps if a President were selected by popular vote, the office might occasionally be filled by popstars or sporting heroes. But does anyone suggest that Butler or Turnbull, or, for that matter, Prince Charles, would ever win a popular vote?

In Parliament today, Howard solemnly announced that five government departments had looked at Labor’s proposed amendments to the FTA, and all had agreed they would be completely impossible to draft. Latham just laughed at him – he might as well have announced that his advice had come from the Liberal Party secretariat.

We’ve reached the point where anything coming out of the Public Service can be assumed to be propaganda on behalf of the government. This assumption isn’t always correct, but when it matters, it’s usually right. Labor has contributed to this trend, but things are far worse now than when Howard came to office. If Latham wins, I hope he sticks to Labor’s promise to reverse this process.

In my preceding posts, I’ve argued that Howard’s rejection of Labor’s seemingly innocuous PBS amendment was a high-risk piece of political brinkmanship, designed to force Labor into yet another backdown. But another thought occurred to me and others (for example, Brian Bahnisch in this comments thread), today. Perhaps the amendment isn’t innocuous after all, and Howard has been told that his great and powerful friends won’t wear it.

Certainly this is the line that Latham needs to push. So far, the debate seems to be going the right way. Howard’s counterargument, that the amendment might discourage US companies from investing in Australian ideas is a dangerous one. As I’ve pointed out previously, it’s inconsistent with the line that, as far as the PBS is concerned, the FTA is a non-issue.

It’s well-known that news tends to be framed in terms of pre-existing beliefs and prejudices. If there’s a general assumption that a public figure or a group of people has particular characteristics, stories will be framed in that way, and stories that don’t fit the frame may not get a run.

The coverage of the dispute between Howard and Latham over amendments to the FTA legislation illustrates this. When Labor Senators announced that the FTA would be supported, subject to some amendments, everyone treated this as the kind of minor facesaving that is usual when one side in a dispute backs down.

But as soon as Howard rejected the amendment on the PBS, the tone of media coverage changed completely. Howard is supposed to be canny and cautious, and Latham to be a wild man, liable to break out at any moment. So we get this kind of thing from Michelle Grattan.

It was typically Latham. Just when at last Labor’s course on the Australia-US free trade agreement looked relatively simple – the Opposition would agree to it after voting down the Left – the leader added a new, personal twist.

Grattan patches the holes in her argument by asserting that

The favoured game plan seemed to be that if these were resisted, they wouldn’t be pushed to the point of jeopardising the agreement.

but I saw no evidence of this game plan at the time.

Louise Dodson, Paul Kelly and Steve Lewis all take the same line.

The fact is that it’s Howard who has chosen to play high-risk politics here. No leader in Latham’s position could afford to back down twice in the same day, so his decision to dig in was a forced move, not an expression of character. But the idea of Howard as a reckless gambler doesn’t fit the established script, so it doesn’t get a run.

Not content with humiliating Labor over the FTA, John Howard has decided to raise the stakes, by rejecting a face-saving Labor amendment cutting off a minor loophole with respect to the PBS. On recent track record, Howard’s judgement looks sound. Labor will probably cave yet again, and look even weaker than before. This was, of course, precisely the judgement the Americans made on Howard and Vaile. By the end, the Yanks knew Howard would sign anything and proceeded to dictate one of the most lopsided treaties ever seen (in the absence of actual gunboats to enforce signature).

But maybe the worm will turn. The PBS is the most vulnerable single aspect of the deal. If Labor can’t fight and win on this, they can’t fight and win on anything. It seems unlikely, but perhaps Howard has overplayed his hand.

The cave-in over the FTA is filling me with gloomy thoughts, and here’s another. What are the odds on another Beazley leadership challenge?

The report that Labor Senators will back the proposed FTA with the US, and that Caucus will almost certainly follow suit, is an indication that Labor has reverted to the small target strategy adopted in 1998 and 2001. The analysis done for the Committee made it clear that the economic benefits of the Agreement for Australia were trivial. This is on the assumption that there are no effects on the PBS. Since this assumption will almost certainly prove false, it’s reasonable to conclude that the deal was harmful in economic terms.

But this was always a political issue, and Labor has been comprehensively thrashed in political terms. In retrospect, it would have been better to capitulate immediately. Given that this hasn’t been done, it would have been better to withhold support and propose to renegotiate the deal after the US and Australian elections. Labor was under a lot of pressure over Iraq and the FTA, and it would have been hard to hold the line on both issues. But caving in on both, with the reinstatement of Beazley and the acceptance of the FTA is a total disaster.

Moreover, there’s no reason to expect anything better from the (still announced) tax policy, or anything new and significant in terms of health and education expenditure. My guess, FWIW, is that we can look forward to another three years of Howard. Of course, nothing is certain. The government is still unpopular, and could lose. Even if Howard gets back in, the economy could turn sour, and he could get the push from Costello. Finally, I suppose there’s a chance he might retire voluntarily.