At first sight, yesterday’s Japanese election result is a lesson — albeit a couple of years late — for John Howard. A 68-year-old leader, widely seen to be out of touch, facing new opposition leader who holds a commanding lead in the opinion polls. Observers said it was a foregone conclusion, and in both cases they were right. The ruling party should have dropped the old guy while they still had a chance.
But, of course, it’s a lesson for Malcolm Turnbull as well, because the Liberal Party is still recognisably the same beast it was in Howard’s day: a party with a proud and successful record but now increasingly sclerotic and anachronistic, whose long-term decline has been masked by one leader’s success and by the weakness of its opponents. Just like Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and facing the same sort of electoral extinction.
If Turnbull were allowed to follow his own instincts, he would probably look for inspiration to yesterday’s victor, the Democratic Party of Japan. The DPJ is a progressive, anti-establishment, anti-statist party. For Australia’s commentariat, who assume that being on the progressive side of the spectrum necessarily means supporting bigger and more powerful government, the DPJ’s very existence is an anomaly. Its electoral success must be mind-blowing.
As a quick look through the DPJ’s website reveals, it targets “bureaucracy-led protectionism and conformity” as the source of Japan’s problems, and calls for the restructuring of government in the interests of “those who work hard and pay taxes”. It aims to “devolve the centralised government powers to citizens, markets, and to local governments” — a prescription that Australia’s economy needs almost as much as Japan’s.
But if the DPJ’s success shows the way forward that Turnbull could theoretically take, it also shows how practically impossible it is for him to take it. The DPJ is a party of outsiders, formed only in 1998 by a merger of several small liberal and centre-left parties. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, is above all else the party of the establishment, with deeply vested interests in the existing social and economic order. Radical attitudes, to put it mildly, do not come naturally to it.
For Turnbull to even have a chance of emulating the DPJ model, the Liberal Party would first have to plumb much greater depths: either to be so desperate for office that it would try almost anything, or to shatter into fragments that could be collected and rearranged into a quite different shape. Neither is impossible — John Hewson and Robert Menzies respectively are witnesses to that — but the chance of Turnbull still being around when they happen is remote.
Charles: Thank you for an informative, concise and expert article. Poor old hidebound Oz. Where are the centre-left Parties to form a united front in Australia?
Thanks to our underwhelming interest in politics, we’ve allowed the spirit of Robert Menzies to linger on, long past the conservative party’s use by date. Malcolm Turnbull has shouldered the biggest albatross since the one in the brought in by the wedding guest. This, combined with the man’s total lack of any moral parameters, leaves the electorate without a meaningful opposition.
I’d imagine the odds against a Liberal/National Party Coalition regaining anything close to a winning spot would be on a par with Australia ever becoming a republic.
Not that I’m in favour of the rancid right ever being in power again, not at all. Merely that without an Opposition the Labour Party shows all the desire to become a totalitarian dictatorship. The censorship of the internet is the beginning of the end.
Funny, other people wrote off the LDP when they lost control of the Diet.
Funny how you neglected to mention that the LDP came roaring back after their opposition made a dreadful fist of their time in government and were summarily voted out by a disenchanted public.
A little history and long term perspective goes a long way with analysis of Japan, something that the pundits here in Australia should consider.
The LDP, like the Menzies clone Howard’s remnants, resemble the Bourbons, they neither forget nor learn. Unfortunately, neither do electorates in the, soi disant, democracies.
PJK parrotted his (alleged) mentor Big jack lang “put yer gelt on self interest, you know it’s trying” – very trying.
The perennial problem for left(ish) governments is that, as soon as their reforms allow hoi polloi to get a couple of zacs to rub together, out goes any thought of equity or redistibution, and the raving BorntoRules come roaring back.
ANyone who’s ever bothered to look at electoral returns, from the early 80s to last week, can see that the Democrats consistently outpolled the Nartionals in the REPS but never had a seat. The Greens, their successors (deservedly after the GST betrayal) have also outpoll the Nats but because of the party list (wot, are we euroids already?) they don’t receive an equivalent representation in the Senate, let alone the Reps.
Anyone who’s observed what a REAL Independent can do, even in the Reps like Peter Andren or Tony Windsor, or the Senate and seen the way people clamourt for the attention of the Xenophons or even, Shaitan help us, the Fieldings, must say to themselves, in the quiet wee hours, “YTF didn’t I, and everyone else who wants their help, VOTE for them last time?”
Maybe NEXT time? Bet a quid they don’t.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. Michael: I don’t write off the LDP, but I do think its plight is pretty desperate. Sure, it’s been in trouble before, but nothing remotely comparable to this. Parties do sometimes come back from near extinction, but at the very least the LDP is facing some hard questions.