There is something utterly delicious in watching the Gladys Berejiklian fan brigade trying to think their way through the disaster of Stadiumgate… or perhaps Stadiumturnstile would be the right word. Here’s a state government who say they’ve turned the economy around, who used the privatisation of state assets to create some new ones, who have managed to avoid the decadence of the last term of post-Carr NSW Labor — and yet here they are, on the edge of losing again. Or at least of losing their majority. And all this because of a stadium.
It’s driving them mad. The can’t get their heads around it. They’re getting to that point losing political forces always do — blaming the public for being so moronic that they can’t see the sheer beauty of their political vision for a few measly details. Fools! Poltroons!
It’s delicious to watch, but it also comes with a distinct political lesson. Governments and parties can no longer dictate the things that people will care most about, or the issues that they will elect as symbolic of legitimacy.
The Berejiklian government thought they could get away with a sop to Big Sport a great matter of public importance, and that it would be forgotten after three days of grumbling. That didn’t happen. The stadium demolition concentrated multiple voter concerns in one, literally, concrete object. It broke the cardinal rule of modern NSW politics, established by Bob Carr: you don’t do too much for “inner” city Sydney. That ensured Carr a risk-free decade, but it left Sydney as a city in decline. Mike Baird then finished it off with his nightlife laws, which managed to combine an advantage to the casino with his seeming determination to stop people having fun.
This is the paradox of contemporary politics. Parties pay huge amounts to employ spin doctors, media consultants, and focus groups all of whom tell them that the public are increasingly focused on issues that the pollies themselves consider marginal, symbolic and scatty. Having spent all that money to find these things out, they continue to believe that the governance-economic narrative is the “real” one, for which they will be rewarded or punished.
That simple narrative was a feature of the middle period of Australian politics, from the 1970s to the 1990s, when we were all suddenly flattered to be included in the technical conversation on J curves, terms of trade, interest rates and the like. That ended when the real choices governments make started to pass, membership of unions, parties and organisations died, and people’s connection to the broader social whole came to be overwhelmingly through the media. For many, there is no longer the ghost of a left-right fight in this politics: there are wars of audacity, surprise, quick turnaround, reframing and repositioning.
This could be seen in the Victorian election, when the refrain went out that the Andrews government was at least “doing something”. That “something” was the sky rail along south eastern rail lines. Note that people didn’t say, “well the government’s committing to public transport”. It was the pure fact of concrete, again literally, achievement. It was the fact of something rather than nothing that persuaded people over to Labor. The NSW government’s light rail program has been, by contrast, such an incompetent boondoggle it would make Guatemala blush.
Such sudden movements are everywhere now — as exemplified in Victoria by Julian Burnside, whose political brand has been discounted quicker than a last-day tuna sandwich, after his membership of the Savage Club became an issue. The Savage, a 19th century club initially for bohemians who couldn’t get into the major clubs, uses appropriated artefacts to emphasise their “savage” nature. It’s been a late anomaly that some of Melbourne’s left-liberal men have been trying to keep quiet for as long as possible (which wouldn’t be an issue if Burnside had run as an independent liberal). As a Green, it has damaged his candidacy as well as theirs, right from the get-go.
But if the right is crowing about that, they should remember that Milo is coming! Yes, Milo Yiannopoulos, it appears, will now get a visa after the right commentariat lobbied vociferously, with a little help from the Freedom Boy Timmy Wilson, and Senator Sprog Paterson. I’ve got no great problem with that. I don’t think Milo’s done anything — unlike violence-mongers Gavin McInnes and Tommy Robinson — to deny him entry. The real reason the government tried to keep him out is that he has the potential to embarrass the right thoroughly in the weeks leading up to the election proper.
Given his public support for the beneficial aspects of adult male-underage teenager sex, the presence of Milo can’t help but give the impression that the two factions of the right are now underage sex “moderates” like Milo, and convicted paedophiles like George Pell. Milo’s stock in trade is outrage. Combine his views on consent and his “$14.88” Nazi trolling of a Jewish journalist, and you have to ask what he’s going to do, must do, to keep the show on the road. He is currently selling possessions on Facebook, after a series of pleading send-money emails between him and his initial tour-backers were revealed. The right is about to find out. If they think it won’t play as a major issue, they still haven’t got it.
In the crumbling stadium of modern politics, the sideshow is now the main event.
Do these events really matter? Send your thoughts to boss@crikey.com.au.
You really can’t blame for voters for investing great import in achievements they can actually see. The endless waffle of marketing techniques applied to policy has made pollies’ abstract promises almost impossible to believe. Seeing actual major new infrastructure in Melbourne’s streets after decades of much-touted and unfulfilled transport “plans” is symbolic in itself.
“As a Green, it has damaged his candidacy as well as theirs, right from the get-go.”
Has it though?
He’s running in Kooyong. Such straying from the virtue-signallying orthodoxy might see Green voters in Northcote abandon him to vote 1 Animal Justice, but do the voters of Kooyong (and not just the headline-writing media and Twitter warriors) actually care in the slightest?
I don’t think his Savage Club membership will count against him anywhere near as much as the pompous way he said ‘Don’t interrupt’ to Jane Hume on that execrable Sky News appearance. He’s dead meat in Kooyong now.
I think it has hurt him as he’s landed in one of the few Liberal seats in Australia where things like that actually matter for enough voters. They’re the sort of people who would feel much more comfortable voting for a small-liberal Green that seems to define Di Natlali’s brand.
No-one actually watches Sky News.
It’s for mouth breathers who move their lips when ‘thinking’.
“In the crumbling stadium of modern politics, the sideshow is now the main event.”
Fundamentally disagree.
For better or for worse, people are now ignoring almost all the sideshows- you can give 30 million to Foxtel for free with no documentation, you can swing a cool half billion to your mates’ Reef foundation on the back of a napkin, you can engage in blatant crony capitalism, and 49 times out of 50 it doesn’t move the needle. Every now and then there’s a relatable (and usually much smaller) scandal like Bronwyn Bishop and the chopper and the public get interested and a head rolls, but it’s rare.
There’s just too many sideshows. It’s fatiguing to follow them all and care. Too many policy areas, too many policies, too many dodgy ministers, too many fudges and exaggerations and scares. They’re almost all buried now in the general trash pile of “politicians suck and they’re all the same anyway” to the great benefit of dodgy politicians and the great detriment of ones trying to do things the right way, and the media don’t help with this at all.
The result is people have the main game and only the main game: “which party do I think is most likely to deliver for me and my values?”
Same thing happened with Trump in the US. Evangelical Christians held their noses and voted for him in droves because for all his philandering and boasting and un-Christian behaviour, they trusted a Trump government more than a Clinton government to retain evangelical positions on abortion and transgender people and to keep delivering socially conservative judges to the courts. Clinton needed to pitch to working-class rust belt voters to vote for her because she’d create jobs and investment in their regions, instead of continuing to beat the Trump scandal drum, and she failed.
As you say, Andrews delivered the level crossing removals and the Melbourne Metro project is well underway and everyone can see it. For a State government, infrastructure delivery on schedule IS the main game, not a sideshow. The sideshows- the CFA dispute, the African Gang beatup, the “red shirts” “scandal”, these things were whipped up for 4 years by the Herald Sun – and people ignored them. Isn’t Andrews the best recent example against, not for, your thesis?
Quite so, we vote for the main events not the sideshows. Maybe you have to be a Melbournite who has to drive all over all the time to get level crossing removal. Or maybe just a Melbournite who’s heard decades of promises to remove the important ones. If they’d done two a year since I was a kid…. but it was a handful in last twenty. Now twenty in three years.
AND the next bit of underground rail after a 40 year hiatus. And more renewable energy approvals. It sure beats an outrageously overpriced submarine deal that we won’t see any of for years. Or the Nationals outback pork rail to nowhere. Or a fed government funded coal power station.
The interesting bit for me is the difference in projects. The crossing removals in Melb have been disruptive but mostly done remarkably quickly and on schedule. The light rail aka tram line in Sydney has been anything but. This is the bit to scrutinise. Infrastructure costs and schedule keeping vary wildly around the world and it seems unrelated to wage costs and countries’ development level.
Level crossings, Melbourne Metro – to which you can add the improvements to traffic flow along Punt Rd and Hoddle St – relatively small beer but much used and a reminder of what is going on elsewhere.
As for NSW, from a distance it seems the message from voters is “Spend our money properly.”
But anyway, isn’t the main game, the Fed election, resolving into a stoush about wages? Pretty much where the rubber hits the road.
Your point about Carr leading Sydney into decline well made GR. NSW Labor right have got a lot to answer for.
Yeah, that one me wince too, so true… Trouble is, since the Carr’s abysmal “Sydney is full” days, putting things “into decline” has become part of the progressive agenda. If someone is building/doing something, the mantra goes, then they are making money – a fundamentally bad thing. Hence in my neck of the woods (inner west), progressive left wing forces are against a public transport project (the metro).
It’s the largest public transport project in Australia by far. The NSW Greens (and parts of NSW Labor, who have vowed stop at least a section of it) – would apparently prefer we drove.
What about all those pollies who belong to the biggest anti-women club of all – the Catholic church.