Like most of us, the political media doesn’t deal with change particularly well. The comfort zone for political journalists is a two-party system; despite generations of smaller parties and independents wielding significant influence in the Senate, the idea of minority governments is still portrayed as a kind of political disaster. Lower house independents are regarded as colourful eccentrics, such as Bob Katter, or political mistakes that are the product of failure by the major parties, traditionally assumed to be entitled to dominate the chamber.
The coverage of the most important aspect of this election, the challenge of an array of centrist independents — all female — to Coalition MPs, reflects the media’s struggle with change. At ease with small, siloed but professionalised major parties and narratives based around personality, political journalists have visibly struggled with grassroots movements dedicated to political change and the candidates that have sought to represent them.
Confusion has abounded over the disparate Voices Of movements across different electorates, with journalists often assuming it’s a sort of monolithic, unified movement when it is nothing of the sort. Contrary to the assumptions of many political journalists, some Voices Of groups don’t even endorse the high-profile independent standing in their seats. The assumption of journalists is that Voices Of groups must be a type of political party, because they’re used to only thinking in terms of political parties, and it’s usually a good rule of thumb for politics. In this case, it happens to be badly wrong.
Two versions of that thinking have been on display this week: one risible, the other more serious. The otiose Alexander Downer, still doing his spot-on Boy Mulcaster impersonation after all these years, this week termed “so-called” independents as “little more than the most loathsome example of pork-barrel gangsters”, which is a fine jape given the Morrison government’s world championship title for rorting. But Downer goes on to argue that these female independents are standing in the way of “great men”.
Take Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong and Dave Sharma in Wentworth. These are people who could become truly great men. But if the independents defeat them those independents will be totally forgotten in 10 years’ time.
Putting aside that Downer’s two former staffers Frydenberg and Sharma would have to die and be born again to have a chance of becoming great, he evidently believes only Liberals — and, he might graciously allow, Nationals and Labor — should be allowed to stand for office, which is apt for a man who belongs in the Tory party of Stanley Baldwin. The unsubtle implication is also that the best contribution the likes of Helen Haines and Zali Steggall and Zoe Daniel and Kylea Tink and Allegra Spender could make is to get out of the way and let the blokes get on with it.
Different from, but not unrelated to, Downer’s stupidity is the perspective of David Crowe for Nine newspapers. Crowe understands the significance of the independents, beginning his column yesterday with “the old ways of Australian politics are about to be tested”. But the urge to turn everything into a party-like monolith was too strong for Crowe, who says “the unifying thread at this election is the funding from a different activist group, Climate 200, and its leader, Simon Holmes à Court, one of the most relentless opponents of the government’s climate policy”.
Again it’s not about female independent candidates, it’s about a man — the agency of the candidates, and of the movements they have emerged from with their thousands of participants, falls away in the shadow of Simon Holmes à Court, who, if not pulling their strings, is the string connecting them.
Crowe argues that, if successful, independents “will sweep moderate Liberals out of Parliament while leaving conservatives untouched. The Liberal Party room would shift to the right.” That is, the upsurge of communities against business-as-usual politics should be seen through the prism not of those communities but through the hollowed-out major party it will affect.
In any event, that analysis is wrong and self-defeating. The independents exist because the Liberals long ago shifted to the right. The Liberals are the party of fossil fuels, which provide finance and staff for it. Fossil fuel companies have captured much of the apparatus of the Australian state, including the Coalition and much of the ALP. That’s why independents have emerged, to challenge this state capture. Minus the “moderates”, the Liberals would be exactly the same, just without Dave Sharma regularly backgrounding The Sydney Morning Herald about how unhappy he is to be rolling over yet again to the denialists.
Political parties are not the purpose of politics. They are not the prism through which politics should be understood or assessed. But when you spend too long in Canberra, you can end up incapable of seeing the world any other way.
The media generally is used to the “argy bargy bully boy” with or without a thin veneer of politeness which cracks just like the Prime Minimal’s does whenever a female stands up to him.
They are very out of their depth, when they commence an interview with Independents that have key points of interest in common and very different life experiences and each with the quiet decent confidence, to not be claiming to be all over all the numbers.
These are the women who can be relied upon to do what they think is best for the country, without considering whether their decisions will upset the donors or benefit them personally.They can’t be threatened or corrupted by the threat of dis-endorsement.
The “teal” or “hot pink” or “Cathy McGowan/ Helen Haynes “fluro yellow or green” or any other colour used by these Independents disguises the fact, that they are all are Independent women of substance.
They have distinctive and solid life stories and the multi-faceted individual life and career experiences that no Party: “Staffer / Advisor/ Gifted Child safe seat selection/ MP will ever have or bring to the table.
If we want our parliament to represent us, and not the Petro-Chemical Industry donors. Yes,us, the ones who donate to charities to help the disadvantaged, not to replace the billions that Smirko and friends blew on sports rorts, car park rorts, infrastructure spending without a business plan and the list just keeps expanding. There are people living in borrowed shipping containers and tents or old caravans who have had almost zero or really, zero money from the ” Fire Recovery Fund”..
Then comes “Da Media” 7 Stokes of WA/ 9 Peter Costello 9 Entertainment/ Sky and 10 Murdoch’s minions and they can’t spin these women as they like to do, with their Gas Lighting and the “Distraught Woman” or the “Absolute Radical” or the “Girly Swot”. If they go down that path, the handbag hit squad ( a fully paid up member, that is me) will be out and all the TV people will lose any invitations they may have and all interviews and articles they could have written, will evaporate and a cancellation of an invitation/s will also be on the cards. .
The ABC is still tugging its forelock towards the Liberal Party and frightened of offending and fearing having another funding cut.
Leigh Sales, Laura Tingle or Annabelle Crabb have fighting chances of getting interviews, because all of these journalists know how to really interview rather than yapping at the interviewee.
I feel for these babies, they have come so far in their journalistic careers and yet, a group of well organized intelligent women, mostly backed by Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate foundation have left them flat footed and unable to get a handle on this organic, grass roots almost tangible, mostly people’s movement. This quiet rebellion of no slogans, stems from the despair that all of us feel because our mainstream politicians have been effectively captured by the very companies causing these disasters and others.
As we have watched, Two 500 year floods in a month were rolling down rivers, where people woke in the middle of the night in the dark (power was already out) and stepped from bed into knee deep water, in houses that had never flooded before and heard the cries for help from their neighbours or the woke as the entire side of the mountain they lived on collapsed into the river taking themselves and their children and animals down there because the bush fires had killed parts of an ancient Rain Forrest and the roots holding the mountain together had rotted out and the saturated red soil collapsed due to gravity.
We can see the problem and we all acknowledge that this is not going to be an easy fix. We also know that the UN has given up hope on keeping temperature rises below 1.5 degrees Celsius and we have about 3 years before a 2 degree halt to temperature rises is unachievable also..
This lazy greedy government is part of the problem and not all of us are sure that the opposition can do it without the balance of power being tightly held. Crudely put, if you have them by their balls their hearts and minds will follow.
We all want to know who the Independents are and so, please could the ABC just ask Leigh, Laura or Annabelle to interview them, perhaps in a “one on one” style format.Play them on Sunday, if need be, to replace “The Insiders” in the run up to this election..
Excellent analysis of the situation. If only we could this across to the general public.
These wonderful women are much like the pollies of old who first went out into their professions or business life, made their money/reputations and then went into politics to put back something into the country that had been so good for them. Not like boys who straight into politics never having worked in a real job
A story about Kate Chaney, the Independent who is standing in formerly the safest Liberal seat in Australia, Curtin (Lib since 1949) is long overdue. I was talking to a Curtin resident who is in his 70s, lives in a lovely house with a lovely view of the river and a big Kate Chaney poster on his river-facing veranda. He struck up a conversation with me because I was wearing a Kate Chaney t-shirt. A member of arguably the most prestigious yacht club in Perth (the second club would dispute this) he said “Everyone I know is voting for her, which must make all the people down at the yacht club that practically own the WA Liberal Party very nervous. I will be voting Labor for the first time in 48 years. We have to wipe out the National Party and do something about the climate.” There is a quiet revolution happening in the leafy suburbs of Perth and as usual, the Eastern States media is not covering it.
It’s quite tragic that the seat named after John Curtin should be such a safe bet for the Lilberals. Let’s hope it goes teal this time around . . .
Minus the “moderates”, the Liberals would be exactly the same, just without Dave Sharma regularly backgrounding The Sydney Morning Herald about how unhappy he is to be rolling over yet again to the denialists.
Great sentence.
If anyone in an electorate with a teal candidate is wondering if they need to vote for them rather than the Liberals to get any progress on the culture of a parliament that is truly representative of the Australian people, Alexander Downer has opened his mouth and removed all doubt.
BK, the Liberals are a party of fossils which is why change is a necessity.