It’s all just a load of politics

Whilst the Canberra press gallery and broader Australian media mindlessly waste ink and data postulating who “won” Tuesday’s political tussle, I’d suggest the only winner was politics itself.

What about Julia Gillard’s rousing speech effectively obliterating Tony Abbott in his chair with clear examples of his sexism and potential misogyny? That was no watershed feminist moment in Australian politics. It was an opportune time to score a big political point. No one likes a hypocrite so what better time to speak out than when Abbott cries sexist?

There have been a litany of moments in Julia Gillard’s Prime Ministership when she has effectively chosen to ignore Abbott’s overt displays of, and complicity with, sexism towards herself and Australian women in general. By expressing her unquestionably genuine offense now, only when her reputation and minority government is at stake, gives off hints of opportunism and sends the wrong message.

It signals to all Australians that calling out sexist remarks towards women is the last resort and socially unacceptable or god forbid, a bit awkward. “You’ve got to toughen up and move on, that’s just how it is. We’ll respect you more if you don’t complain and just take it on the chin”, right? Wrong. But that social fallacy is what keeps many people silent against gender discrimination.

If the woman who holds the highest office in this country won’t or feels she can’t speak out against the extreme sexism directed at her until nearly 2 years into her tenure and only when it’s related to the credibility of a parliamentary motion against the Speaker, how can other less powerful women do the same and with confidence?

In isolation, Prime Minister Gillard’s speech is a progressive light for Australian women and should be applauded, in reality the message, muddied by context and implicit political associations, changes nothing. It’s all just a load of politics.

The Arndt of sex [response and LINK]

My latest article for The Drum (2/9/2011), ‘The Arndt of sex’ made a few middle-aged indignant men unhappy when I questioned Bettina Arndt’s logic behind her validation and heroising of men’s supposed monogamous sex-starved experiences. Needless to say, they weren’t going to be the types won over by calls for a mature and non-polarising discussion about heterosexual male and female sexuality.

Thankfully, I hope and I think, many already recognise that Arndt’s views do not represent the values of most Australians in 2011. This was voiced to me by men and women directly via Twitter and in person. It would appear that the majority of comments on The Drum post were made by those whose life foundations were called into question by my arguments and understandably so.

A few other men, who so very kindly made some of the most derogatory and misogynistic comments I have ever come across and who submitted them to this blog (after The Drum comments had closed), were not in keeping with the rules of proper conduct and hence were not approved. As a related side-note: the issue of misogyny and online abuse of women writers has recently gained recognition after female blogger and Guardian writer Laurie Penny published some shocking tweets calling for violence against her. She has written about her experiences here, ‘A woman’s opinion is the mini-skirt of the internet’.

The inherent difficulty with the subject of sexuality, monogamy, heterosexuality, differing sex drives, gender and masculinity/femininity inevitably leads to some emotional, ill-considered and irrational responses. And then there are superficial “puff” responses that reinforce the outdated, circulating social memes we still have to fight against. In an op-ed for Fairfax, one person decided to bypass the content of the carefully constructed argument I made and instead lambasted me for ranting a little. Here is the article, make of it what you will.

I am proud to have written ‘The Arndt of sex’ as it was one of the most daunting and rewarding intellectual challenges I have had to tackle to date. Writing about gender is hard enough, but writing about sex and sexuality is in a league of its own. It’s a personal topic for everyone and hence, it needs to be approached carefully and with respect. I have a great appreciation for writers who are able to do this, it takes a lot of skill. Personally, after deconstructing Arndt’s piece I decided to take a philosophical approach in offering a solution. I hope more will take up the challenge, because, as I conclude in the article; sex, sexuality and the negotiation of relationships and needs must be talked about more openly, constructively and often than it is now.

Thanks to everyone who has read it and thanks in advance to those who will. Please feel free to leave comments, my only request is that they be respectful to everyone contributing to the discussion.

Walk a mile in a man’s social media shoes (LINK)

It has been an exciting time for me. The article I wrote, ‘Walk a mile in a man’s social media shoes’, published at ABC The Drum on July 8, 2011 created a definite stir, something I honestly didn’t expect.

What surprised me was the overwhelming and very positive response I received from both men and women, equally, saying that the article resonated with their own experiences and/or has made them think and reflect on their own interactions with this gender filter in mind. Many men have happily admitted to me that perhaps I was pretty on the mark with my ‘Twitduel Rules.’

I would like to thank everyone who contacted me about the story and has given me their personal insights. This kind of interaction about posts or publications is what all bloggers and writers most want, that’s what I think anyway. Thanks also to Dr. Cordelia Fine for kindly allowing me to quote from her book, ‘Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences’ Please read it, you will not be disappointed.

I was interviewed on the radio station, 4ZZZ 102.1FM in Brisbane on the news and current affairs program ‘Brisbane Line’. The very talented Stephen Stockwell was the interviewer and you can listen to the unedited audio of the interview here:
Radio interview with Amy Mullins on Gender, politics and social media

Aim High on Climate Change Action (Link)

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to provide a link here to the second article I wrote for The Drum which went up on April 29, 2011. It’s a longer article than usual, and I hope into goes into a good level of depth on the issues of economics and climate change.

It draws from a previous post I published here called, Australia’s dubious and enduring political mantra, ‘Go For Growth’.

Thanks a lot for reading.

Australia’s dubious and enduring political mantra, ‘Go For Growth’

Have a read of this excerpt from Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s speech, delivered at the Sydney Institute (Luna Park “campus”), 13 April 2011:

“Friends, we have a fiscal framework aimed at making the boom last and not adding to the boom’s inflationary pressures.

And we have a policy framework aimed at ensuring all Australians benefit from the opportunities created by the boom.

To appreciate this policy framework, I think it is necessary to appreciate some of the contradictory elements of the economic context.

What I think of as “patchwork pressures” in our economy, where some parts of the economy are strained by growth while others risk being left behind.

Because mining is especially profitable at the moment, it rewards investors and pays workers well.

Investment, equipment and workers are drawn from other parts of the economy, like a magnet dragging iron filings towards it.

In mining areas, the boom has lifted housing costs, it forces non-miners to raise wages to keep workers and it puts pressure on infrastructure like roads, ports and rail.

The record high for the Australian dollar lowers prices for imports – which is good for consumers – but it does make it harder for our exporters to compete.

Mining’s hunger for equipment and workers can also raise costs and make it harder for these non-mining sectors to compete, compounding the high dollar’s effects.

All these pressures require careful management.

So to manage these pressures we have sought to bolster productivity and balance growth:

By improving vital economic infrastructure – roads, rail and ports so we better get goods to market and people to work – with the NBN providing the most vital infrastructure of the future.

Connecting regional Australia – regions of growth and regions needing more growth – to the economic capitals of this country, and the world.

By cutting company tax cut and increasing tax breaks for small businesses, all funded by the mineral resource rent tax, so the most profitable miners increase economic reward and opportunity in other parts of the economy.

By revolutionising our approach to human capital – the most important asset for dealing with structural economic shifts – with deep integrated reform policies to improve the quality of education in schools today.

By record skills investments and growth and reform of universities.

By developing a new, detailed regional agenda so that we understand each part of the nation and engage its local leadership.

By reviewing the GST carve up in order to marry up the “fair go” principle which informs federal financial relations with the realities of today’s economy and today’s reform needs.

By reforming our skilled migration 457 visas to end the rorts and get skilled labour to employers who need it.

Friends, these are economic reforms and responses to deal with the “patchwork economy”.

But “patchwork pressures” are not only felt by industry or something to be distilled in a set of statistics.

These patchwork pressures have a human face as well.”

- ‘The Dignity of Work’, speech delivered by PM Julia Gillard at the Sydney Institute (Luna Park), 13 April 2011.

What was most salient in Gillard’s speech was that her government’s natural response to economic “pressures”, seeks “to bolster productivity and balance growth.” And by balancing growth, I take it that they mean providing other areas of the economy with the opportunity to grow, so that there is growth, somewhat, across the board. The balance would also be achieved by slightly constraining those areas where increased growth has started to have unhealthy effects on the economy.

What is a seemingly benign remark on the surface is actually a core dilemma. Have we consciously considered what economic growth means to Australia? Have we asked, how much growth is sustainable? What are the positive and negative consequences? In which sectors and regions should growth be encouraged?

We may have addressed these concerns in passing and at a very superficial level, but I haven’t seen a public throw down over the concept of growth. What was once a description rightly used decades ago, “growth is good for the economy” has now become an economic and political prescription, “we must have growth, it is always best.”

I’d bet that the average Australian does not think to question what they are told when it comes to growth and economics, and who could blame them? It’s dry, incomprehensible at times and the ideology behind the economy as a whole is not an everyday concern. There are other things to worry about. Issues that affect us much more directly in our day-to-day activities (except if you’re in the financial sector, of course) than whether the economy grows, where that growth occurs and what the practical, ideological and political effects of that growth is.

Of course we all want our economy to travel well. Every government and nation does. It usually means that we materially prosper. But what if there were other ways of measuring the success of our economy and the prosperity of our society? I know, you may have just panicked. What? We’re questioning growth? Just pause for a moment and consider what Professor Tim Jackson has to say (take note, he advises governments, including the British, about economic growth and sustainability).

In his book, ‘Prosperity Without Growth’, Jackson writes a comprehensive analysis of the global economy in general and suggests a different kind of ‘economics for a finite planet’. Now I don’t want to give anything away because Jackson is so eloquent and fascinating to listen to that it would be much better for you to encounter his ideas first-hand.

Watch this 20-minute video of a lecture he delivered at TED talks, it is mind-boggling. I had to watch it twice. But keep in mind it is only a brief run down of his main arguments.

And if you’re curious and want to understand his proposition fully, check out the 2010 Deakin Lecture he delivered in Australia on podcast at Radio National. It’s well-worth the time.

Please, if you have any responses to the video or podcast, I’d love to know what you think.

Thanks for reading.

The perversion of social democracy in Australia (re-post)

This post: ‘The Perversion of Social Democracy in Australia’, was originally published here at the ABC ‘The Drum’ website 11 April, 2011. Check out the link as the formatting is much better than I can do here on WordPress! And to all who have subscribed to the RSS feed of this blog or by email, thank you very much, a new post is on the way.

The somewhat under-recognised British historian Tony Judt (1948-2010) delivered a landmark lecture in 2009 called, ‘What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy?’ In it he raises remarkably poignant and palpable points regarding the origin, the flourishing success and the latent decline of the social democratic tradition. What is most haunting is just how closely Judt’s observations can be applied to the nebulous operation of social democracy in Australia today and its place within its local ideological home, the Australian Labor Party.

I don’t think I’m taking a great leap in saying, we all have an intuitive feeling that Labor has a pervasive inability to communicate its policies to the public. We might even be tired of hearing about this communication and identity crisis that never seems to die. To further state the obvious, even the primary objective stated in Labor’s constitution appears somewhat dislocated from those quintessentially “Labor values” of greater social and economic equality, public ownership and services, fairness, labour rights, social justice and equal access to opportunity.

“The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.” (National Constitution of the Australian Labor Party, 2009)

This contemporary Labor values confusion was also plainly obvious when Prime Minister and Federal Labor Leader Julia Gillard delivered the Inaugural Whitlam Institute Oration in Western Sydney on March 31, 2011.

In her speech she defensively distanced Labor from the past and its former values and actively pushed the Party’s agenda towards “the future” which just happened to include a suite of more liberal, fiscally focused and socially moderate values:

“The historic mission of our political party is to ensure the fair distribution of opportunity. … Creating opportunity and enabling social mobility has required different policies in every age. We have moved beyond the days of big government and big welfare, to opportunity through education and inclusion through participation.”;

“And we are the party of the future. From our earliest days we have always known that you don’t turn back; you can’t turn back. There will always be those who say the way ahead for Labor is to go back.”;

“We are a party of government with all the attachment to the political centre and to pragmatic decision making that comes with being a party of government.”

This repeated desire of Gillard’s to distance Labor from their past, and instead be “interpreters of the future” comes with unintended negative connotations and is a sign of intellectual naiveté. Nineteenth-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, would strongly challenge Gillard’s propensity to brush aside Labor’s public policy history, because some ideas, people and moments in history are useful to be remembered when they can propel an individual into action and lead to personal flourishing. This theory should hold true for Labor’s predicament.

In Julia Gillard’s Whitlam Institute Oration there seemed to be a littering of underlying messages produced by this overt tension between the status of old Labor values and the new. To paraphrase the messages that emerge from Gillard’s speech; “we are not our past”, “we are a party with similar values that have been tailored to respond to a new conservative and uncertain context”, “the ways in which our values will be cautiously promoted will result in comparatively unremarkable policies and outcomes”, “our dutifully open striving for the middle and for pragmatism might conceal and excuse our policy-values disjunction” and above all else, “the situation we find ourselves in is not our fault, it is the harsh reality of the globalised and liberalised world we live in.”

Whilst listening to Julia Gillard’s speech, it became immediately apparent that we have been conditioned by successive federal governments to shudder when “welfare” is uttered, a now inherently dirty word. “Intervention(ist)” is another such word that we may never retrieve from the graveyard of Australian social democratic language.

Furthermore, a linguistic and conceptual change has recently emerged, such that the (blue-collar) “worker” now equates to (low- and middle-class) “working families”. That’s fair enough. Society has naturally progressed with class distinctions in politics subtly evolving and becoming less publicly referred to. But even this modern reference to a foundational Labor principle, that of labour rights and equality of access to opportunity, has amalgamated so much into the mainstream that it is merely an empty signifier of what once was a strength and distinguishing feature of the Labor Party.

Labor’s once radically left values and accompanying language has been adopted by society to become the political syntax of the many. Subsequently, Labor has been led into an impossible fight for the middle with the Liberal Party, because their once exclusive “turf” has submerged into an accepted Australian hybrid of socio-democratic liberalism.

This submersion has led to an inevitable fusion of Labor’s egalitarian moral and ethical values with liberal economic structures. Our problem is that political parties and society in general, have unhealthily absorbed Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Whilst this is fairly unproblematic for the Liberal Party, whose traditional objectives of a free market economy and minimal government intervention in individual and private-sector affairs, marry with this econo-centric rhetoric, it conversely leaves the Labor Party in a real bind.

Tony Judt is able to shine light on the disappearance of social democratic values in public policy-making. The following are excerpts from his lecture, ‘What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy’:

“There is this curious cognitive dissonance between the ends that people are willing, in very large numbers, to approve and even seek, than the means that they are willing to consider.”

“Our problem is not sociological, it’s not economical, it is… discursive, we don’t know how to talk about these things anymore.”

“We have lost the capacity to think of public affairs except in, and in a very restricted sense, in economic terms. When we ask of a policy or a proposal, is it good or bad? We don’t actually ask, is it good or bad? We ask, is it efficient? Is it productive? Would it benefit gross domestic product? Would it be efficient in that respect? Would it contribute or not contribute to growth and so on. We ask, in a very restricted sense, economic questions, we talk economics as a language of public policy. That is not a natural condition, it is an acquired one.”

“How did we come to think in exclusively economic terms, such that, when we have a purportedly national debate about whether or not we (Americans) should fix our collective arrangements for health care, we can only ask, how much will it cost? Who will pay? How much are we willing to sacrifice? And will it be efficient? Rather than, is it good? Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it bad? Is it just? Is it fair?”

Some recent Australian public policy debates came to mind when encountering Judt’s thesis:

- The need and disputed measures required to address climate change (Outcome: Economic cost and efficiency must naturally take priority over what is good and right for the environment now and in the long-term. A good economy is what keeps society thriving.)
- The introduction of a Paid Parental Leave Scheme, the level of financial support a government should provide and where the money should come from. (Outcome: Providing equal opportunity for individuals to participate and succeed in all aspects of life, including both work and family, through comprehensive paid parental leave? A utopian myth.)
- The often avoided question of an undervalued tertiary sector (Outcome: Technological innovation? We’re proud when innovation does eventuate but we’re doing enough and Australia doesn’t traditionally support intellectual elitism.)
- The allocation of public health care funding and the particular areas that should be prioritised (Outcome: So what about mental health?)
and
- The question of significant public investment in vital infrastructure like the National Broadband Network versus the alternative – a minimally regulated public-private sector collaboration (Outcome: If the NBN is built solidly and cohesively by the government using public finances this will lead to definite increases in work productivity. This is good for the economy and that is why it must go ahead.)

I must admit I was initially surprised by Tony Judt’s suggestion that we could or even should be considering and debating these moral aspects so directly, forcefully and in such prominent focus. Yes, these moral questions are always considered to be of great importance by politicians and society in general, but rarely do they seem to be the tipping point towards a greater social outcome in public policy.

It seems to me that Judt is suggesting, for a social democratic agenda and corresponding real outcomes to actualise, asking the moral and ethical questions of public policy, “… is it good? Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it bad? Is it just? Is it fair?” and thereby determining collective values, is just as important as managing economic concerns.

This is what Labor must recognise as essential to their ability to create a distinctive, courageous and confident narrative for itself in public policy creation and reform. Or as Judt suggests, for all political groups and societies with a social democratic foundation, “they need to begin by asking, how should we talk politics? Before asking, what are our policies?”

Some of the policies Labor has been most proud of, the introduction of Medibank (now Medicare), the Snowy Mountains Scheme and even the eight-hour working day, have been significant milestone’s in the progression and renewal of social democratic values and labour rights, all critical to the Labor identity, hence this reformist tradition must continue.

Bestowing equal consideration to social democratic values and liberal values is a sure path for Labor to follow in order to become a credible, robust and distinctive long-term alternative to the Liberal party. And personally, I am concerned about the current and future implications of the Labor Party’s current direction on balanced liberal and social democratic policy creation in Australia. Foresight and innovation is required for this country to transition into a new carbon-conscious and sustainability-focused world. The same great and somewhat risky step is required for Labor to transition into a truly progressive party for now and for the future.

Labor, Public Policy and the Infiltration of Economics

The points Tony Judt makes in this lecture are so relevant to Australia and the Labor Party right now, that it is as if he had this country in mind when he was developing his thesis. Either that or we are politically far more similar to Europe than we think. These ideas have since been solidified and published in his book, ‘Ill Fares The Land’, which I would highly recommend to read.

I have personally transcribed some of the essence of Tony Judt’s lecture on social democracy. The quotes are in chronological order and develop as a narrative. The only other transcription available on the internet is an adaptation from his speech notes for the New York Review of Books and is quite different to what Judt actually says.

Tony Judt, in his lecture, ‘What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy?’:

“There is this curious cognitive dissonance between the ends that people are willing, in very large numbers, to approve and even seek, than the means that they are willing to consider.”

“Our problem is not sociological, it’s not economical, it is… discursive, we don’t know how to talk about these things anymore.”

“We have lost the capacity to think of public affairs except in, and in a very restricted sense, in economic terms. When we ask of a policy or a proposal, is it good or bad? We don’t actually ask, is it good or bad? We ask, is it efficient? Is it productive? Would it benefit gross domestic product? Would it be efficient in that respect? Would it contribute or not contribute to growth and so on. We ask, in a very restricted sense, economic questions, we talk economics as a language of public policy. That is not a natural condition, it is an acquired one.”

“How did we come to think in exclusively economic terms? Such that, when we have a purportedly national debate about whether or not we should fix our collective arrangements for health care, we can only ask, how much will it cost? Who will pay? How much are we willing to sacrifice? And will it be efficient? Rather than, is it good, is it right, is it wrong, is it bad, is it just, is it fair?”

“It’s not accidental that today in Europe social democrats do badly again and again and again at elections, even in traditionally social democratic countries, even in the midst of a shameful, catastrophic financial crisis. The reason is because their language no longer bears any convincing relationship to their programs.

Social democracy emerged as the alternative within the left to Marxist socialism and a little later to Communism. If you look at the great texts of the social democrats in the 30s and 40s they are all defensively targeted towards their left. “We are democratic”, they say, “not authoritarian, we believe in freedom, not repression. We are not communists”, to some extent, although this varied, “we are not Marxists, we are democrats who happen to believe in social justice” and so on.

When the main objective of social democrats was to show that they were not communists and to implant themselves firmly in liberal societies as plausible alternative governments this made sense. Today this rhetorical tick makes no sense. It’s not accidental that Angela Merkel can win an election in Germany against a social democratic opposition with a set of policies that essentially resemble theirs.

The social democrats of today have a problem, they won in Europe. Social democracy in one form or another is, with apologies to Moliere, ‘the prose that people speak’, so social democrats have nothing distinctive to offer, they have no narrative to offer, no story which distinguishes them from the centre and centre right, and the mainstream. It’s different in this country (America), I’ll come back to that.

But social democrats need a new language, they need to begin by asking how should we talk politics before asking what are our policies. The policies are not the problem. So what can be recovered? Well we could begin with the practices of social democracy.”

HOW I THINK THIS APPLIES TO AUSTRALIA:

Now a small number of you may ask, what does this have to do with Australia? Well, if you haven’t thought of any examples I’m gathering you may have read these quotes passively and have not taken Judt’s thesis in, in which case I would ask you to re-read it or come back to it later. If you’re on the ball today you may have applied this argument to the Australian Labor Party and/or some of its policies and policy debates. Now this is stating the obvious, but there really is very little distinguishing them from the Liberal Party anymore, and this is because they have lost their hold on the language of social democracy, or rather, this language has become an empty signifier (for all socially democratic parties). There is a scattering of linguistic relics which remind us of what once was; a party for the worker who primarily looks after lower-middle class interests. Or what PM Gillard would now refer to as caring for “working families.” This stark change is of course a natural product of history and progression. No one expects the Labor Party to stay the same; a strongly unionist, hard left, socially democratic party. The only problem is that Labor still thinks (to a slightly lesser extent) and promotes publicly that this is what they are and that these are the same values they continue to stand for. This is, in my opinion, far from the present reality.

So what then isn’t quite working for Labor at the moment? I believe that we all have an intuitive feeling that Labor merely lacks an ability to communicate their policies well. But as Judt points out, it is more than that, it is a failure to speak about issues within a socially democratic discourse and this highlights a fundamental tension between the old Labor values and the new. The new Labor lives in a world centred on obsessively economic-focussed policy creation. There are obviously good reasons for this focus with global competition becoming more intense, economies becoming more linked and a constant fight for growth. But what we miss, what we lose, in this public and legislative discourse is the ability to weigh more equally the economic with the moral, equitable, fair and ethical questions and dimensions of policy. At the moment it seems that the numbers, efficiency and growth are more important than the actual outcomes. This can be said for Labor’s health policy (where is mental health in all of this?), Paid Parental Leave Scheme, seriously depleted tertiary funding, empty and superficial changes to education from a Federal level (MySchool, National Curriculum etc.) That is just scraping the surface, and don’t get me wrong, the Liberal Party also suffer from this, but the difference is that they don’t purport to be a party with socially democratic values, they are liberal conservatives and they make that position fairly clear.

I do not want to dismiss the Labor Party’s attempts to improve socially-supportive policies such as a proposed increase in superannuation to 12%, the NBN, an un-capped number of CSP-supported tertiary places, a change to and relaxing of the criteria for Youth Allowance and their continued welfare support to those in the community who truly need a little help to get back on their feet. My point here is that if Labor is looking to be a credible, robust and distinctive long-term alternative to the Liberal Party (and the Greens), something radical needs to change in party thinking. And personally, I care about this because of the current and future effects this current direction will have on a balanced liberal and socially democratic policy creation in Australia. Foresight and innovation is required for Australia to transition into this new carbon-conscious and sustainability-focussed world and with that said, I’ll leave it there.

Liberal Party and conservatism post to come…