The power of the media

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Vested interests have long recognised that the media is instrumental in shaping people’s opinions and determining how they think and how they vote. So it was not surprising when Gina Rinehart decided to buy up some media interests early in 2012. Clues to the origin of the idea could be found in the video released by the grassroots campaigning organisation GetUp! not long after. If anyone was in any doubt that the world is run by corporations whose aim is to maintain “business as usual” regardless of the environmental and/or social consequences, one needed to look no further than the this video.

It shows a secretly filmed meeting that took place in July 2011 between “Lord” Monckton and mining industry representatives, with the former explaining the importance of buying up the media in order to spread the desired message: “Whatever you do at street level, which is what you’re talking about here, is not going to have much impact compared with capturing an entire news media…

“Look at the effect Andrew Bolt has had since he was rocketed to fame… and that is the way to do it. You have to capture the high ground of what are still the major media and … will remain for quite some time. And until we crack that one both in the UK and Australia we’re going to suffer from a disadvantage… against the more libertarian minded right-wing people in the United States who have got Fox News and have therefore got things like a Tea-Party and therefore at last have put some lead into the pencil of the Republican Party.

“It seems to me that devoting some time and effort into encouraging those we know who are super rich to invest in even establishing a new satellite TV channel is not an expensive thing, and then get a few Jo Novas and Andrew Bolts to go on and do the commentating every day…

“I’d like to suggest a modest free market solution for the problem we’ve identified (which is that we don’t have a TV channel of our own). I’d be very happy to work with people like Jo Nova, Andrew Bolt etc to put together a business plan for such a thing, if that idea were to be generally supported, and then we’ll see if we can get someone to be an angel funder. “

Enter Gina Rinehart?

In his speech to the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) 70th birthday dinner on April 4, 2013, Tony Abbott said “John Howard has said that Rupert Murdoch has been by far Australia’s most influential international businessman; but I would like to go a little further. Along with Sir John Monash, the Commander of the First AIF which saved Paris and helped to win the First World War, and Lord Florey a one-time provost of my old Oxford College, the co-inventor of penicillin that literally saved millions of lives, Rupert Murdoch is probably the Australian who has most shaped the world through the 45 million newspapers that News Corp sells each week and the one billion subscribers to News-linked programming.

“Rupert Murdoch has sometimes changed his political allegiance but he’s never changed his fundamental principles. At least since the mid-70’s, those have been greater personal responsibility, smaller government, fewer regulations and support for open societies that don’t build walls against the world.

“For our guest of honour, as for anyone deeply steeped in reporting, experience trumps theory and facts trump speculation. His publications have borne his ideals but never his fingerprints. They’ve been skeptical, stoical, curious, adventurous, opinionated yet broad minded. He’s influenced them, but he’s never dictated to them.

“…Rupert Murdoch is a corporate citizen of many countries, but above all else, he’s one of us. Most especially, tonight, he’s a long-serving director of the IPA, as was his distinguished and celebrated father, Sir Keith.”

It is hard to know whether Abbott was being disingenuous or naïve when he suggested that Murdoch’s publications “have borne his ideals but never his fingerprints” and that he has “influenced them, but he’s never dictated to them”, especially when seconds before he exclaimed that “Rupert Murdoch is probably the Australian who has most shaped the world through the 45 million newspapers that News Corp sells each week and the one billion subscribers to News-linked programming.”

To some extent he may be right. Maybe Murdoch, who owns 70% of Australia’s media, hasn’t had to because he employs the people whom he knows will do it for him.

“This country is sailing forth. It is a wonderful land of opportunity, with the right leadership, the right governments, the right bureaucrats and so on… Whatever you do, don’t let the bloody Greens mess it up.”

This is a direct quote from Rupert Murdoch as it appeared in Tom Dusevic’s report This is a land of opportunity, says Rupert Murdoch in The Australian on October 29, 20102. Like most Greens, Bob Brown, then still in the Senate, was fed up with the constant portrayal of The Greens as dangerous, loony ratbags, mainly by the Murdoch media. So Bob, who has always been an ideas person, decided to put out a booklet with some of the positive media that has appeared over recent times. Murdoch’s quote appears on the front cover of the booklet. On the back is this one from Miranda Devine’s January 12, 2012 blog post Bob’s heroes should catch next whale home:

“If the Greens say it’s a good idea, it’s not.”

Bob says with typical good cheer in his brief but to to-the-point introduction inside the front cover “We’re sick of the Murdoch media’s anti-Greens bias; we want a little balance. We make no apology for the happy selectivity of the extracts of enclosed commentary on the Greens; our aim is to leave you smiling as we enter 2012.”

Some of the quotes used in the booklet provide a clue as to why there is such a bias towards the Greens by the mainstream media, reflected and reiterated by the ALP and the Coalition, and vice versa. As George Megalogenis says^¹, “…Privately, the main parties concede that the Greens represent a structural risk to their respective bases because they have so many young people already on board. If they are not thinking Labor or Coalition in their twenties and thirties, what could make them change in their middle age?”

In New Matilda^², Ben Eltham wrote “Tony Abbott will no doubt continue to argue that Bob Brown is really in charge and the the Greens represent dangerous, extreme and radical policy perspectives, an argument which is sure to find support in many sections of the Murdoch press.

“All this talk of what Bob Brown should do should Tony Abbott win the next election is just a little bit premature. Quite apart from the hypothetical nature of the discussion, it’s not even guaranteed that the Greens would retain the balance of power in the next Senate. The Coalition controlled it as recently as 2004-07 and could quite conceivably pick up a senator in Western Australia and Queensland to win back the Senate in 2013.”

Premature it may have been, but clearly Abbott’s strategy is part of the ongoing practice of scaring people away from voting for The Greens so The Greens no longer have balance of power. It’s handy to have friends like Murdoch.

Ex-Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, who will not be recontesting the Victorian seat of Batman, is quoted by Peter Martin in his April 2011 Herald article^³ as saying ‘(the Greens) want to sit under the tree and weave baskets with no jobs.’ Leaving aside the poor unemployed baskets, Peter Martin says that “the views of Greens supporters are not outside the mainstream. They are likely to be more in touch with orthodox economics than the mainstream.

“Greens voters are far more likely than either Labor or the Coalition to support higher taxes on mining profits, a view in line with the International Monetary Fund, the Henry Review and the Treasury.

“They are far more accepting of the mainstream scientific position on climate change – that it is happening and caused by human activity. And they believe market mechanisms rather than regulations are the best way to get emissions down.

“(The Greens’) tax policies echo those of the Henry Tax Review. Tax breaks for high income earners would go, fringe benefits tax concessions that encourage the needless driving of cars would be scrapped and capital gains would not be tax-preferred over other returns from saving. All income received in whatever form would be taxed at the standard rate and the scales would be rejigged to remove high effective rates faced by those trying to get off welfare.

“…This isn’t an argument in favour of the Greens policies, although as it happens I find them attractive. They fit within the economic mainstream. They are coherent, readily available on the web and far more than a grab-bag from a ‘party of protest’ that sits ‘under the tree and weave(s) baskets with no jobs.’

“If the Greens have got it wrong on economics then so have the text-books they have read and so has Ken Henry.”

Fergus Green in his report on the online political journal Inside Story^⁴said “until the Greens took the balance of power in both the House of Representatives (along with some green-minded independents) and the Senate (in their own right), the battle for Australia’s future was a one-sided bloodbath. Labor, the Coalition and Australia’s business and policy elite have long shared a basic commitment to the rapid and far-reaching expansion of fossil fuel consumption and production – for domestic use and for export – in Australia.

“The key difference this time is that the Greens were on the battlefield fighting for a different vision: a genuine clean energy future for Australia.
“…(They) have peeled back the coal industry’s fig leaf and tipped the balance of low-emissions technology development in favour of renewables.”

It has become quite normal for media commentators and other political parties to make alarmist generalisations about the Greens, highlighted by Guy Rundle’s Crikey article of August 2011^⁵. “Since the carbon tax is effectively a mechanism that reshapes the relationship between environment, economy and society (albeit in a fairly modest way initially), its introduction is really a keystone of a transformed political process.”

Rundle points to the skew in reportage on The Greens:

“…Thus the Greens are a fearsome Stalinist force but they’re a bunch of woolly, mung bean eaters but they’re blinkered ideologues, and on it goes round and round. To the casual observer it’s obvious that there is far more strategic and parliamentary talent concentrated in the Greens than there is in the headquarters of either major party.

“Indeed, so frantic have the Right become about the Greens that they’ve recently concocted a new narrative?—?that the Greens have had an easy run because they’ve never been subject to proper scrutiny. This was the actual subject of an editorial in the Oz, inviting the obvious response, shit yeah, if only one had a national newspaper to do that.

“The ‘Greens have never been properly scrutinised’ line has some hilarious aspects?—?in the mid-2000s, the Herald Sun picked apart the Greens policies on drugs, line by line. Sadly they then misassembled the items in question in their news stories, obliging the Hun to run a full-page notice from the Press Council damning the report. When one of the journalists charged with performing the hatchet job was threatened with jail for non-disclosure of sources (on a later, unrelated story) Bob Brown spoke up in his defence, something you can be damn sure you won’t see from the other major parties.

“The latest twist to this?—?’The Greens?—?behind the secretive party we’ve written 8000 articles on’ approach is the non-gotcha gotcha, something at which Glenn Milne appears to be a dab hand.
It goes like this: journo approaches Bob Brown or Christine Milne and says ‘aha?—?you say you want to reduce carbon emissions, but won’t that spell death for the coal industry?’ and they respond ‘well yes we are going to have to phase out coal pretty rapidly’ at which point the journo goes ‘aha?—?so you admit it’, ‘well?—?yes, we’ve put out several releases saying that …’ and on it goes, often for 700-800 words.

Online political commentary website The Conversation posted an article in May 2013, which also appeared elsewhere, enticingly titled Whose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left.
It began as follows:

Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead.

But while the media’s political leanings will no doubt be debated in the lead-up to September’s federal election, our study has also found other largely unscrutinised biases remain – particularly whose views disproportionately shape the news.

Conducted between May 2012 and March this year, the University of the Sunshine Coast’s representative survey of 605 journalists around Australia found that more than half (51.0%) describe themselves as holding left-of-centre political views, compared with only 12.9% who consider themselves right-of-centre.

It is the first study of its kind in more than 20 years to involve such a large number of journalists, and follows on from the work of John Henningham in the early 1990s.

Our survey was conducted by telephone with carefully selected journalists from newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, online news sites and news agency AAP, as a sample of the 8000 to 10,000 journalists in Australia today.

When asked about their voting intentions, less than two-thirds of the journalists we surveyed revealed their voting intention. Of those 372 people, 43.0% said they would give their first preference vote to Labor; 30.2% would vote for the Coalition; and 19.4% said they would choose the Greens – about twice the Australian average.

Eric Abetz, Liberal Senator from Tasmania, cottoned onto this when questioning the ABC’s managing director Mark Scott in the Senate Committee hearing into the ABC on Wednesday May 29, 2013. He said “Mr Scott, do you have any sense of a recent survey which found that 41% of ABC journalists said they would vote for the Greens, 32% for Labor and 15% for the Coalition generally reflects ABC journalists political leanings?”

Mark Scott’s reply hints at the reality of the survey findings, facts with which Abetz was perhaps hoping Scott was unacquainted. Scott said “No. There are about 1000 journalists who work across the ABC in news, radio, rural divisions and others…. We have 1000 journalists and 34 were contacted… Do I believe it is an overwhelming problem? No I do not.”

Even The Conversation failed to include the number of ABC journalists who were contacted. Telling small parts of a much larger story as highlighted by Guy Rundle in his article quoted above can be an effective way of sensationalising something with the intent of scaring people off and is common practice among journalists and politicians alike. Eric Abetz was no doubt secretly pleased by the other findings of the Sunshine Coast University survey which revealed the following (again, quoted from the same article posted in The Conversation.)

Media bosses more in sync with voters
Yet, among those who arguably matter most – the journalists in senior editorial ranks who have the most power to decide news agendas – a dramatically different picture emerged.

Among the 83 senior editors who took part in the survey, the Coalition was the party of choice on 43.2%, followed by Labor (34.1%) and the Greens (11.4%).

This suggests that Australia’s media bosses are more in line with the broader electorate, at least according to recent Newspoll results.

It is important to note that there is little research showing that journalists’ personal political biases affect their work.

When asked in this survey about a range of influences on their work, many journalists said their superiors have a much stronger influence than their personal values and beliefs.

“This suggests that Australia’s media bosses are more in line with the broader electorate, at least according to recent Newspoll results,” eh? Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

Is it just a coincidence that senior journalists, that is, those who decide what goes in the news, just happen to be in the same proportion to the number of people who intend to vote for the Coalition? Especially if you pair that with the last statement of the extract above, that “many journalists said their superiors have a much stronger influence than their personal values and beliefs.”

There is another possibility, and that is that the media is instrumental in shaping people’s opinions and determining how they think and how they vote.

As mentioned, sensationalism is a handy tool and one bound to attract some attention, particularly if you are rich and perceived by some to be a little eccentric, and such a person doesn’t always have to own the media or be the mouthpiece for the media owner to get one’s point across. If you can create controversy or confrontation, you are more than likely to grab some media attention. Pauline Hanson was (albeit often unintentionally) an expert, and now that she has announced her intention to stand for the Senate again with the catchcry “the redhead you can trust”, may attract similar levels of media attention in the lead-up to the election.

A blatant and shameless example of media manipulation in the extreme would have to be Clive Palmer’s admission that he only said that Greenpeace and Green Drew Hutton were funded by the CIA to keep negative attention away from Campbell Newman, so Newman could win government in the Queensland State Election. This is from the ABC online report of March 26, 2012:

“Without you [media], without Julia Gillard, without the Treasurer, without the Greens raising these things in the Senate, who knows where the attention might have been in the last weeks coming up to the election?” he said.

“So it’s wonderful that all of you could play a small role in having Campbell Newman elected as Premier of Queensland.

“So well done, you all deserve a round of applause.”

The fact that Clive Palmer set out to manipulate the outcome of an election seems to have been laughed off. The result may well have been identical without his intervention, but imagine the outcry if The Greens tried a similar stunt.

Maybe a stunt is what is needed to capture the attention of senior media management. On the other hand, and bearing in mind the results of the Sunshine Coast University survey, it’s simply not enough to capture their attention. We need them to inject some balance and truth into their coverage of issues of democracy.

To be continued…

1 Extract from Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era, George Megalogenis, Quarterly Essay, November 2010

2 Can a Bunch of Greens Take Canberra?, Ben Eltham, New Matilda, 1 July, 2011

3 Economic Orthodoxy – it’s a Greens thing, Peter Martin, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 April 2011

4 A Clean Energy Future for Whom? Fergus Green, inside.org.au/a-clean-energy-future-for-whom/, 13 August, 2011

5 Why the Right has Become Frantic About the Greens, Guy Rundle, Crikey, 16 August 2011

Politics = life (and death)

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Whether we like it or not, politics permeates our lives and to an extent, determines how we can live. At some time or another, most people access and are affected by education, health and transport services. We pay for accommodation, either with rent or a mortgage, and sometimes we or others build the houses we make our homes. We buy electricity and water, or even generate it and collect it ourselves, and we pay for roads, sewerage and waste services. We talk on the phone, read books and newspapers, listen to the radio, watch television and use the Internet to make contact with others, find out information and be entertained. We make decisions about the sort of food we want to eat and, if we eat out, where we dine. We visit arts and sports venues to experience music, theatre, visual arts and sporting events and we participate in physical activities ourselves. We make decisions about who we love and who we want to marry, if we do, and how many children we have and when we have them. If we are paid to work, and earn enough, we usually contribute taxes. We often decide beforehand what we want to happen to our bodies once we are dead, and some of us would like the opportunity to decide how and when to die, in the event that our quality of life is compromised by disease.

Regardless of how little respect people currently have for politics and politicians, the decisions that are made by our elected representatives affect almost every facet of our lives. Those same politicians are also responsible for making the big decisions about the sort of future we can look forward to as a result of their approval of activities that are dramatically altering the environment and the atmosphere that sustains us. David Byrne in Bicycle Diaries^¹puts it this way:

“I believe that politics is, besides being pragmatic, social and psychological, also an expression of a wider surrounding context. That includes everything that might affect what people feel and do – music, landscape, food, clothes, religion, weather. Politics is a reflection of the streets, the smells, what constitutes eroticism, and the routine of humdrum lives just as much as it is a result of back-room deals, ideologies, and acts of legislature.”

For the very reason that politics pervades our existence so comprehensively, politicians must ensure that the decisions they make are above reproach. Openness and accountability must be at the core of the decision-making process, as must clear and sound principles. At the foundation of all this must be the greater good, not individual benefit. The back-room deals referred to by David Byrne and to which we have become so accustomed have no place in this sort of decision-making and neither do political donations from large corporations or individuals who would like the ear of government to do their bidding.

The philosophy of individual freedom and the right of the individual to which the Liberal Party and other so called “conservative” parties and independents ascribe so much importance has resulted in the inability of politicians to view the world and the decisions they make in a holistic way. This in turn has wide ramifications for the neighbourhoods we live in on a small scale and the environments that sustain us on a larger one.

Such individual freedom is not to be confused with the personal choices people make in relation to how they live their lives. Actions resulting from the sort of freedom championed by the Liberals and others can, and do, have huge impacts on the environment, on communities and on society as a whole. On the other hand, the impacts resulting from choices people make make about their own lives in relation to things like marriage, abortion and euthanasia are negligible, on the wider world at least.

The cynicism felt so strongly about politicians has been on a steady increase and stems in part from unprincipled decision-making and the self-interest that is apparently corrupting some, if not much of the decision-making process. People feel that they cannot trust politicians when those politicians appear to lack consistency. It ought to be quite laudable for a politician to admit they were wrong and change their stance due to a change of heart and/or because new information comes to hand. It is another thing altogether for a politician to go back on a commitment simply because it will lead to a greater possibility of re-election, or a highly paid job in life after politics.

As long as politicians and political parties are more attached to hanging onto power rather than making sure that there are policy outcomes leading to the long-term, greater good, lack of vision driven by self-interest will continue to steer decision-making. It will not be possible to look after people and the Earth in a nonviolent and inclusively democratic way if we do not change the way we do politics.

The campaign leading up to the next federal election is my second as candidate for Eden-Monaro and thirteenth overall. If the mark of success is winning, I have only “succeeded” three times out of thirteen; in 1997 for the 1998 Constitutional Convention on the ticket Greens, Bill of Rights, Indigenous Peoples and in 2004 and 2008 for local council, but there are reasons much more compelling for participating, regardless of the outcome of the race.

Greens have often been criticised for taking votes away from the ALP, and it has not been unusual for some to suggest that Greens shouldn’t be standing if is going to jeopardise the chances of the ALP being elected. But if a party, whether it be the ALP or any other, is neglecting in Government or Opposition to make a stand on a particular issue, be it public education, uranium, refugees, forests, or industrial relations, it is essential that there is room for an alternative voice. We need politicians to stand up against the senseless and completely unsustainable practice of woodchipping native forests, and speak out for asylum seekers who have no choice but to leave their homelands because of persecution due to their political or religious beliefs. If it is a better world we all want, The Greens need to remain in Parliament and contesting elections for as long as issues like woodchipping and refugees and global warming and the plethora of other matters remain unresolved.

Politics and democracy in Australia ought not be restricted to what are traditionally regarded as the two major parties, acknowledging that one of those is a Coalition of two conservative parties. The two-party system is one that the two parties themselves are keen to perpetuate, and have done so with no small amount of success. But no-one is born to rule, nor does any party have the right to continue to dominate while there are policy areas that are being neglected, especially when the result is greater inequality or environmental degradation than already exists. If, however, either of the two parties cared to implement policies and take action to address those ongoing social and environmental problems and there was no longer any need for the alternative voices, then The Greens have done what we set out to achieve; it should not matter who does it, as long as it happens.

Both sides of politics (or is it simply “the other side”, with the ALP increasingly similar to the Coalition?) have accused The Greens of being goofy and populist. But you can’t have it both ways; if we’re goofy we can’t be populist, unless the wider population is goofy too, because being populist is changing policy to reflect the perceived opinions of the wider population. Yet at the same time we are apparently goofy because we have policies no-one agrees with. Greens develop policies in consultation with relevant experts in their field, and sometimes they will articulate details and actions that are not popular. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t espouse them. Compromise and pragmatism have their place, but there are times when it is important to hold onto the principle even though it seems unpopular. Holding out against an extremely flawed carbon emissions trading scheme was perceived by some to have been the wrong thing to do at the time, and is being held against us now during the current election campaign by both the ALP and the Coalition. But our position was supported then and has been since by those at the coalface of scientific and economic thinking on climate change.

Despite having a clear set of principles on which all its policies are based, The Greens receive an inordinate amount of criticism from the media and from the other political parties and, therefore, a broad sections of the community. Why? Most people would probably agree that it is important to care for people by making sure their basic needs are met, and to provide them with the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes about issues that affect their lives while they live safely and peacefully in a clean and healthy environment. Reflecting that, the four Green principles are social and economic justice, grassroots democracy, peace and nonviolence, and ecological sustainability, principles shared by Green parties around the world.

It seems obvious that the reason that The Greens are constantly misrepresented, derided and sidelined is directly related to greed, power and self-interest. Certain elements of big business recognise that The Greens are their main political obstacle when it comes to maximising profits regardless of the impacts on the Earth and its complex systems, so it is in their interests to make sure that The Greens remain on the periphery. One way of doing this is to own or influence the mainstream media and hope that the dialogue you construct around who is relevant in politics becomes the dialogue adopted by everyone.

Following the 2010 election, the ALP was willing to work with the independents and Greens to form a minority government that went some way to reflect the diversity of views that exist in the wider community. At last it seemed that there was movement away from the insistence that governing can only come out of one of two parties and instead, recognition that it could involve round-table discussion with a view to finding solutions in a consensus-based way. But its detractors did nothing but try to destroy this alliance from the moment it began, reinforcing the reality that it is the adversarial nature of current politics that is the one favoured by the Opposition and now again, it would seem, by the ALP.

We are all in this life together, and if we are genuinely concerned about getting the best outcomes for people and the environment we need to put egos aside, re-engage with politics and work together in a non-confrontational way to achieve those outcomes. In the words of Australian jazz musician Vince Jones – it’s the power of love, not the love of the power^².

1 David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries, Penguin, London, 2010, p.135

This point forward

“Men and women of Australia! The decision we will make for our country on December 2 is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.

“It’s time to create new opportunities for Australians, time for a new vision of what we can achieve in this generation for our nation and the region in which we live. It’s time for a new government.”

These, of course, were the opening words of Gough Whitlam in his campaign speech on November 13, 1972 in Blacktown, NSW, a little less than three weeks before the election at which the Australian Labor Party took government again for the first time in 23 years.

At this point in 2013, as we prepare to go to the polls in September (or at a time yet to be revealed), Whitlam’s words are just as relevant as they were back in 1972, and Tony Abbott, his coalition of Liberal and National parties and their supporters may well have re-badged those words as their own. Until late June it seemed that the the ALP had given up and and decided that a new, LNP government was inevitable. (Re-)enter Rudd, and suddenly things started to look different. But polls are one thing; the question of whether or not the ALP can differentiate itself enough from the Liberal-National Coalition to make a comeback is yet to be answered.

Another such moment in history and opportunity for change, but one which passed almost unheralded, took place in September 1996, shortly after John Howard and the Coalition had taken power back from the ALP. At 5.15pm on September 10, two very different politicians were making their first speeches simultaneously in Parliament. In the House of Representatives, Pauline Hanson, who had not long before been expelled from the Liberal Party, outlined her view of Australia and where our nation should be going. At the same moment in the Senate, Bob Brown laid down The Greens’ ideas about Australia and the planet. Hanson’s speech, filled as it was with controversial and (as many believed) regressive and racist statements and opinions, grabbed the immediate attention of the media, the country and parts of the world, whereas Brown’s speech, filled with positive messages and progressive policies, was almost completely ignored, at least by the media.

In the aftermath of the arrival of Hanson and Brown in Parliament, Howard was faced with a choice. Keen not to lose any of his support to Hanson and what later became her One Nation Party, whose policies were obviously much closer to those of his own Liberal Party to those of The Greens anyway, he chose, not surprisingly, to follow the path that more closely aligned him to Hanson.

For many Australians, Whitlam’s references to the past, with its habits and fears, began to take on a contemporary relevance earlier this year, signifying Tony Abbott and their understanding of what he stands for. But despite their own fears about an Abbott-led government, and where it might take us, many of those people started to consider voting Liberal for the first time in their lives at the 2013 election. And with Pauline Hanson’s announcement that she would be a candidate for the Senate in NSW, history was on track to repeat itself if Abbott were to take government.

It was against this backdrop that the ALP decided to re-install Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. Far from differentiating himself and his party from the Coalition, Rudd seems to be on a mission to minimise the gap between the two parties. First came his plan to “terminate” the carbon tax, followed shortly after by the announcement of a “solution” to the refugee crisis, a move that many feel has taken the ALP further to the right of politics than they see the Coalition placed.

Australians’ opinions of politicians is at an all-time low, with voters feeling more cynical about politicians and more disenfranchised from the political process at this point in our history than perhaps they ever have in the past, and many would rather not have to vote at all. At the same time, we face greater challenges in Australia than ever before, and it will take immense skill and firm resolve to face up to and deal with these challenges in a way that will take us into a safe, healthy and compassionate future. Whitlam’s words have lost none of their relevance for 21st century politics in general, but in order for us to enable that future, perhaps we need to recognise that it’s not that easy. It’s not simply time for a new government. It’s time for a new way of doing politics.