Australia: You’re The Voice (to Parliament)
The next year will show how much Anthony Albanese is able to “change the country.”
“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck.” – Donald Horne
“An Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: about [its] history, about [its] present and the future.” – John Howard
“When you change the government, you change the country.” – Paul Keating
There is a stereotype of the Australian middle class that appears widely in Australian popular culture. The stereotype is of a leisurely life in a comfortable house in a leafy–and probably white–suburb of a capital city, with weekends spent grilling (“shrimp on the barbie”) in the backyard (with a few tinnies of beer at hand) in nice weather, with one or another variety of “the footy” on the television. The images stretch from movies like Muriel’s Wedding to the sarcastic “land of plenty” lyric of Men at Work’s song “Down Under.” Like most stereotypes, there is a fair degree of truth behind it, and when Australians speak of equality, they are often thinking of an equality in which everyone aspires to the same middle class lifestyle. The political center in Australia comes from promises to preserve this lifestyle through keeping taxes and interest rates on mortgages low, and not disturbing that lifestyle with environmental restrictions such as limits on water use–or for that matter, embracing Aboriginal land rights that might extend to those same leafy suburbs.
The political vehicle for this stereotypical middle Australia is the Liberal Party, the center-right political party that traces its roots to Alfred Deakin and the anti-Labor factionalism in the early 20th century, and whose current iteration dates to 1949. Robert Menzies, its founding leader, served as prime minister for two separate spells, from 1939-1941 and 1949-1966. Menzies’ Liberals became the party that defined post-World War II Australia and that profited from the growth of a broad middle class during those years. John Howard, Liberal prime minister from 1996-2007, continued in Manzies’ tradition, reinforcing a traditional suburban Australian identity and promising to keep Australians “relaxed and comfortable” both materially and culturally.
The political scientist Judith Brett has been the primary chronicler of the Liberal Party. Brett has argued that Liberal success as the natural governing party of Australia comes from a synthesis of Protestantism, support for law and order, probity, and support for private enterprise, from small business to high finance. Under Howard, the Liberals became more pointed in their support for neo-liberalism and deregulation of the labor market, and became more culturally conservative, especially in regard to immigration, resistance to the idea of Australia as an Asian nation, and reaction to the Mabo and Wik court rulings on Aboriginal land rights.
There is a large cross-section of Australian intelligentsia that rejects the Liberal view of Australia, broadly dismissing it as parochial and somewhat backward. It views Aboriginals as the original and perhaps true owners of Australia, supports immigration and multiculturalism, and generally wants to transform Australia into something new, though the characteristics of the new Australia evolve with time. Generally, the non-Liberal part of the Australian political spectrum seeks to make the country more open and somewhat less self-satisfied, anxious to move beyond what Donald Horne dismissed as “second rate.”
The three iconic Labor prime ministers have been John Curtin, Gough Whitlam, and Bob Hawke. Curtin and his successor Ben Chifley led Australia through the Second World War and began the expansion of the welfare state, and began the momentum that eventually led to the end of the White Australia policy. Whitlam was the most socially reformist prime minister, and became a martyr to the Labor side of politics for the way his government was dismissed in 1975. Hawke and his successor Paul Keating presided over the opening of the Australian economy to trade and international finance, and presided over what Frank Bongiorno calls “the decade that transformed Australia.”
The dividing line in Australian politics has thus paralleled the modern culture war, in that one side called for a relatively closed and homogeneous Australia, while the other called for a more open country that needed to be transformed in some fashion. This is what Paul Keating meant when he argued that Australians voted to change the country when they elected a government.
The open versus closed debate has returned to the heart of Australian politics since Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader and prime minister in 2018. Turnbull, while a lifelong Liberal and a financier, was open to replacing the monarchy with a republic and supported policies to contain climate change, leaving him open to Morrison’s populist challenge. Morrison regularly invoked religious themes in his political rhetoric, He also exuded the “relaxed and comfortable” ethos by opposing immigration and climate change action, and captured the national mood by embracing “the tyranny of distance” and locking Australia down for months during the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. As Peter van Onselen put it, his government was a “short-term political success” that embraced “idleness” and “doing nothing.”
Morrison’s Liberal-Natiolnal coalition lost power in the 2022 federal election, defeated by Labor under Anthony Albanese. Much of the 2022 Labor platform was economic, appealing to the leafy suburbs anxious at how the economy would rebound from the pandemic, but the new government showed clear aspirations to “change the country” in the form of creating an Aboriginal “Voice to Parliament'' and potentially creating an Australian republic.
In 2017, The First Nations National Constitutional Convention, meeting at Uluru, the former Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory, approved the “Uluru Statement from the Heart,” a petition to change the Australian constitution to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation. The statement proposed the entrenchment of a First Nations Voice in the constitution as a representative consultative body that would “monitor the use of the heads of power in section 51 and section 122,” the pieces of the Australian constitution that give the federal government jurisdiction over aboriginal Australians. The Liberal-National Coalition government rejected any changes to the institutions of government, while the Labor opposition endorsed the call for an indigenous voice and called for a constitutional referendum during its successful 2022 election campaign.
The Australian parliament initiates constitutional amendments by simple majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, which triggers a national referendum that needs the support of a national majority plus majorities in more than half the states (meaning four of six). This is a high threshold, and only eight of 44 proposed amendments have won approval by referendum, though a 1967 referendum to establish the full citizenship of Aboriginals won 90% support and passed in every state. In practice, amendments proposed by one party and rejected by the other have failed.
By May 2023, the Albanese government had presented legislation calling the Voice referendum. While its parliamentary majority guaranteed passage through the lower rHouse, the opposition Coalition generally opposed the bill. The National Party, the rural-based smaller member of the opposition coalition, opposed the bill, while some Liberals either supported the Voice or agreed to hold the referendum while announcing they would campaign against the proposal. However, Liberal leader Peter Dutton, one of the most conservative members of the party, directed members of the shadow cabinet to oppose the Voice, calling the constitutional entrenchment of racially-defined representative body “divisive.” Several shadow ministers resigned in response.
There is not yet a date set for the referendum, as the Senate must still pass the government’s legislation,but Albanese has indicated the government wants it to happen before the end of 2023. In addition to the specifics of the Voice, the Labor government will be looking to build momentum within the country for institutional change, as the Voice referendum clearly seems to be a prelude to a second constitutional referendum on an Australian republic. Labor has supported breaking the tie to the British monarchy since at least the 1990s, and the death of Queen Elizabeth II, who sustained support for the monarchy within Australia through her personal popularity, seems to have raised the question of a republic again. The Liberals are divided on the future of the monarchy, though most are inclined to retain it. Support for the monarchy is broadly part of the relaxed-and-comfortable ethos.
Despite lively debate over its signature policies, Labor seems securely in power in Canberra, at least for the moment. The Liberal Party is divided on the Voice, the republic, climate change, and a number of other issues. The party has performed poorly in polls and by-elections since losing office last year, and Dutton’s leadership is not altogether secure. Dutton tends to alienate the well-educated professionals who are normally an important part of the Liberal base, but who supported “teal independent” candidates at the last election, six of whom were elected to parliament and have supported Albanese on a number of issues, including the Voice. The continued Liberal embrace of Australia as the “lucky country” appears a bit retrograde at the moment, but defeat of the Voice referendum may start to turn that around.
The Labor government will remain in power, but the next year will show how much it will be able to “change the country.”
References:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/voice-to-parliament-referendum
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-05/liberal-party-oppose-voice-to-parliament/102188290
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-29844752
https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/eighties-0
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8263357/a-brexit-like-wave-threatens-the-voice/
https://www.examiner.com.au/story/7780026/well-we-changed-the-government-time-to-change-the-country/
https://john.curtin.edu.au/legacyex/index.html
https://johnquiggin.com/2007/11/20/relaxed-and-comfortable/
https://www.hachette.com.au/peter-van-onselen-wayne-errington/how-good-is-scott-morrison
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/comfortable-and-relaxed-with-conservative-populism/
https://www.niaa.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/uluru-statement-heart
https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9780732911171/
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-lucky-country-9781742531571
https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2005/08/relaxed-and-comfortable/extract