Friday, April 5, 2024

On Politics in Australia



There is one peculiar anomaly in politics in Australia. While majority of the people do not support right wing policies, the right-wing Coalition managed to cling to power for much longer periods of time compared to left wing Labor. Coalition often ended up implementing some of their right-wing policies despite opposition not only from Labor but also most of the crossbench as well. Meanwhile Labor keeps doubt itself and fails to achieve much even when in power.

While its convenient to blame this to right wing media, dominated by newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch News Corp, that is not entirely correct. Fundamentally newspapers are legacy medium that hardly consumed by people younger than 60 years old. Young people do not consume Murdoch press, but they do not vote Labor either, that means Murdoch have nothing to do with it. At the very least Murdoch is far not all there is to a problem.



Fundamental problem is that Liberals a lot more cunning and savvy that Labor. They better understand different demographics and have a big bag of tricks to mislead people into voting for them. In contrast Labor is over reliant on their innate appeal to working class and completely helpless when it comes to expanding its appeal to any other groups. The reasons these parties ended up so different in that regard lies in their history. I will write about each party separately, starting with Libs.


Liberal History

Modern Liberals have many differently named predecessors: United Australia Party, Australia Party, Nationalist Party, National Labour, (Commonwealth) Liberals, Protectionist, Free Trade. Some like to simplify that to simply the same party under different names, but that loses important details. These different iterations of modern center-right party represent periods of existential crises in the party history where they often had to take drastic measures to stay relevant and not be relegated to ash heap of history. They happened because changes to economics and demographics necessitated expansion of party base and inclusion of ever-increasing groups into the party. I will cover each of them separately.

The ancient most predecessors of modern Liberals were Protectionist Party and Free Trade Party. These parties actually competed with each other in elections. They were organic parts the original two-party system. It hard to tell which of them was more rightwing compared to the other as they both represented businessowners. 

Protectionists represented businesses that manufactured locally and favored high tariffs to make local produce more competitive than imported goods. Free Trade represented traders and importers who wanted tariffs low so that their shipping would be more profitable. These two parties competed in election and had a fair bit of rivalry that even made Protectionists to support Labour government against the Free Traders.

However eventually these former bitter rivals came to the conclusion that their mutual differences with Labor are higher than those with each other and merged into Commonwealth Liberals. That produced a more familiar form of two-party system, with one left and one right wing party. Political battlelines stop being about interests of different business groups, they became about interests of employees vs interests of managers and business owners. 



Hext merger came from within Labor itself. Billy Hughes, once a rather popular Labor leader, decided to split from Labour and with his supporters formed National Labour Party. After a minority government supported by original Liberals, they eventually merged with them into a Nationalist Party.

That was the point where right wing realized they can no longer survive without some support from working class and rallied Hughes and a few prominent former Labour members into their ranks under banner of Nationalism. That for the first time added some of the core Labor base to that of the tory. That however also diluted the policies the party stands for, as traditional business owners' interests had to co-exist with patriotic fervor of National Labor working class. 



Huges was eventually expelled from Nationalist party, but soon formed Australia Party that eventually went to merge with Nationalists to form United Australia Party.

The base of the Nationalists again dwindled too far to keep party electable, so they had to resort to populist tactics to lure yet more supporters away from Labour as well as from all other corners of society.

Notice how right wing all too willing to adopt the name that is much closer to the splinter party they are merging into. That represent conscious self-awareness that their tory policy is not popular with people, and they are much better off to be seen as some new catch all party. 

Names themselves cannot be more catch all and generic. Australian Party ostensively represents everyone in Australia, at least claims to. Make it United Australia Party to double on that catch all effect. 

By now it's no longer party of anything, but rather simply anti-Labour party that united people of vastly different worldviews and interests, that have nothing in common with each other.


How Liberals Invented Middle Class

The final exercise in broadening party support came in 1949, when Robert Menzies created modern Liberal Party. While that took the party name back to the original merger of Protectionists and Free Trade, the appeal of the party broadened yet again. This time with the help of the newly invented middle class.

Middle class is essentially an upper crust of well-off members of working class, the Labor' Party base. Labor themselves created them with their policies that benefited working people and allowed them to become somewhat well off. Afterwards these well-off workers were scooped by their rivals with campaign of fears that their wealth might disappear if Labour takes power again.

Ever since Labor engaged Liberals in tug of war over this vaunted middle class, whose socio-economic situations makes their allegiance muddy. This is a game Liberals created and Labor foolhardily walked into.


Modern Liberals

All that makes modern Liberal Party not a party that represents anyone or stands for anything. Rather it's a shrewd political machine that just scraps together votes from any corner they could possibly find and somehow divert to themselves. John Howard described it as broad church but is more of a rag tag group of people that have nothing in common with each other who are sometimes mislead into voting for the Liberals. Because of that they hardly have any policies aside from opposition to Labour, lowering the taxes and doing nothing.

If they would try something else, like rework industrial relationships for example, it would expose differences between different blocks of supporters. That is also why leaders such as Tony Abbot are liked by some in the party and despised by others: this exposes vast gaps between different interests' groups in the party.

The party is fully self-aware of that. The very same Tony Abbot knew full well that people would not vote for him if they knew what his policies were, so he simply avoided saying anything about his policies and focused instead on criticizing Labor ones.



When even that is not enough then, to further prop their ailing electoral prospects, Liberals create a number of spoiler parties such as Democratic Labour Party, Family First Party to further broaden their support and catch votes of those who would not vote for tories but willing to vote against Labour for one or another reason. 

More recently they done that again with yet more of these spoiler parties, such as Palmer United Party that later reclaimed tory old United Australia Party name, Australian Conservatives and a few others.

They also managed to rope-in some popular small party independents, such as David Leyonhjelm of Liberal Democrats, despite Liberal Democrats having little in common with the Liberals.



Finally, the vaunted middle class, that Liberals claim to represent, and Labor wants to win back, sometimes realizes that neither party truly stands for its interests and once their even tried to form their own party Australian Democrats, one and only true party of middle class. They only managed limited success before disappearing into oblivion. Teal Independents is possibly one other such attempt, or they could be simply another one of Liberal spoiler party tricks instead.

Some analysts claim that Democrats place was taken by The Greens, however that is misleading. The Greens are not centrist middle-class party, but rather far-left populist party that represents diverse array of mostly poor and disenfranchised voters to whom their appeal with their populist rhetoric and promises of free stuff.


Labor Party

Labor party situation is the opposite of that of the Liberals. If Liberals needed to constantly broaden their support at expense of, among other things, parts of Labor base, then Labor mostly struggles to keep their large base united and prevent people from leaving for other parties. Unlike Liberals they have never really tried to win any support outside of their target demographic, working people, employees who work for fixed (mostly hourly) wage.

Labor was left scarred by Billy Hughes, DLP and others splitting the party so instead of working on broadening the base, the work on keeping their base together and united. That is why unlike rag tag Cronenberg Liberals, Labor only has two neatly organized fractions: Socialist Left and Labor Unity.

Labor got caught into tug of war over middle class, created by Liberals, and lost many of their policies that actually benefited working class in a near futile attempt to win back middle class. Which did sometimes benefit the party in the past.

Party made so many mistakes that would have buried someone like Liberals long ago, but because Labour's base is very strong, the party could never sink completely. Unionized working class would always vote for their party. Despite partly hardly doing anything useful for them since Whitlam and Hawke, only few of them deserted it.

In general majority of people in our current society are employees and that make Labor a much more natural choice for them compared to Liberals. Liberals had to scratch their heads to invent cunning schemes to get votes, Labor can just sit on their hands doing nothing and government would just fall into their hands.



All that made Labor complacent and blind to reality of Australian life. If you can win without making a single smart move, them why bother thinking. So far this approach occasionally kept delivering government to Labor.

The party exists within dual bubble of their own internal politics as well as that of productivity political narrative, invented by Liberals. and unable to see changes in economy and society around them. It is foolish to trust the lingo and narrative of Liberals, but Labor Unity does so, nonetheless.



Labor claims to be democratic socialist, but by now their policies can hardly be even called social democracy. They too stuck in Canberra bubble and Liberal party invented, productivity, economy and competitiveness narrative, that they completely lost touch with reality.

The right-wing creep is because as people get wealthier, they favor conservative right-wing policies. That is why Liberals managed to snatch upper crust of former Labor's working class, that they dubbed middle class.

However, this problem affects politicians within Labor Party itself. Many of them have investment properties or stock market investments. That would make them fall for the Liberal economic drivel and favor policies that improve economic indicators over the policies that actually help working class or the poor.

By now party is too much focus one token leftwing polices such as feminism as well as public service pet projects rather than things that can indeed improve lives of working people.


Future of the Left Wing

So far Labor managed maintain electability, however, voters increasingly desert Labor to various left-wing alternatives. It is hard to say how long the party can last without changing its approach.

Analysts like to describe One Nation as far-right, but when it comes to economic policies, they are much closer to the left that to the right. Despite the smear campaign against them in media, the party endures and manages to keep significant percentage of vote. Cunning Liberal shadow puppeteers managed to pit One Nation against both Greens and Labor for the benefit of the Libs and detriment of all the other three.

The populist far-left Greens alone managed to consistently hold around the third of primary vote support. I will repeat it here again that unlike Democrats, The Greens are not centrist middle-class party, but rather far-left populist party that represents diverse array of mostly poor and disenfranchised voters to whom their appeal with their populist rhetoric and promises of increased social security payments, social housing and other free stuff.

So far that did not endanger Labor's electability, as Greens preferences flow to them anyway, but that alone is telling of how many people wish for a different left-wing party that represents them. Just think of these 11-12% vs Labor own 32% something. 

One Nation and NXT did manage to carve out some as well. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that Labour only represents half of all left-wing vote with the remaining half represented by other small parties or not represented by anyone and simply lost in cracks of electoral process.


Reasons for Changes to Left Wing

One can ask if Labour have endured before, then they can do so again, but there is a reason why that is not the case. The reason is socio-economic change.

Back in 20th century a number of people who work as employees kept constantly increasing. All these large organizations had to be manned by people. All these people were Labour's core base. Majority of them supported Labor even if Libs managed to chip away few here and there.

Nowadays however many large factories are closing, for example that Holden Factory in Elizabeth. That alone turned all these formally Labor voters, who used to work there, into potential future Greens voters. That is just one example.

A lot of people are unemployed or underemployed, some participate in gig economy or just get by with irregular work. All this ever-growing segment of society is economically left wing but is not represented by Labor at all. Because of that they chose to vote Greens, One Nation or any other 3rd party.

This trend will continue and because of that all these 3rd parties will continue to grow. If nothing is done, they will eventually replace Labor as new left-wing party. Just like UK's Labour replaced Liberals and main left-wing party. If Labor will not try to broaden its appeal, it might as well end up just like UK Liberals.

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