Some years ago, Guy Rundle argued in the Quarterly Essay that Peter Costello might lead the Coalition away from the dead end of cultural conservatism once the dead hand of John Howard is removed from the puppet strings. That argument, an interesting and provocative one in some ways (and Rundle was quite correct to see Jeff Kennett as a modern liberal who saw the libertarian future), was wrong at the time, I thought, as Costello’s product differentiation from Howard has always been something of a pose. That’s something Christopher Pearson and I apparently agree on. And this may be another point of agreement:
Just how seriously we should take Rudd’s claims to be a conservative is far from clear. Unlike Costello, he describes himself as “a non-denominational Christian” for whom sexual ethics are pretty much negotiable: by no stretch of the imagination a religious conservative.
Where he stands on the burning cultural questions of the times — from the teaching of history to declining standards of literacy and numeracy and the political correctness that still infects our universities — is anyone’s guess, although if they were issues he cared about, you’d expect that we’d have heard something about it by now.
It’s interesting to note in Margaret Simons’ new book, Faith, Money, Power, she writes that her requests for an interview with Rudd were declined on his behalf by a staffer on the grounds that he’d already “ticked the faith box” and that the election year debate had moved on. Reading Simons, one can get a sense of what Rudd has actually said about faith and politics, and the substance really is restricted to what he wrote in The Monthly last year. His main concern is to re-orient the discussion toward social justice, something Pearson (and Abbott) know well. Some polling Simons writes about is also fascinating in this context – a survey of churchgoers found that more believed that Jesus would vote for Rudd than Howard. I’m inclined to agree with her conclusions that the “religious revival” in Australian politics is largely illusory, and interested by her experience of attending two years’ worth of services on and off and rarely finding politics being discussed. There certainly is a broader politics involved in what she correctly identifies as a search for meaning which is at the heart of the (still very small) Pentecostal revival, and which has a broader significance in contemporary Australian culture.
But her reading of the Australian Social Attidudes Survey data (which I referred to in an article on the census earlier this year) demonstrates that we have a much more liberal and secular culture than America’s (though American culture is actually multiple in this sense – as the red state/blue state dichotomy gestures at…). Even 65% of women who are regular church goers agree with a woman’s right to choose, for instance (95% of secular women do).
While Howard hating authors like Marion Maddox like to seize at any shred of evidence that would imply an evil plot to destroy secular Australia, it’s simply just not true that this can succeed on any empirical measure (and evidence of the plotting is overdrawn through her habit of making wild and inadmissable American parallels).
But similarly, Pearson and his compadres are whistling in the dark if they really think that the so-called “burning cultural issues of our time” have any resonance beyond the crazed contentions of the commentariat and those, on both left and right, whose interest or ideology is served by claiming that there’s some sort of retraditionalisation of social norms occurring. That is flatly false.
I think one of the most interesting things about the media coverage about Anna Bligh’s ascension in Queensland (and see this article by Ben Eltham in the latest New Matilda as well as my Crikey piece from last week) is precisely how little has been made about her past as a feminist activist. There’ve been no “shock! horror!” stories, and Bligh herself, while pointing to the changed context of the times as well as her own personal trajectory, has seen no need to disavow her previous commitments for electoral advantage.
(There was some reference to her and her partner’s decision to give their first child a surname neither of them bore on this post.)
There are some areas of social change – such as the shift in attitudes towards same-sex relationships – that once some momentum has been established, shift very quickly. And we no longer hear too much about the Caroline Overington talking points about “Young Fogies” or “South Park Conservatives” at which I took aim in the Griffith Review last year [link to pdf] – not just because the evidence is that young voters have overwhelmingly tilted towards Rudd, but also because the shibboleths about a “generation of conservative rebels” have been exposed as Miranda Devine guff and the stuff of pop sociological boosters (who have all moved on to this moment’s cliche anyway, apparently reflecting the attention deficit disorder they themselves accuse Gen Y of…).
Even where there are slightly statistically significant differences – such as more marriages among Gen Y than Gen X, they do not prove anything about a retraditionalisation of mores. The propensity not to marry of my generation is largely explicable by the fact that we’re the children of the most divorced generation in history. The alleged ideological objections to marriage as an institution are in fact the preserve of a tiny minority (myself included, I should add) and marriage simply no longer carries the same package of social attitudes in its wake as it once did.
Whether or not this is something intended by Kevin Rudd, I think the effect of a Rudd ascendancy would be to sweep away all the culture wars argy bargy quicker than you can say boo. Rundle made a similar argument – based basically on demographics and shifting social attitudes – some years ago, and while I agree with him that it would be in the Liberals’ electoral interest to junk all the “trad values” stuff, I can easily see a post-Howard Liberal Party marginalising itself in the same way as the hard right Tories did for so many years in Britain.
But what’s uncontestable, I think, is the inference that the package of rhetoric and biases dressed up as the “culture wars” has always been a discourse solely of elites. There is a small minority of voters, a very small minority indeed, who vote on these issues. The suburban “aspirational” middle class – on whose putative behalf this nonsense is normally articulated – don’t care. They care about things like interest rates, housing affordability, work and family and so forth, and in the great majority of cases, have relatively social liberal views.
We’ll see, but I strongly suspect that Pearson’s “burning cultural issues of our time” will be cinders and embers this time next year. And no sane politician will try to stoke the fire again.
Mark, what do you mean when you say “— Rundle was quite correct to see Jeff Kennett as a modern liberal who saw the libertarian future —”? Are you preducting that in the future Australian society will be a more libertarian one than it currently is, or are you claiming that Australia is now a more libertarian socirty than it was back in 2001?
Both, Damien.
Its just a perception thing. I don’t have any empirical evidence for it. But I don’t really think the extent of liberty in Australia has changed much over my lifetime. Not that I am a big fan of the term libertarian. I tend to have libertarian views in some areas and more interventionist views in others. Consistency would be boring!!!
In what areas do you think individual liberties are greater now than thyey were in 2001?
Interesting that in arguing against council amalgamations,Howard Hobbs seemed to be arguing the exact opposite of the Noel Pearson proposal of getting the workforce to become mobile.
Wonder whether Pearson and Hobbs ever swapped notes to see who could claim to hold the formal conservative position. Or are the pair of them just clutching at straws and using whatever argument is convenient at any given time?
“…what’s uncontestable, I think, is the inference that the package of rhetoric and biases dressed up as the “culture warsâ€? has always been a discourse solely of elites. There is a small minority of voters, a very small minority indeed, who vote on these issues. The suburban “aspirationalâ€? middle class – on whose putative behalf this nonsense is normally articulated – don’t care. They care about things like interest rates, housing affordability, work and family and so forth…”
Depends very much how you view the issue, I think. “They care about things like interest rates, housing affordability, work and family…” All these things are defined by the practical cultural and social matrix in which they are materially manifest, and that matrix is, of course, determined partly, and in a very important way, by the cultural values that are prevalent at any given moment.
Which is not to say that splitting hairs over one’s assessment of Derrida and what-not is going to matter all that much in the long run. But a society (any society) in which certain post-modern ideas get not only a fair hearing but also a fair bit of actual practical implementation, has to answer to the consequences. And guess what, some of those consequences are going to manifest themselves as, well whaddaya know, interest rates, housing affordability, work and family, and so forth.
You mean like this JPZ.
The nervous nellies in the coalition seem to want somebody to do anything to get them out of the mess they have created by having $weetie as Treasurer for eleven long wasted years.
Mark, if we accept for a moment your prediction that we’re headed for a more socially libertarian future in Australia, what do you make of the signs that we’re headed for a more politically centralised future, at least in the short-to-medium term?
While all around you might see signs of social liberation in the breeze, all around me I see signs that the political machinery of this country is trying to move into more and more areas of our lives and do more and more from Canberra.
Whether it’s in education, health, Aboriginal affairs, security or taxation, politicians on all sides are proposing ever more grandiose centralised structures to deal with it. It’s been the case under Howard and there’s no sign that things will be different under Rudd.
Has ’social liberation’ become decoupled from ‘political liberation’ to such a degree that they can now exist on independent tracks and adopt opposite trends?
My own gut feel is that, over the longer term, the increased centralisation and growth of state power in this country spells big trouble for social liberties. To put it another way, we’ll all as individuals be socially free on things that “don’t matter” to the government, but completely atomised and unable to influence any of the state machinery that actually runs our lives on issues that “matter” to the government.
I suppose my view is coloured by the historical evidence that big state power has always been correlated with low individual freedoms. But maybe that’s changing? Maybe the link is weaker than in the past? If so, why? how? Any sociologists care to have a dig?
For what it is woth I think that over the past two decades that the pendulum has swung so far to the extreme of people’s tolerance that a rock bottom has now been reached where newness can occur.
In the early seventies a similar feel was here and everybody could not imagine anything other than near full employment etc. Once the bills started coming in for the cost of the liberal Party’s Vietnam war costs, it all changed.
Hopfully this time the demand will be to be be free of the conservative straight jacket we have all been squeezed into over the past couple of decades.
mark, howard’s “aspirational nationalism” seems to be an attempt to tap into precisely what the SAMC cares about on a cultural level. This is not the minority/elite’s fighting their culture wars around teaching of history, same sex marriage, etc., but Howard continuing his modus operandi to use division to tap into what certain (51%) populations care about. Culture wars are a ‘war of position’ not the continually shifting content.
Damien, having read your second comment, I think we’re at cross purposes. I’m talking about socially liberal attitudes, not liberties.
j_p_z, that’s a big stretch frankly. If you can specify any useful way in which one’s interpretation of Derrida affects housing affordability, I’d be interested.
glen, “aspirational nationalism” is just political populism and not the sort of thing that the culture warriors have in mind when they talk about the “burning cultural issues” of the day. Perhaps its unfilled content is meant to imply some of them. I don’t think it got much purchase, and it’s been effectively dropped. I did make the point on an earlier thread, and I should have repeated it here, that issues to do with race appear to sit in something of a different box (though they’re intertwined in some ways too) with the more properly “social” issues, and I don’t expect them necessarily to go away.
Mercurius, some good questions which I’ll have to think about some more.
Mark
Thank you for your negative assessment of Marion Maddox. I’ve not read her book, but an interview with her on radio and several reviews, persuaded me that her views were shallow and simplistic. And here I was, thinking that the non-MSM punditry were probably cheering her on! IMHO Australia needs serious social research and well-thought policy suggestions, not kindergarten-style name calling. “Boo, hiss”?
Piffle!
A footnote on the believers vs the spokespersons: [back to the 1960's and 1970's] – several years after Il Papa in Rome said “No!” to The Pill, and the Australian Catholic hierarchy echoed his “No!”, someone compared the birthrates of Aussie Catholic women, to the average. Hardly any difference. Aussie Catholic women (and partners) were voting with their birth control, ignoring the edict. This one, prominent, widely-discussed-at-the-time instance of Hierarchy Pronouncement vs Practical Result, should be sufficient, wouldn’t you think, to serve as a caution to any commentator who might be tempted to assume that “Leaders’ Edict = Followers’ Belief”?
but perhaps not…. cheerio
Mark, what interesting timing for this post, on the same day the lesbian couple suing over (successful) IVF has caused a huge, angry public reaction. The case does revive at least one “culture war” question (between those who are happy for gays to do anything they want in reproductive technology and those who find lesbians making their own babies by any means an affront.) The reaction has been so strong, however, that it may spill over into the whole gays financial rights issue too, which is bound to come up in the lead up to the election.
What’s a “huge, angry public reation”, pray tell, steve? A bunch of elderly talkback callers who are rusted on Liberal voters frothing at the mouth? Or just the media saying that there is a “huge, angry public reaction”?
Speaking as one who is a part of the theological community in Australia I would like the opportunity of making some remarks.
I think it needs to be kept in mind that Christians have often played their part in the wider Australian political sphere in colonial times and since Federation. Brian Howe was a Uniting Church clergyman prior to entering Parliament, while Barry Jones was once an elder in a Presbyterian church. One need only recall the Temperance movement of the 19th century and the debates about state and church administered forms of education, the role of Methodists and Presbyterians in early trade unionism (e.g. the faith of trade union leader and ALP minister William Guthrie Spence) and general social reform issues, the debates over conscription in WW1, the rise of the DLP in the 1950s, and so on to be reminded of the presence of Christians in Australian political life and socio-political debates over many decades. Australian Christians in politics have held to a spectrum of views and not all fit into the pigeon-hole of conservatism.
The recent impressions that American-styles of evangelical conservative politics are growing in influence in the Australian scene are a tad over done. Even in the US context Evangelical Protestants have considerable diversity of political attitudes ranging from ultra-conservative (theocracy advocates), conservative (Moral Majority, Christian Coalition), reformist (Richard Mouw, President Jimmy Carter, President Woodrow Wilson) and evangelical left-wing (Jim Wallis, Sojourners, Ron Sider etc). Mitt Romney the Mormon presidential hopeful has a tough task ahead of him to woo evangelicals who regard Mormonism as theologically heretical (Mormons are not included in the evangelical household). In America there are those, such as D. G. Hart (“Deconstructing Evangelicalism”) who even question whether the notion of “evangelical” is itself a fictive construct of post-WW2 American church and media discourses.
The same diverse spectrum of political attitudes can be detected in Australian church life among evangelical Protestants but this is a point sorely lacking from Maddox’s book. One of the key differences is that in the USA there is a strong “civil religion” which some conservative evangelicals misconstrue as equating to their own faith position. The civil religiosity in the USA is closely associated with the office of the President. This problem has been highlighted inside evangelical academic circles and one visiting professor of evangelical history from the US to Australia is Robert Linder has highlighted this very problem in the USA. Linder has been a regular visitor to Macquarie Uni over more than a decade writing about aspects of Australian church history.
While Australia has civil and folk forms of religiosity (ANZAC, jingoism, carols-by-candlelight), Australia has nothing comparable in civil religiosity linked with the office of the Prime Minister as what is linked to the US Presidential office.
The impression of a monolithic evangelicalism equating with the US Republicans or here The Coalition parties is quite misleading. Yes there are small interest groups like the Australian Christian Lobby that brings some very socially and politically conservative interests together. However the political and social justice views of an evangelical Baptist Tim Costello (World Vision) are scarcely those of the Liberal-National parties. The TEAR Fund in Australia has a long reputation for its practical charitable activities here and overseas, and quite a few of its workers definitely belong to the evangelical “left”.
There are small in-house publications produced by evangelicals who have been involved in refugee advocacy at places like the Baxter Detention Centre who have written about the appalling activities there superintended by the Howard Government. Beyond the evangelicals, one need only recall the Jesuit-lawyer Frank Brennan (“Tampering With Asylum”) to note other Christian voices dissenting from the policies of the Coalition. The Victorian cases of religious vilification of Wiccans and Muslims has not galvanised all evangelicals to man the ramparts. Some feel threatened by religious pluralism, other evangelicals do not feel threatened and disagree with their fellow-believers in their behaviour and actions. There are evangelicals who vote for the Greens because of various social justice questions and because of theological beliefs about conservation and earth-stewardship (even though those evangelicals may not agree with The Greens position on euthanasia).
In Kevin Rudd’s world he comes as a Catholic who attends his wife’s Anglican church (an interesting act of compromise over older “sectarian” values). His inspiration for “Christian Socialism” harkens back to the late 19th century to a movement that had both evangelical and theologically liberal elements. There were British and American Methodists and Congregationalists interested in socialist ideas who saw them as compatible with a Christian understanding of equity, justice and faith. Charles Sheldon’s novel “In His Steps” offered a simplistic moral example of how to deal with social problems of the poor by asking “What Would Jesus Do?” Sheldon imbibed some elements of biblical justice themes from the Sermon on the Mount and the circulation of socialist ideas in the 1880s. Sheldon’s novel influenced the US liberal theologian Walter Rauschenbusch. Christian Socialism was also present in the writings of the British theologian F. D. Maurice, and in the US in Francis Bellamy the author of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Rudd spoke at the Australian Christian Heritage Forum in August 2006 as did the US historian Robert Linder. Rudd’s position is hardly the stuff of the Moral Majority, and is much along the lines that Mark (above) suggested — a return to the ethos of emphasising fairness and justice for the poor and marginalised. He is not advocating that being a Christian is a reason for a church-goer to vote for a professing Christian candidate or for an explicit Christian political party. He is clear that being a Christian does not necessarily qualify one to be an astute and competent politician. He does not hold that Christians must equate their faith with any political party. He does hold that in his own outlook he is a Christian and one who sees a strong place for social justice being pursued by Christians both in Parliament but also beyond it in non-government organisations. He is not advocating a theocracy or a parallel to the Moral Majority movement. He is not favouring the transformation of the ALP to become like Family First or Fred Nile’s party or to hark back to the heady days of the DLP. He has tried to make his presence felt among Christians and particularly for those put off by the Howard Government’s gambits to woo voters in the churches.
It might also be noted that while various Liberal Party figures are professing Christians (Catholic and Protestant), there is a strong disconnection between their faith and their political pragmatism and policies. For example, if Peter Costello was conversant with “animal theology” and held to biblical convictions on it he would scarcely have made in clear conscience his dismissive remarks about PETA and pushed for the Trade Practices Act amendment to enable punitive measures on secondary boycotts. Philip Ruddock attends a Sydney Anglican church but his attitude on refugees (to take one example) is regarded by many Christians as hopelessly inconsistent with faith or the ethos of Anglicare. Many evangelicals who advocate positive asylum-seeker and refugee policies precsiely because of their conviction about “asylum-cities” mentioned in the bible have been very critical of Ruddock. I suggest that political pragmatism generally takes precedence over theological convictions for quite a few of those in parliament (though Bruce Baird another Sydney Anglican did dig in his heels a couple of times on matters of conscience versus Party objectives).
On the Labor Party side one hardly hears any media remarks about Peter Garrett’s Christian faith. After his profession of faith he did appear on various locally made evangelical Christian TV shows being interviewed about his faith in the 1980s but since then nobody seems to take any notice.
I suggest that if a rising tide of Christian conservatism was really burgeoning politically one might see that translating into consistent electoral successes for minor Christian parties. The results of federal elections in recent years has never produced an electoral success in the Senate for Fred Nile’s Christian Democrat Party, and even in NSW where Nile’s party has two members in the upper house (hence their greatest “strength”) their NSW vote has never translated into the NSW Senate ticket. Nile’s group has not wooed major support from the clergy of the Sydney Anglican diocese where evangelicalism is strong.
The DLP largely faded from view in Gough Whitlam’s day, though there appears to be a small DLP presence lingering Victorian state politics. The presence of Christians in Hanson’s One Nation Party in Qld likewise did not translate into any massive result for that party federally. The League of Rights remains as ever a fringe group that occasionally annoys the National party. The creation of Family First is likewise intriguing and has led to a split in voting support from those inclined to support Fred Nile or similar sorts of political groups. If anything the presence of many small single-interest lobby groups among Christians suggests that they are not so astute in organising themselves into one massive political force and are actually quite divided over views and strategies. If one did the number crunching on evangelicals there are more of them in NSW and Qld than in Victoria — so why did Family First succeed in Victoria and not in NSW or Qld? It remains to be seen if Family First can produce further electoral victories in this year’s election. If they do then further ruminations and reflections will be warranted.
It should be kept in mind too that regular (i.e. weekly) church attendance rates nationally just make it to 9% of the population. The big figures touted for Hillsong involve special pleading. There are not 20,000 people at Castle Hill — it is a combined figure for two separate congregations (Waterloo and Castle Hill), and there is a revolving door of attendance rates. As fast as newcomers walk in the front door just as many are exiting out the back door. There are not even 9,000 people living in Castle Hill who attend Hillsong — they draw folks across the eight compass points of the metropolitan area. The annual “Hillsong Conference” does draw in over 20,000 participants but they are from overseas as much as from around the country. The video footage of a large mosh pit of youth hopping up and down to 1980s style pop music at the conference (which is not held at Castle Hill) may give an impression of growth for Hillsong itself which is often in contrast to some of the telecasts of Sunday services led by Brian Houston (where there is an empty mezzanine level with the lights switched off).
As an “insider” of the theological community (not of Hillsong!) I find the mainstream media discourses quite pathetic on the topic of religion generally, and they tend to suffer from a lack of familiarity or any depth awareness of a diversity of views in Australian Christianity and this leads to the construction of simplistic and monolithic portraits.
If one was to ask regular church-goers in Australia how they vote and why, it is unlikely to be the case that most (perhaps just a few) make their decisions based on doctrine and theology. The attitudes of the preacher in the pulpit are not always decisive in the lives of parishioners and very few congregations hold to a political “group-think”. Neither do the academic theologians necessarily influence the course of Christian voting habits in this country. Theological education comprises the single largest form of private tertiary education in Australia (so many colleges dot the landscape) with strong enrolments in a handful of institutions. Very few students plan to join the clergy but pursue a range of interests after graduation with many simply being in the mainstream workforce. The theological colleges are likewise hardly monolithic in their power, influence or even the political ideas espoused among students and faculty alike. Are there Christians who hold to conservative politics – “yes”. Are there Christians holding to discriminatory attitudes – “yes”. But do all Christians in Australia fit that obnoxious profile – “no”.
Thanks for the comment, PJ.
That’s Simons’ conclusion too, based on the data available.
“j_p_z, that’s a big stretch frankly. If you can specify any useful way in which one’s interpretation of Derrida affects housing affordability, I’d be interested.”
No, Mark, I think you’ve misunderstood me, at least in part. I was actually crossing off the intellectual arcana like Derrida from what effectively ‘matters,’ in a material sense, in these so-called ‘culture wars’; the strictly academic stuff, while a sort of canary in a coal mine, was not what I had in mind. I was thinking more about the adoption of certain novel ideas which created new patterns of behavior, which, when adopted en masse, lead to material consequences.
For instance, changing attitudes in the mores of marriage, family, child-bearing, feminism, sexual behavior and so forth have altered family formation patterns and living patterns in fairly identifiable ways, and the change creates new patterns (and, inevitably as well, new patterns of stressors) in things like job and housing markets. I don’t think that’s exactly rocket science. Of course it’s not Derrida’s fault, naturally, but all the same it’s not an insane stretch to suggest that there is a constellation of ideas and behaviors that are, let us say, post-1968 in a recognizable way, which have made certain social impacts, and which bear certain kinds of fruit rather than other kinds.
To give a very simple example: if you take a lax attitude towards chain migration where family re-unification is given top priority over skill sets, then you really shouldn’t act surprised if, in the very next breath, there is a shortage of low-income housing in the crappier parts of large cities. You also shouldn’t act surprised if the chain-migrants respond by packing six and eight families into housing that was zoned for one or two families, in clear violation of the codes, which results in an overall degradation in the quality of the housing stock at the same time that the price goes up.
Derrida’s got nothing to do with it, strictly speaking; but the specific cultural matrix in which a joker like Derrida, or in generosity let’s just say his lesser acolytes, can be taken seriously instead of being laughed out of town, will eventually have most of its sillier ideas called to material account.
But the whole “post-1968″ thing is a retrospective and inaccurate label, j_p_z. Most of the social change we’re talking about was well underway earlier, and in fact there was much greater variety in family formation, sexual mores and other such formations prior to the 20th century than during the hegemony of the “nuclear family” during the 50s. It’s a moment in time, really.
“in fact there was much greater variety in family formation, sexual mores and other such formations prior to the 20th century than during the hegemony of the “nuclear familyâ€? during the 50s. It’s a moment in time, really.”
Perhaps, but that doesn’t matter all that much if what you’re trying to do is build on the idea of human progress, or to preserve something that you find worthwhile in your present civilization against the incursion of models you find less worthwhile. For instance: for most of the total sum of human history, say 250,000 years or more, human beings were not agricultural or urban; civilization as we know it is but a “moment in time, really”; yet we no longer consider that primitive part of our history when we talk about how to build super-highways to transport wheat into our great metropolitan regions, do we?
You shouldn’t confuse the intellectual discipline of compiling and analyzing the history of ideas and trends (a noble and useful pursuit in its own right), with the discipline of implementing them and assessing their material implications as we live from one actual generation to another “in real time”.
No, that’s invalid, j_p_z. Were people in the metropoles of the nineteenth century not “civilised”? You could make a good argument that on many such measures they were more so than us. The Romans and the Greeks are often seen as the “fount” of “our” civilisation, yet their sexual and social mores are almost unrecognisable to us. You’re conflating technological progress with some sort of whig narrative of moral progress.
Mark, I don’t understand your comment of 11:00 am, or, insofar as I do understand it, I think it’s either off the point or else beginning to change the subject in some subtle way. (Perhaps the problem was caused by a too-casual definition of terms on my part.) Still, the Romans and Greeks, and anyone else for that matter, had identifiable sets of mores and cultural assumptions, and these bore material consequences for the development of their lives, with which they had to deal. (The steam engine was invented in ancient Greece as a kind of curious toy, but the inventor then threw it away because his cultural assumptions frowned on being practical about stuff like labor.) It’s the same with us today. I wasn’t under the illusion that my initial point had any sort of originality; to me it’s a more or less common-sense proposition that you reap what you sow, writ large. Not necessarily in a judgmental way, simply an observational one.
I’d pretty much agree with that, until US-style methods of mobilising congregations of lite-brite-n-trite churches came to be adopted here. This is still a small phenomenon, but there is nothing stopping it having the longterm, small but decisive role that the Greens almost have.
It’s amazing that funding of “culture” has been low and stayed low in the midst of wars fought in its name. Cultural responses to Hanson and SIEV-X have been
Let’s say there are ten HoR electorates, four or so senate seats, that could go one way or the other over such matters and through this kind of mobilisation. These numbers are indeed irrelevant in the face of the kind of poll numbers we’re talking now, but these could be decisive under a slightly different political configuration.
Indeed they do, but they just won’t vote on these views. A political party that proposed legislating against those 58 (?) pieces of legislation affecting homosexual couples would not be proposing anything offensive to what Liberals call the mainstream – just irrelevant. I’d point you to the debates over gay relationships in NSW over 1994-95: to borrow from Yeats, when it comes to the politics of advancingsecular liberal agenda The best lack all convictions, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.
What was interesting about Pearson’s recent efforts is that people who didn’t give a monkey’s about Aborigines, and were unremittingly hostile to the tiniest expenditure (eg a swimming pool for a small remote township) suddenly became passionate, don’t-care-how-much-it-costs-just-fix-it proponents of change. Once the government changes and a few of these measures are wound back, the apathy will descend again: “our best hopes foundered in 2007″, they’ll cry, and sneer at any/every effort to bring about change. Cinders and embers indeed.
They will, with a patched-together coalition of liberal support that will be filtered out of press-gallery groupthink and will hit with the same force as Hanson in 1996.
Yep, the moment you try to take Derrida seriously he, and the constructs necessary to pretend he has anything worth taking seriously, disappears. Thanks for nothing.
Cultural responses to Hanson and SIEV-X have been non-existant or appallingly ineffectual, I meant to say.
Simons makes the point, Andrew, that even Family First is riven by internal dissension and has difficulty defining a coherent position. Similarly, there is too much plurality in voting patterns and disinterest in politics among congregations for effective mobilisation a la the US, and she doesn’t think most of the evangelical pastors she studied have much if any interest in doing so.
We’re just not America.
“Thanks for nothing.”
Eh, de rien, mon frere. Any time.
Said Ray Williams, isn’t it strange
That in history’s vast social change
We define “culture” fighting,
On one side, inviting
The conflict that culture contains?
…
[I'm sorry. Did I mention the Crusades?]
IMHO one key difference will emerge as a test when we finally get a new PM, whether it is Costello or Rudd, and that is the issue of the heroin trial. It was recommended – after an incredibly detailed amount of research and preparation – unanimously by the Minsterial Council on Drug Strategies, which was made up of all the State and Federal Health and Police Ministers. It was the next logical step after the etstablishment of the “safe injecting facility” in Sydney. Despite the recommendation – that came from both sides of politics and was based on the very best science available at the time – Howard, as everyone knows, prompted by shock jocks and newspaper columnists (some with intersting histories of personal drug use), stepped in and unilaterally cancelled it. Despite the ideological aspects of the “war on drugs”, a renewed push to implement the heroin trial will quickly smoke any new leader out as to how socially progressive they really are. That’s my two cents worth, anyway.
Cheers…
No, we’re not Mark. The phenomenon is much more widespread in the US. Here in Australia it is much smaller, but in a tight contest (not apparent on the political landscape today, but you’d be a fool to bet against it changing) potentially quite decisive.
FF is not the vanguard of this movement and I think Fielding is desperately out of his depth. People like Joe de Bruyn and the Liberals in the Federal seat of Greenway have forgotten more than FF have ever learned. A collapse in the Coalition vote over the next decade or so will see rural independents emerge who will at least include fundamentalist religion in their support base.
A small political movement can wield great power if positioned between major blocs in a tight contest. Only the Democrats have ever succeeded at being in the right place, right time – the Greens are nearest at the moment but they can’t get it together, and while I’m not saying FF will do the job (in fact, I’d bet against it) there is a coalition of forces that could position anti-secularist canddates into a very sweet spot policy-wise.
Perhaps, Andrew, but then the chances of their retaining cohesion are also low. And you have to distinguish between socially conservative voters and the very small number whose vote is actually switchable on such issues. Many who’d vote on the basis of say, abortion (and that’s a tiny number) ain’t never gonna vote Labor or Green.
The RU486 debate should have burst the bubble of the “values” mantra for the pollies and given them some backbone.
Of course, as you say, it’s somewhat of a worry in Labor as well that there’s little genuine commitment to social liberalism among some groups and the De Bruyn-ites’ influence as well is problematic.
I do tend to agree with Rundle that the Hanson movement was the last gasp for some of these demographics. That’s not to say we won’t see rural populism again. I just think we’ll see it organise itself around different issues and affects.
Mark, the fact that the lesbian court case is all over the media is evidence that public interest is all just a media beat up? And you think the overwhelming criticism of (I am guessing) 95% of the comments is all coming from fuddy duddy liberal voting types? I suppose you had better run an LP thread soon on this to even up the reaction. I have no doubt you know few people who would want to deny lesbians who want to have babies however they like, but somehow I doubt your circles include anyone who would label themselves even a moderate social conservative.
I could be wrong in my guess that the case will influence other gay issues under consideration, but it seems to me that it is undeniably a culture war issue of some significance at least in the short term.
Steve why do you call it a ‘lesbian court case’? It’s an IVF issue.
Gay parenting is one of the few areas where I think the social conservatives are still in the majority, though that will moderate in a decade or so. Gay marriage would not really cause much of a splash. even most religious people would not really care on that issue.
Would pro-gay marriage amendments to the marriage act pass a consciene vote post-election in the event of a Labour victory?
steve, the people who comment on mainstream news sites are as self-selected and unrepresentative as talkback callers, and there are similar processes of filtration used. Storm in a teacup, buddy.
The Packer Puppets on Ch. 9 were right into the lesbian IVF case this morning. They thought they were ‘ungrateful’
(You can always rely on that extremely inciteful political commentator Kerry Anne Konnerly (KAK) to be an absolute f**kwit.
Nominally, perhaps; in terms of cross-fertilisation, not really Mark.
One of the funniest aspects of the 2004 election campaign (you have to get your laughs where you can find them) was the fact that Fielding won his seat at the expense of labor Senator Jacinta Collins, a deBruynite. Joe deBruyn was giving backdoor support to Fielding and Kevin Andrews while at the same time remaining on the federal exec of the ALP – not terribly cohesive I grant you, and hard to explain to a first-year Politics student, but no less real and ready to stand together on ru486 or whatever form the next round in the abortion/ stemcell/ euthanasia debate takes.
Who needs cohesion when you have a network? Politics is all about networking.
Them DLP votes had to come from somewhere, and they haven’t entirely gone to the conservatives. There must be four or five ALP Senators who owe their place to deBruyn, and Jacinta Collins is at the top of the Victorian ALP ticket this time.
One of the intellectual traps that Rundle (and for that matter, John Greenfield) falls into is ye olde-timey Historical Determinism. Last gasp my arse!
The whole idea of Howard was (has been?) to determine which of those things Keating was so keen to target and/or brush aside was viable, and which was not. Hanson got a million votes less than ten years ago. It might take 30 or 50 years, but quasi-racism isn’t dead.
With Katter and Windsor, you can’t talk of rural populism in the past tense: with the weakening of the National Party, it would be crazy to do so. Hanson spoke up in favour of teaching creationism, a clear sign that Christian fundamentalists made up an important chunk of her base. Rural populism with an overtly racialist agenda is probably a dead letter today (neither Katter nor Windsor nor the rural independent MPs in the NSW Parliament dog-whistle this constituency), but I’d suggest Christian fundamentalists will take a greater role in defining it.
I’d suggest that these people – many of whom live in rural Queensland – have high hopes for Kevin Rudd and all his Bonhoeffer stuff, but despite my earlier comments about deBruynites it doesn’t go terribly deep within the (current or future) caucus. It won’t take much for the reality of a Labor government to disillusion them.
Good comments all round. One day it would be great to get some meaningful data on the respective political influence of the ‘religious left’ and the ‘religious right’. I suspect one possible reason the ‘right’ seem more powerful is that they choose a smaller number of issues to work on, so they can concentrate more on each.
Oh, and Laura at 1:09pm: the fact that people are calling it a Lesbian IVF issue, and not a medical malpractice suit, demonstrates that it’s part of the ‘culture wars’ IMHO.
Paul Burns @ 1.55
“insightful” ?
or does she also incite with her torrid, “inciteful” rhetoric?
… but let’s not let that get in the way hurling a few more insults his way.
Andrew E,
Regarding this:
“Rural populism with an overtly racialist agenda is probably a dead letter today (neither Katter nor Windsor nor the rural independent MPs in the NSW Parliament dog-whistle this constituency), but I’d suggest Christian fundamentalists will take a greater role in defining it.”
I don’t know about Katter, but Windsor is different kettle of fish – the proclaimed Christianity does help him but without much of a fundamentalist streak. I used to live in the area where he comes from and there was a big revolt against the Nationals at the time because they’d gone from representing the locals to toeing the Lib’s line. It was quite a wake-up call for the Nat’s and they never really recovered – mainly because Windsor seems to actually give a s#$t and isn’t overtly racist (getting the younger crowd onside). The local churches are a bit skeptical of “happy clappers” – what PJ said above seems (to me) to be the best summation I’ve ever heard for religiosity in rural NSW.
As for rural Qld? Three words, one name – starts with “Sir”, wife nicknamed “Flo”. On the other hand I’m bit biased about that part of the world
After moving to Sydney it seems the evangelical push is fairly aggressive in comparison – those who want to get a yearly “hit” travel there from the rural areas (like a “worshiping holiday”).
I think it’s at a turning point – either the USA movement will continue to make inroads (and yes there has been heavy “marketing” of this approach in Sydney at least), or the social issues that Aussie churches have traditionally been involved in will push that aside. I’d hope the latter – speaking as an atheist that seems much more preferable, also helped a lot of the poor in North-West NSW survive.
BTW I never “admit” to not believing in god in the “free speach” USA, it just leads to one hell of an argument – we really do not want to get that point…
Oh dear, Andrew, don’t tell me Jacinta Collins has spent the intervening term working as a shoppies official!
I’m not so sure. Yes, we shouldn’t be deterministic about demographic change leading to political change, but there’s still a huge push factor going on. I went up to Toowoomba in 2005, first visit since 95, and it’s a much changed place – getting its own suburban sprawl, far fewer moleskins and hats, more ethnically diverse, and instead of being Bible Belt city, the religious crazy on the Council lost badly in his run for Parliament as a Nat. That’s too broad brush, still, but you see where I’m going with it.
There’ve always been failing rural populist movements as well as successful ones.
Barnaby really hooked into many of the conservative Catholic movements for his election campaign – he was running full page ads about abortion – and he barely got elected. He had to make something of that in the first place because of the extreme attenuation of the rural protest vote in Qld compared to some years ago.
Mark,
Just call me “Mr Incompetent” but what kind of margin did Barnaby have? Seems to me like he’s”riding the thin-edge-of-the-wedge” (or that could be just biase speaking!).
steve, Barnaby got 6.6% of the Senate vote in 04 – less than half a quota.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2004/2004senateqld.txt
Thanks Mark – as I thought, a bit disturbing…although not as disturbing as the US system of electing prosecutors. You know it’s a worry when even the Economist is reporting it…
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9804134
Sorry – off topic but it still gives me the “heebie-jeebies”…
I do admire a lot about the USA – but at the same time it scares me a bit
I agree mostly but what does strike me is how US-style moral conservatism is a powerful ideological package on the right it seems to be able to mobilise activist support far more easily than middle of the road conservatism even if it is unpopular among the broader electorate. It is a crude but effective poltical package, among those who regard themselves as conservative it has pulling power.
Andrew E
While I proudly confess to turning Left when entering the Church of Historiography – being seated as a “friend of historical materialism” – rather than turn Right and be seated among the poststructuralists, I must admit to being offended at being forced to sit next to Mr. Rundle.
I had never heard of him before LP, but to the extent his position was expressed during his time as Producer of the worst show in Australian TV history – Vulture – I shall demand pistols at dawn unless you take it back, toot sweet.
Peter McGauran does much the same thing in Victoria, the Nationals have basically become the DLP as far as I can tell. Barnaby has shown his true colours now and would romp it in even if he ran as an independent. Look at the issues he crosses the floor on – Santamaria would be proud of him.
I didn’t say that a successful candidate had to be fundamentalist, or even appear so – just to do whatever juju is necessary to get their votes.
Wear it, dude. Part of the problem with conservative intellectuals in this country is the extraordinary prevalence in their ranks of ex-Marxists like McGuinness or Saluszinsky. The right welcome them as little lost lambs but they bring their wolfish Trotskyite assumptions with them. That church that you go to, however broad, is just another institution through which the long march is passing.
Andrew E
Let me see if I’ve got this right. One one side you’ve got me, Rundle, “The Right,” “conservative intellectuals,” Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwen, Paddie McGuinness, Imre Saluszinsky, Martin Amis, etc. etc. Dude, who is on YOUR side of the Church!!??
My attitude is that you are better able to witness all the bounty of the Lord’s creation from outside the church rather than inside. Much less cant and hypocrisy, too.
You forgot Peter Phelps.
Mark writes:
“Just how seriously we should take Rudd’s claims to be a conservative is far from clear. Unlike Costello, he describes himself as “a non-denominational Christianâ€? for whom sexual ethics are pretty much negotiable: by no stretch of the imagination a religious conservative.”
Very interesting comment Mark, but who says self-branded “conservatives” have exclusive entitlement to that very term?
We’ve learnt from the WorkChoices experience just “how radical” the so-called Conservatives can be. When “what” you call somebody isn’t matched by “how” they run their program.
Furthermore, we also know from Kim Beazley’s struggle to hold the opposition leadership in 2006 that a politician can get caught in between “different interpretations of Conservative” – for example, The Left found Mr. Beazley “too conservative” and, as Imre Salusinszky reiterates in The Australian today, The Right found Mr. Beazley to be “too soft”.
Subsequently, Mr. Salusinszky goes on to say “in Rudd they (the voters) are prepared to embrace a leader every bit as conservative, temperamentally cautious and safe-handed as Howard.” (Tim Blair style subtext: a win for Labor is not necessarily a win for the Howard Hating, latte sipping Left. It may even be a win for the folks at The Australian newspaper
)
I don’t believe you can “extract all the meaning” of what it means to be “conservative” by thinking in a linear left-right way. In Marketing, one thinks of Conservatives on a bell curve rather than on a linear spectrum. Conservatives on a marketing bell curve sit in between Early Adopters and Pragmatists to the Left of Conservatives and Laggards who sit to the Right of Conservatives.
One could argue that the Liberal Party are struggling because they appeal only to Laggards on issues such as Iraq troop engagement and the Environment, while at the same time being caught appealing
only to Early Adopters of their WorkChoices policy, a policy that has failed to appeal to the majority, whether they be the next adopters (the Pragmatists) or the next adopters after that (the Conservatives).
On the same day Kim Beazley has made his final speech in the House of Reps, it might be time to reflect back on Mr. Beazley’s interview with ABC Radio National in February, a podcast I listened back to on my way home to Australia from Los Angeles earlier this week. In the interview, Mr. Beazley challenges Mr. Howard’s seemingly endless capability of shifting the public conversation precisely because of a combination of “Hot Button Issues” and “Changing Community Attitudes” that simply don’t fit the linear battle between Left and Right elites.
…From Justin
Published by Mark on 19 September 2007 at 12:00 am
Left-liberals like Mark seem to be continually returning to the theme of the waning of the culture war. They desperately want to lay the ghost of cultural conservatism but, like Banquos, it continues to haunt them.
Mark is indulging in some wishful thinking if he thinks “cultural conservatismâ€? is just a “dead handâ€?. The fortunes of traditional communal institutions – evidenced by falling divorce rates, rising birth rates, rising private school attendances and revivals in nationalistic rituals (eg ANZAC day) – indicates that cultural conservatism still has a bit of life left in it.
Left-liberal minor parties, such as the DEMs and GREENs, seem to be dead in the water, if not actually sinking. I would like to bet Mark that their combined 2007 vote will be less than their combined 2004 vote. Do you feel lucky, punk?
Costello, who recently suggested that ethnic diversifiers push off, has hardly bothered to “differentiate� his pseudo-liberal “product� much from conservative Howard these days. That is because he knows what sells in the electorate. Ditto Rudd. Ditto Howard, although he needs no electoral incentive to do what comes naturally.
I doubt whether Mark really meant to write “Jeff Kennett as a modern liberal who saw a libertarian future�. This statement seems to have been dropped in as a practical joke by an editor moonlighting from a parallel universe. Bracks and Bailleu are not troglodytes but I doubt whether they would set many libertarian pulses racing.
Mark’s fairy tales from a liberal planet remind me of Peter Cook’s description of the Establishment Club, which he said was “modelled on those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.�
Mark says:
Rudd “stands� shoulder-to-shoulder with Howard on at least one “burning cultural questions of the times�: the emergency rescue mission to remote Aboriginal communities. Rudd supported Howard’s conservative authoritarian cultural policy to re-normalise these ravaged places. This has effectively ditched the failed Left-liberalism that has wrecked and ruined so many young lives amongst the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
Mark, amongst many others, have been wailing and gnashing their teeth about this. For all the wrong reasons.
Mark says:
Progressive egalitarianism and conservative communitarianism are a good fit, summed up by the phrase “working familiesâ€?. Mark’s brand of differentiating libertarianism has been done to death over the past generation and is definitely past its used-by date. These born-again luvvies are just trying flog off a discontined line. As Dame Edna says, “isnt it embarassing at his age”.
Mark says:
This is not exactly an apples to apples comparison. Saying that AUS is more liberal and secular than America is stating the obvious. A thing that Mark is getting better at now that he has given up on prediction as “too hard�.
The more relevant question is: is AUS more or less liberal now than it was a decade ago. My answer: it is obviously less liberal.
And a good thing to. Liberalism tends to eat itself if taken to extremes. This has been recognized by most liberal thinkers, such as Mill, Hayek and Popper. Only modern libertarians, who all appear to have come down in the last rain shower, seem to have forgotten the importance of the conservative cultural foundations of a free society.
Mark says:
There is legitimate scope for debate about the meaning and scope of the conservative (authoritative communitarian) revival in familial, parochial and national institutions. There may be a bit more aspiration, rather than actualization, in the conservative tendencies abroad.
A lot of people feel a little bit guilty about missing Mass, not visiting their parents, misspending their youth, indulging in petty vice and so on. So they tend to thump the tub a bit when they hear a Right wing politician giving vent to spleen.
My “Decline of the Wets� thesis is mainly about the loss of political momentum amongst libertarian polities (parties, politicians and policies). I have never maintained that the Col Blimps or Bible Bashers have got the whip hand. All though we could all do with a stern lecture now and again.
These “contentions� about the �retraditionalisation of social norms� cant be all that “crazed� if someone like Pauline Hanson can get 25% of the vote in a state election not so long ago. Obviously some of the punters took note then, and in 1996 and again in 2001.
“Border Protection� is Australia’s most popular television show. No doubt its “crazed� sponsors are laughing all the way to the bank, celebrating the xenophobes who lap this stuff up week by week.
Those “crazed contenders� who have lampooned trendy fantasies about multiculturalism, the republic and reconciliation can also be forgiven for having a quiet chuckle under their breath. That glad morning is never going to dawn again, given the dissaray and disgrace of these movements.
Mark says:
She has learned from the experience and moved on. This is something that all somewhat re-constructed post-seventies Lefties should do, as part of their “personal growth� process. Rather than playing the Net-rooter confecting outrage against a moderate Centre-Right government that has done not much more than administer a long-overdue hiding to an ideologically bankrupt movement. Not mentioning any names or pack drill.
Mark says:
This generation may or not vote more for the ALP than past generations. I don’t know and don’t care all that much since both major parties are pretty much the same. What is undeniable is that this generation of young people is much more socially conservative than the last one. Much less likely to experiment with drugs, protest movements or alternative lifestyles. It is hnot “conservative guff” to note that today’s streets are hardly thronged with rabble-roused youth.
Mark says:
Mark, like most Left-liberal sociologists, is out of touch with grass roots community sentiment. There are signs that the fundamental building blocks of social capital are re-forming after the damage inflicted on it by the insanity and iniquity of a generation of Wets. Divorce rates are down, marriage rates are up and babies are booming. All this means is that traditional families are now valued somewhat more than they used to be a decade or so ago. It is an indictment of liberal-Leftism that this good news is received with truculent bad grace.
Mark says:
This is rather like counting your chickens before they are conceived, never mind hatched. The ‘“trad values� stuff�’ is one of the few things the LN/P has going for itself. Aging demographics are likely to provide continual support for conservative politics. The Tories were, to a certain extent, outflanked to the Right by Blair.
Pundits, mostly those who do not have a good track record in social prediction, keep writing off John Howard. As I correctly predicted back in mid 2006
The punditocracy’s never-ending write-off of Howard reminds me of Michael Coreleone’s description of Hyman Roth’s life-threatening cardiac condition: “Hyman Roth has been dying from the same heart attack for the last twenty years.� Yet he continued to get up of his death bed to get his enemies wacked.
Mark, who is always warning us about the impossibility of social science prediction, should reign in some of his wild speculative ideological fantasies. Or at least get some predictive performance runs on the board.
Mark says:
The strongest expressions of “culture war� conservatism come up on talk-back radio, the medium of the populus. This is the last place that you will find “a discourse solely of elites�.
Mark says:
The “apirational middle� class most definitely do care about crime on the streets, ruliness amongst the minorities, security of borders. The prospects of the communal-Right out there in the mortgage belt will look good for so long as the liberal-Left refuses to learn the lessons of the past decade.
You should get a blog, Jack. That’s a very long comment.
I think I’ve managed to fix all the broken html that stuffed up the formatting.
Now to address some of the points. Generally, the modus operandi in the Strocchiverse is to completely ignore previous refutations and repeat the same stuff over and over, usually talking points taken from Paul Sheehan or someone. For instance:
All this was refuted in great detail on the previous thread about religion. The “baby boom” is statistically insignificant, as any number of statisticians and demographers pointed out when the census data was misinterpreted by pollies and Jack style pundits.
Similarly if you just take “no religion” as a proxy for secular values, then you can if fact see in the tables that were posted of the comparative census data over a decade that aging doesn’t imply any great flight from secularism or flight toward religion, and that “no religion” is stronger in every age group the younger it is.
As to the stuff about teh yoof, I think Mark offered to buy Jack a copy of the book containing the ASSA research. His response was to say it was authored by luvvies or something. Well, ignore the commentary and just look at the survey results from the largest survey of social attitudes and values conducted in Australia and all this bullshit is refuted as well.
I thought your “testable prediction” was that Howard was going to lose this election 53-47.
The significant thing is that she hasn’t disavowed her past activism and is happy to accept and wear the feminist label in a state some claim is the most “socially conservative”.
And the opposition can’t lay a glove on her.
Yawn…. the Culture War RSL feigns ongoing relevance. Its all soooo ‘96, dudes.
Give em one day of the year, get it all over and done with by April.
Andrew E
So you’re less an historical materialism kind of a guy than an “historical rugged individualism” kind of guy, eh? Less EP Thompson than FJ Turner? Less latte and chardonnay than esspresso and Malboro?
Kim on 20 September 2007 at 11:33 pm
The suspicion lurks that Mark’s comment was adressed to someone who fits my ideological description. Possibly a case of misshapen identity.
Thanks for the re-formatting, Webdominatrix.