Laboring the point? … or liberal socialism and/or social liberalism

I was intrigued yesterday to see Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen writing one of the more substantive pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald’s regular feast of op/eds written by pollies. Bowen argues that social liberals within the Liberal Party are as marginalised now as they were under John Howard, and concludes:

But the move to the right by the Liberal Party means that traditional small l liberals are looking for a home. As a social liberal in the Labor Party, I can tell you that it is a very welcoming home.

I’m not so sure that’s absolutely accurate, but more of that later. First, I wanted to explore why Bowen thought this was an apposite point to make at this time. He refers to the amalgamation talk with the Nationals, and certainly Barnaby Joyce’s recent musings might give some small l liberals something to ponder. But I suspect what’s prompted Bowen’s article is actually some shenanigans going on in the Senate, which aren’t unrelated to the Liberal leadership.

Brendan Nelson has been attempting to straddle the divide between the Liberal moderates and the right ever since his election – and the latest shameful so-called compromise is the referral of legislation removing discrimination against same sex couples to a Senate committee – an issue which is far more important than anything Belinda Neal might have said to Sophie Mirabella or when in her cups on the Central Coast. The Liberal position almost collapsed yesterday when Queensland Senator Sue Boyce threatened to cross the floor to support a Democrat motion to give the committee a deadline of 30 June, enabling the bills to be passed by the new financial year. At the same time, Tasmanian Senator Guy Barnett has moved a motion disallowing Medicare rebates for abortions performed after 14 weeks, against Nelson’s wishes.

Lurking in the background is Tony Abbott, who made some pointed remarks about Nelson’s poll numbers on Tuesday. The Courier-Mail makes the connection:

Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott, who has started campaigning against Dr Nelson’s leadership, strongly backed Senator Barnett’s motion.

It would hardly be surprising to see Abbott playing the anti-choice card as a maneouvre designed to destabilise Nelson.

But is Bowen right that all is rosy for social liberals on the Labor side of the aisle? Hardly. Retiring Senator George Campbell has taken the opportunity of his valedictory speech to decry South Australian Senator Linda Kirk’s loss of preselection. Kirk was dumped from the Labor ticket because she defied the SDA on the RU486 vote, and her place in the Senate is being taken by the state secretary of the socially conservative and Catholic-aligned union, Don Farrell.

That’s just one example showing that things are hardly as clear cut as Bowen makes out.

In truth, the Labor Party, with some honourable exceptions, has never really embraced social liberalism as core to its beliefs – and nor was liberalism anywhere near as powerful a political tradition in Australia as in the United Kingdom. It’s instructive to contrast the move by many in the left wing of the British Liberals to Labour in the 1920s and the “fusion” between conservatives and liberals in Australia in the 1910s.

Bowen is right to characterise his own preferred position this way:

Social liberals recognise individuals can only flourish in a society that has economic opportunity and social justice.

It’s intriguing to compare that formulation with a debate going on in the ranks of British Labour between Blairite neo-liberals and what Neal Lawson, writing in the New Statesman, terms “social liberalism” or “liberal socialism”:

There is another way. Liberalism starts with the individual, but true autonomy and freedom comes only from collective action. This is social liberalism, or if you like liberal socialism. It is a creed temporarily crushed by Fordism and the mass production and mass politics of the 20th century. Now all that is unravelling, there is an opportunity for it to reassert itself.

Social liberals recognise the complexity of modern life. They want diversity, experimentation and localism so that people are more engaged in key decisions. But they want fairness, and as much equality and universalism as possible, which can only come from a strong centre. This creates the central paradox of modern politics, as diversity and equality conflict.

A paradox can’t be solved, only managed – and the tool to manage it is democracy. Instead of the bureaucratic or market state, social liberals want a democratic state, so that at every level, people are given not just more individual control to pick and choose providers but a collective say in the big decisions and institutions that currently dominate their lives.

In the Australian context, Liberal liberals are hardly likely to go along with the collectivist elements of Labourism – right from the start the liberal strand, such as it is in this country, had a social basis in the professions and among small employers and the self-employed bourgeoisie. There’s nothing in our political tradition all that comparable with the strong links forged between the Liberal Party, Christian socialism and the labour movement which made social liberalism a living part of British Labour political culture from the late nineteenth century onwards. Unions like the SDA – combining classic labourist collectivism with social conservatism and a disdain for individual rights conceived in a post-materialist sense – are much closer to the heart of the Australian Labor tradition than the infusion of liberal sentiment that came with the party’s middle-classing in Victoria, a wave Gough Whitlam rode, but which has since arguably receded.

Particularly with the demise of the Democrats, Liberal social liberals are far more likely to have to sort out where they stand in their own party, rather than entering the Labor fold, at least in the immediate future.

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30 Responses to “Laboring the point? … or liberal socialism and/or social liberalism”


  1. 1 BenjiNo Gravatar

    “Liberal social liberals are far more likely to have to sort out where they stand in their own party, rather than entering the Labor fold”

    I know this is going to bring about arguments of voids and vacuums but..why wouldn’t there be a new entity?

  2. 2 KatzNo Gravatar

    Many more people agreed with the late Australian Democrats than ever voted for them.

    There are at least two interlocking reasons for this apparent anomoly.

    1. The ADs never marketed themselves sufficiently, demonstrating that they were capable of administering, not merely representing.

    2. The tough-minded social-liberal political talent remained welded to the left of the Liberal Party or to the Labor Party. This political talent did this for a very good reason: the two major parties provided a career path for talent that the ADs could never hope to emulate.

    These two features of the ADs are related to each other and are mutually reinforcing. The only hope for a replacement AD-style social-liberal party is for a fusion of credible leaders from existing parties to form a new entity. Why would a career pollie chuck away her career in pursuit of the unlikely creation of a viable social-liberal political party?

  3. 3 SpirosNo Gravatar

    “Why would a career pollie chuck away her career in pursuit of the unlikely creation of a viable social-liberal political party?”

    They would not. Of course if ever we get the House of Reps elected by proportional representation, all bets are off.

  4. 4 Paul BurnsNo Gravatar

    Since the Rudd government is slightly to the right of Menzies I guess some small l liberals might find a home there – compare Menzies’ education, health and welfare policies for a start.Or the way Fraser looks left-wing.
    As for the Libs, they’re to the far right of Genghis Khan nowadays.

  5. 5 Paul BurnsNo Gravatar

    Actually, if you’re looking for a true liberal, as opposed to a Liberal in the ALP tradition, the former NSW Premier, Jack Lang, with his ideas on welfare for widows, child support, in the days before the Commonwealth had responsibility for social security,is probably a good fit. In fact, he defined himself as a liberal.
    As to small l libs from the Libs moving to the ALP, doubt its success. There’s that tribal animosity between both parties, and those of us already suspicious the ALP is a sell-out from Hayden onwards would only have our susapicions confirmed .

  6. 6 SpirosNo Gravatar

    “Since the Rudd government is slightly to the right of Menzies”

    Paul, with all due respect, this is crap. Menzies tried to ban the Communist Party, censored everything in sight and took us into Vietnam. When Menzies was PM, female public servants had to quit their jobs when they got married and abortions were strictly of the backyard variety, with a coathanger twist.

    Et cetera.

  7. 7 dannyNo Gravatar

    Taking Bowen’s razor on board : “Conservatives believe in … onerous restrictions on the individual in social matters.” ….

    … what does that make the quincey ALP, considering Welford’s ( and presumably he’s just mouthing for the conveniently absent Madam Bligh, on whose watch as Education Minister the whole rancid Oneschool wannabe-corporatist thing was conceived, and tendered, to a Malcolm Turnbull company) non-negotiable edict that:

    “A PHOTO of EVERY state school student will be posted online by the Government, … parents could be denied access to public education if they refused to consent to their child being profiled on the system…He dismissed concerns from parents about pedophiles hacking into the database.”

    Onerously restrictive on individual’s rights enough to get a big C conservative rating you think Mark? Such a proposal by the US Dept.of Ed. was slapped down by congress in 2005. We might have a new taxon: anti-social conservatism, labor to the right of the nationals.

    And BTW, there’s plenty of info about parents captured on these records, like occupation, current place of work, and work phone number.

    This is despite just about everyone outside Mary Street declaring it to be a global hacker/pedarist dream scenario/ parent nightmare. And the propellor head techoid blogs and forums are certainly picking up on the story for disseminataion: “Government declares student detail database unhackable”, talk about red ragging.
    One local MSM blog comment was from a parent saying their teeneager hacked it in 15 mins and I believe it.

    Kev hasn’t been as quick off the mark to say anything about this as he was about henson’s snaps .

    And neither have the usual LP topic seeders. Why is that?

  8. 8 paul walterNo Gravatar

    Katz’ comment had me thinking of the TV senate this arvo. Nettle, Dems, Linda Kirk. Useful younger people drummed out for being functional human beings. And as Bowen and others point out, the libs have eating their socialib young for years.
    I just struck me as indescribably sad, with Nettle and Kirk asking relevant questions for perhaps the last time while a pack of moribund old factional hacks on both sides grunted and burped on.

  9. 9 AdrienNo Gravatar

    Whatever the conscious, private position of various people in various parties is I don’t think either of the major parties qualifies as ‘liberal’ in the sense that I understand it anyway. Both parties are dominated by persons that view the job of government as the architect of peoples’ lives. And the sad fact is that Australian culture supports that. Everytime someone does something stupid we have to have a law to prevent it happenening again. Everytime there’s a problem the government has to fix even if they can’t. All sorts of problems that should be solved in the realm of ethics (ie people privately getting their own shit together) are left to the government to fix whether or no they actually can.
    .
    This has been brought into high relief by the attitude of the Rudd government. They’re just as socially draconian as the Howard government.

  10. 10 professor ratNo Gravatar

    There is already a strong anti-state movement that is already effective and consists of a loosely networked alliance ( united front?) made up of both left and right elements. I don’t think they see the need to formalize the relationship yet as it seems to work well enough to stymie the worst the dreadful centrists can do.

    Case in point – the EU referendums

    This ‘Impi’ strategy spells doom for all major league left and right statists. ie Chinese Communists and US Nazi’s. I mean you fuck with the bull – you get the horn.

  11. 11 Andrew BartlettNo Gravatar

    I know this is going to bring about arguments of voids and vacuums but..why wouldn’t there be a new entity?

    As others said in different ways, it’s because we have a two party system, and we already have two parties. Unless the Liberals disintegrate (slightly possible, but still pretty unlikely), the current arrangement isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

    There’s strands and occasional outbursts of liberalism in the ALP I guess, but they seem to have a much stronger liking for authoritarian – esp if you look at many of their state governments.

    In any case, while is there is some case to be made for Labor liberal tendencies, they can never really credibly lay claim to such a label whilst they maintain such a completely rigid demand of 100% caucus solidarity, forcing people to vote in favour of things they are completely opposed to, regardless of the nature of their concerns. (they even disendorsed a Senator over their stance on a conscience vote FFS!!)

    The Liberals are not overly better on enforcing ‘party discipline’ these days, but as the example in this post of Sue Boyce shows, even the potential of being able to cross the floor gives you greater bargaining power. (and lets not forget who pushed the amendment which opened up the possibility for this partial overturning of bigoted bastadry on the same-sex Bill to occur)

  12. 12 joe2No Gravatar

    Wouldn’t the perpetual ’secret ballot’ in both houses of parliament, administered by the AEC, be the easiest way of breaking up the two party stranglehold?

  13. 13 AdrienNo Gravatar

    Yes the ALP’s culture is, um, well Stalinist. Sorry but it is.

  14. 14 KatzNo Gravatar

    Wouldn’t the perpetual ’secret ballot’ in both houses of parliament, administered by the AEC, be the easiest way of breaking up the two party stranglehold?

    The problem is that we voters tolerate parties that turn elected representatives of the people into rats in a maze.

    The major parties have their duopoly because voters like what this duopoly produces — stable politics run by political machines rather than unpredicatble politics driven at the margins by the conscience of a few individuals.

    Secret ballots of politicians for parliamentary votes is an appalling idea.

    I want to know exactly who is voting for and against certain measures. I want to be able to vote them out next time if I don’t like the way they vote.

    The institution of secret ballots would probably have the opposite to the desired effect. It is likely to increase the power of political machines. Apparatchiks would redouble their efforts to ensure that elected representatives were simply ciphers. Except in the case of saecret ballots voters wouldn’t know which cipher voted which way.

    The only solution in a democracy is for voters to decide whether or not the individual consciences of a small number of elected representatives produces better outcomes than puppets whipped into accepting iron party discipline.

    The answer to that question isn’t as clear-cut as it might initially appear.

  15. 15 DarinNo Gravatar

    If they took a secret ballot I wouldn’t be able to send emails to my local member after each session decrying his voting record.

    I like the idea of splitting the two party system as much as the next person, but it shouldn’t happen at the expense of my fun.

  16. 16 joe2No Gravatar

    “Secret ballots of politicians for parliamentary votes is an appalling idea.”

    Jes’ glad it wasn’t me that asked.
    Oh, it was me.

  17. 17 Stephen LloydNo Gravatar

    I think Mr. Bowen is confusing social liberal with classical liberal. There’s not too many social liberals in the Liberal party. They abhor collective action, and do not accept it is necessary at all, even the small-l’s. They are closer to being classical liberals, not social liberals. Just because you are against discrimination doesn’t make you a socialist.

  18. 18 jack strocchiNo Gravatar

    mark says:

    Bowen argues that social liberals within the Liberal Party are as marginalised now as they were under John Howard,

    Particularly with the demise of the Democrats, social liberals are far more likely to have to sort out where they stand in their own party, rather than entering the Labor fold, at least in the immediate future.

    Good to see Bowen, mark et al finally hearing the penny drop on the Decline of the Wets. For the better part of the decade denizens of the “strocchi-verse” have know that “social liberals”, “luvvies”, small “l” liberals, “wets” call them what you will, are in decline.

    Liberalism has had its day but ran out of steam some time in the early eighties. Since then it has been pretty much all down hill.

    Twas not ever thus. Classical liberalism was once a civilising influence on the body politic, encouraging the growth of an educated middle class. But the middle class is now interested in conserving its gains, not “pushing the envelope”. And normal people are sick of hearing civil rights violins played everytine someone rolls out freedom as an excuse for misbeaviour.

    And there is nowhere for liberals to go but down. There is little hope for fashionable liberalism in either party. Both parties respond to populist pressure and the majority do not like the way certain economic and ethnic minorities abuse freedom.

    Keatings social agenda has failed. The indigenous intervention, the most flagrant bit of authoritarian paternalism in recent history, is very popular and has bi-partisan support. Republic is stale and multiculturalism is being quietly shelved. You only have to look at Rudd’s reaction to the Henson exhibition to see that there is no room at the Labor in for “social liberals”.

    The major problems confronting society now come from individuals taking liberties in one way or another. Neo-liberalism has degenerated into the ideology of pre-modern diversity and post-modern perversity, for problem people at either end of the Bell Curve. Uber-class individuals engaging in white collar crime, off-shore tax havens, hedge funds, art salons. Or unter-class individuals going right off the rails in ethnic ghettos, remote communities and booze-binge bars.

    And dont get me started on the need for authoritative action by institutional authority to mitigate ecological bads and promote technological goods.

  19. 19 RobertNo Gravatar

    This quote really should be read in the context of the whole post, yet the latter bit holds intrigue for other factors going down:

    In the Australian context, Liberal liberals are hardly likely to go along with the collectivist elements of Labourism – right from the start the liberal strand, such as it is in this country, had a social basis in the professions and among small employers and the self-employed bourgeoisie.

    I’m wondering if a sentiment is gathering in puntersuburb which is about calling the Liberal Party on its attitude, specifically, the born-to-rule imperative. This pulls up all manners of historical manifestation as in the ruler and servant, hiding the crucial: we are better and better at it. This is welcome by the electorate when Labor up-buggers it, but I wonder now in this world of fast and drastic global change that it still has a place.

    Could we hear the public response to this attitude as: “How can you possibly know what is better?”

    I think it’s that gap which the Liberal Party needs to fill. They can shift their policies all over the place but it mightn’t matter a toss if their attitude remains the same.

    The Libs may well have ridden through the changing age ahead on this attitude if it weren’t for Howard sucking their well dry on it. People finally saw enough clarity through the “everyman” pose to see his attitude was anything but. We know all this but bear with me a sec. Downer, Abbott, Andrews, they all came to stink of it. By constructing a pose to deny this attitude, headed up by JH, the attitude was eventually highlighted.

    They still have it! It’s going to take a heck of a shift to present as something more representative of the common folk. Facts such as ‘more people are self-employed’ today doesn’t alter the nature of the commonfolk in that they want (or want to feel) representation other than by well-sold policy. This shift is obviously difficult enough but it’s made all that more harder now because whatever it is it surely has to be real and honest.

    Placing policy as a net to cast upon a targeted people – and the angst of that – might be hiding this attitudinal problem and leave it unattended. Pundits and policy-makers and politicians and media get all caught up in that angst. It could be terribly misleading for the Libs. Punters don’t.

    Labor Party attitude has its own flaw; perhaps for another time. Something like a “we’ve broken into our grandparents’ warehouse and we can play now”, a kind of incomplete embracing of power (which I can’t put my finger on at the mo), but the flaw is there resonating with the punters just the same. For all of Rudd’s useful dissolving of the cruelty that gripped the electorate, his appearances of flippancy at times draws a direct line between this Labor flaw and the people, and is a worry.

    Grip-too-tight on the one hand, looseness on the other.

    These are living perceptions which real or not definitely affect voting while at times flying in the face of actual policy. I’d hazard that Labor has long lived publicly with its flaw, but the Libs have been spared due to the times. Not any more.

  20. 20 AlastairNo Gravatar

    “Just because you are against discrimination doesn’t make you a socialist.”

    You sound confused. Social liberal and socialist are two very different ideologies.

    I found that article a very interesting read. I agree that there are some social liberals in the Labor Party. I’m not sure if there are any social liberals in the Liberal Party. However, there are some classical liberals in the Liberal Party. Unfortunately, it seems that there are a majority of MPs and Senators in both major parties who tend to favour socially authoritarian policy more often than not.

  21. 21 LeonNo Gravatar

    Mark, I don’t think there’s much equivalence at all between “social liberalism” and “liberal socialism” — or at least, I think the majority of people who identify as social liberals would strongly distance themselves from liberal/libertarian socialism (perhaps the converse isn’t true).
    Firstly, there are the linguistic reasons: when I see an adjective + noun political allegiance, I usually assume the noun is the “as much as possible” and the adjective is “as much as is necessary”. I tend to think of social liberalism as basically liberalism, but with a “social” flavor, and liberal socialism as more or less socialism — asking a liberal socialist and a vanilla socialist the same questions will, as I understand the terminology, almost always result in the same answers.
    The second reason is that I associate social liberalism with American liberalism at a practical level, and with Rawlsian liberalism at a philosophical level, neither of which are particularly socialistic.

    A paradox can’t be solved, only managed – and the tool to manage it is democracy. Instead of the bureaucratic or market state, social liberals want a democratic state, so that at every level, people are given not just more individual control to pick and choose providers but a collective say in the big decisions and institutions that currently dominate their lives.

    This seems incredibly wishy-washy to me. Both more individual control and more of a collective say? At every level? One can use “paradox” as a nice sounding word, but if there are real conflicts between the perspectives it’s just sugar. Or perhaps they’re simply saying we must navigate a course between liberty and equality — if so, that’s been going on “since forever”.

  22. 22 Paul BurnsNo Gravatar

    Spiros,
    Menzies’ attempts to ban the CPA were an abberation of his smal l liberal record. As for censorship,neither the Libs or the ALP had a good record in that regard, until c.1969 (when Chipp was Minister for Customs.)Both concurred in the banning of Ulysses, Love Me Sailor, and, for a time, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
    The present Liberal Party is not Menzies’ Liberal Party its more like the United Australia Party.
    I’m not by any means a fan of Menzies but I have spent quite a few years studying him, and he was nowhere near as right wing as Howard and co.
    And I’m not offended if you think what I’m saying is crap. I like vigorous debate.

  23. 23 MercuriusNo Gravatar

    Lawson –

    A paradox can’t be solved, only managed – and the tool to manage it is democracy.

    Leon –

    This seems incredibly wishy-washy to me. Both more individual control and more of a collective say? At every level? One can use “paradox” as a nice sounding word, but if there are real conflicts between the perspectives it’s just sugar.

    Not so wishy-washy really Leon. I think Lawson meant ‘paradox’ in the sense of there being mutually-exclusive values in contention, not a strict logical paradox.

    But can you really be so certain that individual control and collective say are mutually exclusive? Is it really so inconceivable that each could reinforce and promote the other? There are numerous historical occasions where collective action has increased individual freedoms. And there are numerous occasions where individual action has led to more collective organisation.

    But in any case, Lawson’s statement seems to me a pretty clear articulation of reality – that there often are real conflicts between our human need and desire for individual freedoms, and the collective will and organisation that’s sometimes required to promote those freedoms and protect them from tyrannical and oppressive forces – including other collective actions.

    And Leon if you know of a better tool to manage that, ahem, “paradox”, than democracy, I, and thousands of others would like to hear it.

    BTW Mark – any chance of a clearer definition of this mysterious “liberal socialism” beastie that’s invoked in the thread..?

    I found this articulation of libertarian socialism from Chomsky in 1973 that seems as good as any: “a final act of liberation that places control over the economy in the hands of free and voluntary associations of producers”. In case you think that sounds like the current state of the world, where a ‘free and voluntary association’ of Halliburtons, Exxons, and Murdochs pretty much control the economy, I should point out that the purported object of such a system is not for the pursuit of power as in a cartel or plutocracy, but rather for a more just organisation of society.

    *pauses for breath*

    But then again, as a rallying cry, “people, let’s all get together and then do whatever we each feel like”, yeah, it has, ahem, some paradoxes to overcome :-)

    Er. This post did have a point, somewhere, towards the beginning.

  24. 24 Paul BurnsNo Gravatar

    More thoughts on liberalism in Oz politics. Probably its most flourishing period was with the Deakinite liberals, and then the Liberal Party, 1949- 1983. The Liberal Party from 1983 onwards was and is much more like the various anti-Labor parties that flourished from c.1916-1949. Menzies’ Liberals were the abberation and what has happened with the Liberal party from 1983 is in fact a return to the political normality of anti-Labor parties. Which is one reason they’ve lost their appeal to the electorate. As, this time tound, its unlikely the ALP is going to have some kind of great split, merhinks they will be in for quite a while.
    (And briefly OT -on Menzies and the attempt to ban the CPA. Labor voted in the Parliament to ban it too. It was only after the CPA and others won a High Court challenge and a referendum was necesary that Labor campaigned for a No vote. If it had had any other leadser other than Evatt, who, though strongly anti-Communist, saw it as a civil liberties issue, Labor would probably have supported the Yes vote. Furthermore when Fadden first put the idea of a ban on the CPA to Menzies, Menzies rejected it. He had to be talked round, if I recall rightly, bur once he decided he went at it heart and soul.btw, about three leading members of the CPA, out of a membership of a few thousand, were very low level Soviet spies.

  25. 25 LeonNo Gravatar

    But can you really be so certain that individual control and collective say are mutually exclusive? Is it really so inconceivable that each could reinforce and promote the other?

    I didn’t mean that at all — of course, both exist in all societies everywhere to some extent. I’m just suggesting that liberal socialism/social liberalism, as described in that article, doesn’t give me any idea about the kinds of political choices a libertarian socialist/social libral would actually make in the real world, compared with someone of any other political stripe. It is a “pretty clear articulation of [a] reality”, no doubt — but simply stating a conflict is not staking out a position. The fact that you asked Mark for clarification seems to suggest you agree with me.

    And Leon if you know of a better tool to manage that, ahem, “paradox”, than democracy, I, and thousands of others would like to hear it.

    I think I do, as a matter of fact — but depending on your definition of democracy these aren’t new.
    Imagine all government decisions could be controlled by worm, a la channel 9. The fact that this is so undesirable is an argument in favor of less “democracy” or more arbitrary power, of the kind that already exists within our system: fixed terms, political parties, the cabinet system, the special power conventionally held by the PM, the GG, the monarchy, separation of legislature and judiciary, etc. In reasonable doses, such as exist in our “democratic” state institutions, these things can add stability even at the expense of pure democracy. Bills of rights are another obvious example, transferring power away from a democratic parliament, and giving it to either a piece of text or a body of judges (depending on your view on these things).
    On a related point, I think the extent to which democratic institutions express the will of the people (or ever could do so) is greatly overrated. It seems that “representative” democracy largely means that the people act as a kind of referee in a conflict between two or three groups of elites. I would offer family conflicts (or life in a share house) as evidence that although an appointed leader represents some common ground, their most important role is to manage conflicts between interests.
    In other words, I think democracy is only one tool to manage that paradox. There are plenty of undemocratic, somewhat arbitrary tools available there as well, because democracy is only an abstract principle until embodied in imperfect institutions.
    Besides that, being pro-democracy doesn’t say what decisions you think should actually be made. For example, I think many of us would have disagreed with the democratic will of the people of Camden in May even if we think planning decisions should be made a local level.

  26. 26 AdrienNo Gravatar

    Jack -

    Classical liberalism was once a civilising influence on the body politic, encouraging the growth of an educated middle class. But the middle class is now interested in conserving its gains, not “pushing the envelope”.

    The benefits of the tenats of liberalism can not be reduced to making life nice for the middle-class. The middle-class as a group hasn’t been interested in pushing the envelope since the reform act of 1832. The divisions between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘oligarchical’ are a feature of Western politics going back at least as far as Periclean Athens.
    .
    I’d suggest that if you intend to be this political philosopher/historian your comments infer a wish to be you might wish to expand your learning somewhat. Hyperbolous statements about the death of liberalism sans substantiation or historical perspective are a bucket of swill.

  27. 27 Paul NortonNo Gravatar

    The term social liberal can have two meanings. It can refer to a person who supports the kind of economic and welfare policies that a social democrat would support, but with the aim of promoting (positive) liberty rather than minimising inequality. It can also refer to a person who favours individual liberty over authority, and reason over tradition, on non-economic issues such as sexuality, reproductive rights, family structures, intellectual, artistic and religious freedom, anti-discrimination, celebration of various kinds of cultural diversity, etc. Of course one can, and many do, subscribe to both versions of social liberalism at once.

  28. 28 philiptraversNo Gravatar

    I want to be confident in and of my own opinions,and I think this blog is over-complexifying matters that maybe more simple,than the expressions here.To have appeal as a party may ,in fact,be hinged on many factors that allow that appeal to become so well known as too become common place.The Keep the Bastards Honest,was a observation from voters turned into an election slogan, by The Australian Democrats.The reason it appealed to many,and accepted by those who didn’t vote Democrats is its in your face quality.The rough diamond replacing the gilt- edged garuantee,it was an irrepressible slogan,that allowed even the non-voters the right to observe without giving way to pretence.Thus even when one could easily accept thinking Chipp was a phoney the slogan outlived its electoral appeal,because essentially it wasnt a tool of invention of the political classes,but,anyone who has to deal with motivations which arent sketchworthy as highly motivated.I am sure across all the present political parties that exist today,there is room for those who express themselves fluently,however,there maybe a harder struggle in that fluency becoming a higher probability in the selected media settings of reportage.The contestability of individuals to be persuaders of voters at election time,I think, has failed both major parties,and where good human resources are present in smaller parties,maybe, the competition is too harsh.This and the dogged pursuit of both tested and untested generalities as policy has failed the electorates as much as the practitioners of rhetoric as elected officials.Life even for politicians should not be a constant election challenge,but, a sense of,we will achieve what we have attempted to achieve ,in theory,before today.Getting people into parties who can stick around,whilst rightfully and regularily want to walk away is the great need today.Without pretence,and so obvious the media commentator finds no need for embellishments.

  29. 29 SachaNo Gravatar

    Unions like the SDA – combining classic labourist collectivism with social conservatism and a disdain for individual rights conceived in a post-materialist sense – are much closer to the heart of the Australian Labor tradition than the infusion of liberal sentiment that came with the party’s middle-classing in Victoria, a wave Gough Whitlam rode, but which has since arguably receded.

    The comment about the SDA is probably true, but I don’t know if the infusion of liberal sentiment has receded – many middle class people support the ALP and it has an element of liberal economic and social policies.

  30. 30 MickNo Gravatar

    Wouldn’t the perpetual ’secret ballot’ in both houses of parliament, administered by the AEC, be the easiest way of breaking up the two party stranglehold?

    LOL worst idea ever

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