Just a follow up to a previous post.
It appears that no matter what the ABC does it just can’t find enough sympathetic Coalition voters to balance a Q&A studio audience and keep Senator Abetz happy.
Mr Scott said the ABC pursued “a number of different strategies” to bring together a more diverse audience, including contacting law and accounting firms, the Australian Retailers Association, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Family Association, Young Liberal groups and every state Liberal MP within one hour’s drive of the ABC’s Sydney studios.
“We have tried a number of different things to try and ensure that we have all the viewpoints represented in the audience and I think we have,” he said.
“I understand that Liberal MPs were approached asking whether in fact they were aware of people who might like to come and join our audience.”
Of course he forgot to memo the ABC board and I’m surprised the Young Liberals couldn’t find a bus load of guys like this charming young chap within an hours drive of the ABC studios?
Or maybe it’s just that they are all too busy charting the complicated metrics of bias in our cultural institutions and wasting everyone’s time making Senate submissions to attend.
You read a phrase like ‘the scarcity of conservative intellectuals’, clearly written in earnest by this fine upstanding young chap with a straight face, and you wonder just how long it will take before he hears the other shoe drop.
And what does this have to do with academic freedom, the subject of Freitas’s article? Nothing, of course.
He’ll never hear it, Dr Cat – he’s deaf as well as dumb.
Dr Cat, I’m touched and humbled by your confidence and optimism that conservatives will resort to introspection. I suspect you will be disappointed.
I too worry for Dr Kitteh. Such wide-eyed idealism.
You know what they say, hope dies last, we must hold on to the dream.
Ooo look, a moth! Whoops, ear need wash. Wait, is that a patch of sunshzzzzzz …
Why Abetz concentrates on Q&A? He could watch ‘The Insiders’ on Sunday morning and Fran Kelly on Radio National and I am sure he will be very happy there.
Guido, Guido, Guido. ‘Insiders’ isn’t biased, it’s balanced, particularly when Bolta or Piers are on it.
On the other hand (and on a more serious note), I wouldn’t know about Q&A, it’s so uniformly horrid I can’t watch it.
Abetz is a an out of date hack. But that Young Lib touches on an issue I find totally misrepresented and just plain sad. The Cardinal Newman Society at the UQ, earlier this year, had stalls outlining pregnancy-support options for women and they were (indeed) disgustingly reprimanded, threatened with disaffiliation and faced formal disciplinary proceedings and all this from a so called great Liberal of UQ. I have to say that this sort of action has fallen from reason. I see no advantage in such action from so called Liberals, regardless if they are ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life’. They should be ashamed.
Maybe they could organise a cocktail party and fashion parade before the show.
Well, I think it’s a pretty bad sign for the NSW Liberal Party if they can’t come up with a decent rent-a-crowd within an hour’s drive of Ultimo! I’m assuming they aren’t talking peak hour, of course. Even then, you’d think there’d be a few Libs lurking around UTS and Sydney Uni. Both are within walking distance.
It also strikes me that their list of likely hangouts for Liberal Party members/voters is a bit stereotyped. Why aren’t they sending letters out to footy and car clubs?
I have no idea what Abetz is going on about. According to the ABC news story the ratio of Labor to Coalition supporters is 36% to 24%. With minor paties and uncommiteds excluded this is 57% Labor to 43% Liberal – EXACTLY THE RATIO OF SUPORT IN THE BROADER SOCIETY OVER THE TIME Q&A HAS BEEN ON AIR!!!
How the hell can you call that bias. The ABC are not favoring Labor – the electorate is!
The same logic as Abetz is using would imply we need to have exactly the same representation of ALL political parties. Even those who have ZERO public suport.
Benjo #10,
after reading various reports of the UQ Student Union’s disciplinary actions against the UQ Cardinal Newman Society, I would have to agree that the reported actions of displaying a poster of a foetus in the womb and handing out pamphlets would seem to be fairly mild expressions of the group’s opinion regarding abortion, and suppressing that expression does seem overly heavyhanded. If the posters had shown some of the more gory anti-abortion imagery and used abusive terms for women who have abortions, as some anti-abortion activists do, that would be a different case as it could be seen as gratuitously offensive hate speech, but as reported the Newman Society’s stall seems well within the bounds of a rational expression of diverse opinion.
Despite that, it’s still wrong for the Young Liberal op-ed writer to present a contretemps in student politics as an issue of “academic freedom”. It’s not entirely unrelated, but it’s not hand in glove, either.
“every state Liberal MP within one hour’s drive of the ABC’s Sydney studios”
I’m all for live broadcast but perhaps Q&A need to consider one of their UK predecessor’s reasons for prerecording earlier in the evening. ie. panellists can be sourced from all around the country and still be flown home at a reasonable hour.
Question Time is also held at a different location every week – town halls/theatres/etc – which naturally makes for much better variety of audience and panellist makeup, as well as a more live feel anyway.
Another salvo fired in the “The other side are crazy and/or stupid” school of political rhetoric. A fine and most constructive tradition that has yielded much by way of excellent advances in the conduct of human life. You do realize of course that neither Right nor Left boast a monopoly either on insanity or stupidity. Sometimes I wonder if we’re drawing the wrong line.
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But, y’know, monkeys – (stup’d, fuckn) –
@Adrien of course, but a lot of good old fashioned simian fun can be had along the way.
Senator Abetz? Who is …? Oh, Yeah, the guy who so believes in Australian democracy he wants to bring in voluntary voting because he thinks less Labor supporters will go to the polls on election day.
Mr Scott’s remarks show that the ABC had no trouble getting its Labor and Green mates along to ABC HQ. They probably had them on speed dial, or just sent an email to the Radio National mailing list. “Calling all Comrades, um I mean RN listeners”. They didn’t have to look far…
But the ABC didn’t even have a clue where to find anyone from other camps – they haven’t tried before. Chamber of Commerce, Retailers Association? How stereotypical. Why didn’t they just go to the local Cigar Club, or top Hat shop while they were at it?
On the issue of UQ Union being Liberal I wouldn’t bet on it. It looks like the Fresh team (who some call Liberal) will win again this year, but this is down to them just being popular and fairly mainstream compared to the usual lefties on campus. They can put so much time into student politics because they aren’t actively involved in political parties like the left or real Liberal Students. And also they aren’t that much different to the old lefties who used to run the unions. Fresh have moved to the left, leaving less room for existing left wing groups.
The main Fresh people may have been in the Liberal party but were very anti-merger with the Nationals and so have been left behind. So please don’t make out that these guys are very Liberal.
Joh #19. Hammer meet nail. *wham*
So Tory True Believers find it impossible to bestir themselves to act as a rent-a-crowd for the likes of Abbott and Costello.
Figures really. Tories are working their way through the classic five stages of grief. This process could take some time.
But I wish they’d turn up. It may make good television.
Memo to Abetz: Harden up, you drivelling idiot.
Phil – Go Bonzo! That’s a class chimp.
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the scarcity of conservative intellectuals’
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Interesting how each side always endeavors to deny, not only the merits of the opponents’ case, not only their follies, their arrogance, their blindness – nay – we have to deny that they have minds at all. This happens on both sides of the fence.
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Whereas the fact is that there are hysterical fools, bigots, shrieking idiots aplenty either side. Sociopathic bastards – for sure. There are also honest, smart people whose views are well considered and valuable. It’s a shame that our culture encourages the exclusion of the other in such a manner. Less shouting, more listening – better culture.
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One can learn quite a great deal from reading conservatives.
Adrien,
One can indeed learn a great deal from reading conservatives. But it depends who they are. Menzies’ Afternoon Light ain’t a massive contribution to political history in say, the same way the work of Spender, Fadden can be. Fraser’s promised autobiography looks like it will be essential reading. (If he’s still considered conservative. My problem is ever since I read Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution (which was in his conservative period) I’ve always thought conservatives were, well, a little ratty.
Adrien wrote:
Name three.
I can think of great conservative intellectuals from the past, but I’m struggling to locate some in the present, particularly in Australia. I guess I’d say there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be strongly associated with the right who I would consider fairly conservative in different ways. In, say, literary studies there are lots of academic and non-academic people whose ideas about literature I would read as fairly conservative but whose criticism and scholarship I think is very important. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what their politics were like outside of literary studies, though.
Any recommendations of good conservative stuff from the last couple of decades, Adrien (or anybody else)? I’m serious in asking the question: I’m going to have time to read and explore a bit more over summer, so I’m interested in looking at things that haven’t crossed my path before.
David Rubie – I think the meme is “name ten!”, but I’ll have a go: Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackermann and Keith Windschuttle. We could also include my namesake, if you need a fourth for a game of bridge …
(removes tongue from cheek)
I thought ten would be too much of an ask (and I’m always partial to “name three” as a gotcha because it sounds plausible in conversation but occasionally hard to do).
The whole point of the post (does conservatism ironically require affirmative action to rehabilitate it) is an important question: it’s not just about Young Liberals weirdo obsessions with never hearing something they disagree with. The whole conservative intellectual movement has been decimated by a craptastic focus on “values”, economic fundamentalism and “balance”. All of these things have been successfull strategies for twenty years in attracting religous numbskulls, backwoods morons and those whose political leanings go no deeper than their next paycheck. Now they have officially run their course with a decimation of “elites”, an over-reliance on religious numbskulls to keep voting on moral issues and an economy that needs a fair amount of non-fundamentalist shoring up.
Despite the money and thinktanks and tame media outlets, the very thing conservatives abandoned (rationality) could save them, but only if they embrace it.
And no Adrien – it’s not about “teh other side is CRAZY”, it’s about a real dearth of actual conservative thinking rather than Rush Limbaugh inspired culture wars.
David — agreed. If it was partly me at #1 that Adrien was taking issue with, I think he might have missed my point, which is that many people who lean to the left do so because they have good brains and have applied said brains at length to the question of what is valuable in life and how people should treat each other (which is one way to define an intellectual), not because they happen to have been picked for the cricket team by some cosmic prefect.
That said, and if we are genuinely in quest of a respectable Australian conservative intellectual, then I nominate historian John Hirst.
I’d second that nomination, Pavlov’s Cat.
Also in my list: Andrew Norton and (on any subject but multiculturalism) Leonie Kramer.
Norton doesn’t count – he classifies himself as a “Classical Liberal” not a conservative. Besides which, quit doing Adriens work for him!
DR, Adrien is too big a commenting institution to be allowed to fail.
On the subject of the dearth of conservative intellectuals, here’s conservative (American) intellectual Ross Douthat.
“DR, Adrien is too big a commenting institution to be allowed to fail.”
Magnificent.
Yes, I’d agree on Hirst. I’ve found some of his work very useful for thinking through problems of history and responsibility in the sense of it being challenging enough to require well-formulated responses, and at other times highlighting problems that are inadequately addressed by others.
That’s a very good way of putting it, Klaus.
I propose, further, that we start importing classical liberal public intellectuals from Canada, where they produce them very well, starting with Michael Ignatieff and Will Kymlicka.
From the Ross Douthat link:
Liam, that dude is an American hating communist. Next thing you know he’ll be denouncing apple pie since he already skewered Mom!
what
I suspect that nothing much will ever impress me about social conservatism. Does this make it intellectually bankrupt? Sure!
The ravings of extreme libertarians are nothing more than a fun scratching-post.
Classical liberals on the other hand can provide a lot of food for thought for socially liberal social democtrats (like me). I suspect the relationship is mutual, as long as both sides of the discussion are willing to engage on fruitful ground.
Puts me in mind of something I read here the other day somewhere, to the effect that the term ‘debate’ – now ubiquitous in describing any political issue – betokens a contest that must have a winner. It sounds more genteel than an ‘argument’, but is much less likely to produce good intellectual fodder.
The thing about being a moderate isn’t so much that you don’t care enough to fully commit; more that you are capable of suspending your assumptions for the sake of argument or discussion. And having done so, realise you can’t hold them as strongly as you did before, or cleave to them in all the ways you did.
Liam — in turn, I second your nomination of both of those eminent Canadians and support their importation. Ignatieff gave the showpiece Writers’ Week Lecture here some years back — he was absolutely brilliant, a weird combination of visionary and hard-nosed.
If I take DR’s question seriously instead of clowning around as I did in my last comment – its really difficult – you might have a writer, say, who’s against a republic, but is otherwise quite radical. And that’s just one example. Its really hard to pin people down, especially if, in their search for intellectual objectivity – never entirely attainable – they mute their political ideologies.
Adrien is too big a commenting institution to be allowed to fail.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Outstanding! But wrong. You should allow me to fail. Some people even think that the government should ban me. I gotta say they have a point.
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Name three.
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Okay: Andrew J Bacevich, John Dean (yes he did time after Nixon but he’s better now), Peter Hitchens.
FDB – The ravings of extreme libertarians are nothing more than a fun scratching-post.
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No. <a href=”http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/with-crisis-comes-oppurtunity/#comments You are lying.
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Classical liberals on the other hand can provide a lot of food for thought for socially liberal social democtrats (like me).
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I don’t think it’s possible to be a classic liberal anymore. Such as JS Mill would probably have different views if they were around today and assimilated historical information that’s since come to light like the inevitable persistence of business cycles, the fragmentation of individualism and its subsequent polarization amongst the political spectrum, the emergence of American Imperialism, the Soviet Union experiment, the development of social theories that evidence Marx’s notions of historical produce etc. Moreover there’s the non-existence of laissez-faire economic realms (something that’s still a bit of a struggle I think). And the problems that result from attempting to impose them.
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That said the ‘classic liberal’ libertarians are pretty good at cutting through current confusions as to the meanings of things like ‘rights’ and ‘liberty’. Anarcho-capitalists seem to me the right-wing version of anarchists I use to know: unable to answer even the most basic questions viz: how it will work in the real world.
Adrien,
Let’s see if any of those pass the “liberal students” test.
For starters, Bacevich says conservatives should support Obama (instant fail).
John Dean is a convicted criminal, so perhaps he’s OK for “liberal students”.
Hitchens is a former Trot and therefore can’t be trusted by “liberal students”.
So that’s one.
Whoops – John Dean is a fail of the “liberal students” test as well – he wanted to impeach Dubya.
Tom Wolfe, Murray Rothbard, Francis Fukuyama, Tom Stoppard, Adam Smith, Hayek…
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JS Mill, Thomas Paine, Voltaire – are they left or right?. Both? Neither?
David – You asked me to name three people of the right who’s views are valuable not who pass this test of which you speak. I guess I could name three who pass that test sure: Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Alan Moore. Somehow of somewhat poorer quality however.
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Hitchens is a former Trot and therefore can’t be trusted by “liberal students”.
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Um you’re thinking of <iChristopher Hitchens, Peter’s brother. Peter’s the one who thinks the ’60s was a catastrophe. I don’t think Christopher shares this view. In fact there’ve been many police calls to Hitchens Clan Christmas get-togethers over this and other issues. Like when Chris insists on singing “Please die ye merry dickhead-twats who believe in fuckin’ God” after the turkey’s been demolished (tune: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”). That and Chris has the temerity to blow spliffs before he comes to the party (I relate). According to Peter getting wasted is immoral and people drink booze for the taste (um …okay).
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Actually I think Peter’s never forgiven Chris for being born first. Again I relate.
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Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience is a damning insight into what’s wrong with conservatives. Their tendency to play the primate pecking order game without thought. Chris Hitchens plays this game with the Left. His advocacy of the Iraq War (which I still finally disagree with) was most convincing. Likewise, his fellow Iraq heretic Nick Coen’s What’s Left is also valuable.
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Bacevich would definitely be out. His picture graces the dartboard of the Weekly Standard games room apparently.
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Peter Hitchens’ views are those with which I have most disagreement. However his arguments against the Euro-jurisprudential moves and social engineering proclivities of the Blair govt are apt. In fact they make an excellent companion to George Monbiot’s Captive State.
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That is if you decide not to play
Protestants v CatholicsLeft v Right anymore.Adrien wrote:
True enough.
But, do you at least get the idea that Pavlov’s Cat is getting at?
And a nitpick – Peter’s personal political history here indicates he was a trot, former member of the International Socialists, was a member of British Labour in the late seventies and only joined the Conservatives in the late nineties. Perhaps he’s a plant, although I think he’s a pretty ordinary version of your average god-botherer who sees the market as an assault on a sepia toned 1950′s that never actually existed but he wishes to resurrect. I blame Ealing comedies.