One of the minor notes of the political narrative last week was Julie Bishop’s half-hearted fessing up to publishing a book chapter containing numerous instances of plagiarism under her name, though (in a move quite reminiscent of the Howard government’s attitude towards ministerial accountability) she sought immediately to deflect responsibility onto the staffer who “dashed something together” for her in a spare moment, recycling and paraphrasing eight year old banal neo-liberal nostrums from the New Zealand Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr. The news didn’t get any better as the week wore on for the editor of Liberals and Power: The Road Ahead, Peter Van Onselen, as it emerged that Brendan Nelson’s chapter had been ghosted by Tom Switzer, whose ruminations turned up in a column under his own name in The Spectator:
“It must have been subconscious … I have just regurgitated [what] was my line.”
Pushing a “line”, of course, comes naturally to the opinionistas of the punditariat/thinktank interface. The big surprise in all this, probably, is why an increasingly furious and perhaps naive Van Onselen ever thought that he could solicit contributions which actually represented the reflections of “some of the finest minds of liberal and conservative thought”. The notion, apparently shared by Van Onselen and Melbourne University Press Publisher Louise Adler, that Liberal politicians are in “a reflective period, a phase of rigorous self-criticism and reassessment” was always risible. All we’ve seen from the opposition since November 24 2007 are the fruits of a sense of frustrated entitlement, manifesting alternately in vicious infighting and empty and cynical populism.
Adler’s commentary on the book is yet another instance of blame shifting. Andrew Elder nails it:
If Adler was concerned about morality she’d pull the book and wear the financial consequences of doing so, to protect the intellectual integrity of MUP. Instead, the next Melbourne Uni student who gets busted lifting an essay straight off the internet should get Adler to brush away any nasty consequences (”so old hat!”).
It’s curious how little attention this has received. Where’s the pressure on Turnbull to sack her?
“…that Brendan Turnbull’s chapter had been ghosted by Tom Switzer”
Mark, was that a Freudian slip?!
Yikes! So it was, Antonio!
I only wish there were some celebrities involved.
Brendan Turnbull was on the news tonight calling for a police investigation into Kevin Rudd making a joke at a dinner party that The Australian editor Chris Mitchell was at about George W. Bush not knowing what the G20 was. So much for reflection, rigorous self-criticism and reassessment.
I’ll be watching to see if Milne is onto the G20-gate bandwagon.
My default assumption was that if it was in the OO, they’d made it up. Like a lot of the “news”.
The one original contribution in the book that the media have examined was from Brandis who publicly dumps all over the Howard legacy. It’s difficult to know what Brandis is up to here. On the one hand he may be setting himself up as some kind of moderate Liberal intellectual, on the other hand many in the parliamentary division of the party and some in the wider membership remember that Brandis switched factions to the Santoro Right in order to get preselected as a senator. So in effect, Brandis was quite happy to toe the Howard line to get into parliament and play hardarse barrister in senate committees for Howard whilst in parliament; but now that Howard is gone he has rediscovered his small “l” roots? Where was Brandis when Petro, Moylan et al were trying to roll back the mandatory detention laws or the citizenship test?
Intellectuals and policy wonks don’t tend to have a positive reputation in the Liberal party (Exhibit A – Hewson), but there is really going to have to be some heavy lifting in a policy sense if the Centre-Right want to get back federal power in Australia. The only other alternative is to wait 10-15 years until Labor fall over. I’m just not sure where the real policy work is going to come from? Tony Abbott sure is earnest but he is too wedded to the Howard glory days. Costello is too bitter to make a decent contribution at this stage and I’ve always been sceptical of his ability to craft a coherent policy narrative. Nelson was never a big fan of substantial policy to begin with. Turnbull is capable of policy work but is he capable of bringing the parliamentary party with him? Some of the smartest minds in the partyroon have preselection dramas to worry about (eg. Senators Trood & Payne). The dearth of intellectual capital in the parliamentary division and the challenge of crafting an intellectual response to the financial crisis into a coherent centre-Right policy framework will be considerable indeed.
All in all, barring a Rudd meltdown, I think it’s going to be a long intellectual winter on the Opposition benches. Probably the best analogy are the UK Tories who only began some 10 years after the demise of the Major government to finally enunciate a non-Thatcherite policy narrative to take to the public. I reckon it will take the Australian Liberals at least as long to formulate a non-Howard intellectual vision for the Liberal party.
Antonio – “centre right”? They’re the ones in power now. The Liberals probably need to work out where they are, and what they stand for. It won’t actually help much though – my general feeling is that “to wait 10-15 years until Labor fall over” (or the converse, while the Coalition is in power) is just the done thing in Australian politics since the 70s. The only potential counter to this is WA (in the sense of falling over, but not in the waiting). This requires a sufficiently fluid definition of “10-15 years” though…
Antonio, Brandis was Minister for the Arts and the convention of Cabinet Solidarity would’ve made it incredibly hard for him to speak out without getting sacked. If we’re going to have a Senate act as a house of review, Senators shouldn’t be Ministers.
I’d like to get to know more about Brandis, particularly what he thinks of Howard’s terms. He could probably lead a renewal of the Parliamentary Libs and come up with some decent policies, particularly around reforming the way governance is done in this nation, but he’s got idiots like Abbott and Costello to deal with.
I share Antonios disillusion with these, and note the responses.
It is deplorable situtation and a cultural dysfunction, as Mark pretty much said.
Is the best they can throw up a senile rant from Murdoch?
Sam,
Brandis was only made a minister in the final term of the Howard government. He had PLENTY of time to voice concerns if he had them whilst a humble senator. Furthermore, Brandis has made headlines for linking Green ideology to Nazism and proposing to censor books in school libraries. Please forgive me for questioning his liberal credentials!
Say what one might about Rupert Murdochs Boyer Lectures but they are offering a far more coherent centre-Right view of post-Howard Australia than anything the Opposition benches are coughing up!
Well, he coined the “lying rodent” epithet so widely embraced in blogdom – so he cant be all bad.
And Howard would never have made him Minister for the Arts if he had’ve spoken up.
I doubt anyone acquainted with Senator Brandis would see him as some glorious saviour of small l liberal principle – I’m with Antonio on this one.
I read the Brandis extract in the paper – it just looks like a bit of typical “sniffing the wind” change of rhetoric that already stunk it’s way through some of the think tanks about 18 months ago. Who really know what his black little heart would reveal if plucked still beating from his chest. Lets find out!
Yeah, Brandis did give us “Ratty” but that’s the beginning and end of his contribution to non-right politics. As for the plagiarism – we had eleven years of lies under Howard and his flunkies. What makes anybody think they’d start telling the truth once they were in Opposition. The Coalition, and especially the Libs operate under the principle, never tell the truth when a lie will do.
Thirded – if Brandis is wingnutty enough to seriously write about Greens being equal to the Nazi movement, there’s no telling what fruity stuff he’ll come up with in the future. Avoid, avoid.
Of course, as a reminder, the most notorious piece of plagiarism by a “liberal” was the unwork of a Canadian cousin. You have to wonder, though, whether Howard was saved from embarrassment, only, by reading a provided script first.
http://brasschecktv.com/page/439.html
I bet after the Young Libs have purged unis of lefty scholars, relaxing the rules concerning plagiarism will be their next campaign.
Poor Louise Adler. I just read that link to her – she really was very, very naive. She wanted them to “flex intellectual muscles”, but she should have known that Howard didn’t select Ministers on the basis of possessing such muscles.
Mind you, Howard may have been right. An interest in ideas is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to be a politically successful Minister, and intellectual audacity is a distinct disadvantage (that’s why Tony Abbott never made the top). Chronic workaholism, political experience and unquestioning loyalty are far more useful qualities for a PM to have in his Cabinet.
I suspect that Nelson and (especially) Bishop offloaded the task simply because they knew they were incapable of it.
Louise Adler – often in the news, but embarrassing every time.
I don’t see why MUP should withdraw the book. Shouldn’t they just stick an insert in indicating the problems? That a) means that other chapters still get out there, whatever their merits and b) means that the sins of the guilty are not forgotten by anyone who reads it.
I’m also not sure this is all that embarrassing for Adler. I think she just gave them plenty of rope.
Louise Adler has turned MUP into Who Weekly.