I’ve commented before on the tendency to anticipate the anniversary of events, and everyone in the Oz media has been doing just that ahead of the milestone of two years since the election of the Rudd government, which falls on Tuesday.
Of particular interest is a long piece by Shaun Carney in The Age. Carney himself refers to skepticism that Rudd is “a right wing free trader leading a left wing party”. I think that’s wrong. I’m increasingly convinced that Kevin Rudd should be taken at his word on his perspective on economics. The fact that his famous article on neo-liberalism was also incredibly politically useful for him doesn’t prove insincerity.
Carney makes an interesting argument that Rudd’s governing style is one forged in the history of Queensland political culture. It would be possible to complicate and trouble this in various ways (including observing a different approach to governance in our state bureaucracy), but I think the core of his thesis is right:
Several of Rudd’s colleagues who believe they understand him politically point to the peculiar nature of Queensland’s politics as a policy guide. Queenslanders, both the politicians and the voters, often view themselves as a breed apart. And their conception of government, historically a battle between two types of state paternalism – Labor and National – does not necessarily match the ideas of elites in the Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne triangle.
Wow, Queenslanders view themselves as different? How unusual in the history of politics! I’ve never seen parochialism anywhere else, that’s for sure.
The point, Jacques, is that there is a different political culture in Queensland which translates into real implications for the way Rudd governs, and how his views have developed. Surely that was clear?
Well, I am not sure that I agree with this “different political culture” theme. Every State/Territory probably thinks that about itself, but it does not necessarily mean much in explaining how Rudd ticks.
And I am a bit puzzled about what Carney means by “the ideas of elites in the Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne triangle” either. Show me this ideological triangulation, other than on a map.
As I understand it, Rudd spent his professional developmental years in DFAT, at the heart of the federal bureaucracy in Canberra, then took his skills to the Queensland bureaucracy, and apparently delivered a bit of a shock to the system, as Dr Death.
Seems to me, Rudd as PM was forged in the nation-centred cultures of the Australian National University and the Australian Public Service in Canberra, the National Capital, rather than on the dairy farm, at Nambucca High School, or within the local political machine in Queensland.
I cannot quickly bring to mind what electorate Rudd represents in Queensland – but more to the point, I am not sure he can either.
It’s Nambour you silly sausage, not Nambucca. I believe that’s in NSW, nice part of the world I’ll grant you. But heavens, how inconvenient what with the Daylight Savings and all? I used to run a newsagent in Coolangatta, you know if it’s warm in Brisbane, then it’s Coolangatta, right? Exactly. I don’t know much about ‘professional developmental years’, almost scares me a little to see you fellows talk on the internet but I feel that Kevin, to me, has a palpable need to be taken seriously and he thinks this is to be gained with policy-wonkism and giving the most irritating convoluted answers to perfectly simple questions. I’m quite fed up with it, between you and me.
I remember seeing a poster that simply had a painted pictre of Joe and the word Queensland under it. Some wag should make up a similar one for Kev.
…pictre?…I meant picture, of course.
I should add that it’s been firmly established that Turnbull loathes Queensland.
I wouldn’t have thought that Rudd (or Swan for that matter) are as conspicuously Queenslandesque as, say, Bob Katter or Warren Entsch.
Or Barnaby Joyce, of course.
It is a little simplistic to say Kevin’s ideas were mostly forged by the Queensland way, as has been pointed out, he was absent from Queensland from 1976 to 1988 while studying at ANU and being a diplomat in Sweden China and Canberra. They were tumultuous years in Queensland, and while Kevin I’m sure kept up with it, he was not actually there in that time. So the influences on him were more than the Queensland political milieu. Which is one of the reasons he is hard to pigeon hole. He’s multifaceted. .
Hey, here’s a thought:
- he’s a social democrat
- the reviews & policy implementations across all portfolios
- he’s not a politician in the line of the previous 3 PM’s
- he’s aiming to destroy the liberal brand (messing with JWH’s mind)
- and he’s an internationalist
- all in all he’s a “polymath”, a renaissance man, eclectic
Please refer to:
- http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/post/2009/10/02/Who-is-this-man-called-Kevin.aspx
- http://www.pipingshrike.com/2009/07/new-myths-for-old.html
It’s fascinating watching the old political paradigm’s shift.
Regards,
Paul
I read this article this morning, and it nearly spoiled my breakfast. Contradictory, waffling, full of non-sequiturs, and largely irrelevant to the state of play in Federal politics (and the last 24 months, really).
I’m wondering what exactly was Carney’s point that the last Prime Minister from Queensland was Andrew Fisher (who emigrated to Queensland from Scotland at 23… guess Carney got that one wrong, too).
Seriously, poor effort Carney.
To understand Queensland we need to remember that the east-west rail links were completed before the north-south one. Cairns (or Longreach) has no more allegiance to Brisbane than it does to Canberra. We also need to remember Premier T J Ryan and the Warwick egg incident.
Through this we learn that
1) Queenslanders have a different sense of place from other Australians.
2) They pay no respect to power elites south of the Tweed.
What this means in reference to Rudd, I don’t know – but I did attend Nambour High.
Queensland parochialism has a quality all of its own.
Carney’s was much better than Grattan’s (on the same page.)
Grattan was all about how Rudd had failed to deliver on his election promises. The fact that most of the failed measures were democratically stymied in the senate was inelegantly elided in favour of the sexier narrative that Rudd is somehow personally ineffectual. Tiresome, this pathologising. Reality is prosaic. Love it for what it is.
The impetus to define Rudd as all symbol and no meat (if I can pathologise the commentary for a minute!) is born of a resistance we have for leaders who are not charismatically forceful.
Thanks Paul @ 10 for your thumbnail sketch of Kevin Rudd which is spot on. As Johncanb said too he is multifaceted which makes him hard to pigeonhole. Well for some Aussie journalists that may be so, but there’s something else at play here.
Whenever I see the slighting references to the PM or hear faint praise of his many achievements I am reminded of the the “tall poppy syndrome” that is said to be a major feature of the Australian national psyche, but in his case is confined to the MSM and his political opponents but is not shared by the public at large.
The cutting down of Kevin Rudd is particularly ferocious and I wonder if it’s because to hard bitten journos looking for an angle and seeing him close up every day he is such an ordinary bloke, of unassuming mien, but of such extraordinary intelligence and achievement. When I read so many comments by columnists about no one knowing who he really is, I think it’s more a reflection of their own bewilderment and resentment that this bowlegged little guy has somehow managed to have it all – brains, the top job and the girl too! And he’s such a nerd! He’s fooled them somehow. QED he’s a fake, a charlatan. One day he’ll slip and they’ll all be proved right. Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton, Julie and Barnaby and the others keep saying so too. He’s all spin and soon the honeymoon will be over and Australians will see him for the dud he is! Won’t they?
Hasn’t happened yet.
Thanks too Paul for the lead to the Political Sword article. So refreshing to read unalloyed support for our national leader and for the very solid team he leads followed by comments reflecting the respect in which he is clearly held by people at large.
And thanks to LP for not banging on relentlessly about the asylum seeker issue. I have to switch off ABC radio lately. Fran Kelly and Co join the Opposition day after day, almost jeering at Rudd’s inability to draw his sword and cut this particular Gordian knot. After all he is only Kevin from Queensland and though he’s here to help, he’s not Alexander the Great.
Mind you in my book Chris Evans is a hero.
I just think you’re overstating the differences. Everyone does it. People here in WA are all convinced that the best thing for their state would be for the rest of Australia to shear off and drift over to … well, they don’t care.
Back home in Darwin the most popular subject of derision is of the genus “Southerners, Bloody”.
Folks in Sydney are different. Special even! And Melbournites know secretly that they do things differently from those uncouth New South Welsh idiots. Meanwhile in Tassie they’re unique guardians of the environment and in SA … well who gives a damn about SA.
But in all of these places, the elites have more in common with their peers in other states than they do with the locals, no matter what those locals are like. There might be some surface variation with accent, favourite sport and drink of choice, but it’s wildly overstated.
If we want to know the formative political experience of Kevin Rudd, it might be worth looking at the modern Chinese Communist Party and whoever used to run Sweden.
Spot on Mark. I agree with Carney. Rudd grew up in Eumundi, Brisbane and Nambour before he went to Canberra. For a host of historical reasons there’s a tendency for Queenslanders to see themselves as living in or coming from Queensland, while people from the Sydney–Canberra–Melbourne triangle see themselves as Australians living in Australia.
I once asked a Texan, fantastic musician, long pony-tail, lefty attitude, on holiday in Australia during the George W Bush years, how americans could vote that idiot into the presidency. He told me that the USA is not a country but a collection of states, that all have their own laws and customs, and there is no real national identity for most americans beyond abstract symbols like the flag and a deep certainty that they live in the greatest nation on earth. He said he was a Texan, not an American (which did not really answer the question, since Bush was too, whatever..).
Maybe some Australians, and most particularly Queenslanders, see their heart’s allegiance first to their State rather than the nation, and accept their character can be explained entirely by the geography of their childhood experiences, but I strongly doubt that Kevin Rudd does, or that his mature personality can be read through that prism, contra Carney’s thesis.
In my view, Rudd is a genuine nationalist (absent all the perjoratives) way before he is a Queenslander, and the evolution of his personal character and political motivations is written in his history in Canberra from 1976-1988 (thanks Johncanb), not the dairy farm or Nambour High (thanks Lisa), or his two attempts to win his seat through the party machine, which was nothing more than a launching pad for him to get the hell out of Queensland and back into his natural homeland in Canberra.
Rudd is sadly opaque to most of the parochial projectionists in the press gallery, unlike Hawke, for example, who could be read through his history at Oxford and in the union movement, or Keating, who could be read through his history at Jack Lang’s knee, because most celebrity journalists these days do not remotely understand how Canberra really works (a proposition once made by a senior now sadly retired journalist, and a thesis in itself). Perhaps Rudd is more like Whitlam, in the sense that Gough was a born and bred Canberra boy too…pile on.
In any case, that Rudd is more a Canberran than a Queenslander gives an inkling as to why his natural trajectory appears to be towards international diplomacy. My guess is that Rudd will move on after a successful stint as PM, at the top of his game, and onto the international stage in the UN.
Perhaps not, but I can’t see him retiring to Queensland.
What is interesting to me is that there is so much fascination with the leader as a person. Now whilst it is clear that a leader’s personality, values and style have a significant impact on their policy agenda and effectiveness, I would enjoy a more fulsome discussion of the social forces and global landscape that have made impact on Kevin.
Iam not professing to be learned on this topic- far from it. I am suggesting I would much rather read an article outlining the way in which these factors have shaped our leader historically, and the way they impact on the practice of his leadership today.
I believe that we have seen eras of politicians affected by global shifts in ideology- just look at Keating’s monetarism- hardly Thatcher or Regan, but influenced by the same neo-liberal ideas. I want to see analysis of what the new “big global ideas” are that are playing themselves out through our leader.
Of course, we are also living in a time of unprecedented risk from the back-lash of nature to our unsustainable practicec in the form of water shortage and climate change. These interesting times deserve deeper analysis, leaving no room for superficial analysis. I crave the attention of the deep thinkers to this.
I don’t care where Rudd’s policies come from. I only care that they are mostly wrong.
If Rudd’s circle is putting this meme out there, then at least they’re more modest than the whole “Howard is the greatest PM evah” rubbish from the tories that was pretty rampant by the end of the last government. I’m shocked by the number of well educated conservatives (Abbott? Van Onselen?) who are convinced JWH’s place in history starts at somewhere greater than Menzies’.
Anyway, Shaun Carney was a bit of a Costello booster, so I can believe he’s dead wrong in his assesment of Rudd.
Maybe Rudd fancies himself as an EG Theodore style big picture man, though in reality I see him as being closer to a successful version of Bill Hayden (and the original Bill Hayden, not the strawman that some Leftwingers have created over recent years. There’s a fantastic profile by Bob Ellis circa 1976 that is reprinted in one of Ellis’ anthologies that explains what that Queenslander was trying to do in going against the ultraconservative regional politics of the era.)
I was discussing this figure with Paul Burns on another thread a couple of days ago, and I came to the conclusion that although I dislike Lang PB is basically right that the big fella was fundamentally a 19th century radical liberal.
Too much is read into the Lang-Keating connection. For instance, it was a young Bob Carr who introduced the motion at that early seventies NSW Labor conference readmitting the BF to the ALP—funny how we never hear much about Carro being a Lang man.
I think the most interesting influence I’ve ever heard Keating admit to having was when he told Phillip Adams in an interview that he’d read all of Churchill’s writings as a teenager. Now that’s a lot of self-aggrandisement for a youngster to be exposed to.
Ando @ 11:
There were two Qld-born Prime Ministers betwixt Fisher and Rudd: Arthur Fadden (1940) and Frank Forde (1945).
Of course, such inconvenient facts have no place in commentariat bluster…
Rudd and his red brigade are all commies, Rudd said in an interview he is from ‘The Peoples Republic Of Queensland’ slip of the tongue?? sooner he goes the better for Australia
Mark says:
Kevin’s “word on his perspective on economics” should be taken with a grain of salt because it changes depending on time and audience. As Costello put it before the 2007 election:
Lets look at his slippery forms of self-definition.
When he first came to prominence he declared “I am an old-fashioned Christian socialist”.
After he won the ALP leadership, speaking to Left-liberals in the Monthly, he castigated Howard’s free-market Brutopia which had so impoverished average people during the late nineties and early noughties.
Before the election, speaking to the mainstream in broadcast land he characterised himself an “economic conservative”.
After the GFC, again sermonising to his pet Left-liberals at the Monthly, he went beyond denouncing greed and latched onto financial marketeers.
Moving away from rhetoric to the facts on the economic ground, Rudd has bent over backwards to please and appease the owning and ruling class. He has
– cut income taxes on high earners
– done virtually nothing to hobble the grip of financiers on the real economy (apart from guaranteeing them against bank runs),
– thrown every kind of subsidy and tax-break at property owners and developers in order to drive up house prices and rents,
– larded the car industry with subsidies,
– ramped up the immigration market to drive down wages,
– riddled CPRS with loopholes for Big Coal and
generally acted like Santa Claus to everyone in a suit.
This is “Right-wing”" alright although it does not have a very great deal to do with Hayekian economic liberalism or free trade (except in commodified labor).
* Right-wing = establishing the high-status
Left-wing = empowering the low-status (the FHO scheme is probably Left-wing on that definition, but it has mainly acted to enrich vendors rather than empower emptors)
“I cannot quickly bring to mind what electorate Rudd represents in Queensland – but more to the point, I am not sure he can either.”
Kevin is my local member and he was *absolutely brilliant* at it. Still is, in some ways. True story: I have a mate who was out shopping in Morningside with his infant daughter earlier this year. He walked past Kevin’s office and saw the C*1 comcar out the front and thought ‘hey! I should go visit my local member!’ So he wanders in past security, unchallenged. “The Prime Minister’s a busy man” he’s told, but maybe he can get a photo is he can wait a few minutes. “I was hoping for a proper chat.” Can’t be done, he’s told, so he leaves and crosses the road, heading back to the shops.
A couple of minutes later, the security guard comes running over and tells him Kevin’s got a few minutes free if he’s still interested. So my mate ends up, to his utter disbelief, spending a bit over five minutes chewing the fat with Kevin about local issues (and comforting his daughter, who didn’t like the look of Big Kev at all).
d
Y’know I hafta agree with Jack somewhat above. Kev’s done what every Aus PM does,regardless of party affiliation or personal ideology, when faced with a economic crisis. Throw money at everyone, suck up to big business and ask every lobby group how they can help and vice versa.
And this approach seems to have worked pretty well over the last hundred years. We’re still here and looking pretty damn svelte by comparison with most of our G20 peers.
Darryl Rosin@24: great little story, glad to hear it, and forgive my throw-away line…. As I understand it, Howard as PM was nothing like this in his local electorate, except around election time of course!
Nabakov Nov 24th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Thats more or less right, “events dear boy, events” as Macmillan once remarked about what was driving policy.
But the phase of the business cycle positively correlates to the ideological valency of policy.
Thus when times are tough governments tend to lurch Right, pampering special interests and cracking down on the powerless. eg early Fraser, early Hawke.
When times are good governments tend to sprawl to the Left, throwing money around members of the general public like a drunken sailor on shore leave. eg early Whitlam, late Howard
Nabakov says:
Things work well for us because we washed up on a bountiful island and we were made of the Right Stuff in what passed for the good old days: Caucasian race, Christian religion and Constitutional regent. The people and their leaders have also had the good sense to stay loyal to powerful imperial allies (UK/US) and cultivate booming trading partners (JAP/PRC).
Things may still go well enough for us if we ditch those key aspects of our traditional identity.
But it just wont be the same.