At Eureka Street, John Warhurst has written a piece about Tony Abbott, Santamaria and the Liberal Party. The illustration (reproduced below) is interesting for all sorts of reasons:
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/03/abbott-pope1.jpg"
The article Tony Abbott penned for the Weekend Australian colour magazine is still online at his website, accompanied by an intriguing justification of the circumstances which prompted him to write it:
I was initially quite hesitant about accepting The Weekend Australian Magazine’s invitation to write about the Pope’s visit to Australia for World Youth Day. For one thing, a “Captain Catholic” reputation is supposed to be bad for my political prospects. For another, as revealed by a well-publicised youthful romance, I’m more than capable of breaking the church’s rules. But on reflection, this papal visit seemed a rare chance to have Australians focus on the things that really count.
I doubt Abbott would pose today so piously holding a picture of Pope Benedict, his head apparently haloed, with eyes uplifted to heaven, and not just because the Pontiff is in the news for all the same wrong reasons that marked his Australian visit [see LP's coverage here]. Similarly, I wouldn’t expect Abbott to rush into print in 2010 to defend Benedict on the question of his responsibility for the victims of clerics who commit crimes of child sexual abuse.
He’s probably more aware now that “a ‘Captain Catholic’ reputation is supposed to be bad for [his] political prospects”. Despite his allegedly spontaneous outbursts about his daughters’ virginity, homosexuality, and all the rest, he’s sought to downplay his religion, arguing that the questions put to him ought also to be put to Kevin Rudd. He suggests he has civic or public reasons for interventions such as his veto on RU486, or his musings as Health Minister over the number of abortions, or the characterisation of some of his initiatives as designed to prevent terminations of pregnancy.
I’m not so sure, though, that Abbott’s ‘Captain Catholic’ persona as a rising politician was all that unwelcome, or indeed, unplanned. It was, whatever you think about his sincerity and his intentions, undoubtedly part of the way he crafted a distinctive political image. His faith, along with his equally publicised devotion to John Howard and The Queen, assisted him to distinguish himself from the pack of junior Liberal ministers in the late 1990s. It may be, now, that he’d prefer that back story to remain just there, in the background, able to be summoned up with a hint or two so as to play to conservative Catholic (and Protestant) voters. But this takes us full circle to the questions Warhurst raises over the Liberal Party and political Catholicism.
Writing of Abbott’s associations with the continuing tradition of The Movement and B.A. Santamaria, Warhurst states:
Other current politicians have connections through their parents and through its residue in party and union politics. But no one else has ties as deep as Abbott, who stresses the closeness of his association with Santamaria, his personal inspiration and mentor from school days onwards.
Abbott joined the Sydney University Democratic Club, supported by Santamaria’s National Civic Council, before he moved on to the Liberals. Abbott often reflects on the consequences of this period, including the rise of Catholic Liberals. He has been known to observe enigmatically that the DLP is alive and well within his party.
Abbott has personified church ties with politics through his relationship with the man he has called his confessor, Cardinal George Pell. In the past the relationship of Catholics with their church authorities has contributed to Protestant distrust. And the Liberal Party has been deeply Protestant in its composition and beliefs.
As Malcolm Fraser recalls in his recent memoirs, when he asked his parents what was wrong with Catholics he was told ‘Well, they are different. They are not Australians; they owe their loyalty to the Pope.’
The transfer of Catholic allegiance from Labor to the Liberals at the parliamentary level has been the most dramatic shift in Australian politics over the past 50 years. The astounding numbers have attracted attention, but many questions have been left unanswered about the impact of their arrival on the party. Has the transfer shaped the Liberals, matters of life-and-death morality like euthanasia and abortion aside?
Warhurst goes on to discuss Abbott’s own answers to those questions, delivered as part of his Sir Philip Lynch Memorial Lecture, delivered in 2004. His notes for that speech are also still available on his website.
Despite gesturing in that speech to B.A. Santamaria’s legacy, Abbott’s desire to put some distance between himself and that interpretation of Catholic tradition is in evidence in the way yesterday’s address on the economy has been interpreted.
Warhurst concludes:
The second question is whether Abbott is a one-off or represents a larger group of Catholic Liberals. There are certainly enough other senior Catholic Liberals, like Joe Hockey, Kevin Andrews and Andrew Robb, to make a difference if they constitute a distinctive and coherent group. But in fact there are as many different types of Catholic Liberals as there are Labor sub-factions. They are on all sides of the party.
Nevertheless you can’t change the demographics of a political party as much as the Liberals have changed without ultimately questioning aspects of party philosophy.
He’s right there, or at least partly, because I wouldn’t want to jump so far down the track into what the actual sociological significance of such a “transfer of allegiance” means for both Liberal parliamentarians and voters, because a large part of the story of that same transfer is the decline in the significance of religion as a variable structuring voting behaviour and political cleavages.
What I think is important is that Abbott’s brand of political Catholicism is a distinct tradition, which by no means all Catholics in the Liberal Party (and Hockey and Turnbull are good examples) would have been socialised into, let alone been so inclined to pay so much tribute to over the course of their political lives.
In his ambiguous inheritance of the Santamaria heritage, Abbott is actually much closer to Bob Katter and Barnaby Joyce and others in or formerly in the Queensland Nationals (into which large elements of the DLP and the National Civic Council moved in the 1970s) than to those Liberals for whom Catholicism is largely a private faith. B.A. Santamaria, by contrast, was not – in any meaningful sense – an advocate of the separation of church and state. And he was certainly opposed to the secularisation of Australian culture, an opposition which has some resonances in Tony Abbott’s writing about Pope Benedict and his closeness to Cardinal George Pell. That’s where the real force behind the question about Abbott’s inability to distinguish between faith and politics lies; despite all the obfuscation about Rudd’s religiosity or Action Man’s ‘woman problem’. Rudd’s public evocation of a religious persona is a thoroughly modern (nay, postmodern) piece of symbolism. For Rudd, it’s much more about presenting himself as appealing to a sort of ideal type of trustworthiness and social solidity, rather than a pitch solely to religious or socially conservative voters.
Abbott’s Catholicism hearkens back to a much older tradition in Australian political culture, born of sectarian antagonisms, and an overweening ambition to impose a particular social and moral economy on the unwelcoming terrain of Anglo-Australian Protestant soil. There’s no direct line of apostolic succession, but his antecedents in the NCC and DLP milieu are hardly insignificant. To that degree, that’s why the fact that he is a Catholic matters, and why it doesn’t matter all that much that Andrew Robb or Malcolm Turnbull is (or that Kevin Rudd was).
And that’s what Tony Abbott would have us forget.
Update: Now crossposted at the ABC’s The Drum Unleashed.
Bernard Salt’s theory is that atheism plays well in inner-city electorates, but Big C Catholicism is what plays well in the outer suburbs.
Catholics vs Non-Believers
[the linked text has been edited to provide a useful description ~tigtog]
Good piece. John was a lecturer of mine back in the day!
I think the other, really intriguing thing about the transfer of the catholic hierarchy over to the Liberal party, is that – by all reasonable measures available – it has not been accompanied by a shift in catholic voters to any large, or even arguably discernible degree (i.e. they are still, last I checked, to be more Labor voting than Liberal). I think this highlights the capability of the public to think in more than one dimension. I have long felt that Abbott’s catholicism is neither the booster he pretends it to be, nor a millstone dragging him down.
@1, Terry, I don’t think much of most of Bernard Salt’s theories. I know a bit about suburban Catholicism, btw!
@2 – cheers, Patrick. Warhurst is a clever fella!
Just on the question of political sociology, evidence from the AES and other such studies tends to show that the number of voters who can be swayed by religion or so-called “social issues” sits somewhere between 1 and 3% of the electorate. And many of them are in safe rather than marginal seats that further dilutes their impact.
You’re right, patrickg, to suggest that Labor generally still gets a bigger proportion of the Catholic vote, but religion structures voting behaviour to a much smaller degree than it once did, and most Catholics (and more so Protestants) are such only residually to greater or lesser degree. To some degree the effect found very strongly in the US where regular church attenders break more to conservative parties exists (more among Protestants than Catholics here), but it’s much weaker as a variable than in the US. Australian politics is, to a degree, residually structured by sectarian cleavages, but it’s part of the cultural architecture rather than something that actually changes votes on the whole.
That’s what annoys me about characters like Salt. In typical marketing fashion, they’re always keen to come up with faux-typologies (outer suburban values voters, whatevs) and almost always ignore the evidence on what switches votes. Many of the sets of attitudes or dispositions are more in the mind of Salt or Hugh Mackay than reflecting the most important facets of particular individuals and groups’ cultural identities. The story from the much more rigorous social science research is that public opinion is mostly fairly static and structured by habit and underlying partisan and other identifications. In other words, it’s a fairly boring story compared to all the “Gosh! Wow!” searches for aspirationals, Values Voters, Soccer Mums, Ute Men and all that crap. But of course all that crap is what enables Salt et al to make a ton of dosh consulting and giving talks to corporates. There’s not so much money in articulating social scientific truths!
The fact that from the point of view of political behaviour, we live in a very secularised society, is also a boring truth that should be taken into account by those who are often concerned, from the left, to greatly overstate the impact of religion on politics in this country!
Its a good post Mark, and sorry to toss the Salt at you. Warhurst’s piece is a good one, not least on capturing the absence of a singular Catholic political archetype on either side of politics.
This is a story where NSW features very strongly. To the best of my knowledge, 8 of the last 10 NSW premiers have been Catholics, with only Neville Wran and Nathan Rees not fitting the bill. Interestingly, all of the Liberal premiers – Askin, Greiner, Fahey – were Catholics, and the pattern won’t be broken if Barry O’Farrell trumps Kristina Keneally in 2011.
I genuinely dont understand both parties mania for courting the christian vote. If I put ted Bundy in a cossack it doesnt make him a nice chap.
To put it bluntly public professions of faith are a negative in my book, it should be private.
@5, cheers, Terry! Like I said Salt pushes my buttons. Better taken in small doses!
I agree that there’s a story in NSW about the relatively greater switch of Catholic pollies into the Libs (compared to the Nats in Queensland, as I said) – and it’s historically related to the weakness of the DLP in that state because there really wasn’t much of a Labor split.
Mark, do you think we pay more attention to Liberal Catholics than Labor ones for historical reasons? For example, Stephen Conroy’s Internet censorship campaign is not linked to his religion.
Terry @5
I’m pretty sure Bob Carr is not a Catholic. (I suppose in a sense he is easily forgotten, but he does hold the record for longest serving NSW Premier!)
Sam, interesting with Carr. I think I assumed he was Catholic because he’s certainly from the Labor Catholic milieu: Keating, Brereton, Richo etc.
Neville Wran was widely rumoured to be a Freemason.
“If I put ted Bundy in a cossack”
You’d have a very tolerate Cossack.
Tony Abbott could be a bloody Confucian and he’d still be a disaster for the Liberal Party.
Actually, Gummo, “Confusion” describe Abbott fairly well …
@8 – Perhaps so, Terry. But maybe when they present themselves as closer to the working class Catholic type – eg. no one ever remarked much about Greiner’s Catholicism, but I recall it being mentioned with Fahey – because he supposedly had a more knockabout blokey style – League rather than Union, smoking ciggies and drinking beer, etc.
Just on your list, though – Askin’s Australian Dictionary of Biography entry says he was nominally Anglican and married a Methodist, and I’m pretty sure Carr is an agnostic.
http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A170037b.htm
I’m also not sure that Conroy’s internet campaign isn’t somehow linked to his religion, but you’re right that it doesn’t rate much of a mention. He’s definitely close to the ex-NCC trend in the Victorian unions/ALP.
What was distinctive about Carr when he was coming up through the ranks of the NSW Right was that he wasn’t a Catholic.
Speaking of non Catholics, I don’t think Askin was one, and neither were his successors Tom Lewis and Eric Willis. So in the past 45 years, NSW has has had 5 Catholic Premiers (Unsworth, Greiner, Fahey, Iemma and Keneally) but between them they’ve served only 12 years in office.
But that may be for reasons contingent on the readmission of the ex-NCC unions into the ALP, and the alignment of some Labor pollies (in Queensland too, in the 80s, particularly in the AWU) with the “Industrial Action Fund” which was the NCC splinter group that disclaimed Santamaria and sought to buddy up with Hawke from the early 80s onwards. There were also influences from internal ACTU politics in the 70s. Some of this stuff is not well documented, but there’s a big vested interest within the ALP and the Labour movement in not reopening some very bitter controversies.
So the Shoppies tend to be the only overt representatives of the former DLP-sters who really rate much of a mention for socially conservative Catholicism when it comes to discussion of Labor politics.
Bob Carr’s agnostic.
“Tony Abbott could be a bloody Confucian and he’d still be a disaster for the Liberal Party.”
Well, he’s sure confusin me…boom, boom. Right. I’ll go away now and yes it was poor.
@14 – Yeah, Sam, that makes Greiner the first Liberal Catholic Premier. We haven’t had a non-Labor Catholic Premier in Queensland, or for that matter, a Labor Catholic Premier since the Split. I’m discounting Anna Bligh, because though she was baptised a Catholic and went to Catholic primary schools, she’s not professed a religious belief since she was at Uni, or perhaps a little before.
There have long been Catholics in the Federal Liberal Party, men like Tom Hughes and Phil Lynch. But they were rare enough for it to rate a mention. This was in the days when sectarianism was still a big deal. Nowadays Catholics follow their ideology into whatever party best suits.
“So the Shoppies tend to be the only overt representatives of the former DLP-sters who really rate much of a mention for socially conservative Catholicism when it comes to discussion of Labor politics.”
And they are still a pretty big influence over the party, though more in some states than others. I don’t think there is much doubt that Conroy’s position on web-filtering is related to his private religious views. Santamaria is still a hero to many irish catholic members of Labor Unity in South Australia.
The biggest difference between a Conroy and an Abbott is their views on the role of unions and the state in the economy, and to a lesser extent their willingness to compromise on social policy. Indeed, those are the lines the socially conservative catholic vote (or socially conservative political activists) have split along.
Another reason for the breakdown in the importance of the catholic/protestant split as an explanator of voting patterns, other than the broader secularisation of Australian society, is changing migration patterns. The Australian population just looks vastly different to how it did even 40 years ago. Catholics in Australia now come from a much broader range of national and ideological backgrounds than was once the case.
Mark, there has been one non-Labor Catholic Premier of Queensland since the Split, Mike Ahearn.
@21, thanks for the correction, Sam!
I suspect that the fact that political junkies like Terry and me are getting it wrong might be an indication that most of the time it doesn’t matter so much!
@20 –
Also, LO, the lines along which the NCC aligned unions split with Santamaria in the early 80s. Though I think Abbott is more of a statist in terms of political economy than those currently running the campaign to distinguish him from Santa (incredibly, including Gerard Henderson) make out.
Oh, and good point about the diversification of the Catholic lay population.
Frankly I doubt that.
The rise of the allegiance of white collar workers to the ALP since 1960 was essential for the survival of the ALP as an electoral force, given the de-industrialisation of Australia dating from about 1974.
Certainly many Catholics, both practising and nominal, have shifted their votes to the Libs. I would suggest that this shift reflects their perception of their economic interests in an increasingly atomised world where careers are dependent upon talent rather than sectarian, tribal associations.
Toward the end of his life Santamaria told me personally that he would never vote for the Liberal Party. At the time it struck my ears as an anachronistic, nostalgic harking back to a long dead world of sectarian tribalism.
@24, yes, Katz, I think Warhurst overstates the case there, so I intimated some reservations in the post. It’s more a story, as I was saying @4, of a rapid decline in the influence of religion and sectarianism in structuring political behaviour, and concomitantly, of the break out of Irish Catholics from their working class and public service redoubts from the 60s onwards, stripping sectarianism of its economic force.
That’s precisely why it’s not that important that Hockey or Robb is a Catholic, and the fact that it is important that Andrews and Abbott are certain types of Catholics is because their political Catholicism is redolent of a much older tradition from a time when sectarianism did have much more ideological force. Though its decline as a political and economic factor is why they’re Liberals.
I see Abbott as a genuine ultramontane, which is a tradition that is related to, but transcends, Irish, populist, fenian Catholicism, which was the dominant political form of Catholicism until the mass immigrations of European Catholics, beginning in the late 1940s.
That’s interesting, Katz. I wonder whether his closeness to his Jesuit mentors has anything to do with that. I think you’re right to distinguish between that sort of Ultramontanism and the more tribal Catholicism of the Irish stamp. That’s also why George Pell is not really Daniel Mannix’ spiritual son, and why he doesn’t fit Sydney Catholicism all that well. Too much Romanitas. Mannix never really gave a fig for what Rome said, except insofar as it suited him.
Abbott has a strong intellectual streak to his make-up.
It is hard to imagine Abbott not being impressed by the scope and sweep of the counter-reformation, especially the circumstances of the Second Spring associated with the return of a Catholic hierarchy to England after 1850.
Pius IX’s strictures against modernism form the bedrock of Abbott’s social views.
Katz,
Do you think that an ALP left led by Julia etc would bring back many disenchanted catholics to the ALP – the ones who think women are equal in all respects, who think the Church failed them and especially children, and are looking for a line to be drawn on Church power and influence in the ALP and certain unions? Its a theory that I , with great reluctance, have started to give greater thought. I made a remark on the other thread on the LNP which is not dissimilar – mea culpa.
Mark wrote:
Well, maybe. But it seems as if the lobbying industry for the various church groups and their associated charities have a disproportionate ability to get to the ear of our political elites – Howard and the Brethren, Costello and Hillsong, Abbott and himself, plus the seemingly never ending stream of Labor ministers who appear on Q&A and start blabbering about their beliefs (most egregiously Tony Burke, the hapless Garrett, Rudds church door weekly photo etc).
Are they misguided on the effect of these very public professions of belief? It irritates the bajingo out of me personally, but I’m not much of a sample size.
@30 – Ute Man, I think there are two things going on, which are related:
(1) Pollies themselves may not know or believe the sorts of findings from the AES etc. if noisy religious lobbies can demonstrate that they are able to inspire lots of phone calls, emails, etc; and/or mobilise donations, people power for how to votes, leaflets, etc.
(2) Pollies tend not to like criticism from Church groups.
But I think the electoral weight of this is largely illusory. The only time it may have been important is when the Catholic Church threw its weight against the GST in the 93 election. But that is also overstated. I’d also note that by no means all of the Family First vote is from religious, or particularly religious people.
Fascinated, I’d tentatively suggest that it depends upon the nature of the disenchantment that you allude to.
Here are the forms of disenchantment I can think of. There may well be others.
Doctrinal disenchantment, where the theological and/or cosmological claims of the church are perceived to lose credibility.
Experiential disenchantment, where the personnel and/or the institutions of the church are perceived to be inadequate to the task of making good on its commitments to its adherents.
Communal disenchantment, where adherents are perceived to fail in the task of creating and maintaining a sustaining lay community.
Each of these different kinds of disenchantment is likely to stimulate different kinds of apostacy and therefore different political effects.
OK – I have another question that I’m not sure is easy to answer.
I don’t recall religion being an issue for politicians from as far back as I can remember up to about (maybe) 1994 and Howard, but I’m kinda inclined not to trust my recollection (with the noted exception of B.A Santamaria appearing on the TV just before the footy on Sunday and the nutty old guy in NSW politics whose name i forget, but I digress).
Because I don’t remember it as an issue except on the fringe, and I’m not really old enough at 42 to recall any sectarianism in normal life, I largely tagged the phenomenon as a US imported bit of marketing fluff that was being trial run by the well organised Liberal campaign to tone down Howards nastier leanings.
Now, is this recollection incorrect? Or is it a lasting legacy of that era? Because Abbott (as in the linked article) doesn’t fit the US imported “moral majority” persona of Howards lapsed methodism (or Fielding for that matter) that really suits that style of religious politics, so it seems like something Abbotts handlers would be keen to play down. It seems that the pulpit thumping, baptist style (for want of a better expression) moralising won’t fit him.
I am sort of with Ute Man. Being anti-gay, anti-abortion is not just a Catholic thing. It’s also an old-fashioned mainstream thing. The beauty of it is that old-fashioned bigots won’t necessarily side with Abbott even though they agree with his social values. They will be predisposed against him simply because he is a Mick.
Nil all draw. There is no electoral value in political Catholicism.
@43 – Ute Man, I’m 42 as well, so we’re in a good position to compare recollections.
I can certainly recall the social and cultural legacy of sectarianism – our parish priest forbidding us as primary school students to attend Christmas Carols in the shopping centre because they were ‘Protestant’, the continuing belief when I did a year in the state public service in 1985 that some departments were Catholic and others ‘Mason’, and that if your name was John Patrick Kelly you were going somewhere in the first and nowhere in the second; stories of the splits within the police force and the bar, claims that Joh’s appointments to the judiciary against the tradition of seniority were motivated by anti-Catholicism.
And later tales from a girlfriend’s mum about signs in boarding houses saying ‘No Irish’ and ‘No Catholics Need Apply’ in job ads, and a realisation that some suburbs in Brisbane that had a traditionally Catholic majority had pubs, while others were drinking place free due to the long influence of ‘local option’ licencing referenda as a compromise between the Micks and the Wowsers.
But it had definitely gone subterranean in politics; though the influence of the NCC in student politics and the Catholic factions in the Labor right and the unions was very much in evidence from the inside when I was a uni student in the ALP.
Some decades on, it’s also not that difficult for me to discern a lot of Protestant tropes lurking in the language of politics and disputation, in some areas that others may find unlikely. Normative White Australian culture is still very much shaped by its Protestant foundations, so it needs distance from that (and a good bit of analytical work) to perceive what becomes invisible because dominant.
But, yep, I think Abbott’s brand of political religion does have distinctly Australian Catholic antecedents, and it would be interesting to do a nuanced comparison between it and the US religious right.
Just on the points made @30 and @34, I think that the value that a pollie like Kevin Rudd derives from popping up at the Mary Mackillop shrine or being interviewed outside the Canberra Anglican Church on Sundays is an appeal to a more generalised social conservatism (or even to an ideal type of same which appeals to those who are at best Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funeral churchgoers). It’s sending a message which is about much more than religiosity.
In Tony Burke’s defence, incidentally, he could hardly have avoided talking about his own religious beliefs on a Q&A programme framed around Richard Dawkins. I don’t think he makes a habit of it.
The Mad Abbott is reported to be taking acting lessons to soften his image as a head-kicking hoon. It is therefore important that all progressive bloggers, when commenting on mainstream sites, remind readers of his aggressive ways and violent demeanour. Remember, he was once thrown out of Parliament for shaping up to punch a Labor Member. Then there’s the attacks on Bernie Banton, swearing at a lady, Nicola Roxon, on telly, and his aggressive turns of phrase, for example: “take the fight up to the government”; “Battlelines” etc.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/tony-abbott-gets-an-acting-coach-to-help-soften-his-public-image/story-e6frea6u-1225848248503
Acting lessons! It’s not Authentic Abbott; it’s Phony Tony.
Guy Rundle on Abbott at The Stump:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2010/04/01/save-a-space-in-the-sepulchre-abbott-is-85-over/
Interesting choice of included article headlines there, too. With a headline for Natascha Kampusch’s eight and a half year ordeal “I’m no victim” and without the article to qualify it, one could speculate wildly on the message being put accross by the editors, with the idea that sexual extremes leave “no victim”‘s, and a politically protected (connected) Pope as an interesting mix of possibilities. Unfortunate coincidence of course, editors don’t apply any real thought to the planning of their front pages.
Thanks Mark.
That Guy Rundle article is bonkers. I can’t see his last paragraph making any sense at all – trying to revive the successes of Thatcherism by elevating Abbott out of desperation? The two couldn’t be further apart in character or motivation. The Iron Lady’s quiet determination to crush the world in her balled fists to suit her image vs. Abbotts righteous wrecking ball.
My latest theory is that Abbotts elevation was an accident of numbers, that Minchin screwed up in an attempt to drag Turnbull further to the right. That’s the real reason he went home sulking – he realised that he’d forever ruined his last chance at getting back into government.
Mark is correct. Abbott and the main tendency of the US (protestant) religious right have taken different paths to the same social philosophy.
As I suggested recently on another thread, however, they are still worlds apart from each other on theological and cosmological questions. It takes considerable self-restraint from both streams of religious conservatism to succumb to the temptation to go for each other’s throats.
It is only the existence of a powerful secularist, liberal, progressive common enemy that prevents another episode of the 17th century wars of religion from breaking out between Catholic and protestant fundamentalist right-wingers.
You win one internetz!
It is a massive stepdown when it is necessary to use macho persona, religeous connection perception, popularist argument, and outright deception in order to win (attempt to win) an election. This should ring loud warning bells in everyone’s mind as being tactics of a con man. Cast your mind around the world to the countries where these methods have been successfully employed and to the political and economic outcomes. I would expect the business sector alone to coerce Abbott aside in their own profit driven self interest, or perhaps he has been prejudged to fail, and therefore no real risk.
Guess this is my cue to expatiate on the insignificance of religion as a guiding force in Aussie life and politics.
Except for the sectarian 1950s (approximate dates) from which we see a carry-over with the present, i would say muted influence of ultra-Christians on the body politic as lobbying groups,both of which I consider an abnormality rather than the norm, I would suggest that right from 1788 up to now, Australians have been, quite properly, given the American experience, been suspicious of politics and religion combining. The reasons go back to early settlement. The Anglican Church and other churches were seen by the vast majority of convicts and their offspring as either the oppressor because it was an arm of state oppression, intended to instil obedience to authority; or as a Protestant Church opposed to Australian Irish Catholicism. Early authority figures, though they were prepared to use the Church, distrusted religion, a distrust which grew out of the perception of the American Revolution being inspired by dissident clergy. This early distrust, even dislike of religion, carried on into future generations of Australians, in much the same way as we used to accept, and possibly still do accept that it is the role of government to care for the people, mainly in the provision of infrastructure that keeps the country functioning economically (railways, roads, bridges,protection from the excesses of banks, control of the airways, and at one stage, shipping) and even social welfare, whether it was the state reun susso, or the federal social security system introduced as a result of a determination that the suffering of the Great Depression would never be allowed to re-occur.
Its one of the explanations as to why we are such a determinedly and happily a secular society.
I’m with what I think may be the consensus here – cannot see anything in religion for either side. Not one person I know ever discusses the intersection of religion and politics.
By the way, I just checked centrebet, and Labor are $1.30 for the federal election. Reckon that’ll blow out to $1.10 by the time we get there.
Just on a slight, yet relevant, tangent. I live in Melbourne Ports, which has a comparatively high Jewish population and is represented by Michael Danby who, I think, is the only Jewish Federal Parliamentarian.
Last election, the local newspapers made a great fuss that the Libs had also chosen a Jewish candidate and that doing this was essential for electoral success. I found this astounding. Previous to Danby, Melbourne Ports had been represented for years by Clyde Holding And Frank Crean. For all these years, there’d been a high Jewish population. No change there, as far as I could see. It’s the only time in which I’ve seen religion play out so explicitly in a campaign.
Mark #32, if Graham Richardson (or someone like him) were taking part in this discussion he might put some variation of the argument he put in relation to the role of the gun control issue in the 1988 NSW State election. This was basically that polls, social attitude surveys, etc., showing that 85 per cent of voters wanted tougher guns laws did not disclose the fact that this 85 per cent consisted largely of reasonable people for whom gun control would be just one issue amongmany to be factored into their voting behaviour, whereas the other 15 per cent included people for whom the gun issue alone was enough to trigger (pardon the pun) a switch in their vote.
I have previously posted about the baleful influence of such ” one inch wide and a mile thick” constituencies.
Fine and Paul, yes, I agree.
Just on Fine’s point, Philip Mendes made some good sense on this issue in a debate prior to the 2007 Federal election. Regrettably I can no longer find the link, but what he wrote was:
Exactly, Paul Norton. I would expect people in Melbourne Ports (regardless of religious affiliation) to vote for the same wide variety of reasons as all other demographics.
As for your point @ 48 – this is why compulsory voting is a good idea.
Compulsory voting, eh?
Conversely, Paul, Israel/Palestine is the perfect issue in those electorates if you want to flood the Letters To The Editor pages with guff and completely derail the other side’s campaign with painful time-consuming bullshit.
See George Newhouse, Rose Jackson, and the 2007 election in Wentworth. Just mentioning the campaign around some people I know causes facial tics. And that’s before anyone says “Overington”.
Personally, I’m against compulsory voting, though I accept that such a move is not without its costs. I hate the idea of being forced to vote for some reactionary moron, so I vote informal.
As people know though I would want far more fundamental reform than mere voluntary voting.
Update: Now crossposted at the ABC’s The Drum Unleashed.
“Michael Danby who, I think, is the only Jewish Federal Parliamentarian.”
There’s also Mark Dreyfus.
I don’t know Dreyfus at all well (I know people well who know him well), but my understanding is that he’s not at all invested in zionism in the way Danby is.
“[Dreyfus is] not at all invested in zionism in the way Danby is.”
Well, who is?
I stand corrected, Sam.
Wilful, I know there’s a cost to compulsory voting. I think of it more as compulsory turning up to a polling booth and getting your name crossed off.
What a shame the piccie of Tone and Pope Ben did go with the crosspost Mark@55. It is a cracker.
Wilful #57, googling around I’ve found that Mark Dreyfus is broadly in agreement with Michael Danby on these matters, and has been on the editorial board of the Australia-Israel/Jewish Affairs Council, of which Danby has been a central figure. That said, it’s doubtful that anyone can claim to have been a more vigorous and high-profile pro-Israel activist than Michael Danby over the past 35 years.
“it’s doubtful that anyone can claim to have been a more vigorous and high-profile pro-Israel activist than Michael Danby over the past 35 years.”
Including Ariel Sharon.
Mark Dreyfus is a Labor Unity member, so while he might not be as vocal about it as Danby is, he’s probably a supporter of Israel.
Also on an unrelated note: “He has been known to observe enigmatically that the DLP is alive and well within his party.”
Enigmatically, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
@60 – yep, agreed, joe2!
I do feel that the traditional support given to the ALP by Catholics has declined. This I believe is partly because the ALP has largely abandoned its support for unions and workers, which was part of life for many working class Catholics in the past.
Secondly, I think a politically correct agenda pushed by sections of the ALP has emerged with strong anti family overtones. Even to non practising Catholics the family remains important and the ALP seems intent on attacking it and disparaging it apart from Rudd’s sickening “working families” rhetoric. So the reasons to vote ALP are not there. This is not a religious shift but a shift based on values which may be influenced by religion and the growing perception that the ALP has been hijacked by forces hostile to the family. This is shared across voters from other faiths too.
The Liberals have attracted some of this vote but their industrial relations policy and anti union attacks is a problem.
For me, I support a lot of what Tony Abbott says on social issues but am opposed to his antagonism to unions. I am wary of the Liberals support for big business even though Abbott is less in their pocket than your average Liberal politician. I am a strong supporter of much of what the DLP stands for – pro worker and pro family and will probably vote for them in the senate. I have a problem with their support for the US alliance though. The DLP actually has some very good social policies without the painful political correctness of the ALP. Here is a link to the DLP website.
http://www.dlp.org.au/
“I am a strong supporter of much of what the DLP stands for”
Well, buggar me. I would never have guessed.
Almost as shocking as Ricky Martin coming out.
Spana
Most families are just trying to keep afloat. Im afraid religion often plays a poor second, third or ninth because the “Churches” have lost their relevance, despite their heavy investment on donate a $ marketing (on TV and otherwise).
In a time when Popes can be subpoenad on matters related to alleged conspriracy, perjury and probable miscariage of Church (and other jurisdictional) justice, the average Australian family doesnt give a flying whatever. They just want to survive another week. The Pope and Cardinal Pell dont pay the rent or if they are lucky, the mortgage.
The ALP right has no doubt caught on to the fact that its traditional, intellectual base has, like Elvis, left the building. Relying on clever marketing campaigns, button pushers and heavies that ignoe all and sundry, will not save the Queen.
Happy Good Friday.
I’m glad to see this thread hasn’t become infested with sub-Hitchensonian rants. Teh performance atheists, perhaps they be learning that they aren’t integral to every single socio-religious discussion here?
To his credit Conroy and his wife have walked the walk in a way that Abbott never would—they had a child through a surrogate mother. That’s no small thing, and if it isn’t good proof that the senator is a post-DLP Catholic in the way his personal life actually impacts his political career, I don’t know what is.
I think the subtext of most attacks on Conroy vis-à-vis the net filter is that he is somehow unduly influenced by the churches. Apparently every civil libertarian knows in their hearts that this policy betrayal could never happen if, say, Penny Wong was the responsible minister. Tools (or merely cynics, pandering to a certain audience?)
Strange fact: Victorian Planning Minister Justin Madden had more social interaction with Santamaria than the Monk ever had, and yet Harry’s ideological project within the state ALP has been to recruit Kirstie Marshall and to try and recruit sports presenter Angela Pippos to run for parliament. Now there’s a couple of Emily’s List approved individuals if ever I saw any.
Anyway, whither the old Lyons Forum in the Liberal Party? I’ve been thinking that the ascension of Abbott must somehow be the revival of that ginger group, only under a different name. Is there any evidence of this?
We’ve sparred on this OT subject before, Katz, but I forget whether last time I raised the fact that part of your thesis is suspiciously like
DrWindschuttle’s Fraser era opus, ‘Unemployment: a social and political analysis of the economic crisis in Australia’.If you are trying to suppress free speech, it’s not going to work. Instead, these types of comments merely serve to provoke atheists such as myself. If it’s a religious stoush you want, it’s a religious stoush you’ll get, so I’ll make a modest start.
Easter is a time when normally intelligent people suspend reason and succumb to the irrational belief that a human being can come back from the dead. It has never happened, and it never will.
The only good thing about Good Friday is that it is a public holiday. The truly bad thing about Good Friday is the congestion it creates on roads where people are trying to get out of the city, and increases the likelihood of road fatalities. If non-Christians weren’t forced to observe this holiday period, our traffic conditions would be much improved.
We need to be discouraging people from using the roads in this manner. It increases fossil fuel consumption.
FWIW Mark a personal anecdote. My mother’s side of the family all were working-class Irish Catholics complete with tails of Depression-era privations, going hungry and truncated schooling.
Among my myriad great-aunts and uncles, I never detected their voting went along religious lines, but class lines. Most of them voted Labor for reasons that had nothing to do with Catholicism. A few of them voted Liberal for “aspirational” reasons ie. a kind of naive snobbery that saw them vote for the silvertails because some of them wanted to be silvertails too, some day. It was an identity vote not based on religion.
And being Catholic, my mother’s side of the family are numerous enough to be a statistically significant sample!
It’s Good Friday? I never met a bad Friday. Busy week for my family. Dad’s side being freed from bondage, Mum’s side celebrating the vicarious erasure of all humanity’s sins. Is Easter chocolate kosher for Pesach?
Your point being…
silkworm,
What about Dracula? transylvania’s built a tourist industry on him.
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, Paul. Tourists who travel to Transylvania to celebrate the Dracula festival, or whatever, kind of know that the Brad Stoker Dracula story is fictional. Christians who celebrate Easter on the other hand actually think that the resurrection story is fact, when it’s obvious to the reality-based community that it’s fictional as well.
Re resurrection. Well of course it’s ludicrous. But then so is the idea of a virgin being impregnated by a holy spirit.
However, as Donald Sutherland’s character Oddball said in the cult WW2 movie Kelly’s Heroes, “Have a little faith, Baby, have a little faith”.
silkworm,
If Vlad the Impaler was alive today ….
What are you going on about?
Who is taking the name of Dracula in vein????
Oh, wait, even better.
The passion of the Silkette on Good Friday.
Silky, given I’m stuck here eating fish and things that would make you vewy angwy, you out of all the mulberry leaf afficionados I know, could understand why would I look forward to Nickws returning to
nail your fleshy white extremities securely to some woodaddress your sewious concerns. Don’t riggle and it will be over quick. I’m going to watch Ghost Whiperer now.Happy Oestre sistahs!
Where did you develop your sick imagination? Oh that’s right, your blessed saviour is depicted this way at your local cult centre.
No, if I applaud a discussion that has turned to a sober analysis of demographics I am not the bleedin’ inquisition. I’m just a person who approves of the commenters here being able to write maturely about societal influences on the body politic without going into OT rants that dehumanise the whole thread.
Though I should blame myself for throwing out redmeat to the acknowledge-your-fake-god-is-my-oppressor tendency.
No, no, Casey, I’m merely a half-arsed Anglican who craves niceness and isn’t certain whether I should publicly commit to believing in the Resurrection. I don’t want to whip anyone or drive skewers through myself like those fellows in the Philippines are doing this weekend.
I can see where the reasonable atheists are coming from, though the unreasonable ones invariably take it too far. It’s almost too apt that someone like Silkworm should (unknowingly?) go ballistic against a milktoast Christian like myself, after all there is something of the intellectual self-destruct in being convinced your opposing point(s) of view must surely by tyranny.
There’s been an interesting discussion over the last few months in The Guaridan about what is regarded as the problem of militant atheism. One of the recent developments, illustrated by the massively well attended Atheist Conference in Melbourne with Dawkins as a “star” guest, is the rise of an apparent need by atheists to organise themselves as a poltical presence. This is undersatandable as a reaction, it appears, to the strengthening of fundamentalism in all the major monotheistic religions (I should add ploytheism given the rise of a specifically Hindu nationalism in India).
I read these developments as a type of pre-conflict positioning.
I’ve never had any problem with the Christian left and that is inclusive of all churches. Common front and aliance politics are highly informative about others and the Christian left is deserving of respect in my view. They aoften achieve internalisation and embodiment of the spirit of Jesus and are often loving and respectful which is a delightful type of person to be around.
As lifelong atheist I know nothing much of the Churches but, through study, something of religions. What religions have that atheism doesn’t is a unifying doctrinal statement against which the actual practices of atheists can be measured. One of the things that allows criticism of religions is that the institutional intentions of religions are discernable through text and statement, whereas atheism has nothing like that. Under those conditions atheistic elisions of moral and ethical obligations become hard if not impossible to detect in daily interaction.
Atheism also generally lacks a practice. Religion has practices: attendance at Church, study of a selected readings, participation in a community directed towards realising the intentions of the religion. I like, for example, the way that the Krishnas continue to feed people as a form of devotion. It is a practice.
Atheism has nothing like that. There is reading – Sartre, de Beauvoir, Gide, the astonishing Genet and myriad others. But none advocate a practice of atheism. That is, things that one does that indicate intentions and enfocr adherance to those intentions. Specfically, none identify a way to be atheist or an internal practice of inner being in accordance with the demands of atheism as you inhabit the world.
Except for what appears to be one of the most radical recent developments in human culture which is the current rennaiscance of Buddhism as it encounters the deeply embedded rationality of modernity in the West. This development develops an atheist and avowedly non-religious practice suited to the demands of modern subjectivity which is overwhelmingly individual rather than communal.
This project is being generally driven by the broad left as it seeks to remedy the failure of Marxism to address subjectivity and is a further development subsequent to the energising effect of the inclusion of Freudian understanding via the Maxism of the Frankfurt school.
I’ll let it go at that with pointers to Stephen Batchelor and Christopher Hitchens.