7095 posts, 309041 comments and counting since March 16, 2005; thanks to all my lovely fellow LP bloggers, commenters and readers!

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No doubt thousands of words will be written to commemorate it.

This is your opportunity to add even more!

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.

The anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse on September 15 will doubtlessly bring with it vast numbers of stories about what it all meant. It was, after all, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, a marker for the near collapse of the financial system and the trigger for government to pump trillions of dollars into economies to stave off another Great Depression.

So it might be an apposite moment to pause and reflect on how much has (and has not) changed. All the screeds about the demise of neo-liberalism, as I’ve observed on quite a number of occasions, seem to ignore the fact that the supposedly almighty markets have always relied on the government as saviour of last resort, and there’s nothing different qualitatively in the big bailout of 2008/9. Short term rhetoric and ideological point scoring aside, it’s just a fact that a capitalist system tightly interweaves the state and private actors.

It may well be, however, that there was a missed opportunity to reorient the current state of affairs globally in a more transformational fashion. But that is an opportunity the left lost, precisely because of a lack of confidence and an acceptance – at heart – of the whole “there is no alternative” mantra of neo-liberalism. Systemic alternatives, rather than Keynesian tinkering, simply weren’t on offer, and there were no social movements to mobilise for them anyway in most OECD countries.

That’s starkly illustrated in a rather nifty piece by Andy Beckett in The Guardian.

Burchell claims that Woodstock “was little more than three wearisome, mud-soaked days of musical chaos”, citing the Wall Street Journal‘s music critic, surely itself an oxymoronic title. Apparently blind to the symbolic dimension of popular culture, Burchell blithely ignores the fact that the entire discourse of the culture wars is founded on the symbolic distribution of cultural value. An anthropologist would have no trouble recognising it for what it is – myth-making.

Tu quoque.

Update: Tim Dunlop.

There has been a certain feeling in the air of deja vu over the past fortnight in Queensland. The jailing of a former Minister, allegations that government was far too close to business, a government sinking rapidly in the polls while making “tough decisions” and, the piece de resistance, the exposure of systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police.

The timing of this sequence of supposedly unlikely events was interesting. Much is being made of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fitzgerald Report. The date falls this Thursday, and Tony Fitzgerald QC himself will be commemorating the occasion with a public lecture at Griffith University.

So is something again rotten in the state of Queensland?

Lurid stories of convicted criminals wining, dining and bonking on dodgy day release jaunts supposedly to gather intelligence for the coppers dominated local press coverage. This a week after revelations of the jailed Gordon Nuttall’s bizarre plans to make himself premier — shades of Russ Hinze perhaps.

The reality, though, is more prosaic.

Premier Anna Bligh claimed that Nuttall’s sentencing and the CMC report into police misconduct were proof that the system was working. A new Queensland would shed light on the malfeasance of a few. A number of voices were raised to accuse Bligh of dangerous complacency.

There’s merit in that claim.

In truth, as veteran civil libertarian lawyer Terry O’Gorman argued, echoed by a chorus of retired judges, the impetus behind the anti-corruption agenda had begun to dissipate long ago. Landmarks were the amalgamation of the Crime Commission and the CJC into the CMC, and the practice of outsourcing inquiries into misconduct back to the departments concerned. The CMC conducts few investigations, and a huge majority of complaints against police are referred back to the QPS’ Ethical Standards Command. The watchers are watching themselves.

The CJC, and it successor, the CMC, have never been popular with pollies. Signs that the Fitzgerald agenda was being watered down go back to the Goss era. The cavalier practice of using the corruption watchdog as a pawn in the political chess game hasn’t helped matters. Nor has, some would suggest, the secrecy surrounding the CMC itself.

Openness and transparency are key to an ethical political — and police — culture. The Bligh government has taken some steps in this direction, but much could still be done. Fitzgerald pointed to the faults of a supine media in his report. In the two decades since, Brisbane’s print landscape has narrowed to one paper, the Courier-Mail, whose tabloidisation is mirrored by the current affairs coverage on ABC Local Radio. The state based 7.30 Report has long gone, and there’s no new Quentin Dempster to put the pollies and coppers under the microscope. Brisbane media over the last fortnight has concentrated on the sensational aspects of the scandalous revelations at the expense of hard-headed analysis and investigative reporting.

That probably won’t change.

So it’s even more important that Bligh and her government ditch the soundbites which appear to come naturally to a government on the ropes and attend to the culture of complacency that has grown up. We don’t need another Fitzgerald Inquiry — things aren’t that bad. But we do need some serious thought and analysis about opening up the Queensland political and police cultures, and about reform of the CMC itself.

It’s quite astonishing that the public figure who yesterday pointed out that the deadline for Kevin Rudd’s response to ideas from his 2020 summit had quietly come and gone was Peter Costello.

Naturally, Costello has his own agenda. But where were the summiteers themselves? Do none of them care that their ideas have come to nought?

Recall, if you will, the atmosphere a year ago.

In April 2008, the best and brightest burned with summit fever. The invitees boasted in their newspaper columns and radio shows about the size of their ideas. Those who hadn’t made the cut trawled desperately through Wonka Bars for a Golden Ticket. There were debates about whether sufficient women were going and whether the date, on a religious holiday, excluded Jews. Kevan Gosper worried that sportsmen didn’t have a big enough say, Tim Fischer drummed up support in the bush, and The Age ran a competition through which John and Jane Average could win the right to mingle with their betters.

Every country town celebrated its local representatives; every university pumped out press releases boasting about the academics who’d be on board. There was even a youth summit for the kiddies.

Was holding a policy at an invite-only event rather than, say, an election just a teensy bit, well, undemocratic? Hush your mouth, you nay-saying cynic! Wasn’t it a little unlikely — in fact, downright impossible — that this galaxy of celebrities would arrive at consensus on a zillion contentious issues in a single weekend? But… but … but … Cate Blanchett! With a baby!

Back then, the left-liberal consensus was almost total. Why, unlike that mean John Howard, our new PM wanted to listen! After eleven years in the cold, the intelligentsia would be back in the tent, singing happily along with Hugh Jackman.

Here’s how The Age reported the event’s culmination:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been given a standing ovation by the 1,002 delegates to the Australia 2020 Summit in Parliament House.

The summiteers rose to their feet as Mr Rudd received the two-day talkfest’s final report from summit co-chair Glyn Davis.

“This has been a very Australian gathering,” Mr Rudd told the closing session.

“Can you think of another country in the world where this could happen?”

“I think the reason it’s worked … is because it’s been characterised by a whole lot of good humour, a whole lot of mutual respect, and a whole lot of very classical, undeniable Australian directness.”

Might not some of that classical, undeniable Australian directness be now put to asking what the hell has happened?

Sure, the more serious of the summiteers didn’t necessarily expect immediate decisions on their pet issues but they bigged up 2020 on the basis that it would provoke ongoing discussion. Well, the most popular topic last April was the republic. Heard much about that lately?

Here’s Kevin Rudd on 18 April, 2008. “What we’ve committed to as a Government is by year’s end to respond to each of the ideas put forward by each of those working groups for Government to consider. And I’ve said that by year’s end, we’ll say what we can embrace and why, and what we can’t and why.”

Or, on the other hand, we won’t.

It often seems like the left-liberal intelligentsia (the people at whom 2020 was pitched) have only two speeds: graze and stampede. Last year, everyone enthused about the summit; this year, no-one — other than Peter Costello — bothers about the government’s response.

Yes, the GFC has come; yes, priorities have shifted.

Nonetheless, accountability still matters. If we don’t hold politicians to their promises, can we blame them for lying to us?

More than that, what does the whole episode say about our political culture? In 2008, the public was assured that tremendously important discussions were taking place, in an event so significant that only the best and brightest could go. Today, the best and brightest seem magisterially indifferent to the whole business. Is it any wonder that so many ordinary Australians pay no attention to public life?

[It] might also be a good idea to take some sort of stock on how the whole “Bridging the Gap” thing is going – almost a year after the Apology. Debate on Indigenous issues appears to have gone into cold storage recently. Although it’s a good thing if Indigenous people are no longer being used as partisan footballs, conversely if we’ve all decided to sit on our bums in a permanent warm glow after the Apology, that’s not a good thing at all.

While it’s probably understandable that the combination of bushfires and the economic crisis and stimulus package kerfuffle have pushed Indigenous matters out of the media spotlight this week, that’s nevertheless deeply disappointing. Props, though, to organisations like SBS which have taken the trouble to highlight the anniversary of the Apology and to interview a range of Indigenous people each night on the news. But, bushfires, Senate shenanigans and the media cycle aside, I think the comments I was making back in January do suggest that “Closing the Gap” has largely fallen off the political agenda, at least in terms of what’s highlighted publicly. So I’m pleased to see Professor Jon Altman reporting in Crikey today on how much progress is or isn’t being made. Go read!

It can also be interesting to compare first term governments at this stage of the electoral cycle, and here the obvious contrast – despite all the media beatups – is the absence of major scandal and ministerial resignations compared to both the Hawke and Howard governments. That doesn’t, of course, imply that all the Labor ministers are fabulous, but it is worth observing.

One of the things that’s interested me in the discussion that had already began quite a while before we reached the actual milestone is that in both comments on this blog and in conversations with some friends I’ve seen the sentiment expressed that simply avoiding hearing a daily litany of horrors from the Howard crew is Rudd’s greatest achievement. It might, and no doubt will, be objected that – “lefties would say that, wouldn’t they?” But I think there are a couple of points here. First, there is no doubt that a government with a more humanitarian tinge and an appreciation of propriety and ethics is to be welcomed, and that sentiment – along with the promise keeping – will be a contributor to Labor’s continuing lead in the polls. Secondly, I think The Howard Years has been interestingly timed to stimulate some comparison and to reinforce the whole sense of relief that we don’t have that turgid mob to kick around any more.

But, again, one thing that wore out the Coalition’s welcome with the electorate was the constant “rabbits out of the hat” and the whole bag of divisive tricks, along with the internal ructions and the cockiness of ministers. I agree that the Liberals are still playing at the same game in many ways. John Howard was elected in 1996 as a safe pair of hands and the Libs were “the party of order”, if you like. By the end of their fourth term, they looked like the risky and unsafe proposition and Kevin Rudd’s calm demeanour undoubtedly contributed much to Labor’s victory. WorkChoices was also probably the biggest single mistake the Coalition made, and the related apprehension that worse would follow and more leadership instability also condemned the Howard government to defeat.

But what of policy, and that shibboleth beloved of the punditariat, “the narrative”? First, there’s the irony that Paul Keating – through one artifice or another – succeeded in setting the critical tone for assessment of the next Labor government after his fall from power. So it probably wasn’t surprising to see Rudd – in an interview with the Fin on Saturday – insist that the government does have a narrative. In fact, I don’t think that’s ever been in doubt. The three themes Labor laid out last year – broadly speaking – human capital and infrastructure, modernisation and social inclusion have continued to be a leitmotif of the government’s program. Rudd himself encapsulated the major tones somewhat differently, including security and defence for instance, but in practice that hasn’t been a domain that’s been at the forefront of public debate.

One could spend a lot of time assessing all manner of policy initiatives and announcements – and the symbolism which actually unifies those three themes (think of Quentin Bryce’s elevation or the Closing the Gap initiative associated with the Apology). But, when forming an overall view, probably the most significant single political factor has been that people really have – on the whole – got what they thought they would get, and that even though the ship of state now has to be steered through some rather more stormy waters, the promises have been kept. It’s almost impossible to underestimate the political importance of this one fact. That’s why, or the biggest reason why, Labor and Rudd have continued to enjoy – monotonously for the punditariat – a level of support somewhat in excess of the election winning vote.

Forget about almost everything that’s been written about politics this year – politics has in effect been on hold. Labor ministers really have been able to play the requisite game in their sleep, and Malcolm Turnbull’s elevation hasn’t changed much. It’s also been accompanied by a maturing of the government’s communications and strategy and sense that a tighter outfit is emerging less obsessed with winning the daily media cycle. It really would be a waste of effort to examine which groups and demographics have shifted slightly or whatever – at least from the perspective of the bigger picture. The reality is that it’s highly likely that a substantial majority of electors are happy with the decision made last year and despite all the counterfactuals and scenarios the media love to play with, the truth is that it would likely take a lot to reverse that satisfaction and comfort level.

It may be, of course, reasonable to borrow one of the punditariat’s favourite notions and remark that the hard decisions lie ahead – two of the most important being the final shape of the emissions trading scheme (and the stance adopted in international negotiations) and the industrial relations changes (with Julia Gillard introducing the legislation tomorrow). As well as the obvious questions about economic policy, service delivery and improvement will be another key yardstick for judgement. But we need to recognise that Rudd plays a long game, and that if the planets align, all the criticism of government by review and so on will appear very ephemeral and fleeting.

My punt is still that Labor are dug in for a long innings. But the continued salience of the “not Howard” factor suggests to me that we do have to wait somewhat longer to discern the true shape of the government elected one year ago.