We face, as Shaun Carney suggests today, a fundamental disjunction between the pressing problems facing our nation and the infantilism of public debate:

The tendency towards verbal infantilism is so ingrained in our politics that it’s not even remarked upon in the media. Politics is more and more about marketing, and less and less about ideas. It’s just a given.

This all comes at a terrible potential cost. Our political system is at a crucial juncture: can it still function effectively or will it go down the American road, where there are no agreed facts, only rejection and abuse, and the legislative process becomes dysfunctional? What is at stake in the resource rent tax controversy is the authority and legitimacy of not just this government, but any Australian government.

Carney is quick to condemn the marketing-speak of politicians. But it may be, as Tim Dunlop argues in a piece at The Drum, that our institutions more generally are failing us. Chief among them, he suggests is the political media:

The problem is not just leadership. It is that politics (broadly understood) is governed by practices and conventions that are not up to the task of solving our problems. We can barely discuss issues meaningfully any more.

Governments try and sneak through change by underplaying the problems because they know the media will treat every issue in either a partisan or a superficial manner (often both) and play a mindless game of gotcha. Oppositions will tell people what they want to hear, oppose for the sake of opposing, and attack wherever possible because it is easier to smear the other side than present a legitimate alternative.

So what is the key to change?

It lies with the media. To all intents and purposes they are the public sphere and until they do their job better, we won’t get anywhere. What’s more, they are the only ones with at least a theoretical commitment to disinterested discussion and objective assessment of the facts.

I’m not arguing for some ideal-type, ivory-tower approach to public debate, some mythical situation where pros and cons are weighed dispassionately and the answer found. But I am saying we deserve better than we are currently getting.

Amen to that.

There is only one way to assess this – it’s brazen political hypocrisy. Rudd’s defenders may (rightly, in my view) argue that the misinformation and lies of the mining industry need countering. But the way to do that is by winning the political argument, and if an advertising campaign is necessary, it should be the ALP who is paying for it. Just as the Coalition is no doubt wallowing in mining industry donations, so too could the Labor party source donations from the superannuation industry, who stand to benefit big time from the RSPT.

The irony is that the government was just getting some traction in the RSPT fight, but now the focus is back on its own tactics.

As Possum observes, parsing the latest Essential Research poll, it’s no great wonder that we seem to be disgusted with both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader.

In the wake of the privatisation imbroglio perpetrated by the Bligh government, expectations were that solidarity between Labor and labour wouldn’t be at the forefront of the Brisbane May Day March. Anna Bligh, and I believe Treasurer Andrew Fraser, disappeared to North America, first purporting to show an interest in bionics, and then holding a ‘virtual Cabinet’ with the provincial government of British Columbia.

What these ventures have to do with anything is anyone’s guess. Commenters on the Brisbane Times‘ story correctly pointed out that Peter Beattie is already paid 250k a year to represent Queensland’s trade interests in North America, and that a ‘virtual’ meeting could surely be virtual for the Canadians, and in Brisbane for the Premier.

To his credit, Deputy Premier Paul Lucas fronted the march, but was met with the jeers which the State Labor crew richly deserve. Kevin Rudd kept his distance, preferring to march with the LHMU, a union well back in the parade, and concentrating on the Resources Super Tax in his address, an initiative I warmly welcome.

In a nutshell, the impasse of Labor politics, and the scissions the Labour movement has fallen prone to, is encapsulated in the events of this day.

It’s a longer story, but I’ve previously argued that (late) modern Labor’s political Janus face results from at least two factors: the corporatised economism of state politics, where slogans about jobs mask a wholesale surrender to business interests; and the weakening of the links between workers, unions and the professional political class.

John Quiggin has provided us with some reflections on Labour Day:

Among his thoughts, he argues:

The old-style politics of class (with the working class represented by male manual workers, gathered in large, naturally solidaristic workplaces) is no longer relevant to the great majority of Australian workers. That doesn’t mean that class has ceased to matter, but it does mean that workers experience class and power relationships more in terms of individual experience than as collective interactions between classes. So, in particular, unions need to be seen more as mutual aid associations that protect their individual members against exploitation and unfair treatment than as vehicles for the mobilisation of the working class. The kinds of legal changes sought to reverse the generally anti-union trend of past decades needs to reflect this orientation.

I think this underplays the degree to which the union movement, particularly as represented by the ACTU, has long practiced a broader class politics transcending trade and occupational union particularism. While I also think that class politics has to move beyond a masculinised workerism, and to take account of the changed social and cultural conditions of twenty first century Australia, I’m not sure things are so simple as John suggests, though he’s surely right that the casualisation of work and a host of other social and economic changes have individualised work relationships.

But I don’t think unions need to return to being essentially mutual benefit societies. They do have a role in building solidarity where there is none, though this role may have to include creating the conditions for more solidaristic workplace relations, through rethinking how unions can intervene in shaping the labour market itself.

I think there’s a great need to develop an approach which does respond to the fracturing of class, the refashioning of the workplace, and the naturalisation of expectations around insecure work. It’s something I’d like to do more work on, and will be writing further about, but it’s also something I think is well worth a preliminary discussion on a very fractured Brisbane Labour Day.

NB: My previous May Day post is here.

The business lobby’s response has been typically over the top and no doubt we’re going to hear the cute phrase about golden gooses from a bunch of geese over and over again.

The claim, typical of business rhetoric in a globalised world, that operations will be moved offshore is particularly egregious in this context. The resources are in the ground. What they mean, what they can only mean, is capital, and in any case the threat is almost certainly an empty one.

It should not be forgotten, aside from all the analysis about an ageing population, that women in particular, and many younger workers in general, are very inadequately served by super, and have little other opportunity to accumulate wealth because they’re not in secure full time work. This sort of reform, to the degree that it addresses these sorts of persistent inequalities, can only be a good thing. Kudos to Wayne Swan.

Elsewhere: Guy Beres.

Update: [by Kim] New post on the media coverage of the Resources Super Profits Tax.

Peter Martin has a series of posts on the issue that should fill the intervening hours if you just can’t wait. Aside from the foreshadowing of a change to the way miners are taxed, the big orchestrated leak so far relates to changes to superannuation, with the taxation regime to be altered in a more progressive direction and the levy to be increased to 12% from its present 9.

Post links to anything interesting review-related you find, and I’m sure one of the LP crew will update this post as appropriate!

Oh, and Western Austraila, go ahead, secede. I dare you…

The report’s emphasis changed a fair deal along the way, a topic treated of by Martin in another post.

If you’ve been wondering why Kevin Rudd’s focus has recently been on the country a few decades hence, Henry provides the answers. The report frames its recommendations around the theme of an ageing and growing population. When the government responds, we’re likely to see further development of a point of contrast they want to hammer home in an election year; the claim that Rudd Labor has long term plans for Australia’s future while the Opposition plays base politics around the headline of the day. Much will also be made of proposals to raise more revenue from resources, something a nationalist and populist Coalition will have trouble countering, if they’re inclined to do so.

Make of that what you will.

There’s been a bit of press coverage this morning, and no doubt it’s a worthy thing to stimulate debate by proposing substantive policy measures rather than just advancing critique. It may be an even worthier thing to shift the terms of the debate, regardless of the merits of the proposed policy directions. We don’t see enough of this sort of initiative.

But I do wonder if the economists stop and think about the political feasibibility of their proposals.

The Rudd government does appear to have developed more backbone in holding or advancing a policy line in the face of attack. One good example was the risible attempt to talk a “Khevlani affair” out of nowhere, which probably got lost in the Julie Bishop noise (her one original contribution apparently being to think it very clever to argue that there’s a “whiff of Whitlam” about the Rudd government.) Trying to articulate together a bit of dog-whistling about the Middle East and memories of State Banks and the Whitlam era with the deficit/debt line was always a complex message and rather dumb politically at that, and I suspect that the Liberals are trying to persuade themselves of the Whitlam comparison in the hope that the Rudd government will be short lived (apparently forgetting Gough was re-elected to a second term.) What was really at issue was a technical (and rather neat) solution to a problem state governments have with bonds in accessing debt. Wayne Swan may have been reading the Fin Review last weekend and noticed unnamed bankers and execs bemoaning the fact that he worried about what Malcolm Turnbull said at all, as “no one else did”, but in any case, he made it clear that if he decided an infrastructure bank was a good idea, he wouldn’t be deterred by the opposition’s politicking.

Now, no doubt one could have all sorts of fun thinking up possible opposition attacks on the proposals of the eight economists, but that’s not the only political point here. They also have to pass muster through the gate of the government’s own political imperatives. While super is in the policy review mix, it would be a difficult sell to cut super – even temporarily and with the promise of more cash in hand from wages. Super, after all, is one of the pressure points – along with household wealth – where the global financial crisis really does have an immediate impact on voters’ psyches. And the temporary nature of the proposal is also problematic – I can hear employer associations screaming already that they’d have to maintain wages at the higher level employees had enjoyed and pay more in super when contributions rose. “Here, have some more money to spend for a while, but then we’ll force you back into saving it” – not the easiest of inducements, I’d have thought.

I’m refraining from comment on the merits of the proposals themselves – except to observe that I think some sort of independent fiscal policy is a fundamentally anti-democratic idea. And I’d also suggest that technocratic worthies have hardly distinguished themselves over the last little while – whether here, in America or elsewhere. But, again, this is just not the sort of thing any government is going to do.

It may well be that the economists in question think it’s better to advance such ideas in their policy purity before the game of sifting and compromise starts being played, but conversely, whether or not that game even begins is surely dependent on the initial political appeal and defensibility of such ideas.

Elsewhere: Joshua Gans and Catallaxy.

He’s the Bert Newton of Australian politics: the polished performer whose gift for spontaneous, stiffly splenetic wit was honed in tougher vaudevillian times, times when having a personality meant more than booking an in-store appearance from Sophie Monk. “He” is of course Paul Keating, a man who knows how to milk a moment in the public gaze, a man who also knows how to fill that moment with something pointedly amusing and worth the repeating.

Two brackets of achingly sharp political standup from Keating yesterday have hogged the airwaves and set a handful of agendas in the 24 hours since. That Keating need only floss his teeth in public to turn the news cycle on its ear says a lot for the standard of over-massaged, verbally neutered performance we have come to expect from the modern political operator.

And then there was this in the Tips and Rumours section:

Keating speaks for all of us: Will Paul Keating’s unsolicited but sage advice to Kevin Rudd prompt a change in style and direction? The view among many Labor staffers and most of the ministry is hopeful. Prompted by Kerry O’Brien on The 7.30 Report, Keating took aim at the government’s lack of “narrative”, strategic direction and ability to work to a theme, a story. The PM’s speechwriters should take note. Keating also took aim at the propensity for “little press secretaries” to keep the PM captive to the 24-hour media cycle while ignoring the bigger picture and time to think. He also ridiculed the PM’s penchant for small-time micro-management, recalling Jimmy Carter’s control of the White House tennis court time sheet. It was a big call for Keating to give the PM a gentle slap in these areas, but he knows he can because he is being urged to by the many players in Canberra he is still in contact with. While the Government is travelling well, mostly due to Nelson’s poor performance, there are underlying signs of worry that Keating has picked up from the odd minister, staffer and party official. He speaks for all of us.

Here’s the other part of what Keating had to say – aside from the bit about narrative – on the 7 30 Report on Wednesday night:

KERRY OBRIEN: Kevin Rudd has been painted as micro manager. Now whatever you and Bob Hawke were accused of as prime ministers I don’t think micro manager was one of them. Can a Prime Minister afford to engage in the small detail in running Government? In the end do you have to invest trust and significant autonomy in your ministerial colleagues?

PAUL KEATING: Absolutely. You can’t micro manage a thing like the Commonwealth. And I noticed the other day that the US presidential candidate Obama was overheard with a microphone on.

KERRY OBRIEN: With the British Opposition Leader.

PAUL KEATING: With the British Opposition Leader saying in these jobs you must have time to think and I used to say that to that Gary Gray when he was secretary of the Labor Party, he thought we should have been out all the time talking. I mean John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He was at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio. The guy did no thinking. When a country has a lead they’re does not think, think then that country starts to move back.

KERRY OBRIEN: You would have to form the impression that Kevin Rudd is not giving him that much time to think either?

PAUL KEATING: Well frenetic activity in the end suiting journos, running at the behest of little press secretaries does not pay off.

…And it looks like PJK’s push for increased super contributions may be having an effect.