Is it too late to save our democracy?

The major parties have only themselves to blame for the state we now find ourselves in

IF you want to understand why our politics is so broken and why trust of political institutions and politicians is so low, look no further than the reaction to the closure of the Hazelwood power station last week.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, federal and state politicians rushed to wring their hands in distress and to pledge financial and in-kind support to the workers and the region, as if trying to outdo each other in the sympathy stakes.

But within 24 hours, that fragile consensus had split with the Liberal-National Party federal government and the state Labor government trading insults and barbs and attempting to blame each other for what was, ultimately, a rational commercial decision by the plant’s owners.

First out of the blocks was federal Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, who accused Labor of having “driven out of town” the plant’s owner. Premier Daniel Andrews retort was that the Feds were “playing games”.

It was all so predictable. Once again, our political leaders had failed the test.

At a time when what was needed was co-operative leadership to develop policies to address the inevitable de-commissioning of high-polluting coal-generated electricity plants and to replace them with cleaner energy sources, and to devise strategies for new manufacturing and industrial jobs, the best they could do was platitudes and petty partisan point scoring. The plight of the workers and community was forgotten in the race for political supremacy.

But the even sadder truth is that they both sat on their hands for so long, ignoring the looming reality because both knew even the slightest semblance of bold or creative policy would immediately be shot down by their opponents for political advantage regardless of its merits.

Meanwhile, the Greens are on a frolic of their own, rejoicing at the closure of Hazelwood with little empathy for the impact it will have on 750 workers, their families and their community.

The culture is to blame

Both Frydenberg and Andrews arrived in their current roles after traveling a familiar path from political staffer to a politician themselves. Like most of their party colleagues they are the products of a political culture in which politics as an end in itself has become more important than politics as a means to achieve positive outcomes for the people you were elected to represent.

The pointless tit-for-tat over Hazelwood (you could substitute the end of car manufacturing, climate change, marriage equality or any of a number of policy issues) is the inevitable outcome of that culture.

This is the state of Australian politics in 2016: given the choice of working together to find solutions or maximising political discomfort for their opponents, the established parties will chose the latter every time.

The rest of us — those of us who don’t suck on the public teat in the pampered and privileged surrounds of the halls of parliament, federal and state — look on with growing disgust.

It’s little wonder voters here and overseas are rejecting mainstream, established parties for outsiders and political fringe dwellers and freaks.

Never grown out of student politics

THE political establishment is now so insular and out of touch with the populace, so enraptured by the too-clever-by-half tactics first learnt in student politics — typified by Christopher Pyne on one side and Penny Wong on the other — that increasing numbers of voters will cling to anything half-authentic, even a proven fraud like Pauline Hanson.

The evidence is everywhere that politics is broken and corrupt, a game only for those cynical enough to allow themselves to be bought and be prepared to keep their mouths shut. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Something is wrong when most people believe politicians are in parliament solely to feather their own nests, and the only people who can’t see this are the politicians themselves (and the Press Gallery who report on them).

How else do you explain someone like Andrew Robb, whose whole career was working in one part of the political machinery or another, milking it for all its worth until the big pay day comes through? He followed the familiar path from the National Farmers’ Federation to Liberal Party director to a safe seat in Parliament to the Trade Minister who oversees a free trade deal with China and then, just months after quitting politics, gains a plumb job as chairman of a Chinese company set to benefit greatly from said deal?

Or the happy snaps from the Birdcage at Flemington last Tuesday of politicians from both the Coalition and Labor shamelessly scoffing the free corporate booze and food on offer while socialising with the likes of Gina Rinehart: what’s the quid pro quo there?

What does it say about the state of our political institutions when someone so manifestly crooked as Bob Day, a shonky home builder whose background is littered with decades of complaints about poor workmanship can literally use his one vote to hold the government to random? Turns out not only is Day about to be declared a bankrupt owing hundreds of hard-working families millions of dollars as they stand in their half-built McMansions in the urban hinterland, but he was double-dipping by renting to the commonwealth space for his electorate office in a building he owned.

Meanwhile, he was also skimming millions from his now broke companies to pay himself and financially support Family First. Day is an avowed union-hating free marketeer who wants to abolish the welfare state, but saw nothing wrong with milking taxpayers for his own benefit. When it came to his own vote, he allowed it to be bought by the Turnbull government through a $2 million grant to a “training college” he had an interest in.

Or George Brandis, surely the most incompetent Attorney-General in history, who has been quietly stacking every government court and tribunal he can find with Liberal Party donors, ex-Liberal Party staff and failed Liberal Party candidates.

And though all these examples come from the conservative side of politics (and the example of Bob Day shows the malaise is not confined to the major parties), Labor’s hands are not clean. Just a few weeks ago, we saw Labor politics at their most cynical, with Kimberley Kitching transplanted into the Victorian Senate vacancy left by Stephen Conroy, despite all her manifest faults, her only qualification being years of factional loyalty to Bill Shorten. So much for transparency and democracy. The only positive was that the union movement is finally rid of her.

Our politics is broken when the vast majority of Australians support gay marriage but it becomes a political football for both major parties to kick around in pursuit of a win in the daily news cycle. Any aspirations for marriage equality become secondary to seeking whatever political advantage you can from the issue.

And it is broken when both parties conspire to prove they can be more cruel than the other in their treatment of asylum seekers. The only purpose of the new Bill to permanently ban refugees from visiting Australia seems to be to wedge Labor — but Labor’s hands aren’t clean either.

And, most tellingly, our politics is broken when opinion poll after opinion poll, on a range of economic subjects — from increasing Newstart to a higher minimum wage to abolishing negative gearing to opposing bilateral trade agreements — find a mood for change, but every time they are ignored by the two main parties because both have too much of a stake in maintaining the status quo.

The obvious solution is to sweep out the shonks and replace them with people who are in politics for the right reasons, but where do you start? There is no way those with an interest in keeping the status quo will give up without a fight, but more pertinently, why would any decent person want to get involved in such a dirty game anyway?

Little difference between the main parties

FAUX hyper-partisanship is the rage, with the mainstream parties pandering to their ever-shrinking base via the social media echo chamber; but the rest of us only see marginal differences between two parties with a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo.

This is the environment that led to Brexit: for years people had been lectured by politicians how well the economy was doing and how lucky they were, when their lived experience was the opposite: insecure work, cost of living pressures, declining government services, shoddy infrastructure, crime and unsafe streets, and so on. The only people they could see doing well were the politicians and their city banker mates — particularly after the GFC caused so much pain to the middle and working classes.

So when the opportunity came along to give the political establishment a good hard kick in the balls, the Brexiters made the most of it.

Very rarely do I agree with Chris Mitchell, the recently retired editor-in-chief of The Australian, but he is correct when he writes: “voters around the world are rejecting leaders unable to articulate a vision for the future [and] whose main preoccupation seems to be personal ambition”. Where we would differ is on what that vision is.

The truth is that a strong two party system remains the best bulwark against political instability and chaos, but the gulf between the political class and the rest of us is now so wide that here in Australia as overseas, people will elect any snake oil salesman to parliament. Just look at the make-up of the current Senate for further evidence.

And it’s for those same reasons that Donald Trump is an even chance of becoming the next President of the United States on Tuesday. Not because of who he is, but because of who he is not.

Even though he was born into privilege and his whole life has been one of exploiting working people and ripping off the system whenever he could, Trump has successfully constructed a persona of himself as the ultimate outsider challenging the corrupt political establishment, personified by Hillary Clinton.

There are many other dimensions to Trump’s rise, not least the perceived political castration of white working class American males, but the best explanation is the one that portrays him as the champion of the anti- establishment. People are only half-hearing the crazed policies he supports; what they are listening for is the anti-Washington tone to his voice.

In this environment, Hillary Clinton, the ultimate Washington insider, is completely the wrong candidate to be running for office.

It’s sad but true but the moral corruption of America’s political institutions is now so complete that it has taken someone like Donald Trump to sink the final nail in the coffin.

Inevitably, these outsider politicians will fail to live up to the hype, either being co-opted by the same system they railed against from the outside, or losing themselves down their racist or loony rabbit hole (David Leyonhjelm anyone? Malcolm Roberts?).

I don’t claim to know what the solution is, but ultimately it’s up to the major parties here and overseas to clean up their own houses. Otherwise the very future of our democracy is at stake.