Who is asking the question? None other than Barry Jones - former Labor federal minister - in giving the eighth Manning Clark Lecture, delivered at the National Library tonight. The Age has published an extract:
"In the 1980s ideology largely dropped out of Australian politics. Politics now offers a choice of management teams, and styles, and elections are about personalities and credentialism. Historically there has never been a time when incumbency has counted for so much, and oppositions for so little. The "majoritarian" view ("Well, we won, didn't we?") is based on a winner-take-all philosophy, an assertion that an elected government can claim a mandate for anything it wants - present or future, including retrospective justification, including issues that were not specifically put before the electorate, such as invading Iraq in 2003.
In this analysis, John Howard is an anomaly - he has a hard-line political, ideological agenda, including overturning what remains of the Whitlam agenda, winning the culture wars and reversing multiculturalism. He takes on unpopular issues (the GST, Telstra, Work Choices, Iraq) and - so far - he always wins.
Ideology has largely dropped out of politics, to be replaced by convergence. Oppositions have generally ceased to oppose, or propose an alternative basis for policy, and the concept that "there is no alternative" has been broadly accepted. Parliament has lost much of its moral authority and the public service has adopted the cult of managerialism and been increasingly partisan, committed to promoting the government 'line'."
One can be forgiven for being cynical about the whole political process. Jones seems to think that there is still some hope. Although it doesn't look all that hopeful unless there is significant application to the task, let's keep our fingers crossed.
"In the 1980s ideology largely dropped out of Australian politics. Politics now offers a choice of management teams, and styles, and elections are about personalities and credentialism. Historically there has never been a time when incumbency has counted for so much, and oppositions for so little. The "majoritarian" view ("Well, we won, didn't we?") is based on a winner-take-all philosophy, an assertion that an elected government can claim a mandate for anything it wants - present or future, including retrospective justification, including issues that were not specifically put before the electorate, such as invading Iraq in 2003.
In this analysis, John Howard is an anomaly - he has a hard-line political, ideological agenda, including overturning what remains of the Whitlam agenda, winning the culture wars and reversing multiculturalism. He takes on unpopular issues (the GST, Telstra, Work Choices, Iraq) and - so far - he always wins.
Ideology has largely dropped out of politics, to be replaced by convergence. Oppositions have generally ceased to oppose, or propose an alternative basis for policy, and the concept that "there is no alternative" has been broadly accepted. Parliament has lost much of its moral authority and the public service has adopted the cult of managerialism and been increasingly partisan, committed to promoting the government 'line'."
One can be forgiven for being cynical about the whole political process. Jones seems to think that there is still some hope. Although it doesn't look all that hopeful unless there is significant application to the task, let's keep our fingers crossed.
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