Pessimistic Take on the Rise of Australian Political Nihilism

Any nation that has lost the art of collective self-improvement has stepped on to the escalator of decline. Australia is on that escalator. Its politics are so noisy, egotistical, destructive and consumed by self-interest that it has missed where the escalator is heading.

In voting terms it is far harder than before to construct and hold together a majority for reform. ­Laments about the decline of bipartisanship are ancient history. Bipartisanship faded away in the early Howard years, think 1996-97.

But the Liberal-Labor gulf over the nation’s direction has widened recently and now involves division over climate change, budget policy, industrial relations, tax reform, welfare entitlements, pensions, Medicare, university fees, competition and productivity. Agreement over the national direction is being torn apart.

The incentives in the system reward and promote policy division. Such splits are not just ideological; they are tactical. Australia is dominated by a poll-driven political culture. It privileges sectional interests over the national interest, short-term actions and the power of the negative.

Recent history is defined by the triumph of the negative and fatal blunders on the part of agents for changes, witness the ACTU campaign against Work Choices, the mining industry campaign against the mining tax, the Abbott-led destruction of carbon pricing and, most recently, the undermining of the Abbott-Hockey budget on the crusade of fairness.

Labor, convinced it was destroyed in office by Abbott’s unjustified negativity and unable to accept it was undone primarily by its own blunders, now exploits a tough and unpopular budget to inflict the same treatment on Abbott.

It is no surprise that 22 years of unbroken economic growth have exerted a profound impact on our political culture. Its corruption is advanced though how far is yet to be tested. It is defined by two qualities: complacency and expectations that cannot be financed by the tax base.