tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post2706972883573462802..comments2023-12-06T00:23:28.790+11:00Comments on Press gallery reform: Andrew Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04705844456819481896noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-51119890741623335442008-12-20T17:20:00.000+11:002008-12-20T17:20:00.000+11:00It's interesting that all elections since 1972 hav...It's interesting that all elections since 1972 have been fought and won in the outer suburbs of the major cities (and here I include places like Wyong and the Sunshine Coast as 'outer suburbs'), but whacking up a civic centre does not a community make. The linkage between Whitlam and the local mayors and ward-heelers was never strong enough to make that localism convincing - same with Rudd and the mayors a few weeks ago. <BR/><BR/>I wish Whitlam had spent a bit more on public transport. Same with Wran, I wish he'd followed through on his early promises in that area - Granville and 'Woollahra Station' curbed his enthusiasm for that aspect of the big-picture, it seems. Nice dodge on the Vietnam thing, by the way. And don't get me started on the Whitlamite freebies that vanished before us Gen Xers could get to them.<BR/><BR/>When you talk about 'What Whitlam Was', I suspect your description might have been fair up until 1969, when he got a whiff of victory and the Libs began crumbling before his eyes. I think it's that very 'grandeur' which makes the trooby levers so credulous, and the rest of us so immune from rhetorical flights. Grand plans issued from Canberra/Macquarie Street/far-distant administrative centre can look awfully silly on the ground, and that's what does for visionary government: whether it's forcing schoolkids to drink warm curdling milk for the sake of their health (OK, I'm not blaming Whitlam for that) or moving to regional centres (you first, no after you), I think Australians are right to be suspicious of dreamers who haven't done their sums. People like John Fahey and John Howard thought this was a means for sinking any and all big ideas, but I think the visionary who's worked it out from the ground up is an idea that hasn't been tried. And won't be into the foreseeable future.Andrew Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04705844456819481896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-7409274878341676622008-12-20T08:11:00.000+11:002008-12-20T08:11:00.000+11:00Really? I'm the first? I thought it was the Conven...Really? I'm the first? I thought it was the Conventional Wisdom in upper Labor ranks, regardless of public rhetoric; the Hawke government was a conscious repudiation of Whitlam's style and substance, because we'd tried that and people hated it. Whitlam's status as 'deity' depends upon most senior Labor figures gritting their teeth and grimacing -- it's to rile up the base, not a demonstration of conviction.<BR/><BR/>The antiquated bits of the Whitlam agenda? Well, for that you have to see What Whitlam Was. And Whitlamism, although it's been adopted by the cultural elites as our own, was essentially designed as Western Sydney politics. Dramatic expansion of the welfare net and social services. It's no wonder everyone focuses on the quote that 'Whitlam found Western Sydney unsewered and left it fully flushed'; that was the heart of the agenda, which was basically making social democracy acceptable by removing its dour connotations. Even Whitlam's cultural agenda has to be read in that light: it was an attempt to expand the reach of Australian culture beyond traditional 'elites', through using spending to make it accessible to the growing middle classes. And in the Campbelltown/Liverpool heartland, where I live, it even worked, sort of -- the development of new museums and galleries keyed to a suburban audience derives from those Whitlam ideals of lavish spending on Australian culture.<BR/><BR/>At the same time, you're right, Whitlam's ideas were based upon the idea that the money would always be there. That's not going to work in the modern age, simply because fiscal theory has developed. But a new Whitlamism DOESN'T require massive spending and the expansion of government, contrary to popular belief. Its heart was in the results to be achieved -- that is, increasing equality of opportunity and access to those in Western Sydney and similar areas. Mark Latham's tenure as Mayor of Liverpool involved an attempt to do the same through public/private projects, which although it didn't work in practice proves that you can attempt to reduce inequality between the suburbs and the inner city without going to Jim Cairns' fiscal policy.<BR/><BR/>But in any case, the Hawke government wasn't interested to the same extent in such things -- it didn't revive DURD, its expansion of the social safety net was, even in the circumstances, half-hearted, and its focus generally lay elsewhere (often understandably). Whitlam's problems didn't lie in 'too much too soon', which I continue to believe is a myth, they lay in poor implementation and poor selling. Governments CAN excite and inspire the population; we're not babies, we're not stupid, and sometimes a certain grandeur can be an electoral plus. Certainly, much of the Whitlam style can be discarded, but the sense of a new era of expanded horizons which he brought is, I think, even more essential today.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, just my two cents.Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06345079564133624529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-31771136518476173492008-12-19T18:40:00.000+11:002008-12-19T18:40:00.000+11:00Firstly, I'll congratulate you for being the first...Firstly, I'll congratulate you for being the first Labor person to wrestle with the idea of the election result as popular rejection - and the implications for democracy - rather than the demonisation of Kerr. <BR/><BR/>I'd be interested in those aspects of the Whitlam legacy that petered out by about 1980, because in there are some of the moderate liberal issues in which I'm more interested.Andrew Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04705844456819481896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-69390642016916559892008-12-19T15:34:00.000+11:002008-12-19T15:34:00.000+11:00Well, we believe very different things, Mr. Elder,...Well, we believe very different things, Mr. Elder, and it's unlikely I'll convince you of my views -- and in any case, that's really not what we're arguing about.<BR/><BR/>And it's not Kerr that I meant by '1975' -- sorry, I wasn't clear. It was the resounding landslide defeat that followed -- the Dismissal was largely theatre. Labor took a far greater blow from the election of 1975 than the events leading up to it. Any attempt to justify the Dismissal as 'the ruling class striking back' is utter rot. We weren't dismissed for our ideas, and our loss was, and this is again a matter of our different opinions, the result of bad government, not bad ideas.<BR/><BR/>I've skimmed through Beyond Belief a few months ago, but haven't read it in-depth. Going by the comments in the back of the next QE, his main points are a) the decline of the base, b) the uselessness of the union affiliation, c) the factional system, and generally structural factors. I agree with much of that -- Labor's structure is totally rotten, undemocratic and nepostic.<BR/><BR/>But the answer requires policy rejuvenation and the rebirth of 'new ideas'. The question is: why would you join the Labor Party? Kevin Rudd's 'reforming centre'? Nathan Rees'...whatever? Mike Rann's eerie smile? You can see someone inspired by Chifley, or Whitlam, or even Keating, or at a pinch loathing of Howard, but without actual ideas of our own why would anyone join the Labor Party? And without new membership, the decline of the base, the entrenchment of an undemocratic structure, and policy drift are all inevitable.Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06345079564133624529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-65554368870982511072008-12-18T21:39:00.000+11:002008-12-18T21:39:00.000+11:00Big Rexy Connor's pipeline thing is the very sort ...Big Rexy Connor's pipeline thing is the very sort of PPP that Rees, Tripodi and the rest of them would be all over today, and the 1975-76 Budget (along with the Land Rights Act and the no-fault divorce legislation) was passed in its entirety. You can't have it both ways: either those ideals were poleaxed by Kerr and his cur, or they weren't. OK, I'll give you Medicare if you agree that the states have pretty much negated it by blowing the health budget on 'monitoring' and PR.<BR/><BR/>There was plenty wrong with not foreseeing that the postwar Keynesian accord wasn't a given, plenty wrong with not scooping up the broken and ignored men who came back from Vietnam and clutching them back into the bosom of the working class. It's ridiculous that that Vietnam remains a festering ulcer in the very guts of this country. <BR/><BR/>Have you read John Button's Quarterly Essay on the ALP? Disagree with any of it?Andrew Elderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04705844456819481896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22534369.post-15266689549798302312008-12-18T15:52:00.000+11:002008-12-18T15:52:00.000+11:00Well, we TRIED having big and inspirational ideals...Well, we TRIED having big and inspirational ideals. That was 1975. It didn't work out so well. (I'm a 'Whitlamite', not an admirer of how it actually worked in practice.) People took the wrong lessons from the Dismissal. The problem wasn't the IDEAS, the problem was how the ideas were implemented.<BR/><BR/>Now, that's a very slippery slope to go down -- some say the same thing about Iraq. 'It would all have worked out, if not for...' And many of the ideas deserve to stay in the 1970s. But Labor has been so traumatised by the failure of Whitlam, and to a lesser extent Keating, that we've been forced into a deeper and deeper defensive crouch. We've become enamoured of the notion that the only way a Labor leader can win is by staying as close to the Liberals as possible and hoping that they screw up first.<BR/><BR/>It's unsustainable in the long term. The thing that keeps Labor alive in our long periods in the darkness -- and boy are they long, and boy are they dark -- is that hokey, concocted, irresistable narrative of proud past achievements, a shining red line throughout history connecting us to Whitlam and Chifley and Fisher. A cautious strategy may work in the short-term, but it risks eroding the base of the party to the point where there's really nothing to keep us going in the dark. <BR/><BR/>It's a larger-scale version of what happened to the UAP -- out of government, and after the death of Lyons, it really didn't exist for anything or any ideal. Ideological bankruptcy is the only way to kill a major party in a two-party system.Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06345079564133624529noreply@blogger.com