So, what’s been happening in Auspol lately? Something about GST, occasional talk of penalty rates, a bit of innovation-speak thrown in the mix. We’ve got Paris, Syria and other more newsworthy items that distract from the humdrum of the national management team in Canberra. The article sharing has slowed, the outraged social media rants have abated, even the satiric Buzzfeed clickbait on the latest ‘wacko’ press conference statement has stopped. When Captain Abbott fell, so too did a form of millennial political engagement and clicktivism, one which congregated around the faux pas of dinosaur-like pollies (onion eating), the contravention of politically-correct norms of public speech (Australia was unsettled) or readily comprehensible issues which in Australia 2015 were relatively one-sided (knights and dames).
Yes, there was concern around the punitive measures of the 2014 budget, its crude ‘lifters and leaners’ rhetoric and the end of ‘entitlements’ that were widely seen as delivering a net social benefit. Of course, there was sincere humanitarian outrage around the treatment of refugees in Manus Island. And yet the Facebook statuses seem to be slowing. Of course Facebook behaviour isn’t everything – but nor is it nothing. The interest and concern with Australian politics that burgeoned amongst young Australians since 2013, having bubbled up throughout the Gillard government and the years of Abbott opposition, is now fading away – apart from the not entirely savoury, paternalising incarnation of Malcolm Turnbull as the nation’s rich, gift-giving ‘daddy‘. It is hard not to think that the outrage, bordering upon activism, around Australian politics in the Abbott era was only over areas in which a consensus of values, or at least etiquette of public-political speech and behavior, was breached. Even the 2014 budget and the treatment of asylum seekers would likely not have provoked such outrage had it come from a different set of salespeople – and even then, opposition to the budget seemed to stem more from anomalous or clearly punitive measures (i.e. the $7 co-payment or ‘$100,000 degrees’) rather than the general principles that lay behind it. As for a broad debate over the kind of future we would like for ourselves? Forget it.
The anti-Abbott activism was always only superficial, for all that the left liked to think they could ride to eternal power on its tide. The Liberal Party is full of anachronisms, and for a time one of them, who carried a whole host of his own quirks and narcissisms with his antique views, came to be prime minister. It shall be seen as an anomaly with the hindsight of history, a feature of the party’s growing pains, decades after the nation had already gone through the same adjustments to their cultural values. The left knew this, and hence entered almost two years of decay in opposition under Bill Shorten whilst they sat back and waited to be elected by default as Abbott revealed the profound extent to which he was an anomaly in Australian politics. But anomalies rarely last, and it was foolish to structure an anti-Abbott opposition against, well, Abbott.
Attorney-General George Brandis. Photo credit: Reid Parker.
There is now the perception that ‘Papa Malcolm’ is in control and we can all rest easy. This is not to say that the change of leadership is in any way a bad thing. Nor am I saying that Turnbull’s government represents a continuation of the Abbott project with a better salesperson – that is crude Shortenian nonsense. However, the comfortable support into which Turnbull has effortlessly glided – and the torpor into which our own interest has slid – smacks of government by default, of the complacent establishment rule of Menzies in Australia, or Cameron in Britain. The Turnbull government inspires little scrutiny or attention, particularly from the young, as it has moved the party enough to encompass the bog-standard cosmopolitan and liberal beliefs of modern Australia. Enough to render itself inoffensive and unideological, as ideology is now only understood by most voters through the crude prisms, platitudes and posturings of cultural politics. Having rendered itself unideological in the eyes of all but die-hard lefties, Turnbull & co. can have a fairly free rein to tinker with taxation and social services as all is simply managerialism, a return to normalcy.
Turnbull is a perfect man for these times in a way that Abbott never was. Turnbull has the perfect CV, a diverse career without setback or uncertainty, a product of the heady Australia of the 1980s, opened to the possibilities of global capital, then schooled in the kind of issue-based politics (the republican question in his case) that would endear him to a suitable amount of cultural ‘progressives’. Abbott spent his 1980s in uncertainty, engaging in unfashionable activities (boxing) and flirting with unfashionable careers (the priesthood), making himself appear more dated than he probably was. Turnbull’s comfortable popularity represents the triumph of the winner in Australian politics, and Australian life. For all his childhood hardships, Turnbull has experienced precious few setbacks in his 61 years. Of course we want a successful, capable person leading our government. But ideally, we would also want someone who has experienced confusion and disorientation in their adult life, who understands at least the pain of frustration and disappointment. They would be foreign concepts to Malcolm, and though I’m sure he would not lack the intelligence to comprehend, whether he would truly understand, and thence factor these lived experiences into his own thoughts and deeds, is another matter.
Yet who has time for GST hikes, plans for tertiary deregulation, and whether the government will do anything to reform the dire state of housing markets, when he speaks to us in that soothing, authoritative voice and tells us all its time for bed? Who could really get hung up on rising inequality and the increasing difficulty young Australians face finding stable employment that fits the tertiary studies they have sunk themselves in debt for, when Malcolm tells us this is an exciting time to be Australian, to get all hot and optimistic for the prospects of innovation. Hell, he probably believes in gay marriage, and he thinks climate change is a thing, so maybe weekends are just normal workdays after all? The grown ups are apparently back in charge, so the kids can go back to their Netflix and their short-term contracts and leave politics to the wonks.
Joseph Moore is a regular contributor to Centrethought and a History and Politics student at the University of Melbourne, as well as a member of the ALP and a self-described ‘conservative radical’. Find out more about him here.