More Australian Politics

How's this for 'the voice of reason'-

Short-sighted see hate at every turn

Gerard Henderson

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 2012

The whole story? ... Gillard presented herself as a political leader

who is attacked because of her gender. Photo: Justin McManus

According to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, it is wrong to talk down the economy since Australia has one of the best performing economies in the Western world. Fair enough.

However, supporters of the Prime Minister such as Anne Summers have expressed delight that Gillard's speech in Parliament last Tuesday has been noted in New York and London and has had more than 1 million downloads from YouTube. Yet the message of the Prime Minister's address is that Australia is a society riven by sexism and misogyny.

Gillard presented herself as a political leader who is attacked because of her gender. More seriously, the lead attack-dog is Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition and, as such, the alternative prime minister. According to the Prime Minister, she hears ''misogyny, sexism every day from this Leader of the Opposition''.

The message is clear. All that is standing between a civilised society, in which women play their proper role, and rampant woman-hating is the continuation of a Labor government. Yet such a message to overseas audiences is much more negative than talking down the Australian economy.

The facts are obvious. Women occupy senior roles in politics, business, the judiciary, medicine, law, even sections of the clergy. Labor's Gillard is Australia's first female prime minister. If the Coalition wins next year's election, the Liberal Party's deputy leader, Julie Bishop, will become the most senior female Coalition minister ever.

Certainly Gillard has experienced a degree of misogyny - especially from the likes of cartoonist Larry Pickering, who, these days, is a bit player on the edge of Australian politics. Some of this unpleasantness is documented in Summers's 2012 Human Rights and Social Justice Lecture.

The problem is that, at times, Summers goes right over the top. For example, she claims the word liar ''was not a term used against back-flipping male prime ministers''. But it was. In the early 1980s, Bob Hawke called Malcolm Fraser a liar. Summers went on to work for Hawke. In 2006, Kevin Rudd called Howard a liar. There are all too many examples.

I agree with Summers it is ''terrible'' to call the Prime Minister a liar. However, when I asked her if she had expressed such a view when Howard was called a liar, she declined to answer the question. Summers also takes offence that, on occasions, Gillard is referred to as ''she'' or ''her'' and maintains that ''previous prime ministers were accorded the basic respect of being referred to by their last names''.

This is manifestly not so. Moreover, last Thursday Gillard used the words ''he'' and ''he's'' in one sentence when referring to Abbott.

This is normal conversation.

It seems that Summers's evident sensitivity has had an impact on Gillard. Last Tuesday, the Prime Minister complained that Abbott was ''now looking at his watch because, apparently, a woman has spoken for too long''. In the 1992 US presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush was criticised for looking at his watch when debating Bill Clinton. This is not a gender specific act. Nor is being told to shut up. Nor is being called a ''piece of work''. Last year I was called a ''piece of work'' by the Sydney University academic Simon Chapman. It took me a full eight seconds to recover.

The problem with such over-readiness to take offence is that it can lead to setting impossible standards. Last Tuesday, Gillard stated Liberal parliamentary members who were present when Alan Jones made an offensive comment about her late father should have either left the room or walked up to Jones ''and said this was not acceptable''. Yet neither Wayne Swan nor Tanya Plibersek took either course of action last Wednesday when a comedian at a trade union function they attended made an indefensible reference to a senior female Coalition staffer.

Conservative female leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel - and social democrats such as Hillary Clinton - have learnt to accept criticism and to dismiss abuse. Last week in Greece, for example, Merkel was confronted with banners depicting her as a Nazi. It is difficult to imagine a greater insult. But she did not take offence. Likewise Thatcher, when some radical feminists declared she was really a man.

Gillard was very popular when she became Prime Minister in June 2010. Her credibility was diminished by Abbott doing his job as Opposition Leader and by the damaging leaks against her from inside Labor. Then, after the election, the Prime Minister did the unnecessary deal with the Greens and broke her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. Her problems stem from politics, not gender.

Gillard has suffered no greater abuse than that experienced by such predecessors as Fraser, Keating and Howard. Commentators who look at contemporary Australian politics and see wall-to-wall misogyny, diminish the very real achievements of Australian women in recent decades.

Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Australian Politics

Food for thought from the ever thoughtful John Anderson-

Crisis of political confidence: Anderson

COLIN BETTLES

13 Oct, 2012 04:00 AM

FORMER National Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, has lamented the diminished standards and lack of civility associated with public political discourse.
Mr Anderson has been out of federal politics since his retirement in 2007, but the former Howard government transport and regional development minister proved - in his Sir Earl Page Memorial Address in Sydney last week to about 100 party faithful - that he’s still capable of stirring political senses.

Mr Anderson said everyone was responsible for improving the standard of public debate and civilising informed national discourse, not just our politicians.

“The critical state of economic health among western democracies is only one manifestation of the challenge we face,” he said.

“We’re at an important inflection point on a whole range of issues from climate change policy, to immigration policy, to foreign affairs policy and families."

He also cited global food security, water security, land availability and energy policy as important issues.

“The decisions we make in the next five years will define the opportunities and prospects of our children in this very difficult environment.

“The range of potential outcomes is enormous and yet still it appears, frankly to me, that we choose to stand and gesticulate with each other on the railway tracks as the express train bears down on us.

“We need to recognise that the nature of a crisis is that it does not wait - it moves faster and further than anticipated (and) shows no mercy.

“And I believe we may be approaching such a point.

“We accuse our politicians of an absence of policy conviction and insight and there’s a popular perception that scandal and slur have become the currency of debate and the focus of our media.

“But we need to recognise clearly that the fault cannot lie solely with our representatives for indeed that matter, to be fair, with our media.

“In truth we are all responsible. All of us have our share of the blame to carry.”

Mr Anderson said “spin and spittle” have been rewarded – but we’ve neglected to act with sober responsibility in light of the challenges that we all face.

The result, he said, has been worse policy outcomes for the Australian people.

“Driven by the incentives that we ourselves have created, we make it all but impossible for our leaders to find the balance between the political theatre that we respond to and the policy substance that we need,” he said.

“And this is not sustainable on any dimension.”

Mr Anderson said the Australian public’s dissatisfaction with politics was unprecedented.

A recent poll provided “staggering” research results, with 33 per cent ranking the nation’s political leaders one or two out of 10 in their capacity to deal with the economic issues the nation must confront over the next five years.

The research results also showed that 26pc of voters are now looking to cast their vote outside of the major parties.

“It seems then that we’ve reached a tipping point,” he said.

“The Australian public is casting about for a clear voice and a clear vision – they sense that we are approaching a point of no return on a number of issues and major crossroads on many more.

“I believe there is a crisis of confidence in the cultural roots and values upon which the success of the West of our society was built.

“We need to face the fact that without values both our economic system and our political system are self-defeating.”

Mr Anderson said a better pathway was to re-engage values in public life, by first re-engaging with the nation’s cultural roots.

He highlighted the importance of history in education and lamented its decline in importance. He said there was also a need to avoid discussions driven by ideology or expediency and characterised by overly emotive, overly personal, overly simplistic arguments.

“If we can break that stalemate, by returning to a dialogue of reason, there are real opportunities to advance the national interest on a number of issues, both controversial and routine.”

“Those who publicly take a minority or unpopular position, or who open a controversial issue for discussion, can be blown away by apparently progressive intelligentsia who would prefer to shut down the discussion to avoid offense, than engage with whatever has been put on the table.

“Unfortunately, this issue has worsened, not improved with the advent of social media.
“The recent examples of 'Twitter trolling' - the mass attacks on our public figures with extreme and hateful language - demonstrate this.
“Protected by the anonymity of a computer screen, people are willing to say and do things that they would never consider were they to find themselves seated across the table from the person they are seeking to bring down.
“Nothing could be more destructive to free speech and quality debate than the fear of holding unpopular positions that is created by such practices.
“It needs to be rejected as a practice that has any place in civil dialogue, lest important truths be downed out or worse still, never spoken.”
Federal Nationals Leader Warren Truss praised Mr Anderson’s speech, saying the former leader had always brought a depth of analysis and perspective to the National’s party room which they now missed.
Mr Truss said the hung parliament had been an intense period for all participants.
He said there’d been little or no spare time for any depth of philosophical debate and discourse on important, long-term policy issues, given that all parties had been in almost permanent campaign mode since the 2010 election.
He said parliament needed to find a better way to debate broader issues more thoroughly, like health, education and land use, rather than being purely focussed on or driven by immediate policies, or the issues of the day.

Flannery of the Overflow

This is not new, but it is to me. As a "Banjo" Paterson fan it has great appeal, and I like the sentiments. I read recently of how science progresses. Scientists come up with a hypothesis, often a guess. The hypothesis is then tested against observations which either prove or disprove it. Surely, at least the extreme anthropogenic green-house hypothesis, with some of Flannery's extraordinary predictions, have failed the observation test.
Flannery of the Overflow

IPA REVIEW ARTICLE

| William York

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him on the Murray, years ago,
He was boating when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, ‘Flannery, of The Overflow'.

And an SMS came directed from a source quite unexpected,
(And I think it was dictated from a river bank or bar)
‘Twas the Prime Minister who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
Flannery's gone all atmospheric, and I don't know where we are.'

With Australia Day flattery, visions come to me of Flannery
Gone a-driving ‘down to Canberra' where the politicians go;
With the journalists and stringers, Flannery pointing with his fingers,
draws a future of disasters none of us will live to know.

And the Greens come out to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
While the politicians ponder an election to be won,
And he sees the vision horrid of our country turning florid,
With a baking sun, a rising sea and little being done.

Gazing up at Kirribilli, I wonder will the ‘Silly
Season' finish with a whimper or a bang
Will we all start getting warm, or is this the perfect storm,
Orchestrated by Al Gore and echoed by the noisy local gang.

It seems to me Prime Minister that there is something here quite sinister
In the push to get our economics in a great big melting pot.
With the present calls for action, you will need to find some traction
For ideas that cool the hot heads so we don't destroy our lot.