Recent events in Australian politics suggest to me that Australian conservatism’s ideological conflicts are coming to a boil. For my foreign reader(s), the situation is roughly this: The Liberal party (actually our conservative party) had a contest for the leadership of the party which was ostensibly between a right wing nutjob, Peter Dutton, and our supposedly moderate PM, Malcolm Turnbull. These contests are par for the course in Australian politics (it’s a Westminster system so the party that controls parliament chooses the prime minister, who is usually [always?] the leader of the parliamentary party and can be turned over by a simple vote of the party’s representatives) but in the past 15 years they’ve become a bit too common and they appear from the outside to be arising out of nothing. In any case in this instance Dutton (the right wing nutjob) did an incompetent job of counting his supporters, Turnbull (the supposed moderate) didn’t have the guts to challenge and lose, and in the resulting shitshow a third candidate, Scott Morrison, came out of nowhere and stole the top job. This might seem like standard bloody-minded ambition, except that if one is crazy enough to follow the history of leadership challenges in this party it seems pretty clear that the underlying forces driving this were:
- Turnbull was about to introduce an energy policy that involved some action on climate change
- The coal industry didn’t like this at all
- A few of the coal industry’s friends in parliament and the media stirred up a fight, and it got out of control
It also appears that somewhere behind it all was the former PM, rampant misogynist and global warming denialist, Tony Abbot, who is an all round piece of shit. Abbot can’t run for the job himself because he did a really bad job when he was last PM and noone wants him back, so instead he used his Frankenstein Monster, Dutton, and (as he does with everything he touches) managed to screw it up.
Unfortunately Morrison is a friend of the coal industry – he once famously brought a lump of coal into parliament because Aussie politics is super classy – and so now we have a denialist back in the top job, just as 100% of New South Wales is declared to be in drought conditions.
Some Australians will probably disagree with my opinion on some of exactly what happened and why, to which I can say booyah because nobody is going to ever find out the truth, but in the run up to this leadership kerfuffle it was pretty clear that the right wing of the Liberal party was beginning to kick up a stink about gay marriage (which Turnbull legislated, but please don’t give him any credit) and climate policy, which has been a huge problem in Australian politics for 20 years now. Unfortunately it now looks like they’re going to lose the next election, and because Turnbull has resigned they may find themselves in a very precarious position in the parliament if his electorate decides it’s time to ditch the conservative nutjobs who are slowly eating the party. This isn’t the first time the party has cut off its nose to spite its face – back in the noughties when I was still living in Australia the NSW state party launched a sudden unexpected leadership challenge that got rid of a very well liked politically moderate leader in exchange for a raving christian nutjob, and as a result lost a perfectly winnable election against a tired and immensely corrupt labour government that must have been so chuffed to see their apparently 100% flatlined political chances revived by rightwing ratfuckery.
Both times this has happened it has been a spiteful christian rump trying to tear down a popular moderate, modern version of conservatism, and destroying the entire project’s electoral chances in the process. This represents a simmering conflict that has been ongoing within this party for the past 15 years, between two radically opposed political visions that have very little in common except their desire to win. On the one hand are a bunch of generally (but not always) younger, more ethnically diverse “moderate” conservatives who are probably better described as not conservative at all, but genuine liberals. They support gay marriage, civil rights, and individual freedoms even where individuals might find those freedoms distasteful on religious or cultural grounds. They also support free markets, less regulation, and an open modern economy. On the other side are the paleoconservatives, who oppose any loosening of the social conditions of the 1950s, and only support free markets where those free markets can be held to benefit middle class white Australians and farmers. The two sides can sometimes agree on economics, and the liberals are so desperate to win that they’ll throw most of their economic principles overboard if they think bribing the middle class will win them votes, but on one or two issues they are implacably opposed and increasingly, as climate change starts to bite, climate change is where their real problem is. Basically, they cannot compromise: one half wants a market-based mechanism for reducing emissions, and the other side doesn’t believe in global warming and is taking a lot of money from the coal industry. As Australia’s weather goes wonky and the barrier reef slowly bleaches away, and the entire country dries up, and as the fossil fuels that the conservatives love become increasingly insecure and expensive due to overseas market conditions, these two sides cannot reconcile themselves anymore.
They need to split and form two parties, a real Liberal party and a real Tory party, but they can’t, because if they do they will permanently cede political control to the labour party, and be forced to sit in the wilderness watching as reasonable policy gets made that benefits poor and working people as well as rich people. Unacceptable! It’s particularly difficult for the tory half of this deal because while the liberal half would be happy to work with labour to pass some social reforms and climate policy, the conservatives can’t allow it. So they have to cling together in this vicious death spiral, fighting each other over policy that the majority of Australians just want fixed and done with, unable to compromise with each other or the electorate and unable to deal with labour. Fifteen years ago when they did this in New South Wales it was over drug policy and how policy was made (evidence vs. religious fee-fees). Now it’s over climate policy and sex. And the two sides really do look like they hate each other now. How long can it last?
If they did split we would see some fascinating political science experiments in real time. What proportion of Labour voters are actually Greens voters who have been sticking to Labour out of fear of the conservative vote, but would shift their vote if they thought it was safe? What proportion of the electorate is genuinely deeply conservative, and how long would it take the Tory party to become a rump? What proportion of the liberal voters would give their preferences to Labour over the Tories? Could Labour and the Liberals do a coalition deal, especially if the Greens started picking up more seats in the lower house (which seems possible if the conservative vote split)? Could the Liberals, Tories and Nationals form a coalition, and how horrifically retrograde would this be given the sudden increase in the Nationals’ bargaining power? What would happen to fringe lunatics like One Nation and Bob Katter if there was suddenly a mainstream genuine Tory alternative, undiluted by Big City Liberals? Would NSW become the conservative heartland, and Victoria the Liberal heartland? What about Tasmania? Who cares!?
Of course as a Labour supporter I would love to see these parties split, and their electoral futures die in a ditch. From the perspective of the single biggest issue facing humanity over the next 20 years – climate policy – it’s essential that whoever is in power in Australia (and every country!) form a solid and radical carbon policy that targets a rapid shift to a zero carbon economy, or industrial civilization will stagger to an ignominious end. So we need the liberals to get kicked out and it needs to be made clear that they lost because of climate policy. Unfortunately when they do get the boot, people in the party will assume it was disunity wot did it, and they’ll just fight harder to win control for their half of the party, intensifying the internecine conflict. That at least provides some entertainment for the rest of us as the planet burns.
This dummy spit by the Tory right of the Liberal party also sends a clear message to politicians in Australia: you cannot negotiate with these nutjobs. Turnbull repeatedly and disgracefully backed down on signature policies, or maintained pre-existing right wing policies (like the ludicrous plebiscite on gay marriage) and it was never enough for the right. The gay marriage plebiscite was Abbot’s idea but his rabid nutjob attack dogs cited it as a reason to be angry at Turnbull – presumably because they really believe they could have won the plebiscite if Turnbull hadn’t been in charge, which shows that they’re way more out of touch with Aussie life than I am (and I haven’t lived there for 12 years!) When Turnbull dropped a big part of the energy policy to please Abbot and his denialist mates, Abbot simply cited it as a lack of conviction by Turnbull. These people cannot be appeased or satisfied, and everything they want is wrong. There is only one solution to these people: they need to be driven out of politics. Reasonable liberal/moderate conservative politicians (if any of the latter still exist) need to see these people for what they are: a fifth column of traitors and economic wreckers, who care only about their ridiculous religious beliefs and the money they get from polluting industries, and for whom ecocide is impossible for religious reasons and in any case acceptable to their patrons. They need to be driven out of the party, driven out of the right wing media and right wing think tanks, and forced into the boondocks of facebook and youtube to yell harmlessly at the clouds they hate so much. We are no longer at the point in environmental history where an accommodation can be made with these people – we have no time for it. Once the Liberal party loses the next election and goes through its soul-searching about what went wrong, the liberal half of it need to get vindictive, get vicious, and get these people out. They’re a stain on the party, and a curse on humanity’s future.
The same, obviously, applies to any other conservative or Liberal party in any other country that wants to be recorded in the history books (if there are any 100 years from now) as anything except traitors to our species.
Compromise and Conceit 
August 28, 2018 at 12:06 am
Reblogged this on Rachel and commented:
In case anyone is wondering what’s going on in Australian politics, here’s a good summary.
August 28, 2018 at 5:23 am
As a non-Australian who has been living here for the last 16 years this seems like a pretty good analysis to me!
August 28, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Haha you moved here just in time to see our federal political parties turn feral. Well done! I hope that this will be the last spasm of a dying party, and you get to see saner political programs in the future …
August 28, 2018 at 9:22 pm
“What proportion of Labour voters are actually Greens voters who have been sticking to Labour out of fear of the conservative vote, but would shift their vote if they thought it was safe?”
Given the existance of preferential voting, basically none? You can always vote Green then give Labor your fallback vote.
And if you mean “I’m scared that the Liberals will form a minority government with Greens support” you don’t need to worry about tactical voting, you need to worry about your sanity.
About the only discussion on Labor/Greens is whether the existance of the Greens allows Labor to move rightward to pick up votes or if it pulls them leftward to defend their flank. But the sum total figures don’t shift much as a result because (to date) the Liberals haven’t allowed Labor to capitalise on a rightward shift plus I don’t think the Labor party itself knows it’s plan.
August 28, 2018 at 11:22 pm
Paul this is purely my impression (hence the question), but I think some non-trivial proportion of voters act on the basis of “don’t waste your vote” (this is a phrase I have certainly heard people use in connection with their first preference). Here’s a great example of advertising in opposition to this idea, and here’s Lee Rhiannon explaining preferential voting on just this basis. I think there are a certain number of people who don’t put their favourite party first in the preference list either because a) they seriously believe that putting your party second is wasting your vote or b) they don’t know how to work out where their preferences go and put their second preference first just to be sure. My guess is this happens most in marginal seats, because that’s the situation where screwing up your party allocation is most likely to have a negative effect. Of course if you have a preferred party you should just follow their how to vote slip, but I think not everyone does that for reasons like a) dumb and b) dumber. If the Liberals split into two parties we would suddenly see a bunch of seats where Labour were well ahead of both their rivals – e.g. 40% labour, 25% Small-l-liberal, 25% conservative, 10% green, and suddenly a large proportion of those labour voters might feel they could put their vote to 1 green without worrying. (I think there are also a couple of seats where the Greens are second, so it’s possible that a shift in labour votes for this reason plus some unexpected preference flows could get Greens over the line).
I can’t imagine the Liberals would form a minority with Greens support, though I wouldn’t be so sure that the Greens weren’t up for that – there is a theory that the Greens aren’t a social democratic party, put forward by someone who studies the Greens, but I can’t find the article now so I can’t back up my claim that it exists. I think it more likely that liberal and labour would form some kind of strategic alliance. My interest though is more in how voting patterns would change when a bunch of people were certain that their preferred brand of conservative (or their hated brand of conservative) had no chance of winning. Presumably they’d change their preferences too (obviously, really, since everyone would have to choose which of the two conservative parties to put ahead of the other one in their preference list). Also I guess there are many electorates where you’re confident your party is going to win on first preferences so you never need to think about how to allocate them, but suddenly your party is on 35% instead of 70% and you have to start thinking about what to do with your vote. What proportion of conservative voters would put labour ahead of Greens in a situation where they suddenly had to decide? Turnbull’s electorate is a good example – in the last election it was 62% liberal, 17% labour, 15% Green. If it suddenly became 31% liberal, 31% conservative, 17% labour, 15% green, how would preferences change? And would some of those labour voters switch to Green, thinking there was a chance they might win?
You’re right about the effect the existence of the Greens has on Labour’s political decisions, but what would the separate existence of the liberals and conservatives do? My guess is that it would enable Labour to change its policies on asylum seekers, since it no longer has to worry about a monolithic party sucking up its votes on that issue. My guess is that there are just as many Liberal voters who are concerned about this policy as Labour voters, but they would all end up voting for the new Liberal party, from which Labour can expect to get most of its non-Green preferences, and so Labour would suddenly have a strong reason to modify that policy. But they would also need to appeal to those voters on economic-liberal grounds, so they might become less regulatory. It’s also possible that they might take up a more aggressive position on global warming, which could damage the Greens.
So many thought experiments! Let’s hope the Liberals split, so we can find out!