Last year, the great cultural critic Fredric Jameson died. In the aftermath of Jameson’s death, I came across a long passage in which he offers a vivid, illuminating image to help us think about what “history” is.

Jameson describes a “vast and ill-lit basement”. It is filled with historians wearing white coats. Most of them are consulting different types of machines, measuring “consumption, luxury goods, life expectancy, annual film production, salinity, ideology, average weight, average heat”. Other historians have decided the measurements don’t matter; still others are trying to bring all the numbers together in one grand “master statistic”.

Each of these historians, in their own way, is trying to pin history down. But, Jameson writes, none of the tools register history directly. Instead, history “exists somewhere outside this basement”. The difficulty is that all anybody has ever seen is these “gauges and their needles”.

I find this useful in at least two, slightly opposing, ways. The first is to suggest how much we miss. This is a useful thing for a columnist to keep in mind, because the temptation is always to believe that you have struck upon the one true rendering of events: there is always another fact, another measurement, which will complicate your conclusions. History is never precisely where you think it is; you may be looking in the wrong place.

But they are a reminder, too, that there is not really such a thing as “the wrong place”, because history exists everywhere: that is, each of us may be more a part of it than we realise. Sometimes history takes place between world leaders or on a battlefield. But it is also taking place in discussions around a water cooler; or at the school drop-off.

Or – bizarrely enough – when you purchase something online. Which is part of what Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh is getting at in a speech he will deliver today.

Leigh will make the case for the government’s actions on unfair business conduct. In doing so, he will say that a set of somewhat nefarious, quite destructive business practices have sprouted online – and have then spread like weeds.

You will be familiar with at least some of them. Just last week, I went to cancel my internet service, only to discover I could not do so online – the irony! Instead, I had to call a number. It’s not the first time this has happened to me – last time it was a newspaper frustrating my attempts. Leigh, in his speech, says, “even Australian companies have reportedly made it harder than necessary for subscribers to cancel”. We should hope that, in his delivery of the speech, it becomes obvious this line is meant comically.

Some other examples Leigh gives: people are essentially tricked into taking out subscriptions; or to sign up for longer than they mean to; or they have to pay a higher price than advertised; or they unexpectedly have to pay to leave a service.

For most of us, such problems will seem merely annoying. But as you read Leigh’s speech, in which he warns of broader consequences, you get a sense of their terrible accumulation. I was reminded of theorist Mark Fisher’s observation that bureaucracy is the dominant feature of our time. Instead of bureaucracy residing in government, Fisher says, it has spread outwards into corporations.

Internet commerce is perhaps the peak of this. It can feel smooth enough at point of sale, but by now, most of us know this is an illusion; instead, we carry with us an awareness that we may be unwittingly entangling ourselves in a set of procedures it will be difficult to escape. The creeping knowledge that this is exactly what is intended makes us more suspicious; we begin to expect such behaviour as a matter of course.

This is the foundation of Leigh’s point: that the way we all slowly accept such behaviour wears us down, and not only in relation to the internet. He does not use the word “cynicism”, but this is surely what he is referring to when he says: “Once trust fades in one domain, it often spills into others.” Such practices “normalise a mode of engagement that runs counter to the values a democratic society depends on: openness, clarity and respect for the individual”.

Of course, the government is not always brilliant at sticking to such values itself – witness its recent attempts to change Freedom of Information laws. But Leigh still has a point, one he puts still more sharply when he says such business practices can “bring a nasty opportunism into everyday interactions”.

I was reminded, reading this, of one of Anthony Albanese’s strongest pieces of rhetoric as leader, saying during the 2025 campaign that “kindness” was “not weakness”. On election night, he went further, saying an “Australian value” was “the strength to show … kindness to those in need”. Facing challenges “the Australian way” meant doing so while “looking after each other”.

Leigh will deliver his speech at Manning Clark House, named for Australia’s most famous historian who, he will say, “reminded us that the stories we tell about our society shape the society we become”. Clark “did not spend much time thinking about the optimal rules for regulating subscription… But he thought deeply about the moral character of Australian life, and about the forces pulling it in different directions”. With that in mind, consider how important it might be that Albanese wants to tell us a story about our society being kind. This is especially obvious in the light of Pauline Hanson’s renewed presence on the political scene. If Hanson is pulling Australia in one direction, the prime minister’s role in pulling in the other direction becomes crucial.

Leigh’s speech suggests Albanese’s rhetoric is being heard, at the very least, by his frontbench; and, at times, it is finding some purchase in the government’s policies. It is hard to know at this early stage how much weight to give to the changes themselves. Still, it is good to be reminded of the many venues in which history takes place: within governments, between governments and citizens, in the way we are all treated by businesses, and in interactions between the rest of us.

Sean Kelly is a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. He is the author of Quarterly Essay 100, The Good Fight: What Does Labor Stand For?

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