James Morrow: It’s time to think for yourself

IF Australia’s political scene looks hopelessly broken, consider also that civil society is also in trouble. Having the “wrong” view can get you fired — and that’s not good.

James Morrow, the Daily Telegraph’s opinion editor.

AUSTRALIAN politics is hopelessly broken. It’s a narrative that’s becoming as much a part of our collective national identity as mateship and meat pies.

It’s not just because of ­Canberra’s revolving door leaderships or the fractious Senate crossbenches either.

Civil society — that space outside Parliament House in the real world where most of us dwell and discuss and negotiate what our nation looks like by a million little exchanges every day — is also in trouble.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s speaking tour, rather than ticking a trifecta of boxes for the Left, has become a cause for suspicion and outrage.

Rather than a space where individuals from all sides can mix it up and push for their ideas and beliefs, the public square is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Particularly as having the “wrong” view ­according to your opponents is now seen as a legitimate ­reason to try to have you fired, as the recent cases of IBM’s Mark Allaby and Macquarie University’s Steve ­Chavura demonstrate.

This is not a healthy situation. And it is why, to fix Australia’s politics and public discourse, we need to start fighting over ideas, not allegiances.

That means getting away from identifying people (including ourselves) as to what team they play for or what ­colour ideological jersey they wear and actually engaging with the principles they hold.

Because once you start identifying yourself and others as members of a team, you don’t have to think. And if the whistle blows halftime and it’s time for everyone to swap ends, who cares? So long as you’re laying the boot in against the other team.

Penny Wong.

Julia Gillard.

Gay marriage, a perfectly defensible issue that should not require threats to get over the line, provides endless examples of what happens when point-scoring trumps principle.

Recall it wasn’t long ago that the atheist Julia Gillard and the gay, partnered Penny Wong were defending marriage as something to be ­enjoyed exclusively between a man and woman. No one really believed they believed this, but understood that’s what their team colours demanded at the time.

And now the same stance when held by an academic or executive is enough for activists from the Left to push to have them fired, with activists directing tweets at employers containing words as threatening as any mafioso’s: “Not a good look.”

This phenomenon plays out over longer timeframes, too. Consider free speech.

Within living memory, it was the Left — and yes, these are simplistic, reductionist terms — that thrilled to the rich possibilities of giving ­offence, while it was the Right that stood for morality, decency and order.

The Right has its blind spots, too.

As late as 1965, the Menzies government was enforcing a ban on the more-schlock-than-shock DH Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Around the same time the publishers of Oz, a left-wing satirical magazine, were being hauled before a judge on ­obscenity charges.

Fast-forward to the present and it was forces from the Left who pursued cartoonist Bill Leak through the Human Rights Commission and in social media sewers like Twitter.

If one needed any further ­illustration of just how much the Left has now become the cultural establishment, note how many people defend today’s pinch-nosed censoriousness with words that could have been lifted from a small-town ladies’ gardening club newsletter. Political correctness, they say, is just another term for manners.

And so too with religion, something which the Left — yes, we will get to the other side soon enough — long ago abandoned as the domain of the slow and the superstitious.

Except, oddly, when it comes to Islam, which despite the documented misogyny and homophobia, is wholly ­romanticised and defended.

Which is why the impending Australian speaking tour of a female atheist refugee from Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, rather than ticking a trifecta of boxes for the Left, has become a cause for suspicion and outrage.

In recent weeks writers at SBS and Melbourne’s Age have penned approving features of protests against Hirsi Ali’s visit, in one case openly wondering why there haven’t been more of them. So much for standing up for refugees, for women, for secularism.

The Right has its blind spots, too. To go back to the whole debacle around Cooper’s promotion of an online discussion about the pros and cons of same-sex marriage between Liberal MPs Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie, we saw many who would otherwise be nervous about a halal certification be completely cool with a Bible verse showing up on their special commemorative Cooper’s Light.

(Pro tip: Neither matters. And who drinks light beer anyway?)

The point is, everyone has their blind spots, but letting other people think for you will only make them larger — and more dangerous.

James Morrow is opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph.