In politics, the ‘modern moderate’ is nothing short of a con

When it comes to politics, moderate is a con. If a company used this word in the same way that, say, many moderate Liberals do, directors would be up on charges of misleading and deceptive conduct.

Politics has a knack for neutering language. Take the word moderate. My dictionary defines moderate as “avoiding extremes of behaviour or expression: observing reasonable limits”. Like sensible health warnings at Christmas about our alcohol and pork crackling intake.

But when it comes to politics, moderate is a con. If a company used this word in the same way that, say, many moderate Liberals do, directors would be up on charges of misleading and deceptive conduct.

Before we get to the ruse, there are some other telltale identifiers of a political moderate. Take Liberal moderates. Many are as wet as the proverbial week-old lettuce leaf. Moderate in this sense means sentimental and emotional. Or to put it another way, completely free of sharp and rational analysis.

The other, related, trait of many political moderates is they haven’t had any recent big political wins.

Before Malcolm Turnbull writes a letter to the editor about same-sex marriage, remember that reform was supported by people across the political spectrum – and, in any case, it was championed by Warren Entsch long before Turnbull did the victory lap in parliament.

The voice is the most recent example of the woeful political skills of modern moderates. Those moderates who supported the voice had a decade or so to win us over, yet the more they spoke about being on the right side of history, the less likely they were to succeed in inserting a race-based body into the Constitution. Their claim to the high moral ground made no sense; it was regressive and radical, not progressive and moderate to reject Martin Luther King’s dream that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The worst political moderates are moral bigots. While most conservatives will contest an idea they disagree with by saying the idea is a bad one, and explain why, many moderates conflate an idea with the presumed morality of the person espousing the idea.

If a political moderate advocates an idea, they will claim to be our moral saviour. If a political moderate disagrees with an idea, they will routinely deride the proponent of the idea as a moral reprobate. Think the voice, again.

To illustrate, I can’t work out if former BBC journalist Nick Bryant wants to be a journalist and writer or a religious preacher. His morality lessons are as tedious as his book titles: The Rise and Fall of Australia: How a Great Nation Lost Its Way followed by When America Stopped Being Great. 

Malcolm Turnbull

I swear that most recent book title was scavenged from the first episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, where surly cable news anchor Will McAvoy slaps down a sorority girl for asking what makes America so great.

Whereas Sorkin is one of the most brilliant creators of television, Bryant is lucky that a country can’t sue for defamation. He would not have a truth defence for this incoherent blather.

Just before Christmas in 2022, Bryant suggested that Australia would be consigned to the international sin bin if we voted No to the voice. “A yes vote would help quash any lingering vestiges of the stereotype that Australia is a redneck nation. A no vote could be devastating and seen as proof that the country is a racial rogue nation,” he wrote.

More recently Victorian Liberal John Pesutto mastered the art of moral bigotry when defaming fellow Liberal Moira Deeming. After Deeming attended a Let Women Speak rally in March 2023, the Opposition Leader – a so-called Liberal moderate – could have taken her aside and said something measured like this: “Moira, you’re new to politics, so may I give you a few bits of advice. First, women’s rights are tremendously important to us Liberals, given attacks by radical trans activists.

“But, Moira, please be careful of those neo-Nazi nutters who turn up to protests. These attention-seeking crazies may end up wrecking your reputation and your career – and they may damage the Liberal Party too.”

Instead, Pesutto went full-frontal moderate – meaning there was nothing remotely measured about his attacks on Deeming and his attempt to have her expelled from the Liberal Party.

As Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan found last week, it was Pesutto – not neo-Nazis – who damaged Deeming’s reputation and career by defaming her as a Nazi sympathiser after the women’s march was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

Nick Bryant

Pesutto didn’t defame Deeming once; that might be vaguely moderate. He did it five times – in a media release, in radio and television interviews, at a press conference and in an expulsion motion and dossier – imputing the worst kind of wickedness. As the Federal Court judge found, Pesutto imputed “that Mrs Deeming associates with Nazis and is thus unfit to be a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party”.

At his press conference following the Let Women Speak rally, Pesutto defamed Deeming by conveying the imputation that she “participated in a rally and knowingly worked with … organisers to help them promote their odious Nazi agenda and their white supremacist and ethno-fascist views”.

In other words, the dictionary definition of moderate doesn’t apply to Pesutto.

After trying to claim the high ground by throwing dirt of the worst kind to impugn an opponent’s character, the Opposition Leader faces a $300,00 defamation award, along with staggering legal bills.

When JK Rowling congratulated Deeming a few days later, she exposed another common trait of so-called political moderates. The Harry Potter author and champion of women’s rights noted: “The ‘right side of history’ is racking up a hell of a lot of losses recently.”

Being “on the right side of history” is like being on the side of God – or a brutal Russian dictator – if you know anything about the roots of this phrase.

The biggest name to use historical determinism to try to win an argument – after Hegel and Marx – was Stalin. Marx was Hegel’s most famous student, and Stalin learnt about historical determinism from Marx.

Moira Deeming and JK Rowling

The Russian tyrant assured his opponents that those who resisted his totalitarian regime were “on the wrong side of history”. More accurately, his opponents were on the wrong side of a gun, a forced labour camp or famine.

It’s not clear that those Australian historians who signed a joint letter during the voice debate, calling “on our fellow Australians to be on the right side of history” by voting Yes, knew their history.

“The right side of history” crutch to preclude debate is dodgy one.

The purveyors of this claim don’t want to think too hard about their views. They reckon their views are correct because they’re on the “right side of history”, and they’re on the “right side of history” because others can’t resist the onslaught of their views. Who’s going to argue with their circular reasoning?

We will.

So my Christmas wish involves a slight tweak to Eartha Kitt’s rendition of Santa Baby. Along with a 1954 light blue convertible, a sable and deed to a platinum mine for me, my wish is that political moderates find a dictionary and a book on Russian history under their Christmas tree.

It’s fortunate I’m not a songwriter.

Thanks for reading and wishing you a very Merry Christmas.