This was the first federal election in 20 years of writing where I had little to say, on paper at least. The reason I didn’t pen a single column on the campaign was simple. It was the most lacklustre one I’ve seen in more than two decades, a series of transactional handouts from both sides that did nothing to address the seriously big challenges facing the country.
Now the bloodletting has started inside and outside the Liberal Party, there is something worth saying: don’t fall for the claims that the culture wars are rotten or lead inevitably to defeat.
Our biggest culture war in the past 20 years – the voice referendum – was squarely about our political culture, about equal civic rights for all Australians. More than 60 per cent of Australians sided with equality. It was the most resounding mainstream victory for our culture the country has seen.
Since the nationwide pasting suffered by Liberals last weekend, a line-up of predictable names and faces has announced, in all seriousness, that the culture wars killed off Peter Dutton’s chance to become prime minister. People don’t like the culture wars, we’re assured – again. The Libs need to step away from the culture wars if they want to be relevant to voters, they’re saying – again. Talk about deja vu. Every time the Libs lose a federal election, it’s painted as an existential crisis and critics announce the Libs must stop engaging in the culture wars.
Rubbish. Genuine Liberals need to stop trembling about these “culture war” accusations from opponents, inside and outside the party.
Everything is about culture. What kind of country do we want to live in? If Liberals don’t start embracing that, explaining policies through the prism of what kind of culture we want, they may as well fold their tent and save donors a heck of a lot of money.
What is remotely warlike, or even scary, about debating whether we want more regulation of small business – or less? That’s one about our business culture. Do we want unions to dictate workplace laws – or not, given they represent a shrinking portion of the nation’s workers? That’s a debate about our workplace culture. Do we want a culture that creates equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? These are very different. The former empowers individuals. The latter empowers the state. Do we want an aspirational, productive culture? If we do, we’d better have the economic policies to match.
The Liberals failed to express these simple ideas about our culture. Which is no surprise because they had no policies to match these important values. If you don’t start from first principles, you will lose your way and stand for nothing.
What value do we place on improving literacy and numeracy, for example – or are we happy with Australian students consistently falling behind other Western countries? Unbelievably, in the final weeks of the campaign, senior Liberals rejected a desperately needed curriculum overhaul. Seriously? They don’t deserve to govern at the moment.
Do we think universities should encourage students how to think rather than tell them what to think? These are debates about the culture of our education system – are we highbrow or content with dumbing students down?
These are big ideas that deserve to be debated.
On that front, do we think people should be able to express their views freely without being labelled racist or misogynist or transphobic unless they are inciting violence? Or do we want to crack down on speech with “hate speech” laws, even if those laws may be exploited by people who simply hate the speech of their opponents?
That’s another important debate about the culture of freedom in our democracy.
The more recent debate about welcome to country is also about our culture. Do we want every Zoom meeting, footy game, conference, school assembly to start with a political statement that has become part of a bigger project to divide the nation between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people?
Last weekend a reader wrote that I might need to rethink my scepticism of welcomes to country given Labor’s win. Why? It’s possible that many Australians oppose welcome to country, but, given what was on offer, chose Labor’s handouts over the opposition’s. Indeed, there is growing evidence that most Australians think welcomes are at best overused and at worst unwelcome.
Ever since I’ve been writing, the “culture wars” have become a general-purpose scare tactic used by a certain class of people who don’t really want to engage in debates. They are usually on the left side of the political spectrum, be it hard-left Greens or soft-left liberals. They mostly work in politics, in the media, in universities, in the places where debates about ideas should be rich and robust, in fact.
But they use the “war” word deliberately because wars are nasty and must end. “War” is deliberately used to shut down debate. But debates are healthy. They should be encouraged.
Critics of “culture wars” will never talk about the need for a debate about what’s in the education curriculum. Instead, they will describe that debate as a culture war over education.
In this same way, debates about using phonics to teach kids how to read became the “reading wars”. Debates about our history became the “history wars”. On and on it went. When some women expressed doubts about the notion that we could have it all, choosing to care for our own children instead of full-time childcare, that became the “mummy wars”. Can’t we just have a debate in this country without resorting to this puerile notion of a war?
As prime minister, John Howard took aim at the “self-appointed cultural dietitians” because back then they wanted to tell us what to think, and if we didn’t agree with them they tried to push us out of the public square with claims the culture wars were bad, or over, or both.
They are nothing if not predictable. In 2007, after the Ruddslide that turfed Howard from power, left-leaning Guy Rundle told people like me the culture wars were over. Rundle said The Australian needed to “clean house” because people like me had “no dialogue with the times”. Over at the ABC, Jon Faine said there needed to be a “cleansing” of voices like mine.
After Labor was defeated in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2013 and 2019, I don’t recall anyone on the conservative side saying the marketplace of ideas should be cleansed of people such as Rundle, Faine or any of their other fellow travellers. It wouldn’t be much of a marketplace of ideas if only one set of views is on offer.
It’s passing strange that the same people who use the term “culture war” will talk heartily about the importance of culture when they’re talking about things they support. The arts, for example, as a central part of our culture, should be supported with public funds, they will say. I agree, up to a point.
Even if I disagree with them, that doesn’t make our disagreement a culture war. It’s just a disagreement. Debates sharpen ideas. Shutting down debates allows dumb ideas to flourish, untested. It’s as simple as that.
If the Liberals let go of liberal values, shy away from big debates about these values or fail to articulate them effectively to voters, the party will face a genuine existential crisis. There is a rich choice of left-wing offerings on the table for voters. If the Libs join that cultural chorus line, why would voters side with a Labor-lite when they can have the real Labor Party?
Conservatism doesn’t need a defibrillator; it needs a decent leader. There won’t be another Howard. In any case, debates about what kind of culture we want in this country must respond to the times. But the values stay constant. Without a firm foundation of values, a political party is just a house of cards.
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