Western democracy on a razor’s edge

Gillette’s sharpest insight was to demonstrate the chro­nic divide between so-called elites and the mainstream.

Scott Morrison and Jenny Morrison with Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu on their arrival in Port Vila. Picture: AAP

In a week when the antics of our nation’s tennis players seemed to emulate the personal enmities and internal dysfunction of our national politics, the real lesson on our global political malaise came from a shaving company. Gillette’s razor insight was to demonstrate beyond question the chro­nic and sharp divide between so-called elites and the mainstream.

We can see this playing out in Washington, London and Canberra. Some of us have been warning for years that politicians have been acting against the interests of the people they are elected to serve. While much of the media and politicians have been reluctant to accept this reality, Gillette has belled the cat.

When a major company can spend millions of advertising dollars demonising its customer base, we know something has gone awry. If the split between the multi­tudinous customers and the privileged executives who profit from them can become so counterproductive, then a political ­disconnect along similar lines becomes easier to comprehend.

If a company reliant on the dollars it derives from its customers can be so sanctimoniously insulting towards them while attempting to win their favour, is it any wonder that political leaders, too, can make fatal misjudgments about those they serve?

If a brand that has built up $US17 billion ($23.6bn) of value in a parent company worth $US200bn over more than a century from servicing the needs, primarily, of men can decide it might be a smart marketing ploy to demean men, then perhaps it makes it more understandable that politicians can forget the priorities of those who elect them.

Brexit is the most explicit example of this modern political disease. The political class has entangled and confused itself in an orgy of resistance instead of implementing the will of the people.

Incredibly, in response to voters demanding Britain no longer take its cues from Brussels, the British government and parliament effectively are allowing Brussels to dictate the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU.

Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill has diagnosed this accurately from the outset. “The Brexit crisis all stems from one simple problem; the people want to leave the EU and the political class does not. This is where all the tension comes from — the fact the political elite detests our democratic demand.”

The dilemma could not be more stark or simple. Yet the complications arising from it could hardly be more convoluted.

Look elsewhere and we see the same malady. In Washington, Don­ald Trump’s mandate for a border wall with Mexico could hardly be clearer, nor could the Democrats’ previous support for similar measures that were put in place in the past, including under Democrat presidents.

Yet the opposition to the US President’s wall is more than politically driven obstructionism from the Democrats; it is encouraged and ­promoted, including with disingenuous coverage, by much of the media and other interest groups. The will of the people doesn’t matter much when the self-declared elites believe they know better.

The repercussions of all this are quite unpredictable. If Trump is thwarted by the hypocritical opposition of his opponents — and he is not felled by other inquiries, attacks or issues — the wall issue will strengthen his chances of re-election because it will confirm the need to drain the swamp. Yet if Trump fails, his enemies will be triumphalist, his presidency will be dismissed as an aberration and a large cohort of voters will feel disenfranchised.

In liberal democracies there is always a fine line between rank populism and responsive representative government. In this age of instant digital feedback and constant polling, the ability of politicians to shape their policy actions in response to their prom­ises, values, mandates and inter­action with voters is sorely tested.

Although a resort to some modern form of direct democracy — advocated from time to time by the ultra-populists — would destroy the essence of parliamentary democracy, we seem to have drifted to the virtual opposite realm, where governments don’t bother enacting their ­mandates or are prevented from doing so.

This dynamic is at the heart of Australia’s political disarray. From Kevin Rudd abandoning climate action to Julia Gillard bringing in the carbon tax she had forsworn, voters have seldom got what they voted for.

Tony Abbott, too, broke faith with voters, increasing income tax and cutting where he had promised to quarantine.

In the end this was Malcolm Turnbull’s problem also, although less explicitly. He never had a strong imprimatur from voters, having squandered all but one seat of the majority he seized from Abbott, and while his climate and energy policy did not break any specific promise, it broke faith with the thrust of the Coalition’s mandate.

The Coalition came to power in 2013 promising to axe the carbon tax, and while Abbott signed up to the Paris Agreement it was a mistake for Turnbull to ratify it the day after Trump was elected on a platform of withdrawing the world’s largest economy from the deal. In the end, Turnbull’s national energy guarantee was a bridge too far for much of this party because it would have prescribed the Paris emissions targets under law.

Likewise, on a more sympathetic note, we can see how Turnbull, Abbott and Rudd were prevented from implementing their agendas. Rudd couldn’t get his emissions trading scheme through the Senate, Abbott’s ­budget measures were blocked and Turnbull couldn’t deliver the company tax cuts to all businesses that were fundamental to his tax reform and economic growth agenda.

The Coalition had to compromise and spend its way to Senate approval for education, welfare and health changes. From their own drift and from Senate obstructionism, our national governments have not succeeded in delivering what voters charged them with implementing.

In a nutshell, this is why voters are testy, minor parties and independents are on the rise, and the major parties are full of self-doubt and confusion. Our politics is in disarray because governments are not doing what we elect them to do. To borrow from the Gillette experience, we elect them to give us a smooth shave and instead they give us patronising messages about our behaviour. We elect them to reduce our power prices and they come up with highfalutin and expensive plans to satisfy the UN negotiators in Paris.

In this election year, the Coalition must learn from all of this — if it is not too late. While the media/political class will constantly implore it to do more on climate action and avoid a population and immigration debate at all costs, these are the touchstone issues for mainstream right-of-centre voters who feel the government has abandoned them.

Apologetic stands and policy fiddles around the edges of these issues tend to miss the point.

The Coalition was elected to secure the borders, bring energy prices down, fix the budget and look after the economic interests of the nation. It has delivered on only one of these promises in unequivocal terms.

The way to sharpen the choice at the election and convince voters that it understands both its mistakes and its mission is to find ways of reasserting these priorities.

Fundamentally this means disregarding the Paris targets when energy affordability and reliability are under threat (and while global emissions are rising substantially anyway).

It also means doubling down on the agenda of lower tax, constrained spending and smaller government rather than drifting along as a less-worse option than Labor. And of course it means highlighting the risks of Labor when it comes to border security and budget stability.

Is there anyone who seriously believes that, in opposition, the Coalition won’t inevitably go down this path after a Shorten Labor government increases taxes, extends the reach of government, doubles our climate effort and weakens our border protection regime? So why wait for opposition? Why not sharpen these positions now, in government?

This would be politically smart and it would outline a policy course manifestly in the best interests of the nation. It would infuriate the green Left, underscoring its virtue. It might stem the drift of voters to fringe parties on the Right and improve the Coalition’s electoral prospects. It might energise party supporters and donors.

But, most important, it would demonstrate that the Coalition was listening to mainstream concerns on the issues that propelled it into office.

It would reconnect the government with its purpose, shunning the alternative universe of a political discussion carried out by the so-called elites in favour of debate about issues that a very successful prime minister once neatly described as barbecue stoppers.