Julia Gillard reveals her disconnect from reality

Julia Gillard delivers the Bob Hawke lecture. Picture: Twitter.

You would be forgiven for thinking that political leaders in western liberal democracies had somehow lost their fundamental grasp of how democracy is supposed to work. Rather than accept the principle that a governing class is put in place at the behest of the people and dispensed with by voters depending on its performance, they seem to think the governing class has been let down by the hoi polloi.

Julia Gillard accidentally brought all this clearly into focus again yesterday in her Bob Hawke lecture. Her intention was to talk about anxiety and stresses in modern society but her appropriation of political turmoil to demonstrate her point only served to reveal her own disconnect from reality.

She is not alone. Her misdiagnosis is rampant around the world with vast swathes of politicians, journalists, academics and others in the media/political class — mainly but not exclusively of the Left — who have been shocked by Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump. Instead of comprehending how the political class has been brought to heel by mainstream voters, they patronisingly explain how those poor little people have got it all wrong.

“Certainly, events like Brexit and the election of Trump show there is a backlash, those hit and hurt by change want to lash out,” Ms Gillard said. “Think of the circumstances of unskilled or semi-skilled Western white men. Challenged by economic change, the gender revolution and the migration of people, culture and ideas, every reality they thought they could rely on has given way beneath them. Anxiety is an understandable response.”

A great privilege to deliver the 20th Hawke Lecture in Adelaide tonight. My speech is here: https://t.co/K9IXcR2IZs JG pic.twitter.com/A3FHt7atTd

— Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard) October 12, 2017

To think this sanctimony could come from a former Labor politician is revealing. Instead of flattering and championing working people (as Bob Hawke always did), Gillard demeans them.

And it is nonsense. Sure, we know the decline of manufacturing in the US, UK and Australia has created disenchantment among traditional left-of-centre voters. But it insults them to suggest their votes of protest have come about from anxiety or confusion about equal rights for women, the influx of various cultures or lack of understanding of seismic economic shifts.

Immigration has played a pivotal role in the rise of these countries, especially the US and Australia, and working people have embraced wave after wave of orderly migration. They expect it to be managed well and they expect the influx to slow down when jobs are in short supply.

The reaction of voters in all three democracies to governments and political classes oblivious to their concerns about border security, immigration stewardship and economic management is not one of anxiety or confusion but of common sense. They pulled the reins on a media/political class that was losing sight of the fundamental values of the nation state.

For their trouble, Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables” who were Islamophobic, racist and sexist. In the UK similar abuse was thrown at the Brexiters, and in our country the tendency has long been to sneer at “western Sydney” as if it is a brutish foreign country and talk about border security policies as some kind of evil “dog-whistling” campaign that harnesses the innate racism of the mainstream. What patronising rot.

Gillard and her co-accused Kevin Rudd lost control of the nation’s borders — in other words they broke one of the crucial building blocks of our modern nation, destroying the integrity of Australia’s immigration system. They also lost control of the budget and broke faith with the electorate over climate policy.

Yet Gillard somehow finds the arrogance to sympathise with the anxiety of mainstream voters as if the poor loves have lashed out at a beneficent ruling class for all the wrong reasons. The lack of self-awareness is astounding, as is the inability to learn the lessons of election defeats.

Gillard — like so many of them from Rudd to Clinton — always finds someone else to blame. “Add to this the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ and the ability of individuals to exist in self-reinforcing bubbles of opinion divorced from facts, and it all is a recipe for even more anxiety — not to mention anger,” she said.

How could someone who tore down her own leader to seize the prime ministership and broke her clear promise not to introduce a carbon tax find the gumption to criticise the dishonesty of fake news? What Trump has found, for all his faults and misstatements, is that exposing the dishonesty and hidden leftist agenda of much of the media actually appeals to mainstream voters. They get it. They see through the blame-shifting of people like Gillard.

There are political ructions at play, to be sure. The delayed impacts of the global financial crisis, repercussions from the rise of China and other Asian manufacturing nations, the new wave of mass migration, rise of Islamist terrorism and consequences of global climate policies are shaking up the political debate in western liberal democracies.

But the voters understand these issues and pressures better than many of their political masters comprehend. Voters don’t need patronising lectures from the media/political class; rather, they need those so-called elites to listen. The voters tend not to give speeches, write blogs, make pronouncements or even tweet their views. They know the power of their voice is in the ballot.

Yet instead of listening, the political elites play the victim card. From their own ivory towers the politicians and former politicians complain that the voters don’t quite understand the wisdom of their political decisions nor how they are informed by a political class that sees itself as being closely in touch with real concerns. It is self-delusion on a grand scale. Here is Gillard from the other side of the Looking Glass.

“For many the answer to that anxiety is to reject the mainstream political class who preach about the inevitability of globalisation, the need for more modernisation, the requirement to respect diversity, all while leading seemingly pampered lives. How easy is it to conclude that these besuited men and women are out of touch?” Gillard asks.

With respect, former prime minister, I think you answered your own question.