This was published 5 months ago
Opinion
Silence descends: Our inability to discuss difficult issues has never been more obvious
Sean Kelly
ColumnistAustralians often mistake for tradition what is only recent habit – Australia Day, say. Or the expectation that Australians hold the post of governor-general: that started in 1965. Australian career military men now seem usual; in fact, John Howard appointed the first.
The most interesting thing, then, about last week’s appointment is the fact Sam Mostyn is the first serious businessperson in the role. The attacks on her for being “woke” were obviously stupid. But it felt just as shallow for many on the left to seem so cheered by her appointment. Mostyn herself is an impressive individual, but this new precedent surely required more discussion than it has had.
Agreement on difficult topics may not be possible, but working towards agreement, of honest and open discussion, can be important.Credit: Illustration: Jim Pavlidis
This scant debate – so typical, now – comes not directly from polarisation, but from the fact that underlies polarisation: one’s political identity determines one’s beliefs and not the other way around. Mostyn was seen as on the left; responses followed automatically.
Equally instructive were the views that some found objectionable. The country had voted No to the Indigenous Voice, therefore someone who supported it could not be governor-general. Somebody who used the term “invasion”, too.
Given the storm created by a white woman believing these things, I suppose there is a grim political calculus behind the fact an Indigenous person was not appointed, as had long been speculated. But it is worth teasing this thinking out. Is the idea that Indigenous people are now, by virtue of the Voice defeat, too controversial? That their very presence is somehow an affront to the 60 per cent of Australians who voted No?
Much like the role of racism in that defeat, this calculus will remain largely unspoken. This week I have had in mind a column written by Gabrielle Chan after the referendum. She wrote, from her small town in a rural electorate: “For all the shouting at the federal level, the silence in my town streets was deafening in this campaign. People were loath to talk about the referendum and its implications, much less discuss how they would vote, unless they were confident they were in company who may reflect their own opinions.” This, she wrote, kept things comfortable, ensuring that “no one was exposed to views they might not agree with”.
This is always a fact of social life. But it has been hard not to feel, in recent months, as though it has acquired even greater force in relation to the horrors we have witnessed in both Israel and Gaza.
Franz Kafka once wrote a short piece about Genesis. In it, he suggested that humans knew what was right and wrong. They were, however, terrified to act on that knowledge. In order to avoid having to do so, they came up with rationalisations, in order to blur their innate understanding of right and wrong, and deny to themselves what they knew.
This is a fair description of people on both sides of the debate in recent months: those who believe they can justify Hamas’ attack, or breeze over the keeping of hostages, or explain away Israel’s ongoing massacre of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. The rationalisations pile up, until you are left with the absurd arguments of this past week, in which some reflexively blame Hamas for Israel’s killing of aid workers – as though Hamas’ horrific attacks mean anything is now permitted. This is a strange, atemporal view, in which there is no past or future, but only October 7, which apparently had no past leading up to it and justifies everything that comes after it.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces Sam Mostyn as Australia’s next governor-general.Credit: AAP
After months of carnage, we seem incapable of a discussion that acknowledges both the October attacks and the distressing way that Israel is conducting itself in Gaza. Reports that sections of the Israeli Defence Forces are operating more or less as laws unto themselves have troubling historical echoes (including with wars this country has fought). A report that Israel is relying on Artificial Intelligence to target bombings, and permitting significant civilian casualties in its targeted strikes, is frightening, both about the present and the future.
But I am talking about debates which most Australians have tuned out of. This is partly because of the public’s usual depressing impatience. But it is also because of the particular way this discussion has been conducted. In the public sphere this has been most obvious in relation to those who criticise Israel, though in some circles Israel’s supporters have faced similar: work lost, friendships destroyed, business relationships severed.
As this schism has widened, driven in part by antisemitism and Islamophobia, reasoned debate has mostly vanished. Discussion has largely been given over to those on each side who are willing to operate at a feverish pitch, playing malicious games of gotcha with code words grasped only by those who play such games for a living. The result has been, as in the Voice debate, a mass silencing of everyone outside of those extremes. This is one of the most disturbing developments in this country I can remember.
The other large story of last week, the Lehrmann defamation proceedings, seems at first quite separate. Often, such cases involve niche legal disputes. Increasingly, though, they have become sites for other battles: over feminism, sexual violence, journalism, nationalism, masculinity. The fact that defamation suits have become so central to discussions of our national culture is strange – but inevitable.
As convention dies, as rational discussion becomes impossible, it is natural that debate has gravitated towards a forum in which rules exist, facts are established, and at least one person listens calmly.
Agreement on difficult topics may not be possible. Even then, the process of working towards agreement, of honest and open discussion, can be important. We seem to have lost this ability, or perhaps the desire. And yet, this bleak fact too is something we will largely leave unspoken.
If the fighting in Gaza ever stops, we will likely take the sudden pause in shouting as a sign of our cohesion, believing that our society has come through a difficult time and arrived on the other side. It won’t be true.
Sean Kelly is author of The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
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