Politics by Postcode

Much has changed around us over the last 30 years, and people who live in regional or rural Australia or engage in activities outside our capital cities have endured most of the consequences.
A question each of us must answer is how we respond to these changes. Do we pretend they are not happening and ignore them? Do we say that we did not ask for these changes and were not consulted about them and that we should not have changed because it is something we did not ask for? Do we say that the forces behind these changes are too powerful for us, that there is not anything we can do about it and that we should accept defeat and find something else to do? Or do we say we shall try to negate these changes and adapt to them while retaining our culture and lifestyle?

To answer these questions, it is necessary to ask why we find ourselves in this situation and where it all began. Some people would say it began with the Vietnam War and the age of protest. That era signalled the beginning of the rise of individualism and, with that, the lowering of the value and importance placed on community and family. Gradually our society has become more about rights and ‘me’ and less about obligations and ‘others.’ However, the political challenge for regional Australia began well before that. The beginning of the end of the ascendancy of regional and rural Australia started in the 1950s with the post-World War II decision to develop a manufacturing industry with a limited population. There were not enough people to take the jobs to, so the people had to be taken to the jobs. Thus, began not only Australia’s well-publicised migration programme but also the attraction of people from the country to the cities in Australia’s southeast corner. Despite Australia’s population growth, increasingly driven by migrants who primarily congregate in capital cities (especially Sydney and Melbourne) and the decimation of manufacturing, this mindset has not changed. Today we see the results - 75 per cent or more of the populations of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia live in the capital cities of those states.
Meanwhile, the consequences of the cultural revolution of the 1960s have been reinforced by the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s. 

Between the 1930s and 1980s, politics in Anglo-Saxon countries and Western Europe were driven by the great depression and communism. Either political parties broadly opposed communism and central planning and were termed the ‘right,’ or they were tolerant of central planning and communism and termed ‘the Left.’ The Berlin wall came down in 1989, putting an end to what had already long been a façade of ideological ballast. The true shape of modern politics was evidenced by the free-market economic policies championed by the Labor Party in Australia in the 1980s. If the major parties in the West had been intellectually honest, they would have wound up as Berlin’s wall tumbled down because the rationale for the existence of all of them had ceased to exist.

However, that was not possible because, even by then, politics was becoming a career, and to have acted on principle would have put jobs on the line. As unapologetic socialist and NSW Carr Government Education Minister Rod Cavalier put it more than 15 years ago:

‘The political class is a coterie. The coterie has its differences within - any such divisions are not about ideas or ideology. The factions have become executive placement agencies, and disputes become serious only when they cannot agree on a placement. They are effectively united for themselves against the world.’ 

The only way for a political party to survive in the modern era was to become what John Howard described in the 1990s as a ‘broad church. And a broad church believes in nothing. Consequently, since the 1990s, the terms left and right have become meaningless, and the only value they have is to provide a way to maintain the myth that the major parties believe in something. The problem is that we have seen through the myth. Today the major parties are as much about values as the football teams you support or loathe with a passion. ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are not terms that give you a sense of somebody’s values or beliefs. Nor for that matter is one’s identification with the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or even the National Party. 

The most accurate indicator of people’s values and beliefs is their postcodes – where they live. In 1998, former Labor leader Mark Latham summed up this development when he spoke of Australians are either “Tourists” or “Residents”. Latham said that the insiders live like tourists in their own country, and there is a sense in which they do not live in Australia at all.‘They travel extensively, eat out, and buy-in domestic help. They see the challenges of globalisation as an opportunity, a chance to further develop their identity and information skills. This abstract lifestyle has produced an abstract style of politics. Symbolic and ideological campaigns are given top priority. This involves a particular methodology: adopting a predetermined position on issues and then looking for evidence to support that position.’ The outsiders, on the other hand - the people who live in the outer suburbs and the regions - are the “Residents” of Australia. Their values are pragmatic, and they cannot distance themselves from the neighbourhood’s problems, so good behaviour and good services are all critical. There is no symbolism, and no dogma, in the suburbs, Latham says. The Residents look for minor, pragmatic improvements, and they are not as interested in “big pictures.”

The evidence to support Latham’s thesis was in already, and it took the form of the referendum results on an Australian republic in 1999. In Victoria, the federal electorates with the four highest ‘yes’ votes were Melbourne, Melbourne Ports, Higgins and Kooyong – two Liberal, two Labor, all inner suburban. The ‘no’ vote in outer suburban Labor seats was like that in outer suburban Liberal seats. 
The same holds in other states. In Australia’s most decentralised state, Queensland, just two seats voted ‘yes.’ The (then) safe Labor seat of Brisbane and the safe Liberal seat of Ryan, both inner suburban. As one went along north along the Queensland coast, the ‘no’ votes were comparable, regardless of whether the seats were held by Labor or Liberal/National. In Sydney, the electorates of both John Howard and Tony Abbott voted ‘yes,’ a harbinger of Abbott’s ultimate electoral demise. Political loyalties do not provide a basis for analysing the results of that referendum...Postcodes do. Neither of the major parties wanted to learn the lessons from this referendum because their key decision-makers and the operatives with critical influence live in the inner suburbs. Instead, as the parties have descended into belief in nothing, they have become vehicles for patronage. The values and beliefs promoted by both parties are the values of the social sets in which their influential members mingle.

Latham’s ‘residents’ are treated with contempt. The political elites think that the way to overcome the incompatibility of the values and priorities of the inner suburbs and the rest of Australia is to work out how much is needed to bribe the outer suburbs and the regions.

Twenty years after the republic referendum, Australians were shocked by Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump. Why? The destruction of community on the one hand and the gutting of the middle class because of the ascendancy of economic Darwinism brought about through the adoption of unbridled free-market theory on the other made the divisions, distrust, and cynicism that we see today inevitable. 

Against this backdrop, hunters, miners, farmers, and people who live in regional and rural areas need to respond to the questions I began with. It is crucial to understand who controls the cultural levers and what those levers are. It is also necessary to remember, in an era where principles are expendable, and values are negotiable, that 75 percent beats 25 percent and that the views of the people with whom the political class socialises have greater weight than the views of the people who they claim to represent. The cultural revolution in which we are caught up will not reverse itself by wishful thinking. Nor will it be reversed overnight. Developing ways to hold the line requires skill, judgment, and wisdom. It also requires recognising where we are and not being distracted by where we think we should be or would like to be. It also requires patience, commitment, and determination – Rome was not built in a day.   

By Rick Brown