As I have noted in the past that, for the most part, Australian political economy is divided pretty simply into two teams. On one side you have a kind of bastardised social liberalism in which trade union thugs wield power via the Labor Party and are supported by a cultural community of Irish-Catholic derived “battlers”. On the other side, you have an equally bastardised neo-liberalism in which corporations wield power via the Liberal Party and are supported by a cultural community of English-Protestant derived “bludgers”.
Whether the members of either team are from Vietnam, Israel, Lebanon or Lapland, rich or poor is irrelevant. This is our tribal political culture.
There is no judgement in this. It just is. It has both strengths and weaknesses.
The main strength is that policy never strays too far from the centre. It simply can’t. Elections are won and lost on winning that group of folks that can still swing between the two teams. By definition, centrist liberals. I confess, I am one of them.
When it works well, the system is capable of delivering national interest outcomes, which we saw in the period of policy innovation through the late eighties and nineties when the Australian economy was liberalised by both sides of the divide.
Moreover, this is why you see both teams often stealing policies that would more naturally fit with the other. For Labor, such things as surpluses and tax cuts. For Liberal, such things as using regulation ahead of market forces in addressing carbon.
The tribalism also enables the bizarrest of political coalitions to endure. To my mind the National Party has greater ideological sympathies with the traditions of protectionsim than it does free markets. Agriculture is the most singularly unliberated market on earth, perhaps outside of weapons. Yet its constituents sit within the party whose driving ideology is supposed to be liberalisation. This gestures toward another area where the liberalisms of the two parties are deeply confused. The Liberal party are for some reason the social conservatives, which gives them some sympatico with the Nationals. And the Labor party are for some reason the social liberals.
In the media, the same tribalism is constantly on display in the apologists for each team. It is as rare as hens teeth to see a major economic or political commentator “cross the floor” as it were. Most pretend to a kind of ideological purity whilst rolling over on all sorts of compromises in support of their team.
The main weakness of the system is that it is constantly at risk of reverting to type. Using their mindless supporters in the media and academy as cover, the interests in each team perpetually tear at the national interest policies that underpin the party centres. Both the unions on one side, and corporations on the other, seek to overreach for greater gains and in doing so they bury the national interest. The successful political leader is he that resists his own core constituencies greatest wishes. Hawke and Keating did it. Howard and Costello did to, until they didn’t, and it cost them power with Work Choices.
So, what is the point of this post? It is this: Australia currently faces a fundamental challenge to this political economy strucutre. If allowed to proceed, recently announced changes in media ownership will deliver 70% of the newspaper market to Rupert Murdoch. The only competitor of substance, Fairfax, will be delivered into the hands of the mining sector.
In short, one team in our political economy will completely dominate the print media and I see no reason why it will stop there. The same team is also moving to dominate television.
It is no wonder then, that the other team, which happens to hold power right now, is freaking out. From the AFR:
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is firming his position in favour of a media ownership public interest test amid pressure for a Leveson-style parliamentary inquiry which could question Fairfax and News Ltd proprietors and executives on their operations.
…He backed his colleague Labor parliamentarian Steve Gibbons who has a motion listed for debate on “the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few” and calling for regulation to ensure a competitive media market.
Senator Conroy confirmed he was looking at introducing a public interest test as he considered the government’s response to the Convergence review by Glen Boreham and the Finkelstein media review.
“What you will see is that we will bring forward a package in the relatively near future that deals with some of the issues around the public interest test, some of the issues around the Finkelstein and Convergence review reports,” Senator Conroy told Sky News.
The problem for Conroy is that the kind of competition he wants to see is ideological not commercial.
To my mind, this makes the media unbalancing a bipartisan issue. Without a counterweight to specific corporate interests, I see just as great a threat to the Liberal team’s ability to prevent its core interest group from overwhelming its own interests. At this stage, though, Tony Abbott doesn’t see it that way:
He said whether Gina Rinehart should sign the Fairfax charter of editorial independence was a matter for the company’s board.
I don’t support government intervention in the media and there is no doubt that online journalism will continue to rise if there is a fundamental shift in Fairfax editorial policy. But if anyone has any other ideas for how to prevent the kind of fundamental unbalancing of the Australian political economy that is in the offing, I’m all ears.
