https://newmatilda.com/2013/12/12/we-got-pm-voted-for
The results of September’s election lifted the veil on Australian culture to reveal a mean, embittered face, says former Greens leader Bob Brown. Speaking to New Matilda, he said Tony Abbott’s popularity is the articulation of Australia’s conversion from a generous, happy country to one characterised by how much it withholds.
“In the Howard years Australia became a much meaner and more self-interested country … We are the richest people per capita in the world, if you just look in material terms, and we are the richest people ever to live on the Earth," Brown said
"Yet there’s this air of dissatisfaction and a feeling that we are being cheated, and that is a cultural shift that came out of the Howard years and has been promoted mightily by the Murdoch media — and that flows on through the ABC and all the other radio shock jocks and so on.”
He believes the Labor years did little to challenge the assumption of Howard-Abbott populism that Australians are fundamentally self-serving. This failure meant Labor fought an election on the terms of the Coalition, battling to appeal to voters' self-interest.
During their period in opposition the Liberals depicted the environmental movement as an enemy of the economy and individual well-being. The antagonistic positioning was overt, deliberate and Australians responded with their votes.
The Liberals went to the election on a platform that included removing layers of environmental regulation, redacting world heritage status from Tasmania’s forests, expanding coal mining in the Galilee basin, opening coal ports that could affect the Great Barrier Reef and removing the $10 billion Clean Energy Fund. But these were mere pallbearers at the funeral of the carbon tax.
“People voted for that with their eyes wide open,” Brown said. “And I might add to that, that they voted for $4 billion dollars in foreign aid to be not spent.”
Australia was dishonoured with the Colossal Fossil award from the Climate Action Network, for their disruptive attitude to the Warsaw climate talks in November. The UN's former climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said in November that Australia’s attitude had shown it to be “a country that would rather stick to a business-as-usual approach rather than building a low-carbon growth model”.
“Australia has generally been seen as a champion of environmental innovation, particularly in climate change," Brown said. "It is now a pariah in the international arena. But people voted for that, Australians knew what they were getting and they voted for it."
His bleak realism should not be mistaken for pessimism. He views self-interest as a hallmark of the times rather than a natural law. Indeed, he says, it bears the seeds of its own destruction.
“I think now it’s starting to tell and I think that [in] this period of government there is a fairly rude awakening occurring in Australia, about whether this is really the country we want to have?" Brown said. "I think that we’re going to see a great strengthening in the direct action from people who do have the intellect who know we do have to protect the biosphere.”
This vision of a future shaped by collective power mounts a challenge against the politics of the self that has so dominated the Australian conversation. Brown remains a staunch democrat. Progressive democracy demands faith in people to make collective decisions based on justice and equality.
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"There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." Christopher Hitchins
Thanks for the chuckle.
