Nation, class and the Australian left, 2003-2007

Transcription

Southern Cross University
ePublications@SCU
Theses
2009
Nation, class and the Australian left, 2003-2007
Nicholas John Fredman
Publication details
Fredman, NJ 2009, 'Nation, class and the Australian left, 2003-2007', PhD thesis, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW.
Copyright NJ Fredman 2009
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Nation, class and
the Australian left,
2003–2007
A thesis submitted for the requirements of the
Doctor of Philosophy
Southern Cross University
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
May 2009
Thesis Declaration
I certify that the work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief,
original, except as acknowledged in the text, and that the material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university.
I acknowledge that I have read and understood the University’s rules, requirements,
procedures and policy relating to my higher degree research award and to my thesis. I
certify that I have complied with the rules, requirements, procedures and policy of the
University (as they may be from time to time).
20 May 2009
| ii
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with how nationalism and national identity interact with sectional differences, particularly those of class, in political life in Australia. The period
focused on is the recent past and the main political subject of analysis is the left—seen
as predominately the Labor Party and the Greens but also encompassing trade unions,
campaigning organisations and socialist groups.
The four research questions cover: the inevitability of national feeling in current political life; the continued existence of identified streams of thought on the nation; the
inevitability of negotiation between the politics of the national and the politics of sectional division; and the general disadvantage of social democratic forces compared to
conservative forces with respect to national feeling.
The methodological approach is a ‘triangulated’ one, with some qualitative and some
quantitative aspects, including: a historical outline of the posited streams of national
thought; an overview of structural and attitudinal change and political developments
during the Howard period; and an examination of several key issues in the period 2003–
2007. The data used includes: transcripts of focus group discussions undertaken with
branches of the ALP and the Greens; samples of newspaper texts; and time series of ABS
figures and academic survey and commercial poll results.
The first major finding is that virtually all political forces express themselves in terms
of national interests, values and/or culture, often in ‘commonsense’ or unconscious
ways, and that the mobilisation of national feeling has been salient in a number of issues
during the Howard period. Secondly, that virtually all material examined can be understood in terms of the posited streams of national thought, with ALP sources showing
particularly strong connections between party/movement tradition and a sense of authentic Australianess. While discourse emanating from the Greens is mainly framed by
elements of traditional internationalism and left nationalism (posing some contradictions), as well as multiculturalism, there were aspects of an “environmentalist-world citizen” identity somewhat different from traditional class-based internationalism. Thirdly,
a relative advantage to conservatism was evident depending upon the type of issue and
the response of other forces. The Howard governments gained considerable strength
from the mobilisation of national feeling when threats or opportunities (via economic
iii |
competition) were seen as external, and when Labor echoed much of its message. Howard’s team however had little success building national unity around domestic economic
issues, and fatally lost support over WorkChoices.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the support and insights of my supervisors, Baden Offord
and Rosemary Webb. Many other university colleagues contributed advice, sympathy
and administrative support. This thesis would not have been possible without the love
and support of my partner Kath O’Driscoll over many years, the love of our son Zachary over the last few, and the hope for the future represented in our new family member Micah. Much needed encouragement has also come from my mother Carolyn and
my sisters Jacqueline and Antonia, and from many friends. Many thanks to Bronwyn
Simpson for sharp proof-reading and editing.
Special mention must go to my late father Lionel, for his enthusiastic support and
his example, albeit from a very different persepctive, of an unashamedly engaged intellectual.
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Contents
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................... 1
2. Social relations, ideology and intellectual production............................................... 5
Intellectuals.............................................................................................................. 20
3. The nation, nationalism and national identity........................................................... 29
Theories of the nation, nationalism and national identity............................................ 30
The national versus internationalisation under capitalism.......................................... 47
Nationalism: rational or irrational?............................................................................. 49
Streams of Australian nationalism and national identity............................................. 52
4. Methodology................................................................................................................ 87
Social historical contexts.......................................................................................... 89
Language and discourse.......................................................................................... 91
Consciousness and action....................................................................................... 99
Triangulation........................................................................................................... 106
5. Howard nation: ‘comfortable and relaxed’ or ‘Brutopia’?..................................... 109
Relaxation nation or Brutopia?................................................................................ 110
Socio-economic change in the neo-liberal era........................................................ 113
Attitudinal change in the neo-liberal era................................................................. 123
From Keating to Howard........................................................................................ 130
The first Howard term and the 1998 election.......................................................... 133
The second Howard term and the 2001 election.................................................... 137
The third Howard term and the 2004 election......................................................... 142
The fourth Howard term and the defeat of 2007..................................................... 147
6. A national history, or contested memories?........................................................... 153
History wars in the Howard era............................................................................... 156
The history summit................................................................................................. 161
Unity of the nation and its history............................................................................ 162
A panic about “leftwing” and “postmodern” history................................................. 165
Responses to the conservative critique.................................................................. 167
A compromise reached, but later overturned?........................................................ 172
Eureka Stockade.................................................................................................... 174
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Nation, Class and the Australian Left, 2003–2007
7. Global trade, national culture and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement....... 189
Australian economic left nationalism....................................................................... 190
Debates around globalisation and trade ................................................................ 192
Australia and the global economy........................................................................... 199
Perceptions on trade and national culture............................................................... 203
The AUSFTA and its discontents............................................................................ 213
Conclusion............................................................................................................. 225
8. War, national security and Iraq................................................................................. 227
Nationalist scepticism towards ‘our’ great and powerful friends.............................. 231
From ‘socialist’ colonialism to liberal ‘internationalism’............................................ 235
The national security agenda.................................................................................. 239
The Iraq conflict as a war of the ‘colonial present’.................................................. 242
Contested constructions of the past....................................................................... 247
Left nationalist opposition to the Iraq war............................................................... 253
Crean’s position, liberal internationalism and national security................................. 257
Conclusion............................................................................................................. 269
9. Nation, class and values .......................................................................................... 271
Nation, values and politics
..................................................................... 272
Evaluating Beazley and Howard on values.............................................................. 276
The government’s offensive on values.................................................................... 279
Howard’s rhetoric on values................................................................................... 282
Beazley’s conscious counter-attack . ..................................................................... 286
Effects of Beazley’s discourse and similar stances.................................................. 290
Conclusion............................................................................................................. 305
10. Conclusion............................................................................................................... 309
The ubiquity and inevitability of national feeling in current Australian political life...... 309
The continuing role of the posited streams of thought on the nation....................... 310
The negotiation of the contradictions of nation and class, and the relative advantage of
conservatism.......................................................................................................... 311
Suggestions for further research............................................................................. 313
Bibliography................................................................................................................... 315
Focus group letter and discussion guide.................................................................... 348
Letter..................................................................................................................... 348
Discussion guide.................................................................................................... 350
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Chapter 1
Introduction
I think you can do a lot more for your nation by not loving it totally. And questioning it,
and changing it, and doing things to it. Blind love of a nation is scary.
(Harry, ALP activist and high school student, August 2007)1
This thesis is concerned with how nationalism and national identity interact with sectional differences, particularly those of class, in political life in Australia. It seeks to explain developments over a recent and relatively short period and relating to a particular
segment of the political spectrum—the left, broadly speaking—while placing the specific analysis within a broad historical and social perspective.
My interest in the topic arose from observations in 2003 that oppositional discourse
around the Iraq war and the free trade agreement with the United States (AUSFTA),
particularly that produced by Labor Party figures but also by a range of organisations
and political actors generally seen as of the left, appeared to strongly draw on longstanding tropes of nationalism. A little later I was struck by a claim by Brett, in explaining an essential differences between Laborism and Australian conservatism, that, “The
Australian Labor Party wore its partisanship on its sleeve, and rallied people to it with
appeals to their class-based self-interest”2, as opposed to Liberalism’s self-consciously
national approach. Regardless of the extent to which this argument is true or has been
true, it seems to miss the central role that differing conceptions of the nation—its history, its purported shared values and interests, the sense of identity and belonging individuals feel toward it—play in political struggle in Australia.
Further, as my research began and as I observed unfolding events, it became clear that
over a range of issues—Iraq, the AUSFTA, refugees, ‘national history’ and finally and decisively WorkChoices—the Howard government had since around 2003 been losing its
1 From the transcripts of the focus groups discussed throughout this thesis
2 Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard
(Cambridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press, 2004) 4
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previously remarkable ability to mobilise national feeling. Labor and other oppositional
forces had framed their own messages in national terms to some extent on all these issues, with some success but also in problematic ways in relation to offering a clear alternative. The project then became one of analysing the contradictory nature of national
feeling for the left in a period in which the major party of the left was, very gradually and
unevenly, clawing its way back to power. The period focused on therefore, is the recent
past (particularly 2003–2007) and the main political subject of analysis is the left—seen
as predominately the Labor Party and the Greens but also encompassing trade unions,
campaigning organisations and socialist groups. However, it also soon became clear that
a broader historical and social perspective of some detail was necessary to understand
the relevant processes.
Early in the research process I was also struck by a bald statement of Nairn’s that, “The
theory of nationalism has been Marxism’s greatest historical failure”.3 I saw this as a challenge to find out whether the Marxist tradition, enriched as necessary by insights from
other perspectives, was the best framework for tackling the multi-dimensional nature of
the research problematic that I had developed. The project then tests whether Marxist
theory can provide a useful guide in the analysis of the national question and its intersections with history, social structure, political action, ideology, discourse and identity.
Chapters 2 and 3 put forward the theoretical bases for the project through critical engagement with theorists and commentators from the Marxist tradition and a range of
other perspectives. Due to the extent of material to be covered, it was found to be most
useful to separate out the more general considerations of social structure, class relations,
ideology and the social-political role of intellectuals in Chapter 2, and build on this in
Chapter 3 to develop an exposition of the national question. Also in Chapter 3, I outline
the relatively distinct, historically constituted streams of thought on the nation, these
being: race patriotism, conservative nationalism, left nationalism, internationalism and
multiculturalism. Through this chapter I develop four research questions examining
the ubiquity of national feeling in political life and the continuing role of the posited
streams of national thought on different political forces.
In Chapter 4 I discuss a methodology for the project that is consistent with the research questions and the materialist and dialectical ontology and realist epistemology
that are part of a Marxist framework. I argue that the relevant methodological approach
3 Nairn, Tom, The Break-Up of Britain (London: New Left Books, 1977) 329
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is a ‘triangulated’ one, with some qualitative and some quantitative aspects, in order to
uncover and relate different aspects of the social surface reality and build arguments
about the underlying social processes at work. A wide range of data was therefore gathered— secondary historical sources, recent ABS statistics, academic surveys, commercial polls, election results, aspects of public political activity, samples of media commentary relating to the issues examined and transcripts of focus group discussions with
branches of the ALP and the Greens.
Chapter 5 presents an overview of social change and political developments during
the course of the Howard governments. This analysis focuses on the contradictory results of a period of rising wealth and also continued and even rising discontent with
inequality and exploitation, and the related contradictory interplay of the mobilisation
of national feeling and concerns with sectional, particularly class, division. Some important and relevant issues that I was not able to explore in detail in separate chapters,
due to lack of space, particularly those relating to refugees and Indigenous people, are
discussed to some extent in Chapter 5.
Chapters 6–9 discuss particular issues salient in the period 2003–2007. As these issues overlap in several ways, they are not tackled chronologically, but in what it is hoped
is a logical conceptual order. Chapter 6 analyses debates around national history, the
‘history wars’, with a focus on the 2004 commemoration of the Eureka Stockade uprising
and the Howard government’s 2006 History Summit. Debates around Indigenous rights
also receive more treatment in this chapter.
In Chapter 7 Australia’s economic role in the world order is examined, with a focus on
the AUSFTA, mooted in 2002 and signed in 2004, on debates around the reality and nature of ‘globalisation’, and how such issues relate to longstanding representations of the
‘colonial’ nature of Australia. Chapter 8 also covers the place of the Australian nationmarket-state within a global system, but shifts to a more directly political sphere with
an examination of alliances with ‘great and powerful friends’, stances towards the United
Nations, and the Iraq War.
Chapter 9 sums up many of the arguments developed earlier by analyzing the most
general ‘issue’ examined in the study, that of ‘national values’. The chapter discusses how
in 2006 this conception was politically mobilized in a general sense and also in relation
to immigration, civil rights and WorkChoices, in ways that revealed particular problems
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and contradictions for Labor.
In this project I aim to be both objective and empathetic. That is, critical of what I
have found to be contradictions and failings of particular political forces in terms of
their stated objectives, but also seeking to understand the internal logic of the worldviews that motivate political actors.
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Chapter 2
Social relations, ideology
and intellectual production
This thesis is concerned with the relation of the national to sectional, particularly class,
differences, in political life. While the national, or any central aspect of social life, is
immediately received and understood by us as ideas, language and other forms of communication, it should be clear that for such a study varied social relations and forms of
political activity, as well as the nature of people’s ideas and how these ideas are communicated, could all be relevant.1 As will be seen, while the literature on the nation
contains quite divergent viewpoints on the relations between and relative importance
of structure, agency and consciousness, much recent work in this area, as in others, has
concentrated on language and discourse, and work suggesting a primacy of material or
structural factors, such as the approach I argue for in this thesis, has often been misunderstood.2 It is worth therefore discussing in some detail the relations between different
aspects of social reality in general before proceeding to an analysis of the nation. This
chapter will firstly present an outline of the general understanding of social structure
and class used in the thesis. I then proceed to examine how consciousness and discourse
fit into a general theory of social life, and also examine the nature of the particular social
forces involved in intellectual production. The following chapter will apply the framework developed here to a study of the nation, nationalism, national identity and forms
of national thought relevant to Australian political life.
One of the aims of the thesis is to examine the efficacy of a Marxist framework in
explaining the research questions at hand. In 1859 Marx summarized the materialist
conception of history he developed with along with Engels thus:
1 Callinicos sees social theory as primarily concerned with the interactions between economic
relations, ideologies and forms of political domination, see Alex Callinicos, Social Theory: A Historical
Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) 1
2 The “turn” to language and discourse in social theory is covered in Ibid. 274–282
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In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations,
which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions
the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their
consciousness.3
With regard to the conception of class structure used in this study, Kuhn and Fieldes
apply such a framework to census and other data to develop a map of class relations
in contemporary Australia. They stress that rather than the conventional sociological
understanding of class as a passive categorisation of individuals by occupation and income, Marxism views class as a dynamic field of relationships within a system of social
production, in which structure, consciousness and action are intertwined. Because of
the dynamic and relational nature of class structure it is difficult to exactly enumerate
classes, as contradictory roles and blurring of edges are common. However Kuhn and
Fieldes put forward the following definitions and relative weights for the contemporary
Australian class structure: the working class, consisting of those blue collar and white
collar workers who are compelled to sell their labour power for a wage, including many
professionals with limited control over their work and many who are legally contractors, but in reality controlled by an employer, making up (with dependents) around
two-thirds of the population; a variegated middle class, consisting of a traditional petty
bourgeoisie who own a small amount of the means of production and have few or no
employees, and a new middle class consisting of some professional and supervisory layers having substantial control over their work and often that of others, making up (with
dependents) most of the rest of population; and a capitalist class, made up of those with
decisive ownership and/or control over the mans of production, who number something less than five per cent of the population.4
3 Karl Marx, ‘Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’,
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm> accessed 3
March 2006
4 Rick Kuhn, ‘Introduction’, in Rick Kuhn (ed.), Class and Struggle in Australia (Sydney: Pearson
Longman, 2005), 1–21; Rick Kuhn, ‘Classes in Australia, in themselves and for themselves’,
paper given at the Workshop on Class: History, Formations and Conceptualisations, University of
|6
If we wish to link such broad conceptions of social reality to questions of how and
why particular perceptions, themes, ideas or types of language occur in particular discourses, it is difficult to avoid engaging with the concept of ideology. However, the definition of the term is problematic. Eagleton surveys a range of theories and approaches,
which he groups into three broad categories: ideology as the particular ideas of a socially
dominant group; ideology as the particular ideas of any of the groups contending within
a social formation, and ideology as those ideas which have the specific purpose of mystifying and/or legitimising particular social arrangements.5 In keeping with one of the
central aims of this study, testing the utility of a Marxist framework in examining the research questions, it is the Marxist tradition from which I will chiefly develop an account
of ideology, although I also draw on the useful insights of other perspectives where I see
these as consistent with the overall approach.
The classic early statement of a Marxist theory of ideology appears in The German
Ideology, in which three important aspects of the concept are enunciated. Firstly, that
the ruling class of a society dominates ideologically, that, “The ideas of the ruling class
are in every epoch the ruling ideas: that is, the class which is the ruling material force of
society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”, due to its control over “the means
of mental production”.6 Secondly, that ideology distorts social reality, that “in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura”.7 Thirdly,
and of particular relevance to a study of nationalism, ideology is used to universalise the
particular ideas of a ruling class, “for each new revolutionary class which puts itself in
the place of one ruling before it, is compelled ... to represent its interests as the common
interests of all members of society”.8 Here Marx stresses the distorting role of ideology,
as illusion, and its grounding in dominant interests, that is ideology is defined with aspects of the first and third of Eagleton’s senses.
It is often claimed that Marx and Engels’ materialist conception of history, and the role
of ideas within this conception, equates to a one-way economic determinism. Cormack
claims that the “traditional Marxist account” is that ideology is “totally determined by
Wollongong 4–5 March 2006; Diane Fieldes, ‘From exploitation to resistance and revolt: the working
class’, in Rick Kuhn (ed.), Class and Struggle in Australia (Sydney: Longman Pearson, 2005), 55–72
5 Tony Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verson, 1991) 1–31
6 Karl Marx, ‘The German Ideology’, in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), Marx-Engels Reader (New York:
WW Norton, 1978), 146–200 at 172
7 Ibid. at 154
8 Ibid. at 174
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the economic structure”, in which the “possibility of ideological change is limited to the
occurrence of economic change”.9 Stevenson, in an account of media theory that clearly
owes a lot to Marxism, claims that Marxism has “neglected other modes of domination
not reducible to class, such as race and gender, and has undertheorised the role of the
state”.10 As well as ignoring the numerous Marxist texts on the state, race and gender,
such arguments confuse the concept of determination in Marxism and also seem to
have a narrow view of the ‘economic’. Marxism is in fact a dialectical doctrine in which
ideology and other ‘superstructural’ elements can reflect back upon the economic ‘base’.
Engels explained the role of politics, law and culture in economic development and
criticised “the fatuous notion of the ideologists that because we deny an independent
historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history
we also deny them any effect upon history”.11 For example, below I will develop the
conception that the “dominant” meanings expressed in texts such as those produced by
the mass communications media, should not be seen as directly reflecting the immediate needs of the ruling class, but are shaped and constrained by material factors and
ideological assumptions generally relating to dominant interests, and are often part of
the articulation of, and debate around, the best policy for meeting these interests. Further, the complex interactions between nations as particular historically formed social
formations and relations such as those of class within nations, are discussed in the next
chapter.
It could be argued that the brief passages from The German Ideology and the Preface
cited above are open to many interpretations, including reductionist ones, that in capitalist society the bourgeoisie consciously and wholly successfully brainwash the masses,
and so on. There are however at least two other areas of Marx’s work in which, although
the term ideology is not used, the subtlety of the relation between consciousness and
social structure, and particularly the contradictory nature of ideological ‘distortion’ and
‘falsity’, is more fully developed.
The first such theoretical tool for understanding ideology is found in Marx’s analysis
of religion contained in an early work, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philoso9 Mike Cormack, Ideology (London: Batsford Publications, 1992) 14
10 Nick Stevenson, Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theory and Mass Communications
(London: Sage Publications, 1995) 9
11 Frederick Engels, ‘Letters on historical materialism’, Marx-Engels Reader (New York: WW
Norton, 1978), 640–650
|8
phy of Law. Here he expounds upon the conception common to German materialist
philosophy that, “Man makes religion, religion does not make man”, by arguing:
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest
against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to
give up a state of affairs which requires illusions.12
That is, Marx does not show an elitist disdain for religious faith as the false irrationality of deluded people, but sees it as an understandable reaction to oppression, and at
least partly rational in terms of coping with oppression until the real causes of misery,
and of illusions, can be overthrown. It might be suggested, in terms of the comment that
religion is the “opium of the people”, often quoted out of context, that in the nineteenth
century opium was a useful analgesic as much as a deadening narcotic. This all suggests
fruitful ways of examining other ideologies. For example, as explained further in the
following chapter, nationalism may help to fulfill basic needs, constitutive of being human, for community and identity, even as it distorts social reality and helps ensure the
domination of a ruling class.
As well as posing a complex dialectic between immediate and more substantive needs
and interests, Marx in his later political-economic writing provides another tool for the
analysis of ideology in his positing of a contradictory unity in social reality between superficial appearance and more substantial underlying structures. In Chapter 1 of Capital
he introduces the concept of “commodity fetishism”. He firstly explains that commodities have both a “use value”, a practical utility, that is readily apparent, and an “exchange
value”, that results from exchanges of commodities between economic actors within the
market. Although such economic exchanges are in actuality framed by social relationships, the social nature of these interactions are obscured by the fact that production is
carried out individually before the market exchange. It seems the commodity-objects
rather than social relations produce exchange value, giving an ideological aspect to exchange.
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character
12 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, 3 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975) 175–176
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of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of
that labour … it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the
fantastic form of a relation between things.13
Taking an analogy from the religious world in which “the productions of the human
brain appear as independent beings endowed with life,” Marx calls this process “the
Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour”.14 In Volume III of Capital he
remarks that the most pronounced aspect of this process is the mystifying transformation of “the production relation itself into a thing (money)”.15 In this text he also extends
the concept of commodity fetishism into “reification”, the general transformation of processes into things. For example the way bourgeois economists see capital as profit, land
as rent, and labour as wages, shows the “complete mystification of the capitalist mode
of production, the reification of social relations and the immediate coalescence of the
material relations with their historical and social determination”.16
The material form of commodities, and wages, rent, profit, the market and so on, are
all real things, so are in no real sense ‘false’ or ‘distorted’. However, they are the more
superficial, as well as the most immediately concrete aspects of reality and as such are
generally seen as separate entities in themselves, unconnected to underlying social relations. Analogously, as discussed in the next chapter and as many examples in this thesis
will show, the nation is often seen as a homogenous and self-explanatory entity rather
than as a historically constituted and evolving set of social relations.
The connections between social structure, ideology and language were a central concern of a range of Western European Marxist theoreticians writing from the 1920s to
the 1960s who collectively came to be referred to as belonging to a stream of “Western
Marxism”.17 One of the first contributions to this debate was the work of Hungarian
Marxist theorist and activist Lukács, who, writing in the 1920s as part of a critique of
earlier moves from a dialectical Marxism to a one-way economic determinism, revived
the concept of reification, tied it more explicitly to ideology, and significantly extended
it to being a central organising principle of the Marxist analysis of capitalism. In capital13 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, I, 3 vols. (London: Electric Book Co, 2001)
104
14 Ibid. 105
15 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, III, 3 vols. (London: Electric Book Co,
2001) 1107
16 Ibid. 1111
17 Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: New Left Books, 1976)
| 10
ist society commodity exchange is universal and the reification effect, which makes it
difficult to grasp the underlying realities of social relations, is hence also universal. Reification produces alienation and atomisation in all aspects of life. This universal effect
of commodities means that, “The problem of commodities must not be considered in
isolation or even regarded as the central problem in economics, but as the central structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects”, and that, “Only by understanding
[the fetish character of commodities] can we obtain a clear insight into the ideological
problems of capitalism and its downfall”.18
Lukács’ stress on the universality of reification is closely related to his more general
ontological position that totality is the key concept in Marxism as a social science, stating
that, “In the last analysis Marxism does not acknowledge the existence of independent
sciences of law, economics, history etc.: there is nothing but a single, unified—dialectical
and historical—science of the evolution of society as a totality”.19
In an advanced capitalised society which is saturated in spectacle and in which commodity relations extend to seemingly every aspect of humanity’s interaction with the
world, from the manipulation of genetic material for commercial purposes to the sale
of seats on space flights, the legitimacy of an examination of the notion that the commodity nature of things shapes every aspect of social being should be apparent. Such a
conception is also suggestive for a theory of nationalist ideology. That is, because the
nation is a concrete immediate fact, it is typically seen as an eternal abstract category,
rather than an evolving social formation made up of the interactions of social groups.
Such social groups could all be expected to be strongly influenced by the immediate fact
of the nation, producing a generalised nationalism. I develop the concept of reification
in regards to nationalism further in the following chapter, when I discuss the complex
dialectic of rationality and irrationality inherent in nationalist belief systems. The reflection of reifying processes in forms of language will also be discussed in Chapter 4.
The view however that commodity fetishism and reification is such a central part of
capitalism might lead to questioning the possibility of reaching any knowledge of the
underlying structures and processes at all. Baudrillard for example argues that society
has been leached of all meaning, leaving a world of surfaces and making ideology in
the classical sense superfluous to the social order: “It is no longer a question of false
18 19 Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971) 83
Ibid. 28
11 |
representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer
real”.20 Lukács does not clearly account for how underlying realities can be understood
(and acted upon) amongst all this reifying illusion. He does begin to suggest a solution
in a discussion of the differential experience (for different social groups) of social reality,
arguing that:
The objective reality of social existence is in its immediacy ‘the same’ for both proletariat
and bourgeoisie. But this does not prevent the specific categories of mediation by means
of which both classes raise this immediacy to the level of consciousness, by means of
which the immediate reality becomes for both the authentically objective reality, from
being fundamentally different, thanks to the different position occupied by the two
classes within the ‘same’ economic process.21
This suggests the possibility of oppositional ideologies, but Lukács does not seem to
go beyond an abstract and very general conception of oppositional ideology. There is
a need for more specific analyses of the connections between different forms of consciousness (such as the different streams of thought in relation to the nation posited in
the next chapter) and particular historical developments, social structures and political
struggles.
Lukács’ work brings up key questions on the relationship between subjective consciousness and the objective conditions of society, of how “social being determines social
consciousness”, and related questions of the extent of ‘autonomy’ or otherwise of different aspects of social structure and consciousness. Althusser, in arguing that humanistic
Marxists such as Lukács ignore the specifics of social determination, sees ideology as
produced by social structures and as social practice, leaving very little role for the subject, and tends to see all structures—the state, parliament, the family—as primarily ideological. Rather than ideology as either emanating from the totality of society, or from the
conscious will of oppositional groups, as suggested by Lukács, for Althusser ideology
primarily occurrs in the “imaginary” of Lacan’s psychoanalysis, a subconscious bank of
meaningful images, projected there by various “relatively autonomous” institutions or
“apparatuses”. To him the subject is constituted by ideology, a process by which social institutions and practices are constantly “interpellating” or calling out to individuals, the
20 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and simulations’, in Mark Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) at 172
21 Lukács, History and Class Consciousness 150
| 12
ideas of the subject being his or her “material actions inserted into material practices,
governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological
apparatus”.22 Eagleton has also commented that for Althusser ideology “becomes, in effect, identical with lived experience ... Expanded in this way, the concept threatens to
lose all political significance”.23 That is, by seeing ideology as in itself fundamentally material and existing in every structure, Althusser tends to downplay the specific role and
character of ideology as a representation of material reality.
Althusser also criticised materialist dialectics as having the same basic simplifying flaws as Hegel’s idealist dialectics, in writing, “For Hegel’s ‘pure’ principle of consciousness (of the epoch’s consciousness of itself) … we have substituted another simple
principle, its opposite: material life, the economy”.24 He replaced the determinative yet
dialectical relationship between a socio-economic base and a cultural-ideological superstructure with the concept of “overdetermination”, which referred to multiple determinations coming together in particular historic “instances”. While stating that the
“economic” was determinative “in this last instance”, he tended to undermine this claim
by, again, presenting determinism of a social base as a simple and direct economic determinism.
In History, these instances, the superstructures, etc.—are never seen to step respectfully
aside when their work is done or, when the Time comes, as his pure phenomena, to scatter before His Majesty the Economy as he strides along the royal road of the Dialectic.
From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes.25
The tendencies of Althusser to downplay the role of subjects, to place different aspects
of social reality as quite separate structures and to construct a static representation of
society rather than one that takes account of interrelations and change, thus leaving
unclear questions of determination, are typical of structuralist social theory.26 In the
following chapter it will be seen that a number of recent accounts of nationalism and
political life follow structuralist methods.
22 Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses’, Lenin and Philosophy (London:
New Left Books, 1972), 121-173, p. 169
23 Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction 149
24 Louis Althusser, ‘Contradiction and overdetermination’, For Marx (London: Penguin, 1969),
87–128 at 108
25 Ibid. at 113
26 Structuralism as represented by Althusser and Claude Levi-Strauss is discussed in Callinicos,
Social Theory: A Historical Introduction 265–274
13 |
In this study I aim to be sensitive to the potential effects of both structural-institutional factors and of the role of social and political actors. Cormack argues that different definitions of ideology, “rather than being rival accounts … can be seen as different
stages in the same process”27, that is, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Lukács’ emphasis on the generalisability of the concept of reification, on the totality of the system
and the active role of the subject, and Althusser’s on the deep seated hold of ideology
and on the specific and “relatively autonomous” role of structures and institutions are
useful within Marx’s framework of the historical determination of ideas. I would also
agree with Eagleton that both narrower (“false ideas in the direct interest of the ruling
class”) and broader (“social determination of ideas”) understandings of ideology are
useful in different contexts.28 For example, I will be arguing that the political texts that
make up part of the data analysed in subsequent chapters can be seen as ideological in
both broader and narrower senses. That is, in the sense that crucial aspects of the history and nature of Australia as a social formation and its role in the global order are
often distorted in ways that legitimise particular social interests, but also in a broader
sense that, even when nothing is particular is being distorted, underlying assumptions
behind these texts can be related to historically determined sets of ideas. Eagleton also
stresses that ideology also consists of “concrete discursive effects”29, how discourse reflects power relations in society, and this is also a central argument of the study. I discuss
how the relations between ideology, discourse and language are examined in the project
in Chapter 4.
The Italian Marxist Gramsci perhaps related objective and subjective factors in forming consciousness more successfully than Lukács or Althusser via his use of the concept
of hegemony. Gramsci uses the word in a number of ways, but the most relevant meaning for present purposes is his conception of hegemony as the complex of methods
that a ruling class developed over time to maintain its rule, through a system of class
alliances and relations of both consent and coercion with subordinate groups. Gramsci
argued that in modern capitalist society:
The ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary
regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each
27 28 29 | 14
Cormack, Ideology 12
Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction 221
Ibid. 223
other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed the
attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of
the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion—newspapers and associations.30
To some extent, consent for Gramsci seems to spring from the ‘total’ structure of society (as in Lukács’ analysis). Gramsci argues that:
The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant social group … is ‘historically’ caused by
the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its
position and function in the world of production.
But Gramsci also stresses the need for analysis of the particular social groups (specifically intellectuals, as discussed below) involved in exercising such “social hegemony” in
the sphere of civil society as well “coercive power” in the realm of the state.31 Gramsci
examines ideology more concretely than Lukács, but does not see a dominant ideology
as a force beamed to the blank slate of a passive mass, as Althusser implies is the case.
For Gramsci such an ideology is more like a historically constituted “common sense” of
society, that is generally accepted but is often contradicted by the experience of people
in subordinate groups. For a working class person:
His theoretical consciousness can indeed be historically in contradiction to his activity.
One might almost say that he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or one contradictory consciousness): one that is implicit in his activity and which in reality unites him
with all his fellow-workers in the practical transformation of the real world; and one,
superficially explicit or verbal, which he has inherited from the past and uncritically
absorbed.
Such conflicts in consciousness exist to some extent until there is “progressive selfconsciousness in which theory and practice will finally be one”.32 This view of common
sense as contradictory within an exploitative society has close similarities with the contradictory relations between superficial appearances and underlying structures, rationality and irrationality and immediate and longer-term interests and needs described
30 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971) 80f
31 Ibid. 12
32 Ibid. 333
15 |
above.
For Gramsci consciousness is always active, as everyone “participates in a particular
conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new
modes of thought”.33 Gramsci’s emphasis on the need for specific analysis of history,
class conflict and the social relations involved in intellectual production to understand
the formation of consciousness, informs the analysis of intellectuals developed below
and the understanding of the relations of texts to particular social and political groups
developed throughout this thesis.
British cultural studies in many ways further developed the insights of Marxism useful for analysing the related issues of consciousness, ideology and cultural production.
Gramsci was an important influence on Williams, who from the early 1960s sought to
develop a materialist analysis of culture, and later more specifically the media. Williams
saw culture both as aesthetic products, and as historically changing sets of meanings,
practices and ways of life.34 He related this to the social institutions of culture and the
media, such as the BBC with its particular relationship to the state and its consciously paternalistic role as legitimising elite culture.35 Williams developed the concept of
dominant “structures of feeling”, suggesting a fairly cohesive and homogenous view of
culture, although he argued that individualism, fragmentation and atomisation were
part of the dominant ideology of capitalism. He has also been criticised (for example by
Stevenson36), for valuing “high” culture as uniquely expressing common social values,
a disdain for popular culture that relates to his background in traditional literary criticism. The relations between historically formed culture, media institutions and ideology in Williams’ work is an important part of the theoretical framework for analysing
the contexts of discourse in this study, concerned as it is with uncovering the historical,
social and institutional bases of public political debate and activity.
The work of Hall from the late 1960s developed the insights of Gramsci and Williams
in light of semiotic analysis, which is discussed in Chapter 4, and applied this to the
analysis of media messages. Hall discusses how the dominant pluralist, functionalist
33 Ibid. 9
34 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961)
35 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Penguin (Harmondsworth, 1965)
36 Stevenson, Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theory and Mass Communication (London:
Sage Publications, 1995) 11–15
| 16
view of society as reflecting social consensus came under challenge in the 1960s under
the impact of social rebellion and increasing recognition of unequal relations of power.37 Ideology then became a central focus for critical study of culture and the media,
particularly the recognition that cultural forms were crucially about signification, the
production of meaning, and the “representation” rather than reflection of reality. The
selection, exclusion and combination of elements, editing and narrative styles as well as
the social organisation of media institutions were no longer seen just as technical questions but also ideological ones.38 Hall’s work extended the concept of hegemony in terms
of the “definers” who are the dominant voices in the media, and later to the social, political and ideological aspects of the encoding and decoding of media messages39. Hall also
developed the well-known distinction between dominant, negotiated and oppositional
decodings or readings of media texts.40
Further, in terms of the ideological role of the media, from the 1970s a number of
Marxists, such as Smythe and Golding, sought to integrate the political economy of
the mass media into analyses of ideology, looking at ownership patterns, competition
for audiences, distribution patterns, organisational aspects of media institutions as well
as broader questions such as those of change in the labour market and political struggles.41 They, in a similar fashion to Herman and Chomsky42, have traced the important
constraints and influences commercial and state-controlled imperatives place on media messages, constraints and influences that they argue invariably work in favour of
the rich and powerful. Australian writers such as Wheelwright have concentrated on
these issues43, while other such as Boney and Wilson have integrated political economic
analysis and semiotics.44 In some cases political economists try and force what seems
a too close fit between the political positions of content and the immediate economic
37 Stuart Hall, ‘The rediscovery of “ideology”: Return of the repressed in media studies’, in M.
Guevitch et al. (eds.), Culture, Society and the Media (London: Routledge, 1990) at 64–65
38 Ibid. at 67–68
39 Stuart Hall et al. (eds.), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (London:
Macmillan, 1978)
40 Stuart Hall, ‘Encoding and decoding’, Culture, Media and Language (London: Hutchinson, 1980)
41 P. Golding and G. Murdoch, ‘Ideology and the mass media: the question of determination’, in J.
Curran and M. Guervitch (eds.), Ideology and Cultural Production (London: Croom Helm, 1979) and
Dallas Smythe, ‘Communications — blindspot of Western Marxism’, Canadian Journal of Political
and Social Theory, 1/3 (1978), 1-27
42 Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the
Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988)
43 E.L. Wheelwright, Communications and the Media in Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987)
44 Bill Bonney and Helen Wilson, Australia’s Commercial Media (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1983)
17 |
interests of particular media institutions. For example, Herman and Chomsky (as well
as Smythe) concentrate on immediate economic concerns of commercial media institutions such as ownership and advertising which, while important, do not tell us much
about public broadcasting or how perceptions are formed in spheres outside the mass
media. That is, they lack a general theory of ideology. This is similar to the rather rigid,
structuralist Marxism of Althusser, merely inverting the focus to a (narrowly defined)
economic arena rather than ideological structures.
Some Marxist-influenced theorists however, saw both the political-economic and
cultural studies streams of analysis, as greatly overstating the closed and incorporating
nature of the ideas transmitted by the media, in a way, defending the humanist Lukács
against the structuralist Althusser. Fiske developed the ideas of encoding/decoding, but
stressed the open, polysemic nature of texts and the resistant readings of audiences.45
Fiske saw on one hand the official high culture of the elite, expressed for example in
the quality press, with its closed meanings meant for middle class consumption. On the
other hand popular culture such as tabloids and much of the output of television had
an exaggerated expression of values and a blurring of news and entertainment, and so
ordinary people could consume it for pleasure, while resisting its ideology.
While returning attention to the audience and providing an antidote to overly determinist conceptions of ideology, Fiske and others like Hartley46 assume that the market
is democratising. Critics have argued that media markets not only produce very unequal access to cultural products, but also fragmented and atomised cultures that may
be alienating, and create diverse markets in the interests of capital rather than liberating
cultural diversity. Fiske has also been criticisied for presenting a very superficial account
of actual content and of dealing in theorised rather than real audience reactions.47
In fact, many of the theorists in the tradition started by Hall and British cultural studies can be criticised for going too far in avoiding determinism. Pawling argues that a
concentration on texts and on the fragmented and subjective nature of audiences have
been part of moves towards post-structuralist and postmodernist analyses of media and
culture that have tended to divorce ideas, texts and discourses altogether, from social
and economic structures and how they change.48 Such accounts are often characterised
45 46 47 48 | 18
John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989)
John Hartley, Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture (London: Arnold, 1996)
Stevenson, Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theory and Mass Communication 89–100
Chris Pawling, ‘Whither Marxism?’, Media, Culture and Society, 18 (1996), 151-160
by a suspicion toward the concept of ideology as a coherent body of ideas, and particularly of ideas being explainable by material conditions. Derrida argues that “transcendental” concepts of theoretical structures having “centres” that are materially grounded
have come under question, and that in the absence of such centres “an infinite number
of sign-substitutions come into play,” and “everything becomes discourse”.49 Lyotard defines the supposed current postmodern era as “incredulity towards all metanarratives”50,
such as Marxism, which attempt to theorise the social totality. Mentioned above is
Baudrillard’s view that representation has completely overtaken reality. The denial of a
knowable objective reality in these modes of inquiry would seem to deny the possibility
of making truth claims and identifying the reality of social interests, making it difficult,
if not pointless, to argue about how public discourses represent reality and how consciousness is constituted.
I would argue then that an examination of the pattern of ideas in public discourses,
the opinions expressed by people, and the social contexts (particularly those involving
wealth and power) in which discourse and consciousness are formed, is a fruitful and
indeed vital part of understanding how the social world actually works. But are there
particular ideologies that exist as distinct entities, such that one can point to a text and
declare, “look, there’s an example of bourgeois ideology”? Thompson sees ideology as
more of a verb than a noun, a practice rather than a system of ideas, defining ideology as,
“The ways in which meaning serves to establish and sustain relations of domination”.51
This puts an important emphasis on showing how particular meanings are mobilised for
social and political purposes, and what happens to those meanings in particular contexts, and Thompson also points out that the same concept (for example, ‘the national
interest’) can be put to very different uses in different contexts. However, this account
seems to deny that ideology can also be a framework for analysing how different and
contending social groups and interests typically adhere to and promote particular ideas,
ideas which have historically developed with certain groups and their struggles. Eagleton points out that Thompson does not put forward any good reasons why systems of
oppositional, as well as dominant, ideas, such as socialism or feminism, should not be
49 Jean Derrida, ‘Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences’, Writing and
Difference (London: Routledge, 1978), 278-293 at 280
50 Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1984) 5
51 John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass
Communications (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990) 56
19 |
seen as ideologies.52 In this thesis I hope to show why I think ideology should be seen
as both a practice and a thing, related to both dominant and subordinate groups, by a
discussion of nationalism and its relationship to political discourse, the formation of
opinion, and political practice.
Intellectuals
Many social theorists, in discussing the role of intellectuals in knowledge production,
and particularly ideology, take as a starting point the work of Gramsci. Gramsci was
concerned with analysing not just how political and social ideas are related to class relations in society, but also the specific means and social groups involved in producing
these ideas. For Gramsci there were two general processes in this regard, firstly that,
“Every social group … organically gives rise to one or more strata of intellectuals which
give it homogeneity and awareness of its proper functions not only in the economic,
but also in the social and political fields”, that is, “organic” intellectuals who play a fairly
direct ideological-political role. Secondly, “traditional” intellectuals, who have a specialised function to produce knowledge and ideas, who may seem to be “autonomous and
independent”, but as a social group have been constituted by existing and past forms of
social relations.53
In either case intellectuals should not be seen as simply transmitters of a particular
class’ ideology, as the role and position of the intellectuals themselves within the social
formation has to be addressed. For Gramsci, analysis of intellectuals is an analysis of,
“The system of relations in which [intellectual] activities (and therefore the intellectual groups who personify them) have their place within the general complex of social
relations”.54
All this raises questions of what intellectuals actually do and of the social role of this
activity. In discussing the relationship of intellectuals to the publishing industry, Kahushin gives a practical definition of the intellectuals that locates their specific activity
in late capitalism and also highlights their interaction with broader social layers. He
argues that an intellectual is:
A person who attempts to communicate with others via books and journals. The others
52 53 54 | 20
Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction 6
Gramsci, Prison Notebooks 5
Ibid. 8
we have in mind are several: first, there is the reasonably well educated general public
interested in ideas, values, esthetics, ethics, science and public affairs; second, there are
elites in business, labour, the mass media, voluntary organisations and various branches
of government who are avid consumers of the output of intellectuals; third, there are the
intellectuals themselves who are the most voracious consumers of the writings of their
colleagues.55
Kahushin is referring to refereed academic journals but also to “serious” magazines of
political and cultural affairs, such as in the US context Nation, The National Review and
Atlantic Monthly. Equivalents in Australia would include Quadrant, Quarterly Essay and
Arena Magazine. Similarly Garnham, in an introductory article to a 1995 issue of Media,
Culture and Society discussing intellectuals, adapts Gramsci’s framework in referring
to two overlapping intellectual fractions, the “traditional intelligentsia or academics”
and the “media intellectuals”.56 These definitions point out that intellectuals occupy not
only the formal academy but also other publishing sites of recognised and authoritative
opinion. This is useful then within a Gramscian/Marxist framework in considering the
interactions between the social positions and published opinions of senior journalists,
academics, authors, politicians and senior bureaucrats, and the crossovers in roles between these various social groupings.
My general theoretical contention is the Marxist thesis that ideological expression
should be seen in a dialectical but not a mechanistic relation to the socio-economic
basis of a social formation. Schlesinger cautions against reductionist interpretations of
the “dominant ideology thesis” of Gramsci and other classical Marxists in regards to
intellectuals, that is, relating the ideological production of intellectuals to direct and
immediate economic interests of the ruling class (not including those intellectuals who
may be “organically” linked more to subordinate classes than to the dominant class). He
cites the ideas of Bourdieu as a useful antidote to reductionist errors. While intellectuals
in the main may be constrained by the domination of the capitalist class, they have their
own sources of power, “symbolic power”, which is related to the “relative autonomy” of
the intellectual sphere. Control over “cultural capital” means that intellectuals are not
the direct mouthpieces of capital but can be seen as a “dominated fraction of the domi55 Charles Kahushin, ‘Intellectuals and cultural power’, Media, Culture and Society, 4 (1982), 255262 at 255
56 Nicholas Garnham, ‘The media and the narrative of the intellectuals’, Media, Culture and Society,
17 (1995), 359-384 at 362
21 |
nant class”.57
Bourdieu has advanced a number of original concepts in order to overcome flaws
in approaches that focus too heavily on either subjective or objective processes. These
are: habitus, which refers to the tastes, opinions, lifestyles and dispositions that govern
people’s choices and actions in relation to their social position, particularly of class; “social field”, referring to differing aspects of social life, such as the economic, cultural, and
political field, etc., that both structure a subject’s engagement in social life but are in turn
constituted by subjects’ actions; and, as indicated, different forms of “symbolic capital”,
such as “political capital”, “educational capital” and “cultural capital”, posited as separate though related sources of power to “economic capital”.58 These may be very useful
categories that accurately describe aspects of social processes. Bourdieu has produced
survey-derived tables which indicate the extent of ‘ownership’ of markers of different
types of capital by class fraction (used in an occupational sense).59 It will be seen in the
following chapter that a number of useful recent Australian writers on questions of the
nation are influenced by Bourdieu.
But while Bourdieu importantly breaks from aspects of structuralism such as the
elimination of subjects, his approach in dividing social life into quite separate areas
without clear relations, avoids, like structuralist approaches, questions of determination
and change. Income and status derived from culture and knowledge are not removed
from the circuit of commodity production under capitalism. Schlesinger points out that
that to the extent that intellectuals are independent, this is based on specific literary and
artistic markets.60 On the other hand, representing intellectuals as part of the ruling
class itself, albeit a dominated fraction, would seem to be a distorted view of their actual social and economic position. The relatively high salaries and ability to make some
investments might seperate some intellectuals from the working class and the classical
petty bourgeoisie. But this hardly qualifies them as owners and controllers of the means
of production, even if they have some power over how social relations and processes
are represented, (and this control varies a lot from junior to senior levels in professions
57 Philip Schlesinger, ‘In search of the intellectuals: some comments on recent theory’, Media,
Culture and Society, 4 (1982), 203-223 at 205–7
58 These are developed for example in the detailed sociology of class and taste given in Pierre
Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1984)
59 For example the differential ownership of cultural capital as indicated by the class basis of
musical preference and knowledge at Ibid. 15, 64
60 Schlesinger, ‘In search of the intellectuals’
| 22
such as journalism and academia). As Elliott argues, “The point is not who is allowed
to contribute to the process of production but who extracts surplus value from it and so
has the resources to control the course of its development”.61 As discussed above, there
is an empirical basis to defining as newer layers of the middle class those intellectuals
who have senior and authoritative positions, some level of independence and a relatively
high income, and those involved in intellectual production at a clearly subaltern level
as white collar workers. Such an intermediate social location suggests a fundamentally
contradictory and variegated role within the social formation.
In any case, it should be clear that in examining the ideological production of intellectuals the broader (and in my opinion ultimately determining) social structures, the
more specific role and interests of the intellectual strata, and the relatively independent
development of the ideas themselves all have to be examined. The interaction between
these different levels of determination can only be clarified with concrete analysis. This
general argument should be made clearer with an analysis of the changing role of intellectuals in advanced capitalist societies over the last few decades. This analysis, developed below, will also begin to provide a framework for understanding why certain ideas
related to national identity have come to be dominant in Australian political discourse,
and of the role of political-ideological groupings within intellectual strata that may be
key in producing these representations, as discussed in subsequent chapters.
The long boom in the advanced capitalist economies (approximately 1945-75) was accompanied by rapid technological change, a vast expansion in the role of technical training and higher education, widespread generalisation of welfare systems and a strong
role of governments, whether ostensibly social-democratic or conservative, in regulating economic activity. In this climate there was a substantial increase in the social layers
that could be considered intellectuals, as well as broader social layers that consumed the
products of and interacted with the intellectuals. In this period the needs of capital, the
role of governments and the aspirations of the intellectual and other middle class layers
encouraged the formation of consensus around a type of social-democratic, welfarist
and interventionist liberalism. Such was the importance of technical, intellectual and
managerial layers in this period that a number of commentators saw a convergence
between advanced capitalist and bureaucratic post-capitalist states, into managerialist
61 Philip Elliott, ‘Intellectuals, the ‘information society’ and the disappearance of the public sphere’,
Media, Culture and Society, 4 (1982), 243-253 at 247
23 |
societies led by an intellectual ‘new class’.62 In the next chapter the existence of a singular
‘new class’ (or sometimes “new middle class”), is contested, and it will be argued that the
change to class structure due to post-war economic and social developments is better
seen as restructures of the existing working and middle classes.
In any case the existence of a dominant managerialist, social-democratic new class
began to look more tenuous with the growing elite consensus of “neo-liberalism,” from
the late 1970s. An important change occurred in late capitalism with the onset of a
long-term economic crisis in the early to mid-1970s. In a period of decline or only fitful
growth, a fiercer struggle for profit levels and competitiveness began to be waged by each
national group of capitalists. The needs of capital, and then government policy, began
to shift towards deregulation, privatisation and sweeping cuts to government spending.
These radical “reforms” began to undermine the social, economic and institutional bases of the long boom intellectual consensus.63 Spending cuts crippled many public sector
educational and research institutions, and encouraged further dependence on private
sources of funding, necessarily more closely tied to the needs of capital, and in many
areas specifically right-wing, neo-liberal societies and institutes. Such cuts also undermined an important site of serious and relatively independent discussion by attacking
public broadcasting in favour of privately owned media. It would be hardly surprising if
such changes strongly affected dominant ideas of national identity and national interest,
and aspects of the changes wrought by the neo-liberal phase of capitalism on political
ideas and practice, are discussed throughout the thesis.
In the light of the above discussion, it is hopefully clear that it is not being suggested
that a new phase in the development of capitalism immediately and wholly resulted
in a new ideological outlook on the part of most intellectuals. The views of the socialdemocratic consensus (and the influence of more radical ideas) among intellectuals did
not disappear, but came under attack from a neo-liberalism with increasingly strong
bases in media columns, the bureaucracy, public policy and research funding. This attack often targetted the whole idea of “intellectuals” and their supposed dominance in
the preceding period. Elliott notes that, “We are sometimes told that British stability
and freedom are menaced by the rise of the ‘polocracy’ or even of the ‘lumpenpolys’”64,
62 Garnham, ‘The media and the narrative of the intellectuals’; Schlesinger, ‘In search of the
intellectuals’
63 Elliott, ‘Intellectuals, the ‘information society’ and the disappearance of the public sphere’
64 Ibid. at 264
| 24
referring to attacks on the layers educated in the new polytechnics in the 1950s-70s.
Garnham argues that an important aspect of the legitimisation of Thatcherite neo-liberalism was a concerted attack on “intellectual elitism” and the “chattering classes”, orchestrated, significantly enough, by an alliance of right-wing intellectuals in the news media,
government, advertising and academia.65 Similarly in Australia negative representations
of “elites” along these lines have been a feature of commentators in the Murdoch media
group, most particularly the quality, broadsheet titles of that stable, with their elite readerships.66
Kahushin, writing in 1982, notes that by the early 1980s organised radicalism among
intellectuals in the United States was becoming more rare due to the decline of broad
left-liberal milieux, the generally comfortable existence of intellectuals and their enmeshment within bureaucratic routines. He argues that, “The only coherent intellectual
circle in the United States is the so-called Neo-Conservatives”.67 The role of changing
economic and political contexts in forming the typical outlook of intellectuals in Italy
is discussed by Pasquinelli. As opposed to the “organic intellectuals” closely tied to parties and political struggle, to a large extent of the left, in recent decades the types of
“professional” and “neo-corporatist” intellectual has emerged. These intellectuals aim to
market specialised knowledge and skills in various markets. While such knowledge is
usually seen as politically neutral, the closer reliance on the market place ties intellectuals closer to dominant economic interests.68 The increased marketisation of the role of
the intellectuals is reflected in France by growing moves by these intellectuals, to forge
careers in journalism and other media fields, as opposed to previous reliance on a rigidly
structured higher education system.69
It has been argued that the last thirty years has been a period of widespread change
in all aspects of intellectual production in advanced capitalist countries, and of intense
debate, with a number of factors favouring the ascendancy of neo-liberal ideas in many
areas. The central arguments of this thesis relate to how political ideas have both histori65 Garnham, ‘The media and the narrative of the intellectuals’ at 374–375
66 Sean Scalmer and Murray Goot, ‘Elites constructing elites: News Limited’s newspapers, 1996–
2002’, in Marian Sawer and Barry Hindess (eds.), Us and Them: Anti-elitism in Australia (Perth: API
Network, 2004), 137–159, 258–261
67 Kahushin, ‘Intellectuals and cultural power’ at 260
68 Carla Pasquinelli, ‘From organic to neo-corporatists intellectuals: the changing relations between
Italian intellectuals and political power’, Media, Culture and Society, 17 (1995), 413-425
69 Paul Beaud and Francesco Panese, ‘From one galaxy to another: the trajectories of French
intellectuals’, Media, Culture and Society, 17 (1995), 385-412
25 |
cal antecedents, and also change with developing social conditions. More specifically,
the forms of nationalism and national identity expressed by the left in the period under
discussion, have deep historical roots as well as being coloured by the more recent period of neo-liberal hegemony. In subsequent chapters these arguments will be developed in two general ways. Firstly, through an examination of the historically constituted
‘streams’ of thought on the Australian nation, and the connection of these streams to
social groups. Secondly, through an analysis of how these streams were used in and
changed by political issues in the period under consideration, using analysis of political
texts and people’s opinions.
Most of the above discussion, in terms of social positioning, links between groups and
strata, and authoritative standing, refers to professional intellectuals mainly engaged
in publication (including broadcasting), whether ‘traditional’ or ‘media’, and those ‘organic’ intellectuals (such as professional politicians), that have an income, social status, access to authoritative publishing sites and other conditions of existence similar to
those typical of professional intellectuals. Information about, and texts produced by,
such individuals and groupings are available in published sources, and the analysis of
such data is discussed in Chapter 4. However, the definition of intellectuals developed
in this chapter, as strata playing an active role in the production and reproduction of
ideology, should be understood quite broadly, and include for example anyone actively
involved in organised politics, such as party member. Gramsci concedes of the idea “that
all members of a political party should be regarded as intellectuals is an affirmation that
can easily lend itself to mockery and caricature”. But he immediately adds, “If one thinks
about it nothing could be more exact … What matters is the function, which is directive and organisational, i.e. educative, i.e. intellectual”.70 I suggest here that the role of
‘grassroots’ intellectuals such as local branch party activists, who may need to articulate
particular ideas in their own arenas, and may publish for example in the local press,
are a mediating point between social structures, professional intellectuals, and broader
masses of people. Data about the views and activities of such people need to be obtained
more directly, as discussed in Chapter 4.
This chapter has critiqued a number of writers on ideology and intellectuals, and
developed a framework for the analysis of ideology and intellectual production for this
thesis. Ideology and consciousness are in the last instance determined by history and
70 | 26
Gramsci, Prison Notebooks 16
social structure, but are actively produced and determining in themselves. An ideology
such as nationalism can be examined in terms of Marx’s conception of the dual rational/
irrational nature of religion, and of the concept of reification developed by Marx and
Lukács. The contribution of Gramsci and those influenced by him help us to focus on
specific analyses of history, political struggle, and modes and forms of intellectual production, and the contradictory nature of consciousness. The following chapter extends
this framework to the analysis of nationalism and national identity, beginning with an
examination of theories of the nation.
27 |
| 28
Chapter 3
The nation, nationalism
and national identity
In the previous chapter, the nature and role of ideology as a socially constituted set of
ideas, particularly as relevant to capitalist social formations, was discussed. A key concern for all social theory is the relationship between ideas, subjectivity and agency on
the one hand, and structures and objectivity on the other. It was emphasised particularly
that although ideas, not least the politically focused sets of ideas that the term ideology
usually refers to, have their social and historical bases, and are shaped on many levels
by the basic driving forces of society, the relative autonomy and specific patterns of development of all spheres of social life, and the determining effects of ideas themselves,
have to be taken into account. Chapter 2 also stressed that an important part of any materialist analysis of ideas, language and discourse is an analysis of intellectuals as both a
specific social group and as tied to other social groups.
The previous chapter laid a general groundwork for relating ideas to history and social structure, and made some reference to the more specific concerns of the thesis in
nationalism and national identity. This chapter will extend the theoretical bases of the
thesis by developing a theory of the nation, nationalism and national identity that both
respects the importance of ideas and places them in their material context. In this regard
it is argued that although the focus of the thesis is concerned with nationalism and its
effects, the often-disputed question of what a nation is, needs to be explored, along with
the ideology of the national and the forms of identity associated with membership of a
nation. This chapter also looks at some gaps and ambiguities in the relevant literature in
order to generate research questions for the thesis.
In this chapter I firstly develop a framework for understanding nations and nationalism by critiquing a number of key writers and texts in this field. Secondly, I make some
comments on the relations between national aspects of capitalist society and tendencies
29 |
towards internationalisation. I then make some comments on the question of rationality and irrationality in relation to nationalism, extending the analysis in the previous
chapter derived from Marx’s analysis of religion, the concept of reification, and Gramsci’s analysis of “common sense”. These discussions on the origins, nature and sources of
strength generate the first, and most general, research question, around the continuing
relevance of nationalism in political rhetoric and action: this question seeks to problematise both conceptions that an era of ‘globalisation’ will make nations and nationalisms
redundant, and theories of the inevitability and permanence of nations and nationalism. In a fourth section I outline a typology of “streams” of Australian nationalism, with
historical and current examples. This section, along with the preceding considerations,
generates a further three questions regarding politically-specific forms of national feeling and their relative strengths.
Theories of the nation, nationalism and national identity
The nation is a ubiquitous and seemingly self-evident fact of modern political and social life. We shall see from a discussion of recent literature on the issue that a nation
is generally seen as a social unit that in some way concentrates political authority and
allegiance, carries a great deal of history and culture along with it, and is often tied to
particular languages and ethnic groups. However, the term is used quite differently in
different contexts, let alone among different writers. For example, the major global political organisation is called the United Nations, even though the affiliated members are
in fact, most would surely agree, better termed states, and, as many of the writers to be
discussed below would argue, states can contain more than one nation and nations can
exist across state boundaries.
Most if not all writers on the nation tackle together the nation as a social unit and nationalism as an associated ideology, perhaps also treating national identity as the related
subjective feeling within, or expressed by, particular subjects. However, there have been
heated debates over how to define both the objective and subjective sides of the question, and how to characterise the relations between these aspects. A main task of this
chapter is to use the general methodology for the analysis of ideology and social structure outlined in the Chapter 2 to develop a credible theory of nations and nationalism,
and to relate this theory to the Australian context.
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One area of widespread concurrence among writers in the field in recent decades
is the proposal that the existence of nation is not a simple continuation of age-old divisions of humanity, but is an outcome of modernity (although as we shall see there
is considerable debate about the role of ethnic and/or linguistic origins). Hobsbawm
analyses the historically divergent and evolving uses of the term nation, and states that
by the time of his writing (1990) it had become “commonplace” to view nations as not
“as old as history”, but that, “the modern sense of the word is no older than the eighteenth century, give or take the odd predecessor”.1 One of the broadest and most forceful presentations of this view is given by Gellner, who states, “The general emergence of
modernity hinged on the erosion of the multiple petty binding local organizations and
their replacement by mobile, anonymous, separate identity conferring cultures. It is this
generalised condition that made nationalism normative and pervasive”.2 More specifically, and from a typical Marxist position, Löwy sees the historical roots of the nation in
fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe, with the rise of the capitalism and the formation of national markets. Previously Europe was dominated politically by “pre-national”
fiefs and principalities, and “trans-national” structures such as the Church and Holy
Roman Empire, and it was “precisely through the destruction/decomposition,” of these
two, “non-national structures,” that the nation was formed.3
While there is broad agreement on rough historical periodisation, a key issue in debates around the origins and nature of the nation is the relative importance of nations
as material social structures or relations, and of the subjective feelings, ideologies and
identities associated with the nation. This debate has both a chronological aspect, in
terms of whether the objective or subjective came first, and an ontological aspect, in
terms of whether the objective or subjective is determinative. I aim to develop a credible
synthesis of the objective and subjective aspects of this question.
James persuasively argues that to the extent that Marx discussed the concept of the
nation, which generally consisted of taking the nation for granted or pointing to the
undoubted internationalising aspects of capitalism, (the latter discussed in the following section), he was constrained by the conditions of his time, the major aspect of which
1 E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990) 3
2 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) 86
3 Michael Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? Essays on the National Question (London: Pluto
Press, 1998) 61
31 |
was the rapid expansion of a free market capitalism which appeared to be sweeping all
non-directly economic relations before it.4 However, I hope to show in this thesis the efficacy of the Marxist method in its post-Marx developments in changing circumstances,
as opposed to what Marx wrote on the question per se.
Hobsbawm points out that one of the first serious debates on the “national question” occurred around the turn of the twentieth century among the Marxist activists
and intellectuals of the Second International, who were faced with the rapid rise of national movements in central and eastern Europe, and stirrings in the colonised world.5
A central part of this discussion was the relative importance of and connection between,
subjective and objective factors. As part of the debate Stalin, writing for a Bolshevik
publication in 1913, defined the nation as, “a historically evolved, stable community of
people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture,” which was a result of rising capitalism. Nationalism was therefore a bourgeois ideology although socialists should support
self-determination. It might be argued that this definition of the nation is static and
rigid, steeped in the evolutionary and mechanical Marxism of the Second International
that, as discussed in the previous chapter, Lukács criticised, particularly when Stalin
goes on to write, “It is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be absent and
the nation ceases to be a nation”.6 Löwy certainly thinks so, and states his agreement
with ‘Autro-Marxist’ Otto Bauer and his text The Question of Nationality and Social Democracy (published in 1907), which Stalin was polemicising against. Bauer saw nations
as, “open historical realities,” and defined them as, “A set of human beings linked by a
common fate and a common character”. Löwy rejects Marxists who are “too economistic or too abstract and rigid—like the four point definition in Stalin’s famous pamphlet,
4 Pointing out that this itself is a confirmation of the Marxist dictum that social being determines
social consciousness, Paul James, Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract Community
(London: Sage Publications, 1996) 47–82
5 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 8
6 Joseph V. Stalin, ‘Marxism and the National Question’, in Lenin. V.I. (ed.), Marxism and
Nationalism (Sydney: Resistance Books, 2002) at 197. It is perhaps worth noting that while the works
of J.V. Stalin might seem an unusual choice of authoritative source, this particular pamphlet was
commissioned as a collective statement on the national question for the Bolsheviks, and was never
disputed by Bolsheviks of more noted theoretical stature including Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin.
Trotsky argued this work was Stalin’s one theoretical piece of any note because it was closely edited by
Lenin, see Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence (London: MacGibbon and
Key, 1968) 233. The importance of the work should also lie in the fact that it was a key text for national
liberation movements in the second half of the twentieth century, as noted in Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism Since 1780 136
| 32
which would become a real Procrustean bed and a serious obstacle to concrete thinking,” particularly the “fetishising of territory”, as, “in so far as there is a common culture,
despite geographical distance, individuals can belong to the same nation”. He gives the
example of Jews and African-Americans, arguing that, “A collective memory of persecution, exclusion or massacres creates a national community of fate”.7 Whether this is a fair
criticism of Stalin’s definition and approach will be considered below after interrogating
a number of other commentators.
One approach that consciously emphasises the objective side, at a purposefully thoroughgoing though abstract level, is that of Gellner. He sees nations as an inevitable part
of the transition between agricultural and industrial societies. Localised, closed communities mark the former, which may be within large states ruled by pan-political military and clerical-administrative castes that are separated from the labouring masses by a
vast cultural gulf. A key factor in these societies is that there is no convergence between
culture and polity. Industrial societies, in stark contrast, require both a high level of
specialisation, but also a much more standardised training at a much higher level than
predecessor societies. The vital needs of industrialisation demand that education become central for the modern state, for which, “the monopoly of legitimate education is
more important, more central than the monopoly of legitimate violence”.8 Standardised
education in turn demands a common culture, such that, “It is not the case … that nationalism imposes homogeneity, it is rather that a homogeneity imposed by objective,
inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism”.9
It is hard to argue that nations and nationalism are not a central, indeed inevitable
part of the modern world, and Gellner’s focus on the deep, structural reasons for this to
be so is a vital part of understanding the question. However, two related problems in his
work are, that his materialism is highly abstract and that his understanding of society is
relentlessly functionalist. His abstractions are revealed in his apparent lack of concern
with the specific reality of actual nations and their formation. He states, “It is nationalism which engenders nations, rather than, as you might expect, the other way around”.10
This may often be true chronologically, but while Gellner also states that nations “use as
their raw material the cultural, historical and other inheritances from the pre-national
7 8 9 10 Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? 47
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism 34
Ibid. 39
Ibid. 55
33 |
world”11, there is virtually no discussion in this text of what a nation actually is after
nationalism has done its work, besides, implicitly, an industrial society with a common
culture. Gellner creates an abstract, schematic, functionalist typology of eight nationalisms based on axes of powerholders versus non-holders, access to education versus
those without such access, and whether there are one or two cultures within a state.12
This schema both erases class structure and class conflict and reduces active nationalist
movements to internal differentiation in ethnically plural pre-national formations.13
The second reduction relates to the fact that Gellner sees nationalism as unproblematically functional, providing the cultural glue for the whole society, and part of
an unproblematically homogenous and rational society. He does not see imperialism
as having anything much to do with European nationalism, as at the time of rapid European colonisation Europe “had, on the whole, more pressing and internal things to
occupy its attention”.14 In writing that national struggles, as well as class struggles, are
only part of early industrialisation, Gellner admits his theory cannot explain “especially
virulent” forms of nationalism such as fascism.15 But surely racism, jingoism, chauvinism, colonialism and imperialism have been implicated in at least some nationalisms,
(as discussed below in the case of Australian race patriotism), and there have been nationalist movements directed against various ‘others’ seen as external to the nation, in a
whole range of developed industrial societies. Theories that cannot accommodate these
aspects of the question must surely be lacking.
Hobsbawm, like Gellner, is not overly concerned with discussing the objective nature
of a nation but rather the objective grounds of nationalism. He sees these grounds in
terms more of movements, classes and political struggle rather than functional-cultural
imperatives. In his work, “Any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard
themselves as members of a ‘nation’ will be treated as such” and he states, paraphrasing
Gellner, that, “Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way around,”16
where nationalism is, as it is for Gellner, a movement to establish a nation-state. He challenges the view that there is a definite connection between language, religion, and/or
11 Ibid. 49
12 Ibid. 89
13 Related to his false claim that class conflict, as well as national conflict, is only a function of early
industrialisation (Ibid. 96), a claim that does little to explain much of the class conflict in varied parts
of the world in the 1890s, 1930s, 1960s–70s, and indeed the present.
14 Ibid. 43
15 Ibid. 139
| 34
ethnicity and nations, citing counter-examples, for example that at the time of the 1861
proclamation of the state of Italy, only 2.5% of the population spoke something like what
would become standard Italian.17
Hobsbawm stresses the plastic nature of nations as largely, creations of forces in political struggle that picked up pre-national material as necessary, arguing that:
In practice the ideas of state and government tended to be determined by political criteria typical of the period since the era of the great eighteenth century revolutions, but
the idea of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ largely by pre-political criteria which were helpful in
the creation of imagined communities and imaginary communities. Politics constantly
tended to take over and remould such pre-political channels to its own purposes.18
However, in his work there seems to be an assumption that a nation is a definite
something that is not congruent with the inhabitants of a political state, as when he
writes of “multinational states” or argues whether particular groups of people are, or
are not, “clearly” nations, for example, doubting whether the inhabitants of many of the
states created by the movements which led to decolonisations are inhabited by distinct
nations.19 Hobsbawm implies nations are the result of prior formations that are changed
around somewhat by politics and are defined ideologically, rather than being relatively
new and distinct social formations. He misses the possibility that the formation of a nation is a process that leads to a definite social formation around territory, language and
culture, and it is in this sense that a nation is ontologically prior to a nationalism—I shall
return to this argument below.
While Hobsbawm represents a significant advance on Gellner in that he recognises
nations as terrains of struggle rather than homogenous wholes, he suffers from a related
problem in not focusing on the materiality of the nation and the factors forming nations, so that in his work, as in Gellner’s, the effect of broad socio-economic change may
not be fully accounted for. In discussing changes in nationalism in Europe in the period
1880–1914, Hobsbawm discusses how the formerly pragmatic conception of the nation
in the earlier “high liberal” period, moved to a more definite linguistic-ethnic definition,
and how related to this change there was a sharp shift of ideas of the nation and the flag
to the right, from the early revolutionary-democratic conception of the nation. He also
17 Ibid. 38
18 Ibid. 188-189
19 Ibid. 137
35 |
notes how changes such as democratisation and mass migration, and in particular the
economic downturn of the 1890s, caused great anxiety among lower middle class layers,
and encouraged among them the growth of militant nationalism and anti-semitism.20
However, he does not place these observations in the context of the general developments of the period, particularly the rapid expansion of European colonialism,
the
concentration of capital into large corporations and the increasing links between big
capital and the state. These processes were generally analysed at the time as being due to
the related tendencies of capital to expand and become more concentrated, and generally called at the time imperialism. Lenin argued that the essence of this modern imperialism was monopoly capitalism.21 McQueen uses the term “monopolising capitals,” to
emphasise that it is a dynamic process organised by particular actors.22 The continuing
effects of this relatively distinct stage of the organisation of capitalism and the state are
visible in the particular modes of mass immigration, governmental power, moves to
less regulated trade, and military intervention by strong powers, that have been key
features of recent times, and often explained together under the rubric ‘globalisation’
(the economic and political aspects of the ‘globality’ of recent social organisation are
discussed respectively in Chapters 7 and 8). These processes all clearly relate to the how
nations are constituted, how they conceive of themselves and how they relate with the
rest of the world. In the perspective developed in this thesis, an epoch of economic and
political expansion (of varied forms) by a small number of rich states will encourage aggressive nationalism in these states and defensive nationalism in states and peoples who
perceive a threat by such expansion, captured in the distinction stressed by Lenin between oppressor and oppressed nations.23 Thus, a general understanding and empirical
demonstration that the development of nations and nationalism in the current period is
crucially shaped by the role of monopolising capitals is a central aspect of this thesis.
Nairn has also emphasised the objective basis of nationalism in a series of insightful if problematic accounts. In earlier works he declared an aim, as noted in Chapter 1,
of addressing a deficiency in Marxism, arguing, “The theory of nationalism has been
20 Ibid. 102
21 Lenin’s 1916 text arguing that the afore-mentioned factors characterised capitalism by the
beginning of the twentieth century begins by noting the ubiquity of the term imperialism by that time.
V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Sydney: Resistance Books, 1999) 33
22 Humphrey McQueen, The Essence of Capitalism: The Origins of Our Future (Sydney: Hodder
Headline, 2001)
23 See for example V.I. Lenin, ‘The socialist revolution and the right of nations to selfdetermination’, in V.I. Lenin (ed.), Marxism and Nationalism (Sydney: Resistance Books, 2002)
| 36
Marxism’s greatest historical failure”.24 To rectify this he proposes that nationalism be
recognised as the central ideology and basis for identity of modernity, or least early modernity, contrasting its reality to the merely theoretical postulation of a universal class
of proletarians:
Nationalism could only have worked, in this sense, because it actually did provide the
masses with something real and important—something that class consciousness postulated in a narrowly intellectualist mode could never have furnished, a culture which
however deplorable was larger, more accessible, and more relevant to mass realities than
the rationalism of our Enlightenment inheritance. If this is so, then it cannot be true
that nationalism is just false consciousness. It must have a functionality in modern development, perhaps one more important than that of class consciousness and formation
within the individual nation states of this period.25
In some ways this is close to both Gellner’s functionalist theory and the orthodox
Marxist approach that both nation-states and nationalism are necessary conditions for
the rise and reproduction of capitalism. However, in contrast to the latter approach
Nairn implies a contrast between nationalism as natural and popular and class consciousness as narrow and externally introduced. In later texts he more explicitly argued
that national feeling, if not nationalism, was an inevitable and permanent part of the
human condition. While emphasising the ‘constructed’ nature of nationalism (as only
developing as a recognisable current in the 1870s), and a rise of a specific new form of
nationalism since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and more emphatically since the US-led
‘war on terror’ declared in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, he also claims:
Nationality, human socio-cultural diversity, came from the interminable migrations of
the species over hunting-gathering time … ‘diversity’ simply is (and will remain) human identity, as will nationality, delineating borders, conflicts between ‘us’ and ‘them’
and the governing or state forms required to sustain diversity.26
It is useful to consider that nationalism likely has both deep-seated antecedents and
ideological variability through time. However Nairn, like Gellner and Hobsbawm, leaves
the particular nature of nations per se unclear, in his case dissolved into a general human
24 Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain 329
25 Ibid. 354
26 Tom Nairn, ‘Ambiguous nationalism: A reply to Joan Cocks’, Arena/22 (2004), 119–138 at 124,
136; for his periodisation of different forms of nationalism see also Tom Nairn, ‘Post-2001 and the
third coming of nationalism’, Arena/21 (2003), 81–97
37 |
diversity, as well as implying that divisive nationalism as well as a more general national
feeling, is now a permanent if varying fixture of human life. The possibility that other
forms of ideology and identity can be more decisive than those associated with the nation is a central concern of this thesis, discussed particularly in Chapter 9.
Anderson, in contrast to Nairn, clearly sees nationality as a modern condition. His influential account of nations and nationalism attempts to come to grips with the strength
of the subjective feeling of nationalism, while accounting for the specific objective processes, social forces and forms of identity and belonging involved in the formation of
nations. He defines the nation as an “imagined political community”, that is both “sovereign” and “limited”, a community involving a “deep horizontal comradeship”. In contrast to pre-national forms of large, extra-localised communities (the “dynastic realm”
and the “religious community”), the nation has finite boundaries within which it is the
“guarantee of freedom”.27 While his stated focus appears (not least from the work’s title)
to be on explaining the subjective feeling of nationalism and national identity, the actual thrust of the text is on the specific social forces and social relations involved in the
origins, spread and reproduction of nationalism. Of central importance is the role of
“print-capitalism” in articulating and popularising national-vernacular “print languages” out of pre-existing forms, as, “the convergence of capitalism and print technology on
the fatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined
community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation”.28 The
specific social forces involved were, initially, the “Creole” colonial officials, printers and
pamphleteers in North and South America who, with a common social existence that
was alienated from the metropolitan centres, articulated a new identity and led wars of
liberation in the period 1760–1830.29 More generally, he notes the role of “lexicographers, philologists, grammarians, folklorists, publicists and composers” in constructing
national print-languages in connection with “reading classes”, which included, “rising
middle strata of plebian lower officials, professionals and commercial and industrial
bourgeoisies”.30 Trotsky makes a similar point, although, to introduce an argument discussed further below, he implies less the determining effect of the work of the print27 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(London: Verso, 1983) 15–16
28 Ibid. 46
29 Ibid. 47–65
30 Ibid. 75
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intellectuals, but rather their role within the capitalist social formation:
The texture of culture is woven at the points where the relationships and inter-actions
of the intelligentsia of a class and of the class itself meet. The bourgeois culture—the
technical, political, philosophical and artistic—was developed by the inter-action of the
bourgeoisie and its inventors, leaders, thinkers and poets. The reader created the writer
and the writer created the reader.31
In terms of what has been discussed in the previous chapter, Anderson and Trotsky
are describing the role of “organic intellectuals” connected to bourgeois and middle
classes and national movements, though seeing these strata and their role in a broader
social-cultural sense than Hobsbawm’s more political focus on movements and their
leaders and cadres.
Smith has argued that, “Anderson articulates how the nation came to captivate the
subject’s imaginary, but he struggles to account for why the nation arouses such deep
attachment”.32 Anderson focuses on the social processes and layers particularly involved
in language and representation, which are certainly vital to understanding how nations
are articulated and felt. But he does not link these clearly to the broader material bases
of nationalism and national identity in the whole development of social formations and
struggles within them. That is, he leans towards the idealist reification of language, discourse and representation criticised in the previous chapter. A broader perspective is
needed for the why.
A central example is Anderson’s notion of “print-capitalism”. Anderson points out that
recognisable bourgeoisies had existed in Europe well before the development of printing
and of nations, and that printing had existed some time before this in Asia33, implying
that “print” and “capitalism” were two separate processes that existed for some time
and then came together in a way that was very much tied to the formation of nations.
However, he seems to be conflating the existence of commercial, mercantile layers in all
pre-capitalist formations with capitalism as a particular social formation dominated by
a class that owns the decisive means of production the products of which are sold on a
generalised market, (it does not help clarity that Anderson says little about the develop31 Leon Trotsky, ‘What is proletarian culture, and is it possible?’, 1923
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/art/tia23c.htm> accessed 3 March 2006
32 Nick Smith, ‘Nature, Native and Nation in the Australian Imaginary’, PhD (La Trobe University,
2000) 13
33 Anderson, Imagined Communities 46
39 |
ment of capitalism as a whole). Such a social set-up is hard to imagine without a defined
home market, (the need for which creates pressure for both state and nation) and well
established communications. In other words the development of capitalism itself was
inextricably tied up with, and was not possible without, the massive expansion of print
technology and reading publics and the formation of nations. Something of Gellner’s
conception of nationalism as an inevitable imperative for capitalism (“industrialism”),
for all its problems, is needed to understand the strength of nationalism.
A second problem with Anderson’s discursive focus is that he concentrates on elite
and middle layers particularly involved in Creole-colonial administration and/or print
production and consumption, to the detriment of the popular masses. Hobsbawm very
usefully points out how nationalism has gripped and in turn been shaped by, the real
interests and desires of working people. This occurred not just in the early leftist, radical-democratic phase of nationalism, but also when democratisation gave broad layers
some sense of “ownership” in the nation-state, and even when nationalism could be
fairly easily argued to express needs in a false or distorted form: such as how the early
(1840s) working class Chartist movement, “hated the French as much as the rich”34, or
the above-mentioned turn by impoverished lower middle class masses, to anti-semitism
and extreme xenophobic nationalism from the late nineteenth century.35
A third problem with Anderson’s lack of clarity about capitalism and how it has developed and changed is that, along with Hobsbawm and Gellner, he underplays the effects
of imperialism, particularly in the linking of racism and nationalism, and in the significant differences between nationalism in oppressed and oppressor nations. Anderson,
referring to Nairn’s The Breakup of Britain, claims that, “Nairn is basically mistaken in
arguing that racism and anti-semitism derive from nationalism”, giving example of antiracist post-colonial nationalisms, and arguing that racism is much more to do with internal oppression, including the oppression of colonies within an empire, than with the
unity the nation against external enemies.36 But the anti-Chinese sentiment, and movement, in Australia, and the central importance of the White Australia Policy were surely
central to the formation of the Australian nation and national identity. For example, the
first point of the 1905 Australian Labor Party platform fused racism and the search for
35 Ibid. 102
36 Anderson, Imagined Communities 148
| 40
a new national identity by calling for, “The cultivation of an Australian sentiment based
on the maintenance of racial purity and the development in Australia of an enlightened
and self-reliant community”.37 There is clearly a connection between some racisms and
some nationalisms, and it is hardly a wild claim to suggest that in the Australian case
this may be due the fact that Australian national sentiment grew in a period of rapid
European colonisation, as discussed further below.
James has concretised and generalised the conception of imagined community by
positing the nation as a particular form of, “abstract community”. This effort is an application of a general social theory, associated with the journal Arena, of “constituitive abstraction”, which refers both to how particular kinds of abstraction arise from
particular forms of social life, and to how varied levels of theoretical abstraction are
needed to comprehend social life, and is presented as a development of historical materialism.38 The theory is suggestive, both in terms of the connection of national feeling
to specific historical and social developments, and in terms of the particular forms and
extents of abstraction related to internationality as discussed in Chapter 7. However, it
is not clear that there are advances made upon the concepts developed within classical
historical materialism, such as reification, stressed throughout this thesis (and explicitly
referred by James as a key example of the materiality of abstraction), and the discussion
by Marx of the dialectical relation between the concrete and the abstract in his Grundrisse.39 Where the theory more clearly departs from classical historical materialism, for
example by positing analytically separate “modes of practice”, of production, exchange,
communication, organisation and enquiry, of equal determinative import, it is vulnerable to similar criticisms as those levelled at structuralist approaches that too sharply
slice up the social totality and lack relations of causation and determination between the
separate spheres of social life.
Anderson’s wide influence has undoubtedly been a major reason for a subjectivist
focus of much recent Australian work on nationalism. Smith for example uses Durkheim’s analysis of religion to argue that, “The nation is an imaginary ideal; it is a fan37 Quoted in Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia (4th edn., St Lucia: University of Queensland
Press, 2004) 41
38 The theory is developed throughout the text but particularly in James, Nation Formation: Towards
a Theory of Abstract Community 18–46, 198–200
39 The section ‘The method of political economy’ in Karl Marx, ‘The Grundrisse’, in Robert C.
Tucker (ed.), Marx-Engels Reader (New York: WW Norton, 1978), 221–293 at 236–244. Of course a
restatement and development of existing theory is highly useful.
41 |
tastic repository of human emotions, sensibilities, thoughts and commitments which
are experienced as real”40, with the implication that the nation is a purely subjective
phenomenon. Poole points out that identity has been a central concept in social theory
in recent decades, describing, very usefully, the term used in this context as, “the nexus
between social life and self-conception” and, “the idea that we come to understand who
we are through the resources provided for us by the forms of social life within which we
exist”.41 He argues that national identity has particular strength and importance because
of the ubiquity and centrality of the nation to modern life.42 While this is no doubt true it
does not explain in itself the very divergent and contradictory forms of nationalism and
important examples of the rejection of nationalism, as outlined for the case of Australia
below.
Poole points out that the origin of the concept of identity lies in the application of
psycho-analytic theory to social life. Hage makes considerable use of psycho-analytic
concepts, derived particularly from Lacan, in arguing that the nation has both a “fatherland” function, of protecting borders, and a “motherland” function, of nurturing the
interior. The fatherland function can overwhelm the motherland, leading to different
types of defensive and paranoid nationalisms. In some cases the motherland can still be
expected to deliver (for example, Stalinism), but under neoliberalism, the motherland
function severely deteriorates, leading to particular defensive reactions and avoidant
behaviour.43 While Hage’s discussion is suggestive (and it is only one aspect of his analysis) it is quite unclear whether it is meant to be an analogy or a literal explanation.
Such modes of analysis can be effective for describing the impacts of social processes
on individual subjects, and how identities and a sense of difference are formed. Clearly
there are connections between individual, social and political spheres, but one cannot
assume they are codeterminous. Mass intersubjectivity has its own logic and modes of
being and change, and this study focuses on these spheres, without losing sight of the
individual and identity.
While very usefully identifying some of the specific social processes involved in the
origins and spread of nationalism, and providing useful insights to the subjective feel40 Smith, ‘Nature, Native and Nation in the Australian Imaginary’ 12
41 Ross Poole, Nation and Identity (London: Routledge, 1999) 45
42 Ibid. 44–82
43 Ghassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching For Hope in a Shrinking Society
(Sydney: Pluto Press, 2003)
| 42
ing of nationalism in the notion of “imagined communities” and types of identities, the
above criticisms suggests that the work of Anderson and others focusing on the subjective or the discursive suffers from some of the failings, discussed in the previous chapter,
of either an overemphasis on language, discourse and representation, or not properly
connecting these aspects of social reality to more objective processes. Such modes of
inquiry do not in themselves tell us much about determination and change.
Smith has sought to integrate the objective and subjective sides of the national question, and puts forward a definition of the nation this is similar to Stalin’s, arguing a nation is “a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and
historic memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights
and duties for all members”.44 He also posits a useful definition of nationalism, describing
it as “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or
potential nation”.45 While this is broader than Gellner, Hobsbawm and Anderson, who
all stress nationalism as a movement to attain a state, it is still somewhat narrow as it sees
nationalism as pertaining to a specific movement, rather than to a broad range of ideologies that can affect varied movements and schools of thought. For example, consider
John Howard’s statement at the Liberal Party campaign launch for the 2001 federal election, in relation to the naval interception and mandatory detention of asylum seekers:
“We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.46
This statement surely shows a great deal of nationalist thinking in terms of Smith’s definition, in that it constructs a unified “we”, and suggests this “we” has common interests
and a common identity opposed to those outside the “we”, despite the likelihood that
many people would not necessarily think of the Liberal Party, in the first instance, as a
nationalist movement. In the previous chapter it was argued that the concept of ideology
can usefully have broader and narrower uses in different contexts. Nationalism appears
a good example, as it can refer to the ideas of a particular movement with a specific aim,
such as the founding of a state, and also to a range of ideas that are part of the practice
and discourse of varied movements and social and political actors.
Smith’s main emphasis however is to stress the ethnic origins of nations, the deep
44 A. D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991) 14
45 Ibid. 73
46 David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003) 245
43 |
cultural roots of a nation in pre-national formations he calls “ethnie”. In a later article he
criticises “gastronomical” accounts, including both “modernists” like Hobsbawm and
Gellner and “post-modernists” such as Anderson, who, despite significant differences
(the former being more aware of and interested in determination as opposed to the latter’s focus on representation and discourse), see the work of nationalism as freely choosing from a wide menu. He clarifies though that the deep cultural roots are not the basis
of a “geological” process, that it is not an evolutionary process of a new layer gradually
forming over essentially set foundations, but an “archaeological one”, in which nationalists uncover, represent and recreate the past, in moves that can involve abrupt shifts and
discontinuities, but from a constrained and determined basis.47 This seems to be a useful
recognition that nations have determined, long-ranging origins, even if they are actually
forged and changed in the furnace of modernity.
If we generalise Smith’s definition of the nation referred to above by subtracting the
point about “common legal rights and duties”, which does not apply to those nations
not conterminous with a single state, we are left with something very similar to Stalin’s definition quoted above: “A historically constituted, stable community of people,
formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological
make-up manifested in a common culture”. Are criticisms such as Löwy’s that Stalin’s
(and Smith’s) definition rigid and fetishistic of territory justified? With the necessary
qualifications and explication, and understood in a dynamic way, Stalin’s definition and
overall method can overcome the problems with other approaches and incorporate the
insights of those discussed above.
In relation to rigidity, criticisms such as Löwy’s are weaker when the whole thrust of
the Stalin pamphlet, and its relation to Marxist thought as a whole is taken into account,
rather than simply this summary definition in isolation (or even more simplistically,
the “four categories”). Stalin was at pains to emphasise the historically constituted and
changing nature of the nation, not only that this was “a historical category belonging to a
definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism”48, but also that “it goes without saying that
a nation, like every other historical phenomena, has its history, its beginning and end”.49
The constant change of nations and the tensions and contradictions this produces is a
47 Anthony D. Smith, ‘Gastronomy or geology? The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of
nations’, Nations and Nationalism, 1/1 (1995), 3–23
48 Stalin, ‘Marxism and the National Question’ at 201
49 Ibid. at 197
| 44
central theme of this thesis, not least because Australia has experienced repeated waves
of mass immigration. Hage usefully puts forward the concepts of the “national field”
and “national capital”, following Bourdieu’s typology of social fields and symbolic forms
of capital such as “cultural capital”, discussed in the previous chapter as productive concepts if broader processes of change, socio-historical determination and dialectical interaction are taken into account, to suggest how national membership can be partial and
needs to be struggled for and accumulated by immigrant communities.50
Further, what does not seem to have been specifically noted by any commentators
previously is that Stalin’s definition, unusually for an orthodox Marxist analysis, appears
to put “material” factors (territory, economy) on the same plane as “superstructural factors” (language, national culture/psychology). This move should be seen as putting the
four categories that make up a nation into a dynamic interrelationship, strongly shaped
by the material basis of the capitalist social formation, within which nations and the
national idea have formed. If the categories are not seen as preconditions or boxes to be
ticked, but as part of a process by which different factors might develop at different times
and different rates, but which mutually come together in the nation, it allows a relatively
precise yet subtle and flexible conception of the national. It recognises that nations cannot exist apart from either a material base or a national culture, in a similar manner to
Poole who argues that the key point about a nation as an “imagined community”, is that
relations between the members of a nation depend upon “mutual recognition that they
belong to the same nation”51, unlike interactions for example, in a market, which do not
depend upon a broad conception of a market.
The inadequacy of Löwy’s critique, with regards both to rigidity and to “fetishisation
of territory,” can further be seen from a brief examination of the formation of Israel from
scattered Jewish communities, which might at first glance appear to be the triumph of
the subjective over the objective. Löwy as noted states that the Jews, per se, should be
unproblematically treated as a nation. However, this tells us nothing about the surely
qualitative difference between diverse Jewish communities around the globe speaking
various languages and interacting with various peoples, and the Hebrew speaking people of Israel with their innumerable daily interactions. Stalin emphatically rejects the
50 These concepts are developed throughout Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White
Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998)
51 Poole, Nation and Identity 11
45 |
notion that the Jews are a nation, but also argues that Jews are an example of a social
group that is not a nation but due to common conditions of existence possesses a “national character” (he uses quotation marks).52 While this is somewhat unclear, it seems
to imply both that social categories are not totally fixed and rigid, and also that the Jews
are a potential nation, with elements of Anderson’s “religious community” and Smith’s
“ethnie”, though actually held together by a particular economic role in pre-capitalist
European society. If the Jews had no national character it is unlikely that Zionism would
have had any purchase, however if they were clearly a nation, it is unlikely that Zionism would have remained a minority current before the Second World War.53 It is only
when Zionism (the ideology that Jews should struggle to obtain a territorial homeland),
for particular historical reasons, became hegemonic among Jews and led mass emigration to Palestine and a subsequent war with Arab communities there, did Jews form a
common capitalist economy on a common territory with a new common language, and
through innumerable new social connections (businesses, collectives, trade unions, bureaucracies, armed forces, communications media, artistic endeavours) created a new
common culture (with Smith’s excavations from the Jewish past to be sure): in short,
forging the Israeli nation54.
If Löwy’s conception of the nation is unclear and his critique of Stalin inadequate,
he puts forward a number of points on nationalism and national identity that usefully
summarise many of the strengths of the approaches discussed above. He sees a sharp
distinction between national identity and nationalism:
It is important to distinguish very carefully between the feeling of national identity, the
attachment to a national culture, the consciousness of belonging to a national community with its own historical past—and nationalism. Nationalism as an ideology is composed of all these elements but also of something else, which is the decisive ingredient:
the choice of the nation as the primary, fundamental and most important social and
political value, to which all others are—in one way or another—subordinated.55
52 Stalin, ‘Marxism and the National Question’ at 197, 199
53 For Jews in pre-capitalist society as a “people-class” and the political balance in pre-Second World
War European Jewish communities Abram Leon, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation (New
York: Pathfinder, 1970)
54 On these processes see for example chapters significantly titled ‘Jewish Nationalism and
Arab Nationalism’ and ‘From Nationalism to Nations’, Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs
(Hardmonsworth: Pelican, 1970) 7–40
55 Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? 52
| 46
This expresses the common bases of and connections between national identity and
nationalism, but also an important distinction in the political sphere. Löwy also usefully puts forward four processes that lead to the reproduction of nationalism. Firstly,
as one of the main forms of the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie over the rest
of society. Secondly, in competition between workers of different nations (or states), in
putting “short term interests”, for example by opposing the entry of foreign-produced
commodities to prevent unemployment, above “historical interests”. Thirdly, in various
“irrationalist tendencies”, such as “chauvinism, religious fanaticism, racism and fascism,
for example as discussed by Fromm in Escape from Freedom and Adorno in Authoritarian Personality” (an issue discussed later in this chapter). Fourthly, the “nationalism of
the oppressed”, in struggles against national oppression and for the right to self-determination.56
To sum up, the nation is understood in this thesis to be a dynamic social formation that is fundamentally a result of the development of capitalism, whereby through
particular historical processes a group of people from varied yet determinative ethnic
and linguistic backgrounds (ethnie) inhabiting a common territory forge a common
economy, language and culture. It has a powerful subjective element that can be summarised in the concept “imagined community”, which is both constituitive of the nation itself (in language and national culture), and which is expressed as varied forms
of nationalism, (politically-oriented ideology), and national identity (socially situated
self-identification). Nationalism and national identity ultimately depend on but also
feed back into the nature and history of the nation and social groups within it. It follows
that to analyse Australian nationalism and its effects on politics, we need an empirical
account of the development and nature of the Australian nation and of the groups and
struggles within it, closely related to analyses of the forms of nationalist discourse and
their political impact.
The national versus internationalisation under capitalism
From the above discussion it might be thought that national distinction and separation
is the primary form of interaction between nations. However a contrary process of international interaction is clearly evident, and widely discussed, and has been for some
56 Ibid. 57–58
47 |
time. Surely in the last decade globalisation has been just as ubiquitous, if contested,
a term as imperialism was in Lenin’s day, as noted above. On this general point Lenin
argued in 1913:
Developing capitalism knows two historical tendencies in the national question. The
first is the awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against all
national oppression and the creation of national states. The second is the development
and the growing frequency of international intercourse in every form, the breakdown
of national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, of economic life in
general, of politics, science, etc.57
Lenin was reiterating, in the new era of monopolising capitals, Marx and Engel’s point
that, “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connexions everywhere”.58 However Lenin recognised the continuation and
importance of nations much more so than Marx and Engels, and did so more strongly
when he began stressing the imperialist nature of capitalism after the First World War
broke out.59
Much of the literature on Australian nationalism has been unclear on, or incorrect
about, the relation between the national and international. As discussed in the fourth
section, members of the “radical nationalist” school of historians (and other commentators and political actors) have analysed Australia in terms of struggle against foreign
domination. At the least, this is very debatable, and conceptions of Australia as dependent will be examined in detail in Chapters 7 and 8. In terms of broad socio-economic
change in recent decades, some commentators have argued in terms of all-encompassing globalisation. For example Hage appears to see a radical internationalisation on the
level of trade and ownership and control of capital in writing, in terms that echo the
preceding quote from Marx and Engels, that, “Capitalism goes transcendental, so to
speak. It simply hovers over the earth looking for a place to land and invest … until it is
time to fly and invest again”.60 Others have taken changes to global trade, investment and
57 V.I. Lenin, ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’, Marxism and Nationalism (Sydney:
Resistance Books, 2002) at 58
58 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, The Marx-Engels Reader
(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1983) at 476
59 Lenin, Imperialism
60 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism 17
| 48
ownership patterns into account while emphasising changes to the nature of a specifically Australian corporate class.61 On the ideological level, it could be argued that those
who have emphasised racism and chauvinism in Australia’s past (such as McQueen62
and Markey63 in regard to the labour movement), have overemphasised, and not taken
enough account of the effects of internationalising factors such as mass immigration,
a point developed later in this chapter. On the other hand, and as I discuss below, a
number of commentators naively thought in the early 1990s that mass immigration and
multicultural policies could in themselves overcome racialised and chauvinistic aspects
of nationalism and national identity.
The question arises as to whether nationalism has lost its importance in political life
or at least declined in importance. The discussion here suggests it has not, and so the
first and most general identified task for this thesis (with three others developed below)
is to test the following hypothesis:
1. That feelings of national belonging and attachment and assumptions of a unifying
national interest are continuing and inevitably central parts of political involvement
and expression in a polity such as the current Australia.
Chapter 4 will put forward a methodology for this analysis. The fourth section of
this chapter will put forward a typology of “streams” of Australian nationalism, gleaned
from historical and current sources, which are related to the analysis of specific aspects
of Australian historical and social reality presented in Chapters 5–9. Before proceeding
however, it is worth considering an aspect of the question of rationality, about which the
literature is also somewhat unclear.
Nationalism: rational or irrational?
A key part of Gellner’s central argument on nations and nationalism is his connection of
the rise of the nation with what he argues, following Max Weber, is the fundamentally
rational nature of industrial society. He sees rationality in both the entrepreneurial and
bureaucratic aspects of industrial societies, and characterises it as involving the choice of
61 Such as R.W. Connell, ‘Moloch mutates: Global capitalism and the evolution of the Australian
ruling class, 1977–2002’, Overland/167 (2002), 4–14
62 McQueen, A New Britannia
63 Raymond Markey, ‘Race and organised labor in Australia 1850–1901’, The Historian, 58/2
(1996), 343–360
49 |
the most efficient means to achieve ends (instrumental reason) and the use of consistent
and universal criteria.64 Poole argues that any identity grounded in the nation however
cannot be based on universal criteria, particularly because national languages construct
meaning differently.65 Löwy similarly if more forcefully puts the case that nationalism is
inherently irrational (in the universalist sense):
Nationalism is by its very nature an irrationalist ideology: it cannot legitimate the privilege of one nation over the others with any rational criteria—since substantive (that is, not
purely instrumental) rationality is always tendentially universal. It must therefore appeal
to non-rational myths like the divine mission attributed to the nation, the innate and eternal superiority of a people, the right to occupy a larger geographical Lebensraum, etc.66
It is certainly not hard to find examples of nationalist ideology that explicitly, and
even consciously and proudly, look to pre-modern and irrationalist modes of thought,
such as Romanticism, that contradict the Weberian principles noted above. Smith describes how the Nazis viewed nature as Urlandschaft, “earth”:
Urlandschaf was wild, authentic, irrational and primeval, an essential part of the Nazis’
very being. Hence the link between nationalism and romanticism, whereby the essence
of the people (or ‘folk’) lies in nature itself, both as a universal principle and as a distinct
cultural identity.
He sees a similar “conflation of nature, native and nation” in Australia nationalist discourse. In what he sees as a romantic influence on nationalism, “the bush, the bushman,
sunlight and the golden wattle became totemically cognate with mateship, autonomy
and egalitarianism in both the urban and Australian imaginary” .67 He argues this is
clearly evident in Australian films of the 1970s and 1980s such as Picnic at Hanging
Rock, Sunday Too Far Away, Crocodile Dundee, the Mad Max triology and the Man From
Snowy River, and that these film reveal the idea of landscape as character.
McCann discusses the common view in Australian literary criticism that a shift from
literary romanticism to realism in the late nineteenth century marked the emergence of
a national literary culture and overt nationalist politics. However, he shows that there is
a strong romantic current (which he relates to Lukács’ conception of romantic anti-cap64 65 66 67 | 50
Poole, Nation and Identity 22
Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? 57–58
Smith, ‘Nature, Native and Nation in the Australian Imaginary’ 19
italism) in William Lane’s novel Working Man’s Paradise. Realist discussions of poverty,
oppression and commodity fetishism are intertwined with romantic notions of land,
race (of ancient and fetishised Anglo/Celtic/Nordic varieties), nature and “Earth Mother”. McCann does not quite explicitly state this, but it seems the realist and empirical aspects of the novel relate to class politics, while the romantic aspects relate to an idealised
and racislised nationalism. The aspects latter include an idealised Germanic racialised
past for the Australian nation and incidents such as the character Nelly’s lurid reaction
to seeing a Chinese man, but are devoid of any clearly factual content. McCann argues
that for Lane “the nation, with its attendant notions of organic bonded communities,
locality and autochthony … is not simply haunted by Romanticism, it is fundamentally
Romantic”.68
However, as argued in the previous chapter following Marx’s analysis of religion and
Lúkacs’ development of the concept of reification, it is one-sided to see ideologies that
may be empirically incorrect, based on faith, or based on surface appearances as simply
‘false’. Part of the power of such ideologies, whether religious or involving the fetishisation of commodities, is that they accord with people’s experiences and/or meet real
needs, even if in a partial or distorted way, and hence are likely to continue doing so
in the absence of alternatives. In a similar vein Anderson suggests that the power of
nationalism may relate to the fact that, like religion but unlike for example socialism
or liberalism, it often addresses the large existential questions of a meaningful life.69
Nationalism can seemingly both address real needs of community and point to a real
visible structure in a nation, even as it reifies this structure into a mythic thing in a way
that effaces underlying social relations. Löwy argues that a strengthening of nationalism in Europe in the 1990s crucially depended upon a decline of a universalist socialist
alternative. As he puts it:
[In Western Europe] as in Eastern Europe, but in a different way, the decline of socialist
and class values, so long identified with the USSR and the communist parties, is making room for nationalism/racism … to this one has to add, in the west, disappointment
with the social-democratic management of the crisis, increasingly indistinguishable
(with the exception of a few details) from the neo-liberal one … Thanks to the weaken68 Andrew McCann, ‘Romanticism, nationalism and the myth of the popular in William Lane’s The
Workingman’s Paradise’, Journal of Australian Studies/70 (2001), 1–12 at 1–2
69 Anderson, Imagined Communities 10–11
51 |
ing of socialist culture, capitalism appears more and more as a ‘natural’ system, as the
only possible horizon, as the necessary form of production and exchange. As a result,
economics and social problems like unemployment, poverty or urban insecurity are no
longer attributed by significant sections of the population to the dysfunctions of capitalism, but to the presence of immigrants and other ‘foreigners’.70
Hence it could be argued that if nationalism accords with the surface reality people
encounter every day, if it meets crucial needs, and if there are not any apparent alternatives, then people who respond to and think and act in terms of nationalism are acting
in some senses quite rationally, in the instrumental sense of choosing the best ends to
meet needs. As well, to the extent that nationalism seems to most people at this point to
history to be a universal mode of thinking (merely expressed differently and with perhaps different ‘values’ in different nations), then perhaps most people could be excused
if they considered their nationalist thinking to be rational in the universalist sense as
well.
Previous work in this area does not seem to have explored the possibility that nationalism cannot necessarily be said to be rational or irrational, but often works through a
complex dialectic between rational and irrational tendencies, working at different levels of thought, experience and reality. In addressing questions of the inevitability and
permanence of nationalism and the strength of its different forms this thesis will be
sensitive to these contradictions in relation to how people perceive, represent and are
involved in politics.
Streams of Australian nationalism and national identity
In the previous chapter it was argued that ideologies are fundamentally the expressions
of the interests of particular social groups, and the public expressions of ideologies are
generally mediated through the work of intellectuals, with the latter term understood in
the broad, Gramscian sense. In this chapter so far the nation and nationalism has been
related to national culture, which might imply some homogenous aspects to ideology
within a nation. This is an opportune point to discuss national culture and its relation to
nationalism in more detail.
As discussed in the previous chapter, culture will be used in this thesis in the sense de70 Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? 91–92
| 52
veloped by Williams, as the forms of representations, language, social being and social
interaction within a particular group. The question of whether ‘values’, with the implicit
ideological aspect of this term as relating to the content of social representation and action, are congruent with ‘culture’, a term most usefully related to the forms of representation and action, will be discussed in Chapter 9. Based on the general approach of this
study, the initial hypothesis is that while form and content are undoubtedly related, the
thesis that they are congruent will be treated with suspicion. Lenin, for example, while
freely using the term “national culture” to denote a real phenomenon based on members of a nation’s common conditions of existence, tends to emphasise the class divides
within such cultures:
The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in rudimentary
form, in every national culture, since in every nation there are toiling and exploited
masses, whose conditions of life inevitably give rise to the ideology of socialism and
democracy. But every nation also possesses a bourgeois culture (and most nations a
reactionary and clerical culture as well) in the form, not merely of ‘elements’, but of the
dominant culture.71
Said makes a similar point though implying more strongly that ideology is distinct
from culture, in suggesting that, “Culture is a sort of theatre where various political and
ideological causes engage one another … culture can even be a battleground on which
causes expose themselves to the light of day and contend with one another.72
If national culture is like the national territory that contending groups both live together in and fight over, it follows that all political and ideological discourse will have to
relate to the national, even those discourses that reject the ideology of placing the supposed interests of the nation before other interests. Löwy argues that, “In the same way
that internationalist movements in each country have to speak the national language,
they have also to speak the language of national history and culture”.73 It further follows
that there will be contending ideological and theoretical representations of the nation,
as for example debates around what, if anything, constitutes national values and national interests, and that these representations will be relatable to, in however mediated
ways, social groups and their interests.
71 Lenin, ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’ at 55
72 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1994) xiv
73 Löwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? 60
53 |
The remainder of this section develops a typology of ‘streams’ of Australian nationalism and national identity, drawn from texts both participating in and analysing ideological debates in Australia. If, as discussed in the previous chapter, ideologies are based
on both material factors and draw on historically constituted symbols, signs, myths and
narratives, then it can be hypothesisied that identifiable types of ideology relating to the
nation, that I will call ‘streams’74, will both frame public debate on the nation and also
change with changing conditions. From the literature relating to Australian nationalism
key texts analysing or typifying these streams will be critiqued. The second identified
research task for this thesis is then to use the data to examine if, and how, such streams
have in framed perception and representation of the nation and whether, and in what
ways such streams have changed.
Although this thesis concentrates on the broadly left side of Australian politics, in
the typology developed below and at other points in the thesis ideological positions and
political forces that are generally considered conservative or right-wing are discussed in
some detail. There are two reasons for this approach. Firstly, because it should not be
assumed that there is necessary congruence between different forms of nationalism and
national identity and particular political forces. Secondly, the thesis deals particularly
with a period towards the end of a sustained period of conservative government, and
hence the rhetoric and actions of forces on the left were to a large degree in response to
initiatives and agendas of the right.
Race patriotism
Racialised versions of nationalism and national identity that essentialise and reify differences of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the definition of the nation, which I will term ‘race patriotism’, have been central parts of the historical construction of the Australian nation.
Hage sees the formation of Australia closely tied to the construction of a white identity,
and a racialised hierarchy of increasing superiority from white to European to British. In
his terms, this was an important part of the function of the state as a distributor of hope,
even if at times this was not delivered, particularly to the working class.75
Varied social forces and interests have been related to the construction and repro74 My use of the term is derived from the analysis of the significantly different ideological
expressions of Javanese Islam, and the relation of these expressions to social groupings and historically
changing system of thought and practice in Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Glencoe, NY: Free
Press, 1960)
75 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism 47–54
| 54
duction of race patriotism. McQueen argues that by the end of the nineteenth century,
“racism became the pivot of Australian nationalism”. He relates this to the social forces
that had interests in the destruction of Aboriginal society and Australian domination
of the Pacific and also to fears of an “Asiatic invasion”, whether literal or through immigration.76 The developing colonial bourgeoisie clearly had interests in these regards,
and McQueen points out that impeccable bourgeois figures such as Alfred Deakin and
Edmund Barton enthusiastically promoted the pseudo-scientific racial theories popular
around that time.77 For example, Barton stated in parliament in 1901 that, “We know
that coloured labour and white labour cannot exist side by side … We are guarding the
last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher
civilisation”.78
Anderson also sees the ideological construction of a white identity as central to the
emergence of the Australian nation. He narrates how a specific sector of professionals
and intellectuals contributed to the construction of this ideology, implicitly if not explicitly relating this to social change, for example, the development of European colonialism and imperialism and the social role and interests of these layers. The medical elite
represented by doctors, biologists and researchers played an active role in producing
a sense of essentialised, reified “whiteness”. Medical theories were expressed in terms
of the social ideology of the times, for example the rise of theories of contagion in the
second half off the nineteenth century (replacing theories of spontaneous environmental cause of disease). This led to further racialised and class-based conceptions of disease, strengthening “old assumptions about what sort of people were most likely, even
typically, dangerous, what sort of people were most likely to transport these intangible
enemies — often the poor and other races”79, helping biomedical science move from
an “environmental discourse” to a “discourse on hygienic white citizenship”.80 The material connections between different intellectual layers and institutions facilitated this
dialectic between medical and social ideology: “Biological and civic metaphors circulated between the clinic and the colonial literary salons, crossed from the clinic into the
76 McQueen, A New Britannia 30, 31
77 Ibid. 42–43
78 Quoted in Mary Kalantzis, ‘Australia fair: Realities and banalities of nation in the Howard era’,
Overland/178 (2005), 5–18 at 7
79 Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002) 44
80 Ibid. 45
55 |
colonial public sphere and back again”.81 In the early decades of the twentieth century,
the influence of eugenics led to anxieties about racial degeneration, obsessions with testing racialised theories of health, and calls to sterilise the unfit. This broke down internationally from the 1930s with lack of evidence and the development of genetic theory,
which encouraged the more fluid conception of “ethnic groups” rather than that of fixed
races. Anderson argues that in Australia notions of race were more plastic (whether
‘white’ meant Britons, Nordic, Caucasian, Europeans etc.), but longer lasting than in
other western nations. For many up to the 1930s, “racial hygiene and racial expression
were inseparable, together giving rise to a virile, white national culture”.82
Markey has shown how the labour movement of the later part of the nineteenth century was a key site for the construction of race patriotism. He attributes racism within
the labour movement to three related factors: fears that superexploitation of non-white
labour could undermine wages and conditions; a specific manifestation of the generally
exclusivist practices and conditions of craft unionists who dominated the movement;
and a opportunistic way to build the movement through populist, cross-class alliances
around questions of race. However, it was the rural labourers of the Australian Workers
Union (AWU) that played a key role in combining racism with a new national identity.
Markey presents the AWU as far more active than the urban unions in campaigning
around race to its semi-petty bourgeois nature. That is, that many AWU members were
also small farm owners or aspired to be so. This material position of the AWU membership encouraged a rural, white identity, linked to a petty bourgeois search for class
peace. In the self-conception of the AWU:
The strong, self-reliant, manly and morally upright bushworker or farmer provided the
backbone of a proud new nation that had shaken off the Old World yoke of class division … The land also provided regenerative properties for the yeoman race of Europeans, no longer tainted by the physical and moral diseases of urban industrialism.83
A confused admixture of class and race politics often led to at least partial displacement of blame for superexploitation onto the victims, exemplified by an article from the
Bulletin relating to the importation of indentured Melanesian workers for plantation labour, cited by Markey. In terms that recall race hygiene, the Bulletin claimed that planta81 Ibid. 69
82 Ibid. 177
83 Markey, ‘Race and organised labor in Australia 1850–1901’ at 357
| 56
tion farming would crush the middle class and that, “Queensland glorious Queensland,
teeming with wealth … will become a paradise of the Devil, inhabited by two classes, the
[planter] capitalist and the savage with a weak constitution”.84
A 1878 petition (with 14 701 signatures) to the NSW Legislative Assembly sums up
the also hygienically-oriented themes of the anti-Chinese campaign of the time: fear of
“competition in the labour market”, the threat to, “the character and prestige of the British race” by, “the degrading and immoral actions practised in our midst by those semibarbarians”, the “demoralising [of] the youthful portion of our female population” and
“their filthy surroundings,” contributing to, “dissemination of infectious and loathsome
Eastern diseases”.85
As noted above, Anderson argues that racism was in decline in Australia from the
1930s. Hage notes that with the need for cheap labour in the post Second World War
period, the White Australia model became untenable, and a new model was developed
for immigrants—“assimilationist” in the 1950s and “integrationist” in the 1960s. The
changing ethnic nature of the Australian nation was, Hage argues, broadly accepted due
to rising living standards. “White paranoia” in his terms was largely suppressed from the
1950s–1970s.86
However, many commentators have argued that racism, in respect to nationalism,
was never eliminated. For example, Smith and Phillips suggest that the term “unAustralian” has long been used in a similar manner to “unAmercian”, that is, a term “through
which the right could allege sedition, subversion and disloyalty”, but which always had a
more racial/ethnic component than in the US.87 In the political sphere, race patriotism
was clearly reanimated by independent member of parliament, Pauline Hanson. In her
September 1996 maiden speech to parliament, she argued that an over-riding problem
for the Australian nation was that, “A type of reverse racism is applied to mainstream
Australians by those who promote political correctness and those who control the various taxpayer funded ‘industries’ that flourish in our society servicing Aboriginals, multiculturalists and a host of other minority groups”. She both pointed to alleged “privileges Aboriginals enjoy over other Australians,” and argued that, “I believe we are in
84 Ibid.
85 Quoted in Stephen Alomes and Catherine Jones, Australian Nationalism: A Documentary History
(North Ryde: Collins Angus and Robinson, 1991) 127–129
87 Philip Smith and Tim Phillips, ‘Popular understanding of “UnAustralian”: an investigation of the
un-national’, Journal of Sociology, 37/4 (2001), 323–343 at 324
57 |
danger of being swamped by Asians … They have their own culture and religion, form
ghettos and do not assimilate”. Her platform included the demands that, “The government should cease all foreign aid,” fund national job creation programs and institute
national service.88
Hanson set up the One Nation Party in 1997, which, as discussed further in Chapter 5, performed strongly in the June 1998 Queensland elections, but declined rapidly
after a poor showing in the federal elections of October that year.89 Since that time, the
most prominent political force espousing a racialised view of nationalism (if generally
in an implicit way) in recent times, has been Australia First. Founded by former ALP
MP Graeme Campbell in 1996, its policy points include, “Reduce and Limit Immigration,” and, “Abolish Multiculturalism”, along with points commonly associated with left
nationalism, as discussed below (and in a manner similar to that of One Nation), including, “Ensure Australia Retains Full Independence”, “Rebuild Australian Manufacturing
Industries” and, “Control Foreign Ownership”.90 As noted above, hierarchal racial categorisation became far less prominent and acceptable from the 1940s, and hence the
discourse of those extreme nationalist groups that have gained some support has been
based on the incompatibility of differing cultures rather than on racial inferiority/superiority. In discussing the settlement of Sudanese refugees in Toowomba, Australia First
associated figures stated, “We bear the Africans in general—no malice,” the problem being a “specialised minority of white Australian activists who serve corporate interests,”
(although the nature of the actual “problem” is quite unclear in the article).91 Yet it appears for Australia First that it is not really immigration or differing cultures per se that
are problematic, given Campbell’s call in 2000 for “priority” immigration to be given to
what he called “White Rhodesians”.92
The discourse and practice of Australia First does seem to slide easily toward the
overt targeting of non-white groups that typified earlier politically mobilised versions of
race patriotism. For example, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that some 120 party
88 Hansard, House of Representatives, 18 March (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2003)
3860–3863
89 Margo Kingston, Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999)
90 Australia First, ‘The eight core polices of the Australia First Party’,
<http://www.australiafirstparty.com.au/cms/> accessed 10 May 2006
91 John Pell, Jim Saleam and Val Hale, ‘Toowoomba Under Attack!’, Australia First, 2005
<http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au/toowoomba.html> accessed 10 May 2006
92 Graeme Campbell, ‘White Rhodesians’, Australia First, 2000
<http://www.australiafirstparty.com.au/campbell2000rhodesians.htm> accessed 10 May 2006
| 58
members were mobilised to leaflet, encourage and supply with alcohol participants in
the 11 December, 2005 anti-Lebanese riots at Cronulla beach, Sydney.93 Dan Box, in an
undercover investigation of the party for The Australian, states that while the party publicly claims to be non-racist in the sense of not believing in racial superiority, one leader
put to him that Australia should “remain predominantly white,” while another member
“yelled ‘Seig Heil’ from a car at a Rabbi”.94
Conservative nationalism and the ‘Anglo-Celtic core’
Connell and Irving have outlined the development of conservatism in Australia, as an
ideology that represents society as based on tradition, organic unity and hierarchal organisation. However the early colonial conservatism based on the Anglican Church hierarchy and the ideology of an “assigned station” in life, soon ran up against the problem
of a lack of a strong social base, in that it was a “non-capitalist, in some ways a precapitalist framework”, that is, “did not embrace, explain or defend the activities of the
local entrepreneurs”.95 One wing of conservatism developed into a short-lived ideology
of the “moral ascendency” of an enlightened elite guiding a largely criminalised society,
while the main forces of conservatism were subsumed into a more general ideology that
promoted progress, development, private profit and political reform—themes generally
associated with classical liberalism—which by the 1830s was based around the rising
bourgeoisie, the Protestant churches and the dissident press.96 However, by the end of
the nineteenth century this general ideology of progress had developed into a liberal
reformism based on further reform of representation, regulation of the labour market,
progressive taxation and protectionism. Conservatives saw this form of liberalism as too
closely connected to the labour movement: thus a divergent ideology stressing competitive individualism, patriotism and the interests of property owners developed. Significantly, with respect to the stress argued for in this study on organic intellectuals and the
organisational basis of ideology, Connell and Irving describe this conservatism as based
on and organised through particular groups such as women’s leagues, the press, loyalist associations, and the boards and committees that business people were increasingly
93 Richard Baker, ‘Australia First: reclaiming the agenda’, The Age, 14 December, 2005 <http://
www.theage.com.au/news/national/australia-first-reclaiming-the-agenda/2005/12/13/1134236064358.
html> accessed 10 May 2006
94 Dan Box, ‘White supremacy in our backyard’, The Australian 4 March, 2006, p. 8
95 R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History (2nd edn., Sydney: Longman
Cheshire, 1992) 66
96 Ibid. 67
59 |
involved in from the period of the First World War.
In her study of the ideology of right-of-Labor politics in Australia since Federation,
Brett argues for the use of “Liberal” rather than “conservative” as a consistent designation, stressing the difference between this political tendency and British Conservatism,
and this current’s stress on both individual rights and the unity of the nation above
sectional interests. Brett contrasts this with the ALP’s class nature in statements such
as, “The Australian Labor Party wore its partisanship on its sleeve, and rallied people
to it with appeals to their class-based self-interest”.97 However it could be argued that
Brett over-emphasises Labor’s working class-based nature as entirely consistent, overarching and unproblematic: the more ‘national’, middle class, populist and indeed often
liberal (in the sense of the liberal reformism discussed by Connell and Irving) aspects of
Laborist politics, are evident both in strands of race patriotism as discussed above, and
of left nationalism as discussed below. Moreover, while the designation of the overall
politics of non-Labor forces as ‘Liberal’ may have merit, there is a consistent stream of
Australian nationalism that stresses, in a distinctly conservative way, organic unity and
reified representations of the nation, its culture and family life, a stream that is often
linked to right-of-Labor political forces.
An abstract and unitary nationalism, compared with the left nationalism discussed
below, has been a consistent theme of right-of-Labor political discourse. Billy Hughes
invoked the “Spirit of Australia” to emphasise the Nationalist Party’s all-out support for
the First World War.98 Similarly, a 1983 Liberal Party jingle recalled sporting prowess
and pointed to “the Aussie spirit when the flag’s unfurled”.99 Yet it was Robert Menzies
who most defined the national aspects of right-of-Labor politics. A number of commentators, including Brett, see a 1943 speech, ‘The Forgotten People’, by then opposition
backbencher Menzies, as key to the development of modern right-of-Labor politics.
This speech also presents many of the themes of conservative nationalism. In it, the
social basis for modern conservatism is simultaneously projected as being both a specific class, and also what is active and vital in the whole nation. Menzies asserts that
the “middle class”, defined as “salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional
men and women, farmers,” are the “backbone of the nation”. As they have a “stake in the
97 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 4
98 Ibid. 71
99 Alomes and Jones, Australian Nationalism: A Documentary History 446. It should be noted
however that this example is followed by a quite similar ALP jingle from 1987.
| 60
country,” based on private property, “individual enterprise” and home, family and God,
they are the basis for a “dynamic democracy”. “What really happens to us will depend
on how many people we have who are of the great and sober and dynamic middleclass—the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones”. However it should be noted that in
this perspective the State will have more “social and industrial obligations” and, “more
control, not less”.100 A perspective for administering capitalism and uniting the nation is
thus presented via the virtues of the middle class. The organic nature of Menzies’ conception of society is evident in a 1949 election advertisement, presented in a way that
both recalls the earlier medicalised white identity discussed in the previous sub-section,
and also appeals to established religious authority rather than rationalism:
Socialism is in Australia an alien and deadly growth … We must destroy its political power
and its mental and spiritual infection whilst there is yet time … Its attitude induces a deep
cynicism about all spiritual values. It is, as Church leaders have pointed out, the lineal
descendent of the gross materialism of Karl Marx”.101
While Brett in Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class emphasises the Liberals’ general Australian uniqueness, Menzies’ conservative construction of the nation is
evident in his view of the essential Britishness of Australia. Menzies’ British identity is
evident in statements such as that made upon sighting the cliffs of Dover:
At last we are in England. Our journey to Mecca has ended, and our minds abandoned
to those reflections which can so strangely (unless you remember our traditions and
upbringing) move the souls of those who go ‘home’ to a land they have never seen.102
Meaney has argued against the view that a unique Australian nationalism and identity has been hegemonic for many decades, pointing out instead the strength of a British
identity until at least the mid-twentieth century.103 A sense of Britishness, particularly
when linked to an organic conception of the nation, surely emphasises tradition and
continuity rather than progress and change.
Brett’s use of the term “Liberal” rather than conservative appears to be related to her
general method, which is to uncover the self-understanding of social groups and the
100 Quoted in Connell and Irving, Class Structure in Australian History 463–465
101 Reproduced in Alomes and Jones, Australian Nationalism: A Documentary History 291
102 Quoted in Brett’s earlier text Judith Brett, Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People (Sydney: Pan
Macmillan, 1992) 135–136
103 Neville Meaney, ‘British and Australian identity: the problem of nationalism in Australian history
and histiography’, Australian Historical Studies, 32/116 (2001)
61 |
efficacy of the appeals of political forces through close reading and analysis of relevant
political texts in their own terms, related as necessary to broader social data.104 While,
as discussed in the next chapter, such a method is undoubtedly necessary to analyse
political discourse, Brett appears to adopt an overly phenomenological analysis of texts,
in that she sometimes takes at face value the claims made and myths and symbols invoked. What Brett sees as the unproblematic “working class” nature of the ALP will
be further contested below in relation to left nationalism, and her discussion of the
class nature of the Liberals is also contestable because of her general acceptance of the
Liberals’ own understanding of class. She sees “one stream” of Menzies’ famous speech
discussed above as a “petit bourgeois … politics of blame and recrimination,” based
on the paranoia of small business layers who are highly vulnerable to the swings of the
capitalist economy.105 Yet for Brett the mainsprings of both Liberal self-identification
and attractiveness lies in the “middle class” which, unlike the petit bourgeoisie, is not a
distinct socio-economic category but a “projected moral community whose members
are identified by their possession of particular moral qualities, political values and social
skills”106, and can therefore have a strong cross-class, and national, appeal, as:
It is individuals, not collectivities like classes, which bear moral qualities; and a class
defined by its members’ moral qualities rather than by their social and economic role is
open to everyone who tries to walk the narrow and respectable road of virtue.107
Such passages suggest the influences of Bourdieu’s emphasis on tastes and dispositions as well as the structurally separate fields of, for example, culture and the economy,
as discussed in the previous chapter. It is not clear why for Brett a psychological state
such as paranoia can have a distinct class basis while morals and virtues, particularly
those with seeming links with social production (such as hard work and savings), cannot, whereas for Bourdieu habitus would seem to be more clearly linked to class. Brett
appears to see class analysis of ideology as necessarily positing a strict one-to-one relationship between socio-economic position and consciousness, which as the previous
chapter outlining a dialectical and mediated relationship between structure and consciousness demonstrated, is not the case at all.
104 105 106 107 | 62
Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 1–12
Ibid. 190
Ibid. 7–8
Ibid. 9
There does not seem to be any compelling reason not to posit that the virtues of the
“moral middle class” have a basis in the conditions of existence of the middle layers of
society, in the socio-economic sense. However much the Liberals have achieved success
in winning broader layers to this middle class self-identification, in promoting both
virtue and nation above class, Brett does not appear to have any alternate explanation of
where such virtues and morals come from, if not fundamentally from socio-economic
relations. Menzies’ speech as quoted above was specific in its definition of the middle
class, even while he slid into broader, more ‘national’, definitions. This class basis is at the
least never far from the surface. John Howard, for example, commemorating his tenth
anniversary as prime minister, quoted a speech of his own from 1995, the first point of
which was, “I believe in an Australia built on reward for individual effort, with a special
place of honour for small business as the engine room of our economy”. Howard listed
as the first of his government’s achievement the fact that there were by 2006 “more selfemployed people in Australia than trade unionists”.108 Another limitation of Brett’s conception of the class nature of Liberalism is that she is also somewhat unclear about the
relationship of big capital to the Liberals, briefly mentioning “their financial dependence
on business and capital”109 without incorporating this into her general analysis. There is
however no reason why Brett’s many undoubted insights cannot be incorporated into a
firmer class analysis.
If conservatism posits a particular if contradictory relation between nation and class,
it is also based on a particular relation between nation and ethnicity (or perhaps in
relation to the following discussion, ethnico-cultural background), a relation that emphasises tradition and reifies unity. For Menzies the Britishness of Australia was unproblematic, while modern conservatives such as John Howard can speak of nations
experiencing “some level of cultural diversity while also having a dominant cultural
pattern running through them”. Howard, as part of emphasis by his government on
national values discussed in Chapter 9, argues that for Australia, “That dominant pattern comprises Judeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and
the institutions and values of British culture. Its democratic and egalitarian temper also
bears the imprint of distinct Irish and non-conformist traditions”110. On other occasions
108 John Howard, ‘Address to the 10th anniversary dinner’, Westin Hotel, 2 March, 2006
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech1798.html> accessed 15 May 2006
110 John Howard, ‘A sense of balance: The Australian achievement in 2006’, Speech to the National
63 |
however he summarises this as Australia’s essential “Anglo-Saxon” nature.111 Howard’s
rhetoric suggests a frozen pattern of a dominant cultures around which are arrayed subordinate, and separate, cultures.
This aspect of conservative nationalism has been elaborated by Dixson. She argues
for the notion of an “Anglo-Celtic core” to Australian culture, which, as a relatively coherent ethnic formation with shades of Smith’s “ethnie” discussed above, has provided
a “vital holding function”112 for the national culture, and has prevented to some extent
the fragmentation and incoherence which are endemic problems in the modern world.
She castigates leftist intellectuals for allegedly representing the history of the national
imaginary as a largely negative or empty narrative, and for not recognising that “old
identity” (“Anglo-Celtic”) Australians are surely feeling loss and fragmentation from the
changes wrought by mass immigration and multiculturalism, and are prevented from
“mourning and moving on”.113 Dixson also however combines some of the major defects
of conservatism, with its reification of traditional elite culture, and of post-structuralism, with its obtuseness and abstraction. The notion of a long-running “Anglo-Celtic”
culture effaces the cultural conflict between the English and Irish that was a major part
of the history of Australia until well into the twentieth century, fed as it was by centuries
of conflict over the occupation of Ireland or parts thereof up to the present, and surely
related to class and political conflict since settlement. The dominant culture is presented
as subsuming other cultures, and modern fears and malaise are presented as purely cultural (rather than, for example, being discussed as results of economic restructuring).
The Anglo-Celtic notion also downplays the fact that immigration from non-English
and Irish sources shaped Australia from the nineteenth century, and that such immigration on a mass level been a reality in Australia for six decades. Added to such traditional
reifications is Dixson’s reliance on a post-structuralist methodology. This method is reliant on abstract generalisation, and the transferance of psycho-analytic categories to the
social, with the realities of the national culture and other claims such as the existence of
a coherent “new class” of middle-class professionals undermining “old identity” AustraPress Club, 25 January, 2006 <http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2006/speech1754.cfm> accessed
10 August 2006
111 For example as quoted in David Humphries, ‘Live here, be Australian’, The Sydney Morning
Herald, 25 February 2006, p. 1
112 Miriam Dixson, The Imaginary Australian: Anglo-Celts and Identity, 1788 to the Present
(Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999) 26
113 Ibid. 42–44
| 64
lia given very little empirical support. In short, the nation for Dixson is a conservatively
represented cultural imaginary, rather than a historically constituted but changing and
complex social formation.
It has been argued that there is a distinct conservative stream of Australian nationalism, based on capitalist and middle class social layers, expressed through various political, media and business institutions and discourses typically involving organic crossclass unity, morality and virtue and reified ethnic/cultural representations of the nation.
A number of commentators have analysed John Howard’s ideological contribution as
representing both continuity with the conservative/Liberal tradition, and important aspects of change from it, though the relative extent of continuity and change is debated.
For example, Jamrozik sees the Howard government as exacerbating via a specific form
of conservatism a fundamental problem that the Australian nation has in its “colonial
inheritance”.114 Whether this analysis exaggerates the extent that it is useful to regard
Australia as ‘post-colonial’ is discussed below, with Jamrozik’s argument critiqued as a
form of left nationalism.
Brett argues that, “Howard is Menzies’ successor not because he has gone back to
him, to mine his words and images to oversee a return to 1950s Australia, but because
like him he has been able to adapt the language and thinking carried in his party’s political traditions to the circumstances of the present”, as part of a task of “recreating a
language of social unity and cohesion”. That is, language within a particularly national
frame after the Liberals had, for the period of the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments, been closely associated with an unpopular economic rationalism (or with the
elite consensus across the Western world of neo-liberalism as discussed in Chapter 5).115
In a later text Brett analyses Howard’s consistent use of popular ideas of Australianess
historically associated with the labour movement (as discussed further below) such as,
“egalitarianism, practical improvisation, scepticism towards authority, larrikanism, loyalty to mates, informality and generosity”, as a significant departure from the Liberal tradition.116 He relates the success of such rhetoric to a weakening of Labor’s base through
both broad social change and specific policies of the Keating government. Howard him114 Adam Jamrozik, The Chains of Colonial Inheritance: Searching for Identity in a Subservient
Nation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004)
116 Judith Brett, ‘Relaxed and comfortable: The Liberal Party’s Australia’, Quarterly Essay/19
(2005), 1–79 at 35
65 |
self has suggested that increasing numbers of blue-collar contractors (significantly a
new ‘petit bourgeois’ layer) have recently been added to his constituency, many being
“socially conservative,” and so a “natural fit for me”.117 In what may be another instance
of taking political rhetoric somewhat for granted, Brett argues that Howard’s popular
Australian idiom is a “language he speaks naturally,”118 and that Howard’s success in part
derives from the fact that unlike Keating he “does not think it is the role of government
to impose cultural change from above”.119 In sharp contrast, Kalantzis writes of Howard’s
“cultural activism”120, quoting him as arguing in 1996 that he needed a full three-year
term because then, “You’ve got an opportunity to change the culture … for the government to really take root in the community”.121 Kalantzis’ analysis concurs with Brett’s
in seeing in Howard both important continuities with Menzies’ Liberalism—that is, in
combining a vision of unitary nation based on an abstract ‘people’ (as opposed to classes and other specific groups) with occasionally ruthless use of exclusivist rhetoric and
practices, moderated by pragmatic moves to the centre as necessary—and significant
aspects of change, particularly change based on the Liberals’ search for new constituencies. Kalantzis emphasises though that the extent to which the Menzies and Howard
governments were pragmatic and centrist had little to do with the respective leaders’
own views, but were rather in both cases responses by other government members to
broad social changes, particularly to mass immigration, suggesting some of the contradictions between conservative and liberal tendencies within ‘Liberalism’.
Radical/left nationalism
Hobsbawm argues that a significant part of the development of nationalist ideology in
countries with strong working class movements was a general process of the development of forms of left nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century. Democratisation gave the working masses an identification with, and at least some real stake in, the
consolidating nation-market-states, to the extent that struggles for democracy and justice were generally seen in terms of changes to the existing state and involving all classes
117 Quoted in George Megalogenis, The Longest Decade (Melbourne: Scribe, 2006) 42. Megalogenis
at page 41 describes the layers of blue collar workers who, having lost jobs during the 1990s
restructuring and established small businesses as “the men whom Keating turned Tory”. However his
contention that the petty bourgeoisie in general increased significantly during the 1990s and this decade
does not match the figures cited in chapter 5.
118 Brett, ‘Relaxed and Comfortable’ at 37
119 Ibid. at 33
120 Kalantzis, ‘Australia Fair’ at 12
121 Ibid. at 11
| 66
that made up the nation. There was however a contradiction between the broadening of
nationalism and its fundamentally bourgeois nature:
What made this populist-democratic and Jacobin patriotism extremely vulnerable, was
the subalternity, both objective and—among the working classes— subjective, of these
citizen masses. For in the states in which it developed, the political agenda of patriotism
was formulated by governments and ruling classes.122
Hobsbawm argues that this process was at least somewhat two-way. For example, the
First World War was promoted on all sides in terms of democracy, social justice and civil
rights rather than in crude national ideas of blood and soil.
As noted above, some commentators such as Brett have viewed the labour movement and the Australian Labor Party as unproblematically the expressions of a politics
of class, section and special interest, in sharp contrast to right-wing politics which has
a generally non-class expression, not least by using rhetoric of the nation. Nonetheless
a stream of left nationalism is also evident in Australian political history through the
discourse of individuals and groupings associated particularly with the ALP, the trade
unions and to some extent more radical forces such as the Communist Party of Australia, and also through the writings of a number of theorists and commentators. This
version of Australian nationalist ideology follows Hobsbawn’s general pattern of a contradictory mixture of an essentialised construction of a nation with shared interests and
recognition of social division and class conflict.
There is an identifiable stream in Australian historiography, particularly in the field
of labour history, which represents the development of an Australian nationalism as
congruent with social progress and indeed radicalism. In his classic 1958 text Ward
describes as the “Australian legend” a set of characteristics and ideals that developed
from the conditions of nineteenth century itinerant rural working-class life. These include practicality, mateship, egalitarianism, anti-authoritarianism and unionism, which
became part of a “national character”, that may be “often absurdly romanticised and
exaggerated,” although it has a “basis in historical fact”.123 For leftists, positive versions
of nationalism generally derive from struggle against oppression: Fitzpatrick analyses
Australia in terms of an exploited colony of the British Empire124, and Turner discusses
123 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (3rd edn., Oxford: Oxford University press, 1978) 1
124 Brian Fitzpatrick, The British Empire in Australia, 1834–1939 (Sydney: Macmillan, 1969)
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the early decades of the labour movement as developing through related processes of
constructing a new nationalism and of winning social and political gains, and specifically argued in answer to critics of the first edition of his book that “radical nationalism”
was an essential part of a socialist strategy in Australia.
It leads towards a political strategy which is based in present realities, and to an attempt to redefine socialist means and ends in terms of a tradition which incorporates
whatever is valuable in Australia’s past—including political democracy and intellectual
freedom—and which carries a specific Australian resonance.125
Examples of positive expressions of the nation by representatives of the labour movement certainly abound. For example, apart from linking White Australia to anti-capitalist themes, activist and writer William Lane saw the interests of the emergent Australian
nation as largely congruent with the interests of the emergent labour movement, with
nations and races as well as classes seen as progressive and reactionary. Lane stated in a
labour movement paper in 1887 that:
We are for this Australia, for this nationality that is creeping to the verge of being, for
the progressive people that is just plucking aside the curtain that veils its fate. Behind us
lies the past, with its crashing empires, its falling thrones, its dotard races; before us lies
the Future into which Australia is plunging, this Australia of ours which burns with the
feverish energy of youth.126
The conception of the labour movement as bearer of a new independent national
identity in the interests of the whole people, as opposed to a conservative British identity, is also evident in a 1911 article in the Sydney union journal Worker expressing
scepticism about proposals for an ‘Australia Day’ to be instituted on 26 January. While
history, exploration and settlement and the “British tie” should be recognised, “Australian settlement started badly,” through the colonial exploitation of convicts. What is
most worthy of celebration is “every step forward in the march of the nation”, and the
labour movement must stress that its “great concern is the whole people,” and that “we
claim the land in the name of Labor”.127
125 Ian Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labour Movement in Eastern
Australia 1900–1921 (2nd edn., Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger, 1979) xxviii
126 The Boomerang, 19 November 1887, quoted in Brian McKinlay (ed.), Australian Labor History
in Documents, 2: The Labor Party, 3 vols. (2nd edn., Burwood, Victoria: Collins Dove, 1990) 7–8
127 Worker (Sydney), 26 January, 1911, quoted in Alomes and Jones, Australian Nationalism: A
Documentary History 161–162
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Part of the nationalism of the labour movement has been expressed in calls to defend
the supposed economic interests of the nation against foreign competition. One aspect
of economic nationalism has been to explain unemployment directly in terms of immigration. A 1928 ALP election poster visually linked a mass of boat arrivals under the
heading “immigrants” with a mass of men leaving a closed factory under the heading
“Australians”, by the device of a larger heading of “unemployed” across both groups.128
Former prime minister Gough Whitlam in his 1972 election policy speech, tied
change and progress to economic nationalism and a new national identity:
It’s time for a new team, a new program, a new drive for equality of opportunities … We
will put Australians back into the business of running Australia and owning Australia.
We will revive in this nation the spirit of national co-operation and national self-respect,
mutual respect between government and people.129
The complex interactions between ideas of class and nation in Laborist discourse is
exemplified by former ALP leader Kim Beazley’s attack on the Howard government’s
industrial relations changes: for example, as when he stated to the 2006 NSW ALP conference, “When we win next year, the first thing I’ll do is rip up Howard’s IR laws and
build a new industrial relations system based on Australian values”.130 Left nationalism
in the political sphere should not be seen as the preserve of the ALP, particularly with
the rise of the Greens as a significant force. Greens spokespeople have addressed foreign
policy questions in national terms: for example, Senator Bob Brown described the Howard government’s willingness to take part in a US missile defence program as, “Howard’s
US missile subservience”131, echoing the trope of Australia as exploited colony evident
in Fitzpatrick’s work.
Fitzpatrick’s analysis of Australia as an exploited colony has recently taken up by Jamrozik. He sees a fundamental problem in the construction of an authentically Australian
national identity in the country’s “colonial inheritance” through which Australia has
developed as and remains a “subservient nation”, stating, “the continuity of the inherited
political and legal systems is increasingly incompatible with the cultural diversity of the
128 Reproduced in Ibid. 194
129 Quoted in Ibid. 351–352
130 Quoted in Anne Davies, Andrew Clennell and Stephanie Peatling, ‘I’ll demolish PM’s poison
work contracts’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 2006, p. 1
131 Bob Brown, ‘Howard’s US missile subservience fosters new arms race’, Media Release, 4
December, 2003 <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=1150> accessed 9
August 2006
69 |
current Australian population”.132 He places Australia in the “post-colonial” category,
a description which may be literally true but which has some major analytic problems
given the vast socio-economic differences between Australia (and other colonial settler states including the US, Israel and New Zealand), and countries which are clearly
economically dominated by rich industrialised nations, a point discussed in Chapter
7. Jamrozik’s critique is wide ranging, discussing the development of political and legal
systems, treatment of Indigenous people by the Australian state, immigration policy and
attitudes to refugees, mounting environmental and agricultural crises, economic change
and industry policy, the US alliance, and particularly the Howard government’s policy in
all these areas. While it is true that the Australian state began as a colonial settler enterprise, that its policies and structures are marked from these beginnings, and that there is
a close alliance whith a much more powerful US state, it is not at all clear that in all these
areas can current directions and polices can be reduced to “colonial inheritance”. For
example, while the Howard government’s policy towards asylum seekers could well be
related to a view of race and of control of the continent derived from Australia’s colonial
history, this does not explain either similar policies in Europe, or particular changes in
Australian immigration policy, nor is it clear where any “subservience” comes into this
issue. A more detailed analysis of social and political interests within Australia, and of
the links between those interests and global social and political structures, is needed.
Jamrozik also criticises the main expression of left nationalism in Australia, the ALP,
for its lack of thoroughness and coherence in presenting a vision of a radicalised Australian identity. He cites Albert Mertin’s 1910 description of the ALP as socialisme sans
doctrine, and sees Labor’s problem as, while it has historically been the party of “initiative” (represented by Chifley, Whitlam and Keating), it has “never developed its political
and social philosophy beyond a mild version of social-democratic thought … faced as it
is by a deeply and rigidly ideologically committed Coalition”, and has recently presented
a “milder version” of Howard’s policies.133
Jamrozik does not explain why Labor is like this, or why it has changed to the extent
that it has (or why its nature is related to his general thesis of the basically colonial and
subservient nature of Australia). Those commentators who deconstruct the historical
and social bases of Labor’s politics typically posit nationalism not as an unproblematic
132 Jamrozik, The Chains of Colonial Inheritance: Searching for Identity in a Subservient Nation 5
133 Ibid. 57
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part of progressive or working class politics in the manner of the radical nationalist
academics and political actors, but as a central aspect of a politics that is contradictory
and/or inadequate in terms of the interests of the working class and underprivileged.
For example the basis for a left nationalism in the nature of, and divisions within, the
working class is discussed in the various editions of McQueen’s A New Britannia. In a
2004 ‘Afterword’ in the fourth edition of the text (itself a development of an ‘Afterword’
in the 1986 third edition), he criticises his own original 1970 view that labour movement nationalism and racism were the result of the peculiarly “petty bourgeois” nature
of the nineteenth century working class McQueen in 2004 argues that this view merely
avoided a concrete analysis of the nature of the working class and its place in the changing capitalist social formation at the time of the formation of the ALP. The real process shaping the early labour movement and ALP, he now argued, is the decisive move
of capitalism from free trade into the era of “monopolising capitals”, and subsequent
changes in the division of labour, the nature of the labour market and forms of the state
from which developed new patterns of craft unionism and new divisions in the working class. McQueen ties this analysis to Lenin’s argument that in the era of imperialism
the “super profits” available to monopolising capitals promotes the creation of a “labour
aristocracy”. That is, sections of better off workers, who along with bureaucratic union
leaders, tend to see their interests in a moderate, reformist, racially exclusivist approach.
He argues however that to Lenin a closer attention to changes in the labour process
needs to be added: that is, with the current phase of globalisation being marked by the
effects on the working class of capital’s demands for de-regulation, privatisation and
atomisation of the employees through enterprise bargaining and, more radically, individual contracts, and by the incorporation of significant sections of the labour movement leadership into the implementation of many of these measures.134
Markey, focussing on the ALP more specifically than McQueen, sees the formation
and development of the Labor Party in the 1890s and 1900s not as unproblematically
reflecting the ideas and interests of the working class and labour movement, but as the
expression of quite specific social forces. In this early period of the ALP’s history an alliance developed between urban professional politicians from a utopian socialist background, and the leadership of the AWU, based upon smallholders and shearers aspiring
to land ownership. Both groups were largely opposed to class struggle and developed the
134 McQueen, A New Britannia 250–290
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distinctive ideology of Laborism based upon a White Australia, class collaboration, arbitration, protectionism, subsidies and land for farmers and the beginnings of welfarism
such as the old-age pension. This alliance captured the party from the more militant
urban union forces, making the ALP a key part of the “national settlement” of Federation.135
Connell and Irving might well have had commentators such as McQueen and Markey
in mind in criticising accounts of labour movement ideology that “over-generalise about
the role of liberal ideology, of bourgeois intellectuals and an over-hegemonised, ‘corporate’ working class”.136 They see “labourism” as a result of the tension between the extraparliamentary, collective power of the working class and the necessary involvement of
workers organisations and representatives in the structures of the capitalist state: thus
the state as well as the working class changed as a result of the encounter, suggesting
that the nature of the dominant labour movement politics was an unavoidable development. However Connell and Irving have a similar analysis to the theorists discussed
above of many of the specific social forces and processes involved in incorporating the
working class into capitalism. Using Gramscian terms, they argue that by the 1890s
there was a distinctive working class politics and culture that produced organic intellectuals and leaders and a strong influence of various types of socialism. However positions in parliament, wage boards and the like, the connection of layers of middle class
liberal intellectuals such as “Christian Socialists” and “businessmen-journalists” to the
labour movement, and the attractions of white identity and imperialist ideology all had
an integrative effect of the working class and contributed to the ideology of labourism.
The latter had many national aspects such as a “partnership between classes”, realised
through consultation and arbitration.137 They also point to the production of a working
class nationalism through the economic structures of the communications media:
The businessmen who ran the Bulletin and other popular journals were unlikely to feed
an emerging working class ideas that challenged the rule of property. Instead they devised an ideological package appropriate to the task of integrating a social order threatened by industrial militancy and political organisation.138
135 Raymond Markey, The Making of the Labor Party in New South Wales 1880–1900 (Modern
History Series; Kensington: New South Wales University Press, 1988)
136 Connell and Irving, Class Structure in Australian History 133
137 Ibid. 138, 139
138 Ibid. 146
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While Connell and Irving suggest that both constraining social structure and self-activity need to be taken into account in discussing labour movement ideology, the means
to achieve this is perhaps better provided by Burgmann, who emphasises political conflict. She stresses that the nature of working class leadership was not inevitable, but was
the result of a struggle, in which socialists, although possessing an ideology that provided much of the vitality of the early ALP compared with a rather uninspiring Laborism,
were both outmanoeuvred and in many cases co-opted by the material privileges and
middle class, ‘national’ cultural atmosphere of parliamentary involvement.139
More radical forces in the labour movement have been seen by some commentators
as minor but at times important sites for the reproduction of left nationalist ideology.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) has been criticised for adapting to the analysis
of Australia as an exploited colony, for adopting economic nationalist themes of tariff
protection, arbitration, state aid for capitalist industry and for a view of Australian culture and history that overemphasises national distinctiveness. Interestingly, a number of
members of the radical nationalist school of historians such as Turner, had backgrounds
in the CPA. Maoist groups, significant in the 1970s, have been criticised as adopting an
almost parodic obsession with Australian culture and defence of Australian interests
against foreign exploitation. These aspects of communist politics have been analysed,
particularly by commentators from the anti-Stalinist far left, as part of a gradually adopted reformism that suited the respective groups’ sponsors in Moscow and Beijing, and
an adaptation, particularly evident after the CPA’s break with Moscow in 1968, to the
mainstream officialdom of the labour movement.140
In terms of the debates outlined in the previous chapter, the commentators critical of
Laborism stress different aspects of social structure, consciousness and political struggle. However they all present considerable evidence linking the particular ideological
nature of Laborism, including strongly national elements of unity of interests across
classes and exclusivist approaches to those seen as not of the nation, to the interests of
particular social forces. These forces include particular sections of the working class,
middle class layers attracted to the labour movement and the “organic intellectuals” of
139 Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885–1905 (Sydney: Allen and
Unwin, 1985)
140 Jon West, Dave Holmes and Gordon Adler, Socialism or Nationalism? Which Road for the
Australian Labor Movement? (Sydney: Pathfinder Press, 1979); Tom O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream:
The Decline of Australian Communism (Westgate: Stained Wattle Press, 1985); Rick Kuhn, ‘The
Australian left, nationalism and the Vietnam war’, Labour History/72 (1997), 163–184
73 |
the labour movement apparatus. In the previous chapter it was argued that while social
structure is “finally” determinative and constraining, consciousness and politics have
their own logic and determinative effects, and a concrete analysis of particular situations
is always needed. Accordingly, one of the tasks of this study is to examine to what extent
a coherent stream of left nationalism is evident, in what ways it may be changing and to
what social forces it may be linked.
Internationalism
The above discussion might suggest that nationalism and national themes are a ubiquitous and inevitable part of Australian political discourse. Yet in Australian history there
is also evident a stream of political thought that rejects conceptions such as fetishised,
normative views of the racial and/or cultural make-up of the nation and unity of classes
and social groups in the national interest. This can be termed internationalism, and is
typically associated with Marxist and other forms of socialist and anti-capitalist discourse and activity. The term suggests that the reality of nations and their importance to
politics are accepted, but not their centrality to the interests of political actors, or their
necessity and permanence.
Socialist groups had formed in Australia from the 1880s, based largely on the Karl
Marx’s revolutionary and internationalist ideas which had by then began to hegemonise
the European labour movement, but which were often transplanted to Australia in poorly understood and incomplete forms. As noted, socialists played a key role in inspiring
the early Labor Party movement, but the generally parliamentary focus of this activity
ensured the ALP mainstream changed the socialists more so than the reverse.141
Socialist groups gained a mass hearing for unadulterated and consistent versions of
their ideas by helping to form the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW
was a significant force in Australian politics from around 1905–1920, taking up the ideas
of the US organisation of the same name to expound industrial unionism, internationalism and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. The organisation’s statement of
principles brusquely rejected any idea of a national interest: “The working class and the
employing class have nothing in common … Between these two classes a struggle must
go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and
141 Burgmann, In Our Time
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the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system”.142 IWW militants acted as
the radical wing of the anti-conscription struggles during the First World War, rejecting
the war entirely as a nationalist diversion from the class struggle. On the war’s outbreak
the cover of their paper was headlined “War! What For?”. It visually contrasted laughing capitalists enjoying war-generated profits to a huddled, impoverished family asking,
“Is this the home that father fought and died for?”143 Burgmann emphasises that the
IWW gained a following due to disillusionment with what was by 1905 the increasingly
dominant ideology in the labour movement prioritising craft unionism, nationalism,
racism and parliamentary action. In arguing against immigration restrictions and exclusion of non-White workers from unions, the IWW urged workers to, “Contrast the narrow parochial outlook evidenced by the ‘white Australia’ policy with the world-oriented
outlook of Karl Marx, when he sent his famous ringing cry down the ages: ‘Workers of
all countries, Unite!”144 Although its period of direct influence was short, Burgmann
argues that indirectly the IWW helped ensure that an internationalist stream continued
through subsequent decades via IWW activists playing a key role in early years of the
CPA, and also through IWW ideas later influencing dissident Communists, the 1960s–
70s New Left and, around the same time, sections of the union movement such as the
NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation.145
Internationalist ideas struggled with nationalist ideas within the labour movement,
and unsurprisingly there have been contradictory admixtures. Gregson describes such
an ideological and political struggle in 1920s–30s Broken Hill, where IWW-type ideas
were influential enough to provoke the main miners’ organisation to see itself as a branch
of a developing general industrial union. In implicit contrast to those historians who see
the labour movement itself as a major source of racism, Gregson demonstrates there
were two political camps in the town, with clear class-based patterns of hegemony and
respective ideological positions. On one side were mine managers, other employers, the
Nationalist Party organisation, middle class elements and some workers organised in
the returned soldiers organisation and at times breakaway unions, who through their
control of one of the town’s two daily papers and interventions in political struggles,
142 Direct Action, 4 November 1916, cited in Brian McKinlay, Australian Labor History in
Documents, 3: The Radical Left, 3 vols. (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1990) 55
143 Direct Action, 10 August 1914, reproduced in Ibid. 58
144 Direct Action, 1 May 1917, p.2 quoted in Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism:
the Industrial Workers of the World in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 87
145 Ibid. 1–10
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consistently expressed racist, pro-war, nationalist and anti-immigrant themes. On the
other side were the members of the miners union and Labor Party organisation, who
through their activity and control of the other daily paper generally opposed racism,
supported the right of migrants to live and work in the town with full rights and join
the union, and expressed internationalist ideas, although somewhat inconsistently: “The
Truth [the pro-union paper] contained a range of articles that espoused eugenics, but it
also paid tribute to the struggles of Asian workers against the incursions of British and
French imperialism”.146 By the 1930s pressure from the employer-controlled side, from
conservative workers who had been incorporated into the main union, and mass unemployment, made consistent internationalism difficult, such that the union conceded
to demands to close its books to anyone from outside the town although it refused to
discriminate among locals on the basis of background. Significantly however, it was not
only ideology directly but the experience of working with southern European migrants
that hindered racism and encouraged internationalism among white workers in Broken
Hill. A similar point is made by Martínez as regards the significant presence of Asian
workers in Darwin around the same period.147
The CPA was formed in 1921 based on the internationalist ideals of Marx and Lenin,
and was a significant force in Australia politics from the 1930s until the 1980s. However,
as noted above, a number of critics have argued that there was an adaptation by the CPA
and its offshoots to left nationalism. These critics do point out that the CPA often fought
against racism and expressed solidarity with struggles overseas, suggesting that it was a
site for the reproduction of contradictory combinations of nationalism and internationalism. For example O’Lincoln argues that the Communist-led 1938 waterside workers
strike against iron exports to Japan was motivated both by appeals for solidarity with the
oppressed people of Asia and by calls to strengthen national defence.148 In the late 1940s
the same Communist-led maritime unions played a significant role in helping the Indonesian independence struggle, through bans on the Dutch colonial force, That stance
that had a clear internationalist, and no discernibly nationalist, content.149
146 Sarah Gregson, ‘Defending internationalism in interwar Broken Hill’, Labour History/86 (2004),
115–136 at 117
147 Julia Martínez, ‘Questioning “white Australia”: unionism and “coloured” labour, 1911–1937’,
Labour History/76 (1999), 1–19
148 O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream 40–41
149 Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada: Australia and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence
1942–49 (Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger, 1982)
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Perhaps unexpected aspects of internationalism are contained in a 1982 pamphlet by
Gough Whitlam and Ralph Willis, the latter soon to be a finance minister in the Hawke
government. In this text Whitlam and Willis, while adhering to the nationalist theme of
opposition to foreign ownership, both criticise a “parochial nationalism” evident then in
“have-a-go” TV advertisements and the adoption, only several years beforehand, by the
major parties of logos incorporating the Australian flag. They strongly argue against protectionism, that is, against the promotion of otherwise unprofitable industries through
government subsidies and tariffs against competing imports, a key part of economic
nationalist strategies for decades. They argue in terms of increasing costs paid by working people for the products of protected industries, the fact that protectionism can only
guarantee to save profits rather than jobs, and that import tariffs retards development in
the poorer countries and hence the living standards of workers there. This critique, and
alternatives in the form of international solidarity with Third World workers, of expansion of the public sector and of other forms of economic planning to secure the “painless reallocation of labour into more productive, better paid and more secure forms of
employment,”150 echo the critique of protectionism by the far left.151 That the subsequent
Labor government moved to a largely free trade rather than socialist alternative to protectionism152, may be seen as further evidence of the structural factors preventing the
ALP from consistently representing working class interests. Whitlam and Willis’ text at
least shows the continuing influence of the internationalist stream, even if in contradictory relations with nationalist streams, in the labour movement.
Consistent and organised expressions of internationalism are still extant in Australia
but once again are contained in small socialist groups. For example, the Democratic
Socialist Perspective, the key group behind the newspaper Green Left Weekly and the
broader Socialist Alliance, summarises its view of nationalism thus:
Nationalist ideology, which propagates the idea that all classes within a given nation
have common interests opposed to those of other nations, is a powerful tool for subordinating the class interests of the labouring masses to those of the capitalist class and
150 Gough Whitlam and Ralph Willis, Reshaping Australian Industry: Tariffs and Socialists
(Melbourne: Victorian Fabian Society, 1982) 14
151 West, Holmes and Adler, Socialism or Nationalism? 27–30
152 Despite the rhetoric with which this alternative was initially promoted. McQueen argues that
via the Accord between unions and the Hawke-Keating governments “policies promoted to secure the
power of employees at their workplaces became devices for managing redundancies” McQueen, A New
Britannia 287
77 |
to the maint enance of capitalist political power … socialists are advocates of workingclass internationalism, which is based on the recognition of the identity of interests
of the workers of all nations, and are therefore opposed to all varieties of nationalist
ideology.
In fact the “nationalism of oppressed nations has a democratic content that is directed
against imperialist oppression”.153 There are some differences among the far left on the
question of the nation: Kuhn for example critisises the tendency that would become the
DSP for analysing the Australian state as a “junior partner” and “client” of US imperialism, which he sees as a concession to left nationalism154. This discussion will be taken
up in Chapter 7.
The direct following of far left groups is clearly quite small: with for example the two
electorally registered socialist groups, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equality
Party, receiving scarcely 11 000 senate votes between them in the 2007 federal election.155 However, there are some indications that the ideas of internationalism extend
beyond committed socialist activists and voters, such as the high rankings achieved by
the Green Left Weekly website, including being judged the most visited political website
in Australia on a number of occasions in the period particularly covered by this thesis.156
In terms of analysing how different streams of thinking and discourse on the nation
have continued and changed, the extent to which internationalist ideas affect broader
forces such as the ALP, Greens and trade unions will also be a focus for this study.
Multiculturalism(s) as national identity
Compared with the political ideologies and streams of thought on the nation discussed
above, the concept of multiculturalism has a still brief history. It has circulated in the
public sphere and has informed policy and political action only since the 1970s. It can
be seen as a challenge to forms of nationalism and national identity based on exclusive
or dominant ‘races’, ethnic or cultural groups, and, as will be seen, explicitly became a
153 Democratic Socialist Party, ‘Program of the DSP’, 1994
<http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/program/prog05.html> accessed August 16 2006
154 Kuhn, ‘The Australian left, nationalism and the Vietnam war’ at 175
155 Australian Electoral Commission, ‘2007 elections: First preferences by group’, 2007 <http://vtr.
aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-13745-NAT.htm> accessed 1 May 2008
156 For example the online edition of Green Left Weekly was measured the website in the “lifestyle
and politics” category most visited by Australian users in the April–June 2005 quarter by the web
monitoring company Hitwise, see Hitwise, ‘Green Left Weekly’, <http://www.hitwise.com.au/awards/
popup.html?sDomain=www.greenleft.org.au&iDate=200502&iCatnum=295&Cal=> accessed 18
August 2006
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form of national identity, or at least a central part of a projected national identity, based
on the recognition and promotion of the diversity and equality of cultural groups within
Australia.
Hage outlines the development of multiculturalism as a response to post-Second
World War mass immigration, one that was first given a name and an explicit policy
direction by the Whitlam government. He emphasises though, a distinction between
on the one hand “workers’ rights” and “justice and equity” multiculturalism, based in
working class communities, left-wing politics and demands for better welfare and free
English classes, and on the other types of “identity” and “diversity” multiculturalism
that could be called (though he does not) ‘official’ multiculturalism. Hage argues that the
Whitlam government made timid attempts at “structural-egalitarian” multiculturalism,
while the Fraser government moved both to full-scale neo-liberalism, and to “multiculturalism as cultural government,” which consisted of managing peripheral cultures
around the main culture.157
Apart from the actual presence of increasing numbers of migrants and their children and grandchildren from a widening ethnic, cultural and language background158,
a number of commentators have identifieds a social basis for multiculturalism in the
changing class structure and related cultural shifts in Australia in the post-war period.
In examining changing attitudes to immigration, Betts and Rapson identify a salient distinction between “cosmopolitans” and “patriots”. Cosmopolitans are typically members
of a “new class” of university-educated professionals who lack attachment to the nation
and felt comfortable in the globalising marketplace. As we saw in the previous chapter
this has been a key term in discussions relating to intellectuals, referring to the rise of an
educated, managerialist elite in the post-Second World War period. “Patriots” consist of
most of the rest of the population including those with less education, managers, those
in manual or lower clerical employment, or those unemployed or housekeepers, who
feel a strong sense of national attachment along with, in many cases, vulnerability to
and uncertainty about ongoing economic change.159 Brett also emphasises the existence
158 In 2001 this was six million people with origins from 240 countries and places according to
Celeste Lipow MacLeod, Multiethnic Australia: Its History and Future (Jeffereson: McFarland and
Company, 2006) 113
159 Katherine Betts and Virginia Rapson, ‘Pride and commitment: patriotism in Australia’, People
and Place, 5/1 (1997), 55–66; Katherine Betts, ‘Cosmopolitans and patriots: Australia’s cultural divide
and attitudes to immigration’, People and Place, 13/2 (2005), 29–40
79 |
of a “new class” or “new middle class” based on the expansion of state bureaucracies
and public sector employment, and also of white-collar work in the private sector, and
the related expansion of tertiary education since the Second World War. She sees this
grouping as a significant change in the structure of the traditionally Liberal “moral middle class” and the support bases for the major parties, in that the conditions of existence
of the “new class” tended to attract its members to social democratic policies and a view
of citizenship as consisting of rights and entitlements, rather than the virtues and duties
central to the “old” middle class conception of citizenship. This social layer is not necessarily pro-Labor but rather saw itself reflected in Gough Whitlam and his government,
an attachment reinforced by shock at the divisive manner of the Fraser government’s
coming to power and its subsequent policies.160 Such analyses suggest a particular social
and political basis for multiculturalism apart from migrant communities.
While such arguments may capture some of the depth of related social and political
change in Australia in recent decades, it is both simplistic and a fetishisation of aspects
of culture and disposition, to see the post-war mass growth in white collar labour as
creating an ill-defined, homogenous “new class” or “new middle class”. There are strong
grounds for seeing much of this change as having the character of a restructure of existing working and middle classes, and in general for digging more deeply into the forms
of and social bases for support for increased immigration and multiculturalism (support
of which is not necessarily congruent). Most of this social layer is surely obligated to
undertake wage labour under close management and control, in a manner not dissimilar to the traditional working class, while others in white-collar work whose economic
position entails professional freedom, significant supervisory duties and/or ownership
of capital are in a not dissimilar intermediary situation to the traditional petty bourgeoisie. This contention is supported by the strength of white-collar unionism. In 2006
the main unions covering the public service, community and education sectors claimed
well over 500 000 members, a significant social force in itself and a large part of the ACTU’s claimed membership of 1.8 million.161 Deery and Walsh found that ideas of union160 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 116–165
161 Claimed memberships are: CPSU, 160 000, see Community and Public Sector Union, ‘What is
the CPSU?’ <http://www.cpsu.org.au/about/1105484464_5372.html> accessed 27 August 2006; NTEU,
26 000, see ‘About NTEU’, National Tertiary Education Union, <http://www.nteu.org.au/about>
accessed 27 August 2006; AEU, 165 000, see Australian Education Union, ‘About the Australian
Education Union’ <http://www.aeufederal.org.au/About/index2.html> accessed 27 August 2006; ASU,
140 000, see Australian Services Union, ‘ASU structure, facts and history’ <http://www.asu.asn.au/
history/> accessed 27 August 2006; FSU, 60 000, see Finance Sector Union, ‘Why Join FSU?’ <http://
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ism and collectivism were strong among bank employees in both Australia and Britain
(though unsurprisingly lower among supervisory and managerial staff), and likely to be
continually reproduced by ongoing concerns about job security and fairness and equity
in the workplace, as well as factors outside work such as family links to unionism and
political affiliation.162
Survey figures such as those analysed by Betts and Rapson suggest that “multiculturalist” views are currently more prevalent among white collar than blue collar workers.
However, to leave the analysis at this as do the new class theorists, is an economic reductionist method: it does not deconstruct immediate and longer-term interests, nor does it
account for the effects of leadership and consciousness in forming differing ideological
positions among people of a similar socio-economic position, or of political and social
links such as those between white collar, migrant and overseas unionists and “traditional”, “Anglo-Celtic”, blue collar unionists. For example the logic of new class theorising is
that blue collar workers would oppose the use in Australia of temporary foreign ‘guest
workers’ due to the immediate economic threat of job losses (as this group are “patriots”
at risk in a globalised market place according to Betts and Rapson). While this may be
true in many cases, a range of blue collar unions are instead seeking to support and organise such workers: the 2006 conference of the Western Australian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia was for example adament that guest workers should receive full
citizenship rights163—a clear example of “workers rights multiculturalism”. This position
by maritime workers, with a strong history of internationalism noted above, also suggests that, contrary to simplistic new class theories, views related to multiculturalism
have identifiable antecedents in the ‘traditional’ labour movement.
Hage sees a two-fold social basis for what I have termed ‘official’ multiculturalism:
firstly in the specific interests of leading or relatively privileged members of migrant
communities; secondly, in the interests of successive national governments and related
social and political forces. In the first case, it was important for “ethnic” middle classes
to have their culture “recognised” to aid competition with other segments of the middle
www.fsunion.org.au/join/1091444323_16260.html> accessed 27 August 2006; ACTU, 1.8 million, see
Australian Council of Trade Unions, ‘About the ACTU’ <http://www.actu.asn.au/public/about/actu.
html> accessed 27 August 2006.
162 Stephen Deery and Janet Walsh, ‘The decline of collectivism? A comparative study of whitecollar emplyees in Britain and Australia’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 37/2 (1999), 245–269
163 For this and related activities of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union see Annolies
Truman, ‘Maritime unionists take a stand against racism’, Green Left Weekly, 16 August 2006, p. 6
81 |
classes. Hage argues that a shift from ‘workers rights’ to ‘official’ multiculturalism in
migrant communities was aided by the “valorisation of petty-bourgeois dreams of upward social mobility”.164 Healy traces how ethnic community-based “stacking” of ALP
branches is related to the particular interests of those elite groupings in migrant communities associated with the ALP: he argues similarly to Hage that a particular kind of
“culturalist” version of multiculturalism is an ideology based in such interests, which
facilitates more generally a move by the ALP to more openly pro-corporate positions:
Migrant ‘access’ to the Labor Party occurs in a way which tends to further entrench
[migrants’] disadvantage. Migrants constitute a considerable part of the low-skilled,
poor-English-proficient work force, which has been severely impacted upon by economic deregulation and restructuring. Yet, this economic/class dimension of migrant
disadvantage tends to be played down by ethnic elites. If migrant problems are seen as
a product of free-market economics, and consequently as problems shared by other
members of the working class, ethnic elites would find it harder to maintain their power
bases within migrant communities. It is in their interests to paint migrant’s difficulties
in terms of culture as this strategy keeps the different groups segregated within the
party.165
Healy’s analysis captures some of interrelations of social interests, politics and discourse necessary to understand how ideologies work, as argued in the previous chapter.
However he apparently views ethnic-based politics as having a strongly determining effect on the right-ward shift in the ALP. At the least he is not very clear on the relationship
of this factor to other aspects of the party, besides a single reference to a “technocratic
party elite”.166 He seems, in a structuralist manner, to see “class” and “ethnic” politics
as separate “dimensions”: in describing a too close “fixation” on the former dimension
at the expense of the latter he seems to adopt the same framework as that which he
criticises. Healy’s analysis thus lacks an explanation of the right-wing shift of the ALP
as a whole, and does not clearly place the role of the ethnic middle class and multiculturalism within a broader framework. He would seem to discount ethnic based politics
that supported rather than diverted working class interests, that is, fighting for specific
rights, and a ‘working class’ multiculturalism.
165 Ernest Healy, ‘Ethnic ALP Branches — The Balkanisation of Labor Revisited’, People and
Place, 3/3 (1995), 48–54 at 52
166 Ibid. at 51
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The second basis identified by Hage for ‘official’ multiculturalism lies in the policies of
successive national governments. It was important for Fraser, Hage argues, to embrace
multiculturalism “in order to promote a culturalist version of Australian society ahead
of a class one,”167 in an attempt to manage a strong challenge from the labour movement.
More decisively, Hawke moved to “multiculturalism as national identity,” a “national
ideological counterpoint to the corporatist economic ideology of unifying capital and
labour”.168 However Hage suggests (not altogether clearly) that this conscious ideological
push was both incorporating, universalising, and so in some sense false, and also that it
reflected an underlying cultural shift. As he puts it:
All multiculturalists have gone out of their way to assert that cultural pluralism is not
a negation of the need for a core culture. What some multiculturalists have argued is
that Australia’s core culture is no longer Anglo-Celtic in a traditional sense. This was the
basic idea of ‘multiculturalism as a national identity’.169
This conception of national identity, stressing values over culture and ethnicity, is exemplified in statements of Hawke’s while prime minister. This representation of national
identity emerges for example in the the words with which Hawke launched the National
Agenda for a Multicultural Australia in 1989:
In all this diversity, one unifying theme is clear. For all our differences in places of birth,
our styles of clothes, our creeds, our colours, our races, there is one fundamental characteristic, one utterly vital value we share. That is our commitment to Australia.170
The rhetoric of the Keating governments (1991–1996) further stressed multiculturalism as a new national identity that also rhetorically encompassed republicanism and
Aboriginal rights.171 At this time there appeared to emerge among intellectuals a widespread culturalist conception of nationalism, and a faith in the ability of official multiculturalism and Laborism to unproblematically produce a new progressive, hybrid identity. As Turner noted in 1994, “so wide is the field of critique within the humanities and
social sciences that resistance to the orthodox definitions of Australianess has become
something of a minor orthodoxy itself ”.172 Turner himself expresses this orthodoxy by
167 168 169 170 171 172 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism 59–60
Ibid. 60
Ibid. 61
Quoted in Betts and Rapson, ‘Pride and committment’ at 65
Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 183–184
Graeme Turner, Making It National: Nationalism and Australian Popular Culture (Sydney: Allen
83 |
analysing government supported changes to the ethnic and cultural makeup of the nation terms of discourse and identity formation, apparently divorced from social interests
and political struggle, such as when he describes “an emerging post-colonial nation like
Australia, actively involved in a complex process of nation formation, which necessitates
explicit recognition of the multiple identities of the present”.173 Such support for Keating’s attempt at transforming national identity among left-liberal intellectuals appears
to have continued long past the event. Hage takes for granted the progressiveness and
genuineness of Keating’s attempt at reconciliation with Indigenous people: “Keating was
a strong supporter of the Mabo decision and advocated a full acknowledgement of the
current generation’s responsibility for the past as part and parcel of a process of reconciliation with the Indigenous people”.174 Brett expresses a similar view of Mabo.175 However,
on this issue Keating was also criticised for publicly trumpeting his Native Title Act as a
new dawn for reconciliation and national change, while concurrently and privately urging state governments to introduce legislation to limit the effects of the Act.176 This matter further suggests that official multiculturalism deals in discourse and culture more so
than the social and economic roots of inequality.
The attitudes of the Howard governments towards official multiculturalism have been
complex. Kalantzis traces how, in a generally successful move to harness dissatisfaction
with Keating, the first Howard government explicitly disdained multiculturalism and
cut immigration levels, while succeeding Howard governments have adapted to such
realities as the need for immigrant labour and the significant number of electors from
migrant backgrounds to gradually increase immigration and renew a positive discourse
on multiculturalism. By 2003 Howard had been persuaded to write the foreward to a
new policy, Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity, which was in essence the same
as those espoused in the Hawke-Keating period. Kalantzis explains the apparent paradox of Philip Ruddock, who in 1988 helped to oust Howard as Liberal leader after the
latter had cast doubts on Asian immigration, and who, during his tenure as immigration minister (1996–2003), both adopted a hard line towards asylum seekers and also
pushed for increased levels of immigration overall (including on family and humanitarand Unwin, 1994) 7
173 Ibid. 113–114
176 Peter Boyle, ‘Keating pulls a fast one on land rights’, 3 June, Green Left Weekly, 1993
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/1993/102/6110> accessed 27 August 2006
| 84
ian grounds). These apparent contradictions are understandable as part of a moral, Anglican liberalism which stands for substantial and strictly non-discriminatory immigration of the worthy who apply by correct channels, and harsh penalties against unworthy
“queue-jumpers”.177 The links with Brett’s moral middle class with its strong conceptions
of virtue and duty are clear, if not explicitly made by Kalantzis.
Hence while the use of “multiculturalism” as an overall term and a form of national
identity has some validity, particularly when multiculturalism is pushed as such through
official channels, attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism have complex relations
to longstanding forms of ideology and national identity. Particularly among the ‘newer
social layers’ as a whole, factors raised by Brett, Betts and Rapson including education,
knowledge-centred occupation, travel and taste may encourage a more expansive view
of national culture and national identity than those previously dominant. There are also
strong links within these layers to more traditional forms of consciousness and ideology.
It is surely a great exaggeration by Betts to write, “The terms left and right have become
feeble analytic tools,” and simplistic to claim that the “left-right axis is now cut across by
another axis concerned with cultural values”.178 This suggests both a rigid, structuralist
division between “economic” and “cultural” views and a radical break with past divisions. Neither contention is supported by other studies and figures referred to in this
section.
In this section I have refined the idea of the ubiquity of national feeling under capitalism by the positing of streams of national feeling with varied social and political bases
and their own (to some extent) historical development. A key aspect of the self-projection of political forces to the right of Labor has been the championing of the nation in
contrast to the allegedly sectional nature of their opponents, which in reality has meant
a more guarded and less organisationally concrete connection to specific social forces.
This dynamic suggests an advantage to the right in relating to nationalism and national identity, although this has not prevented, for example, the relatively long-running
Hawke and Keating governments, key aspects of which were typically Laborist and left
forms of national identity and class consensus. This discussion poses three further hypotheses for this thesis, in addition to the initial hypothesis posed earlier relating to the
continuing ubiquity of national feeling.
177 Kalantzis, ‘Australia Fair’ at 13–14
178 Betts, ‘Cosmopolitans and patriots’ at 37
85 |
national interest are framed by relatively distinct, historically constituted streams of
thought on the nation.
3. That all political forces and actors have to negotiate (consciously or not) the often
contradictory relationships between the politics of the national and the politics of
the sectional, particularly class divisions within the nation.
4. That social democratic forces are often at a disadvantage to conservative forces with
respect to the strength of national feeling, but in particular circumstances can subsume class division into a successful national-populist coalition.
This chapter has examined theories of the nation and nationalism in order to put
forward a theory of the nation as a dynamic social formation related to the development
of capitalism, based on a group of people from varied and often changing yet identifiable ethnic and linguistic backgrounds (ethnie) who inhabit a common territory and
forge a common economy, language and culture, and typically “imagine” themselves
in terms of nationalism and national identity for deep-seated reasons. Additionally, the
internationalising dynamic of capitalism and the irrationalist tendencies in nationalism
are also crucial. Streams of thought on the Australian nation have been outlined and
related to historical, social and political processes. Further, through this discussion four
research questions have been presented. The next chapter will examine the most appropriate methods for analysing these research questions, utilising both general literature
on research methodology, and work specifically addressing the question of the nation.
| 86
Chapter 4
Methodology
In the previous two chapters, the theoretical foundations for the study of Australian
nationalism and national identity and the impact of these forms of thought, discourse
and action on politics were explored. In Chapter 2 a materialist and dialectical conception
of ideology and social structure and of the role of intellectuals, broadly understood, was
developed. In the third chapter it was argued that the nation, as a historically constituted
grouping of people within a particular territory and with a shared economic life,
culture and language, can be separated out, at least conceptually, from the ideologicalpolitical mobilisation of conceptions of the nation (nationalism), and subjectively
experienced conceptions of the nation (national identity). While the material nation,
the actual community, is in the last instance determinative of conceptions of the nation,
the imagined community, it was stressed that there are strong dialectical interactions
between these two levels of social reality.
Throughout these two chapters it was argued that the study of ideology has to include
the social context in which ideology occurs, the forms ideological expression takes, and
the effects that the use of these ideological expressions have. The social context includes
both relevant aspects of the whole social formation, and relations and conflicts within
it, and the role of particular social groupings in the production and reproduction of
ideology, most particularly intellectuals, understood in a broad, organic, Gramscian
sense.
Also, in the previous chapter general research questions were posed as those relevant
for a study of the changing nature of nationalism, national identity and their political
uses, relating to the forms nationalist discourse takes, the social-historical explanation
of these forms, and specific effects of the uses of such discourses. These were:
national interest are inevitably central parts of political involvement and expression
87 |
in a polity such as the current Australia.
2. That such feelings and expressions are still framed by relatively distinct, historically
constituted streams of thought on the nation.
3. That all political forces and actors have to negotiate (consciously or not) the often
contradictory relationships between the politics of the national and the politics of
the sectional, particularly class, divisions within the nation.
4. That social democratic forces are often at a disadvantage to conservative forces with
respect to the strength of national feeling, but in particular circumstances can subsume class division into a successful national-populist coalition.
It should be clear then that a number of approaches are relevant to the study of
ideology and its effects. Thompson argues that the analysis of ideology requires three,
interrelated stages or “moments” of inquiry. Firstly, a social-historical analysis, in
which the institutions, social structures and types of social interactions that relate to
the production, distribution and reception of symbolic forms are discussed. Secondly,
a formal, discursive analysis of the symbolic forms themselves, and thirdly, ongoing
interpretation and reinterpretation of these forms in light of the contexts in which
they appear. Thompson also stresses that the reception of and ‘audience’ reaction to
ideologically relevant messages is as significant as the production of these messages.1
In light of the materialist and dialectical discussion of social structure, ideology and
meaning discussed in the previous chapter, this broad strategy of inquiry will be
followed in this thesis.
This chapter will outline the general research strategy and specific methodologies used
in this study. It will proceed by discussing in turn social historical context, discursive
forms and ‘audience reception’. For each mode of analysis I undertake a critical
discussion of methodological strategies employed in past relevant studies, particularly
those concerned with the analysis of Australian nationalism and national identity, and
more general methodological literature. By evaluating the strengths and weaknesses
of particular approaches and studies, an outline of the specific methods employed to
tackle each research question will be developed. This chapter will also discuss studies
particularly concerned with multidisciplinary approaches, and put forward how the
various research strategies will coalesce in the present thesis.
1 Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture
| 88
Social historical contexts
In discussing the social-historical contexts of ideology and its effects, I have argued in
the previous two chapters that both the materialist basis of social life and the dialectical
relationship between different social and cultural spheres, need to be analysed. In
terms of the class analysis of Australian society, Connell and Irving have criticised both
structuralist approaches that apply pre-existing, fixed categories to a specific social reality,
and also the general approach of the “radical nationalist” labour historians (discussed
in the previous chapter), which they see as empiricist (for often uncritically relaying
notions of class as the historical documents put them) and too heavily focused on
institutional histories (thus missing mass consciousness and less formal modes of social
action). In this study I seek to follow their general conception of a social formation as a
historically evolving whole, which generates class and other relationships including social
conflict and contradiction. This strategy is strongly influenced by Connell and Irving’s
discussion of E.P. Thompson’s application of historical materialism in the Making of the
the previEnglish Working Class, and is also consistent with the arguments developed in ��
ous two chapters. Within such a framework economic and demographic information,
institutional histories and structures and expressions of social action and consciousness
are all relevant.2
To exemplify the strategy aimed for here of socially contextualising��
changing
��
insti�
tutional forms and ideological expressions, we can consider the ‘socio-economic base’
of the mass communications media. As Thompson stresses, this cannot be read from the
profit margin of a media corporation, but is mediated through the existence of the media
within the relationships that make up a complex social formation, which as discussed
here, is a nationally-specific form of capitalism within a global capitalist society. That
is, not only the commercial interests of news media, but also the historical development
of this social formation and its relations to the global order, political and social struggles
within society, the role of and debates within capitalist-oriented governments and states,
the ideological positions of other elite ‘definers’, the hierarchical structures of media
organisations, and the education and ideological traditions of journalists, how media
texts interact with audiences—all are relevant to the analysis.
2 R.W. Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian
Life (1st edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 1–38; Connell and Irving, Class
Structure in Australian History 1–10
89 |
Similarly, the discourses produced by political parties, trade unions and other mass
social organisations, and the effects of these discourses, need to be grounded in an
analysis of the social formation and its constituent parts. As discussed in the previous
chapter, McQueen, in a self-critical ‘Afterword’ to the most recent edition of his A New
Britannia, presents an analysis of the changing nature of the politics of the Australian
Labor Party in terms of the development of Australian and global capitalism that also
exemplifies the strategy aimed for in this thesis for social contextulisation. As discussed
previously, his conceptions of “monopolising capitals”, as being a more dynamic way of
considering the traditional Marxist notion of the current ‘monopoly’ phase of capitalism,
and of Australia being a “nation-market-state”, focusing on how the capitalist market
has cohered the cultural nation and the political state, are also very useful for this study.3
Important aspects of the development of major Australian political forces were dis�
cussed in the previous chapter in the explication of different streams of Australian na�
tional feeling, and subsequent chapters extend the presentation of socio-historical con�
text. The main use of primary economic and demographic data is found in Chapter 5,
in order to show relevant trends in the period of the Howard governments. In Chapter 6
further discussion of Australian history is presented. Chapter 7 presents empirical data,
from primary and secondary sources, on Australian international economic relations.
In Chapter 8 aspects of the more directly political dimension of Australia’s place in the
world are presented, while Chapter 9 adds some detail to that given in Chapter 5 on the
struggle over industrial relations during the period of the last Howard government.
As part of my intention for this thesis to be both materialist and dialectical, the
methodological strategy of the study is to combine conceptually separate categories of
analysis, as outlined in the sections of this chapter, within a single narrative. Hence, each
of Chapters 5–9 begins with relevant social-historical background and other data are
woven into the discussion of public discourses and people’s response to them. Chapters
6–9 are analyses of significant political events in the period under question that have
had a strong bearing on the usage and development of nationalism and national identity
in Australia, and particularly in relation to attempts to forge a Laborist alternative to
conservatism. Initial research suggested that in this period and via the issues Labor was
able to gain a better hearing for alternate forms of national feeling, after considerable
lack of success in this regard in the period 1996–2002. Therefore, the issues covered in
3 McQueen, A New Britannia
| 90
these chapters are presented in conceptual rather than chronological order, particularly
in order to allow logical progression in the presentation of additional social-historical
data in each of these chapters, which move from history, to economic context, to politi�
cal context, to ‘values’. This strategy also meant that an overview narrative, of social
and attitudinal change through the period of the Howard governments, is highly useful.
This is presented in Chapter 5: this approach also allowed some coverage of important
issues, particularly relating to immigration and refugees, for which there was not a
separate chapter. It should be clear through the discussion that there are strong connec�
tions and overlaps between the different issues and events covered.
Language and discourse
The study of the forms ideologies take must involve to some extent the study of language
and cultural representations generally. Standard social science methodology texts
commonly divide the analysis of the cultural, social and political uses of language, into
quantitative content analysis and types of qualitative content analysis such as discourse,
semiotic, and/or narrative analysis.4 The former typically involves the coding of various
aspects of a group of texts and the quantification and statistical analysis of the codes
and perhaps of terms used. Interestingly, although this approach is fairly common in
media, communications and political studies, it does
��
not seem to have been previous�
ly employed in a published study on Australian nationalism. Quantitative methods in
the study of nationalism and national identity have tended to be associated with the
statistical analysis of questionnaire responses, discussed further below. Some of the
data used for this study consist of samples of newspaper opinion texts relating to the
specific issues covered in Chapters 6–9. In demonstrating particular points, such as
showing clearly evident balances of opinion between political positions or changes
of opinion between different times within the public sphere, it was found to be useful
to code relevant newspaper texts in terms of overall opinion and major theme, and to
tabulate and present general and descriptive quantitative analyses of aspects of these
texts. Perhaps because representations of nationalism and national identity typically
make strong use of the ‘meta’ structures such as myth and narrative, as discussed below,
4 Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods (2nd edn., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 181–
217; Peter Burnham et al., Research Methods in Politics (Political Analysis; Houndsmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004) 236–248
91 |
nationalist discourses have lent themselves to qualitative analysis, and that is the main
mode of the analysis of language employed here.
As the theorists and researchers discussed in this section argue, an important part
of the study of social and cultural relations is the study of how commonly recurring
forms of language and discourse have been historically linked to particular (if fluid
and changing) ideological positions and social-political interests. Texts and discourse
cannot be completely divorced from reality to have some political use, as there has to
be some truth content for there to be communicative reason.5 However, apart from the
occasional dishonest or inaccurate statements in political discourse (and examples will
be given in this study), the truth content in such discourse can be partial and crucially, as
discussed in the previous chapters, a superficial rather than substantive representation
of reality. Further, and closely related to the discussion of ideology in the previous
chapters, is the notion that language can evoke particular connotations, can mystify
actual agendas, and can falsely resolve actual contradictions through linguistic means.
Mason outlines how qualitative analysis generally involves the coding and indexing
of textual data. This can be undertaken in a literal, interpretative, or reflexive manner,
and in practice there is generally some combination. Apart from indexing, there are
case study, holistic and contextual approaches, which she argues can better account for
complex social processes and narratives.6 As discussed further below, I use the latter
set of approaches in looking at some texts as whole, in terms of argument, coherence
and narrative, as well as slicing up and indexing texts and discussions. Travers discuss�
es “grounded theory” as a method of systematically approaching qualitative research.
Grounded theory aims to generate new categories and theoretical explanation, typically
through coding of elements of data, organising codes into dimensions and finding re�
lationships between coded categories.7 Regarding this, while as discussed in the pre�
vious chapter I am primarily testing pre-determined hypotheses and categories, I also
use grounded theory by allowing more specific themes and categories to emerge from
initial readings and analyses of the data. The subsequent chapters will demonstate this.
Apart from the choice of overall qualitative method, another general consideration
lies in the choice of the sample of data. Travers sees that an important aspect of ground�
5 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)
6 Jennifer Mason, Qualitative Researching (London: Sage, 2002) 147–168
7 Max Travers, Qualitative Research Through Case Studies (London: Sage, 2001) 41–50
| 92
ed theory is the use of “theoretical sampling”, that is, the collection of enough cases to
cover the range of variations within categories.8 Theoretical sampling for Mason is a
form of “strategic sampling”, in which a sample is chosen on theoretical and empirical
grounds in order to produce a particular, defined and systematic relationship between
the sample and the wider universe. This is distinct from “representational sampling”,
which aims to study a sample representative of a wider population in terms of the
spread of social indicators such as age, sex, ethnicity and class, which may be difficult
or less relevant for qualitative studies. This is part of a process of “organic” sampling,
by which the needs of the study, the intellectual puzzle to be solved, and the method of
data generation, should shape the sampling strategy as the study proceeds.9 The choices
of newspaper articles, political texts and focus group participants, as discussed below,
were based on these considerations.
A number of more specific tools for the analysis of textual material were employed
in this study. A basis for the analysis of language and meaning in this study is the
approach of pioneering Marxist philosopher of language Voloshinov, who argues that
all language and signs are inherently material and social, and hence ideological, as, “A
sign does not simply exist as part of a reality—it reflects and refracts another reality”.10
Social communication can be expressed through any material phenonema, but most
purely through language, meaning that, “The word is the ideological phenomenon par
excellence”.11 Voloshinov also emphasises the socially situated and “dialogic” nature of
all language, that utterances cannot be understood in isolation and “verbal interaction is
the basic reality of all language”.12 This conception will be utilised in seeing texts in a
complex relationship with their intended audience and with a range of discourses. The
role of different types of texts (media news or commentary, political speech or academic
article) is considered. Bahktin’s “speech genres”, a form of utterance associated with
a “particular sphere of communication’ that has developed a “relatively stable type”
of “thematic content, style and compositional structure”13 is a useful framework for
discussing differences found in the meanings and representations in the different types
8 Ibid.
9 Mason, Qualitative Researching 127–140
10 Valentin Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (New York: Seminar Press, 1973)
10
11 Ibid. 13
12 Ibid. 94
13 Peter Morris (ed.), The Bakhin Reader (London: Edward Arnold, 1994) 81
93 |
of articles.
Semiotics has developed as a highly influential method for the qualitative analysis
of meaning. This method is an extension of Saussure’s semiotic linguistics—in which
words are signs made up of the interactions between a signifier (sensory impression) and
the signified (the abstract concept invoked by the signifier)—to a general study of the
meaning of objects. Signs, as well as referring to actual objects, can have the functions
of suggesting the type of text (or code) in which it appears, and of constructing relations
of address. Interactions between signs can produce further meanings through relations
such as metaphor, a comparison between signs, and metonymy, an association between
signs in which one sign signifies a part, a function or an attribute of another. Signs can
have different connotations, that is a range of signifieds, as well as having a dominant
meaning or denotation.14
Two influential studies of the representations and meanings relating to Australian
nationalism and national identity, National Fictions and Myths of Oz, outline the methods
of semiotic analysis in a similar manner to the discussion of semiotics above.15 This
methodology has since been highly influential in the analyses of Australian nationalism,
typically combined with a socio-cultural critique. When Turner stated, as previously
quoted, that, “So wide is the field of critique within the humanities and social sciences
that resistance to the orthodox definitions of Australianess has become something of a
minor orthodoxy itself”16, he could have been referring to method as well as theoretical
approach.17 I aim to incorporate the most useful aspects of such an approach with a
broader range of methods.
A key tool for this study is Barthes’ concept of “myth”. Barthes sees the signs of a
language as the signifiers of a second order system, myth, which he sees as systematic
constructions of meaning that have the ideological role in bourgeois society of making
14 Tony Thwaites, Lloyd Davis and Warwick Miules, Tools for Cultural Studies (Sydney: Macmillan
Education Australia, 1994) 7–57
15 Graeme Turner, National Fictions: Literature, Film and the Construction of Australian Narrative
(Australian Cultural Studies; St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1986) 17–20 John Fiske, Bob Hodge
and Graeme Turner, Myths of Oz : Reading Australian Popular Culture (Australian Cultural Studies;
Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987) ix–xii
16 Turner, Making It National 7
17 Apart from the three cited above examples include many of the chapters in Gillian Whitlock and
David Carter (eds.), Images of Australia : An Introductory Reader in Australian Studies (St. Lucia,
Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1992) with an early example being Richard White, Inventing
Australia: Images and Identity, 1688-1980 (Australian Experience; St Leonards: Allen and Unwin,
1981)
| 94
specific political and social interests and conditions seem universal, of “transforming
history into nature”.18 Hence for example “Australia’s national identity,” as used in
public discourse is not necessarily a myth in the sense it does not exist, but in the sense
that it appears unproblematically objective, but is actually a representation constructed
in certain ways for particular purposes.
Within this framework the more specific methods of Cormack19 and Fowler20 for
the analysis of the ideology of language, are employed to show how particular myths
are constructed. Cormack provides a useful framework for analysing the ideological
position of a whole text, such as an article. He suggests five categories for analysing the
ideology of a text: content—including judgements made, vocabulary used, the types
of characters that appear and actions that occur; structure—meaning the way different
elements of the text are ordered; absence—or the way problematic issues are avoided;
style — the way the content “coheres”; and mode of address—the way a texts “speaks”
to us, and “attempts to confirm us as subjects within ideological structures”.21
Fowler discusses the ideological meanings of more specifically linguistic structures.
Aspects of syntactic structure such as the��
transitivity of verb phrases (��
the form of inter�
action within sentences of subjects, objects and verbs, or who is doing what to whom),
can tell what a text is saying about the relations between participants and circumstances.
Ideologically loaded aspects of transitivity include the use of��
passive rather
��
than ac�
tive forms of noun phrases and the use of “nominalised” nouns, those derived from
adjectives or verbs, such as ‘development’ or ‘privatisation’. Both linguistic choices can
serve to mystify social relations and to reify contradictory social processes with par�
ticular actors into established non-problematic objects. Consider for example the differ�
ence between the sentences, ‘Major political forces have been determined to privatise
aspects of the Australian economy’ (privatisation as a definite action by definite actors)
and, ‘Privatisation has occurred throughout the Australian economy’ (privatisation as
an abstract concept without clear actors or causes). Lexical structure can also have ideo�
logical import, with particular terms (especially in combination) evoking commonly
recognised “registers”, such as the scientific or the bureaucratic, and helping to set the
18 Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today’, Mythologies (London: Vintage, 2000), 109–159 at 129
19 Cormack, Ideology
20 Roger Fowler, Language in the News (London: Routledge, 1991)
21 Cormack, Ideology 33. This method was used to discuss texts generally and also to code as
necessary the opinions and themes of texts for the presentation of some descriptive statistics, as
discussed above, an example of a connection between qualitative and quantitative methods.
95 |
tone and mode of address of a text. Studying the “modality” of phrases, the way notions
of certainty, obligation, permission or desirability are expressed, is also a key method
by which a text constructs a relationship with and seeks to influence an audience.22
Another useful tool for the study of discourse is the analysis of narrative. This is
the organising principle of Turner’s study of “national fictions” in Australian literature
and film. Some basic forms of story, universal narrative structures, are common to
human cultures, and so are seemingly constitutive of our being human. These forms are
expressed and developed in folk tales, myths and legends, which serves as a “culture’s
way of making sense of itself”. In analysing the narratives of industrial societies, the
study of the forms (for example the analysis of formal aspects of literature or film) of
telling stories is as important as the study of basic plots, and the cultural specificity of
a particular culture’s narratives, is found in “recurring principles of organization and
selection as applied to the universal narrative structure”. The specifics of a national
culture’s story telling is shown in the privileging of certain forms, “genres, conventions
and modes of production”, and by the “the bank of ideologically framed myths, symbols,
connotations and contextual associations,” upon which a nation’s narratives draw.23
Coffey and Atkinson emphasise that narratives can be analysed in terms of their social
functions, such as moral tales, warnings and ways of teaching social norms, and are
often driven by “contrastive rhetoric” (a normative comparison between two or more
things), with “oral performance” and types of “voice” important in verbal narrative.
They also point out that contrastive rhetoric is a typical tactic for utterances aiming
to persuade24 (that is, part of the modality function of language in Fowler’s terms dis�
cussed above).
Turner analyses narrative in fictional literature and film, but it should be clear that
this type of analysis can be extended to other forms, such as news media and political
discourse. This is not least because of the strong inter-relations between myth, in this
term’s broader and social-semiotic as well narrower and folkloric senses, and narrative.
As discussed above, myths are very much related to ideology and political discourse.
Narratives draw from myths, and myths are reproduced in a culture through narrative.
Much work in the cultural studies and media studies fields incorporates very
22 Fowler, Language in the News 70–88
23 Turner, National Fictions 18–19
24 Amanda Coffey and Paul Atkinson, Making Sense of Qualitative Data (London: Thousand Oaks,
1996) 68–75, 107
| 96
sophisticated and useful qualitative analyses of discourse, but these are sometimes not
sufficiently grounded in realities of the social contexts which produce discourse and in
which discourse does its work. For example, Turner states that analysis of a culture’s
texts can tell us which “meanings are preferred by it, and which seem to be the most
significant for it”.25 But can textual analysis alone tell us a great deal about preference
and significance? Surely this would also require some study of the audience of these
texts, and of the social contexts in which a text is produced, distributed and received.
This potential shortcoming is sometimes explicitly acknowledged: for example Turner
states in his analysis of national identity in the 1980s that, “The analysis itself deals
with representations rather than broad social or economic movements”.26
Barthes’ method has been criticised by Cormack as “essentially intuitive, and
dependent on the perspicacity of the analyst”27, a criticism which could be levelled at
any analysis purely of discourse, which is why it is necessary to relate the ideology of
discourses to social structure, to relate the formal discursive level of analysis to the
social-historical level. For Fowler, a “critical linguistics” means “an enquiry into the
relations between signs, meanings and the social and historical conditions which govern
the semiotic structure of discourse”.28 Thompson stresses that the referential function
of signs, the fact that symbolic forms say something about something in the real world,
must not be kept out of sight.29 The concepts of myth and narrative though, are important
links between the social-historic and formal-discursive levels of analysis, as a means to
reach the broader interpretive/reinterpretive level, the third level in Thompson’s model.
This level aims to bring a creative synthesis out of the more analytic and deconstructive
methods of social-historical and formal-discursive levels. Seeing texts in terms of myth
and narrative can help identify general structures of meaning in a particular discourse,
and relate social-historical contexts and elements of public texts’ semiotic, lexical
and syntactic forms to these general structures. A substantial part of the analysis will
therefore be a discussion of how different myths develop and change (often as part of
ongoing narratives) through the period under discussion.
The previous two chapters argued the importance of the role of various social and
25 26 27 28 29 Turner, National Fictions
Turner, Making It National 12
Cormack, Ideology 27
Fowler, Language in the News 4
Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture
97 |
political actors in the production and circulation of ideology. Hence the data examined
in this part of the study comprise various publicly circulated texts relevant to the events
and issues discussed in each chapter, that include some reference to the concepts of
nationalism, national interest and/or national identity. Two sets of such data were
garnered, chosen with reference to the concepts of theoretical and strategic sampling
discussed previously. Firstly, for each of the issue specific chapters (Chapters 6–9) a
sample of newspaper comment was taken, consisting of editorials, comment articles
and letters on relevant themes and for specific periods, as discussed in each chapter.
In each case the sample was taken from the Fairfax broadsheets The Sydney Morning
Herald and The Age (Melbourne), the national News Limited broadsheet The Australian, and the News Limited tabloids The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), Herald-Sun (Mel�
bourne) and Courier Mail (Brisbane). These six publications were intended to give a
sample covering the two main newspaper groups and the three largest media markets.
That is, not necessarily representative of public opinion, but representative of the main
range of views circulating in the public sphere (with some representation from the radi�
cal left via articles from Green Left Weekly), in relation to the contention developed
above that the mass communications media are an institutional site of the reproduc�
tion of ideology in society generally. The second set of public texts are statements by
political actors (parties, politicians, trade unions and campaigning and lobby groups)
that played some significant role in the issues under discussion, as found in the media
sample or other research on each topic. These texts include media releases, position
papers, leaflets and parliamentary and other speeches. They will be examined in terms
of the specific linguistic and semiotic structures discussed above, which will be related
to broader structures of myth and narrative. This work will be integrated into other
levels of analysis as discussed throughout this chapter. ��
Textual analysis, of a some�
what more general sort, was also conducted on the transcripts of focus group discus�
sions, as discussed in the following section. A particular use of such methods was to
identify typical themes, myths and narratives and compare them where possible with
more objective measures of social reality and the interests of particular groups, in order
to examine the various research questions relating to the historical basis, contemporary
forms, efficacy and rationality of the political expression of national feeling.
| 98
Consciousness and action
As discussed above, a strong social-historical analysis, and strong linkages between these
two levels of analysis, are required to avoid the lack of grounding in social realities that
is a potential problem with analysis focused on discourse, . Another potential problem
is the generalisability of discourse analysis, or indeed any qualitative method. Philips
has argued:
Systematic empirical research on national identity has tended to be ideographic in
orientation and has offered little in the way of either generalizable theoretical insight, or
models that can be taken up by researchers working in other national contexts.30
A third problem is that public discourses, particularly those produced by ‘elite
definers’, do not necessarily tell us a great deal about consciousness and action among
the mass of the population. According to Emmison, researchers supporting the
concept of “cultural imperialism” have generally worked at a level of abstraction with
textual and economic analysis, assuming that “exposure to international audio-visual
commodities automatically leads to an uncritical acceptance of this material”. Emmison
further suggests that both the partisans of “cultural imperialism”, and also proponents
of “globalisation” and “heterogeneity” in discussion about international cultural flows
,have tended to ignore the “day to day cultural lives of society members”, and both sides
are unlikely to “subject their [claims] to any rigorous empirical scrutiny”.31 In the social
sciences researchers have sought to avoid these problems by examining the views of
a representative sample of the whole population, or a subset thereof relevant to their
research question, through questionnaires, interviews or focus groups.
Phillips has examined national identity by using theoretical literature to formulate
a hypothesis, and by then testing this hypothesis with results from ��
the 1995 Austra�
lian National Science Survey. Responses to particular questions were correlated to
investigate what countries and groups were seen by Australians as part of a four fold
structure of “internal friends”, “internal enemies”, “external friends”, and “external
enemies,” (that is, testing a Durkheimian hypothesis about how national identity is
structured around “symbolic boundaries”) in order to examine attitudes to particular
30 Timothy L. Phillips, ‘Symbolic boundaries and national identity in Australia’, British Journal of
Sociology, 47/1 (1996), 113–134 at 113
31 Michael Emmison, ‘Transformations of taste: Americanisation, generational change and Australian
cultural consumption’, Australia New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 33/3 (1997), 322–343 at 326
99 |
“national issues” of multiculturalism, aboriginality and monarchism. These aspects of
national identity were related to demographic factors of age, religion, employment,
quantity of social networks, citizenship, region of origin and sex. His four general
findings were: there were strong identifications that confirmed the four fold structure;
the structure was more likely to be adhered to by older, more right-wing, more religious,
less educated, more party-identifying and more television watching people, suggesting
a long term shift to a “strengthening of economic and political ties to Asia, increased
social rights for Aborigines and an increasingly cosmopolitan civic culture”32; that there
were unexpected results for women, who were closer to “internal friends” and more
hostile of “external enemies” then men, and for rural people, who were less friendly to
“external friends” than urban people; and that attachment to the “symbolic boundaries”
structured attitudes to the national issues measured, as those “demonstrating strong
attachment to the symbolic boundaries of the national community were more likely to
reject multiculturalism, Aboriginal assistance and republicanism”.33
From these results Philips made a theoretical generalisation conforming to a
Durkheimian view that, “The symbolic boundaries of the national community can
be understood to constitute an autonomous ‘culture structure’ characterised by its
own binary logic”.34 However, this generalisation highlights a problem with research
based on a single survey: correlation does not necessarily show causation. It is hard
to see where the evidence for an autonomous cultural structure is. Exactly the same
results could come about if such a cultural structure is highly determined rather than
autonomous. As there were strong links between political opinions and attachments to
national identity measured in this way, it seems politics is shaped in different ways by
national identity, or that political forces mobilise national identity and hence possibly
shape it, or (as discussed in previous chapters) some dialectical combination of both. In
any case, the results do not support the claim that any sphere of social life is autonomous
from others.
Similarly, Jones correlates the responses to a wide range of questions from the same
survey, including the demographic status of respondents, to test the relations between
ethnicity and national identity in Australia. Questions about Australian superiority,
32 Phillips, ‘Symbolic boundaries and national identity in Australia’ at 128
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
| 100
pride in Australia, support for Australian actions, respect for Australian institutions,
and what was important in “being Australian”, were taken to measure national
identity, whilequestions related to feelings about living near people of different ethnic
backgrounds, and relatives marrying into families of different backgrounds, were taken
to measure national chauvinism. A typology of “dogmatic relativists”, “literal nativists”,
“civic nationalists” and “moderate pluralists” was developed from the correlations,
and found to be significantly related to social background and attitudes to questions
of immigration, Aboriginal policy and republicanism.35 This study also suggests strong
relations between national identity and social structures such as class and to political
interests, without necessarily showing a lot about determination.
Questionnaires, along with textual analysis, have been criticised as a top-down
approach. One possible failing is that they are based on pre-determined categories
that may influence the results. For example, in Phillips’ study the countries about
which respondents were asked were fairly obvious (at least traditionally) “external
friends and enemies”, and some terms used for “internal friends and enemies”, such as
“greenies”, may have more negative associations than alternatives such as, for example,
“environmentalists”. A more general problem is pointed out by Cicourel, who has argued
that questionnaires are not able to capture the complexity of language and social action.
He states that:
Fixed-choice questions supply the respondent with highly structured clues about their
purpose and the answers expected. The ‘forced’ character of the responses severely ��
restricts the possibility that the actor’s perception and interpretation of the items will be
problematic… If some form of fixed-choice questionnaires items are ever to serve as
useful operational definitions of sociological concepts, they will have to be constructed
in such a way that the structure of everyday life experience and conduct is reflected in
them. We must be able to demonstrate a correspondence between the structure of social
action (cultural meanings, their assignment in situational contexts, the role-taking
process) and the items intended as operational definitions thereof.36
Similarly, and more specifically related to the topic at hand, Phillips and Smith argue
that, “One of the limitations of this [questionnaire] approach is that the versions of
35 F. L. Jones, ‘Ethnic diversity and national identity’, Australia New Zealand Journal of Sociology,
33/3 (1997), 285–305
36 Aaron V. Cicourel, ‘Fixed-choice questionnaires’, in Clive Seale (ed.), Social Research Methods: A
Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), 166–169 at 168–169
101 |
Australian identity given to respondents are derived from theoretical and historical
sources, rather than from members’ categories. The problem here is that these objects
and concepts (such as ‘multiculturalism’, ‘citizenship’) may be peripheral rather than
central to member’s knowledge and experiences of the nation”.37
Such arguments imply that the results of questionnaires should be compared to data
obtained via other methods, such as the analysis of texts and less structured ways of
obtaining actors’ views. For example, Emmison’s questionnaire could measure the
country of origin of someone’s cultural tastes, however:
Country of origin in itself cannot, of course, establish conclusively the nature of the
cultural value which is attached to any particular cultural item. It is only through other
forms of inquiry—textual analysis, audience ethnography—that this can be established,
but such methods must inherently sacrifice quantitative vigour.38
Jackman discusses this problem, as being one of “external validity”, but argues that
administering an identical questionnaire to two differing groups, in his case questions
on ethnicity given to both politicians and voters, creates at least high “internal validity”.
He argues that, “In this way the two surveys are akin to a controlled experiment:
candidates and the electorate are asked identical questions in identically administered
surveys, giving my study high ‘internal validity’, whatever its shortcomings on external
validity. This helps bolster my analysis against the familiar charge that survey-based
research manufactures attitudes more so than it measures public opinion … while survey
responses about racial issues are probably highly sensitive to question wording, context
effects, and so on, these factors are constant across the two populations considered
here”.39
More qualitative methods for measuring the views of social actors may avoid the
problem of researcher-imposed categories. Zevallos has used in-depth, semi-structured
interviews for the qualitative analysis of ideas and meanings related to gender, sexuality
and ethnicity and how identity is constructed for groups of second-generation women
from Latin American and Turkish backgrounds. Two ethnic groups were used to make the
data and conclusions somewhat more generalisable. A qualitative analysis of responses
37 Tim Phillips and Philip Smith, ‘What is “Australian”? Knowledge and attitudes among a gallery of
contemporary Australians’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 35/2 (2000), 203–224 at 205
38 Emmison, ‘Transformations of taste’ at 326
39 Simon Jackman, ‘Pauline Hanson, the mainstream and political elites: the place of race in
Australian political ideology’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 33/2 (1998), 167–186 at 170
| 102
was seen as the best way to “explore subjectivity and meaning”, providing “rich,
descriptive data and in depth detail about the experience of specific social groups”.40 It
could be argued that this method, like questionnaires and more structured interviews,
nonetheless created categories for the respondents, as the researcher “devised a general
interview schedule and made sure to cover these set themes with the participants.”
She also “questioned the women on the themes they themselves identified during their
interviews”41, creating the possibility for responses to go beyond and perhaps to even
change the research categories.
It has been argued that the use of focus groups is an even more “bottom-up” approach
which allows people to define their own categories. Philips and Smith state that their
aim in discussing national identity with focus groups was to “bypass government texts
and academic debates as sources of information, and instead to discover knowledge and
attitudes about national identity without the mediation of expert discourses”.42
Nonetheless all methods of questionnaire, interview or group discussion capture a
single time-shot, so cannot directly measure change, and hence are limited in what
they can tell us about determination unless they are carried out a number of times.
It is not possible to directly measure change retrospectively except by examination
of documentary record, or by comparison of the results of a number of similar polls
or questionnaires taken over time. Philips and Smith recognise the contingent nature
of a single study, stating that at the time of their focus group discussions, “Pauline
Hanson’s one Nation Party was looking like a potent force, especially in Queensland. It
is possible that this conjuncture influenced our results in a traditionalist and conservative
direction”.43 Without measuring change it is hard to say much about determination,
such as the possible effects of socially constructed ideology on political behaviour. For
example, in Phillips and Smith’s study, the responses suggested the existence of a shared
culture with a relatively stable structure that has been internalised by Australians. The
authors suggest this supports a functionalist view of culture and values. But without
some evidence of determination it is unclear why such results might not also support
a ‘hegemonic ideology’ type of view. For example the great majority of the examples
40 Zuleyka Zevallos, ‘“You have to be Anglo and not look like me”: Identity construction of second
generation migrant Australian women’, PhD (Swinburne University, 2004) 64
41 Ibid.
42 Phillips and Smith, ‘What is “Australian”?’
43 Ibid. at 206
103 |
of “typical Australians” were well known individuals, knowledge of whom is mediated
by the mass media, rather than arising spontaneously from people’s experience. It
could be that the questions asked appeared to the respondents to be about what “typical
Australian” things were, so respondents sought to convey what they imagined were
common public perceptions, rather than instances from their own lives. In terms of the
cultural tastes investigated by Emmison, it may be possible to estimate the effects of
change by questioning different generations, but this is really “cross-sectional differences
in data collected at the same time”, and it is not practical to ask older respondents to
give examples of their cultural tastes at a younger age, in a way that would give a
meaningful comparison to present day younger people. Therefore such a method might
indicate broad trends but cannot allow for change in taste across the life cycle.44
Any attempted measurement of the effects of ideology must take account of people’s
actions as well as ideas and perceptions. It may be effective to include questions about
actions in questionnaires, interviews or focus groups. There are other, broader measures
of actions, such as election results and attendance at political events, though it may
be more difficult in such examples than in a more controlled data collection, to tie
intentions and ideas to actions. It is reasonable to assume that public political activity
generally requires a more intense political/ideological motivation than an opinion given
to an interviewer. There can be qualitative aspects to subjects’ actions, for example
letters on political issues to newspapers, which are actions with often a clearly defined
ideological meaning and clear political intent, but are (generally) not produced by a
professional-intellectual-definer. Studying actual social action (including through
written texts) is an unobtrusive method of analysing consciousness and action, as
opposed to questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, circumventing the problem
that any research process in which the subject is consciously involved is to some extent
artificial. Part of the methodology of the study then will be to include such texts among
the material examined ��
discursively (as discussed above in relation to letters to news�
papers), and to view public political activity as a central context for the production of
political texts.
In light of the preceding discussion, I decided to include quantitative and qualitative
measurement of social consciousness and action as part of the data analysed for this
study. The use of quantitative data is intended to help show broad trends and evident
44 Emmison, ‘Transformations of taste’ at 327, 338
| 104
processes of change over a number of years and be supportive of other data, rather
than be a detailed analysis of particular questionnaire results with inferential statistics.
Hence relevant responses to rounds of the Australian Election Study (AES), National
Social Science Survey (NSSS) and Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) be�
tween 1988 and 2007 were collated (in some cases calculated) and presented in rel�
evant chapters, and I also critically discuss a number of published analyses of these
surveys. Taking the results of repeated applications over time of the same or similar
questions provides strong generalisability and internal validity, and some indications of
the reasons for change. External validity will be provided by comparing these results
to other levels of the analysis, the social-historic and discursive, and to a qualitative
examination of subjects’ views.
The views and actions of members of the two significant political parties of the
(broadly defined) left, Labor and the Greens, were examined through focus groups.I
organised a Labor group and a Greens group, in both a regional and an urban area,
to account for differences in both political affiliation and geography (that is, there
were four groups altogether). It was argued in Chapter 2 that party members, while
having views and undertaking activities not necessarily representative of the general
population or even of many of the voters of the party to in which they are active, are
crucial links between professional definers and political leaders, being, so to speak,
grassroots organic intellectuals. Both Bryant and Burnham et. al. discuss the use of focus
groups as an effective means for examining subjects’ views on specific social issues,
in a way that accounts for the social, collective construction of meanings, and allows
contradiction, subtleties and the subjects’ own priorities to come into play.45 Hence it
seems, following Phillips and Smith, an effective means for testing how particularly
relevant subjects construct and use nationalism and national identity, in conjunction
with the other methods to maximise generalisability and validity.
I found focus group participants by obtaining relevant contacts in branches in the
two chosen areas from personal contacts in my area. I then requested from branch
secretaries a focus group discussion with 6-1046 branch members following a branch
45 Bryman, Social Research Methods 345–360; Burnham et al., Research Methods in Politics
105–112
46 This size being that recommended in the literature on focus groups as a number that allows a
substantial discussion while allowing all participants time to contribute, see Richard A. Krueger
and Mary Anne Casy, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (3rd edn., Thousand
Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2000) 73 and David W. Stewart and Prem N. Shamdasani, Focus
105 |
meeting, for mutual convenience. The regional Greens group was help in August 2006,
the regional ALP group in October 2006, the urban Greens group in March 2007, and
the urban ALP group in August 2007. The Information Sheet and Discussion Guide
used are found in the Appendix.47 To analyse the data consisting of the transcripts of
these group discussions, I firstly carried put a form of coding and indexing by creating a
“thematic inventory” of relevant utterances, following Phillips and Smith.48 Bloor et al.
suggest two methods for the analysis of such coded data, firstly, “analytic induction”,
by which hypotheses are successively compared to the data, and either rejected or re�
fined until a hypothesis matches all desired cases, and secondly, “logical analysis” by
which the logic of participants’ arguments are reconstructed and their premises teased
out and related. In this thesis a combination of the above methods was used, as I was
both testing hypotheses and open to new categories and explanations.
Triangulation
In this concluding section I make more explicit the argument that a combination of varied
modes of research is the most appropriate means for tackling the research questions at
hand. Bryman discusses “triangulation” as the combination of different methods within
a research project from both sides of the basic division of quantitative and qualitative
research strategies. He sees this as particularly useful when a method from one research
strategy can facilitate the research design of another, or when the researcher wants to
examine different aspects of the same general social phenomenon.49
Perhaps the most sustained effort to bring different modes of analysis to bear on the
problem of Australian nationalism is Hage’s Against Paranoid Nationalism50, some of
the theoretical issues raised by which having been discussed in the previous chapter.
Hage combines the data from ethnographic interviews that formed the basis of his
earlier work White Nation, also discussed above, with a more substantial historical
and socio-economic grounding (particularly in a chapter entitled ‘A brief history of
Groups: Theory and Practice (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1990) 57
47 The number of questions and their sequence, particularly from general to specific, was developed
from the discussion in Richard A. Krueger, Developing Questions for Focus Groups (The Focus Group
Kit; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998)
48 Phillips and Smith, ‘What is “Australian”?’ at 209. Nvivo software was particularly useful as an aid
in coding the transcripts for issue or chapter, theme and sub-themes, and for reconsidering categories
and re-coding in the adapted grounded theory manner discussed above.
49 Bryman, Social Research Methods 451–465
50 Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism
| 106
white colonial paranoia’), with discourse analysis, for example, how the rhetoric of
John Howard has coopted many traditionally ‘radical nationalist’ themes, as well as
with the use of psycho-analytic theory for the analysis of how the formation of the
subject relates to public expressions of nationalism. While I argued in the preceding
chapter that, on the theoretical level, Hage perhaps lays too much stress on the potential
of psycho-analytic theory to tell us, by analogy and extension, a lot about the role of
nationalism in the public sphere, it seems that such a multi-layered method is useful to
obtain a substantial picture of the relation between psychology/consciousness, public
political ideology and social structure. In Bryman’s terms, Hage has used triangulation
to examine different aspects of nationalism.
A somewhat similar range of methods, also by a researcher with an anthropological
background, is employed by Smith, to analysis the relations between “nature, native and
nation in the Australian imaginary”. An “eclectic range of data,” including Australiana
and promotional material aimed at tourists, maps, environmental journals, and history
texts is examined, and related to field studies within a national park co-managed by
indigenous people and a state government department, “combining discourse analysis
with ethnography”.51 As in other work discussed above, the methods of discourse
analysis are not fully explicated, but become clearer through the analysis, and derive
from work and concepts in semiotics and the study of meaning and representations
that are fairly familiar. Smith’s contemporary fieldwork is enriched by being placed
in a context of historically formed images, narratives and myths. There is not really
triangulation in Bryman’s terms, as only qualitative methods were used, but it seems a
useful example of how one method (discourse analysis) facilitated the carrying out of
another (ethnographic participant-observation).
Mason questions whether triangulation of methods per se provides extra validity,
because as opposed to literal triangulation, different methods “are likely to throw light
onto different social or ontological phenomena or research questions (or to provide dif�
ferent versions or ‘levels’ of answer)”.52 In general she stresses the need to be system�
atic and transparent in arguing for the validity of methods, the accuracy of conclusions
and the justifiable nature of generalisations made53 (171–203). Generalisations can be
51 Smith, ‘Nature, Native and Nation in the Australian Imaginary’ v
52 Mason, Qualitative Researching 190
53 Ibid. 171–203
107 |
made on the bases that cases do not seem to be atypical, that conclusions about one
setting are relevant to other settings, that cases are “extreme” or “pivotal” to a wider
situation, and that a “strategically selected range of contexts” was chosen as to allow
“cross-textual generalities” to be made. That is, strong links are needed between the
sampling strategy, organisational and analytic rigour, and valid generalities.54 I contend
that my media sample, political texts and focus group participants are both typical and
provide a representative range of views, that the events and issues chosen are pivotal,
that there are clear links between the textual and social indicator and attitudinal data,
and that the research strategy and analysis are transparent, systematic and rigorous.
This thesis aims to construct a map of a broad and very significant phenomenon, within
a specific period and in relation to specific events. Triangulation then would seem to be a
very relevant concept. ��
Responses to the relatively open-ended nature of the focus group ques�
tions helped to decide the issues, themes and events covered in the study overall. The purpose
of combining the different methods used is also to examine different aspects of the social
phenomena of nationalism and national identity, by tracing how these ideological constructions
are played out in public ��
texts��
, ��
consciousness��
and political action��
, and to maximise the gener�
alisability of the results. In combining the results of the different research methods, particular
emphasis was placed on uncovering the relations between the stated and actual interests of
political actors and the efficacy of nationalist ideology in fulfilling these interests. The following
chapter begins this analysis with an overview of the period of the Howard governments.
54 Ibid. 194–203
| 108
Chapter 5
Howard nation:
‘comfortable and relaxed’ or ‘Brutopia’?
Thus far the theoretical and methodological bases for the project have been outlined.
The dialectics of the objective and the subjective, of structure and agency, have been
put forward as a general concern, raised in three related ways: a view of discourse and
ideology as the product of the relationships between specific social groups; the nation
as a historically changing, material reality consisting of competing interests as well as
commonalities of culture, and the need for different levels of analysis in understanding
political discourse and action. This framework will be used to guide the analysis presented in the following five chapters.
In this chapter the analysis is commenced with an outline of how Australia as a social
formation, a specific nation-market-state, has changed over the Howard years. The aim
is to provide a broad overview of change, and of how this change has been responded
to by the left, which will be followed by analysis of more specific issues and events in
the subsequent chapters. Evidence presented in this chapter will generally consist of
relevant tabulated social indicator data and critical analysis of the findings from a range
of major academic surveys and commercial polls, along with some analysis of the focus group discussions undertaken as part of this study and of public texts. The following four chapters, some of which expand upon discussion commenced in this chapter,
concentrate more upon qualitative analysis of the focus group and relevant public texts,
along with some discussion of relevant quantitative social indicator and survey data. In
accord with the discussion in the previous two chapters of how political and social consciousness cannot be simply revealed in attitude surveys, but also encompasses action
and organisation, relevant data on public political activity is included throughout this
chapter and the rest of the study.
The chapter proceeds with an initial outline of particular developments in global
109 |
capitalism in the late twentieth century and the related rise of the ideological formation
known as neo-liberalism. The argument sketched in Chapter 3, that the Howard government has shown both continuity and discontinuity in relation to established conservative ideology and to the previous Labor administrations, will be developed, and it will
be seen that this government is one guided by a specific form of neo-liberalism. Key
developments in social relations in Australia, particularly productive and workplace
relations are summarised, and survey data is then discussed to indicate how attitudes
toward class relations and relating to national feeling have, and where relevant have not,
changed over the relevant period. Finally the general course of political development
and conflict in the Howard years are discussed. The analysis, while broad, focuses on
the central theme of the study, that is, the conflicts between national and class aspects of
political life. Hence, while the responses of the left are discussed, these are developed to
a much greater extent in the following chapters.
Relaxation nation or Brutopia?
In an ABC TV Four Corners profile preceding the 1996 election that gained him power,
Howard summarised his goal as one of making Australians more “comfortable and relaxed … about their history, about their present and the future”.1 This implied a number
of things: that the apparent conflicts of the Labor years would subside, material wellbeing would increase, and that Australians would feel better about themselves. In key
speeches by the middle of the following decade, Howard found it appropriate to survey
the work of his government and concluded a better off, more optimistic and more unified nation had in fact developed. In his 2006 Australia Day speech he listed a range
of indicators of the growth of wealth and income, but focused on a new “balance” in
Australian life: in economic matters, “between public and private”, in welfare policy,
“between state support and personal responsibility” and, “in our national identity between unity and diversity”. There was a contrast to the implied stagnation and paternalism of the Labor years, and an explicit contrast between a previous period of “being too
obsessed with diversity,” to a new era in which “we proudly celebrate and preserve” the
“enduring values of the national character”.2 In an August 2007 speech he posited that
a sense of “aspirational nationalism” and a “new Australian synthesis of aspiration and
1 Brett, ‘Relaxed and Comfortable’ at 5
2 Howard, ‘A sense of balance: The Australian achievement in 2006’
| 110
fairness is everywhere in progress”.3 For Howard in these speeches, conservative concerns with prosperity, individualism and national unity have both incorporated more
traditionally social democratic concerns with equality and fairness and have successfully transformed Australia.
Others naturally begged to differ. Two months before becoming Labor leader, Kevin
Rudd argued that Howard did not believe in any kind of balance at all, but rather followed philosopher and economist Friedrich Hayek in championing the supremacy of
competition and market forces in all spheres and the commodification of all things,
including human beings in the form of deregulated labour markets, in sharp contrast
to earlier generations of conservatives and social liberals who stood for reciprocal relationships within an organic society. Consequently a more selfish “Brutopia” was being
forged.4 In another text Rudd elaborated on the theme that a marketised Brutopia was
threatening family and community life, traditional conservative concerns, citing figures
on longer and more unsociable working hours and worsening indicators of the health
and well-being of children such as greatly increased obesity levels, and refers to widespread discontent evident in a number of qualitative studies.5
Which of these sharply contrasting narratives better accords with social reality? To
discuss this question it would be useful to outline the ideological basis for Howard’s program. Harvey analyses neo-liberalism, or more precisely, its rise to hegemonic status, as
a response to the breakdown of the consensus that had dominated the capitalist world
in the post Second World War period. After the crises of depression and total war and in
reaction to popular clamour for change, from the end of the war state intervention, and
in some cases considerable state ownership, expanding welfare systems, and consensual
models of industrial relations became the norm in the advanced economies. However,
the limits to the growth potential of this model, which increasingly reduced the share of
national income and wealth appropriated by the wealthy and large capitalists, appeared
to have been reached by the end of the 1960s, leading to a series of recessions through
the 1970s and early 1980s. In this context the ideas of a previously marginal current of
economists and thinkers known as neo-liberals, who advocated a return to the ideas of
3 John Howard, ‘Address to the Millenium Forum’, 20 August, 2007
<http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2007/Speech24507.cfm> accessed 1 September 2007
4 Kevin Rudd, ‘Howard’s Brutopia: What the prime minister doesn’t want to talk about’, The Monthly,
November 2006, 46–50
5 Kevin Rudd, ‘An address to the Centre for Independent Studies’, 1 June, 2006
<http://www.cis.org.au/Events/policymakers/rudd_lecture.pdf> accessed 10 August 2007
111 |
neo-classical economics such as sweeping marketisation, privatisation and deregulation
of all aspects of trade and productive relations, became attractive to those with wealth
and power. Organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie based in academia, business-funded
think tanks and international financial institutions helped develop and propagate these
ideas as a coherent ideological formation, and key political supporters of capitalism
(particularly but not exclusively from traditionally centre-right and conservative parties), became champions of a neo-liberalism that sharply opposed traditional forms of
both social democracy and conservatism. The market turn of the Chinese leadership
in 1978, and the election victories of Margaret Thatcher in Britain in 1979 and Ronald
Reagan in 1980 were key moments in the rise to hegemony of neo-liberalism among
economic and political elites.6
Yet while the deregulation and expansion of international trade was a key component
of the neo-liberal answer to the crisis, this did not mean that the national aspects of capitalism were made redundant. In contrast to some commentators who assumed that the
globalisation of trade and finance would make states and nations less significant, Wood
shows persuasively that states have remained highly regulatory and high spending, intervening more directly in favour of the capitalist class rather than withdrawing from
interventions altogether.7 Further, in a post-Communist world the US has emerged as a
global political and military arbiter of a world system that in fact remains highly regulated and protectionist, displaying one of the key divergences of actually existing neoliberalism from theoretical neo-liberalism.8 In terms of this study such findings suggest
that the contradictions of the national and international become heightened rather than
resolved in the neo-liberal era, a discussion taken up further in Chapter 7.
In Australia, the social democratic party enacted the key neo-liberal turn. In Chapter
3 we saw how some leading figures at least of the Labor party were up to 1982 advocating socialist solutions to the crisis of protectionism, whereas Labor in power after 1983,
applied neo-liberal remedies. Pusey’s questionnaires and interviews with senior public
servants show that by the end of the 1980s neo-liberalism and a faith in the all-encompassing virtues of the market had become totally dominant among upper levels of the
6 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
7 For example unions rather than businesses become highly regulated. Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of
Capital (London: Verso, 2003)
8 That is, generally free trade is imposed on poorer countries while economically more powerful
countries retain much in the way of protectionism. Ibid. 21
| 112
federal government bureaucracy, displacing what Pusey calls an older public service and
“nation-building” ethos.9 As well as noting the weight of this sector of organic intellectuals, Connell points to the increasing dominance of finance capital over other business
sectors and the rise of business education and of consultancies and think tanks in propagating neo-liberalism in Australia. Influenced by the direct needs of capital, the interests
and ideas of capital’s organic intellectuals as well as a bureaucratised labour movement,
Labor in power instituted a form of neo-liberalism consisting of a deregulation of the
financial system, tariff reductions, privatisation of assets such as the Commonwealth
Bank and Qantas, and some measures of welfare restrictions and deregulation of the
labour market rather than a direct confrontation with organised labour and the poor.
This set the stage for a government willing to carry neo-liberalism further.10
Connell argues that, “There is a great secret about neo-liberalism, which can only
be whispered, but which at some level everyone knows: neo-liberalism does not have
popular support”.11 We shall see below there is considerable evidence for this contention,
and Connell’s general point that passivity and alienation are by-products of neo-liberalism. Below, I shall outline how Howard did in fact extend neo-liberal restructuring in
Australia, and how a crucial aspect of this was a more politically effective management
than Labor of the national aspects of policy and rhetoric, particularly those relating to
the security of the borders of the national space, of the unity of the nation, and of the
cultural makeup of the national space. Before discussing the course of political developments however it would be useful, for the present purpose of evaluating how the
Australian nation has changed, to discuss some data relating to broad socio-economic
and attitude change.
Socio-economic change in the neo-liberal era
Howard’s arguments about the legacy of his government and the changes Australia has
undergone (cited above) emphasise changes both in material circumstances and attitudes, that wealth has increased and along with it optimism, unity and self-reliance.
Rudd however saw selfishness and discontent. These contrasting narratives will be eval9 Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes Course
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
10 Connell, ‘Moloch mutates: Global capitalism and the evolution of the Australian ruling class,
1977–2002’
11 Ibid. at 10
113 |
uated in this section with references to data on changes to productive relations, and in
the next section on changing attitudes to such relations and on the ‘state of the nation’
and national identity generally. While a key part of the economic changes have been
significant expansion of foreign trade, this will be discussed in Chapter 7, with domestic
national relations per se being concentrated on in this chapter.
As discussed, a key aspect of neo-liberalism has been the removal of interventionist
measures such as state tariffs and subsidies to protect particular industries in favour of
the market deciding the level of investment flowing to different sectors of the economy.
Table 5.112 shows that such policies have led to a considerable recasting of the weight of
different sectors, as measured by levels of employment in each, with those sectors that
have undergone the most change shown here. Clearly there has been a significant shift
from manufacturing to service areas, and also to construction, indicating that not all
blue-collar sectors are in decline.
12 Figures in Tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 taken from 1994 to 2008 editions of Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Labour Statistics in Brief, Cat. No. 6104.0 (Canberra).
| 114
Table 5.1: Proportion of workforce in selected sectors of the economy
Nov…
Manufacturing
Construction
Finance, insurance,
Property and business
services
Recreational,
personal and
other services
1993
15.3
4.5
13.1
8.0
1994
15.2
4.4
12.8
7.9
1995
13.6
7.3
13.4
10.8
1996
13.4
7.2
13.5
10.6
1997
13.5
6.9
13.9
11.2
1998
12.8
7.3
14.5
11.2
1999
12.3
7.6
14.6
11.1
2000
12.7
7.8
15.2
11.4
2001
11.9
7.7
14.8
11.5
2002
12.2
7.6
15.1
11.6
2003
11.0
8.2
15.6
11.1
2004
11.1
8.6
15.0
11.6
2005
10.8
8.5
15.7
11.6
2006
10.4
8.9
15.8
11.3
2007
9.9
9.0
16.2
12.7
The fairly rapid restructuring of patterns of employment between industries has unsurprisingly led to changing patterns of employment overall. Table 5.2 shows rates of
participation in the workforce by sex, and unemployment rates. It can be seen that the
early years of restructuring were accompanied by significant unemployment, which has
gradually eased in the sustained periods of economic growth since the recession of the
early 1990s. Further, there has been a long-term slight decline in male participation, and
a much greater increase in the female participation rate.
115 |
Table 5.2: Participation in the workforce and unemployment
Nov…
Males
Females
Persons
Unemployment
1983
76.7
44.7
60.4
9.7
1988
75.2
49.9
62.4
7.2
1990
75.6
52.2
63.7
6.9
1991
74.7
52.0
63.2
9.3
1992
74.2
51.9
62.9
10.5
1993
73.7
51.8
62.6
10.9
1994
73.6
52.6
63.0
9.8
1995
74.0
53.8
63.7
8.5
1996
73.7
53.8
63.6
8.6
1997
73.2
53.7
63.3
8.6
1998
73.0
53.9
63.6
8.0
1999
72.6
54.0
63.2
7.2
2000
72.6
54.9
63.6
6.6
2001
72.3
55.3
63.7
6.7
2002
72.2
55.5
63.7
6.3
2003
72.0
56.0
62.6
5.9
2004
71.6
55.8
62.9
5.5
2005
72.1
57.0
64.4
5.1
2006
72.2
57.4
64.7
4.9
2007
72.3
57.8
65.0
4.4
As well as changes to the weight of different sectors and the gender balance of the
workforce, several sets of data show us some of the changes to the nature of work. Table
5.3 indicates a shift toward longer working hours, albeit a change that is fluctuating and
relatively small when averaged through the full-time workforce.
| 116
Table 5.3: Average weekly hours, full-time workers
Nov…
1983
38.3
1984
38.8
1985
38.8
1986
40.1
1987
39.8
1988
39.7
1989
39.9
1990
39.6
1991
40.1
1992
40.8
1993
40.4
1994
40.9
1995
40.9
1996
40.3
1997
41.1
1998
41.2
1999
41.2
2000
41.3
2001
40.4
2002
40.8
2003
42.1
2004
40.4
2005
40.7
2006
40.0
2007
39.2
Table 5.413 shows that casualisation of the workforce has significantly increased since
the late 1990s. The numbers of those working on a contract basis of employment also
appears to have significantly increased in a short period of time, from 11% of the work-
13 The figures are the proportion of employees excluding owner-managers who describe their own
work as undertaken on a casual basis. Figures in Table 5.4 and 5.6 from 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2006
editions of Australian Bureau of Statistics, Forms of Employment, Australia, Cat. No. 6359.0 (Canberra).
117 |
force in 2004 to 15% in 2006.14
Table 5.4: Casualisation as percentage of employees
Casuals
1998
18
2001
20
2004
25.1
2006
24.5
The shift from manufacturing to services, the feminisation of the workforce and the
tendency to less secure forms of employment have been accompanied by a dramatic
decline in union membership and activity, as shown in Table 5.5. Total union members
were 2 600 000 in 1986, 1 800 000 in 2006. How this decline relates to changes to attitudes towards industrial relations will be discussed below.
14 It should be noted the ABS has only examined this question in recent years and broadened its
questions on contract employment in 2006. In previous surveys, only those without leave entitlements
were asked if they worked on a contract basis, and in 2004 11.0% of such employees excluding ownermanagers answered that they did. In 2006 all were employees asked, and 15.0% responded that they.
However the proportion of those without leave entitlements working under contract was only slightly
more, at 15.2%, so we can assume the proportion of all employees in 2004 was not much different from
11.0%. From 2004 and 2006 editions of Australian Bureau of Statistics, Forms of Employment, Australia,
Cat. No. 6359.0 (Canberra).
| 118
Table 5.5: Trade union membership and strike activity15
Union membership
% total employees
Days lost to industrial action,
thousands
1986
46
1306.9
1988
42
1641.4
1990
41
1376.5
1992
40
914.2
1993
38
635.8
1994
35
497.4
1995
33
627.0
1996
31
908.0
1997
27
528.8
1998
28
524.9
1999
26
649.6
2000
25
465.3
2001
25
393.1
2002
23
259.0
2003
23
439.4
2004
23
379.8
2005
22
228.2
2006
20
132.7
2007
19
49.7
In Chapter 3 it was argued that a key aspect of conservative nationalism is the simultaneous claim for the essentially classness nature of the nation along with the apparently
contradictory construction of the petty bourgeoisie as the exemplar of the nation. Howard has argued that supporting small business is a key part of the economic restructuring he has presided over, and emphasised a number of times a statistic, “that resonates
with me more than any”, being, “the statistic that came out about [August 2005] which
showed that the number of self employed people for the first time ever had passed the
number of trade unionists in Australia”.16 He implies here that small business numbers
15 From Australian Bureau of Statistics, Trade Union Members, Australia, Cat. No. 6325.0 (Canberra
1996), and 1999, 2001 and 2005 editions of Australian Bureau of Statistics, Employee Earnings, Benefits
and Trade Union Membership, Australia, Cat. No. 6310.0 (Canberra).
16 John Howard, ‘Address to Small Business Forum, Perth’, 19 February, 2007 <http://www.pm.gov.au/
media/Speech/2007/Speech23911.cfm> accessed 1 August 2007
119 |
have risen, as part of a change to a workforce that is more individualistic and enterprising. However this result has in fact been due solely to the decline of union numbers:
Table 5.6 shows the number of owner mangers is in fact slightly declining.
Table 5.6: Owner managers, per cent of workforce
Owner managers of
incorporated enterprises
Owner managers of
unincorporated enterprises
Total
1998
7
13
20
2001
6.9
12.5
18.4
2004
7.1
12.4
19.9
2006
6.7
11.9
18.6
The sustained growth rates and falling unemployment since 1993 has unsurprisingly
led to general increased income and wealth. However the fruits have not been distributed evenly. Table 5.7 shows the changes in income from 1995–96 until 2005–06, a period
in which (unlike the several years previously), income had steadily increased across all
the income groups reported. While the rises are similar they are clearly skewed toward
the highest income earners. They also do not indicate the extent of change for the small
number of very highest income earners. Atkinson and Leigh for example show that a
typical CEO in one of Australia’s top 50 companies earned 27 times the average wage
in 1992, and 98 times the average wage in 2002.17 In terms of changes in net wealth,
ABS figures are only readily available for a two-year period, as shown in Table 5.8, but
the trend appears similar with the rate of increase of the wealthiest 20% being at least a
third higher than any of the less wealthy groups. A class difference per se in the changing division of the national social surplus can be seen most clearly in Table 5.9, showing
the wages and profit share of national income. The background to recent ABS figures on
these trends describe the wages share as rising steadily through the 1970s, falling rapidly
during the 1980s with wages reaching a historic low of 52.8%, and recovering somewhat during the early to mid-1990s, with the profit share showing reversed trends.18
This corroborates the discussion above of the breakdown of the Keynesian consensus
from the 1970s and Labor’s solution from 1983, which imposed strict wage restraint in
17 A.B. Atkinson and Andrew Leigh, ‘The distribution of top incomes in Australia’, Discussion paper
No. 514, March, The Australian National University 2006 <http://cepr.anu.edu.au/pdf/DP514.pdf>
accessed 11 August 2007
18 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian System of National Accounts, 2005-06, Cat. No. 5204.0
(Canberra 2007) 5
| 120
favour of profits but developed some improvements in wages after the 1990s recovery
commenced. As Table 5.9 shows, the further development of neo-liberal restructuring
has seen a steady transfer of wages share to profit share, with wages falling back near the
1988–89 low. This seems likely to increase the evident disparities in income and wealth,
particularly as any new recessionary period puts pressure on any wage growth.
Table 5.7: Changes in income (2005–06 dollars)19
Quintile
1995–96
2005-06
% change
Lowest
192
255
32.8%
Second
309
414
34.0%
Third
422
565
33.9%
Fourth
568
746
31.3%
Highest
887
1 239
39.7%
Table 5.8: Net worth (2005-06 dollars)20
Quintile
2003–04
2005-06
% change
Lowest
24 997
27 368
9.5%
Second
150 368
160 595
6.8%
Third
318 726
341 745
7.2%
Fourth
537 419
564 294
5.0%
Highest
1 486 457
1 720 680
15.6%
19 Australian Bureau of Statistics, House Income and Income Distribution 2005–06, Cat. No. 6523.0
(Canberra 2007).
20 Ibid; Australian Bureau of Statistics, House Income and Income Distribution 2003–04, Cat. No.
6523.0 (Canberra 2005)
121 |
Table 5.9 Wages and profit share of national income21
Wages share
Profit share
1995–96
54.5
23.2
1996–97
56.2
22.6
1997–98
55.3
23.4
1998–99
55.9
22.8
1999–2000
55.6
23.5
2000–01
55.8
23.8
2001–02
54.7
24.2
2002–03
54.5
24.9
2003–04
53.9
25.4
2004–05
53.9
25.9
2005–06
53.6
26.8
2006–07
53.7
27.2
Thus the Howard period has seen a general continuation of economic trends evident in
the early to mid 1990s, such as continued shifts in the patterns of employment by industry, increased workforce participation by women, and steadily increasing incomes and
net wealth. However a new shift from wages to profit share has taken place, and increased
disparities of wealth and income are evident. While Howard’s claims that material wellbeing has improved are on solid grounds, his claims that fairness has been maintained are
much less so. There is also little evidence of a new era of flexibility and freedom for all
participants in the workforce: what has increased is not self-employment, which clearly
entails more autonomy than being employed by others, but casual and contract forms of
employment, which are less secure. Also increased income appears to be partly based on
increased hours of work and a shift toward two-income families. The latter while being
no doubt welcome in terms of gender equity, would suggest a basis, along with increased
hours of work, for the lack of time for family and community put forward by Rudd. Increased comfort does not seem to have been accompanied by relaxation, rather the reverse. But what have people thought about what is happening to the nation?
21 Figures from the 2004–05 and 2006–07 editions of Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s System
of National Accounts, Cat. No. 5204.0 (Canberra).
| 122
Attitudinal change in the neo-liberal era
In this section a range of attitudes relating to nation and class are examined, using overall frequency counts of responses to relevant questions in a time series of similar broad
academic attitude questionnaires, as well as some critical discussion of studies using
relational statistical analysis of these surveys. Below we shall examine perceptions of
economic division and economic change. Firstly however we shall discuss perceptions
of unity, of national belonging, attachment and pride. Tables 5.10, 5.11 and 5.12 suggest
that by some measures national identity has strengthened in the period of the Howard
governments.22 Table 5.10 shows a high level of agreement, and a high level of stability
of agreement, about what it means to be Australian, with the exception of Christianity
and Australian ancestry.
Table 5.10: What it means to be ‘Truly Australian’, per cent agree
1995
2003
Speak English
86
92
Feel Australian
93
91
Have Australian citizenship
87
89
Respect Australia’s political
institutions and laws
93
89
Life mostly in Australia
60
68
Born in Australia
55
58
Have Australian ancestry
Be Christian
37
31
36
Measures of support for the nation also show some high levels of agreement and
consistency, as shown in Table 5.11. Notably, there is a significant fall in the numbers
22 For all figures from the Australian Election Study and Australian Survey of Social Attitudes series
cited throughout the thesis, the standard error, with sample sizes of around 2000, is approximately 2%.
Tables 5.10–5.12 are adapted from Murray Goot and Ian Watson, ‘Immigration, multiculturalism and
national identity’, in Shaun Wilson et al. (eds.), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report (Sydney:
UNSW Press, 2005) with additional figures in Table 5.12 from Rachel Gibson et al., ‘The Australian
Survey of Social Attitudes, 2003’, Australian Social Science Data Archives, The Australian National
University, 2004 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 10 November 2007; Jonathan Kelley,
Clive Bean and M. Evans, ‘National Social Science Survey, 1995/96’, Australian Social Science Data
Archive, The Australian National University, 1996 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 10 March
2007. Figures in Goot and Watson’s tables from surveys undertaken in years between 1995 and 2003
confirm the trends evident here, with for example a gradual increase in pride in Australia’s economic
achievements. Figures in all cases are rounded to the nearest percentage point, and in Tables 5.10 and
5.11, ‘agree’ and ‘strongly’ responses are combined.
123 |
expressing any shame of Australia, some increase in the minority of those thinking the
whole world should be more like Australia, and some increase in those adhering to a,
‘My country, right or wrong’ attitude. These figures suggest some strengthening of feelings that the national space needs to be and ought to be defended, feelings it might be
suggested are closely related to national pride. Pride itself is more directly measured in
responses to questions recorded in Table 5.12. Tabulating the strength of agreement in
this table reveals some significant changes. The combined and generally quite high levels
of pride in relation to the different questions have remained similar between the two
surveys, with the notable exception that pride in economic achievements has increased
overall markedly, during a period of sustained growth in income and wealth. However,
on most measures there is a marked shift to the stronger indication of pride.
Table 5.11 Supporting Australia, per cent agree
1995
2003
Rather be a citizen of Australia than of any other
country in the world
87
85
Generally speaking, Australia is a (much) better country than most other countries
83
82
There are things about Australia that make me feel
ashamed of Australia
61
47
The world would be a much better place if people
from other countries were more like Australians
38
43
People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong
23
27
I am often less proud of Australia than I would like to
be
NA
24
When my country does well in international sports, it
makes me proud to be an Australian
85
78
| 124
Table 5.12 Proud to be Australian
1995
2003
Feel proud due
to …
Agree
Strongly agree
Agree
Strongly agree
Way democracy
works
61
15
53
25
Its political
influence in the
world
45
5
46
9
Its economic
achievements
43
6
59
21
Its social security system
40
10
57
12
Its scientific and
technological
achievements
54
39
48
43
Its achievements in sports
46
45
35
57
Its achievements in the arts
and literature
59
27
51
31
Defence forces
49
27
44
40
Its history
45
27
41
35
Its fair and equal
treatment of
all groups in
society
41
12
40
18
In the following section of this chapter, and in Chapters 8, we shall see that the Howard government has used apparent crises relating to war, terrorism and refugees to assert
imminent dangers to the national space and to pose as resolute defenders of that space.
We shall see in the next chapter that the Howard team has campaigned for a more unified and positive characterisation of Australian history, and in Chapter 9 the assertions
by Howard and his colleagues of unified Australian values. In the context of these political interventions general feelings of support for and pride in the nation seem to have
increased, or somewhat intensified, at least among a minority. The main argument of
the study however relates to the ambivalences and contradictions of the Australian left
to questions of the nation, in the context of the socio-economic and attitudinal changes
demonstrated in this chapter.
125 |
To whatever extent perceptions of national unity have increased, division around
class and economic questions is still very evident. We have seen that there has been
considerable change in socio-economic relations over recent decades, and considerable
discussions about ‘new’ classes and indeed the ‘end of class’ as an important organising
principle. Despite all this there is considerable evidence for a class basis for attitudes
about socio-economic relations, and that this basis has remained fairly consistent over
the period of neo-liberal restructuring. Emmison cautions that class-consciousness cannot be ‘read off ’ from attitude surveys, as discussed in Chapter 4. However he shows that
there are clear class-based differences evident from an analysis of the 1986 Australian
study that was part of the international Comparative Project on Class Structure and
Class Consciousness led by Erik Wright.23 That is, using questions relating to the legitimacy of the profit motive, corporate power and industrial action and the possibility of
industrial democracy, a scale of ‘pro-capitalist’ to ‘pro-worker’ attitudes was constructed.
Statistically significant differences were found among the class groups, and they could
be placed on this scale in the order: large capitalists, small capitalists, expert managers,
expert supervisors, skilled managers, self-employed, expert workers, skilled supervisors, skilled workers and unskilled workers. Also unsurprisingly union membership in
all relevant groups strongly related to a higher pro-worker score. Using a similar class
typology, Western used analysis of the 1995 NSSS to examine the class basis for attitudes
on ownership of productive property, business regulation, and collective organisation
of the working class including the right to strike.24 He found majority attitudes overall
were ‘pro-capitalist’, that there was more variability and higher ‘pro-worker’ scores on
items relating to working class action, and that there were clear class differences along
similar lines to Emmison’s study. Union membership and public service employment
also boosted ‘pro-worker’ scores, and interestingly middle-class self-identification made
no difference—further evidence against the ‘new class’ thesis.
The extent such attitudes have changed can be indicated by responses to similar questions from a series of academic surveys.25 Table 5.13 shows that class self-identification
23 That is, analysis of responses to the 1986 Class Structure of Australia questionnaire. See Michael
Emmison, ‘Conceptualising class consciousness’, in Michael Emmison et al. (eds.), Class Analysis and
Contemporary Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991), 246–278
24 Mark Western, ‘Who thinks what about capitalism? Class consciousness and attitudes to economic
institutions’, Journal of Sociology, 35/3 (1999), 351–414
25 Figures in Tables 5.13, 5.14, 5.15, 5.16, 5.17 and 5.18 taken from Jonathan Kelley, ‘National Social
Science Survey, 1987-1988’, Australian Social Science Data Archive, The Australian National University,
1988 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 9 March 2007; Kelley, Bean and Evans, ‘National
| 126
has remained quite stable over two decades of economic reform and change. That is,
neither two decades of economic restructuring nor increased wealth and income have
caused any rush to adopt a middle class label. While popular perceptions of class, based
generally on occupation and status, differ from definitions of class as based on ownership and control of the means of production (as discussed in Chapter 2), the extent of
the differing weights given to the working and middle classes by these two contrasting
definitions have also remained stable.
Table 5.13 Self-perception of class, percent
1984
1995
2003
2005
Working
43
38
41
41
Middle
53
53
49
50
Upper
1
1
1
2
Lower
3
2
NA
NA
None
NA
NA
9
8
The following three tables examine changing attitudes to workplace relations. It can
be seen that despite the considerable decline of union membership, hostility toward
unions has declined, even reversed, between 1984 and 2007. While a majority thought
unions had far too much power in 1984 and to some extent too much up to 1995, a sizeable majority did not think so by 2005. On the other hand, while hostility to big business seems to have declined somewhat over time, there was a marked increase in those
thinking big business had far too much power between 2003 and 2007. Significantly, the
2005 questionnaire was undertaken soon after the industrial relations changes known
as WorkChoices were announced, as discussed below. Howard government policy may
also account for increased perception of workplace conflict between the mid-1990s and
the first half of the following decade, as this change perception clearly is not based on
the level of industrial disputation. There also appeared, from Table 5.17, to be stable support for the award system of setting of wages and conditions, and some strengthening of
Social Science Survey, 1995/96’, ; Jonathan Kelley and R.G. Cushing, ‘National Social Science Survey,
1984’, Australian Social Science Data Archive, The Australian National University, 1984 <http://assdanesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 9 March 2007; Gibson et al., ‘The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes,
2003’, ; Shaun Wilson et al., ‘The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, 2005’, Australian Social Science
Data Archive, The Australian National University, 2006 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 10
November 2007; Clive Bean, Ian McAllister and David Gow, ‘Australian Election Study, 2007’, Australian
Social Science Data Archive, Australian National University, 2008 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au>
accessed 20 May 2008. All results rounded to integers.
127 |
negative perceptions of individual contracts.
Table 5.14: Perception of trade union power26
1984
1988
1995
2003
2005
2007
Far too much
52
35
18
20
22
15
Too much
31
28
36
24
16
23
About right
16
22
37
34
32
30
Too little
2
3
5
15
27
25
Far too little
1
1
1
4
7
8
Table 5.15: Perception of Big business power27
1984
1995
2003
2005
2007
Far too much
23
19
14
25
25
Too much
40
46
45
36
44
About right
17
22
32
30
23
Too little
18
19
4
4
7
Far too little
2
1
2
1
1
26 In 1984, 1988 and 1995 the question was whether trade unions “have” an extent of power with
choices as presented in the first column. In 2003 and 2005 the choices were “should have” either “a
lot less”, “a bit less”, “the same”, “a bit more”, “a lot more” power and in 2007 the choices were “strongly
agree”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree”, and “strongly disagree” with the statement, “the
trade unions in this country have too much power”. While the question has been asked somewhat
differently, I assume the attitudes expressed are approximately the same.
27 The questions varied as in footnote 27, apart from the question not being asked in 1988.
| 128
Table 5.16 Perception of strength conflict between managers and workers
1988
1995
2003
2005
Very strong
8
16
18
15
Strong
34
40
58
58
Not very
43
39
20
23
None
10
3
1
1
Table 5.17: Attitudes to awards versus individual contracts
Awards the best way
to set pay and conditions
Individual contracts
favour employer over
employee
2003
2005
2003
2005
Strongly agree
13
16
16
18
Agree
53
53
30
35
Neither
17
15
29
26
Disagree
12
10
16
13
Strongly disagree
2
2
2
2
The discussion above suggests that there are ongoing class-based divisions in attitudes to socio-economic and workplace relations, and to neo-liberal restructuring.
Further, that there is only minority support for one central element of neo-liberalism,
that is shifting power in workplace relations from unions and centralised bargaining to
employers and individual bargaining, and that this support is falling. Table 5.18 shows
declining support for another key aspect, privatisation of public assets. Experience of
privatisation appears to have significantly increased support for public ownership of
key services. We shall see in Chapter 8 that there is also considerable division and deep
ambivalence about the moves towards freer foreign trade, and also towards the cultural
aspects of ‘globalisation’.
129 |
Table 5.18: Support for public ownership, per cent28
1988
1995
2003
Telstra
48
57
57
Australia Post
55
64
67
Commonwealth
Bank
NA
57
NA
The examination here of changing attitudes shows a contradictory development of
perceptions of nation and class. As well as a process in which increased wealth has been
accompanied by increased inequality and insecurity, ongoing and in some sense deepening feelings of national belonging and pride have coexisted with ongoing and in some
senses deepening divisions over economic change. In terms of the evident majority opposition to key aspects of neo-liberalism, it may be pertinent to emphasise that questions of class are not necessarily salient to how people think and act in social and political spheres.29 The next section will analyse how the questions of nation and class have
played out in political developments through the course of the Howard governments.
From Keating to Howard
Keating, since his ascension to the premiership in 1991, had sought to combine continued neo-liberal restructuring with ‘big-picture’ items of reconciliation, multiculturalism
and a republic.30 That is, as argued in Chapter 3, an attempt to manage class discontent
with a new form of national identity. The efficacy of this strategy was not tested for some
years. When John Hewson fought the 1993 election under the Fightback! package, which
included a Goods and Services Tax, and widespread privatisation and contracting out of
public services, Labor was able to emphasise differences in economic issues and appeal
to working class concerns, albeit in the highly mediated form of late twentieth century
social democratic politics, and win the ‘unwinnable’ election.31
On assuming the Liberal leadership, Howard realised the electoral inadvisability of a
direct admission of an intention to radicalise the neo-liberal course. Although by 1996,
28 In 1988 and 1995 the figures indicate those opposed to any selling of what was then Telecom. For
2003 the figure indicates those in favour of full public ownership of Telstra.
29 A point emphasised throughout Michael Emmison et al. (eds.), Class Analysis and Contemporary
Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991)
30 Chronicled for example by a leading participant, Keating’s speechwriter, in Don Watson,
Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating PM (Sydney: Random House, 2002)
31 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 172–182
| 130
unemployment was certainly easing and real incomes rising, discontent—the passivity
and alienation noted by Connell at footnote 11 of this chapter—with the dislocation and
pain caused by nearly 15 years of economic rationalist change, was rife. Howard sought
to tap into deep wells of national feeling to channel discontent against ‘special interests’
and in a nationalist direction. This strategy was conscious and calculated, conceived
and organised particularly through the experience of then Liberal pollster Mark Textor
in manipulating the politics of race and nation with the Country Liberal Party in the
Northern Territory and the Republican Party in the United States (work that was also
significant for the 2001 election).32 Howard sought to build a narrative of a return to
a traditional Australia with secure values, summarised in his goal to make Australians
‘comfortable and relaxed’, as noted above. He stressed his opposition to special interests
and elites, encouraging people to believe such forces were to blame for economic woes
and disconcerting change in general. This was summarised in the Coalition election
slogan, “For all of us”. Such a strategy was a development of the traditional Liberal concern with tying together the rights of the individual and the unity of the nation, with any
collective social force in between portrayed as sectional, divisive and destructive. This
had traditionally been directed at the trade unions but was now extended to Indigenous
people, migrants and ‘elite’ intellectuals.33 The Howard team calculated that normally
non-Coalition voters could be won by simultaneous appeal to national unity and the
apparent exclusion from the national family of special interests and the elites.
As the figures presented and discussed above indicate, economic conditions were improving for the majority, after stagnant wage levels through the 1980s and the recession
of the early 1990s, by the 1996 election. However, the results of this election seems to
indicate the success of Howard’s strategy, and an apparent dismal failure of the attempt
by Keating to promote a republican, pro-Indigenous, multiculturalist national identity
in combination with free market policy at a time when economic pain was a recent
memory. The election was a rout for the ALP. In the House, Labor suffered a swing of
6.2% and a loss of 31 seats, and the Coalition parties gained just under 3%, giving the
new government a decisive 94 seats out of 148, with however the Democrats retaining
the balance of power in the senate.34
32 Marr and Wilkinson, Dark Victory 175–176
33 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 183–191
34 Australian Electoral Commission, ‘Summary of first preference votes by party — House of
Representatives (1996)’, <http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/1996/first_pref/hor.htm>
131 |
In looking for explanations for the results, Charnock examined division-level aggregate demographic data from the 1991 census and relationships between demographic
factors, attitudes and voting patterns emerging from the 1996 AES.35 He found that socio-demographic differences between electorates played less of a role than in 1993, suggesting that there was less of the class polarity that had favoured Labor in the previous
poll. However, there was also a striking reversal of the tendency of the unemployed to
favour Labor in 1993, as well as a stronger tendency for the self-employed to favour the
Coalition than in 1993. In terms of immigration and ethnicity, the largest effect Charnock found was for those born overseas but not in the UK, Ireland, Europe or North
America, favouring the ALP. He also found that electorates with high concentrations
of migrants from South East Asia favouring the Coalition, which he interpreted as an
anti-Asian reaction in the context of the national framing of Howard’s campaign and the
prominence given to anti-immigration independent candidate Pauline Hanson. I would
add that his findings in relation to the unemployed and self-employed suggest that an
anti-economic rationalist reaction among those in the workforce most removed from
the labour movement took a conservative and nationalist direction.
Singleton, Martyn and Ward looked more specifically at the widespread claims of a
blue-collar revolt against Labor.36 In an example of a triangulated methodology, they
(like Charnock) used data from the 1991 census and the 1996 AEC (although with a
more intensive focus on a smaller area, South East Queensland), but also studied what
was happening to the ALP itself by analysing a detailed 1995 survey of Queensland
members, including those who had resigned in that year. They found that areas with
high concentrations of blue-collar workers correlated with areas that had swung strongly
against Labor, suggesting that Labor had indeed lost some of its ‘heartlands’. Further, the
AES showed a strong swing against the ALP by blue-collar voters, and the ALP survey
showed that disproportionate numbers of blue-collar members had left the party and
had cited disproportionately as a reason for leaving that, “In government the ALP’s policies didn’t help workers”. Blue-collar worker ALP members were also somewhat more
likely to disagree with the Keating ALP government’s ‘big picture’ focus on multiculturaccessed 12 March 2007; Australian Electoral Commission, ‘Members of the 38th Parliament (1996)’,
<http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/1996/hor/members.htm> accessed 12 March 2007
35 David Charnock, ‘Spatial variations, contextual and social structural influences on voting for the
ALP at the 1996 federal elections’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 32/2 (1997), 237–254
36 Jef Singleton, Paul Martyn and Ian Ward, ‘Did the 1996 federal election see a blue-collar revolt
against Labor? A Queensland case study’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 33/1 (1998), 117–131
| 132
alism, reconciliation and engagement with Asia.
However, they also found that all of these trends were nearly as pronounced among
general white-collar workers. This result contradicts assumptions of a ‘class’ divide based
on collar colour per se, and also claims discussed by Singleton et. al. that the 1996 election broke down class patterns of political struggle in Australia. Subsequent developments showed the key driving force of Australian politics was an ongoing contradiction
between class and national concerns.
The first Howard term and the 1998 election
While focusing their 1996 election campaign on general promises of a turn away from
special interests and elites and an apparent return to national unity and Australian values, and avoiding the emphasis given by Hewson to a clear neo-liberal agenda, once
a decisive victory was achieved the Howard ministry moved quickly to accelerate the
pace of economic rationalist change in Australia. Despite promising to govern “for all of
us”, such economic change, as well as more foreshadowed changes to policy relating to
Indigenous people, immigration, multiculturalism and generally relating to ‘culture’ and
‘values’, provoked considerable opposition and propelled tens of thousands of people
into anti-government public political activity. In relation to the dialectics of structure,
action and consciousness emphasised in this project, it is noteworthy that Howard’s
electoral fortunes were nearly reversed at the 1998 election.
In the first Costello budget in September 1996, sweeping cuts were made to the public
sector. In just one sector, approximately $5 billion was cut from the three year funding
plan for higher education, and public mooting of these plans led to a national staff and
student strike and marches of 15 000 people on 30 May and student rallies of around
10 000 on 29 August.37 One neo-liberal measure that had been openly canvassed in the
Coalition’s election platform was the privatisation of Telstra. As noted above, support
for the public ownership of the communications provider was in the 1990s and the following decade a focus for discontent with the direction of economic change.
Soon after winning office Howard implemented the Workplace Relations Act, which
introduced Australian Workplace Agreements, reduced the number of allowable mat37 ‘Teachers, students increase pressure on Vanstone’, 5 June, Green Left Weekly, 1996 <http://www.
greenleft.org.au/1996/234/14235> accessed 12 March 2007; ‘Uni, high school students rally against
cuts’, 4 September, Green Left Weekly, 1996 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/1996/245/13570> accessed 12
March 2007
133 |
ters in awards to 20 and banned all industrial action except that conducted during an
enterprise bargaining period (although the price of Democrat support to enable the Act
to pass the Senate was the removal of some measures such as compulsory secret ballots
before union industrial action).38 The Howard government also quickly moved to formulate and push amendments to the Native Title Act that would further limit the ability of Indigenous people to have a say over mining and pastoral activity on traditional
lands, although again with some compromise with opposition senators (in the context
of extra-parliamentary opposition), only achieved in 1998.39 Howard also sharply cut
total immigration intake while continuing the shift from family and humanitarian to
skilled and business programs and downplayed multiculturalism (as the first stage of a
complex relationship between the Howard governments, immigration and multiculturalism, as discussed in Chapter 3).
This sweeping range of polices encouraged a coalition of union, student and Indigenous groups to organise nationally to mobilise on 19 August, 1996 some 15–25 000
people in protest at Parliament House Canberra and some 28 000 in other centres.40
Property damage and some minor injuries led Labor leader Kim Beazley to rhetorically
contrast “15 000 people from mainstream Australia who listened quietly and calmly to
a group of speakers from the Catholic Church, the Uniting Church, all sides of politics
bar the Liberals” to “a group of about 500 who moved off and attacked Parliament with
such lamentable consequences”.41 Deputy leader Gareth Evans described the events as
“ugly, un-Australian, stupid and indefensible”.42 After this attempt by the Labor leadership to construct an alternate national unity and exclude from the national family those
deemed sectional and divisive, using rhetoric very similar to that employed by Howard
in his election campaign, there were no more national protests coordinated by the official trade union leadership. This outsome is significant in terms of the potential for
nationalism to be a conservatising and incorporating ideology.
38 Amanada Birmingham, ‘A guide to the Workplace Relations Act 1996’, Australian Bulletin of
Labour, 23/1 (1997), 33–47
39 Paul Burke, ‘Evaluating the Native Title Amendment Act 1998’, Australian Indigenous Law
Reporter, 3/3 (1998), 333–356
40 ‘More action needed, say Canberra protesters’, 28 August, Green Left Weekly, 1996 <http://www.
greenleft.org.au/1996/244/13645> accessed 12 March 2007; ‘Thousands rally against government
attacks’, Green Left Weekly, 1996 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/1996/244/13641> accessed 12 March
2007
41 Malcolm Farr, ‘A disgrace: two-hour pitched battle’, Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1996, p. 1. The
reports cited in footnote 40 claimed the majority of the crowd was involved in the “siege” of parliament
42 ‘Teachers, students increase pressure on Vanstone’, p. 15
| 134
However struggles continued to break out along more specific lines. A key element
of neo-liberal restructuring in Australia has been a claim that there are inefficiencies
in the operation of seaports resulting from a strongly unionised workforce. The federal government collaborated with Patrick Stevedores in an attempt to confront and
break the Maritime Union of Australia by locking-out its members and introducing
non-unionised labour from January 1998. A counter-campaign involving thousands of
unionists and supporters forming illegal picket lines as well as legal manoeuvres, created
a climate in which the federal court imposed a compromise.43
Unsurprisingly then a range of sharply contested economic, social and cultural concerns came to the fore in the election of 3 October 1998. These issues were crystallised,
firstly, in the decision by the Howard government in June 1998 to advocate a Goods and
Services Tax (GST). The widespread opposition to the indirect tax, and the turnabout
from Howard’s 1995 promise that a GST would never be Coalition policy “at any time in
the future,”44 made it clear to the government it needed a fresh mandate for the measure.
The second crsytallisation was the emergence of the One Nation Party in 1997 on a anti-immigration, anti-Aboriginal and economic protectionist platform, following party
leader Pauline Hanson’s capture of the previously safe Labor seat of Oxley in the 1996
election, and the party was given a considerable boost after winning 23% of the primary
vote and 11 out of 89 seats in the Queensland election of June 1998.45
Howard won the election (just), having lost a net 15 seats and seen his parliamentary
majority slashed from 41 to 12, and lost the popular vote, which favoured the ALP 51%
to 49%, the results of an overall swing of 4.6% against the government.46
McAllister and Bean place the election result in a context of discontent with neo-liberalism simmering since the 1980s. They show with aggregate figures and correlations
from AES 1998 data that the GST and taxation generally were the foremost issues in
voters’ minds, and that although opinion on the new tax was evenly divided and mar43 Helen Trinca and Anne Davies, Waterfront: The Battle That Changed Australia (Sydney: Doubleday,
2000)
44 Made in response to some earlier, more ambivalent comments of his, see Anne Davies, ‘Howard
attempts to put out fire lit by GST comments’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 1995, p. 9
45 Gerard Newman, ‘Queensland Election 1998’, Parliamentary Library, 1998
<http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RN/1997-98/98rn49.htm> accessed 10 March 2007
46 Australian Electoral Commission, ‘First Preference Votes — House of Representatives — by Party
by State (1998)’, <http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/1998/hor/fp_state.htm> accessed
12 March 2007; Australian Electoral Commission, ‘House of Representatives — Seats Which Changed
Hands (1998)’, <http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/1998/hor/seats.htm> accessed 12
March 2007
135 |
ginally favoured the government in terms of what motivated overall changes in votes,
discontent over economic policy direction was the key cause of the Coalition’s slump
in support. Disagreement over tax policy and economic insecurity, measured by fear
of personal unemployment and fear of general unemployment, were both strongly correlated with vote switching from the Coalition to the ALP.47 This marks a significant
reversal from the previous election, in which, as noted above, the unemployed had in
significant numbers switched their allegiance from Labor to the conservatives.
The overall picture was complicated by the significant vote for the new One Nation
Party, which polled 8.4% nationally. The meaning of this vote was the subject of considerable subsequent academic debate. Goot and Watson take strong issue with a number
of earlier studies that had, on the basis of aggregate area voting data and Hansonite
policy positions argued that One Nation was principally a revolt against neo-liberalism
and globalisation, and in some cases painted an archetype of the ‘One Nation voter,’ with
a whole string of characteristics such as male, middle-aged, blue-collar, and rural.48 Aggregate data and policy analysis are limited, Goot and Wilson argue, in determining the
motivations of actual individual voters. Their analysis is based on using AES 1998 data to
calculate predicated probabilities for voting for One Nation on the basis of demographic
factors and attitudinal scales that aim to measure economic insecurity, opposition to
immigration, opposition to Indigenous rights and alienation from the political system.
They found that the demographic factors of blue-collar occupation, union membership
and rural location increased the probability of voting One Nation, but not necessarily in
any combined, ‘archetypal’ way. Further, Watson and Goot found that only opposition
to immigration and political alienation produced a statistically significant increase in
One Nation voting (opposition to Indigenous rights being just as strong among Coalition voters), and so discounted economic attitudinal factors.
However, they do not seem to adequately answer those they criticise or their own
critics49 in relation to ‘class’ attitudes and One Nation, or to explain why One Nation
was able to mobilise anti-immigrant and politically alienated feelings relatively strongly
47 Ian McAllister and Clive Bean, ‘The electoral politics of economic reform in Australia: The 1998
election’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 35/3 (2000), 383–399
48 Murray Goot and Ian Watson, ‘One Nation’s electoral support: Where does it come from, what
makes it different, and how does it fit?’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 47/2 (2001), 159–191
49 For example Nick Turnball and Shaun Wilson, ‘The two faces of economic insecurity: reply to Goot
and Wilson on One Nation’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 47/4 (2001), 508–511; answered in
Murray Goot and Ian Watson, ‘One Nation’s electoral support: economic insecurity versus attitudes to
immigration’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 47/4 (2001), 512–515
| 136
in 1997–98. Economic insecurity did not strongly account for voting for One Nation
overall, and overwhelmingly favoured the ALP, but Watson and Goot’s own figures show
that this scale strongly accounts for a higher probability of voting for One Nation as
compared to the Coalition. McAllister and Bean show a significant correlation between
economic insecurity and opposition to the GST and vote switching from the Coalition
and One Nation.50 Hence, while One Nation may have principally tapped into those with
the strongest anti-immigration feelings and the most politically alienated across the
board, their support also disproportionately came from the less economically secure,
and anti-neo-liberal conservatives who were generally blue collar and/or rural in location. This formation, in its statements and its appeal, clearly tapped into various aspects
of the social bases and historically constituted imaginaries of race-based, conservative
and Laborite nationalisms.
The neo-liberal restructuring of the Australian nation-market-state continued along
a rocky and contested path through 1996–98, with further conflicted relations between
class and nation. Discontent was certainly evident in the streets and at the polls, but the
Labor and official labour leaderships were not keen to fight too militantly, partly with
the justification of the unity of the nation. The rise of One Nation showed that the form
that discontent with capitalist restructuring takes is not at all a given. Howard stirred up
anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous, and anti-‘elite” feeling in 1996, which struck a chord
with the vulnerable and discontented, but which also appeared to take a more directly
race patriotic form in One Nation. While Hanson’s party was a wildcard, it appeared to
help keep discontent, mobilised in a highly nationalist form, within the generally conservative camp by delivering most preferences to Howard’s team. Further, while Howard
appeared to (just) win the GST debate in 1998, the new tax and economic matters generally became increasingly problematic for the government. A sharp nationalist turn,
aided by unexpected new circumstances, appeared necessary for the next Coalition victory in 2001.
The second Howard term and the 2001 election
Despite its narrow mandate the government was able to pass its GST legislation, with
some amendments needed to gain the support of Democrat senators. However, the
50 McAllister and Bean, ‘The electoral politics of economic reform’
137 |
Howard team faced opposition on a number of fronts throughout its second term. Particularly after implementation in late 1999 the GST itself became increasingly unpopular, with polls showing support for the tax falling from half to less than a third of the
electorate by mid-2000.51
The afore-mentioned amendments to native title, as well as the Bringing Them Home
report highlighting the continuing ramifications of past practices of removing Indigenous children from their parents52, sparked a broad movement in support of Indigenous
rights and reconciliation between Indigenous and settler Australians. This reached a
high point in marches involving over 500 000 people, most notably across the Sydney
Harbour Bridge but also in many other cities and centres in late May and early June
2000.53
Discontent with the internationalising dynamic of capitalism became highly visible at
protests outside a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in September
2000, consciously organised as part of a world-wide ‘anti-corporate’ or ‘anti-capitalist’
movement against ‘globalisation’ (as discussed further in Chapter 7). Some 20 000 participants were clearly mainly organised by the radical left and militant sections of the
union movement, and this event as well as some subsequent related activity such as
blockades of all Australian Stock Exchange offices on May 1, 2001 that involved some 20
000 people nationally, were expressions of a continuing stream of internationalism.54 As
in the brief career of One Nation, there were however elements of racial and conservative nationalist reactions to neo-liberalism evident in such events and public discourse
at the time.55
51 Ian McAllister, ‘Border protection, the 2001 Australian election and the Coalition victory’,
Australian Journal of Political Science, 38/3 (2003), 445–463 at 451
52 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, ‘Bringing Them Home: Report of the
National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their
Families’, 2007, 1997 <http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/report/index.html> 13 March
53 ‘Thousands more march for reconciliation ’, 7 June, Green Left Weekly, 2000 <http://www.greenleft.
org.au/2000/408/23539> accessed 13 March 2007; Margaret Allum, ‘Bridge walk “must be built upon”’, 7
June, Green Left Weekly, 2000 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2000/408/23492> accessed 13 March 2007
54 Peter Boyle, ‘M1: Three lessons for the left’, Green Left Weekly, 2001
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2001/447/26163> accessed 13 March 2007
55 Anecdotally I can report that Citizens Electoral Council and the League of Rights had stalls and
material at these protests, and that at the time a regional environment centre distributed with cheerful
abandon a globalisation information kit containing contradictory material from the far left and the
far right. A leading conservative commentator suggested a few months later that Pauline Hanson
was closer to Green Left Weekly than the National Party: Gerard Henderson, ‘Closing the door on
your worst enemy’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 March 2001, p. 12. The riposte by then Green
Left editor Doug Lorimer is not without interest in terms of the interaction of different streams of
political thought in relation to the nation: “In fact, One Nation’s economic policy is much closer to
that supported by Henderson than that of the radical Left groups … The latter are opposed not just to
| 138
In the context of multi-faceted opposition and discontent the government was trailing by more than 10% in the polls by early 2001. This gap had however considerably
narrowed by midyear, due, McAllister argues, to budget measures aimed at appeasing
Coalition supporters, and to Labor’s refusal to release details of any policy including any
alternative to the GST, before the election due by year’s end.56 The latter factor, I would
argue, is another example of the Labor leadership’s efforts to construct an alternate national unity.
Whatever problems the government was facing on various fronts from 2000 to mid2001, political discourse and activity in the period from late August 2001 until the federal election of 10 November that year were completely dominated by popular perceptions
of a crisis in the protection of the nation’s borders, catalysed by two seminal events: the
stand-off over the presence of asylum seekers aboard the Norwegian freighter Tampa
and the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US.
Through 2000–2001 there had been public opposition to the government’s mandatory
detention of asylum seekers (a policy adopted by the Keating government in 1993), who
were by 1999 attempting to to reach Australian territory in increasing numbers, particularly from crisis-torn Iraq and Afghanistan. This opposition was spurred by reports
of ill treatment of the detainees. There was little indication of this issue having a major
effect on national politics until 26 August, 2001, when the Norwegian frieghter Tampa
picked 430 asylum seekers from a sinking vessel in Indonesian waters. The Tampa was
refused permission to enter Australia, and a standoff ensued until 31 August when the
New Zealand government agreed to take 150 of the refugees, and the “Pacific solution”
was inaugurated with the remaining asylum seekers sent to the island of Nauru for processing of their claims for refuge.57
The 11 September terrorist attacks were allegedly organised by Saudi Islamist figure
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa’ida organisation, apparently harboured by the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan. The attacks were quickly followed by a declaration by the US
government of a ‘war on terror’ and of its intention to militarily intervene in Afghani‘economic rationalism’ but to the entire capitalist economic system, with its subordination of human
needs to the accumulation of corporate profits. One Nation and Henderson, on the other hand, share a
common ideological commitment to that system. Where they differ is over how the system can be best
managed through a return to 1950s-style government regulation and tariff protectionism or through the
continuation of the post-1980 ‘economic rationalist’ partial revival of 19th-century British laissez-faire
prescriptions”, ‘Letters’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 2001, p. 13.
56 McAllister, ‘Border protection, the 2001 Australian election and the Coalition victory’ at 447
57 Marr and Wilkinson, Dark Victory 102–109
139 |
stan, and a bombing campaign began on 7 October. Howard expressed his government’s
solidarity with the US at each turn of events, as discussed in Chapter 8.
The election campaign through October and early November was dominated by what
were widely perceived as threats to the security and integrity of the nation from terrorism and those who were commonly portrayed as ‘illegal’ arrivals. The unpopularity of
the latter was compounded by reports from 8 October that one group of asylum seekers
had threatened to throw their children overboard as a means of blackmail. Subsequent
refutation of these claims were largely ignored by the government. Howard framed his
campaign around the seriousness of the threats to the national space and the overriding
need for decisive measures of defence. At the Coalition campaign launch, flanked by
Australian flags and with clenched fists, he declared, “We will determine who comes into
this country and the manner in which they come”. This slogan and image were the key
signifiers on Liberal leaflets, advertisements and posters throughout the campaign.58
The election resulted in a strengthened Howard government, which gained a net two
seats in the house from a swing of 2%, with the status quo of a Democrat balance of
power remaining in the Senate.59 McAllister has used a range of polls and relationships
in the results of the 2001 AES to examine the effects of both aspects of border protection on the election results. He found poll results improving markedly for the government in the wake of the two crises discussed above, and that the key aspects of voter
change in the AES were voters changing from the ALP to the Coalition over terrorism
and from the ALP to the Democrats or Greens over asylum seekers. Further, he related
opinions on asylum and the ‘war on terror’ to dimensions of national feelings, measured
by questions relating to: immigration generally; “racial prejudice” (asking a respondent
to rate their own racial prejudice and asking whether such prejudice had increased or
decreased across society in recent years); “national identity” (pride and respect for institutions) and to “procedural fairness” (views on democracy and authority). He found
immigration and prejudice strongly related to asylum seekers, and support for “fairness”
and strength of national identity strongly related to support for the war on terror. Opposition to asylum seekers was also related to views that immigrants increase crime,
58 Ibid. 227
59 See the various results available from drop-down menus at Australian Electoral Commission,
‘Election results 2001 ’, <http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2001/results/index.html>
accessed 12 March 2007
| 140
take jobs and opposition to immigrants from the Middle East.60 However, a key finding
overall by McAllister is that the views on the ‘war on terror’ more strongly explained the
outcome than views on asylum seekers, contrary to some views.61
Yet the issues might be related in more complex ways than are evident from examining the correlations between responses to an attitude questionnaire. The responses to
questions on immigration and refugees may have been coloured by fears of terrorism,
and vice versa. The issues were certainly linked in the more inflammatory media reports
on asylum seekers, such as the claim in the Daily Telegraph that, “A suspected agent of
the Osama bin Laden network,” was aboard the Tampa.62 It is also problematic to assume
that conscious and admitted attitudes towards particular ethnic groups tells the whole
story about how prejudice affects beliefs regarding asylum seekers and national security.
Combining such questionnaire analyses with more qualitative study of public discourse
and of ordinary people’s opinions and actions would be useful in terms of examining
how historically formed myths and stereotypes influence current opinion.63
Betts also found from the 2001 AES that negative attitudes towards asylum seekers
were related to voting for the Coalition, including vote switching from Labor. More
generally she also discusses how feelings of national identity, measured by responses to
questions on pride in and feelings of closeness to Australia, also displayed these relationships. She argues further that the election highlighted a long-term problem for Labor in that both blue-collar workers and the growing group of general white-collar and
service workers tend to have strong feelings of national identity and belonging. Betts’
analysis is limited in that she tabulates frequency counts rather than shows statistical
significance, and importantly, she misses the greater significance (at least apparent from
the AES) in the election, of war and terrorism noted above. These factors, along with the
significant differences in the election results from those of 1998, suggest the importance
of conjunctural events and government action in mobilising national feeling. In Chapter 3 I discussed the limitations of the views promoted not least by Betts that educated
60 McAllister, ‘Border protection, the 2001 Australian election and the Coalition victory’
61 Such as Marr and Wilkinson, Dark Victory
62 This claim, quoted from Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2001, p. 24, along with the fact it was never
mentioned again, and many other media examples from 1998–2001 of the rhetorical connection of
asylum seekers, terrorism and/or “ethnic gangs”, are discussed in Scott Poynting, ‘“Bin Laden in the
suburbs”: Attacks on Arab and Muslim Australians before and after 11 September’, Current Issues in
Criminal Justice (2002), 44–64
63 Which, as the issue of asylum seekers and immigration is not taken up in detail in this study, is a
suggestion for further research.
141 |
white-collar workers represented a “new class” and that other workers were necessarily
more nationalistic, arguing against such determinism in terms of organisation and action and the strikingly ‘old class’ views found among many finance workers. In any case
it is clear that national feeling, historically formed but also refracted through particular
issues of war, terrorism and asylum seekers, favoured the Coalition and played against
Labor in the election. The advantage to the Coalition of these issues soon ebbed and the
next national electoral contest was fought on quite different terrain.
The third Howard term and the 2004 election
The Howard team entered its third term with an electoral mandate and numerous polls
indicating widespread support for its tough national security focus and the evident
marginalisation of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition. The government
moved quickly to implement a policy of intercepting asylum seeker boats and detaining refugees offshore, and unauthorised refugee arrivals slowed considerably.64 Support
continued for the US war on terror, and as crisis built around a confrontation with Iraq
through 2002, the Howard government continued to offer close solidarity, as discussed
in Chapter 8.
However, while nationalism seemed ascendant in the months following the November 2001 election, events soon blunted the clear mobilisation of national feeling around
the Coalition’s security and border protection agenda. As Table 5.19 shows, the stark
opposition to asylum seekers evident immediately before the election softened over the
following years, perhaps due to continued protests against mandatory detention, reportage on the conditions of the detainees, further revelations about the ‘children overboard’
affair and the sinking of craft known as SIEV-X65, experience in a number of communities of living with refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan, or a combination of
these factors.
64 Emma Macdonald, ‘Ruddock resists pressure to close Woomera’, Canberra Times, 12 April 2002, p. 3
65 Tony Kevin, A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of the SIEV X (Melbourne: Scribe
Publications, 2004)
| 142
Table 5.19: Attitudes towards asylum seeker arrival by boat, per cent66
4 Sept 2001
26 Oct 2001
30 Aug 2002
13 Aug 2004
Turn back all
boats carrying
asylum-seekers
50
56
48
35
Allow some boats
to enter Australia
Depending on the
circumstances
38
33
38
47
Allow all boats
carrying asylumseekers to enter
Australia
9
8
10
14
Don’t know
3
3
4
4
Total
100
100
100
100
The poll of 20 September 2004 also indicated 35% of those polled agreed with and
43% opposed the actions of the Howard government regarding the Tampa issue. This
also shows a loss of support compared with the Newspoll of 3 February 200367, which
found when respondents were asked whether they agreed with “the policies of the Howard coalition government on border protection such as the detention of asylum seekers
and the stand taken on the Tampa issue,” 61% agreed and 30% disagreed.
The war on terror proved to be even less of an ongoing basis for broad unity around
defence of the national space. After the swift collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the occupation of that country by US (and later NATO) led forces from late
2001, the US leadership declared the next front in the war on terror to be Iraq, amid
claims about stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qa’ida. However, scepticism about these claims and an active antiwar campaign from 2002 appeared to contribute to declining levels of support for an
Australian contribution to an intervention, particularly one without the support of the
United Nations. A Newspoll released on 3 February 2003 found that 57% were in favour
of a UN-led intervention, but only 18% in favour of an intervention not sanctioned by
the UN.68
66 The question asked each time was, “Thinking now about asylum-seekers or refugees trying to enter
australia illegally. Which one of the following are you personally most in favour of with regards to boats
carrying asylum-seekers entering Australia? Do you think Australia should ...?”, all results reported at
Newspoll, 20 September, 2004 <http://www.newspoll.com.au> accessed 13 March 2007
67 Ibid.,
68 Ibid.,
143 |
Table 5.20 shows the results of a series of polls in which UN support was not specified. Support clearly fell through late 2002 and early 2003. Soon after the highest level
(61%) of opposition to the war recorded by Newspoll, an unprecedented international
day of action was held on 15 February that attracted up to 1 million people in Australia
and at least 15 million people on seven continents. However Table 5.20 also shows how
after the bombing campaign began on 15 March support swung behind the war. Labor’s
response seemed ambivalent up to near the war’s beginning, with leader Simon Crean
heckled for supporting a UN-led intervention at a 100 000 strong Brisbane anti-war
rally on 16 February. Again the ALP leadership appeared to be attempting to construct
an alternate national unity in a manner, as is argued in Chapter 8, which served in part
to give legitimacy to the government’s position. However perhaps the strength of the
movement pressured the ALP to more clearly oppose the war soon after the invasion
commenced.
Table 5.20: Attitudes to joining Iraq war69
14 Aug
2002
18 Sept
2002
21 Jan
2003
25 Mar
2003
1 Apr
2003
16 Apr
2003
Percent in favour
39
36
30
45
51
57
Percent against
50
53
61
47
38
36
Percent uncommitted
11
11
9
8
11
7
Total
100
100
100
100
100
100
Another swift triumph for US-led arms ensued, and President Bush announced “mission accomplished,” on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln on 2 May 2003. The reality of a
long-term occupation and resistance, the complete lack of any weapons of mass destruction, and vastly inaccurate claims of an easy transition to an Iraqi democracy appeared
to soon impinge upon the attitudes of Australians, with a declining minority through
2004 agreeing that the war was worth it, as shown in Table 5.21, with figures taken
from several Newspolls. See Chapter 8 for further discussion and references regarding
the lead-up to and early stages of the war, the Labor position and changing patterns of
69 Newspolls of the dates indicated, <http://www.newspoll.com.au> accessed 13 March 2007. The
relevant question asked for each of the first three polls shown was, “Thinking now about Australia’s
involvement in possible US led military action againstIiraq with the objective of deposing Saddam
Hussein. Are you personally in favour or against Australian forces being part of any u.s. led military
action against Iraq?” The question for each of the subsequent three polls was, “Thinking now about
Iraq and Australia’s involvement in military action against Iraq. are you personally in favour or against
Australian troops being involved in military action against Iraq?”
| 144
public opinion.
Table 5.21: Attitudes to worth of Iraq war70
11 Feb
2004
4 May
2004
27 Dec
2004
Percent who agree that the war in Iraq was worth the cost
46
40
32
Percent who disagree that the war in Iraq was worth the cost
45
50
58
Percent uncommitted
9
10
10
Total
100
100
100
The election of 9 October 2004 was held therefore in the context of considerable opposition to and scepticism about the Howard government’s stance on national security and
border protection. However Howard strengthened his position, winning a net five seats
on a swing of 1.8%, and winning a majority of one in the senate that would take office on
July 1, 2005, the first time a government had secured senate control since 1980.71
Howard and his team did not emphasise security issues, rather contrasting the experience and supposed expertise at economic management of the Coalition in contrast with
an ALP led by Mark Latham. Much comment on this election has focused on claims by
the government that interest rates would always be significantly higher under a Labor
administration, as McAllister and Bean note.72 But the latter also argue that this issue
did not appear to directly win votes for the Coalition, as they find from an analysis of the
2004 AES that concern over interest rates did not rate highly as an issue, and there was
no significant correlation between this concern and vote switching. Easton and Gerlach
come to the same conclusion from regression analysis of aggregate voting patterns and
demographic data (including on housing and mortgage levels) of each electorate73. The
key issues enabling the Coalition to largely maintain its previous base and win more
voters evident from the AES were more general attitudes to the economy and leadership
question asked in each case was, “Overall, do you think it was worth going to war in Iraq or not?”.
71 Australian Electoral Commission, ‘Two party preferred by state 2004’, <http://results.aec.gov.
au/12246/results/HouseTppByState-12246.htm> accessed 14 March 2007; Australian Electoral
Commission, ‘Seats which changed hands 2004’, <http://results.aec.gov.au/12246/results/
HouseSeatsWhichChangedHands-12246-NAT.htm > accessed 14 March 2007; Australian Electoral
Commission, ‘Senators elected 2004’, <http://results.aec.gov.au/12246/results/SenateSenatorsElected12246-NAT.htm> accessed 14 March 2007
72 Ian McAllister and Clive Bean, ‘Leaders, the economy or Iraq? Explaining voting in the 2004
Australian election’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 52/4 (2006), 604–621
73 Steve Easton and Richard Gerlach, ‘Interest rates and the 2004 Australian election’, Australian
Journal of Political Science, 40/4 (2005), 559–566
145 |
evaluations. MacAllister and Bean relate the former effect to generally rising economic
evaluations measured by each AES from 1998, and a sharp rise from 2001. Leadership
evaluations showed some complex effects. The Coalition gained more overall from positive evaluations of Howard and negative attitudes to Latham, especially related to high
ratings for qualities described as “intelligent” and “strong leader”, but also lost some support from negative evaluations of Howard, particularly related to qualities described as
“honest” and “trustworthy”. Further, MacAllister and Bean show that such evaluations
of Howard indirectly account for much of the losses the Coalition suffered over Iraq, in
that controlling for the Howard effect increases the correlation between opposing the
Iraq war and defecting from the Coalition. There were also further losses from Labor
to the Greens74.
The national unity which the Howard government had previously constructed around
securing the nation’s borders had apparently cracked to some extent in 2002–04, but this
does not appear to effect the overall election results, rather some Coalition losses and
the further confirmation of the Greens as a leftist alternative75. We could suggest that
the economic changes sketched above, in addition to the construction of Howard, particularly in 2001, as a strong and resolute leader, had enabled a more general narrative
of national unity around economic performance and decisive leadership to have appeal.
However the very decisiveness of the Howard government’s efforts to project a border
protection and security nationalism produced discontent around not only refugees and
war, but also trust and honesty as many claims the government had made about Iraq
and asylum seekers became unstuck. Further, it soon became evident, as discussed in
the next section, that it is not at all a simple matter to make people see “the economy”,
and specifically further neo-liberal change, in national terms. Thus it seems that Labor
began to more successfully project an alternative national narrative from 2002, if in uneven ways. This conclusion was the basis for taking several events and issues from the
period 2002–2007 for the subsequent four chapters in this study.
74 McAllister and Bean, ‘Leaders, the economy or Iraq? Explaining voting in the 2004 Australian
election’
75 According the results cited in footnotes 46, 59 and 69, the Greens increased their national senate
vote to 7.7%, from 5.0% in 2001 and in 2.7% in 1998.
| 146
The fourth Howard term and the defeat of 2007
Despite the contradictions suggested above, the Howard team entered its fourth term in
its strongest position ever, with a Senate majority in effect from July 2005. This enabled
some long-term Coalition goals to be raised including Voluntary Student Unionism,
further media deregulation, and also the key issue for the fourth Howard term (and the
issue concentrated on here), further deregulation of the labour market.
The federal government announced the framework for a new industrial relations regime in May 2005, to replace the 1996 Workplace Relations Act. The new regime, under
the general banner of WorkChoices, was passed by parliament in December 2005 and
came into affect 31 March the following year. Key changes included the introduction of
measures intended for the 1996 Act but changed due to the compromise reached at that
time with the Democrats: that is, Australian Workplace Agreements would no longer
have to pass a no-disadvantage test with respect to the pay and conditions specified in
awards, and would only have to comply with five basic conditions; the number of allowable matters in awards would be reduced from 20 to 10; unfair dismissals procedures
would be removed from workplaces with less than 100 employees, or in any case for a
larger employer in which ‘genuine operational reasons’ could be cited for a dismissal;
industrial action by unions would have to follow a regime of notices and secret ballots
for the action to be legal, as well as the existing restrictions to bargaining periods; further restrictions would be made on the right of entry to workplaces for union officials
including prior notice and the need to name employees requesting assistance; and many
of the arbitration powers of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission would be
removed, and many of its minima setting powers given to a new Australian Fair Pay
Commission. An Australian Building and Construction Commission was also created,
with very wide powers to question building workers and very heavy penalties for noncompliance76.
The legislation was met with considerable mobilised opposition and appeared to spur
increased activity by the union movement. Four national rounds of rallies were held,
with campaign sources estimating the participation at 300 000 on 30 June – 1 July 2005,
600 000 on 15 November 2005, 300 000 on 28 June 2006 and 270 000 on 30 November
76 Richard Hall, ‘The WorkChoices revolution’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 48/3 (2005), 291–303
147 |
200677. Unions NSW claimed Table 5.22 shows that according to a series of Newspolls
Work Choices appeared to become increasingly unpopular, significantly when phrased
in the national sense of whether the legislation was “good for the economy”.
Table 5.22: Attitudes to whether Work Choices legislation is “good for the
economy”, per cent78
25 Oct 2005
21 Dec 2005
11 Apr 2006
8 Jan 2007
3 Apr 2007
Good
31
29
23
34
32
Bad
40
43
48
47
51
Uncommitted
29
28
29
19
17
Total
100
100
100
100
100
Hall argues that WorkChoices was more than fulfillment of a wish list for the largest employers. He sees Howard’s WorkChoices-related rhetoric through 2005, in introducing the concept of the “enterprise worker” within a dynamic and flexible economy,
closely linked to the concurrent Independent Contractors Act, encouraging the growth
of contractors, and to welfare to work policies, which, Hall argues, would create a larger
pool of cheap labour. The term “enterprise worker” is ambiguous, deliberately so, Hall
suggests, implying both the need for individual initiative and a rhetorical construction
of the enterprise as the centre of all individual and family aspirations. “It reveals the
place of industrial relations policy in a broader, more encompassing vision of the role of
the state, the market and the family. And this—Howard’s vision—is the real revolution
at the heart of WorkChoices”79.
In each of the four focus groups of ALP and Greens branches conducted (between
August 2006 and August 2007) for this study, there was some discussion of the way socio-economic change in the Howard years had impacted upon general social and politi77 ‘300 000 join union protest’, 6 July, Green Left Weekly, 2005 <http://www.greenleft.org.
au/2005/632/34406> accessed 17 March 2007; Sue Bolton, ‘Only people power can win’, 23 November,
Green Left Weekly, 2005 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2005/650/33341> accessed 17 March 2007;
Graham Mathews, ‘300 000 protested Work Choices: “Strike action needed to win”’, 5 July, Green Left
Weekly, 2006 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/674/6317> accessed 17 March 2007; Graham Mathews
and Sue Bolton, ‘Hundreds of thousands mobilise against Work Choices’, 2 December, Green Left
Weekly, 2006 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/693/36010> accessed 17 March 2007
question asked in each case was, “Overall, do you think these changes to industrial relations are good, or
bad for the australian economy?”
79 Hall, ‘The WorkChoices revolution’ at 302
| 148
cal forms of consciousness. Key relevant phrases and passages were coded into themes
(as discussed in Chapter 4) as shown in Table 5.23.
Table 5.23 Focus group discussion relating to ‘Howard nation’
Theme
Comments
Individualism and
selfishness
Tom [Regional ALP]: So it’s a bit of that transition from like cooperative, collective vision of Australia, now it’s a selfish, competitive,
acquisitive [yeah, yeah around the table] country. That constituency of people who care about other people is shrinking, and that’s
what’s happened to the Labor Party, it’s lost all of its constituents,
because the economic policies of the Howard government have
increased general wealth.
Fred [urban Greens]: We live in a society that encourages [irrational
consumerism] now [Celine: yeah], like it’s basically there’s so much
fear I think, and it comes back to the fear issue, the idea that you
have to accumulate all this, you have to buy this, to be on top.
Increased
individualism linked
to mobilisation of
prejudice
Bernard [Urban ALP]: One of the thing’s I’ve seen about the left is
how in the last 10 years there’s been a really substantial change in
the way Australians view themselves and their country, and become much more individualist country. I’m sick of the dog whistle
politics of the last 10 years where we’ve really seen an American
form of politics come in where you campaign on an issue merely
because it’s going to alienate a certain percentage of the electorate.
Howard
government’s
active promotion
of conservative
nationalism
Bevan: [Regional Greens] The question in my mind has been does
the media reflect the national identity, or does it help create the
national identity? [Bill: It helps create it]. And if the Howard government is changing the ownership rules, why are they doing so, is
there some sort of agenda there, because it seems to me that the
Howard government quite often legislates in favour of its mates,
the big end of town. So are they seeing it as a win to their concept
of nationalism?
Alienation and
passivity
Tim [Urban ALP]: What’s been going on for the last 8 or 9 years I
don’t believe the public have sympathy for, I think a lot of the public have given up or don’t believe they have a say in what will move
us forward. They’ve been somewhat beaten into submission, and
don’t have a lot of interest.
As discussed in Chapter 9, each of these groups was concerned about WorkChoices
and positive about the ability of the anti-WorkChoices campaign to help forge an alternative to the Coalition. However Table 5.23 indicates that the discussion centred on
the broad change wrought through the Howard years was posed in each group (with
no discernable dissent among the 28 participants) in negative terms of a more selfish,
individualist and conservative society, through conscious government policy and the
less direct effects of increased wealth, and an alienated and passive opposition. These
politically engaged opponents of the former government appear to largely accept the
149 |
factual basis of the Coalition’s narrative of a newly prosperous, enterprising and culturally unified nation. In regard to the first comment, I would suggest that at least part
of this perception is due to the overwhelming hegemony in mainstream political and
media discourse of a conception of the “economy” as a reified abstraction, linked to the
fate of the entire nation, rather than a site of social struggle (one of several linked reifications that will reappear in this study). Even as they reject the government’s framing
of these perceived changes, their confidence and morale appears sapped by the changes
themselves. This suggests a particular advantage for conservative nationalism at a time
of relative affluence. This conclusion appears supported by Goot and Watson’s examination of Howard’s electoral success through analysis of the role of social structure and
issues evident in each AES from 1993 to 2004: they stress Howard’s success in forging a
cross-class populist alliance around conservative values (with, however, an evident volatility of Coalition working-class support), changing but still structurally distinct voting
blocks for each main party group, and the gain made by the Coalition from perceptions
of general economic improvement80.
In any case the Coalition suffered a heavy defeat at the elections of 24 November 2007
at the hands of a Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd since 4 December 2006. In the lower
house the government suffered a two-party preferred swing against it of 5.4%, leading to
the net loss of 21 seats and a workable if not overwhelming Labor majority of eight, and
the spectacular loss of Howard’s seat of Bennelong. However with only 32 out of 76 senators from 1 July 2008 the Rudd government is faced with forging combinations of conservatives, Greens, Family First’s Steve Fielding and/or independent Nick Xenophon to
pass legislation through the upper house. The Greens inched forward as the progressive
electoral alternative, with, in the context of the collapse of the Democrat vote, a senate
vote of 9.0% (from 7.7% in 2004) and a net gain of one senator, giving the Greens, with
five senators, ‘official party’ status for the first time81. Indications from the AES 2007 are
that opposition to WorkChoices played a significant role in the result. Industrial rela80 Murray Goot and Ian Watson, ‘Explaining Howard’s success: Social structure, issue agendas and
party support, 1993–2004’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 42/2 (2007), 253–276
81 Australian Electoral Commission, ‘Two party preferred by state 2007’, <http://results.aec.
gov.au/13745/Website/HouseTppByState-13745.htm> accessed 3 May 2008; Australian Electoral
Commission, ‘Seats which changed hands 2007’, <http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/
HouseSeatsWhichChangedHands-13745-NAT.htm> accessed 3 May 2008; Australian Electoral
Commission, ‘Senate results — first preferences by group 2007’, <http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/
Website/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-13745-NAT.htm> accessed 3 May 2008; Australian Electoral
Commission, ‘Senators elected 2007’, <http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/SenateSenatorsElected13745-NAT.htm> accessed 3 May 2008
| 150
tions was marked as an important issue by 70% of respondents, and 62% of the whole
sample indicated they opposed WorkChoices. Of the latter disapprovers, 66% voted Labor and only 17% for the Coalition. Of those who indicated they had voted Liberal in
2004 and Labor in 2007, 18% approved of WorkChoices and 82% disapproved, while
among National to Labor switchers there was 100% disapproval of WorkChoices82.
In terms of this project, WorkChoices was a central and even culminating aspect of Howard’s efforts to recast a nation (if Hall is correct), which has been countered with contradictory responses in terms of ‘national interests’ and ‘national values’ from the broadly left
sectors of Australian politics (as will be seen further in Chapter 9). As noted in the first two
sections of this chapter, the evidence in terms of socio-economic indicators and attitudes
for Howard’s assessment of a new era of flexibility, choice and optimism is thin and contradictory at best. There is some level of Howard’s ‘comfort’ in increased wealth and income,
and some indicators of increased national pride and attachment. However, in increased
inequality and insecurity and discontent with economic change there are also indications
of Rudd’s “Brutopia”. I have argued that although the Howard team managed at several key
points to mobilise national feeling to win support for its general program, unity around an
economic ‘national interest’ has always appeared particularly hard to achieve for long. The
unpopularity of WorkChoices and the 2007 election results shows that WorkChoices failed
to become the centrepiece of an Australia reconstructed around a socially conservative and
economically neo-liberal nationalism, and has in fact broken down further national unity
around supposed common economic goals and aspirations. I have suggested that the ability of Howard to mobilise national unity has been limited by the extent and consistency of
oppositional forces that can present alternative forms of attachment and belonging. That
is, I am suggesting that the extent to which the left has relied upon a national framing of its
program is an inherent limitation to any clear alternative to conservatism. In the following four chapters the broad context and initial argument presented here is developed with
reference to key political developments relating to national history, the war on terror as
defence of the nation, trade, culture and globalisation, and national values.
82 Note that the numbers indicating any particular vote switch is quite small so therefore the margin of
error is quite large. Bean, McAllister and Gow, ‘Australian Election Study, 2007’
151 |
| 152
Chapter 6
A national history, or
contested memories?
In the previous chapter I presented an outline of socio-economic and attitudinal change
and political developments over the period of the Howard governments. This enabled
an initial elaboration of the central argument of this thesis, that a key structuring principle for the varied ideologies and organisations in Australian political life is the manner
in which the inevitable contradiction between national unity and sectional difference is
managed, the fundamental ‘section of the nation’ being class. More particularly, given
the focus of this thesis on the Australian left, a key feature of social democracy is the
contradiction between the desires to be both an expression of sectional movements,
and of the nation as a whole. Generally speaking, conservative forces have succeeded
when they have submerged, for enough people, consciousness of sectional interests into
a unified national interest. In contrast, social democratic forces have achieved success
when they have credibly balanced, for enough people, national interests and sectional
interests. In the following chapters this argument will be built upon by analysis of more
specific events and issues. In the present chapter struggles over the meaning of national
history are discussed, as key sites for the varied expression of Australian nationalism and
for ideological, political and institutional conflicts over Australian national identity.
In this chapter I proceed by firstly critically outlining a number of interventions, from
academic commentators and political actors, in the so-called ‘history wars’ (generally
seen as a front in the ‘culture wars’) of recent decades. As explained in Chapter 4, for
this chapter and the subsequent four chapters the main primary data for analysis are focus group transcripts, print media samples for relevant issues over specific periods, and
other relevant texts produced by political actors in the same periods. For this chapter
two such issues and periods were chosen. In the second section of the chapter, articles
relating to the federal government’s “History Summit” of 17 August 2006 were taken
153 |
from August–September 2006, and also a supplementary sample from 10–11 October
2007 was taken when outcomes from the summit were announced (from the range of
newspapers as outlined in Chapter 4). This sample is analysed along with comments on
general historical issues from the project’s focus group discussions. In the third section
of the chapter, the 150th anniversary of the 1854 Eureka Stockade rebellion is examined. This was chosen as it allowed examination of a recent, specific (and as shall be
seen, highly contested) episode of historical remembering. The media sample is from
November–December 2004. The two episodes are examined out of chronological order,
as the summit was to some extent a culmination of long-running history wars, while
as I shall argue the Eureka event runs counter to much of the public discourse over
the course of these wars. Relevant data was generated from the focus groups by asking a question about what the national flag and ‘Eureka flag’ evoked for participants, a
question designed to encourage participants to think both about national symbols and
national history (see Appendix).
To reprise some of the points discussed in Chapter 3: particular constructions of national history are often seen as major components of the ideological structures of nationalism and particular feelings of national identity. As is clear from the subtitle of his
book, “myth” is a central part of the nationalist program for Hobsbawn, “remould[ing]”
pre-national communities.1 Gellner implies a similar point, as although he stresses the
radical discontinuity between pre-national and national modes of life, he also notes
the way “cultural, historical and other inheritances” are used as “raw material” in nation building.2 For Smith conscious selections of elements of the past are crucial to the
construction of national identities, but through his metaphor of “archaeology,” he also
suggests how such choices are not arbitrary but are materially constrained.3 Turner discusses the strong connections between narrative forms, myths and the way national
feeling is expressed.4 The inevitability of differences between historical narratives and
actual history is argued for by Clendinnen, who sees story telling about the past as a
necessary and positive part of how feelings of belonging to a nation are adopted but,
significantly for the debates discussed in this chapter, sees this process as quite different
1 2 3 4 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 189
Smith, ‘Gastronomy or geology?’
Turner, National Fictions
| 154
from the also very necessary attempt to objectively understand the historical processes.5
Relevant to the debates discussed below, Clendinnen’s position seems to be related not
just to a rejection of ideological falsification, but also to a postmodernist inspired incredulity towards metanarratives, in rejecting that an a historical account can aim for both
objectivity and a clear overarching position.
Examples of the remoulding of historical processes into national myths are recognised
at several points in the print media samples examined in this chapter, suggesting this is a
widely recognised phenomena. In a letter to The Australian Anthony Brown notes that,
“The artist’s impression of James Cook raising the British flag at Botany Bay in April
1770 under the heading, ‘Ten history subjects all Australian students should know,’” in
the 19–20 August 2006 issue of the paper, “perfectly illustrates the romanticisation of
Australian history, commemorating an event which never took place”. That is, the event
“took place on Possession Island, off Cape York, in August,” and the painting anachronistically showed the Union Jack, “which was adopted after the act of Union of Great
Britain and Ireland in 1801”.6 The latter point suggests a reification of an eternal nation
of Great Britain, rather than the historical process of state formation through through
English dominance of neighbouring nations. Cheryl O’Connor, when visiting Gallipoli,
contrasts what she had previously understood as “the story of the withdrawal of the Allies … how we were able to trick the Turkish soldiers with that ingenious mechanism
that enabled bullets to be fired at random allowing thousands of our soldiers to escape
from right under their noses,” to what she was told by a Turkish guide, that “the defeated
enemy of the Turks was allowed to withdraw, rather than to be routed”. This made her
love the Gallipoli story more, and she posits the experience as an example of the need to
avoid a “simplistic linear road” in history telling.7
Macintyre contends that the practice of historical research in Australia has always
been the site of political struggle. Early historical work, based on an attachment to Australia as part of what was seen as the organic family of the British empire, was challenged by radical nationalists such as Brian Fitzpatrick and Robin Gollan from the 1940s
(whose views were discussed in Chapter 4). The radicals brought conflict, between an
exploitative empire and a colonial Australia and between classes within Australia, into
5 Inga Clendinnen, ‘The History Question’, Quarterly Essay, 23 (2006), 1–72
6 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 22 August 2006, p. 13
7 Cheryl O’Connor, ‘Questioning key to unravelling the past’, The Courier-Mail, 24 August 2006, p. 29
155 |
the narrative of the nation’s development. Manning Clark, while in many ways following conservative orthodoxy in viewing historical development as the work of ‘great men’
and the foibles of human nature, increasingly became distrusted by the right through
the 1960s and 1970s due to his attempts to view the Soviet Union objectively, to the
adoption of Clark by left nationalists, and to Clark’s enthusiasm for Whitlam’s nationalist project. In 1984 a former student of Clark’s, Geoffrey Blainey, sparked a controversy
by arguing the Asian immigration should be pulled back in line with then majority
opinion. Blainey argued that his historical knowledge was the basis for his views that
British aspects of Australian identity were largely positive and that a nation needed to be
very cautious with the incorporation of different ethnic groups. Macintyre outlines the
fraught conflicts among historians in 1984–85 as Blainey in media interventions cited
his position of Dean of the History faculty of Melbourne University. By 1988, questions
of the treatment of Indigenous people, and the negativity or positivity of Australian
history were struggled over in media coverage, public events and varied historical texts
produced in relation to the bicentenary of the landing of the First Fleet.8
Macintyre stresses the small number of academic historians and the limited direct audience for their work, despite the importance for what they do in systematically understanding the past. He argues that many struggles over history are not really to do with
theoretical, methodological or factual aspects of historiography at all, but are coopted
into more general ideological-political struggles. Professional historians, as a small and
poorly organised professional group which is entrusted with what is widely seen as the
vital national work of telling a people’s story, are “easy targets” for particular ideological
offensives.9 Given the central contention of this thesis, we can expect such struggles over
national myths and narratives in fact to take clear ideological form, and that attempts by
conservatives to reify national unity and deny conflict are answered by the bulk of the left
with attempts to balance national unity with class and other intra-national struggles.
History wars in the Howard era
As outlined in the previous chapter, central to Howard’s decisive election victory in 1996
was his ability to represent the Keating government as a creature of sectional, divisive,
elite interests and to oppose to this a representation of national unity that was both
8 Stuart Macintyre, The History Wars (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2003) 50–118
9 Ibid. 13
| 156
traditional and positive. A key element of this construction of the national story was a
claim that historiography and history teaching had been seized by leftwing intellectuals
who attempted both to impose their ideology onto the past, and to question the objective historical record. At the heart of this claim is, I shall argue, a very contradictory
amalgam (containing accusations both of the imposition of a rigid grand narrative and
the denial of grand narratives), but nevertheless it was a trope that continued through
the Howard years, articulated both by government spokespeople and conservative intellectuals.
Geoffrey Blainey advanced a key signifier for this ideological effort in 1993. In putting forward a normative balance sheet of Australian history, he argued that a former
uncritically positive “Three Cheers” assessment of the national record, “Australian history as largely a success”, had more recently been overthrown by an orthodox, “Black
Armband” view, “the multicultural folk busily preaching their message that until they
arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace”.10 The image appeared to derive from
the long-standing use of a black armband as a symbol of Indigenous commemoration
and protest. McKenna notes that such armbands were worn at protests of the 1938 sesquicentenary of the First Fleet, the 1970 anniversary of Cook’s landing and the 1988
bicentenary of the First Fleet.11
In any case, the image of the black armband was taken up by Howard and others as
signifying the guilt and shame they claimed a leftist orthodoxy sought to impose. Soon
after taking power, on 18 November 1996, Howard argued in a Robert Menzies Lecture
that, “The ‘black armband’ view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation,
racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination”.12
However any cursory examination of the work of, for example, Henry Reynolds (as
discussed below a key figure in this perceived orthodoxy), contradicts the claim that
those who sought to analyse the effects on Indigenous people of the European occupa10 Geoffrey Blainey, ‘Drawing up a balance sheet of our history’, Quadrant, 37/7–8 (1993), 10–15
at 11. The metaphor of the balance sheet, and the singular index in the understanding of history as
one between pride and sorrow, incidently presupposes a unified national interest can be better or
worse served, rather than the historical development of complex social formation in which particular
developments and processes may be in the interests of some and against that of others.
11 Mark McKenna, ‘Different perspectives on black armband history’, Parliamentary Library Politics
and Public Administration Group, 1997 <http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/pubs/rp/1997-98/98rp05.
htm> accessed 1 October 2007
12 Ibid.,
157 |
tion of Australia stood for a simplistic dichotomy of all whites as guilty and all blacks as
victims. The Other Side of the Frontier13 does attempt to recast the narrative of heroic and
peaceful settlement into one of expropriation and guerrilla war. However, in With the
White People14 Reynolds stresses there were also significant relations of cooperation, and
that Indigenous people were an active part of social and economic change throughout
the continent from 1788. In This Whispering in Our Hearts15 Reynolds charts the story
of those whites who, from the earliest days of settlement, fought for the rights of Indigenous people. That is, Reynolds recognises that historical change within a social formation involves differential interests and political positions, and the misrepresentation of
him, whether wilful or not, appears to derive from conservative assumptions of unified
national interests and homogenous blocks of races or cultures.
The claim that Australian historiography is dominated by a negative, leftist orthodoxy
has been taken up strongly in the current decade by freelance historian Keith Windschuttle. His theses were advanced in three articles for Quadrant towards the end of
200016, and developed into The Fabrication of Aboriginal History17 released in late 2002.
Windschuttle claims that in regard to the colonisation of Tasmania (with other areas of
the continent to be covered in later volumes) leftist historians have falsified the number
of killings that can be empirically verified, falsely interpreted the violence that did occur
as a genocide, prettified the nature of Indigenous society and ignored the generally good
intentions of colonial authorities.
The sustained controversy in the public sphere sparked by these two texts can be seem
by searches for the terms “windschuttle” and “history” in the Australia media sources
collated in the Factiva news media database, which yield 24 hits for 2000, 35 hits for
2001, 99 hits for 2002, 241 hits for 2003, and 86 hits for 2004. Given that Windschuttle
attacked what he claimed was an academic orthodoxy driven by ideology and contemptuous of the facts, it is unsurprising that a number of texts appeared critiquing his work.
A collection of essays criticising Windschuttle and edited by former Quadrant editor
13 Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of
Australia (2nd edn., Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1995) First published in 1981.
14 Henry Reynolds, With the White People (Ringwood: Penguin, 1990)
15 Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998)
16 Keith Windschuttle, ‘The myths of frontier massacres in Australian history. Part 1: The invention of
massacre stories’, Quadrant, 44/10 (2000), 8–21, Keith Windschuttle, ‘The myths of frontier massacres in
Australian history. Part 2: The fabrication of the Aboriginal death toll’, Quadrant, 44/11 (2000), 17–24,
Keith Windschuttle, ‘The myths of frontier massacres in Australian history: Part 3: Massacre stories and
the policy of separatism’, Quadrant, 44/12 (2000), 6–20
17 Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2003)
| 158
Robert Manne appeared in 2003. Boyce highlights how Windschuttle uncritically cites
official records as absolute truth rather than recognising that they are often self-interested and ideological representations of reality, and shows that a wider use of sources
provides ample evidence for a substantially higher number of killings of Tasmanian Aborigines than the 118 that Windschuttle will concede. Further he points to the very
narrow base of evidence for Windscuttle’s sweeping characterisations of Indigenous society.18 Reynolds concedes some referencing errors but argues these are too minor to
warrant a charge of ‘fabrication’, and further argues that Windschuttle’s contention that
there was no Indigenous concept of ‘land’ is misplaced given that there are many Indigenous words for “country”.19
Attwood also details empirical failings and inconsistencies in Windschuttle’s work,
but places Windschuttle’s apparent errors in methodological and political contexts in
considerably more detail than the above critics. On the methodological front Attwood
argues that both Windschuttle and many he opposes are naïve “historical realists” who
do not recognise that much of the written historical record is contextual, partial and
socially and politically interested and hence not a simple mirror to the past, apart from
there being particular limitations on knowledge of the colonial frontier.20 He insists that
an alternative of accepting multiple perspectives, of, “sharing histories” is not relativist,
“does not hold that all historical accounts are true or equal, that anything goes”. However
it is not clear where the position of historical truth (or any possible approximation to it)
is in this conception, as he appears to judge the worth of interpretations by their “value”
rather than their effectiveness in accounting for the available evidence.21 That is, it is not
clear whether for Attwood, as argued in Chapter 2, there is no necessary contradiction
between being aware of the representational and ideological nature of social discourse
and the limitations of the historical record and making empirically-based assessments
of the objective nature of social reality. Hence his position might add grist to the mill
of the kind of conservative amalgams of leftist politics and postmodernist scepticism of
truth claims discussed below.
18 James Boyce, ‘Fantasy Island’, in Robert Manne (ed.), Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s
Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2003), 17–78
19 Henry Reynolds, ‘Terra nullius reborn ’, in Robert Manne (ed.), Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s
Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2003), 109–138
20 Bain Attwood, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History (Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2005)
161–163
21 Ibid. 189–190
159 |
Attwood further and more persuasively suggests that Windschuttle acts ideologically
in close connection with a grouping of “Howard intellectuals” in the political and media spheres and the academy.22 In this he seems to be positing a quite specific grouping
of intellectuals that have captured key positions within ideological institutions, including (and led by) the executive arm of government. The contention that such a grouping exists and is influential relates to the differing opinions outlined in Chapter 3 over
whether Howard’s views passively reflected widespread forms of national feeling, or
whether the Howard government actively sought to mould forms of national identity
and culture. Further evidence of the ‘activist’ view is the controversy surrounding the
National Museum of Australia, which was criticised by Windschuttle and a number of
media commentators, particularly in The Australian, for exaggerating frontier conflict
and Aboriginal deaths. This led to the director Dawn Casey (of Indigenous background)
failing to have her contract renewed in 2003, and the museum’s board to be changed in
a more conservative direction.23 In Chapter 9, debates over so-called ‘Australian values’
are discussed, including another seemingly ‘activist’ move by the government in 2006,
to mandate in schools the flying of the Australian flag and the display of a list of values
superimposed over the historical signifier of the ANZAC medical orderly John Simpson
and his donkey at Gallipoli. The nature of the media texts discussed below also support
Attwood’s claim.
However neither Attwood, nor the other Windschuttle critics cited, come to grips
with why such a grouping developed and became powerful. In terms of the theoretical
bases of this thesis, this grouping could be seen as a particular segment of the organic
intellectuals of the ruling elite, characterised by the espousal of neo-liberal economics and conservative nationalism, and by a militant fervour to engage in ‘culture war’
with perceived elite orthodoxies of postmodernism and leftism. Further, it could be
suggested that this grouping is the most conscious ideological expression of the specific
form of neo-liberalism outlined in the previous chapter, and part of the means by which
Howard took and held power.
In the previous chapter, indicators of increased national feelings from successive attitude surveys were noted. Not least of these indicators was increased levels of pride in
national history, particularly an increase in the more intense feelings of national pride.
22 Ibid. 60–65
23 Macintyre, The History Wars 191–201
| 160
Further, the success of the Howard government in mobilising national feeling into political support for the Coalition was outlined. This evidence suggests that the conservatives gained from the prosecution of the history wars and the left was on the defensive.
The balance of forces in such ‘history wars’ can be further analysed through the media
coverage of the History Summit of 17 August 2006, which appeared to be a culmination
of the history offensives of the Howard government and its intellectual allies. The next
section will take this event, as well as reflecting on themes relating to national history
emerging from the focus group discussions.
The history summit
In his 2006 Australia Day address Howard reiterated his polemic against what he saw as
current trends in historiography, and most particularly in history teaching. A critique of
the alleged ‘black armband’ view was still evident, but now as part of a form of multiculturalism that Howard says, quoting conservative historian Gregory Melleuish, “came to
be associated with, ‘The transformation of Australia from a bad old Australia that was
xenophobic, racist and monocultural to a good new Australia that is culturally diverse,
tolerant and exciting’. Such a view was always a distortion and a caricature”. In his critique of historiography per se, Howard focused more on questions of epistemology and
pedagogy. He argued that, “The time has also come for root and branch renewal of the
teaching of Australian history in our schools”. This was both because of the need for a
stronger place in the curriculum, and because of the way it was taught:
Too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of ‘themes’ and ‘issues’. And too often, history, along with other subjects in the
humanities, has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective
record of achievement is questioned or repudiated.24
Howard’s injunction amalgamated the views that history should be a distinct, important subject, and an opposition between on the one hand a “structured narrative,” about
an “objective record of achievement,” and on the other, “themes” and “relativism”. His
second point appears somewhat contradictory, as it is hard to envisage a narrative without some driving themes, and Howard does in fact enumerate a number of what seem
quite like themes regarding the “ideas that galvanised the Enlightenment”, “evolution
24 Howard, ‘A sense of balance: The Australian achievement in 2006’,
161 |
of parliamentary democracy”, and the “original ways in which Australians from diverse
backgrounds have created our own distinct history”. It may be that a particular set of
themes, rather than an absence of themes, is what is actually being argued for.
On 18 July that year federal education minister Julie Bishop announced a “History
Summit” for 17 August, to discuss the need for a “renaissance in the teaching of Australian history in our schools” arguing that, “It is essential that we put a structured narrative back into the teaching of Australian history so that by the time students finish secondary schooling, they have a thorough understanding of their nation’s past, and how
we have become a modern liberal democracy”.25 The participants encompassed what
Bishop called the “sensible centre” of the history debate.
An examination of the print media coverage of the summit reveals a number of aspects of the ideological use of national feeling. In institutional terms it was a discourse
largely disseminated by the broadsheet press, and disproportionately by The Australian.
Of the 94 items in the summit-related sample from the periods noted above and the six
newspapers used for each sample (as discussed in Chapter 4), 77 were from the three
broadsheet papers, and 44 from The Australian. This institutional pattern follows that
found by Scalmer and Goot in their study of the use by several News Limited newspapers of discourse about “elites”. That is, the more “elite” the newspaper, particularly The
Australian with its high concentration of business people, managers, professionals, those
on higher incomes and the university educated among its readership, the higher the rate
of articles substantially about Australian “elites” (using that specific term). Semantic
analysis showed that “elites” were invariably represented in a populist way as a negative, parasitic force strongly opposed to an undifferentiated mass of “us”, “the people,”
or “Australia”26, that is, displaying typical aspects conservative nationalism. Linguistic
aspects of my sample on history and history teaching also reveal themes relevant to the
ideological and political bases of manifestations of national feeling, as shown below.
Unity of the nation and its history
Two themes that were strongly evident in a number of articles, particularly by commentators writing in The Australian, were the unified nature of the nation and the ‘na25 Julie Bishop, ‘Australian history summit’, 2006
<http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Bishop/2006/07/B001180706.asp> accessed 1 October 2006
26 Scalmer and Goot, ‘Elites constructing elites: News Limited’s newspapers, 1996–2002’
| 162
tional interest’ in history taught being as a narrative. This is often reflected in collective
pronouns. Conservative historian Mervyn Bendle ties together common past, identity
and interests by arguing that a dominant “postmodernist” approach to history teaching
means, “We have no sense of who we are, where we come from, what we stand for and
where we are seeking to go as a nation”.27
Howard in his address to the Summit, which was printed in The Australian, appeared
to acknowledge the need for a diversity of influences that made up Australia, arguing
that there cannot be a “proper understanding of Australian history without some understanding of those movements and attitudes and values and traditions of other countries
that had an influence on the formation of Australia”. But his diversity appeared to consist
of homogenous national-cultural blocks, indicated by the use of the definite article in
phrases such as, “the British and the other European influences … the Western intellectual position, the Enlightenment and all that’s associated with it”28 [emphasis added].
That is, recognition of the varied class, ideological and political influences on the formation and changing nature of the Australian nation is not very evident.
This recognition is even less evident in the edited version of a school history curriculum outline draft (and hence a central part of the summit process) by Melleuish
also printed in The Australian, in which “the nature of Britishness as being founded on
liberty and profit,”29 is posited. As discussed in relation to the Eureka Stockade below, it
is widely recognized that a working class rather than ‘profit’-related aspect of Britishness
in the form of Chartism was a significant influence in the struggle for democratic rights
in Australia. For Melleuish cultures are tied to homogenous nations or religions, when
he states, “Australian history has involved several imported cultures including English
Anglicanism, Scottish Presbyterianism, English nonconformity and Irish Catholicism”,
and, “the rationalist values of the Enlightenment” also appear homogenous.
A key signifier in “the” Australian narrative for Melleuish is “development”: “The economic development of Australia needs to be examined as the wool industry developed
… The development of free settlement … the ideal of the independent yeoman farmer
and how this ideal stood at odds with economic development… development of free
institutions, responsible government and democracy”. This lexical choice has syntactic
27 Mervyn Bendle, ‘History never retreats’, The Australian 21 July 2006, p. 14
28 John Howard, ‘Let’s understand our Western institutional heritage’, The Australian, 18 August 2006,
p. 15
29 Gregory Melleuish, ‘Story of a true blue country’, The Australian, 19 August 2006, p. 21
163 |
implications, as the term is a nominalised verb. As discussed in Chapter 4, such forms
allow subjects to be left out, and hence allow a linguistic reification of presenting historical-social processes as abstract nouns and naturalized objects. Rather than any seizure
of and, class conflict between small and large farmers or struggles over democratic and
social rights, there is development of the whole nation. The term also implies what for
Melleuish appears to be one of two key themes, despite the apparent opposition between
themes and narratives in historiography and history teaching, when he states, “There is
a common emphasis on nation building and economic development”.30
As discussed below, despite debates about ‘black armband’ history and the content
and methods of history education in general, there is widespread consensus about the
need of some level of incorporation of Indigenous history into all levels of history education. The overall structure of Melleuish’s article and the structure of a number of
sentences suggest however that even if an Indigenous narrative begins chronologically
first, in the national narrative Indigenous people are ontologically and pedagogically
secondary. His course outline begins with, “At the beginning of the European presence
…”, and after two paragraphs states that, “There would be a module on pre-contact indigenous society”. In his outline of primary school history Melleuish suggest that this
should start with local history, which “could include visits to war memorials and museums, interactions with local indigenous people”, and later move to state history, which
would encompass, “When the colony was established and who were the local Aborigines
and how they lived”.31
The Australian’s commentary on the immediate outcomes of the Summit emphasised
the unity of national interests and of narrative, even if the opposition between themes
and narratives becomes further confused. Paul Kelly argued that, “Australian history
must be saved from its patchwork, fragmentary and demoralising disrepair with the restoration of the strong narrative themes that encompass the Australian story”.32 The paper’s editorial, in summarising Melleuish’s outline, also put forward a singular narrative
that shows no recognition of any indigenous pre-history by describing it as, “A narrative
of the country tracing our development from penal colony to free society to a federation
and democracy,” and also emphasises the national good in that, “Knowledge of history
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Paul Kelly, ‘Our history in disrepair’, The Australian, 19 August 2006, p. 20
| 164
is important for individual students and for the nation as a whole”.33
While the related themes of national unity and national interest are, within this sample, particularly concentrated in conservative commentators in The Australian, conceptions of the unified nature of national history are found through a number of political
positions and institutional locations. Focus group participants discussed history generally in terms in terms of the unified “we”. Even where the course of particular events and
how they should be interpreted were debated, the framework of the debate was generally
that of the national good, as in the conflicting historical themes that emerged from a
discussion in the regional Labor branch.
Table 6.1: Focus group discussion related to national unity in history
Theme
Comments
National interest in alliance with the US justified Vietnam and justifies Iraq
[Regional ALP discussion]
Ralph: America saved our bacon if we
didn’t have America out there in the
bloody Coral Sea … We’ve got several
treaties with the US … so we really are a
little bit inextricably … I can understand
why we’re in Iraq … [in Vietnam] America
went in, we went in.
Vietnam and Iraq wars against the national
interest
Kerry: the Vietnam War is exactly the same
mess as the Iraq war is. No-one really
knows why we’re bloody there. Vietnam
is not really a war we should have got
involved …
Burt: Iraq was pretty friendly to Australia
prior to America going in there.
A panic about “leftwing” and “postmodern” history
Apart from asserting a close link between a unified national story and the national interest, conservative commentary in this sample and related texts used a number of rhetorical devices to construct a representation of current national history as dangerously misguided and urgently in need of change. Bishop’s view of the problems in history teaching
were summarised in one text as, “not enough students were learning Australian history,
there was too much political bias and not enough pivotal facts and dates were being
taught”.34 That is, a decline in interest was related to linked political and pedagogical
problems, and numerous texts within the sample, particularly but not exclusively in The
Australian, elaborated a conservative position along these lines.
33 ‘Editorial: The new reactionaries ’, The Australian, 19 August 2006, p. 18
34 Jewel Topsfield and David Rood, ‘History’s future on the line’, The Age, 17 August 2006, p. 1
165 |
A key device was the repeated claim that history teaching is highly politicised by leftist teachers. The claim was often expressed with a highly alarming and conflict-evoking
lexis but with a paucity of evidence. At the Summit itself, Mark Lopez claimed, “Curriculums in all but New South Wales and Victoria were outrageous in their degree of politicization,” which might be “endearing to everyone if their parents were in Greenpeace or
the International Socialists”. When challenged by Inga Clendinnen to provide examples
he replied, “It is almost explicit: students develop positions on social and environmental issues and evaluate these as a consequence of their interactions with others”.35 That
is, a claim of an explicit radical agenda is supported by a citation of an alleged implicit
agenda within a call for students to discuss differing positions. Christopher Pearson,
in noting counter claims of the politicisation of history, constructs as a ‘fact’ that, “Using history in an instrumentalist fashion to advocate … ideology … is something [John
Howard] strenuously and plausibly denies but something of which the [Australian Education Union] itself has often been guilty”, without presenting any evidence for either
the plausibility or the guilt claimed.36 A binary narrative of a struggle between good
and evil within history writing and teaching is constructed by Janet Albrechtsen with a
dense lexis of positive and negative terms. Terms associated with the “history warriors”
include, “heroes”, “brave souls”, “courageous”, and those with the “history establishment” include, “fibs”, “so-called massacres”, “former communist”, “left-whingers”, “verbose doctoral thesis”, “madness”, and “frenzied and fruitless”.37 Michael Duffy similarly
distorted the reality of the debate sketched above and asserted the “fact Windschuttle
[that] proved that leading historians had got it wrong on important aspects of colonial
history”.38
Conservative use of repetition with little or no evidence was supported by claims that
the conservative position was simply common sense, such as Mervyn Bendle’s claim
that recent humanities teaching “is so obviously” not critical.39 Conservative columnist
Mark Steyn links the History Summit to Howard’s criticisms of Muslims and his “cultural conservatism” to common sense, the “reasonable man test”, and the “obvious”.40 As
35 The Australian History Summit: Transcript of Proceedings (Canberra: Department of Education,
Science and Training, 2006) 22–23
36 Christopher Pearson, ‘Let history be the judge’, The Australian, 22 July 2006, p. 28
37 Janet Albrechtsen, ‘Asking the Right questions’, The Australian, 23 August 2006, p. 14
38 Michael Duffy, ‘Nothing left but to burst their bubble’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 August 2006,
p. 33
39 Bendle, ‘History never retreats’
40 Mark Steyn, ‘Straight-talking PM’, The Australian, 8 September 2006, p. 14
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discussed in Chapter 2, ‘common sense’ is highly contingent on history and ideology,
and in ‘national’ questions such common sense is buttressed by the clearly existing singular nation, that can easily seem to imply singular identities and interests.
Such claims appear linked to an amalgam between leftism and postmodernism, possibly motivated by the considerations that approaches informed by the latter can be constructed as obtuse and opposed to common sense (with some justification, as discussed
in Chapter 2). As well as presenting a similar dense lexicon to that of Albrechtsen of
negative terms associated with the history “establishment”, The Australian editorialised
that, “The teaching of Australian history is indisputably taught from postmodern perspectives. Mr Macintyre, a former communist and intellectual father to a generation
of postmodernists, bears partial responsibility for this”.41 Two days later a further Australian editorial both castigated “an elite gang of bureaucrats,” and linked “a new postmodern establishment where history is sublimated within broad fields,” to the way that
allegedly in the teaching of literature “Shakespeare is forced through Marxist paradigms
of race, sex and class”.42 Paul Kelly similarly asserted that there was a “postmodernist and
progressivist grip on the humanities in schools and universities,” citing Tony Taylor’s report to the Summit that outlined how history teaching had been subsumed into general
social studies subjects (called Studies in Society and its Environment, SOSE, or similar)
in all states except NSW and Victoria.43
Responses to the conservative critique
At a number of points in the newspaper sample, in related documents and in the focus
group discussions, the conservative view of history and history teaching was contested.
Much of this involved an effort to disentangle the amalgams referred to above: a dichotomous narrative of leftism, postmodernism, thematic non-narrative teaching, subjectivity, guilt and shame on one side, and national unity, the national good, structured
narrative and objectivity on the other.
Tony Taylor wrote a report for the Summit that was critical of the social studies approach. But contrary to the amalgamating rhetoric cited above, there is not a word of
critique in his document of political bias.44 He in fact argued in another text that the
41 42 43 44 ‘The past is prologue’, The Australian, 17 August 2006, p. 11
‘The new reactionaries’, The Australian, 19 August 2006, p. 18
Kelly, ‘Our history in disrepair’
Tony Taylor, An Overview of the Teaching and Learning of Australian History in Schools
167 |
evidence in the two reviews of history education he had undertaken and the 350 schools
he had visited that there was neither a “postmodernist plot to undermine political and
social certainties by indoctrinating students,” as the Right thinks, or any “Tory plot,” as
the Left thinks.45 He was further quoted as urging that the Summit “did not become a
political solution to a professional problem”.46
Taylor also rejected the amalgam between postmodernism and leftism, wishing that
“the Right was capable of differentiating between socially critical thinking in education
(mainly 1980s) and postmodern thinking (mainly ‘90s). Of the latter, there is very little
of it in whatever history syllabuses exist in Australia”.47 In a letter to The Australian Stuart Macintyre, as a venerable leftist (and as one of those named by Attword as a “naïve
historical realist,” as quoted above, and among those who could not adequately answer
Windschuttle because of their epistemological errors) seemed bemused to be accused
of fathering postmodernism. He states there was “no mention of Bakhtin, Derrida or
Lyotard in my lectures,” and he was “in fact an unashamed modernist”, apart from being,
contrary to the paper’s accusations, positive about the summit process.48
The amalgam between history as a stand-alone subject with a narrative approach and
a unified national story of “objective achievement” was rejected by Summit participant
and former NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr, who had reintroduced a stand-alone subject
in that state. In one interview he appeared to give credence to conservative history warriors by positing (without examples) a “tendency of some historians to ‘romanticise’
Aboriginal life before 1788 was rightly condemned as ‘political correctness’”. However
he was also quoted as arguing he “would not like a ‘neo-conservative takeover’ of history textbooks. Students should know there was a White Australia policy, he said. While
history should be made more interesting, ‘it should have controversy and confusion and
argument and bloodshed’”.49 In a radio interview in response to Howard’s Australia Day
speech, Carr elaborated that:
Australian history is not a single story … Complex, elbowing, sometimes antagonistic,
(Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006)
45 Tony Taylor, ‘Milestones on the road to history’, The Australian Higher Education Supplement, 20
October 2006 2006 <http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20217608-12332,00.html>
accessed 23 August
46 David Rood, ‘Critical mark for history summit’, The Age, 15 August 2006, p. 7
47 Taylor, ‘Milestones on the road to history’
48 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 21 August 2006, p. 12.
49 Tim Dick, ‘Staying square with controversy’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 2006, p. 15
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sometimes overlapping stories. The indigenous people who went to war—World War I
and World War II—is an example of overlap. They saw their interest as being bound up
with the broader Australian national interest.50
As well as arguing that history was objectively made up of conflicting stories (rather
than one story or no coherent story) and that it made pedagogical sense to present the
past that way, Carr is here presenting a typical left nationalist position that sectional interests can both be seen as both legitimate and subordinate to the national interest.
The Summit process and conservative critiques were also answered with claims that
the government planned to impose its own agenda on history teaching. Before the Summit Denis Fitzgerald, former president of the NSW Teachers Federation, warned of “a
process … which seeks to establish one take on Australian history,” and argued that
“a central message of history is to keep both bishops and politicians away from our
textbooks”.51 Les Terry supported the conception that the Howard government took an
‘activist’ stance toward the national culture. He pointed to “the flags’ policy, with the
Howard Government offering money to schools for the erection of flagpoles”, as well
as “the Prime Minister’s unprecedented intervention in the classroom, with his call for
school history to be taught more as facts rather than themes,” and “moves to undermine
the secular character of state schools by proposing that the Commonwealth jointly fund
a ‘chaplains in schools’ program”. This he saw as an “old-style nationalist program”.52
Clare Wright took on the amalgamating rhetorical strategies of conservative commentators, criticising a “bald and meaningless dichotomy … [that] you are either fact-friendly
or fact-averse,” and arguing that that the issue was not the lack of narrative but whether
to stick only to “the Government’s preferred narrative of national achievement, military
valour, wealth creation, mateship and fair going”.53 A number of letter writers took up
similar themes, in some instances in the extravagant polemical register of some of the
conservative commentary cited above, such as references to “Mr Howard’s new History
50 Bob Carr and Philip Adams, ‘‘Students want to study something contentious’: Response from Bob
Carr. Edited version of an interview conducted by Philip Adams, ‘Late Night Live’ ABC Radio National
31.01.06’, Teaching History, 40/1 (2006), 10–11. Carr also points to the necessity of recognizing conflict
and objectively different perspectives in teaching struggles between settler and Native Americans and
the often violent class conflicts in 1930s America.
51 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 14 July 2006, p. 15.
52 Les Terry, ‘Howard is trying to leave history students stranded in the past’, The Age, 17 August 2006,
p. 17
53 Clare Wright, ‘Placing the answer before the question betrays a closed mind’, The Age, 13 September
2006,
169 |
Commissar, Julie Bishop” issuing her “next directive from the Ministry of Truth”.54 Focus group participants also took up such criticism in a number of comments, shown in
Table 6.2.
54 ‘Letters and emails’, The Age, 18 August 2006, p. 16
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Table 6.2: Focus group discussion on the politicisation of history
Theme
Comments
Falsified and
exclusionary
nature of
homogenised
history
Jenny [Regional ALP]: And also what about the women and
men, well the men that died at Gallipolli, under this so-called
Aussie flag, and were drawn into a battle and were crucified, by the British, slaughtered, [Doug: Churchill did it too], it
means nothing to me.
Fred [Urban Greens]: Like it’s always exclusionary to talk about
certain things like the Anzacs spirit. Well how about we talk
about the fact that people didn’t vote for conscription in World
War One and that’s never been talked about. You know actually I’m proud of that. You know just to be more inclusionary.
[Discussion among regional greens]
Tony: Another issue that distresses me relating to Indigenous
people, is the current government’s push to meddle with education, and the teaching of history. Apparently Howard wants
us to learn European history, rather than Australian history.
It sounds to me almost like in Japan following World War II
when history was taught happened from 1945 on, and nothing
before was talked about.
Susan: I thought he wanted more Australian history.
Polly: It wouldn’t be everyone’s history. I’d be like war history,
and you know, early settlers.
Bill:… I think John Howard putting history back on the agenda
was a good thing, because history is extremely important, and
it had just dropped off the academic agenda. [Graham: But he
did it for the one motive]. For the wrong motive, but often good
things come out of bad intentions.
Roger [retired teacher]: I think he’s on a loser though because
the high school history teachers associations are not going to
reduce the study of history to a particular simplistic line nor a
list of dates. They’ve been trained in the way they’re trained
their students. That is, as an interpretive discipline, which is
complex and open to a number of viewpoints and laying them
out.
Authentic
connection of
Laborism to
national history
versus inauthentic conservative
exploitation of
history
[Urban ALP
group discussion]
Tom: We had a whole series of [historical anniversaries] that
were exploited by Labor politicians, Keating and Hawke in
particular were going back to Gallipoli and developing that
whole thing, which from the Labor Party’s point of view was
quite authentic, because we’ve always stood for that sort of
stuff… nationalism and national identity was part of our whole
development and reason for being, which has been taken and
perverted like this.
John: The sanitising of history which furthers certain political
ends
Comments from all four focus groups indicate that the view that the conservative
government was fighting a culture war was widespread among the left. History is also
revealed to be very important to these politically engaged people, and part of their motivation in being active in politics. Related to this is a conception of Laborism as authentic
Australianism, which is taken up further in Chapter 9. More broadly when the issue was
171 |
fleshed out in the regional Greens discussion there was an assertion that an authentic
and objective study of history requires a critical recognition of conflict and of differing
perspectives, and so the left should welcome the challenge of a renewed emphasis on
history (a conclusion from which no-one in the group appeared to dissent).
However, within the newspaper sample criticism of the government was restricted to
letter writers, with the exception of Terry’s and Wright’s article. There were by contrast
ten comment articles that directly attacked ‘leftist’ hegemony in historiography and history teaching, out of a total of 23 comment articles in the sample, seven of these articles
being from The Australian. Of three editorials in the sample (all from The Australian),
two as noted, made extravagant attacks on alleged leftist dominance. It appears that
those that did not closely support the government on this issue were generally reactive
and defensive, more concerned with setting out the differences between ideological,
pedagogical and epistemological aspects of the question than with polemics.
A compromise reached, but later overturned?
It seems that despite the clear ideological way in which the Summit had been justified and the generally extravagant and one-sided nature of the media debate, the government was somewhat constrained in achieving its agenda and that the result of the
summit was a compromise. A number of articles in the newspaper sample made points
along the lines that, “Bishop has been careful to convene what she calls the ‘sensible centre’ and has left out hardened warriors such as Windschuttle, author of The Fabrication
of Aboriginal History, and his chief antagonist, Tasmanian historian Henry Reynolds”.55
After the Summit two participants pointed out that the Summit was agreed on the importance of Indigenous history, and that a syllabus should not be highly prescriptive but
that it should incorporate different perspectives. Further, most participants agreed that
the complexity of historical processes should be addressed in school history lessons not
through a singular narrative per se but through following a number of questions through
a chronological sequence, with the detailed plan to be drawn up by Taylor.56 Both the
post-Summit Australian editorial and the commentary by Kelly cited above, did interpret the result as a smashing of the old guard.57 However, some conservative commenta55 Imre Salusinszky, ‘History put on a pedestal reports’, The Australian, 12 August 2006, p. 25
56 John Hirst, ‘Questions will alter the course of history’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 2006,
p. 11, Taylor, ‘Milestones on the road to history’,
57 ‘Editorial: The new reactionaries ’; Kelly, ‘Our history in disrepair’
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tors were clearly unhappy. Mellueish complained that the narrative approach was not
adopted as the government clearly intended, somewhat undemocratically implying that
the Summit was bound to follow the government’s directives.58 Mervyn Bendle thought
that a ‘questions’ approach was an insidious method to maintain “the status quo”, a focus
on what the left saw as “the true cause of race, gender and class”.59
Some reportage framed the responses by state government in terms of a total triumph
of the Howard-Bishop agenda over recalcitrant leftist regimes, such as an Australian
headline of “Defiance of history crumbles”. However the detail in this same report suggested most states were happy to accommodate an increased emphasis on history within
established frameworks: “[Queensland Premier] Mr Beattie’s support for the subject was
under the umbrella of SOSE. The spokeswoman said not all teachers taught Australian
history under SOSE and Mr Beattie wanted to ensure it was a compulsory unit not separate to SOSE … Tasmanian Education Minister David Bartlett did not rule out reinstating
history as a separate subject but said it had been taught as part of SOSE for 25 years”.60
An apparent consensus had been reached between different approaches and interests. But the recommendations just prior to the 2007 election campaign later appeared
somewhat different to the Summit agreement. A Sydney Morning Herald report claimed
officials had stated that Taylor’s draft was rejected because, “Mr Howard regarded his
recommendations as ‘politically unreliable’”. The report also noted that a curriculum
considerably more detailed in terms of dates, names and events was drawn up by a new
committee led by conservative historian Blainey and conservative commentator and
thinktank head Gerard Henderson.61 Henderson defended his curriculum as one that
“respects all the traditions in contemporary Australia … indigenous and non-indigenous, Catholic and Protestant, conservative and social democratic and more besides”.62
However, Macintyre pointed out that whatever the merits of the content, the post-Summit process of prime ministerial intervention and sidelining of actual history teachers
meant the curriculum was crowded and impractical. Further, these processes plus the
implication that school funding would be dependent on adoption of the course meant it
58 Gregory Melleuish, ‘Missing ingredients in history’s stew’, The Australian, 23 August 2006, p. 14
59 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 26 August 2006, p. 16.
60 Justine Ferrari and Tony Koch, ‘Defiance of history crumbles ’, The Australian, 23 August 2006, p. 2
61 Damien Murphy, ‘Attempting to decide what our past is’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October
2007, p. 15
62 Gerard Henderson, ‘John Howard and Bob Carr have done us all a favour’, The Sydney Morning
Herald, 12 October 2007, p. 15
173 |
would be seen as ideological and hence be unpopular among teachers.63
The debate over the teaching of history reveals a number of aspects of the role of the
national in political life. Firstly, different political actors, not least the activists in my
focus groups, view history as central to their conception of the nation and to their motivation to intervene in politics, and as a battleground to contest what they see as ideological use of history by their opponents (though seldom by themselves!) Secondly, while
organic intellectuals of the nationalist left are often willing to take on this battleground,
they appear at a disadvantage to the right, in terms analogous to the general disadvantage in debates about the nation posited in this thesis: their historical narrative, even
when they do not reject the idea of narrative, is inevitably messier, taking up conflict as
well as consensus. They can seem (along with professional historians who are not necessarily leftists but who want to counter the conservative claims about history) reactive
and defensive, and to be taking up complicated arguments rather than straightforward,
dichotomous and ‘common sense’ polemic. Nonetheless it is instructive to consider the
ideological aspects of a historical debate that was of necessity, about class and political
conflict.
Eureka Stockade
In late November and early December 2004 various events took place, around Australia
but particularly in Victoria, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Ballarat gold
miners rebellion known as the Eureka Stockade. In a concentrated time there was a publicly expressed remembrance of this event, conducted through the news media, parliamentary debates, ceremonies and celebrations. Unusually in Australia this event was a
well-remembered historical instance that both clearly involved political and social, and
uniquely violent, conflict, and is generally (though as shown below not unanimously)
recognised as significant in the historical development of the nation. It is unsurprising
then that this remembrance provides another pertinent example of the ideological use
of history in debates about the national, and of the central role of historical understanding in constituting political identities.
The gold rushes of the early 1850s had produced a rapidly increasing, multicultural
population in Ballarat, including many fleeing poverty and oppression in Europe. The
63 Stuart Macintyre, ‘The lessons of history teachers ignored ’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October
2007, p. 33
| 174
colonial authorities, dominated by the landowning ruling class through a Legislative
Council with very a restrictive franchise, imposed a substantial fee upon the miners in
early 1854. Miners became incensed not only at the fee but also at the heavy-handed actions of gold field officials and police and the fact they had no vote, so that demands to
ease the financial burden became entwined with clamour for democratic change. In October, after miners were angered that a Ballarat hotel owner with ties to the authorities
was not charged with the suspicious death of a young miner, a series of mass meetings
was held and an existing Ballarat Reform League grew rapidly. The League had explicit
inspiration in the working class People’s Charter movement in Britain, which fought for
democratic rights, and on November 11 a mass meeting adopted a charter including fair
representation, short parliaments, abolition of the tax and the gold commissioners, and
the separation of Victoria from Britain. As colonial troops and police were mobilised,
a more militant leadership of the League around Peter Lalor, whose brother had died
fighting the British in Ireland, and Italian republican Raffaello Carboni came forward at
another mass meeting on 28 November. At this meeting the ‘Southern Cross’ flag, sewn
by a number of women in the camp, was unfurled, and Carboni declared it, “The refuge
of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth”. Lalor organised some rough fortifications at the Eureka lead and the arming of miners. However most of the rebel miners
were absent early on the morning of Sunday 3 December, not expecting an attack on
the Sabbath, when the colonial forces stormed the stockade. Twenty minutes later 30
miners and four soldiers were dead and the uprising crushed. But this provoked a mass
protest movement throughout Victoria that continued the pressure for change. All those
brought to trial were acquitted, by 1855 the miners’ fee was replaced by a gold export tax
and elected miners replaced the hated gold field officials, and suffrage and parliament
were democratised with a series of measures, including the world’s first secret ballot in
1857, over the next decade.64
The long-standing commemoration of these events was boosted by the Labor Victorian government for the 2004 sesquicentenary, and the occasion and attendant celebrations generated considerable media coverage and debate, at least in Victoria. In the
range of six newspapers I have used for each media sample in this study, there were
79 articles, including letters pages, in November–December 2004 containing the term
“Eureka Stockade”, of which 50 appeared in the two Melbourne-based newspapers. The
64 John Molony, Eureka (2nd edn., Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001)
175 |
key findings from a thematic and discursive analysis of these texts, as discussed below,
were that the coverage and discussion was framed around conflict, in marked contrast
with much historical remembering, and that commentary could be categorised into four
distinct ideological frames. These latter frames are further exemplified by other political
texts incorporated in the analysis, which are relevant articles from Green Left Weekly
and a Socialist Worker pamphlet, representing the internationalist left, and parliamentary material, and also by relevant comments from the study’s focus group discussions.
The group participants were asked what the Eureka flag and the national flag evoked for
them.
The coverage emphasised both the historical conflict in the actual Eureka events, and
ongoing conflicts in the interpretation of these events and in the processes of remembering and commemorating the events. It was noted in a number of articles that the Ballarat Museum exhibition was entitled, “Eureka Revisited: a contest of memories”. John
Huxley argued that what followed the physical battle “is not so much history as many
hundreds of versions of history”. He related the interest in Eureka to a general increase
in a ‘national’ history, to a “renewed search—encouraged by events such as the Bicentenary and the Centenary of Federation—for a sense of national identity, and for symbols,
stories and legends to support that identity”. But he at least also implies that this ‘national’, that is unifying, function of a historical narrative sits uneasily with the way that
different, but each objectively true, aspects of the Eureka story are used in partisan ways
to discuss varied issues over which there has been and continues to be, considerable
conflict. That is, the story contains, Huxley writes:
Sufficient ‘facts’, surely, to prop up a range of views on Eureka, as Australia’s first and only
armed rebellion for democratic rights, as a continuation of the Irish struggle against the
British, as the crisis of colonialism, to select just a few from the past 150 years.65
Some see injustices caused by the events as still outstanding: these include descendents of the above-mentioned hotelier, who claim that their ancestor has been historically framed for murder and that they deserve considerable compensation for the hotel, burned down by angry miners at the time.66 Even those seemingly equally positive
about the events and the importance of commemoration, described various aspects,
65 John Huxley, ‘Birth of a notion’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 2004 2004, p. 29
66 James Button, ‘A 25-year quest for justice, 150 years after the event’, The Age, 27 November 2004, p.
10
| 176
such as the Eureka flag, quite differently. On the anniversary of the first flying of the flag,
Dean Mighell, Victorian secretary of the Electrical Trades Union was quoted at a commemorative flag raising in Melbourne as saying, “This magnificent flag is a rebel’s flag”.67
Whereas Val D’Angri, “great-great granddaughter of an original settler”, suggested that,
“the flag was not meant as a rebel flag. As far as I’m concerned the flag was to rally people
to the meetings”.68 The importance of flags as physical representations of complex and
highly meaningful systems of ideas seemed reflected in a conflict over the flying of the
flag. Several articles mentioned debate over the flying of the Eureka flag in federal parliament. While Labor state and territory governments had planned for some time to fly
the flag outside official buildings on 3 December, only in the week beforehand did federal government members reluctantly agree to discreetly show the flag in the two foyers
of the national parliament on that day.69 One article built a particularly extensive lexicon
of violent conflict relating to aspects of the Eureka remembrance, including the actual
flag flown in 1854. It related how miner descendent Paul Murphy, agitating to have the
flag moved from the Ballarat Gallery to the Eureka Centre, described himself as a “public wild man,” who was “outraged” about the flag, that the gallery would “resist” his efforts, that “passions” were heated and some were “fighting the battle all over again,” over
a number of issues, although that of the flag was the “fiercest dispute”. Other disputes
mentioned in this article include the “insult” felt by Murphy over the fact some colonial
re-enacters, dressed as troopers, had previously fired shots over miners’ graves, and a
“split” between two commemorative events, the 3 December Diggers March and the 5
December Dawn Lantern Walk.70 The latter became the focus of some controversy when
Terry Hicks, father of and campaigner for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, and a
Eureka miner descendant, was invited to lead the walk. The Melbourne tabloid HeraldSun was particularly concerned with this story, devoting to it one front page article on
2 December, another front page article, an editorial and a column by Andrew Bolt on 3
December, and framing its 6 December coverage of the walk in terms of this apparent
controversy. Terms used in the latter article to describe the reaction of some participants
67 Jonathan Green, ‘The last word’, The Age, 30 November 2004, p. 12. The ETU plays a prominent part
in commemorations, due to descendents of the miners being among its members, as well as adoption of
the flag as a logo and a general attachment to the meaning of the event.
68 Liz Gooch, ‘The threads of history’, The Age, 29 November 2004, A3 p. 2
69 This dispute was mentioned for example in Katrina Strickland, ‘Eureka causing ructions 150 years
on from stockade’, The Australian, 3 December 2004, p. 5
70 James Button, ‘How children of the rebellion maintain the rage’, The Age, 27 November 2004, p. 1
177 |
include, “anger flared”, “disgusted”, “disgrace”, “angst”, and “absolutely furious”, although
warmer reactions were also noted in this report, as was the “split” in the Lalor family
about Hick’s participation.71
Some texts, including some of those discussing Hicks, posited a conflict between extreme and mainstream elements in Australian society. Letter writer Tim Wilson of Glen
Huntley argued Hicks’ participation turned the commemoration from “an event of unity
into something that most Victorians won’t be able to embrace”.72 The emphatic modality, “won’t”, of this phrase, echoes the assertions of ‘common sense’ that those stressing
national unity often make, as noted in the previous section. The Sydney Morning Herald
editorialized, with respect to the commemorations generally, that the way “the Communist Party seized Eureka as its own,” and how “the ultra-right, racist National Front followed suit,” suggested, “the capacity of political extremes to mould history in their own
image”, and that this “reflects poorly on the mainstream”.73 These commentaries suggest
that there is some authentic, unifying national story relating to Eureka, and that conflict
is therefore inauthentic.
The discussion about Hicks is also relevant to a theme relating Eureka to present
day conflicts. Andrew Bolt set up a binary opposition between soldiers at Eureka who
“died doing their duty,” to “uphold the law and suppress an armed revolt,” and aspects of
current society he represents as “decay,” and, “weeds that will choke us”: these include
Terry Hicks’ divorce and “heavy drinking”, David Hicks’ tattoos and former interest in
“Satanism”, and the fact that Lantern Walk organiser Graham Dunston is associated
with the “Australian Cannabis Law Reform Movement,” describes himself an “Aquarian
elder,” and is a “lantern maker”.74 That is, the forces of social decency were opposed to
the forces of social decay in similarly dichotomous ways in 1854 and 2004. One article
linked the 10 000 strong protest in Melbourne following the suppression of the revolt
(when the population of Melbourne was 30 000) with the “thousands of trade unionists
demonstrat[ing] in support of jailed ex-union leader Craig Johnston,” the day before
the article’s publication, and cited varied opinions about modern protest.75 Another de71 Mark Buttler, ‘Eureka rebellion: Father of accused terrorist David Hicks asked to lead historic
march’, Herald-Sun, 2 December 2004, p. 1
72 ‘Letters: Miner would have welcomed Hicks Sr’, Herald-Sun, 4 December 2004, p. 86
73 ‘Editorial: The many facets of Eureka legend’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 2004, p. 10
74 Andrew Bolt, ‘An undeserved honour’, Herald-Sun, 3 December 2004, p. 25
75 Geoff Strong, ‘Eureka march remembered, but might the day of the demos have passed?’, The Age,
26 November 2004, p. 9
| 178
scribed the apparent militancy of Victorian unions in terms of the fact that, “since the
miners’ uprising at the Eureka Stockade 150 years ago, it has always been the case”.76 A
letter writer urged rejection of the further privatisation of Telstra by declaring, “let us
harness some of the Eureka Stockade spirit and say no”.77 One article seemed to aim for
irony by pointing out that a ban by transport unionists had as collateral damage a plan
by the ETU and construction unionists to charter a steam train to travel to the commemorations.78
Thus memory of Eureka clearly generated and evoked conflict and this was clearly
recognised, if not always welcomed. Those parts of the coverage that expressed clear
opinions (comment pieces, editorials and some quotes), as well as the related political
documents and focus group discussions, also fell into five distinct ideological frames.
These were generally related to the streams of national thought discussed throughout
this study, but also in some ways cutting across them.
The ‘official progressive’ frame
The first, and what seems to be the dominant, frame, I call ‘official progressive’. Prominent features of this frame are a recognition of the tradition of struggle and egalitarian
multiculturalism and of generally progressive positions represented by Eureka, balanced
by a concern with stressing the national and unifying aspects of the event. This is often
argued for via a particular framing of the class forces and ideological makeup up of
the rebel movement. For example in an extract from the book Imagining Australia, a
group of academics argue that the values Eureka stands for, “egalitarianism, mateship,
fairness—together with democracy, freedom, republicanism and multiculturalism,” are
“distinctly Australian,” and hence Eureka should be a “central legend of Australian nationalism”. Eureka “was a revolt of indepe ndent free enterprise against burdensome
taxation,” rather than “a collective of militant trade unionists protesting against the exploitation of labour”. They mention the women’s suffrage campaign as, “that other great
movement in the history of Australian democracy”, the definite article implicitly excluding the labour movement.
Labor figure Michael Easson did acknowledge the importance of Eureka to the “fledging labour movement” as, “a model of collective action”. But he was very concerned with
76 Paul Robinson, ‘Memo Mr Howard: unions aren’t the only ones at fault’, The Age, 27 November
2004, p. 2
77 ‘Letters ’, The Australian, 18 December 2004, p. 20
78 John Masanauskas, ‘Unions′ Eureka trip derailed’, Herald-Sun, 29 November 2004, p. 9
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emphasising the national aspect of the event, as something that could “warm the hearts
of liberals, conservatives, libertarians and Laborites” alike, and because of which, “Liberalism in the classic 19th-century sense of removing the hindrances to fairness got a
boost”. He saw the democratic outcome as that a “consensus developed consistent with
liberalism, conservatism and social democracy”.79 An article by then Victorian Labor
premier Steve Bracks emphasised the Eureka Charter, the adoption of which meant the
event “was not about a riot—it was about rights”. Bracks both suggested that Eureka
was part of the genesis of progressive ideas of social justice and multiculturalism, and
stressed national significance through the unifying collective pronoun. He argued that
the event was central to “our evolution from a fledgling colony to an egalitarian nation
of immigrants”, that it “reflected the aspirations of a new, multicultural nation and, ultimately, helped turn its democratic aspirations into a reality we still enjoy”, and that “we”
need to remain “true to the Stockade’s democratic principles”.80 Through most of one
article, Ray Cassin invoked numerous signifiers of radical-democratic and revolutionary history: the 1848 revolutions, the People’s Charter, the miners singing Marseillaise,
the Irish rebellion, the Canadian rebellion, the similarity to the International Brigades
of the Spanish Civil War. But in the last three paragraphs of his article Cassin switches to
a far more national frame, arguing that, “After the massacre, the uproar died almost as
quickly as it had flared,” and “a peculiar British and Australian pragmatism and preference for conciliation asserted itself,” which would seem to downplay the mass movement
following the suppression of the revolt, and the workers agitation around the eight hour
day in following years. While for Cassin “it was the union movement and the broad left,
along with the Irish, who made Eureka their own”, he also argues that, “As with any great
national myth, Eureka is open to argument. There is a valid conservative reading too,
with the miners as independent contractors engaged in a tax revolt”.81
Then Labor leader Mark Latham, speaking in parliament, largely followed this frame,
but rather than arguing for the participation of conservatives, he used differing appreciation of the events to suggest that Labor has a more authentic relationship with national
identity and history, a point raised by ALP focus group participants quoted above. Eureka for him represented “so much about the Australian character and identity: our love
79 Michael Easson, ‘A typically Australian turning point that all of us can honour’, The Australian, 1
December 2004, p. 15
80 Steve Bracks, ‘The brief battle that hastened our democracy’, The Age, 3 December 2004, p. 15
81 James Button, ‘Rebels, redcoats and a bloody dawn’, The Age, 3 December 2004, p. 8
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of the underdog … our willingness to stand up for our rights… our tradition of defiance,
dissent and the larrikan spirit”. The unenthusiastic response of most conservatives to its
commemoration, including the “boycott” by the federal government, for Latham “highlights one of the great flaws in the Howard government: its meanness and divisiveness
— in this case expressed through its ignorance of Australian political history”.82 The differing institutional positions of for example Bracks and Latham no doubt conditioned
their responses: the one a government leader, expected to display unity, the other in a
position in which criticism of the government is the norm. In any case, different texts
within a frame of moderately progressive nationalism displayed some differences in specific political positions.
The ‘consistent radical’ frame
Secondly, other texts, using what I term the ‘consistent radical’ frame, concurred with
the official left frame in a positive appreciation of Eureka and its progressive and labour
movement oriented significance, but stressed the militancy of the event. A number of
letter-writers critical of the Howard government linked Eureka to contemporary conflicts and controversies, including the struggles of boat people83, the lack of due process in the trial of David Hicks, the writer positively noting the participation of Terry
Hicks.84 One of several republican letter writers noted that it is “ironic that the coin
minted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade has the image
of the British monarch emblazoned on the front”.85 Even when suggesting Eureka was a
‘national’ event such texts downplayed unifying elements, except in the negative sense
of compromise. For example Peter Conrad assigned positive descriptors to militancy
and negative ones to a national compromise by stating, “A rebellious flag emblazoned
with the Southern Cross was raised above the Eureka Stockade, but it later entered into
a neutered alliance with the Union Jack”.86
ETU leader Dean Mighell was quoting as arguing for the national significance of Eureka in one article: “If this was the United States, the Eureka flag would have a national
guard around it 24 hours a day and there’d be a public holiday to commemorate the occasion … I think we should have Eureka Day on November 3 instead of a Queen’s Birth82 83 84 85 86 Hansard, House of Representatives, 29 November (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2004) 59
‘Letters’, The Age, 24 November 2004, p. 18
‘Letters: At least the miners got a fair trial’, Herald-Sun, 7 December 2004, p. 16
‘50/50’, Herald-Sun, 8 December 2004, p. 16
Peter Conrad, ‘Terra of the great unknown’, The Australian, 20 November 2004, p. 31
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day holiday”.87 Several left forces used the anniversary as an organising opportunity,
with a ‘Spirit of Eureka Committee’ issuing a leaflet advertising a 1 December public
meeting in Melbourne involving the ETU, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), the
Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU), Indigenous activist Gary
Foley, civil rights lawyer Rob Stary and Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen. This
clearly had both militant left and left nationalist themes, referring to the, “US domination of Australia”, “trade union rights”, “democratic and civil rights”, “discrimination and
oppression of Indigenous Australian”, summed up in the need to struggle, as at Eureka,
for a “just and sovereign Australia”.88
However, while some of the texts within the consistent radical frame included nationalist themes, struggle rather than national unity or an essential Australiness was emphasized and there was no effort made to reach out to conservatives or business people.
Mighell for example was quoted in an article stressing the rebellion’s political demands
and Chartist origins, observing that, “It’s no wonder Howard won’t talk about Eureka”,
and the links with the contemporary labour movement: “Above our Queensberry Street
office and on our shirts and letterheads we proudly display the flag of the Southern
Cross, made famous at Eureka. For the ETU it’s a symbol of independence and our commitment to a fair go”.89 This concurred with other positive coverage in the internationalist texts, such as one of a series of articles in Green Left Weekly that recognised aspects
of defeat following the rebellion including Lalor’s later conservatism and the use of the
flag at anti-Chinese riots, but that argued, “To commemorate Eureka is to celebrate the
capacity of ordinary people to organise and resist, to break unjust laws and to demand
their rights, by force if necessary”.90 A Socialist Worker pamphlet, besides projecting a
positive appreciation of the revolt as part of a militant history of struggle against the ruling class, plausibly took issue with undertheorised contentions, (including in the texts
examined here) that the miners were equivalent to an established small business class
that typically supports conservative politics. They were a fluid and radicalising social
layer:
87 Kylie Hansen, ‘Rebellion stirs public passion: Thousands recall uprising’, Herald-Sun, 4 December
2004, p. 15
88 Spirit of Eureka Committee, ‘Spirit of Eureka: The struggle continues’, 2004
<http://www.etu.asn.au/pdfs/mua_committee011204.pdf> accessed 10 September 2007
89 Dean Mighell, ‘Eureka the brave ’, 1 December, Green Left Weekly, 2004
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2004/608/31298> accessed 1 October 2007
90 Karen Fletcher, ‘Why celebrate Eureka?’, 1 December, Green Left Weekly, 2004
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2004/608/31259 > accessed 1 October 2007
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They were self-employed—petit bourgeois—often impoverished and with aspirations
for advancement. However, they did not form a stable class of business people with
purely narrow economic concerns. … the gold rush led to the breakdown and recomposition of class relations. … This social instability meant that the miners’ opposition
to harsh taxation quickly spilled over into a struggle for wider social reforms … The
majority of diggers were not so successful and would at some point leave the goldfields
and return to wage labour in the emerging capitalist economy. To this extent many diggers would form part of the working class in formation.91
The main thrust of focus group participants’ commentary on Eureka also fits into this
frame, as shown in Table 6.3. Despite some evident confusion in the final comment, and
some recognition of the contested nature of the Eureka flag, it is clear that remembrance
of and symbols are related to a sense of attachment and belonging to progressive politics, particularly the labour movement.
Table 6.3: Focus group comments within the ‘consistent radical’ frame for
remembering Eureka
Theme
Comments
Eureka flag as a signifier of the
labour movement and progressive politics
Tim: [Urban ALP, blue collar union organiser] Obviously
being a unionist I associate strongly with the Eureka
flag, whilst I know the history behind it, it’s also the
principle behind it. While they weren’t unionists, they
were a group of people who banded together to fight …
I like the comradeship behind it … I’m comfortable with
[the current national flag] being the Australian flag until
[any collective decision to change it]. But for the heart
strings, the Eureka flag and the reasons behind it, is
probably something I associate with a lot stronger.
Fred: [Urban Greens, white collar union organiser] I’m
a big fan of the Eureka flag, because a lot of the unions
use it as a sort of logo, it represents sort of rebellion,
the idea of freedom, a couple of unions use it as a bit
of a core cry I guess … I don’t like it when right-wing
people try to use it to be perfectly honest, it does get
used by right wing groups, not knowing what the actual
Eureka Stockade was about or the fact that it was a
multi-ethnic group that was taking up arms.
Sally [Regional ALP]: The Eureka flag was supposed
to be about democracy. There was 120 people shot or
something, and only 13 of them tried, and they did get
the licenses and they did [Maryn: They were successful
in the end] and they did get the right to vote, and not
one of those miners voted. But they fought for it.
91 Hamish McPherson, ‘To stand truly by each other’, 2004
<http://www.anu.edu.au/pol sci/marx/interventions/eureka.htm> accessed 10 September 2007
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The ‘left denialist’ frame
Thirdly, there were two media texts, and some focus group comments, that fall into what
I have called the ‘left denialist’ frame for remembering Eureka. Baron Alder focused
on the inherent ambiguity and polysemous nature of the significations of the Eureka
flag, in yet another text built upon a binary opposition of extreme and mainstream,
authentic and inauthentic, although in this case from a social democratic rather than
the more typically conservative position. He implied that the flag could have positive
significations, in that he used positive descriptors for the social democratic nationalism
behind Whitlam’s invocation of it, describing Whitlam’s program as “a reinvigoration
of national goals and aspirations,” associated with values of “national self-confidence,
maturity, originality and independence of mind”. Alder contrasted this to the flag’s early
“distasteful xenophobic subtext” at the Lambing Flats riots, “even before it was appropriated by National Action”, as carried on by a far right gathering during the 2004 commemorations, and later use of the flag by “disaffected extremists such as Maoists and anarchists whose stated objective was the overthrow of legitimate government”.92 Similarly,
journalist and commentator Alan Ramsay describes how after shedding his youthful
romantic notions of the rebellion it became for him, “A story about a flag designed by
a Canadian and a 20-minute rebellion led by a Pom who later became a land-owning
Melbourne politician who used Chinese miners as strike breakers and who opposed the
vote for anyone who did not own property. So much for Peter Lalor, Eureka hero”.93
Within the focus groups of Greens’ members there was some complex ambivalence
expressed toward the meaning of Eureka, as indicated in Table 6.4.
92 Baron Alder, ‘Too many causes draped in banner of historic importance’, The Australian, 2
December 2004 2004, p. 11
93 Alan Ramsey, ‘Room for all in the stockade, bar one’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 December
2004, p. 33
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Table 6.4: Focus group comments within the ‘left denialist’ frame for remembering
Eureka
Theme
Key comments
Ambivalence towards the progressive nature of Eureka
[Discussion in regional Greens group]
Bill: Good old Norm and the BLF. I think that’s their flag
isn’t it? [Laughter].
Bevan: I don’t think the Eureka stockade flag speaks for
me. Because it’s not broad about what Australia is or
could be or should be …
Bill: It was a revolt of small businessmen for Christ
sake! [laughter].
[Discussion in urban Greens group]
Johan: They wanted the right to mine, and they didn’t
want to pay tax [general chuckling].
Fred: It wasn’t just the taxation issue.
Johan: Yeah it was oppressive tax.
Fred: Yeah exactly. It comes back to the representation issue too. Taxation without representation was
the whole basis for the American revolution you could
argue.
In both cases there was a noting of the small business and tax-related aspects of the
revolt, with the implicit irony that these are typically conservative concerns. In the first
group there was some suggestion of a conception of the labour movement as narrow,
while in the second example the flow of discussion clarified that an ironic comment did
not seem to represent a major difference over a generally positive appreciation of the
event, even if there was a difference of emphasis (an example of the utility of the focus
group method in examining the complexities of perspectives within a group). Perhaps
significantly there was only positive appreciation expressed in the Labor groups, with a
closer identification with labour movement traditions.
The ‘positive conservative’ frame
Fourthly was a ‘positive conservative’ frame. This was one of two frameworks that,
while both broadly based in conservative positions, displayed considerable difference.
Texts within this frame sought to position Eureka within a small business and conservative tradition. Gerard Henderson, in contrast to Ramsay, presents Lalor’s conservatism
as a positive, and points to positive appreciations through history of Eureka by Catholic
and Liberal commentators including Menzies. He contends that, “Then, as now, the
Liberal Party was not that good at what became known as the culture wars,” and hence
“misses out on something both fun and important”.94 This may be the case but Henderson
does not explain why it may be so. An editorial in The Australian had an explanation in
94 Gerard Henderson, ‘Libs should battle for Eureka’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 2004, p. 13
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terms of the alleged leftist hegemony in historiography and history teaching that would
later dominate its coverage of the History Summit. The “sons and daughters of Manning
Clark” so dominated “the shaping of historical understanding in our schools and universities, the received version of Eureka is of a workers’ uprising nipped in the bud”. In
a lexicon evoking a incipient neo-liberal mass movement, the miners were represented
as the analogue of today’s “contractors, consultants, franchisees and entrepreneurs”, opposed to “unjust tax”, and of “being pushed around by politicians and bureaucrats”, and
exemplars of “enterprise and independence” and “moderation and compromise”, of how
“Australians have settled their affairs pragmatically”.95 Apart from distorting how historians have typically analysed the event, such a representation obviously needs to excise
the Charter, the oath, republicanism, and the mass action before and after the fighting.
A more plausible explanation than The Australian’s historians’ conspiracy for the leftist
domination of the legacy of Eureka, lies in the existence, noted by many texts in this
sample, of more obvious social and political connections between the revolt and later
labour movement and leftwing concerns, than there are to conservative traditions. The
miners were inspired in part by a clearly proletarian movement in the Chartists and, as
noted, did not seem to be a cohered business class. Conversely there has been a near
total lack of ‘movement’ type organisation and collective action in the conservative tradition, with partial exception of the 1949 anti-bank nationalisation campaign, as noted
by Brett.96
The ‘conservative denialist’ frame
A fifth and final frame, more evident among letter writers than the positive conservatives, was that of ‘conservative denialists’. These tended to minimize the importance of
the event in Australian history, seen as the positive and gradual development of a unified nation. Blainey recognises, “The Ballarat miners accelerated the movement towards
democracy”, but also states a key theme in this frame, that democratic development was
proceeding apace in any case: while, “By 1857, Victoria had one of the most democratic
systems of governments the world had seen … Curiously, South Australia by then was
just as democratic as Victoria, without firing one shot”.97 Monarchist leader David Flint
95 ‘Editorial: Story of Eureka belongs to us all’, The Australian, 4 December 2004, p. 18
96 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class 63, 118
97 Geoffrey Blainey, Clare Wright and Anne Beggs Sunter, ‘Cradle of democracy or a small uprising?
Historians assess the meaning’, The Age, 3 December 2004, p. 8
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similarly argued in a letter that, “the South Australian constitution, then the most democratic in all the world, was probably as much the inspiration for the Victorian parliament
widening the suffrage than the tragedy at Eureka”.98 A number of letter writers more
explicitly minimised the issues of the struggle, as a squabble over tax. One compared
the work of “socialist historians” in exaggerating Eureka to the “rewriting of history” in
“Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea”, as the event “was nothing more than a
demonstration and a stand against taxation of the time”.99 Another dismissed the miners
as “essentially tax avoiders who objected to paying taxes”.100 Texts in both conservative
frames expressed frustration with the leftist tenor of the commemorations.
Thus there were clearly distinguishable ideological frameworks evident in both the
media and focus group discussions on Eureka, in which social and political-organisational determinants of ideological discourse are traceable. While there was generally a
stronger identification with Eureka among the left, judgments and interpretations to
some extent cut across the streams of national thought posited in this study, further
evidence on the highly contested nature of historical remembering. There was also considerable difference between the way different ideological positions were expressed, and
the balance of forces between them, in the two debates discussed in this chapter.
In the previous section of this chapter it was argued that the left generally were put
in a defensive and reactive mode through the course of the history wars during Howard’s period in office. Through the “Howard intellectuals”, a particular nexus between
executive government, sections of academia and particular media institutions, notably
The Australian as an influential site for debate among professional, political and media elites, a conservative nationalist agenda for historiography and history teaching has
been strongly projected. This was in the context of the noted increase in feelings of pride
in Australian history, and had the advantage of a ‘common sense’ appeal of a unifying
and positive narrative. Responses in terms of the complexities of the historical process
and the technicalities of different pedagogical approaches were inevitably more complex
and defensive. However, while the attempts made to give this agenda material effect in
interventions into the make-up of the National Museum, the flying of flags and displaying of values at schools and the form and content of secondary school history teaching
98 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 6 December 2004, p. 8
99 ‘Mail’, The Courier-Mail, 4 December 2004, p. 34
100 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 6 December 2004, p. 8
187 |
indicated the ‘activist’ nature of the Howard government in relation to national culture,
the History Summit itself proved no overwhelming victory. Different institutional bases
of ideas and more strictly pedagogical issues inevitably came into play, and the government itself fell before the outcomes envisaged in Howard’s 25 January 2006 speech could
be implemented.
While the left may have retreated in good order from the battles around the Summit,
it was actually in an offensive posture around the earlier Eureka commemoration. Part
of this was a broad united front: moderate leftists, militant-minded radical nationalists
and the internationalist left were united in appreciation and celebration. The latter two
sections shared essentially the same frame of appreciation of Eureka as part of a militant history. The possibility of this unity was perhaps due to the nature of the Eureka
event, with respect to the theory of the nation advanced in Chapter 3, as part of the early
history of a nation in which national development and the interests of the labouring
classes coincided. A related explanation for the left’s successes in this battle of the history
wars, lies in the general advantages of the left in accounting for history that cannot but
be discussed in terms of class and social conflict. The subsequent chapters will further
elaborate how in more contemporary debates, the left has more often been caught in the
contradictions of class and nation.
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Chapter 7
Global trade, national culture and the
Australia-US Free Trade Agreement
I stand up for Australian sovereignty, and I say to the people in my electorate that it is
the Labor Party that is the patriotic party in this country. We will not surrender our
interests in the United States by entering into a free trade agreement that allows for
enormous subsidies in the United States.
(Mark Latham, speaking in the House of Representatives, 20 June, 2002.1)
These comments by Mark Latham referred to a particular controversy in recent Australian political history, but drew on long-standing tropes. For the great bulk of the Australian left questions of sovereignty generally, and in the economic sphere issues of dependency and exploitation, have always been central. This chapter explores perceptions
and representations of nationalism relating to the Australian nation-market-state’s place
in the world economy and cultural aspects of trade relations. Here I aim to use background material, relevant survey results and focus group comments and an analysis of
the public debate around the Australia United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA)
to trace the historical antecedents and social and political bases of such representations
and perceptions.
In the previous chapter we saw questions of class and sectional differences generally
complicating any unified national history. In most discussion of trade and economic
relations, the ‘national interest’ looms large, but most forces on the left have had to
reconcile a particular conception of such unified interests with an understanding of
class division. This chapter firstly overviews the historical development of economic left
nationalism, and then critically analyses interventions into recent debates on globalisation. After an empirical sketch of Australia’s actual position within global capitalism,
1 Quoted in Alan Ramsey, ‘Sovereignty lost in the trade-off ’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July
2004, p. 37
189 |
the debate leading up to the August 2004 ratification of the AUSFTA is utilised as the
chapter’s key event. A media sample taken from two weeks around a key turning point
in the debate, the eventual acceptance by Latham of the agreement on the proviso of
two amendments to the government’s enabling legislation, is analysed along with antiagreement campaign material and relevant comments from focus group participants.
Australian economic left nationalism
As discussed in Chapter 3, a key component of left and radical nationalisms in Australia
has been populist, rather than consistently class-based, conceptions of socio-economic structure and alternative economic strategies. It was argued that such analyses have
been channels through which the specific interests of business, professional, parliamentary and bureaucratic layers and some better off and well organised workers have been
mediated. Populist-nationalist ideology has often been explicitly counterposed to more
class-based and internationalist ideas, not least in early struggles over the nature of the
Labor Party. Class analysis takes Australia as a capitalist social formation dominated by
a national bourgeoisie that owns and controls the means of production and exploits the
working, small business and farmer classes. Advocates of nationalist and populist views,
particularly those that have any connection to or avow sympathy for the left or the labour movement, may take on elements of class analysis. But such views stress a cleavage
between ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ and parasitic groupings, often constructed as alien to
the nation, based on particular economic sectors and, generally, foreign capital. Strategies tend to focus on protection of and assistance to ‘Australian’ industry and enterprise
through exchange controls, tariffs, quotas and subsidies.
From early in the history of the labour movement, a central part of the populistnationalist nexus between foreigness and parasitism was a critique of banking capital as
the ‘money power’. The merging by the early twentieth century of banking and industrial firms into finance capital was misconstrued as the domination of parasitic money
changers, many of whom were British, over productive layers of society. This critique
at times had anti-semitic overtones, as in the title of a seminal text, Frank Anstey’s The
Kingdom of Shylock, and a 1930 labour press cartoon showing Otto Niemeyer, sent by
the British Reserve bank to enforce austerity measures on Australian governments, as a
| 190
caricatured Jewish-Asiatic octopus devouring Australia.2 The latter appeared at a time
when anti-bank feeling was being forcibly expressed by NSW Labor premier Jack Lang,
who railed against “foreign bankers” and “financial imperialists,” and attempted to repudiate some debts and lower interest payments before his heroic stature was confirmed by
his dismissal by the NSW governor.3
As also noted in Chapter 3, left populist-nationalism was boosted of the turn by the
Communist International toward Popular Front policies from the early 1930s. The ‘national’ aspects of this had less expression in the economic sphere per se than in calls for
national defence against fascism and particularly Japan.4 However both Communist and
left Labor commentators from the early 1960s increasingly came to view Australia as a
dependent or semi-dependent section of the world economy, and thus as a nation exploited by foreign multinational, and particularly US-based, corporations. Ted Wheelwright in particular developed this view, along with typically left nationalist alternatives in the form of some public ownership combined with protectionist measures that
would be supported by non-‘comprador’ sections of the bourgeoisie (that is, sections
not directly dependent on and beholden to foreign capital).5 In the 1960s and 1970s
radical national historians also increasingly analysed Australian history in terms of an
exploited British colony, and the labour movement as a central part of the construction
of national values and institutions, positions which led them to support a nationalist
road to socialism in the present.6 From this period as well, the Communist Party of
Australia (Marxist-Leninist), a Maoist group relatively influential on the left in the late
1960s and 1970s, took up an extravagant concentration on opposing foreign capital and
supporting Australian identity and ‘independence’, largely as a byproduct of its support
for Beijing over Moscow.7
2 Frank Anstey, The Kingdom of Shylock (Melbourne: Labor Call Print, 1917). The school of thought is
named after Frank Anstey, Money Power (Melbourne: Fraser and Jenkins, 1921). Cartoon from Worker
(Brisbane), 27 August 1930, reproduced in Alomes and Jones, Australian Nationalism: A Documentary
History 207. For a detailed treatment see Peter Love, Labour and the Money Power (Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1984). A recent echo in popular culture was the 2001 film The Bank,
in which an American chief executive led the transformation of a benevolent regional bank into an
aggressive global corporation that ruined the lives of decent and productive Australian farmers and
petty bourgeois.
3 Lang quoted in West, Holmes and Adler, Socialism or Nationalism? 29
4 O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream 37–52
5 See for example E.L. Wheelwright, Australia and World Capitalism (Ringwood: Penguin, 1980)
6 An example of Australia as exploited is Fitzpatrick, The British Empire in Australia, 1834–1939, and
for an argument for the importance of national values and institutions to an effective socialist strategy
see Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics xxviii
7 For critiques of the nationalism of Australian communism in the 1960s–70s see O’Lincoln, Into
191 |
By the beginning of the 1980s, in the context of large industrial and social movement campaigns, significant sections of the left, led by the powerful Amalgamated Metal
Workers Union, were calling for both defence of the ‘national’ economy, and for public ownership and militant defence of living standards and jobs. However from 1982
the logic of a nationalist approach in a period of by then declining industrial struggle
led to the signing of an ALP-union Accord, also spearheaded by the AMWU, and to
an increasing emphasis on industry policy, tripartite planning and a trade-off between
wage claims and the ‘social wage’ (including ‘national’ institutions such as Medicare).
With Labor in power from 1983, unions and social movement leaders increasingly accepted that restructuring involved substantial job losses, reduction in real wages and
successively lowered expectations of the social wage. The nationalism of much of the
left increasingly came to equate to a national struggle for global market share and hence
increasingly less distinguishable from neo-liberal nationalism.8
However, as will be demonstrated below, the themes of opposition to foreignness and
defence of national values and institutions have been very evident in analyses of and attitudes toward globalisation and trade agreements. The next section will consider these
issues in light of more recent debates on what exactly ‘globalisation’ is.
Debates around globalisation and trade
Central to debate about economics and trade in the last two decades has been the contention that a qualitative new epoch of global interaction in trade, financial exchange,
culture and communications has emerged under the rubric ‘globalisation’. In the 1990s,
a number of commentators both claimed that this development was superseding the era
of nation-states, and hailed the change as allowing comparative advantage within a free
market to bloom to the advantage of all regions of the world.9 The word form of globalisation is a nominalised verb, and, as argued in previous chapters such a lexical device is
a typical sign of reification, in which social processes are stripped of varied actors with
competing interests and presented as self-evident objects.
the Mainstream 95–169, West, Holmes and Adler, Socialism or Nationalism? 36–41 and Kuhn, ‘The
Australian left, nationalism and the Vietnam war’.
8 Pat Brewer and Peter Boyle, ‘End of the illusions? Accord politics and the left in Australia’, Links:
International Journal of Socialist Renewal/1 (1994), 68–89, O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream 170–179
9 For example, Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy
(London: Harper Collins, 1994), Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (London: Harper
Collins, 1999)
| 192
By 2000 the hegemonic acceptance regarding what globalisation is and its unqualified benevolent nature had began to break down among orthodox economists, some of
whom began to analyse the process more in terms of the neo-liberal turn discussed in
Chapter 5. Joseph Stiglitz, World Bank chief economist from 1997–2000, has analysed
the ideological and social processes behind the reified mystifications. He charts how
International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies, in contrast with the original
brief of these global institutions to regulate trade and development to avoid crises and
overcome poverty, were by the 1980s totally dominated by the neo-liberal “Washington Consensus”: simplistic, mythical models that assumed markets could be based on
complete and instantaneously transferred information and would by themselves lead to
optimum efficiency, while hypocritically ignoring the protectionist policies of the rich
nations. Stiglitz stresses the links between big capital and the finance and trade ministers who make up secretive IMF and World Bank decision-making processes heavily
weighted toward the richest countries, while impacting most on the poorest who are
forced to liberalise. Results have included massive economic decline in post-communist
countries and the needless exacerbation of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.10
This decade commentators, notwithstanding the various differences, omissions and
ambiguities discussed below, have generally agreed that globalisation is a real phenomenon, with important continuities alongside aspects of the new, and that, particularly,
the role of nations and states have been transformed rather than erased. Woods points
out that while since the 1980s there has been increased trade and the expansion of markets underpinned by new technologies in some areas, especially in communications
and financial markets, on some measures levels of international trade were higher in the
early twentieth century. What is essentially new, Woods argues, is a number of political
processes. These include international trade regulation, a contradictory process whereas
some states, particularly weaker ones, are denuded of power, while other, stronger statesshape globalisation and strengthen their own internal institutions, although in some
areas such as currency controls, states across the board have surrendered power.11
A key aspect of the institutional change relating to trade in the last 50 years has been
the development of trade agreements. Part of international economic architecture nego10 Joesph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002)
11 Ngaire Woods, ‘The political economy of globalization’, in Ngaire Woods (ed.), The Political
Economy of Globalization (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 1–20
193 |
tiated after the Second World War, along with the IMF and World Bank, was the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the stated object of which was eventual free
trade, although rich countries inserted substantial exemptions. The ‘Uruguay Round’
of negotiations was launched in 1986; this aimed to bring new areas into GATT and
eliminating loopholes. After protracted disputes, outcomes of this round included an
agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS), covering an important aspect of the controversies surrounding AUSFTA as discussed below, and the formation of
the World Trade Organisation from 1995, to oversee global trade. Moves toward global
trade infrastructure have however had a contradictory relationship with the regional
trade arrangements that have been proliferating since the early 1990s. Commentators
dispute whether such regional deals may act as building blocks, or whether they close
outsiders off from trade, and many point out that they may have inconsistent rules to the
WTO. They may give smaller players a bigger voice or may give larger economies arenas
in which to dominate.12 Also, as Given argues, security and geopolitical considerations
have always been intertwined with direct economic calculations in trade agreements,
with the US favouring bilateral agreements with “friends” from the 1980s, as multilateral
agreements became slow and difficult. This tendency increased after the terror attacks of
11 September 2001, part of which was the granting of special powers to Bush to negotiate trade agreement in 2002. Subsequent bilateral deals, including the AUSFTA, have
been touted in “subjective” terms of sharing practices and values as well as trade and
security.13 Given sees a basic contradiction between the desire to exchange goods freely,
and the desire to retain cultural freedom, the latter being the idea that, “People should
be free to create, distribute, receive and engage with the things, practices and people
that offer meanings to their lives”.14 He sees many of the inconsistencies, compromises
and disputes relating to trade agreements, such as those around quotas and subsidies for
national cultural products, as resulting from this clash. While Given appears to follow
structuralism in viewing the cultural and economic realms as quite separate, the ‘subjective’, ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ aspects of trade arrangements are quite understandable in
terms of the dialectical, rather than vulgar economic determinist, nature of the working
12 Diana Tussie and Ngaire Woods, ‘Trade, regionalism and the threat to multilateralism’, in Ngaire
Woods (ed.), The Political Economy of Globalization (London: Macmillan, 2002), 54–77
13 Jock Given, America’s Pie: Trade and Culture after 9/11 (Sydney: University of New South Wales
Press, 2003) 63–77
14 Ibid. 14
| 194
out of socio-economic interests argued for in Chapter 2.
The latter point relates to more general considerations of the relationship between nationality, globality and social theory. James and Gills distinguish between globalisation,
as processes involved in objective structures of or subjective representations of a specifically world system, and any sort of international or cross-border interactions. They
are, more generally, concerned with distinguishing between globalisation, the market
and capitalism, as a way of understanding the elements of both continuity and change
in present conditions, seeing different social formations are characterised by different
forms of these processes, with new forms “overlaying” rather than replacing previous
forms. Part of their account is an adaptation of Weber’s chronology of traditional and
modern forms of capitalism, by adding a “postmodern” form. While, with regard to the
discussion in Chapter 2 this is useful in terms of the recognition of the relative autonomy
of differing structures, and the need for concrete, historically grounded analysis (such as
of the rise of specifically global structures and representations), they appear to reject the
conception of varying overall types of social formation. It is not clear for James and Gills
that there is a social system where market relations are dominant, and that therefore it is
useful to call this type of formation capitalism and see it as qualitatively different from
pre-capitalist traditional societies where the market plays a quite different and more
subordinate role. The lack of recognition of some element of totality in social structure
is, in their account, evident in that while wage labour is cited as central to capitalism, it
is not clear that this becomes the dominant form of labour, or that ownership of capital defines a powerful elite, with a very different role from periods when the owners of
slaves or the controllers of serfs held powerful social positions.15
Goodman and James emphasise that nation-states and globalisation have not been
separate moments in the development of modernity, rather the formation of nations
and states occurred during a particular taking off point of globalisation. Their analysis, sketched below (and that of James and Gills above) is in line with James’ conception of the national and of the theory of constituent abstraction, discussed in Chapter
3. Goodman and James see the changing nature of and differing forms of interaction
between globalism and nationalism in a structuralist way, as shaped by relatively autonomous modes of production, exchange, enquiry, organisation and communication,
15 Paul James and Barry K. Gills, ‘Globalization, capitalism and the market: Beyond ahistorical and
flat-Earth arguments’, Arena/28 (2007), 171–195
195 |
with different forms of power and resistance within each sphere. The types of practices
within these structures vary to the extent that they are on the one hand embodied and
on the other hand abstracted, a variation with significant effects on how the different
practices will be globalised. They see more recent forms of globalism as increasingly
mediated, abstract and spacially extended, particularly by new forms of communication, as opposed to older (but still important), more embodied forms of globalism. The
embodied to abstract continuum extends from physical trade and mass emigration at
one end, through “agency-extended” practices (the movements of institutional agents),
to abstract communication. The former are more highly state controlled and regulated,
and the latter less regulated and more borderless. This seems to be an aid to understanding the debates about different aspects of globalised trade and culture discussed in this
chapter. However, such a structuralist division of social space along different modes and
levels of abstraction may miss interconnections, such as those between finance capital
and national currencies and physical economies, and the bounding of all modes and
levels by the same social interests. Goodman and James admit their schema minimises
the question of agency, as it does not seem to account for social interests pushing in the
direction they discuss and not in others.16
Nairn by contrast stresses questions of agency when he argues that the neo-liberal
form that globalisation has taken has been due to a deliberate ideological choice. “The
world has been afflicted by Thatcher and Friedmanism, rather than the spread of capital and commerce in themselves”.17 However he also emphasises that globality of any
sort changes, rather than makes redundant, forms of the state, nationalism and national
identity. Politically he makes the strong claim that the Iraq adventure (discussed in the
next chapter) will spell the end of Great Britain, as Scottish and Welsh people increasingly tire of outmoded imperial entanglements via a state dominated by the English, a
situation that will increasingly show the hollowness of a “British identity”. Nairn sees
such developments as key to any alternative to neo-liberal, conservative forms of globalism. Economically, he suggests, “Just as classic ‘Free Trade’ was impossible without
16 James Goodman and Paul James, ‘Globalisms, nationalisms, solidarities’, in James Goodman and
Paul James (eds.), Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal Globalisation
(New York: Routledge, 2007) at 1–7, and Paul James, ‘Global formation’, in James Goodman and Paul
James (eds.), Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal Globalisation
(New York: Routledge, 2007), 23–40
17 Tom Nairn, ‘Nations vs imperial unions in a time of globalization, 1707–2007’, Arena/28 (2007),
33–44 at 43
| 196
assorted forms of protection and barriers, so positive globalisation will only work via
renewed forms of identity conservation, including that of national identity”18, an identity based on place and belonging rather than ethnicity. Whether significantly different
forms of capitalist globalisation are possible, and what role the nation, nationalism and
national identity play in any alternatives to current orthodoxies, are highly contested
aspects of the globalisation debate.
Garrett statistically tests notions that globalisation pushes all states into an equally
deregulationist, free market framework, by correlating measures of freedom of trade,
deregulation, public spending, income transfers, progressiveness of tax policies, labour
movement strength and the presence of left parties in government for OECD countries.
He finds, at least for the OECD up to 1994, overall moves to freer trade and financial openness have been accompanied by increased public spending, a continuing wide
variation in measures of government spending, income transfer policies and taxation
regimes, and weak correlations between deregulation in these areas and measures of
trade, investment and financial openness. The strongest correlations were between the
strength of labour movements and the presence of left parties in government and the
continued strength of the public economy.19
Such arguments for the possibility of policy variation, and the dependence of such on
social-political agency, are extended and radicalised by proponents of new forms of leftist nationalism. Laxer argues that progressive alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation are
to be found in “inter-nationalist nationalisms,” that stand for diversity, multiculturalism
and social justice framed within popular sovereignty.20 It is true, as for example Stiglitz
demonstrates, that many countries are exploited and lacking in sovereignty. It seems
clear that social struggles are largely contested within national arenas. As pointed out in
many parts of this project there are often strong senses of national-cultural attachment
associated with progressive ideals. But important distinctions are glossed over in Laxer’s
account: whether nationalism plays different roles in exploited and exploiter countries
is not clear, and Australia and Canada are too easily categorised as “semi-peripheral,”
with little regard to patterns of wealth, development and control, as discussed below.
18 Ibid. at 40
19 Geoffrey Garrett, ‘Shrinking states? Globalization and national autonomy’, in Ngaire Woods (ed.),
The Political Economy of Globalization (London: Macmillan, 2002), 107–146
20 Gordon Laxer, ‘Progressive inter-nationalist nationalisms’, in James Goodman and Paul James
(eds.), Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal Globalisation (New York:
Routledge, 2007), 108–122
197 |
Laxer asks whether citizens can “actively participate in their own nation, but have no
attachment to it? If such attachments are not nationalisms, what are they?”21 However,
such formulations collapse together three distinct things: political struggles that happen
to be carried out within a nation-state; national attachment and belonging that might
often operate as a ‘background’ or generalised ‘common sense’, and mobilised nationalist ideology, especially in regard to national interest. Significantly Laxer sees racism and
exclusivism as the negative potential features of nationalism, but apparently not ideologically deployed and arguably spurious common interests.
Goodman sees responses to globalisation as inevitably having both international and
national aspects, in terms of defending sovereignty and forging links across borders.
Progressive responses to neo-liberalism aiming for economic justice, democratisation
and more humanitarian norms will both be international and will “seek to construct
more inclusive versions of the nation, and in the process directly assert, mobilize around
and reproduce nationalist sentiment”22, a standpoint summarised as “cosmopolitan nationalism”. However, as with Laxer, the problems of nationalism are left at lack of inclusivity, with little regard for the problematic ideological deployment of the myth of the
‘national interest’, or the problematic nature of protectionist strategies. In the examples
of campaigns and issues given, the ‘national’ aspect appears to be that the issue, such
as the activities of multi-national corporations, occurs within a national framework as
well as a global one, rather than demonstrating that any ‘national interest’ is an effective
mobilising point. It is questionable that without any appeal to ‘national interest’, there is
any nationalism per se involved. Goodman’s appeal to Marx’s view that support for Irish
national freedom was a precondition for the social emancipation of the English (as well
as Irish) proletariat, misses the very important point that this was the initial formulation
of the conception of the sharp divide between oppressor and oppressed nations in the
Marxist tradition, as discussed in Chapter 3.
Bryan posits the limitations of any ‘national’ alternative to neo-liberal globalisation
by arguing that within capitalism globality and nationality are always intertwined, “mutually constitutive,” rather than counterposed, in terms of economic exchanges.23 For
21 Ibid. at 112
22 James Goodman, ‘Reflexive solidarities: Between nationalism and globalism’, in James Goodman
and Paul James (eds.), Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal
Globalisation (New York: Routledge, 2007), 187–204 at 195
23 Dick Bryan, ‘Global and national: the constitution of contemporary capitalism’, in James Goodman
and Paul James (eds.), Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal
| 198
example, the trade in financial derivatives, such as futures and options relating to currency prices, is based on differentiation between national currencies, and is also used as
a tool by central banks to ameliorate the impact on national currencies of the turbulence
of financial markets. This enmenshment limits the possibilities of any form of ‘national
interest’ strategy, as both protectionism, and what Bryan very usefully describes as a
“national crusade” for “global competitiveness,” are but different ways of mediating capital’s interests at the expense of labour.24 There are options within state policy but the only
real alternative is to break with the logic of profitability.
From the above discussion we can conclude that since the 1980s forms of trade, technology, communication and dominant ideology have undergone significant change
across the world, with change particularly evident in more abstracted and communicative forms of social life, but also that such changes are based on continuity with capitalist relations of production and the phase of monopolising capitals and rich country
domination described in Chapters 3 and 4. ‘Globalisation’ seems a useful term both
to describe the general internationalising dynamic of capitalism, and the more recent
phase, if the meaning is clear by context (or by prefiguring with ‘neo-liberal’ for the
more recent phase). Further, debates about the role of the nation and nationality in the
global system may take new forms but also echo previous arguments around the notion
of Australia as exploited and dependent. Political and media accounts and popular perceptions on trade and the AUSFTA are discussed below. It would be instructive before
dealing with perceptions and representations further to consider the empirical reality of
Australia’s recent economic place in the world.
Australia and the global economy
In Chapter 5 I discussed the ‘neo-liberal’ turn in global capitalism from the mid-1970s
as an attempt to restore rates of profit through a raft of measures including privatisation, removal of protectionist measures, deregulation of financial markets and attacks
on working conditions and union power. In the section above, this turn was related to a
phase in social life that has been ‘globalising’ in particular ways, that is, has seen a relatively new phase in the internationalising dynamic of capitalism discussed throughout
the project. A key recent aspect has been a drive to increase export earnings and to use
Globalisation (New York: Routledge, 2007), 41–55
24 Ibid. at 53
199 |
more open trade as a tool to discipline labour markets and facilitate economic restructuring in general. One key question to address is whether within these processes, Australia can be seen as exploited or dependent, as many left nationalists have traditionally
held. It therefore be instructive to examine measures of foreign ownership in Australia,
as shown in Table 7.1 in terms of the percentage of total business equity that is foreign
owned.
Table 7.1: Foreign ownership of Australian equity25
Year
Per cent
1990
33
1992
26
1994
29
1996
28
1998
29
2000
29
2002
31
2004
30
2006
27
It appears that, with some variability, foreign ownership rates in this period, since
some time after the commencement of neo-liberal restructuring, have been quite stable,
and certainly showing no upward trend. It is worth highlighting that despite the history
of analytic, political and popular linking of foreign exploitation and the banking sector
noted above, and despite extensive deregulation and restructuring of banking since the
1980s, foreign ownership in this sector has been below the average, standing at 24%
both in 1997 and in 2006 and varying by several points in between.
The following table presents some comparative information on Australia’s role in
global trade and the world economy. Gross domestic product (GDP) is a standard measure of the size of an economy. Gross national income (GNI) per capita, is comprised
of the total monetary value produced within a country plus income received from other countries (such as repatriated profits), and so is a measure of a national economy’s
25 Figures for this table and for banking ownership from Guy Woods, ‘Foreign ownership and
corporate Australia’, Parliamentary Library, 2001 <http://www.aph.gov.au/Library/pubs/rn/200102/02RN08.htm> accessed 10 December 2007; and Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Feature Article —
Foreign Ownership of Equity’, Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Australia, Sep
2006, Cat. No. 5302.0 (Canberra 2006)
| 200
wealth and stage of development. Foreign direct investment (FDI) refers to investment
that gives the investor a significant measure of control over the entity invested in. For
a particular country FDI inflows as a percentage of GDP is a measure of the extent of
foreign penetration of the economy, while FDI outflows are a measure of the extent to
which actors within a national economy are players across the global arena.
Table: 7.2 Measures of wealth and investment flows, selected developed and
underdeveloped countries, 200626
Country
GDP
($US million)
GNI per capita
($US)
FDI as per cent of GDP
In flows
Outflows
US
130 201 819
44 260
1.3
1.6
UK
2 345 015
35 580
6.0
3.3
Ireland
222 650
35 900
5.8
9.9
Sweden
384 927
35 070
7.0
6.3
Australia
768 178
34 060
3.1
2.9
Japan
4 340 133
33 150
-0.1
1.1
Colombia
135 836
7620
4.7
0.8
Albania
9136
5840
3.6
0.1
Indonesia
364 459
3950
1.5
1.0
India
906 268
3800
1.8
1.0
Vietnam
60 884
3300
3.8
0
Angola
44 033
2360
-2.6
0.2
The first thing to note is the sharp divide in wealth per person between the first six
and latter six countries, even for large and rapidly growing economies such as India’s,
reflecting a still basic divide between developed and underdeveloped economies. A second notable factor is that the underdeveloped countries all have significantly greater FDI
inflows than outflows (of at least 50%), suggesting their relatively minor role as global
investors. This difference is evident for the United Kingdom as well, although notably
the level of outflow is significantly greater than for the underdeveloped countries. Other
26 Figures for the table and subsequent discussion taken and calculated from World Bank, ‘Total GDP
2006’, 2007 <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf>
accessed 10 December 2007; World Bank, ‘GNI per capita 2006, Atlas method and PPP’, 2007
<http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf> accessed 10
December 2007; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, ‘FDI 2006’, 2007
<http://stats.unctad.org/FDI/TableViewer/tableView.aspx> accessed 10 December 2007, with GNI taken
as the purchasing power parity figures
201 |
developed states have greater levels of outflows, apart from the US and Japan, these being very large internal markets with less reliance on trade. Australia, from these figures,
appears as a small economy relative to that of the United States (at 6% of the latter’s
size), but out of 209 national economies it is the 15th largest, and the 21st wealthiest per
capita. It has a level of outflows similar to the UK and between the two largest national
markets and advanced European countries that as significantly smaller economies are
more reliant on external trade. Hence the overall picture is of a sharply divided global
economy in which most capital movement is between advanced national economies,
and in which Australia sits, not as an exploited and dependent neo-colony, but a wealthy
and advanced global player.
This is not to deny that the Australian economy faces specific structural problems, let
alone that it has escaped capitalism’s history of cyclical crises. However it is important
to ground the perceptions and representations of the place of Australia in the global
economy within the empirical reality of the basic division between rich and poor nation-market-states.
The clear position of Australia within the former category is also shown by how Australian big capital and the Australian state have acted in concert to secure the best conditions for outward investment flows, particularly within South East Asia and the Pacific,
where weaker nation-market-states are often bent to Australia’s will. Rosewarne outlines how Australian capital, particularly in agriculture and mining, aggressively moved
into the South Pacific from the late nineteenth century, in competition with European
rivals (including the assumption of direct colonial control of New Guinea after Germany’s defeat in the First World War). Particularly from the late 1980s, foreign policy
was more closely and consciously aligned with competition for global markets, signified
by the Department of Foreign Affairs becoming the Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade. In the immediate region, this shift was enacted through making aid conditional
on the purchase of Australian products and services and a push to tie security agreements to the sale of Australian armaments. In the 1990s Australian policy towards the
South Pacific increasingly turned to working in concert with the World Bank and the
IMF, both to decrease the Australian state’s direct aid costs, and as a means of applying
political pressure and further conditions on aid to enforce privatisation, public sector
| 202
cuts and deregulation.27 After initial conservative pragmatic caution in foreign affairs,
the Howard government appeared to adopt the US neo-conservative “whiteboard” approach to “failed states,” which posited that a benign great power could restructure nations and states at will. Military and police interventions such as those in East Timor
(from 1999) and the Soloman Islands (from 2003) could claim some success but by 2006
had both caused resentment by ignoring local social and cultural traditions and, again,
imposing neo-liberal models of minimal government, privatisation and increased openness to investment by Australian big capital.28 The increasing militarism of the Australian state’s regional strategies is further discussed in the following chapter.
Perceptions on trade and national culture
As demonstrated in Chapter 5, while the precepts of neoliberalism have been hegemonic among the corporate, political and media elites since the 1980s, there has always
been majority opposition to many aspects of deregulation and privatisation, and this
tendency has grown since the 1980s. Survey data with regard to questions of trade, globalisation and national culture give a similar picture, although with some notable contradictions. Tables 7.3 to 7.8 summarise relevant survey data, using where possible those
questions that have been asked in more than one questionnaire, to allow any change
over time to be evident.
27 Stuart Rosewarne, ‘Australia’s changing role in the South pacific: Global restructuring and the
assertion of metropolitan state authority’, Journal of Australian Political Economy/40 (1997), 80–116
28 Michael Wesley, ‘Reality beyond the whiteboard’, Griffith Review/16 (2006), 173–186; Tim
Anderson, The Limits of RAMSI (Sydney: Aid/Watch, 2008)
203 |
Table 7.3: Attitudes towards the question, “Opening up Australia’s economy to
foreign competition has a bad effect on job security in this country”29
2003
2005
Strongly agree
12
14
Agree
36
43
Neither agree
nor disagree
23
21
Disagree
19
16
Strongly
disagree
3
2
Can’t choose
6
4
Total
100
100
Table 7.4: Attitudes toward the question, “Australia should limit import of
foreign products to protect its national economy,” per cent
1995
2003
Strongly agree
34
25
Agree
42
40
Neither agree
nor disagree
11
20
Disagree
10
13
Strongly
disagree
1
2
Can’t choose
2
2
Total
100
100
29 Results for all tables are rounded to the nearest per cent. Data for Tables 7.3 to 7.8 from Kelley,
Bean and Evans, ‘National Social Science Survey, 1995/96’; Roger Jones, Ian McAllister and David
Gow, ‘Australian Election Study, 1996’, Australian Social Science Data Archives, Australian National
University 1996 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 10 November 2007; Gibson et al., ‘The
Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, 2003’; Wilson et al., ‘The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes,
2005’
| 204
Table 7.5: Attitudes toward the question, “Australia should use tariffs to protect its
industry,” per cent
1996
2003
2005
Strongly agree
16
12
11
Agree
43
40
44
Neither agree
nor disagree
29
25
26
Disagree
10
11
9
Strongly
disagree
2
1
1
Can’t choose
NA
10
9
Total
100
100
100
Table 7.6: Attitudes toward the question, “Free trade leads to better products
becoming available in Australia,” per cent
2003
2005
Strongly agree
7
5
Agree
42
32
Neither agree
nor disagree
28
30
Disagree
15
22
Strongly
disagree
3
6
Can’t choose
5
5
Total
100
100
As we can see from Table 7.4, between the mid-1990s and 2003 overall support for
the limitation of the import of foreign products fell to a considerable extent (from 76%
to 65%), although still constituting a majority. It was also found in 2003 that support for
the idea that free trade is beneficial in terms of product availability was a near majority
and considerably higher than the proportion opposing the idea (Table 7.6). Correlating
a range of measures of economic openness with demographic factors and expectations
of living standards for the 2003 AuSSA, Marsh et. al. found a significant difference between economic “winners” and “losers”. The university educated, managers and professionals were less likely to agree that openness threatened job security, and those who
lived outside cities and were concerned about their own situation, were more likely.
205 |
Education affected attitudes towards the importation of foreign products, and lower
perceptions of economic mobility correlated with disagreement with the idea that free
trade improved the availability of goods.30 However there was also a general reduction of
support for free trade between 2003 and 2005, with support for tariffs rebuilding somewhat (Table 7.5), less enthusiasm about the benefits of free trade (Table 7.6) and a very
large increase with those viewing foreign competition as detrimental to job security
(Table 7.3). This matches the increasing discontent with neo-liberalism on questions of
business and unionism noted for the same period in Chapter 5.
Available measures, as summarised in Tables 7.7 and 7.8, indicate that there was less
opposition to more directly cultural aspects of globalisation.
Table 7.7: Attitudes toward the question, “Increased exposure to foreign films,
music, and books is damaging our national and local cultures,” per cent
2003
Strongly agree
8
Agree
16
Neither agree
nor disagree
21
Disagree
41
Strongly
disagree
12
Can’t choose
2
Total
100
30 Ian Marsh, Gabrielle Meagher and Shaun Wilson, ‘Are Australians open to globalisation?’, in Shaun
Wilson et al. (eds.), Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005), 240–257
at 244–245
| 206
Table 7.8: Attitudes towards the question, “Australia’s television should give
preference to Australian films and programmes”
1995
2003
Strongly agree
17
14
Agree
39
32
Neither agree
nor disagree
21
28
Disagree
18
21
Strongly
disagree
3
3
Can’t choose
0
2
Total
100
100
Only a quarter of respondents were concerned about the effects of foreign products on
local and national cultures in 2003, and between 1995 and 2003 those supporting quotas
for television slipped from a small majority to a large minority. Marsh et. al. found from
the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes that older people, those on lower incomes
and those who did not complete year 12 tend to be more culturally “protectionist,” but
university education did not significantly increase “cultural cosmopolitanism”.31
A more general finding by Marsh et. al. is that compared with other smaller advanced
capitalist countries Australia has a low exposure to trade, has low social spending (which
particularly in Europe is seen as a means of balancing the risks of trade) and has attitudes that are quite protectionist.32 It is difficult however to clearly separate opposition
to neo-liberalism from positive support for traditional protectionist measures. None of
the surveys examined directly tested support for differing conceptions of globalisation,
and the media texts examined below relating to the AUSFTA examined, contained very
little that explained any alternatives beyond the free trade/protectionism dichotomy.
The anti-AUSFTA campaign material examined did at points offer the alternative of
“fair trade,” with measures such as those designed to encourage labour and environment
standards and the use of protectionism for underdeveloped rather than advanced economies. However, this was far from as prominent as the nationalist framing discussed
below. That is, most people may have little exposure to alternatives to free trade and
traditional protectionism. Marsh et. al. offer some suggestive data on the differential op31 Ibid. at 250–251
32 Ibid. at 252–253
207 |
position to neo-liberalism. They argue that from responses regarding tariffs and social
spending that there are four identifiable clusters with regard to globalisation, and break
down membership of each cluster in terms of party political support. This exercise is of
interest, as their categories match to some extent the streams of national thought posited
in Chapter 3. Table 7.9 shows their categories, relates these to the streams of national
thought posited in this project, and shows figures for the percentage of supporters of
the main left and progressive parties in each category, the latter figures calculated from
Marsh et al.’s figures for the proportion of each category supporting each party.
Table 7.9: Political groupings with respect to tariffs and social protection, 200333
Marsh et al
categories
Approx analogues in
terms of this project
Per cent of sample
Per cent of
ALP, Greens or
Democrats
supporters in
this group
Pro-global
(against tariffs, for
social spending)
Aspects of
multiculturalism and
internationalism
22
25
Social and economic
protectionists
(for tariffs, for social
spending)
Traditional left
nationalists
28
43
Neo-liberals
(against tariffs,
against social
spending)
Neo-liberal
conservative
nationalists
20
11
Australian settlement
(for tariffs, against
social spending)
Traditional
conservative
nationalists
30
21
100
100
Total
The ‘pro-global’ group is designated as encompassing internationalist and multiculturalist ideas, as I would suggest that members of this group would likely be amenable
to ‘social protection’ in favour of the weak and exploited globally, as well as nationally.
This table and those above suggest that protectionist ideas dominate the population as a
whole, while supporters of the left consist of a near majority of traditional left nationalists and similar numbers of more conservative protectionists and ‘left globalists’.
Comments from my sample of leftist party activists can give us some further insight
into the complex ways national feeling interacts with globalisation.
33 Adapted and calculated from Ibid. at 255
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Table 7.9 Focus group participant themes relating to trade and economic
relations
Theme
Comments
AUSFTA as ‘our’ nation being out-bargained
[regional Greens discussion]
Bill: Well it’s free on one side. America still
keep all their internal restrictions and subsidies. So it’s not a free trade agreement at
all.
Diana: It’s an unequal bargaining position,
the whole process.
Bill: We got rolled. It’s not going to happen
without sugar! [laughs]…
Roger: We had a couple of donkeys over
there
Bill: For Christ sakes, we sent the National
Party there.
Trade and the market as constraint and
causing convergence
[urban ALP discussion]
Bernard: [labour movement lawyer] I think
there’s a lot of commonality between the
major parties in terms of the national interest purely because we live in a global world
and regardless of whether you lean to the
left or lean to the right, there’s some relationships you’re going to maintain regardless, and there’s going to be certain external influences on things like our economy…
you’re going to try to maintain what is in
the national interest. For example a trading
relationship with China, or a good strategic
relationship with the United States…
Tim: [mining union organiser] There are a lot
of things, doesn’t matter who’s in government, you’re not going to have much say
over. A population like ours in the world
market, there’s some things we have to follow suit on.
209 |
Social democracy as a more strategic national program for global market
Tim: Thankfully that’s something the Labor
Party has talked about, we’re looking at
the minerals boom and the great pace the
world economy is going on, looking at the
manufacturing side of things … a lot of
people are looking at the future and are
looking at the national interest by setting up
greater broadband … That’s more forthright, that’s looking after the national interest, much more than just reacting as the
current government seem to be doing…
Paul [political consultant]: I accept that
there’s an economic benefit to long-term
growth which means more people can
be included and have an opportunity, but
we’d like to have seen government during
this period of economic expansion to have
been more tempted than they have been to
invest money in places that we know struggle to get money in periods of recession,
in areas where there’s been no even hint of
temptation. Tim: Investing is the key term…
rather than just throwing.
Australia as exploited by foreign capital,
Coalition as comprador
Tim: I mean the Coalition are renowned
for looking after big business, is made up
of multi-nationals and not Australian, you
could argue that they rule for the international forces and the international big
companies, you could argue Murdoch has
a fair say in the country…
I think I’d much rather be aligned with
[unions] than with big business and multinationals, who a lot of times aren’t based or
aren’t a part of Australian society
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Australia as exploitative, and this justified
by ‘national interest’
[urban Greens discussion]
Johan [postgrad student]: Now the national
interest is that the interest of BHP when
they go off to South America or Africa or
somewhere and you know get copper, lead
and zinc out of the ground for next to nothing. Is that the national interest? Olympic
dam, selling uranium in the most irresponsible ways to countries that might proliferate
nuclear weapons later is that in the national
interest? I mean we have to have an ethical
framework in which to hold these conversations really…
But it seems to me like a politically immature thing to be chauvinistic about who
we are and to think that you know serving
our prosperity or the prosperity of our elite
is actually a good thing to do against the
interest of other people. Give you an example. Malcolm Turnbull, who was a company
director for the company that was plundering the forest reserves for the Solomon
islands now he is our environment minister
who
‘Globalisation’ as ideological justification
for policy
Johan: That globalisation means the race to
the bottom. We’re competing with Chinese
slave labour, and people people who are
prepared to pick computers apart with no
protective clothing, so if we don’t do what
they’re doing we’ll price ourselves out of
the market… That’s always the fear thing
that John Howard uses. But I think Paul
Keating used it too.
211 |
Alternatives to imperative of exporting primary commodities
Barry [public servant]: Is it in the national
interest to support these 20 000 [working in
mining in Queensland], plus the executives,
or to say it’s in the national interest to say
no, no, we’ll phase that out in the national
interest and support the 60 000 jobs forever
on the Barrier Reef.
Fred [union organiser]: … we have to be
very mindful of the fact that coal-mining
communities, forestry communities, they
are communities in their own right. I guess
the problem that I have because my uncle
and my grandad were both miners, is that
the particular identity they had was built
around that. To overnight say tomorrow
you’re not going to be coal miners anymore
, that’s stripping a person of their entire
identity. So the Greens policy isn’t about
saying tomorrow that’s it we’re not going to
be doing any more coal mining, it’s looking
long term in terms of what are we going to
be offering as alternatives.
Barry: We’ve done it with loggers, we’ve
got a plan. You really can’t be a logger after
a certain date, and here’s the subsidies,
here’s the plan, here’s the package. … let’s
have a grasp of reality, it’s in the national
interest to do a certain thing for our future,
this is that certain thing, now let’s get on
with it.
In the themes emerging from these comments we can see the gamut of positions
discussed in this chapter. The brief comments from one Greens group on the AUSFTA
per se reflect a straightforwardly nationalist, unified ‘we’ conception of trade in which
the incompetence of the Australian trade representatives were a key issue (with regional
Greens showing a particular antipathy to the Nationals), along with a left nationalist
inflected suggestion on the weakness of Australia’s economic position. Comments from
urban ALP members reflected an acceptance of the ‘national crusade’ for ‘global competitiveness’ referred to above, but also an insistence there was a social democrat version
of this encompassing (presumably public) planning and investment. Those commenting
along these lines were those most professionally associated with the labour movement
and Labor apparatus (union organiser, consultant and labour lawyer), which is perhaps
significant in terms of the expression of an ‘official’ position. Tim showed particular
contradictions. As a miner’s organiser it is unsurprising that he is concerned with global
trade, but he also expressed antipathy towards large corporations, and a traditionally left
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nationalist conception that the most exploitative capitalists are foreign and that the conservatives are their political representatives. The urban Greens took up at several points
the conception of Australia as an exploitative country and ‘globalisation’ as expressed by
governments as an ideological myth. They also debated some subtle differences when
discussing the need to reject the imperative of maximising export profits, specifically a
policy of phasing out coal mining on environmental grounds. Barry, who notes that he
came to the Greens as an environmental activist and later took up “social issues,” sees
a straightforward matter of replacing export profits and jobs from mining with those
available from tourism. Here he articulates a trope expressed by a number of Greens (as
discussed further in Chapter 10) that contrasts long-term, rational, ‘true’ national interests to short-term, profit driven, ‘false’ national interests. Paul, a union organiser who
came to the Greens as representing a “vision of a better society,” while expressing the
same policy, is more concerned with relating to working class identity and the need to
win over workers. There appears to be potential differences among these Greens about
how and to what extent the “logic of profitability,” in Bryan’s phrase, can be rejected.
We can see from the previously cited survey results that support for neo-liberal globalisation has been minimal and seemed to decline in the latter period of the Howard
government, despite increasing growth and wealth in that time. The main expression
of opposition to neo-liberal globalisation has been strongly influenced by traditional
left nationalism, although cultural aspects are viewed somewhat differently, there is a
significant current of ‘left globalism’, and the same person can express contradictory
expressions of nationality and globality.
The AUSFTA and its discontents
Controversies and discontent around trade and globalisation became a national political issue in 2003 and 2004, with considerable debate and activity around a trade agreement with the United States. Such an agreement had been raised in 1938, 1985 and
1997, but each time rejected on national interest grounds. By the end of 2000, with the
WTO process stalled, a new conservative US administration and a range of bilateral
and regional deals across Asia and the Americas being negotiated, the context seemed
more propitious for those in favour of a deal. In April 2001, trade minister Mark Vaile
proposed the deal officially to US Trade Representative Bob Zoellick. A June 2001 report
213 |
by the Centre for International Economics predicted large gains, mainly in beef, sugar
and dairy, based on the elimination of all barriers within five years. Another favourable report commissioned by the government was released by the APEC Study Centre.
Business lobby groups were formed in the US and Australia, the latter being Australia
United States Free Trade Agreement Business Group (AUSFTA), led by Alan Oxley of
the APEC Study Centre, which noted that the agreement related to shared values and
security, as well as trade. In March 2003 Vaile released a list of objectives, focusing on
the reduction of the substantial US tariffs and subsidies and restrictive quotas on agricultural products. Negotiations took place between March 2003 and February 2004,
with agriculture and ongoing stumbling block, and Vaile announcing at several points
that sugar had to be part of the deal. Despite discontent on the Australian side with
minimal and drawn-out change in beef and dairy and no change in sugar, on 8 February 2004 it was announced negotiations had been concluded. Another study by the CIE
in April 2004 predicted even greater gains, based on increased US investment, an issue
not previously considered. A number of commentators subsequently pointed out that
the impressive sounding $54 billion of calculated gains was over ten years and hence
considerably less than 1% of current GNP growth per year. In any case, an economist
hired by the Senate committee investigating the agreement found much smaller gains.
An extended debate began within the ALP and union movement. The senate committee, with an opposition majority, agreed to the deal in early August 2004, but with a long
list of caveats. Labor leader Mark Latham was widely seen as facing an inevitable loss
of support from either the elite consensus in favour of the deal or the popular, and particularly Labor and union, opposition to it. However, Latham put forward two amendments to the government’s enabling legislation, one guaranteeing Australian content in
television, another levying fines on pharmaceutical corporations attempting to use new
patent regulations to unreasonably deny access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
(PBS) to manufacturers of cheaper ‘generic’ products. After wrangling by the government around the second amendment, the Senate as a whole agreed to the legislation
with Latham’s amendments on 13 August 2004. Diplomatic notes were exchanged on 17
November, and the AUSFTA came into force on 1 January 2005.34 The remainder of this
34 Tor Krever, ‘The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement: The interface between partisan politics and
national objectives’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 41/1 (2006), 51–69; Patricia Ranald, ‘The
Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: A contest of interests’, Journal of Australian Politicial Economy/57
(2006), 30–57; Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews, How to Kill a Country: Australia’s
| 214
section will analyse typical arguments from commentators and political forces criticising and campaigning against the agreement, some measures of popular opinion about
the agreement, and a sample of media commentary from the crucial period of 27 July to
10 August 2004, a week before and after Latham announced his amendments.
Commentators from the time of the agreement’s announcement raised a range of
potential negative affects. Environmental concerns with the FTA included the possibility of downgrading quarantine standards, restrictions on the use of and mandatory
labelling rules for genetically modified organisms being used in food products or environmental legislation being treated as barriers to trade and open to dispute under the
agreement’s rules. Andrew also notes Australia has no legislative mechanism to assess
environmental or social impacts of FTAs.35 Davis points out that Indigenous people
worldwide have borne the brunt of the negative impacts of expanding trade. She points
to possible threats to health provision through any desire by US pharmaceutical corporations to raise drug prices in Australia by changes to the PBS, and the general threat of
tighter intellectual property rights, posing the patenting and de facto theft of traditional
knowledge, as particular concerns of Indigenous people in Australia.36
In relation to the PBS, Drahos et al. point to the numerous trade actions brought
by the US on the petition of US pharmaceutical corporations. Specifically the agreement gives the US corporations more grounds to appeal decisions of the Pharmaceutical
Benefits Advisory Committee; limits access of generic manufacturers to drug data; will
make it easier for manufacturers of patented drugs to delay competition from generics
by banning release of any product subject to a patent claim (raising the threat of “evergreening,” that is the patenting of a minor, non-clinical aspect of a medication to extend
its patent life); and bans “parallel importation” (in this case the importation of a product
patented or copyrighted in the US from a licensed manufacturer in another country).
Drahos et al. stress that the FTA is part of an ongoing strategy to bend global trade in
intellectual property further in the US interests through successive agreements. The US
industry group PHrMA employs 625 lobbyists in Washington, more than the number of
members of Congress, and spent $US164 million on political campaigning in 2003–4.37
Devastating Trade Deal With the United States (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2004) 1–27
35 Jane Andrew, ‘AUSFTA: Linking war, free trade and the environment’, Journal of the Asia Pacific
Centre for Environmental Accountability, 9/2 (2003), 5–9
36 Megan Davis, ‘Indigenous Australia and the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement’, Indigenous Law
Bulletin, 5/30 (2004), 20–23
37 Peter Drahos et al., ‘Pharmaceuticals, intellectual property and free trade: The case of the US-
215 |
Groups campaigning against the agreement generally used nationalist arguments,
often stridently so. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union covering
media and cultural workers, pointed out that job losses and decline of cultural production in Australia could result from cuts to television content quotas and film production
subsidies. But it also used contrastive rhetoric to posit the US and Australia as seemingly different social systems with different goals. “For the US, these negotiations are all
about business. For Australia, the issue is one of national sovereignty and the right to
foster cultural expression”.38 For the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the issues could be summed up by the slogans, “Maintain Australia’s economic and cultural
independence” and, “Australia must not become the 51st state of America”.39 Similarly
a Greens leaflet demanded, “Australia is not the 51st state! Back off! Australia is not for
sale!”.40 The campaign’s umbrella coalition, the Australian Fair Trade and Investment
Network (AFTINET), fought the agreement under the slogan, “Don’t trade Australia
away,” and a logo of a stylised Australia coloured in with a US flag inside a crossed out
circle.41
In the most extensive text of the campaign against the deal, Weiss et. al. cover a broad
range of concerns about the finalised agreement, pointing out that for the first time
trade officials will be involved in decisions regarding quarantine standards and the
PBS, that remaining restrictions on government procurement markets greater favour
US firms and that tighter intellectual property provisions (which as a number of commentators point out are the opposite of ‘free’ trade) will also greatly favour the economy
overwhelmingly dominant in entertainment, communications and information technology.42 However, despite comprehensive coverage of the specific issues, they provide
no theoretical justification for their repeated representations of Australia as exploited
and dependent and US capital as uniquely rapacious. They argue that, “Once this FTA
is implemented, then the era of the American Economic Empire may be said to have
Australia Free Trade Agreement’, Prometheus, 22/3 (2004), 243–257 Ken Harvey, ‘Patents, pills and
politics: the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme’,
Australian Health Review, 28/2 (2004), 218–227
38 Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, ‘Trade and the future of Australian culture’, 2003
<http://www.free2baustralian> accessed 3 December 2003
39 Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, No Australia/US Free Trade Agreement: A Guide for
Delegates and Activists (Melbourne: 2003)
40 Australian Greens, Greens Action Update: GATS/USFTA (Sydney: 2003)
41 Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: Trading
Australia Away? (Sydney: 2003)
42 Weiss, Thurbon and Mathews, How to Kill a Country
| 216
begun, with Australia as one of the first ‘developed’ economies’ in tow”. The US is seen
as reasonably fighting for “its” own interests, with the blame placed on the Howard government for not fighting for “Australian” interests, and even being some kind of colonial,
comprador regime. They were concerned that Australians might be “happy to be led by
the nose by a government that represents the interests of a foreign power, to be shackled to the institutions and procedures of that foreign power”.43 The left nationalist trope
of the conservatives as compradors is repeated with their suggestion that the Howard
government is acting as a direct “agent for the international pharmaceutical industry”.44
They confusingly mobilise the notion of “Australian values”: they claim Australian business is uniquely fair-minded and egalitarian, while mocking the notion that the beef
industry would make the “magnanimous gesture” of supporting the FTA because of its
benefits for other sectors.45
In contrast Ranald, both a commentator and key participant in the campaign, analyses the debate around the AUSFTA as a clash of social interests rather than nations per
se.46 On one side were US corporations, not least in pharmaceuticals, and Australian
big capital, coordinated by lobby groups such as AUSTA and pro-business think tanks
such as the APEC Study Centre. Corporate lobbying also played a significant convincing
the ALP right to support the agreement. Opposed were union, environmental, public
health, pensioner and church groups linked through AFTINET. Campaigning, in the
form of hundreds of meetings and rallies, hundreds of submissions to inquiries, thousands of letters, petitions and emails, had the effect of reducing public support47, ensuring the agreement did not contain any “investor-state complaint process,” that would allow corporations to sue governments, as had been raised as a concern in regard to North
American Free Trade Agreement, and that there were minimal changes to the PBS and
food labelling regarding genetically modified organisms, relative to what had been initially feared by opponents. This result highlights the role of agency in the outcome of
political struggle, even in the face of substantial economic and political interests. However, Ranald does not comment on the reality that the campaign materials were based
on nationalist rather than ‘clash of social interests’ arguments.
43 Ibid. 22–23
44 Ibid. 97
45 Ibid. 148
46 Ranald, ‘The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: A contest of interests’
47 Ranald cites Hawker-Britten polls which show 65% support in 2003 and 35% in February 2004, and
a Lowy Institute survey which found 34% support in February 2005.
217 |
Media coverage of the issue was extensive throughout the period from the commencement of negotiations until the passing of the enabling legislation, peaking at the time of
the release of the agreement and particularly the debate around Latham’s amendments.
For example the number of articles containing the terms “trade agreement,” “Australia”
and “United States” in the Australian media sources collated in the Factiva database
totalled 160 in August 2003, 349 in January 2004, 773 in February (when the agreement was released), 595 in July and 952 in August. A sample of editorials, comment
articles and letters, from the six newspapers used throughout the study, was collected
for the period 27 July to 10 August 2004, a week before and after the release of Latham’s
amendments, which garnered material covering a range of themes relating to the agreement and also indicated the significant political impact of the amendment tactic. The
articles were coded according to opinion about the agreement, and also as to whether
there was a single central theme. Due to the impact on the debate of the amendment
announcement, the two weeks were coded separately, as themes and opinions differed
significantly, as shown in Tables 7.10 and 7.11. These are of course small samples, so
any extrapolation to wider media or public opinion has to be treated with caution, but
examination reveals some striking quantitative as well as qualitative results, especially
when related to other data.
Table 7.10: Themes and opinions, comment articles, editorials and letters related to
AUSFTA, selected newspapers, 27 July – 3 August 2004
Opinion/Central
theme (if any)
Editorial
(n=3)
Comment
(n=15)
Letter (n=90)
Total
(n=108)
3 (20%)
9 (10%)
12 (11%)
6 (40%)
16 (18%)
25 (23%)
Against: free trade
9 (10%)
9 (8%)
Against: lack of
debate
9 (10%)
9 (8%)
Against Latham
disappoints
4 (4%)
4 (4%)
Against FTA, for
multilateralism
4 (4%)
4 (4%)
For: free trade
For total
3 (100%)
Against total
4 (27%)
65 (72%)
69 (64%)
Other
5 (33%)
8 (9%)
14 (13%)
15 (100%)
90 (100%)
108 (100%)
Total
| 218
3 (100%)
Table 7.11: Themes and opinions, comment articles, editorial and letters related to
AUSFTA, selected newspapers, August 4–10 2004
Opinion/Central
theme (if any)
Editorial
For: free trade
Comment
Letter
Total
4 (11%)
5 (4%)
9 (5%)
For: Latham’s clever
politics
1 (14%)
7 (18%)
1 (1%)
9 (5%)
For: Howard
obstructing
1 (14%)
2 (5%)
1 (1%)
4 (2%)
For: Latham
obstructing
4 (57%)
5 (13%)
6 (5%)
15 (12%)
8 (21%)
64 (50%)
72 (42%)
27 (71%)
77 (62%)
112 (65%)
1 (3%)
4 (3%)
5 (4%)
3 (2%)
3 (2%)
For amendments
For total
6 (86%)
Against:free trade
Against: lack of
debate
Against: Latham
disappoints
1 (3%)
10 (8%)
11 (6%)
Against FTA, for
multilateralism
1 (3%)
1 (1%)
2 (1%)
Against total
10 (26%)
40 (31%)
51 (30%)
Other
1 (14%)
1 (3%)
9 (7%)
11 (6%)
Total
7 (100%)
38 (100%)
127 (100%)
172 (100%)
The texts in the sample covered the range of aspects of and concerns about the agreement discussed above, such as investment and trade levels, pharmaceuticals, intellectual property rights, film subsidies and television quotas. They were largely framed by
nationalist arguments, with for example the term “national interest” appearing in the
sample 58 times, and constant use of the nationally unifying modality expressed by the
pronouns “we” and “our”. A number of themes were common to both weeks. The theme,
“For: free trade” refers to those texts that emphasised a general defence of the worth
of free trade, for example Peter Hartcher’s claim that, “We know from experience that
protection leads to stagnation, and that an open Australia can compete and prosper”48
(seemingly forgetting the extensive experience from the 1900s to the 1970s, that is a
period when virtually the entire economic and political elite favoured protection and
48 Peter Hartcher, ‘A tough choice, but the right one for Latham and the economy’, The Sydney Morning
Herald, 3 August 2004, p. 6
219 |
there were sustained periods of growth). Similarly those coded, “Against: free trade,”
made clear the writer rejected the nostrums of neo-liberalism, such as the letter writer
who contested a typical pro-free trade metaphor by asking, “Will the crumbs of the hypothetical growing pie, which fall outside of millionaires’ row, be big enough to let us all
afford the sort of drug prices which drive good, middle-class folk in the US to shop for
medicine across the border in Canada?”.49 “Against: lack of debate” refers to those whose
substantial point was that the treaty was negotiated in secret and that very conflicting
information was available as to its likely impact. The coding, “Latham disappoints” indicates those opposed to Labor’s support for the deal announced on 3 August, and often
expressing the view that there was a general lack of political opposition, with a typical
comment being, “After Labor’s backflip on funding of schools, industrial manslaughter
laws and now the FTA with the US, I will vote for the Greens”.50 Significantly, as discussed below, there were no items coded this way that were published after 5 August, by
which time the Latham amendments had become the key issue.
Other themes occurred after the Latham amendments were announced. “For: Howard
obstructing” refers to those commentators who did not necessarily support the amendment but who castigated Howard for holding up the passage of the legislation by opposing, for about five days, Latham’s proposal to levy fines against evergreening pharmaceutical corporations. For example, senior Murdoch commentator Greg Sheridan argued
that, “For the sake of the national interest, John Howard should pass Mark Latham’s
pointless amendments”. He cited the similar view of mining magnate Hugh Morgan and
the Business Council of Australia, and also somewhat laboured his point by using the
term “national interest” three times.51 “For: Latham obstructing” codes the somewhat
larger number of articles that accused Latham of populist opportunism against the national interest, which was the Australian’s editorial position.52 A number as indicated
noted Latham’s clever tactics without passing judgement on them, within a framework
of general support for the agreement as a whole. However, by far the most significant
change was a new category for which the main theme was support for Latham’s amendments (42%), and a concurrent reduction in those articles clearly opposing the deal
compared to the period before the amendments were proposed (from 69% to 30%). For
many of those who supported the amendments it was not completely clear whether the
deal as a whole was rejected, for example Alan Ramsay supported Latham’s stance but
implied opposition to the whole deal by attacking Howard via a left nationalist narrative
49 ‘Mail to: The Courier Mail’, Courier-Mail, 6 August 2004, p. 18
50 ‘Letters’, Daily Telegraph, 5 August 2004, p. 26
| 220
51 Greg Sheridan, ‘Just ride your bike, PM’, The Australian, 5 August 2004, p. 11
52 ‘Labor plays politics with trade treaty’, The Australian, 5 August 2004, p. 10
of the historically comprador nature of Australian conservatism: Howard “has prostituted himself—and this country—to obscene lengths to get [the agreement], so as to
seal his place in history, as did Menzies with ANZUS in 1951”.53 Many coded in this way
hailed Latham’s stance as truly oppositional, or took objection to the government taunt
of Latham as “anti-American”.54 Other indicators suggest both that the amendments
were broadly popular and that opposition to the agreement as a whole rallied around
the amendments. Talkback callers supported Latham and saw Howard as concerned
with drug company profits55, and a disapproving Dennis Shanahan reported, “There’s no
doubt [Latham] won favourable publicity and Labor offices were inundated with callers
who thought the party was opposing the entire FTA”.56
The other striking result is a significant difference between letter writers and the ‘expert definers’ writing editorials and comments pieces, especially given that many supporting the amendments implied opposition to or scepticism about the agreement as
a whole. Over the whole sample of 280 texts, 45 out of 63 or 71% of articles by definers showed clear support, and of letters 195 out of 217 or 90% either were opposed
or supported Latham’s amendments. This result is further evidence of the hegemonic
position of neo-liberalism among political and media elites, that is in striking contrast
to popular discontent and distrust. However the turnaround in opinion and focus following Latham’s amendments suggests that the Labor leader was able to largely co-opt
this overall opposition into minor change to some aspects of the implementation of the
agreement.
It could be argued that the nature of the opposition to the AUSFTA, as evidenced in
commentary and campaign material, show the inevitability and, given the non-appearance in the agreement of some expected features and the successful amendments to
the enabling legislation, efficacy of opposition to neo-liberal globalisation couched in
nationalist frames. However there are several significant objections that can be made.
Firstly any nationalist framework misreads the social forces involved in the dispute, and
in particular cannot make sense of the fact that virtually all representatives of Australian
capital, and the great majority of pro-business organic intellectuals in media, govern53 Alan Ramsey, ‘The official speak and the unspeakable’,The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 August p. 37
54 Such as the letter writers who inspired the title for ‘Labor’s stance is pro-Australian, not antiAmerican’,The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 2004, p. 16
55 According to Steve Lewis, ‘Howard hints at FTA deal with Labor’, The Australian 6 August 2004, p.
2 and Dennis Atkins, ‘Taste of own medicine’, Courier-Mail, 7 August 2004, p. 27
56 Dennis Shanahan, ‘Latham stunt a placebo’, The Australian 6 August 2004, p. 13
221 |
ment, think tanks and academia, supported the deal. Weiss et al. unconvincingly argue
that opposition was bribed or bullied into submission. They mention a $444 million
package for the sugar industry disappointed at lack of increased access to the US market, but claim without much evidence that other agricultural sectors were also directly
paid off. They also claim, without specific examples, that the media were silenced with
threats or fears of falling advertising revenue and government access, and while they
can cite hyperbolic abuse and dishonest amalgams from agreement supporters, it is far
from clear why such language would dissuade any section of corporate Australian.57 In
contrast, there have been a number of indications that the importance of the agreement
lay in its linkage to the neo-liberal agenda as a whole rather than the projected modest
direct gains. Greg Sheridan argues that one of “four substantial benefits” of the AUSFTA
relates to “liberalisation in Australia. The Howard Government has a disappointingly
modest record of economic reform. Bilateral FTAs help by forcing domestic liberalisation, making our internal marketplace cheaper and more competitive, and thus more
efficient”.58 Goldman Sachs JBWere senior economist Tim Toohey was reported as stating that, “The FTA has iconic significance as a signal of the Government’s determination
to continuing reforming the Australian economy… reforms through the second half of
the ‘80s and the ‘90s are starting to wane”.59 Similarly a senior Liberal senator told Krever
that the FTA was “emblematic of what the Howard government represents”.60 One of
the small band of pro-free trade AUSFTA sceptics, Ross Gittens, claimed the push was
largely ideological, in that, “Because of the words ‘free trade’ in its name, and because
the deal’s being opposed by the Neanderthal protectionists of the union movement, the
political pundits have concluded this is another round in the battle between free trade
and protection”.61 For Hugh Morgan, chair of the BCA, the significance of the deal is that
“we must remain committed to ongoing liberalisation through multilateral and bilateral
agreements” and reject “pressures to re-regulate economic activity in Australia”.62 For
the Howard government as for Australian capital and its organic intellectuals it became
a key performative prop in realising a conservative nationalist agenda of a nation of
57 Weiss, Thurbon and Mathews, How to Kill a Country 139–157
58 Greg Sheridan, ‘We must not shuffle on China deal’, The Australian, 7 August 2004, p. 15
59 Malcolm Maiden, ‘Milking the free trade deal for all it’s worth ’, The Age, 7 August 2004, p. 1
60 Krever, ‘The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement’ at 67
61 Ross Gittins, ‘FTA: bad politics drives out good economics ’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August
2004, p. 44
62 Hugh Morgan, ‘Free trade: we’ve only just begun ’, The Australian 11 August 2004, p. 13
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global competitors based in a secure national space. The discussion in Chapters 5 and 9
shows the rejection in recent years by substantial majorities in Australia of policies that
are seen as increasing corporate power, but the somewhat more complex results in this
chapter suggest that the nature of pro-corporate policies can be mystified when couched
in national terms, and that this is easiest to do when related to external trade.
A second, related objection to a left nationalist opposition to the AUSFTA is that a focus on the supposed ‘national’ threat of the AUSFTA puts the focus on quotas, subsidies
and other measures of protection that aim to safeguard the profit rates of ‘our’ business
sector, and hence marginalises other possible orientations, such as campaigns for jobs
through increased public ownership or industrial action that demands that the burden
for job protection be placed on corporate profits rather than taxpayers. Socialist activist
David Glanz, who has worked as a journalist on a number of major newspapers, argued
that:
As somebody who’s in the newspaper industry and a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, I find it rather ironic that my union mobilises vigorously
around the FTA when it has done nothing to stop the loss of jobs. All too often, the cry
of, ‘Defend Australian media!’ becomes the alternative to actually fighting for jobs.63
A focus on protectionist-nationalist measures, rather than an international collaboration between political actors opposed to free trade, may also miss the opportunity for
even minor gains. There was late and limited recognition by Australian unions of the
fact that pressure to include labour rights provisions in trade agreements is quite advanced in the US, obliging the US government to include such provisions, including in
the AUSFTA. More focus on this issue by unions and the ALP could have strengthened
these provisions, which, along with ALP policy from its January 2004 conference, only
call for “respect” of International Labour Organisation conventions (which the 1996
Workplace Relations Act for example was found to flout), a position that the US Republicans are comfortable with, whereas the US Democrats call for “enforcement”.64
Thirdly, the nationalist framing of the opposition to the AUSFTA facilitated a co-option of this opposition to a politics of compromise and moderation. Within a nationalist
63 Graham Mathews, ‘A socialist view of the free trade agreement’, 10 March, Green Left Weekly, 2004
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2004/574/32876> accessed 10 December 2007
64 Chris Nyland and Anne O’Rouke, ‘The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement and the
racheting-up of labour standards: A precedent set and an opportunity missed’, The Journal of Industrial
Relations, 47/4 (2005), 457–470
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framework it becomes seemingly automatic to accept the terms of the ‘national crusade
for global competitiveness’, as evidenced in the comments by clearly leftist and otherwise anti-corporate Greens noted above on “our” poor bargaining team. Latham could,
in 2002, as quoted at the beginning of this chapter, express in strident terms opposition
to the agreement as a whole on the basis of continuing US subsidies, and claim on this
issue Labor stood for the national interest. Rather than challenge the neo-liberal consensus in favour of the deal, Latham was able to sublimate national feeling into moderating two aspects of the implementation of the agreement. In regard to the media content
rules, he told parliament, “Whether we call it the larrikin spirit, Australian mateship or
any other description, we all know as proud Australians on this side of the House that
there is something special about Australian culture. There is something special about
the Australian way of expressing ourselves in the media. That is why we support the local content rules”.65 In regards to the ‘evergreening’ amendment, Latham demanded the
government “support these amendments, thereby ensuring that the Australian people
receive the economic benefits of the agreement but also a guarantee that it will not undermine the PBS”.66 The use of similar rhetoric to support substantially different goals
highlights the performative aspects of political action and discourse, and the way national feeling can bind the same people to quite different political positions, although
the manner in which the issue was contested also highlights the importance of and possibly particularly strong feeling toward ‘national institutions’, such as the PBS, that are
undoubted gains for ordinary people. Indications discussed above from the press coverage and talkback radio suggest that Latham was quite successful in this tactic.
The success appeared short-lived. The AUSFTA appeared not to be an issue at all in the
2004 election, for example the framers of questions for the 2004 AES did not deem the
issue worth putting to respondents. As discussed in Chapter 5, in this election the coalition suffered from the unpopularity of Iraq and related declining trust in Howard, but
maintained a particular advantage in ‘economic management’. Latham appeared to make a
short term gain around minor tactical issues at the cost of further surrendering the ground
on economics generally to neo-liberalism. This could be contrasted to the more substantial differences between Labor and the Coalition on at least some economic issues at the
1993 election, discussed in chapter 5, and the 2007 election, discussed in Chapter 9.
65 Hansard, House of Representatives, 4 August (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2004) 32 119
66 Hansard, House of Representatives, 3 August (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2004) 31 802
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Conclusion
Despite some grand claims about recent, radical and abrupt change in all spheres of life,
‘globalisation’ is better understood as (depending on usage and context) either an aspect
of the long-running tension within capitalism between nationality and internationality, or as a relatively new phase within this contradiction. Protectionist economics and
conceptions of Australia as dependent and exploited, which have been a central themes
of the nationalism of political forces of the left for many decades, continued in debates
around globalisation, and the political struggle around the adoption of the AUSFTA.
This is despite the empirical reality of Australia as an advanced economy with significant
outward as well as inward flowing capital, and arguments from the left against protectionism and on the perils of adaptation to a ‘national interest’.
Despite the neo-liberal turn by capital and its hegemonic status among political and
media elites (albeit with significant differences in conservative and social democratic
versions), there remains substantial public opposition to free trade conceptions of globalisation. Within this opposition there are complex variations between economic and
cultural aspects of globalisation and differing constituencies among the support bases
of the left regarding protectionism. There is also a complex interrelation between what
I have argued is the common but spurious conception of national interests, and the
defence of institutions that are both clearly real and beneficial to the mass of people
and commonly seen as ‘national’. Perceptions and representations relating to trade and
globalisation in recent years attest to the continuing power of national feeling, its partly
rational basis in defending institutions and providing bases of identity and belonging,
as well as its irrationality in mystifying social relations and falsely identifying interests.
The importance of institutions in this debate may also bear on the distinction between
embodied and abstract forms of social life and their modes of globalisation discussed
above. It is perhaps relevant that the content rules for nationally-based television networks were defended, whereas Labor made no effort to address the fact that the agreement, or existing legislation, provides no content requirement for new media. That, is
the more abstract emerging media forms may be more amenable to unregulated globalisation and harder to address by any nationalist strategy. Also, as we have seen, feelings
ran high around defence of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, often represented as a
national institution, while there was less (if still evident) concern about the globalisation
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of culture per se. On the other hand, large corporations are attempting to more highly
regulate seemingly abstract intellectual property rights, and this could have for example,
a very material impact on the cost and availability of medicines in Australia. Once again,
this suggests that both the relative autonomy and specific nature of different structures
and the totality of the social formation are important aspects of social and political life.
In the debate around the AUSFTA, Latham aimed to bridge the contradictions between on the one hand social justice and class concerns, distrust of big business and
economic rationalism, and left cultural and economic nationalism, and on the other
an overwhelming neo-liberal consensus among official opinion. He did this via support for the agreement overall combined with amendments to the enabling legislation
expressed in language addressed toward national feeling. This was in some senses astute
coalition building, evidenced by broad popular opinion apparently swinging behind
Latham. However, in the process the precepts of neo-liberalism were unchallenged,
even reinforced, aiding the conservative claim to represent the national interest in the
‘economic’ field. In the following chapter we shall see how Labor and other oppositional
forces responded to a similar challenge represented by the government’s national security agenda.
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Chapter 8
War, national security and Iraq
In the previous chapter, representations by different sectors of the left of the global economy and Australia’s role within it were analysed, with particular reference to debates
leading u p to the signing of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) in 2004.
Key findings were that the great bulk of the left framed the question of global economic
interaction by some conception of the national interest, and that the Labor leadership
was able to construct what was widely seen as a different account of the national interest.
Bounded as this effort was by the assumptions of neo-liberal economics, the differences
were limited and the success in projecting and winning support for Labor’s position
quite partial. This chapter continues the focus on the interactions of Australia with the
rest of the globe, while shifting to a more directly political level, with an examination of
war and national security threats. The historical development of such issues is related
to the debate in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In this chapter, as in
Chapters 6,7 and 9, an overview of relevant historical examples from secondary sources
are given, followed by a thematic and discourse analysis related to the issues and period
under discussion using a range of political texts, comments from my focus groups, reference to measures of public opinion and political activity and a media sample. My aim
is to show thw socio-historical bases of differing perceptions, in relation to the posited
streams of the thesis.
The stance of the Howard government on several interrelated issues and processes in
the period 2001–03 brought to the fore notions of national security, border protection
and the right to militarily intervene in others states, under the overarching rubric of
the ‘national interest’. McDonald calls the latter term the “central organising principle
of foreign policy under Howard”. He argues however that this is not based on any objective assessment of what this interest might be, but a “particular conception of Australian history, culture, identity and values,” with such conceptions constantly invoked
227 |
in the period under discussion.1 It is argued throughout this thesis that the conception
of the national interest has only real validity in cases such as military invasion or clear
economic exploitation of a nation as a whole, instances which for many decades have
been more prevalent in poorer countries than advanced and industrialised ones. For a
country such as Australia most examples of purported ‘national interests’ are in, at best,
the short-term interests of the majority, and are contradicted by other interests. This was
shown in the previous chapter by the fact that whatever gains for working people may
have been produced by increased trade due to the AUSFTA were contradicted by the nature of the AUSFTA as a key component in the ongoing neo-liberal agenda of deregulating the labour market and eroding wages and conditions. The historical antecedents and
contemporary ideological mobilisations of differing conceptions of the national interest
are further explored in this chapter in regard to foreign policy.
In the immediate wake of the terror attacks on the United States on 11 September
2001, Howard invoked the mutual defence provisions of the ANZUS treaty and declared Australia ready to support any US military action. Subsequently 1500 Australian
troops were committed to the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban
regime, an action justified on the basis of the presence in the country of al-Qua’ida
fighters, accused of the 11 September strikes. Asylum seekers intercepted by Australian
forces in 2001 were linked in government rhetoric to terrorism and the need to aggressively defend the national space. This was followed by an explicit endorsement by Howard government figures of a US doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes enunciated in
2002, in which states declared to be possible or implicit, rather than immediate, threats
to the US were deemed to be the legitimate targets of military action. South East Asian
leaders were perturbed by Howard’s declaration in December 2002, after bombings in
Bali killed 202 people including 88 Australians, that Australia reserved the right to assault presumed terrorist targets in the region. The alleged threat of terror also justified
increased powers given to ASIO in 2002. From the middle of that year Howard government figures echoed US accusations that Iraq had failed to disarm according to the
ceasefire agreement following the 1991 Gulf War, harboured significant chemical and
biological weapons stocks, sought nuclear weapons, and planned to help terrorists use
such ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs) against the West. Australian forces were
1 Matt McDonald, ‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2004’, Australian Journal of
International Affairs, 59/2 (2005), 153–168 at 153
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committed to a US military build-up in the Gulf region and, despite unprecedented
opposition and lack of any UN mandate, joined the assault on Iraq on 20 March 2003.
However no WMDs or any substantial programs were ever found, and through 2004
the Iraq adventure became increasingly tarnished by reports of civilian deaths, mounting US and allied casualties, and torture and mistreatment of prisoners by allied troops.
Despite this, the government seemed largely helped by security issues in the 9 October
2004 elections, possibly due in part to a 9 September bombing outside the Australian
embassy in Jakarta.2
Before proceeding further with an examination of background material, it is useful firstly to examine the general contours of the media sample for this chapter. This
consisted of opinion pieces, that is editorials, comment articles and letters, published
in the six newspapers used for samples throughout this thesis (as discussed in Chapter
4), in the week leading up to the first reports of the invasion, that is from 15–21 March
2003. This allowed for a substantial sample (consisting of 12 editorials, 69 comment
pieces and 527 letters) from a concentrated period. The comments and editorials were
coded as being, on the whole, for or against the participation of Australian troops in an
invasion of Iraq, which was widely seen to be inevitable by the beginning of the sample
period, as summarised in Table 8.1. As discussed below there were clearly a whole range
of themes and varied extents of support and opposition, with particularly the question
of UN authority complicating a simple for or against, and the numbers are small for any
detailed quantitative analysis. However the coding and tabulation is useful in giving an
indication of the extent of coverage and overall balance of views within the two media
groups.
2 Joseph A. Camilleri, ‘A leap into the past—in the name of the ‘national interest’’, Australian Journal
of International Affairs, 57/3 (2003), 431–453; Alan Doig et al., ‘Marching in time: alliance politics,
synchrony and the case for war in Iraq, 2002–2003’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 61/1
(2007), 23–40; Daniel Flitton, ‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2002’, Australian Journal of
International Affairs, 57/1 (2003), 37–54; Brendan O’Connor, ‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy,
2003’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 58/2 (2004), 207–220; McDonald, ‘Perspectives on
Australian foreign policy, 2004’ and Tom Conley, ‘Issues in Australian foreign policy, July–December
2004’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 51/2 (2005), 257–273
229 |
Table 8.1 Opinion articles on Australian involvement in the invasion of Iraq,
selected newspapers, 15–21 March 2003 (rounded percentages in parentheses)
Editorials
Comment articles
News Limited
Fairfax
News Limited
Fairfax
For
10 (100%)
2 (100%)
21 (53%)
12 (41%)
Against
0
0
14 (35%)
16 (55%)
Other
0
0
5 (13%)
1 (3%)
Totals
10
2
40
29
12
69
There were clearly some differences in the balance of the opinions of News Limited
‘expert definers’ as compared to those printed in the Fairfax group papers, although not
overwhelmingly so. Combining editorials and commentaries, News Limited showed 62%
in favour, 28% against, with Fairfax at 45% in favour and 52% against. Although the standard error of the mean for a small sample of 81 is about 11%, this then is still a statistically
significant difference. One commentator in the sample noted that 174 out of 175 newspapers in the global Murdoch stable supported an invasion, and argued that such support
from the dominant newspaper group, (with “the best-selling newspaper in every major
capital, other than Perth”) was a factor in popular support for the war3 (the ‘news’ coverage also often made News Limited’s sympathies plain, as with a subheading of, “Allies
against evil,” for numerous articles in the Daily Telegraph of 19 March 2003). Both groups
printed a range of views but the balance of the two Fairfax papers sampled was much
closer to the weight of opinion leading up to the war. In the 12 polls from August 2002 to
March 2003 that asked simply for support or opposition to participation in the war, (as
opposed to those polls that asked conditional questions such as relating to UN support
for a war, as discussed below) opposition averaged 54%, and a Newspoll taken on the eve
of the war indicated an even spilt of 45% in favour and 47% against.4 As in other samples
in this thesis, there was least difference evident among editorials and these were, unanimously, close to the government’s position. This is further suggestion for the institutional
and social bases for differing ideological positions, with the more elite opinion (in this
case editorials) and the Murdoch press as a whole, closer to conservative positions.
3 Robert Manne, ‘Understanding Howard’s war’, The Age, 17 March 2003, p. 15
4 As reported by Murray Goot, ‘Public opinion and the democratic deficit: Australia and the war
against Iraq’, May, Australian Humanities Review, 2003 <http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/
Issue-May-2003/goot.html> accessed 10 January 2008
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Nationalist scepticism towards ‘our’ great and powerful friends
As discussed in the previous chapter, the ideological stream of left nationalism has historically positioned Australia within the global economy as an economically exploited
colony, with economic policies determined by foreign imperialists and comprador sections of the local elite represented politically by the conservatives. This stream has also
been reflected in conceptions of Australia’s foreign affairs as also controlled by powerful
external actors, and the need for truly ‘national’ alternatives.
There was scepticism among more radical elements in the emerging Australian nation at the end of the nineteenth century towards what would be the Commonwealth’s
first foreign intervention, in support of the British Empire’s war against Boer settlers in
its South African colonies. A Hobart radical paper linked what would become two key
themes of left nationalist opposition to foreign wars, that of foreign economic interests
in Australia and that of Australia needing to mind its more immediate interests, in the
form of an imaginary conversation. One character states, “England is the pawnbroker,
the Governor is the bailiff in possession. Did you ever know a bailiff-haunted tenant
who would go and help the pawnbroker or landlord to evict some other refractory tenant?”. Another argues, “Australia may soon have a hard row to hoe on her own account,
and should reserve her strength rather than go messing about in some other people’s
kitchen gardens”.5
As I outlined in Chapter 3, outright opposition to Australian involvement in the First
World War centred on the implacable internationalism of the Industrial Workers of the
World. However while those who opposed conscription generally supported the war
and the Empire (albeit in somewhat distinct left terms as discussed later in this chapter),
some in the labour movement raised the themes of self-reliance and foreign entanglements, without explicitly opposing the war. For example the labour movement newspaper the Worker argued, “The whole trend of Australian policy was to build up a selfreliant nation, capable of its own defence in case of attack …The theory that Australian
defence means the compulsory deportation of our citizen forces to foreign battlefields
is entirely new”.6
The long-dominant figure in Australian conservatism, Robert Menzies, made at vari5 Clipper, 14 October 1899, quoted in Alomes and Jones, Australian Nationalism: A Documentary
History 141–142
6 Worker, 14 September 1916, quoted in McKinlay (ed.), Australian Labor History in Documents 55
231 |
ous points from the 1930s to the 1960s a convenient political comprador figure for antiBritish, anti-fascist and/or anti-American expressions of left nationalism in relation to
foreign policy. Bongiorno discusses how a leftist demonology of Menzies asserts that: in
the 1930s he appeased fascism generally, and in particular as attorney general in 1938
he ensured pig-iron was supplied to Japan against a waterside workers strike; that as an
Empire loyalist prime minister in 1939–41 he sent Australian divisions to Britain and
North Africa to the detriment of Australia’s defences, and that he cravenly followed
America’s lead in signing the ANZUS treaty in 1951 (with the justification of Australia’s
need for “great and powerful friends”) and in sending troops to Vietnam in 1965.7 It was
noted in Chapter 3 that the form and rhetoric of the union campaign against pig-iron
exports, in which waterside workers leader Jim Healy declared with respect to Japan,
“fascism is within striking distance of our shores”, displayed on the part of Communists
and other militants a contradictory amalgam of internationalism and left nationalism. It
is relevant here however, that it was a significant episode in mobilising virtually the entire left for national unity and the coming war effort in anti-fascist and anti-imperialist
terms, a stance which had bases in both long-standing forms of left nationalism and
more specifically Stalin’s alliance with Western democracies.8
It was during the campaign against the Vietnam War that nationalist opposition to
the US-Australian alliance first gained prominence. Kuhn notes that the criticism of
some on the Labor left of Australian involvement in Vietnam and a close alliance with
the US generally, particularly leading figures such as Jim Cairns, was “moral and cultural,” rather than based in social interests, and explicitly accepted a form of the US alliance. Cairns wrote in 1965:
Our failure to achieve a distinctive Australian outlook is preventing us from solving our
Australian problems. The basic assumption of our ‘defence’ policy, for instance, is that
we cannot solve our military problems: that we must depend on ‘powerful friends’.9
The harder left was more concerned with social and economic forces at play, although
7 Frank Bongiorno, ‘The price of nostalgia: Menzies, the ‟Liberal” tradition and Australian foreign
policy’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 51/3 (2005), 400–418. Bongiorno argues that
Menzies was in fact always guided by a conservative appraisal of the ‘national interest’ (being I would
argue the interests of large Australian capital), although always tinged by a nostalgic imperial race
patriotism that became increasingly irrelevant (or, I would argue, contrary to capital’s interests) in the
1960s, and led to Labor gaining the mantle of foreign policy modernisation for decades.
8 Notwithstanding the interlude of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. O’Lincoln, Into the Mainstream 40–52
9 Kuhn, ‘The Australian left, nationalism and the Vietnam war’ at 167
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nationalist arguments were here still hegemonic. More militant sections of the Labor left
often took their ideological cue from the Communist Party, and the latter in turn accommodated its positions to its strategic orientation to the ALP. The CPA, in analysing
Australian involvement in Vietnam, vacillated from condemning Australia’s own imperial interests, particularly manifest in the colony of New Guinea, and positing a determining role to US investment in Australia, while using formulations such as “stooge for
the US gendarmes”, “slavish support for the USA” and, with the commitment of combat
forces in 1965, arguing, “Menzies thus finally surrenders the last shred of independence
in foreign policy”.10
Part of the ‘new nationalism’ of the Whitlam government from 1972, along with a description of the government as ‘Australian’ rather than Commonwealth or Federal, and
calls for a new flag, a new national anthem and ownership and control by Australians
of local enterprises, was a demonstrative break with the foreign and security policies
of previous conservative governments, seen as dependent on successively Britain and
then the US. Conscription was ended, ties were cut with the white minority regime of
Rhodesia and the People’s Republic of China was recognised. However for Whitlam the
new ‘independent’ foreign policy was intimately tied to not only aspects of traditional
economic nationalism but also to an early form of the aggressive national crusade for
global markets described in the previous Chapter. He stated in 1973:
Under the policy of benign neglect tolerated by our predecessors, Australia’s national
resources … fell increasingly into foreign hands. This was an intolerable situation in
itself. But it has a more significant international dimension. We are among the world’s
five main producers of bauxite, iron ore, tin, nickel, silver, lead, zinc, manganese and
uranium … we are likely to become a significant element in the resource strategies of
the importing countries … our commercial and strategic importance to the western
world is giving us a growing political voice.11
A traditional anti-British, anti-conservative left nationalism was invoked in 1992 by
10 The veracity of the latter statement is considered below. CPA documents quoted in Ibid. at 168–169
11 Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May 1973, quoted in West, Holmes and Adler, Socialism or Nationalism?
35. For evidence that the substance (if not necessarily the form) of Whitlam’s foreign policy had less to
do with a ‘Labor tradition’ that with the need to adapt the Australian economy to the collapse of both
the British Empire and the post Second World War economic regulatory order, and the opportunities to
sell resources to Asia, see Wayne Reynolds, ‘Labor tradition, global shifts and the foreign policy of the
Whitlam government’, in David Lee and Christopher Waters (eds.), Evatt to Evans: The Labor Tradition
in Australian Foreign Policy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 110–130
233 |
then prime minister Paul Keating after he was accused of disrespect towards the Queen
on a visit to England. In taking up this issue in parliament, McCarthy notes that Keating,
significantly, attacked the opposition in parliament by projecting a stream of nationalism with particular (and impassioned) representations of war, historical narrative, national interest and self-identity:
I was told that I did not learn respect at school. I learned one thing: I learned about
self-respect and self-regard for Australia—not about some cultural cringe to a country
which decided not to defend the Malaysian peninsula not to worry about Singapore and
not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free from Japanese domination. This
was the country that you people wedded yourselves to, and even as it walked out on you
and joined the common market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods, and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it.12
However, with the bipartisan hegemony of neo-liberal ideas from the 1980s13 left nationalism, particularly in regard to any direct application to current issues as distinct
from politically useful constructions of the past, was increasingly relegated to forces
outside the Labor leadership. Such views were strongly represented within the 1990–91
movement against Australian naval involvement in the Gulf War. In describing an action at the time Australian ships left Sydney, Firth reports that, “At a time close to the day
when plastic noses are displayed in support of research into cot deaths, the demonstrators yelled ‘brown-nosed Hawke’ as a way of expressing the view that the Prime Minister
was motivated simply by a desire to please the United States”. Firth notes, approvingly,
that many critical of the war made much of the fact that intervention was decided after
“a phone call to the White House,” rather than consultation with caucus, regional allies
and the United Nations. He argues left nationalist ideas, “which belong to the mainstream of Australian political debate, offered the peace movement the best chance of
mobilizing broad support and may well have done so if the war had persisted”.14 This
12 House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, 27 February 1992, 373, quoted in John McCarthy,
‘The “great betrayal” reconsidered: An Australian perspective’, Australian Journal of International
Affairs, 48/1 (1994), 53–60 at 13. In arguing against an imperialist ‘betrayal’, McCarthy points out that
no-one in the Curtin and Chifley Labor governments of 1941–49 saw things that way, and that it was a
later construction.
13 As discussed in chapters 3, 5 and 7, and in terms of Hawke and Keating governments’ foreign policy,
“broadly based on free trade and free market principles”, see Stephen Bates, ‘The foreign economic
policies of the Hawke and Keating governments’, in David Lee and Christopher Waters (eds.), Evatt to
Evans: The Labor Tradition in Australian Foreign Policy (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 234–253
14 Stewart Firth, ‘The peace movement’, in Murray Goot and Rodney Tiffen (eds.), Australia’s Gulf War
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992), 97–113 at 104, 107
| 234
contention is challenged in this chapter.
It is argued below that left nationalist ideas commonly framed responses to the Iraq
war, even if they were less prevalent among the upper echelons of the official opposition.
However the pervasiveness of varied forms and aspects of nationalism is evident even
among those who are quite critical of the ideological usage of the ‘national interest’. Camilleri, for example, expresses scepticism about this term in relation to Howard’s foreign
policy stances in the period under discussion, pointing to some of the conflicting interests possible within the nation, and also the distinct lack of any discussion of what this
interest might be and how it can be “calculated” in government documents, that is, it is
an abstract, commonsense reification. He does suggest that an objective calculation of a
national interest might be possible, and that the Howard government has replaced such
an effort with subservience to the US. “Australia’s policy-making process had not sought
to engage in an interest-based calculus of costs and benefits, which, one assumes, would
have required an independent assessment of the nature, scale and origins of the terrorist
threat”, rather there was a “preconceived determination to align Australia firmly with US
priorities and strategies”.15 He does not see this as some kind of comprador, inauthentic
or unAustralian stance, but as very much tied to asserting a traditional, white nationalist
identity. But Camilleri does not appear to consider that the Howard government policy
might represent the aggressive materialisation of specific interests, of capital needing to
expand across the globe and seeking appropriate political conditions, suggesting rather the Howard doctrine was simply about “deliver[ing] the prosperity and stability to
which Australians aspire,” that is, an actual national interest.16
From ‘socialist’ colonialism to liberal ‘internationalism’
Traditional left nationalism, with its implied isolationist refusal of foreign entanglements, has not been the only ideological basis for the foreign policy of the left and labour
movements. There has long been contention on the left between those advocating internationalism and self-determination for colonial peoples, and those arguing for varied
forms of great power interventionism (whether on national interest or ‘humanitarian’
grounds), with the latter increasingly dominant through the twentieth century. George
Bernard Shaw, speaking on behalf of the Fabian Society, supported the 1899–1902 Boer
15 Camilleri, ‘A leap into the past—in the name of the ‘national interest’’ at 439
16 Ibid. at 449
235 |
War on the basis that it was in the interests of African people and that, “A great power
must, consciously or unconsciously, govern in the general interests of civilisation,” a
stance rejected by anti-war socialists who saw imperial power as the sole motive, and
noted a disregard for the rights of blacks by the British forces. Similarly, leading members of the right wing of the German Social-Democratic Party, Eduard Bernstein and
Gustav Noske, were denounced by much of the Socialist International in 1900 when
they supported colonialism and rejected the “right of savages to the soil they occupy”
on the basis that, “In the last resort, the higher culture enjoys the higher right. It is not
the conquest, but the cultivation of the land that gives the occupier his historical and
legal titles”. However, some opposition was merely in the form of demanding a “socialist
colonial policy”.17
McQueen notes the “peculiar nature of Australian anti-imperialism which accepted
British domination of the world as a pre-condition for Australian independence”.18 In
the early decades of the Australian state, the explicitly avowed right of powerful nations
to dominate the world was a bipartisan basis of foreign policy, with the specific twist
that Australian involvement was often seen as insurance for a relatively weak European
outpost in Asia, a down payment to ‘great and powerful friends’. In 1899, a former president of the NSW Trades and Labour Council, E.W. O’Sullivan supported the sending of
troops to the Boer War with the comment that, “The conflict between the British and
the Boer must, therefore, be regarded not as a fight against a few score thousand brave
and hardy farmers, but a war to uphold the British prestige all over the world”.19 The first
Labor majority government of Andrew Fisher could be portrayed as a truly ‘national’
administration, carrying out tasks such as the establishment of a national bank, currency, railway and an independent navy. However representatives portrayed its work in
foreign affairs and defence in terms of race patriotism and the need for active support of
British imperial hegemony. For example, defence minister George Pearce stated when
launching the Royal Australian Navy in 1910 that, “It would be a calamity to English
speaking people and the world if the Union Jack should be humiliated by any foreign
power”, and that his audience “had to look further afield than the mere defence of Aus17 Tariq Ali, Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq (London: Verso, 2003) 179–181. Ali also
notes the collapse of the avowedly internationalist majority of the Socialist International at the
commencement of the First World War.
18 McQueen, A New Britannia 22
19 Ibid. 20. McQueen also points out that much labour movement opposition to the war was based on
virulent anti-semitism (seeing a Jewish conspiracy controlling British policy) or anti-African racism.
| 236
tralia and be prepared to defend that flag and all that it represented”.20 Also in 1910 the
Victorian Labor Party election manifesto stated that:
When a majority of the people of the principal nations, such as the United States, Germany, and Great Britain are converted to the Labor Gospel, war as we know it will cease.
The only use for armies and navies then will be to police the world, and keep the small
and less civilised nations in order.21
When the First World War broke out Fisher himself pledged to “stand beside the
mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling”. Of the first
53 000 volunteers, 23 000 were unionists, and 64% of the Australian Imperial Force were
tradesmen or labourers. Nearly all union organisations took part in recruitment activities, and as noted above, the great majority of anti-conscriptionists were pro-war.22
In 1941 Labor under John Curtin came to power in a wartime election, and soon
faced a more immediate threat from advancing Japanese forces as well as fighting for
Britain in Europe and North Africa. In seeking to mobilise national feeling for the war
effort, the government was prepared at points to appeal to colonialist, racist prejudice,
with one advertisement stating of the Japanese, “We’ve always despised them, now we
must smash them”.23 Curtin also formalised a turn towards a close alliance with the
United States, stating that, “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear
that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to out traditional links of kinship
with the United Kingdom”.24
In the imperialist countries by the post war period, after the defeat of explicitly racist
regimes and as an era of anti-colonial struggles began, the mainstream left policy toward the colonised world had moved from forms of benevolent colonialism to a ‘liberal
internationalism’. This ideological position emphasised self-determination of nations,
individual rights and the global operation of the rule of law guaranteed by authoritative international bodies, within which national interests could peaceably contend. It
was seen as a more progressive alternative to conservative ‘realist’ forms of asserting
20 Ibid. 12
21 Ibid. 51
22 Ibid. 25–29
23 Advertisement in The Argus, 27 March 1942, reproduced in Alomes and Jones, Australian
Nationalism: A Documentary History 270
24 The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1941, quoted in McKinlay (ed.), Australian Labor History
in Documents 115
237 |
the national interest above all else.25 Liberal internationalism was first given a detailed
exposition and used as a guide to action in the post First World War period by US
president Woodrow Wilson, as the ideological basis for the League of Nations. Wilson
had some success using this doctrine, of internationalism as a legal framework for all
individuals and nations, to counter the growing popularity among anti-colonial activists
of the Bolsheviks’ calls for an alliance of labouring people and oppressed nations against
imperialism, an internationalism of the global struggle of social forces.26 Liberal internationalism naturalises, that is reifies, the existence of rights and the operation of legal
structures, rather than recognising the history of popular struggles that often precedes
the formalising of rights and the political and ideological role rights and laws play, and
also naturalises the existence of government and authority as resulting from consensual
agreements between individual actors. In summarising liberal theory, Novack notes that
bourgeois constitutions have been based on the existence of “natural rights,” that, “Humans are born with certain inherent and inalienable rights which no sovereign power
can deny, although they may be surrendered to a government through a social contract.”
In reality, Novack argues, the reality of exploitation under capitalism means all bourgeois ideology is beset by contradictions, due to the “insoluble conflict between human
rights and the claims of private property”.27
A case in point is the stance of Labor toward the United Nations, the post Second
World War successor body to Wilson’s failed League of Nations. Labor’s pro-UN stance
shows the contradictory nature of ALP foreign policy, on the one hand seeking to be
distinguished from that of the conservatives in the direction of a more just world order,
on the other often supportive or complicit in great power interventions against weaker
nations. Australian Labor foreign minister H.V. Evatt played a central role in the formation of the UN, in contrast to the realist position of conservatives who were supportive
but looked more closely to a bilateral alliance with the US. Evatt envisaged a strong social justice and development role for the world body but also crucially insisted on provisions for both military operations under UN command and the right of single nations
and coalitions of nations to go to war in self defence.28 Presumably the situation whereby
25 Scott Burchill, The National Interest in International Relations Theory (Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
26 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of
Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
27 George Novack, Democracy and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971) 109, 111
28 Bob Howard, ‘Labor and the United Nations’, in Murray Goot and Rodney Tiffen (eds.), Australia’s
| 238
great powers could manipulate and pressure the world body into military and other enforcement actions for ends other than self-defence was not foreseen. The danger in this
case was that the UN, reified as an inherent good abstracted from socio-political realities, could act as ‘internationalist’ cover to or diversion from the actual divisions in the
world. In regard to the Vietnam War, and in a striking parallel to what will be discussed
below, Howard notes that, “Appeals for UN involvement served the important tactical
purpose of allowing moderate Labor critics to condemn the war without directly attacking the US alliance”.29 In the first Gulf War of 1991 and the crisis leading up to it, Labor
figures explicitly referred to the work of Evatt as part of their justification for participation. The inclusion of a “just resolution to the Palestinian issue,” in the parliamentary
motion confirming an Australian role in the war, helped to keep the ALP left on side.30
The national security agenda
An examination of how the political and bureaucratic elites have represented ‘Australia’s’
foreign policy interests in recent decades, of the policies carried out and the material interests behind such representations and polices, shows the inadequacy of understanding
Australia either as an oppressed colony loyally following orders, or as a multilateralist
champion of the equal rights of nations. The key factor in formulating policy has in fact
been elite conceptions of the national interest.
An example of a foreign policy expression of these interests is the fact that t��
he intervention of Australian troops in Vietnam from 1965 was not, as some believe, (including
as discussed below by some of my focus group participants) a response by a loyal follower to orders from above, nor was it made from concern for the ‘self-determination’ of
the artificial state of South Vietnam. Cabinet papers from 1965, when released in 1996,
show that the sending of a combat battalion was a Menzies government initiative with
the motivation of locking the United States into a strategic commitment to South East
Asia. One journalist summarised the papers as:
Confirm[ing] that Australia committed itself to the war without a formal request from
Gulf War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992), 203–217; David Lee, ‘The Curtain and
Chifley governments: Liberal internationalism and world organisation’, in Christopher Lloyd and
Christopher Waters (eds.), Evatt to Evans: The Labor Tradition in Australian Foreign Relations (Sydney:
Allen and Unwin, 1997), 35–47
29 Howard, ‘Labor and the United Nations’ at 209
30 Ibid. at 214
239 |
the United States, and notified the South Vietnamese almost as an afterthought … the
Menzies Government was, even then, extremely anxious about the course of the war but
was more fearful of the US abandoning the region.
Menzies is quoted in the papers as stating in a cabinet discussion that, “we… were
looking for a way in and not a way out … We have, if anything, a livelier interest than
they in the success of their Vietnam efforts”.31
A series of papers from the departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Defence
during the tenure of the Howard governments outlined elite thinking on Australia’s
strategic interests, particularly a close connection between making the immediate region safe for investment flows and ensuring Australia’s military has a offensive and interventionist capacity—indeed the latter is implicitly recognised as the key role in the
foreeable future of the ‘defence’ forces. As the latest major defence white paper noted,
while immediate defence is mooted as the forces’ first task, “A direct military attack on
Australia is unlikely”, and, “��
Our armed forces need to be able to do more than simply defend our coastline. We have strategic interests and objectives at the global and regional
levels”.32 This is seen as in alliance with the US and clear support for its hegemonic position: “Government believes [the United States’ preponderance of military capacity and
strategic influence] will serve the strategic interests of the Asia Pacific region including
Australia, and will promote economic, social and political developments that align with
our interests and values”.33 The major Howard government statements on foreign policy
published in 1997 and 2003 projected the same strategy of a mutually beneficial alliance
with the global hegemon, combined with a regional and global projection of Australia’s
own power.34 The second of these statements noted, “our flexible and technologically
advanced armed forces make us a significant and recognized military power in Asia and
the South Pacific”.35 A 2003 update to the 2000 defence white paper again repeated the
major themes but, after the 11 September 2001 terror strikes and Australian intervention into Afghanistan and in the lead up to the Iraq war, with an added tone of anxiety
31 Karen Middleton, ‘Troops sent to Vietnam uninvited—documents’, The Age, (Melbourne), 1
January 1996, p. 7
32 Department of Defence, Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force (Canberra: Commonwealth of
Australia, 2000) ix, 29
33 Ibid. 16
34 Significantly titled, in terms of MacDonald’s point at footnote 1, Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, In the National Interest (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1997); Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade, Advancing the National Interest (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2003)
35 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Advancing the National Interest
| 240
and threat evident in the chapter headings, “A changed strategic environment”, “Global
terrorism”, “The threat of weapons of mass destruction”, and, “A troubled region”.36 It was
claimed that, “The threats of terrorism and WMDs are real and immediate”, and the paper stated, noting increased Australian military and/or police operations in Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands that, “there may be increased
calls on the ADF for operations in Australia’s neighbourhood,” and, “ADF involvement
in coalition operations further afield is somewhat more likely than in the recent past”.37
Increased resources for special forces, counter-terrorism units, intelligence operations
and communications integration with allies was also noted. The overall effect is to construct an amalgam from varied issues and crises of a homogenous global threat that
creates an imperative of a heightened military and security response in close alliance
with US power.
Barker is among those who reject this amalgam of threats and responses. He points
to the facts that by 2006 US intelligence services had concluded that the Iraq war had
increased the threat of further terrorist attack on the US, suggesting the moderate threat
to Australia had also increased. Further, in Australia a raft of new powers of detention
without trial and proscription of organisations, the undertaking of hundreds of investigations and, at the time of writing of Barker’s article, the laying of 24 charges, had led to
the harassment of innocent citizens and threatened civil liberties without by that time
producing a single conviction.38 Suskind relates how such amalgams in the wake of 11
September have led the Bush administration to adopt the, “One per cent doctrine,” by
which any potentially catastrophic threat with even a one per cent probability of occurring, requires a decisive response. The result has been wasteful, disruptive and paranoid
responses to a number of imagined threats.39
The real interests, as discussed in Chapter 7, behind the recent defence and security
agenda is a desire on the part of governing elites to make the world safe for Australian
business, and a view of such elites of South East Asia and the Pacific as particularly significant sites of investment and exploitation for Australian monopolising capitals, ‘our
backyard’.
36 Department of Defence, Australia’s National Security: A Defence Update (Canberra: Commonwealth
of Australia, 2003) 3
37 Ibid. 25
38 Geoffrey Barker, ‘Terrorism, fear and reality’, Dissent, Summer 2006/2007, 6–8.
39 Ron Suskind, The One Per Cent Doctrine (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006)
241 |
Flitton argues that in 2002 foreign policy divergence occurred between the government and the ALP, with the former stressing a “new realism” of support for US action
against terrorism, unilateral (or rather non-UN) if necessary, and the latter expressing
a, “classic liberal internationalism,” of a multilateral, pro-UN approach. However, he
stresses that at several points through the year Labor figures refused to rule out support
for a unilateral US strike on Iraq, and joined with the government to vote down a Greens
motion to condemn non-UN authorised military action.40 The role of both ‘anti-imperialist’ nationalism and of liberal ‘internationalism’, and the extent of actual divergence
between the government and the opposition and the left more broadly, on the strategic
interests of ‘Australia’ in the region and the world, will be discussed below in relation to
the lead up to the Iraq war.
The Iraq conflict as a war of the ‘colonial present’
Gregory contends that past colonial relations between nations are strongly inscribed
into contemporary global economic, spatial, political and cultural structures and processes, and thus much of the world, regardless of formal political independence, exists in
a “colonial present”. He shows that a crucial aspect of present global relationships is the
way historical memory within the former colonial powers is largely framed with “amnesia” and/or “nostalgia,”41 and the media and political texts discussed below will show
these frameworks being deployed in regard to Iraq.
The conflict in Iraq is certainly symptomatic of the contradictory and conflict ridden
way that the intertwined dynamics of nationality and internationality within capitalism
have developed. Two related aspects of this dynamic, as discussed in Chapters 3, 4 and
7, are constitutive of the unequal relations of wealth and power within the global system. Firstly, in Europe and then North America increasingly from the sixteenth century,
strong states making sovereign claims to represent relatively established and homogenous nations, that were prosperous and had well developed internal markets, asserted
themselves globally. Secondly economic development, nation formation and conflicts
over political boundaries in the rest of the world have thus all taken place within relations of dominance to some extent. The end of several centuries of political subjugation
of much of the world by the mid-twentieth century did not end exploitative economic
40 Flitton, ‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2002’
41 Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004)
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relations between regions of the world, based on profit repatriation, debt repayments,
inevitably unequal exchange of labour time between markets with greatly varying rates
of productivity, and political arrangements that helped reproduce such exploitation.
Such political-economic aspects of the ‘colonial present’ are described by many commentators as ‘neo-colonial’.42
Iraq itself is a spatial-political creation of the colonial past, with the state created by
occupying British forces from three provinces of the defeated Ottoman Empire after the
First World War. Before the war there had already been substantial investment in emerging oil fields by capital deriving from Britain and other colonial powers, and Britain set
up direct colonial rule in 1919 to protect these assets and occupy a strategic position
within the Middle East. Decades of near constant revolts, protests and strikes against colonial control followed, despite the establishment of a nominally independent kingdom
from 1921. Radical nationalists first seized power from the pro-British regime in 1958,
and the Pan-Arab nationalist Ba’ath (Rebirth) Socialist Party (based in Syria as well as
Iraq), came to the fore from 1963. Oil interests and Western governments were increasingly perturbed, especially by nationalisation of the oil industry in 1973.43 The violent
history of Iraq is also symptomatic of the complexities and contradictions of nationalist
responses to colonialism and neo-colonialism. Saddam Hussein seized power as part of
the most militarist and pro-capitalist section of the Ba’ath in 1968. He may have been
genuine enough in his Pan-Arabic and Iraqi nationalism, but this ideology combined
with policies of state-directed crony capitalism also suited an emergent bourgeoisie, and
his rule was characterised by opportunist intrigues with different imperialist powers.44
United States-based corporations had also heavily invested in Middle Eastern Oil
from the early twentieth century, and after the Second World War the US increasingly
replaced Britain and France as the pre-eminent neo-colonial power in that region. Leaver argues that control of Middle Eastern oil was central to the US’ strategic orientation
throughout the Cold War era, allowing the rapid reconstruction of Japan and Western
42 For example as an integral part of the post Second World War phase of imperialist and monopolising
capitalism in Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1998) 343–376
43 Illario Salucci, A People’s History of Iraq (Chicago: Haymarket, 2005) 9–47, Ali, Bush in Babylon
42–143
44 ‘Isam al-Khafaji, ‘State incubation of Iraqi capitalism’, Middle East Report, September–October
1986, 4–12. Further on the conflicts between different streams of Third World nationalism, right-wing
Ba’athists of both Iraq and Syria had violently suppressed leftist members of their own party as well as
communists and other left forces in their respective rises to power, see Salucci, A People’s History of Iraq
35–72 and Ali, Bush in Babylon 66–124
243 |
Europe following the Second World War. Such control also helped the US maintain its
political and military hegemony over its Western allies, due to the latter’s heavy dependence upon imported oil. However US economic and energy vulnerability relative to
its allies has increased, due to closer attention to conservation and alternative energy
measures by Japan and Western Europe than the US, the floating of exchange rates since
the 1970s, which means the US cannot expect automatic inflows of currency towards a
strong dollar to pay for military hegemony, and the diversification of the global market
in oil. Symptomatic of these changes is the differing outcomes of the oil shocks of the
1970s, which led to recession in Western Europe and Japan, and the 1990–91 Gulf crisis, which led to recession in the US.45 Leaver does not draw these conclusions but such
processes suggest the basis for a turn by the US toward more direct intervention and
control in the Middle East, and an opportunity arose to do so with the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1990–91.
Two thirds of known oil reserves are located in the Middle East, and Iraq has, definitely, the second largest reserves behind Saudi Arabia, and possibly larger reserves,
with the great majority of fields still untapped and exploitable with less production costs
than most sources. Apart from the general considerations cited above, US planners were
less sure of secure Iraqi supplies from a regime led by Saddam Hussein after negotiations
for the US corporation Bechtel to guild a pipeline from Iraq to Jordan, initiated in 1983
by later Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, collapsed in 1985.46
An example of the way the national question has impacted on conflicts around the
Gulf was the fatal implications of the long-held view among many Iraqis that the tiny
neighbouring state of Kuwait is illegitimate, being an artefact of intrigues between the
former British colonial masters of Iraq and the long-deceased Ottoman Empire. Saddam Hussein promoted this idea in 1990 when he accused the sheikdom of stealing Iraqi
oil by drilling under the border and robbing Iraq of oil income by undercutting OPEC
prices. In any case he felt confident to threaten and then carry out an occupation. The
US had backed the secular Hussein in his 1980-88 war against the revolutionary Islamic
state of Iran, and on 25 July 1990 US ambassador April Glaspie stated that the US had
“no opinion” on Iraqi action. However, soon after the August takeover of Kuwait, the
45 Richard Leaver, ‘Australia and the New World Order’, Australia’s Gulf War (Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 1992), 218–233
46 Any Rowell, ‘No blood for oil?’, in David Miller (ed.), Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion
in the Attack on Iraq (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 115–125
| 244
US mobilised forces in the region, and convinced the UN to authorise military action
in February 1991, quickly overrunning Iraqi forces and forcing a surrender. Economic
sanctions, imposed in August 1990, were to continue until the UN was satisfied that
Iraq was completely rid of chemical and biological weapons and of a nuclear weapons
program.47
Ritter provides a senior insider’s account of the methods with which the UN weapons
inspection regime was manipulated and coerced from its stated disarmament goals towards the interests of the United States.48 A policy, to “fix the intelligence around policy,”
was followed by the CIA from as early as 1992, when intelligence on SCUD missiles
was doctored to show Iraqi non-compliance, despite this contradicting inspection findings. US logistical, intelligence and political support for the inspections was withdrawn
at crucial points, and pressure was successfully applied over what to or not to inspect,
with the intent often being to provoke the Iraqi government. The object was to ensure
that Iraqi compliance could never be proven, and that economic sanctions continued,
despite the cost of hundreds of thousands of premature deaths due to shortages of food
and medicines and general economic collapse, until a convenient window for military
action (that is, more decisive action than the bombing raids regularly carried out when
any “non-compliance” was alleged) and regime change could be created. Ritter notes that
by 2004 US government reports admitted that Iraq had effectively disarmed in 1991.49
Following the Clinton administration’s serious consideration of an invasion of Iraq
through the 1990s, the Bush administration from its inception was clearly intent on
military action to remove Saddam Hussein as a central aspect of a plan to ensure oil supplies for US corporations and to remake the Middle East in the US’ strategic interests.
This strategy was formulated particularly clearly by the Project for the New American
Century, a neo-conservative think tank that was launched in 1998 by leading conservatives including later senior Bush administration figures Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz, as well as George W. Bush’s brother Jeb. This body made a number
of statements arguing for the need for military action in Iraq before the Bush presidency,
47 Ali, Bush in Babylon 130–143
48 Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America’s Intelligence Conspiracy (London: I.B.
Taurus, 2005)
49 Ibid. 289; for the devastating period of sanctions, the effects of which were described by UN
official in charge Denis Halliday as “genocide” just after he resigned in October 1998, and the Clinton
adminstration’s material and political support for regime change, see also Gregory, The Colonial Present
164–179
245 |
including a global security document which stated, “The US for decades sought to play a
more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for substantial American force presence in
the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein”.50 In 1998 the think tank
had written to Clinton urging military action to remove Hussein in terms that made oil
security and geo-political dominance central considerations, arguing that failure to act
would mean, “The safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like
Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil
will all be put at hazard”. Similar arguments were publicly made to congressional leaders
later that year.51
Doig et al. chart the gap between the patchy and circumstantial evidence of the post1991 existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the public pronouncements
through 2002 and early 2003 of certain and immediate threat by Bush, Blair and Howard, and the related gulf between private determination to invade Iraq from the earliest
days of the Bush administration, and the public stance through 2002 that this was a last
resort if Saddam Hussein did not disarm.52 In a 29 January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush contended that there was an “axis of evil,” consisting of the states of Iraq,
Iran and North Korea that were central to the global terrorist threat, and implied that
military action was necessary and imminent in that, “our war against terror is only beginning … The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous
regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons”.53
The US was able to convince the UN Security Council to adopt resolution 1441 on 8
November 2002, which stated that Iraq had a “final opportunity” to disarm, but which
did not specifically authorise military action. Widespread opposition to the invasion
plans culminated in possibly the largest global political action in history, involving at
50 Thomas Donnelly, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
(Washington: Project for a New American Century, 2000) 14
51 Project for the New American Century, ‘Letter to President Clinton on Iraq’, 26 January, 1998
<http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm> accessed 10 January 2008;
Project for the New American Century, ‘Letter to Gingrich and Lott on Iraq’, 1998
<http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqletter1998.htm> accessed 10 January 2008
52 Doig et al., ‘Marching in time: alliance politics, synchrony and the case for war in Iraq, 2002–2003’
at 29–38. The lack of real evidence and the attempt at mutually reinforcing ‘proof ’ by coalition political
figures is also charted by another insider account, that of Australian Office of National Assessments
analyst, Andrew Wilkie, Axis of Deceit (Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, 2004)
53 George W. Bush, ‘State of the Union address’, 29 January, 2002
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html> accessed 10 January 2008
| 246
least 12 million people, including between 500 000 and one million in Australia, who
marched against the impending war on the weekend of 15–16 February 2003. By this
time it was clear that what had been termed the “coalition of the willing,” would not win
a majority of the Security Council, nor the necessary unanimous vote of the permanent
members, for military action. However legal justification was claimed on the basis of
post-Gulf War resolutions and Resolution 1441, and military action by “coalition forces”,
including 2000 Australia personnel, commenced on 20 March 2003. Once again formal
hostilities lasted a matter of weeks and Bush declared “mission accomplished,” on the
deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003, followed by Howard
announcing to parliament on 14 May that a “decisive victory” had been achieved and
that Australia troop numbers would be reduced to 1200.54
The neo-colonial motive of the invasion, on the part of both the US and Australian
states, was revealed by the economic policies of the occupying forces. The Coalition Provisional Authority enforced a neo-liberal model to the benefit of corporations from the
US and allied states, and made all such laws incumbent on succeeding governments, in
many cases for decades. Food subsidies were scrapped, as were state purchasing of agricultural products, and tariffs and duties, creating a large market for imports at the expense of local producers. Farmers were forced to rely on patented seeds, which needed
to be purchased each year, and there was a large scale sell-off of the Iraqi public sector.
Strikes by oil workers and threats by insurgents prevented initial plans for the wholesale
privatisation of Iraq’s oil supplies, however oil corporations based in Coalition states
have been guaranteed access to production and refining for 30 to 40 years. Australian
officials played key roles in these moves, and Australia corporations, particularly in agriculture and energy, have been awarded substantial contracts.55
Contested constructions of the past
The debate around the Iraq war exemplified the close connections in political discourse
between nation, war and history. It appears that discussion of war, as generally a contest
between nation-states, particularly lends itself to reified and mythical constructions of
54 Flitton, ‘Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2002’; O’Connor, ‘Perspectives on Australian
foreign policy, 2003’; Ali, Bush in Babylon 144–171; Norm Dixon, ‘Largest coordinated anti-war protest
in history’, 19 February, Green Left Weekly, 2003
55 Christopher Doran, ‘Separating the wheat from the chaff ’, Arena Magazine, October–November
2006, 34–36
247 |
the nation as unproblematically united by history, culture and values. Such views of the
nation were particularly evident in the media sample among conservative supporters of
the war. For example, there were a number of attacks, by commentators, editorialists and
letter writers alike, against ‘France’ as a whole, that purported to explain French government policies against a US-led invasion by an utterly homogenised representation of
French history, culture and society. For example Neil Graham of Branxton, citing the
bombing by French agents of the Rainbow Warrior while the Greenpeace vessel was at
port in New Zealand, a former war-time ally of France, concluded, “The society that produced such a government must possess a culture that is very nearly morally bankrupt,”
and hence, “France waving its Security Council veto loudly around is a tragic farce”.56
Henderson opined that the anti-semitism and collaboration with Nazism displayed by
the wartime Vichy government of France was evidence that, “The French position is not
motivated by a search for peace but rather by (traditional) French duplicity”.57 Reaching
even further back, Aury Norman of Loftus asked, “What value can be put on France’s
opinion?”, raising “France’s” mistakes at Agincourt and in regards to the Duke of Wellington, as well as the second World War.58 The homogenisation of French interests and
opinions appeared to be a rhetorical diversion from the fact that official opinion (not
to mention public opinion) in the great majority of states around the world opposed a
US-led war.
Pro-war articles in the sample, commonly constructed parallels with dictatorships
and episodes of ‘appeasement’ in the past, with eight pro-war articles referring to Hitler,
Nazism and/or 1930s appeasement toward fascism. In answer to two questions about
the lack of a case for war at a 13 March 2003 National Press Club speech, John Howard
stated that waiting for definite proof of the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and of Iraqi connections to terrorist groups would mean, “It’s virtually Pearl Harbour,” and, “That is I said a Pearl Harbour situation”.59 The modality of these two phrases
(the claimed future situation ‘is’ rather than ‘might be’), combined with the historical
56 ‘Letters to the editor’, Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2003, p. 26
57 Gerard Henderson, ‘Of left and right, and Gallic gall’, The Age, 18 March 2003, p. 15
58 ‘Letters to the editor’. Reaching this far back into history indicates again the common assumption
of the abstracted, eternal, or “geological” in Anthony Smith’s phrase discussed in chapter 3, conception
of the nation. In reality the process of turning “peasants into Frenchman” was still occurring in the
twentieth century, see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France,
1870–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976)
59 John Howard, ‘Address to the National Press Club’, 13 March, 2003 <http://pandora.nla.gov.au/
pan/10052/20030521-0000/www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/2003/speech2185.htm> accessed 10
February 2008 | 248
reference indicates Howard’s rhetorical tactics included the projection of the utter certainty of a devastating surprise attack if his course was not followed.
In the media sample, an article by Winston S. Churchill, former British Conservative
MP as well as grandson of the wartime prime minister, was particularly generous with
historical allusion.60 Churchill’s key point was that his “grandfather’s experience has lessons for us”. The key lesson is an alleged equivalence between the United Nations’ refusal
to support an invasion of Iraq and the “impotence” of the League of Nations in acting
against aggression in the 1930s. The flouting of League of Nations’ resolutions was undertaken “first by the Japanese, who invaded Manchuria, then by the Italian dictator
Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia and, most gravely, by Nazi Germany”. Churchill senior
also allegedly showed unique foresight, “in 1948 favour[ing] the threat and—if need be
the reality—of a pre-emptive strike to safeguard the interests of the free world”, believing
“that the US—while it still had a monopoly of atomic power—should require the Soviet
Union to abandon the development of these weapons, if need be by threatening their
use”. That is, Saddam Hussein’s regime is equivalent in threat and nastiness to the great
twentieth century dictatorships, while Churchill employs contrastive rhetoric to unfavourably compare 1930s western leaders to Bush and Blair who, like Churchill the elder,
show “resolve”, are “absolutely right,” and are “firm in [their] beliefs”.
This article also provides support for Gregory’s contention that a “colonial present”
exists and is defined by amnesia and nostalgia about the colonial past. Churchill junior
refers to his grandfather’s experience as colonial secretary in the 1920s and close involvement in the creation of modern Iraq, Iran and Jordan. His only concession to any
errors of this period is the overruling by the Colonial Office of Churchill senior’s plan
to create a state of Kurdistan. The violent repression of strikes and uprisings is absent.
A salient amnesia with regard to parallels with the crimes of Saddam Hussein is shown
by the enthusiasm of Churchill in 1919 for chemical warfare against rebellious Iraqis,
pre-dating his above-mentioned support for unprovoked and unilateral use of nuclear
weapons of mass destruction:
I am highly in favour of using poisonous gases against uncivilized tribes … It is not necessary to use lethal gases; you can use ones that cause serious harm and induce terror
without permanently affecting the majority of those hit.61
60 Winston S. Churchill, ‘Not an unnecessary war’, The Australian, 21 March 2003, p. 21
61 Quoted in Salucci, A People’s History of Iraq 126. Note the humanitarian caveat from Churchill, a
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Tony Parkinson showed similar nostalgia and amnesia when alleging that Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare in the 1980s was unique. “Weapons of mass destruction were
the curse the world had to learn to live with after Hiroshima. In fact, under the old rules
of the ‘balance of terror’ they provided an important deterrent to war—for so long as all
sides understood and accepted the costs of using them would be intolerable. At Halabja
[a Kurdish village gassed by Iraqi forces], Saddam broke that spell”. As an argument that,
“The Iraqi leader’s use of chemical weapons is evidence enough of the danger he poses”,
this shows considerable historical amnesia about the massive use of chemical defoliants
on Vietnam, the destruction and misery caused by the use of depleted uranium weaponry
in the first Gulf War, and US and other Western states’ encouragement and supply for the
Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.62
However a conservative construction of history did not go uncontested in the debate
around Iraq in early 2003, albeit with considerably fewer examples. Labor leader Simon
Crean argued that the central meaning of the failure of the League of Nations was not
appeasement but the rejection of international institutions by great powers:
Let’s have regard to history. Let’s understand what happened after the First World War
when the League of Nations was established. The League of Nations was established
essentially to stop another war like that happening again, but the League of Nations
collapsed. It collapsed because countries, and significant countries, were not prepared
to commit to it in the authority through which conflict and tension was addressed. And
when the League of Nations collapsed, what happened? We had another world war, the
Second World War.63
Crean, in the transitivity of the first two sentences of this passage, addresses the inclusive, unifying collective pronoun “us” as the subject that is under the imperative of
understanding history. But this is an implicit, indirect way, no doubt seen as appropriate
to an official Australia Day address, to accuse some of ‘us’ (that is, Crean’s political optradition of the self-avowed civilizing mission of colonialism reflected in more contemporary claims of
the use of smart weaponry such as the missiles that would “surgically strike at Iraq’s military command
structure” (and not apparently elsewhere) according to the editorial support for the war on the opposite
page to Churchill junior’s article, ‘A war that we can fight with a clear conscience ’, The Australian, 21
March 2003, p. 20
62 Tony Parkinson, ‘Saddam is a real threat — just ask the Kurds’, The Age 17 March 2003, p. 15; the
points about Vietnam and former support to Iraq are made by Robin Cook, ‘How can a weak man be a
threat? ’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2003, p. 6; Bob Hawke, ‘Lies and deceit litter road to
war ’, The Australian 19 March 2003, p. 13
63 ‘Crean says Howard has “gate-crashed” Iraq war and ignored UN’, 26 January, 2003
<http://australianpolitics.com/news/2003/01/03-01-26a.shtml> accessed 9 January 2008
| 250
ponents) of misunderstanding and abusing history. While very arguably a flawed representation of the causes of the Second World War, mystifying the struggle of social forces
by the abstract norms of liberal internationalism, Crean’s comments avoid a central historical amnesia in the conservative appeals to the appeasement narrative: that Germany,
Japan and even Italy in the 1930s were powerful industrialised nation-market-states,
and thus constructing a parallel with the impoverished, divided and largely disarmed
Iraq of 2003 was an invalid exercise. Similarly a number of letters pointed to the incongruity of John Howard pointing to Pearl Harbour as a justification for an attack on Iraq,
such as Phil Harvey of Mosman who asked, “If pre-emptive strikes are now OK, is Pearl
Harbour no longer a ‘day of infamy’?”.64
Stating openly what Crean implied in the quote above, Anne Finnane of Eastwood argued, “John Howard now would cast us in the role of Hitler’s divisions and Japan’s fighter
planes to attack a country that is in no way a threat to our sovereignty”.65 Finnane also
cited the war service of her father and grandfather. Such citations of familial connections appear to be rhetorical claims for the authenticity of particular historical memory,
and were repeated in a number of texts (and in the focus groups, see below), such as this
from D.J. Christmas of Tiaro, Queensland: “Our fathers and uncles fought and died in
two world wars to stop unprovoked attacks on sovereign states by powerful aggressors.
Now Australia is to join the ranks of the aggressors”.66
Former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke was also less coy than Crean in naming aggressors evident from the lessons of history:
Will the people of Australia not remember that this is not the first time the conservative forces have done this to Australia? Will they not remember Vietnam? In Vietnam,
the conservative forces went in and supported America’s adventurism in a war that was
unjustified.67
Focus group participants also framed a number of their arguments with historical
narrative, with key examples given in Table 8.2, the second of which gives some excerpts
of an extended debate among members of the regional ALP branch regarding how past
war and historical memory related to the present in Iraq.
64 ‘Letters: No wonder flimsy case failed to win support ’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2003,
p. 16
65 ‘Letters to the editor’, Daily Telegraph, 17 March 2003, p. 22
66 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 20 March 2003, p. 12
67 Bob Hawke, ‘Failing the key test of prime ministerial responsibility’, The Age, 17 March 2003, p. 15
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Table 8.2 Focus group comments on war and history
Theme
Comments
Questioning an
aspect of nationalism (in nationalist terms)
Jenny [Regional ALP group]: And also what about the women and
men, well the men that died at Gallipolli, under this so-called Aussie
flag, and were drawn into a battle and were crucified, by the British,
slaughtered, [Doug: Churchill did it too], it means nothing to me.
Contrasting historical narratives
that are used to
either support or
question the US
alliance and the
Iraq war
[Excerpts from
an exchange in
the regional ALP
group]
Ralph: I’d like to take a different view on all that [Iraq]. I see Australians as being ones who always look after their mates and who always
form strong bonds with others, and help each other in times of need.
And if you go back in history to World War 2, and Doug would know
this, I mean America saved our bacon, if we didn’t have America out
there in the bloody Coral Sea…
Doug: I don’t believe that, not for one minute. We saved their bacon. If
you understand how much the Australians put into the islands …
Ralph: I guess everyone’s got different views on that and I’ve read my
grandfather’s journals and he fought in Papua New Guinea and certainly his view and that’s where I get it from is that the Americans were
the saving grace flying supplies in and so on. If we put that argument
aside, and look at some of the treaties we’ve signed. You’ve got the
ANZUS treaty, the Australia, New Zealand, US in 1951. That treaty’s
in place so if any one of those 3 get attacked, the others will automatically go in. That’s why we’re in Afghanistan, because … you’ve
got Osama bin Laden with the airliners going into the World Trade
Centre… Now Iraq is a different kettle of fish, because that doesn’t
come under the treaty. We’ve got several treaties with the US, linked
to economics, linked to trade, linked to defence, so we really are a little bit inextricably, like it or not, America really is an ally that we need,
it’s not somebody you can choff off, and say we don’t need you. I can
understand why we’re in Iraq, for that reason, America going in, the
same as the Vietnam war against Communism, as it was spreading
South, America went in, we went in, to assist as well… We’ve been
there 3 years. It’s like a gardening job, you pull up your garden, it
takes a while to get it sorted out…
Kerry: The garden that was built or was started to be built in Vietnam
was never finished either Ralph. They’ve sorted themselves out. I
don’t say it’s the most perfect thing that’s ever happened, in the end,
but the reality is there… I joined the regular army, on the basis that I
thought Vietnam and all those Communist countries were, you know,
enemies or whatever, as a young naïve soldier… But the whole thing
was, the Vietnam War is exactly the same mess as the Iraq war is. Noone really knows why we’re bloody there. Vietnam is not really a war
we should have got involved with either.
What is significant about the first comment is that while Jenny was seeking to make
a point about the abuses of nationalism, that is about the flag as a symbol that contributes to people being killed against their actual interests, she does so in terms that use a
typical left nationalist construction of the fighting at Gallipolli, that is another British
‘betrayal’. This is suggestive of the unreflective, ‘common sense’, even unconscious usage
of nationalist terms, themes, myths and narratives pointed to throughout this thesis.
The second example is from a sharp exchange over the meaning of history. Ralph, as the
| 252
only participant among the 28 involved in the focus groups who indicated any support
for the Iraq war, constructed a narrative of shared history, concerns, interests, debts and
agreements that intimately bind Australia and the US, in a form with no discernible
difference from a conservative nationalism. Unfortunately for Ralph’s arguments (and
to his surprise in at least the first case) the two veterans in the group had sharply different memories of the relevant wars. They use such memories to construct a narrative of
Australia as historically dependent, and, in the case of Vietnam, drawn into the foreign
adventures of others, against an alleged threat and despotism that was not what it had
initially seemed to be, and Kerry draws a close parallel with a flawed case for war in Iraq.
The authenticity of historical memory is called into question, with Ralph raising both
the multiplicity of interpretations of war and the basis of his views in a ‘primary source’
that he is deeply attached to. Thus, opinions on wars in the present are closely connected
to ideologically coloured memory of national history.
Left nationalist opposition to the Iraq war
As was touched upon in the previous section, themes, myths and imagery readily recognisable as deriving from left nationalist traditions were evident in the debate in the lead
up to the Iraq war. Crean’s earliest announcement on the crisis, at a 22 April 2002 speech
to the Australia Asia Institute, was in terms of subservience to the US.
In his first major foreign policy speech Mr Crean distanced himself from
Kim Beazley’s strongly pro-American stance and described Prime Minister John
Howard as a ‘swaggering deputy sheriff ’ to Uncle Sam. ‘For too long the Howard Government has behaved as though we have no choice in foreign policy,’ he
said. ‘Support for the war on terrorism and other areas of co-operation with the
US does not mean that this country’s foreign policy should be a pale shadow of
America’s’. 68
This report stated that he indicated, “No case had yet been made to warrant a direct
attack on Iraq”, but he did not appear at that point to focus upon the UN, which as discussed in the next section, became the main theme of Crean’s position by 2003.
Campaigning organisations and unions also utilised left nationalist rhetoric in opposition to the war. For example in the lead up to the conflict the Construction For68 Malcolm Cole and Ian McPhedran, ‘Crean urges caution on US foreign policy’, Courier-Mail, 23
April 2002, p. 2
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estry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) called for “independence”, and opposed
“the Howard government’s subservience to the US-led war against Iraq,” arguing that,
“Our national interests are further jeopardised, particularly in our region”. However, a
significant difference from the official Labor leadership here is the call for widespread
action, including for what would presumably be the illegal industrial action of “workplace meetings to discuss the Federal Government’s arrogance and contempt”.69 Andrew
Wilkie, the former intelligence analyst who resigned from the Office of National Assessments in the lead up to the invasion in order to publicise the lack of a case for war,
presented to a 19 October 2003, ‘Don’t be Bush-whacked’ rally, on the occasion of Bush’s
visit to Sydney. He presented a succinct left nationalist explanation of the causes of war
and the resulting dangers for the ‘national interest’, particularly utilising a rhetorical
contrast between “sovereignty” and “subservience”:
I’m a friend of the US and a supporter of a limited Australia-US alliance relationship.
The current relationship undermines our sovereignty by tying us too closely to the US’s
strategic interests; undercuts our democracy by shifting decision making from Canberra to Washington; risks our security by encouraging Australia to assume the reliability
of US security guarantees; and risks our broader interests by encouraging the US to presuppose Australian subservience.70
Greens leader Bob Brown has consistently used left nationalist themes on issues of
war and security, but has also tied these to broader concerns and understanding than,
for example, Crean. He linked Howard’s closeness to the White House and concerns
about a ‘democratic deficit’ in lack of support for the war (as expressed in a number of
texts in the media sample), in stating:
Mr. Howard has shown he speaks more for the White House than the widely held feeling in Australia that this is not our war. After the speech [US ambassador] Tom Schiefer
could say ‘he speaks for me’ but millions of Australians will say ‘he is not listening, he
doesn’t speak for us’.71
69 CFMEU National Office, ‘Stop the war on Iraq: Australia must assert its independence’, 5 February,
2003 <http://www.cfmeu.asn.au/national.int_issues/20030205_iraq.html> accessed 16 December 2003
70 Andrew Wilkie, ‘Andrew Wilkie speech at “don’t be Bush-whacked”’, 19 October 2003
<http://www.nswpeace.org/features/1066944641_6126.html> accessed 15 January 2008
71 Bob Brown, ‘Prime Minister says nothing new: Speech full of contradictions’, 13 March media
release, 2003 <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=709> accessed 9 January
2008
| 254
In a statement released several days later Brown reprised (whether consciously or not)
the imagery from the first Gulf War of US domination of Australia via telephone: “Prime
Minister Howard’s relaying to Australia of today’s phone call from President Bush is the
worst humiliation so far for the millions of people wanting an independent voice for the
nation on the issue of Iraq … [In deciding on deployment Howard] simply awaits President Bush’s next phone call”. In this case Brown rhetorically contrasted subservience to
the US with a liberal internationalist concern with the UN in stating, “Our Prime Minister is not thinking of global law, the UN Charter, or the options for containing Saddam
Hussein so much as accolades in a post war Rose Garden”.72 On the eve of war Brown’s
expression of left nationalism was significantly different to that of Crean’s (to the extent
that Crean expressed any traditional left nationalism). Brown clearly linked an internationalist concern for Iraqi people and an underlying economic basis for US intervention
to Australian subservience: “This morning in Baghdad and Basra millions of innocent
Iraqis are huddling in terror … President George Bush has effectively sent Australia to
war … This is an oil war, this is not Australia’s war”.73
Yet at other points in regard to Afghanistan and Iraq, Brown’s left nationalism was
linked not to opposition to war from a consistent anti-imperialist position but to an
isolationist stance, of avoiding Australian involvement, in terms that implicitly accepted
key tenets of the ‘national interest’ security and defence agenda and the necessity of
US intervention in both nations. In opposing extra troops being sent to Afganistan in
early 2006 Brown stated, “This is the Bush administration’s war and it is up to President
Bush to ensure the security of both countries, not the Australian Defence Forces … Our
troops should be in Australia and our neighbourhood where our national interests are
concentrated”.74 Similarly in April 2007 Brown argued, “The 300 [SAS troops being sent
to Afghanistan] should remain in our region where instability is rife and our defence
forces are already stretched…The current Afghanistan mire comes out of the Bush administration’s mistake in withdrawing from Afghanistan and invading Iraq. It should be
President Bush dispatching the extra contingent to Afghanistan, not Australia”.75 These
72 Bob Brown, ‘Howard humiliates Australia’, 17 March media release, 2003 <http://www.bobbrown.
org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=712> accessed 9 January 2008
73 Though apparently ignoring authentically Australian oil interests. Bob Brown, ‘World shame’, 20
March media release, 2003 <http://www.bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=713>
accessed 9 January 2008
74 Bob Brown, ‘Greens oppose Afghanistan build-up’, 10 January media release, 2006
<http://www.bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=1872> accessed 9 January 2008
75 Bob Brown, ‘300 SAS troops should remain in our region—Greens’, 2007
255 |
examples, from the far left of Australian parliamentary politics, are further evidence
both of the hybridity and fluidity of expressions of nationalism, and of the limitations
of left nationalism as an alternative to conservative expressions of national interest and
foreign policy.
Left nationalist themes were also evident in some media sample texts as central aspects of criticism of or explanation for the war. Ramsey raised the theme of subservience
by asking rhetorically, “Does anyone really believe… that the Prime Minister of this
country … will not ape the Americans in whatever it is they do, like the devout Sir Echo
he has become to the Bush White House?”76 Similarly Stuart Khan of Sydney demanded that Howard should “not allow our armed forces to become merely the Australian
branch of the US military”.77 Several writers displayed metaphorical uses of language
that are examples of how complex semiotic structures of national myths can be signified by a single or a few images78 and thus seemed a particularly useful tactic in short
letters: “Blooming Mad” of Ivanhoe asked, “Will we see a new flower in the gardens of
Kirribilli House—the yellow rose of Texas?”79, while Anthony David of Melba ironically
suggested, “We should remove the kangaroo and emu from our coat of arms and replace
them with a chihuahua and a bald eagle, linked by a leash”.80
Left nationalist themes were also linked to other concerns, for example the ‘democratic deficit’ and a lack of regard for the UN raised by John Doherty of Burnley in stating,
“John Howard shows a frightening eagerness to please George W. Bush and a staggering
disregard for the Australian people and the millions throughout the world who want
the United Nations to settle this matter”.81 Bob Hawke in the article cited previously
was not only keen to narrate a history of conservative aggression but also to suggest the
worth of Laborist consensus at home and independence in foreign affairs by criticising
“a Government that still pursues the policies of confrontation at home and mindless
subservience abroad”.82
Focus group participants expressed a similar range of usages of left nationalism in
<http://www.bobbrown.org.au/600_media_sub.php?deptItemID=2273> accessed 9 January 2008
76 Alan Ramsey, ‘Hollow ring to Sir Echo’, The Sydney Morning Herald 15 March 2003, p. 41
77 ‘Letters to the editor ’, Daily Telegraph 19 March p. 28
78 Bringing to mind Barthes’ example of the myth of French imperiality constructed by the signs
within a photograph of an African legionnaire saluting the French flag in Barthes, ‘Myth Today’ at
116–128
79 ‘50/50 ’, Herald-Sun, 19 March 2003, p. 18
80 ‘Letters to the editor’, The Australian, 20 March 2003, p. 12
81 ‘Letters: Evidence of terror is in short supply’, Herald-Sun, 17 March 2003, p. 18
82 Hawke, ‘Failing the key test of prime ministerial responsibility’
| 256
connection with other concerns, as shown in Table 8.3.
Table 8.3 Foreign policy, war and left nationalism in focus group discussions
Theme
Comments
Conservative subservience contrasted
with authentic,
independent Australianess of Laborism
Tim [urban Labor]: I think it’s more on track, I think the Liberal
Party people are bowing to the American, Bush more so. Therefore
it comes across as we’ve got an opinion. Given our party’s views,
just recently at the APEC while Rudd spoke on behalf of the party,
he had the balls to not agree with Bush. And saying that over some
issues this country won’t see eye-to-eye, I do believe this country’s
become too Americanised.
Left nationalism,
respect and identity
Tony [regional Greens]: Bob Brown exemplified our vision for
Australia’s national’s interest, values and national identity when
he stood up in the parliament and told George Bush what for. And
that one instance is the only time in the last ten years that I recall
any Australian media being broadcast overseas that made me feel
proud.
Left nationalism and
a multiculturalist
identity and multilateralist stance
Diana [regional Greens]: And I think there is a sense as far the
Greens social and foreign affairs policies goes is that Australia
having an independent identity, not hanging off the coat tails of
America and so on. And having a place in the region, the Asia
Pacific region.
Left nationalism and
anti-corporatism
Roger [regional Greens]: Here we are, a little outpost of the American empire, and I think the rise of militarism in our society in the
last few years to me anyway is quite disturbing. Recent announcements about beefing up the number of battalions and being at the
bidding of George Bush and his corporate war machine at any time
and place, anywhere around the world, regardless of whether it’s in
our national interest.
Particularly in regard to Iraq, war and security, focus group participants contrasted
conservative subservience, to American and corporate interests, to an independent and
significantly authentic expression of Australianess expressed by their own parties. The
connotations of authenticity and self-respect (recalling Keating’s comments from 1993
cited above) are further suggestions of the entrenched power of nationalism and national identity, and are discussed further in the next chapter in regard to values.
Crean’s position, liberal internationalism and national security
As indicated above, Crean’s first comments on Iraq, and first foreign policy intervention
as leader, in April 2002 attempted to differentiate his position from that of the government within the frame of traditional left nationalist accusations of blind acquiescence to
the great and powerful US on the part of Australian conservatives. However, in speeches
and comments from the end of that year, following UN resolution 1441 to which he
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referred a number of times, until the commencement of the hostilities, Crean focused
on the question of UN endorsement. This position was followed by a number of commentators in the media sample. It was very much a question of process rather than
substance: from Crean particularly served, along with the Labor position on national
security, to mystify a number of crucial aspects of the crisis.
This effort by Crean was to some extent tied to continuing themes of opposition to
blind subservience. At a December 2002 address Crean argued, “Independence within
a strong alliance is what I will deliver. I want Australia to lead, not follow… That’s why
I’ve insisted since the beginning of the year that the Iraq question must be dealt with
through the UN Security Council”.83 However, Crean’s position also involved accepting
much of the rationale of US and Australian government policy. He implied at a number
of points that war was justified if Iraq had not disarmed to the UN’s satisfaction (as expressed either by a unanimous Security Council or a large majority of it), for example
stating at a door stop interview, “What Saddam Hussein still has to do is to convince the
United Nations that he has disarmed in relation to chemical and biological weapons that
were established that he had back in the ‘90s”. During this interview he further argued:
I don’t argue at all with our troops still being sent to support the War against Terror,
and it’s important to make that distinction. John Howard tries to make the link between
the War against Terror and the campaign in Iraq. No such case has been made. And, of
course, if such a case were made, then the circumstances would change.84
That is, he accepts the existence of a singular entity signified by the apparently proper
noun, “Terror”, a construction convenient for mystifying actual processes and actors, in
this case the varied organisations with specific and varied grievances who choose to terrorise as a political tactic. Crean follows the amalgamation of conflicts, issues and anxieties into a singular justification for military intervention expressed by the government.
This was reinforced at an interview with Radio 2GB the same day, during which he was
repeatedly asked why a decision to go to war should be based on the UN’s stance—rather
than made simply on the basis of Australia’s “national interests”. Crean replied:
If the United Nations comes to the view that its efforts of diplomacy, etcetera, have
83 ‘Simon Crean’s address to the National Press Club’, 10 December, 2002
<http://australianpolitics.com/news/2002/12/02-12-10.shtml> accessed 9 January 2008
84 ‘Australia should not be preparing for war: Crean’, 16 January, 2003
<http://australianpolitics.com/news/2003/01/03-01-16.shtml> accessed 9 January 2008
| 258
failed and it needs to take stronger action, then we should be prepared to support the
UN, that’s why we’re up there supporting the economic sanctions now… [stating that
regardless of the UN we won’t be sending anybody there] is not a course of action that
I support because I believe that it’s in our long-term interests in the region and as a nation, for the authority of the UN to be upheld and we should be supportive of actions
that the UN is prepared to sanction. But the truth of it is, the strength of that position is
the great leverage you’ve got to force the rogue states into doing it. Because what we’re
really talking about here is the fact that Iraq still has to comply with decisions of the
United Nations —which it hasn’t.85
In this there is both a reification of the UN as an impartial body standing above contending interests, and also an avoidance of any questioning of motives and interests in
the actions of the Bush, Blair and Howard governments. There is an overt acceptance of
the just motive of combating a “rogue state”, which itself as a short-hand signifier serves
to amalgamate several countries and again mystify actual processes, issues and actors.
In a further interview on Radio 3AK the same day, Crean gave further evidence that
liberal internationalism is not at all incompatible with a view (even if unconsciously expressed) that the strong and rich need to dominate the weak. He stated without equivocation, “Saddam Hussein is an evil person, and I do believe that he has, still, Weapons of
Mass Destruction”. Further Crean expressed little overt concern for Iraqi people, stating
that the issue was “about people’s lives, their futures, the involvement, the pressure on
families, the people who would be sent in the event of war”. While concern for Australian personnel is highly understandable, in all of Crean’s statements examined for
this chapter there is no reference at all to the impact of war on Iraqi people. When the
interviewer pointed out that, “We have drawn the lines in the map”, a practice that may
have been part of the problems in the Middle East and may require “restructuring”,
Crean replied, “We can have our views in relation to what might happen, but we should
be arguing those and suggesting them through the United Nations framework”. This
again avoids substance in place of process, and the relevance of the principle of selfdetermination, of the views of the actual people in the region as to where state boundaries should be, does not seem to occur to Crean. In this interview Crean, in response
to the interviewer citing US statements that Iraqi revenue would be used to pay for the
war, somewhat curiously raises neo-colonialism explicitly in order to reject the concept,
85 Ibid.,
259 |
stating. “I don’t think that this can be seen as an exercise, a grubby exercise in terms of
grabbing someone else’s revenues. That’s the worst type of warfare, the economic imperialism, and that’s where a lot of people are questioning the US motives—I don’t in that
regard”.86 While this is again an explicit acceptance of US motives, perhaps the way it
formulated is an indirect ‘dog whistle’ message to those Labor supporters and potential
supporters who clearly do question US motives, and hence another indication of some
of the contradictions within Laborite traditions.
Crean’s focus on the UN was repeated at a 26 January festival in Springvale in his Melbourne electorate, marking both Chinese New Year and Australia Day. On this occasion
he rhetorically tied muticulturalism and liberal internationalism. He noted the focus of
the festival that signified that, “Multiculturalism means you don’t have to give up your
culture to become an Australian citizen”. He then represented the UN as an extension
of a liberal individualist community, describing it as “a community of international citizens”, and arguing that, “Just as we have to recognise community strength here, we have
to recognise it in the international framework”.87
During January and February 2003 however, Crean came under sustained pressure
from those with a more consistent anti-war position, including from within his party. At
a 7 January speech to ALP members in Sydney former Labor foreign affairs spokesperson Laurie Brereton bluntly deconstructed the public rationale for the impending war in
terms of US motives and interests. “‘Regime change’ is about installing a pro-American
regime in Baghdad. It’s about changing the regime that controls Iraq’s oil wealth. It’s
about putting in place a regime supportive of the US military presence in the Middle
East”. But his position was somewhat contradictory. He stated firstly, “In the event of
Iraqi obstruction of inspections, military action should only follow explicit authorisation from the Security Council”. This was followed by the statements, “In the event that
the UN does authorise military force, Australian involvement should be limited to our
present bilateral intelligence co-operation with the US”, and, “there is no substitute for
an independent assessment of Australia’s strategic and diplomatic interests. There is no
compelling case for Australian troops to fight in Iraq—period”.88 That is, he clearly opposed any Australian military involvement on the nationalist grounds of ‘our’ interests,
86 Ibid.,
87 ‘Crean says Howard has “gate-crashed” Iraq war and ignored UN’
88 ‘Don’t let Iraq become Australia’s new Vietnam: Brereton’, 7 January, 2003 <http://australianpolitics.
com/news/2003/01/03-01-07.shtml> accessed 9 January 2008
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but left open the possibility of political and intelligence support for a UN-backed war
based merely on alleged obstruction of inspections. Brereton’s position seems indicative
of the observation made in this thesis a number of times, that distance from the centres
of Labor power allows for a more critical position, but also suggests the limits of such
criticism.
By late February at least 16 Labor backbenchers were prepared to oppose the party’s
official position and vote against the war whether authorised by the UN or not, and
Unions WA and the Victorian branch of the CFMEU had called for stop work protests the day after any attack on Iraq began. After witnessing a massive anti-war rally in
Melbourne on 15 February, Crean ensured that he was placed on the platform of a 16
February Brisbane rally by the event’s chair, Labor Lord Mayor Jim Sorley (without the
knowledge of other organisers). Crean was however, virtually booed off the stage after
attempting to justify a war under UN auspices.89
Crean’s statements on the war to parliament in February and March 2003 were significantly different in tone and thematic meaning, and it seems reasonable to suggest that
this is another of the examples pointed to throughout this project of a mobilised public
materially impacting on political rhetoric and practice. In a 5 February speech to parliament, Crean took up the theme of subservience to the US substantially for the first time,
asking rhetorically “which nation” Howard was referring to when he claimed sending
the troops was in the “national interest”. A lexis of fawning subservience is built up during the speech, with reference to the Laborite historical narrative of conservative elitism
and unAustralianism, using terms in reference to Howard’s actions such as, “toadying”,
“riding instructions”, “constant sojourns at the Savoy”, “great and powerful friends”, “the
nod and wink”, and “cow-towing [sic]”. However, there is also again a legalistic reification of the UN, with Crean stating, “The very first clause of the ANZUS treaty makes
it clear that all alliance decisions must be in conformity with the United Nations. This
clause commits all presidents and prime ministers, but you haven’t fulfilled it”. Again
US motives are not critiqued but implicitly exalted, with Crean arguing that, “Australians and Americans believe in the same things—democracy, freedom and respect for
the rule of law,” even if differences within a strong alliance can emerge. Further, Crean
89 Alison Dellit, ‘Labor divisions over war deepen’, 26 February, Green Left Weekly, 2003
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2003/527/30855> accessed 9 January 2008; Personal observation of the 16
February 2003 Brisbane anti-war rally platform
261 |
makes clear the national security agenda is not flawed but simply aimed at the wrong
region, stating, “The Prime Minister has taken his eye off the ball in the fight against terrorism in our region. He has failed to adequately prepare our defences against terrorism
and neglected regional security measures … [and] sent our best anti-terrorism troops
ten thousand miles away”.90 The tone is harsher, particularly due to the subservience
theme, but precisely because of this Crean’s additional left nationalism appears another
device to avoid questions of motivations and interests and to widen tactical differences
around securing Australian corporate interests into the appearance of principled differences. Crean’s speech on the eve of war on 18 March again covered subservience and the
claim of a clear dichotomy between Labor and the government, with statements such
as, “Under the Labor Party in government we will determine the foreign policy of this
country. We will not have it determined for us by the United States”91, and a number
of references to a telephone call from Bush to Howard that day determining Australia’s
participation in the war. There appears somewhat of a shift towards forthright opposition to any intervention, with Crean arguing that no evidence for any immediate threat
had been presented and that he does “not believe the argument is whether this is legal or
not legal; it is just that it is wrong”.92 However, much of his speech is concerned with the
detail of legalistic meanings of UN resolution 1441 and the ANZUS treaty, and Crean
again expresses the imperative for Iraq to disarm as well as presenting a motion that opposes a “commitment of Australian troops to a war in Iraq outside the authority of the
United Nations”.93
The media sample contained a number of texts that focused on either the UN or
national security. Several articles restricted to the contending expert legal opinion94. In
the anti-war camp a number of texts highlighted these issues. Rob Wiseman of St Kilda
explicitly saw the issue as one of the process of law and security rather than interests,
stating, “Vigilantes only erode security and promote lawlessness. If processes of international law and order aren’t working perfectly, then now is the time to fix them — not
discard them”.95 Hanson saw the UN as a reified abstraction by describing the “the rules90 Simon Crean, ‘Text of address by Simon Crean to parliament on Iraq’, 5 February, 2003
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/04/1044318605090.html> accessed 9 January 2008
91 Hansard, House of Representatives, 18 March (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 2003) 12 516
92 Ibid 12 514
93 Ibid 12 517
94 Such as Hilary Charlesworth and Andrew Byrnes, ‘No, this war is illegal ’, The Age 19 March 2003,
p. 17; Greg Hunt, ‘Yes, this war is legal’, The Age, 19 March 2003, p. 17
95 ‘Letters’, The Age, 18 March 2003, p. 14
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based international system the world has painstakingly built over the past 50 or so years”,
and surely, given the turbulent history of this period, nostalgically mythologises the past
by calling for “a return to established patterns of international relations”.96 Uniquely for
a senior News Limited columnist in the sample Kelly opposed the war, albeit within a
pragmatic ‘realist’ frame often seen, as discussed above, as typical of conservative conceptions of international relations.
Howard’s strongest point is that you can’t disarm a regime that won’t agree to disarm; if
you are serious about disarmament, then you back the war option. But he has failed to
mount a persuasive argument that a war to disarm Iraq is an imperative now when the
risks are so vast and the national interest could be prejudiced.97
For many anti-war commentators the role of the UN and security were linked to a
broader critique than that presented by Crean. Marc Purcell of the Catholic Commission for Justice Development and Peace exemplified much church opinion by raising
both legal and moral arguments: “War is a last resort and our Government must pursue diplomatic means within the UN. Pre-emptive invasion would not just be illegal
but morally unjustifiable”.98 Bob Hawke and British Labour MP Robin Cook, the latter
writing on the eve of his resignation as Foreign Secretary due to his opposition to the
war, both supported a stronger UN role but also both detailed a history of support by
US and British companies and governments for Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons programs. This again suggests that those social democrats with some distance
from power are freer to frankly discuss questions of neo-colonial motivation and interests.99 These were the only two articles to take up this history, although it was covered
in a number of letters. W.H. Smith of Point Cook mentioned 1980s aid to the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden, as well as Saddam Hussein, and the destruction of Vietnam to
conclude with the need to replace US dominance with UN law-keeping. “When will
someone tell the Americans where to get off? Is it not the job of the UN to see that
world order is kept?”100 Others projected a similar linkage to Crean’s combination of a
(somewhat) alternate national security approach with aspects of left nationalist calls for
96 Marianne Hanson, ‘World changed forever ’, Courier-Mail, 21 March 2003, p. 19
97 Paul Kelly, ‘The hapless persuader ’, The Australian 15 March 2003, p. 30
98 ‘Letters to the editor ’, The Australian, 19 March 2003, p. 12, The Australian, 19 March 2003, p. 12
99 Hawke also covered CIA support for the rise to power of Iraqi Ba’athism, while Cook’s was the only
article to seriously doubt the existence of Iraqi WMDs. Hawke, ‘Lies and deceit litter road to war’; Cook,
‘How can a weak man be a threat? ’
100 ‘Your say’, Herald-Sun, 19 March 2003, p. 18
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independence, such as Dod Davidson of Buderim, Queensland who questioned “the
logic of withdrawing our SAS from Afghanistan where they were at the invitation of
Hamid Karzai’s administration and where al-Qa’ida remains a threat,” and concluded,
“The PM is locked into the priorities of the US administration rather than identifying
and pursuing our own”.101
The problem with Crean’s approach in terms of his stated goals is that a concentration
on national security, global threat and the processes for dealing with threat supported
the assumptions behind government policy while seemingly lacking a clear and consistent strategy for dealing with the purportedly generalised threat. My contention that this
was a result of the Labor position is supported by a number of measures and examples
of public opinion. Leading News Limited commentator Dennis Shananan argued as the
war began that Howard’s “consistency of action within his character have given him
an advantage in turning around a lost popular cause”. As evidence he cited a Newspoll
taken on 19–20 March, which not only showed that, “More people were supporting the
war before the UN became irrelevant and before the bombs began to drop yesterday,”
but also, “Howard was seen as being almost twice as decisive and strong as Crean, and
opened a bigger lead over the Labor leader on having a vision for Australia”.102 Citing a
Newspoll taken on 14–16 March which seemed to give a decisive rebuff to the government by showing 33% opposed to the war in any situation, 68% opposed to a war without UN sanction, and only 25% in favour of a non-UN backed war, self-avowed pro-war
leftist Pamela Bone pointed out that, “about 62 per cent of Australians do not oppose
this war as long as it is sanctioned by the UN Security Council. This is not a no-war position. Labor does not have a no-war position. It has supported a UN-backed war”.103
From a close reading of all the Australian polls related to military action in Iraq conducted between August 2002 and the war’s end in April 2003, Goot argues that those
who had opposed a war not mandated by the UN were in large part were expressing a
preference for the form that the war should take, “A statement of preference for a war
mandated by the UN, not a stand against a war that the UN might not mandate, When
the UN said ‘no’, but America, Britain and Australia said ‘yes’, this preference was simply
made manifest”.104 He points out that there was no evidence for the claims made that
101 102 103 104 ‘Letters to the Editor ’, The Australian, 18 March 2003, p. 10
Dennis Shanahan, ‘Howard has more to gain from crisis’, The Australian, 21 March 2003, p. 21
Pamela Bone, ‘Why the hypocrites are right this time ’, The Age2003, p. 17
Goot, ‘Public opinion and the democratic deficit’
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‘rallying around the troops’ led to the increased support for the war after hostilities commenced (which in any case was not as dramatic as often also claimed). The only pre-war
poll that asked the question in the form of, “If military action would go ahead …” was
the only one to register majority support for Australian involvement. The decreasing
support for a non-UN mandated war was similar to the decreased support found by
one Newspoll in September 2002 for a war not backed by “firm evidence” of an Iraqi
“nuclear weapons capability”, and other polls measured increased support for war if a
strong case were made. These results suggest that the question for many was legitimisation, evidence and a case for war, rather than the UN per se, and increased support after
the commencement of the war could relate to assumed legitimisation. Monitoring of
talkback callers also suggest that some of the more neutral or undecided began supporting the war as it seemed more legitimised. According to media monitors Rehame, “Only
13 per cent of callers had a neutral opinion this week, in contrast to 23 per cent a fortnight ago … The number of callers who support a war on Iraq increased by almost 10
per cent in the past fortnight from 29 per cent to 38 per cent. The majority still opposed
war, but that figure had increased by only one per cent to 49 per cent”.105 That the factor
in increased support for the war was not so much ‘support for the troops’ as legitimisation is also supported by the significant falling away of support for the war by late 2004,
when lack of WMDs, the doctoring of evidence in pre-war argument and the failure to
secure peace and popular support for the occupation became evident, as discussed in
Chapter 5.
Goot argues that Howard was successful in linking terrorism to Iraq, citing a Hawker
Britton-UMR poll found that 24% of people agreed that the 12 October 2002 Bali bombings made them more likely to support, “Australian military participation in a war on
Iraq”, as opposed to 14% who stated that this made them less likely. But he also suggests
that Howard was following the tactic developed by the US Clinton administration of
“triangulation”, that is, putting forward a clear position but also co-opting what is popular in the position of opponents.106 Howard, as Goot notes, often expressed preference
for a UN backed war as well as indicating a war was justified in any case, and thus appeared to be appealing to liberal internationalist and humanitarian interventionist, as
105 Natalie Gregg, ‘Talkback callers making up their minds as deadline nears ’, Courier-Mail, 19
March 2003, p. 11
106 Goot, ‘Public opinion and the democratic deficit’
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well as more traditionally conservative arguments.
How some wavering people may have seen Crean’s arguments as both inconsistent
and also implicitly supportive of the government’s position is indicated by a number
of letters in the media sample. Peter Rahme of Greenacre took issue with the argument
that,
It is OK to go war with Iraq if it is UN-sanctioned. In other words, regardless of the reality of the situation, regardless of the right and wrong of war, what really matters is not so
much the welfare of the Iraqi people but the well-rehearsed, empty rhetoric of the UN
… it’s time to disarm the dictator.107
John Oldfield, of Gordon, ACT succinctly pointed out that Crean’s position addressed
process rather than substance. “For those who claim war would be acceptable with UN
approval but not without (such as Simon Crean), the fact is, the targets are the same”.108
Humanitarian and liberal rhetoric was clearly employed by Paul Tsardakis of Werribee
South who asked,
How can Australians state that this war has nothing to do with us? This opinion, held by
many people in Australia, is selfish and xenophobic. We are all part of the global community and it is our duty as one of the wealthy countries to assist those who are not so
fortunate. The repressed Iraqi people need our support.109
Bob Brown did not escape accusations of inconsistency, with Bev Armstrong of Laverton, Victoria quoting a motion that Brown presented in 1991 to the Tasmanian parliament, which called on “prime minister Bob Hawke to act immediately to put pressure
on Australia’s allies to intervene in Iraq to stop the slaughter of the Kurds and establish
their right to self-determination”, even though, Armstrong points out, “an invasion of
Iraq had not been authorised by the UN Security Council”.110 Another letter writer suggested that the more consistent position of the Greens threatened Crean with loss of
support to his left as well as to his right. “The other parties seem to only be concerned
with the question of whether war is legal. The Greens have recognised that this debate
is irrelevant: the real question to ponder when considering going to war is whether it is
morally justified”.111
107 108 109 110 111 ‘Letters to the editor’, Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2003, p.26
‘Letters to the editor ’, The Australian, 19 March 2003, p. 12
‘Letters’, The Age, 21 March 2003, p. 18
‘Letters to the editor ’, The Australian, 15 March 2003, p. 20
‘Letters to the editor ’, Daily Telegraph, 21 March 2003, p. 30
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There were a number of texts in the media sample that either rejected the security
agenda or showed clear antecedents in internationalist and anti-imperialist traditions,
although such positions were almost entirely confined to the letters pages. J. Bernard of
Melbourne argued for a consistent application of sovereignty and self-determination by
asking, “Does not every country have the right to possess weapons for defence purposes? The US and Australia will be regarded as rogue states, acting illegally, if they invade
Iraq”.112 The devastating effect of the pre-war sanctions regime was entirely absent from
articles, but was denounced in two letters.113 Richard Thomas of North Strathfield was
the only commentator in the sample to explicitly reject western moral superiority and
interventionism.
The new case for war is based on the West’s moral authority to invade any country it
chooses on the basis that its leader is thought to be developing WMDs. Al-Qa’ida’s arguments for their atrocities are also based on a superior moral authority and the right
to strike pre-emptively at anyone who threatens them. The difference has now become
simply one of scale: our WMDs can kill on a scale that al-Qa’ida can only dream of.114
In the only article in the sample that analysed the war in terms of decisive economic
interest within the US and of conflict between national blocs of capital, Davidson points
to the imperative for the US elite, of the dollar remaining the main global currency
to enable continuing massive trading deficits, pointing to the continued relevance of
Leaver’s argument at footnote 47.
In 2000, Saddam’s regime had the temerity to demand payment in euros for the trickle
of Iraqi oil the US has allowed onto the international market. Iran and Venezuela are
following Iraq’s example. This is the real threat to US hegemony. If the US can control
Middle East oil production, it can control the industrial development of Europe, China
and Japan (and Australia), to prevent a rival to its hegemony emerging. But to do this it
must retain the greenback as the world currency.115
112 ‘Letters: Evidence of terror is in short supply’, Herald-Sun, 17 March 2003. p. 18
113 From Max Goodenough of Killarney Vale in ‘Letters to the Editor ’, Daily Telegraph, 18 March
2003, p. 18, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2003, p. 18; and a group of public health professions who point
out, “The death rate of Iraqi children is 2.5 times higher than it was in 1990. Estimates say 16 million
Iraqi civilians are totally dependent on government food distribution and only 60 per cent of Iraqis
have access to drinkable water. If war breaks out, the food distribution system will be severely disrupted
leading to further shortages and hospitals are likely to be out of medicine within 3-4 weeks” in ‘Letters
to the editor ’, The Australian, 19 March 2003, p. 12
114 ‘Letters to the Editor ’, The Australian, 18 March 2003, p. 10
115 Kenneth Davidson, ‘The real reasons America is invading Iraq’, The Age, 20 March 2003, p. 17
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Focus group participants expressed a similar range of themes relating to the United
Nations and national security, as shown in Table 8.4.
Table 8.4 Focus group comments regarding national interest and security
Theme
Comments
Underlying
economic and
strategic national interests
in the global
arena
[Urban ALP]:
Bernard: There’s a lot of commonality between the major parties in terms
of the national interest purely because we live in a global world … there’s
some relationships you’re going to maintain regardless, and there’s going
to be certain external influences on things like our economy… For example a trading relationship with China, or a good strategic relationship with
the United States. I’m personally from the left faction of the ALP, we’ve
obviously been very critical of some of the comments that previously Labor leaders have made, in terms of the alliance with the United States…
Regardless of whether you agree with Iraq, regardless of whether you
agree with other aspects of US policy, there is a significant national interest in maintaining that relationship.
Rejection
of security
agenda tied
to rights and
justice
[urban
Greens]:
Lucy: Protecting Australia from terrorism is in the news and the Greens
really do believe that that needs to be done as well. But they have a more
complex understanding of it and they realise the best way to protect
Australia from terrorism is to ensure human rights and civil liberties and
ensure that you don’t oppress minority groups, that’s when you become
a target of terrorism. The major parties just want to up the ante on the
anti-terror laws.
Rejection
of security
agenda tied to
left nationalism
[Regional ALP]
Doug: That just shows how weak Howard is, he could have brought
[David Hicks] back here.
Jenny: Another towdown [kowtow?] to Bush.
Doug: He could have said, he’s our only bloody man, you’ve got to bring
him back here, there’s 6 or 7 go back in England, they weren’t going to
buck them, so they wouldn’t buck that.
Jenny: Johnny’s too scared to ask.
UN as US
proxy
[Regional ALP]
Doug: But the United Nations is nothing but a conglomerate of American
right-wing groups, having the power and they just go the way America
wants…
Kerry: The UN didn’t sanction George Bush, or Australia or Blair to go,
right. George Bush is an absolute warmonger, his father was a warmonger, and his generations to come will always be warmongers when
they’ve got money to put themselves into political power [Jenny: It’s all
about money]. Now George W. senior had a lot of problems with, well he
actually was mostly there when they supplied a lot of weapons to Saddam Hussein…The problem being is the UN give them an agenda of going
in and seeing if there were weapons of mass destruction there.
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Ambivalence
towards
‘humanitarian
interventions’
[Regional
Greens]
Steven: I’ve changed my view on [military interventions]. When I was a
young man I thought that anyone who joined the army has got to be a bit
of a git [Bill, a former officer: Yeah, laughter], who want to go to interesting places, meet the people and kill them. But these days I recognise,
particularly in situations like East Timor or Namibia a long time ago, or
Bosnia, that there is a role for a multi-national force to keep the peace.
Tony: As long as it’s not American-led.
Darren: They should have gone in 25 years earlier. And they only went in
when they went in because they found the oil, and the deal was done…
Simon: My memory of Australia committing troops to Timor was that a
week or so before we actually did commit to it, and we were only shamed
into it because the United Nations got into it, and Howard and what’s
his other mate, minister of, bloke from Adelaide [Bill: Dumpling Downer],
didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to put their hands in their pockets. It was too expensive an exercise. So they certainly didn’t go into
Timor for any good reason, they just jumped on the bandwagon and then
took all the credit.
Most participants showed outright rejection of or ambivalence towards the US alliance and the security agenda generally, with the exception of Bernard from the urban
ALP group, who as discussed in the previous chapter was least critical of the ‘national
interest’ of the imperative of the struggle for global market share. As with many examples
in the media sample the security agenda could be critiques on both nationalist grounds
and in terms of more internationalist, multiculturalist and universalist concerns with
equality and rights, with the latter significantly expressed by a Green. The discussion in
the last example indicates some of the complexities for the left in negotiating global issues in the ‘colonial present’: a legacy of crises and conflict in the underdeveloped world
may present some situation in which military intervention by the West is popularly
accepted in the regions concerned, while as these participants recognise great power
interests will still be at play, while as the discussion above showed, the rhetoric of humanitarianism and self-determination can be co-opted by varied ideological positions
and social interests.
Conclusion
All sides in the debates outlined in this chapter appealed to arguments around war and
national history, often with attempts to authenticate deeply held feelings and memories
by appeal to personal experience or that of close family members. This is further evidence of the strength and ubiquity of national feeling in political discourse, however
once more the material examined points to the contradictions and obfuscations of na-
269 |
tionalism.
Representations from the left of the Iraq war and related security and foreign policy
issues have been framed by long-standing tropes of dependency, subservience on the
part of Australia and a purported need for independence. However, a dominant reading
on the left, epitomised by the Labor leadership, while not necessarily doing away with
such traditional left nationalist themes, emphasised a liberal internationalism defined by
global cooperation and an international operation of the rule of law through the United
Nations. While both general frameworks were employed as a means of differentiation
from the positions of the government, as many examples above show, neither was incompatible with acceptance of much of the ‘national security’ agenda of the government
or with neo-colonial conceptions of the right of great powers to dominate the world.
Both were also typically nationalist in often serving to mystify the social, sectional interests within nations that benefit from and promote particular foreign policies, as evident
from the actual history of Australia’s international relations, particularly towards South
East Asia and the Pacific, and the colonialisms past and present in the Middle East. A
range of evidence suggests that the stance of the Labor Party, in accepting many of the
assumptions of neo-colonial national security agenda, helped to legitimise the government’s position.
As discussed in Chapter 5, by the time of the October 2004 federal election, the delegitimisation of the Iraq war, with a by then definite absence of Iraqi WMDs, mounting
casualties and continued fighting, cost the government some support with respect to
the distinct, troop withdrawal position of Labor. However as also discussed, the government continued to benefit from perceived strength and consistency on issues of security
and terrorism, the more general areas in which the ALP continued to stand ‘shoulder to
shoulder’ with Howard and his team. The more consistent anti-war and anti-imperialist
position of the Greens was also complicated in some instances by assumptions about
the national interest similar to those underpinning conservative foreign policy. In the
foreign policy as much as trade dimension of international relations, the ideas of left are
in the main bounded by nationalism.
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Chapter 9
Nation, class and values
This final analytic chapter takes up the question of ‘values’ in relation to the role of nationalism and national identity in political life. A focus on the concept of values allows
a re-examination of many of the central arguments of this thesis. The concept of values
is a useful tool in analysing the links between beliefs and norms that operate on a more
general level than ideologies, and social and poltical action. Apart from this analytic use
of the concept, the term often has a political usage, and this was certainly the case in
the period under discussion. Various actors in Australian political life have wielded the
concept of ‘Australian values’ in recent years, clearly linking values to nationalism and
national idenity. As I discuss below, it appeared to be an increasingly favoured term of
government members through 2006. In the period September–October of that year a
concerted effort was made by then opposition leader Kim Beazley, in apparent response
to government use of the term, to relate ‘Australian values’ to a range of issues including
terrorism and national security, industrial relations, education, a proposal for a ‘values’
pledge for visitors to Australia. He was also at that time obliged to respond to government mobilisation of the term in regard to a new citizenship test and comments by
Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali. Government spokespeople also commented on
Beazley’s proposals as well as relating values to national security and the US alliance.
Beazley’s performance in this regard was widely criticised, both for specific policy
proposals and more generally the wisdom of taking up “values” at all. As part of the
critical media discussion of these issues Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter
Hartcher stated, “It is impossible for Beazley to beat Howard in the culture wars as long
as he seeks to fight on Howard’s terms”.1 The responses to a particularly conscious and
concentrated use of the term and concept “values” by a Labor leader and government
members, and related evidence from the political life of recent years and from the his1 Peter Hartcher, ‘Howard’s warriors sweep all before them’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October
2006, p. 33
271 |
tory of different political currents, may tell us whether Hartcher was correct and more
generally whether there are sharper contradictions for social democrats than for conservatives in taking a ‘values’ or more generally ‘national’ approach.
In this chapter the nature of the concept ‘values’ is discussed in relation to national
feeling and political life, and related back to previous discussions of the contradictions
between nation and class. The specific period referred to is examined through an analysis of the texts produced at the time by Beazley and Howard and the media response to
these, and this discussion is related to relevant comments from the focus group discussions and to some relevant poll and AES results. As in previous chapters, the aim is to
relate this analysis of a recent period to the historical development of the relevant issues,
to show the bases for national feeling, in regard to the streams of thought posited in the
thesis and the implications for the political effectiveness of the left.
Nation, values and politics
Throughout this thesis the argument has been made that the undeniably powerful structure of the nation does not necessarily override intra-national differences, even if these
differences may be masked by a sense of belonging to the nation. Specifically, a contradictory relationship between movements based on the working class and national feeling has been referred to, as expounded through Hobsbawm’s argument of how a significant part of the development of nationalist ideology in countries with strong working
class movements, came from the emergence of forms of left nationalism towards the end
of the nineteenth century. It is useful to again cite his argument about the contradiction
between the broadening of nationalism and its fundamentally bourgeois nature.
What made this populist-democratic and Jacobin patriotism extremely vulnerable, was
the subalternity, both objective and—among the working classes—subjective, of these
citizen masses. For in the states in which it developed, the political agenda of patriotism
was formulated by governments and ruling classes.2
Relating this general claim of a tension between nation and class (or intra-nation difference more generally) to the focus of this chapter, the connection between the identity
and consciousness of individuals and broader social and political action has often been
discussed in terms of shared ‘values’. In an influential text Rokeach defines a value as,
| 272
“An enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of
existence”. Further he sees a “values system” as, “An enduring organisation of beliefs
concerning preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existence along a continuum
of importance”.3 In the literature the term values is generally seen as a useful category for
beliefs and sets of beliefs that are somewhat more general than ideologies but meaningful enough to guide social and political action. If my general claims about nation and
class are true we can expect there to be complex relations between value systems as well
as social forces within a nation.
Throughout this thesis it has been recognised that there is certainly evidence of a
sense of shared Australian nationhood. When asked about “typically Australian” people,
places, groups and events, Phillips and Smith’s focus groups, consisting of people from
a variety of social and geographic backgrounds, gave responses that were fairly homogenous and traditional, even stereotypical, suggesting the existence of a shared culture
with a relatively stable structure that has been internalised by Australians.4 A strong
sense of national identity is also evident in survey data such as that reviewed by Goot
and Watson, in regard to attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism. Drwing on a
range of surveys conducted from 1995–2003, they show that there is majority and stable
agreement on most suggested aspects of “being truly Australian,” on support for and
pride in various aspects of Australia and its perceived achievements, and strong and
stable opposition to migrants maintaining perceived cultural differences (as opposed to
adaptation to wider society), and to government support for the maintenance of cultural
differences. But within these widespread shared perceptions there is evident change and
contestation. Opposition to immigration per se has fallen markedly across social groups
in this time. While opposition to immigration is not strongly correlated with a “national
pride” scale, it is strongly correlated with a “nativism” scale, that is, with those who
more strongly believe that important factors for being “truly Australian,” includes being
born in Australia, having Australian ancestry and mostly living in Australia (which were
those aspects of being “truly Australian” which gained the smallest majorities in agreement). Hence while there is a very widespread sense that there is a common “national
3 M Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values (New York: Free Press, 1973) 5, quoted in Marc Stewart
Wilson, ‘Values and political ideology: Rokeach’s two-value model in a proportional representation
environment’, New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 33/3 (2004), 155–162 at 155
4 Phillips and Smith, ‘What is “Australian”?’
273 |
identity,” there is considerable disagreement about who the nation includes and to what
extent, a disagreement which affects support for a specific policy (immigration levels)
but which has not prevented an across the board shift in attitudes to this policy.5
In studies dealing more specifically with values, there is also evidence of both consensus and conflict. Braithwaite and Blamey have surveyed the field, including Rokeach’s
work, and analyse values in terms of broad principles that can frame the social actions
of both individuals and institutions. They present evidence from similar questionnaires
administered in 1975 and 1995 to argue that social values in Australia are largely consensual and stable over time. The Social Goals Values Inventory is based on interviews
with 73 community members in 1975, and has subsequently been used in a series of
questionnaires. Results from the 1975 and 1995 interviews show strong support for
nearly all 18 identified values including, “a world at peace”, “freedom”, “reward for individual effort,” and “greater economic equality”. These were largely consistent over time,
with the notable exceptions of falling support for the “domination of nature” and “traditional sexual moral standards,” indicating aspects of social-cultural change. Factor
analysis indicates some clustering around stronger support for what has been identified
as “security oriented” values (generally traditional, individualist and right-wing), and
“harmony oriented” (generally progressive, collectivist and left-wing), the latter being
significantly correlated with education level. However, a large majority (around 70%) of
respondents in both surveys were either agnostic towards or strongly supported aspects
of both general orientations.6
Other studies have emphasised, in relation to the connection between values and the
political sphere, the clustering of values around recognisable camps. Goot has shown,
via content analyses of policy speeches, analyses of spending patterns on different policy
areas, and the perceptions of voters, that the contention that the major Australian parties have reached some kind of convergence is hard to sustain and that there remains
an identifiable and widely recognised left/right difference between Labor and the Coalition.7 Similarly Wilson, in testing Rokeach’s argument that “freedom” and “equality”
were the key defining values in political ideology, analysed the content of parliamen5 Goot and Watson, ‘Immigration, multiculturalism and national identity’
6 Valerie Braithwaite and Russell Blamey, ‘Consensus, stability and meaning in abstract social values’,
Australian Journal of Political Science, 33/3 (1998), 363
7 Murray Goot, ‘Party convergence reconsidered’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 39/1 (2004),
49–73
| 274
tary speeches of representatives of the broader range of parties represented after New
Zealand’s first national election by proportional representation in 1996. He found that
parties of the left and right could be significantly differentiated in the incidence of their
use of positive synonyms for “equality” and “freedom” with, as expected, the left more
associated with equality and the right with freedom.8 A study that emphasises both the
existence of shared values and their arrangement into recognisable political camps is an
analysis by Shamir and Arian of the prioritisation of four basic values by Israeli voters.
They found respondents had no problem with either understanding or prioritising the
proffered values and that there were strong correlations between priorities chosen and
political affiliation and positions on more specific issues.9
It may be thought then that there are overarching national values cut across by some
political difference, but there seems more to the issue than that. There may be some
broad agreement within a nation on, for example, what values or attributes the members
of the nation should have, but more generally it can be questioned whether ‘shared’ values are actually ‘national’ values. In the sample of media commentary discussed below
a number of texts raise this point, including one by demographer Bernard Salt, who
argued, “The much-vaunted Aussie ‘spirit of mateship’ is really nothing more than a
genuine human concern that is evident in communities across the globe … the notion of
mateship exists just as fervently as it exists here. It is simply expressed differently”.10 That
is, a supposed national value could actually be a universal value, perhaps expressed in a
particular national form, suggesting a crucial distinction between culture and values.
Two other related objections to the concept of ‘national values’ are, firstly, that such
things are often expressed so generally as to lack any real meaning, and secondly that
any meaningful content in the expression of a value has a much more ‘shared’ basis
across ideological rather than national lines. For example, in the discussion below it will
be seen that Beazley often deployed the term “fair go” to mean an award system and a
strong role for trade unions, a political position that social democrats from a range of
nations could subscribe to. In contrast Howard, for example, in a 2000 speech elucidating his conception of Australian character and values, has used “fair go” to defend his
government’s changes to the welfare system, the creation of a flatter tax scale and the
8 Wilson, ‘Values and political ideology’
9 Michal Shamir and Asher Arian, ‘Competing values and policy choices: Israeli public opinion on
foreign and security affairs’, British Journal of Political Science, 24/2 (1994), 249–272
10 Bernard Salt, ‘Mates are great, but not just Aussies’, The Australian, 21 October 2006, Review p. 1
275 |
abolition of capital gains tax, positions surely agreeable to conservatives worldwide.11
That is, one way that political actors attempt to justify and win support for particular
(and quite different) perspectives and policies is by painting them as national. These objections also relate to the distinction suggested above between culture and values. Many
people seem to freely mix these two concepts, as in Phillips and Smith’s focus group
participants who cited ways of acting such as, “saying nasty things in a nice way”, “easy
going” and “casual dress” among examples given of, “Australian values and beliefs”.12
Surely however one could be laconic, ironic and casually dressed while expressing either
left-wing egalitarian values or right-wing individualistic values.
Thus while nations may be the major basis for the cultural expression of its members,
who may have a very strong sense of national belonging and perceive that there is a set
of ‘national’ values, there are also strong grounds to see a significant (if not necessarily totally sharp) distinction between national culture and values understood in any
meaningful way, especially in relation to politics. This suggested contradiction between
perception and reality suggests a basis for the ideological use of values, in painting the
sectional as universal.
Evaluating Beazley and Howard on values
In Chapter 4 the importance of the study of the ideological bases for particular forms of
political language was stressed, and the need to ground this analysis in firm historical
and social contexts was also highlighted. In Chapter 3 we saw how conservative streams
of nationalism have a self-definition of an organic national unity counterposed to the
alleged sectional concerns of conservatives’ political opponents. This ‘unity’ has historically been based, in a somewhat contradictory way, on the virtues of a broadly-defined
middle class, and more latterly on the values of the ‘mainstream’, with at points even
more contradictory laudatory references given to specific social forces in the form of
small and, less often openly, big business. I have argued that left or radical nationalism is
a result of contradictions within the labour movement and particularly the nature of the
ALP as historically an uneasy alliance of radical unionists, socialist activists, bureaucratically-minded and well-off officials, middle-class reformers, and those seduced by the
11 John Howard, ‘Melbourne Press Club Address’, 22 November, 2000
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/2000/speech.549.htm> accessed 3 March 2006
12 Phillips and Smith, ‘What is “Australian”?’ at 218
| 276
pleasures of high office in a thoroughly bourgeois environment. That is, the party was
and is a contradictory site of struggle between competing ideas and interests in which
the more privileged and conservative elements have had many structural advantages.
Further, this social reality led to many cross-class, nationalist, populist and at times racist elements being part of the genetic structure of the ALP.
In light of the previous section, we can recast the arguments developed through this
thesis regarding social structure, political forces, ideologies, rhetoric and the nation, in
terms of values. Conservatives have sought to strongly frame their political outlook in
terms of a values system based on individuals and the nation, with little or no mediation,
although confused ‘sectional’ values are sometimes evident. Social democrats have also
sought the mantle of the nation, although a strong ‘sectional’ movement both creates
more bases for belonging and particular contradictions for stances related to ‘national
values’. These general contentions will be tested below through an examination of the
use of terms and ideas around ‘Australian values’ by John Howard and Kim Beazley in
the period in question. The possible effects of Howard and Beazley’s use of these terms
and concepts are also measured in several ways that are specific to this chapter, that extend upon the methodology discussed in Chapter 4.
The relevant discourse produced by Howard was gathered by collating relevant items
from the ‘Media’ section of the prime ministerial website, <www.pm.gov.au> that is,
gathered before the 2007 change of government and consequent changes to this site.
The sample consisted of Howard’s media releases, speeches and interview transcripts,
dated between 1 September–31 October 2006, which contained the word “values” at
least once. Similarly, the relevant discourse produced by Beazley was gathered by collating those items from the ‘Media’ section of the ALP website, <www.alp.org.au>, which
contains media releases, speeches and interview transcripts of leading party parliamentarians, under Beazley’s name and dated between 1 September–31 October 2006,
that contain the word “values” at least once. Following Wilson’s use of content analysis
through the counting of items13, to identify that Howard and Beazley had in fact taken
up a ‘values push’ counts were made of the number of times he used the term in this period and the equivalent period in 2005, and similar counts were made in the Australian
media sources collated in the Factiva database in order to identify whether there was
a particularly active media discussion of ‘Australian values’ in this period, and to what
13 Wilson, ‘Values and political ideology’
277 |
extent a framing of industrial relations in terms of national values was reflected in the
media discussion. From both Howard and Beazley’s discourses a thematic inventory (as
discussed in Chapter 4) of what general issues values related to was constructed, and
counts of these made, to give an indication of the range of and relative weight given to
issues in both sets of texts.
The focus in this chapter on a particular term lends itself to extending the general
forms of language and discourse analysis used previously with the formulaic semantic
analysis used by Scalmer and Goot in their study of the use of the term “elites” in the
Murdoch press. They argue that content analysis by frequency count is limited in failing to capture the dialogic relation between terms in language, in missing narratives
built into communication, and by not telling us how the meanings of terms may change
between social actors or over time.14 Narrative and relational meaning in Howard and
Beazley’s discourses are analysed both through the thematic inventory (as are other sets
of texts as discussed below), and through use of Scalmer and Goot’s basic linguistic
structure of a “semantic triplet”, of <subject>, <action> and <object>, each of which can
be affected by a <modifier>, into which phrases can be broken down to allow systematic interrogation of how terms relate to social action. A number of phrases containing
representative uses of ‘Australian values’, in both the Howard and Beazley samples, are
broken down and tabulated according to this schema and discussed.
Further analysis was conducted in relation to the effects of the Labor discourse, which
(along with leftist discourse and action generally, as well as the relation of these to the
then government’s agenda), is the major focus of this thesis. The possible effects of the
Laborist discourse are analysed in three ways, firstly through commentary in the print
media. The sample chosen were of opinion pieces (editorials, comment articles, letters
and printed weblog entries) from the set of newspapers used throughout this thesis,
again for the period 1 September–31 October 2006. Those collected contained, for the
first sample, the terms the terms “Australian values,” and “Beazley” or “Labor”. Texts
that did not express an explicit opinion on Beazley’s use of ‘Australian values’ or clearly
related concepts were discarded. The remaining items were coded for an overall positive,
negative or mixed opinion on, respectively for each sample, Beazley’s performance in
14 Scalmer and Goot, ‘Elites constructing elites: News Limited’s newspapers, 1996–2002’ at 137–138 As
noted in chapter 4 Turner also argues that narratives are of particular importance in discourse about the
nation, Turner, Making It National
| 278
this regard, and for those clearly negative aspects, an inventory of themes related to the
negative opinion was constructed, and a frequency count of instances of such themes
was made.
Secondly, utterances of the party branch focus groups participants relating to values
and national interests are inspected to build an inventory of themes, and, as in previous
Chpaters, are discussed to examine relationships between themes and overall meanings.
Thirdly, the results of a number of opinion polls are cited through the chapter, as well as
some general descriptive statistics from two consecutive AES’, are quoted to shed further
light on the argument about values, the national and political engagement.
The government’s offensive on values
Throughout the period of John Howard’s premiership spokespeople of his government
have stressed the importance of values and the reality of Australian values, and have
tied these values to particular policies, as exemplified by the 2000 speech of Howard’s
referred to above. This discourse appeared to expand more rapidly through 2005 and
2006. In May 2005 then education minister Brendan Nelson launched an initiative under
the banner, “Promoting values in our schools”. It defined the, “Nine values for Australian
schooling”, as developed for the document National Framework for Values Education in
Australian Schools, as, “Care and compassion; doing your best; fair go; freedom; honesty
and trustworthiness; integrity; respect; responsibility; and understanding, tolerance and
inclusion”. Teaching of these values would be mandatory for public schools to continue
to receive federal assistance under the Schools Assistance Act 2004, as would the display
of a poster of these values illustrated by “an image of John Simpson Kirkpatrick—‘the
man with the donkey’—famous for his bravery under fire rescuing soldiers at Gallipoli
and whose actions personify the meaning of selfless service for others”.15 The similarities
with the values found to be widespread in Australia by Braithwaite should be clear, however the apparent contradiction between the assertion of these values as unproblematically national and the need for financially punitive measures to enforce the their teaching, does not seem to have been discussed. The implication is that teachers, perhaps
as a highly unionised, ‘sectional’, group, are not to be trusted to impart national values
unless a Coalition government, as the trustworthy custodian of the nation’s values, acts
15 Brendan Nelson, ‘Promoting values in our schools’, 10 August 2005
<http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Nelson/2005/05/n1107020505.asp> accessed 2 May 2006
279 |
as headmaster.
Howard again made the notion of Australian values a key part of an address commemorating Australia Day 2006, discussed in Chapter 6 in relation to national history.
With some care Howard argued that the question of values, defined similarly to those in
Nelson’s schools project, related not to unity and tradition alone but the correct balance
between unity and tradition on one hand and diversity and change on the other.
Australia’s ethnic diversity is one of the enduring strengths of our nation. Yet our celebration of diversity must not be at the expense of the common values that bind us
together as one people – respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, a commitment to the rule of law, the equality of men and women and a spirit of egalitarianism
that embraces tolerance, fair play and compassion for those in need. Nor should it be at
the expense of ongoing pride in what are commonly regarded as the values, traditions
and accomplishments of the old Australia.
However, balance does not appear to mean a relativistic equality between past immigrant cultures and more recent ones, as unlike the multiculturalist perspective discussed
in Chapter 3, Howard outlined a quite specific cultural hierarchy.
Most nations experience some level of cultural diversity while also having a dominant
cultural pattern running through them. In Australia’s case, that dominant pattern comprises Judeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the Enlightenment and the institutions and values of British political culture. Its democratic and egalitarian temper also
bears the imprint of distinct Irish and non-conformist traditions.
He is also quite explicit in the need for a change from the recent past, arguing, “We’ve
drawn back from being too obsessed with diversity”. Howard also followed Nelson in
targeting teaching, particularly of history, as a problematic areas for a truly balanced
approach to values, arguing that,
I believe the time has also come for root and branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history in our schools …too often, history, along with other subjects in the humanities, has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of
achievement is questioned or repudiated.
Again, true national values are simultaneously seen as natural and sensible, but needing the guiding hand of the Howard government to remain so. Howard noted that, at
| 280
that time, “the irony is that no institution or code lays down a test of Australianness.
Such is the nature of our free society”.16 The further irony was however that the debate
on values later in 2006 would largely revolve around proposed tests of Australianess.
Soon afterward, in a February 2006 address to the Sydney Institute, treasurer Peter
Costello outlined his views on Australian culture and values. He appeared to want to echo
Howard in balancing some sense of diversity, in that he sees Australia as a “successful
multicultural society”, at least, “in the sense that people from all different backgrounds
live together in harmony”, with a hierarchal organisation of cultures and an overarching
unity, as, “There is a predominant culture just as there is predominant language.” However, he also appeared to be stronger in opposition to alleged past practice by describing
a speaker at a 2006 Australia Day citizenship ceremony, who he says, “went on about
how important it was not to give up anything to become an Australian,” as expressing
“confused mushy misguided multiculturalism.”
Costello outlined his views on what “Australian values—our values,” are, which included familiar items such as “economic opportunity”, “security”, “democracy,” and “personal freedom,” (including ,“importantly,” for women), but also surprising aspects such
as the “physical environment,” including “clean air and safe food and water,” and “open
space and natural beauty,” as well as “strong physical and social infrastructure,” such as
“roads that are paved, where traffic moves,” and “hospitals that can treat illness and a
good education system”.17 Values seem here to be any possible positively coded thing
within a national space, independent not only of peoples’ thoughts but, in the physical
environment, their very existence, and thus surely the reductio ad absurdum of the use
of “values” by a political actor to justify their perspectives.
Whatever the validity and logic of the statements of Howard government spokespeople on these matters, it is clear that they sought to portray their government as the
embodiment and guardian of the nation’s values, no doubt being encouraged in this
approach by the sort of evidence presented in Chapter 5 and the first section of this
chapter on widespread feelings of shared values and shared national identity. They also
sought to contrast their approach, implicitly or explicitly, with that of the Labor Party,
not so much as the “alien socialists” of Menzies’ day (as discussed in Chapter 3), but as
16 Howard, ‘A sense of balance: The Australian achievement in 2006’
17 Peter Costello, ‘Worth promoting, worth defending: Australian citizenship, what it means and how
to nurture it’, 2006 <http://www.treasurer.gov.au/tsr/content/speeches/2006/004.asp> accessed 2 May
2006
281 |
confused, relativistic multiculturalists. Howard continued a strong values framing of
his rhetoric with the following comments on 31 August 2006, in response to a talkback
radio caller.
Most people who come to this country try very hard to become Australians. There are
some who don’t … And what I want to do is to reinforce the need for everybody who
comes to this country to fully integrate and fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language, if you don’t
already speak it, and it means understanding that in certain areas, such as the equality
of men and women, the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary
and as progressive as ours is… I think there is a section, a small section of the Islamic
population, and I say a small section and I’ve said this before, which is very resistant to
integration.18
As will be seen below, these comments ignited considerable debate. It was in this
context that Beazley entered the values fray on 11 September 2006: while Beazley attempted to ties values to a range of issues, debate between Howard and Beazley continued through that month and the next particularly on proposed visa tests and citizenship
tests and the comments relating to women and sexual violence made by Sheik Taj Din
al-Hilaly.
Howard’s rhetoric on values
From 1 September until 31 October 2006 there were 86 items in the ‘Media Centre’ section of the (former) prime ministerial website, of which the term “values” appears in 12,
or 14% of the items, and the term appears a total of 48 times. In the equivalent period of
2005, of 110 items, “values” appeared in 9 or 8.2% of items, a total of 11 times. It appears
Howard increased somewhat the frequency of occasions in which he used the term and
increased considerably the emphasis he put upon it. An inventory of the broad themes
which Howard related the term to, is shown in Table 9.1.
18 John Howard, ‘Interview with Chris Smith Radio 2GB, Sydney’, 2006
<http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Interview/2006/Interview2111.cfm> accessed 10 November 2006
| 282
Table 9.1 Inventory and frequency of the themes that “Australian values” were
related to in Howard’s discourse
Theme
No. of items in which “values”
is related to theme (percentage of total items)
No. of mentions of “values” in relation to theme
(percentage of total
mention of values)
Citizenship test/integration
6 (50%)
10 (20.1%)
Beazley’s visa proposal
3 (25%)
3 (6.3%)
Shared values with US/universal liberal democratic values
4 (33.3%)
8 (16.7%)
Opposition to “radical multiculturalism”/balance between
diversity and common values
2 (16.7%)
3 (6.3%)
Terrorism/balancing security
and values
3 (25%)
3 (6.3%)
Conservatives values vs. “political correctness”
2 (16.7%)
3 (6.3%)
Sheik Hilaly’s comments
2 (16.7%)
3 (6.3%)
General importance of values
2 (16.7%)
2 (4.2%)
Values not politically contentious
1 (8.3%)
1 (2%)
School chaplaincy program
1 (8.3%)
1 (2%)
Opposed to some other countries’ values
1 (8.3%)
1 (2%)
Some typical semantic structures of the use of the term in Howard’s discourse were
chosen and are shown in Table 2, the last column of which refers to the footnotes which
give references for the phrases.
283 |
Table 9.2: Semantic structures of typical use of “values” by Howard19202122
<Subject>
People …
when they
come here
People
<Modifier>
<action>
[have to]
learn
allowed [by] the to argue
radical interpretation of
multiculturalism
<Modifier>
<object>
<Modifier>
Reference
The lanNot at a PhD 19
guage…a
level, nothing
knowledge
like that
of the
country, its
customs, its
values, its
history
20
you can
really sort
of keep
your own
home-grown
values when
you come to
this country and not
embrace
mainstream
Australian
values
All of us
rededicate ourselves to
maintain
values
That are uni- 21
versal values
of individual
liberty and
dignity, of
freedom of
religion and
freedom of
thought
I
visit
a lot of
countries
That have
values I
wouldn’t
sign up to in
a month of
Sundays
19 John Howard, ‘Interview with Ray Hadley, Radio 2GB, Sydney’, 2006
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/interviews/Interview2140.html> accessed 22 November 2006
20 John Howard, ‘Interview with Jon Faine, ABC Radio, Melbourne’, 2006
21 John Howard, ‘Address to the September 11th Commemeoration’, 2006
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech2128.html> accessed 22 November 6
22 John Howard, ‘Interview with Geoff Hutchinson, ABC Radio, Perth’, 2006
| 284
22
You
can’t have
I
can say
as one of the
values [in a
citizenship
test]
an issue that 23
is a matter of
political contention [such
as awards
vs. individual
agreements]
without fear that what he
of contra[Hilali] said
is repugnant
diction
to Australia
values]
24
2324
Howard’s discourse emphasises common values as a central part of Australianess,
which are necessary to acquire, by immigrants at any rate, to be truly Australian (a
notion that recalls Hage’s notion of “national capital,” discussed in Chapter 3). Values
appear as passive objects, reifications, that are inherently and obviously (“without
contradiction”, without “contention”) part of a culture, scarcely defined in this sample
apart from the third phrase in Table 9.2, although they can be attacked from without
by terrorists and from within by radical multiculturalists.
The latter threat points to a significant contradiction for Howard, similar to a central
contradiction for conservative conceptions of the nation, between the universality and
specificity of values. Values are at most points “Australian”, and at least in one example
contrasted with “a lot” of other countries, but at many points also shared with countries
such as the US or even universally for all of humanity. In a speech celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the conservative magazine Quadrant, Howard appears to contrast the
beliefs of leftists in “collectivist ideologies”, “philo-communism,” and “political cor�
rectness,” to “democratic freedom and a pluralist society,” the latter exemplified by
the “magazine and the values that unite it”. However, two sentences after such values
are linked to a partisan magazine, they are referred to as the “universal values of lib�
eral democracy and truth and the spirit of the individual”.25 For Howard,“Our cultural
diversity … must never be at the expense of the greater importance we attach to the
common values that bind us together as one people,”26 that is, apparently cultural di�
versity cannot accommodate values that reject the idea of overriding national values,
23 John Howard, ‘Interview with Neil Mitchell, Radio 3AW, Melbourne’, 2006
24 John Howard, ‘Doorstop interview, Finley RSL Club’, 2006
25 John Howard, ‘Address to the Quadrant magazine 50th anniversary dinner’, 2006 <http://www.
pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech2165.html> accessed 22 November 2006
26 John Howard, ‘Address to the ASPI Global Forecasts Conference’, 2006
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/speeches/speech2150.html> accessed 22 November 2006
285 |
even though this argument would seem to contradict pluralism and indeed, freedom of
speech. It seems then that rather than there being a contest of values within the nation,
those opposed to certain ‘obvious’ values are simply outside the nation (or possibly nor�
mal human conduct), and the nation has the right to police its membership in relation
to values, the latter implication being in marked contrast to Howard’s 2006 Australian
Day speech referred to above.
Beazley’s conscious counter-attack
During September and October 2006 Beazley made a conscious effort to enter the values debate and relate the notion of values to a range of issues. According to one commentator in the sample of print media texts discussed below, Beazley learnt by early
September that the federal government was soon to propose the above-mentioned citizenship test with items on values (and this was in fact launched on 18 September in a
paper by parliamentary secretary for immigration Andrew Robb), and wanted to preempt and undercut this with a proposed pledge on values for all visitors to Australia.
This he announced on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on
New York, clearly relating values to national security and terrorism.27 Most of the media
discussion related to values in this period focused on Beazley’s and the government’s
proposals on visas and citizenship, however, the Labor leader’s values push was intended
to be much broader.
In the ‘Media’ section of the ALP website for the period 1 September 2006 until 31
October 2006, there are 81 items (media releases, speeches and interviews) from Beazley. The word “values” is mentioned in clear connection with Australian values in 28,
or 35%, of these items, including in the headings of seven of them, and is used a total
of 79 times. For the equivalent period of 2005, there are 92 items from Beazley, and six,
or 7%, use the term values in a national sense, and no items had the term in a heading.
Discounting one speech to the Australian Christian Lobby in which he said “values” an
impressive 33 times, in the 2005 period he used the term a mere eight times.
A thematic inventory of the items in which the term appears in Beazley’s discourse in
the relevant period, and a count of the number of items and the number of instances of
the term in which values are related to particular themes, shows us the range of issues
27 Glen Milne, ‘Kim Beazley is right about Aussie values’, The Australian, 18 September 2006, p. 16
| 286
Beazley harnesses values to and at least a rough measure of the weight he attaches to
these issues in relation to values.
Table 9.3: Inventory and frequency of themes “Australian values” are related to in
Beazley’s discourse
Theme
No. of items in which “values”
is related to theme (percentage of total items)
No. of mentions of “values” in relation to theme
(percentage of total
mention of values)
Industrial relations/WorkChoices
12 (43%)
26 (32%)
Visas
7 (25%)
31 (39%)
Education
4 (14%)
4 (5%)
Hypocrisy/inadequacy of government in relation to values
2 (7%)
6 (7%)
Attribute that immigrant community has
2 (7%)
3 (4%)
Attributes of the ALP
2 (7%)
2 (2%)
Defining values
2 (7%)
2 (2%)
Terrorism
2 (7%)
2 (2%)
Citizenship test
2 (7%)
2 (2%)
Steve Irwin
1 (4%)
1 (1%)
Some typical semantic structures of the use of the term in Beazley’s discourse were
chosen and are shown in Table 9.4, the last column of which refers to the footnotes that
give references for the phrases.
287 |
Table 9.4: Semantic structures of typical use of values by Beazley
282930313233
<Subject>
<Modifier>
<action>
<object>
<Modifier>
Reference
Bringing in
Foreign
workers
Who do
not speak
English,
let alone
sign up to
Australian
values
28
are the front
line against
extremists
and terrorists
29
Included on
Visas
statement
on Australian values
30
Beazley Labor
government
ensure
respect for
Australian
values
plays a
strong
role in the
school curriculum
31
Howard
trashing
Australian
values
of a fair
days work
for a fair
day’s pay
32
Beazley
building
industrial
relation system
based on
Australian
values
33
Howard’s
rorted work
visas
Australian
values
Of respect
for each
other,
mateship,
fairness,
freedom,
respect for
our laws
The two tables show us that “values” for Beazley appear a broader concept than
Howard’s reified objects, appearing very flexible and playing diverse roles, as subjects,
objects and modifiers of varied political ideas and actions. They are related to a broader
range of issues than for Howard, can go to work fighting terrorism, can be worked upon,
28 Kim Beazley, ‘Howard′s hypocrisy on Australian values’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/0906/msloo041.php> accessed 10 November 2006
29 Kim Beazley, ‘Aussie values a condition of visas’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/0906/msloo110.php> accessed 10 November 2006
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Kim Beazley, ‘AWAs; Aussie values; Year 12; WA pre-selections; torture’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/1006/dsiloo050.php> accessed 10 November 2006
33 Kim Beazley, ‘Health reform for a modern economy’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/0906/speloo150.php> accessed 10 November 2006
| 288
in being supported by Labor or trashed by Liberals, and can inform (modify) the con�
tent of varied policies. Three examples from the second table are from the same short
media release, as this text most clearly introduced Beazley’s values push and it should
be noted from the first table that the themes were repeated throughout the period in
question. In some of the cited cases in Beazley’s discourse, the proposed actions, such
as the inclusion of purported national values on visa forms, lack subjects, suggesting a
universal obviousness to the idea. The first example from the second table relates to the
way Beazley represented the government, in allowing short-term staying foreigners to
work on lower wages and conditions than those mandated for Australian resident work�
ers, as hypocritical on values and exploitative on industrial relations. But in suggesting
as a problem with this that foreign workers are possibly lacking in Australian values,
there are echoes of Labor’s xenophobic past. Altogether, here is a fairly clear narrative
being constructed of the ALP as the true embodiment of Australian values, more reso�
lute and proactive in fact than the government on issues of citizenship and education,
and the only representative of Australian values in the sphere of industrial relations.
It was in some senses an old story, with Beazley harking back to tradition in rela�
tion to the apparent poisoning of the “Tree of Knowledge” in Barcaldine, Queensland,
a part of Labor lore under which striking shearers met in the 1890s, stating that, “The
tree is dead but the values live on … a basic Aussie value, now under threat”.34 In other
senses it was quite a new narrative, as it appeared to consciously appropriate Howard,
the political actor whom some, as noted previously, see as the great appropriator of the
Australian legend. One curious media release says of Howard in relation to industrial
relations that, “Howard has changed, he has betrayed Middle Australia”.35 This, in im�
plying that Howard had previously represented “Middle Australia”, seems an odd thing
for a Labor figure to state. It appears part of a pitch to those attracted to the values of
Howard’s version of the Moral Middle Class but also at threat from WorkChoices.
There is some evidence that the sort of things Beazley was saying had strong reso�
nance in the electorate, such as talkback radio monitoring in NSW and Queensland, im�
mediately after Beazley’s proposal for a values pledge, showing callers supporting the
34 Kim Beazley, ‘Childcare; Solomon Islands; Kokoda; Tree Of Knowledge; media ownership laws’,
2006 <http://www.alp.org.au/media/1006/dsiloo030.php>
35 Kim Beazley, ‘Value-adding: the gifts we can share with the world’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15
September 2006, p. 4
289 |
Labor leader on the issue by a ratio of three to one.36 Similarly a Newspoll conducted
on 22–24 September 2006 that asked respondents about their attitude to the proposed
“introduction of a formal citizenship test,” that would include “an English language test
and questions about Australia and our way of life,” found 77% in favour.37 However,
while Beazley may have seen in such data support for his proposals and his positions on
the government’s proposals, there are other indications that the Beazley values pushed
brought to the fore some long-standing problems and contradictions for Labor.
Effects of Beazley’s discourse and similar stances
As noted above, the effects of Beazley’s discourse and similar evocations of national values from the left can be discussed in terms of the evaluations made and language used
in comment articles in the print media sample, the themes emerging from focus group
discussions with ALP and Greens branch members, and relevant survey data. The discussion on values in the period in question did not just emanate from Beazley but was
reflected in the print media with a marked increase in the use of the term “Australian
values”. The term “Australian values” appears in all the Australian media sources collated
in the Factiva database a total of 88 times in the period September–October 2005, while
for the equivalent period of 2006 it appears 851 times, an increase of 938%.
The first point to note from the media coverage at the time generally and from the
sample chosen to examine more closely for this chapter, is that there was an almost total
lack of media interest in Beazley’s attempt to attach values to industrial relations. Of all
the Australian sources collated from the Factiva database for the period in question,
searches for items with both the terms “Australian values” and “industrial relations”
or “WorkChoices” or “Work Choices,” yielded 47 hits. This is 5.5% of the 851 items
mentioning “Australian values,” compared with the 43% of the items in Beazley’s direct
media work, as noted in Table 1, in which the Labor leader attempted to tie industrial
relations and WorkChoices to values. The only specific mention of industrial relations
in the sample examined here, was a denial that this issue related to values at all by Age
commentator Michelle Grattan, who argued that Beazley “was getting the values debate
mixed up with the industrial relations debate”.38 This attitude is also exemplified by a 26
36 Philip Coorey, ‘Beazley is the leader, for once’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 2006, p. 5
37 According to Newspoll, 22–24 September, 2006 <http://www.newspoll.com.au/> accessed 10 April
2007
38 Michelle Grattan, ‘Empty statement devoid of value’, The Age, 12 September 2006, p. 5
| 290
September doorstop interview, which Beazley held at an Adelaide shopping centre to
highlight a union-negotiated collective agreement for retail workers, and introduced
with twelve sentences on how Australia values relate to Labor’s stance on WorkChoices. Beazley’s attempted framing was however totally ignored and subsequent questions
asked were on water, Telstra, native title and defence.39
To further examine the media responses to Beazley, the sample chosen was coded in
terms of evaluation of the Labor leader’s approaches to values, as shown in Table 9.5, and
thematic inventory was constructed from items giving a negative evaluation of Beazley.
Table 9.6 shows the themes and the frequencies with which each occurred.
Table 9.5: How media opinion pieces evaluated Beazley on values (frequencies with
percentages in parentheses)
Type of item
No in sample
Positive
Negative
Mixed
Editorial
9
0
7 (78)
2 (22)
Comment
32
7 (22)
21 (66)
4 (13)
Letter
32
4 (13)
28 (88)
0
Weblog entry
8
3 (38)
5 (63)
0
Totals
81
14 (17)
61 (75)
6 (7)
Table 9.6: Major critical themes in items in the media opinion sample with negative
or mixed evaluations of Beazley
Theme
Frequency (percentage of all negative
and mixed items)
Visa proposal absurd/unworkable
36 (54%)
Sceptical of national values
24 (36%)
Tail-ending Howard
24 (36%)
Xenophobic
10 (15%)
Beazley and/or ALP not serious on national
values
9 (13%)
Clearly the response to Beazley was overwhelmingly negative. The positive response
of 14 items or 17% is even more dismal when it is considered that two of these items
were relevant opinion pieces written by Beazley himself. Many of the negative respons�
es related to the specific proposal for a requirement for all visa applicants, including
tourists, to sign a pledge on Australian values, which was widely derided, and terms
39 Kim Beazley, ‘Industrial relations; water; Telstra; Peter Costello; native title’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/0906/dsiloo260.php> accessed 11 November 2006
291 |
such as “impractical”, “absurd”, “silliness”, and “bizarre” abounded. However, many
pieces linked problems with this specific proposal with the broader issue of Beazley
tail-ending Howard on values and nationalism (9 items expressing both themes), and/
or both criticised the proposal and expressed some scepticism about national values (12
items expressing both these themes). For example, Sweetman explained the “idiocy”
and “incompetence” of Beazley’s proposal to an approach on Beazley’s part of “any�
thing Howard can do I can do better,” and accused both leaders of trading in “populist
jingoism” and pushing inherently “indefinable values”.40
It may be thought that widespread scepticism about national values in a media sample
relates to an arguably unrepresentative, cosmopolitan, ‘new class’ nature of media pro�
fessionals and also possibly those more likely to write to the press. Whatever validity
there is to such an argument, it is significant for the purposes of this study that Beazley
was generally criticised both from the left and from conservative viewpoints supportive
of the government’s stand on values and ‘national’ issues, which made up the items
containing the ‘not serious on values’ theme. For example, as one of nine items criti�
cising Beazley on the grounds of lacking seriousness and integrity on values, Miranda
Devine argued Beazley’s visa proposal showed him to be a “weak catch-up Johnny”,
and rhetorically contrasted “Howard’s real self-belief” on values to Beazley’s nature as
a “cynical, opportunist follower”.41 Similarly The Australian editorialised in favour of the
government’s proposed citizenship test while castigating Beazley’s approach as a “gim�
mick” and “political point-scoring”.42 A number of commentators contrasted alleged
national values to universal or ideological values, including one conservative, Frank
Devine, who reasonably complained that the inclusion in supposed national values of
“mateship” and a “fair go” excluded Australians who genuinely believed in “never
giving a sucker an even break” and that “nice guys finish last”.43 Beazley seemed to
be attacked from right and left with the charge, as characterised by one participant in
a Courier-Mail weblog on values, that he lacked a “strength of conviction,”44 and this
widespread view seems to indicate a general problem for the ALP speaking in ‘national’
40 Kim Terry Sweetman, ‘Stay with the IR target, Kim’, Courier-Mail, 15 September 2006, p. 28
41 Miranda Devine, ‘Beazley’s latest fog of indecision’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 2006,
p. 13
42 Kim Beazley, ‘No choice — in the prime minister’s own department’, 2006
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/1006/msiaiiloo090.php> accessed 10 November 2006
43 Frank Devine, ‘Proposed citizenship quiz a double-dutch trivial pursuit ’, The Australian, 29
September 2006, p. 13
44 Howard, ‘Interview with Chris Smith Radio 2GB, Sydney’
| 292
terms.
How activists of the left might have responded to Beazley’s discourse, or might re�
spond to similar invocations of national values, can also be indirectly gauged from
my focus group discussions, in that there was considerable discussion relating to the
interactions between values and value systems (along with apparent synonyms such
as “ethos” and “vision”), identity and political positions and involvement, as shown in
Table 9.7. To explicate the themes that emerged from the discussions relating to values,
requires quoting relatively long passages from the transcripts, as relevant passages dis�
played considerable use of extended narrative and contrastive rhetoric, and generally
relational aspects of language, and the dialogic interactions of participants uncovered
particular nuances. For ease of discussion, I have labelled the resulting themes A to L.
293 |
Table 9.7: Focus group themes related to values
Theme
Comments
A. Labo(u)r, social
justice, progressive value systems as bases
for political
motivation
[Urban ALP discussion]
Mark: I like [Labor’s] values and policies.
Tim: My motivation is that it’s the party whose ideals sit with me.
Al: I’ve always held very strong social justice values, and I think
the Labor Party is still the best opportunity to get those realised,
despite it’s manifest failings …
Ralph: The Labor Party represents social justice issues …
Michael: I grew up in a Labor household, I’ve always had Labor
values …
Denise: I notice everybody here is coming from a strong Labor
background where those social justice issues are really important
for us and we care about them …
[Urban Greens discussion]
Fred: I heard Bob Brown talk and I though this guy’s really cluey,
he knows what he’s talking about, is very articulate, and he sort
of represented an ideal or vision which could be a better society I
guess, through the Greens party, not just himself.
[Regional Greens discussion]
Roger: I came to the Greens as a disaffected Labor person, of
many years standing.
Stefany: I’m similar … I was always a Labor voter but saw myself
foremost as a socialist. Labor’s sold-out any socialist leanings
it ever might have had, I think it did have once. And I believe in
things like free education and all those other things I see as socialist.
Darren: I joined the Greens because all the other parties were going too far to the right, and they’re all too involved in corporations
and putting profit before people, whereas the Greens are putting
people before profit and putting the environment before profit.
B. Aspirations to
change national
values
[Urban Greens discussion]]
Celine: I think when people talk about Australian values they
say mythical things like egalitarianism and, [Gary: mateship] and
they’re a bit vague. They don’t tend to focus on the shameful parts
of Australian culture like a fear of strangers or a fear of outsiders or
the xenophobia type thing or [Johan: or having stolen the country]
yes, and contempt for the indigenous peoples, so the Greens actually break down some of those bad Australian values and some of
our policies directed towards fixing those Australian values up.
Fred: I suppose our vision is if we want to have the good, and yes
there are good aspects to Australian society then we also have
to accept the bad. And I think what I have a problem with, as a
Green, is that John Howard will always talk about the good like the
ANZAC spirit …. Well how about we talk about the fact that people
didn’t vote for conscription in world war one and that’s never been
talked about. You know actually I’m proud of that. You know just to
be more inclusionary.
| 294
C. Laborism as authentic national
identity/values
Bernard: That’s what I find most frustrating about the current
government, on things like refugees, on things like race, he really follows a lowest common denominator path, and I don’t think
that’s Australian. It’s actually the antithesis of what every Australian
probably considers to be inherent Australian values like mateship.
That fundamentally in my view is a collective ideal … I think over
the last 10 years the government has bastardised many traditional
Australian values …
Tom: Historically, the Australian Labor Party was formed when
Australian was still a dominion, and long before we had a national
identity. The Labor has been, sees itself as anyway, as being parallel with the development of national identity, culminating with the
Second World War, when Labor Prime Ministers stood up against
the great threat … We had a whole series of these things that were
exploited by Labor politicians, Keating and Hawke in particular
were going back to Gallipoli … which from the Labor Party’s point
of view was quite authentic, because we’ve always stood for that
sort of stuff … Those of us who look back on this, see that for the
Australian Labor Party nationalism and national identity was part of
our whole development and reason for being …
Harry: The thing that shines out for me is probably Gough Whitlam,
in terms of our national identity … It wasn’t until the early 70s when
we came up with out own national anthem, our own policies, and
we had such a great change to our society.
Bernard: … there’s so many important parts of our national identity,
if you look at them historically, they arose during a Labor government. Whitlam’s a good example. We got Medicare, we got the
Family Court…
Me: So do you guys see authentic Australian values and Labor
values as being pretty synonymous, the same thing?
John: The whole concept of authentic Australian values is incredibly hard to define [someone: yeah]. I think what the Labor Party
does, that the Howard government probably doesn’t, is allow
people to find themselves in some way, and not force definitions of
various different things onto them …
Tom: It seems to me the Labor Party for myself anyway has a more
authentic … a more coherent view of the national interest, because
… Labor politics tend to be the politics of joining together, and
trying to create coalitions between groups, so you tend to have to
be more consensual. Conservatives politics could be defined as
separating, creating divisions in order to be able to divide and rule.
Fred [Urban Greens]: In terms of Australian identity and industrial
relations in particular I think certainly what some politicians, …
certainly some from the Labor Party, particularly ones from a union
background, will talk about the uniqueness of the Australian industrial relations system, whether you can tie that into some sort of
national identity or not I don’t know. It was a fairly unique system
.until recently, in terms of the way, compared to other countries,
295 |
D. The contest of
value systems
| 296
[continuation of urban ALP discussion above]
Bernard: The conservatives have had a role in shaping the national
identity but in terms of radically shifting the ALP’s been better at It
…
David: I accept that there are legitimate conservative strains, and I
mean that in a lower c conservative form of the Australian national
identity. We could wilfully ignore the extent to which conservative suburban existence is … legitimately Australian, and strongly
Australian.
Saul: I guess for me one of the defining characteristics of the
Howard years has been the commitment to delivering a budget
surplus, over the economic cycle. And to me it’s almost getting
to an embarrassing amount of surplus, and I think, they then say
it’s in the national interest, to run with no debt, it’s all good for the
economy. But I think it goes to the heart of the meanness of the
Howard years, and then that is related into other policies like the
war in Iraq, like Work Choices, like cutting education … I think one
thing the Labor Party has, as opposed to the Howard government,
we seem to have a focus more on a fair go and more of a focus
on human beings, and their wellbeing, as opposed to everything
always coming down to a dollar value.
Ralph [Regional ALP]: In business terms the Labor Party strikes
me as looking after the worker, whereas the Liberal/National party
is very much looking after the employer base. So in terms of a
national vision, well I think we’ve really been called to arms with
the WorkChoices because it’s been an attack on workers rights, it’s
an attack on social values and it’s an attack on people’s freedom in
many cases …
Denise: I’m a Labor voter … I could never take on that [individualist] ethos, and I don’t know for Liberal voters what would come
into their heart that could make them change … Actually the worst
part about it is they actually believe what they’re doing is good and
that’s what really frightens me.
Bill: We all read the Sydney Morning Herald and things like that
so we get a totally different perspective than what the average
person’s consuming in media. They’re consuming Alan Jones and
Stan Zamanek, and the Daily Terror, [Someone: and Piers Ackerman]. Absolute ignorance and propaganda, and that’s what keeps
them in line.
Bevan: … the question in my mind is, does the media reflect the
national identity, or does it help create the national identity? [Tom:
It helps create it]. And if the Howard government is changing the
ownership rules, why are they doing so, is there some sort of agenda there, because it seems to me that the Howard government
quite often legislates in favour of its mates, the big end of town. So
are they seeing it as a win to their concept of nationalism? …
Tony: I would say that the Greens have the broadest vision of Australia’s national interest, values and national identity because we’re
E. Labor following wrong
values
Paul [Urban ALP]: One reason that the Labor Party’s been less sure of
itself that the Liberals in terms of values in that for better or for worse,
and I think frankly it’s for worse, there’s been times in the Labor
Party’s history and the country’s history, the Labor Party’s been far
more activist in asserting a far more rigid version of what is Australian. The classic example I suppose is the White Australia Policy, but
I think you can look at many points where the Labor Party with the
best intention in the world has asserted much more strongly a rigid
notion of Australian values and we don’t do that now and I think that’s
good.
Ralph: Well does the Labor Party, do you think it has that vision, you
should be looking after others. Or do you think we’ve sort of lost our
way a little bit? …
Denise: Tampa [was] a prime example of when we went for a populist
thing, when our ethos would have been, no, those people are coming
here … there are so many people out there who really believe, and really strong Labor people, that we did the wrong thing, it’s like we lost,
we sold our soul with Tampa.
F. Ideological
use of values
John: [The bastardisation of many traditional Australian values] is just
it, the narrowing of who actually is being classed as being within the
scope of Australian values. There’s a subjugation of various people
within the community. Being unAustralian in various things [LUKE:
I hate that word], it’s a horrible word, and it’s used politically all the
time.
Johan: I feel deeply insulted by the fact that people like John Howard,
Philip Ruddock, Brendan Nelson and Peter Costello who represent
the most shameful things that our country has done, are the very
same people who raised this thing about values, because they knew
that it was designed to distract us from what they had been really doing … They’ve even got us at it, that we have to sit here talking about
values, explain what our values are because this agenda has actually
been set by people who have no values and even don’t have respect
for the rule of law…
Me: Did you notice Kim Beazley was putting his argument about
industrial relations in terms of national values?
Johan: Beazley was actually a worry really. Here was somebody who
was up against the wall, couldn’t say anything that was right. And
the other bloke’s talking about values, values, values, so he had to
talk about values, and he tried to turn the argument around a bit. But
here’s somebody who couldn’t make his mind up about whether we
should be torturing people or whether we should be really bastard to
refugees, or whether we should do what we’re supposed to do…
Celine: Maybe he meant like being able to have a public holiday off
from work, we could all have a barbie in the back yard … I don’t think
they’re necessarily Australian.
Stefany [Regional Greens]: The more right, the closer a person is to
the far right, or a party, the more they talk about the ‘real Australian’,
and I mean this is a phrase that’s bandied around by right wing politicians, and people who agree with them you know, the ‘real Australian’, and I don’t know who they’re talking about, I don’t know …
297 |
G. Conservative
morals and
virtues and national identity
Susan: What I think is quite ingrained in national identity in Australia is the idea that you have what you deserve, and I think that
feeling that someone who’s on social services, benefits, that’s
because they’re not working really as hard as me, and I deserve
what I’ve got. I’m not privileged, it’s something that I’ve worked
for, and I think you can sort of put that to asylum seekers as well.
Even if it’s another country, we sort of have this feeling, that we’ve
got what we’ve earned, and that if you don’t have it then basically
it’s because you’re not really doing it good enough. And I think that
comes right down to the national identity of how we view ourselves, and demonise anyone who doesn’t have what you’ve got,
to make yourself feel justified in having what you’ve got.
Bill: It’s a good point. Sam [sic] Zamanek, you know the bloody
shock jock, he’s a really right wing arsehole, one of his flaks rang
me up the other day about this 5000 bucks for somebody to relocate for a job, they wanted a view you see, and she rings up and
says, you’re with Brown aren’t you, you’re one of Brown’s bludgers
aren’t you [laughter].
Polly: Because Australians are quite happy for people to come to
this country if they’ve got the $500 000, that the government says
they should have to come to this country. They deserve it then.
H. Flag actually
represents (reified) values
[From regional ALP discussion]
Ralph: [The current flag should be retained as] you’ve got a lot of
service people who’ve gone to war under that flag for the Australian values that we believe.
Kerry: [It’s positive that the RSL had asked a repentant flag burner
of Lebanese background from the December 2005 Cronulla riots to
march on ANZAC day to] to show him the true values of what the
diggers fought for
I. Flag a distraction from important values
[In response to Ralph’s’s comments above]
Denise: [The real issue for ex-diggers is a] fairer deal from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs … when I talk about a values system,
the flag means nothing to me.
| 298
J. Progressive
values vs.
increasing
individualism/
conservatism
Bernard [Urban ALP]: One of the thing’s I’ve seen about the left is how
in the last 10 years there’s been a really substantial change in the way
Australians view themselves and their country, and become much more
individualist country… I’m sick of the dog whistle politics of the last
10 years where we’ve really seen an American form of politics come in
where you campaign on an issue merely because it’s going to alienate a
certain percentage of the electorate, you want to get the largest chunk
of it, with the wedge politics issue. Howard does that admittedly, looking
at it objectively, brilliantly, but the fact is that he always picks the worst
parts of our culture and tries to create the wedge on that.
Regional ALP discussion]
Al: [There’s been a] transition from like cooperative, collective vision of
Australia, now it’s a selfish, competitive, acquisitive [couple of yeahs]
country
Colleen: I think we’re just meaner, and nastier … I don’t think that was
a Labor ethos … But that’s how I feel we’ve become as a society. I’m
alright Jack, I’m getting a lot of money, sitting in a million dollar home…
Kerry: A friend of mine, I don’t think he’s a friend of mine anymore because I give him a copful the other week, he’s a bus driver, close to retirement age. He thinks it’s bloody marvellous that he can get his super out,
tax free. He reckons it’s the best thing since sliced eggs and he will vote
for Howard forever and a day while it happens, while he can get a quid
out of him. I guarantee that same prick, if he hadn’t gotten that tax-free
threshold off his super, wouldn’t have voted for Howard.
Celine: It’s a whole philosophy of making people be self-interested and
look after themselves and their immediate families.
Fred: We live in a society that encourages this now [Bronwyn: yeah], like
it’s basically there’s so much fear I think, and it comes back to the fear
issue, the idea that you have to accumulate all this, you have to buy this,
to be on top.
299 |
K. Internationa-list/
world
citizen/
ecological/
rationalscientific/
long-term
value
systems
| 300
Johan: Well I’d be proud that the greens might be the most internationalist party and you see yourself as a citizen of the world …
Barry: Our party is the community party, we’re not in the interest of
private individuals or the big end of town, we’re in the interest of the
community and I think we’d include the world. We’re in the interest of
the world community … if the national interest is about greed then the
Greens aren’t into it. If the national interest is, if something is in the national interest we, Australia will gain some great benefit at the expense
of somebody else, well the Greens aren’t a party to it. But if the national
interest is, we’ve done something correct that is good for the global well
that’s what the Greens support.
Johan: A collective interest. A community of interest, but we hold that
community of interest with other humans and other creatures around the
world. It is not an exclusive thing. The national interest is such an old 19th
century idea from Europe really, it really doesn’t belong in this century …
Barry: The Greens are a party with a long-term view. The Greens don’t
want to know what’s good for the next couple of years we want to know
what’s good for the next couple of centuries. And if its in the national interest to flog off all our uranium and flog off all our coal for some short term
gains for the country well the Greens wouldn’t say that’s in the national interest because globally it will have repercussions and will come back later,
waste wise it will have repercussions … What’s the long term view, what’s
the global position and then lets talk about the national interest.
Ryan: To me the flag is the thing we’re trying to fight against. It’s a bit of a
selfishness. You’re only concerned with your own borders and you aren’t
looking beyond that. I’m not very much of a flag supporter. I think it’s divisive in terms of a world view … I think the other one we touched on earlier
that was a bit more specific was this coal exporting. It’s in the short-term
so-called national interest, but in the long-term national dis-interest.
Roger: I see myself, and this gets back to the Greens, I’m a Green and I
see myself as a citizen of the world, I’m not that much interested in being
very Australian.
Bevan: The Greens have a vision and that involves community, respect,
and the sort of values Roger has already talked about. National interest,
yes, the Greens have got a view about that too, and again like Keith said I
think it’s more in terms of an internationalist perspective. National identity, I
don’t think the Greens have really got a vision about a national identity, except that to the extent that it’s linked to those values which are universal…
Bill: So flags and nationalism are utilised by conservative forces to unite
their people against somebody else, and in the world that we’re moving into now, there’s no longer room for that sort of thing. We need more
cooperation otherwise we’re not going to survive …
Stevan: The reality of the world is that it is broken up into nations, and
hopefully particularly for the environment we can move past that eventually to where we have a global community. And maybe the Greens can
lead that.
L. Distinction
between
culture
and values
Roger [Regional Greens]: By my sitting by force of circumstance a kind
of observer on the other side of the world it seemed to me that [national
identity] didn’t really matter that much. Some of things that people sort of
cherish here like notions of tolerance and fairness I found to my surprise
that the English are far better at than we are. And so, I think my view
about that, if you’re talking about a national character, there’s no need
to get upset. I know I’m in France when I’m in France, I don’t mistake
French for Italians, and I don’t mistake either of them for Germans, I don’t
think there’s much to worry about there, it’s just there.
These discussions reveal some complex and varied interactions between values, na�
tional feeling and political activity. As discussed in previous chapters, in all of the focus
groups there was some recognition of, as well as some scepticism toward, conceptions
of shared national interests, and the latter idea was often expressed in a common sense,
even unconscious way. However in Theme A the important area of political motivation
(asked directly in the initial question for participants, see Appendix), was expressed far
more in terms of identification of a movement and/or party, ‘sectional’ interests, often
related to family background, and associated value systems. Theme B relates to a sug�
gestion raised in the regional Greens discussion that national values may be real but are
varied and subject to change, implicitly challenging a conservative, reified notion of
values. This exchange recalls an article in the media sample in which Hage argues:
For conservatives, values are on the side of cultural tradition, habits and customs: they
are things that one has. For progressives, values are on the side of ideals: they are things
that one pursues. Consequently, conservatives believe that if you criticise a past or a
present associated with a tradition, you are immediat ely criticising the values of society.
For the progressives, criticising society is part of how we refine our institutions to make
them as close as possible to our idealised values.45
It could be argued against Hage (who wants to define “a progressive take on Australian values”) and also these Greens activists that, while the above seems a fruitful distinction, if progressive values are inherently about conflict and change then it is hard to
see in what sense they are ‘national’. This also relates to the extended discussion quoted
from in Themes C and D. A number of the urban ALP members expressed the conception of Laborism as authentic Australianism, framing several narratives of political
history with this theme, but on more direct questioning from me the discussion moved
toward a conception of Australian identity made up from the contest of value systems.
Hage’s distinction is also relevant to Theme E, in which Labor is castigated from within
45 Ghassan Hage, ‘Values to have and to have not’, The Australian, 27 September 2006, p. 34
301 |
its ranks for following values that are reified, traditional and populist, rather than striving for change. As Theme F shows the ideological use of values was directly recognized
in three of the groups, although more so in the Greens, as was the ideological use of the
sort of morals, virtues and duties discussed by Brett as an important basis for Australian
conservatism46, in Theme G. Themes H and I show some of the contradictions, particularly for Laborism, in relation to values: two members express quite traditional and
conservative conceptions of reified national values as unproblematically signified by the
national flag, and Ralph is not only countered by Denise in theme I, but also himself
expressed a quite class-based conception of the clash of values in Theme D. A ‘material
basis’ for differing values is recognised at several points: in class interests and the role of
different media in Theme D, in a perceived increase in individualism (explicitly or implicitly related to increased wealth), expressed in Theme J, and in the distinction, which
as discussed I think is quite significant, between national culture and values raised by
one participant at Theme L. The somewhat cumbersome title of Theme K alludes to several themes that were related in discussions among the Greens and seemed to express
something of an overall alternative to the perceived narrow nationalism of the ‘major
parties’. Here and in previously cited passages there were clear elements of traditional
internationalism, certainly in scepticism about invocations of national interests and insistence on need for a broader perspective and identity. However, rather than this being
on the consistent material basis of class interests that transcended national boundaries,
there was a strong idealist element evident. That is, nationalism as an outmoded, irrational, short-sighted idea, as opposed to a long-term, global, ecological perspective,
a conception that implies that people of good will from all classes should be able to
accept rational ideas of environmental protection and international cooperation. The
Greens’ internationalism appears here bounded by a consensus view of society, as wellsummarised by Tom at Theme C.
Generally, and notwithstanding the considerable range of views expressed, for these
grass roots political actors, the membership of a nation that has some interests and values in common seems to be a taken for granted concept that has some relevance to political ideas and action, even if the national question is cynically abused by those to one’s
right. However the most salient aspect of the question for the participants seems to be
that a political movement has to have its own values system through which it fights for
46 Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class
| 302
leadership of the nation, even if current circumstances make that difficult.
Another indirect method for evaluating possible effects of Beazley’s stance is an examination of relevant data from successive Australian Electoral Studies conducted after
elections at which the ALP presented somewhat different policies on ‘national’ issues.
In the 2001 elections, the ALP supported the war in Afghanistan and the government’s
asylum seeker policy, while in the lead up to the 2004 election, in the name of “enduring
Labor values,” the ALP decided on policies of a withdrawal of most Australian troops
from Iraq and for significant changes to refugees policy, the latter albeit through compromise with those in the ALP pushing for the end of mandatory detention.47 Relevant
aggregate figures from the 2001 and 2004 AES’ are shown in Table 9.8.
47 Mark Hearn, ‘Enduring Labor values? A report on the 43rd ALP National Conference, Sydney,
29–31 January 2004’, Labour History/86 (2004)
303 |
Table 9.8: Selected responses to the question “whose policies—the Labor Party’s or
the Liberal-National Coalition’s—would you say come closer to your own views on
each of these issues” in the 2001 and 2004 Australian Electoral Studies, per cent.48
2001
2004
ALP
Coalition
No
difference
Don’t
know
ALP
Coalition
No
difference
Don’t
know
Immigration
20
47
23
10
22
39
21
19
Refugees
and asylum
seekers
15
46
27
11
22
36
22
21
Defence
and national
security
18
41
28
13
21
49
19
12
31
42
15
13
20
45
23
13
Iraq
Terrorism
13
42
31
14
It can be seen that in 2004 the ALP, after differentiating itself more from the coali�
tion on key ‘national’ issues of participation in foreign war and asylum seekers, both
increased the perception of difference between the major parties and on the whole in�
creased its support on the AES policy areas seen as national. While in the area of “de�
fence and national security” the Coalition has increase its support to a greater extent,
and in general it is not clear how much of the changes are due to party policy and how
much to external events, there is certainly strong evidence against the contention that
Labor benefits from taking a similar stance to the Coalition on ‘national’ issues. Fur�
ther, we saw in Chapter 5 how the Howard government’s introduction of WorkChoices
was met with widespread mobilised opposition, and that there are many indications
from polls and the 2007 AES that this, unavoidably ‘class’, issue, and the perception
of a clear distinction between Labor and the Coalition, significantly contributed to the
change of government in 2007.
48 Clive Bean, David Gow and Ian McAllister, ‘Australian Election Study, 2001’, Australian Social
Science Data Archive, Australian National University, 2003 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed
5 February 2007; Clive Bean et al., ‘Australian Election Study, 2004’, Australian Social Science Data
Archive, Australian National University, 2006 <http://assda-nesstar.anu.edu.au> accessed 5 February
2007. Rounded to whole percentages.
| 304
Conclusion
In framing a number of issues in seemingly ubiquitous national terms and championing
seemingly popular proposals, Beazley faced the apparently paradoxical situation of an
overwhelmingly negative response from a wide range of media commentary. This can
partly be explained by a specific proposal that was widely ridiculed, but there are clearly
broader issues at play.
Firstly, there appears from the media sample to be a popular perception that ‘national’ and ‘national values’ issues are generally those such as defence, national security
and immigration, as opposed to worker’s rights and (notwithstanding Nelson’s efforts)
education. That is, issues which easily lend themselves to a conception of a unified nation with interests directly contrasting with those outside the nation, and particularly
those perceived as pertaining to defence of the national space. Beazley attempted to
contrast his position on industrial relations and education to those of the government,
and argued he thus used values to “bring people together,” while Howard used them
for “exclusion”.49 However, in using an overall ‘national’ approach he seemed drawn to
a conception of citizenship which appeared little different from the government’s and
which seemed to place the unworthy outside the nation, while other issues he attempted
to link to values were virtually ignored.
Secondly, there is a popular perception, whether real or not, that the Liberal tradition
is a ‘national’ one, distinct from class or more generally sectional interests, a perception no doubt reinforced by incumbency, the efforts of John Howard to appropriate
the ‘Australian legend’, and social changes that have to some extent eroded institutional
collectivism and strengthened individualism (as discussed in Chapter 5), and reflected
in the strong support for the Liberals in repeated Australian Election Study results on
‘national’ issues of security, defence and immigration. Hence the former government
seemed to be able, in an echo of Hobsbawn’s point above, to set the agenda of what ‘the
national’ is.
Thirdly, there is, reflected in the media sample and the focus groups analysed here,
and despite widespread common sense agreement on the reality of national identity
and national interests, a strong sense that there should be contrasting values systems
contesting for the leadership of the nation. Beazley then in framing issues the way he
49 Beazley, ‘Value-adding: the gifts we can share with the world’
305 |
did seemed a weak echo of the government, failed to enthuse his own supporters, and
lost opportunities to press the government in areas, particularly industrial relations, on
which it was vulnerable, while when Labor has put forward a more contrasting position,
even on ‘national’ issues, it appeared to make ground. As will be discussed further in
the concluding chapter, the question is not just the strength of national feeling, but also
its salience. National belonging can act as a sort of background ‘common sense’, which
may exist in a contradictory relationship with more immediate, and more partisan and
sectional, bases for belonging, identity and systems of values.
The extent that Labor is actually able, because of its nature and because of the current state of Australian social structure and the Australia polity, to present a consistently
contrasting values system is open to question. During and soon after Beazley’s ill-fated
values push, soon-to-be Labor leader Kevin Rudd, in a number of public interventions,
was framing the issue in a quite different, at least much more nuanced, way. Firstly while
not explicitly rejecting the notion of national values, he argued the real issue was a debate within the nation between value systems.
In Australia today, much is being written about ‘Australian values’. Much less in being
written about another debate, that between neo-liberals and progressives, concerning
whether the balance of our national values lies with the individual or with the community.
Secondly, he argued that Howard’s ‘national’ approach was a cynical distraction from
the real contest, that, “Mr How ard is a clever politician who often succeeds in masking
the essential self-interest of his political project with a veneer of ‘duty to the nation’”.50
He appeared to be carefully avoiding the contradictions of fighting the values war on
Howard’s terrain by positing the realm of the national as a simple given, while putting
forward a contest over differing values systems. Such a stance seems to avoid a distracting debate about the reality and content of ‘Australian values’ and criticisms of ‘metooism’ while being more energising to Labor’s ranks. The apparent ability of Rudd and
his deputy Julia Gillard to represent ‘Labor values’ was reflected in the regional ALP
focus group discussion, some months before their ascension to leadership, and without apparent reference to this article. In discussing the unpopularity of Beazley and the
focus of politics on individual leaders, one respondent argued about the importance of
50 Kevin Rudd, ‘Faith in politics’, The Monthly, October 2006, 22–30 at 28
| 306
“the people who are keeping the infrastructure underneath, holding it up, keeping the
values there, like Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard” and another answered with, “I’d vote for
Kevin Rudd”.
This is not to say Rudd’s approach is unproblematic and without contradiction. In the
subsequent issue of The Monthly he further developed the contest between social democrats and neo-liberals, community and individualism, a social contract and market
fundamentalism, and Howard’s fudging of these conflicts. His major argument however
was that the neo-liberalism of Howard was extremely disruptive of traditional conservative concerns with community and a fair social contract with capital and labour, and
hence, “The time has come to forge a new coalition of political forces across the Australian community, uniting those who are disturbed by market fundamentalism in all
its dimensions”.51 The industrial relations policy that Labor took to the 2007 election,
Forward with Fairness, was constructed around a contrast between the “extremism” of
the Coalition and Labor’s position of a balance between “productivity and prosperity”
on the one hand and “fairness at work” on the other.52 The notion of Australian values
does not appear once in the document.
The election result and associated evidence suggests that a majority national-populist
coalition, based on fairness and consensus, was indeed built. However, the kind of coalition Rudd has espoused, incorporating rather than challenging conservative ideas,
must surely be at risk of tensions regarding the family, sexuality, and immigration, not
to mention the role of trade unions. Soon after taking the leadership Rudd appeared to
be echoing Howard’s stance on ‘national’ issues, such as by removing the term multiculturalism from the title of the Labor immigration spokesperson, renaming the position spokesperson for “immigration, integration and citizenship” on 14 December 2006.
As had been mooted for some time, the government body was similarly rebadged the
Department of Immigration and Citizenship on 23 January 2007.53 Rudd also echoed
government calls for a review of the citizenship status of Sheik Taj Din al-Hilaly after the
apparently unAustralian act by the latter of claiming he had more respect for Australian
51 Rudd, ‘Howard’s Brutopia: What the prime minister doesn’t want to talk about’ at 50
52 Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, ‘Forward with fairness: Labor’s plan for fairer and more productive
Australian workplaces’, April, Australian Labor Party, 2007
<http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/fwf_finala.pdf> accessed 10 January 2008 1
53 See for example Dennis Shanahan Cath Hart, ‘Rudd changes migration stance to outflank PM’, The
Australian, 14 December 2006, p. 1 and Jewel Topsfield, ‘Integration Howard aim’, The Age, 24 January
2007, p. 14
307 |
values than did the prime minister.54
Further examination of the extent to which Rudd and Labor in power will be able to
manage such contradictions is outside the scope of this study. While it is clear that there
is some room for manoeuvre in the practice and rhetoric of modern social democracy, it
appears the weight of Labor’s history and current social structures, including the party’s
own differing social bases, will continue to reproduce dilemmas in reconciling the value
systems based on class and nation for the ALP, and the Greens appear to be an as yet
partial resolution to some of these contradictions.
54 Richard Kerbaj, ‘Rudd backs Howard in damning Hilali’, The Australian, 14 April 2007, p. 2
| 308
Chapter 10
Conclusion
In this study I have examined, using varied methods, different aspects of the way national feeling has related to political life in Australia in recent years. The focus has been
on the left, and that is where the main thrust of my conclusions are directed, althoughconservative politics have also been discussed in some detail. The theoretical bases for
the analysis of the national question and its intersections with history, social structure,
political action, ideology, discourse and identity, and also some historical background
for the project, were laid out in Chapters 2 and 3. From this discussion research questions for the thesis were derived. In Chapter 4 a methodology for the project, ‘triangulating’ several qualitative and quantitative methods, was developed. An initial formulation
of the main arguments of the thesis was outlined in Chapter 5 through an analysis of
social trends and political developments during the terms of the Howard governments,
while in Chapters 6–9 I discussed several overlapping issues and themes that arose in
the period 2003–2007 which were particularly relevant to how the left negotiated nation
and class. In this chapter I restate and tie together the conclusions made in previous
chapters, with reference to the research questions (discussing research questions 3 and 4
together, to aid clarity), and make some suggestions for further research.
The ubiquity and inevitability of national feeling
in current Australian political life
In the material examined and discussed, virtually all political forces expressed themselves in terms of national interests, values and/or culture. As I discussed in Chapter 5,
national feeling on some measures increased during the period of the Howard governments, during which time general wealth increased and other collective bases of belonging, notably union membership, declined. Further, the mobilisation of national feeling
has been salient in a number of events and issues in the course of the Howard govern-
309 |
ments. In less formal discussion, particularly noted in the focus group discussions and
in letters to newspapers, national feeling was often expressed in ‘commonsense’ or even
apparently unconscious ways. Only one of the 28 focus group participants, in the urban Greens group (Johan), appeared consistently sceptical of the role of national feeling
within politics. These results, along with the discussion of the continuing importance
of the nation-market-state in chapters 7 and 8, point to the conclusion that the contradiction between nationality and internationality remains a central feature of capitalism
and that the question of the nation will continue to bear down on all political forces in
capitalist politics.
The continuing role of the posited streams of thought on the nation
Virtually all the material examined can be understood in terms of the streams of national thought posited in Chapter 3. ALP sources showed particularly strong perceived
connections between party/movement history, tradition and identity and a sense of authentic Australianess. This was the case with the invocations of labour history and its
role in national development discussed in regards to Eureka in Chapter 6: although
general evaluations of Eureka cut across left/right divisions to some extent, the presence
of historically differing nationalisms (and internationalisms) were traceable in all such
evaluations. Connections between Laborism and an authentic national identity were
also evident in the myth of an economically dependent Australia, defended by Labor
and betrayed by comprador conservatism seen in Chapter 7, in the related myth of a
politically dependent Australia analysed in Chapter 8, and to the interaction of party/
movement values and national values expressed in some sources examined in Chapter 9.
However, what would seem to be conservative themes were also evident from avowedly
leftwing sources, such as reified notions of the flag as signifying unproblematic national
values, also seen in Chapter 9. Discourse emanating from Greens seems mainly framed
by elements of traditional internationalism and left nationalism in regards to the economic and political questions seen in Chapters 7 and 8, along with the clearest expressions of multiculturalism found in the study. However, there were aspects of an “environmentalist-world citizen” identity somewhat different from traditional class-based
internationalism.
| 310
The negotiation of the contradictions of nation and class,
and the relative advantage of conservatism
The Howard governments gained considerable strength from the mobilisation of national feeling. This was achieved when threats or opportunities (via economic competition)
were seen as external, as we saw in Chapter 5 and as was discussed in Chapter 7 in terms
the reified notion of “economic management” for the benefit of the whole nation—a
myth which the Coalition has more successfully propagated. The latter advantage has
been despite occasional allusion to conservatism’s social bases in small and big capital,
more than occasional hostility to unions and to continued and even increasing majority
opposition to all the basic policy positions of neo-liberalism (in a period of increasing
inequality). The contradictions of nation and class for conservatism has however been
clearly evident in the Howard team’s lack of success in building national unity around
specific domestic economic issues such as privatisation and the GST, and in its fatal loss
of support over WorkChoices. Also, in Chapter 6 we saw how the Howard government
had limited success in imposing the teaching of a unified version of national history and
conservatives seemed generally at a loss in relating to a historical event that was clearly
about class and conflict, that is, to the Eureka uprising.
Conversely, when Labor has emphasised national unity it has generally lost ground
to conservatism. Regarding refugees Labor’s nationalist defence of the national space
helped to legitimise the government’s position, as suggested in Chapter 5: a demoralization of Labor ranks over the issue was noted by focus group participants in Chapter 9.
We saw in Chapter 7 how Latham’s national interest arguments appealed to many who
saw, for example, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as both a ‘national institution’
and a gain for ordinary people. But Latham’s stance helped to co-opt and moderate opposition to the AUSFTA overall. In Chapter 8 the role of ‘liberal internationalism’ in legitimising great power interventions was discussed. Appeals to national values blunted
and diverted Labor’s message on WorkChoices for some time, as analysed in Chapter 9.
The rhetoric of “fairness” however, could evoke exploitation and marshall Labor’s (and
the Greens) more militant and class conscious supporters, as evidenced in focus group
comments, without unduly alluding to class struggle for the benefit of more conservative and/or elite opinion: Labor’s ‘Forward with fairness’ policy document for the 2007
elections blames only the Howard government, and refrains from blaming any employ-
311 |
ers, for any “extremism” in industrial relations1.
As we saw in relation to the discourse of the Greens, and in opposition to war and free
trade agreements linked to the exploitative role of big capital rather than to a perception
of Australia as dependent, internationalist arguments have a limited but real impact in
contemporary politics. The contradictions between internationalism and left nationalism is implicit within the Greens, for example as discussed in Chapter 8 in relation to the
role of foreign troops in Afghanistan and Australian troops in the Pacific, but this will
perhaps not be tested further until the Greens gain more power.
The more general question arises of whether Labor and the Greens, or any avowed
forces for social change aiming for mass support, have no choice but explicit expression
of national feeling and national unity, given the points made in the previous section. As
discussed in Chapters 3 and 5, ‘new class’ theorising suggests that certain social layers,
comprising a majority, are locked into support for conservative conceptions of the nation, as opposed to a cosmopolitan new class. The ‘new class’ critique of the ‘multiculturalist’ left is somewhat analogous to Stuart’s analysis of the strident cosmopolitanism
of the Partai Ouvrier Français in the late nineteenth century. Stuart argues that Marxists
have generally failed to understand a basic human need for particularistic belonging,
and especially those related to attachment to place2. There are two objections here. One
is the specific point that attitudes about the nation, such as those regarding immigration levels cited previously, can change significantly in relatively short periods of time in
response to changed conditions or political struggle. Therefore attempts by progressive
forces to follow rather than lead opinion on ‘national’ (or indeed any) question, can be
a self-defeating surrender to conservatism. Secondly, and more generally, the evidence
cited and found here suggests that while national identity is clearly at present a central
part of most people’s need for belonging and for an ‘imagined community’, it is not at all
necessarily to the fore in terms of political actions and beliefs, as a desire for a clear alternative can override or put into the background an undoubtedly widespread nationalism.
The contradictory nature of comments from the same political formation and indeed in
1 Rudd and Gillard, ‘Forward with fairness: Labor’s plan for fairer and more productive Australian
workplaces’
2 Robert Stuart, Marxism And National Identity: Socialism, Nationalism, And National Socialism
During The French Fin De Siecle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). This is a similar
claim on the plane of political practice to the theoretical argumentt I have attempted to counter in this
thesis, Nairn’s claim, cited in chapter 1, that, “The theory of nationalism has been Marxism’s greatest
historical failure”, Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain 329
| 312
some cases the same person uncovered in this study, particularly the unreflexive nature
of the many comments relating to any national unity, supports the complex relations between rationality, interests and national belonging developed in Chapters 2 and 3. These
contradictory results also support the general nature of the nation developed in Chapter
3: a social formation with real commonalities of history and culture, but also comprised
of contending social interests, the more powerful of which are particularly interested in
representing their specific interests as national, and prone to use all ideological means
at their disposal to do so.
As noted throughout this thesis, political actors always have some room for manouevre but are also constrained by their social bases and historical constitution. I also
emphasised systematic differences of opinion between elite and popular opinion and
between those closer and those further from power in the Labor apparatus. These findings support the discussion of intellectuals in Chapter 2, as both a relatively distinct
social layer, and a variegated social category with complex relations with differing social
and political interests. In short, bourgeois and middle class interests affect the ability of
Labor and the Greens to consistently represent the interest of the majority, and the historically determined strength of nationalism and national identity are important aspects
of this state of affairs. My conclusions overall may mean that Labor and the Greens per se
may not ever escape the contradictions of nation and class, but this does not mean that
some other mass left political force could not do so. It is also not necessarily true that
the relatively recent phenomena of the nation will forever remain as the major site of a
human need to belong.
Suggestions for further research
I have aimed in this thesis for a triangulated approach, including the use of quantitative structural and attitudinal data. The use of such data was of a general, descriptive
nature, useful for indicating general trends particularly over time but less so for detailed
analysis of and making statistically proven claims about relations between aspects of the
social whole. Time and space constraints did not permit the development of inferential
statistical tests alongside the other methods used, apart from discussion of relevant past
studies. It would be a useful exercise, in further testing the conclusions of this study, to
use data from surveys such as the AES and AuSSA to develop scales of attitudes about
313 |
nation and class and to examine what correlations occurred with political positions and
affiliations and social structural factors. This could be carried out over a series of surveys
to develop a more detailed quantitative map than that presented here.
Throughout this thesis the reactive, relational nature of politics has been stressed, that
is, I have argued that the discourse and practice of particular political forces cannot be
understood without regard to that of their opponents. This seems particularly the case
for oppositional forces contending against government with clear agenda-setting advantages. Thus the history, social bases and contemporary nature of Australian conservatism has been discussed at some length. It would be fruitful however to extend some of
the sources of data and analyses that were in this project specific to the left, particularly
investigating local conservative activism through focus group discussions with Liberal
and National Party members.
The focus group method could be extended in other ways: as noted, it appears focus
groups or other in depth qualitative methods have not been used with local party activists in any previous research. Despite some encouragement on my part participants in
this study did not discuss their activity much at all, as opposed to the ideas motivating
their activity. A study focused on local party (or movement or campaigning group) activism discussing activity and social-political networks, could be highly useful in exploring the nature and role of grass-roots politics today.
| 314
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347 |
Appendix
Focus group letter and discussion guide
These two documents were given to branch secretaries before each discussion group
with a request that they be distributed to those likely to attend the discussion.
Letter
Dear branch member,
I am undertaking research for my PhD on how notions of nationalism and national
identity affect Australian politics today. As well as looking at the statements of political
parties and other organisations and commentators and examining opinion surveys, I
am conducting ‘focus group’ discussions with grassroots members of political parties,
which I hope you will agree to participate in.
These focus group discussions will be similar to an everyday conversation among a
group of people, with the addition however of a moderator who will introduce discussion points. Please find attached a list of these, as well as an Informed Consent form
that all those wishing to participate will be asked to sign. It is envisaged that the one-off
group discussion will take place in a mutually acceptable venue, if convenient attached to
a regular meeting time of your party branch, about which I will liaise with your branch
secretary. The discussion will be recorded on audiotape. It would take about 60-90 minutes, but I am happy to provide appropriate refreshments as some recompense. I think
you will find it quite interesting to take a ‘big picture’ look at what motivates and informs
the political involvement of you and your colleagues.
Participation in the study is strictly voluntary and your confidentiality is assured by
the following measures: all information on the recruitment process will be kept only by
me and will be destroyed at the project’s conclusion; tapes of the discussions will be keep
for 5 years under secure and confidential storage at the University; you are free to withdraw from the discussion or the study at any time, and at any time can choose whether
| 348
to have your comments included in the transcript or not; you are free to comment, or
not, on particular discussion points; in the transcript of the discussion, individuals will
be not identified, the exact party branches will not be identified (only the general area),
and if necessary the transcript will be modified to remove possibly identifying names,
places or events; while it may be relevant in the thesis to state some general information
about the participants in your group, such as range of occupations and ages, no specific
comments will be tied to any such potential identifiers. As a final point, it is suggested
that you keep in mind the extent you want to disclose your views to people you probably
have an ongoing relationship with.
My research is being conducted under the supervision of Associate Professor Baden
Offord and Dr. Rosemary Webb, who are members of Southern Cross University’s
School of Arts and Social Sciences. If any issues or questions are raised as a result of
your participation in this research please contact:
Dr. Baden Offord, phone 02 6620 3162, email [email protected]
Dr. Rosemary Webb, phone 6620 3615, email [email protected]
The ethical aspects of this study have been approved by the Southern Cross University
Human Research Ethics Committee. The Approval Number is ECN-06-103. If you have
any complaints or reservations about any ethical aspect of your participation in this research, you may contact the Committee through the Ethics Complaints Officer:
Ms Sue Kelly, Ethics Complaints Officer and Secretary
HREC, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157 Lismore, NSW, 2480
Telephone (02) 6626-9139 or fax (02) 6626-9145, Email: [email protected]
All complaints, in the first instance, should be in writing to the above address. All
complaints are investigated fully and according to due process under the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans and this University. Any complaint you make will be treated in confidence and you will be informed of the outcome.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Fredman.
349 |
Discussion guide
The following are questions that should be covered in the discussion. The moderator
may need to adapt the questions in light of how the discussion proceeds, but the aim is
to encourage contributions from as many participants as possible about as many issues
as practicable.
1. Could everyone please briefly say what their occupation is, and how they came to be
involved in the [party].
2. When different issues come up in political debate it’s often asked, “What is in the
national interest?”. More generally, issues of national identity, and Australian values,
have been discussed a lot in recent years in relation to many political issues. Does
your party have a broad vision of Australia’s national interest, values and national
identity?
3. Ideas about the nations are often related to particular symbols. I’d like you to think
about the Australian national flag, and also what’s known as the Eureka flag. What do
these flags invoke for you?
4. I’d now like you to nominate which political issues and recent events (those occurring this decade) you think have been important in terms of the national interest,
nationalism and/or national identity. I’d like you as a group to work out the, say, 5-7
most important issues and events without discussing particular ones too much, so we
can then go on to discuss each in turn.
5. I’d now like to go through each nominated issue or event and hear your responses
on how each relate to nationalism and national identity, and how these issues might
relate to your everyday political activity if this is relevant.
[The moderator should then make a 2-3 minute summary of the discussion and then
ask about the adequacy of the summary].
| 350

Nation, class and the Australian left, 2003-2007

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