Before we all plunge into electioneering mode I would like to say a few things about the piss-poor political choices available in Australia, as well as the piss-poor political discussions that we are all about to engage in. I am being inclusive here. In the coming months I will talk a lot of shit, and so will you. It is compulsory. So, before we once again begin hurling shit at each other, I would like to take a moment to step back from the impending shitfight and clearly acknowledge that we are being very badly served by our current political and media environment.
It is so easy for me to like Albo and hate Dutton. Really really easy. Dutton is particularly icky. There is so much not to like. Whereas Albo has the air of an affable deputy headmaster. So, I find it dangerously easy to believe that Albo is simply doing the best job that he can, under the circumstances.
However, we all similarly find it easy to like Albo and hate Dutton (or vice versa) because we have all been conditioned to react in such a fashion. Personal assessments regarding the personality of a politician have come to act as an alias for engaging in substantive consideration of policy or current circumstances. Instead of being enlightened by our media channels we have been trained to at once repeat one or another well-worn yet largely pointless argument. And so it comes to pass that decades of partisan bullshit standing in for news has acclimatized us all to talk about political and economic dynamics as if we are blithering idiots. But it is difficult to not react like a rabid Pavlovian dog when you have been trained all your life to react like a rabid Pavlovian dog.
For the last half a century the clearly and triumphantly partisan media outlets in Australia have provided us all with only a very few selected narratives to use as explanations for everything. And as we have all heard these (often nonsensical and inevitably partisan) explanations repeated, continuously and incessantly, over and over again, the fact that these arguments are nonsensical is now simply ignored. It is presented as how we do things here: in other words, the Aussie consumer of ‘the News’ is ever invited to engage in our ongoing political discussion, by either shutting the fuck up or by correctly parroting one-or-another party line.
Some of our discussions relating to governance have even become so rarified and detached from reality that we need to put them in a separate section of our newspapers which we label ‘Economic News’. Apparently, you have to be especially well-trained to work as an economic commentator in our media, as the economic sphere plays by ‘a different set of rules’. Which is quite evidently the case. When considered carefully, almost all of our ‘economic’ discussions continue to feature wrongheaded and demonstrably false propositions that have been long discredited by events in the real world. Yet while these ideas have been abandoned by intellectuals and academics, politicians and media commentators continue to parrot a host of inanities. So, the coming election will feature discussions in which all the participants will pretend that:
- Increasing taxes on the rich and on corporations is unpopular;
- cutting personal tax rates will stimulate the economy;
- reducing regulations will lead to greater commercial activity;
- reducing taxes on corporations will lead to further investments and wage growth;
- further environmental regulation will inhibit exploration and investment;
- providing tax incentives for landlords will ease the housing crisis;
- increases in the welfare safety net are inflationary;
- imposing adequate taxation and excise levels on foreign corporations will lead to a lessening in investment;
- it is both equitable and sensible to have one health care system for the rich and another for the poor;
- it is both equitable and sensible to have one school system for the rich and another for the poor.
Etcetera.
Moreover, any conversation featuring any of these false presumptions will lead nowhere. It will slowly disintegrate into partisan bickering of an entirely predictable nature. Nevertheless, these many misguided arguments and false assumptions still currently power almost all the economic discussions in the media, and will certainly inform the policy discussions that will be engaged during the upcoming election. Which all serves to wedge out even the possibility of any well-founded and nuanced consideration of these many topics.
Why do the media treat ‘economics’ as being a separate project that must be discussed in dry terms that are utterly absent of abstract snowflake considerations such as ‘equity’ or ‘fairness’? Why do our ‘economic’ conversations always occur in a social and ethical vacuum? These questions are never asked in the mainstream media as the modern mythology of ‘economics’ cannot tolerate the idea that the economic health of the rich and powerful owners of capital in our midst should be assessed in accord with the same rules that apply to everyone else.
Consider how our staggered rates of taxation, as they apply to earned wages, are ever being closely examined and tweaked, yet the massive mountains of unearned capital are entirely ignored. Additionally, any mention of inherited wealth, or gross inequity, or fairness, will at once attract the charge that the speaker is engaging in ‘class warfare’. Or simply that they are being ‘rude’.
Thus, hundreds of billions of dollars of unearned wealth is currently being enjoyed by the very rich in our country yet this gross inequity is never discussed. We have been convinced by our media that it would be rude, or silly, or beside the point, to even ask why a person who inherits wealth can then live a life of luxury, even while others must work slavishly to support their indulgences. Then whenever the proposition that we might reintroduce an inheritance tax or a simple wealth tax is raised – by anyone – it is instantly shouted down and branded as being absurd, or impossible, or communistic. Even though these modes of taxation were considered to be essential elements in the Australian social compact right up until the last half a century. (Which, oddly enough, corresponds to just about the same time as the Australian press environment was being bought up in its entirely by right wing media moguls.)
So, we at last come to the pending election campaign. It will be a joke. We can all script the arguments that we will be allowed to engage in ahead of time. The journalists will set the tone and agenda and will dictate what can be discussed and the manner in which it can be discussed. Otherwise, we will be invited to shut up and piss off.
Our election campaigns have turned into a shallow neoliberal farce. The large political parties and their media henchmen will once again recycle the same tired old mythologies and narratives in an effort to outbid each other in offering ever more substantial tax breaks for the wealthy and the business sector, in accord with all sorts of utterly spurious ‘economic’ propositions. All while actively ignoring the massive and ever-growing wealth and service inequities in our country and further outlawing or shutting down any remaining venues for protest and dissent.
For the last fifty years the people who have been setting our political agenda have been politicians and media moguls. It has resulted in our current media environment which is all spin and no substance, and in elections where only nonsense is tolerated.
But while it is evident that we need to reclaim our media, that would require that we all shake off more than fifty years of Pavlovian conditioning. It would require a relatively self-aware citizenry who are willing to acknowledge that we are all a part of the problem. It would require that we all would have to vow to forgo taking cheap political shots and continually demonizing our political enemies.
So, in other words; we’re fucked.
Let’s just do it all again…
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I couldn’t agree more! Australian politicians have been very quiet on substantive issues preferring to give 30 second door stop interviews, Friday night press releases and confected ad hominem ad nauseam “gotcha” moments on trivial issues. Nobody is prepared to debate policy. Our politicians, along with the parasitic and obsequious main stream media have been hiding behind the US political media circus and only talking about Australian matters that don’t result in a critical response from prominent lobby groups (guess who?) for fear of loss of corporate donations and electoral unpopularity. The same scenario is currently being played out in Canada and the UK. The media runs the show at the behest of their patrons. Both journalism and politics need a radicle revamp in this country before the electorate begins to regain lost confidence in our democratic “governance” system.
If I was at all self aware, I would have included a line in the article urging anyone who reads my stuff to donate a small sum (five or ten dollars) to AIM. [There is a button somewhere above]
I suggest that we must all take a hit for equity and community by doing what we can, when we can. Why? I do it purely for selfish reasons. It makes it easier to sleep at night and look my daughter fair in the face.
I mean… just look around. How can it be that my generation has managed to screw the pooch so comprehensively?
PS – thank you very much Mr Gumley. You do seem much more positive about things than I currently feel. But then I cycle between cautious optimism and utter social and existential despair. Who knows where I will be next week? {see also https://doi.org/10.25918/thesis.263 which will be right up yr alley}
Also I would like to strongly associate myself with all yr musings Mr Hetebry. You seem to talk in paragraphs which stands out in a world of three word zingers; it is a delightful deviation from the norm.
Who controls the narrative?
The media is controlled by very wealthy people, even the ABC, although publicly owned is managed by very wealthy people.
To look to a redistribution of wealth, to increase taxes on corporate profits or to even consider taxing inherited wealth is considered theft.
Yet, the period of the greatest equality in the sharing of the wealth of our economy was between the 1950’s and into the 1980’s, where tax in wealth, whether it be higher wages and salaries or profits earned by business was high. We were then suckered into the Chicargo School of Economics trickle down theories embraced by the Reagan, Thatcher etc leaders and that included the Hawke-Keating government here.
Complaints from work mates when I was employed often centred around the rate of tax they had to pay on overtime earnings….I pointed out that their pay packets were still larger because of the work done, the hours worked. Just because you went up a tax bracket during that overtime work, doesn’t mean your take home pay got smaller.
And did you enjoy the extra money in the pay packet? Did it help to fund the new car, the dinner out with the new girlfriend? The holiday you are planning? Or were you somehow less well off because of the higher tax rate on the hourly rate plus 25%…or 50% when the eleventh hour of the day started. The argument defied logic.
Why should inheritance not be taxed? Those who have the greatest wealth have ensured that their offspring are also wealthy, and when the parents pass on to the great beyond, they cannot take their wealth with them, but pass that on to their offspring who already have more than they need.
I have loved the definition of good government being committed to the well being of the most needy of its citizens. And that can only be achieved through a fairer redistribution of the nation’s wealth.
PPS:
The things that really matter…
In the end the story,
is not about the fight.
The endless argy-bargy,
or the shouting in the night.
For in the heat of battle,
the reptile rules the fray,
and there’s rarely rhyme or reason,
in the things that we might say.
But when the dust has settled,
and the lizard slips away.
When we contemplate the many things,
that happened in our day.
The things that really matter,
aren’t discussed in any fight.
Or in the tittle-tattle,
about who was wrong or who was right.
The things that really matter,
aren’t about a ‘wrong’ or ‘right’.
They’re all about the wellbeing,
of the fighters in the fight.
Well put Dr JIMM
“Both journalism and politics need a radicle revamp in this country before the electorate begins to regain lost confidence in our democratic “governance” system.” Due to the fact there’s little to no chance that’ll happen, I think it’s too late.
If I may, I wish to extend my criticisms of both our politicians and journalists for the manner in which they have patently ignored the consequences of the disastrous health policies that have plagued our communities over the past 5 years. This is not about pro-vax vs no-vax. This about the manner by which narratives supplied by DARPA, (see links to US documents [email protected] ,”The CBRN PsyWar: Revisiting the question asked by Australia’s Senator Malcolm Roberts in August 2023 regarding the COVID Operation “), and certain Australian bureaucratic health luminaries, who blatantly manipulated both press and politicians to comply with the commercial interests of the medical-pharmaceutical industry. Personal sovereignty and civil rights were ignored. Small businesses and employment were decimated. Massive funds were raided from taxpayer sources without any investigative journalists uttering a squeak of alarm. eg; why was public money provided to construct a high tech vaccine manufacturing plant in Melbourne for big Pharma when that industry enjoys a multi-million dollar annual turnover?
Reputable science has now revealed that all the conspiratorial claims against “safe and effective” have been proven to be true, so why haven’t polies and journos come out with mea culpas? Because they work together in a mutually beneficial manner designed for self-preservation. We, the people can get stuffed!
Senator Malcolm Roberts has been the lone voice for the people on this matter in Parliament. There was no health crisis – there was a major crisis in truth telling.
Transnationally there are the same spectrum of issues and talking points to frame politics, but wilfully ignored by media:
Atlas Koch fossil fuels (inc. anti-environment, anti-renewables, climate/COVID science denial, pro-nuclear & faux free market) – cost of living crisis (cut budgets/taxes & ‘housing crisis’ etc, see Tanton) – Christianity (esp US, abortion, evangelicals) – intellectual dark web & manosphere (for non Christian blokes to denigrate centre, woke, education etc.) – Tanton greenwashing of bigotry (Fox & GB News, refugees, Islam, immigrants, population growth & migration policy).
Fossil fueled social-Darwinist nexus between Koch and Tanton Networks’ agitprop that targets busy media and politicians, who accept at face value and don’t question. Made easier if lacking critical literacies including maths/data, finance/economics and science/research process vs received knowledge and talking points for polls and horse race calling.
Here’s a take on local media by a Canadian consultant, and a local response:
‘Australian political analysis is rarely informed by global trends. Nothing that is happening to the Labor or Liberal electoral coalitions is happening in vacuum in Oz. We aren’t that unique as much as it makes our pundits feel comfortable to pretend we are’
Response:
‘What I really noticed is it felt shorn of any wider global context other than a fleeting reference to the UK election, esp as party system fragmentation & housing being a huge issue are not isolated to Oz. It didn’t grapple w/ whether #auspol is just catching up to the rest of the globe?’
One is still surprised at how little middle aged and educated Australians including elites, know about the outside world, or outside the Anglosphere; except for an occasional trip. Accordingly, they struggle to understand any issue of the day as they ignore or don’t know related offshore…makes a more pliable electorate and the media more important?
Never a truer article. Prepare for same old, same old arguments. The rich get richer and the poor can get stuffed. So much for the fair go we delude ourselves. Look at the policies and follow the money.