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GUSNOTE: NOT BEING FAMILIAR WITH THIS SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY, I HAD TO DIG AROUND TO FIND A MODERN INTERPRETATION. FROM THE NEW YORKER:

There’s cleverness in Ralph Fiennes’s adaptation of “Coriolanus” but little beauty. It would be an insult to prose writers to say that his filming is prosaic rather than poetic; rather, the movie is filmed merely functionally. Fiennes updates the story—of a great and proud Roman warrior whose contempt for commoners results in his exile, where he makes common cause with the city’s enemies, the Volscians, and prepares to make war on Rome—to a current-day “place calling itself Rome” (a reference to John Osborne’s 1973 adaptation; also, a place where Serbian graffiti is legible on walls).  

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/notes-on-coriolanus

“Your affections are a sick man’s appetite ... a strange [petition] to break the heart of generosity.” 

– Coriolanus, Act I, by William Shakespeare

BY Barry JONES

Australia is one of a handful of nations where the concept and practice of liberal democracy can survive, but only if citizens are prepared to fight for it. In the United States it may be too late.

In November 1992, in my John Curtin Memorial Lecture in Fremantle, I raised the subject of binary issues and spectrum issues.

I argued the causes that involve people in politics, deeply and passionately, for life, are generally binary issues that produce an unambiguous “Yes” or “No” answer.

Spectrum issues are contextual, where parties and governments differ about how far to move along a continuum. Nobody is going to argue a case for worse schools or worse healthcare. Therefore, these are spectrum issues, in which the argument is simply about how much money is to be allocated and if it is to be centrally administered or dispersed.

In the past few decades, where there has been bipartisan support for free-market economics and a managerial approach to running governments, parties have become risk-averse and serious policy debates are avoided. In addition, political parties are increasingly stacked with apparatchiks and careerists.

Now there is a thorough rejection of evidence. Testable propositions are often displaced by tribalism, harvesting fear and rage and the domination of opinion.

Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024 was essentially based on performance, performance, performance. His dominance at public rallies electrified his supporters and maddened his opponents. He never answered questions directly or explained what his assertions were based on, or how they would work.

Trump’s agenda, constantly repeated for a decade, and again put into action since his second inauguration, is entirely binary: Get out of the Paris Agreement on climate change; drill, baby, drill; leave the World Health Organization; make Greenland and Panama part of the US; proclaim the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America; determine there are only two genders, male and female; restore male hegemony; impose high tariffs as a trade weapon; pardon all those convicted after the Capitol Hill insurgency in January 2021; promise never to have mandatory vaccinations.

At Trump’s second inauguration, other than former presidents, pride of place was given to a gaggle of tech billionaires, including X owner Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew, Google’s Sundar Pichai, former Alphabet president Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook of Apple. All applauded Trump’s rejection of “fact-checking” on social media.

Australian billionaires Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt were excluded when the sun failed to shine and the event was transferred to the Capitol Rotunda. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, former British prime minister Boris Johnson and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage were there, but French President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz were not invited. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was a surprising absentee.

“Technofeudalism” is a useful coinage by the Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis in his book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. He points to the global influence of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform that has 1.95 billion regular users worldwide and 170 million in the US, more than the combined vote for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

In Australia, TikTok claimed 9.7 million regular users last year. Facebook had 16.6 million and image-sharing platform Instagram had 13.9 million. Millions of Australians are entirely dependent on social media for self-identification, reinforcement and confidence.

Past experience shows that voters respect, but don’t necessarily like, leaders who tell them what they don’t want to hear – and then explain why. This was true of Hawke and Keating on tariffs, Keating on Indigenous land rights, and John Howard on guns and the GST.

Figures for active members of Australia’s major political parties are elusive, but 30,000 would be a fair estimate.

The abolition of capital punishment is a paradigm example of a binary issue, a major factor in recruiting members as diverse as Peter Walsh, Steve Bracks, Jim Bacon and Tony Burke to the Labor Party in the 1970s. Some commentators would regard capital punishment as a peripheral issue, others as a core belief.

As I told the Labor National Conference in January 2004: “I am relieved that the abolition of the death penalty has been a settled ALP policy for a century, one of its core beliefs, because there might be some difficulty in getting a principled policy up now if the opinion polls did not support it.”

Getting out of Vietnam and recognising the People’s Republic of China, both binary issues, recruited many young people to the ALP. In the 1966 election, Labor lost a string of seats by taking an unpopular line on the Vietnam War. This, however, gave it a moral base that made the party competitive in the 1969 election and helped Gough Whitlam win in 1972. Should Labor have avoided the moral issue and played safe in 1966? To have done so would have jeopardised its long-term recovery.

In 1979, my electorate of Lalor was the most Catholic in Australia. Now, after several redistributions, it is the most Hindu. I exercised one of my very rare free votes in March 1979 to vote against a motion to end entitlement for medical benefits for elective abortions. I was not exactly an enthusiast for abortion but, as I said then, it seemed “absurd that the only all-male lower house in any national parliament in the world should be pontificating about what rights the other sex should have over their reproductive capacity…”

Despite my position, which was at odds with Catholic doctrine, in the October 1980 election there was a swing to me of 16.8 per cent, the highest recorded in any Australian electorate. The conclusion I drew from that was that being frank with electors and convincing them of your integrity was more important than doing what they wanted.

A major binary issue in the March 1983 election was a commitment to use Commonwealth powers to prevent flooding of the Tasmanian wilderness area, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where the Liberal state government proposed damming the Franklin–Lower Gordon wild rivers. Labor’s stance was unpopular in Tasmania and the party held none of the state’s five seats in the House of Representatives until 1987. However, the Tasmanian dams issue won seats on the mainland and Doug Anthony, deputy prime minister under Malcolm Fraser, thought it was decisive in Bob Hawke’s victory.

In 1983 Bob Hawke’s electorate of Wills had the highest proportion of clothing and textile workers anywhere in the nation and the overwhelmingly female Clothing and Allied Trades Union was influential. Nevertheless, Hawke supported tariff reductions that threatened employment. He used his exceptional gift as a persuader to say to workers in sweatshops: “You’ll probably lose your job, but we’ll look after you, providing all the support you need, the economy will grow and your children and grandchildren will be more secure than you ever were.”

Polling indicates there is strong voter support for even tougher – read crueller – policies on asylum seekers unless the contrary is powerfully argued. Voters will recognise and reward courage, but they despise evasion.

Peter Andren, an independent who took a courageous line on refugees, won 75 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in Calare in 2001, a mixed rural and urban electorate west of Sydney. Many voters set a high premium on politicians showing authenticity, without necessarily endorsing their policies.

Past experience shows that voters respect, but don’t necessarily like, leaders who tell them what they don’t want to hear – and then explain why. This was true of Hawke and Paul Keating on tariffs, Keating on Indigenous land rights, and John Howard on guns and the GST.

Among Whitlam, Fraser, Keating, Don Dunstan, Bob Carr, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull there were passions for Graeco–Roman ruins, Mahler’s symphonies, Marcus Aurelius, chamber music, theology and collecting paintings. These are not majority interests but were accepted as being “authentic”. They did not attempt to ingratiate themselves as just being part of the mob. They were not.

As premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews imposed six “hard lockdowns” in Melbourne between March 2020 and October 2021. In all, the city was under strict restrictions for 262 days, the longest of any major city in the world. Andrews faced unprecedented attack, month after month, on talkback radio and in the Murdoch papers, where he was branded “Dictator Dan”. He imposed compulsory vaccinations, the wearing of face masks and remote learning for schools.

Nevertheless, in the November 2022 election, despite a small drop in Labor’s primary vote, the Andrews government was elected for a third term, winning an extra seat.

Andrews retired in September 2023 and his successor, Jacinta Allan, seemed warmer, more approachable, less authoritarian. The approval rating of the government collapsed, falling to 22 per cent this year, despite the toxic civil war inside the state Liberals.

Being likeable and approachable is not necessarily a vote winner. Decisive, assertive leadership is.

In the run-up to the federal election, Albanese is trying hard to be likeable and not offend anyone, especially Rupert Murdoch, the gambling industry, miners and industrial salmon farming. He offers a stereotypical spectrum agenda, essentially “Small Target, Mark II”. He is not a powerful advocate. If he was prepared to say “Yes” to saving the planet, taking stronger stands against fossil fuels, and persuading voters that external factors and disastrous taxation policies have made housing costs among the world’s highest, he would re-energise the progressive base and sound like a leader. And he must say “No” to lying about race.

Peter Dutton only pretends to be likeable, but he concentrates on binary issues: nuclear power, rejecting Indigenous demands for a Treaty and truth-telling. To do so, he relies on assertion and misinformation. He presents issues as a choice between X and Y and insists he is the only politician brave enough to take this decision.

If the election is called early, Dutton is likely to win, given that Albanese has refused to take a stand on just about every issue so far. If the prime minister can channel the courage and fight of Whitlam, Hawke or Keating, however, he can turn public opinion around in time for a later poll and produce a different outcome.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on February 1, 2025 as "The case for bravery".

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/02/01/the-case-bravery-and-frankness-politics#mtr

GUSNOTE: DO WE END UP DESTROYING WHAT WE HAVE?

... I saw him run after a gilded butterfly,

… and when he caught it, he let it go again, and after it again, and over and over he comes, and up again, catched it again. Or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it.

... O, I warrant it, how he mammocked [CRUNCHED] it!

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE SINS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…