Shortly after the shock of the narrowest of election victories in 1961, Robert Menzies started to bring in some new policies.
A member of his Cabinet complained, “”But they’re Labor Party policies.”
To which Menzies is reputed to have replied, “”Yes, I know. Half the people voted for the Labor Party.”
Will John Olsen in South Australia have the perspicacity to carry off a similar Menzies trick? It must be said at once, of course, that he does not have the Menzies wit.
Of more import, will John Howard see the pertinent lessons in the South Australian result. So far, he has articulated only the very obvious lesson that disunity is fatal in politics, and has done so in a very self-serving way. He said the South Australian result was the price of “”infighting” and “”internal brawling”. It was a reference to Olsen’s undermining and capture of Dean Brown’s leadership of the party 11 months ago. But it was also a message to his own colleagues. First, to the Two Peters (Costello and Reith) that leadership batons must be kept firmly in the knapsack. Howard of all people feels that leadership brawls are a recipe for staying out of power. But secondly, it was a warning to others in both the ministry and outside it to remain united on policy matters. In other words, do not dissent from the Howard view of the world (by threatening to cross the floor on media ownership, for example.)
So, the lesson Howard is preaching to his colleagues is, “”Don’t cross me or you will be in Opposition or you could lose your seat”.
It is a self-serving lesson that completely misses the point. It is not disunity or leadership changes per se which causes voter antipathy, but the underlying failure to deal with the policy disputes that cause the disunity. After all, the Australian electorate voted Labor into government in 1983 just weeks after Bob Hawke toppled Bill Hayden from the leadership. But Labor through its factional-spoils system had worked out a method of containing the policy disunity.
So did Menzies. The Menzies trick was to stay in government by including dissenting views and working them through, rather than excluding them. At least then dissentients still feel part of the party and part of government and do not become constant dissidents.
Of course, Menzies has been accused of staying in power personally by banishing anyone of any talent who might challenge him, either to a diplomatic post or to the High Court, such as Spender, Casey and Barwick. That may be so. None the less, in a policy sense he brought together and kept together the several strands of the Liberal Party. These are: the social conservatives who believe in greater prohibition and regulation of social behaviour for the greater good of society; the small l liberals who believe in the right of individuals to fulfil themselves whether that is in an economic or social sense; and the manufacturing protectionists (mainly Victorians) and the agricultural free traders (mainly outside Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania).
The only common theme is an opposition to compulsory, large-scale unionism, and even that was surrendered by the Victorian protectionists for a time. Economic liberalism, laisser-faire economics and more recently economic rationalism have also been reasonably well represented in a party that applauds individual effort.
Menzies held them together. But since the mid-1980s the Liberal Party has vigorously suppressed, marginalised and expelled the small l liberals, especially in Victoria and Western Australia. The view of liberalism as a belief in individuals to pursue liberty and happiness in whatever misguided way suits them has been severely weakened in the Liberal Party. A weak remnant from South Australia (Chris Gallus and Robert Hill, and even he was denied a Reps seat) and Tasmania (Warwick Smith) is still limply waving the liberal flag. But in the major states, in Victoria (Ian Macphee and others), Western Australia (Paul Filing and others) and NSW (Chris Pulpick and others) it was sent packing.
As a result, not only has the Liberal Party lost one of its precious three strands, but it has lost the very strand that strengthened legitimacy and efficacy of the other two strands by subjecting their actions to questioning and debate without personal rancour in a way that is second nature to small l liberals.
It is like old land-line telephone wire that had just one copper wire surrounded by steel wires. Sure, the steel wires were strong, but the message did not get through without the copper one.
Without the small l liberals, John Howard’s “”broad church” is in fact a narrow nave.
Worse, it is a philosophically contradictory one. The present Liberal Party applauds individual freedom, action and responsibility to pursue money in the marketplace, but deplores individual freedom and action to smoke dope, gamble, display lewd artworks, debate, contradict and argue. The economic belief does not translate to the social field.
The exception in the Liberal Party at present is Jeff Kennett. He is an individualist in both the economic and social spheres. For Jeff, you can make a million bucks, gamble away, smoke dope and view Christ immersed in piss.
He is on philosophically consistent ground. Sure, he may be a majoritarian — you get elected and get on with it until you are thrown out at a subsequent election and that may eclipse the small l liberal aspect of his individualism, none the less the philosophic consistency enables him to get away with the worst aspects of his majoritarianism.
Howard, on the other hand, is in a more difficult position because of the contradiction between his economic and social philosophy. It is a more difficult task to resolve the two into a political platform without personal friction, the more so in the absence of social liberals.
The point for the Liberal Party is not that disunity is death, but that a failure to allow a range of policy options, wider debate and dissent on occasional individual issues inevitably leads to policy weakness and public disaffection which in turn feeds disunity and enables the pursuit of personal ambition. The horse comes before the cart.
Of course, it is easy to point to Menzies, who lived in an easier, less fluid time, and say copy him and you’ll be all right. Nowadays we have an almost ingrained disillusion and pessimism to deal with, especially against the major parties.
If so, we should ask what is the nature of this disillusion? Why is it there?
Is it because people would like to trust governments to do the right thing issue by issue but have found for the past quarter century that people in major-party politics have washed their hands of that role and engaged in too many deals behind closed doors on policy formulation with pressure groups, factions, minority groups and consultants having a greater say that the people we elect to represent us doing precisely that?
When it is compounded by individual rorting and self-aggrandisement, of course disillusion will set in.
John Howard has missed the lesson of South Australia. He has mistaken the symptom of a leadership change as the cause for voter revulsion. And instead of heeding the underlying lesson himself, he has taken the superficial lesson and used it to lecture and threaten his colleagues in the very self-centered, survivalist way that voters are rebelling against in their politicians.
Small wonder South Australians voted in record numbers for the party whose slogan is “”Keeping the Bastards Honest”.