Tag Archives: #elections

Fact v Fiction in Public Discourse

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In an era of fake news, alternative facts, deep state conspiracy theories, absolutists and populists, “political truths” are wielded like linguistic weapons. Any form of dissent (or contrary evidence) is branded as “unpatriotic”, “undemocratic”, “unconstitutional”, “disloyal”, “treasonous”, “elitist”, or “subversive”.

“The Treachery of Images” (Painting by Rene Magritte, image sourced from Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

Experts are treated with scepticism, scientists with suspicion, relativists with disdain, pluralists with apoplexy. Anyone seen to be challenging the status quo is dismissed as an “enemy of the people”. The public is being co-opted/coerced into buying wholesale certain political claims and party agendas (often hidden), without any opportunity to subject them to independent scrutiny or fact-checking.

Facts and logic are often the first victims in this abuse of language in the exercise of public discourse. Political slogans don’t even bother to avoid or deny accusations of propaganda: “Yeah? So what?” is often the response.

With that in mind, let’s play semantics and semiotics! To begin with, some opening statements:

1. This is a red car. (Observation, and a Fact if we agree on what is “red”) *

2. Red is the most popular colour of car. (Statement of Fact, if proved statistically) **

3. Red cars hold their value more than green cars. (Opinion, but also a Fact if it can be proved statistically, and we agree on what “value” means in this context)

4. Red cars are better than green cars, but blue cars are better than red cars. (Judgement tending towards a display of bias and prejudice)

Depending on the positioning and messaging, #1-#4 could be used in various marketing and advertising campaigns to sell red cars (or in the case of #4, sell blue cars).

Now, here are two reasonably uncontroversial propositions:

  • “Traffic laws are important to the functioning of society.”
  • “Good government relies on the democratic will of the electorate, and adequate funding of public services via taxation.”

We can see from the way language and truth are mangled in the service of current political debate and social commentary, that “statements of fact” can be easily positioned as “expressions of opinion” (and from there manipulated into pejorative and derogatory accusations or subtexts):

1. Red cars are involved in more road accidents than any other colour of vehicle
(Anyone who drives a red car is more likely to drive recklessly.)

2. People who drive red cars don’t observe the speed limit.
(Anyone who drives a red car is either a libertarian or an anarchist.)

3. People who drive red cars fail to pay their taxes.
(Anyone who drives a red car is anti-government.)

4. People who drive red cars are subversives.
(Anyone who drives a red car is a terrorist.)

5. People who drive red cars are law-abiding citizens.
(Anyone who drives a red car is a conservative. OR: Anyone who doesn’t drive a red car is a criminal.)

6. People who drive red cars give to charity but people who drive blue cars give more.
(Anyone who drives a red car is a better person than someone who drives a green car but not as good as someone who drives a blue car.)

The combination of sweeping generalisations and over-simplification in public discourse can obviously distort meaning and generate distrust. For example:

1. What if all taxis are red? That might mean they spend more time on the road, and therefore are more prone to be involved in traffic accidents.

2. What if more sports cars are red than any other colour? That might mean their drivers are more likely to speed. Or that their owners have more money. Or they are status conscious.

3. What if people who drive red cars come from a specific socio-economic, sectarian or ethnic demographic? Even then, they won’t all agree on the same issues, and they will likely display a similar range of divergent, opposing and contradictory views as the drivers of any other colour of car.

Unfortunately, the current environment for political debate and public commentary is being reduced to a binary state, where nuanced and subtle argument is being sidelined in favour of polarised and partisan politics, where facts are not allowed to get in the way of some convenient diatribe. If only politicians were accountable to voters under the Trade Practices Act – although we may soon see election campaigns subject to misleading and deceptive conduct legislation.

* Colour can also depend on context, as these experiments demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFC7EyR1lhU

** It’s not actually true: https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/most-popular-car-colours

Next week: Business as Unusual  

Pre-election Musings

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At the time of publication, Australia is four days out from a General Election. At the time of writing, I have submitted my postal vote, as I will be overseas on polling day (May 18). I am certainly not going to call the result or predict the outcome, except to say it will probably be far closer than most people would have expected, maybe even a hung Parliament, with an even more fractious Senate. But I have to say that this has probably been the most difficult ballot I have had to complete.

Image sourced from The Donkey Vote

For one thing, I can’t see why either of the major parties deserve my vote. Plus, in my own constituency for the lower house, the ALP candidate has been disendorsed, so as a result, I have been denied the option of voting for the official opposition. (More on this disendorsement later.) (Meanwhile the only Green Party MP who sits in the lower house and who represents my constituency, labelled himself an “independent voice”. Does that mean he no longer represents the views of the Green Party?)

Why do I feel this way about the two major parties?

First, neither party leader inspires me – they are purely products of their political organisations and their respective factions, and display very few leadership qualities other than they probably know how to stitch together half-baked policy deals in their party meeting back rooms. I doubt they have ever had an original idea, and certainly not since they became the leaders of their particular factions, let alone leaders of their parties.

Second, both parties have simply been sloshing around tax payers’ cash – funding here, pork barrels there, sleights of hand all over the place. I agree that most areas of public services and infrastructure demand a rethink on their current funding models, and some deserve more money. But from what I have been able to glean so far, most of these funding commitments and/or budget re-allocations are mostly about headline amounts, and not measurable outcomes, assuming they have been properly costed in the first place.

Third, despite all the money on offer, there have been few, if any, announcements on more fundamental issues of economic and structural reform such as competition policy, productivity measures, innovation, startups, etc. Yes, there have been some financial and tax incentives thrown out to small businesses who take on more staff, or who invest in new equipment, but these are just the usual tweaks. And there has been very little debate about the need to review the design, delivery, quality and accountability of public sector services.

Fourth, and the one main thing that the major parties have in common, is that the only policy levers they seem willing to push/pull are continued fiddling about with tax rates, superannuation and industrial relations. All of which is counterproductive, as it just means the focus is on winners and losers, and the resulting class-war based “politics of envy” and crass take-downs of the “big end of town”.

So let’s talk about jobs.

Much of the money ear-marked for particular industries or service sectors is intended to support job creation. Where are most people employed in Australia? By industry category, the top sectors are: Health Care; Retail; Construction; Professional, Scientific and Technical Services; and Education. Most of which are destined to be the recipients of tax payer-funded largesse after the election. And while I agree that Health, Education and Public Infrastructure need to be adequately and properly resourced, innovation and the high-tech jobs of the future will more likely come from the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sector. (And $3m for a “Blockchain Academy” is woefully inadequate for long-term thinking and vision.)

But as should be obvious to anyone, industries don’t create jobs, companies do. And most people in Australia (70% of the working population) are employed by small to medium-sized businesses. Of the nearly 2.2m registered businesses, 60% have zero employees (mostly they are owner-operated sole traders, including self-employed tradespeople), more than a quarter of businesses employ fewer than 5 people, nearly 10% of businesses employ between 5 and 20 people, 2.4% employ between 20 and 200 people, and only 0.2% of businesses (c. 3,800 companies) employ more than 200 people. In addition, only 100,000 businesses have an annual turnover of $2m or more. Welcome to the long tail of the Australian economy.

As for the election outcome itself, it will largely be determined by swing voters in marginal seats. Five of the 10 most marginal seats are in Queensland. And with the Adani mine project being such a divisive topic, this one item could determine who takes government. And even if Labor wins a majority in the House of Representatives, the Senate will be even more split between minor parties, and whoever wins government will find it difficult to navigate the upper chamber. In my own state of Victoria, there are something like 30 party groupings and around 80 individual candidates standing for just 6 seats. Trying to research the minor parties and their candidates or their labyrinthine preference deals is virtually impossible, which cannot be healthy for the democratic process under the proportional representation system of the single transferable vote model.

The real issue, though, is that with 3-year Federal Parliaments, parties are in perpetual campaigning mode. There is very little long-term thinking or vision, while short-term compromises are the order of the day. All of which results in either total inertia when it comes to making any real structural change, or constant policy tweaking to keep ahead in the polls. All hot air and no momentum.

Finally, coming back to the disendorsed Labor candidate for the lower house in my constituency of Melbourne. The party was forced to act (albeit somewhat reluctantly and almost equivocally) when the candidate’s social media past caught up with him. At first, the party and its Leadership suggested that the 29-year old candidate should be forgiven his indiscretions because he was “only” 22 at the time said offensive remarks were posted. I think that argument is total hogwash. If you are not going to be held responsible or accountable for the consequences of your actions at the age of 22, then you should not have the right to vote, get married, have children, stand for election, serve on a jury, sign a contract or take out a mortgage because clearly you have not fully developed as a mature adult, and your capacity to think and make important decisions is obviously impaired, such that you cannot be relied upon to exercise reasonable judgement.

Next week: Trends in LegalTech

 

 

Revolving Doors At The Lodge

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Since his unceremonious dumping as leader by his colleagues in the Parliamentary Liberal Party, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull must be wondering why the party that spat him out twice (despite benefiting from his personal donations) accepted his membership in the first place. So adamant were his conservative enemies that Turnbull was “not one of us”, they were willing to sacrifice not only Turnbull’s status as preferred Prime Minister, but also his popular deputy, Julie Bishop, and their own preferred leadership candidate, Peter Dutton.

Turnbull’s farewell speech – image sourced from The Australian

All of which suggests Australian democracy (or at least, the version played out by our political parties) is seriously damaged, if not actually broken.

Turnbull is the fourth sitting Prime Minister to be dumped by his or her own party in less than 10 years (and let’s not forget he himself ousted his predecessor). This latest incident suggests that the problem is not with the electoral system, but with the party system that controls the management and exercise of political power – and with scant regard for the voters who directly elect their constituency representatives.

Here’s why I think party politics are the root cause of Australia’s current leadership malaise:

1. No legal or constitutional basis

Quite simply, political parties are neither mentioned in the Constitution, nor formally defined in any Act of Parliament. Their role in our democracy is entirely by custom and convention – in a way, we tolerate them as a “necessary evil”, because we are led to believe that Parliament cannot function without them. At best, Parliamentary parties operate under a license, one which should not be seen as a right, but as a privilege. And like all such licenses, this privilege should be subject to being revoked at the will of those who granted it – the electorate.

2. If our political parties were treated like corporations….

…. they would likely be hauled before the ACCC every time they broke an electoral promise, for misleading, unconscionable or deceptive conduct. Sure, circumstances can change once governments are elected – but should it be a requirement for governments to re-establish their political mandate before they make a significant u-turn? In fact, political parties are exempt from a number of legal provisions that apply to companies. Political parties may have a paying membership that determines policy, candidate selection and other procedural matters – but they are not directly answerable to the customers they purport to serve: the general electorate.

3. Our elected representatives are not even accountable to their electorates….

…. except at election time. The notion that voters elect parties into power needs to change. Voters elect individual candidates who stand for office. Even if a candidate aligns with a specific political party, there is no binding obligation on them to sit as a member of that party once they are elected. By switching party allegiance, elected representatives who cross the floor are being disrespectful of the same (flawed) party system that saw them selected to stand for election. But they are also disregarding the wishes of their electorate, who may have been convinced or persuaded to vote for them on the basis of their stated party allegiance.

4. Voters are increasingly excluded from choosing their Prime Ministers (and their governments)

Of course, we do not directly elect our Prime Ministers. The parliamentary convention is that the elected member who commands a majority in the house of representatives is invited by the Governor General to form government. The parliamentary custom and practice is that the leader of the parliamentary party that holds most seats becomes the de facto leader of the government, and hence Prime Minister. Increasingly, the largest party bloc may not command a majority. So formal and informal coalitions have to be formed, often between competing political parties, to enable minority government to function. Such alliances may be politically expedient, but they cannot be said to represent the will of the people, if we assume that the electorate is expected to vote along formal party lines. Besides, if the party system is to retain any credibility, shouldn’t voters be entitled to expect that the leaders of the parliamentary parties, which they have (indirectly) elected to lead that party, should continue to lead unless and until they have been voted out by that same electorate?

5. Voters are not even consulted when Prime Ministers are rolled mid-term

Since Prime Ministers are not directly elected, voters have also been excluded from the process when political parties choose to roll their own Prime Minister (and effectively change the government without having to call a general election). Do the party factions who seek a leadership change bother to directly consult their paid-up local party members, or their own party voters, or the local constituents they purport to represent (regardless of which way they voted at the previous election)? To me, this represents a huge fraud on the population – and the party system is at the heart of this “madness”.

6. The failure of (party) political leadership

During the 2013 general election I commented on the lack of public support for the then leaders of both major political parties – part of what I saw as a broader failure of leadership across multiple public institutions that claim to represent our interests. Regardless of their party allegiances, the electorate seems increasingly disillusioned, if not repelled, by the party back-stabbing, treachery and disloyalty. The result is, we are poorly served by our elected representatives and the governments they form along supposed party lines.

7. Politics is not binary….

…. but the party system forces us to think this way. On most party-driven policy questions, the answer cannot be reduced to “for” and “against” – there are just too many shades of grey. This is especially true of the key policy area that seems to have brought down the last four Prime Ministers – climate change, energy and the environment.

First, Kevin Rudd abandoned the ETS, a decision which he later regretted. He claimed that the main actors in his own demise were the ones who agitated for this policy u-turn.

Second, Julia Gillard avowed that she would not introduce a carbon tax – and the electorate never forgave her for her later u-turn, resulting in her being dumped by Rudd.

Third, Malcolm Turnbull was unhappy at the direction Tony Abbot was taking the Liberal Party on climate change.

Fourth, Turnbull came a cropper on energy policy (linked to climate change), even though he had decided to capitulate to the right-wing views in his own government and Party.

You have to think that something as important as climate change demands a bipartisan solution – but the party system just keeps getting in the way.

8. “Power, corruption & lies”

Finally, in recent years we have seen a litany of corruption and other cases involving our major (and some minor) parties, and the factions within – a further cause of the lack of public trust and respect for parties, politicians and power-brokers. Add to this mix the relatively small numbers of directly paid-up members of political parties, issues of party funding and campaign donations, the party stuff-ups on disqualification due to dual citizenship, and the ongoing saga of MP’s expenses, a key conclusion is that the political party system is not conducive to modern democracy or the electoral, parliamentary and government processes. And while it is sometimes said that we get the type of governments we deserve, I don’t think any member of the general electorate would say they voted for the current situation.

Next week: Separating the Truth from the Facts

 

Infrastructure – too precious to be left to the pollies…

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With its 3-year Federal parliamentary cycle and fixed 4-year terms in each State and Territory*, Australia is never too far away from an election. South Australia and Tasmania are both currently in full election mode. Victoria doesn’t go to the polls until later this year, but the informal campaigning (rather like a phony war?) is already underway. And although the next Federal election is not due until 2019, the stump speeches are already being wheeled out.

Fiction imitates (or even predicts) fact in ABC TV’s “Utopia” (hard hats obligatory)

With so much focus on “infrastructure”, it’s going to be a bumper year for hard hats, hi-viz vests and photo opportunities in front of big “stuff”. It’s just such a shame that even with the real life Utopia, Infrastructure Australia (and respective statutory and quasi-independent bodies in each State), so much of the decision-making is left to politicians. Because this “stuff” is far too important to be left to the short-term priorities, self-serving tactics and party preservation shenanigans that most of our elected representatives are forced to succumb to.

Hot infrastructure topics this time around are energy (especially in South Australia), water (Murray Darling Basin), resources (what do we do after the mining boom?), and the call for “jobs” linked to putting up or digging up “stuff”.

I understand that we need employment opportunities both sparked by, and as a driver for, economic stimulus. But there has to be more than simply creating short-term jobs on unsustainable projects (Adani, anyone?). Of course, one could argue that the powerful construction and mining unions (and their infrastructure owning superannuation funds) have a vested interest in maintaining this trajectory.

But if these projects need to take on long-term debt, with the 3 or 4 year election cycles, you can see how difficult it becomes to manage budget priorities. Worse, incoming governments may strive to cancel, overturn or curtail projects of their predecessors, which won’t endear them to the private sector companies (and their banks) who have successfully bid on the contracts.

Roads represent a large chunk of the infrastructure “stuff” in my own State of Victoria, and are already shaping up to be a key election issue (at least in the minds of the parties). For a major city that still doesn’t have a dedicated train service connecting the CBD to its ever-growing international airport, Melbourne probably needs fewer roads, and more planning (especially as we move to ride-sharing and self-driving vehicles). Besides, while we are in an urban and population growth cycle, given the rate at which some of the current new roads are being built, they will be under-capacity before they are even finished.

I would argue that there is just as much demand to upgrade and refurbish existing infrastructure, (which will probably generate just as many employment opportunities) rather than feeding the insatiable demand for shiny new toys. Or revisiting (and even restoring) some “old” ideas that might actually make sense again today, such as the orbital railway concept connecting Melbourne’s suburban hubs. Sure, we have the new Metro Tunnel project under the CBD, and this may lead to extensions to existing suburban services, and even the airport itself. But future projects have not been scoped, and are subject to prevailing party ideologies (not to mention the NIMBY brigades…) – rather than serving  the interests or greater good of the population (and environment) as a whole.

Finally, some sobering news came out of the UK recently, where London is actually experiencing a decline in passenger numbers on public transport. There have been a variety of explanations for this drop (the first in more than 20 years) – from the threat of terrorism, to new work patterns (more people working from home); from changing lifestyles (more Netflix, less Multiplex), to the “on-demand” economy (more Deliveroo, less dining out).  With fewer people likely to commute to the CBD (40% of the population will have self-directed careers), governments, their infrastructure boffins and their policy wonks will need to think about what this does actually mean for roads and rail…. and how much longer must I wait for the NBN in my suburb of Richmond (and will it already be obsolete by the time I have access)?

* For the breakdown see here.

Next week: Blockchain, or Schmockchain?