It’s been a big week in Australian politics.
There’s been lots of different, and interesting, reactions to rise of Malcolm Turnbull, particularly in the group I would broadly define as the “left”. I’ve seen a lot of elation (which I don’t understand), despair, fear and anger — all mixed in to one.
Yet, some of the most interesting reactions I’ve seen have been a sense of relief that finally we’ll have a “functioning Government” again. The reactions here have varied too — from those who have been excited because Malcolm Turnbull will apparently bring back ‘rational debate’ to our Parliament, which will apparently make the Labor Party and Greens pick up their game, to those who have sighed with relief that finally they don’t have to be ashamed to call themselves Australian any more.
The message is clear — functioning Government is essential.
We’ve heard this message a lot before. In the Gillard years for example many tried to point to the amount of legislation Gillard’s Government passed as if that was a measure of her worth as a leader. People have often even pointed back to that when Abbott was in charge, trying to tear him down. Look, he’s not as productive as her! How awful!
What this all says is that, for the left in particular, it doesn’t matter what Government does, it just matters that it functions. This lines up with a lot of thinking recently, which seems almost entirely focused on the state giving us what we want. We need a functioning state, we are told, as the state is the only way to create real change. More important than that, we need good leaders! Because it is only through elected leadership that we can create change. That is why Abbott’s Government was so bad — it was not that he was ideologically problematic (although that was obviously the case), but rather that he made a “shambles” of it. He made the state look back, and there seems to be no worse crime than that.
It is this thinking that puzzles me. The fact that Abbott’s Government was a complete and utter shambles was one of the best things about it. Not only did it mean that he was unable to pass his agenda, but it highlighted to the broader community how inept our political class has become. Abbott was great at highlighting just how disconnected our politics has become from the general population.
So, I just don’t think I can get excited about Turnbull reinforcing the value of the state again. Despite all the strange hopes of some of our big progressive organisations Turnbull is not going to make this Government any more left wing. He will be extremely anti worker, anti environment, anti refugee, anti social services — he will be the man we should be fighting against.
What that means is that what we may get — if the left is right — is a Government that is just better at implementing a right wing agenda. Why is that worth celebrating? Why do we want a functioning state if that means a state that continues to attack the general population. Wouldn’t we rather a Government that is an embarrassment, and take pride in the social movements that build up to fight against it?
The state is not the be all and end all, and it being ‘functioning’ is certainly not a measure of the worth of our society. In fact it could be seen as the opposite.
The left today: defending the state, even when it’s at the expense of the general population.