Category: Blog posts

A little while ago I posted a piece called Are we wasting our time on denialism. My basic thesis was that most of the energy fighting climate change denialism was wasted energy – energy we could be putting into fighting the fight for good climate policy. Finally getting around to reading the latest copy of The Overland Journal I have managed to complete the piece Beyond Denial by Philip Mirowski, Jeremy Walker and Antoinette Abboud. They go into this issue in much more detail, and so I think it is worth a review.

If we think about the climate movement globally at the moment we can see two key themes – the vast majority of energy is spent either in defending climate science, or alternatively fighting for market-based mechanisms to solve the problem. We fight for climate science and then talk about carbon pricing mechanisms as a way to deal with the issue. For Mirowski, Walker and Abboud this has put the movement in dire straights – one where climate denialism is growing, and the market-based solutions being proposed are not cutting emissions. Authors such as Robert Manne in the Monthly, Nick Feik in the Age and Clive Hamilton have all argued similar positions. But according to the authors there is a bigger problem:

While we agree that the situation is indeed dire, we want to highlight another dimension to the tragedy: the unacknowledged dominance of neoliberal ideas across the spectrum of acceptable climate change.

The authors argue that the three most dominant elements of the climate debate; denialism, and the proposed solutions of market-based solutions and/or geoengineering show the dominance of neoliberalism in the climate change debate.

We think most people on the Left don’t full realise that the phenomena of science denialism, emissions trading and geoengineering are not in fact unrelated or rival panaceas but rather constitute together the full neoliberal response to global warming.

The reasons this array qualifies as neoliberal are twofold. First, they all originated from within think tanks and academic units affiliated with the neoliberal thought collective; second, the net consequence of all three is to leave the problem not to the state but to the market. Denialism buys time for the other two options; financialisation of the carbon cycle gets the attention in the medium-term; geoengineering incubates in the wings as a techno-utopian deus ex machine  for when the other two options fail.

It makes sense. Neoliberalism can easily be argued to be the dominant political structure of our time, and it therefore makes sense that on an issue such as climate change neoliberalism would play a major role. Mirowski, Walker and Abboud make this argument extremely well. They argue that neoliberalism has see a shift in the definition of ‘the economy’ to one in which ‘the maket’ is seen as the omniscient arbiter of truth. In doing so, the market has become the key indicator of defining what is right and what is wrong – the market knows all and provides all solutions. It is therefore up to the market to make the decision on how to respond to such an issue as climate change.

What is interesting, and potentially different about climate change however, is that neoliberals have managed to use the issue to reinforce their own ideals, and bring the left along for the ride:

At each step along the way, the neoliberals guarantee their core tenet remains in force: the market will arbitrate responses to biosphere degradation because it knows more than any of us about nature and society. As a bonus, some segments of the Left, operating under the impression they can oppose one or more of the neoliberal options by advocating another – that is they might think they can defeat science denialism or geoengineering by advocating emissions trading – end up as unwitting foot soldiers for the neoliberal long march.

In other words, environmentalists have become ‘neoliberals on bikes’, becoming unwitting foot soldiers for neoliberalism and dooming our world to a point where geo-engineering becomes the last and only option available to save us from climate change. And Mirowski, Walker and Abboud provide an excellent analysis of how this is playing out (it is hard to cover it all in this piece). However, unfortunately this is where the critique seems to end. Whilst their analysis is great, I feel like it lacks that next step – how we deal with it. Now, don’t get me wrong – they do go somewhat into the failure of environmental neoliberalism – the failure of emission trading schemes in Europe and New Zealand and the terrible potential solution that is geo-engineering. But I come out really questioning how we can defeat these ideas. The authors provide a very quick solution at the end:

The way out of our current impasse involves a serious reconsideration of what ‘the economy’ actually is. Rather than allowing ourselves to be enrolled pragmatically in the neoliberal script, we need to remind ourselves that there are other policy options.

In doing so they suggest one policy solution:

For example, fixed high or rising carbon taxes applied universally to wholesale coal, oil and gas transactions deserve our serious consideration, as they might actually accomplish the effect of a ‘price signal’ and spur disinvestment in the ever-expanding fossil-fuel sector.

For me this is quite a confusing policy response after such an in-depth critique of neoliberalism – and it highlights to me some of the issues that we continue to face with neoliberalism, and importantly the continued economic-focus of environmental problems. Whilst I certainly agree that a high price on carbon is a better mechanism than an ETS, I don’t see it as part of the ‘serious reconsideration of what ‘the economy’ actually is’. In fact, in discussing the role it can play in accomplishing a ‘price signal’ it seems to me that it is just a different form of using the market to solve the problem.

And that is where the challenge lies. If we agree, as I do with Mirowski, Walker and Abboud that market-based solutions to global warming are not going to solve the crisis, how do we articulate a better response? I think they hit the nail on the head when they argue that a reconsideration of our economy is essential – but I think we need to delve into that issue in a much deeper way. This means fundamentally questioning not just the role of neo-liberalism in environmentalism, but neo-liberalism in itself.

I’m not going to provide any answers to that today, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot – so more to come.

Published in the Overland Journal, 30th May, 2013. 

I learn more about privilege from what I get wrong about misogyny than from what I get right about racism –Teju Cole

After reading Mia Freedman’s piece about Delta Goodrem’s ‘blackface incident’ (not sure what else to call it) a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t help but find myself agreeing. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘we are getting over outraged over the symbols of bigotry, and in doing so diverting our attention away from the real fights we need to have. And really, how offensive could that photo be?’

I’m glad I didn’t express my views at the time. As I watched the debate go on, I started to see that as a white man, I had not realised the impact of blackface. I did not know enough of its history and how offensive it truly was.

And then it clicked. The people trying to downplay the situation were the same sorts of people I would get angry at (as a queer man) when they tried to downplay Julia Gillard calling Christopher Pyne a ‘mincing poodle’ because ‘we know she’s not homophobic’. They’re the same ones who tell me to calm down if I get annoyed when I’m called ‘princess’ – because it’s ‘just a joke’.

In doing so, I learned a lot more about privilege, and more from what I got wrong about racism than from what I get right about queerphobia.

Freedman got herself into some hot water again yesterday when she tweeted in support of Eddie McGuire:

Eddie has an outstanding reputation for supporting equality and indigenous AFL players. His apology is sincere.

This time around I’m struggling to see the outrage. What McGuire said was clearly racist and he deserved to be torn a new one for it, but I think it is fair enough to say ‘he’s learnt his lesson, let’s be done with it’.

After all, hasn’t McGuire now learned about privilege from what he got wrong about racism?

In reaction to Freedman’s first piece, Sunili Govinnage argued that ‘Freedman didn’t encourage a conversation Australia very desperately needs to have. She ended it.’ Govinnage continued, saying that it ‘would be a good start if, for once, we can have a discussion about racism that doesn’t finish with a white-Australian proclaiming that we don’t need to have one.’

I couldn’t agree more. We need to have a bigger debate about privilege and bigotry in Australia. But for me, an important part of this would be how we can encourage people to learn from their mistakes about bigotry, and become part of a movement that challenges it. But I don’t think this is the debate we’re having.

The only way I can really describe much of our debate about bigotry at the moment is ‘outrage’: a thirteen-year-old girl sparks national outrage after calling Adam Goodes an ape. Stephanie Rice was hammered when she tweeted ‘Suck on that faggots’ after the Australian rugby union team beat the South Africans a while ago. Online sensation Destroy the Joint regularly takes to Twitter to publicly shame those who make sexist comments on their feed.

We are outraged at bigotry and we are willing to show it.

I’m not trying to play the ‘poor white boy’ here who believes that queers, women and blacks have now taken all the power and it’s white men who are now oppressed: that’s clearly not the case! But I don’t think this world of outrage is how we build a strong movement against bigotry – or help people ‘learn from their mistakes’ about misogyny, racism or queerphobia.

When I think about identity politics, or the collective fight against bigotry, I cannot help but think of it in a structural way. Our societies are built for white, straight, wealthy men, and we are all sucked into this hierarchy. This means that while individual instances of queerphobia, racism, and misogyny are clearly bad, they are part of a broader structural problem in society, which prompts the question – how do we challenge bigotry on a day-to-day basis as well as on a societal level?

I think the solution is to engage in a collective fight against bigotry, while also being willing to (respectfully) challenge it daily, and as part of a collective movement. And herein lies my problem. In this world of outrage, we’ve decided to focus on that second element, and in an aggressive way. Challenging bigotry has shifted from ‘Hey, that’s racist, you need to think about that’ to ‘You’re a racist fuck, the scum of the earth and because of [racist statement] you are now dead to me’. Delta Goodrem and Mia Freedman’s feeds were both full of it, and McGuire received a lot of it too.

And I understand why! Bigotry is awful, but I just don’t think this approach works. Instead of engaging with the structures and effectively challenging large-scale bigotry, we are creating a world in which those who say the wrong thing at the wrong time get eviscerated for it, and then completely locked out. In the meantime, the real structural bigotry often gets ignored.

While giving it to Alan Jones (rightfully) for his comments against Julia Gillard late last year, campaigns on issues such as access to abortion and freedom from violence struggle to get traction. Yet, in all of this debate around racism, the report from last Friday that showed that increasing numbers of Indigenous people are being both imprisoned and dying in custody seems to have been largely ignored.

Instead of doing the groundwork of building a collective, we are spending our time identifying those we think aren’t part of the collective and shaming them for it. If the targets were Tony Abbott, Jim Wallace and the like, I probably wouldn’t have a problem with it. But it’s not – it’s happening both to those who are building the bigoted structures, as well as those who are caught up in them.

We need to be able to have these debates about what constitutes misogyny, racism and queerphobia. At the same time, we need to question whether the debate we are having now is really that effective. When I think about this, I want us all to be able to ask that question, just like Teju Cole: ‘how can we all learn from our mistakes about bigotry?’

The world of outrage fails to do this.

A couple of weeks ago, Media Watch ran a lengthy segment on political disclosure, or when and how political commentators should disclose their political affiliations. Commentator Andrew Bolt decided to weigh into this debate last week, attacking Mamamia Editor Jamila Rizvi for not disclosing her political affiliations. As Bolt said:

How to disclose when you’re not disclosing:

Jamila Rizvi @JamilaRizvi
Editor at @Mamamia, columnist at @CosmopolitanAU, optimistic realist, feminist + former political staffer. Opinions expressed are mine + I’m not sharing. Hmph.

“Editor at @mamamia” should already be enough to tell you her political leanings, given those of her boss.

This should clear it up:

So, back to the non-disclosure disclosure. Whose political staffer was Rizvi?

Need you ask? The Rudd and Gillard governments’, of course.

Apparently if you are commenting on public policy publicly, and you are a member of a political party, you should always have to disclose.

As a member of a political party myself (The Greens) and someone who writes publicly on a range of issues, I have thought about this a lot. I have often felt anxious about the impact my party membership on my public commentary, and the impact of my commentary on my party. When I was the Convenor of the ACT Greens in 2011-12 I decided to always disclose my membership whenever I was published (it may not have always worked out that way). As an elected spokesperson of the party at times, I thought it was necessary to delineate my two roles and make it clear when I was, and wasn’t, speaking for the party. Today, as someone without any of those roles, I don’t always publicly declare my affiliation (although it is relatively well known publicly), and I’m not sure I should always have to. It’s not that I have a problem with it, but rater that I think the debate about public disclosure is kind of missing the point. Here’s why, and why I think it is important.

In our public debate I have noticed that we have placed ‘official politics’ – or that of the work of elected politicians and political parties – into a very special and weird space. Whilst those of us who identify as members of NGOs, scientists, economists etc. are seen to argue for an issue because they believe in it, we have a mindset that those identified with parties are only there to put party first. Jamila Rizvi clearly only cares about cuts to the public service because campaigning on that will help the ALP, and I only write to help get the Greens ahead. The moment you join a political party in this country you are tainted – forever tarred with a brush of being a politician who cares more about power than values.

And I can see how this idea has come around – I have discussed cynicism in our political system extensively (here and here). When you take such a cynical approach it makes sense to be cynical about members of political parties. It is then obvious to assume that everybody needs to disclose because they are only talking to benefit party power, and not to progress a policy ideal.

But, as an argument, or belief system, this is fundamentally flawed (the media having a flawed understanding of the internal workings of political parties is a constant frustration of mine). Because whilst the leaders of political parties may present a united front, whether we believe it or not, intra-party debates are always present. I have never met a member of a political party who has not got a passion for the issues, and does not pursue them fully within their chosen party.

And here is where the problem lies. Because as long as this cynical idea dominates our political debate, it is going to discourage involvement in our political system. It seems obvious to me that as long as we pursue the idea that political parties are a centre of political sameism, where membership is simply a source of financial income and the potential to create foot soldiers for the policy prescriptions decided on from above, people are not going to want to engage in the process.

But it’s worse than that, because this narrative also discourages active debate within parties, and in particular discourages that debate becoming public. I can just point to my own experience in relation to this. In an article I wrote last year I criticised the queer movement for what I called exclusionary tactics, in particular around same sex marriage. In doing so I pointed out the exclusion of people in poly relationships from the debate and the Greens were one target for criticism. I didn’t do this to attack the party, but rather as an opportunity to try to open the debate about this issue. But for the mainstream media (or in particular The Australian), it was an opportunity to find ‘a split’, and they ran with that in an article called ‘Greens Elitist on Wedlock’. We can see this happen all the time, whether it is the debate in the Greens over the Tasmanian Forest Agreement, the arguments in the LNP over Paid Parental Leave, or the vote in the ALP caucus this week over political party funding. If there is a debate, it is a split – and one that clearly opens questions about party leadership.

The point here is that we have created a misunderstanding of how our political parties work – we assume a group of people who have exactly the same positions and are only in a party to help gain power in a non-ideological world. If the party changes positions, so to would the members. And if there is a debate, it clearly is a major split that opens up massive questions about relevant party leaders. Declaring affiliation here therefore really isn’t the problem – it is the way we treat our political process.

For me, my political affiliation is just one way in which I aim to achieve my policy goals. It is not the driving factor, but instead a means to an ends. I am left-wing first, and Greens identifying second. For everyone else I know in a party, this is the same. Declaring affiliation therefore isn’t the solution – it is just a way to alienate people from an essential political process.

This weekend marked the 20th anniversary of when St. Kilda player Nicky Winmar lifted his jumper and pointed at his skin in reaction to racial taunts in the Saints match against Collingwood at Victoria Park. 20 years on and the debate Winmar ignited has unfortunately reared its ugly head once again, after Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes was called an ape by a 13 year old fan in their game against Collingwood on Friday.

It is hard to describe how disappointing this is. It was a terrible incident. But something much more disappointing happened on Friday. Earlier in the day the Australian Institute of Criminology released a report about Indigenous deaths in custody. The report is alarming at best.

Here are some terrifying statistics.

The report said that whilst only two-and-a-half per cent of the Australian population are Indigenous, Indigenous people make up 26 per cent of the adult prison population. This represents a doubling Indigenous people in prison over the past 20 years – a DOUBLING.

Since 1980 there have been 2, 325 total deaths in custody across Australia, with 450 of those being Indigenous people. 19% of deaths in custody in Australia over the past 20 years have been Indigenous people. And these numbers seem to rising. In 2009-10, 14 Indigenous people died in prison – the highest number on record. As more Indigenous people are entering prison, more are dying.

Let’s go back a little while and have a look at some more terrifying statistics. In a report that I doubt very few actually noticed (I certainly didn’t until the weekend), in March the United Nations ranked Australia number 2 un the Human Development Index. Take Indigenous Australians out as their own group however, and that number drops from 2 to 122. As The Stringer reported:

“The report stated Australians have the world’s fourth highest life expectancy in the world – 82 years. But this is not so for Aboriginal peoples – subtract 20 years from the Australian life expectancy average for Aboriginal peoples, and in some regions of Australia make that 30 years less off the average.

With education – in terms of number of years of schooling achieved and the standard of school performance – Australians are ranked second highest but that would not be the case for Aboriginal peoples who do not enjoy quality schooling in many semi-remote and remote communities.

Australia has the lowest suicide rate of the world’s top ten nations but Aboriginal peoples have the world’s highest youth suicide rates.

Nothing has improved since the 2011 United Nations State of the Indigenous Peoples report, “In Australia, an Indigenous child can expect to die 20 years earlier than his non-native compatriot.”

These aren’t new statistics. These aren’t new issues. But they are extremely confronting to me. I feel like I may end up coming across here as the ‘white boy with some middle-class guilt’ here. Maybe that is part of what I’m feeling. But at the same time I feel like it’s just useful to say something. Anything to help bring up this issue.

What happened at the AFL on Friday was disgraceful, and Adam Goodes should be lauded for the way he dealt with it. He has helped further the debate about racism in Australia that we desperately need to have. But, please, at some point, can this debate also include some discussion about ending systematic racial violence in this country? About closing the gap, ending poverty and getting people out of prisons?

I’m a white middle-class man. I can’t explain what it is like to be an Indigenous person in Australia. I can’t truly explain the impact of over 200 years of oppression. I can’t tell you what the solutions are, nor even come close to acting as though I can speak for Indigenous people. I’m not sure if I can progress this debate and do justice to it.

But the one thing I do know is that the systematic violence against Indigenous people in this country is shameful. I’d be delighted if we can finally have a national debate about it – one that actually deals with the over 200 years of oppression that continues today, and actually looks to tackle this issue.

Any ideas on how we can do this?

It is a peculiar part of our politics when politicians are routinely slammed for changing their minds. It is even more peculiar when it is the exact people who have been arguing for a change do all the criticising. But that is what we’ve seen from many after Kevin Rudd publicly came out in support for same-sex marriage on Tuesday night. For example, George Brandis claimed that Rudd’s announcement was politically motivated:

“What it tells you is that Kevin Rudd has not given up; Kevin Rudd is at it again.”

Others have hit Rudd for not making the announcement earlier, saying that he should have done it when he was PM. For example, Kieran Salsone started his op ed on the issue this week with:

CHEERS, Kev. I’m glad you’ve finally figured out that denying queers like me access to marriage isn’t particularly ethical.

These sorts of arguments are common. We hear about Julia Gillard’s ‘lie’ on carbon pricing, and Wayne Swan’s ‘backflip’ on the surplus. And, just like Rudd, Barack Obama was slammed by many for not supporting same-sex marriage earlier in his Presidency. Apparently, changing our minds, and our policies, when new information arises, or simply because we change our perspective on an issue is no longer acceptable.

Let’s get over the basics here. It is obviously ridiculous to assume that circumstances and minds can’t change and that our politicians can’t change with them. If it were the case then we would live in a completely static political world.

Despite this, I can see where it comes from. In a world in which politicians are forced to take their policies to an election every three years, the ‘they lied’ argument can be a very effective political tool. In cases like same-sex marriage I can also see why people get frustrated with the time it takes for people to change their views – I have experienced that myself.

However, I think we need to question our desire to jump on pollies when they change their mind. Whilst we may think that keeping pollies to their promises is important to democracy, the Kevin Rudd experience shows how it has taken has become quite destructive.

If we look at modern Australian politics I reckon there is one word to describe it; cynicism. We are all cynical – we expect the worst from our politicians. And we have some reason to be cynical – politics in many ways has become all about spin and a lot of substance has been lost. But at the same time, I think the public need to acknowledge their role in this process – we get to decide our politicians, and so it is therefore up to us to change our politicians if we want to.

I think this demand that people can’t change their minds is deeply part of cynicism. Instead of providing some decent analysis around how and why politicians may change their mind about a subject, we have become wholly cynical about their motives – that it is all political, and that they change their minds to suit political needs. The problem with this is that it creates an awful feedback loop – we become cynical about politicians motives, so politicians become more political about their motives, and hence we become more cynical etc etc.

Where this has become interesting though is when social movements play into this cynicism and I think the same-sex marriage movement is a good example of this. As a movement that fights for people to change their mind on an issue, it is often very cynical when people actually do change their mind. When I think of social movements, I think maybe there are two ways to create change – to defeat your opponents, or to convert them. Both are important. Yet, with this cynical approach to politics, we seem to have lost our drive to convert – if you have held a bad view once it is held against you forever and no amount of repentance is allowed to bring it back. The problem is that it inhibits change. If politicians know they are going to get slammed when they come out in opposition to a position they have previously held, even by the supporters of that position, why would they do it? The risks become too large, and without any cover to support change, it seems easier to stay in the closet.

I guess what this all comes down to in the end is an appaling lack of trust we have found ourselves placing in our politicians. As Stephanie Peatling said about Rudd:

“It is a failing of the political discourse in Australia that politicians are often not given the benefit of the doubt when their thinking on a particular issue changes.”

I couldn’t agree with Peatling more. We need to start taking responsibility for our lack of trust in politicians just as much as the politicians do. If we think people are backflipping for political reasons, that’s fine – let’s vote them out. But at the same time I think we need to break down some of the cynicism. Not everything every pollie does is for political reasons – people get into the game for genuinely good reasons. So maybe we can start treating it a bit like that as well, and we can engage in a proper debate about how policies can and should evolve.

This video has been doing some rounds recently.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJtjqLUHYoY&w=560&h=315]

Watching it made me think about my coming out, and people asking me, “when did you find out you were gay?”. It always bemused me – as if there was a date that I suddenly ‘figured out’ that I was gay. I decided to start responding “when did you find out you were straight?” It not only confused people, but I think it also got people to question some of their assumptions about sexuality.

I think lots of queer people have probably had this sort of experience. And in doing so I think many have framed their understanding around the development of sexuality wholly through that experience – sexuality is developed at puberty, you get given your label (gay, lesbian, bi or straight) and then that is what you get for your life. It’s not a choice. It’s a message that has even taken a deeply political tone – how often do you hear people say that sexuality is not a choice so therefore we shouldn’t discriminate against the gays and lesbians?

I think it is about time we challenge this ‘choice’ (or really non-choice) narrative. And as luck would have it, Charlie Anders, the authors of one of the latest chapters I’ve read in That’s Revolting, ‘Choice Cuts’ would happen to agree with me. What a great opportunity to mix a bit of a rant with a review at the same time. Anders goes straight to heart of the issue:

The involuntary queerness story is the linchpin of many queer peoples strategies to claim normality. “We didn’t choose this” becomes part of “We’re just like you in every other way.” Because, of course , if it wasn’t for that one difference, queer people would all be just like Republican hate-monger Orrin Hatch. Even the women.

For Anders, this seems like a very strange version of ‘pride’:

“Straight-acting” gays and “soccer-mum” lesbians always seem to be the ones who claim the lack-of-choice defense most vigorously. It’s no more our fault than a blink in response to a finger jab in the eyes. It’s always struck me as a weird version of pride. Aren’t people usually proud of their decisions and the things they’ve built for themselves? The implication of the “we’re just built this way” argument always seems to me that if queer people could choose, of course they would choose to be straight.

In fact, I don’t see this as just an ‘implication’. I think many queers believe it outright. The amount of times I’ve heard queers say “why would I choose this” is amazing – a form of internalised homophobia that whilst based in the idea that no one would want to live with such prejudice, actually facilitates a discussion around how awful it is to be queer. Of course this is something that has been inflicted upon us by a homophobic society – the idea that being queer is an awful thing to be stuck with – but there is also a bit of a political agenda here.

Because if we decide that ‘queerness’ is not chosen, we get given it at birth, and it is nice and simple, just like straightness, then it gets rid of all the scary queer stuff. It gets rid of the exploring your sexuality, and just says – you have a sexuality, and it is nice, simple, and vanilla. We’re saying, don’t worry conservatives, you shouldn’t feel threatened as us – we’re just as conservative as you, we’re just born differently.

Of course, this has it’s problems. Firstly, it says that we’re breaking the rules of society because we’re forced to, not because they’re shit rules. And in doing so, we’re only breaking them a little bit, not enough to freak you out too much. But do you know what? I want to break the rules – they are rules that need to be broken. As Anders states “I want to keep on being openly frivolous, breaking the rules for fun rather than out of necessity.”

But, it’s more than this, because it means that the queer community is once again limiting itself to a set of a few different options of acceptable identity. And one who chooses a ‘sexually deviant’ lifestyle is definitely not one of those acceptable sexualities. There can be no better example than this than the way actor Cynthia Nixon was treated after she said her sexuality was a choice. Nixon was quoted in a New York Times magazine a couple of years ago, saying:

“I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

The response was stunning. Wayne Besen, of Truth Wins Out, for example stated:

“Cynthia did not put adequate thought into the ramifications of her words…When people say it’s a choice, they are green-lighting an enormous amount of abuse because if it’s a choice, people will try to influence and guide young people to what they perceive as the right choice.”

Blogger Perez Hilton responded by saying:

We totally hear her out and true, we cannot define her “gayness,” but it wasn’t a choice for us. We were BORN gay. And millions of gay people around the world feel the same way.

Whilst both Bensen and Hilton framed their arguments around the impact on the queer movement, what they were actually saying is ‘you cannot express your identity how you want because it’ll freak out the conservatives’. As Anders says, it is the perfect way to exclude people:

It’s easy to make political arguments based on lack of free will. Nobody can really hold your identity against you if it was thrust upon you. That makes it easier, in some ways, to pus for nodiscrimination legislation, beacuse you can compare queerness to “inborn” traits like ethnicity.

It’s a lot harder to face up to opponents of queer rights and say, “Yes, I’m deliberately flouting your rules, because I like it.”

But whilst it may be easier to argue that we didn’t ask to be this way, it makes our coalition a lot smaller. You leave out people like me, as well as other potential allies.

I guess, in the end though, what this all amounts to is an level of self-hatred that needs to go. Being queer can be fucking awesome and we should bloody celebrate it. Of course, many people still face awful queerphobia and that can make life hard, but the problem here isn’t ‘being queer’ it’s the way people react to us being queer. And therefore when we say ‘we wouldn’t choose this’ what we’re actually saying is ‘we’re just as ashamed of ourselves as the straight community are’. Well, we shouldn’t be ashamed. We should be proud. I know I am.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott recently asked what the national disability insurance scheme was trying to achieve, and if it would impose a cost we could not afford. The council is behind the program, in assessing a key issue for national productivity and casting judgment on its fiscal prudence.

The Productivity Commission answered the question 18 months ago. The goal of the NDIS is to increase the economic and social participation, and therefore productivity, of 410,000 Australians with severe disability.

This is what John Della Bosca, the national campaign director of Every Australian Counts wrote in his op ed a couple of weeks called This Scheme Makes Business Sense. That’s right. The point of the NDIS is to increase productivity. People with a disability are only useful to our society if they are ‘being productive’.

Whilst NDIS supporters have used a range of arguments to promote the scheme, recent coverage has been dominated with the use of economic benefits to promote its passage. Following on from Della Bosca’s op ed for example, a segment in The Project in the same week focused almost solely on the economic benefits of the scheme as the reason for its passage. On the following Sunday, Peter Martin wrote a piece on the increase of the Medicare Levy, saying:

Some things are worth doing precisely for the reason that they will boost Australia’s economic performance. Whatever its other merits, the national disability insurance scheme is one of them.

I’m not going to say that helping people get into work is a bad thing. Of course work can have positive impacts (although as I’ve noted before we have to be careful is assuming that work is always a good for individuals). But the use of pure economic indicators to promote social reform is becoming all too consuming.

We can see these argument across the policy spectrum. The Productivity Commission is becoming an extremely influential Government body – having major influence in policy ranging from the NDIS to climate change. Our arguments about high-speed rail seem only to be able to focus on ‘return of investment’, as if mass public transport doesn’t have other benefits. And education reform now seems focused on ensuring all students can ‘get into the workforce’.

This is part of a continued neo-liberal agenda that puts the economic individual at the heart of policy. The negative impacts of this are clear.

First, if we focus entirely on economic output, we ignore people who may not be able to be productive in the way we desire in our society. Whilst the NDIS has the opportunity to help many get into the workforce, there are many others who may not be able to. Framing everything about economic output means that those who may not be able to ‘contribute’ to our economy have the potential to get left out. If you can’t be productive, you’re not worth providing assistance to – you’re not a worthy part of our society.

And this really opens up big questions about our public policy priorities. Productivity and employment are simply not ends in themselves – they are means to get to other ends our society desires. We need an employment system so people can work to get the resources they need to survive, and productivity is about getting these resources as efficiently as possible.

Bertrand Russell describes this best in his piece, In Praise of Idleness: 

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare.

As Russell points out in his essay, there is a lot more to life than work. Our desires to be part of a society, and to achieve enjoyment in ‘idleness’, or in other words to be able to do the things we enjoy in life, are what work should be about. It is these things that are often shown to have real impacts on human happiness and well being.

Yet, our economic focus has changed this. We are now treating productivity and jobs are an inherent good in our society. Everything is focused on growth and if you cannot add to that you are no longer worthy. And in doing so we have switched our priorities. Instead of using employment and productivity to achieve a social good – we are framing them as an inherent social good and basing all our policy around how to achieve them.

This is part of a growing neoliberal agenda, which the left wing movement is buying deeply into. Whilst we often think about neoliberalism as about individualist freedom – it is more than that. It frames this freedom in economic terms – turning us into economic individuals, rather than a society that is good in and of itself. Producing is the way for individuals to succeed. And left movements are now buying this wholly – whether it is linking the NDIS to productivity, talking about the jobs benefits of climate action, or unions being almost wholly obsessed with ‘jobs’.

After Margaret Thatcher died earlier this year, much of the criticism about her focused around her infamous statement “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” The statement was the worst example of Thatcher’s awful individualism . Yet, in the criticism of Thatcher’s individualism, we often forgot an important part – that individualism wasn’t just about ‘individual rights’ – but it was about an entire state of being and ‘usefullness’. The individual in neoliberalism is only useful if it is being economically productive – societies are a collection of people competing against each other to be economically productive.

And whilst progressive people and organisations were quick to criticise Thatcher, if we look at the way we deal with social policy today, we can see the ongoing impact of neoliberalism. Even when it comes to social policies that are supposed to be to heart of the left we have bought into an economic neoliberal agenda – one which puts the economic individual before our society. The society has been taken out of social reform.

* Feature image sourced from: http://everyaustraliancounts.com.au/images/NDIS_logo_htext_hires.jpg

I am currently working on a long piece on the role of work in our society (something I hope to have published sometime in the near future). So I have been been doing a lot of reading on work. Today I thought it would be worth reviewing on of the most interesting piece’s I’ve read on the issue so far, Bertrand Russell’s  In Praise of Idleness. (Actually this has ended up not so much as a review but as a summary of the work, but that is fine).

In Praise of Idleness focuses on our obsession with work. Russell starts by looking at what work is:

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. 

Russell aims to find out how we got to our current work situation by looking at the history of work:

From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at least as hard as he did, and his children added their labor as soon as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger. This system persisted in Russia until 1917 [1], and still persists in the East; in England, in spite of the Industrial Revolution, it remained in full force throughout the Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago, when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. In America, the system came to an end with the Revolution, except in the South, where it persisted until the Civil War. A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally left a profound impress upon men’s thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

It is the end point of that (long) paragraph that is so important. Before the industrial revolution hard work was an essential component for everyone for survival. Without it you wouldn’t have the basic needs of life. It is from this history that we have come to value work – a belief that you need it to survive. Yet, the industrial revolution brought with it something special – a reduce in the labour required to produce the necessities of life.

Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war. At that time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since.

We no longer all need to work ridiculous hours to survive. We can produce the necessities of life on much less labour than in the past. Despite this however, our work obsession continues. Russell provides an illustration:

Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

Work has become an end in itself. Russell argues that this is because of two reasons:

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s surface.

What this means is that whilst we value work, we actively de-value the results of work:

The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.

The solution; an end to our work culture? Russell suggest a four hour work day, which he believes will have significant results:

In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.

Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.

Yesterday was an interesting day of political drama, wasn’t it?

It all began with a conservative MP from Sydney’s north. After rumoured internal rumblings, MP Alex Hawke finally broke ranks, arguing that the Coalition should drop it’s policy on paid parental leave. Actually, the drama probably began well before then. It started with a well-financed, and now pretty influential thinktank, the IPA, putting pressure on conservative politicians to come out against their leader. But, yesterday the story really hit its peak, and after Hawke broke ranks, so did others.

Following this Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (and Opposition Tresaurer Tony Abbott) was forced to come out to defend the scheme. And then, this. In this press conference Abbott says:

“We do not educate women to higher degree level to deny them a career. If we want women of that calibre to have families, and we should, well we have to give them a fair dinkum chance to do so. That is what this scheme of paid parental leave is all about.”

And of course, the reaction.

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was quick to respond to Abbott’s comments, saying:

“Who exactly does Mr Abbott think are women of calibre? What does he think about women who are child care workers, nurses and community sector workers? Are they of lower calibre than women who are law firm partners?”

Anne Summers was one of many who took to Twitter, saying:

Aussie sheilas of calibre let’s #destroythejoint and stop these silly boys saying these stupid things about us FFS

I don’t call this a political drama to play down the impact of yesterday’s events, in particular Abbott’s comments. Although I am a man and therefore really can’t understand the impact of sexism, I get that these sort of comments hurt, and as I’ve said in the past, they have an real impact. But I think, a day after this whole thing played out, that there is a next part of the story – the one where we deal with the real threat that came from yesterday’s events.

Let’s get the formalities out of the way before I start. Firstly, Abbott’s statement was clearly clumsy at best, and extremely classist/sexist at worst. It was stupid, and potentially a real indication of his attitudes. Second, Abbott clearly still has issues with women. Many rightly think that on a whole, an Abbott Government, would be bad for women.

But, in saying all of this, I actually think we may have missed something in the way many attacked him yesterday. Because whilst Abbott has major problems when it comes to women’s policy, and class, this isn’t the case when it comes to paid parental leave (PPL). Abbott’s PPL scheme is excellent – it makes it a workplace right, and not a welfare system that needs to be applied for. This brings it in line with other rights, such as long service leave or annual leave. And instead of hitting the poor to pay for it, it actually hits where it needs to – the businesses who should be paying for this already. Compared to so many other policies, in this one instance, Tony Abbott has brought the Coalition significantly in the right direction.

And what yesterday’s events showed is that this is under threat. Right-wing forces in the Coalition are mounting not just to change the Coalition’s current PPL policy, but to potentially get rid of it in its entirety. To take Australia back to the dodgy position of joining the US as the only country in the Western World that doesn’t have a PPL scheme.

This was the real threat posed yesterday. And unfortunately, instead of genuinely talking about it, what we all focused on was Abbott’s stupid comments.

And this is something about identity politics today. We are outraged (myself included). And we are obsessed with outrage at things people say. We get angry at Alan Jones, Jim Wallace, and Black Caviar being named sportswoman in the year. And of course this makes sense. But instead of raging about their role in structuralised racism, homophobia and sexism – we seem to focus only on their stupid comments. It misses the point that bigotry is structural – it is about structural homophobia, sexism and racism in our society.

And paid parental leave is one way to deal with these structural issues. It is a key way to do it. And Abbott is on board. In fact, Abbott’s scheme is further on board than the ALP’s.

So whilst we were shaming Abbott for a stupid comment yesterday, the real attack we should have been making was against Alex Hawke, the IPA and other conservatives who want to take down a major social reform. We should be attacking these people and defending paid parental leave to ensure it stays enshrined in not just the next term of Government, but forever.

And I know that people are keen to have a go at Abbott, and given his conservative positions, that is worthwhile. But that is another area where we missed an opportunity. Because if we needed to attack Abbott yesterday, there was a good line of attack we could have made . There are some simple questions that could be asked; why, if Abbott thinks PPL is so important, does he still have such awful positions on other women’s issues? Why is he still opposed to a woman’s right to choose? Why did he vote to cut Newstart payments? What other sorts of welfare payments is he planning to cut? If he believes people deserve the best in paid parental leave, why not in welfare?

This is the next part of the story we should be telling. It is the story of how, despite the attacks from conservatives, we managed to enshrine paid parental leave, and make it better. It is the story about how we managed to tackle one element of structural sexism and put it to bed. But to tell that story, we need to turn our anger away from a stupid comment, and on to the conservative forces brewing.

*Correction: I have been informed that Abbott’s scheme would only allow men to take two weeks off and forces women to take the rest. It is therefore really problematic to call it ‘paid parental leave’, when it really is ‘paid maternity leave’. This is a major problem with the scheme.

Finished!

It’s taken a couple of months (I’ve read a lot of other books at the same time), but I have finally finished The Occupy Handbook. Instead of reviewing the book though, I thought today I would do a reflection on one of its final chapters; Jeffrey Sachs’ Occupy Global Capitalism. Whilst I don’t agree with all of what Sachs says, his piece comes closest to being a review of the book itself.

Before I do that however, let’s have a quick look at the book. As I’ve said, The Occupy Handbook is a series of essays on the occupy movement. The book is broken up into three categories; How we got here, looking at the lead up to the financial crisis and the occupy movement, Where we are now, looking at the economic situation we face and how the occupy movement stands, and Solutions, looking at, well, the solutions. In doing so, the book covers a lot – ranging from detailed and technical economic policy to analysis of how anti-capitalist social movements form and can succeed. And whilst it is this broad analysis that makes the book worthwhile, it also brings it problems. Although it has an overall leftist critique (despite some very notable exceptions), the Handbook in many ways lacks a true narrative.

This is where Sach’s piece is really useful. Just like the book itself, Sachs’ piece covers the key issues of how we got here, where we are now, and solutions to the problems. In doing so he provides an overall analysis that I think is largely in line with much of the narrative of the book itself.

So, let’s start at the beginning. Where are we? Throughout the book we heard about a world of financial crises, massive economic inequality, and high poverty rates. To understand how we got to this, Sachs says we need to look directly at capitalism as a system:

Global capitalism has arisen during the past thirty years as a system of deep contradictions. On the positive side, global corporations have created a deeply interconnected network of production and finance that is fueling worldwide technological advancement at an unprecedented rate…

Yet global capitalism has also created massive new hardships and has sapped the political will and perhaps even the ability of national governments to response to the needs of those hurt or left behind by economic change.

Sachs’ analysis is therefore based largely around power. As capitalism has gone global so has the power of the global corporation. This is to the extent where economic interests have become more power Governments, or even broader society. The 1% is more powerful than the 99%.

Many of today’s multinational corporations are more powerful than the host governments. By virtue of their immense financial wealth and their credible threat to move jobs across borders, the corporate giants push local politicians to ease regulations, lower corporate tax rates, and weaken or abolish environmental and labor standards. The “race to the bottom” is evident in every sphere of government: business relations, financial regulation, accounting practices, tax police, labor standards, environmental regulations, and the compliance of boards and managers with fiduciary responsibilities.

The problem, as Sachs argues, is that the 1% only really have their own interests at heart:

Here, then, is the picture of today’s global capitalism: a ferociously productive juggernaut that brings new high-tech products to the marketplace but ruthlessly divides societies according to power, education level, and income. The rich are getting richer and more politically powerful; the poor are being left behind, without decent jobs, income security, an income safety net, or a political voice.

So, what are the solutions? There has been much criticism of the occupy movement since it arose – largely that it provides ‘no solutions’ and that it has no staying power. Sachs disagrees. He starts by looking at the history of social movements – arguing that the occupy movement has some good history to back it up, but also a unique challenge in itself.

Revolutions, protests, and anticolonial upheavals have often traveled across national boundaries. The year 1848 saw a wave of antimonarcial upheavals across Europe. Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 spurred several failed attempts at revolution in Europe. Anticolonial movements leaped from India and Indonesia in the late 1940s across Asia and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Nineteen sixty-eight was a year of global youth protest, and in 1989, anticommunist revolutions spread like wildfires across central and Eastern Europe. The 2003 U.S. war on Iraq spurred coordinated antiwar protests around the world, showing how a global protest movement could be quickly organized with online support.

Yet the Occupy Movement is distinctive. It is a wave of social protest that spans rich and poor countries alike. While each country swept up in protest has its distinctive political and economic grievances, there are important commonalities in the aims of the protests in countries as disparate as Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Spain, Chile and the United States. The protests can reasonably be labeled Occupy Global Capitalism.

By framing it as the Occupy Global Capitalism movement, Sachs argues that the occupy movement has the capacity to bring about the next ‘progressive era’ of politics. Inherent in this is a range of demands that have clearly been articulated. He lists them:

Politics in the hands of the 99 percent, not of the 1 percent that control large corporations.

Rebuilding a mixed economy with a proper balance of markets and government

Ending reckless wars and downsizing the military.

Shifting public funds into training and education so that young people can develop the skills needed for gainful employment

Taxing the rich and the financial sector, including with a financial transactions tax

Building or rebuilding a social safety net and active labor-market policies more along the lines of northern Europe

Reinventing key services, such as health and education, to bring them within reach of everybody, rich and poor

Global cooperation to put this agenda into effect

Sachs argues that even though this sort of era may look a far way off, it could just be around the corner. The movement has staying power, and the real capacity to make change. To leave off, here is where he sees it going.

Today’s youth already changed politics in 2011, even though the new progressive era is yet to truly arrive. Authoritarian rulers were toppled, and long-standing social crises were brought dramatically and vividly to the public’s view.

Civil society is gaining strength by inventing new methods of social cooperation. Global civil society will increasingly be positioned to challenge, and to help reform, the global economy. We are entering an era of networked politics, education, healthcare, energy systems, and other key parts of our global economy. An era of transformation and reform is at hand.