Since 9 October we have had the usual stream of election post-mortems. Several weeks after the event, journalists, academics and pundits of various kinds are still trying to make sense of the unexpected scale of Labor’s defeat, the implications of the Coalition’s control of the Senate, and the inability of the Greens to stamp their authority as a new emerging force in Australian politics.
While there is much to explain, most of the analysis to date has focused on appearances and symptoms. Endless words have been written and spoken about the ailment which afflicts this or that leader, this or that party, or this or that election strategy. However, there has been remarkably little said about the ailment which may afflict the entire body politique.
Numerous explanations have been offered for the ALP’s poor showing: Latham’s youthfulness or ‘inexperience’, the ill-judged last minute release of new policies, especially on Tasmania’s forests, the effectiveness of the government’s advertising scare campaign, Labor’s failure to return to its social roots, the reasonably good shape of the Australian economy.
No doubt all this sheds some light on the result, but little on the mood of the nation, and even less on the health of our political processes and institutions. A deeper analysis would begin not with political parties, their leaders, strategies and tactics, but with the electorate itself.
One does not have to go far in today’s Australia to observe a profound unease about the future. This is not to say that all Australians experience the same insecurities, or that they deal with them in exactly the same way. Age, income, social status, gender, and ethnic and religious background no doubt help to shape the way we experience anxiety and the conscious and unconscious responses we bring to that experience. At first sight, deeply felt anxieties do not seem to impinge much on politics generally or on election campaigns in particular. Obscured though it may seem, the connection is nevertheless real.
The insecurities of the nation cannot but percolate through to issues of identity, multiculturalism, relations with the outside world, and most importantly to notions of the ‘good life’ that economy and politics are supposedly meant to deliver.
Australian insecurity is not a new phenomenon. Australians of European origin have long experienced in their relations with ‘people-of-colour’ a mixture of anxiety and discomfort. This experience continues to shape our relations with Aboriginal Australia as