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Poll 07: the Wedging of the Electorate

Peter Andren

Wedge politics relies on part of the story not being told. The largely distracted and increasingly self-absorbed electorate hears the dog whistle but doesn’t bother to investigate further. Successful wedging requires people to not ask questions.

The PM has been at it again these past few weeks as he plays his favourite game of spot the potential wedge in the lead-up to the elections.

The Aussie flag debate was just the latest. He deplored the attempt by organisers of the Big Day Out to dissuade people from bringing Australian flags to the music concert. The PM thought it “offensive” that any display of the flag should be banned.

Did he really mean “any display”? Did he mean to include the yobbos wrapping their flags like capes around their shoulders or waving them like matadors at those who’d dare poke fun at their jingoism, or ignore their demand to kiss the national emblem? Did he really mean this sort of display? Sadly I think he did.

He went so far as to accuse the Big Day Out organisers of “running their own political agenda.” What agenda? A radical anti-flag movement, a backdoor republican putsch? Give us a break; maybe they were simply trying to avoid the growing expropriation of the flag for deliberately provocative WASPish nationalism.

We have a PM ready and willing to disparage by sleight of phrase any vaguely critical comment emanating from the Moslem community. If a Brit accuses Australians of being the descendants of convicts there’s some mock indignation, even pride at our rough roots. If it comes from a Moslem it’s offensive.

But, like the Aborigines, the Moslem community represents a minuscule percentage of our population (and importantly our vote) yet warrants a greatly disproportionate amount of scrutiny and criticism from politicians. There’s a strong correlation between the size and voting power of minorities in our midst and the degree to which they are exploited for political wedge politics.

Morris Iemma urges Taj Din al-Halali to “bring it on” – the nomination of Moslem candidates in western suburbs electorates – knowing as he does there aren’t enough votes to make much difference in the poll and they’ll be exhausted anyway without causing damage. It’s deliberately provocative; it further marginalises a community whose vast majority rejects extremism.

Once the grist of the rabid late-night commercial talk jocks, race-specific slurs are now encouraged and fed by selective insinuation if not direct attack by some politicians, including our PM, some premiers and opposition leaders and the populist media happy to feed prejudice. It’s a sad and dangerous political game, especially post-September 11.

Another big wedge is now being driven into the climate debate. As with George W and his “you’re either with us or agin us” in the war on “terror”, John Howard is trying to protect the true believers (nuclear and clean coal) from the fringe dwellers (genuinely clean alternative energy) in a classic bit of Howard wedgism. Peter Garrett and Labor are about to be wedged big-time on their completely contradictory policies of expanding uranium mining yet opposing nuclear.

Whether it’s the usurping of Hansonism to flog indigenous Australians over native title, their alleged inability to manage their own affairs/ political representation or more recently their “obviously” dysfunctional and violent families, this government and this Prime Minister have left a decade of division as its legacy.

Wedge politics relies on part of the story not being told. The largely distracted and increasingly self-absorbed electorate hears the dog whistle but doesn’t bother to investigate further. Successful wedging requires people to not ask questions.

Questions such as: Doesn’t native title simply provide access, not ownership of land for which long-standing and continuing connection has been proved?

What are the relative child abuse statistics for the non-indigenous population, and what part does poverty and addiction play in such statistics?

How can anyone be an “illegal” immigrant when they have fled regimes our soldiers were sent to depose?

Shouldn’t the firing of rockets from Israeli helicopters into Palestinian refugee camps be regarded as much an act of terrorism as a suicide bomb attack?

Isn’t it true a person need only be employed an hour a week to not appear on unemployment figures – how can we really have the highest employment rates in 30 years when full-time work was the norm back then?

The call to defend Australian values fosters another type of wedging. Whose values indeed must we defend? Are the values that forged the Pacific refugee solution “our” values, “your” values?

What indeed is “anti Australian”? The behaviour of both sides of the Cronulla riots should be deplored by all, with an important question of what has really prompted such hatred. Could our political “leadership” have fed these flames?

Some of the oft-quoted Australian “values” – rugged individualism, egalitarianism (fair go), racial tolerance and freedom of speech and religion have been seriously tested (and failed) in our history and can now be even more strenuously challenged in an increasingly unequal society. Such virtues would no doubt also be claimed by several other nations, with New Zealand and Canada coming quickly to mind.

But under the soft belly of those values claimed exclusively for Australia, there’s a nasty reality that such ideals are more and more highlighted in their abuse than their respect.