Howard's third way

IN THE febrile atmosphere of post election punditry, with its narrow focus on the rights and wrongs of the election campaign, we are likely to lose sight of the broader political forest for the trees - Tasmanian, of course. As sweeping as the claims of the pundits may have been, very few seem to have picked on the revealing fact that Howard’s victory is really not about any shortcomings or deficiencies in Labor’s campaign. What it signifies is a structural shift in the political terrain which has been clearly captured by conservative political forces. Howard has fashioned a distinctive political project where there is a mix of an appeal to economic reform with the language of values and social conservatism. This is, of course, the heady brew that has intoxicated the US Republicans. But there is a more interesting parallel here: Tony Blair’s ‘third way’. This was Latham’s message while he was on the backbench. But ironically Howard has turned tables on Latham by coming up with his own brand of third way politics that taps into the roots of those constituencies that might otherwise have found the Labor Party attractive. A crucial dimension of this new politics is the way Howard’s program rides on social policy. And this is where, in a sense, Howard has stolen Latham’s third way clothes. It is social policy writ in the language of moral responsibility and choice. Moral responsibility is imposed on those like the unemployed or the indigenous people who are deemed to be shirking their work obligations. It is more like a twenty-first century poor law for deserving poor - at the same time appealing to many key targeted groups, including upwardly working class members - with policies and language framed in terms of choice. Take Howard’s baby bonus, which framed the debate in terms of choice while helping to promote a socially conservative agenda. It is the kind of policy that appeals to those aspirational voters so central to the popular sociology of the third way. This is the kind of policy that one can see Tony Blair or, for that matter, even Gordon Brown, embracing. But the point is this: with the carrot of choice in one hand and the whip of moral responsibility in the other Howard has ridden social policy in way that has fashioned this amalgam of market reform and social conservatism. And this is where Labor had a real problem in choosing to fight Howard on the terrain of social policy. This ‘third way’ manages to juxtapose a commitment to the process of economic reform and modernisation with an emphasis on the return to the virtues and values of a nostalgic past - be it Blair’s New Labour appeal to the Victorian virtues of work, moral responsibility and religious values or Howard looking back to the post-war Menzies era and to what some have referred to as ‘the anglo-celtic core culture’. Add to this mix a good dose of old time religion, the new evangelicalism as evident in the coalition’s embrace of the Family First Party during the election. In looking back to this past this new social conservatism seeks to re-invoke the comfort and security of local particularisms, supposedly vanquished by the destructive forces of the post-war social revolution. To the extent that the third way is a generic political brand it arises out of an increasing anxiety about social solidarity, social order and cohesiveness, all of which are in part the consequence of deep seated structural changes in the fundamental of economic life. It is this broad anxiety about social order that is now embodied in a new politics that emphasises a return to a more secure idea of community. But it is ‘community’ understood in terms of the staking and manipulation of cultural boundaries. In this sense the Coalition’s political project is much more hard-edged than the soft culturalism of New Labour. The Coalition, and Mr Howard in particular, draws explicitly on notions of cultural nationalism that have much affinity with old style of labourism. Take, for example, the way such notions as border security and the restriction of the rights of asylum seekers have been framed within the language of old style labourism that would have done not just Henry Parkes, but Arthur Calwell proud. In fact, at the core of the prime minister’s political program is not a repudiation - as he claims - of ‘identity politics’, but in essence a conservative politics of identity consistent with a program of economic reform. This is what started with the slogan ‘governing for all of us’ at the 1996 election and has been the message ever since. And it is on this ground that the coalition has been successful in a values agenda appealing to notions of community that seem to cross those boundaries between communities of interest and class that were the bedrock of post-war politics. What makes this brew of social conservatism and neo liberal market reform even more potent is the new politics of fear that is so evident in the politics of liberal democracies. September 11, Tampa and Bali provided a set of circumstances around which submerged insecurities and fears are given shape by the language of values and social conservatism. It plays neatly alongside the new politics of risk and security that now buffet all liberal democracies of the western world. This is of course, a deeply illiberal project. There is a strong whiff about moral authoritarianism in the new language of values. But even more troublingly this authoritarian streak extends to the derision of any serious contestation over the terms of this new politics of values. In fact, both Blair and Howard seem to be highly antagonistic to representative institutions as well as other liberal institutions such as the judiciary and public broadcasting that sometimes hinder the implementation of their programs. If the Labor Party is to confront this new political landscape it must surely be by contesting this illiberal direction and not by succumbing, for whatever reason - strategic or otherwise - to the language of this new politics of values. The real issue for the Labor Party is this: can it combine a commitment to a competitive and international economy with an agenda that contests the rolling back of the social revolution that was surely so distinctive of the final quarter of the last century. Kanishka Jayasuriya is a principal senior research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University Photo: Andrew Jeffre