Australia’s democracy has faceplanted and Labor is staring down some disturbing truths

Extract from The Guardian

Labor party

Katharine Murphy

Labor is the only part of government that is halfway serious about climate change, but it has been unable to move the dial

@murpharoo

Sat 14 Dec 2019 06.00 AEDT Last modified on Sat 14 Dec 2019 06.02 AEDT

The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has copped a hiding on social media and elsewhere for visiting coal communities during the bushfires. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

One of the most striking findings in the Australian National University’s Australian Election Study – the survey of voters the university has undertaken after every federal election since 1987 – are the results on satisfaction with democracy.
The survey tells us that back in 2007, Australians were sanguine. Kevin Rudd had won the federal election, and politics was hovering on the brink of a decade of profound disruption. At the tail end of the revolving door of prime ministers, and the failure of our parliament to achieve a durable consensus on important issues like climate change, only 59% of us are satisfied with democracy, and trust has reached its lowest level on record, with just 25% believing people in government can be trusted.
Loss of faith, given the experience post-2007, is to be expected. But the striking bit for me in the latest AES was the rate of decline in satisfaction with democracy. The faceplant in Australia has been steeper than the experience in the United Kingdom after the 2016 Brexit referendum and in the United States following Donald Trump’s 2016 election win. Just roll that small insight around in your head for a minute. Politics in the US and the UK has completely jumped the shark – yet our citizens are hitting the screw this button faster than the citizens of America and Britain.

Assuming this insight is correct, that’s really quite something. It tallies with the despair I encounter among the community of politically engaged people on social media, day in and day out, heaving and crashing. My inbox is studded with it. Progressives, engaged folks, are clearly angry, frustrated, thwarted.
Some of this roiling is currently trained in Labor’s direction. Anthony Albanese has copped a hiding on social media and elsewhere this week for visiting coal communities during the bushfires – the visit seen as a portent of capitulation by Labor on climate policy. I want to work through the points I’m going to make about this reaction, step by step, just so we are clear.
This first thing to say is I’m minutely interested in where Labor ultimately ends up on climate policy. If Labor does ultimately capitulate on climate action, producing an execrable policy for the next federal election, then I will be the first one lining up with the rhetorical baseball bat. I will be taking no prisoners.
But rather than fly off in a rage because Albanese went to Emerald, or looked sideways at a coalminer while Sydney choked in smoke, right now I’m content to wait, and watch. I’m content to wait and watch, not because I’m a naturally patient person, or a trusting person, or a generous person, but because I’m a student of history.
It’s worth laying out the recent history just so it’s clear, because right now the debate feels a bit untethered, and things that can be known and proved (as opposed to being speculated about) are a bit obscured in the thicket of fail hashtags.

History tells us that Labor has made mistakes on climate policy, significant errors of hubris, fear and poor judgment, that have set back the cause of progress.
But history also tells us this political party shows up on climate action. It is the only party of government in Australia that does, election cycle after election cycle. That basic fact seems a bit lost in the wash in some of the current emoting and hectoring.
The other lesson of history that may not be obvious is this. Labor has lost two elections on climate change – 2013 and 2019.
Climate change wasn’t the only negative factor in these contests. Labor lost predominantly in 2013 because it was more interested in conducting a civil war at taxpayer expense than serving Australian voters, but Labor also lost because Tony Abbott was successful in weaponising climate change. It was diabolical, what Abbott did, but it was a precision, partisan, demolition.
A backlash against climate action in regional Queensland was also part of the story of Labor’s election loss in May. I don’t think a lot of progressive people have really grasped this basic fact, because they prefer to think climate change switched votes Labor’s way in 2019, because that’s a more comforting story.

"I can’t fathom, given what the science says, why climate change goes on being Australia’s Brexit."

Now it’s true, climate change did help shore up Labor’s left flank against the Greens, and pushed a number of swing votes Labor’s way in 2019. But it’s important to look where those positive swings happened, and they were largely in seats Labor had no prospect of winning.
Any political party will happily bank any positive swing. It’s gratifying. It suggests the dial is moving. But obviously it is better if the swings deliver you government rather than just a warm inner glow, and abstract validation.
So what I’m trying to convey this weekend is Labor has paid a price electorally for pursuing climate action.
I don’t high five this fact. I don’t find it comforting. I can’t fathom, given what the science says, given the clear evidence that warming is under way, why there is even a debate in this country about what needs to happen, why climate change goes on being Australia’s Brexit.
But there is a “debate”, pushed by corporates with vested interests, and culture warriors intent on routing progressivism, whatever the cost; and materialist anxiety is stoked assiduously by poisonous agitprop rags like the Daily Telegraph, and other alleged news outlets in the Murdoch stable that act like sheep dogs rounding up thought criminals, fully resolved to let no good deed go unpunished.
I thought after the defeat in May we would see ignominious surrender from the ALP. I fully expected that to happen, not because it’s right, but because retreat is not irrational in terms of the electoral calculation.
But the only person I’ve heard in Labor saying we need to lower the level of ambition is Joel Fitzgibbon, who got the fright of his life after suffering a huge negative swing in his coal community in the Hunter Valley, and has now embarked on a coal worshipping tour of the country as an act of contrition.
Mark Butler isn’t saying lower ambition. Albanese isn’t saying it. Penny Wong isn’t saying it. Senior New South Wales rightwingers, such as Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, are saying we need to maintain ambition consistent with the science and find a way to do that while reassuring our blue-collar base. Burke and Bowen have floated the New Green Deal, or something like it, as a mechanism that might square the circle.
Maybe Labor will, ultimately, surrender. It’s certainly possible. But what’s happening now isn’t surrender – it’s an attempt to stitch climate action and blue-collar jobs together. It’s an attempt to craft a nuance.

Now some progressive people will argue that’s impossible, so don’t even bother; Labor should just draw a line now and say we are for climate action, no compromises, no redux on the messaging. If you don’t like it, vote for someone else.
That’s fine, as long as the people making these arguments understand a couple of basic things.
Labor can’t win an election by saying that. Not on current indications.
Perhaps that could change in time, because public sentiment will shift as the evidence and experience of warming grows. The community is clearly mobilising. But right now, Australians are telling pollsters they are increasingly worried about climate change, but a majority is not voting in favour of climate action when push comes to shove. The country remains divided, and rancorously so. That’s the legacy of our busted arse politics, and our busted arse media “conversation”.
While ever that remains the case, Labor will have to hold its progressive post-material constituency and hold its traditional base, or enough of it to win enough seats to form a government.
If it’s either/or, Labor loses.
So let’s be precise about what that means. It means the only party of government in Australia that is halfway serious about climate action, the only party with the capacity to deliver tangible action, remains out of power, unable to move the dial.
This is less of a problem obviously if the Liberal party can enjoy a Damascene conversion. I remain hopeful that it might happen. But there’s not much evidence of that happening currently.
These are just facts. These might be irritating facts, facts disruptive to the flow of feelings, but they are facts.
Let’s loop back to despair, which is where we started this weekend. I get despair. I understand why people who care about the fate of the planet are so worried about the failure of our political system, particularly on this issue. I worry about it constantly. I report on it incessantly in the hope that something will change.
I understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. I battle these feelings myself. But also know this. Lashing out is a waste of time and energy. Rage in advance of the facts is just more noise. Some of it’s eloquent noise, but it is just noise.
David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote one of the finest pieces of the year about the challenges of reporting during the age of Donald Trump. He told his readers despair is not an option. “Despair is a form of self-indulgence, a dodge.”
Remnick is absolutely right. Despair is not an option, particularly in advance of the facts.
The times are just too serious.

• Katharine Murphy is Guardian Australia’s political editor