From expert guidance to a just cause, there are reasons to be hopeful if you know where to look
It was hard to maintain hope in a year when Australia lurched from catastrophic bushfires to a pandemic to its first recession in 30 years but, when it came to politics, there were reasons to be hopeful if you knew where to look. Here’s a smattering of bright sides from politics over the past 12 months.
1. The return of experts
It was the year when Australia and the world battled the coronavirus and the most significant global economic shock since the Great Depression. There is obviously not much upside to be found in either of these events. But there was one plus. In this country, the governments of the federation weren’t perfect. At various points they were manifestly deficient – Victoria’s mismanagement of hotel quarantine and the commonwealth’s failure to fortify the vulnerable aged care sector are two examples.
But when the threat of the pandemic reached our shores in the first couple of months of 2020, the national response was guided by evidence and by a phalanx of experts. Governing with due regard for facts and evidence should be a given in any advanced democracy. But if we look around the world, we can see this baseline was not a given. In countries where the response to the public health and economic crisis was shaped by post-truth populism and hyper-partisanship, by fecklessness or incompetence, by delusions or chronic indecision, millions of people suffered, and that unconscionable suffering continues.
2. Albanese put the country first
The federal Labor leader could have used the opportunity of the crisis to dial up partisan attacks on Scott Morrison and the Coalition with the express purpose of energising his political base: the partisans demoralised by an election defeat in 2019. Instead of bowling up measured critique that periodically had a substantive impact, Anthony Albanese could have spent the past 12 months ruthlessly undermining public confidence in the various policy responses to the crisis in an effort to advance his own public profile. We have seen some opposition leaders in the states plough into that sinkhole.
Instead, Albanese understood the gravity of the moment required a commitment to pursuing something larger than relentless, zero-sum self-advancement. As a consequence, he exhibited a basic altruism that some of his restive Labor colleagues, hungry for the knockout blow, sometimes confuse with passivity or haplessness. To my observation, this makes Albanese something of a rarity in public life – a throwback to the quieter national interest politics that existed before Tony Abbott broke the template for opposition in Australia.
3. A brave policy battle
Pick a legislative fight with Google and Facebook, the bullies of the internet? Are you freaking bonkers? Well, apparently Australia is bonkers, because this year the Morrison government brought forward legislation to counter the market power of the digital platforms, at least in their dealings with traditional media companies. Adding to the astonishment to see some courage from a very busy government, Australia’s perpetually pugnacious media companies have thus far managed not to derail the proposal by descending into a fake culture war about who does or does not deserve help.
The regulation being proposed will force Google and Facebook to negotiate a fair payment with news organisations for using their content in Facebook’s news feed and Google’s search. (A bit like evidence-based policy, fair compensation for services rendered really should be a given, but it isn’t now.) The behemoths are worried this law, if passed in 2021, will create a global precedent. Anya Schiffrin, director of technology, media and communications at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, has said there is “huge hope” the plucky Australian regulation will actually work. Dare to dream.
4. Someone kept watch
It’s true Australia lacks an integrity commission at the federal level (anti-corruption commissions were “a fringe issue”, Scott Morrison sniffed a couple of years back). It’s true that we absolutely need one, and the model the government has bowled up (grudgingly) remains less than compelling. But in the absence of the body we need, please send flowers to the Australian National Audit Office. This year the ANAO more than proved its worth – unearthing the sports rorts imbroglio.
The exposure of the Coalition’s pre-election pork barrelling prompted a gritted-teeth ministerial resignation, which in part triggered a major eruption in the National party and a rolling effort by Morrison to inoculate himself from the fallout, as well as serious questions about whether the grants had been made lawfully, and a court action. The ANAO also shone a light on the Leppington land purchase, where federal officials paid $30m for land worth $3m – a transaction so freewheeling and so dubious it prompted the auditor to refer the transaction straight to the Australian federal police. When you send the flowers, please attach a card that says: “Thank you for watching, we are grateful, democracy needs you.”
5. Sometimes a just cause wins
Community campaigners including the NotMyDebt group have been dogged in pursuit of the government’s botched robodebt scheme. My Guardian Australia colleague Luke Henriques-Gomes was equally dogged when he encountered persistent stories of vulnerable Australians being pursued by private debt collectors and having their tax returns garnisheed as part of the scheme. The response to all the organising and the prodding was stonewalling. But eventually the persistence won out.
The government first settled a landmark challenge conceding a $2,500 debt raised against Deanna Amato, a 34-year-old local government employee, was not lawful because it relied on income averaging. Four months after the government settled that case, Henriques-Gomes revealed that the government was drawing up secret plans to repay victims of the scheme. Labor’s Bill Shorten brokered a class action by Gordon Legal challenging the legality of the scheme. Several months later the government agreed to a $1.2bn settlement. It is extraordinary (in the worst sense of that word) that ministers and public servants who inflicted this debacle on the community have kept their jobs, but there was some justice for the victims.
6. A glimmer of hope for climate action
Proving conclusively that 2020 was not 12 months of unremitting hell, even though it often felt that way, the Republican demagogue lost his bid for re-election, and much of the world and millions of Americans exhaled properly for the first time in four years. There are many reasons to celebrate the end of Donald Trump – too many to list here – but from an Australian perspective, the election of Joe Biden had an immediate impact on the way Morrison spoke about climate change.
His rhetorical shift from grudging to cautiously tepid to bursts of warm really was instant, which suggests Australia is concerned about being isolated diplomatically if Biden (with the help of Boris Johnson and Europe) manages to reinvigorate the global climate change process. Whether Morrison’s more constructive language is matched by anything approximating positive practical action remains moot, and we all know that hope can be dangerous, given the bin fire of Australia’s climate politics. But this remains the story to watch in 2021.
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