Buy me a place in parliament and I’ll deliver you a nation. I’m not sure who said that but it seems that Malcolm Turnbull must hold a few shares already.
We have an interesting political funding disclosure regime here in Oz. Taking a leaf out of the books of many overseas regimes, we have a situation where, as always, there are loopholes through which the major parties and their candidates are able to receive huge amounts as donations (we could never call them bribes) and not disclose them. On the other hand we have a regime in which we subsidise them if they win. This ensures that the major parties, who received over $20 million dollars each in refunds last time, are never short of a buck to spend on political propaganda. When it comes to individuals, this election, for the first time, featured one very rich man, Malcolm Turnbull, who was prepared to ‘invest’ his own money in a ‘win at any cost’ propaganda campaign. And it paid off.
Someone like Turnbull, a man of huge ego who was brought up in the "born to rule" mindset, has the cash and the mates to assist him rebuild Australia into their image. They realised that the only way to do that was to get ‘their’ representatives into the parliament. While crude and base, Turnbull’s scheme worked.
But Malcolm, being a bloke who believes in his heart of hearts that anyone can become king, although he espouses the republican line, decided that the only way to get the result you want is to buy it. Not directly, that would be illegal. Rather, by using $600,000 of his own fortune to further his own cause he spent on average about $17 per vote in his electorate to make sure he got in. This put him at the top of the Australian Electoral Commission list of individual candidate spenders on campaign material.
Of that $600,000 he spent over a quarter of a million on direct mail and a similar amount on posters, pamphlets and how to vote cards. None of this Liberal party cheap stuff. None of this, we’ll supply the copy, you supply the photo that the rest of us get. No. For Malcolm’s blue blood constituency, only the best will do.
He managed to get a number of "dear old ladies" to donate substantial amounts. That’s not really that hard for him, I guess, as his electorate has the highest concentration of millionaires and multi-millionaires in the country. Nonetheless even their money was not enough. Malcolm has to do it his way. He has to control the process. He has to remain in control of the image management process so that his ego is not bruised by the rough and tumble of the real world of politics. He is, in short, a one man band. Conductor, multi-instrumentalist, roadie and audience.
In short, Malcolm represents all that is central to the conservative dogma. That is, a strong belief in the division of society into those who are born to rule and those who are born to be ruled; that the rights of the individual should take precedence over the collective protection of society; and that those who fail to "pull their weight" are a blight and should be left to their own devices.
Now why has this got me into a lather (not a pretty sight I can assure you)? For not the first time, but certainly the most contemporary, we have an individual who uses the language of inclusion (‘I will help us govern for all’, ‘I will even make sure those who didn’t vote for me get a fair deal’ etc etc) while his actions and attitude tell us that he trusts no-one, is only concerned for his own future and will not take direction from anyone.
In our democracy, flawed and inadequate as it is, we expect those who sit in the big house to, at the least, have some semblance of connection to the rest of us. Now I realise that after a few months in that cloistered environment, most of them loose the ability to remember where they came from and are nothing more that seat fillers for their party but there is some possibility that many of these people could, if we tried hard enough, be convinced to see the devastating results of their decisions.
Someone like Malcolm, however, would not comprehend the detrimental results of his decisions because, like the front bench of his party, he thinks that poverty and misery are part of the "natural" order. For the more religious in his party of choice, they hold fast to the words of Jesus who said, "… the poor you will always have with you …". They interpret this as meaning that is how god created the world and therefore it is an immutable law of nature.
When we combine this attitude with vast wealth, we have very dangerous mix. And tis from a man who poured two million dollars of his own money into the republican campaign a few years ago. During this campaign it’s ‘leaders’ were telling us we should each, individually, once we attain the age of eighteen, be able to vote on who should be our ruler. Now I’ll ignore the direct versus indirect election squabble, as it’s immaterial. The point is, Malcolm wanted us to believe that people like him really, truly believe that a direct election of the head of state should take place and that once installed that head of state would be able to veto any government decision and, if challenged, remove the government from office and create a new parliament without elections at all. Unlike the present situation where the Governor General must make recommendations to the Queen, the President of Australia would have total and full control of the whole political process.
Now I’m not a monarchist by any stretch of the imagination but can you imagine what it would be like to have a head of state who had total control of the political process and who would have, no longer in theory as is the case with our current Governor General, but actual control of the armed forces. In some places they call this a dictatorship.
Oh Shane, you’re reaching new heights on hyperbole. Settle down and have a nap. This would never happen. Would it?
I’m not suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull wants to become the first dictator of Australia but I am saying that there are those who believe that fully centralised government, with a very narrow row of top apparatchiks should run our nation. Some may argue that we already live under these conditions. However, given Turnbull’s capacity to fund his own campaign, and lets not forget he got a hefty refund upon winning the seat, should alert us to the substantial shortcomings in our current electoral processes and the dangers they represent to our ability to choose the government we want.
Turnbull is not Australia’s richest man (and his call for tax cuts for the rich means he wants to stay, at least, in the bottom half of the top 200) but his example should not be ignored. He may be only one man but he is, as they say, the thin edge of the wedge. His example will not be lost on those who want to gain control of the processes we call democracy. The problem is, when you have control of the democratic process its no longer democracy. It’s something much worse. My question is, are we willing to take the risk and give up more to those who believe that buying political power is just another part of the natural order when it comes to running a nation.