One, Two Nationalisms - The Work Ethic Become Feral

Review of Two Nations: The Causes and Effects of the Rise of the One Nation Party in Australia, Various authors, with a foreword by Robert Manne. [Overland, 153 Summer 1998 pp.87-89]

For a declaration to appear as uncomplicated and clear, the circumstances of its making - of its making sense as simple and as clear - must have receded beyond the visible horizon, no longer readily available to examination. And so it is - mostly - with the book Two Nations: The Causes and Effects of the Rise of the One Nation Party in Australia. In the Foreword, Robert Manne writes: "The thought here is simple and straightforward." This is not true, which is also to say that it is true, so long as the reader intuitively shares or presumes the question which prompted and frames the writings here.

To elaborate, let me begin by noting what Two Nations is not. It is not a book that explores racism in Australia, though it gestures toward doing so. Nor is it a discussion of racism from the perspective of those who, in this case, have been gathered into the objects of racism: indigenous peoples and those rendered as generically 'Asian'. I am not suggesting that only those subjected to racism can speak of it but, like Graeme Little in his review, I am surprised at their absence in a book which seeks to account for the politics and presence of One Nation.

So: what is Two Nations? Technically, it is seventeen short essays authored by four politicians, six academics and seven journalists, including a series of photographs by a news photographer. Some pieces are more interesting than others. Margo Kingston's work is possibly documentary journalism at its best. Michelle Grattan, Murray Groot and others point clearly to the intimate connections between One Nation and the Coalition parties. Henry Reynolds rightly insists that racism is a central feature of Australian life, a fact extant before One Nation. There are contributions from the conservative side of politics – those conservative elites - who endeavour to make the 'politically correct' elites liable for One Nation: Padraic McGuinness and Ron Brunton, maintaining their rage at being left out of the loop during the years of ALP rule. There are those such as Judith Brett who, rather blithely, regards One Nation as an inchoate call for the return of the ALP to social democracy and the return of ALP government. There is Marilyn Lake's bizarre attempt to reject, from a feminist perspective, Hanson's presence in politics whilst continuing to assert that feminism is still a universalism: feminists, whilst supporting all women's political participation, are – apparently – relieved of their central idea because Hanson, after all, is a "man's woman". And, there is Paul Kelly's defence of Paul Keating and (that dreaded word) 'globalisation' – a view which Manne takes issue with briefly in the Foreword.

What holds these pieces together though, what gives the volume its air of clarity and simplicity is the unstated question which, perhaps, is more a kind of panic: how do those involved in political, symbolic or social management, those who work as the wordsmiths for social order, deal with this apparent rise of the vulgar masses in a frightening form, whose terror resides most squarely in the fact that they seem no longer amenable to administration? This is not only evident in the biographies of the contributors but, more importantly, in the way they speak, in the way certain formulas repeat themselves and in the way the problem of One Nation and Pauline Hanson is ascertained. For Manne this is expressed as the emergence of "two nations inhabiting separate moral universes"; for Nicolas Rothwell this is a split between the "intellectuals" and the "mainstream"; for Michael Woolridge, this constitutes a divergence between "policy culture" and "the community"; Grattan: "the community in revolt against the elites"; Brunton: "ordinary citizens" and "leaders". Michael Woolridge asks plaintively, "Why this malaise in the relationship between power and people?" Kelly is more direct: "Why was Australia so incapable of managing Hanson?" The masses have, evidently, run amok; no longer responsive to reason or decency. As Tony Abbott sees it, the masses have succumbed to the "not very rational" expectation "that the system will always let them down".

While these dualisms grasp a real fact concerning the nature of political authority in late twentieth century capitalism, they are generally put to use as a moral estimate which either exalts of derides 'the people' on the basis of an assumed innocence or ignorance – thus holding on to, at least as a longing, the promise of re-asserting some kind of tutelage, instruction and control over the 'vulgar'. Disturbingly – and some would say, paradoxically - there is manifest here an appetite for vigorous leadership. Brunton argues that "Australia's current misfortune is the absence of any federal leaders on the horizon who might be capable of restoring the trust of a large number of ordinary citizens in the political system, and convincing them that the nation's social and economic circumstances should really be a source of great optimism." What we have here (so the story goes) is a failure to communicate. Also, 'ordinary people' are far too often and effortlessly defined as white, dovetailing nicely with One Nation's (and the Coalition's) constituency-building strategies. The contributors do not offer the same explanations of the apparent divergence between 'the masses' and 'the elites'. They do, nevertheless, assume that here resides the fundamental difficulty of One Nation. This implicit fear and derision of 'the masses' is - I think - ever-present in those in positions of governing or managing. This book is, with few exceptions, drafted as an expedition by 'the elites' (which includes McGuinness and Brunton) into the territory of 'the masses' – a kind of Wigan Pier as political commentary.

To return then to Manne's quarrel with Kelly. It seems to me that here is the possibility for discussion and understanding. But only a possibility. Manne is right when he insists that people's painful experiences of 'economic restructuring' should be taken seriously. I think Kelly is also right that economic nationalism is no solution here. Unfortunately, this debate threatens to contract into a dispute between those for and against economic rationalism.

In doing so, a crucial point - perhaps it is the crucial point – goes unremarked. One Nation talks ceaselessly about work: the problem with Aborigines is that they are getting hand-outs; the problem with single mothers is that they are on welfare; protestors are dole-bludgers; the elites (academics, journalists, etc) don't do real work; the problem with immigrants is that they come here and go on welfare; the problem with Asians is that they work too hard and take our jobs, or take them overseas because they can live on less pay. Farmers work hard. One Nation members work hard. In short, One Nation's limitless complaint is that 'we' work hard whilst 'others' bludge.

There is a widespread faith that waged work is both a national duty and a moral imperative. The Labor Party's election policy was drafted explicitly along these lines. The Coalition's strategy against the MUA was premised on building up a popular resentment that maritime workers got paid too much for not enough work. Waged work is now regarded as the chief criterion of citizenship. For years we – all of us, including academics and journalists – have been forced to work harder and longer or face the smear and poverty of unemployment. Having worked harder and longer, subjected to years of speeding up and efficiency drives, we find that there are no rewards for hard work for the masses of people.

It is routinely assumed that One Nation is an irrational phenomenon, an anomaly or a throwback. But, why is it assumed that it is rational that no matter how much more productive and efficient the world becomes, the more people are subjected to poverty and the more people are required to work longer. Surely - logically even - one would think that greater efficiency and productivity would entail less work for everyone. The supposition of scarcity which underpins One Nation's racism – a class racism, if you will - is simply wrong: if the world's troubles can be tracked to anything it is perhaps the disposition and the compulsion to produce more and more. If we consume only 20% of the foodstuffs made here, exactly why are we encouraged to be so internationally miserly and why is anyone here wanting? In the final analysis, One Nation does not present a critique of this situation. Rather, it offers a dreadful enforcement of the belief that every person is born owing a debt to society that can only be repaid through ever-increasing sacrifices to waged work, much like the concept of original sin. The work ethic become feral.

In a situation where we cannot see the possibility of things being different, of having to submit larger chunks of our life to waged work (or competing with someone else for their pay), where the terrorism of money is seen as eternal and rational, why would anyone be surprised when some people see the only available option as one of a struggle for relative advantage? One Nation is a response to economic rationality, but it is also a creature of it. Is not the need to engage in a national struggle for relative advantage what economists have been teaching us? 'Globalisation' never meant internationalism; instead, it announced a time of relentless competition between nations, a malignant entrepreneurial nationalism that forced everyone to prove our devotion to the nation by 'tightening our belts' and under-bidding other countries' wage costs. The difficulty the contributors to this book have is the same one confronting One Nation members: they cannot even begin to think of the possibility that capitalism is not eternal or natural - or reasonable. This too has been made to recede beyond the perceptible horizon. Many of those writing here have been both prominent and instrumental in framing anti-capitalist politics as beyond the pale of rational thought, as taboo even.

There is a third way in which what is obvious here in this book is so because of what is presumed and thereby no longer available for debate. There is no reference here to the relation between the rise of One Nation and the population control policies which all the parliamentary parties now more or less adhere to. No mention of the ALP's introduction of compulsory and non-reviewable imprisonment of refugees; nor of the Democrat's policy of zero net immigration. Immigrants and refugees are now customarily and serenely regarded as the source of all evil, economic strife, disorder and pollution. Indeed, One Nation's much-vaunted coarseness has become the shield and alibi for other parties' embrace of these policies. This disregard highlights again the absorption of Two Nations: it is not concerned with the racism that One Nation promotes but, instead, with the presumable insufficiency of political administration that One Nation has come to indicate for those in positions of authority. Here the struggle against racism is converted into a technique of the state against the unruly masses. This is appalling, echoing as it does the fact that in the rallies against One Nation, this same struggle has been reduced into an occasion for recruiting for organisations on the Left. An analysis of the causes and effects of the rise of One Nation remains to be done, in all its difficulties, and without the tranquil presumption of the everlasting nature, if not intrinsic virtue, of our current political and economic system.

Angela Mitropoulos

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