Debate goes up in smoke

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This was published 12 years ago

Debate goes up in smoke

The forum for political discussion has shifted into the realm of advertising.

By Shaun Carney

Not too far down the track, those of us of a certain age will be able to regale the young folk with stories of a lost Australia, where it was natural and not at all strange for citizens to join political parties and take part in debates. Issues worked their way through the community. Parties arrived at positions, were judged by the positions they took, and implemented policies in government. Governments were regarded as having not just a right but an obligation to enact legislation. It was generally accepted that when all was said and done, governments should be allowed to govern.

That's all been turned on its head. Political party membership is increasingly becoming an oddity in our society. As a result, issues do not naturally percolate through the parties and into government from the community in the ways that they once did. For an issue to attract the attention of politicians now, it must reflect a set of interests.

Image:Judy Green

Image:Judy Green

The bigger, established parties have memberships with an age profile that grows steadily older. Unlike the big parties, the Greens have a rising membership, skewed towards younger voters, but those members are also predominantly Anglo-Celtic, urban and more highly educated.

The consequence of all this is that the parties often struggle to reflect the thoughts and aspirations of the broader community. There's a hole in the middle. Political leaders, their advisers and party technocrats try to cover the gap through marketing and research, casting around for policies that will look like what those voters in the middle really want.

The Labor Party suffers most acutely from this problem but it is a challenge for the Liberals too. You could fill a newspaper several times over with a discussion of how this process started - whether the parties have made it happen because of their substandard, poll-driven pursuit of votes on the electoral margins or if political organisations are themselves victims of bigger social changes.

It's possible, just possible, that these factors occurred simultaneously and have fed on each other. Whatever the cause, or causes, it makes for an unedifying spectacle. In any event, that's a discussion for another time.

The fact of the matter right now is that for whatever reason political debate in Australia is especially barren.

The Gillard government has not yet put together a carbon tax scheme but has already pledged to provide compensation for the vast bulk of households. In response, Tony Abbott has promised his own tax-cut package, based not on any visible economic argument but purely, it seems, to combat Julia Gillard's promise of handouts. One phantom policy counteracts the other.

Only some of this seems driven by the beliefs of the respective leaders. Yes, the Labor Party generally believes that a price on carbon is necessary and it would not want to leave the low-paid worse off, and in recent years the Liberals have been disposed to income tax cuts. But politics is also a very big driver.

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There is, of course, no such thing as a vacuum in the public sphere. Have you noticed how much of the debate over political issues has shifted into the realm of commercial advertising in recent years? It began, probably, under the Keating government in the 1990s, when government schemes, programs and services became more and more a feature of TV advertising breaks. The Coalition under John Howard railed against these ads, and pledged not to run campaigns like that in office. Once in power, it spent heavily on advertising its policies; by its last year in office, its ad spend was a disgrace.

Sauce for the goose became sauce for the gander. In Howard's final term, the ACTU used advertising to devastating effect as part of its political fight against WorkChoices. And last year, the mining industry spent tens of millions of dollars on ads designed to destroy the Rudd government's proposal for a resource rent tax. It was almost as successful as the ACTU's campaign, rattling Labor and forcing a substantial change in the government's proposal.

The most extraordinary development in this process is the new advertising campaign by Big Tobacco aimed at bringing down the government's policy mandating the plain packaging of cigarettes. If ever there was an ad that demonstrates the shift of political discussion from the shop floor, the local party branch meeting and the community group get-together to the station break on radio and TV, this is it.

The essential message of this campaign is not practical, it is purely ideological. Smokers, and probably even non-smokers of a libertarian bent, are urged to resist the change on the grounds that its represents the extension of the ''nanny state''.

In the world of conservative think tanks, libertarian groups and other, similar parts of the political realm, the nanny state is the equally toxic sibling of that other scourge of modern life, political correctness. The guiding idea of Big Tobacco's objection to the plain-packaging measure, as expressed in its advertising campaign, is philosophical: that adults should not be told what to do and should be allowed to exercise free choice.

This is a new step in the way public debate is conducted. Arguing from a point of naked self-interest, cigarette manufacturers are trying to generate a political movement. On the face of it, this seems absurd. For a start, the plain-packaging measure will not stop smokers from having access to cigarettes; it does not infringe or impede their right to choose to smoke.

What it does is interfere with the ability of the tobacco companies to use branding to enhance the market reach and apparent desirability of their products. The nanny state argument is a fraud, as is the suggestion that the measure sets a precedent for other potentially harmful goods. Unlike cars and alcohol, cigarettes start damaging the consumer from the very first use.

The Big Tobacco advertising campaign tries to exploit that gap between the government and the community. The campaign by clubs and hotels against a plan to introduce a form of licensing for gamblers is designed to take advantage of the same phenomenon: the final line of the radio ads describes the measure as ''un-Australian''. This campaign is intentionally about values rather than practicalities.

As digital and social media have expanded, the expectation has been that community activism would break down the old power structures and forms of communication. Instead, big unions, big miners and Big Tobacco, using conventional ''old'' media, have shown deep pockets can still mean loud voices. Crumbling parties and uncertain political leaders only amp up the volume.

Shaun Carney is an Age associate editor.

Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

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