It remains a fact that white, mainstream Australia is compared to say Iran or China, a very, very, young bunny.

I think the real difference that makes is that we are less racist, or at least our racism is less entrenched. As attested to by the way we have integrated successive waves of distinctly (racially) different immigrants, contra eg immigrants to, er, well, any other non Anglo-Saxon country.

Cultural differences stem from people’s spiritual and psychological disposition, affected as it is, by their surroundings. Culture is not something which can be achieved just by attending the opera, the art gallery or the fucking football. Culture is about the deeper concerns of the population, expressed in the main, by those who take the time to study them.

It remains a fact that white, mainstream Australia is compared to say Iran or China, a very, very, young bunny. It should give us a sense of direction and hope, but instead, so far, we seem to have developed some sort of chip, which in recent times has transmogrified into an even more odious ’strut’.

despite the fact that the Democrats at least enshrine a right to independence in their party rules, my subjective impression is that divergence from a party room decision or formal party policy position is very rare (Id be interested in Andrew Bartletts reflections on this if he happens past). In fact, the only time when there actually was some real policy divergence between Democrats politicians was while Meg Lees was still there, and that resulted in the party being portrayed as a disunited rabble and setting itself on a downward and possibly terminal electoral spiral.

Ken

‘Divergence’ within the Democrats is not overly common, but it happens every now and then without much drama. For example, there was one just a few weeks back where I was the only Democrat Senator to vote against the latest pay rise for federal politicians. There were also split votes on things like internet gambling, aspects of the Republican referendum, aspects of the nuclear waste dump laws and a few others in previous years. Usually the media/public barely notice.

It wasn’t really the split vote on the GST which caused the portrayal as a ‘disunited rabble’, it was that it was such a hugely controversial stance to be voting in favour of it in the first place, given the perception of most of the public of what the Democrats pre-election and post-election position on the GST was. Also, the parliamentary party was never able to really resolve its differences on it. Usually people can come to different positions and just agree to disagree without too much problem, but there was so much deceit (internal as well as external) involved with various components of the GST decision and the ongoing public justifications given for it that accommodating these differences remained very difficult.

It is true that the potential for media to portray any difference of opinion as ‘disunity’ or incoherence is a strong disincentive against regular split votes, but the reality is that it is not really an issue very often. Strong differences of opinion on issues or legislation just don’t come up that often. One mightn’t always 100% agree with a position, but teamwork means that you usually only diverge if you have strongly opposing views.

The drawn out public brawling within the Democrats from over five years ago didn’t involve any real philosophical differences – it was just old fashioned personal enmity and revenge, and the impossibility of curtailing some extremely determined efforts by a few people to cause as much damage as possible. That sort of stuff can happen in any party, regardless of how much much personal freedom is allowed with votes on legislation in the Parliament.

Obviously a party can’t have their members voting every which way on every second issue, but there really should be much more scope for conscience votes or crossing the floor or whatever you want to label. I think it is a terrible thing that people regularly vote in favour of things in the Parliament that they are personally deeply opposed to – it perverts democracy, dilutes personal responsibility and leads to a much greater likelihood of bad laws.

The current US system is really more of a hangover from the old days of the North / South divide of the parties. The Northern Democrats used to agree more with the Southern Republicans (what few of them there used to be) and the Southern Democrats were closer to the Northern Republicans. That changed with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, so party discipline is getting stronger in the US now. If either side of politics there had managed to enforce something similar to the Pledge, Congress would have been similarly filled with drones.
I can see the need for Cabinet solidarity, but the idea of the Pledge is something I have never agreed with. Its effect is extremely pernicious.

We are young, less sure, less tolerant and more suspicious of people who deviate from the norm. Toeing the party-line, the gang-line the mob-line is part of being normal, not standing out, being predictable, safe and not threatening the status quo.

Hey, most of us quit the unions years ago. Also, have you tried other countries? I don’t mean spent six months in San Fransisco thinking ‘how enlightened all these gay arty types are!’ but actually lived with the ‘bogan masses’ in America or Europe or anywhere else?

I have never, ever, ever found even anecdotal evidence that people are much different from here, anywhere else. In fact the only evidence I have ever found is people like you telling us that it must be so.

Its constricting, anti-life, and smacks of the small town mentality. But that’s all we seem to have achieved thus far.

Consider the case of Republican Lincoln Chafee — the only Repub to vote against Iraq and more liberal on social causes than most/many Democrats but got turfed out at the last Congressional elections anyway — the great “sending a message to Bush” vote. People are motivated by different things at different times, sometimes a consideration of the individual in question and sometimes the symbolic tug of collective punishment/praise. Anecdotally, it seems to me Australians do evaluate candidates individually as much as Americans.

There appears to be an unholy (and in my view immature) consensus between the Australian media and voting public that public unity on the part of political party representatives is a more important value that honestly, thoroughly and publicly debating and deciding issues and policies to foster a finer-grained democratic accountability.

Thank you. I agree, although I’m not sure about the “finer-grained” bit. I think we are immature. Not something necessarily to feel badly about, as its actually a fact. I think a larger population would help. I think a bit of good leadership would help.

Our current batch of Ministers have made me realise how immature we are in the eyes of the world–and then again, how immature the world behaves. Nelson, Downer, Andrews have all made international fools of themselves as being not only disingenuous, but pretty bloody parochial. It is cringe-worthy. There are so many finer, smarter, brighter people around, (but not alas, in politics). We’ve clearly got a long way to go. Probably this ‘mob’ mentality is a transient, neolithic, survival method for smaller groups of warring members?
Also

Politics in Australia is like footie without the physical violence: the other team is the enemy and disunity is death.

But not the psychological violence–plenty of that, indeed its mostly that, pretty well ALL that.

Mark had a post up at LP sometime ago, which talked about violence in politics. It was interesting. It is just another form of war and in our case perhaps, when there’s only 50 apiece you have to hold firm and tight. No drifting off to get distracted from the main-game. Which in the case of our Government the maingame being invariably, to attack the Opposition and win the day.

Its all so immature and so much like war. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

what was a sensible strategy over 100 years ago isn’t necessarily a sensible strategy today.

One straw in the wind is that when the punditocracy moves to execrate the Howard Government with even more gusto than they trashed the Fraser Govt after it’s fall, one strand of analysis will be that Howard had too much power. He appoints everyone so everyone is beholden to him.

The ALP has not had a happy record with its looser arrangements as far as getting caucus approval for Ministerial decisions and having an absurdly large ministry operating as a cabinet.

But most of those things were sorted in a reasonable fashion when Hawke learned the lessons of the Whitlam Govt and dealt with them. The ALP approach of caucus election to the ministry with Prime Ministerial allocation of appointments does have more defused power – which is not a bad thing.

Even Caucus having the final say on decisions is not necessarily a bad thing, but the media render it unworkable as they depict a party in chaos when it’s just working out its own processes in public.

Funny and sad how our image of leadership is about not tolerating dissent.

Creepy really.

Also remember in the US, campaigns are essentially run by individuals which differs from both the UK and Australia where it’s usually parties.

On the other hand, maybe rigid internal party discipline is an unavoidable consequence of compulsory voting

I almost agree, except that I think that ‘rigid internal party discipline‘ is actually our reconciliation between prime ministership/presidentialism and parliamentary government.

I really can’t think of any very effective way to change this, although I suspect that abolishing party voting in the Senate might help (although it might more significantly reduce the number of valid Senate votes).