ONE thing that sets Australia apart from its
Asian neighbours is the interminable, vicious public infighting that scars its
politics.
On March 25th Julia Gillard, the prime minister, shuffled
her cabinet for the fourth time since scraping home in an election in August
2010. She purged it of supporters of Kevin Rudd, her predecessor, whom some of
her Labor Party colleagues had tried and failed to install as her replacement
on March 21st. Australian commentators wrung their hands at the tawdry
politicking.
“Our long national nightmare continues,” lamented Sam Roggeveen on
a blog on the website of the Lowy Institute, a foreign-affairs think-tank in
Sydney, fretting that Australia was becoming a laughing-stock. It is true that
its politics provokes a smirk or two elsewhere in Asia. Few could argue with Ms
Gillard’s assessment that the coup attempt was “unseemly” and “self-indulgent”.
The Labor Party’s troubles date back to Mr Rudd’s stint as
prime minister, from 2007-10. He alienated his colleagues and was losing
popularity, so the party toppled him ahead of the 2010 election. Many were
taken aback both by the suddenness of his downfall, and the ruthlessness with
which Ms Gillard knifed him. He seems never to have given up hope of a
comeback. A Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, in public he is an appealing
character: erudite, eloquent, witty and even, on occasion, self-deprecating. In
opinion polls he has consistently scored much higher than Ms Gillard as the
leader who might secure victory in the next election, which she has called for
September 14th.
The sad truth for Mr Rudd, however, is that many of his
Labor parliamentary colleagues, who choose the leader, cannot stand him.
According to James Button, who worked briefly as a speechwriter for Mr Rudd,
writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, “behind closed doors he
consistently treated people with rudeness and contempt.” He had no chance of
unseating Ms Gillard and, for the second time in their three leadership
contests, did not even compete in the leadership ballot she called. Hence the
“Chicken Kev” taunt thrown by another columnist and former Labor speechwriter,
Tim Soutphommasane.
Ms Gillard, on the other hand, a former industrial-relations
lawyer with strong ties to the trade unions that back Labor, has again shown
her toughness. In a recent interview with the Canberra Times she said
that, in politics, you have to be “a pretty hard bastard”. Tony Blair, a former
British prime minister dogged by intraparty conspiracies, had told her politics
was afflicted with a “new brutality”. She spoke of how technology has
transformed the media, encouraging “more drama, more shock, more horror”.
At least now Mr Rudd has promised Ms Gillard his “100%
support”. Even if he had his fingers crossed when he spoke, Ms Gillard can
probably concentrate for the next six months on fighting the opposition rather
than looking over her shoulder. Still, if the opinion polls are to be believed,
she needs quite a turnaround to avoid a humiliating defeat in September.
Perhaps her best hope is that the conservative opposition
coalition has as self-destructive a recent history as Labor’s. Its leading
force, the Liberal Party, has had four leaders in the past six years. Tony
Abbott, the incumbent and probable coalition candidate for prime minister, is
not its most popular politician. The man he ousted in 2009, Malcolm Turnbull,
is a bigger vote-winner. Ms Gillard, whose finest moment as prime minister was
a blistering attack last year on Mr Abbott for alleged misogyny, may feel she
still has a chance.
Australian politics seems locked in a culture of democratic
coups, with the perverse effect that the leading parties fail to field their
best candidates. And, when not dominated by tales of back-stabbing leaders and
their muck-spreading sidekicks, they are taken over by scandals of sleaze and
graft.
Asia’s big democracies—India, Indonesia and Japan—have all
faced difficulties in finding leaders acceptable both to their parties and to
the electorate. India’s Congress party seems likely to resort, by default, to a
dynastic succession; the most popular politician in Indonesia, Joko Widodo,
Jakarta’s governor, is not yet even a candidate in next year’s presidential
election; Japan is on its seventh prime minister in seven years (and it is his
second go in that period). In all three countries politics is even more
unseemly, self-indulgent and even corrupt.
Just like the Politburo
This sounds like an advertisement for autocracy. On a
superficial view, China, for example, does not suffer from this leadership
instability. One ten-year regime has just given way, in a choreographed
transition, to another, expected to endure until 2022. But in fact, Chinese
politics also closely resembles Australia’s. There, too, no politician forgets
that, as Mr Rudd put it in 1998, “politics is about power”. There, too, leaders
are chosen by factional intrigue. There, too, politics is dominated by personal
rivalry. And there, too, the public’s preferences are of secondary importance.
The difference is that Australia’s politics is played out in
the open. Uniquely in the rich world, Australia is enjoying its 22nd
consecutive year of economic growth. If this is a national nightmare, who wants
to wake up? Moreover, as Mr Roggeveen forecast, the leadership kerfuffle played
out peacefully according to the rules of Australia’s democracy: “No troops on
the streets and probably not even a demonstration.” Australia may in fact be
Asia’s most stable country.
By comparison, China’s politics inhabits the shadows, except
when some scandal, such as the Bo Xilai affair last year, casts a lurid light.
And when that happens it calls the whole closed system into question. As Mr
Roggeveen noted a day after his doom-laden blogpost, the latest Rudd-Gillard
tussle did not make Australia a laughing-stock after all. It was widely seen as
a non-event. It must be chastening for Australia’s leaders that their squabbles
seem irrelevant. But it is also a lesson in the benefits of transparency. By
Banyan for The Economist
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