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| Scotland is having a proper democratic debate. Australia should be so lucky | Scotland is having a proper democratic debate. Australia should be so lucky |
| (about 20 hours later) | |
| Claire, a 24 year old hairdresser from Granton, Edinburgh, tells me she is not a political person, but the subject of Scotland’s impending independence referendum has made political conversations inescapable. | Claire, a 24 year old hairdresser from Granton, Edinburgh, tells me she is not a political person, but the subject of Scotland’s impending independence referendum has made political conversations inescapable. |
| As she carefully treats and dries my hair in the little salon in Edinburgh’s Old Town where she’s a subcontractor, Claire explains that for several months she “hasn’t gone a day without seeing it discussed on TV, or in the papers, on a billboard, on Facebook or even at the pub with friends”. A quick circuit of the block where Claire works proves her point: the newsagents blast referendum headlines, photocopied campaign material is plastered on unclaimed walls, and the local second-hand bookstores cram their windows full of volumes on Scottish historical subjects. | As she carefully treats and dries my hair in the little salon in Edinburgh’s Old Town where she’s a subcontractor, Claire explains that for several months she “hasn’t gone a day without seeing it discussed on TV, or in the papers, on a billboard, on Facebook or even at the pub with friends”. A quick circuit of the block where Claire works proves her point: the newsagents blast referendum headlines, photocopied campaign material is plastered on unclaimed walls, and the local second-hand bookstores cram their windows full of volumes on Scottish historical subjects. |
| Claire hasn’t decided how she’s going to vote, though she has recently decided that she will; the campaign’s concurrence with the televised horrors in Gaza has made her realise that there are “people dying in other countries” in campaigns for self-determination, although of course the two are not exactly comparable. Claire can explain both sides of the debate, is healthily suspicious of both teams of campaign leaders and is intending to research the arguments for and against in more detail. The one thing she is sure about is that a discussion about “where we’re all going as a country is a good thing”. | Claire hasn’t decided how she’s going to vote, though she has recently decided that she will; the campaign’s concurrence with the televised horrors in Gaza has made her realise that there are “people dying in other countries” in campaigns for self-determination, although of course the two are not exactly comparable. Claire can explain both sides of the debate, is healthily suspicious of both teams of campaign leaders and is intending to research the arguments for and against in more detail. The one thing she is sure about is that a discussion about “where we’re all going as a country is a good thing”. |
| It’s this last insight of Claire’s that makes me – presently 12,000 miles from home but with Australia on my mind – more than a little envious. As much as the Indyref campaign is inescapable in Scotland, it is, as proved in the person of young Claire, excitingly enfranchising. | It’s this last insight of Claire’s that makes me – presently 12,000 miles from home but with Australia on my mind – more than a little envious. As much as the Indyref campaign is inescapable in Scotland, it is, as proved in the person of young Claire, excitingly enfranchising. |
| While in Australia young people are massing on the streets against Christopher Pyne’s punitive education policies, their political engagement is one of combat. University and trade students are on the streets fighting exactly because they are not participants invited into a determinative policy conversation – not only is their policy input unsought, but even their approval is uncourted. Of course students are storming television shows, marching and allowing themselves to be arrested; as a community divested of any meaningful influence in debates regarding the policies that will affect them, it is only by physically disrupting the authoritarian imposition of Pyne’s agenda that otherwise powerless students can seize entry into the conversation at all. | While in Australia young people are massing on the streets against Christopher Pyne’s punitive education policies, their political engagement is one of combat. University and trade students are on the streets fighting exactly because they are not participants invited into a determinative policy conversation – not only is their policy input unsought, but even their approval is uncourted. Of course students are storming television shows, marching and allowing themselves to be arrested; as a community divested of any meaningful influence in debates regarding the policies that will affect them, it is only by physically disrupting the authoritarian imposition of Pyne’s agenda that otherwise powerless students can seize entry into the conversation at all. |
| It’s not only students, of course. Across the policy spectrum, in the budget and policy wake of the Coalition election, there have been street marches, petitions, lock-ons, gatherings and emergency meetings fomenting across communities from environmental stakeholders trying to save the Great Barrier Reef, to Australian pensioners defending their hard-earned retirement entitlements, to even the activist foment of a long-dormant trade union movement. | It’s not only students, of course. Across the policy spectrum, in the budget and policy wake of the Coalition election, there have been street marches, petitions, lock-ons, gatherings and emergency meetings fomenting across communities from environmental stakeholders trying to save the Great Barrier Reef, to Australian pensioners defending their hard-earned retirement entitlements, to even the activist foment of a long-dormant trade union movement. |
| It’s revealing that negative poll results for Abbott have not swayed his government’s determination to ram through health, welfare or education policy that Australians do not like and do not want. Results of surveys repeatedly conclude significant majorities of the population want equal marriage rights, fairer taxation and tax revenue spent on services, yet Abbott’s government is unresponsive to the civic will. As more communities rally in defence of what is important to them, what becomes apparent is not only the devastating effect of Coalition policy on communities, but how that devastation has been enabled by a federal political structure that barely engages ordinary Australians beyond a single day of electoral investment once every three years. | It’s revealing that negative poll results for Abbott have not swayed his government’s determination to ram through health, welfare or education policy that Australians do not like and do not want. Results of surveys repeatedly conclude significant majorities of the population want equal marriage rights, fairer taxation and tax revenue spent on services, yet Abbott’s government is unresponsive to the civic will. As more communities rally in defence of what is important to them, what becomes apparent is not only the devastating effect of Coalition policy on communities, but how that devastation has been enabled by a federal political structure that barely engages ordinary Australians beyond a single day of electoral investment once every three years. |
| And what even does that day mean? Abbott was forthright in the lead up to the election that there would be “no cuts to pensions, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC or SBS” with a Coalition victory, promises that were shredded by his government in their first budget, on the pretext of a “budget emergency” that treasurer Joe Hockey blithely admitted to a recent audience in New Zealand does not, did not, did never exist. | And what even does that day mean? Abbott was forthright in the lead up to the election that there would be “no cuts to pensions, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC or SBS” with a Coalition victory, promises that were shredded by his government in their first budget, on the pretext of a “budget emergency” that treasurer Joe Hockey blithely admitted to a recent audience in New Zealand does not, did not, did never exist. |
| The activist outpouring since Abbott’s election can be read in this context not merely as opposition to specific policy activities, but symptomatic of a people’s democratic instinct to participate. If leaders and their parties are not accountable to their own pre-election policy commitments, then it’s fair to conclude that Australians have lost their stake in public policymaking, full-stop. | The activist outpouring since Abbott’s election can be read in this context not merely as opposition to specific policy activities, but symptomatic of a people’s democratic instinct to participate. If leaders and their parties are not accountable to their own pre-election policy commitments, then it’s fair to conclude that Australians have lost their stake in public policymaking, full-stop. |
| It doesn’t have to be this way. When writer and academic Fraser McDonald made the distinction in a recent piece about the Scottish referendum that “independence is about the territorial enactment of self-determination”, he could well have been speaking to an unarticulated yearning in the newly activist Australian electorate. | It doesn’t have to be this way. When writer and academic Fraser McDonald made the distinction in a recent piece about the Scottish referendum that “independence is about the territorial enactment of self-determination”, he could well have been speaking to an unarticulated yearning in the newly activist Australian electorate. |
| While Scotland debates the country it is and that which it wishes to be, Australia remains a nation with a constitution that is 113 years old, declared without the universal enfranchisement of women or indigenous Australians, who had only limited voting rights in South Australia. That constitution has not seen change since 1977, nor even been subject to public discussion since the failed republic referendum of 15 years ago. If the institutions we have inherited from the constitution have allowed a government which freely breaks its promises, then it’s time for our system to be renewed. | |
| In such a political climate, it is hard not to look towards Claire, her enfranchisement, and the Scottish community’s historic decision – however they choose to vote – with envy. | In such a political climate, it is hard not to look towards Claire, her enfranchisement, and the Scottish community’s historic decision – however they choose to vote – with envy. |
| This piece was updated on 5 august 2014 to reflect the fact that women and Indigenous people were enfranchised to vote internally in South Australia in the constitutional debates preceding federation |
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