What Kevin and the Hollowmen told us about Res-publica Australis
You all did love him once, not without cause
- Julius Caesar Act III, Scene 2
Iron Chef, every Saturday night on SBS
In some respect, the political assassination of Kevin Rudd was executed like a reality TV show.
Millions of viewers watched live on prime time TV political correspondents turning into a bunch of Iron Chef Commentators: “skuza! I think the Deputy Prime Minister is now walking to the PM’s office. We don’t know if they will have Miso soup for dinner” (1)
As the night went on, the rumour inflated: would the ‘factional leaders’ among the 115 contestants of the governing tribe(2) decide to subject their Chief to an Immunity Challenge? The whole thing ended up 24 hours later with an elimination ceremony at the Tribal Council. Kevin was the weakest link. Kevin had to go.
So much eloquence has been displayed to comment, and even predict this downfall (David Marr’s Quarterly Essay, Annabel Crabb’s Rise of the Ruddbot). What is it to add? Especially as we are heading towards a new federal election anyway. Maybe we could clarify some simple questions and recap what we’ve learnt.
Bill Shorten on the night of Kevin Rudd’s Immunity Challenge (Wednesday, 23 June 2010)
Question #1 – Who are those factional leaders?
“We don’t vote for them, we don’t even know their names and we’re not quite sure what they do. But they wield enormous influence. They are the power behind the power. They are The Hollowmen.” was the tag line of the eponymous ABC series The Hollowmen.
The reality has caught-up with the fiction, albeit the hollowmen responsible for Rudd’s demise were not Canberra public-servants from the policy unit of the fiction series, but a handful of Labor party operators who terminated him “à la Italian way”: at night, from the restaurant, over the phone by rounding up the troops and “doing the numbers”.
Answer and Lesson #1: although relatively known to the constituency, the Party’s king makers are not the people we see taking profound and thoughtful roles in shaping the public debate. Whilst they do appear from time to time on national TV (ABC Lateline or QandA. Pick any), they don’t really come across as policy makers or deep thinkers. The reason is that their role is more akin to Party Room bouncers. How he ended up having the power to change the PM remains a bit of a mystery.
Mark Arbib
Question #2: So what is this Westminster System exactly?
According to the text book: A democratic parliamentary system of government modelled after the politics of the UK. It has a head of state, the Queen, who despite being the theoretical holder of executive power mainly does ceremonial duties. Her representative in Australia is the Governor General (ceremonies for a living). The Prime Minister (PM) is the head of government: typically the head of the majority party in the elected Parliament. The executive branch is the cabinet led by the PM. The parliamentary opposition plays an important role by appointing a shadow cabinet on its front bench: ministers have opposites who work on the same portfolios and make sure not issue is left unturned.
The parliament is often bicameral: a lower house (house of representatives) and upper house (senate). Among a few frivolities, the lower house does have the ability to dismiss a government by “withholding -or blocking- Supply” ie. rejecting a budget. It happened in Australia in 1975 to Labour PM Gough Whitlam, who eventually got sacked by the Governor General.
But the killer difference with a Presidential regime is that the real boss (the PM) is actually NOT DIRECTLY elected by the people. As Bob Hawke (PM in the 80s) put it in his usual colourful language when hearing the claim made that Kevin Rudd had been elected by the Australian people.
“That’s a lot of bullshit – the Australian people don’t elect the prime minister; the Australian people have never elected the Prime Minister.”
“The parties, on both sides of politics, elect the Prime Minister, and once they’ve done that, if they’re still around at the time of the next election, he or she gets the chance to get the endorsement of the electorate.”
“To say otherwise is a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution and of parliamentary practice.”
Answer and Lesson #2: we don’t vote for the Prime Minister. Thatcher and Hawke ousted by members of their own cabinets in the 1990s – respectively John Major and Paul Keating – would concur. We vote for a Party.
Question #3: What’s with this leadership challenge (or #spill) that left everyone wondering WTF was going on? (and it’s not going away)
It actually did not look like a political process, but rather like a corporate sacking.
“Get in the room. See your boss with an HR officer. 15mns conversation. You’re done. Put your things in a box, give your security pass back and please leave the building accompanied by a security guard. You’ve been fired.”
Answer and Lesson #3: This is in essence what happened to Kevin. The Hollowmen fans were dreaming of The West Wing, they got Up-in-the-Air instead.
In our conditioned civilian minds, that’s not the way things are supposed to work in politics. Processes are supposed to take time. The players were supposed to come to the 7:30 Report or Lateline to massage the case a bit. Not this time.
Conclusion: What about the health of our democracy in all of this?
This is probably the real question that I have not heard in the last 4 weeks.
There is actually some good and some bad.
The pretty bad?
There is something quite unsettling in seeing a PM, head of government, accountable and responsible for major decisions such as sending the country to war, vanish in 24 hours. Vaporised. In 24 hours. Not by the will of the people after a long (albeit often unsatisfying) campaign but by party apparatchiks.
The unease is probably coming from a vague subconscious association between the disposability of the leader and a potential flimsiness of the institutions. Social constructs where leaders get purged that way are not usually healthy beacons of democracy.
The good?
On the other hand – taking a totally opposite view – it could be argued that compared with presidential regimes where unpopular Presidents are sticking to their position like clams on a rock (e.g. Sarkozy in France), the ability for constituents to pressure the governing party is a more democratic proposition. In theory, the Aussie way enables citizens to send signals via polls and dissatisfaction feedback through parliamentarians, and be heard. The Parties are supposed to take notice. Their incentive to stay in power is to take corrective action further to the citizen’s grievances and change the executive branch. A sort of self regulation.
But is it?
Irrespective of what you think of Rudd, his style or his policies – this was not the point of this post – you probably want to reflect on the real lesson (re)learnt from this episode. We have a system that really favours the role of the Hollowmen and their mode of operation. It really does.
To paraphrase what Arthur Sinodinos wrote in his Australian column: “party powerbrokers saw the polls and blinked. It became save-the-furniture time. Imagine this lot running Britain in 1940”. He has a valid point.
This alone should be enough to re-open the debate about the Constitution and the Republic.
The terms of this re-prosecution would not be about the Queen or the flag. It would be about asking if Australia is equipped with the appropriate mode of government so that political leaders can make the required uncompromising choices to deal with environmental issues, wealth redistribution, and basically the future of the Nation; without fearing to be bumped at the next poll hiccup.
{ leLaissezFaire }
Julia Gillard, 27th Australian PM – Kevin Rudd, backbencher
Foot-notes:
(1): Japanese television cooking show which run from 1993 to 1999 and got revived with uber-kitsch cult status on Australian’s SBS Channel.
(2): the 115 Labour members of the House of Representatives and Senate form the Labour caucus.
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