Joe Aston’s accusation in his new book The Chairman's Lounge that Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was chummy with disgraced former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, and received flight upgrades on request, is adding to the public distrust towards politicians.
Albanese’s excuse is that he declared these perks; his supporters have been quick to point to Coalition MPs who also enjoyed upgrades. Opposition leader Peter Dutton used the private jet of Australia’s richest billionaire Gina Rinehart on multiple occasions.
The "other pollies get perks too" excuse doesn’t pass the pub test, just as "my mum lived in public housing" didn’t take the sting from the headlines about the PM’s $4.3 million real estate purchase.
However, it is reinforcing the growing distrust of politicians and the political system.
A Grattan Institute submission to a 2020 Senate inquiry into nationhood, national identity and democracy reported that 74% of those surveyed believed politicians “look after themselves and their mates, at the expense of the public interest” and that trust in government was at an all-time low.
It said many “are worried that interest groups with the resources or connections to lobby and influence politicians get special treatment”.
A public survey showed 56% of respondents had “personally witnessed or suspected” public officials “making decisions that favoured a business or individual who gave them political donations or support”. It said the number was higher among those working in federal government.
The Senate inquiry heard that 68% of politicians had declared corporate-sponsored hospitality or travel and 7% accepted overseas trips sponsored by a foreign government or agency.
It also heard that, in the previous decade, around a quarter of former federal MPs or assistant ministers have taken up roles with special interests, including in the tobacco, mining and weapons’ industries.
More recent surveys by Essential Research show a continuing decline in trust in public institutions, including scientific institutions like CSIRO, universities, health departments, the police and court system, the public service and state and federal governments — the last being the most distrusted.
Essential Research found that global corporations are even more distrusted.
Its October survey found 21% “totally distrust” the federal government and 42% have “not much trust”, while 30% “totally distrust” international corporations and 46% have “not much trust”.
This well-founded distrust comes after decades of privatisation, tax cuts, subsidies and concessions for the corporate rich that has corrupted public institutions. The rich benefit at the expense of the common good, the climate crisis being one of the strongest examples.
Labor and the Coalition, the traditional parties of government, completely agree on this neoliberal economic course.
A bipartisan generation of neoliberal politicians has increasingly abandoned the pretence of propriety, often appearing puzzled at why the public should be so upset about their shameful eagerness to get to the trough.
The majority belief that corporate interests dictate the direction of government may be a result of decades of neoliberalism but, in reality, it long predates this.
The system of supposedly democratic parliamentary rule has its origins in a system of more naked class rule.
The first parliaments were to represent the owners of property and not the majority of citizens. Universal suffrage was only gradually won, through struggle, hundreds of years later. The South Australian Legislative Council was elected on a property-based franchise until 1973!
As the vote was extended, property owners developed other ways to make sure that the elected government continued to defend their interests.
Numerous small ways of co-opting or corrupting politicians exist: every perk, privilege and corporate donation is part of a system of “golden chains” that ensure the politicians and heads of government departments and other public institutions (including the police and armed forces) serve the ruling class.
We’ve seen the conga line of PMs trooping to the United States to pay homage to Rupert Murdoch — underlining the power of the old and new media monopolies.
But the biggest of these golden chains is the billionaires’ threat to withdraw their capital. In the era of globalised monopolies, this is called “capital flight risk”.
There are good reasons for the growing distrust of the political system. However, in absence of a strong progressive alternative to the major capitalist parties, that distrust can build the conditions for the rise of far-right populism, as we are seeing in Europe and the US.
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