BY ALISON DELLIT
If the mainstream media are to be believed, the ascendency of Natasha Stott Despoja to the leadership of the Australian Democrats, and of Aden Ridgeway to the deputy leadership, heralds a new era in Australian politics. Never has so much been made of so little.
The barrage began well before the actual ballot results were announced. Since Stott Despoja declared in March that she would stand against incumbent Meg Lees for the party's leadership, there have been endless media discussions about her hair, her youth, her eating habits, her footwear, her television "style" and her media manipulation skills — everything in fact but her politics.
Since the postal ballot results were released on April 7, Australia's political commentators have been falling over each other to offer the most sycophantic coverage of the new leadership team. Former Democrats leader, and now ALP frontbencher, Cheryl Kernot won the contest, coining two new buzzwords for the Stott Despoja and Ridgeway combination: "new politics" and the "dream team".
These labels appear, unfortunately, to be here to stay. Picking up Kernot's themes, Tony Smith in the April 9 Australian Financial Review and Jason Yat-sen Li in April 12 Sydney Morning Herald both predicted an upswing of interest in politics among young people generated by the Stott Despoja/Ridgeway pairing.
The new Democrats leader has always pursued a media strategy designed to give herself maximum exposure to young people, from forcing herself onto the platform of student rallies to appearing on Good News Week and The Panel.
But for all of Stott Despoja's "exposure" to young people, she has little to say. A master of the unvoiced implication, she wants to be seen to support many progressive causes, while remaining vague on the detail.
Her manoeuvring on the GST was an example of this. During the 1998 federal election campaign, Stott Despoja made several public commitments, including at student demonstrations, that she would not support a GST on books. These commitments undeniably convinced many students to vote for the Democrats in that election.
When the Democrats did support putting the GST on books, Stott Despoja refused to resign from the party, instead choosing the meaningless gesture of personally voting against that particular provision in the bill, thus fulfilling the letter of her pledge, but not the substance.
But in re-painting the Democrats as progressive, the queen of spin may have taken on the impossible. Since they split from the Liberal Party in 1977, the Democrats have sought to play the role of backing "little bosses": small to medium businesses. Founder Don Chipp's rallying cry of being "against big capital and big labour" defined the political space that they sought to carve out.
When a strong environmental and peace movement developed in the 1980s and the ALP shifted rightwards, the Democrats sought to gain a new electoral base by taking a progressive stance on some social issues. The mainstream media's subsequent portrayal of them as "dangerous radicals" increased their left-wing profile, and accentuated the change. This reached its zenith with the election of Janet Powell following the federal election in 1990.
Under Powell, the party took real steps away from its anti-working class platform. It supported repeal of Sections 45D and E of the Trade Practices Act, which made solidarity industrial action illegal, an act the Democrats had blocked changes to in 1984. Powell also publicly supported a proposal to merge the Democrats and the Greens into a single party.
But Powell's politics were bitterly opposed by many within the party, and she lost the leadership to John Coulter in 1992 following a vicous personal campaign.
Coulter's first major policy document, Getting to Work, re-established the Democrats credentials as a pro-capitalist party. This "unemployment" policy focused on restructuring private industry through a jobs levy and increased corporate handouts, while backing a modest increase in company tax rates.
This return to a "safe" pro-capital policy had a direct media benefit. When the WA Greens held up the budget process in 1993, attempting to force concessions from the ALP government, the Murdoch press began to conciously profile the Democrats as the "real" third party in Australian parliamentary politics.
Understanding their part of the deal, the Democrats responded by stressing their "responsible" attitude. On core questions, they would always support the needs of capitalism.
Along with a return to the fold came a stregthening of their reactionary anti-worker policies. In 1996 the Democrats supported both Peter Reith's weakening of unfair dismissal legislation and the draconian, union-busting Workplace Relations Act.
The Democrats were rewarded by blanket media coverage in the 1998 election, particularly of their criticisms of a GST on food. Consequently, their senate vote skyrocketed, giving them the balance of power there.
When they used this power to pass the GST, and other unpopular government laws, with only modest exemptions on some food, many who voted for them were outraged. Discontent with the party's rightward shift has increased, both amongst voters and in the party itself, since then.
Having moved so dramatically to portray themselves as a "respectable" establishment party, the Democrats have found themselves suffering the same voter backlash as the federal government. Associated with the privatisation of Telstra and the GST, most voters consider them as thoroughly pro-economic rationalism as the major parties.
In state elections in WA and Queensland, and in the Ryan by-election, the Democrats' progressive voters bled to the Greens and their loony right-wing fringe bled to One Nation.
It's no surprise therefore that Democrats members have opted overwhelmingly for a reshuffle at the head of the table. Nor is it any surprise that the bosses' media have been all too happy to assist.
Stott Despoja and the media have been working hand in glove over the last six weeks to convince the electorate that the Democrats are no longer the same party that played ballboy for John Howard.
Stott Despoja has outdone herself in meaningless gestures. She made a point of meeting with Sharan Burrow from the ACTU before any representative of the government or the opposition. She has stated her intention to be "hard" on John Howard, and to make the Democrats "vibrant" and "relevant". She has even floated the idea of a membership ballot to consider supporting some elements of GST rollback.
But she has not announced a single policy change, or criticised one element of previous Democrat policy, not even their support for the GST. While she has blamed the Democrats poll losses on the "perception" that they are too close to the Howard government, she argues that it is a false impression.
On April 23, for example, 10 days after Stott Despoja met with the ACTU, Senator Andrew Murray, the Democrats spokesperson on industrial relations, confirmed that the Democrats would not support the repeal of individual contracts under an ALP government.
Despite all the hype, the Democrats still want to be a bosses' party. They want to steal Green and progressive votes without annoying the corporate elite. Stott Despoja understands that her media popularity comes with a political price tag, and she is only too eager to pay it.
For its part, the corporate media will give the Democrats any coverage that will take votes away from the Greens, who the bosses still consider a wild card. This is behind the portrayal of Stott Despoja as the voice of youth, a portrayal which is based on little more than her age and her public position against student fees.
When it comes to reflecting young people's attitudes to politics, Stott Despoja is about as relevant as Ray Martin. In her first speech to parliament in 1996, she said, "If I can speak for all the youth of this country it is to say that we want to respect our institutions and our leaders".
This attitude is not surprising, given she was chosen as Australia's "most promising youth leader" by the World Economic Forum, the institution that thousands of young people came out to oppose in September last year.
But this is Stodge's basic problem. For all the groovy image, the right clothes and media attention, she and Ridgeway are the bosses' "dream team" and no-one else's. The Democrats are the third party alternative which offers no alternative and Stott Despoja is the politican who sold her soul to capital in return for media coverage.
Cheryl Kernot got one thing right. There is "new politics" in Australia — but it has nothing to do with her one time protege.
The new politics is happening far from the plush red benches of the Senate; it's happening in the streets, on the campuses and high schools, in the workplaces and communities, in the mass mobilisations and direct actions. And it's marching straight past the Democrats "new" leader.