BY ALISON DELLIT
If anybody still doubted that the corporate media is dominated by sexist, anti-democratic scandal-mongerers, the coverage of the Democrats' split has provided plenty of proof.
The "reporting" on the resignation of former Democrats leader Meg Lees and the dummy spit by GST supporter Senator Andrew Murray has been patronising, duplicitous and — worst of all — has attempted to rewin credibility for right-wing politics.
The Lees-Murray revolt is a classic case of chickens coming home to roost. It is the crisis that has been inevitable ever since Democrats senators sold most Australians down the river by ensuring the Coalition parties' GST was implemented, and by supporting the Coalition's industrial relations legislation.
The GST sell-out was the culmination of the Democrats' raison d'etre — assisting the governing corporate parties to get anti-working-class policies through the Senate in return for minor concessions for the Democrats' middle-class constituency.
The crisis in the Democrats has nothing to do with current Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja's hair colour, age or marital status, nor Lees' appearance, age or personal friendships. It is certainly not caused by party democracy being unworkable or the Democrats being too left-wing.
Yet one or both of the above arguments have been put by large numbers of corporate media commentators, including Democrat founder Don Chipp, Sydney Morning Herald columnists Alan Ramsey and Padraic McGuinness, former Lees advisor Susan Brown and the Bulletin's Tony Wright as well as being supported by editorials in the Canberra Times, the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald.
According to these commentators, the Democrats have moved too far from their "centrist roots". They should "go back" to doing deals with the Coalition government which sell principle at the altar of "relevance". And they should let their senators do what they please without kicking them out.
The cheer squad for pragmatic compromise is predictable. It is not just the final sale of Telstra, which Australia's corporate elite have been salivating over for some time, but on any issue that the ALP still feels electorally bound to oppose (stripping back unfair dismissal laws, secret ballots for strike action and regressive changes to welfare for example), the corporate elite want a "compromise" squad to ensure the essentials get through.
So we are told repeatedly that the Democrats electoral fortunes were better when Meg "principles-are-not-the-end-of-the-road" Lees was in charge.
In the 1998 federal election, the Democrats ran a prominent campaign based around the idea that a vote for them was a vote to stop an unfair GST. Small wonder then, that after a reasonably high vote in that election, their support dropped to a tiny 3% after they supported an anything-but-fair GST.
The Democrats also lost support after the 1998 maritime union dispute, when many voters realised how draconian the Democrat-supported Workplace Relations Act actually was.
After the 2001 replacement of Lees with Stott Despoja, who was less identified with the GST, the party climbed a little higher in the polls, managing to hold its vote of about 8% in the July 2001 Aston by-election.
The party's image, however, was tarnished by a preference deal with Labor in the November 2001 federal election, justified on purely electoral grounds. ("This make our senators a little more secure", Stott Despoja explained on October 9).
In the polarising climate of the federal khaki election, the Democrats "in the middle approach" (in the final pitch in the November 10 SMH, Stott Despoja wrote: "The Democrats are a sensible, balancing force between government and opposition when they bicker... ") did very badly, losing a NSW Senate seat to the Greens and almost losing their Victorian and Western Australian Senate seats.
This was followed by a halving of their vote in the February South Australian state elections — a result which contrasts dramatically with the recent Greens result in their "home" state of Tasmania.
The Democrats' split is also being used for a few free kicks against control of a party's MPs by the party's non-parliamentary membership. Wright wrote in the July 31 Bulletin: "The real problem with the Democrats is that they are not only minor, but they operate as a secret society run by members who are for the most part faceless."
No, he's not plugging plastic surgeon services. He's arguing that it is more "democratic" for senators to make an individual decision about whether, to pick a random example, selling Telstra is in the "national interest", than it is for them to stick to policy decided on by the party's membership.
Most of the corporate media windbags conveniently forget that people vote for the Democrats' candidates believing that, if elected, these candidates will stick to the party's policy platform. By claiming to be "responsible" only to hundreds of thousands of atomised voters who, between elections, have no mechanisms to hold MPs accountable, Lees will be able to vote in the Senate any way she pleases. There is nothing democratic in that.
Like the oft-repeated refrain "politicians have to have the courage to do unpopular things" (i.e., break election promises), the "follow-your-conscience" theory of politics is designed to suit the needs of big business. After all, it is harder to co-opt "faceless" members than just one or two "leaders", whose re-election prospects are very dependent on how they are portrayed by the corporate media.
One of the most revolting aspects of the corporate media's coverage of the Democrats' debacle has been the deliberate belittling of the political issues involved particularly the use o<%2>f sexist patronisation of both Stott Despoja <%0>and Lees.
Here's a sample from the corporate hacks:
"Rumours persist that since becoming engaged [Stott Despoja] has lost interest in staying in politics." Louise Dodson, July 25 Melbourne Age.
"[A] flibbertigibbet leader ... an in-your-face blonde." Alan Ramsey, July 27 SMH.
"[Lees] might look like the local librarian, but she has as big an ego ... as the rest of them." Glenn Milne, July 29 Australian.
"[M]iddle aged men tend to be more susceptible than their female counterparts to intellectual vanity." Peter Brent, July 29 Canberra Times.
"[G]ood looks and (relative) youth were regarded as all the rage... Nowadays maturity, along with apparent ordinariness, is all the electoral rage... Few would challenge the assertion that Stott Despoja is attractive ... it is unfair to point the finger at the young and the blonde." Gerard Henderson, July 30 SMH.
"[S]omeone should point out to little Natasha..." Ramsey again, July 31 SMH.
"The Australian Democrats once wasn't big enough for two blondes." Miranda Devine, quoting Coalition Senator Amanda Vanstone, in the August 1 SMH.
"Leftie" columnist Margot Kingston added to the tone of the debate in her July 30 SMH piece listing all the names Meg Lees could use for a new political party, including: the Leesbians, the Meg-massage Party, the Natasha-basha Party and the Too Old To Party Party. (Some, such as The Party to Keep The Party To Keep The Bastards Honest Party and the Liberal Lite Party, at least had an element of political satire to them).
The corporate media's obsession with the appearance and "personality" of the two women involved in the dispute has obscured the political issues that underlie it, and thus trivialised politics outside the pro-corporate ALP-Coalition framework.
This treatment of the split implies that, rather than a difference of political orientation, Stott Despoja and Lees are divided by ego and hurt feelings. This view of women as emotional and irrational is part of an age-old sexist stereotype used to support notions that they are too psychologically unstable for public life.
It also implies that politics is better left to the "professional" politicians of the two major parties and that the minor parties are just amateurish and unconcerned with "real" politics. Actually, since a career in the corporate-supported ALP or Liberal Party is much more lucrative than in the minor parties, clashes of ego and personal power struggles are even more rife there.
Voters have flocked to small parties in recent times less than 75% of voters now vote ALP or Liberal. This has been a trend that the mainstream newspapers in Australia have deplored for some time. Their portrayal of the Democrats as unstable wierdos may help to counter this trend.
Finally, it reinforces the belief that "ordinary" people are idiots, more likely to judge political leaders by appearance and clothes than by policies or political arguments.
There does appear to be a divide between Stott Despoja, Senator Andrew Bartlett and Senator Brian Grieg, on the one hand, and Lees and Murray on the other (senators Aden Ridgeway, John Cherry and Lyn Allison seem to be leaning towards the Lees/Murray camp).
The Stott Despoja faction is motivated more by a desire to win disaffected major-party voter support, which is drifting to those who appear principled and forthright (for example, the Greens' stand on asylum seekers and opposition to war has won them increased votes). Lees and Murray think the Democrats' future is bound up with being considered (by the corporate media and the Coalition government) "responsible" and "relevant".
While in this sense, Stott Despoja and Bartlett seem to represent the "left" in the split, the whole framework of the Democrats adjudicating between the parliamentary big players makes it unlikely, if not impossible, for them to break with the pro-big-business consensus that those parties represent.
Whether or not the current battle within the Democrats represents that party's death-throws, the corporate media seem determined to use the show to attempt to hammer voters back into playing the "safe" two-party shell-game.
From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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