While Bob Menzies pumped the political scare campaign to the max, to help ensure his newly formed Liberal Party’s ongoing popularity between 1949-66, locals were often more relaxed about sharing community life with those they battled on election day.
My parents were founding members of Menzies’ new party from 1949, and they recruited their three young sons into the work of letterbox dropping, handing out How To Vote cards, and placing placards around the streets to promote their version of small business helping to bring progress to a struggling tourist town still stuck in a postwar rut.
Meanwhile they sent those same children to Dr Eric Dark, husband of famous novelist Eleanor Dark, as the family GP. The Darks were serious socialists and even had to leave town for periods and retreat to their bush camp north of Leura, to wait for frenzied anti-communist hysteria to die down. But they were respected personal and professional friends.
During that same period, Peter Carroll, builders labourer and President of the Communist Party of Australia Katoomba Branch, would come into my parents shop and chew the fat about how they were all seeing the world go round. There was friendly banter and taking the mickey about how their different political philosophies might offer solutions. But there was a foundation of honouring the dignity of each other’s choices, which could be argued over vehemently, but at the same time respected and ultimately decided at the ballot box. They were all decent people, not pariahs to be blamed for the world’s evils because they voted differently.
Everyone had known real hardship, and they also knew that politics was a matter of personal choice, but it didn’t have to break up friendships and a shared belief in working for the Common Good. Election Day was a bit of a festival of different ideas and ideals, and the atmosphere was more about celebrating being lucky to live in a democracy, rather than a dog eat dog fight to the death over ideology.
Decency was a valued commodity. People were coming from a basic level of respect for the difference and diversity that healthy politics encourages.
We badly need to rediscover that perspective and shared approach to representing our different political constituencies today.
I recently took my grandson to Question Time in Federal Parliament, and also toured the Old Parliament House MoAD (Museum of Australian Democracy), where I used to visit regularly as a journalist back in the 80s. The contrast was stark. Everything about ‘the big house’ was security-ridden and grandiose (architecture and ego mindsets), while ‘the old house’ felt ‘down home,’ rustic and much more personally connecting.
And in those ‘old days’ in the 80s there weren’t hordes of parasitic lobbyists and consultants spread around the parliamentary precinct, plus the Canberra CBD, all hanging off the public purse like ticks on a dog’s ear.
Nor was the Press Gallery full of ‘gotcha moment’ ambushers, desperately seeking crass beat up headlines, although Rupert Murdoch’s staffing appointments were beginning to head in that direction.
There was still a healthy difference between the mainstream parties, as the advent of neoliberalism and transglobal economic rationalism had yet to totally merge them into a bland universal veneer, dedicated to permanent impression management.
It feels like we have lost the ability as a nation to have healthy differences of opinion, while also respecting the dignity of those with whom we differ.
The Question Time theatrics we saw weren’t much different to the 80s, but there was a worn out feeling to the whole process, except for what the minority representatives bring to both chambers of parliament. Their views are passionate, and unrestrained by mainstream party platforms or discipline. Something feels alive and kicking in the way they appeal for a more compassionate and less compromised version of working for the Common Good. But they are predictably targets for derision from the mainstream parties and their bedfellows in the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media. Decency and Dignity are nowhere to be seen along the benches of the mainstream parties – only bully boy tactics.
As we approach ‘the silly season,’ when politics traditionally shifts aside for ‘the cricket season,’ it is timely to remember that Australians CAN do politics in a Decent and Dignified way. We don’t have to slide into the slanging matches that detract from the precious gift that real democracy is. The ability to respect our differences and allow healthy debate conducted in a dignified manner.
Peter Bowers, and before him Jack Fingleton, were longtime press gallery members who used to make the annual summertime switch from the Canberra Press Gallery to the SCG/MCG media rooms, to transfer their attention from one ‘gentleperson’s’ game to another.
Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to see our elected representatives come up with some old style Decency and Dignity this year. It would be the very thing to gain them scores in the Respect they all crave, rather than topping the list on the Cheap Shots Scorecard.
Robbie Lloyd
Dr Robbie Lloyd has been a national journalist, public affairs director, education and community health reformer for over 50 years. He works with First People and those with Lived Experience of mental health challenges, disability, alcohol and other drugs, DFV, ageing and trauma.
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