The Irrelevance of the ‘Culture War’

Jasper Lindell,

Correspondent (Oceania)

 

ANALYSIS

CANBERRA — Late on election night Tony Abbott made the victor’s speech. “And from today, I declare that Australia is under new management.”

It didn’t take people long to realise just how different this management, led by Abbott, was. It was a Liberal government that wasn’t afraid to shake things up and make changes.

In late September, three weeks after the election, the new education minister, Christopher Pyne, told Fairfax Media he wasn’t concerned about starting the “history wars” anew by claiming Australia’s national curriculum favoured causes of the Left. He said he wouldn’t mind if the Left wanted to take the government on over the issue.

Already it looked like we would see more action on the fronts of the Culture Wars, which seem to encompass the “history wars”.

But what Culture Wars? There are no battles in the streets, there have been no fatalities and food does not have to be rationed. The Culture Wars are a game of the media and politicians.

Barrie Cassidy, a journalist who works for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and who was press secretary to Bob Hawke when was the Australian prime minister, was appointed by the former Centre-Left Labor government as the chairman of the Old Parliament House Advisory Concil on the day after the federal election was called. The council steers the direction of Old Parliament House and the Museum of Australian Democracy housed there.

This, the conservative side of the media declared, was a fresh move in the Culture War.

Following a conversation with the new government’s Attorney-General, George Brandis, Mr Cassidy offered his resignation. It was seen as a successful counter move by the Right.

A government’s choice of appointments of people with political leaning similar to their own are the main moves they can make in the Culture Wars. Oppositions, meanwhile, are left to vigorously hold the government to account, and to complain.

So, after Cassidy, a man of the Left, was removed from his unpaid appointment, the new government made some appointments of their own.

Tim Wilson, director of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Right-wing think tank, was appointed as a commissioner to the Human Rights Commission, a body which he called to be abolished. Mr Wilson will earn $AU320,000 a year in his new position.

While Sophie Mirabella, a former Liberal MP who lost her seat at this year’s election, was appointed to the board of ASC Pty Ltd, formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation, a government owned enterprise. Mirabella was a close ally of Abbott when they were in opposition.

And as appointments were made and it was debated whether they were politically motivated or not (while it always seemed like they were), the Right and Left of the media attack each other in relentless volleys of accusation after accusation of irredeemable bias.

The Australian, the Murdoch-owned national broadsheet, deplores the ABC’s Left-wing bias. Editorials and opinion pieces run attacking the ABC’s green-Left view on the world and the fact that latte-sipping hipsters are running the place.

When the ABC tries to highlight The Australian’s obvious Right-wing bias, the reply is that, because they aren’t tax-payer funded, they can pretty much do whatever they like.

The Culture War, though, is almost always a load of hot air. It doesn’t hang over us and nor do we live in the shadow of the printing press.

Another weapon used in the so-called War is that either side of the media is out of touch with the people. This isn’t true: people who lean to the Left pay attention to media that leans to the Left; those on the Right will pay attention the Right. The media is in touch with majority of its audience.

It is the Culture War itself that people find of touch and wholly irrelevant. No one will the Culture War, it seems, because it is like trench warfare where the guns are on a timer and all the soldiers are asleep; only the generals are awake and they are the only ones who care.

Every year here we have a festival of hot air balloons. We have to do something with the by-product of the so-called Culture War.

Image Courtesy: By MystifyMe Concert Photography (Troy) (Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (16)) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons