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An empty centre

Michael Gawenda, Election 2010

Published 8:06 AM, 23 Jul 2010 Last update 11:25 AM, 23 Jul 2010


The television pictures of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott sitting together in the church in Murwillumbah, at the funeral service for private Nathan Bewes who was killed in action in Afghanistan, were, more than anything, a relief. It seemed that Gillard and Abbott, for a moment at least, were able to talk to each other without instructions or talking points from their campaign teams.

Nathan Bewes died in a war that started in September 2001. Seventeen Australian soldiers have died there and hundreds have been injured. It is a war that is not going well and which will be a significant issue in the US mid-term Congressional elections in November. It is unlikely to be a major issue in the Australian election campaign.

Gillard and Abbott suspended campaigning to attend the fallen soldier’s funeral, but given that both the Government and the Opposition are committed to keeping Australian soldiers in Afghanistan – indeed, Abbott has said he would be prepared to increase Australia’s troop commitment – there will be no real debate in this campaign about Australia’s Afghanistan involvement.

The truism of politics in liberal democracies is that successful governments govern from the centre and that election campaigns are always about which party is best able to capture that centre ground. Elections are won, according to this long-established conventional wisdom, by winning over swinging voters—in the US they are called independents—who are non-ideological moderates, sitting there in that hallowed centrist ground waiting to be won over.

In both the US and Australia, this no longer holds. The middle ground is empty. There is no middle ground in US politics on the major issues that will dominate the mid-term elections: whether America should – and can afford – to remain in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq, and whether the faltering US economy can avoid not just another recession, but a depression, without another massive stimulus package. There is no centrist position on these issues.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott may have suspended campaigning in recognition of the fact that Nathan Bewes had given his life in a war that both Gillard and Abbott are prepared to risk Australian lives for, but the campaign ground on without them.

Kevin Rudd, now that he is no-longer prime minister and therefore free of any obligation to suspend his campaign to win the seat of Griffith, the safest Labor seat in Queensland, was good enough to confirm that he had indeed been offered some sort of UN job, but that it was part-time and he remained determined to win his seat and stay in the parliament. He would have been gratified by the media coverage. There can be no centrist position on Rudd, on his sacking, nor on his determination to be resurrected.

Meanwhile, Julia Gillard may have suspended campaigning, but not so the Labor campaign team on her behalf. The team leaked the speech Gillard will give today on the Government’s climate change policies. The leak didn’t quite manage to push Rudd out of the news cycle, but it got good coverage—which is not necessarily such a good thing for Labor.

The speech and policies Gillard duly announced are perhaps the best illustration so far in this campaign of Gillard’s—and her government’s—political timidity. They are also an illustration of the empty space that is the middle ground of politics in Australia.

After all that has happened on climate change in Australia, after the decade or more of debate on climate change policy, after Malcolm Turnbull’s removal as Opposition Leader because he refused to back down on his support for an ETS, after Rudd had won an election having told Australians that tackling climate change would be his government’s greatest challenge, we have this essentially farcical Gillard attempt to start again on climate change.

A Gillard government will set up what she calls a "citizens’ assembly" to examine the science of climate change and whether or not an ETS is really a good idea. This citizens’ assembly will be supported by a climate change commission of experts that will inform the good citizens of the citizens’ assembly about what’s happening out there in the world of climate change science.

Is she kidding? A citizens’ assembly? A commission of climate change experts? This sounds like something dreamt up by the government of North Korea. Even the Chinese Communist Party has abandoned this sort of nonsense. There is no middle ground on climate change, and no citizens’ assembly and commission of experts can sit in that centrist space. That space is essentially empty.

Read Michael Gawenda's previous election commentary pieces here.



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4 Comments


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John Delahunt wrote:

Gillard's citizens' assembly has shades the Kevin Rudd's 'think tank' which was, in the end, all but ignored by Labor. If this is the best that Gillard can do we are headed for a period of extreme mediocrity (See An empty centre, July 23).

23 Jul 2010 10:11 AM

Steven Baker wrote:

I thought we already had a citizens' assembly - it's called the federal parliament! (See An empty centre, July 23.)

23 Jul 2010 4:23 PM

Robert Smith wrote:

Citizen juries or assemblies are designed to tease out practical options when people disagree (See An empty centre, July 23).

The technique involves exposing relevant experts to questions from a panel of citizens over time.

It's a real technique and might just work.

23 Jul 2010 6:18 PM

John Warszawski wrote:

Why is Gillard, who is after all an experienced and capable politician, adopting so many intellectually ludicrous positions? Is this a necessary compromise of leadership and electioneering? It seems the strategy for capturing the "empty centre" is to avoid substance at all costs (See An empty centre, July 23).

This strategy may well win the election – but what then? In a vacuum, or in Australia's great empty centre, no-one can hear you scream.

Gawenda's "empty centre" may well become a new national catch phrase.

23 Jul 2010 9:01 PM



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