The outsiders within the tent (tuned into #insiders)

I made an evident mistake on Sunday when I tuned into the #insiders hashtag, coming away from the experienced somewhat depressed but wiser for the detail conveyed to me about the errors people make in their judgements about the Liberal-National Coalition (the conservative party here in Australia). 

When I awoke ready for the next day I nursed remnants of a dream about the governor-general – it’d been in my imagination a new GG’s inauguration ceremony – and I felt chastened for the richness of the imagery displayed by my unconscious mind, with its soldiers and trains. Our current GG was a soldier, and this class of citizen had IRL furnished many candidates for our top constitutional role. Accustomed to serving the Queen and forming a link to Buckhingham Palace he or she is a form of guarantee of sanity. You feel secure that, however strange the natives become with their outlandish ideas, leadership shall always be kept within bounds established in the distant past. Not so with our elected representatives, some of whom espouse strange ideas.

Craig Kelly is more concerned about being #PeteEvansmark2 and pushing dangerous lies about public health than he is about representing his electorate. The LNP are complicit by allowing his terrible behaviour. This man is not fit to be in politics. He is ignorant AND stupid. 

This tweet referenced two Australians, most prominently Craig Kelly, the federal member for Hughes (a swinging NSW division) and Pete Evans, a celebrity chef known for his strange ideas.  @bourne_2_learn echoed the feelings of @BethanyinCBR the same morning:

Craig Kelly not even mentioned on #Insiders. Morrison's unwillingness to shut him down should have been discussed extensively. Look how the US has turned out with its rampant misinformation. 

The US had a problem with misinformation – in the gigantic and ultimately oppressive form of Donald Trump – because the motivations that brought him to power weren’t given rein in the community and in the public sphere that serviced it. Before Kelly, Australia elected Pauline Hanson, a woman who has, since 1996, engaged with the same segment of the population and who has successfully channelling radical right-wing energies into areas of public discourse where they could be both given recognition and gently shut down by a series of unsuccesses in a range of state and federal polls. 

The reason for our success and America’s failure is that, due to the way our electoral system is organised, minor Australian parties can be electorally viable where in the US they’re mostly not. If you don’t allow oddballs and outsiders to be part of the political process their supporters – or people likely to sympathise with their views – will engage in other types of action. They’ll storm the Capitol.

Keeping ppl like Craig Kelly and Matt Canavan in the tent is good in a way as it lets the govt express minority opinions, and keep a lid on their influence.

That was me, tweeting something that garnered no response. My idea wasn’t popular – as the post you’re reading won’t be consumed widely. 

My views are not mainstream. The mainstream – part of the community that lambastes the media as the “lamestream media” (echoing Trump) – believes in rigid orthodoxy, desiring everyone’s cleaving to one narrow principle. It shuns diversity because such a solution to living together in close proximity is too hard, requiring tolerance.

Who’s got time for tolerance? It’s more fun to hate. Part of the problem is that people who say such things don’t understand that, in the age of spectacle, they are players just as much as any journalist with any mainstream media outlet, or just as much as any politician with any mainstream party. Hence their demand for perfect coincidence between their collective view and the expressed policies of the governing party (the Liberals). It’s all about their feelings. A diversity of viewpoints offends their sense of propriety, hence dismay expressed on account of Craig Kelly’s views on climate change.

Joe Biden is making Scott Morrison look like the Climate Change Denier and Fossil Fool he is on the world stage.

Scott Morrison is the Australian prime minister, in case you’re reading this from overseas.

If Joe Biden is a climate change nerd, what does that make Scott Morrison? A climate change jock in remedial class? 

@Blueirons and “Allan Green” miss, however, seeing that the Australian government must shift slowly. The problem with Labor’s approach to policy setting is its reliance on big, visible programmes that can be attacked in the media – especially from the right, and especially by Murdoch editors and journalists. By accommodating such players as Matt Canavan and Craig Kelly, or at least by giving them space to air their obnoxious views in public, the prime minister is able to skirt danger and sneak in his hydrogen policy through the back door (as it were).

You can’t outlaw stupidity, so there will always be awful elements that express extreme sentiments and cause trouble. But you can disenfranchise them by proxy by giving them a chance to air their views – and then offer these up to the community for consumption and judgement. 

Roy Orbison put it best.

We saw what happened to Fraser Anning in the 2019 federal election – he founded a white nationalist party and crashed out in the poll. Pauline Hanson herself has struggled to get more than 10 percent of the popular vote even in the most ostensibly loyal electorates in the country. “You rule.” Not Pauline or Buckingham Bess.