Event
Date
by Professor John Warhurst, Head of the ANU School of Social Sciences
Presented at the Sixth Canberra Weekend of Ideas a fair go for refugees? 30 March-1 April 2007 on a panel with Father Frank Brennan.
Parliamentary Democracy
Parliamentary democracy per se, populated as it is by a cross-section of the public servants, politicians, lawyers, community activists and various groups that Fr Brennan has mentioned, is primarily about the process and institutions of representative government not about ethics and morality. Individuals within it can be ethical but they can also be unethical.
(There will be legitimate disagreement as to what constitutes ethical behaviour too, but that is another matter. Ethics have an absolute aspect to them, such as protection for the poor and the weak, and an element that is more subjective, such as what to do about it in practice).
Representative democracy is about limited popular participation and control, but only mediated through elected representatives. Its ethics are equitable representation, fairness and transparency in the electoral process. The system aims for a level playing field in electoral competition.
That is the broad context of this Weekend of Ideas. Ethics and morality in government primarily depend on the drive and direction of a country’s leaders at the time. The ethics and morality of its citizens comes second.
Civil society is about citizens behaving ethically but only within an established parliamentary framework. Elections are central to the role of citizens in parliamentary democracy. Elections give citizens the chance to have their say on a regular basis. We are about to have our fourth federal election since the present government was first elected in 1996. But these days electors generally only have the choice between the two major parties. If the major parties agree on something then, with due respect to minor parties (Greens and Democrats) and Independents, there is nowhere else to go. The governing parties can do a lot wrong and offend a lot of people, as the recent NSW elections demonstrate, and still hold on to office.
What we know of the motivation of voters in making their choices suggests that economic self-interest is a powerful force. I don’t want to disparage economic self-interest as some do.
(While economic self-interest is often interpreted negatively as a selfish, virtue-less motivation it can of course be the interest of the family not just the individual that is paramount. But that is another matter).
However, it is true that the “fair go” begins at home for most people. This seems to have been the case during the Howard era as much as any other.
In this context, the intense beliefs of a minority of voters about a single issue like Refugees are of limited use unless they can be effective at election time. Majorities win elections in majoritarian democracy. With some mediation by preferential voting, with a bow in the direction of proportional representation in the Senate and with a nod towards the role of the High Court, power is exercised by the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives. That person, at the moment, is the prime minister, John Howard (with the support of his Cabinet).
Responsible Government
My second point is that somewhat the same comments can be made about responsible government, often called the Westminster system. Once again the emphasis is on process rather than on ethics and morality. The ethics of Cabinet government in so far as they exist are solidarity, supported by secrecy. Government ministers stick together. There are doctrines and mechanisms, known as collective and individual responsibility, to hold governments and ministers responsible for their actions. But it is most unusual for majority governments to be held collectively responsible by the parliament through the mechanism of a vote of no confidence. It is equally rare for individual ministers to be held responsible for a matter of policy or for the administration of their department. We know that plenty of ministers get sacked these days at both state and federal level, but that is generally for reasons of personal failure rather than policy failure.
Backbench members of parliament are under tremendous pressure to conform to the overall wishes of their party in such an adversarial environment. Party discipline is enforced and usually prevails, though not always. Petro Georgio, Bruce Baird and their Coalition colleagues, as well as Carmen Lawrence within the Labor Party are an exception to this rule.
Civic Action
What then can citizens do? My third point is that between elections the role of citizens in a representative democracy is limited to persuasion, pressure, advocacy, lobbying and protest. They can do this alone or in organised groups. They can do this through the traditional means of working with their elected representatives or by means that take them outside of the parliamentary process. Each method of civic action has its cheer-leaders and its critics in so far as political effectiveness is concerned.
Citizens banded together into a majority can remove a government that is unethical in their eyes from office, but only every three years or so. Citizens can also join and work through political parties in an attempt to advance a cause like Refugees. Some have attempted to do so in this instance, through groups like Labor for Refugees.
Citizens have responsibilities to others in a democracy. Democracies should protect the rights of minorities to practice their beliefs, to speak freely and to organize against the government within the law. In Australia generally these are not constitutional rights but common law rights. I agree with Frank Brennan that broadly speaking Australia is an open civic society in this respect with some exceptions.
Importantly, citizens can care for one another in a democracy. Many citizens are most generous in their in their personal care for others. As far as refugees are concerned this list is almost endless. Citizens can assist refugees to settle, they can visit refugees in detention, they can pray for them, they can welcome them into their own homes, or they can even offer to hide them from authority. This is civic action at its most personal.
But Not in My Backyard
But, my fourth point is that often citizens try to exercise their individual rights in a way that protects themselves from intrusions by others. Love your neighbour as yourself is not a central principle of government or politics. The operating principle rather is Not in My Backyard (NIMBY). Foreigners are an obvious case in point here, but so are fellow citizens.
The NIMBY principle is frequently exercised in our daily political life by individuals against others in our democracy. Sometimes it shows itself in ways that I find understandable. For instance, no one except a few politicians wants a nuclear power station to be built near them. In such circumstances we can become frightened and insecure, and open to fear campaigns. The same may be true of other developments like wind farms. But in many other cases the motivation appears to be selfishness, disguised by other reasons. For instance, there are frequent local campaigns against mosques on the grounds that they are noisy, against aged care facilities on the grounds that they attract too many cars, against new prisons on the grounds that dangerous prisoners might escape, and against dual occupancy houses on the grounds that they lower house prices and disturb the amenity of the area.
Against this unpromising background my point is that it should not be surprising that refugees and asylum seekers should be welcomed into our community only by some people, and then only with some trepidation, and sometimes not at all. If we are inclined to look after our own comfort before that of others when we are put to the test in little ways, then it should not be surprising that as a nation we should act and vote to keep others beyond our borders. As a community we are always open to be led by our political leaders in that direction.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ethics and morality are not embedded in the framework of our parliamentary democracy. They have to be insisted upon at some cost and often accompanied by a great deal of heartache. Progress is slow. Frank Brennan is somewhat optimistic about the way our democratic processes work. I agree with him, but I imagine that he would agree with me that politics is tough work; as Max Weber once said, it can be like boring through hard boards. Advocacy for Refugees in a representative democracy like Australia is very much a case in point.