The Decline of Political Leadership in Australia?

Changing Recruitment and Careers of Federal Politicians

Jan Pakulski, B. Tranter

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137518057
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137518064
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Gobierno estadounidense

This book analyses the changing political recruitment of the Australian federal parliamentary elite. It argues that the elite's quality has been reduced to a worrisome degree, especially since the 1990s. It suggests that the declining quality of the Australian 'political class' is a major factor behind the declining public trust in politicians.

1

Introduction: What Is Wrong with Our Politicians?

Pakulski, Jan and Bruce Tranter. The Decline of Political Leadership in Australia? Changing Recruitment and Careers of Federal Politicians. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137518064.0004.

[W]here any serious division of labour prevails, only some persons can occupy strategically influential bureaucratic positions. These persons have the incentives to develop the kind of political skills that are necessary to secure and hold such positions, and most other persons have little incentive to do so. This means that in societies of any complexity there is simply no way to prevent elitism.

Field and Higley 1980, 72

Aristocracies decay not in numbers only. They decay also in quality, in the sense that they lose their vigor, that there is decline in the proportion of the residues which enabled them to win their power and hold it. The governing class is restored not only in numbers but—and that is the more important thing—in quality, by families rising from the lower classes and bringing with them the vigor and the proportions of residues necessary for keeping themselves in power. It is also restored by the loss of its more degenerate members.

Pareto 1935, para. 2054

Popular portrayals and evaluations of Australian politicians are critical and harsh. Politicians and leaders today have been criticised for being opportunistic, dishonest (breaking promises), unreliable (changing views) and weak, especially in comparison with their predecessors. Comparative ratings of federal MPs in terms of ethics and honesty show not only a very low position relative to other occupations, but also a significant decline after 1976, followed by small fluctuations over the last few decades.¹ Parliaments also receive their share of criticism—as partisan and theatrical—even though they are quite effective in passing large numbers of bills and maintaining political scrutiny of governments.² Criticisms of parliamentary pre-selection—as reflecting ‘branch stacking’, factional ‘corruption and cronyism’ and ‘patronage and power rather than merit’—are perennial, appearing in the media with depressing regularity and relating to all major parties.³ Public interest in elections has fallen since a peak in the early 1990s.⁴ The most critical public comments and evaluations, though, seem to be reserved for political parties. The level of public confidence in political parties has fallen rapidly in recent decades accompanying a decline in party membership, identification, loyalty and support. Public support for, and public trust in, major parties has been fluctuating around record low levels.⁵ The number of ‘independents’ and ‘party rebels’ is increasing, as are factional divisions within the parties. Moreover, leadership failures and political scandals, especially cases of dissent and corruption within party apparatus, preoccupy the media, thus feeding back into popular concerns.

The first reaction to this critical assessment may be dismissal: Australians have always—it is tempting to say ‘traditionally’—treated their political masters and representatives critically and harshly, and the mass media have always relished muckraking and scandalising exposes. Such critical portrayals, as noted by some commentators, reflect not so much the reality as the popular egalitarian-democratic ethos and dislike for ‘the powers that be’, ‘elites’ and ‘tall poppies’. Thus the question that we should ask is not ‘What’s wrong?’ but ‘What’s new?’

Yet, despite this traditional and wide popular contempt for politicians, the recent torrents of criticism directed at the political elite are somewhat puzzling. For a start, their intensity has been increasing at the same time as Australia has ducked the 2008 GFC, survived unscathed the resulting 2009–13 Great Recession, maintained high employment and stability and prevented terrorism on its soil. Criticisms and distrust at times of crisis, instability and/or security threats might be expected, yet Australia’s economy and politics remain robustly democratic, open and (at least in relative terms) honest. Australia is currently (2014) competing with Norway for the highest ranking in the Human Development Index, and Transparency International has been ranking us consistently among the ten least corrupt countries in its Corruption Perception Index. Our ‘political class’, in other words, seems to be delivering on all popular expectations: prosperity, stability, security, honesty and dignity. Under such circumstances, political leaders and elites should be given credit for lasting democratic openness, stability and security, as well as prosperity.

Yet they are not—which may suggest that there is some hidden causal fire behind the critical smoke, though this fire is difficult to spot. Although an exaggeration hypothesis may have some justification, the widening and intensification of critical appraisals of declining elite quality and performance make the ‘fire behind the smoke’ hypothesis more plausible.

The smoke

This dissatisfaction is not due to prejudice born of ignorance or apathy, as most voters (c. 78–80%) in recent elections have declared at least some interest in politics and election campaigns, and approximately three quarters have discussed politics with others.⁶ It also does not look like a projection of economic frustrations—Australia has survived relatively unscathed the recent Great Recession. It cannot be attributed to frustration with democracy either—the level of satisfaction with democracy remains high.

There are some ‘give-away’ aspects of this apparent political malaise, dissatisfaction and distrust of political elites. The first concerns attitudes towards political parties. All major parties, as noted earlier, have been losing members, loyal voters and public confidence—a trend that Australia shares with the majority of other advanced democracies. In 2010 the level of confidence in Australian political parties was even lower than trust in leaders (and most other institutions). Only 31 per cent of Australians declared confidence in parties, compared with 41 per cent for the federal government, 44 per cent in federal parliament, 55 per cent in major Australian companies, 77 per cent in the police and 80 per cent in universities. In the Australian segment of the 2012 World Values Survey the levels of confidence in political parties, government and parliament sank to even lower levels, with 85 per cent of respondents expressing ‘not very much’ or ‘no confidence’ in political parties, 66 per cent declaring low or no confidence in federal parliament and 67 per cent in the ‘Government in Canberra’. It is worth noting that the respective comparable ‘no/low confidence’ figures in the 1990 survey were 46 per cent in political parties and 39 per cent in the Commonwealth Government. This steep decline in public confidence accompanied a wave of media criticisms of political corruption, nepotism and factional patronage. It seems that members of the Australian political class suffer damage by association with the increasingly unpopular major parties that control their recruitment and careers.

The second give-away concerns the timing and substance of public and media criticisms of politicians. The political malaise in Australia seems to have been intensifying since about the end of the last century, and it is regularly linked with certain aspects of political recruitment and selection.⁷ Thus popular criticisms have been linking the shortcomings of top politicians with the shortcomings of party selectorates. They reveal cases of branch stacking and ‘factional nepotism’, as well as populism and leader-favouritism.⁸ Feminist critics point to gender bias in the operation of alleged ‘men’s clubs’ at the top; party officials blame populist independents. It seems that the Australian political class not only suffers from ‘collateral’ reputational damage—damage by association with factionalised major parties—but also damage related to its alleged closure and malformation. Critics also focus on the declining capacity of political leaders to chart consistent strategies and generate public confidence in those strategies.

Tables 1.1 and 1.2 (a and b) illustrate trends in the public assessment of leaders in Australia.⁹ Table 1.1 shows the results of the ‘feelings thermometer’ survey question that measures the degree of popularity of, sympathy for and ‘closeness’ felt to political leaders. The earliest scores (1987–93) are higher than the latest scores (2007–13), indicating declining popularity of leaders. The enormous popularity of Bob Hawke is apparent in the high mean scores for 1987 and, to a slightly lesser extent, 1990 relative to John Howard and Andrew Peacock respectively. Paul Keating tended to polarise voters (love–hate relationship), and this is apparent in his lower mean scores shared by the unpopular John Hewson in 1993; Keating’s popularity declined dramatically in 1996 compared to Howard. In 1998, when the Kim Beazley-led Labor Party actually won a majority of votes Australia-wide, but not the majority of seats necessary to form government, the leader evaluation scores suggest he was more popular than Howard, although they were ‘neck and neck’ in 2001. Also apparent are the troubled leadership of Mark Latham and the surging popularity of Kevin Rudd as the latter swept to power in 2007 (Higley and Pakulski 2011a; 2011b). However, Table 1.1 also shows the declining popularity of the Labor leaders, first of Julia Gillard in 2010 and then of Rudd in 2013. Tony Abbott’s popularity remains stable but very low in both 2010 and 2013. In fact, the previous two election results show that both the incumbent and the opposition leader were not at all popular with Australian voters.

The low popularity rating of leadership contenders in the most recent elections, 2010 and 2013, is quite striking. Neither leader in these elections enjoyed high popularity, trust or approval ratings. The same regularity can be seen in Tables 1.2(a) and 1.2(b), which show the responses to questions about trust and honesty. In 2010, Gillard was tainted by the ‘leadership coup’ against the still popular Prime Minister Kevin Rudd earlier in the year, as, to a lesser extent, was Abbott by a narrow victory (by a margin of one vote) over his popular predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull. In 2013, Rudd, restored to leadership at the proverbial eleventh hour, still carried the stigma of his previous leadership failures (which were the reason for his replacement by Gillard in the first place), while Abbott was seen as a weak performer who could win only by default (due to Labor self-destructing). In general, there has been a decline in the proportion of voters who assess both Coalition and Labor leaders as honest and trustworthy over time.

TABLE 1.1 Feelings thermometers, 1987–2013 (means)

TABLE 1.2 (a) Trust in Coalition leaders, 1993–2010 (per cent)

TABLE 1.2 (b) Trust in Labor leaders, 1993–2010 (per cent)

All leaders involved in the 2010–13 contests—Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and ‘Kevin Rudd Mk II’—were seen as desperate choices, rather than well-groomed and tested leaders. Each was also regarded as ‘weak’ and ‘risky’, and these perceptions, regularly revealed by opinion polls, made them vulnerable to further criticisms and leadership challenges. They were also seen as carrying the odium of former failures, lapses and errors. In fact, the 2010–13 configurations resemble what Weber famously described (and criticised) as ‘leaderless democracy’—a leader-centred democratic regime suffering from a leadership vacuum.

To what extent should these results be seen as mere media-constructed public perceptions, rather than a reflection of reality? Do they reflect a contingent and random fluctuation or a general trend? Do they indicate a few stumbling leaders and inexperienced governments, or a more general political trend, an ongoing decay of our parliamentary elite?

As shown below, the data on political recruitment—especially when seen in the context of intensifying criticisms and declining trust—point to the declining quality of politicians and leaders. They indicate a relatively new but general trend in the national political class that affects both the ALP and the Coalition. Although our main effort in this work is directed towards diagnosing the important aspects of this qualitative decline, and to charting the general trend, the final chapter also addresses the intriguing question of causes, especially those causal factors that are most frequently mentioned in public criticisms of politicians, parties and leaders.

Problems with diagnoses

The difficulties in spotting the causal fire beneath the critical smoke, we argue, reflect three problems. The first one concerns our superficial knowledge of the political class. Beside our knowledge of Australian voters—who are polled and surveyed regularly—our knowledge of parliamentarians seems shallow and fragmentary. Studies of parliamentarians are relatively rare (compared with studies of voters), and public perceptions of political representatives are shaped mainly by media reports that tend to focus on scandal and drama. Thus the public and academic views ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: What Is Wrong with Our Politicians?
• 2  Political Elites, Elite Quality and Elite Recruitment
• 3  Political Candidates
• 4  The Australian Federal MPs: Changing Recruitment and Career Profiles
• 5  The Leaders
• 6  Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index