While political divisiveness is the rule in the U.S., in Australia it is just some of this and some of that

 

For a change of pace, I recently ordered an OOP DVD set of a Australian television show from an Ebay seller in that country. Inside the shipping box the seller had used some pages from the “largest rural news service” in Australia as padding. This weekly serves mainly the state of Victoria, where the city of Melbourne is located; this particular section of the newspaper seems to indicate its readers enjoy the skewering of “city folks”…

 

…where we see “Tough Talk Twit” Elon Musk getting the “dill of the week” award—“dill” being Australian slang for “idiot” or “fool”—and a child care park with no one around to “mind” the children save the poles holding up the sign stating such; are the poles getting paid to “mind” children? There is also a letters section where we learn that although rural people in Australia are generally labeled “conservative,” their concerns seem to be less political or cultural than simply how to get on with life, thus they are not particularly impressed with Musk’s right-wing “credentials” as is Rep. Jim Jordan, who I’m sure most Australians would view as an embarrassment and clown.

In Australia, as in Europe, one must not be caught-up in the left-right name game, since it is only a matter of degree: the center-left Labor Party is currently in power, opposed principally by the Liberal Party, which is center-right.  Both parties have their right-moderate-left branches, and they all agree on certain common issues that are sacrosanct, but stray either left or right on policy on how to get there or whose vote they trying to get--and not necessarily that of the rich or business interests like here in the U.S.. Since neither party typically gains absolute majorities themselves, as in the European parliamentary systems they have to form coalitions to form a government, with smaller parties that are either farther to the right on one side, or to the left of the other.

While pandemic policy briefly allowed for some more "lively" political "debate," in general the most important “core” principle driving politics tends to be the state of the jobs market; if we believe Richard Denniss of The Guardian, there is very little difference between the Labor and Liberal parties because they both have the same “goal,” and their principle difference in this regard is who among the working class they think deserves more "help": 

So what does “left” and “right” mean now? Both sides of politics are sometimes skeptical of markets, sometimes fans of subsidies, and sometimes want to help workers and communities adjust to transition. It seems to me that the left wants to intervene to ensure that all workers and communities are supported in transition, while the right only wants to help mining and farming communities.

Which of course explains why rural communities tend to be more “conservative.”  But why would people who consider themselves right-leaning vote for a “Liberal” party or even a “Liberal Democrat” party? In fact the National Party, the principle ally of the Liberal Party, is not really “nationalist” at all but is the “rural” party, and supports government intervention to protect the agricultural sector. 

Obviously the term “liberal” in countries outside the U.S. have different ideas of what the term “liberal” refers to.  In many European countries, “liberal” refers to “classical liberalism,” which in turn means libertarianism—meaning small government and people being allowed to do whatever they want, presumably as long as they don’t interfere with someone else’s right to their life or property. 

That all sounds well and good—except that libertarianism in practice does the opposite of what it proposes: completely uninhibited laissez-faire policies requires protection by authoritarian and reactionary government to maintain an economic and social order that protects the rich over everyone else. Thus the Liberal Party, like just about every other political party, gives only lip service to "ideology." In the U.S., most of the Republican Party has long since abandoned "traditional conservatism" for far-right conspiracy-mongering.

On Quora, one resident of Australia noted that on issues of “healthcare, education, social welfare, fair wages and infrastructure” the major parties have in the end little in “dispute.” Universal healthcare is simply a matter of how much. Regulation of gun ownership is not a major cultural issue dividing the country. “Parliamentary debate” tends to be disputes about minor incidents of unethical behavior than anything actually substantial, although that could be said about what House Republicans are doing today with their so-called “investigations.”  

All things considered, most of the issues outside that of foreign policy and defense are already decided, with the governance of the country largely in the hands of state government and federal bureaucrats, and out of the hands of “idiot” national politicians.

Of interest was the weekly's letters section. The political cartoon showed a man looking inside the supposed “bare cupboard” of the government budget...

 

...only to discover there is a lot of “bread” there, except it is for a lot of wasteful programs, while the road repair shelf is barren. One letter was from a professor from a concerned scientists group opposed to the building of more of dams for water storage. Of course a concerned citizen had a different view, asserting that if current dams were not full, then we simply need more of them.

Obviously if one looks at a climate map of Australia, it appears to be mostly barren and desert-like:

 

But despite the fact that its land mass is about that of the continental U.S., its total population is only somewhere between that of Florida and Texas. Yet on average, Australians use far more water-per-person, a mind-boggling 26,000 gallons. However, 70 percent of this water usage is for agriculture, and thus for rural folk the issue of dams is important. While a large percentage of the country’s water comes from the relative huge Great Artesian Basin...

 

...and some comes from desalination plants, and rivers and reservoirs depend on the meager 18 inches of rainfall per year on average. While most of the rainfall is on the more tropical northern coast, major flooding events—especially effecting communities along rivers—are becoming increasingly common on the east coast, and the complaint by some is that the current dam system doesn’t allow for the storage of this excess water, or the targeted prior release of water so that the excess can be safely absorbed.

But since rural farmers are so highly dependent on water, naturally they don’t want to hear about the “science,” they just want a reliable source of water. On one side is the “concerned scientist," who points out that that current dams that are already located at the best sites to catch overflow in reservoirs are below normal levels, and the proposed new dams (apparently rejected) were to be located in unfavorable locations and far more costly than their alleged benefit. 

The “answer” is simply to be far less wasteful of the water that is available, and better managing the Aquifer. The other side of the issue asserts that since the current reservoirs are below normal levels, the country simply need more of them, and the environmental impacts of building new dams is of course “overstated.”

Then there is a letter explaining what “blackwater” is and that it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with climate change, which is beside the point. Blackwater occurs when organic material accumulates after long periods of drought that is then swept-up during the occasional flooding events like this…

 

…and find their way into rivers and lakes, where bacteria grows and consume oxygen from the water, effecting fish and other wildlife. There is very little that can be done to “manage” blackwater because of the variable climate in Australia, although environmental activists place blame on the increasing frequency of such events on climate change.

Another letter addressed the global methane reduction pledge and criticized another letter writer who supported it only so long as it was “aspirational”—meaning having no “teeth.” Another letter writer named Deb asks “WHY carry on with these debates all parties lie through their teeth what a waste of time” in response to a story about the smaller political parties in the state demanding a televised debate that includes themselves. This would include the (relatively) far-right Liberal Democrat Party, which was given an ultimatum to change its name because one political party is not allowed by law to use names that other parties already lay claim to, to avoid voter “confusion.”

Being a “rural news” publication, it would make sense that this weekly pokes fun at urban dwellers—Australia’s urban population as a percentage of the population as a whole is one of the highest in world—and its concerns tend to focus on water and environmental regulation policies, or at least they did on this particular day. But as Denniss suggested, politics in Australia seems to be more of this than that, and the divisiveness that we see in the U.S. today is seen as just a waste of time and accomplishes nothing.