
Time for Morrison’s ‘quiet Australians’ to roar
ArticlePolitics
BY Simon Longstaff 21 AUG 2019
The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has attributed his electoral success to the influence of ‘Quiet Australians’.
It is an evocative term that pitches somewhere between that of the ‘silent majority’ and Sir Robert Menzies’ concept of the ‘Forgotten People’. Unfortunately, I think that the phrase will have a limited shelf-life because increasing numbers of Australians are sick of being quiet and unobserved.
In the course of the last federal election, I listened to three mayors being interviewed about the political mood of their rural and regional electorates. They said people would vote to ensure that their electorates became ‘marginal’. Despite their political differences, they were unanimous in their belief that this was the only way to be noticed. They are the cool tip of a volcano of discontent.
Quiet or invisible?
Put simply, I think that most Australians are not so much ‘quiet’, as ‘invisible’ – unseen by a political class that only notices those who confer electoral advantage. Thus, the attention given to the marginal seat or the big donor or the person who can guarantee a favourable headline and so on…
The ‘invisible people’ are fearful and angry.
They fear that their jobs will be lost to expert systems and robots. They fear that, without a job, they will be unable to look after their families. They fear that the country is unprepared to meet and manage the profound challenges that they know to be coming – and that few in government are willing to name.
They are angry that they are held accountable to a higher standard than government ministers or those running large corporations. They are angry that they will be discarded as the ‘collateral damage’ of progress.
And in many ways, they are right.
Is democracy failing us?
After all, where is the evidence to show that our democracy is consciously crafting a just and orderly transition to a world in which climate change, technological innovation and new geopolitical realities are reshaping our society? Will democracy hold in such a world?
By definition, democracy accords a dignity to every citizen – not because they are a ‘customer’ of government, but – because citizens are the ultimate source of authority. The citizen is supposed to be at the centre of the democratic state. Their interests should be paramount.
Yet this fundamental ‘promise’ seems to have been broken. The tragedy in all of this is that most politicians are well-intentioned. They really do want to make a positive contribution to their society. Yet, somehow the democratic project is at risk of losing its legitimacy – after which it will almost certainly fail.
In the end, while it’s comforting to whinge about politicians, the media, and so on, the quality of democracy lies in the hands of the people. We cannot escape our responsibility. Nor can we afford to remain ‘quiet’. Instead, wherever and whoever we may be, let’s roar: We are citizens. We demand to be seen. We will be heard.
The Ethics Centre’s next IQ2 debate – Democracy is Failing the People – is on Tuesday 27 August at Sydney Town Hall. Presenter and comedian Craig Reucassel will join political veteran Amanda Vanstone to go up against youth activist Daisy Jeffrey and economist Dr Andrew Charlton to answer if democracy is serving us, or failing us.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
MOST POPULAR
ArticleLifestyle + Health
Vaccines: compulsory or conditional?
ArticleBeing Human
Free speech has failed us
ArticleLaw + Human Rights
He said, she said: Investigating the Christian Porter Case
ArticleBig Thinkers + Explainers
Ethics Explainer: Ethics, morality & law
Join our newsletter

BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
3 Comments
Our prime minister’s dreadful performance in the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu is the latest in a long string of woeful actions by our Government regarding climate change–actions that make many of us feel ashamed to be Australians. I have often tried to think of ways in which our system of government could be changed for the better without giving up democracy. Besides selfishness of the individual voter, and a tendency to take science as little more than opinion, the major problem that I see is the absence of long-term thinking. For the latter, I seriously recommend a change that would make a positive difference. Arrange that, in elections for parliament, each vote by a voter aged under thirty-one be counted as two votes. The change may result in some silly voting, such as for a younger version of Clive Palmer or Donald Trump. But I’m confident that overall, there will be a major realisation by the young voter that their future, years hence, will be strongly affected by the way they vote now. Fundamentally, the proposed change is not a matter of favouring the young over the older. It’s making a correction for the fact that we did not evolve in a situation in which we needed to think far into the future. I note that likewise, we did not evolve to place much confidence in conclusions reached by highly abstract thinking–the kind of thinking that is required in science and is essential to making wise decisions in our highly developed modern world. By the way, I am aged 79.
ReplySimon. I would suggest that it’s the people that fail democracy which is a philosophy of belief. Over my many years, I have observed that the citizen of today is more concerned with their own welfare having no regard for their fellow man and the national interest. I am witness to the transformation being a preWW2 child. I saw returned service personnel, whose patriotism could never be questioned, find difficulties gaining employment and any of the promised benefits leaving a social resentment that still echoes in the minds of many Australians. The social contract between citizen and government was tarnished to leave an embedded blemish of distrust amongst other of our social values at the time. The country has never recovered and probably never will: distrust continues to erode the citizen-government relationship and destroy the existence of the social contract to embed disinterest and the lack of any form of patriotism with materialism predominating. Labour failed to recognise the existence of this new set of ‘values’ at the last election which simply means ‘bugger you jack, I am alright’.
ReplyI believe our entire paradigm of democracy has not served communities well. It has nothing to do with peoples’ ability or motivation to vote and much more about the people who are able to present as candidates… and these people go on to manage government departments with ideology as their first agenda. and theres the rub.
Reform and increase efficiency they say, as if no-one had ever said the same words before. The populist rhetoric, “How good is…” whatever the entertainers catch phrase leads to… the headline, and persona management which must appeal to the greatest number in the electorate… not in a sense of intelligence or knowledge but in charisma.
This is how an election is won and the people who go on to run our national interest. No wonder we question the success of democracy.
I have well considered thoughts on how this could change but I look forward to hearing better thoughts. Thank you Simon Longstaff and Ethics team.
Reply
Join the conversation
Should politicians assume the voice of the voiceless?