The Antipodes
Divisive politics
Alexander Macleod
The volatility and sheer explosive power of politics in the Antipodes are astonishing many, including people in the countries concerned. One looks in vain for satisfactory explanations of why, in New Zealand, a Labour Party majority of twenty-three in an eighty-seven-seat parliament was converted within a mere three years into a National (i.e. Conservative) majority of twenty-three, representing a nearly 10 per cent swing. Still less are really convincing reasons being put forward to account for the fact that Gough Whitlam, incompetent colleagues and a self-possessed Governor-General notwithstanding, was vanquished at the polls.
The effects of world recession, inflation and switches in political leadership since Labour. swept on to the scene in both countries in 1972 offer half-answers, but they do not explain the convulsive quality of today's Antipodean politics or the ruggedness with which power is contended for. In reality, what we are seeing cuts much deeper than the surface party battle. Distinctively national styles of political conduct, long masked by adherence to Westminster forms and European standards, have at last broken the surface. Having grown accustomed to the fabric of the Westminster model wearing thin and ultimately ripping in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, we are shocked and surprised when the same (or something similar) happens to kith and kin Down Under. Yet we have little right to be amazed.
True, in both Australia and New Zealand the inevitable rupture with continuity, Europeanstyle, was long hidden from view. For an entire political generation Sir Robert Menzies made it appear that despite certain unavoidable seachanges the Westminster model was alive and well and breathing the bracing Pacific air. With his orotund rumbling and thundering, he even preserved the illusion that Australians, at bottom, were displaced Britons. From 1960-72 Sir Keith Holyoake performed a like role in , New Zealand. He spoke in what he thought would be considered an English accent, sent his deputy John Marshall to Brussels and London to argue, with conspicuous success, that Kiwis were really Englishmen out on a South Pacific limb.
In each case the face was far different from the mask projected to the world. At heart Sir Robert was no less tough or arrogant than Gough Whitlam. He had a more cultivated, sustained style, and he could count more confidently on nis Political colleagues, but he was tough and bloody-minded underneath — qualities now evinced in a thoroughly transparent way by his successor, after four rapid-fire Liberal Party upheavals, Malcolm Fraser. Sir Keith could be just as auggety and un-English. Beneath the vain alit pompous manner, a thoroughly shrewd local politician was operating. In cabinet or caucus, nobody challenged Kiwi Keith — except Rob Muldoon. Now, like Mr Fraser, Mr Muldoon, the new Prime Minister, sees no need to cloak his toughness.
What has happened in both countries is that the bones and sinews of a clearcut indigenous style no longer need to be disguised. Menzies presided over the final shortening of the British shadow but was reluctant to abandon the tone and form of the British legacy. Mr Whitlam was much leSs in awe of inherited modes and, at the same time, was determined to wrench Australia towards new international alignments, new and much-needed welfare institutions. His Liberal antagonist Mr Fraser has much of Mr .Whitlam's self-assertiveness, buttressed by family millions, and little of Sir Robert's respect for precedent and constitutional niceties. Mr Fraser's use of the veto-power in the Senate showed that he sees the federal constitution as something to be exploited rather than revered. He promises a future in which individual merit and personal wealth will enjoy safe havens — in itself a reminder that Australian politics are far from being devoted exclusively to the pursuit of egalitarianism. Across the Tasman Sea Mr Muldoon, despite his talk about "the ordinary Kiwi" and "plain blokes", speaks above all for the acquisitive white-collar white New Zealander, less concerned about race relations or social justice than the Labour Party, more eager to construct a lively trading nexus with a prosperous Japan than to establish more intimate economic and political links with the developing nations of Asia and the Pacific.
The reality is that Australia and New Zealand are now embarked upon national careers of their own and, politically and a little belatedly, are exhibiting political styles of their own as well. They are styles in which both radical and conservative voices are much more apt to speak in the strident tones of the indigene. In Australia, Mr Whitlam and Mr Fraser have shown themselves to be impatient with constitutional constraints. They lack the deep-rooted respect for parliamentary institutions of Sir Robert Menzies. Mr Muldoon already with a reputation as a political polariser, has served notice that he will be unyielding with trade unions, and tough too with Maoris and Pacific Islanders who stray from standards of conduct judged proper by middle-class white New Zealanders. In governing style the new Prime Minister of New: Zealand is already proving to be assertive, even demagogic, compared with the defeated Labour leader Wallace Rowling who, unlike his dynamic predecessor who died in office last year, Norman Kirk, ran the country as though he had Clem Attlee's Antipodean ghost monitoring his every move.
In Australia the true temper of politics is impatient, passionate, at times unprincipled and brutal'. It forsakes the Queensberry rules: it is thoroughly Australian. It is, above all, difficult to measure with a European yardstick. With the new mood out in the open, we should not be at all nonplussed to see the Antipodean scene continue increasingly to exhibit political shapes and sounds which, at a distance of 12,000 miles, are hard for many to explain or even recognise.
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