Middle ground is where we'll make real progress - 13th June 2017

Middle ground is where we’ll make real progress

Politics and public debate have become a tussle between a committed Greens/Left perspective and a Hanson One Nation/Right positio

Theo Theophanous, Herald Sun

June 13, 2017 

LAST week I visited a cafe in East Brunswick. Predictably it was full of inner-city types who vote Greens, believe there is a global warming disaster and espouse views that are pro-refugee, pro-gay marriage and pro-Islamic tolerance.

The demographic shifts in these areas have been so profound that what were once inner-city working-class suburbs have changed in a way that has altered forever the political landscape. The battle is no longer between Liberal and Labor but between the Greens and Labor.

When I was first elected, we’d sit in a sandwich bar near my office in Northcote, have a pie, a coffee, talk about the footy and a better deal for the workers and read the Herald Sun. Today’s inhabitants go to trendy cafes, choose between lattes and macchiatos to go with their crushed avocados and read The Age. I rummaged around the East Brunswick cafe to find the Herald Sun and sat there reading it when one of the men sipping his single-origin free-trade coffee said: “What are you reading in that paper?” In fact, it was an article I had written about our energy challenges. The debate that followed with him and his friend was illuminating. In their determination to align themselves with a zero emissions green future, they could not understand how I could support an emissions trading scheme and renewable energy while simultaneously wanting more conventional gas exploration and clean-coal technologies as paths to that future — not even when I pointed to spiralling energy prices or the intermittency of renewable energy, or the use of rare minerals to make ever bigger batteries or the jobs that might be sacrificed in agriculture and manufacturing if we run out of gas.

Leftists can’t understand how I could be a Christian with strong views about the sanctity of marriage and yet have accepted the argument for marriage equality.

Those were mere counterfactual annoyances to the settled world view of the new inner-city folk.

As we spoke, it became clear it wasn’t just on energy that inconvenient truths threatened their settled perspective. They could not understand how I could support strong border protection and humane treatment of refugees. Or how I could be an advocate of multiculturalism but still be concerned by Islamic extremism.

Or how I could be a Christian with strong views about the sanctity of marriage and yet have accepted the argument for marriage equality. Or how I could support a woman’s right to abortion while being saddened by the circumstances that led to a potential life not being realised.

I think newspapers have a responsibility to encourage debate that is difficult and tortuous. It is not good enough for The Age to line up with trendy views to sell newspapers to inner-city elites and claim to somehow represent the intellectual class. It does not.

Often views and news are targeted at this self-declared elite and present reinforcing, or simple solutions to what are complex problems that are far from settled, intellectually or otherwise. Yet the underlying message is of self-assured intellectual superiority.

It is appalling to see Andrew Bolt physically attacked by Leftist extremists.

While I am by no means a conservative, I can understand why conservatives object to the Left’s self-declared intellectual superiority, which dismisses valid arguments warning us about attacks on free speech or the inherent dangers embedded in the Islamic religion.

It is appalling to see Andrew Bolt physically attacked by Leftist extremists and I worry about the safety of people who express strident concerns about Islamic terrorism. The Herald Sun has at least given voice to alternative views and at its finest it has also given voice to those who have been unfairly treated, falsely accused or silenced by powerful elites. My opinions on these pages, given my history and background, are testimony to that.

But my point is that politics and public debate have become a tussle between a committed Greens/Left perspective and a Hanson One Nation/Right position. In one way or another both claim intellectual or moral superiority not just over each other but also over those of us in the middle.

Worryingly, neither end of the spectrum easily accepts criticism, both sometimes resort to violence and often reject inconvenient facts. Yet it is in the middle where elections are won and where practical if not perfect solutions are proposed, debated and implemented. Let’s hope the mainstream political parties and the mainstream media can resist being advocates of the new Left or Right extremes that play on fear and prejudice and instead promote diverse intelligent views and reasoned argument on the way to good social, environmental and political outcomes.

Theo Theophanous is a political commentator and former state government minister