Why Younger Australian Voters Can't See the Point of Democracy

What follows is based on the 2/7/19 report by The Australian's Rachel Baxendale, ALP pick of Israel critic stirs backlash.

Think, if you will, of the content of Baxendale's report as a case history:

Victorian politician Enver Erdogan, reportedly of Turkish Kurdish origin, began his political career  as as member of Labor's Socialist Left on Melbourne's Moreland City Council at the time of Israel's Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) onslaught on the Gaza Strip. To his great credit, Erdogan reacted instinctively to the carnage in the Gaza Strip by successfully moving a motion on council condemning the 'Israeli massacre in Gaza.'

Around a year later (?), when asked (by whom is not disclosed, but one assumes the usual suspects, Erdogan is reported to have said: 'Of course I fully support Israel's right to exist as an independent state and I support a two-state solution'. Keep in mind that whatever conversation Erdogan had at the time, and with whom, this is an out-of-context quote.

However, we then find Erdogan switching from Labor's Socialist Left to the most right-wing faction of the Labor Party, the Shop Distributive & Allied Employees Association (headed by Joe de Bruyn and known colloquially as The Shoppies) as part of a current stepping-stone to parachute him into an upper house seat in the Victorian state parliament.

This follows a recommendation of the Victorian ALP's administrative committee. In making the recommendation, the administrative committee would be bypassing normal rules that would have given local members full voting rights. Erdogan has reportedly declared that if elected, he would move to the southern metropolitan bayside area 'promptly.'

Note that, but for the following data, which I quote in full from The Australian's 2/7/19 Baxendale report, such 'parachuting' would have excited little or no controversy in and of itself:

"'There is deep local disquiet over the parachuting in of Mr Erdogan, a controversial figure with no connection to the southern metropolitan region,' said one local member, citing Mr Erdogan's motion on Israel as being of particular concern. 'If Mr Erdogan spent valuable council time on a conflict unrelated to council matters, what might he get up to in the Victorian upper house?'

In the same report, Erdogan is described as now 'close to former member for Batman David Feeney.' Note that Baxendale's later 5/7/19 report, Council colleagues troubled by Labor's hopeful new MP, has little to add to her earlier report except to assert that 'factional allegiances mean it is highly unlikely anyone other than Mr Erdogan will succeed...'"

On Feeney, see my 18/5/16 post The Appalling David Feeney MP, where I record him as follows: "The Palestinians should abandon their campaign to destroy Israel [by] abandoning the so-called 'right of return' for the descendants of the 1948 refugees'."

My point in raising the issue of Enver Erdogan is not that he is unique in his political shape-shifting, but rather typical of a system in which toeing the party line requires that any principles a would-be politician may have had prior to embarking on a political career, are invariably cast aside in the interest of carving out a career in party politics. This leads to the hypothesis that it is precisely this kind of behaviour that has brought our political class, whether at local, state or federal level, whether Labor, Liberal, or any other political party, into disrepute with younger voters. As the 2018 Lowy Institute poll, for example, reveals:

"Only 47% of Australians aged 18-44 years of age say 'democracy is preferable to any other kind of government." Or, to put it the other way around, 53% of Australians aged 18-44 see no point in Australian democracy.

The Appalling David Feeney MP

Well, well, well:

"Labor frontbencher David Feeney owns an undeclared $2.31 million property, potentially placing him in 'serious contempt' of the Parliament. And the ALP power broker said he didn't know if the house was negatively geared* - despite Labor's proposed changes to property tax rules being a key election issue... [Feeney, BTW, lives in a $2.875 million pad East Melbourne and also owns an investment property in Seddon purchased for $380,000 in 2004.] Mr Feeney has not declared the $2.31 million Northcote property, purchased on December 24, 2013, more than two years after the parliamentary deadline [for disclosure]. The rules around what MPs must declare are quite strict and require that all property, shares and gifts worth more than $300 be reported within 28 days. Although Mr Feeney updated his register twice in 2015, on neither occasion did he declare the Northcote house." (Election 2016: David Feeney didn't declare $2.3m house and 'doesn't know' if it's negatively geared, Massola/Willingham/Hunter, The Age, 17/5/16)

OK, I can understand why Mr Feeney twice overlooked updating his register of interests last year. He was busy... scribbling pro-Israel propaganda pieces for Melbourne's Age.

In a piece he wrote back then called Empty symbolic gestures of recognition will not help the Palestinian people, he declared, among other things, that:

"The Palestinians should abandon their campaign to destroy Israel [by] abandoning the so-called 'right of return' for the descendants of the 1948 refugees." (22/7/15)

Now just so we're clear here, our 3-property portfolio politician's "so-called 'right of return'" just happens to be enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - the right of people to leave and return to their country (not to mention UN Resolution 194 which calls on Israel to permit the return of Palestinian refugees driven out of their homes by Zionist forces in 1948).

So, this padded, 3-property (and counting?) right-wing ALP power broker, who blithely prattled on in his 2008 maiden speech about believing in "the fundamental human rights of us all and the need to eliminate discrimination wherever it is found," is calling on Palestinians to give up their fundamental, inalienable, international law-guarenteed right to return to the homes from which they were driven by his Israeli heroes in 1948.

What an appalling hypocrite! No wonder Labor's losing ground to the Greens.

[*"#Election2016 - #negative gearing costs every taxpayer $310 per year smh.com.au..." Feeney tweet, 12/5/16]