Vol 90 Issue 3 Jul–SEP 2019
Deleting Democracy: Australia and the surveillance juggernaut including: Prof Ginny Barbour | Prof Graham Maddox | Dr Zac Rogers | C aroline Graham & more
Open Access:
Should one model ever fit all?
Blowback:
The Sewage Intifada of Gaza
Interpreting the Dismissal Paul Kelly’s influence
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CONTENTS
AQ
Vol 90 Issue 3 JUL–SEP 2019
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10
22
31
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The sewage intifada of Gaza
Party spirit in politics
Caroline Graham
Peter Board
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Open Access: Should one model ever fit all? Prof Ginny Barbour and Scott Nicholls
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Deleting Democracy: Australia and the surveillance juggernaut Dr Zac Rogers
IMAGE CREDITS: Please see article placements
3
Blowback:
22
Interpreting the Dismissal
From the Archive: 1931
36
References
Paul Kelly’s influence Prof Graham Maddox and Dr Tim Battin
COVER IMAGE: © Annabel Robinson
JUL–SEP 2019
AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY
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AQ
a word
A
Australian Quarterly
n incredible number of words have already been spilled on the ‘miracle’ election – an election that was a vigorous, noisy and dramatic vote for a familiar status quo. Voters across the country chose to favour a party with no policy platform other than to flatten the tax system to fatten the rich.
It looks like the ghosts of the last 15 years of bleak, navel-gazing politics were not so easily banished. All eyes will be on whether both parties have heard the warning shot of their failing primary vote, and can work to find common ground rather than flirt with the fringes. Yet the challenges facing Australia are not simply domestic. Technology has birthed companies valuated at more than the GDP of some countries – all on the back of harvesting, sharing and selling your data. And with the advent of 5G technologies, this constant digital surveillance system is about to leap into overdrive. Dr Zac Rogers looks at the individual and democratic risks of ‘surveillance capitalism’. At the opposite end to this opaque surveillance architecture, we investigate the potential for Open Access scientific publication to help developing countries achieve advancement. Yet if the world is to achieve complete freedom of scientific information, what model of OA will work? And can any one model work for everyone? In terms of seminal moments in Australian political history, the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975 stands as tall as the man himself. Yet what echoes of this tumultuous time have lingered into modern politics, and how has the predominant storytelling of The Dismissal framed its legacy? How many times did you hear the term ‘two-party-preferred’ this election cycle? Every Newspoll? Every article about every Newspoll? Australia has been stuck in a narrative that politics is always a two-horse race. Yet it’s important to remember that political parties are not technically necessary to the functioning of government at all… In light of the election we look back to 1931 to find that the same issues haunting the major parties today, are the same issues being debated almost 90 years ago… Plenty to chew on this edition. And if you don’t already, you can follow AQ on Twitter and Facebook for even more news and commentary between editions.
Grant Mills
Editor-at-large
Notes for Contributors AQ welcomes submissions of articles and manuscripts on contemporary economic, political, social and philosophical issues, especially where scientific insights have a bearing and where the issues impact on Australian and global public life. All contributions are unpaid. Manuscripts should be original and have not been submitted or published elsewhere, although in negotiation with the Editor, revised prior publications or presentations may be included. Submissions may be subject to peer review. Word length is between 1000 and 3000 words. Longer and shorter lengths may be considered. Articles should be written and argued clearly so they can be easily read by an informed, but non-specialist, readership. A short biographical note of up to 50 words should accompany the work. The Editor welcomes accompanying images. Authors of published articles are required to assign copyright to the Australian Institute of Policy and Science, including signing of a License to Publish which includes acceptance of online archiving and access through JSTOR (from 2010) or other online publication as negotiated by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. In return, authors have a non exclusive license to publish the paper elsewhere at a future date. The inclusion of references and endnotes is the option of the author. Our preference is for these to be available from the author on request. Otherwise, references, endnotes and abbreviations should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum. Articles appearing in AQ are indexed ABC POL SCI: A Bibliography of Contents: Political Science and Government. The International Political Science Abstracts publishes abstracts of political science articles appearing in AQ. Copyright is owned by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. Persons wishing to reproduce an article, or part thereof, must obtain the Institute’s permission. Contributions should be emailed to: The Editor at info@aips.net.au
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Editor: Grant Mills Assistant Editor: Stephen Burke Design and production: Art Graphic Design, Canberra Printing: Newstyle Printing, Adelaide Subscriptions: www.aips.net.au/aq-magazine/ subscribe enquiries to: Stephen Burke, General Manager, AIPS, PO Box M145, Missenden Road NSW 2050 Australia Phone: +61 (02) 9036 9995 Fax: +61 (02) 9036 9960 Email: info@aips.net.au Website: www.aips.net.au/ aq-magazine/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/ AQAustralianQuarterly ISSN 1443-3605 AQ (Australian Quarterly) is published by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. This project is supported by the Commonwealth Government through a grant-in-aid administered by the Department of Finance and Deregulation. ACN 000 025 507 The AIPS is an independent body which promotes discussion and understanding of political, social and scientific issues in Australia. It is not connected with any political party or sectional group. Opinions expressed in AQ are those of the authors. Directors of the Australian Institute of Policy and Science: Leon R Beswick (co-Chair) Andrew Goodsall Maria Kavallaris (co-Chair) Jennelle Kyd Suresh Mahalingam Peter M McMahon Sarah Meachem Peter D Rathjen
Publication of academic research serves four primary functions; archiving, registration, dissemination, and certification of the research. Until around 20 years ago, all four functions were mostly bundled together through publication in print media that were fairly uniform in process, though widely diverse in subject and geographical coverage, and with the end point being a research paper in a bound journal. ARTICLE BY: Prof Ginny Barbour and Scott Nicholls
Open Access: Should one model ever fit all?
T
he arrival of the internet threatened to disrupt publishing substantially, and in many ways it has done so. But the changes we have seen have, until very recently, been more related to only the delivery of research via a different medium – electronic versus print. There has not yet been a widespread disruption of publishing business models, nor has there been a full exploitation of the innovative potential of the internet to reshape how research could be published. But that is now changing.
JUL–SEP 2019
AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY
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Deleting Democracy: Australia and the surveillance juggernaut
The digital age means we increasingly carry out the minutia of our daily lives …markets in a type of hyper-Benthian attentionthat are about us harvesting behavioural-modification but not for us. Panopticon. Google Inc, whose search engine has its origins in military Shoshana Zuboff funding,1 invented the business model and was quickly followed by a litany of emulators – Facebook and the social media brigade, Amazon which dominates cloud-computing – and an endless procession of start-ups for whom data-capture, in all facets of humanbehaviour, is the core around which entire businesses are built. ARTICLE BY: Dr Zac Rogers
IMAGE: © Truthout
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T
he ‘datafication’ of the economy as we near the third decade of the 21st century is all-pervasive. The model, in the space of a decade and a half, has become so utterly hegemonic that it has earned its status as a special type of capitalism – Surveillance Capitalism – a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff in 2015 and the subject of her watershed 2019 book.2 Surveillance capitalism is a new data-driven socio-political-economic modality that aims to predict and modify human behaviour for profit and market control. Behavioural prediction markets are dominated in the US by Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix,
Blowback:
The sewage intifada of Gaza Is it possible for a besieged society to drown in its own sewage? Yes, but there was very little publicity when five hapless residents of the Gaza Strip drowned in raw sewage when a sewage dam collapsed in 2005,1 or when raw sewage flooded their streets after a storm in 2013, trapping people in their homes2 – an event that is no longer uncommon. ARTICLE BY: Caroline Graham
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W
ithout going into background politics, one result of the Israeli siege imposed on Gaza from 2007, is that few, if any, spare parts and tools are allowed into Gaza for repairs and maintenance of its handful of wastewater treatment plants;3 especially of the new World Bank-funded plant rendered dysfunctional by Israeli bombs.4 Israel categorises most such
Interpreting the Dismissal. Paul Kelly’s influence
Interpreting the Dismissal
Paul Kelly’s influence For many, perhaps most, Australians, the distant political crisis of 1975 has faded into the background of a barely relevant history. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to trace the present malaise of our politics, which almost everyone detests, to the unresolved issues of 1975. ARTICLE BY: Prof Graham Maddox and Dr Tim Battin
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f the present political malaise can be characterised by seriously diminished accountability, a propensity of the executive to stack the system or use mediating institutions as weapons against political opponents, or more generally embodied by ‘doing whatever it takes’ to win, or some mixture of these elements, then there is a compelling case that can be made that this condition has a parallel in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Yet it seems our task is doubly
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Party spirit in politics
Originally Published in The Australian Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 11 (Sept 1931) This has been edited for clarity and to correct any original mistakes. No substantial changes have been made.
Editor forward
your representative is required by party policy to vote against your best interests. One need only think of Michael McCormack’s disastrous response to the question of whether he could think of a single instance where the Nationals had backed farmers over miners… There is no practical way to be rid of parties in politics, but there is a way to break the thrall of the major parties. We need to recognise that Australian politics is not a two horse race, with the riff-raff having jumped the fence and invaded the track. A renewal of Australia politics will not come from parties that hand the rights of government back and forth between themselves, and that feel born to rule. In 1931, Australia’s federal democracy was still fledgling and the ubiquitous nature of political parties was yet to be fully entrenched. ‘Partyism’ was causing the exact same problems as it does today. This piece from the AQ archives makes for an entertaining read, particularly given many of the quotes could have fallen from the lips of a weary, modern-day political boffin. Never mind that they were said almost 90 years ago…
When William III [of England] determined to select his ministers from the dominant party in the House of Commons [in 1698], he created a distinction for future generations between politics and statecraft and between the politician and the statesman. ARTICLE BY: Peter Board
F
rom that time it has been the object of political parties to command the majority of votes in all those parliaments which follow the constitution of the British Parliament and, by so doing, to secure for their adherents the power and the spoils of office. Party politics, like war, has in its operation called out the best and the worst in human nature. Patriotism and self-abnegation, as well as deceit and self-seeking, have marked the history of political parties, but it is
APR–JUN 2019
AUSTRALIAN QUARTERLY
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IMAGE: © National Library of Australia
Wherever there is politics there will be political parties, just as whenever there is debate we find ourselves drawn to taking sides. We are, and always will be, a tribal species. The formation of parties is a necessary (and inevitable) evil – a shorthand for the broad aspirations of a community – but it is important to remember that they are in no way fundamental to the formation of government. The existence of the Liberal and Labor parties are not enshrined anywhere. They could (and arguably should) wane and disappear as they fail to keep up with the will of the electorate – the cyclical renewal of a healthy democracy. Despite the ‘major’ parties bleeding primary votes for yet another election, Australia is caught in a narrative of good and evil, ying and yang, Lib and Lab. Yet constantly framing Australia’s system in 2-party-preferred terms only perpetuates a myth that harms our nation’s health. The very concept of parties contradicts the essence of representational democracy, in which constituents are meant to vote for the person most suitable to represent the majority of their needs. Yet no party can represent all the needs of all the people of Australia, resulting in the situation where
1931: Party Spirit in Politics
From the Archive
From the Archive
These electors are denied the right of choice by the interposition of small groups who, with the "arrogance of elected persons," determine which candidates shall be the favoured recipients of their votes. the latter which has led to the widespread condemnation of party politics. [Edmund] Burke declared, "Parties must ever exist in a free country." Party government, although it has been in operation under the British Constitution for nearly 250 years and has borne the distinctive marks we recognise today for nearly 100 years, has undoubtedly developed features which are detrimental to the well-being of the State. Australian instances can readily be found. Political parties have adopted an organisation governed by rules so inflexible that it has acquired the rigidity of a machine. Under the party system the electors have been restricted in their choice of representatives by a preselection of candidates in which the members of the party as a whole have had no voice. These electors are denied the right of choice by the interposition of small groups who, with the "arrogance of elected persons," determine which candidates shall be the favoured recipients of their votes. Again, political parties have claimed the right to dictate to governments what their administrative and legislative actions shall be, and ministries
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have been found so subservient to this dictation that the responsibility of a ministry to parliament has been discarded and its place taken by the responsibility of ministers to persons outside parliament. Political parties in the course of their development, have established over
their own members a tyranny which destroys freedom and independence of thought. Obviously, membership of a party implies a concurrence in the foundation principles of the party and in the attitude towards public welfare that the party adopts, but outside of that claim for allegiance, where differences of opinion may legitimately exist without inconsistency with party membership, liberty of opinion has been denied and the rulers of the party have adopted the theory stated by Hobbes in his Leviathan that, "A doctrine repugnant to civil society is that whatever a man does against his conscience is sinne."
Further, party politics gives a bias to the administrative acts of government which interferes with justice in administration. However perfect an Act of Parliament may be, it touches private and personal interests at some point or other and a vigorous political party on the alert to make party allegiance profitable to its members, takes care that the administrator does not so far regard the public welfare that the opportunities for serving these private and personal interests are lost. Finally, political partyism tends to produce sectional legislation. Representing, as the party does, a section of the people of the State, it feels that the support of that section can only be retained if the legislation the party promotes gives some exclusive privileges to the section which supports it. If a party rests for its existence on a class-conscious cleavage, it produces a class legislation which disregards the welfare of the whole people, so that government "of the people, for the people, by the people" does actually "perish from the land." These evils undoubtedly do follow from political partyism in government. But the question may well be asked: Are these evils a necessary and inevitable consequence of political parties, or rather are they not inherent in the mechanism, the organisation through which effect is given to the party's objects?
Open Access: Should one model ever fit all? The internet threatened to disrupt academic publishing substantially. Yet there has not been a widespread disruption of research publishing business models. But that is now changing. A massive wave of innovation and demand is forcing a rethink of what it means to publish research, with a strong push to embrace open access (OA). Yet the diversity of ways that OA is being achieved in different parts of the world means that policies and practices can differ quite substantially and in some cases be in conflict. Who wins? Who loses? And can one model ever fit everyone? Ginny Barbour and Scott Nicholls
Deleting Democracy: Australia and the surveillance juggernaut The digital age means we increasingly carry out the minutia of our daily lives in an attention-harvesting, behavioural-modification Panopticon. Super-companies such as Google and Facebook have heralded in a new form of economic model built on the perpetual digital harvesting of citizens’ data – surveillance capitalism. And such concepts as privacy, autonomy and democracy are all there to be sold, quantified, or undermined. And just as governments are catching up on regulating the risks of this surveillance technology, it is about to make yet another dramatic leap away from them… Zac Rogers
Interpreting the Dismissal. Paul Kelly’s influence Diminished accountability, the Executive stacking the system to use mediating institutions as weapons against political opponents, the ‘whatever it takes to win’ mentality – if these can be seen as markers of the modern political status quo, then this condition has a parallel in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. For perhaps most Australians, the political crisis of 1975 has faded to become barely relevant history. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to trace the present detestable malaise of our politics to the unresolved issues of 1975.
IMAGE CREDITS: Please see article placements
Graham Maddox and Tim Battin
Blowback: The sewage intifada of Gaza Is it possible for a besieged society to drown in its own sewage? Yes, but there was very little publicity when five residents of the Gaza Strip drowned in raw sewage when a sewage dam collapsed in 2005. Likewise, few people are aware of Gaza’s critical ongoing sewage crisis, compounded by the closure of tunnels through which cheap diesel fuel was smuggled, enabling the running of the sewage treatment plants. Yet things are now becoming untenable for Israel as well, and for this reason alone change may come to a suffering people. Caroline Graham
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