Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric

Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric Edited by John Uhr & Ryan Walter Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Studies in Australian political rhetoric / edited by John Uhr and Ryan Walter. ISBN: 9781925021868 (paperback) 9781925021875 (ebook) Subjects: Rhetoric--Political aspects--Australia--History. Communication in politics--Australia--History. Politics and literature--Australia. Australia--Politics and government. Other Authors/Contributors: Uhr, John, 1951- editor. Walter, Ryan, editor. Dewey Number: 320.014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Nic Welbourn and layout by ANU Press Cover photographs: Kevin Rudd speaking. (Photo: John Gass / APN) Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. Mr Abbott is asking the Speaker be removed from office immediately under section 35 of Constitution. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) A file photo of Sept. 4, 2001 of former Prime Minister John Howard speaking to eldery people at a community morning tea in Melbourne. Mr. Howard turns 70 on Sunday, July 26, 2009, relaxed and comfortable in his retirement yet still busy interpreting his own place in the political pantheon. (AAP Image/Julian Smith, files) Coalition Leader Tony Abbott speaks during the Coalition’s election campaign launch in Brisbane, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013. (AAP Image/Dan Peled) Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2014 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgements . vii Contributors . ix Introduction What’s at stake in Australian political rhetoric? . 3 John Kane Part I: Just rhetoric? Language and behaviour 1 . ‘I am sorry’: Prime ministerial apology as transformational leadership . 19 Stephen Mills 2 . Economic management, rhetorical tactics, and the cost of promises . 33 Ryan Walter 3 . Leaders and legitimacy: Lessons from two Labor leadership transitions . 63 Jennifer Rayner 4 . Unintended rhetoric: The ‘Little children are sacred’ report . 85 Barry Hindess 5 . The gilded cage: Rhetorical path dependency in Australian politics . 99 Dennis Grube Part II: Standards of rhetoric 6 . Looking backwards to the future: The evolving tradition of ideal political rhetoric in Australia . 121 Mark Rolfe 7 . Whistling the dog . 143 Barry Hindess 8 . Debating the Speaker . 155 John Uhr Part III: The content of rhetoric 9 . ‘The maximum of good citizenship’: Citizenship and nation building in Alfred Deakin’s post-Federation speeches . 177 Mark Hearn and Ian Tregenza 10 . The rise and fall of economic rationalism . 195 Geoffrey Stokes 11 . Languages of neoliberal critique: The production of coercive government in the Northern Territory intervention . 221 Melissa Lovell Conclusion Studying Australian political rhetoric . 243 John Uhr and Ryan Walter Acknowledgements This volume represents the proceedings of a symposium, ‘Australian Political Rhetoric’, which was hosted by the School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University, in May 2013. The editors would like to thank Justine Molony for her excellent editorial assistance in preparing the manuscript, and the Australian Research Council for financial support (DP130104628). vii Contributors Editors Professor John Uhr, Director, Centre for the Study of Australian Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University. Dr Ryan Walter, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. Contributors Dr Dennis Grube, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University. Dr Mark Hearn, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University. Emeritus Professor Barry Hindess, School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University. Professor John Kane, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University. Dr Melissa Lovell, National Centre for Indigenous Studies, The Australian National University. Dr Stephen Mills, Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney. Jennifer Rayner, School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University. Dr Mark Rolfe, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Professor Geoffrey Stokes, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), College of Business, RMIT University. Dr Ian Tregenza, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University. ix Introduction What’s at stake in Australian political rhetoric? John Kane Rhetoric — generally defined as the art of discourse — has been distrusted as deceptive or subversive ever since the Greek sophists made a living instructing how to make the weaker argument seem the stronger in the law courts, or how to use persuasion to win in politics. Still today, people commonly dismiss rhetoric as ‘mere rhetoric’ — an effusion of ineffectual words by slippery politicians, concealing more than it reveals.1 Yet rhetoric remains central to democratic politics, which necessarily depend more fundamentally on the power of persuasion than on the force of command. Persuasion relies crucially on explanation and argument — in Greek, the logos. But how are non-expert citizens to judge whether a political argument (which does not admit of mathematical demonstration) is sound or merely cleverly deceptive? Here Aristotle’s amendment of sophistical cynicism remains as salient today as when he issued it millennia ago. He argued that of equal importance to logos in rhetorical practice were judgements of character — ethos — both the listeners’ judgement of the character of the speaker and the speaker’s judgement of the character of the audience. In the former case an audience must judge whether the speaker is a competent and trustworthy source, and in the latter the speaker must understand what matters to, and therefore will move, a particular audience. This last consideration brings up another of Aristotle’s requirements of rhetoric — pathos — an appeal to the emotions. Even a sound argument from a reliable source is meaningless if no one cares about the issue at hand (Aristotle 2000, 1356a1–16; Bk II, Chs 2–11). Aristotle’s analysis resonated through the ages as political leaders strove to find the words and style that could move people in presumptively virtuous directions.2 Ideal rhetoric was that capable of moving an audience by the evident wisdom of the argument and the indubitable character of the speaker. The hope of seeing this ideal realised endures, though hope is always shaded by the distrust that speech inevitably arouses in the political arena. The papers 1 At the opposite extreme, rhetoric may be feared as all too effectual in arousing a democratic rabble to insurrection. 2 Cicero took up the Aristotelian elements of rhetoric in his De Oratore (55 BCE), describing them as probare, delectare, flectere (to prove, to delight, to stir). This formulation is later taken up by Quintilian and becomes important in Augustine’s discussion of Christian eloquence (see Kennedy 1986: 100). For a modern reassessment, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (2003) and Garsten (2006). 3 Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric in this collection afford material for contemplation of this perennial tension between ideal and actual in the Australian context, and allow us to address our leading question: what is at stake in Australian political rhetoric? Australian political rhetoric A general inquiry into Australian political rhetoric may be imagined to aim at one or both of two things: a) to apply a general understanding of the functioning of political rhetoric to particular Australian cases; or b) to discern what may be distinctively Australian in the rhetoric of our nation. Reflection on the papers collected in this volume suggests that these aims are so deeply intertwined in practice as to be scarcely separable. To be sure, Barry Hindess reports that the term ‘dog-whistle politics’ may (or may not) be of Australian coinage, but that marks an exception (if it is one). The profound interconnectedness across history of the Australian political system with the systems of other nations — Britain and the United States in particular, but also all other democracies — means there has been massive influence on Australian rhetoric from sources abroad, as well as a comparable set of challenges and problems that rhetorical practices must try to meet. Thus Mark Rolfe in this collection explores how political leaders in the developing Australian colonies and in the early Commonwealth looked consciously to the evolving rhetoric of US leaders to discern a style suited to their own burgeoning democracy. More recently, as Stephen Mills notes, Australian leaders have borrowed a new ‘rhetoric of apology’ for past official wrongs from examples set in Europe and elsewhere since the 1990s. But for all the inherited commonalities and influences, Australian political history has followed such an idiosyncratic path that we should be surprised if Australian rhetoric had not acquired its own distinctive accents. Rolfe traces the general evolution of political rhetoric from a high-flown aristocratic

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