Now despite the title this post is not really about gaming... well not video games. In actual fact I'm going to be talking largely about politics. So you can close your browser tab and run off screaming if you must. However this isn't so much a rant about a particular political party or such more about the way that we view political parties in general. I find the whole political system amusing and depressing at the same time and you can see some of my reflections over at gnomishtruth.gameldar.com. However it will involve a bit of detail about recent Australian politics.
So a bit of an Australian seat-of-the-pants political history lesson in bullet form:
There are two major political parties in Australia
In 2007 Kevin Rudd leading the ALP ousted John Howard (Libs) from government in a fairly decisive swing vote.
The Coalition had been in power for 11 years previous to this.
In Australia the Prime Minister is the leader of the government – he/she has to be elected like any other politician, but is elected to the position of Prime Minister by vote of the party he/she represents.
At the end 2009 Kevin Rudd was replaced as Prime Minister by Julia Gillard in a surprise coup that occurred in one weekend.
(As a side point) Julia Gillard become the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
In the 2010 election no one party had a majority in the parliament – Gillard formed government through an alliance with 3 independents and the Greens.
(http://gnomishtruth.gameldar.com/2010/08/voice-of-people.html) Gillard appointed Rudd to the (important) role of Foreign Minister within her cabinet (the ministers that have a formal role within the party – i.e. they take primary responsibility for Foreign Affairs or Treasury or Health etc)
Gillard is on record as the least popular Prime Minister in the history of the polling.
In the last couple of weeks there have been rumblings in the media about a possible leadership spill in the ALP again largely due to how poorly Gillard is polling – with it coming to a head on Friday last week with Rudd resigning (while in Washington) as the Foreign Minister due to speculation about him. His reasoning being that Gillard didn't defend him against certain accusations others were making therefore he must not have her support. He stated he wasn't going to challenge for leadership and then flipped and flopped and it resulted in Gillard declaring that there will be a ballot to determine if she should remain the leader of the ALP (and therefore Prime Minister). She won the ballot with a decisive victory (70-21 or something like that).
The interesting thing has been the reaction to the state of the ALP. How can we trust them when they aren't stable? How can they be in government when clearly there is a lot going on that we just don't know about?
I just listened to these arguments and thought – when has it ever been, nor can it really be completely stable. The ALP hasn't had a clear strong leader since Keating (who was defeated by Howard's government) and that is only relative to recent times. He had in-fighting issues as well. His predecessor however was the longest serving prime minister – Bob Hawke.
However I'm not using this brief instability to justify my thinking – I was actually approaching it more from a general perspective about what a political party is and what it represents. Namely it represents a relatively wide spectrum of thoughts and philosophies. Political parties form, not because they hold one hundred percent uniform ideas but because there is power in numbers. At the fundamental level, in the Australian political system, my vote is used to determine my representative within Parliament. However if the Parliament consisted of so many individuals there would be two main problems:
How would we determine they are going to be a good representative – there is no way that we can know how they'll approach any particular topic such that they truly represent me.
Forming legislation would likely slow down and grind to a halt – because there would be too many sides to the debate and everyone trying to get their little modifications done
Now these can be somewhat addressed by having a political party that the individual represents the ideals behind. As such it is streamlining the process. Yes you can't know everything that the party will officially support, however because there is a greater number of people and views that a party represents (and in internal discussions can raise) – the general 'tone' or representation value would be averaged out across a large group of people. You don't have to worry so much about an individual's special bias because others within the party that also hold influence would counter that.
So given that presumption – it seems obvious to me that there will be internal differences within a party that result in conflict. Politicians are affiliated with a party because it gives them greater influence over the resulting decisions than they would if they were an individual (although this is skewed in Australia's current political clime because the balance of power is held by independents). Alliances and sub-affiliations will therefore also occur to increase the power of individuals with the party as well, to gain more control. And this is what is clearly visible within the ALP. There is the 'unions' faction, there is the 'new labour' faction – and there are likely more.
The thing that I don't get it why people are surprised. Really all that has happened is that the lid has been lifted on what can be expected is going on under the hood. I don't think it is a bad thing either. Yes there are bad elements. But it is good that there are differences – it allows necessary changes to occur within reasonable time frames. It presents a diversity of views and empowers people in the long run. Now – there is a problem in Australian politics that not all views are represented within the political sphere. I certainly feel that way (basically all our parties are in the conservative right – there is way too much money focus in current day politics, no one is standing up for real social/environmental change unless it is fiscally viable) and it leads me to feeling like John Mayer wrote in his song “Waiting on the World to Change” - that I'm relatively powerless and just have to wait for the powers to shift as people get off their capitalist/modernist high.
Again going back to the “Why are people surprised” - I really don't understand it. There is a real and dominate precedent – look at churches and church history since the formation of the church (or in particular the institutionalisation of the church by Ceasar Augustus). Here is a huge 'meta' organisation that has thousands of different forms (denominations). In theory they all have the same basic goal – that of being representatives of Christ on earth. But there is such a vast difference that this sometimes boils over into conflict. And boy have there been some conflicts. I don't condone the violence that has come about because of these differences, but I really really do value the diversity that can be seen in the different churches. Put simply – people are different. We all have different ideas and differing priorities and when you try and mesh those things together they are not always going to gel perfectly. But the sum is greater than all the parts.
Now if you've lasted this far – a WoW analogy for you – think about all the types of players that there are in the game. There are a lot of different types and focuses – some pure raiders, some hardcore PvP, others that like to do a bit of everything, roleplayers, noobs, casuals. We give them all titles, but there are players in all those camps that will speak up and say 'I like WoW, you should play it too' but at the same time they'll all clamour on the forms wanting different things address in the next patch/expansion. That is a good thing. We just need to drop the 'PvE nerfing things for PvP' or vice versa rhetoric. All of those different things play a major part in what makes WoW, wow and the game we love to play.
I'll end by saying there is a downside to this visible crack in the ALP's situation, and with anywhere that this occurs – it's that of broken trust. As people we operator on trust, and seeing what is normally private, public it damages our trust (Bruce Schnier has a few interesting points about trust in a blog post today: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/liars_and_outli_7.html). I guess if you dig beyond the sensationalism in the media and the FUD that the opposition is thrown up – really trust is the issue. If we step out of our naivety we know it must be occurring, but knowing about it and seeing it are two completely different issues. However when it comes down to it – was it that long ago that the Liberals had a similar bust up? Sure they weren't in power, but they are not immune to the internal fighting. Are they any better? Or are they just better at hiding it?
So for me – my reaction to this situation is this: I'm not overly worried about it happening. It is a by-product of having a system that can still function and still represents a wide range of views. My trust still needs to be earned – but this is a small blip in the scheme of things. Actually being able to implement new policy that isn't completely neutered because of the lack of balance of power – and actually achieve something of value within the term of office – that is more important to me.
