[csaa-forum] latham, labor and aspirationalism

[Aren Z. Aizura]

Hi everyone,

Like everyone else, I'm stunned by the election result -- not so much
because I really wanted Labor to win, but by the enormity of the swing to
the right, and the Senate result. Brett's article was very much on the ball
about the politics of emotion or affect that have been mobilised over the
last nine months.

One thing I wanted to ask, though, after comments such as these:

> The reticence of the Labor Party to advertise its policy on Iraq, like
> its kinder approach to refugees, stems from its attempt to win back a
> number of marginal seats, usually located on the fringes of Australia's
> cities.

But wasn't mandatory detention a policy Labor came up with, originally?
Until very, very recently, Labor's policy on mandatory detention was hardly
different to the Coalition's. The Labor detention policy is 'kinder' to the
extent that it aims to reduce the amount of *time* undocumented migrants
spend in detention; plus a concession to various left-liberal NGOs who have
focused on issues like children in detention -- at the loss, I would argue,
of presenting a firm line about how any kind of mandatory detention is
wrong. 

Labor also supported the 2003 federal anti-terrorism legislation (although
various left-Laborites didn't) and really, was the Latham stance on Iraq so
much more preferable? I read the 'Troops Home By Christmas' malarkey as a
badly designed Whitlam performance. I say 'performance' because I think
that's exactly what it was: a cynical attempt to mobilise ex-Whitlam voters'
nostalgic memories of the Vietnam war, and on the way pick up the approval
of the 'numerous' anti-war protesters -- who, by that time, had vanished
into the ether. The famous 800 troops would have been redeployed in Iraq on
'humanitarian' missions, not sent home.

There are other, more scary ALP policies that are worth mentioning here:
Latham's promise that every school-leaver would be working or studying
rather than unemployed -- more decimation of the dole, anyone? And people in
NSW can look to Bob Carr to figure out what racialised politics might be
like under Latham: more 'left' xenophobia/nationalism and panic about
migrants taking 'our' jobs, gangs etc etc etc.

I think all this will be evident to Brett and to many others. What interests
me, however, is how even though I knew Labor was no better than the Liberal
Party, part of me still wanted Labor to win. I was anticipating a
generalised moment of enthusiasm on the left followed by anger and
recrimination, not unlike the UK liberal left's response to Tony Blair --
and yet I still felt shattered on Saturday night.

I don't think this is an isolated phenomenon, given the previous posts. And
I want to understand why this is so. Apart from demonstrating the failures
of majoritarian politics, as Brett noted, what does it mean when a
significant proportion of the population really cares more about their
mortgages than other people and vote Liberal? What does it mean when another
significant proportion of the population can pretend (even momentarily) that
we're being offered any kind of viable alternative in Latham's Labor?

Aren Aizura

_________________________________________

"There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons."
(gilles deleuze)