Message in a Bottle

Christmas is a funny time of year – where we’re encouraged to feel good about ourselves and others through the spending of money, where the quiet tension between the religious and the humanist strangely mirrors the awkwardness around the extended-family Christmas table and where Australians actually pretend to care about yachting.  Well, almost.  Coming hard on the heels of the Sandy Hook School shootings, chemical weapon attacks in Syria and George Pell’s Christmas blessing, this year’s pagan harvest festival feels a little like a fragile mirage. An unreal moment of stillness amidst this storm of inhumanity.  And, yet, from an expected place comes a quiet message of reassurance, maybe even hope.  Not hope on any grand or global scale, but the kind of personal hope that comes from the realisation that someone out there in a position of influence shares your thoughts and your concerns.

The US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, addressed the National Press Club in Canberra this month.  His speech was remarkable for its positivity, some would even say optimism.  Bleich, of course, is a diplomat and optimism is his job. But it was when he was asked about the US elections that things got interesting.  He made the point that during the election campaign a total of $2bn was spent by both sides to basically tell Americans how pathetic and untrustworthy the other side was. 

Bleich contrasted this with a conversation he had had with the CEO of Burger King.  Bleich asked, why, in all the years of intense competition, had Burger King or McDonalds never run an advertisement attacking the quality of food or service of the other side?  The Burger King CEO’s response was emphatic: first rule of business, never kill the category.  Looked at in this way, Bleich positions US election marketing as a $2bn advertising campaign to get people to disengage from politics and to extinguish faith in the political leadership.  It was a campaign that not only failed to consider whether it would “kill the category”, but sort to hold a party on its grave. A mentality where: the victor of scorched earth is still the victor ... and without recognition that such victory only persists until the wind blows the whole kingdom away. 

Jeff Bleich - he's not the messiah, he's just a sensible man

Bleich went further still in his analysis and critique of destructive politics and discourse.  This negative narrative constructed by politicians, parties and the media, he argued, loosened the connection between people and political debate.  It de-values democracy by fostering a broad apathy – why vote for anyone, they’re all as bad as each other.  As if this weren’t concerning enough, this loss of trust, he continued, went deeper to destabilise the economy.  Why would people and companies invest in a society with such deplorable leadership?  Here was the sharp message for those who think that negative political discourse and this language of opposition (shared by governments and oppositions alike) is just semantics.  Economic development is not a rational force, it is suckled upon confidence and trust … and that trust begins with those to whom we have given the authority to tend the helm.  Undermine this trust and the voter becomes apathetic about voting, the investor about investing, the employer about employing and the consumer about consuming.

Nek minnit, Wilson Tuckey be PM

Now, I’m sure Bleich was not suggesting that we have government without accountability or criticism.  The difference is between the constructive and the destructive.  Today, we in Australia, like our American cousins, suffer with a destructive public discourse.  On both sides of politics, ideas are replaced with antagonism, vision with viciousness, and all speak with the one tongue: the language of opposition.  While Bleich was too much the diplomat to bring the point home, clearly his purpose for raising it in this context was to convey a gentle warning to the leaders of the Australian public discourse. Just be careful where you step, ye who enter here.  The test is now ours to find someone, somewhere willing to remove this message from its bottle and speak its words aloud.  And in the season of hope, anything is possible … [fades to static]