Australian conservatives scared to death of woke institutions

Compare Australian conservatives to Trump. They fear the woke institutions. Therefore they fail.

In my last Substack, Trump: It’s the Institutions, Stupid! (11 November), I gave my take on a central aspect of the Trump agenda—that is, his planned assault against embedded government institutions. This is BIG!

Trump’s overarching policy aim is to ‘de-woke’ America.  His election plan states that it “… offer(s) a clear, precise, and USA oriented plan to stop the Radical Left Democrats’ Weaponization of Government and its Assault on American Liberty.” But the method of achieving this is to upend the institutions that promote, embed and manage woke. That’s the bit that I say is BIG!

I’ve stated that “Trump seems to understand, like no other conservative Western leader of the last three decades-or-more, that personality and policy are not enough in the political and cultural battle. Whoever controls the institutions controls everything.” And I looked at the evidence of what Trump has declared he is set to do.

I also observed that in Australia when conservative parties win government, they most commonly leave the institutions intact to the extent that the institutions manage the conservative government/s (instead of the other way around). That is, conservatives might win elections but their failure to change the institutions means they don’t win control of government. They are, in effect, useless vassals.

In this Substack post I want to look at some of the major Australian institutional forces and how the conservative political establishment respond to them.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Misinformation Bill

In this institutional context, let’s first take a quick look at the controversy surrounding the Albanese government’s latest attempt to push through its Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. Essentially this Bill seeks to empower ‘faceless bureaucrats’ to decide what information placed in the social media public domain is true or false. The controversy around this goes to the Bill’s capacity to suppress, even criminalise, free speech and opinion. But look at this through the institutional lens.

The Bill is an attempt to establish a new institution oriented to controlling expressed opinion. That process essentially means the control of what we think. That is, if we can’t express our thoughts, we tend as humans to suppress what we think we should think. It’s an institutional process of turning us into puppets. If ever there was a clear woke agenda at play here is a stark example.

Remember however that the proposal to create a Misinformation and Disinformation Bill was  first flagged by the Morrison conservative government in 2022. They seem to have recanted this woke inclination and now oppose the Albanese Bill.

So say this Bill gets passed into law in even a highly modified form. The history of conservative Australian political parties is that they won’t take the opportunity to eliminate such laws that institutionalise such agendas.   

18C

As a prime example of this reluctance, take section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Journalist Andrew Bolt was successfully sued for expressing his opinion in two articles in 2009. The effect of section 18C is to suppress free speech on race issues. The Bolt articles allegedly “…implied (that) light-skinned people who identified as Aboriginal did so for personal gain”. Yet when the Liberal/National Coalition was in government it kept 18C in place. This ‘woke’-style law institutionalises race differentials. Effectively, conservative politicians have by default endorsed the institutionalisation of ‘woke’.

The Voice

Look at The Voice referendum proposal. This was the most aggressive attempt ever witnessed in Australia to institutionalise division along the lines of race. This wasn’t just an attempt to do that through legislation. Rather it sought to institutionalise that division within the Constitution. Yes, the Liberal/National coalition, as the dominant conservative political group did oppose this. But this only happened after a substantial battle within the Liberal Party, where some major elements favoured giving way to The Voice push.

Compulsory Superannuation

But now look at where the Liberal/National coalition is scared to death of one institution that delivers massive control of our economy and society to a tiny select group of elites.

In my Substack analysis last year, The New Australian Socialist Experiment (30 January 2023), I described the socialists’ capture of Australian capitalism. They have done this through the compulsory superannuation system which feeds Australian workers’ enforced savings into Industry Superannuation Funds. These funds control more than $872 billon of workers’ money and are managed through, or controlled by, a political network of (essentially) self-appointed elites.

Through their almost overbearing, financial clout, the Industry Funds exert huge control over the direction of investments. As ‘investors’ they exert massive influence over the decisions of large corporations including which people have positions on corporate boards. The clout of Industry funds, in my view, provides much of the explanation for why so many corporations backed and funded the ‘Yes’ Voice campaign. That is the Industry funds promote, push even bludgeon corporates into woke compliance.

And understand that Industry Funds, since their beginning, have operated under privileged rules that limit their transparency. Further, that the funds’ controllers have hardly any accountability when compared at least with members of corporate boards. This was and largely remains the intended design of the laws covering Industry Super Funds. The ‘trick’ with this one has been to create a massive financial institutional network that’s immune from the normal standards of transparency and accountability that apply to all other financial institutions.

As one example and in the words of one financial commentator, the Industry Funds had “…a relatively free pass during the financial services royal commission that cut down banks, insurers and retail funds”. (The Australian, 13 November 2024)

Given that such a situation has existed for so long, it’s reasonable to assert this must inevitably lead to malpractice, even potential corruption. Maybe evidence of this potential is starting to emerge.

Take the giant construction specialist Industry Fund, CBUS. It’s the fund into which construction workers (CFMEU members or not) deposit their compulsory savings. The CFMEU holds controlling ‘trustee’ positions on CBUS. The CFMEU construction division has recently been put into administration based on evidence that it is riddled with corruption and controlled by criminals.

I’m not in a position to allege that CBUS is corrupt and don’t do so. But now CBUS is accused of malpractice in relation to members’ funds. “The Australian Securities and Investments Commission revealed it is suing the $94bn fund over an alleged bungle which has affected more than $20m in payments to members.” (The Australian, 13 November 2024) And the regulator (ASIC) has warned that “…it’s fair to say that we do think this is a broader industry issue.”

So what’s the core problem here?

It’s not just that the Industry funds are immune from proper transparency and accountability. It’s the compulsory nature of the superannuation system that is the basis of the problem. Australian workers are forced to pay money into funds over which they have no control about what happens to their own money. It’s the removal of the right of Australians to control their money that is the problem. And it’s this compulsion that creates the institutional problem at first instance.

What has been the response of the Liberal/National coalition? In a word, fear. It fears the power of the Industry funds to run political campaigns against it if there’s even a slight whiff of a conservative coalition seeking to carry out serious reform. The Coalition’s reform proposals to date have been at the tiny policy edges at best. The Coalition is effectively ensuring the maintenance and strength of the superannuation institutions that work so effectively against the interests of individual Australian workers. CBUS could be viewed as a woke institution!

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Education

Trump has stated that he’s going to close the US Federal Education Department. That’s a clear Trump assault against an institution that doesn’t ‘do’ any teaching. It’s an institution that tells teachers what to teach. In removing such an institution, Trump pushes the control of teaching back to the local level.

Would a conservative Australian government take such a step? I doubt it. In fact, on past behaviour the Liberal/National coalition is terrified of even suggesting such a thing. Its fear is a political war waged against it by the public service and the teacher unions who effectively control the education department.

Political capacity

I’ve highlighted a very short list of institutions here—although superannuation is a hell of a huge elephant in the political room.

Australian conservatives dominated by the Liberal/National coalition have a long history of being fearful of entrenched institutions. They operate on the basis of ‘let’s get into government first!’ But once in government, they operate on the basis of ‘we need to stay in government’. What this shows is inept political skills. The result is that they don’t really govern. The institutions effectively govern them!

What Trump has done is to break the presumed orthodox political mould. Political orthodoxy says that you can’t win against the power of the institutions. But those entrenched institutions are the very ‘things’ that run and manage the ‘woke’ agendas. There’s no value just whinging about something. It’s about doing something. Trump is clearly about ‘doing’.

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You’ll find all of my Substack posts here if you’re interested in reading more.