What the hell is a ‘social licence’? Malcolm Turnbull has recently referred to the banks operating with a ‘substantial social licence’ and repeated this phrase in a press conference announcing his annual grilling of the ‘big four’ before a special committee. He suggested the banks were jeopardising this ‘social licence’ by not making his life easier and doing what he says by passing on rate cuts.
The left of the Liberal Party have been applauding Baird’s shut down of the greyhound industry. When faced with the unavoidable cost in animal life, human happiness and taxpayer money this will bring, they dust it off as a natural consequence of the ‘industry breaching its social licence’.
The emergence of this stupid phrase disturbs me. It’s a nonsense used by professional politicians projecting their political problems on industries that operate in the real world, admonishing them with an ambiguous, unquantifiable, catch all obligation to their ‘social licence’. If they breach this ‘social licence’, this means of course that they have breached no law or regulation at all, only that they’re unfortunate enough to be the victim of gutless politicians pinning their problems on others to avoid any responsibility for real solutions.
It is baffling that any Liberal leader or any member of the Party would rely on this stupid phrase, ‘social licence’, as a crutch. You can’t spell socialism without social and you couldn’t think of a word more evocative of the oppressive, authoritarian state than ‘licence’. It’s awful policy and worse politics. Obviously though, some confected ‘everyman’ in a focus group thought it sounded like ‘social justice’ and had positive connotations. Consequently our politics is infected with the hollow but far-reaching concept of the ‘social licence’.
Can one get their ‘social licence’ from Services NSW? What button do I press on the colourful touch-screen?
Of course, the ‘social licence’ is unattainable. No one knows the terms of the social licence. No industry, no institution, no individual will ever know they’ve breached it until they’re denounced and either hauled before impromptu committees or summarily shut down.
Pray that this vacuous concept is banished from political discourse before you’re found in breach.
William Dawes is president of the Sydney University Liberal Club
