There may be a reason why Anthony Albanese and his ministers do not answer questions about their signature policies, even when those questions are asked with respect. It may be that these politicians simply cannot hear what is being asked of them.
For example, the Prime Minister does not seem to hear the question about what will happen with Aboriginal issues if the Voice to Parliament is enshrined in the Constitution.
Similarly, his Energy Minister does not appear to hear the growing criticism about green science or complaints that he is making the lives of millions of Australians worse by rushing to energy source transitions.
Following along is the Treasurer, who cannot hear that his actions are contributing to inflation particularly with regard to how he structures the Budget.
In sync is the Industrial Relations Minister, whose office also contributes to inflationary pressures with reforms that are cruel to productivity.
Meanwhile, the Environment Minister plays her part as well by being deaf to the critiques of issues such as the health of the Great Barrier Reef which has miraculously improved.
Is all this simply political posturing, or is it something deeper? If Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory is correct, and apt in these instances, there may be deeper reasons why Peter Dutton and Susan Ley have not had their questions answered, even when the Speaker of the House tries to insist.
Haidt, in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, explains that across all the cultures in which he has studied moral values foundations, there are five (or six) main moral themes for us humans. He explains that as societies and communities, we tend to focus in different ways on: care instead of harm, fairness over cheating, loyalty over betrayal, authority instead of subversion, sanctity over degradation, and a later entry to this family of moral value pairings, liberty instead of oppression.
After establishing these themes, Haidt then started using them to help understand whether and how different groups of people held differently to these moral foundations. When he applied this to the two main groups in the ‘culture wars’, he found:
The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying primarily on the Care/harm foundation, with additional support from the Fairness/cheating and Liberty/oppression foundations. Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all six foundations, including Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation.
This helps makes sense of the socialist leaders we currently have, particularly if we own that they are the ‘new Labor’. These Labor folk are very different to the Irish Roman-Catholic ones that I grew up with in the west of Sydney. We knew we voted differently, but we built community together because our moral foundations were so similar across all six areas that Haidt describes.
But not so today. How can the Prime Minister and his Minister for Indigenous matters hear the questions being asked of them when they have a very limited sense of loyalty to the Western traditions that made this nation strong, and when the present government has a strong sense of subverting our history? They also agree with the moral foundation of perennial harm and so believe that their actions are the more caring, rescuing the embattled minorities from entrenched oppression.
Likewise, the Treasurer cannot see the harm his is doing to the very people be believes he is helping as he restructures capitalism into a socialist, oppression-breaking mould. He carries his authority poorly because of his subversive mode, and thinks he is rescuing people from harm.
The minister in charge of energy transition is possibly the one who is most ‘visibly deaf’. His office and ideology only sees the environmental changes through an unrealistic alarmist lens that asserts care over harm and insists they are releasing people from oppression of the ‘death-enhancing’ traditional sources of energy. The Treasureer cannot see that his version of justice cheats people and businesses. Those entrusted with leadership of the environment and industrial relations are similarly afflicted with ideologically induced deafness.
This lack of awareness, in Haidt’s theory, also explains these leaders’ tone deafness to religious issues. Haidt notes that they – religious conservatives – use all six, so want to care, but also remember the traditions from whence care came. They do not want to cheat people but they also want to keep the principles and institutions that give authority to the rule of law. They want to release others from oppression, but also see a need to maintain certain truths as immutable, such as everyone being of equal worth, particularly under the law and with reference to being an Australian citizen.
It is why Haidt repeated the research from Putnam and Campbell:
By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbours and better citizens than secular Americans – they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life. (p.310)
People on the ‘left’, under the influence of cultural neo-Marxism, or what I call the ‘serious socialists’, have a ‘blind spot’ (as Haidt calls it) to these dynamics. It is why so many of their socialist ideas are devoid of coherent detail and why so much of their thinking, when put into practice, backfire with terrible unintended consequences.
And so, the ‘chicken littles’ (to quote the Prime Minister), will not be understood by the socialist left. That is why their questions will not be answered – these socialists are not able to hear them through the earmuffs of their restrictive moral foundations.
