Quick Post: Why #OpenLabor isn’t the political movement you’re looking for #auspol

What is the problem with contemporary political debate?

There might not be a single, simple answer to this question.  It could be a variety of things — some of which might be framed in several different ways — depending on what you think the purpose of political debate is.  For my part, I think the problem lurks in the Outrage Economy.  People don’t want to feel stupid, so public ideas have to protect the psychic construction of the self as intelligent(/commonsensical), savvy, and entitled to their opinion.  So instead of having public debates where people engage with each other, we have public events where one party tries to confirm the prejudices of the audience while the other tries to outrage the audience.  Because outrage is profitable, the cycle continues.

People might not agree with me on this, and that’s fine.  Or they might agree with me that the Outrage Economy is a problem, but not as great a problem as something else.

Pouring their derision on anything we did… On @NickOsbaldiston and the public role of academics #auspol

English: Australian National University College of Law, Canberra Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you haven’t read Dr Nick Osbaldiston’s blog post over at AusVotes2013, I recommend you do.  In his article, Dr Osbaldiston responds to a sporadic debate that we are having in Australia — the role of academics in public debates.

The University of Melbourne opened in 1853 amid a debate not entirely unlike the debate we are having today.  Where the broader public wanted a practical university to provide practical training in practical practices, an influential group of conservatives wanted the university to be a civilising force during rapid economic growth of Melbourne.  Thus, the inauguration of the classics department.

A similar debate occurred in the 1940s during the establishment of the Australian National University.  This time, it was the Australian Labor Party who was spearheading the institution, claiming that it had ‘not lost sight of the value of culture in the community‘.  The debate at the time was whether the funds going to establish the University was coming at the expense of other sectors.  A member of the Country Party, Winton Turnbull, had this to say about the establishment of a fund to protect the wool industry: