Hostile complexity

In the spirit of A&U's motto, first to know the nature of things, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and waterways which were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend our respect to Aboriginal and toouristrate islander peoples listening today. >> Oh, can I tell you, democracy sausages are my favorite meal. They are dulu with no salu. >> Forget about what you've been told by the hate media. >> I'm optimistic. They have the right idea. >> Google it, mate. You're >> such a sick fan. >> This is Democracy Manifest. >> Welcome to another episode of Democracy Sausage. I'm Mark Kenny, director of the Australian Studies Institute at A&U. >> And I'm Dr. Maria Tufflagger from the School of Politics and International Relations. Now, I've been really fascinated by the confusion in One Nation this week over immigration. This is like the Labour Party not being sure of its position on unionism or or perhaps Medicare. If you're Pauline Hansen, think about it like this. Compromise your position on immigration. And well, what are you? Uh this was always the looming test, I think, for One Nation as it rose this year. How to translate the vibe into detailed defensible policy, agreed policy. We saw David Farley, the new lower house member for Ferris, who's in Lee's old seat, which he won in that bi-election not so long ago, talking about an immigration intake, a net overseas migration intake. He had his own sort of somewhat uh bespoke definitions, but the aggregate number that he was talking about, 230,000 or so net overseas migration to Australia, uh is not really different at all in any material terms from what Labor is proposing. And of course, Pauline Hansen was out pretty quickly saying that it was going to be significantly less, more like 130,000 all up. So, you know, this it's, as I say, real confusion there, Maria, in terms of what they stand for. Uh, and uh, for One Nation, it doesn't really get much more definitional than this immigration question, does it? Well, I guess it's just a it's a lesson in in politics of of making principles translate into reality. Yeah. but also some of the things that we've been talking about in the past about the nature of the constituency that's voting for her um or or flirting with voting for her and the needs of those communities, communities that are being shaped by the fact that there is migration to the cities and and the impact that that's having on regional and rural communities where she's getting a lot of her vote from. >> Yeah. And yet uh as we've seen so much the wi with one nation and with populist parties around the world this sort of ins populist insurgencies as they're sometimes called it's often not the detail that actually matters and to some extent contradictions like Pauline Hansen con you know communing with billionaires or whatever those sort of contradictions don't seem to uh really matter much to this this burgeoning constituency of of the disaffected uh and um you know and and other contradictions in policy detail may also not matter because and we see this with Trump you know it just it just doesn't matter. Nothing seems to prick the balloon as it were of of this kind of inflated um inflated kind of public support. Uh so let's talk with someone who has looked at this and a number of other things. Uh Alex Fine who is the research and intelligence principal at the RedBridge Group. Welcome to you Alex. >> Hi thanks for having me. What are you making of this whole uh immigration kind of discussion in terms of its impact on on um on the standing of One Nation, the understanding of One Nation? Is it it's somewhat surprising? Uh likely to have much effect on Pauline Hansen's support. >> Short answer for now, no. None. Um I think the the real reason for that is the nature of the information ecosystem at the moment. Uh it's so siloed and those of us who are aware of what happened on insiders on Sunday and then the discussion that happened after that we comprise an increasingly small segment of the population. Um it it really is fewer and fewer people who are engaged with that kind of uh political discourse. Almost no supporters of One Nation will be across a lot of this stuff. >> So in your your day job is basically to do the qualitative research for the RedBridge uh group which means you're talking or listening really to voters day in and day out. And I suppose one of the things that's really I'd like you know I'd love to know is that what what have you observed in the way people are are talking about I suppose the the pressures um that are facing the electorate uh cost of living that that are all kind of and immigration and concerns about immigration um that are all kind of being considered to be driving the one nation vote. So you know what are you what are what are real people saying about this in the focus groups that you're observing? So it's a real mix. A lot of the people who are considering One Nation for the first time, they might have concerns around crime that then get conflated with migration, but that's not really the thing that's driven them into the arms of One Nation. There is a real sense of having been failed by the political class. And because people aren't necessarily thinking of the supports, as meager as they are, that do exist, they can't really imagine a situation that would be worse than the situation they're in right now. The pressures are just so enormous on them. And so they will they will say literally and people across, you know, many different demographics, how could it get any worse than it already is? may as well try something new. You do have a small proportion that really do have hostility to migration or have kind of inhabited this uh corner of the internet that is feeding them faright material particularly around um the supposed societal collapse happening in the UK as a result of migrants and they will repeat Tommy Robinson talking points but they're a minority even among One Nation voters. uh most people are just like we've got to try something new. This isn't working. So, in a way, they're buying the um the ones who aren't, you know, sort of really committed and and sort of uh you know, listening to Tommy Robinson and those sorts of arguments aren't really into the detail, but they are in a sense picking up the general vibe, right, which is that a number of the problems that I face in my community that that that you know, the overcrowding and the, you know, the cost of housing and rents and and and can't get into into the waiting room at the hospital and all these this is uh they're picking up this vibe that this is a function of too many people coming in. So they are sort of getting a kind of a non ideological version of the migration argument percolating through to them. >> Yeah, that's a really great way of putting it. What I'll often tell um particularly civil society clients is that in the absence of any other systemic explanation for why life has gotten as hard as it has, the immigration answer kind of fills that systemic gap. And you know, for an even smaller minority, uh, sometimes it it's kind of there's been too much climate action. You know, the renewable stuff is kind of the cause, but that that that's a smaller portion of of even that segment. When you give people systemic explanations about basically what's happened broadly speaking because of neoliberalism and you start to discuss how the tax system set up, older people are able to volunteer even without prompting uh what privatization has wrought. uh when you start discussing the role of monopolies and things like that, people really do start to cohhere around oh this is the systemic explanation and um I kind of put it into three buckets right which is people really feel like we should take back what we own and so that is about firstly getting the tax base in order secondly it's about um having the resources that we all collectively own like that we're compensated for the extraction of those resources. Taking back those natural monopolies. Um you know people tell me over and over profit and care don't mix. Like why why has care been privatized? Things like that. So take back what we own because core to Australian identity across cohorts it is completely crossartisan is the sense that we look after each other. what it is to be Australian is that we care for our neighbor um and we care about fairness and that if those two things were sorted out then individuals all of a sudden have room to be able to aspire. People say over and over that corporations are doing terrible things getting away with murder but there is an expectation that business will do what business will do. That's you know big business is in it for profits. It's government's role to take care of us and government is failing to protect us. >> This is really fascinating because it strikes me as um an argument pretty undisguised argument for supporting the Greens. Um you know that that take back uh what we own, take back control of our of our economy, um be u do something about the fact that we've privatized so many services. I mean this is what we don't see and we and this is the case in a number of places and it's certainly the case in Australia. What we don't see at the moment is any kind of swelling movement for the the the what is derisively referred to as the populist left. But we do see it on the right and it feels to me like one of the key reasons for that is immigration. Would you agree with that? >> No. >> As in immigration anxiety? I mean, >> no, I don't think that's what's going on. I think what what has really happened is we have a very particular information ecosystem in Australia. Because of our population size, we can't get the kind of scale that they can get in a place like the US or or the UK. for people doing progressive content online to get the sorts of followings they need to get in order to kind of cohhere big groups of people. We've got a couple of really big influential creators in punters politics, Conrad Benjamin and Hannah Ferguson, but they're kind of almost alone in the landscape. They're not there isn't thisworked kind of information ecosystem. And what they're up against is aworked far right that is incredibly well resourced, well funded, but they also have a decade of research and testing behind them. They have a playbook and there is just yeah so much money so so many resources um so much research so much sophistication behind their operation that the message in a sense the like the true systemic message itself has a hard time cutting through and there is a a mismatch between what people say they want and then what they receive like via the algorithm. >> All right. Okay. So what you're basically saying is is that people might be um interested or open to ideas, you know, essentially a sort of uh reationalization agenda that you just sort of described, but instead of receiving the left-wing version of that, they're receiving the right-wing version of that, which is which is actually about redistributing cultural power and very selective reationalization of certain things, but not not the caring agenda. um in terms of actually res redistributing resources, material resources, caring for each other rhetorically only by excluding other people. >> Exactly. And there's there's there are two other really important elements here as well. There's a power element and a complexity element. So the power element is really critical in as much as there needs to be a believability behind any promise of delivery. And so uh people will often tell us in the groups, "Oh, there's no point voting for the Greens. It's a wasted vote." Cuz people don't really understand how the voting system works anyway. Um, and there's not a believability that what the Greens promise, even if they've heard it, which they generally haven't, that they'd be able to deliver it. Um, so that's that's kind of the power problem. And Hansen's projection of power is one of her biggest assets at the moment. She looks like she is dominating because she's everywhere. And that because she's so tough and she's so ballsy. These are the words that um, participants use, tough and ballsy. um she'll be able to get through whatever she wants to get through because they don't really know or care how it happens. And um that kind of leads me into the complexity part of it as well. So um I call the kind of condition that people exist in at the moment a a state of hostile complexity because everything is so messy in the information sphere. it's impossible to know what's true there. Um, but also like government services have and eligibility and things like that are incredibly complex and and difficult to navigate. Um, privatized uh systems are also incredibly difficult to navigate. You don't know when you're getting scammed. And so scams become indistinguishable from legitimate government programs or legitimate businesses. And so people are in this constant state offormational overwhelm and don't know how to kind of exist within it. And in there comes someone like Hansen with a really simple and clear message that is about agency that she can be the conduit by which they regain agency over their lives. So she's using immigration as one lever but in it's also about delivering pain to the elites and the establishment. um she has the power to do that and she restores agency to them that they feel they've lost within this state of hostile complexity. >> That's fascinating, Alex. Um so one of the things when you were talking about the power problem, I I immediately thought of Adam Band and in some ways your additional answer has has I think gone some way to answering the question I'm going to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I I think I'd be interested to know what you have to say. So, Adam Bant was, I think, a very different Greens leader to all the other Greens leaders we've had. Adam Bant was someone who understood, I think, power and and was not afraid of it and was very happy to use it. But, you know, your point about complexity, your point about agency, that one is a bit interesting, I think, for someone like Adam Bent. And your point about pain to the elites. So I suppose how did Adam Bant go in the focus groups and um what can it kind of tell us about how he might compare to to what Pauline has achieved? >> The tragedy is he was never mentioned >> not once right. No I'm serious. It it like he just he wasn't on people's radar at all. None of them are because it's again a problem of cutting through in this environment. There needs to be a building of a kind of this progressive network that crossamplifies and cross boosts each other um in a way. Um, and we're we're quite or I shouldn't say we um progressives are quite siloed. Um, and and generally are in in their own little niche and the algorithm rewards what is crossamplified um and andworked in and it it generally does not reward politics either. Politics comes into people's feeds via other things. It's snuck in through other issues that people are much more likely to care about. People say they hate politics. They don't want to hear about it. So, you need to be where people live in the first place about an issue that is material to them. If you start with like a policy issue, it's not even going to make it through the algorithmic filter. I wonder whether I mean this is kind of very sort of entry levelvel or or simple level kind of um uh concern but nonetheless an important one. We we know presentation is is is really crucial in in politics and in communications generally. If we compare someone like Adam Bant to Pauline Hansen, we have in Bant's case a a very precise linguistic form. uh the use of words, uh carefully spoken, um uh educated. And with Pauline, we have uh an untrained kind of broadcast voice, um a much more kind of um visceral kind of emotional style to her speech. One of them, according to I I suppose going off what you've just been talking about, one of them is going to relate at a diff in a different way to the other. And is that crucial also do you think to uh the extent of absorption of whatever their messages are relatively speaking? >> So yes, but it doesn't have to be kind of lowest common denominator stuff either. So someone like Punter's politics, he his content is just repeated back to me in the groups constantly um from all sorts of different cohorts and he is often talking about really complex things. He he treats his audience with like profound respect, but he does it in a way that doesn't make them want to kind of curl up in a ball and it and it gets through >> but it is funny, right? I mean, it's it's he often uses comedy. Um he he he's an educated person, right? He's a former economics teacher who who you know I mean there there's an interesting mix there. I am fascinated what you're saying though that that it it comes up a lot that and is that right across the spectrum of of of people that you interview that that he's he's reaching or that they are reaching? >> Yeah, it it's it's remarkable um kind of how how broad his his audience is even like at times it can skew male but it's not exclusively. Another person who cuts through is David PCO. >> Um, but David PCO generally tends to cut through to um men between the ages of I would say late 20s to um 50s. And they're men who are considered they're not necessarily um tertiary educated, but they're they're men who are like serious about their information consumption and and they they really love sort of um citing him. And what's interesting is he is just a CRA from a a senator from CRA and yet there are people in like regional New South Wales, regional Victoria who will site David PCO which is we find that remarkable. >> Well, I think having been captain of the Wallabies might have had something to do with it. I mean he's a you know a very successful high-profile sports person in his pre-political career. So he's an he is you're right a very interesting kind of package and and and and a good effective communicator in his own right. Uh it's kind of interesting to to um >> but he also has something that Pauline has and I don't mean that in an insulting way but like he has an authenticity about the way he speaks like when he speaks you feel like he is not putting on a filter and Pauline is absolutely like that too and um and he's not I think giving pain to the elites but what he is doing is sitting there going mate >> why are we doing this this is dumb right that's so much of what his his message is. It's like the lowfi calm version of what Pauline does. >> That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And people want often that they want really radical policy, but they they would never think of themselves as wanting radical policy, you know, because if you're talking about nationalization and and getting the tax base in order, that by the political class is radical. But they want it delivered in a calm, measured way that demonstrates that you've taken all the evidence um in and and you've considered it carefully and and you've come to this conclusion. So they want radical stuff delivered really kind of sensibly and calmly. And um the exception to that sometimes is someone like Jackie Lambi where her passion um is something that people really appreciate. They they really appreciate the the rawness and uh you know what they feel is is her honesty with the electorate as well. >> Yeah. It's a sort of I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to take it anymore kind of thing. >> She's she's embodying that kind of rage of the silenced. >> Yeah. >> You know, like she's there by by accident and and when she says all of those things like you you know she's lived it. and if she hasn't lived it, her sister has or I don't even know she has a sister. >> I'd really like to explore um because I know you've written about are we really polarized and this what you've just said about radicalism is is a dovetail to that. But I'm doing I'm going to do your job now Mark but don't we need to go to a break? >> We do need to go to a break. Thank you. Yes, let's do that and we'll come back in just a moment. >> Welcome back. Uh Maria, back to your point that you're about to go to. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, Alex, I mean I think I think it would be really um helpful for people to sort of understand I suppose like when people say the political cast has failed them like what are the examples that are actually coming up like I think you've mentioned a few but I think that's a really good place to sort of start about whether or not we are really divided as a community. There's a really strong sense that politicians are in it for themselves and are kind of constantly doing cynical short-term band-aid solutions to deep systemic problems for their own personal gain in one way or another. Whether it's for reelection because they're just obsessed with the electoral cycle. Some people are aware that um they might be after a job after politics in a particular industry. So they want to keep them sweet. The really really engaged people understand about lobbying um and wanting to keep the donors sweet. People who are less engaged just have a sense that um and it's more amorphous, but they do have a sense that um they're on the side of big business and trying to pate sort of moneyed interests and things like that. And and so when things don't work, when you can't access a doctor or a psychologist or a dentist or your school is falling down, um you know, the myriad things that don't work in people's lives, um the supermarkets aren't being reigned in for their price gouging or, you know, whatever it is. >> Um this is because politicians are beholden to interests that are not the interests of ordinary people. A word we uh haven't used yet, but which I think underlies a lot of this is nostalgia. Right? This is a a a feature of populist rhetoric, whether spoken or not, but certainly represented in slogans like take back control or make America great again or whatever. Uh the rhetoric is often invoking a time when things were better before all of these changes, whether it be privatization and neoliberalism and all these other things. Whether whe whether that's articulated in people's minds, it's just this general kind of sense that we used to be a society that you could understand, that you had value in, that there were values in, and now all of that's gone. Um, do you pick up much of that in in in your conversations or any sense of of of of kind that kind of temporal frustration? >> Absolutely. Um, it is it's such an important point because people have a really strong sense of a loss of community connection. They have a sense that things used to be much better and simpler and easy to understand. They used to be able to get what they needed. They used to be able to aspire. They used to know that if they worked hard that they would get somewhere. That none of that's the case anymore. And again, the systemic explanation that kind of slips in there from the far right is, well, migration has kind of ruined all of that, plus all our corrupt politicians. Or you get a lot of people who are Gen X um or younger boomers even who talk about privatization that when we used to own these either natural monopolies or um sources of care or whatever it is, uh we weren't price gouged and things were affordable. And now there's kind of like this upward concentration of wealth and it's only accelerating. And they won't use those words, but but that that's what they're talking about. And when those older people in the group say it, if there are younger people in the group, you you just see them go, "Oh, oh, wow. That's that's what's going on. It it's amazing." Yeah, >> that's so interesting. There there is so much nostalgia for a time when things weren't or or when people weren't existing in a state of hostile complexity when life was legible and the values of the people ruling them were not so completely divorced from their own values of caring for each other. >> Do do people actually invoke specific like times or leaders or is it a distant unspecified past? It's mostly unspecified. Um, you will have the odd, very, very odd exception who will talk about pork. They need to be a lot older >> um to do that, but it's almost always kind of just this amorphous thing. Yeah. >> And that aspiration, like is it an aspiration to a specific location like as in like I'll then have a house or is it just better than here, better than where I am? it it's you know young people like the fury of some young women who had always they'd always dreamed of having a family and they feel like I'm never going to be able to afford to have kids certainly never going to be able to afford to have a house like you feel their pain right and people get really animated talking about Norway is kind of like a north star like they do x y and zed in Norway >> really you you you have people mentioning Norway constantly across cohorts. >> Do they know that the tax rate is a lot higher in Norway? Is that part of the conversation? >> They just know everything works better there and that there is a social safety net >> and a sovereign wealth fund. >> Some know about the sovereign wealth fund. >> Sometimes they'll kind of broaden it out to Scandinavia. Um, every so often you'll get someone mentioning the public housing in Singapore and getting very animated and excited about that. Sorry to cut you off, but what I find fascinating about this, and it goes back to a previous interjection I really made uh is is that these again these are things that are essentially um values on the on the left uh and yet they're manifesting in this kind of bloated, flatulent kind of expression on the right, if I can put it like that. >> I love that. It seems to me like there's a real failure on the left to articulate uh sort of a set of answers to people that um that could contest the simplicity on the right. And I suppose you're about to tell me that that's actually the point, right? That on the right it is the simplicity against the complexity that is cutting through, right? >> Yes. It's partly that. So I think this is a two-prong thing. It's what is the nature of the complexity and it's also this kind of moralizing overlay like it it doesn't feel warm and inviting um when the left is getting cross about like the use of a wrong word here or there, right? Um identity politics in a way is such a hyperindividualistic thing because it it like separates you out from the us, right? Um, we all have a suite of share shared interests regardless of of who we are or where we come from. But the complexity is like the left has like this really kind of small vision of this policy here and and this policy there. And they're not talking about the grand vision of what does life look like? What does life feel like when we all are taking care of each other because we've taken back what we own and we can afford to do it? No one's talking about like what it's like to to regain community connection because we insist on not having, for example, hostile urban design that serves the interests of perhaps developers and big business again. um and not like the communities that have to live there. >> Yeah, that's really fascinating. So the rage against the machine is is is is one element of it, right? But people need to actually have something in their mind that they are thinking about and if it's not being articulated by the left, it's almost into that vacuum articulated by a kind of a nostalgic sense of a time when community and oneness was just normal. >> That's it. That's exactly it. It's exactly it. Like there was this young woman um in one of the groups who said, "I would love to be more connected to my community, but I I work such long hours and then I have this massive commute back to my estate, which is like one road in, one road out. So, I'm in the car forever." And I get home and all I can do is flop on my bed and scroll on my phone. And that's heartbreaking, right? People people want to be around with each other and and connected with each other, but there are fewer and fewer opportunities and and you're also finding what we would have imagined, you know, traditionally middle class uh occupations like teachers and nurses, they're now having to uh you know, for example, do gig work like drive Ubers to supplement their incomes. like thing things are really really rough out there. And when when they say, "How could things get worse?" Well, people who are very very engaged kind of have a sense of, "Yeah, this is how things could get worse." But they're telling us something really important that we need to hear. >> What is that? What do we need to hear? We need to hear that the vision needs to be offered in a way that is kind of digestible and comprehensible, but also promises like a bit of joy in there, a bit of fun and connection while we're doing it. And you're not going to get yelled at if you use the wrong word. You're not going to get looked down on because you don't have this bit of education or that bit of knowledge. Someone asked me like, "Oh, how do you have the patience not to correct people in your groups uh when when they say something um you know, very right-wing or whatever?" And I'm like, "These people are so much smarter than me, right? They're telling me stuff that makes me understand how the world works. And if I had to live some of their lives, I would be I wouldn't be here. Let me tell you, like these are brilliant people." And I feel like too many in the political class, in the media class, um, you know, more broadly, sort of the engage, they think the general population is stupid. And they think that a vote for One Nation means you're stupid. They're not stupid. They're not voting against their own economic interest. Any vote right now is a vote against their own economic interests. Where is the vote for their economic interests? there isn't really one that is coherent. >> That's really fascinating, Alex. And um and it's it's a really I think good segue into the the piece I want to kind of ask you about next, which is, you know, you you are Yeah. You're describing you're you're describing a really distressed electorate desperately searching for uh two two things real material change in their everyday existence but actually looking to the state to provide that through the vehicle of what you've termed care which I think is really interesting because you know Anthony Albanzy um declared victory by saying care is an Australian value and and I've been kind of going on about the fact that we haven't really heard much about that since we've heard a bit about aspiration but not about um care and and I and and you've you've mentioned that the these ideas around neoliberalism and what neoliberalism has done to the state i.e. shrunk it and what it's done to community life i.e. atomize it making it very difficult to actually live a 1980s family life or a 1970s family life or a 1930s family life. Well, actually, it's probably closer to the 1930s in in in some in some regards. So, so what are people what are what are people's diagnosises for how to fix it? Like, do they actually have solutions? Do people call it neoliberalism? Do is it about community rebuilding? Is it just about taking back assets? Like, like what what uh you know, to use a a stupid academic phrase, I suppose, but like from below, what is the solution? So it it varies like when when you talk to them about like certain policy areas, they will give you the most extraordinary blueprints. They know their own lives and they know what they know so brilliantly in order to fix these single kind of policy areas. So knowing like paid parental leave for example, um they'll give you this incredible blueprint or you know certain aspects of healthcare or whatever. But the really complex big picture stuff about rolling back neoliberalism, that is not something that they come across in their day-to-day lives. And most people don't know the term neoliberalism, right? And so there's a need to kind of do awareness raising about what has happened and how the state that we're in now is not kind of you know the natural state that is somehow immovable or um it's not a force of nature. we have created this um and this is what it used to be like before or this is what it's like in Norway which they can say and they'll say Norway but they don't really have a sense of what Norway is exactly up to that makes it Norway right so uh there's an awareness raising component to this and and again you know people like punters politics are are doing their best to try to kind of get that common knowledge going. Um, but there needs to be a much more kind of cohesiveworked approach on the progressive side to get that really sort of out there. >> You've written that the answer to the far right is not a a a louder argument or a better spreadsheet, but um a kind of a human story, I think, is is what your argument is, isn't it? So, and and and I can hear that coming through what so many of your comments have been about in terms of testimony from from individuals from from members of the public, which is that they know their lives. They know the circumstances they face, the hardships they confront, um the stories they see around them. And you need to speak to that reality. And you can do that not really with abstract ideas whe whether it's terms like neoliberalism or or balanced budgets or whatever it is. You have to do it through much more relatable human stories. Is that is that something that Hansen does implicitly if not explicitly whereas the whereas the left sort of doesn't? >> I don't know. I think she does it a bit. there's this whole kind of subterranean um information thing that none of us are seeing because it's not coming through our algorithmic filters and I get to see kind of fragments of it uh from the folks in the groups. I think what's going on with her is this really distinctive parasocial relationship that people have built with her. And so they project onto her their own lives and then see within her the possibility of agency. And so that's something different. >> Yeah. Because she speaks in the first person in the ways that other politicians don't. So she says, "I've had a gut full of this. I don't care. I don't care if we cut immigration and businesses complain. And so that's and and Lambi does that a bit too that that sort of first person thing. And it is quite relatable, isn't it? For the reasons you've just described. >> Exactly. Exactly right. >> Which is in such a strong contrast to to a party like the Greens, which is a party of, you know, technocrats, academics, and um environmental, you know, people who've been very happy to go to jail to be chained up next to a tree. >> Yeah. people in a sense live outside of themselves for a broader cause or whatever which is the opposite of that in >> but you know that that that like I'm not I'm not trying to be projorative because I I we're talking from a university but um but but what I'm sort of trying to say is is that if your if your lived experience is in a very sort of narrow segment very technocratic very u like it's it's it's a world away from the from the people in in in focus groups talking about working two jobs even though they're supposed to have a job that is supposed to offer the good life and security. You know, it's it's like being a teacher is supposed to give you an adequate income to live on and to be comfortable. And it's supposed to it's a trade-off actually. Like you get you get to like uh you're supposed to be able to have a family with that job and not slave away and in a bank working 25 hours a day. also they've invented time um cuz I've added an hour to the day um you know for $300,000 or or or whatever whatever it is. and and the Greens um you know they don't like when they're when they're talking they're often they do they do sometimes talk about things in emotional terms but it's it's it's never visceral whereas Pauline is so visceral and Jackie Lambi is visceral and PCO is the lowfi version of that you know to go back to that kind of argument um it's all felt it's all deeply felt whereas you listen to Mark Butler Um, you know, he's he's a good communicator, but you know, he's in press conference mode. >> Yeah. >> And he probably talks very differently in the office. And I've seen a video of him doing karaoke, so he he lives there's there's life within him, right? So, you know, do you see what I'm saying? To be really mean to Mark Butler. Um but but all of these things you can kind of sort of see how um Pauline essentially just being unapologetically herself and being you know not of that mold. You can see how she could become a tribune particularly if she says I'm going to smash it up and I'm giving you a frame that explains everything and the and and I think I think you put it so beautifully Alex when you were sort of saying that effectively the left has instead of you know they've rejected meta narratives you know due to ' 90s um uh cultural theory and and in doing that they've you know some of them are doing cultural politics and some of them are doing material politics but none of them are talking about where the hell we're going like where is the light on the hill? Chiffley used to do that. Hawk did that. You know, Keading used to do that. >> Such a great point. It's it's there's also like there's something aesthetic in there as well. There's something very austere about the left and there is something there's a promise of something magnificent on the right. Now, this is kind of like the Trump gold toilet aesthetic is a promise of, well, there's riches out there. Okay, we might need to step on a few people in order for you to get them, but there's riches out there. Whereas the left is put on this hair shirt and maybe the world won't burn you to death. >> Eat your unsalted oatmeal. >> Right. Yeah. And what someone like Mani has done is he's been able to insert joy and a little bit of like good chaos. >> Yeah. >> Into things so that, you know, people feel like there's there's a point to going to something that he he's he's putting on like to go to one of his treasure hunts. Um there's something exciting and he he very deliberately made small business part of his inroup and people want the state to take care of them but they want the state to take care of them so that they can go and do things in their lives and and be proud of something they've achieved in their lives. doesn't necessarily have to be small business, but something anything that they've made themselves that they feel like their life has been worth it. You know, >> they want a solid floor so they can achieve agency. >> That's it. >> So they can aspire to a future that is worth living. It it's really fascinating though when we think about this in the sort of broader sense of uh you know the crisis in the the state and and then the crisis related crisis in politics because in a sense the withering of the state the deliberate withering of the state's role in the economy and people's lives through the the neoliberal agenda through privatization and small government and lower taxes as a as a sort of a a kind of an uninterrogated good all the time uh is is has left political parties with kind of it's kind of stripped them of their purpose as well. I mean they don't just spend all their time tearing each other to pieces which by the way what other sector of the community exists like that and then hopes to be popular. I mean they actually have built right into the whole system uh a sort of a process of um of contested worth all of the time on an ongoing basis uh run through exaggerated rhetoric and and and misrepresentation of of motive and everything else and competence. All those narratives running all the time. But political parties themselves have kind of gradually written themselves out of this longerterm picture because they have minimized their their their ability to affect change in any short-term way. And people are sick of incrementalism. They're sick of process, sick of complexity being put in front of them that will change things gradually possibly over the next 10 years or whatever it is. Someone like Mami Mamani comes along and he he's not an incrementalist. He's a big lever puller and there's a moral basis to it. There's a narrative coherence to it all, but it's also exciting and purposeful and and it delivers in a human time frame. >> Well, I think that's also why PCO's so appealing because he's basically just saying, well, I've looked at this and this is just doesn't of course we can do it. We could just we could just do it, >> you know. um we could just do it. What a radical idea to we've got this architecture and that's why he's so appealing, right? You know, >> I guess the people in government would say, "Yeah, well, it's always easy to do that when when you don't have to sort of put that complexity together." And that's the challenge that Hansen potentially has is that, you know, none of her herself included have any experience in government at all. Um I mean, the only one who does is Barnaby Joyce. Uh, and you know, some people have questions about how good he is at it. Um, but that that's for another debate. Um, Alex, we're going to have to wrap it up there. It's been such a fascinating, rich discussion. Really really enjoyed it. And and and I think people will come back. Yes, you must come back and and and and continue uh this conversation. Um, and and you know, with your ongoing research, more power to you and and thanks for joining us on Democracy Sausage. >> Thanks so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. That's it for us, Maria, for this week. Um, we'll look forward to talking again next week. >> Bye everyone. >> Bye-bye.