Our first post responds to a column that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last Thursday by Elizabeth Farrelly. Her column commences by describing the world of pure bred dog breeding, which actively selects for unhealthy characteristics that are regarded as essential to the breed. She goes on to write:
Our repeated election of politicians we know to be defective similarly selects, over the years, for perfidy, cronyism and prioritisation of tribal ritual over public good…
Tribes that – like the NSW Right – demand that their members prioritise group values over those of the general populace are deeply, dangerously anti-democratic… This is how we get John Robertson, who once promised to “put D9s and chainsaws through Currawong if I want to” as Minister for the Environment, as well as Climate Change and Energy. It’s how Minister Keneally can approve a massive 188-berth marina (half as big again as the proposed Rose Bay marina) at Lake Macquarie, with five-storey residential units on bushland – proposed by Pitt Town developer Keith Johnson ($438,000 to the NSW ALP) and call it “a lively new foreshore precinct.”
There’s no law against Labor MPs filling their offices and departments with spouses, relatives and friends. It’s not illegal for the party to cultivate legions of the biddable who play musical chairs between departments, consultancies and ”independent” panels – then, when the Libs get in, dive underground like mudskippers awaiting rain. It’s not illegal, but it’s cosy, nepotistic and wrong. Wrong because it produces a private clubby atmosphere where party and personal interests coincide so emphatically as to obscure all else…
Let us put to one side the apparent fact that Ms Farrelly is so lacking in empathy that she cannot but impute bad faith to anyone who disagrees with her views. Let us also put to one side the fact that Ms Farrelly offers no evidence whatsoever for her charge that private interests are out ahead of public interest or for her paranoid claim of a deeply networked conspiracy. Let us finally ignore the delicious irony of the SMH labelling the NSW Right “in-bred” on the very day that the Fairfax family came blustering out of the conservatory, sherry glasses in hand, to re-assert their control of the family company.
Rather, let us consider the sheer improbability of the comparison of the NSW Right to a pure breed of dogs.
Yes, the NSW Right has some hereditary members. But these are few in the context of the broader membership and it is not unusual to see reproduction within other professions such as medicine and law. In reality, the members of the NSW Right come from an enormously diverse set of backgrounds. Among the NSW parliamentary grouping are people of Lebanese, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Assyrian and Croatian heritage as well as immigrants from the UK and the USA. Many of these members have accents and features that demonstrate their ethnic characteristics have not been “bred out”. This diversity compares well to the largely WASPy Greens and the mostly anglo-celtic Lib/NP representatives. The membership of the NSW Right are also far more likely to have grown up in the Western Suburbs or a regional city and have gone to the local state or systemic Catholic school.
There is good reason for this diversity of ethnic and cultural background in the NSW Right. For the NSW Right, in its very DNA, is a grouping of newcomers, of people from outside the establishment. Originally, it was the Irish Catholics – and plenty of them still remain – but increasingly others have joined them. It is the faction for outsiders seeking the opportunity to shape society through the exercise of power.
That seeking of power is an unapologetic trait of the NSW Right. The Right is not content with the purity of impotence. And it is this drive for power by newcomers that makes the NSW Right so threatening to the Establishment and to its house organ – the SMH. This group of newcomers has always been subject to smearing based on ethnic and cultural stereotypes. Decades ago the Establishment joked about Irish drunkenness and accused Catholics of hiding behind an obscure teaching to lie under oath. More recently they have relied on stereotypes about organised crime.
When you look closely, it’s no wonder that the SMH is still afraid of outsiders seeking power. The “pure-bred” heritage of the SMH extends well beyond the Fairfax family. Scan the by-lines in today’s newspaper. You will notice they don’t sound much like a real cross-section of Sydney. Where are the Asians? Where are the Arabs? Where are the Southern Europeans? (Compare those by-lines to the Daily Telegraph: tell me you see no difference!) Indeed, one of the few obviously non-anglo names among the senior reporters appears to have inherited her status as the ”token ethnic” from her father before her and is married to another senior reporter. Isn’t that the sort of thing that Elizabeth finds so offensive about the NSW Right?
So Elizabeth, which organisation do you think looks more like a bunch of pure breeds?
