The rise of a new ruling class

INITIATIVE MATTERS

Australia is often referred to as the “lucky country”. However, what most Kiwis (and many Australians) don’t know is that Donald Horne was being unkind when he coined the phrase in the 1960s, the full sentence being: “run by second-rate people who share its luck.”

Former Finance Minister Michael Cullen once said of Australia: “It’s nothing to do with their intrinsic superiority or less regulation or whatever, it’s because they’ve got this vast mineral wealth. We only succeed on the basis of what we’re intelligent enough to create, not like the Australians digging up their country because the world wants what they’ve got buried beneath it.”

This is a widely shared view, even within Australia. It is considered Aussies are lucky and that it just so happens that they hit a resource boom at precisely the time of China’s rise. Insofar as luck exists, it is true, this was lucky. But, and it is a significant but, Australia had to be in a position to capitalise on both its mineral resources and the demand from abroad.

Mining operations had to be cost competitive and there had to be infrastructure (much of it privately provided) to get products to port. Australia’s institutional settings had to be strong and predictable enough to allow investment in long-term, high-risk projects.

And, finally, there had to be individuals and companies prepared to take a risk and make massive investments in resource exploration and commodities, the prices of which are inherently unstable.

It was not, contrary to public myth, the fact that Australia was merely lucky and some mining robber barons have gotten rich off the back of the “resources of all Australians”.

Fascinating new book
It is against this backdrop that a fascinating new book on the nature of Australia and its people emerges. The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class by Nick Cater, a senior editorial executive at The Australian newspaper, argues that much of Australia’s success has been determined by its national character, one based on the fair go, the ability to get ahead on one’s own efforts and on a peculiarly antipodean egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism, as understood by Mr Cater, is not what often passes for such in New Zealand but is equally as applicable here as across the Tasman. Rather than being typified by equality of outcomes, abilities or wealth, egalitarianism down under is displayed by manners and morality.

We have all tended to regard each other as basically equal regardless of formal skill or qualification: I might be able to diagnose an ear infection but not fit a gas connection. The punter is as good as the politician and so on.

However, Mr Cater argues this old-fashioned egalitarian social order is being undermined by a new generation of Australians who by dint of their education, beliefs and opinions, think of themselves not only as better qualified but as better morally equipped to recognise and understand problems than their fellow citizens.

This class “better understands the demands of the age” and “their presumption of superior virtue tempts them to look down on others and assert the right to rule”.

Bunyip alumni
This new class, which Mr Cater calls the “bunyip alumni,” have remarkably similar views on issues as diverse as climate change (happening and must be mitigated through an ETS), boat people refugees (all are legitimate and Australians racist for not thinking so), peak oil (an important concept), the suburbs (desperate places of latent racism and ignorance) and aspiration (cloying and unintellectual).

Even the nature and desirability of progress through human improvement is questioned.

This, he argues, is a new presumptive ruling class, primarily the producers of intellectual, cultural and public policy products. They reside in the same suburbs, indulge the same tastes, read the same books and hold the same beliefs.

And this new class increasingly holds views, attitudes and policy prescriptions that are at odds with the majority.

Mr Cater produces some interesting figures to help illustrate this growing divide: when Australian cities are broken down by electorate, the civil servants and cultural class are overwhelmingly clustered around the same areas, as are the lawyers and the plumbers.

The difference between taxpayers and tax eaters is apparent. And, interestingly, it is not about left or right voters in a given area but whether the jobs are those of insiders and outsiders.

But why, you might ask, does any of this matter?

It matters because in Australia – and this has real resonance in New Zealand – there are now a group of people who essentially control the national broadcaster (the ABC), many newspapers, the universities and the bureaucracies who have little or no idea about what it is that Australian prosperity is built on.

There is no knowledge of business processes, investment, productivity or any of the stuff that creates jobs.

Partly this is because because the world is cast, through education, as a place of moral abstractions. It is a world full of inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, worker exploitation, replete with challenges to “human rights” and “social justice”.

Egalitarian threat
Practicalities such as employing people, starting a business, raising capital for commercial ventures, finding a job or building the economy (and even the view that these are issues) are foreign. In fact, for many in the presumptive ruling class, Mr Cater argues, it might not occur that reasonable people might well disagree on many issues.

And this is why, he says, this new ruling class is such a great threat to traditional Australian egalitarianism.

Because of its insider status it accords its own views with a morality and significance that plebs do not seemingly possess. And so it is worthwhile considering: is this sort of class on the rise in New Zealand or has it been trying to run the joint for quite some time?

Luke Malpass is a reseasrch fellow at the New Zealand Initiative

luke.malpass@nzinitiative.org.nz