Quiet - lauding the disengaged

Dismissing those who complain seems to be an Australian pastime. 

We sure have a lot of words for it: whinging poms, elitist ingrates, dole-bludgers, anti-jobs activists, professional troublemakers, idiot protestors who block the streets and make life difficult for everyone else. 

In contrast, the fabled Australian character is stoic, no-nonsense, easy going, just get it done, uncomplaining. Don't make a fuss, don't whinge, and don't - whatever you do - get involved in protests.

This fabled character recently resurfaced in Australian politics. In May 2019, Scott Morrison attributed his unexpected election victory to 'the Quiet Australians who have won a great victory tonight'. 

I wondered who these quiet Australians were and if I knew any of them; they're the majority judging by the political outcome.

If we go by the dictionary, a quiet Australian is: 

➣ marked by little or no motion or activity, gentle, easy going

➣ free from noise or uproar, unobtrusive, conservative taste 

So, are the Quiet Australians minimally active, gentle, easy-going, quiet, calm, unobtrusive people with conservative taste in clothing and food? Don't they even occasionally yell at their children?

Well no, the word quiet means something much more insidious in politics. 

Moral judgement and the 'real' Australians 

'Quiet Australian' joins similar concepts - Menzies coined the 'forgotten Australians', Howard had his 'battlers' and Nixon used the 'silent majority' for the 1969 presidential campaign. 'Silent majority' recently resurfaced with Trump.

Quiet, forgotten, battling, silent people - these words are pretty vague. They don't point to a particular demographic of income, class, age, race, or even political leanings. 

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Of course, it's not a demographic group at all. It's a moral judgement: they are the fabled uncomplaining, hardworking and optimistic Australians. 

Used this way 'Quiet Australian' is positive: quiet is a virtue; silence is golden. Quiet Australians are the real Australians - those who don't complain, who just get on with what has to get done. They work hard, look after their families and themselves, they plan for retirement. 

It is also a moral judgement of anyone who is noisy or rough. Noise is a vice. Uproar is wrong. Loud, complaining, protesting Australians are un-Australian. 

'Quiet Australian' shouts conservative ideology 

Such a term exists because of how we do politics in Western societies. In very broad terms, we can think of left wing, liberal politics as based on people within groups (communitarianism) while right wing, conservative politics as based on individuals (individualism).

The conservative politician needs a label to speak to 'their people', those who favour individualism, those NOT in the union, not party members, not members of local collectives, not joiners in general. 

Conservative politicians need a label for a group of people who are not a group! 

'Quiet Australian' meets this need. 

It quietly shouts conservative political ideology. 

It promotes individualism: the ideology that values people as individuals (viz, Thatcher's infamous quote: there is no such thing as society). It views poverty, crime or lack of health services as problems of individuals (rather than social systems).

'If you're lucky' Source

It values self-reliance: the ideology of small government rather than government support for people. It frowns upon reliance on government funding for social services.

It lauds the fabled 'self-made man': the ideology that individuals generate their own success and achievement, with no acknowledgment of the social and personal benefits that only some people experience. 

Most importantly, it promises that the Australian 'dream' can be achieved by those who earn it, that hard personal work leads to future reward and difficult conditions now will pay off. It reveres a definition of 'success' as extensive material wealth (money and assets), so it promotes unquestioning consumption. It tells people that taking on exorbitant debt to afford the large new home in the suburb with no infrastructure or public transport is a good way of life. If they are 'lucky' they might have some time with their family. 

And wrapped up in the message is that their hard slog is morally superior.

So, the quiet in 'Quiet Australia' is a useful word to convey a whole wad of conservative political values - individualism, self-reliance, small government, personal effort equals reward.

Do Quiet Australians support conservative policies?

When journalist Laura Tingle went to find some Quiet Australians she found people with a wide range of values, not necessarily coalition voters or conservative ideologues. They were also not the 'selfish, ignorant, entitled and apathetic among us' as claimed by those unhappy with the election results.

Many who voted for the Morrison government in 2019 thought the government should be doing more on drought assistance and support for the unemployed. They were concerned about the environment, and they wanted to see action on climate change. They were not necessarily satisfied with the government; they wonder if politicians can actually do anything much. While their primary concern was the economy, this is primarily about fairness for those who work hard, and any impacts on them achieving their dream. 

They worry about Australia's lack of action on climate change, catastrophic bushfire seasons and when it's just too damn hot, but are more worried about immediate concerns, like the cost of electricity. They can be influenced by the personal stories of people who are unable to earn a living due to drought, disaster or ill-health, so they support government funding for those people, but they tend to blame 'the unemployed' for their laziness and lack of desire to work. 

They come from all sort of backgrounds (although not the very poor, the socially marginalised or the extremely wealthy) and they aspire to a better future and a good life. 

Quiet Australians are therefore easy to upset with stories of people wanting 'special treatment', e.g. support for indigenous communities, or fear mongering about changes which will impact their future comfort, e.g. changes to franking credits or a move to electric vehicles. This makes sense because their identity revolves around working really hard now to get wealth and comfort in the future - so anything that threatens that won't get their vote. 

They care about the welfare of other Australians, they worry about their children's educational options and job security, they are concerned about climate change. 

Yet, they voted for a government with a stated policy platform of not addressing any of these issues.

They voted for a government that told them how good they are for being quiet. 

So why are they quiet? 

I used to think that the Quiet Australian was complacent - everything was okay for them. 

Source: Costa A Comics

More recently, based on broad reading and trying to understand people I interact with, I've amended this considerably. They are:

• Busy and stressed - don't have time for that stuff 
• Overcommitted - focused on coping with debt to achieve what they think makes a good life 
• Trusting and naïve - politicians will look after us 
• Accepting of official authority- we should all respect authority; they know best 
• Ahistorical - no knowledge of political history or systems in Australia or elsewhere
• Uninformed - don't know how the levels of government work 
• Unimaginative and unaware - this is the way it has always been and change is scary 
• Disengaged and cynical - no politicians are worth the bother, but we have to vote. 

The Quiet Australians are fully occupied, overwhelmed, concerned about their job security, worried about debt, caring, hardworking and unquestioning about the pursuit of the Australian dream - a 'dream' that actually makes their daily life a grind. 

The Quiet Australians are not necessarily easy going and gentle, or agree with conservative politicians/values, or complacent. They are exhausted and disengaged. 

So, the message that they are doing the right thing is very appealing. 

Disengaged and easy to manipulate 

Okay, so they are busy and stressed out just paying the bills, dealing with work, and taking Joey to footy training.

With limited time and understanding of how the Australian system of government actually works, they are relatively more easily manipulated by misinformation spread about, e.g. franking credits and Aussies losing their utes, fearmongering about immigrants and terrorism, and by the blatant lies spread by the Murdoch press or Clive Palmer's multi-million dollar campaign to keep the liberals in power. 

Where they do engage in politics it will be on local issues that impact them personally and directly. They want tangible, practical and immediate outcomes, and have little interest in principles or long-term planning. They don't care to argue about who should do what - just get the thing done! Funding for improved parking or facilities at the sports club will win their vote. 

This is why the government's various 'slush funds' for local infrastructure projects worked a treat to influence voting for the 2019 election, following the same manipulative strategy across electorates. 

Plenty of Australians signed petitions fabricated by the federal LNP candidates for a new car park at the local train station. I wonder if it occurred to the signatories this was actually a local government matter. Some even talked at work about what a nice fellow the local candidate was, not at all like on the telly. And look at that - just before the election, the federal infrastructure project funding was delivered!! That's a candidate who fights for us! 

Well, yes, the voters got funding/slush money for a new carpark (once the local government worked out how to fit the unplanned, un-scoped, unintegrated, unapproved work into their work schedule). However, they gave their vote to unstated policies in areas the federal government is actually responsible for: like taxation (corporate tax cuts), immigration (migration targets aimed at population growth to disguise a failing economy), using the cover of national security to destroy an  independent media, cutting government services (privatising visa processing, cuts to universities and health), and environment and climate (coal, coal, coal, and then gas).

A local win in the short term, working against their own long-term benefit. But the parking is really so much better. 

The strategy behind lauding the Quiet Australian 

Lauding the Quiet Australians also works to malign those who have issues with those very government actions and policy. 

It implies those 'noisy Australians' are lazy or bad people making unfair demands. It positions those 'noisy Australian' as the entitled poor - they want 'special treatment' given to them for nothing, or the entitled rich - so well off they don't have to worry about their jobs while they spend a day (or even a week!) protesting. 

This plays to the Quiet Australian's values of hard work and fairness: it's unfair for them to get things for free when I have to work so hard; it's unfair they don't have to work as hard as me; they have too much time distracted by social or 'progressive' issues because they don't have to deal with real and immediate issues like me. They have it easy. It's not fair. 

It says those noisy Australians only make things difficult or unfair for the Quiet Australians as they sit on a bus on the way to work held up by protestors.

Dangerously, it also suggests that the Quiet hold the appropriate point of view, and that other opinions are not legitimate. It says that the very act of being noisy, of criticising or protesting discounts a point of view. Rioting is bad; your viewpoint is likewise bad. How very convenient when that view is critical of the government. 

But most loudly of all, it shouts that staying out of politics is a good thing. 

The existential threat of the noisy Australian 

The Quiet Australian is more than happy to demonise the noisy protestor. 

After all, in a practical and immediate sense, what does a street march, gluing yourself to the road or sitting in front of an excavator actually achieve today?

One of the recurrent themes in Laura Tingle's article was resentment about the implied criticism by the protestors: 'the noisy Australians almost make you feel like you don't care about climate change' (insert any issues there). They write angry and self-righteous social media posts about the dumb, selfish protestors and the traffic hassles and they complain at the neighbourhood BBQ. 

They feel judged. They perceive criticism in people not accepting the same values as them. 

But they don't allow themselves to think about why someone would actually put themselves out there to protest. (I know, I've asked them.) 

I think the reasons for this are deeply personal. 

Robert King Merton's 'strain theory' helps to understand the experience of people who aspire to western society's particular standard of 'success as material wealth' whether they have the means to satisfy such standards or not. Merton said that when individuals are faced with a disparity between what they consider 'success' and their current status, this surfaces as 'strain'. 

Many respond by working even harder toward 'success' through socially approved means - the 'conforming poor'. Others achieve this same 'success' through crime and deviant social behaviour. A small group rebel, rejecting both society’s definition of 'success' (material wealth) and the socially approved way (hard, endless work) to achieve them, then work towards replacing them. Merton called this group the 'resisting poor'. 

We might call them the Noisy Australians. 

Seriously considering the messages and methods of protesters represents an existential threat to the Quiet Australian. Protestors are not just challenging government policy; they are challenging the Quiet Australians' values and lifestyle. Protestors question that everyone wants the same things, that relentless hard work is virtuous, that material wealth equals success; they contest the identity of self-reliance and self-made that helps the Quiet Australian cope with the grind of their existence. 

Exploring and understanding what the Noisy Australians say would require the Quiet to confront their life choices. To look at their unexamined definition of 'success.' To consider that the life they have chosen might not be the only or the best way to do things; that maybe sacrificing their health and family time for a new media room or a trip to Disneyland is not a good trade; that maybe individualism leaves them vulnerable and open to manipulation and power abuse; that maybe valuing suffering in silence is a ruse used by the powerful. 

And maybe, just maybe, they have been conned. 

Unthinkable. Feels much better to insult them for being noisy in the first place. 

Christian suffering in silence 

The moral value of being quiet and not complaining has a long Christian history (the dominant early religion in Australia) which has fed into our fabled uncomplaining Aussie.

The Christian maxims about who should be quiet make it clear the purpose of this message: to retain power. In the bible, in 1 Timothy 2:12, Paul writes, 'I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.' This morphed over time to the saying, 'Children should be seen and not heard' (originally aimed at young women rather than all children). 

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Christians have been told for hundreds of years to suffer in silence, offer up your pain to god, earn a place in heaven through your quiet endurance, all while they struggle to survive through poverty, famine, war, and rampant disease. 

It continues today. 

The social reinforcement of 'suffering in silence' continues to serve the ends of those who abuse their power.

Complaint, criticism and protest are not whining, Pope Francis, they are a rejection of the wrongfulness of the status quo. Protestors reject complacency or abrogating responsibility to people who misuse their power. 

Lauding the Quiet Australian, encouraging people to 'suffer in silence' and to see virtue in accepting their difficult lives, reeks of paternalism and power abuse. 

Individualism as disempowerment 

As a political strategy, promoting individualism and self-reliance ensures people remain atomised and do not organise into groups that might challenge the government. 

The Quiet Australians do care about problems facing Australia and the world; they have just been sold the idea that the answer to such major social and environmental problems is individual. 

For example, they care about the environment (although not as much as they care about 'the economy') but they are already 'doing the right thing'. They don't use plastic bags and they turn the lights off when they leave the room. So, they take practical action as individuals, doing the things they have been told will help 'save the planet'. 

However, they won't vote for anything that represents a substantial change to their way of life, despite over-consumption by the affluent West being indisputably the cause of climate change and environmental degradation.

If the Quiet Australians are concerned about government policy, like the level of the unemployment benefit, support for farmers or coal policy, they sign online petitions, re-post a pithy social media post, or tweet at the TV panel discussing the topic. They have their say, but it's all isolated, it's not concerted enough to have any effect. It's no voice at all really, although they will vote a government out if they see an alternative (which is why scaremongering about the possible alternative leader is so powerful). 

They have bought into a set of values that means their individual actions are ineffectual, and they have minimal power to create the society they want to live in. 

Valuing both individualism and being quiet, they have bought into their own disempowerment. 

The Noisy Australian 

What do noisy Australians do (besides cleaning glue off their hands)?

They hold government to account, and they challenge decisions and policies they consider unjust. 

Each government pushes its own ideology and agenda as far as the people will allow it. Politicians engage in the 'art of the possible', pushed and limited by constraints from various organised groups (unions), powerful interests (wealthy mining or publishing magnates), lobbyists and social networks (returning favours for friends), but ultimately by what the electorate will accept.

As individuals, you and I don't have much impact on ongoing government decisions, however if we are in an organised group, like a workers union, shareholder group or pensioner lobby, we might have some more, and every three years we unite to provide the ultimate constraint of what the electorate will accept. Voting a government out says, 'you pushed too far'. 

However, a genuine democracy requires engagement - not just voting every three years, but constant monitoring and participation.

Between elections, being quiet is acceptance, while being noisy is saying 'too far'. Protestors are noisy in the face of injustice.

Protests, civil unrest and social resistance have been integral to positive changes in society, many of which the Quiet Australia now takes for granted: civil rights, universal suffrage, abolition of exorbitant levies and costs (e.g. the eureka stockade), the eight hours day, protection of the Franklin and the Daintree, indigenous people's land rights, decriminalisation of homosexuality, etc. Read more about the history of protest in the US and in Australia.

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The real reason governments criticise protestors, social resistance (like student rallies), and riots is the enormous pressure it puts on them, the limits they place on government's unfettered exercise of power between elections. 

While protest is inevitably noisy, messy and inconveniencing, it is an essential element of our democracy. Its role is a constraint on the powerful. It is the only way for those not in power to limit abuse of power and demand justice.

So, governments often encourage the idea that democracy is voting in a representative and leaving them to make decisions until the next election. The quiet (forgotten, battling, silent) Australian allows governments to do what they like. 

No wonder the victorious conservative politician thanks them! 

The future of the Quiet Disengaged Australian

So quiet is a most useful political word. 

Quiet Australian is a term that conservative governments use to promote a complacent form of democracy in decline. 

If he had been honest, Morrison would have attributed his election to, 'the disengaged Australians who have won a great victory tonight - for me'. 

Lauding the Quiet Australian allows them to see their disengagement as positive, as a virtue. It encourages them to resent and delegitimise the message of those who are not. It paves the way for power abuse.

The Quiet Australians are not disengaged because they are complacent, but because they are fable-chasing, isolated, hardworking, self-reliant, worn out, worn down, fearful and bamboozled Australians. Their disengagement from politics makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. 

Being quiet leads to an impoverished, unjust and insecure future society for which none of us would knowingly vote. 

In the face of that future, quiet is the last thing anyone should be.

Images

• All quotes created by the author, sources provided below quote.
• Protest signs and electoral sign snipped from social media where no sources were provided.
• Desperate people, by Costa A Comics at https://popthirdworld.tumblr.com/post/155385199033/i-made-this-comic-during-the-abbott-era-but-it