Michael Pusey

Political communication and ‘media system’: the Australian canary

We came to this project troubled by the ‘disconnection’ of Australian media policy discourses from the normative democratic framework of informed citizenship – a common ‘connection’ in many other democracies. In such a framework, informed citizenship is a leading goal of media policy. Institutional design and regulatory specifications are configured to ensure the provision of, most especially, an adequate ‘space’ for professional journalism to perform its key function of informing citizens (Hutchinson, 1999). Such a situation, combined with the conspicuous lack of a bill of rights, makes Australia a somewhat unusual democracy. However, Australia’s media/politics system also displays the lack of a primary policy anxiety in most Western democracies – the relationship between the media and citizen engagement as measured by (usually declining) voter turnout (Couldry et al., 2007). For Australia has one of the oldest, and strictest, compulsory voting systems in the world (established in 1924). According to a major longitudinal study, Australia has the highest average turnout of registered voters for national elections in the world – 94.5 percent (IDEA, 2002: 78). This has led to some advocacy of this Australian ‘democratic innovation’ elsewhere (Hill, 2006), including a 2001 UK proposal, developed in the wake of poor turnout in that year’s election, that reached the First Reading stage in the House of Commons (Hill, 2004: 480). The absence of any central role for informed citizenship in Australian media policy thus seems to us all the more remarkable. One might have expected that the onus on the state to facilitate informed citizenship in the nation with the world’s highest voter turnout would be immense. For mere compulsion to

The Legitimation of State Education Systems

In recent years social theorists and sociologists have shown much interest in the problems of the legitimation of the social order and of what is variously seen as the actual crisis in ’the governability of democracies’ (Crozier et al., 1975) or the ’impending legitimation crisis’ of ’advanced capitalist’ societies (Habermas, 1975). A frequent criticism of these discussions is that they are too abstract and too general. Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis ( 1975) is the obvious case in point, inasmuch as it confines itself to an extremely condensed macro-level theoretical discussion which only very occasionally makes reference to concrete situations in particular nation states. He prefers to talk generally and in abstract about the functions of government and about ’the politico-administrative subsystem’ (of ’advanced capitalist’ societies). The scant comments on specific functions of govern-

The Struggles of public intellectuals in Australia : what do they tell us about contemporary Australia and the Australian 'political public sphere'

In the light of Markus’s notion of the decent society, this contribution examines the challenges facing public intellectuals in Australia’s contemporary political public sphere. It observes, firstly, that Australia has a distinctly Benthamite political culture that listens more to bureaucratic solutions than to metaphysics, history and arguments grounded in human rights. It explains, secondly, how public opinion gives voice to underlying norms and should thus be treated as the starting point for intellectual activism. Thirdly, the article looks into confusion on the criteria for political deliberation in contemporary Australia. Consideration is then given to the growing constraints imposed on public intellectuals through various new forms of censorship and closure. The conclusion uses the gathering debates on adjustment to climate change to illustrate how public intellectual activism can break new ground.

Australia: Once the Lighthouse Social Democracy of the World. the Impact of Recent Economic Reforms

In this century Australia has enjoyed the highest per capita incomes and probably the most equal distribution of income of any nation in the world. Australia has been a lighthouse social democracy. We assess the impact of the vigorous liberal economic reforms of the 1980s on economic management and steering, social integration and cohesion, on the public sector, on civil society and the public sphere. We see that the reforms have been ideologically driven and that they have negatively affected the distribution of income, the deliberative capacity of the policy apparatus, and the unique institutional features of social democracy in Australia.

From the Media Moguls to the Money Men?: Media Concentration in Australia

This article examines how the Howard governments 2006 media ownership rules affected the concentration of ownership of Australian commercial television and radio services and newspapers. It reviews the historical context of these changes and presents new data on ownership in the light of attitude surveys showing that a large majority of Australians believe media owners have too much power. It shows that the new ownership regime has led to more rather than less concentration of ownership, and explains how the 2006 rules both give primacy to economic market considerations and further sideline other priorities of quality and democratic governance of the media.

From economic rationalism to global neoliberalism? Marking 25 years since Economic Rationalism in Canberra

Despite the impact of global economic crises and, more recently, the international shockwave of populism, neoliberalism persists as a framework for policies, policymakers and social orders. In Australia, debate about neoliberalism was largely initiated by the publication of Economic Rationalism in Canberra in 1991. This special section of the Journal of Sociology has been compiled to mark the impact of this seminal text over the past quarter of a century. The contributions to this section outline the evolution and transformative impact of neoliberalism locally and globally, and especially highlight current work by early-career researchers in Australia. As well as acknowledging competing interpretations of neoliberalism, this introduction summarises emerging scholarship in economic sociology by focusing on: the rhetoric of policymaking; the rollout of neoliberal policies in Australia and comparisons with international experiences; the impact of neoliberalism on social movements and social activism; and its ongoing role as a frame of reference for everyday work and life.

Economic rationalism in Canberra 25 years on

This article, based on an edited transcript of a speech at The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) conference in Melbourne in December 2016, summarises the criticisms of ‘economic rationalism’, cum neoliberalism, that emerged from the ‘economic rationalism debate’ in Australia of the early 1990s to the present. Economic rationalism reversed Australia’s historic nation-building legacy. Free market neoliberal doctrines have captured the central Canberra policy-making apparatus and radically reduced the coordinating role of the state in most areas of public policy. Economic ‘reform’ is seen primarily as a political project led by international and domestic corporate interest groupings and aimed at the transformation of Australia’s institutions. The neoliberal orthodoxy continues to distort the policy process as it has become functionally indispensable for the process of policy making and government, despite its failing intellectual legitimacy.

Globalization Transforms the Broad Middle Class

What major social transformations have re-shaped Australia — socially, politically, ideologically, culturally — over the 25 to 30 years of rapid globalization? In the Australian case it is clear that economic globalization has been first of all a top-down political project aimed at nothing less than a re-engineering of a whole nation society.

Rationality, Organizations, and Language towards a Critical Theory of Bureaucracy

Here Dufrenne identifies what is essential to the continuing discussions among Habermas, Ricoeur, Gadamer and Apel ---all of them participants at the symposium about rationality in society and in the contemporary philosophy of the social sciences. Although many of the participants at the seminar would not want to be labelled as ’critical theorists’ it is worth noticing that Dufrenne’s statement serves as a definition of the central aim of all of ~labermas’s work.