The quiet Australians, and the larrikin-wowser nexus
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another — slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” — Neil Postman
Unlike in most countries, Australians can only travel outside of Australia with the government’s permission, and only strictly for specific reasons, namely responding to COVID-19, essential conduct of critical business, or humanitarian response. By comparison, the governments of all the other English-speaking countries, including New Zealand, don’t effectively ban their citizens from travelling abroad.
In the current circumstances, restrictions on people (Australian and otherwise) arriving in Australia are reasonable, and if Australian travellers are aware of this, there is no common sense in not letting Australians travel abroad. More often than not, government-imposed restrictions, bans, limits, quotas, prohibitions are about power, not common sense.
Last year, Australians went on 11.3 million outbound international trips, thereby making it a significant part of Australian life. It is for this reason that I was perplexed, for quite a while, by why many Australians, if not most, seemingly accept this, along with what is effectively an interstate travel ban across Australia, whilst the rest of the world are not having a bar of it. Is the larrikin cliché just a front? Are Australians truly okay with being told what to do, rather being left to be adults who exercise common sense?
It is said that larrikinism goes further back than the birth of the ANZAC legend, that it was a reaction to corrupt and arbitrary authority during Australia’s convict era. Indeed, for much of the 19th century, colonial Australia was probably the most politically and culturally liberal place in the world. This was so because British aristocratic and Anglican traditions failed to take root, making way for the mindset of free trade, balanced budgets, low taxation, and in general, small government. This, along with a strong entrepreneurial culture, was Australia’s period of political larrikinism.
Then wowserism started to make waves, especially from the Labor movement, in the form of protectionism and trade unionism to bring back the ‘working man’s paradise’ that was based on a mining boom that was going to go bust anyway. Labor larrikins Bob Hawke and Paul Keating tried their valiant best to break these waves for once and for all, only to have their own movement turn on their legacy in a heartbeat. Wowser, the opposite of larrikin, refers to an Australian who seeks to deprive others of allegedly immoral and sinful behaviour.
Re-reading history helped me realise why it’s easier to talk about the larrikin spirit in Australia: it’s because it’s harder to talk about the stronger wowser spirit pervading Australian society since Federation. Wowser waves have been more than just protectionist and unionist throughout history: the effective ban on Australians travelling abroad is just the latest wave of wowserism. The larrikin-wowser nexus continues to tilt away from larrikinism, but it seems not all Australians think this is bad.
So is the larrikin cliché just a front? Are Australians truly okay with being told what to do, rather being left to be adults? The answer to this question is not simple. The larrikin-wowser nexus has been Australia’s cultural system of checks and balances. Australia’s modern history shows that this is what Australians generally want politically, socially and culturally. Australians still want what is more or less a two-party system of government (and use One Nation and the Greens to reinforce the dichotomy), Australians want their governments to be authoritarian every now and then (and no more), but Australians also want to be able to call out BS on the system when necessary (and not all the time). Some convict codes of honour do die hard.
I think ‘the quiet Australians’ is ScoMo’s reference to a modern larrikin-wowser nexus. These Australians are retirees (and the ageing population in general), middle-class parents, those relying on the mining industry for their livelihoods, and Christians who quietly donated to Izzy Folau’s legal fund. I don’t want to stereotype and generalise, but it wouldn’t surprise me if these demographics do indeed possess both larrikin and wowser characteristics, based on my observations. If I am onto something, then it’s no surprise that Australians seem okay with the draconian travel bans and other COVID-19 restrictions, for now.
ScoMo knows better than anyone else that the long-silent voices, that you don’t usually see on social media or hear on talkback radio, finally made themselves heard at last year’s Federal election. Surely then, he knows that it’ll be a matter of time before more Australians like Jim Penman finally voice their frustration at being told how to think and what to do about travelling overseas. The larrikin-wowser nexus is not static — it can tilt either way.
“The Australian people despise politicians, but the politicians can extract an amazing degree of obedience from the people, while the people themselves believe they are anti-authority. Australians are suspicious of persons in authority, but towards impersonal authority they are very obedient… Australia’s political culture [is] “majoritarian and bureaucratic”…
… wartime — and especially the second world war — does provide another indication of Australians’ high tolerance for interference in their daily lives, if they are persuaded that restrictions are necessary for the common good. Rationing, the direction of labour, censorship and conscription for service in the Pacific: these were all features of Australia’s wartime experience…
None of this means that most Victorians love Daniel Andrews. Nor does it mean they will necessarily vote for him and his party at the next election. One reason for Australians’ obedience is their majoritarianism. They know that they will have the opportunity, sooner or later, to deliver a thumbs-up or thumbs-down in the conventional manner. At the ballot box.”
“Something strange is happening in the UK. Surveys show strong support for the government’s authoritarian Covid measures. But other surveys suggest that only small numbers of people are adhering to quarantine and other Covid rules. We’re witnessing a performance of compliance. People know that the done thing is to say that you back the crackdown on Covid, but they also recognise that these myriad rules and regulations are a menace to our lives and our liberty. So they say we need a stricter society, but they also bristle against that strictness. This is an opening for those of us who want to push the democratic case for taking a more reasoned, less fear-fuelled approach to the pandemic. Boosting the public’s confidence not only to get around the rules but to openly question them — that’s the task for all of us who believe in freedom and democracy.”