And he would preach these doctrines with the same didactic certainty in their historical necessity. The Labor Party needs less of such surrender to binding orthodoxy, more improvisation. A democratic temper is sorely in need of revival. There is widespread disquiet in many sectors of Australian society. The gap between rich and poor grows.
Young people find it difficult to find work, or a toehold in the cultural mainstream.
Politicians reach for ever more regressive measures mandatory sentencing and Aborigine-bashing in an attempt to woo voters. The old, patronising languages of middlebrow liberalism that have dominated Australian public life since the 1960s have demonstrably failed, washed up on the rocks of economic rationalism, 'wedge' politics and the Ten-point plan. Mainstream cultural life is deadened by critical complacency and stalemated agendas that often date back decades. While the new right dominate public discussion by scoring semantic points over whether the stolen generations were stolen or rescued, and while mainstream political pundits waste much ink on 'corridor politics', there is little analysis of some of the real forces driving contemporary cultural change. The lecture will outline the case for widespread cultural renewal in Australian public life.