The Apathetic Country: Why Ignorant Voters Dominate Australian Politics

By Greg Kramer

Why are so many people uninterested in politics in Australia, yet the same people decide who governs us? The Apathetic Country is the first book to focus on the power of politically apathetic voters. The authors show how uninterested citizens, forced to the ballot box in Australia, vote in arbitrary ways, with clear and dramatic effects on political outcomes.

Ironically, the voters least interested in politics are those the politicians are most interested in. Political parties understand their impact and focus on manipulating and lying to attract their attention. This is why we have to endure Mediscare, claims that cows will cost as much as houses due to the carbon tax, and the shenanigans of One Nation. It is why Labor lost in 2019, and why Scott Morrison campaigned for the “quiet Australian” vote by shearing sheep and having a beer with guys with mullets. It resonated better with the voters who decide elections.

Based on 15 years of research, The Apathetic Country explains the reasons for the lack of interest and knowledge of apathetic voters and proposes a radical solution. With the effects of political ignorance felt worldwide, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of Australian politics and democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398449442

Greg Kramer

Greg has been a baker, bank teller and English teacher in Japan. He has climbed in the Himalayas, hitchhiked over 40,000 km and paddled 500 km down the Congo River in a dugout canoe. But Greg’s real passion is politics. He grew up in a family completely uninterested in anything political and struggled to understand why no one around him was interested in politics. So in 2018 he undertook the first ever academic study on people who don’t give a toss about politics, which has formed the basis of this book. At least now he knows why he is strange. Neil got an early introduction to politics in a pram at anti-Vietnam War marches, and later in the front line of US nuclear ship and Springbok rugby tour protests. After stints as a farmhand, fruit picker, postie and piano teacher, he left New Zealand to bus, hike, hitch and cycle around the world. Highlights include canoeing PNG’s Sepik River and getting shot at and arrested while cycling from China to Pakistan. Neil now lives relatively uneventfully with his partner and children. He teaches writing at Auckland University, an institution he barely graduated from due to all the time spent protesting. AUTHOR RELATIONSHIP Greg and Neil met travelling in Papua New Guinea in 1987 and went on to trek the Baliem Valley in West Papua together. They met ex-cannibals, caused an inter-village dispute over a pocket-knife, stumbled blindly through the middle of a local war, and survived on the local diet of sweet potato. What struck most though, was the genuine kindness and warmth of the West Papuan people. They staggered out of the jungle several weeks later, 10 kilos lighter and with one shoe each, and have been firm friends since.

Book preview

About the Author

Greg has been a baker, bank teller and English teacher in Japan. He has climbed in the Himalayas, hitchhiked over 40,000 km and paddled 500 km down the Congo River in a dugout canoe. But Greg’s real passion is politics. He grew up in a family completely uninterested in anything political and struggled to understand why no one around him was interested in politics. So in 2018 he undertook the first ever academic study on people who don’t give a toss about politics, which has formed the basis of this book. At least now he knows why he is strange.

Neil got an early introduction to politics in a pram at anti-Vietnam War marches, and later in the front line of US nuclear ship and Springbok rugby tour protests. After stints as a farmhand, fruit picker, postie and piano teacher, he left New Zealand to bus, hike, hitch and cycle around the world. Highlights include canoeing PNG’s Sepik River and getting shot at and arrested while cycling from China to Pakistan. Neil now lives relatively uneventfully with his partner and children. He teaches writing at Auckland University, an institution he barely graduated from due to all the time spent protesting.

Author relationship

Greg and Neil met travelling in Papua New Guinea in 1987 and went on to trek the Baliem Valley in West Papua together. They met ex-cannibals, caused an inter-village dispute over a pocket-knife, stumbled blindly through the middle of a local war, and survived on the local diet of sweet potato. What struck most though, was the genuine kindness and warmth of the West Papuan people. They staggered out of the jungle several weeks later, 10 kilos lighter and with one shoe each, and have been firm friends since.

Dedication

For Thomas and Travis: May you stand up and be counted when they work out right from wrong. And thanks to Brigid for living this book with me.

—Greg Kramer

For Naoko, Wakana, Gen and Kaze. Kia kaha in your own way.

—Neil Matheson

Copyright Information ©

Greg Kramer and Neil Matheson 2023

The right of Greg Kramer and Neil Matheson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398449435 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398449442 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Professor Clive Bean for overseeing my PhD, which this book is based on. Clive’s mentorship and gentleness, along with his thoughtful input, made the PhD a joy. But mostly I would like to thank my wife Brigid who read the PhD and book countless times, always offering thoughtful and helpful advice. It takes a lot of time to write a work such as this and I thank her for her patience. I would finally like to thank all the people who are interested and engaged in politics who attempt to make the world a better and fairer place - quite often to their own detriment.

—Greg Kramer

To my family; thanks for your immense patience during the writing process. Grateful thanks also to the University of Auckland for study leave at a key time in the project. And to Greg, whose 15 years of study forms the basis of the book, and whose vision and passion drove it to fruition.

—Neil Matheson

Introduction

This book is about a group of little-known Australians with enormous political influence. One was approached by a television reporter after leaving a polling station during the 2018 ‘Super Saturday’ by-elections and was asked how he’d voted:

Yeah, I don’t even know who I voted for.

You don’t know who you voted for?

Yeah, people like me shouldn’t even be allowed to vote if you don’t know who you’re voting for.

So, you just ticked some boxes down the line.

Pretty much.

Like a donkey vote.

Yeah. I’d like to know who and what-not, but I’ve got enough things in my own world going on.¹

While most wouldn’t be as honest as this guy, it is a common situation for many voters. At least 20 per cent of Australian voters are not interested in politics. Their knowledge of politics is minimal, they don’t browse the media for political news, they don’t talk about politics, and like our friend leaving the polling station, many don’t know who they vote for. But that doesn’t matter to them—because they don’t care who wins.

Voters who are not interested in politics are very different political actors compared to interested voters. Interested and knowledgeable voters are generally rusted on supporters of one party or the other and it often takes a dramatic event for them to change. In contrast, politically uninterested voters are highly fickle. Studies continually show that uninterested voters are generally swinging voters who are more likely to change their vote from one major party to the other at differing elections.

Australian academic Ernest Chaples described swinging voters as:

the airheads and drongos, they are the apoliticals of our society. They do not know much about politics, and they care even less. If it were not for compulsory enrolment and voting, the airheads would hardly matter as they would seldom be enrolled and would hardly ever show up to vote. But in the Australian system, airheads do vote.²:³⁶³

If Labor can get enough uninterested votes, then they form government and vice versa. These voters have been characterised as Howard’s battlers, called working families by Rudd, and hard working early-alarm-setting Australians by Gillard, while Morrison rebadged them as the quiet Australians.

Whatever they’re called, election campaigns and a lot of politics is oriented towards catching the attention of uninterested voters, which is why catch phrases such as moving forward, stop the boats and jobs and growth are repeated over and over in the hope that an uninterested voter will stumble across the slogan and be influenced by it. This is also why fear campaigns are so prevalent in election campaigns. A fear of Medicare being privatised or refugees throwing their children overboard may be the only ‘information’ some voters have.

Uninterested voters may also be influenced by politicians wandering around with fluoro vests and hard hats during elections while others treat elections like a popularity contest, voting for the politician they most like. Voters with little interest in politics generally decide who to vote for in the last couple of days of the election campaign, which is why major parties concentrate the majority their advertising in the last week of campaigning. It is aimed fair and square at the people who decide who governs.

This book is based on a PhD written by Greg Kramer in 2018, which was the first study to quantify the electoral impact of politically apathetic voters in Australia. This book expands on this research and is the only book written that focuses solely on Australian voters who are apathetic about politics. It is provocative because we highlight the political shortcomings of these voters and the fragility of our democratic system. We are not trying to denigrate these voters. Almost every citizen has the cognitive capacity to engage in politics if they so desire, and it is not the fault of uninterested voters that they are forced to vote. But it is shocking to realise that our politicians are most interested in the voters who are the least interested in politics.

If uninterested voters were fully informed on the social and economic issues that have the most impact on their lives, it is likely election outcomes would be quite different, and the social and economic systems in place would be more responsive to their needs. As it is now, their uninformed voting choices mean they may well be making things worse for themselves, with implications for the whole system of government in Australia. Given many uninterested voters are from lower socio-economic groups, the serious concerns they have about health, education and economic equality are hijacked by issues that have little influence on their lives. It is the fear of differing races and religions which has been highlighted in order to win people’s votes. A vote based on fear may elect a government that acts directly against the needs of these voters.

Where Do the Numbers Come from?

To demonstrate the influence of uninterested voters, we draw on the views of individuals from the Australian Election Study (AES), which has surveyed about 2,300 people after every federal election since 1987. This book is, therefore, based on the views of about 27,000 voters over a period of 32 years. The survey asks a range of political questions and a lot of the academic research on Australian politics is based on these surveys.Annexure 1

Surveys such as the AES are carried out in most developed countries and results are similar in all the surveys, so Australia is not a special case. The US was the first to undertake the study in 1948 in an attempt to understand why Germans had voted for Hitler. The researchers believed that a Hitler-style leader could never be elected in the US and set out to prove it. The results, however, showed a third of Americans were uninterested in politics and if they did engage in politics, they would vote for a strongman authoritarian figure, as evidenced by Trump’s election. Academics fell over themselves to reassure people that political apathy was not a problem as long as apathetic citizens didn’t engage in politics. It’s a very different situation in Australia where we compel these apathetic voters to vote.

It is important to note that it is the AES respondents themselves who are telling us they aren’t interested, or don’t care who wins, or don’t know which party they voted for. If they say they are not interested in politics, then it’s a fair call to believe them. Think about the last conversation you had—was it interesting? Was the last party you went to interesting? Are you interested in 15th century music, cooking or tennis? We can all quantify our level of interest in something and can equally recall knowing who we voted for—if we are interested enough.

Like any large public survey, there are a few concerns with the AES. It has become increasingly difficult to get people to complete the survey. In 1987, 63 per cent completed the survey; this dropped to 23 per cent in 2016. However, if you received a survey asking your opinion on something you have no interest in—it could be say, crochet, curling or Carthaginian architecture, it is more than likely you’d bin it too. It’s no surprise that politically uninterested voters bin the AES survey meaning, if anything, the results under-report the lack of political interest. Political apathy is, therefore, likely to be worse than described in this book.

The AES, however, remains the most reliable survey available for studying political interest in Australia and is used extensively in this book together with other research findings. The picture of political apathy we paint is already so disturbing that we can afford to be conservative in our estimates of the problem.

Overview

To explain the impact of uninterested voters in Australian politics, we explore unchartered territory, as even within academia there is a ‘surprisingly scarce’ amount of research on apathetic voters.³:⁷³ We document just how little interest apathetic voters have, their lack of knowledge, their demographic and the reasons why they don’t care about politics or who governs them. And we show how their votes have affected electoral outcomes and political discourse.

Winston Churchill famously said, the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter. If we were more interested in politics we would be more likely to elect intelligent and forward-thinking politicians. We would have experts making decisions on our economy, the environment and health. Instead, we allow self-serving politicians to claim the carbon tax would wipe Whyalla off the map, that Vegemite is funding terrorism, and that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. We elect someone who jokes about Pacific nations disappearing under water and another who reasoned that marriage equality would mean people could marry the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We leave crucial decisions on our economic, social and environmental future up to politicians pandering to the fears of apathetic voters.

Chapter One

Democracy: A Long and Glorious History?

Mention the word ‘democracy’ and what often springs to mind is a rich history of government by the people, for the people, in a tradition linking all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Modern democratic governments are seen to be carrying on a tradition of democratic rule developed across millennia.

The reality is, however, quite different. Democracy as we know it is a relatively recent way of deciding who governs and how we are governed. This is because there has always been a concern that ordinary citizens lacked the interest or knowledge to make reasonable political decisions. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and pretty much every leading thinker until around 150 years ago thought the idea of democracy as we conceive it today was rule by the ‘poor, the ignorant, and the incompetent’.⁴:⁹–¹⁰ This argument has been used to exclude groups such as women, the young, the uneducated and the poor from participating in democracy until relatively recently. It was due to this distrust of the masses that democracy came about slowly and cautiously in Western countries.

We can trace the roots of democracy back to Athenians with their concept of ‘demokratia’. Derived from ‘demos’, meaning the people, and ‘kratos’, meaning power or to rule, it is the rule of the people, and it is the people who decide political outcomes. While government decides things on a day-to-day basis, responsibility for political decisions rests entirely with us. We have the power to kick politicians out if they’ve done a poor job or if better people or policies are available. The defining feature of democracy, in other words, is that elected officials can be replaced without bloodshed by simply casting a vote.

Many traditional societies had some system where people contributed to collective decision-making, but Athens is seen as the birthplace of democracy. However, Athens was far from what we would consider democratic today. In order to vote, you had to be a citizen, and only around 40,000 out of a population of 250,000 were allowed to participate. Slaves, women, merchants and labourers were denied citizenship and property qualifications denied others until around 450 BCE. Aristotle justified this on the basis that there was a hierarchy of citizens, with some born to rule and others born to obey.

Plato agreed that most Athenians were incapable of contributing to democracy, while Socrates believed that in order to participate in politics, people had to have knowledge rather than just opinions. For Socrates, you had to know something about the topic in order to have the legitimacy to open your mouth and speak about it. Interestingly, technical issues that required experts were depoliticised in Athens, with Socrates stating:

When we gather for the assembly, when the city has to do something about buildings, they call for the builders and advisors and when it is about ship construction, the shipwrights, and so on with everything else that can be taught and learned. And if anyone else tries to advise them, whom they do not think an expert, even if he be quite a gentleman, rich and aristocratic, they none the less refuse to listen, but jeer and boo, until either the speaker himself is shouted down and gives up, or the sergeants at arms, on the order of the presidents, drag him off or remove him. That is how they behave on technical questions.⁵:⁴⁶-⁴⁷

Can you imagine how political debates in Australia on issues like climate change or ‘clean coal’ might be different if we adopted this Athenian strategy? The average Athenian citizen did, however, have a say on many issues even if they had little idea what they were talking about. One such issue was war with citizens voting to send a military force against Sicily in 415BCE.

Thucydides commented that most Athenians had no idea how big Sicily was, how many Sicilians there were, or what may be needed by Athens to invade successfully. It seems that a jingoistic fervour overtook the Athenians to such a degree that those who actually opposed the war were afraid of being thought unpatriotic if they voted against it.⁶:²²

The war was hampered right from the start because Athenians understandably did not want to tax themselves adequately to prosecute the war.⁶ As you might expect, the war didn’t go as Athens hoped; they lost over 200 ships and their entire expedition was captured or killed.

The defeat proved to be the turning point in the long running Peloponnesian war and for Greek democracy. Naturally, Athenians looked for someone to blame and pointed the finger at Pericles, their leader at the time. Pericles, however, reminded the Athenians that they had voted for the war. Can we imagine an Australian political leader nowadays castigating the public for making bad political choices?

Socrates also chastised Athenian citizens for failure to rule their empire correctly, stating The persons to blame are you…who go to see an oration as if it were a sight, take your facts on hearsay.⁷:⁶⁵–⁶⁶ This criticism of the public for being ill-informed got Socrates into trouble. He was put on public trial and ended up having to down a jug of poisonous hemlock. This seemed to work in silencing him—permanently.

The disastrous war illustrated the central problem with Athenian democracy—citizens lacked the capacity to make reasonable decisions. It was not just the war in Sicily where Athens failed. Athenians continually voted to make war on former friends and allies, formed alliances with Greeks who had collaborated with the Persian enemy, extorted financial payments from weaker neighbours, and imposed governments on the people they did not support.

They increased state welfare to themselves and when the treasury was getting low, invaded neighbours to replenish their coffers. Rich people also paid poorer citizens for their vote—pork barrel politics, at least, has a long history—and leaders simply told the electorate what they wanted to hear in order to stay in power.⁷:⁶³ This sounds especially familiar.

With Athenian democracy in its death throes, the only way to coerce citizens to gather and make decisions was to pay them, yet as Athens had little money left, corruption also became rife. Plato thought the primary reason for democratic failures in Athens were decisions made by an unenlightened majority.⁸:⁹⁶

Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle and Socrates were all harsh critics of voting rights for citizens, doubting their ability to make rational and informed decisions. Considering Socrates’ fate for voicing criticism, it’s surprising the other three survived. Perhaps it was because of Athenian apathy. Democracy did, however, prevail in Athens for nearly 200 years and in comparison, the autocratic rule, which subsequently took hold can hardly be viewed as enlightened or fair.

Rome also embraced democracy at a similar time as Athens. They called it a ‘respublic’ with ‘res’ meaning thing and ‘public’ well, public, so a republic is a public thing. The Roman parliamentary system was very complicated and has never been replicated, though elements of the US democratic system can be traced back to the Roman version.

Initially, the Roman republic was limited to elites, but eventually the ‘plebian’ commoner males were also allowed to participate. Women, slaves and non-citizens, however, were still excluded and the military dominated the Senate chamber. The Roman republic endured longer than the Athenian democracy, in fact longer than any democracy in history, and they did manage to introduce some useful concepts such as ‘equality under the law’. Another good idea was providing citizenship to the people whose lands they had conquered—a clever way to stave off rebellions across their empire.

But it all started to unravel around 60 BCE. Imperialism had left the republic over-extended, which led to local governors usurping control and undermining central Roman government. Pompey, a successful military commander, along with the mega-rich Crassus, dominated government which had become chaotic and dysfunctional.

Corruption was also rife as elites become even wealthier. Understandably these