The point is not that Dutton and Berejiklian are similar in any way. But the rhetorical strategy is interesting because in both the video and Dutton’s defence of Berejiklian the manoeuvre is the same:it seeks to place the personal impression of one or several people over what that particular person has done – and been observed doing – with their power.
This is particularly interesting because of an odd confluence of events around corruption and mismanagement. On Thursday the ICAC reported. On Monday the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) properly begins its work. Some time in the next week or so the robo-debt royal commission will report.
Robo-debt was an awful policy that did awful things to people. One of the reasons it was awful is that while its victims could be identified easily enough,it was hard to identify precisely who the perpetrator was.
That is because,in a very real sense,there wasn’t one:that was the point. The entire intention of the scheme was to replace individual decision-makers – with their human flaws and,it turned out,their human mercies – with an algorithm.
I have written before of the writer Mark Fisher’s argument that call centres are the symbol of our time and the bureaucratic capitalism that dominates:try as you might,you can never find an actual person to talk to,somebody who can make a decision themselves and assume responsibility. In robo-debt,this bleak model of our society reached perfection.
Loading
Appropriately enough,we saw a repetition of that model when one of the ministers responsible,Stuart Robert,told the royal commissionthat he had publicly said things he believed false because,as a cabinet minister,that was his duty. Cabinet rules are not an algorithm,but in this case they might as well have been. Stuart Robert the man had vanished;the machine was running things. Like a call-centre operative,he was saying only what his tight script permitted him to say.
One of the important achievements of bodies such as the ICAC,or the NACC,or a royal commission,is that – against a backdrop of impermeable,labyrinthine systems – they reassert the primacy of the individual with power.
This person,elected or appointed to discharge these powers,chose to do a certain thing. They are named,and a label is given to their conduct. The fiction of the machine without a person at its centre is,at least temporarily,banished.
This is why Dutton’s rhetorical strategy is so disturbing. Yes,he said,there is a person – but what matters is not what that person chose to do,it is who I think she is. He sought to replace a cool,evidenced,considered judgment of Berejiklian’s actions with his own impression. In effect,he was saying:yes,somebody did these things,but not Gladys,not the Gladys I know. Who was it then? We are left again with an impersonal machine,in which nobody with power ever has to take responsibility for what they have done.
Loading
Politicians will always seek to tell us stories about who they supposedly are in private. But they should not expect us to believe there is some “real” version of them hiding just over there,away from the actions they have taken.
We know enough about Berejiklian now to make up our own minds. If Dutton wants us to know something new about him,it is his right to make an ad. But if he wants us to believe he is somebody other than who he has so far appeared to be,then it is up to him to demonstrate it in his leadership of the federal opposition.
Pretending the ICAC findings are not as serious as they are is not a good first step.