The end of settlement

Settlement politics, the activity of reaching political agreement through a form of compromise, has been central to Australian political history. But in the wake of the 2023 referendum, is settlement politics still possible? by Damien Freeman.

“It was never as warm and cuddly as that,” John Howard writes in A Sense of Balance when reflecting on the way in which “some commentators nostalgically refer to the 1980s as a golden era when the major parties came together to implement good policy.” Although we should be wary of nostalgia, Howard never doubts that there were “key instances when the major parties managed to agree.” Remembering this is all the more important today because, as Howard also reminds us, “there is no evidence of bipartisanship in Australian politics now.”

To avoid the nostalgia is to understand the sense in which opponents came together; the sense in which they managed to agree. It wasn’t the case that differences dissolved. Concurrence took a particular form; a form that admitted of ongoing disagreement even in the face of agreement about the need to implement fundamental policy reforms. Such concurrence might be called settlement politics.

‘Settlement’ can mean many things, but the relevant sense is a compromise through which parties voluntarily end a dispute. Settlement politics is the activity of reaching political agreement through a form of compromise. Settlement politics has been central to Australian political history. But is settlement politics still possible? If the 2023 referendum is anything to go by, then it seems like there is no hope for settlement politics in Australia anymore. If that is the case, then what is the way forward? How are we to navigate our political future when it comes to major change? And, if settlement politics is critical for achieving certain forms of major reform, such as constitutional amendment, are we best advised to give up on any attempt at such major reform in the near future?

These questions are important ones, and The End of Settlement lays out one way of approaching them. It begins with a discussion of Paul Kelly’s account of the Australian Settlement in The End of Certainty. According to Kelly, the first eighty years of the Commonwealth were dominated by the settlement established by Alfred Deakin. This provided a shared set of ideas that were broadly accepted across the political divides. These ideas were challenged and abandoned in the 1980s, when, he argues, a new basis for public policy was required. The undoing of the Australian Settlement was largely the work of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating as prime minister and treasurer. In doing so, they found support in the shadow treasurer, John Howard, who had independently reached similar conclusions about the necessity of reform.

The emphasis of Kelly’s account is how a set of propositions about Australia’s governance was abandoned and replaced, and the sense in which this undermined the certainty that had hitherto prevailed in Australian politics. A subtheme in his account, which deserves more attention, is the political concurrence that attended the dismantling of the Australian Settlement and the construction of a replacement for it. Although an agreed set of principles was abandoned, there was broad agreement about the need to abandon them and what should replace them. The End of Settlement is concerned with the sense in which there was agreement about what needed to be done and how to do it. Such agreement is an example of settlement politics. Politicians across the political divides found agreement about how to go about implementing reform, even if they were still conscious of their other political disagreements.

In the period since the end of certainty, John Howard has been one of the most dominant political figures. His premiership was the longest in the post-Australian Settlement era. The End of Settlement considers him in relation to settlement politics. There are three senses in which he is relevant to this discussion. First, he was a major player when the Australian Settlement was being dismantled in the 1980s by Hawke and Keating, and his role as shadow treasurer enabled this major reform to occur in an uncontentious way. Secondly, as leader of the Liberal Party, and as its elder statesman, he frequently articulated his vision of the party as itself a kind of settlement that allowed conservatism and liberalism to co-exist. Finally, as the title of his book, A Sense of Balance, suggests, he sees Australian society as a kind of settlement in which competing approaches can co-exist.

If we accept that Howard is a settlement politician, what is the relevance of his settlement politics today? Is it desirable to engage in settlement politics, and, if so, is it still possible? The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer paints a picture of an Australia in which trust is decreasing and polarisation is increasing. These changes have consequences for politics. In an increasingly polarised society, it seems settlement politics is ever more difficult. Yet it might also be argued that as politicians abandon settlement politics, polarisation is likely to increase. If settlement politics is desirable, then we need to get clear about its relationship with trust and polarisation in order to understand whether we should be trying to pursue settlement politics in an increasingly polarised Australia, and, if so, how we go about doing it.

Does the Albanese government’s failure at the 2023 referendum mean that settlement politics is no longer possible? As the book shows, settlement politics has served England and Australia well over the centuries. It continues to have much to commend it as we face future political challenges. For settlement politics to be effective, however, politicians need to be willing and able to engage with one another and their challenges in a certain way. Yet for this to happen, the right circumstances are also necessary. Yes, rivals need to see the need to settle their differences, but they also need to see a pathway to settlement. Once that moment passes, we are in the realm of goodwill rather than settlement politics.

No good comes of adopting a utopian attitude to the future of Australian politics. Indeed, this is even more dangerous than adopting a nostalgic attitude to its history. A proper understanding of how politicians have worked effectively in the past might provide insights for how they could work effectively in the future. If it turns out that the future is going to be so very different from the past, it may be that a different kind of politics is required. Even so, it is important to understand what has worked in the past and what we might have to give up when confronting future challenges. For all these reasons, it’s worth taking the time to think carefully about settlement politics.

Damien Freeman is a writer, lawyer, and philosopher and one of the original architects of the voice. This is an extract from his new book The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 referendum failed.