Rational argument and coercion have no place in Australian society

When the Prime Minister talks about the rights of workers to have jobs and the importance of unions to advocate on behalf of workers she is dredging up an invented tradition that has its roots in persuasion and illusion.

A persuasive argument is one that gets us to change our attitude or behaviour towards something or someone.

In reality Australian workers are less likely today to be union members than they were at the height of union popularity last century.

There are a lot of reasons for the lack of interest in being a union member some of which are directly attributable to the fact that unions have not held to their tradition, to their original invented reality. The object of invented tradition is invariance.

Unions have varied the original formula that gave them popularity and consequently they have changed the reality of what they offered.

The original promises they made, the original persuasive argument for better wages and conditions, have been lost because union leaders now offer alternatives attached to their own personal political illusions.

It is no coincidence that in recent weeks the Australian Labor Party has resorted to tactics that include wheeling former union-heavyweights Bill Kelty and Bob Hawke back into the sociopolitical arena.

Their job is to try to persuade workers that unions have their best interests at heart — a tough gig when the reality is that organisations such as the Health Services Union are being held to account in court for contemptuous acts against their worker members.

Any argument that says change is inevitable has lost sight of the significance of the original invention.

Every change recasts the original invention, altering its traditional illusion.

It is no accident that corporate advertising of such things as Marlboro cigarettes for years never changed the scenes, the actors, or the horses in its television and billboard commercials.

To be persuasive the face of the product or service must not vary.

Our lives are chaotic. We look for consistency in illusions so that they become more believable than the chaos of our real lives.

Persuasion is not always rational and verbal persuasion is not always successful. But verbal persuasion is more acceptable than violent coercion.

Rational argument alone rarely changes attitudes and behaviours – the things governments and corporations live for.

Some government ministers in Julia Gillard’s Labor government attempt to present rational argument while others use violent coercion.

The rational argument folk, such as Greg Combet and Martin Ferguson, believe we will change our attitudes and behaviours simply because a rational argument is presented to us.

Combet says climate change is real and a carbon tax is the best medicine to make it better. End of story.

At the other extreme, then Health Minister Nicola Roxon used coercion in her attempts to stop people smoking; she hid the ciggie packets from view and created legislation that made it illegal to smoke in most places within society that people gather.

Neither of these extremes places value on persuasion and rhetorical presentation as effective tactics.

Nor do they take into account the possibility that some people do not want to change their attitudes or behaviours for any number of equally rational reasons.

Rational argument and coercion have gifted the opposition with a win win opportunity to apply non-rational persuasion to government policy.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has become a skilled leader in the game of emotional persuasion and rhetorical presentation.

In presenting alternative emotional arguments to the boring rational persuasion and coercion of the government Abbott taps easily into the emotional chaos that has been allowed to surface.

Social emotional chaos is the result of the Labor government’s loss of control of the illusion of its inventions.

Since it was elected in 2007 it has come up with some pretty good inventions – schemes that are designed to rupture the structure of Australian society and to drag it out of its illusory frame.

The problem for the government is that it is trying to run three strategies at once and only one of them has real value.

It runs its rational argument strategy and its coercive strategy at the same time as treasurer Wayne Swan and others attempt a persuasive strategy based on the rhetoric of presentation.

Wayne Swan told us that we avoided the global financial crisis because of good fiscal management: a persuasive rather than rational strategy as there was no rational evidence for this statement.

In making such a persuasive statement Swan set up a good base for building further deep rupturing policies.

It was not to be. And it was not a matter of staying on message as many commentators have suggested. The fatal flaw was built in to the system.

The government invented good policies but the policies were never allowed to stick to the original formula and to be the subject of a persuasive communication strategy with roots in rhetorical presentation.

The communications strategies turned on rational argument (pink batts, computers in schools boatpeople, gay marriage) or coercion (carbon tax, plain packaging for tobacco).

Australian society is filled with illusion rather than reality. Bashing us with reality was never going to have the desired effect.

The turnaround for the government came with the delivery of payments before July that were designed to offset the increases families and workers would pay when the carbon tax comes into effect.

A persuasive strategy, bubbling over with rhetorical presentation, won the battle.

Most inventions require a good dose of illusion to make them palatable.

If the Gillard government wants to win the next election it would do well to lose the rational and the coercive and stick with the illusory. It’s what we want.