A dark month of black swan events threatens to push the national political debate on to a platform of fear as the drumbeat of trauma asks new questions of governments around the nation.
Knife attacks in shopping centres and churches, the bashing of a woman after a home invasion – allegedly by someone released from immigration detention – and an intensification of killings of women by men combined to create what feels like a moment of reckoning.
The collective noun for swans in flight is a “wedge” and this could also be the political effect of the current wave of crime if Labor incumbents at federal and state levels are perceived as passive – or, worse, ineffective – in the face of these events.
Already struggling under the insecurity of rising living costs, this week’s Guardian Essential report shows that public concern about crime is as strong as its appetite for decisive government intervention.
A separate question in this week’s report finds more than one in 10 Australians saying they fear for their personal safety, including one-third who say they don’t feel safe online, creating a compelling call and response that any government worth its name must heed.
The cognitive linguist George Lakoff described the stereotypical gendered binary of governing models that contrasts the strict father with the nurturing mother. Debates around crime are a proof point to his theory. Hardline conservatives opt for tougher penalties and more invasive policing, while progressives preference broader interventions interrupting the underlying causes of crime.
In Peter Dutton, the former Queensland cop who has never quite shed the vibe, the opposition has someone who will enter the public debate swinging the rhetorical truncheon with relish.
The default response from progressives is to cite data showing crime is actually falling, accusing the conservatives of playing the politics of fear and calling for systemic reform. But at a time when more women are being killed, that approach will just not cut it.
Instead, state Labor governments are preempting attacks from the right by vowing to toughen bail laws and come up with increasingly intrusive tools – like random knife searches and ankle bracelets for mitigating risk – knowing deep down they can never out-tough their opponents.
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Meanwhile, federal Labor risks being left in the role of ineffectual bystander, allocating funds that need to be spent by the states but having little control over how, where and even if they are used.
A separate question in this week’s report shows the danger inherent in this positioning, with a strong majority of respondents looking for the strict hand of the Daddy State to restore a sense of order and safety.
Of course, the Mummy/Daddy binary has always been a false one. Like all parents, the two need to operate in partnership and in the context of the broader community.
This is where the Albanese government can play a significant role by addressing a strong thread running through the recent horrors: the role of technology in fomenting and platforming dangerous behaviour.
The alleged stabbing of an Assyrian priest at a Sydney church was streamed live, and women’s safety experts have flagged the deleterious impact of pornography, gambling and misogynistic online influencers all served up by opaque algorithms.
A political circuit breaker for Labor would be to lean into the systemic reforms that are desperately required to make the online world safer: not so much tapping the platform of fear, but confronting justifiable and growing concerns about the platforms.
We know Australians are strongly behind Australia’s eSafety commissioner in her face-off with Elon Musk to remove video of the alleged church stabbing globally, but individual takedowns are the digital equivalent of calling the police after the crime has been committed.
A final question shows the appetite for government intervention goes further; with the vast majority of Australians wanting the government to intervene deeper into the operations of the global digital platforms.
There is a caution in these findings. Tougher laws are easy politics in the real world where a willing public wants to feel safe and police have never had a power they didn’t want expanded.
The challenge of regulating the digital realm is altogether harder because it is - by design – lawless. Every policy to assign responsibility is an interruption of the grotesquely successful business models that have been built on the fiction they are nothing but neutral pipes.
For example, one of the calls with strong support is age verification for people to access pornography sites, despite real concerns about the integrity of data collected in the information and who will hold it.
Any viable verification regime requires stronger privacy laws, which are themselves in the tortuous process of being updated for the first time in almost 40 years. But privacy is just one of a domino of interventions currently before the government to civilise the internet, including extending the scope of the Online Safety Act, new misinformation laws and erecting guardrails around AI.
Despite the protestations of Musk and his sock puppets, these measures are not constraints on our freedom, but rather an expression of it: our freedom as citizens to create safe and dignified environments for our society.
Of course, our leaders should be outraged by crime, but it can’t be a reactive and righteous anger; rather, a determination to stand up to the most powerful and dangerous corporations on earth.
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org
Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company
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