Earlier this year, I was asked to speak at the Round Table Forum on ‘the hollowing out of democracy: managerial elites, popular disaffection, and the crisis of representation’.

It was a broad topic, and my co-speakers went in many enlightening directions. For me, I recognised this question as the profession I breathe every day as both an editor and political commentator.

Politics used to be about volume … each group shouting loud enough to be heard in a crowded room of demands and complaints.

That is not what I observe today.

Politics is a room of people speaking past each other in different languages. I do not mean that in the ordinary sense. Rather, the same English word has acquired a separate and often opposing meaning depending on which class shouts it.

Allow me the classic example of free speech.

When the Left demand ‘free speech’ what they often mean is the introduction of speech regulations that confine speech to pre-approved limits within which it is free. When the Right demand ‘free speech’, they mean it in the Enlightened sense where the liberty of speech cuts sharp enough to moderate the ambition of government. Between this, we have the fence-sitters politely referred to as ‘moderates’ who are not sure what sort of speech they want, so long as whatever they agree to keeps their ABC invite warm and their name on the High Society list. All of these positions support ‘free speech’ and yet they produce incompatible laws.

This is what I mean when I say politics is being ‘lost in translation’.

If not already, we will soon lose the ability to talk across the political fence. It is a situation made worse by the media, who are meant to be society’s moderators and yet enjoy willfully misrepresenting whichever position they dislike. The chaos created as a result fuels clicks, prestige, and money.

The question remains, why and when did Australians lose the ability to talk to each other?

Was it the emergence of ‘political correctness’? Did it start earlier?

Australia has never been a land of class divides. Not really. Certainly not by global standards.

And yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest the political class has lived separately from the general public for so long their elitist ‘accent’ has diverged into a separate language.

Promises, reforms, pledges, cost, green, savings, fair, balanced … these have to be translated from campaign posters into reality. Usually in an unflattering manner.

To this we can add the Prime Minister’s misuse of ‘position’ and the way it might change.

If Albanese is evicted from the Lodge at the next federal election, I am personally adding ‘Going Melons Up!’ into the lexicon.

Media standards and the petty interference of our 18C overlords, along with legislative additions in recent years, have ensured that TV stations, radio, and print media have had to moderate the level of truth shared through an interpretative veil of legal garble. ‘Her penis’ serves as the perfect example of incomprehensible phrasing. This is further confused with glaring omissions in stories.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned us not to dabble in these sorts of state-approved lies and yet we have an entire generation of Ministers and Senators who will look you dead in the eye and say they have to take the definition of a ‘woman’ on notice.

This is not the only mechanism corrupting our ability to speak the truth.

Thanks to the Democrat-run years of Silicon Valley, the mangling of language began as vague and unevenly enforced ‘Community Notes’. Users complied under pain of being shadow-banned or silenced. Was it law? No. Was it influential… I would argue that it was. The desire to remain in the conversation, be heard, or continue doing business forced social media users to create a new vernacular. You could not say someone was murdered, so they were ‘eighty-sixed’. Trying to narrative a crime documentary about paedophiles ended up being subtitled as ‘pdf-files’. And so on.

This censorship became more sinister when it left the realm of community safety and began to serve political motives.

Denying Climate Change or sharing a story about Covid vaccine harms could result in permanent bans. We are social creatures and being cut off is a significant punishment. Once the media began leaning on social media, they also had to self-censor headlines, images, and tag lines to bury the lead. Many stories were never able to go online at all. Even politicians, such as Craig Kelly, had their constitutionally protected speech banned.

Now, thanks to legislation penned and passed by both major parties, the relationship between legislative censorship and social media community guidelines has been formalised into the beginning of a dystopia. (Anyone who tries to interject safety here is hopefully genuinely dim-witted.)

If this goes on, the legal penalties for speech will be guaranteed by pathetically insecure governments around the world, with Australia as its designated leader. Attempting to free social media companies from this will be the work of generations. If it is even possible. And you can bet online censorship will go a lot faster when a radical democratic socialist sits in the Oval Office.

Historically, controls and distortions of language arise when speech becomes powerful.

Language becomes powerful when governments fall into grave disrepair.

Aside from barely being able to understand each other, it seems voters no longer believe a word being printed or said by politicians. ‘Trust’ is the currency of the realm, and only one political party is in possession of the commodity. That is why it has become so expensive for major parties to lure votes with campaign promises. They will go broke trying. Well, technically they will send us broke.

Pauline Hanson presents an existential problem for the established landscape. Not only does she speak the same language as voters, and built her political brand on the dialect, the Senator has amassed indisputable trust that is acknowledged even by her detractors. Should she come forward one day and announce she is going to Mars. The first assumption would be that she has struck a deal with Elon Musk, not that she is joking.

The consequences of this are interesting. As things stand, One Nation does not need to pencil-in your typical election hand-outs. The party can announce it will fix corruption, and people believe them. They say they will cut the UN loose, and people believe them. They say they will cut taxes, and yes, it is believed. This works only once.

When the other major parties attempt to match One Nation’s claims, the response is as you’d expect: You’ve been in power this whole time, why didn’t you do it then?

There are probably no good answers.

Returning to the topic of the talk, we find ourselves in a democracy that is being hollowed out – a great shell with its core dead and gone with the weathering of the tide. The coarse rub of sand has weakened its beautiful swirl, and something has smashed the delicate edge. Its decay remains visually beautiful.

At least, this is what I used to think. I believed the narrative of an empire with one fate, locked into the lazy story of Rome’s collapse.

I have since changed my mind. Passively observing our demise does not diagnose the problem or offer insight into the future of our civilisation.

Democracy is a living thing. Capable of discarding its shell. Regrowing. Rising from its shattered body. It can discard its old shell entirely and wander outside the bounds of the analogy.

The idea of Western democracy has always been more of a vibe than a strict system of rules. Its creators left enough give in the seams to ensure its limits could never be properly understood. While ever the children of the Enlightenment live, anywhere, civilisation endures. Today, we are alive and well.

Our democratic structure is taking on the heavy lifting now that its people have stopped talking to each other. The ballot box is doing what France’s guillotines promised. And while that nation gives in to riots, burning, and pillaging as the legacy of its violent definition of liberty, Australia is trusting the political process to self-correct decades of failure and abuse.

If we can shake off the sickness of Marxism and maintain a controlling interest over our own destiny, then we will survive.

However, it must be said: whoever the next leader of this nation is, they must – absolutely must – return people their natural right to speak.

As any business owner, doctor, or engineer will tell you, no one can solve a problem if they are unable to accurately describe it.

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.

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