Labor hasn't risen above the culture wars — they've just adopted a more liberal way of negotiating disagreement - ABC Religion & Ethics

Australia Broadcast Center

15-05-2025

Culture wars, it would seem, were partly to blame for the recent losses incurred by both the Greens and the Coalition in Australia's federal election. But what are culture wars? And why did the public take such a strong stance against them?
A quick dictionary search tells us that such wars typically take the shape of a conflict between progressive and conservative groups, who hold different cultural ideals, beliefs or philosophies. And it's easy to see how disagreements over values can lead straight into a full-blown culture war in many institutional contexts outside of politics.
For instance, university academics might engage in a kind of culture war if one group were to denounce academic freedom — arguing that it protects speech to which vulnerable groups object — while the other side dismissed those concerns and went out of their way to encourage that kind of speech on campus. Suddenly, both groups would be vehemently disagreeing on what counts as harm and what the role of universities should be. You can also imagine the conflict escalating to the point where it interferes with teaching and research — the core business of universities.
What is puzzling about the application of the culture war label to politics is that politics, at its core, is a space where so-called progressive and conservative groups in society passionately disagree about cultural ideals, beliefs and philosophical commitments.
Disagreement arises because citizens who hold profound differences on questions of value must find a way to live together in peace. Yet, because citizens feel so strongly about moral, religious and cultural issues, conflict is inevitable — especially since resolutions often fall short of consensus and frequently result in laws that bind all citizens, even when not all citizens would have consented to such laws if given a choice.
Disagreements over abortion laws illustrate this point well. When one group in society sees abortion entirely as a woman's right to reproductive health, and another as a foetus's right to life, consensus becomes impossible. To put it bluntly, no conceivable law could simultaneously secure the fundamental rights that each group prioritises in their advocacy, which means one side will always necessarily lose in this contest.
Here is the truth of the matter: if all groups in society could come together, deliberate respectfully, and reach consensus on moral, religious and cultural issues, we would not need politics. Politics is a first step toward solving the problem of pervasive disagreement over these difficult, emotive and identity-defining issues.
In fact, some realist political philosophers might go as far as to claim that culture wars are the core business of politics. But even if they are wrong, we can at least agree that some degree of cultural war is inevitable in political life.
Is Labor the liberal party of Australia?
So, if all political parties are parties to these conflicts, why was Labor spared from public condemnation? I suspect that Labor comes across as the party more inclined to take the interests of all citizens into account when making progress on controversial issues — to, as it were, stay neutral on controversial moral, religious and cultural matters. Or at least, Labor appears less likely to side with one group in society at the expense of another.
By contrast, examples of Coalition and Greens MPs taking sides are everywhere to be seen. It was Jacinta Nampijinpa Price who referred to late-term abortion as 'infanticide'. It was Peter Dutton who accused public school teachers of indoctrinating students or dismissed Welcome to Country and Acknowledgment of Country ceremonies as 'overdone'. It was Adam Bandt who accused Anthony Albanese of being 'complicit' in genocide in Gaza, or who declared that trans rights are non-negotiable when asked about potential conflict between trans inclusion and some interests of natal women.
Now, I don't take a stand on the validity of these views, but the sheer inability to recognise competing interests from other citizens — and at least attempt to advance such positions constructively — strikes me as problematic. Take one example: you can be pro trans inclusion and advocate for better healthcare for trans people, as the Greens have rightly done, while also acknowledging that some feminists have raised concerns around women's shelters and fairness in sports that deserve a more thoughtful response than the serious accusation of transphobia.
Labor, on the other hand, has been much more disciplined in handling such controversial matters. They are more careful in how they engage with them, but they also seem more willing to work hard to find solutions that genuinely treat all citizens as free and equal, creating the conditions for everyone to flourish on their own terms — without interfering with one another.
And this leads me to what I see as the greatest irony of this moment in Australia's political history: Labor is the real liberal party of Australia. They recognise that a just society is one that does not impose controversial positions on its citizens, and instead attempts to solve the perennial problem of pervasive disagreement by pursuing liberal laws and policies — laws and policies that create the conditions for individuals to make their own decisions on moral, religious and cultural issues, thereby allowing them to live according to their own values without preventing others from doing the same.
Luara Ferracioli is Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Liberal Self-Determination in a World of Migration and Parenting and the Goods of Childhood.