In this week’s ICB, The Punch calls bullshit on Shadow Immigration Minister and regular Punch contributor Scott Morrison, for citing a thing called the Social Cohesion Index at yesterday’s National Press Club address to show that Australia is going down the gurgler under Labor.
There are any number of indicators which Morrison might’ve chosen to bolster that increasingly popular thesis. Yet he chose an obscure, little known indicator, and if you ask us, there’s a sneaky reason why he did it.
Morrison, in short, was dog whistling. In a speech littered with references to asylum seekers, the Member for Cook thundered “it is a real concern that social cohesion in Australia has declined by 8.6% since the Labor government was elected. His inference was clear: All those illegal immigrants are tearing us apart.
The embarrassing thing is, Morrison didn’t even get the stats right. The Punch contacted the report’s author, Professor Andrew Markus of Monash University today. He wasn’t aware that Morrison had cited him overnight, but he kindly pointed out that the 8.6 decline is in fact since ’09, not since Kevin ’07, as the graph on page 11 of the report shows.
In fact, Australia’s social cohesion actually went up in the first two years of the Rudd government. Oops.
Before researching this piece, my strong instinct was to call bullshit not just on Morrison, but on the index itself. As a former full-time sports journalist who has waded through the cricket’s mind-boggling Duckworth Lewis system and the baffling World Golf Rankings, I know a statistical dog’s breakfast when I see one.
But no, let’s give Prof. Markus some credit. He launched the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion in 2007, in an attempt to measure Australia’s pulse through the social science lens, with the type of rigour applied by economists.
His goal, put really simply, is to question Australians on their perception of how our society functions. He does this by quizzing them on five indicators – sense of worth, sense of belonging, participation, acceptance and social justice & equity.
Obviously, the results will always be open to conjecture, or even ridicule, a fact Prof. Markus concedes. After all, stating that we’re 8.6% less cohesive is a bit like saying we feel 3.2% happier than yesterday, or that George Clooney is 4.8% handsomer than anyone else over 50 (even though the Clooney thing is probably about right).
But in his defence, Prof. Markus says “you can use it to get some indication of change, especially when a whole range of indicators are moving in the same direction.”
And right now, that’s exactly what’s happening. As the Professor says, “the Index highlights that this is a society under strain and stress. Morrison has to recognise the contribution to those stresses caused by the combative way the Liberal party is playing politics since Tony Abbott was elected leader.”
Nice work, Scott. You cite a figure which largely reflects your own argument, and the demeanour of your party. You stir the pot, the pot boils over, then you cite the stats to prove that Labor dunnit.
While Scott Morrison didn’t invent community resentment towards boat arrivals, he is in a position to make it worse, and it’s a bit rich to cite a social cohesion index to argue that it’s of Labor’s doing
If it wasn’t for us meddling kids Scott, you would’ve gotten away with it. Sorry, but we call bullshit.
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