Public opinion underwrites executive choices and action. While they must sometimes confront their publics, political leaders mostly need to work with the grain of public opinion. Public opinion plays a role in the political system roughly analogous to that of money in the market system. It is the unit of exchange. But opinion does not spring into life spontaneously or ready formed. Rather, public opinion develops reciprocally in the context of issues, institutions and, perhaps most importantly, ideas. It develops like a snowball. It starts in the belief of a few people that action is required on a particular issue. The protagonists could be community activists, business leaders, university experts, ministers or MPs. Through persuasion and argument the number of people who share a concern progressively expands. If this does not occur the issue dies. But if a concern is to grow in significance, more organised actors need to become involved. This can happen as particular individuals or groups give cues to others or as coalitions take shape (e.g. Yankelovich, 1992; Zaller, 1992).

There are numerous practical examples of these abstract propositions. Take the literature on the rise of the social movements (e.g. McAdam, McCarty and Zald, 1996; Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000) or the emergence of neo-liberal politics in the US and Sweden (Blyth, 2002). Or consider the impact of the abortion debate in the Australian Parliament (Hansard, 9 February 2006), or the Get-Up campaign on behalf of David Hicks.^[1] Perhaps the most recent vivid example, yet to be fully documented, concerns the development of public opinion on climate change to which protracted drought, Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and the Stern Report presumably all made major contributions.

In any polity, the formal political system is the principal stage for this process. It constitutes a kind of artificial theatre. Its succeeding acts and scenes and its cameo dramas can be the settings from which, and through which, views are transmitted from one group to another. By these means, public attention is mobilised. The distinctive role of Parliament is apparent in the fundamental split between this setting and the administration. Cabinet and ministers provide the link. They are the only actors with standing in both sub-systems. Meanwhile, political exchanges occur mostly in and around parliamentary rituals or parliamentary settings. Question Time, confidence motions, urgency motions, ministerial statements, legislation and (to a lesser degree) committee hearings are the settings in which agendas are established and through which arguments are developed and priorities communicated. These settings provide raw material for the daily media.

Bernard Crick once described parliamentary rituals as tantamount to a continuing election campaign. Reflecting this spirit, they are almost wholly adversarial in character. But in the process of regulating the struggle for power in a developed and civilised democracy, these processes are also supposed to foster social learning. Indeed this is their ultimate rationale. In democratic theory, as the political conversation unfolds, the public becomes better informed (e.g. March and Olsen, 1995; Pettit, 1997; Dryzek, 2000). Public opinion should be refined and distilled as more views are accommodated, more questions answered, more uncertainties dispelled and more consequences recognised. This is the path to effective and adaptive governance.

The premise that social learning is best fostered through adversarial rituals involves a number of assumptions. First, it assumes that there is a fundamental programmatic difference between the major parties. This was indeed broadly the case when the Labor Party was formed. It could be plausibly argued that this persisted until roughly the early 1970s, when both major parties adopted a catch-all stance (e.g. Mair, 1997; Marsh, 2006b). This marked the beginning of convergence on policy between the major parties, a process that is now virtually complete (e.g. Blyth and Katz, 2005). Second, adversarialism assumed that party difference derives from underlying normative orientations that are reflected in whole agendas and programs. Debate does not need to focus on particular issues or on the detail of proposed measures because measures and instruments are assumed to be almost wholly implicit in the competing party programs. We will want to revisit the continuing relevance of these basic assumptions.

In recent decades, the media have come to play increasingly critical transmission and brokerage roles between the formal system and the citizens that it (ostensibly) serves. Media roles have waxed as those of other political institutions (notably the major party organisations) have waned. The media often determine which issues and which voices will be given prominence. However, they rarely set the agenda. This usually involves either top-down announcements by the political leadership or sustained bottom-up campaigning (e.g. Get-Up and David Hicks). The media mostly disseminate or re-package messages that others have originated. Key commentators transmit opinions and influence the views of others. They can be very important cue givers. But the media rarely determine the options that enter public debate.

In step with the rise of the media, there have been other changes in the approach of party leaders to informing and influencing public opinion. Perhaps unintentionally, they have largely turned from leading to following the community. With some qualifications (noted in a moment), party leaders now often take their cues from focus groups or talkback radio. This outcome is a consequence of developments from the 1970s. Around that time, the major parties changed their approach to the development of public opinion. The appointment of a new style of party manager was symptomatic of this change. Professionals in public opinion polling and marketing replaced party loyalists (e.g. Mills, 1986). They promised a new outcome. Direct marketing, polling, media advertising and packaging promised to render dispensable organisational policy development and a large party membership base. Clever marketing, focused on the parliamentary leadership, could, it was imagined, sufficiently compensate for weakened party identifications among electors. Indeed conferences, large memberships and internal policy development processes came to be seen as constraints on the political leadership. Liberation from them allowed the parliamentary leadership to reach out directly to the electorate. Sophisticated marketing techniques seemed capable of delivering the required outcomes in mass opinion formation.

A direct approach to the electorate via the media is clearly one viable option for building public opinion but there are many constraints. Media requirements for a punchy ‘grab’ distort presentations. The media have difficulty maintaining attention on an issue without sensationalising developments. The media have commercial interests, which are not necessarily consistent with the development of an informed public opinion. In sum, media requirements for a punchy grab and their short attention spans have, arguably, significantly diminished public understanding of policy issues and choices (e.g. Lloyd, 2004 ; Henry, 2007). In addition, the focus of public debate on party leaders limits the development of an informed public opinion in fundamental ways. Most major policy announcements are made by the Leaders of the major parties. This means that the leader’s prestige is implicated in the successful implementation of whatever has been proposed. A focus on the party Leaders foreshortens the time available for reciprocal exchanges between protagonists and limits the scope for developing public and interest group opinion. It also turns many issues into futile jousts between governments and Oppositions.

Further, market practices are now in common use for policy development: increasing attention is given to focus-group and opinion surveys by ministers, departments and political parties. A reliance on focus groups and talk back radio means knee-jerk public responses and unformed opinion are given inappropriate standing. Finally, policy has been merchandised by the use of commercial advertising to project messages to the general public. Look no further than the recent campaigns associated with WorkChoices, domestic violence or the tax system. Fred Argy has estimated the Howard governments together spent some two billion dollars on advertising and policy promotion — an astonishing sum (Argy, 2007). These developments deflect attention from actions that might be taken to develop better-defined strategies and public opinion about them. There is limited scope for actions that might refine and deepen public opinion and, hence, limited attention to such possibilities.