I just returned from a stint as guest professor at the University of Bologna – a jewel of a city. It is home of the oldest university in Europe, founded in 1088.
Almost a quarter of the population are students. Since medieval times there has been pressure to find accommodation within the fortified walls of the city. A clever solution was to build above the pavement area and confine the shops within a standard shape and under the arches of elegant porticos. To this day the vibrancy of the artisanal shops is matched by the glowing parade of youth.
I was in Bologna, in part, to trace the footsteps of an ancestor. In the middle of the 15th century the Greek, Cardinal Vasilios Bessarion who was governor of Bologna and later in Venice.
Bessarion came from a peasant family in Trabzon and rose, through his theological scholarship and diplomatic skills, to be one of the influential figures of the Italian Renaissance.
Fearful that the collapse of the Byzantium Empire would also extinguish Greek literature and philosophy he became a collector of ancient manuscripts. The manuscripts were gifted to the Republic of Venice, and eventually, the opulent Marciana, the city’s first public library, was built to house them.
Even in the splendid cities of Bologna and Venice I noticed more homeless people than I have ever previously witnessed. My colleague and friend Pierluigi Musaro told me that the cost of living is now so high in Bologna that, one in two of the nurses decline the coveted offer of a placement in this city.
Nurses were the heroes during the COVID pandemic. But who cares now that they can no longer afford to live within reasonable distance of their workplace? The old gap between public servants and private entrepreneurs is becoming a chasm.
Just before I departed for Bologna, I witnessed a televised exchange between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. During parliamentary question time Dutton in his dull tone listed a wide range of purchases and expenditures that had been recently made by the Labor government. He stressed that the government was spending recklessly while ordinary Australians were doing it hard.
Anthony Albanese stood from his bench, buttoned up his jacket, and gleefully countered by pouring out an even longer list of grants, funds, and subsidies which were issued by the previous Liberal government. He pointed out that some of the grants were neither tested nor requested.
Albanese had mounted his moral high-horse and confined his response to a variation of the pot calling the kettle black. He had the smug look of a person who knew what was coming, thought he had this little victory in the bag, and was already dancing before the siren.
I don’t know what was going on in Dutton’s mind. How can anyone tell from his dour demeanour? But if I were him, I would think; “gotcha”.
Albanese did not get offended at the accusation of waste. He did not justify his expenditures with angry righteousness. On the contrary, he played into the narrative that governments waste ordinary people’s money.
The Liberals were spending money at a time when all governments around the world were printing money at unprecedented rates. While Albanese was smiling as he was pointing the finger at Dutton’s hypocrisy, he was falling into a trap. Many of the viewers would be still thinking of his new multi-million-dollar holiday home. His answer did nothing to distinguish his government from the association with reckless waste. It certainly did not lean towards a sign of sympathy for people that are struggling with rents and mortgages.
While Albanese’s response suggested that the Labor party’s expenditures was the lesser of the two, Dutton’s point was that it was still malevolent. This might lead some to conclude: a pox on both houses, but clearly, what Dutton was reaching for was the demonstration of an opportunistic prime minister who is out touch with the struggles of ordinary people.
Dutton was playing Trump’s tune, and Albanese danced as if Harris had won. Dutton does not care about how different the circumstances are for Australia and America; he is simply tapping into a populist rhetoric that is spreading across the world.
In America Trump has no intention of reducing the deficit. He knows that America, unlike any other economy in the world, can keep printing money. The only time their economy went into recession was the year after Clinton balanced the books. For the past three decades the surpluses in the private sector have boomed when the government has gone deeper and deeper into debt. This logic would be disastrous if applied in Australia. It would rip the country even further apart.
Despite the urgent need to repair the economy in ways that support ordinary people the Labor party is presenting itself as a government that is too timid to confront the excesses of big corporations, and at best providing reforms that may someday in the fine future trickle a few more coins down the pipeline. When Bessarion arrived in Bologna, he found the university to be in a parlous state. Buildings were in ruin, professors had been deprived of their salaries, and many students were struggling to find accommodation. Bessarion turned to the rich landowners and said:
“You all profit from the boost to the city that this university gives and so you will pay more for it.”
He actively recruited new professors from beyond the city and even provided stipends for the poor students from his own income.
By contrast we see the Labor and Liberal parties using Universities as political footballs and international students as scapegoats.
In the 1970s the transition from the Liberals to Labor was ridiculed as a march from to quote the great political economist, Robert Catley in 1974s ‘From tweedledum to tweedledee…’. Interestingly Robert Catley became a Labor politician and served under Souths Australia’s Labor government of 1990-1993.
Not unlike now, in Bolognia at the time of Bessarion the variation was in two types of patrician politics. Now we are sliding faster into the riotous cacophonic variations on populism.
*Prof. Nikos Papastergiadis the Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures, is based at The University of Melbourne. His most recent book is ‘John Berger and Me’.
