By Andrew Klein and Sera Elizabeth Klein

Reader’s note: We do not need readers to agree with us. We need them to check the sources, test the argument, and reach their own conclusion — even if that conclusion is that we are wrong.

Abstract

This paper examines the Albanese Labor government through two complementary analytical lenses: Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement and the concept of a political “caste” as articulated by Guy Rundle and others. It argues that the government’s policies — specifically the NDIS cuts, veterans’ healthcare cuts, and the AUKUS submarine program — exhibit all eight mechanisms of moral disengagement identified by Bandura. It further argues that these mechanisms are not individual psychological failures but the operating logic of a political class structurally separated from the consequences of its decisions. The paper concludes that the legitimacy deficit identified in Australian politics is not a failure of communication or policy but a structural feature of a caste that governs according to its own delusions rather than the reality of the electorate.

I. Introduction: The Legitimacy Deficit

Australia is not a failing state. Its institutions function. Its elections are held. Its Parliament sits. Its courts operate. And yet, by the measures that matter — trust, belonging, economic security — the relationship between the governed and the governing is deteriorating.

Only a third of Australians trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. Only 46 per cent report a great sense of belonging in their own country, down from 63 per cent in 2020. Commonwealth gross debt has passed $1 trillion. Real output per person has fallen for seven consecutive quarters to September 2024, leaving it roughly where it stood four years earlier.

These numbers describe a legitimacy deficit. The question this paper asks is: how is that deficit produced and sustained? The answer, we argue, lies in two interlocking mechanisms: the psychological process of moral disengagement, and the structural reality of a political caste.

II. Theoretical Framework

2.1 Moral Disengagement

Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement identifies eight mechanisms by which individuals and institutions justify harmful actions without experiencing self-censure. These are:

1. Moral justification — reframing harm as serving a noble cause

2. Euphemistic labeling — sanitising language to remove human reality

3. Advantageous comparison — making harm seem minor compared to something worse

4. Displacement of responsibility — shifting blame to others or “the system”

5. Diffusion of responsibility — spreading culpability across a group

6. Distortion of consequences — minimising or denying harm

7. Dehumanization — stripping victims of human qualities

8. Attribution of blame — blaming victims for their own suffering

These mechanisms are not abstract. They are observable in the public record of the current government.

2.2 The Political Caste

Guy Rundle’s Quarterly Essay describes the Australian political class as “an almost priest-like formation that is part of the elite separation of political participants from the general public [that] has become so marked as to constitute a historical breach“. The Spectator Australia is blunter: “What we’ve got now is a caste of careerists with their super sorted, their staffers scuttling behind them, and their titles polished like heirlooms. They’ve mistaken the remuneration for a mandate. Worse – they’ve mistaken it for talent”.

The caste is defined by separation. Its members inhabit a different world: the Chairman’s Lounge, the study tours, the committee loadings, the safe seats. “The MP sits in the top few per cent of earners. His expense claim, no matter how ridiculous, is ‘within the rules’. His taxpayer financed superannuation contribution is a tidy 15.4 per cent. His next career, as a lobbyist, is one Parliament House orange lanyard away”.

III. Case Studies in Moral Disengagement

3.1 The NDIS Cuts

The Harm: The government has announced $37.8 billion in cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme over four years, removing approximately 160,000 people from the scheme.

Moral Justification: The government frames the cuts as necessary to “make the scheme sustainable.” Minister Mark Butler told the National Press Club: “Unless we take action to make it sustainable, it simply will not be there in the future for the Australians who need it most.”

Euphemistic Labelling: The explanatory memorandum states: “Funding for some NDIS supports may be less than the actual cost of providing or acquiring the support“. In plain language: people will not receive what they need.

Distortion of Consequences: “The government has modelled what it expects to save. It has not modelled the losses,” says Megan Spindler-Smith of People with Disability Australia. The consequences — isolation, harm, death — are not in the spreadsheet.

Attribution of Blame: The government claims the scheme is growing “beyond what governments can sustainably fund.” The implication is that the disabled are the cause of the problem. A 25% gas export tax would raise $17 billion a year — more than enough to fund the NDIS. The government chose not to impose it.

Advantageous Comparison: The government compares current growth to projected growth. But the cuts are $36.2 billion over four years, and when adjusted for inflation and population growth, funding is “set to fall 12% from 2026-27 levels to 2029-30“.

3.2 Veterans’ Healthcare Cuts

The Harm: The government has confirmed $748 million in savings from the veteran support system, including a $5,000 annual cap on allied health services for Veteran Card holders.

Moral Justification: The government presents this as fiscal responsibility. The censure motion in Parliament documented the reality: “betraying the covenant owed to those who served Australia, and balancing the Government’s budget on the back of veterans and their families”.

Distortion of Consequences: One veteran’s message: “I’ll not be a burden on my family. I will take my life so my family doesn’t see me at my worst“. Another: “If I lose either of my treatments, I can guarantee I wouldn’t be here much longer“. These consequences are not in the budget papers.

Attribution of Blame: The government frames the cap as a measure to ensure “sustainability.” The implication is that veterans are overusing services. The reality is that they are bearing the cost of the government’s fiscal choices.

3.3 AUKUS

The Harm: Australia has committed $368 billion to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, with no enforceable guarantee of delivery, no compensation if the deal collapses, and an indemnity clause that makes Australia liable for nuclear risks.

Moral Justification: Justified as essential for national security. The Greens note: “These submarines are not about defending Australia. They are designed to project force thousands of kilometres from our shores and embed Australia in US military operations”.

Euphemistic Labelling: “Defence capability” replaces “power projection.” “Alliance” replaces “asymmetric dependence.”

Advantageous Comparison: The government compares the $368 billion expenditure to the cost of not having submarines. But the UK has no deployable attack submarines and the US is producing 1.3 per year when it needs 2.3 for itself.

Displacement of Responsibility: Responsibility is displaced onto the US and UK. If they fail to deliver, it is their fault. But Australia signed the treaties. Australia agreed to the indemnity clauses. Australia agreed to take the nuclear waste.

Distortion of Consequences: The financial liability is $368 billion. The environmental liability is nuclear waste that will remain hazardous for tens of thousands of years. The sovereignty liability is embedded dependence on an increasingly unreliable ally. None of these are counted in the official costings.

IV. The Caste and Its Delusions

4.1 The Electorate as Problem

The Spectator describes the electorate’s demands as incoherent: “It wants housing to be affordable for the young and property prices to keep rising. It wants more houses built, but not in its own suburbs. It wants taxes cut and spending on health, aged care, the NDIS, and defence increased.”

But this is not the electorate being incoherent. It is the electorate responding rationally to a system that has failed it. The political class created the housing crisis through negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. It created the NDIS funding crisis by refusing to tax gas exports. It created the budget crisis by cutting revenue while increasing spending. The electorate is not deluded. The caste is.

4.2 Policy as the Only Legitimate Politics

Rundle notes that the press gallery believes “politics is not politics – the clash of interests, ideas and belief systems – but policy.” And policy has a specific meaning: “the steady and further neoliberalisation of economy, state and society”. Anything outside this frame — independents, minor parties, community campaigns — is treated as an “interloper,” a “pet to be managed by the grown-ups”.

This is the caste defending its monopoly. The 2025 election saw a record number of independents and minor party candidates. The caste’s response was to dismiss them, not to listen.

4.3 The Golf Course Scandal

The $6 million grant to Marrickville Golf Club is a case study in caste behaviour. The Prime Minister announced it alone, during an election campaign, six months before the fund existed. The club is across the road from properties he owned. Analysis by the Centre for Public Integrity found 73 per cent of projects approved under this programme were in Labor-held seats or key marginals.

This is not corruption in the legal sense. The rules were followed. The grant was “within the rules.” But it is the caste operating as a caste: distributing benefits to itself, using the language of “community grants” to mask the reality of pork-barrelling, and then retreating to process when challenged.

V. The Structural Function of Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement and caste behaviour are not separate phenomena. They are two aspects of the same system.

Moral disengagement is the psychological mechanism by which the caste justifies its actions to itself. It is how the Prime Minister can cut veterans’ healthcare and still believe he is acting in their interest. It is how the government can remove 160,000 people from the NDIS and still claim the scheme is “sustainable.”

Caste behaviour is the structural reality that makes moral disengagement necessary. The caste is separated from the consequences of its decisions. It does not use the services it cuts. It does not rely on the submarines it buys. It does not live in the communities it neglects.

The two lenses together reveal a political class that is not simply incompetent or cruel. It is structurally incapable of seeing the electorate as it is. It has built a world for itself — the Chairman’s Lounge, the safe seats, the media cycle — and it governs according to the logic of that world, not the world of the people it claims to serve.

VI. Conclusion: The Legitimacy Deficit as Structural Feature

The question posed at the outset was: how is the legitimacy deficit produced and sustained?

The answer is that it is produced by policies that inflict harm on the vulnerable while enriching the powerful, and sustained by psychological mechanisms that allow the architects of those policies to avoid self-censure. It is not a failure of communication. It is not a failure of policy. It is the system working as designed.

The caste will remain. The electorate will remain. But the relationship between them — the thing that makes a state legitimate — is being dismantled, one moral disengagement at a time.

The question is not whether the Albanese government will change. It will not. The question is whether the electorate will continue to accept the terms of a relationship that was never offered, only imposed.

References

1. Bandura, A. (2016). Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves. Worth Publishers.

2. Rundle, G. (2025). The Political Class. Quarterly Essay, 98.

3. The Spectator Australia. (2026). The Australian political caste.

4. The Point. (2026). The NDIS cuts explained.

5. ABC News. (2026). Veterans’ healthcare cuts.

6. Australian Greens. (2024). AUKUS 2.0 Agreement: All risk, no reward.

7. Centre for Public Integrity. (2026). Community grants analysis.

8. News.com.au. (2026). Marrickville Golf Club grant.

9. Womack, B. (2016). Asymmetry and International Relationships. Cambridge University Press.

10. Chato International. (2025). Reclaiming Australian Military Sovereignty.

Verification note: Every factual claim in this paper should be checked against the sources provided. Readers are encouraged to verify independently. If any claim does not hold, it should be discarded. 

 The paper applies Bandura’s framework and the caste analysis to the Albanese government’s record, using the documented evidence from the search results.

The core argument is that the legitimacy deficit is not an accident. It is the structural product of a political class that has separated itself from the consequences of its decisions.