ABSTRACT
The 'community values' being espoused by the politics of community appeal to the populist identity. In this chapter, the author shows how the politics of community has created a new political constituency, 'the battler', an identity which is now exerting tremendous influence on public policy making. In Australia, 'the battlers', or Howard's 'forgotten people', have been drawn together as a political constituency through the public expression of negatively charged populist sentiment made legitimate by the current political leadership. Politicians and other public opinion makers who substitute popular prejudice for reasoned public debate on issues relating to social justice have let these sentiments out of the bag of 'political correctness'. Freud explained the connection between envy and social justice when he set out his theory of group psychology. This was the way in which he understood the lived experience of community - as a process of identification.
