Little Johnny

..staggering
Lear-like around a deserted caravan park. What legacy will he leave? Missed
opportunities, doors closed that might have been opened, darkness where there
should have been light. The opportunistic gall, the sacrifice of principle to
expediency and the denigration of truth and transparency will rankle less than
the utter mediocrity of the man and his values.
Many years ago I recollect seeing in scratchy black and white an interview between
Walter Cronkite and an aging Dean Acheson, who had been the Secretary of State
in the Truman Administration. He had played a central role in defining American
foreign policy for the Cold War and had a central role in the creation of many
important institutions, including Lend Lease, NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank,
together with the organisations that later became the European Union and the
World Trade Organization. My recollection of his summation at the end of the
interview is unsubstantiated, but it went something like this, “We have
entered the age of the common man and I, for one, am glad that I shall not see
too much more of it.” One can only agree when the front page of Melbourne’s
leading broadsheet is headlined ‘Rudd targets junk food ads’. Such
a key point in anybody’s electoral plank!
This demonstrates that, despite the reporting in the media, most people are
not concerned about politics; there is little passion for philosophy and ideals
– rather we seem to prefer a number eight fencing wire , angle grinder practicality
in two shades of party political grey.
But let me chronicle some of the idiosyncratic highlights of the Howard years,
knowing that if you have read this far I am preaching to the converted and the
rest have left to go play with themselves in front of the TV. These are not
the highlights, like Iraq, where our stunted PM cheerfully lied Australia into
George Bush’s Middle East disaster. (This, I regret, will now lead to
the eventual withdrawal of allied troops and the return of Iraq to another military
dictatorship. Pray that it does not lead to an even greater folly in Iran as
an inept call to the American Christian right’s new Armageddon).
I am saddened by the pernicious, neo- liberal economic fear that many people
live in, based on the idea that individuals, households and businesses should
manage by themselves, not as part of society, but as a distorted inhabitants
of a nightmare world that Adam Smith could never have envisaged. Where everybody,
no matter how fit, is a part of a system of market transactions. This has culminated
in the new work place agreements, whose purpose is to effectively demolish the
union movement and to redistribute income from wages to profits.
I am incensed by the mantra of economic superior management that seems to hold
sway, ignoring the fact that Australia now has a trade deficit averaging about
$15 billion dollars per quarter when we live in the best of times having a staggering
commodities trade boom . Simply this is because of the growing liabilities owed
to foreign investors and financial institutions, which would be even worse were
we not temporarily shielded by the rise of the Ozzie dollar. The government
would say that this is all private debt and that the Commonwealth has no debt
– which should be universally acknowledged as a good and great thing. True,
in that by 2006 had completely paid off the $96 billion dollar Commonwealth
government net debt, however, current foreign debt now stands at over $540 billion
dollars. Not much of a swap
Government debt (the debt that as taxpayers owe to ourselves as superannuants)
is really little different to foreign debt (the debt we owe foreigners). The
holders of that debt are directly or indirectly Australian banking institutions
and the government guarantees them.
Privately obtained debt may be beneficial in terms of buying machinery, to drive
internal domestic and exportable production – or it may be to buy plasma televisions,
BMWs and investment housing. Regrettably the last three categories have dominated
and cheap finance for investment housing has also been instrumental in making
housing increasingly unaffordable.
Government debt, which historically attracts much lower interest rates, has
generally been used to provide national infrastructure from railways, airports
to education. Some may have noticed that the spend on education has been lower
over the past 12 years – particularly in the universities – which this government
has underfinanced to several billions dollars per annum and ideologically attacked.
The result of this is a shortage of skilled graduates in many spheres, such
as medicine or geology, which leads to the astounding situation where we are
bringing in doctors from India, a country that surely needs them even more than
we do. Occasionally we manage to deport one.
As an example of blatant Liberal government myopia they also banned all funding
of student unions, which in fact were largely facilities fees that supported
childcare, campus doctors and housing services. It was just the word union that
got in the way.
To my astonishment I find myself regretting the diminishment of States’
rights – odd given that the multi-layered Australian government is excessive
for a population of 20 million. We now have a centrist government – largely
the result of the suicidal decision of the previous Labour opposition ceding
control of the Senate to the Liberals after one of the bizarre preference of
Family First instead of the Greens .
I don’t need to mention the Tampa, the resulting Pacific Solution, the
excessive anti-terrorism legislation or the attempts to rewrite history, the
legislating out of existence of nearly all Aboriginal land rights, the Australian
Wheat Board corruption, the slow transformation of the Health system to an American
model, the US Free Trade agreement which has increased US trade into Australia
(but not the other way), David Hicks, or the loss of judicial independence.
I’ll pass over the endemic homophobia, which was headlined by Senator
Bill Heffernan’s attack on Justice Michael Kirby using fabricated evidence
for which he eventually had to apologise, though he remains a staunch friend
of John Howard’s. I could go on about amusing details like spending $550
million to buy 59 Abrams tanks which are too heavy for Australian bridges but
suited for desert warfare. A force which can fight in high intensity, conventional
conflicts, but not suitable to peacekeeping and post-conflict operations.
What I miss most are even the vestiges of truth. I know that there are over
300 spin-doctors reporting to cabinet and hundreds more in every department
massaging every bit of information that is reluctantly given out. I deplore
the fact that government has become corporatised, with power concentrated on
the executive. We no longer have government for the people; we have government
for the government. By having a mediocre government we ourselves become mediocre.
Enough is enough.