An Electoral Reflection

Last night I watched John Howard concede defeat in the Australian Federal election with more dignity and integrity than has characterised most of his time in office.

I have no desire to gloat over a fallen man, however, I am convinced that history will record Howard as the most mediocre individual ever to have been Prime Minister of this country. Which is not to say that his influence and impact on Australia have not been enormous; just that, in my view, Howard's influence on this nation has been almost entirely negative.

Howard's one, shining moment when he acted with genuine integrity occurred early in his Prime Ministership, when he introduced some sanity into the nation's firearms legislation in the wake of the dreadful Port Arthur shootings. Howard did so in the face of bitter protest and opposition from the right-wing of his own support base, and he is to be credited with standing up to the loony shooters fringe and acting in the national interest.

For the rest of his term in office, however, it was a steady downward decline.

Howard has always peddled the "honest John" label that attached itself to him early in his political career. And yet honesty was conspicuously and frequently absent when it came to Howard's decision-making; he much preferred a dissimulation or obfuscation that engendered political capital, as opposed to acting with true statesmanship. Granted, he is not the only politician who has done this, nor was he the only member of his Government who did this; but as the Prime Minister, he set the tone and established the pattern. The reasons for entering the Iraq War and the Howard Government's allegations that refugees threw their children overboard are just two of the more conspicuous examples of dishonesty; and yet in these and other cases, Howard has denied all responsibility, blaming others for supposedly providing defective information, or no information at all. And yet, while it was politically advantageous for him to do so, Howard readily latched onto these lies to entrench his own power.

Howard's dishonesty went further than this. There was, of course, the notorious "never, ever" GST; however, even worse than this was the glib "core and non-core promises" excuse bandied out to the electorate as to why he hadn't kept his election promises; apparently, some of Howard's promises ranked higher on the "I intend to keep" scale than others (not that the electorate was told this, or given the rankings, before an election). Now, Howard is not the only politician to have broken a promise; but the absurd and insulting justification he produced for his dishonesty pointed toward the sinister manipulation of language that would characterise both his government and his approach to realpolitik. This was the Government that changed "refugees" to "unlawful arrivals"; "soldiers" to "enemy combatants"; "dissenters" to "un-Australian". This was the Government that deemed a whole raft of workplace conditions and entitlements to be "non-allowable" in industrial awards, and then had the temerity to attach the phrase "Workchoices" to its punitive industrial legislation. This is the Government - and the Prime Minister - who routinely demonised select groups of people for its own purposes, while at the same time prattling on about "mateship" and "Australian values".

And it is this last that is the defining characteristic of the Howard Government, and of Howard's legacy to Australia: fear. For Howard has manipulated both the underlying racism within Australian society, as well as our habitual insularity and sense of superiority, to secure his own place in politics. When the Hansonite movement threatened to undermine Howard's power-base among conservative, racist whites, Howard not only didn't oppose Hanson directly, he appropriated most of Hanson's policies, especially with respect to Aboriginal Australians and refugees. Hanson's disappearance from politics was not due to any integrity on Howard's part, but was a consequence of Howard's cynical, blatant usurpation of Hanson's power-base. In the wake of 9/11 and the Bali bombings, instead of choosing to comfort the traumatised and offer a platform of hope and engagement, Howard chose to invoke "fortress Australia" and stoke up the fires of mistrust and suspicion. The Howard government's willingness to participate in the unlawful detention of Australian citizens by a foreign power, without trial and subject to every violation of due process imaginable, speaks to the depths to which it was prepared to descend in the pursuit of power.

Australia has been a dark place in the bit-over-a-decade in which Howard has been in power. We are a nation obsessed with material consumption and plunging further and further into personal debt in its pursuit. We claim to be an open and egalitarian society, yet we are suspicious of difference and demand that "others" conform to our "values" and norms. We claim to be fighting on the side of freedom and humanity, yet we have willingly acquiesced in the perpetration of an illegal war, with all the ghastly consequences - including the fostering of new generations of violent extremists - which doing so involves. We claim to be an optimistic and cheerful people, and yet we brood over threats from within and without, and scan the stock reports for signs of impending disaster. We claim to be a nation of anti-establishment larrikins who think for themselves; and yet we have cravenly kowtowed and grovelled to whoever we have thought might offer us security and a few dollars more.

And at the centre of this darkness has stood the figure of John Howard, Prime Minister. Not that I'm suggesting Howard has woven some sort of fiendishly clever web in which he has imposed a dystopic society without us realising the fact. Rather, Howard has been the quintessential expression of our collective weakness; when we needed leadership and statesmanship, we got politicking and manipulation. When we needed courage and hope, we got fear and loathing. When we needed genuine egalitarianism and compassion, we got demonising and finger-pointing. We are to blame for what we are; but Howard, as Prime Minister, is to blame for not trying to make us see what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature", for not trying to make us be bigger than the sum of who we are. Howard is to blame for allowing us to wallow in our self-absorption, instead of lifting our eyes to new lights.

What Australia needs now more than anything else is hope and vision. I hope this new government can at least be the starting point for this; otherwise, we're in a lot of trouble.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Of all lives, the political life always ends in failure. (Enoch Powell)