The more things change the more they remain the same. It is imperative that the Morrison government not be returned at the forthcoming election. It is devoid of ideas for the future. It denies climate change. It is corrupt. It is self serving. It is racist. It has no moral compass. For these and for a range of unaddressed social justice and environmental issues, including mining, the Barrier Reef and refugees, the Labor Party must be elected. But the election of a Labor government will not bring the type of fundamental change that is so overdue.
Both major parties conduct their politics within the same framework. One exists on the Right, the other on the Centre Right. There is no Left in Australian politics. In light of the Murray Darling Basin debacle and climate change, the Labor Party is not proposing to nationalise water resources; they haven’t even committed to a royal commission and Tony Burke has been attempting to defend his flawed MD Plan from his time as Minister for the Environment. The framework is defined by a lack of moral courage within people designated or who see themselves as leaders.
The Labor Party is not proposing a Banking and Financial Services Act to regulate greed and protect customers; it is not proposing to nationalise the energy industry and it supports a distortion in funding to religious schools. It has not proposed taxing religious organisations. It has not proposed regulating the fees charged by medical specialists nor has it proposed fundamental reform of Medicare and private health insurers. Other than vague references to a republic it has no firm plan to ditch allegiance to the British Crown.
It has no policy toward a national housing scheme for the homeless, or the empowerment of Aboriginal people. It has no policy toward refugees other than deterrence. It has no plans for managing climate change, no announcements of a ministry to co-ordinate responses to significant natural disasters in Australia and the region and no plans to conduct training exercises between the ADF, SES, fire authorities, ambulance services and hospitals.
It has no plans to scrap the ludicrous plans to build new submarines that will be obsolete before the first of the proposed twelve are launched.
By its very nature climate change will require increased government intervention to deliver and maintain essential services including the production and distribution of food. Governments will increasingly be required to take and carry the risks associated with climate change.
In my opinion Australia adopted its present restrictive and right-leaning political framework when it decided to go to war on the side of Britain in 1914. It was a looser framework then than it is now. Until Australia embarked on what was to become a major national disaster, it was set on a path of putting together a very progressive state. It had undertaken extensive infrastructure reform with railway construction, roads, bridges, harbours, hospitals and schools. In 1902 the Commonwealth Franchise Act gave women the right to vote and sit in the federal parliament. The Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904 established the basis for industrial relations until the 1990’s. The 1907 Harvester Case established the terms for a ‘fair and reasonable wage’ for the average working man.
The union movement was strong and progressive and gave birth to the ALP. This should be central to who we are as a nation, not the Boys Own story of WW1.
WW1 drained the nation of manpower, money and self confidence. It wasn’t just the dead and injured, which numbered some 200,000; it was the fact that many men who had served on the front line returned to Australia with shell shock, now known as PTSD. The effect on the nation through friends and families has largely gone undocumented. The waste and futility carried by the soldiers, has largely gone undocumented, the associated guilt swamped with jingoism. However there was enough fight and decency left in the nation to oppose and defeat the introduction of conscription for the war proposed in the form of a referendum by Prime Minister Hughes in 1916 and 1917.
Optimism, innovation and creativity were dealt a further blow by the Great Depression and WW11, the ending of which saw the social blight of WW1 repeated and reinforced by large numbers of refugees and migrants from war-torn Europe. Of course it was not all gloom and doom, but it was dull and conservative as people sought to rebuild their lives. And conservative Prime Minister Menzies took full advantage of a cautious electorate to tighten the restrictive framework of the state.
Menzies defeated Labor Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, in 1949 after he tried to nationalise the banks. Events played into Menzies’ hands. The Cold War gripped the major powers, communism was the scourge of the West and Menzies used the fear associated with it to further cower and corral the little Aussie battlers. Labor had no narrative, particularly after it split in 1955 leading to the formation of the breakaway right wing Democratic Labor Party which had close ties to the Catholic Church. Menzies also rode the wave of sustained economic growth fuelled by wool, wheat and mining.
Menzies committed the country to war in Vietnam in 1965 without telling the country and introduced conscription without telling the people that the conscripts would fight in that war. The Labor Party did little to oppose the war and conscription until public opinion moved substantially against both by mid 1969. It proved to be a vote-winning issue for Labor leader Gough Whitlam at the 1972 elections.
Gough tried to dismantle the framework. He moved fast, far too fast in the face of a deteriorating economy. He was sacked by the Governor-General in November 1975. That act, which had been engineered by Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser and endorsed by the Queen, saw the framework back in place. Bob Hawke defeated Fraser in 1983. He saw his chances of being elected dependent on maintaining the status quo, which meant the framework and his successor, Paul Keating, did likewise pushing the envelope to the right with a program of privatisation and detention of refugees.
John Howard came to power in 1996 and within four years had taken the country back to the Menzies era, including a sham love of cricket, the sport which roundly rejected his attempt to become world president. The Howard regime was racist, royalist, misogynist, militaristic, jingoistic and elitist. Anzac Day and Australia Day were turned into pseudo-iconic national events. Refugees and Aboriginals were demonised and no government that has followed his defeat in 2007 has changed that, including the Labor governments of Rudd and Gillard.
Howard sowed the seeds of intolerance and vilification toward Muslims which found ready disciples in Abbott, Morrison and Dutton and which some are saying, and I agree, reaped a vile harvest in the ghastly Mosque massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March, when an Australian right wing devotee shot dead 50 worshipers and wounded another 39.
Abbott in 2013 was a shrill and nastier version of Howard’s government; Turnbull in 2015 was a failure to himself and the nation; and Morrison in 2018 a caricature of all that went before him. All maintained the framework; perhaps believing it was a structure that fostered stability. It has not. Howard like Menzies before him secretly took the country to war in Iraq.
For me the framework is defined by how an Australian government approaches questions of race, distribution of income, the fairness of the tax and education systems, jingoism and how greed is being managed, in other words what the fairness graph is reading. To move out of the framework, the fostering of innovation would need to take place together with nurturing the aged, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the environment.
Shorten is shuffling. He will win the election because Morrison and his moronic muppets will lose it. He shows no interest in challenging or even trying to bend the framework, from refugees to water, banking to defence. He will see off a corrupt, stupid and morally bankrupt government, but he will not oversee creative, constructive and long overdue change. Sadly he is comfortable in our constraining and constricting framework forged as a result of the failure of war.
He condemns us to the turnaround of the hour glass.
Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and former diplomat.
Bruce Douglas Haigh is an Australian political commentator and former diplomat.
Comments
13 responses to “The hourglass”
Thanks for a fine article Bruce.
One of the great confidence tricks of the last century was the presentation of Australia’s WWI casualties (at least 200,000 killed, wounded or incapacitated) as heroes deserving praise and honour by the nation and its government rather than presenting them as victims of an immoral decision by government and thus deserving apology and compensation ( to themselves or their bereaved families) by the nation and its government.
This was/is part of an even greater confidence trick, that played by the “masters of war” (Bob Dylan’s apt phrase) on the people of 1914 and the rest of us. This has led us to accept that war or readiness for war is the natural condition of nation-states and their peoples. This means submarines and jet fighters are more important to the good of a country than climate policy and education. Who benefits? Politicians, industrialists, financiers and media moguls. The same wicked cabal that took Europe and its allies into WWI.
As the “Anzac Season” (I heard that on radio or TV the other day, I’m not joking) approaches we’ll again hear a lot more deceitful mythologising about “winning our nationhood” at Gallipoli. Anyone expressing any cynicism will be branded “un-Australian”.
If we have a Shorten Government soon I hope many will support better ways to govern by joining political parties and being active. The ACTU with Sally Mc Manus will not stop its campaign to change the rules. We need non partisan combined action from all parts of Australia on climate change, war powers reform and nuclear weapons and more.
I, too, look forward to a Shorten government if, as someone else just said, with reservations.
Has anyone else been following China’s President Xi on his recent tour of Europe? First, he went to Italy where Italy joined the BRI initiative with the focus reportedly being on the ports of Trieste and Genoa. Then a quick stop in Monaco and an agreement to have the whole place covered by 5G by the end of this year. The goal there seems to be the very wealthy Chinese tourist market. Then on to Paris where he placed an order worth $35 billion with Airbus.
On the other side of the Eurasian landmass China has unveiled plans to build a city (an entire city!) out on one of those reclaimed reefs.
Meanwhile our ships full of coal are still (I think) swinging on the hook off Chinese ports awaiting final customs clearance.
It seems clear to me that in what was once known as the Great Game, the West, and especially the Anglo portion of it, is playing the bye.
As a small nation dependant on exports, we need to abandon the ridiculous notion that China can be “contained”. Without money from exports nothing domestically has a chance of progressing. We will be hamstrung. Will Shorten and Wong find a way to stand up to Yankee pressure and gain us a place on what will clearly be the winning side in the 21st century’s geopolitical reality?
“In 1902 the Commonwealth Franchise Act gave women the right to vote and sit in the federal parliament.”
The same act also disenfranchised Australia’s Indigenous population, some of whom had had the right to vote in some of the colonies making up the new Australian federation/glorified customs union. (Which was one of reasons for not including their numbers in the census – as this population data was used to determine the boundaries of electorates.)
Speaking for the Bill, MP King O’Malley suggested that “the was no scientific proof that the Australian Aborigine was even a human being”. (New Zealand Maoris resident in Australia, were however allowed to vote in Federal elections.)
Note too the women’s Federal suffrage was due to the fact that the colonies of South and Western Australia had already given women the vote. (In South Australia with the aim that the votes of women might counter those of male trade unionists and in Western Australia in the hope that women voters in Perth might counter the votes of male miners in the Goldfields and so keep W.A. out of the wretched Federation.)
“when it decided to go to war on the side of Britain in 1914”
Hardly a decision. A cable came from London with the information that the Empire had declared war on Germany. Australian Prime Minister Cook then announced;
“We have just to sit tight now and see the thing through. Whatever the difficulty, and whatever the cost, we must be steadfast in our determination. Our resources are great, and the British spirit is not dead. We owe it to those who have gone before to preserve the great fabric of British freedom, and hand it on to our children. Our ancestral home is the repository of the great liberties, the great traditions, and the great pieties, and on our very lives we must cherish them.
Our duty is quite clear – namely, to gird up our loins and remember that we are
Britons.”
There was no vote in the Federal Parliament and no separate declaration of war. That Australia was at war by the decision of the Imperial government in London was just as sure that Scotland, Wales and Ireland were at war with Germany.
The comment that there is no left in politics ignores the Greens whose policies are largely what you are calling for. I find it disturbing that so many commentators ignore the Greens who have been villified from day 1 (remember what Senators Dee Margets, Christabel Chamarette and Jo Valentine had to put up with – extreme mysogyny and ridicule). The right wing reaction is not surprising since their policies would bring about the change that’s needed to work to address climate change and the current sixth extinction crisis (if its not too late), and also our critical social justice needs.
Criticise their policies of today by all means (they obviously won’t all be perfect) but to pretend the Greens don’t exist is exactly what the right wants.
Many thanks for a fine, accurate Short History of Australia. Bring on the Republic and a new, workable Constitution; a President to be in charge of recognition of and justice for the First Australians; an Academy that defines and oversees policy principles that are binding on all future governments of all flavours; the re-development of pride in our country, based on a gratitude that we are ever so lucky.
Thanks Bruce Haigh and P and I. From my perspective as a dissident on foreign policy, seeking a prudent balanced multipolar Australian foreign and defence policy open to mutually respectful dialogue relations with China and Russia as well as with our traditional US and EU partners, there will be two real benefits in a Shorten Labor government:
1. There will be people in government we can talk to about these matters. There is nobody to talk with in the present government , or in fearful policy departments like Defence and DFAT wilting under its heavy and prejudiced thumbprint). The doors are literally closed and the recycled cold warriors are in charge of everything. I write this as someone who has for years been unsuccessfully inviting DFAT to talk with me about Russia, a country about which I know more than a little now, having visited there three times in the last three years.
2. The ABC may become a little less fearful of entertaining dissenting views on its airwaves.
In these ways, Australia will, I hope, become a little more democratic and open in its governance and public dialogue style – even if the main planks of foreign and defence policy hardly change at all under Shorten.
So I will celebrate election night, with reservations.
A superb summary of where we find ourselves today in this country.
Shorten is cautious, and must be, as he knows, any substantial political reform on anything will require three terms in office. Therein lies the conundrum and the paradox of long-term planning and the realities of short term strategies. The tragedy of the Whitlam government stands as a beacon warning for the Labor Party, in our profoundly conservative electorate. Within a month of Shorten becoming Prime Minister, the substantial forces of Murdoch Inc. will be aligning against him, and begin vigorously maligning anything that hints of small changes that depart from the status quo.
I am not aware of any historical publication that documents the undue influence that the Murdoch dynasty has had in the formation of Australian political thought, practices and public opinion dating from as long ago as 1914, and running though to present times. ( though the award winning book ‘Beyond Rupert: Keith Murdoch and the Birth of a Dynasty’ by British historian Tom Roberts makes a good start. )
Such a publication is sorely needed as a third generation of Murdochs continue to successfully adapt to the rapidly changing media environment.
https://theconversation.com/book-review-before-rupert-keith-murdoch-and-the-birth-of-a-dynasty-49491
Bruce may well be right; Labor seems very disappointing except in a comparison with the present hopeless government. But if Shorten proposed much more than he’s already proposing, there is no way the conservative forces outside parliament would tolerate his being elected. The shrill and hysterical reaction to the very mild negative gearing/capital gains tax/franking credits/superannuation and other policies is a mere hint of that intolerance. If Labor is elected, those forces will be working away from day one at the return of the LNP asap, no matter how bereft of policies and basic decency the right wing parties are, so Labor will have to progress slowly. The simple fact is that Labor has to do ten times as much and step ten times as carefully as the LNP; the abiding explanation for the wretched things the Liberals do is their knowing they can ‘get away with it’.
After World War has Australia changed and merged into the Asia Pacific area of the world in a very slow manner and moved away from Europe. People incomes also rose and they had no need of the communist party. The ALP changed slowly to meet the needs of its new demographics hence Whitlam reforms but in government way to fast for many people. In government Bill Shorten will move slowly to implement his progresive agenda well his ministers will do it not him.
Pet theory – the changes that swept Aus from the late 60’s on were due to the grandkids of WW1 veterans. Things like ending the silence about the realities of war.
As ever, Lawson somehow forgot about the original owners, but even so he nailed it pretty well…
Australia’s a big country
An’ Freedom’s humping bluey,
An’ Freedom’s on the wallaby
Oh! don’t you hear ‘er cooey?
She’s just begun to boomerang,
She’ll knock the tyrants silly,
She’s goin’ to light another fire
And boil another billy.
Our fathers toiled for bitter bread
While loafers thrived beside ’em,
But food to eat and clothes to wear,
Their native land denied ’em.
An’ so they left their native land
In spite of their devotion,
An’ so they came, or if they stole,
Were sent across the ocean.
Then Freedom couldn’t stand the glare
O’ Royalty’s regalia,
She left the loafers where they were,
An’ came out to Australia.
But now across the mighty main
The chains have come ter bind her –
She little thought to see again
The wrongs she left behind her.
Our parents toil’d to make a home –
Hard grubbin ’twas an’ clearin’ –
They wasn’t crowded much with lords
When they was pioneering.
But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook ‘is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.
So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting
O’ those that they would throttle;
They needn’t say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle!