Our dollar falls below $US50 cents. The Indians end our winning streak in cricket. Our sharemarket crashes. Our confidence collapses. John Howard says to a talkback caller on radio, “I am desperately upset, can I tell you, I really am very unhappy about the high price of petrol … Can you tell me what I can do?”
And he asks Kim Beazley a question which would normally be rhetorical but in present circumstances probably isn’t. “What really matters is if the Labor party has an alternative to handling the economy at the present time. Can we please hear it?”
I suppose what Labor would do really does matter now, not what the government will do. After all, Howard all but conceded defeat in Ryan in his begging letter to voters. A Labor win would “encourage Mr Beazley in his belief that he can cruise into government without policies or without ever telling the Australian people where he stands on particular issues”. So, don’t protest against me, protest against him. But maybe voters don’t want to know what Beazley would do, they just want Howard out. Maybe they think neither side has the intellect, commitment, or inspiration to bring us together and drive us forward. Maybe that’s all of our faults and not just theirs.
Tyron Pitsis is getting most upset at our plight. “I am a young(ish) Australian and I am frightened about the future. Our environment is slowly dying, the dollar is now worth less than US50 cents and foreign debt is so high now that not even John Howard drives around in his “foreign debts bus” to tell us how much we owe (even though its mainly private sector debt). However it’s not those things in particular that bother me, it is our leaders’ reaction to them. I am alarmed: does no one care? Why are politicians so quiet about it? Why is no one angry? Have we just given up? But what’s our option, a protest vote? I’d just like you to tell our “leaders”, and I can only speak for myself, they have let us down! They have created a deep feeling of confusion, loss of trust, resentment and a general feeling of what I’ll call PAD (Political Affective Disorder – A general loss of psychological well being caused by our politician’s poor leadership and gross mismanagement).”
I’m starting to wonder whether Howard could survive a defeat in Ryan. If a personal plea for forgiveness to voters in a blue-ribbon seat your party has owned for 50 years doesn’t work, if you tell voters that if they vote Labor it’s a death sentence for his government, it’s hard to see where he could go from there.
I wonder if either Beazley or Howard could have avoided the stakes getting so high in Ryan. While Labor is confident of success, a Labor person I spoke to today is desperately worried about a surprise loss. It seems its goodbye Kim or goodbye John. Ryan has become more than a byelection, alright, its become a referendum on which leader should stay and which should go.
I predicted last week that Howard would win Ryan – and regretted it ever since – but here’s my latest self-serving rationale. The fall in the dollar to under $US50 cents is just the latest bit of bad news panicking the hell out of all of us. Ryan voters could take the tack that, with everything falling apart around them, keeping Howard in the game for now would at least be a vote for stability.
Say Howard loses. The Liberals have tried populist backflips and apologies, throwing away their edge on economic credibility as a result. I know I’ve written that Howard could still set some traps for Labor via tax cuts in the budget, but after that letter I reckon there’s only two cards left to play. On the prospect of a leadership change, it would be a brave party to try Costello, and a brave Costello to take on such a poisoned chalice.
The other play would be to call an election immediately and let Howard plough right into it. That would catch Labor off guard and concentrate voter’s minds on the choice, or lack of it. It might even hold up the Liberals vote a bit because of the sheer guts of the move. So that’s my crazed prediction if my crazed prediction that Howard will hold Ryan is wrong.
On the ground in Ryan Ann Roberts has no doubt the Liberals are gone, as do most of you in the Ryan poll (478 go Labor, 145 Liberal)
Ann writes:
Anticipation mounts in Ryan.
We’re not in the most exclusive of Ryan’s suburbs. Our area is pretty average. For what seems like decades tho’ it has seemed an unassailable blue-ribbon Liberal seat. Now there is hope.
This afternoon we have been phoned by 4 polling organisations. Someone is in a frenzy. Sadly we haven’t been sent one of Mr Tucker’s videos – one has to wonder how a Ryan resident could qualify for one of them. The Courier Mail, in reporting about the videos this morning ran a rather cruel wedding photo of the Tuckers with the bride shown in a strange headdress: not a vote catcher.
I ran into a hard working high school P & C worker this afternoon who said John Moore didn’t even acknowledge invitations to a local school over the years – perhaps arrogance will reap its reward. Mr Tucker seems to have run a campaign more suited to someone running for a local council. He keeps mentioning seat belts in buses.
Anyway Saturday night can’t come soon enough – we have to take our pleasures where we can in these hard times
Tim Dunlop in Canberra goes for Howard’s jugular:
“Did you see this letter in today’s SMH? Raises a good point, don’t you think? Howard had staked his political reputation on being a good economic manager, but was willing to flush it for the sake of another shot at being PM. But one thing he has stuck with absolutely is his opposition to an apology, or really, anything like a more sympathetic response to Aboriginal disadvantage. Good to know he still has some principles.
“It’s a shame the majority of electors in Ryan aren’t Aboriginal. John Howard would have said “sorry” last week, we’d have a new flag, and the treaty would be drafted this week, ready for signing on Friday. Ryan did vote “yes” in the republic referendum, however, so we can look forward to Howard’s conversion to the cause and a new vote in 2002. I can hardly wait.” Brendan Jones, Leichhardt, March 12.
Stephen Clarke nails Howard on tax, but wait for David Davis, my REAL favourite correspondent, who wrote our first profile on Ryan in good spirit but now accuses most of us of commie tendencies.
Stephen:
John Howard can’t have it both ways. He refers to his party’s natural inclination toward lower taxes. At the same time he crows about his GST as being a growth tax which will secure and build revenue for spending by the States. In fact, it has been argued that with the introduction of the GST this government is the highest taxing ever. It would be more accurate to say that the Liberal Party believe in low indirect taxes (income tax, company tax) and high direct taxes on consumption (GST). To put it another way: The Liberals have a natural inclination toward lower taxes for the rich and higher taxes for the poor.
David:
I see you have selected Don Arthur as your “favourite correspondent” (Webdiary Monday). Well that’s just lovely. In the end I shouldn’t be surprised though. Communists are probably always attracted to their own kind. Just as well people like you, Don Arthur and Phillip Adams weren’t at the wheel during the Cold War, otherwise I suspect by now we’d all be marching around in some kind of hideous goose step in the shadow of giant surreal posters of Gough Whitlam.
I thought anyway that in your scheme of things excellence should not be recognised (ie by calling one of them a favourite). Doesn’t that mean the individual is being given higher priority than the collective?
Anyway, I need to get to work. Enough of this breakfast babble.
Still, as I sit forlornly on the Number Six tram as it traverses the Rhine River in Basel this morning, I will soak up the melancholy atmosphere of this grey morning and wonder what might have been. If only I hadn’t been so strident about petrol, perhaps I could have had a shot at being Margo Kingston’s favourite correspondent.
If only. Woe is me.
PS: I am resigned to the reality of my ranking as a “lower to middle order” correspondent. Such is my lot, such is the card I have been dealt. I won’t blame anybody, I’ll just accept it.