The defence force fights back.
The Government humiliated the chief of the navy last week as part of an abusive play to use the defence force as a political tool for its reelection. Now the chief of the army and the hero of East Timor, Lieutenant-General Cosgrove tells the Bulletin magazine he sympathised with “those who set out in horrible boats from Indonesia to cross all that water and who take an enormous risk”.
Pardon? Sympathy is out, isn’t it? Aren’t they terrorists, animals who throw their kids overboard and set fire to their boats?
“I haven’t spoken to any of the sailors involved. But I feel sorry for them,” Lieutenant-General Cosgrove said. “They’re doing a great job and their solace, I suppose, is in knowing, at least according to pollsters, that most Australians believe they’re doing the right thing.”
“Solace”, he “supposes” is that “at least according to pollsters” most Australians back the task? That’s either code for revolt or appeasement of the sailors.
In this issue, more responses to the question: What will you do?, more on the elite debate, and analysis of where Labor’s gone wrong and why Howard got it right.
I’m in Melbourne tomorrow for an election post mortem at the Melbourne press club. Back Thursday.
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
Jodie Brough
I loved your comment about the need to articulate a kind of migrants’ charter of adopted values. It’s absolutely what I’ve been discussing with people as this debate has taken off.
I think the community is entitled to feel that if people come here to make their lives, they’ll want to adopt our foundation values rather than just reap the economic benefits of living here. Sure, they’ll always be children of the place they came from but they also need to be children of Australia too. There has to be a cultural middle ground where people can have more than one facet to their identity.
I was musing a couple of weeks ago that I wanted in some way to reach out to new arrivals in a way that invited them to be part of our culture. A lot of white Australians don’t mean to be exclusive but they are. So of course migrants head for the comforts of ethnic communities, but it’s a form of ghettoisation. So how do you reach out? There must be a way. We need a few more Al Masris playing Rugby League and Chee Quees playing cricket. It’s stuff like that which subtly makes people re-evaluate their perceptions. Maybe I’ll start a footy school for Arab kids.
At least we’re talking about it. That’s what makes me less depressed than I could be. As much as I despised Hanson for her ignorance, I always thought there was a healthy element to her coming. It’s just very sad that the pall of censorship Howard accused Keating of has been replaced not by a culture of debate but by the new censorship.
Any sort of policy or public position that isn’t either self-centred or concerned with so-called economic reform is suspect. No wonder the gallery is furiously self-censoring. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
The problem with debate in this country is that you can’t have a debate without overreaction. We always seem to mistake debate for conflict. The media rarely helps to sponsor a rational exchange. Whenever two people from the same side of politics differ there’s mass hysteria. That’s a definite issue for the public culture of the Labor Party too.
So what will I do? Maybe I’ll actually join the Labor Party and start making a pest of myself. At the end of the day, I believe that only the major parties can make a real difference. It’s their responsibility. The minor parties should give the major a kick up the backside by pushing the debate around – that’s their job in the process.
***
Christine Evans
I am writing from the US, which the Fulbright commission has generously funded me to visit on the presumption that world peace is more likely if we get to know people from other countries and share our views and lives a little.
I am trying to make sense of the fact that the post-Sept 11 atmosphere seems more poisonous in Australia than in Manhattan, where strenuous attempts are being made to AVOID racial profiling and bigotry. I am trying to redraw my map of “home” after the deeply depressing election results – and more generally, political ugliness- in Australia.
Globally, I feel we are living through the first death throes of the nation state and that the ugliness and fear we are seeing is more than just racism, but a response to the vague but real perception that borders mean less and less.
With over 28 million refugees now world wide, our way of being “citizens” and defining our sense of belonging has to change, unless we are going to define an exponentially escalating part of the population as pariahs. And populations with nothing to lose are, of necessity, terrifying.
Back to `what will I do’ and the map of home. Edward Bond (playwright) says that the child maps the world in a process which also creates the child; the map and the mapmaker are one. He writes “If the map is torn, the mapmaker is torn”. My map of Australia has just been torn, but along folds that have been worn thin for a long time.
Another vision of maps inspired by visiting Belgrade this summer (in conversations with my Serbian theatre friends who have survived, overcome despair and offered continuous resistance to a far more poisonous political situation than ours) is one in which “home ” is redefined not as country or race or nation, but by the connective tissue one builds between points of meaning: connection points to land, music, people, ideas, cultures. The task is then to make “home” by building bridges between these starry points.
This sounds abstract, but as a strategy kept my theatre friends alive as people and artists for 10 years: when “home” was unlivable they worked overseas; when the regime fell they brought their international friends to visit. They refused to be as small as the degraded and shrunken politics of their country would have them be, and defined themselves as both Serbs and more than Serbs, human beings and artists with loyalties beyond their State.
How can I apply this way of mapping? By ways despised in the current climate in Australia; through art, conversation, imagination and trying to strengthen community. By refusing to recognize the borders of the nation state as the borders of my and others’ world.
For instance: I am writing a musical set in a refugee camp. Much of it takes place in the Australian desert. I hope I can get it produced in Australia as well as the US and that the music will be so seductive that even people who hate its politics will tap their feet.
I also visit the International Institute in Providence, RI USA, twice a week helping on a project where recent immigrants are learning English and writing a script together. I’m organizing a visit for my Serbian friends to Providence, where we will do a theatre project bringing African-American, student, and local arts communities together. Dijana Milosevic will lecture to our community on “The Role of the Artist in Wartime”.
These are only small things but they are attempts to redraw the map. Every day with every action, we vote for the world we believe in, which- like the notion of a country- is both imaginary and real.
***
Kerry Mills
Just heard you on LNL and HAD to let you know that as you were speaking about the brain drain I was on the ‘net searching for post-doctoral positions in Europe. My partner and I are both finishing PhDs in medical research at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne – one of the most successful research institutes in Australia.
I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet, but Australia has just lost us. This is important because training a PhD student in medical research costs about $100,000/year in consumables etc. I’m in my 4th year so my $400,000 worth of publicly-funded training is about to be exported to Germany/Switzerland. Many scientists like us find it impossible to come BACK because there are no jobs.
Each year the NHMRC funds 15 – yes, 15 new postdocs. Friends of mine who want to stay here and who have been very successful can’t get a fellowship and will be on the dole within months. We have spent an average of 8 years training at university and therefore have a lot of drive and passion for our work. It is depressing beyond belief that those people who may in the future save or improve the lives of “ordinary” Australians are not valued at ALL by them. Certainly not by the federal government.
So, we’re off to Europe. There are plenty of fellowships there, and science and scientists are valued. Roll on the brain drain…
***
Dr Gary Williams, educational technologist, in Mundaring, Western Australia
I heard you on Late Night Live saying you thought the number of people leaving OZ may now increase. Thought it was time to send you my brief story as it describes my own journey through electoral indecision, then apathy, and finally a decision to leave Australia, again.
Excuse the number system – as a scientist I just have to be ordered!
1) Age 35 (in four days in fact – the tragedy of the middle 30s). Australian Citizen – whatever that means.
2) Had no great love of Australia (even though been here since 77) until my first job after studies. At Charles Sturt University in Albury, NSW discovered the beauty of our land.
3) 1999-2000 over in Hong Kong, working for one of their Universities. Decided to return as I was missing Australia and my parents. Also, makes a nice change to not actually see the air you are breathing!
4) This year (2001, until March 2002) working as a fulltime consultant with the HK university. Doing what I was doing while in HK, but fortunately once I explained why I had to head back to Oz we reached an agreement where I work from Perth, and my staff work over there. I project manage and develop distance education materials (Internet-based as well as paper-based, also called flexible learning). So, I’m working at a distance on distance education materials.
5) Since returning to Oz have been tracking the Higher Ed jobs in The Oz – as my intention was to work in Oz from 2002 onwards. Fortunately lots of possibilities in my field of work. Been keeping copies of all the possible jobs.
6) Never voted in any election. I am not registered to vote. A deliberate decision – decided I would vote when it was voluntary.
7) Due to the mid-30s crisis I decided 4 months ago to enrol to vote. First, rang the Electoral Office to make sure I was not going to face back-dated fines. I would not. So, had the forms sent out to me.
8) Two months of glancing at the forms as they sit in my office. Trying to work out if I wanted to enrol.
9) Tampa incident. Liberal reaction as expected. Labour reaction tragic – couldn’t (and cannot) believe it. Read the newspapers and listened to the radio for next month. Growing more and more despondent with the public trend.
10) Decided not to enrol. Basically, just lost that part of me that considered this was a nation I was now ready to fully commit to.
11) Election night – result close to my prediction. Can’t see things changing. Can’t see the parties – and more importantly – the people changing. Fear for the ethical future of Australia.
12) Come March 2002 I’ll now be travelling around the world for about three months. This will also be an opportunity to evaluate overseas job opportunities. I have skills and experience I know Aust can use. But, to stay in a country I need to feel that the nation is at least trending towards a civil society. Can’t see that here.
13) Conclusion: Feelings – disappointment and sadness. Sadness knowing that soon I will not be waking-up to the sounds of the Australian bush. But, a sense of expectation as I seek out a nation I can feel a part of.
14) Suggestion: Keep commentating on LNL – as I’ll be listening in through the Web overseas.
***
Kay Murphey
Just reading your article on the election loss and your worries about a brain drain of progressive thinkers….My question is “Where would they go?” Certainly not the US.
During my last visit to the US (visiting relatives in Dallas, Texas) I could not find any “left wing” commentary (my favourite kind) in the papers or on the TV. I spoke with a friend saying “Where are all the liberal minded people?” and her reply was that they had all retreated to the Pacific Northwest and were looking after themselves and local issues. It would seem so, as the conservatives and the more conservatives seem to be running the country (and the world).
I left the US when Ronald Reagan won a landslide re-election. I couldn’t escape the fact that everyone knew what they were voting for (we had seen him in action for 4 years) and they really liked it and wanted him back in record numbers. I thought I didn’t fit in there anymore and left to travel the world and eventually settled in Australia.
After Saturday, I do wonder where I could bolt to now. Very depressing.
***
Dell Horey
I was overseas for most of the campaign – and yes we did check out jobs in the UK while we were there, just in case. Nevertheless, I don’t think we will go – well maybe for a short time if it gets all too much. I can’t just give Australia up to the likes of Howard without some sort of fight.
Part of the problem is that too many of us have been prepared to sit back and leave it to the politicians to determine Australia’s future – then we can blame them when it all goes wrong. I personally don’t think the Greens are the answer, because they are less likely to straddle the competing interests in the community that Labor has had problems with.
Labor needs to articulate its basic beliefs and work out what Labor supporters have in common. The ALP may have come out of the union movement but it has attracted more than “the workers” for some time and this could be part of the problem for it. Previous Labor policies not only changed the nature of Australian society but also the nature and expectations of its “natural” support base. Labor policies enabled many families to have children university educated for the first time. This has led to profound changes in society, and in experiences and expectations of Labor supporters.
I once heard it said that Howard embodied the “old Australia” and while Keating was focussed on taking us to the future, so it was not surprising that the old guard would fight to keep us where they felt safe, with people just like them.
The trouble is that many of us believed that battle was over but we need to discuss what sort of Australia we want. I liked it when people of different cultural backgrounds felt safe in Australia. I find it incredibly disturbing that is no longer so. I want to have an Australia that welcomes cultural diversity.
THE BRIGHT SIDE
James Gifford
On election night I was as depressed as anyone, and cringed at JH’s victory speech with all that motherhood cliched garbage. Then I started to think about how lucky we are despite my view that we would have been even better off under a Beazley government.
1. The Howard government is the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. They are collecting more tax as a proportion of GDP that when they came to power. Sure, some of it is being given back to the wrong people (30% private health rebate) but at least they’re collecting it. Imagine how hard it would be for Labor to increase taxes had Howard seriously undermined our tax base as is the inclination of many on his side of politics.
2. The poor aren’t getting poorer – thanks to Bob Hawke and his family payments, the poor have done OK over the last 20 years. Sure, they could and should get a better deal and have more opportunities but it’s not too bad.
3. The people on the Tampa and other boats will probably end up in a developed country such as Australia and may end up being no worse off than had they been thrown in Woomera Detention Centre for 2 years under the management of that evil American private prison company.
4. John Howard will, most probably, make way for Costello during this term and the republic, reconciliation and international engagement will be back on the agenda. One Nation and race politics will be dead.
5. John Howard will try to mitigate the damage he did during the election. He knows it has caused us damage internationally and he does care about how history sees him. He won’t reverse the border protection policy but I think we’re at rock bottom and things can only get better from here.
6. The Greens and the Dems will have the balance of power in the Senate and Howard is unlikely to be able to do anything much in this term.
7. We should have the first female deputy leader of the Labor party (and if she performs well, hopefully the first female leader)
8. The Greens did really well and they now get federal funding, Bob got back in and he rocks.
We are relative creatures, always comparing what is, with what could have been. The grass is always greener. Sometimes we have to look at how lucky we are and have some sort of objective reality-check. Get over John Howard’s victory. Sure, reflect on it but then go to work to change things.
It can be better, but remember that it’s not too bad. The fact that Margo, Phillip and Secco still have jobs gives me faith that the bad guys don’t completely run the show!
A SATIRE OF US BLEEDING HEARTS
Heavy heart
By Abraham Kennedy
I am so heartbroken about what happened in this election that I am determined to make a difference and make this place a decent country again. Or go overseas to live. At least there’s no Australians there. Or not many, and generally not in the better hotels.
Yes, Australia is such a great country, or it could be. If we could just get rid of that lot who voted Coalition. You know the majority. If it wasn’t for them, boy would this be a great place. Bloody Australians; they’re so racist. They just speak in these massive generalisations about people, and put them down and call them names and make fun of them. All Australians do that. The idiots. Sometimes they’re dumber than New Zealanders.
And talk about politically ignorant! Australians never talk about politics in public. You never go to a cafe and hear someone just stand up and recite the Magna Carta or Edmund Burke’s address to the electors of Bristol. That sort of thing happens all the time in Europe. And parts of Africa. In Australia, no-one ever quotes Habermas or Adam Smith or Hobbes or John Stuart Mill at the Pizza Hut.
All Australians are interested in are selfish things like their standard of living and having a job and a future for their children. And sport of course. Bloody sport! Australia is the only country in the world that cares about sport. That million people that flooded onto the streets of Paris after the last Soccer World Cup were actually just coming out of a conference on post-structuralism. The French really respect their intellectuals, especially the ones who support communist dictatorships. I wish we were more like that.
Australians think democracy is all about how many people vote for something, whereas in fact it’s about what you feel in your heart, and having the freedom to criticise everything, and whether you can say sorry to Aborigines while continuing to occupy the land you took from them. (I mean, it’s just impractical to give it back, but at least we could feel bad about it and give some money to ATSIC.)
Democracy isn’t about voting and debating and finding things in common – it’s about knowing who’s in and who’s out and feeling bad about just about everything that happens. That’s why we have the media..
Aboriginal policy is a good example. We don’t want to go listening to those people like Noel Pearson who just want to try and fix things up. People like him forget that it’s not the current problems that are the problem but the reason for the problems that is the problem. It’s about knowing who to blame. How can we honestly expect things to get better if we don’t know who to blame and we don’t go on blaming them?
And the boat people. God, I’m so ashamed. Why can’t people just come to this country when they want to and live here with us though not assimilated to us or in the Eastern suburbs but sort of like us, but better cooks? No other country in the world has immigration controls, does it? (I seem to be able to go wherever I want.)
So bring em on, I say. I’m willing to go some distance West to look at them. I think it’s quite quaint and multicultural to see those women walking around a few steps behind their men, completely covered like walking letterboxes. It’s not really intolerant or sexist, is it? It’s just ethnic. Australians really have to learn to tell the difference.
Those of us who are tolerant and clear-thinking have a lot of work to do in the wake of this election.
We need to be a knowledge nation and educate people how to think. There really is a need for those of us who do know the right things to think to take pity on the ignoramuses who don’t and really correct them when they are wrong. People will only learn if their errors are pointed out to them.
So we need to fill as many major newspapers as we can with articles saying how stupid Australians are and simply belittle them into having better views and values. The more often we tell ordinary Australians that they’re wrong, and the more harshly we point out their failings, the quicker they are likely to learn the error of their ways. It’s just so obvious.
And we really need to get back to basics: the republic, a new flag, and kowtowing to Asian dictators. How do we expect to be secure in our region unless we agree completely with everything said by whomever happens to be in power? Isn’t it obvious that the suppression of human rights in our nearest neighbours is the best guarantee of own freedoms?
And how can we have any respect for ourselves while we continue to have another country’s Queen as our head of state and their flag in the corner of ours? We don’t want to be British, do we? (Though London is great, and the Royal garden party this year was terrific.)
Really, the only thing wrong with Australia is Australians. Except me. And my friends. If only everyone could be more like all of us this country could really be a tolerant, forward-looking place, and someone genuinely nice to come to during the European winter. We owe ourselves that. We deserve it.
Tim Dunlop is happy to pass on comments to Abraham via tinota@primus.com.au
HOWARD’S SECRET
Lee Borkman in Menangle, NSW
“Plausible Deniability”. That’s the secret. It takes fine political judgement to encourage all of the electorate’s ingrained racist attitudes, while still being able to claim that your policies and rhetoric are not racist.
John Howard has near-perfect political judgement. Without plausible deniability, people would not feel at liberty to vote for him. Australians would not vote for a politician who was openly racist. The trick is to walk like a racist, but talk like a patriot.
After all, when he pokes out his trembling bottom lip like that, how could any right-thinking Australian doubt his sincerity? John loves humanity, John’s heart goes out to the suffering, but John can’t allow his love to interfere with his duty.
By hammering that image of himself, John allows Australians to vote for him. After all, you have to leave an escape route for people’s consciences.
`ELITE’
C Crowther
It’s just plain rubbish to say that targeting racism is elitist, a la Miranda Devine and Paddy M and Angela Shanahan in today’s Australian: “You don’t know what its like to live in the suburbs which are the coalface of multiculturalism”. Well maybe that’s true. Maybe this liberal in southern Brisbane is no different to the northern liberals in the US who are all for civil rights but have no black neighbours.
But since when did the Right wing commentariat become such relativists? On every other subject, they assure us all that “right is right and wrong is wrong” and that cultural relativism is bunk from the elites. But not when it comes to race. Suddenly, its OK to be a bigot, so long as you do it in Parramatta?
Its the height of hypocrisy for the same people who argue that culture and circumstances shouldn’t be taken into account by a Judge when someone steals bread outside Darwin to then argue it should be used to excuse bigotry in Campbelltown.
If ever there was an absolute wrong in this world, its racism. If you’re hurting in Western Sydney, you’ll still hurt after you blame the Vietnamese or the Afghans. That’s an argument that was held and won decades ago. Perhaps it’s now time we won it again.
***
Bruce Tabor
Like you and many of your readers I have been brooding over the re-election of our local member – John Howard. I had hoped that the majority of Australians would see reason – that it is not OK to exploit racism and xenophobia to win – and reject his government’s bid for a third term.
When the Tampa crisis broke I had no idea it would influence the election result. When Howard, Reith and Ruddock were found to be lying about the children being thrown overboard I assumed it would be a major disaster for their re-election. I was wrong on all counts.
The reason I was wrong is that I have a socially progressive outlook. I assumed that truth, equity, tolerance, justice, morality and principles matter to most Australians. I was wrong, or at least wrong in my understanding of what these mean to most Australians.
John Howard himself spent 13 years in opposition “searching for answers” to defeat Labor. Labor had become strong because it was able to marry two major demographic groups in our society that together constitute the majority: their traditional blue collar support base and the socially progressive classes.
Howard’s answer was that he had to divide Labor’s support base. His economic rationalist agenda was inimical to the socially progressive classes, so he had to target the “battlers”. Labor pursued policies that the battlers were deeply uncomfortable with, such as: multiculturalism, high immigration, aboriginal reconciliation, engagement with Asia, and some forms of environmentalism.
Labor had pursued these with enthusiasm because its own leaders were generally socially progressives, rather than battlers. Labor’s last Prime Minister, Paul Keating was the darling of the socially progressives. The man with the big picture of how Australian society ought to be. The battlers hated him.
Howard’s solution to beating Paul Keating was simple: he wasn’t Paul Keating. Oh, and he would keep Medicare, the one thing battlers couldn’t live without. His solution to beating Labor since then has been utterly practical, cynical and devoid of principle: drive a wedge between the battlers and the social progressives.
In the 2001 election that wedge was not so much keeping out the refugees, but the tacit appeal to the battlers’ economic fears, xenophobia and outright racism.
Labor had a choice. It could side with the socially progressives – a fickle group that is difficult to please under any circumstances – or it could try and protect its blue-collar base. (I think you will find social progressives are divided on how to deal with the refugee crisis – I certainly disagree with your views, for example.)
Siding with the socially progressives would have decimated Labor – it could even have given the Coalition outright control of the Senate. Siding with its blue-collar base would minimise the loss of battlers to Howard, and the socially progressives would generally preference Labor ahead of the Coalition anyway.
In my view Beazley chose correctly for the long-term future of both the Labor Party and Australia. Better for the nation to retain an effective force in politics than to be slaughtered on your principles. To his credit he did not employ the tacit xenophobia of his opponents. I think he deserves more credit than you give him.
As for searching for answers to John Howard, I don’t know. Labor can either find a way to unite its two warring tribes, it can try and steal some of the Coalition’s demographics (e.g. country people, which it tried), or it can wait for the Coalition to stuff up.
Unfortunately, countering xenophobia and racism requires leadership from the government. I doubt it can be done effectively from opposition. My biggest concern is that now the race card has been played so successfully to win an election, we will see it appearing more and more in the future. Ughhh!
David Stanford in Paddington, Sydney
What a bunch of absolute whingers many of your correspondents have been . As a child you see other kids want to pick up their bat and ball and go home. These kids were the losers, because in life if you get beaten you get better, practice harder, learn more skills then beat your opponents when you have paid your dues.
This churlish stuff is hard to swallow: ” I am going overseas forever or for a while, I am ashamed of my country or that I am paralysed and fear the future”. Grow up and do something about it. Contribute practically to the debate. Learn empathy and thus find out why fellow Australians are voting the way they are, then you might be able to convince rather then hector them (unlike Keating).
Win peoples hearts and minds. Please remember that people hate being called racist ,stupid, immoral, amoral, dumb, unfeeling or inhumane, to name a few of the epithets directed at the majority. This antagonises people and drives people further to support their conclusions.
Keating never understood this. Howard does, and he loves it when the SMH goes front page with critics smashing his viewpoints because his polls rise instantly. Pauline Hanson learned this trick of baiting the so called elites and she reached her zenith until Howard worked it out, starved her of political oxygen and cherry picked her constituency of the disaffected.
The Keating cultural agenda is dead, so what’s your alternative? I suggest third way politics of the kind being employed by Blair in the UK and Schroeder in Germany. These policies are economically conservative and socially progressive, they don’t involve union stormtroopers and they do involve wide community participation, sustainable development and environmental components.
You need consensus politicians starting from scratch that can solve problems like Northern Ireland and take a global community perspective. Get conviction politicians not career aparatchiks and clean out the old hardheads in labor like Brereton, Ferguson, McLeay, Campbell and Crean and start again, otherwise Labor will never get in.
Labor’s future lies with its thinkers and radicals – Tanner, Latham, Macklin and their like – not ex union bosses. Instead of whingeing find these people and encourage them get them elected. If you get rid of branch stacking then perhaps you might encourage quality people to give it a go so that we actually have someone with substance and ability to vote for.
You never know – small l liberals like me might vote Labor and the blue collar workers might vote Labor again like in the Hawke era.
Finally, don’t listen to a word Paul Keating says. He suffers from a Napoleon complex and is detested by a large and gowing majority. It’s a pity he rolled Bob Hawke. He ranks as sore loser of the decade and he lost Labor’s heartland.