Something is rotten in Australia

Unlike most of Australia’s media outlets, we at Crikey are not commercially conflicted, spineless, hobbled by a desire for impartiality, or the subject of special deals with the Howard Government which influence our voting recommendations to subscribers ahead of tomorrow’s vital national election.

We believe it is in the national interest for Australians to put an energetic and intelligent social democrat such as Mark Latham in The Lodge.

Governments decay over time. It happened to Fraser, it happened to Kennett, it happened to Hawke and Keating and it is happening to John Howard’s government.

After the profligacy and ill-discipline of Whitlam and the do-nothing years of Fraserism, the first five years of the Hawke Government were arguably the finest in Australian history. However, much of the good work was undone in the fiscal disasters of the last years under Paul Keating. We would all have been better off if Labor had not won a fourth term in 1990.

And so it is with John Howard, the oldest Prime Minister ever to seek re-election in Australian history. The Prime Minister served Australia reasonably well in his first two terms until the tail-end of 2000 when he embarked on an unseemly spending spree which, when coupled with his divisive policies on refugees, were enough to win him an undeserved third term.

The Howard years could have been so good. But, instead, history will remember them for only a handful of notable reforms:

  • the waterfront
  • industrial relations
  • and the GST package

The booming economy is a false dawn with a policy-induced housing bubble and a debt-funded consumer binge leaving no great legacy for future generations.

The Howard years have coincided with the age of the Internet, yet we have not produced an IT company of any note. Our business sector has become an amalgam of gouging cartels, a service sector oligopoly which has delivered for shareholders but not for the nation.

For the first time in history, we have fallen below one per cent of world exports and those exports remain dominated by primary products and minerals.

Just as Bob Hawke benefited from the drought breaking, the Howard Government has taken credit for things over which it has no control, primarily low global interest rates and the our best terms of trades in many years thanks to the boom in China.

The national economy has grown from $500 billion to $800 million since 1996 but too much of this relates to the property bubble and unsustainable debt funded consumer spending.

After this unprecedented election spending spree, the Howard Government’s claims of fiscal responsibility ring like a death rattle. Unfunded public sector superannuation has blown out from $75 billion to $90 billion and the Commonwealth Government still has a net worth of negative $36 billion.

The Reserve Bank has been raided for $18 billion in dividends and now our foreign reserves are lower than most comparable countries in the region.

A unique opportunity has been squandered to tackle Australia’s punitive personal income tax rates as John Howard abandoned his pretensions for serious economic reform and smaller government.

Whilst the economic record is superficially good, sadly there are now a long list of negatives that will sully how history treats the Howard years.

Standards in government is the most obvious. Whether it is demonizing refugees, telling blatant untruths or even running ridiculous scare campaigns over interest rates, John Howard has shown himself to be a man of few principles who will do or say anything to stay in power.

When the rot starts at the top, the diminishing standards spread throughout the entire government.

It now seems standard practice for retiring Howard Government Ministers to try and cash in from their knowledge. Look no further than Peter Reith, Michael Wooldridge and Richard Alston. Having trashed his ministerial code of conduct, it would not surprise if John Howard retired from Parliament and took a paid consultancy with Halliburton.

John Howard used to be a conviction politician who believed in truth in government, lower taxes and small government.

Now he’s just another ruthless pragmatist enjoying the spoils of power whilst his government run out of puff.

The trouble with Latham

Mark Latham has campaigned well, but not all his policies are commendable. Medicare Gold is underfunded and impractical in the medium to longer term, the $800 million bribe to red-necked tree-loppers was grossly excessive and the abolition of AWAs was a sop to the union puppeteers who still have way too much influence in the ALP.

Mark Latham has some interesting ideas – but the worry was that he wouldn’t be able to shift the lefty troglodytes in his party.

His modest tax and family policy demonstrated that he was able to defeat the entitlement mentality in the ALP. The mantra of hard work, incentive, productivity and labour market participation are at the heart of his appeal.

A hungry Labor leader who did it tough in his younger years and personally detests waste and mismanagement is always an encouraging sign given the constant examples of Labor profligacy that are now on display in NSW and, to a lesser extent, Victoria.

Latham has clearly out-campaigned his opponent and a victory tomorrow would give him tremendous authority in any new Labor administration.

But the question remains whether he can take his party with him.

A formal apology to the Stolen Generation, the release of women and children from behind barbed wire and the push for an Australian Republic would also be welcome symbolic gestures of genuine reconciliation by a mature nation truly comfortable with its place in our region and the world.

Living with wall-to-wall Labor Government is naturally a risk, but could also prove a unique opportunity. Petty buck-passing and blame shifting have for too long characterized Australia’s antiquated system of federal-state relations.

We accept Mark Latham is a work in progress: that’s why we have a strong Senate to act as a house of review. With that in mind, the decline of the Democrats is sad, and we urge voters to strongly consider the Democrats in preference to the Greens – who seem not to understand the language of political compromise – in the Senate.

Mark Latham didn’t mention the war in his Press Club address on Wednesday. But we will: the way John Howard took us sneakily into war without declaring his intentions boldly up front characterises his modus operandi as Prime Minister.

Never mind the missing WMD’s fiasco, Howard wasn’t straight with the people from day one on War in Iraq, and for this alone he stands discredited. Saddam Hussein needed to be removed. But a nation first needed to be fully informed.

Howard’s unblinking support of the increasingly rudderless US policy in Iraq has made Australia a less safe place. Bob Hawke could hardly have been accused of being anti-American, but he was able to stand up to the excesses of the Reagan administration and give Australia a more independent foreign policy voice. Howard has lived up to his Deputy Sheriff tag and it’s remarkable that no-one has seriously raised the question during this campaign of how Australia would react if Bush is dumped – a real possibility.

Howard claims that his government is “respected” in the Asia Pacific region. This is nonsense; anyone who has spent time in Asia knows that Asian leaders distrust Howard and his government and that they only give them token respect because they know they have the ear of the Bush Administration.

In particular, there is a need for serious industrial engagement with the growing economic superpowers of China and India, rather than the current “we’ll sell you the farm and the minerals” approach that conservative governments have always followed.

Stability or stagnation?

No doubt many voters are not persuaded by Latham’s “change before it’s too late” mesage. They sense that Australian democracy is robust institution, and three more years of Howard can hardly do lasting damage (although the 20th century should have taught us not to overestimate the strength of democracy).

One great Australian institution, however, that may not survive the re-election of the Howard government, is the Liberal Party itself.

Sickly for many years, under Howard it has become almost comatose. Its members have deserted, dissent has died out, and its state divisions have degenerated into factional warfare over diminishing spoils.

A Howard victory tomorrow would set the seal on his picture of what the Liberal Party should be: a party hostile to any genuine liberal thought, undemocratic in its principles and its processes, loyally supporting whatever policy twists the Leader (always with a capital “L” now – remind you of anything?) deems necessary to secure his re-election.

The Fraser and Howard governments both frittered away opportunities to change the nation for the better, but all the signs are that Latham would be a genuine reformer.

We believe Australia deserves fresh ideas on both sides of politics. It’s time for John and Janette Howard to pack their bags and enjoy a well deserved retirement at their holiday shack in Hawks Nest. Time for a new generation of leaders to take us forward.

We like the idea of Mark Latham vs Peter Costello. Both have untapped potential, and deserve to be removed from the political shackles that have held them back – albeit with a strong Senate and a robust media to hold them accountable.

We believe that overwhelmingly it’s time for change. Not change for change’s sake. Change for the nation’s sake.

*Responsibility for election comment taken by the Publisher, Stephen Mayne