Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to make some remarks marking Mr Howard’s 10 years as Prime Minister. Holding the office of Prime Minister for a decade is definitely a noteworthy personal and political achievement, but being in power for a long time does not in itself mean that that reign has been for the good of all Australians and the future of Australia. Over the past 10 years Australia’s values and culture have both changed, and I and many others think for the worse. That change has largely been delivered without putting at risk the coalition’s hold on office, because of the success, I would argue, of propaganda. I agree that Mr Howard is a very skilled politician. He has used imagery and language to implement his conservative agenda. If you need convincing, look at the definition of propaganda in the Wikipedia encyclopaedia on the internet, which lists the techniques of propaganda as appeal to fear, oversimplification and scapegoating and using terms like ‘the common man’ and ‘virtue’. All are used in Australia successfully by the Howard government.

Or read George Lakoff’s book Don’t think of an Elephant!, which details how conservatives have employed progressive language to change the way the media report and public see the world so that they accept the conservative agenda. Think of the antithetical titles of bills and policies—‘work choices’, ‘clean coal technology’, ‘fair dismissal’ and the cleverly accusatory ‘politically correct’. There is also the appropriation of fundamental Australian values and virtues such as mateship, freedom, choice and decency. These have been given conservative definitions. Advocates, ministers and media commentators use this language so that public discourse takes place within the conservative framework and the underlying agenda goes unquestioned.

That Australians appeared satisfied that the Howard government has protected them against terrorism and interest rate rises is a measure of the success of that discourse. In both cases, the Howard government successfully used a campaign of fear. It has convinced Australians that terrorism is the biggest threat facing us in this country, despite the fact that death from smoking, driving and even climate change is a good deal likelier than being killed by terrorists. As a result, many Australians have willingly relinquished substantial rights and freedoms, something Australians would not have contemplated 10 years ago.

On the economy, while some credit can be given to the Howard government for economic growth and lower rates of unemployment, it was not done unaided. The government capitalised on the Hawke-Keating microeconomic reforms and only succeeded in early tax and IR reforms after the Democrats brought back balance and fairness to these radical agendas. But it is not all rosy. In the 10 years to September last year, average household debt rose from $43,000 to $117,000. Median city house prices blew out from an average of $159,000 in 1996 to $388,000 in September last year. Yesterday Australia’s net foreign debt exploded to a record high of $473 billion. Foreign debt is now growing at its fastest rate in Australia’s history, and the interest bill has jumped by almost 40 per cent.

For all of the Howard government’s virtuous values, a recent Saulwick poll found that we have become a meaner society. In just 10 years Australia has become less compassionate, democratic and tolerant of others and instead more divided, fearful, controlling and materialistic. Mr Howard has mastered the art of dog whistling. He has given ministers and backbenchers permission to indulge their biases and prejudices without ever quite saying or revealing his position on those views. Loose-lipped backbenchers were not chastised for insensitive attacks on Muslim Australians. Nor were Pauline Hanson’s redneck values found wanting or reparations made for Senator Heffernan’s false and malicious accusations against Justice Kirby, for example. On the shameful detention of Cornelia Rau, who is still, as we heard this week, to be compensated, ‘children overboard’ and an unwarranted attack on Iraq, Mr Howard has scapegoated public servants and protected ministers from taking responsibility for these disasters.

In some cases the government has trained the bureaucracy so well that they do not properly advise ministers or, if they do, they do not tell all the truth. This, in my view, is a corruption of process that goes to the heart of the AWB scandal. The Howard government’s fingerprints may not be all over the AWB’s feather nesting of Saddam Hussein, but its failure to investigate makes it culpable nonetheless. The failure to ask about Abu Ghraib torture, weapons of mass destruction, depleted uranium or Iraqi civilian deaths all point to selective intelligence gathering and hypocrisy on the part of the government. The government has been able to get away with the lines ‘to the best of my knowledge’ or ‘I didn’t know because nobody informed me’ without facing proper open and transparent scrutiny. Taxpayers’ money has been used to fund government advertising that blatantly promotes coalition party policy. That may not be illegal, but it is certainly immoral.

In the early years Mr Howard provided leadership on gun control, pumped Telstra sale funds into repairing the land and intervened in East Timor. With the assistance of the Democrats, the government brought in strong federal environment laws, transport emission controls, greenhouse abatement spending and fair, moderate IR and tax reform. But there is no new vision emerging that looks anything like these reforms. Instead, Mr Howard’s focus is on conservative morals, the economy and terror. I do not think there is much on the horizon to build on for all Australians. The recent copycatting of reactionary American social and foreign policy has left little room for compassionate, inclusive leadership or for protecting endangered species, conserving resources or tackling climate change. Climate change has now been accepted as a reality by the world’s leading politicians and scientists, yet this government has failed to urgently act in the face of overwhelming evidence and upon the presentation of achievable solutions.

Mr Howard has also failed to address Australia’s skill shortage or build the infrastructure necessary for a sound economic future. He has presided over unprecedented levels of underfunding for our universities and TAFEs. Recent talk of providing loans of up to $160,000 to students to pay for their university education is bad for people’s financial capacity to have children or buy a house. Much-needed medical places will be full fee paying. These doctors will feel no social obligation to work in rural settings, with Indigenous communities or with patients who need to be bulk-billed.

He also failed on the barbecue stopper: women still do not have government funded paid maternity leave or access to affordable child care and secure, flexible, suitable work. The government’s industrial relations and Welfare to Work reforms will have a detrimental impact on women and their ability to balance work and family. Mr Howard’s new IR system will lower wages and conditions. It will further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and make it difficult for many people to balance work and family.

These last 10 years have seen the destruction of reconciliation and the decay of multiculturalism to a shadow of its former self. Mr Howard has taken away small gains made by Indigenous Australians on land rights, abolished their representative body and done little to improve their economic status or prospects for a longer, healthier life. He has failed families on the care for those with disabilities, public education, mental health and dental services, deterring drug use and educating the young about responsible sex. The list goes on.

Australians need to reject this economic rationalist, strict ‘father knows best’ style government and, I think, start questioning the underlying values of the conservative agenda that has been put forward. Australians need to look beyond the words and the marketing machine. It is important that we are not conned for another 10 years.