Racism: Howard's re-election strategy
Leading right-wing columnists and journalists in the daily newspapers are debating how the government should manage growing popular discontent — without getting diverted from the path of economic deregulation.
These columnists represent more than just their personal points of view. The newspaper columns of Paul Kelly, Michelle Grattan, Ross Gittins, Laurie Oakes, Gerard Henderson and others are the public reflection of ruling class opinion.
It seems strange that there should even be such an elite debate. After all, the federal Coalition government's economic reform agenda was designed for the benefit of the super-wealthy owners of Australian business, and there is basic consensus between the Coalition, Labor and the Democrats that the essential thrust of this agenda should remain.
But while the corporate rulers are generally happy with the government and Prime Minister John Howard for getting the GST and business tax cuts through parliament, they have an insatiable appetite for greater wealth and, therefore, more economic "reform".
Now they're getting worried that Howard won't be able to implement the rest of this agenda, because he is not selling the "benefits" of economic "reform" and instead is getting sidetracked into disputes over social issues.
Populism
The Australian's international editor and resident mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch, Paul Kelly, made a sharp intervention into this debate on February 19, criticising Howard for being poll-driven and populist. He wrote, "We enjoy our strongest economic expansion of the century ... Yet any visitor touched by the media-driven political debate in the past few weeks would conclude only that Australia is in the depths of a national crisis."
Kelly yearns for the Coalition or the Labor Party to adopt aspects of the former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating's style. Keating actively campaigned for economic rationalism and pushed symbolic projects of national unity, such as a republic and reconciliation.
But Kelly neglected to mention what happened to Keating. Initially Keating won public acceptance for the view that a little sacrifice now would be rewarded with a trickle down of wealth and jobs later. But after 13 years of sacrifice, and with no reward in sight, that story wore thin and the Labor government was tossed out of office.
The same syndrome lay behind the phenomenal support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in the 1998 federal election. One Nation drew voters away from Labor as well as the Liberals and Nationals.
Both Howard and Labor leader Kim Beazley are acutely aware of this, and hence they can't afford to talk up the "benefits" of economic reform and sacrifice without feigning concern for the people who have been hurt by these policies.
But Kelly's criticisms found an echo in an Australian Financial Review survey of CEOs published on April 5.
Rio Tinto's managing director Barry Cusack argued "There's no agreement about our long-term objectives or about how we should balance the competing business, social, environmental or labour needs to get there".
David Buckingham, executive director of the Business Council of Australia, said "the political policy-making process is now driven by a sense of the constraints about what the community will tolerate and we will pay a heavy price if that mind set is allowed to prevail."
Richard Hein, chairperson of P&O was worried that the difficulties of getting things through the Senate "coupled with compulsory voting ... all drive the debate towards populist issues."
Howard's response was simple: "with great respect to business, they don't have the problem of re-election."
The 'wedge'
Since its election in 1996, the Howard government has used a political strategy imported from the United States, known as "wedge politics".
Wedge politics is designed to whip up resentment by whites against blacks, men against women and workers against welfare recipients, based on the argument that Aborigines, migrants, women and welfare recipients get special privileges not available to other working people.
Historically, the Liberal, National and Labor parties have frequently resorted to fuelling crude racist prejudices against Aborigines and Asian migrants. Wedge politics is a modern variant on this classic divide and rule tactic.
In the hands of its modern-day architects, the US Republicans, wedge politics sought to convert, for example, a generally progressive, anti-racist sentiment into its opposite by attacking affirmative action programs designed to redress historic disadvantage. Being careful not to use crude racist language, the catchcry of the campaign was against "reverse discrimination" against whites and men.
Typically, politicians using this tactic speak in code. They use words or terms that can be defended against accusations of racism on semantic grounds, while ensuring that everyone knows exactly what they're talking about.
Some journalists, such as the Sydney Morning Herald's Michelle Grattan, dispute that Howard is using wedge politics. Instead, Grattan argues that the deeply conservative Howard just "doesn't understand" Aboriginal issues.
Many who oppose the government's racist policies accuse the government of not "leading" on the issue. For example, the novelist Thomas Keneally told the February 21 Australian that "To lead a nation sometimes you have to form and lead public opinion rather than react to it".
But Keneally is mistaken. Howard is not passively following public opinion on Aboriginal issues. On the contrary, Howard is actively trying to fuel racist prejudices amongst the public.
Stolen generations
There is ample evidence that this is the case, even just in the controversy about the stolen generation, let alone further back.
Howard publicly supported the Aboriginal affairs minister John Herron's Senate inquiry submission which disputed the existence of a stolen generation. The report was written in the Office of Indigenous Affairs, which is within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and was OK'd by one of the PM's top advisers.
When he did finally apologise for offence caused, the Prime Minister likened it to apologising when you interrupt somebody unreasonably. The government has not withdrawn the submission. There's now even a rumour that the report was deliberately leaked to the Daily Telegraph by Herron's office.
Since then, it has been revealed that, against the advice of the pollster, Peter Vaughan, the head of the Office of Indigenous Affairs, demanded the inclusion of inflammatory questions in a Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation-commissioned survey.
Vaughan added questions which were designed to elicit a particular response. One such question asked if people agreed with the statement, "Compared with other Australians, Aborigines get too many handouts from the government".
Andrew Coward, who worked in the Northern Territory Chief Minister's office in strategic political planning for seven years, confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald on April 8 that wedge politics is deliberately used by the Country Liberal Party government there.
Coward said that about 80% of people who would describe themselves as Labor in another state would have an anti-Aboriginal view in the Territory. Many of them would vote for the CLP in Territory elections, because the CLP could convince them that the ALP would give the rights to land and sea away to Aborigines.
Social divisions
Many CEOs and journalists, regardless of whether they think Howard is fomenting racist divisions because of his political strategy or his personal conservatism, are worried that the social divisions opened up by wedge politics may be greater than intended.
The Queensland National Party's central council vote to instruct its six federal MPs to oppose any further sell-off of Telstra illustrates that playing to rural "battlers" may indeed slow pro-business reform.
Some Liberal MPs, especially those in marginal urban seats, also fear that the mix of social conservatism and an excessive focus on rural "battlers" may alienate city voters — hence the backbench mini-revolt against Howard on mandatory sentencing.
Even worse, they fear that voters could connect the various attempts at wedge politics together — attacks on Aborigines, refugees, the unemployed, pensioners, nursing home residents and on unions — and harden anti-government sentiment, rather than divide it.
The Coalition is caught between a rock and a hard place. Electorally, its support is flagging, it got slaughtered in the Brisbane City Council in late March and polls even indicate it could lose the Western Australian elections. There's no guarantee that wedge politics will reverse this.
The only trick the government has up its sleeve is to shine the spotlight on the ALP, particularly its willingness to campaign against many government policies without ever promising to reverse them.
Some newspaper columnists such as Grattan have called for treasurer Peter Costello to replace Howard as prime minister, believing that his socially liberal views on issues such as the republic could rebuild social cohesion and thus allow the government to focus on selling its pro-rich economic policies.
However, it's unlikely that a re-run of the Keating approach would be successful, as each stage of economic restructuring causes a greater level of misery for greater number of people, thus forever recharging the batteries of people's discontent with government.
BY SUE BOLAND