Nationalism is a central component of the ideological glue that holds capitalist society together, and just about all capitalist governments are happy to beat a nationalist drum. However the Howard government has been particularly noted for its efforts in this regard, not least in its championing of "Australian values". They've been flogging the term for a decade but in recent months there's been a bit of a "values" frenzy, with the added spectacle of Labor making an ill-conceived attempt to compete in the "values" stakes.
Far from reflecting the plain, common-sense views of ordinary Australians as they like to present themselves, PM John Howard and his team have aggressively sought to impose their version of values onto the populace. Cultural institutions and grant bodies have been stacked with right-wing cronies; cash-starved schools are forced to fly the flag, nail up a list of values and employ chaplains rather than secular counsellors; school and university curricula are criticised and research grants ideologically judged.
Values can seemingly be trotted out to justify anything, to an extent that recently has become a bit ridiculous. In September extra troops were sent to Iraq and shiny new Abrams tanks purchased from the US under the slogan "protecting our people, interests and values" (with some speculation that this was a road test for an election slogan). The threat to our values seems so serious that heavy-duty firepower as well as ideological conformity is needed.
The nature of the supposed threat is evident in the regular refrain of recent years that Australian people of Islamic background are lacking in "Australian values". Howard used the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks to accuse "a section of the Islamic population" of having "values and attitudes hostile to Australia's interests". Several days later the government announced new citizenship criteria that would extend the wait for residents to gain citizenship and include tests on English and, of course, values.
Some Labor figures have tentatively criticised all this rubbish but their bumbling leader (as we go to press anyway) Kim Beazley opted once again to go shoulder to shoulder with Howard on a nationalistic issue. On September 11 he pre-empted the expected new citizenship tests by declaring that a condition of entry for every visitor to Australia, including tourists, should be a pledge to respect "Australian values", a stance that was widely ridiculed until it died.
In his speech at the November 30 national day of action against Work Choices, Beazley repeated a theme he has also been pushing for some months, that the alternative to the Howard government's anti-worker laws is an industrial relations system that reflects the "Australian values" of a "fair go" and a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work". Compared to his gaffes on visas this intervention into the values debate has been largely ignored, which should probably tell him something.
Some readers might be sceptical of the conservatives' use of values as a blunt weapon but sympathetic to the idea that Australian history has forged some common values, including positive ones originating in struggles by ordinary people for progressive change. But while centuries of social interaction certainly forge a common (if diverse and changeable) national culture and character, "values", to the extent that they have real meaning, are much more related to social and political divisions.
The famous laconic Australia humour can be evident both among workers defending their jobs on a picket line and in a corporate boardroom among bosses cheerfully planning to use Work Choices to screw said workers. Beazley is attempting to bridge these unbridgeable interests with his vague notion of "fairness".
A definable set of "Australian" values is a vague, and slippery, notion. Whether it's Beazley or Howard, Costello and Abott pontificating, lists of "our" values always include banal rhetoric about "fairness" and "mateship", along with whatever spin is required for current political purposes.
Howard has outlined his conception of Australian values many times without mentioning women's rights, but in the past couple of years has mentioned women's rights whenever he discusses values in relation to Islam. Beazley ties values to "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay", whereas Howard and Costello have mentioned the middle-class virtues of enterprise and private property.
The problem for Labor in all this is that setting more of the political debate in clearly nationalist terms moves it to terrain more favourable to conservatism. Values, like all national ideas, are very often directed against someone else, or easily imply this. This may be especially so if issues relating to "security" or terrorism can eclipse industrial relations.
A number of studies based on Australian Election Study data and commercial polls have suggested that the Liberals' brutal stance against asylum seekers, and Labor's acquiescence in this, both contributed to a swing against Labor in the 2001 election, as faced with a seemingly undisputed nature of a national crisis some swinging voters choose the tougher or perhaps more authentic option.
Social-democratic versions of national values are generally preferable in terms of the interests of the majority to conservatives' ones. But this debate is another indication of how the ALP is fundamentally mired in nationalist and pro-capitalist politics.
Socialists stand for values that are universal, in the sense of reflecting the interests and struggles of the great majority in whatever nation, and we give our values of solidarity, freedom and justice real programmatic content. Our activism is aimed at winning a world in which such values are dominant in whatever cultural form they are expressed. We can leave the mystifying debate over "Australian values" to the squabbling factions and ideologues that represent the boss class.