We’ve had a string of monkeys, but finally the organ grinder appears. Alexander Downer has a deplorable piece in today’s Oz, attacking John Curtin yet again. Downer quotes Wurth’s piece from last week, managing to omit Wurth’s observation that Menzies was the worst appeaser of all.
It’s pretty unedifying stuff, but if Downer wants to compare personal and historical records, it certainly won’t be to the advantage of Menzies or the Liberal Party and its predecessors.
Rather than dive into this yet, let’s look at the current debate. Downer is promoting the credentials of the Liberals as the war party, against Labor’s pacifism. Right now, we have a disastrous war in Iraq, which has immeasurably strengthened the forces of global terrorism, while dividing and weakening the democratic world, and leading to the commission of crimes including torture and murder on a large scale by those who are supposed to be defending civilised values. On the horizon, we’re promised new wars with Iran, Syria and, if you listen to the government’s most vociferous supporters, the entire Islamic world. Pacifism may not always be the answer, as John Curtin recognised, but it’s greatly preferable to the warmongers who are in charge today.
John Quiggin 
Hi Kanga,
You wrote :
A completely obvious question that seemed to have escaped most journalists and many environmental organisations at the time. As I wrote, it would have only cost the Australian community fraction of what we have had to pay otherwise, for example through the market driven degradation of our telephone network, and for increased telephone line rentals.
You have explained very well some of the reasons why the majority of Australians have tolerated, for at least the past 30 years, such abysmal standards of Government.
You wrote :
Virtually every political party in Australia from the far right to the far left is either completely corrupt or, at best, else deeply flawed, so it would be hard to accomplish anything worthwhile by joining any one of them. If a decent political party capable of rising to meet all the social and environmental threats posed to our society existed, I would join it today and devote almost every living breathing moment of my life to it. In the meantime, I will do the best I can by contributing to web sites such as these, writing letter to editors, ringing talk back radio, participating in activist groups etc.
You wrote :
We enjoy very little sovereignty in this country at at any level, community, local government, state government or national government. Most decisions are taken out of the hands of ordinary people and, instead, determined, ostensibly by what the neo-liberal economists say are good for the economy, but, in reality only serve the interests of parasitic elites and Transnational Corporations. Examples include the privatisation of telstra consistently opposed by majorities of around 75%, the privatisation of the Snowy Hydro scheme, the Privatisation of Medibank Private opposed by 65% according to one poll, the destruction of Brisbane communities in order to build the insane North South Bypass Tunnel and related projects, the destruction of the environment, including the endangered lungfish, and communities in the Mary Valley in order to build Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s ludicrous Traveston Dam, the destruction of the Spit on the Gold Coast, to build a Passenger terminal, the building of the obscene Woolworths supermarket on the main street of Maleny again the wishes of 80% of that community, etc, etc.
If we were truly a democratic sovereign nation, none of this would have occurred.
You wrote :
Not sure what you mean. Mark Latham seemed aware of how vested interests inside the Labor Party helped to thwart his efforts to win Government. I have read Mark Latham’s Diaries in part, also. It is very good. Notwithstanding Mark Latham’s personal flaws and his earlier naive trust in some aspects of neo-liberal economics, it seems to me that Mark Latham was in politics for the best motives.
It’s this easy, John Howard is doing alot of damage to this country
and a vote for him next year will only come from the selfish people he created over the past 10 yrs. Please vote for anyone else just not this current coalition government and it’s puppet Senate.
I thought that War Party was in Canada.
Just run the Google search for war party:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=war+party&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Glen,
Just as well the Labor party could not possibly have done worse or we may believe that your comment was one eyed and partisan and adds little, if anything, to the debate.
Andrew, what you are saying is that the ‘choice’ presented to the Australian electorate is between this objectionable and clearly incompetent Government, on the one hand, and something even worse, on the other.
If you are correct, don’t you think that, perhaps, the Australian people deserve better? What sort of ‘democracy’ offers voters this kind of choice? Is this acceptable to you or do you feel that something needs to be done about it?
To restate my point from above, there are clearly serious flaws with the Labor Party, but it has never, so far, stooped to anywhere near the depths that this current federal government has, so the choice between the two alternatives is still important. If the next federal Labor Government fails to be a significant improvement on this one, then we should try to build better alternatives, instead of just allowing the pendulum to swing back to the Liberal Party as happened in 1996 as a result of the electorate’s understandable dissatisfaction with Paul Keating.
Glen, Good on you. I don’t think what you have said can be said often enough. Let’s make sure that Howard or whoever his successor turns out to be, is well and truly consigned to the dustbin of history in 2007.
Let’s not get fooled again.
James,
As I have made plain before I do not, nor have I ever, supported everything the Liberal Party has done in government; just as I hope you do not support everything the Labor Party has done in government. The difference seems to be that you believe that “…virtually every political party in Australia from the far right to the far left is either completely corrupt or, at best, else deeply flawed, so it would be hard to accomplish anything worthwhile by joining any one of them.”
I would be interested to see what you propose in their place – I have seen a lot of complaining and not much positive suggestion.
I am not so pessimistic. While I believe that there are problems with all of the parties I see no reason why they cannot be improved if people of goodwill join and make efforts to improve them. It will be a long, slow process with lots of dead ends and sheer hard work.
Andrew, you seem to have misunderstood the point of my last post.
My point is that you excuse your intention to vote Liberal on the basis of your claim that Labor is somehow worse, rather than by simply defending the record of the Howard Government per se.
If you think that the only possible alternative to this Government is even worse, then what sort of ‘democracy’ do you believe exists here? If such a form of democracy is acceptable to you, then you can’t be that troubled by the clear immorality of this Government in regard to, as just one of many examples, the AWB scandal and its subsequent decision to participate in the overthrow of the same regime that it had previously allowed to be bribed with $300 million.
Andrew Reynolds wrote
A democratic grass roots political party, committed to most of the principles upon which the Labor Party was founded in the nineteenth century, would be a good start.