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 
This is, of course, the very same Alexander Downer who ignored, or is at least unable to remember, scores of warnings from his own department about what the AWB was up to in Iraq. At least it’s of a piece with his hero Menzies’ unconcern with what the Japanese were up to in China. The man has no shame.
Onya, Prof.
“..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.”
It seems odd that the War (aka Liberal)party was founded by someone who resigned his commission with the Melbourne University Rifles at the start of World War One. I wonder how Mr Downer would explain how Menzies burgeoning career was, in the words of eddie Ward ” halted by the outbreak of WW1″.
OK, so Downer is a pathetic habitual liar who poses in fishnet stockings.
In the 1970s ferchrissake? The annexation was prior to World War II, when good old pig iron Bob was on stage.
But a vote for Beazley is a vote for exactly the same crap:
Beazley’s the ultimate appeaser: anything to not make waves with our new American overlords. What a pathetic fool.
There’s the choice. Pathetic habitual liar vs pathetic clown, both obvious tools of a foreign power.
Organ Grinder’s Monkey couldn’t recall a top secret cable from Bronwyn Moules laying out a behind-closed-doors discussion of the UN Security Council directly concerned with Australia’s business dealings with Iraq….that Monkey should criticise anyone for showing a lack of vigour in the defence of Australia’s interests is simply breathtaking in its arrogance.
Stuart Bowen, the US special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction said in his report yesterday – “Corruption is another form of insurgency in Iraq. This second insurgency can be defeated only through the development of democratic values and systems, especially the evolution of effective anti-corruption institutions in Iraq.”
Organ Grinder’s monkey and the Chief Organist by this criteria are guilty of not only appeasing a dictator with massive corruption and theft from the Iraqi people but undermining the very future of the country they say they have helped to “liberate”.
What is worse is the way that the Australian has become a newspaper that publishes lengthy pieces like the Downer diatribe as if it is balanced.
Does he remember anything? – such as Menzies selling materials to the Japanese that came back to kill our soldiers in the form of bullets. Or has he forgotten because it is too close to the fact that he forgot to stop kickbacks to Iraq that could buy bullets?
Does anyone actually take any notice of Dolly.
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding embedded in the phrase “pacifism may not always be the answer”. A genuine pacifist ipso facto believes that his approach is always the answer. That sort of thing happens to be wrong, but someone who sincerely believes that pacifism may be applied selectively is deceiving himself as much as someone who thinks that he is a Christian but only accepts Christ as a great teacher (by which I mean, deceiving himself that he is a Christian, not ipso facto deceiving himself about the teachings). Someone who applies pacifist policies selectively is a syncretist in these matters, not a pacifist at all.
In this post-1939 era it’s much harder to understand that ideal of pacifism, and the term may sometimes be applied merely to somebody who prefers peace or prefers non-violent methods (which is to say, fraud before force – which, Indians please note, doesn’t make the practitioners great of soul). G.K.Chesterton wrote a very insightful essay on pacifism before he died in 1936, i.e. it had to have been written with insight rather than hindsight.
Of course, with politicians, it’s far more likely that one might present himself as a pacifist but respond to changing circumstances by tactical trimming, a hypocrite even if he doesn’t face up to it. If you are examining the soundness of Curtin’s policies at different times you are making a very different assessment than if assessing him as a pacifist or as an appeaser. Most likely he was neither except from time to time as politically convenient in a tactical sense, but rather a trimmer like the usual breed.
“This has been the pattern of Labor leaders since World War I.”
Just a nit-picking point, but wasn’t Billy Hughes – a foundation member of the Liberal Party – the Labor leader at the outbreak of World War I? Highes was no pacifist!
No..Bob Schlong …your “nit-picking point” is sadly , absolutely wrong.!.The P.M in power in August 1914 when war was declared ,was a conservative,Cook.
There was an election campaign in progress(the first double dissolution !),which the ALP won a month later.and Andrew Fisher became P.M with majorities in each house.
Hughes was in fact Deputy P.M.,and became P.M. a year later when Fisher resigned on grounds of poor health
Hughes was a warmonger of Blairite/Bushist proportions ,and went to the UK and was thoroughly turned about by the British Government,and would have sent every able bodied man in Australia to the battlefields of Europe,had the Labor left not resisted and led and won , two amazing campaigns against Hughes and Conscription. In a nation of only 4 million .the First world war took 60,000 young mens lives…and left 300,000 wounded….a bigger proportion than the US lost.. and .please any more “nit-picking points”.. try to base them on the facts!!!or a little research before rushing into print .
Sadly as a South Australian (albeit living in New York) he gives us such a bad reputation.
He will be noted for the following:
1. A war based on a lie
2. AWB and the irony of paying bribes to Saddam (dont mention the war!)
3. A disgraceful treatment of refugees
4. Along with Nick Minchin a targeted campain to rid the SA liberals of moderates.
I look forward to history’s judgement on this piece of work.
Dolly demonstrates that he has as good a grip on history as he has on his…
…portfolio!
SJ wrote :
This kind of thinking has only helps to reinforce the current paralysis and despair in the Australian electorate. It helped Howard to be re-elected in the past and may well help to get Howard re-elected in 2007 with unthinkably worse further consequences for democracy, accountability, government probity, the environment, society and the economy.
In fact, the choice between Labor and Liberal is very important. We could talk all day about the serious deficiencies of Kim Beazley and the Federal Labor Party. However, at the moment, there is no other path out of the awful political rut that we have found oursleves in since at least 1996 , except by removing this Government and electing Labor.
This doesn’t mean that we need place any great hopes in a future Labor government, but, at least, we stand a reasonable chance of having the objectionable IR laws removed.
If Labor does end up becoming little better than a pale imitation of this current Government, we don’t have to take it lying down.
If you know of any better way forward, please let us know.
Oh come off it! Pr Q’s compulsive Howard-hatred is once again scuttling any common sense he might deploy in the analysis of the LN/P’s foreign policy.
Pr Q’s attitude to LN/P foreign policy is little better than Downer’s attitude to ALP foreign policy. Naivety about bad political means combined with obtusity about good policy ends.
Downer’s nasty campaign against Curtin’s pacifism, parochialism and “appeasement” has nothing to do with foreign policy, and everything to with domestic politics. Probably his attempt to rally the LN/P’s ultra-right wing base for his leadership challenge.
The same realist analysis can be applied – on a broader canvas – for Howard’s militarism, globalism and “roll-back” policies in the ME. The ADF’s global expeditions have mainly been undertaken in favour of peace-keeping, sanctions-enforcing and terrorist-hunting.
Howard has only made token efforts to curry favour with great and powerful friends in the US. Australia’s contribution to Iraq-attack has been miniscule, token and carefully sited in safe havens. There is no evidence that Howard wants to commit any more troops to regime change in Iran and Syria or beyond.
Howard’s alliance-favouring policy paid off mightliy when the ADF’s US-backed military expedition in Timor stopped further massacres there. Even Pr Q would not dare dispute that brute fact. In fact, Pr Q agrees with Howards proto-militarism closer to home, in Timor, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands.
Howard is a Machiavellian realist whose major strategic concern has always been the military-political environment to our Near North. This fact has been hammered by me from the out set and later elaborated by Hugh White. The facts on the ground prove this beyond doubt.
The correct foreign policy is not pure pacifism or pure militarism but (law-ful) realism. This is more or less Howard’s way.
Of course if the big ticket capital defence procurements (tanks and destroyers) currently in the system are used to knock out more Baathists in Mesopotamia and challenge the PLA in the Taiwan then my thesis is refuted.
If Pr Q subscribed to the realist view of Howard’s foreign policy he might save himself and us the tedious chore of listening to more* of his silly moralistic outbursts in this area.
*As if the TNI care about Howard’s mailed-fist/kid-gloves hypocrisy over regional assylum seekers. They care about the OPM threatening their Freeport dividends.
Jack,
I do not always agree with you, but I believe your analysis of the foreign policy of this government is correct. It is also difficult to see how a Labor government would have differed without hurting our long term interests – with the possible (but only possible) exception of the Iraqi engagement.
Even James can only bring it back to his usual bugbear of the IR laws, not foreign policy.
Perhaps I was a little hard on Pr Q just now, since his predictions on the consequences of the Iraq-attack turned out far closer to the mark than mine.
It is certainly the case that jaw-jaw and law-law are far preferable to war-war in most cases. To that extent Pr Q’s case for a pacifist or legalist approach to foreign affairs is greatly strengthened.
This is especially the case when dealing with a protean and quick silver enemy like Islamist terrorism, which thrives on clumsy militaristic irritation.
Downer’s general foreign policy philosophy, whether set-out for political or ideological reasons, is obviously wrong-headed and ill-willed.
But the ALP didn’t and haven’t disagreed with the Coalition on the broad scope of Australia’s commitment to the US alliance since Vietnam.
Under Whitlam, the US bases remained. Only cosmetic administrative changes were made.
The US and Australia agreed over Indonesia during the Whitlam and Hawke regimes.
Hawke allowed nuclear carriers into Australian ports.
Hawke made a bigger commitment to GW1 than Howard did to GW2.
The atmospherics may be different as the ALP pays some lip service to reflexive Anti-Americanism in the Left. Just as the Libs like to drape themselves in the Stars and Stripes for the same rhetorical effect upon Australian conservative Americanophiles.
The two areas major areas of disagreement since 1960 have therefore been Vietnam and Iraq.
And neither of these commitments reads well on any CV of an aspiring “Macchiavellian realist”.
So if the Americans can stomach a bit of mild anti-American grumbling, it looks like the ALP has the edge in fruitful pursuit of the American alliance.
Katz,
I think many of Latham’s comments on the US amounted to a little bit more than some “…mild anti-American grumbling”. Or would you disagree?
Latham’s admittedly intemperate comments concerned Iraq.
You have said nothing that disagrees with my above comments.
Thus my comments above stand.
James Sinnamon Says:
I don’t think it’s the entire Labor party that’s a pale immitation of the current government, I think it’s Beazley. And that’s the very first thing that shouldn’t be taken lying down.
Beazley, in charge of Foreign Affairs in the run up to the last election had the softest possible target: Downer. A six year old could’ve torn Downer apart. What did we get from Beazley? Nothing. Zip. Nada.
There’s some hope, apparently, that Beezer the Geezer will be able to do better against Costello than Howard. That’s a false and useless hope. If the Beezer can’t even take on fishnets Downer, there’s no way he do anything with Costello.
SJ,
I have no argument with your last post. Few have done more, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to prolong the awful reign of John Howard’s government than Kim Beazley.
However, there is a subtle, but important, difference between lamenting Beazley’s general ineptitude as an opposition leader (or Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister) on the one hand, and arguing that the choice between Labor and the Coalition is therefore of no consequence on the other.
A good many people on the left can’t seem to grasp that difference, and I believe that this may have actually made the critical difference in more than one federal election since 1996.
James,
Isn’t it a problem when the voters get it wrong. Maybe we should decide it all for the poor little dears.
James Sinnamon Says:
Look, sport, it’s not these “people on the left” “arguing that the choice between Labor and the Coalition is therefore of no consequence” who are the problem. I’d be surprised if there were, in fact, any such people.
It’s quite a specific problem with a particular person and his backers: Beazley.
The instant that Beazley was brought back onto the opposition front bench, Latham’s campaign was doomed. Gone was Latham’s “arse-licker” rhetoric, to be replaced by some stupid kind of “vote for us, we’re exactly the same as the other guys, only better” bullshit that also lost the US election for Kerry.
It was the party’s own presentation that led voters to believe that it was useless to vote for the Labor party. The Labor party backed away from its earlier anti-Howard, anti-Iraq war stance, lost all credibility and paid the price. Thanks for that, Kim.
Interesting that all of Labor’s faults can be blamed on one person. Must be quite a man to carry all that voting power in the Party room.
SJ wrote:
Well, how about the Greens during the 2004 elections? They devoted most of their efforts in failed attempts to win safe Labor seats such as those held by Lindsey Tanner or Anthony Albanese, or towards winning the last Senate seat in different states from the Democrats.
When decent compassionate Australians were working hard to end the mis-rule of this country by John Howard, they played stupid games pontificating how they were going to allocate preferences right up to the last moments (as if any party has the right to tell it’s supporters how to allocate preferences).
In the last days before the election, Bob Brown even raised the sickening prospect of a Greens-Liberal ‘Accord’. Coming from a man who predicted in 2003, as a result of the invasion of Iraq, that the “Australian Public would never forgive Howard” this was a bit hard to take. No doubt, Brown would have rationalised this reckless unprincipled stunt on the grounds of the false claim that Labor is not significantly different to the Liberal Party.
When Mark Latham surrendered on the US Australia Free Trade Agreement, George Campbell of the AMWU stupidly threatened to ask his members to vote against Labor. It was tantamount to asking unionists to cut off their noses to spite their collective faces.
Whilst these examples are not as significant as the Labor Party’s own monumental mistakes, they, nevertheless, in my opinion, played a part in getting Howard over the line in 2004 and we are all now paying the terrible price.
—
Andrew, How is it in our our ‘long term interests’ to have bribed the Hussein regime with $300 million, and then to have subseqently participated in an illegal invasion of Iraq in defiance of world opinion and the UN Security Council, on the grounds that Hussein represented an unacceptable threat to the world community?
Do you believe that the world would be a better place or a worse place if every country acted according to the same moral standards as the Howard Government did, for the sake their own ‘long term interests’?
James,
Have you ever considered anger management classes? Asking the same rhetorical questions over and over again is a symptom of something, I just remember what. I am sure it is not good rhetoric.
Andrew,
I missed the part of your earlier post where you wrote “… with the possible … exception of the Iraqi engagement. …”, so it would come as a relief to know that you don’t believe that our Government’s behaviour towards Iraq was in Australia’s ‘long term interests’.
My apologies for having misread your post.
I will take your answer to my second question to be that you don’t believe that the world would be a better place if every country in the world acted with the same moral standards as the Howard govenment has.
James,
I believe it is in our long term interests – it just might not be legal. It was only one of the differences in policy. I do not propose, though, to revisit this ground – we have been over it ad nauseum.
I am not in a place to judge the moral standards – but a look at Jack’s comment above would give a position not too far from my own.
Of course, I would prefer that we get to a position where international disputes can solely be solved through a judicial process and without recourse to violence – violence always represents economic destruction in the short term – but we are not there yet. The question at the moment is where we put the limits on that violence.
Downers theorising is merely part of the concerted attack on the very foundations of the Labour Party from its history to its membership to its organised support. The IR laws are to do in the finances and organisational support of Labour, the government policies to convince Australians that Labour is irrelevant to the modern world, and the Downer historical revisionism to discredit its intellectual and philosophical base. Trouble is they gave the job to Downer who has stuffed it up in his usual inimical fashion. Then again detail and accuracy is not a hallmark of this party except when it suits, so lets sow the seeds of doubt or let the hares run, either way it works. Boy Keating’s attacks really did get to them.
James: Fair point.
James,
One other matter you may want to address is about the flow of Green’s preferences. The Greens may have chased the Labor voters hard and then may have played games on preference allocation, but, when you actually do the analysis of Greens prefernce flow the way they “direct” their preferences matters very little. The Greens voters are the least likely of all voters to follow the how to vote cards. Over the last few Federal elections in the few seats where Greens have preferenced Liberal over Labor the actual difference in the preference flow has been less than 2 percent of the Greens vote. In other words, if the Greens get 10% (an unlikely number) the actual difference in the vote split two party preferred is 0.2% or less – well down in the noise. This would only make a difference in the most marginal of seats, if any.
In reality, both major parties know the Green’s preference directions are not worth chasing as the Greens cannot enforce them anyway. This was one of Latham’s big mistakes – he went out on a Green limb, chasing votes he already had and leaving the bulk of the Labour movement behind him. The limb broke and the result was the farce we saw in Tasmania.
Well, James, while you are busy recycling myths from the 2004 Federal Election, perhaps you can explain why “progressive” voters should reward Labor for handing its Senate preferences in Victoria to Family First over the Greens, thereby keeping the Greens out of the Senate, despite the Greens far higher primary vote.
In the week that the ALP QLD Govt announced plans to trash not one but two endangered species with the ill-considered Mary River Dam, not to mention 5% of Qld milk production, I fail to see why anyone interested in sustainability of any kind could think Labor is worth a primary vote over the Greens. Unless you are just another rusted-on true believer with stars in your eyes and wool in your head.
Mark White,
What you have written, perfectly exemplifies what I was describing when I wrote :
The point I was making was that in almost every lower house electorate, one has to at some point decide whether to put Labor ahead of Liberal or vice versa. Whether we are talking about the second and third preferences or the 101st and 102nd preferences, it is still an extremely important choice. In any seat where either major party candidate does not get an absolute majority, putting one party ahead of the other will help determine which will win and ultimately who will govern this country. Most unfortunatley in 2004, it turned out to be Liberal, rather than Labor.
Even in the Senate, as you pointed out yourself, the choice is very important. What you wrote about the unprincipled Senate preference deal made by the Labor Party was perfectly true, but that is no reason to not vote Labor in preference to the Liberals. Also, I think the Senate “above the line” voting system, which allows the Party machines to secretly allocate their preferences, is an outrage.
Where did I ever say “Labor is worth a primary vote over the Greens”?
In fact, in every election, I have voted in where there has been a Green candidate, I have given the Greens my preference over Labor, in most cases, I have given them my primary vote.
I am very well aware of the appalling record of Peter Beattie and other State Labor Governments. However, this is no reason to vote in the Liberal or National party oppositions, who, at best, only promise to implement the same policies. At worst, they threaten wholescale slashing of government jobs and the emasculation of the public sector unions as the Liberal Party opposition has promised in NSW.
If you want to stop the dam on the Mary River, as I do, I suggest that you get in touch with those fighting the dam at :
Also, if you want to help fight the North-South Bypass Tunnel of Liberal Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, which has, shamefully been aproved of by the Labor majority on the Brisbane City Council which has the power to stop it, as well as by the Beattie Government, please attend a protest rally today (Saturday) at 11:00PM outside of the office of the River City Motorway Consortium at 189 Elizabeth Street in the CBD.
For further information please see http://www.notunnels.org (Please also note the link on the home page to the site against the Dam mentioned above. I put it there myself, yesterday)
Finally, please tell me what myths from the 2004 elections, I have recycled. All that I wrote about Bob Brown and the Greens was factual. Please tell me where you think it is not.
James, your post was composed almost entirely of myth-making about the Greens, with misleading comments such as “In the last days before the election, Bob Brown even raised the sickening prospect of a Greens-Liberal ‘Accord’”.
I never heard of any such propect, and I was on the Qld Federal Election Campaign Committee. But perhaps you know better.
Anyway we are well and truly off topic for this thread, which is Alex Downer’s breathtaking display of hypocrisy – at least we can agree on that!
“Deciding it all for the little dears” is precisely what representative democracy achieves.
Mark White,
I trust we are also agreed on the need to stop the insane $400,000/metre North South Bypass Tunnel.
(Yes, I agree that we have gone way off topic, nevertheless …)
If you doubt what I have written about the offer by Bob Brown to enter into an ‘accord’ with John Howard, why don’t you ask Bob Brown himself to deny it?
In the final days before the 2004 election, Bob Brown told the newsmedia that he would consider entering into an ‘accord’ in a style, similar to what had occurred in Tasmania in the early 1990’s (or late 1980’s?) with either the Labor Party or the Liberal Party depending upon which was better prepared to act to save Tasmania’s forests.
During those days, John Howard had been fueling speculation that he might embrace the cause of forest preservation. Of course this turned out to be yet another deceitful ploy on Howard’s part, which Bob Brown had foolishly fallen for. A few days later, Howard addressed those infamous rallies of Tasmanian forestry workers, who had turned their backs on the rest of the Australian labour movement and the $900 million industry retraining package offered by Mark Latham so that they could be permitted, by a re-elected Howard Government, to continue their destruction of old growth forests in Tasmania.
Even if Howard had committed himself to completely halting the destruction of Tasmania’s forests, I cannot understand how Bob Brown could have contemplated acceptance of all the evil of the Howard Government in return : the Iraq war, his sabotage of the Kyoto protocols, privatisation, destruction of government services, politicisation of the public service, pork barrelling, taxpayer-funded Liberal Party propoganda etc, etc.
It seems fairly clear to me that this unprincipled stunt and the Greens overall equivocation on the question of the urgent need to remove the Howard Government are factors which helped marginalise the Greens within the Australian electorate in the wake of the 2004 elections and which also helped to marginalise those within the Labor Party who wanted it to retain decent policies in regard to Tasmania’s forests and towards the environment in general.
The fact that you, as a member of the Queensland Federal Election Campaign Committee, were never consulted about the offer of an ‘accord’ with Howard, nor given an explanation afterwards, suggests to me that the Greens, contrary to what I had once believed, and, in common with nearly every other political party in this country, spanning from the far right to the far left, is a hierarchical organisation which is not accountable to its rank and file.
Andrew,
Of course, what you write about the way Green voters allocate their preferences rings true.
I object to the way the media discusses preference allocation on any political party’s how-to-vote cards as if that party has a right to tell their supporters how to direct their second and subsequent preferences. I suspect that this leads some voters to believe that, if they don’t exactly follow a how-to-vote card, their vote will be invalid. The way most parties, including the Greens actively promote this misconception about our voting system, or, at best, fail to challenge it, only helps to ‘dumb down’ the Australian electorate.
Of course I don’t accept that Mark Latham’s policy towards Tasmania’s forests, allegedly in order to chase the Green preferences that he almost certainly already had, was a ‘big mistake’, but I will argue the point elsewhere.
Andrew Reynolds wrote :
As I have already explained extensively elswhere, including here, there is no way that John Howard could possibly have won even the 1998 elections, let alone the 2001 and 2004 elections, if the voters had been properly informed.
The Murdoch and Packer media empires, well assisted by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded Liberal Party propoganda, have ensured, thus far, that a majority of electors have been misinformed as has been so well depicted in this series of Doonesbury cartoons from 2004.
James,
Senator Brown did tell the media that, in the unlikely event of a hung parliament, the Greens would consider an accord with the Government of the day – if the Greens held the balance of power and the deal would have to be based on the Greens’ policies.
This is a far cry from the original basis of your attack, a claim that “people on the left� were “arguing that the choice between Labor and the Coalition is of no consequence� .
You should apologise to Senator Brown.
Also, can you cite evidence for your claim that “Greens actively promote misconceptions about our voting system”? Or is this just more hot air.
Mark White,
Why do you think that such an unconscionable and ruthless politician such as John Howard with a majority in the House of Representives would have been prepared to do deals with the Greens in preference to other parties in the Senate?
Any ‘accord’ between a Howard Government with a majority in the House of Representatives and the Greens would have been contingent upon the Greens being prepared to barter away their principles in return for a few concessions in regard to the Tasmanian forests. That is how I interpreted Bob Brown’s statement and, how I believe that most Australians would have interpreted it.
The message that it gave me was that Bob Brown, who had said, himself, in 2003 that the Australian people would never forgive John Howard for the invasion of Iraq was, himself, prepared to forgive John Howard in return for saving a some trees in Tasmania.
I believe that this stunt only served to diminish, in the minds of many Australian electors, the gravity of John Howard’s crimes against the truth, democracy, government accountability, the poor of this country and the rest of the world, and would have helped John Howard over the line in 2004.
If the Greens did not believe that “the choice between Labor and the Coalition is of no consequenceâ€? then please tell me where they clearly and unambiguously advocated placing the Liberal Party last on everyone’s ballot paper in order to ensure that wherever a Green, a Democrat, or a good independent failed to win a seat, that at least Labor would?
They avoided doing so because they hoping to be able to do prefence deals with other political parties or to hold out to either of the two major parties the prospect of Greens preferences being directed their way in return for concessions on some environmental questions.
I wrote that “… most parties, including the Greens, actively promote this misconception about our voting system, or, at best, fail to challenge it, …” so your quote is a little out of context.
The way the Greens, in common with nearly every other political party, acts, at election times, to fuel media speculation as to how they intend to direct their preferences, helps to reinforce the media-generated misconceptions I was referring to.
Why couldn’t the Greens have made the simple point that, whilst they had the right to recommend to their supporters how to direct their prefernces, the ultimate decison was up to the voters themselves? If the Greens had done so, it would have make them stand out as one party that does treat the electors as if they are intelligent.
James,
You can repeat your point about the last election(s) until you are blue in the face, but I just do not think you are right. The voters have proven, time and again, their ability to go against what the “…Murdoch and Packer media empires, well assisted by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded … propoganda.” The republic referendum is a good case in point. To me at least, the people looked at Latham, and Beazley before him, and decided that the devil they knew (if he is indeed a devil) was better. They simply did not trust the Labor Party with government, as the did while Hawke was leader and the government had some obvious talent.
The fact that Gillard and Rudd are the only real possibilities as leader if Beazley goes just emphasises the point.
James – I would suggest you get over it and move on. If you want to improve Labor’s prospects the first step is to admit to reality and accept that they lost, work out why other than blaming the media and work to improve their prospects next time, dim though they are.
You will not find many more disappointed than me that the opposition are not doing well – an strong opposition helps to improve government overall. The government could and should be doing better than it is.
Andrew,
I will stop ‘repeating’ my argument about the circumstances of John Howard’s re-election in 2004 when you desist from trying to get in the last word as you did when you wrote :
… and when you wrote :
Sorry, I thought your comment before mine was harking back to this discussion. Shall we call a truce, at least until some other poor sod raises the question and then we can get back into it?
Andrew,
That comment was not intended to re-visit the discussion on whether or not the 2004 elections were fair.
It was to make a point that the choice between Labor and Liberal, on a two party preferred basis, is still an extremely important choice, however dimly one may regard Beazley and many other Labor politicians.
On these issues, I take the view that an unchallenged assertion can become accepted by many as a fact.
I believe that the health of our democracy depends upon the public being able to grasp how they have, in my opinion, been manipulated and misled, so it is a very important discussion in my view, although my intention, at this point in time, is to continue this discussion elsewhere.
Bringing Menzies to the discussion is an attempt to deflect attention from Curtin and avoiding the main point which is that :
“When it comes to great international challenges, be it Nazism or global terror, the Labor Party has adopted the position that Australia is a tiny, isolated backwater that has no responsibility to do any of the heavy lifting.”
Liberals are not the war party, we would prefer to have a good a relatively peaceful time, like in Clinton years, but when challenges emerging we are ready to do the heavy lifting, rather than trying to muddy the water and and not to see the clear danger.
Also at the end of article the credit was given to Curtin for his action:
“Curtin did fulfil his responsibilities (and partly redeemed his reputation) once he became prime minister in October 1941. After two years of atrocities in Europe and the outbreak of global warfare, he accepted the role that history had delivered to him. He steeled his resolve and abandoned his pacifism to provide the nation with solid wartime leadership.”
However Curtin did that, despite his previous convictions:
“The Labor tradition and philosophy, however, remains firmly built on the pacifism, isolationism and weakness that characterised most of Curtin’s political life.”
Dear James Sinnamon,
I was interested in what you wrote about Bob Brown and the Telstra/trees choice.
I have to admit that, when Bob Brown gave us a choice
between Telstra and trees, trees won hands down for me. Not a ‘few’ trees either, although these forest policies are always very poor on
quantification. Tasmania has a LOT of trees and I would like to save them
all. Trees come way before militating about privatisation for me, although privatisation is high on my list. My list goes like this:
Trees
Population
privatisation
Industrial law protection for workers
What may be happening though is that John Howard (or someone or all of them) have a way of making our key values into an ‘either or’ situation.
Will it be trees, or will it be Telstra?
Excellent wedge politics. Offer Brown trees in exchange for Telstra and
lose Brown support from the Tree supporters AND from the Telstra supporters, whichever way Brown jumps.
How often has that occurred?
I do concede your point about putting Labor before Liberals though, because the Liberal party’s IR laws are just too scary. No-one is going to be able to fight for anything in the coming slave society – not trees, not Telstra, not for population stabilisation. Nope, we will be low in trees, overpopulated, corporatised and privatised. And Labor will have helped to take us to this point.
But,
We must vote Labor in, even if it means voting in that ridiculous gas bag Beasley, to have some chance of fighting on the IR front.
Kanga,
I wasn’t referring to the choice between Telstra and trees. I was being critical of the way Bob Brown and the Greens conducted themselves in the 2004 elections.
In any case, you are wrong. The choice was never offered by Howard.
It is not in our interests to give control of our national Telecommunications to Foriegn based CEO’s such as Trujillo who can’t give a toss about the concerns of ordinary Australian telephone users and it is not in our interests to allow the massacre of the Tasmanian forests to continue.
It is wrong to assume that we should trade off one bad policy in order to achieve some good, assuming that the choice had ever been offered, which it hadn’t.
To Bob Brown’s credit, he has stood strongly against the sale of Telstra after his brief indiscretion back in 2002. (However by having foolishly helped John Howard get back in in 2004 with an outright Senate majority, his principled stance on Telstra may end up counting for little.)
Hi James Sinnamon,
I think you have a particularly strong argument, James, in constantly proposing to us that we must denounce the imposition of such ‘false’ choices’. The ability to denounce and oppose those false choices relies on the electorate regaining its self-respect and demanding respect from Howard and the rest of the people who broker power by polarising political issues and thereby break up cohesion among citizens, setting us against each other.
I was giving you my analysis of how Howard got Brown to do this and how he achieved a split in Brown’s supporters. That doesn’t mean that I support what was done, even though I fell for it completely at the time. I was a member of the Greens in Victoria at the time and I received an email on the Greens Activist list from Bob Brown asking us (words to the effect of) if he should respond to Howard’s [percieved] invitation to save trees in return for the Greens allowing the sale of Telstra.
You are right that it is wrong to trade off one bad policy for another when the choice really hasn’t been offered: “It is wrong to assume that we should trade off one bad policy in order to achieve some good, assuming the choice had ever been offered, which it wasn’t.” (https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/05/02/finally-the-organ-grinder/#comment-49706)
But, at the time, it did look as if the choice was being offered to safeguard forests in exchange for Telstra. As a person who will always put trees ahead of everything else, I personally fell for it because it was offered via Brown. I assumed he knew what the position was.
My analysis is that Howard has a clever way of pairing strongly valued policy matters off as dilemmas, thereby splitting the public wherever these policy matters are being discussed.
Perhaps this tactic, which is a devastatingly effective kind of wedge politics, needs to be rammed home to Howard. So Brown, had he been aware of how he was being manipulated, should have turned round and lambasted Howard for creating an unconscionable dilemma in the minds of the public and kind of forcing them to give up power over either policy.
Just because I observe that it worked doesn’t mean that I think it was right, James.
I will admit, however, at the time, being largely taken in myself, as were the other people on the list, many of whom wanted Telstra over forests and none of whom, to my recollection, cared that Howard had no [moral] right to engineer such division, because they accepted that he had the political, [machiavellian] right because he is a politician.
We have become so naively cynical (to coin an apparent contradiction in terms) that we tolerate openly divisive politics from a parliament that really should be united on solving Australian problems. Instead Howard and other politicians simply use their duty to manage the country as a way of dominating sectors of Australian voters by dividing their territory up into oppositional factions. They do this by
a) identifying, popularising and marketing a value set e.g. national assets including trees and Telstra
b) identifying those who identify within that value set e.g. Greens and Labor supporters
c) they thus identify political territory and a political electorate
d) then they polarise the value by highlighting differences within the value set e.g. national environmental assets (Trees) vs national social assets (Telstra), thus creating two value subsets.
e) They then divide and conquer supporters of the broader value set of national assets by unethically imposing a choice between the two subsets. They manage this division by offering a truce with a politician who markets this value-set (Brown) if he will side with one or the other. Brown offers the choice up to his supporters. His supporters now perceive that they are divided into “Trees vs Telstra”. Some are immediately disaffected furthermore by the idea that Brown would truck with Howard. Brown cannot win.
f) I fell for it. It was at this point that I left the Greens. I perceived that the majority would support national social assets over national environmental assets. This was proof to me that the Greens were social welfare over essential and desirable ecological services.
As you imply (I hope I am right); it was a false choice [in management terms because it separated things that did not need to be and should not be separated. We rely on intact complex ecology for long-term function of our economy and society.]. It was, however, a real *political* choice because Howard managed to create an emotional situation that made us [few dimwitted Greens on the list at least] all believe we had no choice but to subsribe to a dilemma and fight amongst ourselves.
I might add that Howard did exactly the same kind of thing when he divided the electorate over supporters of asylum seekers &refugees, vs supporters of moderate immigration intake. He created a false or immoral dilemma, and the Greens and Labor fell for it again.
I will just repeat my opening paragraph in an attempt to avoid being completely misunderstood due to my complicated presentation here. I think you have a particularly strong argument, James, in constantly proposing to us that we must denounce the imposition of such ‘false’ choices’. The ability to denounce and oppose those false choices relies on the electorate regaining its self-respect and demanding respect from Howard and the rest of the people who broker power by polarising political issues and thereby break up cohesion among citizens, setting us against each other.
Kanga
kanga,
Thanks. You have hit quite a few nails on the head, here.
In fact, if you wind back the clock a few years further, an immoral trade-off was made in which funds from the first tranches from the sale of Telstra were used to fund the National Heritage Trust. Even if the funds had been properly spent, which they weren’t, the money could easily have been raised in so many other ways, and we would not have had to pay the price of having our national telecommunications carrier so atrociously neglected as a consequence of cost cutting in order to suit the needs of those who had bought shares.
In Professor Ian Lowe’s opinion, the money was largely wasted in piecemeal and uncoordinated projects. For more information see here and here. So, the Australian community has lost out very badly.
Hi James,
Re the funding of the National Heritage Trust, I remember thinking at the time
– Why can’t the government just fund it? –
but then supplying my own explanation which was that the government was so one-dimenionally ‘economically’ oriented that one could not rely on them to see that the national assets are part of our economy and thus to fund them as major items,
and, also thinking,
– Well, funding via Telstra is better than nothing.
In other words, I was so brainwashed (again) that I simply abandoned what I had once expected for whatever crumbs the government might accord me, even as it stole from me and mine to line the pockets of the private sector. And not even the private sector that tends to employ and use local effort, but private corporations that have become particularly swollen parisites, such as banks and other financial institutions, infrastructure/engineering/housing, packaging and industrial so-called recycling.
Have you thought of going into politics, James? Do you have any political base from which you operate particularly?
I wonder if you have ever considered the notion that our sovereignty as a collection of citizens generally is threatened by all these trends, or am I the only one?
I have read most of Mark Latham’s book, but I don’t think he considered the question of loss of power over our polity.
Kanga
Alexander Downer wrote :
There was no terrorist threat in Iraq until after the 2003 invasion. What terrorist threat existed in the world prior to then was largely the creation of the United States through its aid to Osama bin Laden during the war from the late 1970’s up until the 1990’s against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan.
In any case, it is well known that both the Australian and US Governments have had an inconsistent approach towards the regime of Saddam Hussein since the 1970’s including, most notoriously, the $300 million that Alexander Downer, himself, allowed to be paid to a regime which he was to subsequently depict as a threat to world peace.
However, as every informed observer knew back then, and as is indisputable now, the regime of Hussein posed no significant threat to either its neighbours or to the rest of the world.
So, I fail to understand how Alexander Downer can maintain that his Government can be compared favourably to that of John Curtin up until 1941, or, for that matter, that of ‘Pig Iron Bob’.
If, instead, a threat such as that posed by Hitler, Mussolini or Imperial Japan in the 1930’s were to re-emerge, it remains to be seen whether this Government would any better rise to meet the threat than did Neville Chamberlain, Bob Menzies or John Curtin did.
I expect that this Government to act towards such a threat with the same resolve as it now demonstrates toward the threat of global warming, which even the Pentagon acknowledges is a far more significant threat than terrorism to humankind.
Alexander Downer wrote :
Because the Australian government chose war, when many other options had not been exhausted, ‘war party’ is an accurate label for the ruling Liberal party.
Just as with the AWB bribery scandal, there was abundant evidence for the Prime Minister and other Government ministers, who were prepared to look, that that the alleged weapons of mass destruction did not exist.
Even if weapons existed it would have not been possible for them to have been used with the whole of Iraq being scoured by UN weapons inspectors. The United Nations weapons inspectors pleaded to be given time to allowed to finish the job. Had they done so, it would have been quickly apparent to all that there were no WMDs as former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had been saying all along. With that task concluded, the UN could then quickly could have moved to similarly conduct inspections in order to detect human rights abuses as German Chancellor Schroeder had proposed to the UN.
Instead, the weapons inspectors, the UN Security Council and World public opinion were ignored and the invasion was launched and we are now all reaping the whirlwind that Alexander Downer and his Government helped to sow.