As is often the case, I’m coming late to a story that more alert ploggers have covered at length, that of Governor-General Michael Jeffery’s remarks supporting pre-emptive military action. Roughly speaking, it seems that opinion is divided along left-right lines as might be expected. The left line, represented by my blogtwin, Tim Dunlop focuses on the Howard government’s hypocrisy in view of its criticism of less overtly political statements by William Deane. The right line, which I’ve seen but can’t now locate a good instance of, is that the hypocrisy is on the side of the left, who cheered Deane on, but are now deploring Jeffery. I have a couple of observations.

First, this is a typical instance of the policy dynamic under the current government. When faced with some aspect of Labor’s behavior in office (weak code of ministerial conduct, publicly funded political advertising and so on) the Howard government has initially deplored it and promised to do better. But when this inevitably proves inconvenient, the response is to take actions which are claimed to be in line with precedents from the Labor government but which in fact are “pushing the envelope”. Ministerial conflicts of interest and use of public money to fund political ad campaigns allow for much more impropriety (relative to the views of propriety that prevailed until the 1980s) than under the last Labor government (though who knows what the next one will be like).

In the present case, the government disliked Deane’s attempts to act as a social conscience, so it decided to appoint Hollingworth who seemed to have a track record that would protect him from adverse comparisons with Deane combined with a willingness to look dignified and stick to his script. When it turned out that the latter qualities, in operation as Archbishop of Brisbane, had produced some disastrous outcomes, the government decided to give up on neutrality and appoint someone who would speak out on their side of the debate.

The second point is that, as a result of this, it’s now clear that the post of Governor-General is a political one and that anyone who holds it is a politician. The natural conclusion is that a politician holding such an important office should have the legitimacy that can only be derived from popular election.

This is logically independent of the Republic issue. We can have an elected governor-general (David Solomon pushed this idea after 1975, and Ken Parish revived it recently) or an appointed president. Realistically speaking though, a move to directly electing the GG would lead straight to a republic with a directly elected president. By giving up on the idea of the GG as a neutral figurehead, the government has effectively conceded defeat on the main arguments against both a republic and direct election.

Everybody else has had their say about Jim Cairns, and I suppose I should put my own thoughts on record, too, even if they are not particularly original. In my view, Cairns played a significant and essentially positive role in the Vietnam moratorium movement, and everything after that was largely irrelevant.

In talking about Vietnam, it’s important to remember not only that the war was wrong in itself, but that the government was conscripting young men (too young to vote against it*) to fight, rather than making a moral case strong enough to attract volunteers or paying wages high enough to make the army an attractive choice. Whereas it’s possible to make a case for the war itself (not, in my view, a convincing one) this was unequivocally wrong.

As regards the anti-Vietnam campaign, Cairns must get a fair bit of the credit for the fact that, despite some fringe violence, the movement never produced the kind of terrorist offshoots that emerged in the US and Europe.

Once the war was over, so was the role of someone like Cairns. He wasn’t a great minister, but that’s not surprising – the politics of the street don’t translate well into the requirements of public office. The kind of moral certainty that was needed for the Vietnam campaign was of little use in the period of chaos and compromise that emerged after 1974.

His infatuation with Junie Morosi led him to dishonest and arguably corrupt actions and contributed to the dismissal of the Whitlam government, but any social democratic government elected in 1972 was doomed in the face of the global economic crisis of the early 1970s.

I’m not a Melbournian so I only know of his later life, selling his books at the market and so on from occasional reports. It sounded rather sad, but substantially more honorable to the post-Parliamentary careers of a lot of other Labor MPs.

* As I recall, the govt acknowledged the untenability of its position by letting conscripts vote after they had been called up.

One point that hasn’t been noted in the current debate over reform* of the Senate is that there is no need at all for the major parties to secure a constitutional change. If they think that upper houses are too obstructive, they need only agree not to oppose each others’ legislation, whenever this has an appropriate mandate. The minority parties could do nothing to stop the operation of such a convention.

Howard could show his good faith by instructing the Liberals in the Western Australian Upper House to pass legislation for a one-vote, one-value electoral system, something for which the Gallop government has a clear mandate and which is, in any case, a basic requirement of democracy.

Then again, pigs could fly, given wings and an appropriate power-to-weight ratio.

*As always, I use this term to mean “change in form”, not “change for the better”.

Chris Sheil puts forward a somewhat tentative case for the return of Kim Beazley to the Labor leadership, prompting me to clarify my own views on the subject.

In my view, it’s a mistake to expect an Opposition leader to be a votewinner. There are exceptions, such as Hawke in 1983, but most of the time the best an Opposition can hope for is that the leader should not drag the party down. An illustration is the fact that the incumbent Prime Minister, no matter how unpopular, almost invariably beats the Opposition leader on the question “Who would make the better PM”.

In current circumstances, there’s also not much point in trying to distinguish between alternative leaders on the basis of their beliefs about policy. To the extent that apparent differences have emerged from time to time, they are more about political positioning than anything else. So, for example, Beazley is now attacking Crean and Latham from the left, arguing against tax cuts, but the positions could easily be reversed. Similarly factional allegiances, while they are important in lining up numbers, now have little or nothing to do with policy. The Socialist Left faction, for example, might as well be called the Impressionist Blue faction as far as the significance of the name is concerned.

My view therefore, is that Labor needs someone competent, without substantial negatives, rather than a savior.

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I can’t say I’m eager to say anything positive about Kim Beazley after the fiasco of 2001, but I have to agree with what he has to say here and with the unstated message that it’s time to dump Simon Crean as Labor leader. Beazley attacks the last round of tax cuts, endorsed by Crean, and Crean’s promise not to increase the Medicare levy. (I haven’t been able to confirm the existence of this promise, but it’s implied in various press reports)

Having said that, I don’t retract my endorsement of the Caucus decision to reject Beazley’s leadership challenge. Beazley had the chance to put his thoughts into practice in 2001 and he squibbed it. Not only did he not propose an increase in the Medicare levy, he even vetoed any change to the absurd tax subsidy to private health insurance.

After beating off Beazley’s challenge, Crean needed to get off the fence as far as tax and public spending is concerned but he’s failed to do so. As a result, he remains a purely negative figure as far as the Australian public is concerned. In effect, he’s reproduced Beazley’s small target strategy.

So I’ll modify the ABC (Anybody But Crean) view, and say that Labor should go for ABCEB (Anybody But Crean, Except Beazley).

If you want to see how Australian Federal politics have changed in a few short years, it’s worth contrasting the cases of Andrew Theophanous and Philip Ruddock. Theophanous,a former Labor MP, is serving a jail sentence for taking bribes in return for making false representations on visa applications. This was straightforward old-fashioned corruption – his clients paid cash and, if things went to plan, got a visa.* In one form or another, this happened ever since the First Fleet, though it used to be rare at the Federal level.

Now contrast the modern way of doing things under Ruddock. Nothing as sordid as a brown paper bag ever enters his office. He receives representations on immigration matters from prominent and well-respected community leaders, and responds by intervening to grant visas. Of course, under the general rules that apply nowadays, only friendly community leaders are likely to get a hearing and the best way of demonstrating friendliness is to deliver votes and donations to the Liberal Party. But, except for slipups like the Dante Tan case, there’s nothing so crude as the appearance of a quid pro quo in individual cases.

But how do the respected community leaders get the information on deserving migrants and the resources they need to maintain their leadership? No doubt they are approached by upstanding members of the community, who have demonstrated their upstandingness by supporting the community organisations that have such respected leaders. And, in one form or another, whether in cash or mutual and familial obligations, these upstanding members of the community expect some sort of return from the potential immigrants whose applications they support.

So, when everything is netted out, the applicants have less cash, but a better chance of getting a visa, while the Liberal Party ends up with more cash and the general pool of applicants loses some potential places **. But no-one has done anything illegal, or even sackable, and the crucial step – the Minister’s intervention – is on the public record, open and above board. Isn’t progress wonderful?

*I should note that Theophanous was partially successful on appeal and maintains his innocence on the remaining charges.

** In these circumstances, it is more necessary than ever to punish and demonise ‘queue-jumpers’ who have paid common criminals in the hope of securing a visa.

I asked a few days ago of a piece by Glenn Milne, highly critical of Howard

does it reflect a nascent Press Gallery consensus that Howard is consistently dishonest, and therefore should not be PM?

Judging by Greg Hywood in today’s SMH and Michelle Grattan in yesterday’s Age, the answer is a definite Yes. Grattan and, to a lesser extent, Hywood are opinion leaders for the Press Gallery; they set the assumptions by which others assess the action (more on this Real Soon Now).

So the cumulative impact of ethanol, Tuckey and Hanson has been substantial, even though the government has ridden them all out. Perceptions won’t have been helped by the recent arrival of the Tampa refugees (the government’s official assessment, not mine) who Howard promised would never be allowed to set foot on Australian soil. Even for those who supported the government’s policy, it must now be clear that this episode showed the Howard government at its sordid worst.

This opinion poll reported in the Sun-Herald shows Labor 4 points ahead on the two-party preferred vote. I don’t imagine that this will persist – the government has had a particularly bad week. Still there are a couple of lessons that can be drawn.

One is that, contrary to what was, at least a week ago, the conventional wisdom, Howard does not bestride the political scene like a colossus. Given some bad luck at the right time (for example, a Tampa-style stunt that went wrong), he could easily lose the next election.

The second is that the view of the government as ‘mean and tricky’ is well-established for a large section of the electorate. Episodes such as the ethanol scandal, Abbott’s efforts over Hanson and the WMD lies all fit into this perception.

As long as the housing bubble continues, the odds are in Howard’s favor. But, the bubble will burst sooner or later. When it does, the accumulated costs of mean and tricky government will burden the Liberal Party for years to come.

Update 1/9/03: Glenn Milne agrees with much of this, and emerges as a Costello partisan and strong critic of Howard. Is this new, and does it reflect a nascent Press Gallery consensus that Howard is consistently dishonest, and therefore should not be PM?

Further update 2/9: Dave Ricardo and Tim Dunlop, who follow Milne more closely than I do, say that he is a longstanding Costello partisan. And Mork raises the more general issue of the Press Gallery and its role. This will require a big post some time.

Absurd comparisons between Pauline Hanson and Nelson Mandela have not helped to advance the debate. But a more useful comparison might be made with legal harassment of opposition politicians in countries like Singapore. It is not illegal to oppose the government there, but somehow opposition leaders seem to run afoul of the law a lot, notably with defamation actions. In particular there are strict regulations on the constitutions and financial affairs of political parties, which cause big problems for opposition parties.

Australia is not the same as Singapore. Nevertheless, I imagine the Hanson case will be quoted prominently in reply next time anyone from Australia criticises restrictions on the political freedom of our Asian neighbours.

Our legal system behaves in strange ways. Pauline Hanson was jailed for three years for a highly technical breach of the electoral registration rules. But apparently it’s OK for one political party to foment and fund legal disputes within another.

Update According to Ken Parish, Abbott may indeed be in legal difficulty over this.