The dead hand of John Howard is causing some understandable wistfulness among liberal types here. Many are appalled at his new order of ultra-conservatism, Australia’s toadying foreign policy, measures that look designed to undermine state healthcare and to deliver monopoly to local media barons.
Above all is the sheer lack of leadership and inspiration.
But what strikes me is the imitation. Something happens in the US or UK and it immediately gets echoed here. Blair accuses the BBC of bias, the Libs attack the ABC. George Bush invades rogue nations, it suddenly becomes urgent for Downer to exert his power in the Pacific. The US backs away from multilateralism, so does Australia.
I’ve been reading Don Watson’s fabulous insider story of the Keating years Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, all 700 pages of it. Apart from being extraordinarily well written it’s a great primer on how this sorry state came to be. Keating of course lost to the “man with the airbrushed past”. He lost because both he and Labor had lost energy for the fight after four terms in office and because Howard managed to paint himself a fictional divide, between the “elites” and the “battlers”. He was on the side of the battler and, of course, everyone sees themself as a battler …
Keating was aloof, appeared arrogant, appeared too smart and disconnected and talked about the republic and APEC when he should have talked about jobs, education and health. He could easily connect with people but seemed to stop trying. It was just too much.
According to Watson, he wanted to destroy Howard, not just beat him. The hatred these two carry for each-other is visceral. It is when he is in a street-brawling mood that Keating is, oddly, at his most endearing, to me anyway.
Here’s Keating talking to Watson by phone from Israel in the lead-up to the 1996 election: “I think that little bastard’s done us some damage,” he said. “Ignore him,” I said, not wanting politics to spoil any miracles the Holy Land might work. “I’m not going to ignore him,” he said. “I’m going to drive an axe into his chest and lever his ribs apart.”
Howard is a famous nobody. Where others may try to develop character and conviction, he eschews both. If a policy is unpopular, he’ll drop it. If it’s popular, he’ll co-opt it. His backflips on GST, immigration, Medicare, French nuclear testing, native title, education vouchers and the republic are a matter of record and were patently obvious. For John Howard nothing is a matter of principle.
Keating tried to draw attention to these U-turns. He said Howard was trying to slide under the electoral wire. Watson writes: “He was, and he could be seen; and he knew he was and he knew he could be seen! And still they said they’d vote for him. And still one could not help feeling the media coverage contained the message that this was not gutless or duplicitous, but clever politics.”
Unbelievably Howard even went green for a few weeks.
Keating asked, now that Howard was all things to all people, “if next we would hear him say he was a Fabian socialist?”
But no one was listening.
And now it looks like Labor is just as gutless, only far less effective. Crean measures every word in a very faux Howard style. But that's not the way back for Labor. Focus group politics delivers sameness and what they need is difference and a leader of at least Keating's stature to carry the people with them.
One of those points of difference, it seems to me, is the ground of economic responsibility that the right is abandoning for big spending on defence. Make no mistake, this will have to be paid for eventually and it will be paid for out of social programs. Maybe that is the intention.
There have been several articles here recently about Gen-X resentment at the benefits us boomers received. They are now footing the bill. But if you want to see a prime example of boomer-led inter-generational theft, you don't have to look much further than the irresponsible spending of a John Howard or George Bush.
As for Keating, in the manner of retired Aussie PMs he still drops a rock in the pond every now and then. And welcome those rocks are.
Keating was often accused of arrogance, but his defence to this charge should be remembered: "The test of arrogance, Keating said, was how you treat the community."
Watson comments: "In the office and in the campaign he had treated the people conscientiously and with integrity. Howard had not released the policies by which the electorate might judge him. He had 'danced past the press gallery for a year.' That was arrogance."