When John Howard contested the 1996 election he was fortunate enough – as he has so often been – not to have had to offer much in the way of policy.
Nor did he have to agree with any elements of Keating Government policy for fear of being wedged by what the majority of Australians saw as a smelly dead cat.
Upon winning, therefore, Howard had a blank cheque and no statements to come back to haunt him, with perhaps one notable exception – the “never ever” GST.
Indeed, perhaps John Howard’s greatest political talent has been to always anticipate that any commitment, promise or statement made now might come back and bite him. This self-protection is one of the few respects in which he might be described as visionary.
Journalists often trawl the past to catch politicians out with an inconsistence in the present. Often they were caught out. Paul Keating’s J curve turned out to be all snake oil and no ladder. His L-A-W law tax cuts were never delivered. Bob Hawke’s messianic declaration that by 1990 “no child shall live in poverty” is belied by a visit to a poor outer suburb or an Aboriginal community.
Not Howard. Time and time again I, and other journalists, have trawled Hansard, press releases and transcripts of broadcasts or door stops to catch a quotable, spot on, undeniable inconsistency with no wriggle room. You might have a general impression that he was against Asian immigration or that he would hold down interest rates, but you can never find the quote.
On interest rates all he said was that rates would be lower under a Coalition Government than if a Labor Government were elected. It is an unprovable hypothesis. You could not even have a blind trial, let alone a double blind trial, because it just is not possible to run a Labor Government for three years then wind back the clock and have Liberal Government and then compare the results. You’d think that running a double blind trial with politicians would be a cinch.
The impression was that Howard was promising low interest rates. The wriggle room was that when rates went up he could say, without fear of logical contradiction, that they would have been higher if Labor had been elected.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd on the other hand often does not leave wriggle room.
Worse, he has nailed himself so firmly to the mast on many of Howard’s policies (like his predecessor Kim Beazley) that when those policies have gone sour he has not been able to say, “I told you so”. He has not been able to say, “Look at the consequences of your awful policies. If Labor had been governing none of this would have happened.”
The worse examples are: refugees; the Iraq war; Haneef and terrorism; further restrictions on the freedom of speech; the Tasmanain pulp mill; work visas; and to some extent the Murray Darling.
Labor should have opposed the Iraq war from Day One. Like Arthur Calwell did on May 4, 1965, in opposing the Menzies Government’s decision to send combat troops to Vietnam. He said, “The course we have agreed to take today is fraught with difficulty. I cannot promise you that easy popularity can be bought in times like these. Nor are we looking for it. When the drums beat and the trumpets sound, the voice of reason and right can be heard in the land only with difficulty. . . . But I offer you the sure and certain knowledge we will be vindicated, that generations to come will record with gratitude that when a reckless government wilfully endangered the security of this country, the voice of the Labor Party was heard, strong and clear.”
Where was such language when the Tampa was barred from Australia and the Pacific solution embarked upon? Or when we went into Iraq? Or when the terrorism laws that later ensnared the hapless Haneef were rushed through Parliament?
And now when these policies are proven to be egregious populism what can Rudd do or say? Labor was party to them, or at best silent acquiescers.
The sad thing about Labor’s stand is that it has resulted in the facts and arguments that have condemned these policies not being given extensive coverage in the mass media – the tabloids and commercial television.
Look, for example, at the coverage of the damning report on the Pacific solution by Oxfam. Oxfam showed that it cost $1 billion over five years at $1830 per detainee per day to process 1700 asylum seeker in Nauru, Manus and Christmas Islands — $500,000 per refugee. To process them at Sydney’s Villawood it would have cost $35 million or 3.5 per cent of what was spent. Any auditor would denounce it as a scandalous waste of public money. But Labor could say nothing.
Just as Labor can say nothing now the Government’s unnecessary, draconian “anti-terrorism” laws have ensnared an apparently innocent amid police and ministerial incompetence and pre-judgment.
It can say little about the breaches of approval processes over the Tasmanian pulp mill or the abuse of work visas.
Under Howard, Australia has plummeted to 39th on the International Press Union table for freedom of speech. Labor is mute.
Compare that to the way the anti-Vietnam-war movement ultimately succeeded because it had half of Australian politics on side. As one would expect of a Coalition Opposition in the face of any Labor folly or tyranny.