It was the political debate of last week, and we missed it. But that’s ok – so did most of the rest of the population, I would imagine. The columns of The Australian were full of the ‘legacy wars’ – arising out of Kevin Rudd’s speech at the launch of Paul Kelly’s new book. Rudd argued that – contrary to Kelly’s thesis of a similarity between John Howard and Paul Keating as ‘patriots’ working to modernise Australia along a similar path – that the Howard government had left little in the way of a nation building legacy. This promptly prompted rantings about his hypocrisy (because he’d argued that the history wars were done with when launching Thomas Kenneally’s book), claims that conservative dissent was being repressed, and … well, Rudd appears to have learnt the trick of making the punditariat and the Liberal frontbench rant on cue. Useful politically, that one.
It also probably contributed to the demand – within the Liberal party – to ‘stand for something’, which is apparently code for ‘defending the Howard legacy’. This theme inspired Turnbull to get ahead of the pack and raise the tattered banner of individual work contracts. Not so useful politically, that one.
Those interested in the merits of this debate, as opposed to the sound and fury, might find Mungo McCallum’s contribution interesting:
It’s all Kevin Rudd’s fault. Here we are, nearly two years out of the Howard years and happily consigning them to well-deserved oblivion.
And then Rudd has to mention the war; and of course John Howard and Peter Costello lurch out of the political cemetery to boast about the size and quality of their tombstones and pretend they are not really dead after all, and Malcolm Turnbull feels that he has to join in and defend the two people in the world he most wants to forget. Such is the level of discussion in contemporary Australia.
It seems the Tories want extra credit for simply doing their jobs. This just makes them look like vain, preening greedy pigs in my book.
Then there are the crimes of these patriots. Illegal aggressive war, complicity in torture, AWB and on and on and on.
Tory party history increasingly resembles that of some bizzare Leninist state – its beyond belief.
You have to give Rudd credit in one respect. He knows just how to push the Liberals/Oz commentators’ buttons to get a maximum infuriated reaction. He is like the kid in the back seat of the car on a long trip who gives his sister a series of little pokes until she lashes out, and then she gets into trouble. The kid is a shit, but he gets away with it every time.
Rudd famously said in 2007 that he wanted to get in Howard’s head and drive him crazy. He succeeded then and is succeeding now. Will these people never learn?
Isn’t Paul Kelly’s thesis just George Megalogenis’ thesis from The Longest Decade rehashed?
I think we’d all prefer if Rudd kept his mind on the issues and just let the Libs talk as much as they want.
I, for one, would like to congratulate the Liberals on finally taking a firm stand — for policies that make them unelectable (Workchoices, no action on CC)
When he was elected, I thought Rudd would bring a breath of fresh air to politics. I even hoped for a statesmanlike leader for a change. But I am beginning to wonder about his words versus his activities.
Isn’t there something a bit creepy about someone who sets to work on proclaiming their “legacy” almost from the first days in the job?
A bit like a 20 year old writing their obituary? Premature and a bit precocious, perhaps?
merc@4
and opposition to structural separation, wind back the stimulus and massively cut spending, opposition to optical fibre roll out to the home, more AND less spending on education, a leader with NPD … whgo complains that others are too narcissistic …
I liked the front page of The Age today with the Nationals doing their “just because we’ve got nowhere else to go doesn’t mean we’ll always be there for you”. It would seem that the more the coalition stands for the less coalition there is.
I’m still wishing and hoping and thinking and praying, planning and dreaming each night, that the Nationals will turn to The Greens in their hour of need and form a coalition of land-caring types (with apologies to Burt). It would mean a couple more independents but I think it would be more interesting to see them fighting to make things work rather than trying to screw things up.
Moz of the high-level wishful thinking.
Moz @7 of the high-level wishful thinking, I’m right with you!
Let us also think and pray, plan and dream of our Admiral as newly-minted ambassador to Europe suddenly “getting it” that those guys believe in climate change, and believe in taking concrete steps to reduce CO2 emissions?
Otherwise, if he talks like he did the other day about climate change, they might just decide that he is a useless twat.
They might even start thinking something similar about Rudd for sending him as ambassador to Europe?
So much for the long-run outcome of clever-dicky efforts to poke their coalition “sister” in the ribs? Thanks to Sam @1 for the graphic analogy!
tssk@3 – but Rudd does have his mind on the real issues and he is letting the Libs talk as much as they want. He’s just making sure they talk about things he knows will keep them productively(for him!)occupied while he gets on with his own agenda.
Mark, I thought Mungo’s piece in Crikey was a neat, clear exposition of how policies unfolded through the Howard years after the Hawke and Keating reforms had set the economy on track for success. Who on the left could quarrel with it? arriving on the scene.
Perhaps the journos can write up events and interpret policies and outcomes in terms of history wars, but doesn’t the embargo on publication of Cabinet minutes have to end before real historians can do their bit of entrail reading? The inevitable wait for another twenty to thirty years before the truth emerges seems to give pollies like Howard and Costello, and even our beloved Hawke and Keating, the chance to ride off into the sunset in a golden haze of self justification.
One thing puzzling me is Mungo’s take on the Libs and the independence of the Reserve Bank. Wasn’t that an informal given even under Labour? I recall Keating’s comments about having Bernie Fraser in his back pocket and how well that went down!
Certainly, it makes sense for the conservatives to try and defend certain parts of the Howard legacy. They seem to remember what Howard did to Labor and are trying to avoid spending the next decade disowning the entire history of what they did in government.
However, it makes no sense at all to continue to defend the legacy of the things that lost you the election – springing WorkChoices on an unsuspecting electorate and (to a lesser but still important extent) climate denialism.
Liberal legacy? Let me count the ways. Workchoices, The Australian building and Construction Commission, the Pacific Solution, children in detention camps, The Intervention, the Patricks waterfront dispute, persecution of the unemployed, single mothers and the disabled, Privatisation of Telstra, underhand support of Pauline Hanson, the useless History wars, refusal to do anything effective on climate change, refusal to apologise for the Stolen Generation, attempt to destry Medicare by stealth, unseemly intervention in US demestic politics by calling presidential candidate Obama asupporter of terrorists, the Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, wasteful middle class welfare at the expense of the genuinely needy, covert government support of racist nationalism, political interference in the ABC – need I go on? (I’m sure I’ve left heaps out.
History wars over the economy aside, and responding to Paul’s list @ 11 the nastiest and meanest of Howard’s heinous crimes was his failure to continue support for the dental care scheme. Anyone who’s had a toothache overnight or a weekend will have some idea of the pain, often chronic, to which he subjected the most needy and particularly the elderly. Some states have since filled the gap, but huge damage has been done to the dental health of a generation of underpriveleged kids and untold misery to old people.
PS Paul, I followed up your last Lazy Sunday note on Francis Grose with a query I somehow couldn’t manage to post on your blog. I’m genuinely curious.
In a couple of decades time, after we have had our fill of the second rate government we currently have and are tired of their lost opportunities and wasted potential, it will probably be highly relevant to remember Paul’s list, incomplete as it is, and remember that the reason we have the mob we have now is that, despite their failings, they are, and probably will continue to be, far far better than the COALition could ever be.
Kymbos: reading Paul Kelly’s book would feel like the longest decade!…though at some stage I’ll probably try to put the ultra-serious, didactic neo-liberalism to one side and flick through it.
I love the born-to-rule cluelessnes of the Libs – we were so brilliant, we had racial wedge politics down pat, yet somehow our beloved PM managed to lose his seat.
Here’s a start, Libs: you were wrong – catastrophically wrong – on Work Choices, Iraq (including paying kickbacks to Hussein’s regime), global warming inaction.
The reason the New Right are going so mental over Rudd’s essays and speeches is that not only are they out of power, but around the world their ideology has been discredited. It can’t be easy to be confronted with the fact that all you have worked for – “rolling back the frontiers of the state” – was wrong and stupid.
I;m glad to see I’m not the only one having trouble balancing what seem to be two contradictory historical narratives on neo-liberalism coming from Kevin Rodd:
Linked text
Make that Kevin Rudd for #15. Kevin Rodd can be a worry as well.
“two contradictory historical narratives on neo-liberalism”
You were expecting intellectual consistency from the PM?
The Hawke-Keating legacy that Rudd defends was in large part the very essence of the neo-liberalism that he denounces when it is convenient, especially the financial deregulation of 1983-85. Certainly it was seen so at the time. Keating, as Treasurer, was loathed by the Left for it.
Not that there is anything unusual about a PM being intellectually and philosophically inconsistent. Every PM in a long living memory has been (except Billy McMahon, who was just a joke, even to his own side).
Paul Kelly by the way is completely wrong-headed when he tries to weave a consistent story running from Hawke to Howard. There was no consistency. It was rather a series of ad hoc responses to crises coupled with some timely opportunism. As narratives go, it’s only slightly less plausible than a trying to weave a consistent story that runs from the Weimar Republic through the Third Reich and then Adenauer’s Federal Republic.
Sam, a chat about German neo-liberalism one day would be good.
But I think the problem runs a bit deeper than intellectual inconsistency, partly because it is hard to be “indolent” about pursuing “extreme neo-liberalism”, as the previous government has been accused of doing. If you are going to be ‘extreme” about something, it is hard to do it in a half-arsed, “indolent” manner.
There is a bigger issue that I see a Cabinet that has some people in it who are recognisably of the mind-set of the Hawke-Keating years – Lindsay Tanner and Craig Emerson are the two that mist obviously come to mind – alongside some old-school rent-seekers.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, because its only people like David Burchell and Paul Kelly who expect a “narrative” (and then typically complain about the one they get), but it does give this government an odd shape, as we are still not yet clear where its key players are – Rudd, Swan, Gillard – on what used to be called the micro-economic reform agenda (which now seems to have morphed into neo-liberalism).
And, yes, you’re right that the left of the late 80s hated the policies of the era that they now take retrospective credit for (the reform and opening up agenda). I was one of that left of that era.
As in “Ordo-liberalism”?
I think Paul Kelly et al confuse the sort of ideological/cultural/political economy sort of meta-narrative they like imposing on events, and plain old fashioned political messaging.
Terry,
I don’t think you are right about Tanner. You certainly are about Emerson, though he isn’t in the Cabinet amd probably never will be. Emerson was in Hawke’s office during the great reform and opening up years. He is a try-hard who hasn’t had an orginal thought in 25 years.
I liked how the other week when talking about Insiders Bernard Keane in Crikey referred to him as Paul “well Barrie” Kelly. Cracks me up everytime I hear his name now and how was the rude plug he gave for his book last week on the show, he did it so seriously & straight faced that a couple of the “couch collective” started laughing.
When he starts veering off course I can’t help but think of Johhny Depp in Fear & Loathing In Las vegas, “Just…finish…the fucking story!”.
Sam, you mentioned the 3rd Reich. Therefore you lose.
Any historian selects elements from events. You could write recent decades as a tale of opportunistic politicians wheeling and dealing (and here questions of their motives would be important), or as a tale of conservatives and social democrats striving to work out what their political projects meant in new times and how to implement these projects, or you could write it as a tale of bipartisan policy change (and here the role of public servants would be very important). The problem with Kelly is that his work jumbles up elements of all three. His understanding of economic reform is often very simplistic, he bags on about the floating of $A which if anything gave govts more policy autonomy, he has never read policy documents, and his big idea that Labor had destroyed its political rationale by the reform project has obviously been refuted.
Geoff @ 24, I think you give Kelly too much credit for intelligent reflection.
Sam, I agree completely that the idea that Howard’s policies were simply an extension of Hawke and Keating’s policies is completely bogus.
The usual suspects have tried to play down Howard’s radicalism. I think this sells Howard short – Howard was our most ideological PM.
The Right argues Keating introduced enterprise bargaining and that Work Choices was simply an extension of those changes. It’s hard to imagine anything more intellectually dishonest. Whereas Keating’s IR laws contained important protections like unfair dismissal laws, Work Choices was probably the most extreme set of IR laws introduced in any modern democracy. We’re talking about a set of laws that effectively outlawed trade unions. Its true purpose was to destroy the base of his opponents – to create a one-party state.
I wrote to a foreign journalist who fell for Howard’s act and had described him as a pragmatist and “centre-right”. I encouraged him to look into Work Choices on the web. He was amazed – I don’t think he had any idea that a government could be that radical in a western democracy.
Howard may have been flexible tactically, but he was certainly a neo-liberal ideologue.
To that list Paul you may not wish to add; staring down the moody loner lobby by bringing in the uniform gun laws Hawke was too spineless to pursue post Strathfield, ending Australia’s complicity in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, standing by the US at their time of need (as per the ANZUS Treaty, but hey), joining in the incredible response to the tsunami, strengthening ties with China while not leaving out Japan (no mean feat), and keeping Peter Costello out of the PM’s job.
You may instead prefer to add; ripping money out of public education to make private cheaper, turning Ministerial Standards into an oxymoron, bullying East Timor over those gas field negotiations, sucking up to a US adminstation that was demonstrably incompetent and lacking any intellectual or moral credibility, and keeping Malcolm Turnbull out of the Ministry.
Let the good be interred, blah blah blah.
brisbanedavey, the gun laws and East Timor intervention were both totally poll-driven.
I take it by “standing by the US” you mean “illegally invading a sovreign nation”, so I’ll ignore that.
The tsunami was, I concede, extraordinarily generous.
I don’t reckon keeping China and Japan both onside would be too hard if you have a couple of competent diplomats doing the heavy lifting.
$weetie kept himself out of the Lodge. He didn’t really need any help from Howard.
Not really. Iraq is an unmitigated disaster and referred to in the ‘moral and intellectual’ component. Afghanistan was necessary. Poorly done, sadly, as the focus wrongly shited to Iraq.
Poll driven? Gun control used to be a Dem and Labor-left wishful-thinking type of thing. Political suisice was the received wisdom of the day. Hawke refused to touch it, and he wasn’t one to ignore a poll. Howard drove it through over the States, and the laws worked. Credit for that is actually deserved, IMO.
Was Whitlam’s original roll-over also poll-driven? I wasn’t around then so perhaps there was a lot of Australian public support for the invasion. Haven’t heard much about that though.
You don’t have to ‘concede’ anything on the tsunami. A good thing was done. Pity Howard couldn’t have done more good things, especially at home.
Your China/ Japan comment I won’t touch, it’s simply too silly. Read a book or something. “Not too hard” works only as an ironic statement.
Fair enough to say that Costello and Howard worked together to keep Costello out of the Lodge? Even if neither of them would put it that way…
I’m glad Howard is gone, I simply have no interest in looking back with eyes blinkered by hatred or by hero worship. Shame the conversation has to default to one of those. Was there a memo I missed?
Afghanistan was necessary
.
No it wasn’t.