I’ve had an interesting day today, helping to organise two functions to commemorate the sacking of popularly elected governments. The second was with Don Carlos, the Mayor of the City of Joondalup, who was suspended along with his council but ultimately praised by the McIntyre Inquiry for the principled position he had adopted since before his election. Carlos demanded the resignation of CEO Denis Smith, who had faked his qualifications; Liberal-aligned councillors defended the CEO’s dodgy behaviour. We’re now awaiting a Ministerial decision about the future of the council.
But as I’m under strict instructions that today is for Whitlam-related posts, I won’t bore you with those details. Instead, I want to discuss the first of today’s events, with special guest Lindsay Tanner. We already knew what Tanner was going to say to us, because an abridged version of his speech was published in The Australian this morning, a potted summary was on the front page, and it was getting a pretty good run on the radio. Labor, said Tanner, should get over the Dismissal, and get on with more important things.
Its symbolism is still potent, its formative influence on many people like me remains immense, but it’s now a part of our history. It means very little to younger Australians. Though my rage and enthusiasm are essentially undimmed after 30 years, I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that it’s time we got over it.
I think I agree with this sentiment. I was born six and a half years after the Dismissal, so I don’t have a sense of personal outrage about what happened. When the LP bloggers started talking about a mess of posts on the event, I wondered whether I could muster enough interest to participate (and I very nearly didn’t).
There’s something to Tanner’s theory that the emotional investment of a generation of activists on both sides of politics is giving the Dismissal a greater prominence than it deserves. It is treated as current affairs rather than as a historical event. It seems to go beyond the celebration of Labor history (and myth) that is so important to the party and that is a part of the Labor culture I enjoy immensely. People really do need to get on with it.
It is the parts of Tanner’s speech that weren’t published in The Aus that I found really engaging. People’s obsession with the Dismissal reflects the cult of victimhood that is crippling Federal Labor. As Tanner put it, “I’m sick of getting emails from Labor supporters complaining about George Bush and John Howard. I’m sick of not getting emails from Labor supporters putting forward ideas about solving the problems affecting our communities.” He wants to see a Labor party that gets on with addressing issues in a systematic way, instead of simply playing to the polls or responding to the Government.
It’s time we moved beyond that sense of victimhood. Shit happens, but we need to be realistic about it. We need to put the Dismissal in the broader context of Labo(u)r history. We’re good at bearing grudges, but they tend to keep us out of office by distracting us from the main game: ours is a movement for social progress and justice, and we can’t afford to be sidetracked by squabbles about who sacked whom thirty years ago.
I think the industrial relations campaign has the potential to be a catalyst for that change. Instead of focussing on some slight that was done to the movement recently, it is putting MPs, union officials and grassroots activists back in touch with the real reasons they support the labour movement — and, indeed, the reasons they elected the Whitlam Government in 1972. We need to maintain the rage, but we need to aim it in the right direction. It’s time to take up the fight to those Tory bastards who are trying to wreck our great nation.
Update: Of course, a straightforward “piss off, Lindsay” response would be to point out that this is a culture war and you don’t stop fighting ’til the battle’s won.
Best post of the series, Robert. The dismissal belongs to history, not legend, and it’s time to move on. I suspect the IR policy will not prove to be the catalyst you predict, but we can but hope – if Labor boxes clever enough.
Thanks, Rob. Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic about Labor’s response to the IR legislation, but I think the unions have certainly found a renewed focus that bodes well for the future.
Yep, this is the only real issue that Labor has going for it. It probably sounds Machiavellian (but who knew politics better than he?) but Labor should welome this legislation (internally, anyway) as a golden opportunity. It should put together a casebook of bad examples over the next couple of years, so that it can go to the next election and say, ‘This is what they’ve done. How do you like it?’
I think that’s precisely what they plan to do. The most important thing is to keep it on the agenda — someone on another thread pointed out that even if a High Court challenge failed, it would keep opposition to the IR package in the news for a while. If the States play it right, they can drag it out and maybe bring States-rights conservatives along with them.
The key as always in good timing, good packaging and good policies (in that order). These days, I almost feel like joining the ALP so I can scream this formula at every meeting.
What Rob said. Excellent post, Robert, and not just because I agree with you.
Well argued, Rob, but I don’t see that it’s impossible to continue to be concerned with events that have both emotional affect associated with them and contemporary ramifications and get on with the job. The first should give impetus to the second.
I’m sure the other Rob would not argue that we should forget the crimes of Stalin, for instance.
I think that part of how the memory of such events plays out over time is getting things in proportion.
An analogy might be the memory of Joh in Queensland. It was good to see that some protesters who’d been involved in fighting his regime (including electricians who’d lost their livelihood in the SEQEB strike) decided on reflection not to picket his funeral in Kingaroy but to organise a protest in Brisbane. Peter Beattie’s argument is that we should recognise the “good things” Joh did for Queensland. Perhaps so, but not at the expense of forgetting the bad – which were very bad. If nothing else, it should make people more vigilant about abuse of power and corruption and the degradation of democracy in contemporary political affairs.
Oppostions who never really got over lossing elections can only attempt to stop supply , remember they didn’t oppse it, IF the government is hopeless.
Maintage the rage against Gough the pathetic. Remember this proabably wouldn’t have happened IF the silly man had appointed Hayden, Wriedt etal into the cabinet positions they should have been in!
Should we maintain the rage? No!
Mark: I donÄôt see that itÄôs impossible to continue to be concerned with events that have both emotional affect associated with them
Neither do I — but they should be considered as historical events, and put in their proper context. As I said, one of the things I like most about the labour movement is its strong connection with history. But as Lindsay Tanner put it, “30 years is long enough for any grieving process.” We can’t let emotions prevent a sober assessment of what happened. For instance, while we should never forget the disgraceful way the Liberals behaved in deposing an elected government, we need to remember the bad things Whitlam did (such as his authoritarian rule of the Party) to prevent them from happening again, too.
Naomi: But we also ought not forget that Whitlam only got in on the basis of policies that had been built over a decade.
That was the main thrust of Tanner’s speech.
I haven’t spent the last 30 years in a rage over the Dismissal. I don’t often think about it. But it was an extraordinary time and I found the actions of Kerr and Fraser truly unforgivable. So while I don’t expect others to maintain the rage, especially if they weren’t there, I’m afraid my own feelings on the matter are going to remain. Especially when my buttons are pressed by a facile “get over it!”
So I reacted to the Tanner headline, but when I heard him speak he sounded quite balanced and sensible about it. I remember a yoga teacher saying, “Contemplate failure with equanimity. Invest all your energy, including your emotions, on what you might do in the future.” It’s just that there are one or two tinstances where I find this good advice hard to follow.
The one thing that has been lacking is a good straight-forward account of what actually happened at that time by a competent historian. I had a go here but I’m not an historian. It’s important to realise, I think, that Whitlam had the confidence of the H of R, that the senate had not blocked supply, and that Whitlam had signalled to Kerr on that very day that he would seek a half senate election plus a referendum on fixed parliamentary terms. Hence Whitlam was proposing political solutions to a political impasse that was still being played out. What he got was a highly political and prejudicial intervention for a GG whose main concern should have been to see that the problem was resolved politically by the politicians.
I tend to agree that we would be unlucky if the same problem occured again and the obvious thing to do is take extreme care in setting up any head of state position in revised constitutional arrangements. Especially if we are to have a popularly elected head of state. This is the approach being taken by Malcolm Turnbull and Nicola Roxon among others.
But possibly a bigger worry is to take care about what statutes you have on the books that could be used in an unprincipled and ruthless manner in circumstances not envisaged by the legislators. Actually what we are getting at the moment is the Machiavellian establishment of laws that can and are intended to be used in ways that are deliberately being obscured.
I think the textbook definition of conservatism sees it as being essentially authoritarian and valuing people with power and property over those without. In more recent times you have a form of conservatism that wishes to conserve existing arrangements that are imbued with the values of liberalism. It is important to realise, I think, that the Howardistas are not liberals but the older kind of conservatives.
So in things as simple as whether you need a doctor’s certificate for sick leave the gun is being loaded against those without power.
Also the use of fear to keep us all on edge. Back in the days when North Ltd were fighting with the unions we had executives running around with “The right to manage” embossed on their brief cases and saying that every worker should come to work every day thinking ‘I might be sacked today if I don’t perform’. North at the time were using the whole paper business as a milch cow in true capitalist exploitative style to provide funds to dig more holes in the ground.
No need for such messages now as such values are being embedded in the culture.
Bugger it, I’m depressing myself, but we need to recognse that we are up to our navels in alligators while we dream our dreams and think our beautiful thoughts. And then be realistic but honourable in our strategies.
btw, that was a brilliant comment, Naomi. Don’t stay away too long.
An insight from Paddy McGuinness on the Whitlam years is here. It is characteristically cruel, but characterically fair nonetheless.
It’s worth drawing attention to this comment by Brian which is also responsive to this post.
Naomi, thats’s good, but I’d still submit that Howard is a conservative but a radical/reactionary one. Conservatives generally distrust human nature, seeing it as bad and unperfectible (after Heywood, “Political Ideologies 2nd ed). Hence institutions are needed to contain and control our base animal nature (the ‘thin veneer of civilisation’ and all that.) I’d submit that Howard is rejigging the institutions, taking us back a century or two by stripping out the liberal elements.
But there is a path to virtue, or so we are told. We need to become entrepreneuers ourselves. But if we stop as being sole traders it is a false promise, as all we do is forego solidarity and put ourselves in a situation where we can be picked off one by one and simultaneaosly blamed as the authors of our own condition.
Naomi, you also mysteriously become good if you are rich and powerful. Conservatism is said not to be utopian, but I’d suggest it is. Originally goodness ultimately derived from God and to some it still does, hence monotheistic religions of which Christianity has historically arguably been the most aggressive and intolerant, are still behind it all somewhere perhaps.
Also the view of human nature is arguably pre French revolution where the peasants were seen as somehwere betweeen the gentry, land-owners etc and the beasts of the field.
Nice to rap but I must fly.