Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Why dazzle 'em with policy when you can baffle 'em with...

Back in the dim, dark days of my childhood, in the middle of the last century, the big star of Sydney radio station 2GB was a pompous pontificator named Eric Baume. While nowhere near as malevolent as his present day successor Alan Jones, Baume was no less shameless.

The story goes that one day, after a particularly fierce piece of commentary, Baume asked his producer what he thought of it. The producer, a hardened veteran of commercial radio, replied that it was utter bullshit. "Ah, yes," rejoined the unabashed Baume, "but wasn't it good bullshit!"

Which brings us, inevitably, to opposition leader Mark Latham and his landmark speech last week to the National Press Club.

In the harsh atmosphere of present day politics, Latham's speech was indeed largely bullshit. Instead of facing the stern realities of the war on terror, border protection, economic globalism and the Australian cricket team, Latham chose to embrace the namby-pamby, do-gooder agenda of family and children.

It was an extraordinary and totally unexpected break from tradition, which caught both the media and the government flat-footed. But there is every sign that, from a voter point of view, it was almost entirely welcome.

The Howard government certainly acknowledges family matters as an issue, but only as number three - numbers one and two are, of course, national security and the economy. Only when these are dealt with satisfactorily does the mini-micro world of the hearth and home get a mention.

The born-again, new age Latham stands these priorities on their head; while security and economics are of course important, their purpose is to provide a benign setting for society - indeed, for individual family members. They are not, and should never become, ends in themselves.

To the government this is heresy, sacrilege - not to mention bullshit. But not to the voters, who, if talk back radio and the polls are to be believed, rather like the idea of having their own perceived interests placed ahead of exaggerated or downright mythical threats and the ruthless bottom line of economic rationalism.

And certainly the hamfisted attempts of Howard and his ministers to deal with it suggest that they have not yet come to terms with this new political reality. Their first reaction was to try and dismiss it with a snigger and a sneer; Alexander Downer hissed that he had been absolutely knocked over by the fusillade of clichés. Others dutifully followed suit.

But then Howard himself, once more singing a tune different from that of his loyal defenders, mused that he had been saying the same things for years - if he closed his eyes he could hear himself speaking Latham's words. His staff hastily produced a speech from 1995 to prove it, and sure enough, Howard had indeed once put family first - or he said he did.

The problem is this was nearly a decade ago, and there is no evidence that he has ever done anything substantive about it, or at least that's how it appears to an awful lot of struggling families. Once more Latham ended up setting the terms of the debate and winning the argument hands down - that's the way the public saw it, even if Howard's increasingly frantic apparatchiks in the media did not. Good bullshit indeed.

In this context the moves from the government to regain the initiative were little more than laughably inappropriate distractions.

First, the usual suspects from the Business Council of Australia and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry were trotted out to rubbish Latham's economic credentials. The high priest of unfettered capitalism, Hugh Morgan, denounced the plan to use the Trade Practices Act to protect small business from the predations of the big boys as anti-competition, while other very large businessmen warned that proposals to make industrial relations a more level playing field would be bad for the economy (meaning themselves).

This was not only tediously predictable but precisely the kind of self-serving jargon that the voters were rejecting; being attacked in such a manner by such a cabal only strengthened Latham's case.

Then Amanda Vanstone sought to apply the immigration wedge again by suggesting that Australia should be shrunk still further: the continental border should no longer start from the low-water mark, as international convention dictates, but from the high water mark.

She explained with a more or less straight face that this would toughen up border protection by forcing asylum seekers to reach dry land before they could claim refugee status - as if there were currently swarms of them demanding residency as they floated towards our shores on the incoming tide. The proposition was largely ignored as being plain silly.

And in and out of parliament both heavyweights and lightweights continued to rake over Latham's past (and also the Centenary House chestnut, with which Latham had absolutely no connection), and no one - not even the tabloids - took the slightest notice.

Latham's dream run will have to end sooner or later; eventually the public will demand that the feel-good stuff be translated into specific and attainable promises, and then the real contest will begin. But in the meantime the newly invigorated Labor Party is winning hearts and minds at a truly impressive rate and is leaving the government - and especially Howard - looking tired and flummoxed.

And didn't they have it coming. For years Howard has relied on his own brand of bullshit to baffle the electorate. Now he himself must proceed, as they say, undeterred.