Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Libs offer more hard labour

Over time, politicians develop various nasty habits, and one of them is the use of phrases that do not actually mean what they say.

This is not always a bad thing; such phrases can serve as warnings to the trained observer. For instance, whenever the late and unlamented Peter Reith opened a sentence by saying "Well, to be perfectly frank..." it was a signal that what followed would be a monstrous lie.

The latest addition to the government's lexicon of misleading words and phrases is "the national interest." Whenever John Howard or any of his ministers describe one of their proposals in these words, it is a sure sign that the idea is dodgy or divisive or both - the so-called free trade agreement with America is an excellent example.

Thus to hear Peter Costello call his plan to end early retirement and drag the old, the wounded and the crippled back into the workforce as both "visionary" and "in the national interest" was to be doubly alarmed.

Admittedly his whole speech was grossly oversold in advance; Howard especially had led us to expect something almost revolutionary from his reluctant deputy, and Costello didn't help by rolling out sonorous plagiarisms like "a date with destiny" and "the die is cast."

But the problem of an ageing population is a real and serious one, and we were entitled to expect at least an attempt at a real and serious solution. Instead, the government once again shrunk to the occasion.

Costello calls his puny project a recipe for growth; it isn't. A genuine attempt to reform the working economy would involve getting the long term unemployed, particularly the over 45 bracket shunned by employers, into full time jobs and, in the longer term, fixing the cumbersome and expensive superannuation system so that it provided a viable retirement income. All Costello wants to do is to take as many people as possible off the pension - hence his targeting of retirees, single mothers and the disabled.

The bottom line, his real concern, is a saving of about $30 million over 10 years. This sounds like a lot of money, but it is not even petty cash compared to the billions that will actually be needed as the ageing of the population really picks up - and note that this is not just about a bubble of baby boomers; longer life expectancy and a lower birth-rate means that we are looking at a permanent change to Australian demography.

Costello is probably right in saying that higher immigration rates alone won't solve the crisis; apart from the immediate cost of settlement and training, immigrants often bring dependants with them, and in any case eventually become dependants themselves. Which leaves the other options he rejects - at least for now: higher taxes, decreased services, or deficit budgeting. None is very palatable; but then, Costello's grand plan, which can be summed up as "work longer at worse jobs for less money and eat into your super while you're doing it" isn't exactly utopian either.

And more to the point, it will make no significant long-term difference. At best it is a quick, election year fix. So much for the national interest.

Our Foreign Minister continues to become more and more foreign - or perhaps alien is a better word.

Alexander Downer's most recent exoticism is a ringing endorsement of the good old US of A as the world's nuclear sheriff - a fearless avenger ready and willing to shoot first and ask questions later if it appears that anyone he doesn't like is getting hold of nuclear technology. Downer, who was once a diplomat, says that this is what the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is all about: stopping the spread of nukes.

Actually, it's about half what the NPT is about. The other half involves those who already have nukes progressively getting rid of them. Washington is going the other way, a fact which is of some concern to those who note its attempt to make itself invulnerable through the missile defence program while simultaneously asserting its right to strike pre-emptively against everyone else.

In any commonsense view of the world Australia should be in the coalition of the concerned. Downer, however, now apparently accepts American unilateralism as both a global benefit and an act of faith. Perhaps it is time he joined Rupert Murdoch in taking out American citizenship, so that we (and for that matter he himself) can see just where his allegiance lies.

Although his momentum in opinion polls is apparently slowing, Mark Latham continues to enjoy more than his share of luck.

The most recent bonus was a rather pompous column in The Australian by Phillip Adams suggesting, more in sorrow than in anger, that Latham is betraying true Labor values.

Readers with long memories will recall that Adams once had similar reservations about another Labor leader. In 1968 he supported Jim Cairns's campaign to unseat Gough Whitlam, whom he then regarded as a dangerous heretic. Whitlam went on to win a fairly close caucus ballot and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, in the minds of a great many of those seeking the return of a Labor government, is Adams. In the present climate, his disendorsement of Latham can only be a nett benefit. Swinging voters will see it as a sign that Latham has escaped from the clutches of the chardonnay swilling elites - which is doubtless unkind to Adams, but what goes around, comes around.