Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

A failed experiment

Some 13 years after it was started, ATSIC has become the experiment that failed. John Howard now tells us that he has always been uncomfortable with it; his Minister against Aboriginal Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, compares it to apartheid.

Then why didn't they get rid of it eight years ago? Because to have done so would have confirmed the view that Howard and his government are essentially racist.

Actually most people got that message with Howard's attacks on Asian immigration, the Wik judgement, reconciliation and the Stolen Children report, not to mention his exploitation of asylum seekers. But to have unilaterally knocked off the so-called indigenous parliament would have been a bit like donning a white sheet and waving a burning cross. He couldn't do it until Labor, in the form of Mark Latham, signalled that disposal of ATSIC was now a bipartisan position.

Latham, of course, saw it as a constructive move: ATSIC had become too centralised, too nepotistic and too tainted through ongoing scandals over its leadership. The institution had to go, but the principle of self-determination was to be preserved in regional councils, while a new elected body would take over ATSIC's advisory role. Indeed, something similar had been recommended in a report prepared for ATSIC itself.

Howard, on the other hand, wanted to lay waste the entire concept and sow the ground it had stood on with salt. ATSIC and all it had represented was to be vaporised; aboriginal affairs was to go back 30 years, to a time when any form of independence was unthinkable. Programs were to return to the mainstream departments that had failed so consistently to deliver improvement - health being the most depressing example. Representation was to be through an appointed board of Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas on which, as a number of indigenous leaders pointed out, no aborigines in their right minds would ever sit.

The emphasis was to be returned to what Howard calls practical reconciliation, by which he really means assimilation. Above all, symbolic issues were to be set aside as totally irrelevant. Except, perhaps, for a return to that oldest symbol of all: the lie of terra nullius. Bring out the white sheet.

In the eight days I have just spent in Bali, the Jakarta Post contained just two mentions of Australia. One, of course, was the news of Rupert Murdoch's move out of the place. The other was an approving coverage of Mark Latham's foreign policy speech, a report which dismissed with contempt the criticisms of Alexander Downer, who seems even more despised in Indonesia than he is in Australia.

In spite of Downer's constant protests to the contrary, there is no doubt that at least some of our regional neighbours feel neglected by the Howard government and are also suspicious and unhappy about the deputy-sheriff connection to Washington. Latham to them represents not some kind of revolutionary shift, but simply a return to normal.

But if Latham is winning hearts and minds in Indonesia (while, of course, losing them in America) the real concern must be with the voters in Australia; and it is far from clear that continuing the foreign policy-defence-intelligence-security debate is the way to win over the doubters.

Superficially it might look as though Latham is ahead. The growing chaos in Iraq, the stream of whistleblowers from the intelligence services, the rise of anti-war sentiment in the United States and elsewhere should be working in Labor's favour. I also suspect that the parade of American and Iraqi propagandists trotted out by the government and the media to attack Latham's policy of withdrawal is counterproductive: we will decide, et cetera.

But when Latham and others start comparing Iraq with Vietnam, I get a nightmarish flashback. I remember 1966.

This was the year of Australia's Vietnam election. There was no international consensus about intervention in Vietnam either - the United Nations was not involved and even the British were opposed. It was an American adventure supported by a token Australian presence.

The conservative government was gung ho about supporting our ally and would not hear of possible defeat; we would never cut and run. The Labor opposition described the war as unwinnable and campaigned on a policy of immediate withdrawal. The Prime Minister, Harold Holt, fell back on his great and powerful friend, the President of the United States for support, which he duly received.

At the election which followed Labor was beaten by a record margin. Indeed the margin was so great that although Gough Whitlam picked up 17 seats three years later, with Vietnam still an issue, it wasn't enough to win in 1969. He had to wait until 1972, with Vietnam out of the picture, to bring Labor to power on a platform in which health and education were the principal planks.

I know, I know; Iraq isn't really the same as Vietnam: for starters, most Australians opposed getting involved in the first place. And we have learned things since then, the times have changed and circumstances are very different. But the fact remains that, for all the sentimental harking back to John Curtin and the glory days of World War II, Foreign Affairs and Defence have seldom been Labor's strong points.

Howard has made the whole security area his own; fighting at his end of the field, the best Labor can hope to do is break even. To win, Latham needs to get back on his own turf - specifically, health and education.

There will be time to play the international statesman when - if - he becomes prime minister. For now, it's the domestic issues, stupid.