Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Deep down, we're really just softies (if not lefties)

In his address to the nation on Sunday night an almost teary John Howard told the Australian people how proud he was of their generosity - and with reason.

On our behalf, he had just promised an unprecedented $1 billion in aid to Indonesia alone, albeit with some pretty inelastic strings attached.

On top of that the general public has pledged over $120 million to various non-government agencies, and still counting; numerous fund-raising events are scheduled for the weeks ahead. Indeed, so great has been the outpouring that one charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres, actually told the public that enough was enough - for the time being, anyway. The organisation's volunteer doctors could not responsibly use any more money in the current circumstances.

Of course, not all the pledges will be honoured; many of those who have big-noted themselves, especially on the telethons, will have second thoughts when it comes to actually writing the cheques. The last great natural disaster was the earthquake at Bam, in Iran; this too was the subject of a great outpouring of charity, but in the event less than half of what was promised - both by governments and by private sources - was finally delivered.

But even if there is a bit of a morning after, this does not detract from the initial outpouring of compassion, which was apparently as disinterested as it was spontaneous: most of those who gave so generously did so out of pure concern for strangers whom they would never meet and from whom they could expect nothing in return.

Which leads to a paradox: how does this caring, sharing Australia which extends its goodwill across the boundaries of nationality, race and religion square with the self-centred, xenophobic, interest-rate-obsessed populace which just three months ago gave an increased majority to the Howard government after an election campaign in which the chief motivators were fear and greed?

Are the people who dip into their savings to rebuild Muslim schools in Aceh the same mob who applaud the deportation of the Bakhtiari family, asylum seekers who could not prove to the satisfaction of the government that they were Afghans (although the government could not prove that they were not) and who have now swapped years of detention in the Australian camps for a future which they insist will be one of fear and persecution - a family who can now never return to Australia because, in a final act of cynicism, they would be charged millions of dollars for the privilege of their imprisonment?

Are those who donate a day's pay for the support of the widows and orphans of Sri Lanka able simultaneously to ignore or condone the kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of the Australian Mamdouh Habib, and nod approvingly when Phillip Ruddock declares that he has no reason to disbelieve the reassurances of his American captors and that they (the captors, not their prisoner) should be given the presumption of innocence?

Are those who applaud the laying waste of one country, Iraq, on the preposterous grounds that it makes them more secure, now making sacrifices to rebuild another country, which they have been taught to perceive as the most real of all potential threats?

It would appear to be so, and therein lies the great contradiction in the Australian populace: while we may claim to be pretty practical, hard-headed characters, quick at detecting bullshit and rightly sceptical of our leaders, the reality is that we are bunch of softies - marks for any passing con man and easily led in whatever direction our political leaders choose to take us.

For various reasons, John Howard has this time chosen to take the high ground, and we have been happy to follow him. When he congratulates us, he is really congratulating himself. He has, finally, achieved a form of consensus among his people.

Well, all but one of them. Mark Latham's continued silence is both inexplicable and inexcusable. He may well be seriously ill, although if the recurrence of his pancreatitis was triggered by a touch of Christmas over-indulgence, this suggests a worrying lack of judgement and restraint. But unless he is actually comatose, his failure to issue even a proxy statement over the tsunami disaster is akin to political suicide.

It is not enough to leave it to a party spokesman, or to assume that it will be understood that he takes a bipartisan view with the government. The biggest neighbourhood catastrophe in living memory requires a personal response and Latham has failed to provide one.

As a result he has been accused of sulking and malingering and has given enormous aid and succour to his enemies, both inside and outside the party. When he does get back to work, he had better have a pretty convincing medical certificate. The problem is that if it is really convincing, he will probably have to resign on health grounds.

And in case anyone thinks I am getting too soft on Howard, let me say that even if he gets an A for compassion, he still rates F for English. On Sunday he said that the tsunami "decimated the lives of millions." No it didn't.

Decimate does not mean to destroy, or ruin, or make miserable: it means to reduce by one tenth. Roman legions convicted of cowardice were decimated - every tenth man was executed. It's what Howard could do to his ministry, before enrolling in one of Brendan Nelson's literacy courses. If, that is, he ever returns to earth.