Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

A sorry state of affairs

What is it with John Howard and the word "sorry"?

Why, no matter how much the circumstances demand it, is he unable to force even the vestige of a gracious apology between his expensively capped teeth?

First there was the stolen generation of Aboriginal children; he may have had some regrets but he wasn't actually sorry, because he personally hadn't stolen any and some of the people who had probably had good intentions. As for the white settlers whose rape of Aboriginal women had produced the children in the first place, well, he wasn't one of them either.

Then there were the other children - the children overboard. When it was proved beyond doubt that their asylum-seeking parents had not thrown them overboard at all, Howard refused to apologise on the extraordinary grounds that he had thought the lie was true when he said it. It now appears that this may have been another lie, but even if it wasn't, the justification was absurd - as Howard the lawyer should know, a libel remains a libel whatever the intention of the libeller. And anyway, if he was genuinely mistaken, all the more reason to say sorry. But not for little Johnny.

And now we have the case of Cornelia Rau, wrongly incarcerated and abused by the Immigration Department, an arm of Howard's government. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, whose government was also involved, apologised immediately. Many of Howard's own backbenchers have urged him to do likewise. But no; this time the excuse is that saying sorry might be taken as a confession of liability and someone, some time, might sue (this was also given as a secondary reason for not apologising to the stolen children; it did not, however, deter every state premier from expressing sorrow. The states remain unsued).

Rau's relatives have already made it clear they are not interested in litigation of any kind; presumable Howard doesn't trust them. Perhaps he is thinking that, in their position, he'd be charging into court with all guns blazing. But more probably it is simple pigheadedness. No matter how compelling the evidence, no matter how open and shut the case, our Prime Minister can never, ever, admit he is wrong.

Victorious one day, infallible the next. And with the new Senate taking office in July, omnipotence is just around the corner.

This realisation also informs the government's handling of the Tumbi Creek affair, a squalid little rort which shows just how closely the government identifies public money with Liberal Party funds.

The sequence goes like this: The Liberal member for the marginal seat of Dobell announces that $1.5 million is available under the regional partnerships program to dredge Tumbi Creek in his electorate. This comes as a surprise to the local council, which has not yet applied for the grant, let alone had it processed or approved. By the time the application goes in, the creek has been cleared by heavy rain. The council rings the office of the responsible minister to tell him; an adviser tells them to shut up and grab the money anyway.

Just another petty fraud in the life of an increasingly corrupt government, and Howard was never going to worry about it. But the arrogance of his response - that it was okay because the council wanted the money - opens breathtaking new opportunities for misappropriation. No wonder a refreshed Kim Beazley noted that putting the pork before the barrel was an invitation to kleptomania.

It is pleasing to note that our excitable Foreign Minister remains calm about North Korea's claim to have nuclear weapons.

Alexander Downer notes that this foundation member of the Axis of Evil may well have a couple of crude missiles - not the suave and sophisticated models he admires on his visits to Washington - but that a return to diplomacy will fix things up. It is a welcome contrast to his reaction to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which was to roll around on the floor screaming and biting the carpet before spluttering off to an undeclared and illegal war with his mates.

Downer was just about the last person in the world to abandon the fantasy of Saddam's weaponry. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the reality of Kim il Sung's. The irony, of course, is that Baghdad denied (truthfully, as it transpired) that it still possessed WMDs; Pyong Yang is boasting about them. Kim and his advisers have presumably decided that this is the safest course of action.

Given Downer's complaisant response, they may well be right. It is a lesson that will not go unheeded in other nervous capitals - Teheran being the most obvious example.

So interest rates are going up, and under a Howard government - and after we all trusted him, just as he asked us to.

But hang on: it's not really a broken promise because it's really Labor's fault anyway, for blocking the industrial relations reforms. Howard's spending frenzies before the last two elections had nothing to do with it. Of course, this excuse will disappear after July, and interest rates will continue to rise nonetheless. So who will get the blame then?

One thing's for sure - it won't be little Johnny. Not now, not then and not ever. You might as well expect him to say sorry.