 Political Corrections
with Margo Kingston
It's The Leadership, Stupid
The TV screen is black, save for one narrow line of words in white type:
'Who'll make the tough decisions?'
The solemn voice of one E. Horton intones:
'Even before the recent tragic events in the United States, the world was facing a period of recession. The US economy was at a standstill, Asian powerhouses Singapore and Japan were officially in recession and most if not all European economies were slowing, some to a halt.
'John Howard has faced these sorts of challenges before. He took the tough decisions to reduce Labor's debt, to fix the tax system, to protect East Timor, to take a strong stand against illegal entrants.
'Now the world faces more uncertainty, and more tough decisions will have to be made.
'This election you must decide who is capable of making them.'
This campaign opener says it all about the dark dead end to which John Howard has taken us. This is John Howard's address to the nation post terror. The world's troubles have closed in on us, fading our prospects to black. Nothing about the way through. Nothing about how we can make the world or our nation a better, safer, place.
The politics of fear. The politics of closure.
David Davis, an expat living in Switzerland and long-time contributor to Webdiary, has been a Liberal moderate all his life. The Tampa drove David to despair with his mob, just as it did many Labor stalwarts with theirs. It symbolised all that had been lost in the last decade - which I'd summarise as the core values of small 'l' liberalism on social issues and its respect for the checks and balances of vibrant democracy, the capitulation of egalitarianism and respect for the role of government to neo-liberal ideology, and the collapse of consensus on our role in the region and the world.
It's not a happy election climate, that's for sure, except for the ravers and the ragers. The only way to protest is to go for minor parties, but it seems from the latest polling the voting public is polarising around the majors.
Howard's motto is: 'The Howard Government. Putting Australia's interests first. Certainty, leadership, strength.'
He'll need it, because he's pissed off the world so much we no longer 'punch above our weight' as Keating once said, but have become irrelevant and alone. Where are we in the region, helping Indonesia stay firm against terror and liasing with our neighbours on behalf of the US and her allies?
Where in the world are we putting our views on the future course of the war and the ideals we think the world should strive for? Neither party leader will even let their own public in on that, even if they had a clue.
Our contribution until this week to the core aim of the Coalition against terror - to convince the Muslim world that we are not against their religion but against the terror of extremists among them - is to rough-house Muslim boat people fleeing oppression.
This week, Howard blasted the Taliban about the aid workers on trial for preaching Christianity, saying all they were doing was preaching Christianity.
'We can't have a situation where the safety and decent treatment of people who are doing nothing but preaching Christianity are put under threat in the way that the Taliban have done in relation to these people.'
That shredded the hard work of his foreign minister, the families, their lawyers, and the negotiators to deny outright they were doing anything other than delivering aid.
He thus joined Italian leader Berlusconi in harming the Coalition's propaganda war in the Muslim World.'Certainty, leadership, strength'.
Do we really need John Howard's version of the three?
This is David Davis's take on the advertisement, which he downloaded from www.liberal.org.au
'The part of the ad that disturbs me is the more cynical aspect of playing to people's fears. It is true we are in an uncertain period but I wonder about the collective 'mental state' at the moment. Yesterday in Germany the Interior Minister called for calm because the sense of fear is really becoming terrible. In Italy it is dreadful as well and I am not sure how much better it is in Switzerland.''
'I am not sure how Australians are feeling. They may not be as fearful as Europeans are at the moment. If they are, and this is the part I don't like, it is irresponsible and dangerous to actually increase the fear level with this kind of ad. It is not good enough to make reassuring noises on the one hand and then ratchet up the fear level on the other.
'Increasing fear is one of the worst things they can do. In subsequent developments this fear may turn into outright panic. This of course would have economic and other implications. I think they should be very careful about playing with the national mindset in the midst of a crisis.
'I feel it will probably be an immensely successful ad in gaining votes for the Liberal Party - but there is something in the back of my mind, a little hard to define, which says it's actually dangerous and irresponsible. My sense in Europe is that the fear level is so great that such an approach at the moment would never be considered.'
Email: mkingston@mail.fairfax.com.au
Margo's web diary - www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/webdiary/
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