 Political
Corrections
with Mungo MacCallum
Utopian Vision a Middle East Nightmare
Forget about the United Nations and their silly little resolution 1441, a pitiful document, which simply demands that Iraq disarm. Iraq is in fact doing that, and as the Bush-Blair-Howard Axis of Drivel points out, it is far too little too late.
Indeed our own steely Prime Minister, reading directly from a press release prepared in Washington, gives it as his own considered opinion that Saddam Hussein is not altogether sincere - that he is, in the felicitous phrase coined by Condoleeza Rice (or was it Don Rumsfeld? They do tend to operate from the same script) only playing cat and mouse games.
But in any case, Dubya's creative genius has moved on from such trivia to far loftier aims - nothing less, in fact, than the transformation of the entire Middle East into an earthly paradise. Well, at least George Bush's idea of an earthly paradise, which presumably means something pretty like good old Texas - a kind of Arabic version of the Lone Star State in which the people kill each other for secular rather than religious reasons and the wealth - especially the oil - is managed for the benefit of George and his buddies.
Indeed, we read that they are already divvying up the spoils; American construction companies have started jostling for the estimated $900 million worth of reconstruction that will be required after the bombing stops and American wheat farmers are invoking the unassailable principles of free enterprise to cut their Australian allies out of the market.
Bush's plan, incidentally, shows a hitherto unsuspected literacy; who would have guessed that he was familiar with the archaeological theories which hold that civilisation began in Mesopotamia, between the much-abused Tigris and Euphrates, or with the writings of such early Utopians as Sir Walter Raleigh, who actually located the garden of Eden a little south of present day Baghdad? Such precedents make Bush's current project all the more impressive.
So far the reaction from the area has been one of caution tempered by incredulity, but the White House and its allies - both of them - remain sanguine. After all, as Bush points out, when other middle eastern states see the wonders wrought by the liberation of Iraq, they will be unable to contain their own enthusiasm for freedom and democracy (or at least the American kind; as Robert Mugabe pertinently pointed out during last week's conference of non-aligned nations - he isn't the only one to have stolen an election, and at least more than 25 percent of his citizens voted for him).
Such vicious and authoritarian dictatorships as our close friends Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (itself but recently liberated with the promise of democracy for all its citizens, a promise which has temporarily fallen into John Howard's non-core category) will presumably lead the stampede towards liberty, equality and fraternity. Syria and Jordan will fall into line and the trifling differences between Israelis and Palestinians will be swept away in the great tide of brotherhood.
The Iranian mullahs will swap their Korans for bottles of Wild Turkey and even in far off Afghanistan, where the well-publicised program of rebuilding and reconciliation also appears to have been put on hold, century-old feuds will be forgotten under the stern but benign (and above all profitable) Pax Americana.
Such is the grand vision, and it all springs from the single, simple act of knocking off the bad guy with the sinister moustache who tried to kill Dubya's daddy. Is it any wonder that he gets impatient with the nervous nellies from the old nations who think they have a bit more experience with wars designed to bring peace to the world, and are reluctant to jump into yet another one.
Why, back in Texas, a man shoots first and asks questions afterwards. At least that's the way it works in the movies.
And speaking of movies: why should Australia get involved in Star Wars? Well, because the North Koreans one day just might have nuclear missiles that could reach our shores. But why should the North Koreans want to shoot nuclear missiles at us? Because we're getting involved in Star Wars, of course.
Such is Australian foreign policy under John Howard and Alexander Downer, who reacted to the news that North Korea had lobbed a short range missile into the Sea of Japan by sniffing that the action was "quite provocative and entirely unnecessary" - I'll bet that had the dear leader quaking in his shoes.
The idea of a missile defence shield is, and always has been, fantasy - it is estimated that it would take ten years to prepare one to counter today's ballistic weapons, by which time of course there would be a completely new lot, 10 years ahead again. The only certainty is that pursuing the idea would set off an arms race in the region, once more leading to precisely the result we claimed we were protecting ourselves against.
Howard claims to be flabbergasted that anyone should reject it out of hand. The most depressing thing is that his servility and myopia has now got to the stage where he probably means it.
 Political Corrections
with Margo Kingston
Election Debate Finally Starts on Drugs
'Heroin handouts'; 'Ecstasy for sale' screamed the headlines in the Sunday Telegraph. It was a king hit for the Greens. At last the whackos were exposed, the pretenders unmasked.
But a funny thing happened after the kill. The public started talking about policy - the big picture and the individual tragedies - and Greens spokespeople were run off their feet doing talkback on their ideas to a surprisingly non-judgmental audience. The terrible trauma of families was told, again. The price of criminalisation in soaring crime rates and rampant corruption got a run, again. Anyone interested in drugs policy already knew the Greens were way out there on the harm-minimisation front, didn't they?
Carr is tough on drugs and so is Brogden, but they both support heroin injecting rooms. So what does their political reaction to this left-field ball in an area both parties had decided not to use against the other in the campaign tell us about the state of play?
Labor pursued the Greens for preferences after the Cunningham by-election, but late last year it walked away. Alan Jones was onside, and Carr had ensured Brogden and Howard had no chance to call him soft on terrorism by enacting police-state type laws for search and home invasions.
The Liberals knew The Greens were highly unlikely to preference them, except perhaps in Port Jackson, where the two parties had joined forces to stop Carr selling-off part of Callan Park for development, and the prospect of Labor minister Sandra Nori losing her safe Labor seat to The Greens via Liberal preferences was delicious for Liberal and Green alike.
But Carr's lack of action on water, land clearing and saving the western forests, and his 'let it rip' development policy in Sydney and along the coast meant several local Green groups had decided to exhaust rather than preference Labor.
As most of the Green vote is ex-Labor, this would give the Libs a better chance to win a few marginals. Brogden was offering some attractive policy to encourage The Greens to exhaust - a scale-back of medium density development in Sydney, an end to the sell-off of public land, and more money for public education and health.
Then came the troop deployment and the explosion of the war debate.
The latest Newspoll shows the Greens polling 8 percent in city and country - a steady performance - but we can assume that its support shot up sufficiently in marginal Labor seats for Labor to worry about The Greens again. Labor resumed its seduction recently, and you will have noticed a steady flow of greenie announcements from Carr ever since, including stopping logging of old-growth on the north coast and a sort-of moratorium on genetically modified food.
This is the context for Brogden's extraordinary announcement on the day of the Sunday Telegraph hit (it was old news by the way, and Brogden well knew The Greens approach to drugs policy from the parliament's drug summit) to preference Labor above the Greens in all state seats. Now that Carr was wooing The Greens to stop them 'doing a One Nation' on Labor's vote, why not try the successful Labor gambit of forcing the Coalition to put One Nation last in reverse?
It makes sense if you're dumb, which Brogden is showing every sign of being under pressure, because a moment's thought would throw up two huge problems.
The biggest, of course, is that Bob Carr would never fall for it. My bet is that he's laughing at his rival's stupidity. Thanks to Brogden, he can pull out the mega-bucks he was devoting to save Sandra Nori and put it elsewhere. And Brogden's labelling of the Greens as so "dangerously irresponsible" that he'd rather preference Labor means Carr has just about got Greens preferences in the bag, and may well have to deliver less to get the prize.
What's the risk for Carr - that some voters will desert him for the Liberals because he's soft on drugs? You've got to be kidding. Voters know there's no chance of The Greens policy getting a look-in in the current climate.
So Carr condemned the policy - "I don't want us to be a pill-popping society with youngsters boiling their brains on amphetamines and marijuana" - and laughed off the Brogden challenge. "I disagree with their drug policy. We disagree with them on a lot of things; I'm a bit more comfortable with some of their environmental concerns."
The second downside for Brogden is that drugs policy is no longer a left/right one. It's all over the place, and the reason is that many people, from all walks of life, have lived with the horror and grief of an addicted family member, relative, friend or acquaintance. They have personal stories of the lack of help, of the police corruption, of the nightmare for everyone concerned. And so talkback has not been filled with rage, but with genuine debate. The vast majority believe the Green's ideas are far too radical, but a significant minority are interested in the harm-minimisation approach.
Some people have joined The Greens over the years after losing a loved one to drugs precisely because of its approach to tackling drug abuse. Others would like to have that alternative voice in the debate, if only to keep it alive, and most, in my view, will not change their vote over drugs.
And isn't it strange that the first substantive policy debate in the campaign has been triggered by the determination of the Murdoch press to get The Greens? Just like how the far right, through One Nation, forced debate on race. Sometimes the major parties' silent consensus on controversial issues covers over deep cracks in public opinion.
The Greens believe the drugs debate will cost them votes. I'm not so sure. I am sure that Brogden's preference play is a disaster for his chances at the election. Lost Green votes will not go to him because he put the Greens last, they would flow back to Labor, where they once belonged. Carr's reputation cannot be soiled on this issue, if only due to the fact that he's tough despite the death of his brother through drugs. Brogden, yet again, is acting like an amateur.
It's such a shame for the health of NSW democracy.
PS: As I write, Turkey's decision to block access to US troops for an attack on Iraq looks like it could delay an invasion of Iraq until just after March 23. If so, I bet many voters won't able to resist sending a message to Canberra on the war. Don't expect Bob Carr to walk away from The Greens preference negotiating table until he's got Greens preferences in the bag. He'll want to ensure that if anti-war voters flock to the Greens to send a message to John Howard, he's absolutely sure of their second preferences.
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