... And at least another ten years to undo the damage

Holding the office of Prime Minister for ten years is definitely a noteworthy personal achievement. But being in power for a long time does not in itself mean that this reign has been for the good of all Australians and the future of Australia.

Many attribute Chairman Mao's long reign in communist China to his clever use of propaganda. Mao convinced students and workers to revolt against the bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party, killing thousands and injuring and imprisoning millions. Obviously Australia is a far cry from the 1966 Cultural Revolution, but there are no doubts that Australia's values and culture have changed over the last ten years, primarily as a result of the Howard Government's propaganda.

I agree that John Howard is a skilled politician, not so much for his economic management, but rather for his success in imagery, and reframing language and public discourse to reflect his conservative agenda. Put crudely he is a con artist, and a skilled one at that.

If you need convincing, look at the definition of propaganda under the Wikipedia encyclopaedia on the Internet, which lists the techniques of propaganda such as appeal to fear, oversimplification, scapegoating, common man, and virtue words. All used in Australia successfully over the past ten years by John Howard and his government.

Take Howard's continuous use of mate and mateship. This is a blatant use of the common man technique to appeal to average Australians by using their language. But we have seen few images of John Howard actually out and about with his mates, and it is unlikely you will see him down at the local drinking with his mates.

Also read George Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant, which details how the conservatives have employed progressive language to change the way the media report and the public see the world, which leads people to accept the conservative agenda.

Think of the antithetical titles of bills and policies; "work choices", "clean coal technology", and "fair dismissal" and the cleverly accusatory “politically correct”.

Lakoff argues conservatives have realised that issues need to be set in an overall moral and ethical perspective for them to resonate. While Lakoff talks predominately about America, the parallels for Australia are pronounced.

The Conservatives in Australia have appropriated fundamental Australian values with virtues such as mateship, freedom, choice and decency and have given them conservative definitions. Advocates, ministers and media commentators are using this language so public discourse takes place within the conservative framework and the underlying agenda goes unquestioned.

That Australians appear satisfied the Howard Government has protected them against terrorism and interest rate rises is a measure of the success of that discourse. In both cases the Howard Government successfully used a propaganda campaign of fear. The Howard Government has convinced Australians that terrorism is the biggest threat facing Australians, despite the fact that death from smoking, driving and even climate change are a good deal likelier than being killed by terrorists.

As a result of the fear instilled in the community, Australians have been willing to relinquish substantial rights and freedoms, something we would not have contemplated ten years ago.

On the issue of the economy, while some credit can be given to the Howard Government for economic growth, lower rates of unemployment and higher incomes for many workers, it was not achieved unaided. The Howard Government capitalised on the Hawke-Keating microeconomic reforms, and only succeeded in early tax and IR reforms after the Democrats bought back balance and fairness to these radical agendas.

However not all is rosy on the economic front. In the past ten years average household debt has risen from $43,000 when Howard took Government to $117,000 in September last year. Household debt as a proportion of household disposable income has increased from 82 per cent in March 1996 to 165 per cent in September 2005.

Median city house prices (expressed in 2005 dollars) increased from $204 000 in 1996 to $388 000 in September last year. Australia’s net foreign debt in February 2006 exploded to a record high of $473 billion. Foreign debt is now growing at its fastest rate in the nation’s history and the interest Bill has jumped by almost 40 per cent.

For all the Howard Government’s virtuous values, a recent Saulwick poll found we have become a meaner society. In just ten years, Australia has become less compassionate, democratic and tolerant of others (yet more tolerant of government failings), and instead, more divided, fearful, controlling and materialistic.

Now I don't believe for one minute that the majority of Australians actually want to live in such a society. But I believe that many Australians have been so successfully conned to think that the Howard Government knows best - ethically, morally, and economically - that people have been willing to go along.

John Howard has mastered the art of dog whistling, where he has given ministers and backbenchers permission to indulge their biases and prejudices without ever quite saying so or revealing his position on these views.

For instance, loose-lipped backbenchers were not chastised for insensitive attacks on Muslim Australians and neither were Pauline Hanson's red-neck values found wanting or apologies made for Bill Heffernan's false and malicious accusations against Justice Kirby

On the shameful detention of Cornelia Rau, children overboard and an unwarranted attack on Iraq, Mr Howard has scapegoated the public service and protected ministers from taking responsibility for these disasters. He learned well from his first year in office that strict ministerial accountability could not be applied without losing valued colleagues.

In some cases the Government has trained the bureaucracy so well that they don’t properly advise ministers, or if they do so, they do so by “omission”. They don’t tell all of the truth. This is a corruption of process and goes to the heart of the AWB scandal. The Howard Government's finger prints may not be all over the AWB's feather-nesting of Saddam Hussein but its failure to investigate makes it culpable nonetheless.

The failure to ask about Abu Ghraib torture, WMDs, depleted uranium use or Iraqi civilian deaths, all point to selective intelligence gathering and gross hypocrisy on the part of a government that has again damaged our standing in the international community.

Similarly domestic scandals such as children overboard, Cornelia Rau, Vivian Solon, demonstrate a government that refuses to take accountability seriously. A prevailing culture of government deception and cover up is made much worse with the Government in control of the Senate. The Children Overboard Inquiry would never have been possible if the Government had control of the Senate back then.

For too long this Government has been able to get away with the line “to the best of my knowledge”, or "I didn't know because nobody informed me" without facing proper open and transparent scrutiny.

The Prime Minister has elevated the influence of Christian religion in politics. Religion is perhaps more visible now in Australian politics than for almost 30 years, and a growing number of Australians are concerned about this.

He has also used taxpayers’ money to fund government advertising that blatantly promotes Coalition party policy. This is immoral and wrong.

Mr Howard provided leadership in the early years on gun control and pumped Telstra sale funds into repairing the land and intervention in East Timor, with the assistance of the Democrats, brought in strong Federal environment laws, transport emission controls, greenhouse abatement spending and fair moderate IR and tax reform.

But there is no new vision emerging that looks anything like these progressive reforms. Instead Mr Howard's focus is on conservative morals, the economy and terror rather than building a sustainable nation for all Australians.

The more recent copycatting of reactionary American social and foreign policy has left little room for compassionate, inclusive leadership, for protecting endangered species, conserving resources or tackling climate change.

Climate change has now been accepted as a reality by the world’s leading politicians and scientists. Climate change is already having a detrimental impact in Australia. According to leading scientists, a 4C rise could result in thousands of deaths in Australia each year from heat-related diseases, a 148 per cent increase in bushfires, a rise in the frequency of natural disasters and the loss of our treasured natural icons, such as the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu wetlands and the upland forests in Australia's Wet Tropics, as well as our alpine habitats.

Climate change is the world’s most urgent problem, not terrorism. Yet this Government has failed to urgently act in the face of overwhelming evidence and upon the presentation of achievable solutions.

The Prime Minister has destroyed reconciliation and let multiculturalisim decay to a shadow of its former self.

He has taken away small gains made by Indigenous Australians on land rights, abolished their representative body and done little to improve their economic status or prospect of a longer more healthy life. Indigenous health is still the worst in the developed world.

He has also failed to address Australia’s skill shortage or build the infrastructure necessary for a sound economic future.

Econmomist and opinion writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Ros Gittens stated that "politicians may be making heroes of themselves and proving they can do the impossible by quietly running down the quality and adequacy of public infrastructure". He is not just talking about roads and ports, but other essential services such as schools, hospitals, and water.

The Prime Minister has presided over an unprecedented level of under funding for our universities and TAFEs. Only this week there was talk about providing loans to students of up to $160,000 to pay for their university education. Can you imagine leaving university with a $160,000 debt, and the impact this will have on decisions to have children or capacity to buy a house.

Much needed medical places will be full fee paying. These doctors will feel no social obligation to work in rural settings, with Indigenous communities or with patients who need to be bulk billed.

The Prime Minister also failed on the BBQ stopper. Women still do not have Government funded paid maternity leave, women struggle to find affordable and accessible childcare and still have difficulty accessing secure, flexible and suitable work. The Government’s Industrial Relations reform and Welfare to Work reform will have a detrimental impact on women and their ability to balance work and family.

The new IR system will lower wages and conditions, it will further widen the gap between the haves and the have nots, and will lead us down the American path of the working poor.

Mr Howard has failed families on child care, care for those with disabilities, public education, mental health and dental services, deterring drug use and educating the young in responsible sex.

The list goes on.

Unfortunately it is likely that it will take more than ten years to undo the damage that Howard has done.

Australians need to reject this economic rationalist "strict father knows best" style government and start questioning the underlying values of the Howard conservative agenda and to look beyond the words and the marketing machine. Let's not be conned for another ten years.