Leadership is the art of the impossible

offshore processing of asylum seekers quagmire.

In 1983, Bob Hawke won the Drover's Dog election and three more on the trot. He set out to get an accord between the government, the unions and industry - the ultimate actions of a pragmatic manager. Wages did not keep pace with inflation but workers superannuation and social security benefits were seen to compensate for that. After a prolonged internecine dispute, he was eventually replaced by his deputy. Paul Keating did so much as Treasurer to modernise the economy but will probably be best remembered for the vitriol of his debating style and the humanity of Redfern speech.

Keating held on to office in the 1993 election, during which John Hewson had tried to convince Australia that we needed a GST, only to lose in 1996 to John "Lazarus with a triple by-pass" Howard. Howard never made any secret of his economic fundamentalist leaning, nor his social conservatism and set out with alacrity to fight the culture wars against those he declared to be "elites." He convinced many blue-collar workers that those who were reliant upon social security were welfare cheats or dole bludgers or job snobs. Thereby unleashing, in the ranks of the "Howard battlers," a torrent of downward envy directed at people who were unemployed, lone parents or disability support pensioners.

Once he succeeded in dividing the working class, Howard was able to enforce individual work contracts and slash award conditions. He eventually introduced a GST. He attacked Indigenous organisations and the reconciliation process. His last act was to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act and implement the Northern Territory Intervention.

But on the way, he used the Port Arthur massacre to bring in gun control and managed to get Indonesia to hold a referendum in East Timor that ultimately led to East Timorese independence. Howard introduced temporary protection visas, turned some boats around on the high seas, excised offshore islands from Australia's migration zone and introduced offshore processing of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru. Not since Whitlam had there been a leader as intent to use his time in office to change the status quo.

By 2007, it was time for Kevin 07 Rudd, to present himself as a safe pair of hands who was not going to frighten the horses – a social conservative like Howard and a devout Christian to boot. He even promised to persevere with the NT Intervention for a year. Towards the end of his first term, having managed to avoid a recession by counter cyclical spending, Rudd succeeded in convincing his colleagues that he was a control freak with few useful ideas who was not even a good pragmatist. In fine Labour tradition his deputy, Julia Gillard, rolled him.

The next election resulted in a hung parliament - Julia Gillard was able to convince three of the independents and the Greens that she would lead a better government than Tony Abbott. She has managed to introduce a price on carbon pollution and will probably oversee the legalisation of gay marriage. She has managed the crossbenches in the Parliament well and the 27 per cent who say they will vote Labor are probably satisfied with her pragmatism.

But like the leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott (the leader of the no's in the House) she is cowered by the racists in this country who would ignore the International Conventions on Refugees that we have signed and ratified and use to process those who arrive by boat onshore. Gillard has continued most of the Howard NT Intervention policies and extended some of them to ensnare poor people in other parts of the country where Aborigines, Pacific Islanders and Muslims are concentrated. This is not leadership - it is racism.

Looking back at the last 70 years it is easy to separate those heading political parties who championed change even when the changes they were seeking seemed unlikely to occur from those pragmatic managers who were content to massage the egos of those around them in order to hold on to power.

In the 2011 Australian parliament, the overwhelming majority of the parliamentarians believe Howard won the culture wars and that the fight is over. Only the Greens and a couple of the Independents have the courage to champion the impossible.