Dictatorial conduct

As noted in The Courier-Mail on Saturday, August 11 about the forced amalgamations in Victoria in 1994:

(Liberal Premier) Jeff Kennett ... sacked all the councils in the state, replaced them with administrators sympathetic to his objectives, then set out to determine how the boundaries should be redrawn. As a result, all the councils were run under the tight control of the premier for 18 months or so while the amalgamations were implemented. There was no chance for referendums or consultation or negotiation with mayors or councillors. There was no agonising over "the voice of the people". Everyone was sacked and out of the way while the process was driven through.

Prime Minister John Howard, although only Federal Opposition leader at the time, nevertheless, did nothing to dissuade his Victorian colleague from a course of action which was every bit as dictatorial as that which is now being undertaken by the Queensland Labor Government.

In government, John Howard has lowered the standards of democracy and government accountability to levels many would never have believed possible. As a house of review, the Senate has been emasculated. All manner of important legislation is rammed through, in exactly the same way that the forced council amalgamation legislation was recently rammed through The Queensland Parliament, with little or no opportunity for scrutiny of the legislation. Bills which have become law in this fashion include:

• Telstra privatisation;
• WorkChoices; and
• Bills currently before the Senate to take away the rights of Aboriginal communities to manage their own affairs and to alter their land tenure.

The misnamed WorkChoices laws, which have changed the very fabric of our society were not even put to electors in the 2004 elections. In 2005 Howard announced his intention to enact industral relations “reforms” to be known as WorkChoices. Even before the bills were presented to Parliament, an unprecedented saturation level campaign of TV, Radio and Newspaper advertising was launched. This cost the taxpayer AU$55 million. Since then, the Government, by having belatedly changed the original legislation in election year, has acknowledged that the claims made in this advertising campaign were false.

During the 2004 election campaign Australian electors were bombarded with all kinds of advertising material promoting the supposed achievements of the Howard Government. One of these was the notorious "Strengthening Medicare" campaign, the claims of which were known, even at the time, to have been false. This campaign cost taxpayers AU$20 million.

John Howard's Government has shamelessly used the pork barrel to win votes in strategic marginal seats.

The Howard Government has also cut the funding to organisations which have been in any way critical of government policy. Scientists working for the CSIRO who have been critical of the Governments inaction in the face of the threat of global warming have been sacked.

So, it would seem that John Howard's new found commitment to democratic principles may not be quite as strong as his moving condemnation of the Beattie Labor Government's outrages would lead many of us to believe.

In fact it is striking how congruent the policies of Howard and Beattie are:

• both support the export of every possible tonne of Australian coal in spite of the obvious and growing peril that this poses to our global environment;
• both encourage rampant population growth to suit property developers and land speculators;
• Beattie, in common with all Labor premiers indicated their support for the Australian US Free trade agreement, which grossly disadvantages Australian farmers, even before Federal Labor had adopted a policy on it in 2004;
• both are engaged in extensive programs of privatising publicly owned land and other assets; and
• in 1999, even before the "never ever" GST legislation had been passed through the Senate in the face of heated popular opposition, the Labor state premiers, with Beattie foremost among them, fell over themselves, to sign agreements with Howard over the distribution of GST revenue.

As Mark Latham pointed out in The Latham Diaries the Victorian, New South Wales and Tasmanian Labor Governments all acted to harm the electoral prospects of Labor in 2004, apparently to suit their own selfish interests.

The upshot of all of this, unless we are careful, may be that Howard will win in 2007, thanks to a swing against Federal Labor in Queensland, but will fail to reverse Beattie's amalgamations just as he failed to reverse Kennett's earlier unpopular and ill-considered amalgamations in Victoria. When Queensland Labor next faces the people in 2009, the horrors of the re-elected Howard Government may well cause many to forget Beattie's current outrages against democracy as previously happened to Bracks in 2006 and to Iemma, Carr's successor, in 2007.

Paradoxically, the best way for Queenslanders to punish the Beattie Labor Government for trampling on their democratic rights, may prove to be a strong vote for Labor in the forthcoming Federal election.