Kevin: the morning after

With so much attention focussed on the Rudd-Howard show, Australian politics has been trivialised, even more than usual. But personality politics obscures issues that will have to be faced, after the election. What will we wake up to, with Prime Minister Kevin?

Progressives have become obsessed with the ‘get rid of Howard’ campaign to the point that they speak little of the issues; while the oligarchy and many of its hangers-on seem resigned to a change, on the basis that it will be ‘business as usual’.

Many harbour the fond illusion that a real contest lies ahead; but it seems pretty certain that Kevin Rudd will be the next Australian Prime Minister. The polls are clear and consistent. As if to underline the cynicism of the system, the day after the polls were called, and before a single candidate had registered, the corporate media had their ‘election guides’ published, explaining the choices available: Howard or Rudd.

Even that limited choice is all but made. The impending Labor victory raises two questions: how could this happen? and what difference will it make?

The answer to the first question is not too difficult to discern. Howard’s regime has been the most hated for many years, pushing through unpopular policies of privatisation, war, corporate subsidy and the destruction of civil rights.

Yet the uncritical support of a powerful, indoctrinating corporate media, and the weakness of the political opposition gave Howard his dream run. After all, from the point of view of the big investors, Howard had delivered on taxes, subsidies, protection from the costs of environmental protection and industrial laws. In Australian media terms, no major scandal (the wheat board bribery affair), gross abuse of power (indefinite jailing of refugees) or gross criminal activity (the slaughter in Iraq) ‘stuck’ to the Howard regime.

However Labor under Rudd finally managed to capitalise on the hatred of Howard while apparently cutting some specific deals with the small, unelected groups that control the major banks, mining companies and media groups, and thus dominate Australian policy.

In Australia’s two party system, Labor’s task has become a little more complicated in recent times. Since the 1970s Labor strategists had known they had to not only put together a coherent package for the public, but to sell this to a significant section of the corporate elite.

With no real wish to confront the economic powers, Labor knew it could not afford to alienate the bulk of the investor class, as had happened in 1974-75, with disastrous consequences for the Whitlam Government. The corporate media, backed by finance and mining groups, would crucify them.

This lesson was fresh in the minds of the Labor leadership in 1981, for example, when (in opposition) the executive abandoned the party’s ‘no uranium mines’ policy. The explicit reason was that the investment groups (‘finance markets’) would not accept it. The banks thus ‘out-voted’ Labor’s membership. Hence Labor’s strange ‘three mines’ policy. Then in 1984, with banking ‘deregulation’, the Hawke Labor government allowed the banks to set their own interest rates. Again, in 1985 and after a media campaign by the mining companies, the Hawke Government reneged on its 1983 election promise to introduce national Aboriginal land rights legislation. The recent collapse of Labor’s ‘three mines’ policy is entirely consistent with the Labor leadership’s priority for investor groups.

However with the takeovers, mergers and institutionalisation of major investor groups from the 1990s on, capturing the support of just one section of these groups was no longer an option. All the Australian banks had acquired the same major shareholders (currently led by J.P. Morgan) and these banks were in turn heavily cross linked to the strategically important mining companies. Kevin Rudd had to impress a far more unified group. He seems to have done this.

Labor’s fortunes in the media and therefore also in the polls turned a corner with Kevin. One of his first tasks was to visit Rupert Murdoch in New York; showing the appropriate direction of ‘lobbying’. Next Rod Eddington, a member of both the News Ltd and the JP Morgan boards was quickly badged as Kevin’s business adviser, and introduced him to the Business Council of Australia.

We can safely assume that the reassurances at these meetings related to the smooth nature of regime change under a Labor administration. Such reassurances relate to the great bipartisan and neoliberal issues which, because they are bipartisan, play little or no part in contemporary Australian election campaigns.

First, Labor is expected to maintain the systems of corporate subsidy and privatisation. There will be no backtracking on the privatisation of Telstra or the major utilities, even if new privatisations might be stalled. Labor is expected to maintain the subsidies for the private health insurance companies and private health service providers, as well as for drug companies, agribusiness and the coal industry, while developing new subsidies dressed up as corporate ‘partnerships’, or as environmental protection measures such as ‘carbon trading’.

Second, there must be no rupture with the US – a difficult task in the middle of a bloody and genocidal war, with no exit in sight. Here Labor hopes for an answer by following the US Democrats, but they too have no easy way out. The US does not know how to lose a war.

However Labor will share its first year in office with Bush, and its image in global affairs will be immediately strained as it struggles to avoid sharing moral responsibility for the worst genocide of a generation. The numbers slaughtered in the Iraqi genocide are now double those of the Rwandan genocide. Yet after a million dead from an illegal invasion Kevin calls the U.S. a “force for good” in the world. He begins his term with a serious credibility problem.

Official denials of any crime or wrong doing block serious debate of war crimes in the corporate media; and Australians seem to suffer some collective delusions over the scale and criminality of the current wars. Yet a little political (or prosecutorial) will would see a case rapidly mounted against Howard, Downer, Hill and the others for their war crimes. This, in fact, seems the only way to salvage a credible Australian voice in international affairs.

A de facto state of emergency under the guise of this ‘war on terror’ (little more than a front for imperial intervention) has been at the root of the erosion of civil rights in Australia and the region. We now have multiple forms of preventive detention. The jailing of refugees and interventions in friendly neighbouring states have also relied on wartime jingoism and threats of terrorist invasion through supposed ‘failed states’.

Labor has participated heavily in the attacks on civil rights and the ‘war on terror’ jingoism, in state government as well as federal opposition. There will be no easy retreat for them. One consolation is that the extremity of the attacks on civil rights should reignite debate over a Bill of Rights, preferably through a new constitution.

The highly unpopular ‘work choices’ regime - the most recent move in a long-standing campaign to cripple employees’ rights by displacing collective bargaining and effectively abolishing trade unions - is one of the few central issues that has seen light of day in public debate. Yet once again Labor has taken its cue from the investor groups, adopting a fair measure of support for inferior individual contracts.
 
Labor, in short, has painted itself into a corner, readily selling its conscience for a three year term in administration. So, what difference will Labor under Kevin Rudd make, and what are the practical possibilities for progressive politics?

The first thing to note is that Labor’s derivative politics allows for very little independent political will. It is almost inconceivable that Labor will take any initiative that breaks the neoliberal mould of corporate subsidy, ‘open markets’ and imperial collaboration. Reform in the way of public institutions or citizens’ rights will most likely only come through substantial public pressure, and then be subject to heavy corporate constraint.

This is not to say that Prime Minister Rudd will not announce new policies. In fact, as a simple matter of political identity, he must do so. But look for the pattern. By neoliberal logic, for example, any redistributive social policy must be fiscal, rather than through the redefining of social relations. Labor’s ‘social inclusion’ seems most likely to rely on state capacity to pay, rather than a redefined notion of citizens’ rights. Public investment must not be at the expense of private investment opportunities. For example, investment in public health must be matched by new ‘cash cows’ for the private health insurers and providers.

Labor has promised substantial new investment in education and infrastructure. Watch to see if public education recovers and to what extent privatisation is rolled back at the universities. Labor has also promised increases in regional foreign aid. But watch to see if AusAID programs become any less the ‘boomerang aid’ cash cows for a handful of Australian investment groups.

Labor will slow the pace of the destruction of workers’ rights, by amending individual contract law and practice. But remember it was Labor (under Hawke and Keating) that began to dismantle the award-based wage system. Recuperation from the damage inflicted on organised labour will require time, recruitment and organisation. But recall that Labor presided over the ‘accord’ period of the 1980s in which a reliance on government and peak union deals was encouraged, penalties were increased for industrial action and union membership fell.

Culturally there may be some more possibilities. A retreat from the overt racism of the Howard regime and a resurgence in the teaching of Asian languages (which began in the 1960s, but died under Howard) are likely. Nevertheless, we must remember it was Labor (under Keating) that introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and Labor (in Western Australia) that introduced the mandatory jailing of Aboriginal child offenders. The first test for Labor in race relations will be to apply the Anti-Discrimination Act to the Northern Territory and reverse the privatisation of indigenous land rights that Howard began this year, with Labor support.

Low expectations of Labor (perhaps a bitter pill for those young people who do not recall a Labor government) can prove useful. There is a great need to rebuild progressive politics after Howard and this, in my view, can only happen outside Labor, but perhaps including a split in Labor.

Student activists will have to watch the role of Labor students with a Labor government. With most of its leadership angling for jobs in the Labor machine, Labor student groups will be actively working to defuse criticism of a Rudd government.

The socialist groups, some of which have been important in anti- war and solidarity movements, will have to rethink their approach to Labor in office, as well as to the unions that bind themselves to a Labor government. A ‘left realism’ has crippled the imagination of many, through narrow labourism and despondence, just as the ‘correct line’ obsession of others has made them irrelevant. Yet socialist groups are well placed to unmask neoliberal doublespeak, and offer practical alternatives.

The Greens, who seemed to be the hope of some conscience in Australian politics, are likely to go backwards electorally: first because of the corporate media stage management of a highly polarised election, and second because the Greens have developed illusions about electoral success through ‘playing it safe’. They will have to reconsider their relationship with a Labor administration, and to distinguish themselves very clearly on the major issues. To mimic the Democrat-Liberal relationship would be fatal.

So what are the big issues? What might ‘politics’ in Australia be after the Rudd-Howard show? Well what about work security, social security versus private superannuation, shared institutions versus privatisation, public education with a conscience (not just vocational training), citizens’ initiatives versus consumerism, internationalism versus imperial war and regional domination, public health without the ‘parasites’, environmental protection without bogus ‘market solutions’, and a new constitution with a bill of rights? These could be a good start.