Kevin: the morning after

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.