Pragmatic and out of touch

In 2001, at the height of the Tampa affair, Beazley came out with an alternative policy to deal with illegal refugees. He proposed setting up a coastguard to patrol northern waters in close cooperation with Indonesia. The policy drew on his experience as Defence Minister and tapped into the unhappiness from some quarters of the Navy about their use in policing refugees. It was widely agreed to be a sensible, cost effective and pragmatic policy.

As a political response, of course, it was an utter failure. The problem was that it may have addressed the problem as it was posed, but not as it existed. Even Labor itself pointed out there was no real refugee problem, ship numbers were not increasing to the extent that they could not be easily absorbed. What the refugee crisis tapped into was the real problem at that time, the lack of a clear framework for managing international relations. The refugee influx triggered a panic because there seemed no basis for negotiating with other countries to stop the flow.

For Australia, the absence of such a framework was keenly felt in its relations with Indonesia that had become less active in halting refugee ships before they entered Australian waters. Beazley could propose the obvious solution of working closer with Indonesia but no means for how this was to be done. Howard’s hard-line response was irrational but seemed to make sense against the vacuum in international relations at the time. This result of the failure of Clinton’s humanitarianism foreign policy was a major concern in Washington with the new Bush administration that would not be resolved until later that year on 11 September.

Now that the War on Terror is being superseded by the Global Warming agenda, Howard has similar problems to those faced by Beazley six years ago. Howard is trying to sound pragmatic and sensible on climate change, certainly not hard to do against Labor and the Greens. The latter brings out a policy document to cut emission without even an attempt to estimate the economic impact. Labor’s economic spokesman sounds equally unconvincing on Lateline talking about the consequences of bringing in their climate change response.

Costello has a point when he calls Labor religious fanatics on the issue. The trouble is that the gap between heaven and earth in this case is between a new global agenda that is now being formed and its eventual translation to a domestic agenda. Here it is heaven that is the reality, the earth that is yet to be created. The same gap that makes Labor sound religious, but rooted in reality, was the same gap that made Howard sound like a knee-jerk racist, but in tune with the nation back in the days of Tampa.

What is Anzac Day but a media farce?

There is something slightly insulting in the surprise from some of the commentariat that Australian voting intention was not significantly moved by the silly little episode over Rudd’s Anzac Day appearance on Sunrise. Rescheduling the dawn service to suit media timetables does no more than illustrate that Anzac Day is already the very definition of media spectacle; a playing of images, visuals and symbols with very little content.

The myth of Anzac’s landing at Gallipoli was originally intended to drum up support from a reluctant Australian public for the Empire’s war effort. It is not surprising that the massacre of Australian troops resulting from English ineptitude failed to persuade and the Australian public twice rejected the introduction of conscription for what was seen as a European civil war. After WWI, the returned servicemen and the Anzac tradition formed a backbone of pro-Empire conservative politics reaching a crescendo with the formation of the far right New Guard and its rise in NSW during Lang’s tussle with the English bondholders.

The Anzac tradition underwent a sort of rehabilitation on the Kokoda trail with the broad consensus for the Asian War of 1941-1945 and held on to it for a couple of decades but still clearly identified with the conservative side of politics. However, that consensus collapsed with the disaster in Vietnam and Anzac Day fell into irrelevance.

The decline of political tensions in the 1980s saw a revival of the Anzac myth but not with the content of the past. It now became a compromise between the right’s acceptance of foreign ventures with a left view of Australian soldiers as victims. The resulting mish-mash does not mean very much. It may help the political class develop some sort of national identity but portraying Australian soldiers as innocents at the mercy of major powers is unlikely to inspire broader support for military action (although it may at least provide comfort when thing go wrong like in the current mess in Iraq). Even for those most prone to such national myths, the isolated and the young, there are limits, best shown by the annual backpacker carnival on the Turkish coast and the rubbish left behind on the sacred shores, like any rock concert.

This election will not be determined by voter views on personalities and whether they think Rudd is a media tart or Howard a liar. Despite the prejudices of some of the media, Australian electoral concerns are not trivial but, as for any modern democracy, determined by international factors and how they translate in the domestic realm. Australian politics may seem parochial sometimes but that is because the political class often bends over backwards to make it appear so and avoid the embarrassments caused by Australia’s subservient position in the world, shown so well by the glorious Anzac tradition.

Displacement activity

The AEC’s new rules for enrolment come in today. Amidst all the hand-wringing over the new tougher requirements what has been less mentioned is that around a quarter of 18-25’s are currently not enrolled, suggesting that for a significant section of Australian youth the value of the vote franchise has already been eroded.

The response to this will be a campaign coyly organised by the left-wing of the political class to increase voter participation along the lines of the US ‘Rock the Vote’. Getting the youth to enrol is a more comfortable activity than giving them something to vote for when they do. The willingness of Labor activists to act as the youth wing of the AEC is part of a broader merging of the ALP with government institutions that is likely to especially become a feature at state level.

Rudd’s glass jaw (Part III)

The final entry of a three-part post on Labor’s response to current changes in the international order.

The critical factor in this year’s Federal election, but one likely to remain in the background, is the change in international relations caused by the failure of the US’s War on Terror. The inability to draw on this has left Howard exposed with an irrelevant domestic agenda. By politicising a weakening of unions that has already happened, Howard’s IR reforms are even irritating his own business supporters.

When Rudd says that global warming is now on an equal footing with national security, that is a pretty accurate reflection on the balance in international relations between the US’s War on Terror and the climate change agenda of its rivals that is now gaining ground. It is quite clear that a reappraisal is now underway on climate change even in the US, not only indicated by the return of Al Gore to the national stage but even proposals within the current administration to use the military to police environmentalism across the globe.

The problem for the US is not just that responding to climate change means taking on the agenda of its rivals, it involves a fundamental reappraisal of how the US defines itself and its global position. The War on Terror makes a virtue of its military power, the Global Warming agenda is basically one of economic restraint. This may suit sluggish Europe but it gives the US little opportunity to assume leadership. The current administration’s attempts to marry military power with environmentalism look pretty unconvincing.

The US’s problem with the climate change agenda is brought out starkly with its relationship with China. The coincident interest of the US and China was seen in their toning down of the conclusions of Europe and Japan in the recent UN report on climate change. US resistance to the global warming agenda strengthens its ties with a power that has no need yet to make a virtue out of slower economic growth. Any adoption of the climate change agenda by the US would need a reformulation of this relationship.

Rudd is hoping to do a ‘Whitlam’ by playing an advance party role in this reformulation just as happened thirty-six years ago. His speech in the US later this week will be setting out how he intends to do this.

The problem is that what has to happen now is much more complicated than back in Whitlam’s day. Back then, the ‘problem’ of China was Communism, something that the US was formally opposed to but had to find a relationship with. This time the ‘problem’ of Communist China is unfettered capitalism, something the US is supposed to formally champion! This problem translates domestically as well, pushing economic restraint in the US is still a long way from being a vote-winner. Even in Australia, where global warming is much more accepted as a problem, Rudd is electorally prevented from detailing how he intends to reach his 60% emission cut goal. The uncertainty over how the US will shape this new world order and how it will be translated domestically hangs over Labor’s electoral chances this year. It underpins the fragility of its leading position and the touchiness of its leader.

Rudd’s glass jaw (Part II)

The second of a three-part post on Labor’s response to current changes in the international order.

Australia’s subservience to international trends is often the great unspoken of its politics. But after the initial shuffling at the beginning of Federation as Australian politics moved from being pastoral to class-based, every Labor government has come to power on the need to modify Australian political institutions to international changes.

The link between Labor governments and the upheavals of the two global wars and the two upheavals in the global economic order (the Great Depression of the 1930s and the global deregulation of the 1980s) is readily recognised. Less acknowledged, because of its greater sensitivity, are the international drivers behind the Whitlam government. But it is the Whitlam government of the early 1970s that has relevance for Rudd.

The post-war success of the anti-colonial movements, especially in Indochina, and the US’s change in Cold War politics to Détente all demanded changes to Australian political institutions in the 1960s and early 1970s. Just as the European powers decolonised their empires, the US desegregated the South, Australia needed to remove the more overtly racist features of its political institutions such as the White Australia contract with the unions and the denial of citizenship to the indigenous population. Even before taking power, Whitlam was pivotal in this modernisation.

This accommodation was carried to the global order as the US lost control of Vietnam. The US moved to the Cold War compromise of Détente and looked for allies like Australia to take on a more active regional role. Central to this realignment by the US was the setting up of what was to be a critical new relationship, that with China. Whitlam’s visit to China in 1971 ahead of Nixon’s in 1972 was a master-stroke that confirmed his fitness to take over government from the L-CP.

This brings us to Shanahan’s curious piece on Rudd’s relationship to China in The Australian this week. It is curious because it is well informed and the allusion between Rudd’s approach to China and Whitlam’s is spot on but the premise on which he views it is utterly wrong. While a super-power like the US has many friends, there is none it has such a co-incident strategic interest with as Communist China, despite the efforts of the Neo-Cons in the early years of the Bush administration. China is as central to US foreign policy as it was thirty-five years ago and Rudd’s China strengths can not only play a useful role in the adjustments to US global policy now underway but also add to his claim on power. Shanahan’s warnings of alienating the US reads like Coalition envy at Rudd's greater flexibility to adapt to these adjustments. [Continued]

Rudd’s glass jaw (Part I)

With Labor’s recent dip in the last Newspoll, and everyone assuming that a landing to more normal levels is inevitable, there has been speculation about how Rudd’s ‘glass jaw’ would react to a decline in his popularity.

Assuming that the parties’ polling will inevitably become closer because that is what has happened before is unjustified and ignores the current unprecedented political conditions in Australia. On the ‘glass jaw’, however, they do have a point. There is a fragility to federal Labor’s lead that is reflected in its leader. The source of that fragility is the changing international situation.

The fascinating feature of Australian politics is its high dependence and vulnerability to international political trends but translated in a way that appears parochial. The critical change that is making this electoral cycle different from that of 2001 and 2004 is not Rudd but the falling apart of the US’s War On Terror agenda. Much has been made of Howard’s resilience to the political problems of the Iraq fiasco compared to Bush and Blair, but the difference lies in the way Australian politics translates international political trends compared to countries like the US and UK where it is much more direct.

The US and UK governments can be reasonably upfront about international events because they have some control over it. To be blunt about it, it is in the interests of no one in the Australian political class to expose how subservient they are to other powers. Howard’s slip-up in prompting Democrat candidate Obama’s to slap him down publicly by dismissing Australia’s commitment to Iraq, is something that no-one in Canberra wants repeated.

While the failures of the US’s War on Terror are still not really directly impacting Australian politics, the global agenda being pushed by US rivals on climate warming certainly is. Lower than average rainfall in Australia’s south-eastern pastoral districts (offsetting the higher than average rainfall in the north-west) combined with poor water infrastructure is now being interpreted through a global prism of climate change. The translation of a regional issue into a global agenda is the opening Rudd needs to let the ALP fulfil its historic role, adapting Australian political institutions and alignments to changing trends in international politics. [Continued]

Fresh, new and dead

Another day, another new Liberal state leader, this time in SA, the third in 13 months. Why do Liberal leaders have such short shelf life these days? It can’t be just because they lose, Federal Labor lost for decades and they hung on to theirs like grim death. The fact is that the state Liberals, while externally looking intact, are falling apart internally. They are no more than a group of individuals with no significant agenda difference between them, and leadership changes end up being no more than one group of individuals taking over from the other bunch. Once again a new Liberal leader arrives talking of freshness and renewal, but no significant policy change.

The trouble is, without any agenda behind the move, it could just as easily go the other way - even at the same time. Despite Hamilton-Smith claiming this signals the most significant change for the SA Liberals in over a decade, the party itself doesn’t seem to think so. H-S is finding winning the top job is being accompanied by the threat of losing the deputy to another group as happened to Barry O’Farrell in NSW.

No New Labor

An amusing well-written piece in today’s SMH by Paul Sheehan which unfortunately disproves precisely what he sets out to prove. If the appointment of Gibson was a sign of the influence of the power-brokers, what are we to make of his rapid exit barely after being sworn in? It would seem the Gibson episode marks instead the decline of the powerbrokers rather than their influence, a direct measure of the decline of the power of the factions they manage.

It is why the encouragement from the right-wing press for Rudd to ‘do a Blair’ at this year’s conference is meaningless. Blair’s role in the 1990s was to create a new entity through ‘New Labour’ on the back of the formal defeats of the unions and the left a decade before. In Australia there was no formal defeat of the unions and the left, they sold themselves out quite happily through the Hawke/Keating years. Without any formal defeat of the left, factions in the ALP are left in a curious state. They carry on but these days without any purpose. Instead of their existence being a result of their stance on certain issues, issues are more taken up to justify their existence.

One favourite issue for such shadow-boxing is of course uranium. This issue first came to prominence in the state where the decline of factions began earliest, in SA, during the late 1970s and early 1980s (this was also the state where the death throws of factions was marked by the rise and fall of that peculiarly SA phenomenon, the Centre Left).

Uranium is threatening to fulfil its traditional role at this year’s conference but any defeat of the Left would symbolise nothing. It would no more be a ‘Clause IV’ moment than Howard’s pointless faux-Thatcherite IR agenda is a repeat of that lady’s attack on the unions. It would be merely a second time farce without the first time tragedy.

One-eyed for the two-party system

In the old days a gushing welcome for a new NSW Liberal leader like on the front page of yesterday’s SMH would have been just a case of pro-Liberal bias. However, if there is any media bias these days it is more to push the idea that there is still a viable opposition and two-party system operating in the state at all. Unfortunately, despite Barry O'Farrell's ability to crack a few jokes and look relaxed at a press conference a more prosaic assessment buried inside the paper indicates the Liberal’s fragmentation has become, if anything, even worse after the election. “B’OF has been done over in his first leadership test,” said one Liberal MP on his failure to get endorsed his picks either for his own deputy or that for the upper house.

No one wants Howard's IR agenda

Howard must be one of the world's few national leaders to have ever launched an attack on unions that even business didn't need. It may make the Liberals feel good, but the IR campaign is not something that business feels worth paying good money to defend.

The hollowness at the heart of Hicks

For David Hicks, the Global War on Terror was ideal. What better conflict for a hometown naiveté to get involved in than a full-scale military intervention by the world’s largest powers who themselves did not have a clue what to do once they got there.

The problem for Hicks was that the US’s lack of resolve translated to his treatment as a prisoner. At the core of the US’s handling of this POW was not vindictiveness but a lack of clarity over the legitimacy of the ‘W’. As time dragged on and the resolve of the US establishment faltered, it swung between regarding the Guantanamo Bay residents as examples to be made of and an embarrassment. The final days of Hick’s trial typified this with the ham-fisted move of the prosecutor to pose Hicks as a threat to the US (including calling him by his Muslim pseudonym) counterposed to the final farce of his sentence intended to get him out of the way as quickly as possible.

If the US has a problem of resolve, at least it has a decision-making process. Howard can do nothing but watch the US’s campaign unravel and try to tack and turn to look credible. Hicks’ home-coming only accentuates this government’s growing political paralysis with it not even having the political clout to impose the gag order that was agreed as a condition of Hicks’ release.

For Labor on the other hand, the Hicks case shows more clearly than any other its current advantages but also its problems. The international agenda is moving away from Howard giving Rudd continuing opportunities to embarrass the government. But there are similarities to Rudd’s global warming agenda, where he criticises the government’s lack of action on climate, but without the political consensus to propose his own. The Hicks case showed Rudd could even challenge Howard's moral high ground over a self-confessed aider of terrorists. But once it was decided Hicks was coming home, Rudd had absolutely nothing else to say.