Howard's
Laissez Faire Ideology
Recently, the Senate of the Australian Parliament
once again censured the Prime Minister. The censure concerns the manner in
which Howard took Australia into the US-led war with Iraq. He misled the
Parliament and the Australian people. This was the second censure for Howard in
his 7½ years in the office. Since Federation in 1901 there have only ever been
four such censures of the Prime Minister.
It's becoming rather curious how John
Howard generates structural problems the longer he stays in Parliament. The
list of serious political and constitutional problems emanating from his
conduct grows. He seems quite capable of getting away with whatever he does,
conduct his political opponents would not have tolerated from their own
leaders. Not so long ago, say before
1975, such censure would have generated enormous debate within the ranks of his
side of politics. On pre-1975 standards, a Prime Minister who had been censured
by the Senate, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, might well have been
seen by both houses of Parliament, let alone the electorate, as living on
borrowed time! Not so, John Howard!
How does he continue to get away with it?
What is the true source of the ineffective opposition to his politics? When we
have identified that we might then be able to see how his political ideology
actually challenges Parliamentary Democracy at its roots.
Let's first consider whether the root of
this problem is to be found in the character of Australian politics itself?
Howard's approach cogently expresses views that are widely and tenaciously held
throughout the country. Here I am not only referring to economic policies. In
trying to explain Howard I am suggesting that his power derives in some way
from the fact that policy debate regularly gets bogged down. And there is a
widely held dogma that political debate in this country must express in some
way or other a laissez faire world-view. This may find its definitive form in
economic and financial policies but public debate on all sides, in the media,
churches, universities and venues where public opinion is formed, views
politics as the framing of self-interest in terms of a laissez-faire framework.
That, in a nutshell, is why Howard's
approach is so powerful. We might allege that whatever he proposes is guided by
a well elaborated political self-interest but it is the laissez-faire world
view which absorbs his inconsistencies and opportunism. Since he gained 'top
job' in 1996, his flouting of convention and public opinion has been ruthless
and it has advanced his political prestige and power. His approach is
revolutionary, guided pragmatically by a firm hope that he will be proved right
by history.
Once the self-interest maxim is accepted
within economics then everything else should be left to follow as a matter of
course. And yet, as we know, it doesn't and as, with the procedural failings in
his appointment of an Anglican Archbishop as Governor General, a serious crisis
results and executive responsibility is reduced to merely personal "errors
of judgment" and justified in terms of "everyone makes a
mistake". Howard may lack insight into how his laissez faire commitment
undercuts the very fabric of representative democracy within which he operates.
But by claiming a common humanity with the rest of us he gets himself off the
hook. He claims to be serving the self-interest of ordinary Australians and so
such mistakes are viewed as merely understandable "blips". What else
is the national interest if it isn't the combined self-interest of ordinary
Australians? With such a taken-for-granted view any debate about policy must
get bogged down and does.
Take Howard's attitude to the Senate. The
fact that there is a glaring inconsistency in his approach does not stop him
promulgating this reform, the most recent phase in the Liberal Party's crusade
to impress itself upon the national identity. Howard was first elected to
Parliament in May 1974. That election was called because legislation introduced
by the Whitlam Labor Government had been blocked in the Federal Upper House
where the Coalition Opposition were in the majority.
Right at the start of his Parliamentary
career Howard became a spokesman for a party prepared to abjure its own principles
in order to advance its Parliamentary advantage. The 1975 constitutional crisis
is unthinkable without the commitment by Howard's side to take whatever steps
it deemed necessary to advance its own advantage. Those who subsequently have made a political career for
themselves via the Liberal or National parties have a deep problem. To maintain
credibility in their own eyes such politicians must either give up
principles altogether or promote the mythic equation of the national interest
with what is to the advantage of their own party (or Coalition).
And so the impact filters down. Cynical
self-interest is accepted as a sine qua non of political thinking per
se. Those who vote for John Howard, as they did in their droves in the
aftermath of the Tampa débacle, and as
they may well do again next time, do so because they have no longer believe
that the national interest can stand apart from the sectional interests of whichever
political parties are dominating our Governments.
This is indeed an important part of the
reason why nothing seems to challenge the security of this revolutionary leader of self-interest
politics. But the advantage of the Liberal Party is not the national interest.
The nation is not an extension of that party, nor of any party. But to say that
these days is to be greeted by blank stares left and right. Apparently, only
the Greens now understand the point. The rules defining a valid and lawful vote
for lower house elections imply that those who cannot in conscience vote for
the two largest parties will not be represented in Parliament. The gerrymandered
ballot paper says it all.
So a Senate censure does nothing whatsoever to unseat Howard and
his crew. Labor continues to avoid challenging the Government where it truly
hurts - they cannot expose the laissez-faire ideology as the root of this
problematic because they are committed to promoting an alternative laissez
faire ideology from the Treasury benches putting their own party's advantage
ahead of the national interest.
How can Labor be expected to effectively challenge John Howard if
it can not face what is staring all of us in the face? Nothing less than a true
conversion will do. Nothing less perhaps than a re-consideration of R H
Tawney's alternative of 1920, The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society.
Labor has been running its alternative laissez faire for so long
that it has forgotten it might be possible to launch an alternative to
laissez faire. As long as it is still convinced that the policies it
implemented from 1983 to 1996 are the root cause of any economic boom, it
prides itself in its disastrous pioneering of State-centred materialism. By
preening itself as the harbingers of the definitive post-modern form of
democracy, Labor decides it is too hard to challenge the true basis of John
Howard's revolutionary appeal.
Australia needs renewed political debate that rejects the Liberal
Party's subordination of the national interest to the advantages it accrues
unto itself.
John Howard is no more a liar than your "average Ozzie"
but he would be hard pressed to explain himself in any consistent and
principled way if Labor chose to get on side with Bob Brown's attempt to
promote just constitutional and electoral reform. As long as Labor continues
its current course it confirms the mythic representation of John Howard as
"man of steel". But there is more important political work to do.
Electoral justice and parliamentary reform should not be postponed.
The tension at the base of Australian politics is not being addressed by the
political parties which, let us not forget, stand to receive the largest share
of public funding from the next election.
(this piece was written after reading Jim Skillen's Capital
Commentary "Laissez faire is
not enough" )
Bruce C
Wearne
October
8, 2003