Thirty years wallowing in the dregs

Marcus Browning

When last month, John Howard marked 30 years in parliament with a 
fanfare of self-promotion, the endorsements and nostalgic 
reminiscences that flowed like sewage at a purging convention 
were not hallelujahs for a concrete plan for the future but a 
call to keep looking backwards, for more of the same.

This is the mantra of the ultra-conservatives: that there is no 
future beyond the bounds of some imagined, permanently-fixed past 
which they yearn always to relive and reinvent in the present.

Progress is poison to them, because it means living history 
ringing in change, the bringing down of the status quo, the 
elimination of elite privilege.

Instead, they look to a past suffused in the glow of 
sentimentality and present it as the golden mode of existence 
towards which we must all strive. It contains the ideal-ised 
family-home-maker mother, bread-winning father and obedient 
offspring that attend church every Sunday and are deeply 
nationalistic while being patronising, fearful and ever-vigilant 
in guarding against other peoples and cultures.

It is a world where challenges to the pre-ordained hierarchy are 
forbidden, by both divine and civil law, where there are no trade 
unions, no organised dissent, where homosexuals simply do not 
exist and there is definitely no recognition of Indigenous 
rights. Everyone knows and accepts his or her place, be they 
oppressor and dispossessed, master and servant, man and wife.

Fiction

This portentous and nauseating fiction is part of the 
philosophical underpinning that drives the Howard Government's 
actions — seen from their born-to-rule rejection of any public 
accountability and from the dictatorial arrogance of the Prime 
Minister himself.

The real past — the racism, the discrimination against women, 
the ruthless exploitation of labour, the despair and hardship 
that tears families apart — is the bitter legacy of Howard's 
ultra-conservative views and the reactionary predecessors he 
worships. These are the putrefying dregs he has wallowed in for 
the 30 years of his parliamentary sojourn.

It wasn't until 1996 that Howard finally managed to get elected 
as Prime Minister over John Hewson's assassinated body. It was 
also in the slipstream of the 13 years of empty promises, 
unemployment, falling living standards and burgeoning corporate 
profits that the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments dished up.

One cover-up after another

Since then it's been one cover-up and lie after another — the 
secret training of scabs in Dubai to push the union off the 
waterfront; Minister Reith's rorting of his taxpayer-funded phone 
card and a litany of outright lies: children overboard; Iraq's 
non-existent weapons of mass destruction and torture in Au Graib 
prison.

There is the growing list of human rights violations: 
contraventions of international labour laws; the attack on 
Indigenous rights; the locking up of asylum seekers. There is a 
widening gap between rich and poor, the pro-big business tax 
restructure, punitive welfare provisions, increasing levels of 
poverty, the destruction of jobs and services and the 
privatisation of everything the corporations can lay their hands 
on.

During his 30 years (in a sure-fire, blue ribbon Liberal seat, of 
course) Howard has been consistent in a number of areas: the 
fawning and obsequious promoter of US imperialism, union basher, 
racist.

And his attitude toward women is nowhere better expressed than in 
the new media promotion of the Government's National Elimination 
of Violence Against Women program.

The program is at once an opportunistic pitch for votes and the 
means to perpetuate the marginalisation of women as second class 
citizens.

For example, the TV and radio advertisements which are part of 
the campaign propose that instead of calling the police, women 
victims of domestic and sexual violence should use a telephone 
counselling service run by a Christian charity.

Closure of services for women

The fact is, this government has withdrawn funding from and 
caused the closure of services for women such as rape crisis 
centres, and shelters for women and children made homeless, in 
many cases, by domestic violence.

But best not to dwell on these cold, hard facts. The 
conservative's claim that it is all the fault of the women's 
rights movement which made members of the fair sex believe they 
could go against nature and God and become equal and independent. 
All will be put right again once they recognise their folly and 
return to the golden state of domestic bliss and the sanctity of 
the church (Christian, of course).

Let's go back to the future according to Howard. This is where 
we'll find the youth and, in particular, those young workers 
being ripped off by transnational fast food chains, who are, 
apparently, ever so polite.

"Some of the friendliest, most well mannered young people around 
are the one's you find in McDonald's", Howard stated last month.

"There's some cause to believe that in the young people, there 
might be better manners, a return to those things", declared 
Howard as he covers-up the torture of Iraqi prisoners.

To listen to that tripe one might believe that in the making and 
serving of hamburgers and chips a kind of osmosis takes place 
that infuses people with a code governing social niceties. (The 
reality is that all these polite youngsters will be sacked from 
McDonalds and be replaced by other easily exploited teenagers).

These are just the kind of workers Howard wants everywhere — 
low-paid, lousy conditions, and non-union.

So, what to do? In the immediate future — vote them out at the 
coming federal election. That would be an important step and send 
a strong message that the people reject this government's 
backward policies, its ultra-conservative ideology, its wallowing 
in the past, and its attempt to drag the country into this 
cesspool with it.