Editorial:

Election cynicism

The current election campaign has become the most cynical 
exercise in pork barrelling by the two major parties ever seen in 
Australia. It follows the announcement of a record Budget surplus 
of between $8 billion and $10 billion. The sky is now the limit 
in spending promises.

"Millions fly in [the] battle for Sydney" and "Labor pledges $1 
bn more for hospitals" are two of the front-page headlines in 
last week's Sydney Morning Herald. The Financial Review 
ran an interview with Howard — "my fourth-term agenda" — 
promising to get stuck into the trade union movement even more, 
thereby conveying his congenital hatred of the working people of 
Australia and working class organisations.

Then there is the phoney "debate" about security in which the two 
major parties compete with one another to prove that they are the 
toughest in the "war on terrorism" and all other imagined enemies 
that they conjure up to hoodwink the electorate.

Even General Douglas MacArthur knew what governments of this sort 
are all about. He said: "Our government has kept us in a 
perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of 
patriotic fervour — with the cry of grave national emergency. 
Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some 
monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did 
not blindly rally behind it."

For many years we had the "red threat" and the "yellow peril". 
Now governments are steadily building up the "Muslim peril" — a 
course that could well result in long periods of chaos and even 
the destruction of civilisation as we know it. What is happening 
in Iraq is but a foretaste of what this policy brings.

The electoral promises being made are virtual chaff in the wind 
while much more real and fundamental issues are being ignored by 
the major parties — policies which are the causes of the 
problems facing public education and public health, for example.

The consequences of economic rationalist policies of 
privatisation and the wholesale attack on any and every public 
enterprise, service and institution are being ignored.

Then there is "competition" policy which is no more than a cover 
for the take-over of the public sector while the big corporations 
grow fatter and stronger than ever.

What has the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank done for the 
banking system, except to give all power to the four major (all 
now private) banks who have closed branches, slashed staff and 
imposed charges on almost every operation that a bank undertakes?

Why is there a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses in our 
hospitals despite the fact that we have a record Budget surplus? 
It is not any shortage of money. Why do many country towns have 
no services at all? Why have we one of the most unfair taxation 
systems that one could imagine?

Working people and their families are paying a more and more 
disproportionate share of taxation than ever before thanks to the 
GST. Yet this topic seems to be totally taboo on the part of the 
major parties. Howard declared that a GST was a "never ever" 
proposition before he became Prime Minister and the Labor Party 
strongly opposed its introduction. Then the GST was going to 
solve all state spending problems for ever and ever. So what has 
happened?

The massive cuts to health, education, welfare, public housing 
and other community services along with the money that has poured 
in from the GST are funding tax cuts election pork barreling. 
Above they finance big rewards to the corporate mates of the 
politicians who pay large sums into the coffers of the major 
parties.

These major policy issues are being neglected in this election 
campaign yet they are the root cause of the neglect and run down 
of many social and welfare services that have been fought for and 
won in earlier times. At the same time the big corporations are 
reaping an ever richer harvest of profits and personal payouts. 
Yes, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, received a hand-out of 
$28 million at the company's recent Annual General Meeting.