Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Of nightmares and Dr Frankenstein

Labor's defeat in the Cunningham by-election was described in the mass 
media as a "shock" to Simon Crean. I don't know why. Labor's analysts would 
have been well aware of the likely outcome at least as early as their 
candidate, and she knew she was doomed the moment the other parties without 
exception directed their preferences away from Labor.

What has apparently really shocked Crean is the belated discovery that the 
people (including the rank and file members of the ALP for whom he clearly 
has nothing but contempt) are not prepared to vote Labor if Labor is going 
to pursue Liberal Party policies.

Hitherto Labor leaders could smugly say of disaffected ALP voters, "where 
are they gonna go?" Now they know: More and more are seeking alternatives.

Australia's social democrats have nowadays so openly thrown in their lot 
with the ruling class that they don't even bother to dissemble about it. 
The right wing of the ALP wants people to be aware of their allegiance to 
corporate interests.

As they continue to support the Howard government, especially its pro-US 
foreign policy and the mandatory sentencing of refugees, parrot other 
Liberal Party policies and connive at the running down and destruction of 
public services and utilities, the Cunningham scenario is likely to be 
repeated elsewhere.

Up my way, the local Newcastle Herald on the Monday after the 
Cunningham by-election gave pride of place on its Letters page to one from 
Karylynne Kemp of Warners Bay who detailed a nightmare visit to Belmont 
Hospital.

Ms Kemp accompanied a young girl to the hospital for treatment. They 
arrived at 3.30pm. They finally saw the doctor at a quarter past midnight!

During that time a mother whose baby was suspected of having measles waited 
six hours before giving up in despair and going home. "Another baby with 
what sounded like croup or asthma was still waiting when we left at about 
1.30 a.m."

I don't know how many doctors would have been on duty during the first 
three and a half hours that Ms Kemp and her young charge had to wait, but 
she was told that after 7.00 pm only one doctor is on duty for the whole 
hospital.

It is not surprising then that she saw the nursing staff having to give 
"people with broken bones pain-killers and bandages and [send them] home to 
come back the next day, without seeing a doctor".

As she rightly says: "it is grossly unfair to nursing staff, expecting them 
to handle this situation".

As we have said many times before: access to the best health care that a 
society can provide is every person's right. It is not a privilege to be 
given to those who can afford private health facilities and denied to those 
who can't.

It is the duty of society to take care of its members and any society that 
fails to do so will not last.

Not blind or stupid

The people of Newcastle, as elsewhere, are well able to see the way their 
public hospitals are being run down. They are not blind and they are not 
stupid.

The people of Cunningham voted for the Greens and other alternative 
candidates and then gave their preferences to the Greens, not just to 
punish Labor. They did so because the Greens showed concern for the needs 
of the people, and opposition to the dangerous and inhumane war drive of 
the Howard government (which Simon Crean fully supports, of course).

One very reassuring factor in the present worldwide struggle to stop this 
monstrous war before it starts is the enormous breadth and range of the 
opposition. From mass demonstrations to eminent persons' advertisements to 
sharp-tongued letters to suburban newspapers, the number of people saying 
NO WAR is truly vast.

Apart from the mass demonstrations, often involving thousands and tens of 
thousands — even hundreds of thousands in some cities like London and Rome 
— the people are resorting to every available means to impress on their 
governments that the US war is just not on.

And make no mistake, this global wave of revulsion and protest is 
succeeding. The Stars and Stripes would have been waving over the ruins of 
Bagdad months ago were it not that the US, still less its very few allies, 
simply cannot just ignore so much public and government opposition, however 
much they would like to.

That the US was forced to turn to the UN Security Council, a body the US 
Administration had previously thought they had effectively sidelined 
forever, is a huge defeat for the warmongers in the White House.

In Australia, people from all walks of life and of every political hue wage 
the No War campaign vigorously in every local and daily newspaper. Their 
spontaneous campaign is helped to some extent by the poverty of 
imagination, gob-smacking ignorance and craven grovelling to the US of the 
pro-war camp.

The Newcastle Herald on October 19 carried a letter from someone 
claiming that the present wave of "anti-Americanism turns my stomach". This 
brought a hard-hitting letter in response two days later that pointedly 
said, "unquestioning support for their [the USA's] never-ending wars is too 
much to ask".

The writer went on: "Acts such as the assassination of the democratically 
elected Chilean President Allende and death by embargo of millions of 
Middle-Eastern children has earned America the hatred that is now striking 
out at it.

"Why are we being asked to stand beside Dr Frankenstein to face the 
numerous monsters he has created?"

A question for John Howard, I think?