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Don't kid yourself about Latham's 'new politics', those are old tactics

By Greg Barns - posted Wednesday, 7 April 2004


These trends reflect a style of government which will change profoundly under the Liberal and National Parties.

Under us, the views of all particular interests will be assessed against the national interest and the sentiments of mainstream Australia.

For the past 12 years Labor has governed essentially by proxy through interest groups. Identification with a powerful interest group has been seen as the vehicle through which government largesse is delivered.

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Increasingly Australians have been exhorted to think of themselves as members of sub-groups. The focus so often has been on where we are different - not on what we have in common.

In the process our sense of community has been severely damaged.”

In this one passage, John Howard set out the values and themes that the electorate could expect from him if they voted for him over Paul Keating in 1996.

And this speech wasn't the first time Howard had played the values and themes game with policies being fitted around them. Once again, no doubt Ms Grattan would recall Future Directions the 1988 document issued by Howard when he was Opposition Leader the first time. That document, with a family behind a picket fence on its front cover, was a cohesive attempt to provide market economics with a values system - a marriage of liberal economic themes with social conservatism.

Future Directions argued that Australia was in an economic and social crisis – ordinary Australians’ living standards were in decline, corporatism, and particularly too powerful unions, were undermining our sense of well-being and our living standards.

In Future Directions privatisation, labour market deregulation, income tax cuts and a shift towards indirect taxation were featured policies. But Future Directions focused as much on the need to strengthen the traditional family unit, educational standards and an homogenous Australian culture, as it does on economic prescriptions.

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It argued that "average Australians" do not feel secure and safe as they once used to. Why? Because governments have “devalued and dismissed” religion and community pride. The “professional purveyors of guilt have attacked Australia’s heritage and people” and there is not enough plain old common sense. The interest groups have imposed multiculturalism and Aboriginal reconciliation on Australians, and Future Directions rather crudely helps to fuel that resentment.

The Grattan piece in the Sunday Age is yet another example of Latham's capacity to mesmerise even experienced Canberra journalists. The spin is working - "somehow Mark Latham is playing the opposition game differently and the government doesn't know what to do with him" is the line his staff want you to believe.

Well if you care to look at the modus operandi of the man Mr Latham hopes to replace as Prime Minister this year you might find that he's not that different after all. John Howard has always been a "themes and values" player and during his second period in Opposition some of those journalists who are today claiming that Mr Latham is unique because Mr Howard is unable to deliver a knockout blow to him, used to say the same thing about Paul Keating's inability to slay John Howard.

Plus ça change!

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Article edited by Ian Miller.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.

This article was first published in Crikey! on 6 April 2004.



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About the Author

Greg Barns is National President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance.

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