Abbott's war on Australia

"Our border creates the space for us to be who we are and to become everything we can be as a nation," so said the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, upon announcing the new Australian Border Force.

There is a sense in which this is true. If tomorrow we were to be invaded by a genuine threat, unlike say a handful of the world's hapless seekers of refuge, we would defend Australia not only to save life and limb but, at heart, to defend the Australian way of life.

But what is the Australian way of life? In short, to follow Morrison, who are we?

The very question has been grist for the mill for much navel gazing, especially over recent times given what is oft dubbed "the culture wars." The literature is vast, both the shelves and the servers groan, so perhaps we might consider the government's own account as a useful frame of reference.

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade a, if not the, key Australian value can be found in "a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces tolerance, mutual respect, and compassion for those in need."

Furthermore, we are told "Australia is an egalitarian society" so much so that "there are no formal or entrenched class distinctions in Australian society, as there are in some countries."

Putting aside the myth of the classless Australia there is surely an undeniable streak of egalitarianism that underpins much of Australian culture. We see it in so many wonderful ways even in the daily conduct of our affairs. From our love of the laconic larrikin to our devotion to mateship and the fair go this spirit of egalitarianism envelops the Australian ethos.

If this is who we are, if this is what Australia is all about, or perhaps better still, is meant to be all about, then it follows that Australia is now under attack.

Not from seekers of asylum; no no Australia is being attacked by its own government.

The Abbott Government is like an invading force that seeks to destroy the social fabric that binds us as a nation. The Abbott Government, through its Commission of Audit, had foreshadowed an attack on "the spirit of egalitarianism that embraces tolerance, mutual respect, and compassion for those in need."

The Abbott Government's first budget is but the opening offensive to bring to realisation the stark and austere vision that pervades the Commission of Audit report.

The detailed policy prescriptions of the Commission of Audit, and much of the government's rhetoric regarding ending "the age of entitlement," are designed not just to ravage the welfare state, just about an Australian invention, but in essence to dismantle the very ethos, the spirit of Australia if you will, that underlies it.

We provide welfare for the elderly, the physically and mentally disabled, the unemployed, single parents raising our most precious commodity, which isn't iron ore or coal, the young whom society has failed, and our native population still heart wrenchingly suffering from the legacy of dispossession, because we care about people who suffer. We have compassion for their plight and we understand that the fair go means giving them a helping hand in life.

We do this because we understand that social security is an important element of citizenship in any nation that takes egalitarianism the least bit seriously. To be a citizen of such a society entails more than just a bundle of civil and political rights.

With citizenship comes membership of a moral community where citizens enjoy upon the basis of equality a number of entitlements. My right to vote, my right to protest, my right not to suffer from discrimination and the like is no more and no less than yours or anyone else's.

The welfare state enriched our understanding of what it means to be a citizen of Australia. The social elements of citizenship, which had been slowly built upon in Australia from even before Federation, to use the fine words of Marshall in the British context, "entail the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security; to the right to share in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society."

We did this because we understood that unregulated free market capitalism brings with it inequalities and injustices that make a mockery of the idea of a shared moral community whereby citizens are given the opportunity to live a rich social life as fellow members of a participatory society. A nation infused with the spirit of egalitarianism does not tolerate a permanent underclass because it is recognised that such an underclass would unjustly miss out on much that Australian society has to offer.

To end "the age of entitlement" means nothing less than ending the very conception of Australian citizenship that, in part, social security was meant to enshrine. It will entrench an underclass alienated from Australian society, to be noticed only on ABC and SBS bourgeois sketch comedy.

It should be stressed that this attack does not apply just in regard to social welfare. The mooted attacks on both the minimum wage and awards, on the back of a fraudulent campaign alleging wages in Australia are too high, also form a significant armoury in Abbott's attack on Australia.

We know that the government's "debt and deficit" rhetoric justifying its harsh budget measures is but a furphy.

Public debt as a proportion of GDP is low, moreover the economic theory on the effects of public debt on economic growth that has been used to justify austerity the world over has been shown to be wrong if not an example of scientific fraud. That said, a lot of the discussion on the budget misses an obvious but more important prior point.

We have a deficit in the first place because a fiscal stimulus was required to prop up the economy after the rich stuffed up the global economy.

I had stated here in 2008 that following the stimulus the poor would be made to suffer. So it has come to pass. "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must" as Thucydides put it bluntly in antiquity. Nothing sums up history and contemporary affairs better.

A very important consideration animating government action here is an attempt to structurally weaken the organised working class. Cutting social welfare and the minimum wage has the effect of entrenching a sizeable precariat at the margins of society that would function as a "reserve army of labour" putting downward pressure on wages. This is of significance because capitalism has been facing a long term crisis, trend rates of economic growth have not matched the halcyon days of the Keynesian era, and profits when growth is low are basically maintained at the expense of society.

But to come full circle.

To be fair to Morrison he did say, perhaps the most honest statement on refugees made by any political leader since the Tampa, that we protect our borders because by doing so we can "foster free markets."

That is correct.

"Border protection", a point completely neglected by the post-materialist Left, is neither about refugees nor border protection. It is an ideological shield behind which those who wrap themselves in the Blue Ensign attack Australia.

When in opposition Tony Abbott stated that his would be a government of no surprises.

His attack on Australia was not foreshadowed whilst in opposition. Compared to secretly planning the uprooting of the Australian way of life Juliar, surely, pales into insignificance.

Can there be anything more surprising than a mean and tricky government that always had plans under sleeve to launch an attack on Australia herself?

May 13 2014 is "a date which will live in infamy."