Betrayal of Menzies - eschewing federalism

Consider the fronts on which Howard's troops are moving. Health Minister Tony Abbott would like to control hospitals. Howard and Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, wish to dismantle state industrial relations subsystems. Attorney General Philip Ruddock seems determined to impose uniform defamation laws. Education Minister Brendan Nelson, easily the most enthusiastic of the power accumulators, wants commonwealth control of universities, a national education certificate and commonwealth technical colleges.

In their unadorned determination to exploit power while the going and the Senate is good, many of Howard's ministers display no parallels with a Deakin or a Menzies, who reluctantly understood that constitutional restraints on the untrammelled exercise of power are a given good, even if  and perhaps especially when they most irritatingly restrain you.

Rather, they closely resemble the old leftist social engineers they profess so to despise who, having briefly stormed the citadels of power, will brook no inhibition or argument against the full implementation of their program of the hour. They are, in short, neither liberals nor conservatives with a respect for balance and restraint but merely politicians in the usual self important hurry towards eventual, inevitable replacement by their opponents.

Yet to suggest that such thoughts might even occur to some members of the Government would be to invest them with an innate understanding of the political tradition they purportedly represent that would be as implausible as their adherence to it. It is not so much that they have no commitment to the real constitutional values of liberalism, as that they would not even recognise a constitutional liberal if they met one.

The irony, of course, is that the Howard policycrats eventually will go the way of their Labor forerunners. After their little span in power, the immense national machines they have worked so hard to create will fall cyclically into the hands of their enemies, and from industrial relations to universities they will be turned against them. The Nelsons and the Howards will moan aloud, and talk of balance and federalism.

In the meantime, where is anyone who really does believe in such arcane concepts to look? Apparently, not to the sullied heirs of Deakin. Perhaps Labor could take some new partners for the new millennium?