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Building a land fit for heroes

By John Tomlinson - posted Wednesday, 16 March 2005


Policies which undermine Medicare and promote private health insurance cover have been sold to the public in terms of shortened waiting lists for those who can afford to go private, thereby removing the pressure from public hospitals. This speedy access for the rich to elective medical services reduces Commonwealth funding to public hospitals in two ways. First, the Commonwealth-State Medicare funding is decreased in proportion to any rise in the percentage of privately insured patients. Second, the $3 billion Federal subsidy which is paid to private insurers could be spent sorting out public hospital waiting lists. The further we proceed down this “American health system” path the more likely it is that public health services will decline and we will find that gaining access to a public hospital will be near impossible for less-well-off people.

The number of social security breaches by recipients peaked in 2000-2001 when 386,946 breaches were made. Some of the poorest Australians, mainly unemployed recipients, had their social security payments reduced or cancelled resulting in increased homelessness and despair (pdf file 677KB). Once the Government has control of the Senate after July this year, it will move to reduce by a third the number of disability support pensioners and will impose further obligations on lone parents. Many families will have their lives disrupted but this will provide the Howard Government with sufficient funds to give tax cuts to the rich. It is the moral equivalent of making a living stealing money out of blind men’s cups. And we are morally complicit by allowing the Government to do this.

Since the 1960s, governments have attempted to discourage criticism from welfare agencies by threatening to cut their funding. The Howard Government has honed such “don’t criticise the government” policies to an art form. This means that potential sources of social justice advocacy are silenced.

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The Government and Opposition both declared they wanted to abolish ATSIC. The Opposition intended to replace ATSIC with an agency controlled by elected representatives in line with the spirit of the ATSIC Act. The Government selected a group of well-to-do Indigenous people to advise it four times a year. Former Social Justice Commissioner Bill Jonas deplored replacing a body elected in a national Indigenous poll with appointed advisors. He saw this as being in breach of Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which Australia has signed and ratified. It certainly increases Government control of Indigenous matters.

The Government is in the process of “mainstreaming” Aboriginal services as part of its stated policy of “practical reconciliation”. Indigenous people, the Human Rights Commission, the Aboriginal Medical and Legal Services and a host of anthropologists, welfare workers and scholars have pointed out that it was the past failure of mainstream agencies to service Indigenous people adequately which is the major reason for their current poor health and low socio-economic position. Mainstreaming services to Indigenous Australians without offering them a choice of Indigenous service agencies is cultural imperialism and simply a way to sanitise governmental neglect. It also removes a potential source of advocacy for Indigenous people. However, it does pander to the social conservatism of Coalition supporters.

The Howard Government’s commitment to incarcerating asylum seekers has driven it to argue in the High Court that people, like Peter Qasim, who has been in refugee concentration camps in excess of six years and who can’t be returned to Kashmir, should be confined indefinitely. The Government continues to detain children in such camps despite the fact that doing so risks causing permanent mental health problems. The preoccupation with incarcerating asylum seekers makes it difficult for Government’s ministers to explain the treatment meted out to Cornelia Rau in the punishment cells at Baxter.

Australians who want peace abroad and social justice at home need to draw the connections between each of these policies as part of the struggle to build a united opposition to the Howard juggernaut. We need to show how a diverse group of people is adversely affected, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, by such policies. We need to show how the social fabric of the nation is being destroyed and we need to build a coalition of resistance - to build into that resistance the idea that the struggle for one is the struggle for all. For too long:

We held our wallets to our chest
and said that I’m alright Jack
and to hell with all the rest.
(Eric Bogle)

If we can mobilise the 50 per cent of employees who are in casual, part-time or in precarious employment, the 3 per cent of the population who are Indigenous, the 25 per cent of workers who are trade unionists, the 40 per cent of families who receive family allowances, the 20 per cent who are in poverty, the 5 per cent who are officially recognised as unemployed, the 10 per cent who are recently arrived migrants and refugees, the 5 per cent with severe disabilities, the 5 per cent who are gay or lesbian, the 10 per cent who vote Green, the 38 per cent who vote Labor, the socially progressive, the environmentally conscious, and all the other decent people in this country we would have a majority and could in Eric Bogle’s words: “Build a land that’s fit for heroes and for you and me as well.”

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About the Author

Dr John Tomlison is a visiting scholar at QUT.

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