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... And at least another ten years to undo the damage

By Lyn Allison - posted Thursday, 2 March 2006


However not all is rosy on the economic front. In the past ten years average household debt has risen from $43,000 when Howard took Government to $117,000 in September last year. Household debt as a proportion of household disposable income has increased from 82 per cent in March 1996 to 165 per cent in September 2005.

Median city house prices (expressed in 2005 dollars) increased from $204 000 in 1996 to $388 000 in September last year. Australia’s net foreign debt in February 2006 exploded to a record high of $473 billion. Foreign debt is now growing at its fastest rate in the nation’s history and the interest Bill has jumped by almost 40 per cent.

For all the Howard Government’s virtuous values, a recent Saulwick poll found we have become a meaner society. In just ten years, Australia has become less compassionate, democratic and tolerant of others (yet more tolerant of government failings), and instead, more divided, fearful, controlling and materialistic.

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Now I don't believe for one minute that the majority of Australians actually want to live in such a society. But I believe that many Australians have been so successfully conned to think that the Howard Government knows best - ethically, morally, and economically - that people have been willing to go along.

John Howard has mastered the art of dog whistling, where he has given ministers and backbenchers permission to indulge their biases and prejudices without ever quite saying so or revealing his position on these views.

For instance, loose-lipped backbenchers were not chastised for insensitive attacks on Muslim Australians and neither were Pauline Hanson's red-neck values found wanting or apologies made for Bill Heffernan's false and malicious accusations against Justice Kirby

On the shameful detention of Cornelia Rau, children overboard and an unwarranted attack on Iraq, Mr Howard has scapegoated the public service and protected ministers from taking responsibility for these disasters. He learned well from his first year in office that strict ministerial accountability could not be applied without losing valued colleagues.

In some cases the Government has trained the bureaucracy so well that they don’t properly advise ministers, or if they do so, they do so by “omission”. They don’t tell all of the truth. This is a corruption of process and goes to the heart of the AWB scandal. The Howard Government's finger prints may not be all over the AWB's feather-nesting of Saddam Hussein but its failure to investigate makes it culpable nonetheless.

The failure to ask about Abu Ghraib torture, WMDs, depleted uranium use or Iraqi civilian deaths, all point to selective intelligence gathering and gross hypocrisy on the part of a government that has again damaged our standing in the international community.

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Similarly domestic scandals such as children overboard, Cornelia Rau, Vivian Solon, demonstrate a government that refuses to take accountability seriously. A prevailing culture of government deception and cover up is made much worse with the Government in control of the Senate. The Children Overboard Inquiry would never have been possible if the Government had control of the Senate back then.

For too long this Government has been able to get away with the line “to the best of my knowledge”, or "I didn't know because nobody informed me" without facing proper open and transparent scrutiny.

The Prime Minister has elevated the influence of Christian religion in politics. Religion is perhaps more visible now in Australian politics than for almost 30 years, and a growing number of Australians are concerned about this.

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About the Author

Lyn Allison is a patron of the Peace Organisation of Australia and was leader of the Australian Democrats from 2004 to 2008.

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