Libertarian nation by stealth

The all-embracing sweep of the libertarian approach is, generally speaking, not well understood. US legal scholar and Reagan favourite Robert H. Bork spelled out in his influential Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (Harper Collins, 1996), published the year Howard won office: "Culture eventually makes politics."

Bork wrote: “‘Culture’, as used here, refers to all human behaviour and institutions, including popular entertainment, art, religion, education, scholarship, economic activity, science, technology, law, and morality.[It] seems highly unlikely that a vigorous economy can be sustained in an enfeebled, hedonistic culture, particularly when that culture distorts incentives by increasingly rejecting personal achievement as the criterion for the distribution of rewards.”

The libertarian logic is that, since personal freedom and the existence of free markets are inextricably entwined, and since - as Bork puts it - "vigorous" economies are vulnerable to being "enfeebled" by particular cultural practices, then the champions of personal freedom have a licence to police cultural practices - in the interests of freedom and economic vigour.

Thus libertarians can reason that difference (for example, multiculturalism, homosexuality) must be eliminated so that the economy can function better - reasoning that is absurd, to say the least.

That the libertarians’ pursuit of their vision of personal freedom could therefore involve liberticide for others was not understood by voters when they embraced Howard at the 1996 poll. Australians did not think they were installing a government that would rule by dividing the community on race, sex, lifestyle and religious lines, reversing the social tolerance and cohesion that had progressed steadily in the postwar period.

Especially in Australia’s world city, Sydney, where Howard’s long-held economic agenda had many supporters among the business elite, what actually unfolded after the government took office in terms of explicit social division was a shock - a shock whose pain was quickly dulled by successive tax cuts massively skewed in favour of the wealthy.

Enthusiasm for the divisive “dog whistle” politics the government practised from the moment it won office was notable among many blue-collar “Howard battler” voters and gave the government a big political return at subsequent elections in traditionally Labor-voting areas.

Multiculturalism, immigration, border security and indigenous policy all became sharp weapons in the government’s re-election toolkit. The “Culture Wars” so famously fought by libertarians in the United States were adapted for Australian conditions with verve by Howard.

His crusade against the so-called “black armband view of history” is right up there with the most egregious American examples. The so-called “Australian values” debate, the mandating of a national history curriculum, depriving higher education institutions of proper funding, strategic staff and board appointments of Howard favourites to cultural and other bodies are all part of a piece, directed by the government to moulding Australia in its own image.

When Howard hammers “political correctness”, it is not just a political line: it is the battering ram that primes the way for the libertarian initiatives that follow, conditioning social relations in a way that makes Australians ripe for acquiescence.

Howard’s steady, systematic embedding of the libertarian policy agenda in Australia, largely without fanfare and often via backdoor means, can make his approach look ramshackle and puzzling in places - like that of the modestly bright service station owner’s son from Earlwood that he seems to be. It contrasts with the flashy “Fightback!” of John Hewson (PhD in economics from Johns Hopkins University, former International Monetary Fund and Reserve Bank staffer, and University of New South Wales Professor of Economics), and the big, clean policy lines of Paul Keating.

But it has not made Howard less effective in terms of achieving his strategic policy ends. History shows that it has made him more effective. Hewson couldn’t win the only election he led the Coalition to, and then couldn’t hold on to the leadership long enough to get another shot. This was a tragedy for Liberals who wanted the economics of libertarianism without its nasty social agenda. Hewson was about the economics, not about the Culture Wars.

After unarguably the most impressive treasurership in Australia’s history, Keating failed to keep the nation with him long enough as prime minister for Labor to reap the economic dividend and entrench itself in power. The result has been a decade of root-and-branch libertarian change at Howard’s hands.