Greens win the war but lose defence

Respected authors on the Vietnam War, Paul Ham and Michael Caulfield, have argued that the impetus for the anti-war movement came about because of conscription. That is when you force members of the general public, namely young men, into a war; then the public becomes interested in the debate. Mortgages and the economy take a back seat when your own life could be threatened by going to war.

Since the ending of National Service in late 1972 by the incoming Whitlam Labor government, the average person in the street has lost whatever leverage he or she had over defence experts and the professional volunteer defence force.

The reality is that professional military forces and politicians do not like conscription, because of the intense public scrutiny it brings. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was willing to bleed our special forces, the SASR and Commandos, dry fighting conflicts in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq rather than have our regular infantry battalions do the fighting or for that matter using conscripts.

From a political strategic point of view it would be in the interests of the Greens to support the re-introduction of conscription, to act as a break against military adventurism. The question remains, will the Australian Greens be brave enough to support such a controversial issue?

History is full of political-ideological u-turns.

Joschka Fischer began his political career as a radical, left-wing, brawling taxi driver in the then West Germany in the 1970s. During a riot he beat to a pulp a German Police officer and almost blinded him. On becoming a Greens politician and later Germany’s Foreign Minister, Fischer apologised to the policeman and also supported the war in Afghanistan.

In 1972 South Australian Premier Mike Rann was a Greenpeace activist in New Zealand who actively worked against the French Security forces in the South Pacific by sending boats to disrupt nuclear testing by encroaching upon French territory. Rann has now moved to the right within the Labor party.

Conscription remains one of the last taboos in an Australian society where drug use, sexual orientation, rape, incest, mental health are now talked about freely.