COMMENT - 27 November 2007
The extent of the Rudd victory on Saturday perhaps surprised some in Coalition ranks, however the prophetic writing had been on the wall for a long time.
Former Nationals leader Mark Vaile has apparently blamed "the desire for a change" for the government's defeat. He was quoted as saying, "There seemed to be a sense of just wanting to change for change's sake in Australia" (Melissa Jenkins, AAP, 26/11/07).
To a certain extent there is truth in that statement, however, it would be too easy to sweep reality under the carpet and walk away from the real causes for the Coalition's defeat.
Over a period of 11 years Australians had become quite cynical of the government's motivations and goals.
Firstly, we were never ever going to have a GST. During the 1996 campaign then-Opposition Leader John Howard issued a four-sentence statement saying, "Suggestions I have left open the possibility of a GST are completely wrong. A GST or anything resembling it is no longer Coalition policy. Nor will it be policy at any time in the future. It is completely off the political agenda in Australia."
The Coalition introduced their "tax reforms" soon after the 1998 Federal election, and the GST, so soundly rejected when proposed by banker-turned-politician Dr John Hewson in 1993, became law.
This clearly was a breach of trust on the part of the government and one which should have brought retribution at the ensuing election. However, the government managed to escape the wrath of Australians by focussing Australia's attention on three quite unexpected events in the weeks leading up to the election: the MV Tampa incident in August, the terrorist attacks on the New York Twin Towers a few weeks later and the arrival in early October of The Olong (referred to as "SIEV-4" in official circles; "SIEV" being short for "Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel") .
When the government's lies about the "babies overboard" were exposed, Defence Minister Reith lost his career but the government was safely re-elected on 10 November 2001.
On 17 September 2002, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer addressed the Australian Parliament at length on "Iraq" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Seven days later, the British government released a dossier on "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction", and the "threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime". A few weeks later, in November 2002, United States President George W. Bush called for a "coalition of the willing to disarm" Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The rhetoric continued until March 2003 when the Howard government announced that it was committing Australian troops to support the invasion of Iraq. Prime Minister Howard said it was "directed towards the protection of the Australian national interest" (Sydney Morning Herald, 18/03/2003).
Bush and Howard and the British PM Tony Blair, unable to get United Nations support for the invasion, continued to talk about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the great need to restore democracy in Iraq. No such weapons have ever been found and Iraq is still locked in dangerous conflict with no end in sight.
Only this month, former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was reported as saying, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil" (Graham Paterson, The Sunday Times, 16/11/2007).
According to Great Britain's Sunday Herald newspaper, the decision to attack Iraq had already been made by the United States long before September 11, 2001. "President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary" (Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis, Sunday Herald, 6/10/2002).
In hindsight, it seems the entire conflict was simply a ruse to secure (and advance) United States oil interests in the Middle East (Iraq is reportedly the second largest source of oil on planet Earth) and to enhance the considerable business interests of President Bush himself, as well as those of his key supporters.
It is interesting to note that for the first time in United States history, the President, Vice-President and Secretary of State are all former executives from the oil industry. Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney still have substantial interests in oil. Cheney's company Halliburton, an oil service company, has been awarded lucrative contracts by the United States government in post-war Iraq.
Condoleeza Rice, "after serving in the first Bush administration from 1989 to 1992, was placed on the board of directors of Chevron Corporation and served as its principal expert on Kazakhstan, where Chevron holds the largest concession of any of the international oil companies" (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/rice/rice.html).
Indeed, there has been a very active pro-war lobby of influential figures who continue to benefit handsomely from the ongoing conflict in Iraq.
Polling clearly showed many Australians did not support becoming involved, but the government pressed on. Australians were taken for granted yet again and treated as gullible fools by the Howard government.
But the final straw for the average Aussie was the arrogance of a government pumped up by its capture of the Senate in the 2004 election. It failed to learn from either Australia's history or its Constitution.
The Senate was intended as a House of Review, not as a rubber-stamp for ill-considered government policy or sectional interests.
Despite very clear warnings from many in the community, the government pressed ahead with its reforms of the industrial relations system and drove a wedge deep into the electorate.
The unions, facing declining membership and good economic times, saw this as their opportunity to reassert themselves as the guardians of Australian working conditions. They started a very intense and expensive public awareness campaign against the government.
The government foolishly thought they could exploit the links between Labor and the unions, but in the end it was only Labor who appeared to be concerned about the loss of workers' rights and conditions and this struck a very raw nerve with the average Aussie.
Along the way, there was an assortment of other distractions for a government that seemed to be losing its discipline and its focus on serving the people. For the last two or three years, the government wandered from issue to issue seemingly unable to project a clear message on any one of them. These included:
- The sale of Telstra and the continuing public stouch with its directors over which direction to take telecommunications. This allowed Labor to put forward an alternative plan, which although flawed, kept the government on the back foot.
- The government's failure to hold any of its ministers accountable for the AWB fiasco and its irregular wheat dealings with Iraq.
- The government's failure to act decisively following the arrest of Australian citizen and alleged terrorist collaborator David Hicks. For more than five years Hicks was held without trial at the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, amidst constant accusations of torture and inhumane treatment of inmates.
- The government's erosion of civil liberties as evidenced by its handling of the arrest of Indian-born Dr Mohamed Haneef on rather flimsy grounds and the subsequent revoking of his work visa. This was seen as a cynical exercise to use the threat of terrorism to evoke support for the government in the lead up to an election.
- The government's failure to understand and counter the influence of the global warming lobby.
- The government's inability to steer the debate with respect to Gunn's environmentally sensitive pulp mill for Tasmania.
- The failure of the Health Minister to show up on time for his most important press event of the campaign.
- The unfathomable stupidity of Liberal supporters in the seat of Lindsay, printing and distributing misleading and provocative election fliers.
- And the corker of them all, the ongoing petulence of Treasurer Peter Costello and his band of supporters within the government itself. The childish cage-rattling of the Member for Higgins, in his craving to be Prime Minister, when he did not even have the support of his Liberal Party colleagues to mount a challenge to John Howard's leadership, proved invaluable to the Opposition in its quest to undermine the government. Costello's decision to abandon his quest for leadership of the Liberals following the government's defeat has not only thrown the Party into confusion and disarray but reinforces the widely held view that he was really not interested in what he could do for Austalia but what The Lodge could do for his ego.
Unfortunately, with so many little fires burning, the government was simply unable to regain the momentum it desperately needed to hold onto government.
