Please, if you find this discourse useful, post it elsewhere.
Its no news that Rudd has gained the opposition leadership and taken the torch to the Liberals over a wide variety of fronts. I have in the past accused him of maybe going off a bit too early because people forget things after a few months - could anyone remember it was the I.R. laws against which Rudd first scored a few points? Probably not.
The government has unsurprisingly, given the political nous of John Howard, let Rudd expend his first salvo before replying. The reply is what I'd like to discuss, and how considered and cunning it is. It is in three parts, so far;
1) Make noise about David Hicks as if to say you are going to get him dealt with properly.
This is crucial; 60% of Australians are anti-American and anti-War on Terror, and though we are pathetically lazy about Hicks' fate and should be ashamed of how fast we gave up on his rights and therefore our own, we were merely being led by example. John Howard and Phillip Ruddock's example. Now, 10 months out from an election, John Howard is making noises as if to say he's had enough with the judicial farce of Guantanamo and wants Hicks charged and dealt with. This is crucial; Howard can't afford to have Hicks hanging over his head in an election year. Howard knows the half-life of the Hicks issue is 3-5 months, so if he gets it done by March, he's 3 months clear.
2) Get rid of political deadwood.
Here I refer to his two most criminally negligent ministers; Ian Campbell who fucked up the Free Trade negotiations and in concert with other fuckjams such as Alexander Downer, oversaw the bungled AWB scandal. I also refer to Amanda Vanstone, who has overseen 25 bungled immigration cases resulting in improper detention and deportation, including people to Lebanon who were hunted by the Syrians; Vivienne Solon and Cornelia Rau. Vanstone has also overseen for part of her career the fiasco which is Aboriginal Affairs. Party to the removal of these two Ministers, is also a rebranding of the Department of Immigration, Mulicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) into DIMA when indigenous affairs got too spicy, and now into some department of citizenship and immigration, to better reflect the rhetoric of assimilationism which Howard is sing to deflect criticism that the muslims aren't playing nice neighbours.
Howard has cunningly cut his two biggest achilles heels and redrawn the jurisdictional borders to give their replacements as clear a path as possible. It will be impossible for Labor to direct questions at the Ministers because they now have plausible deniability "I didn't know of that." or "It was the previous Minister" or "It is not the purview of my Department". Rudd's job just got a lot harder.
3) Address contentious issues.
Part of this is the considered move towards rebranding tolerance as assimilation; saying we have Australian Values and our immigrants damn well better take them on and uphold them, which Howard correctly sees as a natural response of the public toward Sheik Hilaly et al's ridiculous dinosaurian behaviour and the public's unease in the new world order. Similarly, the environmental problems which he has let lapse for so long are being dealt with; talk of carbon trading, nuclear energy, biofuels; dealing with the water crisis, all the things he left untouched for 12 years are now on the agenda in the runup to his next election because the political landscape favours those who deal with the problems and don't ostrich-neck it. Rudd had scored lots of runs on this issue; now, armed with a purse bulging from mining royalties and exhorbitant taxes, Howard spends $2.5B on water and tries to regain the initiative.
Look for strident greenhouse targets; look for efficiency and recycling initiatives. Look for moves on reforming the education system, as Howard moves to neutralise the advantages of Rudd and Labor.
So what's my point? As an elector, don't be a fool and forget that on all three counts Howard has slacked off for five to ten years and done sweet fuck all to change his policies and rectify the problems. Its fine that he's changing tack now, it certainly benefits the electorate, but leading the country shouldn't only occur when you have vigorous political opposition which is scoring in the polls. A good leader and good government should have been addressing basic human rights abuses (Hicks, Solon, Rau; aboriginal rghts, immigration refrm) at home and abroad; it should have tackled environmental and infrastructure issues (water, transport, health, security) regardless of whether there was a drought and public support for climate change (and they slacked off despite this), and it shouldn't have maintained worthless and incometent ministers in their positions for up to a decade simply because they could get reelected on account of a poor opposition and interest rate fears.
As an elector, I beg you; ignore the interest rates. Ignore any gibes of how Rudd is a Catholic (Howard's a Baptist, Costello is on the God Squad), remember that this damage control was done and only done because it was damage in the first place. Remember the Tampa, the Pacific Solution, the non-signing of Kyoto, Iraq; everything. Remember that anything Howard does now is ten years too late and for the wrong reason; look beyond this recent progress and think; what if we'd reformed water a decade ago? What if we'd already installed the 20% renewables we will do within the next decade? How much better would our environment be, our energy security, had we made the hard choices?
What if, as a nation, we maintained and entrenched those Australian Values Howard craps on about. The independence in International Affairs which, previously, made us invulnerable to terrorist rhetoric? Maintained our dignity in human rights,because we didn't abrogate our responsibilities to our own citizens let alone immigrants? What if we, as we did under Keating, suppported the U.N. instead of flaunted its rules ala AWB and Kyoto? Imagine how much more respct we'd have internationally, how much better we would feel as a nation?
So, in November, remember.
distressed