Paying the Bill of Rights

Last week former Prime Minister John Howard told the 2009 Menzies Lecture that an Australian bill of rights was misguided and would not expand individual liberties. Howard reminded his audience that Robert Menzies was a lawyer and would have opposed such a bill with “every bone of his common law body”. Howard said that one of the functions of the common law was to protect the individual against infringement of his personal rights.

But Menzies is more remembered as a politician than a lawyer. Here again Howard said Menzies would not have supported a Bill of Rights. It would have impinged upon Menzies “deep reverence for parliament”. The parliamentarians’ ability to enact good law on behalf of their constituents would be hampered by an “elitist” charter that would place rights ahead of responsibility. According to Howard, common law provides better protection for the individual than a bill of rights and enshrining such rights muzzles the ability of parliament to pass laws in the public interest. So the question becomes, are rights right or are they a tool of the left? To answer this, we need to go back a bit.

The history of rights begins properly with the guilt of Auschwitz. During the war, the Allies had very good maps of the area, knew the layout of Auschwitz I and II and knew roughly what was its scale and purpose. Yet while Dresden and other cities were regularly firebombed, not a single bomb was dropped on either Auschwitz. It was considered to be unhelpful in the act of the winning the war.

While apparently sadistic, this was an essentially correct military decision. Germany’s lunacy in the later stages of the war meant that valuable resources were being drained away on the unproductive factory-killing of many of its minorities and the Allies wanted this to continue so that they could put an end to the war sooner. The military decision could not take into account that society’s weakest would be the ones that would pay the highest price for thia strategy.

When the full cruelties of the camps unfolded after the war ended, it inspired the new UN to act for the defenceless. In 1948 its General Assembly instituted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Prior to this, the only well known bill of rights was the first ten amendments of the US constitution in which timeless notions such as freedom of speech mixed uneasily with peculiarly Georgian needs such as keeping a well-regulated Militia. But despite misgivings over possible post-war anachronisms in the UN declaration, all western countries have adopted some components of the UDHR charter.

All western countries bar one, that is. Although Australian foreign minister Dr Herbert Vere Evatt was a crucial player in the formation of the UN charter, his own government had misgivings about the brown and black people having the same dignity and rights as them. Its aboriginals were then still considered fauna and Labor supported the White Australia Policy to protect the jobs of its voters. Australia ratified grudgingly but never adopted it in local laws.

The Menzies era that followed was equally disinterested in formulating rights laws though for a different reason. In 1967 the newly retired prime minister said individual rights were adequately protected by common law and “the good sense” of elected representatives. Howard drew on these traditions when defending matters such as mandatory sentencing, sedition, and the treatment of refugees. The original 1901 constitution still gives the federal government powers over “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”. While this seems like antiquated law, it has been invoked as recently as 1998 in the Hindmarsh Island case which allowed the government to discriminate against Aboriginals.

While the jurists see no way past these laws, it may be dangerous to also assume that politicians will always have the sense to be sensible. Against it, is the political need to be seen doing something. No politician ever lost an election by being tough on “law and order” and many rights are further eroded in knee-jerk reactions to terrorism events or bad bikie behaviour. Once taken away, it is very hard to get those rights back. The usual response to harsher measures is that if you are not doing anything wrong you will have nothing to worry about. But lack of rights doesn’t just affect deviants. They also affect the vulnerable, the unlucky and those on the border-line.

That is not to say there are no protections in Australian law. There is freedom of religion, trial by jury, freedom of trade, and property rights. Voting is not simply a right, it is a duty. Common law also has an 800 year tradition of preserving rights that goes back to the Magna Carta. But while it recognises rights, it does not recognise freedoms. Judges see this as a role for parliament.

But while many parliamentary inquiries have looked at rights bills, very few have recommended action. A Labor Human Rights Bill in 1973 was sunk by strong opposition in the Senate. A second attempt in 1985 collapsed because WA was unwilling to give up its gerrymandered electoral boundaries. Further efforts for constitutional change failed in 1988 and 1999 which made the rights agenda a handy wedge issue. Opponents would say Russia in the 1930s had a human rights bill but that did not stop the gulags. So savvy politicians like Bob Carr preferred to hide behind cosy do-nothing statements such as “the protection of rights lies in the good sense, tolerance and fairness of the community.”

He may be asking too much of the community. But Australia does have one bill of rights jurisdiction. In 2004, the Australian Capital Territory lived up to its acronym and became the first Australian administration to enact a Human Rights Act. The Act recognises equality before the law, the rights to life, family, reputation and freedom of expression. But it has weaknesses. There is no remedy for breach of these rights. It is also silent on the matter of economic and social rights, which are the ones most lacking in the most disadvantaged sectors.

But as George Williams says in “The Case for an Australian Bill of Rights”, it is a good start. He argues a national bill would augment the common law and enhance democracy here by expressing the fundamental rights of a diverse Australian people. This is not an obvious or intuitive concept and education will be needed to show the community why it is needed. It should follow the model used in the ACT, New Zealand and UK legislation and begin with a small set of laws that could be expanded upon over time. The courts should have the permission to strike down legislation, there should be an override clause and should eventually be included in the constitution.

Williams says the real value of such a bill would be in education, shaping attitudes and offering hope and recognition to otherwise powerless people. There is also little doubt it would be also be something all new law would be measured against, and could act as a moral check to any temporary madness towards clamping down on a country's own citizens. Perhaps this the real reason Howard and his supporters do not want a Bill of Rights - they do not want to identify what freedoms citizens really have, or should have.

Liberal Rules OK?

For the last few days SBS has been heavily promoting Liberal Rule: The Politics that Changed Australia, a weighty three-hour retrospective on the Howard era of Government. This was always threatening to be compulsory viewing not only because of the sociological claim in the subtitle but also because many of the biggest Liberal politicians and staffers contributed: John Howard was in it as was Fraser, Costello, Downer, Reith, Staley and Sinodinos. Here would be some good insights into the business of government.

This morning, anticipation was lifted up another notch when Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald called the documentary “a shocker and a disgrace”. Henderson is a Howard supporter and plainly didn’t like the authors’ “layers of subtext” which he saw as code for left wing. He sportingly said the left got “free kick after free kick” and then played the man not the ball when he said Norm Abjorensen's book John Howard and the Conservative Tradition has sold fewer than 100 copies in a year.

But I’m thinking Henderson should be on the SBS marketing payroll if he isn’t already. By publicly bagging the program, he was drawing splendid attention to it. And it was a program he was in. In his SMH attack he leaves out any discussion of the layers of sub-text of his segment. This suggests the filmmakers treated him fairly. Henderson did show he was more accurate than SBS in one key respect - he got the time of the show right. SBS were sending out online ads in Crikey and elsewhere all day saying it was on “SBS One Wednesday 8.30pm”. But Henderson got the facts right in his article – It was aired at 8.30pm tonight (Tuesday).

Apart from unnecessarily losing out on audiences, the SBS mistake also undermines the fact that Liberal Rules is likely to become good history - assuming the quality does not dip in the next two episodes. As Henderson rightly criticised, it did not interview any Labor or National politicians and overcompensated with leftwing critics such as the unfortunate Abjorensen, Judith Brett and Mark Davis (whose praise appeared on the blurb of the ad with the wrong day). But so what. In three hours of television, there will be a wealth of great historical material to choose from the political interviews.

This is a necessity the filmmakers turned into a brilliant virtue. Joint filmmaker Garry Sturgess had brought his skills as a senior researcher on ABC’s Labor in Power to do a similar job on the Howard era. But Sturgess found it difficult to open old doors. He and partner Nick Torrens struggled with sibling rivalry on the public purse when they tried to gain access to ABC’s treasure chest of news archives. It was the job of ex-SBS employee Alan Sunderland to deny the request on the grounds that their “primary responsibility is to make programs for the Australian public.”

So Sturgess and Torrens stacked the program with talking heads. This is difficult to make exciting and they wasted no time showing the questions or questioners inanely nodding. Audiences had to work out what was going on from the guiding of the anonymous narrator, the taut editing of the film, and the surprisingly candid answers themselves.

Howard and the other Liberals agreed to take part because they knew this would be a film about legacy and they were keen to shape it. As the film itself says, the Liberals are all about leadership. From Menzies to Turnbull the ethos of the party is that leadership is central to its identity. Liberal philosophy changes with the winds unburdened as it is by any -ism. What was most of interest in this film was how Howard and the rest approached their decision making.

For example Costello was brutally honest about the spoils of power. He would go to meetings where there might be 15 or 16 or people. The difficulty of getting them to do something for him was that all of them there were appointed by Howard. All that is, except him. “I was the only one elected”, he said. Ever since he backed Downer for the leadership in 1993, it was clear Costello always preferred to be the message rather than the messenger.

What mattered was not who did things the best, but who announced them best. And John Howard was always better at that than Costello. Howard was more ruthlesss for starters and served a tougher apprenticeship learning for the top job. In the 1970s, he was a young and generally hopeless Treasurer. In the 1980s, he wrestled with Peacock for the right to lose to Bob Hawke. And in the early 1990s, he watched as the newer leaders Hewson and Downer were gobbled up and spat out by the “street brawler” Paul Keating. Downer resigned in 1995 as the party stared at a sixth election loss. Costello was kept as deputy but it was Howard – battle-hardened but just 56 year old – who was chosen. He came out by Costello’s side to tell the media he had been appointed “unanimous leader”. His body language suggested supreme confidence he was going to be the next Prime Minister and he crushed Keating at the election a year later.

Howard was the master of the small agenda but his inability to look up almost made him a one-term premier. In trouble in the polls, he turned to his tax agenda and decided to run hard on getting a mandate for a Goods and Services Tax. While this overturned an election promise, he got away with it because Labor though an election could not be won selling a tax. Despite the fact his victory over Beazley was narrow, it was was a turning point. Although Howard would have to reach into his bag of tricks again to find another issue to win in 2001 (Tampa), it was the GST election that cemented his place in the party’s pantheon.

After that second win, he had carte blanche to do what he wanted. Howard used the twin drivers of the mining boom and a trillion dollars worth of personal debt to get the government back in the black. He then increased public spending on favoured projects and dished out largesse in the budget much to the chagrin of the more economic rationalist Treasurer. Neither of them did much on climate change. It is this sense that Liberal frittered away their years in power that bothered Henderson about Liberal Rules.

He says the left have won the victory of ideas because unlike the Liberals, they take history seriously. Henderson took the example of Opposition frontbencher George Brandis who complained in The Spectator that that Liberals are not celebrating the 100th anniversary of the formation of the inaugural Liberal Party. “But Brandis could have arranged such a celebration himself,” Henderson said. As Malcolm Turnbull and all the others before him showed, the Liberals are not about ideas, they are about actions.

4 Corners: Howard’s End

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard excused himself in Nigeria while his former party colleagues forensically dissected his election defeat on ABC’s Four Corners last night. Howard launched his career on the international speaker circuit at Nigeria's biggest awards ceremony in the capital, Lagos, at the weekend. Howard steered clear of Australian domestic politics and instead spoke about Nigerian economic reform and its need to seek more foreign investment. It is likely Howard was paid in the region of $40,000 for this new and blander version of the Nigerian phishing scam.

While his speech content was uncontentious, the same could not be said for the swag of senior Liberals who bared their souls about their defeat on national television last night. The program entitled “Howard’s End” attracted 1.15 million viewers to the national broadcaster. The program featured significant interviews from key players such as Arthur Sinodinos, Nick Minchin, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, John Abbott, Joe Hockey but not from Howard himself who has not spoken to an Australian media outlet since his defeat.

The program began with how Howard ascended to the leadership in 1994. Alexander Downer was opposition leader with Costello as his deputy. Downer was in freefall as leader and Liberal powerbroker Ian McLachlan set up a secret meeting to replace him. In the meeting were three people, McLachlan, Costello and John Howard. In this meeting Howard asked Costello not to nominate so Howard could be elected unopposed. Both McLachlan and Costello say Howard committed to serving only one and half terms. A reluctant Costello agreed knowing he did not have the numbers to win anyway. Costello asked McLachlan to document the undertaking about “one and half terms” on a piece of paper.

Eight weeks later in early 1995, Howard ascended to the leadership unopposed with Costello continuing as deputy. This would be the team that would vanquish Paul Keating in 1996 and go on to win four successive elections. By 2006 Howard was in power for ten years and was the second longest ever Australian leader behind Robert Menzies. Howard is at the peak of his power and the “one and half terms” idea has seemingly been forgotten. The one time Howard had obliquely mentioned retirement was in 2000 on his 61st birthday when he said nothing lasts forever and he would consider his position on his 64th birthday.

He turned 64 in June 2003 and decided to stay on despite Costello’s prompting. By 2006 Howard was now 67 and talk of change was in the air. Chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos said the speculation grew as the 10th anniversary approached. But Andrew Robb said it was not the sort of thing people would raise when talking to the PM. Senate leader Nick Minchin knew that Howard’s time was nearly up and he got Sinodinos and foreign minister Alexander Downer to sound out the retirement on the 10th anniversary which, Minchin thought, was the ideal time for Howard to go out on top. Costello was aware of Minchin’s plan. Both men conveyed their views but Howard never followed the matter up with Minchin and there the matter died.

Sinodinos said Howard’s attitude was he wanted to think it through. However he said that process was truncated by the McLachlan affair. In July 2006 McLachlan finally released the contents of the “one and half terms” piece of paper to the media. The note mentioned that a voluntary “undertaking” had been given. Howard and Costello subsequently gave differing accounts of the meeting, with the obvious imputation that at least one of them was lying. Minchin said the impact of the public spat was “devastating”.

Two days later Howard told the media “it was the will of the party” that was paramount. In July he announced he was staying on until after the next election. Costello told Four Corners that the McLachlan affair was irrelevant and that Howard never intended in standing down. But Downer said that had 1996 been a controversy free year, Howard would have retired. Costello said the impression he had was quite the opposite. But in any case Costello faced the same problem he always had – Howard had the party numbers. Costello conceded defeat and publicly proclaimed his loyalty to the team. He said the problem was the number of MPs that had been elected since 1996 who only knew Howard as leader. To them, said Costello, the Liberal Party WAS Howard. Liberal Senator Judith Troeth said Costello’s problem was that never cultivated the party backbench which made him arrogant and unpopular.

In December 2006, the Liberals had new problem: Kevin Rudd. Rudd came to the Labor leadership with a mandate for new leadership. The Liberals didn’t panic, they had seen off Mark Latham in 2004 and felt they could see off the new boy. But from the time Rudd became leader, there were 50 polls all of which pointed to a Labor victory. John Abbott said the Liberals could not counter this “fresh face” strategy; Costello was too associated with Howard, who anyway, according to Abbott, was the Libs best asset.

Labor homed in on the unpopular Government workplace relations law with the unions running effective scare ads. Joe Hockey was appointed Workplace Relations Minister with a mandate to fix the problem. In the most remarkable admission of the program, Hockey told Four Corners that “many ministers in cabinet” were not aware that people could be worse off under WorkChoices. Hockey moved to bring in the Fairness Test. Robb said this failure was proof the government were no long listening to “the Howard battlers, the people who put us there in the first place”.

Failure to sign Kyoto was another disaster for the government in 2007. Costello said the government should have ratified it “many years earlier”. Abbott said Howard’s rigid position on the “totemic issue” of Kyoto didn’t help the party. In September, Howard hosted the APEC summit in Sydney. On the eve of the summit, a newspoll showed an 18 per cent 2PP lead to Labor. This was a devastating poll that made the leadership “jumpy”. While Howard was busy hosting international presidents, he began to finally believe he would lose the election.

Howard asked Downer to sound out the opinion of the other cabinet members whether they would be better off changing leaders. Downer invited eight cabinet colleagues to discuss the matter: Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop, Philip Ruddock, Chris Ellison, Ian Macfarlane, Kevin Andrews and Joe Hockey. Most were unaware of Howard’s thoughts. Hockey said he thought the leadership had been sorted a year ago and he was stunned Howard himself was re-opening it. The view of the meeting was that if Howard didn’t think he could win, he should step aside.

The following morning, Downer reported back to Howard about the pessimistic mood of the meeting and the view of the majority was that Howard should quit. Later Downer told Costello he should get ready for leadership. Downer then told the cabinet that anyone who thought Howard should go, should tell the PM. Joe Hockey told Four Corners he rang Howard to tell him he should quit. Howard said he appreciated Hockey’s honesty but made no commitments. Downer then told Howard he should leave voluntarily. But Howard took the view he would only leave if told to do so by his colleagues. But those colleagues in the main felt doing that would be an electoral disaster.

For Andrew Robb, it was unfortunate Howard wasn’t told he should go. But for Hockey, a “knifing” of John Howard would have meant the Liberals would have been reduced to a small rump in parliament. Because the conditions were not agreed, Howard decided to stay on and contest the 2007 election. Something Costello thought he always was going to do anyway. Howard went on A Current Affair to say he had talked the matter through with his family and said “they want me to continue”. Hockey said he was disappointed that Howard had earlier said he would always stay as long as the party wanted him and “now the formula had changed”.

According to Downer, Howard did not want to look like a coward, and besides, had higher personal approval ratings than Costello. Two months later, Howard announced the election and the entire team got behind him. Nothing changed during the six week campaign and Howard was voted out of office both as PM and MP on 24 November. Costello refused the opposition leadership the following day. The Liberals would never find out what changing the leadership would have meant. According to Costello supporter Christopher Pyne “the public gave Labor the biggest swing they had ever had into government and that was the final say on who was right about that”. According to Four Corners, Howard loved the job too much to quit.

Welcome to the New Government: Labor wins Australian election

Labor has won. The analysts are arguing over the margins and WA is not yet in but the only question is by how much. Howard has not yet conceded, yet he is presiding not just over a defeat, but is also relying on postal votes to avoid the humiliating loss of his own seat. Labor have a guaranteed 82 seats so far needing 76 to form government. They are also leading in most of the undeclared seats. The swing is 5.7 per cent. Neither leader has emerged yet to either concede or claim victory. But there is no doubt that Kevin Rudd has replaced John Howard as Australia’s Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd’s name is almost astonishingly absent from the commentator’s lips at the moment but this represents a huge victory for the Queenslander who has turned around 2004’s massacre of Mark Latham in resounding fashion. It is also a personal defeat for John Howard who hoped to seal his legacy with a fifth straight election victory.

Not since the Wall St Crash era of 1929, has an Australian prime minister lost his seat. In that election Stanley Melbourne Bruce of the defunct United Australia Party went down with his ship. John Howard is in deep trouble behind on preferences this time round and is relying on a large postal vote to avoid defeat. Maxine McKew is on screen as I write, saying it was “still on a knifeedge”. But she is probably being coy. And even if McKew does not win Bennelong from John Howard tonight, there is little doubt she will win it comfortably in a by-election to follow in the next month.

ABC and Sky News were calling the result around 8.30pm Sydney time. Among the print media, the Daily Telegraph was an early on-line entry around the same time saying "Labour” were claiming the win. While the British daily may not realise the ALP use the US spelling of “Labor” they have correctly called the election.

Little word from the Senate yet but it likely the Coalition’s current majority there will disappear by 1 July 2008 when current terms end (there was a small chance it could end tonight if the second ACT seat falls to the Greens). In the lower house Labor needed a national swing of 4.7 to win and looks to have exceeded that comfortably. Needing 16 seats to change hands to claim government, it has picked up 20 definites so far. They are 7 seats in NSW, 6 in Queensland, 3 in South Australia, 2 in Victoria, and 2 in Tasmania (getting a clean sweep of the apple isle in the process). Several others seats including Howard’s remain in doubt.

But the champagne is already out in the Labor campaign offices and the Labor fans, Chaser boys and TV network wannabees are running amok in the tally room leading a chant of “Julia, Julia”. The queue to get into the room is massive. Inside they are feting the new deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard in the ABC tally room studio. Their loud whooping is causing much annoyance to ABC election presenter Kerry O’Brien. But Labor’s exultation is understandable, the party has not won government from opposition since 1983.

The mood for change was obvious out in the electorate. At the Catholic school where I voted, there was a queue of 30 people outside waiting to vote. The Liberal placards warned of “wall to wall Labor” while Labor’s called for “New Leadership”. I voted in the safe Labor seat of likely Treasurer-to-be Wayne Swan. I met fellow blogger Sam Clifford the sole Greens rep handing out how-to-vote cards. Theirs was a call to “Take action, Take Green action in the Senate”. Sam was zinced up with a full day ahead of him on the hustings. A man in a Kevin07 t-shirt was explaining the voting process to two women.“Swan is in the lower house, that’s where you are voting for the Prime Minister. The guys in the Senate you won’t have even heard of.”

As I entered the school building, there was a poster on the wall. It was a face of Jesus which was broken up into hundreds of people’s faces. Underneath was an injunction from the Gospel of Matthew 25:40 “truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me”. I’m not sure if this was a coded illegal how-to-vote message inside the election room directed at the minor parties.

Or maybe it was directed at Labor after all. Julia Gillard has just called Maxine McKew “a miracle worker”. The tally is now 81 to Labor. Sometime in the next hour John Howard will concede defeat. Then the man who amazingly no-one on TV still dares name, will emerge to claim victory. And he will say “My name is Kevin, I’m from Queensland and I’m here to help”.

Election 2007: healing of a bipolar nation?

With just two days left of a bloated six week election campaign, Australia is are witnessing the final messy moments of the John Howard era. The $60 million advertising campaign ends tonight with the compulsory 48 hour blackout before Saturday’s ballot. The Prime Minister remains bewildered to the last why the nation is deserting him during a resources boom and a 33 year low in unemployment.

Appearing on ABC’s 7.30 Report last night, he clung to his two main themes of economic prosperity and national security credentials as reasons why voters should continue to trust him to run the country. He said the country was flirting with “change for change’s sake” and warned the country would be different. Not for the first time he launched into a scare campaign about the consequences of victory for Labor by comparing a change of government to an unwanted pet. “It's not like a Christmas present you didn't want,” he said. “You can take it back at the Boxing Day sale, it's not like that.”

Howard’s comment is an insulting indictment of the Australian electorate who are only all too aware that the term is three years, almost half of which is spent is spent campaigning for the next term. In his essay “Bipolar Nation: How to win the 2007 Election” (extract at New Matilda) written earlier this year, Sydney Morning Herald political reporter Peter Hartcher examines the contradictions that lie at the heart of Australian politics. Hatcher shows how Kevin Rudd has drawn away Howard’s core constituencies and undermined his fundamental arguments. Hartcher’s thesis is that Australians are economically secure and yet anxious about the future. He explores these themes under the banners of The Lucky Country and The Frightened Country.

The Lucky Country was Donald Horne's 1964 book about the complacency and mediocrity he saw in Australia’s ruling class. “Australia is a lucky country,” he wrote, “run mainly by second-rate people that share its luck.” The book was intended as a critique of a derivative society hostile to originality and expertise. The book’s title became misunderstood as praise for the country not a warning. But Horne was prophetic. Australia’s luck did run out in the seventies and eighties. Between 1970 and 1990 the country’s average income dropped from fourth in the world to fifteenth. Australia was well on the way to becoming what Lee Kuan Yew called “the poor white trash of Asia”.

But when Lee visited Australia in 2007, he said his comment was aimed at the discriminatory immigration policies which ended in the 1960s. He admitted Australia had changed for the better since then (Ruddock's policies notwithstanding). When interviewed by Hartcher, Horne too agreed Australia was now a different place. He hailed the economic reform program of the Hawke-Keating government as the “threshold moment” for Australia and one which arrest the country’s slide down the ranking of wealthy countries.

In 1983, the new Labor government slashed the tariff walls that protected the economy from competition. Labor’s industry minister John Button described manufacturing as an “industrial museum” while finance minister John Dawkins said the country had “first class living standards with a third class industrial structure”. With the tariffs gone, Paul Keating released the tightly controlled finance system and liberalised the wage structure. It was as necessary as it was unpopular. His courageous acts left him with few friends even within the Labor movement. “Not that one has a check list, but you do get around to offending everybody,” he told Hartcher. "But somebody has to give the country a break."

After a recession “we had to have”, Australia’s boom began in 1991. It is still humming along 16 years later. It comfortably survived the Asian economic crisis of 1997. But Keating didn’t. By then a vengeful electorate had tired of his “big visions”, high interest rates and fatal hubristic streak. The people gave John Howard’s Liberals a landslide win in 1996. The time lag between implementation and success meant it would be John Howard who would reap the benefit of Keating’s revolution. While the Coalition have added Reserve Bank independence, the GST and budget transparency, it is the Keating reforms that remain at the heart of Australian prosperity.

Howard successfully claimed ownership of the boom because Labor deserted the field. Because of Keating’s unpopularity, they never trumpeted their own success. Labor retreated into its traditional preoccupation, how to redistribute wealth not how to create it. Not until 2005 was Keating was rehabilitated and it took another year for Labor to fight back on economic credentials. In August 2006, Wayne Swan reminded (hansard pdf) John Howard that interest rates reached 21 per cent under his time at Treasury, 4 points higher than the Keating record.

Incredibly, it was the first time the Opposition used this tactic since Howard became Prime Minister. After a decade, Labor has finally re-entered the economic argument and started to take credit for its own accomplishments. With a self-styled “economic conservative” now at the helm, feted by the last three Labor PMs at his conference, Labor may finally be able wrest economic credibility back from the government. At his campaign launch speech last week he finally outflanked Howard on the economy. “I have no intention today of repeating Mr Howard’s irresponsible spending spree.” The Labor faithful, the press gallery, and probably the electorate, all lapped it up.

However, economic credibility is only half the battle. In his 7.30 Report interview last night, Howard reminded the viewers that “national security is being looked after”. Howard is aware that a fearfulness sits at the heart of Australia’s relationship with the outside world and has long capitalised on this fact. This is theory of The Frightened Country, that occupies the second half of Hartcher’s essay. The Frightened Country is also the title of a book by former diplomat Alan Renouf.

Renouf argues that Australia’s irrational fear of its neighbours is central to the national psyche. The country has always been a follower, either of Britain or of the US and rarely ventures into its own international policy making. There have been a succession of foreign ‘bogeymen’ such as the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Soviets, and in more recent times the Indonesians. Australia relies inordinately on the Anzus Treaty signed in 1951 but the wishy-washy text of the treaty declares the parties would only act “to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes”. Howard and his foreign minister Alexander Downer love to talk about the treaty but they never mention the fact that those inconvenient “constitutional processes” remove the sense of obligation.

Nor do they talk about the time in 1964 when Australia, which was worried about the Indonesia Reformasi crisis, invoked the treaty for the first and so far only time. The US refused to help. Nor did Howard enjoy the reaction of Clinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who, when asked to support an international military coalition in East Timor, testily compared Australia’s problem to his daughter’s messy apartment.

Nevertheless Howard is a deft handler of the fear factor. According to Hartcher, Howard first prods them so people are aware of their fears. Then he offers reassurance. He has used this double strategy to keep troops in Iraq. His argument is if we remove them it would be a propaganda coup for terrorism and increase the number of terrorists in Indonesia. Implicit is the argument that Howard’s putative terrorists would be a threat to Australia. Despite the polls saying Iraq was an unpopular war, Howard’s appeal to fear resonated far stronger in the electorate than Latham’s 2004 promise to bring the troops home by Christmas.

However the elevation of the former shadow foreign minister to the Labor leadership has changed this ballgame too. Rudd was an unapologetic supporter of the Iraq war. Rudd was unable to seize this agenda and has remained remarkably quiet about it in the election campaign. He has relied on the Prime Minister to concede the running with a bad mistake. Howard made just such a blunder when he criticised Barack Obama’s call for total US withdrawal from Iraq equating it support for Al Qaeda. Obama underlined the flaw in Howard’s argument when he noted Australia’s small contingent in Iraq. He suggested Howard “calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.” That was the end of the argument. John Howard was never prepared to put the bodies of the Frightened Country on the line.

In the endgame, it is the emperor who has lost his clothes. The bogeymen and the bipolar nation have moved on. Neutralised on security and outflanked on economic credibility, the Liberals have failed to gain any traction in the opinion polls and the main topic of political debate is now the margin of Labor’s win. Former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson is today predicting a Labor landslide and a swing of six to seven percent (it needs 4.88 per cent to win). "I think people have just stopped listening to John Howard,” he said “He just stayed too long."

Howard refuses to put out Nalliah’s fire

Australian PM John Howard has refused to cut ties with the controversial Catch the Fire Ministries despite its leader’s links the far right League of Rights group. Church leader Danny Nalliah has addressed the holocaust-denial group in 2005 (pictured) and has accepted another invite to address the league again. Nalliah has had private audiences with Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello. Howard described the League of Rights as “a bit anti-Semitic,” but said he could not be responsible for what the people he meets do. Nalliah is unrepentant. "I would not change my view. I stand by it," he told The Age. "I am a Christian minister — my task is to go after the sinner, not cast away the sinner. There is no one beyond redemption".

Grahame Leonard, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said Nalliah’s view were naive "at best" given the league's anti-Semitic stance. He also cautiously chastised Howard, who has long been a staunch supporter of Israel. “We would urge all our politicians to publicly distance themselves from the pastor and his views,” he said. The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council also criticised Nalliah’s decision to accept the league’s invitation.

This is not the first time Nalliah has run into trouble with racial vilification. In January 2004, Nalliah fell foul of Victoria’s controversial Racial and Religious Tolerance Act in the first case before the Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal (VCAT). VCAT found against him for vilifying Muslims. The tribunal said that he was one of two pastors to suggest the Koran promoted murder and looting, Muslims wanted to take over Australia and terrorists were true Muslims. However the Victorian Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year saying the Act does not “mandate religious tolerance”.

Religious tolerance is not something anyone can accuse the Sri Lankan born Nalliah. In 2004 he was the second person on the Family First ticket for the Federal Senate election in Victoria. During the campaign Nalliah called on his followers to “pull down Satan's strongholds”. These strongholds included bottle shops, brothels, casinos, gambling places, mosques and temples. Nalliah wasn’t talking about Christian temples, he meant Freemason, Buddhist and Hindu ones. While party chair Peter Harris distanced himself from these comments, Nalliah's rhetoric had results. Steve Fielding - the man ahead of Nalliah on the ticket - was successfully elected.

Danny Nalliah was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, in 1964. In his early years he played in a band in Colombo. After “finding God” Nalliah began to preach to congregations in Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia. He arrived in Australia in 1997 and founded Catch the Fire Ministries soon afterwards. The group is associated with the Pentecostalist Assemblies of God and has grown to be one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the country. Ten thousand people get the Catch the Fire newsletter and Nalliah is now head of Rise Up Australia, a national prayer group with over a hundred affiliated churches.

On Australia Day this year, Nalliah held a service at Melbourne’s Festival Hall, a venue normally reserved for rock concerts. Prime Minister John Howard agreed to provide a DVD message for the service. Margaret Simons described the event in her book “Faith, Money and Power”. The venue was bedecked in Australian flags and Catch the Fire’s flame-coloured banners. A choir sang on a stage backdropped by pictures of Uluru. An usherette danced in the aisle while waving a flag. Simons instinctively recognised a dangerous combination of religious and nationalistic fervour.

Nalliah spoke to the assembled audience. His speech on this occasion was benign but fitted in with the theme. He praised the “freedom of Australia”, thanked the armed forces serving overseas, emergency services fighting bushfires and prayed for the country’s leaders. He was followed on stage by other pastors and then some students, one of whom denounced postmodernism “with its claim that truth is a matter of opinion”.

After an hour and a half Nalliah finally introduced the message from John Howard. Nalliah said that Catch the Fire had also approached Opposition leader Kevin Rudd to send a message but Rudd was unable to do so “because of all his business and travel”. On his DVD speech, Howard spoke of the shared values and of the “great contribution Christianity has made to our country”. He concluded by congratulating Catch the Fire for “bringing Christians from many denominations together for this celebration” and he wished them all a very happy Australia Day. His minute long address was lacklustre and greeted with muted applause and cynical laughter. While Howard was widely criticised for making the DVD, the audience didn’t care about it at all. Simons said many had left the auditorium before the speech ended.

Nalliah has not decided to stand for election this time round. However the pastor has thrown his support behind the Prime Minister and his heir apparent Peter Costello. In a letter sent to the Catch the Fire faithful, he said the Lord had told him to meet personally with Howard and Costello. There Nalliah was to “prophetically prepare Federal Treasurer Peter Costello as the future Prime Minister of Australia”. Nalliah met Costello on 9 August and Howard one day later. Unfortunately he could not share the timing of the Costello handover with his flock or disclose what else transpired in the meetings. But whatever he said, it had resonance. Howard continues to stand by Danny Nalliah despite his racist rants.

Phoney war is over: Howard calls the election

After months of pseudo-campaigning, John Howard today called a federal election for Australian voters on 24 November. The six week campaign is likely to be heavily presidential in style with a large focus on the record of the two leaders, Prime Minister John Howard and Labor leader Kevin Rudd. The 68 year old Howard is seeking a fifth and apparently final term in office, having promising to hand over the reins of power to his deputy Peter Costello “some time” in the next three years. Howard emphasised the continuity of his leadership team in his election announcement today, saying it was “the leadership that has the experience to further expand the prosperity of the Australian economy and to ensure that everybody gets a fair share of it.”

But voters are not heeding this message, if the opinion polls are to be believed. Labor has a 12 percent lead in Two Party Preferred terms. Many commentators see Labor leader Rudd as a younger version of Howard. Rudd is a self-described “economic conservative” and has taken the “small target” strategy used so successfully by Howard when he won power in 1996. However there are strong areas of difference between Rudd’s Labor and the ruling Coalition. Labor has pledged to sign the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions and also roll back the Government’s most controversial industrial legislation, Workchoices, which Rudd said today “[strips] away penalty rates and overtime and basic conditions which working families for generations have enjoyed."

While Labor and the Coalition will dominate the lower house, a slew of minor parties will be hoping to form the balance of power in the Senate. The Liberals gained outright control of the review house for the first time since 1961 in the last election but opinion polls suggest that they will lose some seats this time round. Because most Senate seats (except for the 4 ACT and NT seats which are one-term only) are six year tenures, only half its members are up for re-election this time round. All four Democrats are up for re-election but only Queensland’s Andrew Bartlett has any realistic hope of winning this time round. The Greens have two senators seeking re-election in Tasmania and NSW and have also hopes of winning in Victoria and Queensland. South Australian ‘no pokie’ independent Nick Xenophon is the new wildcard having decided last week to move from the SA upper house where he took a staggering 22 percent in the last state election.

Because of the plethora of electoral bodies at local, state and federal level, Australians seem to be in almost perpetual electoral mode. The first parliamentary election in Australia occurred in 1843 when propertied adult males were granted the right to vote for the NSW Legislative Council. By 1859 all the eastern seaboard colonies had full secret ballot suffrage for all adult males over 21. In 1894, South Australia followed New Zealand’s lead to become only the second polity to allow women the vote. This right was extended to all states by 1908. Early elections were voluntary but by 1924, all parliaments had made voting compulsory.

Australia is one of about thirty countries that enforce some form of compulsory voting. More accurately it is a compulsory duty to attend a polling place. All political parties have a self-interested reason to retain this system and there is no need for parties to campaign to ‘get out the vote’. Currently the fine is $20 for non-compliance and even this fine is not strictly enforced. Nonetheless the system ensures that turnout in Australian elections is always in excess of 95 per cent of eligible voters.

The federal government has a three year term of office. The House must be dissolved no later than three years since the first sitting after the previous election (hence Howard could have in theory delayed the election until January 2008). There is no minimum term. A government can call a double dissolution election if the Senate fails to pass a Bill twice. From 1901 to 1973 there were only two such dissolutions but then there were four in fifteen years: 1974, 1975, 1983 and 1987. There have been none since.

About 3 percent of the voters, either accidentally or deliberately cast what is called a ‘donkey vote’. These voters simply number the boxes on their ballot paper from top to bottom. Prior to changes in the Electoral Act in 1984, candidates were ordered on the paper in alphabetical order, a candidate whose surname started with ‘A’ or ‘B’ stood a greater change of winning. Since 1984, the position on the paper is now in random order but because the donkey vote still exists, getting a position on top of the ballot paper remains a significant advantage.

Although the government changed the laws in April to close enrolment on the day of election, there is a still a small window of opportunity for voters to get on the rolls to vote this time round. Enrolment for new voters ends on the same day as the electoral writs are issued. This occurs at 8pm this Wednesday 17 October. Those already on the rolls but with an out of date address have an additional week to get their details up to date.

Indigenous groups suspicious of Howard's emergency response

A group of 90 indigenous and welfare groups have accused Prime Minister John Howard of using the child sex abuse emergency as an excuse for a land grab. The group made the claim in a letter to Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough. They said the move to take control of Aboriginal communities in NT is “totally unworkable” and a “Trojan horse” to take over Aboriginal lands. The letter said the proposals went well beyond an emergency response and solutions must be developed with the communities not prescribed from Canberra.

Howard announced the intervention last week, declaring abuse of children in indigenous communities a national emergency. Howard argued the plight of children overrode concerns of intervention in the territory which he dismissed as “constitutional niceties". He urged the states to co-operate on similar measures and offered to cover any expenses they incur.

The Prime Minister’s announcement came in the wake of the release of the NT Government’s “Little Children are Sacred” report (pdf). The 316 page report was produced by the NT board of inquiry into the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. The title of the report reflected the traditional law of the Yolngu people which says that “little children are very sacred because they carry the two spring wells of water from our country within them. The eight month inquiry reported to NT chief minister Clare Martin on 30 April and examined the extent, nature and factors contributing to sexual abuse of Aboriginal children, focussing especially on unreported abuse.

The report found that sexual abuse is endemic across the Territory. Its two major findings were that Aboriginal child sexual abuse in NT should be seen as a matter of urgent national importance and that the NT government provide strong leadership on the issue. The inquiry said that sexual assault is no more acceptable in Aboriginal society than it is elsewhere. However due to a major breakdown in Aboriginal culture, Indigenous communities face particular difficulties in dealing with the problem. Consumption of alcohol, other drugs and petrol sniffing have led to excessive violence which in turn have led to sexual abuse of children. Family breakdown, the weakening of traditional values and lack of employment opportunities are all contributing factors. The report said the federal government’s multi-billion dollar surplus should be used to address these problems.

The report’s authors, lawyer Rex Wild, QC, and Aboriginal (Alyawarr) leader Pat Anderson, travelled more than 30,000 kilometres visiting 45 communities in NT, where they were told of rampant child sexual abuse in every community. They recommended changes in 12 key areas: alcoholism, education, poverty, housing, substance abuse, gambling, pornography, unemployment, government agency response, law and justice, and rehabilitation of offenders. Education was identified as the key to solving the problem. Education ought to explain what sexual abuse was, confirm that sexual contact between children and adults was not normal, and insist that attending school be compulsory. It also insists that parents take responsibility for their children in terms of school attendance, cleanliness, care and abiding laws.

The report made 97 specific recommendations after the inquiry found that sexual abuse is rampant in virtually every Indigenous community in the Territory. The recommendations fall across the areas of leadership, government responses, family and children’s services, health – crisis intervention, policing, bail, offender rehabilitation, prevention, family support services, education, community awareness, alcohol, other substance abuse, community justice, the role of communities, employment, housing, pornography, gambling and implementation of the report.

It took two further months for the NT government to release the report after which the Howard Government immediately swung into action. It planned to introduce widespread alcohol restrictions on NT Aboriginal land for six months. This involves banning the sale, possession, transportation, consumption and will also monitor takeaway sales. The Government announced it would bear the cost of medical examinations of all indigenous children under the age of 16 and change welfare payments so that 50% can only be used for the purchase of food and other essentials. The plan links income support and family assistance payments to school attendance.

One of the more controversial proposals is in the area of property rights. The government plans to take control of townships through five year leases to seek improvement in property and public housing. The permit system for common areas and road corridors on Aboriginal lands will be scrapped. X-rated pornography in prescribed areas will be banned and all publicly funded computers will be examined for evidence of pornography.

All states except WA have agreed to provide 10 police officers for immediate deployment. They will be backed by military logistics officers. The Australian Crime Commission will be asked to locate and identify perpetrators of sexual abuse of indigenous children in other areas of Australia. While there is broad-based bi-partisan support for the move, the Howard response has been criticised in some quarters as paternalistic, and a form of apartheid. While the Prime Minister had no control over of the timing of the "Little Children" report, the timing does smack of electoral opportunism and leaves him open to the charge of orchestrating a "Tampa 2". However unlike the Tampa, this is a genuine emergency and deserves the chance to succeed. But unless he gets the indigenous community onside, it will go down in the long litany of failed government initiatives to ease the plight of Aboriginal Australia.

The Howard Years

John Howard has hit back at claims he is too old for the job of Australian Prime Minister. In a reminder of the 1984 Reagan-Mondale presidential race, the 67-year-old told Channel Nine this morning "I could probably borrow that famous line of Ronald Reagan: 'If you don't talk about my age I won't talk about your inexperience." Howard made the barb (incorrectly about Jimmy Carter in 1980 not Walter Mondale in 1984) after opposition leader Kevin Rudd told him his time was up. Speaking at a Labor conference on Friday, Rudd accused Howard of being arrogant, out of touch, and not having any new ideas since the days of black-and-white television. The attacks to are likely to become increasingly personal as the 2007 election looms closer with Rudd leading in the polls while Howard looks to claim a fifth successive victory.

John Howard has been in power so long that a book can now be written about him called “The Howard Years”. Published in 2004, and edited by Melbourne academic Robert Manne, the book is a series of essays by writers who trenchantly judge the conservative populism of the Howard era and find it wanting. Manne admits in the preface that the writers are what the government would call a despised new social category, “the elites”.

Manne himself is a long-time critic of John Howard. He is the professor of politics at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and a major political player himself. He has been involved in Australia’s wars on the so-called ‘black armband’ side (those who know there have been significant massacres of Aboriginals by settlers), served on the Stolen Generations Taskforce and a former editor of the influential conservative magazine Quadrant which he took in a social democrat direction, albeit briefly.

The 2004 book describes itself as “the first reasonably systematic and broad ranging assessment of the impact of the Howard years”. Howard was then eight years and three elections in the job. Manne himself writes an overview of those years. Three writers (Mungo MacCallum, Judith Brett, and Helen Irving) tackle the enigma of “Honest John”. Mick Dodson writes about Howard and Aboriginal Australia. William Maley discusses immigration policy. John Quiggin writes about economics; Simon Marginson reflects on the universities, Ian Lowe does the environment. Finally there are two essays on foreign relations, one specifically about Indonesia by M.C. Riclefs and another about general foreign policy by Tony Kevin.

It is a heavyweight selection of essays. They are all critical of the Howard administration. Manne’s overview is a chronological dissection of the decision making process in the Howard Government. Manne notes that Howard’s Liberals have tapped in to suburban middle Australia. They have achieved this partially by good representative politicians and secondly by conspicuously rejecting the progressive agenda that had been in place since the Gough Whitlam administration of 1972 – 1975. This meant, as Manne said, saying no to multiculturalism, Aboriginal self-determination, gay rights, environmentalism, and refugee rights.

Since 1970, Australia has undergone two social revolutions which have reshaped its way of life. The first was a cultural revolution with the arrival of Indigenous land rights, the ending of the White Australia Policy and the idea of assimilation of immigrants. The second was an economic revolution with involved a floated dollar, deregulated financial system, privatised utilities and a tariff free economy. The educated left led the charge in the first revolution and the educated right led the second. But the mood on the street to both revolutions was turning sour.

No one was more committed to both revolutions than Paul Keating. As Treasurer, he brought about the economic revolution. As last Labor Prime Minister he tried to implement fully the first revolution. But in 1996 his labour base deserted him. That year the Liberal Party slogan was “For All of Us”. It was an unsubtle reminder that Keating only governed for some of us; ethnics, Aboriginals, feminists, gays.

John Howard ran that year with a “small target” strategy and won comfortably. His first year reflected this with a lack of major policy initiatives. His biggest plan was rid the waterfront of its union. It was a secret strategy to sack the maritime unionised workforce and replace them with a crew that was being recruited and trained by the army in Dubai. But the Dubai scheme was foiled when it was leaked to Labor and the union threatened an international maritime boycott. With Howard’s backing, the firm Patrick sacked its workforce anyway only to have the decision overturned by the courts.

But the defining characteristic of Howard earliest years is how he dealt with Pauline Hanson. Hanson was a Liberal candidate in 1996 who was disendorsed by the Party after she advocated the abolition of government assistance for Aborigines. She stood as an independent and won with a massive swing. She achieved instant stardom after her maiden speech to parliament which warned Australia risked “being swamped by Asians”. Hanson became a media superstar and the speech unleashed a whole unspoken argument about multi-cultural relations in Australia. Hanson claimed to have a mandate on behalf of commonsense and the forgotten “mainstream” Her new party took one vote in every four in the Queensland state election. They almost crippled Howard in his first re-election in 1998. One Nation took 8.4% of vote but Hanson herself was defeated.

In his second term, Howard put paid to the republic with his skewed referendum, discredited the “Bringing them Home” report on Aboriginal child removal and began to put in place a new policy to deal with asylum seekers. Mandatory detention had been in place since the Keating era. If their claims were rejected, asylum seekers could potential end up in permanent custody. The principle of refoulement means they could not be sent back to a war-torn country. Howard’s job was to demonise these people. They were called “queue jumpers”, “forum shoppers” and “illegals”. Howard stole a Hanson idea and created the concept of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) which would review status after three years and would not allow re-entry. Next of kin were not allowed to join them in Australia.

TPVs caused a flood of immigrants to flout the law and attempt to land in Australia. The detention camps were overflowing. A UN Working Group on Mandatory Detention visited the camps and found gross abuses of human rights. But 70% of Australians favoured this treatment. In 2001 survivors from a leaky boat called the Palapa were picked up by a Norwegian vessel and the Tampa crisis was created. While Howard’s harsh treatment of the Tampa refugees attracted international condemnation, he was supported by 95% of his own public. Howard hammered home the political advantage with his skilful manipulation of the false Children Overboard affair and the tragically real Siev X which sunk claiming 353 lives.

This policy alone would have won the 2001 election. But it was reinforced with 9/11. Howard was in Washington when the attacks occurred. Howard immediately invoked Article IV of the ANZUS treaty and pledged military support to the US. A month later he farewelled Australian troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban regime. Another month later, Howard had won a massive victory at the polls.

As the ‘war on terror’ unfolded Howard kept Australia in synch with the US position. Howard was a tireless arguer for the merits of going to war with Saddam. He criticised the UN for its “intransigence” over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He sent in Australian troops after the US and Britain ignored the lack of a Security Council resolution and invaded anyway. Assisted by a pro-war Murdoch press, and the lack of Australian casualties Howard survived the early parts of the war with his reputation unscathed. And his vision of Australia was clear: Western values, the Anzac tradition, and a military alliance with its oldest allies, the UK and the US.

The rise of Crosby/Textor

The editorial in yesterday’s Crikey was a damning indictment of John Howard’s tactics in the Brian Burke affair. Crikey was critical of Howard’s statement there is no need for a register or code of conduct of lobbyists. It suggested the real reason that Howard was reluctant to introduce accountability into the $1 billion industry is due to his own allegiance to lobbying firm Crosby/Textor.

The Burke case has launched a public debate on the influence of lobbyists. But this is not a recent concern. In 1983, the new Hawke ALP government created a register of lobbyists, accessible only by ministers. But it fell into disuse and lobbyists can freely enter the parliament building if vouched for by two MPs. ALP supported a registration process in the 2004 election and new leader Kevin Rudd has stated Australia needs a comprehensive national register of lobbyists, listing their clients and the politicians they had met. Howard is resisting the change. "In the end it's a matter of judgement and it's a matter of personal responsibility. There is no instinct for proper behaviour in these matters, you can't legislate it," he said. “I’m not a great believer in substituting rules and regulations and registers for personal responsibility. It is all a matter of judgement."

Crosby/Textor would probably agree with Howard's judgement. It is a Canberra-based market research and communications company with close connections to the federal Liberal Party. According to their own blurb Crosby/Textor offers “an unmatched pedigree combining comprehensive experience in market research, strategic communications and campaign execution”. These skills have been honed by its two principals, Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor, in the last four elections. As well as the federal Government, their high powered clients include Telstra, British American Tobacco, Qantas and lately the Qantas takeover bid.

That latter role has brought accusations of conflict of interest over the privatisation of the national airline. The company was hired by the private equity consortium Airline Partners Australia (APA) for their inside knowledge and perceived influence with government ministers and backbenchers to convince them to accept the politically sensitive $11 billion Qantas takeover deal. The bid was accepted by the Government on Tuesday this week. Crosby/Textor is reputedly earning at least $50,000 a month for their work on the deal. Company spokesman John Kent brushed off media concerns by saying "we never talk to anyone about anything about clients."

The company was founded in 2003 by Crosby and Textor. Both men played key roles in the Liberal party’s four successive election victories. Lynton Crosby (pictured) rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party and was appointed Federal Director of the party in 1997. John Howard appointed Crosby as campaign director for his second victory in 1998. He is known for his mastery of dog whistle politics. Crosby was responsible for the 2001 wedge campaign which promoted fear and hatred of refugees in the wake of the Tampa crisis.

Mark Textor cut his teeth in his native Northern Territory when he was part of the successful Country-Liberal Party's election campaign committee in 1994. Buoyed by the success of this campaign, he went on to mastermind the strategy behind the breakthrough 1996 Liberal federal victory and became the principal Liberal pollster for the next three elections. Textor is notorious for his pull-polling techniques which are influential in changing the way people vote. Push-polling pretends to be a typical poll, gathering information about preferences, but quickly morphs into something more manipulative. The questioner will defame or sully reputations by implying drug use or improper behaviour and then asks the respondent whether they would still vote for that person regardless of that behaviour.

Textor and Crosby had immediate success in 2004 when they ran the Liberal federal re-election campaign. Then in 2005 their machine was behind another Howard election campaign. But this Howard was Michael Howard then-leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Crosby was criticised by the British media for bringing many of their divisive tactics with them to the British campaign. Michael Howard used issues such as immigration, asylum seekers, gypsies, law and order and abortion to exploit fear and prejudice to win votes. The Tories paid the Australian firm a million dollars for their services and although Howard lost, blemishing their perfect record, the previously hapless Tories gained 36 seats to put them within reach of Government for the next election.

Crosby/Textor also advised the conservative National Party in New Zealand’s 2005 election. They used the same wedge issues as in Australia and Britain, playing the fear card especially on immigration and security. The tactics were exposed by journalist Danny Hager’s “Hollow Men - A study in the politics of deception” which led to the recent resignation of National Party leader Don Brash. According to Hager the Nationals claimed increased migration put pressure on NZ’s health system and migrants go “straight to the welfare queues”. Ultimately however, their divisive tactics failed in New Zealand as they did in Britain.

Here in Australia, their star still shines brightly in the upper echelons of the Liberal party and John Howard remains deeply indebted to both men. In particular Crosby’s ruthless targeting of key marginal constituencies with highly localised campaigning is more responsible than most for keeping Howard prime minister for 11 years. Howard is therefore unlikely to lead any charge to change the rules on regulations for lobbyists.

Not everyone in the industry is happy with the status quo. Danny Pearson, director of Labor-aligned lobby group Hawker Britton, is in favour of regulation but said lobbyists were a necessary part of the political landscape. "You are almost like a translator: you are translating to government the needs of a client or business more generally, but you are also translating to a client basically how government thinks and operates and works."

Maxine to hasten Howards end?

The fight for John Howard’s marginal Sydney seat of Bennelong took a new twist with the overnight announcement of ex-ABC journalist Maxine McKew as Labor’s candidate in the next election. Prime Minister Howard defends his seat with a slender 4% margin and recent redistributions have made Bennelong even more precarious. A Roy Morgan poll indicated Howard would have lost the seat if an election had been held last week.

In 2004 Howard won the seat with 49.8% of the vote, down 3% on his 2001 result. Then ALP candidate Nicole Campbell took 28% and the Greens’ high profile Andrew Wilkie came third with an impressive 16%. Wilkie was a former soldier and intelligence analyst who spilled the beans on the faulty intelligence the Australian Government used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Even with Wilkie's impressive showing, Howard ended up with 54% on a Two Party Preferred vote.

The 53 year old McKew is a former ABC journalist who joined the Labor Party earlier this month as an advisor to opposition leader Kevin Rudd. She left the ABC after a distinguished 30 year career in October last year. McKew won a Walkley award in 1998 in the category of broadcast journalist interviews for her work on the ABC program Lateline. McKew is married to Bob Hogg, the former national secretary of the ALP.

According to former Labor leader Mark Latham, McKew could have been a Labor MP six years ago. Then MP Julia Irwin held the safe seat of Fowler in NSW. Labor heavyweights planned to move Irwin to the upper house and offer the seat to McKew in the 2001 election. According to Latham, Labor’s then NSW assistant general secretary, Mark Arbib told him “[McKew] backed out, said she couldn’t stand living in Cabramatta or Liverpool”. Wealthier inner-west Bennelong may be more her liking. Online Crikey the real purpose of the McKew’s Bennelong bid is “to irritate and annoy the Prime Minister to help Labor beat his government throughout Australia rather than to actually defeat him in his own seat”.

Even if McKew loses, there is a strong probability Bennelong will offer up a second chance by-election sometime in the next 18 months when Howard finally calls it a day. However a McKew victory first time up is very plausible. The Morgan poll of 21 February has the Liberal number crunchers worried. It identified 7.4% of voters who elected Howard in 2004 will vote Labor this time round. The poll identified what issues were hurting Howard. 64% of Bennelong’s voters want Australia’s Iraq forces brought home compared to 29% who say they should continue fighting in Iraq. 63% say he was wrong to attack Barack Obama and 59% disagree with his Industrial relations reforms.

If Howard does lose, he will be the first Prime Minister to suffer the indignity of losing his seat since Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929. A war hero from World War I, Bruce led the country for six years. In perhaps a warning for Howard, Bruce lost his seat in Flinders, Victoria due to his uncompromising stand on industrial relations. Bruce's Nationalist Party (the forerunner to UAP which eventually led to the Liberals) also lost government to Labor in the 1929 election.

Election analyst Antony Green says recent polls and the redistributions over the past decade suggest Bennelong is a seat that will be one to watch in the next federal election. "We'll have to wait and see, but the polls we saw last week and also the changing demographics does suggest this is a seat that's really going to be one to watch," he said. "And it's about the point on the pendulum where there would be a change of government."

The election must take place by 19 January 2008. Labor needs to win 16 seats to ensure that change of government.