AUT: re: Australia turns right

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Analysis from Papua New Guinea of the Australian
election - I thought people might be interested since
this has been discussed already
Andy



Middle power or lonely country?
By Allan Patience
What does the resounding victory for John Howard?s
government at the recent federal election in Australia
mean for the South Pacific region? More immediately,
what does it mean for Papua New Guinea?
Answers to these questions lie in two single realities
at the heart of modern Australian culture. Both of
these realities will be consolidated, maybe even
entrenched, following the Howard victory.
First, increasing numbers of contemporary Australians
hold what are referred to as ?aspirational? views
about what they expect from government.
Aspirationalism is about winning the material
symbols of middle class affluence for strictly
personal and private purposes. This is referred to by
political theorists as ?possessive individualism?.
Second, most Australians firmly believe their country
is a middle power in world affairs, perceived as such
by its neighbours and by its Western allies. However,
they fear that, as a middle power, they are under
increasing threats from terrorist and other
non-Western sources.
These cultural realities are contributing to the
fragmenting and isolating of Australians into a
society that has lost the balance between
individuality and community, between
entrepreneurialism and a ?fair go?.
They are also intensifying its alienation from the
South-east Asian and South Pacific regions, making its
responses to the regions clumsy and self-serving.
Aspirationals are unimaginative materialists.
They want private schooling for their kids, for status
not educational reasons. They desire affluent
lifestyles, expensive holidays and lavish amusements
(sports, ?reality? TV, restaurants, soft-porn movies,
pop concerts).
Home ?entertainment? systems, computers and laptops,
electronic keyboards, mobile phones, clumsy-chic
four-wheel drives, large houses and the latest casual
fashions are voraciously consumed as symbols of
?success? in life.
Any one, or anything, that threatens this aspirational
culture is seen as an enemy ? whether it is high
interest rates, failing states in their region, or
terrorists. A ?them and us? sentiment is growing in
Australia.
Opinion polls show many Australian think they have
been lied to by their Prime Minister. One of his own
MPs was alleged to have called him a ?lying rodent?.
But people still believe only Mr Howard?s government
can, and will, maintain high economic growth and low
interest rates.
Aspirational Australians don?t want to share their
affluence with any outsiders.
Many Australians have invested in hefty housing
mortgages. They?ve amassed high levels of credit card
and household debt. The long economic boom through
which they have been living has intensified their
aspirations, overturning old working class/middle
class divides, even blurring ethnic cleavages and
turning people into ?possessive individualists?.
The sad thing about all this aspirationalism is it
stops people from seeing beyond the blinkers of their
comfort zones. Populism flourishes in this
environment.
Where once Australia had the vestiges of a robust
social democracy, it is now focusing on an extreme
neo-liberal economism that encourages contempt for
welfare programs, asylum seekers and refugees, the
poor, Aborigines ? and the plight of the suffering
world beyond its shores. This all feeds into the kinds
of defence and foreign policies Australia has been
pursuing under the Howard government. Following the
election success, these policies will be ratcheted up.
A middle power is one that provides sustained
leadership in global diplomacy despite the fact it
doesn?t have a large economy and/or a credible (or
threatening) military capacity. Nor is its own
national interest immediately affected by the
diplomatic problem requiring the leadership in the
first place.
The way it achieves this leadership is referred to as
?niche diplomacy?. While other things also come into
play in determining whether a State is a middle power
(eg, population size, the structuring of the economy,
military commitments to international peace keeping
operations, the effectiveness of alliances), it is the
capacity to engage in niche diplomacy that most
effectively identifies a State as a middle power.
Australia?s erroneous self-image as a middle power is
rooted in the history of the country as a settler
colonial society. White Australians have nearly always
viewed themselves as superior to non-whites, whether
they are Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders, Asians,
Melanesians, Polynesians or Africans.
For nearly three quarters of the twentieth century
this superiority was expressed in the white Australia
policy ? a law that prevented non-whites from settling
in Australia (the law was repealed in 1973).
Past Australian leaders regularly identified their
country as a ?white dominion? in the Commonwealth,
standing aloof from the ?coloured Commonwealth? that
started to emerge after World War II.
The white dominion self-image led many Australians to
believe that they were, to all intents and purposes,
?British?.
They assumed this afforded them a special relationship
with Great Britain and its monarch.
Yet, by the end of 1942, as Britain?s power in
South-east Asia crumbled under Japanese attacks,
Australians were forced to look elsewhere for ?great
and powerful friends?. So, America became a surrogate
motherland for fearful Australians.
This was cemented in the ANZUS Treaty signed in 1951
by Australia, New Zealand and the US. (The New
Zealanders have since sensibly dropped out of this
paper-tiger arrangement.)
Throughout the Cold War, Australia stayed close to
America. It contributed to the Korean War in the
1950s, loyal to that less than glorious US-led
anti-communist crusade.
It slavishly followed America?s line on communist
China up until the early 1970s. And it became
hopelessly bogged down in the ill-conceived mess that
was the Vietnam War.
Mr Howard is a firm believer in the US alliance. He
has doggedly defended the war in Iraq and sent
Australian troops there ? despite earlier United
Nations? opposition and Kofi Annan?s ongoing stinging
rebuttals of the legality of that increasingly violent
war.
He has been more than a willing (some might think
craven) supporter of President George W Bush?s ?war on
terrorism?.
This all means Australia ? rightly or wrongly ? now
sees itself as the most significant representative of
Western values in the South Pacific region.
Mr Howard?s determination to fight against terrorism
alongside the United States has just been soundly
endorsed by a large proportion of Australian voters.
This means Australian interventions in the South
Pacific must be expected to intensify. During the
election campaign, Mr Howard insisted Australia has
the right to make pre-emptive strikes in the
territories of its neighbours if their governments
were unwilling or incapable of closing down terrorist
bases aiming to attack Australian interests.
The Foreign Minister clarified this to mean ?failing?
South Pacific states ? but he declined to identify
exactly which states he was referring to. Mr Howard
repeated his pre-emption claim immediately following
his election win.
What this means for the South Pacific in general, and
PNG in particular, is big brother Australia has not
only arrived back in the region but is here to stay.
Pacific Island Forum states can expect to see more of
Australia laying down the law to them, pressuring them
to conform to the Australian Prime Minister?s demands,
cajoling and persuading them to adopt governance
structures in line with what Australia wants in terms
of its security interests.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned,
aspirational Australians remain deeply populist, even
xenophobic. They want to hang on to their affluence,
come what may.
If this means bullying the neighbours, they won?t
hesitate.
A residual white Australia racism remains embedded in
the culture, allowing the Howard government to
frighten people into believing asylum seekers are evil
people who throw their children into the sea and
provide recruits for terrorist organisations.
Yet, in South-east Asia and the South Pacific,
Australia remains the odd man out ? full of Western
hubris, punching way above its weight.
Australian Ministers arrogantly lecture states like
Indonesia and Fiji on human rights issues ? while
maintaining the grim structural inequality of
Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Its small population (20 million in a land mass almost
as big as the US), very limited military capacity, its
basically resource-export based economy and its flimsy
(if fulsomely lauded) alliances put it behind the
eight ball when it comes to backing up its spurious
claims to middle power status.
But most of all, it is a very poor performer when it
comes to niche diplomacy.
Until Australia learns to really integrate into its
region, by engaging openly with the cultures and
peoples within it, it will remain isolated as far as
real regional development and security are concerned.
Over the past eight years, Mr Howard has shown no
ability to understand this or to confront it with
intelligent policies. In this respect, he is a true
representative of the bulk of contemporary Australians
who have clearly demonstrated that they share his
views and approve his policies.
For these very reasons, Mr Howard will continue to
preside over a lonely and selfish country ? not a
reliable regional partner conducting sensitive niche
diplomacy to benefit its neighbours at least as much
as itself.
PNG in particular, and the South Pacific in general,
should be warned. Australia?s middle power pretensions
are just that ? flimsy, baseless and untrustworthy.
Australia is not Norway, New Zealand or Canada ?
states that are very good at niche diplomacy.

* Allan Patience is Professor of Political Science,
University of Papua New Guinea
Allan.Patience@xxxxxxxxxx


		
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