Waiting for Labor?

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For some time now I have been arguing that the mainstream political battle
ground in Australia was over the nature of the incoming Labor
government.  I assumed naturally that the Conservatives would not get
another term; that they were going down; and that nothing could save the
Prime Minister.

Now I am not so sure.  For one thing we are currently awash with patriotic
feeling aroused of course by local success at the Olympics.  As is the
Australian way the number one national hero is a sports person, in this
case a 17 year old swimmer named Ian Thorpe.  For me the redeeming feature
here is his engagingly effeminate manners. It is taboo to say this but he
is, as we gays would say, quite 'twee', delightfully so. In post modernist
terms this works to deconstruct the macho persona which all sports men are
suppose to have.

There have been rumours that the Tory Govt will try and take advantage of
the national euphoria and go for an early election.  We shall see.  However
it is not so much the Olympic factor that has me thinking that perhaps the
Tories will get another electoral victory.  Rather it is the performance of
Labor itself.

Labor always seeks to learn from its defeats by moving to the right.  Thus
the 1949 Chifley Labor Govt allegedly fell because of opposition to its
plans to nationalise the banks. When Labor was coming into office again in
1972 the Labor Leader Gough Whitlam explicitly ruled out bank
nationalisation, even though no one had called for it.  He was desperate to
reassure the powerful.

In a parallel fashion received wisdom about the defeat of Labor in 1975 was
that they were careless economic managers.  Accordingly the Labor leader
Bob Hawke promised on the eve of victory to be a 'good economic manager'.

The problem with the defeat of Labor in 1996 is that it cannot find a
"left" mistake on which it can blame its defeat. There were admittedly
attempts to blame the party's links to minority groups.   However I do not
think this has really caught on as the Hawke & Keating Govts were so
determinedly right wing.

So in the absence of a clear "left" mistake to correct, Labor seems to have
settled for a general policy of doing nothing to upset the powerful.  The
hope seems to be that if they are very quiescent the Government might lose
and they might sneak into office.  The result of this strategy is that
there is almost no Labor opposition to Howard.

However in such circumstances why would the rich and the powerful bother to
throw their support behind a change of government?  There is very little
unrest for Labor to defuse, mislead, deflect and betray - the traditional
roles of Labor governments.

So I am beginning to fear that we might be about to witness another Troy
triumph.  Another three years of that grinning monkey, John Howard.  Eheu!


regards

Gary