National Observer Home > No. 62 - Spring 2004 > Article

The 2004 Federal Election

John Stone

As this article is being written, a general election has just been called, and our new Government will probably already be known before its publication.

To survey our political scene today may therefore seem strange. On the contrary, there could hardly be a better time for doing so.

With an election so close, we now know, or can reasonably guess, the major policy positions of all the political parties. Yet with the campaign not really under way, those policy positions can be assessed free from the distractions which will emerge in the weeks ahead.

In fact, an undeclared election campaign has been going on ever since the May Budget - more frenzied with each passing month, and plumbing new lows in public incivility.

Before coming to detail, let me state a general point of which, in the election campaign confusion, it would be easy to lose sight.

The basic truth is that elections are not about choosing between a flawed side and a perfect one. They are about choosing between two flawed sides, one less so than the other.

For example, I do not particularly admire our present Coalition Government. It has some good achievements to its credit, but in many ways it has been a disappointment. Anyone wanting to find fault with it will have no difficulty.

Nevertheless, before this is published I shall have voted for it - in both the House of Representatives and the Senate - for one simple reason. The alternative - a Labor Government led by Mr. Latham - will undoubtedly be worse, and could indeed be very much worse.

My ultimate position thus stated, I now first enumerate some major issues against which the various parties' claims to office should, in my view, be judged. Within that framework I then assess the claims of the Coalition, the Labor Party, the Australian Democrats and the Greens, respectively. Finally, based on those assessments, I shall reach my conclusion.

The Major Issues

Any election throws up many issues for voters' consideration. Yet while some electors will have voted because of a party's stance on a particular issue, overall it will be the judgments made, rightly or wrongly, by the great majority about a few major issues that will have carried the day.

For example, some voters may have decided that they could not vote for either the Coalition or Labor because both combined to pass, last August, legislation defining "marriage" as the union between a man and a woman. But although I approve strongly of Mr. Howard's initiative in proposing that legislation, it does not bulk so large in my concerns as to cause me to vote for his Government for that reason.

Any attempt to define the major issues must necessarily be a matter of judgment, but I suggest that the four issues to which, in this election, voters should have directed their principal attention are:

1. The War on Terror

Many Australians, I fear, still do not fully understand or accept that since 11 September 2001 the civilised world has been at war with fundamentalist Muslim extremism. That War on Terror came close to home for us in Bali on 12 October 2002. Almost certainly it will come to Australia itself during the months and years ahead. In this election, no issue is more important.

This War on Terror will not be short-lived. The Cold War against the world forces of totalitarian Communism lasted almost 45 years.¹ This war is unlikely to be shorter.

That Cold War reference may remind us that the War on Terror, too, is a war about beliefs. The Cold War required us to remain steadfast, under the shield of the United States, for our beliefs in liberty and our detestation of totalitarianism. This new war requires us to face down, over time, the freedom-denying forces associated with Muslim extremist terrorism. Stalin and his "evil empire" successors have been replaced, not so much by Osama bin Laden and his deranged henchmen, as by the mad mullahs of Saudi Arabian Wahabism, the Iranian ayatollahs, and their collaborators in Indonesia, Iraq, Pakistan, the Philippines and so on.

That particular resemblance aside, however, the War on Terror will be unlike any war Australians have previously fought. It will be not so much a war of armies (although military force will still be important) as one of intelligence, police work and the prosecution of our beliefs in the battle of ideas. In its nature it will, regrettably, involve some incursions upon our civil liberties in order to protect the very society which has given us those liberties.

Ultimately the West (and not just the West) will win this war. It will do so because only the West (and that increasing part of the rest of the world which has adopted the outward-looking attitudes which have rendered Western success possible) has the key to progress. Without embarking on an extensive analysis of the failings of Islam, one may nevertheless observe that the warped dogmas of Wahabism, in particular, are chiefly a product of a creed which, for the last six centuries or so, has turned in upon itself.

So the issue is: which political party can be best trusted to sustain, in company with our allies, the War on Terror until it is brought to a successful conclusion?

2. Economic Management

Our present economic upswing began in 1991, following Paul Keating's "recession that we had to have". By March 1996, when the Howard Government was first elected, that upswing had come increasingly under question, as Mr. Beazley's $10 billion budget "black hole", and his $60 billion of additional public debt, worked their adverse effects upon business and consumer confidence.

From 1997 onwards I have been consistently rather critical of the present Government's economic performance, and particularly of that triumph of Canberra centralism, the Goods and Services Tax (G.S.T.). In January last year I pointed out, when criticising Peter Costello's performance as Treasurer, that federal taxes had risen, as a proportion of the gross domestic product, to the highest level in our history - from which they have since only marginally retreated.

All things, however, in economics as well as politics, are relative. Since 1996 the Beazley "black hole" has been eliminated and most of the Beazley accumulated public debt repaid. Since 1995-96 the Australian economy has grown in real (inflation adjusted) terms by 34 per cent, and average real incomes have risen accordingly. If this continually rising tide of economic progress has not lifted every single boat in our society, it has certainly not left many behind.

So the issue is: which political party is most likely to maintain this record and advance it further?

3. National Identity and Our Future Place in the World

In 1973 Prime Minister Whitlam and his ineffable Minister, Al Grassby, began imposing their official multiculturalism programmes upon Australia. Between then and the mid-1990s things went from bad to worse. Despite the Fitzgerald Committee's warnings in 1989, divisions within Australia grew more bitter, anger over the direction of our society swelled, resentment of all immigrants rose to boiling point, and the Political Correctness thought police became ever more repressive.

In 1996, via the most unlikely agency of Pauline Hanson, the lancing of this boil began. Suddenly, encouraged by Hanson's outspokenness, people rebelled against the conspiracy of silence agreed between, and imposed on them by, all the major political parties, backed up by virtually all the media.

That breakout from the Political Correctness corral notwithstanding, the repressive forces of official multiculturalism remain strong. The thought police are still patrolling, particularly in "our A.B.C." (and our S.B.S.) and the Fairfax press. The manifestly untrue proposition that all cultures are of equal merit is still strongly asserted by the bien pensants, and the very idea that in (say) its immigration policy Australia should positively discriminate in favour of some cultures (as distinct from races) and against some others (such as Muslims or sub-Saharan Africans) would provoke outrage, genuine as well as confected.

To take another example, consider the plight of those many Australians describing themselves as Aboriginal. How will it ever be possible to ease that plight if we remain unwilling to say that, however much it may appeal to our latter-day Rousseaus, Aboriginal culture is a failed culture? The truth, but not one you will hear stated, is that until Aboriginal Australians abandon it and join the modern world (as a majority of them have already effectively done), they will go on living in the degradation to which it has so powerfully helped to reduce them.

If our grandchildren, and their children, are to live in a nation with a peaceful and harmonious future, such issues must be addressed. So the question is: which political party will best address them?

4. Possible Threats to our Constitution

It may seem strange that I should so elevate a topic which, to many, may sound arcane. Yet one has only to look around the world to see how vital to a country's stability and prosperity is its Constitution.

Australia has been blessed with an excellent Constitution. We have a powerful Senate to check the perennial arrogance of the Executive; a federal system which, despite the gross depredations over the years of a centralist High Court, still helps to divide power and thereby preserve our freedoms; and a system of constitutional monarchy which gives us the advantages of that form of government while reposing real power in the people (our so-called "crowned republic").

Like liberty, however, the price of preserving our Constitution is eternal vigilance. Today at least three major threats are looming: attacks upon the Senate; renewed proposals, even more dishonest than before, for moving to a republic; and growing legal academic moves for a Bill of Rights, which our founding fathers carefully considered in the 1890s before, rightly, rejecting.

So the question is: which political party will best defend our Constitution against those who, in these and other ways, would subvert it?

The Parties' Claims to Office

I now consider the claims to deal with those issues of, respectively, the Coalition, Labor, the Australian Democrats and the Greens.

So far as the War on Terror, and national and international security generally, is concerned, there can really be no doubt that the Coalition parties stand head and shoulders over Labor. The former are not without fault, and many Labor parliamentarians are just as patriotic and equally clear-eyed on the issue. Labor's problem is that, when the chips are down, its own sharp internal divisions raise the gravest doubts whether it can be trusted.

This problem lies in Labor's Left, including large segments of the trade union movement. These are people whose minds are addled with anti-American hatreds, naive attachments to the failed promise of the United Nations, utopian visions of the perfectibility of mankind, and beliefs in some New World Order presided over by right-minded (i.e., Left-minded) people like themselves. These are the people to whom Mark Latham was pitching for support when he notoriously described the leader of Australia's most important (one might almost say, only) ally as "the most dangerous and most incompetent President" in U.S. history.

It is true, as Labor always reminds us when such charges are raised, that over 50 years ago a Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin, invoked the United States' aid in defending Australia. But as they say, that was then, and now is now. Would Mr. Latham have responded as John Howard did on 12 September 2001, invoking the A.N.Z.U.S. treaty and declaring that Australia was now at war with America's enemies? I very much doubt it (despite urgings from many in his party to do so). Would Labor have stood side-by-side with the United States and Britain in toppling Saddam Hussein? We know it would not have done, preferring to side with the French and others in weasel-worded United Nations evasions. Would Labor have acted as John Howard did when the people-smugglers and their pathetic human cargoes sought to invade our shores and abuse our laws? Certainly not. Only the immediate pressures of the then looming election campaign caused Mr. Beazley (rightly fearful of the voters' backlash otherwise) to accept John Howard's reactions, to the not entirely suppressed fury of his party's Left.

As to the Democrats and the Greens, a preliminary general comment may be helpful.

For almost twenty years now the Democrats, who originally asked us to vote for them so that they might "keep the bastards honest", have largely abandoned that justification for their existence. Under a succession of weak leaders (with Meg Lees, whom they sacked, the only exception) they have effectively operated as an auxiliary Senate battalion for Labor's Left - not quite as extreme as some of that group, but well to the left of even Labor's centre.

In this election, however, the Democrats' place is under threat from an even more extreme Left grouping, the Greens - effectively the old Communist Party of Australia under a new label. Although presenting itself as a party chiefly concerned to protect our environment, it devotes most of its time and resources to furthering all those other far Left agendas which render it so appealing to "our A.B.C." (from which, in terms of media coverage, it consequently hugely benefits).

Whereas Labor's Left is at least subject to some discipline from the full Caucus, the Greens have no such constraints. Mired in their essentially Marxist hatreds of the business community, their subversive beliefs that anyone who wishes to come to live in Australia should be allowed to do so, and their contempt for our armed forces, they are at least as great a threat to our national future as, fifty years ago, the Communist Party and its crypto-Communist fellow-travellers were then.

If therefore Labor cannot really be trusted to support the United States in the War on Terror (and it cannot be), that undermining of the U.S. alliance would be as nothing to the attitudes which the Democrats would adopt. In turn, they would look positively patriotic compared with the Greens.

On a points score (out of 10) on this first issue, therefore, the parties rate as follows: Coalition 8; Labor 4 (or 5 if you feel generous); Australian Democrats 1 (or 2 if you feel generous); and the Greens 0.

What then of the second issue, economic management? As noted earlier, the Coalition's performance here has been disappointing. Not only have they introduced another major federal tax (the G.S.T.), but they have also presided over a rising burden of federal taxation overall - a burden necessitated by the prodigality with which they have thrown around our money. Even after the last Budget's welcome tax cuts, our top marginal income tax rate (including the Medicare levy) remains at an outrageous 48.5 per cent, and will cut in, even after those tax cuts are fully effective, at the derisory $80,000 income level. No wonder tax avoidance is so widespread!

The truth is that that ambitious young man, the Treasurer, has no programme in mind, and never has had, whereby these gross taxation burdens can be reduced. If the Coalition should prove to have won this election, John Howard should prevail upon Mr. Costello to serve in another capacity, and give someone else a chance to bring both drive and imagination to the Treasury portfolio.

That said, the Government does nevertheless have worthwhile economic management runs on the board. The Budget is in surplus, albeit with both expenditure and revenues too high. Australia now has a lower public debt to G.D.P. ratio than almost any other country. Inflation has been kept low, although the only recently dampened property market inflation has been a significant blot on that record. Trade union power has been appreciably reduced (most outstandingly on the waterfront), and employers have been providing more jobs as a result. Many more jobs could have been created had Labor not blocked, in the Senate, every attempt to reform our industrial relations system. Indeed, this industrial relations area constitutes a major touchstone for judging the parties' claims.

Thus, while my assessment of the Coalition on this second issue is less than enthusiastic, they would still score appreciably better than Labor. From that quarter we have had all manner of promises, promises, promises . . . The Budget will always be kept in surplus (yeah, yeah!); public debt will be wound down further (yeah, yeah!); and the ratios of both taxation and expenditure to G.D.P. will be steadily wound back (as under all previous Labor governments!). Yet although, at the time of writing, Labor has made new spending promises totalling (already) $9 billion, and promised to cut taxes for all taxpayers under the $52,000 income level, it has still not produced a policy document even purporting (however imaginatively) to show how those sums can be made to add up. Frankly, I do not believe a word of it.

It is not merely on the Budget (and via that, on interest rates) that Labor does not seem credible. Even worse, because here the facts are clear, is its industrial relations policy.

This policy, which proposes to restore to trade unions most of the power stripped away from them not merely by the present Government but by the Keating Government also, would be little short of disastrous. It would drive up costs, lower productivity, and reduce the likelihood of job-providing investment. The inflationary forces created, including those flowing from the downward pressures on our dollar they would produce, would in turn feed through into interest rates. And given current community-wide indebtedness, any significant rise in interest rates will quickly have sharp effects on personal consumption, business investment and jobs.

On this particular issue the Democrats' industrial relations spokesman, Senator Andrew Murray, is rather more sensible than Labor's Dr. Craig Emerson. But on economic management generally the Democrats are, like Labor's Left, big spenders and big taxers, excelled in all those respects only by the Greens.

On this second issue, then, we might rate the parties thus: Coalition 7; Labor 4 (or 5 if you feel generous); Democrats 2; and the Greens, again, 0.

Next there is our national identity and our future place in the world - an issue on which none of our political parties has much claim to virtue.

As noted earlier, for more than two decades prior to the Hanson volcanic eruption, all sides of politics conspired against the public on these issues. Whitlam's work was carried on and intensified under Prime Minister Fraser, with the establishment of "our S.B.S." for the "ethnic communities" and other such Balkanising "initiatives". It was further enhanced under Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating - particularly, in Keating's case, through his notorious Redfern speech and the Native Title Act 1993. Meanwhile few voices were ever raised in our media challenging these developments, and such lonely voices in academia as did so (such as Professor Geoffrey Blainey in 1985) were set upon by assorted bands of academic jackals and their professional careers destroyed.

Only once during those two decades did any Australian political leader dare to speak out against the bipartisan conspiracy. In 1988 then Opposition Leader John Howard questioned the composition of the Hawke Government's immigration programme and warned against (some of) the dangers to which official multiculturalism policies were leading.²

More recently, the 2001 battle against the people-smugglers, and the Tampa incident in particular, showed Howard at his most resolute and Labor (then led by Kim Beazley) wallowing in the indecision resulting from its own internal divisions. Although the Coalition seems to have retreated recently from some of its previous firmness on those issues, it remains clearly more trustworthy on them than Labor.

As for the Democrats and the Greens, each is so far to the left even of Labor on these issues that there is no point in discussing their attitudes in detail.

So on this third issue the party ratings are: Coalition 6; Labor 3; Democrats 1 (if only to distinguish them from the Greens); and the Greens, once more, 0.

Again, on my fourth issue, possible threats to our Constitution, none of the parties measures up well.

It was, after all, the Coalition which, late last year, launched that extraordinary attack upon the Senate, actually proposing for public discussion constitutional amendments to clip its wings by granting even more power to the Executive than the excessive power it already enjoys.³ While that issue now seems to be effectively behind us, it has left a nasty taste in the mouths of everyone with any feeling for the safeguards the Senate provides within our overall constitutional framework.

Again, however, all things are relative. For example, when Mr. Howard launched his attack on the Senate, Labor upped that ante, saying that the only basis on which it would support him was if he would also propose removing the Senate's power (in such extreme cases as 1975) to block Supply!

Meanwhile, apart from proposing to revive the earlier Republic debate via a series of dishonest plebiscites,⁴ Mr. Latham has also recently advocated a constitutional amendment to require fixed terms for both the House of Representatives and the Senate – a proposal which in one form or another has been rejected by the Australian people at referendums on several occasions.

Ironically, both the Democrats and the Greens would be sounder on the Senate issue than the major parties, albeit only from self interest. It is, after all, in the Senate that their power lies. Basically, however, neither is to be constitutionally trusted. In particular, each stands ready at the drop of a United Nations hat to surrender Australian sovereignty via some international treaty or other.

On this fourth issue, then, the parties score: Coalition 5 (or 6 if you feel generous); Labor 3; Democrats 2; Greens 1.

Conclusion: My conclusion as to which party is best fitted to govern us for the next three years is obvious. The summed point scores on my four major issues put the Coalition (out of 40) at 26-27; Labor at 14-16; the Democrats 6-7; and the Greens 1. As we used to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

There is also one final point which, as between the Coalition and Labor, leads unhesitatingly to the same conclusion: their respective leaders.

John Howard is not a Robert Menzies, but then, neither is Mark Latham a John Curtin. Whereas Howard, despite his faults, has given us a very safe pair of hands for eight years now, Latham is not only almost totally inexperienced, but his leadership is also the product of some of the most malignant forces in the Labor Party (Gough Whitlam, Laurie Brereton, . . . and the list goes on).

I said earlier that "a Labor government led by Mr. Latham will undoubtedly be worse, and could indeed be very much worse" than the Coalition. The Labor governments elected in 1972 and 1993 were very much worse than anyone predicted, because they were led by two people (Whitlam and Keating) who, like Latham, proved highly unpredictable. In sharp contrast, under John Howard we have enjoyed something of the same kind of economic and social stability which, for some sixteen years, we enjoyed under Menzies.

So, fully acknowledging that before this article appears the Australian electorate may have decided differently, I rest my case.

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1. In passing, I cannot forbear from noting that it was his matchless battle against those forces which gave lustre to the name of the late B.A. Santamaria - the founder in 1985 (along with myself and a number of others) of the Council for the National Interest, whose journal this is.

2. As a National Party Senator for Queensland at that time I supported Mr. Howard to the end. Indeed, I supported him beyond that point, when the cowardly forces within his own party, led by such people as then Senator Fred Chaney, forced him to back down, and to sack me from his Shadow Cabinet for refusing to do likewise - an action for which, incidentally, I have never borne Mr. Howard himself the slightest ill-will.

3. Three papers on this issue given to the 16th Conference of The Samuel Griffith Society in Perth last March are now contained in Volume 16 of the Society's Proceedings, Upholding the Australian Constitution, and may be consulted on its website at www.samuelgriffith.org.au.

4. This proposal was considered in my article "Constitutional Lies, Damned Constitutional Lies and Plebiscites", in the Winter 2004 issue of National Observer.

National Observer No. 62 - Spring 2004