As the federal election approaches (it may already be over by the time you read this), PM John Howard and federal Labor leader Mark Latham are engaged in a tricky fandango worthy of the ABC's Strictly Dancing. While dramatising each and every petty difference between Labor and the Coalition they have been narrowing down their divergences on all issues of substance.
Just recall the issues on which this war of agreement has unfolded over winter. Having dared to be a bit different for its first few months, the Latham leadership dropped its two-year-long opposition to increases in patient contributions to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, agreed to the government's "anti-terrorist" legislation, supported the misnamed "Free Trade Agreement" (FTA) with the United States, moderated its "troops home by December" commitment, surrendered to Howard on his homophobic ban on same-sex marriage and his flag-pole-in-every-school-yard patriotism and agreed to international tax law changes that hand multinational companies an extra $400 million.
From his side, Howard has responded to every cheap stunt from Latham with near costless capitulations on free pneumacoccal vaccinations, MPs superannuation, the content of Medicare Plus, conditions on the FTA and whether those mistakenly paid the $600 family bonus bribe should be forced to hand back their ill-gotten gains.
The result of this retreat to the cover of consensus behind smokescreens of mutual abuse is that the 2004 federal election revolves less than ever around policy differences and most around who is best fit to govern in the name of a largely shared agenda. Latham: "Who would you trust with the FTA, me or that man who can't lie straight in bed?" Howard: "Are you really going to trust important decisions of state to an erratic ALP thug?"
True, the convergence between Liberal and Labor at this poll isn't a simple repeat of "Bomber" Beazley's standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Howard's refugee policy after the Tampa and SIEV X tragedies in 2001. But the "neutralisation" of the refugee issue this time around has nothing to do with the ALP: it was because of the efforts of the refugee-rights movement and the exposure of the vile lies of "children overboard" that the scales fell from the eyes of hundreds of thousands and refugees turned from "queue-jumpers" into suffering human beings like you and me.
The triviality of this "main contest" contrasts violently with the seriousness of the real stakes in today's world, symbolised by the criminal US war and occupation of Iraq. That's why the community of those alienated from the two major parties is up to 15-20% and inevitably contains many very different sorts of people. They range from unionists sick of the ALP's umpteenth betrayal and Liberal ex-presidents who think Howard should be charged for war crimes through to the Jindabyne butcher who surprised Daily Telegraph journalists with his fury at being lied to about WMDs.
No surprise, then, that the Greens are bound to follow up their increased 2001 vote with even greater support in 2004. On the issues of the day the Green parliamentarians have stood where resistance to economic rationalism, defence of democratic freedoms and simple human decency have indicated. Their stance has also extended to touchstone issues like the Coalition's union-bashing Workplace Relations Act.
This consistency of the Greens contrasts with the miserable opportunism of the Australian Democrats. Indeed, the nosedive of the all-things-to-all-people Democrats is a subordinate symptom within the broader alienation from status quo politics. It is dawning on many that an approach that's confined to "keeping the bastards honest" can only lead its exponents to becoming a pimple on the backside of the bastards themselves.
But the Greens will face their own critical choices — if not immediately then inescapably. When the moment of decision comes will they follow their German counterparts in making a "red-green" alliance to their right — with the ALP — or to their left?
This question may not be asked of the Greens for a long time, given that the structures of political representation in this country are so undemocratic and tend to reinforce the ALP-Coalition duopoly, but they will be asked. There's an irreducible incompatibility between the Greens' four principles (social justice, peace, democracy and environmental sustainability) and a predatory capitalism that needs and generates social injustice, war, dictatorship and environmental ruin.
This contradiction gets resolved in one of two ways: sooner or later instinctive and diffuse anti-capitalism either succumbs to the imperatives of the profit system or it becomes conscious and purposeful anti-capitalism — socialism in deed if not in word.
Which answer will be given is not predetermined. Contrary to the dogma that tells us on the basis of overseas examples that "the Greens must betray", the Green choice will depend on the strength of the most class-conscious Greens, on the power and influence of a revived union movement, on the social movements of resistance and on the influence of a non-sectarian socialist current within both.
Here in Australia there's reason for guarded optimism. The emergence and growth of the Socialist Alliance, grouping together the majority of socialist organisations and individuals, has allowed socialists to play an important role in the anti-war movement, to help defend and revive militant and democratic unionism, and to mount the biggest socialist election campaign for decades. Through all this work, including helping organise the pre-election "End the lies" rallies against the criminal Coalition, Socialist Alliance is doing all it can to end the Howard nightmare. Through that work the alliance is simultaneously helping to strengthen the social movements needed to defend working people against a Latham government which, unless put under massive pressure, will work in the tradition of Hawke and Keating — the experience of whose governments gave us Howard in the first place.
[This is the editorial in issue 2 of Seeing Red, the forum of social, political and cultural dissent published by the Socialist Alliance.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, October 6, 2004.
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