By Lisa Macdonald
Only one other term has featured as boldly and often in the establishment media as the word "mandate" since the March 2 election. "Political correctness", used in its derogatory sense to trivialise and attack attempts by oppressed and minority groups in society to be recognised as equals, has become the rhetorical weapon of the conservative forces in their efforts to roll back the progress made by the social justice movements during the 1960s and '70s.
The anti-PC brigade used the federal election and its aftermath to aim their sights at people of colour in this country — indigenous Australians in particular.
Following the success at the polls of Bob ("little slanty-eyed ideologues") Katter, Bob ("de-wogging ceremonies") Burgess, and Pauline (Aborigines get it "too easy") Hanson, member for Kalgoorlie Graeme ("Asianisation of Australia") Campbell declared these results a "landmark victory". They showed that "there is a great ground swell out there of people who are sick to the back teeth of political correctness, of not calling spades spades", he said.
Having helped Hanson with her election campaign, Campbell is now seeking an alliance with her in parliament, saying he "agrees with ... her views on Aboriginal affairs".
Campbell was far from alone in this line of attack. Both Paul Keating and John Howard, along with the National Party's Queensland state director, Ken Crook, explicitly condemned PC during their election campaigns, and every sector of the big business media has run hard on the issue. On March 4, Sydney radio 2UE host Alan Jones put it most baldly when he described the election results as a defeat for PC in our time — a blow to a system of government which has gone out of its way to "indulge minorities".
Like all conservative ideological weapons, the main function of the anti-PC charge is to rewrite history and obfuscate current reality so as to turn the spotlight away from the gross inequalities which persist (and are increasing) in this society. We're meant to believe that racism is no longer a serious problem — so that we don't resist those who are deliberately stepping it up.
Scapegoating
In periods when large numbers of people are suffering — unemployed or insecure in their jobs, fearful of crime, trying to exist on inadequate wages and welfare payments — it is relatively easy to create scapegoats. Once some soft targets are identified, the conservative forces who control the mainstream ideological machinery can all too easily transform the generalised suffering into a form of public hysteria. Attention is thereby diverted from the real causes of suffering, and from those with real power.
It is no surprise, then, to find that in Ipswich, where 30,000 people voted for Hanson (whose only campaign issue was that the government is "looking after Aborigines too much"), the unemployment rate is well above the national average.
But however much the majority of people in Ipswich (or anywhere else in Australia) are suffering as a result of capitalism's austerity drive (and they certainly are), the facts are that they are no more, and generally much less, the victims of capitalism's attacks than Australia's Aboriginal population.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality rates are three times those of the general population. Their life expectancy is 18-20 years less. Their unemployment rate is almost double that of non-Aboriginal Australians. The Aboriginal prison population has increased by 52% since the 1989-90 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Aboriginal women's health has deteriorated in the last 20 years, and their death rate is at least 3.2 times that of non-Aboriginal women.
Contrary to Hanson's claims, public expenditure on Aboriginal health and education is less per capita than it is for non-Aborigines. According to the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, there are only two areas in which Aboriginal people are entitled to special social security benefits: in education, where only 17% of 18-20 year old Aborigines participate, compared to 45% of the non-Aboriginal population in this age group; and in housing, where 28% of Aborigines own their own homes, compared to the national average of 70%
The Third World status of Aboriginal Australians on almost all indicators of human well-being is the result of centuries of institutionalised injustice based on racial oppression. The anti-racist social movements of the 1970s made some progress in ameliorating these effects by campaigning for and winning not only formal legal rights for Aboriginal people, but also concrete affirmative action measures to begin to compensate for past and present discrimination. Those movements also made important gains in raising many people's awareness of and opposition to racist oppression; they forced much blatant racism into the cupboard.
Turning back the clock
But the movements did not eliminate racism; they did not overcome the systemic sources of racial inequality. With the movements much weaker now, the infrastructure of racism still in place, and the economic and political conditions ripe for scapegoating, the powers that be are able to pull it back out of the cupboard and resell it to the public under the new guise of asserting "ordinary people's" right to be free of the so-called totalitarian, left-wing, PC thought police.
In a political context desperate to justify major cuts to welfare expenditure, affirmative action and other programs targeted to assist the disadvantaged, the "brave" defiance of PC by a number of reactionary politicians and media personalities is not just tolerated but encouraged by the ruling class. It paves the way for turning the clock back to the 1950s, when Aborigines (and women and gays and non-Anglo migrants) knew their place and did not make demands that would cost the ruling class some of its profits.
Already, with the ideological backlash just warming up, big business is making its real moves. Within a fortnight of the election of their new agents in parliament, key business figures were demanding more Aboriginal blood.
On March 13, Robert Champion de Crespigny, executive chairperson of Normandy Mining and one of the richest businessmen in Australia, gave the keynote address at a major international gold conference in Kalgoorlie. His speech, widely reported in the media, was a direct demand that the new government make the "necessary changes" to the Native Title Act before "the beginning of the next financial year".
The push by Champion de Crespigny, also a member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation set up by the Keating government after the 1992 High Court Mabo ruling, closely followed WA Premier Richard Court's opening address to the Australian Gold Conference. Court announced his intention to re-raise the question of the priority of pastoral leases over native title claims, as well as various measures to speed up the decision-making process. Speaking for the powerful mining corporations, he argued that "delays in [mineral] exploration will lead to production declines unless action is taken".
Alongside these moves to take back even these minimal gains of the land rights movement, in mid-March the new minister for Aboriginal affairs announced an audit of all funding programs for Aboriginal people — a clear signal of the cuts intended to follow this phase of softening up any vestiges of public resistance to the right wing's agenda.
The pre-election fears of Noel Pearson, chairperson of the Cape York Land Council, that the Coalition's campaign slogan "For all of us" contained the subliminal sub-message "But not for them", are rapidly proving well founded.
In promoting race hatred, bigotry and social inequality under the guise of freedom from PC censorship, Hanson, Campbell, Jones and the growing army of crude but effective racist propagandists are doing some of the necessary, filthy political work that keeps the working class divided, and advanced capitalism going.
If the last month is anything to go by, it seems that few in academia, the churches, unions, non-government organisations or what remains of the social movements are willing to actively contest them. The Labor "left's" utter silence on the question is simply a continuation of the ALP's long history of implementing and dismantling racist policies according to the needs of the ruling class.
It is a matter of urgency that left activists, organisations and media join with the Aboriginal community and other people of colour in denouncing and actively resisting the racists' attacks. The most effective way to do that is to reassert, without qualification, the basic human right of all people, regardless of skin colour, to have equal opportunities and status in society.
For Aboriginal Australians, achieving that reality will be impossible without land rights, Aboriginal control over Aboriginal affairs and preferential treatment in accessing health care, welfare services, education and jobs.