By Lisa Macdonald
Just three years after decisively rejecting Liberal leader John Hewson's Fightback! strategy at the polls, the Australian people are having it foisted on them again, this time by a smarter John Howard, who concealed it beneath a cloak of promises that "no Australian will be worse off", until he won government.
The Coalition has no mandate for Fightback Mark II. The draconian policies being revealed and implemented by the Coalition were not put to the vote on March 2. The Coalition did not campaign on them, nor did it present its general framework of slashing public spending, wages and working conditions. Its election campaign has been revealed as a massive exercise in deceit.
The Coalition won the election (with only 46.8% of the primary vote) because many people, fed up with the ALP's 13 years of lies and attacks, saw no other way to express their dissatisfaction. Their opposition to the Keating government's austerity program does not translate into a mandate for even worse attacks today.
The only way to stop this government from carrying out a wholesale offensive against working people is to refuse to acknowledge its "mandate", refuse to accept its "right" to implement a horror budget based on the huge lie that mass suffering is unavoidable, and force it out of office.
This can be done. The 29 ALP, seven Democrat and two Green senators have the numbers to block the government's supply bill (which provides the funds to govern). Without supply, the Coalition would be forced to a double dissolution and a new election.
A double dissolution would give people the chance to vote again, having seen (at least part of) the real intentions of the Coalition. And the indications are that the Coalition would pay for its lies. An AGB-McNair poll of more than 2000 people conducted nationwide on August 9-11 showed that support for the Coalition has dropped significantly since March 2 — 4% in primary vote support and 7% in support for the prime minister.
That poll also revealed that the majority of people do not accept the government's claim to a "mandate". Fifty-eight per cent disagreed with the government that the $8 billion budget deficit justified the breaking of election promises. Sixty-one per cent said they would support attempts to reject budget measures that are "unfair" or involved broken promises, and 60% wanted the government to abandon proposed cuts in areas like higher education, health and welfare.
In this light, a new election could only strengthen the little democracy that exists in this country. Arguing that people can condemn the budget at the polls in three years' time has nothing to do with real democracy. By then, millions of people will be worse off, thousands of lives will have been destroyed, and rights and protections that have taken decades to win will be lost and much harder to win back.
To date, only the Green senators have not ruled out blocking supply, saying that they will decide what to do after a detailed assessment of the budget for its impacts on social justice and the environment.
'Stability'
ALP leader Kim Beazley announced in mid-July, "In principle, we think a government should have its budget". This is the "principle" of a party which represents the same interests as the Coalition and expects to pursue the same agenda when it gets its turn back in government.
The Democrats too have a policy of not blocking supply, arguing that "stable" government cannot be sacrificed, not even to real democracy, to fulfilling the needs and wishes of the majority of people.
Stable government under the Coalition simply means giving Howard and Co the political confidence to attack harder, the stability to carry out big business's demands for more and more austerity. The rhetoric of stability and mandates simply props up the rules of the parliamentary game — rules that were made to be (and are) broken by conservatives to suit their own ends.
Like the ALP, the Democrats also acknowledge the government's basic "mandate" to cut public spending (albeit by only $4 billion), "reform" industrial relations (albeit in only 20 specified areas) and hold governmental power for the next three years (albeit "kept honest" by the Senate).
Labor, Democrats and Greens have all promised to block parts of the budget legislation, including the privatisation of Telstra, the proposed increases in the Higher Education Contribution Scheme and the fee-paying plan for tertiary students. The Green senators have condemned (while not committing themselves to vote against) proposed cuts to welfare programs, migrant services, the ABC, ATSIC and labour market programs.
But tinkering around the edges in an effort to soften the blows, while accepting the basic right of the government to deliver them, will not advance the struggle against Howard's overall goals. Anyone who accepts the claim of the Coalition's right to govern according to its mandate inevitably has to limit criticisms and alternatives. They can dispute this or that issue, but their general stance still legitimises the government's hand in pushing ahead in the direction it wants.
Of course, even limited efforts to reform the budget will generate a barrage of condemnation from the right wing. The Australian newspaper launched the first major volley in its August 14 editorial. Reminiscent of the establishment's vilification of the WA Greens in 1993 when they refused to rubber-stamp the Labor government's austerity budget, it accuses Kernot of being irresponsible, conducting a "guerilla campaign" against the government and seeking to "hold the country to ransom".
Amendments
The actual content of amendments being proposed is not the main issue in this barrage. The real value of obtaining the parliamentary opposition's seal of approval for the budget is to reinforce the legitimacy of the government's mandate in the eyes of an increasingly critical electorate and, just as importantly, to neutralise a potential leadership for mass extra-parliamentary opposition to the government. A partial acceptance of Howard's mandate by the opposition parties will not seriously challenge such an outcome.
Even at a purely mechanical level, attempts to amend the budget, rather than vote it down entirely, will play into the government's hands. The Coalition requires only one extra vote to block amendments. Given the conservative bent of independent Senator Brian Harradine (who voted with the Coalition 50% of the time and against it 35% of the time during the last term), the prospects for substantial amendments are not good.
Neither the Democrats nor the ALP are going to block supply unless forced to do so by a loud, persistent and uncompromising demand from masses of people. A principled stand by the Greens would add to this pressure. More importantly, their refusal to give any credibility to this budget would also strengthen the extra-parliamentary mobilisation for an alternative, progressive budget.
Our demand that the budget be blocked must be directed at the opposition parties. In the process we will influence (or expose) the direction of their politics. But whether or not we win that demand will be determined in the real realm of political struggle — in workplaces and communities, on campuses and in the streets.
If the ALP — the party that pushed politics so far to the right over the last 13 years that it made the viciousness of the Coalition's attacks possible — were to win a new election, it would happen only because the mobilisation of mass opposition to Howard's cuts had forced it, the Democrats and the Greens to block supply.
In this context, it would be almost impossible for Labor immediately to carry on the attacks of the Coalition. Some breathing space would have been won to organise against further attacks (by any party). The progressive movements and the potential for creating an alternative to the big business parties would have been strengthened in the process, and Labor would have to be far more cautious in carrying out its project on behalf of the ruling class.
To minimise the possibility of such an outcome, Labor has opted for the path of least resistance. As the only "alternative" in the two-party system, Labor can assume that its re-election after three years of Coalition attacks is likely. In the meantime, it will remain silent, allow the Coalition to force through the austerity campaign that the ALP initiated in government and anticipate electoral victory in 1999 — without strings attached by stronger mass movements.
Labor's front groups, the ACTU in particular, are doing their best to carry out this perspective. Discussion about the best ways to fight back has been gagged, mass anti-cuts mobilisations have been sabotaged and acceptance of Howard's "mandate" has been encouraged.
To campaign seriously for another election now, the potentially powerful anti-Howard movements must be freed from ALP control — free to mobilise many more people in defence of hard-won rights and living conditions, and free to demand that the Democrats, the Greens and the ALP block this budget.