I’ve spent the last 36 hours hiding from a world I don’t understand any more. At least I hope I don’t understand it, because when I look at the results of last weekend’s election the picture I see is very scary indeed.
History will record that, against the odds but in line with almost everyone’s predictions except mine, John Howard won the 2004 general election. He increased his party’s vote and will hold a majority in the House of Representatives that will be practically unassailable three years from now. The Liberal-National coalition will continue in government until at least 2010.
At the same time, it’s clear that the Labor Party, Australia’s oldest political party, has lost its way, with its share of the vote eroding for the last four elections in a row. Unless Labor finds a way to reverse this trend, it is headed for oblivion, and a new opposition party isn’t going to spring into existence, fully-formed, to take its place any time soon.
Compounding this, for the first time in a quarter of a century the Senate will be controlled by the government, with the coalition holding at least 38 of the 76 seats, and with the (conservative, evangelical christian) Family First party making up the numbers. In recent history neither of the two main parties have had a Senate majority, leaving the government of the day to deal with minor parties (the Democrats and the Greens) and independent senators to pass legislation.
Opposition in disarray. A compliant Senate. This is not a recipe for good government, regardless of who is in power.
It is very difficult to overstate the significance of this. For the last eight years, as they’ve slashed and burned their way through Australia’s social and moral fabric, the coalition has nonetheless been restrained from implementing some of the more radical parts of their agenda by the Senate. That all changes on July 1 next year (the new Senate comes in on that date). Howard and his gang will be free to sell the rest of Telstra, destroy the independence and diversity of the media, continue to restict the rights of unions and workers, and turn the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into a toothless tiger. That’s just what we already know is on the agenda. What other measures they might have filed away in the too-hard (until now) basket I shudder to think.
What is clear is that Howard has won. Not just this election but he has done what he always set out to do: he has changed this country forever. On Saturday Australia abandoned the ideals of decent, caring, honest government for low interest rates. It doesn’t matter to the majority of Australians that their government joined an illegal war, is actively campaigning against human rights and the UN, and has a thinly-veiled policy of turning Australia into a nation of winners and losers. What matters is tax cuts. Interest rates. National security. Border protection.
My country – the country I always believed was populated, in the main, by good people who placed the good of the community above self-interest, seems to have disappeared from view.
I don’t want to harp on about this – there will be plenty of opportunity for more reflective analysis in the weeks and months ahead – but I do think we witnessed more this last weekend than a change of government. And I think it’s deeply disturbing.
