Politics

First, a disclaimer. Since 1975 I’ve had a sneaking affection for Jim Cairns. At that time, I was flirting with various environmental causes – as you do at the age of nine. I circulated some petitions at my primary school calling for the preservation of the Tasmanian south-west from its concrete-crazed Hydroelectricity Commission. I forwarded these to a string of political power-brokers, identified rather shrewdly by their appearances on the ABC news.

Repressive despot, or enlightened reformer? What are we to make of Suharto, four years after his fall? Was his prolonged rule an inevitable outcome of the Indonesian political process and of the mistakes and chaos of the Sukarno years? Or was it an illegitimate and corrupt militaristic venture, which has now been replaced by a genuine democratic political system, whatever its flaws and bloody dissensions? Is it too early to draw firm conclusions?

Don Edgar has brought his wealth of experience in monitoring Australian society and its institutions to reflect on the changes now taking place and what needs to be done about them. The Patchwork Nation summarises the key aspects of social change, identifies the challenges associated with them (specifically for government) and sets out a coherent strategy for reform built around a strengthened role for local communities in responding to the forces of global economic change. This involves covering a huge amount of material. In this regard, the book succeeds in bringing together a number of disparate trends, ideas and themes, and makes them accessible to a wide audience. The book also contains a good deal of insight into the changes taking place. Yet there are questions to be asked about the extent to which some aspects of Edgar’s analysis are as compelling as the solutions he proposes. While many of the proposals developed in Section 3 are attractive, they do not always link with the forces for change described in Sections 1 and 2, and they are not always convincing.

Selling books is a difficult business. Publishing, too. Booksellers and publishers need courage and imagination. A book about a contemporary Federal politician with the adjective ‘new’ in the title displays both these qualities. Tony Blair may have got away with ‘New Labour’ in Britain. In Australia, a large part of the disenchantment with politics and politicians stems from the feeling that, apart from the fresh face of Natasha Stott-Despoja, there’s nothing new around; no new ideas, no articulated vision of where the country might be in ten or twenty years’ time, nothing inspirational. Perhaps something might emerge before the next election. But no one’s holding their breath. All the signs, surveys, focus groups, radio talk-backs, flirtations with maverick independents show that Australians are looking for something better from Canberra. And they have vestigial hope. So the word ‘new’ in the title is not so stupid after all. It’s based on the theory that hope usually triumphs over experience. People might buy the book hoping for the revelation of a ‘new Liberal’.

London 1999. I’m in a draughty slum in Hackney, the poor part of the East End, shared with a mini-UN of students, squatters, drifters and a junior investment banker. Feeding five-pound notes into the gas meter, keeping an eye out the window for the television licence detector van, we’re doing what everyone who comes to cool Britannia does most evenings – watching the BBC ‘cos we can’t afford to go to the pub. Suddenly, the screen seems to widen and there’s Sydney Harbour in all its luminescent glory, with an expert panel of worthies – Bob Hawke, Bill Hayden, Geoffrey Robertson – arrayed before it.

On May 24 this year, a memorial service was held in the Great Hall of Parliament House. The great and the good were there in force. They were marking the death of Sir Arthur Tange, widely regarded as the last of the great public service mandarins who flourished from the 1940s to the 1970s. Although the usual partisan conflicts were temporarily suspended, an element of controversy intruded. In his eulogy, Malcolm Fraser lamented that changes to the public service meant that ministers today and tomorrow would not have the benefit of the frank, fearless, non-partisan ad-vice of the kind that he had received from Tange. The next eulogist, Alexander Downer, felt compelled to give an unscripted response, asserting that he and his ministerial colleagues did indeed receive advice of comparable quality and independence from their departmental secretaries. The third eulogist wisely stayed clear of the debate, although his views would have been highly relevant, for Dr Allan Hawke occupies the last position held by Tange, that of Secretary of the Department of Defence.

How different South-East Asia looks in 2001, compared with just four years ago. The economic crisis of 1997 gave the region a terrible shock. There is an entirely new country, Timor Loro Sa’e. Indonesia, that former bastion of stability and economic powerhouse, is now racked with unrest. It may well no longer exist in its present form a few years from now. The Philippines has just ejected another president, although its eternal problem of a landowning elite and an impoverished populace never seems to get addressed. Colonial borders are a problem everywhere in the region, incorporating tribes and peoples that would likely be better off if the whole map were redrawn.

In February 1996, as Australians prepared to elect the Howard government for the first time, Paul Keating addressed a trade union rally at the Melbourne Town Hall. Keating, knowing but not accepting that he would soon be ejected from the prime ministership, ran through a commentary on the leading figures in the Liberal–National coalition. Keating’s message was that these people were second-rate and would disgrace Australia if they won power. In reference to the National Party leader, Tim Fischer, Keating attracted a big laugh when he averred: ‘You know what they say – no sense, no feeling.’ Keating, who had previously described Fischer as ‘basically illiterate’, regarded his opponent as a joke. He was not alone. There were worries about whether Fischer would be up to the task of holding down a senior ministry, especially his chosen portfolio of trade, and of serving as acting prime minister when John Howard was ill or out of the country.

The intriguing story of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party began the day before the first Federal Parliament convened in Melbourne on 9 May 1901. At 11 a.m. on 8 May 1901, Labor’s twenty-two federal parliamentarians met in a stuffy basement room in Victoria’s Parliament House. This historic first Federal Caucus was chaired by Queensland Senator Anderson Dawson who from 1 to7 December 1899, as premier of Queensland, had led the first Labor government in the world.