Howard's Endgame

It would be tempting to say that John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister, has truly lost the plot, or that he’s decided to show his fascist side. I think it’s more likely that he’s simply displaying the cunning killer political instinct that has kept him in power even when it looked certain voters were about to kick him out.

Howard, who famously described Australia under his rule as being the “deputy sheriff” to George Bush’s regime, is a neo-conservative who’s not afraid to go too far. I criticised Howard for his boneheaded attacks on the US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama here and here. At home, Howard was willing to promote an incident involving illegal immigrants that was revealed to have been faked, allegedly with his full knowledge. There have plenty of other cunning tactics, too.

Now he’s at it again. A report came out describing widespread physical and sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, fuelled by alcohol and drugs. Howard responded by, essentially, taking over the Northern Territory (because it’s not a state, where he’d have no authority). He’s banned alcohol and pornography from Aboriginal land, taken away Aborigines’ rights to control access to their own lands, issued an order requiring all Aboriginal children under 16 to have mandatory health examinations and he’s restricting 50 percent of aborigines’ welfare payments to pay for housing and food, supposedly to make sure it’s not spent on drugs or alcohol, and making it all dependent on the children attending school. He also plans to use the Australian army to help with “law and order”.

The report detailed nothing that was new. The thing is, Howard did nothing about these well-known problems in the eleven years he’s ruled Australia, but now, suddenly, it’s an “emergency” and he claims he needs to exercise dictatorial powers over Aborigines. There’s something much more going on here.

Howard and his coalition government have been polling badly in recent months. He told his party to expect a massacre at the polls, a tactic designed to rile up his base, of course. While that was standard politics, Howard’s antics now are upping the ante considerably. He plans to use the same tactics against beneficiaries throughout Australia, regardless of race. It’s another in his long line of now classic attacks on the vulnerable and politically scary (to ordinary Australians), including immigrants, gays, and now a two-for-one: Aborigines and beneficiaries.

Technically, this is called “dog whistle politics”. He’s saying things that his many opponents hear and condemn, but they can’t hear his real message, which is that he’ll deal to those drunken, lazy good-for-nothing abbos and welfare bums. Music to the ears of his red-meat base and, sadly, a good many otherwise decent Australians—there are plenty of people in Australia who are loudly cheering him. He, as usual, makes no apologies:

It is a hardline approach in the sense that we are moving in, we are going to take control. I will be slammed for taking away people's rights and so forth. Frankly, I don't care about that because I do know that the greatest responsibility I and others have got is the protection of the vulnerable in our community—and nobody is more vulnerable than a little child.

It’s a statement any fascist would be proud to have made. Is Howard a fascist? Personally, I have no idea what he is, except for one thing: His political cunning is matched in the Western world only by George Bush’s kingmaker, Karl Rove.

At the very least, his new policies are incredibly paternalistic and smacking of “white man’s burden”. Moreover, Howard is certainly insincere. He pledges to spend “millions” on his jackboot tactics, but has absolutely no plans to deal with the problems he’ll create: Nothing to help people get off of drug or alcohol addiction safely, no counselling to help children who have been abused or families that are torn apart, no additional medical resources, despite the fact that the medical establishment has said they don’t have the people to screen every Aboriginal child, and certainly not to deal with the huge follow-up that will be necessary. There aren’t enough police, either.

There’s plenty of one thing, however: Headlines. In the end, that’s all that Howard wants in order to rile up people so they’ll vote for him. He doesn’t really care about the problems among Aborigines; he just wants to use them for his political gain. If he cared, he wouldn’t have ignored their problems the entire time he’s been ruling Australia, nor would he have used his time in office to disenfranchise Aborigines and cut them of from the democratic process.

But this will all play out very well in Australia. I knew he’d pull something in the run up to their fast-approaching national election, something divisive and right wing. As much as I dislike Howard, I almost have to admire his cunning and the way he’s able to cynically play Australian voters like a violin.

Unless something dramatic happens between now and the election, I’d bet on another term for Howard and his right wing coalition government. And once he does, the Aborigines’ very real problems will be forgotten again.