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Tomorrow......the luck runs out?

Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University, reflects on tomorrow's Australian Federal election in an op-ed piece in The Age:

"Unless scores of astonishingly consistent opinion polls have been systematically misleading, tomorrow the Howard Government will be voted out. How will historians judge it?

Not every judgement will be negative. Even though foreign and personal debt are at record levels, the nation is far wealthier than ever in its history. The Howard Government will be praised for its part in creating the conditions for non-inflationary growth, with low levels of unemployment, but without dismantling the basic pillars of the welfare state. It will also be praised for introducing the GST and using this new tax to finance the states; for introducing effective gun control; and, despite early missteps, for helping East Timor gain its independence.

Compared to the harm it has done to Australia, however, all this will seem relatively trivial. Stimulated by the Hansonite movement, from 1996 the Howard Government has waged a protracted culture war against what it called "political correctness". As part of this war, the Government turned its back on the aspiration that had been embraced by every government from Whitlam to Keating via Fraser — to build a multicultural society in Australia. It did not fight against the Hanson attempt to make "Asians" feel unwelcome in Australia. Following September 11, the rhetoric of Howard Government ministers, which challenged Muslims to prove their loyalty, succeeded in marginalising patriotic citizens. In its desperate eleventh hour, it cast a slur on the Sudanese refugees brought to this country.

The abandonment of multiculturalism was paralleled by the attempt of the Howard Government to deny the moral meaning of the indigenous dispossession. It refused to apologise to the thousands of Aborigines who had been removed, as children, from their mothers and communities. It destroyed the prospect of a symbolic act of reconciliation at the centenary of Federation. The Prime Minister personally encouraged a new denialist school of history, pioneered by Keith Windschuttle.

The abandonment of both the aspiration for multiculturalism and the quest for reconciliation had no direct electoral impact. The Government's callous treatment of asylum seekers, fleeing from the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, did."

Comments

Anonymous said…
So a strong economy, welfare state and low unemployment is 'trivial' compared with an attack on 'political correctness'?

"As part of this war, the Government turned its back on the aspiration that had been embraced by every government from Whitlam to Keating via Fraser — to build a multicultural society in Australia."
But this was never the aspiration of the Australian people, only people like Manne and his ilk who are responsible for the multicultural chaos unfolding in Europe.

"In its desperate eleventh hour, it cast a slur on the Sudanese refugees brought to this country."
Manne will never live in one of the emerging Sudanese ghettos himself - he'll leave that for the unwashed 'hansonite' supporters he clearly despises. He's too intellectual to soil his hands actually living in the sort of society he expects others to live in. Do you think he stays in an Algerian ghetto when he visits France?

"The Government's callous treatment of asylum seekers, fleeing from the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, did."
Actually they were fleeing numerous safe countries, before paying thousands of dollars to make the short trip over from Indonesia, deliberately bypassing Australian authorities.

This rubbish is so biased, ill-thought out and completely detached from reality it could only have been written by an "academic".

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