Quarterly Essay 26 His Master's Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard by David Marr

Author:David Marr [Marr, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Writing, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781458798640
Google: -DtPBwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27466137
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
Published: 2007-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

BIPOLAR

NATION

Correspondence

Bill Bowtell

Peter Hartcher’s essay is as elegant and erudite as its author. Hartcher correctly believes that economic outcomes shape political ones. That is, the better the economic results across key indicators – employment, interest rates and inflation – the greater the certainty that any incumbent government will be returned at the polls. He must therefore adhere to James Carville’s First Law of Politics: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Applying the general rule to Australia in mid-2007, Hartcher assumes that strength of the Australian economy puts the outcome of the imminent federal election almost beyond question – that is, a fifth victory for the Liberal–National Coalition. Hartcher expects that Howard will stare down the Opposition and again pull victory from the looming jaws of electoral defeat, just as he did in 1998, 2001 and 2004. He believes that Howard understands better than any other Australian politician how to stimulate the two opposed lobes of the brain of Hartcher’s bipolar Australia – Horne’s Lucky Country and Renouf’s Frightened Country.

Howard’s skill is to know just how much pressure to apply to bring about the desired political outcome. First, he will attack the frightened country lobe by conjuring up the hideous terrors that will ensue if Rudd were to win. Then, the stern father will be replaced by forgiving Dad proffering the political equivalent of a Bex, a cup of tea and a good lie-down. Why risk Rudd when you can stick with the Devil you know?

The shape of the scare campaign is obvious. Rudd will be painted as a naive, inexperienced control freak, a myth-maker about his family history and assassin of the Anzac Day Dawn Service, unable to be entrusted with running a $1 trillion economy. His religiosity will become a signifier of hidden zealotry. Rudd will become a baby-faced axe murderer stalking every coal-industry job and town, doing the bidding of a cabal of effete Europeans and shadowy United Nations scientists.

In Hartcher’s view, the combination of stellar economic figures and Howard’s undoubted campaigning skills cannot but deliver what would be Howard’s greatest, and probably last, victory.

Hartcher’s analysis is powerful. It has history and commonsense on its side.

The economy has apparently never been better. In addition to the blessed trinity of economic indices – inflation, unemployment and interest rates – consumer confidence is at record levels, the share market is at an all-time high, and, in April 2007, the Australian dollar soared through the US$0.80 cent barrier with ease.

As of April 2007 almost the entire Australian political class believes that Rudd simply cannot win the next election. The commentators and learned observers have determined to their satisfaction that a Rudd victory is theoretically impossible.

The only trouble is that the Australian people seem stubbornly disinclined to follow the script. The completely unforeseen sensation of the 2007 political season, at least for the first half of the year, has been that the better the economy has performed, the worse the Howard government has slumped in the polls. Rudd has established ascendancy over Howard as preferred prime minister.

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