Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Introduction

I Am, You Are, We Are Australia

"When the government changes, the country changes." Paul Keating concedes democratic defeat


I voted for John Winston Howard in 1996. Like many Australians, I was angry with Paul Keating.  He may have lost me when he promised not to sell the Commonwealth Bank and then did.  It may have been his scare--mongering over John Hewson’s Fightback! package, to steal the 1993 election – as a voter I’d admired Hewson’s plucky vision, and the ‘World’s Greatest Treasurer’ had himself -championed a consumption tax.  
Keating’s quick reversal of his L-A-W tax cuts and -unheralded hikes to indirect taxes after beating off Hewson showed that 1993 was the bankrupt campaign of a desperate prime minister willing to do whatever it takes to keep political power. The ‘True Believer’ triumphalism on election night simply confirmed that this now included sheer bloody gall.
Whatever it was that turned me off him – as a voter and as a professional observer – in many ways it was a reluctant parting. After thirteen years of economic reform, Labor under Keating had got its teeth into issues of great importance to me and to the country: Reconciliation, the Republic (I favoured a directly elected president), our place in Asia.

But there was too much baggage. Keating’s government was exhausted, arrogant and out of touch. John Howard had soothingly assured us he’d smoothed his more extreme policy edges on Medicare and industrial relations, and pledged himself to act as a torchbearer of the Menzies Liberal tradition. I voted for what I thought was a healthy turnover of power in our democracy. Time for a change.

Be careful what you tick for.

*

I’m now an outsider to the goings-on at the physical and symbolic heart of our democracy – Parliament House, -Canberra. I left the place I loved and despised in equal parts more than three years ago, after twelve years of breathing its air, thinking about its thoughts, chatting to its players, questioning its decisions, investigating its secrets. Hating it. Loving it.

In late 2003 I returned to Canberra to watch the President of the United States pay Parliament his due respects as a democratic envoy from Australia’s friends and allies, the American people.  In the triumphant flush of Saddam Hussein’s defeat, Prime Minister John Howard had invited George W. Bush to speak on the matter that had bitterly divided the nation. Our parliamentary representatives – every Australian- we’d voted into the House of Representatives and the -Senate – would hear the leader of the American -people thank the Australian people for the gravest decision any sovereign people can take: the decision to start a war against another -sovereign people.  

As one of many citizens who’d opposed that war, I wanted to hear what the man who had led us into it would say, especially to those elected representatives who, on behalf of Australians like me, had refused to back him.

As a reporter, I wanted to see if he’d look them in the eye as he spoke. Instead what I experienced on 23 and 24 October last year made me fear for our democracy’s future.

I saw a Parliament on its collective knees before a condescending Imperial Caesar, led by a lame provincial governor of a Prime Minister so blind to the duties of his own democratic office, so unmoved by the issues still rending his own people, that he turned what might have been a healing thank-you visit into just another vehicle for his own ambitions. I saw him do so at the expense of Westminster traditions and norms of civilised behaviour that I’d thought were above partisan politics. I saw elected politicians – elected by us, the Australian people – shouted down, physically manhandled and viciously abused.

I saw a public service in ruins, reduced to mere caterers, lackies, careerists, political stooges. 

And I saw a castrated press gallery largely oblivious to what was happening to our democracy right there before their eyes, on their own professional beat. A press gallery unwilling or unable to report it to a citizenry that urgently needed to know.

I was staggered.

We, the people of Australia, are systematically being left out of the democratic equation. The finely tuned mechanisms of our Westminster system, so painstakingly developed by the people over centuries of struggle, are corroding fast. Our politicians are replacing checks-and-balances subtleties with government by unseen sledgehammer – by rigid control, populist manipulation, outright misinformation and deceit – all of it disguised in a very expensive wrapping of super-spin designed to blind us to the fact that governance is now mere salesmanship.

We’re increasingly being hustled by ruthless, weak and cynical representatives on behalf of those anti-democrats in the big business community who see ‘globalisation’ as an excuse to cut themselves free of all accountability, and who’ve long come to regard us ordinary voters as no more than ‘consumers’. In their world we’re human commodities, which they can use up and throw away as they please, shedding the mutual obligations and civic duties that once made all Australians part of the same egalitarian country.  

Dissent, accountability, scrutiny, principle, even the rule of law – these things have no place in the Darwinian worldview of anti-democratic big business. A parliament is simply an obstacle, which is why ours is quickly and quietly being dismantled.

On John Howard’s democratic watch.

This book contends that John Howard is not a liberal, or a Liberal, or a conservative, or a Conservative. It seeks to show that he’s part of an ideological wrecking gang made up of radical-populist economic opportunists, one which long ago decided that robust liberal democracy was an impediment to the real elites – Big Business and Big Media – that sponsor them, rather than an essential complement to and underwriter of market capitalism. 

This book contends that John Howard’s wrecking gang has always been plain wrong but now threatens the long-term future of Australian democracy.

Sorry, John. We’re not just consumers. We’re not just commodities. We’re citizens. And as a citizen, what I saw during George Bush’s visit scared me.  

As a reporter, it confirmed that I’d been right to start breathing the Canberra air again. After all you go where the real story is.  

*

In this book I’ll take you through some of my recent journalistic experiences that illustrate why our democracy is in a lot of trouble.

I want to show you why I’ve come to regard John -Howard – ‘relaxed and comfortable’ Honest John, for whom I voted – as a threat to our democracy. I want to demonstrate where I think John Howard’s Australia now stands in this crucial election year, after eight years of Howard ruthlessly changing Australia to suit his ‘times’, NOT him suiting our times as he often claims.  I’ll show you who’s ‘in’ in Howard’s democracy, who’s left ‘out’, and how such exclusion corrodes civic life for everyone in the long run – whether we’re ‘in’ or ‘out’ or totally disengaged.

I also want to show you why I no longer have any confidence that either of the two major parties is capable of addressing the problems Howard’s government is increasingly normalising and how their behaviour has in fact jointly brought us to this looming crisis.

And I want to show you why I think we’ve now reached the stage where it’s up to each of us, as Australians, to work together to save the day. You might not draw that conclusion from what I report, of course, but there are a lot of Australians out there who do.

*

I don’t know about you, but last year I felt like opting out of trying to make a difference. The assault on the very idea of civic duty seemed irresistible: as if the god of economic globalisation had decreed we were all to lose every value of ours that wasn’t an economic one, completely and irretrievably.  Society really was finished and we were headed for Orwell’s 1984, fast. So why not opt out? Escape. Live simply. Create a beautiful personal space. Sit back – observing what was going on outside with sadness, sure, but also with relief that I was no longer part of it.

So in this book I’ll also describe when the moment of choice arrived for me, personally and professionally, and why I decided to take the activist option and to hell with surrender. And what happened when I did so, on the one issue that it is not only my right to be politically partisan about, but also my obligation: cross-media ownership laws. And the way I was rejuvenated by that decision, and how in the subsequent fight this jaded political reporter at last grasped an essential truth about a healthy working democracy: that if a cause is sound, and openly, -passionately fought for, then it can quickly become a wider, non-partisan one.

My personal fight showed me again why our ‘least worst’ system of governance is so precious and so worth defending: there is room enough for ALL of us in it. My ‘crisis of engagement’ – and the rescue of my civic faith by those politicians, journalists and fellow citizens who’d remained committed – led to a reaffirmation and a determination to keep playing my part, as journalist and citizen, in the fight to help save our messy, inclusive, brilliant democratic system from John Howard’s grubby wrecking gang. 

Alongside many, many other determined Australian -citizens.

*

I’ve been involved in some of Australia’s biggest political -stories in my career, and I’ve watched politics up close for more than fifteen years. For the last few I’ve been on the outside, engaging in intense conversations with -readers of my Sydney Morning Herald online forum, Webdiary. In that time Webdiarists have followed the issues of the moment and the ebb and flow of daily politics; talked about longer term trends in our society, good and bad; and especially canvassed – furiously, frantically, despairingly – new ideas about how more of us can help clean up the democratic system. Many are as anxious as I am about the future of their democracy, and many want to get involved in taking it back.

Webdiarists are from all walks of politics. They’re One Nation and Labor supporters, small-l liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Greens. We’ve argued with each other, often fiercely. But we’ve influenced each other, too, and proved that the ugly screaming matches that pass for public debate in Australia today are not all there can be. We’ve got beyond the crazy idea that just because we don’t agree with each other on one issue it automatically means we can’t like each other as people or agree on something else.

I try to minimise simplistic divisions and cheap wedges in Webdiary discussions.  We’ve stepped out of our partisan enclaves to engage with each other’s lives and beliefs. And we’ve found a lot of common ground in the process – often where none was first apparent.

The common ground? All of us can agree that our democracy has served us bloody well, and that it’s worth protecting no matter who we vote for.

So alongside my own stories I want to publish the citi-zen’s stories of five Webdiary contributors: stories that reveal why they think our democracy is in strife and what they’re doing about it. I’ve got a few ideas myself. I’m sure you do, too.

My starting-point Big Idea? The political parties have lost the power to do the job for us so we have to do it ourselves.

This book is my start. I hope it snowballs into something bigger. Penguin has agreed to set up a website, www.nothappyjohn.com, in conjunction with the book, where, if you like, you can comment on each chapter and add your own suggestions. Let others know what you’re doing to make your voice heard.

We citizens only ever find out how strong we are when we finally get around to working together.

*

Before we kick off, let’s declare.  On the surface this is a politically partisan book, and I’m a political journalist. Readers have a right to know where I stand.  

No, I’m not happy, John.

And, yes, I firmly believe that we citizens must throw out your wrecking gang at the next election. As a voter, I regard myself as a swinger; since 1996, John, I’ve thoroughly swung.

Above everything else I believe in universal human rights – the foundation principle of the United Nations. It’s central to my personal value system and to my idea of what this nation stands for. So, for example, although I had voted for Labor in 1998 because I was disgusted with Howard’s stance on Wik, I had no choice but to change my vote when Labor agreed to Howard’s plan to excise territory to deny asylum seekers access to our laws. Instead in 2001 I supported – for the first time and to my great surprise – the Greens.

But could I envision working with One Nation, say – which supports John Howard’s policy of turning the boats back – to strengthen our democratic institutions?

Too right I could. Like all of us, I have my bedrock beliefs – my democratic ‘line in the sand’ – but that doesn’t mean I hold back from the messier pragmatics of democracy.  As this book will show, I can and will happily work with anyone – conservative, Liberal, ALP supporter, National Civic Council member – who wants a cleaner, more transparent system, one that produces a parliament truly representative of the various views of our citizens. One not beholden to the powerful and the cashed-up when the ‘public interest’ is being decided.

One very unlike the system we have now.

The second thing I’m unashamedly partisan about is my own vocation, journalism. This is what underpins my conviction that Howard’s got to go – he is now on the verge of destroying Australia’s mainstream independent media.

So that’s where I stand. But don’t get me wrong. I’m no Labor patsy. In the end all I’m really partisan about when it comes to politics is the future vibrancy of our democracy.

It’s under threat. And it’s worth defending.

*

In my dreams I imagine ordinary Australians getting together to back strong, intelligent, trustworthy, -independent-minded candidates, to put some wind up the big-brand parties.

I imagine Independent and minor party politicians holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives for once – ensuring some real debate, demanding some real democratic hard yakka from the cabinet, fostering some real engagement down where the legislative action should really be: in the people’s House.

I imagine the big power-players, the real elites, for a change facing a bit of stiff competition for ministers’ ears. I imagine their shocked faces when they realise they can’t buy access and influence and power from our politicians with donations to their parties.

I imagine democratic politics as an honourable vocation, not the grubby career that John Winston Howard seems so determined to bequeath as his political legacy. I imagine ethics and honesty and decency restored to mainstream debate. I imagine real people standing on real principle. I imagine party politicians prepared to step off the party line when it offends their core beliefs or when it betrays the welfare of the people who put them there.

And I imagine transparency. Trust. Civic duty and -sacrifice. Truth. Humility. Humanity.