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A First-Rate Country Run By Second-Rate People
By John Pilger
01/19/06 "ICH" -- -- Shortly after Christmas, the Australian
media tycoon Kerry Packer died in his mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour, guarded by large, salivating dogs. In Britain, he was
remembered as the man who brought hoopla and money to cricket.
Here, in Australia, his death provided a glimpse of the changes
imposed on societies that once were proud to call themselves
social democracies.
Lauded as "Australia's richest man" who "achieved" a rating on
Forbes magazine's rich list, as if this put him alongside Donald
Bradman and the Sydney Opera House, Packer excited a fear and
sycophancy not normally associated with Australians. "Laid to
rest in his beloved sunburnt country", said the obsequious
banner headline across the front page of the Sydney Morning
Herald. The Sydney Sun-Herald topped this with: "Packer's
practical compassion a model for us all".
Packer was a hulk of man who lost his temper a lot, said "fuck"
a lot, gambled and lost huge amounts, admired Genghis Khan (no
irony) and ruled by the sheer power of his inherited money, much
of it accumulated by having legally avoided paying many millions
of dollars in tax - the fail-safe method employed by his
principal competitor, Rupert Murdoch. In the mid-19th century
the Australian press was one of the liveliest and bravest in the
world; today, dominated by the marketing empires of Murdoch,
Packer and Fairfax, it is little more than a voice of
Australia's political elite and of Bush's Washington. Not
surprisingly, the government of John Howard is to give Packer a
state memorial service. "Kerry," said the prime minister, "was
larger than life." It was Howard who, stricken with pneumonia,
famously got out of bed to entertain "Rupert" at his home. It
was Howard who embraced the mantle bestowed by a Packer magazine
that he was George W Bush’s "deputy sheriff". (When asked about
this, Bush immediately promoted him to "sheriff for south-east
Asia".)
The fear and sycophancy that Howard and his Antipodean
neoconservatives have promoted since coming to power almost a
decade ago have put paid to Australia's tenuous self-regard as
"the land of fair go". (The much-abused term "lucky country" was
ironic, coined by the author, the late Donald Horne to denote a
first-rate country run by second-rate people.)
Like Bush's America, Howard's Australia is not so much a
democracy as a plutocracy, governed for and by the "big end of
town", even though, as Mark Twain pointed out, this is "an
entire continent peopled by the lower orders". He was not that
far out; for my generation, like that of my parents, we were the
poor who had got away. There was a sense that we had inherited
something other than the British legacy. Long before the rest of
the western world, Australians gained a minimum wage, an
eight-hour working day, pensions, maternity allowance, child
benefits and the vote for women. The secret ballot was invented
here and became known as the "Australian ballot". The Australian
Labour Party formed governments 25 years before any comparable
social democracy in Europe. In the 1960s, with the exception of
the Aboriginal people - who are always the exception -
Australians could boast the most equitable spread of personal
income in the world.
It is a proud history that is barely a memory in Howard's
Australia. His is an undeclared union with the "opposition"
Labour Party, which under his predecessors Bob Hawke and Paul
Keating launched a spectacular redistribution of wealth in
favour of the rich. According to the financial analysts County
Securities Australia, the deregulation of the television
industry alone gave Packer and Murdoch "a one billion-dollar
gift entirely free of tax". The convicted crook Alan Bond built
a paper empire that owed 14 billion Australian dollars, or 10
per cent of the national debt. "Bondy", said Hawke, was also
"larger than life".
Howard takes his legislative lead from Blair and Bush, whose
police-state impulses were recently made into law here. The few
members of parliament who tried to debate this were silenced,
incredibly, by the Speaker. The result is that Australians who
seriously question Howard's role in Iraq risk prosecution under
a law of sedition: penalty seven years. This was followed by a
bill that guts trade union rights. In the United Nations, which
Australia helped found, Australia has stood against almost all
of humanity on global warming and the rule of international law
in Palestine.
The recent race riots in Sydney were all but licensed by a
government whose racism has seen asylum-seekers go to their
deaths in leaking boats, or kept in harsh, remote camps.
Aboriginal institutions and programmes have been destroyed or
emasculated and land-rights claims tied down by laws that invite
endless litigation. Most young black Australians can look
forward to prison. Behind the glamour of Australian sport, black
footballers - including whole teams - are often dead before the
age of 40. Australia is the only developed country on a United
Nations "shame list" of countries where trachoma, an entirely
preventable disease that causes blindness, is tolerated among
its indigenous people. Using acolytes in the press, the
government has attacked institutions, such as the National
Museum, and historians who dare to remind Australians of their
true past and present. Donald Horne's "lucky country" was spot
on.
First published inthe New Statesman -
www.newstatesman.co.uk
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