Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

Our political culture is in great flux. The admirable work of the Piping Shrike has detailed this in a series of posts as a political realignment. The major parties are catching up to the fact that they have no social base and hence are hostage to the nightly news cycle. This gives an apparent fragility to Rudd's stratospheric polling. However it rather forgets what has happened federally is merely an extension of the decline of state Liberal parties to the point of irrelevance. So much so, that in South Australia the Liberal party is now experiencing defections to the federally moribund Family First. A small group of pundits have either diagnosed Rudd as acting as permanently on campaign or like a political bubble ring - held in a kind of stasis by the vortex of his activity. Presumably they believe that Julia Gillard is the dolphin responsible.

Rudd has decided that the media is for the dissemination of this messages, and his chief conduit to said media is rumoured to have a nasty habit of abusing them. Consequently they are taking it personally and according him very little favourable coverage. It also fits within their frame of reference that budgets mean something to politics and that the opposition is merely dormant, to be revived under the appropriate leader once Nelson nicks one to the slips. Hence Rudd is nothing remarkable and will come down to earth once his honeymoon ends. The thought does not enter their collective heads that this is the new reality. Instead, we hear the Whitlamesque fairytale that Gillard will storm the barricades and burn the Treasury benches to the ground like Boudicea. Some in the Canberra Press Gallery witnessed the Whitlam crash firsthand, no one has ever witnessed a federal government sustain ratings in the high 50s.

Into this breach step the Howard-era acolytes, now spurned by the new regime and left to ply their trade on the fringes of mediocrity. They demonstrate a bitter, visceral resentment of Rudd for removing their great leader Howard. The great citadel of Howard's media support is the Australian, which has now altered its brief from acting as government gazette to Her Majesty's loyal opposition. Loyal to Washington, specifically the neo-conservative, market vision, where private wars and global hegemony are de rigeur. Ad hominem argument suits this band as their voice, their tribe, their man is always right and their opponent is always wrong. Hence distracting bloggers by trolling and pouring vitriol is acceptable in the name of new-age Foucauldian information politics. So while taking down those that support the agendas they oppose, they also fly assorted kites to either make the Liberal position appear mainstream, or change the mainstream altogether and push the polity in the right direction. This ad hominem strategy extends to the truly bizarre and inconsistent criticisms of the Rudd government, one minute pro-business, then anti-business, pro-China, then anti-China.

As the polity has moved right through waves of economic prosperity, the traditional Liberal party's role has become almost irrelevant. With Labor concentrating on technocracy, encouraging education and removing the complexity of business regulation, politics shifts to the nanoneconomics of petrol and grocery prices. The Liberals are left with an emoting leader and little else. Climate change represents the position perfectly. The agreed solution is an emission trading scheme - a market mechanism - yet the free market, user-pay Liberals strain to support it and even now seek to make political capital.

If Labor wins the battle on emissions trading, the Liberals will be split between the caterwauling right and the moderate left. The caterwaulers will most likely head to Family First. How much of the party ultimately survives depends on whether Labor can successfully manage this fundamental change into a new political constituency. If economic management becomes covalent with environmental management, then Labor could well benefit from demographic change and make serious realigning inroads into those leafy seats that polls make so tantalising. If the green barrier dissolves in the political sphere, it will dissolve in the minds of voters. One suspects though that long-term ideological, logical and intellectual poverty will eventually cause the party to split unless strong leadership can hold the strands together.

If, however, the politicians fail to act appropriately, then the results could be apocalyptic for all of us.

Pop goes the alcopop proxy

It is undeniable that there has been an increase in alcohol-related harm in recent years, whether this be measured by hospital admissions, police reports or sheer anecdotal evidence. It seems that the latest generation of teenagers to run the gauntlet of adolescence have taken to drinking (more) early and (more) often. In response to this, the Rudd government took the most immediate policy action at its disposal, imposing by regulation the same tax scheme to pre-mixed drinks as conventional spirits. The uncharitable have criticised Rudd's move as 'spin and symbols', yet the problems raised by alcohol are so complex that the alcopop tax served as a proxy for real action while that massive effort was weighed, planned and negotiated.

The alcopop tax loophole was created when for reasons best known to itself, the former government chose not to adjust the excise rate charged on alcopops to match conventional spirits. This created a very slippery pathway for young teenagers to move from soft drinks into spirits while not experiencing the paint-stripper style symptoms associated with higher alcohol drinks. While teenagers have always taken up drinking through the high school party scene, the government's tax policy should have assisted in them choosing something other than sugar-coated rum as their poison. The spike in the ready-mixed drink share of the alcohol market, from 3% to nearly 12%, points to a very substantial increase in alcohol consumption through this fiscal misadventure.

However the alcopop debacle is only part of the problem. Greater disposal income, more stress being felt by adolescents in a world of unstable employment prospects and the collateral effect of older siblings' own drinking habits have caused the problem to snowball. The ridiculous hours clubs are open to, coupled with the relaxation of planning provisions and the introduction of mega venues where responsible service of alcohol is not in management's interests create a cocktail of potential violence, drunken behaviour and potential major health ramifications.

Clearly, to address all these problems will require a coordinated effort between local, state and federal government, alcohol manufacturers and club management. The accessibility of alcohol, the concentration of venues and the attractiveness of excessive drinking need to be considered carefully. The idea that it is acceptable to consume twenty drinks a weekend for ten to fifteen years is unsustainable. Yet that kind of intake is more norm than exception. The assumption appears to be that consistent drinking through the week is bad, a sign of alcoholism, but the weekend binge is culturally acceptable. This assumption needs to be examined and researchers must develop responsible guidelines that speak to the long-term effects of 'the binge', rather than just the per diem intake.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon seems intent at present to cover the time lag in taking tough action with party politics against the former government's inaction. The former government's actions in allowing the pre-mixed drink preferential tax treatment and failure to develop any response beyond the obligatory alcohol campaign are worthy of censure. However Roxon would be better served not battering her audience into submission but laying the groundwork for a major social overhaul - one that may eventually see the weekend binge as unwise a social choice as the pack a day cigarette habit.

Setting liberal democratic parameters for free speech

It is interesting to note the minor blogging brushfire breaking out over the prosecution of the Canadian neo-conservative columnist, Mark Steyn, for alleged hate speech comments under British Columbia's anti-vilification laws. The problem anti-vilification laws are bound to run into is the issue of free speech - the purported essence of democratic society. The introduction of anti-vilification law - legislation specifically designed to change behaviour through language and attitude -raises questions as to how to set the boundaries of free speech.

Anti-vilification laws represent a laudable attempt to protect minorities from abuse and work towards a harmonious multicultural society. However, they have failed to address the philosophical challenge posed by an insurgency of conservative commentators. Progressive thought is constantly under attack from those who oppose it. Anti-vilification law, with its focus on behaviour change and centralised control, is tarnished with images of Maoist-Soviet re-education. The sanctions offered by the laws are weak, yet the challenge remains strong. The result is a hatred of the laws, rather than the behaviour, and the false assumption that other cultures are 'protected species'. Anti-vilification laws are seen as a dangerous fetter on free speech, rather than valid laws which should be upheld by the archetypical law abiding citizen.

The idea of anti-vilification is to set parameters for what is and what is not acceptable conduct in society in line with internationally recognised human rights principles. In other words, it goes to fundamental questions of humanity. Rather than being seen, however, as 'behaviour change', instead it should be recast as 'the law of the land'. This is particularly important in the post-terrorism era, where aggrieved persons are easy prey for fundamentalists of all persuasions, and a 'free speech incident' such as an ill-advised cartoon in one country can lead to bombings in another. Failing to bridge the divides between communities, and worse, reinforcing the prejudices as justified resistance to 'political correctness' makes all of us vulnerable to bad neoconservative foreign policy adventures in Iraq, Iran (or insert Muslim country of their choice) and increases the likelihood of terrorist attacks in all corners of the world.

There is a loud chorus of concern that moderate Muslims do not take action to rein in their extremist counterparts. Yet that chorus also sings loudest about the evils of political correctness and refuses to accept that the crude remarks of Jones and his acolytes also demand action. This lack of a causal link speaks to a deeper and perhaps wilful misunderstanding of both other cultures and the nature of terrorist outrages.

Australian speech is partially protected by the implied constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication. That guarantee means that any law that is not appropriate and adapted to preventing obscenity, libel or incitement to violence and restricts the ability to criticise government policy or access to media during political campaigns is likely to be unconstitutional. It is arguable that in the present climate, a strong anti-vilification law which inteprets say, Jones' laissez-faire response to the Cronulla text messages as worthy of sanction may meet this test for incitement, but it is a grey area.

To play their role to best advantage in the Australian polity, anti-vilification laws need to be remodelled in consultation with those very players who are at the pivot point of the problem. Conservatives and cultural representatives should be brought together for a thorough-going summit on social inclusion, freedom of speech and incitement to acts of violence, vandalism and discrimination. This would be an act of true national leadership and may provide an environment of goodwill and understanding, where issues can be rationally debated. This summit should then lay out a nonpartisan programme for uniform anti-vilification legislation, allowing for strong sanctions such as suspension of broadcasters and ultimately broadcast licences for repeat offenders. This would give the conservatives (and their media masters) most likely to be affected by law changes a hearing in the process and mitigate their concern about the threat to free speech.

The continued attack by conservatives such as Steyn on anti-vilification and other similar laws is neither liberal or democratic. However, without consultation with such parties, the resentment and martyr mentality of the 'political correctness' mindset will continue to thrive and plague our supposedly liberal, democratic and mature society.

Ten things we should be debating instead of FuelWatch

How to turn the 122,000 plus vacant properties in Sydney into accommodation for the homeless, or at the very least lower the cost of renting.

How to reform our transport and power sectors so we don't go catatonic when oil goes up by $15 a barrel.

How to solve the problem of baseload power and how it can be sourced solely from renewable energy.

How to protect the less well-off from higher energy prices under a carbon trading/mass greenhouse abatement scheme.

How to ensure our farms can keep feeding us and save the Murray from becoming permanent sludge.

How to extricate US forces and allies from the mires of Afghanistan and Iraq while preventing those countries descending into theocratic feudalism.

How to prevent speculative nonsense like the CDO debacle happening again.

How to reform our international institutions on a multilateral, global and regional level to deal with problems of poverty, food security and irrational dictatorships.

How to manage the emerging power balance shift between the US, China, India, Japan and Brazil.

How to ensure our health and education systems deliver the best quality support for all of us at optimum cost.

On populism and political correctness

Two phrases that pop up more than perhaps they should are populism and political correctness. Populism has connotations of supporting the 'people' over the 'elites' (another horribly abused phrase in recent times). That would suggest that any policy that favoured, say pensioners over pharmaceutical corporations could be termed 'populist'. There is a clear hint in the term that such a policy choice is bad. However, as almost any economist this side of Genghis Khan will tell you, the PBS represents a world best practice model for reconciling drug delivery with low/middle income patients. So while technically it is 'populist', it is not bad policy.

However saying that policy helps the people must surely be a truism if we even imagine to live in a democracy which works in the best interests of the people. A better use of the term 'populist' might be to describe policy ideas that are at first glance 'popular', but on closer analysis reveal themselves to be bad policy. Such an analysis might apply to the petrol excise debate. The difference made by a 5 cent a litre cut would save a family maybe $3 per week in fuel, yet the excise cut would cost $1.8 billion. The policy would have little real effect on its target audience (beyond the psychological comfort of 'something being done'), but would potentially eat into funding for other areas such as health. It would also seriously compromise greenhouse abatement efforts and provide a perverse incentive for people to use more fuel, rather than move towards energy conservation and efficiency measures. On those measures, the excise cut call represents a populist policy in its truest sense.

Political correctness is one rather horrid phrase dreamed up as a backlash by right-wing bigots and their acolytes in response to greater ethnic and gender diversity in workplaces and society at large. The phrase is viewed by its proponents as a form of 're-education', akin to the worst excesses of Maoist zeal. By assailing measures aimed at reducing prejudice, political correctness becomes a de facto assertion of a right to maintain and exercise prejudice free from either government or commercial interference. How this is a good idea in an increasingly globalised world where disenfranchised individuals are easy prey for extremist movements of all persuasions remains to be seen. The recent Camden school controversy demonstrates a large group of Anglo-Saxon Australians either think exercising prejudice is not racist or they are locked into conservative doublethink which inverts anti-racist policies as de facto racism against Anglo-Saxons. Clearly the Howard-era messages of the dangers of political correctness have permeated the fields of Albion.

The concept of political correctness should be scrubbed from the political lexicon. In short, it is a backward-looking victim-mentality view based on pig ignorance and wilful misguidance by so-called conservatives. If anti-discrimination provisions and policies were recast as part of the rules of democratic society, safeguards rather than fetters, it would improve the prospects that the shock jocks and columnists would get the message. It is interesting that the very people who claim to be law-abiding citizens of the highest order are the first to denigrate laws put in place to safeguard the very order of the society they seek to defend.

2020 Summit Part II - The Final Wash-up

This is a very belated post completing this blog's evaluation of the 2020 Summit, now fading into the rear view mirror of history. The Summit represents something of a lost opportunity, with dark suggestions that ideas were planted to endorse government proposals and that many of the ideas were not especially revolutionary. The whole thing in hindsight looks like a bunch of high-powered minds locked in a gilded cage, constrained by the tight timeframe and need to fit the results of their labours into the pre-packed report summaries. It is hard to see how the Summit could have operated differently, as alloting more than a weekend risked reinforcing the idea of it being a think tank rather than a symposium. Perhaps cutting the numbers to 500, removing the government co-chairs and allowing a staged reporting of group conclusions might have been a less political approach.

On the ideas front, the main runner to date is the HECS-for-volunteering scheme which appears to be an adaptation of the Clinton (I) AmeriCorps program. Macquarie University has already mooted a compulsory community scheme for students from 2010. This idea looks useful for closing the gap between students from our various social and cultural backgrounds. One big negative of the Summit was the treatment of climate change. The recommendations of the climate change group are about as strong as miso soup. Green protests suggest that Rudd's hands were tied by virtue of the coal industry's efforts. More on this position in further posts.

The range of taxes suggested by most groups to fund particular initiatives such as preventative health centres was predictably attacked by the don't-tax-me-I-didn't use it crowd. Interestingly the much-maligned Cate Blanchett-steered Arts group did not propose any additional taxation, even offering a suggestion that the arts be directly financed by every other government department.

Curiously it was the economists who came up with some of the more innovative ideas such as the business-schools support program and the Golden Guru program to use the skills of older Australians. The governance stream produced the usual menu of republican sympathy and international institution building without providing clear pathways on solving the issues of governance and increasing the quality of democracy.

Overall, the Summit got the headlines, but hamstrung by offering few concrete solutions on either governance reform or carbon transition of the economy, it was left to the little nuggets to carry the day. The use of so many stars in the arts group risked turning the coverage into a branch meeting of the Hollywood Democrats and probably did not help public respect for the project.

High degree of difficulty but relatively modest success. 6/10.

Evaluating 2020: Part I - Perspectives

Evaluating the 2020 Summit is a massive task which the Great Kevin has rightly decided cannot be guaranteed until the end of the year. It remains to be seen whether this is a Pizza Hut style deal where failure to deliver hot reasons will result in the delegates receiving their money back. Accordingly, Peregrine will devote two posts to the Summit. For openers, a brief look at perspectives of the Summit.

What you make of the Summit depends largely on your perspective. Conservatives largely consider it a contemptuous revival of Keating-era elitism, journalists a cynical political exercise in ideological suffocation, attendees a robust exchange of ideas and ultimate settlement on a surprising number of themes. Bloggers (of the idea-based rather than ideology-based kind) are divided between those who consider it the start of a new Rudd post-politics order, a stupendously unoriginal recycling of ideas and a wasted opportunity. Poor old Brendan Nelson does not seem to know what he thinks of it and appears to be still reeling from his encounter with the representative of the Sex Workers Union.

The Summit has again highlighted the discomfort Australians have with the idea of an elite group of intellectuals showing their faces in public, however it also offers the encouraging idea that we do not mind big thinking and ideas themselves. Nelson's political response could have been stronger, or at least coherent, if he had complimented the idea of the Summit but criticised the lack of ordinary Australians, or in the alternative, announced his own counter-summit, or some such gathering beyond his nebulous listening tour. The Summit's profile, focus, purpose and relevance stand in stark contrast to Brendan's aimless tour lacking both form and substance. If the good ship Nelson comes any further onto the reefs of irrelevance, he will be donning a black wig and taking up resident on Lygon Street.

In short, we like ideas, but as an egalitarian nation, we like our share in the conversation. The lesson from this weekend, a reiteration of Malcolm's Republic referendum, is talk down to the people at your peril. It will be very interesting to see how Liberal resident intellectual Malcolm Turnbull responds to the new climate of big thinking and government recasting given his form as head of the elitist vanguard.

Are we allergic to ideas?

There seems to be a strange disconnect in the political psyche: journalists and the people alike keep asking for policy, something to be done about the big issues of our time, whether that be climate change, the health system or education. Yet the most public attempt to gather these ideas and have a conversation about them, the upcoming 2020 Summit has been largely derided as a stunt, a cynical 'rubber-stamping' exercise and a replacement for the ordinary political process.

These comments seem premised on the idea that while our politicians may have muddled along to the point of near-crisis in many of our institutions and industries, somehow they will right the ship without any assistance from the outside world. Worse, any such body chosen to assist them amounts to some kind of intellectual quisling regime, not really contributing anything and only granting legitimacy to the preconceived policies of the government.

So either Rudd and the ALP have no ideas at all, or they have plenty and just want the imprimatur of the 'best and brightest' to put them beyond political reproach. This amounts to a vote of no confidence that either Rudd is incompetent and merely a master manipulator or that he is a fascist of high order. Both conclusions seem wide of the mark. The mere act of calling the Summit suggests a willingness to listen to the ideas of others, whereas former PM Howard would be lucky to listen to his own deputy, let alone those outside his ideological echo-chamber. At least two of the co-chairs have had successful careers on the other side of politics. Before anyone trawls up Howard's bipartisan Constitutional Convention, remember that he was forced into the republican debate by his predecessor's enthusiasm, and he became increasingly enthusiastic to scuttle the whole thing by supporting the 'No' case.

There is another possibility that Rudd actually believes that community elders can prove a source of wise counsel and ideas for the future. We hear a lot about intellectual capital and the like, so what on earth is wrong with actually using it? The normal policy making channels favoured by the political process include a lot of party hacks of limiting degrees of intellectual skill and life experience. Calling on the thoughts of such a diverse range of people from a multitude of perspectives can only add to the cross-pollination of ideas.

It seems strange that Rudd's policies on indigenous health and education and climate change have met with suspicion, long -term targets in search of a strategy. Yet at the same time, the implicit aim of the Summit is to produce possible intermediate steps to reach these and other long term goals. To criticise one of these arms in isolation is fair, to criticise both is verging on the cynical.

The Summit is not being set up as some permanent vehicle of policy development but as a mega-symposium, with participants sharing their somewhat abbreviated pitches, the distillation of a great deal of research, reflection and thinking. The entire exercise will cost the taxpayer next to nothing and could produce all sorts of ideas to throw into the future policy mix. The expectations of the Summit should be proportionately low, and then we may be astonished at what may flow from it. We may find out then whether we are in fact allergic to ideas and having to think for ourselves rather than delegating the task to our assorted politicians.

Why applying the lessons of the past does not always work

Brendan Nelson made his alternative PM debut at the National Press Club yesterday. After plumbing the depths of opinion poll hell by becoming Brendan 007, he has adopted the very simple philosophy of trying to be himself. Nelson's natural personality is a blend of emotion and protection of self-interest, which may explain why he initially joined Labor but rose to be the Liberal leader. It also explains this off-the-cuff plea to define our values against terrorism.

My children’s generation is facing something that isn’t all that easy to see in day-to-day life, but it is resurgent totalitarianism which in the form, in the main, of Islamic extremism throughout the world and we have to be clear about precisely what we stand for and what we will do with our allies throughout the world.

The problem with this rhetoric, which seems to be setting the Liberals up to become lock-stepped to McCain's policy of confrontation, is that it betrays the conservative belief that communism and Islamist philosophy are similar political doctrines. The only thing communism and Islamism have in common, other than being 'isms', is a tendency towards greatly curtailing individual freedom. Communism relies on individuals subordinating themselves to the state for the greater good, while Islamism relies on individuals wholly embracing a narrow interpretation of the Koran. One sees the state as the ultimate entity, while the other sees it as a collection of true believers.

The real difficulty for conservatives schooled in Cold War politics is that Islamism is a totally different beast. Whereas communism evolved into a struggle between two global superpowers, each offering an alternative view on government and political organisation, Islamism has no such power base. Islamism has control of no government, but in the age of globalisation it has employed the same kind of franchise and internet delivery systems favoured by corporations such as McDonalds and Dell. The Cold War relied on two mighty military machines conducting a series of proxy wars against each other. Islamism is not reliant on military might. It relies on winning the battle of ideas, a battle it can shape by using the modern media techniques of spin and alleging to speak for the disenfranchised.

The US seems to seriously believe that fighting Islamist inspired fighters in Iraq is equivalent to fighting the proxy Soviet forces of the Viet Cong. The problem is that the war on the ground does not itself frustrate the movement. On the contrary, it provides it with great media attention and a legitimacy it craves as the standard bearer for Arab and Muslim grievances from Morocco to Indonesia.

The best way to deal with the issue is not to promote Islamists to the level of the Supreme Soviet. The greatest mistake made since 2001 has been the invasion of Iraq, a high risk strategy which was poorly executed. The second mistake has been the mishandling of domestic terrorist legislation and investigations and the failure to bring communities together rather than harness division for political ends. If Nelson is serious about the values that bind us as a nation, he would drop his value-based assault on public schools, an assault that leads to less unity and greater secretarian education of the next generation.

Stolen story sorry business for Nelson's character

It is rather ironic that the Liberals have chosen to reheat the alleged links between Kevin Rudd and Brian Burke to assail the character of the PM. After much morning media theatre, Rudd's office released the full exchange. The worst one can say about it is that Rudd considered Burke's proposal for a dinner in his honour and then recanted on further reflection. This blog suspects that Rudd may have canvassed the idea of using Burke's influence among the Western Australian Labor party to turn members against Beazley. Beazley has spoken out strongly against Burke and hence those still aligned to Burke would naturally be less sympathetic to the former leader. Better judgment ultimately prevailed and Rudd cancelled the dinner. In contrast to former PM John Howard's dealings with the Exclusive Brethren and the government's general approach to such matters as the AWB affair, the degree of candour Rudd has demonstrated is quite extraordinary. Rudd is not, in his own words, 'Captain Perfect', but he does seem to acknowledge his mistakes and considers his actions before he behaves in a manner which may compromise his integrity.

Unfortunately, this blog has doubts the same words could be applied to his opposite number. Brendan Nelson was always going to be on the back foot in responding to Rudd's sorry speech. If he had demonstrated a tin ear by both apologising (thus alienating some in his party) and sounding churlish with his dirge of a sermon on Australia's history since white settlement (thus causing the indigenous viewers and their supporters considerable insult), he compounded this by his appalling misappropriation of the words of Faye Lyman. Ms Lyman is a Victorian woman whom Nelson claimed to be quoting in his speech.

The text of the speech includes this excerpt from Ms Lyman's story, credited as part of the Many Voices project at the National Library:

“Personally I don’t want people to say, ‘I’m sorry Faye’, I just want them to understand.
It was very hurtful to leave Dad. Oh it broke my heart. Dad said to me, ‘It’s hard for daddy and the authorities won’t let you stay with me in a tent on the riverbank. You’re a little girl and you need someone to look after you.’ I remember him telling us that, and I cried. I said, ‘No, but Dad, you look after us’ … But they kept telling us it wasn’t the right thing. I don’t want people to say sorry. I just want them to understand the hurt, what happened when we were initially separated, and just understand the society, what they’ve done….You don’t belong in either world. I can’t explain it. It hurts so much.”

The words were followed in Dr Nelson's speech by the phrase 'there is no compensation fund. Nor should there be'. Ms Lyman now feels 'stolen all over again'. Not only had Nelson used her words without consulting her, he had implied her father had approved of her removal. Dr Nelson rang her to apologise, which Ms Lyman recounted as him saying 'I just wanted them to know your story', When Ms Lyman asked why did he not call her first, he could not answer.

Dr Nelson may have been attempting to bridge the gaping chasm between the progressive and ultra-conservative wings of his fracturing party. He may have been trying to bring some belated understanding to the feelings of indigenous people. However, by treating the speech as just another departmental research exercise, amiable to anonymous googling, he revealed a lack of grasp of moment and the sensibilities of the vulnerable. Whereas Rudd reconsidered meeting Burke once he realised it was the wrong thing to do, Nelson did not even think to contact Ms Lyman, let alone advise her that he would use her words in contravention of her own suffering. To use a person's words without permission is unwise, to use them out of context, and in such an emotionally charged situation, shows a fault of character and bad judgment.

Rudd's 2020 vision highlights his approach

Kevin Rudd's proposed Australia 2020 Summit has variously been described as a great innovation, yet another glorified talk fest and the ultimate in PR flummery. Which description one favours is as much about one's own personal prejudices as the exercise itself. The clear message from Rudd's symposium on the Australian condition is that unlike his predecessor, the new PM is willing to at least listen to alternative ideas and engage in reasoned debate.

John Howard's prime ministerial tenure was marked with a determined effort to remake Australia in his own image. The 'white picket fence' became a metaphor for the restoration of an Anglo-dominant culture where immigrants from Asian backgrounds strove to fit into that dominant culture. Consequently, universalist notions such as human rights, multiculturalism and indigenous self-determination were dismissed and a conservative bulwark of commentators cultivated to conduct a culture war with so-called 'elites'. The goal was to support an existing world view rather than seek new ideas and perspectives. Howard was a man with a legalistic grasp of language, aiming to control every ounce of meaning his words carried. His allies had a ready supply of labels to dismiss arguments contrary to their common project.

Kevin Rudd's background and general manner both in opposition and on the Treasury benches reveal a totally different approach. While Howard's view saw the world as malleable to his own design, Rudd's aim is to solve the problems that world presents. It is a utilitarian vision, with the common good firmly in the centre. Rudd's philosophical background is not the Methodist preacher or the Republican push-poller, but the Chinese cultural tradition. Rudd is known in China as Lu Kewen, 'the hard-working and enduring one'. As his many colleagues seem to frequently anonymously admit to newspaper columnists, these traits describe him aptly. Another principle advocated since the days of Confucius is to listen to elders and to value intelligence. Rudd's 2020 vision exemplifies such a belief that people of intelligence beyond the party machinery and political apparatchiks have some value to add to our major policy challenges.

It is notable that most of the criticism for Rudd's plan comes from the old Howard support group. The idea that strong policy outcomes could come other than through the echo chamber of the Parliament, a Parliament which Howard essentially exercised an iron grip over, is an affront to these stagers. Rudd has promised to consider suggestions he considers to have merit, while offering reasoned explanations for rejecting alternative options. Such a return to a civilised political debate is a refreshing change from the Keating - Howard years of polarisation and dismissal.

Fear of the past masks fear of the present and future

The report that Kevin Rudd has earmarked the opening of Parliament on February 12 as the due season for an apology to the stolen generation has set off some predictable caterwauling from the self-styled conservative element about intergenerational guilt and false priorities. The faux argument about an apology being inextricably linked to compensation seems to be rebuffed by the conspicious lack of actions against state governments who have issued similar apologies for past mistreatment. The real reason for the garbage associated with any call for an apology has to do with insecurity and a failure of political and moral leadership. The problem for self-styled conservatives in the mould of Howard and Nelson is that it is in their self-interest to encourage such false beliefs and insecurities to deflect attention from both social inequity and the pressures created by their free market brand of economics. If the punters cannot be bound together by a positive sense of the tribe's achievements but are forced to consider their possibly murky past, they may realise that men such as Howard and Nelson may not necessarily act in a bona fide manner and that such actions have a direct, detrimental effect on their lives.

The kernel of opposition to an apology is that the present generation is not responsible. This is a wilful misrepresentation of the issue. Rudd's proposed apology is on behalf of the nation, for acts performed on the orders of the state in the name of the citizens of that nation. It is a collective acknowledgement that such actions were in many cases detrimental to the people involved and the nation no longer believes such policies to be appropriate. For the Howard-Nelson clique, apparently pride in the achievement of one's forebears is perfectly acceptable, but regret at their actions is not. By making the apology issue personal, they actually undermine their project to develop a national mythology, enshrining the Anzac spirit at Gallipoli as the epitome of Australian virtue. It shows maturity to face up to one's mistakes, swallow one's pride and apologise for harm caused.

Instead, we are told that at least half the population is being misled so we behave like historical kindergarten kids. A society that cannot accept fault is on a collision course with disaster. With challenges such as climate change, an ageing population, diminishing resources and burgeoning health costs, surely our society is best served by encouraging us to think about how we do things, what effect our actions have on the present and future generations, and not just whether it suits us or makes us feel uncomfortable to think beyond the plasmascreen and picket fence.

Conservatism should be about preserving the institutions that make the country great and upholding the values that improve the country further. It should not be about misleading individuals with tales of ill-founded guilt or compensation-seeking bogeymen while pushing through reforms that undermine those very institutions and values.

The New Segregationists

Heath Ledger's premature death is a tragedy for his family and for his many fans, colleagues and admirers of his work. Who knows what masterly performances he may have given us, with some acclaiming him to be a young Jack Nicholson. A further tragedy is the bizarre behaviour of the Westboro Baptist Church, who plan to picket Ledger's funeral on the basis that he was a 'fag-enabler' through his role in Brokeback Mountain. These petty-minded firebrands are making a mockery of the American ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. One presumes that when Reagan and Bush went on ad infinitum about 'freedom', that was what they had in mind.

The Westboro insurgents present the Christian Right and those seeking its support for their presidential ambitions with a choice. They can draw a line in the sand and say that these proclaimed defenders of decency are a blight on civil society or they can adopt a craven position of expedient acquiesence. Westboro's rhetoric is reminiscent of the criticism levelled against whites who sympathised with oppressed blacks, a newspeak rendering of 'nigger-lover', a term so loaded in American discourse it can only be printed as 'n*****'. However taking a firm hand against such abuses does not seem to be on the agenda in a political climate where no one even mentions Governor Huckabee's evocation of the Confederate flag issue - code for slavery and all manner of inhumanity - during his South Carolina campaign.

In fact, the entire project of the Christian Right is reminiscent of the old segregationists. Segregationist policy was premised on Jim Crow laws mandating 'separate but equal' treatment for black and white. This fudge meant that as long as one provided facilities for both black and white patrons, one complied with the language of equality. In reality, Jim Crow was a vehicle to hide racist policy behind a legalistic veneer, upheld by the US Supreme Court for nearly sixty years. The Christian Right's shameless manipulation of its churches to deliver electoral success evokes such as a legalistic fudge. Under the Internal Revenue Code, churches can only retain tax-exempt status by not endorsing or opposing specific candidates. To get around this injunction, many churches publish the equivalent of how-to-vote guides detailing candidates positions on a broad range of issues. However, the key vehicle is the use of questions on abortion and marriage. The last US election was held in conjunction with marriage-related referenda in at least a dozen states. The implicit aim was to encourage voter turnout on these issues and hence maximise Republicans chances of re-election nationwide.

Interestingly, the only instance this blog has noted of criticism being levied at a church for involvement in politics was against an anti-war rector. However, not satisfied with this position of formalistic legality, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma proposed amending the law in 2006 to allow churches to endorse candidates and maintain tax-exempt status. If such proposals were to come to pass, the American political system may look more like the Puritan English Commonwealth of Cromwell than the Jeffersonian Republic.