![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsidheNo, it's not because I'm a “Howard-hater”. Well, not just. I do, in fact, despise Howard and what he stands (stood) for, but it is not some blind irrational Stalinist groupthink, despite what the very term ‘Howard-hater’ implies. No, I hate him for very definite and concrete reasons, based on his actions and inactions. The various reasons why I hate Howard, however, are so varied that it's not possible to summarise them in one pithy “because he's X”. It needs an essay.
Here is that essay.
People keep burbling on about how wonderful an economic manager Howard is. And it is true that the economy seems to be doing well.
Seems. Myself, I think that the economy is running mainly on inertia, and we're going to have a Wile E. Coyote moment disturbingly soon, when the Resources Boom trails off, and the current US issues catch up, and people apply the word ‘bubble’ to the housing market. At the moment, the exchange rate looks pretty good relative to the US. But this is largely because the US is falling, not because we're rising, and they can only fall so far before the rope tied between us pulls us down after them. But I'm not an international economist, and this is unsophisticated back-of-the-envelope stuff from first principles. I'm sure![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
erudito would rip it to shreds. But I'm not finished.
Howard shouldn't even have been running the economy, not at all. First: he was not the treasurer, Costello was. If Howard really was running the economy to the extent to which he is given credit, then Costello was even more of a sock puppet than he looked. (Maybe that's why he bravely turned his tail and fled every time it came down to it — he knew that he was hollow.) And when Howard was treasurer, then the economy was in worse state than the worst of the Labor examples he liked to scare the children with. So much for that. But then, a large amount of the economy was contingent on circumstances outside the government's control anyway. The Resources Boom. Various trends in international markets. China's rise as a customer. So it would be interesting to see what Howard/Costello's performance was once all that stuff is factored out. My bet is that it will actually be quite poor.
This is because of how the economy was run: it was run like a small business, or a household. Now, as a small business, it was run relatively well, all things considered. Except for a couple of points:
i. there was next to no re-investment of savings back into infrastructure, not even for repairs. Gods forbid that there was any new infrastructure set up.
ii. Much apparent saving was made by plumping up the bank balance by selling off the furniture on eBay. Which is fine if the furniture was going to be replaced by something worth more, or was superfluous and just taking up space. But no new furniture was bought, and when it was discovered that we need a kitchen table and chairs after all, they were all rented back in a way that abnegated the initial flush of money in a couple of years. More than that, Howard's fanatical adherence to the Glorious Free Market blinded him utterly to the increasingly evident detail that it doesn't work like he thinks it does.
iii. A country is not a small business, and the economics don't scale. You don't just add zeros to the end of the entries and expect the spreadsheet to work the same. There are deeply and fundamentally important differences between a Nation's economy and any human-sized budget, but Howard and his gang seemed oblivious of that concept. And the economists were divided between those who thought that Howard had somehow changed the laws of economics, and those who simply weren't listened to. Hmm. The Cheerleaders and the Irrelevant. That's a division which we saw a lot of.
Going back to the fire sale of the nation's assets, take Telstra as a prime example. Once upon a time we had a world-beating telecommunications organisation. Sure there was bureaucratic overload, and a certain degree of arrogance, but it was also to largely justified. The R&D labs were extensive and busy and recognised worldwide, and the technology was up there with the best. Howard reckoned that if a government bureaucracy had done all this, how much better would a lean, mean private company do it?
Not very well, it turns out. When Telstra was exposed to the concept of risk, it became a coward. The R&D labs were shrunk and closed all over the country. Profit and efficiency, rather than effectiveness and service, became the watchwords. And because you can't have one private company with a monopoly on a service, competition was introduced which completely screwed the pooch. Where there used to be improvements to the telecoms infrastructure based on need and technical reasons, now there are interminable fights over who gets to own what, and how much everyone gets paid, and the end result is that nothing ever happens. Indeed, even repairs have been falling behind. Which is not surprising at all when you consider that Telecoms is an infrastructure service, and there are aspects of it which are not amenable to being chopped up and sold in bits.
And there is the thing: for all the billions of dollars in false savings, in padding out the bank account but with the kids' credit cards still going full bore, what has any of this been spent on? Where is the infrastructure? Where are the projects? Where is the landscaping and the new shed and the newly paved driveway? He's thrown a couple of parties, but all we've been left with is the empties. There have been plenty of excuses: about how it was the private industries' responsibility to upgrade things, or the States', but if the Federal Government doesn't have the responsibility to spend any of the billions of dollars it collects, then what the hell is it for? It seems that the answer to that is to mould the nation into the Liberal Party image, whether it wants to be or not.
The field in which Howard did the most damage, however, was not the economy. It was, basically, everything else. It was under Howard's watch that Australians started claiming to be New Zealanders while overseas. It was Howard and his gang who made us ashamed to be Australians. Well, except for a few, who thought that Howard was doing the right things to make us proud Australians, but those people's vision of Australia was just as shame-inducing, or more so.
He hitched us so tightly to George W. Bush's wagon, that we had very little slack left to make our own decisions when it came to international relations. Where we could make our own decisions was were George simply couldn't care less what we did: were it had no impact on the US, or to our usefulness to the US. When Bush zigged, we zigged. When he zagged we zagged. And George is not a considerate driver: the wagon to which we were hitched so tightly was — is — careening all over the road, forcing some others out of the way, running over others, playing chicken with more. And us dragged along behind. When Bush invaded Afghanistan, with some justification, then we were among the first to join in. And there was some justification for that. But then he invaded Iraq. Now the chickenhawks are all sitting back in their armchairs talking about how much of a monster Hussein was, and how whatever the justification given at any given time, it was a Right, Just and True Reason why Iraq Delenda Est, but that is all bullshit. Iraq was invaded so that Bush could parade his big brass manly cojones all over the Middle East, pour encourager les autres. It wasn't about al Qa'eda: there simply was no link, not at all, none, whatever bullshit the chickenhawks invent or distort. Hussein was precisely the sort of liberal modernising Muslim that bin Laden couldn't stand, and bin Laden is the sort of undermining fanatical lunatic that Hussein would not allow outside his own family. That it might have been the oil was given a boost when the Museums were looted while the Ministry of Oil was locked down immediately. It wasn't about democracy, judging by the thugs, con artists and sycophants who constitute the ‘government of Iraq’. It wasn't about getting rid of a Monster, well, it was, but not for the right reasons. It was about Bush telling the entire Middle East “Don't fuck with us, or else we'll fucking stomp on you.”
It is, im my opinion, a good thing that we got rid of Howard before Bush gets around to smashing Iran into dust. The Iran Delenda Est rhetoric has been thick and fast, and evidence has at best been a slight impediment. But all that's a slightly different rant.
Domestically, Howard was quick to accuse others of being over the line ... whenever it was convenient to do so. He was so quick off the mark to abuse such evil monsters as Unionists, or the ABC, or drowning refugees, that one must assume that if he didn't say anything, then he approved. He demonised the foreign. Muslims,‘illegal’ immigrants refugees, the mentally ill, he did his level best to ensure that that muck knew their place.
His bunch of thugs became experts at the “no-one told me!” ‘defence’. It is hard to think of another government that so consistently defended against accusations of bastardry and corruption with the defence of incompetence. Ruddock, then Vanstone, then Andrews all relied heavily on the “I didn't know, no-one told me” defence every time another revelation about how deeply sick the Department of Immigration was (is). Never did they take a single skerrick of responsibility. It was always someone else's fault. Similarly with the AWB farce. Similarly with the “Children Overboard” farce. Similarly with the SIEV-X tragedy. And with all those people wrongly locked up for years.
He institutionalised lies as part of government. I mean, it was always a given that politicians lie, but never had the concept become so openly embraced. The Non-Core Promise is the single most emblematic concept from Howard's reign. He openly said that he reserved the right to do whatever he wanted, in the teeth of what he may have said. And people voted for him anyway... right up until Work‘choices’, when people finally realised, I think, that Howard's whim was not divinely inspired, and was not benign. That he had reserved to himself the right to do whatever he wanted, and all you could do was trust him. Workchoices finally convinced enough people that you could not trust him.
Ah, yes, Work‘choices’. A wonderfully Orwellian title for what was presented as an attack on Workers Rights, on the basis that workers had too many of them. The point of Work‘choices’ was to give all the choices to the employers, on the basis that they shouldn't have to care so much about the people dependent on them: their workers. The rhetoric all turned around the lazy worker who couldn't be fired, the Unions who tell employers what to do, the ease with which you could just get another job if things go pear-shaped.
Unfortunately for Howard and Hocking, people realised quite quickly that the same thing which made it slightly difficult to fire a lazy slob was sometimes the only thing protecting people from being dumped at the slightest inconvenience. That the Unions had, in fact, arranged all the things which we take for granted as part of a civilised working life, all of which was now open to being ‘negotiated’ away (at the discretion of the employer, who usually had all the cards — is it still negotiation with a gun to your head?) That all those jobs available for the taking were low-end service jobs, which now had no rights, less pay, no security. It was still as hard as ever to get one of the increasingly few mid- to high-level jobs, where you could conceive of planning more than a fortnight ahead.
And the attempts to soften the edges of this travesty were at once transparent, did not solve the problems, and worked precisely against the stated purpose for the legislation in the first place, thus pleasing no-one at all.
He and his Minister for the Protection of Aborigines ignored Aborigines for almost their entire regime, taking their opinions from 1960s history books, assimilationist sockpuppets, and useful ideologues. Then another report came out pointing out exactly how bad it is for Aborigines. Claiming to be deeply concerned for the children, Brough and Howard proceeded to ignore every single recommendation of that report, and every other report on the subject where anyone actually asked an aboriginal what they thought, and proceeded to stage a Military Invasion of the Aboriginal lands of the Northern Territory. Anyone asking critical questions were rebuffed as somehow supporting Child Abuse, and furthermore were accused of having been complicit in the howling down of the fine people in the Howard government, accusing them of racism at every turn and hurting their feelings. Q: “Isn't this racist?” A: “How dare you say that, you always accuse us of that, you're just trying to use abuse to force us to follow your political agenda. You filthy Child Abuser”.
The Invasion went in very loudly with the Army and a few Federal police, who with great fanfare sent medicos around to all the communities they could looking for child abuse, and they found exactly nothing. Except for more evidence that things really were as bad as everyone had been saying. Oh, and a couple of cases where Child Abusers were caught and tried. By police, as part of their normal duties, in other states where the Invasion had nothing to do with it. What the Invasion was really about came when the issue of Land came up. It turned out that doctors wasn't part of the ‘solution’: Private land ownership was. To this extent, powerful communities got a choice: rent the land to the Federal Government for it to be on-let to individuals for extended leases (99-year leases are implied), or be eminently domained and have it sold off wholesale. Not-powerful communities weren't given the choice.
This is just a continuation of the old treatment of the Aborigines as Children. It used to be that salaries were garnished in their entirety, because those Aboriginals (who are just like Children) could not be trusted with money, so the Government would keep it on their behalf. Of course, it never found its way back to the person who had earned it, but at least they didn't waste it on grog, hey?
Well, now those Children could not be trusted to be able to chose how they wanted to live. Obviously, private land ownership is the only rational system, so they must be forced to live in this way. We're giving them the choice to buy the land they live on! Why would they possibly chose anything else? It's not rational to chose anything else, so we'll just remove that choice. In the same way as I give my daughters the ‘choice’ between peanut butter toast or vegemite toast, but not chocolate or coffee. Children should have a choice, but be sure to make it a choice between permissible options.
And did I imply that wage garnishing was over? Oh, no, they'd just changed the method. You see, there was a set of programs which were designed to do the very things that the Government was saying was most important: generate self-sufficient economies with working educated members of the community contributing to the general wellbeing. Well, the Government had decided that those Children could not be trusted not to buy alcohol with their money, and it would be unfair to decent White people to restrict the sale of alcohol, so the only way was to ... garnish the welfare payments of Aboriginals to ensure that they spent their money only on what the Government said they could. But the people on the aforementioned programs weren't on welfare: they had proper jobs, with proper wages, which they could not be prevented from spending on grog if they so chose. This was unacceptable, and the solution was to kill those programs outright, every one, and put all of those people back on the dole, which could then be garnished.
Difficult to see how that could not be seen as treating Aboriginals as Children, really. Except if you were so sunk in sycophancy and cheerleading that whatever the Howard government did must be right, because it was Howard doing it.
And there's more, but I grow weary. And I think you get the point.
I'm glad that Howard has gone. I'm glad he lost the election, I'm glad he lost his seat. On the night, as he conceded, I felt a little sorry for the old man, so thoroughly and universally rejected.
Then I remembered everything above. And I remembered why I hate John Howard, and why I'm glad he's gone.
Now it's up to Kevin, and Julia, and me, and you, and everyone in this goddamned country, to pick up the pieces and put back a decent, caring, civil society.
To do something about Climate Change, before it gets worse.
To do something about helping the Aboriginals feel like part of this country, rather than subjects of it.
To return a crime to being a crime, and not some symptom of how those {Sudanese/Muslims/Lebanese/Asians/Dagos/Catholics/Unionists} are all violent alien monsters, just waiting to rape our women and impose horrible laws upon us decent WASPs.
To tell George that he is wrong, and stop enabling the sad stupid fuck and his gang of psychopaths.
To finally build all those things which have been put off and left to rot for eleven years.
To fix all the holes where the government has attacked its own people for not wanting what Howard wanted.
To be able, once again, to walk the streets of any country with an Australian flag, and be proud of it.
Here is that essay.
The Stupid Economy
People keep burbling on about how wonderful an economic manager Howard is. And it is true that the economy seems to be doing well.
Seems. Myself, I think that the economy is running mainly on inertia, and we're going to have a Wile E. Coyote moment disturbingly soon, when the Resources Boom trails off, and the current US issues catch up, and people apply the word ‘bubble’ to the housing market. At the moment, the exchange rate looks pretty good relative to the US. But this is largely because the US is falling, not because we're rising, and they can only fall so far before the rope tied between us pulls us down after them. But I'm not an international economist, and this is unsophisticated back-of-the-envelope stuff from first principles. I'm sure
erudito would rip it to shreds. But I'm not finished.Howard shouldn't even have been running the economy, not at all. First: he was not the treasurer, Costello was. If Howard really was running the economy to the extent to which he is given credit, then Costello was even more of a sock puppet than he looked. (Maybe that's why he bravely turned his tail and fled every time it came down to it — he knew that he was hollow.) And when Howard was treasurer, then the economy was in worse state than the worst of the Labor examples he liked to scare the children with. So much for that. But then, a large amount of the economy was contingent on circumstances outside the government's control anyway. The Resources Boom. Various trends in international markets. China's rise as a customer. So it would be interesting to see what Howard/Costello's performance was once all that stuff is factored out. My bet is that it will actually be quite poor.
This is because of how the economy was run: it was run like a small business, or a household. Now, as a small business, it was run relatively well, all things considered. Except for a couple of points:
i. there was next to no re-investment of savings back into infrastructure, not even for repairs. Gods forbid that there was any new infrastructure set up.
ii. Much apparent saving was made by plumping up the bank balance by selling off the furniture on eBay. Which is fine if the furniture was going to be replaced by something worth more, or was superfluous and just taking up space. But no new furniture was bought, and when it was discovered that we need a kitchen table and chairs after all, they were all rented back in a way that abnegated the initial flush of money in a couple of years. More than that, Howard's fanatical adherence to the Glorious Free Market blinded him utterly to the increasingly evident detail that it doesn't work like he thinks it does.
iii. A country is not a small business, and the economics don't scale. You don't just add zeros to the end of the entries and expect the spreadsheet to work the same. There are deeply and fundamentally important differences between a Nation's economy and any human-sized budget, but Howard and his gang seemed oblivious of that concept. And the economists were divided between those who thought that Howard had somehow changed the laws of economics, and those who simply weren't listened to. Hmm. The Cheerleaders and the Irrelevant. That's a division which we saw a lot of.
Going back to the fire sale of the nation's assets, take Telstra as a prime example. Once upon a time we had a world-beating telecommunications organisation. Sure there was bureaucratic overload, and a certain degree of arrogance, but it was also to largely justified. The R&D labs were extensive and busy and recognised worldwide, and the technology was up there with the best. Howard reckoned that if a government bureaucracy had done all this, how much better would a lean, mean private company do it?
Not very well, it turns out. When Telstra was exposed to the concept of risk, it became a coward. The R&D labs were shrunk and closed all over the country. Profit and efficiency, rather than effectiveness and service, became the watchwords. And because you can't have one private company with a monopoly on a service, competition was introduced which completely screwed the pooch. Where there used to be improvements to the telecoms infrastructure based on need and technical reasons, now there are interminable fights over who gets to own what, and how much everyone gets paid, and the end result is that nothing ever happens. Indeed, even repairs have been falling behind. Which is not surprising at all when you consider that Telecoms is an infrastructure service, and there are aspects of it which are not amenable to being chopped up and sold in bits.
And there is the thing: for all the billions of dollars in false savings, in padding out the bank account but with the kids' credit cards still going full bore, what has any of this been spent on? Where is the infrastructure? Where are the projects? Where is the landscaping and the new shed and the newly paved driveway? He's thrown a couple of parties, but all we've been left with is the empties. There have been plenty of excuses: about how it was the private industries' responsibility to upgrade things, or the States', but if the Federal Government doesn't have the responsibility to spend any of the billions of dollars it collects, then what the hell is it for? It seems that the answer to that is to mould the nation into the Liberal Party image, whether it wants to be or not.
Not the economy, stupid!
The field in which Howard did the most damage, however, was not the economy. It was, basically, everything else. It was under Howard's watch that Australians started claiming to be New Zealanders while overseas. It was Howard and his gang who made us ashamed to be Australians. Well, except for a few, who thought that Howard was doing the right things to make us proud Australians, but those people's vision of Australia was just as shame-inducing, or more so.
Foreign Affairs
He hitched us so tightly to George W. Bush's wagon, that we had very little slack left to make our own decisions when it came to international relations. Where we could make our own decisions was were George simply couldn't care less what we did: were it had no impact on the US, or to our usefulness to the US. When Bush zigged, we zigged. When he zagged we zagged. And George is not a considerate driver: the wagon to which we were hitched so tightly was — is — careening all over the road, forcing some others out of the way, running over others, playing chicken with more. And us dragged along behind. When Bush invaded Afghanistan, with some justification, then we were among the first to join in. And there was some justification for that. But then he invaded Iraq. Now the chickenhawks are all sitting back in their armchairs talking about how much of a monster Hussein was, and how whatever the justification given at any given time, it was a Right, Just and True Reason why Iraq Delenda Est, but that is all bullshit. Iraq was invaded so that Bush could parade his big brass manly cojones all over the Middle East, pour encourager les autres. It wasn't about al Qa'eda: there simply was no link, not at all, none, whatever bullshit the chickenhawks invent or distort. Hussein was precisely the sort of liberal modernising Muslim that bin Laden couldn't stand, and bin Laden is the sort of undermining fanatical lunatic that Hussein would not allow outside his own family. That it might have been the oil was given a boost when the Museums were looted while the Ministry of Oil was locked down immediately. It wasn't about democracy, judging by the thugs, con artists and sycophants who constitute the ‘government of Iraq’. It wasn't about getting rid of a Monster, well, it was, but not for the right reasons. It was about Bush telling the entire Middle East “Don't fuck with us, or else we'll fucking stomp on you.”
It is, im my opinion, a good thing that we got rid of Howard before Bush gets around to smashing Iran into dust. The Iran Delenda Est rhetoric has been thick and fast, and evidence has at best been a slight impediment. But all that's a slightly different rant.
Pater Familias
Domestically, Howard was quick to accuse others of being over the line ... whenever it was convenient to do so. He was so quick off the mark to abuse such evil monsters as Unionists, or the ABC, or drowning refugees, that one must assume that if he didn't say anything, then he approved. He demonised the foreign. Muslims,
Malevolent or Incompetent... who can tell?
His bunch of thugs became experts at the “no-one told me!” ‘defence’. It is hard to think of another government that so consistently defended against accusations of bastardry and corruption with the defence of incompetence. Ruddock, then Vanstone, then Andrews all relied heavily on the “I didn't know, no-one told me” defence every time another revelation about how deeply sick the Department of Immigration was (is). Never did they take a single skerrick of responsibility. It was always someone else's fault. Similarly with the AWB farce. Similarly with the “Children Overboard” farce. Similarly with the SIEV-X tragedy. And with all those people wrongly locked up for years.
Contempt for public debate
He institutionalised lies as part of government. I mean, it was always a given that politicians lie, but never had the concept become so openly embraced. The Non-Core Promise is the single most emblematic concept from Howard's reign. He openly said that he reserved the right to do whatever he wanted, in the teeth of what he may have said. And people voted for him anyway... right up until Work‘choices’, when people finally realised, I think, that Howard's whim was not divinely inspired, and was not benign. That he had reserved to himself the right to do whatever he wanted, and all you could do was trust him. Workchoices finally convinced enough people that you could not trust him.
“Dickensian” is not a dirty word.
Ah, yes, Work‘choices’. A wonderfully Orwellian title for what was presented as an attack on Workers Rights, on the basis that workers had too many of them. The point of Work‘choices’ was to give all the choices to the employers, on the basis that they shouldn't have to care so much about the people dependent on them: their workers. The rhetoric all turned around the lazy worker who couldn't be fired, the Unions who tell employers what to do, the ease with which you could just get another job if things go pear-shaped.
Unfortunately for Howard and Hocking, people realised quite quickly that the same thing which made it slightly difficult to fire a lazy slob was sometimes the only thing protecting people from being dumped at the slightest inconvenience. That the Unions had, in fact, arranged all the things which we take for granted as part of a civilised working life, all of which was now open to being ‘negotiated’ away (at the discretion of the employer, who usually had all the cards — is it still negotiation with a gun to your head?) That all those jobs available for the taking were low-end service jobs, which now had no rights, less pay, no security. It was still as hard as ever to get one of the increasingly few mid- to high-level jobs, where you could conceive of planning more than a fortnight ahead.
And the attempts to soften the edges of this travesty were at once transparent, did not solve the problems, and worked precisely against the stated purpose for the legislation in the first place, thus pleasing no-one at all.
They're like Children, honestly!
He and his Minister for the Protection of Aborigines ignored Aborigines for almost their entire regime, taking their opinions from 1960s history books, assimilationist sockpuppets, and useful ideologues. Then another report came out pointing out exactly how bad it is for Aborigines. Claiming to be deeply concerned for the children, Brough and Howard proceeded to ignore every single recommendation of that report, and every other report on the subject where anyone actually asked an aboriginal what they thought, and proceeded to stage a Military Invasion of the Aboriginal lands of the Northern Territory. Anyone asking critical questions were rebuffed as somehow supporting Child Abuse, and furthermore were accused of having been complicit in the howling down of the fine people in the Howard government, accusing them of racism at every turn and hurting their feelings. Q: “Isn't this racist?” A: “How dare you say that, you always accuse us of that, you're just trying to use abuse to force us to follow your political agenda. You filthy Child Abuser”.
The Invasion went in very loudly with the Army and a few Federal police, who with great fanfare sent medicos around to all the communities they could looking for child abuse, and they found exactly nothing. Except for more evidence that things really were as bad as everyone had been saying. Oh, and a couple of cases where Child Abusers were caught and tried. By police, as part of their normal duties, in other states where the Invasion had nothing to do with it. What the Invasion was really about came when the issue of Land came up. It turned out that doctors wasn't part of the ‘solution’: Private land ownership was. To this extent, powerful communities got a choice: rent the land to the Federal Government for it to be on-let to individuals for extended leases (99-year leases are implied), or be eminently domained and have it sold off wholesale. Not-powerful communities weren't given the choice.
This is just a continuation of the old treatment of the Aborigines as Children. It used to be that salaries were garnished in their entirety, because those Aboriginals (who are just like Children) could not be trusted with money, so the Government would keep it on their behalf. Of course, it never found its way back to the person who had earned it, but at least they didn't waste it on grog, hey?
Well, now those Children could not be trusted to be able to chose how they wanted to live. Obviously, private land ownership is the only rational system, so they must be forced to live in this way. We're giving them the choice to buy the land they live on! Why would they possibly chose anything else? It's not rational to chose anything else, so we'll just remove that choice. In the same way as I give my daughters the ‘choice’ between peanut butter toast or vegemite toast, but not chocolate or coffee. Children should have a choice, but be sure to make it a choice between permissible options.
And did I imply that wage garnishing was over? Oh, no, they'd just changed the method. You see, there was a set of programs which were designed to do the very things that the Government was saying was most important: generate self-sufficient economies with working educated members of the community contributing to the general wellbeing. Well, the Government had decided that those Children could not be trusted not to buy alcohol with their money, and it would be unfair to decent White people to restrict the sale of alcohol, so the only way was to ... garnish the welfare payments of Aboriginals to ensure that they spent their money only on what the Government said they could. But the people on the aforementioned programs weren't on welfare: they had proper jobs, with proper wages, which they could not be prevented from spending on grog if they so chose. This was unacceptable, and the solution was to kill those programs outright, every one, and put all of those people back on the dole, which could then be garnished.
Difficult to see how that could not be seen as treating Aboriginals as Children, really. Except if you were so sunk in sycophancy and cheerleading that whatever the Howard government did must be right, because it was Howard doing it.
And there's more, but I grow weary. And I think you get the point.
I'm glad that Howard has gone. I'm glad he lost the election, I'm glad he lost his seat. On the night, as he conceded, I felt a little sorry for the old man, so thoroughly and universally rejected.
Then I remembered everything above. And I remembered why I hate John Howard, and why I'm glad he's gone.
Now it's up to Kevin, and Julia, and me, and you, and everyone in this goddamned country, to pick up the pieces and put back a decent, caring, civil society.
To do something about Climate Change, before it gets worse.
To do something about helping the Aboriginals feel like part of this country, rather than subjects of it.
To return a crime to being a crime, and not some symptom of how those {Sudanese/Muslims/Lebanese/Asians/Dagos/Catholics/Unionists} are all violent alien monsters, just waiting to rape our women and impose horrible laws upon us decent WASPs.
To tell George that he is wrong, and stop enabling the sad stupid fuck and his gang of psychopaths.
To finally build all those things which have been put off and left to rot for eleven years.
To fix all the holes where the government has attacked its own people for not wanting what Howard wanted.
To be able, once again, to walk the streets of any country with an Australian flag, and be proud of it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-06 07:36 am (UTC)Davey, thats going in my memories file.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-06 07:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 01:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 01:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 04:11 am (UTC)A wonderful summation of Johnny's horrible flaws and failings. It still saddens me greatly that the lying little rodent got elected so many times, but this election has finally given me hope for our country again.
(Followed the link from
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-07 03:25 pm (UTC)When the Dallas Morning News crowed about Bush being the country's first MBA President in 2000, I couldn't stop screaming: I'd worked for CEOs just like him, and each and every one of them was an arrogant, preening fratboy who lied incessantly to his charges about how "we're in this for the long haul" and "I'm watching out for everyone," meanwhile selling the company out from underneath everyone, stealing the money intended to pay for Unemployment benefits and 401(k) contributions, and preparing to spend the rest of their lives in a life of comfort and ease. It's also no surprise that Southern Methodist University is the only educational organization ethically challenged enough to want the George W. Bush Presidential Library, as SMU's business school cranks out similar sociopaths every semester. (A local joke is that SMU's MBA program exists solely so the school's most notorious party animals can get something from eight years of keggers besides a coke habit and syphilis.) But state and federal law has to protect these little snowflakes from the big bad employees.
All I can say otherwise is that I truly envy Australia: you have a little idea of how we felt back in 1974 when Nixon quit rather than go to jail. Now if we can just get rid of our own unbearable cross, we might feel the same glee.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-08 06:08 am (UTC)