Exporting the 'ALP model' to Britain
By John Pilger In a recent article in the Guardian, the [British] Labour MP Denis MacShane lauded the "compelling model" of the Australian Labor government. "What is the secret of its success?" he asked, listing among the reasons the "break-up" of the Australian business and media elite and a commitment to an "internationalist agenda of human rights". MacShane's piece was the latest attempt to give credence to a winning model for Tony Blair's new Labour. Both the British and Australian press have made much of Blair's "admiration" for Paul Keating and, while the two men have little in common personally, the political similarities are striking. MacShane's piece was headlined "the left-wing Wizards of Oz". Yet, like Blair, Keating has nothing remotely to do with the left. On the contrary, during the mid-1980s, Keating as treasurer and Prime Minister Bob Hawke pioneered Thatcherism by another name. Turning political meaning and language inside out, they baffled the Australian electorate; and this has been Blair's tactic. The left became the right: indeed a virulent "new right". Hawke was little more than the local representative of multinaÂtional capital. He and Keating courted business like born-again evangelists (just as Blair and Brown are doing now in Britain) and set in motion the greatest redistribution of wealth in AusÂtralia's history. Keating deregulated and privatised to such an extent that he all but eliminated the base of an economy that had once produced the most equitable spending of personal income in the world. After only six years of Labor in office, Australia had a new elite of 200 "entrepreneurs" with a combined wealth of $25 billion. One percent of the population owned 20% of the national wealth — twice as much as when Labor won office in 1983. Hawke and Keating, according to MacShane, "decided to break apart the coalition of business, city and particularly media interests that were arraigned against the Australian Labor Party". The truth is that in 1986, Keating introduced a media bill that cut the diversity of television ownership from 25 proprietors to a handful of monopolists. Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer between them made $1 billion profit overnight, tax free. At the same time Keating ignored the recommendations of the Foreign Investment Review Board and allowed Murdoch to take over the country's biggest newspaper group, the Herald and Weekly Times, giving him almost 70% of the metropolitan press. Murdoch was now Labor's most important ally. His Australian newspaper made Hawke "Australian of the year". His company, News Ltd, paid as little as 13 cents in the dollar corporate tax when the official rate was 49 cents. Such benefits were routine for members of what became known as the "Order of Mates". Hawke and Keating did not stop there. In what the Australian Journalists' Association called "an extraordinary campaign" they publicly attacked and denigrated the National Times on Sunday. Already in financial difficulties, the paper that had exposed ties of corruption between Labor and big business reeled under a barrage of the government's charges of fabrication and distortion — all of them unsubstantiated. The National Times on Sunday soon closed, leaving Australia with the most monopolised and least free press in the western world. According to MacShane the Australian Labor "model" built a "coherent alliance with the trade union movement ... so that they can be partners in the workplace with companies". This "partnership" has produced an unofficial unemployment rate of over l0% and diminished the value of wages. The desired result was a shift of some A$30 billion from wages to profits. Today, in "young" Australia, youth unemployment exceeds 34%. In the land that pioneered child benefits, pensions and the minimum wage, poverty is endemic, with one in five children growing up below the official poverty line. The most puzzling praise by MacShane is that, under Labor, "Australia changed its foreign policy significantly in favour of an aggressive support for human rights". The opposite is true. The Keating government has effectively tied its foreign policy to unquestioning support for the dictatorship in Indonesia, which has one of the worst human rights records of the 20th century. The Australian government not only trains those Indonesian special forces responsible for the worst atrocities in East Timor, but it has welcomed, as an honoured guest, the general who ordered the massacre of more than 270 unarmed civilians in Dili in 1991. The Australian government has consistently apologised for Indonesian brutalities in West Papua. Australian military aid has allowed the government of Papua New Guinea to wage war against dissidents in Bougainville — where Australian mining companies do virtually as they like. Having kept aid going to Thailand while the Thai military slaughtered hundreds of its citizens on the streets of Bangkok, Australia has backed the Thai regime in its specious denials of helping to sustain the Khmer Rouge. MacShane wrote that "encouragement was given [by the Keating government] to non-government organisations to engage the pro-human rights activities of young people who felt they had in Canberra a government committed to an internationalist agenda on issues like the environment and support for peace and human rights". But if anything has distinguished Labor's years in office, it is the cynicism of young people about politicians, especially on the issue of peace and disarmament. This can be traced back to Hawke's invitation to the Reagan administration to test the MX missile in Australian waters, and to his attempts to undermine the New Zealand government's anti-nuclear stand, along with the Treaty of Raratonga, which called for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Australian opposition to the current French nuclear tests is entirely the result of public opinion incensed by its governÂment's initial appeasement of the French. In the centre of Australia, two spy bases, Pine Gap and Nurrungar, are run by and for the benefit of Washington, specifically the US's "Star Wars" program, which will bring back "theatre" weapons and threaten the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Recent ironic twists for the Keating government hold lessons for the British electorate and for Blair. The most intriguing was Murdoch's recent description of the Australian economy as a "disgrace", indicating that he was bored with Labor. Murdoch has since given Keating a new approval rating. Even so, Keating must be miffed at the attack by his old "mate" as it seems it was Keating who encouraged Blair to win over Murdoch by promoting a deal that, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, "could further enrich the Australian-born media magnate and help Blair get a better deal from the traditionally hostile Murdoch press". The Herald called it "a deal made in paradise". Blair's mainly rhetorical speech to the British Labour Party's Brighton conference contained a curious reference to "wiring-up" Britain to computers and "the knowledge race". He revealed that British Telecom had promised to "wire-up" every school, college, hospital and library in return for further deregulation. What he failed to mention was that a Murdoch company, MCI, the biggest American telecommunications group, would very likely be the key provider of BT's equipment. "The more you earn", said Blair, "the more you learn" — a sentiment that Murdoch would applaud. The lesson for Blair is that Murdoch dumps favourites as summarily as he adopts them. The more general lesson, one of many that MacShane and other enthusiasts of the "compelling" Australian model omit to mention, is drawn from the fact that Keating is odds-on to lose next year's general election. If Keating does lose, it will be because ordinary voters are emerging from the political and ideological disorientation that caused many Australians to continue believing Labor represented them when clearly it did not. "Seeing Labor leaders rubbing shoulders with and enjoying the company of the media moguls", said the Sydney Morning Herald, "is undoubtedly a factor which has made blue-collar workers feel their government is out of touch with their concerns". In desperation, Keating is now campaigning "to win back the workers". In Britain, in spite of a dense, Blairite fog in the media, a similar disillusionment is well advanced. Blair and his clever people seem untroubled by this. They believe that by abandoning the concerns of ordinary people and becoming a "safe" conservative party, new Labour will win the "middle ground" and form a government. But recently, a leading London advertising executive close to Labour disclosed privately that opinion polls showing Labour well ahead were "highly deceptive". Only internal "focus reports" were reliable, he said, adding, "With these we were able to tell Kinnock had lost a week before the 1992 election. In the end, what will matter this time is the perceived difference between the parties. If there is none, anything could happen".[Abridged from an article first printed in New Statesman & Society.]