From the Opening Plenary of the Now We The People conference, 23.8.03, University of Technology, Sydney

Senator Kerry Nettle

Thank you, it's good to be here with everyone and have the opportunity to discuss where Howard and Bush are taking us, and then to have the opportunity over the next couple of days to talk about where we want this country to be taken, and how we put in place strategies for being a part of taking the country where we want it to go.

I'm bringing today a Federal Greens perspective to the debate, and I want to start by pointing out someone who I really think exemplifies the close relationship between the Bush Administration and the Howard Administration […and that's Tom Schaeffer, the US Ambassador to Australia…] who took the ALP off for a meeting about their public disrespect for George W Bush in the Parliament and took them aside to have a go at them about that one. And then just last month it was, Tom Schaeffer thought nothing of attending a Liberal Party function with Alexander Downer in Alexander Downer's electorate. So the Ambassador for the USA Administration thought it was OK to go to a Liberal Party function in Alexander Downer's electorate. Now this man is not a diplomat; this man has never been a diplomat, this man is a mate of George W Bush. Together they bought a baseball team, and then he stayed on as president of the baseball team when George Bush got elected as Texas Governor, then when Bush got into the Presidency he took his friend Tom out of the - where was he working? - stadium real estate consultancy and made him the ambassador to Australia. This man is not a diplomat.

Now I think the Scheaffer approach to diplomacy doesn't just highlight the close links between the Liberal Party and the Bush Administration which of course that Liberal Party function which is a symptom of, but it is also a link between an attitude we see coming from the Bush and Howard administrations in he way in which they do politics. And that's what I want to talk about today. It's aggressive, it's personalised, and it's elitist, in the way in which they carry out their politics. Other people are talking about particular issues; I want to talk about a modus operandi of both the administrations, in the way in which they engage with the public on a whole range of different issues.

It is characterised - and we see it here in Australia - by willingness of the government to mislead, deceive, and to lie to the Parliament and to the electorate. Some will say lies are nothing new in Parliament, but I think the Howard Administration has taken this to a great extent in terms of the number of lies, in terms of the significance of the lies, and also the motivation behind the lies of the Howard Government, are not just your normal politician-covering-their-arse kind of lies. That's not what we're seeing, it's something far more significant than that. When it comes to winning elections on the lie of children being throw overboard, when it comes to SIEV-X, when it comes to when we made a commitment to go to war, for what reason we made a commitment to go to war, whether there are weapons of mass destruction, and the last couple of weeks we've had the ethanol subsidy fiasco.

All of those lies are indicative of a steamrolling PR campaign to facilitate public support for government decisions that have already been made. What we see in terms of the way the government makes decisions - the government comes up with an outcome that they know will bring benefit to themselves and the vested interests that they protect in their government of this country, then they implement those policies, and at the same time as they implement those policies they bring on board PR companies to run campaigns to convince the general population that these decisions that are being made are in the interests of the Australian public. So, having started out making that decision on the basis of "this is in our interests", then they bring on the PR companies to try and convince everyone that it is in the Australian public interest, for whatever it proposes they take or forward on different issues.

Now this is a fundamentalist style of politics to run, this is an elitist style of politics to run, this is a politics where there is no consultation with the public. Interaction with the public is through the PR companies. It is also an aggressive style of politics. People see Tom Schaeffer as a pushy American but it would be a mistake to take that down as an accident of culture - it is a general approach. We are seeing a level of bravado, of tough talk, threat, insult - and ultimately violence - that is displayed by the Bush Administration. It is a result of a calculated abuse of the power of leadership.

It is an interpretation that is born perhaps because of a realisation that the prestige of office allows much more scope to manipulate public opinion than was previously thought. The Bush and Howard Administrations use their positions of power and leadership to manipulate public opinion.

Now of course the times have to be right, and the lies have to be bold, and you have to be prepared to bet big. But the Bush and Howard Administrations have shows that George Bush and John Howard are leaders who are prepared in their circumstances to manipulate the public mood. And they don't care what lies, deceptions or scaremongering and bring up of fear they use along the way as a part of their strategy for strengthening their power, their control, and their leadership.

For George Bush it's been a dramatic expansion of the US's global, military, and imperialist activities that have been facilitated with his "you're either with us or against us" way in which he does politics. For John Howard, at the same time as George W Bush was making these sorts of comments, he and his ministers were weaving an elaborate and audacious myth about baby-abusing subhuman invaders threatening our way of life, and in illustrating this compelling yarn with ample military props, including helicopters, warships and, of course, the beloved SAS.

It's worth noting here that the success of the Coalition in the leadership-led manipulation of the public mood was significantly assisted by the failure of the Opposition to rise to the challenge. I think one example of that comes from the electorate of Calare, where Peter Andren is an independent there. That's a conservative electorate in a lot of ways, and I know that Peter Andren has been going around and speaking to the street about his support for the rights of asylum-seekers. He faced abuse, he faced people yelling and spitting at him in his campaign when he went round and he talked to people on the street about the pro-refugee steps he was taking in his electorate. He got a 15% swing towards him in that electorate during that election campaign.

Now some people might think that there's less aggressiveness in Howard's style of doing politics as opposed to George W Bush, but certainly the "we'll decide who'll come to this country and in what circumstances they come" line is firmly entrenched in the George W Bush tradition. We also see in Howard a Christian conservative of the 1950s church district cricket player and Bradman enthusiast. But it's within this conservatism that we find a conflict in the direction that Howard is taking us - a conflict between this and the other strong tradition that both these leaders share, that masquerades as Liberal free market capitalism but is in fact more a kind of crony capitalism that tips the playing field in favour of big and influential players in the economy.

The tension exists because the kind of family oriented community oriented mateship and barbecues vision that Howard would like to realise, is hard to see thriving in a deregulated, user pays, dog eat dog world that his social and economic policies endorse. He talks much about mateship, but his social policies don't create an environment where mateship and a sense of community can thrive.

In terms of social policies, both George W and John Howard are anti-gay marriage and equal rights, prohibitionist in the drug debate, they are environmental vandals, they are climate criminals, they have an atrocious track record when it comes to indigenous rights and these strongly held personal beliefs may sometimes struggle to find articulation in policy detail, but their power still finds ample expression through being set in a leadership context. Many would have dismissed Howard's recent comments on gay marriages as stupid and irrelevant, but the fact that the Prime Minister made those comments brings them into the debate. And it is the same thing in relation to the death penalty. The fact that it is the Prime Minister making comments on the death penalty brings it into the public debate, and engenders a sense of conservatism in relation to gay marriages, homophobia and in relation to the death penalty engenders a sense of revenge within the Australian community.

Now the battle against leadership that we see in George W and that we see in John Howard requires leadership. It requires conviction politics that deals with principles and that deals with vision. It requires bravery and it requires belief, and I know that that is the politics behind Now We The People. The Greens also hope to play that kind of role and those kinds of politics, and we call on others to do the same.

Thanks.

Kerry Nettle is the Federal Greens Senator for NSW

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