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

Tanya Plibersek MHR

In Kerry Chikarowski's first attempt to become Premier of New South Wales, you might remember one of her television ads. She was down at the Rocks, beautiful blue sky, beautiful blue water, and she was talking about when our ancestors came here escaping religious and political persecution. It was a direct rip-off of an American TV ad, and Kerry was rightly bucketed for not realising that our history of settlement is quite different to the Untied States' history of settlement.

That thoughtless borrowing of a political ad is symbolic of so much more. We pick up policies, not just ads, quite thoughtlessly. Foreign policy is quite obvious at the moment, but things like 'three strikes and you're out' and 'just say no to drugs' are direct rip-offs. It is really this that thinking people object to most in Australian politics.

It is interesting that two of the speakers have already had to say that they are not anti-American, and I also have to repeat that I am not anti-American. Because any time that we criticise the Untied States, the finger is immediately pointed. If you are not prepared to plod along, uncritically adopting the US policy that we decide to import into Australia, you get accused immediately of being anti-American. It doesn't happen for example when you criticise China for their record on Tibet. You don't get called anti-Chinese. It is a real problem that our leaders are not able to distinguish what is good in American life and policy from what is not good for us. Of course we have every right and it is important to have a constructive relationship with them, to adopt what is good, but the idea that we must be the unquestioning Deputy Sheriff in the Pacific is the problem that we face.

It is that plodding adherence to US policy that is the problem.
I want to talk briefly about the two areas that you see the most harmful influence from the United States, and they are social policy and economic policy. And economic policy is the driver of foreign policy, and I group those two together.

Starting with economic policy, it is plain that US foreign policy is fundamentally driven by their economic interests at home and around the world. We get laughed at sometimes for talking about a political-industrial-military nexus. People think that is a hoary old cliché of the left. But without preaching to the converted, you all recognise that the link between what happens in military industries and other industries drives foreign policy in the United States.

Look at the links between the sugar industry, the tobacco industry and the pharmaceutical industry. The big donations that they give to both of the major political parties in the United States absolutely drive foreign policy.

My Honours thesis was about cigarette advertising in developing countries, looking at the way those southern state Senators who relied on tobacco donations were prepared to bully countries like the Philippines, Japan, Middle Eastern countries that wanted to introduce the same restrictions on tobacco advertising to protect their kids as the United States has. These countries were bullied with the foreign aid money, tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers if they introduced those protections. This is a terrific example of how big money controls the US political system. That will never change until they come up with some changes to their campaign financing. That is increasingly true of Australian politics as well. We need limits on how much money parties can spend on electronic advertising, that is the single biggest political expense in most campaigns. If you put a limit on that you would have much less reliance on political parties going out to companies to beg for the almighty dollar.

I don't need to be the one today to draw the link between military and industrial power and US foreign policy, but what interests me is how willing the Howard government is to play that Deputy Sheriff role in the Pacific, and how absolutely irrelevant it is to the United States that they have this sniveling lapdog prepared to follow them around.

Australia was completely left out of the talks on what was going to happen in Iraq because we are irrelevant to the United States militarily. We have to protect our own interests and have a foreign policy that suits our agenda in the region, that focuses on our region in the Pacific and Asia.

We go along pretending that the United States is the only country that has a right to be a super power. This will be an ongoing problem for us. Other countries have an absolutely legitimate desire not to be at the mercy of the United States. While ever we say that the United States is the only country that is allowed to have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and spend half of the world's military budget, and not other countries, we have a problem and other countries will react that way.

It is a particular problem when the United States talks its 'first strike' rhetoric. The United States has decided that it alone has the right to attack other countries before they attack the United States. What does that mean for our region? Why shouldn't India and Pakistan think that they have the right to attack first? Why shouldn't North and South Korea each think that they have the right to attack first?

Once we say that international solutions for problems between countries are irrelevant, and that the strongest country can attack first, and has the right to do that, we have problems. And the problems will be greatest in our region.

While economic influences from the United States are pushing us into uncharted ground, their influence in the area of social values is taking us back to a crueler, less tolerant times.

For those shocked by footage in some countries of people celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, how about those US fundamentalist Christian teachers who went on national TV and said, 'This is God's punishment on us for allowing abortion and homosexuality in this country'. What an illustration that it is fundamentalists anywhere that are the problem rather than communities that are prepared to live and let live!

The United States social policy continually prioritises the nuclear family with married parents as the only legitimate social relationship in the community. John Howard has adopted this and used it to his advantage spectacularly. No one was talking about IVF for single mothers before John Howard raised it. Not many people were talking about gay marriage before John Howard raised it. He raises it to set up a 'them-and-us' dichotomy, it suits his interests completely to do that. You saw it with migration, with 'children overboard', with comments of 'who would like these people here, who could do this type of thing to their children?' The government has never corrected the record there, those statements about those parents.

If you look at social security recipients, again they are setting up a 'them-and-us' dichotomy. Work-for-the-dole is all about 'lazy dole bludgers', we all know that. But how about Disability Support Pensioners? How about Carer's Pensioners? Parents who are caring for kids with severe illnesses were told three months ago by Minister Amanda Vanstone that they were going to be means-tested and work-tested, and examined when he illnesses their children have and the care they need is clear.

This ignores the fact that most Australians during their life will receive social security payments. The government is saying to people who may be receiving Family Tax Benefit Part B, or some other benefit, 'It is not you we're after, not the deserving recipient, it's all these other bastards leeching off the system'.

Howard's recent entry into the debate on paid maternity leave gets him a great headline, but he will not do a thing for women working. The Baby Bonus is $500 million un-means-tested that would easily pay for 14 weeks maternity leave for every working woman, and across the board.

The latest inquiry into automatic shared custody is another way of buying into the disgruntled fathers' movement that supports Howard's 'them-and-us' dichotomy. The Family Court is obliged to make decisions in the best interests of children, and if children's best interests are served by sharing equal time with each parent, then the Family court can make that order today. Howard is not interested in the facts of this matter. He is not interested in what happens to women who leave a relationship because of domestic violence, who have their male partners use children against them. What he's interested in is buying into an issue that plays big in the pubs. And that's what he calls it, the 'pub test' - all these blokes who don't like paying their child support - and that inquiry passes the 'pub test'.

The 'them-and-us' rhetoric that Howard has set up for political reasons is not just rhetoric. This government continually punishes the weak and rewards the wealthy. We saw it with migration - you can buy your way in if you donate enough to the Liberal Party. You can also see it in the pattern of restrictions on parental visas in recent years. There are 40,000 parents of Australian citizens who would like to be reunited with their family. The government wants to introduce a system where if you pay enough, your parents can be bumped up the queue. It is the same with the Disability Support Pensioners. But tax breaks under this government have gone to the wealthy. They've done nothing about family trusts. It is a paten of ripping money off from the poor, and transferring it to wealthier families.

The final thing I want to talk about is drugs policy. We in Australia have always had an evidence-based approach to drugs policy. We've said if it is a health problem, we need to treat it like a health problem - until the Howard government came it. There's been a total throwing out of the harm minimisation principle that has governed drugs policy in Australia. This may seem like a side issue, but every family in Australia is touched by someone who has misused drugs and has health effects because of it. Howard's desire to stop the medically-supervised injecting room in Kings Cross and to prevent the heroin trial in Canberra throws out the evidence-based approach to drug treatment in favour of a 'just say no' approach adopted straight from Ronald Reagan's days in the United States.

The 'just say no' theme is terrific in that booklet they sent to every household in Australia, which suggests that if you talk to your teenage kids you'll probably get them off heroin!
I have no time left to talk about the attacks on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the High Court, the churches whenever they say it is wrong the way we treat refugees, it is wrong that we have no reconciliation with Aboriginal people.
Any group, like the Women's Electoral Lobby or the Australian Youth Policy Action Coalition, that publicly criticise, get de-funded. HREOC has lost more than half its funding and is under attack again. It is a total unwillingness to accept any public criticism.

So where are Howard and Bush taking us?

They are taking us back to the bible-belt, except that the mainstream churches are generally more compassionate than either of these two Administrations. They are taking back to a time when people hid difference, and were ashamed and punished for it. They are taking us back to a time when women knew their place, and their main satisfaction was to be gained from bearing children, and perhaps from the occasional nip of gin from the teacup at the end of the day.

Economically though, they are taking us to an area that is completely uncharted, where the limits on capital are gone, where workers' rights are irrelevant, where companies can move as easy as blinking an eye from one country to the next and leave behind whatever human toll, whatever human tragedy is there.
Foreign policy is perhaps the most frightening of all. The new policy of shooting first and asking questions later is a real worry when it is a nuclear world we have out there.

Tanya Plibersek MHR has been the ALP member for Sydney since 1998.

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