It is a long way from the euphoria of the “Kevin 07 campaign” and the simplicity of the “I’m Kevin from Queensland and I’m here to help” lines. There is no doubt the Rudd government has been a welcome change from 11 years of conservative government. However, the reforms delivered have been uneven, with important policy planks undelivered, as they focus on a late 2010 Federal Election.
The abolition of the worst aspects of the Work Choices legislation, more investment in public housing, health and education all seemed to lead to a bright beginning. The new government signed up pretty quickly at Kyoto and global warming was described as the “greatest moral challenge of our time”. The water crisis became a major issue to be tackled. An apology was delivered to the stolen generation of indigenous people, a just result for the consistent community campaign waged by the Indigenous community and their supporters. Other areas of policy also saw modest reform, which benefited ordinary Australians.
However, unionists remained concerned about the continued use of an industrial police force in the building industry, the narrowness of collective bargaining concerns and the restrictions on the ability to take industrial action. The continuation of inequitable private school funding and public league tables for schools based on national testing became a concern to the school education community. The government relied on market solutions for major environmental problems in the form of an Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) around climate change and attempts to solve the far reaching problems of the River Murray. While there has been some progress in some areas of Indigenous policy, the government continued with the divisive Northern Territory intervention of the Howard era, which led to the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act for much of its term. The refusal to process asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka was a backward step with echoes of the Howard era.
Despite early concerns with perceived inflationary pressures, the Rudd government’s finest act was its quick and comprehensive financial stimulus, when it realized the depth of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 and acted decisively. This increase in government spending, more than continued Chinese demand for exports, saved may jobs and allowed the economy to keep growing. Further, government measures also underwrote the deposits of ordinary Australians in financial Institutions. In short, significant government intervention in the economy was back on the agenda, with neo-liberal policies seemingly fading. Unfortunately, implementation of some of the schemes such as the Home Insulation and the Building the Education Revolution scheme, were not well managed, with deaths and safety issues in the former and high costs and too prescriptive plans in the latter. These two areas highlight a major concern with the Rudd government – it did not listen to unions and industry experts with wide experience in these fields. It knows best and is very top down about how it operates, often ignoring important ideas and strategies that could improve its programs.
However, the Government’s biggest failure has been its inability to bring about an ETS or Carbon Tax. Vested interest s in the form of the mining and energy industry and the extreme right of the Liberal and National parties played a key role in making sure this did not happen. In the end, the massive subsidies to mining and energy interests did not allow The Greens in the Senate to support it. When The Greens took up the idea of an interim carbon tax of $20 from Professor Ross Garnaut’s report the Rudd government rejected it. The “great moral challenge of our time” has now been sidelined as the government saw it slide as a priority issue in some opinion polls in an election year.
The government then repositioned itself by focusing on healthcare reform and some tax reforms arising from the Henry Report. As well as putting climate change on the backburner, it also decided not to proceed with the building of 240 childcare centres, a real setback for working families, especially women workers.Health Reform, or as some would put it Hospital reform became a new strategic focus of the government and as Tim Woodruff points out in this issue there has been progress but major problems remain. Similarly, the Henry Report, which was not released for five months, suddenly came into focus, with the resource rent tax as the centrepiece. This is a good proposal which progressives should support as it redistributes some of the super profits from non-renewable resources to the whole community. The mining industry has unleashed a massive attack, similar to the campaigns against the Chifley government’s bank nationalisation proposals in the late 1940s or the Rex Connor vision for the mining industry in the Whitlam government of the early 1970s. Moreover, Fairfax media journalist Ross Gittins points out that the “The big international mining companies are fighting it partly because they fear once its success has been demonstrated it will be copied by other countries”(The Age, 26/05/2010, p15). As Richard Dennis points out, this mobilisation has threats of a “Capital Strike” about it and the government could have handled its response more skilfully. Once again activists despair at the arrogance of the ALP, which actually does something good but knows nothing about how to bring the community with it. It relies on its spin department far too heavily to influence public opinion. When this top down strategy does not work against powerful forces, the Australian people often then have to face the consequences of a good measure being cut back or becoming a major campaign point for the conservatives. Nonetheless, the situation provides opportunities for positive community debate, moving beyond the vision of Australia as a quarry. It allows examples, like Norway’s use of oil revenues to build a prosperous, universalist welfare state, to come into focus.
However, the amber light of caution was evident in the mid May Federal Budget. Some, like Kenneth Davidson “With $46bn taken out, growth rests on private spending”, The Age, 12/5/2010, p.15) argue that a quicker timetable in terms of getting the national budget into surplus, may undermine our recovery, particularly if private investment does not replace public investment. The current downturn in the world economy, around the crisis in the Euro zone, reinforces this concern. Further, major social needs around public services such as in the education, housing, health, transport and indigenous areas remain, not to mention a plan to combat global warming.
In our autumn 2009 issue, Australian Options produced a supplement analysing the GFC and put forward 16 proposals to create jobs and make Australia fairer and more environmentally sustainable. While a number of these proposals have entered the public debate, few have been implemented by the federal government in a significant way. If these measures were put to and accepted by the Australian people they would amount to a Green Stimulus, recognising and combating the twin crises of our time –growing inequality and the many dimensions of the threatening environmental crisis.
The young Australian Commonwealth led the world in some significant areas of social policy in the early part of the twentieth century. Australians need to reclaim that vision in the early part of the twenty-first century.
Source: Australian Options, Issue 61, Winter 2010, pp. 1-2.