from Crikey …..

first fibs from Dear Leader

Mungo MacCallum writes: 

Always start the way you intend to continue; so our Dear Leader began his official election campaign with a great big fib.

“Like me or loathe me,” he told a numbed press conference, “people know what I stand for.” But we don’t; not any more. Eleven years ago we thought he was just a boring, balding, myopic conservative who wanted us to be relaxed and comfortable. Then we realised he actually had some pretty right wing plans for change and was not going to be overly scrupulous about putting them in place. More recently we have realised that he is a fully-fledged megalomaniac, determined to impose his view on every aspect of Australian society, from cradle to grave.

But now John Howard seeks to pose as a humble servant of the Australian people, very ’umble, if it please you, and as the Great Reconciler with the indigenous community he has done so much to dishearten. As an exercise in political agility it has some merit; as a demonstration of unbending consistency it is just confusing.

Howard himself says that last week’s announcement of reconciliation should not be seen as a sudden conversion, and he is right; there is nothing actually new in it. In 1998 he promised to make reconciliation the centrepiece of his second term in office, a promise that turned out to be one of his most non-core. In 1999 he mentioned the Aborigines in the proposed new constitutional preamble he put to referendum, but proceeded to ensure that it was not adopted by campaigning against the substantial Republic referendum.

Now he is offering to do the same again and this time not sabotage the proposal; but that’s all he is offering. His program involves putting together a form of words in 100 days and holding the referendum in 18 months, and that’s it: take it or leave it. John Howard, boasts John Howard, is the only mortal capable of uniting conservatives and progressives on the issue – no mention of the Aborigines themselves, who are presumably meant to be fawningly grateful for this belated crumb of concern.

He is prepared to offer this act of symbolic reconciliation, and if the nation is ungracious enough to reject it, then the nation can shove it: my way or the highway. And if the only symbolic act that really matters is an apology, well tough. That is not on Howard’s agenda and never will be.

Howard seeks to explain this intransigence by saying that he is a product of his times, but in fact what it proves is that he is a leftover from a far earlier era. The popular drive for a better deal for Aborigines came in fact from Howard’s contemporaries; I know, because I am one of them. We were at Sydney University together. It is hardly our fault if Howard never emerged from the grey confines of the Law School while the rest of us were rearranging the universe.