Thursday, September 16, 2004
"Battlers" vs "Elites"
[On Saturday 09/10/2004, the conservative Liberal/National Party Coalition won Australia's federal election, and, what is more frightening, seem set to control the Senate (the upper house in the Australian Parliament) thus allowing them to push through draconian and anti-democratic legislation. Yet the Leader of the Coalition, John Winston Howard, has always posed as the champion of the "ordinary person." This, combined with Australia's rampart anti-intellectualism, has allowed the win to be painted as the victory of the "battler" over the "elites."]
Last Sunday I was appalled when I heard Mr and Mrs Average claiming that John Howard’s victory in the Federal election was a triumph for the ordinary bloke/sheila, the little person, the “aspirational battler.”
Is this the same John Howard who championed the BIG stevedoring company, Patricks, against the maritime union, whose Cross-media Ownership Bill, if passed, will only advantage the BIG media owners, Packer and Murdoch, whose full sale of Telstra will benefit the BIG investors, and whose support of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement will prove a boon for the BIG US drug companies? One can only argue that John Howard is a friend of the battler, if one assumes that “what is good for business is good for Australia and for all of us” — an assertion that has been torn to pieces more times than I can count.
Of course John Howard is canny enough to know two things about Australians:-
1. Elites in sport and money-making are idolized — anyone who criticizes these people is “just jealous.” Elites — people with knowledge and experience — in the fields of public service and diplomacy, the arts or education are despised, especially when they espouse socially progressive causes, as setting themselves “above” the average person. Reasoned argument is replaced by the Common Sense populism of the “Fooddie (Football) Club,” where he who is the biggest bully, or she who shouts the loudest wins the case; and
2. While the “chardonnay-sipping Volvo-driving elites” will insist that reality is complex and that solutions are rarely simple, John Howard and his allies on the Ratbag Religious Right know better. They know that the “middle classes” are simple people who desperately want to get ahead but who are also in constant trepidation. They know that the best way to soothe the nervous “battler” — 1.7 children, SUV, and struggling not only to meet their own mortgage payments, but to meet those on an investment property which will be a good nest egg for the kids — is to choose a comforting, conservative and simplistic message based on fear, and keep repeating it ad nauseam, usually with the coda that the "battler" should leave the Big Worries to Uncle John, or Jee-zus. I have trouble doing this — firstly because I am old enough to remember a certain Queensland politician [Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland in the 1960s, '70s and 80s] who would say, “Don’t you worry about that,” even as his government was crashing down amid charges of corruption, and secondly because Jesus has been dust for nearly two thousand years.
I hope that when interest rates rise — as they inevitably will before year’s end — or phone charges go through the roof — as they inevitably will under a privatized Telstra accountable only to its shareholders — Mr and Mrs Average remember the importance of the “economic stability and performance” for which they voted.
Last Sunday I was appalled when I heard Mr and Mrs Average claiming that John Howard’s victory in the Federal election was a triumph for the ordinary bloke/sheila, the little person, the “aspirational battler.”
Is this the same John Howard who championed the BIG stevedoring company, Patricks, against the maritime union, whose Cross-media Ownership Bill, if passed, will only advantage the BIG media owners, Packer and Murdoch, whose full sale of Telstra will benefit the BIG investors, and whose support of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement will prove a boon for the BIG US drug companies? One can only argue that John Howard is a friend of the battler, if one assumes that “what is good for business is good for Australia and for all of us” — an assertion that has been torn to pieces more times than I can count.
Of course John Howard is canny enough to know two things about Australians:-
1. Elites in sport and money-making are idolized — anyone who criticizes these people is “just jealous.” Elites — people with knowledge and experience — in the fields of public service and diplomacy, the arts or education are despised, especially when they espouse socially progressive causes, as setting themselves “above” the average person. Reasoned argument is replaced by the Common Sense populism of the “Fooddie (Football) Club,” where he who is the biggest bully, or she who shouts the loudest wins the case; and
2. While the “chardonnay-sipping Volvo-driving elites” will insist that reality is complex and that solutions are rarely simple, John Howard and his allies on the Ratbag Religious Right know better. They know that the “middle classes” are simple people who desperately want to get ahead but who are also in constant trepidation. They know that the best way to soothe the nervous “battler” — 1.7 children, SUV, and struggling not only to meet their own mortgage payments, but to meet those on an investment property which will be a good nest egg for the kids — is to choose a comforting, conservative and simplistic message based on fear, and keep repeating it ad nauseam, usually with the coda that the "battler" should leave the Big Worries to Uncle John, or Jee-zus. I have trouble doing this — firstly because I am old enough to remember a certain Queensland politician [Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland in the 1960s, '70s and 80s] who would say, “Don’t you worry about that,” even as his government was crashing down amid charges of corruption, and secondly because Jesus has been dust for nearly two thousand years.
I hope that when interest rates rise — as they inevitably will before year’s end — or phone charges go through the roof — as they inevitably will under a privatized Telstra accountable only to its shareholders — Mr and Mrs Average remember the importance of the “economic stability and performance” for which they voted.
