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March 8, 2005
Fred Halliday is in Australia. Some observations:
"Howard, a tough politician with a sharp tongue and good instincts for the popular mood....has presided, in domestic and foreign policy, over a significant reorientation of the country, away from the more liberal and multicultural attitudes of the 1980s and early 1990s. The shift brings Australia closer at once to the values and aspirations of the "White Australia" of the post-war, Robert Menzies era and to the worldview of the contemporary United States of America. In current European terms, by combining domestic conservatism and pro-American foreign policy to secure election victory, Howard is following the Danish path rather than its opposite, the Spanish." .
Halliday comments that immigation and aboriginal issues have swung Australia away from being a multicultural society. He adds that these:
"...trends in government policy have been accompanied by a rise in nationalist culture [that]lends itself to multiple modern associations – Australian heroism, a Muslim enemy....The paradox of Australia...is its combination of isolation and fear. One result of its sense of great distance from its natural allies in Europe and the US, and its persistent nervous awareness of its giant Asian neighbours to the north...is a feeling of vulnerability."
He ends by saying that Howard has little time for New Zealand's socialist and liberal values; like Rupert Murdoch, he promotes what is, in effect, the Americanisation of Australia's public life.
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