|
August 9, 2007
In an essay entitled Adverserial Politics in The Monthly (July 2007) Judith Brett says that Howard has been astonishingly successful in creating a new language of national unity for the Liberals.
When he became leader of his party for the second time, in 1995, this seemed an almost impossible task, Keating having so successfully deflected the negativity and divisiveness associated with economic liberalism onto the Liberals. But with astonishing adroitness, Howard shifted attention away from the conflicts of the economy to the cultural unity of the nation, and staged a successful takeover of the symbols and imagery of popular Australian nationalism which had once belonged to Labor. Through Howard’s words, the Liberals became the guardians of Australia’s traditions of mateship and the fair go, of practical common sense and an endearing informality of manners. And in tracksuits, Akubras and cricket hats, our off-duty prime minister became a reassuringly suburban Australian everyman.
She adds that:
Nation, economy, strategic national interest: none of these is working anymore for Howard. And he is now faced with a new Labor leader who is proving frustratingly resistant to being characterised as a figure of division in the well-worn Liberal way: as a creature of the unions, and as prone to corruption and blind to conflicts of interest. In Liberal Party rhetoric, ‘union’ is a code word for the selfish pursuit of sectional interest; the lawless use of power; workplace bullying; factional warlordism; rude, crude masculine aggression; and probably a bit of crime and violence on the side.
She points out that Rudd does not come out of the Labor Party’s industrial wing. Rather, he comes from its social-democratic tradition of faith in the creative powers of government to develop good policy and solve national problems in the interests of all.It is because he is grounded in this tradition of our political life that Rudd is able to present himself as a plausible figure of national unity, and this is the basis of much of the power of his challenge to Howard.
|
