Critical Times

There is a moment in the history of any government when the concerns about a government’s policies that have been raised by a vocal minority are suddenly crystallized into the concerns of the majority. The mystery surrounding the death of Private Jake Kovco in Iraq and the debacle surrounding the return of his body to his family in Australia, by a government that thinks so little of the ultimate sacrifice made by its soldiers that it has outsourced the responsibility of returning bodies of dead soldiers from the armed forces to a private contractor, marks the beginning of the end of the Howard government in the eyes of an increasing number of Australians.

The moral, ethical and intellectual vacuum that has been brought into existence by a government that has dominated politics in Australia for the past decade, by exploiting people’s insecurities and by pulling out a fistful of dollars from its re-election war chest to sweeten its electoral appeal at appropriate times during the electoral cycle, is no longer being ignored by an electorate that had seemed to be immune from the corruption of public life that the Howard government’s culture of deceit and Orwellian policies created.

Australians are beginning to realise the enemy are not asylum seekers, indigenous Australians, the unemployed, people on disability and single parents benefits, trade unions and the working poor. An increasing number now believe their enemy sits on the government benches. The Howard government’s culture of lies, deceit and double speak has helped to create two Australians. Those who own the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication that have done extraordinary well under the Howard government’s legislative onslaught against the rest of the country. The rest of the community has ‘prospered’ by accumulating a mountain of debt, by working long hours and by losing the rights they had to access education and health care before the privatisation onslaught and the Workplace Relations Act, saw gains that were made by the struggles of generations of Australians legislated away by the stroke of a pen.

The stench that permeates every level of the Howard government has become so overpowering that no media makeover, no legislation to criminalise Australian’s rights to protest, no new scapegoats, no tainted electoral fistful of dollars and no taxpayer funded government advertising campaign, can ever rehabilitate a government that has reached its ‘used by date’ and a Prime Minister who should resign before the public cynicism created by his deceitful parliamentary and political performance does irreparable damage to the national psyche.

Age Weekly Review