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The Forum > Article Comments > The left has deserted Hawke's famous promise > Comments

The left has deserted Hawke's famous promise : Comments

By John Roskam, published 27/6/2007

After generations of trying to make the world a better place - and not succeeding - the left has now given up any pretence of concern for the poor.

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"Since 1987, the politics of good causes in Australia has been turned upside down. The reality is that the people who have done the most to overcome poverty have been John Howard and Peter Costello."

Depends on your take on poverty John. Poverty of pocket, or poverty of happiness. Howard and Costello have done nothing for either. It was largely the reforms of the Hawke/Keating years that set the stage for the prosperity that the upper class feel so comfortable with today. The policies of Howard, particularly the draconian 'workchoice' legislation, have done extreme harm to the mental health of a largely unseen proportion of Australians. People like you, with your cushy job and silver tongue don't see what I deal with every day, as in people who have attempted to take their own life because Centrestink (Centrelink) forces them to perform degrading tasks which enables them to pick up an unsustainable income from our "oh so generous" Howard led Government.
John Howard hates workers with unbridled passion. He thinks of the unemployed as nothing more than potential slaves to big business and thanks to the introduction of workchoices, he's well on the way to archiving this task. Howard is nothing more than a bloody minded bully. Costello is his unwilling associate.
John, people have already woken up to Howard's agenda which is one of enslaving those on the lower aspects of society. His continuous strive for economic growth has seen housing affordability put out of the reach of young Australians and those lucky enough to be in a position to pay off a home are now paying more than double out of their weekly earnings than they were under a Keating/Hawke Government. That same strive for continuous economic growth will destroy the very planet on which we all have to live in due course. We can't exploit it for much longer.
I'm beginning to wonder if Liberal supporters have children or grandchildren at all. If they do, they certainly don't give a rat's cooter about them, much less the future generations of the rest of us 'commoners!"
Posted by Aime, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:09:07 AM
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Well said Aime. My left wing friends are amazed at how far right the Labor party has gone. We are appalled at the working conditions that most Australians are subjected to and appalled at the rise of working poor, workers who earn insufficient wages to live in because they are paid low hourly rates and/or rostered on for insufficient hours to earn a living.

I also despair at the lack of vision or perhaps its the shift of focus from an Australian society with a decent social safety net to a society that supports the super rich and too bad about the rest.

Why don't people protest more, well they are frightened of losing their jobs, too busy working or too busy filling in the extremely complex paperwork that is now part of daily living for any one who deals with government bureaucracy especially for tax payers or social welfare recipients.
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:28:12 AM
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"My left wing friends are amazed at how far right the Labor party has gone."

Unfortunately Billie, all so very true. For too long, marginalised people have been made to look like lazy and ungrateful non-participants in Howard's economic expansion regime. We urgently require a new direction in Australian politics as the two major parties have come up short. One panders to the US Government while the other tinkers around the edges with current policy. In the mean time, those on the fringes of society continue to suffer. They have no voice.....they're not wealthy enough. Those trying to pay off an unaffordable home loan don't have time to become engaged. Only those on high thrones in glass houses are currently enjoying a world of their own creation.
Wish I had more time, but right now I have to hurry off to my job of looking after the most marginalised of our society.
Posted by Aime, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:50:07 AM
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To you both I am a leftie who fully agrees. The left hasn't given up on the eradication of poverty, however with an ultra right federal government working only for the big end of town it is impossible to get poverty up as an issue.

Child abuse is another situation happening from Toorak to Townsville, from Perth to Proserpine and everywhere in between. I wonder when the police and army will swoop on Toorak to cross examine every resident as with the Northern Territory.

I live in Townsville North Queensland population 160,000 we have more than 1,000 homeless families living in poverty, the Howard Government doesn't want to know.
Posted by SHONGA, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 12:03:56 PM
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in my visit to the serengeti, i had many deep political conversations with the wildebeest, whose view of hyenas and lions were much the same as the views expressed by many ozzies about pollies and corporations.

when i raised the possibility of throwing off these parasites, the wildebeest always said: "oh, that's politics, we don't do politics."

pretty much the same here.
Posted by DEMOS, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 1:14:25 PM
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Roskam asserts that the most famous promise in national politics is Hawke’s: "By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty." I reckon Howard’s GST “Never, ever” promise, would give it a nudge for the GST's enormous impact on low income families. The wealthy with their enormous assets and income pay the same tax on consumer goods as those in dire poverty.

Roskam’s analysis of the political left is out of touch. He fails to understand the shifting dynamics in Australian politics. If you want to describe the political left in Australia today you don’t look at political parties like the ALP. You start with social movements like GetUp and myriad new organisations using new technologies as the means of mobilising public opinion. And with welfare agencies alert now to the danger of political co-optation.

That’s why the old media can’t understand the current opinion polls. Why aren’t people more grateful?, they lament, along with right-wing commentators like Roskam: “The reality is that the people who have done the most to overcome poverty have been John Howard and Peter Costello.” Unemployment, says Roskam, is at a 30-year low and the left, he alleges, ignore low unemployment as mere ‘economics’. Why has the left’s anti-WorkChoices campaign bitten Howard so heavily?

As a researcher, Roskam would know that all the research shows that these employment statistics – based on a politically-convenient construct (you're employed if you work at least one hour a week) – disguise the number of people living with income poverty. The official figures don’t show the hundreds of thousands of underemployed people who want to work more to earn a decent income but can’t get more work. The official figures don’t show the people intermittently employed who need to be in constant work to avoid the poverty trap.

The employment figures don’t show income as related to other poverty variables like size of family, distance to travel to work (rising transport costs), child care facilities, age at point of retrenchment, home ownership and rental costs, and so on.

Poor analysis, Mr Roskam. Try again.
Posted by FrankGol, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 1:28:32 PM
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The name Demos sounds like it means great thought, in classical greek tradition. Sadly it's a misnomer
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 1:30:33 PM
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What idiot ever believed Hawke's statement? Given that no one in history has ever come close to what he promised I'm actually stunned that someone can quote that line as if it ever meant anything.

Here's another. See if you know who said it. "There will never be a GST".

As to the ripper Aime highlighted first post.

Give me a break. Why are the homeless numbers increasing, why is there a sudden "Emergency" in remote communities, why are people losing their homes, why can't people afford homes?

It's Howard and Costelloe, Should be Abbott and C... of course as this line is a joke, Just not funny to those who, apparently better off, choose to not feed their kids, live on the streets, vacate their previously owned homes and so on. Yes, they all choose to do that as we are so well off.

Don't you get it Roskam? Some are doing great but they were never in danger of poverty. The vast majority live pay to pay and there are often days missing between money arrivals.

Look at it another way. These 2 clowns have been in charge for 11 years but the poverty and so on problems have changed NOT AT ALL.

When are people like you going to understand?

Understand what?

Simply that neither side works for us. They work for themselves.

To blame left or right, notions from the 50's by the way, is to be oblivious of life.

Bill Gates will do far more for relief from poverty than any Australian government will do. Just not here as we can afford it if only one thing changed.

That is the greedy, rich and selfish actually shared.

But no, your saviour, Howard, has removed the security workers had so that they will soon be competing with the real poverty stricken. Work for food. Oil for food. Wheat for cheats.
Posted by RobbyH, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 2:09:55 PM
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Having read Roskam's Liberal party policy document I was about to write a lot here. No Need. Frank has said it well, with less anger than I. Thanks Frank.

I too must stress the ignorance of people who swallow this low unemployment tripe.

Note first Howard claims it is the lowest for 33 years. Since who was PM? That's right. Whitlam. So Howard isn't as good as Whitlam on this issue? That's what he says every time he spouts this set of fantasy figures. He doesn't seem to think Gough was very good, at anything. Slight problem with logic there Roskam. Think about it. Or, try reading and maybe even thinking

Another clash of logic is this, Mr Roskam. Howard claims it is him who has reduced enemployment. Actually so does every Labor State Premier and Chief Minister. So all of them have done this. What harmony.

Sorry Frank, people who use supposed credible qualificiations to reproduce garbage annoy me. Big time. There are many ways the unemployment stats are fiddled. Have any of you actually seen the numbers of people accessing Super? Why? They can't get a job, have to pay for living and need money. That's unemployment. Just not "official".

Now here's something none of you will actually know. How is the unemployment figure arrived at?

It comes from the Census, not CES, Treasury or anywhere else. It's directly from the census. Only those who answer the Census saying they are unemployed are classified as unemplyed.

In between each census this is adjusted. How? Sample surveys from selected large employers, such as the various Public Services.

Any of you firstly know people who don't register for anything, never reply to the Census etc? I do. Lots.

So these "figures" are based on what individuals rate thmeselves as, adjusted over 5 years and called data.
So you see Mr Roskam, you haven't a clue yet you present this tripe as your opinion.

If it is then you should withdraw it, try reading and come back with some reality.

Whew, I tried but the anger just over flowed.
Posted by DavoP, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 2:42:05 PM
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DavoP
the employment and unemployment data are calculated from a monthly sample survey. The methodology is described here:

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DOSSbyTopic/139689E1A84FE4F0CA256BD00028B0E5?OpenDocument
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 2:54:21 PM
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Aimee

You make or infer the false assumption that people on the right of politics have no compassion while those on the left do. I personally have spent plenty of my personal time working with people with mental disorders.My wife worked for years with people with disabilities. We are both conservative voters .

Maybe the problem is that politics of either persuasion can't help the most vulernable in society. Could it be that the selfishness of many on the left and right of politics adds to the dilemma. Could it be that your hate for Mr Howard has blinded you to the fact that politicians are only human and that their are people of compassion on boths sides of the fence.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 3:43:45 PM
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These trashy, Left-bashing op eds are a bit like serial killer movies. Once upon a time they could really get the adrenalin rushing. But now, they’re running out of angles. There’s been so many that they have little left to say. You just can’t get a decent scare out of them anymore.
Posted by MLK, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 4:04:57 PM
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Whatever constitutes the "Left" in Australian politics and society, Roskam demonstrates that he has no idea what it is. It certainly has little do with the ALP, which in recent years has moved to occupy that right-wing niche formerly characterised by the Liberals. The latter mob have shifted even further to the "Right" and now look like some sort of ghastly hybrid of the DLP and One Nation. As for the Nationals... who?

The only significant Australian political party that might be characterised as broadly "Left" is the Greens - which is of course why the others tend to spend so much time and effort trying to discredit them.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 4:21:54 PM
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The real poverty here is the povety of thought demonstrated, as usual, by the left-wingers.
Posted by Leigh, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 4:24:38 PM
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This is hilarious. In response to an article detailing the decline in thought on the left, the first response to the Coalition's efforts in reducing poverty was...

"Poverty of pocket, or poverty of happiness?"

Surely that's what the article was saying... the left are annoyed that working Australians have decided to buy material goods with their 20% increase in real wages over the last 11 years - and i'm not talking about solar panels, free trade coffee or hybrid cars! They're choosing to renovate their homes, or send their children to non-government schools... and who's ever heard of a person at a non-government school being happy... and surely only people living in apartments and town houses are happy, because suburbia is evil?

Please, don't criticise Labor Right. In NSW, they've proved themselves to be the only group that identifies itself with working class politics that has enough respect for the working class to let themselves make their own choices because they themselves know best how to attain their own happiness. Labor Left have always been parasitically middle class and scornful of those workers who just want their lot bettered, and thus sensibly have voted Coalition.

Howard, like Fahey, Askin and Menzies before him, phrased liberalism as ordinary people's freedom, prosperity and choices. The cultural left disagee with these three... and you won't be leading the Labor party if you've faction is based around middle-class uni students who have never done a hard day's work in their lives.
Posted by DFXK, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 4:33:35 PM
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I suggest that people (the lefties particularly) read Clive Hamilton's book "Affluenza" and then start a debate about real poverty.
The idea that the ALP is somehow the saviour of the poor and those in need of any form of social welfare is nonsense...they gave up that game years ago but continue to ride on a completely undeserved reputation.
The Coalition has actually done more but lefties will never wear that and it is, of course, not politically correct to say it.
Posted by Communicat, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 5:06:18 PM
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Of course, the left cares about the poor and the poverty-striken. That's why, whenever they gain power anywhere, anytime, they work so hard and so successfully to create more poor and poverty-striken.
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 5:57:59 PM
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With you there mhaze. Of course, so many of the left earn their living by talking about, at, or down to the poor. Obviously they want as many as possible.
Then again, Richardson did show them that its easier to buy the bludger vote, so perhaps thats where their main interest is now.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 7:48:46 PM
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I do not see that the 'Left' holds up development in the Third World. Instead I see institutions like the IMF and World Bank that enforce a single neo-liberal template and thus effectively shipwreck the democratic process. And I haven't noticed figures in the ALP Right talking any more about poverty than those in its Left. This is mere rhetoric. (Although I would agree that the 'Left' is deeply implicated in a process of self-liquidation - and if we keep heading in the current direction, we will not know what we stand for)

If you're serious about ending poverty, yes, you have to deal with unemployment. But when last in power Labor dealt with a global recession that the Conservatives this time around have been lucky enough to avoid. By contrast they have benefited from a booming Chinese economy. If we did had another global recession now, though, how would the Conservatives respond? At least Working Nation was willing to make some real counter-cyclical expenditure - and there were results. But today we would just have spending cuts leading into a recessionary spiral - whichever party was in power.

Eliminating poverty requires welfare reform - especially in light of rising power and water costs; it requires assistance and tax breaks for the low paid and those moving from welfare to work; and it requires a regulated labour market with higher minimum wages. And it requires a strong social wage that the Conservatives aren't interested in providing. The democratic socialist and social democratic Left are still interested in all these things, even if the post-materialists sometimes relegate such pressing concerns to 'the dustbin of history'. None of this means there is no validity in post-materialist theses - it does mean, however, that their obituaries of the social democratic left are premature.

As US society shows, deregulating and letting the labour market clear does not provide all the answers. The neo-liberal path is one of many ways of addressing unemployment: but rather than eliminating poverty, it only magnifies the problem.

Tristan
Posted by Tristan Ewins, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 8:29:02 PM
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Good to hear a spokesperson for a right wing think tank discuss notions of poverty and unemployment. That's a first. I'm amazed The Age published this as Hawke's claim was silly then and silly now but his heart was in the right place.

There's a large gap between conservatives (that is conserving freedom of expression, liberty and social welfare for the poor) and the totally market orientated policies advocated by this think tank.

One arrow hit the mark though - the bemoaning of inner suburban intellectuals about mental health and urban poverty - and then writing peer refereed articles about it, thinking 'job done'.

Cheryl aka Malcolm King
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 8:29:06 PM
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These discussions remind of Michael Apple's paper espoused years ago as elements of 'how the left makes the right - that is, he refers to as the "hegemonic alliance of the New Right." These four movements include: neoliberals, neoconservatives, authoritarian populists, and the new middle class. Apple suggests that although each movement has different and oftentimes conflicting political and ideological interests, they form a "hegemonic alliance" when it comes to opposing progressive and democratic forces on the Left.

This alliance has clearly arisen here in Australia against the most vulnerable, the disadvantaged or simply those who are not disadvantaged but who take a progressive view about the need to alleviate poverty.

They don't believe greed is good so much as refute that wealth should be shared equally. Yes it’s a fine line I know but this hegemony is the one we see both Rudd and Howard trying to lure.

The new middle classes are perhaps the most easily persuaded in by economic carrots.

The whole idea of having zero poverty is complete anathema to them all simply because they believe rich and poor are how modern economies should operate.

I for one don't believe this for a minute.

And just remember Hawke was an authoritarian populist and the Left is more about values than political fidelity to any specific party. (although some of them think they have the franchise on leftist values
Posted by Rainier, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:33:19 PM
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Cooktown and Cape York has between 25-28% unemployed.

The cost shifting is on those who have the least.

There are "invisables" everywhere in the Costello Budget. We will now have to pay.

My respect would have been higher if we didn't have to yell louder (and fight so hard) for the truth!

Poor service infrastructure - no idea of Civic Engagement at ground levels. No idea of the value of ALL (social capitals)... Education, "Sharing Service Provisions" ... Trust - Alma Ata - or a consumers health cry.

This is not about left vs right as much as HUMANITY.

What is good about the current climate in AUSTRALIA is that we are learning just as (intensely as) it was when Hawk made his poverty speech. I respect Fraser for what he has done since he was PM too.

I remember the issues then, and no one could have known what we have come to know now, as a nation and as a globe. We became badly distracted.... manufacturing... IT sciences... e-economy - fear of on-going recessions and WAR - we ALL lost our way.

To 'problem solve' we need the right information. (ALL of IT)

We need to keep the real HUMAN FOCUS (on HOW we do things) completely in the FRAME

I have faith that what ever happens, this learning curve we are experiencing now will impact us ALL for many years to come.

I hope we learn from eachother, know we are all connected, and that those who need support, get it without the spin - lies - villification.. (bullying) and politcal concerns that are chiefly based on oneself, LONG-TERM!

Given the national world view... the wider and tougher challenge is now here. We are a cultural mirror of ourselves.

We as a nation are being tested. It is timely and hopefuly PRODUCTIVE in ALL areas of our "everyday life".

I believe what we need to do is pro-activate beyond party politics, if Sustainablity is a true citizens call.

http://www.miacat.com
.
Posted by miacat, Thursday, 28 June 2007 2:14:30 AM
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