Howard Government Research Articles

Doing ‘the other’ over: narrative conservatism in radical popular films

Tom Zubrycki's documentary film Molly and Mobarak (2003) and John Doyle's television mini-series Marking Time (2003) were both released during the most vehement anti-refugee governmental regime of contemporary Australian history. Whilst the Howard government and the Ruddock and Vanstone ministries were intent on dehumanizing refugees, these film-makers—amongst other Australian artists—were intent on humanizing them. Afghani refugees were portrayed in these films attempting to create viable lives in rural Australia, as thousands of Afghani asylum seekers were detained by government policy in remote and offshore detention centres. This article considers Zubrycki's and Doyle's portrayals of Afghani refugees as political and aesthetic interventions into official discourses distancing the interests of ‘Australians’ from those of the refugee ‘others’ (Gannon and Saltmarsh 2006, 2007). At the same time as applauding these interventions, this article also attempts to map their limits by asking in particular whether the conventions of film narrative inevitably contain and tame. Does narrative carry with it, in these instances at least, a conservatism where empathy becomes most possible when the other is made over to become like ‘us’?

Retrenching or renovating the Australian welfare state: the paradox of the Howard government's neo‐liberalism

Most conventional studies of the former Australian Liberal–National Coalition government refer to its neo‐liberal ideological agenda: its concern to reduce government interference with free market outcomes by restricting access to social security payments. That analysis suggests a substantial retrenchment of the Australian welfare state based on redirecting responsibility for the disadvantaged from government to corporations, private individuals and families. Yet there is increasing evidence from reliable sources that the government has not reduced social expenditure, and that increasing resources have been directed, particularly via the family payments system, towards some disadvantaged groups such as low‐income families and the aged. Utilising the theory of the US political scientist Paul Pierson, this article explores the joint paradox of Australian neo‐liberalism: the punitive treatment of some disadvantaged groups such as the disabled and lone parents versus the generosity towards other groups and, more generally, the growth rather than decline in social expenditure. The author asks what this paradox tells us about the likely future of the welfare state in Australia and elsewhere.

Policy Fiascos, Blame Management and AWB Limited: The Howard Government's Escape from the Iraq Wheat Scandal

In 1999, the Australian government privatised the statutory Australian Wheat Board and created AWB Limited, transferring the Board's assets and its export monopoly to a grower-controlled company. In 2000, allegations surfaced that AWB Limited had made payments to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in order to secure lucrative wheat exports worth $500 million per annum. Such actions violated the terms of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme and became one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history. It also placed considerable pressure on senior ministers in John Howard's coalition government who were vulnerable on a number of issues, including the existence of numerous warning signs and the extent of ministerial awareness. The purpose of this article is to outline and examine the federal government's role in managing the ensuing blame game. It utilises literature on policy fiascos and blame management to create a conceptual framework that is then applied to the unfolding dynamics of the AWB Limited case. It examines issues such as the roles played by the Cole Inquiry and the political language of ministers in steering blame away from ministers and towards AWB Limited and the UN.

Muslim Australians: the deep histories of contact

Muslims are now arguably the most widely debated and feared segment of the Australian community but they are also its most long-standing non-indigenous segment. In Australia we are able to draw on a long and primarily positive contact history between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians that makes nonsense of the paranoid nationalism with which the Howard government wanted to protect a way of life from ‘recent invaders’. There are deep histories underlying some of the highly debated ‘border control’ phenomena such the Tampa refugees and ‘Timorese poachers’. The way we understand our histories also shapes the way in which we can imagine our futures and the fantasy of a white Australian history does not stand up to historical investigation.

Hasten Slowly: Urgency, Discretion and Review - a Counter-Terrorism Legislative Agenda and Legacy

<p>This article examines the practice by the Howard government from 2003 of invoking a paradigm of urgency in the introduction and enactment of multiple examples of counter terrorism legislation, with claims that review and remediation of that legislation best occur after rapid enactment. Speedy<br />legislative passage was frequently accompanied by few amendments, a discounting of parliamentary and other review recommendations and a contrasting unwillingness or neglect to subsequently review and amend enacted legislation to strengthen safeguards and increase accountability. By<br />examining selected major examples of counter-terrorism legislation, a comprehensive understanding of the applications of urgency as a legislative mechanism in counter-terrorism law reform from the Howard years can be<br />obtained. These applications range between the obtaining of immediate political advantage and an ongoing concentration of executive power. Several serious and distinctive features adversely impacting upon representative democracy were also generated by this urgency paradigm in counter-terrorism legislative enactments. The Rudd government has inherited the considerable legacy of this urgency bound legislative agenda. Questions now arise as to whether proper review of that legislation will occur and whether the culture of urgency will persist in a different government’s legislative responses to terrorism.</p>

Permanent Populism: The Howard Government 1996–2007

This article argues that populism was a permanent feature of John Howard's government and that populism and the associated tactic of wedging were adopted to secure the government's position and to eliminate populist rivals such as One Nation. Margaret Canovan describes the use of populist techniques by mainstream politicians as politicians' populism. She also suggests that democracy has both redemptive and pragmatic faces and that when too great a gap opens between democracy's two faces, populism is likely to emerge. The experience of four terms of the Howard government indicates that when politicians knowingly use populism they can successfully eliminate populist alternatives such as One Nation. The costs for democracy, however, are high, and in the case of the Howard government included neglect of minority rights, the growth of distrust in the institutions of representative democracy, increased community cynicism, the reluctance of the Opposition to speak out on a number of human rights issues for fear of losing support, and opportunistic policy making.

Collective Bargaining under Trade Practices Law

AbstractThe Howard Government, supported by the Labor Opposition, legislated in 2007 to enable small businesses to engage in collective bargaining with large businesses under the Trade Practices Act. The object of the legislation is to facilitate greater equality in the bargaining power of the parties. Except where the small business sells goods/commodities rather than a service, a person who is ‘employed’ and the business that provides a ‘service’ are both effectively involved in the sale of labour or in the performance of work in the labour market. However, the legal concepts and procedures relating to collective bargaining in these two types of labour transactions are different. One, the ‘employment’ of persons, is placed in the category of workplace relations operating through labour law; the other, the ‘sale of services', is viewed as a commercial transaction, dealt with through commercial law. This paper considers the question of whether there are sufficiently significant differences between these labour/service transactions as to justify the application of two separate sets of laws to deal with them — one to cover transactions between employers and employees, and the other to cover transactions between small and large businesses. A case study will be used to illustrate the involved and unsatisfactory approach of the commercial law route in determining what is in essence a labour transaction rather than a commodity transaction.

Minimum Wages, Unions, the Economy and Society

AbstractOne of the characteristics of the WorkChoices legislation introduced by the Howard government was the anti-union bias that permeated it. Some argue that this is appropriate because unions increase minimum wages, and economic theory shows that this will decrease employment and hence output. The Rudd government has signalled that it intends changing this anti-union bias, while at the same time restoring the role and coverage of minimum wages. This paper examines the arguments around these issues and concludes that neither side of the economic theory debate has delivered a knockout blow. The theoretical analysis is followed by a section looking at empirical evidence on the effects of deregulating labour markets. Again there is not complete consensus among the economics profession. However, both sides of the debate on the effects of labour market deregulation agree that strong minimum wage legislation does significantly reduce earnings inequality by increasing earnings at the bottom end of the distribution. The paper concludes that the increase in inequality consequent on labour market deregulation has adverse effects on the economy in the short run and disturbing longer run effects on society.

Reconciliation and Australian Indigenous Health in the 1990s: A Failure of Public Policy

In 1991, the Australian Commonwealth Parliament unanimously passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991. This Act implemented a 10-year process that aimed to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous people by the end of 2000. One of the highest priorities of the reconciliation process was to address Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage, including health, education and housing. However, despite this prioritising, both the Keating Government (1991–1996) and the Howard Government (1996–2000) failed to substantially improve socio-economic outcomes for Indigenous people over the reconciliation decade. In this paper, I examine one of the most prominent socio-economic areas, that of Indigenous health. First, I discuss the appalling levels of Indigenous health throughout the reconciliation decade by analysing a number of health indicators, including life expectancy, infant mortality rate, standard mortality ratios, hospital rates and health Infrastructure. This analysis reveals significant and often worsening disadvantage in these health indicators. Second, I analyse a number of policies and programs concerning Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage that were developed by Commonwealth Governments in the 1990s. I argue that these policies and programs largely failed to address Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage. I also discuss alternative policies and programs that could reduce the significant levels of socio-economic disadvantage suffered by Indigenous people.

Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

<i>Jindabyne</i>’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

"We Are Next!": Listening to Jewish Voices in a Multicultural Country

"We Are Next!": Listening to Jewish Voices in a Multicultural Country

The Howard Government's Foreign Policy: Really Realist?

Several scholars have suggested that the Howard government took a Realist approach to foreign policy, and others have claimed that it made important deviations from Realism. This article constructs a template of a Realist foreign policy and examines the Howard government's policies against it. It finds that the government scores highly on two of the indicators of Realism – emphasis on military power and lack of enthusiasm for multilateral institutions – and scores fairly well on the third, the subordination of values promotion to the advancement of interests. The Howard government, however, promoted democracy and human rights in situations in which no other Australian interest was involved, so its Realism was somewhat modified.

New world orders and the dystopian turn: transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction

Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, Australian children's literature responded to a conservative turn epitomised by the Howard government and to new world order imperatives of democracy, the market economy, globalisation, and the IT revolution. These responses are evidenced in the ways that children's fiction speaks to the problematics of representation and cultural identity and to possible outcomes of devastating historical and recent catastrophes. Consequently, Australian children's fiction in recent years has been marked by a dystopian turn. Through an examination of a selection of Australian children's fiction published between 1995 and 2003, this paper interrogates the ways in which hope and warning are reworked in narratives that address notions of memory and forgetting, place and belonging. We argue that these tales serve cautionary purposes, opening the way for social critique, and that they incorporate utopian traces of a transformed vision for a future Australia. The focus texts for this discussion are: Secrets of Walden Rising (Allan Baillie, 1996), Red Heart (Victor Kelleher, 2001), Deucalian (Brian Caswell, 1995), and Boys of Blood and Bone (David Metzenthen, 2003).

Defence, the Family and the Battler: The Democratic Labor Party and its Legacy*

The split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of the mid-1950s had a lasting impact on both the political and industrial wings of the labour movement. In electoral terms the creation of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), and the DLP's second-preference strategy, in particular, had adverse consequences for the ALP. This article re-examines the DLP in terms as a political party, a promotional pressure group and as part of a social movement. The article argues that as a party, the DLP was a failure largely due to its narrow focus on anti-communist defence and foreign policies. But as part of a social movement, it was far more successful and its legacy was still evident in 2007, and was found in the non-labourist social conservatism of the Howard government.

Closing the Gap? The Role of Wage, Welfare and Industry Policy in Promoting Social Inclusion

Australia's social policy regime has been described as `social protection by other means' (SPM). Its foundation is attributed to the Harvester Judgment's minimum wage decision and is said to have persisted more or less successfully from 1907 to 2005 when the Howard Government passed industrial relations reforms known as the Work Choices legislation. This proposed that wage minima should be determined more by what the market can afford than previous welfare criteria. In 2008 the new Labor Government will need to revisit the role of the minimum wage in relation to social policy. Many see SPM as a failed model in the context of economic globalization and propose that Australia must reckon with creating a new European-style welfare state system of `flexicurity'. This article proposes that the perception of a crisis in SPM is fundamentally mistaken. Australian welfare has been far less reliant on wage determination than has been supposed and points towards a socially inclusive policy framework that is readily attainable.

Howard's End: The 2007 Australian Election

The Australian federal election of 24 November 2007 saw the defeat of the Howard Liberal-National Party coalition government after almost 12 years in office and brought to power a Labor government, the first since 1996, under the leadership of Kevin Rudd. John Howard, Australia's second longest-serving prime minister, became only the second prime minister to lose his own seat at an election. This article summarizes the election result and places it in the context of post-Second World War Australian political and electoral history. The highly unusual character of the large swing to the Labor Party is underlined, as is the rarity of a change of government in Australia since the Second World War. The article also examines the influence of the political leadership of the two major parties in contributing to the changing climate of opinion during 2007 and surveys the campaign itself, underlining the many problems experienced by the Howard government in the final weeks of its life. Finally, the article emphasizes the critical roles that interest rates, climate change and industrial relations all played in fatally undermining the Howard ascendancy. The government, faced with a politically credible and electorally attractive opponent, emerging economic difficulties and a shifting policy agenda, was unable to present itself as equipped to deal with new local and global challenges after a long period in power.

Innovation and Disability

Innovation and Disability

What influences the transfer of research into health policy and practice? Observations from England and Australia

To explore the role of evidence in the public health policy-making process, and show how the way in which public health problems are defined and measured influences policy outcomes. The policy responses of the Blair Labour Government in the UK and the Howard Coalition Government in Australia to persistent health inequalities over the last decade are examined as a case study. Soon after being elected, the Blair Government commissioned an independent inquiry into health inequalities, signalling the priority it gave to addressing this longstanding challenge. It chose to take a 'whole-of-government' approach, combining actions that addressed both personal risk factors and the social determinants of health. This approach reflects the long-established tradition in England of routinely measuring disparities in health outcomes and correlating them with socio-economic status and underlying social determinants of health. Over the same period, the Howard Government also outlined its 'whole-of-government' approach to addressing the most extreme and persistent health inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. In contrast, its approach focused primarily on modifying risk factors and improving service provision. This approach reflects the different historical circumstances in Australia and a different tradition in the collection of health data, focused more on health service access and personal risk factors. This case study offers some insight into the ways in which the production and presentation of evidence can influence and shape governmental responses to public health problems. The usefulness of available evidence is dependent upon the type of data that is produced routinely by government, as well as more deliberate decisions concerning public health research funding. Researchers can maximize the influence of research evidence on the policy process by engaging in the policy-making process, presenting research in ways that fit with the political context of the day, and, where necessary, using research evidence in public health advocacy in order to influence political priorities more directly.

Australia's trade policy dilemmas

In recent years, Australia has had a very active agenda for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) whose net economic benefits remain at best unclear. There has been a strong defensive element to some of this PTA activity but the Howard government also used PTAs to pursue non-economic objectives, such as the promotion of foreign policy and security interests. This article broadly outlines Australia's PTA policy and the problems and dilemmas that it has generated. More importantly, it looks ahead to consider likely scenarios for trade policy under the Rudd Labor government. Each of these scenarios has different implications for policy strategies and outcomes. This article concludes that while there could be significant pay-offs should Labor choose to pursue its traditional preferences for non-discriminatory trade arrangements, the world has changed considerably since the heydays of the multilateral trade system. A commitment to reinvigorating multilateralism will require strong political leadership, imaginative thinking, and creative diplomacy.

The First Two Decisions of the Australian Fair Pay Commission: A Critique

The Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) was established by the Howard government under the controversial WorkChoices legislation. It was heralded by its supporters as a major improvement on the previous system of safety-net wage cases under the Industrial Relations Commission and universally condemned by the union movement and Labor. Others questioned whether a minimum wage was needed at all or even whether it was a major impediment to labour-market adjustment. The AFPC's first and subsequent decisions were, therefore, looked on with interest by the media, academics, politicians and vested interests. This paper provides a critique of the AFPC's first decisions and suggests how the process of arriving at a minimum wage could be improved.