On Friday, October 22, 2004, at 07:25 AM, Jan Straathof wrote:
Malcolm,
i have a question about the election that was held in your country on
October 9. I was under the impression that opposition leader Mark Latham
was way ahead in the opinion polls,
Not at all, polling was mostly a dead heat through the election campaign with upwards of 10% undecided.
mostly because prime minister John
Howard was under heavy fire for his multiple lies and deceptions about the
Iraq war and because Latham had promised to
pull out Australia's forces before Christmas.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Howard's lies and deceptions are well known in the electorate as he won the previous election on lies. Honesty in public office is not a matter of any real public debate here it seems so long as the lies have no direct impact on middle class lifestyles. Latham's qualified promise to 'reduce' troop numbers in Iraq was a footnote to the Iraq war coverage which itself seems to be largely a matter of indifference to most people. Australia's involvement in the criminal aggression in Iraq is also not a matter of any real public debate here, whether that's in our heavily monopolised mass media, in political debate or in the shopping malls and pubs. Likewise Howard's situation is nothing like that of Blair or Bush, there is no 'heavy fire'.
Our complicity in the ongoing mass murders in Iraq was simply not an important issue in the electorate, and the illegal war there is still sold as a US and British war on 'terror' even though everyone knows it has little if anything to do with 911 or Al Qaeda and so on. There's no real coverage of it in the papers apart from regular references to 'terrorist' bombings in the Green Zone killing Americans with some oblique references made to the slaughter in places like Fallujah as the US prepares yet another criminal assault on a major urban centre.
The war is not a mainstream concern here.
It seemed Latham was
a certain winner. But to my big surprise Howard won by a landslide victory
with a nationwide voter swing towards his party. What has
happened ?
The undecided came down heavily on the side of maintaining the status quo at a time of a slowing yet still busy housing boom, fairly strong corporate economic growth and an increasingly nervous middle class up to their necks in mortgage and credit debts. The housing and consumer credit bubbles could burst as soon as interest rates go up along with oil driven inflation but everyone involved desperately needs the party to keep on going forever. Basically it was a consumers election, and the consumer does not know or particularly care that we're in Iraq as part of the Coalition of the Willing murdering babies for oil in order to help the yanks keep their debt bubble growing. The mainstream political parties collude with the media to keep discussion of real problems like ongoing climate change, resource depletion and illegal 'democratic' wars out of the mainstream public arena. The consensus reality is 'business as usual' which means maintaining a growing economy at all costs. The reality of the world at large is something to be nervously ignored until it can be ignored no longer. I think the reality check may come much sooner rather than later, possibly as early as next year if the US economy goes belly up and they invade Iran. Saudi oil extraction may well have already peaked and if so we're all on the threshold of a very brave new world.
Us Australians are an increasingly xenophobic, self-obsessed and self-interested nation focused solely on domestic and commercial concerns and transitioning to a US style user pays society at the expense of individual, social and national morality. That's how I see it anyways.
Regards,
Malcolm
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