Australian Left Review No.134 1991

MEDICARE UNDER THE KNIFE FAREWELL TO THE ACCORD MILES DAVIS ■ CORRUPTION SINEAD O’CONNOR GREENING TRADE No. 134 • November 1991 • $4 ■M niiiiiiiiniiniii 3 0009 02945 0629 FOR RICHER FOR POORER The Medicare Debate YOU READ IT FIRST... (tfe %bnej] ilorn mg l§ern lit THE YELTSIN REVOLUTION^ Communism is dead Boris grabs Gorbachev kicks away the levers the remaining props Sydney Morning Herald, 26.8.91 Jk THE AUSTRALIAN DEATH OF 41 “ •■••• ■tbiw m « ■ rr*T*- _ COM M UNISM CiORBArlHfV OU1T5 f'AftTY TEl I ' CfNTftAI fOM M(TTFJ TO DttBAN DEATH OF COMMUNISM ALR, February 1990 Australian, 26.8.91 If you want to find out what forward-looking people on the Left are thinking, before it enters the newspapers, ALR is your only choice. To subscribe to ALR: TO SUBSCRIB E you'll need to send us your name and address. RATES: for one year (11 issues): £35 individuals, $32 concession (students, pensioners, unemployed), $45 institutions. For two years: $62 individuals, $54 concession, $75 institutions. Supporting subscriptions (to help fund our growth): $60 one^ear, $100 two years. PAYMENT: Please enclose payment by cheque, money order. Bankcard or Mastercard. With credit card orders, please indude holder’s name, card no. and expiry date. Post to ALR Subs, Freepost 28, PO Box A247, Sydney South, NSW 2000 (no stamp needed il posted in Australia). Overseas rates on request. Newsmaking controversy. Agenda-setting debates. And a darned good read. CONTENTS MARGINS: Polar Logic 2 PROFILE: Miles Davis 3 JUDY HORACEK: is at home with the tomatoes 46 CHINA SHOP; The ABC of bad taste 47 CORRECT LINE COOKING: How to survive the Boring Party 48 BRIEFINGS THE BARBARIAN SYNDROME: Nick Greiner loses the script 4 SWEDEN SOUR: Final farewells for the Swedish model 6 NATIONAL OBSESSION: Romania's turbulent tribes 8 PAPUA TIGER: Rowan Callick with some rare good news from PNG 10 FEATURES CARRY ON DOCTOR; Brian Howe's Medicare copayment highlights the real problems of health funding. Deidre Wicks and Roy Green look at the options, and Julie Power talks to Medicare architect John Deeble. 12 GOVERNING CORRUPTION: Gary Wickham and Gavin Kendall argue that our ideals of public probity may be a mite ambitious. 20 A CHANGE OF HEART: A decade on, the Accord is being reassessed. Clare Curran spoke to the authors of a new; highly critical, book. 24 TRADING UP: Lyuba Zarsky looks at the green agenda for international trade, while Jock Collins takes on the green critics of immigration. 30 THE CHINA SYNDROME: China's apparatchiks are doing very nicely out of the market, reports Annette Chan. 36 ALREVIEW POWER TO THE PEOPLE: A museum is bom 39 BIMA UP: Murri radio prospers from the black deaths Royal Commission 40 FROM HAIR TO MATERNITY: Sinead O'Connor and Sandy Shaw: two peas in a pod? 42 UNCHECKED MATES: Australia's most successful fraternity club 44 SHORT REVIEWS: Napoleon meets Goethe 45 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW: 134 NOVEMBER 1991 EDITORIAL COLLECTIVES - SYDNEY: Brian Aarons, Eric Aarore, Hilda Andrews, Rds Bragg, David Burchdl, dare Curran, Kitty Eggeridng, Gloria Carton, Jane Inglis, Sue McCreadte, Peter McNieoe, Mike Tlcher, Gory Tteuien. MELBOURNE: L ise Connor, Jim Crosthwaite, Michael Dutton, David Ettershank, Kale Kennedy, Paddy McCony, Sob McQueen, Pavla Miller, Ken Norilng, Olga Silver, Jarma Thompson. BRISBANE: Nicola Doumany, Jane Evans, Howard Gullle, Mike Kennedy, Colin Mercer, Mjchad Meadows, Jeffery Mlnsor. Paul Norton, Marg O'Donnell. Giselle Thomas. EDITOR; David Burchell. BUSINESS MANAGER: Mike Tlcher. REVIEWS: Roa Bragg. ACCOUNTS: Hilda Andrews (Sydney); Olga 5flver (Melbourne). DISTRIBUTION: Intemews, 1 Seddon Street, Banks town, NSW 2200 DESIGN: Ros Bragg. COVER GRAPHIC Roe Bragg. TYPESETTING: Gloria Gallon. PRINTER: Spotpress, 105-107 Victoria Road, Mamckville 2204. PUBLISHED BY: Red Pen Publications, 1st Floor, 6a Nelson St, Annandale 2038. All material CALR1991, Permission mual be sought to reprint articles or reproduce graphics. CORRESPONDENCE: ALR, PO Box A247, Sydney South 2000. PHONE: (02) 5651855; (02) 550 3831. PAX: (02) 550 4460. ALR welcomes contributions and letter*. Contributions must be typed, double-spaced on one side of the paper only. They will be returned if accompanied by a stamped, self-addiessed envelope. Sony, all care but no responsibility taken for unsolicited manuscripts. A style guide Is available on request Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the editorial collective. 2 COLUMNS Over the next few months and year, of postmodernism. And few would one suspects, as Communism fades presum ably still use the from view, the parameters of political 'revolutionary'/'social democrat' debate will be reshaped closer to the polarity as ideal end points for the eastern European model - where the graph line of left-of-centre politics. major dividing line at present is be Yet still, curiously, we nearly all still tween those who want a more rapid, talk as if these were, in fact, the most and those who (for various reasons) meaningful definitions in want a Blower transition to the democratic politics. We still habitual market. Even this, though, will not ly describe the Right of the political dearly replicate the Western ideal of spectrum as 'conservatism' - even a 'spectrum', with calibrated 'Left' though, as Paul Keating is fond of and 'Right' arms, because the forces pointing out, the Left nowadays on either side will remain disparate spends more time defending the MARGINS and fluid. On the 'slower transition' status quo than does the Right. And side— at present the losers— will be it seems clear that the Cold War found both social democrats and divisions in the Australian labour Polar Politics nationalist reactionaries, old-style movement are going to long oudive Communists acting in defence of the the withering of the international When Mikhail Gorbachev claims to old order and new-style trade blocs around which they were or be a socialist in the mould of Willy unionists acting in defenoe of living ganised. Brandt and the Swedish SAP (ALR standards. 133, October), we really know Com This lends a strange sense of munism is dead. Not that we ought One response from the western Left schizophrenia to much contem to take Gorbachev's miraculous to these seismic political shifts is to porary debate on the left side of conversion on the road from the argue that it all doesn't really matter politics. At one level it is freely ad Crimea too seriously In itself; after to 'us', anyway; 'we' gave up on mitted that the self-definition of left thirty years or more as a member of Soviet-style socialism years ago: and and labour politics is 'in crisis', and the CFSU, his sudden (re)discovery it's all just a matter of the collapse of that the collapse of the old Soviet of Western social democracy 'stalinism', rather than socialism, model is not without consequence seemed a little forced. anyway. However, there is some for our own vision of the good thing a little hollow about this sort of society. In the very next breath, But Gorbachev's statement does at disclaimer. After all, regardless of though, conversation usually least accurately reflect one important subsequent disclaimers, the tradition proceeds as if this crisis had been reality. Like many former socialists in of 1917 has had a seminal influence resolved, and resolved decisively in the formerly Eastern European satel on the character of the Western politi favour of the old verities. lites, he realises the game is up, not cal lexicon over the last three just for Communism, but also for the quarters of a century. Indeed, the foreseeable future for socialism more Perhaps it is this schizophrenia very conception of 'the political which explains the mood of defen broadly, in the old Soviet bloc. spectrum' in Western politics is itself siveness and 'return to Henceforth, it seems, the parameters the product of the two epoch-making of political debate there will be fundamentals' which seems current events of modem European history: ly to be abroad in leftish politics. staked out between a number of com the French Revolution (which coined After a decade of pragmatism and peting political currents, the the vocabulary of 'Left' and 'Right') 'rightness' or 'leftness' of which in compromise, it's asserted, now is the and the Soviet Revolution (which time for the Left to return to its tradi Western terms is not always immedi created the divisions within the left- tional role as conscience of the labour ately apparent. At present these of-centre spectrum which we take for movement and guardian of maxi- would appear to be: Westem-style granted today, and more particularly mali st rectitude. On the face of it, one so dal democracy, a form of West the conception of calibrations of m ight have thought the times European Christian democracy, a 'leftness' defined by proximity to, or demanded something radically dif peculiarly rigid interpretation of distance from, the revolutionary ab ferent a comprehensive rethinking Anglophone neo-liberalism, and old- solute). style Russian atavistic nationalism, of the 'boundaries' of politics and of i the instincts and assumptions under At the moment in the ex-Soviet Most people on the Western Left lying them, for instance. But what if Union the main political and would probably now concede that it is precisely the fear of the loss of ideological struggle is between a the identification of 'Left' and 'Right' identity' which this process might loose coalition of the first three with 'progress' and 'reaction' respec create which causes otherwise well- against an unholy alliance of the tively (the tradition founded in 1789), intentioned people to fall back on the fourth — old-style primordial Rus no longer makes much sense — eternal truths? sian nationalism— and the remnants regardless of whether or not one sub of hardline Soviet Communism.

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