2 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

1988: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

A Year to Forget For the Aboriginal people, the end of 1988, the much-vaunted "year of reconciliation”, seemed much like the beginning, with an infant mortality rate still three times higher, unemployment four times higher, imprisonment rates up to sixteen Photo: Rapport times higher, and life expectancy conservative onslaught against But a question mark remained. twenty years less, than the national Aboriginal self-determination and Were Gerry Hand's actions a average. Aboriginal programs. In NSW, capitulation to the right's anti-black The inspiration of Sydney’s “mainstreaming” (read “assimil­ vendetta, or was the demise of the January 26 march raised hopes of a ation”) became the buzzword. And in unloved Charles Perkins and friends better future. But where the year’s Canberra the furore in the a case of the Aboriginal movement beginning had at least seen some Department of Aboriginal Affairs choosing the moment to put its own attempt at progress, its close saw the saw the government in abject retreat house in order? government in hasty retreat behind a once more. DB Shady Lanes and Dark Alleys he into donkey’s back". T his is no way to Mat the inquiry already has at its corruption was talk about your own party and disposal. Tone of the great pieces of government, and why a donkey Two senior ministers, a political theatre of 1988. And, like rather than a camel is not clear. What Supreme Court Judge (Angelo any other good drama, it came to a is clear, however, is that the ambit of Vasta), a District Court Judge (Eric climax shortly before the year’s the inquiry is now firmly, rather than Pratt), a Police Commissioner (Sir curtain-fall. “allegedly” within the political arena. Terence Lewis), several other senior ’s confessions that he had and some lower-ranking officers, all By the lime this gets into print rorted both the taxation department now either stood down or aside, or dramatic events may already have and the ministerial expenses system confessedly corrupt, is not bad going resulted irom former Senior (allegedly along with many of his for just over a year's work. But these Minister. Don “Shady” Lane's ministerial colleagues) to the extent have been only the most public confessions to the inquiry in of a combined sum of SI30,000 may figures and events in the inquiry. November. As one allegedly reliable pale into insignificance against the What is clear is that Tony Fitzgerald National Party source was quoted as wide implications of his confessions QC has been slowly building up a saying on ABC local radio: “this in relation to the amassed evidence database of intelligence, occasionally could be the straw that breaks the introducing a “key operator” to 1988: THE YEAR IN REVIEW AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 3

enable the database to form into distinctive patterns. The slow sweep Howard Plays the Wild Card through the networks of prostitution, illegal casinos, and SP betting, producing some rather flat and uneventful moments in the life of the inquiry, have nonetheless provided the inquiry team with an invaluable system ofcross-references which swing into action as key witnesses appear. The fact that this has all been done in public, and that the public can — and does — make cross references too, gives it political implications far beyond those of any previous inquiry in Queensland and probably in the whole of . Jack “The Bagman" Herbert, former Head of the Licensing Squad, and star witness for the inquiry, turned out to be a bit of a 1988 was the year racism came Not for the first time, John disappointment in terms of back into fashion. The FitzGerald Howard found himself exchanging sensational revelations, and stood- Report opened up a “debate” over Menziesite conservatism for the down Police Commissioner Sir multiculturalism even as a sanitised lexicon of the populist right. Terence Lewis suffered from 18 days version was doing service as the Meanwhile, the left found itself in a of non-recall, but both of these key official representation of nationhood familiar dilemma: how to support the figures were clearly made in the Bicentennial year. And “social multicultural principle while uncomfortable by pieces of evidence cohesion” became the racists’ remaining critical of the produced by the inquiry’s catchcry. practice? elephantine memory-bank of Queensland’s network of both alleged and confessed corruption. In more “moderate” than Reagan. both cases, this discomfort enabled Bushed Bush will probably wish to the inquiry to make at least tentative continue Reagan’s kudos-winning connections with the sphere of he world recently experienced disarmament initiatives. But he is government in Queensland. two major American events: still a hawk. He supports Star Wars The tentative connections T the election of George Bush as as vigorously as Reagan. And appeared to become firmer as the President, and the twenty-fifth defence expenditure will only be inquiry moved into its "political anniversary of President Kennedy’s affected by the ability to squeeze season” initiated by Don Lane’s assassination. While history sees the other sectors, do deals with confessions and allegations about his latter presidency as Camelot; we can Congress, and the pressures of the cabinet colleagues, though the predict with certainty that the former general economic malaise. former minister has denied being the falls into the Father Knows Best We know Bush supports “Big Don” who advised Herbert to category. Reagan’s “freedom fighters”, the leave the country in 1987 and has With a Bush administration we Contras: his exact role in the Iran/ denied any alleged connections with are assured of four more years of Contragate scandal has yet to be illegal out-of-hours hotel openings extreme conservatism, despite the spelled out in court (if it gets that far). and electoral irregularities raised in fact that political commentators, Where Bush does differ from previous evidence. The big step into scrambling for a label, suggest he is Reagan is in the “charisma” stakes. the arena of government has been made, however, and ii remains to be M A T SORT OF MAN l$ MB STtU,pONTKNOW. FOR. SibtCL H fc seen what effects this may have in the The M M fK&QetiT-£lECT * fttA$0H$9e$T&tA$P£&BY iYO&VSN8) r?y£ iMGBtt, ?RifrtOeMT‘t<£C T m ASX&) Pt5VN6Ut5rt&> m HANPUXS H£ PSOPL& AdB NOWiJNfiBi# 10 w-PtjKAmm'? | TH m -7Am 5T J.5. HAVZi.,,. 10 PUT POKTHA PO&iim THINK Of- H fM /V ®3H 5 OMJH. NOT AVAtLA&iS run-up to the inquiry's final report, KRGQNA. \ THAN itlH A T «£/$ NOT* FOftaywew scheduled for mid-1989. The next ■ ? state election is scheduled, according to an unusually pre-emptive announcement by Premier Mike / { ^hern. for December 1989. Could be another interesting year in m i / " to s '

Queensland .... Cartoon: Garry Trudeau Pholo: Rappor! 4 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 1988: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

The chances are that he will be best remembered by history in Gerry Glasnost’s Year of Trials Trudeau’s D o o n e s b u r y strip caricature: no body, just a weak voice 1988 was the Year of Glasnost. on the page. Almost daily, the limits of the And the American voters (those possible were pushed back by Soviet who bothered) gave him to us. journalists and intellectuals. The Democratic Party gave him Today, Gorbachev is himself to u s, too. They are, as criticised, in particular because of his commentators say, a party with proposal to take the two top “vision". (An odd term, conjuring up positions in the country into his an image of an entire party hands. leadership hallucinating. On second And now it is the armed forces thoughts, perhaps it is appropriate.) who must answer for their huge In any case, for the next consumption of the nation’s wealth. four years, while the Democratic The restructuring of the armed forces Party leadership searches for that is finally being debated including vision (or a different TV series on among the military themselves. which to model their prospective Andrei Nuikin, a commentator presidency), anyone in the US who known for his outspoken views, thinks they might be labelled a recently even asked if the military “liberal” had better keep her or his may not take part in a coup d'etat head down. against perestroika and glasnost ... Photo: Rex Feature* And the rest of the world? Well, But if glasnost continues to we in Australia will have to deal with chalk up new victories, perestroika, levels is m ore o bstinate and all that visioning going on in particularly in the economic field, is ferocious. Often it seems almost Canberra with the major political sadly lacking. It is here that the conscious sabotage. parties. jl resistance of the bureaucracy at all Ordinary working people see the queues grow longer, prices rise, and the bureaucrats cynically defy their Back to Basics own slogans. Yet the worst is still to come: price reform is essential to get Former premier Barrie some rationality back into the Unsworth had pledged “back to economy, but will involve inflation, basics”, and back to basics is speculation and hardship, In China, certainly what NSW electors got. after ten years of rising living The fall of the twelve-year old Labor standards, it is still difficult to "sell’’ government in March was the cause such reform. In the USSR it will be of little mourning, but it did usher in much more difficult. one of Australia’s most dangerous The hope is that greater recent experiments in conservatism. democratisation will enable the people themselves to decide such By the end of 1988, the Greiner reform is unavoidable, as are the government had undermined the problems it will bring. The tragedy is state school system, threatened to that the $80 billion the USSR abolish Aboriginal land councils received in hard currency during the and “mainstream” their funds, oil boom in the 'seventies was moved to privatise a swathe of squandered by the Brezhnev government services, and wielded a apparatchiks. That could have hatchet through women’s programs. softened the pain of reform. Today After years of corruption and there is little left, complacency Labor received a 1988 solved nothing for the newer, cleaner face with reluctant Soviet Union, but the hope remains leader Bob Carr. Yet it offered little that glasnost and democratisation agenda was to push the conservative resistance to many of the new will allow fundamental change in the focus nationally from the “hip pocket government’s assaults. economy and society as a whole to nerve” to John Howard’s new begin in 1989. But nothing is certain: And while some of education fascination with “conservative a neo-stalinist coup is certainly not minister Terry Metherell’s plans values”. Is Greinerism the face of the excluded, although the resistance probably have a touch of merit, the Liberals’ future? overall effect of the Greiner moral would be enormous, df 1988: THE YEAR IN REVIEW AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 5

Paying the Bill

1988 saw the curtain fall on one of the most contradictory careers in Australian politics, that of William George Hayden. A man reputedly loved by the party which ultimately didn’t really seem to want him as leader; a self-professed “democratic socialist” who ended his political days as an acolyte of Paul Keating, and who instigated perhaps the first “Keating budget" back in 1975; Hayden’s career was a maze of ambiguities. His foreign policy record, too, was fraught with paradox: strong on Indochina but spineless on East Timor; never quite happy with the Americophilic tendency of his government, yet unwilling or unable to buck it. His final flourish produced similar spasms of ambivalence: was it just a “job for Bill”, or was it a genuine way of removing the spectre of 1975? Probably the most fitting epitaph to his career is the faction formed in his image, the ALP Centre Left; a “conscience” of the party which always seemed to deliver to the right, and an “alternative to the factions in the ALP’s history. In the simultaneously. No drover’s dog, factions" which coincided with the crunch, like its mentor, it was perhaps. Bill Hayden, but neither a deepest institutionalisation of squeezed by left and right shepherd of the flock .... DB

longevity as himself. In fact, it has on those of de Gaulle, in the Faded Dreams taken twenty years for any substance exchange there has been a loss of to be found in his terse prophecy that both political perspective and f “les evenements” of May 1968 apres m oi le deluge. expectations. Whereas, twenty years marked the imminent departure Indeed, the flood of radicalism ago autogestion meant a saner world I of President de Gaulle, May of most feared by the general could where people had control over their this year saw the resuscitation of the have just floated ashore this May in workplaces, the idea of workers’ only politician capable of rivalling the shape of the avuncular control has now slipped, via the path the general’s dominance over the Mitterrand and the apparent of economic rationalism, to the hope shape of French Fifth Republic consolidation of a left/centre of buying a share in a recently politics. The re-election o f formation in French politics. And privatised national airline. Mitterrand to the presidency seems this must be what weYe excited On reflection, maybe the general to have finally broken the political about: against the backdrops of was right about the deluge: he just mould cast by de Gaulle. Kohl, Thatcher and Bush, had the direction wrong. PMcN And this is not surprising. After Mitterrand does indeed look rather asserting the political role of the welcoming. Contributors to 1988: The Year in presidency, de Gaulle was And yet there’s something Review: sufficiently immodest to believe the despondent about all this. Although political structures he had put in the political structures being put in David Burchell, Denis Freney, Jane place would have precisely the same place by Mitterrand are an advance Inglis, Colin Mercer, Peter McNiece,