The March Of The Patriots – Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly is an insightful, prominent and prolific political commentator. He is editor-at-large of The Australian and has authored seven books on the modern Australian political landscape – the most recent being The March of the Patriots (2009). Paul Kelly has earned a number of accolades for journalistic excellence, including a double Walkley Award (2001) and Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year (1990). Paul Kelly addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 9 September 2009, and reviewed aspects of the governments of John Howard and Paul Keating.

THE MARCH OF THE PATRIOTS

PAUL KELLY

It is a pleasure to speak at the Sydney Institute and I thank Gerard Henderson for the invitation. I congratulate Gerard and Anne Henderson on the 20^th anniversary of the Institute. In this time it has made a genuine contribution to our intellectual life and the diversity of speakers appearing at the Institute has been striking. I want also to acknowledge Gerard and Anne for their individual contributions as writers addressing many aspects of Australia’s political and social life and this includes Gerard’s weekly columns in Fairfax papers offering sharp analysis of current and historical events.

My book, The March of Patriots, is the story of the struggle for modern Australia. It is an inside account of how Paul Keating and John Howard governed Australia during the decade from 1991 to 2001 and it is the first in a two book project that spans the entire Keating-Howard era from 1991 to 2007.

This book reflects my abiding view of Australian political reporting and commentary: that it is focused too much on politics and not enough on government. It is not too difficult to report politics but it is very hard to penetrate governments. Yet it is governments that really matter. This book is unmistakably about governments. I try to capture the view not just from the Prime Minister’s office but get inside the heads of Keating and Howard as they ponder their options and take their decisions.

For this reason I believe the book frames the Keating and Howard periods in a way that has not been presented before. It is certainly conflicts with much of the conventional media coverage throughout the era. The same applies to particular events and themes with the book’s coverage, for example, of East Timor, economic reform, migration and asylum seekers and foreign policy offering different perspectives from much of the media orthodoxy.

The book took six years to research and write. In truth, however, it is nearly 40 years in the making. I first met Paul Keating in 1971 and John Howard in 1974 and I have lived through and reported their tribulations, tragedies and triumphs. I respect them both for the 27 years and 33 years respectively they devoted to public life.

For me, Keating and Howard go together. They came from roughly similar parts of Sydney, children of the Menzian age, fashioned by the 1950s, hailing from families with fathers in small business and mothers dedicated to the children. They were raised in the age of White Australia, full employment and the convenience of male dominance in households that believed in Christian values, personal responsibility and progress through hard work.

Both came from political families and were tribalised early and permanently. The culture of the Keating household was Irish-Australian-Catholic-Labor while that of the Howard household was Protestant-Middle Class-Empire-Liberal loyalty. As adolescents neither excelled at school yet both were driven and ambitious with a capacity to learn and adapt. That both men leapt from the Sydney suburbs to the Prime Ministership over 30 years testifies to Australia’s remarkable democracy.

In politics Keating and Howard fed off each other and measured progress against each other. They ran the Australian Treasury from 1977 to 1991 unbroken, first Howard then Keating. They ran the Prime Ministership from 1991 to 2007 unbroken, first Keating, then Howard. Both used their experience at Treasury to lay their claims as party leaders. Their time as Prime Ministers saw the virtual capitulation of party identity to Keating and Howard. During this time, Labor was Keating and Liberal was Howard. Their fingerprints, their branding, their beliefs, run all over modern Australia.

Where they agreed their ideas were entrenched: an open economy, tariff reduction, termination of centralised wage fixation, a progressive income re-distribution, an economic partnership with China, close ties with Indonesia, and integration of the US alliance and Asian engagement. Where they disagreed, the unresolved legacy was left to Kevin Rudd: Aboriginal Reconciliation, the republic, trade union powers, the culture wars and the balance between social libertarianism and conservatism.

Keating and Howard were authentic, good company, fierce advocates and remarkably open about their aspirations. What you saw was what you got. While ruthless pragmatists and temperamental opposites, they were conviction politicians who, in the end, died for their convictions (along with their mistakes). They constitute a political brand that is probably gone forever.

The March of Patriots is about these two men – but it is also about the ideas that have shaped modern Australia. The book neither hesitates to criticise these leaders nor shrink from supporting their policies when they advance the national interest. I have no time for armchair moralists who condemn politicians as a class or condemn leaders as immoral without assessing the real world policy choices that they faced. I argue the modern age of Australian politics began with the Hawke Government in 1983 and, while alert to policy failures, I believe the extent of national progress under Bob Hawke, Keating and Howard has been substantial.

The title is The March of Patriots for two reasons.

The lesser reason is that Keating and Howard projected as Prime Ministers a more intense form of patriotism. For both men, this was a highly deliberate and symbolic decision. Keating declared in January 1992 his view that Australia would be re-made during the coming decade. He said the economic imperative and the cultural imperative were tied together. This was dangerous territory because Keating was talking about faith. Convinced that Australians were still too culturally dependent upon Britain, Keating aspired to bring the nation across the Rubicon to a deeper condition of self-esteem and self-confidence. For Keating, this transformation was the organising principle for all his policy goals from economic reform, to Aboriginal Reconciliation to the republic. The risk in this hubristic mindset was the implication that Australians would not be a mature people until they passed Keating’s tests. The people came to resent Keating’s patronising attitude and eventually rejected him.

Howard was both a patriot and a nationalist. He had read the diaries of his father on the Western front in 1918 and concluded that his father had been a dedicated patriot. One of the worst misreadings of Howard by the Labor Party and much of the media was to see him as a pro-British toady. It is hard to imagine a more serious mistake about the substance of an Australian leader. Howard was always an Australian nationalist. He saw no conflict between being a pro-British constitutional monarchist and a patriot. Howard was certain about his own patriotism because it came from certainty about his own family. In office, he became the most nationalist Prime Minister in the history of the Liberal Party and set about seizing the cultural icons of nationalism for the Liberal Party – the ANZAC ethos, the bushman image, the battler symbol. In a comic event he even proposed putting “mateship” into the Constitution only to realise this was too populist a step for the Australian public. Howard, unlike Keating, was relaxed about Australia’s past and saw its patriotism as fully formed requiring neither the approval of others nor the transformation that Keating imagined. In short, Howard and Keating were patriots divided by different visions of patriotism.

The second and more substantial reason for the title – and the unifying theme for the book – is that in this period a distinctively Australian policy model was being devised to deliver success in the globalised age. This was a model geared to Australia’s unique situation. The Keating/Howard model was not American; it was not European; it was not Asian. It was distinctively Australian and it reflected the culture and characteristics of the Australian system. This was the reality that many public intellectuals failed to grasp. Because Howard ran a pro-US foreign policy he was often depicted as trying to Americanise both Australian values and policies. In fact, it is hard to recall a single policy idea Howard took from America. The defining feature of governance under Keating and Howard (despite their differences) was that it became more distinctively Australian.

Dramatic proof of a distinctively Australian economic model came in the 2008 global financial crisis when the economy proved far more resilient than the economies in America and Europe. The reason is because Australia’s policy, regulatory and institutional arrangements were built on Australian practice and principles. Our system of financial and economic management was different. It was also a Labor-Liberal joint creation. Labor contributed the float, tariff abolition, competition policy, privatisation and enterprise bargaining and the Liberals contributed the fiscal consolidation, public debt abolition, tax reform, labour market reform and more privatisation. The modern Australian economy is a joint Labor-Liberal creation and the evidence offers no other interpretation. Our relative success in the downturn offers no reason for complacency. It is, however, a compelling exhibit that Australia pioneered its own ways to manage the challenge and opportunities of globalisation.

There has been a constant and healthy debate in Australia concerning the balance between economic growth and egalitarianism. There is, of course, no ideal balance. But Australia, by avoiding the grossly inadequate social safety net in America and also avoiding Europe’s over-regulation and government intervention, seems to have struck a sensible balance. Its outlook is neither American nor European. The truth is rarely remarked: that Keating and Howard were essentially on the same page in striking this balance.

In The March of Patriots I argue that Keating and Howard aspired to renovate the beliefs and governing strategies of their parties for a new era. In my view Paul Keating tried to find a New Light on the Hill for Labor; he sought to nourish Labor’s heart. This was enshrined in his “big picture” with its core ideas of seeing the market economy as a public benefit, engagement with Asia as a national aspiration, Aboriginal Reconciliation, the republic and the concept of a diverse yet united community. Keating sought to sustain Labor’s soul and implant these ideas as a beacon. His defeat at the 1996 election shows that Keating’s ambition was only ever partially realised. The tragedy, during the 1993-96 term, was his abject failure to devise an electoral strategy to sell his vision. Keating was determined to govern on his own terms, a luxury no Prime Minister can afford.

I argue that Howard is the most important Liberal since Menzies and is poorly understood and poorly analysed. The Liberal Party is a vehicle for leadership; the task of each successful Liberal leader is to re-interpret party beliefs. Howard came to office in 1996 without any master plan. Yet there is no doubt where he finished – Howard stood for four ideas: economic liberalism (or reform), social conservatism, cultural traditionalism and national security vigilance. He was a conservative, a liberal, a populist, a radical and a pragmatist. He dressed according to need and the reason there is such confusion about his Prime Ministership is because it defies any one-dimensional analysis.

As an economic reformer Howard championed the GST-led tax reform, promoted labour market reform including WorkChoices, privatised Telstra and the Commonwealth Employment Service and advanced welfare reform. This was not the agenda of a conservative; it was consistently opposed by Labor as a dangerous change agenda.

As a social conservative Howard opposed the 1960s revolution in personal libertarianism, promoted family values, funded households according to children and tried to give mothers a choice between work and home. Above all, he recruited the ideas of personal responsibility and mutual obligation as the spearheads of an aggressive conservative ideology that appealed to mainstream Australia, defying Labor’s assumption that social conservatism was an obsolete notion. Its initial sign was his anti-gun law after the Port Arthur massacre and its zenith was his 2007 Northern Territory intervention.

As a cultural traditionalist, Howard asserted the ideas of national sovereignty, border protection, ANZAC, the Western canon in education, Christian values and the British heritage. He felt the culture war was real and that the qualities many Australians loved about their country were under assault. As an agent of national security vigilance, he pursued the strategic concept of Australia as regional leader, authorised the most wide ranging military deployments for more than three decades spanning East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and implemented new national security laws at home.

While Keating shopped for ideas, Howard was weak at discussing ideas. Where Keating was intellectually curious, Howard was dogmatic. Yet both offered their parties new governing models based upon a re-interpretation of their party ideology. Neither enjoyed the popularity of Bob Hawke nor the command of Sir Robert Menzies. Both became polarising figures whose identity as tribal warriors became a liability.

Ultimately however, Keating and Howard left a large footprint upon the nation. They helped to construct a new model of Australian Exceptionalism that mirrored their grudging agreements and bitter conflicts. Their legacy is impressive, contradictory and incomplete – a commentary upon the nation they served.