In Saturdays Australian General Election, after an 11-year term, Conservative PM,John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the left-tilting labour opposition Kevin Rudd, who has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australian troops from Iraq.

Labour’s environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, was reported by the BBC as saying:” Australians have decided that they are going to throw out a government that has been delinquent on climate change,


Howard, like other Neoliberal National leaders: Aznar in Spain, Blair in the UK,, Berlusconi in Italy, “, he stood shoulder to Shoulder” with Bush in the War against Iraq, described just after the Invasion as illegal by the then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, led their countries to war In spite of huge domestic opposition Since then, much evidence has surfaced indicating that they all lied over Iraq over the reasons they gave to justify the invasion.

And as in Britain, many Australians now believe their government's support for the war in the Iraq has increased the likelihood of a terrorist attack on Australian soil This was proved a reality in Spain after the Madrid bombings and has been reinforced by the UK´s security services in a pre-war report, and thwarted and actual terrorist attacks in Britain after the war.

Howard also introduced controversial labour laws and planned to introduce even more Draconian ones. His WorkChoices laws, hammered unions, increased employers' rights, cut pay and conditions, and stripped protection from unfair dismissal for the overwhelming majority of workers.

Additionally, his aversion to asylum seekers made headlines throughout the world, especially in 2001 when he refused to allow 400 migrants picked up by a Norwegian cargo ship into the country.

The New PM has pledged to a certain degree, to reverse Howard’s progressive authoritarianism, and legalisation of neoliberal economic policy.






Comment/Analysis:

SeniorAustralian journalists have said Australia "has slid" into "fascism" (Alan Ramsey) and referred to Howard's "totalitarian grip" over information (Mungo MacCallum), and The lawyer Cameron Murphy has said Australia is becoming a "Stalinist police state. Others have echoed this sentiment. It remains to be seen whether the new Labour leader will reverse this tren, because the labour governemt under Blair that followed 11 years of Margarets Thatcher´ neolineral leadership in Brtain continued her policies and many hnave said continued on the road to a neocon-fascist police state.

Gerard Henderson wrote in the Sydney Institute
The word "fascist" has become a cliched term of abuse. Real fascist societies, as in Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler, had authoritarian regimes which possessed a state ideology enforced by terror or the threat of terror. The reality of genuine fascism is well depicted in recent books by the likes of Michael Mann ( Fascists), Roger Eatwell ( Fascism: A History) and Robert Paxton ( The Anatomy of Fascism) ( http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/ghwcContent.php?ghwcID=22

I think what people like Gerald haven’t realised is that neoliberalism is a state ideology, and not as is claimed by many commentators and academics as the contrary, and states such as the US and UK are still trying to fully legalise neoliberalism, despite its evident failure around the world.

These states actually do use state terrorism and the threat of terror (shock and awe) as policy both externally, for example in the case of Iraq and the threats against Iran; and increasingly internally with the introduction of Draconian laws on freedom of speech and the right to associate and protest, anti-trade union laws the, and the hypocritically named anti-terror laws. The introduction of surveillance and monitoring systems in the US and the UK would seem to point to a movement to a neocon-fascist state.

It remains to be seen whether the New Australian PM will reverse these trends by scrapping Howard’s laws, and ´whether further afield a New Democratic leader like Hilary Clinton in the US will halt or reverse the process there in the years to come. Zapatero has done it in Spain, but successive Labour leaders, Brown and Blair in the UK carried on further down the road to a necon-fascist state.

As is always the case, it will most probably come down to money and power: and how successful neolibeal economics and neoliberal fascist ideology is at retaining the power and wealth of elite. The new Australian leader may, at best, be sincere in pledging another way to keep the wealthy and elite satisfied.


Yours as ever

Harold Hamlet