Socialist Party Australia - Political Aerobics: A list of Latham's backflips

By Gregory Bradshaw
Latham’s amendment to the Free Trade Agreement has slightly reinvigorated his support amongst working class people. He stumbled on this amendment by accident and if Howard hadn’t blinked first, Latham may well of done so soon after.
Because after eight years of attacks on unions, refugees, women, and the environment, few people would be able draw a hair’s breadth between the pro-big business policies of the Coalition and those pro-big business policies of the supposed Labor "opposition". It is precisely this lack of an alternative that has enabled Howard to win three consecutive terms. In response to such attacks, many are shouting for "anyone but Howard and the Libs!" to win the upcoming federal election. Some see Mark Latham as an alternative of sorts: a man who speaks his mind and sticks to his guns. But a quick look at his hitherto career as Labor leader reveals that nothing could be further from the truth. Latham’s stunning political backflips show a man more suited for the Australian Olympic gymnastics team, than one able to fix the crises in our society.

PBS Price Increase
Two years ago Labor denounced Liberal plans to raise the prices of essential medicines covered under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), accusing them of attacking society’s poorest and most vulnerable. It labelled them as "unfair and unjustified" impositions on "pensioners and families under financial pressure".

But in late June Latham did a massive policy u-turn, voting in favour of the legislation in order to fund the 2004 federal budget. For the first time in history this budget offered tax cuts exclusively to the wealthiest layers of society, with some 70 percent of the population, those earning less than $52,000 a year, receiving nothing. The budget also boosted defence spending by $1.8 billion over the next four years, with military expenditure for 2004-05 to top a massive $16 billion.

From next January, the cost of subsidised medicines will rise by 21 percent, adding up to $50 a month to the medical bills of patients suffering such serious illnesses as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, hepatitis and HIV. By the government’s own estimates, some 5.5 million prescriptions will not be filled next year, simply because patients will be unable to afford them. Under Latham’s decisions (although he was too cowardly to announce them himself, relegating the onus onto one of his finance spokesmen), society’s poorest and most vulnerable are paying for upper class tax cuts and Australia’s rapidly growing military.

US-Australia FTA
Despite opposing many aspects of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Latham has passed it through the House of Representatives to near-certain ratification in the Senate in August. By agreeing to raise prices of prescription drugs under the PBS, Latham implemented by his own hand his supposedly greatest reservation about the FTA!

Playing the nationalist card, Latham initially held a vocal preference in favour of Australian big business over foreign interests. Infamous comments by him, such as the Government being a "conga line of suck holes" to the US, played on the anti-US sentiment that existed in opposition to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. However he has now reneged on this policy line, joining the "conga line" and jostling with Howard for the position of US Deputy of Southeast Asia.

Latham is attempting to win over both the sections of big business: one that favours multilateral policies (the WTO, the IMF, the UN, and other "global" institutions), and the other that supports bilateralism (individual FTAs, particularly with powerful states such as the US).

Troop Withdrawal
While our health, education and "public" transport systems lie in ruins, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent instead on the invasion of Iraq. Labor failed unequivocally to provide any sort of political resistance, towing the line behind the flimsy rhetoric of the Howard Government.

A newly elected Latham announced the withdrawal of Australian military forces by Christmas. However such talk was very short lived. Under pressure from the Labor party’s corporate backers, as well as intense political intimidation from Washington’s pro-big business Administration, Latham has whittled away his promise. At the highest estimates, Latham has "qualified" his position by stating that just 425 of the 846 military personnel deployed in Iraq and surrounding countries would be withdrawn. At times, Latham has seemed determined to drop his previous comments altogether. At an internal meeting of Labor MPs on June 17, he even had the tenacity to declare that the issue of troop withdrawal from Iraq was now of "scant interest" to anyone outside parliament! Since then, Latham has pursued a "don’t mention the war" approach to the Australian military in Iraq, and, in order to appease US militarists, he has appointed the war hawk Kim Beazley as Shadow Defence Minister - the man responsible for the Collins-class submarine debacle.

Gambling Policy
Early in 2004 Latham made promises to try to tackle the escalating community concern over gambling addiction. These included laws to force gambling venues to close for part of the day, loss-limiting smart cards, and mandatory cooling-off periods. However these promises failed to last even six months before they were withdrawn.

While declaring that state and territory governments are not responsible for addressing problem gambling, he has fallen silent on federal promises to combat it. The reality is that Latham’s state and territory government colleagues are collecting record windfalls from gambling tax revenue. And despite community protest, an average of less than half a percent of a total $4 billion gambling tax revenue is spent by each Labor state and territory on problem gambling services.

Family Bonus Scheme
But nothing could better display the fickleness of Latham and the entire parliament when, in early July, he demanded that the Government chase down those families that had been accidentally overpaid by the Family Bonus Scheme. Labor had previously slammed the Government for attempting to "claw back" the $600 "baby bonus". Howard, who had hitherto held the same position, switched to the opposite position to declare that they should be entitled to keep the money from the Governmental error. The two completely swapped views on the recovery of the overpaid benefits.

Latham’s Agenda
Latham has entered into a campaign of cheap populism in an attempt to win back disaffected working class voters. But in key policy areas, he has been careful not to alienate the heavy financial backers of the Labor Party, and is even moving to win over new layers of the Australian corporate elite. In turn, Australian big business has been grooming Latham’s economic rationalist politics as an alternative to the traditional conservatism of the Liberal Party.

No longer is Labor a party that represents working people, it is instead a neoliberal party with an agenda of privatisation and extreme free-market economics. Never before has this been so blatant than under the leadership of Latham.

We are all hoping that the upcoming federal election will leave Howard in the dustbin of history. But an electoral victory for Latham and Labor will not cease the attacks on working people, minorities, and the environment. We must maintain and strengthen the movement that has been the true opposition - not Labor in Canberra - to the Howard Government’s politics of war on the Middle East, on refugees, and our unions.