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  • From: Nicholas Roberts <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Rudd manifesto is all good in hindsight
  • Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 19:42:29 +1100

* 3 . Rudd manifesto is all good in hindsight*

*Jeff Sparrow, editor of
Overland<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=c22a3bf3-cc29-4dbe-add7-ad9ec24cd590&rid=56aacd75-139e-4169-8912-7a7da4498ba8>writes:
*

Had Kevin Rudd published his *Monthly
manifesto<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=7beca81e-d7cb-450d-9353-101e6e6d61e1&rid=56aacd75-139e-4169-8912-7a7da4498ba8>
*back in, say, 2004, it would have been a most remarkable document.

Back then, when you couldn't find a cigarette paper's worth of difference
between the social democrat Tony Blair and the Republican George W. Bush,
denouncing neo-liberalism would have been courageous. Had he spoken up in
2004, Rudd would have had to stare down the Murdoch attack machine at its
most powerful, an experience Mark Latham knows something about. By
sharpening the economic differences between Labor and Liberal in an election
year, Rudd could have sounded the alarm about the precipice ahead.

Of course, being Kevin Rudd, he didn't do that.

Nor did he take his anti-free market fundamentalist ideas to the people in
November 2007. On the contrary, back then, as you will recall, he boasted
that Labor's fiscal policy was "a mirror position" of John Howard's, that
Labor's attitude to budget surpluses was "identical to the Government's
[with] no sliver of light between them".

In other words, a little over a year ago, Rudd enthusiastically endorsed the
"free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed" he now
sees as so reprehensible: as the *Australian *'s Matt Price said at
the
time<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=268b6e91-1f07-40a9-afb3-00d27852ef0a&rid=56aacd75-139e-4169-8912-7a7da4498ba8>,
the general idea was that "Rudd agree[d] with the PM on everything
economic."

Thus, when Rudd asks in his *Monthly *piece, "How was this [crisis] allowed
to happen? What ideology, what policy, what abuses made this possible? Were
there any warnings?", the answer is that, no, there weren't -- or, at least,
there weren't from Kevin Rudd.

Today, everyone's bolting that particular stable door, but, of course, the
horses of economic apocalypse have long since galloped away.

Rudd's entirely right to say that economic orthodoxy has been overthrown.
Indeed, his essay exemplifies the new orthodoxy as entirely as his position
in 2007 exemplified the old orthodoxy: like every other world leader, he now
says that the financial sector needs greater regulation, that governments
should, without resorting to protectionism, oversee the market, yadda yadda
yadda.

Mind you, this new consensus has not been reached in any coherent fashion.
It's not just in Australia that we've witnessed the unedifiying spectacle of
politicians adopting, almost overnight, policies against which they've spent
their entire careers arguing. It was, after all, George Bush -- Mr
Neoliberal himself -- who presided over the utterly unprecedented bank
bailout, a zillion dollar intervention into the sanctum of the market that
went ahead not because of any consensus that the bailout would work but
simply because no-one knew what else to do.

And still they don't. Yes, the stimulation plans proceed but to date they've
proved as effective on the economy as a defibrillator might on a corpse. In
any case, now that Obama's in the White House, Republicans seem to be losing
enthusiasm for spending their way out of trouble – though, naturally, they
have no better ideas of their own.

Meanwhile, take a look what's happening in
Europe<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=89cc814e-c1ad-4a8e-8100-c56051f5a18e&rid=56aacd75-139e-4169-8912-7a7da4498ba8>.
Surveying the strikes spreading from Athens and Reykjavik, the
*Guardian *concludes:
"Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are
trembling. Revolt is in the air."

There's none of that in Australia – at least, not so far. But one wouldn't
like to entirely rule it out.

Yes, the global crisis represents the failure of neo-liberalism. But, more
than that, it represents the bipartisan failure of political leadership, of
a political class that didn't speak out against the free marketeers when it
might have mattered, and that now seeks to creep away from that history
without any reckoning whatsoever.

The best thing about Mr Rudd's manifesto is that it might, perhaps, spark a
more general conversation about policy alternatives. God knows we need it.

*Send your tips to **boss@crikey.com.au* <boss@crikey.com.au>*, submit them
anonymously
**here*<http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=2f065f84-c8bc-4073-8e18-5d98deb52478&rid=56aacd75-139e-4169-8912-7a7da4498ba8>
* or SMS tips and photos to 0427 TIP OFF.*

--
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor



  • [permaculture] Rudd manifesto is all good in hindsight, Nicholas Roberts, 02/03/2009

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