HOWARD'S WAY

Political Amnesia and Howard's Ten Years

The mainstream press's analysis of "Ten Years of Howard" has involved a massive dose of political amnesia. A pattern of Government lies and racism is all but ignored. Instead Howard is lauded for his "mainstream" values and for keeping down interest rates.
So what about:
- The "$8 billion dollar black hole" the government discovered upon election to office that meant it had "no choice" but to slash public funding for health, welfare and education.
- the introduction of the regressive GST despite denials before coming to office of their intentions
- the curtailing of Native Title rights with the Wik legislation.
- the lies and secrets surrounding the training of scabs by the military in Dubai prior to the MUA dispute where the PM and senior Ministers lied about their involvement
- the Children Overboard scandal where the Prime Minister and his senior ministers again lied
- the racist treatment of the Tampa and the subsequent establishment of the "Pacific Solution"
- the lies and cruelty that has occurred in the past decade in the running of on-shore immigration detention facilities.
- Howard's implicit support for the ideas of Pauline Hanson through "dog whistle statements" and a refusal to condemn her ideas and then the subsequent adoption of much of her platform
- the wrongful imprisonment and deportation of Australian citizens in Australian immigration detention
- the lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq
- the failure to sign the Kyoto Agreement and massive subsidies to the coal industry. They have also promoted the expansion of Uranium mining and other parts of the nuclear cycle such as reactors and waste dumps.
- the AWB lies
- the introduction of regressive and unpopular IR laws
- ballooning spending on Defence as the Government increasing make the Australian military another division of the U.S. "Foreign Legion".
- the racist scapegoating of Muslims both at home and abroad
- the introduction of draconian and undemocratic security laws which have wiped out centuries of hard won legal rights such as the presumption of innocence and the right to not be detained without trail.