By John Hewson, Dean of The Macquarie Graduate School of Management.
Sydney - Friday - March 7: (RWE) - In his resignation speech on August 8, 1974, US president Richard Nixon claimed: "If some of my judgements were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be in the best interest of the nation." Honest statement? Or rewriting of history and rationalisation? And did he really believe it? Or perhaps "national interest", like its sister, patriotism, is the last refuge of the political scoundrel. "National interest" is a term I have become acutely sensitive to, especially under the Howard government. Let me take three areas where this has been widely claimed by Howard and his ministers: "our" commitment to war in Iraq; "our" decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and the proposed free trade agreement with the United States. And notice that we are "deputy sheriff" to the US on all three of these issues. In the face of outcomes that could well turn out to be significantly against our national interest, in each of these areas, I can almost hear Howard's resignation speech already. And I'll bet he will then still swear "true blue" to the value of our alliance with the US. It is with disbelief that I observe Howard's willingness to commit troops, ships and planes to what is potentially a Middle East war with the claim that it is in our "national interest". Saddam Hussein needs to be stopped. But leave George Dubya and a handful of his other deputies to do it, and only with United Nations sanction. This is not our war. This is not one where Australian lives should be sacrificed, nor our diplomatic efforts concentrated. It's damaging our reputation and making us a prime terrorist target in the region. Our focus and concern should be more on North Korea and its mounting nuclear capability. We are in a strong diplomatic position. Why aren't we leading (at least) the Asian diplomatic push to build a "coalition of the willing" against North Korea? It's always hard to compare monsters, and perhaps we shouldn't, but North Korea's Kim Jong-il is a madman. I fear he's even capable of lobbing a nuclear weapon across the border to test the water. Just consider the way he has reacted to having been listed as one of the three in the "axis of evil". Surely, ensuring a sensible outcome on North Korea - that is, avoiding a potential Asian disaster - is much more in our "national interest". In the same vein as Iraq, we are playing up to the US by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Ratification will happen with or without us. We have punched above our weight in negotiating our current position. We can increase our greenhouse gas emissions by 8 per cent over the 1990 base for the first commitment period (2008-12) when almost everyone else has to cut them by 10 per cent, and we get special allowance for carbon sinks, land clearing etc. Kyoto may not be ideal, but it's the only game in town. An independent study has revealed that Australian industry, overall, will be better off if we ratify. Finally, there was disturbing evidence this week that the much-coveted free trade agreement with the US may be contrary to our "national interest" and, ironically, this might be our "reward" for supporting the US on Iraq and Kyoto. I have always argued that as a trade-dependent nation, Australia should grab whatever trade liberalisation opportunities it can, be they bilateral, regional or multilateral, but always in the context of unilateral cuts within our own protection. Against that background, the Tasman ACIL Consulting study, prepared for the government-funded Rural Industries Research and Development Corp, released this week, is worthy of careful scrutiny. The report concludes: "Australian national interests will be best served if our negotiators devote their time and energies to the pursuit of global trade liberalisation." Even assuming trade with the US would be genuinely free, "much of the increased bilateral trade with the US would be trade diverted from Asia" such that, overall, it would be "slightly detrimental to the Australian economy". Moreover, the report argues that there would be "a serious deleterious effect on the prospects for advancing other forms of trade liberalisation", it would undermine our participation in the World Trade Organisation and its multilateral negotiations, and it would "irritate" other trading partners and misdirect our negotiators' time. Our national interest? Or what John Howard believes are his poll-driven interests? Leadership where? Source: The Australian Financial Review ENDS
