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
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