I think it is time we took a look at this creature of the NSW right. On economics he was another Howard, he said.
Mark latham famously said he would not trust Rudd
:Article from: The Australian IN his latest fashioning of a political narrative Kevin Rudd has located his government in the Hawke-Keating reform tradition and seeks to de-legitimise the Howard era from any claim on Australia's economic and social success.
Rudd argues contemporary Australia is essentially a Labor project, a view he advanced with gusto at the launch of my book, The March of Patriots, at Parliament House on Monday. His speech was a powerful and partisan interpretation of history by asserting Labor ownership of "the reforming centre of Australian politics" and saying this was where the Rudd government belonged.
For Rudd, "the great Australian contract" lies in the social and economic reforms of the Hawke and Keating era. More than before, Rudd highlights the continuity between his government and Hawke-Keating governments as he sketches his own ambitious reform agenda "to seize the great global opportunity that now presents itself to the nation".
The story Rudd constructs feeds into next year's election and the embryonic debate among pro-Labor intellectuals over how to place Rudd Labor in an ideological and historical context. His comments fall on contested ground precisely because Rudd's government, so far, is more defined by government interventions than Hawke-Keating market reforms.
Just as Rudd responded to the book, Malcolm Turnbull has responded to Rudd's speech. Turnbull told his partyroom yesterday that Rudd had delivered a "graceless" speech and was attempting to rewrite history in a manner worthy "of a general secretary of the Communist Party at a Communist Party conference". The Liberals are stung by the history that Rudd propounded. Turnbull insists the Liberals will ensure such falsehoods do not become "received wisdom". Maybe.
While offering a strong overall endorsement of the book, Rudd took issue with two propositions it advances: first, that the Howard government was not neo-liberal, and the closest Australia got to neo-liberalism was the Coalition's 1993 Fightback agenda whose defeat constituted, in effect, the death of Australian neo-liberalism.
The book argues that Howard, in office, never aspired to significantly cut the size of government, that he kept Medicare and the social safety net, gave huge budget support to families, spent generously, was cautious (Work Choices aside) about market forces and, in relation to financial regulation, backed treasurer Peter Costello's strong regulatory regime and rejection of any "let-it-rip" neo-liberalism.
In short, Howard actually "shunned" the neo-liberal agenda and, having not promised this agenda, "it is unsurprising that he did not achieve it".
The second proposition Rudd disputed was the book's argument that Australia's contemporary economic success was a Labor-Liberal "shared achievement". My argument is that Labor's contribution from 1983 to 1996 was "more dynamic and substantial" and involved the float of the dollar, financial deregulation, tariff reductions backed by competition policy, enterprise bargaining, privatisation and the move towards central bank inflation targeting. The Howard government's contribution from 1996 to 2007 was seen as "important and path-breaking in changing conservative ideology", with Howard building on Labor's reform agenda but putting the Liberal Party stamp on our economic progress.
The key Coalition contributions were the fiscal consolidation and public debt abolition, the creation of an independent central bank (with former governor Ian Macfarlane saying the bank's "international standing" came only in 1996), more concerted labor market deregulation, further privatisation and the GST-led tax reform. The book argues this constituted a long-run Howard-Costello model to deliver sustained economic growth.
The Prime Minister, in reply, said true neo-liberalism was an ideology that believed markets were self-correcting. "That ideology did not diewith Fightback," Rudd said. "We see it alive and well more than 15 years later."
Rudd accuses the Liberals of a sustained "free market fundamentalism which has little in common with the philosophy and policy of the reforming centre of Australian politics". This was the situation under Howard; it continues under Turnbull.
Rudd's charge is that during the Howard years Work Choices, climate change reluctance and the failure to implement a deposit insurance scheme reflect this ideology. Moving to the Turnbull leadership, he says the Coalition's reluctance to back the fiscal stimulus to ameliorate the downturn reveals the same ideological fixation.
In short, Rudd believes the Liberal Party remains contaminated by neo-liberal ideology, an argument he will marshall at the election.
On the second proposition, Rudd disputes the credentials of the Liberal Party as an agent of economic reform. He says the Liberal failure to advance a strategy for productivity gains is no "minor blemish" but "a fundamental failure of long-term economic reform". As a result, it "casts legitimate doubt over the extent to which the Liberal Party can be regarded as partners with Labor in the great project of economic modernisation for Australia". This charge strikes at the integrity and utility of the Howard government. The Liberals will overlook Rudd's philosophical attack at their folly.
Rudd recruits the book against Howard, drawing on its argument that Howard failed to invest sufficiently in human capital, was too slow to act on climate change and reluctant to better co-ordinate infrastructure investment.
He argues that Labor believes in a "social contract between government and citizens" while Liberals lack such belief. In an extremely contentious claim, Rudd says that even when Liberal governments retained social reforms for long periods (witness Medicare and universal superannuation), it was "not because our opponents believed in them" but that "it became too difficult to uproot them". This leads to Rudd's conclusion: that Australia's progress has resulted "not because of bipartisan support but despite conservative opposition" and that the Howard government, following Hawke and Keating, "barely added to that reform agenda during their 12 years in office."
Launching the book, he invited a debate on these propositions. In fact, Rudd has thrown a political spear at the Liberal Party's heart.
It is too early to know exactly where the Rudd Government will fit into Australia's grand historical narrative. The message, however, is that Rudd will campaign as an intellectual warrior against the Liberal Party. The further message, as he concedes, is that the interpretation he offered this week is contentious and contested.
