Snippets from 'The Fight'

I've just finished reading a thoroughly enjoyable non-fiction, part-biographical book called The Fight, by Martin Flanagan and Tom Uren. Flanagan reflects on the life of Uren - mainly his time as a federal Labor politician - , but also includes his own views on Australia: its history, its present and its future. I was struck by how clearly he stated his thoughts and how articulately he described the problems with the current Australian society.

Here are a few snippets from the book that I myself found particularly interesting.


Tom Uren on Gough Whitlam:
I think history will treat Gough Whitlam very generously. Working with him from the 1960s onwards, I saw the best and worst of the man. He proved to me that Labor did not need an economic downturn to defeat a conservative government. His vision and greatness engendered the development of a new nationalism in Australia, a new awareness of the importance of our art, our theatre, our science, our health programs, our cities, local government and regions, a new approach to our indigenous people, our Australian heritage and our environment.

Flanagan comparing Fraser & Howard in relation to apartheid:
An examination of Fraser's record reveals he spoke out against apartheid in the Australian parliament in the early 1960s. By contrast, John Howard was opposed to economic and sporting boycotts of the apartheid regime as late as the 1980s. Not only that, when fronted by a journalist, Howard admitted he had arrived at his policy position without discussing the matter with a single black South African... It's an important story since Howard is rarely challenged in any elementary way by journalists any more.

Flanagan on views during the 2004 federal election:
During the 2004 federal election, I found myself seated between a small businessman from Brisbane and a bikie, a bearded hulk aged about 40, now also living in Queensland. The small businessman...was worried about Costello becoming Prime Minister. The possibility of Costello becoming Prime Minister was the guts of the Labor campaign. The bikie...hated Costello whom he saw as a criminal re-directing wealth towards his class. Both...agreed Iraq was a mess and that Howard committing us to the war had made Australia a more dangerous place. And both were voting for... John Howard.

Flanagan on Howard & the environment during the 2004 election:
I began noticing other weird things in our national psyche. Our foreign debt was booming, but each night the story of the economy was told to us through interest rates and housing... In the course of stitching up a deal on Tasmanian old-growth forests forced on him by Mark Latham, John Howard - whose landmark failures include torpedoing the Kyoto protocol on global warming - called himself a conservationist and described Bob Brown as an extremist. No-one took him up on it. No-one in the federal Opposition, no-one in the national media... There were people out there who now believed John Howard was actively caring for the environment when his record in the area was zilch.

Flanagan on conservatives and political language:
We are in the process of becoming another nation, but the people taking us to a new Australia still speak the language of old Australia so that at the time of the Beaconsfield mine disaster John Howard could speak of the virtue of the working class ethic of mateship while bringing tax 'relief' to the rich and stripping working people of levels of workplace security...
Conservatism is the belief that humans are flawed, that notions of human perfectability are dangerous, particularly when applied en masse as the Left sought to do for most of the twentieth century. The question to be asked of conservatives is what exactly are they intent on conserving. Their own small-mindedness, however clever? Meanness? Common prejudice?... And who exactly are these 'neocons' who think with Dr Strangelove certainty of their ability to re-shape the world and treat war as some sort of video game?

Flanagan on Malcolm Fraser & the anti-terrorism laws:
Malcolm Fraser told me he wondered whether Australians understand that the anti-terrorism laws actually apply to them.
"If they're returning from another country, are taken in for questioning and are deemed obstructive, they have the potential of five years in jail. They don't have to be guilty of an offence."
Fraser said we had entered a new world where people cease to be people
"not because they are known to be something but because they are suspected to be something. It's the sort of law Stalin passed".