Family man
John Howard's re-election to the leadership of the party-that-can't-find-a-leader has been accompanied by a barrage of comments on that most fundamental of institutions, the family.
Howard admits that "on ... issues such as the role of the family ... I guess I have a conservative view". Sydney's Sunday Telegraph announced Howard's ascent to the top job with the headline "Family First", followed dutifully by an account of his intention to champion traditional family values, to protect the traditional household which is under siege.
No-one denies that the general community is under siege — but what type of siege, one might ask.
Families are under a huge amount of financial pressure today — making ends meet on a decreasing wage, if its members are lucky enough to find jobs in the first place. Sending the kids out to work on below survival wages doesn't help balance the budget much. Getting an education for your average family member isn't getting any easier either.
But will the Liberals' reiteration of "traditional family values" really help this situation?
Current Liberal policies are pretty hard to pin down on the specifics. They're too busy trying to look unified to make another "read my lips, we will introduce a GST on you poor bastards" type of statement, but we have had some indications.
In a speech to a meeting of Young Liberals on January 11, then-leader Alexander Downer advocated "greater choice in health care by retaining universal bulk billing under Medicare and encouraging the private health sector". This could more honestly read: those of you too poor to afford private health cover will languish in the waiting lists of a decreasingly funded public health system, while those who can afford it will get better and faster care in the private sector.
Howard has announced that he intends to lift living standards by cutting government spending. This would more correctly read, lift the living standards of the rich, while the rest of us lose out on the little social wage that's left after a Labor government has whittled it away over the last 12 years.
Howard has also made no secret of the fact that he intends to take industrial relations "reform" further than the ALP could dream of in a pre-election year. This would more openly read: make you bastards work harder, for longer hours, to make industry more competitive, which will mean some of you will lose your jobs, and we'll cut the unemployment benefits you can get anyway, so those of us who own the industries you all work in can make bigger profits and buy more yachts.
Sound fair? Sound like Howard is putting Australian families first? Well, maybe his family.
By Kath Gelber