Rewriting history
By Kath Gelber
As the Labor party continues to implement its restructuring agenda, the effects on women are becoming more widely felt — lower wages, less job security in part-time and casual work, still not enough child-care, increasing costs of health care, cuts to public transport. In this context, the Keating government needs to pull some swifties if it is going to be able to keep winning the women's vote.
Women's votes have been crucial to Labor's ability to hang on to power over the last 11 years. In 1984, for the first time in Australian political history, the popularity of Labor among women (48%) was higher than among men (46%). The ALP has presented itself as the social justice alternative and in so doing has employed some of Australia's best known femocrats.
GLW has previously documented the role Anne Summers played in winning women's votes for the ALP. In 1993, although the Liberals ran their electorally suicidal campaign of telling the truth about imposing new taxes, the ALP was losing its support among women. Anne Summers was given the job of convincing many women that Labor was the lesser of the two evils they were presented with at the ballot box.
Although no longer employed by Keating's office, Summers obviously took her time there to heart. She now works as editor of the Age and Sydney Morning Herald magazine, Good Weekend. In its recent 10th anniversary issue, she took the opportunity to deliver her version of changes in Australian politics over the last decade.
In particular, Summers claims, the Labor government has "remained champions of the poor and needy". Australian politics "became more representative and more complicated"; women, migrants, gays and greens won political chums in Canberra as "Labor saw mileage in wooing these groups".
The bureaucracy "bloomed" as special offices or sections were set up to advise on women, the aged, youth and migrants. This, of course, is true. However, Summers' conclusion from all these changes is that "overall, Australian politics are more inclusive". She sees the rise of independents and small parties as a wise counter-balance to the potential tyranny inherent in Labor's long stint at the Lodge, rather than as an expression of dissatisfaction with both major parties.
In short, Summers' version of the changes of the last 11 years seems a little rose-tinted, to say the least. Who are these "champions of the poor and needy"? The very same government which is collaborating with the murderous Suharto regime in Indonesia, which provided military assistance to the Papua New Guinea Defence Forces to slaughter Bougainville civilians, which sent Australian troops off to the Gulf War and is prepared at the drop of a hat to do the same again.
This is the government which oversaw the introduction of land rights legislation which many criticise as only further restricting access to land by most Aboriginal people, which has restructured the wage system so that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The very same Labor Party that led union-busting campaigns and which introduced fees for higher education.
Need I continue? Summers' version of history appears more linked to her own personal fortunes than to reality for most Australian people.