Kennett's sharp edge
The first two weeks of the Victorian Kennett Liberal government have given a sharp edge to politics that even its powerful backers are worried about. The pro-Liberal Australian editorialised that Kennett had already "tripped himself into a series of unnecessary sideshows" and needed "to get his eye on the ball very sharply". Its advice is that all attention should be focused on the state's debt.
Behind the criticism is the tactical discussion about how best to implement the Liberals' agenda in the approach to a 1993 federal election, Kennett's blunder being that he has immediately directed public attention to the core plan for "labour market reform" instead of keeping the focus on Labor's perceived derelict financial management, the issue that won Kennett the election.
Giving such a clear and early preview of the not very well hidden agenda of an incoming Hewson federal government is a worry to those big business interests who hope to slip Hewson in under the (weakened) guard of the labour and social movements.
By moving on the public service, Kennett has gone for the jugular on labour market practices to quickly replace award procedures with the New Zealand-style contract system. Kennett had to jump because the unions were hoping to bleed members out of state and into federal awards to avoid the Liberals' assault. That's now impossible.
Like John Howard's ravings, Kennett's quick move towards deregulated contract labour easily hurdled Labor's "enterprise bargaining" procedures, a barricade to the NZ model that, not surprisingly, proves very brittle.
To dramatise the importance of his moves, Kennett claims that federal Labor has not implemented a single micro-economic reform in its 10 years of government, a characteristically exaggerated statement but one that very clearly marks his intention to take to the task with a much bloodier axe.
While he drops the guillotine on one area, the premier has left to his treasurer, Alan Stockdale, the task of tightening the screws on all others, assigning him the job of slashing the state's debts and expenditures. Seven thousand jobs will go right away in the public service, and another 7000 from dropping Kirner's public works pledges.
Clearly, maintaining virtual mass unemployment has been reinstated as the primary control mechanism while union conditions are taken apart, and there can be little hope left that — even if the phantom recovery ever appears — unemployment is going to fall.
Equally as clearly, the unabashed turn to "growth" in the economic rhetoric foreshadows a worsening of environmental degradation under the Liberals. Kennett has already indicated there will be cuts Victoria, a certain recipe for a ballooning of car exhaust emission levels.
With Labor running limp on the issue, the environmental movement is faced with finding new ways to bring mass pressure to bear behind the critical need for action to preserve the urban as well as the natural environment.
While the tide seems to be flowing their way, worries from sections of big business may indeed be warranted. At the least, Kennett's sharp edge has begun to clearly cut out the issues.