The message from Dr Michael Macklin in 1989 to the Australian Senate:
On Saturday October 28 1989, Senator (Dr) Macklin spoke at the second fund-raising dinner of the St Patrick’s Old Boys, on the topic of “How Green is my Party”. At the time, Senator Macklin was only person elected from Queensland on an anti-uranium, nuclear disarmament, sustainable economy, and social justice platform. When he spoke, at the time the Australian Democrats had the balance of power. His wisdom and knowledge should not be ignored.
EXTRACT OF DR MACKLIN’S SPEECH:
The Australian Democrats have held the balance of power in the federal parliament since 1981 [finally lost 2004]. We have continued to hold the balance because the electorate wants a third force in the Parliament to, at the very least, “keep the bastards honest”. I suspect that we have had only partial success in this objective, because there seems to be just as many bastards now as there were in 1981! And I am not too sure about keeping them honest since that rather presumes that they were honest in the first place.
Nevertheless the Australian Democrats have achieved a great deal in the parliament – much of which has gone unrecognised. Let me just give you a perspective of our workload.
In the last four years, the Senate considered a total of 1345 bills. Of these, 836 bills were passed by both Houses of parliament. Each of these bills was examined in detail by our Senators on a clause by clause basis, and where necessary we sought to amend them. During the same period of time, the Australian Democrats moved a total of 548 amendments. Of these 178 or 24% were passed. This is a considerable achievement for a party with no money, limited resources in terms of staff and equipment, and only 7 out of 76 Senators. The Australian Democrats are often championed as the holders of the balance of power – indeed we gained the balance when I was elected in 1981 election. However, the balance of power is a very fluid thing. It only crystallises when no single party holds the majority of seats and when the major parties do not vote together.
Although it has been true since 1981 that neither of the major parties hold the balance of power, these supposed political adversaries are increasingly voting together on a whole range of issues. When this occurs the balance of power evaporates. Let me just outline some of the many, many important items which has seen the Labor, Liberal and National Party Senators combine to vote against the Australian Democrats.
In December 1986, Labor, Liberal and National Senators voted against the Democrats senators when we attempted to prohibit the export of uranium to France. In November 1987 Labor, Liberal and National Senators voted against the Democrats senators when we attempted to remove the tax deductibility from tobacco advertising. In December 1987 Labor, Liberal and National Senators voted against the Democrats senators when we moved amendments to social security legislation to improve the positions of pensioners – including widows and sole parents, homeless youth and the unemployed. In March of this year, I moved an amendment to require that the government report on the effectiveness of our foreign aid with respect to alleviating poverty, protecting the environment and considering the views of indigenous peoples and was defeated by a combined government and opposition vote. In May of this year Labor, Liberal and National Senators voted against the Democrats senators when we moved to encourage savings and to assist first home buyers as they all did when we attempted to remove the 25% sales tax on recycled paper.
Now whether you approve of these policy positions or not, it should be clearly recognised that in all of these the Australian Democrats did not hold the balance of power. Rather, the unholy alliance of Labor, Liberal and National parties voted together en masse to oppose the Democrats.
Despite this workload, or possibly because of it, the Senate has often been criticised for being obstructionist – especially by the government of the day. However, I really do believe that a case can be made out for procrastination. After all, Canberra wasn’t built in a triennium. I am reminded of the saying that: “Positive procrastination is a valuable management technique in this rapidly changing world.”
I know many of you are keenly interested in politics. Can I recommend that if you wish to really get a good grip on the operations of government that the best text to study is the script from “Yes, Prime Minister”. Indeed, I met a senior shadow minister in the library recently taking out a book – Yes, Prime Minister – and he said waving this airily at me “I’ve been here for some years now and we may be heading into government so I thought I would find out how it all works.”
After ten years in the Senate, I believe the overwhelming problem with the major parties is that they are dominated by people who don’t hold any belief deeply enough to withstand the polls that suggest that the majority believe the opposite. Indeed, there is even a quaint custom to have a so-called “conscience vote’ on some issues. The party leaders informing the rest when they can use their conscience – the definition of which in such circumstance is simply the inner voice which warns that the electorate may be looking.
The people of Queensland and Australia will soon be going to the polls. I am not going to hesitate a guesstimate at the results, but I would like to make a few remarks about the electoral processes.
I know that it considered a breach of democratic etiquette to question the collective wisdom of the electorate. But it really is somewhat ironic that the electorate’s decision is held to be self-validating. However stupid, ignorant, gullible, thick or innocent individual voters might be, it is suggested that collectively they are the epitome of wisdom and knowledge. Indeed, I sometimes feel that it is just too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxis and cutting hair. Of course, as a matter of logic, this makes no sense. The real insult to the electorate is to suggest that it is immune from error and that it reaches its judgement on who gets the ministerial suite by some mystical process somewhat akin to the sword emerging from the lake.
Often it would be nice to respond to constituents the way Harry Truman did when he read an unflattering review of his daughter’s singing recital. ” I have just read your lousy review. You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success … I have never met you but if I do, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes and a supporter below.” Not a “silly, old bugger” in sight.
I extend to every voter who votes for a party other than mine the courtesy of serious disagreement: you were wrong. You may well have been misled or underinformed or simply intellectually lazy or you may be highly informed and thoughtful but have made a faulty analysis or you may have acted out of a narrow selfish self-interest. Whatever the reason, you blew it in my opinion. I take democracy so seriously that my own decision on how to vote was the result of lengthy process and am not going to reverse itself over election night just because a majority of voters disagree with me.
The theory of democracy is not that the voters are always right. Nothing about voting magically assures a wise result. The proper form of democratic piety is that you have the right to be wrong. The essence of a democratic society is one where it is safe to be a minority. Of course, in Australia’s form of democracy, one finds one or other of the major parties devoting its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to govern – and both commonly succeed and are right! It really doesn’t matter what the item is. I am waiting for the day when the government says it is a good thing to keep a dog and the opposition says that we should loathe such people because they are cowards who haven’t the guts to bit people themselves.
Parliamentary politics is often about forecasting the worst and then, when it is not quite as bad as all that, to claim victory over adversity. For example, there is a story of the young girl at a boarding school, who wrote to her parents in these terms:
Dear Mum and Dad
I am sorry to have to tell you that my dormitory and half the school burned down; but don’t worry about me because I am now living in a flat in town. Don’t worry about that either; I am being looked after; I am living with Roger, the school plumber. You needn’t be concerned about this because I am going to marry Roger – I am three months pregnant with his child.
The next day she wrote again:
Dear Mum and Dad
Don’t worry about yesterday’s letter. The school didn’t burn down, I’m not living with Roger, I’m not pregnant or about to be married. The fact is I am failing in mathematics and I wanted you to get this problem into proper perspective. “
We sometimes debate policy matter in parliament, for example, in science. Now I am a great admirer of science. For example, I am one who believes that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. We even had a discussion of a new chemical that manages to kill all trees but leaves the grass. Now any fool can destroy a tree. They cannot run away but even if they could they we would continue the maniacal destruction that has occurred to date. This is the modern way to commit universal suicide and it is generally promoted by those who would not dare to kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours would think. Of course, in many countries the poor know no other way and it is not possible to expect people who have been sucked into a whirlpool to appreciate its beauty as a natural phenomenon.
One of the strangest debates in the Parliament that we have had was the one on privatisation. I have had any number of debates in which I constantly ask why we are proposing to sell off public utilities which make money for the public purse and yet the private sector do not seem interested in buying those utilities which are making a loss.
I am reminded of the American astronaut when asked what concerns him most in space travel replied that every time he climbed into his seat he would say to himself “Just think Wally, everything that makes this thing go was supplied by the lowest bidder”. As Joseph Heller said in Catch 22, “Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.”
Indeed, in this area as in so many others that singularly wise comment is singularly appropriate “that to every complex question, there is always a simple answer and it is always wrong”. While I am aware that it might be seen as a radical break with tradition, I believe that we do have a right to expect some sort of evidence from government before we are expected to accept their dramatic conclusions.
Some of the most vocal public and media debate takes place not on the really major policy issues affecting the nation – such as the treatment and care of AIDS sufferers, the rapidly aging population or the impact of the greenhouse effect on agriculture – but rather on such peripheral topics as politicians’ pay.
I suppose this is because a pay-packet is something most people can associate with. I suspect it also because politicians’ pay originates from the taxes that the community pays. I must admit that this job is the only one I have ever been in which I knock back pay increases.
I suspect that many of you will be unaware that over recent years, federal politicians have turned down the recommended pay increases. In fact, this is the only job where I have actually voted down a salary increase. In my previous working life I paid money to a union to go out and make sure I got a pay increase. Harold Wilson, one-time Prime Minister of Britain, said that there is something utterly nauseating about a system, which pays a prostitute twenty-five times as much as it, pays its Prime Minister and I can but agree.
Just on the subject of money, over the years, I have been involved in many pay negotiations. For example, when teaching at a suburban state high school. I was not prepared for Rosy – a fourteen year old who was repeating grade nine and whose frequent late returns from lunch were most annoying. In fact, she was doing very nicely thank you supplementing her income behind the football sheds and it was my job to see she took a pay cut.
Politicians are regularly lambasted for the lurks and perks which they enjoy – usually at the taxpayers expense. One such supposed perk comes in the form of international travel and delegations.
However, overseas trips are not always all that they are cracked up to be. Indeed, on one occasion in the U.S. we were taken to see a new fast-food cafe where our order was fed into a computer. Our hamburgers, made from the flesh of chemically impregnated cattle, were cooked over counterfeit charcoal, placed between slices of artificially flavoured cardboard and served to us by recycled juvenile delinquents.
More recently, I made it over to the United States for an eagerly awaited visit to see how computer technology has been adapted to suit disabled people. It just so happened that the day before I was to travel from Oregon to San Francisco, the earthquake struck and I was forced to return early. Since the delegation I led to China was caught up in the democracy movement rallies, my staff who regularly travel with me between the electorate office and Canberra have now refused to travel on the same plane as me! Of course being a Senator in Queensland leads one to strange places like our smallest town that consists only appropriately of a pub with the rest having been eaten by goats.
Once when visiting North Queensland I slept on the verandah of an old house built on stumps. For reasons known only to God and the hormones of possums, they chose to mate underneath the verandah where I was sleeping at 3am in the morning. Until you have experienced possums mating underneath your bed at three in the morning, you have missed one of life’s more sensational moments. If you have heard cats fighting in the night, you have a clue. Magnify the volume and the intensity by ten. It’s not what you call a sensual or erotic sound – more like a fire alarm. I have seen them wandering off dazed after such an encounter covered in what looked like a mixture of blood and mud.
I must admit I have often in the middle of a hard debate in the Senate fallen to wondering why is it that life so often has to be carried on with so much pain and strain and mess.
At the end of the day, I would wish to defend politicians and I would like to use Theodore Roosevelt’s words to do so: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
However, there is one serious message I wish to leave you with tonight. It is this. No matter how much the Labor party or the conservatives refer to their “mandate” it should be recognised that the Australian Democrats also have a mandate.
I have done some calculations on the outcome of the next federal election. On all the opinion polls that have been published to date, it will be impossible for either Labor or the conservatives to win a majority in the Senate. Even with a worst case scenario with the Democrats already have sufficient numbers to hold the balance of power in the next parliament. We will continue to constructively review legislation, we will continue to move amendments and introduce private members bills where the government fails to act on important policy issues. And yes we will continue to “keep the bastards honest.”
Dr Michael Macklin, Extract of “How Green is my Party”, St Patrick’s Old Boys, Saturday October 28 1989.
Featured Image: Dr Michael Macklin at the Hadrian-Wall in 2023.
Neville Buch
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