Readers of this blog will know that I share Paul Krugman’s view that the US Republicans are a crazy, scary bunch. And during the Howard years there were lots of people who argued that Howard was the same. Which is ridiculous. He was sympathetic to the Crazy Party of the United States, and he did steal from their playbook, but mostly in the department of the culture wars – at which he was no slouch himself.
He never trashed the budget the way the Crazies can’t help doing. And this column by Paul Krugman reminds me that there’s something else they didn’t do for which I must say I’m very grateful. They didn’t cut the top marginal rate of tax until right at the end of their term of office, when they were, in part responding (and responding in a fairly minimal fashion) to the urgings of ALP politicians.
And on thinking about it, I can think of another major difference – Howard supported gun control, whereas I think the Republican policy is to issue automatic machine guns to all kids on presentation of the first of their milk teeth to fall out. There’s also compulsory voting I guess.
Any other blessings to count oh Troppodillians?
Supply-side economics only rarely rears its ugly head here. Racial populism is relatively tame in Australia, only manifests as dog-whistling and is not rooted in conviction on either side of politics. The fundamental responsibility of the government for certain public goods, such as a basic welfare net, infrastructure, health, education etc., are bipartisan. We’re spared imperial adventurism; even when Howard committed to Iraq, it was a propaganda force more than anything.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
We don’t have an insanely high military budget. Even better, a lot of our expensive military hardware doesn’t appear to work very well, and no-one really seems to care.
Yes, I’ll pay that Conrad, and no real delusions of grandeur (except that without us the allies never could have won WWI – oh wait, that’s the US version too).
Zac Spitzer adds via Twitter “@NicholasGruen Oz conservatives embraced Medicare”.
Personally I’d be happy with some medical safety net, but there you go, it’s a lot better than no socially provided medical insurance.
I’m glad they never introduced time limits for payments like NewStart, although they significantly tightened eligibility and activity tests.
The conservatives here haven’t been as aggressively anti-abortion as conservatives in the US, for which we can all be thankful. It’s not a partisan issue here and I’m very glad of that.
Yes, got to pay both of those Matt and I’ll add to your second one that our conservatives haven’t played politics with the death penalty – though I think they could. There’s a festival of gratitude breaking out here. We’ll all be ready and primed for more gratitude when the announcement comes.
The Tea Party crazies are crazed in part by their religiosity. So far, not many on the Oz right suffer this mental condition.
I wonder, though, how much of the relative moderation of the Howard Government can be ascribed to genuine moderation within the Coalition, and how much is a function of their lack of a majority in the Senate from 1996-2005. I think that if they had had control of both chambers for more of their time in office, the conservatives would have been more extreme on issues like restricting welfare eligibility.
Overseas aid is another area to mention. Conservatives get some mileage in the US by opposing aid, whereas there seems to be bipartisan support here for aid. As with the death penalty (good suggestion), I think a conservative with a populist bent could get a lot of mileage from opposing foreign aid.
The Senate is a fine institution, whomever has been in power. So far anyway.
In the crazy, scary department, one also finds the kind of raw and robust stupidity that yields the widely held views that Obama was not born in America, and that he is really a Muslim.
Oz conservatives don’t believe Julia Gillard is a Muslim!
Neither of these points are strictly correct.
Howard tried for years and years to gut Medicare, introduced penalties for not having private insurance, and introduced subsidies for private insurance.
RU486 was banned in 1996, but the ban got overturned on a conscience vote in 2005. Mr Rabbit was one of the more outspoken opponents of overturning the ban.
Even under Howard, our financial and prudential regulators didn’t brandish chain saws.
There’s no ‘even under Howard’ to it. Wasn’t even an issue.
Aussie conservatives do not seem to be at risk of being hijacked by the tea party , unlike the Republicans in 2010-11