The Null Device

In his own image

Fairfax commentator Margo Kingston on Australian PM Howard's road to absolute power:
Howard wants to go out on a high alright, but he wants the high to be higher than the one he's already on. He wants to transform Australia so completely that the old Australia can never be revived. His vision is so radical that only a man in complete charge of the political agenda could even dream of it. And the cross media legislation - the one I've been writing about in such despair for a week now - is central to his plans.

Kingston then describes how Howard's threat of a double dissolution election and proposed media deregulation laws would be used to give the government a power to reshape Australia that even the Bush Whitehouse doesn't have. And not surprisingly, the Australia that will emerge will be the worst of both worlds: repressively socially conservative and conformistic, and economically ruled by big business. All public debate, meanwhile, will be framed by the Murdoch/Packer press; which, by contrast, will make America (a country whose dissenters famously have to import their news from Britain) look like a model of pluralism.

And scarily, this is all within reach. (via Stumblings)

There are 1 comments on "In his own image":

Posted by: mark http://ariel.affordablehost.com/~smiley/blog/ Tue Jul 8 06:49:44 2003

Radical in the way only a Conservative can be, Or, What Happens When You Mix Socially Repressive Free Marketers With Greed?