A Working Class Squire Is Something To Be
Harold Hark
3 February 2004

Your typical dishonest politician is interested only in enriching himself at the public expense, a goal he shares with most of his fellow citizens. An honest politician is far more dangerous. He or she is sincerely committed to bettering society by political action. In practice, that means by writing and enacting more laws. But every new law creates a whole new criminal class; as more and more laws are passed, more and more citizens become criminals.
Hagbard Celine

An honest politician is one who, when bought, will stay bought.
Simon Cameron

It's been two years now since I threw the lawn mower against the back fence, smashing it to smithereens. Since then a gent by the name of Paul, lawn mowerist extraordinaire, has attended to the removal of the weeds which constitute our lawns. The neighbours must be relieved, because Paul does not go about his work with the foul epithets that routinely burst from my snarling gob every other Sunday.

The reason I mention Paul, is because we always join in with a loud diatribe against John Howard on the front porch before his departure. Paul is, if anything, more left wing that I.

Often we excoriate Little Johnny for the benefit of a neighbour, Illiberal to the core, who more often than not these days, is out watering his roses for the occasion.

Lo and behold, said neighbour approached me last Sunday as I was tentatively examining a bush with a vague intent to prune. After joint "How are ya's", he said, "Y'know, that Latham's a beauty, he may just get my vote."

"How's that," I responded, hastily returning the secateurs to my hip pocket and backing slowly toward the front door like Homer Simpson after he discovered Apu in a compromising situation.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I always had a soft spot for Peter Reith. Him and his arbeit macht frei philosophy gave me hope, but this Latham's got a better spin on it. Something about social investment in social capital for social mobility and social security. Kind of glazes the eyes, don't it. But that's what'll make it sell!"

I asked him why he thought "arbeit macht frei" was a good idea in the first place.

Eyes darting towards his house, he said with lowered voice, "Look, I'm sick of only working six days a week, 10 hours a day. If I could work all seven and sleep at the site I'd be in heaven. I could send money home to the wife and kids and," here he lowered his voice even more, "you know, not have to actually live with 'em. All those do's and don'ts, can's and can'ts, rationing out the tinnies, I might as well be in the army. Freedom, in case you didn't know, is not giving a stuff."

Is this man the tip of an iceberg?

Probably not, but why else would any one support having to work harder? Aussies already work the longest hours of any nation in the developed world. Has Mark missed the several reports published recently, as well as anecdotal evidence from just about every working person in the country, that we are all, like, overworked?

But perhaps he is speaking on a loftier level. Work as a metaphor for effort. Work means a job, effort is what it takes to figure out why you're alive in the first place and what you're supposed to do about it. Work is all about money and security; effort is about increasing intelligence so that work and money become the nearly unnoticeable by-products of a mind unharnessed from meaningless endeavour.

Nah. Judging from his devotion to the wisdom of his mother, I don't think that's what he's referring to. She reminds me of my father. Pop Hark was a working class bloke, a pressman for a major daily. To him the world was also made up of slackers (or no-hopers) and the good guys. He may have been a little more extreme than Mum Latham, in that he included in his category of "slackers" every conceivable form of wog, all religions and races save his own and, above all, anyone who sniggered at the work ethic. In short, he was suspicious of everything that moved unless it was in overalls or a reasonable facsimile.

Is this a working class disease?

Probably not. There is no reason to think that in a lifetime spent scampering up the rungs of aspiration, Our Markie would have done so with tunnel vision, pausing occasionally to remove the blinkers and cast a venomous side-eye at those his class despises. Balancing himself today on the penultimate rung, he is offering us a self-made-man philosophy that he wants everyone to emulate, and that further promises lots of new laws to turn formerly law-abiding citizens into criminals.

Ironic how the Illiberal Party always likes to accuse Labor of being the party of social engineers when they are the ones engineering society into forced march conformity. But Latham's amphetamine rush to devise new ways of putting our noses to the grindstone may just get him his chance to assign us all to a box, the kind where the minute you step out of it you get fined or jailed.

Mark just wants us to be happy with our "free economy" and it's beautiful bouncing baby, the "strong state." He wants to legislate against any wrongdoing to that economy, hence a state of fortress-like strength. Social ills caused by such a structure? Sorry, all human foibles must adjust to the great running river of capital investment and all its rivulets and especially the little trickles that sustain this planet of workers and customers.

Are we dealing with a work ethic zealot here?

Probably not. All capitalists are work ethic zealots. We've all been conditioned to earning our keep, a sort of penalty for ever having been born. Introspection? Pausing to think about the Mysteries? That's for slackers.

Meanwhile, as someone who couldn't think in corporate terms even if the warden just instructed the executioner to give me one more chance, I look forward to the next year of mammalian politics. It's going to be fun to see Howard squirm and scary to watch Latham develop his post-working class worldview, because it's obvious he's doing so on the run.

Let's face it amigos, we are between a rock and a hard place, in that we have a right wing party and an extreme right wing party to represent humanity in the Australian sector. As Chester Riley used to say, "What a revoltin' development!"

The emergence of Latham has seen Howard become effete almost overnight. He will show some fight for awhile, mostly by getting nastier and nastier. But I can't see him doing other than slowly deflating over the next year like a dirigible pricked by a pin. The slow agonising wheeeeeesh of a man suddenly grown old.

Unless the Illiberals call on MOSSAD to have Latham physically removed (the CIA and ASIO would botch the job), or do the dirty on his reputation in a way that resonates with the two-minute attention span of the electorate, Our Markie cannot help but win the next election. His ideas may get wackier and more right wing, but at least they are ideas. It could be worse. A Howard victory will have us singing hymns in Dubya's theocracy.

See Christopher Scanlon: You can't legislate to repair society, Mr Latham