Janet Albrechtsen has taken an e-mail exchange with playwright David Williamson as the basis for her most recent column. Responding to Williamson’s claim that “conservatives lack compassion”, Janet argues that conservative policies do demonstrate compassion but that conservatives do not do a good job of marketing their compassionate credentials. Unfortunately some of the evidence and argument she draws on to back up her argument are rather shaky.
Janet is one of the few pundits who has had much to say about John Howard’s recent newspaper columns in the SMH and The Australian, which were based on the his lecture at the Menzies Research Centre [PDF transcript]. Albrechtsen proposes that “Howard made a compelling case” that conservative policies help the greatest number of people and provide a safety net for the underprivileged.
Albrechtsen points, in particular, to the Howard Government’s “Work for the Dole” program as one of the substantial reforms that provided the best long-term outcomes and demonstrated the conservative approach to compassion. This ignores the fact that while introducing their “mutual obligation” scheme, the Howard Government also dismantled the Working Nation programs the had been initiated in 1994 to provide training and employment to long-term unemployed. The Keating Government had already adopted the notion of a “job compact”; it can be argued the distinct approach of the conservative government was to reduce the resources being assigned to strategic training initiatives.
Albrechtsen’s reliance on the Howard Government’s record of compassionate reform is also undermined by some obvious cases where there was a distinct lack of compassion: WorkChoices, the removal of unfair dismissal protections, and the Pacific Solution, for starters. But Jason Whittaker makes a broader point about the compassion embodied in many conservative policies – it is conditional and exclusive. The Howard Government’s form of compassion was extended preferentially to those who met their criteria for being appropriate Australians – so, middle-class families were recipients of far greater rewards from the government than same-sex couples, for instance (or aged pensioners, as Ken Lovell notes).
Albrechtsen also undermines her argument by drawing false equivalence between conservative and progressive policies. For instance, she suggests that:
[T]he Australian Human Rights Commission’s report has exposed that under the Rudd Government children are still being held indefinitely in our detention centres. Yet the silence from activists has exposed previous calls for compassion from an uncaring Howard government as bogus, politically motivated stunts. The new-found silence suggests they do not care much about detained migrants, at least not enough to protest against a Labor government.
The Rudd Government announced that from July 2008 children would not be held in immigration detention. The AHRC’s report certainly does not give the new government a clean bill of health on its treatment of children – however, it does note that children are no longer held in immigration detention centres. The concerns the report raises involve several cases in which they found children had been housed – usually, it seems, for a relatively short time – in immigration residential centres and transition accommodation. While this might mean that the Rudd Government’s record is not spotless on children in detention, it is disingenuous to suggest that we should be just as outraged as when it was government policy to hold children in detention centres for what, in many cases, turned out to be a period of years.
Albrechtsen continues her argument by proposing that conservatives engage filters that refine our compassion and direct it to rational and appropriate ends. For instance, she dismisses concern about David Hicks’s treatment as fashion – others, such as myself, would argue that it involved respect for the rule of law and fundamental human rights. She shows no insight that there are any policies of the Howard Government or conservatives in general that could be criticised as lacking compassion; instead, Janet’s final solution is that conservatives need to do a better job of recognising and selling their compassion.
Perhaps that would be easier if the evidence for it wasn’t so inconsistent and contradicted.
15 Comments
This type of article seems to surface regularly in Andrew Bolt’s blog as well. “We Conservatives more generous than those Lefties after all!” is the gist. I couldn’t put it better than you have above, that this compassion is qualified in the extreme; and not only that, it is always highly advertised and spun up into a big self-serving piece of propaganda.
Someone should tell Janet that true compassion doesn’t go telling everyone about itself.
Good point about children in detention facilities. The word “disingenuous” is bandied about way too much in the blogosphere, but in this case Albrechtsen qualifies.
As much as I really don’t like Albrechtson’s views, is this article the kind of which Pure Poison should be focusing its energies? Examples of shoddy journalism, cherry picking of facts, misrepresentation, etc. as so frequently pop up in the work of Bolt & Blair seem to be a valid target, but this just seems to be more of the author’s disagreement with Albrechtson’s opinion on something (unless I’m missing the point, and I’m happy to be corrected). If articles like this continue to appear, Pure Poison will be less about its stated aim of exposing intellectual dishonesty wherever it arises, and more about generally left-wing commentators disagreeing with their right-wing (commercially-published) counterparts.
The trouble with most lefties is that they can’t distinguish between genuine compassion and soft-headed adolescent sentimentality.
How many of you would consider a father loving and compassionate if he constantly indulged his child, even into early adulthood, advancing him enough money so that he didn’t need to get a job, and generally protecting him from the consequences of his less wise actions? If you can recognise this as bad parenting why isn’t it also bad government?
Genuine love or compassion involves desiring and seeking the best for the other – so what Whitakker & Ziegler call “exlcusive” love might rather be termed “wise, discriminating love.”
The trouble with most lefties is…
Yawn. How about you shove the generalisations right up your [DIRTY WORDS REMOVED - TOBY], and start addressing the evidence, as has been attempted above…
Bearbrass: but not for females, right?
Tough love, eh Brassbear?
Brilliant!
From now on when Conservatives behave in a way that isnt even slightly compassionate, you can just claim that it WAS compassion, albeit of the stern, fartherly kind.
Andrewpr, the mission statement of this site is to expose dishonesty in journalism.
Albrechtson is falsely claiming that the Rudd government is indefinately locking up children, which is simply untrue.
She is also, as is brassbear, trying to shift the goal posts of what compassion is. If you retool the word “compassion” to mean kicking people off the disability pension, cutting funding to public schools and hospitals and dismantling workers rights, then sure, Howard was seriously compassionate.
I think a politically motivated attack piece, full of half truths and misrepresentations is exactly the sort of thing that Pure Poison should be focusing on.
Just my opinion, of course.
the howard government took short-term political opportunity to shameless new heights. if planet janet thinks howard’s motives represented compassion she’s even more a hardline partisan shill than bolt. the other thing she fails to make public is she was appointed by the howard government to the DFAT committee and the ABC board.
“Dirty” words removed Toby? Happy to play by Queensbury rules, apologies…
Andrewpr, I would definitely view her claims about children in detention as a misrepresentation. And her argument about the appropriateness of the conservatives’ “safety net” is weak – it essentially amounted to, “Because John Howard said so” without anticipating or rebutting some of the obvious counters. I’m critiquing her arguments and the evidence she draws on.
Bearbrass, your example seems to be focussed on the idea of mutual obligation – as I noted, that’s not an idea that was initiated under Howard. It’s also not one that I would argue against. I would suggest that Working Nation had more strategic direction in terms of setting up programs that addressed long-term unemployment through training. You’ve also missed the point that a lot of the exclusions from Team Howard’s compassion were for other reasons – some moralistic, some opportunistic.
MR, I figured by editing that your point would still come across while just pulling out something that might have caused offence. Just trying to keep the focus on the issues.
Howard was very compassionate towards the upper middle class. All those Bentleys and Beemers and Audis whizzing around in chichi suburbs suggests he was FRIGHTFULLY compassionate, no?
the upper middle class are carrying you and many others on their backs, bertus, so they deserve a little comfort…
I appreciate your response, Tobias – I expect I would defend some of the things that you term “moralistic’, as being “wise and discriminating.”
Many of the best counters to Frau Albrechtsen’s musings can be located upon the threads of her own posts. Kudos for the moderators for putting them up.
Although dripping with ideology she doesn’t quite come across as being as rabid as Akerboltblair.
NB, I’m definitely not a fan.