This is John Howard's Autralia

John Howard set out to transform Australia, to remould our society from what he calls ‘the old order’ to what he describes as ‘the new order’. Unions are part of the old order. In John Howard’s Australia, workers are isolated from the support of their coworkers and left to fend for themselves in negotiations with management.

In John Howard’s Australia, every one can have a job, but they need two jobs because wages are too low to pay the mortgage or tollways

In John Howard’s Australia, every home can have a plasma screen television, but not hospital services worthy of a civilised society.

In John Howard’s Australia, we declare a national emergency and send the Army in to stop the Aboriginals abusing their children, but they don’t find much evidence of it.

In John Howard’s Australia the Prime Minister defends Pauline Hanson’s right to make racist remarks and dark-skinned people from the Middle East are locked away in concentration camps in the middle of the desert for up to 7 years – including children – but no white people. Then we express surprise at the Cronulla riots – “race riots” – the ultimate outcome of John Howard’s ‘dog whistling’. Moslem women are spat upon in the streets.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Minister For Immigration demonises one community (Sudanese), accusing them of being violent, lawless and incapable of living peacefully in a civilised society. He neglects to mention that these legitimate migrants from a war-torn African nation were dumped here without support and left to fend for themselves.

In John Howard’s Australia, neighbours are encouraged to spy on each other and report any suspicious activity to security forces. Our banking and telephone activity records are trawled by secret police for evidence that we are terrorists.

In John Howard’s Australia we ban books that the Attorney General believes are likely to encourage terrorism. He defines terrorism. Anyone critical of the Government’s foreign policy could qualify as a terrorist or one encouraging terrorism.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Prime Minister does publicity for a company set up to build nuclear power plants, despite the fact that the majority of citizens are against nuclear power.

In John Howard’s Australia, young people show no respect for authority, but what example have they had? The Prime Minister introduced to our children the concept of the ‘non-core promise’. He explained the lie of ‘keep interest rates at record lows’ by saying he only told the lie for 2 days. He told some very public lies – like ‘they threw their children overboard’ and “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction”.

In John Howard’s Australia, country people are left without decent mobile phone coverage and third world Internet access, even though the nation owned the biggest telecommunications company in the market. With the compliance of the National Party – the true blue defenders of country peoples’ rights – the Government sold Telstra, using another lie: that country people would not be left behind.

In John Howard’s Australia, government scientists are gagged when their findings about global warming contradict government policy. Reports were rewritten or not released.

In John Howard’s Australia, we can see the countryside disintegrating under the weight of a freak drought, but refuse to call it Climate Change. When we finally admit that it might be Climate Change, we refuse to do anything serious to curtail emissions because the coal miners and energy companies might suffer a reduction in profits.

In John Howard’s Australia, a $35billion tax cut to bribe voters is more important than reducing our greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2030 – which would cost the same amount.

In John Howard’s Australia, everyone is better off, but no one feels better off. Youth suicide is at a record high. Rural males are killing themselves in record numbers. Mothers are murdering their children.

How can there be such despair in our booming economy?

There is something wrong in John Howard’s Australia.

What is it?