It is looking more and more that Labor will win, and that the present unforeseen Coalition government majority in the Senate may be lost too. That will give a Rudd Labor government the potential for winding back bad laws and correcting past serious negligences and injustices. And may I say how important it is that, in Senate seats Labor has no realistic chance of gaining, they should not repeat their disastrous decision last time round in Victoria and Tasmania to preference Family First over the Greens. That gave the Coalition control of the Senate, from which so much bad legislation came.
There are interesting moral questions arising from this analysis for us "bleeding hearts", among whom I am happy to count myself.
First, if Rudd wins, should we expect all good things to come at once? We should not. I do not underestimate the moral damage that eleven years of relentless Howardism have done to Australia’s moral decency. At core and at grass-roots level, we are still a decent people. But it will take time and patience to bring the level of public debate – especially among our political, business and professional elites, much of whose public discourse Howardism has intimidated or corrupted - back to a decent middle ground of instinctive and unstudied respect for human dignity.
A second interesting question if Labor wins - how much did the patient human rights-based advocacy by we bleeding hearts since 1998, against all the odds and in the face of withering scorn and contempt - contribute to the erosion of Howard's initial high moral credibility? ALP hardheads – the sort of folk who used to advise Kim Beazley - say we did not help at all. In fact, they say, we bleeding hearts have been a nuisance, distracting Labor into bitter internal divisions that Howard could exploit, especially on border security, thereby eroding the ALP vote in elections since 1996. Better if we had shut up, they say.
I don't think Rudd would agree with that, judging by his essay in The Monthly. And I think our sustained moral critique was necessary. Over time, it played a role in helping bump Howard off his public pedestal to his present quite strongly negative public persona.
A third question is, what should we bleeding hearts be doing in terms of public advocacy for the remaining months till the election? I tend to think that we should now go more gently. We should leave room for Labor to win, on its chosen ground. We should not help to give Howard any Tampa-type red-button issues to play, to distract and pump up the electorate.
But a fourth question then arises - what consequential dangers might we run if we are too silent? Could a Prime Minister-Elect Rudd then turn around and say " I won the election without you people, now don't go telling me what you want me to do” - on issues like ending Temporary Protection Visas, ending use of Nauru or Christmas Island as detention centres, setting up a judicial inquiry into the people smuggling disruption program and the sinking of SIEV X as the previous Senate four times demanded, disengaging from the Iraq occupation, opening up Iraq War accountability issues, reviewing sedition laws.
My answer is in two parts. First, I think that church leaders in particular must continue to speak out, in firmly non-partisan ways, on issues in politics that are deeply moral. And I note Rudd’s words that Boenhoffer’s bravery as a church leader applies not just to societies in crisis as was Nazi Germany but to all societies at all times. Australian hurch leaders must continue to speak out on political and social issues that are at the same time moral issues.
Second, do we bleeding hearts in the wider community need, quietly but firmly, to make known our expectations of Labor now? Or is it better to trust in Kevin Rudd to do the right thing when he has the chance to?
I have not worked out a complete personal answer to this yet - I like Kevin, but Tony Blair’s record as a Christian socialist leader who went off the rails as British Prime Minister just gives me the shivers. I think Kevin Rudd is just as smart as Tony Blair - smarter, even. I hope his moral conscience also will be stronger than Tony Blair’s proved to be in office. The Monthly article, that I have quoted from extensively, gives me hope that it will.
– Tony Kevin is a distinguished former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia and 2003 "International Whistleblower of the Year". This article is an extract from an address he delivered at the New Pentecost Forum in Sydney in May 2007. The full text is here.