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Issue No. 123 | 21 December 2001 |
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The Unmaking of History
Interview: Braveheart International: Global Year in Review Unions: A Year at the Barricades Technology: Unions Online 2001 Republic: Terror Australis Economics: 2001: Annus Horribilis Campaign Diary: Melanie and Me Politics: Tony Moore's Final Word Review: You Are the Weakest Program Legal: The New McCarthyism
The Soapbox The Locker Room Trades Hall Tool Shed
 A Fair Go For AllThe First BastionTom Collins' Christmas Wish
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EditorialThe Unmaking of History
The new millennium has got off to an ominous start. The fireworks, circuses and self-congratulation of 2000 were a thing of the past and we were left with the task of redefining ourselves in a new era. Events at home and abroad conspired to ask us to respond to crises in new ways - from the dot-com crash to the battle for compo, from the S11 attacks to the Khaki election . The great tragedy of 2001 was that all too often it seemed we were working from a blank slate rather than making use of our greatest asset, our collective history. It was as if we had ruled a line through the experience of the past 100 years; that the sense of solid ground that had characterized the post-war era had been junked with the old calendar. Our enlightened engagement with our Asian neighbors was cast adrift somewhere in the Indian Ocean, our aspirations to be an open and tolerant society marooned with it. In its place sits a new isolationism that seeks to quarantine our affluence from the rest of the world and a leader prepared to push any race button to hold onto power. When the election was called it was if we were in 1950 when a White Australia feared the yellow peril, rather than the year after we had celebrated the diversity of the global village. There was a similar time-warp to the political and industrial struggles that consumed the union movement, as if a century of labour movement solidarity counted for nought. Labor MPs crossing a picket of State Parliament opting for the interest of the employer over the worker, then turning around and accusing the unions of demeaning their precious Democracy. Thousands of workers thrown on the scrap heap, told that entitlements they had lawfully accrued were no longer there's as the architects of corporate failure skipped town with their massive 'performance' bonuses. And most bizarrely of all, the Labor Party, licking its wounds from losing an election that appeared 'unloseable' dealing with its hurt by turning on its only true ally - the union movement. If there is a common theme in all these sad occurrences it is that events do not occur in a vacuum; they are part of the sweep of history that can only ever be defined in hindsight. When we look back on 2001 what will we see? A society that got so caught up in the issues of the day that it forgot where it had come from; that in rejecting its building blocks of egalitarianism and decency now seems more fragile than ever before. It's an adage that is sometimes sadly dismissed as a clich�: those who choose to ignore their history are doomed to repeat it. Let's make sure that in 2002 we reassert our heritage -starting with the fundamental benefit of working together for our collective good.
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