FED: A year of questions, not answers

AAP General News (Australia)
12-28-1998
FED: A year of questions, not answers

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, AAP - The 1998 election settled Australia's political course - to some extent.

John Howard's coalition runs the parliament - up to a point.

A GST is on the way - in some form.

Australia will soon be a republic - possibly.

Formal reconciliation between black and white Australians is imminent - perhaps.

The economy has escaped the worst of Asia's meltdown - for the time being.

All the big issues have to be qualified.

Nothing seems certain - not Sydney water, not Victorian gas, not even death and taxes, as
Kerry Packer has proved.

This year seemed to pose as many questions as it answered.

Even the federal election failed to settle key arguments.

John Howard declared it gave him a mandate to introduce a 10 per cent GST as part of his
grand tax overhaul.

Kim Beazley and the Australian Democrats said just the opposite.

The Democrats, set to hold the balance of power in the new senate, oppose a GST on food and
other items, which could jeopardise John Howard's promised income tax cuts.

Few could belittle Mr Howard's achievement in taking to the people an electorally toxic GST
- and winning.

But Mr Beazley was also seen as a winner of sorts. He scythed the coalition's majority from
44 seats to a dozen, engineering a swing back to Labor even greater than the anti-Keating rout
of 1996.

He acquired a new deputy when Simon Crean replaced Gareth Evans and a new parliamentary
colleague - but only just - in Cheryl Kernot.

Labor's most influential woman, however, may rue her election-night "dummy spit" when,
looking like a loser, she complained that the party had not found her a safer seat.

Beazley, dismissed early in the campaign as having insufficient "ticker" to run the
country, also won the majority of the two-party preferred vote.

He guaranteed himself another crack at the big time, something that may be denied the prime
minister if the pundits are right in predicting a challenge in this parliament from his
treasurer Peter Costello.

Tim Fischer's Nationals also had reason to celebrate, beating off the challenge for the
rural vote from the new One Nation party headed by Pauline Hanson, self-styled "mother" of the
nation.

Hanson had earlier stunned the country by picking up 11 seats in the Queensland state
election.

But although One Nation was left with a lone senate seat to show for its efforts federally,
and its leader failed to get back to Canberra, it still outpolled both the Nationals and
Democrats and attracted almost one million primary votes.

That figure underscores why Australia's struggle to assert itself as a tolerant
multicultural country will remain one of the "big picture" issues, along with the republic and
reconciliation.

Australians go back to the polls in a referendum - as agreed at the constitutional
convention in Canberra - in 1999 to decide the fate of moves to formally break away from the
United Kingdom.

The approach of the new century also focuses minds on achieving a genuine accommodation
with the original inhabitants of the continent - a big ask considering that Australian of the
Year Cathy Freeman says she is still shunned in public because of the colour of her skin.

Many see an apology to the "stolen generations" as an essential part of the reconciliation
process.

Yet the nation is led by a monarchist who won't say sorry, and who still suffers from the
perception that he took far too long to stand up to the more unsavoury and divisive aspects of
Hansonism.

Labor won the year's two state elections, bringing home Jim Bacon in Tasmania and narrowly
allowing Peter Beattie to form an ALP government in Queensland for only the second time in 40
years.

The Northern Territory had the chance to become Australia's seventh state, but surprisingly
voted the move down in a referendum.

The federal government was embarrassed by two casualties of the MPs' travel rorts affair -
Noel Crichton-Browne and Michael Cobb - and by the continuing saga of the "chase for Skase".

The Spain-based business fugitive even thumbed his nose at authorities by acquiring a
Dominican passport and discarding his Australian citizenship like "smelly socks".

One-time Labor colleagues discarded Bill Hayden just as unceremoniously after his evidence
in the high farce atmosphere of the (Tony) Abbott and (Peter) Costello defamation case.

The former governor-general was lambasted for mentioning in court baseless rumours that
former prime minister Paul Keating had an affair with a woman as well as a predilection for
young men.

Weeks later Mr Keating and his wife Annita announced the end of their 23-year marriage, but
stressed their decision should not lend credibility to "malicious" rumours.

Mr Keating's successor in office had his diplomatic powers tested by regional crises - the
fall of Indonesia's Suharto regime, domestic turmoil in Malaysia and PNG, and the nuclear
stand-off between India and Pakistan.

But Australia's response to the renewed Gulf crisis was more practical - the despatch of
190 elite SAS troops in February, a decision John Howard called the most "serious and solemn"
he had made.

The threat closest to home - from Asia's financial meltdown - so far has had less effect on
the local economy than most experts predicted.

Economic growth remained solid - over three per cent, inflation was almost non-existent,
interest rates remained at historic lows and job growth prevented unemployment ballooning out
over eight per cent.

The dollar plunged to a record low of 55.30 US cents - even lower than when it slipped on
Paul Keating's banana republic skin - but bounced back into the 60s.

A $2.7 billion federal budget surplus - the first for eight years - encouraged John Howard
to claim Australia was in its soundest financial position for 25 years.

Domestic problems sprang from unexpected sources.

Millions in the country's biggest city endured two months of intermittent water torture
caused by the presence of cryptosporidium and giardia bugs.

Victorians put up with a fortnight of cold showers - and were chided by their premier for
moaning about it - after an explosion at Esso's Longford gas plant near Sale.

The blast, which killed two and injured seven, led to 50,000 stand-downs and cost industry
an estimated $100 million a day.

Brisbane suffered several days of power blackouts caused by a series of power plant
failures. It was not a good year for essential services.

The merits of privatisation came under further scrutiny as Mr Howard pushed for the full
sale of Telstra, aiming to turn Australia into "the greatest share-owning democracy in the
world".

Political brawling further tarnished the image of the Sydney Olympics, already hit by the
loss of two SOCOG presidents and one chief executive.

Rod McGeoch, who led the city's bid victory, became another victim of infighting, quitting
the board over a campaign of "vilification and muckraking" against him.

The enduring memory of the worst industrial row is the spectre of balaclava-clad security
men and guard dogs on the nation's wharves.

Patrick stevedores, at the cutting edge of the government's ambitions to reform the
waterfront, sacked its 2,000 workers and tried to replace them with non-union labour.

"MUA here to stay" became the battle cry of unionists who fought all the way to the High
Court to be reinstated.

After a five-month dispute that cost Patrick an estimated $50 million, the company
succeeded in almost halving its workforce but those that remain are still unionised.

Natural disasters seem to be a perennial problem; the bushfire season got off to a tragic
start when flames engulfed a firefighting truck in western Victoria and killed five
volunteers.

Light plane crashes claimed six lives in the Snowy Mountains, and five at Berowra Waters,
north of Sydney; and four sailors perished in a fire aboard the navy vessel Westralia.

Australia was subjected to its first orchestrated campaign of terror by post when
authorities discovered 28 letter bombs targeting mainly tax office employees. A 43-year-old
man has been charged.

Police were rocked by the murder of two officers in Melbourne and one in Sydney, and a
drive-by spray of gunfire at Sydney's Lakemba station which miraculously hit no-one.

Police took 18 people into custody after a $400 million heroin seizure, Australia's biggest
ever, on the NSW north coast.

They also cleaned up by recapturing the elusive "postcard bandit", Brendan Abbott, in a
Darwin laundry.

Crime may not pay but tax specialists do. Kerry Packer, worth over $5 billion at last
count, took the unusual step of saying through his lawyers that he paid "millions" in taxes.

But his company, Consolidated Press Holdings, succeeded in having a $260 million tax
assessment for two years reduced to $25,000.

The nation's richest man underwent heart surgery in New York but was back on his feet in
time to land another multi-million dollar Melbourne Cup plunge on New Zealand mare Jezabeel.

Packer's rival mogul Rupert Murdoch had mixed personal fortunes, too. He received a papal
knighthood and made a $1.7 billion bid to buy soccer club Manchester United in the same year
as he split from his wife of 31 years, Anna.

His son Lachlan, meanwhile, made plans to marry lingerie model Sarah O'Hare. But wedding
plans were cancelled for the country's other most prominent son, James Packer. Actress Kate
Fischer reportedly got a $2.5 million Bondi beach house to console her.

Australian sport had plenty to crow about. Tennis pin-up Pat Rafter won back-to-back US
Opens, and swimmer Susie O'Neill won a record 10th Commonwealth Games gold amid Australia's
198-medal avalanche in Kuala Lumpur.

But although our cricketers remained world champions in the year Sir Donald Bradman turned
90, their achievements were tarnished by the revelation that Shane Warne and Mark Waugh had
been fined for accepting money from an illegal Indian bookmaker, and that officialdom had
covered it up for four years.

The news overshadowed some mighty feats. Captain Mark Taylor in particular won plaudits in
Pakistan for matching Bradman's highest Test score of 334, and Ian Healy surpassed Rod Marsh's
world wicketkeeping record.

One of sport's saddest moments came with the death of Tommy Smith, racing's greatest
trainer ever.

Other Australians to join history's passing parade included Catholic lay leader Bob
Santamaria, Arbitration Commissioner Sir John Moore, former BHP boss Sir Ian McLennan,
businessman Sir Asher Joel, RSL leader Sir William Hall and former Socceroo Jimmy Mackay,
whose goal took Australia to the 1974 World Cup finals.

The passing of the years was starkly evident when, for the first time, Anzac Day was
commemorated without a single survivor of the original Gallipoli landings.

But although father time always wins in the end, a doughty Victorian digger proved that age
does not always weary them.

Former mine worker Les Colley, of Ararat, died at the grand age of 99 - just seven years
after fathering his ninth child.

AAP dc/it

KEYWORD: YEARENDER NATIONAL

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