1 - Eureka Street

The state of VictoriaIVictoriaAmid football fina ls, the spring racing carnival and the opening of the new tollway system,is heading for elections. Moira Rayner looks at the condition of democracy andcivil liberties in Premier Jeffrey Kennett's 'Victoria on the Move'.FF KENNETT's popularity has never been of the Bolte years, and the small '1', social- cosying, though critics are quickly labelledhigher, especially among young voters and democratic liberalism of Hamer and Cain. disloyal, selfish and un-Victorian, andyoung males in particular, in the newer Victoria was the cradle of a liberalism which dismissed. His government's willingnessouter suburbs of Melbourne. His has been a used state intervention to achieve equality to seek out major events, such as the Grandremarkable metamorphosis. Even as he led of opportunity, so important to liberal Prix, and create new projects, such as thethe coalition to its massive landslide into philosophers such as John Stuart Mill. Since Docklands stadium, City Link and Crowngovernment in 1992, Kennett was widely 1992 that public infrastructure, established Casino, has invigorated business (and aseen as a clumsy, impulsive politician, pronecertain chauvinism). The Victorian premierto gaffes, personal abuse and intemperatehas also embraced multiculturalism (one ofgestures. (He would rather we forget hishis most attractive acts was his genuineinfamous mobile phone conversation withrejection of One Nation policies), supportedAndrew Peacock in which he described hismoves to liberalise laws to allow the termipoliticalcolleague, John Howard, in four-nally ill to die with dignity, and (off and on)letter words, and his repeated interjectionsadvocated drug law reform. He is,when Joan Kirner, then Minister, spoke inT of course, a minimalist republican.the Victorian parliament, that she was a'stupid woman'.) Even as her LaborEMOSTPROFOuNoeffectsofthe Kennettadministration was definitively rejected byreign, however, strike at the heart of goodthe people, in 1992 Joan Kirner was still bygovernance. These transformations arefar the people's preferred premier.complete and probably cannot be undone.Now, as the celebrity premier, with hisIn the name of small government, freecarefullycrafted 'rough-diamond' mediamarket policies, and individual choice, noimage, heads into his third electoral contest,area-not even justice-h as been leftand an undoubted third win, it is hard tountouched. Paradoxically, the effect has beenrecall (and younger voters simply don't)an increase in central government controlthat this was the man dismissed as aand regulation, largely under the personal'boofhead' in the '80s and a buffoon in thecontrol of the premier himself. Even the'90s. The Teflon premier personifies hisheads of the departments report not to theirgovernment, thriving despite scandals,ministers, but to the premier, personally.professional opposition and popular protestThe greatest changes came quickly, asat the wholesale changes wrought, in justthe new administration cashed in on theseven years, in the structures of govern-atmosphere of 'crisis' which it could blameance. He has effectively silenced his critics, over 150 years of conservative administra- on Labor. But benefits-such as theboth within and outside his government tors (Labor governed for just 19 years in all) minimisation of state debt through publicandhisparty.Hehasnoheirapparent:there has been dismantled. The 'conservative' asset sales and the efficiencies ofis no sign that he has any plans, or another social and political culture which saw privatisation, corporatisation and restrucplace,to go . Jeff Kennett's face is an icon, as Melbourne described as 'grim city', the turing of the public sector-have come atNicholas Economou and Brian Costar home of Protestant wowsers and a bastion the cost of accountability.remark in their introduction to The Kennett of social conservatism, has gone with it. The changes to the public sector and toRevolution (UNSW Press, 1999), of 'the It is timely to review what Kennett has industrial relations have been immense. Inmost robust example of the way the Liberal wrought. reframing the employment market, forParty of Australia's approach to govern- The most obvious change is the example, Victoria abolished the old awardment and politics altered under the personification of government in one man. system and Industrial Relations Commisinfluenceof neo-classical liberalism'. Victoria has a new verb: to be ' jeffed'. Jeff's sion in 1993, then simply handed over itsAs Costar and Economou write, the foibles, now he is so powerful, seem amusing, own new system to the Commonwealth inVictoria of 1999 has thoroughly cast off reportable, and almost endearing. The 1997. In the process, it abolished its owntraditionalliberalism, both the paternalism bullying tone has softened into cajoling and (not particu lar! y tame) creature, the20 EUREKA STREET • SEPTEMBER 1999