US protests: It’s all there in black and white

Protesters lay down facing a police line in front of the White House during protests over the death of George Floyd in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

Racial discrimination is ugly. No matter who is practising it, decent people are disgusted by it.

To witness the riots that have occurred since George Floyd’s death is truly sad. The undercurrent of black despair, anger and despondency is ever present in the US, lurking just beneath the surface. When the fuse has been lit, you know that yet another bout of rioting and looting will surely follow.

The American civil war was one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in the cause of justice for black Americans, which has never been fully delivered. Black lives do matter, and a black life taken cheaply is a disaster in the making. When taken by a white policeman, you can multiply that a thousandfold.

Coming to the debate too late as usual, Donald Trump had little to say. Why is it beyond him to act as a healer? Why can’t he jump on to Air Force One and fly to the trouble spot, call a meeting of the warring parties and calm the situation?

At least things do seem to be improving. I have been watching Sky News and there are large crowds of peaceful protesters on the streets of Minneapolis. You still get the impression there is plenty going on beneath the surface, but let’s hope this break in hostilities can last.

Despite years of recruitment policies to attract more blacks into the US police forces, progress is lamentably slow. As long as black neighbourhoods remain predominantly poor, the riots will continue to happen.

Being trapped in a cycle of poverty is not a new phenomenon but it is still too common in the US, where the disparity between rich and poor remains a problem too easily illustrated. During these riots there has been a frenzy of destruction. I saw one guy desperately wrestling with a street sign, trying to tear it down. The rioters are ripping apart their own neighbourhood, making the lives they are living only worse.

When race riots occur in the US, after some period of mayhem differences are papered over on a temporary basis. They never get fixed. Perhaps they never will be, but if we all succumb to that line of thought then there will never be progress.

Of course, the US is not alone in suffering from racial uprisings. The poor and the dispossessed of Britain have occasionally taken to the streets, but not with the same gusto or persistence. Boilovers such as we have seen this week are far more common in the US than they are in other Western nations.

In my lifetime, the only occasion I can recall when the streets were used successfully to change public opinion and then force a complete political rethink was the Vietnam moratoriums led by former treasurer Jim Cairns. He may, arguably, have been the worst treasurer since the end of World War II, but he achieved hero status for leading some huge protest marches against the Vietnam War. There were large protests against the South African rugby union team in 1971, but public opinion in Australia was already firmly against the system of apartheid practised in a country ruled by a white minority. Interestingly enough, Malcolm Fraser spent the latter part of his public life trying to atone for the manner in which he first became prime minister by adopting causes such as the abolition of apartheid. The problem for Fraser was that in the eyes of Labor voters, his rehabilitation was never a remote possibility.

It is hard to believe that back in the early 1980s, the issue of uranium mining caused enormous upheavals in the Labor Party. The only time I was ever spat on was at the 1984 party conference at the Lakeside Hotel in Canberra. I can’t remember the last time I heard that issue mentioned, yet there was a time when it came perilously close to causing the party to fragment. Bob Hogg, the former Victorian state secretary of the party, stepped up to the plate and, at considerable danger to his own position in the Victorian Left, forged the compromise on uranium. That decision was necessary to confirm that Labor was fit and ready for government.

Labor’s lack of time spent on the government benches translates into a need to continually demonstrate that it will spend responsibly. Labor is now better placed to do that with Jim Chalmers in the role of opposition Treasury spokesman. When he speaks, he speaks with authority, and he has yet to make any errors. He knows his stuff, and the clash at the next election between Josh Frydenberg and Chalmers will be almost as interesting as that between the leaders. Now that the Treasurer has released details of the government’s stimulus package, Chalmers has the dual responsibility to tear down the government’s model and create one of his own. This will be his first real test and all eyes are on him.

The Coalition has mostly put lawyers into the role of treasurer — Peter Costello, Joe Hockey and Frydenberg to name a few. Only Hockey ran into any serious trouble when he and Tony Abbott tried to do too much too soon in the notorious 2014 budget. No one was ever going to sell a $7.50 co-payment on Medicare visits, and even though that figure was subsequently reduced, but the damage had been done. To top it off, an absurdly generous parental leave scheme that would have seen wealthy solicitors receive more than many suburban families could manage to earn was simply too much for the mob to handle.

When the pandemic fog has lifted, there will be a need to move swiftly to stimulate an economy that has been grievously wounded.

As one government backbencher said to me this week: “We are all Keynesians now.”

The government will have to spend its way through to the next federal election.