Julia Gillard in western Sydney where she pledged $1 billion of taxpayers' money to help build the WestConnex expressway to the city. Photo: Andrew Meares
It's often claimed that the Hippocratic oath for new doctors commands: "First, do no harm." That's not quite right. This phrase does not appear in the oath. But it does appear in the wider body of Hippocratic writings, and it is the most famous maxim to stem from the Ancient Greek physician's work in establishing Western medicine.
When a doctor treats a patient, it says in the first book of Epidemics, "do good, or do no harm". It is the ethical basis for modern medicine. It is better to do nothing at all to a patient than to blunder in wrong-headedly and make the situation worse.
It should also be the starting point for modern politics. That is, our political leaders should take an oath to do good or, at the very least, do no harm to the national interest as they compete for political advantage.
Illustration: Rocco
Especially during election campaigns, when the contest for power is at its most urgent and intense. We are, of course, well into a campaign now, merely an undeclared one. So let the political parties play their games, let them attack each other, but demand that they not damage the national good in the process.
It can be done. For instance, this week, when Julia Gillard campaigned in western Sydney, she announced an offer of $1 billion of taxpayers' money to help build the WestConnex expressway to the city.
The government's natural impulse in an election campaign was simply to blurt out a promise of money, claim credit for doing something for the people, and worry about paying for it later. With all the other bills that pile up in a campaign. Unfortunately, that is standard procedure in an election campaign.
The more desperate the government, the more recklessly it will make big spending promises. Remember the final days of the John Howard era, when the prime minister launched the 2007 Liberal campaign promising $9.5 billion in a 40-minute speech, an average of $237 million in new spending for every minute he was on his feet?
But on this occasion, the responsible minister, Anthony Albanese, Gillard's Minister for Transport, had a better idea. He insisted that the Prime Minister make a conditional offer, not a simple promise. That's why Gillard offered the money to the NSW government on three provisos: that the highway include a freight link to Port Botany to take truck traffic off suburban roads; that it run all the way to the city rather than stopping short; and that the state not impose any new tolls on existing roads.
The NSW government rejected the deal and the cash; Barry O'Farrell said the federal conditions would add $5 billion to $8 billion to the cost of a project estimated originally to cost $10 billion to $13 billion.
The conditions were not outrageous. Indeed, Tony Abbott had offered $1.5 billion towards the same project, also including the rider that the expressway run all the way to the city.
But the Liberal Premier, at war with the Labor Prime Minister, was probably going to find fault with her offer in any case. He certainly did not sound in any way inclined to co-operate with Gillard: "Coming in at five minutes to midnight on the eve of a federal election, when it hasn't been delivered in the past five years, does make people a bit sceptical," O'Farrell said. "The first I heard about today's plan was when I picked up the newspaper. This is back-of-the-envelope stuff."
By adding the three conditions instead of just a bucketful of cash, the federal government had managed to sound responsible and thoughtful. And here is the central point - the offer does not run up the national deficit. Because the federal government is not bound to hand over the money.
Gillard got her headline, she managed to look like she cared about the people of western Sydney, yet it will not cost the taxpayer a cent. If she had made the offer unconditional, the money might well have been put into a NSW account and used well, or not. There was no guaranteed gain, only likely cost. Gillard in this instance at least protected the national interest. The Hippocratic principle was honoured.
Abbott, by contrast, did not insist on his earlier stipulation that the expressway run to the city. He abandoned his position just to side with his political bedfellow, O'Farrell, in a fight with Gillard.
The really big test for Abbott's credibility on the national budget, however, is yet to come. We saw a worrying wobble this week as the Coalition teeters on the brink between populism and responsibility on a fundamental decision.
The wobble emerged in tension between Abbott and his shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey. Abbott, of course, has promised to repeal the carbon tax. And the Coalition has long said that if there is no carbon tax, then there is no need for any compensation for the tax.
But this week Abbott seemed to wobble. He said that he would, after all, keep in place some of the compensation measures, but without saying which ones or how much.
Hockey, however, was equivocal. Asked whether any of the carbon tax compensation would remain, he responded: "I'm not going to get into a speculation about it. Forget our numbers. Focus on the fact the government's not telling the truth about their numbers and they're in government today."
Forget our numbers? This difference between Abbott and Hockey only draws attention to the fact that the Coalition has not yet come to an internal decision on this multibillion-dollar question. It is a public sign of their differing private inclinations.
Abbott, as leader, courts popularity. He wants to be able to offer voters as much largesse as possible in pursuit of as many votes as possible. Hockey, as the man responsible for fiscal discipline, wants to offer as little as possible in pursuit of a balanced budget.
How the Coalition decides this point will be central to its credibility. It will also be fundamental to forming its character, if it wins power, as a populist regime or a responsible economic manager.
As the Coalition leadership group sits around the table deciding in the weeks ahead, they should keep the Hippocratic principle - "do no harm" - in the front of their minds.
Sadly, that principle has been wantonly disregarded by the Prime Minister in her extraordinary attacks on foreign workers this week. Mind you, she wasn't the first to reach for the grubby political panic button marked "x" for xenophobia.
That honour went to the Liberal Party's Scott Morrison. Energetically exploiting the news that a refugee on a bridging visa had been charged with sexual assault, Morrison proposed that a special new system of "behavioural protocols" be imposed on asylum seekers in the community. That is, in addition to the behavioural protocols otherwise known as the law.
But it quickly emerged that Morrison was off the Coalition reservation with this idea, and no one else in his party followed.
Rather than let Morrison monopolise the x-button, the Prime Minister soon followed and pressed it, hard and repeatedly. Though Gillard did not seek to vilify refugees, she did target temporary foreign workers admitted under 457 visas, a program designed to fill areas of skills shortage where Australian workers cannot be found.
Gillard told an audience in her desperation tour of western Sydney that she would "stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back".
This, of course, is not how the 457 visa system works at all. It is the exact opposite. And Gillard knows it, because her government administers the program and has, in fact, increased the numbers of visas issued. Challenged on this, Gillard did not back down but ramped up her rhetoric, implying that workers admitted on 457 temporary worker visas were stealing "Aussie jobs." So the national leader was vilifying legal immigrants who had been admitted by her government to fill an economic need. It was a dismal low. "It's so crass, it's just embarrassingly bad," one of her cabinet ministers despaired privately.
And this was in the same week that the BRW inaugural Women's Rich List declared that the richest self-made woman in Australia, co-founder of a $600 million-a-year Sydney company that employs over 900 workers, broadband provider TPG, was Vicky Teoh, an immigrant from Malaysia.
The same week that the NSW Art Gallery announced an ambitious $400 million expansion plan, with the support of the gallery's president, Steven Lowy, son of the Jewish refugee Frank Lowy, founder of Westfield, a $4 billion-a-year Sydney-based company that employs 4000 workers, and chairman of Football Federation Australia.
The same week Gillard's Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Kate Lundy, announced that resources had gone online to help promote Harmony Day for schoolchildren to "encourage students to think about their own heritage and the important concepts of diversity, harmony and belonging".
Gillard's xenophobia in pursuit of low political advantage is a shameful moment, divisive and damaging in a country built on immigrants. The measure of her conduct was that it was warmly approved by Pauline Hanson.
To minimise the damage to the deficit, the economy, the social fabric, as our leaders plunge into a frenetic campaign, they need to keep the Hippocratic principle foremost. If you can't assist the national good, at the very least do no harm.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor.
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