John Howard is not my prime minister.

How could he be? I don't live in his Australia. I live in an Australia that celebrates diversity, that believes in tolerance, that regrets centuries of injustice to the indigenous people. John Howard is the PM of a country where difference is seen as divisive, where intolerance is a political imperative, where policies regarding indigenous people seem as cynical and ruthless as they were a century ago.
Not for the first time John Howard is being widely described as a racist. Back in 1988, when he detonated the immigration debate, his apologists were defending him from that charge.
More recently, his diagonal nods to Pauline Hanson have added fuel to the fire. Well, if he's not a racist, he's something far worse.
He's a reckless man who will exploit the racism of others for his own short-term advantage.
Sincere bigotry seems preferable, is certainly more understandable, than somebody who cold-bloodedly manipulates it.
Of course, any mug can be a political arsonist. Igniting hatred is easy. It doesn't have to be left versus right or white versus black or rich versus poor. As Northern Ireland reminds us you can create hate within what appears to be a mono-culture.
Now John Howard threatens a Wik election. No, Wik isn't a race issue. It's a business matter. And Australian society is mature enough to deal with it. In half a century of observing politics, I can't remember a performance as ominous, as chilling, as reprehensible. For while the Prime Minister takes the moral high ground he would be unleashing the armies of the night.
On the 30th anniversary of the 1967 referenda passed by an overwhelming majority of Australians, the referenda that got Aborigines counted in the census, I spoke to Faith Bandler.
"Would it be passed today?" She thought about it for a long moment. "Perhaps, but narrowly."
Why narrowly? "Because, today, bigotry is organised."
Let's start at the fringes and work our way to the centre. Whilst murmuring pieties about their commitment to an informed public debate, the Coalition would benefit from the coalition of crazies. Eric Butler and his anti-Semitic, white supremacist League of Rights would be campaigning for Howard. The neo-Nazis would be campaigning for Howard. The Ku Klux Klan (yes, we have branches of these sociopaths in Australia - ask Marcia Langton who has to deal with them in her Darwin suburb) would campaign for Howard. The deranged elements in the gun lobby, the white supremacist militia movements, the plethora of fascist groups with their internet home pages, they'd all pitch in. And as well as these sad, sick, demented creatures we'd have their patron saint, Pauline Hanson. Here's where, finally, you can understand Howard's Hanson strategy.
Hardly a day passes when my mail doesn't contain more toxic sludge from the lunar right - and Pauline's their pin-up girl. More ominously, she now emerges as Howard's secret weapon. Here's the issue that forces the Hansonites to back Howard to the hilt, at least with their precious second preferences. Where else could they possibly go? Nowhere. Much and all as the Hansonites might despise the Libs, seeing them as wimps and wuzzes, when the issue boils down to those over-privileged Abos, white Australia is going to fall into line.
The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, the Premier of Queensland and the Premier of WA can scarcely contain their excitement. Within 'nanoseconds' of Howard threatening a Wik double-dissolution, there they were, on the telly, urging him on. They could already taste sweet victory. Stone was particularly excited. At any second you expected to hear him say "I love the smell of napalm in the morning ", to the backing of Ride of the Valkyries.
Borbidge is one of the premiers who've come out and attacked Hanson, but only half of Hanson. They've attacked Hanson's hostility to Asia - because that half can hurt trade, tourism, the big quid.
But the other half of Hanson - the Abo-bashing half - has been fine by them. Ditto for the business leaders who've come out against the woman. We mustn't be rude to Asia - Asia has our future in its hands. But 'bugger the Abos.'
The trouble is that, internationally, people won't make the same fine distinctions. They'll see Howard embracing Hansonism. They'll see us returning to the dark days of White Australia. They'll see a nation that, moments ago, was being celebrated as a triumph for pluralism, as arguably the most successful multicultural society the world has seen, turning back to bigotry. This, on the eve of our Olympic Games? On the eve of the Centenary of Federation? Make no mistake, this election will fascinate and horrify the wider world. We'll be able to occupy the proud place vacated by pre-Mandela South Africa.
I like to think that Jeff Kennett would behave differently from Borbidge and the boys. That for all his bovver boy tactics, he'd find the Howard strategy disgusting. And many decent people in the Liberal Party will be appalled. Ever since Bill Wentworth was Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, there's been a growing commitment to what we now call Reconciliation in the party of Menzies.
From Reconciliation to Wreckonciliation: for many Libs this act of social vandalism will be the last straw. You may well find Cheryl Kernot's defection from the Democrats echoed in significant defections from the Libs. Fred Chaney, of course, has resigned from the Liberal Party already. Others of calibre might well jump ship.
Who else will saddle up for Howard's civil war? Internationally he's been lauded and applauded by the likes of Le Pen in France, by Pat Buchanan and his cohorts in the US, by the skinheads in Germany.
Locally the thugs who've taken control of the National Farmers' Federation will be there, along with the less responsible mining companies, pouring big bucks into the sort of television campaigns they've rehearsed in the past. The shock-jocks will, of course, be frothing at their microphones, seeking to amplify every anxiety, to libel the Aboriginal leadership, to revile and manipulate.
And all the time John Howard will be saying this isn't a racial issue. But he knows better. And so do the uglier elements in our society.
Many of you will remember what happened in this country during the Vietnam War. Expect far greater divisions, far greater damage. We will be unleashing enmities that nobody will be able to control, dividing homes, communities, playgrounds, newspapers. In a few short weeks we'll undo much of what we've achieved as a pluralist and allegedly tolerant society.
I hope I'm wrong about this. But anyone who knows anything about the political dynamics, about the dangerous exhilarations of racism, knows what can occur. John Howard may well win his election. But in the same breath, he'll go down in history as not only our worst prime minister but our most despicable one. And these conflicts will be choreographed by the doyen of the Lyons Forum who, suddenly, has turned a deaf ear to Christian concern.
Australia's Aboriginal leadership has been remarkable for its tolerance, even for its sense of humour. But for the last 20 months it's been confronted by a PM who prefers the white blindfold to the black armband, who resolutely refused to apologise for the stolen children - or for any other atrocity committed against Aboriginal people.
Pearson's outburst about "racist scum" has to be seen as a cry of despair, of desperation. And it's going to get much, much worse.
The Aborigines, of course, won't be able to afford the multi-million dollar ad campaigns. They'll be trashed by the conservative pundits in both broadsheets and tabloids. They'll be vilified by the shock-jocks and their people will be in physical jeopardy as the hatreds are orchestrated.
But this is not to suggest, for a moment, that the Senate should roll over on Wik, that the Opposition should allow itself to be panicked. There are some issues that simply have to be fought out. Vietnam was one. This is another.
But it's principally a problem for those on the Treasury benches. Now is the time for Costello, for Reith, for someone, to move against a rash, negligent, amoral, incompetent leader.