Backed down again huh?

"Labor MPs have backed down on a demand that Indonesian abattoirs comply with Australian standards, paving the way for the return of live cattle exports to slaughterhouses that do not require animals be stunned before they are killed."

Of course you have. You spineless jerks.
You and your great moral imperatives that you forget as soon as someone somewhere whinges about them.
Now how are we going to believe you when you tell us you have assurances that refugees sent to Malaysia will not be caned?
Where's your fucking "resolve" now???

Too many out of too few

Mr and Mrs Politician,

Ours is not a big army. We can't keep losing these guys while hearing about how YOUR resolve is undiminished.

Death and Blackmail

The new Coalition (our conservatives, that is) state government swings into action in Victoria...

Item 1
Singer Olivia Newton-John - a cancer survivor - has spent 7 years working on the development of a holistic cancer centre. Six out of eight storeys of the building have already been completed, and the plan is that 2000 Victorians would get oncology and radiotherapy treatment from early 2013.
But new 'Health' minister David Davis has said finding the $45 million needed to finish it would be a "significant challenge" and would not elaborate. Except to blame the previous government, of course.

I bet you could find $45 million for political advertising, party junkets, or getting Tiger Woods to play golf here..
Jerks.

moving on...

Item 2.
"The Baillieu government has been trying to blackmail the University of Melbourne into overseeing its controversial alpine grazing trial by threatening to withdraw millions of dollars in research funding... Ethicist Leslie Cannold said it was wrong for the government to use its fiscal power as a threat. ‘‘You’ve essentially got an academic institution that is being blackmailed,’’ she said."

Now let me guess, you're not planning to withdraw the millions and put them into the cancer centre instead are you?
No? I didn't think so...

all in a days light reading in the local paper...

Australia - humane or not?

It might be an exaggeration to say that the case of a 9 year old asylum seeker is probing the conscience of a nation. It is probably a too-optimistic assumption to even think most people are paying attention... but it IS front page news, and people are asking the hard questions.

Last December a shipwreck on the coast of Christmas Island of a boat carrying Iranian asylum seekers killed still undetermined scores of people, among them parents of a boy known to us as 'Seena'.

Illegal arrivals by sea has served as the number one wedge issue for the conservative coalition, now serving in opposition after coming as close to winning an election as is possible without actually gaining government.

It's all smoke and mirrors of course, illegal immigration by plane vastly outnumbers so called "boat people", but like any other population, Australians can be swayed by symbolism and vague atavistic fears exploited by ruthless and - it has to be said - Right-leaning politicians.

Seena among others was flown to Sydney for the funeral of bodies recovered from the shipwreck, and the opposition immediately blithered about the expense, were promptly called out on their lack of compassion, and forced to retreat and, to some extent, recant.

Then the government came under fire for putting Seena back behind barbed wire.... Christmas Island is in the Indian Ocean and is Australia's offshore processing centre for illegal arrivals by sea. It's about as Santa Claus as Alcatraz, with tropical zone malaria to make the place feel homey.

Seena has since been released into the care of relatives residing in Australia - either too quickly or not quickly enough depending on at what stage people want to sledge the Department of Immigration.

But then the scene shifts back to December again when the Liberal Party (the Liberals are our conservatives here in Australia) had a little meeting wherein opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison is alleged to say something to the effect of "hey, let's scare the voters shitless with the spectre of Muslim hordes taking over the country and use it as a wedge issue against the Labor Party!".

That is not exactly what he said nor meant, in all probability... but suspicion is not eased by refusal to discuss the detail of the meeting.

The issue in this then, I think, is not what Morrison said, but the split within the Liberal Party about what he can be interpreted to have said, and - just quietly - how to approach the M word - multiculturalism.

I find the absence of this word in discussions is quite interesting, if one seeks context from Howard's culture wars. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott merely said that the Coalition ''will always have a non-discriminatory immigration policy''. He didn't use the M word either, and Labor knows better than to step that landmine by looking to do anything than get Morrison's scalp.

It's like watching an ideological cold war that neither side has the honesty to admit to nor the will to fight.

Meanwhile, the Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has called for an independent review of the Migration Act, aimed at stopping children being put in detention. Over a thousand are in detention. There is constant talk about ending it, but the wedge issue is too valuable to the coalition and too dangerous to Labor for anything to happen while government and opposition stare across a parliament split with diamond-cutting precision down the exact middle.

Long after Morrison sees his name come off the front page, he may realise that wedge issues are not, ultimately, things you can choose or not choose to have, after all.

Little wedges everywhere... within Labor caucus, within shadow cabinet... everyone trying to look tough and compassionate at the same time (never an easy trick), ambitious Liberals looking to walk over political corpses, leaders looking to define themselves... and a country wondering how the hell we have kids in what can only be called prisons.

Little wedges... like little boats, coming unbidden and testing what it is you really stand for.

Contradictions

At least in how polls are presented....

I read in Crikeydotcom:

"Tony Abbott’s week from hell and the continuing fallout from the floods has delivered a boost to Labor, according to today’s Essential Report. In online polling conducted last week and over the weekend, Labor’s primary vote rose 2 points at the expense of the Liberals (our major conservative party) .... The Prime Minister’s personal numbers fell, with her approval rating falling back below 50% to 48%, and her disapproval rating rising 5 points to 41%. However, they remain much healthier than her end-of-year numbers..."

But the major and usually reliable paper I read says:

"The (conservative) Coalition has opened an emphatic 54-46 per cent two-party lead in an Age/Nielsen poll that shows Labor's primary vote and the Prime Minister's popularity sliding. This is the biggest lead the opposition has had over the Gillard government in Nielsen polls and - depending on preference allocation - probably its best result since early 2005. The Coalition's two-party vote is up 3 percentage points since November, with Labor's down 3 points."

Both these articles are dated today.

Even the normally Right-leaning paper, The Australian, says:

"Gillard has stared down state leaders to deliver $16.4 billion into the health system in return for absolute transparency about how state governments spend the federal money.... Ms Gillard's first major policy victory as prime minister and follows her promise last year to make 2011 'the year of decision and delivery'."

Meanwhile Abbott has got into a fight with his own deputy and has achieved diddly squat.

Memo to the Coalition and the media

"The first cracks have appeared in the Gillard government's alliance with the crossbench MPs, with the Greens signaling they may side with the Coalition on some issues..." says the newspaper.

Funny... what I heard, from the leader of the Greens, from his own lips, was that the Coalition will be judged harshly for being "destructive instead of constructive".

But no... let's have waves of doubt and pessimism and report every little passing conflict because, hey, we're the media and we prefer conflict.

What he was ACTUALLY saying was there is a new "paradigm" where you - the cantankerous conservatives - can initiate legislation and not have it squashed provided you have majority parliamentary support.
Meaning... better "democracy" MORE bi-partisanship - not less.

You're so busy pissing on the Greens out of jaundiced ideological prejudice you can't see they are offering you a measure of 'power'.

And the Coalition have gone from civil to bitter and twisted faster than the Wicked Witch of the West getting in froth about not scoring the red slippers.

Questioning the Gillard government's "legitimacy"?
If you thought you had a leg to stand on with that you'd run with it but you don't - because by every rule of our system Labor has the right of minority government. Gillard got the independents on side. You didn't. Get over it and work towards the next election - which may not be so far away anyhow.

Julia keeps the top job

Update: I have replaced the image I had here previously, which was the iconic Obama "Yes We Can" with Gillard in it - because it could be taken to mean all sorts of things I wasn't actually saying.
I meant it in good humour.

My commenter Sigil remarked on it, and I decided he had a point. I do take intelligent constructive criticism on board.

This afternoon the three remaining regional independents announced who they join with to form a minority government: Coaltion, Labor, Labor.

Labor wins.
Julia Gillard will remain prime minister.

The key issues which persuaded the affirmative two were the building of the broadband network - that being the country's biggest infrastructure project - and recognition of the issue of climate change.

Although this is a complex and extraordinary political situation in a system not familiar to many of you, I want to just point out what I took away from it, personally...

1/ During the 17 days of negotiation and deliberation, the country continued its business, tranquil and unfazed.

2/ No-one - except for one flaky Right-wing cretin who looks to have lost his senate seat - said "I will block anything you do". Everyone pledged to make things work.

3/ A conservative coalition lost the opportunity to form a government in part over failures of policy regarding climate change. It might have only been in the minds of a handful of men... but when it came to hard business of politics, it mattered. It actually affected the outcome. That's significant.

4/ The much needed parliamentary reform, which everyone agreed was necessary while in opposition then forgotten in government, was finally agreed to.

5/ Gillard was by far the superior negotiator.

6/ Between the leaders it was never personal. There was not one fleeting moment of spite. It was all about the best outcome for the country, as they variously see it. The Coalition were disappointed, but they were civil. There was no fist-pounding. No hysterics. They acted like grown-ups.

7/ I was greatly entertained, and the better team won.

Election deadlock - Thursday update

Today Andrew Wilkie - who I wrote about here - committed himself to political partnership with the Australian Labor Party (and he was a Young Liberal once...), which gives Gillard 74 seats. To form a minority government she needs two of the three remaining independents to commit. In order for the Coalition to do the same they need all three to commit to them (which can of course still happen, unfortunately...).

Treasury has gone over Coalition costings and found "a black hole" of at least $7 billion and maybe as much as $11 billion. Since the Coalition refused to submit the costings to Treasury review prior to the election (and for a while afterwards)... this has caused suspicion. It's a matter of speculation that if the conservatives had been transparent (read... "honest") up front... then this would have been revealed prior to the election and maybe the ALP would have got a narrow win instead of a hung parliament.

I read the Treasury analysis... dry but interesting. And clear - the coalition have dodgy assumptions. As ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) reports:

"Before the election the Coalition said its promises would add about $11.5 billion to the budget bottom line over the next four years. But Treasury analysis given to Tony Windsor and his fellow independents Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter shows the Coalition's promises would only add between $860 million and $4.5 billion to the bottom line.
The Treasury document shows the Coalition has costings problems with its plans for health, education, infrastructure and its paid parental leave scheme.
The difference in figures also comes down to the Coalition making significant spending promises without saying which projects would be slashed to pay for those promises."

Rob Oakeshott, one of the remaining independents, came out of 14 hours worth of meetings with the Coalition... and expressed disquiet. If he goes to the ALP then the Coalition cannot form a minority government. Either it's 75 each way, in which case it's a matter of constitutional interpretation or one or both of the other two come on board and Gillard has the numbers to form government.

Sunday Cartoon

The situation in federal parliament at the moment...


Both coalition and Labor have 72 seats. There are 150 in the house of representatives, thus no absolute majority for the first time since 1940, when we were in the middle of a war. Then the independents switched to Labor, and John Curtin was prime minister till 1945.

Either the independents back one side or the other, or we hold another election, or something weird happens.

Probably take at least to the end of the week to see what happens. I don't favour another election because they're a nuisance, even more people would thus vote informal, and we could just end up at square one again anyway.

Axis of Deceit, Fulcrum of Power?

In 2003 a former Australian Army lieutenant-colonel and intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie, spoke out as a whistleblower against the invasion of Iraq, and quit the Office of National Assessments.

The ONA provides builds assessments on international political, strategic and economic matters of interest to Australia, reporting to the prime minister and the National Security Committee of cabinet, linking up with services such as ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation.

The conservative Coalition government of the day promptly mounted a campaign of personal vilification.(...a Right-wing government vilifying an experienced military officer for doubting the wisdom and basis for an illegal war...good heavens... who would have thought it?)

Then prime minister (and eternal scumbag) John Howard said Wilkie was ''guilty of distortion, exaggeration and misrepresentation''. Liberal Party senator David Johnston described him as ''unstable and flakey". Howard's own office called Wilkie "unbalanced".

Well... the tables might or might not have turned now...

Andrew Wilkie is now an independent political candidate and a potential power broker in the stand off in the hung parliament, wherein neither government nor opposition alone has the numbers to take power. Wilkie was once a member of the Liberal Party (the greater part of the conservative Coalition), and later stood as a Green.

This week Wilkie said Australia should separate from the US on Afghanistan war policy, and exit the conflict, saying that the assertion that Australia was there because of terrorists is a "great lie". He says the terrorists have "morphed years ago into a global network" making Afghanistan an irrelevance.

Both Labor and the Coalition opposition currently support Australian military presence in Afghanistan.

The night before last yet another Australian soldier was killed. He was from what was Wilkie's own battalion and regiment.

Wilkie has yet to claim victory in his Tasmanian seat but the current Coalition leader and would-be prime minister Tony Abbott has called him and apologised for what the Howard government - of which Abbott was a key member - did to him.

I bet he did.

Gillard has arranged to meet Wilkie on Saturday. Abbott will meet with him on Monday.

Election - the day after

What happened?

It's still happening. We're waiting....

Election eve

Election tomorrow. The tightest in years, no-one has a clue who will win.

I'm going to vote, do some shopping, go to the MCG to watch the football, and hope to hell that Labor wins.
(...shit, what happens if we get a hung parliament? )

Cheating in elections is not allowed

By the end of the day the coming Australian federal election - which sits on a knife's edge - was announced... 100,000 people were disenfranchised.

Let me explain how that happened.
You see, in 2006, a conservative Coalition government was in power, and they changed the rules about how much time people have to get on the electoral roll before it closes, after an election has been announced.
...to 8pm THE SAME DAY.

Previously you had 7 days.

Now....why? Why would any government make that change?

Ah well... the reasoning was pretty transparent:
People who are not on the roll already are mostly young. It could be their first election. And these people...
...tend not to vote conservative.

The changes wiped out thousands and thousands of potential votes for their opponents, the Australian Labor Party and the Greens.

But one political advocacy group weren't going to have it and they took it to the High Court. On Friday the High Court handed down its majority decision, at around lunchtime. It was the fastest-ever ruling for a full court hearing. The changes by the Coalition were found to be unconstitutional. Those people have a right to vote.

The Coalition might get back into power anyway. Like I said the election is on a knife's edge. But at least one more conservative attempt to hijack democracy has been averted.

John Howard sucks hirsute canine appendages.

Oh and... Failing to enrol incurs a $110 fine. The Coalition were going to deny you the chance to vote against them, and then take your money for failing to do it.

Three Big Issues

Economy:
Nobel Prize-winning US economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has described the Rudd government's stimulus package as ''one of the most impressive economic policies I've seen"..."not only was it the right amount, it was extraordinarily well structured, with careful attention to what would stimulate the economy in the shorter run, the medium term and the long term"..."it was, I think, probably the best-designed stimulus program in the world"

This cuts the conservative opposition off at the knees when they describe it as "wasteful"... should anyone pay attention to a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

( He also said lack of consumer confidence in the US is a sign that the latter is heading for a ''double dip'' recession. A second US stimulus package - though needed - is unlikely to be delivered because it's an impossible sell, politically.)

Industrial Relations:

In 2007 the Workchoices legislation sank the Coalition government. It was electoral poison. However this does not stop the current leader of the Coalition from being evasive about whether a future Coalition government would attempt to bring elements of it back...

They just don't get it: Australian workers prefer collective bargaining. It keeps the terms of negotiation with their elected representatives - not a bunch of lawyers they couldn't afford to hire (and shouldn't have to).

Border Protection:

The classic Coalition wedge issue. Make the public believe there are teeming hordes of people arriving in boats to steal the Australian way of life. (Just don't mention they are vastly outnumbered by illegal arrivals by plane...). Goofy government ad has an image of an Australian warship in reference to this, which I dislike - because this is not a military situation per se, it's just that only the military has the resources. And in any case the navy absorbs tasks that in other countries would be assigned to a Coast Guard.
And we're not Battleship Australia, thank you.

It's on...

Federal election in August. Julia Gillard has called it.



I'm not worried but I am concerned. Labor kept us out of recession but has had its problems and the rarest of political spectacles: a Prime Minister removed by his own party in his first term.

The conservatives, being conservatives, will fight dirty. It's going to be a long night on August 21st to 22nd...

I fiercely want Gillard to win. I actually find her too conservative on many issues, but in the balance she has the qualities I want in someone leading my country. She's not another Hawke or Howard. She could alter the tone of politics.

She doesn't rant. She doesn't angrily rage at her opponents. She doesn't offer false friendliness. She's all business. Her delivery is cool, measured and dedicated.

And her opponent is God-bothering clown.

Hawke

Wow... something unexpected.
A telemovie about Bob Hawke.

For my American readers... Hawke was our longest serving Labor Prime Minister, and a huge (beer-guzzling philandering) personality of Australian politics in my lifetime (so far...). The likenesses in this - performance-wise - are uncanny.

The cackle and vowel-chomping accent takes me back to 1983 and High School, when the Hawke government began. Keating in particular... that pale overcoat!



The Herald Sun writes:

"The telemovie starts in December 1991. Hawke is staring down six of his closest ministers, including mate Kim Beazley (Patrick Brammall), who want him to step down for Keating.

From there it is back to 1977 where we meet the earlier Hawke - the boozy, womanising but brilliant president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Hawke concentrates as much on the personal as on the political.

The scenes between Bob and Hazel are quietly devastating.

It is a credit to the makers of Hawke that Australian viewers will have so many mixed emotions about our former prime minister. By turn, Hawke is caring, arrogant, visionary, boorish, emotional, loving, calculating and more.

Hawke is a major achievement. Don't miss it."

"I'm not a religious person" - Prime Minister Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, yesterday, on ABC radio's Jon Faine talkback program (which I listen to most mornings):.

Faine: "Do you believe in God?"

Gillard: "No, I don't Jon, I'm not a religious person."

As The Age reports:

"Amazingly, the radio station was not struck by lightning. Gillard hastened to add she was brought up a Baptist, attending the Mitcham Baptist Church. Why, she even won catechism prizes for remembering verses from the Bible. "But during my adult life I've, you know, found a different path," she declared. "I'm, of course, a great respecter of religious beliefs - but they're not my beliefs."

I'd say there's a quarter of a million votes in that alone. The mood of anyone I speak to and hear on the radio appears to concur.

Lest we forget that John Howard, the Prime Minister till 2007 and Bush's buddy, had secret talks with the insidious cult The Exclusive Brethren, who peddled influence via his party, something I'll never forgive him for.

The BNP and the anti-immigrant who is emigrating

This is from a few days back...

The British National Party - the ultra-Right party with a pathological hatred of immigrants - has been forced by law to scrap its whites-only membership laws. Members voted to change the party's constitution so that black and Asian people can join - if you can imagine that they would want to.

The leader Nick Griffin - a Holocaust denier - said on Sunday anyone can join if they agree that the country should stay "fundamentally British"... thereby being suitably vague while ensuring that everyone knows exactly what he means.

A funny sequel to this is their extension of an offer of membership to none other than Australia's own Pauline Hanson, who after years of banshee-like wailing on the fringes of Australian politics has decided that, for all her oft-professed patriotism, she will say goodbye to Australia "forever" and emigrate to Britain.

Griffin said she would not be regarded as an ''immigrant sponger'' .
What charm.

Pauline Hanson is a sort of Australian Palin except without Palin's physical appeal and a voice that is actually more grating on the ear, if you can believe that. She opposed non-white immigration and generally had well-deserved pariah status among the major parties.

Goodbye Pauline. Good riddance and don't come crawling back when you discover the weather is not as nice as it is in Queensland.

Religious idiot of the week

The inaugural award goes to Tony Abbott, recently elected by a margin of one party vote to the leadership of the federal opposition.
The next prime minister should the people of Australia collectively lose their mind (stranger things have happened...)

To quote Michael Peruso, chief executive of Sacred Heart Mission:

" I was in Canberra last week and had the opportunity to ask Opposition Leader Tony Abbott whether a government under his direction would continue with the Rudd government's goal of halving homelessness by 2020. His answer was no. In justifying his stance, Abbott quoted from the Gospel of Matthew: ''The poor will always be with us,'' he said..."

Tony...have been asleep all your life?
Spouting quotes from the Bible as social policy is, REALLY, the wrong thing to do here.

Israel's cause supported by non-conservatives

Peter Costello, who might have been prime minister if he wasn't (he claims) short-changed by John Howard, commented in Israel that his support for that country was motivated in part "by the anti-Israel rhetoric of those on the left of politics".
The irony is he was standing next to the acting prime minister of Australia at the time of the Gaza incursion, Julia Gillard, who IS to the Left of him. Yet...

In front of an elite audience of Israeli politicians, academics and cultural figures at a dinner at the landmark King David Hotel, senior Israeli minister Isaac Herzog paid a warm tribute to Ms Gillard for her support for Israel during the Gaza conflict in January.
"You stood almost alone on the world stage in support of Israel's right to defend itself," enthused Mr Herzog, an act of courage he said would never be forgotten by the people of Israel.
Ms Gillard was Acting Prime Minister when Israel launched a three-week offensive against Hamas that resulted in the deaths of more than 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
At the time, Ms Gillard condemned Hamas for shelling southern Israel, but pointedly refused to criticise Israel's response, although she did urge it to be "very mindful" of civilian casualties.
Mr Herzog, a personal friend of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (also to the Left of Costello) and chairman of the Israel-Australia parliamentary association, also thanked federal parliamentarians for passing a motion last year in support of Israel's 60th anniversary.
(source: The Age Newspaper 24th June 2009, reported by Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem)

So where is the actual basis for Costello's comment? In myth and stereotype. In demonisation of anyone to the left of politics.
And yes some Israeli actions in the Gaza incident remain questionable, even if Gillard didn't say it.