Search This Blog

Thursday 26 August 2010

Stop the Waste

In a recent report it has been revealed that the cost to Australia of alcohol misuse is $36 BILLION per year.  This includes a lot of indirect costs, obviously, but is said to be a realistic figure.

So the Liberal Party wants us to "stop the waste"!  I say let's start looking at this problem of alcohol misuse.  It's sobering to think that if we all stopped misusing alcohol for just a year and a half, we could actually pay for the National Broadband Network, INCLUDING budget over-runs!

This puts a lot of things into perspective.  The coalition has long claimed that the NBN is a waste.  On this basis, it is, in reality, excellent value for money.  Why don't we see people appealing for the reduction in alcohol abuse with the same sort of vehemence they are opposing the NBN?

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Barnaby

Who's that jolly dumb-fuck you've got in your cabinet?


Thanks to Andrew Hansen for absolutely cracking me up tonight on "Yes, we Canberra" !!

Why Labor didn't win

I can tell you why Labor didn't win if you'd like to know.  The answer is easy.  Labor gave up on itself, and therefore the electorate gave up on Labor.  Consider these points:

(a) Climate change was the greatest moral challenge of all time up until early 2010.  Labor gave up on its policy despite a clear mandate to do something about it at the 2007 election.

(b) The Home Insulation Scheme had problems.  Hell yeah, but most government schemes do have problems.  What happens?  The problems are identified and steps are taken to fix them.  Instead Labor gave up on the insulation scheme.

(c) The Henry Report, which was the most important review of the taxation system was written and released to the government and it was given up on.  It wasn't published for over six months, and when it was partially released the government gave up completely on explaining it.  We still haven't had the figures and statistics underlying the conclusions released to this day.  The government implemented about 8 of the 138 recommendations.  So can I say that the government 94% gave up on it.  And the bit that it did decide to go with (Mining Tax) was unpopular and pilloried by the miners and their mates in the Liberal party.

(d) The promise of fixing the health system by midway through 2009 was given up on.  Okay Kruddy got around to doing something about it, but they certainly gave up on the deadline.

(e) after a cumulative effect, of the above bad policies, the government did the ultimate capitulation, and gave up on its leader, resulting in Julia Gillard coming to power.

(f) In the campaign, the government gave up on announcing significant policies, gave up promoting itself, gave up countering ludicrous arguments from the other side, gave up pointing to its fine record in the GFC, and simply reverted to the line that Tony Abbot was a real risk and you should not vote for him.

After all this (and a lot more besides) the electorate gave up on the government.  And fair enough too.

Granted, the opposition gave us a bland and negative campaign consisting of the line that the government was incompetent and we should not vote for them (if there were any other policies used I must have missed them).  Their "action contract" said they'd repay the debt (what debt?  I know the dollar amounts sound impressive, but borrowing 6% of GDP is not a significant level of debt); stop waste (a party wanting to give $75,000 to a couple earning $450,000 a year for paid parental leave cannot lecture us about waste); stop new taxes (see the previous point resulting in a 1.5% tax levy on all big companies that sell us groceries, banking services and petrol and filtering through the economy); bring the budget back to surplus by 2013 (weren't we all going to do that anyway) stop the mining tax (might be a problem with the former unless huge cuts to government services are going to result) and stop the boats (thus ending a whopping 3.4% of the asylum seeker problem).

And yet, with this campaign, Tony Abbott emasculated the ALP, made them lose 15 seats and their majority on the floor of the parliament.

It's no coincidence that most seat losses for the ALP occurred in Queensland.  Kevin Rudd is a Queenslander.

How the ALP can say Gillard ran a great campaign and that if Kruddy was still PM they would have lost another ten seats is beyond me.  It is a case of believing your own spin.  It was Shakespeare that said "and this above all, to thine own self be true".  The ALP needs to take a page out of the folio, learn from the debacle and move forward in the real sense of the term, not the spinning sense.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Election Fever!

The federal election has brought me out of hibernation.  Firstly I must state that at the moment I am an ALP member, and have been for about fifteen years now.  Back in the mid 1980s I was in fact a Liberal party member, God knows what possesed me to do that.  (Actually it was Mum & Dad, but let's not go into that now).

I need to make quite a few comments on the election.  Firstly re the political process itself.  I absolutely hate it when people say they can't be bothered with politics, you can't trust politicians and they couldn't care less who gets in.  Probably the middle point is true, but we get the politicians we deserve.  They come from us.  They come from people who care enough to care.  If no-one cares any more, then obviously the standard of political candidate decreases and any old so and so can get in.  But whose fault is that, really?  All politics is local, and if you care enough about it, then there IS something you can do (ask me how - I won't go on about it here).

Secondly, consider the electoral process of "compulsory" voting.  As Mark Latham pointedly reminded us, we don't HAVE to make a mark on the ballot paper, we only have to turn up and get our names crossed off the roll.  However I think if you've bothered to turn up, get a paper issued to you and are in a polling place anyway, it'd be crazy not to vote.

That's not the crazy point.  The thing that drives me mad is that half the nation simply couldn't care less about politics.  They don't understand the processes, they aren't interested in the game at all, and they regard voting as an inconvenience.  In some countries, people have died (literally died) over the right to vote, yet half of us couldn't give a toss.  Just do a quick street poll and see if you can find out what proportion of people can actually name their local member.  I reckon you may be in for a big disappointment.  When Kruddy was toppled that fateful day a couple of months ago and Gillard was made Prime Minister, I actually spoke to people who had never even heard of Julia Gillard.  It says it all, really.

But in Australia we force them to vote and influence the outcome of the elections, yet their decisions as to who to vote for might be based solely on such factors as the colour of the candidate's hair, or the fact that their second cousin has the same surname as their local candidate.  These criteria, for some people, are the main basis of their decision.  More fool us for forcing them to vote.

Accordingly, the election campaign has to be pitched at a level that the dumbest Australian can understand.  Don't worry about giving them facts about economics, don't worry about giving them aspirations, don't worry about giving them foreign affairs and defence policies, it's a waste of time.  What you do instead is give them a sound bite with a juicy quote, or a picture, such as buying a pie from a shop, or chucking around a football.  This is what Australian politics has been reduced to, and it's not something that gives us a good government.  The sad thing is that instead of basing a political choice on the outcome of a debate, a lot of Australians might prefer to base their decision on the result of a bare-knuckle fight between a couple of political leaders.

So I say this: make it optional.  If you don't care, don't vote.  If you don't understand, don't vote.  If you hate having to interrupt your Saturday footy or fishing trip, or visit to the pub, don't bother, we're all right without you.  This way those who care enough to vote will be the ones making the decisions and the rest of the nation can just acept what those who did vote actually said.  This is the way it works in most countries in the world.  According to Wikiedia, only 32 countries have compulsory voting.  Notably USA, UK, New Zealand, etc, etc do not, yet people do not tend to argue these nations are undemocratic.

Thirdly, and I need to probably end this post on a positive note, isn't the outcome of this election great on the same basis as the second point?  To form a government, the independents and Green will need to be courted by someone aiming to form a government.  On this basis they need to convince not a dumb electorate, but some of the most wily and canny political thinkers in Australa.  I've been listening closely to what the non-aligned members have been saying (okay, ONE of them is a little disappointing with his parochialism - sorry Bob) and I am encouraged.  They WILL be making a government based on policies, aspirations and abilities, and not the colour of the hair, or the relative's names.  Won't this be a welcome breath of fresh air into the mix.

As a prediction, I cannot see either Tony Windsor or Rob Oakeshott coalescing with the Liberals.  Adam Bandt has actually come out and stated that he wouldn't.  I have no idea how Bob Katter will go (nor does anyone else, I'd say - even including Bob Katter, I'd reckon).

But the upshot of all this is I can't see Tony Abbott as Prime Minister this parliamentary term.  The numbers are so close, however, that I also don't think the parliament is going to be workable.  If a minister needs to go overseas, if an opposition member gets sick, if someone dies, or (more likely) someone has to resign due to either retirement or corruption, the parliamentary dynamic can change.  The fact that the governing side would probably need to give up a speaker who doesn't have a normal vote also makes it difficult.  So my prediction is a Labor/Green/Independent coalition for now, but it'll become unworkable due to an external factor and we'll be out at the polling booths again within a year.

Sunday 22 August 2010

Try to Remember (that kind of September)


The singer is Tamara Abbott, as part of Wyong Drama Group's show "Harp on the Willow" on Saturday 21 August 2010 at Wyong Memorial Hall.  The video speaks completely for itself.  One of the nicest renditions of the song you'll ever hear.