And Howard thought Joh was his worst Sunshine State nightmare?
Labor needs a net gain of 16 seats to form Government in its own right but if it falls short by one or two seats the independents will come into play.The former National Bob Katter said yesterday he had excellent access to both leaders but expressed major frustration with the Howard Government.
“If you were trying to antagonise me you could not be doing a better job,” Mr Katter said, pointing to the recent decision to allow imported bananas into Australia and the apparent lack of interest in helping the ethanol industry.
Conversely, he heaped praise on the Labor leader and claimed credit for Mr Rudd’s decision to denounce Premier Peter Beattie’s merger plan for councils.
Three weeks ago Mr Rudd surprised many when he appeared at a press conference in Townsville with Mr Katter to criticise the proposal and introduced Mr Katter as “my friend”.
pointing to the recent decision to allow imported bananas into Australia and the apparent lack of interest in helping the ethanol industry.
rofl. So protectionism is his price? No thanks.
Hey that could be Howard’s biggest scare tactic. “Do you really want a Queenslander running the country?”
In that part of the world, Bob Katter is a good friend to have. Up there, they go bananas over the import of same.
Kennedy can’t be won by anyone other than Katter. But there are other possibilities in the deep north.
And what if it’s a hung Parliament?
It’s a trap.
cam - not importing fruit isn’t protectionism, it’s protecting our crops.
I can’t believe someone needs to spell this out, but Australia is geographically isolated from the rest of the world, and thus protected from many of the diseases that farmers in other countries have to contend with.
We don’t have, for example, Black Sigatoka disease, which is a significant threat to banana production worldwide. Start letting in imported bananas, and we won’t be free of this disease much longer.
We’re also currently free of fusarium wilt (Panama disease) of banana, which has devastated production of Cavendish cultivars grown for export in Indonesia and Malaysia.
We don’t have blood disease and moko disease of banana If either of these enter Australia the cost of control may make the industry uneconomical.
And we don’t have banana freckle disease.
The Nationals are completely right on this one - and reducing it to protectionism is just simplistic nonsense.
Im a big fan of Bob’s work on coalition unity.
Heh.
I agree, Rebekka, but it does also ensure protectionism.
Mark, yes, but calling it protectionism is missing the point that quarantine measures are valid and necessary to protect our crops. Protectionism (of this one particular industry) is a necessary by-product of the (very sensible) policy, not an *aim* of the policy.
Of course, I’m not saying it’s not convenient for the Nats…
I wasn’t saying I was against it, Rebekka.
The cavendish banana is very susceptibe to disease because it is reproduced asexually and has no genetic diversity, and it is thought it could disappear in the next 20 years due to disease? (see the wikipedai article on bananas). Is this protectionism?
Your point is very well put Rebekka, for there are many, including in government, who have little or no concept of “quarantine”. Quite scary, when it comes from people who could be presumed to have some savvay of sorts, enough to get a degree or get elected.
Yawn. Not the hung parliament thing again.
When Australia changes government, it changes government. Whitlam got a majority in single digits but it was still a majority. It’s crap that winning 16 seats is a big ask for Labor. A general election is not 150 simultaneous byelections, there is such a thing as the national mood and the winner captures it. Sure, Carr in 1995 and Bracks in 1999 had to rely on independents, but national elections are different because the scope of the nation is perceived differently by voters.
The idea that there might be a hung parliament is one of those stories which captures the imagination of bored hacks at the expense of other issues. They spend so much time on it that other more pressing stories go unnoticed (another one of these is when Howard will retire). Rudd Labor is on track to win decisively, and even if he/they flame out the Coalition will be returned with a majority. After eleven years of play-it-safe government, with massive insecurity about jobs and terrorism, do you really think voters are going to want a parliament with no certainty other than journalists having plenty of gossip?
There will not be a hung parliament. Katter will not be a kingmaker. Banana growers had protectionism with Cyclone Larry, which is why the price skyrocketed rather than having imports even out costs for consumers. The reason protectionism worked was precisely because Katter and other banana-growing interests kept quiet - had Katter attempted to claim credit, we’d have had South American bananas like they have in NZ (a place not known for its plagues of banana-related disease, despite their prominent placement in supermarkets). Protectionism is economic xenophobia and has no place in this country’s public policy debate.
If you were a press gallery journalist, you’re easily bored by debate. Would you want to trawl through balance sheets in search of government bungling/fraud, or would you want to watch Bob Katter stand on his head, wax lyrical about the Gulf of Carpentaria and skull a bottle of Bundy? Eh? When you can answer that, you can stop worrying why readership is declining.
I’m going to have more to say on this later, Andrew (in Crikey) but I agree. Note that Katter himself appears to be the source of this story. Some psephologist computed the odds of a hung parliament and they’re incredibly long (I can’t unfortunately recall where I read it). Bracks, Carr (and Beattie in 98) were all inconclusive elections where there were countervailing electoral moods at play. This election looks like being very decisive and polarising.
Andrew E, naughty of you to misrepresent.
Bananas were a banned import in New Zealand for something like the past 10 years, due to an outbreak of papaya fruit fly in 1995.
16% of amphibians & reptiles detected by NZ quarantine inspectors in the 1990’s arrived with legal banana imports.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/10year-banana-export-ban-to-NZ-ends/2006/06/15/1149964661652.html
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/stories/s586538.htm
Yes, there is are bananas grown commercially in NZ. Have a guess how many? (hint, you may not need the fingers on both hands)
I know! I was just clarifying my position
As someone who has arrived back in Oz with a tub of beaut kiwi honey, only to have customs dump the same in their ‘protectionist’ bin, I’m with Andrew E on this one. I think some of these primary produce wankers need a cold shower and find it hard to believe that we’re living in a supposedly first world economy that would allow banana prices to quadruple on the back of a cyclone and locals able to lobby against any imports at all. Have they heard of fumigation for starters?
Rebekka: Australia’s banana-growing areas are a hell of a long way from the major population centres.
If imported bananas were sold in Melbourne, Adelaide, or Perth, precisely how would these banana diseases make it anywhere near the banana growing areas of FNQ?
Robert, coming from an intelligent person that’s one hell of a stupid question.
My 11:48am post is already being proven by some commenters.
Shortly the phrase “acceptable risk” is likely to be trotted out.
Perhaps all protectionism should be abolished? What about the protectionism on Australian wages? Let’s allow anyone to enter the country & offer to work for a competitive wage, rather than continue to allow wages to be quadruple world averages.
The workforce wankers have had it too easy for too long.
Robert, Coffs Harbour is easily within a Sunday drive’s range of Sydney, and they grow so many bananas they’ve got the Big Banana.
You know, Steve Publicius, it’s not just bananas.
For me…..it goes way beyond that. Is your establishment’s “gaming” room called “The Banana Republic”? Whichever way one views it, it’s a nice touch, unless of course, the punters always win.
Steve, if you can’t grow ‘nanas in Sydney, you sure as hell can’t grow them in Palmerston North without a greenhouse.
And you thought all those special-purpose visas were for …?
“Im a big fan of Bob’s work on coalition unity.”
Yep , no what you mean.
Labor should beware of that big kahuna.
Could be another banana split.
Exactly Andrew, hence the small size of the commercial banana industry in NZ.
More on Bob Katter:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/05/my-names-bob-im-from-queensland-and-im-here-to-help-kevin-ii/
I’ve always respected Katter for being a maverick…he luvs our State & does what he can for the locals. Tho I disagree w/ a number of his views. Bit too religious for my likings. But he seems to have more integrity than many of those in his old stomping ground, the National Party types in Government…who i reckon have sold out Australia to the Multi-Nationals.
My vote for the Senate is going to Andrew Bartlett…Democrat & all round decent fella. He’s got a good blog site too:
http://www.andrewbartlett.com/blog/
‘Robert, Coffs Harbour is easily within a Sunday drive’s range of Sydney, and they grow so many bananas they’ve got the Big Banana.’
But Fiasco de Gama, have you had any of their bananas? They are bloody awful piddling things that look ordinary and taste like something like flour and they were the only things going during that awful banana holocaust last year, so we gave up on bananas altogether.
Anyway, I was hoping Kevin’s dream run would hold out until July so that I could have the exquisitely handcrafted joy of seeing Howard turn banana yellow. But maybe the bounce has been a blessing in disguise. It seems to have put paid to the leadership question rumblings that were starting up from people like Wilson Tuckey and put Howard back on the moving rubber road towards the banana bending machine. Because I want to see Howard and only Howard cop it and if he goes down by a hairsbreadth or has to get down on his knees and perform certain acts to please the likes of Bob Katter, well that’s just fine by me.
Anyway Katter and Rudd seem to have quite a lot in common - with their Rock Chopper (local slang for Roman Catholic) roots and all. Remember Rudd was the one who really agonised over all that stem cell research drama. That would probably have warmed the cockles of Katter’s heart. We wouldn’t want two more dinosaurs running the country would we?