I’ll add it to the to-do list for version 0.0.0.2.

1 (c) Any criticism is therefore implicitly supporting the evil that Dear Leader is seeking to eradicate, as in (for slow learners like Tony) a certain ex-leader of Iraq, and now surely any criticism of control order No.1 on Aboriginal communities in the NT is implicitly supporting child abuse, which probably is all connected with Islamic radicalism anyway.
Simple really.

1. 1. First declare that the criticism is all coming from Latte swilling elitist LEFTOIDS who are:
   (a) out of touch with mainstream Australian values;
   (b) repeating themselves yet again.
2. 2. Once you have established the veracity of Statement 1, it then follows that no criticism of Mr Howard can be valid.
3. 3. Therefore all criticism is unAustralian and part of TEH LEFT’s real agenda of undermining Western Civilisation as we know it, and handing the world over to islamic radicalism.
4. 4. (Optional) mention the numerous issues on which TEH LEFT has been shown wrong in the past. Such as supporting Stalinism. Establish once and for all that TEH LEFT just can’t get it right.
5. 5. If the substance of a policy is questioned, if anyone dares suggest that the policy might not work, this is obviously because the writer (or speaker) is actually motivated by hatred of a fundamentally decent man who certainly didn’t become a liar in the past two years. And if he ever did lie it was only once and the lie wasn’t all that important.
6. 6. Post your comment on as many blog comment threads as you can find an excuse to do so. After all, everyone deserves to see your brilliant wit, don’t they?

Published under the terms of the GNU Public Licence.

THE ANTI-HOWARD ARGUMENT TEMPLATEâ„¢

In the event that Mr John Howard (Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia) should make a public statement that is subsequently reported in the mainstream news-media (particularly if that statement may be seen in a positive light by the uneducated majority of the Australian public—otherwise known as voters) the following template may must be used:

1. First make the statement “John Howard is a liar�. (If challenged at this early stage the usual response is “Well he lied about ‘children overboard’ didn’t he?�.)

2. Once you have established the veracity of Statement 1, it then follows that nothing Mr Howard ever says is true.

3. Therefore everything is said to further another secret agenda—a sinister ulterior motive if you will.

4. Establish that motive using phrases like “it’s just an excuse to�, “the real agenda is�, “only months out from an election�, “playing the wedge� and so on.

5. Now go on to attack the motive, thus avoiding the actual issue, or the substance of his statement. This will avoid the possibility of having to concede that Mr Howard may believe what he is saying, and is in fact sincere on this or any other issues.

Simple.

The Template™ © devised by Tony of South Yarra. All rights reserved.

After all we all know that whoever leads Labor will be unfit to govern, controlled by union bosses, unable to manage the economy, and basically a danger to the Australian way of life and all it stands for. As exemplified by King Howard and his annointed successors.

Mate,
Federal elections happen every three years and this one is supposed to happen before Jan/08 . It is not as if this place is Zimbabwe and Ratty can cancel them and this is why he panics when opinion polls indicate he is doing badly.
A lot of opinion makers in ordinary community life are internet people who do not take much notice of the paper news or even TV news but the considered information they find on reasonable blogs.
First the SMH will get dirty with Rudd come election announcement day according to Crikey sources and now you say the Herald Sun according to you will get “medieval”with Rudd.If you (or “your people” ) have any dirt they would like to dish perhaps they could put here where the bullsh*t detectors are pretty good.

“Paulkelly Says:
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
John Howard has long shown an interest in the welfare of Aboriginal children. I believe his maiden speech dealt with it. He believes all humans, irrespective of race or background -certainly irrespective of race (it is only progressives who accuse Howard of racism) are equally deserving of security and safety.
(I know for a fact it pained him to tell lies about boatpeople 6 years ago, but he had no choice.)
I know he has sleepness nights about it and I wish people would stop being so cynical about this. The reasons he has waited until five minutes before an election, and why he has eschewed any hint of softly softly in the PR sphere are purely legitimate.
I don’t know what they are but will get back to you when I have been informed.
Vote 1 Mr Howard. He’ll keep our country clean and white.”

This is good, we can see here how government works. If something is mentioned in a speech then that is “handled”. Government is getting much easier. And lies are ok as long as one is remorseful. There. What are you all going on about.
Back to paul:-

“Paulkelly Says:
June 23rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Bilb. I expect politicians to tell lies, especially in campaigns. Sadly, that’s what they do – Australian ones at least as much as most. This government is probably only a bit worse than its predecessors in that regard.
But I loathe rodents (and others) who take the easy, shameful racist/religionist/otherist route.”

There. Lies are a natural part of government, even to be expected, as long as one has a higher purpose. I feel much better after that explanation. Thankyou Paulkelly.

That is a wrap.

There is nothing to see here folks, you can all go about your regular business.

Mark being obviously more concern about a policies impact on a number of vacuous abstractions and ones own ego (�it confirms my prediction of major party convergence�)than its practical effects may not be very scientific but it is very Strocchi.

Oh that’s right Chris. It’s always all about you, isn’t it.

Any relation to Dick Emery? Polls schmolls. The election hasn’t even been bloody well called yet. My people tell me that the Herald Sun is about to get real medieval on Rudd and the unions.

Personally, I’d prefer to see Kevin Rudd behind the counter at my local Bing Lee store than in the Lodge.

[Moves off camera. Lingering side shot of Cpt. Strocchi, frozen to the spot, slack-jawed, looking on in stunned disbelief.]

[Dolly back to reveal floor length mirror in right of frame]

CPT STROCCHI (to his reflection): Is that a gun in my pocket or am I just pleased to see me?

Howard has had the look that the Ceausescus had in their last days for most of this year because the opinion polls consistently say he is unpopular.Everthing he does be it throwing dirt or belatedly deciding to take a proactive interest in Aboriginal welfare is a desperate act to try to claw back his position in the polls.Your “sensible right wing populism” should have happened to the Aborigines eleven years ago if were really a sincere and popular right wing belief.

Moves off camera. Lingering side shot of Cpt. Strocchi, frozen to the spot, slack-jawed, looking on in stunned disbelief.

…Dick flops around in ear.

Not your week really, is it?

Get your hand off it. I am having a political ball right now, seeing sensible right wing cultural populism turned into state policy. With the “professional” bonus that it confirms my prediction of major party convergence (to the right) on cultural policy for minorities.

And, I am ashamed to admit, some malicious personal pleasure at seeing so many Cultural Lefties squirm as Howard steals a march on their territory.

I see Howard is extending his right wing cultural policy to clamp down on white dead-beats and rock-spiders. A good thing to, the more national statism for at risk kids, the merrier. Although it makes a nonsense of Larva-Prodder claims that Howard’s plan is race card, dog whistle, wedge etc.

Howard has made gob-smacking progress in the Culture War during this term of office, hurting his political enemies by helping their “clients”. Educated women have gotten over the ratbaggier forms of feminism and are in the midst of a mini baby boom. Ethnics are fitting in and getting on, now that multiculturalism is on the way out. Now he is dealing with the indigenous issue, by caring for neglected indigenous children.

He must feel politically ambivalent about all this. Like Col. Kilgore, simultaneously gloating over a smashing victory and yet somehow rueful over the diminishing number of targets. The irony is worthy of a mocumentary:

[Col. Howard, facing camera surrounded by spell-bound junior officers, oblivious to incoming fire as he warms to his theme.]

I love the smell of drying Wets in mourning. It smells like…victory…Some day this Culture War is going to end.

[Moves off camera. Lingering side shot of Cpt. Strocchi, frozen to the spot, slack-jawed, looking on in stunned disbelief.]

Gunner not “Gantner�. The courts agreed with Howard on that one. Are they in on the kitchen cabinets political scheming too? Obviously this example of paternalism was not a total failure as Cubillo is 66 years of age, a ripe old age by the standards of his peers.

Nice nitpick Jack. The error was due to a peculiar little mental glitch where “Cubillo Gunner” gets mixed up with “Carillo Gantner”. Gawd knows why.

It’s her peers Jack, not his. A little more attention to detail, and you might have avoided giving the impression that your comment was little more than a venomous little piece of ineffectual payback for previous points lost.

Not your week really, is it?

What we need is a groundswell of public support for legislation that punishes lying pollies.

“I am interested in a more generic debate about the role of trust and honesty in government.”

Given the complexity of the indigenous child abuse issue and both its political and policy implications, concern about the Howard Government’s motives should certainly “switch between” the elements and the system or aggregate, as strategic thinker Stuart Wells would say. It’s good that Anna has identified the need for synthesis, not just analysis, to be applied to this issue.

Other strategic thinkers, Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff in their book ‘Co-Opetition’ (published 1996 by Doubleday), further add to the case for applying synthesis on Page 234:

“No game is an Island. Even so, people draw boundaries and divide the world up into many separate games. It’s easy to fall into the trap of analysing these separate games in isolation – imagining that there’s no larger game.”

Perhaps Matt Price sums up “the big game” when he describes John Howard’s actions this week as “belated and political, for sure, but nonetheless brave, sincere and proactive. For the first time in months, the PM is driving an issue rather than tailgating Rudd”.

In other words, there are implications caused by this indigenous child abuse issue that are ultimately not just about indigenous child abuse itself.

Anna also writes:

“There is way too much evidence, research, inside knowledge and personal experience for every single one of us to make a completely rational and informed assessment. That’s why we vote for governments, as opposed to having plebiscites on every single issue. We vote for people whose judgement we trust.”

Indeed, I developed an understanding from an International Marketing class last year that we do need to “trust power” to others, namely a central government, to make some decisions for us. So long as that concentration of power is “kept democratic”, we all potentially benefit by being connected with “the bigger game”…or bigger picture. Rather than be left to make decisions and judgments informed only by own experience.

However, democracy isn’t fool-proof and I do believe the issue of “strategic thinking” makes sense of this claim. In summary, without appropriate strategic thinking, a fool with a tool (like democracy) is still a fool.

It’s precisely because so much evidence, research, inside knowledge and personal experience exists “outside of our own” that we need to “take a risk” in trusting the judgment of others, the risk being that your trust will be manipulated, as ChrisGS suggested:

“It’s difficult to nail Howard as a liar – he’s too shrewd for that. But it’s like dealing with a dodgy second-hand car dealer: your trust is manipulated, and you somehow never quite end up with what you thought you had originally purchased.”

Indeed, by “trusting others to make sense of the big game”, you risk allowing them to break up the big game with the big picture into separate games with separate pictures, in a way that polarises issues and can disadvantage one’s self interest.

As Angharad suggests:

“He (John Howard) doesn’t want ‘us’ to trust him and doesn’t care much what ‘we’ think about that. Anyone who is interested in debating the issue and whether it is the right approach, certainly isn’t the target group for the headlines created by stuff like this.

This perspective begins to make sense of Brandenburger and Nalebuff’s theory that “the scope of context” each game has (the evidence, research, inside knowledge and personal experience), relative to one big game of life, will be “established or adjusted” according to attempts by “those trusted with power” to understand, play-off or change links between games.

This is why, “taking a position” on an issue, without necessarily seeing the links between games, can mean you trip over the links instead, as Brandenburger and Nalebuff say.

This provides me with reason not to be fooled by Jack Stroochi’s comment:

“What a joke coming from a political push which apparently confuses hating Howard with caring for the downtrodden”, an attempt by Jack to link two different games (dissent against John Howard and concern for social justice) which I am cynical about.

The conservatives are spending much of this election year painting the other side of politics as “aggressive application of power”, which has the ironic potential to “pacify” a person’s ability to “assert a position” that’s alternative to the Howard Government’s viewpoint (in other words, they play wedge politics).

Shaun Carney writes in The Age today about Mr. Howard’s skill of “asserting the power of incumbency”. I emphasise the word “asserting”. It is Mr. Howard’s strategic thinking discipline, not the conviction of any ideology, that helps him survive.

In order for “The Left” to adequately question Mr. Howard’s decision-making (to “assert a position”, not merely take a position), it needs to apply “nothing less” than the disciplined strategic thinking the Right-wingers have adopted.

Which returns me to my original point. The need to switch concern between the elements of an issue (analysis) and the system or aggregate that envelopes an issue (synthesis).

…From Justin

I conclude that your “trust� epistemological principle is flawed as it stands.

Huh? It’s not a principle, Jack. It’s just my personal feeling of trust towards someone.

GregM:

In fairness, Anna, this is a subject that has been so long a part of Australian concern, discussion and discourse that your opinion on what Howard proposes should not be informed by whether you trust him but whether in your judgement, informed by your knowledge of the issues at stake, the course he proposes is necessary and likely to be beneficial/effective. Yes, he has to make out his case but that’s what he has to do in all circumstances, and in this one there are a lot of people about who can provide informed comment to help us judge whether he has done so- unlike in the children overboard case.

I think you’re slightly missing my point. What I was trying to do is point out the dangers of cynicism in politics – people giving in and saying “Oh well, we can’t trust any of them”. Usually that doesn’t matter too much, because, as you say, evidence, debate etc all get considered.

But it does matter a lot when the government tries to declare a state of emergency, or when there is a genuine emergency, where swift action is needed. In times like this it matters a lot that we can trust our leaders to, if not be always right, then at least act in the best way they know how, with the best intentions.

If that is not dishonest then I do not know what dishonesty is. There is nothing that Howard can say that can be assumed to be true.