From today’s Crikey email:
The fractious Queensland Coalition has been, well, fracturing over negotiations for a joint Senate ticket. Last night they made the decision to band together.
But many Nats I’ve been speaking to over past weeks are not convinced this is the best solution for their party. It’s seen by many as John Howard’s perennial fix for problems of disunity in Queensland. What’s more, my sources argue that the third spot is unwinnable, so toxic has Howard’s rep become in rural and regional Queensland.
The joint Senate ticket represents the first time the Libs and Nats have run together for the Senate for decades. But upper house Nats leader Ron Boswell is only being offered the third spot, and Barnaby Joyce doesn’t think there should be a joint ticket at all.
In 2001, Boswell won his seat by running as the anti-Pauline candidate. Brisbane voters were treated to the unlikely spectacle of members of the Chinese community handing out Nats how to votes at metropolitan booths. But, this time around, Hanson is more of a tawdry reality TV star than a serious threat, and Nats sources say her run is driven by greed and ego.
Nationals members argue that the party can only hold on to a seat by strongly differentiating themselves from their Liberal Coalition partners. Continue reading ‘Boswell commits electoral suicide?’
Evan Thornley has a fascinating proposal: giving the parents of children under 18 the right to vote on their behalf.
As a child-free inner suburbanite, it seems to me that the child-inflicted already get a disproportionate influence on our body politic, by their concentration in the outer-suburban mortgage belts that decide elections. Certainly, the past ten years have encouraged a steady transfer of funds through the never-ending collection of baby bonuses, family tax benefits, parenting allowances, private school funding, the have one for the country bribe. And you barely hear a sentence out of the major parties that doesn’t include the word “family”. There are also obvious practical difficulties - which parent gets to exercise the additional vote, for instance? Thornley’s claim that change would “…break down short-term thinking and encourage thinking about cross-generational issues such as global warming, education funding and job creation” is also open to question. Aren’t those outer-suburban marginal seats the ones that swing most strongly according to the economic cycle?
All that said, the idea has some intuitive appeal. What do you all think?
Since people obviously want to have a yarn about this breaking story, and since the Premier of Victoria’s resignation doesn’t have a lot to do with grogblogging where the discussion has begun, here’s an open thread.
In yesterday’s Crikey, Senator Christine Milne of the Greens says, “If the Coalition was smart, it would change leaders to rid itself of the Howard baggage, repudiate the compromised pulp mill assessment process, and develop good forest policy based on downstreaming the plantation estate. Then it could sit back and watch the polls shift.” Her remark about changing leaders got me thinking. On Wednesday I read Paul Kelly’s riff on the Costello-Howard leadership tussle. Although Kelly talks as if Costello will eventually become leader, the subtext suggests to me that Costello doesn’t actually have much hope of that happening, either before or after the election, whether the Coalition wins or loses.
There are some people I know who have always voted Coalition who are finally disenchanted enough with Howard to consider voting for a different party this time - and concern about the environment is a large part of that. So Milne correctly identifies a pro-Liberal, pro-environment group of voters. What would it take - or who would it take - for the Libs to retain this vote at the coming election? Continue reading ‘Taking the lead’
Two in one week! Skepticlawyer aka Helen Dale is going to be visiting Brissie for one last time before heading overseas to study at Oxford. Come and have a drink with her at Noi on Saturday night at 7pm! Again, if you’re planning on coming, an rsvp via commenting or emailing mbahnisch (at) gmail (dot) com would be appreciated.
Just recently released in Australia, Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA has been reviewed by Chalmers Johnson over at TomDispatch, cataloguing a sorry saga of incompetence, political meddling, corruption & remarkable stupidity. As Weiner remarks, the Agency came into existence in response to the ’surprise’ attack on Pearl Harbour, & revealed its decades-long failure on the morning of 9/11.
Reading it, you can’t help but reflect on the complete cock-up that the AFP has dished up, presumably ably assisted by our own intelligence (sic) bodies, as regards Mr Haneef. The incompetence is either indicative of a culture of poor procedures & poor training, the impact of political interference or a delightful combination of both. The cataloging of stupidity & ineptitude has largely been from NGOs such as the Law Council, or within the judiciary, & has had some reporting from our fearless media. But little substantive analysis. A lot of alert but not much aware.
The question I keep coming back to is, who will be able to write a similar history of the AFP & our intelligence agencies, & given the catch-all nature of anti-terrorism laws & the continual weakening of FIO access, whether it would even be possible. Howard’s response to criticism of this Buster Keaton-like farce, is to insist that the laws will be strengthened, enlarged. As Weiner shows, such a response will only further entrench political interference.
John Howard turns 68 today. Anne Summers, who is six years younger than Howard and two years younger than Mick Jagger (who turns 64 today), thinks recent comment about his age has been “cruel“. I think that’s a bit of an overstatement, yet I also feel uneasy about the atmosphere of insinuation that people in their late 60s are somehow past it. Continue reading ‘Play the man, not the age’
For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow
For he’s a jolly good fellow (pause), and so say all of us
And so say all of us, and so say all of us
For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow
For he’s a jolly good fellow (pause), and so say all of us
All together now. Hip! hip!……..?
The Nation brings us a long, detailed investigation of the other war - the effect of the US military’s occupation on the people of Iraq.
It’s not a pretty picture - a combination of jumpy GIs, a fair sprinkling of racists and sadists in the military’s ranks, and the attitude of command that Iraqi deaths were of little concern, it’s impossible not to draw analogies with Apocalypse Now.
Given the anecdotal basis of the report, the self-selection bias of the interviewees, and the presumed motivation of the authors (it’s hard to imagine Laila Al-Irian is keen to give the Bush administration an even break) it’s hard to know how reflective of the overall situation it is. Nevertheless, it’s both disturbing and plausible.
I can think of no better way to blog the Nicholas Gruen does Brisvegas grogblogging evening than to do so photographically. But, as you can probably see from the general air of conviviality in the photos, I think it’s fair to say that a very very pleasant evening was had by all! Our guest of honour has been captured for posterity in this snap, which displays the excellence of the paella he enjoyed.
Continue reading ‘A tale of two thinktanks’
It sort of slipped by last week without a great deal of notice, but Alexander Downer revealed something rather interesting about Australia’s negotiations with the US about our future involvement in the nuclear industry:
“It’s a real possibility that we could build a relationship with the Americans under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) but their work on that isn’t even finished yet,” he said.
The GNEP, you ask? It’s an American-led proposal to allow the expansion of the nuclear industry, while minimising the concerns about nuclear proliferation. If a developing country wants nuclear power, the GNEP countries will sell them a reactor, provides the fuel, and takes the fuel back for reprocessing and disposal afterwards. Therefore, the developing country isn’t faced with the difficulties of safely disposing of spent fuel; equally, the spent fuel isn’t available for nuclear proliferation either.
Continue reading ‘Australia to join the nuclear OPEC?’
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about just what online strategies could be most effective for political parties in getting their message across to the voters. I’ve run across a lot of interesting views, and thought on them (in between reading chapters of HP7) so here’s a summary of major points.
Disclaimer: I’m not a member of any political party, but I do want the Liberal-National coalition to lose government, or at least lose control of the Senate.
Political parties in Australia don’t have to “get out the base” i.e. motivate them to turn up at the polling booth. The voters already have to turn up or face a fine - so the message isn’t about making them want to get out the door, it has to be tailored to where they’re actually going to put their mark, and tempt them into being an active supporter who volunteers time and money. Thus the recent efforts from pollies of all stripes to suddenly get themselves pages on the social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube, some more impressively than others.
So how do the high-profile parties in Australia (i.e. the parties who already have successfully elected federal parliamentarians) stack up in attracting the attention of the casual political websurfer, and how do they rate in funnelling them towards a firmer voting intention and maybe a donation of time and/or money?
Continue reading ‘Political outreach online’
The Howard Government’s union-busting ABCC released a report (pdf) today claiming that smashing unions is good for the economy. Needless to say, The Australian ran hard with the story, giving it the front page, an opinion piece (”analysis”), and the editorial.
The report was prepared by Econtech, a firm that is heavily invested in the WorkChoices project — it was paid by the business lobby to sing the legislation’s praises. It is also committed to the ABCC, after preparing a report in 2003 predicting that government-sponsored union-busting would boost the construction industry. Econtech has now been hired by the ABCC, to verify its own predictions and justify its client’s existence.
If you don’t like the official evidence, invent some new evidence
It is worth noting that the 2003 Econtech report was reviewed by the Employment Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle (pdf). That review found fundamental problems with the Econtech methodology and assumptions.
Continue reading ‘ABCC and Econtech: flawed assumptions, biased report’
Readers might remember my series of posts on QUT Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake’s move to abolish the “old humanities” at QUT. It’s pleasing to be able to report that reason has prevailed and a lot has been salvaged from the wreckage:
THE Queensland University of Technology will keep some arts double degrees and may even end up with a reworked bachelor of arts degree.
The outcome of the Council meeting is a significant turnaround from earlier proposals, which some at QUT have characterised as a rejection of Coaldrake’s push. For far too long, academics and students have rolled over when university managements have unilaterally announced school closures. It’s heartening to see that a strong student and staff campaign, supported by the NTEU, can make a difference.
…asks recent immigrant to these shores, Pommygranate, on a Catallaxy thread. I think there’s quite a simple answer to that question. Despite the globalisation of the news cycle, and increasingly of selected political issues, there are still significant differences in national political cultures. Australia never needed Eustonistas because it was the Liberals who took us into Iraq, and the Labor Party (and other left and centre-left parties) was consequently united in opposition. A big contrast both to Blair’s warmongering, and to the way such issues play among the Democrats in the States. And the “Third Way” project needed no great defence because it never took off in Australia - the reason being first that the Australian Labor Party shed its socialist clothes at an earlier stage (and in fact the Hawke/Keating government inspired much of Blairism rather than the influence being from Britain to Oz) and secondly that the far left in Australia has not for many years had anywhere near as much influence or presence as in the UK.
The absence of Eustonistas (and I discount the odd voice in the papers, like Pamela Bone, because they represent more a punditarian slot for an op/editor to fill rather than any real political grouping) is a good thing. We have no need of a “pro-war Left” and it’s significant that tiny sects such as the Maoists at Last Superpower are the only political formations who actually represent in a real sense this tendency in Australian politics. The battle lines are relatively clear, with the right wing commentariat being the exemplars of tortured non sequiturs and ludicrous leaps of logic in the face of the collapse of the Iraq War. In any event, such voices are usually very muted (and fewer) now as reality has finally caught up with the faith based community. The probable election of a Rudd government will see the last embers of the fires of the Iraq War in Australian political debate die away very quickly, and hopefully we will have learned some lessons.
Continue reading ‘Where are the Australian Eustonistas?’
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