Mercurius wrote last week on the rotten state of NSW politics. My apologies to those living in the states bordering NSW as you would have noticed the stench worsening through the week.
The source of the foul odour is the ICAC investigation into shady development deals done by the Wollongong City Council. That alone is an interesting story and has implicated a number of Iemma ministers. The rogues gallery being NSW Housing Minister Matt Brown, Police Minister David Campbell, Health Minister Reba Meagher and Minister for being mentioned in ICAC Investigations Joe Tripodi.
In the letter columns in both the Daily Telegraph and the SMH, along with the obvious voice of the disenfranchised talk radio, people have been asking the obvious question. What can be done to rid us of this plague of factional fiends masquerading as politicians?
Can’t the governor sack Iemma as happened to the Big Fella, Jack Lang in 1932?
The short answer is no. The circumstances surrounding Lang’s dismissal was a sequence of events stemming out of animosity between the NSW and Federal government and shenanigans over loan repayments and collection of taxes. In the end, governor Sir Philip Game felt that Lang was acting unconstitutionally and gave him the boot.
All Iemma is guilty of is gross misjudgment and having the spine of a jellyfish. The governor would have nothing to justify the use any of her reserve powers. Also, Section 24 B of the NSW Constitution Act of 1902 outlines the events that would lead to the Governor being able to dissolve parliament.
So unless something extraordinary happens, we have 3 more years of Labor in NSW. Iemma still has a chance to turn it around. But on form so far, Iemma has neither the vision nor political courage to affect any real change.
It’s all the fault of us bleeding heart, whining, childish, unrealistic, soft-headed non ‘moderate’ lefties!
NSW Labor has been handed over to grubs by the John Docker trained ‘Ooh, aren’t we the tough guys’ undergrad Right. The corrupt scum that now infests the party have laughed for three decades at the likes of Richo’s generation, all these nice middle-class wusses playing tough guy bigmen, who’ve seen themselves as ‘moderate realists’, but who in reality have been bum-boys for criminals and real deal ‘big swinging dick’ developers. That whole ‘whatever it takes’ gang of self-aggrandising Realpolitick wankers (who were never remotely as ‘tough’ as they told everyone) has lamely delivered the ALP to filth, while everyone’s attention has been diverted by endless attacking of those elements of the party – disdainfully dismissed as ‘The Left’ – who have been desperately trying to stop it happening.
These middle class suckers who go around calling themselves ‘Comrade’ ironically and rolling their eyes at the Party’s idealists, slogging away at all the volunteer Party hackwork, are the true softheaded suckers: stooged by the fantasy-fuelling ‘glamour’ of closeness to thuggish raw power into running an administrative vehicle for the financial and sexual advancement of charmers like Scimone. Nice one, ‘hard head’ Comrades.
Please Lord, let’ the ‘Gong shit-trail lead ICAC to Leichhardt Council…
“Please Lord, let’ the ‘Gong shit-trail lead ICAC to Leichhardt Council…”
… and then to the Blue Mountains City Council.
Jack , I think you just have to accept that the NSW Labor party is the NSW Labor party.
This is how it’s memebers behave and it needs to own and acknowledge it’s corruption before it has any chance to change. The NSW ALP hasn’t been delivered to filth it is the filth.
The dysfunctional nature of NSW’s governance exists beyond the influence of the factions in one party and has been around for a long time – since Atkin’s reign at least.
I don’t think much will change as an outcome of this latest investigation , mores the pity because there doesn’t seem to be any way to attract honest operators into any level of politics in NSW. I do hope there are lots of sackings and the end of the careers based on nepotism and payback.
I suspect that Kevin Rudd is at the moment sending out strong signals to NSW to get its act together.
It’s not as if there’s an alternative now, is there? Iemma’s Government is on the nose but what’s the alternative?
A one-acceptable-politician Liberal Opposition, riddled with factions, having dumped most of its moderates. and controlled by the far-Right? One who on past form would be either flogging off transport and other infrastructure to big business (Milton Morris anyone?) or propping up nutcase ideologues (Terry Metherell anyone?)
If any more dirt sticks to Tripodi, he’ll be gone next week. Hope then that ICAC does its job properly.
That might give Morris the cojones (or the frighteners) to either move on or move out in favour of John Watkins.
Well put, Jack. It is ugly, and now incompetent, if it wasn’t before. But isn’t that old-time hard-nose Ducker, not Docker?
When I came to New South in the mid-sixties I was expecting (in my youth and idealism) to discover enlightenment in health, housing and education policies after nearly 30 years of Labor rule. Instead the system was in far worse shape than that I’d known in SA after 30 years of Playford Liberalism. In my youth I didn’t know that Playford, despite the notorious electoral gerrymander, was the exception for the Libs – a real ‘of the people’ leader. I thought that he was the norm and real reform lay in the hands of Dunstan.
NSW then was a disappointment in the extent of poverty and lack of social concern. But a couple of things stood out. Public transport and taxis were cheaper than in SA (despite SA’s lower cost structure). So was the price of beer. It seemed to me that in the era of Charlie Oliver and Ducker they did at least address some of the concerns of the average working man.
With the Richo and post-Richo era this concern is vanishing. Maybe it has not totally gone. During the Olympics 2000 my wife (who worked casually there then) was most impressed with the way award and union conditions were observed when the general emphasis elsewhere was for labor deregulation, especially in OH&S. And the Hardie asbestosis thing would’ve been a lot harder without trades hall weight.
But all the same, the evidence is mounting that they’re too much in the hands of greedy developers, and that this is not the ‘realism’ they seem to believe it is.
The Garnaut report and recommendations on global warming may offer many a chance for redemption. But it is doubtful if this lot can grasp it.
“But isn’t that old-time hard-nose Ducker, not Docker?”
Yeah, my typo, ta, Don.
What a silly cont.
Moreover Iemma is an idiot. What is it when governments have been in for a long time that makes them forget democracy – even at the expense of their own skins?
Needed or not, the electricity privatisation is _overwhelmingly_ unpopular. Without a mandate for it, what does Iemma do and say? “Stuff you. We know best.” This is the exact same behaviour that got Howard turfed out: Ignoring what voters actually want.
Meanwhile, half the party’s corrupt as all hell, and the other half are merely incompetent.
The liberals are busy penning a local Mein Kampf for the day they finally get in – if it ever arrives. And there is no third first – the Greens, bless em, stick to their principles, but it will never give them mass appeal.
I would be very surprised if this was not the last term for Labor in NSW for a while. Iemma promised the state a rabbit was in his hat, but he’s just been pulling out the same greasy dandruff that Carr was throwing out in his later years – without the benefit, it seems, of Carr’s intelligence.
They should sell the retail end and kept the infrastructure. As should have been done with Telstra, though Howard put paid to that.
It is always hazardous to get into bed with the private sector. The experience might seem satisfactory, but 9 times out of 10 they won’t respect you in the morning.
You deal with them clutching the proverbial long spoon, because they are basically bastards only interested in their own profits. But you can use them.
What you must never forget is that its a quickie, not a love affair.
The Cross City Tunnel is a case in point.
However that does not preclude a private-public partnership for a gas-fired power station.
And developers are the AIDS carriers of the business sector. Wasn’t the Juanita Nielsen matter a lesson to all governments?
Trouble is the Government is a punch-drunk fighter at the moment, reeling from rope to rope. So there’s no clear thinking going on and it’s the same old same old.
Though I have never voted Liberal in my life, and have no plans to betray my principles, the NSW Labor Government actually makes me wishes I’d voted Liberal in the last State Election!
If you truly believe the above guys, there is only one thing for it. Join whichever of the major parties you disagree with the least and try to push for change. I would (from a distance) agree that both of them look like crap. The only solution is to get involved in the pre-selection process and the only way to do that is to be a member.
Whining from the outside will not fix the problem. Threatening pre-selections has a chance.
Labor does not have a completely clean slate in the pre-selection game. I recall at least two attempts to branch-stack in the inner West in the 80s on behalf of individuals who thought they were entitled to seats.
And I seem to recall that’s exactly what happened in the state Liberal Party…except it was the extreme Right pushing for “change” by stacking branches and intimidating members. Not only did they manage to turf Brogden, who may have had the potential to keep Iemma on his toes, but many other moderates soon followed. Mike Baird getting up in Manly actually went against the pre-selection trend, and it remains to be seen whether he has the integrity of his father Bruce.
My own experience of N.S.W. is solely determined by the Centrelink organization run like a mechano set designers fantasy who will one day grow up to run the Roads and Traffic Authority,and then by astral travel will return carnate to run Centrelink! What can one say about Labor Leaders and their appointments!? Only the names of themselves and the rest adds up to the medical condition of forgetfulness.
Well Sorcerer, depending on how you look at it, the ALP battles in the Inner West in the 1980s were either examples of branch-stacking for the benefit of entitled apparatchiks, or an example of local activists linked to Green, anti-development and other new social movements taking control of their Party units against the machinations of an out-of-touch Right machine. These days you can turn to page N.40 and choose your own adventure.
I’ll second AR’s comment #10. The takeover of the NSW Liberals by a group who, let’s not forget, campaigned on the basis of Rightist principle against the sleaze, entitlement and inertia of the Moderates/Group, was an amazing example of what *could* be done in any Party with the right number of people.
“But isn’t that old-time hard-nose Ducker, not Docker?”
The correct tense with respect to John Ducker is “was”, because he is dead.
Liam, I think I was talking about an area a bit “Wester” than your normal stamping ground – specifically Burwood electorate.
You’d have been a wee bairn at the time 
Though the particular ratbag ideology involved and some of the weapons used were not exactly conducive to giving the Liberals broad electoral appeal. At least not at that time. There was also a lot of public disquiet at Brogden’s downfall. He was broadly seen even by Labor people as flawed but a nice bloke.
Things might be different in 2011 if Labor does not act now.
When I get pissed off with the inertia of a Iemma, or an Unsworth before him, I always ask myself would I be prepared, in the event that Labor was not in government, to live under a particular Liberal regime.
Because that’s the choice you get.
I lasted through Greiner despite Terry Metherell. Greiner was a moderate. A Clarke-controlled Liberal far-Rightist government with a sock puppet O’Farrell as Premier and a small coterie of scared moderates would be a nightmare, comparable in many ways to the awful-for-different-reasons Askin Government of my childhood.
Look forward for instance to a roll-back of reproductive rights, a back-to-the-50s school curriculum, sell-offs of infrastructure (because in the Clarke world God and Mammon are intimately acquainted), no action on climate change, progressive handover of health to the private sector and more Laura Norder than you can shake a capsicum spray at.
I was in the Labor Party for almost 20 years. I like to think I had a modicum of clout and respect, despite being a factional independent. But I and others like me (there were many) couldn’t be everywhere at once.
And you do get tired of being asked as I was in a pre-selection Q & A session “What you are going to do with the children?” when you actually have put your hand up and nominated.
As I said before – the NSW Labor Right are bastards. But they are our bastards
Yep,
The smartest guys in the room have shown just how smart they really are. But another aspect of Costa’s enthusiasm little noticed and commented on by a media that is salivating at bringing down an ALP government is that the whole privatisation schtick has a very retro, ’80s and ’90s feel about it. Poor Michael, always wanting to be the champ for fundamental change, (as he sees it) and always ending up behind the curve.
The decision to privatise electricity generation and its retail business in NSW has the hallmarks of Thatcher’s Poll tax mistake, without the level of popularity enjoyed by Thatcher at least among her own supporters. This must rank as one of the most completely ‘own goal’ policy mistakes ever made by a State ALP government, and speaks volumes about the closed and inward looking nature of the circle jerk that the inner group propping Iemma really is.
No need to sack the government if it is abolished. With the incumbent and the alternative government on the nose; now would be the perfect time to have a referendum to abolish the state of NSW and completely reform local/regional governance and management assets owned/operated by the State Govt. It would be the greatest achievement Iemma could hope to achieve with the reminder of his time in office. He would certainly be remembered for it.
Anyone care to make the case for a NO vote?
One has to wonder how much money the Garnaut interim report just cost the NSW government.
Yep, abolish the state government and let the feds run the place. After all, Kev’ll have to fix the hospitals anyway if he’s fair dinkum.
Dodgy preselections occur all over the joint: ask Victorian ALP, asl High Poo-bah Burke of Perth, etc etc.
I’d hazard a guess: we’ll see a cleanskin Federal ALP Govt under Mr Rudd, and a sequence of unrelated scandals and minor bombshells in various State ALP Govts. I’d hazard a guess that the stench of any given scandal will correlate with the longevity of said government. Complacency leads to Crap.
A blogger here a few weeks ago suggested that Simon Crean had wasted much effort by trying to reduce branch-stacking by changing ALP rules. OK, it’s Christmas Panto time boys and girls….
stage compere: “Simon Crean was wasting his time!!”
bemused audience: “OH NO HE WASN’T !!!!!”
“…depending on how you look at it, the ALP battles in the Inner West in the 1980s were either examples of branch-stacking for the benefit of entitled apparatchiks, or an example of local activists linked to Green, anti-development and other new social movements taking control of their Party units against the machinations of an out-of-touch Right machine…”
“As I said before – the NSW Labor Right are bastards. But they are our bastards…”
You guys, honestly, you need to stop being saps. The power brokers of the ALP are politically agnostic self-servers. Politics has zip to do with the ALP in NSW now, much less ideology. Since Baldwin got thugged knowing (ex)/members like you two have piled excuse on excuse on ironic excuse to look the other way, whistling hiply, while criminals, bullies, liars, cheats and spivs took over branch after branch. That some call themselves ‘this’ or ‘that’ faction…is mournfully moot. The game in NSW is all played out under the radar, at the nexus b/w the local councils, the local developers, the local ‘colourful personalities’, the local put-upon branch operators and members (AKA suckers). These ‘bastards’ of today’s NSW Right are no more ‘yours’, Sorceror – no more care less about you, your opinions, your principles, your beliefs, your annual cash, your volunteer time, your factional affiliation – than they do about a rap on the knuckles from Rudd. They are bovver boys on the make who would just as happily have hijacked the Liberal Party, the NSW Police Force, the ASX or the Darlo Road Whores’ Union if they thought they could a) do it successfully, and b) get the power they wanted by that route.
What they want, Liam and Sorcy, is: banal bureacratic power at statutory body/ministry level to make ‘democratically accountable’ and ‘legal’ daily decisions which will make them and their ‘mates’, daily, richer and more powerful. That is all. They get it via NSW politics by wrenching actual or ‘mates’ proxy-control of State government mechanisms that control PS jobs, development, hotel and gaming, various licensing areas, government contracts, privatisation policy, public-private commercial projects…a whole range of mundane, just-below-the-radar administrative functions. They couldn’t care less about your silly ideological or political or factional bullshit. They certainly couldn’t care less about your dainty feminist concerns, Sorceror – your tolerance of them because they supposedly keep the Lib Right-wingers hands’ off your bod is a sick joke: go and chat to the women in the ‘Gong planning department if you see a grub like Scimone as some kind of femmo white knight, FFS.
They’re the ‘mates’, you poor saps. They’re the ‘boys’, the grubby NSW ALP C**tocracy. They don’t give a fuck about you and your delicate chit-chat about democratic renewal and revival of the party. They’ll never let it happen. Because they control the party where it counts – at exactly that grass-roots point-of-entry where new members even remotely likely to upset the gravy cart get strangled at birth, or shortly thereafter.
Stop romanticising them. They’re grubs. Thugs, grubs, liars, cheats, spivs, rule-breakers, bullies, self-serving, big-noting, (usually) woman-hating, gay-hating assholes. They got away with whacking Baldwin largely because people like you inside the party said: ‘They’re bastards, but they’re OUR bastards…” Why wouldn’t they just keep on doing it? Stop romanticising, glamourising, intellectualising, explicating…excusing and so enabling the anti-democratic criminality of large swathes of the NSW Right. That’s Bob Ellis’s job anyway, I thought.
Jack: you are a living treasure, whether or not the National Trust ever gives you their stamp of approval. Now that you’ve given us a precise description of the types, and a hint of their modus operandi, I have three questions:
1. would there be enough jail cells in NSW were this rabble convicted [or should we force them to double bunk??
]
2. do you have some suggestions for Herakles, who is awaiting in the vestibule of the Augean stables?
3. would you care to drop your (very welcome) high society politeness and really let fly with some stronger language?
When non-stooges in the Labor Party cease to be blamed for the sins of their organisation going back to the Blackburn Declaration in 1922, regardless of their actual behaviour, we’ll start to listen to hecklers in the cheap seats who tell them they’re ‘enablers’.
KTHXBYE
Ain’t my bod I am concerned about, and I am certainly not a “dainty feminist”. No such thing. If I ever would have needed an abortion I always could have had one. However there are those who would not then and would not be able to now under
ClarkeO’Farrell, however things have progressed since my spawning days and whatever public opinion about the issue was.This is going to be but one of the prices the ratbag Right extracts from the moderates for not engineering yet another Liberal leadership spill.
Of course I don’t. He’s a turd. If I knew him to speak to him he would know it.
You see Jack, the media has blown this one up. Scumone is not a Labor heavyweight, he’s only a Branch President. He was unknown outside Wollongong until all this ICAC stuff blew up. He certainly wasn’t in the Party when I was, though I did know slimebags like Domican and Danny Casey by sight.
I am not privy to public service appointments either. I doubt if any NSW ALP members read the Government Gazette So the fact he went to a nice Exec Service job again would be under the radar of most people.
However I am more likely, had I the power, to get a hearing from Labor Right than from the Liberal Right. That’s the point I am making.
I don’t think either Liam or myself have any illusions about the Labor Right, and your description of them is quite correct for the most part. I’d be asking for answers about Baldwin too, and even people like John Faulkner didn’t get them at the time, nor did the media, not the full story anyway, so I hardly think we’d have any luck.
So what’s your solution?
“So what’s your solution?”
“When non-stooges in the Labor Party cease to be blamed for the sins of their organisation going back to the Blackburn Declaration in 1922, regardless of their actual behaviour, we’ll start to listen to hecklers in the cheap seats who tell them they’re ‘enablers’.”
Liam’s got a point, Sorcerer, it’s not my business to critique the party from the outside. Sorry for the OTT and unfair attacks as ‘enablers’. I intended that in a ’sin of omission’ rather than ‘commission’ sense, by the way, but even there, it’s not my place to advance that view, uninformed as I am about your activities specifically and party internal arrangements generally. I was angry at the unfolding revelations in the ‘Gong and let myself get out of line, and I withdraw and apologise.
BOLWRTNSWALPS – it stands for ‘best of luck with reforming the NSW ALP’.
Your “out-of-liners” are sometimes more entertaining and meaty than other people’s serious posts.
Apology accepted from me anyway. I don’t speak for Monsieur Beret
’s cool, JR. No offence taken. After all, the greater danger would be;
By the way, the closest thing now existing to the Darlo Road Whores’ Union is SWOP, who do a good job in an industrially perverse industry.
Here’s what’s stupid about Costa’s power selloff, and the mania for privatisaton and PPPs within the Liberal Party: infrastructure aint the goldmine it once was. At least with property you can get your end in.
I would. The Liberals may well fall over the line for a term or two but even they regard Labor as the default government – and Labor knows it. The uglies are a small part of the Liberal Party but they are also the most active part, and they may yet strangle O’Farrell’s ambitions. Yes, they are that stupid. O’Farrell has to establish his authority over the NSW party – there’s some goodwill for this to happen, but until he does the default government stays no matter what.
No, Andrew Reynolds. You either become part of the problem, engaging in all that busywork that changes no votes, or else you find yourself stacked out and burnt out. People within political parties place more credence in those outside politics, those within are dismissed as hacks.
O’Farrell is not a sock-puppet, and the reason he didn’t seek to replace Brogden is because Clarke was too strong. Debnam supped with that devil and got burnt.
Since the last state election Mike Baird and Prue Goward have tilted the balance, and there is no way Martin Laverty would or could be acting state director if Clarke was still at the height (depth?) of his powers.
None of this stopped the fabulism necessary to excrete this:
Yeah, could be worse sorcerer – but could be better too. Clarke hasn’t got the clout to pull this off, but neither has Iemma despite having all the baubles and trinkets of office. Do you realise your argument is a cop-out, or doesn’t it matter?
If you flatter yourself that you have no illusions about the Labor Right, why spook yourself into complacency with illusions like those?
Oh, boo hoo. If it wasn’t for the media, Iemma and NSW would be going so well, wouldn’t they? They have a lot of catching up to do after being mesmerised by Carr for so long. A media that propped this lot up isn’t worth having.
Yeah, Wollongong Council. Cheer up, it could be worse.
No, I deserve better than these people. This mentality is born of ingrained powerlessness, the very opposite of what it means to live in a democracy: it’s despicable. How much satisfaction do you think Zimbabweans get from Mugabe being “their bastard”?
And your solution, Andrew E? Is it to fade away, like the Situationists, into greater obscurity and romantic attachment to their one moment of power? Not a bad analogy for NSW Liberal moderates, actually.
Your assertion that involvement in politics changes “no votes” is wrong. Ask Ben Spies-Butcher and Shaun Wilson, or the Your Rights At Work campaigners.
(I do give you credit for your Flugge-atar though. Ten points to you, a second-hand .357 and a suitcase full of someone else’s money).
“If you truly believe the above guys, there is only one thing for it. Join whichever of the major parties you disagree with the least and try to push for change.”
Actually Andrew Reynolds, there are two options, the one you propose and the one I’d advocate: Get in there and try to ensure that a combination of Independents and Greens have the balance of power.
Sure not all the Independents are much good, and the NSW Greens are much more tightly locked into ideological boxes than they need to be, but a mix of the two holding the balance of power would have made things a very different place.
Good one Liam , next you’ll be suggesting we learn from Lei Fung.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Feng
Ten points eh Liam? That’ll keep me going.
I don’t believe that Getting Involved per se makes things better. I’ve seen it make things much worse. Interesting that YRAW had to set up its own brand, discrete from the ALP and ACTU.
No it isn’t. For most people who get involved and much of the busywork of major (and, increasingly, minor) parties, this is absolutely true. There are excptions, just like there are gamblers who turn a profit on their punting.
Different, sparrowhawk; just not better.
You’ve just contradicted yourself insofar as the whole problem is Clarke’s power. Remember as a young man Clarke was mentored by ex-Ustasha Lyenko Urbancich, who in turn was trained by the Nazis. That’s gold standard for bastards.
Baird as I said is an unknown quantity…his Dad is good value but so was the late Jack Ferguson. Political nous is not genetic.
I think Goward will blow whichever way the wind does. Politics is not like sitting in an executive job in the Public Service. She may be formidable on the sort of issues she dealt with as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, but as for the rest…
Hard to know too how moderate a close personal friend of John Howard’s would be. If factionally she is a Kerrie Chikarovski or Virginia Chadwick, conversations at dinner dates with the Howards must have been very stilted.
You don’t think so? Then try an unholy alliance with Fred Nile and the other wingnuts around the joint come election time. Try a smear campaign targeting certain politicians in marginal Labor seats. Try an alliance between George Pell and the ratbag Right via Tony Abbott…he’s been taking messages between the Cardinal and the Right for ages.
I don’t get that comment.
Sorry Andrew E but in your excitement you accredited that quote incorrectly. I didn’t write that.
Different situation. The majority of Zimbabweans voted against him at the last elections…which he rigged.
Comrade Elder, you’re reflecting bourgeois defeatism. Political incumbents are paper tigers; if one has ten claws, knock out each one at a time. Deal with them earnestly and truthfully, and you cannot but succeed.
Murph, if it’s examples to youth you’re after, I suggest José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the usefully absent.
“But they are our bastards,� …priceless!!!
The enablers are not the inner west innocents like Sorcerer, who unquestioningly barrack for Labor like it were a football team, but the electorate, aided by compulsory voting, who let them continue doing what they do at both local and state government levels.
In blue ribbon Liberal areas you at least have an army of NIMBY wankers to keep councillors looking over their shoulders, and prevent any ‘unnecessary’ progress, but if one party is left to rule over Wollongong, Fairfield, Liverpool, Bankstown et al in perpetuity, then you can expect said authorities to show all the concern for the ‘little people’ and good governance that the commissars in China show for the rights of Beijing home owners.
Until the day the A.L.P. faces the possibility of losing such councils in an election, rather than a dismissal, they’ll continue with the Calabro-Sicilian model of government.
Bollocks! What have I just spent most of my time doing on this thread if not tearing Labor’s current performance to pieces?
So what do you want to do that’s realistic? (besides whingeing)
Many ALP grass root members are fed up to the back teeth with the incompetence and impropriety of the NSW party. Don’t be surprised to see a very real backlash from these people in the very near future. Active demonstrations, withdrawal of volunteer assistance and refusal to assist in fund raising are just some of the things being contemplated across the state. Those things can only be done from within the party and it’s only from within that change can happen. Call me naive but while forums like this allow us to vent our spleen, it doesn’t change anything. If you really want things to change stomp on your local member’s toes until you get the change you want.
True. What’s the chances of rank-and-file action actually happening? And is the current crowd at Young Labor with you?
I assume these people are still active?
Vote the @$*#’s out of office.
“So what do you want to do that’s realistic? (besides whingeing)”
Sorcy, some of us outside the party have tried hard to support those outside and inside who have been trying to do stuff that’s ‘realistic (besides whinging)’…for a long time. Our reward has generally been to get sneered at as naive jokes, from all sides…but by the ALP ‘hard heads’ in particular. I dunno if you remember it, but this grubby character assassination is absolutely typical of the kind of casually-ruthless, assymetrical destruction of anyone who has ever gone head-on at the NSW ALP on this shit, one embraced by even a supposedly ‘decent, civilised, faction-lite’ ALP heavyweight like Bob Carr. This was the start of the end of MK’s MSM journo career (and Webdiary, too). Most of the MSM cheered at the Premier slagging her off. Most of the still-fledgling blogosphere snickered, or stayed schtum…embarrassed by our hillbilly gaucheness, I s’pose.
Such is the power of the corrupt culture in NSW ALP politics. Even people who know better pile onto the wrong side of these stoushes, out of…fear, ladder-climbing, selfishness, laziness, cowardice, favour-currying, misplaced cynicism, tribal instinct, pure hackle-habit…I don’t know what, Sorc. I don’t know. But they do. They do.
‘You’ ALP members – metaphorically, collectively only, Sorce – do. Or you did in this case, anyway. It crushed MK’s career – and sent a clear message to everyone else in the NSW 4th. As of course such bullying invariably is really, primarily designed to do.
I’d like to point out something that some people seem to have not taken into consideration – the majority of NSW Liberal MPs are moderates. Three out of four leadership positions in the NSW Liberal Parliamentary Party are held by moderate MPs.
I believe the power of the Religious Right has diminished since the disastrous (for the Liberals) last state election.
NSW Labor is a shambles and the people in power within the party don’t give a damn about the people of NSW.
Bob Gould has a comprehensive analysis of the line-up for and against electricity privatisation at Ozleft. http://ozleft.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/bestoftimesworstoftimes/
It’s a heavyweight bout between affiliated unions, left and right, and the government, with part of the parliamentary left supporting the unions and part of it dragging the chain.
The corruption stuff is in this mix, and the ICAC problems are likely to spread. Councillors around the state are watching the ICAC transcripts anxiously, and Rockdale (a traditional Labor right stronghold) has already been mentioned.
I think this next few months is going to be a hell of a ride, Ed. Hope it’s a cathartic one, too. Finally. Good luck to the good guys in the party.
You could be right Jack. I was musing today that if enough Labor members voted against Iemma on electricity privatization in parliament, could it bring around a no confidence motion as per the constitution allowing for dismissal.
Highly unlikely but the musing kept me amused. If it did happen, the Libs would probably find a way to lose any resulting election.
Nope. Not till Clarke goes from the Legislative Council. Not till Alex Hawke loses his next pre-selection in Mitchell. Not till Tony Abbott goes.
They were shaken by the Howard defeat but by no means stirred.
Eternal vigilance and all that, old boy…
Part of the reason for Margot Kingston’s departure from the SMH as she pointed out herself lay with internal Fairfax politics, and the game-playing which always goes on between management and senior journos.
She was really caught between a rock and a hard place because she believed so strongly in the Webdiary concept, yet lacked the financial resources (and some of the toughness) to pull it off alone.
And what didn’t help either was the stated “open door” policy, supposedly encouraging free debate between political opponents, which meant that some very nasty characters popped up with the deliberate intention of sabotaging her and the site…and don’t forget the obsessive war of attrition waged by Tim Blair and his crew, including one clearly defamatory post in his blog which was never acted upon by the Webdiary people, and at least two defamatory posts about Cornelia Rau.
I hate to say this because I have a lot of respect for Margot, what she achieved and the quality and good nature of most of the people she attracted to the site (including one Jack Robertson
)
But sometimes circumstances overcome us and we become in some ways the authors of our own misfortunes.
I think you’re being unreasonably pessimistic about the NSW Liberals Sorcerer. Are you really suggesting that the moderates who have a majority in the NSW Parliamentary Liberal Party are a bunch of spineless gits?
Hawke and Ferravanti-Wells are members of the federal Liberal parliamentary party, not the state.
The NSW Liberal Parliamentary Party does not have much control over pre-selections. But they do have control over making policy. Here the moderates have the numbers and should rule the roost. I don’t believe that is not the case.
‘Greiner liked the phrase “user paysâ€?…well when we hear that we know who is getting used.” Labor gives us that sort of stuff as well. No difference.
I believe a NSW Liberal Party controlled by moderates would be far preferable to this current bunch of idiots running the NSW Government. The government members have got their heads in the sand, are no longer listening to the people, and don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.
State and Federal Party branches of either major party do not operate in separate universes.
And so are Howard and Abbott…and they all wield considerable clout with the State Executive. That was my point.
Howard deliberately refused to intervene as the Liberal Party went from disaster to disaster in his home branch after the Brogden Affair, because events were very much to his liking.
Debnam’s defeat may have been a setback, but he decided not to push for reform as an incumbent Prime Minister with absolute control over his Federal Government could have done.
Let’s see what happened to these moderates.
Retired members… Bruce Baird?
The person the Right wanted to replace him with in Cook.
Ahem…in the Young Liberals, John Hyde-Page?
…Alan Cadman? Patricia Forsythe? Steven Pringle?
Read Pringle’s speech announcing his resignation from the Liberal Party here
The excutive have some control – that is what both federal and state parties have in common. Ultimately the Parliamentary Party decides and votes on policies. The moderates easily have the numbers in the NSW Liberal Parliamentary Party. So unless they are spineless and give in to the religious right, they should be able to control the policy.
A big ask I should think. Let’s see if they have the balls to throw out the Right.
Wollongong De Prave (or Sex and the Shitty)
The developer Tony Soprano
Met developer Al Capone
They each munched a chicken kebab
And talked through a mobile phone
Said Tony “To get to first base
We act in a very low-key manner
So how do we push this one through?”
Said Al “We must sleep with the planner”
“I’ll bamboozle the Council” said Tony
“Mate Lucky knows all of the heavies”
Good” answered Al as he looked at the plans
“We’ll bribe ‘em and buy ‘em some bevvies”
On the plans which they laid out in front
Was high-rise which looked very funny
No greenspace or shading had they
But they’d make both lots of good money
The punters would pay through the nose
As they’d done since Bob Askin was a boy
For ramshackle realty’s the name of the game
And the home-buyer a criminal’s toy
Whether “colourful racing identity”
Or well-known of Sydney Town
You find these boys where the dough can be made
And the pollies all paid to lie down.
“Caveat emptor” is a saying we know
It simply means “Buyer take care”
Don’t buy any junk that the villains have built
All developers are crooks – beware!