A weekly open thread where, at the mercy of your election-year mania, you may discuss various breaking politicking news that is not on topic for other current threads.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Rather enjoyed the Spotlight kerfuffle yesterday, with Spotlight deciding that individual agreements make everything too complicated and unsure and they were better off just negotiating collectively with the unions.
Bill Shorten on the radio was speculating that perhaps the assessment of Spotlight’s AWAs under the fairness provisions was meant to be all reassuring about how Workchoices was accountable etc, and now that spin has been torpedoed by Spotlight returning to collective bargaining. What sort of effect is Spotlight’s decision to prefer the nasty union over lovely AWAs going to have on business perceptions about workplace reform “benefits”? How many small businesses already drowning in paperwork are going to hear the message of simplicity and predictability of collective agreements as a siren call?
GGis reporting Howard’s stunt over plebescites for Council elections in Queensland has failed dismally. He really should learn all about successful wedge politics.
Speculo ergo sum…
I speculate that the first notice we will get of the election date will be on youtube ..
King John told the school kids as much
I don’t think we need it, but just another example of the bulls*@t that flows from Howard’s mouth. Last night the TV news was full of John Howard pointing out that the coalition had pledged $100 million more to dental health than the ALP. This morning Fran Kelly interviewed someone who represents dentists who pointed out that the ALP committment is over 3 years, but the Government committment is over 4 years so the net effect is exactly the same on a per annum basis. Incidently, the dental guy said both were promising a level of spending equivalent to what was being spent in 1996 when Federal assistance was abolished by the Howard Government. In reality a lot more is now needed.
I don’t know if anyone has heard Kim Beazley this morning on Radio National Breakfast.
It was a melanchonic interview, with Beazley leaving Parliament after 27 years, but also considering that with his father also being in Parliament he was connected with the place since he was a baby.
When he was asked how he felt about leaving politics he stated that he felt ‘ordinary’. That awful day when he lost his ledership and his brother at the same time was remembered.
I will never forgive him for that moment in Parliament when he agreed with Howard on the Tampa. Although he rightly stated that the first legislation was rejected by the ALP and the second draft was basically based on his speech.
Whether you agreed with him or not it is sad that someone that contributed so much to Australian politics seems to end his political career with such a whimper.
I think that history will be much kinder to Kim Beazley than John Howard.
I forgot.
The link to the interview is HERE
I forgot
The link to the interview is HERE
In all the hoopla about about the headline numbers in this week’s newspoll, some of the details have been under-discussed.
There was virtually no change in the preferred PM poll, with Rudd ahead 48:48 compared to 48:37 last time. Isn’t this Dennis Shanahan’s favourite leading indicator of future voting intentions?
There was also no change in the satisfied/dissatisfied numbers. Howard 45:44 (last time 46:44); Rudd 65:18 (last time, 66:19).
Then there is old spinning perennial, the soft vote.
56% say they won’t consider changing their vote, and 30% say there is only a slight chance they will change their vote. Voting intentions have hardened since the last time the question was asked in June (52,33). 8 weeks before the election in 2004, the numbers were 46,36, so voting intentions are harder now than then.
Those who intend to vote Labor are slightly harder (61,28) than coalition voters (58,29).
10% of Labor voters say there is as much chance they will vote for someone else, but so do 11% of coalition voters.
So, with Labor ahead 55:45, to break even Howard will have to convince a bit less than 1/2 of the soft Labor voters while not losing any of his own soft voters. Suppose Howard wins the campaign and convinces 2/3 of soft Labor voters to switch but Rudd convinces 1/3 of soft coalition voters to switch. Then Labor still gets 53% of the vote which should be enough to win the election very easily.
But in practice few votes are changed during a campaign. Howard knows this, which is why he keeps banging on about how “you can’t fatten the pig on market day”. And he is a bad campaigner in any case.
The election is there for Labor’s taking. All they have to do is not stuff it up.
Guido, thanks for the link. Be a bit careful about reposting rapidly when a comment disappears, it makes the spaminator think you are a spammer.
Hanson registration may miss deadline.
Looks like we won’t have Pig Iron Pauline to kick around any more.
Quiggin on Newspoll and noise:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/09/19/signal-and-noise/
Down and Out of Sài Gòn re Pauline Hanson.
Hanson knows she can’t win in the electoral stakes. But she can win in the financial stakes and she doesn’t have to spend anything to get the money. No receipts are required.
But see it from her point of view.
I am concerned that we have a tampa like event happening. The US sub-prime crash will have the gov saying “in these times of troubled economic events you need a competent proven economic leader and its us!” The public are so mortgage driven they’re likely to believe them and vote them back in!
this morning as i looked at the front page of the australian and saw costello giving rudd the finger across the chamber – and you remember yesterday’s front page pic of howard giving rudd the finger across the chamber – and thinking “team” (in particular what a bunch of total fuglies the coalition cabinet members are), i so clearly saw the winning strategy – the cabinet as the Sopranos!! but of course, they’re no way near cool enough – it would be more of a muriel’s wedding version (or maybe more skippy) (;
Ed it is already underway.
For sure, Ed, this election might be best LOST for Labor.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/09/15/1189277042180.html?page=fullpage
How do you reckon Kev might best go about losing? Trouble for him, would be, that everything he did would, likely, increase his popularity. When your hot your hot!
More seriously , it is worth considering that many might be drawn to Labor, in difficult economic times, because they may be thought to be more compassionate.
Spiros? Are you channelling me? I just wrote a post on the same soft vote figures with the same “swap” examples (and the same conclusions) over at Possum’s.
I dips me lid to your obvious sagacity.
BB, the soft/hard numbers stick out like the proverbials, for anyone who cares to look.
This obviously excludes all the dumb ass commentators in the MSM, who are too stupid or too lazy to look beyond the headline number.
If it’s business as usual from now till the election, then Therese can start organising the interior decorators for the Lodge.
Spiros #2… seeing as you wrote yours before mine (three hours before) it is YOU who must commend ME for MY sagacity.
“But in practice few votes are changed during a campaign.”
Nor sure whether you’re right about this, Spiros
Sol Lebovic this morning in the OZ:
“In each of the past four elections at least one in four voters, 30 per cent in 2004, didn’t finally decide who to vote for until the last week of the campaign, with 10 per cent or more only deciding on election day.”
That said, the polls have been remarkably consistent in pointing to a Labor victory and the usual “soft” polling may well have hardened much earlier than has previously been the case.
Geoff, Lebovic is saying nothing more than what I said in my first comment, which was taken straight from Newspoll.
Around 30% of voters say now, and have said in the past, that there is a “slight” chance (Newspoll’s word) that they will change their mind between the poll and the election.
As Lebovic says, some of them will irrevocably make up their minds very late.
But with few exceptions the way they will finally decide is the way they are leaning now.
One of the pollsters did a study, I think Morgan, a couple of elections ago where they polled a group and went back to the same people after the election. They found that a lot of the swinging voters swung, but the net change was not all that great.
I wish I’d bookmarked it so that I could give you the details.
Speculation:
What’s really got King John rattled is the appalling truth that Australia has lost the cricket to Zimbabwe and Pakistan, and worse, his Hero Ponting is injured and might have to miss the rest of the tournement.
He knows we shouldn’t be appeasing Mugabe in any way, shape or form, we should be showing leadership and not be playing them, even if it means not joining the carnival, that’s what leadership is. As it is now the Harare Herald, published by the government of Zimbabwe, can print:
“Zimbabwe caused the biggest upset in cricket history when they beat pre-tournament favourites Australia by five wickets…now everyone knew why the Australian national side was banned by its government from coming to Zimbabwe for a one-day international series this month”
And Ponting is classless and seemingly arrogant in defeat… he just says “It’s a mental thing for us – we’ve got to start respecting the game a bit more” …Nothing about how well the Zimbabwe youngsters played the game. Of course he couldn’t say that. We were outsmarted by Mugabe.
It’s a bad look, and King John is getting the feeling “Whom the Gods would destroy, first they take away the enjoyment of their only pride and joy”, which in his case is as we all know ad nauseum, cricket. The horror.
BTW, contrary to popular belief it’s not a case of “Good King John, he signed the Magna Carta”, it’s weasel King John, he was forced to sign, and then tried to get out of it afterwards. Familiar?
Or alternatively, the ALP can say, if push comes to pear shaped, who do you think you can trust to look after the interests of all Australians, not just a lucky few?
I agree with you on the issue. It is going to be a real issue, as easy credit that has greased the wheels of a private consumption lead boom, dries up, and suddenly, what you earn is what you get to spend. In that context, the focus of what is happening at work becomes important, since the option of borrowing to cover the gap between aspirations and reality, becomes more difficult.
Political innoculation about economic reality would seem to be the order of the day here, but I won’t be holding my breath. It might raise awkward questions that neither of the majors are prepared or willing, to answer.
One poll that I would like to see undertaken very soon is one sponsored by the Australian Electoral Office to assess what percentage of a sample of voters are disenfranchised through not being currently enrolled.
With the change in time to enrol once an election is called (to 24 hours?) it worries me that many existing and new voters will be confronting a Florida 2000 situation. Around 20 percent of the population change address each year and I can envisage a situation where tough AEC officials turn away many who should stand their ground and demand their right regardless of the Government’s rule change.
Pablo,
It would seem to be a very attractive proposition for Ratty to call the election on a Saturday so that no one could enrol anyway.Could this happen? Or perhaps even Friday lunchtime?
Not that funny but the horse at the back of the field(JH) has just got a lung of new wind , as the books front runner(KR) stumbles over the numbers that count for the average punter. My guess is the odds are about to shorten real quick.
My guess is that throwing mud does not equate to new wind, they’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work.
Now they are trying to smear Rudd by saying he is not healthy enough to be PM. It hasn’t quite dawned on the Liberals yet how much the voters hate this stuff. The Brian Burk thrashing in the polls taught them nothing.
Everyone;
Looks like we’ll be in for an exceedingly dirty election campaign. [I'll be interested in seeing if the election actually does take place].
[1] Kevin Rudd’s childhood rheumatic fever was probably genuine; after all, he did have cardiac surgery to treat a serious complication of that disease. It makes such a refreshing change from all those who gained exemption from National Service [military conscription] on the basis of having felt they might have suffered from retrospective childhood rheumatic fever, then were miraculously cured as soon as National Service was abolished and then went on to very active careers in public life ….
[2] Wonder if that virulent outburst by a coalition staffer against a Iraq War veteran standing as a Labor Party candidate was thoroughly scripted by backroom planners to see if it would fly. Get ready for a nasty campaign where very distant, nebulous, well-silenced ADF personnel are lauded …. and war veterans back in Australia are portrayed as baddies.
The more things change….
“Gold medal liars
After observing the Coalition Federal Government since 1996 and reading or listening to a great
many of its political statements, the following is my sincere opinion.
This Federal Government lies.
It tells small, medium and large lies. It tells whopper, gob-stopping lies. It even tells lies
about telling lies.
It lies on the floor of Parliament, it lies in the media, it lies to the Australian people and, it lies
to other sovereign nations.
Of all the federal governments installed since I reached my majority, this Federal Government
publicly lies the most frequently and consistently.
If there was a Commonwealth Games event for liars, then the current Federal Government would win gold, silver and bronze.
JUDITH M. MELVILLE”
[The Daily Examiner,Grafton,letters to the editor,23 March 2006,p.6]
Graham Bell,
You’ve hit the nail on the head – on both points!
I found the outburst by the Liberal staffer on the ex-ADF person unf$%^ing acceptable.
I’m sorry if anyone disagrees with my language but as the son of a Vietnam vet I get bloody angry with anyone who (as a “political type”) waltzes into a meeting unannounced and slags off said veteran with only the next election in mind.
To quote many minds wiser than mine: let the bloody politicians fight the next war – the barstards deserve it.
I’d be interested to hear the opinions of those who were at that meeting – the “Belson” comment was just beyond belief…disagreeing with a debatable war is one thing, taking part in the pre-meditated murder of 4-6 million human beings is another matter entirely (not to mention the 50 odd million in the total conflict).
Sorry kids, a bit wound up about this…deep breath…they’re only politicians, expecting them to understand is impossible…
Could someone please provide a link or factoid on the Barnaby Joyce/ Rudd/Qld Govt document shredding item?
I have heard an occasional 50 word grab on the 1/2 hour news, but nothing at the top of the hour.
Does it have legs? Is Ratty going to pounce with it?
“At least you know what he stands for”….. How many times have you heard that from the JWH camp. Well these are some of the things JWH himself claimed he stood for: 1) Full Ministerial accountability. 2) An independant and fair Speaker of the House. 3) No public funded advertising that is party political. 4)To be honest with the Australian people. You could go on, but by any measure how many voters can claim to know what JWH stands for.
On Heiner, mark, here you go:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/08/19/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink/
Very apt Sandy. That stumble by Rudd didn’t do much for my estimation of him.
This ain’t good for Howard
The polling, obtained by The Australian last night, found the count would not even go to preferences, with Labor candidate Mike Kelly attracting 51 per cent of the primary vote over Special Minister of State Gary Nairn on 39 per cent.
The ALP polling comes a week after John Howard told the Liberal partyroom it could take heart from Liberal Party polling in Eden-Monaro, which Mr Nairn holds by a margin of 3.3 per cent following the last redistribution. It also contradicts Mr Nairn’s claims that he is in the best position since he was first elected in 1996.
Mr Kelly, a former army colonel and military lawyer who served in Iraq, is also ahead 58 per cent to 42 per cent on two-party preferred and would ride a massive 11.5 per cent swing into parliament if the result were reflected on polling day.
Eden-Monaro, which includes the NSW south coast and the city of Queanbeyan, near Canberra, has for decades been seen as a crucial pointer to the likely election result.
In every election since 1972, it has been won by the party which formed government.
News of the polling last night followed embarrassment for Mr Nairn with news his chief of staff, Peter Phelps, compared Mr Kelly to Nazi guards in World WarII concentration camps during a recent public meeting in Queanbeyan.
Dr Phelps was forced to apologise to Mr Kelly and Labor targeted Mr Nairn over his staffer’s activities.
From the SMH -”Show us the money: that’s what it boils down to,” its chairman, Bill Alexiou-Hucker, said of the proposal by the actor and the Souths’ rugby league club’s other co-owner. “The board will make its decision on financial data and not on moral vision.”
So ‘ moral ‘ vision is obviously a liability.
2 celebrity club owners are considering removing 160 poker machines from a club they are associated with.
Is gambling and particularly problem gambling an issue that might get a run during the election?
The AHA killed any chance of a licencing change in NSW recently – the issue appears to have quietly died and the main problem they have with these changes is possible loss of gambling revenue.
Costello was on the ABC yesterday praising the stance taken by the club owners.
Does the ALP have a position on gambling/ pokies?
Graham Bell and steve h, Dr Peter Phelps is well known around the traps as a nasty slanderous bully and a base political operator who has never been drawn to account for his actions by the government. It is not surprising that the ALP has finally got him in their sights.
Phelps has been Chief of Staff for three Special Ministers of State, Nick Minchin, Eric Abetz, and now Gary Nairn. When Phelps worked for Abetz he was responsible for a couple of government submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Accountability inquiry into Government Advertising and Advertising that personally vilified and slandered other witnesses, in a manner unprecedented in the history of parliamentary committee proceedings.
These government submissions (written by Phelps) were so extraordinary that the final committee report in December 2005 made special mention of them in very unflattering terms. See here (pdf) for the relevant report extract, paras 1.16 to 1.31:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fapa_ctte/govtadvertising/report/c01.htm
Phelps’ reprehensible conduct has also been previously noted by ABC Media Watch, see here:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1172416.htm
Phelps is a disgrace. But he is held in high regard by the Howard Government.
Indeed Give me Some Coins, the ALP does have a position, for it is they who introduced them. Without the ALP, those Taj Mahal sized suburban casinos wouldn’t exist.
On top of that, they exempt from income tax.
“On top of that, they exempt from income tax.”
Which is down to the Federal Government.
Will that great moralist. Peter Costello, exercise some leadership and announce that clubs will be liable to pay income tax on their gambling profitd?
Danny and Pablo, re:
Very interesting point, so I chased it up. It turns out that if he calls the election on the weekend, the rolls close at 8pm on the following working day after the call. So you get till Monday evening. Phew.
However, if he calls it at 4pm on Friday, you ain’t got much time – only to 8pm that night.
DanyLeRoux asks if Howard were to call an election on a Saturday, voters who are not enrolled will have no opportunity to avoid being disenfranchised. New AEC rules mean you have only the day an election is called to enroll. Stiff shit if Howard goes to the GG late afternoon even on a working day. No wonder the AEC is running all those TV ads. My fear is that Rudd will lose in terms of the disenfranchised and informal voting.
Spiros, profit is profit. Clubs do not pay income tax.
Prior to GST being introduced clubs did not have to keep any receipts, record of takings or anything, (that stuff the rest of us keep in shoeboxes) and ATO inspectors could not enter a club and demand to see records (apart from PAYG payroll records). The ATO however can enter your, mine, or anybody’s dwelling, upend the dresser drawers, count how many pairs of socks fall out, then demand we account for how we got the money to purchase our clothes.
At least now GST accounting means
suburban casinosclubs have to account for their income and expenditure.Trying v. hard to defy godwin’s law:
Herr Phelps is not the first to the first Lib to roll out the N. word, you might be amused, ( and surely he was playing for laughs) to remind yourself of Senator George Brandis’ sterling, if tasteless, effort in parliament,
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/29/1067233222840.html
“I intend to continue to call to the attention of the Australian people the extremely alarming, frightening similarities between the methods employed by contemporary green politics and the methods and the values of the N…”
The Senator gives quite the burlesque performence:
“the common source of the fanaticism of contemporary greens with the nature worship practised by the N…s in the 1930s…”
“another connection that we see between the values which Senator Brown represents and the values which were the antecedents of European fascism is commented on by Professor Staudenmaier and found in the writings of Ernst Arndt and Wilhelm Riehl. Wilhelm Riehl, in a 1853 essay ‘Field and Forest’”
And of course it is the Good Senator George to whom we owe the historic rodent epithet.
BTW: It’s proabably a little known factoid that gnaw rodentae must: their teeth keep growing throughout life, like eyebrows.
And you don’t want to know about that other distinguisher between rodents and humans, the baculum. You have been warned.
There is a mythology surrounding Eden-Monaro which has it that it is a bellwether seat, in other words, that as this seat goes, so goes the whole country. But it’s not as if Eden-Monaro has some magical effect on the rest of Australia. It’s just a coincidence as Anthony Green points out. The mythology was used by Howard to gee up his party. The Libs must win this seat if they are to win the election, so it pays to put more into winning this seat, but this is only buying into magical thinking.
So, now that Eden-Monaro is well and truly lost, because of Phelps’ over-the-top remarks, the Libs are thrown back to the situation they were in last week when Howard was contemplating committing political suicide.
Another thing. Lib and ALP internal polling are giving different outcomes, so who do you trust? I’d be inclined to trust the ALP’s. It would be in their interest to get as accurate a result as possible in order to plan forward, though there are shades of the ALP buying into the mythology surrounding Eden-Monaro. Howard, on the other hand, has an interest in a non-threatening result, the better to sell his party on the winnability of their position. Yes, not only does Howard lie to Australia, he also lies to his own party.
There was a Roy Morgan poll last week published Crikey on Eden-Monaro which found basically the same result as the leaked ALP polling. So you don’t have to trust either theirs or the Liberals’, though I’d note that no one has seen the latter and we have only Howard’s word. Think about that for a second.
Trevor Cook is saying this.
That he’s checking into a mental asylum?
It would be good to see a lot of people turn up to that fete with big red foam rubber hands, middle fingers extended, and hold ‘em up during his speech.
Just wishin’
And so the odds continue to shorten as the Steve’s and others look closer at the field as the race draws nearer.
The Steve’s looking closer at the field see more rats desserting the ranks.
In Olden Times, when Semi-Competence Ruled
From “War and Words: The Australian Press and The Vietnam War”, by Trsh Payne
[Parliamentary debate on the "water torture of a prisoner" story...]
…[Phillip] Lynch preceded Gorton with his Ministerial Statement. The statement had been prepared for him by Peter Lawlor and other public servants. When he stood to read it, he was not even in receipt of the entire speech, which was delivered in pages as he read. He did not write it nor had he read it in final form until he stood on the floor of the chamber presenting it. He was justifiably nervous.
golly!
Looks like someone decided to smoke him out instead of vote him out.
Latest Morgan Poll
sandy, odds schmodds.
If I had been the guy who splurged $100,000 on the ALP a few weeks ago at about $1.75, I would currently be thinking $10,000-$15,000 on the Libs at $3.50 is a very nice hedge. A lot of bets placed are tactical, and have nothing to do with who the hypothetical punter thinks will really win. The odds are also set by bookies in order to attract more punters.
Likewise, breathless reportage of the Libs having a good week and “clawing back” to a 10-point deficit is designed to sell papers. The most interesting result I saw this week was in the NewsPoll aggregated polling: the ALP is ahead 58-42 TPP across all marginal electorates, so how many hundreds of thousands of votes
in marginal seats will the Libs have to sway in the space of weeks, just fall over the line?
GG’s commentary on the aggregate newspoll is laughable, not just for the marginals. Check out Possum’s graphs and tables.
According to Shanahan, Howard is coming back in Queensland.
Yeah right.
11.2% primary swing since the last election to the ALP. 9.1% 2PP.
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/newspolls-for-all/
Morgan Poll (Labor 56.5:43:5) confirms what we already knew, which is Labor 55:45, give or take sampling error.
Sampling error aside, the polls have been stable all year.
Oh Dear.
AWA’s lose another friend.
THE ACTU says the Federal Government’s WorkChoices workplace laws are in tatters, with a report today that the Australian Cleaning Contractors Association is set to dump Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).
The Sydney Morning Herald said the association, representing 150 contract cleaning companies, was on the verge of dumping AWAs because they found them too complex and confusing.
The association reportedly said the Government’s workplace relations system had become farcical and pointless, and it was now considering returning to the award system or enterprise agreements.
“We have always known these laws are bad for workers and we are now seeing employers decide they are also bad for business,” ACTU president Sharan Burrow said.
“This week we have seen local councils that employ 50,000 workers writing to the Workplace Minister Joe Hockey saying they want to drop out of WorkChoices.”
The national retailer Spotlight this week announced it was fed up with the WorkChoices laws and had abandoned the use of AWAs for its 6000 staff.
“The Government’s WorkChoices IR laws are in tatters with major employers jumping ship almost every day and more and more workers saying they are worse off under the laws,” Ms Burrow said.
Spiros,
Has there been another year when the poll results have been so steady (plus or minus sampling error) for so long?
It looks as if voters made up their minds just after Christmas, and are not being swayed, whatever happens, whatever’s said. What say you?
efaristou
Ambigulous, what is happening is what happened in the lead up to the 1996 election.
Howard replaced Downer as Liberal leader in January ’95; the coalition immediately jumped into a big election winning lead, and that’s the way it stayed until the election in March ’96.
In the mid 90s, the voters were itching to get rid of Keating, but wouldn’t while the Liberals had crappy leaders in Hewson and Downer.
It’s exactly the same this time round.
Expect an announcement to coincide with the advertised starting time for the telecast of the AFL Preliminary Final on Saturday afternoon, followed by a speech defining the election issues as he sees them which will be broadcast right up to the start of the game approximately 10 minutes after the telecast commences.
Just have to say I loved seeing the three front runners striding out in the house yesterday, as the poll draws near to a winner.
PS: sorry forgot the mare, four front runners that should read.
Did someone say the Liberal Party is out of touch and confused? Spare a thought for Ted, looks like he needs a map and a compass as well as a basic Political Science course donated to him for xmas. I wonder if he has any idea why the Libs are behind in the polls?
steve, good but not great. For true greatness, look no further than the Ruddster:
Not really relevant to anything, but pretty funny.
BBB
BBB fair to middling – for real genius check out Fantoche
The debate on the Phelps interaction with Mike Kelly has been very partisan. I didn’t like the way Phelps phrased it, but he was right to challenge Mike Kelly’s ‘orders are orders’ defence for why he fought in a war (Iraq) he thought was wrong. The decisions that military people have to make in these circumstances are very difficult, but the best of them go way beyond just saying ‘orders are orders’. I didn’t hear Kelly so his response may have been more nuanced, but if all he said was ‘orders are orders’, then he should have been challenged. Bonhoeffer would certainly have done so.
Johno,
Two questions:
First: if Phelps seriously believes that Kelly should have refused to go to Iraq, what is he doing working as a staffer for Gary Nairn, a minister in the very Government that sent Kelly to Iraq in the first place? If the passion he showed in the performance shown on the 7:30 Report was genuine, he ought to have quit or been fired by now, surely.
Second: aren’t you in the wrong comments thread? Shouldn’t you be commenting here with the rest of the wingnuts?
OK, troll feeding time’s over folks.
Gummo, way to miss the point by a country mile. Clearly Phelps’ point is that there is a degree of hypocrisy in Kelly’s current public position on Iraq, not that Kelly shouldn’t have gone to Iraq in the first place.
BBB
Gummo Trotsky
I put forward a rational argument about the Kelly/Phelps interaction on ‘orders are orders’ and you call me a ‘wingnut’. Is that a rational comment on your part or is it abuse and contrary to the comments policy? Rightwing I certainly am not.
I should make clear I think Mike Kelly could put forward a strong argument why he could in good conscience fight in a war he disagreed with, and even a war he thought (as I think) was illegal under international law. The arguments available to him are complicated and arguable, and there’s not much point me going into them here. My point was that ‘orders are orders’ is not a sufficient argument, and I reckon Kelly would agree.
My recollection was that Kelly said he had reservations about the war (rather than an outright strong objection), but went anyway: as a soldier, obeying orders from above is a job requirement, don’t forget. His strong objections to the war arose after he had spent some time in the middle of it and could see the pointless devestation it was causing innocent civilians.
Can anybody explain the logic of the Libs. releasing a dirt file on one of their own cabinet Ministers, trying to blame Labor and thinking they can get away with it. Or is this just something from the serpentine depths of right wing Opus Dei factional NSW politics? I haven’t got a clue who it is, but since he was seen visiting a Sydney bath-house, presumably he’s most likely to be from NSW. The interesting aspect of this is not that he’s gay and predatory (ho-hum) but why on earth it was done in the first place, and why the hell they thought the electorate would give a damn.
I’ve posted specifically on Phelps v Kelly here.
Paul Burns
If the subject of this “fact sheet” is who I suspect it is, he’s not from NSW. But I’m sure that you are right that the scurrilous document originated in NSW.
I would surmise that the point of the exercise is a vicious and rather indirect form of revenge against Peter Costello for the events of the week before last.
More than this I cannot say
Meher Baba,
Intriguing.
I’m not the slightest bit interested in outing the guy. A person’s sexuality is their own business.
And as I remarked, who gives a damn nowadays.
But why, if JWH and Costello are now chummy, (as chummy as they can ever be, anyhow) and why, when they have a very difficult election campaign to concentrate on that it looks like they will lose, do they further go on with this madness. It would appear Howard’s longstanding inability to face reality has spread to the rest of his party. If the coalition wins (God and everybody else forbid!) are we set to be governed by a claque of mad people.
We are already, Paul.
JWH and Costello will never be chummy.
I suspect that an overwheling desire to keep Costello out of the Lodge is one of the things that has kept JWH going for the past 3-4 years.
JWH sees Costello as a lazy, dilentante to whom all the good things in life have come without sufficient struggle for him to be worthy of them.
If JWH wins the election, he will try to do everything he can to make sure that someone, anyone else gets the PM’s job.
That said, I very much doubt that the PM himself was even remotely connected to this “fact sheet”. One suspects over-enthusiastic supporters.
I find it amazing that the coalition will tip a bucket on their own this close to a Federal election.
If you are in the defence forces you follow orders. You get court marshalled if you don’t. The issue is who is issuing the orders and the nature of the orders. (e.g. Iraq War, Tampa lies, SievX lies)
The real hypocrisy comes from Phelps – who is in line with and employed by a government that perpetated the great lie of WMD, then changed their story a couple of times, gave cash to their supposed arch enemy (Saddam) and won’t commit to any exit date etc etc. Phelps was really just playing the man and not the ball, in time honoured gutter politics fashion.
Oh, and if you are accused of smearing, it would be convenient if one of your own appeared to be smeared in similar fashion wouldn’t it? The intent is for these two smears to cancel each other out political, like swapping pawns in a chess game, not?
Latest Galaxy is out: 56-44 2PP
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22468466-952,00.html
I think the Howards better start organising Grace Removals to pack their goods and Chattels
The latest Galaxy just follows what has happened all year. The more personal mud thrown by the Tories the further they sink in the polls, will they never learn or is this all they are capable of doing?
Mark,
Slip of the key. I do recognise the Consevatives’ continual delusional fantasies. Its just that people other than politics tragics are beginning to notice them too.
According to one of JWH’s last set of weasel words he is not responsible for Rudd’s health smear nor is the Liberal Party. (So was it the Exclusive Brethren?)(And is he responsible for all the other smears?) The Howard Gov, according to JWH, is not the Liberal Party.
While I fully realise I live in a disconnected world, and am probably a l;ittle bit mad myself, surely it aint that disconnected.
So, who is this closet homosexual married-with-children Liberal minister who frequents bathhouses, and who was outed by
Laborsomeone in his own party? My gaydar is tingling.“So, who is this closet homosexual married-with-children Liberal minister who frequents bathhouses, and who was outed by Labor someone in his own party? My gaydar is tingling.”
I don’t know, and frankly silkworm I am shocked that you care.
Although there might be something to say for outing raging homophobes, I am still not sure two wrongs make a right.
Which part constitutes smear material according to the Libs?
Being gay, or bi? Having children too? Going to bathhouses?
There must be a lot of people out there who will be very surprised to learn that they should be ashamed of themselves, according to the implicit Lib Credo, some of them in the liberal party at a guess.
Someone tell the Libs: Psst, it’s been legal for nearly 30 years.
My tip/speculation is that the libs are in extreme disarray. They are starting to jockey for the very few senior positions available in opposition. Factional wars are beginning to break out and the NSW right are beying for young, supposedly moderate, ministerial blood.
Just hopin’ with all bits crossed.
Nothing beats a liberal Party brawl over the spoils of defeat. It eventually gets to the stage where they would rather lose an election to intensify the brawl rather than see their factional foes in power.
Labor in Queensland wrote the book on how to snatch Defeat from the jaws of victory during the Bjelke Petersen years and up till now only Young Labor in Queensland and the Queensland Liberal Party seem keen on following the doctrine at all costs.
To hear that the disease is spreading to the Libs in NSW is bad news indeed for the Libs there as there is no cure and isolation is the only solution to the problem.
Meanwhile Crosby-Textor polling in WA Shows Howard is still strong.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22476916-5006789,00.html
Somehow, I doubt it.
Im loving the way the polls are quickly crushing the desperate attempts by Lib staffers (and the few dodgy media apologists still onside) to spin momentum.
Steve,
right wing factional brawling against Lib. moderates has been going on for years now. They forced the resignation of John Brogden and triggered the poor man’s suicide by revealing his drunken shenanigans at a party and his proclivity for threesomes, had a moderate Patricia Forsyth dropped from the upper house ticket, etc, etc. Its endemic and incurable but not at all tragic for people like me. Though I did feel very sorry for Brogden.
A quick question. If the election is called on Sunday and writs are issued on monday would that mean that the last day for new enrollments would be friday, given that monday is a public holiday?
“Although there might be something to say for outing raging homophobes, I am still not sure two wrongs make a right.”
Darlene, fair enough, sexual preference is not something we should judge anybody for. Except when a person pretends to run a hetero/ family life aggenda, as a politician, and behaves differently, themselves.
As a basis of government policy ‘hypocrisy’ has never proved a good element.
Hasn’t this happened once already – how close is Mr Rein to this company?
Didn’t Ingeus pull the same manoeuvre in Australia ?
From the SMH -”The general secretary of the Public and Community Services Union, Mark Serwotka, was reported as saying the Government had “handed a large chunk of work to a firm which is failing and mired in controversy in Australia”.
Yesterday a spokeswoman for Ingeus denied it had won the contracts by bypassing British regulations designed to protect staff when operations are transferred to a new employer.
She said the regulations did not apply because it was a new program, but existing employees would be offered interviews.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudds-wife-pulls-a-quid-in-uk/2007/09/25/1190486311891.html
Okay, the new weekly Election Speculation thread is open.
This thread is now closed.