Here’s a list of requests from the three rural independents.
And here’s the Prime Minister’s response.
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Impressive.
How much of this is TA likely to agree to?
well, if Smuggles had a plan B it’s been blown out of the water by that!
Not too much pork in there!
The specific date suggestion, for the next election in three years time, is a great touch by Julia G. Impressive also that she has been back so quickly on all the other matters. My bet is that the coalition will be shitting themselves at the thought of having their costings subject to scrutiny.
It would have been nice if the independents had asked for disclosure of donations made to the parties over the election period be brought forward.
This is brilliant. Three former Nationals call for a caretaker ALP government to “Open the books”. Love it.
Number 7 gave me a hot flush. “Truth in advertising” You mean that the mining companies (indeed, hopefully all corporations) might not be allowed to political advertising campaigns but, if they are, will be accountable. Fantastic. Nothing could be better for our democracy.
That’s either a shopping list the has been in the back pocket for some time, or the independents are even smarter and more decent than I’d thought (although I’ve thought they were ok, and long had a weird kind of soft spot for Katter).
Gillard’s response was pretty good – not that she could do much else. The additional suggestion of talks with NBN co honchos was a nice touch.
If she dusts off the lefty agenda, pulls out some old committee recommendations (much the way Sir Humphrey did when he /had/ to) then Monday is a reasonable timeframe for a reasonable response.
Hell… I’d wanted a hung parliament, but I hadn’t dreamt that there was such a chance of a good outcome so quick.
Fingers crossed….
Can you imagine Three Boats Abbott running around right now screaming out for someone to produce a policy on political donations reform, etc etc? Will someone give me a frickin policy, quick. There must be one around here somewhere
Maybe Three Boats will write back and ask if the independents will take a report on costings from a mid-level accountancy firm.
Monday’s for starting the meetings. Friday the 3rd of September is when the negotiations begin. Looks like they’re paying Paul Kelly the appropriate amount of respect.
Hands up who thought on Sunday that these negotiations would be conducted in view of the public? I’m impressed.
And yes, I think that the indies have known for some time precisely how Parliament ought to run. I particularly enjoyed Tony Windsor’s smack at the other Tony this morning: “I’ve seen some of Tony’s reforms – he actually reformed the standing orders so that independents were unable to speak on matters of public importance.”
You have to remember that the Crucial Three are on their best behaviour and are also aware that their national standing mightn’t last all that long.
Having said that, I’m interested to hear just how we will implement truth in advertising and how far the funding disclosure stuff goes.
You don’t want to end up with a corrupted American style system as exemplified by the arcane relationships between the think tanks and the political parties.
I suspect that won’t happen, which means all the political funding just heads underground into “citizens movements” and winds up in the hands of all kinds of crazy.
I wish they had demanded Proportional Representation – this is the only real chance for it for a long time
Speaking of Three Boats’ aspirations ,… I don’t see Immigration in there.
A pointed rejection, n’est ce pas?:
Acting in the ‘national interest’! Great! Now who decides?
This is the revenge of the real. After the confected, juvenile nothingness of the Lib-Lab leaders’ campaign, a couple of actual adults have entered the arena. What a freakin’ relief.
Ob, wouldn’t that require a referendum?
UTE MAN – for a start, they should ban ALL corporate political advertising. Corporations can advertise soap detergent, but not jump into the political arena. Only citizens should be aloud to fund political advertising. In other words, there should never be a political advertising campaign run by major multinationals. End of story.
I understand that Tone has already gone on TV and said that the independents should be happy with a briefing on costings from his dimwit shadow ministers and the accountancy firm.
I laugh any more I’m gonna do myself a serious injury.
Mike, why stop at corporate political advertising?
Why not call for the banning of all forms of advertising for products or services for sale?
Advertising is a totally manipulative and parasitic industry, a waste of resources and offers zero benefits for consumers or society. In the end it means we pay more for what we buy because its costs are passed on to the buyer.
Who needs it.
PHILOMENA – if you can organise it, I’ll back you up.
Fantastic demands. I wish I always vote for candidates of this calibre. Shows how dead the two major parties are to the electorate.
This is the first time after an election where a few independents can ask for the moon from a major party who needs their help to form government and the major party will reply “do you want fries with that”.
DIOGENES – And Julia can tell her handlers to f… off, because she has to hand out the fries. After the disastrous election she may be handed a fantastic opportunity to go progressive and do some big things.
Wonder what Smuggles response will be?
I’m feeling all giddy. Any minute niw I’m going to wake up and realise I’ve been dreaming. Could we really have a new, brighter ALP Govt where the spin doctors have been sent packing? I’m too old for this, my heart has been weakened after years of machine politics, surely such ethical changes are an impossibility?
If the ALP commits to serving the full three years is that for the ALP or the PM or both?
@17 Rebekka its been a while since I’ve done constitutional law but i don’t recall there being a requirement that the house of representatives be single member electorates. I think its an act of parliament how the effects of (and I’ve got this vague recollection s24 of the constition is the right section).
My recollection is that the key is directly chosen by the people and in proportions to population and to the senate ie being about twice the size of the senate in total numbers. beyond that i think the parliament has the right to establish the actual system
The time in the Sun for these independents will be brief. The key to any strong negotiation is an initial ambit claim. Good luck to them. They know it won’t last.
actually the commitment to a full term was sought and granted by bracks to the vic independents in 1999. on the other hand if i was abbott i’d point to nsw and say they are what happens if you create fixed terms
@27 – Providing that each state has at least five members, and electoral divisions don’t cross state borders, the parliament can establish any electoral system it likes. In fact, the constitution says that in the absence of any other provision, each state shall be one electorate:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/par3cha1.htm
So the current system could be changed by Act of Parliament. No need for a referendum or constitutional amendment.
Wait a minute. Wyatt Roy isn’t old enough.
I’m all for stopping corporate donations as long as unions stop donating as well.
@32 when our old mate howard was in there was a push amongst the libs to make union donations subject to a majority vote of their members. howard himself stopped it on the basis that this would involve a quid pro quo of all shareholders of corporations determining corporate donations.
i think that it would inevitably involve a question of quid pro quo.
@31 – dropped to 18 when the voting age did.
@34 bugger. I got excited for a moment there.
I saw Wyatt Roy in the street in town the other day, wearing a suit, Blackberry glued to ear. Wasn’t aware that he was such a tiny person…
@33 – John Faulkner has indicated his desire to ban all corporate *and* union donations. I’m not sure if that’s government policy, but he said in an interview that his conclusion from the time he was the Special Minister of State was that was what should happen.
#32, #33 we’re on our way to donations caps in NSW. Corporations, unions, developers, everybody.
FYI ABC24 re-running the National Press Club Indie Nation address at 10:00pm tonight
Kim @ 30 – and each state must return a number of members proportional to its population.
That makes a *national* PR system a bit complicated (but not impossible). But PR within each State is trivial.
d
@38 Like the Union Bosses are going to let that one through.
With regards to donation reform. Why can’t corporations, unions, whoever just “donate” their money to individuals who then donate it to the party in question? Or if their are $50 or $10,000 limits, divvy it up to cap/donator less than or equal to the limit, if you know what I mean. I never hear this discussed on these blogs. Naive discussion of campaign finance reform, perhaps? Mmmmm?
@ 42 – exactly – especially form the union side – list of members with personal donations attached. Thank you very much.
Considering the documents are in the public domain (thanks Peter Martin) why aren’t the ‘real’ media linking to them? I haven’t looked at Murdoch but neither Fairfax or ABC seem to be linking. Do they not want people to have primary sources or are they clueless?
And Katter was entertaining on Lateline
OK, Indies rewatched.
Tony Windsor: Toney Windsor. Despite the fact that he’s my local member and an ex nat, I heavily underestimated him. He’s the shit. “Precautionary principle” FTW!
Rob Oakshotte: Rob Rimshotte. I can’t make any substance out of anything he says other than some kind of sunshine and lollipop land of local members and no parties that sounds a lot like a John Adams on peruvian marching powder.
Bob Katter: Loveably insane.
razor i don’t think you understand how the alp works. It isn’t donations which provides the union with power in the organisation – it is affiliation. Affiliation does not require donations.Donations occur because the unions believe that the labor party will provide better legislation to provide people with rights at work. Affiliation is what provides numbers at conference, not donations.
@40 –
Yep! And we should have it!
From grog’s link it seems the murdoch press are providing primary documents
Personally, on the question of campaign finance, I’d regard a spending limit as easier to enforce. Let them only be allowed to spend some multiple of the number of votes they got at the last election and make them document everything.
If someone goes above the limit or gets involved in didgy accounting related to it, let the party leader be declared unelected, and face a huge fine plus repayment of election funding. Third parties would have to account for their funds too.
That’s not to say that donations shouldn’t also be capped.
I am now ROTFLMFAO.
“3 Boats” now has to subject his policies to real costings. No ducking and weaving.
I guess that’s what’s required of real leaders hey?
Kim @ 47 – we already do – they’re called senators.
What the three Independents said at the National Press Club yesterday had real substance and it is indeed supposed to be about the people, electoral representation by our elected MP, and not about the party, the executive and toeing the party line. I hope the Independents will seize the momentum and press for serious reform and accountability. I believe we urgently need citizen initiated referenda on demand in order to be able to veto bad decisions, e.g. compulsory fluoride, forced council amalgamations, public asset sale etc.
And how I wish we had such passionate MPs in Logan, who put the interests of their electorate and the people they swore to represent first. Then we would not have to demonstrate outside the electorate office of our local Labor MP, John Mickel, Speaker of Parliament on lack of electoral representation. This is week 13 of our political protest, which received no mainstream media attention. However Jimboomba Times covered my protest on 16 June. I had to go to an Independent MP to sponsor the following e-petition for me http://bit.ly/aueuVm titled Independent investigation into unlawful editing of courtroom audio tapes and transcripts. A ministerial response to this petition is due on 2 September, but we fear the result will be that our complaint will again be swept under the carpet by the Bligh Labor government, while the opposition is strangely silent.
Further details: Australian Press Council fails judicial corruption and school bullying victim http://indymedia.org.au/2010/07/31/australian-press-council-fails-judicial-corruption-and-school-bullying-victim
I had this to say to Samantha Maiden about her article about JG’s meeting with the independents and I’m sure it won’t get through moderation at the Liberal Party Daily, so have pasted it here:
Oops, clicked Submit too soon… And cleared the clipboard by mistake (spot the before-second-coffee cut and paste error.) Anyway long story short, by couching JG’s meeting with independents as an “arranged marriage” with a “bride price”, “mint tea” and the “best goat”, the Liberal Daily is totally pushing the sexist AND ethnocentric buttons at the same time. Depressing, mediocre stuff! Even with the biases intact, the use of metaphor here added an extra layer of hate and prejudice.
A proportional lower house (unlike the Tasmanian dominated upper house), is the only mechanism by which any serious parliamentary reform will live on for more than 1 parliamentary term. Just look at how quickly the Howard Gov. dismantled the senate systems (e.g. committees) and how quickly they changed it again when they lost government (e.g. question time). Parliamentary reform can happen quickly and hence there needs to be a mechanism to stop retrograde actions in the future.
People, be serious. The Independents can’t advocate for PR. It would spell the end of Independent representation.
FFS.
@56 – As has been pointed out repeatedly, if you go with an MMP system that includes electorate representatives, you can still have independents elected – as in New Zealand.
The problem with banning political advertising is that then we’re left with *only* the media who did such a wonderful job this election.
Since News Ltd owns most of the daily newspapers, the ghost of Kerry Packer runs TV and the ghost of Howard is haunting the ABC at the moment I’m not so sure that’s a great idea.
Unless they’d find some way of defining The Australian as political advertising…
Helen @54: read the link and can only ask who writes that shit? Is the mention of camels meant to be a snide dig at katter’s “mid east” (ie, familial Lebanese) background. The author deserves an old fashioned punch on the nose.
Josh@56: there’s two ways around that. One is a mixed member system, the other is a quota-less proportional system. Most PR systems include an anti-democratic “quota” designed specifically to exclude independents. In NZ it’s 5%, Germany 3%: get fewer votes than that and they count for nothing (unless they win an electorate in a mixed system).
What happens is that a very few votes make the difference, leading to the idiocy in NZ where microparties win an electorate seat and that means their 2% of the vote gives them an extra seat in parliament, but other parties who get 4.8% would get 5 seats except that they didn’t win an electorate seat or get 5%, so they get nothing and people who vote for them have their votes thrown away.
In theory the quota could mean that the single party that wins more than 5% of the vote could take 100% of the seats (20 parties get 4.5% each, one party gets 10% … only one party is over the quota).
But with independents in the driving seat hopefully we’d see a quota-free PR system with very large electorates (either based on Tasmania determining the electorate size or each state being one electorate with the number of MPs being determined by population – so the “NSW electorate” would get 50-odd MPs, the “Tasmania electorate” 5)
Philomena @19, MIKE @20 and Stephen @58, a ban on political advertising (corporate or otherwise) would require either a contitutional amendment that expressly declares there is no right to freedom of political communication in Australia, or the High Court to overturn its series of decisions which confirmed such a right exists, impliedly, in the Constitution.
You might want to think a little bit more about the implications of that.
37, that would be as much about labors flight from the unions and ordinary people, as much as an attempt to reform funding.
Helen, the actual bride price could be worked back to two pigs, if we can eliminate the goat.
Can Julia suckle?
Oh, and for those saying “but we might get One Nation elected”, that’s is the entire point of the exercise. Representative democracy means having the representatives that the people want in parliament. If half of Queensland loses the plot we get that many plot-less parliamentarians elected. Although given the performance of the major parties recently, plot-less politicians might be an improvement
As Tim Macknay says, sometimes the price of freedom or democracy is putting up with things we don’t particularly like, just so we can make other people put up with things they don’t particularly like. If the price for not having to listen to Pauline is a choice between Liberal and Labour forever… JFO.
Banning corporate and union donations is fine but as long as there is any channel for donations to the party’s they will find a way of funneling money into that channel.
I suppose removing the tax deductability may change some behavior.
Buying influence isnt something that would be given lightly by those used to it.
Josh said:
Not necessarily …