The CCC has again released adverse findings after yet another investigation into local government, this time into the mayor of the City of Cockburn. He’s standing aside while the findings are investigated by an independent inquiry. I don’t really want to write about the findings themselves; they’re pretty self-explanatory. But a story that has come up during the saga raises a troubling issue about the ability of the powerful to quash democratic protest.
Residents of Cockburn have been collecting signatures for a petition calling on the Local Government Minister to sack the councillors. According to a report in Cockburn’s local community newspaper this week, staff at the council have been contacting shopping centres asking them to remove the protestors.
Continue reading ‘No space to protest’
COLIN Barnett will become WA’s 29th premier after the National Party agreed to form a government with the Liberals today.
The Nationals announced their decision after spending yesterday locked in day-long negotiations, considering proposals from both Labor and Liberals. Neither party could form government without a partnership with the Nationals.
Continue reading ‘It’s the Libs’
Accy raises an interesting concept.
Whichever party the Nats decide to deal with, they likely won’t enter into coalition. They’d guarantee supply, but otherwise keep their options open. And given the Nats’ likely control of both houses, it would possible for one of those options to be to get legislation passed without the help of the government. Meaning ministers forced to implement legislation they voted against.
Unlikely, sure. But wouldn’t it be fun while it lasted? And what other wacky scenarios can people think up before boring reality kicks in again?
Saturday’s election result in WA means the possibility of the political commentator’s dream: the hung parliament. Labor has suffered a massive swing, and now it’s probably going to come down to who can convince the Nationals to make a deal. Whose trainwreck? We’ll see…
The Nationals in WA are more agrarian socialist than they are in the rest of the country, and there are some who say that Brendan Grylls personally leans more towards the Labor Party. Common ‘wisdom’ and Liberal MPs suggest that the Libs and Nats will come to an arrangement, but Gryll’s personal politics, and a desire (and need) to appear genuinely independent and influential mean that there’s a good chance he may prefer to make a deal with Carpenter.
Whether Carps will want to, when it will mean having to fork out a huge amount of money to rural seats, in addition to meeting all his election promises, and dealing with the instability of an angry party and CCC reports, is another question. Whether he’s capable of working with another party when he’s so terrible at working with his own is a third. To be successful would require an ability to reach a consensus, at least with the most important bills; that just isn’t his style.
Continue reading ‘No, thanks’
Yesterday the WA Labor Party took the strange step of releasing its internal polling publicly, rather than pretending to some journo that it was an uncontrolled leak. They claim that Labor faces losing the election on Saturday, and are hoping that much of the swing away from them is a protest vote, that people don’t really want to elect Colin Barnett.
When polling was “leaked” in the usual way last week, Joe Spagnolo wrote that:
Labor is still quietly confident of victory.
It just doesn’t want to show it.
Labor still believes that come election day, voters will not want to bank on a Coalition which has changed leaders four times in three years.
It just wants to make sure that the expected protest vote doesn’t become a protest of tsunami proportions.
But after yesterday’s performance, “quietly confident” is not a phrase I would use to describe them. It looks like they really are worried. The punters, not so much.
Continue reading ‘Whose trainwreck will it be?’
On a day when speculation ran rife that WA had lost the nation’s biggest resource development project, the Inpex Liquefied Natural Gas project in the Kimberley valued at $25 billion, Alan Carpenter announced yesterday he would be closing the bars at Parliament House.
That announcement, aimed at wedging Colin Barnett over his predecessor Troy Buswell, was pretty typical of how this election has gone in the first two weeks and might explain why at the halfway mark of the campaign Labor finds itself in a tight contest against a crisis-ridden Opposition that only settled on a leader the day before the election was called.
Barnett may be obsessed with Brian Burke, but the Labor campaign is a little too fond of the Buswell jokes they had prepared to let them go this quickly. There are many valid points to be made about Buswell’s continued political success, in particular the effect it’s had, and will continue to have, on women in the Liberal Party, which translates to the women whom they seek to govern. But stunts like this impress nobody, and they belittle the real issues that Buswell’s behaviour brings to light. The problem with Buswell, and the boys’ clubs on both sides, is not that there are bars in parliament house.
Continue reading ‘The big issues’
After the Great Debate 05, it was always going to be a staid affair. Last time, Barnett used the forum to announce his plans for the “Far Canal“. The Howard Government wouldn’t speak in support of it, and then he got his costings wrong and denied that they were.
So it’s not surprising that the verdict this time: dull.
Carps focussed on his Vision for Western Australia, in a strategy that sounds a little “More to do but heading in the right direction“; talking about environment, infrastructure and services.
Barnett’s main theme was that the current government is too corrupt to win another term, although he refused to implement a ban like Gallop’s (and, eventually, Carpenter) on his team meeting with Noel Crichton-Browne or Brian Burke. He started off quite well, and the worm liked him, but he struggled when the focus turned to how he would deal with the problem. Frankly, it’s a little strange to make Burke the focus, yet be unwilling to say the word “ban”. Apparently, his team just won’t have any contact with them.
Continue reading ‘No Alarms and No Surprises’
With just under two weeks left until the earliest WA election in 100 years, the main story of the campaign is a Premier trying to position himself as a strong and decisive leader, and an opposition trying to paint him as devious and arrogant. It’s all about Carps, really.
He’s devious, because calling an election only a day after Barnett became leader was like “jump[ing] into the Olympic swimming pool five seconds before the other competitors“. But if length of time as leader is the issue, then it’s his own fault that he gave up his advantage; if he’d stuck around after losing the last election he’d now be ahead of Carps in time served.
He’s devious because he’s trying to avoid CCC reports that will prove just how deep he was in with Brian Burke. He went to parties with Burke, you see. The idea that Brian Burke installed Carps as leader is one of those stories that’s both true and not-true, all at the same time. Continue reading ‘I am not, nor have I ever been…’
Jim Edwards, over at BNet, has noticed a change of tone in GSK’s blog for weight loss drug Alli.
Why does a drug need a blog anyway?
Sold as Xenical in Australia, Alli is a fairly notorious drug; it last made news here in 2006 when Xenical advertising run during Australian Idol was criticised for targeting teenage girls. A complaint from Choice Magazine very nearly cost the drug its over-the-counter status, and the TGA revoked Roche’s ability to advertise the drug direct to the consumer in Australia.
The marketer of the over-the-counter version of the drug in the US, GlaxoSmithKilne, have a blog devoted to the “wonders” of the drug. As Edwards points out, a change in sales management has lead to a very a distinct change of tone; away from a chatty style with a focus on health and nutrition (albeit with a strong sideline in “buy our drug”), and on to a much more aggressive “if you’re fat and ugly (you know—anything larger than a size 10), you’ll feel better if you take our drug.”
Continue reading ‘Ask me how!!!’
There are some interesting power games and shifts happening in WA politics at the moment, which make this state election slightly more interesting than it would otherwise be. I’m sure they will have very little effect on the outcome of the election (I’m sure Mr Poll Bludger can confirm or correct me here) although some of them may have an effect on the dynamics of the government afterwards.
Continue reading ‘Party Games*’
In discussions during the long Democratic primary I’ve heard it suggested a number of times that should Obama not win the nomination, a generation of newly-engaged voters will be disillusioned and may never vote again. While this is understandable, it’s not really a sensible criticism of the process.
Should Clinton actually steal the nomination, by somehow breaking the rules, then this may be a reasonable thing to argue, although it should be clear that if this were to happen, young people’s feelings would be the least of the Democratic Party’s worries. But should she get the nomination by, you know, winning it, frankly I don’t see why some First Time Voters’ (FTV) feelings should trump that.
If I was to be cynical, I might feel it useful to point out that we’re generally talking about acknowledging the disappointment of a group of young first-time voters (mostly male), as opposed to the disappointment of a group of older women who’ve been waiting a lifetime for the chance to see the first female nominee. I guess people figure they must be used to disappointment by now.
But ignoring for a moment the politics of why the feelings of FTV - who have a lifetime of opportunity ahead of them - should be given priority over things like party rules, democracy, electability etc; I think it’s also important to consider the importance of having one’s hopes dashed early on.
Continue reading ‘Disappointment’
The WA Liberal Party today chose to keep a self-confessed sexual harasser as their leader. Continue reading ‘The Boys’ Club’
Last week, I went to a bar where men and women had only one toilet each, and no urinals for the boys. A small corridor leads to both, so that everyone has to wait in the same line, until their respective facility is available.
It seemed to me that the crowd was pretty evenly split, gender-wise; it certainly wasn’t any more male-dominated than any other bar in the city on a Friday night. So imagine the looks of surprise on everyone’s faces when the unisex line was dominated by blokes. Throughout the evening, men outnumbered the women in line.
Continue reading ‘Waiting’
There’s a greater focus on the role of the Senate since the Howard Government gained control of both Houses. That’s a very good thing, and let’s hope it continues.
Most of the Senate focus has been on the importance of minor parties who will keep the majors honest. This argument often assumes that a vote for the major parties is a second-best option. But as with everything in politics, there are pros and cons to every decision, and there are some very good reasons for supporting the Labor party in the Senate, too – or more importantly, there are very good reasons for voting more progressive Labor MPs into the Caucus. So here’s why I’m going to be voting Labor in the Senate in WA, and why I think you should too.
Continue reading ‘Progressing the Senate’
The last 9 days of the election look set to be quite the grab-bag of issues here in WA.
The “AARRGH! SCARY UNIONS WILL DESTROY STUFF THE COUNTRY” meme has been dealt a bit of a blow now that two of the main stars of the Libs’ TV ad are no longer members of the party.
Apparently Labor is “soft on crime”, unlike Liberal MPs and candidates who regularly patrol the streets in their spare hours, hunting hoons and bringing evildoers to justice. Brian Loughnane should be commended for having the guts to put up seat-specific versions of the ad that suggest that the Member for Stirling, a former real estate agent and ministerial staffer, is tougher on crime than the guy who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does this mean that in its next term, the Howard Government will begin a federal takeover of the prison system?
Continue reading ‘Wild, Wild West’
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