Rewi blogs at Oqurum and this post was originally posted there.
In an earlier post I briefly discussed the issue of civil rights in Australia, particularly as to how we justify infringing rights in order to deal with specific segments of society. It’s a distinctly worrying trend, but when the decision of the Western Australian government to grant police the power to stop and search citizens without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing is cast in terms of ‘cleaning-up the streets’ to the benefit of ‘decent families’, as opposed to violent thugs, it’s pretty hard to say ‘Hang on a minute’ without being accused of being with the terrorists.
But… hang on a minute.
The trend in Western Australia, and Australia generally, should be alarming its citizens. This isn’t just about physical intervention by police forces, but an active campaign of intimidation designed to inculcate a compliant population.
And it appears to be working.
As of 2004 Perth was home to the largest single closed-circuit television surveillance system in Australia. CCTV isn’t about catching crooks; its advocates argue that it is meant to act as a deterrent to crime. Much could be written about the value of deterrents in criminology, but let’s skip that for now. In this instance, deterrence can only mean one thing: intimidation. CCTV exists to intimidate citizens into obeying the law. As does the newly increased use of sniffer dogs in police patrols through the city.
But which laws?
Continue reading ‘Of pimps, prostitutes, dealers and freedom: guest post by Rewi Lyall’
This time last year, we were all feverishly anticipating the calling of the federal election, which was less than a fortnight away. Now, courtesy of the quarterly Newspoll geographical and demographic analysis we can track where and with whom the Rudd government has been travelling well and less well from January to September 2008 and compare the poll numbers with the election result in November 2007.
Possum has all the spiffy graphs.
As The Poll Bludger notes, there are two really interesting trends in the aggregate poll. First, the Rudd honeymoon is still very much alive for the 18-34 demographic (and it will be intriguing to see some good data on how Turnbull’s elevation shifts this – if at all – down the track.) Secondly, Labor is still doing poorly in the West, and has gone a fair way backward in South Australia. (Incidentally, the data supports the point Kim made here the other day about Labor trending upwards in Queensland federally while Anna Bligh’s state regime goes into a slump – albeit a slump which is still of election winning dimensions even if it’s not a Beattie style landslide. And federal Labor hasn’t been hurt in New South Wales by the implosion of the Iemma government.)
A lot of folks are attributing Labor’s performance in South Australia to the Murray-Darling basin issue. Again, it’s worth noting that Labor still has a primary lead of 3 points over the Coalition, but it is no doubt significant to see eight points knocked off its lead so quickly in the last quarter, after having been stable at 49% more or less since the election. I’d be interested to hear from South Australian LP-ers about what they think is going on.
If it is the Murray-Darling, this might say something interesting about the Rudd government’s ability to deal with relatively intractable problems through its preferred mode of governance. Continue reading ‘The state of Rudd Nation’
When it appeared likely that the Libs might win in WA, much of the commentary focused on how a non-Labor state government would play havoc with Kevin Rudd’s “cooperative federalism”. As with so much political analysis around the traps, this is lazy commentary shaped by myths and cliches and not by reality. Rudd’s “ending the blame game” theme was always somewhat tentative – people seem to forget the stick and carrot approach never went away. Indeed, it was explicitly highlighted before the election with regard to health and the possibility of a Commonwealth hospitals takeover. Implicitly, it’s raised its head as “argy bargy” on issues such as IR, education and water, among others. The feds still have the power of the purse strings, and this and the fear of breaking ranks among Labor premiers, and being seen to do so, is a very effective method of shaping outcomes while maintaining the political high ground.
A possible Barnett premiership would shift the dynamics somewhat, but Barnett would still have considerable incentive to cooperate. Rudd’s template for COAG reform comes from the 90s when Liberal premiers such as Kennett, Greiner and Court worked with Labor premiers such as Goss and Paul Keating’s government.
It’s also worth remembering that Rudd’s “ending the blame game” promise was explicitly defined as a response to the “coast to coast Labor” scare. A Liberal state government or two would allow Rudd to sharpen the almighty Narrative some, as well as enabling him to adopt a somewhat tougher political persona, just as Labor will probably benefit politically from Liberal Senate obstructionism. It would be very far from the disaster some short sighted commentators with short memories seem to think it would be.
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’
This was the worst campaign I have ever seen run by the ALP.
Ever.
This was an election where all of the ALP’s problems over the last 6-8 years came home to roost.
There was no central theme. The campaign material was ugly, late out, badly written, and largely unrelated to anything voters actually cared about.
The central campaign was a shambles, courtesy of a complete disconnect between the Parliamentary Labor party, party office, and the lay ALP membership.
Continue reading ‘Worst. Campaign. Ever.’
MB: William’s been having problems with his database crashing, so he’s going to conclude his liveblogging of the WA election poll count here if the problems continue.
10.48pm. I’ll wrap it up here and carry on over at my place, so enormous thanks to Mark Bahnisch for allowing me to clog up his page. The Liberals have gained Ocean Reef, North West, Jandakot, Swan Hills, Mount Lawley, Bunbury, Darling Range, Kingsley, Wanneroo, Southern River and apparently Morley. Varying degrees of doubt remain about Riverton, Forrestfield, Collie-Preston and Morley. Labor might make a notional gain of Albany. Former Labor independent John Bowler has won Kalgoorlie from the Liberals. Labor may have lost Kwinana to independent Carol Adams. Independents Janet Woollard in Alfred Cove and Sue Walker in Nedlands may or may not lose their seats to the Liberals. The numbers are 27 to 29 for Labor plus Labor independents, with either one or two of the latter; 26 to 28 for the Liberals plus Liberal independents, also with one to three of the latter; and four for the Nationals.
Continue reading ‘The Poll Bludger’s live blog of the WA count [continued from The Poll Bludger]‘
WA goes to the polls today. Prediction, speculation, reports, links, etc, welcomed.
Possum and The Poll Bludger have rounded up the latest polling, which suggests a very close race.
Election bloggy goodness: Worst of Perth and the WA Greens both have posts. Liveblogging is going to happen at The Poll Bludger, and Antony Green’s place at the ABC, where the election coverage will also be streamed. ABC Local Perth Radio also has a tally room blog.
Update: The polls in WA have now closed and local lad The Poll Bludger has opened his liveblogging post.
Watch it on your computer: Here’s the url for the ABC’s live streaming tv coverage.
Update: [by Mark] William Bowe’s been having database problems at The Poll Bludger, so his liveblogging of the WA count continues here at LP.
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’
I suspect none of the major parties federally or in any of the states and territories could entirely escape the accusation of being a “boys club”, but I’m very interested to see – for the first time I can think of – gendered cultures within a political party being raised as an election issue in Australia. The WA Labor Party is running a radio ad which you can listen to here. The ad highlights the disparity in female representation between the two major parties, and it’s reminds voters of some of the appalling behaviour associated with former leader (and current Shadow Treasurer) Troy Buswell. But aside from the ikkiness of the boy culture exposed by Troy “I did not have intercourse with that quokka” Buswell, there’s clearly something in the accusation – the way that “star” candidate Deirdre Willmott was casually elbowed aside to accommodate the resurrected Colin Barnett really seems to have been appalling from a story in the weekend Fin Review quoting Willmott at length. Apparently Barnett met her two days before, and mentioned nothing, and she wasn’t told what was going on even before the press conference at which Buswell resigned. A range of other female Liberal MPs resigned from the party in the last term, and some are recontesting, with independent Liberal Liz Constable being co-opted into a frontbench role by Barnett to try to soften the damage.
I’d be watching any gender breakdown in the polls in WA very carefully.
Elsewhere: More from William Bowe aka The Poll Bludger for subscribers in Crikey.
The Poll Bludger has a comprehensive post on what’s happening in the WA state election. The polls are showing it might be a close run race, with a 51-49 result from Newspoll and basically a dead heat in Westpoll (albeit from a 400 strong sample). There’s also lots of electorate level polling to read about.
Discussion of the Northern Territory election results continues to be framed in terms of its possible implications for WA, where Alan Carpenter also went early. There are at least two problems with this narrative – first that there’s no evidence but only supposition that the NT result was directly related to an early election (and it’s worth pointing out that after all the insta commentary, it’s now being recognised that the result was the second best Territory Labor had ever attained in terms of primary votes). Secondly, I’ve always felt that argument by historical analogy is at best risky – as patterns that might form the basis for prediction are hard to discern just from political history in the absence of quantitative data. It becomes riskier when you start assuming that what appears (and it only does appear) to be the case in one jurisdiction can unproblematically be the basis for an inference to what might occur in another. The number of qualifiers I’ve felt obliged to use here might be a bit of a clue to the logical force of any such arguments.
Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that politicians think this way, and often seek to learn from campaigns and tactics that appear to have worked elsewhere in the past. There’s a whole mini-industry now, for instance, of importing Australian political consultants to work on and direct British campaigns. One thing I’m surprised no one (to my knowledge anyway) has mentioned is the fact that Alan Carpenter is obviously taking a leaf or two from Peter Beattie’s campaign book.
Continue reading ‘Is Alan Carpenter the new Peter Beattie?’
In a fit of predictability, incumbent Labor Premier Alan “I used to be a credible journalist, don’t you know” Carpenter is promising “vision, leadership, and stability” – the last one of the three, at least, might play to Labor’s strengths.
Resurrected Liberal leader Colin “Don’t mention the canal” Barnett is promising that he’s not Troy Buswell. And doesn’t at all look like the kind of bloke who could be caught sniffing chairs.
The first night is all about predictability – Barnett is claiming that the snap election has been called because Labor is running scared (of him, presumably). Carpenter is denying that the snap election has been called to take advantage of the leadership turmoil in the Liberal ranks.
Despite some rustlings of dissent from the local commentariat – local political commentators are largely calling the move a political mistake – a call based largely, I suspect, on the idea that if Barnett isn’t as thoroughly unpopular as Buswell was, the Libs should therefore cruise to an easy win.
There may be something to that view – certainly Buswell was regarded in WA with the kind of amused contempt that makes it difficult to get any political traction, and it is entirely possible that WA electors have forgotten exactly why it is they didn’t vote for Barnett last time. And there is no doubt at all that Carpenter isn’t held in the same regard as Geoff Gallop, and certainly doesn’t have the same campaigning experience as his predecessor.
But when you consider the raw mechanics of Carpenter’s decision, it starts to look like a potentially very good decision indeed.
Continue reading ‘Day 1 of the WA State Election…and we’re all bored already.’
…so the Poll Bludger reports. Looks like Alan Carpenter is taking a leaf out of the Peter Beattie book and dashing to the polls while the opposition is still mired in leadership confusion and disunity.
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