What the hell is with the New South Wales government? Down here in Victoria, our state government is at least trying to grapple with serious issues like how we’re going to move ourselves around our rapidly growing state capital. Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the government seems to be far too busy fighting itself and the NSW union movement to do anything much. Not to mention backbenchers publicly slagging off the entire front bench.
About the only policy output coming out of them right now seems to be Treasurer Michael Costa running his mouth off at the Garnaut Review in The Oz. As typing is not activism points out, it’s moronic.
Is there any prospect whatsoever of the NSW Labor Party getting itself sorted out and concentrating on dealing with that state’s considerable economic and social problems at some point between now and the next election?
Published in Activism,
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To be fair to Morris Iemma and his bunch of clowns masquerading as a government, New South Wales isn’t alone in imposing risible and over the top security regulations for major “public events”. We’ve seen similar things in finance talkfests with Melbourne and CHOGM in Queensland saw Peter Beattie invent preventive detention for “known public nuisances”, as well as going to ludicrous lengths to prevent protest. But Iemma’s mob seem to have made it an art form, perhaps because as I’ve speculated before, their sense of authoritarianism compensates for their total ineffectuality in governing just about anything else than public events. (Compare - “public services”.) But the latest bunch of regulations for the Pope Fest really take the cake. It’s more or less private governance. Where’s the public benefit in preventing pilgrims attending World Youth Day in Sydney this month from being annoyed? Will their world really come to an end if someone hands them a condom or wears a t-shirt with an anti-homophobia message? What possible public justification does the NSW government have for denying basic rights to freedom of expression at the instance of the fragile petals in Cardinal Pell’s hierarchy?
Continue reading ‘Annoyed!’
The New South Wales Premier, Morris Iemma, has deferred a vote on electricity privatisation (which he would have lost due to Labor MPs voting to uphold party policy) in order to negotiate with the Coalition for its support. An admininstration in permanent crisis teaming up with the opposition to introduce something opposed by a large majority of voters. Not a good look.
If you’d been watching George Brandis and Pru Goward on Q&A on Thursday night or Christopher Pyne on Lateline last night, you might have formed the impression that Belinda Neal’s alleged dust up with restaurant staff was Watergate or something. High crimes and misdemeanours, corruption, abuse of power, blah blah. It was interesting that Pyne apparently felt able to deflect any parallels with Troy Buswell by saying the Liberal party had endorsed his leadership and he’d apologised (that’s ok, then) and then by claiming that he didn’t have to answer questions about something that had happened a few months ago because it had happened a few months ago and therefore wasn’t “news”. Put this together with Virginia Trioli’s claim that Iguanagate was the political “talking point” of the week (everything the government actually did in policy terms was just “symbolic” or “spin” according to Pyne), and reference to how important the story must be because it was on the front page of the Daily Terror for days, and you’ve got - what?
Add in another datum - the plan by Morris Iemma and Michael Costa to refer New South Wales’ industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth, which is being discussed in terms of revenge on the unions for their stand on electricity privatisation. Continue reading ‘Iguanagate - what’s really going on?’
Well, hasn’t it been a busy week or so for NSW Minister John Della Bosca and his wife, Federal backbencher MP Belinda Neal?
Of course, for the last few days we’ve only been hearing about her, despite Della Bosca’s documented history of multiple traffic offences leading to a revoked driving license and allegations that he was part of the alleged drunken and abusive behaviour in a Central Coast nightclub last weekend.
Last month Della Bosca’s licence was revoked for six months following a series of speeding offences, after which he reportedly swore at a newspaper photographer for taking pictures of him riding a bicycle.
Yesterday, he refused to speak to irate teachers who invaded his office to vent their fury at the Government’s decision to change the rules under which school principals hire staff. [source]
Perhaps the newspapers are a bit bored with Della Bosca’s temper, plus although people like to lampoon him he’s simply not that easy a target for anything more (such as collecting a political scalp for the editor’s wall), due to the degree of power he wields in the NSW Labor party. But his wife doesn’t have the same powerbase behind her, and besides - a woman with a filthy temper, there’s a news story with legs - cue hordes of gleefully chortling editors. Neal’s excesses have made the international newspapers now, which gives us a very pithy summary of the key points that are being latched onto for the news cycle: Continue reading ‘Power couple politics NSW style and the alleged disciplinary double standard’
What’s with the Iemma government?
DRINKING a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.
All kinds of nanny state madness, I guess.
Apparently, unlike the NT intervention, it’s up to “communities” to request a no grog zone where even drinking in the home will be banned. But who are those communities? And who gets to say whether “chronic alcohol abuse” is going on? All I can see resulting from this is a push from some residents in areas such as Newcastle’s CBD with a big concentration of nightspots in one area to ban takeaway sales. Presumably respectable citizens won’t expect the booze police to knock on their door and confiscate their chardy, and all the bourgie restaurants on Darby Street will fall outside the zone. It may also of course result in all sorts of puritan dogooders forming unrepresentative action groups or whatever in their local hood. Just stupid.
Continue reading ‘No rivers of grog - now for whitefellas in NSW (if they want)’
Whatever you think about the merits of the issue (and it’s certain that Morris Iemma doesn’t have the public of New South Wales on his side with his electricity privatisation drive), the politics of Iemma’s decision to ignore a contrary vote of the Labor Party conference which was carried overwhelmingly - by 702 to 107 - are intriguing.
Iemma’s trying to position the whole thing as a fight with the unions. You’re supposed to win electoral kudos as a Labor leader by standing up to “union bosses”, or so the Tony Blair script goes. But that ignores the fact that Iemma’s at the end of his government’s tether, not a bold new opposition leader, and both he and the policy are wildly unpopular, whereas the unions’ position is in keeping with the public will. He’s also broken not just election promises but specific undertakings to the party. I don’t think the “tough guy standing up for what he thinks is right” act is going to do him any favours, not at all.
Continue reading ‘Iemma and electricity privatisation’
What’s with the Iemma government? About the only time they seem to hit the national news apart from scandals and stories about the collapse of public services is when some new height of absurdity is reached in their apparently obsessive desire to fence everything off from anyone bar dignitaries. Yesterday, Morris Iemma unaccountably locked the public out of a ceremony to unveil a statue of a New Zealand soldier on Anzac Bridge. Today, the charges against the Chaser boys for their APEC stunt are dropped, and ABC tv news reports the government warning ominously that it might send the wrong message to people contemplating something similar for the inordinately expensive Popefest in July - where all the usual panoply of exclusion zones, special police powers, fenced off areas of the city, redirected roads and so on will be in place for what looks set to be a spectacular flop, at least as far as frustrated Sydneysiders are concerned it would seem.
Please enlighten a puzzled Queenslander. Is it that they only get the illusion of power in a state they’ve made ungovernable when they can erect fences and restrict civil liberties? Is this the reductio ad absurdum of Bob Carr’s law and order campaigns? A distraction from electricity privatisation? Would they be happier with the North Korean style of staging a public event? Puzzled minds want to know!
One way in which John McCain earned a reputation as a “maverick” was his support for campaign finance reform - not something usually associated with the Republican Party - particularly when Tom DeLay’s regime in the House was founded on the notorious “K Street Project” - a drive to ensure lobbying firms employed only Republicans and an attempt to hoover up as much corporate money as possible for the GOP.
Morris Iemma is, perhaps, a more unlikely political reformer than McCain, but it appears that he’s been driven to a recognition that a complete ban on political donations is the only way to draw a line under the succession of scandals associated with developers and Labor mates which threatens to engulf his already shaky government. Writing today in The Australian, Mike Steketee rightly points out the radicalism of the plan Iemma is supporting, and its desirability.
There are two big questions, however, which remain unanswered as yet. Continue reading ‘Ending political donations?’
And as a result the patients are starving.
It would appear, from reading this and other coverage of the sorry state of affairs at Royal North Shore Hospitals, that the hospital’s problems are related to the fact that decision-making in the hospital has been effectively concentrated in the hands of administrators whose principal concerns are the financial bottom line (and with a narrow, unstrategic, intellectually lazy conception of what this entails) and adherence to bureaucratic protocol regardless of the effect this has on the delivery of clinical services, with minimal or no input from health professionals such as clinicians or nutritionists.
This way of running things comes straight from the New Right toolkit of public choice theory, one of whose obsessions is the fear of “provider capture” by professionals (and their unions) in government services such as education and health. Such professionals, so the story goes, are motivated principally by self-interest of one sort or another, and thus if empowered to make decisions or influence policies in such services, will use such influence to enrich or aggrandise themselves at the expense of their employers and the wider public interest which they are supposed to serve. The solution is to exclude the professionals from influence over policy and management as far as possible, and vest power in generic managers free of links to vested provider interests.
Continue reading ‘Royal North Shore Hospital successfully avoids “provider capture”…’
Whether or not you think a “Borg is back” t shirt has the same appeal as a Kevin07 one, it’s pretty clear that Lawrence Springborg’s attempt to do a Kevin on Anna Bligh is all about style and very little about substance. Whether it’s the “United Conservative Party” non-starter of an idea, or his crusade on parliamentary standards, Springborg consistently talks process not policy. He has very little to say about the big issues of state politics - health, education, infrastructure, and surprisingly for a conservative leader, not much on Laura Norder.
So it is with the current push for four year terms in Queensland. As Griffith academic Paul Williams observed in the Courier-Mail yesterday, Springborg has muddied the waters of his alleged bipartisan support for a referendum with a number of quibbles about FOI and standing orders. If he persists with these demands, Bligh will just junk the referendum.
In any event, I’m not sure four year terms are all that desirable. Continue reading ‘Against four year terms’
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.
Continue reading ‘Iemma ain’t no Big Fella’
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