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?
This post isn’t quite as long as I thought it might be, and I think that’s a good thing. There’s no doubt the Garnaut Report [link to pdf] is seriously big as well as eminently serious, and I suspect a lot of the blogosphere’s climate change wonks are waiting to digest it rather than rushing in to write insta-commentary. Although the report is a very serious piece of policy work, its release is also a political event par excellence, and taking the time to understand the report’s arguments and proposals is a template that could usefully be applied to other big political happenings - including but not limited to the Budget - even if it goes against the grain of the 24/7 media cycle. It’s also worth noting that these sort of issues really lend themselves to the power of aggregating distributed knowledge - given the number of seriously informed people out there participating in the climate change debate - and therefore the comments threads are possibly more important than some of the posts themselves - which informed the approach we took at LP on Friday by posting an open thread.
So, what has the blogosphere had to say about the Garnaut Climate Change Review interim Report? Continue reading ‘Garnaut: the blogosphere reacts’
Queensland Liberal members voted by a large majority to accept the Nationals’ takeover bid for their allegedly insolvent party, and the deal is all set to be consummated at a constitutional convention. So all is peachy in the Pineapple Party? Maybe not.
There’s been previous speculation that Mal Brough, the former federal Minister and recently elected Liberal President, may be positioning himself in the medium term for entry into state Parliament. There’s been speculation that the Santoro forces in the state Libs might be doing the numbers to oust Lawrence “The Borg” Springborg from his perch. Brough was elected in order to get a better negotiating deal for Liberals than his predecessor, Gary Spence. Now Spence is putting his hand up for the presidency of the Liberal National Party and current Nats president, Bruce McIver, hasn’t ruled out throwing in his hat. All federal MPs and Senators have been bought off by guarenteed preselection, but - rather ironically - Warren Truss says it would be undemocratic to pre-empt the question of the presidency. Will Brough be dumped? Is this payback for Brough’s negotiating stance and a pre-emptive strike at a possible leadership contender?
Continue reading ‘Mal Brough gets the rough end of the Pineapple’
Update: For anyone having trouble getting to the Garnaut Review website, which obviously failed to anticipate the amount of traffic that would be heading its way, the report can be downloaded from the SMH. In pdf form, huge file.
I have no doubt some of our resident regular climate change bloggers will be offering some commentary when it’s released, and the contents digested, but here’s a thread for anyone who wants to discuss the interim Garnaut Report in the interim. It’s out at 12.30am, and I imagine it will be viewable at the Garnaut Review’s website. I think everyone would agree that it’s a most significant event, particularly since, as reported earlier this week, it would appear that Kevin Rudd will make his climate change response the signature issue of this term.
Peter Martin explains the process:
Continue reading ‘Open Garnaut Report thread’
It’s getting a bit tedious writing posts like this, but perhaps there’s a continued need to do so. The cumulative Newspoll for the first six months of the year across all states (and with a demographic breakdown) is out [table in pdf form], and poor old Dennis Shanahan is reduced to writing things like:
The biggest drop in satisfaction for Mr Rudd was in South Australia, from 68 per cent in the three months to March to 63 per cent in the three months to June.
Continue reading ‘Honeymoon, over, etc.’
Published in Authoritarianism,
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When I read about Andrew Leigh’s departure from academia into the pointy end of the social policy world on secondment to Treasury for six months, my first thought was that it was a mixed blessing - no doubt Andrew will do good things in the public service, but taking him out of the mix of commentary in the blogosphere and the pages of the Fin deprives us of one of the far too few provocative and interesting and informed writers on public affairs we have in this country. My second thought, having attended Richard Allan’s presentation at the CCi conference last week was that it didn’t need to be this way. Tim Watts got there before me - pointing to the much more enlightened view taken on public servants contributing to public debate in the Old Blighty. Once the home of the “Official Secrets Act” and all things backstage and hidden, Westminster is doing an awful lot better in promoting open government and facilitating public debate than we are in this country. And British citizens are doing a lot better at finding ways to talk back to power via the web. Worth thinking about why that might be so.
Continue reading ‘The public’s gain is the public’s loss’
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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 Senate won’t formally sit until 26 August, but scrutiny of the Greens Senators, Family First’s Stephen Fielding and South Australian Independent Nick Xenophon has already been ramped up, since they all now collectively hold the balance of power. Props to my CPD colleague Ben Eltham for interviewing Xenophon and thus introducing him and some of his policy positions to those of us who aren’t familiar with South Australian politics.
While the Greens’ policy positions are well known, or if they’re not, they’re reasonably accessible, and thus transparent for those who take the time to look, Xenophon’s disclaimer of any left/right ideological commitment and indeed the relatively narrow range of issues on which Fielding has taken a prominent stand raises an important question. Unfortunately, we’ve lost our most prominent blogging Senator - from the Senate, that is, not from blogging. One of the Democrats’ more laudable stances was accountability to their membership (although aspects of that commitment - particularly the low threshold for a leadership challenge - were also probably a large contributor to their downfall), and Andrew Bartlett carried this level of accountability to a broader public through blogging the work of the Senate, which also allowed for public input into his legislative and policy decisions.
Continue reading ‘Open Senate?’
It’d be interesting to go back and trace the first appearance of the “Kevin Rudd will be a one term PM” narrative - I suspect it coincided with about the fifth round of declarations that “the honeymoon is over”. Lyn at Public Opinion helpfully summarises today’s MSM commentary so we don’t have to read it:
Gippsland one day, the nation the next. Newspoll via Possum says 55 - 45, back to the 10 points off primaries at 44 - 39. At last, the honeymoon is over, the chickens have come home to roost, the electorate has woken from its slumber and the narrowing is narrowing. Kevin’s down from 68 to 64 and Brendan has gained a whopping 2 points at 15.
In a post about Rudd’s decision to make an emmissions trading scheme the centrepiece of his government’s reform agenda, Brian provides us with some sensible commentary on the Newspoll numbers [pdf], while the redoubtable Possum Comitatus observes:
91% of all polls for the government are historically below 55%.
In other words, governments do things and some people get unhappy. But they can still go on and win. Continue reading ‘Oncer?’
The “media narrative” we’ve seen the first taste of today in the wake of the Gippsland by-election couldn’t be more predictable. Brendan Nelson’s contributed a theme of his own - that polls aren’t as meaningful as the “only poll that counts” - an election, or in this case a by-election. Never mind that one gives us a reading on the state of opinion in one electorate under conditions which are quite unique and the other seeks to measure opinion across the nation using a representative sample. There’s an echo there of Christopher Pearson’s line from last year - the specious distinction between “national polls” and putative local trends. The actually meaningful distinction is between dynamics in by-elections - particularly those in regional seats - and public opinion more broadly. Nevertheless, the opposition and the punditariat have given themselves licence to ignore the poll they “own” and to continue constructing a constant barrage of confected chaos and crises.
By the way, the Gippsland tsunami barely got a mention in the Brisbane Sunday Mail. Just as the dynamics in Gippsland shouldn’t be extrapolated too readily to the country as a whole, we should realise that whatever the national media obsesses about doesn’t necessarily carry that much weight outside the redoubts of the political class. Although the dynamics of the discourse will be quite different tomorrow, there’s no reason to assume that one of the most astute readers of public opinion, Rod Cameron, isn’t as right now as he was on Friday night’s Lateline that Kevin Rudd enjoys a genuine popularity “in the suburbs” and that much of that is attributable to voters being impressed with the government having actually kept its promises.
Continue reading ‘Send Canberra a message!’
As a follow up to my post yesterday on the Liberals’ revived climate change denialism and the the fear campaign they’re running, I thought I’d point to a couple of interesting signs of the times. Tim Watts at Tree of Knowledge thinks the Libs have taken a leaf from the Canadian Conservatives’ book - the Tories in Canada are running a campaign against Liberal opposition leader Stephane Dion’s support for an emissions trading policy. It’s all couched in terms of “new taxes” and “driving up the price of everything” by putting a… wait for it… tax on petrol. The ads, which you can preview at this woefully designed website, are said by Watts to be going up in petrol stations.
Given Nelson’s populism/desperation on the Fuel Excise Cut, no doubt we can expect to see the same from the Coalition. There will come a time when the electoral value of climate change credentials will have to go head to head with back pocket concerns and the above is not an encouraging vision of the future. Whatever the substance of the response to the Garnaut report, the Government is going to have to engage in some pretty serious ground work in preparing the public for any adverse impacts….
Another report suggests that time may have already come. Continue reading ‘I blame Canada’
In Question Time yesterday, Kevin Rudd accused the Coalition of kicking off a “fear campaign” on climate change. He’s right, according to Crikey’s Bernard Keane, who writes:
The party of greenhouse denialism is back in town.
You can read Keane’s analysis here.
Greens Senator Christine Milne also writes on this topic in today’s Crikey, commenting on deliberate distortions of the Climate Institute’s discussion paper on energy affordability and emissions trading. [Update: Christine Milne’s article has now been posted at GreensBlog.]
Continue reading ‘They’re back!’
Graph from ABARE
Tim Dunlop notes that the commodities boom is far from over, and in fact that its pace is set to pick up next financial year.
One of the first actions taken by the Blair Labour government in the UK (back in the days when Gordon Brown had a bit of a clue) was to impose a windfall profits tax on privatised utilities to fund social infrastructure. Writing in the Fin Review today, Andrew Leigh thinks we might well consider something similar to cushion ourselves against the possibility of a future recession:
Few issues require such careful political management as a windfall tax. But implemented properly, it is possible to imagine that such a tax could be both economically responsible and in line with fundamental Australian values. Why not raise a little more from our lottery-winning miners today, and squirrel it away for the next recession?
I think that’s an excellent idea, and Leigh makes a good case for it. Continue reading ‘Ensuring prosperity beyond the mining boom’
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has used her keynote address at the Queensland ALP state conference at the Gold Coast today to distance herself and her government from her predecessor Peter Beattie. Bligh criticised Beattie for short term thinking and for being reactive.
Ever since she became Premier, it’s been clear that Bligh understood the importance of putting some clean air between herself and Beattie. Frustrations about service delivery and perceived inaction on health, water and infrastructure almost saw the veteran Premier lost the last state election, saved only by a clever campaign and the complete uselessness of the Nationals and Liberals in opposition. Beattie was also able to argue that service delivery had been impeded by the Feds’ inaction under John Howard, a line that resonated powerfully, and that was put to good use in delivering Kevin Rudd and Queensland Labor such a big swing and a swag of seats in the Federal election last year. Bligh will be hoping it’s a theme good for three elections - her argument will now be that Kevin Rudd is helping where Howard didn’t, but that results will take some time to eventuate.
Bligh’s emphasis on forward planning was established before her ascension to the top job - when she was Treasurer, she began to move away from the state’s traditional low debt and low taxes mantra, and this is a direction she’s accentuated as Premier - keeping business sweet by going with the PPPs Beattie had always nixed. It also gives her the chance to do something that many in the Labor Party had always regarded as neglected under Beattie and Wayne Goss - ramp up Queensland’s historically low levels of social spending. Bligh has eschewed Beattie’s “media tart” strategy, keeping a lower profile and not popping up on the tv news every night in the manner supposedly characteristic of state premiers. In fact, her appointment of Beattie to a Trade Commissioner position in the US is looking a bit smarter than it did at the time - enabling her to insist that as a public servant, he no longer hold forth on the news of the day. His running commentary certainly continued after his ostensible retirement.
A Galaxy Poll published last week showed Labor and Bligh going backwards - a result that was met with scepticism among the pseph tragics at the Poll Bludger’s thread. Continue reading ‘Anna’s Independence Day’
Interest group politics following a change of government is always interesting. It’s not always quite as simple as rewarding your friends and locking out your enemies (though maybe it was with Paul Keating and John Dawkins), but some repositioning always goes on - for a smart lobby, in advance of the election. That occurred last year with business groups - some were prepared to cut the Howard government loose and go public with concerns about lack of infrastructure investment, population policy, climate change, productivity and federalism. From early 2007, blind Freddy could have seen the defeat of the Howard government coming, even if the national news media couldn’t, and the agenda of groups like the BCA was well articulated to the policy direction of the Labor party, thus guarenteeing influence both before and after the election itself. Even on the touchy issue of IR, it became fairly clear that ideologues such as Peter Hendy aside, most business interests had reasonably happily accommodated themselves to the end of WorkChoices well before November, and in fact that they extracted significant concessions in their favour. Those who really kept their head down when urged to put it above the parapets by the Howard government - such as the AIG - have had their reward in spades under Kevin Rudd.
The Australian Medical Association seems to be an exception to this rule. As Tim Dunlop writes:
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has obviously decided they don’t like the Rudd Government and seem to be doing everything in their power to criticise, annoy and/or embarrass them. Since before the election, the doctor’s union has made clear that they don’t like the approach the Labor Party takes to health and were, for instance, critical of Labor’s plan to—potentially—shift control of hospitals to the Federal Government.
Since then, they have taken every opportunity to attack the Government’s plans to change the criteria for the health care rebate, and have been particularly upset about moves to allow nurses to increase their role in the provision of general practices services.
The degree of self interest in the positions they’re adopting is a bit too blatant for comfort, I’d have thought. Continue reading ‘What’s with the AMA?’
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