Despatching a leader

Can't help but think that there is a stark contrast between the way the Power got rid of Mark Williams and the way the Labor Party got rid of Rudd.

The agony that went through Labor ranks is laughable when you consider the ruthless despatching of Choco. Very few people are standing around saying that he deserved better (which in my opinion he did) but I guess he was more compliant than Herr Rudd too! And he didn't seem to think for a moment that the club wouldn't/couldn't survive without him.

Work together!!!

If politicians, of all persuasions, genuinely had the nation’s interests at heart then they would recognise that the refugee issue is not straight forward and that it requires both parties to work together.
What we want to see is not a wedge being driven into the heart of the electorate, but rather both parties seeking a just and compassionate solution to what is human tragedy, not a political football.

...ohhh no election time again

Apart from being my favourite movie (here) I have been wondering about the ten things I hate about the presenting parties at this election time....these will no doubt grow as time goes on so check back
Labor

1. I hate their failure to provide sufficient distinction between themselves and their opponents. This phenomenon will no doubt go down in the history books as the decade in which the two parties became indistinguishable
2. I hate their capitulation to market driven economics and their desertion of the commitment to traditional labor policies in education, health and social welfare
3. I despise the fact that the Labor party's compassion for the underdog has now been thrown away
4. I hate that they are no more compassionate to refugees than their opponents
   

Liberal

1. I hate the proposition that they and they alone have the answers
2. I hate the opportunism that in getting control of the senate they refuse to take responsibility for the fact that they alone are responsible for the failure of the Carbon Emissions Tax
3. I hate a particular candidate in whose electorate I have been who appears to have taken his electorate for granted until our support appear to have been in doubt.
4. I hate the way refugees have been treated

There is a certain irony in this post. It is based substantially on a similar post of 3 years ago!!

Not much has changed.

One of my correspondents observed about that post

I won't be voting for either party.

and I replied

Well, I have a dilemma as I live in Boothby!
I haven't voted for either major party for the 12 years we have lived here...but I guess even if you don't...you do!

As I say...not much has changed

The politics of personality

The ongoing decline in the Rudd Government's popularity and approval rating is part of the inevitable reflection communities make on incumbent governments. How did it happen? How can a government that was so phenomenally far in front now be behind in the run-up to the election?

There is no doubt that the answer to that is: Tony Abbott. His political savvy and relentless discipline in the last little while has been remarkable. Not unlike that of his former leader and mentor, John Howard.

But it needs to be said that, by and large, the battle ground has not been policy (what are the Liberal policies any way?) but personality. The Liberals have ruthlessly and relentlessly painted Rudd as boring, wordy and remote. One would have to say that they have been successful.

They have also been able to hammer the enormous spending spree that the fiscal rescue seemed to demand. (What would they have done?) and despite the annoying nature of its repetition...the idea of the Great Big New Tax has been fed into the nation's psyche and people don't like such an idea.

Equally well, political liabilities have been kept out of the public eye. Where, for example, has the agressive Ms Bishop been? or the twee Mr Pyne?

I suspect that the Libs have had (good) advice that they are both political liabilities and so have been kept very much in the background.

Will the Labor party then be sucked into this game and start playing personality politics. It will be fun to watch! It will be dirty! But is it good?

I don't think it is yet all over for the Labor Party, but they need to get their act together if they are to be credible.

Compromise

One wonders what history will make of the Australian political compromises made on global warming.
Will it condemn Abbot’s Liberal party for getting rid of the only leader who took the issue seriously and replacing him with a political opportunist?
Or it will it laugh at Rudd’s Labor Party which haled it as the most important issue of the century and then downgraded it for three years when it saw there were no votes in it.
Either way, neither of these political strategies will do anything to actually encourage Australians to act responsibly.

Done and dusted

There is any number of comments that could be made about the recent State election I'll try and up-date some of these ad hoc remarks as the day goes on.

1. The age old dilemma about the "dodgy how to vote cards", in which Labor sympathisers obviously tried to make themselves look like Family First members, handing out cards that would give Labor a preference rather than Liberal, raises the question about the difference between legal, moral and ethical (Ethics 101). Something which may be legal is not necessarily moral.

2. The Labor campaign manager says "These questions are best left to philosophers". I want to suggest that this is equivocation of the worst kind, the 'lectorate despises this sort of casuistry and the Labor party should sack campaign managers who do not think they should act morally as well as legally.

3. Good on Premier Mike Rann for condemning this out of hand. Well done Chloe Fox for not adopting this strategy. Boo to Leon Bignell, whose victory has been tarnished even if it cannot be proved that this actually delivered the victory to him.

4. On the other hand. Let us not so be so ingenuous as to suggest that voters slavishly follow how to vote cards, and even if they do then more fool them.

We should all take responsibility for how we vote and not blame cards which short-circuit our brains.

The Legislative Council

Don't even get me started on the Legislative Council! The whole process of 'voting above the line' is in my mind an affront to our democratic rights. It suits the two major parties who want to get rid of as many independents and smaller parties as they can. Anything which impedes their open slather is a bad thing in their eyes. By voting above the line you are ceding your right to choose for yourself to these party machines.

I shall expound more about this tomorrow

The language of 1984

One of the key features of George Orwell's book "1984" is the way language is distorted by power to mean something that it obviously doesn't mean.

For the last two weeks (and longer) I have listened to the Liberal party build up its language of criticism of the Government. Now this is OK on one level, as long as we the public are critical of language and don't just accept it on face value.

It is, for example, OK for them to simplify the Emissions Trading Scheme as a Big Fat Tax.

As a strategy it seems to be working well, but the more knowing public should at least try to take this simplistic analysis for what it is....simplistic. But I have heard all sorts of Liberals use it in the last few days, Abbott, Bishop, Joyce...and no doubt others.

What is not OK is the use of the term Stalinist to describe the Labor Party's decision making processes. This term is of course most derogatory. I have no doubt that some of that mud will stick. I have heard both Abbott and Pyne, and others, use that term in the last week.

History suggests that there is not much to pick between Hitler and Stalin, and no one could imagine that a slur that Labor Party processes were run like the Nazis would have just been allowed to go unchecked.

There is not much to pick between the Labor and the Liberal Party in terms of questions like, loyalty and consistency. And you wouldn't stand in front of many of them with an exposed back on a dark night, but let's not even begin to suggest that the term Stalinist should be applied to any Australian major party. It is at the very least belittling to any and/or all of those who were subject to the violence of Stalinism.

The Boys' Club

Acknowledging that the present divertissement in the Liberal Party is not about leadership in general but about Peter Costello in particular; it is interesting that no women are ever talked about as potential party leaders.
The other side are not particularly blameless in this regard either, but it is noteworthy that I could mention: Macklin, Wong, Gillard, Roxon off the top of my head. But I am hard pressed to mention any woman at all...other than Bronwyn...on the other side. No wonder the Liberals still present as a factional boys' club

G is for

GOUGH (of course). Labor leaders are probably more loved and mroe hated than their Liberal counterparts.
None more so than Edward Gough Whitlam. My dear late friend Joyce Townend, a fervent Labor party supporter, would speak little of politics normally, but often of Gough. She, like many of us, thought him to eb a sort of saint. Though he was deeply flawed, profoundly arrogant and absolutely brilliant.
As it turned out, a fatal combination.

Reverse psychology

The question of the day is whether or not the startling revelation that Kevin Rudd had a naughty night out will work for him or against him. My immediate reaction, far too cynical to be true I suppose, is that this is probably a reverse psychology leak by the Labor Party. The electorate will be so outraged by this leak that they will deem it dirty politics, and it will end up working in Rudd's favour.
It was noticeable that key players were remarkably silent, Abbot Abbott (not known for his caution when bad-mouthing people) declared himself to be a Trappist monk (here)and implemented a self-imposed vow of silence.
The reason?
Well it has long since been understood that once the sexual immorality card is played there is no stopping the flood of damaging revelations to both sides of politrics. It will be interesting to see how this reverse/reverse/reverse psychology plays itself out. Though I would much prefer to get on with the election and just simply get it out of the way.