124 posts tagged “aussie politics”
After a horror start to the week for the Liberal Party of Oz (see earlier post) the later half did indeed improve with some valuable comment from some Liberals.
Unfortunately for the Party it came from elder members who no longer have much input but nevertheless it was nice to see something a bit more thoughtful for a change.
First cab off the rank was Malcolm Fraser (pictured at left) who made an insightful reply to Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast. When asked what he thought Kevin Rudd should do (principally about boat people) he said "Kevin Rudd should get out of the way and let his Ministers manage their portfolios."
A very good observation although I appreciate he is viewing it from a different angle. The problem with Oceanic Viking got blown way out of proportion and Kevin 07 did not need to be in center stage as it exploded. He should have left it for his Ministers to solve and only get involved if it really went pear shaped.
The problem arose from some misreading of a poll and Labor is not the only interest group to get it wrong. Even Michelle Grattan got carried away and started reading more into the data. For those who missed it a poll was undertaken just after the rescued Sri Lankans refused to leave the Oceanic Viking at an Indonesian port. Now some Voters were excited and the Press certainly got their knickers in a twist but the Public in general were just watching things unfold. A few different Labor folk started jumping in front of cameras too and that also caught the publics attention.
The results of the poll were Labor down 15 points but Kevin himself only 2 points. For some reason the pundits and even Kevin himself, decided the love affair with Kevin was over. I thought the data was clear. The Voters were happy enough with Kevin but unhappy with all the other members of the Party and trade unionists loudly asking for the asylum seekers to come straight through.
More detailed polling has since shown that the Voters are pretty evenly split over how to treat asylum seekers. Some want to push them away while others want an "Open Door" policy.
The upshot was Kevin hitting the airwaves a la John Howard and popping up all over the place. Personally, I think this is a bad tactic. Eventually you will say something that offends just about everyone or people just get sick of seeing you around. I simply wouldn't go there.
If Rudd hadn't jumped in he could still be relaxing back at the Lodge instead of having to keep going over the same ground.
The second Elder Liberal to make an intelligent comment was a real shock. None other than Sadam Hussien's bag man Alexander Downer. His observation was uncharacteristically accompanied by an admission of having made the same mistake himself. The comment was about carrying on negotions with a megaphone ie. through the Press. He equated it to their (The Libs) dealing with the Tampa the same way. When you use the Press to publicise your agreements you paint the Indonesians into a corner and you will struggle to get the desired result.
Normally Kevin 07 understands this as shown by the Hu Stern case, but somehow this one slipped through. Being the clever clogs that he is, I'd be surprised if he doesn't learn from this error of judgement and he probably recognises disunity was part of the problem after the more detailed polling.
Rudd has had a challenging week, not a disastrous one, and if he reflects on the lessons and fine tunes himself and his party, life for Turnbull is going to be a hard row for quite some time yet.
It's been a shocking week and it's only Wednesday.
Monday night got things off to an exciting start with the 4 Corners program giving the Climate Change skeptics a full run. After all Malcolm's efforts to try and hide these characters the ABC has given them the opportunity to increase the size of the hole in the hull and they went for it boots and all.
Then something snapped in Joe Hockey who is supposed to be a future leader of the Libs. For some strange reason he has decided to play the God card, presumably because he thinks it will better his chances in Leadership ballots. Logic fail. Kevin 07 beat Howard in spite of his religious beliefs not because of them.
Aussies are always supicious of "God Bothering" from pollies. Yes, you can declare your hand if the matter is raised by others but to start the topic yourself is a very dangerous tactic. When you have another political challenger in your Party representing Cardinal Pell pushing a different God then things can get ugly mighty fast.
To add insult to injury, young Joe has also come out with the extraordinary claim that he doesn't lie. Perhaps he has already forgotten his part in promoting Work Choices but the victims of it haven't. It shouldn't be too long now before the Interviewers start reading back on his unhappy time as the Minister and start quizzing his pronouncements. Perhaps he should have added the caveat "from now on" but even that would be a struggle. His announcement that "People smuggling is in decline" though not an outright lie is certainly a dishonest presentation of the facts.
All this on top of Howard sticking his head up to remind the Voters of children being imprisoned with their asylum seeking parents.
The week can only improve from here.
Firstly, I should declare that I was once an employee of the company when they were at the pointy end of developing the network and more interested in evolving than churning customers from their competitors. It was a time when aiming for the best for the country was the priority rather than offering huge wages to a select few at the top.
Those days have long since gone and the business model has been a bit of a basket case for quite some time. Currently the existing customer base are suffering through a new billing system that they appear to have brought on line before it was finished. The upshot is a flood of complaints where the customers are helping the company debug the software. Now to the Economic Rationalists it probably looks like a winning strategy but they have failed to measure the effect on their client loyalty.
In the first place it's a bad idea to abuse you client base in this cynical way but an even worse idea is not correcting the problem on the first call. Folk who have told me about their troubles invariably mention how many calls it took to solve the problem and I can't remember one who was satisfied with an easy solution.
You can imagine how hard this makes the job for the folk trying to churn the customers back to Telstra once they have had enough of them in the first place.
But I see some more pain coming courtesy of Telstra. This time it's the share holders but this time I'm less sympathetic.
Some folk seem to value trading in shares as somehow more up market than punting on the gee gees. For all its sophistication, shares is simply betting on a different commodity. Now I can't imagine anyone would be in favour of covering my bets at the local TAB so I'm not inclined to be throwing support on a different form of gambling that didn't work out. Fairs fair.
It's not as if the Telstra investment has ever been a good one. Those who accepted John Howard's invitation to invest have been drifting down the gurgler ever since and should have hit the exits long ago.
Of course if John Howard wanted to throw some of his personal wealth to help the victims this would be an honorable thing and I would applaud it but somehow I can see that happening. He certainly was party to Ziggy overstating the value of the shares something Ziggy fessed up to much later on.
The Libs seem intent on trying to hold up the demise of Telstra but once again they have failed to think about what the Voters want. Finding Telstra fans is harder than finding fans for Malcolm Turnbull.
This morning’s AM program, and later the commentary by Michelle Grattan during RN Breakfast, bought forth an interesting item about the Environment Minister, Penny Wong, effectively issuing a time deadline to the Opposition over the upcoming ETS legislation due back in the Senate before too long. When this is coupled with the hints at a Double Dissolution, the pressure is really on the Opposition benches.
The next couple of months look extremely interesting and it’s hard to tell which way things are going to play out.
I do think it’s high time the Liberal Party accepted that
they lost the last election and started to work at becoming an effective
Opposition. It shouldn’t be too foreign to the party. They have been in
Opposition before so there must be some political memory of how to appear as a
viable alternative government. If not, then examining how Labor defeated them
is a rich field of study and not that long ago so the bodies are still warm.
Once they start behaving more responsibility they will be able to ignore the threat of a Double D and then perhaps they can relax a bit and start doing a better job.
Of course it would also help if the Shadow Ministers and “seat warmer” Malcolm could get their stories straight. This morning’s responses from Turnbull and the Shadow Environment Minister make an interesting study.
McFarland’s response to Penny Wong’s memo was “She is just demanding
what we have already agreed to”. Be this true or otherwise it was a good reply
that cannot be easily dismissed without further study. Compare that to Malcolm’s
response which effectively said they would work along at their own speed
regardless of what Minister Wong demands. Wow. That’s a maximum score on the
arrogance scale even if they meet the target as McFarland suggests. That's what I call turning a positive into a negative.
Poor Malcolm still doesn’t get it. It’s not all about him. It’s about what the Aussie Public want. Continually reminding the Voters that he feels left out is not going to garner any sympathy. It’s one of the “benefits” of losing an Election and it's time for a reality check.
Labor has done their best to assist young Malcolm get the Libs in shape with the threat of a Double D. It gives him a lever to try and instil some discipline within the party and has already helped him marginalise the likes of Iron bar Tuckey. The trouble is Turnbull is such a loose cannon and often can’t keep his character flaws under control. He worries the party and effectively undoes the help Labor has inadvertently (?) offered. In some ways he reminds me of Mark Latham from the Labor side. Unpredictable and ultimately dangerous.
So then next couple of months are very interesting. If the Opposition remains a basket case, they could well face the Double D. As much as I have never been in favour of early elections, I’d be seriously tempted to bring it on if the ETS bill is defeated. It would more than likely rid the chamber of the floundering Fielding and cart out a few more National Senators to boot. It might even thin out the Greens after their less than stellar contributions.It would be an easy case for Labor to argue sound financial management against the “Do nothing” approach of the Conservatives. Especially when the Public is getting impatient about actually making a start on tackling Global Warming in the face of unstable weather patterns.
It was a pretty inept effort. Firstly, the drafting of the Laws is unclear and sloppy but worse, it leaves too much to the discretion of politicians who showed a complete lack of morals when elections and foreigners are involved. Children overboard still scars the Liberal party.
The most inept part of the process came about when the new Laws were claimed to be urgently required but nothing happened after they were enacted. When this was bought up we suddenly had police raids flooding our TV screens but this was undermined by the fact that the Press were advised well before the raids and actually had their cameras set up before the cops arrived. It rather highlighted the point that there was more concern about it being a PR exercise than a "life or Death" struggle with terrorists.
Things have been much quieter since then but yesterday we were back to media driven reactions to presumed threats. Apparently there has been some monitoring going on of some shady characters and things were building up to setting up some arrests when the Australian newspaper published details that could have alerted the suspects. This is where it all gets rather murky. There are claims and counter claims between the Police and The Australian about what was cleared and what wasn't. The final wash up is the suspects are now in custody but more questions are now being asked about who "Needs to know".
The lack of self control exhibited by the Aussie media would make them last cab off the rank if I wanted to run a secure operation but first cab off the rank if I wanted a PR campaign and lots of fear mongering. Standby for the frenzy switch to be set to Max.
So what do we want from our counter espionage service?
Me? I want an effective branch of policing that does the job. I'm not interested in risking it's effectiveness so some media folk can run an adventure story. I know it's fun and you can write some exciting material about blowing up the MCG but not at the cost of security.
If we keep the anti-terrorist operations away from the media we get a more secure service but even more importantly, it doesn't become a political football that any self promoting pollie can hijack for their own personal advancement.
Since before the last Election here in Oz, I have been operating under the theory that the Greens have something to offer the political process. In fact I even handed out their “How to Vote” cards even though I didn’t vote for them. The reasoning behind this gesture was a theory that despite the annoying behaviour of Senator Milne, I thought their being in the Senate would be helpful in steering Labor towards honouring their Environmental commitment.
Then along came Snowy with this excellent post about the Greens not providing hard facts. Once the discussion got beyond a couple of comment posts I realised I had fallen asleep at the wheel and become accepting of them just being there. Where is the valuable input?
Snowy and I have had discussions about the Senate before
with me believing it improved the quality of legislation and Snowy claiming the
minor parties are just show stoppers. (I’m sure he will fine tune this summary
if I have made it too simplistic.) This ended up with some interesting comments
between Andrew Bartlett (a Democrat Senator at the time) and Snowy.
Well now I find myself climbing down from my original position with the current makeup of the Aussie Senate. Instead of supplying some nice hard facts and figures the Greens, under Bob Brown, seem to have decided to just provide background noise rather than offer some helpful suggestions. I expected much better.
Add to this a few Independent Senators trying to build a profile and the hapless Steve Fielding who has suddenly discovered he is a Climate Change denier and things have gone into Never Never land. Incidentally, how can you claim to put families first then decide to wreck the Environment for your kids? Must be a God thing.
Although he doesn’t realise it yet, this has left Malcolm Turnbull with the chance to undercut all the grandstanding in the Senate and play the hero by supporting an ETS. Effectively wiping out all the plans of the Independents and flipping blokes like Wilson Tuckey on his back.
The reason I believe he hasn’t realised is because I had a letter from him today defending his position and it’s clear he is more interested in trying to score petty points than put the interests of the country first. The opening was a doozy.
“However, it is vital that we get the design right”
The hell it is. An ETS is a complex beast. You just have to look at the range of figures Accountants have offered of the Global Financial Crisis to see how varied the ideas are. What is vital is we start NOW and then fine tune as we go. All the lead in time involved can be started on now rather than wait another year after Copenhagen while the paperwork is being done.
After the Election I thought there may be some back sliding by Labor but it has turned out that is the least of our worries. Senators trying to differentiate their position from their fellow Senators is a much bigger problem. The fact that they put their personal status ahead of the country is a sad commentary on their morality.
I can’t see myself handing out How to Vote cards next Election. I’d much rather see some action.
Looks like Barnaby Joyce has caused another brain fade in the Liberal ranks with the current Rio Tinto problem in China. Apparently the preferred response to spying charges against Stern Hu require a good ol’ sabre rattling to drive the commies into subservience. Looks like something from way back in the 60’s but luckily we now have a government with a more realistic view of the world.
Thankfully this doesn’t run right through the Liberal Party ranks so there is still hope that some common sense still exists within the party but it is worrying that a newbie like Andrew Robb is so far away from the real world. The new blood is supposed to be smarter. Really, if Peter Costello can work it out then Robb should be able to.
I’m surprised the Libs have even decided to play with fire here. The last corruption claim on an international level was the AWB in Iraq and that turned out to be well founded and either actively supported by Alexander Downer or else he has taken to initialling things in his sleep. Surely they don’t want to go there for another beating from the Voters.
The problem here for the Libs is their lack of focus. A collective case of ADHD if you will. Just as in the Utegate affair, the enthusiasm to play the man has overridden the requirement to look like a viable alternative government. Realistically, who is going to vote for a government that doesn’t have the wit to manage diplomatic affairs?
A couple of things are now surfacing to make it harder to run the Liberal line. Firstly the US has started to throw its weight around with no effective impact. Then there are more sensible folk like Cozzie who would rather appear smarter than toe the opportunist line. Not all the details have been revealed and considering bribery is not unknown and even mandatory in some foreign business deals, it’s a brave person who sticks his neck out when they don’t live within the company. Let’s face it. One man’s bribe is another man incentive payment. The key is placing your funds with the right person.
Personally, I can’t imagine why international relations should be played out via the shock jocks and I include RN Breakfast in this description. Just because the media want to know everything is no justification for them being in the picture. Back channels work precisely because they are not subject to hot head intervention.
Meanwhile the Liberal party should invest some serious thinking into how they want to market themselves to the Aussie Public. If they decide to stick with the status quo then Barnaby Joyce will look like he belongs in the mainstream instead as a maverick who shouts before he thinks.
I think it’s an easy choice.
The recent electoral victory of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Indonesia didn’t appear to get much Press within Australia but it should have. Perhaps it’s the case of good news doesn’t sell papers but I tend towards the theory that we are so dumbed down that most folk don’t even know where Indonesia is.
For those of us who are aware on Indonesia’s attempt to annex PNG in the late 50’s or those who worried about expansionist military leaders or even those who fretted about East Timor, should all be delighted by our neighbour’s embracing of Democracy.
Plenty of fear mongers have predicted doom and gloom for our relationship with Indonesia and thankfully their predictions have been way off the mark. Especially scary for some of these folk was the non-Christian religions presumed to be able to control the Government. To my utter delight, the Voters ignored the 2 biggest Islamic groups who favoured SBY’s opponent, Jusuf Keller, and who only managed 10% of the vote.
So it appears the “Religious” vote counts for as little in Indonesia as it does here in Oz.
Following a recent trend in world politics, it seems smart and thoughtful is more favoured over flag wavers and fear mongers. Susilo’s style is non confrontational. Solving problems comes before hard lines and he needs to be this type of personality to meld together a diverse culture.
Not only has he stabilised his country, he has done some things the US system could well imitate. A drive against corruption delivered some impressive scalps including some senior pollies, central bankers, bureaucrats and even a relative. The only thing missing is a few lobbyists.
Of course they still have some way to go with the anticorruption program and this time around the mandate allows him to ignore some “no go” groups that helped him hold power.
One claim to fame from SBY’s early years is his performance during student demonstrations when he was the military commander at Yogyakarta. While other commanders used tanks and bullets, SBY had already established links with the students and no weapons were required. Very impressive for a military man.
So Aussies should be celebrating this outcome and atheists too for that matter. Another bright light in world politics.
Firstly, he blocked legislation that very nearly resulted in the alcohol manufacturers getting taxes back that most probably would have been used to market to our kids. So much for putting families first.
Secondly for finally deciding to side with the Climate Change Deniers. While most of us have been reading and absorbing the science, young Steve was otherwise engaged and not paying attention. Then he decides we all have to wait while he catches up and produces an excuse that has been dealt with a couple of years ago.
I think this points to a person with an eye towards campaign funds rather than the well being of the Great Barrier Reef.
As always. We should demand better from our pollies even if they are from a fringe element and maybe even because they are from the fringe.
Imagine holding back the country while he struggles to catch up!
I may just have to print this one up.
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