The Death Defying Parachutist Stuntman

Deja vu in politics can be a terrible thing.

This is because it so very often relates to a former leader resurrecting themselves.

Think of 'The Bomber,' Kim Beazley, for a recent example of this. Everytime the wallopers in the backroom of the Labor Party got a bit twitchy - very often about the same time the current leader started talking about 'reform' of the party structure - The Bomber would find himself pressed into service, a safe pair of hands - and no reform ideas - to guide the party through a rough patch. In fact, this happened so often, the poor bloke probably got a bit confused and forgot where his seat in Parliament was. No wonder he muddled up Karl Rove and Rove McManus.

And everytime The Bomber came off the bench, he'd pledge himself to 'a fresh start,' 'bold policy ideas,' 'a new Kim Beazley' and all the other half baked, cliched nonsense that politicians come out with when they hope no one's actually listening. And everytime, he'd fair about the same; he'd waffle on for a bit, Howard and Costello would make fun of him and he'd be packed off to the back benches as soon as another half credible leadership alternative presented itself.

One of which was Kevin Rudd.

So it was with an odd sense of deja vu, mixed with goodly amout of dread, that one watched Heavy Kevvy's performance on 'Q & A' on Monday night (sorry, no embed option available, get with the times 'ABC'!):

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201104/r749026_6194007.asx

For there can be no doubt, based on this effort, that Kevin Rudd imagines that he can one day lead the Labor Party and be Prime Minister again.

I mean, let's look at the evidence.

The first time around, when Rudd became ALP leader - seemingly several lifetimes ago but actually only 3 and a bit years in the past - he did this largely through the media. Partly, this was down to necessity.

Rudd does not come from a union background, or some other sector easily identifiable to the Labor faithful, and had never cultivated much of a personal following in Federal Caucus. The media allowed him to bypass these more traditionally required steps to the party leadership and establish himself as a prominent public figure. And so he developed his media profile, on the one hand appearing on popular mainstream shows like 'Sunrise,' and on the other becoming a well established leaker and confidante of leading press figures, who he could then use to help push his agenda.

And here he is again, years later, cracking lame jokes and mugging to the cameras through the forum of a national TV program. And while 'Q and A' may not be 'Sunrise' (to everyone's relief), it's not the 'Mt Gambier Advertiser' either.

The Rudd persona that was on display on 'Q and A' is another indicator that the little nerdy bloke is thinking about taking the top job back again. He's had a couple of these, personas, since Gillard and the wallopers pushed him over last year. There was the teary windbag from 'resignation' day:



The sulky outcast, wronged by the world:



The hard working local candidate, just trying to represent his local constituents:



And the death defying parachutist stunt man:



Ahhhh... if only.

But this latest incarnation is the first one that has attempted to connect Rudd back with his successful public persona of 2007/08; nerdy but compassionate, compassionate but tough, tough but brainy, brainy but not that far removed from you. You can almost see him thinking: 'It worked a treat last time round... Why not again?'

Why not indeed?

While it's unwise to rule out anything in politics, Kevvy will find his path back to the top much harder this time round. For starters supporters, whether inside a political party or out in the boarder public, do not return to discarded leaders easily. Part of the appeal of a new leader is that they have something fresh about them, that they haven't yet bored us to death with their personal catchphrases and tale of woe upbringing anecdotes. Rudd no longer has this advantage. Whatever charm the way he asks himself a stream of rhetorical questions, or mangles the classic Australian vernacular:



used to possess, dissipated long ago.

Secondly, Rudd has almost certainly made himself more enemies within the ALP since he was last leader. As mentioned, he was never personally popular but when he became leader he'd also done his best to avoid the worst of the factional infighting and skullduggery that seems to make up so much of modern Labor. This is not the case this time, where his internal standing has been tarnished by a number of mini scandals; chief among them the leaks from Rudd's cabinet that seriously threatened to derail Labor's election campaign last year.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the third key element that will work against Rudd's quest to return to the Labor leadership is that John Howard is no longer Liberal leader. Rudd has always been a weird, tightly wound, bureaucratic little freak with a short temper, but, in direct comparison to Howard, suddenly looked like Hunter S. Thompson.

Rudd's public persona at the 2008 election was essentially Howard-lite: all the conservative tendencies without the extreme elements of Howard's policy program, 'Work Choices' chief among them. Flash forward till now and the roles would almost be reversed in a contest that pitted Rudd against Tony Abbott. A lot of people may be wary of Abbott's politics, but he is widely perceived as a knockabout sort of bloke. An every day sort of guy, largely free of artifice, who speaks his mind and, perhaps most importantly in Australian politics, the sort of bloke who wouldn't look out of place at the local pub. In other words, about as far removed from Rudd as you could imagine.

None of which, I suspect, will deter Rudd, in his second quest for the top (perhaps the only thing that would, would be a bottle in the face, and that only briefly). And it may not deter potential backers inside the Labor Party either. Rudd, after all, is an election winner, and that is something that has been in very short supply in the ALP recently.

All of which makes for the prospect of highly unstable times ahead for Labor, and creates another problem for the Prime Minister to deal with. And for Julia Gillard, this will make for a very strong sense of deja vu indeed.

2010: The Year in Australian Politics

What a year it was in Australian politics!

Really, it had everything; sex, violence, hit tunes... well, maybe it didn't have those things, but this isn't America. Even so, we had elections, changes of Government, a deposed Prime Minister, a deposed Prime Minister resurfacing as foreign minister, our first female PM, scandals, angry debate, boat people, cowboy hats and more budgie smugglers than anyone would've thought possible:



And so I wonder why, thinking back over the year that was, that I'm not filled with a sense of excitement, but mostly with a sense of disappointment... disillusionment... even self loathing. It almost reminds me of the time I went to see a Russ Meyer film at ACMI here in Melbourne; yeah it was great fun and I cackled like a goon at the camp hilarity of it all, but afterwards I felt like I needed a wash or, at least, two tickets to a Noel Coward play with some Proust to read afterward (this didn't stop me going and seeing another Russ Meyer film the following week, of course).

For rarely, if ever, have we had a year where there was so much political activity, so much political noise (to call it 'sound and fury' would be to imbue it with undeserved lofty qualities), that cost so much money (tax payers money for the most part), that lead to so little in the way of identifiable outcomes that would be of benefit to anyone.

2010 was truly the year of 'Nobody': Those who talk loud, saying nothing.



The major political event of the year was, of course, the Federal election.

And you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't get a bit of a jolt out of that one. I mean, it was so action packed that even people with no interest in politics - i.e. most people - were forced to pay attention as the leaks, backstabbing and vitriol mounted up. And that was just members of the ALP turning on each other! To say nothing of the result, which saw the two major parties effectively shadow box each other into a coma, leaving the outcome to be decided by a handful of Parliamentary independents in the House of Representatives; the nutjob in the hat, the crusty old timer, the serial candidate trying his luck in Hobart and the boyishly enthusiastic windbag who no one seemed to like very much.

To understand the election outcome it is instructive to look at the opposite trajectories of two of the major players in it; Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. The Ruddbot started the year miles ahead in the polls and appeared certain to stroll into a second term whenever he decided to call the election. But a strange kind of paralysis seemed to overcome his programming as the year progressed and he began to malfunction so badly that his party decided to disconnect him and destroy his CPU before he could even get back to the polls, making him the first Prime Minister to be kyboshed before facing re-election. This stands in stark contrast to the trajectory of the Opposition Leader, Tony 'Action Man' Abbott, who started the year as a Speedo wearing national joke, but came so close to becoming Prime Minister that many of my facebook friends posted status updates about leaving the country. Abbott lost the election but somehow seemed to convey the impression that he'd actually won it, or, that he'd rather be a respectable Opposition leader than Prime Minister of a coalition of misfits and weirdos.

This left the person who actually won the election, Julia 'Wavy Hands' Gillard, trailing badly behind Abbott and Rudd, in both interest and nickname stakes. To be as fair as possible to Gillard, she certainly tried hard once Labor's backroom head kickers had installed her in place of Rudd. But her efforts on the campaign trail were seriously handicapped by a hatful of factors, chief among them the fact that Labor's backroom headkickers had installed her in place of Rudd. It's quite hard to go to the electorate pledging yourself as trustworthy and safe when you've just conspired to overthrow your boss after a few bad polls.

Gillard also handicapped herself with a largely policy free election platform. I mean, what was she pledging again? Her vision for Australia? An unfunded promise to build a rail line in Western Sydney and an unbuildable refugee processing centre in East Timor. And something about broadband internet, coming to a suburb near you in 2035. Not that she was alone in the policy-lite stakes, as the Action Man took up the do-nothing-shout-loudly style of politics with gusto. He really seemed to enjoy it too, rushing around the country like the Loony Tunes devil in rolled up shirtsleeves, only pausing to yell 'Stop the Boats!' at any country fair, primary school, CWA meeting, small business, gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse that would have him:



The Action Man was rewarded for his shrill, one note, intelligence insulting campaign with truckloads of votes from all corners of the country, proving that people in the suburbs are just as easy to convince that darkies are about to invade the country and drive up electricity prices as they were when John Howard was in charge. Sadly, you can bet we'll hear more about this issue, in the same overblown fashion, in 2011.

The Federal election was also good for at least one minor party, with the Greens obtaining their first lower house seat won at a general election, when they took Melbourne from the Labor Party (Michael Organ won the Federal seat of Cunningham at a by election in 2002, only to lose it back to Labor at the 2004 poll). There were a variety of factors behind this result, chief among them the retirement of popular Labor sitting member Lindsay Tanner and the decision of the Liberals to preference the Greens ahead of Labor. But it also shouldn't be forgotten that the Greens selected a well known local candidate - Melbourne based lawyer Adam Bandt - and had him run on a progressive program choc full of fresh ideas. Hopefully Labor and Liberal alike will take notice of these radical initiatives.

2010 also brought a State election to Victoria, with an even more surprising outcome than that of the federal poll.

Boosted by landslide victories in 2002 and 2006, the John Brumby lead Labor Government appeared to have an impossibly safe and intractable buffer to prevent them from losing at the November poll. That they managed to do so, coughing up a dozen seats and suffering a swing against of above 6% state wide, is more a tribute to some bizarrely inept campaigning and a stubborn refusal to address any of Victoria's problems than anything that Opposition leader 'Big Ted' Baillieu and the Liberal Party came up with.

Based on the Labor campaign, you'd have thought that the chief priorities of the outgoing Government were making sure everyone knew that Brumby sheared sheep occasionally in his spare time:



That, and the fact that he wanted to spend about a squillion dollars forcing every Year 9 student in the state to go to some kind of combination karate/army fantasy camp. And all while the demountable classrooms at the states public schools remained unairconditioned and slowly fell apart, and the trains running to the schools and everywhere else regularly broke down on hot days while the Transport Minister expressed amazement that it was hot in summer time. I mean, again? Geez, that seems to happen every year.

Coming to the rescue of Victorians, then, was Big Ted, with his well documented plan to fix the state's problems by... doing things exactly the same. Which is certainly a radical idea, if not very inspiring. Well, 'doing things exactly the same' may not be exactly correct. Victoria's new government will buy a massive 8 - 8!!!!!!!!! - new trains over the next four years, so there'll be a handful more to break down on hot days. And they're going to give us a new state slogan too, to replace the old one that has been the bane of everyone's life for sooo long. What was it again? The old slogan? 'Victoria: Something something.' Man, am I ever tired of that thing. It's good to see that Big Ted has got his priorities straight.

2010 was also a rare year, in that an Australian managed to make a mark on the world political stage. We're talking, of course, about 'WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, who caused such a stir worldwide and was so widely discussed that he probably should've been 'Time' magazine's 'Person of the Tear.' I mean, Mark Zuckerberg? They know that he founded facebook about 8 years ago, right? All that happened to Zuck this year was that a film got made about him.

Anyways, Assange's website published thousands of secret diplomatic cables that had been leaked to it, managing to embarrass pretty much everyone with any association to politics in the process. He also found himself threatened, broke, jailed and facing sexual assault charges and so had pretty effortlessly acquired all the trappings of a major modern celebrity. We'll know that the transformation is complete if he releases his own line of underwear this year, or starts talking about his 'brand.'

And so 2010 came to an end, with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a kind of unsettled feeling, a bit like indigestion. And for all the disappointment and disillusionment and self loathing that comes from following the political debate in this country (and I smashed things several times listening to our leaders speak), there's no doubt that I'll do it all over again this year. After all, I need something to fill the gaps in the week and year when there's no footy or cricket on.

And So This Is Christmas

So now that the Victorian State election is behind us, and Victoria's new Premier has emptied the Parliamentary liquor cabinet into the bin and refilled it with a stock of mineral water, we can perhaps return to the Federal political scene.

You remember that scene, right? The Federal scene is the one with that angry bloke who doesn't like foreigners and the girl who giggles a lot and likes footy. And The Mad Katter, you wouldn't want to forget him. And Federal Politics is where all the big sexy stuff is located; foreign affairs, defense and pots and pots of your tax payer dough.

So yeah, let's flick channels and catch up on all the action that's been going on in Canberra over the past six weeks or so:



Which is to say, there hasn't been a lot.

Christmas seems to come early in Canberra and not much occurs for weeks either side of it. Julia went overseas, Tony went for a therapy session on the ABC 'Insiders' program and everyone else fled the capital, glad to get away from the place and home to their families for the holidays.

Which is nice for them. But it's probably worth noting that not everyone in Australia is so fortunate.

For, as reported by the Victorian newspapers yesterday, workers at 'Australian Paper's' Gippsland mill have been told that they will be forced to work over Christmas. Not even that actually. To add some sort of linguistic insult to injury, what they have been told is that they will be forced to 'volunteer' to work over Christmas.

Now, if you're like me and you immediately think, 'Well that's not right, you can't be forced to volunteer for something, where's my dictionary?' let me explain how it works.

When the previous collective bargaining agreement was signed at the mill, between the company and the workforce, it was included that the mill would remain open on Christmas and Boxing Day's but that only workers who volunteered would work on those days. Those that did volunteer would get a handsome hourly rate and a few slices of dried up turkey roll for lunch. Everyone else would get those days off to stuff their face and argue with their family, as is traditional (and maybe watch Australia get belted in the cricket, which is not). The company had more than 200 workers volunteer to work and all appeared to be well.

But the problem arose, and continues to arise, when it was noted that not enough workers had volunteered in the powerhouse and recovery boiler sections of the mill. The mill is unable to operate without these sections being adequately staffed.

And so 'Australian Paper' had an ingenious solution. Force their employees from those sections to work. When it was pointed out, by the CFMEU, that their enterprise bargaining agreement specifically said only volunteers would work over Christmas, 'Australian Paper' agreed... And then announced their 'compulsory volunteering' plan.

Now if you're like me and you immediately think, 'Hang about, they can't pull this sort of shit, didn't we have an election a few years ago to stop this sort of stuff, where's my Your Rights At Work pamphlet?' then you'd be right... and wrong.

Right in the sense that the 2007 election was fought largely over Industrial Relations and that the voters in this country rejected John Howard's more extreme 'Work Choices' in favour of Labor's more moderate policies. The new Labor Government then set up a new IR body, 'Fair Work Australia,' to serve as an independent umpire and intervene in disputes between employees and those employing them.

And wrong because when the CFMEU took 'Australian Paper' to 'Fair Work Australia,' FWA found in favour of the company, ruling that AP could force their workers to volunteer over Christmas if they deemed that necessary. Further, they also ruled that any required workers who failed to attend work over Christmas could be prosecuted for conducting an illegal strike and could be fined up to $6000.

Which is really too depressing to consider, and leaves open the possibility that John Howard really did win the 2007 election after all (something I thought had only existed in his and Tony Abbott's fevered minds).

And what have we heard about this from our elected representatives in Canberra? Some of whom purport to be from a 'LABOR' organisation? Quite a few of whom talk endlessly about protecting workers rights and safeguarding workers rights and sticking up for workers rights? Well, as of this writing, let me sum up what we've heard from them:



Meanwhile, negotiations between the two sides continue.

A Collingwood Supporter

In any election, state or Federal, there's always a certain cache attached to which electoral boffin is the first to 'call' the election. As in, which pundit is the first to get onto some sort of media outlet and declare the winner. And there's even more cache attached to doing this and getting the answer correct.

And the winner this time? For last weekend's state election in Victoria? If you're thinking ABC Election obsessive Anthony Green you'd be...dead wrong.

Incredible as it may seem, long forgotten British electro pop duo 'Bentley Rhythm Ace' were the first to call the outcome this time around. Even more incredible is that they called it 13 years ago!

For their 1997 song 'Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out!' pretty accurately describes the outcome of the poll and also what soon to be no more Premier John Brumby faced up to on Sudnay, the morning after.



In that the election was close, in terms of the number of seats won, with the ultimate winner to be decided by whichever of the major parties managed to win the seat of 'Bentleigh' (so the spelling's different, so what? BRA were artists, man).

The day after the poll, most media commentary had Labor on 43 seats (out of 88) and Liberal on 44. Well, that's not true. Most media had already called the election for Big Ted Baillieu and had the final result 45 - 43 in favour of the conservatives. But Brumby is not a man to let go easily. He waited a long time in the shadow of that likeable goofball, Steve Bracks, doing the Government's heavy lifting in Treasury while Bracksy rode around in the car with the flag on the bonnet, and he wasn't going to vacate the Premier's office until he was absolutely certain, beyond the shadow of any sort of doubt, that there was no way that defeat could be turned into victory.

Hence his election night prediction that a hung Parliament was 'the most likely outcome.' As predictions go well, optimistic is probably the wrong word. 'Creatively unrealistic' is probably closer to the mark (and people had said that the soon to be no more Premier was a dour man, with no creative side).

Which brings us back to Bentley/Bentleigh, as this was the last of the electorates in the 'too close to call' bracket. Nevermind the fact that, again, most followers of the election had this one already falling to the Liberals' Elizabeth Miller. The soon to be no more Premier was determined to soldier on, stating in a press conference on Sunday arvo that there were any number of pre-poll, postal and absentee votes left to count that could still get him over the line, although by this time the Liberal lead was about 400 votes and that was enough to extinguish any hope.

He then went on to point out that even if Labor did lose the election, and the soon to be no more Premier felt this unlikely, Labor really hadn't done too badly. I mean, the Liberals would only win by one seat. And Labor had won at least 43 seats, which was one more than Bracksy won in 1999 when he took office. He’d outdone Bracksy, see. And, and, and, Labor had held all of their inner city seats against the Greens. So really, you know, when you think about it, it was a pretty good result, overall.

So if the soon to be no more Premier's election night prediction was unrealistic, this analysis of the outcome was a bit like the captain of the Titanic saying 'Yes, well, the ship may have sunk and a few people may have drowned, but we were making incredible time!'

For the fact of the matter is that this election result is a disaster for the ALP. Pre election, they looked more or less impregnable having had two large victories in 2002 and 2006 which gave them a buffer of 6.5% and 13 seats statewide. Which really ought to have been enough. Especially when you consider that Brumby's opponent was Big Ted, who's never been the sort of person to inspire any emotion from the public previously, unless mild disinterest counts as an emotion.

But despite these factors, JB has still succeeded in leading State Labor over a cliff. The anti Government swing in the suburbs ran as high as 10 - 12% (JB himself suffered the ignominy of a 12% swing against him in his own electorate of Broadmeadows), and those are the sort of numbers that sweep even well entrenched Governments from office. The ‘It’s Time’ factor was a large part of this, the feeling that the Government had been there too long, but Labor had also had a series of legitimate policy failures – myki, public transport generally, hospital wait lists and water among them – for which the public were calling them to account.

All that was left was for JB to formally concede, which he finally did yesterday afternoon, this time mostly restraining himself from offering up all the same lunatic excuses listed above. However, the soon to be ex Premier couldn't resist putting on the record how he thought Labor had campaigned well and, if given his time over, he wouldn't have changed a thing. If this is really what he thinks, then we can expect a chapter in the ex Premier's memoirs about how he and Ted Baillieu are best mates and he was always a Liberal double agent.

Inept campaigner - and aloof, arrogant bugger - he may be, it was hard not to feel a bit sorry for JB yesterday. His dream of actually being elected Premier and riding in the car with the flag on the bonnet:



is over.

And after a lifetime dedicated to Labor politics; junior staff lickspittle, backroom apparatchik, Federal backbencher, State Opposition leader, State Treasurer and unelected Premier, he now has to find something else to do with his time. It makes a person's eyes moist to be sure…

… until you remember that he is a Collingwood supporter after all.

Vitriol

The Greens are doing it tough in this state election.

Well, everywhere but the polls that is, where they have been routinely recording 16 - 18% of the primary vote. This is a significant, dramatic, increase in the 10% they received at the last state election and approximately 3 times the primary vote pulling power of the National Party (who can be expected to furnish the Deputy Premier and several key ministers if Big Ted achieves an upset victory on November 27).

No, where the Greens are doing it tough is in their dealings with the two major parties and the media.

If you were to believe some of the stuff that has been put on record about the Greens in Victoria by Labor, Liberal and the conservative media, you'd have to think that this well meaning minor party were a pack of psychotic, unbalanced, fanatical, misanthropic, zealots, determined to bankrupt the state, overthrow the Government and make us all where hessian sacks to work (not that we'd have jobs, as they'd be outlawed by these nutters too). The 'Commie Nazi's' of out time:



But don't believe a word of it.

I mean, I used to be a member of The Greens and I was thrown out precisely for having those qualities (except for the sacks of course. I don't like hessian that much). If anything, the Greens that I met in my time were a bit on the dull side; middle class, educated types, with conservative dress sense and a tendancy to sigh and look wistful whenever the ALP was mentioned. Not the sort of types it was easy to imagine blowing up a coal fired power station or handing out drugs to school children (or whatever lurid fantasy the little paper dreams up this week).

Nevertheless, the vitriol directed towards the Greens remains.

I suppose in the case of the ALP, the reason is obvious. Many Green supporters are disaffected Labor voters and the ALP has finally woken up to the fact that a lot of them aren't coming back inside the tent. This has gone on to such an extent now that Labor are in danger of losing up to four inner city seats - Melbourne, Brunswick, Northcote & Richmond - in this election (having lost the similarly located Federal seat of Melbourne to the Greens earlier in the year) and they're not too happy about having their former supporters turn on them. A classic case of political jilted lovers syndrome.

But the reasoning behind the Liberal dislike of The Greens is subtler and at once more intersting and more alarming.You could even call it nefarious... which I will do (somewhere below) because I like that word.

The Liberals primarily have an ideological dislike of the Greens, their policies and what they seem to represent. As the state's, and the country's, primary conservative party, this is to be expected. But this dislike seems to run much deeper than a simple difference of opinion on health or education policy, until it reaches a point that a vastly better political commentator than myself may have referred to as 'Fear and Loathing.' This is particularly true among the rusted on, core Liberal supporters; businesses, rural folk and the elderly. The Greens really seem to give these people the willies.

Which may explain, at least partly, Big Ted's decision of last week to place the Greens last on Liberal how to vote cards for this coming election. Behind even the Labor Party who some of us, myself included, had stupidly thought were the Liberals political opponents. We can see now that this is not the case, and that Big Ted has in fact been working on a secret six year plan to keep the Greens out of the lower house of state Parliament (and not what he appeared to be doing over the last six years i.e. nothing).

But this can't be the whole explanation. Because, at first glance, this decision also seemed to mean that Big Ted had decided that he didn't want to be Premier either. For if the Liberals had a big task ahead in gaining a 6.5% swing and 13 seats to take office, that task has now become momumental, like 80's Oprah big, now that Labor no longer has to devote as much effort to holding their inner city seats against the Greens. For the truth of the matter is, without Liberal preferences, the Greens chances of snaring even one lower seat house are somewhere between slim and none.

But that's not the nefarious part. The nefarious part of this whole situation, which is so nefarious that it's drowning in it's own nefariousnessness, is as follows:

The Nefarious Part

It has been clear for some time that there is little difference between the two major political party's in Australia, at state or federal level.Most of the major ideological disputes between the two of them were settled some time ago and there is general agreement between the two sides on the best course of action in most areas. What they do argue about are peripheral details (the size and scope of stamp duty relief in this current campaign, as an example of this) or matters of what are usually referred to as 'social issues' (whether or not legalise euthenasia, say). Some of these debates are important, most of them are trivial and leaders from both sides try to shout as loudly as possible about them in order to cover this up.

What's clear from the major party's treatment of the Greens is that they both recognise this and that they're both comfortable with it. They are no longer really opposed to each other, but rather are only opposed to anyone who might break up their cosy little club and try and get their snouts out of the trough.

Nefarious Part Ends

Which is certainly something worth considering on polling day.

Not just in relation to the Greens, but any other small party or independant candidate who might be willing to get all Mr Smith Goes to Spring Street and shake things up a bit. I'm going to follow this advice myself. In fact, I already know who I'm going to vote for:

Big Ted

Two days ago, Liberal leader Ted Ballieu had his official Victorian Election Campaign launch at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Meanwhile, across town in Richmond, the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) were letterboxing the neighbourhoood my girlfriend lives in with an information pamphlet highlighting the shortcomings in Victoria's public transport system.

And, at the same time, Felix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe.



What do these seemingly unrelated events have in common? Well, if you exclude the last one, plenty.

We'll start with Big Ted.

Ted 'Law and Order' Baillieu made a lengthy speech at his launch in which he sought to highlight what he saw as the Labor Governments failings. These are familiar to most people who have paid any attention to the recent campaign (or, more accurately, anyone who's been anywhere near Victoria in the past decade). Victoria's problems then, through the eyes of Big Ted:

- Failings in the public transport system.
- Failings and associated scandals in the health system.
- Out of control street violence and rising crime rates.

Big Ted made it clear that these would be the things he’d be banging on about from now until polling day and, from his demeanour, it also appeared that he may think these three issues are enough for voters to tip the Government out.

But this is only one part of the equation for an Opposition leader at election time. Having identified what he felt was wrong with things, it was then up to Big Ted to outline how he’d go about tackling these problems if he were in charge. We return to his speach then, with actions and policies added to the previously outlined problems:

- Failings in the Public Transport System: Nothing
- Failings and associated scandals in the health system: Nothing
- Out of control street violence and rising crime rates: MORE POLICE, MORE JAILS AND LONGER SENTENCES!!!

That last bit said as loudly as possible to try and distract people from the whole lotta nothing in the top half.

So having droned on for some time about the woes of Victoria’s public transport system, and so having got most of his listeners on side, Big Ted then proposed to do sweet fuck all to address the problem. By which I mean, he proposed buying seven new trains in his first term as Premier (and about 14 million more if he’s then re-elected at some distant future time) and building two new train stations. And by doing so he performed the previously unthinkable trick of making the Government’s ludicrously inadequate and much derided transport plan look meaty and visionary.

I mean, seven trains? Sweet Jesus, what on earth was he thinking? A statement from the transport department the following day said that this was about the number of trains that they'd retire in the next Government's four year term, so we’d probably end up with exactly the same number of trains rolling around, if not less.

And this, tragically, is what brings us full circle and back to the PTUA and their well meaning flyers.

The flyers themselves were admirably non partisan in that, after highlighting some of the public transport system’s shortcomings, it went on to ask people to consider public transport as an issue when they were deciding who to vote for. Not to support Labor over Liberal or Liberal over Labor, but to look at each parties policies and work out who would do the most on this neglected issue, Make your vote count! That type of thing.

But admirable though this is, the reality for the people of Victoria is that they’re not being offered much of a choice by any of the prinicpal contenders in this election. Labor are offering up the same expensively advertised but woefully inadequate Transport Plan that they’ve been hawking to no enthusiasm for several years and the Liberal Opposition are offering us 7 fucking trains. And this is not even mentioning the Greens, who have come up with a well meaning but unafforable fantasy land uptopia of undergound light rail and new train stations on every corner.

Is there no way to make any progress on this issue? Other, much larger, cities than Melbourne have much better services and have had them for a long time. Yet here, the Government still seems stunned every summer that their trains and trams don't run so well when it’s hot.

Can we not get some experts in? People that have run successful public transport networks in New York or London or Paris? What about the academics at RMIT who study this stuff for a living and relentlessly criticise the current Government’s lack of foresight? Isn't it time we tried something a little different?

Fresh thinking please.

Time Warp

Editors Note: The following was written on the Friday before the election, the day before polling day. It was meant to be posted that day... or at least the next day, before the polls closed... or at least that evening, just shortly after the polls closed but - crucially - before I went to an election night party to get blind stinking drunk. Of course none of these things happened which is why I'm posting it now. Your correspondent saved it on a different computer on the Friday before polling day and couldn't access the fucking thing across the weekend. This is why your correspondent should be never be charged with doing anything important. Nor anything unimportant for that matter. In fact, your correspondent should probably spend more time in bed reading and leave the doing of things to others. My final thoughts then, from a sort of time warp, before the votes were cast...

Australian elections aren’t generally super close. They’re not generally landslides either, in either direction. When they are landlsides, there’s normally an overwhelming reason for it: Labor’s Paul Keating got buried in the ‘waiting with baseball bats’ election in 1996 when everyone in the country was sick to death of him and the Libs Malcolm Faser got wiped out in 1983 because he was stupid enough to put the economy in the hands of a young up and comer named John Howard, who did such a bad job that Fraser’s career came to an end.

But we’re a conservative bunch in this country.

The majority of people will vote the same way all their lives, never changing from whatever major party they support regardless of changes in leadership or policy. A handful, about a quarter of the electorate, of swinging voters who do actually change the way they vote from time to time decide elections in Australia. And this group - mostly immigrants, students, intellectuals and nutters - take some convincing.

Hence the fact that we’ve only changed Government three times in the last thirty years; 1983 (Hawke over Fraser), 1996 (Howard over Keating) and 2007 (that bloke from Queensland with the glasses whose name escapes me over Howard). That two of these elections are mentioned in the first paragraph about landslides tells you two things:

1) The limited amount of research I do for these entries leads me to reuse a lot of my material,

And

2) When we do decide to change Government there’s normally widespread community sentiment that the incumbant mob are not up to the task and need to be turfed out on their ear.

Which brings us to our current election, Julia v Tony.

Having read and watched and listened to a simply ridiculous amount of election coverage, and absorbed so many polls in the last few weeks that I’m inclined to talk about any topic at the moment in terms of numbers (‘What movie would I like to see tonight? 41% of me says ‘Incepetion,’ 39% says ‘Scott Pilgrim,’ 14% says ‘Me and Orson Welles’ with 6% Undecided’), I get the feeling that the Australian public at large is not angry enough with Julia and that Queenlsand bloke with glasses to aggressively turf them out. Nor are they sufficiently enamoured with Tony to get right behind him and sweep him into The Lodge so that he can yell ‘Stop the Boats!’ at them for three years.

The Labor Party has not been bad enough, nor the Liberals good enough, for this election to move into the decisive result category. Which leaves us where, exactly?

As Faye Dunaway put it in the movie ‘Network':

‘That puts us in the shithouse. That's where that puts us.’

In terms of where we are as a country.

The most likley result tomorrow is that Julia Gillard and Labor will be returned with a reduced majority, losing roughly a dozen seats in Queensland and NSW, and offsetting those by nabbing one or two in Victoria and South Australia, with the staus quo in place in Tasmania and West Australia. Not a very good result for a first term Government, but not disastrous enough for them to lose office.

A net gain of 17 seats, which is what the Liberal Party requires to win office outright, appears unlikely. The best that Tony Abbott can seem to hope for would be a hung Parliament, with Labor fairing worse than expected in Queensland or New South Wales and the Libs squeaking an unexpected seat or two somewhere else. There are likely to be four independants in the next Parliament, three of them former members of the conservative National party and it’s a possibility that Abbott may gain the Prime Ministership through the back door, leading a minority government with the support of these three.

Which leaves us where, eaxactly? No wait, I did that already. Ok! This time I’ll try and answer that question.

Where either result - narrow Labor victory or Liberal minority government - will leave us is with a hanstrung government without a sufficient mandate to do anything much. Small margin in the legislative lower house, blocked by the balance of power greens in the Senate. Which might not make much of a difference, since neither party has really appeared to propose to do anything much, policy wise.

The simple truth is that this has been a dispiriting election, with little on offer from either side other than some sloganeering and some, pretty modest, pork barrelling for punters who live in marginal seats. If you do live in such a marginal seat, you may find yourself with a new railway line if you vote Labor, or a new hosptial if you vote Liberal, or vice versa depending on where you live.

But the important questions that Governments need to deal with; how we’re employed, how our economy functions, how we deal with the rest of the world, how much tax we pay and what it gets spent on, how we look after our environment, how we attend to our poor and underprivelaged, will be little changed regardless of who wins the election. There will be some fiddling at the margins in terms of policy, and some lofty rhetoric from whichever side gets to do the fiddling, and a small number of punters who are slightly better or worse off because of it. And that’s about it. No wonder former Labor leader Mark Latham went on telly to tell everyone to vote informally (as about 6% of the electorate, or as many people as vote for the National Party, do anyway).

And the price tag for this never ending 5 week circus that will deliver this negligible result? This relentless bombardment of ads and slogans and photo ops and op eds pieces that will encourage approximately three quarters of a million people to write ‘Fuck’ on their ballot papers or just leave them blank? According to the ‘SMH,’ somewhere in the nighbourhood of $200 million dollars. And that’s just the tax payers share.

Something to think about during the next Parliament, when whoever is then Prime Minister starts describing how there's no money left to do anything substantial.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, can probably relate.

After all, leading a minor party in a Western country that has a two party system (i.e. all of them) can be a tough gig. The major party's suck up all the media time, energy and oxygen, leaving precious few column inches or airtime minutes for you and your party to try and get your pitch to the electorate out. What media attention you do get is often unwanted, as it's along the 'These nutty freaks want to give ecstasy to our school children' type of slanderish media beat up.

Which is a shame. Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott having both decided to campaign with empty slogans and trivial promises, a la Kang and Kodos in the 'Treehouse of Horror VII' ep of the Simpsons:

kang and kodos
Uploaded by Paul Kelly Academy

there ought to be plenty of space available for other ideas.

So into this policy free zone come the Greens, who had their campaign launch last weekend. A brief smaple of their announced policies to date:

DENTICARE: Modelled on Medicare, the idea is to provide a cheap, universal dental care system across the whole country. Most people with any experience of trying to get dental work done know that it is either ridiculously expensive (private care) or subject to ridiculously long waiting lists (public). The effect of which is that a fair proportion of Australians just learn to put up with wonky teeth or toothache.

EAST COAST RAIL LINK: The proposal is to build a super fast, hi tech railway link between the major East Coast capital cities; Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Most people with any experience of driving along Deathn Route 1 (AKA the Pacific Highway) or Death Route 2 (AKA the Hume Highway) thant currently link these three cities would agree there’s some merit to this plan. Better for the environment than air travel and thats before we even consider how many people would be employed to build it.

CARBON PRICE: The Greens want a 40% reductionm in Australia’s carbon output below 1990 levels by 2020. Recognising that they have no chance whatsoever in getting this done, they have proposed a more modest alternative, to be negotiated with the enext government; a simple tax on carbon of approximately $20 per tonne, to be kept in place until a more comprehensive cap and trade system can be put in place.

This last one to pay for the first two, among a host of other progressive initiatives (which, if you think the above is a bit too radical for your taste, you’re probably better off not finding out about. Euthenasia anyone?).

Now regardless of whether you agree with these proposals or not, it has to be admitted that they are bold, constrcutive ideas with a bit of vision attached to them. Compare these ideas to what the major parties have come up with, policy wise, so far in this election. Summarised here:

COALITION: A solemn, weighty, heartfelt promise to ease the tax burden on Australia’s business sector by reducing the corporate tax rate by 1.5%. And a solemn, weighty, heartfelt promise to produce a paid parental leave scheme by inccreasing the corporate tax rate by 1.5%. And, oh yes, turning around the few hundred hapless refugees who wash up here each year and leaving them to drown at sea.

LABOR: An absolute rock solid committment to prevaricate and obfuscate and procrastinate and do as little as possible in any sector, other than copy the policies of the Rudd government. A Government so bad that Rudd himself was replaced before he could even afce the electorate. And, oh yes, copying the Liberals on refugees, population, environment and any other major issue that frightens people in outer metropolitan areas.

Even giving a short paragraph each is probably overstating the amount of content in the major party's policy positions. What they've announced to date has been little more than fiddling at the margins, subtle tweakings to to a society that they've obviously both decided is already A-Ok.

But despite being almost devoid of content, these Labor and Liberal policies will be subject to thousands of words of analysis in the printed media and thousands of hours of discussion on radio and television, as earnest talking heads sift through the details and try and work out if there are any actual differences between them. In the meantime, better, more foward thinking, more interesting policies from the minor parties, the Greens being just one among many, will whither and die on the floor of the rainforest, starved of sunlight and rain by the tall trees around them.

To quote 'Citizen Kang' again:

Kang: It's a two party system! You have to vote for one of us!
Man: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man 2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.

Which us back to the beginning; whether you’re a small plant in the Amazon, or a muppet frog in the swamp or a geeky looking guy in the Asustralian Senate, it ain’t easy being green.

The TV Ads

And so they came. On a Sunday night, prime viewing time, with 'Master Chefs' and 'CSIs' being watched by millions, the first real moves of the 2010 election campaign were unleashed. By which I mean, the first batch of television ads went to air.

And they're interesting to watch, both because they give us an insight into what the major party's focus groups have been telling them, and to what the major party's think their probable support groups look like. To take them one at a time then, starting with the Labor ad:



Focus Group Feedback AKA 'Q: What Do You Like About Julia?'
Julia Gillard is a nice person who cares about the same things I care about. She really cares about Australia and wants to see it develop in a responsible way. She cares about strong border protection but she wants to target the wicked people smugglers not the asylum seekers. She wants to move the country forward (this last repeated at the end of the focus group meeting, 14 or 15 times, drone like).

How the ALP Views Their Supporters Based on This Ad
ALP voters are a pack of easily frightened simpletons who are so dense that they'll only be able to understand our policies if we whittle them down to two or three words each and even then we'll have to repeat them twice. And we better say those words in a soothing tone with some soft music playing or else the voters in the mortgage belt seats are likely to hide under their beds and miss the slogan. These people don't like the boat people but they do like the economy so we'll be sure and say that those are the things we dislike and like too. And, did I mention the slogan, 'Moving Foward'? Better say it a few more times so that it really lodges in there.

And the Libs:



Focus Group Feedback AKA 'Q: What We Like About Tony'
Tony Abbott is a man of conviction, a man unafraid to speak his mind, a man not constrained by the evils of moderated speech and political correctness. A man, in short, that we can rely on to take charge of things, shake 'em up a bit and maybe rough up the deadbeats while he's at it. He may be a successful politician but he's not that dissimilar to YOU! I mean, ME! He understands that Labor has let the darkies take over the country again and drive up electricity prices and this worries him, just like it worries YOU! I mean ME! Really, the similarities between YOU/ME and Tony Abbott are amazing when you think about it...

How the Liberal Party Views Their Supporters Based on This Ad
That there are a lot of people out there in the suburbs that are ready to join a neo-Nazi style cult, with uniforms and symbols and rigid rules and that, if such a cult isn't available, they may as well vote for the Liberal Party. These folks want a leader who'll throw a few punches and we've got one who's positivity popping out of his suit wanting to get his hands on someone. Kevin Rudd would have been better but Julia'll do. Equality and all that! So give 'em a logo and a four point plan and we'll hand out the red meat at the rallies. We've got a lot of work to do!!!

What's Interesting About Both Ads
That there is neither an ALP nor a Liberal Party symbol on display anywhere. Are these guys running as independents?