Hate Speak

Despite the best efforts of the major parties to keep the election campaign devoid of content, a few issues have finally surfaced. And one of these has brought to light some very ugly people, with very ugly views about their fellow citizens.

I'm talking about this:

Like a cancerous growth, the flyers displayed above have  sprouted in marginal electorates across Australia. Shamelessly depicting distressed looking children alongside an emotive cry for 'mum and dad,' the flyers trade in the basest kind of public discourse imaginable; the language of fear and hatred.

The frankness of the homophobia on display is shocking. The message from these flyers is unmistakable in any way; gay people are abnormal and their abnormality corrupts children. The collapse of society follows shortly afterwards.

The second of the flyers above is the work of Jim McCormack, a long standing member of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Australian Family Association (AFA). Contacted by The Age newspaper regarding his work, Mr McCormack was unapologetic about distributing printed material designed to encourage discrimination. He explained that he stood by his ads and had acted out of concern 'for children in the future.'

This AFA website uses less noble sounding language. In a section titled 'Keep Marriage 1 Man + 1 Woman,' the AFA President, David Perrin, speaks of an 'unrelenting attack' from marriage equality campaigners and charges his followers to do what is necessary to defend the equation outlined in the heading. Perrin's language, like the whole of the AFA website, is aggressive, hostile and inflammatory. The only thing missing is a call to round up a posse and light a few torches.

The views of McCormack and the AFA are mirrored in sections of our polity.

The 'Rise Up Australia' party, an extreme right group headed by church minister Daniel Nalliah, takes a strong anti-gay stance. Running candidates for the Senate in all states and the ACT, Rise Up's website lists defence of 'traditional' marriage amongst its 26 policies. Their website also states that they will:

Laughably, two points after this blatant piece of bigotry, Rise Up offer their support for 'the protection of Human Rights.' The conclusion you can draw from this is clear; any homosexuals have given up their right to be considered human.

Nortoriously homophobic NSW Senator Fred Nile draws different conclusions. The Christian Democrat Party (CDP) that Nile leads has this graphic on their website:

So for Nile, it's more a matter of economics. Gay people are stealing straight people's money! Luckily the CDP 'will change that.' In 2013 it's hard to believe that an opinion like this could be held by anyone, and certainly not by anyone who wished to be taken seriously. Yet Nile is a long term member of the upper house in Australia's largest state and ahs helped shape policy there for decades.

And then there is the re-entry of former Prime Minister John Howard to the campaign this week. Touring marginal seats around Adelaide, Howard offered his view that marriage equality was 'nonsense.' He insisted this opinion wasn't discrimination because:

In other words, it's not discriminatory because... well, he doesn't say. Perhaps he thought it was obvious.

Throughout his Prime Ministership, John Howard denied that he was a homophobe. Much as he denied that he was racist, xenophobic or bigoted. Sure, gay and dark skinned people made him feel uncomfortable and he laid out policies designed to marginalise them and make their lives less equal then everyone else's, but that never meant he was prejudiced. He always said that he was simply upholding a traditional position. Maintaining the status quo. Not messing with something that wasn't broke. And any one of a thousand more wooden, thought deadening sentences that he used to lull his audience into a mild coma so he could get on with the job. Based on his quotes in The Advertiser, he clearly hasn't felt the need to come up with a new strategy.

This same mentality is at play in the people behind the examples of hate speak listed at the start of this article.

Jim McCormack, David Perrin, Daniel Nalliah and their supporters would have you believe that they're not prejudiced either. Or, at the very least, they will lay claim to this, while putting written and verbal material into the public sphere that proves the exact opposite. Their defence in every instance is the same as Howard's. And the same as people put forward to defend the White Australia policy, the denial of Indigenous rights and unequal treatment of women. These too were all traditional parts of Australian life at one time and overturning them took agitation, upheaval, much effort from good people. Minds had to be changed and new ideas promulgated. All of these things are now either gone or on their way out. None of them are missed.

Kevin Rudd has had a dismal election campaign and is probably headed for defeat this coming weekend. But on one issue at least, he showed signs that he was more than just a big plastic bag stuffed with focus group analysis.

For the first time in a long time, the Labor leader got on the reform side of an issue, and it looked good. This was his finest moment since his return to the leadership, and the only one anyone associated with his turgid campaign will want to recall later.

Replacing ill founded and unfair traditions with new ideas is called progress. If politics does not have this as a goal, what is the point of any of it?

6 vs. Half Dozen

There’s a long interview in The Age today with each of the major party leaders, capturing their mood and views as they make the final turn for the run home to Saturday. And it’s instructive to read them, back to back, as  taken together they give quite an insight into both the mindset of Rudd and Abbott, as well as the state of politics more generally in Australia.

Neither interview contains much in the way of policy, and so mirrors the campaign that surrounds them. Rudd again mentions Abbott’s ‘$70 billion’ worth of cuts to Government spending and services; a claim that has been revealed as essentially a figment of Rudd’s imagination by Polifact, the ABC and nearly every journalist who’s bothered to take an interest. And Abbott offers only the same un-frightening generalisations that the media have been happy to let him get away with to date; he wants a ‘stronger’ Australia and doesn't want ‘to leave anyone behind’ while he builds it, sentiments that would probably apply to anyone currently alive. I mean, could we find a public figure who’s against these things? Even Bob Katter and Clive Palmer aren't mental enough to demand a weaker Australia and a tougher time for punters stuck at the bottom.

If only...

So much for policy. Which makes sense really, as the major parties long ago made peace with the fact there’s little difference between the two of them anymore. At least, on the big questions about how the country is to be run.

Which brings us to other considerations. And here the differences between the two men can be more starkly defined.

Truthfully, Rudd comes across as a bit bonkers. The first chunk of his interview is given over to raving about the Murdoch press being out to get him which, while undoubtedly true, isn't worth his time complaining about. This is simply part of life on the left side of politics in this era, where Murdoch still holds an inordinate amount of influence, and there’s little that can be done about it. Murdoch’s media instruments aren't doing anything illegal and the sensible course of action, for a party leader anyway, is to get on with the job and just ignore it. By banging on about evil empires and conspiracies, Rudd just makes himself sound like  someone who’s watched too much Homeland and not gotten enough fresh air. Rudd’s underlings should soldier the burden of whacking back at the billionaire tyrant, he should be talking solely about health, Gonski, broadband, disability insurance and far above everything else, the economy. 

‘Most country’s would envy Australia’s economy,’ writes US economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz, yet Rudd spends far more time jumping at shadows then he does claiming some credit for this. I mean, is this really what he wants to run with in the closing days of a losing election campaign? ‘These bullies are out to get me!’ Shouldn’t Rudd be pointing out how Labor helped insure the strength of our economy, and then raising legitimate questions about how a change of Government would effect this rosy picture? After all, this tactic worked a treat for John Howard for a decade (until people got sick of his tracksuit and senile drawl). But Rudd seems no better at communicating his party’s successes than he was 3 years ago.

In contrast to the jittery, rattled sounding Rudd, Abbott presents the very definition of calm confidence. A comparison that has served him better and better, the longer the campaign has dragged on. Abbott clearly expects to be Prime Minister on Saturday, in a way that he can’t have in 2010, when he was always behind in the polls and only rated a fool’s chance of causing an upset. But behind the slick demeanour, lurks an alarming void. As well as having no policy information on hand to enlighten us with, Abbott seems determined to try and remove all traces of a personality from his public utterances as well. His interview consists entirely of the same well worn phrases that he’s been rolling out for three years, batting the interviewers questions away and presenting the blandest possible face of a potential Coalition government. With Rudd at least, you can see motivation behind his will to power; the Labor leader clearly values himself highly and nothing short of the top job will do (he also has a never ending list of enemies to get even with). Abbott would pretend that he’s not even motivated on this level. 

Why does he want to be Prime Minister? ‘To build a stronger country, without leaving anyone behind.’ This is the logical extension of his ‘Stop the Boats’ mantra: a reasonable sounding phrase that means precisely nothing. The truth of Abbott’s position as heir apparent is that no one has the slightest idea what he’ll do if he is elected, and that includes his colleagues. Consider the most expensive policy put forward by any party in this election; Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme. Costed at billions per annum, Abbott announced this policy on National TV, having consulted almost no one in his shadow cabinet about it beforehand. The absence of detail from the Opposition leader, and his well documented fickle nature and fondness for snap decisions, should be alarming to everyone, reinforcing why Abbott is keen to smile and nod his way through to September 7.

The Abbott revolution: Day 1

The Age also asks both leaders to identify their opponents best quality, which again highlights personality differences between the two men.

Rudd nominates Abbott’s love of his family and their closeness as a group.  In other words, he places no value whatsoever on Abbott’s contribution to public life and has instead chosen to praise the safest, blandest, least controversial thing he could think of. And this then serves to reinforce the image Rudd would like to cultivate of himself; that of a family man and a regular bloke. ‘I love families! Families are great! They are so great that even that cunt Abbott loves them. Even though he wants to steal $70 billion of their entitlements!’ Rudd has reached a point in his political life when he can include the words ‘working families’ in response to a question on any topic.

Abbott offers a more interesting choice, by selecting to highlight Rudd’s time served as Prime Minster. ‘A serious country does not elect nobodies to the Prime Ministership,’ Abbott says, offering a perspective on his own campaign, where he has sought to portray himself as ‘Joe Nobody,’ the affable bloke from next door. Abbott’s respect for Rudd’s time as PM displays his old school love of title and position and maybe offers a small clue to how he will position himself, post election, assuming he is successful. If Kevin Rudd isn’t a ‘nobody’ then his feat of knocking him off is magnified. Abbott’s victory speech will probably include a reference to ‘Kevin Rudd, the greatest political operator who’s ever lived!’

But neither Rudd nor Abbott offers anything much new, and certainly nothing that is newsworthy, in either of their interviews. Both appear to be stuck in the grove they’ve been in for the last five weeks; Rudd frustrated but unsure how to control his destiny, Abbott obfuscating but increasingly confident no one will catch him out.

Mercifully it will all soon be over. And life can then continue, almost exactly the same as it has for the last three years. What does Bill Shorten think of it all? We’ll probably know soon enough.

The Send Off

THE SETTING:

My workplace; the inner city office of a large corporation, chock full of dead eyed, middle aged suburbanites, spinning their wheels while they wait for something interesting to happen.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Three colleagues of mine, who sit in my immediate vicinity:

 - CATHY: Thirties, portly, talks incessantly, addicted to reality TV and internet dating.

 - JEN: Early twenties, hyperactive, very into her job, addicted to reality TV and junk food.

 - EMMA: Mid twenties, slim, recently preggers, plays with her iPhone all day.

THE SCENARIO

A conversation I overheard this morning between the three of them, as I fiddled with my email settings, discussing the Labor leadership drama of the night before.

CATHY: Did you watch House Rules last night?

JEN: Yeah. But, I mean, really.

CATHY: What?

JEN: Well it was interrupted because of that business in Canberra.

(General groans from several people nearby).

CATHY: Oh my God. I couldn’t believe that.

EMMA: I don’t want to talk about politics.

JEN: They stopped the show right in the middle and switched to some press conference.

CATHY: I was so annoyed!

JEN: I was just sitting there going, ‘Julia, get the hell off the TV!’

CATHY: I know.

JEN: ‘I don’t want to watch this!’

CATHY: I know.

JEN: Aargh!

CATHY: I know it’s meant to be important or big news or whatever. But… really?

JEN: I want to watch House Rules! I need to know what’s happening.

CATHY: Yeah!

JEN: But I can’t understand why they’d go back to the other bloke anyway.

CATHY: Rudd?

JEN: Yeah. Why would they go back to him now?

EMMA: I really couldn’t care less. They’re both terrible.

CATHY: Well, I think Julia hasn’t been going too well.

EMMA: No one likes her.

CATHY: And they were worried about losing, I guess.

JEN: But it just seems… weird. To go back to someone that they got rid of before. Why not just stick with him in the first place?

CATHY: Yeah. I don’t really understand it either.

EMMA: I don’t like him either. I think he’s creepy.

JEN: Or just stick with her, since they got rid of him.

EMMA: I really hate the whole thing. I’m just sick of hearing about it.

JEN: Yeah, I know.

EMMA: I hate politics!

JEN: It doesn’t even make any difference who the Prime Minister is.

CATHY: Yeah.

JEN: I mean, who cares? I just… I hate hearing about it.

CATHY: Me too. I’m sick of it already.

JEN: It makes no difference, just get it away from me!

EMMA: They’re all the same.

CATHY: Well, at least Rudd is in favour of same sex marriage.

(General murmurs of agreement)

JEN: But I don’t understand how anyone could be against that.

CATHY: That’s right.

JEN: It’s just… how does it affect anyone else? If people want to get married then… just let them.

EMMA: Yeah. It’s no one else’s business.

CATHY: It seems like a weird thing to be against.

JEN: Yeah. I just don’t understand why you’d be opposed to it. Like, I’ve never really heard a reason to be against it.

EMMA: Why would you want to stop people getting married?

CATHY: Yeah, I don’t know either. But you know that Abbott is against it?

JEN: Yeah.

CATHY: That’ll never change if he gets elected.

JEN: Yeah. And he probably will win.

CATHY: Yeah.

JEN: Anyway, who cares.

CATHY: Yeah.

EMMA: I don’t want to talk about politics!

CATHY: Well anyway, you know that House Rules came back on after the Gillard thing?

JEN: Oh yeah! I nearly turned it off it dragged on so long. But yeah, it came back on.

CATHY: I was so happy!

The Prosaic Response

It's been a long time.

One year and one day since I last wrote something on this blog, about the state of the nation's politics. My last piece was a lengthy hand wringing about the thorough ineptness of the Prime Minister and her handling of the Craig Thompson affair, something that was dominating the news and my frontal lobes at the time.

I ended by describing Julia Gillard's standing in this way:


Her credibility is at an end, her popularity is non existent and it's difficult to see how Labor can keep going, with things as they are, without doing something.


At the time, I imagined she would not be Prime Minister for much longer.

So it's some tribute to our PM that a year later she is still in the job. A tribute not just to her determination and steely nerve, obvious to even her harshest critics, but also to her sheer bloody mindedness in still wanting the office that she holds after all that has happened.

For if I was mistaken in my assumption that Labor would change leaders, I was not mistaken in thinking that they would do something. It's just that, in the style of modern Labor, what they did over the last twelve months made absolutely no sense whatsover. My error was in thinking that they were capable of a course of action that would.

To summarise what has happened inside the ALP over the past twelves is a torturous exercise, so I'll keep it to dot points:

• Gillard's primary leadership rival, Kevin Rudd, brought on a challenge that none of his supporters were ready for and which he lost comfortably.

• Kevin Rudd's supporters brought on a challenge that their nominal leader, Kevin Rudd, was not ready for and that, in the end, he didn't even show up to. 

• The resulting turmoil from two destructive, haphazard leadership challenges cost several senior ministers their positions, among them some of the Government's best performers, and caused the rest of the caucus to hide in the nearest cupboard.

• The carnage of the first three points prevented the ALP from mounting any sort of concerted attack on Tony Abbott who was, after all, meant to be their common enemy.

• The relentless awfulness of the first four points made the leader of the Labor Party about as popular as a relentlessly advertised internet gambling site, both inside and outside her party.

• All of the points listed above served to simultaneously entrench Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, as no one else now wants the job, and diminish her prospects of victory in October.

Quite a list of achievements, for twelve months. It makes you wonder how the business of Government carried on at all, with all the members of the Parliamentary Labor Party spending their time putting thumb tacks on each other's chairs and spraying each other with 'Fart Gas'.

But sooner or later, however reluctantly, the ALP had to turn their hands to politickin'. 

The budget is due in less than two weeks and, in an election year, this assumes added importance, as it sets the agenda for everything that is to come. The budget serves as a road map for what the Government sees as policy priorities (and gives them one last chance to splash some money around) and, conversely, guides the Opposition into areas of criticism and opportunity. For a struggling Government, like the incumbent,  it also provides a chance to let a little sunshine in and spin a positive yarn around what they're about. 

But any die hard Labor types who were hoping for a little joy and optimism  from Budget 2013, probably had their eyes opened by the Prime Minister's speech to a think tank in Canberra on Monday. She could hardly have dampened the mood more if she had let fly with a big can of 'Fart Spray' across the room. 

Tuesday May 14 will be no old fashioned pre-election budget.

There is serious, persistant weakness in global growth.

Global weakness creates important economic pressures in Australia.

The amount of tax revenue the Government has collected so 
far this year is 7.5 billion dollars less than was forecast last October 
(and) this will increase to 12 billion dollars by he end of the financial year.

In other words; our financial forecasts were optimistic and, not only will we not have a truckload of money to spend on new stuff for the election, we don't even have the money that we already committed to spending last year. So expect no new goodies, and a fair delay on the ones you thought were already in the post.

And this spells serious trouble for the Government. For bringing in an austerity style budget in an election year is normally just a form of political suicide; as the elections of 1996 and 1983 demonstrate. 

Gillard doggedly plodded along through the rest of her nationally covered speech, gamely trying to cover some of this grim news up by recounting the fine position Australia finds itself in overall; low public debt, low unemployment,  high wages, good credit rating, high standard of living (although she struggled, as always, to explain how the general swell-ness of everything matched up to the bleakness she had mentioned in her previous sentence)

Gillard even tried to explain current fiscal demands with a new rhetorical tactic, in the form of a metaphorical anecdote (and by 'new' I don't mean just by her, this is probably a unique tangent in the history of public oratory).

Imagine a wage earner, John, employed in the same job throughout the last 20 years. For a period in 2003 to 2007 every year his employer gave him a sizeable bonus. He was grateful but in his bones knew it wouldn't last.

The bonuses did stop and John was told that his income would rise by around five per cent each year over the years to come. That's the basis for his financial plans.

Now, very late, John has been told he won't get those promised increases for the next few years – but his income will get back up after that to where he was promised it would be. What is John's rational reaction?

To respond to this temporary loss of income by selling his home and car, dropping his private health insurance, replacing every second evening meal with two-minute noodles. Of course not.

A rational response would be to make some responsible savings, to engage in some moderate borrowing, to get through to the time of higher income with his family and lifestyle intact and then to use the higher income to pay off the extra borrowing undertaken in the lean years.

Commenting in The Age, Michael Gordon highlighted the oddity of the Prime Minister's preferred option for handling a scenario like this; borrow money to maintain your lifestyle until your income started rising again? That way seems to have a good chance of spiraling out of control. I mean, what if your income never comes back up again? You know what happens then...

Most people I know would have a much more prosaic response to be being told their wages were going to be frozen for five years; they'd start looking for a new job. 

And for our Prime Minister, facing hostile press, polls and public, this should be a very worrying metaphor indeed.

The Adventures of Tony Abbott, PM in Waiting: Prince Tickets

The Adventures of Tony Abbott, PM in Waiting: The Pie Defence

The Adventures of Tony Abbott, PM in Waiting: The Thompson Saga