Actually, maybe I should've called this one 'SEX!' Just to pique people's interest:
But anyway, the Victorian State Election is done and is rapidly disappearing into the rear view for most people (Huh? Wha?) but I think it would be most remiss to let it go completely without some discussion of the 'Australian Sex Party' (not that I could ever actually let it go, of course).
You know those Sex Party people, they were the ones dressed in un-political (i.e. bright and interesting) clothes outside major polling booths, handing out the flyers about un-political issues (i.e. personal freedom and human rights). And they did quite well in the election, for a new party run by a handful of amateur volunteers, garnering nearly 13 000 first preference votes in the lower house and roughly the same in each of the four upper house districts they contested (running as high as 15 735 votes in West Metro). Not enough to get anyone elected but a pretty good showing nonetheless.
But that's not what anyone wants to read about when you mention something like the 'Australian Sex Party.' We want sex! And if we can't have sex, then we at least want something kinky, fruity, outrageous or un-political.
And they didn't fail to deliver in this area either. We had the battle over the Federal Government's dislike of female ejaculation... and the Sex Party's Bayswater Candidate Sortiria Stratis saying (gasp!) 'fuck' while on the campaign trail (well, sort of)... and their candidate for Richmond, Angela White, sending then State Treasurer Rob Hulls a porno film she'd been in:
To which Mr Hulls said something like, 'Sex? What's that?'
But my favourite 'Australian Sex Party' story relates to those volunteers I mentioned at the beginning. It seems that, small low-rent operation that it was, the ASP wasn't quite able to muster up enough people to man all the polling stations they wanted on election day. Their solution to this problem was simple: Pay a bunch of British backpackers $150 for the day to do it. ASP leader Fiona Patten confirmed that this had occurred and added that 'most of them we kept on to clean up after 'Sexpo' too.'
And this made me realise that we've been overlooking a vast, untapped resource in this country. The backpackers! There's lots of them, they're poor and they'll do anything for money! And not very much money! This is who we should have cleaning up our streets, planting our trees, emptying our bins and rebuilding our public transport infrastructure. It'll only cost about four bucks and a slab of beer. They're going to clog up our beaches and pubs all summer so we may as well get some bloody value out of them!
With a bit of luck and foresight, we could even end up with the same wonderful situation that people in the US enjoy:
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…
Due to powers beyond my control, I was unable to write any sort of prediction about the State election outcome before polling day. And by 'Powers beyond my control' I mean a combination of 'Friday night' and 'pub.'
But I don't see this as a big problem. I mean for starters, my wishy-washy prediction, something along the lines of:
Labor will lose seats in the East of Melbourne put probably hold enough of their rural and regional marginals to retain Government by a slim margin.
would have been dead wrong, making me look as stupid as every other political pundit in this town. Well, probably not quite as stupid as most of them... most of them are paid a large salary to be wrong.
Failing a prediction then, there's still the other stock standard piece of election day commentary available to me, which is the morning after analysis. The key points from last nights surprise election outcome then:
1. THE LABOR PARTY HAD BEEN IN POWER FOR 11 YEARS: And people were sick of them.
And that's it really. As John Keats would have put it, 'that is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.' (I've left out the bits about beauty and truth, these have no place in any sort of political discussion).
Much else will be said and written about the election in the coming days, particularly as the final outcome is still undecided as I write, but you need to look little further than 'Point 1' for an explanation as to the outcome. Labor had been in power for more than a decade in Victoria and was past it's use by date. Even a casual study of recent Governments in this country, state and Federal, will bear out the fact that once a party has been in power for 10 plus years, they live on borrowed time (see John Howard as a prime recent example of this).
So that's it.
I'd like to alert our network affiliates that we'll be finishing a little early tonight, tune in tomorrow when our topic will be 'What is the one true faith?'
(Brief Pause)
Well, actually, it's raining out and I've got nothing else to do right now, so let's have a few of the minor points from the election night result as well:
2. BIG TED - SUPER GENIUS: Big Ted Baillieu's do-nothin', say-nothin', propose nothin', smile politely campaign strategy frightened no one and so was enough for him to edge over the line once the voters had decided to give the incumbent mob a kicking. But you can expect his content-lite campaign to be described in the most glowing of terms and the man himself to be praised as some kind of modern day political superman, like a contemporary Napoleon on a roll after a big pot of coffee. I'm sure he'll be getting about in one of these soon (at least in his own time):
3. SERVICES, SERVICES, SERVICES: A companion piece to 'Point 2.' Liberal egghead analysis on election night had them winning the election based on voter dis-satisfaction with Brumby Labor's performance in delivering basic public services - public transport and health chief among these - and the Liberals superior plans to improve them. Half of which is fair enough. Labor had failed to deliver in these areas. Where we have a problem is with the other half, the bit where the Liberals enact their plans to rapidly fix these problem areas up. Because unless I was following a different election, the Liberals have no real, concrete plans to fix public transport delays, hospital waiting lists, sham urban planning processes, myki or anything else that's wrong in this state. In fact, for anyone who's interested, I'll bet a hundred bucks that these self same issues are what we'll be talking about in four years time, when Baillieu faces re-election against new Labor leader Randy the Purple Puppet:
(no one will want the job, see). I mean, wasn't Steve Bracks elected Premier largely on a promise to restore public services - public transport and health chief among them - that Jeff Kennett had neglected?
4. FEELING BLUE, I MEAN, GREEN: That the Greens pre election polling of 16 - 18% evaporated as the punters went into the booths to mark their cards should surprise no one. Relentlessly hostile press and a pseudo boycott from both major parties will do that, particularly to an under-resourced minor party largely run by well meaning volunteers.
5. THE END OF THE KENNETT ERA: Ummm... wasn't he voted out, like, 11 years ago? I remember getting drunk and partying all night as they carried his bleeding corpse out of Liberal HQ! Well, this may be but it hasn't stopped the ALP fighting every election since like Kennett was still tormenting all of us and not just the members of Hawthorn FC. But I doubt we'll see any more posters about how Kennett ruined the state at the next election. I mean... right? It's over... right?
6. THE ELECTION IS STILL UNDECIDED: Forget it, it's over.
Big Ted will be Premier, people who have committed minor criminal offences will go to jail and have their lives ruined and the States Year 9 students will rejoice that they've been spared two weeks of 'motivational camp.' Anyone who's waiting in the rain for an overdue train, or hoping that their life saving surgery will soon be approved, or watching while a large corporation builds an ugly apartment block in their midst without consulting them can expect more of the same, only with a different logo on the accompanying form letter:
There's something fitting about the fact that, on the morning before the election, the Liberal Party have a large ad on the front page of 'The Age' newspaper featuring a piece of rotten fruit.
No doubt they mean it to represent the Labor Government (or maybe, I thought in a moment of half awake delirium, John Brumby's brain) but it would be more appropriate to stand as a metaphor for the previous five weeks of desultory campaigning. What we've been given in Victoria, across the course of this election run up, has been a contest between 'More of the Same' and 'Doing Things Similar.' A sham choice really, between two political 'parties' that long ago abandoned ideoglogy and are more or less in agreement about how the business of government should be conducted.
For an example of this, we can return to the rotten fruit ad. Alongside the picture is a list of issues that the Liberals are claiming the Labor Government has mishandled during their time in office. There is no mention in the ad as to what the Liberal Party would do to correct these problems if we make Big Ted Premier and there's a reason for this: With the exception of the 'law and order' stuff, they have none. The list then, followed by a summary of what the Liberals would do in each policy area:
* UNSAFE STREETS: (Loudly) Longer sentences, more police, bigger jails!!!!!
* PUBLIC TRANSPORT MESS: (Quietly) 7... ahem... 7 new trains. Ummm, have people been watching the Ashes?.
* MYKI FIASCO: Keep it in exactly it's current form with no changes whatsoever.
* SOARING WATER AND POWER BILLS: These are bad.
* TRAFFIC GRIDLOCK: This is also bad. But, you know, we're buying 7 new trains... And The Ashes! What about that Peter Siddle! He's Victorian, you know.
* HEALTH & AMBULANCE CRISIS: ........... (crickets chirping)...........
As a political manifesto for change, you might feel that this list is a bit lacklustre. I mean, say what you want about Jeff Kennett, but at least he floated a few ideas about how he'd do things differently if we were foolish enough to elect him:
Sack Everyone! Kill everyone else! Poison the wells! Scorch the earth!
And he even delivered on those promises.
But his successors in the Liberal Party have failed to really articulate much of a case for change this time around. They have clung to the hope that the public were sick of Labor after 11 years and would turf them out without them, the Liberals, having to do very much. Just smile and nod, roll some lawn bowls, roll up the shirt sleeves, avoid saying anything much about anything and hope to sneak in on the back of voter dislike of the other mob.
And on one level, it's hard to blame them for this. After all, the same tactic worked for Rudd in 2007 and Bracksy in 1999 and Howard in 1996. The old adage about Opposition's not winning elections but Government's losing them.
But even if this is so, that doesn't mean we can't whinge about it. For the biggest loser in all of this cynical, small target, do nothin' politickin' is you and I. By which I mean, us! An ineffective, risk adverse, policy-lite Opposition simply means that the Government does not get held properly to account and so does not need to improve in areas where it's performance has been poor.
Imagine, as one example, that the Liberal Party in 2006 had gone to the polls with a policy to roll back Labor's broken promise on the Eastlink Freeway, and make it free to use as it was initially intended. Such a policy would have had one of two outcomes:
a) Labor would have been forced to match this policy. Or,
b) The Liberals would have been elected and would have enacted their policy.
The result, in either case, would be a free road for us to use. So the winners, whether Labor or Liberal won the election, would have been you and I. By which I mean, us!
Come to think of it, Big Ted was the Liberal leader then too, so I guess it's no surprise that a different policy from Labor was just a bit too hard, a bit too radical, a bit too alien for him to try. But if you take the example of the road toll issue above and then apply it to public transport, health, planning or whatever you like from this current campaign then it's not a long stretch to see that a properly functioning Opposition, putting forward some new policies of their own and opposing the Governments bad ones, delivers better functioning services for the community at large.
And so the ultimate loser from Big Ted's insipid performance in this election campaign, much more than the Liberal Party, is you and I. By which I mean... well, you get the idea.
And finally, a note of comedy in this otherwise grim State Election Campaign.
Well, that's probably unfair. Truthfully, the leaders have done their best to make us laugh over the past four weeks. Ted Baillieu's plan to fix the Melbourne transport system by buying seven new trains was a great example of absurdest humour, while the Premier's policy of sending all the State's Year 9 students to camp was probably the most laughable big campaign launch announcement in the history of Australian politics. And the sight of both of them with shirt sleeves rolled up and ties tucked into pockets while they try and play cricket or weld doors or anything else that their advisors have told them that 'regular' folk do, never fails to make me laugh.
But Big Ted and JB have been outdone in the comedy stakes, by none other than Australia's favourite annoying busy body, Harold Bishop. Or, should I say, Australia's former favourite busy body (see below), AKA Logie winning actor Ian Smith.
Former independent MP Phil Cleary, a mate of Smiths, is having a tilt at reliving his glory days and running for the State seat of Brunswick. He's long odds to snatch the seat, which is seen as a two way contest between Labor and the Greens (with Labor favoured).
To try and drum up some media attention for his outsider campaign, Cleary asked his acting mate to come with him to a media event on Tuesday morning. Cleary would be talking about rural planning policy, the TV networks and major newspapers would be there, and having Harold Bishop alongside would add a little juice to the event.
Except the TV networks didn't show. Nor did the newspapers. At least, not at first. One newspaper photographer finally came, 40 minutes late, and started taking photos of Cleary (who is something of a minor Melbourne celebrity himself). After taking a few pics, the photographer was set to leave, without having photographed Harold at all. When Harold complained about this, in classic hissy fit fashion apparently, the photographer told him that:
'He hadn't recognised him.'
Yowch!
Even for someone who spent their whole career on 'Neighbours,' and so has to be something of an industry joke, that's gotta hurt! But Phil and his mate are undaunted. They'll be back again on Saturday, handing out how to vote cards at the Brunswick Town Hall. They'll be there all week folks, don't forget to tip your waitress.
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:
Credit to Victorian Labor leader John Brumby, he does things his own way.
When it came to the Labor Party's State election campaign launch this week -r ridiculously late in the campaign for the usual reason - he followed the template of neither his Victorian Liberal Opponent nor either of his Federal counterparts. Whereas Liberal leader Ted Baillieu had, in his campaign launch earlier in the week, delivered up a series of minimal policies designed to change as little as possible, and Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott had, earlier in the year, delivered up policy free launches devoid of anything even remotely resembling a policy of any description, the Labor Premier had something tangible for us. An actual policy! Different to his opponents and everything!
Things got even more original when the Labor leader declared just what this policy was: He was going to send all the states year 9 public school kids to 'Brumby Camp.'
And much like the time when Homer decided to go to Clown College, I don't think any of us had expected the Premier to say that:
Most people, press and public alike, had probably expected any major policy announcements to be in the 'Law and Order' area, so countering whatever Big Ted had announced at the Liberal Party do. Or, if not that, than maybe something about the economy or the environment or health or, if on the topic of education, something about more schools, more teachers, better access for country kids to quality facilities.
Instead, we got 'Brumby Camps.'
Put simply, this is a proposal by the Premier to make compulsory a two week Government funded camp for all Year 9 students. Details were a little vaguer on what this 'camp' would actually entail, but Brumby created the impression that it would be a bit like a fortnight of Army basic training, karate school and one of those wilderness survival things, where people get left in the forest with a spork and a compass, all rolled into one. Further hints could, perhaps, be taken from a short biographical video about the Premier, also played at the launch, which showed Brumby shearing sheep, planting trees and playing sport:
The cost of the program, dubbed with the usual ridiculous Government spin style moniker of 'Education for Life' (or something) was about $2000 per child per year, or some $208 million across the next term of the Government.
Now, you can undoubtedly make a case as to the value of this sort of program. Something that engages with kids outside of the staid classroom environment and shows them something of the world beyond high school. The Australian Education Union, to cite just one example, was in favour of the plan.
But it seems to me that this is something of an indulgence, given that there are many more urgent problems facing our education system in this state. Particularly in the public school system and, even more particularly, in the bush, children from the lower end of the socio economic spectrum are disadvantaged in terms of access to proper facilities.
Public school children in many areas still study in demountable classrooms. The Government has continually failed in its efforts to get high standard teachers into disadvantaged or rural areas (in fact, on that topic, the Government really refuses to admit that there are any differences between standards of teachers). Some under-resourced public schools continually fail to meet basic reading and writing benchmarks (while the government fights tooth and nail to with hold this information from the public). And, in areas of concentrated poverty and neglect, school drop outs rates remain disappointingly high.
These are all problems much more deserving of Labor's attention, than setting up a well meaning but essentially frivolous network of lifestyle camps.
There is also more than a little hubris about the proposal. 'The Age's' state political reporter, Paul Austin, noted the day after the announcement that, far from a gimmick, the 'Brumby Camp' proposal was 'a long-held Brumby dream, something he's been working on from the moment he became Premier.' His legacy to the state, in other words. Something for us all to remember him by. But really, there are more pressing needs for the state Government to address in regards to education, than the Premier's place in the history books.
