Tag: politics

Benny on Bligh

This week is turning out to be very interesting.

First up, the Traveston Crossing Dam is no more. A rather belated move by Peter Garrett destroys his Labor counterparts plans. The Courier mail contains good coverage of the issue today, and highlights some very interesting points.

I don’t like Anna Bligh much. I didn’t like her much prior to her becoming Premier, but I decided to give her a chance and a clean slate. She has failed miserably in pretty much all respects.

However, she did have a tremendous task in front of her. She inherited a government that had spent up in the good times and left little for the bad, a SEQ grappling with water issues, a tarnished health sector, oncoming infrastructure problems (that many foresaw were approaching, but the past Labor government did little to avoid), and, it has to be said, a not overly sparkling bunch of MPs around her. So, it could be said, the previous Premier Peter Beattie bowed out just before his legacy took its crippling hold on the State.

It was nice though of Garrett to wait so long to enter the fold here. Good decisiveness by the Federal Government, who took the best part of two years to make a real stand against a project that has impacted so many people. Still, the move will probably win them further accolades as the saviours of the area. Maybe they were holding off so they didn’t impact Bligh’s chances, but then when they realised Bligh was too far gone, and there was no point trying to save a fellow party member if they are going to lose anyway, they may as well do something. It would be interesting to find out what happened behind the scenes there.

Still, Bligh has yet to display any real propensity for the job. She managed to introduce flouride, which was generally well received though controversial, and begin some water projects (all of which have so far had far more failings than successes). Many attacked her media profile, but I think this is a bit of a meh point. In today’s world of governance, public exposure is important. She used her leave for Master Chef, so while it was arguably a dumb move, it wasn’t exactly a decision deserving of major criticism.

Further into today’s Courier, the new Family (Surrogacy) Bill has gotten some coverage. Not content with the (very poorly written) article, I went and found the Bill. Indeed, section 9 (2) of the Bill provides eligible couples to only include married couples or mixed gender de factos. Springborg apparently has said the Bill is designed for hetrosexual couples only. So it might be a bit hopeful to suggest the language of the Bill almost sounds like it would be open in the future to providing surrogacy to all types of married couples (depending on who was defined as ‘married’). So, depending how you feel about surrogacy, this is at least a step forward. But, while making the step, there is also a bit of throwing the leg out and tripping some people over. It seems the LNP is adhering to its more conservative members on this one.

Which leads on to the next interesting happening. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens has introduced a Bill to allow same-gender marriage. High fives all round Sarah Hanson-Young. So it seems there is one awesome Green. But then she goes on and says this:

“I’m calling for the prime minister to … grant his members a conscience vote so we can get a true reflection of how the Australian community is feeling.”

Pfft. A conscience vote has no chance of reflecting how the Australian community is feeling.

November 12, 2009

Passive Aggressive veto

Some people might think that a veto, in itself, is an act of political aggression rather than passive aggression.

But when you embed a rude, coded, message in your letter to the legislative body you are turning down, it’s classic passive aggression.

It’s so rude I won’t post the picture. But if you’re not offended by the F-bomb – and want to see why the Governator is awesome (other than the fact he keeps his Conan sword in his office)… check it out.

Here’s a news story that shows it’s legit…

October 29, 2009

MasterCh(i)ef

I made that little picture myself. I thought it would’ve been done to death, but I found no evidence of that online…

Did everyone catch Anna Bligh on celebrity Master Chef last night. What a laff. Queensland produce was centre stage… right up until the second ad break. When the Queensland LNP took out a sixty second (I think) ad calling the Labor Party a pack of liars – with a nice, intense close up of a nice, intense looking Anna Bligh.

Unfortunately they couldn’t really capitalise on their ad. The call to action was the LNP website – sadly it seems to have been hacked. If you google LNP google gives you all sorts of warnings about the site not being safe. And you eventually get to an LNP holding page announcing maintenance.

Here is the graphical evidence…

October 15, 2009

Benny on electoral reform

The latest Electoral Reform Green Paper, Strengthening Australia’s Democracy (available from http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/elect_reform/strengthening_democracy/index.cfm ), was recently released. While it covers an issue that has been jumped all over recently by mainstream media, that of lowering the voting age, which while somewhat interesting, it also covers issues which I think are far more discussion worthy.*

I love talking about electoral reform. It is one of my favourite topics. I could talk about this paper a lot.

For today, sections 5.42 to 5.62 discuss the voting system used in the house of representatives. Currently, the house of representatives uses a preferential voting system. In effect, this means you can choose to give each candidate a number, and if for some unknown reason you give your first preference to a Family First candidate, throwing your vote away, you get an automatic reprieve and your vote is reallocated to your second preference. This process of preference skipping is repeated until a preference for a sensible party (or occasionally the greens) is reached.

In all seriousness though, the preferential system is a mostly sound system. The main problem from most perspectives is preferential systems always favour majority groups. A candidate needs to be the first to reach 50% of votes, via an initial majority or through preferences. For example, in Queensland, in each electorate, the candidate who gets to 50% first will win. Thus, as one of the main parties will generally get to 50% on preferences first in each electorate, minority parties will generally fail. Thus, even if 10% of Queenslanders support the anti-environment party and everyone else puts them as last preference, if those who support are roughly distributed evenly across all electorates, they won’t win a thing. Thus, sizeable minorities that otherwise do not form the majority views in any electorate will have no representation in the lower house.

Alternatively, the Senate has a proportional system. A fantastic article on how our proportional voting system for the Senate works can be found here : http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/guide/senatevotingsystem.htm . Or if you are dull like me, go read (the incredibly wordy and complex) section 273 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The way our proportional quota vote counting system works is very interesting, and I don’t think too many people in Australia have much idea how the Senate is actually elected.

So, back to the new green paper. One of the opportunities it outlines is for the House of Representatives to shift to a form of proportional representation, with divisions at the state or sub-state level. The green paper even discusses many of the arguments for and against the idea (it is quite the paper). This change has the potential to change the political landscape. It also raises some interesting issues for how the ballots will be developed (i.e. will the option remain of voting “above the line” for a single political party, thus accepting the party’s preference order for candidates).

I am still making my way through this paper (at 260 pages it is quite a study). And there have already been a few parts of it I have been disappointed with (the discussion of current proportional vote counting in the paper is poor). But this thing provides topic fodder for months.

*Utilising Nathan’s asterix technique, and noting my prior post, lowering the voting age is pulp news. Further, a 16 year old who wants to sail around the world is not news, and everytime the State Premier/Deputy Premier etc has a press interview, they should not be asked their opinion on said teenager sailing around the world, and their comment is not news.

September 30, 2009

Benny on journalism

I thought long and hard about what my next article was going to be. I have been working somewhat on a series of articles related to children, including should children be subsidised and are current custody laws in the Family Law Act adequate. However, these article take a fair amount of time to do.

However, for me, there were two events last week that really stood out. The first was the release of the latest Sensis Business Index.

On Wednesday the Sensis business index came out, and included one of the findings that, after 21 consecutive quarters of this prestige title, New South Wales was overtaken by Queensland as the least popular Government amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (in terms of their opinions of government policies impacting small business).

Anna Bligh is already struggling in the poles, and you think that this would be a fine source to use to ridicule her. Instead, the Queensland opposition seemed unblissfully unaware of this. Instead, from my limited media exposure, the main topic for journalistic reporting for the day was the Treasurer beating up the opposition over teddy-bears. Further, few media outlets even realised the Sensis report. Queensland Business Review picked it up rather early, but otherwise it mostly went missing.

This compares to earlier in the week, when the most recent Tourism data was released. The big story was Victoria overtook Queensland in Domestic Tourist Visitors. It led to quotes like this:

“The offer of big events, cultural events, retail, food and wine is considered more attractive than stuff like theme parks, Big Pineapples and gee-whizzy type of stuff,” Victorian Tourism Industry Council chief Anthony McIntosh said.

Apparently culture includes the absence of severe storms, floods, an oil spill and all the bad PR stemming from these. But this is beside the point.

Last week highlighted two things, the severe disadvantage the opposition is at due to its lack of human resources, and the absolutely woeful state of Queensland journalism.

I have always hated Today/Tonight. I think it more miseducates the public rather than provides a good consumer watchdog type service. While I think the media has become to an extent the method of exposing and crushing certain elements of society that seemingly fall through other safety nets (e.g. exposing dodgy dealings, etc), I am not sure Today/Tonight deserves much kudos in this regard. I tend to think Today/Tonight more highlights rather unimportant issues, directing attention away from issues that deserve focus and onto things that benefit less from continual oversight. It gives many issues that really don’t deserve much more than a passing comment a place in the limelight, determining the content of talkback radio switchboards the following day. And the ABC isn’t much better. I watched some Tony Jones interviews a while back that were absolutely terrible. He got various politicians on to discuss policy, and Tony Jones’ interviewing technique was all about aggressiveness and trying to get the interviewee to trip up. If a certain issue wasn’t working, he moved on to the next one. Providing an interview that provided information to the public and discussing the actual policy was non-existent. It was all about the spectable.

In a perfect world, the media would be on-top of issues, and be able to disseminate and present it to the public in understandable chunks. While it seems many journalists aspire to report the facts and avoid opinion, it seems that disection, inference and explanation also have disappeared. Instead, they go for the candy issues, the stuff that BTN would present to schoolchildren if all BTN’s employees were dead.

Analysis should be an integral part of journalism. Journalism has become a spoon-fed role. Journalists get given a prepared statement, and they put it through the journalism machine and out pops an article. I think the machine applies quotation marks and a snappy headline. Still, the commercial goals of the media are not in alignment with Australia’s democratic processed. With the media more concerned with the easy stories and the politician cheap-shots or trips-ups, politicians will be more focused on media and perception management rather than governance and providing policy related information.

Without the resources and personnel the government has available, opposition attacks seem to be limited to what they can derive from mainstream media. These days, Australian opposition parties are very limited in the extent of their government oversight roles, and winning an election is more a case of the government losing the support of the populace rather than the opposition winning it.

We have to begin to wonder, given the importance of the media in our political structure, does something need to be done?

September 21, 2009

Cultural Convergence

The West Wing is the best television show ever made. Without question. The Godfather trilogy is the best movie trilogy ever made. Also without question. So when one references the other… you sit up and pay attention…

TOBY
So we’ve got to do it for him. We’ll keep it away from this office but we’ve got to get real
now. Leo, Ann Stark’s a war time consigliere. That’s why she was bumped up.

LEO
I’m a wartime consigliere too, Toby. I was just hoping it’d be peace time a little longer.

I’ve posted a lot about the West Wing in the last couple of days. I’ve been watching a lot of it. It’s just as good third time round. We’re up to season 2 already.

The best news, is that the scripts from every episode are up online. Here.

I’ve been toying with some lengthier posts on the intersection of faith and politics in the West Wing – but I suspect that only really interests me. It really is the seminal political text of this generation.

August 7, 2009

Would you like salt with that?

My WebSalt article about the Greens is now up. You should go over there, read it, and argue it out with me in the comments… It’s much more balanced than my regular blogging fodder because it’s not polemic – it’s balanced… I hope.

“But there is much in their policy platform to celebrate – an Australian Christian Lobby media release issued prior to the 2008 election praised the Greens for their strong stance on climate change, refugees, overseas aid, work life balance and poverty. These are important issues – and should be serious concerns for biblical Christians.” “The criteria that determine an individual’s political preference will come down to personal convictions – that’s the fundamental freedom offered by a liberal democracy. So voters need to decide for themselves whether caring for the poor should be the government’s concern or the church’s? Or whether we should impose a Christian ethical framework on non-believers? Can we vote for a party that purposefully pursues an easing of restrictions in the circumstances surrounding the termination of the lives of unborn children? Just how much of a concern is the environment?”

July 15, 2009

15 and a half minutes of fame

I may have extended Corey Worthington’s 15 minutes of fame by referencing him in this letter I wrote to The Australian – but then he went and got booked for speeding and made the news by himself. My letter was a response to a stupid piece by Phillip Adams suggesting young people should get to vote because his 16 year old daughter is smarter than the average voter. My letter was edited slightly to fit in the space available so the second bit seems to be a bit of a non sequitur. 

July 14, 2009

Political Calvinist

Calvin is best known in Christian circles as the predestination guy. But I think he should perhaps be best recognised as the political guy. He was a champion of the separation of church and state – this came from the church first, not the state… and was big on the separation of powers with a system of checks and balances.

This fascinating biography of Calvin includes some great insights into how he interacted with the (still nominally Christian) government of the day…

“Calvin’s preaching was at times direct, confrontational, and “politically informed.” One 1552 sermon so irritated the Council that they inquired just why it was that he spoke of the Senators and other civil rulers in a particular sermon as “arguing against God,” “mocking him,” “rejecting all the Holy Scriptures [to] vomit forth their blasphemies as supreme decrees,” and as “gargoyle monkeys [who] have become so proud Calvin’s rhetoric was certainly not so academic or technical as to elude his audience.”

July 11, 2009

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

The NSW Government has just decided to ban bottled water.

Well, for Government departments.

They’ve done so after a country town in southern NSW introduced a blanket ban. This seems dumb.

People buy water for convenience sake. Water is important to live. The town in NSW will introduce filtered water fountains into the street.

I can’t help but think that this is an ailing Premier’s cynical attempt to ride a wave created by a small corner of his constituency…

“We’re asking government departments to phase it out unless there is obvious and practical commonsense reasons not to in the event someone doesn’t have cool water in a hot environment,” he [Premier Rees] said.

The Premier says the move will save taxpayer money and help reduce the impact on the environment of producing and throwing away plastic bottles.

“Local businesses in the town of 2,500 people are proposing to replace the bottles with reusables and then offer directions to filtered water fountains that will be installed on the main street.”

“At the very least, if they don’t ban it, then at least they will reduce their usage of it and in doing so, reduce the half-a-billion dollars a year that Australians are spending on bottled water.”

That’s half-a-billion dollars worth of convenience and jobs axed for ideological reasons.

Bottled water, in some people’s minds, is a tax on stupidity. Ever held a bottle of Evian up to a mirror? It’s free from the taps.

But that’s not the point.

As friend Paul pointed out in an email discussing the country town’s ban – people are buying the bottle not the water – you’re hardly going to stick your mouth on a tap in a public place.

Benny is most unhappy. Tap water gives him ulcers. He’s the only person I know who sees fluoride as an election issue.

Stupid hippies.

July 8, 2009

Market politics

SMH Economics writer Ross Gittins has written a great piece on the similarities between modern politics and commerce. He touches on the status quo bias and the fact that for politics to truly work voters need to pay more attention to the details – which he says is the same for consumers in the economic sphere. This raises a question about where this theory would lead were it to be fully applied to the system – and I think non-compulsory voting would be a likely outcome – then the disenfranchised and disinterested wouldn’t have to vote, and the interested would be rewarded with a greater per capita say in the election of the government. The alternative is to see a merging of the two – which is essentially the ideology pushed by “small government” market economists who want to see the “free market” take ownership of economic development. If that ideology was taken to its extreme it’d be a “no government” ideology where the market controls everything. Corporations could take the place of political parties, taxes could be wiped out and the “head corporation” could be the one that achieved the highest level of financial support from the public/customer – this financial support essentially equals power, and power is lost if the corporation fails to develop services for the customer. It’s not that different from the current system. But it doesn’t work – because Government has to play a role in delivery of essential services that have no real market value – or that shouldn’t. Like education, health, child protection, justice, and environmental protection. Gittins makes an interesting point about why the Government doesn’t really work as well as it should… and it’s precisely because we’re largely disinterested.

“In any case, they know that, should they actually fix a problem, we’d be grateful for about a week before moving on to the next problem on our list. Because we take so little interest in the details of problems and their solutions, because we rarely follow up yesterday’s concerns, because our emotions are so easily swayed by vested interests or the media, the pollies learnt a long time ago that appearances matter more to voters than the reality of the situation.”

July 8, 2009

There’s a “backfire” pun here somewhere

Malcolm Turnbull’s tenacious UteGate attacks were a serious miscalculation. It seems that it’s not a case of the public “not caring” about the issue – but rather caring that they had to continue putting up with an issue that nobody but Turnbull cared about.

He’s now a less popular leader than Costello (who has announced his retirement) and Joe Hockey. As usual, Peter Hartcher’s SMH analysis is worth a read.

June 29, 2009

Reader Poll

Does anybody actually care about Utegate?

K-Rudd isn’t going to resign. Swan isn’t going to resign. Turnbull isn’t going to resign. The guy from the public service is going to get fired jailed. It seems he’ll be the only one remembering this whole saga a year from now.

What I think would be awesome would be if the alchopops thing is the trigger for a double dissolution. Imagine being the Prime Minister booted out for trying to make grog more expensive. That’ll play in headlines all over the world.

I also hate the way we add “gate” to the end of every political scandal. It didn’t happen in the Watergate building so it’s not analogous.

I hope K-Rudd is learning his lesson about how it pays to be nice to your public servants and not make them work at break neck speed. They’ve claimed his Defense Minister and now they’re after him.

June 22, 2009

Political segway

When Dick Cheney wasn’t busy being awesome shooting his friends on hunting trips he was being awesome riding a segway.

June 17, 2009

Costello to retire… one day… soon

The best Liberal Party MP never to lead the country has called time on his career (at the next election). Ending over a year of speculation and no doubt taking some pressure off Turnbull.

I like Costello. Particularly during Question Time.

Today both K-Rudd and Turnbull had some nice things to say about him – his Costelloesque* response (appropriate given that he is Costello…):

“It is just possible both sides of the dispatch box are happy with the announcement I’ve made,” he said.

“It is a very nice thing to actually come here and not be quite departed and hear the kind of speeches one hears as eulogies. In fact, I might come back tomorrow, I’m enjoying it so much.”

*the coining of a new adjective.

June 15, 2009