This fortnight’s Seat of the Week is Eden-Monaro, renowned throughout the land as the “bellwether” seat that invariably goes the way of the party that wins the election. It is not immediately obvious why it should have this reputation, as its record in this regard is far exceeded by Macarthur, which has gone with the winning party at every election since its creation in 1949. One reason is that Eden-Monaro’s broad mix of elements make it arguably representative of the state at large, if not the entire country: it includes suburban Queanbeyan, rural centres Cooma and Bega, coastal towns Eden and Narooma, and agricultural areas sprinkled with small towns (as well as the ski resorts at Thredbo and Perisher, which have many visitors but few voters). Furthermore, the area covered by Eden-Monaro has been remarkably little changed over the years, whereas Macarthur’s varying fortunes have largely been determined by redistributions. Eden-Monaro’s boundaries have always been defined by the ocean in the east and the Victorian border in the south, and its relative population decline has roughly cancelled out the effects of the increasing size of parliament.
The most significant aberration was when it acquired a north-western spur that took in Goulburn between 1934 and 1977. The 1998 redistribution left it with boundaries that were almost identical to those it had before 1913; the current redistribution, which saw New South Wales lose a seat, has for the first time expanded it westwards to include Tumut and Tumbarumba, formerly in the safe conservative seat of Farrer. These areas produced a two-party Liberal vote well into the 60s at the last federal election, and their addition has seen the Liberal margin increase from 2.2 per cent to 3.3 per cent, despite the loss of the Liberal-leaning Batemans Bay area to Gilmore. Labor’s strongest area remains the Canberra satellite town of Queanbeyan, not counting its outer suburb of Jerrabomberra where the 60/40 split in Labor’s favour is reversed. The coastal area can be divided into a finely balanced northern half, including Narooma and Moruya, and a strongly Liberal south, including Eden and Bega. Cooma and other inland towns are also solidly conservative. The 2004 election produced little change in voting patterns throughout the electorate, with the Liberals recording an overall swing of 0.4 per cent.
Eden-Monaro was held by conservatives of various stripes for all but one term until 1943, the exception being Labor’s 40-vote win when Jim Scullin’s government came to power in 1929. Allan Fraser won the seat for Labor with the 1943 landslide and held it against the tide in 1949 and 1951. He was defeated in 1966 but was back in 1969, finally retiring in 1972. The loss of his personal vote almost saw the seat go against the trend of the 1972 election, with the Country Party overtaking their conservative rivals for the first time to come within 503 votes of victory. The Country Party again finished second in 1974, this time coming within 146 votes of defeating Labor member Bob Whan (whose son Steve unsuccessfully contested the seat in 1998 and 2001, and is now the state member for Monaro). However, 1975 saw the Liberals gain strongly at the expense of the Country Party as well as Labor, and their candidate Murray Sainsbury won the seat with a two-party margin of 5.6 per cent. Sainsbury held the seat until the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983; the same fate befell his Labor successor, Jim Snow, who was swept out by a 9.2 per cent swing when Labor lost office in 1996.
The seat has since been held for the Liberals by Gary Nairn (left), who cut his political teeth in the Northern Territory as president of the Country Liberal Party in the early 1990s. Nairn moved to Queanbeyan and joined the Liberal Party in 1995, moving swiftly to secure preselection at the following year’s election. Within a year of entering parliament he landed a significant role as chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, but he then had to wait until October 2004 before being made a parliamentary secretary. Nairn was further promoted to the outer ministry position of Special Minister of State in January 2006, in which capacity he has expanded his authority in relation to electoral matters. He has also had to deal during the current term with the loss of his wife Kerrie to cancer, at the age of 53.
Labor made national headlines in April when it announced its candidate would be Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Kelly (right), a military lawyer who had been credited with efforts to warn the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about the AWB kickbacks scandal, and the Australian military about possible abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Kelly was installed as candidate a week after the party’s national conference empowered the state executive to appoint candidates in 25 key seats over the heads of the local party branches. The preselection process had already been considerably delayed because the party did not wish for it to coincide with the March state election. The front-runners to that point had been Kel Watt, a former political staffer linked to the Right faction who had been the candidate in 2004, and Andrew Beaumont, a Treasury official who had won backing from former member Jim Snow and Fraser MP Bob McMullan. The high-profile independent mayor of Queanbeyan, Frank Pangallo, said in April that “senior party figures” had encouraged him to throw his hat into the ring, due to what Andrew Fraser of the Canberra Times described as a “growing feeling” that Beaumont and Watt “might not have what it takes to win”. Less fancied candidates were Graham Shannon and Toni McLennan, both public servants.
197 Comments
Nicely done
Eden-Monaro will indeed be a very interesting seat to watch come election night.
One point though, isn’t Farrer a Liberal seat, not National?
Does Kelly have any connection with the area? I’m not sure that a seat like Eden-Monaro is the best place to install another ‘celebrity candidate’. They’d have been better off putting him in a safer Sydney seat like Chifley or Fowler, and getting a well-known local to stand in E-M .
The following are the current average polling results for ALP TPP% from Newspoll, Morgan, AGBN and Galaxy, from Jan 1 to date (dates approx):
06-Jan-07 57.0
20-Jan-07 55.9
03-Feb-07 55.8
17-Feb-07 57.1
25-Feb-07 58.2
06-Mar-07 59.8
13-Mar-07 59.8
18-Mar-07 59.4
02-Apr-07 58.8
16-Apr-07 59.0
01-May-07 58.9
13-May-07 58.3
20-May-07 56.8
24-May-07 56.3
27-May-07 56.0
If you make a linear trend line out of all of these and project it forward to election time, the result is pretty flat and predicts a TPP at the election of about 58%.
But, adding the recent Galaxy and Morgan polls has begun to reveal a distinct tendency for the TPP to drop. If you look backward along the graph, it now conveys the distinct impression that John Howard’s much hoped-for tip point (or at least a maximum for the ALP) occurred in early March.
Then, if you make a trend line out of the figures from early March on, the trend drops sharply until it reaches a value of about 50.5% at election time. That would be line-ball for seat balance.
When we get 4 month’s trend post-March, the trend (up, down or flat) will probably be locked in. In 1996, we had 1 year of “flat”, in 1998, we had 6 months of “slightly up” and in 2001 and 2004, we had 6 months of “down”. In all cases there was not much disturbance of the trend, notwithstanding (e.g.) Tampa and the handshake.
If the recent Galaxy poll is really very aberrant and corrects itself next month, all of this is out the window and will just go to show how wobbly the statistics are.
I think the reason no-one talks about Macarthur as bellwether anymore, even though as you say William its record is much longer, is that no-one thinks Labor can win it this time. As you said, its boundaries have changed substantially; so have its people (and their wallets).
Parties sometimes confuse cause and effect with these bellwether seats. They think if they win this seat they’ll win the election and so throw more money than is warranted.
Agree with Marcus, Labor should have put a local in.
If Gary Nairn was president of the CLP in the NT and moved to Queanbeyan where he joined the Liberal Party in 1995, you could hardly call him a local. Anyway, where does Mike Kelly live? Canberra?
You are quite correct Pseph, Sussan Ley won the seat for the Liberals when Tim Fischer retired in 2001. Now corrected.
Looking at the booth by booths from 2004 in E-M much of the swing to the ALP appears to have come from the coastal booths around Batemans Bay, Moruya and Merimbula – areas that have large numbers of retirees and may have been attracted by Medicare Gold. If that was the case, it is likely that Gary Nairn’s majority of 3.3% may be understated by 0.3 – 0.5%, small but significant in a marginal seat.
“The 2004 election produced little change in voting patterns throughout the electorate, with Labor recording an overall swing of 0.4 per cent.”
Nope – the other way around. The 0.45% swing was to Nairn, in 2004, not to Labor.
“… where he joined the Liberal Party in 1995, you could hardly call him a local.”
Except that he had a holiday home at Adaminiby for the 15 years prior to his preselection and he consequently spent a good deal of his time in Eden-Monaro each year. Except that he actually expanded his surveying business to Queanbyan in 1994 (not 1995) to look for a greater slice of Government work. Remember: he moved to the region for business, not for preselection. He was subsequently asked to run by local Libs and, don’t forget, that he eventually went on to beat five other people in the preseletion, something that the Lawyering Colonel didn’t (couldn’t?) do.
“Anyway, where does Mike Kelly live? Canberra?”
Yep – he’s never lived in Eden-Monaro in his life. Can’t even correctly pronounce the name of the electorate: it’s ‘mon-AIR-oh’ not ‘mon-AH-ro’ – the former is a place, the latter is a Holden. The only claim for local interest he makes is that his great grandfather is buried here.
Adaminaby – PIMF
Phil Robbins,
Fair enough I suppose re Nairn, although I doubt he was as much of a high-profile candidate as Kelly.
I still maintain that Labor tends to get it wrong with putting big-name candidates in marginal seats (Cheryl Kernot anyone???). If they really want to utilise these people’s talents they should install them in safer seats, and put hard working locals into the marginals (particularly country seats which don’t respond well to blow-ins). In recent times, the Liberals have tended to do this pretty well, and it’s strange that Labor hasn’t learned to do the same.
Thanks Peter, I have corrected my error about the direction of the swing.
Would anyone be too offended if I replied on the Julia “Medicare Gold” issue? A view has been put on this which I feel needs to be responded too.
Hi Esj, I bow to Mr Bowe’s wishes but I think it is a psephological topic if only because of the way Mad Mark and his advisors butchered its presentation. Perhaps rather than letting this descend into a policy debate you could be allowed to reply and I promise not to respond.
OK lets ignore the policy merits – which I think is a fair starting point for these discussions.
It was driven by the need for “bold” and “visionary” policy because of a view that Labor needs these things to excite voters as a so-called reformist party.
I think the 2nd element was a desire to be seen to be doing something big because of the nepotistic smell about Labor.
As a result the turkey known as Medicare Gold was hatched by Ms Gillard. I think it fell apart because the ethical issue was Labor giving free health care to the super wealthy over 70’s.
It encapsulated the modern Labor dilemma – what does this party actually truly believe in? What is the truly die in a ditch issue of belief? What is worth losing an election over?
Medicare Gold stank to high heaven because it showed this is a party without soul. Presumably Labor thought destitute 68 year olds deserved free medical care too? What should 80 year olds have got – Medicare Platinum?
If it was such a good policy why did they bury it unceremoniously too !
If you’re trying to interpret the South Coast retiree vote it’s useful to know where they come from. Without having seen any numbers I would imagine a disproportionate number of retirees in the area would come from Canberra and would have brought their (largely Labor) voting habits with them. The Liberals also did surprisingly poorly in Bega at the state election – essentially no swing, and that was coming off a base from 2003 of no sitting member and a bitter pre-selection which ended up with an independent running and polling quite strongly – with those factors removed in 2007, and the statewide swing, you’d have expected a strong swing to the Liberals but it didn’t happen.
It was a very good policy and should never have been buried, far better than giving millions or billions to a dysfunctional private health system.. what a rip of this is.. whilst people sit on waiting systems with have this rip off! and private insurance continues to increase prices for health cover.. far better to provide a free system for all.. instead of champagne and three star meals..
In recent times since Allan Fraser all members for Eden Monaro have had personal votes, this didn’t stop changes of members when a government fell
eg 1983 and 1996. The recent state election figures combining Bega and Monaro would suggest a labor Victory in E_M was quite possible. I think this is really a bellwehter seat
I don’t think Kelly can be called a “celebrity candidate.” Hands up who had ever heard of him before his candidacy was announced? He is not a TV newsreader or popstar, he is a lifetime professional soldier. Since I know his son quite well, I have met Kelly and heard him speak. He is a very tough nut as well as extremely smart.
It’s true that in a country seat not being “a local” will count against Kelly, and of course Nairn will exploit that for all it’s worth. But EM is probably less “rural” in its political outlook than most country seats, because of the proximity of Canberra and its overlap into Queanbeyan. This will be offset by Kelly’s impeccable credentials on national security issues. I doubt even Downer or Nelson will have the nerve to argue the toss on Iraq with someone who spent a year as the senior Australian in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.
I think the issue is: is this person some kind of high profile blow-in those clowns are foisting on us? That negative sentiment usually outweighs allure the other way (although a police/soldier’s uniform is generally worth a few votes).
Nairn may have been a blow-in (or not, as his shy and retiring staffer Dr Phelps tells us) but if he was he was a low profile one, as most are. It’s the “famous’ people you’ve got to worry about.
The only “famous” candidate I can think of that did well was Pat Farmer (2001). Does anyone know if he was a local? (I suspect yes.)
Again excellent detail William.
The redistribution did not do Labor any favours. One wonders what will happen at the next redistribution across inland NSW as the drift to the city accelerates as a result of the drought/global warming.
IMHO placing Kelly in Eden-Monaro is a good tactical decision. Given his background it will be hard to attack him on national security issues, and Rudd will use him to show that he (Rudd) understands those issues as well as Howard. However, he is not a shoe-in, which saves safe seats for people closer to the ALP core, letting high-profilers like himself and Maxine McKew create a stir and waste Liberal Party time/money/energy on combatting them (Howard will be distracted by McKew and the Sydney media focus, and I suspect that Nairn will want a reasonable share of Ministerial attention for his seat too).
Like Wilkie’s campaign in 2004, it also highlights a potential deficit area in Coalition policy which the ALP will try and exploit, and lastly I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a ‘rub-off’ effect in the ACT, with some ACT residents being swayed to vote ALP by his proximity. This might then have a flow-on an effect in the Senate, as Gary Humphries is sitting closer to a quota.
I agree that not being a local will count against Kelly, but I don’t think he’s a “celebrity candidate”, as Adam rightly points out, he is not a famous person.
To answer Peter Brent, I am sure that Pat Farmer was basically a local, in that he was from the Camden / Campbelltown region. Whether he actually lived in Macarthur I don’t know, but he was local enough for a city seat.
’showed this is a party without soul.’ I’m not going to argue the call on Medicare Gold.
But the is a party without soul is something that is going to be relevant in Eden-Holden car as it will be in every electorate in Australia.
Edward I’m sure you will be familiar with this quote:
Therefore, the success of the Labor Party at the next elections depends entirely, as it always has done, on the people who work.
I try to think of the Labor movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket, or making somebody prime minister or premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labor movement would not be worth fighting for.
Joseph Benedict (Ben) Chifley – 1949
For more than 100 years this has been, and it remains our soul. You forget it is not just a political party, like some, it is a movement. I think what you are trying to get at is the difficultly in applying and balancing this in the economy Keating created. Rightly or wrongly as a whole country we are where we are and candidate selection and policy formation, even when headed for the light on the hill is not easy. Spin spin is easy. Policy, good policy that makes the lives of Australians (and dare I mention Iraqi’s) is not easy.
Medicare Gold highlights that.
It is an admirable idea, surely you cannot argue with that. Can we afford it? I don’t know! Was it sold well? I think not.
If Howard has taught us anything it is that we sneak up on the light on the hill, while saying we are camped at the cosy campfire at the base. Baby steps baby steps.
Neither party machines will admit it but people do love a candidate, from either side, with real passion for the local area, even in urban areas. Just it is very hard for a candidate to make an impact at a local level in a very large suburban seat where there is not so much community.
I enjoy reading that Kelly is a soldier and will sock it to Downer over Iraq, then I remember the words “Swift Boat”
Further comment: why don’t Australians make a bigger thing of pointing out chickenhawks. I can’t believe the Howard Government so full of “Vietnam-Age” Ministers, none actually managed to go. A bit like Cheney, they had “other priorities”
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but my impression is that Medicare Gold was a stinker because, in its best traditions, the ALP had been short of the backs of envelopes when costing the proposal. At least I cannot recall the Coalition’s claims of the true cost being refuted.
A smarter policy might have been to give the 80+ group a pension bonus, on the grounds that they wouldn’t be drawing it for too long – a similar principle in other words to Chancellor Bismarck’s introduction of the age pension at 70, an age by which most Prussians were dead.
About 50 per cent of the total medical costs in a lifetime occur in the last six weeks of life. So further medical subsidies to the aged could be very expensive, means-tested or not.
Well Black Jack your analysis is simply economic side and maybe you are right, I suspect no-one was going to waste time refuting anything the Government says in an election campaign, it would have less credibility is just left alone.
Back to the light on the hill your economics driven proposal is actually designed to not help people, Medicare Gold was designed to help people. There is a subtle difference there.
Met Mike Kelly at a function in Canberra this week. V impressive. He’ll win – easily.
Why? The Libs have never been more on the nose in the ACT in the 30 years I have lived in and visited the place. Given that the Feds are the major employer, the depth and bitterness of the mood is truly astonishing. A lot of cynicism even amongst people you’d expect to be supporters about waste and featherbedding that borders on the corrupt. Local business people can’t compete with the wages the Feds are paying and are struggling for staff. It was said that if you’re warm and upright with no skills or qualifications you’ll still start on $50K in the public service just to shuffle paper for the next ad campaign.
Now this mood doesn’t stop at the ACT border. A lot of these people actually live in NSW on acreage plots or in the semi-rural towns like Bungendore. In Queanbeyan, Nairn needs to win the more upmarket Jerrabombera booth (where he actually lives) and I’d be very surprised if he didn’t suffer a pretty big swing there. If there’s any sort of swing to Labor in the rest of Queanbeyan then Nairn is gone.
Calling Mike Kelly a “celebrity candidate” doesn’t really fit – I’d just call him a really good candidate. I doubt he is particularly well known in any electorate, compared to, say, Peter Garrett or Maxine McKew or Malcolm Turnbull. I reckon Marcus and Mumble are over-weighting the value of being a local.
He looks really competent. So, what is wrong in putting him up for a marginal and definitely winnable seat like this one? Particularly when putting his life experience up against that of a professional politician, who only became a local when he first won the seat.
Didn’t Mike Kelly purchase a house in E-M with the intention of moving in a few months ago? That makes him as local as most politicians.
Saying you have to be local to run is silly. Most Australians move several times over the course of a lifetime, and move between states, cities and towns – I think there is no people on earth who move so often as we do, or live so far from our birthplaces!
Blow-ins ARE representative of teh common people.
Military candidates are little help if their party has a perceived disadvantge on national security, remember John Kerry. Didn’t Kernot do well to win Dickson in 1998?
Pat Farmer was a Campbelltown local prior to running for Parliament, although I’m not certain if he lived in Macarthur (as opposed to Werriwa), I think he was, but not sure. He definitely was involved in the local community, I remember him being involved with my brother and sister’s local Catholic school in Eagle Vale near Claymore.
Geoff
Cheryl did win Dickson in 1998 and from election night onwards worked very hard at losing Dickson …. Poor Cheryl was unfortunately sold a pup in what was possibly a very clever ploy to destabilise another party on the same side of the political spectrum.
Ah, Gareth Evans one success in opposition ….
Thanks for Pat Farmer info.
I reckon at election time people think first about which party they’ll vote for. In this case it’s better for the opposition to have someone no-one’s ever heard of, eg Gary Nairn in 1996, even though he actually was a blow-in.
It’s not about whether someone is just a blow-in, but whether they can be portrayed as such someone who they’re flying in. Kelly, who’s getting lots of attention, can be portrayed like this. Nairn was presumably a nobody so he couldn’t be portrayed as anything.
Cheryl Kernot scraped home (by 176 votes) in Dickson in 1998 only because her name recognition gave her a majority of prepoll votes. Other Labor candidates in close contests missed out.
Comparing Mike Kelly to John Kerry is absurd. Kerry served in Vietnam over 30 years ago, became prominent as an antiwar activist, then became a professional politician. He lost to Bush because (like most US Senators) he is a pompous blowhard and because he failed to convince voters he would make a better president than Bush, which you wouldn’t have thought was very hard. Kelly is a career soldier who has quit to stand for Parliament, a very different thing. He is much more comparable to Jim Webb, who won a Senate seat in Virginia last year.
exactly
VINDICATION
St Paul on Lateline tonight – confirmed Julia MEDICARE GOLD has blown it on IR and confirmed the dead set obvious UNIONS are finished and the ALP needs to cut them lose.
Passion, brains and courage in spades – Labor’s lost leader
So Edward, you voted for Paul Keating those years ago?
No, no, Keating was too right-wing for Edward, he wants a *real* socialist as Leader. The transparent way Liberals like Edward boost Gillard so as to puff up what’s left of the Left and make trouble for Rudd is so risible it’s hardly worth pissing on.
I agree Gillard is very talented and could well have been leader had she not been silly enough to join the SL. The same could be said of Tanner.
Indeed Gary
The ALP should never have rejected the Keating philosophy, but reject it they did, and were proud of it. Another thing to thank Simon Crean for.
Keating. If Rudd fails, they had better trigger a by-election somewhere and get him back into parliament.
Dreams…
Ah Adam,
I just have a sneaking suspicion that you may be looking down the barrel of another three years of blogging.
or as they said about Patrick White’s biography ‘flaws in the glass’ -Claws in the arse
IMHO, the tragedy of Keating was that he did not have the opportunity early in life to tool around a university. If he had, he would have been more sceptical than he was about economic theory, and its modellers and forecasters.
As a consequence, despite a huge and perhaps unique intellect, he was diffident about taming the excesses of the Pure Treasury Line. Nobody before or since has been as brilliant in articulating the Line, a talent that perversely worked against him.
As a result, he accepted advice that burned the guts out of the economy at the time.
But he could make a come-back. He would still be younger at the 2010 election than Howard is at this one.
ahh PJK – we still love ya.
Paul Keating is one of my political heroes!
How I used to look forward to Federal Parliament in the early 1990s when PK was at his eloquent and crude best, flailing the Liberals.
It’s a pity I missed LATELINE last night. I agree with what Keating said.
Gillard is a dud, the ALP ought to ditch the ACTU, Rudd should dump the policy agenda he inherited from Beazley.
Black Jack,
Neo classical economic theory has been proved right time and again. It saved the UK, Turned the US around and prevented Australia from going into recession when everyone else did.
THe reason Keating lost wasn’t the economy or the recession, or even his arrogance.
It was reconcilliation and the republic. Had he left them alone he probably would bot have had a fighting chance in 96
Paul Keating is the prime minister who’s ideas are closest to my own.
Black Jack, you’re forgetting that the Treasury was opposed to floating the dollar, which Keating supported. When Keating became Prime Minister he felt the treasury had influenced him too much, so he opposed a lot of their recommendations then. But I agree when he first became treasurer he was still influenced by what they suggested, but only to a point.
Evan: You can read the transcript here:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1945485.htm
Or watch it here for broadband
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r149390_530052.asx
Or here for dial up
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r149390_530053.asx
Both links are Windows Media Player.
Keating was not an initial supporter of the dollar float and abolition of exchange controls. It was driven by Hawke’s office, Keating at first adopted the John Stone/ Treasury line that it was a rather dangerous move.
Andrew are you seriously arguing that reconcilliation and the republic cost Keating the election.
My memory is that more than 50% of Australians favored a republic and reconcilliation was broadly accepted and divorced from the mining company extreme right wing scare campaign about native title issues.
If you are right that a majority of Australians lacked a desire for independence and lacked compassion before Howard walked us down the racist hate filled path in the footsteps of Pauline over the last 11 years I would be very concerned. That lack of campasion and subservience has flowered under such poor leadership is not surprising, but to suggest it actually bloomed and flowered under progressive leadership is very interesting.
My 2c on some comments made above:
- If Labor brought back Keating they’d never win an election again. The guy is almost universally despised.
- The reason Keating lost was unemployment and recession.
- Yes, Keating makes amusing and witty negative comments.
- Keating’s economic theories were largely correct and he was right to pursue them. He can claim responsibility for much/some of the current economic sunshine, however the voters will never see it that way.
Morgan has Labor’s primary support up 2 per cent to 51 and the Coalition up 0.5 to 38 per cent. Two-party preferred, Labor is up 0.5 to 58 per cent.
As expected, the SA Labor machine last night dumped Linda Kirk from its Senate ticket, rather unwisely installing SDA chief Don Farrell in top place ahead of shadow minister Penny Wong. Sure, Wong is from the Left and Farrell from the dominant Right faction. But Farrell is normally a canny operator and must know that the government is making some mileage out of Labor’s links to the union movement. Little known journalist Cath Perry, 30, is in the winnable third spot. Kirk, 40, a legal academic, will now serve out only one term.
Don, the DLP man!
Not just a “union hack”, but all the lefties will hate him too–he’s firmly seated in the right part of the party.
Keating lost because his preoccupation with worthy issues such as reconciliation and the republic just looked out of touch to traditional blue collar Labor voters. Their loyalty had been stretched to breaking point by a decade of economic reform including the accord, industry deregulation, tariff reductions and enterprise bargaining – not to mention the words recession and interest rates. Just look at Pauline Hansen in Oxley. It was the only Qld seat to stay with Whitlam in 1975 and she would have sunk without trace as a Liberal. After they disendorsed her it gave a whole lot of people an excuse to vote him down.
Paul, god bless ‘im, has never really accepted that he, and not Howard, created her. So he will never accept that electorate has now gone full circle.
I largely accept your point Mark, but submit that on the whole ‘worthy issues’ whether we agree with them or not do frighten our wallets all that much.
And yes a strong progressive government with ‘worthy ideas’ created the conditions for a uninformed ‘unworthy’ minority backlash. Still even given the conditions created by the Labor party it was inside the Liberal Party she refined and spread her message, they who endorsed it with her initial candidate endorsement, and the Howard through 11 years of endorsement fostered and encouraged the views that are at best ‘unworthy’.
Like the PM’s quite ‘unworthy’, uninformed homophobic comments this morning.
In 95/96 I was living in Menai a suburb of Sutherland (HUghes) and the absolute contempt that people held for reconcilliation and the republic ideal was quite venomous.
As i recall most of the people at the time felt that reconcilliation wasnt about reconcile but about theguilt factory. And here was the Prime Minister telling the nation they should be ashamed of themselves.
Maybe people havent noticed but most people in this country prefer there own people. thats not racist thats just a preference.
Australia has not gone down a racist path its always been like this.
Absolutely agree with both of you Yasmin and Andrew. Keating as usual was absolutely right in principle but in these instances he failed to take people with him. But Hansonism is now a joke and people may be ready to take a more progressive approach to nation-building. Howard’s comments this morning and the reaction to them simply reaffirm the view that he is now the one who is out of touch.
Menai is close-ish to Cronulla. Enough said. “We grew here, youse flew here.” Oi oi oil
Their was one thing that Keating said last night that should resonate and that being the pathetic and useless advisors the Labor Party has these days- nothing like the Bob Hoggs’ of the eighties and nineties. Latham in his diaries explains beatuifully some of the half wits that Labor has within its ranks and the people who help win( or never win) it elections..
Additionally, Keating talked about how pathetic the unions have become.. and i could not agree more.. full of careerists, self-serving factional hacks who spend more time on union elections, smear campaigns and very little time on gaining union members and helping members.. I have always wondered why unions are so powerful in Europe and so willing to help working people whilst here they tend to operate as little cliches, fighting for factional supremacy and numbers on conference floors so their members can grab a seat or two… a good example is the stacking occurring in the seat of Scullin currently.. supposedly done by a unionist and his mates just so he can enter parliament.. of which then he can introduce economic rationalist policies which in the long run does little for working people….
and so much for this boom can someone please tell me how much is funded by credit.. if we took this away the economy would be in terrible shape.. can’t wait when overseas banks stop lending or want to be repaid… and what of this glorious economy governments no longer spend on anything and no longer own anything so we have infrastructure all around this country in terrible shape.. profit and shareholders now come first and what of the social and physical capital does this matter? look at communications is anyone spending anything on broadband capital or energy sector so dependant on terrible coal and unwilling to spend on measures which would be environmentally helpful and then their is airlines and banking.. look how Qantas is treating its’ workforce and willing to massively go into debt just for mega bucks for its’ board members.. and then their is our banks so great at making us pay to keep money in them… Didn’t Governments own airlines and banks once oh but privatisation creates more jobs and more money but for whom may i ask?
“We grew here, youse flew here.†Oi oi oil”"
Thats exactly how I remember the place.
Unions are declining everywhere around the world.
Latham’s book is not a credible source for anything except his own delusional vanity. He thought everyone was an idiot except him.
Gary Gray was a waste of space, that is true, and it is a shame that he’s getting into parliament. (I thought he left Canberra to go back to the farm and be with the wife and tend the chooks and all that stuff. Why is he returning?)
Further to Andew: If “there[sic[ own people” means people like Andrew, then I prefer the average aborigine or migrant over Andrew any day.
But Keating puts Hogg in the same category as Gray.
Your obviously been hoodwinked by the media when it comes to Latham… and this view about everyone have you actually read his book? he at least questions this pathetic rumor gluten society we live full of people talking about one another, spreading lies and unable to get above such trivalities as to focus on caring and helping one another, delusional no he was someone who in my mind could actually see through the fog of crap that politics has no become in this country.. with politicians now very busy spending their time on how much they can make and in a very short time and not what really matters and that being doing what is actually in this countries interests.
Sorry Andrew but I think the view you express pre Howard represented an extreme wing of the Liberal Party and those further to the right.
I don’t think people would have done the ‘grew / flew thing’ remember back then even the Libs had the moral courage and compass to disendorse Hanson, if only Howard had the courage to lead in a different direction I am almost certain the Cronulla thing would never have happened. But with 9/11 Howard could resist using encouraging ignorant racism to try and lever a few extra votes, and Cronulla was, IMHO the dividend of that investment.
And while I don’t think Keating took the people with him, I think he was leading in the right direction and as a whole we as a country were following. Howard has double backed and blended in with the racist tail and of course some have followed him.
Yasmine this is fundamentally a racist country.. it is ignorant, uneducated and selfish.. and whist I agree with most of what you said regarding politicians leading and nurturing debate i however believe that within many in this country is a mistrust of people whom are different.. The Cronulla riots were partly caused by Howards’ rhetoric but they are also a product of the media with their current affairs shows highlighting minority groups and muslims’ and certain talk back hosts who encourage outrage..
Keating tried but to bring change regarding race is just a mountain to climb in Australia they people here see things through greed and don’t care what minority group must suffer to get it.. one only has to look at how we have treated Aborigines for the past two hundred and nineteen years.
Mark,
Your comments are very true.Keating had the verve, panache and honesty to inspire and to lead.
Now there is just a wasteland of careerists and spivs.
My comments also apply to this rotten Howard Government.
Mark
Agree that Australia is a fundamentally racist country. I am disappointed with the way we have treated the aborigines.
We have the oldest civilisation in the world in our country but it constantly disparaged for political reasons.
The aborigines have been here for between 60,000 to 100,000 years.
Yet we have Ruddock spitting on them saying they were stone age and had even invented the wheel, we have Windshuttle, Howards favourite historian saying the Tasmanian aborigines were not wiped out by the settlers.
I could never understand how Windshuttle could get away with his comments when if I made the same comments about the Holocaust I would face condemnation and leag action. Yet Australia is the only country to successfully practise genocide.
We do not appreciate the aboriginal history, we are destroying their history on the Burrup pensinular and disparage them at every opportunity.
And the reason, land of course, land that holds uranium and can now act as a nuclear dump.
The Cronulla riots were also a result of the behaviour of the youths of ‘mediteranean descent’. the ’skips’ may have gone to far, but the behaviour of the ‘lebs’ was disgusting, and truly much of what happened to them they deserved.
if you recall the cause of the cronulla riots wasnt howards rhetoric, but a group of ‘lebs’ putting two volunteer lifeguards in hospital.
and howards rhetoric ensured cook and hughes were going to stay in the blue cloumn for quite some time. The worst your could accuse howard of was opportunism, or dare i say, being clever.
I agree with Andrew. Australia is not “fundamentally a racist country.” It is a vastly more tolerant country than Britain, France or Germany, where I have been travelling. Look at the almost universal acceptance now of large-scale immigration of Chinese and other East Asians, who were the original targets of White Australia. The problem with Australian Muslims has nothing to with race – what race is David Hicks? It’s a problem of ideology. A minority of Muslim clerics, almost exclusively in Sydney, have been egging on a minority of Muslim youth to reject the culture they live in and become a self-created extremist ghetto. This lies behind both the Lebanese gang culture that sparked Cronulla and the recruitment of people to violent jihadism.
Here we go again blame a few muslims for the problems, this does not mean you should retaliate.
Also adam what of the 2001 election? Was this election not one due to the race card? Yes we have accepted asians and the Chinese but how long has it taken? I think we are tolerant within limits of our thinking. And yes there is perhaps an element of people within the Muslim race who are somewhat extremist but don’t all races have such groups- what of the Jewish race for example. To single out extremist elements within the muslim faith fails to look also at extremist elements within our own race.
ONE=WON
Their are dickheads amongst all races. What we need to do is discriminate against dickheads, rather than against people based on race. This should occur irrespective of their place of birth, or religious beliefs. I don’t care if it is Sheik Al-Hilaly, or George Pell. If someone spews hatred against someone because of their race, gender, class, sexuality etc then they should be condemned.
Not often I agree with Mark but the Hanson issue was created under the Ketaing government. I will say straight out that I loathe the man – for being an overbearing undereducated false intellectual – and for the policies of the Hawke government making the early 1990’s recession much worse than it had to be. And folks it was no fun not knowing how long your job was going to last – oh good I can come in on Monday – and eventually being unemployed myself – as were most of my friends and lots of others I knew – and this was in Sydney where things weren’t meant to be that bad! I eventually went overseas to work because it wastoo grim here.
But, when I came back between 93 and 96 the amount of political correctness and the righteousness of the rainbow coalition that had been put together and believed it had a divine right to rule was sickening. And obviously a lot of other people thought the same thing, it was apot on the boil and in 1996 the lid finally blew off.
I agree with other threaders that these things are cyclical and that there is a change of tone out there now.
I vote for Adam as the Rudd Labor Governments first correctness commisioner. Perhaps Yasmin can be the Registrar?
Notes from Deakin – Victoria’s most marginal seat. The ALP candidate Mike Symon (now part time ETU official) is quoted in this weeks Whitehorse Leader as disagreeing with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on IR!! in particular the maintenance of the Building and Construction Commission until 2010. The Whitehorse Leader is usually pretty straight down the line – IMHO not enough political debate in its pages -but the article went on to provide Mike’s thoughts on Dean Mighell. This could be interesting to watch how this all unfolds….
I said at the time that Symon was a poor choice for a marginal seat, and as usual I was right (Edward take note). Harkins and Symon should both be disendorsed and the ETU disaffiliated.
Adam,
Dont forget the secretary of the HSU in New South Wales is the candidate in Dobell.
Howzat for picking winners? The 2 must win seats in NSW and VIC both have union hacks!! Same in QLD I think in Petrie is it?
I don’t recognise a category of “union hacks.” There are good union officials and bad union officials. Some union officials are good candidates, some are lousy. As a rule, however, they are more suited to working-class seats than to middle-class ones. Combet is a good fit for Charlton. Symon (even if he were not a left-wing dill) would be a poor fit for Deakin. That said, in a suburban seat it won’t matter much if there is a big swing. Harkins in Franklin is another matter. Anyway Deakin is not a “must win seat,” though of course Labor wants to win it. I don’t know anything about the guy in Dobell. I’m told that Yvette D’Ath in Petrie is an excellent candidate.
And of course we see once again the hypocrisy of this line of attack. If Labor runs candidates from within the labour movement, they are “union hacks.” If we run candidates from outside the labour movement, they are “celebrity candidates.” I ask again, where would these critics have Labor find its candidates? Meanwhile the Coalition runs an endless succession of lawyers, farmers and small-businesspersons, without attracting comment.
Hmmm,
The “use” of celebrity candidates is a bit like stomach stapling surgery for seriously obese people – ideally they should lose weight through diet and exercise but stapling is resorted to as an emergency measure.
Similarly the Labor party should reform but because that takes time and serious effort the quick fix is “celebrity”. I have no doubt any of the past 5 Labor leaders would have bemoaned the inability of the machines to throw up decent candidates.
Answer the question: where would you have Labor find its candidates?
Labor just needs a better process.. instead of the factional stack stack and the lack of voting by local people.. it has recognise that its members exist… and we need to understand that some people just don’t deserve seats examples- Hoare and the Hutchins..
Mind you Adam have a look at the hacks the Liberals have been providing in State politics..
Blacksburnpseph- the Keating Government never resorted to the race card… this government encouraged fairness between the races.. it has been Howard who has played the Race card and whom would have caused the Recession in 1991 to last for many years as Howard does not believe in Pump Priming…..
Where wuld you find better candidates?
Pharmacists
Genuine tradespeople – plumbers,electricians etc – who are largely now independent contractors
Scientists
Managers/Professional people
engineers
independent retailers
Howzat for a start?
its not about the occupation in my opinion its about having ideas and vision and the guts to follow through with them and sadly this is lacking in this country at present.. People have become influenced by pressure groups and the media..
Latham and Keating had ideas and I thought Whitlam also did and a belief in something, and sadly although i think he is turning this country into another America, Howard actually believes in something a deluded conservatism and economic rationalist bulldust and frighteningly a one nation state..
ie: (a one party state)
So Edward thinks Labor should recruit more *pharmacists* (among other equally arbitary categories) as candidates. Of course, they can’t be pharmacists who are members of the Labor Party, because then they’d be hacks, and they can’t be well-known pharmacists, because then they’d be celebrities. They have to be anonymous pharmacists with no political experience. And such persons would make better and more useful Labor MPs than, say, Bill Shorten or Mark Dreyfus or Maxine McKew, would they? Please. You’ll have to do better than that.
Mark thinks Labor needs to trust more to rank-and-file preselections. That’s fine in theory, but unfortunately in practice such preselections tend to produce the worst candidates. As I have argued here before, for sociological reasons beyond the control of political parties, the days of mass party membership and a genuine “rank-and-file” are over. Such preselections are inevitably dominated by a handful of factional activists and the pensioners and drones who have nothing better to do than go to branch meetings. This is as much true in the Liberal Party as it is in the ALP (except that we don’t have a bunch of crazy evangelicals trying to take us over).
That’s why I favour primary elections on the US model, which would put the choice in the hands of *voters* rather than *members*. But given that that is not likely soon, we are left with a choice between rank-and-file preselections and selections by panels elected by state conferences, or directly by state or federal executives. There’s no doubt that the latter two methods produce better candidates and are less open to manipulation. Don’t forget that Kelly Hoare “had the numbers” in her local branches. It was only outside intervention that got Combet installed there. I would much rather that than corrupt rank-and-file preselections such as the one in which Malcolm Turnbull bought himself a seat in Parliament.
I note just in passing that Graham McBride, Labor candidate for Dunkley, has a background in both science and small business.
http://alp.org.au/people/vic/mcbride_graham.php
Andrew is fantasising about Cronulla. No lifeguards went to hospital, although one off duty one got a smack on the gob.
It’s a strange thing to say people who had nothing to do with that or any or incident “deserved” to be bashed up. But I know what he means, they deserved it because they were Lebs.
Cook and Hughes are the whitest electorates in Sydney. That’s why they vote for the Rodent and did for One Nation in its time. No mystery, no big deal, need to call it something it isn’t: they’ve got lots of Andrews there.
“We don’t want to end up like Bondi”, a few of the drongos said – Bondi being appalling multi-coloured and multi-cultural. I’d prefer a dip in Bondi to the stultifying white breadedness of Cronulla any day.
The more migrants we bring in, the fewer Andrews we have per head of the population. Let’s double the intake!
Combet has a degree in engineering.
As for ‘union hacks’, Mark Butler, next member for Port Adelaide, is not only a union secretary but also an honours graduate in law. Oh yes, and he’s the grandson and great grandson of two Sir Richard Butlers who were Liberal premiers of South Australia.Edward StJohn suggests we need engineers in parliament. Well, Greg
That should have read:
Edward St John suggests we need engineers in parliament. Well, Greg Combet has a degree in engineering.
As for ‘union hacks’, Mark Butler, next Labor member for Port Adelaide, not only is a union secretary but also is an honours graduate in law. Oh yes, and he’s the great grandson and great great grandson of two Sir Richard Butlers who were Liberal premiers of South Australia.
The problem for the ALP that has become extremely manifest during their years in opposition is that a huge majority of their MPs have come up though the unions, party apparatus, or staffer routes.
The gene pool has become extremely limited. It is good that the ALP has been recruiting from a broader pool, but how deep are these people’s roots in the party? Have they been actively involved (without taking the careerist route?) .. probably not. In Nicole Cornes case, definitely not.
And with the deeply tribal nature of the ALP, will these newcomers elected or not, be taken seriously into the senior or decision making echelons? Or will the same self serving cabal use and discard as required?
Please people, enough of the “the reason the ALP has crap candidates…” stuff. I’ve watched good and bad candidates come up in the ALP and Greens. The ALP has to cover more winnable seats, so the competition is tougher thatn in the Greens, but you get doubtful candidates in all parties. I’ve often lamented the lack of plumbers, electricians etc on the ALP front (or back!) bench, but lets be clear that they can often earn more and have a nicer life NOT in parliament – and they don’t think they are ‘working class’. As well, the complexity of legislation now does require someone who can see their way through it – someone trained in law (or potentially engineering etc) does have an advantage here. Personally I’d like to see a few more ‘people skills’ people in there (youth workers, community workers, nurses etc) but then I’m still talking semi-professionals.
As to my local member (Peter Garrett), well he does an okay job for a ‘celebrity’ candidate – and you could say being a ‘rock star’ was being self-employed. My state member (Paul Pearce), while having a law degree was also self employed prior to being a local Mayor and then MP. Michael Daley in Maroubra was a solicitor and local Councillor. I might not always agree with their politics but certainly both state MP’s are community based. My experience of the Illawarra was less positive (lets not forget Sharon Bird losing presleection in Throsby because Jenny George was N40′d in and then Sharon herself was N40′d into Cunningham over Chris Christodoulou who probably would have won the byelection instead of losing to Michael Organ), but then you take the good with the bad…
I didn’t say they deserved it because they were lebs.
Youre putting words in my mouth.
Greg Combet is an engineer.
Doesnt he claim to have worked as a miner? I wonder how much time he spent underground gettin ‘dirty’?
blackburnpseph is on the money. We are talking about people who spend years manouevring for position and advantage, which is fine its just that the people who get there then tend to be pretty useless.
The point of nominating a couple of occupations is that being a politician is a job in which you should be fearless. Ideally a politician should be someone who is not afraid to lose and can contemplate a life outside politics. If you have had a life outside it you are more likely to accept going back.
What we have now is a professional class of politicians who have sacrificed a lot to get in and could not imagine life outside it. Those type of people are not going to take any risks or do anything remotely controversial. Which is exactly why Labor is so scared of cutting the ACTU loose.
I think it was PJK who said all you have to fear is losing your job to his cabinet. Who is going to resonate better PJK who left behind issues which will still be debated in 20 years or Howard?
I’ve just checked Adam’s list of 13 marginal Liberal seats.
There is a Labor hack factor of 8. Truly shocking!! all union officials or staffers or recycled MP’s.
I can accept some hacks but 8 out of 13?
Adam reform is urgently needed. Primaries wont do it – you’ll just have unions spending 100K+ on mail outs if you go that way.
did you check out the brace of CCI, AMA, NFF goons on the other side as well ?
If the swing is on, “union hacks” or not, Labor will win and so will many of those “shameful hacks”.
Well Blacklight,
My theory is that any political party is always going to have a “hack factor”, I guess its reasonable because there has to be a reward for those who do the mundane work – letterboxing, doorknocking, organising, branches etc etc. The quid pro is that if you are below average intelligence or talent you can be rewarded above your due if you are prepared to do the boring and the mundane.
I’d suggest the hack factor is ideally about 15-30% of parliamentarians. After all you do need some who are happy being Indians and never Chiefs. The problem with modern Labor is that the hack factor has grown to about 50-70% which in turn promotes dangerously undemocractic structures and organisation.
I would say without researching the background of the Liberal marginal holders the hack factor would be substantially lower about 30-40%. Witness for example Howard protecting the nuclear scientist fellow in Tangney. Unfortunately Labor has very few like Tinley in Stirling.
And Gary,
Just how good will government by “union hack” be? Whats the point of having one or two hopeless terms other than to assist superannuation plans for ALP frontbenchers on the wrong side of 40?
This issue of how to pre-select “better” candidates is bedevilled by the nature of the modern political parties. As Adam points out there is no near-term likelihood of any party in Australia becoming a mass movement. This leaves them cherry ripe for take-over by factional heavies. I stress that this is not particular to Labor. The Victorian Liberal Party is no less factionalised.
In principle the Victorian Labor pre-selection process is a good one, with 50% of the votes deriving from members in the local electorate and 50% from a centrally elected panel. What is deficient is the unrepresentativeness of both halves of this process.
I agree with Adam that a primary system would be the ideal to work towards, but it’s clearly not going to happen, while the beneficiaries of the current system benefit from it.
So tell me Edward, what problems will these masses of “union hacks” cause to a future Labor government? What evil will they bring? Are you sure you voted for Labor during Keating’s time? Weren’t there masses of “union hacks” back then?
Would you consider Shorten and Combet “union hacks”? Are there any that have talent or is this just a good ol’ union bash?
Well a Rudd Labor Government 2007 would be not unlike the Iemma Labor Government if you need an example of what government by hack would be like.
Keating’s time – no I believe the hack factor was lower – certainly had some first rate ministers back then Button, Evans, Beazley, Blewett etc
Interesting that Shorten and Combet are cited as talent. How should we measure the talent or ability of a union leader. Perhaps union membership is a fair objective figure. In the last ten years I believe the ACTU and the AWU would have lost membership of approximately 15-20%. Good union leaders would be:
Police
Nurses
APESMA
SDA
who have all maintained market share.
Or what great achievements has a union leader delivered. Profit share is at a record therefore real wages are at a record low – not much of a record of achievement for these stars Gary.
Edward StJohn Says:
Good union leaders would be:
Police
Nurses
APESMA
SDA
Please not the SDA. If we used them as an example of good union leaders then the criteria must exclude actually doing anything if the SDA is involved.
Of course Bill,
I would endorse a better to die standing then live on your knees view of the world.
Of course only 4 more hours or so and we should get the establishment view from some dingy cafe in the UK!
Edward – “Well a Rudd Labor Government 2007 would be not unlike the Iemma Labor Government if you need an example of what government by hack would be like.” Could you tell me where you bought that very “clear and accurate” crystal ball?
I’m no economist but I’m not convinced this statement by you is accurate in the sense that because of A then B must follow. “Profit share is at a record therefore real wages are at a record low”. Not only that but you say this as if it is the unions’ fault. Try blaming the laws the unions are working under.
I wonder what kind of candidate i would be classed as?
Interesting that after attending some community meetings lately that a good percentage of members from theses groups are now looking to the Greens as their first option as they do not feel the major parties are serious on Climate change , environment , education , health and social equality in Kingston and as a whole.
Most union members who are not politically minded or interested cannot stomach union bosses who go into politics. They see this as a betrayal and look at it as that they are ‘only in it for the money’. Union delegates and shop stewards seem to support these union bosses moving into ALP politics. I believe that there should be more rank and file union members running for parliament.
A union with genuine employee support can beat any employer law eg O’Shea in 1969.
Profit share has been on the up since before WorkChoices.
Edward StJohn, I seem to recall a less than successful Liberal Party hack of the 70’s of the same name. Are you he or just a relation?
Is It really necessary for you to post your incisive slant on your own party’s propaganda in such a condescending, sneering and frankly, insulting manner towards your co posters?
Do you have an anger management problem, or is it just your way of compensating for the inferiority you feel over the loss of your hyphen.
If it’s the latter, I can help, St-John. See?
If its the former, you are, I’m afraid, in the political sense, destined to become a lot angrier.
Bill,
I guess the volk of Kingston will answer your question.
Gary, your distaste for Workchoices is understood, but your disagreement with anyone who criticises or questions Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard or any current ALP position (including the reasons for the party’s standing in recent opinion polls) is becoming a very common theme in your posts. Are there reasons for that? Even ALP members are, on occasion, critical of their own party.
More sadness than anger Fulvio,
Last time I checked debate and argument werent condescending, sneering and insulting. I guess sometimes people play the man when they know they cant refute the argument. Please cite examples if you want to take that tack and be taken seriously.
Having said that I dont deny the odd niggle only to Adam, but then I think he would concede he is not adverse in that department either.
I can assure I shall be of good cheer whatever the election outcome. I have no particular dog in this fight as the Americans like to say, Fortunately whoever wins is not going to impact my life greatly.
Dear Andrew,
Why then did people who had nothing to do with it deserve to get bashed up?
The original Ted St John (MHR for Warringah 1966-69) was not a Liberal hack, he was a genuine and highly principled liberal who would certainly would not get endorsed for a safe Liberal seat today. He was an active opponent of apartheid at a time when most Liberals were still defending it, he used his maiden speech to criticise his own government (prompting Harold Holt to ask “What’s this chap’s name – apart from bastard?”), and he criticised Gorton to his face for his drunkeness and womaning (what today would be called sexual harassment), thus getting himself expelled from the Liberal Party. He left politics with a clear conscience, which I rather doubt Phil Ruddock will do.
David, I make no apology for my views, nor should I and nor should anyone else here. I can say this to you I am not a member of any party but just express my view as I see it.
Edward, “Profit share has been on the up since before WorkChoices” I agree with you but I’m questioning the veracity of your statement that that automatically assumes wages are down.
I also note that you provide me with an example of a Labor government with union hacks as proof this will be Rudd’s fate. Being Victorian I’m not familiar with the Iemma government. Could you be a little more specific with your objections to having “union hacks” in government? What “damage” will they do?
Are there any state governments that don’t have “union hacks” at the moment? Are they all bad governments?
Bill, it’s not how many people are going to vote Green that’s so important, it’s how many of those people will preference a particular major party that counts in the long run.
about Paul Keating’s lateline interview
it is worth looking at it on the abc website
These are Mr Keating’s opinions using his usual colourful turn of phrase
some is influenced by his upset at losing Government and some is well
thought out. What should be looked at is the merits of his arguements
eg it is possible to disagree with Julia Gillard’s effectiveness in terms or the
I.R position she puts forward without agreement with Mr Keating’s proposal
completely certainly one should look past the “Newspaper Journalism”
Gary,
The failures of the NSW govt are too many to mention, I think we discussed it extensively in the threads pre NSW election.
Essentially the NSW Govt is not prepared to challenge the self interests of a union rump in the public sector.
There is a disconnect between the ALP interest in good government and the ACTU interest in status/power etc. The dilemma which PJK touched on is the needs of government need Labor to attack its own base.
Think Gorbachev in 1990, he wanted to reform but to reform was to weaken the powerbase that kept him there. Same problem with Labor (but obviously not on the same scale)
Gary, fair enough. It really is a no brainer: everyone, within the limits of the laws of defamation, should be free to express their views about anything or anyone (although some, like Robert Mugabe, may not think so). I was most certainly not asking you to make any apology for your views (some of which I share), but just wondering when you might surprise me, or even engage me, with a different and refreshing perspective, perhaps in the same way you might be surprised and engaged by Mr Shanahan of The Australian if he wrote something different.
At least Shanahan has the excuse that he is only a hired pen who is doing what he is paid to do.
I only have the excuse that I believe in what I write. Bugger, I could use the extra maoney.
Adam I have a reasonably open mind on the idea of selecting candidates via primaries. I think it would be essential that any such system have reasonable rules on campaigning – eg an expense ceiling or some other methods to ensure it didn’t simply become a case of victory going to whoever had the most money.
However, I wonder whether it would actually make much difference – how many people would bother to vote. In the US it works for a number of reasons that probably wouldn’t apply here. In cases like the attempt to roll Simon Crean I can imagine a lot of people becoming engaged and voting either for or against a high profile figure, but would many non-members really have come out for preselections such as those held last year in Scullin or Isaacs?
Dear in two minds about keaters,
Although thi isnt the forum, i will answer youre question.
Many female friends who still reside in whats called the shire have been the taget of what would be called sexual harrassment at cronulla beach by people of mediteranean descent. Now i under stand youre an apologist for these individuals, but there is no excuse for behaviour of this kind. Truly if you belive the cronulla riots are because of how we ’skips’ behave you are seiously mistaken.
It may be time to divest yourself of moral relativism and get with the real world.
Why do i have no time for the islamic lebanese, (as clearly distinct from their christian cousins), simple, because you dont treat women like that.
I often think about better ways to handle pre-selections.
What about a middle course between primaries and local area preselections that allowed ALP members from all over the state to vote in each preselection? It would a) make branch-stacking almost impossible and b) actually pay heed to the reality that members represent the party generally rather than a specific handful of branches.
With a weighting towards votes from the local branches, I think it would work quite well.
I agree that would be an improvment on local selection.
To some extent, of course, that is what we have in Victoria. 50% of votes are cast by local members, the other 50% by a panel *representing* the statewide party membership.
I doubt there’d be enough party members who really take a strong interest in party affairs outside their own electorate.
Andrew, now I understand, thanks.
That’s why female Lebanese deserved to be set upon by mobs of drunken hoons and have scarfs ripped off etc.
And of course harassing women is very un-Australian.
“We decide who harasses our women, and the circumstances in which they’re harrassed.”
David – even if there were only a few hundred amongst the 13,000 Victorian ALP members, for instance, that would constitute a reasonably representative sample.
Adam – whilst your point is correct in theoretical terms, I would suggest that most grass roots members do not feel that the central panel represents them.
You cant put lipstick on a pig and make it presentable.
Probably PR in elections is the only realistic option with a reasonable threshold say 2.5% is the only way to open up the whole corrupt system.
2.5% would mean that there would be list PR (or senate style list stv) which just gives preselection to the cetral state party (or federal party if the constitution is changed to allow national list) whick would not make the preselection procedure more democratic.
If you want proper democratic cadidate selection then then have Tasmania/ACT style system with the electoral commission organising a preselection if more than a set number of candidates from any peticular party nominate.
Sorry to all those bored with Bill’s SDA obsession, but, Bill, I agree with what I have already said about the SDA.
It would be interesting to have a primary system. All parties participating, managed by the AEC, and all happeningon the same day. If as quite rightly said above, there were controls put on spending, it may be what the political process needs as it could reconnect large numbers of people with the process.
I just hope that all ALP members and supporters will be happy with a Family First controlled senate
# Chris Curtis Says:
June 10th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Sorry to all those bored with Bill’s SDA obsession, but, Bill, I agree with what I have already said about the SDA.
Chris obsession or not its how many of the members feel. Its good that you can agree with yourself ( would be a worry if you did not ).
I keep noticing the back peddling by Rudd and co on IR. You can just feel a split coming in the ALP. The unions ( not the right wing boss run unions ) are seeing the ’stab in the back’ after committing money and resources to the YR@W campaign. So i believe if the ALP wins this election we will see the beginning of a new or amalgamated workers/community party which will make politics very interesting.
People don’t see themselves as working class unless Adam says they are? I find this a very strange attitude which seems to flow from the right.
Charlie says:
“Adam – whilst your point is correct in theoretical terms, I would suggest that most grass roots members do not feel that the central panel represents them.”
But that misses my point Charlie – there are no “grass roots members” in any real sense, only a hard core of factional activists and an outer circle of pensioners and drones, whose opinions on what is a suitable candidate are, frankly, not up to much. To repeat myself, the days of the mass-based political party are over, and cannot be brought back by any act of will by the parties. This is true all over the world.
The objective of any reform must therefore be to place the power of choosing candidates in the hands of Labor *voters*. In the US a person cannot join the Democrat and Republican parties as such at all – there is no “Miami branch of the Republican Party.” People register as a Democratic or Republican voter, and then join the primary campaign of whichever candidate best reflects their views. I know there are many problems with this method, but I think it is more in touch with the realities of modern politics than is the 19th century model we have at the moment, based in a working-class movement and culture which no longer exist.
“So i believe if the ALP wins this election we will see the beginning of a new or amalgamated workers/community party which will make politics very interesting.”
I assume I’m not the only person to read the word after workers/ incorrectly… and then re-read it to notice I was wrong by a letter.
Honestly advocating an American system of primaries is not unlike advocating a Big Mac diet to a sufferer of chronic heart disease.
Primaries are going to favour money and power interests. Who is going to be in a position to attract public interest in a seat like Deakin someone with an existing public profile or someone with lots of cash to get a profile.
Our system of politics is rooted. Australians want thorough reform. Look at the republic referendum it went down not because we love the Queen but people actually wanted a real reform and change. The decline of parties reflects that most sensible people wouldnt touch either party with a barge pole.
Who benefits from such a system? People like the rodent, you arent going to beat the rodent by being the rodent. It’s truly amazing that people who see themselves as stalwarts of the ALP are so scared of its own reformist heritage.
Adam – I think it’s a little over the top to say there are “no” grass roots members. Their numbers may be thin, but either they are still around or my social circle is very atypical for a non-ALP member. All that really matters is that there’s a few hundred in each state (which would be the case except for Tasmania, I would think). Also – the key to getting a lot of them back, and turning solid supporters into members is to make membership meaningful again.
I have said in the past that I’m sympathetic to the primaries idea, but I think it’s just too radical a change for either of the major parties to contemplate it. Therefore, I’m focusing my musings on what I imagine might be within the realms of possibility.
When I want advice on how to reform the Labor Party from Liberal propagandists I will ask for it. I would have thought that a party which has lost 20-something state elections in a row might be in need of some minor tinkering itself. And do spare us your silly pseudo-left rhetoric. Our system of politics is not rooted – it is in need of some reforms, but on the whole it is among the best in the world. If you want to get into bed with bill weller and the trotskyites I hope you enjoy the company.
Charlie, how do you propose to “make membership meaningful again”? People in 2007, including working-class people to the extent that the term still means anything, do not want to spend their evenings at dreary branch meetings or listening to speeches in the Mechanics Institute. That is part of a 19th century civic culture which has been dying since WW2 and is now stone dead. Smart politicians recognised this years ago – recall Menzies delivering his 1963 policy speech on TV, while Calwell orated at Festival Hall (I think) like something from the 1920s. Phenomena like the internet mobilisation for Howard Dean in 2004 are the future of politics. As I have argued before, I would abolish party branches altogether. People who join the Labor Party could join a policy committee or a campaign team, but they would not choose candidates. No doubt many nominal members and stack-fodder would be lost, but frankly they would be no loss apart from their membership fees. I note in passing that the largest party in France in membership terms is still the Communist Party, but what does this mean in practice? Rien.
I hope the second to last comment was aimed at ESJ, rather than me.
As for your post. I agree with your view about *why* party membership is moribund. Maybe with the idealism of youth (I’m only 20) I’m just more optimistic about turning it around. There’s no reason why the ‘dreary branch meeting’ *has* to be the only avenue of involvement in the party. The trick is simply to get like-minded people from the same area in the one place and start them talking about what they’d like to see happen – I know this is possible because I am a member of just such a group (albeit non-partisan). What needs to happen is for people to have some ideas and just do them regardless of whether they’re sanctioned by the state executive. If I’m a young ALP member who can’t stand Young Labor events, why shouldn’t I start my own youth network of Labor people?
Adam’s argument is a bit like the Monty Python skit, ie “You think you did it tough we lived in a shoe box …”
I dont think the Liberal party needs my humble efforts for its propaganda. Both parties are stuffed or rooted. In my book success if measured by what you do not how many elections you win.
The alienation of Australians from politics is something I think most posters on this site agree is a fact. “Best in the world” you are a victim of relativism – just because Australia may be better on one statistic or other does not make it acceptable in an absolute sense. Are we truly to be compared to America?
No reason at all, and I wish you luck. But that idea in itself is a recognition that the current branch-based structure is obselete, non?
Absolutely, Adam. We are in full agreement on that point. We just have different ideas on how branches can be circumvented whilst still getting people involved in one way or another.
“In my book success if measured by what you do not how many elections you win.” I’ve seen some asinine comments on this blog, but that is about the asininist. In a democracy a political party is an organisation for winning elections and forming governments. It has no other purpose. It cannot “do” anything unless it can win an election – ask any opposition leader.
So its “whatever it takes” is it? How sad.
Bill, FF will only get seats if Labor’s primary senate vote is low and they receive Labor preferences.
And Adam’s remarks are a good hit of common sense that is worlds apart from some of the other chit-chatter on here.
“People who join the Labor Party could join a policy committee or a campaign team, but they would not choose candidates.”
Adam, what would your version of the ALP look like? Who would choose the candidates? Who would choose those who determine candidates and party policies?
“I know there are many problems with this method, but I think it is more in touch with the realities of modern politics than is the 19th century model we have at the moment, based in a working-class movement and culture which no longer exist.”
I used to be very attracted to a primary-style selection of candidates. A problem with it, though, is that one would require substantial amounts of money to run in the primary (although this would be lessened in electorates with small numbers of electors). An advantage of a primary is that, by definition, many people would have already supported the eventual candidate over other candidates – the candidate would probably have more mass appeal than one who only had to win the votes of party members.
Sacha,
Why the answer is obvious, some learned, pragmatic and in tune in with common sense and middle class wisdom – why someone like Adam of course!!!
Indeed.
As Vladimir Illich said
democracy is so precious it must be guided and rationed.
I believe Mr Ulyanov`s quote was more about liberty not democracy.
“But that misses my point Charlie – there are no “grass roots members†in any real sense, only a hard core of factional activists and an outer circle of pensioners and drones, whose opinions on what is a suitable candidate are, frankly, not up to much. To repeat myself, the days of the mass-based political party are over, and cannot be brought back by any act of will by the parties. This is true all over the world.”
Adam, what are the relative proportions of “factional activists”, “pensioners”, “drones” and others? You appear to think that there is, in any real sense, no-one else. Is this true? I agree that the days of the mass-based political party are over. What, in your opinion, would be a good structure to replace it and why?
To answer Sasha: candidates would be chosen by voters. In the US when you register to vote, you register as a Republican, a Democrat, a Communist or whatever you like. That entitles you to vote in your party’s primary election to choose its candidates. So, to take me as an example, I would register as a Labor voter, and I would vote in a statewide primary to choose Labor’s Senate ticket, and in a constituency-wide primary to choose the candidate for Melbourne Ports. The same would apply to state and council elections. Since we have compulsory voting in Australia, this would ensure that the candidates chosen would have the support of the majority of the party’s supporters. I would support a cap on primary election spending, but experience in the US shows that this is not very meaningful – you can’t stop people raising and spending money to support candidates if they want to. I don’t think it matters much. As Malcolm Turnbull has shown, it’s perfectly possible to buy a federal electorate under the present system. On the other hand, if money was all that counted, Ted Baillieu would be be premier of Victoria.
I pass over Edward’s puerile sneering – if that’s really the best Liberals can put up they will lose another 20 elections in a row.
Thanks Adam – that’s a primary system. How would party policy be determined?
Sacha is right in that winners of primaries would have to be proven vote winners. As they would have to communicate with a wider audience,they would also have to developed some policy positions, or positions relative to the wider party policy position. One difficulty with a primary system would be that it would work well in safe or winnable seats,but frankly who would contest the liberal primary in Calwell or Fowler, or the Labor primary in Bradfield?
Youd probably also see an increasing independance of view and thought from candidates and members.
a good thing i think, but some may not agree
An interesting debate and I am going to throw caution to the wind and suggest that the ALP is not broken, the Libs are not broken (just morally bankrupt under Howard) and our democracy is healthy and thriving (omitting Howard’s attempt to disenfranchis voters at the next election which is clearly a disgrace that only someone abusing uncontrolled power would try).
I don’t think that the public is largely disengaged from politics, is a sign that there is anything wrong with our democracy. It presents a risk, and something good governments (ie Labor Governments) will take into account to ensure ordinary Australians aren’t exploited.
I say a risk because a really bad Government might do something silly assuming everyone is asleep and disengaged and then find polling putting it anhiliation territory.
The only thing I would change about the ALP is that instead of endless ‘anti-stacking’ rules (all looking to limit membership) I would want to see much much much more recruitment of members and growth of branches.
Yes most people don’t want to sit in meetings but there are enough interested people in most communities who will, and far too few of them are Labor party members. In fact they end up at local chambers and thinly disguised liberal party meeting.
And as for the Liberals well I find their informal branches thru local chambers and largely member free community groups to be very effective but; but just a little bit dishonest.
What do you mean by “informal branches”, Yasmin?
One aspect of a primary system is that an eventual candidate will be popular amongst the section of the population voting in that preselection which doesn’t necessarily mean the whole electorate. A good example of that is the Democratic Senate primary for Connecticut for the last Congressional elections. (All readers here would well remember that story and the outcome of the actual election.)
Adam, I see you are proposing that voting be compulsory in the primary as well as the final election. This would certainly deal with the problem I raised (that very few voters would bother to participate in most preselections). However, while I think that optional primaries are a possible, although long-term, project I cannot see the faintest chance that Australians will ever accept being forced to vote in party’s preselections.
In which case surely all this muttering about primaries as the solution is not much different from trots babbling on about how everything will be better after the revolution, without any serious effort to achieve practical reforms.
Yasmin says: “I would want to see much much much more recruitment of members and growth of branches.” This is a fantasy. There is no way this can be done in the kind of society we now live in.
Sasha says: “an eventual candidate will be popular amongst the section of the population voting in that preselection which doesn’t necessarily mean the whole electorate.” Well of course not. Just because I win the Labor primary in Kooyong doesn’t mean I will win Kooyong. But it does mean I will probably by the candidate best-placed to maximise the Labor vote in Kooyong. I don’t see the relevance of the Connecticut primary. Registered Democrats, being strongly antiwar, voted for Lamont, but the voters of CT disagreed and re-elected Liebermann. So?
Stephen: Turnout in US primaries varies enormously depending on the situation. Not many people vote in the Democratic Senate primary in Utah, because everyone knows that Utah always elects Republicans. The same would be true here if primary voting was voluntary. If there had been primaries in the Labor seats where sitting members were challenged this time (Maribyrnong, Corio, Hotham, Charlton, Blaxland etc etc), or where sitting members had retired (Fremantle, Port Adelaide), I think the turnout would have been quite high.
I think primaries would be a good addition to the Australian political scene, and have expressed that view previously too.
The one thing I would caveat though is that in many of the high profile preselections I have seen on the Liberal side, the preselectors have been proven to have gotten it right, even if they are only shown to be right after the preselection.
Who would rate Pru Goward better than Greg Smith after her spectacular entry into Macquarie Street?
Who would rate Peter King better than Malcolm Turnball?
Very few Liberals at this point from what I can tell.
One big advantage of the primary would be decentralising the power of the parties, while local branches will retain their critical role in harnessing support for individual candidates (even if less formally).
It could also have the impact of reducing the advantages of incumbency (especially if primaries were more than 6 months prior to elections), and give name recognition to non-sitting members. It would also add credibility to the situations where a sitting member is challenged, as the challenger would be shown to have the support of a majority of their voters in the area.
The only problem is that the media would have to lose some of the fake outrage that comes when political parties (and their voters) democratically decide who should represent them, rather than giving individuals a seat for life.
I’m pretty cold on the idea of primaries in Australian.
As I think someone may have mentioned before, forcing intra-party contests to a popular vote forces the candidates to differentiate themselves from one another. Which means that candidates, even after they’ve won the primary, are as much running under their own banner as they are their party’s.
This fosters an independent mentality amongst MPs which I believe has more downside than up. My core concern being that these quasi-independent MPs will work more towards the narrow interest of their own constituents than the national interest.
Also, contrary to what some have argued, the primary system entrenches incumbency. In the US, primary challenges to sitting members are rarely successful. The recognition factor of a sitting member proves difficult to overcome. This is also true of general elections, where the recognition factor boosts incumbents.
Western Suburbs argues that challengers would have greater name recognition under a primary system. But this is superficial. You’re comparing a system where name recognition is important, to one where it’s of lesser value.
Did anyone get the details (figures, pollster, number polled) of a poll taken in Western Australia recently? Apparently it wasn’t good for Labor. Thanks.
Adam wrote: “I don’t see the relevance of the Connecticut primary. Registered Democrats, being strongly antiwar, voted for Lamont, but the voters of CT disagreed and re-elected Liebermann. So?”
It’s an example of where the views of the primary voters don’t reflect the views of the electorate – so while many more people (as a proportion of the total electorate) voted in the Connecticut Democratic primary than in any Australian preselection, it didn’t mean that the candidate was necessarily more electable. Of course, Lamont winning the primary meant that he was preferred by the registered Democratic voters instead of the relatively few local members of a notional Democratic Party.
One benefit of a primary – it involves many more people choosing the candidate.
One drawback of a primary – it involves much more campaigning and thus money, probably leading to greater incumbency factors.
The focus on individuals in a primary may mean that the Primary winner is more independent of their party than at present, which could be seen as positive or negative.
Sorry Adam – while I agree there is no way to do it easily, and yes it may be a dream, but your position frankly, and with all due respect for the embedded ALP warlords who would find a real growth in branches threatening, you ‘it is impossible’ view shows all the leadership of Howard. That is stand behind a crowd and quietly follow.
Those with the power and the money in the ALP are those least interested in recruiting members, and most interested in creating ‘anti-stacking’ rules that are essentially anti-member rules.
Now remember I said the party isn’t broken, and I don’t want to sound like it is, but if there is an impediment to membership it is the party itself, not community attitudes and beliefs, and lifestyle.
Sorry Swordfish, by ‘informal’ I mean run by Liberal Party operatives, attended largely or exclusively by Liberal Party members and operatives, but not actually branches of the Party.
Again the turnouts at these kind of events, show people are not incapable of public activity in evenings, they are not as disinterested as the male powers that be would have us think, and they are looking for ways to be part of their community. The male powers that be are much more interested in pretending there is no community so they can move mates around seats and city’s without local consideration.
Labor would be much better of, and much stronger if it was a bit more active on membership, as opposed to being institutionally disinclined to it.
In the US, it is well known that voters in primaries are more likely to be committed activists, and can drag the party away from the mainstream to an extremist position. I recall reading that in Minnesota, Republican primary voters are very right wing, and Democrat voters very left wing, to the point where the endorsed candidates did not reflect mainstream view, and Jesse Ventura came down the centre.
Lets apply an Australian example, imagine for some reason that the primary voters (for either major party) in Melbourne Ports voted for a candidate that was actively anti – Israel. Of course, it may attract some voters, but it would largely repel the 30% of Jewish voters in MP. Said candidate would lose big time, that is an example where the primary voters would not reflect the wishes of the constituency at large.
Gary – that’d be the Westpoll. Bear in mind that the paper that runs it specializes in character-assasination of state ALP government ministers and pretty much calls for the Premier to resign on a daily basis. I can’t supply the figures because I didn’t buy the paper.
Thanks SR.
OK Yasmine, I await your prescription for reversing a decades-old, worldwide sociological and political trend (disengagement from active participation in political parties) and restoring a genuine mass membership base to the ALP, or any other party. Vague aspiration is not enough, let’s have some specifics.
I think perhaps you take a step too far Adam with ‘mass membership’, but I’ll start of with ‘more membership’ (perhaps I got a bit effussive and gave a grander vision but hey gotta have a grand vision to take baby steps) and see how it goes from there.
Rewrite the rules in every State to encourage membership of branches, rather than discourage because everyone wants to talk about the ‘elephant in the room’ (that is branch-stacking)but no-one could be bothered measuring it or enforcing the existing rules. Freeze the 50:50 at current numbers and then have a formula so that union representation is effectively diluted down to 70:30, but only slowly over time by real increased measurements. Make state secretaries and presidents responsible for leading recruitment campaigns with KPI’s and bonuses dependent on hitting targets towards 70:30.
Something like that. Unless you are too elitist to want to listen to the community you must see the party only gets richer from increased membership and participation.
Sorry Adam had a late brain wave, essentially I’m saying do what is necessary to run the organisation like a business what wants members and wants to listen to them, and run the parlimentary party exclusively like a party that wants to win Government.
I’m sorry Yasmine but none of that will cut it.
* “Rewrite the rules in every State to encourage membership of branches.” More vague aspiration. Rewrite them *how*?
* “Freeze the 50:50 at current numbers and then have a formula so that union representation is effectively diluted down to 70:30, but only slowly over time by real increased measurements.” I *think* this means “give branch members more votes at state conferences vis-a-vis the unions.” How will that increase membership? Have you ever been to a state conference? I’d rather be boiled in oil than sit through another.
* “Make state secretaries and presidents responsible for leading recruitment campaigns with KPI’s and bonuses dependent on hitting targets towards 70:30.” I have no idea what that means.
* “run the organisation like a business what wants members.” Businesses exist to make money, and people join a business in expectation of material reward. I don’t see any useful analogy.
* “run the parlimentary party exclusively like a party that wants to win Government.” What does that have to do with increasing membership?
Sacre Bleu -70-30 rule, Yasmine have you joined the forces of the reformation?
It is indeed time to let the winds of change into the ALP, good for you!! Slowly painfully the ALP will come to adopt something exactly like your position.
No doubt there was a significant element in the 60’s who believed the national executive would never yield leadership to the parliamentary party so there you have it.
Gentle slow improvement Edward gentle slow improvement.
Rewrite the rules : isn’t technically obscure, I think if you’d stayed awake at the State Conferences you’d have notice amendments to the rules probably happened at some point or another. Pretty traditional mover / seconder debate vote stuff.
If you are saying the powers that be just aren’t going to change, I’d probably agree with you, the numbers to do it aren’t there; but that doesn’t provide support for position.
Sorry if I was too brief, essentially if you give an incentive for increasing membership, ie, so that increased membership diluted the 50:50 rule over time, then it is an incentive to enrol branch members because if you grow the membership then the State Conference membership votes increase, no membership growth no increased vote no dilution.
That unions would probably form a large chunk of these branches and increased membership is quite irrelevant the votes have moved from the unions to political branches. Not rocket science, not in the interest of the powers that be but still a way to encourage rather than discourage membership.
It doesn’t really matter if I’ve been to State Conferences or not. I assume that was an intend slight which I will recover from in due course. Although wait I mentioned above the State Secretary at a recent State Confernce mentioning poll bludger … so I at least know they occur.
KPI’s and targets. You don’t understand organisations having goals and measuring the performance of staff against those goals? Are you serious? I guess I should know what you do for a living, but I don”t. I will say however if you can get me a job in the unmeasured untargeted world you inhabit please send me an application pack.
OK my apologies for using a business metaphor, in my circles Government and Organisations are told they are supposed to run like businesses, but then they have targets and performance measures, so I’ll apologise for living in the business world. All I mean is that the aim of the organisation is to add additional members it, in and of itself would be an improvement. If you then make measures of that and tell key people and staff they are going to be evaluated against those measures and performance and you have carrots and sticks at your disposal then you can actually acheive.
Finally my last point was to clearly identify two different focii and aim for them with different body’s and efforts. If a large blobby organisation has no goals or isn’t really sure what is goals are it is not really going to go anywhere. If you have two organisations both exclusively focused on winnning Government you’d have massively declining membership of …. oh wait didn’t we already do that?
I’m not trying to cut anything honey. I’m trying to suggest that the party I love has a organisational culture and structure that actively works against membership, rather than the other way around. It still is a great organisation, it still does great things and seems at the moment to have a great record of success baring Cth elections.
And if you key point is the powers that be aren’t going to give up power, and aren’t going to focus on getting more members and more input and deliver a better party you are almost certainly right. If you are suggesting this is either good or inevitable then I fundamentally disagree with you and would beg you to go and join some other party.
If your key thesis is that communities have no interest in their own community and politics I think you are wrong; and while high standards of living, relative peace and relative stability is going to reduce participation through increased satisfaction, I know in the communities I’m part of there are lots of passionate active people who should be in the Labor party but the Labor party needs to go to them and recruit them, they are not going to come to us.
For goodness sakes about half of the people that manned the booth I ran at the last Federal Election, standing in the hot sun were not even party members. Why would that be Adam? They care enough to stand in the sun and had out HTV’s for some factional hack who has barely visited the electorate and who they’ve never heard of but they don’t join the party? Not surprisingly the particular seat moved from relatively safe to massively safe based on the last effort.
My key thesis is that if we take serious steps to recruit them we are better off. No I don’t think it is going to happen, but I object strongly to any attitude that suggests we shouldn’t even try.
Yasmine: will come back to your post later tonight (v. interesting though)
I certainly agree that Ahern pulling off a surprise re-election has some lessons for Australia – I have never said that this election is in the bag for Labor. It isn’t and it won’t be until Rudd survives the shitstorm of negative advertising and Murdoch attack-journalism he is going to get during the campaign. But I agree that the peculiar nature of the Irish election system make comparisons difficult.
Yasmine, well you may be right, it may be possible to bring about some recovery in branch membership, but this is swimming against the very strong tide of civic disengagement that has been flowing since suburbanisation, the postwar baby boom and TV killed off the old culture of civic participation. I wish you luck. I still think that primaries are a better solution to the problem of candidate selection than attempts to recruit more branch members.
(Someone has now told me what a KPI is. I thought it was a brand of fried chicken. My previous occupation was politics, so of course I know nothing of such things.)
Adam – it’s a very brave thing to admit to not having known what KPIs are.
Yasmine,
Will you be the Marianne of the revolution? You’ve started down an exciting road.
Well Yasmine I had the advantage of a 1970s liberal arts education, so I didn’t dirty my hands with such matters.
Adam,
KPI, KSC, ETWR, transformational leadership – it doesn’t matter. If you go to the satire section of platowa.com, you will find about fourteen editions of Bull**** Bingo, provided by the hard-working cynics of Hampton Park Secondary College. Almost every one of the, perhaps 500, terms, comes from education, but they all have that meaningless businessspeak about them.
Yasmine,
I think you will enjoy them too, even if you are a believer.
OK you have caught me out.
The KPI stuff well what can I say. I agree with Chris without going his source. And yes in business and more so in Government it is mostly, um bingo rubbish. I have been a captive of this world too long they have infiltrated my brain.
Without the stupid jargon I got caught out on, my point is at the moment in the State I know best if membership drops, the powers that be probably don’t go to the office bearers and say “OMG membership has dropped WTF have you been doing?”
If they noticed odds are they’d say “Fantastic 200 less drongos this year, should be much neater as we move amendment to rule X to ensure that members must line up at Chicken Treat between 3.30 am and 4.00 am on the 27 June to renew there membership which only may be paid in West Coast Eagles Football Cards to the value of $100.” Just think how this measure will be fantastic to reduce branch stacking… ha ha ha … we wont have branches … ha ha ha.
I think this is the wrong direction. I don’t think the tide can be turned I’m too cynical and old for that but my most critical point is there are, I know I meet them, people who should be in the Labor Party, they believe what we believe and many live it and put it into action even better than us, but we have to go to them and listen to them and promise to try to do better. But we don’t we sit back thankful the branch meeting finished in 10 mintues and hope the Admin committee don’t notice we have the full cast of cheers signed up as members for next year.
15 or 16 or 17 seats to win Government ? WHO CARES !!!! Whoever wins the 2007 Federal Election is historically speaking not going to have to play footsies with Independents-it will be a clear majority-that is my contention> What do i have to back up my contention, what empirical evidence ? Australian Election history for one thing.
What bothered me and drove me to make this God awful [totally unsound and inverifiable] contention is the very real concern I have about what happens if Rudd loses this Election- at the next Election ?
Will the ‘damage’ done by Latham’s lame effort be repeated- More Coalition seats taking an unexpected shift toward ’safe’ space ? More voters opting for the [protest-oh bloody hell, their both hopeless] Greens ?
Family First getting a run at another Senate seat in 2010 ? And the ALPs chances of winning next time being improbable ?
Latham’s anti-logging thing did damage in TAS and parts of VIC and elsewhere – Bass, Braddon et al- but can the ALP win either back ? Hindmarsh, Swan, Bendigo, possible LOSSES–grrr !!! Corangamite, Kalgoorlie, Bennalong, no way– Bonner, Blair ? Ha !! Eden Monaro- perhaps; Wentworth, please God Wentworth, Im sick of his face on the TV;
Page, dont think so; Solomon ? perhaps; how depressing, scratching together a few ‘gain’ seats for the ALP.
Cross referencing between Adam Carrs seat by seat prognosis, rogue and other polls, The Poll Bludger, a 6 week solid analysis of 2001 and 2004 election results in fine detail, and the coal face I stare at out here in the bleachers here in sunny SE Brisvegas where i function as a social worker in a very prominant Federal Government department i conclude that any ning nong who wants to predict the outcome of this Election needs to be either Nostradamis love child, very good at reading tea leaves, or a bloody idealogue with a personal bent for one or other of the 2 contenders-that is, one you can safely ignore as ‘biased’.
Please win Mr Rudd, Im sick of looking at little Johnny and that smug faced Costello telling us with great pride that the share of the economic pie going to ‘the worker’ fell away and the share of the pie going to capital improved yet again. Its not us v them -stupid way to view it- adversarial approaches to capital-labour relations is just ignorant- just as ignorant as voting for one side or the other because of the colour of their ties , red or blue, or even [ewww] green. I worry for the next election if Rudd loses this one- yes loses. Imagine another 3 years of Howard/Costello- OMG-wheres my Prozac !!
Howard reckons he’s winning Eden-Monaro.
No-one had bothered to comment on the PM’s recent prognostications to his party room. He may have been making it up.