The latest Morgan phone poll has Labor’s two-party lead widening to 63.5-36.5 from 60.5-39.5 last week. I believe this is a record for a Morgan phone poll, while not quite matching face-to-face polls from earlier in the year which put it at 65-35 and 64.5-35.5.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Morgan: 63.5-36.5
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720 Comments
Gotta love Morgan for a Friday arvo poll-fix.
Talk about a single party state.
Lyne would fall on those figures.
The phone poll is lower on average than the face-to-face. This augurs badly for the Opposition, who are continuing to pick away at irrelevant minutae like a pack of rabid sandflies, while Rudd serenely sails away on fair winds.
Even the Libs’ urgers, lurk merchants and spruikers-in-chief – Shanahan, Uhlmann, Albrechtensen, Henderson and Sheridan – have, to varying extents, left sideshow alley and caught up with what the mainstream is thinking. Meanwhile, back in the tent, the Two-Headed Lady, Girl In a Bottle and the Incredible Tattooed Man (aka the Liberal-National Opposition, in various guises) continue to bark away at passers by, trying desperately to get someone, anyone to see the show.
Rudd forgot to go to Japan.
Rudd remembered to salute Bush.
But he forgot to bow to the Queen.
He talks too much about Tibet.
He talks too little about Tibet.
His cost-cutting is too much.
It is too little.
We hate Work Choices.
We love Work choices.
And, amazingly, Brendan Nelson agrees with all of the above points, so desperate is he to keep his razor-thin Liberal leadership majority in place.
They are a leaderless rabble. The man who claims to be leader is being pulled around by the nose like a bull at a slaughterhouse, being readied for the butcher’s knife. The rank and file can’t get used to being on the wrong side of the House Of Reps’ chamber. But that doesn’t stop them from beiong on both sides of just about every issue, trying to have two-bob each way on anything and everything under the sun (and a few things that the sun never shone down upon).
I’ve run out of metaphors for this dreary lot of losers.
Wait a minute… did I use “turkies”?
Labor is not all that far from double the vote of the LNP and this is a phone poll which slightly disadvantages Labor. I think Australian History shows Conservative parties cannot handle Opposition – they disintegrate until a genuine leader can be found.
LNP are heading towards being just a right wing rump. Possibility in time a new party on the Left will gain some prominence as Global Warming becomes more important in the Global Consciousness. Perhaps the Greens or a similar party- but they will need a wider base of policies than just “save the planet”.
It says L-NP down 1.5 on primaries, but I make it down 2, assuming the comparison is with the previous phone poll, not the previous poll.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4279/
Love your work Bushfire.
Sorry, I missed a later phone poll:
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4282/
But Labor is up 3 on that one, not 0.5.
“I think Australian History shows Conservative parties cannot handle Opposition – they disintegrate until a genuine leader can be found.” Doug, I would amend that slightly. They disintegrate until the Labor Government becomes unpopular and that usually takes more than 10 years. The Libs got in last time due to this. I guess in retrospect this could apply to most changes of government in Australia.
The honeymoon continues for PM Rudd…………….
………but meanwhile he may be on a “Listening Tour”, but Brendan Nelson will not like what he is hearing from this poll, nor will his party for that matter. He won’t last very much longer.
To be honest Turnbulll isn’t much better by saying the proposed budget cuts don’t go far enough. They were in power for so long and remained silent while Howard and Costello held sway and led us to the position of high inflation we are in today.
The new ALP govt could not get elected until the majority of members that were in Hawke/Keating govts were out of parliament. The same may apply to the current opposition.
so I guess that the opposition havent build on the “momentum” that Roy Morgan falsely attributed to them last time
And I would blame Howard more than Nelson for these poll numbers. He left the party in the state that it finds itself
Well as I have been saying, they wanted to be like one nation, a valid position, one nation has shown there is an extreme right wing vote, its about 10%. They have another 20% to lose. Nelson is a leader, he got to 10% early.
Does anyone have a sense of the numbers in the Liberal partyroom in terms of left/right? It seems the right was strong enough to veto Turnbull straight after the election when just about every commentator viewed him as the more dangerous opponent for Rudd.
“blame Howard more than Nelson ”
I fully agree ‘Andrew’ #12.
Turnbull has gone missing since treasury and the reserve bank made him look like a goose for telling fibs, Nelson is making an embarrassment of himself on his clayton’s tour and all Dolly can do is have hysterics about pandas. No wonder Robb is scraping the barrel considering a return of the Smirk for leader.
On the big Panda issue by the way, Kev has had a joke about it with reporters saying he was sure they “will enjoy a happy sojourn in Australia”
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23522723-5006301,00.html
Bushfire Bill @ 4 You made me laugh out loud! And I’m in a shared study area – not a good look!
The only thing saving Brendo right now is that nobody else in the Liberal Party would want the job, not even Turnball! I say keep Nelson around for a few more months, let the conservatives totally implode into complete irrelevance, if they haven’t do so already.
May way well we say “god save the queen… because nothing willl save DR Nelson”
The only saving grace for Nelson is that he does go to great lengths to listen to members of his own party. The Liberals (especially backbenchers) have gotten their voice back on the party room floor, and they’re not about to give it up to an autocrat like Turnbull. That will help Nelson stay on as leader – though it’ll do nothing for his chances to become PM.
Corker of an article by Bernard Keane at Crikey about Nelson’s unhappy listening tour. An excerpt:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080409-Weekend-at-Brendans.html
What was the Wally from Wentworth on about today – spending needs to be cut by $10 billion a year to effect inflation.
He may be stating an economic fact -but it is a political own goal. Is he going to criticise the budget for not cutting spending enough?
Are there a couple of synapses missing between his mouth and his brain?
I don’t recall Allbull being outspoken about the need for budget cuts when the Coalition was spending up big, running up the inflation problem now being faced.
Allbull and Co can’t have it both ways no matter how hard they try. Come budget night they’ll be complaining about the nasty cuts to this and that while at the same time saying the overall cuts aren’t savage enough. It’ll be a simple case of put up or shut the f#ck up. They will not be willing to identify what cuts they would make if (heaven forbid) they were in government. The Rudd juggernaut will power on regardless.
Well that is an interesting thing for Turnbull to say, a definite own-goal.
The next question he will have to answer is what LNP spending policies he thinks should be cut, Carer payments, pensions, public servants, defence?
This gives a number of options for Labor to argue… such as ‘we want to lower inflationary pressures not vandalise the economy’. ‘Let Mr Turnbull tell us where he thinks another $10bn should be cut’.
AND of course this helps Tanner who has a second round of cuts later in the year remember, he has Turnbull’s up front support for them now!
Another reason why Turnbull would be useless as Leader. He cant think beyond one or two steps ahead, keeps putting foot in mouth, keeps helping the ALP with what he says. Not to mention his speaking style is off-putting.
Maybe Turnbull is an ALP mole? Along with Brendan and Downer and Hockey.
25
Kina, I agree (reluctantly) with your assessment of Chief Turning Bull.
Reluctantly because I did expect him to make a good politician.
However, it’s obvious in interviews that his knowledge of issues is very shallow indeed; he can sound deep and meaningful for a short stretch but if he’s asked in depth questions or to go off topic he flounders.
Celebrity candidates need to be parked on the backbenches for a while to be given a chance to learn the ropes. Probably CTB’s ego wouldn’t let this happen but it’s his loss.
Bull butter!
Turnbull is still thinking about Glen Stevens. He is correctly trying to say that Govt. spending has little effect on inflation.
But politically he is an A grade dunce –
Actually the odds of Hockey being the opposition leader by the next election are looking very good at around $26.
Nelson and Turnbull are not options as has been seen by their preformance to date in opposition. They won’t go for Bishop, Downer and Costello have left the building and Pyne is just not an option.
Hockey would bring a personal aspect to any contest between him and Rudd and the links between him and Work Choices, now abolished, will be in the past when he goes up against Rudd at the next election.
Or maybe Turnbull butter.
Rod
I think Hockey would be like Beazley – a nice guy, but would you really want him to be PM?
Well there is a reason im going to hear Nelson’s speech on Saturday, because there might not be too many chances of hearing him talk as Leader of the Opposition.
Do you think he would retire at the next election if he lost the leadership??
Nelson will get to the budget and the Gippsland by-election. If he doesn’t perform and we Tories lose what should always be a safe Tory seat then the knives may come up sooner rather than later.
It’s all mandarin to the Coalition. They should start brushing up on their foreign languages. It could be a long while in exile.
Meanwhile, the WA community cabinet comes to Broome on Sunday for some local politicking. Interesting to see what goodies are announced in an election year. Things are certainly hotting up, with pre-selections on both sides reminiscent of earlier days in Victoria. The Premier has been especially active it seems and the deposed Opposition leader has shown there is life left in the old dog yet.
Jesus, or maybe the idea is to say.. “cut more, cut more, in the interests of Australia’s disabled whale loving aged pensioners cut more you bastard”
Then if Swan doesn’t cut everything from the budget except $100 bucks a yr for a single volunteer cop to patrol the entire OZ, plus $80 bucks for notebooks and pens he can say “see, they should have cut more”!.
But if Swanney goes in hard and actually allocates a cool $70 for notepads, Turnbull can say “well, the cuts were misplaced” … I would have spent the $70 on a mobile with $30 prepaid credit!
“I’ve run out of metaphors for this dreary lot of losers. Wait a minute… did I use “turkies”?”
that is an unconscionable slur against alectura lathami, bill. any queenslander knows turkeys have the brains to get out of the sun.
But despite that gam Wayne Swan is still a clown!
compared to whom, turnbull? alexander ‘buy me a panda daddy’ downer? or perhaps the ear himself?
I don’t know what the evidence is for Swan being a fool, no more so they any that have gone before him, his problem I think is just personal presentation style which he is getting better at. Tanner is clearly the better front man.
Gam arguing Swan is not a clown is like saying the sky isn’t blue!
Forget Hockey, he will always be tainted by “WorkChoices”.
Ebenezer hate to break it to you but it was Kevin Andrews who wrote up the legislation, Hockey did all he could to get a fairness test put in when he became the IR minister! Hockey is not tainted by WC IMHO!
glen, i’m making a comparison. there are fools and then there are unelectable fools.it’s all a matter of perspective.
Gam, if you feed it you just encourage it to live
Glen
Your comment at 37 is part of your side of politics problem. What if Swan is not a clown? What if Rudd is more substance than spin?
What if the electorate thinks that they quite like a new invigourated Govt.?
I know politics is politics but when will your side realise that they are getting creamed by a better team? A team that took a decade to build.
When are your guys going to admit they stuffed up big time? That the King of Kirribilli had no clothes? That the Smirk did no tax reform for ten years, that our foreign policy was a joke, that infrastructure was an election bribe, that “people skills” was “the worst friend medicare ever had”, that industry policy meant whatever is best for our mates, that climate change was a leftard wank, that water policy could be dreamt up over a weekend, that spending a quarter of a billion dollars on advertising could not sell a turd sandwich, get my drift?
But you think your side is in deep brown stuff now? Its only just begun.
“it was Kevin Andrews who wrote up the legislation, Hockey did all he could to get a fairness test put in when he became the IR minister! Hockey is not tainted by WC IMHO!”
that’s exactly the kind of nuanced argument that will convince voters that the man they saw spruiking serfchoices on tv didn’t actually have anything to do with it. i look forward to hockey’s turn at the liberal leadership. perhaps he could start with a tour called, ‘workchoices wasn’t really my fault, honest’.
Just you wait Ruawake, in 10 years time some Tory will use what you’ve said as reasons why you shouldn’t re-elect the ALP by your standard!
Ruawake, it doesn’t take a political genius to figure out Swan is a Clown and the worst performer in the Rudd Government, im pointing out a fact. Sure the ALP front bench has some intelligent people in them but Swan is a dunce and couldn’t hold a candle to Costello.
Glen arguing Swan is a clown is like saying the Coalition is a disciplined group of intelligent politicians.
Glen how about waiting till the Budget is handed down? No one is arguing he is a brilliant Parliamentary performer, it is the policy work that counts.
You really still think Costella was worth a pinch of shit as Treasurer? Sure, with a Treasury brief in front of him, the backbench clacque behind him and a complaisant Speaker he thundered away in Parliament, but let Howie make all the spending decisions.
Apres im glad you refuse to see the facts that Swan is a dunce and Labor’s weakest link. Because the longer he’s Treasurer the more Labor will be vulnerable on economic policy and the easier AllBull’s job will be.
Thomarse considering Swan virtually has every answer to Questions in Parliament written by the Treasury Department, they’ll probably be writing most of the economic policy handed down in the budget so as long as he looks like a clown when in Parliament the longer the ALP will struggle on economic competency.
Glen
Do you agree with Turnbull that Costello did nothing to reform the tax system for 10 years?
Did you notice the legislation that passed when parliament last sat? Recommendations that had sat on the Smirks desk for 6 years?
Swan could sit in his office playing solitaire on his computer and still be a better treasurer.
And Costello the same, just he enjoyed the theatrics. Treasury still wrote his briefs. At least Swan has economics qualifications! As to Treasury doing the budget, bullbutter!
I also noticed Costello hardly ever addressed the substance of a question.
Why has Turnball gone rather quiet?
Australian Physiology 2008, Lesson 1.
The ear is on the nose.
What is the criteria for judging if someone is a good Treasurer and, how has it been applied to Swann?
Costello had the popular media personality and also the popular act in parliament which gave the appearance of a strong man in control but, I do remember him last year not even knowing how tax scales were applied. From memory he thought that once you got into another bracket your whole income was taxed at that rate. That was about the same time (in the same week) they were lambasting Rudd for not memorising the tax scales.
As media performing Treasurer you would give him 9.5 but, what you really want in the job is a smart Treasurer who takes all the professional advice in and, knows how to use it. Better to have a good Treasurer but boring media performer than a great media performer but lousy Treasurer. We don’t know how to rate Swan as yet.
Glen wrote:
I’m addressing the argument, not the person, so this is not feeding a troll.
Hockey was so plainly, stupendously, gob-smackingly stunned by the “Fairness Test” that it was plain he had not been let in on the loop when the decision was made to try it on.
If I’ve ever seen a stunned mullet, bunny in the headlights, blank palette in my life it was Joe hockey’s face when journalists asked him on the morning of the announcement what he thought about the Fairness Test. Only the day before he had been in the same spot, outside the doors of Parliament House, shielded from the cruel Canberra cold by seventeen layers of falafel-induced blubber, vowing, nay, signing in blood and swearing on his poor dead granny’s grave his opinion that a Fairness Test was a no go, dead-in-the-water nonsense dreamed up by Lefties, tree huggers and various other nobodies who tended to wear brown corduroy trousers and woollen ties.
The version that Glen reprinted was pure, unadulterated, Hockey-Speak, dredged up from an interview he gave post-election to try to make himself look like the Human Face of Liberalism. It’s part of the self-authored Myth of Uncle Joe, and just as devoid of reason, meaning or recognizable context.
Hockey not tainted by Work Choices? That this could be even contemplated in reference to the big round form of The Avuncular One is so depressingly far from the truth as to make the Flat Earthers look like sober-minded physicists in white lab coats starring in an episode of Catalyst.
To converse in Hockey-Speak (similar to Howard-Speak, but for a dumbed-down audience) simply beg or borrow a ouji board, move the Scrabble tiles around and around for five minutes, compile a meaningless sentence comprising words of two syllables or less, pass it through your empty head and then spout as if you’d been saying this for years. It helps not to cast your eyes to the left as you say it. If you do people will know you’re making it up as you go along.
Tell us anything Glen, but please, not that utter drivel about Joe Hockey not being tainted by Work Choices.
Aren’t you being a little generous to Joe Two-Cents, B Bill? He can’t take all the credit. The whole Liberal Party is tainted by WorstChoices.
Watch Labor rattle the WC sabre in the next election campaign, with the help of some juicy grabs from J Two-Cents, Julie Bishop etc.
56
Bushfire Bill
OUCH
Did anyone else listen to pm? I swear the coverage of the Therese Rein’s company beat up had a time skew to the usual suspects garbage about how Rudd should resign due to the heinous breach of ministerial code of conduct and other over blown confected outrage. Maybe I’m getting a little paranoid about the ABC, and I did tell Antonio I’d try and keep an open mind, but there was only Julia stating the case for the non-inclusion of the company on the register vs. the others.
Glen: If you think Wayne Swan is crock and doesn’t know what he is doing then I suggest you read this from the Four Corners program “Howards End”.
JOE HOCKEY: Quite frankly when I took over the job I don’t think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under WorkChoices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation. And once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of WorkChoices we introduced the fairness test.
So that says to me that Ministers in the last government didn’t understand the implications of the laws they had passed. I found that quite an extraordinary statement.The people elected these members and they have a right to know that their elected representatives have the ability and capacity to understand the laws they are passing. Note the plural…MINISTERS……Not one but many. Incompetence is in plentyful supply in the Coalition it seems.
Kina @ 26 –
Maybe Turnbull is an ALP mole? Along with Brendan and Downer and Hockey.
I’ve heard that all except one of the Libs/Nats are ALP moles and that our Glen is their handler
Glen, I’m sure it will be a deep comfort to Horatio that you’ll be there to listen to his speech on Saturday. Do let us know how many turn up and stay awake.
Kina, I’m not so sure about you awarding the Smirk 9.5 for media performance. He increasingly, to me, came across as arrogant and full of it. Moreover, his PPM ratings weren’t ever anything to write home about, so I don’t think he had much appeal to the public, even given being Treasurer is a tough gig. The proof is also in that he didn’t cut it in the party either, never had the numbers.
#30
Rod, Regarding Hockey:
“…the links between him and Work Choices, now abolished, will be in the past…”
With respect, you’ve got to be kidding. Hockey has Workchoices tattooed across his forehead – there’s no surgical procedure that can remove it.
Thomarse, I reckon Malcolm baby figures that because he’s worth big bucks, he’s a natural for shadow Treasurer (the Leadership a little later, and not just of the Opposition). Unfortunately, every time he opens his mouth, he says something so stupid, he’s just stuffing the other foot in, and winding up on his arse in the process.
I keep wondering, with these share trading companies going down the gurgler, what the hell is so great about a free market. It’s looking more like a recipe for crims and incompetents to screw over whomever they can, and the devil take the hindmost.
What’s even worse for the Libs is the parliamentary secs waiting on the sidelines earning their kudos – maxine m, mike kelly, greg combet, bill shorten to name a few – labor has got a chock load of talent at the moment – libs ???
These debates about who is a good performer in Parliament are just silly. Mr Costello obviously turned people off bit time with his bombast in Parliament, and Mr Keating did the same before him. Strong leadership is not necessarily synonymous with ranting, raving and abuse. Whether Mr Rudd will be seen by history as a strong leader is far too early to tell, but in adopting a more conversational approach than Costello and Keating, he’s off to an interesting start.
Downer bends Rudd to his will………..
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/11/2214650.htm
Will Lord Dolly of Mayo now be known as “Wang Wang” ?
eeek… how much can a panda bear
While I have empathy for pensioners and the amount of pension they receive why do I have this feeling that there is an ulterior motive behind the current drive by the MSM to improve the lot of pensioners? Particularly as nothing like this was done by them during the eleven and a half years reign of the previous government.
When you say pensioners, do you mean only aged pensioners or all the rest?
Disability pensioners etc have long been forgotten by the GOV and indeed the general public. A person living for whatever reason on a pension is doing exactly that… living on a pension.
It’s got to be hell @ $250 aweek
Nothing was done for anybody other then those on aged pensions… all the rest were deemed unlikely LIB voters
Enjaybee
Because a Liberal dominated Senate Commitee said so, if pensioners had increases to pensions instead of “one off bonuses” they would be $400 a year better off.
Another mean and tricky act from Smirk and the former member for Bennelong.
Classified
Did you miss the Australian editorial? Us DSP pensioners are a nation of crocks. Daytime television ratings must be soaring along with … ahem … bad backs, “crippling” stress, chronic fatigue and other assorted ills.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23447652-16741,00.html
HSO, well im sure we’ll actually be able to understand Nelson speak than the poor people at the Brookings Institute who didn’t understand a word of Rudd speak!
75 Glen – I hope you can verify this assumption. Have you asked them all Glen?
Well maybe Rudd knew what he was talking about who knows?
69 ruawake – I think that should be with a “k” not a “g”
Are you now saying they may have understood Glen?
Gary
No but Rudd must have or else he’d be crazy, which he obviously is not. But i doubt anybody else in the room knew what he was on about!
Just wondering Glen, did you understand Rudd during the election campaign and since when he speaks to the average Australian? What didn’t you understand if that be the case?
Why do you doubt that glen, given he was speaking to a particular group of people who probably understand such terminology. Have they come out and told you they had no idea what he was saying?
Given that rudd probably understood what he was getting at (according to you) and I agree with you on that, what makes you think noone else in this world did?
Rudd was talking gobbledegook, guys, face it.
Seems to be popular gobbledegook, though.
I have been thinking about a photo op moment for year’s ruawake.
In which I will recreate a moment that has happened to me many times.
In this scenario, I will take my “ korsakoffs induced dementia” mum along with me to the local hairdressers. Like a diligent and caring son I will stand there as they tell me that sure, a pensioner gets 10% off. Then as they say “ready for you Mrs Classified. I will say “wait here mum.. I’m getting a haircut”
They will say… no…we thought it was for her. No I say. It’s for me. Well you must pay full price. Why I say… here’s my blue card
“Sorry, only for the AGED pensioners”
Its standard practice
Now I love my mum, but she is old and is basically dependant on me for many things. She has lived her life, bought her house and raised her kids.
I am young, disabled and trying to raise my kids, I rent and I will not take a cent from her
I reckon I need that 10% discount as much as she does
For what it’s worth, she agrees
(Although she still keeps putting apples in the kids bags)
Pedant (67) In my opinion, your Post is the most sensible, pithy and balanced perspective so far on this thread, and that is (frankly) very refreshing.
I agree that Mr. Rudd has made an interesting start but particularly so relative to the style of stewardship of recent predecessor prime ministers.
One commentator has (I believe, disparagingly) referred to the Prime Minister as the ‘Prime Bureaucrat’. On the contrary, I think Mr. Rudd’s bureaucratic approach to the business of government promises to be very successful and is apt to produce positive outcomes for this country’s domestic and foreign policy. The latter (positive outcomes for the country) is my main concern but of course, if his approach to government has the consequence of generating favourable (electoral) outcomes for the Australian Labor Party, then I suppose that will sustain at least for the time being, the present joy of that party’s barrackers, a few of whom seem to be regular contibutors to this and other threads.
Ruawake at 74
The irony is that the majority of old age pensioners (I don’t know about invalid, disabled, etc) vote for the Liberals but it is not until a Labour Government is in power that lobbying for their plight begins.
david charles … Gary Bruce
this thing your setting up here
cute
will be fun to watch
84 Dyno – my point is only that that gobbledegook was probably understood by that particular audience, not by me, not by you but by them. To make a general statement that no-one understood it was wrong.
Enjaybee the same could be said of Teachers…
The ALP has been in power in every State for some time and yet the Teachers Unions complain and complain rightly sometimes i might add that they aren’t being paid enough (Victoria) and yet they’ll never vote Liberal in their life!
ruawake @ 74 – Wonder how much of the 300% increase in numbers of DSP recipients reported in the linked article are due to state governments reducing workers comp entitlements?
David Charles (86): One aspect of the approach being taken by Mr Rudd which perhaps has not been fully appreciated yet is its often considerable subtlety. Take, just an example, his refraining from purging from the public service senior leaders perceived to be close to the previous government. This is smart on at least four levels:
(1) It has enabled the government to get out of the blocks quickly, by avoiding unnecessary brouhaha in departments.
(2) It invites comparisons with Mr Menzies when he came to power in 1949 – on this, see Mrs Heather Henderson’s letter in the latest issue of Quadrant.
(3) The fact that the Boxalls, L’Estranges et al. have had to stay on under a government which may not reflect their own sympathies represents a gentle, unstated, but very clear signal about where power now lies.
(4) Keeping them on in the public service denies the opposition the opportunity to pick them up as advisers who could potentially be of use.
Another thought: there’s a tendency in Australian partisan debate to assume that if you aren’t offending people, “you don’t really stand for anything”, “aren’t a strong leader”, “are wishy-washy”, “try to be all things to all people”, etc., etc. But diplomacy is all about achieving your objectives without offending people. Too many of our “strong” leaders have managed to implement their pet policies when in power, but have done it in so divisive a way that it has been easy for their opponents to dismantile them as soon as there has been a change of government. Really strong leaders are the ones who persuade people, rather than telling them to follow, such that when they are no longer in power, their policies are so bedded down that it’s not politically feasible to dismantle them. Whatever you think of the New Deal, the fact that the architecture of Roosevelt’s policies survived so long after his death is a tribute to the genuine strength of his leadership.
In a similar vein: it’s usually the new government which dismantles the former government’s policies. At the moment, it’s the former government which is dismantling its own legacy. Maybe there have no choice, but it’s still unusual.
Finally, I can’t resist a quote from a distinguished Australian political scientist which seems to apply to Dr Nelson: “he has the air of a sparrow which has strayed into a badminton game”.
89 “yet they’ll never vote Liberal in their life!”
Great story in the Dead Tree version of the Gold Coast Bulletin today. Not available on line but it was saying the majoity of the 700 Liberal members on the Gold Coast are likely to split from the official Liberal line and join the Pineapple Party once the State Organisation rejects the Nationals proposal.
Apparently they are pissed off that the State Liberals never gave them a vote about the future and they are going to get even by splitting the Liberal Party in this state even further. Looks like the group that won’t vote Liberal is expanding.
Glen, I admire you, you’re a passionate advocate for your side of politics! It’s a pity more conservatives aren’t as eloquent as you!
I’ll say I’m not entirely convinced by Swan, I think Tanner would do the Treasurer job so much better!
Gippsland Byelection? I’d still expect the Nationals to hold it, but if Labor chooses a decent candidate and Rudd’s honeymoon continues, there could be an upset.
In conclusion, a brilliant week for K Rudd, and another disaster for Nelson!
Didn’t Joe Hockey say that the Libs are on the comeback,just after they won the Brisbane City Council elections.
Yes, but I think he’d been reading and taking calls from Glen. Would love to be a fly on the wall at the Victorian Liberal Council meeting tomorrow to see what he advises them.
Glen, you are staking a lot on your opinion of Swan. Imho, he will get into stride. The economy has been through an inflection path recently. It has been difficult to read: even the RBA has had trouble calibrating policy.
From my knowledge of Swan, he will want to be right and he will be prepared to work hard. He has the ability to get on top of his brief – in common with the other senior ministers – and will sort out the policies and the messages.
Take comfort in your scorn, Glen, but be prepared to be disappointed….
When does the Liberal candidate for the Gippsland by election get named, after Glen’s speech to the Victorian Liberal Council or at a later date?
89 – Might have something to do with the number of school closures that generally follow an election of Liberal governments. But as I have stated before demanding higher pay for teachers is one the few places the Locum might actually outflank the ALP.
As for the DSP: In certain areas of Australia the number of people on DSP really got out of hand in the mid to late 90’s. In the northern suburbs of Adelaide, it approaches 10% of the voting population. It largely happened because the Centrelink staff were encouraged to lower unemployment figures for their areas and because they were having to decide who was going to work-for-the-dole. Illiteracy was being written off as a mental disability (desk staff got sick of assisting with forms).
So there has been an unwritten policy is to keep the DSP low, so that those who might manage to get a job will. And that really harms the people on DSP who really need it. A higher DSP with more rigourous checks would be a benefit to the disabled.
As for the Olympic Torch: It reminds me of a late-life Howard Hughes. Its there, but nobody can see it.
Does Morgan really reckon their Government Confidence Rating means anything? Wasn’t it also above 100 for the Howard Government just before the last election?
Oh Dear, things aren’t looking good for Nelson.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23526436-601,00.html
From Frank’s linked article
“It had been thought that Dr Nelson should be given at least a year to consolidate his position and rebuild the Liberals’ stocks with voters, but fear is spreading within the party that fundamental damage is being done to the Liberal brand.”
I would have thought that was done by Howard and his cronies long ago, it is a long time since this has been a ‘Liberal’ party
What happens when Turncoat proves a dudd as leader?
Abbot, Hockey or Pyne?
Greg Sheridan has written another piece that is full of praise for our PM.
“Rudd has shown the world that it is possible to be a good friend of China and still speak to the Chinese leadership frankly and in public about its appalling human rights practices. This is a profound revolution.
Let no one tell you it is not a change from the past. I am sure Australian officialdom advised against this approach and it is a radical departure from the practice of John Howard, who preferred to concentrate on what he and the Chinese had in common.”
“His approach, of course, was immensely sophisticated. In his speech at Beijing University he said he wanted to be a zhengyou to China. This Chinese term means a friend who is such a good friend that he will tell you unpleasant truths. This is where Rudd’s approach, which was very high risk, much higher risk than anyone will now admit, has paid off handsomely, indeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams before the trip began.”
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gregsheridan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/pm_makes_great_leap_on_china/
Good on you Greg Sheridan – you are a beacon of light.
Thomarse @ 103 – IMHO Abbot is about as electable as tinea, especially after we’ve had 3/6/9 years of the ever calm Rudd. So it’s a contest between Hockey and Pyne. I personally can’t stand Pyne so I’m hoping he never gets the guernsey and at this stage I don’t think he quite has what it takes to be leader. Maybe after the next election. As others have said Hockey would be another Beazley. Nice bloke but…. However, he could be the bloke to pull the party out of its Howardista funk into something resembling an opposition
BTW – having spent some hours in Beazley’s company at various times I believe he would have made a far better PM than most people thought, including possibly Kim himself, which may well have been his real archilles heal.
The Turning has begun. Rupert really likes China. Therefore Rupert’s writers like China.
On another matter my next door neighbour’s dog is a lovely dog. He’s a 3/4 golden Labrador named “Barry”. He’s everybody’s friend. He gets to be everybody’s friend by literally eating his way through the neighbour’s brush fence and waddling up the driveway to a friendly porch to sit with us and just commune with the neighbourhood.
One of my dogs, Bob, hates Barry. Bob only weighs 7 kilos and Barry weighs 45 kilos, but that doesn’t stop Bob. The one time I tried to introduce them Bob waited an hour until we all thought he’d calmed down and then, when I released him, took off like a rocket and bit Barry on the bum so hard Barry yelped and cowered in a corner, shaking with fear. Bob 1, Barry Nil.
But Barry has one naughty trait. He’s realised that when he gets up in the morning all he has to do is issue one loud “Wooft” from his backyard 50 metres away and that’s enough to get Bob so apoplectically enraged that he’ll tear down from the deck to the back yard making a noise like someone has tied a brick around his balls. He then barks for fifteen minutes non-stop. I have this picture of Barry smiling a doggy smile and saying to himself, “Heh, heh, heh… that fixed the little bastard.”
This is a true story but is presented as a fable here. The moral?
The next time Glenn logs on and writes the single word, “Bull butter!”, don’t give him the satisfaction of careening from all corners of this blog to bark at him. You won’t change his mind. You won’t change his nature. You can’t win the argument. All he does is smile.
I know this is pedantic, but…. I wish Greg Sheridan and the other OO journalists would get it right. It’s Peking University, not Beijing University. Yes yes yes, the city of Peking is now Beijing but Peking University is what the university calls itself. As others have said, it is the top Chinese university with extremely competitive entry standards. The students KR spoke to are the brightest of the bright.
Good Morning Fellow Poll Bludgers,
The next Liberal PM isn’t even sitting in Parliment at the moment. Until the moderate Liberals can purge the hard right, they will remain “The John Howard Party” unelectable, out of touch and out to lunch permanently.
The Liberal Party will be born again once all Howard’s ex-ministers are no longer shadow ministers and preferably out of Parliment altogether. However, that will probably take at least another two election defeats.
William
Would you please put a permanent link in explaining how to use blockquote and whilst you are at it have a go at persuading people to use a browser wth a spell checker and how to turn it on.
When you get around to these critically important tasks Mr Bowe, would it also be possible to educate posters in their use of grammar?
Cheers,
Tom
Punctuation would be good, too.
Glad to know we’re really getting into the important issues.
Spell checker, hmmm you planning any magic Albert Ross?
Sorry, the pedant in me
Alan Ramsey, blunt and to the point on Nelson.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/alan-ramsey/nelsons-even-got-his-mum-worried/2008/04/11/1207856825776.html
thomarse youre right there are great expectations for turnbull but the current situation is more about how good Rudd is rather than how bad Nelson is. THat’s why I would wait 18 months if i was Turnbull. And I dont think Turnbull will be as great as he thinks he will be
Laurie Oakes on Nelson. Even more cutting and to the point.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23524847-5000117,00.html
I don’t think Mr Rudd was particularly well-known 12 years ago; certainly not as a potential future leader.
I wonder if Rudd’s omission of Japan from his tour was a deliberate ploy, due to Japan’s internal problems or just one of those things not considered important at the time.
Rudd’s more strident approach to whaling, confirmation to Bush of our troop withdrawals from Iraq, Rudd’s comments on Tibet and raising them again in China, his seeking for an Australian seat on the Security Council, his pressuring for increased troop commitments in Afghanistan, indications of closer economic activity between Australia and China and Rudd’s intellectualism will, we might hope, strengthen his/our bargaining hand when he does get to Japan.
111 [Punctuation would be good, too.
Glad to know we’re really getting into the important issues.]
Yes, zoom we could become a mini Poll bludger’s Toastmasters club all gloss and no substance. Zero tolerance and no learning from mistakes that is what I want to see. Then we could all get ourselves elected to public office and be lost for lack of substance from day one when we arrived there but the presentation of our bullbutter would be perfect.
Perhaps we could appoint the equivalent of toastmaster’s gruntmaster who could keep a running tally of errors and harangue offending commenters with their piddling mistakes after each comment.
Kina, from what I read the Jap govt is in a worse shambles than the Libs. So bad the Jap PM didn’t even ring Rudd to offer congratulations. Would have been better to have the Rudd visit as planned.
Rudd has an interesting dilemma.
Rudd has told China that he wishes Australia and China to have a Zhengyou style relationship, where constructive criticism should be allowed without hurting the friendship. Rudd has thus made his criticism about Tibet on this basis and thus implies that all else about our relationship should be unaffected.
Rudd will find it very difficult to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony on the basis of Tibet since he has had the ‘luxury’ of his criticism and, to be a good friends he should still attend.
Like Joe Hockey should have attended Rudd’s daughters wedding if they had Zhengyou friendship. They can be opponents and criticise and battle each other but still remain friends and honour the commitments of friends.
My wife (Chinese)was telling me about Zhengyou in ancient wars where famous generals on two sides respected and honoured each other and would apart from the war be great friends. Fate had them on opposing sides and it was recognised each had to fight valiantly but outside of the fighting would treat each other as friends.
If Rudd wants to be Zhengyou he will have to honour the things China does but, have the right to fairly offer criticism.
99
B.S. Fairman Says:
A higher DSP with more rigourous checks would be a benefit to the disabled.
The DSP is not easy to get. You can’t just walk in complaining about having a bad week, and they will hand it over to you. Most applicants have to go through at least 3 layers of assessment, including two medical and a psychiatric, and most are reassessed frequently.
The problem is that many medical (and especially psychiatric) judgements are in grey areas that are hard to prove or disprove, the science is not up to speed yet (and may never be). But that does not mean these people don’t have very real and serious medical problems. Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, hypthyroidism, and stomach ulcers, and many other serious physical conditions, were all once dismissed as some form of malinger’s charter, and not that long ago. Medicine is an imperfect art and science, and it frequently gets it wrong, and will always do so.
There is no perfect system of assessment that delivers no false positives or negatives, not even close. If you get too ‘tough’ and stringent you will inevitably end up hurting innocent, vulnerable people who do deserve support. You gotta take a certain margin of error into account in these situations. I would rather there were 10% getting the pension who did not deserve it, than 10% not getting it who did deserve it.
True to form, The Australian is just picking on the weak and vulnerable, with hollow ideological economic arguments, willful ignorance about medical and welfare issues, and superficial morality play thuggery. Completely contemptible stuff.
Nelson says he’s staying on as Lib Leader.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/im-going-nowhere/2008/04/12/1207856885612.html
121- My idea is not to punish Disability Support Pensioners. In fact, I want them to get more money. Heck, I wouldn’t to try and live on the pissweak amount that is given to them. But it would be a hard sell politically, as the commentary, particularly in the MSM, would be all over the cases of questionable pensioners and therefore argue against raising the rate. This is part of the reason for the unwritten policy of keeping it so low exists.
My solution is establish a new payment system for DSP receivers which includes more rigourous checks (to appease the MSM) but with a much higher payment. People could choose to remain on the current system, but without the extra cash. Hence, the people on the new system would be seen by the media as truely in need and increasing payments would be easier.
“I’m going nowhere” is precisely Brendan’s problem. He’s going nowhere, that’s why the back bench are muttering about replacing him.
First post for a while,
Still soaking up the new political landscape. I thought Rudd’s performance in China was a jaw dropping brave move – and he succeeded in confronting the Chinese but keeping them onside – a feat matched by how many world leaders?
That now makes two political moments this year when I have been enormously proud of the leadership shown by the PM and felt good about my country.
Meanwhile, Nelson correctly observes “I’m going nowhere”
An interesting analysis here:
Rudd rewrites the rules of engagement
Geremie Barme is a professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University.
the link
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/rudd-rewrites-the-rules-of-engagement/2008/04/11/1207856825767.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Does anyone know how long Dolly Downer was Opp leader for? I am trying to work out if Brendon Nelson will take the gong for the the shortest tenure of an opposition leader. You have to laugh!!
Rudd’s approach makes the Washington Post site
‘Australia to China: Let’s Not Be Friends’
Does the West have a new secret weapon in dealing with China in the person of Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister of Australia?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/pomfretschina/2008/04/australia_to_china_lets_not_be_1.html
Peter of Marino
Dolly was opposition leader for about 8 months.
Dolly’s reign of Error lasted from 24 May 1994 – 30 Jan 1995. So that is 251 days (if I can add correctly).
The shortest term as leader of the opposition however is 36 days. But that was Bob Hawke who of course didn’t lose the leadership then, just the title of Opposition Leader. Downer is the shortest not to be PM.
Actually, Deakin served for 7 days as Opposition Leader in 1909 before taking government for the 3rd time. So that is a shorter “term” than even Hawke’s. He had was later opposition leader as well for about three years after losing the 1910 election.
To avoid beating Dolly as the shortest lived opposition leader Brendon would have to make to past the middle of November.
That looks like an very time away.
I think Turnball is the best hope the Libs have. It would enable some positive movement on issues like the republic. It would also flush out the “meanness of spirit” that is the dark matter eating away at the Libs.
B.S. Fairman
A two tier system for DSP is already in place – to qualify for DSP you must have a stable condition that is likely to persist for at least two years.
Otherwise you get newstart – without a mutual obligation test, this requires a regular doctors certificate.
Contrary to public perception DSP is not easy to get – I could bore you with my tale – but people with bad backs or stress do not get DSP.
Our Kev’s a bugger you know, he’s more or less forced the Chinese president to make a statement about Tibet.
“He said China was ready to meet the Dalai Lama provided he desist from trying to “split the motherland”, “incite violence” and “ruin the Beijing Olympics”.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/feedstory/0,,-7456826,00.html
135
I wonder if Brendan is listening?
Obviously Rudd has to get the Dali around for an iced Vovo to make sure he understands…..and on he goes.
One of my favourite sayings: “Nothing is so unwelcome as the right idea from the wrong person”.
Rudd is the right person at this point and he’s going to have to be a bit careful – it looks like China is prepared to lap up any of his ideas. The win-win-win of this deal is just classic and the MSM hasn’t even scratched the surface of the cultural meaning and Rudd’s understanding of it.
The trouble for the Libs goes beyond leadership to questions of values and motivation. Who do they think they represent? Why do they seek office? What is their message? What do they stand for? They do not have convincing answers to such questions: It’s no wonder they look so bamboozled. Changing leaders won’t change a thing for the Liberals. They need a change of mindset first.
Now which is it, Rudd has enormous stamina or he is looking very tired? So much for this trip being a junket, as some suggested.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23525796-662,00.html
134 – I am not suggesting it is easy to get. The MSM believe it is too easy to stay on. You will never get a rise in payment if you don’t get the public onside (via MSM). What I am trying to suggest is a way of getting the MSM onside.
133 – August 7th is the date Nelson has to pass to go past Downer. (251 days from Nov 29th).
B.S.F 139
I take your point.
Would it be too much to ask that politicians did what was right, instead of what “journalists” perceive as right?
140 [Would it be too much to ask that politicians did what was right, instead of what “journalists” perceive as right?]
ruawake I am expecting to see the beginning of what you want in the May budget this year. I think it will be a bit like the recent trip of Rudd’s. The journalists will bag it from the rafters prebudget thinking it will be another costello/Howard lookalike and then on buget night itself be blown away with the competence of the new administration.
Just popping by, not same address, I guess, William, lull in the footy, attempting to encourage my sister in law to take an interest in things other…
About the Panda. No idea why or if Alexander is having hysterics, as some indicate, but my recollection is that Howard promised the Pandas to a little boy. For whom it was his heart’s wish. Who would be severely disenchanted if this promise was not fulfilled. He not thinking of party loyalty.
We who participated had a quite heated discussion about the dangers of disappointing the little boy if and perhaps after Labor had won. And providing the Liberals with another young if Kevin did not come through.
Not to mention the dangers of buying into the Howard, mercenary agenda.
Should my recollection be accurate.
Cool, I must say, that Kevin has dealt with the Pan Aussie issue and beautifully well timed and placed.
142 The pandas were initially promised to the Gold Coast CW but Downer diverted them to Adelaide.
“PANDA-monium has erupted on the Gold Coast after Adelaide secured two giant pandas at the glitter strip’s expense.
The Gold Coast’s Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary applied to the Federal Government several months ago to import pandas from China as part of a breeding and conservation program.
But it was revealed yesterday that Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer had smoothed the way with the Chinese and Australian governments to secure the pandas for his home zoo in Adelaide – a first for Australia since the 1988 Bicentennial.”
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,22375646-3102,00.html?from=public_rss
Beg pardon, William. I am at my friend’s place, where the footy is viewable on an excellent screen, but in ‘ the shed.’
I cannot get the modem signal on my laptop in the shed, due to metal, I guess. So I have to go outside and closer to the modem.
Not convenient.
Would a router solve this problem?
Ruawake at 134 – Drs Certs are only accepted at Centrelink for 1 month. God knows when that came in but after lodging Med Certs totalling 1 month you cannot lodge anymore (they don’t accept them) and you have to undergo a Job Capacity Assessment.
In that assessment if you are not permanently incapacitated (as you say 2 yrs) you will still have to participate in MO because the lowest classification band of your job capacity assessment is 0-7 hrs work capacity a week. The zero is an anomaly because they insist this band is still in the range of 7 hrs per week. There is no stand alone “zero” hrs per week band and hence you still have to comply with MO
Nelson’s speech today was good told us how far the Howard Government took Australia from the Banana Republic to an Economic Powerhouse but also where we went very wrong like removing the no-disadvantage test on AWAs.
Now i am biased like the rest of you but i thought he did a really good job today. It’s just a shame the media decided to tar him since he became leader as a dud, they’ve never given him a chance and they’ll have a lot to answer for if Turnbull takes over!
It’s little wonder Nelson’s ratings are where they are when they’ve gone from Howard to Nelson from the known to the unknown. I hope Nelson stays on Turnbull’s ascension to the leadership would hasten the Republican movement as Nelson is a realist and a constitutional monarchist…
CW: Er … sure, a router. Make sure it’s a blue one.
Crikey Whitey
Ask Helen Coonan.
Althought it seems she could not use a computer.
Wireless meets Colorbond Steel – wireless loses.
WB @147
I was just have a little think about our upcoming “Dump Day”. The Olympic Flame is set to be in Canberra on 24th of April. The nightly news is going to be dominated by this, whether it goes bad or not. There is also the HMAS Sydney memoiral on the day. So any other news is going to be after the first news break. Plus it is a long weekend the next day.
All the bad news the government has to announce will be released on this day. The budget bad news is going to be announced in the morning. Public service cuts will be hidden by an announcement in the afternoon. Defence might even get the Kangaroo cull in Canberra done on this day.
146 Glen we don’t care about the propaganda. Who is the Liberal candidate for Geelong? If a council can’t deliver that news then there is no point in going.
Gippsland even
Steve, if you call that propaganda then you should also apply that to Rudd whenever he speaks then unless you are a hypocrite!
Steve there is no State or Federal Seat of ‘Geelong’
There is the seat of Corio and Corangamite and they’re both held by Labor.
Corangamite is held by that clown Cheesman who couldn’t visit a school or child care facility because he didn’t own a car.
We’ve not yet picked our candidate but while the ALP nominate a mouthpiece for Canberra as the ALP plans an all ‘Rudd’ election effort the Liberal Party will nominate a local rural resident who understands the issues affecting the people of Gippsland and who’ll stand up for them in Canberra against the Rudd government.
Tony Smith’s analogy of Wayne Swan using a cigarette lighter in the dark to fix a gas leak was hilarious. Making fun of the gutless Rooster is just too easy and enough to make Liberals laugh at a time that many would find it hard given our current predicament.
Andrew Robb didn’t make me go to sleep surprisingly, though he didn’t speak for too long. He made a good impression though basically not to fall into the trap about thinking people got it wrong in 2007 as many did in 2002 when we got belted after thinking the Country would come back to us which they didn’t in Victoria.
But no mention of the ‘merger’, which was my only disappointment of the day, except for Melbourne getting thrashed at the MCG but i kinda expected that one!
Glen
Good to see you recognize the way that the media have taken to Dr. Nelson. Now you might have some appreciation of how we non coalition leaning posters feel when we read the articles written by most journalists and other contributions particularly in News Ltd publications.
cb at 145
Not my experience, I provided monthly doctors certs for 9 months before I applied for DSP – I also had to give photocopies to my Job Search wallies.
I also refused to visit Mission Australia to discuss work – my immune system is compromised (blood cancer) – I told them to visit me.
Eventually they phoned to say I had been “disengaged” from the Job Network.
Maybe its because of my age – over 50, or because I have dealt with public servants for over 30 years, or I refuse to cop crap from anyone,
Unfortunately people who are desparate get shafted.
BS re dump day
“The Olympic Flame is set to be in Canberra on 24th of April.
Defence might even get the Kangaroo cull in Canberra done on this day.”
Do you reckon Defence could cull the protestors instead and leave the roos alone.
There is a state seat of Geelong. It was the one that was lost to the Libs in 1999 by 16 votes. Normally there would have been a byelection but given the fact the tide had turned and their poor showing at Frankston East, there was no way the Liberals were going to challenge, just to lose.
Glen now I am sorry that I missed such a monumental, entertaining and informative event. But when will the Gippsland Liberal candidate be known?
Well the contest isn’t until June probably so i would expect it to be within the week as nominations i believe closed last Friday.
B.S i stand corrected, im surprised they didn’t challenge it 16 votes is not that many.
154
Enjaybee – yes but Rudd has got the dream run from the media ever since he became leader, you don’t have to worry about stories saying how bad your leader is over and over and over based absolutely nothing!
I’ll bet those ’shadow ministers’ just wanted to ruin the coverage of Nelson’s speech so instead of it being about Brendan makes a good speech it’s now Brendan is going nowhere.
For Dr. “I’m going nowhere”
“He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.”
John & Paul
Just saw Julia Prole on telly at the Yoof Summit.
Her coiffure looked like a cross between Moe Howard of The 3 Stooges and Anton Chigurh, the ”philosopher” from “No Country For Old Men”.
However, the orange mop mantled a brain that is as sharp as a steel trap.
I suggest that she will never be seriously troubled by Madam Mesmer.
“Dr Nelson nevertheless received standing ovations when he addressed the Victorian Liberal state council in Melbourne today.”
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23525541-2,00.html
It’s a bit like giving Britney Spears a standing ovation after she stops mouthing the words and the backing track keeps singing the song anyway.
“I’ve had people underestimating me for 20 years and it seems nothing has changed,” he said.
Who are these people? Maybe it’s a typo and should read overestimating?
Anyway, given that serving it up is just too damn easy what’s the rational explanation between Nelson and the party’s support? Does it mean:
people will vote for a party regardless of the leader?
people are assuming the leader will be replaced before they have to vote?
people don’t know he’s the leader?
any others?
161 grammar
….explanation for the difference between….
160 EC
Madam Mesmer would be seriously troubled by a bus driver asking for exact change…
not that she’ll ever have to endure such a horrid encounter.
Calls for reform of the Victorian Liberals.
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/vic-liberals-call-for-party-reform/20080412-25q4.html
EC @ 160,
You need the song to penetrate their minds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHLjYBsl2zA
Yes, true, Onimod, does Madam M. qualify for a Commcar as Opposition 2-IC?
Ah, that was beautiful, Growler, hadn’t heard it for years. Induced goose bumps and a lump in the throat. Btw, you do a swell job on the Sep threads with your musical links and literary allusions, even if we don’t often see eye to eye on the politics.
Was sure it was Alice who said “it means what I want it to mean” but as you correctly stated, it was Humpty Dumpty. Spent a delightful half hour moseying through some Lewis Carroll sites to confirm, rather than engage in my reflex hip-shooting m.o. Just as well, because your the sort of chap who really knows how to hurt a bloke when he’s wrong.
At least I’ve never slagged you off as “Grinch”!
Still, it’s a long, long way from April till November. Plenty of time for furthur exchanges of “pleasantries”.
Thanks for the reply Ruawake @155 All I can say is the rules must of changed – hate to say this but maybe you were “grandfathered” (a bloody god awful term) in the system. Good health to you.
Yep, the new rules only apply to new DSP applicants, all current DSP recipients have been Grandfathered, UNLESS you voluntary look for work, then you are subject to the new rules if at any time you need to go back on.
Latest Akermann blog:
“All talk but no action
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd achieved a personal and international best when he became the first national leader to mention the T-word in Mandarin in a speech to a group of hand-picked students in Beijing.
It’s a pity more of China’s 1.3 billion people didn’t get to hear it, nor the similar remarks he subsequently made to Premier Wen Jiabao in English.
As it happens, Tibet was a minor part of that discussion, according to the description he gave of the talks to the media.
Mr Rudd’s remarks were, as with so much of his government’s actions, largely symbolic and in this case also largely for Australian consumption, not a Chinese audience,”
He also made the same remarks to hu Jintao.
Hmm handpicked students? Thought the students were queuing up to attend his lecture?
What a farce that blog is!
Watch the libs cry Jobs for the Girls, considering Nolene Brown sttod for State Parliament for the ALP.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23528516-5005361,00.html
Akerman is the most blatant Liberal pusher in the media. Before the election (if not after, I have been ignoring him) he was actually parroting word-for-word lines from Howard Ministers such as Downer, including it in his pieces as his own “opinion”. Simply a Liberal mouthpiece, no other way to describe it. If there isn’t a hotline connection between him and Liberal HQ I’ll eat my keyboard.
lol
check out the poll currently running on PerthNow
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow
ever funnier are the results
and speaking of the results:
Poll Results
Thanks for voting, here are the results so far:
Who do you think should lead the Liberal Party?
Brendan Nelson 2%
Malcolm Turnbull 11%
Julie Bishop 7%
Alexander Downer 2%
Peter Costello 6%
Wilson Tuckey 32%
Donald Duck 36%
Donald Duck couldn’t do any worse.
At least Donald Duck doesn’t pretend to be a human … not like the soulless Liberal Scrooge McDucks.
Wilson Tuckey and Donald Duck? Isn’t that a tautology?
Seanofperth#172
LOL and the winner is….. DONALD DUCK
Horatio Hornet made a little slip, he meant to say that people shouldn’t “misunderstimate” him.
I’m sure they don’t.
The party of WorkChoices needs to go for growth in the polls. They just need the incentivation.
Rudd’s performance must burn like acid in the likes of Ackerman. All Howard’s men must be devastated that his legacy has been nothing but ashes and a destitute Liberal party.
Rudd is the ALP resurrection, Howard the anti-Christ of the Liberal party. Spending 11 years destroying the Liberal party from within his job was done, and as foretold he handed over government to the ‘chosen one’. Was it Ackerman and the other band of vipers in the forecourt that cried for the crucifiction of Rudd? Murdoch pretended to wash his hands of the matter and released another, but it did no good.
Now it is a long slow slide into purgatory for the Sun God’s angels of untruth where they will self-consume. The Liberal party has become the withering vine.
The shed owner pulled from his cupboards his blue router. Blokes. You know, with equipment by another name.
Not quite what is meant, said I, to the person I have pushed, shoved, dragged into the world of the computer and its complexities. Organising everything.
Not, mind you, that this person is unfamiliar with computers in his sphere of competency, namely commercial air conditioning. Green included. An expertise I doubt that any on this site would possess.
Clearly I do not know all about the connectivity, but thus far unafraid to ask.
Thank you, William at 147. I will find out.
Wilson Tuckey is outpolling D.Duck – incredible.
I always considered Donald to be a socialist type duck. Whatever made him stand for the Liberals?
I mean, he originated from a farmyard environment, often went back to his roots to visit his Granma on the family farm, and helped support his three orphaned nephews.
He was very badly treated by his obscenely capitalistic uncle, and his employment status was generally lower working class.
Labor lost the services of a good duck in not encouraging him to stand for the party.
But I suppose in his own mind he felt he had a greater chance of advancement in a party where ducks, particularly wood ducks, were highly regarded and rapidly promoted.
When you think about it, Brendan and Malcolm Duck did much the same with far lesser abilities.
A National Socialist, Fulvio.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiRiIpZVF4
183 FS, loved it. Socialist duck indeed!
) and the budget will be the icing on the cake. Sober and responsible, but representing a starting point to redressing the damage done by the despicable Rodent and his cronies in such areas as housing and health. I am also encouraged by the attention being given to poker machines, the crack cocaine of gambling. This is an area of concern to me, hundreds of thousands of people addicted to these god-awful machines, and I try to help them pick up the pieces of their lives each day. For the first time we have someone in Canberra prepared to do more than mealy mouthed platitudes, long may he rein (no pun intended).
Did my bit for the promotion of democracy and voted for D Duck, mind you Tuckey would be an equally good leader for the Libs, would ensure they remain in their rightful place as opposition for another few decades.
On a separate note, I am now encouraged each time the MSM embark on another Rudd beating exercise, I am increasingly of the view that the public can see through their blatant bias and hypocricy. Rudd and Co are looking even better by the day (if that is possible
Hash-filled condoms burst inside Australian
I thought the article would explain how some of the less vitriolic opinion pieces emanating from the ‘Orstralian’ recently, but it’s just about some drug smuggler.
Blah – link
Hash-filled condoms burst inside Australian
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/12/1207856915289.html
Just remember, Donald Duck does not wear pants. What does that say about the Libs?
Heh, had a look at Pies’ blog. Some very good posts defending Rudd, the usual culprits there really twisting themselves into knots trying to denigrate Rudd’s talks in China. You *almost* pity them.
188 – Is Donald Duck related to Malcolm Fraser?
Good one BSF.
Just watching the Insiders: Andrew Robb, whilst defending Nelson, was very quick to point out he voted for Turnbull. “There is no problem, and it is not my fault”.
C’mon, Fulvio! If DD comes from a farm & is subservient to a Feelthy Capitalist uncle, at best he’d vote for the Qld Nats, at worst he’d be a Tuckey or Katter fan!
BW, re Brendan’s ratings, let’s hear it for the formidable Tom Switzer, who left editorship of TheOz Opinion page to advise him. AS Joadja noted (cited howardout.blogspot.com (05/03/08):
“Take poor Tom Switzer for example. He’s left the editorship of The Australian’s opinion page to work for Brendan Nelson! Talk about sliding downhill, he was once a staff writer at … the American Enterprise Institute.”
I’d never have picked TS for an ALP mole!
180
Kina
I’m sure most of the Liberal party find Rudd’s performance almost astonishing, and shows how low down the food chain they’ve become, but diehards like Piers are paid strumpets, and he’ll do tricks for the conservatives forever, screaming abuse at Labor at every opportunity. You’re perfectly right about Howard, he instilled laziness and mediocrity into government while he ponced around as the god-king with his cretinous courtiers like Downer. They’ll pay a long time for Howard’s smallness.
We can enjoy this for a few years by the looks of it, with an able team and PM that’s got huge public and international support, whoever gets the warm seat from Horatio will suffer the same irrelevance.
Turnbull will do a better job, but I can’t see him sticking it out at least 2 terms, can you?
And what will the locals think?
Here’s one:
Justin Taylor, 30, the mayor of Carbondale, Pa., has not declared a preference for president. But he said he was leaning toward Mr. Obama and his remarks about small-town voters would not dissuade him. “People are bitter and at the end of their rope,” he said. Referring to Mr. Obama’s comments, he said, “I don’t believe it is a problem.”
…but camp Clinton is so desperate we should expect them to arrange some Deliverance country hunting expeditions before the election.
God, she could start a TV seance and get in touch with Charlton Heston and get his endorsement! He knew a thing or two about guns and poofs.
Desperate? Or what?
Malcom Fraser.
I don’t know if it’s the vegemite Kev has for brecky but he sure gives that energiser bunny a run for his money (let alone Donald Duck)
Arrived back home this morning then and off to the Youth 20/20. he just keeps going and going and going
“The jetlagged PM packed in almost 50 high-level meetings and 11 major speeches during his 18 days overseas.
Unlike trips by his predecessor John Howard, there were no visits to Lord’s, and he stayed away from Europe’s fine galleries favoured by Gough Whitlam. ”
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23525796-662,00.html
Rudd has announced that our new GG is to be a woman. Onya Kevin. Way to go!
196 Her details are here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bryce
I touch off topic , however a funny story!!
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21122366&postID=606928582194112536&page=1
QUEENSLANDER
Onya Quentin.
The Nationals have announced that Darren Chester will contest the Victorian seat of Gippsland at the by-election expected in June.
Will the Libs contest the seat?
199 How dysfuntional are the Liberals to have a Victorian Liberal Council meeting yesterday but be unprepared to make an announcement there about a candidate for Gippsland. I fully expected Glen to make the announcement in his speech to the Council but as usual he has failed when most needed.
i dont get why insiders always has opposition members as guests. I recall this happrening very rarely when Howard was in
201 Andrew, I think it is to give us something to laugh at at the start of the political week.
I dont know why people bother reading and replying to blogs such as Shameaham, Porky andAlbrechsten. They are irrelevant, biased and deliberately provocative. Consuming them gives them legitimacy. Ignore and they will eventually go away.
I enjoyed Andrew Robb this morning – he admitted he did not have a clue what was happening.
204 I’d have thought he would be touring the world as Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister. Still working out how to finance his junkets is he?
The Liberals are caught between a rock and a hard place on Gippsland. They actually stand a chance of winning it, which would cause headaches for the relationship between them and the Nats. They could also deliver a victory to the ALP by splitting the vote.
But then again, the Nationals’ have never been challenged in the seat in decades by the Liberals. McGauran was always elected at General elections and ergo had a nationwide campaign assisting him and people turning up to vote Liberal and voting National.
If they run and win, the Liberals will use it to argue for a takeover of the Nationals. If Nelson is the leader still, he will be in a lot stronger position.
If they run and the Nationals win, nothing changes and things go on as they are going. Badly, but with a little bit more a zip in their steps perhaps.
If they run and the ALP win, then it will be a massive blow and Nelson will be given his marching orders the next week.
If they don’t run it will be seen as either Weakness or letting the Nats have a clear run at it. This will weaken the leadership of Nelson (not that there is much to weaken) but the harm will be minimal if the Nats win. If the Nats lose, questions will be asked about why they didn’t run a candidate. The coalition will fall apart as the anti-National parts of the Liberal Party demand that they are the only conservative party that should be.
I know for a fact that if the Libs don’t run in Gippsland I will have fun for six months at Glen’s expense. If they run and lose in Gippsland, make that twelve months.
Blimey! We have a new GG [not the government gazette aka OO but governor general].
A woman!
Quentin Bryce, gov of Quinceland.
Reactions?
208 Fred we were all waiting here with bated breath for you to tell us who the next governor of Queensland will be.
Last GG of Australia?
The next Queensland Governor will probably be the last too.
Bring on Turnbull as Opposition Leader so he can oversee the last of Royalty leave office!
Well, fancy!
- the last Australian Governor General is a woman.
Well done Kevin.
I just said to my 83yr old dad – “hey dad, we’ve got a new GG” Dad asked “who is he?” hahahahah
Andrew Robb would be a great cure for insomnia! Watching that tool on INSIDERS this morning, I literally almost fell asleep a few times. If he’s the epitomy of the Liberal shadow minister, god help the rest of them LOL
Rudd has all the answers right now, and today’s choice of a female Governor General will push that popularity rating up even further. Meanwhile Nelson sinks further and further into irrelevance, and his colleagues resemble a bunch of carping fools.
This is what I just posted on the Kevinruddsucks.com forum:
Next–and last?–GG a woman.
Quentin Bryce, Governor of Qld. Blimey, Kevvie keen on Qlders eh?
Now, any takers on last GG? Their terms are, what, 6 years? So time for a Convention and a referendum?
If so, what model? With curses towards Howard I voted against the Republic in the previous referendum. Fair broke my heart it did.
I do not want a flunky of the PM as President (OK, the GG is just that, BUT the GG is not our head of state but is just the representative of our HoS, the House of Windsor.)
So, the GG must be elected. OK how do they nominate or get nominated? Don’t want 500 candidates on ballot paper. So, you need 10,000 signatures on nomination form, or a $20,000 deposit or something, run off elections in each state, a prelimanry electoral college etc. Doable.
So what powers of a Pres? He does have his own powerbase (electoral success) so can act on his conscience. Would have been nice for someone to be able to, say, tell Ratty ‘NO!’ to Pacific Solution, to be able to petition the US (as our HoS) for the release of Hicks. Ultimately, to be able to either sack a PM or to dissolve Parliament and call for fresh elections. Christ knows we needed one during Ratty’s reign!
Then again, we don’t want to have an election every other month. So some way to balance all this. It goes without saying that the Prez has no executive power, we keep our Westminster system. The GG CAN sack a PM, we have known that since 1975 (even though Cur sought the advice of Chief Justice not the PM–but there are good lessons there.)
The Irish system seems to work.
Any comments from the collective?
The problem with Irish model is the ARM doesn’t back it. It is the ARM fault, we are still a CM. I will blame Turnbull until he admits it was he who broke the nation’s heart.
Great a woman G-G….and she’s been backed by the ALP twice now.
Hmmm, well Canada has a female Governor General at the moment, just another bit of symbolism from Rudd. Michael Jeffery, should be recognised for restoring respect to the office of G-G since that idiot Hollingsworth had the job.
The only prerequisite of her being our Governor General is whether she is a Constitutional Monarchist, if she’s a Republican she doesn’t deserve the job.
If she supports the current system i have no trouble with her holding such a position but if she’s a Republican then she shouldnt have it. Hopefully the media will ask her those questions.
One solution is to join the ARM and have a say in their policies. Or set up your own group or network.
Hmmmm, I can just imagine some of the redder-necked “conservatives” muttering under their breaths about a certain recent appointment needing to get back in the kitchen …
No Glen the only prerequisite is her ability to do the job – unlike Janette Howard’s last appointment.
221 Glen – “Great a woman G-G….and she’s been backed by the ALP twice now.” Oh hell, not only a woman but someone that’s been tainted by those meanie ALP people. That makes her doubly bad and unsuitable. It’s ok if the representative is male and selected by the good guys, you know the Libs, but not by Labor. Are you for real Glen? This is childish nonsense.
“The only prerequisite of her being our Governor General is whether she is a Constitutional Monarchist, if she’s a Republican she doesn’t deserve the job.” Another BS statement. She has performed her role of governor with distinction hasn’t she? Come on Glen provide the proof she hasn’t performed well.
Guess what this article was about. “Swans unhappy at ANZ after Hall injury”. Silly me and I thought I was in for some political reading.
GB at 226
It was a pretty good left hook from Hall.
To keep the political tone – does “Call me Brendan” support The Swans? or is it St Kilda? or maybe The Gold Coast Titans? or maybe whatever team he thinks his audience favours?
We are starting to see that “Brendan” is a follower not a leader.
Quentin Bryce will do a magnificent job as GG, as she has done in Qld. Great choice, Kev.
And we don’t need your misogynistic comments either Glen. F**K OFF!
“Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson will be given until next month’s budget to turn his dismal polling around or face a leadership challenge.”
http://news.smh.com.au/nelsons-leadership-safe-for-now-robb/20080413-25sc.html
If any are polled please say you prefer Brendan,he tries hard.
the libs are delusional if they think the budget will help. i cant imagine that Rudd will not fashion a smart budget, and given that Turnbull has said that the cuts wont be enough, any cuts can be done with a reminder of this to the electorate.
personally, i’d rather see Nelson stay until the next election!
I’m very disappointed!
If Mr Rudd had appointed a transexual as Governor General we could still say our Queen is our head of State!
Priscilla, Queen of Australia…it would make a great sequel,(in sequins too!).
224
ruawake – a Republican should automatically be eliminated for any list of potential GG’s IMHO no matter if they are male or female or how good a candidate they may be…if you don’t believe in the position you are taking you ought not take it!
It’s stupid to have someone in a role for which they have no respect for. I don’t know our new GG’s position on a Republic so i can’t comment. But if you gave a Republican a regal position it’s like making an Anarchist the head of a company…stupid plain stupid!
Quentin Bruyce is the new GG. Who the hell is she?
Another lawyer. Another academic. Another snoozer nobody has ever heard of. Another snobbish appointment.
For once could we have someone appointed who people know? Someone with some relevence in the lives of ordinary Australians.
A terrible appointment. Reinforcing the detachment of the GG from the people.
Glen … a logical argument would then follow … a republican shouldn’t be a PM? Regal my arse!
Sceptic the GG is not meant to act like a President or Government figure head so they don’t have to be a celebrity to be a good GG!
Anyway that’s what our system is Westminster the Government is closet to the people and Rudd was elected by the people and so they have chosen Ms Bruyce!
No cb that would not follow, as the Prime Ministership is not a Regally appointed position! The people elect the Government and thereby the Prime Minister!
It would be nice if we knew who the GG is.
She’s a nobody to most people. Totally irrelevent. A former lawyer, academic and sex discrimination commissioner. BIG DEAL!
A crappy decision.
I don’t know about you Glen but I’m not real comfortable about “Regally appointed positions” I guess you are?
238
Sceptic
So who then?…remembering your comment She’s a nobody to most people”.
Of course that is because i support the current system and because it works!
Sceptic, this is from the previous page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Bryce
Steve K,
There must be somebody out there respected, well known, popular and competent.
The GG not only maintains the law of the land but is supposed to unite the people.
John Landy was a great Governor of Victoria. Maybe someone like Ron Clarke. How about Gus Nossal, Peter Cosgrove or Fiona Wood?
Someone we all know and love.
One thing you can bank on Sceptic is that no matter where you live you will get an opportunity to see her once see becomes GG as she is a workaholic who tours extensively.
Sorry Steve, it’s still a crappy appointment.
I’m sure she is a nice lady but we should all know who she is before she is appointed.
I just reckon it sucks.
Glen – Isn’t that like saying you’re not allowed to drive if you believe the speed limits are too low? Provided you keep to the speed limit, you can believe anything you want about them, and still have a licence.
who would you suggest then Sceptic?
245 You haven’t been to Queensland much in the past twenty years have you Sceptic?
Glen, if the Queen doesn’t want to appoint a republican, she is well within her rights to say no, isn’t she?
I’d like to see her try it.
I’d like to see sceptic get another appointment up after Rudd has already announced this one. You should have had this debate yesterday ,Sceptic. Get over it.
Steve #248.
I’ve been to Qld a number of times. So what?
Nobody outside of Qld has heard of her.
Add Ian Frazer to your list.
251 Next time you visit Queensland open your eyes and ears. You might learn something, Sceptic.
That puts the legitimacy of any Liberal leader in the foreseeable future in doubt!
Should be interesting tomorrow night – 4 corners are investigating ALP funding. That will get the ALP young wankers on this site going I imagine.
Steve,
How many people do you think has heard of her?
Snitchy comments don’t do you justice.
243 says
” How about Gus Nossal, Peter Cosgrove or Fiona Wood? Someone we all know and love.The GG not only maintains the law of the land but is supposed to unite the people. ”
Hey not so much of this “we all love” crap. I for one can’t stand Cosgrove, a Howard suckhole and we’ve had enough conservative Army appointments. Unite people, yeah sure drop a few bombs and all the meat ends up as one big pile of mince, is that what you mean by unite.
Good on Kev for giving us Quentin Bryce a wonderful humanitarian by all accounts.
Sceptic
I find the revelation that you’ve never heard of Quentin Bryce reveals a lot about who you are.
It might be time to watch something other than Channel 10 eh?
Would you prefer to have an online poll before any appointment is made?
Why do you even think it’s necessary for YOU to know who she is?
You might want to have a read here:
http://www.gg.gov.au/governorgeneral/category.php?id=2
before you think that the ability to get one’s big head on television qualifies one to be an effective GG.
The role is a bit more involved than the prom queen’s.
Snitchy comments don’t do you justice.
Nor does arguing for another appointment when one has just been made.
Vera, you’re an idiot!
septic
bite me, wanka!
You’d have to wonder why my comment is “awaiting moderation”. Must be censorship – no non left wing comments allowed.
Can we raise the arguements to something above name calling?
The big issues are being talked about again and now it is the Governor General, and to be honest i don’t care who he appoints as long as it is not someone who will sack the Government and will at least take the advice of the Prime Minister first.
Please grow up or is it impossible.
BSF One would hope so but when the argument revolves around whether the new GG is known personally to everyone everywhere it becomes a bit difficult. I must admit that I knew nothing about the present GG when he was appointed but would never have thought of arguing against his appointment on the basis that I didn’t know and love the person.
Yep and who heard of Dean, and Jeffrey. Fair Dinkum maybe it should have been Mal Meninga or Mark Taylor or Kylie Minogue…
I hadn’t heard of the current GG before he was appointed…and he has lowered his profile even further since then.
This is the first time I’ve heard it suggested that the GG should be a populist appointment.
I’ve met the Governor of Victoria but I’d bet even money that 9 out of 10 Victorians couldn’t name him – and why should they be able to?
It’s a ceremonial position. Whoever has it just needs to look good in suits, be able to stand still for long periods, look appropriately serious and be able to deal diplomatically with people boring them to death about nothing (brings to mind Hayden’s comment that he was used to ‘fetes worth than death’).
A celebrity appointment would NOT be a good idea.
How about Matthew Koch? (Little fat kid from Hey Dad!).
The most of the actual job done is a legal one, hence it is not suprising that people with a legal background tend to get the role. Senior ADF Officers also have to understand regulations and so also fit well in the role. But the case of leaving this well-worn path (Hollingworth) was not a bit hit.
Peter Cosgrove would have been my choice, but alas Rudd wanted a symbolic appointment (a female).
Zoom i was being sarcastic, this argument about having someone everyone knows is silly. To be honest though the GG is another irrlevant position which the taxpayer must dish out for and really it should be done away with.
I’ve no doubt Peter Cosgrove would have been Howard’s choice if he was still PM. The Rodent liked military men who didn’t ruffle any feathers and stuck to the ceremonial role.
No.. lining up were Piers Ackerman, Alan Jones, Peter Reith, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt, Heather Ridout and not forgetting Alcherbt from the Australian Newspaper.. and a late chance Graham Morris…
Yeah! I bet Cosgrove was disappointed when Howard & the Libs got rolled last November.
I bet he had already gone in and got measured up for his new robes and spoken to the removalists.
Talking about high profile Anglicans and the Liberals. I found this interesting tit-bit in a cruise through the OZ online.
The rest of the article is interesting but disturbing reading and is but another example of religion intruding into politics but with a perverse twist.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23525012-28737,00.html
To be honest was going to suggest a certain Mr D. Duck as Governor General until I heard he was standing as a candidate for leadership of the dark side.
He would have had all the qualifications posters on this blog require; humble origins, working class background, lack of ostentatious wealth, compassion, maturity (he is at least 70 years old), yet a great worldwide recognition factor and celebrity status.
As well, he has never been a lawyer and is not known to haver ever actually achieved anything.
The Liberals have a lot to answer for in involving him in ther internicine political wars. They have deprived us of a potentially great GG.
Wow it’s the Liberals fault for everything FS, i can see the world more clearly now!
I dont see how i could be more sarcastic…oh and marky how predictable your post was put more of an effort into them will you!
Is he for real?
Mentioning a few conservatives dills must have given you heartburn Glen.
But as i said the GG position should be done away with, really it is just a opening and visiting events party for the representative and a free feed, servants, travel, and hospitality party for the appointment, put simply one big party. Time to give the land that the appointment lives to the aborigines or use it for openspace and all the residences the same. It is just a waste of money.
Glen, what an enduring pleasure it is to hear you squirm and wriggle as Rudd lays one on your side after another. I wonder whether you truly believe the crap and spin that you come up with, but I respect your right to sound like an absolute tool. Keep it up, it sure makes your side look bad.
Hmm, so there was no booze for the Yoof Summit.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23532739-5005361,00.html
zoom @ 265
Now with a turn of phrase like that, Hayden was clearly over-qualified!
I recall chatting with Michael Jeffery beside a campfire at a place called Iga Warta (in the Flinders Ranges) a couple of years ago. He was out for ten days on a whistle-stop listening tour of the outback, accompanied by an entourage of fifty or so minions (including a personal physio and dentist I was told). I recall being distinctly underwhelmed by the man – and I don’t say that bitchily. He had physical presence, sure, and a booming voice (you don’t lead the SAS without these, I suppose); but his words were platitudinous and unimodal and I soon got bored.
The fact that Ted Egan was loitering within conversation shot gave me my break. I finished up with his excellency, gobbed the rest of my damper and turned to the folk legend for a more stimulating exchange. (For the record, I asked him several questions about his strange, haunting song The Drover’s Boy.)
Wow Rudd is really doing his job cutting spending!
$300,000 on a Youth Summit that a year 11 class could do for free!
Perhaps the $300,000 ought to have been given to the carers that Rudd and Swan wanted to leave high and dry or perhaps put it towards trying to reduce petrol and grocery prices as they promised in the 07 election?
Enjoy your time here, Bargearse – I suspect it will be very brief.
Apologies, Marky – we’ve said before we need an ‘irony alert’ button.
Agree that the position should be done away with, at the moment however it is a constitutional reality that cannot be overturned without a referendum…or the Q coming here to live.
In her absence, it seems appropriate that she be represented by a woman.
Scorpio @ 271 -
I bet he [Peter Cosgrove] had already gone in and got measured up for his new robes and spoken to the removalists.
The only place Cosgrove should be moving to is a cell at The Hague. The one next to Howard’s.
Slight off-topic (sorry, William), speaking of Liberals and the more remarkable fringe of religious believers …
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/andrews-in-radical-group-that-boycotts-disney/2007/08/04/1185648204452.html
Andrews in radical group that boycotts Disney
Kerry-Anne Walsh and Michelle Singer, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 2007
I think that statement about trying to catch hold of “smoke” is even more relevant now than last year.
The Libs just cannot lay a glove on the Ruddster. Every time they take a swing he is already out of reach and moving on to his next triumph, leaving them floundering on the mat, frustrated and exhausted.
William,
I’m assuming you’re referring to Sceptic ? or is this person been already banned before we saw his comments ?
For once i agree with Glen, summits, petrol and grocery prices in the end are just diversions from the real issues, they in the end mean little and achieve little. The summit will be one big party at taxpayers expense.
Glen i have heard the libs are having a summit also and it is being held in a two man tent.
Sceptic will be banned if he makes another comment as useless as #259.
FC, Bargearse’s comments are 254 and 261.
Glen, it must upset you that some of your lot are taking part in the summit: Warwick Smith, Tim Fisher etc.
Any bets on the results of the next newspoll? Could Rudd’s rating exceed 75%?
Marky Marky: LMAO
Is the dead duck Nelson attending the summit? And will anyone notice if he does?
The problem for Nelson is simple, honeymoon for Rudd and that he was not born with a face which you looks trusting, because he looks shifty. Nelson will never be Prime Minister for this simple reason.
Nelson ought to attend. He’s all for it…
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/liberals-in-purgatory-and-far-from-heaven/2008/02/28/1203788534735.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Michelle Grattan, The Age, 29 February 2008
(His, err, colleagues, disagreed though.)
It makes me wonder what pills or how many drinks the Liberals had when they elected their leader… They must been either stoned or still traumatised after the loss… Losing for the libs is very hard to get over as they think they are the born to rule mob.
The GG performs their role for the whole country. I can’t see a problem with appointing someone that is recognisable in every state and territory.
One of the problems with the office of GG is that few people can name or recognise their GG. I actually reckon that is a bit sad. The last GG most people remember is Bill Hayden. That is not to say that others haven’t performed the role of GG with distinction. But it would be a good thing if more people had a greater recognition of who their GG was. The role is actually important.
I have never suggested the appointment of celebrity appointments. But maybe the appointment of eminent people from diverse fields who are more easily recognised across the whole country. Michael Jeffrey for example was very well known in WA but was little known elsewhere. He performed his role competently (after the disasater of his predecessor) but he will leave office with most people still not knowing who he was.
The GG should be one of the office holders who people can name. Most people can name the PM or their state premier. The same for the GG because he or she is technically our head of state.
Just my opinion.
285
Interesting.
Of course there couldn’t possibly be a link to the fact that GSK’s competitor Pfizer is a nice little young-liberal hothouse could it?
296
Thanks Sceptic. A post like that with a bit of thought behind it could have avoided a lot of angst further up. It makes the difference between a debate and a slanging match.
Onimod, Is Pfizer an Australian company? I thought the Liberals made a law against organised boycotts.
Marky glad we can agree sometimes…
Rudd was being as crafty as Howard in blurting out his 20:20 summit without telling Nelson of the particulars…so he had no choice but to support it then as the media would have all but crucified him by saying Nelson isn’t thinking about the future.
But this ‘Summit’ is just a tool for the Rudd government to hawk its ‘progressive’ agenda namely Republic/Bill of Rights both things we don’t need. We need to start talking about Education what happened to the ‘Revolution’ what about uniform curriculum and performance pay for teachers but with minimum wages increase uniform across the States.
What about fixing the health system?
This is just a talk fest a waste of money that could either be given to the poor or to charity…i want Swan to tell us how much this summit will cost me the taxpayer!
This ‘Summit’ can be only described as a Junket!
After 11.11.75 the strength of the dubious position of govgen is that they should be ONLY symbolic. A popular GG (in both senses) is way too dangerous
“Most people can name the PM or their state premier” errr I doubt it! Quite a few polls seem to show people are unsure re Premier and PM.
Jeffrey would have been better known I Howard had not elbowed him out of functions just to get a photo op! Up to the GG to make him/herself known!
299 Rx
Pfizer is HQ’d in NY
Pfizer Australia has their offices in West Ryde
IF Howard
(yeah, an edit facility would be nice!)
The summit is about ensuring a cosy relationship exists between Labor and News Limited because it has a few representatives from it attending including Lachlan Murdoch who is their to tell us about his economic vision, which no doubt will be from his perspective of the world, What is that again Lachlan? Less tax for the corporates and the rich? yep we will take that on board Lachlan…
Glen the health and education system are in a mess because the previous Government were into funding private schooling and private hospitals, and this government is refusing to reduce such lucrative handouts…
The policies to do such are staring them in the face, no summit needs to occur to tell them this. The summit is a waste and is just about spin and good media coverage and cosy up to celebs and academics and business boofens and telling them that we are listening and caring but in the end not actually doing much about the real probs that exist… But of course you never know i could be wrong..
But i doubt it.
LOL, here is why Howard never brought up human rights abuses with the Chinese …
http://www.geocities.com/wmds_r_us/images/howardrights.jpg
I have wondered about the Education revolution.
At the policy launch not much was said about it except the computers and the preschool literacy & numeracy training.
But that launch was delayed an hour while Rudd & Co debated cutting $Bns from the election launch.
I am sure we will eventually see more about the Education Revolution but I would love to know what was dropped from he launch!
Beautiful Rx, i just love Tandberg… have a look at his cartoon in the age on Saturday, sums up in a simple way the debate about gambling… lucid and clever mind, he is a genius.
Spin again.. Education Revolution.. More like Education crumbs …
Thomarse me thinks the so called Education Revolution was the 1905 one not the 1917 one!
I find the claims that the 2020 summit is JUST a junket are just a continuance of the economically rationalist stifling of debate in this country. The evolution of media ownership in Australia has already lowered the intellectual content of debate about as far as it can go. Rudd’s polling versus the incessant nit-picking of the MSM suggests they have gone too low for their own good, and no longer hold the interest or credibility they think they do.
I fear that we’ve been heading to the extremity of the US talk show culture, where anyone’s opinion is equally valid, because we’re all equal or something…
It’s well and truly time that we found out, as a community, where the real intellectual future of this country is, because the idea that it can come from politicians is frankly daft.
In almost any field of endeavour great achievements have occurred through singular perserverence in pursuit of a goal. Politics is the about the art of the compromise. Those two ideal are in direct conflict, and will result in vastly different outcomes. It’s about time we decided which problems need a political solution and which ones don’t. We need some leaders who aren’t politicians to step forward and receive the same sort of support that out political parties enjoy.
It won’t make much difference who the Liberals appoint as leader unless they change their tactics. Turnbull will ‘appear’ better than Nelson and may ’sound’ better for a little while but, ends up with some horrible waffle that you couldn’t even call bureaubabble. He is not a natural politician and all his efforts seem contrived and shallow, usually ending up in foot in mouth disease.
The Libs seem to be very slow learners or are still living in denial that they were not considered good enough and, even less so now. Their tactics have hardly changed. Trying to score cheap points off Rudd on the basis of twisting his language or intentions or becoming really petty (salute, tour too long, Japan, bowing to Queen and so on) when the truth is obvious to most of the public wont work [it doesn't against Obama either].
In fact, as before, every time they try to criticise Rudd it just gives him more TV exposure, where he looks like a PM in action and gives him an opportunity to speak on tv in defence where he sounds good. It is really counter productive.
The Liberals presenting themselves in terms of Rudd.
During the election campaign Rudd usually avoided mentioning or criticising the government. He instead presented himself as an alternative PM and government on the basis of his vision and policies. He was positive and avoided nit picking. This seems to be something Obama is doing as well.
They may as well keep Nelson until they can sort themselves out, what they believe in, their policy platform and so on then choose the leader they think best to prosecute the cause.
Totally agree with you Onimod but you will never satisfy the Media entrepeneurs..
And to suggest good will come well sorry but it will not, that is why we have had taxes for the rich going down and down for 30 years now and the environment being continually ripped to shreds…
Look at all the things Keating tried to achieve such as a better tax scheme, media laws etc in the 1980’s through summits and look what the wealthy wanted… and in the end got… They will have their set agenda and mindset and will go into wanting it and they willl not budge..
It is like the Coal industry, significant climate change is occurring and the world is dying and they will not budge untill a minute until midnight, sometimes it is just like talking to people who cannot listen and will not and when they want their way they will express it through the media and will go expressing it until they get it.
So what does Labor believe in Kina? And what is its policy platform…
Sceptic 296, I’d wager that ‘most people’ hadn’t heard of William Deane before he became GG. He proved himself in the role, unlike that arselicker Jeffrey. Your point being?
Rudd is very clever! there are still Lib followers who believed that he was shamed into stating Swan would be Treasurer. I believe no such thing.
At the time this kerfuffle arose the Libs were behind in the polls and their campaign was faltering. They needed the oxygen of media exposure desperately. So Howard dares Rudd to say who would be his treasurer.
By not answering for a day Rudd ensured that all media exposure was speculation about who would be Labor Treasurer–and got people thinking about a Labor government. The Libs were starved of oxygen for another day and the election was galloping nearer and nearer!
Brilliant!
Rx @ 306 – Spot on. I find it farcical how the Coalition here and all American politicians are blathering about the Chinese crackdown in T*bet which, as bad as it is, pales compared to what we’ve been a party to in Iraq.
For example, the almost complete destruction of a large section of Fallujah was the end result of an initially peaceful protest by some 200 Iraqis wanting their local school reopened which was broken up by American troops firing on the protesters killing 17 and wounding 70. The final death toll is anyones guess.
And we hardly covered ourselves in glory with the ‘Pacific Solution’/detention gulags!
Kina is correct. Replacing Nelson with somebody else will only sacrifice another candidate for no gain. I suspect this term is about limiting the damage and staking a claim for the future. Trouble is Nelson is damging the Liberal brand. They are caught between a rock and a hard place.
The coaliton needs to develop a policy philosophy and communicate their ideology and core principles. Rudd, through the power of incumbency, has effectively captured the middle ground. The coalition do not have a story to tell.
They also have a dearth of leadership options. Nelson, Bishop, Abbott, Robb, Hockey et al. None are seen by the public as potential PMs. Just like the ALP after the 2001 election. Except the current government is new and fresh.
Eventually the government will face political reality. Probably not this term though. Unless the opposition looks to the longer term and develops a “brand” that is both identifiable and electable then they will be in the wilderness for many elections. Especially when they will almost certainly lose a significant number of seats in 2010 with the erosion of JWH’s personal vote.
Al least nelson has some company with his low polling.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/13/2215578.htm?section=justin
313
I’m as cynical as you marky.
I see the current outcomes that we both disagree with as the resultants of process. So either the process is delivering the wrong results, but can produce the right ones with changed input, or the process is fundamentally flawed. Who knows – maybe the fundamental failing of western democracy is that it’s unable to cope with the demands of a global phenomenon such as climate change?
I’m applauding the summit at this stage because it’s changing the process. Even if it’s a failure it will teach us something. One of the fundamentals of a democracy is that is gives the possibility of testing itself, again and again and again.
I actually believe that humans learn more from their failures than their successes – just look at the things we memorialise, remember and out obsession with publicising failure.
If the summit fails – so what? The worst thing we can do in a democratic state is to not try. If we do that we don’t learn from the failure, or the success. The status quo will prevail. I reckon that the success of our democracy is necessarily predicated on change. That’s why I have problems with long terms of conservative rule. Evolutionarily, I believe that humanity is also fundamentally change oriented – only marginally, and hence the progressive/conservative political divide; a long period of conservatism has resulted in a reaction by a majority of Australians that even they don’t necessarily understand, and they don’t have to either.
You’d be living under a very large rock if you didn’t realise that the human race is facing some pretty serious problems. In the past we’ve over come these types of challenges, by evolving. Evolution indicates that we’ll take more risks – some of them will be successful, and others will be equally unsuccessful, and this will continue until we reach a new equilibrium.
I don’t see the summit as a solution in itself, but an indication that processes might change, and in that sense it pleases me.
Rudd approached the last election on the premise of going beyond the mining boom (which will probably last a long while yet) which the average Australian can relate to, in fact it speaks right to the fear of many people – what happens if I lose my job, I can’t assume I will always have it or always able to have one. Thus Rudd’s message is understood intuitively. He then follows it up with the solutions – education revolution concept – with the policies that then proceeded…trade schools, private schools sharing facilities, computers and so on. The same with health etc.
He released a whole bunch of policies during the campaign making it clear what they wanted to do and thus implying that this is what they believed in…ie fair workplace, education and health equality and so on etc. There was no shortage of stuff coming from the ALP. The general public are not interested in the statements of the core beliefs/philosophy of the party – they imply this from their actions and policies….before and after.
Howard has gone, the Libs need to revisit their platform, beliefs and develop some policies positions.
Without regurgitating the entire ALP platform and policies – they are quite detailed below.
Platform
http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/2007_national_platform.pdf
http://www.alp.org.au/platform/
Policies
http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php
Latest Liberal Party platform (latest = 2002)
http://www.liberal.org.au/info/docs/federalplatform.pdf
“The Party’s policies are detailed statements of specific courses of action derived from the principles contained within this Platform.”
They got the old platform still there but no policies as yet to go with them that I can see or have heard which, is all the work that needs to be done in a post Howard Liberal party before they can go up in genuine competition with Rudd.
What is their IR position, education, health now that Rudd is reshaping it with his policies? The Libs need to make/remake their policies with a view to society that has progressed beyond Bush and Howard.
Time to kip. Night bludgers. Wonder if Brendan sleeps with his eyes open now?
Shamahan speaking his mind on the Liberal leadership. It doesn’t get much worse for them.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23534618-5013404,00.html
The media never gave Nelson a chance from day one. Especially since they all assumed Malcolm AllBull would lead the Liberal Party and got it wrong!
Rudd became the media’s darling overnight after taking the ALP leadership and barely criticised him at all! Compare this with Brendan Nelson and you’ll see how far the media have gone to destroy him…
I for one will not be happy if Nelson is shoved on and Allbull gets the job!
Abbott is an idiot, he backs Nelson then gets a dud shadow position and now wants to back Allbull to be Opposition Treasury spokesperson…
324 Glen – I agree with some of what you say but to suggest Rudd was not scrutanised by the press is just plain wrong. They questioned his family backgound, his wife’s businesses, his stamina, his character (hell, they’re still saying he’s hiding the “real” him, whatever that is supposed to be and remember Burke?) and his motives. Don’t tell me he was given a free ride because that is patently BS.
New Westpoll in 2mws West Australian re Federal Voting Intentions
62-38 to Labor (16 per cent swing since the Fed Election) on a primary of 55
Also found 51% support for a Republic
Brendan has destroyed himself. If they had scrutanised Brendan like they did Rudd Brendan would not have made it this far.
They are amazing figures from the west.
Bull butter!!!
Thank God Howard is gone.
Police ignored strong evidence showing Haneef’s innocence
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/police-ignored-haneef-evidence/2008/04/13/1208024990541.html
onimod @ 320
Who knows – maybe the fundamental failing of western democracy is that it’s unable to cope with the demands of a global phenomenon such as climate change?
Humans have been failing the environment test under a wide range of political systems from the time they first began living communally. The first cities that had to be abandoned because the environment that sustained them was over exploited were in Sumeria where largish cities first developed about 6,000 years ago. No doubt that had also been the case with villages even earlier.
Rather than a “fundemental failing of western democracy” it seems to be a fundemental flaw in humanity.
I the past we’ve had the luxury of being able to move elswhere when we’ve fouled the nest. Unfortunately, this time we’ve no where else to go. Some insist that this alone will ensure we tackle and fix the problem. However, the history of Easter Island suggests that we probably won’t. So, like you, I am not optomistic.
Rudd became the media’s darling overnight after taking the ALP leadership and barely criticised him at all!
El primo bull butter.
Agree with some others on here that Turnbull isn’t likely to lead Libs to victory in any foreseeable scenario.
Therefore the Libs should install him as Leader now – he wouldn’t be nearly as hopeless as Nelson, and therefore wouldn’t damage the brand all that much.
Out of the current crop Hockey seems to me to be the only electable one, and realistically that won’t be in 2010 unless something absolutely extraordinary happens.
RE: Poll Results
Find a trigger, and bring on a Double Dissolution.
Our new female G-G has refused to answer a question on whether she is a Republican…
So i do not support her appointment as G-G…shame on Rudd for having Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointing a Republican as our defacto head of state!
Can’t get any more bull butter than these words by Glen (335).
336
Yep – they’ve identified another piece of lint in their navel – surely this will be the one to bring Rudd down?
What evidence do you have that Governor Bryce is a republican, Glen? Refusal to answer the question does not necessarily mean she is one. Governors/Governor-Generals are supposed to be politically neutral so she may just be keeping her personal opinions to herself, as indeed she should.
Another piece of wax in their ear?
Has Glen (335) stopped taking his meds again?
Theodric (and everybody else): please try and do better than #340. A comment worth making is one that is about politics, and not about another commenter.
As the link suggests “Coalition support in WA collapses”:
http://news.theage.com.au/coalition-support-in-wa-collapses/20080414-25yq.html
It’s starting to feel like one country again – what the hell was going on over there?
Are they just more cynical, behind the curve, selfish, easily swayed?
Is it a measure of the MSM one sidedness being exposed?
Have Tuckey and Bishop been exposed as lightweight or irrelevant (your choice)?
All of the above?
onimod (342): It is the leadership speculation caused by D. Duck’s constant gnawing away at the incumbent. The party needs to rid itself of these sorts of destabilising elements.
Glen wails:
“So i do not support her appointment as G-G…shame on Rudd for having Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointing a Republican as our defacto head of state!”
Shame indeed. He should have made her President. That way, instead of two pretend heads of state (G-G/de facto, Queen/de jure) we could have one *real* head of state (President). Bring on the referendum!
Wait till Turnbull becomes Opposition Leader. You monarchists won’t be able to hide behind John Howard’s skirt anymore.
http://news.theage.com.au/coalition-support-in-wa-collapses/20080414-25yq.html
Coalition support in WA collapses
The Age, 14 April 2008
Would this collapse in support in WA for the coalition at a state level flow through to the Federal scene?
How have Western Australians reacted to PM Rudd?
It would be interesting to know who the Federal WA MPs support in any leadership ballot.
WA was always going to bounce back to Labor. In 1972 the Liberals bounced back after their 1969 wipeout, in 1974 it swung back to Labor. In 1998 One Nation & Kim helped Labor and it then corrected for the next 3 elections.
346 Sceptic
1. it IS a federal poll
2. well, obviously
3. 9 liberal seats held; likely to be 2 if an election was held at present; at least 8 voted for Bishop as deputy (Nelson).
They’re probably still crazy enough to push for Bishop as leader, but I’m prepared to be surprised – it’s pretty obvious to all except the liberal party that something has to be done.
346 Sceptic – I could be wrong but my understanding is that this Westpoll was all about the Feds, not the state government.
My apologies, I never read the link.
The Liberals don’t really have anybody of any stature, other than Costello, who would cut the mustard as opposition leader. But Costello has a serious image people inside and outside the party.
If Costello is leaving parliament why hasn’t he resigned? It appears he hasn’t been inundated with juicy job offers. But maybe he’s waiting for a tap on the shoulder to be drafted back. The ultimate revenge for him would be to have his party to beg him to return after he was spurned for years.
At least Costello might be more competitive than Nelson. Mind you that wouldn’t be hard.
From what I’ve read the appointment of the new GG was welcomed by monarchists and republicans and by “Just call me Brendan”. I really can’t see why anyone would object to her being chosen on the grounds she may be a republican. She has done a fine job as governor of Queensland and will peform her GG duties to the letter no matter what. The other thing that needs to be remembered is that, as GG, she doesn’t get to vote at anytime on any thing to do with the change of the constitution, that will be up to us as a nation.
I can’t see Costello making a comeback. Too much baggage. He would be seen as yesterday’s man, big time.
Maybe Gary, but would Costello regard himself as yesterday’s man?
These politicians have a high opinion of themselves.
352
12 years of practised deceiving that’s still effective on a large chunk of the population – “what baggage”?
A couple of chats on ACA and TT; an “in depth” interview on 60 minutes showing him playing stick with the dog; a quick walk on the Kokoda track with his mate Tony – he could be ‘back’ if he had the ticker for the fight rather than just the desire for victory.
It’d certainly provide more of the contrast that the MSM is looking for, and they’ve got plenty of file footage to get the ball rolling for him.
Sceptic, one can only hope he gives it a try. Rudd would run rings around him IMHO. However I think he is a clever bloke and knows he would be on a hiding to nothing. To me he’s seemed to have wanted the PM’s job to fall into his lap and not have to work for it. As opposition leader against Rudd he would have to work overtime. I really don’t believe he’d be up for the challenge.
GB thanks for your link to the Shanahan article. It does not sound at all like him. Wonder who wrote it and where the real Dennis has gone.
I agree that the time is not the best for Turnbull to take over now. He will be consumed by Rudd’s popularity. Best to wait another year in the hope that Rudd’s ratings come down from their peak
You see it all of the time in modern day politics. Politicians who have conquered the mountain very rarely have the desire to climb it again, starting at the bottom.
356 Andrew – I agree Andrew but I suppose the real Dennis will be with us again soon.
354 onimod – What baggage? Are you kidding? Possibly you are of course and I’m not picking up the sarcasm and if that’s the case ignore the following paragraph.
How popular was Costello in the polls for leader when they were in government? Now think as to why that was and then you’ll have an idea of what that baggage could be. He wasn’t popular then, what makes you think he would be now against Rudd?
I still can’t believe Costello hasn’t resigned yet. He could have when McGauran pulled the pin but he stays there, silent, casting a shadow from the back.
The longer he remains an MP the more likely it appears that he is waiting to be drafted. Otherwise he would surely have resigned by now.
Maybe I’m wrong. But compared to Nelson he must look tempting to despairing MPs. Trouble is very few people like him, including the voters.
#360
Or he is just waiting to make sure that the Higgins byelection won’t have to compete with any others for bad headlines, to shaft those that wouldn’t make him PM.
359
sorry Garry – I was leaning hard against the sarcasm button.
I still think the MSM would be keen to give him a leg up though.
360
I’m not sure what sort of job you’ve got, but would you leave it if you didn’t know where the next one was coming from? Have a look at the federal politicians employment and superannuation and lack of productivity measures and tell me you’d be giving it away?
McGauran needed to get out before any enquiry findings into EI, or before Rudd/Gillard enacted law to back up their ministerial guidelines limiting future employment in the area of a former ministers responsibility.
One thing.
They have to get rid of Nelson, now.
Those W.A. figures are terrible and something has to be done. He won’t last out the month.
Hi All,
Have not posted for a while, good to see a female G-G.
Anybody have any clue on when the electorate entitlements for QLD and NSW will be known for the next election? I heard a rumour that, like 2007, QLD will gain another seat and NSW will lose another. If true, a western Sydney seat will most likely go this time.
Nick Minchin appears to be the king maker in the little disaster we call the Federal Liberal Party.
The muted merger of the Nats and the Libs could bring a swathe of conservative members. This would kill off Turnbull, Costello and probably Hockey’s aspirations.
The other wedge issue will be the Republican debate which will no doubt fire up again in the not too distant future.
I think the Libs are expecting the economy to go pear shaped in the next 18 months which might be a ticket back in to office for them.
Maybe Minchin is ready for the move to the lower house (via Downer’s seat). If so,
then Minchin may be angling for leadership long term. I suspect the final showdown may be between Minchin and Costello (if he stays).
Sceptic @ 360
Why didn’t Tip grab McGauran’s when he pulled the pin?
I wonder if it’s because the Libs are a bit short on cash?
Maybe they can only afford 1 by-election at a time!
#362
Costello is an industrial Barrister so presumably he could return to the bar and earn a squillion in that field. His mate Michael Kroger could also find him a high paid job in his merchant bank.
A backbencher’s salary of $120,000 per annum is high by my standards but he could earn that very quickly if he traded as a barrister again.
I don’t think money is motivating him. Maybe he keeps the leadership baton in his knapsack or maybe there is another reason. But if his motives aren’t political ambition then I don’t know what they are.
Sample size of the Westpoll was only 406. What would the MOE be?
Glen given that you have referred to Malcolm Turnbull as AllBull, we will hold you to this when you spin your torie fantasies when he is leader
“Sample size of the Westpoll was only 406. What would the MOE be?”
Just under 5%.
Thomarse,
MOE = 1/sq root sample size
So 1/20.15 = ~5%
Newspoll usually has 1200 sample size for MOE of ~2.8%.
Therer is a website for these calculations somewhere….
By all means Andrew. But i hardly think that would be relevant if Nelson is out of the picture which he would be if Turnbull took over. There would be no choice but to back Turnbull despite my preference for Nelson.
Still if i had to pick between Nelson and Turnbull i would pick Nelson. If Turnbull takes over nothing much will change i dont hate the guy and he may do a decent job but i still prefer Nelson..
I suppose it is a case of “long live the king”, even if you don’t like his replacement.
So long as Rudd doesn’t put the republic on the agenda before Turnbull takes over. What an atomic wedge that would be, if half the coalition said no to a republic, yet their leader was the head of the ARM 10 years ago.
Can’t wait.
Look at all the Liberal leadership aspirants (Turnbull, Nelson, Bishop, Abbott)…by the time the Liberal Party becomes competitive again they’ll all be in their late 50s early 60s…in other words dead wood…plus look at the ages of those on the Shadow Front bench…Minchin, Robb, Macfarlane they need a clean out and get in some younger MPs in there.
Hockey is the only one in his early 40s except for Billson and he wont be the leader anytime soon.
We need to start looking to future leaders, Tony Smith, Greg Hunt, Michael Keenan, Peter Dutton these blokes are going to have to carry the Party into the Future!
From Costello’s point of view it would be undertaking a huge effort for no return realising that the chances of winning at the next election will be low. Thus, does he want to hang on 6 years before he gets a real shot at PM? The only reason he would take up the job now is to limit the damage to the LNP but then again I don’t think he feels that inclined to help them.
glen, acknowledging it will be a while before the libs are competitive, acknowledging an issue with talent??
can the person impersonating glen at 373 please stop
I won’t vote for a party with a Workchoices type IR policy. How long will it take for the LNP to fully abandon the Howard policy? They will be unelectable for as long as they don’t totally discard it. What will it take for them to admit this? Do we have to wait for Bishop, Minichin and co to leave?
Don’t know enough about the other three to comment, but Peter Dutton has the same chance of becoming Liberal leader and being elected PM as he has of being the first man on Jupiter.
Precisely zero.
Kina #376
Unless the economy hit the rocks big time over the next 12-18 months and both Swan and Rudd were not coping well politically.
Then the question would be who would the voting public punish at the ballot box.
History indicates that there hasn’t been a one term Federal government since 1931. As Treasurer for 11 years during a period of strong economic growth would Costello have some credibility against a struggling government, or would he been seen to have been part of the the problem?
Such a scenario is a very long shot but maybe Costello thinks it is possible if he doesn’t resign as an MP.
Andrew you have to be brutally honest about where you’re at right now and we’re in the worst period in our what 64 year history as a political party. Just like the ALP people probably did in 2001. 7 years later they’re now in Government. It may take 7 years before the Libs have a chance again but look it wont happen over night.
In all fairness these poll numbers are terrible and getting used to them is almost as bad. But i have no doubt that it wont last forever and that eventually we’ll become competitive again but we Libs ought to work on State politics where we need to start our comeback.
I understood Costello was waiting for his super to max out and that that will happen around mid 2008.
Glen,
Good of you to mention getting the act together in the States. How does this report of the shenanigans at the Vic State Conference last weekend gell with thoughts of beginning to start a comeback?
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/2008/04/red-ted-dead-baillieu-faction-forces.html
I hear time and time again that the Opposition and some portions of the media criticise Rudd regarding symbolism vs real practical outcomes and spin/substance.
There has certainly being an element of symbolism in what Rudd has done but it is much more than just symbolism.
I wonder what really is symbolism? Does the Opposition really know as theynal are calling most things that Rudd does as symbolic. (perhaps it comes from one of their Thinktanks which refuse to admit they are right wing)
I see it as something that captures the essence of a situation or hopes of people in a single action eg “sorry” to the Stolen Generation. It represents in one action a far bigger picture underneath. People can refer to it in a split second in their minds &/or hearts and it has behind it a wealth of meaning. A flag or a National Anthem are symbols. They are not the real thing ie a flag/national anthem is not a nation but representative of it. Depending on what it means to the individual it can raise strong passions of love, loyalty, hate etc in each perso
378
Kina – we have dumped Workchoices except for wanting to reinstate unfair dismissal laws everything else is gone out the window!
I don’t see a problem in giving employers and employees the option of an individual employment contract with a serious no dis-advantage test?
Well GG i liked Ted’s initiative on teachers pay, a Liberal policy that ought to have been on the table months ago but it looks like a good deal to me!
Sorry, last message 384 unfinished. I must have pressed the “Submit” button accidently.
Glen,
Teacher sackings,
School Closures,
Heavier workloads
Denial of the right to speak out
Denying Opposition politicians the right of entry to schools.
Now which brand of government had these policies in place.
Hint: Starts with Liberal.
Throwing money at teachers might get a few on board. But, what about the “Education Policy?”
GG who is underpaying Teachers right now….i believe it is the Brumby Government!
You can harp on about the Kennett era, a time in which we had to fix the Mess the ALP left us but it will not take away from the fact Victorian Teachers are being underpaid compared to other States and all under a Labor Governments’ watch!
And GG, we’ve yet to see an Education Revolution that Rudd promised, which will go down as the biggest furphy in the 2007 campaign!
Kina @ 376 – I’ve been saying since the election that I don’t believe Costello has given up his ambition to be PM.
Your take on his options are spot on, and Sceptic @ 367 had posted a compelling argument that he would be financially far better off back at the bar or in business. I also understand that the longer he stays on as a backbencher the more this affects his parliamentary super.
Yet he continues to haunt the upper back row of the opposition benches which suggests that money isn’t his primary focus. Perhaps he at least didn’t make the dogs breakfast of his personal finances that some of his colleagues seem to have.
It’ll be interesting to see if he quits after the budget. If he doesn’t then a tilt at the leadership 9-12 months before the next election would have to be a strong probability.
Greensborough Growler @ 365 – I’m not convinced that Minchin has leadership ambitions. He strikes me as be more interested in being the king-maker rather than the king. And he doesn’t confine himself to the federal sphere. He’s been doing a lot of meddling within the SA state parliamentary party too, much to the annoyance of the opp. leader, and also Chris Pyne who heads the moderate faction in this state. The moderates have recently taken the extraordinary step of bringing the upper house pre selection forward by 12 months to prevent Minchin getting a right faction candidate into the last winnable spot on the ticket.
I don’t think they can ever step away from it now, either ideologically as a Party (it’s in their Liberal DNA), or, more worryingly for them, in the perception of the public.
Even if they were to genuinely discard it, their trouble surely would be convincing the public they had ‘gone straight’.
I mean, they could say swear black and blue it would never ever be on the agenda, and all Labor would have to do is replay the infamous words of Ghost Howard.
How would they ever convince enough voters they were genuine?
RX can you please tell me what of workchoices other than unfair dismissal and the right to have individual contracts do the Liberals support that is so extreme?
Workchoices is done you just want to use it against us even after we’ve disowned all that what wrong about it!
Glen (381) I agree that the Liberal Party needs to work on State politics at the moment. That is where a change of electoral fortunes will be generated, and indeed there are some signs that is now occurring in NSW where the members of the O’Farrell led Opposition look and sound better than their tired and inept counterparts who sit on the government benches (admittedly, looking and sounding even remotely better than the ALP is not too difficult in the once ‘premier’ state). There are some promising performers for the Liberals like Gladys Berejiklian and Mike Baird).
It means, of course, that Liberal Party supporters will have to eat s**t sandwich for a while yet (about 150 Saturdays) because their best chance of a win looms as Saturday, 26 March 2011, when many (including me) will be grateful to see the ridiculous Iemma (or whoever is then leading the ALP) government consigned to the rubbish bin of history.
What I was trying to say in 384 was that symbolism is a powerful tool to indicate to people the direction that you are heading to deal with a particular issue. Hence the “sorry”, and the speech in Mandarin to the elite Chinese students. It is valuable communication.
This early in the electoral cycle and with a new Government it seems to be exactly what is needed. People now know what general direction the ALP intends to take on certain issues and in a dramatic and very effective way. It addresses people’s feelings as well as indicates a course of action. It is in fact part of the planning process. What else but planning and communication would you really expect after only a few months of Office?
Howard used symbolism too in a very effective way. But it caused divisions and was destructive. Remember the “dog whistling” to certain groups of people(especially the hard right).
Rudd so far has used it as the early steps towards healing eg Aborigines, and even with some degree with China. It addresses people’s feeligs as well as signifies an action. It is very positive and not negative as it shows Rudd/ALP has many ideas on how to deal with certain situations.
Glen
All independent information points to an extreme far right IR position, on an overall basis as 90% of power was to the employer, 10% employee. The Senate Submission from our top 150 labour market academics routinely says thru out the document “extreme and radical” and against international labour organisation tenets – the rights to collectively bargain were even more extreme than in the US where is most employees want to collectively bargain the employer has to come to the table – under “WorkChoices” (choice being a laughable word for alot of people) the employer does not have to. Other provisions against human rights include non disclosure provisions in AWA’s – ie the inability to freely discuss your wages and conditions with other employers – most people think this is a basic right or human liberty in a liberal democracy – I have a friend who is a top IR person and she gave me a copy of the Submission..
Yes, it was a far right IR policy for the most part – the destruction of the social democratic structures.
Glen, if you cannot crique policy independently – and on its own merit – then you cannot be taken seriously – you seem to just selectively choose information but do not really go into things – it seems to be about propping up your word view not what is actually happening on the ground.
Glen
“individual contracts”
Lets have your definition of this instrument before we get carried away eh?
Please define it and comment on how if differs from the currently available options?
Please define how it is different from the now abolished AWAs?
I’m prepared to give you a right of reply, because either you don’t understand your own party’s policy, that of the government or you’re resurrecting workchoices.
(Hint – hunting through Julie Bishop’s speeches won’t help a bit.)
Another first for Rudd. It’s hard to believe just how much he has achieved so far and he has only been PM for a little over 4 Months.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/14/2215780.htm
Glen, #392
WorkChoices out of the blue abolished employees’ rights to penalty rates, long service leave, holiday loading and other benefits. I don’t know if you have ever been in the situation of being an employee reliant on those benefits just to stay afloat, but I have when younger, and I tell you I was gobsmacked when, not long after the 2004 election heard Howard had unilaterally done away with it. That was a watershed moment in my personal interest in politics, the gall of the little rodent, and I will never look at the Liberals in the same way again.
But it wasn’t just the nasty aspect of attacking paypackets. It was articles where employers could average a year’s worth of work over 52 weeks and stagger the hours (at their pleasure) to (example only) 60 hours per week for nine months of the year, and then none, zero hours per week for the remainder of the year.
Put yourself in an employee’s situation being subject to that sort of arbitrary randomisation of their roster. How can they predictably plan to spend time with family or friends or participate in the life of their community (because workers are more than just units of production you know) when they can be rostered on (or off) at the drop of a hat? And be fired on the spot for resisting. Talk about hung out to dry! What are they meant to do if left for months with no hours cos they had already been rostered all the year’s available hours in the preceding months?
Then there was the legal inclusion of clauses in AWAs which forbade union membership. Freedom of association should be a fundamental right, not something employees can be forced to sign away to get a job.
Yes, you will say, if they don’t like the conditions offered then just get another job. But that’s textbook-speak, not real life. It is not that easy, certainly not that easy for the low-skilled. And it will certainly will be harder still when the economic/employment conditions turn down again. What then for workers in a WorkChoices-type environment?
I know you are going to say too that the tories have had a miraculous change of heart and now advocate a “strong no disadvantage test”. But why was the test done away with in the first place? Just ideology! Liberals now say, yes it was a mistake to institute WorkChoices with no test, but you cannot convince me (or, I suspect, the electorate at large) that tories don’t still, in their miserable tory hearts, hold dear to an ideology of ripping away the safety net from under employees. Talk of tory “safety nets” just rings cynical and phoney this end, and I’ll have no part of it thank you.
Then there were the Coalition’s plans to take it even further if re-elected. They had their sights set on doing away with the minimum wage, all awards and who knows what else. (Politically they were forced to hush up and deny their plans when it dawned on them what a crock the public saw WCs as being.)
It is disturbing to think that they brought in these miserable laws during the longest uninterrupted boom time in our history. If that is what they do with regards employees when things are good, just what draconian measures would they bring in if times were bad??
The other thing was the agenda to legislatively sideline union effectiveness, this designed to cripple the financial viability of the Labor Party, reliant as it is on the union movement for a lot of its funding. A bald-faced fascist agenda of slowly strangling the political opposition. Hate that!
How hilarious, not one of you could say what things the Liberal Party still backs from Workchoices that is extreme and far right! Why i know why because you can’t find anything extreme about what the Libs support on IR and you persist and persist with the Libs ‘bringing back Workchoices’ now im sorry but you’re all pandering to the Union Movement with that, we’ve learned our lesson and we’ve dumped all that was wrong and extreme about our IR policy. Lest you forget that alot of Workchoices is now being supported by the ALP.
HAHAHAHAH
Seriously you really are still caught up with Workchoices that you cannot see that everything extreme about the legislation is no longer supported by the Liberal Party.
The only parts of Workchoices the Libs still back are (individual contracts with a fair no-disadvantage test) and the removal of unfair dismissal provisions now how extreme a policy is that lol hardly…
I’m still waiting on what parts of Workchoices the Libs still support that are extreme???????????????????????
Until you can come up with an actual response to my question your pathetic and crude attempts to criticize me over Workchoices are a lame excuse for not being able to handle the fact the Liberals no longer have an extreme IR policy!
Rx might i remind you that the Fair Pay Commission raised the minimum wage not decreased it so your theory on the Libs doing away with the minimum wage is spurious!
399 nice one Glen
How about answering the rational question before heading into the irrational?
I didn’t criticise you – I just asked a question to make sure we’re talking apples.
They’re not far back – post 396.
My question was first, so lets see some of that respect you keep banging on about eh?
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23270048-662,00.html
Howard had harsher IR
John Howard wanted to limit unfair dismissal laws to businesses with more than 200 employees and abolish all minimum wage classifications.
Gerard McManus, Herald Sun, 25 February 2008
Costello is also on the record as citing the minimum wage as a possible future target.
396
onimod – I’m talking about are bringing back individual employment agreements the likes of which were in place from 1996 to 2005, they would be reinstated under the Liberals IR policy.
Common Law contracts are basically designed to get people into collective agreements because they are a dud of a thing for small business owners and the likes to use. Common Law contracts dont offer the flexibility of individual employment agreements between employees and employers and in the end really arent worth the paper they’re printed on.
Onimod actually my question was well before you asked yours but i at least have courtesy to answer your question.
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/11/16/1194766965937.html
Liberals in workplace worry
Ben Schneiders, The Age, 17 November 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22791429-11949,00.html
Sid Marris, The Australian, 20 November 2007
403
Rx – Wow one candidate, and that was before the election you fool!
I’m taking about the Libs post election position on IR!
Rx you are stuck in the past….only because you can’t answer my question….still waiting…still awaiting your answer????
Fool hey? LOL Glen, you are being uncharacteristically abusive + effusive with your punctuation and hahaha’s (see #399). Sounding rattled there.
Glen
Would it be possible for you to post a link to the new Liberal Party IR policy? I am interested to read it before making any comment.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/union-numbers-take-tumble/2008/04/14/1208025052749.html
Trade union membership takes tumble
“Trade union membership in Australia has taken another tumble, falling nearly 90,000 during the past year.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said 1.7 million workers, or 19% of the workforce, were trade union members in conjunction with their main job in August last year.
This was down 89,600 from the previous year.
The ABS also found that a higher proportion of full-time employees (21%) were union members than part-time employees (14%).
In the public service sector, union membership was 41% compared with 14% in the private sector.”
Well, Well even without workchoices and without Howie the Unions still can’t get people to join them…go figure!
No offence, but seriously people – the last thing any of us needs to be doing is arguing about the past with on of the Glens.
Glen can’t even define current policy, doesn’t know what the ‘individual contract’ he brought up is all about anyway, because neither does the party he supports.
He has shown himself time and again to be either multiple people, or substantially inferior to the level of thought that can develop here. I really wonder whether it’s a good thing for us to engage him here at all?
Once upon a time I was involved in a motor sport forum. A particularly annoying character arrived one day and went a large way to destroying the place. He opened the floodgate to outright personal slanging matches. It turned out later that that person did in fact have a disability. It did him no good to get emotionally invested in the forum, and I’ve never gone back to participating in the forum either – it’s always attracted the wrong people from that point and the standard of information/debate plummeted. Just something to think about.
I am far from pristine in this regard either, but I reckon the level to which this forum drops on occasion must be turning away the sort of people I’m sure all of us would like to have a good conversation with.
I’m sorry this falls well outside the topical boundaries we’ve developed here William, but it’s time the topic was raised and debated. The last thing we need is William to be wasting his time moderating, so lets work out how we might proceed?
So instead of addressing the question, you’ve said there is no question to be answered how typical of the left to avoid answering the tough questions!
what
parts
of
workchoices
do
the Liberals
Still support
that
is extreme?
How is backing individual contracts based on the pre-2005 AWAs and backing the removal of unfair dismissal provisions in businesses extreme? That’s all of workchoices the Liberals still support and it is not extreme.
Glen.
Is there a policy document? Or is this just this weeks position?
I tried tp find something similar to:
http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php#industrial_relations_employment_&_workforce_participation
Surely the Libs have something similar?
410 Glen
How are individual contracts not possible under current and future workplace laws?
Your campaigning for blue sky without looking up first?
If you want to keep it simplistic, and it seems that way because you don’t seem to want to take the opportunity to flesh it out when it’s presented to you on a plate, Julie Bishop is still talking about trading away benefits for pay when she says ‘individual contracts’ – she hasn’t looked up at the sky either.
Is guaranteeing ‘individual contracts’ just stupidity on the Liberal party’s behalf, or is it, as many people here assume, just another version of workchoices?
Your choice – stupidity or maliciousness?
Now 409 is pointed at you too – do you like being the victim here? There are a lot of people who see it as some kind of sport to come here and lay hits on you. Do you see it as some kind of badge of honour?
Far be it for me to tell you what to do, but I certainly don’t see you getting much from this board when it’s at it’s worst.
No obviously not because we’re just 4/5 months out of an election defeat. This is the time when a Party has to remodel and rethink all of its policies but from what we have heard from Nelson and Bishop those are the only 2 things of workchoices that would survive and be in the Libs new IR policy.
Avoid answering the question but that merely confirms the fact that you cannot come up with arguments against the current position of the Liberal Party on IR before they release a comprehensive policy document!
412
onimod – there is a difference between Common Law contracts and Pre-2005 AWAs just so you know!
The Liberals are about choice, we dont want everybody on uniform agreements we want to give people the choice as to whether they want a union agreement or whether they want an individual agreement.
No but i don’t consider myself to be a victim on here, we’re debating policy. And i believe that in order for this blog to maintain a semblance of bi-partisanship it needs people who don’t agree with Lord Kevin! It’s no badge of honour Onimod, it’s call sticking up for your own beliefs and debating policy with your opponents, its called Democracy.
“I certainly don’t see you getting much from this board” no i dont get much respect from left wingers on this site but do you think i expected that when i don’t always agree with Kevin Rudd?
Glen
Thanks.
The Liberals have NO policy on IR, except that the last one is not the current or future one.
See how it works Glen?
Your side is in opposition, I can remember before the election people on your side of politics were saying that Labor had no policies.
Is it now fair for us to do the same?
Not when you’re 4 months out from an election loss!
If its the year of the election 2010 and we’ve still got nothing out even i would join in trashing my side that we had no concrete policies…
Glen
Explain how the current system reduces that ‘choice’ you claim please?
Glen I certainly don’t see you as my opponent. I’m not a member of a party, and don’t intend to be one. I’d like to think I’m in favour of policy from any political persuasion that I agree with. Yes I support a lot of what the ALP is doing at the moment, and that’s mainly because, to me, is represents a level of intelligence far and above anything else going. I’d love to be able to chose between two or three intelligent policies. Frankly I put people like you who parrot what your party puts out in the ’sock puppet’ bin. Yes, there are ALP member here who do the same.
399
Glen
“How hilarious, not one of you could say…”
Don’t include me in that statement. My reason is that I can’t be bothered discussing any issue with you.
So Glen.
It may be a little premature, for the Liberal leadership team, to state what the policy in any area is?
If this is the case why are people in leadership positions deciding on policy? Is there a policy forum in the Libs?
Or does the leader make it up over the weekend?
How much can one get paid to stand behind a liberal front bencher and nod when the camera is on?
How much can one get paid to stand behind Wayne Swan to lip sync what he is saying to the camera? lol
John Howard $10,000 per seat before the election. $250 after.
Steve K, please don’t leave comments like 418.
arghhhhh – too much Glen 20 for me – over and out
The way Theresa Rein dresses fits her personality, cheerful and carefree and not vain. I for one like the way she appears.
The media in search of something to fill time on the airways are trying to dissect the way she dresses, with some suggesting she should do the makeover like everyone else. I find it offensive and trust she will ignore them. The last thing we would like to see is Theresa becoming a plastic copy of popular vanity.
423
William Bowe
Apologies William.
Our watchdogs that were defanged during the Costello era still have no teeth.
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2008/04/asx-is-joke.html
steve,
Not just a problem from the Costello era (although I agree that some of the decisions taken then turned out badly).
But Occidental happened in 1991 (or 1990 perhaps?), and I distinctly remember PJK was Treasurer at the time.
Of course the key problem is that regulators don’t offer competitive packages to their employees, compared to what’s on offer in the private sector. Not sure if there’s an easy answer to that.
http://www.democracy4sale
4 Corners ABC
“Dirty Se4y Money”
Now on
This would have to be the most cunning interview by a politician for a long time. can anyone enlighten me as to what it is all about?
QUESTION:
Dr Nelson were you aware that in 2007 the Australian Defence Department hired mercenaries to work for it?
DR NELSON :
No I’m not.
QUESTION:
It’s your department, surely you’d, you would have been across it?
DR NELSON :
Well I won’t comment on it.
QUESTION:
So were you aware of anything?
DR NELSON :
Well as I say I won’t comment on it and I’m not aware of it.
QUESTION:
Why won’t you comment?
DR NELSON :
Well I don’t have to. So I don’t need to.
QUESTION:
Surely as minister at the time though you bear some responsibility?
DR NELSON :
Well in terms of mercenaries what are you talking about?
QUESTION:
Just, links that we’ve made, payments to companies who were performing tasks in various danger zones.
DR NELSON :
I’m not going to comment on what defence was doing as a part of its operational matters, now or any time in the recent past.
QUESTION:
Do you support the use of mercenaries?
DR NELSON :
I won’t comment on it.
http://www.liberal.org.au/info/news/detail/20080411_NelsonDoorstopMelbourneVisittoFrankstonOlympicsDefenceTour.php
Iraq is awash with Western mercenaries – I don’t think anyone would be too surprised it it turned out we were paying for a few of them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/14/2216774.htm?section=justin
432 If you are aware of it Dyno then how come Nelson claims to be unaware of it?
“QUESTION:
So were you aware of anything?
DR NELSON :
Well as I say I won’t comment on it and I’m not aware of it.”
Well I don’t have evidence to support my opinion, but if I had to bet …
“It is understood as many as 1,000 people are losing their benefits each week, with about a third of those becoming homeless.”
So they were lazy bludgers not even willing to try and get a job to keep their family and home?
Something very wrong going on here. What kind of a safety net is that?
435 but if I had to bet …
You’d bet that Nelson was a natural born one man circus no doubt.
“The regulators have just become defendants.
Opes Prime had warned both the ASX and ASIC in February that it was in breach of its liquidity requirements. Both failed to act. Any client of Opes whose exposure to the collapsed Prime broker increased between that time – at the latest – and the collapse in March presumably has an action against the regulators.”
What kind of Negligence?
steve,
He’s much more depressing than a circus …
Kina @ 438,
Aren’t you just talking about criminal neg?
But surely they’d go for civil neg – that’s the easiest way to the pot of money!
Yes they will go for civil neg. Just wondering if they also fit the other kind.
It is unlikely that they would be found 100% liable for any losses. It is not like there were not others involved whose actions have effected the collapse to a greater extent than ASIC and the ASX. But it could easily be found that they were 10% or 20% responsible. So it is not like the pot of money is going to that massive.
BSF, What’s your thinking on the date Nelson will be rolled?
Well, It is a case of the party is going to have appoarch Turnbull for him to takeover. It is not in his interest to be seen to be giving Nelson the boot. If he was to do that, it is likely Bishop or someone on the right would stand as a protest; Turnbull would still win but it is not a good look.
The budget is 3 weeks away. The Liberals are not going to roll Nelson this week as too many members are overseas and the partyroom would be questionable (like the November one). Next Week is out as they really need someone to be at the HMAS Sydney thing in Sydney on the Thursday and it is then a long weekend. So the week of the 28th is only chance to do a swap before the budget.
Budget week is out. But then there is the Gippsland byelection which is looking like it might be June 7th or 14th (the writs haven’t been issued yet, I am not even sure that the formal letter of resignation has been received). They won’t want to dump him during the campaign but if the poll figures are really bad (as they are now) it will be all over red rover.
And provided he has survived that long, it depends on the byelection result. And if the ALP win the seat, he’s dead. If the Liberals win, he is saved. The Nationals win, it is status quo and they will go on with him until September.
I would be saying post byelection is most likely but don’t rule out a tap on the shoulder on ANZAC day weekend.
Howard’s a bit late with his “me too-ism” here I think.
Remember; I’m Kevin, I’m from Queensland & I’m here to help.
Too late John. I think the liberal Party has had all the help they need from you in the past 12 years.
http://news.smh.com.au/howard-willing-to-help-libs-and-nelson/20080414-264r.html
As I predicted some time ago, Rob Oakeshott has refound his conservative credentials.
http://www.portmacquarie.yourguide.com.au/news/local/general/pollies-stay-mum-on-lyne-future/1222362.html
The results of this meeting: It must be realised that there is intense personal animosity between Vaile, Oakeshott and NSW Nationals leader, Stoner. Stoner came out today to attack Heffernan’s interfernce but it appears to me that Oakeshott is short odds to succeed Vaile as the conservative member for Lyne. I also think that this may be a little more incentive for Vaile to stay on and deny Oakeshott his chance.
Caught the Howard appearance on Lateline. This all round defeated person should get out. That was his promise. Still, we know all about his promises. If the Libs think that his contribution will assist them, they are dead wrong. It scares me still, though, I have to say. The dead hand of the dreadful, stultifying years lingers.
It is slightly humourous that Howard thinks he can offer advice to the Libs now, after the state he lef them in. Only the second PM to have lost his seat, it says it alla bout how out of touch he was. They are better off without him.
Will any ‘help’ by Howard help to hold them in the past? The man responsible for their destruction now wants to advise them. Will the MSM still idolize him or speak truth?
As painful as it was I watched the rodent’s speech tonight (I really needed to confirm his defeatedness). He summed up the opposition’s problems – he still has no idea why they were defeated, much less that it will be a cold day in hell before they stagger into another electoral victory – anywhere
Glen may thake heart in the Italian Election Results, but the elections themselves are a dog’s breakfast.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3744594.ece
Hmm, that sounds suspiciously familar to Howard’s “Electoral Reforms” in regards to earely closing of polls etc, and we all know what the result was there
.
I’m sure many of us saw Four Corners tonight, but why the apparent reticence to make comment?
My take was that what was presented was essentially factually accurate, but nothing new was revealed that wasn’t widely reported in the MSM at the time the enquiry was conducted.
What was more revealing was the style of presentation, the theatricals, the overblown confected indignation, and the exaggeration of relatively petty issues into major conflagrations.
It amused me, and given my ethnic background , also mildly annoyed me, to watch the disingenuous racist overtones, the introduction of the “Mafia connection” on the sole and spurious basis that some of the participants were of Italian or other European origin. I could almost hear the unexpressed sentiment, “what’s a nice Australian girl doing screwing those dirty wogs?”.
And the presenter, Sarah Ferguson, a Pomeranian pretending to be a Rottweiler.
In your face, snide, confrontational interviews, leading questions, impertinent yapping intrusions, and self aggrandisment masquerading as investigative journalism.The Ray Martin school revisited. ABC a la Albrechtsen.
And by the way, no criticism of him,but was the David Charles ,formerly president of the ALH, who made a brief comment on the program, the same David Charles as sometimes graces this blog?
Doh, AHA.
Frank, it’s uncanny how our posts seem to follow each other late at night. I know it’s because we’re both in WA, but people will soon start calling us “the two amici”!
Yeah
Re Four Corners, I note D’Orazio is trying his best to destroy the WA ALP by not geting the hint that the majority of the Party bar the New Right faction don’t want him back. And the West’s faux sympathy for him his hypocritical since THEY were instrumental in the whole “Godfather/CCC saga which forced John to resign in the first place.
I reckon the real reason is Kerry Stokes – Reece Whitby is an employee of Stokes at Ch 7, and Stokes wants to get on the WAN Board and get rid of Paul Armstrong – hence the hatchet job on Reece and his investment properties.
“Mr Howard told the gathering, which included Dr Nelson and a number of his federal and Queensland colleagues, that he was there to help”
Howard will be advising the libs on policy, which they don’t have any of at the moment, he has also taken heart from Berlusconi who has regained the prime ministership at the age of 71.
Howard will be 71 in 2010, plan is for him to be parachuted into a safe seat just before then and take over the leadership of the libs.
His policies will include to never ever reintroduce Work Choices, take back the apology to the aboriginals, rescind Kyoto and bring back conscription to send as many troops to iraq as possible.
Howard will be 71 in 2010, plan is for him to be parachuted into a safe seat just before then and take over the leadership of the libs.
Fine by me. Guarantees an even longer and more painful time in the political wilderness for the Tories.
Forza Silvio!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/15/witaly115.xml
Silvio Berlusconi wins Italy election
“Projections showed that Mr Berlusconi’s coalition won 163 seats in the Senate, compared to 141 seats for Mr Veltroni.
In Italy’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, the count was 332 seats to 215.”
At least Conservatism isn’t on the way out in other countries…though it is funny that Silvio created alot of their economic mess in his first term…but i suppose it is right for him to fix the mistakes lol!
onya Glen, if you cant get into power in Australia, start cheering for Italy. Sheer desparation indeed
Glen, I’ve said this before to you but who cares about Italy’s political antics. They are a joke. As far as I’m concerned the conservatives could remain in power over there for the rest of my life and it would mean nothing to me and the same applies for many other countries. Still, if it helps, go for it.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-388915.html
This is an interesting criminal problem that Allbull will bring to the utter shambles that is the liberal leadership.A Howard comeback,yes please.LOL!
No of course it doesn’t help but just as many of you lefties would jump for joy if Obama became America’s President i am glad to see our side of politics do well wherever they may be.
Andrew i wouldn’t call it sheer desperation i’d call it acknowledging the success of your side of politics overseas.
At least Conservatism isn’t on the way out in other countries…
Isn’t Italy the birthplace of Fascism?
Glen (463) the problem with your argument re acknowledging the success of your side of politics overseas is that there are degrees of “left” and “right”. What is seen as “centre right” here in some countries would be considered left wing. So just barracking for a right wing party or left wing party overseas has its “dangers” let’s say, particulalrly if you don’t really know what it stands for and its policies.
Of course there are countries that mean a lot to Australia and consequently we take more interest in politically, eg the USA but Italy? No thanks.
457
Rod
It was enough to make me choke on my weeties! Imagine, the slimy little rodent who, like some aging despot (Mugabe comes to mind! LOL), hung on to power, brooked no dissent, and watched his party get decimated as he was chucked out of his own seat.
And he wants to ‘help’! And why not? He helped himself for years and years, did little but bribe the punters, and didn’t even have the courtesy to establish a secession for his own party.
I’m surprised they didn’t do a Juliius Ceasar on him, but instead, like the gormless inbred idiots they’ve become, they cheered the little rodent!
Will wonders never cease? They’ve not only lost power and direction, but any vestage of dignity. They truly deserve the oblivion they’ve made for themselves.
well said KR. The libs cannot move forward until they acknowledge the damage that the Howard years did to the party (and the country). And they wont, so I think they face a long time in opposition
This article about Costello’s lost opportunities and Howard’s role in that is certainly on the money in some respects.
Typical of the Oz though. No name to it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23539466-16382,00.html
Talking about hyprocracy and revisionism, this is classical.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/howard-speaks-his-mind/2008/04/14/1208025099007.html
Glen wrote:
“No of course it doesn’t help but just as many of you lefties would jump for joy if Obama became America’s President i am glad to see our side of politics do well wherever they may be.”
Didn’t you hear? Over in the US, the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress at the last mid-terms. Irrespective of who wins the Presidency in Nov., the GOP could lose even more seats in Congress (especially in the Senate, where they are especially vulnerable).
Gary @ 465, spot-on mate. All I would add is that Rudd is well on the way to becoming one of the great “Liberal” PMs Australia has ever had. I have voted Liberal or National most of my life and I have to say 5 months in, Rudd has not done anything to upset – or even slightly annoy – me yet. Moreover, and to be totally fair, the likes of Crean, Gillard, Albanese among others are off to an excellent start in their respective portfolios.
The thing that amuses more than anything else about some of the losers who seem to spend most of their day and or night on here is that they don’t really appreciate (or perhaps choose to ignore) the fact that many of the Howard reforms the Rudd Government has implictly accepted were front and centre of ALP campaigns in 1990, 1993 and 1998. In fact its hard to distinguish Rudd from Fraser or from Peacock in 1984.
LDN Chris @ 448, you no doubt would have been one of those creaming their jeans over the fact that Howard could not hold on Bennelong. Get a life champ. Bennelong would have been lost years ago if not for JWH being the member. Moreover, whatever else you might think of Howard, at least he had the guts to stick it out in Bennelong instead of decamping to a safer seat like Evatt and Beazley
Chris at 448, its seems the editors at the Oz now (belatedly) agree Howard was out of touch
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23539466-16382,00.html
The only economic impact Howard had on Australia for the last 11 years was to take us from a welfare state to a middle class welfare state – vote buying, inflation fuelling short sighted politcs. How about investing in higher education so that innovation happens here, not in China where there are literally millions undertaking post grad studies!
CofE, happy to here you will be voting [1] Labor at the next election.
Room to criticise both sides today IMO. Howard opening his mouth in complete denial of being kicked out of office is a gift for Rudd.
But I thought the Four Corners story last night on corruption within NSW Labor was accurate and if anything too weak. One aspect that wasn’t mentioned was the cost to taxpayers. Developers like Hardie Holdings pay politicians $500,000 as a development is approved. That works out at $800 per block for Huntlee. But this may also avoid the system where these developments are made to pay for the infrastructure costs they generate. Those sort of large, remote greenfield sites need road and/or rail links to provide access. In my work the bill often comes out to in excess of $20000 per block. If the developer isn’t made to pay these costs that is $20,000 per block extra profit. Hardie sold teh land after approval and made $185 million profit. In the case of Huntlee it is relying on the F3 to Brankston freeway extension to provide it, which will cost Commonwealth taxpayers over $300 million. Hardie didn’t pay for any of it.
So if you live in NW Sydney and ever wonder why the government never has the money to pay for the rail links needed, and the roads are all tolled, this is why. (It is legitimate to charge developers the cost of their infrastructure impacts since a High Court case, King Ranch vs Cardwell Shire Council, in 1972.)
471 Chris from Edgecliff – I’m guessing you’d be, in Australian terms, centre right in your politics. I’m centre left and mostly vote ALP, which just proves what you are saying to be so. We agree on Rudd so far. I would also suggest we are typical of the majority of voters, hence why Rudd is doing so well in the polls. Howard started out with these voters in mind but veered too far right of centre, hence his political demise. Rudd needs to keep this in mind. His success will depend on it.
Mr Howard added to the historic revisionism theme by telling his audience all the big reform milestones in Australian history had happened under Liberal governments,
Comedy gold.
What he is saying is that, by unilateral partisan definition, anything his side did was a “big reform milestone”, and anything Labor did wasn’t.
And even if a Labor government had introduced any of these glorious ‘reforms’, he would no doubt just say that they were really Liberal party policies anyway that Labor pinched when the Liberals weren’t looking.
Gotta admit, he hasn’t lost his touch for blatant, shameless spin.
Silvio starting out as he intends to continue. (via Andrew Landeryou).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Ik3s72h6E
Howard’s comments are not a surprise. Hard to believe though, that even after losing the election and his own seat, he is unable to critically examine why, what went wrong, what could have been done differently
he wont budge an inch, which was, of course, his downfall
Also funny how he talks about revisionism. he devoted a tremondous amount of his whole prime ministership to discrediting the Hawke/Keating achievements and reforms (with alot of help from his MSM friends)
It’s all about projecting and protecting Howard’s “legacy” as Australia’s finest Prime Minister.
No matter how hard he works at this, history will be his biggest enemy as more and more his so called, legacy and input into Australian society and economy is evaluated.
Analysts and researchers will identify how Howard’s leadership led to an abject failure to take advantage of favourable economic conditions and set the country up for a prosperous and socially cohesive future.
Conservatism is by no means dead worldwide. Conservative parties are in power now in the United States, Canada, Italy and Germany; within the next couple of years, they will also take over New Zealand and Britain (and retained in the other countries listed above). Just like what happened in Rome, this is a short-term, limited throwback in Australia, and it is entirely plausible that Krudd will also be nothing but a one-term less-than-wonder.
The fulcrum of the world has fundamentally shifted, and is continuing to shift, toward the Right. Capitalism and social conservatism are in essence the views of the mainstream majority of the Western World, and we should continue to be proud of that.
Every former PM wants to project and protect their legacy. It’s only natural.
I do home the Libs, take up Mr. Pyne’s suggesstion of having the members vote for the Leader. I like that idea.
Lol, I heard Sharran Burrow on the radio this morning blaming WorkChoices for the fall in Union membership.
Decades will pass before there is an informed and objective analysis of Australia 1996 to 2007 under the Howard stewardship. If you are glad Howard’s time has now passed, then that’s great. Those who understand history will be thankful that our electoral system allows us to change governments in an orderly and peaceful way. That the person who supplanted Howard is (so far) doing very well is an added bonus which I trust will continue for a little while yet.
Nostradamus
If you believe conservatism will retain power in the United States, then you are well named indeed. Better to write your predictions in poetry though, so that they can be reinterpreted after the event… just in case.
Nostra re your predictions of rudd. is this to be regarded as accurate as you predictions about last years election. If youre going to be a troll, at least be a good one
Nostradamus: Australia has had conservative governments for the past 30-odd years. For the past 12 years we have suffered a neo-conservative (fascist) administration. Ditto for the U.K. Anybody who considers Blair to be anything other than a warmed-over Margaret Thatcher is naive in the extreme.
I can hardly tell you how sick I am of seeing the word “troll” directed at anyone who dares to express a conservative opinion around here. It would make sense if the avowed purpose of this site was to provide a left-wing talking shop a la Daily Kos, but it ought to be immediately obvious to anyone who spends 30 seconds here that that isn’t the case. I’m actually quite insulted that someone like Andrew has been able to conclude otherwise. What have I been doing wrong here exactly?
482 Nostradamus – again I say who cares. We live in Australia. The most important governments for us are here. Although I’d like to see the Republicans rolled in the US this time round, because I think they deserve it, the rest of the world can go whichever way they like.
Howard in no way was responsible for the economic performance of Australia over the past decade.
At best he can be said to have sat at the till and raked in the money without breaking the system. It is obvioius that our strong performance has been on the back of Gobal growth and resources demand.
Keating/Hawke get the credit for reforming the economy and for buffering us from the Asian crisis.
Howard can be blamed for economic negligence in not keeping current, upgrading or expanding infrastructure. Simple basic facts supported by a number of statments from banks and economists.
Workchoices came late on the scene and had only been in a short amount of time when they started making rediculous claims about its boost to the economy and jobs [apparently both reducing and increasing wages depending on what point they were being grilled on]. And it is fairly obvious that Workchoices was a purely ideoligical venture designed to destroy unions and Labor’ base.
But the real danger of Howard was his attack on democracy, accountability, transparency, seperation of powers etc. They set about trying to limit all those things.
The result of another 3 years of Howard would have been an opaque government free from proper scrutiny and pulling all the strings of society and fear among many to speak up. As it was people were afraid to speak up during the last 3 years for fear of losing funding, being character assasinated, losing their job and so on.
William@488
Didn’t think you did anything wrong – when CfE & Glen are in form they can be quite astute (same to for John of Melbourne), but I have noticed a demonstrable drop off in quality of debate and content over the last 6 months. I do think, however, that when people start labelling both people and government’s as “fascist”, “troll”, “Krudd” etc the level of debate falls to new lows. I don’t contribute much because most of what is here is just banter (with occassional gems) and I’m not necessarily interested in it – maybe thats the same for others (or, at least, those who are practitioners and not watchers).
CfE@471
Spot on about both Rudd government’s inate conservatism and Bennelong – but hasn’t this been the trend from western government’s of the past 30 years (at least the conservatism part anyway)? And Bennelong – this was discussed I remember before the 2004 election with reference to the 2003 NSW State Election and how much of Bennelong was held by the ALP at a state level. So yes, Bennelong should now be a swing seat, but tending ALP
I should add, in response to Nostradamus@482, that I don’t see the Rudd Government as a “short-term, limited throwback in Australia” but in fact a continuation of process of convergence between Labor & Liberal parties, and more generally a continuation of conservative politics globally. Of course, you can argue that Fraser himself was quite the progressive in some ways, and that the real difference is between radical and reactionary (Hawke-Keating-Howard being radical, Fraser & Rudd being reactionary), but this would not go far in explaining the symbolic nature of Rudd’s first 100 days – compared the wholesale rejection of symbolism by Howard.
This doesn’t mean that I automatically reject al of what Rudd is doing, or that all of Howard’s legacy should be dispensed with either, but I do reserve the right to be critical of poor policy or hypocritical (or at least contradictory) activities.
William, you haven’t done anything wrong. Your blog has just travelled a fairly well-established path for political blogs, that’s all.
Look around the political blogs, and you will be lucky to find one that isn’t biased one way or the other. Whether that was deliberate from the beginning (for example, Akerman’s blog) or not (yours wasn’t), they usually end up that way, as far as the persuasion of the commenters goes.
Over time the balance of participation weighs toward one side or the other, becoming self-perpetuating in that the more weighted the commenters toward one side, the less inviting the atmosphere for contributions from the opposing side. Your blog has ‘fallen’ to the left, it seems, not through your doing, or even obviously your intent, but just the course of its externally-driven evolution.
It’s not limited to just “blogs” of course but political discussion boards and the like too. Show me one that is truly balanced in intent and contribution, and I will show you Santa Claus.
Blog participation reflects human nature IMO: people prefer to hang with their own side/sort. Birds of a feather and all that…
Just Me @ 477 -
And even if a Labor government had introduced any of these glorious ‘reforms’, he would no doubt just say that they were really Liberal party policies anyway that Labor pinched when the Liberals weren’t looking.
That is pretty much what Howard has said about the many Keating reforms which made Costello’s job such a cakewalk, claiming that they were Lib policy that he wanted to legislate when he was Treasurer but Fraser wouldn’t let him. LOL
So what did he do when he finally got the top gig? As far as I can see his vision was limited to the GST and turning the workforce into serfs.
Thanks Stewart J
Perhaps the quality has dropped off because so little has happened bar a bit of symbolism here and there.
As much as I appreciate William’s running of this blog he has admitted in the past that he has been more leniant on rightwing scallywags than left ones. Perhaps the cause of this blog losing it’s way abit was back in those days when William tried to compensate for a lack of rightwing commentary. From a lefty point of view, it’s hard to maintain the marquis of queensbury while the other guy is punching you in the goolies and getting away with it. That is just human nature.
As fas as this notion of Rudd continuing on conservative rule in this country goes, anybody who thought that Labor was going to implement some kind of year zero strategy when they won office, really doesn’t have a clue. What the government is attempting is a mass de-programming of the population after the collapse of the cult of Howardism. This will take time and must be expertly handled.
Rx (493) You infer that it is impossible to have a weblog site that is truly balanced in intent and contribution. That is a disappointing opinion because I believe that it is quite possible to have such a site particularly if contributors acknowledge that a prevailing group think on the blog at any one time is not always correct, learn to respect a range of different perspectives and then refrain from labelling those they disagree with as ‘trolls’, ‘fascists’, ‘tossers’ etc.
“That is pretty much what Howard has said about the many Keating reforms which made Costello’s job such a cakewalk, claiming that they were Lib policy that he wanted to legislate when he was Treasurer but Fraser wouldn’t let him. ”
This was fairly much played out in the pages of the Australian between Keating, Fraser and Howard. Basically Fraser was calling Howard a liar. If there were such desires by Howard says Fraser, let Howard produced all the documentation to support it … Howard remained very silent, there were and are none.
“Conservatism is by no means dead worldwide. Conservative parties are in power now in the United States, Canada, Italy and Germany;”
WRT to the US, that’s very simplistic. Once again, the US government is split between the executive and the legislative. Irrespective of who holds the presidency, he or she must deal with Congress. George W. Bush may occupy the White House, but his opponents (the Democrats) effectively control Congress. Dubya’s presidency has been emasculated.
And Germany has a “Grand Coalition” of left and right.
Meanwhile in WA, D’Orazio is allowed back into the ALP.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/15/2217631.htm
“482
Nostradamus Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 2:29 pm ”
Didn’t you predict a stunning Liberal Party win at the last election with John Howard holding his own seat and increasing his majority??
Not too good on predictions are you mate?
And this stuff of Howard nobly sticking with Bennelong as it slowly moved to the ALP. Wasn’t this silly? Last election some seats might have been lost because Howard had to spend so much time in Bennelong. Crazy!
I’m a right-winger now, but I still detest Fraser for his actions in 1975. (when I was an ALP supporter). It is truly amazing to me that he has become a hero to the left-wingers of today. I wouldn’t trust that arrogant creep in any respect, ever.
I am surprised at how quickly the Liberal Party dumped Howard’s policies. If they had said we only lost by about 3% – our policies are correct and we will fight for them at the next election they may have had a chance at one term in opposition.
But unfortunately (for them) they lost thier policy nerve and have given Labor a clear run. Sad really.
The main reason they lost their “policy nerve” and dumped a number of their policies was because they were comprehensively rejected at the last election.
The Libs are a policy free zone now because what policy platform they ran on at the last election was shallow at best and rejected by the majority of the Australian electorate.
Their big problem now is that they left the gate open and Rudd & Labor was able to quickly fill the void with a reasonably comprehensive range of policies that were popular with an overwhelming number of electors.
The main problem for the Libs now is that, Rudd hasn’t left very much fertile ground in the paddock for the Libs to till. They can only go further right, which would be total suicide, or go to the left of Labor, which wouldn’t sit very well with much of their base.
I think you will find that they have decided to just shadow Rudd, policy wise for a while, with occasional variations on individual policy positions (similar to the apology issue), and hope for advantages to come their way from adverse economic conditions and a poor response from Labor as well as maybe a big stuff-up or mishandling in more than one policy area over the next 3 years.
I personally don’t like their chances in any of these three scenarios. They are up against a wiley operator in Rudd who has a very capable and competent front bench at his disposal. Unfortunately for the Coalition, they have neither a capable leader or front bench that the electorate feels in anyway comfortable with.
Witness the polls. There is no likelihood of any change much for a very long time. The LNP needs to totally remake themselves, get rid of the far right nutters and develop policies that further the interests of the average Australian. This will take some time and effort and if not undertaken, will lead to totally irrelevance.
Scorpio replace Labor with Coalition and Rudd wirth Keating/Beazley/Latham and it would reflect Labor in opposition.
I believe it was either Possum or Mumble who explained small variations in policy positions is product differentiation.
JoM
That is kind of the point I was making, the Liberals have abandoned their brand and thus have to build another from the ground up.
I don’t think that the Labor victory was as comprehensive as Scorpio says. Qld came back to a normal situation and there was a moderate swing in some other states.
If the Liberals had stuck to their “brand” and attacked Labor I contend that they would be in a better shape at the next election.
But they were in shock when Howard lost his seat – everyone expected Costello to take the reins – when he did not they were without a rudder.
Rudd wedged them – and called for bi-partisan approaches to issues that they should have remained mute on for a while “we are having a policy revue – and we will announce at a later date what our position is” would have been a more prudent response.
Or maybe they just got outplayed by a better political team?
John of Melbourne,
Only a confirmed optimist could make such a comparison.
Keating/Beazley/Latham were never in a similar position in which your side of politics now find themselves in.
There was always room to move policy wise in their case, but Nelson and the Coalition do not have a similar luxury.
they are a policy free zone exactly as I outlined in my previous post. If you can demonstrate “any” policy of substance that your side are currently proposing, I would gladly recant my position.
Unfortunately, what I have said is true, which is unfortunate not just for Nelson & the Coalition, but for the Australian political process as a whole. The sooner your side come to the realization that what I have previously posted is the reality of their position, the sooner steps can be taken to recrtify the dire position you are now in.
I do not mean this in a vindictive or smug way, but hope it can be accepted as a constructive evaluation of the reality of the situation.
Ruawake I agree with you when you said the Liberal party should have said, “we are having a policy revue – and we will announce at a later date what our position is” in regards to bi-partisanship.
“Or maybe they just got outplayed by a better political team?” Could be.
I think Rudd will be vulnerable on health after having said the buck stops with him. In two years time that might bite.
INHO good on Costello for not taking the reigns. The country needs a break from people associated with the Howard years. I think he should stay on in Parliament and contest for the Liberal leadership in 2011 -2012. I think he could win then.
Scorpio you’re right we don’t have any concrete policies, everything is up for renewal.
John, I’m sorry, but after observing Costello fairly closely for the past 12 years, I cannot imagine him quietly sitting by while the Liberal Party go through a complete renewal and restructural process.
The man’s ego wouldn’t allow it and in a lot of respects, he is part of the problem they now have.
If the Libs go through a similar process that they went through in the 80’s with constant shuffling of the leadership, front bench etc., then I cannot see Costello staying on.
He’s carrying too much baggage also and would be a sitting target for Rudd to constantly wedge and time will beat him in any case.
Scorpio fair comments.
I don’t know about his ego but I’m sure he’d have a hand in the restructuring process. This is a great opportunity for the Liberals to expand their membership base simply because they have to, to raise money. Costello could be involved in such a campaign.
The baggage you speak of may be long forgotten by 2011 – 2012. If it the country is in a poor shape financially at the time of the 2013 elections and if I were Costello I would run a campaign titled, “Glory Day” i.i Costello will bring back the glory days.
Looks like another labor election promise well on the way to implementation.
Don’t think many of the service station operators in my area will be too pleased though. The ones in my area have a bad habit of putting prices up early after a world oil price rise, never bringing it down when the price drops and by coincidence, all having the same fuel prices on the same day.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/15/2217746.htm?section=business
494
MayoFeral Says:
So what did he do when he finally got the top gig? As far as I can see his vision was limited to the GST and turning the workforce into serfs.
Plus some divisive pap about culture wars and how the Left magically dominates every institution in the country in perpetuity, even after the conservatives had been in power for 11 years and held both houses of federal parliament.
498
Kina Says:
If there were such desires by Howard says Fraser, let Howard produced all the documentation to support it … Howard remained very silent, there were and are none.
No doubt Howard would view it as a dignified silence.
509
John of Melbourne Says:
I think Rudd will be vulnerable on health after having said the buck stops with him. In two years time that might bite.
OTOH, if Rudd actually delivers a substantial improvement in health, and that is a possibility, he will be very difficult for the Coalition to attack, especially considering their less than impressive track record on health issues. And if Rudd also delivers in other major areas, such as education, foreign relations, and general state-federal co-operation, then the Coalition and their policy approach to these matters really are in seriously deep doo-doos, because by most measures stuff like that got worse under their rule.
512
John of Melbourne Says:
The baggage you speak of may be long forgotten by 2011 – 2012. If it the country is in a poor shape financially at the time of the 2013 elections and if I were Costello I would run a campaign titled, “Glory Day” i.i Costello will bring back the glory days.
Can’t see that happening. Rightly or wrongly, many people still weigh down Keating with interest rates baggage, and that was over 12 years ago.
The stench of SerfChoices in particular will take a long, long time to wear off, and Costello can’t pretend he had nothing to do with it, he’s always had a hard right ideological line on IR. Dollar Sweets, anybody?
It looks like those people who critisised Rudd for a back-down on the Olympic torch relay security issue will have to eat humble pie.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/15/2217755.htm?section=justin
The Liberals do need to start polling better figures sometime soon. Otherwise it means they can’t oppose anything. The last thing, with such bad poll figures, they need is to fight an election (also the warchest is compeletely empty) and if they oppose anything in the senate it is likely to be blocked*, which could cause a double dissolution. And the ALP is in the exactly opposite position and would love to fight another election sometime at the end of this year or next year. So the Liberals are going to be extremely reluctant to block legalisation.
And if the Liberals can’t oppose anything, then they look like they stand for nothing. Taking a stand against stuff is seen as leadership, and if Nelson or who follows can’t do that, then they are not going to make much headway. So I think Nelson is gone within three months**.
But that also leaves another question or two: If Nelson is rolled by Turnbull, how long do the Liberals give Turnbull before he has to perform? What do they do in six months if his TPP figures are say 20 – 60?
*The Greens would love a double dissolution and therefore I don’t expect them to be active in passing much legalisation.
** If Nelson manages to make a meal of his speech at HMAS Sydney memorial (24/4) or has a “Karl Rove” moment, he could very well be shown the door the next week. I say this as it is the one time he has to speak a wider audience before the budget.
A reminder of Howard’s economic credentials commented on during the election campaign. I wonder if Howard really wants us to dig into his performance?
Michael Costello: History backs Keating’s claim on economy
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21984668-7583,00.html
Govt could have ‘better spent’ resources revenue
ANZ Bank chief economist Saul Eslake says the Federal Government should have made better use of the revenue it has made from Australia’s resources boom.
Mr Eslake has addressed the Australian British Chamber of Commerce and told the gathering the Government has spent or given away almost every single dollar associated with the windfall gains.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/26/2044302.htm?section=australia
Gap between rich and poor widens
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gap-widens/2007/08/02/1185648060461.html
A collection made during the campaign and after at this site:
http://www.ozforums.com.au/viewtopic.php?id=62&p=5
Chris from Edgecliff @ 471
LDN Chris @ 448, you no doubt would have been one of those creaming their jeans over the fact that Howard could not hold on Bennelong. Get a life champ. Bennelong would have been lost years ago if not for JWH being the member. Moreover, whatever else you might think of Howard, at least he had the guts to stick it out in Bennelong instead of decamping to a safer seat like Evatt and Beazley
We’re not bitter much then, are we? I was simply pointing out that JWH doesn’t seem to get it. He spent years telling us how in touch he was with the man on the street, yet he couldn’t even hold his seat. And this notion that somehow he was a martyr for sticking it out in Bennelong is ridiculous. He had such a messiah complex that even when the majority of his cabinet told him to go, he stayed on because his family told him to? Right…… If that’s not out of touch, I’d like to know what is. I’m sorry if you find that upsetting.
Still on JWH’s appearance – what does Nelson think he has to gain by appearing with him? I suppose his approval ratings can’t get much worse, but why jettison most of his policies, then be seen acting like best mates?
“I don’t think that the Labor victory was as comprehensive as Scorpio says. Qld came back to a normal situation and there was a moderate swing in some other states.”
Without the advantage of incumbency and the aura of and familiarity with Howard/Costello I believe the LNP would have been well and truly belted at the last election. Now Howard has gone and being the Opposition the mirage has been broken and a gaping hole revealed of credibility revealed – and the polls show us that.
Now we have Rudd gathering credibility points from day one, non-stop. How quickly he has smothered the Howard legacy and left no one anytime to reflect on it so busy has he been. The Rudd government has given the strong impression that it has come in and taken control of the economy to try and fix it etc. Be it true or false the impression is being made in the public mind.
Kina
I am predicting a huge Labor swing at the next election (using my super dooper Nostradoofus skills).
A bit like Beattie in Qld or most Labor state Govts when they won Govt. The winning is the hard part. To be honest doing a really serious bit of doofusing, the Nats could be the senior coalition partner in 2011-12.
Ruawake: Left Wing troll.
BB
Go easy, ruawake. You don’t want to send Nostro and Glen to bed with a migraine, do you.
Kina, you forgot those scummy electoral laws that cost me money with centre bet
I find it interest that some of you guys find it interesting to revive Bennelong again. I personally think if he wasn’t a tool he could have kept it. What sticks in my mind especially, was something that Glen Milne said on the insiders a few months before the election. That if the vote in Bennelong was close, his branding of the Tamil tigers as terrorists (some being arrested and such) would cost him dearly due to its substantial Tamil population.
Although may post at 520 had my tongue firmly in cheek there is some truth in it. If you look at when state govt. have fallen to Labour the general rule is that they increase their majority at the subsequent election.
The challenge for the Libs is to stop this from happening, but I think they have gone about it in a predictable but wrong fashion.
Scotty at 524
Exactly – the libs might have been on the nose federally, but the fact that he lost his seat as well shows people thought he had lost the plot. I would have thought being PM would add at least 10% to his vote. He made some silly mistakes and couldn’t see they were going to cost him his seat.
Chris
I agree most, incumbent governments benefit from fear of the unknown that allows incumbent governments to fear monger about absurd statements.
Once that uncertainty goes and the people who make those absurd statements (who will attract anger) will look silly.
Interestingly in recent federal government changes incumbent governments have not increased their vote. But the state labour government have done this. But many of them came from minority governments. So it should prove very interesting.
Scorpio @ 513,
Surely you have to be very, very sceptical that this measure is anything more than window dressing?
What it means, fundamentally, is
- prices will move less often than they do now – hard to see why this necessarily means the average punter will pay less
- there’ll be a lot more incentive for petrol stations to price-fix (at a local level, anyway) than is currently the case. Currently if the guy down the road is cheaper than me, I just put the price down. Under this system I won’t be able to do so till tomorrow, so there’ll be much more benefit in “talking” regularly than there is currently.
(I’m not a servo operator, by the way, just trying to put myself in their shoes).
I guess the beauty from a Labor perspective is that no-one will ever be able to prove what effect the new regime has had.
Most interesting reading, Bludgers. For what it’s worth, I reckon no matter who is the Leader of the Libs. a) they should be back peddling into the middle distance any time Howard offers to help, politely, of course, and b) they need to reconcile who it is they actually represent and develop some policy in relation to same – well, any policy really. This, of course, is going to be tremendously difficult, because it’s unclear who they represent and Horatio’s magical listening tour doesn’t appear to have turned up any likely takers/supporters. A move to the left? A move to the right?
William, for what it’s worth from a bar fly, fine site, sometimes descends into garbage and I confess to being a contributor to the rubbish, and promise to try and lift my game.
Glen
Deary me i must say i have lost a little respect for you today. Silvio Berlusconi is one of the most disgusting politicians to inhabit the earth. The way he changed electoral laws to make it almost impossible for the opposition to govern with a majority then used senate numbers to damage the country to make the government look bad. The way a few honourable senators were treated who thought that was immoral was abysmal. Shame on you. I would not be proud of a left wing leader acting the way he has. I do not even support leaders who are not that bad. For example i think Hugo Chavez is a tool of the first degree. I would have nothing against a conservative such as Angela Merkel being elected but that shows how desperate you must be feeling atm.
Nostradamus
I must give it to you. You are an optimist. I think the point is that most incumbent governments are in hot atm, especially those who have been there awhile. The Haitian President proved that. Food prices and petrol prices have made people very angry since the start of the year. The problem with your argument is that you exclude places such as Japan, USA and possibly Germany could fall into this category. You are however probably right about New Zealand if they stick with Helene Clark and maybe even if they do not. I’m not so sure about The Poms. They do not have an election due for awhile and if they ride out the storm they may be okay. Their biggest hope is that The Democrats win. As this would help sweep under the carpet their largest electoral liability.
I would also point out that the governments of Paraguay and El Salvador are abit on the nose. Generally not worth attention. However that would make Colombia the only conservative government in South/Central America.
It seems to me that some fairly intelligent discussion between left and right has resumed on this site, which is a good thing. I’ve been reading every day but felt that no matter what anyone said, someone else would abuse the crap out of them, so I stayed away.
Anyway, things seems to have improved.
A few random thoughts…
I think the petrol pricewatch is a good idea. It’s worth trying, at least. There is evidence that it’s worked a little bit in WA. Falling petrol prices doesn’t just help motorists – they flow into the inflation figures too. And it warns the oil companies that this government is at least prepared to regulate prices a little bit.
Brendan Nelson is a bit like Simon Crean. He’s an experienced minister who’s taken on the party leadership at a time when it’s suicidal to do so. But if he can push for changes to the party structure, as Crean did, and start the long process of developing new policies and attacting more graasroots members to the Libs, they’ll thank him one day. Mind you, his chances of becoming PM are extremely slim.
The Liberal Party really needs to re-think industrial relations. WorkChoices was a truly absurd policy at a time when there was a labour shortage. What it has created is a younger generation with no loyalty to any employer or any career path, which takes what it can get from a boss and moves on, because there’s no trust in employers. No-one wants to be an apprentice because the pay is crap, and you can earn more labouring or working in a cafe.
Rudd has hardly put a foot wrong since becoming PM. He’s made changes the way Whitlam did – and I do think symbolism is important – but he’s more rational. I agree with one of the other posters that this government could follow the same patterns as states like Queensland, SA and Vic – and have a huge swing TO them at the next election.
Rudd has also picked up on what could be the biggest issue in the world in coming years – the rising price of food, and the effect it will have on global stability and poverty. If Australia plans (particularly with water use and skills training) we can have an agriculture boom after the mining boom.
Dyno,
I mostly agree with your comments @ 528, but, I do think that there will be at least some benefit flowing on from a comprehensive fuel watch system.
For one, many operators who are currently selling at way outside a reasonable profit margin in relation to the Singapore & world spot price, would tend to be much more careful in their pricing arrangements.
The fact that they are being closely monitored and their pricing being available for both consumers and regulators will certainly curtail the rampant price gouging that is currently the case.
I would however, like to see some level of censure and penalty imposed on those who operate outside of community expectations of a fair deal from an industry which is in a monolopy position in the provision of a product that is in some ways, indespensible to much of the community.
Kerry O’Brien interviewing Nelson: rather like kicking a dead dog around the place! I almost feel sorry for Brendan, but the problem is the Tories aren’t cut out for opposition, they have this “born to rule” mentality. It’s my suspicion they will be in the wilderness for a long time to come!
Nostrodamus: mate, your predictions are very unreliable, or is it just wishful thinking on your part?
I think there is going to be a Westpoll re state voting intentions in WA in The West Australian 2mw
If 59% of ALP voters support sunday retail trading (yes we dont have it in WA) and 45% of Coalition voters support it
and the overall support is 51% what does that make WA Labors 2pp? Am i correct in assuming its very bad?
Thats assuming they used 2pp instead of primary votes?
I assume progressive youre referring to tonight?? Why is it that there are so many opposition guests on 730 report, lateline and insiders. This did not happen so much under the previous government. Well done ABC
Antonio Says: @ 531,
[I agree with one of the other posters that this government could follow the same patterns as states like Queensland, SA and Vic – and have a huge swing TO them at the next election.}
If Rudd & Labor’s polling continues to remain above 57% 2PP through to the next election and can maintain the correction in WA that we have just seen, then it is inevitable that Labor will increase its margin.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, we have seen in recent months and looking into the upcoming 30 months, points to any other conclusion. I cannot see this changing.
I shudder to think what the print media will make of Nelson’s effort on the 7.30 Report tonight.
Somehow, I don’t think they will be too kind to him. Any remotely tricky question put to him by Red Kerry was batted back with a basically similar and excruciatingly manner of avoidance.
The Nelson interview was poor television. I learned nothing from it, Kerry is a good interviewer but tonight it was like sticking pins into the voodoo doll, it was ridiclous. Nelson should have not answered many of the inane questions, perhaps he should have declined the interview. What it all achieved was absolutely nothing.
Horatio is a dead duck, when News Limiteds’ journas’ have been told get him and finish him and i don’t care how you do it, much like what happened to Latham.
Are you saying Nelson might have done better on the “Moment of truth” over on Nine?
Antonio @ 531,
Well we will see about petrol pricewatch, but my suspicion is that any benefits will be pretty nebulous. You are right in saying that the main benefit of any laws prohibiting dodgy pricing is that people know they are being watched, however I would still bet that on the important days of the year there will be an uncanny similarity in the prices charged by neighbouring servos. Time will tell.
Agree with you about the absurdity of WorkChoices. Absurd on a policy level, the economy was going great guns, no-one wanted this (including employers). If the agenda was to kill unions, well they were slowly dying anyway, and WC gave them a new (if temporary) burst of relevance. And on a political level, Howard would quite possibly still be PM were it not for that policy. No idea what the Liberals thought they were doing.
RE Costello’s leadership
I’d argue there are two interrelated issues that Costello would have to deal with before he became leader. The first is what his former leader labelled ticker and Costello doesn’t have anything of that, witness his unwillingness to take on Howard. The other issue he’s got to deal with is Turnball and to take him on he’d have to have serious amounts of ticker to do that.
At a personal level I think the Liberal Party would want to commit political suicide giving Costello the leadership. Turnball I could almost be persuaded to vote for, I’d want to see Turnball get the economic policy he was advocating a few years back adopted by the party first, not sure they’d be up for that though.
It would have been good to see Howard on the Moment of Truth… I wonder if he would have told the truth.
To be honest though the commercial stations are provding crap and the ABC is slowly catching up..
Foreign Corresspondent has become not foriegn but news about our near neighbours… Seems like they have no money to travel people anywhere…
Certainly they learned nothing from the Queensland experience. The National Party Government, around 11 years ago, went into an election proposing a system of Statutory Individual contracts and the abolition of the Award system.
They were soundly defeated and the Beattie Government wound back much of IR Minister, Vince Lester’s provisions that had provided the groundwork for their introduction.
The only remnants of this folly was that a number of Labour Hire firms, set up to take advantage of this regressive system survived but still had to abide by the appropriate Award for their clients.
The people of Queensland still had memories of the previous time a Tory oriented Government had tried to force workers on to individual employment contracts.
It led directly to the establishment of the political arm of the Labour Movement, The ALP.
It was not acceptable in the 1890’s, nor the 1990’s and certainly not in the 2000’s. Howard and the crony’s who pushed this barrow on behalf of a small segment of the Business lobby, were nothing but FOOLS of the highest order.
The libs deserve to serve a long time in purgatory for this folly and they will never get forgiveness for it by me or my family in our lifetimes. Nelson and Bishop can push their modified version of it for all they are worth. They will only entrench Labor to such an extent that they may never regain Government again.
Most developed countries were in awe and extremely envious of Australia’s well developed system of Industrial Awards. What a stupidly, shortsighted act it was to abolish something that on the whole, worked extremely well and underpinned Common law Contracts and Enterprise Bargaining so well.
Nelson & the Libs are in such a bad way that even the Labor Party feels sorry for them and is offering a helping hand with some good advice.
Certainly, Nelson would be well advised to take notice of Simon Crean, who most definitely would know what he is talking about on this subject.
http://www.scopical.com.au/articles/Politics/4564/Crean-offers-leadership-advice-to-Nelson
#542 Scorpio, great post I couldn’t agree more. When will the ideologues wake up to them selves and realise that Aussies don’t want this deregulated work place crap. Just reminding the electorate about Work Choices is enougth to ensure that Labor wins the next election in a landslide.
I’m not convinced that the WA pricewatch scheme will produce the results being claimed.
The best way to reduce prices is by increasing competition. One of the worst decisions the former government made was abandoning the elements of the Petroleum Retail Marketing Sites Act and Petroleum Retail Marketing Franchise Act which limited the number of sites the oil companies could own. They then compounded the error by not extending those provisions to Coles and Woolies.
The result is that the two grocery chains now have 50% of the petrol market and the oil companies control most of the other half through their owned sites.
Unfortunately, getting these powerful companies to divest themselves of such a profitable business is not going to be easy.
OTOH, is making petrol cheaper something that an environmentally aware government should be doing? IMHO, the answer is no, but only if they were prepared to spend billions on building a useable public transport system and limiting urban sprawl.
.
Disclaimer: These days I only do about 5,000km a year in a fuel efficient car so petrol is a minor expense.
Irony of ironies. Howard thought he was stabbing Labor in the back with Workchoices but because of twisted vision couldn’t see until too late that he was actually stabbing his own people through the heart.
Howard coming on the scene again and actually mentioning the economy only reminds us of the inflation and interest he left. In 18 months the irony will be that Rudd will say he has conquered Howard’s inflation. And of course, unless they change, they still have a Workchoices type IR stance.
Howard’s appearance and ‘help’ may only serve to strengthen the likes of Minchin, Andrews, Bishop and the right and heighten the ideological divide in the party. Will the non-hard-right want to go through a Howard type era again, even in opposition where they are ruled over like a king? Howard might just tend to shake up the muddy water again.
The good thing about the WA system is it forces retailers to make the ir pricing decisions without knowing what their competitors plan to do, and then the information is published. So consumers have relevant information at the time they choose to buy. If a retailer makes a wrong guess about pricing, he will lose sales and won’t be able to “correct” his prices until the following day. So the pressure is on the retailer to choose the lowest price consistent with being able to stay in business, rather than opening with high price and then scaling down.
It is a version of the prisoner’s dilemma. A rational choice is to be first with the best price, not last…
Hm, THe Dr’s Union flexing their muscles – wouldn’t have this been illegal under Serfchoices ?
http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=475516
Regarding the Liberals, they should remember that the public were very, very tired of JWH and a majority had been keen to dump him for a long time. There is a lot of goodwill for a new government – especially one that is energetic and capable and delivering on its promises. So the Opposition have to be prepared to wear a probably-long period when the public basically have no reason to be interested in them. They had a long opportunity to do the things that Rudd is now doing and they comprehensively wasted their chances.
People will start to take an interest in them in time, but until then they should take time to reflect on their values and their basic sense of purpose.
In this context, I suspect the deeper problem for the Liberals is that many of them have no great purpose other than seeking to achieve office and rule the roost. Parties have to want to win, but in itself, this is not enough to gain the support of people. This will be the problem with Turnbull. There is no doubt he has ambition enough. But beyond that, what would he really want to do?
#543 Scorpio
I think Simon Crean would have been a great PM. I am not entirely sure why the public never warmed to him, maybe he lacks charisma or something? The ALP should be greatful of the the reforms he introduced to the party.
Oh my lord
Is he trying to look like an idiot now??
Debate locking up mentally ill – Nelson
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23543786-949,00.html
Spot on Kina. In actual fact what did Howard in mostly was that with his blind idealogy taking precedence with his introduction of Workchoices, he failed to realise that the make-up of the average Unions Membership, roughly represented the political affiliation within the community at large. ie roughly 40% labor, 40% Coalition and 20% Minor Party and swinging votor.
In fact in some Unions up to 80% of the Membership were Coalition supporters. These people (not units of production), in effect Howard’s famous “Battlers”, were sold out and betrayed by Howard & Co.
They will find it very difficult to trust a Conservative government ever again. One thing that the Tories have never realised is that Unionists have extremely long memories when they experience unjust, unfair treatment.
Ask any middle aged or older person in Collinsville about their feelings of the AWU even though the issue of concern happened over 40 years ago. They will never forget or forgive. This is Howard’s legacy to the Liberal Party.
Rudd is certainly not wasting any chances so far and people are certainly very interested in what he has to say and what he is doing.
http://news.theage.com.au/pm-leads-community-meeting-in-sydney/20080415-2674.html
So Sean (551), you’re a fan of the Richmond Report I take it?
The Nightmares. I woke last night, imagining that Howard lies in wait, for Costello to resign, so that Howard may stand in Higgins.
Howard, as the now de facto Leader of the Opposition. I would not put it past him.
Frank,
Rudd is certainly giving the mat a good shake and rattling a few cages at the moment.
It’s as though he has been told that the likes of him has been long, longed for, to set the country on a good and steady path that will be of benefit to the whole community and not just a segmented portion with vested interests.
The Liberals in retaining a Workchoices type IR platform again give life to the union movement and a reason for their continued existence – for protection against the Liberals should they ever come to power.
At the community forum it was a wonder Rudd didn’t bring up the fact that Workchoices would have taken away penalties and so forth, thus making it much harder to make ends meet, in response to the guy complaining about the cost of living and difficulty in making ends meet. And a reminder that the Liberals still retain such a policy. A missed opportunity.
I wonder if Red Kerry will get to have a shot at any of the bye-bye-elections? Assuming he wants to and would be given a chance.
Sinowestie Says: @ 550,
Simon never lacked charisma or ability. He was a victim of the Corporate MSM who demonised him and basically destroyed his leadership within the community.
By the time Simon came on the scene, they had had quite a deal of practise at undermining Labor leaders with Keating and Beasley.
Australia and it’s society is all the more poorer for that.
Time for bed, cheers to all you good people.
A quick one before I retire. Well worth a read. It looks like the Oz have abandoned Brengun.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23533646-16741,00.html
Kina @ 557,
Do the Liberals still retain such a policy?
I thought the whole point was that no-one knows what their policy is (which would not be all that much of a problem, if only they were open about being in review mode).
Yes they do, Nelson said as much a few weeks ago about there being room for AWAs that excluded union involvement in their negotiation.
Don’t worry, CW. If Howard ran in higgins, he’d lose that one too.
SeanofPerth @ 552 -
Debate locking up mentally ill – Nelson
This is vintage Nelson. He correctly identifies a problem but then makes a goose of himself by nominating the worst possible solution.
He is almost spot on when he says“The argument was we could put these people out into the community. Then, of course, the money that was tied up in those magnificent residences that our forebears had put aside for them didn’t follow them into the community. It went into other things,”
When they were closing psych hospitals down the states made all manner of promises about using the capital from their sale and the running costs saved to look after the former residents in the community and then failed to keep any of them. The end result is that many are now living in even more reduced circumstances and a good many have ended up in gaol.
Nelson briefly acknowledges the need for greater funding, but then instead of promising to either do that at the federal level or by forcing the states to spend a lot more apparently spends the rest of the interview banging on about locking everyone up in asylums again. Sigh
I also wonder how much exposure he had to the old mental health system. Most of the residences had long ago lost their “magnificence” Anyway, in most cases only the facade was in any way magnificent. Inside they were pretty bleak, depressing and very basic places often worse than the prisons of the period, even when new.
RE MayoFeral post 546
I’m inclined to agree. It’s been interesting hearing some of the debate on this on the radio. A lot of assertions not backed up by much evidence or good arguement. That’s barring the issue RE independent sites anyway. Something that might work there is an exemption for independents who only own a single site. This could see them free to adjust their prices on the fly so long as they notify the price watch say an hour before hand. That would give them the power to remain competitive in the face of predatory pricing by the big companies.
Rudd loves those stars… would have thought he would have gone to Mr. Buttons funeral as opposed to seeing Cate Blanchet’s new baby.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23547478-2,00.html
RE blindoptimist post 550
Not sure if you remember Turnball’s Economic policy that Costello howled down. That was just after Turnball was elected, he was getting out advancing a policy that would, as I understand it, have re-jigged the whole tax system.
From memory this would have seen a seamless transition from receiving income support to paying income tax with a threshold around $30k. At the moment, if you’re on unemployment benefits it all jolts around creating what has been labelled a disincentive to work unless you’re moving directly from benefits to a reasonably paid job anyway. If you check the rates, fortnightly income between $62 and $250 reduces fortnightly allowance by 50 cents in the dollar. Income above $250 per fortnight, fortnightly allowance reduces by 60 cents in the dollar (1). That’s before you then start including tax which is usually the minimal 15% on anything over $115 gross a week. If you consider that reducing peoples income support is effectively another form of taxation. Then start doing the maths and you realise the unemployed cop effective tax rates than the highest taxed group! We then wonder why these people don’t want to work especially if their main avenue of work is likely to be lowly paid anyway. I think if Turnball can sell that to the Liberal Party and the public then they’re in with a realistic chance.
I hope that all makes sense
Refs
(1) http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/filestores/co029_0707/$file/co029_0707en.rtf
567 John of Melbourne – John Button’s funeral started at 10.30am. Rudd visited Cate Blanchett at 1.30 pm and then only for 10 minutes. To link these two happenings is dishonest and mischevious.
youre right Gary re: the times. Rudd could have done both- I wonder why he didnt go to the funeral though??
BTW dont be surprised at the tories getting excited at another attempt to snipe at Rudd. They’re desparate remember
570 Andrew – all I can say Andrew is that the reason he didn’t go must have been genuine otherwise it would have been front page news by now. I note with interest though that his story has been dragged from the Courier Mail site where it was a main story and very few of the media have taken it up. A Rudd haters delight that went nowhere based on nothing.
568
Andrew B.
Well said. The three most effective (and equitable) policies that would most sustainably improve the workforce participation rate among welfare recipients are:
1. eliminate that massive effective marginal tax rate;
2. ensure affordable and available childcare during working hours; and
3. provide decent skills based training.
Notice that these are carrots, not sticks.
JM # 572,
Hush your face! Everyone knows that you can’t go around offering those bludgers a carrot – they’ll shrivel it just by looking at it, then snatch it out of your hand, mug you and steal your wallet to pay for their daily overdose!
/end sarcasm.
If John Button could send the PM a message from the other side he would say “Kevin, you need to prepare for that important event taking place this weekend so don’t worry about me mate. You take care of business.”
Even the opposition won’t stoop to suggesting the PM was disrespectful.
Brendan Nelson is half as popular as Simon Crean.
This tells you something
Steve K isn’t it great that we have a Prime Minister so caught up in his own media image that he’d rather be seen with a second rate actress than paying his respects to a Labor legend.
576 Glen – refer to 569 and get your facts right Glen.
It seems to me the opposition are saying “don’t bother doing anything about petrol, nothing can be done.” Why aren’t they willing to give things a go instead of carping and mocking the government’s attempts?
Gary didn’t mean to be mischevious but as Andrew said he could have done both.
Gary #578, “Why aren’t they willing to give things a go instead of carping and mocking the government’s attempts?” More bipartisanship?
Lol, Rudd should have left petrol prices for the 2020 summit to discuss.
576
Glen
Why do you consider Cate Blanchet to be a second rate actress? I would have thought that someone who has been nominated literally dozens of times for various prestigious awards including the academy awards, golden globe awards and the BAFTA awards as either best actress or best supporting actress would be considered as first rate.
Are you really that bitter and twisted that you consider anyone associated with a Rudd initiative to be less than first rate? If that’s the case then you will also consider former deputy PM Tim Fisher, Tim (the better Costello) Costello and Kelvin Kong (Australia’s first Aboriginal surgeon) to be second rate.
Now, if you think Blanchet really is a second rate actress then I’m interested to know which of her roles in particular you consider to be inferior.
Petrol Prices- the only way forward regarding petrol prices is greater competition. Nonetheless cheaper petrol should realistically not be sort, as we are running out of oil and because of greenhouse gases, price rises will be good for the environemnt in regards to forcing people to use alternative means of transport.
Would prefer that the government started targeting public transport funding instead of this bandaid solution regarding petrol prices. Nonetheless if any comment needs mentioning it is this, at least the Government is trying something as opposed to the Howard Government which did absolutely nothing.
Regarding Rudd and Blanchett- it is about getting on the celebrity bandwagon and what qualifications does Cate have again… The summit as i mentioned previously is a waste of time and will achieve very little except providing people with free food and hospitality, and to listen to people such as Lachlan Murdoch telling us his perspective of the world on economic policy- lower corporate taxes.
And not to be disrespectful to John Button and his rels, if Rudd failed to attend who really cares, as what difference would it have made.
The Summit occupies a single weekend in the life of the Nation. If it’s seen by some as a waste of time then big deal. I’m willing to reserve judgement AND I hope it succeeds. What cheeses me off are people who are hoping for failure. It’s a breath of fresh air having a government that is willing to listen to the people.
You question Blanchett’s qualifications. She hasn’t been appointed a military general or the pilot of a 747. She’s to play the role of a facilitator and a communicator and for that she is well qualified.
The summit will also be about donations- more money for the Labor Party, Four Corners Last Monday night just showcased how political parties make decisions these days the media and most of all donations and being able to talk to pollies…
Their is still a perception within Labor circles that the corporate and elitist mob can be talked around and put simply it is absolute rubbish, people with money want more and will do anything to get it…
So why is Lachlan Murdoch attending the summit Steve K, and is to be the economic guru for economic ideas… Importantly this area is Number One and the lead guy is a media boffon.. .what are they frightened of?
I do not want this event to be a failure.. Never said that just think it is a poor idea. And yes a listening event, listening listening and listening… policy and decisions we will wait and see.. but who will get listened to the most…
Bet you it will be the people with the biggest pockets. Oh i am cynical.
Rudd was at a Community Forum Meeting with all the cabinet Ministers which followed on from the third community cabinet meeting.
The Forum Meeting was planned long before John Button died and Rudd would have been pilloried if he had not attended it.
Looks as though it was very successful too.
http://news.theage.com.au/pm-leads-community-meeting-in-sydney/20080415-2674.html
Yes you are cynical. No doubt that Labor and Libs will try to curry favour with the likes of Murdoch. You might think that’s poor behaviour. Here’s a challenge: show me a government in the free world which has told media power brokers to get stuffed. You have already made your mind up that the Summit will be a failure as it won’t find a cure for cancer by Sunday evening.
Tell me the latitude and longitude of Shangri-La and I’ll book a one way ticket tomorrow.
Steve K, yep at least i kind of admit my flaws but you have one giant one and that being you and Gary Bruce use this sight to spruik Labor policy, and ideas, actually to advertise the Labor Party… What ideas you have i do not know because they never come out, like so many people they get brainwashed by party mantra and this idea that everything we do and believe is right…
Yep just because the rest of the world does it means we have to do it as well…
Media Watch highlighted how pathetic it is all is when the media auctioned of seats…
If the summit produces results i will say fantastic simple… Okay Steve K come back to me in three months and tell me what results it delivered…
And note that voters in Italy have elected as Prime Minister a Media Owner, who no doubt used his media outlets to help get himself elected.
So we now admit it the media barrons run the country… even labor insiders admit it.. now lets discuss what we do about it…
584 marky
What if Lachie is there so that he might be revealed to a large number of his peers as a complete fraud?
I think one of the possibilities of the weekend is that a few smart cookies are there to analyse the participants to reveal the real thinkers and leaders, as opposed to a celebration of the status-quo.
For example – is there anything more damaging that the ALP could do to Nelson, other than let him talk to the media at every opportunity? I don’t think so.
The primary sport of the media is to spot the downfall of a public figure 5 minutes before all the other MSM outlets. Why not turn them loose on some of Australia’s best and brightest so the wheat might get sorted from the chaff?
i’m involved in huries and competitions as part of my job. I’d like to think of this weekend as just a bit of self selecting shortlisting.
Our history of public philanthropy falls substantially short of some countries – here’s a good opportunity for some Australians who have derived an awful lot from this country to put there hand up.
huries = juries
The media have their agendas Onimod, just as the Murdoch press does… They ruined Latham, Whitlam, Cain Government in Victoria and their agenda is to ruin Nelson.. but of course i think Nelson does not need the media to ruin him, he is doing a very good job of it himself…
The media love news.. the Iraq war, Murdoch wanted it because it would sell newspapers, and the summit i suppose is news more newspapers to sell…
Yep if the summit produces meaningful results good but i for one am not into summits or talkfests not unless you go to learn about things.. gather knowledge, of the group summits i have attended people go with set mindsets and do not change one bit and the summit i think will be the same…
Gary Bruce @ 578 –
It seems to me the opposition are saying “don’t bother doing anything about petrol, nothing can be done.” Why aren’t they willing to give things a go instead of carping and mocking the government’s attempts?
Because for 12 years they they did virtually nothing and would prefer the people weren’t reminded of the fact. Indeed, the two things they did do, removing the protection independent resellers had from oil companies and then letting the supermarkets to grab a huge slice of the market has severely reduced competition.
The following may give you some idea of whats been happening since the protections were removed:
When fuel-dockets were introduced in my area they were for 10/Litre for the first 2 months or so and there were 5 petrol stations within a 2KM radius. Because neither Coles or Woolies owned any sites they forced 2 of the existing ones to work for them.
And I do mean forced. I know one of the big boys approached one site offering them their business provided they absorbed 8 of the 10 cents/Litre. The particular petrol station was only given a very short time to agree to this or the supermarket would give its business to the competitor just up the road. It is now owned by the supermarket and the competitor is long gone.
The other chain was even sneakier. They initially did a deal with a site and then waited for its main competitor to go under then bought it, no doubt at a greatly reduced price, abandoning the first site. This still struggles on, mainly I suspect because of its location on the main bypass road. It rarely matches the two Coles/Woolies sites being generally 2 cents/Litre more expensive (6 cents with the docket discount).
The fourth tries to compete, but it changes hands at least once a year and probably only survives because of the attached workshop. Most days you could have a kip on the forecourt with little danger of being run over!
When I came here 14 years ago prices were about the same as in Adelaide. Now they are generally 2-3 cents higher at every point in the discount cycle.
592 marky
sure sure
But if I told you to go out and find some leaders and I give you a list of, say 1500, how are you going to whittle that list down into a short list of possible advisers, advocates and patrons?
It’s much better that they do it themselves. Even if you think you’re pretty astute and you arrange to meet 3 of them a day, that’s 2 years of your time, and probably realistically 4 years; and even if you identify the people you think are good, there’s no guarantee their peers do too.
This way – you’ve got a really good first crack at selecting those people that the movers and shakers in Australia rate and are prepared to listen to/follow. I think you’ll find that there are several people who are charged with producing a measured set of participants who are capable and respected at the end of this weekend. The occasion is a relatively safe way of finding them – you’re not asking them to get up and convince a whole nation, just their peers, and with
the number of them in one place, it’s tough to see the Aussie tall poppy syndrome picking 1 or two out for particular ridicule.
(Behind closed doors) The list of people who didn’t accept the invitation, made poor excuses, or didn’t seek a berth when not asked directly, is already a very telling one.
Look – I could be completely wrong, but there are several people/groups that run these sorts of exercises for large companies all the time.
To me it just looks like the Rudd business as usual approach to politics with a bit of icing on top to make sure the skin deep journalists don’t have an F’ing clue about what is really going on.
This weekend is about finding allies who are prepared to convince Australians of some of the very tough decisions we’re going to have to make in the next lifetime. You can’t just make the tough decisions and expect all of us to abide by them and not dismantle them at the next election. You need some of the people in Canberra this weekend to be helping you herd this country of cats on to the bus so we can all get to the next stop.
Just think of what happens if in this term we make enough corrections to say solve global warming. There is no doubt, in this political climate, that the next regime will dismantle the system, and that system will never see the light of day again – an opportunity completely wasted. Battle won; war lost.
I respect your cynicism, and I could be wrong, but I think there is something a little more intelligent going on than the media knows, or would even understand.
593 Mayo
nice explanation there
I’m going to agree with the cynics and say that the listing of prices won’t achieve anything economically….BUT
What it is doing is starting to educate the population about what what is really going on in the market, and softening up the oil companies for real control. The oil companies are smart enough to know this, but what are they going to do? They failed to fix the public problem on their own and they deserve to be reigned in for being a pack of really poor chess players.
Once the scheme is in place, and it does little to placate the public, it gives the government the next green card to move forward. Next thing the price change will be limited to weekly, and if that doesn’t work it’ll be ramped up until the government could eventually put a profit cap on the whole industry.
Sounds stupid when you propose it first up, but we might eventually get there with continued public noise, and an oil industry that’s so hell bent on competition between suppliers that they’ve taken their eye of the overall prize.
Baby steps eventually add up.
573
Mathew Cole
Yeah, I know, it is just the foolish soft-touch lefty in me, believing you get the best from people when you get off their backs, remove the unnecessary hurdles in their way, and give them a genuine positive opportunity.
586
Steve K Says:
You [marky mark] have already made your mind up that the Summit will be a failure as it won’t find a cure for cancer by Sunday evening.
Exactly. MM has set completely unrealistic standards and expectations, and when the summit inevitably falls short of them, he can say ‘I told you so’. Classic pessimist and cynic.
MM, there is a very important (though often subtle) difference between hard (but constructive) skepticism, and relentless, self-fulfilling, self-defeating negativism.
Why don’t you just wait and see what happens at the summit. (Hint: It is not going to magically change the Australian political, economic and cultural landscape overnight. It is a bit of groundwork for later on.)
Why doesn’t the Government cut the GST that is applied to the petrol excise? Or cut the excise by the amount of the GST on the excise? (This is the easier path as the it doesn’t involve getting the states agreement). There shouldn’t be a tax on a tax.
Mayoferal back at 565. Actually, the States have been very uneven in their response to deinstitutionalisation and for a variety of reasons. Largish States with uneven population distribution such as Queensland, and even South Australia, and even more so Western Australia, have faced specific problems around how to organise responsive mental health services, across the life span. Here in Victoria, where I’ve worked for over 30 years primarily in mental health, the transition to community based services has been easier to manage and there has been both good blue prints for how to organise mental health services, and surprisingly, bilateral support from both sides of politics. There are undoubted problem areas, and I would argue, still inadequate funding, but believe me, compared to what “the bins” were like, that Brendan (you know I’m a doctor) wants to return, I reckon he’s just alienated another sizable section of the voting community. Could his Preferred PM status drop even more? You betcha.
Just me- what expectations do i have regarding policy? Put simply maybe i am not expecting something.. .Yep wait and see.. Still though i do not agree with summits.
Maybe if this summit is about convincing, developing meaningful policies and arm twisting people to support them good, but is the summit about writing out some platitudes or statements and once that is done fantastic, but of doing something..
But what of the policies hence we have all agreed to do something about climate change, do something about public hospitals and schools but then the hard part policy… Thus higher taxes cannot happen say the reps from the media and big business, doing something about coal can’t do that it will affect exports and the coal industry and union members.. say union reps and big business… The summit will write a list of statements/platitudes that is my perception, much like a Labor Policy Platform and then left in a cupboard for the next three years…
Just a general comment on the 2020 Summit thingy. There’s been a huge amount of interest here amongst the Mexicans. Local ABC radio have run a whole day ideas generation event at Parliament House and there’s been regional events involving hundreds of people. I reckon one of the yet unrecognised effects of the Summit is that people are becoming re-engaged with the political process, that it’s not only legitimate to do so, but is actually encouraged. P’raps Kev from Quinceland really is here to help. Eh, Marky?
Petrol is running out, and the problem in years to come will be inequity regarding who will able to drive automobiles, people with money or in jobs who provide cars or trucks yes but people without money no. Time to face the reality, cars and trucks are destructive to the environment, and arguing about the price of petrol is crazy.
We can keep on holding summits and talking Harry but when do you decide to do something? I did like the ABC summit as it had real people involved and not some media moguls,celebrities and former pollies…
Marky, please see previous post and start taking deep long slow breaths, you’re panicking. A cynic is a disappointed romantic and politics is the art of the possible. If anyone should be panicking, it’s Brendan (don’t you know I’m a doctor, stick ‘em all back in loony bins, I’m for it, I’m agin it, and no, no one else in the alternative government/opposition agrees with me, except if I’ve just talked to them and then I’ll agree with them) Nelson.
602
Marky. If you’re a savvy pollie, you make a decision when it’s politically expedient.
The means growing the idea and building the popularity until it’s a no-brainer.
How long did the population take to realise they wanted a government that would sign Kyoto, apologise, and withdraw from Iraq?
And if all of those things weren’t on the table, I shudder to think what might have happened.
Plant the seed; watch it grow; take everyone along for the ride; let everyone else claim it was their idea – it doesn’t matter, so long as the job gets done.
The aim is to win the war; the battle over ear wax is irrelevant.
How do you propose to convince 20 million Australians they should really be paying more for petrol? I’m pretty sure we could find around 1 million who might agree with you, but that’s by no means a working majority.
Marky, I’m most impressed by the engagement of significant numbers of people back into the political process and the feedback into informing future directions for Australia as a whole. While I’m pretty much the sort of person who would gouge out their genitals with a blunt spoon rather that vote for the Libs., nevertheless, we need an effective Opposition, so if the political process is more informed and engaged (maybe Brenda can stop telling everyone he’s a doctor long enough to listen), maybe our society may be enhanced. It’s an experiment. Some of it may work. Some may not. Won’t have immediate effects, but Jeez I like a gov’t that will try and engage the population in the political.
And could Morgan, perhaps even Newspoll, get even more dire? Anyone prepared to have a stab at predictions? Me, I reckon pretty much the same, give or take MoE.
600 – Easy answer to the shortage of oil is to convert coal into oil. It can be done (The Germans did it in WW2 and the South Africans in the 80’s) but it is kind of expensive as it costs about as much as oil costs now. And we aren’t really short of Coal as there is a few hundred years worth of that left. So supply is not as a massive issue as it would appear.
We will be using oil for at least 25 years for majority of transport. It is completely unrealistic to suggest anything else. For one thing, PT is already running at breaking point in most major cities (in peak hour anyway). And the only thing more bicycles are going to do is increase the organ donation rate (if we tripled the number people on bikes, we might decrease traffic by 2%). Plus there are people who need to drive places.
Yes, we need to reduce pollution and therefore decrease the need for fossil fuels, but in the short term Petrol prices are an issue that people are not going to be able to avoid.
B.S- According to leading scientists we only have 4 years left before it is late regarding terrible and world ending climate change, so using coal is just the solution we need… Sorry don’t agree time we woke up and realised we must start making some very hard decisions or it is goodnight nurse. Face the reality.
Reason i say it is that Co2 stays in the atmosphere and can stay their for up to one hundred years, so we will continue to cook unless drastic action is taken to reduce it.
My investment in geodynamics geothermal is looking good because they have so far proved the concept and are well on the way of building a pilot 1MW power plant using hot-rocks.
Geodynamics update report to the ASX.
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20080325/pdf/3186psnwfgdvqx.pdf
As other power sources get expensive this stuff becomes increasingly viable. Look forward to when I can plug my electric car into the power socket. Hopefully not too old.
While we are on doomsday things like peak oil. An article today has the asteroid Apophis missing us by 32,000km in 2029 and a 1 in 50 chance of hitting us in 2034. It is 200 billion tons of metals.
proven
Kina spot on.. Instead of Rudd government investing in geosequestrian and carbon emissions trading it should be using hot rocks or solar power technology coupled with wind farms… that is the future. And on water, we should all have water tanks and be using recycled water for our gardens… But our governments want to keep making money from water by making us pay for it and by building desalination plants.
608 – So I say it can’t be done. Not in 4 years. Are seriously believing we are going to get a solution that quickly? Has any international agreement been sorted out that quickly? (Well, maybe the Hague Convention of 1898, but things were simply then). So it is time to move on from trying to save the planet as it is and try to work with a damaged atmosphere and we live in the damaged lifeboat and work on technology that will help us survive.
If we stop using petrol in four years, the country would go down the drain very quickly. Hydrogen is a possible solution but not in such a short time frame.
Here we go again, people making silly jokes but here are the very real impacts
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Impacts/
Marky mark –
What leading scientists say this?
My understanding (and I work in the field, even if it’s only in a very small way, which means I talk to some of the top climate scientists in Australia on a regular basis) is that –
1. If we stopped ALL greenhouse gas emissions TODAY we would still experience massive, irreversible climate change;
2. The point of mitigation measures is not to prevent this happening (we can’t) but to slow it down and perhaps stabilise the situation in the long term;
3. The world ain’t going to end. It’s going to change. We can adapt. Some of it’s going to be good, some of it’s going to be bad.
On water – using water tanks is a very expensive, inefficient and potentially harmful (healthwise) option.
The average water bill in Melbourne – for 190 kL (190,000 litres) of water – was less than $500.
$500 buys you (not installed, without pump) one 330 litre water tank – literally a drop in the ocean when we’re talking household water use.
For $7000 you can get a 45 000 litre tank (again, not installed, without pump) but that’s still not getting near half of your yearly water use.
Healthwise, tanks are far more dangerous than tap water, which is treated and tested. Roofs accumulate rubbish (have a look in your gutters some time) and in cities, this includes pollutants from the air. Tank water thus often has very high lead levels.
Tank water must therefore be tested and treated regularly.
I’m not knocking tanks, or saying don’t use them; I’d argue that any form of water conservation is a good thing.
Governments, however, make decisions taking in mind cost/benefit analyses. Therefore a government would argue that it is more economic, efficient and healthy to deliver extra water via measures such as desalination plants (which do have problems, I know) than by subsidising installation of tanks.
Also the local wildlife also use tanks as their personal toilets as well.
I am not making fun of the consequences of climate change, I am suggesting we are more than likely are going to have have to deal with them as the pollution is not going to stop in time.
For power generation in Australia we need about 12,000 windmill (or the like) and we can do that but it will take time (decades). And if do get around to getting electric cars on the road, we will probably need a few more as well.
Carbon capture makes sense as when it gets working it gives us time. And time is what is needed.
James Lovelock the inventor of the Gaia Theory says this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=541748&in_page_id=1770
More government speak Zoom, and yes i made a slight error regarding water not for human consumption but for laundries, gardens and toilets would be a much better idea.
The Australian conservation foundation agrees tanks instead of energy guzzling desalination plants http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=1022&c=16324
Moreover your costings put forward one glaring point and that is water consumption costs need to be increased.
Moreover i tend to think that we may be faced with to much water in Victoria when this desalination plant is finally built so it may be a waste of money.
A mistake regarding tank water.
I’ve had the electric car argument with a few people and am still trying to work out whether or not they’ll be of any benefit in terms of mitigation.
As you imply, B.S., introduction of electric cars will increase electricity usage, which will increase the demand for coal (given that there are no practical replacements for coal in the medium term) which will increase greenhouse gas emissions.
I don’t know what the figures are for petrol v coal as far as greenhouse gas emissions, but I would speculate that petrol is a more efficient fuel than coal and thus better environmentally. (Basis for speculation: other countries use far more petrol than we do per head, but Victorians are the world’s highest p.h. emitters because of their reliance on coal; you get an awful lot more energy out of a litre of petrol than you can out of a kilogram of coal and are left with less residue).
618
sorry, marky, we’re crossing here.
The majority of the 190,000 litres – if you analysed it – would be used in laundries, gardens etc.
Agree that gets rid of the health risk (to some extent – do you want high lead readings in your vegies?) but it doesn’t get rid of the efficiency arguments.
None of what I’ve said is government speak, but is a mixture of googling, talking to scientists and common knowledge (my sole water source is tanks).
You can double – indeed quadruple – my costings and tanks are still expensive – and that’s without delivery, installion or maitenance costs factored in.
Tanks also have the same problems as dams – if it doesn’t rain, you don’t have water. (This effect is witnessed regularly by country town water supplies. They hold up wonderfully for a while – then suddenly there’s a jump in consumption as home water tanks dry up. Given that they all fill at the same time, and that water use is fairly constant across households, this can be a discernible spike).
That’s the argument for desalination. It’s not rain dependant. And that’s why the Vic government is favouring it, even if it’s only for emergency situations.
(I recognise that they are taking practical steps to encourage tank use as well, but – as I hope I have made clear – tanks are only a partial solution).
A possible solution to charging electric car is to have them charge on the “off-peak” periods. But instead of our current Off Peak times, a computerised system could communicate when there is excess power at any time. Although I would suggest Hydrogen is more likely than stored charge as a fuel source. But Hydrogen production could be run on an off peak systems as well.
Carbon capture is costly, time consuming and has significant risks and we will also continually pump out pollutants from the coal plants which have pollution costs to all living things. Not forgetting the problems of leaks.
The United States was thinking of starting a carbon capture program but earlier this year abandoned it due to cost. This is what greenpeace says
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/energy/?p=171
B.S., you’ve set me off googling to try and find some answers.
This site: http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_109261/printArticle.html suggests that a purely electric fired car would emit 4.6 kg of CO2 per litre compared to the same car on petrol at 2.6 kg.
MM, agree that carbon capture unlikely to be successful and has a lot of potential problems, which is why my IF was such a big one.
Re the article you referred to (Locock) in 618, I would say the author and I are in basic agreement – he says the world won’t be destroyed, humanity will survive, climate change is irreversible and we need to prepare for it. My arguments exactly.
I don’t agree with him entirely but the basic science is the same.
There was an article in an American journal earlier this year which sets out how America could generate about 65% of its total energy needs – including all oil imports – from large solar farms in Nevada, New Mexico etc for about US$420 billion (2007 dollars).
On a per capita basis we should be able to do much the same for about US$28 billion, say $35 billion in our dollars, which is just a bit more than the promised tax cuts. Even if you multiply this by several orders of magnitude its still a small sum when spread out over several decades.
We certainly have enough land, plus untapped wind and geothermal energy.
The authors also have devised a more efficient DC electric system capable of transmitting the power generated over long distances with minimal power loss, which opens up the potential for us to build a far bigger system than we need and selling the excess electricity to our northern neighbours who don’t have enough vacant land or year round clear skies.
It could become the 21 century ‘Snowy Scheme’ (TM)
625 love the (TM)
Water whilst yes water tanks maybe expensive but a desalination plant will be much more expensive. According to estimates it will cost 2000 dollars a megalitre and be operated and run by a private (actually it is public private partnership) operator who will want to recoup its costs and will put clauses into its contract stating no competition nearby its plant.
They are expensive to run also and are energy sapping, adding to greenhouse which is the problem.
Instead we should be making business save water, like households, water tanks could be used, hence according to John Twaities former minister in Victoria our big shopping malls, sporting ovals and hospital use 30 per cent of Melbournes’ water.
Other points to make about tanks is that tanks can be to big for suburban blocks but still should not be ruled out as an option.
More use should be made of stormwater and perhaps households using less energy because energy uses significant amounts of water. Therefore it is best to move to options which don’t require water like solar energy, geothermal and wind farms as coal uses significant amounts. And not forgetting our agriculture businesses which use massive amounts of water- beef, dairy and cotton which use massive amounts.
Then their is the use of bottled water in Australia by Coca Cola and is being exported overseas, who would know of the new bottled facility near Melbourne.
And finally their is the use of big profits gained by water trading by big agribusinesses from the country to the city.
Sorry Desalination plants are dirty,expensive, noisy and polluting and will pump a dangerous chemical brime into the ocean. Put simply their are other options.
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/environment/solar-is-a-real-option-csiro-report-says-sun-will-soon-match-coal/483163.html
“Solar thermal technology is capable of producing Australia’s entire electricity ……baseload generation for Australia” and will be cost-competitive with coal within seven years. …….The CRC’s report claims a 35sqkm area with high levels of sunlight and low cloud cover “could produce Australia’s entire current power demand” using solar thermal technology…..”
Way to go people!
Mayo Feral i am with you totally. This is real vision and we could export it to the world instead of coal which is doing nothing for health and our futures.
Yeah, we can’t put salt into the ocean. It might get salty.
That is the world’s worst arguement. The ocean is huge. Any saline brine is going to dilute back into the water very quickly. It is not like the amount of water removed is going to have any effect. You could have several outlets too if you are worried about the isolated effects that might happen their.
on another note, Julie Bishop thinks the heat being put on Nelson by commentators and pollsters is “ludicrous”
so being behind 60/40 with single digit PPM should not result in heat on a leader?? what planet are these guys on???
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23549390-601,00.html
B.S here is something for you
http://cleanocean.org/index_general.asp?menuid=040.090.010
631- The pressure might be on the deputy as the leader. When the leader is cut down, why not cut down the deputy at the same time. It would stunt Bishop’s leadership hopes which would be in the interest of whoever takes over from Nelson.
Torch relay- what a waste of time and money. Just saw a member of the chinese community suggesting that Tibetans are organising terrorist actions, yep meanwhile China does not allow journalists in to monitor what they are doing in Tibet.
632- Your really suggesting that putting the extra salt from a billionth of what is there is actually going to have a great effect?
The Clean Ocean Foundation is a NIMBY organisation if there ever was one.
634- Total Agreement there. It will cause chaos for the public service too.
Plus the greenhouse gases of the flame!
So B.S you agree with desalination plants.
Not worth talking to you, you are acting like a child.
Yes, I support Desalination. It is part of an overall solution. It can run on green power too.
Electric cars do not need to be charged from the mains. How do we use our cars? Drive to work, park for 8 hours, drive home. While the car is parked it could be capturing solar voltaic energy, meanwhile the carport or garage roof is doing the same thing.
The cars that do the Darwin-Adelaide Solar Challenge drive all day, but most people don’t drive their car all day but commute & park.
Without that huge hunk of metal making up the engine, without the petrol pump, oil pump, carburettor, radiator & water pump etc but using electric motors on each wheel, with power managment software so that braking is effective by enerating electricity to go into the battery, going downhill speed is regulated again by running the wheel motors as generators, i.e. an efficient, lightweight car these electric cars should have acceleration, range etc equivalent to ICE cars.
Public transport should use trolley buses. These can take coal fired power station power and very efficiently convert this into acceleration & motive power/ Congestion charges sould be but won’t be used, so make one lane of freeways etc a bus-only lane in peak hours to nudge people out of their cars to public transport. Trolleybuses are smooooooth in operation and their floors can be 100% flat, easy for disabled, mothers with prams or trolleys of shopping etc.
Yep we use green power what could be used elsewhere.
Yep any group which comes up with a very good argument is a not in my backyard group.
Where do you store the desalinated water B.S, in dams perhaps which evaporate.
Marky, how do you overcome the problem that tanks rely on rain? – as does the rest of Melbourne’s current water supply.
The other strand of thinking behind desalination is the possibility of fires in Melbourne’s catchments, which could contaminate one or more of Melbourne’s dams to the point that the water is unusable for some time.
Stormwater capture is being encouraged – as are most of the options you refer to- but it is incredibly expensive. We don’t have a system whereby all (or even most) of the stormwater drains come to a central point – many of them connect directly into the river. To connect each individual stormwater drain to the water supply in such a way that the water could be used by households is incredibly expensive and would involve major works – digging up streets, etc.
As for agriculture, that’s irrelevant to the desalination argument – Melbourne’s water supply is just that, the water used for agriculture comes from other water supplies. If you didn’t use any water for agriculture, it wouldn’t create more water for Melbourne.
Governments have people who work on these issues (regardless of the political colour of individual governments) full time for all of their working lives. It’s not as if the various options are unknown and uncosted.
Desal (much as I dislike it personally) appears to be the only source of water which is not rain reliant (again, stormwater use implies rainfall) or likely to be affected by a severe bushfire.
marky marky @ 629 – I don’t know how many people are employed in our steaming coal industry, but I’m guessing it less than 10,000.
Germany embraced solar some years ago and is now the biggest supplier of solar cells and related equipment, employing over 58,000. The real kicker is that the solar cell technology on which their industry is built is Australian.
The richest man in China is building his fortune on solar technology he helped develop at Melbourne University which is the world leader in solar cell research.
We could have had all of that if only the previous government had had as much foresight as the German and Chinese governments who bankrolled the initial investment and, in the case of Germany, created the framework that allowed the industry to grow domestically by requiring power companies to buy solar generated electricity at premium prices.
Meanwhile we get a few crumbs in royalties.
Re #638: no more from you this evening please, Marky.
641- The article you pointed to actually had the solution to the problem in it. You dilute the brine with seawater, which is then diluted with more seawater and more seawater.
Look, I can’t help it that you quote a group from the Mornington Pennisula who’s aim is “closing the Boags Rocks outfall at Gunnamatta Beach”. That is in their backyard. I actually agree with them but it still does make them a NIMBY group.
Anyway, I am off for the night.
Just for those interested.
The Liberal Party has endorsed Rohan Fitzgerald as its candidate for the forthcoming Gippsland by-election.
“Aged 36, Rohan works as a senior manager with the Central Gippsland Health Service in Sale, and also works at its campuses in Maffra and Heyfield. Rohan lives in Traralgon with his wife Kim and their four sons, who are aged between 7 and 15 years. Both he and Kim are active volunteer participants in their local school and parish community, with Rohan coaching an under-16s basketball team in Traralgon.”
So the Libs are going hard for the seat after all. The last thing we need is a young National Party MP to hold the seat for a decade + or the ALP to gain the seat!
Glen, I am keen to see what you have to say about my response – see
580
Steve K
646 [So the Libs are going hard for the seat after all. The last thing we need is a young National Party MP to hold the seat for a decade + or the ALP to gain the seat!]
I still am mystified, Glen as to why that announcement wasn’t made at the Victorian Liberal council meeting last weekend. It is a bit wasted midweek. They really have got a long way to go before one could consider they act in a functional manner.
I see that you have disagreed with my call about Blanchet being a second rate actress, we’ll she’s no Nicole Kidman especially since Blanchet has never won a best actress academy award.
Aside from that she’s an extreme left winger, so it’s no surprise she got picked for the 20:20 summit.
And I bet the candidate is pissed off from being starved of all the attention that a big time announcement would have given him!
steve, maybe the candidate isn’t worried about having Rudd like media attention and he’d be more inclined to be out on the hustings drumming up support as a local candidate who won’t just be a Rudd mouth piece in Canberra!
651 I thought you told us they were ‘going hard’ to win Glen. Then why tie one foot up to the other hand behind his back?
Glen, it sounds like the old trick of just stand a candidate so he will preference the Nats secretly hoping the Nats will fall over the line.
649
Glen
As I expected = another case of cloudy logic from the boy with th eye patch.
Why does preselecting someone whose only community involvement is coaching a kid’s basketball team mean the Liberals are going in hard?
Your candidate – as described – doesn’t sound as if he’d have much of a community profile, which would be absolutely essential in getting rural votes in this seat.
Glen good to see that your poor judgement in politics extends to film. Blanchett is one of the best actors of her generation and if seriously think that the Oscars genuinely reflect talent you are more far gone that I thought!!
True Glen #646, Nationals should become Liberals. It is only a matter of time.
I think Kevin will ask Cate at the 2013 election to stand as a Labor candidate.
As for her film roles I liked her in the Lord of the Rings, before that I didn’t even know who she was.
657
Agree with you there though the Nats may only merge with us if we form a new party, i am open to either idea, seriously if the Nats lose Gippsland to the Liberal Party they’ll hold less than 10 federal seats and 1 Victorian seat.
I suppose i shouldn’t expect people from Hollywood to have an open mind, but Blanchet basically said that Australia is a joke and it kisses the US on the behind and that she thought we had a bad international reputation all things i disagree with but she’s entitled to her opinion.
I’m wondering if people like Glen would write off an actress if she were a right winger. I think not. It’s amazing how being considered left wing makes a person like poison in the eyes of right wingers and completely useless for anything. How simple minded is that?
Gary I don’t think we’re writing off Cate Blanchett, I think we’re amazed how star struck Kevin Rudd is. Where is his love for local talent? Will he be commenting on the loss of Sally from Home and Away?
Glen,
Which of her movies have you seen, and then liked or disliked? Apart from the measure of an Academy Award, how does her perceived political views make her a better or worse actress than Nicole Kidman. By the way, via a friend of a froiend, you would be surprised (or, more likely, disappointed) at how Nicole thinks politically.
I thought Cate was excellent in Notes On A Scandal. Et tu?
The blinkering going on here with Blanchet is just astounding.
How does her acting ability in any way relate to her moderation and mediation skills? Are you people even aware that you can have an ideology that is at odds with your job description?
Simple mindedness doesn’t even come close to explaining it Garry.
660 John – I usually respect your opinion on politics because you come over as a sensible person but that comment was purile or a poor attempt at humour. Besides isn’t Cate Australian?
I’ll tell you this though if this is the only “fault” we have to concentrate on Kev’s doing extremely well. And the pettiness continues.
Lol, Gary 663, True Cate is Australian and yes it was an attempt at humour
Gary you are correct when you say Kev is doing extremely well for he is. Its only a 5 month government which has yet to make any hard decisions.
666 – Thank heaven’s for that John. I thought we may have lost one of the clearer thinking conservatives here. I agree with you on Kev. Time will tell. It will be a real disappointment if he doesn’t deliver.
John
Care name a successfull hard decision that was made in the last 5 years?
We just need to know what the benchmark is. Otherwise you could be talking apples while others are talking oranges eh?
Gary
So true, only time will tell.
Onimod you almost got me…. successful you say? I think WorkChoices was one. Yes it did cost Howard his government but he did win the case in the High Court and it appears as though the Rudd Government will keep most of it albeit under contractual agreements. As Deng Zao Ping said, ” it doesn’t matter what colour the cat is as long as it catches the mouse.”
Small business legislation that was brought in by Barnaby Joyce.
Forrests initiative in Indonesia. etc, etc…
Oh yeah and fiscal conservatism, alwas have been and always will be a financial conservative
John
I wasn’t trying to catch you.
I only meant in terms of ’successful’ that it’s stood the test of the electorate. Dismantled decisions are, for whatever reason, not successful if the population won’t eventually support them.
This round of Workchoices might have been hard, but I think not successful. There might be some elements that remain technically, but overall you’d have to suggest it’s a bust. We’ll know for sure by the end of the term. let’s leaver tht one alone because it’s been done to death.
“Etc etc” doesn’t cut it though.
If you’re going to be technically rationalist with Rudd then you need to have the perspective to do the same with Howard too.
Are you seriously suggesting that the shining lights of the last 5 years (60 months) of political rule is a bill from a party outsider like Barnaby, and the giving of $30m to the Indonesian government?
Ominmod sorry I was speaking to myself when I wrote you alm ost go me, please discard.
Onimod I agree with you when you say, “If you’re going to be technically rationalist with Rudd then you need to have the perspective to do the same with Howard too.”
That is why I have copied a link to Howard Government Achievements as my answer.
http://www.liberal.org.au/about/ach.php
John
sorry, 670 is probably ever so slightly aggressive.
My simplified opinion of the conservative side of politics is as follows:
1. no progress will be made until the ‘look at what we did’ approach to relevancy is dropped entirely – it rarely works for anyone.
2. Conservative used to be synonymous with considered; no longer. This shoot from the hip reactionary approach is flawed entirely and just generates further weakness (it’s probably cosying HRC at the moment too). state leadership is the worst at this, though the federal party is catching them fast.
3. The world at large, as a result of world events has turned ever so slightly progressive. If conservative politics wants to remain relevant, and I agree that it has to for our countries sake, then there must be at least some adoption of this.
4. The wedge political, dichotomic view of the world has to stop. It’s a sign of real immaturity. It’s very rare in Australia to find Australian who fundamentally hate other Australians. This is not Northern Ireland in the 70’s. Painting everyday living as a war is just plain silly, and no wonder no-one wants to listen. People like the positive. The only time that pure negativity works is in the later stages of an election campaign, and people are prepared to overlook that.
5. Surely it’s easy to make the argument that a party in Australia could adopt 80% of the ALP policy, improve on the last 20% and they would be eminently electable? Australian politics is like squash or Volleyball – you can’t win a point when you’re not serving.
6. There ’s an old boardroom saying: “there’s nothing so unwelcome as the right idea from the wrong person” This is old business politics of the psychopath. Again, the adoption of this level of debate and discourse suggest that the conservative side really doesn’t have a handle on business and are only in the game for selfish reasons.
Australians might not ‘know’ these things, but they can feel them. They’ll give all sorts of reasons for not supporting Brendan that are simplistic and rationalist and less than 20 words long.
Conservative politics needs to up the intellectual ante if they really believe in this country moving forward.
After 4 months how can you judge a Government? How much did Howard do after 4 months? Obviuosly Rudd has to be judged finally by what has been achieved by the end of the electoral cycle.
Rudd has started very well and is laying the groundwork. He and his Ministers are planning. They are communicating and consulting. Budget is being prepared behind the scenes.
He is laying groundwork internationally as well as domestically. Because of his visit to China following USA, England and Europe the International community and Australia have an idea on the direction he is heading. Because of “Sorry” to the Aborigines people have an idea of where he/ALP is heading in Indigenous Policy. The High Profile 2020 is about more communication and involvement of the Australian Community through representatives. More ideas and more communication by practical example. Part of the strategy has to be to get the Australian people aware of his visions and to be onside. Read his speech to the Sydey Institute. There is also a genuine attempt to rise above the old ideas of Left and Right so as to join people together for a common purpose.
Howard never reached an agreement with the States on the Murry -Darling. Rudd showed how easy it was if one went about it in the right way.
All I saw of Howard in a positive light was the GST and even that is debatable. Work Choices beat him plus his carelessness with the truth.
Onimod, lol, its true and it cost Hward the election saying look at what we didnot what we’re about to do.
My simplifed view of Conservative politics is: equality in opportunity.
Give people choices and the opportunity (economic well being) to make those choices and they’ll do the rest.
Doug Murray-Darling is a furphy they only agred to agree.
671 John – nice one.
It also presents the problem even more clearly.
Every one of those titles is soft and general.
Any half smart Australian should be able to name at least 2 or 3 achievements, and I’ve got to be honest, I asked you the question without having a clue what you were going to answer (never the way to win an argument…).
Rudd might not have made any hard decisions by your measure, but every Australian can talk about Kyoto and the Aboriginal Apology, whether they agree or not.
Your list reads pretty much like the adequate response of a government, but there’s no icing on top – no positivity that makes Australians feel like they’re living in the best place on earth.
Anyway, as I said above, talking up the past is no way to win in the future. Peoples memories are polarised, and all talking about the past is doing is fixing people to one side of the fence or the other – it’s not shifting people through the open gate. You need to be telling people the grass is greener over there, not just telling people that the grass they’ve chosen is crap.
Cheers Onimid got work smart not hard
Anybody know anything about the “jurists letter” re the so called Heiner Affair? Someone linked to it and it does not look to me like ‘jurists’ would have written it. Apart from that all the signatories (if genuine) are all retired/old lawyers. About as genuine as a $3 note I reckon.
674
I reckon we’re a bit past that John.
The fundamentals of a free market economy are accepted and entrenched in both parties now. Neither party agrees fundamentally with complete deregulation either. At it’s most basic the economic divide between the parties is about how many lever and who controls them. The idea that there’s some deep chasm between the parties is long gone. There’s certainly been no wholesale change of personnel at Treasury.
I think the idea that people will fundamentally organise themselves given the opportunity is fundamentally false.
Ever read ‘Lord of the Flies’?
Is that what you really mean, or is it just simplistic idealistic jargon?
I thought that was the tag you’d apply to a Lefty? Hahaha
Onimod, no never read it.
Thomarse, I don’t know exactly what you are referring to, but it may be you have a misunderstanding.
“Jurists” usually refers to people expert in jurisprudence and the law, as distinct from “jury” or “member of a jury”.
Hope that helps, or at least doesn’t offend.
John 680
It’s a fable about what happens when you give humans free reign.
the wikipaedia entry is short and to the point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
The reason we’ve evolved to have leaders it that we’re not really good at it without them. We actually need regulation/leaders – it’s hard-wired. It also means we’re hard-wired to accept poor leadership, and partially explains the advantage of encumbancy.
Anyone know if there are any animal (not bird or fish) species that have no leadership/regulation structure?
681 Fulvio
Yeah, the language of the ‘Heiner Watchers’ (and Pies) is jurists. Some old legal farts are supposed to have signed this letter about the “Heiner Affair” Just thought someone may have known more about it.
Been having fun disparaging ‘Heiner Watchers’ and hopefully save one or two entering that conspiracy theory
659
Gary Bruce
That’s why I latched on to Glen’s comment that Blanchett is a second rate actress. I expected Glen to reply that he didn’t actually mean that she was second rate but that he was simply tipping a bucket on her politics when his emotions took over and he wrongly bucketed on her talent as well. No, not Glen. He then tries to justify why she is second rate by comparing her with one other Aussie actress who has won an academy award. That is why I referred to Glen’s eye patch a few posts later. His view of politics is through just one eye.
“Equality in opportunity” = Conservatism?
Sorry, John, but I don’t know of any conservative party which has stood for that.
There is no equality in opportunity in favouring private schools over public ones or private health over public hospitals – and yet that has been a clear divide between Liberal and Labor policies over many, many years.
The inherent belief in sending one’s children in private schools is that you are offering them better opportunities than they would get in a public school.
True conservatism (look up the meaning of the word!) is about preserving entrenched traditions. That’s not necessarily bad – indeed, in many situations, quite the opposite – but preserving entrenched traditions basically shuts down social mobility.
A true conservative is thus anti equality, believing that people are in the places where they’ve ended up because they deserve to be there, not because they had different opportunities to others.
Have I misunderstood what you mean by ‘equality in opportunity’ or have you misunderstood what ‘conservative’ is?
zoom # 685.
I refer you to the second paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
re: Private schools vs Public schools its all about choice.
zoom
I think you’ve nicely highlighted the problem with ‘conservatism’ being the mainstay of a party that titles itself “liberal”. Can they really not see the irony I wonder?
Of course, when they work this out, there will be an unnamed contributor who will post-rationalise what they meant by ‘conservative’ to match the current definition – an amazing feat with just one eye…….
Now if I could just find possum’s whinge about ‘lefty-righty namey-whamey’ labelling…..
Political enthsiasts have been banging on about the concept for plenty long enough, and yet I reckon the public understanding of the concepts is actually waning. It’s just too simple to summarise current political thinking.
686 yeah but John, please compare and contrast with the current Liberal Party play book!
There’s a job for you as the future leader of this country if you could get the Liberal Party to follow that link.
Maybe I’m unfairly tying you to the LP – let me know?
BTW – I happen to believe anyone who is great in a particular field has a particular gift – the perspective to conduct rational self criticism. I’m not saying the ALP is any better, but the LP certainly can’t (as a party).
Onimod #688, JWH may have been more a conservative then a liberal but Kevin adopted winning Coalition policies to get into office as did Howard adopt winning Keating policies.
My point is the pebdulum swings sometimes too far to the right or left so they are then brought back to the centre by the electorate.
689 John
I don’t disagree with the pendulum, but is the whole population of Australia, state and federal, swinging left at the moment, or is the LP standing at the wrong bus stop?
The idea that any party claims a policy as a way to exclude the other is intellectually disgusting, and the idea that something is good, just because it’s better than something that is bad is not far behind. I’m not having a go at you specifically, but surely we can get beyond that here?
A good policy is a good policy. Full stop.
We live in a peaceful and prosperous country. There should be a lot of policies that are common to both parties. If a liberal parliamentarian has a really good policy, he should be down the corridor to the ALP minister to raise it ASAP – that’s what I expect (but rarely get) from my representatives. That the whole country has to wait until a change of government for that idea to get raised is daft.
Why should our parliament be governed by only half the available brain power?
John, you are moving the goal posts.
You were not talking about ‘choice’ but about ‘equality in opportunity’.
These are not synonyms.
I’ve talked to people who genuinely believe that (for example) if a child is born with a certain inherent genius – violin playing, for example – they will ‘find their way’ regardless of their social and economic circumstances.
Yet, strangely, we have no violin virtuosos emerging from Broadmeadows (apologies to any Broadsmeadowian vvs out there whose dramatic rise to stardom has escaped me) or from the slums of Africa or remote Aboriginal communities – they all come from well off families of a certain cultural bent.
IF ‘equality in opportunity’ was a reality, we would have ‘elite’ professions such as the law, medicine, stockbroking, merchant banking etc reflecting in their educational/family background the same demographics as society as a whole.
Yet, strangely, not only is this not the case but they don’t even have the same sex demographics as the rest of society.
If ‘equality in opportunity’ was even vaguely adhered to by conservatives, I would have a good chance of finding Toorak born, Melbourne Grammar educated tradies or check out chicks.
Never met one.
From the evidence, one would have to conclude that either:
(i) richer families carry within them genetic advantages which are passed on to to their children, and the affluent circumstances into which these children are born are irrelevancies;
OR
(ii) richer families spend a lot of time and money ensuring that their children are able to enter elite professions and actively dissuade them from considering other paths.
My experience of life, JofM, has been that there are opportunities that are not available to me -will never be available to me – because I didn’t grow up in the right area, go to the right school or know the right people.
Under a Labor government, I was able to overcome some of these advantages because I was given opportunities NEVER available to my parents under previous conservative governments.
I know I’m not more intelligent than my parents, or more capable. I simply had opportunities given to me (ta, Gough) that were not available to them.
Conservative governments, however, in my experience, have actively worked to try and ensure that these opportunities are not available to people like myself.
Thus I see ‘equality in opportunity’ as inherently of Labor and the left, as Labor recognises that not all people have the same opportunities in life and seeks to overcome this bias in the system.
Liberal and Labor candidates announced for Gippsland.
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/2008/04/let-games-begin-three-candidates-ready.html
Onimod I agree a good policy is a good policy. Let he who adopts a policy tell people where he adopts it from. Competition enables better policies.
Zoom I understand your point and I don’t know what life was like before Gough so I do not make comment.
I believe you can do anything in this life if you’re willing to accept the consequences. Australia is a great place and he who wishes to succeed has every opportunity to succeed. Having said that I feel that the path towards success for those disadvantaged should be made shorter.
692
).
so, without any significant policy expected Gippsland is a ‘brand’ and ‘man’ fight.
2 of the 3 brands don’t know whether they’re Arthur of Martha, and yet there’s no doubt plenty of rusted on support. Can the LP afford to spend time and money on this?
Nearly 5.6% swing or around net 5,200 people need to have changed their mind since November. I think it’s probably a bridge too far (though Brendan seems to be keen to help out in the building the bridge
693 John
“I believe you can do anything in this life if you’re willing to accept the consequences. Australia is a great place and he who wishes to succeed has every opportunity to succeed. Having said that I feel that the path towards success for those disadvantaged should be made shorter.”
So you believe in “equal opportunity” but not a system that delivers it, even though you recognise it’s required?
J of M, with great respect, you can’t do anything in this life, whether you accept the consequences or not.
I, for example, will never be, however hard I try, however much I believe, a top basketballer because I’m at least a metre too short.
Similarly, my inherited and inherent clumsiness meant that I was never going to be any good at sport in general (again, no matter how hard I tried).
Just as there are inbuilt physical differences between people, there are inbuilt cultural and social ones as well.
A kid from Broadmeadows SHOULD have just as much chance of being a violin virtuoso (why it’s desirable is another matter) as one from Toorak but the cultural, social and economic circumstances make it very unlikely – as unlikely as my overcoming my lack of physical coordination to star sports wise.
Similarly, a kid from Toorak shouldn’t find themselves doing Law or Medicine without at least understanding there are other opportunities (and many of those I went to Uni with had as little choice in their careers as Prince Charles did).
As I hope I’ve already made clear, to believe that people will naturally end up realising their potential is lovely – but it isn’t true.
Zoom, I do understand your point and may I say very well illustrated. If I may though… I think the quote was refferring to ones positon in life. We are born equal but we were not created equal.
697
John of Melbourne
But there is neither equality of birth or universal equality of opportunity even in a country as great as ours.
Who was it that pointed out Nelson was being quizzed about mercanaries being hired in Iraq? Channel Seven just had a story about the “Unity Resources Group” that Australia has hired and is being sued in the UK for an unlawful death. I think the two things might have been linked.
B.S.F.
I think this is the one:
431
steve
700- That would be it. Thanks. I will interested to see if there is more to the story.
Anyone know if there are any animal (not bird or fish) species that have no leadership/regulation structure?
Many species are essentially solitary and have no social structure to speak of, such as all feline species (except lions), orangutans, quite a few other mammals, most reptiles, etc. However, it is true that every social species has a hierarchy and leaders (or at least, dominant members).
702 thank you; sounds informed.
Just Me @ 702 – I assume you mean other than the coalition?
Tom.
701 BSF some background here.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Unity_Resources_Group
Cracker joke, Tom
This is a totally misleading and inaccurate article. The standard of journalism at times leaves a lot to be desired.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23552235-601,00.html
704
Tom
He he.
Oh dear
Virginia Trioli has set herself up to have a go at the Kev’s childcare idea and she’s got two experts on – they both love the idea.
Lots of words like “absolutely” and “visionary” being tossed about.
I’m not sure Virginia knows what to do….oh here we go.
They are going to have a barney about private and public funding of the idea.
Thank goodness – I thought we were going to really struggle with the bias guidelines there for a minute.
I reckon they’ll fund this by removing the baby bonus – not a bad idea.
I’ll need to go to the transcript to check, but the suggestion was that for every dollar invested into early childhood education results in a $7 saving/return later.
I wonder what the return from the current baby bonus is…or the future fund…?
Is Virginia thinking about having kids? Something’s not right here; it’s almost a discussion! It’s almost like the ABC is pretending to raise the level of debate…and they’re not even backing a winner!
3 women
no ties
no pinstriped suits
well done ABC!!!
“Is Virginia thinking about having kids?” If she is she needs to get a move on (she’s 42).
And news on the Gippsland byelection: We have an ALP candidate. Wellington Shire Mayor Darren McCubbin has been pre-selected after joining the party yesterday.
Oh why why why does the party do this?? (Extistential cry of despair here).
The Victorian branch seems particularly prone to preselecting Mayors who have had -up until then – no declared party affiliations.
I’m not sure what the infatuation is.
I am sure that drafting non party members is a bad strategy.
It rarely gains you any points electorally and their lack of knowledge about the party’s inner workings, campaigning and politics in general creates its own series of problems.
If the person does get elected, they’re so busy learning all these things that it’s hard for them to carry out their real job – you can’t afford that if you’re representing a marginal seat.
Plus, the ideological commitment to Labor ideals held by a candidate who joined the party five seconds before they were elected is necessarily suspect.
Much as I dislike the notion, they’d have been better parachuting someone in if they were so short of political talent down there (and they’re not – Gippsland has some very active members).
He may work out brilliantly, and I wish him all the best (and he’s certainly one up on a basketball coach) but there’s a good reason why the ALP has a rule – honoured though it maybe more in the breach than in the observance – that you need to have been a member for at least two years before seeking preselection.
They’re still at it.
Peter Hartcher warns Rudd his Prime Ministership is in danger from trying to plase all the people all the time. Oh, and he’s not much different to Howard. This is all in the context of Rudd’s Sydney Institute speech the other day.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/peter-hartcher/australia-in-for-a-rudd-awakening/2008/04/17/1208025377389.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
I guess Hartcher’s pondering why we changed.
I’m wondering why Rudd bothered to attend.
Hartcher seems to have learned nothing since he wrote up Howard’s culture war speech at the quadrant dinner in 2006, thus:
“Avenue of cultural conquest,” fer cryin’ out loud?
Ah… for the good old days when leftists infected the wards of our hospitals and haunted the corridors of our schools. When, according to Hartcher, Tony Abbott ranked the cultures wars highly:
when there was,
…
Together, the reform agenda for schools and universities will make Bishop one of the country’s most important cultural warriors.
Another rising star of the Howard Government, Andrew Robb, the parliamentary secretary for immigration and former federal director of the Liberal Party, has also become a warrior with his discussion paper on citizenship.
The mild-mannered Mal Brough has brought the warrior’s chariot to the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio.
Even the maladroit Joe Hockey, in a bumbling sort of way, sought to join the war this week by attacking the lack of work ethic among the unemployed.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/howards-warriors-sweep-all-before-them/2006/10/13/1160246325222.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Howard? Costello? Abbott? Downer? Minchin? Bishop? Robb? Brough? Hockey? That sounds like some “proliferation”… but can someone please remind me who these people were?
Dennis is a good read today (I never thought I’d write that) He even uses the nickname Nightwatchman for spanky…
It’s [a href="http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/dennisshanahan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/threat_of_bloody_battle_is_liberal_leaders_best_chance/"]here[/a]
Gary #707
I am not sure there is reason for your complaint about the newspaper article. Is it the headline and the comparison with the Hawke pledge in 1987 which you say is ‘totally misleading and inaccurate’? I thought you said on a previous thread that you welcome reasonable scrutiny of those in government. Do you say this article fails that standard of reasonableness, and if so, why?
As to Rudd’s idea, it is certainly worthy of proper consideration and that must include some more thought about mode of implementation, a timetable for it to happen and how it is to be funded (including detail of taxpayer funding). I would also like to hear the views of (politically uncommitted) parents/carers with infant children or those planning families in the near future.
Bushfire Bill #712
Thank you for providing the link to Peter Hartcher’s opinion piece. I thought his key point was, in fact, complimentary to Rudd; that is, Rudd appears to have a pragmatic approach to the practice of politics and that happens to be similar to other recently departed politicians like Blair and Howard, who won a few elections in their time.The Prime Minister ‘is working in the …centre ground, where there are no longer any ideological absolutes but only questions of degree’. Tony Johnson and Geraldine Doogue may not ‘get it’ but there is no reason why the rest of us cannot.
David, my impression in reading the article, was that this plan was a done deal. This is far from the truth. It is a proposal up for debate with the detail to be decided if at all. It may never happen.
I think the link with Hawke’s so called pledge is just plain wrong. That is implying that it is an impossible dream.
Sure criticise and provide alternatives but don’t exaggerate and mislead, that was my point David.
I see today, by the way, that Rudd is now being criticised because he didn’t think of it first. Eh? So now he has to come up with original good ideas is that the claim?
716
Apparently good ideas on their own aren’t good enough these days.
So if someone cures Cancer in France we won’t use the idea because we didn’t think of it?
That sort of think is pretty funny coming from an MSM journalist, because we just know that the fountain of intellectual originality aren’t they…
Typical neocon argument – ‘if you don’t know everything then you don’t know anything’
Latest Morgan Poll ( phone),Labor increasing lead 2PP 64% to 36%. Wow!
Hartcher trying to legitimise Howard by linking him to Rudd?…LoL
Good press, bad press it is all good for Rudd as this simply highlights he is thinking of helping those who need help. I didn’t think Hartchers piece was all that bad apart from implying that there was not much difference between Howard and Rudd in relation to position they were working from.
New Morgan thread up.