I grew up in South-East Queensland, in the general area whose water needs would have been serviced by the dam, and I did not pee indoors during winter for my entire childhood. Tank water – you weren’t about to waste it on flushing. Water was a treat - when we visited city relatives with town water, we’d clamour for a luxurious “big bath”.  I remember staring in hypnotised horror at a visitor who put the kitchen tap on all full-blast, instead of the usual trickle.

Admittedly,  having to confront menacing cane toads in the dark as I struggled with my undies after a pee was a childhood trauma that may have played a role in driving me south of the border for university, where I remain to this day and where I have picked up wasteful city attitudes to water. I turn the tap on full-blast, I shower for longer than is strictly necessary for good hygiene, and I pee indoors (which must come as a relief to the citizens of Canberra). Give people more or less unlimited access to water, and we’ll use too much of it. The population of South-East Queensland is booming – and it’s booming with people who (like most Australians) do not have frugal attitudes to water.  As the Australian Water Association says, that needs to change.

The situation for individual women seeking an abortion and for doctors prepared to provide it is now totally untenable.

It has now been reported that

Public hospitals in Rockhampton and Mackay are believed to have joined the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in suspending medical abortions, while a service attached to Cairns Base Hospital is also reviewing its legal position.

…. more hospitals are set to follow and suspend drug-induced abortion services.

Queensland women are now having to travel to Sydney for a medical abortion.

Because this issue will always be treated as a conscience vote, it means traditional party controls and discipline do not apply.

If a majority in the Queensland Parliament do believe that abortion should be illegal, then let them have a vote to confirm that. There would obviously be many people unhappy about this outcome, but at least it would provide certainty and clarity about what the law is.

At present, the legal uncertainty means Queensland has the worst of both worlds on the issue.

Even though the Premier and her Ministers in Cabinet may not be wanting to have a full debate, the Parliament as a whole should have the final say on bringing on any proposed changes to the law for debate. Each individual MP would also be free to move amendments to any Bill that is brought forward.

Cairns-based gynaecologist Caroline de Costa has been writing regularly in Crikey over many months now assiduously documenting the untenable situation which has developed in Queensland following the decision to charge a young woman from Cairns with procuring, and her partner with assisting to procure, her own abortion.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has kept trying to avoid the issue throughout this time, stating that while her personal view is that abortion should be a matter between a woman and her doctor, there shouldn’t be any attempt to change the existing law, supposedly because there wouldn’t be the numbers in the Queensland Parliament for it to succeed.

Personally, I am not so convinced about that, but even so, I don’t see that as sufficient reason not to bring on a debate, which would at least clarify the issue.

This has always been an issue that is treated as a conscience vote by all parties in the Parliament, where traditional party line votes don’t occur. Efforts have been made by some in the Labor Party to introduce a Private Members Bill (i.e. legislation that is not formally produced or backed by the government). This was done successfully in the federal Parliament in regards to RU486, where a Bill sponsored by a Senator from each of the Liberal, Labor, Democrat and National parties.

However, while legislation on a matter which is seen as a conscience vote can be introduced by any MP, the decision about whether or not to allow that legislation to be debated and voted on is still a government decision – unless enough individual members of the governing party willing to defy such a decision, which does not occur when Labor is the governing party.

Even though most surveys suggest a clear majority of Australians support safe abortion being made available to a woman who seeks it, politicians of all parties usually tend to shy away from bringing on debates on the issue. This may be more due to the fact it can be quite divisive within a party, than the fact it can be lead to strident debate within society.

The big benefit of a conscience vote is that it makes each individual member of Parliament individually accountable for what they do. They can’t hide behind the party room or caucus.

There is no doubt this is an issue where have people have very strong and genuinely held beliefs on both sides of the debate. That situation might require a special effort be made to have as respectful a debate as possible, but it is no reason to dodge the debate all together.

ELSEWHERE: ABC reports Anna Bligh’s view that bringing in legislation aimed at clearly decriminalising abortion might end up with the Parliament amending it to create an even more restriction situation than currently exists.  The government instead is planning to amend the Criminal Code “to give medical abortions the same protection as surgical terminations.” Professor de Costa doesn’t sound convinced that this is sufficient.

I assume amending the Criminal Code in the way the Premier has described would also require amending legislation to be brought into the Parliament and voted on, which I would have thought would also open up the prospects of other amendments being moved. However, it’s possible there are some procedural rules in the state Parliament that I’m not aware of which preclude this prospect.

I also can’t see why amending the Criminal Code in the way the Premier is planning wouldn’t also be a conscience vote, given that it clearly relates to abortion, but perhaps there are vagaries of internal Labor rules I’m not aware of.

In any case, given that hospitals are now suspending the performance of abortions, it does suggest that the current “protections” for surgical termination are less than watertight.

* Amanda Greer writes about the issue at New Matilda.

* (26/5) Some more in The Australian, with Logan Hospital confirmed as the fourth hospital to cancel their abortion procedures.  I’m a bit surprised there seems to be more on this issue in The Australian – a nationwide daily – than there is The Courier-Mail, the main Brisbane & Queensland based paper.

They marked World Environment Day in Brisbane by labelling the offices of the Premier, the Environment Minister and the Resources Minister as “global warning crime scenes.”

Friends of the Earth declare the Premier's electorate office in West End a "global warming crime scene"

I fear that if the Copenhagen conference on climate change at the end of this year does not bear much fruit, and no strategies start to appear in Australia to reduce the reliance on coal, we will start to see direct action much stronger than a few photo opportunities.

Those who believe there is no threat from climate change are less of a barrier to effective action that those who believe there is a threat, but are either not willing or not able to confront the changes necessary to credibly meet the threat.

Spare a thought for John English, the former Labor member for Redlands, who after two weeks of nail biting, ended up losing his seat by a miserly 34 votes.  To make it even worse for him, according to this comment on the Pineapple Party Time blog, at the very end of the count a small pile of ballot papers were discovered to have been placed with the wrong candidate, leading to “a total of 23 (taken) off the Labor total and added to the LNP total” – sufficient to change the outcome.

Labor was on the right side of the other very narrow win, hanging on to Chatsworth by just 74 votes.

The ALP has ended up with 51 seats – 8 down on their total at the 2006 election.  The LNP has 34 seats and there are 4 incumbent Independents, who were all comfortably re-elected.  My guess when the election was first calledthat Labor would win 50 seats was close to the mark, although I wrongly thought Stuart Copeland would be re-elected running as Independent. 

My suggestion the Greens’ Ronan Lee might hold on was also misplaced.  Although he fell just 42 votes short of getting second place ahead of Labor and receiving a majority of their preferences, it is very unlikely the flow would have been strong enough for him to have overhauled the LNP candidate.

There were only 3 seats out of the 89 where the candidate leading on first preferences was overtaken due to second preferences.  In each case it was the LNP who were overhauled – twice by Labor in Chatsworth and Barron River, with the other being Independent Dolly Pratt in Nanango.  The result in Redlands is a clear-cut case where Labor would have won if compulsory preferential voting still operated in Queensland. 

Election junkies wil be relieved to know there is a by-election worth watchingin WA in the state seat of Fremantle (not to be confused with the federal seat of the same name). Given the circumstances and the result in that seat at the most recent WA election, it is reasonable to say that the Greens have a credible chance of winning this.

Far more important in many ways for Australia’s future is the elections for Indonesia’s Parliament, which happens this coming Monday. The President is directly elected in a separate ballot to be held in July, but the result of the elections for the legislature could shape some of the dynamics of the Presidential poll.

Certainly the fact that there has been a steady stream of state Labor MPs announcing they will retire at the election reinforces the suspiscion an election announcement by the Premier is imminent.  Another sign has been the weekend launch by Premier Anna Bligh of her own Anna4Qld website. 

I don’t greatly care when the election is held and I find election date speculation not only tiresome but futile.  However, regardless of whether it’s called tomorrow or September, I have to agree with Graham Young in saying Anna Bligh’s website is fairly ordinary, at least at this stage. 

I don’t mind stolid, functional websites that give you meaningful information without lots of information.  And obviously I like websites which give readers an opportunity to make their own comments.  But this one seems heavy on spin and catchphrases, little in the way of solid policy detail with policy ‘plans’ that are little more than media releases, Plus it has a ‘blog’ which doesn’t allow people to leave comments. 

No doubt it will still draw traffic and the launch of it generated a reasonable amount of media, which I suppose can be half the aim of these things.  But it’s hard to see how it will shift many votes on it’s own.

ELSEWHERE: Derek Barry at Wooly Days, Mark Bahnisch at LP.

Of course it is politically very difficult for any government to abolish, because it would provide a golden opportunity for the Opposition of the day to run a populist campaign supporting cheaper petrol.

Not surprisingly, various inquiries have discovered that the whole eight cents is not fully passed on to the motorist.  Rather than use this an a reason to justify the scrapping of such a totally ridiculous policy, the state government has explored various ways of trying to ensure the full rebate is passed on to the motorist.

Given the populist nature of the subsidy, it was very refreshing to see Brisbane’s Courier-Mail editorialise that, just maybe, with a looming recession and a huge greenhouse challenge, there might be better things for the state of Queensland to spend half a billion dollars a year on than making petrol a few cents a litre cheaper

I concur.

The federal government has quite sensibly resisted most of the pressure to slash the migrant worker intake.  This week, Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the skilled worker intake would remain roughly the same, while being “more targeted”.  This was reported in The Australian, under the headline “Skilled Migrant door left open”, as there being “no cut”, but rather a “retooling” of the program.  The report in the SMH was fairly similar, saying the skilled migration intake had been “tweaked” by the government.

By contrast, The Courier-Mail had a huge front page headline saying “SHUT THE GATE: Immigration tightened to protect Aussie jobs”.  The text of the article (with the online headline missing the “Aussie” reference) spoke of the Government’s announcement as a move “to tighten immigration laws to protect Australian jobs” and “a move to save jobs for Australians”.

The notion that cutting migration “saves jobs” is pure nonsense, so I should emphasise that these quotes are all commentary by the reporters, not quotes by Minister Evans. 

The next day, Queensland Premier seemed to be picking up on The Courier-Mail’s vibe, with a report in that paper saying she had “urged the Federal Government to consider sending home foreign mining workers so sacked Australians can have their jobs.”

To give the Premier the benefit of the doubt, I couldn’t find any other media commentary, speech or media release by the Premier that matched this interpretation and the actual quotes of her in the article don’t quite reflect such a view either.  The main relevant quote of hers is

“I think the Australian people would expect that when we are seeing large-scale job losses that Australian workers will be the ones who have the opportunity where they are available.”

I certainly hope she was misinterpreted or misreported, because if it was true, it would be an extraordinary move to urge migrant workers to be sent home.  To cancel the visas of employed migrant workers so that an unemployed Australian citizen can be given their job would almost certainly be against the law, and would destroy the credibility of our migration program for decades – not to mention cause serious harm to those parts of our economy which still rely heavily on skilled workers from overseas.

Of course, it also plays into the xenophobic myth that migrants take Australian’s jobs, and it incredibly destructive for public leaders to give any credence to it.

The Courier-Mail editorialised on the issue the next day, saying that  

Premier Anna Bligh is treading a perilous path with her call this week for the Federal Government to consider revoking the visas of foreign mining workers, and sending them home so their jobs can go to Australian nationals.

It is of concern, however, when a moderate, left-leaning Premier – no matter how she may try to spin it – plays the “foreign workers are taking our jobs” card, a move more likely to create divisions in some workplaces and communities than to offer any concrete solution to changing economic circumstances.

It might be popular with some sections of the electorate, but it risks smacking of short-term, knee-jerk politics, rather than sound policy thinking.

I agree with this (assuming they are accurately reflecting the Premier’s statements), but The Courier-Mail might also want to reflect on their own front page story from just three days earlier.

Courier-Mail front page Dec 18 2008

After The Australian newspaper ran a determined, prolonged fear campaign for a full month recycling all the usual rubbish about ‘toilet to tap’, the Queensland government backed down on its long-held insistence on proceeding with full recycling.  Instantly, the same newspaper starts writing about “spectacular backflips”, even while saying it might not be good policy, but it’s “smart politics”, even while still running quotes pushing the totally false fearmongering line that the plan involved “putting sewage in drinking water”.

I can’t see how it’s smart politics in the long run to give in to fear campaigns rather than stand up to them, but the government can make it’s own political judgements. There’s no doubt it’s terribly policy though, and will just make it that much harder for full recycling of water to be taken up more widely, which is what is needed to improve water efficiency.

The fact that the terrible Traveston Dam is being ‘delayed’ at the same time – a welcome, science-based move that could and should signal an end to the whole expensive, destructive project – means there is even less reason to hold back on full recycling.  However, there will now be uncertainty over both projects – leaving long-term water policy in a state of limbo, as well as the long-suffering residents in the vicinity of the Traveston site.

ELSEWHERE: More on this topic at Larvatus Prodeo

No drinking water can be said to be zero risk. But there are already many areas in Australia which source their drinking water downstream from sewage treatment works, none of which treat the water to anything like the standard that is being done in Brisbane.

Just to show I’m not just engaging in gratuitous bashing of The Australian, this opinion piece on their website by Paul Greenfield outlines the basic facts very well.  The Queensland government should be expanding the use of recycling to further strengthen the water capacity of south-east Queensland and scrapping the Traveston Dam instead. It’s cheaper, uses less energy and is just as safe.

Ronan was scheduled to speak at the same event I spoke at yesterday – the Love Earth Gathering to promote the greenhouse and other environmental benefits of a low or no meat diet, but pulled out at short notice, which might have had something to do with his needing to focus on his announcement today.

There is something of a precedent for this in South Australia, where sitting Labor MP Kris Hanna quit to join the Greens a few years ago.  For whatever reasons, they turned out not to be that well suited for each other. He failed to get support for pre-selection for the Upper House and ended up quitting the Greens and recontesting his seat as an Independent.  In somewhat of a surprise, he managed to retain his seat of Mitchell, getting in on Liberal preferences despite polling less than 25% primary vote.

The seat of Indooroopilly, in Brisbane’s leafy western suburbs, used to be Liberal Party heartland, until Ronan Lee managed to win it in the Beattie landslide of 2001.  He’s done well to hold it in two subsequent elections.  I’ve run into Ronan, a migrant from Ireland, at a range of events around Brisbane over the years and he has seemed to me to be a bit more prepared to show some individual opinions than many major party MPs, even after he was promoted to a Parliamentary Secretary position.  Speaking at the Love Earth Gathering is an example of this, but he has also spoken at events like the Human Rights Torch relay, strongly criticising  the human rights record of the Chinese government. 

My understanding is that he is opposed to reforming abortion laws, which would probably put him at odds with many Greens members, even though abortion is normally seen as a conscience issue in the parlament. However, I should emphasise that, to their credit, the Constitution of the Greens – in Queensland at least – takes the same approach as the Democrats always did, explicitly stating that “where the views of an elected Member are in conflict with the Queensland Greens policy, then the elected member may vote in accordance with their conscience.” 

To retain his seat as a Green, Ronan will need to poll better than either Labor or the Liberal-Nationals, and hope to get in on their preferences.  However, Queensland’s system of optional preferential voting makes this harder, with many voters just putting a 1 beside their favoured candidate and not passing on preferences.  He will need to come close to or top the primary vote, which will be a difficult task.  Personal votes for the incumbent can be higher at state level than they are at federal level, but just how big it will be in this case is hard to tell – especially as he is running for a different and minor party, not as an independent.  Labor usually pursues a ‘just vote 1’ strategy with their how to vote cards in Queensland, which would hurt his chances, although the Greens may be able to use some leverage regarding their own preference decisions to prevent that this time. 

Most of the lower house seats around the country where the Greens have polled well in recent years have been Labor held seats with a low Liberal vote.  While it is still a big mountain to climb for their party candidates to win lower house seats, it is easier if they only have to poll in the low to mid twenties. This one is different – while Indooroopilly has a reasonably good primary vote for the Greens, both major parties poll relatively high, making it harder for a third candidate to get above one of them.

Indooroopilly is a seat the Liberals would be hoping to win back at next year’s election – indeed have to win back if they are wanting to get near winning government.  They polled 42.4% in a three horse race last election, with Ronan Lee getting 40.4% as a Labor candidate and the Greens polling just over 17 %. 

Labor’s vote was already likely to drop, and will do so even more following today’s move.  It is reasonable to assume the Liberal’s vote will rise this time, although Indooroopilly is precisely the sort of seat that might have been made harder for the Liberals as a result of their merger with the Nationals. It is the so-called ‘western suburbs faction’ of the Qld Liberals who are most commonly describing the merger as a National Party takeover. 

The absence of any major political pressure on Labor from the progressive side of the spectrum has been a significant problem in Queensland.  With the vast bulk of the political pressure coming from the conservative side with the Nationals and Liberals (and to a lesser extent One Nation), there has been a continuing incentive for Labor to focus its energies and actions in that direction.  This has meant policy approaches which give consistent priority to areas like Indigenous issues, the environment and human rights can tend to get short shrift.  Whether Ronan Lee’s move will help remedy this is far from certain, but at the very least it does create the possibility. 

More on this at Larvatus Prodeo and at Dennis Atkins’ blog at The Courier-Mail.