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.

This latest boat, reportedly stopped by the Indonesian Navy at Australia’s behest, was carrying 260 asylum seekers, which is quite a large number compared to most of the boats that have arrived in Australia in the last year or so. Tellingly, all the asylum seekers are from Sri Lanka.  The human rights situation in that country is at a low point at the moment, with mass internment of Tamil citizens in atrocious conditions occurring for many months.  When a government kicks out the Red Cross, as the Sri Lankan government has done, you know things are not good.

The Australian government has been spending money trying to dissuade people in Sri Lank from trying to come to Australia.  It would have far more effect if the Sri Lankan government could be persuaded to start respecting basic human rights – although that is obviously much easier said than done.

Meanwhile, the inflexibility of Australia’s migration laws is on display again, with some more local level ‘let them stay’ campaigns happening.

Liberal Member for Hume, Alby Schultz, has voiced support for Mr Jing Bang Zou and his wife, Mrs Litang Fan, who are currently living in the New South Wales town of Young.  Mr Zou is reportedly a “world renowned apiarist”, but doesn’t have the required professionally recognised qualifications, thus making him ineligible for a permanent visa.  Earlier this decade, Young was one of a number of towns in rural Australia which had trouble finding enough labour for their local meatworks, and relied heavily on refugees from Afghanistan – all of whom would have come here by boat – to keep their meatworks profitable.

Meanwhile, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, a family of four originally from South Africa, who run a small business in Buderim, are facing removal because they have assessed as not meeting the minimum assets requirement of their business visa.  The local paper, the Sunshine Coast Daily, is going in to bat for them, with their coverage giving a strong emphasis to the unpleasantness of life in South Africa, with its  “barb wire-fenced homes with security cameras, guard dogs and streets deemed too unsafe for their children.”

An opinion piece in the Daily supports the family’s cause, while at the same time highlighting some readers’ comments attacking asylum seekers.  Somewhat ironically, but none the less appropriately, it ends with the following comment:

We all need to realise that Australia is built on the principle of the fair go – and that some of our best businesses have been created by immigrants, who are often more hard working than us laid back Aussies. In the end it means more jobs, not less, for all.

A good and simple principle, which I very much agree with.  Hopefully we can apply it to all who seek to settle here.

Queensland has caused grief for the ‘Coalition’ parties at national level before, and I suspect Malcolm Turnbull should be careful trying to publicly tell the Queensland party what to do, especially when in this state it is now a nominally National Party dominated hybrid.

I have to admit, I can’t really see what it is that had led so many of Mr Dutton’s colleagues and journalists from federal Parliament to describe him as someone of such talent and promise. However, I accept his party colleagues in the federal parliament have a far better opportunity to see all of Mr Dutton’s qualities than I do, so I will take them at their word.

But taking the personalities out of it, the main message I get from the whole episode is how pessimistic the Liberals and Nationals (and the Liberal Nationals) must be about their chances at the next election.

It is true that Mr Dutton’s former seat of Dickson has nominally become a Labor seat under the new draft boundaries released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in their latest redistribution in Queensland.  However, given Mr Dutton only had a margin of 0.1% in his favour to start with, and it has only shifted to a nominally Labor margin of 1.3%, it was hardly a total upheaval for him.

And whilst the AEC usually only makes minimal changes between their draft boundaries and the final version when they do redistributions, it seems excessively defeatist for an incumbent to bail out before things are even finalised, given the overall shift is only 1.4%.  Incumbency is clearly worth something, and whilst Mr Dutton lost almost all of his margin at 2007 poll, it seems defeatist to assume he’s likely to go backwards again.

The now Labor held seat of Longman, which adjoins Dickson, has had the Labor margin cut from 3.6% to 1.3% which is the same as the new Dickson margin. Whilst Longman has a Labor incumbent, large chunks of the redistributed seat will be new to the electorate and the incumbent would not have had much time to work them.  Longman was previously held by Mal Brough, someone who was also labelled by many in the media and his party as a rising star but had the biggest swing against a sitting Liberal MP in the entire country last election. Whilst this might suggest Longman isn’t fertile ground, one could also say that it’s swung about as far as it’s likely to go, especially as the outer urban areas such as those covered by Longman (and much of Dickson it has to be said) are the sort of demographic who are the most likely to be pissed off by what the Bligh Labor government has been doing at state level in recent months.

In any case, while I can understand why Peter Dutton would have wanted to run for the now vacant seat McPherson (with a nominal margin on the new draft boundaries of around 8.6% for the LNP), the newly created seat of Wright, which adjoins McPherson, has a nominal margin to the LNP of 3.8% which surely isn’t too bad for a rising star like Mr Dutton in a seat with no incumbent.

Not only does Peter Dutton apparently feel his incumbency will not be enough to make up a 1.3% margin, it seems he wasn’t even comfortable with going for a new seat at a 3.8% margin to the Liberals.  If I was Malcolm Turnbull, I’d be feeling slightly insulted by that. There hardly seems much point in a party talking about the need for renewal and having high quality candidates who can offer things in the future if they’re just going to stick them in seats the party will always win anyway.

ELSEWHERE:

• Graham Young, a former party Vice President and Campaign Director for the Liberals in Qld, gives his assessment on Ambit Gambit.

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.

With a difficult and emotive issue like refugees, sometimes it is helpful to look at the experiences of individual people – taking it out of the realm of political sloganeering and into the grounded reality of individual human beings.

This piece on Derek Barry’s blog tells the story of one young Rohingyan man who is now living and working in Brisbane. It’s well worth reading.

If only the climate crisis was being taken as seriously and urgently as the economic crisis.

It continues to baffle me that governments can continually assert they are taking the danger of major climate change seriously, while repeatedly using public funds to lock in major infrastructure designed specifically to assist greenhouse intensive activities.

The Queensland Premier has released a list of 300 potential Queensland icons, across ten different categories. The plan is to bring that down to a final 150 icons through a process of public voting.  The government’s website now lets people vote for their favourite icon in each of the 10 categories.

In a recognition that people are just as likely to get annoyed as they are pleased by what’s on and not on the list, there’s a disclaimer at the start of the online voting form:

The inclusion of a person, event, invention or place on the short-list of Q150 icons is not intended to offend or upset any individual member or groups of the public.  The inclusion of a person, event, invention, place or the nomination on the Q150 icons shortlist of 300, or final list of 150, does not constitute an endorsement or affiliation by Q150, the State of Queensland, their officers, employees or agents with that person, event, invention, place or nomination, or any affiliated product or service.

I suppose that is really just a reminder that it’s all meant to be a bit of light-hearted fun, so I shan’t use the lists as an excuse to unleash my inner curmudgeon.  No doubt I’d be excused of doing so if I suggested the lists could do with some more explicit recognition to the killing, removing, displacing, enslaving and confining Indigenous people in the process of establishing the state and developing its economy.  obviously not something to celebrate, but definitely a defining thing for the state.

But the short-list of potentially iconic defining moments does include things such as “the arrival of ‘Kanakas’ in Queensland”, the torching of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub (resulting in 15 deaths) and the demolition of the historic Cloudland ballroom, so it’s not all sweetness and light.

In an ironic juxtaposition, the coming of railway to Queensland in 1865 is listed just before the starting of European settlement at Redcliffe.  (The settlement was soon relocated to where Brisbane city is today). 

This juxtaposition highlights a real historic and iconic representation of Queensland; our state’s oldest and probably most frequently broken political promise – the promise to build a railway to Redcliffe. First proposed in the 1890s and many times since, it has never happened. 

But in a true show of respect for Queensland’s heritage, the Liberal National Party has used the current election campaign to once again  pledge to build the railway. However, they’re getting in early with their backflip, saying the promise is subject to financial conditions.

In another nice touch, the list of potential icons includes Boggo Road Gaol, scene of many brutalities and abuses, as “one of the locations that put Qld on the map”, and the Hornibrook Highway Bridgeas an iconic structure.  This bridge is currently planned for demolition. It was opened in 1935 and at around 3 kilometres was once the longest bridge in the southern hemisphere (there has since been a longer newer bridge built beside it, with another part way to completion).  It first connected the northern edge of Brisbane with the Redcliffe peninsula – (must be something about Redcliffe).

Anyway, as they say, vote early and vote often (the website doesn’t seem to make any effort to stop multiple voting).