Category Archives: Political commentary

Sick Labor

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard has at last begun the effort to explain her carbon price policy, but all agree she has a lot of ground to regain after scoring yet another spectacular own goal for Labor, this time by announcing a price on carbon without having any clear policy on compensating households.  This while facing a Leader of the Opposition who will say and do anything for a populist scare campaign, his biggest bogey of all being “a great big new tax”.  It is not so hard to think of how to present the issue to the public, as a journalist and a blogger demonstrate.  Why can’t Labor?

Labor has form, as former PM Kevin Rudd also scored a spectacular own goal last year by walking away from the greatest moral challenge of our time, global warming.  Then there were the running sagas of home insulation, green loans and so on, which could and should have been explained, fixed and continued but which became such a political liability they too were abandoned.  Labor has displayed staggering ineptitude.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s recent speech to the US Congress was so sycophantic it was more sad than embarrassing.

We who think good ole Oz can be something other than a fiefdom of powerful foreigners are used to cringing when ever an Aussie politician visits the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Ironically it is the Labor politicians who are the most servile, because they think they have to prove they’re not lefties.  That will be one of the reasons for Gillard’s grotesque performance.

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What a realistic government agenda would look like

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[This article was published by the Canberra Times 14 January, p. 19, under the title “Carbon price, wealth creation are critical issues this year”.]

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has declared that 2011 will be a year of accomplishment for her Government.  However many people are deeply frustrated that mainstream politics seems oblivious to new and dangerous issues, as global warming tightens its grip and the verities of old ideologies are found wanting.  There is a huge chasm between politics as usual and the issues we really should be addressing.

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Land Clearances, 21st Century Style

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The film Our Generation, currently being launched around Australia, gives voice to the people targeted by the Northern Territory Intervention.  The Intervention, begun by Prime Minister John Howard and continued by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, has resulted in little discernible benefit to indigenous people.  It is arguably doing substantial harm, it has stigmatised and demonised people on the basis of race, it is blatantly violating the human rights and dignity of the people and is deeply resented by them.

So much may be fairly widely, if vaguely, appreciated.  What was less obvious to me, until I saw the film, was the pattern in the political sallies that preceeded and accompany the Intervention.

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Australian Election: Democracy’s Problems Run Deeper Than Spin

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[Published by On Line Opinion, 2 Sept.]

The big winners in this election are the Greens and Informal.  The informal vote rose by more than the Liberal vote, and between a fifth and a quarter of first preferences (counting informals) did not go to the major parties.  Clearly the message from many voters to the major parties is “a pox on both your houses”.

The reasons for this alienation run much deeper than deposed leaders, poor communication, shallow spin, backroom boys, misleading and mendacious claims and stilted performances.  These are all symptomatic, but the real problems are the ossification, lack of principle and systemic corruption of both major parties.

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The Australian Labor Party is Dead

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[This was published by On Line Opinion, 12 May.]

Isn’t it time we declared the Labor Party officially dead?

The party has become a façade, an empty shell, a Faux-Labor Party.  It lost its vision long since.  It has forgotten why it exists.  It has no purpose, other than to gain power for the egos that inhabit it.

Lacking a vision, Faux-Labor is purely reactive.  Lacking a vision, it cannot frame issues to its advantage.  It cannot seize the initiative.  Caught awkwardly in its opponents’ framing, it is forever on the back foot, only ever able to be less bad, never able to proclaim a noble goal and pursue it.  Its collapse in the polls is surprising only for its speed.

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The Peaking of Climate Denialism and the Resurgence of the Sensible

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Despite the ascent of Tony Abbott to the Liberal Party leadership and some recent unhelpful comments by the Chair of the ABC, Maurice Newman, there are some glimmerings that the irrational backlash against global warming science may be peaking.

The backlash can be seen as part of a broader attack on evidence-based, sensible debate that has been systematically promoted in Australia over the past several decades.  The attack has ranged over many social and political topics, including asylum seekers and the “history wars”, which concern our forebears’ treatment of indigenous people.  It has also taken on an explicitly anti-science tone in recent years.

It is revealing to examine the nature of the climate controversy, and to spell out exactly what the approach of climate “sceptics” implies about how we should determine policy.  There are also lessons on how our political process can be distorted by disinformation and by superficial interpretations of “balance” in reporting.

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Where is the Bold Leadership?

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This was published by New Matilda, 22 Jan 2010.

The Republican victory in Ted Kennedy’s former senate seat in Massachusetts may seem a long way from Australia, but there are similar forces at work in both countries.  So far, no major political party in the Anglophone world has been willing to directly challenge the right-wing ascendancy of the past three decades, and we continue to pay a heavy price for their timidity and lack of vision.

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Tony Abbott and East Anglia have not cancelled Global Warming

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Published by On Line Opinion, 8 Dec.

The triumph of climate delialists in the Liberal Party and the recent unauthorised release of allegedly damaging emails from a British climate research group are being portrayed by some as the end of the global warming “conspiracy”.

However the so-called scandal of the emails is a manufactured storm in a teacup.  Anyway the evidence for human-caused global warming is far more diverse and robust than denialists make out.  In fact the latest evidence is even clearer, and more ominous.  Denialist politicians are on the wrong side of history.

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Rudd, Labor Fail to Lead

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As Kevin Rudd twists slowly in the asylum-seeker noose of his own making, it is not only the flimsy basis of his “Indonesian solution” that is exposed to the world. Also exposed is a consistent failure to assume leadership, a failure that has defined the Labor Party for a generation, and that comes at a critical time in our history.

Full article at New Matilda