Category Archives: Political commentary

The Greens: Paddling Hard but Missing the Wave

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[Just published at Independent Australia]

article-9388-heroDisaffection with old parties and old politics continues to grow, here and abroad. Unlike the US and the UK, however, progressive politics in Australia is hardly progressing. The Greens are the obvious standard-bearer, but so far they are missing the wave. It matters because the destruction of the informed, fair-go society and the sell-out of our sovereignty continue apace.

In the recent election the Greens pulled only 10% of the 23% of primary votes that went to non-major parties in the House. For the Senate, they got 8.7% of around 35% of non-major primary votes.

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Demise of Lib-Lab: an electoral fancy

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bleaching-lizard-islandFrom the perspective of 2020 it’s a bit hard to recall just how disconnected from its constituents the political mainstream had become before the 2016 election campaign. No wonder they churned through so many prime ministers.

The readjustment began just as the campaign began, though few saw what was coming. Even the bleaching of a large part of the Great Barrier Reef did not at first get much reaction. True to form, the major parties gave it minimal lip service. It was only as large swaths of the Reef turned brown and ugly over following weeks that widespread concern began to surface. The Government might still have squeaked in, but it had set itself a 10-week-plus campaign.

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Approval voting: a non-distorting, non-gamable measure of voters’ will

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[Published 28 Feb 2016 at Independent Australia]

votersThe Coalition has been negotiating with the Greens to change the Senate voting system. Proposed changes reportedly would exclude most minor parties and some of the Greens, while benefiting mainly the Liberal Party.

It is claimed the Senate voting system results in an unrepresentative Senate, because the system has been gamed by minor parties to gather preferences and get one of them elected. There is some truth to the charge, in that quirks can determine which minor party is elected. On the other hand no minor party would be elected if the major parties were not so unpopular.

However the more fundamental problem is that no conventional preferential voting system can reliably reflect the voters’ will. Strangely enough, there is another voting system that would reliably reflect the voters’ will, and it is a widely used system. It’s just not used in politics. Would the Greens party please pay attention?

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The Enormous Hidden Cost of Population Growth

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[Published in the Canberra Times, 22 Feb 2016 and SMH 19 Feb 2016.]

CityWorkers Australia’s population just passed 24 million and former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, unusually for a very public figure, reckons we’re growing too fast.

He cites the pressure on the housing market, clogged infrastructure, and the greater difficulty of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. At some point we will exceed the carrying capacity of the continent, and perhaps we already have. Those are all sound reasons, but they tend to be brushed aside by the growth lobby, partly because the numbers are hard to pin down.

But what if we knew that cutting immigration in half would save us $50 billion or more per year? According to some little-noticed papers by development economist Jane O’Sullivan, population growth costs us over $500,000 per person added.

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Hunter Valley coal: how many ways to be wrong?

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WindEyesoreThe New South Wales government has given final approval for a huge expansion of a Rio Tinto coal mine in the Hunter Valley. This will degrade or destroy the village of Bulga and significant natural habitat.

What is right about this decision? Nothing at all.

What is wrong about this decision? Let me count the ways.

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New Anthem Words – Australia We Share

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[Published at Independent Australia]

The anachronistic words of our national anthem are finally getting a bit of attention. Denise McAvaney has done a good job on this site of laying out reasons why we should no longer grovel to Britain. She was triggered by Scott Morrison’s ridiculous and typically ill-informed rant demanding that all children should be forced to sing the current words. Denise also refers to Deborah Cheetham’s decision not to sing the anthem at the AFL grand final because she considers the words to be offensive to indigenous people. Susanna Duffy has posted some more thoughts and versions here. There may be others.

I was provoked a couple of years ago by an episode of the TV series Redfern Now, in which a young indigenous lad gets into trouble for refusing to sing the official anthem. I conceived the idea that we can just start writing new words.  Anyone can have a go, there need be no competition and no prize.  If a version catches on, then it might eventually replace the old words, by popular acclaim. So I wrote my own version, to kick the process along. It appears below.

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Revoke Tony Abbott’s Australian Citizenship

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[Just published at Independent Australia]

Some people have wondered why Europe did not close its borders before the recent incursion by known incendiarist Tony Abbott. A more pertinent question for us is why we would let him return to Australia.

Some have made a plausible case that Tony Abbott is a dual citizen of Britain and Australia. That, combined with his activities here and abroad, would seem eminently to qualify him for having his Australian citizenship revoked.

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Labor’s Twin Crises – Malcolm and Jeremy

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[Just published on Independent Australia]

150830sm_CorbynNo doubt the apparatchiks of the Australian Labor Party are currently very exercised with how to counter the Turnbull Coalition Government. It is now possible to conceive that Malcolm Turnbull could comfortably win the next Federal election. Or perhaps the Coalition will tear itself apart and Labor will coast in. In these early days no-one knows.

But the ALP would do well to focus also on a more profound challenge, one that may turn out to be existential. The personification of this challenge is Jeremy Corbyn, who recently won a landslide victory in a ballot of members and supporters for the leadership of the UK Labour Party.

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Why Corbyn is Right and Blair is Wrong

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Tony Blair, like a lot of mainstream people, is mystified why anyone would support Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the UK Labour Party, but then he’s mystified why anyone would think invading Iraq illegally based on a lie was stupid and wrong, so his views are not worth discussing.

The useful thing to discuss is whether it can be sensible to oppose austerity, and possibly some of the other ills of the modern world like rising inequality and social discord, and a feral and destructive financial system. Young Labourite Rosie Fletcher is right, this is not 1980, and a few things have become clearer since then, to those who will look.

For example, economic performance in the neoliberal era has never equalled the economic performance of the postwar mixed social-democratic economies.

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