View From The Couch - 10/Feb/2017

When Satire Lands A Punch

Donald Trump has rightfully earned himself a lot of satirical blows. What's funny about President Trump is that he's no different to the Donald Trump on 'the Apprentice', which is to say he's just carried his reality TV persona into the White House, and leaks suggest he is fuming that people are able tome fun of him so mercilessly. His hapless advisor Kellyanne Conway has been a faux-pas machine blessing the world with such notions as 'alternative facts' and a totally imaginary 'Bowling Green Massacre'. Then there is his Press Secretary Sean Spicer who just can't land on the truth.

The novelty news of he week has been just how good Melissa McCarthy's take down of Spicer has been (and it really was spot on as well as hilarious) and Spicer meekly offered that perhaps the Saturday night Live crew were being mean. This is was sort of funny coming form the administration that went out of its way to be mean to women and muslims in the first ten days, so it was a bit rich.

All of this got me thinking a bit because I've been watching 'Designated Survivor' on Netflix and truth be told, they who plays the Press Secretary in that show looks ten times more competent than Sean Spicer. Actually, Kiefer Sutherland's accidental President looks to be ten times more competent than the Donald, and both men are having problems filling positions in their administration, even if it is for totally different reasons (I won't spoil it).

What's interesting about the real life chaos in the White House is that after watching 'West Wing', 'House of Cards' and 'Designated Survivor', most people would have a better idea of how to go about presenting for an administration. Clearly that's not the case with these people, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway. To the extent that politics is a kind of theatre, then what we are seeing is a long-running Broadway show in the Obama Administration giving way to an underground variety theatre troupe, sort of trying things out as they go along. As State Actors go, they're terrible talent. Even with Donald Trump's experience with all the camera hogging he's done in all his life, he's actually not really anywhere near a good a talent as Alec Baldwin who is crucifying him. Melissa McCarthy is far more talented than Sean Spicer, and as for Conway, well...

A picture tells a thousand words. She shot her own credibility and all she has as comparison is Beavis.

The last time the SNL crew got it so well was when Tina Fey did her Sarah Palin back in 2008, and again, what was at play was just what an amateur talent Palin was, next to a consummate professional camera talent as Fey. This doesn't mean politicians ought to go to acting school or that - god forbid - more actors should be drafted into politics. It's just that the capacity for well-executed satire to demolish the pretensions of a politician resides in the gap of camera talent. It also explains the fact that the reason Reagan can be revered by so many Republicans is that at the end of the day, Reagan too was a great camera talent despite his track record as a B-Movie actor. The phrase 'B-Movie Actor' probably disparaged and undersold his genuine strengths as camera talent.

It's a peculiar problem of American Democracy because Americans value public speaking so much and so many of their good orators put across dodgy arguments with great presence and presentation. The very nature of charismatic leadership lends it self to image-over-substance and so it is understandable that a reality TV star beats out a field of bad camera talent, as Donald Trump did. It also means the whole system is susceptible to a talent like Donald Trump to short circuit proper discourse and shoehorn himself in to the White House - which is the big irony in all of this stuff. Therefore, as hard as it is to believe, Trump's still okay talent, but he needs to straighten out his act a lot if he wants be taken seriously.

If one casts one's mind back to recent Australian politics, we can see a parallel in the rise of Kevin Rudd, who basically built a demographic support out of a TV audience which over-rode the political considerations. The fact that he was reasonably equipped to tackle the job of leader and then Prime Minister might have been a tangential aspect to his leadership. What really fuelled his rise to theta was in fact his stint as pundit on a morning breakfast show. Similarly, the rise of WTE Joe Hockey to Worst Treasure EVER was facilitated by the very same show appearing opposite Rudd.

That being said, the leader Trump resembles most in the Australian landscape is of course Tony Abbott. Both men stand firm on the side of denying climate change is real, and both men entered their office as the most unpopular incoming leader. It took two years before the Liberal Party felt compelled to remove their leader in TonyAbbott, so we'll see just how long the US Republicans can tolerate the irrational, temperamental, unstable leadership style of Donald Trump.

All this is to say, it's really interesting to find out what an Administration is made of when a satirical punch lands as hard as Melissa McCarthy's turn as Sean Spicer.

News That's Fit To Punt - 05/Aug/2016

BOE Set Interest Rates At Lowest Rates Ever

We live in interesting times. If you see things that are once in a generation, then live long enough you might see it twice. There are people who presumably experienced the Great Depression firsthand, and are now experiencing the GFC audits aftermath. Yet, even they would never have witnessed the Bank of England settler interest rates this low.  That would be because it's the lowest 322 years.

The central bank's Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to lower its benchmark interest rate to 0.25 per cent, the lowest level in the bank's 322 years. The rate had been at 0.5 per cent since March 2009.

further this year, but he ruled out the possibility of negative interest rates. The committee's next meeting is set for November.

The bank also said that it would introduce a series of additional measures to support the economy, predicting that there would be little growth in the second half of this year and that economic growth would decline sharply next year compared with its earlier forecast for 2017.

What we're seeing, is the Bank of England moving to the point where it no longer has any means of adding stimulus to a moribund economy.  

The Bank of Japan has been doing this for over 20years. There's a whole generation of people in Japan who grew up under low interest rates and low inflation that they cannot imagine a world with 6%-8% interest rates and 5-9% inflation. You wouldn't be saying it too loud, but it appears the British economy has entered a similar twilight zone where no amount of interest rate cutting and stimulus spending can reflate the economy. 

It's a strange state of affairs, when you think about it. The central banks are virtually giving money away to banks so they can lend into capital investment. The place where most of the money ends up is in fixed assets, namely housing, and businesses just hoard cash instead. The consumer expects prices to drop in the future so they too hold on to cash; and together they form an environment where demand is low. The rest of the heartache and sorrow, about which you know, so I won't go into it today. I just thought it was worth noting that if you see an institution doing something it hasn't in 322years, you're seeing something very extraordinary; something they'll be talking about in a thousand years' time.

The question I want answered is how do we get to the other side of this malaise without wars and revolutions and killing each other? Because that's what usually happened in the past. 

About Those Jobs In America That Were Lost To Free Trade

I caught this during the week and it's an interesting little article because it shows we might be overstating the extent to which globalisation is eating up manufacturing jobs. If you go through to the Op Ed it is citing, you get this:

The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has indeed been in a long decline since the late 1970s, but that disguises the true story of American manufacturing. Nostalgia for a bygone era blinds politicians and voters alike to the reality of a revitalized sector of the American economy that is thriving in a global market.

American factories and American workers are making a greater volume of stuff than ever — high-tech, high-value products that are competitive in markets around the world. In the last 20 years, which include enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, real, inflation-adjusted U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40%. Annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion.

What has changed in recent decades is what our factories produce. Americans today make fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables than we did 30 years ago. Instead, America’s 21stcentury manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment. 

We produce more manufacturing value with fewer employees than in years past because today’s workers are so much more productive. They are better educated, equipped with more sophisticated capital machinery and turn out more valuable products than their parents’ generation. And as a result they are better paid, with total manufacturing payrolls rising during the last decade even as the number of workers declined.

The article in a nutshell says it's technological progress that has eaten the jobs, not trade. I'd imagine that this is true in Australia as well. There are good trade deals and bad ones (like theTPP they keep trying to pass), but in most part the economy has had rational players when it comes to manufacturing goods. 

I've had a number of discussions with people about this very phenomenon. It has been argued by empirical economists in the past that technological development does not kill jobs, it more than creates more jobs. That when the car came about, the horse-drawn buggy makers went out of business but lots of people found employment making cars; and so when the Australian automotive industry closes, those people will inevitably find employment in areas of higher technology. It makes sense that this has happened, but it seems unlikely that re-training auto-manufacturing workers into high tech workers of unspecified industries is the same as retraining buggy makers into auto-manufacturing workers. 

Similarly, the past performance is no predictor of future performance, and so we cannot simply subscribe to the view that it will happen again because it happened before. The implication being derived out of the empirical numbers, seem to be technological progress is happening in such as way as to cut the rate at which future jobs are created. We're now on the incline where each new development will likely destroy more job than they create, which is a new phenomenon.

The Rudd Revenge Is Just Beginning

Here we go!

"What I don't respect is, having pursued this campaign for United Nations secretary-general for such a long period of time in abso­lute good faith, to then see that good faith dishonoured and trust broken,"Mr Rudd told The Australian.

Arguing he had no interest in pursuing a "quixotic venture", Mr Rudd claimed his continued campaign to be the next secretary-general was based on assurances and underlying assumptions of support from both the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop.

For his part, Mr Turnbull has again insisted that he told his predecessor that it was a decision for cabinet and warned him in May that the chances of his nomination going ahead were not good.

Oh, I dunno what to say. This Parliament hasn't even sat yet and they've managed to make a problem out of a trifle.

News That's Fit To Punt - 01/Aug/2016

The Rudd Rejection

It's already a fiasco, but this business of the Coalition Government not nominating Kevin Rudd to run for Ban-Ki Moon's office of Secretary General of the UN is already spinning wayward.

Kevin Rudd says he was told he had Malcolm Turnbull's strong support for his bid for the top job at the United Nations before the Prime Minister suddenly reneged on that commitment, according to private letters from Mr Rudd to Mr Turnbull, obtained by Fairfax Media.

In an explosive new development in the aftermath of the Turnbull government's official rejection of Mr Rudd's request for endorsement to run for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Rudd has released letters, which, while only showing one side, suggest that agreements had been reached to support the Rudd bid, but that this support was suddenly withdrawn on May 1, just days before the election was called.

This is quite awkward.
Over the weekend, Peter Garrett was heard this first concert since returning to being a vocalist, that the world dodged a bullet when Malcolm Turnbull refused to back Kevin Rudd as a candidate. It's a bit cruel but I guess there's no love lost between Rudd and Garrett*.

It's not exactly a great move by Turnbull. Now he'll have a vindictive Rudd on his case and god only knows how that will play out. After all Kevin Rudd can be a spectacular media tart and if he signs up for something like Sunrise again to prefer his political opinions on a regular basis, it mightn't be long before he will actively say things to sway public opinion against the government. Rudd was always going to be better for everybody concerned, outside of Australia.

Anyway, Pleiades tells me this won't be the end of it because Rudd doesn't know how to quit. Not only that he has significant recourse with his international friends. Dr. Geoff Raby has an article in the AFR today that illustrates possible path back for Kevin Rudd. If the election/selection for the UN Secretary General does not conclude before the US election and if Hillary Clinton should win,therein every chance that a President Hillary Clinton might back Kevin Rudd for the job. At which point it's going to be an uneasy phone call for Malcolm Turnbull.

In a matrix of fifty-fifty coil flips, there's a 25% chance Turnbull doesn't have to revisit this issue, 50% chance that the issue remains irrelevant, but a 25% chance that he's going to have to eat crow.   That 25% however is looming larger when you think through the fact that the next Secretary General is being selected in sync with the next US President. The US will moe than likely delay the selection until after the election, and that Donald Trump is (for al his blather) unelectable. That means there is a great probability Malcolm Turnbull will be asked to revise this topic.


* - As a side note, I've been pondering for long time why as a fellow leftist Peter Garrett's stance on things have bothered me over the years. My old working theory was that he was a prat, but that seemed too simplistic. The most accurate representation of his position might be that he is a regressive leftist. Once you understand that about Peter Garrett, the rest of it is rather easy to decode. 

One Seat Majority

The last seat in the Lower House fell to the ALP, which means the Coalition have only a seat majority. One would surmise then that Malcolm Turnbull has no margin for error.

No Coalition MP will be able to cross the floor. Even an abstention would force the Speaker to cast a tie-break vote, creating the appearance of party weakness. Coalition discipline will need to be watertight. 

2212`1`12Coalition figures have been fond of saying that a narrow majority will enforce its own discipline. That's true in the sense that it forces the party to stick together like glue. But on whose terms will it stick together? 

Mr Turnbull's challenge of managing his right flank becomes that bit harder because the handful of lower house MPs who might actually take the rare step of defying party discipline at the point of voting in Parliament will need to be placated down to the last man or woman. 

Those passionate outliers within the party will be empowered by knowing Mr Turnbull cannot afford to lose a single vote.

Well... one would imagine that's a two way street. If the fringy-crazy want to threaten to cross the floor, it would be over a policy that the ALP may actually want, and would a fringy-crazy rightwing nut job MP want to cross the floor just to spite their moderate PM? There can't be that many bills that satisfy both the ALP and the Greens and the fringy-crazy right wing of the Coalition. Not even Bob Katter would cross the floor to do that. It's hard to image that fringy-crazy rightwing MP of the Coalition would be going that far as well, no matter how unhappy they are with Malcolm Turnbull.  

Of course Bob Katter's not happy Malcolm Turnbull hobbled Katter's friend Kevin Rudd's aspirations so maybe therein a scenario where Bob Katter crosses the floor (Katter's already signalled he's not going with the ABCC legislation).

Didn't Last The Week

In the last post I pointed out how untenable the Royal Commission that was announced was, having Brian Martin heading up the Royal Commission, and surely enough he's resigned.

Former Supreme Court judge Brian Martin has resigned as the head of the royal commission into the NT juvenile detention just days after being appointed. 

His replacements have been announced as former Queensland Supreme Court judge Margaret White and, following calls for an Indigenous co-commissioner, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda.

Citing the need for public and stakeholder confidence in the joint Commonwealth-NT inquiry, Mr Martin said that criticisms of him had been "disingenuous" and ill-informed.
"However, notwithstanding the nature of the commentary, it has become apparent that, rightly or wrongly, in this role I would not have the full confidence of sections of the Indigenous community which has a vital interest in this inquiry," he told media in Canberra.

As teens like to say, "sure, whatevs". You have to love people putting up defences of their positions that fly in the face of reality. If it were exactly as he said it was, he wouldn't be quoting, would he? Both things cannot stand and one thing we know for sure is he's not doing this Royal Commission any more. You can't put a man in charge to investigate himself.

The Downside Of Identity Politics

Here's something about a statue going up in Ashfield.

It's the peace statue that is dividing Korean and Japanese community groups, with legal threats issued to a church minister and complaints escalated as high as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. 

At the centre of the dispute is a statue commemorating the "comfort women" of World War II - the women and girls who were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese troops - which has been imported from Korea by a local Korean community group.

The group - called the Peace Statue Establishing Committee - plans to unveil the statue, which they describe as a "peace monument", at a traditional welcoming ceremony to be held at the Korean Community Hall in Croydon Park on Saturday. 

The statue, which cost $35,000 and was donated by a Korean benefactor, is about 1.5 metres high and depicts a Korean comfort woman sitting beside an empty chair, as a symbol of the victims who have since died.

And so it is that we come to the Comfort Women issue, exploding on the streets of Sydney. Really, we ought to ask, should this issue be played out in Australia? Should it be played out in Sydney?

Now, this statue was meant for Strathfield but was soundly beaten back by a presentation by the Japanese community. The main plank of the rebuttal, so to speak, was that there actually is no mythical girl who was forcibly taken away by the Japanese Army to be a sex slave prostitute. Except this is accepted as fact thanks to the Yoshida Testimony of 1982, as published in Asahi Shimbun. Since then there has been much research on this area to corroborate the Yoshida Testimony, and nobody has been able to corroborate any of it. There has even been a US Senate enquiry into it and the the US Senate recognised that there was no truth to the Yoshida Testimony. Seiji Yoshida himself made statements before his death to the effect that he had made it all up.

Last August Asahi Shimbun finally retracted the Testimony as false, which has led to a class action against Asahi Shimbun for insisting on its provenance for 34 years, providing ammunition for the claims that the comfort women were forcibly taken away by the Japanese government orders. It's been such effective bullshit that people in the west are refusing to give up that talking point, now that Asahi Shimbun has retracted the claim. The new of its retraction and what it means has been very slow in getting around the globe.

So yes, the statue is inflammatory. That's the whole point. It's primarily being put there to offend while proclaiming peace and remembrance or whatever. The people who want to put it up want to do so to stick it to Japan over stuff that happened in World War II. The people who don't want it put up are fed up with South Korea trying to stick it to Japan for an apology and an extra pay out.

Except as of 28th December 2015, there has been a new apology and an agreement to pay the claimants. The terms of the agreement stipulate several things including, this is the last discussion to be had on the topic of comfort women, their recompense, their status and as a bargaining point between South Korea and Japan. Part of the agreement was for the government of South Korea to work with the activist group to remove the original statue placed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Now, it should be noted that it is against international convention to stick a protest statue in front of another country's embassy, regardless of the cause. We don't do it, the Americans don't do it, nobody in Europe or Africa or the Subcontinent does it, Japan certainly does not do it in retaliation, not even Israel does it to the German embassy.

If the agreement of 28th December 2015 is to stand, the South Korean government has to remove the original of the statue. That's what they agreed and signed upon, and eight months later they're yet to do it. It is therefore in incredibly bad faith (and bad taste) to be sticking a replica of that very same statue in the streets of Sydney proclaiming it to be an act of peace. It's extremely disingenuous of this Reverend Bill Crews to be talking about apologies an peace.

Be that as it may, it should be asked of the Korean community if an equivalent statue ought to be erected in tribute to the Vietnamese comfort women the South Korean Army procured for itself during the Vietnam War.

During the Vietnam War (late 1960’s – early 1970’s) South Korea sent troops to Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam free from communism. It was reported later that many South Korean troops raped Vietnamese women and committed atrocities such as massacring farmers and aged people, and many others were forced into working as prostitutes for the South Korean soldiers. Many of these women would then later become pregnant and after these mixed Korean-Vietnamese children were born they were shunned by Vietnamese society and their soldier fathers returned to South Korea never to be seen or heard from again. The plight of these women was lost to history and not discussed until the late 1990’s when many of the victims began to speak out against the Vietnam and South Korean governments and demand recognition and compensation. To date the South Korean government has done little to acknowledge the issue but has continued to pursue further financial compensation from Japan for their own comfort women survivors and some say that their actions have become hypocritical and they are using the issue as their own political tool. In fact, South Korea orchestrated with Korean-American’s politically-driven campaign in the U.S. continent against Japan.

Yes, that's right.

I'd be okay with the statue going up in Ashfield if the Korean Community acknowledge what their troops did in Vietnam and build a plaque next to it, mentioning it. I doubt they would - it's all about bullshit nationalist fervour. So unfortunately for the Reverend Bill Crews, there's not much moral high ground going around there.

It's kind of pathetic people are still fighting over this terrain, seventy-one years after the conclusion of World War II, but that's what happens when identity politics is given full rein. 

View From The Couch - 26/Jul/2016

Runaway Trump

Since confirming his nomination as GOP nominee for the POTUS elections, the critiques, the attacks and brickbats have mounted against Donald Trump. It's game on for everybody to have a hack.

First cab off the rank was Michael Moore who pessimistically prognosticated a Trump win.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this! 

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small planeaccidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!” 

Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.

It's not a happy thought, and he's right in assuming we're all in denial that this is going on.

The more urgent hit came from the Washington Post, famous as the home of the guys who brought down Richard Nixon. This time it appears they're not taking any chances.

DONALD J. TRUMP, until now a Republican problem, thisweek became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew. 

Any one of these characteristics would be disqualifying; together, they make Mr. Trump a peril. We recognize that this is not the usual moment to make such a statement. In an ordinary election year, we would acknowledge the Republican nominee, move on to the Democratic convention and spend the following months, like other voters, evaluating the candidates’ performance in debates, on the stump and in position papers. This year we will follow the campaign as always, offering honest views on all the candidates. But we cannot salute the Republican nominee or pretend that we might endorse him this fall. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.

And on it goes, right down to the end where they say:

The party’s failure of judgment leaves the nation’s future where it belongs, in the hands of voters. Many Americans do not like either candidate this year . We have criticized the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the past and will do so again when warranted. But we do not believe that she (or the Libertarian and Green party candidates, for that matter) represents a threat to the Constitution. Mr. Trump is a unique and present danger.

Look, I don't know about you, but the candidacy of Donald Trump and the surprising Brexit vote and even the election of Tony Abbott indicates a world where democracy seems to have one to mean much less than it used to. We seem to be voting in favour of less tolerant less meaningful, less nuanced, less informed, less intelligent positions in spite of ourselves. A little like how we seem to like to cut off our noses to spite our own faces or cut off our dicks to spite our balls. We should know better than to be voting in the likes of Abbott or Turnbull, or listening to demagogues lie Farage, Gove and Boris Johnson, or for that matter making one Donald J. Trump a serious candidate for the Presidency of the most powerful nation on the planet on nothing but a promise to make that land great again (whatevertjhe hell that means). There are a lot of asshole voters giving into their inner fascist assholes in the first world.
I don't exactly relate to that mentality.

In that light, it is perhaps valuable to assay the catastrophes of the past that we as humans inflicted upon ourselves.

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world. 

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.” 

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape. 

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a minor European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people. 

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

It makes for some sobering reading. The rest of it is no less somber and sobering. History tells us we're heading in for some self-destructive times. We'd better take note.

Meanwhile The Arseholes We Have Down Here

It's no secret Kevin Rudd wants to be the Secretary General of the UN. He has two problems on that front. One is that the Australian government hats officially endorse him as the Australian candidate. The other is that Helen Clarke is also running. While none of this is fresh news, the Australian Government has prevaricated mightily over Kevin Rudd's candidacy. In short, they don't want to give him the nod in cabinet. Why? Partisan politics.

Except John Key over in New Zealand's quite happy to endorse Helen Clark, who was the NZ Labour Prime Minister.

Mr Key, who hails from the conservative National Party in New Zealand, is barracking hard for his former Labour party rival Ms Clark to become the UN Secretary-General.
It marks a curious contrast with his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, still struggling to decide whether his government will do the same for Mr Rudd. 

Mr Key also revealed he had spoken to Mr Turnbull about the race and was quizzed about whether he'd asked him not to support Mr Rudd. 

"I've had a couple of chats with him about it," Mr Key told breakfast television in New Zealand, but was coy about details. 

"All I'd say is if any person wants to be in the race, be in the race … You've got to get either your host country, preferably, or a country, to nominate you. At the moment, he [Mr Rudd] doesn't have a country nominating him. 

"I still think anyway, if it's a drag race between Kevin Rudd and Helen Clark, New Zealanders - and I reckon a hell of a lot of Australians - know who the best candidate is, and it's not Kevin Rudd."

It's all bit academic really, because the man in the lead is Antonio Guterres from Portugal. All the same, it's worth pointing out that Kevin Rudd was quite nice to departing Coalition politicians. The least they could do is return the damn favour. The fact that they don't immediately say yes says tons about these people. 

IOC Takes A Stand Against Doping And Passes The Buck

Nobody really has spine. 

It seemed a mere formality that the entire Russian team would be rubbed out, saving the Olympics any more of the embarrassment that the host city keeps heaping on itself with incomplete facilities. 

There was an expectation – not a mere desire – that Russia would be excluded.
Instead, the Olympic Committee's executive board has displayed the type of leadership that allows doping to flourish: it passes the buck and instructs individual sporting federations to decide which Russian athletes can compete in Rio. 

In other words, it has been left to sporting federations to wade through a legal minefield … in 12 days. 

Some of these sporting federations are loyal to Russia and the bottomless money it provides. Some are too scared. Some are complicit to doping themselves, turning a blind eye to the poison in their own sport and yes, cycling, we are looking at you. 

The IOC has had an appalling bet each-way. Foremost, it is a slap in the face for WADA, which has again been undermined. 

"WADA is disappointed that the IOC did not heed WADA's Executive Committee recommendations that were based on the outcomes of the McLaren investigation and would have ensured a straight-forward, strong and harmonised approach," WADA president Sir Craig Reedie said. "The McLaren Report exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russia that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code." 

That's not a few rogue athletes. That's not even a rogue sport. That's a rogue country. If the same happened here, we'd be calling for Royal Commissions, lifetime bans and jail time for those responsible.

Oh the outrage blahblahblah. As I asked - rhetorically - in my previous entry, are we done with this PED hysteria yet? We really need a new approach to the problem especially if the body that allegedly is in most favour of the current method of shaming athletes and banning them, won't back itself to carry out its policies. Go figure.  

We live in a world where haters are gonna hate and cheaters are gonna cheat. It's just the way it goes when sport is anachronistically wrapped up in nationalism of 200-odd nations,some of whom have no shot at any medal, but more importantly some of whom whose national pride depends upon it. Like Russia and Australia. The dumbest thing about the Olympics is how somebody from some nation wins a gold medal and the whole nation gets to thump their chest over that win. This idiotic bit of identification is bolstered by nationalist sentiment and misplaced identity politics. These are really 19th century kinds of modes of thinking, unbecoming of the 21st century. Yet here we are again at another Olympic Games ready urge our boys and girls on to medals. 

Go you beautiful Aussies as you swim through the raw sewerage waters of Rio! Do we relate to this experience? Really?  

'The Killing Season' - Episode 3

To The End, The Chaos

Aye Carumba, as Bart Simpson would say. Episode 3 puts us into the tumultuous 3 years of Julia Gillard's turn at the Prime Minister's chair and finishes with the election defeat. As with the previous episodes, it feels like too close to be called history as the heat from it being news is all too familiar.

Perhaps this is part of the Big Now where everything is in some way significant, but it leaves you feeling numb to realise that the ALP coughed up a big lead over personality issues. It is on the whole, unreal and unbelievable. Our disbelief marks us out as neophytes, the unwashed, and outsiders in the arena of parliamentary politics. Clearly we knew so little and have little to do or to say or give.

What's Interesting About This Episode

This was simply devastating to watch right down to the end. People have said some rather extreme things about Kevin Rudd but I don't find him that hard to understand. He's logical and principled and what you see is what you get. He's not perfect, he's not the saviour, but he's there for the greater good. When he was Prime Minister he was there for all Australians. Over the years I have been told how warm and friendly Julia Gillard is, but I actually find her mentation a lot harder to understand. I have to commit to political expediency as the guiding ruler understand why she would do or say the things she would. And yet it's not like she didn't have principles and she had much discipline.

Still, watching this episode was even more traumatic than the previous 2 episodes. Kevin Rudd is essentially self-conscious to a fault while Julia Gillard seems to be unaware of the extent she kids herself when she prevaricates. When she chooses to characterise things, she is far less convincing than Kevin Rudd, and Rudd to his demerit, does not characterise things enough. They may be two of the least insightful leaders from the ALP in a long time. It's funny because they're both clearly intelligent and educated, but insight into themselves seem somehow faulty. Mark Latham seems to possess more insight into his own character than these two, and we thought he was nuts and unworthy.

As long time readers know, I never warmed to the Julia Gillard Prime Ministership. What happened with the 2010 Rudd removal was too drastic and shocking for me to ever get over and then embrace the new Prime Minister. What it did was highlight how little control we had over the political process, and just how much the parties run on the cult personality and take our votes hostage. When Julia Gillard tells us her time in office started with a shadow over it and it only got darker, it highlights the fact that she's trying to ignore the deed that got her into office having any currency as a problem. You really shouldn't try to talk about accidents you caused in the third person.

Lessons In Power

In watching it, one thing becomes very clear. Julia Gillard should have been ruthless and forced Rudd right out of Parliament. As long as he remained, everything that happened was inevitable. The problem of courses was that she couldn't buy out his career, and there was not enough political capital anywhere to buy out Kevin Rudd's career. And so he stayed. Which is like one of those Bond movie bits where the villain's got James Bond strapped to a death machine, spills his beans on the dastardly plot to take over the world and walks away without killing James Bond. She really didn't finish the job she started. And as long as Kevin Rudd was politically alive, he was always going to come back.

The fact that Julia Gillard didn't have this simple insight alone tells you a few things. She didn't really think through what would happen in the event she knifed a Prime Minister in his first term, and a very popular one at that, and she didn't seem to have the insight that if the shoes were reversed, she would be the one doing the come back. In fact if there's one thing that could be said about Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister, it would be that she didn't seem to have a hell of a lot of insight into the minds people who voted for the ALP in the Kevin '07 campaign. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe it was a blind spot, it's really hard to tell and we may never know. But it translated as being tone-deaf to the electorate.

Then again, former Senator Mark Bishop observes that she was miscast as the leader.

Albo Made Me Cry

There was a moment in March 2011 when there was the first spill to try and bring back Kevin Rudd, and Anthony Albanese pleaded for unity. It was busting him up that the ALP had come to such straits.  Holding back tears he fronted the microphones and pled. Seeing that footage again just broke me. It was pure grief.

But then it made me think, "who are these people making Albo cry? Who are these people in Parliament moving these machinations?"

They're the first beneficiaries of Whitlam's free tertiary education. They are that generation who got the free tertiary education and did with it whatever they could - and they made it parliament. It wasn't a birthright, it was serendipitous that it fell on their laps; and now they're milking it for what it's worth, damn the country, the future generations, the budget bottom line or any kind of integrity. They're grubs.

You Missed The Bit That Pissed Me Off, Sarah Ferguson

It's a very simple thing if you are not a union member but support the broad Left. In this country, if you can't go with the radical idealism of the Greens, then you have to find your place with the ALP. If the ALP tells you, we're putting union concerns ahead of your concerns - your 'social democrat' ones - then you are deprived of a political platform that represents you. Now, I might not agree with Kevin Rudd's do-gooder Christianity-tinged ethos on a personal level, but in all his time as leader and PM, I never felt like the ALP somehow didn't represent my broadly Left-y position. Julia Gillard set about narrowing what the ALP stood for, to the point she was telling us proudly she is not a leader of a 'social democratic' Party.

Gillard sold us out. She told me and my friends who are educated and progressive, and who broadly support her cause, to fuck off. And while I'd never vote for the Tories, she wonders why the middle ground never came back.

Alan Jones & Tony Abbott

Years ago I met a producer who was worried what would happen to an Australia where right wing shock jocks ruled the airwaves with their extraordinary rants. At the time it seemed a little too sensitive to the carping of people who were exercising their right to freedom of expression. Nonetheless it is abundantly clear that years of this kind of hateful bilge from the likes of Alan Jones has infected our democracy to the point where sensible dialogue does not find traction, and instead we get slogans and obtuse rhetoric.

The destruction of nuance and meaning in our polity by the likes of Alan Jones directly led to the rise of Tony Abbott, who can only be described as an utter disaster as Prime Minister. Now, Alan Jones might console himself by saying that he was a kingmaker, but what is the point of installing a functional imbecile as the Prime Minister of this land?

The poisonous slogans and rhetoric that emanated from Alan Jones and his kind has for worse and worser and worst-est, destroyed the political discourse in this country. It is shameful that Alan Jones still has a job and keeps doing it. It is shameful that the Prime Minister of this land takes his cues from the likes of Alan Jones.

Shameful and vile, is what all this is.

It's All Over Now

It's all a little quaint now that we've adjusted to the daily horrors of an Abbott Government. Right up to the last minute of Kevin Rudd's first Prime Ministership, there was a semblance of intelligent discussion about policy and where our nation was going to go. Julia Gillard did try to keep it going, but in the face o the monolithic negativity and feigned-stupidity that marked Tony Abbott's time as Opposition Leader, it never really survived.

Today, I have been reduced to just laughing every time somebody tells me the latest study thing Tony Abbott has said or done. The short answer is, on some level we have no control over any aspect of this stuff. Our democracy only offers us a delusion that our votes count, our opinions matter, facts trump opinions, that our democratic ideals are somehow intact. The fact is, Tony Abbott's government goes to show everyday how venal and menial our existence is, how much our political classes disrespect us, how little integrity there is going in Canberra, how close we are to an authoritarian state where things get decided by decree and not proper discussion.

There are days where I blame Rudd and Gillard for what transpired that brought us to this place. Then again, it might just be a reflection of just how dumb the population has become, and was inevitable that we would come to this point in time. We may marvel yet at Rudd and Gillard in future years - it becomes more likely the longer we are forced to live under the rule of these tories.

Quick Shots - 23/Jun/2015

Good Heavens Is That You?

The Sydney Morning Herald now wants to campaign for action on climate change. Unfortunately it reinforces the notion that Darren Goodsir is a moron.

Human-induced climate change is real. The risks of inaction are real and mounting.
The Herald today offers an opportunity to be part of something special - the climate for change. Our aim is to help Australians reconnect with the urgency of acting, by seeing how our nation is contributing more than our fair share to the problem but also how our best minds and businesses are hunting for solutions. 

We can all support them and do our bit. But fine intentions will mean nothing if our leaders do not do more. And that, ultimately, is up to us all.
The time is 2015 - not 2009 when the world split over how to tackle global warming; when the then prime minister Kevin Rudd was caught out and retreated; and when climate sceptic Tony Abbott swooped to defeat Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal leadership. 

It's not 2012 or 2013 when Labor's shenanigans and the carbon tax made it impossible to have a reasoned climate debate; when the climate sceptics capitalised and gained disproportionate sway with their boutique views. 

It is 2015. The overwhelming evidence is that the Earth is warming and will heat further without concerted action. The Australian Alps, the Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Strait Islands will be affected regardless of adaption strategies. Rising sea levels will threaten some of your homes and contribute to more extreme weather events. Higher carbon dioxide levels will even reduce proteins in wheat and change the sort of bread you eat.

If they were going to get so worried about the climate, why in the nine hells of stupidities would they back Tony Abbott at the last election? Seems utterly self-defeating to me. As for this business of 2009, well, more on that in a moment.

If you want picture on what the world might look like food wise, here's something really scary from Lloyds.

The ability of the global food system to achieve food security is under significant pressure.

Global demand for food is on the rise, driven by unprecedented growth in the world’s population and widespread shifts in consumption patterns as countries develop. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that global agricultural production will need to more than double by 2050 to close the gap between food supply and demand.1 As this chronic pressure increases, the food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to acute shocks.

There is a pressing need to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the impacts of an extreme shock to the food supply.

Sudden disruptions to the supply chain could reduce the global food supply and trigger a spike in food prices, leading to substantial knock-on effects for businesses and societies. The food system’s existing vulnerability
to systemic shocks is being exacerbated by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation, and heightening political instability.

Lloyd’s commissioned the development of a scenario of extreme shock to global food production in order to explore the implications for insurance and risk.

Experts in the field of food security and the economics of sustainable development were asked
to develop a scenario describing a plausible, relatively severe production shock affecting multiple agricultural commodities and regions, and to describe the cascade of events that could result.

The systemic production shock to the world’s staple food crops described in the scenario generates widespread economic, political and social impacts.

There are uncertainties in the scenario, arising from the difficulty of obtaining key data, the applicability of historical data to modern food trade networks,
and the uncertainty surrounding future impacts of climate change. However, the scenario provides a robust tool to allow these uncertainties to be explored, and to begin to think about the possible implications of a global food shock for the insurance industry.

It's actually grim reading inside. So yes, take that!

Climate Change Retribution

According to 'the Killing Season' episode 2, Kevin Rudd was there the earliest and was the last to leave in Copenhagen 2009, working and hoping for a climate change deal. It never happened. In that moment in history, the Prime Minister of Australia was the most progressive leader in the world, trying to get a deal done. The failure to do so led to his demise; and in the subsequent flip-flopping and backstabbing and argy-bargy, led to a Carbon Tax which was then repealed by our current idiot-in-chief Prime Minister.

It strikes me as odd that we are in this situation where we've gone from the most progressive to the most regressive, but what annoys me more is when other countries get self-righteous about this situation. Tony Abbott is known as the wrecker of the climate according to our Nobel laureate Peter Doherty. Yes it does reflect badly upon us.

Nonetheless if there is something that needs to be said, it is this: the country that expended the most political capital in trying to reduce emissions was Australia, and the politician who gave their political life to that cause was Kevin Rudd. Dare I say, the progressives of Australia lost out big in Copenhagen in 2009.

If the world thinks so highly of itself and its engagement with the issue, why wasn't there a deal in 2009? If the world reviles Tony Abbott now, well, frankly they got what they deserved. I take delight in their suffering. If they're discovering only now just how much was riding on an agreement in 2009, well, I say stiff shit. It's too late now. Sometimes too late is just too late.

Because As Mrs. Gump Said, Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Peter Hartcher is now pleading with Tony Abbott to do something about climate change.

Abbott and his ministers are being guided by two opposing influences.
One is international movement. This is accelerating rapidly in the direction of solving the problem. 

Illustration: John Shakespeare 

In just a few months, the global debate has gone from cutting carbon emissions to "decarbonising" altogether, as the Group of Seven rich democracies illustrated with its June 8 communique.

Australian public opinion has been moving in the same direction, as the Lowy Institute poll last week revealed. 

The other is the right wing of Abbott's party. This refuses, still, to admit that there is a problem to be solved. 

Abbott himself mightn't hold deep personal conviction on this. In opposition, he said that he was a "weathervane" on climate change. 

But, as Malcolm Turnbull said after losing the leadership to Abbott: "The fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming." 

Most of them have not gone away; many were promoted into Abbott's cabinet.

Thus Tony Abbott will do as little as possible.

'Storytelling In The Digital Age'

I went to this forum chaired by none other than my favourite whipping post Darren Goodsir. He was up on stage with some other luminaries of the SMH, but did most of the speaking. It struck me that these people were way too much in awe of themselves. They wear a nice suit, but gee, that was a really shallow talk.

The audience was predominantly white with greying hair, if they had hair at all. A lot of rhetorical questions were asked and in response got largely mundane answers. Nothing controversial was uttered all night long. I wanted to ask Darren Goodsir whether the NBN was an asset to the digital storytelling, and if so, why did he support the worse candidate with the worse NBN offering? Of course, I never got the damn microphone.

'The Killing Season - Episode 2'

We Really Lived Through That?

If there's one thing tougher than living through the tumult of the Rudd to Gillard change over and seeing it happen (and having no control over it, as with most things in politics), is having to relive the emotions of it all in this documentary series. I think it's a very valuable account by those who were there as participants and witnesses and perhaps it will serve as a lesson to the future.

The agony of watching the CPRS put on hold, watching Rudd's support fail and having Julia Gillard suddenly emerge as the Prime Minister was one of the greatest horror sequences of the ALP's time in government. It's hard to believe these people managed to forget what got them into government and pissed both the climate change issue and their Prime Minister down the toilet.

I'm sorry Ms. Gillard, but you don't come up smelling of roses when you swim in that toilet. As for Kevin Rudd himself, he hasn't really changed my mind about him. He was a populist PM, but he did have the big picture right. We were incredibly lucky to have had him at that time.

What's Interesting About This Episode

The number of people who contradict Julia Gillard's account is mounting. Sarah Ferguson has said she believes both Rudd and Gillard lied to her in the interviews, but as far as the headcount goes, quite a number of people are disputing her version of events. And she looks quite shifty in the interviewee's chair. Maybe Kevin Rudd was always a better media performer, but nobody except Julia Gillard is seriously contradicting his account. If indeed both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are lying, that's one thing; what we're seeing is that Kevin Rudd might tell little lies to smooth over difficulties and problems whereas Julia Gillard tells big lies to coverup her tracks.

Worse still, Wayne Swan was hardly the honest broker as Gillard went and white-ant-ed Rudd's Prime Ministership from her position as his deputy. The Removal was fomented on the backbench by first-timer rookie MPs, and the cabinet ministers were either on-lookers or unaware until it happened. It's quite insane when you think about that. A bunch of rookie MPs scuttled the very Prime Minister whose popularity brought them to power and at the first sign of trouble, they panicked. Nobody seems to have thought ahead to what that would look like and how it would play out in the electorate.  The colossal stupidity of it is breathtaking.

Which brings us to Tony Burke who comes across as this big doofus who let the whole thing roll into action. Whatever his reasons and his latter-day rationalisations, it is clear he totally ignored the contra-indicators and fairly historic reasons why you should not roll a Prime Minister in his first term. As such, he deserves his place in ALP history as one of its villains. Not that anybody's saying out loud, but yes, he did a damnable thing in fomenting the challenge. He should never be allowed to live that down.

We're Hostage To The Cult Of Personality

There's no other explanation for the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd in the eyes of the public as well as the Caucus. The ALP needed a man who could get its message out to the public. Once they put him in as Prime Minister they were constrained by the fact that he exercised power. As idiotic sit seems, the ALP clearly couldn't handle the conditions of victory any more than they could handle the condition of defeat in Opposition. Mark Bishop offers up a picture of how the various Senators started panicking at the polls while Tony Burke started spreading the word that Gillard should replace Rudd.

For all the high-minded talk about policy from Kevin Rudd, it's unbelievable that all these other politicians went about the business of replacing Rudd out of a sense of grievance against the persona. i.e., it wasn't a policy thing at all. At one point Julia Gillard starts psycho-analysing Kevin Rudd to justify her sabotage efforts and well... it drove me to drink I tell you.

Both Gillard and Swan let all the talk fester and pretended it wasn't going on and kept it from Rudd. The only person who conveyed to Kevin Rudd there was trouble brewing was Albanese. Justifiably, Rudd has not forgiven either Swan or Gillard. Seeing that the both of them presided over the election that brought about a hung Parliament and the subsequent government followed by the Abbot government, they have a lot to answer for. It makes it worse to think that Gillard wanted to ride through it with the 'First Female Prime Minister' branding as if this was going to negate the issues of how she came to power. As it turned out, the electorate was not interested in her gender, they were interested in the fact that she just rolled a popular PM, and in a most negative way.

Bitar, Arbib, Howes

Paul Keating referred to the Senate as unrepresentative swill. In the case Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib, he was right. What Paul Howes - who is not an MP, not an elected official in any government - had to do with any of this and why they needed his consent remains a kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink mystery.

The most objectionable of the lot remains Mark Arbib who brought his NSW Right faction bullshit to Canberra and promptly applied the machinations (addition, it's called Mark Arbib, addition. Not 'calculus') he used to usher in the likes of Iemma, Reece, Keneally in quick succession in NSW with the help of the likes of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Yes, the stench of foul Morbid Obeidity stretches all the way into the Rudd Removal as it does to so many other things.

It goes to show that there is a great problem with the nature of party politics and the upper houses, and how people are chosen to preside there. If you had a normal street view of things and life, there's no way you give that kind power to the likes of Bitar and Arbib. Somehow, they happened to have it, and exercised it against the will of the people.

Careerist Politicians

It used to be the case that people had careers in other things before they went into politics. Now, they seem to go straight into the business of politics as soon as they are able to, after finishing school or university. Being in office is kind a bonanza - a winning lottery ticket - that attracts all kinds of ambitious people, but it can also be seen from this series that they might be the wrong people.

It's hard to like the Nationals and Liberal Party in this country. The Nationals are old school fascists while the Liberal Party at this point in time seems like a Neo-Fascist party. The Greens at the other end of the spectrum appear to be just as mercenary and self-serving as the Nats and Libs. The worst thing about all this is that the whole lot of hem are careerists trying to look after their butts. It's despicable. And that includes the ALP in the ostensible 'middle'.

The light at the top of the hill is clearly only there to attract the worst moths in our society.

The Limits Of Holding Power

I might have pointed out this before but the modern ALP Prime Minister has a short time in power with the exception of Bob Hawke. For all this talk about the glory of the Hawke-Keating years, the second part where Paul Keating was PM only went four and a bit years. He won the incredible 'This is the Sweetest of Victories' '93 election, but from there, he only had 1 term. Whitlam was really only in power for 3 years. The same goes to Kevin Rudd and now Julia Gillard.

So if there is a pattern emerging, it is that the ALP has structural issues where it can't keep its Prime Ministers in power for long. This lay dormant through the Hawke years exactly because Hawke was an expert peacemaker and the ALP was still shocked from the events of 1975, nobody dare rock the boat. Perhaps the events of the late 2000s and early 2010's will be remembered as so shocking that the next ALP Prime Minister will be able to stitch together a long consensus based stay.

If this doco is anything to go by, it shows that there are simply too many factions and people who can destabilise even the most popular of Prime Ministers, and that they are none too wise about the consequences of doing so. The fact that the Removal was organised from the backbench and the cabinet were last to know indicates that a bunch of novices got way ahead of themselves simply because they could; but when they got what they thought they wanted in Gillard, they spent the next 3 years wondering why the electorate was in a punishing mood.

The worst aspect in all of this is that there are echoes of Bill Hayden's time as Opposition Leader in Bill Shorten already.

Hate Tony Abbott Coming To Power? Blame The Greens

I forgot how in the fray the Greens scuttled the CPRS because wasn't sufficiently pure for their liking. Given the opportunity to do something for the environment and nothing but grandstand, they clearly chose the latter. Then they held the Gillard government hostage and put in the carbon pricing which was more pure to their liking but saddled Gillard with a broken election promise.

In a roundabout way and then a direct way, all of that combined led to the Tony Abbott Government of today - and we know how environmentally un-friendly they are. Way to go stupid Greens, way to go! I'd forgotten just how odious the Greens were in this time. If you want proof that the Greens are just as careerist and self-righteous hypocrites, their actions during the Rudd and Gillard governments tells you plenty.

*ugh*.

'The Killing Season - Episode 1'

The 'Phantom Menace' Of Australian Politics

Earlier in the week it was reported that all the TV stations rejected a TV drama series based on Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership, a project that had Rachel Griffith attached. The TV stations all rejected it because basically Julia Gillard was still hated. I laughed when I read that because we all know it was low polls hat eventually brought her Prime Ministership to an end. 27% support at the end of 27  straight losing polls would do it to you; so maybe there is some truth there.

In any case, the ABC doing a documentary on the Rudd-Gilard-Rudd years was exactly the kind of thing I didn't want to watch. After all, I don't think I've ever endured as much trauma at the hands of the ALP at another time in my voting life, and I hoped not to be subjected to the same teeth-grindingly-awful sequence of events so soon. All the same, it has been 9 years since Rudd and Gillard took over from Kim Beazley and 8 years from Rudd's victory over the Howard Government. It might just be the right time to reflect on what once was and could have been.

And let's face it, for all the turmoil of those years, it was still a much better government than the daily farce presented to us by Abbott, Hockey & co.

Whats's Good About It

As long time readers know, I was in fact down on the ALP and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard when they deposed Kim Beazley. John Howard had been in power for a good part of a decade and stinking up the joint while the ALP in the wilderness of opposition were doing a fine impersonation of the Coalition in their wilderness years. So it's good to be reminded of just what Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister. He was indeed formidable as he was prescient on the GFC, and he was the right man at the right time.

What's Bad About It

It's in such a rush to tell the story leading up to Julia Gillard's coup, it glosses over some really important details about the unfolding GFC. it also glosses over just who some of these players were beyond their job titles. Some time is spent on the Godwin Grech affair, which was one of those awful things that ultimately had very little to do with Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan and just about everything to do with showing us why Malcolm Turnbull was a terrible alternative Prime Minister.

What's Interesting About It

It is the battle for posterity and my gut reaction to finding out about this series was "for the love God, please - both of you shut the fuck up and go away and leave us in peace!" That being said, once you start watching it, it does bring back memories of things and events that seem so distant now. The GFC really was terrifying. It still is terrifying; but back in 2007 and 2008, it looked like financial Armageddon was going to consume the planet.

The documentary goes some distance in explaining just how out of the ordinary Kevin Rudd was as an ALP politician. He didn't come up through the traditional Union ranks and he was also the right man at the right time even for the ALP to lead them to an election win. The ALP had gone through most of the Howard years recovering from the '96 election loss and reeling from the leadership failures of Simon Crean and Mark Latham; and without any meaningful direction or policy ideas worth spit, had fallen back on the caretaker Kim Beazley, and were going to lose again.

They really needed new policies, a fresh face, they needed a new direction, and had they been brave enough they might have settled on Julia Gillard right there and then. The reasons they didn't probably highlight the sign of the times more than anything else. The ALP of that era probably didn't want to go to the polls with a female leader against John Howard and taken extra punishment for gender politics, and they didn't really believe they were in any kind of winning shape in 2006. they sure didn't look like it.

I went back and did a quick scan of my own blog here and I can attest to the fact that all ALP supporters were deep in a funk, so picking the seeming populist in Rudd and pairing him up with the party apparatchik in Gllard made some kind of weird sense. What the doco goes on to show is that Julia Gillard saw herself as the person of destiny - Kevin Rudd turning up was a spanner in the works for her. And so the seed of the eventual destruction was sown right there at the beginning in the unholy alliance of expediency and need.

Still, all this machination and party-politicking seems quaint next to the monstrous stupidity of the Abbott Government. In trying to escape the horror circus of the ALP this decade, our electorate voted in the greater horror that is the Abbott Government. Just don't ask me how subsequent governments are going to repair this damage.

Horrible Bosses

Kevin Rudd's reputation as a boss was in tatters. It may still well be the case, and it comes down to this business of the kitchen cabinet "gang of four" and the urgencies and demands that the events made on the government. Ken Henry who was Treasury Secretary says in this doco that the cabinet process would not have been able to deal with the GFC. These were indeed extraordinary times. If Climate change was the moral challenge of a generation, the GFC was a once a century financial challenge that had to be dealt with and put to rest.

What's struck me as odd through out the latter part of Rudd's year as Prime Minister was just who was spreading this notion that Rudd was too chaotic, and how they were making a comparison.
Who was leaking? You can eliminate Rudd from the 4, and Lindsay Tanner who retired shortly after the period could not have a motive to be doing it. Wayne Swan was the Treasurer and neck deep in the GFC questions and by Julia Gillard's own reckoning she was going down to Swan's office to bitch about Rudd's style. By her own words she was destabilising Rudd in the same language that was used to bury him.

Even as events were unfolding it was hard to believe that the ALP would roll their own PM in the first term - especially one who was so popular for so long - and then run out an argument that he was a horrible boss. Naturally, the argument never really stuck with the electorate and Julia Gillard deservingly was hung by that rope.

Just A Side Note On Conservatives And Moral Fortitude

It was pretty galling to be reminded of the whole Godwin Grech saga. Like some evil Gollum from the dungeon caverns underneath Treasury came upon this land a blighted man of much negative charisma and visibly distorted persona with a fake email to bring about the complete humiliation of Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition leader. It was bad because it was stupid; and yet Malcolm Turnbull was willing to be that stupid because he believed so strongly that Gordon Grech had some kind of moral fibre as a whistleblower when there has been no such bone in the conservatives of this nation, all the way back to mother Britain.

The really strange thing is that after the Grech-fake-email-debacle, Malcolm Turnbull hung on as Opposition Leader despite an 18% support rating in the polls. The Liberal Party really didn't think they could do better than Malcolm Turnbull who basically humiliated himself with the chasm that was his "lack of judgment" (as described by Paul Keating). But when the topic got to carbon pricing and introducing the ETS, that was different, the Liberal Party and its climate change deniers erupted into an open rebellion and managed to put Tony Abbott in as their leader.

And Australian politics has been in a state of lobotomised moron-ry ever since. It's like our political leaders cannot talk about anything in sensible ways because Tony Abbott single-handedly destroyed all nuanced discussion of anything and everything by turning all topics into into three word slogans.  We've been dragged down to the abyss of unfathomable, intolerable, execrable stupidity by our very own political leaders.

Which just goes to show that for all this talk of morality and moral fortitude that conservatives love to bandy about, they're just as likely to excuse themselves and their friends of any unconscionable acts and keep pretending they have some kind of high ground in the morality stakes. If you could ever build a moral argument out of economics, then surely Kevin Rudd saving Australia from the GFC-induced recession was a much more high-minded act than the subsequent carping about deficits that the Liberals and Nationals have done. The brazen hypocrisy of the conservatives in this country - who undoubtedly benefited greatly from Kevin Rudd saving their bacons as well, for they had more to lose - essentially captures the intellectual bankruptcy of the government that today exults in winding back renewable energy in this country.

Comedy In The Making

All You Need Is The Canned Laughter

We would say, "this stuff writes itself" when we find a good vein of comedy gold. I've been saying this for a few days now since Tony Abbott knighted HRH Phil husband of Royal Betty II. The ridicule and the disarray in the Liberal ranks, while unseen to us on the streets, has been enough to hit the front pages every day with a juicy bit of morsel.

Although it did get me thinking a bit, as to what Buckingham Palace might have made of Tony Abbott handing out a gong to Prince Philip. The problem is that having fought so hard against Republicanism in Australia, he put Republicanism right back on the map by drawing attention to the Royals in Australian political life. One would (and could) well imagine this might have prompted a phone call to Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove from the Palace, asking him just what in the name of all that is good, is going on Down Under.

The short reply might be that we Australians have elected themselves a brain-damaged entity who is doing some crazy shit in the driver's seat of government. And the Palace may well tell Sir Peter to sort it out. Not wanting to be a second Kerr, Sir Peter himself might be working the phones of the Liberals to remove Tony Abbott.

I jest.
Although Peter Hatcher is not kidding when he says the ray of light for Abbott is that he has no immediate rival.

Still, when you read that the Liberal backbenchers have appealed to Mal Brough to raise his hand in a spill because Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull have said no, you get the feeling that the Liberal Party is possibly in some kind of rush to remove Tony Abbott, and anybody will do. Right now, more than the electorate itself, they want to vote for "Not-Tony-Abbott". The cabinet minsters are allegedly circling the wagons but if you are a backbencher in a marginal seat, every bit of errata generated by Tony Abbott would be votes being driven away from your name. You'd get pretty nervous and right now there maybe even more nervous-nelly-Liberals in Queensland, following on from Victoria.

Yes, the other blowhard idiot from the right, Campbell Newman is getting voted out tonight. He's even going to lose his seat, much like John Howard did. You'd think this phenomenon would lend itself to the vision of a one-term-only Coalition Government in Canberra. The seeming success of the 2013 election was in fact no kind of success at all except the Steven Bradbury variety. The Liberal backbenchers in marginal seats are right to be very antsy. Tony Abbott is giving them nothing but turd balls to take back to their electorates as the fruits of their labour.

It's all deliriously funny. I am now getting an insight into how the Liberals must have felt between 2010 and 2013 as the ALP underwent its civil war between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and kept getting smashed the polls. The delightful titter of Schadenfreude, the poisonous laugh of the cynic, the ticklish mirth of watching the misfortunes of the other, are all here in plain sight. It must've been a wonderful laugh for them and that totally blinded them to the fact that in reality Tony Abbott was a terrible candidate to be pushing as leader and then Prime Minister.  If there's one thing worse than a politician that is full of bullshit, it is a politician who believes his own bullshit and acts accordingly regardless of consequences. That's their man Tony to a tee.

They say History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then comedy. I think we're watching is the funniest show in Australian politics right now. It's the 'House of Larfs'. Where's the canned laughter?

Will It Never End?

No, Really, Is This The Way We'll Be Forever?

When I cast my mind back to the events that led to Kevin Rudd's Removal, I'm led back to the chain of events involving the ETS. In late 2009, the ALP Government worked hard to get an agreement at Copenhagen, and of course that fell to bits. In the wake of Copenhagen ending up in smithereens without an agreement in sight, it suddenly put into sharp focus the likelihood that Australia was going to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme that was tailored for a world in which there had been an agreement in Copenhagen. And this whole fiasco triggered the sequence of events culminating in The Removal (I'm putting in caps so we can understand it like we understand The Dismissal).

In short, Julia Gillard - a good union stalwart that she is - opposed the ETS. It was too soon in her opinion and best buried. So on her advice, and Wayne Swan's advice, Kevin Rudd postponed it indefinitely to the never-never. This led to his polls collapsing. Then he tried to jump start his polls by doing the mining tax and that led to a mining industry backlash campaign, which further damaged his standings in the poll. And so it was time to do a bit of damage control, remove Kevin Rudd, soothe the public, and go to an election to shore up the ALP position. Of course we know what happened then: Julia Gillard campaigned on not having an ETS or a Carbon Price and ended up with a hung Parliament. To form government, she then had to do a fateful backflip and team up with the Greens who made it conditional to have a Carbon price followed by an ETS.

Consequently any time she claimed the carbon price was a good thing, she sort of looked like a real wally because it was difficult to imagine a person who fought and politicked against it twice - knifing a Prime Minister in the process - going on to sell something she clearly didn't put as great an emphasis upon, unlike the man who said it was the greatest moral challenge of our time. Yes, the very same PM she knifed. Power-hungry psychopath he may have been; a chaotic screaming control-freak he might have been; but at least he clearly wanted to do the ETS and do it right.

During the Gillard years I often got asked by ALP supporters why I still wanted Kevin Rudd to come back and I had to explain the above from scratch, each and every time. Put simply, Rudd was the guy who was willing to do the right thing. Gillard was the party hack that made sure it didn't happen until it became incumbent upon her to make it happen. You see, she's never been a conviction politician as far as the track record tells you. She's been an apparatchik, stayed an apparatchik, and her Prime Minster-ship was marked by moments she declared her position very much like an elevated apparatchik. ("I am not a social democrat."- great one, lady, just great!)

It's all water under the bridge now because Clive Palmer helped Tony Abbott get what he wanted, by repealing the carbon 'tax', which also involved a circus double act involving Al Gore of all people.(My head still spins when I think of that moment) Thus, one would think that all of this is so far in the rear view mirror of Australian politics except Julia Gillard is now trying to sell a book about all this form her point of view. No wonder she's been in the headlines a lot in the last week.

Why would she want to sell a book now? She's made for life, she's never going to starve or want for anything material. It's only been a year since she's been ousted. Why now? Why the money grab now? Is she dying of cancer? Is she migrating to England or somewhere, leaving us all behind? The last thing we need right now is a detailed rendition of her account in print. Really - we need that like we need a hole in our heads.

Naturally, Kevin Rudd thinks her account is fiction. It's fair to say he is being provoked.

On Wednesday, Mr Rudd fired back at the woman who knifed him politically and took over the nation's top political job in June, 2010. 

"Consistent with the past, Mr Rudd has no substantive comment to make on Ms Gillard's latest contribution to Australian fiction," Mr Rudd said through a spokesman. "The Australian people have long reached their own conclusions about Ms Gillard's relationship with the truth – from the coup to the carbon tax." 

"They have also reached their own conclusions on Ms Gillard's continuing efforts to reconstruct a justification after the event for her actions in June 2010 by trying to dress up personal political ambition as some higher purpose for the party and the government."  

Mr Rudd's former deputy prime minister, Anthony Albanese, moved to shut down discussion about the damaging political split that ultimately cost Labor government after just six years, during a National Press Club speech on Wednesday. 

"People have their critics but the fact is that Julia Gillard is a friend of mine, she remains a friend of mine; Kevin Rudd is a friend of mine, he remains a friend of mine. I'm about looking towards the future," he said. "If the entire caucus was concentrating on the needs of the Labor government rather than internals every day then I might be here without shadow before my portfolio."

At this point I want the both of them to fade back into history instead of trying to get their version out. It doesn't matter any more. Between the both of them, they managed to screw the pooch.  The both of them need to make a sanguine appraisal of that bit of history and their lousy part in it. We, on the other hand, have the immensely ugly and hopelessly difficult task of living under the utterly insane Abbott Government - a disaster they played great part in ushering in.

This Must Be The Week For Ex-PMs Airing Grievances

Dear John Howard... You Can STFU Too

If Julia Gillard offering up her analysis about her time in government wasn't painful enough yesterday, today we have the wretched John Howard offering up some spuds of stupidity and onions of opinions.

The first spud of stupidity is that he says he's 'embarrassed' about the WMDs not being there in Iraq. This is interesting because a lot of people died and got maimed for that mistake. John Howard insists the intelligence said in forceful language that the WMDs were there. I seem to recall at the time, Collin Powell was telling us that if we looked at the photographs closely enough, we could almost imagine there being WMDs on the ground.

Andrew Wilkie who once had to become a whistleblower on this very subject came forth and slammed John Howard saying he should be ashamed. This was peculiar. The man says he's embarrassed - presumably that's shameful enough. I mean, I don't rely get the political nuance difference between being embarrassed and being ashamed, that would some how "un-fuck the goat". I guess John Howard wants us to know that he didn't lie - because he's still wanting to be 'Honest John'. Well, thanks John Howard you're still racist prick in my books. Which brings me to this other bit:

Yes, just as I predicted there would be throng coming forth to slam multiculturalism in the wake of the arrests over the ISOR terrorists the other day, John Howard chose this moment to say he "wasn't a fan of the doctrine of multiculturalism".  John Howard then goes on to say he doesn't believe in culture, he believes in races and people coming here to assimilate.

He also weighed back into multiculturalism. Howard in the 1980s was a trenchant public critic of multiculturalism and argued for a reduction in Asian immigration. He later recanted the position on reducing Asian immigration. 

“I’m not an overwhelming fan of the doctrine of multiculturalism, I believe in multi-racialism, I believe in bringing people from different races, different religions to this country but once you’re here, you’ve got to become part of the mainstream of the community,” he said. “I think over the years we’ve dropped off a bit too much.” 

On Sunday night he argued now was not the time to debate the level of immigration from the Middle East - but he remained critical of the term multiculturalism. 

“I think it’s a confusing term, what does it mean? It means different things to different people” he said. Howard contended we needed to “try harder” to integrate communities of different ethnicity into Australian society.

Which is to say, he's a racist and an unreconstructed colonialist bully - which we already knew but there he is again flying the flag for all the racist dingbat boys and girls to go riot in Cronulla. Way to go John, now wrap yourself in a flag and choke.

He even had something negative to say about Julia Gillard's big shining international moment, 'The Misgyny Speech'.

“I thought that was nonsense … the idea that Tony Abbott is anti-women is ridiculous,” he said. Howard said that type of posturing discouraged women from entering politics when more are needed in the parliament, though he said it should not be through quotas. He said Gillard’s speech “did not resonate” with women he knew. 

Note, "women" he "knew". I rest my case.
The fact that he wanted comment on it in that way spoke volumes about why he had to go and be consigned to history's dust bin. Except I thought this was self-evident in 1987, so I don't know why it took another 20 years for Australia to be finally done with him.

While he was in a mood to diss people and things left, right, and centre, he decided to tell us that Peter Costello didn't have the ticker to take over as Prime Minister. Well, thanks for that non-history lesson John Howard, we surmised that when Peter Costello pulled up stumps in a petulant frenzy and quit politics after that 2007 election.

No, really. With a cavalcade of wretched excuses for mistakes and insults for both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, it was an interview we really didn't need. if they really want a say in all this, they should've stayed and fought on. It's the worst kind of commentary in a democracy.

And Then There's Bob Carr

Bob Carr wasn't happy that Julia Gillard said he was lazy.

Bob Carr has suggested Julia Gillard's claim that he was a "lazy" foreign minister for Labor could be payback for his decision to switch his support to her leadership rival Kevin Rudd before the 2013 federal election. 

And Mr Carr has denied admitting that he struggled to keep up with the demands of modern politics because he was more settled into his retirement than he realised.

What do you do? What are we to make of this? Bob Carr isn't exactly somebody who acquitted themselves very well in the last ALP Government. If anything, he's one of those people who should be copping it sweet and slinking off to enjoy his bountiful retirement cheques courtesy of the taxpayer. All of these people, John Howard, Bob Carr, Julia Gillard, need to shut the fuck up and get out of our faces.

I can't think of another time in the last 30years where politics equalled such misery-making. If you go back 40, I guess you get The Dismissal. This, is just The Dismal.