Flip-Flop Tony

Making Sense Of Tony Abbott

One of the things that makes Tony Abbott's government seem terrible in one way (there are many) is the ideological baggage he has carried with him from Opposition into office. In particular has been this histrionic insistence that the Carbon 'Tax' was a terrible burden on the economy and how he has characterised its repeal as a great political victory - which dove tails with his statement that "Climate Change is Complete Crap". The Mining Tax gets a similar sort of, almost idiotic reduction of notions, right across the board where surpluses are categorically good and deficits are categorically bad, and coal is good and industries protected by tariffs are bad and so on. That there isn't a nuanced policy decision that can't be bludgeoned into stupidity with his ideological baggage.

However there is an entirely separate aspect to Tony Abbott's government and in particular Tony Abbott that gets missed is that he flip-flops pretty hard on all these ideologically charged policies. It is is as if he's dedicated to running these dreadful policies up the flagpole at least once, gauging how negatively the electorate responds, and if it's bad enough, he flip-flops away form the position. Case in point is the medicare co-payment that was one o the surprises in the May budget (which of course didn't pass), which he then backed down, only to spring on the $20 reduction for bulk billing, which he also then pulled when the furore reached a crescendo.

Abbott basically wants to hoe into Medicare and universal healthcare for largely ideological reasons - even though he tries to dress it up in fiscal terms - and he's made two runs at it; but in the face of electorate backlash, he's had to pull it both times. This is where we start to see a different kind of politician. Tony Abbott may indeed be a bigger opportunist with no particular beliefs than a committed ideologue. The record is in the public for us to see. Malcolm Turnbull has reported to us that Tony Abbott flip-flopped twice on climate change, going so far auto describe himself as a weathervane. Whatever the strengths of his political persona might be, contrary to the presentation, he's hardly the kind of politician you would call a man of conviction.

What is emerging instead is a man who is rather ad hoc about the issues as they come and how he deals with them; who is also a master at contorting himself into suiting the prevailing winds of public anger. Otherwise it is nigh impossible to make sense of politician who slammed the ALP government for 1 broken promise, but then proceeds to break a dozen of his own promises once in government, and further more flip-flops twice on a point of policy which wasn't even contested at the election only 16 months ago.

When you add it all up, you get the picture of a man who is so much more of an opportunist than any man of conviction. So much so that we might have to take his professed ideological hardline as something he adopted along the way to get ahead; and maybe he doesn't even have those as non-negotiable. He's just been bluffing us really hard into thinking they're non-negotiable.

Indeed, he might very well say anything at any given time on any given topic - and try to pass it off as policy. Which is exactly what he did when he was challenged about his accomplishment as the Minster for Women. It's pretty psychopathic - and perhaps unsurprising because it is more than likely our political process and system rewards a certain kind of - almost pathological - opportunism. In Tony Abbott's case, these traits are very pronounced, and it's getting harder by the day to push the thought out of one's head. More importantly, what we're seeing is a guy who is nowhere near as steadfast as he lets on.

The problem is, if there's one thing worse than a man of conviction with all the wrong convictions, it is a man who has no convictions but is willing to do and say anything to grasp for power and keep it. Australia is in deep trouble under this government which managed to deter investment in renewable energy so much so, there's been an 88% drop in investments into renewables in Australia. That minus 88% tells you this government is not only doing a crappy job of controlling emissions, it's deterring business. The play at ideological purity about not handing out welfare entitlements has amazingly resulted in car manufacturing retreating out of Australia. He's hurting his own constituency for what reason? We could put some positive light on such things if he was going somewhere with this, but all indications are that they are collateral damage in a massive game of bluff he's running on the populace. He's doing all this so we don't find out that the doesn't really believe any of it.

So, if you thought it was terrible living in an Australia run by a terrible conservative ideologue, think again. Because deep down, he seems to have no principles whatsoever.

Dogs Are Better People Than Politicians

Couldn't Keep Denying

It amazes me that the Abbott government keeps limping on being the way it is. Normally, being the host nation for something like APEC or the G-20 burnishes the standing of a nation, but somehow Tony Abbott and his miserable government managed to lower the standing of Australia, simply by being their climate-change-denying selves. At the end, Tony Abbott made a speech to the effect that all the governments represented at the G-20 wanted to do something about climate change. It hardly seemed plausible given the degree of resistance mounted and shown by the same government, during the lead up to the G-20 meeting. It sure was hard not to talk about something all these guests anted to talk about it.

I guess that's the nature of summit meets. The host nation doesn't really get to control the agenda if it isn't a nuclear superpower. Tony Abbott made Australia look like an adolescent who is in denial about having to do chores, on the international stage. I'm sure the world took notice. Now that China and America have decided to do something about climate change, then it also activated Clive Palmer and the PUP's agenda of keeping an ETS. Greg Hunt might think they've mothballed the thing but it might comeback from the dead sooner than people thought. After all, the problem with Direct Action is that it is not scaleable in the same way as the ETS. The more there is to cleanup, the better it would be to simply ramp up the ETS again, and be done with it.

No Cuts To Adelaide ABC? Then Don't Make Stupid Cuts

Chris Pyne, he of the Coalition Government that came to power promising not to make any cuts to the ABC and SBS but promptly started cutting as soon as they got in, started a Chang.Org petition to stop the ABC cutting the Adelaide production facility.
Let us now count the shades of stupid in this petition and petitioner.

1. He's a freaking minister of government. He's a lot closer the to the decision making than public petitioners and their petitions. 
2. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting $254million to the ABC budget.
3. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting that $254million in the face of the ABC asking them not to make such cuts.
4. The alarming hypocrisy of a minister of a government making largely gratuitous, political cuts, on alleged economic grounds (whether true or not) can't complain about such cuts affecting their electorate. 
5. Since when does Chris Pyne care about the ABC's production capacity anywhere? If he's going to start caring about that, maybe he should be looking into the plight of the Film & TV industries a lot more carefully?

Naturally we are underwhelmed. It would be a great shame if the Adelaide unit had to close because of the cuts. It would be a shame if any production facility had to close because of the cuts, because that's the very zero-sum game this government set up. You sort of wonder if these people have any actual brains.

Hooray For Jacqui Lambie (Can't Believe I Just Typed That)

Jacqui Lambie has been going rogue for a few weeks now, over the conditions of defence personnel and something to do with their Christmas bonuses. It has gotten to the point where to refuses to pass anything of the government unless they do as she says, which is to say, she's holding the government to ransom, all on her own-some. The early net effect of this ornery statesman-ship is that the ALP has corralled her into stiffing the Coalition's plans to water down the Future of Finance Advice changes.

This is no ordinary stiffing; this is being described as a "body blow" by the SMH, but more accurately, it's the moment when it has become untenable for the Coalition Government. To date, the Coalition Government has managed to get some of their idiotic plank of policy through the Senate thanks to Clive Palmer making deals with them. Only a couple weeks ago it looks like Palmer was the idiot in letting the Direct (In)Action policy through in time for the Brisbane G-20 summit. Yet now, the rogue PUP Senator is undoing done deals.

If it's bad enough that Joe Hockey's government hasn't been able to pass its awful-awful-awful budget, six months hence from its big debut, then the PUP disintegration ought to give them pause. This might be the moment where it forces the Coalition (the No-alition) to properly think about a Double Dissolution, because they ain't getting it done now. The earliest opportunity to vote out these drongos would be most welcome.

Direct (In)Action To Be Enacted

...And Al Gore Was Nowhere To Be Seen...

Oh brother. Clive Palmer and PUP have reached an agreement with Greg Hunt to pass the Coalition's bizarre policy of paying polluters to pollute, 'Direct Action'.

Direct Action, the key plank of which is a $2.55 billion fund that pays major polluters to reduce their emissions, is now set to become law, assuming independents Nick Xenophon and John Madigan also back the legislation. 

The breakthrough represents a major win for Mr Hunt and a step forward for the government, which has been without a carbon abatement policy since dumping Labor's carbon price in July. 

But to achieve it, it has had to embrace the possibility of a return to emissions trading scheme at some point in the future.

At a media conference late on Wednesday with Mr Palmer and CCA chair Bernie Fraser, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the government would restore funding to the authority, which would be "appropriately resourced" to conduct an 18 month inquiry. 

While Mr Hunt maintained that the government opposition to carbon pricing remained absolute, the government is now in the strange position of funding independent advice which may well recommend it does just that before the next election. 

A draft terms of reference, seen by Fairfax Media, shows the authority will be charged with investigating if and when Australia should implement an ETS, and what Australia's emissions reduction targets should be after 2020.

So Clive Palmer and PUP have offered a fig leaf for the Coalition, just in time for the G-20 meetings. No, we don't have a carbon price, but yes, we have this immensely cumbersome and white-anted policy called 'Direct Action' which is big government spending for dubious results. Very DLP. John Madigan will vote to support it. I would guess this works very well for the lobbying edifice of the energy sector because hey, it can be argued they get paid something for doing what they do best - keep polluting.

Despite Jacqui Lambe's far-right ethos of fining people for wearing religious garments, the Palmer United Party has put itself in the unlikely middle between outright climate change denial and having some kind of sensible policy. Unfortunately, they're not close enough to the sensible policy, but they are pushing for it. They've made the Coalition commit to another inquiry into the effectiveness of an Emissions Trading Scheme. 

Thus, the cycle of irony has gone full circle, possibly around some square peg-holes. Greg Hunt originally devised the Emissions Trading Scheme as mooted under the late years of the Howard Government, which Kevin Rudd cooped for the sake of convenience, and which Abbott and Hunt subsequently fought hard to brand a Carbon Tax and destroy. Now Greg Hunt has a chance to retrieve his original ETS from the mire of politics and look quite sensible. You wonder if the rest of the climate change denialist nutbars of the Coalition will let him. 

...but back to Clive Palmer for a moment. He and his party have somehow come up in the middle in the way that would have made the Democrats of old proud. You can almost hear Natasha Stott-Despoja squeal with joy at the deft manoeuvre. "Match-ia-vellian", she would've called it. Still, what exactly is the PUP platform that can pull Al Gore from a hat ("get into that, get into that!") and abolish Carbon Pricing, and then allow Direct Action to pass with a proviso to have an inquiry about an ETS? 

It helps to not really explain what the philosophical underpinnings of the party are, but it seems to be some kind of Whig-ist pragmatism mixed with hokey individualism and an avuncular populism. You could do worse. You could have no policy whatsoever on the issue of carbon emissions control. It is a kind of pragmatism to take a bad policy over no policy and promise to go investigate (again) a better policy. That, actually looks so much like actual politics. Natasha and Match-ia-Velli would approve!

I hate to say this but the Greens have so far dealt themselves out of the equation on the singularly most important issue on the environmental agenda. That can't be good. They might be the rising third force in Australian politics, but because they're too far to the left, it won't change the agenda in a meaningful way at all. It may transpire that the partnership they had with the Gillard Government in a hung Parliament was the high point of their electoral support, because as of now, you have to wonder how they're going to contribute in a meaningful way if the Palmer United Party can just put this deal together and make the whole party obsolete. 

Besides which it's not as if they managed to pull Al Gore out of a hat. 

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.

Torpedo Clive

Sinking Abbott's Boats

If yesterday was eventful and humiliating for the Coalition government, then today must have been a gourmet meal built around a shit sandwich from Clive Palmer. Essentially, the Palmer United Party thwarted the government's third attempt to repeal the Carbon Tax.

The Pulse during the day made for interesting reading as things went awry for the Abbott Government. Reading the entires it seems really clear that the Coalition promised to word it in a particular way, and then in classic sophist-fashion, welshed on the deal by changing the wording which got the ire of Clive Palmer.

Late in the day Pleiades gave me a heads up about how Clive Palmer was on 702 later in the afternoon, talking to Richard Glover. The interesting thing is that Palmer says he was double-crossed by the Coalition in the wording and so he simply wouldn't support the Carbon Tax repeal bill that was so important to the Coalition. He then went onto say he won't support the co-payment to doctors, and h would rather cut the 45billion off the NBN, 20billion off the Paid Parental Leave being proposed, and 37billion dollars ear-marked for Japanese submarines, than have the Co-Payment.

Here's an interesting article on the day's proceedings from Tony Wright. Tony Abbott has a huge problem on his hands and he can't control it. He can now call a double dissolution but his polls are so dire he dare not. What threadbare preposterous notions the Coalition might have had as policy is being torn asunder. It's well-deserved, but it's going to cripple his government. He's not going to be able to game Clive Palmer out of the game quickly.

Pleiades had an interesting observation. He thinks Clive Palmer probably sees the end of coal fire and fossil fuels around the globe and wants to get into renewables; but to do so, he wants there to be a market for him to function within and that means retaining the outlines for an ETS. From that angle you can begin to understand the how and why of his road to Damascus conversion on an ETS and not removing the emissions target. In any case, things are only going to get more interesting for the Abbott Government. The inability of the Coalition to negotiate anything is starting to look like a major stumbling block in them getting their policies through.

News That's Fit To Punt - 10/Dec/2013

I've had an abominamble month with computers and mobile phones and cars. Retired is my trusty 2009 Quadcore Mac Tower, replaced by a Mac Mini that runs 50% faster and is much more quiet. While it was inevitable, and the Mac Mini is a place-holder until I sort myself out for the new Mac Pro, the phone thing and the transferring data and account thing and the car thing has made it nearly impossible to blog.

So... I'm back. And I don't have a whole lot to say except nyah-nyah to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Their Bed Of Roses

One of the weirder spectacles of the last federal election of course was the endorsement handed out to Tony Abbot by the Fairfax group (excepting the Age in Melbourne who rightly saw the NBN as the deal breaker), led by the Sydney Morning Herald. It was as if the editor of the paper hadn't bothered reading their own paper and proceeded to hand undeserved accolades to Tony Abbott on the grounds of stability. Well, we know how that went, and in less than 100days since taking office Tony Abbott and his Coalition government has squandered its electoral goodwill, and not for once has the editor of the SMH complained about his government's performance.

In that light the joy that keeps giving is the sight of the SMH editorial that lambasts the Abbott Government for their shortfalls, pitfalls and pratfalls.

The Herald believes Abbott has a mandate to scrap the tax but doing so will have virtually no impact on Australia's economic future and leave it with an untested alternative. It is a symptom of a larger problem.

Abbott was a successful opposition leader, adept at knocking down but not rebuilding; criticising but not explaining. Now he is struggling to find - let alone create - a core vision for the nation beyond dispensing with Labor's legacy.

Making matters worse, Abbott's strategy before the election was to defuse contentious policy challenges by promising them away or pledging to seek a mandate first.

I don't know about you, but I have to tell you it's quite unseemly that the editor of the SMH has to write an editorial like this, having vigorously endorsed the said purpose-less Prime Minister on the way in. The truth of it, as it was on election day and before, Tony Abbott was always going to bring in a duplicitous, mendacious, largely ideological, backward looking pack of cultural dinosaurs into office. To that end he exercised immense duplicity, mendacity, ideological gobbledegook, and retrograde sloganeering to get into office. All of us with any power of observation (and reading - for we learned this from news sites) could have told the editor this was the case, and this load of duplicity, mendacity, ideological obtuseness and obscurantist fascism would not translate well into being a fit and proper government. If there is any thing to be gleaned from all this, I will say this: that this Abbott government will one day be thrown out with equal parts bad faith and bad science, and their names destroyed by this duplicity, mendacity and fascism. As Abraham Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people, all of the time. And fool you once, shame on them, but fool you twice... you probably voted for John Howard in '98.

It's only been 3months but it's already getting old beating up on the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald who *foolishly* - yes ever so retarded-ly - backed Tony Abbott on election day. Yes, you sir, remain a fool.

Speaking Of Which, That NBN Thingy!

In case you missed it, the NBN is going to be able to deliver world class speed of up to 1GBps by the end of this year. We're talking 3 weeks.

Australians linked to the national broadband network will be able to get world-leading internet download speeds of one gigabit per second by the end of this year, the company building the network will announce on Friday.

While some countries such as Japan are moving even further ahead with 2Gbps connections, Australia's coming 1Gbps capability is the same speed as Google's cutting edge fibre network in several US cities.

An entire movie could be pulled down in several seconds using the service, which is about 100 times faster than the average speeds offered by ADSL connections. But most people would not see the true benefit of 1Gbps for another 10 years, when households would have multiple rooms streaming super high definition video from the internet, according to Professor Rod Tucker, director of the institute for a broadband-enabled society at the University of Melbourne.

"The average person who does regular internet activities is probably not going to notice much difference today,'' Professor Tucker said. ''Where I think it will make a difference is in small businesses.''

Independent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said right now only about 5 per cent of people, mainly small businesses, would be able to make use of the increased speed.

The wholesale price for the 1Gbps service will be $150 a month, though retailers will add a margin to this. NBN Co will also launch two other high speed services - 250Mbps and 500 Mbps - by December.

The scary thing is that Coalition Government still want to hobble this great infrastructure project because it's allegedly a waste. The single biggest beneficiaries will be the tech sector followed by other assorted small businesses, but no, Tony Abbott wants to slow this down and saddle it with the truly pathetic Telstra copper network.

Telstra has never revealed how much it spends maintaining the network each year and its own descriptions of the life span range from three to 100 years.

The state of the customer access network, as it is known, directly affects the cost and speed of implementing the proposed fibre-to-the-node network because unusable sections of copper must be repaired or replaced with fibre.

Fault rates have increased in the past seven years from about 13 per cent in 2006-07 to 18 per cent, or 1 million faults, in 2011-12, according to figures published by the communications regulator.

However, a spokesman for the expected incoming communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said copper maintenance costs were not cited by any telco in the world as a reason to replace wires with a full fibre network, and the most common cause of faults was accidental digging through phone lines.

''In areas where the [network] is deployed using fibre to the node, the most error-prone parts of the copper - the large bundles running between nodes and exchanges - will be replaced by fibre,'' he said.

Which does not really give you a whole lot of encouragement about where the Coalition sees this as going. It's like we have a government that is hell bent on fucking up the most important infrastructure project going. Of course this bunch want to be known as Infrastructure mavens but they mean concrete-pouring for more roads. It's worse than pathetic, it's totally misguided.

Whither Double Dissolution?

Pleiades sent in this interesting entry. Actually he's been sending me lots of interesting things but this one is probably most relevant.

So why is this all a problem for Tony Abbott?

Today’s Newspoll, published in The Australian, shows a rapid cooling of the relationship between voters and the Coalition government. Newspoll shows that based on 2013 preference flows (in the House of Representatives), an election today would return a Bill Shorten Labor government, 52 per cent to 48 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.

Most commentators believe the Tony Abbott/Christopher Pyne mishandling of the Gonski reforms is to blame, but the flare-ups with Indonesia and China can’t have helped.

There is also a strong whiff of cooked-books coming from Treasurer Hockey’s office – the $8.8 billion he shovelled into the Reserve Bank of Australia’s capital reserves was widely criticised as a way to blow out the budget now, to look good later.

So if a Western Australian election is held before the new Senate sits on July 1, there could be some very large swings, and major re-routing of preferences.

That translates into a scenario where the Carbon Tax repeal gets rejected before the new Senate comes in; followed by a new election for the Senate in WA, resulting in another Senate that the Coalition does not control; which would knock out the Carbon Tax repeal and give Tony Abbott his card for a double dissolution except it's likely Abbott's electoral support would be less than ideal to contest an election. At that point it would be a choice between going to the polls to try and get that mandate or giving up on the biggest thing they promised when they went in.

Goes to show that the brand of crash-or-crash-through brand of politics deployed by Abbott has the interesting side effect that it destroys the institutional support that might have come to you had you not behaved like a bull in a china shop. Life is, if nothing else, interesting.