Federal Election Night 2022

And It Finally Ended

Jeez. It took 9 years but this government of miscreants that started with the Idiot Abbott, is finally put out to pasture. Now that he is headed for the door, Scomo sure was a weird Prime Minister, as much as Malcolm Turnbull sandwiched in-between was redundant. It's hard to believe such a government went 3 terms, as clearly it was in turmoil as it had 3 Prime Ministers in 3 terms. That's weird too. 

The rise of the 'teal' candidacy is probably a historic inevitability given how far to the right the Liberals swung and left urbane ideas behind. A bunch of highly educated professional women with Liberal Party pedigrees running as independents in deeply entrenched inner city Liberal seats obviously did the trick. The Sydney North Shore, Northern Beaches together with the Eastern Suburbs has gone 'teal'. Gone are Trent Zimmerman, Jason Falinski, and David Sharma. All I can say is, what took them so long? The great mystery to me has been all these well-educated, well-heeled women toeing the party line against their own personal interests. It's about time they woke up and went their own way. They're not my political friends, but I applaud them for wanting out at long last. It's a divorce that's been a long time coming.

Losing these women also raises the question where the Liberal Party is going to go. Amazingly, you saw no urgency about this existential threat from the Coalition in the weeks leading up to the vote, and arguably Scomo didn't address any of it in his concession speech. Again, he's a weird guy - but more on that later. He and his cohorts in government had plenty off opportunities to do something, even if just symbols to address the grievances of women in general - but they chose to do nothing. They couldn't possibly wonder how this election resulted in them getting kicked out by people who were once close to them. For now, we can see that the Liberal Party has been deserted by its women-folk, and that's kind of interesting. 

Climate Change As A Priority Issue

Maybe - just maybe - Climate Change (read GLOBAL WARMING) can stop being treated like a back burner as a result of this election. I remember thinking that when Kevin Rudd won, but, no, that didn't work out quite that way. Tony Abbott came storming back on the climate-denial vote. That said if you look at the 11 cross benchers in the lower house, all of whom who ran on Climate as a leading issue, you would expect that perhaps Albo has a shot at getting something concrete done. It would be nice if once and for all if the Coalition could get up to speed and just accept that it's a bloody big issue instead of trying to bury it for political posturing purposes. 

The rise of teal candidates tell you one thing - all the carping from the Murdoch press could not dissuade these electorates from the need to vote out the Liberals and get some action happening on the Global Warming problem.  

Up to now, there's been this weird dynamic where you were often incredulous as to whether the Coalition acted against having any kind of serious climate policies because they just didn't believe it as fact; or didn't want to believe it because of profit motive; or whether they did in fact believe it but were told to act like they didn't to preserve a voting block. If it was the last, then it sure didn't work out for the Coalition at all. If it was the former, two they need to go get an education and get their heads on straight in the coming years because the electorate has pretty much rejected climate change denialism. 

Boutique Retail Politics

You heard the phrase "all politics is local" a lot in the coverage on the ABC. You get the feeling that politicians say this to themselves in order not address the elephant in the room like China's ambitions in the region or the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Instead we're treated to a kind of car-salesman like pitch about costs of living. While costs of living is important, you'd want to vote on more than just that issue alone, and not acknowledging that point as a politician is kind of retrograde. Anybody can argue for self interest. It takes a better candidate to argue for the interest of the community, the area, the state and the nation. 

In light of that the fragmentation of the electorate is a little irksome. The teal candidates are to retail politics what custom made branded goods are to retail goods. There's a hint of neo-liberal personalisation of politics that seems to have happened in the era of social media, and we are given a stronger sense of proximity to our candidates. In turn, the successful candidates are photogenic or long on social-media-savvy. A quick glance at the teal candidates gives you the distinct sense that this is a very personalised kind of body politic expressing itself. 

Is this good? Who knows? Yet it does open the door to the massively populist, lowest common denominator politics. So we should ask in the same breath was, say Trump good? Is Boris Johnson any good? As per the Gillard minority government before it, the new ALP government has its work cut out for it. 

The Old Codgers Died

The other aspect of all this that springs to mind is that the old codgers who were stubbornly conservative passed away between 2019 and 2022. The rich suburbs got inherited by their children, and these children are a lot more worldly than their parochially conservative parents. I mean, it must hurt the pride of those educated and conservative that they had to toe the line that Climate Change wasn't happening, or that we needed to keep doing fossil fuels at the expense of the planet because money talks and bullshit walks, or  simply play dumb like climate change is a non-issue. And if the climate wasn't the only thing where they had to play dumb to be nice, then surely the corruption and pork barrelling was hard to justify and defend and most certainly trying to defend a government that had a total disregard for women's issue must have been galling. 

Given how Queensland went in 2019, it's a bit surprising that the inner city of Brisbane got eaten out by the Greens, and chances are, it wouldn't have happened if the old codgers were still around to vote for the Coalition. There's a message in there for Anastasia Paluszczuk (I have to look up that spelling every single fucking time!). Maybe she can be a bit more confident and tell Adani to fuck off with their coal mine.

The Weirdness of Scomo

Scomo, in his time as PM has shown himself to be an utterly mendacious, lazy, selfish partisan git. But just as how we might describe somebody having a mean streak, I would say Scomo had a weird streak of decency over his mendacious, lazy, selfish, partisan git-tish ways. He stood by the importance of democracy (in spite of undermining its institutions through under-funding them) and he talked a good game for Australia's prospects (which have not diminished, have grown in his time, but has also reduced Australia to a quarry).

He is also, Australia's first Generation-X Prime Minister and goes into his post-political career at the tender age of 54. He was an MP for a mere 12 years before becoming PM, 15 years total to date. It is a meteoric career in once sense, that also came with controversies and a certain obliviousness to the nuances of anything. He was a stick-in-the-mud middle class dufus from Sutherland Shire. He characterised himself as a bulldozer towards the end of this campaign, but he was more bull-in-a-china-shop. He moved fast and broke things much as the motto goes at Facebook/Meta - it is not a good motto. 

As we go back to a Babyboomer PM in Anthony Albanese, the sheer anomalousness of Scomo's time in the Lodge sticks out. One certainly wouldn't have expected the Coalition to move to a Gen-X leader faster than the progressives. At this stage the ALP front bench looks like deeper veterans than the outgoing Prime Minister. 

I guess the circumstances of his rise to the office was weird as well. The Liberals had the choice of Julie Bishop, Peter Dutton, and Scott Morrison. For some reason only known to the deepest darkest recesses of the sexist collective mind of the Liberal party room, Julie Bishop in spite of all her experience was rejected in favour of Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison. Having disposed of their one credible female leadership candidate, the Liberals decided Peter Dutton was a bit too gauche and rightwing, so they they picked Scomo as a compromise. That turn of events is so weird it is not likely to be duplicated in future. 

All this has led to the incoming Albo Government to look almost nondescript and plain vanilla. I guess when you consider the abject anti-intellectualism of Tony Abbott at the start of the 3 terms, maybe it is not surprising that it ends with this chaotic, mendacious, lazy, whimper.   

News That's Fit To Punt - 11/May/2016

Global Warming Rolls On

I hate the term Climate Change when I think about the simple fact that the climate is going to change towards the warmer and more volatile. It feels like an attempt to sugar coat the unpalatable, a bit like Milo Minderbinder's attempt to sell chocolate coated cotton in 'Catch-22'. For heaven's sake it's Global freaking Warming and pretending that the climate is merely going change like the timetable for the public transport system is part of the idiotic nonsense that allows a certain breed of conservative politician to flat out deny it's even going on, or that it's man made.

But you've heard that from me well enough so I'm just here to plonk this bit of further evidence on to the immense pile.

Within the next couple of weeks, a remote part of north-western Tasmania is likely to grab headlines around the world as a major climate change marker is passed. 

The aptly named Cape Grim monitoring site jointly run by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will witness the first baseline reading of 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, researchers predict.


"Once it's over [400 ppm], it won't go back," said Paul Fraser, dubbed by CSIRO as the Air Man of Cape Grim, and now a retired CSIRO fellow. "It could be within 10 days." 

The most recent reading on May 6 was 399.9 ppm, according to readings compiled by the CSIRO team led by Paul Krummel that strip out influences from land, including cities such as Melbourne to the north. (See chart below, with the red line showing the baseline CO2.)

I mean, just look at that line going up. So for all this talk of emissions control and Kyoto protocol and what have you, we just keep adding on to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even the deal in Paris was non-binding so there's really no evidence we're going to help one another or even ourselves. We wasted a valuable 20 years under the Kyoto protocols not doing enough, and Paris will promise not much more. 

What's genuinely frightening is that we've managed to do absolutely sweet fuck all to halt this calamitous progression. Extraordinary things are going as we speak:

Fish are dying because oxygen in the sea is eaten up by the algae blooms fed by the rise in CO2. 

The Ocean itself is acidifying at an increasing rate because of the CO2. 

The Coral is bleaching. 90% of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering.

2016 is already showing record temperatures around the world.

And that's just the beginning. Google says there are another 235,000 news items to do with Global Warming. 

Sydney's had a mild autumn really. It should be winter at this point in the year but the forecast for this week tells me its sunny and 22-24degrees right down to Sunday. Sydney weather's always been nice, but not this nice this late into May. It's downright creepy.

...but what do you do? It would certainly help to vote out these clowns.

The Crappiest Election In Memory

Here's a piece from David Marr who thinks we don't have much going in terms of choice. He's probably right. 

Australians want action. Polls year after year have shown we believe climate change is real. We know Australia isn’t doing enough. We are more uneasy than ever that it’s Australian coal destroying the atmosphere.

But the political system can’t deliver a solution.

So we head into yet another election campaign – and this the longest anyone can remember – arguing over familiar problems with little hope that the next election will be any more use than the last in solving them.

Education standards sag; life grows steadily worse in remote Indigenous communities; marriage remains beyond the reach of the LGBTI; multinational corporations operate largely untaxed; and budget deficits deepen year after year. 

We do executions better than solutions. Turnbull is Australia’s fourth prime minister in five years. Australians want this leadership churn to end. They crave continuity. But victory no longer guarantees survival.

It's enough to make you want to cry. Australia doesn't have to be so captive to this kind of politics. I don't know how it happened but the electorate is far more progressive than the politics of the place seems capable of being. It's as if the whole electorate has to wait for the stupid kids to catch up to the notion that this Global Warming thing might be a bad thing for them and them in particular. Instead we keep missing the moment, distracted by issues that are equally 'worthy' but on the whole far less significant in terms of how are lives are materially lived. 

The bleeding irony is that Malcolm Turnbull once stood for doing something about Climate Change. You'd look at him now and you know he's totally captive to the stupid Right Wing denialists. Bill Shorten isn't exactly the scintillating alternative given his history surrounding the climate change policy wrangling in the ALP government. Even with a 5% swing, an ALP government isn't going to do anything too radical. The problem is, of course, that the situation is demanding something radical be done. 

What do you do? I say we start by voting out these bastards.

Just Who Are The Aussie Tax Dodgers?

The Panama Papers point to a coterie of Australians. Some are companies, some are individuals, but they clearly weave a complicated web of money intrigue. It's interesting the SMH focuses on this bit first before going into the companies.

Australia's fifth-richest man, chairman of Hong Kong-listed Shimao Property Holdings Hui Wing Mau, who boasts a wealth of $6.9 billion, is on the list. He's among a number of Chinese billionaires listed. 

The company is listed as an officer for Mossack Fonseca client Vicking International, which in turn is a subsidiary of Shimao Property Holdings, according to the company's annual report.

Shimao Property Holdings is also listed as a client of Mossack Fonseca. Shimao purchased a Sydney office tower in late 2014 and last year launched its Ashmore apartment development in the Sydney suburb of Erskenville.

Mr Hui, whose current fortune trails behind Gina Rinehart, Anthony Pratt, Harry Triguboff and Franky Lowy, debuted on the BRW Rich 200 list in 2013.
He went to university in South Australia in the 1990s and was described by BRW as being "private and elusive about his business dealings".
Shimao and Mr Hui did not respond to inquiries. 

All up, the ICIJ's database links to people and companies in more than 200 countries and territories.

Is it just me that detects nascent racism in going for the Asian Australians first before going for the big boys? Because the more famous names are just as intriguing, and probably a bit more vexing: 

Australia's biggest company BHP Billiton, shopping centre behemoth Westfield, Rio Tinto subsidiary Alcan Corporation and ANZ Bank and National Australia Bank have all had either the head company or subsidiaries named in the Panama Papers and Offshore Leaks. 

Many of the subsidiaries severed their relationship with Mossack Fonseca years ago, according to the database.

BHP Billiton, which has been named previously in reports on the Panama Papers, declined to comment. 

Alcan's relationship with Mossack Fonseca ended in the mid 1990s. A spokesman for Rio Tinto said: "The period in question pre-dates Rio Tinto's ownership of Alcan, and as a result we are unable to comment." 

NAB, which is listed as an intermediary, did have a branch in Labuan in Malaysia, which was closed in 2005. 

A NAB spokeswoman told Fairfax Media: "NAB can confirm it does not have any current controlled entities registered in Labuan in Malaysia." 

Another intermediary named is accounting firm Grant Thornton, which acted for Canyon Commercial SA, listed in the jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands.
PwC in Australia is listed in connection with officer Roman Wolfgang Berg in the United States. 

And former Reserve Bank board member Robert Gerard is listed as the sole shareholder of Mayfair Land Management, a BVI company he acquired from Gerard Corporation in May 2010.

BHP Billiton, Westfield, Rio Tinto and NAB aren't just any old companies - they're some of the top 10 firms Senator Sam Dastrayi charged as running Australian policy formation, some months ago.  It stands to reason that these companies would be behind lobby attempts to defund and disempower ASIC and the ATO. It certainly passes the cui bono test, because nobody else could possibly benefit from those Coalition moves but these tax dodging companies. 

It's kind of sickening that the same companies would have been directly influential in forming the recent Coalition policy of cutting company tax - especially because they've already been minimising their tax through tax havens, all the while letting revenues for the Government shrink, and pushing for cuts to health, education and welfare. Can there be any less stench of corruption to the links between the big end of town and the Liberal and National parties? How is this materially different to the links between the unions and the ALP, that they have to go and put in the ABCC but not a Federal ICAC? If anything, the Panama Papers pertaining to Australia reveal the depth of corruption inherent in the relationship between the Liberal and National Parties, big business and organs like the IPA who keep coming up with Thatcherite Trickle-down agendas to suit these big companies the most and damn the rest of Australia. 

Frankly I'm surprised there isn't more general outrage in the wider community. It's like we're all Stockholm Syndrome sufferers when it comes to how the big end of town and the conservatives gang up and beat us around.  I guess there's plenty of outrage already with Kelly O'Dwyer sticking her foot in her mouth on Q&A, but still it never seems enough and the pundits still talk about this government like they're somehow sensible people when they're clearly no such animal. 

but... 

What do you do? Vote out these fuckers.

Trudeau Wins In Canada

Canada's Generation Jump

And just like that Canada elected Justin Trudeau as their new Prime Minister, ousting longtime Conservative Stephen Harper. One does not want to comment too much about the people other people's nations elect but if there is one thing to be said about Stephen Harper is that his brand of conservatism enabled the likes of Tony Abbott to continue being a climate change denier head of government. Harper's Canada and Abbott's Australia were substantial holdouts in making any meaningful commitments towards curbing emissions or moving away from mining fossil fuels as the mainstay of exports in their respective countries.

Interestingly enough, Australia's Liberal Party ousted Tony Abbott to get some credibility back, and in so doing the right wing climate-change-denying end of politics in Australia has had to beat a retreat from the controls. It's probably not coincidence that Stephen Harper simply ran out of time, options and good grace as a new leader took control and won the election. There is something of Kevin Rudd who came to power after a long Howard Government, in Justin Trudeau's victory. Given that Canada has a Westminster system just like we do, whether we will see ructions developing as they have over here in Australia. It is quite possible that the long Harper Government has kept a handbrake on change for a long time, but now things are about to go into flux.

It's certainly hard to read the lay of the land in Canadian politics because there are 3 parties to the left of the Liberals including something called the New Democratic Party; they also have a Green Party; and they have a Québécois Party that caters to francophones; but only the Conservatives to the right. In the 2011 election the Liberals were decimated but now they've taken a solid chunk out of the middle ground, so much so they have a majority in their own right.

The even more notable thing is that Mr. Trudeau is a strapping 43 years old. Yes, he is Generation X, which doesn't mean anything about his potential competence as ahead of government; but it is remarkable in that Canada got there second in the anglophone nations (David Cameron was born in 1966, he is the first). You wouldn't have thought it was possible even 6 months ago. Just as the youth vote swung hard behind Kevin Rudd in 2007, one imagines the youth vote made a meaningful impact in installing a young leader.

It's doubly remarkable because it appears the Baby Boomers aren't going away in the upcoming US election - none of the Republican Gen-X candidates have a shred of appeal or credibility so far, leaving the leaders as Clinton, Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right; All 3 a bunch of old Baby Boomers. It's going to be a while yet before a Gen-X-er sits as President in the White House. Australia too has had a choppy few years of Prime Ministerial change but it appears to have been a musical chairs audition amongst Baby Boomers in Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and now Turnbull. As I've said before, if Turnbull is successful and stays a while, a Gen-X PM is going to have to wait in the wings indefinitely.

The point is, Trudeau has possibly arrived at his political destination a little early in history. Stephen Harper is roughly a contemporary of Barack Obama and Julia Gillard. 12 years younger, Justin Trudeau is a contemporary of Winona Ryder, Ricky Martin and Sacha Baron Cohen. It's a big jump. How can Canada's Baby Boomers handle this sudden jump? Or are they less conservative than their counterparts in America and Australia and the UK? It's hard to imagine, but it might even be the case.

So it is with that in view I'm going to make a fearless prediction and say Canada's polity will necessarily be infected by the Australian disease and start chopping and changing leaders as polls go south. Trudeau will be fine for a while until he is forced to break one of his big promises. His poll will sink, his backbench will get restless, and voila! Chop-and-Change time will manifest itself. Some Baby Boomer is going to try and reclaim their moment in history.

Really, it's not just about the hair.

A Terrible Year

And It's Only September

What can I say, Tony Abbott and the Coalition won. This is a terrible thing, but hey I'm with the guy that started this meme:

Talk about the mother of all disappointments. It reminds one of the joke about the little kid who is asked by a Latin American Generalissimo if he knows the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe.

The little kid responds, "Yes Generalissimo. A Disaster is when you and your cabinet are in a plane crash. A Catastrophe is when you survive that crash."

Well, this election is that crash and the winning survivor is... Phoney Abbott. That's it. I've decided to call him that because basically he never told his crackpot climate-change-denyin' loonie mob to take down the 'Ju-liar' tag, so here's serving up the same cold soup. From now on he is Phoney Abbott to me until he is ousted from office.

Actually, looking at how the ALP did this time, it seems like they did save the furniture so Phoney can't claim that he has some great mandate. The ALP are with a fighting chance to come back if they can just get their house in order. Still I imagine there's going to be quite a bit of recriminations and bickering in the days to come. Greg Combet was already winding up with a few spitballs on the ABC tonight.

I'm still stunned that the middle shifted ground back to these lousy conservatives. What idiots. I guess it's just a case of "they know not what they do". That's the problem with willful ignorance - it delivers conservative governments. I guess this horrible day had to come; but did this have to be such a terrible year?

Fear Of The Unknown Unknowns

Sometimes 'The People' Are Idiots

The unthinkable is about to happen. No, not World War III, but an Abbott government is about to get in if the polls are to believed. This is about as swift a turn to the right as you can get and show what ingrates and opportunists the political middle ground of this country can be. But the bit that gets me the most is that the swinging middle of the electorate is about to vote into office a decidedly sorry lot who have refused to have their costings looked at until 3 minutes to midnight in the election. If their intellectual dishonesty doesn't stink to high heaven, their efforts in government surely will because these people are banking on doing some pretty stupid things.

A couple of days I ago, I pointed out that their policy on the internet and broadband alone should disqualify them from taking office, but close behind their idiotic NBN policy is their climate policy - their so-called Direct Action plan. I know it's late in the game and we're all past reading stuff, but here's a link from Pleiades that's worth reading: Part I & Part II. In Malcolm Turnbull's own words:

Because most capital equipment, especially in the energy sector, has lives running into many decades, the business is going to require assurance that the government subsidy will match the life of the asset – so running well beyond 2020.

Which is why a subsidy scheme which terminates in 2020 will achieve very little….

Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale and there will always be a temptation for projects to be selected for their political appeal.

In short, having the government pay for emissions abatement, as opposed to the polluting industries themselves, is a slippery slope which can only result in higher taxes and more costly and less effective abatement of emissions.

Which is to say, Malcolm Turnbull is saying Direct Action can't work. Certainly not in the way the Coalition have gone about selling it; and of course all of it suffers from the great credibility gap of Tony Abbott being an un-reformed climate sceptic global-warming denier.  There's just no knowing how any of this Direct Action policy is going to work or if it's even viable.

Pleiades also wanted me to point out to you that the Coalition do not have an Arts Policy. At all. Not a sausage. This is probably not surprising in that the arts community of this country is entirely, reflexively hostile to the Liberal and National parties, so if anything they probably just want to abolish all arts funding. (And I admit there's an evil side to me that wouldn't mind seeing that because I find the reflexive progressivism of Australia's arts community to be pretty obnoxious. But that's a different issue altogether!)

Even the alleged strong suit of the Liberals looks pretty crappy today. Here's Michael Pascoe lambasting Joe Hockey yesterday after the Liberals gingerly released their costings.

After all the huffing and puffing, Hockeynomics is only proposing a $6 billion improvement in the budget’s cash bottom line over four years. In light of the past four years of hyperbolic fiscal posturing, this is genuinely astounding.

Even if you take year three and four budget projections seriously (and you really can’t, as everyone should now know), that works out to be an average improvement of $1.5 billion a year on a $400 billion budget – all of 0.375 per cent. It’s not even a rounding error. A half-decent Queensland storm can blow that away in half an hour.

By way of comparison, Tony Abbott is blowing $1.8 billion on reviving the novated lease/FBT tax lurk enjoyed by a minority of new car buyers, let alone an even smaller minority of voters. Consider the massive percentage increase in the Coalition’s budget improvement goal that could be obtained by implementing just this one tax policy based on principle and equity instead of subsidising a few salary packaging firms. Hey Joe, do the math.

After all the histrionic fuss and slanderous accusations about waste, the Coalition proposes to save a relatively speaking marginal 6billion. The way Abbott carried on for 3 years, you'd think that Australia was about to turn in to Greece (uhh, ...no) or go into a Great Depression Mk. II (uh... no again); but of course it's not like he's got any real savings on offer and is instead proposing a largely skewered-to-the-wealthy paid maternity leave programme.

And frankly, you'd have to be pretty dense to be voting for any of these claptrap policies thought up in the isolation chamber of entitled sectionalists hoping to scare the electorate into voting for them. But that's what really gets me. Middle Australia is saying to the pollsters that's exactly what they're going to do. Vote in the eminently unsafe, unhinged, reactionary monarchist, sectarian nutjob that is Tony Abbott as their Prime Minister.

I've been racking my brains as to who but those with expensive Private School educations, would be voting for this mob? The western suburbs of Sydney they say. But for the life of me I can't imagine why the people in most need of support would vote in the people who are going to kick them in the hip pocket.

Anyway...

...the scuttlebutt has been that the polls seem to indicate 53-47 to the Coalition. Even this has been disputed by some. It turns out the polls are collected by landline, so they  skew heavily towards the retired elderly, who are in general more conservative-leaning than the young who do not bother with landlines and get about on their mobile phones. Pleiades tells me when pollsters conducted a poll that included mobile phones, it started to look more like 50-50, which is to say, a hung Parliament is once again on the cards.

Now that, would be cool because then Tony Abbott will chuck a hissy fit again and not deal, and that would leave us with another minority ALP government, just to stick it up the noses of all these idiot munchkin editors who claim stability is more important. (Only the editor of the Age had the good sense to argue in favour of the ALP based on policies; and based on policies, he had the NBN as the leading item followed by Gonski. I call that doing his job. What the hell are the other papers doing but playing cult of personality and personality politics?)

The most terrifying of them might have been the editorial on the SMH. Yes, the Sydney Morning Herald no less supports Tony Abbott. Now, I'd normally quote the most coherent part but amazingly the editorial presents very little coherence of argument about policy and mostly has knocks on how history has unfolded. Well Mr. Editor we've all been reading your paper and we can tell you your characterisation of the last 3years in this sorry editorial is mostly impressionistic nonsense not worthy of consideration, that somehow illogically ends up supporting Tony Abbott with a plea for stability.

Heck, Hosni Mubarak's Egypt was 'stable' for 28years.  Saddam Hussein's reign was equally stable. Muammar Gaddafi too. I don't think stability in of itself is any good, and this is exactly the point where armchair political scientists go wrong. Niccolo Machiavelli argued in favour of a stable government, but the second condition a government had to fulfill beyond stability according to Machiavelli, was delivering the maximum benefits to the maximum number of people in the constituency. Somehow I don't think the Liberals and Nationals are capable of the latter. So, I don't know how we've come to this, but this election campaign period has exposed the editor in chief of the Sydney Morning Herald as an idiot munchkin - something I did not know until today. You sure can put that down to "you learn something new everyday".

This election is going to be a litmus test to see how stupid people are. In future people will be able to look back and ask which way you voted. If you say you voted for the Liberals and Nationals in 2013, you will be laughed at for your stupidity.

Just don't vote for the Coalition what ever you do.

Fear Of The Known Unknowns

Our Own Bloody Fault John Hewson?

Good Grief Charlie Brown part II is how Tony Abbott's Liberals are not releasing their costings until Thursday before the election. I keep thinking this is fraudulent on the part of Abbott, but John Hewson was on radio defending this bit of 'strategy' (it hardly seems worthy of the word, but  there you go). Hewson, who was badly burnt in the 1993 un-losable election because he released his policy details sees that as a watershed moment when politicians realised that the electorate is easily scared and if you have policies, you're better off not telling the electorate during election campaigns. We only have our selves to blame, reasoned Hewson.

You gotta hand it to old John Hewson. He did lose in 1993 well and good and thank bloody goodness for that. Aah, memories of Paul Keating's "greatest victory of them all".

I'd have to say while it sounds like some kind of causal link to the state of affairs today, I don't think Hewson is right in drawing universals from his failed campaign. And all the same, it's still unprincipled for Tony Abbott to be withholding his costings given that he's been banging on about government debt and waste for the better part of 3 years and 9 months. Sure it didn't work for John Hewson, but nobody remembers Hewson as a fraudulent politician. He's accorded that much respect, which is why he gets asked by the media to commentate.

Tony Abbott on the other hand is firmly working with this notion that he won't let us know what he's going to cut to make his dumb figures fit. It's game, it's got chutzpah, but it's an utter lie to suggest that this is anything but deceitful. And you know, this is the same simpleton that spent the last 3years banging on about the Carbon tax being some kind of deception by the ALP when in fact anybody with a brain understood that it was the price the ALP had to pay to form Government with the Greens. characterising at as a deception as Tony Abbott has done for the last 3 years must be one of the biggest con jobs in Australian political history - what little of it there is. So as it is with the completely cockamamie 'Abbonomics' or 'Hockeynomics' or whatever austerity-tinged idiocy they plan on bringing in, you have this layer of Orwellian lies to keep it all greasy so it goes down easy with the gullible electorate.

If this man wins this Saturday, I guess Australia has got everything that's coming to it. Good Grief.

Then There's Gay Marriage

While I'm on this wicket of calling out Tony Abbott and his indecent sense of politics, I want to point out that his defiant "people know where I stand" remark gave me the shits today. I know he's a social convservative, a Catholic, an ethical midget and a moral munchkin from long ago but really Tony Abbott is copping out from answering why he holds to these socially conservative, Catholic views (views contradicted by the current Pope no less), and why there's anything good with keeping gay people from having the marriage rights.

I'm not the biggest advocate of Gay Marriage rights. I just quietly support it from the side. Mainly because on a personal moral scale, I'm a libertarian at heart. I don't think it's the business of the state to dictate who can form marriage unions with other human beings given what we know of humanity and sexuality and psychology and history. If Tony Abbott is really going to be a standard bearer for these 'conservative values', he really ought to man up and spell out why exactly he thinks it's in the state's interest to say no to Gay Marriage. Just something that shows his moral reasoning on this is something beyond "because God says it's wrong according to the Pope."

What's Really Going To Piss Me Off About An Abbott Government

I'll be honest here. What's really going to piss me off about an Abbott government is how he's going to sell us this crappy substitute for the NBN. His promise is that the people who've already got it can keep it, but the roll out will stop. So if you wanted the NBN, but if it hasn't rolled out to your area, then stiff shit you're not going to get it.

I just don't see how this is even remotely fair or as politicians like to say equitable. To use the Liberal Party's own logic on this, quite frankly, I paid my taxes, I expect to be treated equally under the law. I don't see how it is going to be equal for some part of Australia to have 100mbps bandwidth and other parts 10mbps bandwidth just because Tony Abbott says 10mbps should be enough.

Let me put this to you all another way. As good as it sounds, 100mbps only gets us to the level playing field of average around the globe. Google recently trialled 1000mbps =1 Giga-bits-per-second  in Kansas city. 1 Giga Bits Per Second is 100 times faster than what Tony Abbott thinks is 'enough'. One Hundred Times!!!!

Google put in this network for free, and suddenly all these companies were starting up in Kansas City, trying to take advantage of this speed. Even if Australia got the NBN at 100mbps, it's still only 1/10th the speed of Google's 1Ggbps network in Kansas City; and clearly, there's a well-established correlation between high tech industry growth and internet speed. There's a tech boom in Kansas City just because Google put in this network. As the ghosts whispered to Kevin Costner in 'Field of Dreams', "build it and they will come".

This is a huge issue if Australia wants to become the financial hub in the Pacific rim. This is a huge issue if Australia wants to move on into the post-mining boom period, looking for next areas of growth. This is a huge issue if we want to have technological relevance and industries that can deliver in a post-industrial economy. We can't just be mediocre at this stuff, we have to be good to great. And all these things are challenges the RBA and the current ALP Federal Government understand. Does Tony? (Rhetorical. Obviously the answer is 'no'. *facepalm*)

Thus I find it incredibly hard to stomach the fact that Tony Abbott's Liberal Party claims to be pro-business but is in fact 3 buckets of Luddite and a sack of stupid when it comes to its internet policy. It's not surprising given their idiotic stance on climate change, but that is another issue. Yes, I'm pissed off about this more than just about any other aspect of their idiotic, as-yet-un-costed policy platform, and by extension I'm very angry at a middle Australia who want to vote in this lot. As Homer Simpson once asked the Guru on top of the mountains, "I mean, really? Really, really? Really, really, really?"

Seriously folks, if there's one - and only one - point of differentiation that matters to the future of the Australian industrial landscape, it's the NBN. Not the Carbon Tax, not Gay Marriage, not Industrial relations and not even the possible hiking of the GST. It's the NBN.

So save the NBN: Don't vote for the Libs. Everything else is either slamming the gate after the horse has bolted or fighting the tide of history. The NBN. Remember that when you go to the poll booths.

Won't Have Kristina To Dick Around Anymore

No Splintering To The Left

I have to admit that I must be pretty radical when it comes to the political spectrum. I'm not exactly a communist - far from it, but I sure as hell don't run with the conservatives come hell or high water. Which chased me into my choice of voting Green. I don't regret it even though in my seat, the Green candidate won't come close to the line. The Liberal Candidate ended up with a 25% or so swing in his favour according to the election night telecast on TV. (Thanks Angela D'Amore, you are the gift that keeps on giving, like a Herpes virus).

I'm a little amused that Kerry O'Brien started off the night by saying it was going to be a bloodbath, everybody knows the result; the only question is just how much of a bloodbath. Even more amusing was the ALP colour commentator they had - Luke Foley, I think he's called - who came across as somebody with an IQ of about 75. He had to admit it was catastrophic, the resulting devastation was going to be cataclysmic and that the ALP were going to have to do a lot of soul searching. Well, d'uh.

I guess nobody looks smart when their heads are getting beaten in; and yet even he had one reason to crow and that was that Carmel Tebbutt was likely to hold Marrickville against Fiona Byrne, and went on to bag out Fiona Byrne for being a terrible  candidate for the Greens.

Which all got me to thinking how much of the ALP vote that might have been swinging votes and traditional votes ran to the right into the arms of the Liberal and National Parties. Luke Foley was saying that the 'Labor Heartland' no longer exists. That might be true, and by extension this might be one of those elections that changes the state for ever. The ALP may not be able to win in NSW until well past 2020. And if the Hawke-Keating years and  the Howard years proved something, 10+years can change the culture of a place dramatically. NSW might turn into an arch-conservative state.

So where does that leave me with my radicalised environmental vote? Gagging on my recycled materials wooden spoon.

The Rush To The Right

Given the sort of miasma and nauseating whirlwind that was the Labor government of the last 4 years, it's not surprising that the middle rushed to the right, just pull the handbrakes on the craziness. I don't know if it's even a rational choice given that 79% of the electorate don't know what the Coalition's policies are and that 65% voted them in.

The poll is at odds with predictions that the gap between the parties would narrow as voters paid more attention closer to the election. It suggests voters switched off long ago.

Asked how much they felt they knew about the Coalition's policies, 79 per cent said they knew either ''little'' or ''nothing at all'', with just 21 per cent saying they knew a lot.

Knowledge of Labor's policies was slightly better, with 68 per cent saying they knew little or nothing and 31 per cent saying they knew a lot.

This could mean that a lot of people are going to wake up tomorrow and wonder just what the hell they've done but I guess it's too late for that now. The ALP haven't done much for the image of stability. That Karl Bitar fellow and 'protected' US informant Mark 'The Mole' Arbib have done over Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees,while doing the same Federally for Kevin Rudd and helping Julia Gillard to a hung Parliament has made the ALP a laughingstock in most conversations I've come across.

The unfortunate upshot is that it's pushed a lot of people to the right, and it amazes me how unimaginative people are when it comes to their politics. Here's the thing. I voted Greens last time too, but I preferenced ALP. If Nathan Rees was still Premier, I might have been persuaded to still vote ALP even. As soon as they dumped Rees and put in Kenneally I vowed they would not get my vote, and it's a sentiment that's been shared by many people I've spoken to. I'm amazed that most of the people who felt that way took it as a cue to vote in Barry O'Farrell, but I guess that's the 2 party system for you.

In any case, it's not like all is lost for the ALP faithful of NSW. It's just a bleeding state election to kick out a tired, over-ripe, incompetent ALP government. Surely some of those who ran to vote in Barry O'Farrell will come back as prodigal votes. It's the nature of politics.

Can The Greens Get Beyond The Marginalia Of Politics?

On the basis of tonight's result, I think this is going to be a tougher ask than I thought. So far it's counting about 11%. That suggests that:

• 10 out of 11% are crackpot socialists and tree-hugging hippies and dope-smoking Newtown-ites.


• Only the extra 1% represent the people who jumped to the left. The 20% swing to the right represent the middle.

I think 1% is an incredibly hard basis to build a platform upon when you're already outnumbered 10 to 1 by the loonies in your own party. 13% at the Federal election was a good showing, but in closer examination, the Greens are still the party of feral-loonies, druggies, hippies the dispossessed and socialist-idiots.

By contrast, at 50% of the vote, the current crop of Coalition voters are people with desperate mortgages and the NIMBY crowd. Laura Norder didn't even factor into it this time around.

One Final Thought About Kristina Kenneally

I'll be flayed for writing this, but what the hell. Everything else is going down in flames.

I'm thinking that Kristina Kenneally has to represent the end of the line of that crappy brand of 1980s feminism that saw male chauvinism layered in to every text and wrote post-modern essays about gender politics in Shakespeare to Bananarama. Let's call it, 'Quota Feminism' for want of a better tag. It gave us Verity Firth and Carmel Tebbutt and Angela D'Amore and Virginia Judge and Kristina Kenneally in an awful hurry.

Here's the thing: If that line of thinking really had merit, Kenneally and company would have been more persuasive figures - And I do say this with my deepest condolences to the Po-Mo 1980s feminists I know, but the rise of Kristina Kenneally (and to some extent Julia Gillard) has got to be one of the more abstruse and disaffecting manifestations of that line of thinking.

Was it any good? Goodness, the proof sure is in the pudding tonight, isn't it? Half the electorate ran screaming to a patriarchal-looking Barry O'Farrell. Doubtless Germaine Greer is going to write an article for The Observer over in the UK saying how this proves we're all sexist shits in NSW, and how Kristina Kenneally was defeated by the forces of backward oppressive patriarchal men. But you see, that's exactly where the ideological rot is at.

On The Eve Of The NSW Election

Vote Green

I was at the usual shop picking up lunch when I ran into some people I always meet. One of them said he was thinking of voting for the Greens. The other was a gnarled mechanic in overalls saying the Greens want to bring in death duties. I interjected, "well why not?"

"Kerry Packer said why should his family give up money so you can misuse it?" the older guy retorted.

"For the common good. That's why. I mean Jamie Packer didn't exactly work for that money. Why the hell should he get such a big head start in life on account of his dad being obscenely rich?"

"Yeah but if my mum dies and she leaves half a million, why should the government tax that?"

"For the common good."

"...But they'll only waste that."

"...and you'd only sit on it for you own pleasure. How's that helping anybody? If it's all the same, the 15% they would take from it would be put to better use than you sitting on it," I offered. "I mean, you didn't earn it. Your mum did; and when she goes, she can't take it with her, so a portion may as well go to the state, because the state probably looked after her as much as you with its hospitals and doctors and nurses."

You should have seen the guy's expression. He was apoplectic with rage. I said, "mate, don't worry. I think they should tax everybody more, but that's just me. We don't pay enough taxes as it is and we wonder why our hospitals are clogged with waiting lists."

He looked even angier.

"I mean, tax everybody. Who really cares?" I continued. "The money you get taxed, do you really miss it? There's still enough for you to pay your bills and pay your rent and still have a drink with your mates. I mean what were you going to do with it that was going to change other people's lives? That's what governments do, so give them what they need."

"...But they'll waste it," he offered again. "That's what governments do. They waste it."

"What? On hospitals and ambulances and police and emergency rescue workers and all that? Roads and trains and water and sewerage treatment and electricity? How about schools for kids, day care centres for infants and libraries and colleges and TAFE? Apprenticeship schemes where you got your training, it's all a waste is it?"

"Bullshit mate," he snarled, grabbed his lunch, and stormed out. Couldn't say I blamed him. I'd hate to be harangued by me while picking up my lunch too.

The first guy said, "I've been back to Greece and when you go to the country side, they have nothing. No roads, no schools, no sewerage or running water. It's like medieval times. They don't even know about taxes. Never even heard of the idea, let alone paid it. And the place is so backwards and they wonder why. So yeah, taxes are fine by me," he said.

Apparently, that's the way things are in the spiritual home of democracy and a country racked with sovereign debt issues.

So vote green, peeps! Vote for higher taxes for the rich. Get a little Bolshy. Higher taxes never killed anybody.

The Lady Deserves A Beating

Sexism? I think Not

Kristina Kenneally may not indeed be the most odious Premier of NSW. It is a point I must concede. After all, Robert Askin sounds like he was as crooked as they come, and Bob Carr seems like one of the most insufferable human beings a man could meet. Nick Greiner left such a slimey impression what with his board memberships on so many dodgy PPPs, and Neville Wran was... Neville Wran.

The point being it is entirely possible she has not been the worst human being to grace the position of Premier of NSW. However, this puff piece had me choking.

During Verity Firth's husband's ecstasy scandal last week, Keneally's staff almost fell over laughing when asked if their boss had dabbled with drugs. She similarly fails to grasp sexual innuendo during office banter, they say.

For all these reasons the Premier is likely to recoil, rightly, at the disturbingly sexist view of her that has arisen in focus groups assembled by the Liberal Party.

A senior Liberal source says a theme has emerged, particularly among male voters, that can be boiled down to: Keneally is the one-night stand who was fun at the time but insisted on hanging around the next morning, even though you wanted her to leave.

It's always hard to know if selected snippets of internal polling like this reflect the true results or, more likely, illuminate one element for damaging effect. But there's no argument that opinion polls showed voters had an immediate attraction to Keneally when she took on the job from Nathan Rees in December 2009.

''It was a flirtation, or some sort of infatuation,'' the senior Liberal said. ''She's obviously attractive but it was more than that; it was a novelty to have an American as premier - an American woman as premier.''

Almost everyone is surprised by how hard and fast Keneally fell in the polls when the love affair ended - to the extent that she now lags the Liberals' Barry O'Farrell by 20 percentage points as preferred premier.

If people believe they've somehow been taken in by Keneally, that's their view, fine. But our first female premier deserves better than being objectified because of her gender.

The last bit  is nuts. What she deserves is the line from 'Unforgiven', "deserve's got nothing to do with it." along with the electoral bullet to put her out of her misery.

But before getting to that point, here are at least 2 problems of Kenneally's own links to scandal that this article glosses over. Number 1 is of course just how deep her dealings with Ron Medich (and the whole corrupt dealing aspect of Medich's empire) actually go, and number 2 is the allegation that the Barangaroo contract for car parks benefits her husband Ben directly. So no, it is not true to say she is scandal free herself.

The four women who marched in to replace Nathan Rees with Kristina Kenneally as Premier, if I recall correctly were Verity Firth, Angela D'Amore, Carmel Tebbutt and Virginia Judge. Of these 4 MPs, Verity Firth's in this drug scandal with her husband even if she had nothing to do with the said pill; Angela D'Amore has since been found to have been corrupt and been kicked out of the ALP; Virginia Judge has been accused of handing out grant money to her mates; which leaves Carmel Tebbutt the only one free of scandals.

I think the electorate has actually been highly supportive of the politically correct/anti-sexist line to the extent that when these women engineered the first female premier of NSW - though unelected she may be - the electorate perhaps was willing to give her a go. Okay, it's true, I made a commitment to never vote for her government - one which I will keep - but other people around me have been umm-ing and aah-ing. They've told me they like the reality of having a female mayor of Sydney, a female Premier of NSW, a female Prime Minister and a female Governor General, plus a Queen.

In other words, sexism isn't what's going to kick Kristina Kenneally out. In all realistic appraisal, when Kristina Kenneally's government does get voted out on 26th of March this year, it would be because of the collective shenanigans of all the NSW ALP members and staffers. That she contributed very little to the parade of scandals is not going to persuade people to keep this NSW government. Any argument mounted in favor of Kenneally's government should face up to that daunting, brutal, frank reality.

In that light, the article was one of the dumbest things I've ever read in the SMH in a long time.