Midnight In The Garden of Democracy And Failure

Sign O' The Times

It didn't take long...

Hey, it's a new day. 

The obits are coming in for Bernie Sanders' campaign. This one here is worth the read, even though it hails from Rolling Stone.

Democratic voters tried to express these frustrations through the Sanders campaign, but the party leaders have been and probably will continue to be too dense to listen. Instead, they'll convince themselves that, as Hohmann's Post article put it, Hillary's latest victories mean any "pressure" they might have felt to change has now been "ameliorated." 

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide. 

This is especially the case now that the Republican Party has collapsed under the weight of its own nativist lunacy. It's exactly the moment when the Democrats should feel free to become a real party of ordinary working people.
But they won't do that, because they don't see what just happened this year as a message rising up from millions of voters. 

Politicians are so used to viewing the electorate as a giant thing to be manipulated that no matter what happens at the ballot, they usually can only focus on the Washington-based characters they perceive to be pulling the strings. Through this lens, the uprising among Democratic voters this year wasn't an organic expression of mass disgust, but wholly the fault of Bernie Sanders, who within the Beltway is viewed as an oddball amateur and radical who jumped the line. 

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power. And the narrative will be that with him out of the picture, the crisis is over. No person, no problem.

Yep, it'll go by like it was on skates. The Democrats don't want to deal with this because dealing with it  will turn the party inside out an if you're on the inside, it's always better to stay there. The way it is with most institutions is that the institutional culture is preserved at the expense of the mission statement. The Democratic Party is clearly exhibiting signs of a thoroughly ossified institution. It is going hand in hand with the Republicans who are also ossified to the point of immobility, and so cannot catch out a rogue insurgent candidate like Donald Trump. American democracy is deeply in the poo.

We're not exactly too behind in Australia if this year's Federal election is anything to go by.

Julia, Hillary, And The Things That Maybe Don't Matter Like Legitimacy

I mentioned Hillary's candidacy in relationship to Julia Gillard's prime ministership yesterday and had some more thoughts about all this. I'll be honest, I didn't think Julia Gillard really established her  legitimacy with the electorate as evinced by the hung parliament of 2010- very much like how Malcolm Turnbull has failed to establish legitimacy for his government.

Generally speaking politicians and legitimacy is a funny thing. It's even harder in a democracy where leaders come to power on vote and not by the sword. Consider Machiavelli's take on legitimacy.


So who comes to mind as not having solved the legitimacy problem in a democracy? Kristina Keneally as NSW Premier was a fraught figure because she too always had the problem of legitimacy in the eyes of the public. I've been told by those who worked the Department of the Premier how on top of her brief Keneally was and how sharp she was in negotiations with Kevin Rudd (something which Kevin Rudd himself conceded), and even then I never warmed to the premier who got the nod on the back of failed Premiers and backroom deals. But then again Nathan Rees and Morris Iemma weren't exactly people who sparkled with legitimacy. That entire musical-Premier-chairs phase of the NSW Labor Government was strange and demented, infested as it was with Morbid Obeidity to boot. Yes Eddie Obeid had a marvellous way of subtracting from the sum total of legitimacy right across the board.

In that light, and while we're talking about female politicians  I do want to say I liked Anna Bligh a lot. I wish she'd run for Federal office. I liked Joan Kirner - I think she got a raw deal. And going back a fair way, I liked Janine Haines; I was indifferent to Dr. Carmen Lawrence (I sure didn't dislike her but the Easton Affair was troubling); and well, Cheryl Kernot was great until she jumped ship to the ALP - again legitimacy was an issue there. The Anna Bligh thing was interesting because at the hight of the Brisbane flood waters, Anna Bligh looked so much more the states-person than the visiting PM, Julia Gillard. In fact it made Julia Gillard look so bad, it probably wasn't worth her while standing next to Bligh in the big press conference, which was surprising.

The point is, regardless of gender, it's important to look like you got your office fair and square and in the right way. You could be an utter dickhead like Campbell Newman, but at least you have to hand it to the dickhead that he stormed to office on an agenda that was voted in in a landslide. He was eminently despicable, but while he was in office, legitimacy wasn't an issue. It's deeply ironic, isn't it?

Which brings me back to Hillary Clinton who basically has a legitimacy issue not unlike the one Julia Gillard carried through her tenure as PM. Now that it's out in the open that the DNC manipulated the system to Hillary's advantage and did its best to bury Bernie Sanders, she's never going to escape the lack of legitimacy this 'win' gives her. Now, legitimacy is one of those iffy things where it's hard to pin it to a person or an office, but when the role is head of government, you sort of need that thing to beat over the heads of your opponents both domestic and foreign. Indeed, Barack Obama does an excellent job of wielding his legitimacy to beat up on the GOP.

Things worked out the way they did because clearly the Clintons own the Democratic Party and the party owes the Clintons too much not to give Hillary the nod. To that end it burnt its own constituents as well as the youth vote, condescending and patronising them as they disenfranchised them. Legitimacy is in short supply now. She might be the world's best candidate, but we've seen what happens to a head of government who struggles to establish legitimacy. To that end, it's just like the Rolling Stone article linked above says, the Democrats have poisoned themselves, just to deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton. We'll see if the poison ends up killing them.

Wall Street And The Dems

Wall Street told Hillary Clinton that she couldn't pick Elizabeth Warren as her running mate.

NEW YORK — Big Wall Street donors have a message for Hillary Clinton: Keep Elizabeth Warren off the ticket or risk losing millions of dollars in contributions.
In a dozen interviews, major Democratic donors in the financial services industry said they saw little chance that Clinton would pick the liberal firebrand as her vice presidential nominee. These donors despise Warren’s attacks on the financial industry. 

But they also think her selection would be damaging to the economy. And they warned that if Clinton surprises them and taps Warren, big donations from the industry could vanish. 

“If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her,” said one top Democratic donor who has helped raise millions for Clinton. “They would literally just say, ‘We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can’t trust you, you’ve killed it.’” 

Most big donors don’t want Warren on the ticket because she is the most accomplished anti-Wall Street populist in the Democratic Party. But many also think her presence would drive a potential Clinton administration too far to the left, poison relations with the private sector from the start and ultimately be damaging to the economy.

And so it came to pass that Elizabeth Warren wasn't the VP nominee and running partner to Hillary Clinton. I'm sure it's some kind of pragmatism but this is the very kind of deal that browns off people  from the Clintons. Then some person tells you it's because you're a misogynist. How can you be a misogynist if you want a woman to be a VP to go with the female POTUS candidate?! 

More importantly, the fact that Hillary couldn't run it past Wall Street tells you just how much Wall Street has it all over the politicians. Wall Street got TARP and the bail out in 2008 because it was Wall Street. Did you get a bail out? No? See what I mean? Jokes aside, all this proves that there's too much money in US politics as well as outline the unlikelihood of Bernie anders getting up as the nominee. If people really want the political revolution, we're all going have to dig in a lot harder to dig out these banksters.

View From The Couch - 28/Jul/2016

What Need For Terror Laws?

Since 9/11, all the western societies have seen a steady erosion of privacy and rights as governments have sought more powers to contain the terror threat. Each time a bill has come up, more rights have been curtailed and more powers given to the security forces of the western world. At this juncture, it is worth asking if these powers are actually helping at all.

Consider Man Monis, our very own terrorist dickhead. The AFP had him on their watchlist and he fell off. Then he acquired a gun and did what he did at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney. The argy-bargy to do with the Lindt Cafe Siege has been going for a number of weeks now, and nobody exactly has explained how Monis slipped off the AFP's watch list and nobody has reported just how Monis got hold of a weapon.

This is notable because since 2007's APEC in Sydney, there have been APEC Anti-Terror laws in place without a sunset clause. We're all still in danger of being arrested without charge on alleged suspicions of terror links and being refused a lawyer - because hey, we don't have Miranda Rights in this country, and that's all okay by our state governments as well as Federal Government.

And yet with all this great power (and as follows Spiderman "comes great responsibility"), the AFP completely missed Monis. The NSW police had no chance as it went around looking for drugs at festivals rather then round up Monis with its great powers.

The same goes for the bastard who shot up the gay bar in Orlando, the truck driving bastard in Nice, the neck-slitting bastard in Normandy, and all the bastards who participate in the big Paris terror attack. Each and every one of them it turned out was on the radar of the authorities and somehow slipped the net togged through and do their dastardly bastardly deeds.

So today, we must ask, what good are these powers given to our police? What good is us citizenry giving up our privacy and rights to these governments whose security apparatuses still fail to stop these bastards anyway? Ed Snowden tells us the governments of the world are listening into everything we say on the phone, everything we write on emails an so on. With all this omniscience, you'd think they'd be doing a better job of stopping these bastards.

There's even a school of thought out there that they want these attacks to happen so they can justify their vast power and surveillance budgets. It's looking more believable by the day as more anymore terror attacks happen, only be revealed the perp was on some watch list but dropped out.

I say, we need a drastic re-think of these terror laws because they seem to be doing sweet fuck all. really. The bastards keep getting through. I am not fearful, I am angry at the rights of mine they are curtailing.

Privatisation Killed The Economic Growth

Pleiades alerted me to this one. The ACCC thinks privatisation kills economic growth.

Selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy, according to Australia's consumer and competition tsar, who says he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent.  

In a blistering attack on decades of common government practice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said the sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation.

"I've been a very strong advocate of privatisation for probably 30 years; I believe it enhances economic efficiency," Mr Sims told the Melbourne Economic Forum on Tuesday.

"I'm now almost at the point of opposing privatisation because it's been done to boost proceeds, it's been done to boost asset sales and I think it's severely damaging our economy." 

Mr Sims said privatising ports, including Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW, which were privatised together, and the Port of Melbourne, which came with conditions restricting competition from other ports, were examples where monopolies had been created without suitable regulation to control how much they could then charge users.

"Of course you get these lovely headlines in the Financial Review saying 'Gosh, what a successful sale, look at the multiple they achieved'," Mr Sims said.
"Well of course they bloody well did: the owners factored in very large price rises because there's no regulation on how they set the price of a monopoly. How dopey is that?"

Nice to see it told straight out for once. The question is will anybody listen? Or is the greed factor just too good to let go?

No Country For Old Warhorses

Here's something on Kim Carr.

In 2006 Carr cultivated an alliance between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, convincing them they should join forces to depose Beazley. 

In government he supported Gillard's leadership challenge before later becoming a leading agitator for Rudd. 

"Shorten is the first leader he hasn't ratted on," a colleague says.
Gillard dumped Carr from cabinet after many colleagues concluded he had been leaking damaging stories to the media. Carr, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has denied this charge. 

Carr's rivalry with Albanese deepened during his leadership battle with Shorten in 2013. After winning the vote among Labor members, Albanese would have become leader if left-wing MPs locked in behind him. 

A furious Albanese has told colleagues Carr promised him his support only to vote for Shorten and encourage his allies to do the same. Carr denies reneging on any deal.
Laurie Ferguson, a left-wing Labor MP who retired at at this election, says the move against Carr was clear "payback" from Albanese and his allies.

It's probably not right to say this from a clinical perspective because I'm not qualified (educated yes, but not qualified) and Kim Carr is not my patient but I'll say it anyway. That prone-to-dramas thing is a dead giveaway for a personality disorder. It is conceivable that the schizo-genic nature of the ALP in the past two decades could be a function of this guy being an influence broker.

Speaking of this kind of thing...

No Country For Old Female Politicians

Okay, a bit distasteful, but only because it's in reference to the sexism referred to here.

At the Republican Convention last week, attendees had the chance to wear their sexist derision for Hillary Clinton with pride. Just outside, hawkers sold T-shirts emblazoned with "Trump vs Tramp", bumper stickers proclaiming "Life's a bitch, don't vote for one," and the badges printed with "KFC Hillary Special: 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, one left wing". 

If that last one sounds familiar, it should. Almost exactly the same "joke" was made at the expense of Australia's first female prime minister in a menu at a fundraiser for Liberal MP Mal Brough: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box".

That 'menu incident' was about as low as 'politics' in this country got. It's one thing to dislike the Prime Minster because you disagreed with her position on policy. It's another thing to go ad hominem and liken people to poultry as a sex joke - that's all kinds of wrong and it was about as much disrespect as one could take.  And let's not forget, the Opposition that presided over that kind of sexism is now our government to this day.

Anyway, Julia Gillard is backing Hillary Clinton. No surprises there. To give Ms Gillard her due, I should quote this bit, which is important and something I agree with greatly. More people should have called out the rank sexism for what it was. Not doing so robbed the moral authority from the genuine criticism of her office.

No one called for my execution by firing squad, as a supporter of Donald Trump did for Mrs. Clinton, but a radio talk-show host did say I should be put in a bag and dropped in the sea. Witches can’t be drowned, I cynically joked. 

I have often reflected how powerful it would have been if, at that moment, a male business leader, especially one who opposed my policies, said, “I may not support the prime minister politically, but Australia must not conduct its democratic debates this way.” 

Unfortunately, that never happened. 

To my dismay, some of the young women who chat with me are not asking for political insights. Instead, they tell me that, having seen how I was treated, they have decided politics is too punishing for them. I always try to talk them out of this position. Sometimes I succeed. 

In 2016, I hope there are many brave voices naming and shaming any sexism in the presidential contest. The next generation of potential female leaders is watching.

I guess in Hillary's case, she didn't exactly knife Obama to get into her current spot, but she did do her damnedest to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign, and with it shred the credibility of the Democratic Party. That would definitely get Hillary Clinton into the same hot-seat as Julia Gillard's time in office, which is kind of where she is in Philly right now. They have more than one thing in common.

No Country For Old Perverts

Cardinal George Pell is getting investigated after all.

The ABC's 7.30 program has revealed that Taskforce Sano has been examining allegations from complainants in Ballarat, Torquay and Melbourne for more than a year, and is looking into incidents that allegedly happened during Cardinal Pell's time as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. 

The program has obtained eight police statements from complainants, witnesses and family members who are helping the taskforce with its investigation. The allegations were repeated on 7.30 on Wednesday night, and include: 

• that Cardinal Pell would touch the genitals of children while swimming in a public pool in Ballarat in the late '70s
• that he was naked in the change rooms on a regular basis in front of children
• that he exposed himself to three young children in another change room, at the Torquay Surf Club in 1986 or 1987.

Cardinal Pell vehemently denied the allegations, with his office saying he "emphatically and unequivocally rejects any allegations of sexual abuse against him".

This is going to get good.

View From The Couch - 28/Jul/2016

What Need For Terror Laws?

Since 9/11, all the western societies have seen a steady erosion of privacy and rights as governments have sought more powers to contain the terror threat. Each time a bill has come up, more rights have been curtailed and more powers given to the security forces of the western world. At this juncture, it is worth asking if these powers are actually helping at all.

Consider Man Monis, our very own terrorist dickhead. The AFP had him on their watchlist and he fell off. Then he acquired a gun and did what he did at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, Sydney. The argy-bargy to do with the Lindt Cafe Siege has been going for a number of weeks now, and nobody exactly has explained how Monis slipped off the AFP's watch list and nobody has reported just how Monis got hold of a weapon.

This is notable because since 2007's APEC in Sydney, there have been APEC Anti-Terror laws in place without a sunset clause. We're all still in danger of being arrested without charge on alleged suspicions of terror links and being refused a lawyer - because hey, we don't have Miranda Rights in this country, and that's all okay by our state governments as well as Federal Government.

And yet with all this great power (and as follows Spiderman "comes great responsibility"), the AFP completely missed Monis. The NSW police had no chance as it went around looking for drugs at festivals rather then round up Monis with its great powers.

The same goes for the bastard who shot up the gay bar in Orlando, the truck driving bastard in Nice, the neck-slitting bastard in Normandy, and all the bastards who participate in the big Paris terror attack. Each and every one of them it turned out was on the radar of the authorities and somehow slipped the net togged through and do their dastardly bastardly deeds.

So today, we must ask, what good are these powers given to our police? What good is us citizenry giving up our privacy and rights to these governments whose security apparatuses still fail to stop these bastards anyway? Ed Snowden tells us the governments of the world are listening into everything we say on the phone, everything we write on emails an so on. With all this omniscience, you'd think they'd be doing a better job of stopping these bastards.

There's even a school of thought out there that they want these attacks to happen so they can justify their vast power and surveillance budgets. It's looking more believable by the day as more anymore terror attacks happen, only be revealed the perp was on some watch list but dropped out.

I say, we need a drastic re-think of these terror laws because they seem to be doing sweet fuck all. really. The bastards keep getting through. I am not fearful, I am angry at the rights of mine they are curtailing.

Privatisation Killed The Economic Growth

Pleiades alerted me to this one. The ACCC thinks privatisation kills economic growth.

Selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy, according to Australia's consumer and competition tsar, who says he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent.  

In a blistering attack on decades of common government practice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said the sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation.

"I've been a very strong advocate of privatisation for probably 30 years; I believe it enhances economic efficiency," Mr Sims told the Melbourne Economic Forum on Tuesday.

"I'm now almost at the point of opposing privatisation because it's been done to boost proceeds, it's been done to boost asset sales and I think it's severely damaging our economy." 

Mr Sims said privatising ports, including Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW, which were privatised together, and the Port of Melbourne, which came with conditions restricting competition from other ports, were examples where monopolies had been created without suitable regulation to control how much they could then charge users.

"Of course you get these lovely headlines in the Financial Review saying 'Gosh, what a successful sale, look at the multiple they achieved'," Mr Sims said.
"Well of course they bloody well did: the owners factored in very large price rises because there's no regulation on how they set the price of a monopoly. How dopey is that?"

Nice to see it told straight out for once. The question is will anybody listen? Or is the greed factor just too good to let go?

No Country For Old Warhorses

Here's something on Kim Carr.

In 2006 Carr cultivated an alliance between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, convincing them they should join forces to depose Beazley. 

In government he supported Gillard's leadership challenge before later becoming a leading agitator for Rudd. 

"Shorten is the first leader he hasn't ratted on," a colleague says.
Gillard dumped Carr from cabinet after many colleagues concluded he had been leaking damaging stories to the media. Carr, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has denied this charge. 

Carr's rivalry with Albanese deepened during his leadership battle with Shorten in 2013. After winning the vote among Labor members, Albanese would have become leader if left-wing MPs locked in behind him. 

A furious Albanese has told colleagues Carr promised him his support only to vote for Shorten and encourage his allies to do the same. Carr denies reneging on any deal.
Laurie Ferguson, a left-wing Labor MP who retired at at this election, says the move against Carr was clear "payback" from Albanese and his allies.

It's probably not right to say this from a clinical perspective because I'm not qualified (educated yes, but not qualified) and Kim Carr is not my patient but I'll say it anyway. That prone-to-dramas thing is a dead giveaway for a personality disorder. It is conceivable that the schizo-genic nature of the ALP in the past two decades could be a function of this guy being an influence broker.

Speaking of this kind of thing...

No Country For Old Female Politicians

Okay, a bit distasteful, but only because it's in reference to the sexism referred to here.

At the Republican Convention last week, attendees had the chance to wear their sexist derision for Hillary Clinton with pride. Just outside, hawkers sold T-shirts emblazoned with "Trump vs Tramp", bumper stickers proclaiming "Life's a bitch, don't vote for one," and the badges printed with "KFC Hillary Special: 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, one left wing". 

If that last one sounds familiar, it should. Almost exactly the same "joke" was made at the expense of Australia's first female prime minister in a menu at a fundraiser for Liberal MP Mal Brough: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box".

That 'menu incident' was about as low as 'politics' in this country got. It's one thing to dislike the Prime Minster because you disagreed with her position on policy. It's another thing to go ad hominem and liken people to poultry as a sex joke - that's all kinds of wrong and it was about as much disrespect as one could take.  And let's not forget, the Opposition that presided over that kind of sexism is now our government to this day.

Anyway, Julia Gillard is backing Hillary Clinton. No surprises there. To give Ms Gillard her due, I should quote this bit, which is important and something I agree with greatly. More people should have called out the rank sexism for what it was. Not doing so robbed the moral authority from the genuine criticism of her office.

No one called for my execution by firing squad, as a supporter of Donald Trump did for Mrs. Clinton, but a radio talk-show host did say I should be put in a bag and dropped in the sea. Witches can’t be drowned, I cynically joked. 

I have often reflected how powerful it would have been if, at that moment, a male business leader, especially one who opposed my policies, said, “I may not support the prime minister politically, but Australia must not conduct its democratic debates this way.” 

Unfortunately, that never happened. 

To my dismay, some of the young women who chat with me are not asking for political insights. Instead, they tell me that, having seen how I was treated, they have decided politics is too punishing for them. I always try to talk them out of this position. Sometimes I succeed. 

In 2016, I hope there are many brave voices naming and shaming any sexism in the presidential contest. The next generation of potential female leaders is watching.

I guess in Hillary's case, she didn't exactly knife Obama to get into her current spot, but she did do her damnedest to hobble Bernie Sanders' campaign, and with it shred the credibility of the Democratic Party. That would definitely get Hillary Clinton into the same hot-seat as Julia Gillard's time in office, which is kind of where she is in Philly right now. They have more than one thing in common.

No Country For Old Perverts

Cardinal George Pell is getting investigated after all.

The ABC's 7.30 program has revealed that Taskforce Sano has been examining allegations from complainants in Ballarat, Torquay and Melbourne for more than a year, and is looking into incidents that allegedly happened during Cardinal Pell's time as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. 

The program has obtained eight police statements from complainants, witnesses and family members who are helping the taskforce with its investigation. The allegations were repeated on 7.30 on Wednesday night, and include: 

• that Cardinal Pell would touch the genitals of children while swimming in a public pool in Ballarat in the late '70s
• that he was naked in the change rooms on a regular basis in front of children
• that he exposed himself to three young children in another change room, at the Torquay Surf Club in 1986 or 1987.

Cardinal Pell vehemently denied the allegations, with his office saying he "emphatically and unequivocally rejects any allegations of sexual abuse against him".

This is going to get good.

News That's Fit To Punt - 16/Apr/2016

When Governments Suck This Hard

Several people sent me this link yesterday. It obviously hit its mark because lots more were posting it upon Facebook. It's a veritable talking point sort of article, obviously because it sums up what most people have thought and continue to think of this sorry government.

How to explain the trainwreck that is the last three years of the federal government? The debacle poses a challenge that will dog journalists, policy wonks and historians for decades to come. The explanations for its dysfunction and sustained under-achievement are complex, but there are at least two distinct theories worth considering.

In Malcolm Turnbull’s second ministerial reshuffle in February, Alex Hawke was promoted to the office of assistant minister to the treasurer. In 2005, the then young Liberal office holder prophesied that conservative politics in Australia would move increasingly towards an American model. Hawke explained that: “The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they’re blended it’s a very powerful duo.” 

Can the relentless incoherence and incompetence of the current government be attributed to a particular blend of capitalism and religion that has found favour in the US? Perhaps. British author Will Hutton argues that a malaise has swept the political right throughout the west and that it has given up on the Enlightenment and in doing so has rejected “tolerance, reason, democratic argument, progress and the drive for social betterment as cornerstones of society.”

If there is a serious contest about capitalism being waged in Australian politics, it is invisible to most of us. To the extent that there is a debate, it focuses on neoliberal capitalism. Perhaps Hawke’s invocation of capitalism is another way of expressing an opposition deep within the modern Australian conservative; an opposition to taxes and to government itself. Despite the rhetoric, the recent experience of conservative governments including the current government is that they levy more tax than their Labor counterparts.

And so on it follows. Anybody with a modicum of education and a sense of fairness would find this unsurprising. Yes our government is unrelentingly crass and incoherent, and it's totally impossible to work out what exactly they came to power to do given their contradictory (mostly self-contradictory) positions on things.

China Boom Is Over,  She Says (She's Probably Right)

Here's even more confirmation Australia is headed for economic turbulence. 

The slowdown in China's rapid economic expansion and "rebalancing" away from resource-intensive construction activity towards domestic consumption has dramatic ramifications for Australia's quarter century of uninterrupted economic growth.
In the official lingo, Australia is being forced to "transition" away from the mining boom. But to what? 

Julia Gillard began grappling with the "challenges and opportunities" presented by China's maturing economic development in 2012 when she released Treasury's 'Australia in the Asian Century' white paper. 

It too extolled the opportunities that would flow for Australia to replace record iron ore exports with shipments of health and financial services, meat, wine and dairy.
Add to this list cherries from Tasmania and crayfish from Geraldton, Mr Turnbull this week told a "gala lunch", while extolling the virtues of the recently signed China Australia free trade agreement. "The early export gains have been extraordinary," he claimed. 

Of course Ms. Irvine goes on to argue that services exports from Australia are nowhere near lucrative or competitive as to what our mining exports were able to do during the Mining Boom.

It's a special kind of mess when a Liberal Government can't point at its own record to make the point that the people are better under their economic care. It's also sad that short of thinning exports, was we have to offer Chinaware primary produce - things that are well and truly the part of the commodity trade and where prices are always in deflation.

This probably doesn't need a refresher but the problem with the Gillard Government was that without a solution it opted to double down on the Property Bubble; which, if you think about is no solution at all because it pays no attention to the economy on the other side when ultimately property prices recede back to historic norms, and there's still no industry to replace the mining boom.

The clear and obvious idea lay in the value-add that Australia could provide, so science and technology would be your front line areas to secure an industrial future for Australia beyond the Mining Boom. But of course there aren't any typical union jobs in the ranks of science and technology so the ALP in its worst moments of self-interest would not pursue such a path (And frankly I can't think of any other motive).

The subsequent Coalition Government has been worse in that it helped shut down car manufacturing Australia (because those jobs are unionised) and managed to gut a good portion of the secondary industry while wielding a budgetary axe to science and technology as well as compromising the NBN. So just in case you're wondering, Malcolm Turnbull hasn't been a panacea for the extreme Stupid which befell the Coalition Government under Tony Abbott, any more than an ALP victory might be of any help if they should squeeze past this terrible government at the next election.

Why Pay Tax When You Can Do This?

Glory be. How in God's Green Earth do these big companies get away with not paying tax?
In case you've wondered ho, here is the explanation:

Once upon a time, multinationals had proper 'bodies corporate'. Typically, they had six or eight directors who made decisions in the interest of their Australian entities, a director's duty. 

Shell Australia for instance used to be called Shell Australia. It had a full board, board meetings were generally attended. After every year end, the company would produce a glossy annual report, its financials there for all to see. A press conference, though meagrely attended, would be held. 

Now the Anglo-Dutch giant refers to itself as "Shell in Australia". Its statutory financial statements are nowhere to be seen. If you fork out $38 a pop to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) you can find them. Net, they have paid no corporate income tax on $60 billion in revenue in three years. 

Shell is a big one but the pattern is clear. Thanks to tricky financial structuring, multinationals regard paying income tax as optional. "Leakage" they call it in the land of tax lawyers. 

ASX companies, such as Woodside, Shell's peer on the North West Shelf, are bound to file their accounts publicly, and free of charge. They are visible, and they are filed – unlike Clive Palmer's accounts of yore – on time each year. 

Compliance, generally, has been in freefall over the past decade. Even the Business Council of Australia, which pontificates to government on good business practise, has only managed to get its accounts in on time in eight of the past 16 years. 

The question needs to be asked of multinationals: what is the economic reality?
Is Shell a little piece of London, and Chevron a little piece of America, which has been given carte blanche to plunder Australia's resources, pay little (in royalties in the case of Chevron) for them and bank all the proceeds of their sale in foreign head office bank accounts? 

Once Chevron has paid the money it pays to real Australians (during construction Gorgon & Wheatstone), there is not much in the way of ongoing economic benefits for Australians. 

Are these really Australian exporters? Multinationals used to run subsidiary companies and the money earned by those companies was banked in Australia and circulated in the Australian economy while the parent waited patiently for a dividend.

What a joke. The kind of money being discussed seems to be the kind of money needed to properly fund the NDIS and the Gonski Reforms and a whole lot more. It's not that these things are unaffordable, it's that our government both ALP and LNP has let their corporate donors run roughshod over the tax office. What we want is for the ATO to start going after these multinationals. That should be the platform parties run on if they want us to take them seriously about things like the budget deficit. 

'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.

'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.

Dear Julia Gillard... Please STFU

Please Go Into The Night Quietly

Ugh.
If there was one single reason we're having to suffer a Tony Abbott government, it would be because the ALP managed to lose so much ground in 2 terms that nothing was going to get them back into government for a third term - not even a looming Tony Abbott Coalition Government. I don't know how to couch it any other way. Julia Gillard said a good government had lost its way but my memory of it was that she made sure it lost its way and picked her moment to do the Brutus. Everything else is  blithe commentary. That includes all the good things Julia Gillard was supposed to have done as Prime Minister, and how well she navigated the hung Parliament and all else.
It just didn't matter then, it matters even less now - the disaster has befallen truly and squarely.

However the jury of history comes in to pronounce its verdict on the Rudd-Gillard government years, one thing that is already certain is that they fucked it up so bad, it brought on the unthinkable. And one year on from that fateful election, all of Australia is still living under the dreaded lobotomised ignorant cynical corporatist Abbott Government. That's all thanks to the ALP for coughing up their lead. Did they choke? Did they lose their minds? Did they decide to martyr themselves on their self-image? All I know is that between the lot of them, they screwed things up solidly, wilfully and painfully - and it's not going to get unscrewed any time soon.

With all of that in mind, I have to say, it really doesn't help for Julia Gillard to bob up and say things like this:

"If anything, the reputation I have from that night is one of political brutality," she says. "Actually, in the moment I was hesitant, a conversation went too long, I certainly fed [Mr Rudd] hope. I shouldn't have done that." 

"I know a lot now about what it feels like to lose the prime ministership, so I expected him to feel very, very battered and bruised," she says. "Obviously I was wrong about that." 

The former prime minister, whose memoirs are due to be launched this week, also laments her infamous comment during the 2010 election campaign that it was "time for me to make sure that the real Julia is well and truly on display". The remark opened Ms Gillard up to ridicule from the Coalition and raised questions about her political strategy. 

"I put my hand up for that 100 per cent," she says. "That's my fault, you know, sort of dumb, dumb error, rookie error maybe. I mean, I wasn't a rookie in politics, I was a rookie at being prime minister."

You get the feeling she is trying to mount an argument that it was tactical things that got out of hand. Except I can't really recall the grand strategy bit in her prime ministership. I don't mean to dump on her legacy and achievement more than is necessary, but it has to be said the current jackasses are doing their utmost to unwind a good deal of it, and some of that ground will be lost forever. So it comes back to asking, just where exactly did she think the centre sat in all of this?

When I recently moved my blog back over, I had the opportunity to read a number of entries from those years and it brought back the sense of quiet desperation that the ALP was simply losing the game by kicking own goals. Except it wasn't a game, and we weren't punters, we were citizens watching in horror.

Quite frankly, it wasn't the tactical things that let her and her government down. It was the inability to  do things as a political party in government, as a political party in government should - in other words  straight up competence as politicians, and the absence thereof - that let them down. Today, we live with the ongoing misery and inanity and banality-of-evil that is the Abbott Government. It is terrible, it is awful, it is humiliating, it is embarrassing. But it needs to be said loudly and clearly, that Julia Gillard and her ALP government by dint of their deeds were instrumental in bringing about this horror.

So Ms. Gillard, I know you were summoned back into the public eye by the stupid Royal Commission, but please go back to wherever you were hiding and shut the fuck up until at least the Abbott Prime Minister-ship is well and truly over.

Unfinished Business In The ALP

Gillard Wanted To Handball The PM Chair To Combet

I like Greg Combet. He's the only politician I know of who has admitted to being a fan of Frank Zappa. He's done now, but while he was around, I had hopes for the man. Perhaps these hopes were misplaced, given that the sort of man who likes Frank Zappa might look at Australian Politics and choose to walk away. I have to respect that as a voter, but it's still sad. Maybe it got too hard to work in Parliament all week and go home and put on a Frank Zappa record and there is Frank singing "Keep it greasy so it goes down easy". I'd imagine the cognitive dissonance might become unbearable. And so it is that he left Parliament at the end of his term at the 2013 election.

The news today - more like a non-news really - is that Julia Gillard offered to hand him the Prime Minster's chair, just to fend off Kevin Rudd. This is pretty bleak material.

An embattled Julia Gillard secretly offered to stand down as Prime Minister in June 2013 and secure the leadership for then Climate Change and Industry minister Greg Combet in order to fend off Kevin Rudd, Mr Combet has revealed.

But dogged by months of ill-health, and unsure that a switch to a third leadership contender so close to an election would improve Labor’s position, Mr Combet declined the chance to be prime minister.

‘‘I was struggling a good deal personally by the time June [2013] came around’’ Mr Combet told Fairfax Media in an interview this week. ‘‘I was in constant pain with the problems that I was having, and the thought of taking on additional responsibility and not being 100 per cent fit to do it, in that febrile environment, it didn’t look easy.’’

This ALP factional infighting is pretty awful stuff. It partly goes with the terrain of the Westminster system, and over the years we've been made to be inured to its odd outcomes. The ins and outs of these machinations are way beyond the purview of the electorate, and are subject to influences from such things as the Unions and lobby groups. It's just difficult to understand how they could have cocked up so many decisions along the way.

He says he remains convinced that former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley would have won the 2007 federal election and become a highly successful Labor Prime Minister if Mr Rudd had not dislodged him.

ACTU polling as part of the Your Rights At Work Campaign in the run up to the 2007 election left him ‘‘completely convinced Beazley would have won’’, which would have resulted in a ‘‘vastly more experienced, mature person as Prime Minister presiding over, for want of a better description, a really grown up government, avoiding all the mistakes’’.

‘‘Neither Julia nor Kevin had had a lot of experience in leadership roles and I think that impacted on their capacity to do the job’’ Mr Combet told Fairfax Media.

So at least we were right all along in 2007, that the Rudd-Gillard leadership was a balls-up waiting to happen. It's a shame I can't point to neither Kevin Rudd nor Julia Gillard as the same kinds of leaders as Paul Keating, Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam before them. The tumultuous six years in government exposed all the problems of the ALP that went unsolved since Keating lost in 1996. The problem is compounded by the fact that neither Kim Beazley nor Simon Crean were able to restructure the party in the way it needed to be restructured, and Mark Latham's turn was certainly hobbled by the same influences that replaced Beazley twice, that put in Rudd, removed Rudd, removed Gillard and essentially burnt the metaphorical house down.

Oh, and Ms. Gillard, I will never forget the slight you made when you said you were not a social democrat.

Here's Mark Latham being particularly frank about it.

Faulkner’s reform plan, to be put to State Conference this weekend, is to allow ALP branch members to select the party’s upper house tickets. Having given rank-and-file members a say in the selection of Labor’s federal and state leaders, why shouldn’t they be empowered to preselect upper house candidates? Why doesn’t Clements trust the True Believers who staff the polling booths, who keep their local branches alive, who fight so passionately for the cause of Labor?

Far from restricting rank-and-file union involvement, democratisation encourages it. It says to union members: don’t allow union secretaries doubling up as factional bosses to make all the big decisions. Join your local ALP branch and have a direct say in how the party is run: in picking federal and state leaders, in selecting Labor’s lower and upper house candidates.

This is what Faulkner is trying to achieve: Labor as a membership-based party, rather than a narrow factional-based clique.

Mark Latham's been made out to be a crazy person by the media which must be galling because he commentates in the media; and once upon a decade ago, he was the guy trying to put together a way back to office, when the party machine had run through both Beazley and Crean and found them wanting. It's hard to forget those terrible years either, together with the terrible campaign and defeat that followed. And all that time, the likes of Mark Arbib and Paul Howes were fucking shit up from behind the scenes.

It's really hard to forgive the ALP. Especially if you don't want to vote for the right.