The coming Oz election thread ...

Deb, from living close to the financial edge over the past few months, while not working, I can tell you that "the safety net" doesn't cheer me much. If you're already stretching your limited $$ to meet ends now, any extra, unavoidable expenditure is going to make things even tougher. It just means that you have to tighten your belt somewhere else. Many, many Australians are"doing it tough" right now & not all of them are unemployed, or pensioners. Some are simply under-employed, working part-time or contract work.
AND imagine how the US FTA will further erode the spending dollar for those on fixed incomes .... I don't believe a word of the government assurances that the PBS will remain the same. I'm waiting with baited breath to see what Labor's response to the FTA proposals will be. I suspect they'll make a bit of a noise about it, then cave into the pressure to rush it through parliament. We don't HAVE to rush & cave into the pressure! I'm reading much media analysis that suggests it's not exactly hugely beneficial to Australia at all. Why not try for something better?

Oh yes, I know. (Might you qualify for a health card for a bit, Msolga? Being single is sure a health hazard, I note - double income married folk cut in way earlier than we do!)

To be devil's advocate:


Thing is, when you really have to make the decisions, they ain't easy.

The electorate will squeal like a stuck pig if there is a HINT of raising direct taxes - especially for higher income earners. Nonetheless, we want to retain Medicare and decent universities and such.

In election mode, nobody dares raise the idea of anything unpalatable. Governments can only do such things early in the cycle.

I suspect that some finance folk in the Labor engine room have recently revised some figures. A hole in the platform figures? Or - given the huge ongoing costs of the PBS, they have made a tough and hard policy decision.

I don't think Latham and Labor can possibly be worse than the Libs.


Especially on the - to me - defining issue for Oz right now - Aboriginal reconciliation.

I have recently gotten a Health Card, Deb. It helps.

Yeah, I understand about the need not to shock, rock the boat, scare the living daylights out of people at election time. With Howard, Costello, Abbott & co. at the helm of the Libs, imagine what a fantastic Scare Campaign they could run! They're so good at it!

But, but .... I really believe that at the moment many, many ordinary people are sick to death, revolted even, by the constant smear campaigns & distortions, the grovelling to Bush & co, the running down of Medicare & public education, the detention centres, our involvement in the Iraq war, the election advertisements & vote buying, "non-core promises", etc, etc, etc ...... I honestly believe a whiff of REAL CHANGE from Labour at this time would be a vote winner. People are seriously looking for a more humane & honest approach from government. Let's see what Labor actually comes up with.

Now I've gotta run! I have a meeting at 10:30!

Yes, a very important issue, Deb. But equally important to me is re-establishing our autonomy from the US government. This terrible, shameful grovelling has led us down a very dangerous path. I am truly ashamed of what the Liberal Government has done in our name. Say nothing of scared silly!

I am about to read Margo Kingston's "Not Happy John".

Her thesis is that this government has been eroding the fabric of Oz democracy.

I couldn't agree more with her conclusion, though haven't read it. Let us know what she has to say, though I think I can guess!

Tony Fizgerald's speech, launching Margot Kingston's book:

The corruption of democracy

June 29, 2004

Spite and deception dominate the political landscape and we are all the worse for it, says Tony Fitzgerald.

Democracy in our tradition assumes that a broad range of political activity is controlled only by conventions of proper conduct. Especially because individual rights are not constitutionally guaranteed in this country, justice, equality and other fundamental community values in Australia are constantly vulnerable to the disregard of those conventions.

Since the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975, the major political parties seem to have largely abandoned the ethics of government. A spiteful, divisive contest now dominates the national conversation, and democracy struggles incessantly with populism. Mainstream political parties routinely shirk their duty of maintaining democracy in Australia.

This is nowhere more obvious than in what passes for political debate, in which it is regarded as not only legitimate but clever to mislead. Although effective democracy depends on the participation of informed citizens, modern political discourse is corrupted by pervasive deception.

It is a measure of the deep cynicism in our party political system that many of the political class deride those who support the evolution of Australia as a fair, tolerant, compassionate society and a good world citizen as an un-Australian, "bleeding-heart" elite, and that the current Government inaccurately describes itself as conservative and liberal. It is neither. It exhibits a radical disdain for both liberal thought and fundamental institutions and conventions. No institution is beyond stacking and no convention restrains the blatant advancement of ideology.

The tit-for-tat attitude each side adopts means that the position will probably change little when the Opposition gains power at some future time. A decline in standards will continue if we permit it.

When leaders fail to set and follow ethical standards, public trust is damaged, community expectations diminish and social divisions expand.Without ethical leadership, those of us who are comfortably insulated from the harsh realities of violence, disability, poverty and discrimination seem to have experienced a collective failure of imagination. Relentless change and perceptions of external threat make conformity and order attractive and incremental erosions of freedom tolerable to those who benefit from the status quo and are apprehensive of others who are different and therefore easily misunderstood.

Mainstream Australians remain unreconciled with indigenous Australians and largely ignore their just claims. Without any coherent justification, we are participating in a war in a distant country in which more than half the population are children, some of whom, inevitably, are being killed. In our own country, many live in poverty, children are hungry and homeless and other severely traumatised children are in detention in flagrant breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child simply because they were brought here by their parents seeking a better life.

There are, according to recent figures, 162 children in immigration detention in mainland Australia and on Nauru and Christmas Island.

The recently published report by the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention (A Last Resort) confirms what those of us who have sustained contact with some of the children now released have known for some time, namely that "the traumatic nature of the detention experience has outstripped any previous trauma that the children have had".

It observed that "children in detention exhibited such symptoms as bed-wetting, sleepwalking and night terrors. At the severe end of the spectrum, some children became mute, refused to eat and drink, made suicide attempts and began to self-harm, such as by cutting themselves".

With respect to some children, the inquiry found that the Immigration Department "failed to implement the clear - and in some cases repeated - recommendations of state agencies and mental health experts that they be urgently transferred out of detention centres with their parents. This amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

Other measures which I would describe as inhumane and dehumanising include giving children (and their parents) a number which they must wear at all times and by which they are known and called; and not allowing parents to take any photos of their children - so babies born in detention have no photos recording their development, something most parents take for granted.

Politicians mesmerised by power seem to be unconcerned that, when leaders fail to set and follow ethical standards, public trust is damaged, community expectations diminish and social divisions expand.

However, these matters are important to the rest of us. We are a community, not merely a collection of self-interested individuals. Justice, integrity and trust in fundamental institutions are essential social assets, and social capital is as important as economic prosperity.

In order to perform our democratic function, we need, and are entitled to, the truth. Nothing is more important to the functioning of democracy than informed discussion and debate. Yet a universal aim of the power-hungry is to stifle dissent. Most of us are easily silenced, through a sense of futility if not personal concern.

That a society which calls itself civilised continues to countenance the prolonged and indeterminate detention of children in conditions closely resembling those of a high-security prison, shocks me profoundly. That this society is Australia saddens and angers me more than I can say.

This is an edited version of Queen's counsel Tony Fitzgerald's written speech for the Sydney launch of journalist Margo Kingston's book Not Happy, John - Defending our Democracy (Penguin, 2004).

`

Excerpt from "Crikey":

uhoh


1. Labor battens down the hatches for Sunday's Latham demolition

Will John Howard visit the GG at 11am on Sunday morning and call an election for August 7? That's one theory going around if all the talk about Ross Coulthart's 40-minute profile of Mark Latham for this week's Sunday program is anything to go by.

Sunday's ratings have been poor this year so the pre-broadcast publicity is already kicking in as you can see from this item in Amanda Meade's Oz Media Diary column this morning.

Meade refers to "another violent incident in Latham's past" and the word doing the rounds is that Coulthart has got to the bottom of the story about Latham king hitting a campaign worker who was then in his 50s and is now in his 70s.

Labor is in damage control over the story and is trying to innoculate Latham against any fallout. Lateline's Tony Jones last night referred to a Liberal dirt-gathering unit comprising Kevin Andrews staffer Ian Hanke and former Costello press secretary Nikki Savva, who is now a fellow floater nominally with one of the Kemp brothers.

John Faulkner has also been pushing the Liberal dirt unit line through Senate Estimates and Laura Tingle referred to it in the AFR recently.

However, the fact remains that these aspects of Latham's past will eventually come to the surface, regardless of whether the Liberals have staff dedicated to dirt-digging or not. Ross Coulthart is no Piers Akerman - he is a straight-shooting political neutral and one of the finest investigative journalists in the country.

Getting to the bottom of this Latham profile was no mean feat and Coulthart is apparently telling colleagues it was the hardest story he has ever done. 4 Corners were also chasing the story but apparently gave up when access was denied. Knocking around night after night in the pubs of Green Valley is no easy gig but Latham has enough enemies from his past that eventually the truth comes out.

The Labor machine was able to gag the likes of Gough Whitlam, but the Labor veterans of Green Valley are less easy to manage and even the bloke who introduced Latham to Whitlam is said to have laid the boot into Iron Mark as well.

Meanwhile, what a fascinating combination of damaging Labor stories have emerged simultaneously. Poor old Bob Collins has only just regained consiousness after his car accident and news has leaked that he's under investigation over alleged sexual assaults on young boys in remote communities. Check out The Advertiser's coverage here.

And if Latham is king hit by Sunday, anyone pushing the idea of a sudden return to Kim Beazley has to deal with this week's Bulletin cover story about an alleged security breach. Read the full Paul Daley story here. Lateline gave the Beazley denials the biggest run last night and you can read the transcript here.

Given that The Bulletin and Sunday are the two flagship media brands controlled by Kerry Packer, conspiracy theories will emerge that Australia's richest man is going after the ALP. And why would he do that? Is Labor's plan to licence a new entrant to the free-to-air television market is troubling the man who creams off 40 per cent of the revenue in the lucrative television advertising market?

We don't buy the theory but the timing is very interesting and if Howard does sprint to the polls on the coat-tails of Sunday, grassy knoll conspiracy theorists will be out in force. Latham certainly had a dream run out of the Packer media empire for the first six months of his leadership, but that has all comes to a screaming end now.

Naturally the PM floats above all of this grubby stuff. This is what he told Lateline on Tuesday night:

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: I'm not interested in personal attacks on anybody. I don't like them. I think people's private lives and you know what I mean by that, we all know what we mean by that, I don't think those things should be dragged into politics. They do get dragged in on occasions but I counsel people not to do that and I hope Mr Latham would counsel people not to do it as well.

Meade refers to "another violent incident in Latham's past" and the word doing the rounds is that Coulthart has got to the bottom of the story about Latham king hitting a campaign worker who was then in his 50s and is now in his 70s

Uhoh, indeed, Deb! That's what I thought we I heard it on the news this morning. Next thought: an election earlier than we'd thought? This could be dirty!

What does "king hitting" mean?

Some stuff I found interesting from this morning's paper:

So far the government has spent $13 million (of tax payers' money)on pre-election advertising. They call this a legitimate passing on of information about policy changes, etc., to the electorate. I call it tax-funded propaganda. And the date of the election hasn't even been announced yet! Incidentally, for those of you who don't live here, Oz has a population of a little over 20 million. That puts the spending in context for you. If the election is held as late as October (as is being predicted by "expert commentators", what giddy heights will government spending reach by then? At the moment you can't watch anything on commercial television without being blitzed with these messages about all the wonderful things the Liberals have done with Medicare (which they've subverted since being in office), the "family bonus" payments, violence against women (which they've taken 10 years to discover ) etc, etc, ....

I'm all for fixed election dates so this sort of nonsense can be minimalised.

Bashing, physically attacking, knocking someone out, etc ... Our Labor leader has a "colourful history", Sozobe! But he's a reformed man, now! :wink:

The other bit of information I found interesting:

Despite the argument that the proposed price rises to the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS - mentioned in earlier posts) were "desperately needed" to sustain the scheme: apparently the government will save only $1.1 billion over 4 years through the extra costs passed on to beneficiaries, mostly a the poor, elderly & unemployed & chronically ill. This is, apparently 0.04 per cent of gross domestic product. Surely these "savings" could have been found in other ways? Sadly, the Labor party agreed with the government's position.

That is so grossly unethical.

AND their damned medicare/anti-violence glossies! Felt like returning them wrapping a heavy brick.

But WE woulda paid for the excess postage.


A king hit isna a bashing, to be fair, Msolga - 'tis a knockout blow.

Aking hit isna a bashing, to be fair, Msolga - 'tis a knockout blow.
Ah, I knew it was SOMETHING to do with an act of violence! Thanks for clearing that up, Deb.

Looks like we'll find out more on the Sunday program, then?

Ferking Murdoch.

It would want to really affect his ability to lead the country for me to consider it aught but Murdoch muck-raking.

Yeah <sigh>