The coming Oz election thread ...

Sorry to hear you are out of wine but you will probably be pleased in the morning. I'm home alone and playing up a bit. I do take my politics seriously. I hate the fact that I hate John Howard, I hate hate but this man is too much.

But he is such an easy man to hate! I find his cynicism & disrespect for the electorate breath-taking. And they lap it up! Drives me nuts. What is politics without passion, anyway? :wink:

But WHEN those interest rates rise, soon, those sucked-in voters will understand that they've been played for suckers. And Howard's explanations for why the rates have risen will be very interesting, too! Lots of people will be paying attention after this campaign.

Enjoy the rest of your evening/morning, gozmo. I'm sorry that your wife is in hospital. Nothing too serious, I hope?

And now, in the absence of any more plonk, I'm heading off to bed.

Cheers,
Olga

That sucks, folks ... my commiserations.

I've been looking for a bright side to the story, but its kinda hard to find.

Yes, talking detail - at least the Greens did nicely in first preference votes, 7,0% ... won two percent even while Labor held steady.

And at least One Nation got obliterated, left with only 1,1% of the vote - that's that awful lady's party of xenophobes, right?

Full results here ...

Oh, A2K poster Fishin' might be pleased to learn that The Fishing Party won close to 2,000 votes ... almost as many as the Outdoor Recreation Party. (Is this, like, your variation on the UK's legendary Monster Raving Loony Party?)

F* F* F*

Control of the senate with Family First. Poor fella my country.

Obviously, as previously noted, we are a nation of f*ckwits.

Bye bye Telstra.

My take on Labour's failure:

They have always been a party of two classes - blue collar and academic (aka thinking people). The blue collar vote was dissipated by two things: the whole interest rate, keep things going the way they are mentality - and by the let's cut the forests down rather than get jobs that might still be around for our kids. Damn the CFMEU - I hope they like their new AWAs. Hard to believe that unions use to play a progressive role in oz politics (green bans, apartheid bans, nuclear waste bans et al).


The intellectual vote drifted to the greens because the ALP never seemed to go far enough left because it was trying to court the 'majority'.


Before i fell into a red wine coma it looked like family first would get a senate seat - even though their quota was 0.1 and the greens was 0.5 (can't remember the state) because of preference deals. This is democracy? I can almost smell the lesbian witches burning.

Get me the NZ embassy's number. I've obviously been living in a completely different country that has the same name. I still call Australia hole.

Yikes, I heard the news. I'm sure all or most of the aussies here on a2k are not happy with the election results.....

Lol!!!!! Timber, you're a hoot. Getting pissed means he is getting drunk, not angry!

Best to speak the language before making assumptions, and building castles in the air out of them.

Even had your analysis of Gozmo's meaning been correct, I would then have challenged you to prove that the left is any angrier than the right! Man, would you have trouble proving THAT one!

Do they REALLY have the senate with that scary pack of god botherers?

They are real freaking fundies.

Hmmmm - they have been pretty much a policy free zone - I do wonder how they will react to industrial law and such?

I suspect that is unclear.

I was working with heaps of them on the booth yesterday - and they really are as thick as two short planks - very well-meaning, of course...

They have kept their Assemblies of God thing very quiet.

Only heavin knows what their attitude is to labour issues and such!

Mebbe we can convince them that destroying workers' rights is bad for their families?

Gonna be a whole lot of wooing going on.....

Hi Deb - don't know if wooing will do the trick - these people aren't known for their clear thinking. At least with Fred Nile you knew where he was coming from (and could avoid going there).

If they hold power in the senate then it will be like Harradine - weird deals in back rooms. Like 'Ok you can sell Telstra if you make schools teach creationism' and 'OK woodchip Tasmania as long as you get rid of condom dispensers in public places'

I am so ashamed of my nationality. Radiohead's 'How to disappear completely' cycling through my head ...'This is not happening....'

Well, we have lived through this before, we can do it again.

Thing wiht this lot is how they are politicizing the operations of democracy - like the ABC, the public service etc.

I am sure, like most of us, they sincerely believe they are doing good.

Perhaps - as with his terrible racist attack on Aboriginal people, this may revitalize resistance? I fear, though, that, like that wonderful grass roots support, it will fade because of lack of focus and direction.

Perhaps, too, the mask will come off more frequently now, with the shot of blood to their heads, and their character will be more evident?

Lol - democracy sucks - it's just that there ain't anything better! Working on booths is always depressing - seeing how little people value and take seriously the vote so many died to get for them.

You are right - the FF's will not think clearly - it is likely to be a shemozzle. 'Twill be a damn crucible for them - as reality was for the Dems, once they stopped being able just to prance about at the bottom of the garden, being good and sweet, and had to face the consequences of real power.

If this joker has real power - oh man! At least the Dems had folk there who had experienced government and the political process.

Lol! I am off to rejoin Labor - I am always a foul weather friend - they piss me off so much that I am always letting me membership lapse.

But - they are family - you get angrier with them than you do with the conservatives, but come Christmas, there you are with gifts.

And to American friends who think we are just being "tribal" in our dislike of Howard's government - in my view the key issue for Oz is reconciliation with Aboriginal people - Howard rode to power on a wave of carefully manipulated backlash and racism - while, in his clever way, never really being open about this, and allowing the openly racist One Nation to make the front running for him

This is one key sin, in my opinion.

From a previous article, in 1996:

"John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia

Race and Politics in Australia

by Bernard Cohen

When John Howard's Liberal Party (the major conservative party in Australia) won the 1996 election, Howard promised that he would lead the government 'for all Australians'. This drew derisive laughter and cries of 'not us' at my election night party.

Obviously there are many, co-existent explanations for the previous Australian Labor Party government's loss. Nonetheless, the major campaign difference between the parties was that ALP leader (and then Prime Minister) Paul Keating was unequivocal in saying that there was no space for racism in the Labor Party.

The so-called "maverick" (read "racist") Graeme Campbell's expulsion from the Labor Party came years too late but, in the lead-up to the election, could clearly be read as a statement of Labor policy.

As self-noted political journalist Ray Martin commented, politics is as much about perception as substance. The Coalition's condemnations of racism were often equivocal. In a Coalition campaign run almost exclusively on the politics of perception -- the Liberal Party line was that Keating was arrogant -- perceived racist comments by its members were defended as 'taken out of context'.

When Bob Katter, another "maverick" member of parliament (and a member of the Liberal Party's coalition partners, the National Party), described the (as always) politically correct enemy as 'environazis', 'feminazis' and 'slanty-eyed ideologues', he was defended by both National Party leader Fischer and prime minister-elect Howard. They accepted Katter's explanation that he had meant to be poetic instead of racist -- that his substitution of 'slanty-eyed' for 'slit-eyed' was a slip of the tongue -- rather too easily for my liking.

Liberal Party candidate Pauline Hansen, who has now founded the so-called "One Nation Party" (stands for one nation, provided it's Anglo-Saxon) was disendorsed by the Liberals for stating that she would not be representing Aborigines in her electorate. But the ballot form nonetheless continued to label her as a Liberal. There was no mention in the press of whether she had also been expelled from the party, and the Nine Network omitted the disendorsement story from its Sydney news coverage at least.

Hansen and other 'mavericks' attracted large swings in this election. Katter's first-preference vote rose over twenty-three per cent. While Liberal Party candidate Warren Entsch was elected ahead of (maverick National) Bob Burgess, Burgess attracted a far greater swing on the primary vote -- over seven per cent compared with Entsch's one.

Aside from questionable views on race and social policy, what Hansen, Katter, Campbell and Burgess share is free use of the term 'political correctness'.

Characterising opponents as politically correct -- that is, incapable of individual thought -- has been a highly effective tactic, particularly for gaining media coverage.

The Labor Party -- and the Coalition parties if they, too, want to discard their racist apologists and the appearance of racist apologism -- must counter this taunt. Journalists should stop using the phrase as well. It forestalls serious analysis and real thought by celebrating mindless anti-intellectualism.

Rather than reflecting on candidates' maverick status, journalists ought to examine these people's beliefs and policies more closely, and should refuse them shortcut phrases such as 'maverick', 'rebel', 'politically incorrect' and 'forthright'.

Racists and sympathisers should not be permitted the fiction that only they are true free-thinkers while anti-racists are somehow in the thrall of 'lobbies' and other deterministic and dehumanising forces.

Along with the views of various candidates, one Liberal Party policy was equally important in sending equivocal messages on race to electors.

The Liberals promised to extend to two years the time social welfare is withheld from certain categories of new migrants. The harshness or fairness of this policy is, no doubt, a matter of opinion. (I believe it is unduly severe.)

More important in terms of perception, however, is that the policy seems to confirm the populist, talk-radio view about unfairly advantaged new migrants living off the sweat of hard-working ordinary Australians.

The Liberals, in effect, promised to clamp down on a vast number of imaginary bludgers.

This contributed to the impression that everyone but an exclusive Anglo 'us' has it easy.

The other troubling aspects of the election were the prominence of anti-immigrant parties -- some candidates attributed with a respectable, environmentalist veneer -- and the increasing vote of the redneck leisure grouping, Australian Shooters Party.

Such parties tend to concentrate redneck and racist votes and send them towards one or other of the major parties -- in this election, the 'winners' were predominately the Coalition. In every State where they fielded Senate candidates, the anti-immigrant and gun parties sent their preferences to the Coalition ahead of Labor.

In New South Wales, the parties between them drew over three and a half per cent of the primary Senate vote. In some lower house seats, this rose to around five and a half per cent.

The figures may sound insignificant, but the Coalition won government and around two-thirds of seats in the House of Representatives with a 'landslide' two-party preferred vote of only around fifty-four per cent.

It is probably impossible to quantify accurately the extent to which the Liberal victory was attributable to the racist vote, but all the circumstantial evidence is there.

The new government has a lot to do to prove that it is intolerant of racism.

As for me, I've joined the Labor Party."

I agree with this commentary.

And Crikey on how hard it is to really do anything, and how easy to look as if you are:


Walking For John Howard

Jason Bryce
Crikey Contributor

Who were the real winners from the great Harbour Bridge walk for Corroboree 2000?



04 June 2000



Affluent Australians showed the world how tolerant we really are while John Howard apparently got the message loud and clear that reconciliation and the sorry word enjoy vast support in the electorate.

Some Aboriginal walkers were brought to tears by the liberating feeling of acceptance that surrounded them; many on the Sydney Harbour Bridge felt they were fringe dwellers no longer.

But there are three clear winners from the weekend's staged assemblies of black and white Australians: John Howard, the International Olympics Committee, and the white marchers themselves.

The walk effectively concealed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation's failure to achieve its stated goals, and of course, aboriginal Australians are still waiting for the justice and equity many require for reconciliation to mean much in their lives.

In fact the walk was the celebration of victory by the real winners of reconciliation: white Australians.

It is they who have taken the opportunity to rid themselves of what Henry Reynolds calls "this whispering in our hearts": the denied knowledge that you personally are the beneficiary from the dispossession of Aboriginal people. By saying sorry and walking for reconciliation we, white Australians, can again be proud to call ourselves Australian.

This is what white people wanted in 1988 when massive Aboriginal protests marred Bicentennial celebrations.

Corroboree 2000's vital, unstated motive was fear of a repeat performance this year. Olympic organizers and the federal government hope that it will be sufficient to avert a credible aboriginal protest campaign at the Olympics.

The weekend's symbolism, however, seems pale when there is no treaty, no compensation for the stolen generation, and no formal national apology.

Over the last five years the Commonwealth has cut spending on Aboriginal programs in every budget. The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs typifies the arrogance and ignorance of a mission manager whose "visits" to Aboriginal communities are conducted from the back of a moving limo with windows wound up.

This awareness of the dim state of Australian policy provided a further motive for marchers, many of whom hailed for the nearby, wealthy suburbs to the north of Sydney's main bridge.

They will be in receipt of ample humiliating questions from friends, relatives and business associates in other countries about the nature of racism in Australia.

Thousands of these people lined up at the northern and southern ends of the bridge on Sunday to get their pictures taken and so take home tangible evidence of their tolerance.

Only last month Sydney's print media exploited the fears of these same people, with condemnation of the prospect of Aboriginal protests over the stolen generation and the "sorry" word.

The Daily Telegraph reported on page one that all sympathy for the stolen generation had been "incinerated" by Charles Perkins' threats of an aboriginal campaign.

Piers Akerman in early April told alarmed readers that "Charles Perkins has revealed the true Olympic agenda of a minority of aborigines - an unprecedented campaign to denigrate Australia in the eyes of the international community."

Barely a month later the same paper told its readers to join the walk for reconciliation.

Seem hypocritical? Hardly. The reconciliation walk was a positive photo opportunity literally teeming with international media.

Photographers and camera operators mobbed Aboriginal kids. Everyone got images of black and white together. Should blacks protest during the Olympics, media images of Corroboree 2000 will be published and broadcast again to disprove any claims of ongoing racism.

Corroboree 2000 did make a difference. You only had to be there and see the smiles on every Aboriginal face to know that. The fringe dwellers came in from the cold and were welcomed by white Australians with open arms.

For a race of people used to "looking rejection in the eye" (Warumpi Band) they saw only friendly smiling faces just wanting to know them. Some Aboriginal marchers reported that this was truly a personal turning point, a day they will remember with affection for the rest of their lives.

This is no small victory. Aboriginal Australia desperately needed a signal that Howard and Herron did not represent the views of white Australia if the reconciliation process was to proceed.

But the real test of our tolerance is yet to come. White Australia has much ground to make up in respect of its treatment of its indigineous citizens, even to catch up with other former British colonies.

But large questions remain. Does widespread support for reconciliation mean widespread support for a treaty or compensation for the stolen children?

How would we react if 100,000 Aboriginal people marched over the bridge? Would the media urge white people to join in and "vote with your Feet" as The Sun Herald exhorted, or would the police line the route armed with batons and riot gear "just in case"?

The community seems to have finally decided that reconciliation is important but there is not yet any substance behind the words. So far reconciliation has helped restore our tattered international reputation without delivering anything tangible for Aboriginal Australians.

Ha Deb, I had that 'join the ALP' conversation last night - Deja Vu of 1998.

My problem with democracy is that people vote having only read Murdoch papers, have little understanding of the ebb and flow, and lessons, of history, who see their position in time and space as an unchangeable fact. They say they love their kids but what sort of world are they creating for them? And worse yet they have no empathy for anyone outside their immediate circle, so the big issues aren't even considered.

Heinlen's 'Time Enough For Love' had a quote in the middle bit

"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something."

"Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?"

LOL Yeah, I did stumble over the cross-cultural colloquialism thing ... and I really shoulda known that one, too.

As to who's angrier, hell, there's damned little difference, quantitatively, out there on either fringe ... blowin' up an abortion clinic isn't any different from blowin' up a church, apart from the address. I'll admit I don't have any sort of first-hand familiarity with Ozian socio-political mood, but its my perception that just about globally, The Ultra-Partisan Left is about as wacky as the Ultra-Partisan Right, and each are roughly equally prone to violence the one against the other and each other's institutions, whether its swastika-wavin' skinheads or anti-WTO scruffies.

Here in The US, however, there has of late been a rash of incivility directed toward the Republican Party and its appurtenances, such as break-ins and thefts from or vandalization of local Party offices (including at least a couple of documented, if isolated, cases of shots being fired through windows), the theft or vandalization of campaign signs and posters, and the vandalization of vehicles, lawns, and buildings sporting Repubublican promotional stuff.

I just read about one fellow who got tired of replacing his often-run-over-and-squashed-flat Bush/Cheney '04 yard sign. He dug a 12" diameter, 4' deep hole in the sign's customary location, dropped an 8', 1/2"-wall, cast-iron pipe into it, filled the pipe and the gap around it in the hole with concrete, securely mounted a huge Bush/Cheney sign to it, and waited for the fun. He was not disappointed. Apart from totalin' his relatively new car and sustaining a bit of minor injury, the miscreant responsible for the vandalism-by-vehicle now faces several traffic violations and he and his companions also face a variety of criminal charges. Their prosecution will be quite uncomplicated; the car was firmly wrapped around the pole several feet off the roadway and into the sign-owner's front yad, and the sign-owner got the whole incident on video tape. I got a real chuckle out of the story.

Actor, John Howard, makes the apology many believe the real John Howard should make, but he refuses to do so - on the satirical program about preparations for the Sydney Olympics, "The Games."

"APOLOGY MADE BY JOHN HOWARD ON THE 3RD OF JULY ON NATIONAL TV

Any other John Howard who wishes to make this announcement should apply for copyright permission here, which will be granted immediately.

Good evening. My name is John Howard and I'm speaking to you from Sydney, Australia, host city of the year 2000 Olympic Games.

At this important time, and in an atmosphere of international goodwill and national pride, we here in Australia - all of us - would like to make a statement before all nations. Australia, like many countries in the new world, is intensely proud of what it has achieved in the past 200 years.

We are a vibrant and resourceful people. We share a freedom born in the abundance of nature, the richness of the earth, the bounty of the sea. We are the world's biggest island. We have the world's longest coastline. We have more animal species than any other country. Two thirds of the world's birds are native to Australia. We are one of the few countries on earth with our own sky. We are a fabric woven of many colours and it is this that gives us our strength.

However, these achievements have come at great cost. We have been here for 200 years but before that, there was a people living here. For 40,000 years they lived in a perfect balance with the land. There were many Aboriginal nations, just as there were many Indian nations in North America and across Canada, as there were many Maori tribes in New Zealand and Incan and Mayan peoples in South America. These indigenous Australians lived in areas as different from one another as Scotland is from Ethiopia. They lived in an area the size of Western Europe. They did not even have a common language. Yet they had their own laws, their own beliefs, their own ways of understanding.

We destroyed this world. We often did not mean to do it. Our forebears, fighting to establish themselves in what they saw as a harsh environment, were creating a national economy. But the Aboriginal world was decimated. A pattern of disease and dispossession was established. Alcohol was introduced. Social and racial differences were allowed to become fault-lines. Aboriginal families were broken up. Sadly, Aboriginal health and education are responsibilities we have still yet to address successfully.

I speak for all Australians in expressing a profound sorrow to the Aboriginal people. I am sorry. We are sorry. Let the world know and understand, that it is with this sorrow, that we as a nation will grow and seek a better, a fairer and a wiser future. Thank you."

http://www.abc.net.au/thegames/howard.htm


http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3057509a12095,00.html


The fight goes on:

"Sorry, but the PM says the culture wars are over
By Mark Riley, Political Correspondent
September 10, 2003

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The Prime Minister, John Howard, has effectively declared victory in the so-called culture wars over the past treatment of Aborigines, saying that "people no longer ask me for an apology".

He also believes more recognition should be given to the role of white settlers in the development of Australia and its culture.

However, Mr Howard stressed yesterday, in a debate in his government's partyroom, that special recognition should be reserved for traditional indigenous land-owners.

In making the remarks, Mr Howard issued a provocative, yet probably sincere, message to his predecessor, Paul Keating: "It has been more than seven years. I hope you get over it soon."

That comment was in response to remarks made by Mr Keating last week, which suggested the cultural views of Mr Howard and his supporters would be "simply a smudge in history".

The former prime minister said there was no real framework to the conservative version of Australian history and that "deep in their tiny, timorous hearts" Mr Howard knew this was so.

Mr Howard rebuttal of Mr Keating's attack came during animated discussion, sparked by the Queensland Liberal Senator Brett Mason, on the official recognition of the past inhabitants of the land.

Senator Mason said there should be a greater acknowledge-ment of the contribution of white settlers at occasions where politicians were routinely expected to recognise the traditional indigenous owners of the land they were visiting.

Mr Howard said he agreed generally with Senator Mason's view but believed the contributions of Aborigines was "slightly different" to those of the white settlers who followed them, and should be recognised as so.

Mr Howard said his Government's relationship with the Aboriginal community was good, saying the best evidence for this was that no one asked him now for an apology.

In a suggestion that might have been equally directed to former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser, another staunch critic of the Government's indigenous policies, Mr Howard said he believed former Australian leaders should follow the example of the former British prime minister John Major and accept loss of office with "grace and dignity".

Mr Howard said he would model his own conduct on Mr Major's when the time came for him to leave politics.

However, there are certain aspects of Mr Major's behaviour that were less than an ideal template for perfect conduct. It was not until well after Mr Major left politics that he was forced to admit conducting a long-term affair with a fellow cabinet member before becoming prime minister.

"It is the one event- in my life of which I am most ashamed," he said last year.

No one in the Coalition partyroom was game to point out that to Mr Howard yesterday.

Perhaps that will be in Paul Keating's return message."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/09/1062902057793.html

The Labor party is firmly centrist.

It is not ultra-partisan left.

And th worst we do is unscrew their damned bronze party headquarters plaque from the fence and hide it, from time to time.

Where's my damned screwdriver????

Deb, thanks for the John Howard speech. I put John Clarke slightly above Bob Brown on my pedestal of admired people.

Do you want to talk about the indigenous thing? My significant other worked for ATSIS, passionately, her stories make me sad...

Now, don't go gettin' angry :wink: ... I didn't say it was. Most folks, in fact, whatever their pary, are relatively "Centrist" ... that's why its called The Center. Like anything else, political self-identification among a population pretty well conforms to a bell curve.