MrGareth’s Missives

Dear Bob, Rob and Tony too...

As you chaps enter your final days of consideration as to which government you'd like to give your blessing to, I thought I'd do you the favour of trying to sum up your dilemma because I'm sure its been a very confusing fortnight for you all.

1.  You've put at the top of your list "stable and competent government".  Well, consider the following: 

• with the Greens locked-in in a formal "a-green-ment", not only does that give the  ALP a 73rd seat in the House of Reps, but from July it also gives them complete   control of the Senate.

•   with Wilkie locked in also, that gives them a 74th seat meaning that with all three of your votes included, that would give the ALP a spare seat at 77.

• (at first I thought this was a week point but now...) The ALP have a three line whip and can be depended on to keep party voting discipline much better than the Coalition, who don't.

• with Tony Crook, the Coalition have a loose canon.  A National who unseated a Liberal in the seat of O'Connor, he has said he won't necessarily vote with the Coalition and while he does agree on some topics, he can't be fully counted on to vote along party lines.  He's a renegade.

2. You said that you want to work with a party you can trust.  Well consider the very first request you made: that election promises be submitted to Treasury for costing.  What was the Coalition's first reaction? "No." Then when they did finally submit them, hey presto: a $7-11 billion black hole!  When quizzed about it, both Rob and Hockey put it down merely to a "difference of opinion".  So: non-cooperative, incompetent, lacking integrity and arrogant too - is this who you want to be working with? (Lara Tingle in the AFR said this alone made them unfit to govern.)

Then consider the Coalition's negotiation with Wilkie.  He mentioned that a priority of his was a new hospital for Hobart.  Bang! $1 billion suddenly appears on the table - from where?  With their election promises already out by $7-11 billion, does this extra billion taken that to 8-12? Furthermore, when asked by Tony Jones on Lateline if that billion remained on the table for Hobart if the Coalition did make government, Andrew Rob said it would.  The following day his colleague Joe Hockey said it would not and that Wilkie had "cost Hobart a hospital" by going with Labor.  That is either deliberately duplicitous, or Rob and Hockey can't communicate.  Competant? Trustworthy?

3. On policy, you've said that you want to bring the bush to the national agenda.  Let me list the key acronyms we need to think about in the bush: NBN, RSPT, ETS.  Who can deliver those and who can't?  Broadband for the bush, environmental protection and infrastructure spending.   Even another acronym: BER.  While poorly delivered admittedly, this was a government investing in schools.  With super clinics, they are investing in health too.  What are the Coalition planning? Cuts.  Afteral what is government money for? Sitting on?  Or spending?

4. We should also think about what the people wanted.  Preferred Prime Minister? Gillard.  If the Liberal/National Coalition is actually right, and the Labor/Green alliance is a new "coalition", then in both primary AND two-party preferred, the Labor/Green Coalition is by far and away the people's choice for government and Julia Gillard their choice for PM.  So it could be construed as your duty to put them into government.

Also - remember all three of you actually left the National Party for a reason!  Are you sure you want to join up again, because that's in effect what you'd be doing by backing an Abbott Government - resuming your metaphical seats on the National Party backbenches.

This second election, with an electorate of just the three of you, has been fascinating.  It's been far more interesting than the phony five week farce we sat through prior to the poll.  It's focussed on what the issues actually are, rather than idiocy like stopping the boats.  It's focussing on health, it's focussed on pokies, it's focussed on the economy.  I think we are all agreed that Gillard fully lost the phony election, but Abbott has easily lost the real election.

Finally, perhaps this advice I saw on a church notice board I passed in Rozelle: "vote for the one with the smallest gap between what they say and what they do."  I think that should help you frame your decision. 

 I eagerly await your verdict, best of luck! 

P.S. Try and stick together too! Mr Katter, if you back Abbott and the other two put Gillard into Government, then Kennedy will get nada from a Gillard Government!

So, there's still three seats in play and we won't have a final result until sometime next week, so the principle upshot is that like a score draw in a cup final, we now go into political penalties: furious horse trading just like in the UK in May. 

Annabel Crab summed it up best: "national puzzlement...a collective 'huh?'"  It seems that bereft of any real inpsiration or enthusiasm with either side, the nation abstained as if as one voice.  A deafening silence.  And now a motley crew of five, possibly six, "cross" bench-ers hold the fate of the naiton in their hands. 

As a self-confessed champagne socialist I still managed to find some things to celebrate on Saturday night (I over-optimistically bought a lot of champagne!), and here's how I Tweeted these highlights:

• "To be honest happy to see the back of McKew. Great Lateline host, rubbish pollie!"
• "Nice to see the Greens in the house of reps, although I'd rather have Tanner"
• "Sen. Fielding's gone? Oh champion, that's cheered me up no end!"
• "At least Wilson tuckey got sacked, there's some justice"

Also, of course, the election of the first indigenous and muslim members of the House of Reps, and the first child, should be noted; as well as as many as Nine Greens now holding the balance of power in the senate from July next year, which means the environment will again become an urgent priority for whomever is in government, instead of the elephant in the room.  

Of the three seats up for grabs (I think they are Brisbane, Dennison and Hasluck) and I think Labor will win Brisbane, Andrew Wilkie will have Dennison and Tony Crook will win Hasluck.  Of the "cross bench-ers" one is a green who has already declared for labor, one is an ex-green and three are former nationals who hate the national party but are naturally conservatives.  Certainly the fate of two policies - the NBN and the ETS - are now probably secure because between the independents and the Greens both these acronyms will be key show-stoppers on any negotiation if they are ruled out.  (There is a possible sixth element in Tony Crook who can't seem to decide if he wants to be a National inside or outside the party room, or inside or outside the Coalition.)  In short - there's one seat it and of the three yet to call, one could go to Labor or the Coalition and the other two are weird.

What concerns me the most is exactly what Mr Rabbit said - this was a govt that couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery WITH a 17 seat majority, I dread to think what we won't get done when they don't even have a majority at all.  But of course, the thought of a return to a Howard Government (albeit with son-of-Howard) frightens me even more.  So far, the gentlemen on the cross benches seem fairly sane, rational and logical people to me which is reassuring; and whats important is they are not handicapped by party-political rubbish.

What happened to Labor in the last three years is staggering.  A year ago they faced the opportunity of pulling the trigger on a double-dissolution election and doubling their majority to more than 30.  Now, I feel they fully deserve to lose their majority.  They were hopeless.  I follow politics fairly closely and I have no idea how they threw away all that goodwill we gave them in 2007 (which was very much akin to the wave of euphoria experienced by Blair  in 1997 or Obama in 2008.)  But despite all of that confidence and hope, they collapsed amid in-fighting, factional mendacity and incompetance.  Speaking for myself, while I said I'd still vote Labor (and I did) I did so with no enthusiasm after the betrayal of the ETS-surrender.  What we have before us now is a government who's only real achievement - economic stability and an apology aside - is attempted political suicide.  A classic cry for help. 

Well help is at hand*: meet The Independents.

 * = of course its true that The Liberals can try to form a  government, but my bet is they will fail despite the Nationals.  But I got that wrong in the UK in May too!

RANT WARNING: It infuriates me that the "boat people" issue has raised it's ugly head again.  The last election was free of all this horse-pooh and instead delt with real issues like climate change and indigenous affairs.  The only reason its important this time is at whenever politics gets desperate in this country - like in 2001 - the right can go raiding the left's heartland by appealing to the racist, ignorant underclass for their votes.  You wouldn't want these people in your support base if you were comfortably ahead, and you wouldn't demean yourself by blowing this whistle if you were popular.  But as soon as the going gets tough, the tough get racist...it's like raiding the sofa cushions for spare change, like combing the ashtray for cigarette buts.  It's filthy, abhorrent and beneath us all - particularly when they use phrases like "peaceful invasion" or "armada of boats".

The statement "at the current rate of arrivals it would take 20 years to fill the MCG" may simplify the issue somewhat, but it does a great job of identifying just how meaningless and insignificant this problem is.  The only reason we are debating it is because the Tories are scraping the bottom of the vote barrel.  It's the only issue that turns the so-called Rudd "working family" into the "Howard battler".  A boat arrived yesterday - apparently the 6th since the election began.  Do you know how many "boat people" were on it? Fifty. FIFTY! Most West Sydney RSLs wouldn't notice an influx of that many people.

Of course the Liberals are making hay while the immigration sun shines.  More boats have arrived - they will repeatedly tell us - in the last 6 weeks than in the last 6 years of the last Liberal Govt. Know why? Because they re-routed them all to some island in the middle of the pacific no one has ever heard of, that most people describe as nothing more than a pile of bird pooh.  They were sent there to 'process' them to ensure they were "genuine" refugees and not "economic migrants".  Know how many turned out to be "genuine" and eventually took up their right to asylum?  All of them.

I'm sick to the teeth of listening every morning on the radio to one ignorant bigot after another wittering on about "the boats" like it was some life threatening blight.  It's not.  The only thing it threatens is someone's desire to live in some 1950s mono-chrome idyll their parents eulogized as "how it should be".  Not only is not going to be like that anywhere ever again (ever heard of the global village) but it shouldn't be like that.  We are all people: skin colour, faith and culture make no difference.

And yet its top, TOP, of The Liberal Party's "National Security" policy agenda.  Ahead of terrorism!

People who think this way will spurt all the empty slogans the Liberal party have thoughtfully furnished them with, slogans that thrive in an otherwise vacuum of  political intelligence. "They should join the queue". Join the queue? What queue? Have you ever seen anyone queue their way off a battlefield? The last people to do that were The British at Dunkirk, getting raked by Messerschmitts.  I'd like to see some of these so-called "battlers" politely wait for their papers to come through as they try to sleep in the mud of some disease-ridden refugee camp while their wives are raped and their children die of malnutrition.  I'd like to see them patiently wait for their paperwork to finalise as the murderous army they fear kill their way ever closer to their doorstep.  Why should they queue just so we can sleep easily in our beds safe in the knowledge that everyone on our street barracks for the same footy team?

I'm not saying these people don't know desperation. Most of them probably do.  Many of them no doubt have horrendous debt problems, severe health issues maybe, or drink abuse.  Its possible they are under-educated and have probably never had the opportunity to travel inter-state let alone enjoy the kind of international travel that broadens your mind and allows you to accommodate foreign cultures and traditions so much more easily.  But aren't all these far more important issues to be worrying about in this election than 10 or 12 desperate families looking for a place where they can start again in a lifestyle we take entirely for granted but they can only dream of?

Speaking of desperation, why isn't THIS an issue: "The Grog still flows in Alice Springs"?

If we want the "problem" stopped, then let's go to the disaster zones, lets identify the people that should leave and TAKE them away.  We can "process" them expeditiously on the spot.  Provide asylum there where they need it, quickly and sensibly in the same way we deliver food and water.  We have a duty to these people, its our fair share as the world's most privileged 5% (we do take more than 13,000 every year anyway!).  Let's deal with this "issue" like responsible grown ups instead of ignorant morons. 

But then that would be leading.  Today's polititians only follow whatever base instinct they can appeal to to get votes.

 

With 2 weeks to go in this farce of an election I have reached a point of utter dejection - there's almost nothing that I can see anyone doing about the fact that I just can't in good conscience cast a vote confidently for anyone at all.  The only people making the slightest sense is the Australian sex party, which as fun as it might sound is obviously no basis for serious government.

I completely trust the Liberal party under Tony abbot to competently and cost effectively implement policies that deeply shame me and make me question my very decision to live in Australia - just like the seven years of Howard Government I lived through before.  At the same time, I trust Labor to have principles I wholeheartedly agree with, but to develop policies that are half-cut compromises to satisfy various factional vested interest and then completely fail to competently implement them.  In terms of leaders, it's a choice between Mad Monk Abbott and Julia Gillard's 'government by Kath and Kim' - with the mercurial Ruddbot lurking spookily in the shadows and the delusional Mark Latham popping up randomly like some Pythonesque jack-in-the-box. 

(Come back Malcolm Turnbull and Kim Beazley – all is forgiven!)

And the greens? While I would like to donate my very first Australian vote to the Greens, I cannot forgive them for conspiring with the Coalition to kill the ETS (in a remarkable case of ‘letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.’ ).  I can't remember if they could or couldn't provide the numbers to get that through - but its the principle of the thing.  Besides, I do find that to a man and woman, their self-righteousness is stomach churning.

Its a depressing and exasperating proposition which leaves me mulling a really bizarre set of options since voting in this country is mandatory

- the positive: vote green purely to keep the Liberals out while making sure Labor gets a bloody nose
- the creative: turn up to vote but defile the ballot paper. The main challenge here is to decide what to defile it with.  All suggestions welcome in the comments box below
- the negative: not turn up and register a protest by paying the $100 fine
- the comical: vote for the Australian sex party afteral; (somewhat dependent on whether they sell out to share preferences with the puritanical 'family first' party)
- the insane: lobby the Queen to revoke Federation so we can re-establish British rule

The last option of course is an echo of this comical letter from the Queen circulated after the debacle of the 2000 US election.