The Outer Life

Capital Idea

2008-04-17T11:37:00.005+10:00

So it's been awhile since I blogged, and it seems a little strange to jump back in with this particular discussion, but some news from this morning seems worthy of discussion, so why not. The news in question: the International Herald Tribune reports that the US Supreme Court has upheld as constitutional Kentucky’s preferred method of capital punishment, a particular form of lethal injection.

The Supreme Court's ruling is, prima facie, a blow to the anti-death-penalty campaign in the U.S. Having seemingly jettisoned as unpopular the argument that capital punishment is in itself unconstitutional, anti-capital punishment forces had turned their hopes to outlawing the death penalty in its variously practised forms as inhumane. It is a telling fact about the American justice system that in this particular case, Baze v Rees, the prisoners were arguing not that the death penalty or even lethal injection per se breached the Eighth Amendment, but that Kentucky's particular form of lethal injection, in which three separate drugs are administered, was unconstitutional. Lethal injection, once touted as a humane method of killing people, has come under all sorts of scrutiny in recent years; there is a body of evidence that suggests that it can be both a slow and a painful way to die. The procedure used in Kentucky also happens to be the method of choice for most of the 38 states in which capital punishment is still an option. As such, the last few months have seen a moratorium on capital punishment in the US while the honourable justices considered, once again, the issue of the death penalty vis-à-vis the Bill of Rights.

Well, that's over. By a 7-2 majority, the court reaffirmed Kentucky's use of lethal injection as constitutional, because there's not enough proof that it causes undue suffering. The standard by which the Court adjudicates the cruelty of a given punishment is, given the subject, remarkably clinical. "An execution method violates the Eighth Amendment only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain," the court ruled sternly. "Judged under that standard, this is an easy case". Right. Don't lose any sleep over it, then. It's only somebody's life.

Not just somebody, either. As Kentucky, so go the other States: death is back. It looks like a big step back for the anti-death penalty movement as a whole; which has claimed a number of judicial victories in recent years. Certainly, it is a great personal tragedy for the condemned prisoners in question, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr.

And yet… and yet. In Justice Stevens' opinion – an assenting opinion, mind you – we find the resurgence of a seemingly outdated idea. After reluctantly agreeing to the majority view that lethal injection is not, as far as killing methods go, particularly cruel, Stevens devoted the second part of his "concurrence" to a deeper question. Could it be, he remarked, that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional? Does capital punishment in any form breach the eighth amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment"?

In the context of recent US Supreme Court history, this is more radical than it might appear. To someone who has never known an execution in her own society, the idea of debating the humanity of this or that method of killing someone is more than a little dissonant. But that's the way the debate in the US has been framed. Even Justice Blackmun's famous refusal to "tinker with the machinery of death" was based on pragmatic, rather than philosophical, objections: fairness of trial, consistency of application, and the like. Did Blackmun believe that killing people was always cruel and unusual? Possibly, but it's impossible to tell from his 1994 dissent. "The problem", he concludes, "is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution".

To those of us who were unaware that the Constitution required any sentences of death, the opinion of Justice Stevens comes as a great rhetorical, if not legal, progression. Stevens was one of the justices who upheld the death penalty in 1976, and he invoked the three "societal purposes" that were used in that case to justify the death penalty: incapacitation, deterrence, and retribution. Since then, Stevens notes, there has been considerable revision of public opinion on all three counts. The first two he deals with easily: the evidence continues to mount that the remote possibility of being put to death deters nobody; and life without parole, enforced properly, is nearly as incapacitating as killing somebody and a lot less traumatic besides.

That leaves us with retribution, and, as Stevens notes, "it is the retribution rationale that animates much of the remaining enthusiasm for the death penalty". Stevens' argument here is more nuanced: vengeance, he says, is an innate human drive, and the death penalty is motivated primarily by the desire to inflict on the criminal the kind of suffering that he (and it's usually a he) inflicted on his victim. But by progressively reducing the level of suffering which accompanies an execution, the judicial system has, in effect, done away with the state's ability to inflict suffering on the offender equivalent to the suffering experienced by the victim. (Almost no non-state murderers anaesthetise their victims before killing them.) Thus, says Stevens, the retribution justification has been diminished just as surely as the other two.

This seems like convoluted reasoning, and it earned an acerbic retort from the majority: "we would not have supposed that the case for capital punishment was stronger when it was imposed predominantly by hanging or electrocution." But what Stevens is getting at - which he says, much more clearly, a little later in his opinion - is that the human thirst for revenge is unquenchable, at least by any action that would leaves the state's humanity and moral authority (such as it is) intact. And if it's unquenchable, under current laws, it's pointless to try to quench it. So the retribution rationale is undermined, not because it's immoral, but because it's unachievable.

Having thus dismissed the rationale he endorsed in 1976, Stevens was unequivocal on the utility of the death penalty, describing it as "the pointless and needless extinction of life with only negligible social or public returns." It took him awhile to get there, but Justice Stevens is entirely correct. Two hundred years after the eighth amendment was ratified, state-sponsored murder remains hardly less cruel and significantly less usual. It has no place in a civilised society, regardless of the crime, regardless of trial procedures, regardless of the method of execution.

Commies in our Schools

2008-02-21T10:39:00.002+11:00

My housemate revealed yesterday that at his primary school, the powers-that-be had eschewed bells, hippie-like, in favour of music. Which music? Well, there was the Chariots of Fire theme, and then there was this:

Muscovite propaganda. In the late eighties. In Tasmania. Course, it's just an Olympic theme, but it certainly sounds communistic. The Howardians were right all along – primary schools are hotbeds of leftist indoctrination, or at least they were under the Hawke government.

This never would've happened when Dr Nelson was the education minister.

Thoughts on the Apology

2008-02-13T15:47:00.005+11:00

- Rudd was pretty damned good. He can never entirely escape his inner technocrat; even on this most emotive of occasions, he felt the need to bring up policy reform and procedural objectives and special cabinets. He's no poet, but somehow it worked. I, along with many others, was moved to tears.

- If there was ever any doubt that Rudd's prime ministership would be different from Howard's, it should now be banished. One of the best parts of Rudd's speech was his repudiation of the idea that acknowleding blemishes in our history constitutes a "black armband view" - it is, as Rudd said, "just the truth". Ah yes, truth: I remember the concept. Rudd might not be a raving lefty, but his moral compass is sound.

- Jokes about post-reformation theology: a surprise hit?

- I have little doubt that Dr Brendan Nelson is a good man. Really. He was clearly affected by the notion of taking children away from their parents, by his experiences in indigenous communities, by the emotional presence of dozens of members of the stolen generation. His task today was utterly thankless. But it was also self-inflicted. Had he stood with Malcolm Turnbull, weeks ago, and said unequivocally that he would support an apology offered by the government, he could today have given full voice to the compassionate doctor within. He could've played gracious statesman, transcending partisanship to right an old wrong. But he did not. So he was stuck blending compassion with occasional, strange detours into petrol-sniffing and ANZACs, obvious bones to the dogs of the hard right. And he pleased nobody.

- Watching Nelson squirm as Rudd announced the Bipartisan War Cabinet: solid gold.

- My hero: Tom Calma. I've had the pleasure of meeting him, and it's hard to imagine someone whose decency and intelligence and compassion are more clearly and immediately in evidence. If he weren't so busy healing race relations, and if I weren't a republican, I would suggest him for Governor-General.

- Paul Keating was in his element talking, post-apology, on ABC TV. Eloquent about indigenous disadvantage, generous about Rudd, scathing about John Howard. His view on Howard's non-appearance: it's a disgrace that he wasn't there, but consider the alternatives. To show up in support would've been rank hypocrisy; to show up in protest unthinkable. So his staying away was the best that could've happened. Still, for shame.

- And speaking of shame, the black list of Opposition MPs who didn't show:
- Wilson Tuckey (who nonetheless managed to make it to the Lord's Prayer, directly before)
- Alby Schultz
- Sophie Mirabella
- Don Randall
Add to that Chris Pearce, who remained seated throughout and read a magazine. I'm not saying we should steal their kids, but a keyed car or two wouldn't go astray.

The Hardest Word

2008-02-13T15:38:00.005+11:00

Sorry.

Keelty Update

2008-02-05T16:17:00.000+11:00

Sometimes, you just wish you hadn't opened your big mouth, right, Mick?

With his quasi-totalitarian suggestion of a media blackout during terror cases, Keelty has managed to unite, in one fell swoop, a number of disparate groups. Well, one might expect those bleeding hearts in the Council for Civil Liberties to be against it. And the Rudd troops have demonstrated much less squeamishness over the Haneef case in government than it did in opposition: first McClelland, then Rudd himself condemned Keelty's argument.

But then, to add insult to injury, the Opposition's justice spokesman, Chris Pyne, joined the chorus. Pyne is, to be sure, one of those Libs - they do exist - whose past record has a faintly suspicious whiff of humanity about it; he's a moderate who's been known, for instance, to voice concern about certain aspects of the Howard government's immigration policy. But that was as a backbencher; now, he is speaking in an official opposition capacity. If Keelty can't rely on the Libs' spokespeople to maintain their support, who can he turn to?

Of course, there's always someone. And that someone is, as usual, Gerard Henderson. Ah, Gerard: lone voice in the wilderness, brave contrarian flying the flag for the AFP, taking the fifth-estate consensus and ripping it apart with nary a care for his own interests. In these confusing, apology-offering, Kyoto-signing times, it's good to know that some things will never change.

So what's the argument? Sez Gerard:

Journalists, editors and producers are invariably willing to advise police how they should behave but do not appreciate being told what they themselves should do by police.

I see. There is a distinction between the media advising police how they should behave, which is non-binding and constitutional, not to mention part of the intended function of the media, and the police suggesting, seriously, that the media should be dealt blanket legal restrictions forbidding them to publish details of terror cases on the off-chance that what the media has to say might damage the credibility of the case put forward by police. One is part of the checks and balances of a democratic society; the other runs directly counter to them. But never mind. Next objection?

Also, many in the media do not approve of Australia's updated national security laws which were passed by the Howard government, with the support of the Labor Opposition, following the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.

All true. Lots of us, even outside the meejah, don't approve of Australia's 'updated' national security laws, which were, apart from anything else, of dubious constitutionality. I, for one, would rather expect laws expanding executive power and suspending habeas corpus to cop a hiding in the press. But we're not really talking about an interpretive matter here: Keelty is mostly peeved that The Australian - the Australian! - published a full transcript of the Haneef interview. To quote from the great cop himself:

... we are now witnessing these records of interviews being leaked to the media to add weight to public campaigns. When a "record of interview" is given to the media with accompanying commentary, we run the risk of jeopardising the accused's ability to receive a fair trial when the matter reaches court. It is also only one part of the greater body of evidence, and when considered in isolation it may serve as a public relations tool in the short term, but it has the potential to severely harm a case in the longer term.

Translation: this is not merely a crusade against soft-on-terror writers of opinion pieces. It's factual reporting Keelty is opposed to. Get it?

Look, Gerard. We all understand that you're feeling a little beleaguered in the post-Howard era. There are certain socially acceptable remedies available to you; one would understand if you felt like turning to the bottle, or perhaps kicking the cat around a little. But defending Mick Keelty's call for a media blackout is not the way to cope. It makes you look silly, and it alienates you from your peers. Chris Pyne has proven he knows which way the wind is blowing. It's probably time you took heed.

What Your Reading Material Says About You: Dodgy Facebook Stats Edition

2008-01-30T13:46:00.000+11:00

In a feat of statistical analysis only a market researcher could love, these people have correlated Facebook users' self-reported favourite books with their colleges' mean SAT scores. Yeah, I know, but it's all in good fun. And there's a lot to like about the results, even if the methodology's suspect: Lolita and García Márquez are awesome, 1984 is way better than Animal Farm, and the less said about university students who still list "The Holy Bible" as their favourite book, the better. Also, turns out crappy schools are more likely to attract people who don't realise Hamlet is a play, not a book. Sounds about right to me.

Mick Keelty and the Logic of Public Scrutiny

2008-01-30T12:05:00.000+11:00

Is it just me, or has cop-in-charge Mick Keelty been acting a little… unhinged ever since the Mohammed Haneef case?

Exhibit A for the prosecution: Keelty's address to the Sydney Institute last night, in which he criticised the media for reporting on high-profile terrorism cases and subjecting the powers-that-be to rigorous and sometimes unfriendly scrutiny. You know the drill. I think it's known in some circles as "doing their job".

Keelty's complaint is that the media have been so busy reporting on cases such as the Haneef prosecution, airing facts in the public sphere, humanising the would-be defendants, and so forth, that the judicial process doesn't stand a chance. Which is just a little rich on a few different levels. Namely:

1. Time and again, the media has wielded its opinion-making power in a way that is most favourable to the public prosecutors. I'm looking at you, Murdoch press. One hardly needs to open the Daily Telegraph to encounter an example of journalists and editorial writers whipping up a public frenzy against the minor recalcitrant du jour. Due process? Forget it. Keelty might be disappointed that this handy little coin has a flip side, but he can hardly claim to be surprised.

2. Er, the burden of proof rests on the prosecution. Innocent until proven guilty, as the legal phrase has it. The media are supposed to cover criminal cases as though the defendant is innocent. Remember? If the cops can't make the case for the defendant's guilt in the face of a little media scrutiny, they can't make the case at all.

3. Re. the Haneef case: it's been so long that perhaps our collective memory of the events is a little hazy. So, a little refresher on Haneef-case chronology. First, the AFP themselves released highly selective excerpts from the interview, the cumulative effect of which was to lie about Haneef's association with terror suspects. Then, Haneef's lawyer, Stephen "Atticus Finch" Keim, released the whole transcript to set the record straight. Now, it's understandable that the AFP were embarrassed by the release of the full transcript, in all its computer-illiterate, geographically shaky, Ramadan-ignorant glory. But that's hardly the media's fault. Is it really Keelty's contention that justice would've been better served had the media's knowledge of the case been based solely on AFP-approved "facts"?

4. While we're on the subject of extraneous bodies influencing judicial matters, how about a little shout-out to then Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, who, at the behest of the Australian Federal Police (yes, that AFP) cancelled Haneef's visa, thus effectively overriding the decision of the judiciary to grant Haneef bail? Or are we not supposed to be concerned about that kind of extrajudicial interference?

5. If you purport to be concerned, as Keelty does, about the erosion of public confidence in your institution, you're probably not doing your cause any favours by waxing totalitarian. So rather than calling for "a halt to criticism of public institutions", how about you focus on cleaning up your own act? The media can only report on what happens, after all.

Attempting to preserve secrecy is not, of course, an uncommon reaction to the threat of terrorism. But it is an irrational one. The seriousness of the charge lends more, not less, weight to the importance of due process; and the heightened powers of the police render it more, not less, important that the media scrutinise that process. Confidence in public institutions can only be achieved if the workings of those institutions are exposed to the public. In the Haneef case, the AFP and Andrews failed the accountability test miserably. But that is cause for greater accountability, not easier tests.

* * * * * * * * * * *

UPDATE: Writing in Crikey for us subscriber-freaks, Greg Barns has a similar take: "The idea that Keelty and his colleagues should be allowed to brief editors of media outlets on a secret basis in terrorism investigations, while at the same time preventing lawyers acting on behalf of those being investigated speaking to the media, is so absurd, that one wonders if this man has really lost the plot."

US Candidates: The Issues

2008-01-11T14:57:00.000+11:00

Doing the rounds of the internet at the moment: a political compass test for US presidential candidates. See how you compare!

Here are my results:

Rather comforting, actually. After all the commentary I've read about John Edwards being the true progressive in the race, I was beginning to worry that my Obama/Clinton leanings were informed by white liberal guilt, or feminist overcompensation, or misplaced nostalgia for the Clinton era, or the fact that Obama looks good behind a lecturn. Well, they probably are, but at least now I can claim 81% policy convergence with Obama, and 78% with Clinton. John Edwards is just behind; Bill Richardson, whose staffer emails I have unaccountably received all campaign, is my least favourite Dem (but he dropped out this morning, so that's ok). And I detest everything Fred Thompson stands for, which is fine by me.

New Hampshire Intrigue

2008-01-09T15:08:00.000+11:00

For those of us who just can't get enough of politics, US primary season is already up and running. (And we complain about our six-week election campaigns.) The commentariat was abuzz on the weekend with the twin surprise out of Iowa: Huckabee over Romney, Obama over Clinton. Now we're in New Hampshire, where John McCain has won in a big way, and Clinton has reversed the tide yet again with a narrowish win over Obama, just as people were beginning to predict an Obama domino effect. Isn't politics fun when you have no vested interest in the outcome?

Conventional wisdom in much of the non-US world has it that Barack Obama does not stand a chance: the American electorate is just not ready to elect an African-American president, especially not a Democrat. Obama, though, is a uniquely appealing candidate for people who might otherwise be subconsciously wary of electing a non-white. He's young. He's nonthreateningly handsome. His rhetoric is cerebral rather than muscular. He speaks not with the populist outrage of John Edwards – that would be a bridge too far – but inspiringly, optimistically. He loves to invoke lofty ideals like unity and "post-partisan politics". He makes people feel good about voting for him.

And perhaps as a result, moderate Republicans don't hate him; at least, not nearly as much as they hate Senator Clinton. Obama's big achievement in Iowa was to mobilise self-identified independent and even Republican voters. Pretty good for a guy who voted against the Iraq war from the outset. Of course, the campaign hasn't been entirely free of nastiness - the 'rumour' doing the rounds that Obama is a 'secret Muslim' comes to mind - and one can certainly expect an escalation of this kind of thing should Obama win the nomination. But so far, so good, at least as far as race-baiting goes.

Now Obama's problem, such as it is, appears to take a somewhat different form: people – certain people - don’t take him seriously. I'm calling this phenomenon Obama's Jonathan Franzen problem. Franzen, you may remember, was none too pleased when Oprah endorsed his critically-acclaimed novel The Corrections as part of her book club. The author felt this cheapened him as an artist, robbed him of his intellectual credibility among the elites he felt to be his natural readership.

Famously, Oprah has now endorsed Obama for President, providing him with a useful injection of popular support. Oprah is staggeringly influential, and when she says Vote Obama, people - certain people - listen. (The cultural implications of this I will leave for a later discussion.) But it's also had the effect of tagging Obama the Oprah Candidate, which, while not particularly damaging in itself, manages to encapsulate a lot of the arguments of the anti-Obama camp: too young, too inexperienced, style over substance, celebrity over policy.

Much of this criticism is valid; 46 is young for a President, and one term in the US Senate is not exactly a substantial resume. But Obama is no fresh-off-the-turnip-truck naif, either. Besides, as job descriptions go, being POTUS is utterly unique. Every other 'experience' up to this point can hardly be expected to prepare the candidate for the actual presidency - even, dare I say, the experience of being married to a two-term prez.

At any rate, given the New Hampshire result, the race for the Democratic nomination is looking suddenly more interesting. Meanwhile, those crazy Republicans vacillate between McCain and Huckabee… it's nice to see the conservatives riven by internal conflict for a change.

Freedom '08

2007-12-13T09:49:00.001+11:00

The Herald has an exclusive today about the New South Wales Government's plan to enact emergency laws during next years World Youth Day conference. Leaving aside the religious aspect, I have to say I'm getting a little sick of having my civil liberties periodically restricted just because I have the hide to live in a temperate, good-looking city. I'm all for encouraging tourism, but not if that entails John Watkins acting like Pervez Musharraf every time a big event comes to town. Emergency laws? Excuse me, but an appearance by a leading religious figure does not constitute an emergency.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of all this is the muted response laws like this seem to generate. Oh, sure, people grumble, in much the same way people grumble about their local council cracking down on overhanging branches. But the potential for abuse - and the precedent set by the government enacting new, authoritarian legislation whenever they feel like it - doesn't really seem to hit home.

I'm not trying to pull a Naomi Wolf here. I don't really think Supreme Leader Watkins is about to start sending in the army every time someone stages a protest, and heaven knows Iemma has neither the drive nor the competence to do so. But people are getting so accustomed to having this or that event invoked as a pretext for upping the city's Laura Norder quotient, one begins to suspect that such an action would barely raise an eyebrow. It's sad, and it's dangerous. Remember these images? They're out of place in any democracy, let alone one with a supposedly proud anti-authoritarian tradition.

Of course, the NSW Opposition, many of whom would be quite happy as members of Generalissimo Franco's goon squad, didn't object to the laws per se, at least not as the bill was being debated (to their credit, the Legislative Review Committee did raise serious objections). Instead, the Libs' Jonathan O'Dea took the opportunity to provide a few helpful suggestions of his own:

In light of the recent APEC experience, I particularly urge the Government to consider better ways of dealing with the ABC Chaser team. The boys are quick and imaginative in their endeavours to amuse television audiences. Asking them to sign a post-APEC good behaviour bond would only set their minds in overdrive. I therefore suggest that the New South Wales Government provide funding to get them out of Australia for the week. How about sending them to the Kalahari Desert to investigate humour in 45 degrees heat or to Russia for lessons on how to behave solemnly? Perhaps they could be sent to China and India, as Premier Iemma was before the recent Federal election to save Kevin Rudd from further embarrassment.

Quite. The Chaser provided the only moment of sanity of the entire APEC saga. It cannot be allowed to happen again.

Doris Lessing's War on Everything

2007-12-12T07:45:00.000+11:00

So Doris Lessing has used her Nobel Prize acceptance speech to hit out at the internet. The internet! What is behind this? Could it be a simple case of viewing one lolcat too many? Or was Doris, like so many of us, just annoyed to have found herself spending an hour idly clicking around Wikipedia, touring through the pages on salamander and mercantilism and Bobby Darin only to lose track of her original purpose?

Oh no. Lessing is worried that the internet is leading us to our ruin, specifically by dumbing us down. We are turning into a society of ignorant, barely literate, jaded automatons. People specialise in one thing - computers, most gratingly - and don't stray from their field of expertise. Nobody reads anymore. Young people know nothing, and also quite probably chew with their mouths open, although Lessing doesn't find time to mention it.

Could she be right? I think, if anything, I read more - and more widely - than I would if the internet had not been invented. Here is a snapshot of browser windows I had open when I chanced upon the Lessing article. (Please note it was a quiet-ish day at work.)

1. The Sydney Morning Herald - "Net dumbs us down"

Even without the internet, I would almost certainly read a print newspaper every day. I always used to. But equally certainly, I would read different stuff. The article on Lessing would probably never have reached me, hidden as it was in the Tech section, which is generally of no interest to me, and gets thrown out every Saturday, when I do buy the print Herald. In fact, in eradicating the physical barriers between interest sections, the online version probably leads to more branching out of one's interest area, not less. What's more, when I buy the print Herald, I read it on the bus, which takes away time I would normally spend... reading a book.

On the other hand, when I have the paper in hard copy, I always end up doing the cryptic crossword, which I don't like online. It's too hard to mark up, and too easy to cheat.

2. The Guardian, A Hunger for Books

The full text of Lessing's speech, which I googled on reading the article to ensure she wasn't misquoted or taken out of context by the Herald. Checking the context seemed like the fair thing to do. One hardly needs to point out... oh, go on then: this would not have been possible without the internet.

3. The New Yorker, None of the Above, by Malcolm Gladwell

A neat summary of a debate about the statistical IQ gap between races and its implications, with particular reference to the Flynn Effect. I have been following this issue with some interest, although without any scientific expertise. See, it all started when Slate published a series of articles by William Saletan in which he argued that the racial IQ gap was genetic and immutable. This did the rounds of the blogs, including Matthew Yglesias, where I was alerted to it, and naturally sparked a great number of fiery arguments, particularly when it turned out that Saletan's reportage was informed largely by fruity white supremacists. (Duh.)

Being kind of a tosser, I can easily imagine that I would spend perfectly good caipirinha money on the print New Yorker in the absence of an online version. So I would've read Gladwell's article. But I would have had no context outside what the article provides - I wouldn't have read Saletan, nor would I have any idea of the uproar his work had caused. I could have guessed, but I wouldn't have experienced it myself. Also: it was reading Gladwell's blog, as well as the Freakonomics blog, that convinced me to buy his books "The Tipping Point" and "Blink". Do we still think the internet discourages reading?

4. 150 UK pounds in Euros

This is actually for work. I am the office converter of pounds to Euro, miles to kilometres, etc. I keep trying to tell my colleagues about Google Conversions, but they insist that I "do it quicker". This is quite possibly the result of belonging to a generation that has never had cause to doubt that the answer is at our fingertips. If something unfamiliar - a place, a person - comes on the news, someone immediately goes to the computer (that would be the spare computer, beside the television) to find out about it.

How can this mean we know less? We might retain less arcana, because we know we can always retrieve it later. But I even doubt that part, because the internet lends itself to broadening the search, so that each piece of trivia eventually gets a context, something to link it to all the other stuff we've found out about. There's no better way to remember something than to relate it to what you already know. I read that online somewhere.

5. The Economist, Defeat for Hugo Chávez

Like the New Yorker, the Economist is something I can imagine reading in print... or half-reading in print, and then leaving, crumpled, under the passenger seat of my car along with the half-read, crumpled New Yorker. (This is slightly more than just an educated guess. I hereby apologise to the old-growth forests of Tasmania that have died for my sins.) The refined classical liberals at the Economist take a dim view of Mr Chávez, but that's okay, because John Pilger thinks he's God's gift to poor people, and I saw Pilger's film too. It's all about balance.

6. Programme for International Student Assessment, 2006 results

I was led to this through an Economist article outlining the educational attainment of various countries. I wanted to check how Australia measured up. Not too badly, it turns out - our achievement band contains some reassuringly Scandinavian countries, as well as some Asian New Economies. Our performance in reading is slipping, though. Must be all that internet surfing.

7. Crikey: Brendan Nelson: Rat, coward or liar... you decide, Guy Rundle

Crikey is irreverent, contrarian, openly non-objective, and obsessed with the insiders' world of politics and media. It publishes contributions from Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne and GetUp and David Flint. It gets down and dirty with polling-by-electorate data and publishes anonymous "Tips and Rumours" from deep within Canberra's bowels. Its readers - who can and do comment on each story - are sometimes morons and often astoundingly well-informed. In short, Crikey epitomises much of the internet's effect on political discourse. Would we be better off without it? Like hell we would. Consider the Lie Matrix in the Rundle article I linked, showing the rather unpalatable choice of interpretations one has regarding Brendan Nelson's backflip over "never voting Liberal":

You don't get that in Doris Lessing books.

* * * * * * * * * * *

It's probably too easy to take an 88-year-old to task over her views of the internet. It's certainly easy to wax nostalgic about books, and I share her wish that more people would read more literature. But this notion of a past populated by erudite book-readers is at best overly romantic, and saying the internet is dumbing people down is erring dangerously close to grumpy-old-lady knee jerking. People still read. People still read books. As for the internet, it is what you make it: there's a lot of crap out there, but there's a lot of useful things, too. We need to spend less time bitching about Yoof These Days and more time teaching people the difference.

Rich Businesswoman

2007-11-30T09:37:00.001+11:00

I was googling for other examples of rich businesswomen married to successful pollies, and, well:

Women's Business

2007-11-29T17:45:00.000+11:00

Much is being made of the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister is suddenly OMG a woman and that her opposite number, a Tory for chrissake, is also of the female persuasion. Kevin Rudd is also rather proud of the fact that there are four women in the Labor cabinet - Gillard, Jenny Macklin, Nicola Roxon and Penny Wong - which tops the female count of even Howard's most feminine cabinet.

It's a brave new world. One would expect nothing less from a man who, apropos his wife's dodgy industrial relations practices, proudly asserted that his wife was no appendage of her husband. Nosir, although she did subsequently sell her multi-million dollar business in deference to her husband's political career, apparently content to spend the next God knows how long obsessing over curtains à la her Lodge predecessor. Oh, well. I suppose if manchester doesn't prove fulfilling she can always fill the time planning her Hillary manoeuvre.

Nor, when you think about it, is four women in a cabinet of twenty much to write home about. Forty years since the Second Wave, and we're only at 20%? Germaine Greer will be outraged, if she ever snaps out of her current Oz-dissing, young-boy-admiring daze.

I'd like to think we've progressed beyond the stage where a leader has to explicitly state that he didn't choose women for his cabinet just for the hell of it. But the fact is, however much we may snigger at the Coalition MPs who've suddenly discovered the joys of family life after all these years, politics is damned unfriendly to those who want any kind of balance in life. The hours are ridiculous, the job stressful, the travel requirements strenuous. I think that, more than, say, a lack of ambition or qualifications on the part of women, or sexism on the part of men, is the reason for the current gender imbalance in politics. Until the paradigm shifts to a point where women and men actually do share the business of child-rearing equally, women are going to be underrepresented in Cabinet, in the outer ministry, in Parliament.

Brendan NELSON?

2007-11-29T13:09:00.000+11:00

I guess they thought Malcolm Turnbull's policy agenda was just far too likely to be well-received for the modern Liberal Party to take on board. Turnbull has all these crazy ideas about republics and reconciliation and signing Kyoto and failing to hate on brown people. It's Just Not On. Not what liberalism's About. Just ask Miranda Devine. I'm not saying Nelson is a right-wing maniac - I don't think he is - but his election as Liberal leader, with the support of the Liberal right faction, is a clear sign that the Liberals have no intention of learning from their mistakes.

As a matter of fact, the Libs have gone insane. Contrary to current conservative wishful thinking, this election was about more than a repudiation of John Howard, the man; witness Turnbull's results in Wentworth and Petro Georgiou's in Kooyong versus the debacle in, say, Bennelong or Lindsay. Hard right doesn't work; moderate liberalism does. It's what people want. But to admit as much would be to take on much of Rudd's centrist agenda, thus, in the view of some Libs, depriving the party of its raison d'etre. I get that, but turning right just for the sake of opposition isn't going to get them elected. It'll just turn them into a bigger version of the NSW Libs. And then there's Tony Abbott's dark warning that he might challenge for the leadership at a later date. For a Howard man, he doesn't seem to place much stock in leadership stability.

Serious questions about the future of the opposition aside, though, this existential crisis they're going through is highly entertaining, wets vs. dries vs. crazy uglies; my personal favourite moment was when Tony Abbott declared (with, one pictures, a hand over his heart): "I always regarded myself as the honorary president of the John Howard fan club." Aww. True believers can be so cute sometimes.

Oh Happy Day

2007-11-26T13:48:00.000+11:00

Democracy works. It really does. I have never experienced such a jubilant mood, post-election: our Don's Party, nervous at the outset, quickly gave way to a mess of cheering, dancing, heckling, bloodthirsty speculation over the Liberal Party leadership, referring to one another as "comrade", and drinking penalties every time one's local member was spotted on the TV (much to the distress of the lone Joe Hockey constituent in the room; it seems the man cannot bear to be offscreen for more than a few seconds at a time).

Some thoughts:

- Maxine McKew mightn't be a seasoned politician, but she has star quality by the bucketload. Charming, articulate, natural. Her infectious speech on Saturday was the best moment of the evening. Guy Rundle summed it up in Crikey: "If the real deal happens, and John Howard is replaced by a FEMALE, LABOR, ABC JOURNALIST, how could you not see, in her sparkling eyes, a reflection of the light on the hill?"

- By contrast, we got bored and turned the music back up in the middle of Rudd's acceptance speech. He might be Third Way, but Tony Blair he ain't.

- If I say I'm glad Turnbull survived the bloodbath, do I get stripped of my True Believer credentials? I just think we need all the socially moderate Libs we can get right now, so we can forget that Howard's culture war years ever happened. The last thing this country needs is a hard-right, God-bothering opposition.

- For the same reason, Tony Abbott cannot be allowed within 500 metres of the Liberal leadership. He'll rewrite the party charter to include excerpts from the Book of Revelations and run on a platform of banning condom sales and instituting Compulsory Mass for the Dole.

- Quote from a "senior Liberal", post-Bennelong debacle: "f-cking Chinese". Dearie me: have they learned nothing?

- The Queensland electorate of Leichhardt topped off a highly entertaining six weeks by posting the biggest swing to Labor in the country. A bravura performance all round. But the title of most entertaining seat this time around must go to Wentworth. It had everything: silvertail businessman Malcolm Turnbull versus human rights lawyer George Newhouse, the political retaliation of an embittered ex, anti-Zionist campaign managers, the accipurpose revelation that Turnbull had sworn at the PM over Kyoto, an illegitimate candidacy and subsequent suppression of vital documents, the "girl talk"/political interference intrigue of Caroline Overington versus Danielle Ecuyer, and the soap operatic culmination on polling day, when Overington actually slapped Newhouse. Ah, the eastern suburbs.

- The talk is all about the Liberal implosion, but a secondary question - whither the Nats? - is equally salient considering Saturday's primary vote.

- One gets the impression Alan Ramsey has been waiting a long time to file this piece.

- Ditto Paul Keating.

- Between the seat losses and the leadership quitting, we have quite the star-studded death list: Howard, Costello, Vaile, Brough… hate to sound greedy, but couldn't we have squeezed Danna Vale in somewhere?

- Interesting times: the balance of power in the Senate will likely be shared among independent South Australian Nick Xenophon, Family First's Steve Fielding, and his mortal enemy, the Greens. God only knows what kind of under-the-table legislative deals we'll see this term.

- I know you're probably as worried as I was about how David "The Australian people are too smart to throw Howard out" Flint was handling the electoral heartbreak. Worry no more: apparently he survived.

- The young NSW quasi-fascist Alex Hawke is now a federal MP. He's an unashamed critic of the small-l liberal faction of his party and is said to have been instrumental in the downfall of John Brogden as NSW opposition leader. Be very afraid.

- Primary vote in Lindsay, home of the leaflet scandal: 38% Liberal, 52% Labor. Combined elected representatives of Pauline Hanson's party, One Nation, and the Muslim-bashing Christian Democrats: 0. We're getting there.

- In what may be an early sign that Rudd's prime ministership will, indeed, restore some compassion to the electorate, I actually feel a little sorry for Peter Costello right now. But I'm sure it will pass.

Holy Crap

2007-11-22T16:53:00.001+11:00

Er, that would be the DAILY Telegraph.

Ala Akba

2007-11-22T11:47:00.000+11:00

Apart from anything else, a leaflet taking on the voice of Islamic activists is rendered somewhat less convincing when the signature rallying cry is misspelled. Upon reflection, it was probably a deliberate style choice, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.

Amusingly, Howard's in damage control mode, condemning the leaflets as racist, which is just a bit rich for my delicate sensibilities at this hour of the morning. After all, the man is not above encouraging bigoted fringe groups himself when he gets a spare moment, and both his policies and his past rhetoric leave him open to the charge of race-baiting. It's just the execution of the leaflets that was a bit off. He's condemning the blackface while upholding Jim Crow.

This episode has made front-page news out of a long-existing fact: there are some scary folk in the hard right faction of the Libs. Sometimes I wonder how they can coexist with a man of evident conscience like Petro Georgiou. Fine, it's a big tent, but surely there are limits? Is a middle-class upbringing and a heartfelt devotion to cutting taxes really enough to keep these people together?

I'm not entirely sure it is. If the Libs lose office, the post-election fallout is going to be vairy interesting. Stay tuned!

Race for the Bottom

2007-11-19T16:18:00.000+11:00

For those of us who like to make a big deal out of our triennial accountability moments, the Senate group voting tickets are available online. Read. Research. Vote below the line. Truly, it's exhilirating.

I know roughly how my preferences are going to go, but I'm yet to work out the final details, in particular, who will win the coveted spot at the very bottom of my ballot paper. In the race:

The Christian Democratic Party

Fred Nile's disciples want a moratorium on "Islamic immigration", citing a highly scientific Daily Telegraph online poll which claims 99% community support for the initiative. Then, hilariously, they claim in the very next paragraph of their leaflet that "the Christian Democratic Party stands for religious freedom in Australia and worldwide". Religious freedom as long as you're, you know, Christian.

To me personally, this is all the more injurious because one of their candidates, Paul Green, is from Nowra. Indeed, he's the Deputy Mayor of the Shoalhaven City Council, where he no doubt introduces a certain godly je ne sais quoi to the quotidian business of bypasses, garbage collection, and development approvals.

Also, there are grammatical errors in their leaflets.

The Citizens' Electoral Council

These people are beyond bizarre. Allow me to demonstrate:

The CEC are affiliated with the anti-Semitic LaRouche Organisation. They have also likened the scientific consensus on global warming to "Hitler-Nazi race science". I'd explain the link between global warming and eugenics, but I think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand it. Sorry, folks.

Pauline Hanson's United Australia Party

Evidently think "Pauline: You Know Where She Stands" is a good thing. Well, the rest of Australia might've forgotten how much damage Pauline did in her pre-Dancing days, but I haven't. Onto the list she goes!

In a touching concession to its likely visitor stream, her website asks rhetorically "Did you know that the Senate can say 'No' and overrule the government?" Actually, I did, in common with most of my primary-educated counterparts, but thanks for asking.

So there you have it. Pauline Hanson: #1 representative for people without a goddamn clue.

One Nation

It's just not the same without Pauline, is it? Still, according to One Nation's own website, we should vote for them because that way... they can do exactly the same stuff Howard's been doing without them anyway! Well, the race-baiting stuff, anyway. As calls to action go, it seems somewhat lacking to my ear, but then I am probably not One Nation's target audience.

Clicking on "The Principles and Objectives of One Nation" will get you a 404 Not Found, which I thought was vaguely amusing.

The Nats

Just cos I'm mean, and it would be funny.

******

With so many genuinely bad-crazy candidates to choose from, it looks like the garden-variety or single-issue right wingers - Family First, the Libs, the Shooters, et al - are not even in the running. (Neither are the Nats, if I'm being completely honest.) It's really a pity when they work so hard at being objectionable. But hey, there's always next election.

Avendanos versus Andrews

2007-11-19T11:37:00.000+11:00

Another distressing story from the dark corners of the immigration department. After everything - the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau, the deportation of Vivian Alvarez, the impassive response to hunger strikes by Baxter detainees, the cancellation of Mohammed Haneef's visa on 'character' grounds, the seven-year limbo of the stateless asylum seeker Ahmed Al-Kateb, and so on, and so on - it should come as no surprise to anyone to discover yet another instance of merciless bureaucratic stonewalling. But it angers nonetheless. This family has lived here for 23 years. Their son, Rainiel, an Australian resident, is a 19-year-old with an intellectual disability. Because of the refusal of immigration ministers - first Vanstone, then Andrews - to intervene on behalf of the Avendanos, Rainiel faces the choice of moving to the Philippines with his family, or staying in his country of birth without them.

This is profoundly wrong. Whatever interest Australia has in securing its borders, however strong a 'message' it wants to send out to would-be illegal immigrants, there is no justification for such cavalier treatment of any human being – let alone a family that has resided here peacefully for almost as long as I have been alive.

Kevin Andrews hasn't had long as Minister for Immigration, but in his short tenure he has proven himself quite Amanda Vanstone's equal as far as embarrassing Immigration portfolio incidents are concerned. My friends and I sometimes play a sort of parlour game: which Howard cabinet member would you get rid of, given the chance? I've always been an Abbott girl myself, and Abbott's performance of the last few weeks hasn’t done a great deal to dissuade me. But if I were playing the game with a completely open mind, minister for minister, Andrews is as good a reason as any to vote the Howard government out on Saturday. Unfortunately, his is a safe Liberal seat - but an Andrews on the Opposition benches is infinitely preferable to Andrews as Immigration Minister.

Newsflash: Talkback Caller Has Reactionary Views

2007-11-15T18:09:00.000+11:00

I'm not entirely sure why the AAP felt the need to dedicate a news story to a talkback call by a diehard Liberal, but here it is in all its trivial glory. Looks like the subtext of the Libs' message – DON'T TRUST THE LESBIAN COMMIE REDHEADS - is getting through, at least to their Land-reading, John Laws-listening 'base'. Of course, the Coalition is probably hoping that their scare campaign about the deliberately barren, non-skirt-wearing communist union boss Gillard will transcend the redneck ouvre, but I wouldn't count on it. Gillard is a pet target of conservative politicians and pundits, but actual voters, it turns out, quite like her. Michelle Grattan, peace be upon her, had a good piece about this dichotomy a few weeks ago.

In other beatup news, Kevin Rudd does not hate the Australian flag, in fact he loves it dearly, but doesn't feel the need to drape himself in it at every occasion. Nice deflect. I would add that I find it bizarre the way uber-patriots expect the flag to be waved at every conceivable opportunity. If anything, I would expect a patriot to be offended by the idea of the flag being appropriated for such a transparently partisan cause as a Labor Party launch - the implication being that Labor faithful are more Strayan than their Liberal/National counterparts. Surely that's not what the flag is for?

Then again, what would I know? I don't even like the Australian flag.

How Do You Say "Quelle Surprise" in Urdu?

2007-11-02T16:54:00.000+11:00

From the Australian:

CONFIDENTIAL emails between top AFP agents and a senior public servant advising Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews indicate that there was a secret plan to thwart a decision by a magistrate to release then terror suspect Mohamed Haneef on bail. The emails show the AFP was aware of a weekend "contingency" plan to ensure the Indian doctor would remain behind bars by having Mr Andrews revoke his visa under the Migration Act in the event of bail being granted by Brisbane magistrate Jacqui Payne on the following Monday.

No shit.

This goes back to what I was saying earlier about public confidence in politicians. I don't know a single person - not a single one - who will be surprised by this revelation, or whose opinion of either Kevin Andrews or the Australian Federal Police will change as a result. We know now, after all, that the 'contingency' did arise, and that Andrews did revoke Haneef's visa. In doing so, he was merrily disregarding, constitutionally speaking, the longstanding principle of separation of powers, and functionally speaking, the even longer-standing principle of habeas corpus. Here's a rule of thumb: if you think what you're proposing might contravene the Magna frigging Carta, you ought to consider the possibility that it's a very bad idea.

Not Kevin the Lesser, though. He's adamant that he and his department acted impeccably throughout the Haneef case. Labor's Tony Burke, who at the time couldn't support Andrews quickly or loudly enough, is calling for a judicial inquiry, presumably one unaffected by political interference. And so the world turns: the outraged among us grow a little more outraged, the minister concerned ducks for cover, and the apathetic continue not knowing or caring. Plus ça change.

Parenthetical of the Day

2007-11-02T16:38:00.000+11:00

Guy Rundle writing in Crikey about Tony Abbott:

(Mind you, Howard’s unfortunate follow-up to cancer insensitivity – ‘well Tony’s taken his lumps’ – can only be described as Anglican par excellence. Dame Edna would be proud.)

Snigger.

Nothing Leicha Dame

2007-11-02T11:29:00.000+11:00

Who knew the far-north Queensland seat of Leichhardt could be this much fun?

Leichhardt, you'll remember, is the site of the unusual tri-partite contest between the Liberals' Charlie McKillop, the Nationals' Ian Crossland, and Labor's Jim Turnour. It has already caught our attention once this election campaign when Crossland opined aloud that although he was no sexist, Leichhardt is "no seat for a woman". And meant it.

Now McKillop is once again the subject of no-fault-of-hers controversy. Ben Jacobsen, Family First candidate for Leichhardt and every bit as far-right as that implies, has been rebuked by Steve Fielding for insisting that McKillop make her sexuality a matter of public record. McKillop must be cursing the day gender stereotypes were invented; they've bitten her from both sides during this contest. Can't a female ex-prawn trawler be left to campaign in peace?

One would've imagined that Family First have been hoisted on the sexuality-publicising petard quite enough for one week - Steve Fielding evidently thinks so - but that's the trouble with pathological homophobia: you never know when it might rear its ugly head (cf: Bill Heffernan).

And that's the point here: Jacobsen's statement wasn't a one-off gaffe. Impolitic it certainly was, but claiming that people have "the right to know" about a candidate's sexuality is really just a logical extension of the entrenched Family First principle that consensual sex between adults is everybody's business. Hence, banning pornography and prostitution; hence banning gay marriage and denying gay couples the full complement of rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. Philosophically speaking, the "gaffe" and the policy are coming from the same place. Politically, Fielding's rebuke is the right thing to do, but ideologically it makes no sense whatsoever.

Incidentally, rare props to Peter Costello, for saying, explicitly, that this "doesn't reflect well on Family First". Damn right, it doesn't.

I'm Not Sure They're Fully Grasping Her Concern #2

2007-11-02T10:51:00.000+11:00

A heartfelt piece from Kate Seear in the Life & Style section of smh.com about the media's treatment of powerful women. Seear is concerned about the way in which women are evaluated not for their contributions to public life, but rather for their looks, bodies, hairstyles, clothing, etc.

I pretty much agree with Seear's sentiments, which might be why I found it so laughable that smh.com concurrently ran a poll - in the same section - asking readers to evaluate the "political styles" of various politicians. And no, they don't mean rhetorical or managerial or policy styles:

The good news, I guess, is that it's not confined to women - it's also about men who dress like women. I don't think Alex Downer is ever living down those fishnets.

The Best Reason to Celebrate Halloween

2007-10-31T16:11:00.001+11:00

Letter to the Herald, reprinted verbatim:

Australia is rich with its own unique culture, customs and traditions. Why introduce Halloween, which has strong roots in paganism, witchcraft and devil worship? Our Christian heritage teaches us to have no part with the occult.

Parents, do you want your innocent children involved in dangerous evil tricks, deception and Satanism?

I'm satisfied. American or not (and it's not), Halloween has all the right enemies. Trick-or-treaters, go forth and multiply. There are gold coins at my house if you're in the neighbourhood.

Lefties Really Are Latte-Sippers

2007-10-31T14:13:00.000+11:00

Proof, as if we needed it, that coffee is the most political drink. Buy a coffee and cast your bean into your plastic cannister of choice. It's the apex of consumerist democracy.

I'm not sure I approve of the one-coffee poll tax, but my on-the-ground (Pitt Street Mall) survey suggests that inner-city coffee drinkers are voting for Labor in a landslide. The website poll is somewhat closer, so the Libs must still have caffeine-friendly supporters who are willing to admit it in public somewhere. Howard's outer-suburb battlers, perhaps. And where are all these Democrats coming from? Aren't they supposed to be dead in the water?

Never one to pass up an opportunity to have my say, I had an iced chocolate (with cream) and voted. I now feel sick but highly enfranchised.

Dealing with Lunatics: A Libertarian Perspective

2007-10-31T11:49:00.000+11:00

Much has been made of the Greens' refusal to respond to the Australian Christian Lobby's survey demanding to know what the parties think on a range of Christian-type issues. Naturally, I'm behind the Greens all the way. The questions are highly leading, like this:

There is community concern that society is becoming desensitised to sexually explicit and extremely violent material as film-makers test the boundaries of the interpretation of classification guidelines. Unfortunately, the current National Classification Code and Classification Guidelines allow too much discretion to the classifiers ... Would your government direct a review of the Code and Guidelines, and the Classification Act, with the intent of limiting the discretion of the classifiers on such matters?

When the ACL asks questions like that, they're not so much engaging the parties in a discussion as advancing a particular, and in my view quite scary, agenda. So the Greens had every right to tell the ACL to go to hell, and were possibly even correct to do so. Apart from anything else, I am thoroughly sick of the Rovian idea that Australian Senate candidates need to cater to some kind of monolithic Christian Vote. Leaving sectarian tensions behind was a good thing in Australian political life.

But the Liberty and Democracy Party, just as opinionated as the Greens and equally antagonistic to the ACL's agenda, took a different tack, and I think their responses are worth noting. I'm not a libertarian myself – I like gun laws, for instance, and I don't think government foreign aid is immoral. And as for the LDP's apparently straighfaced assertion that relaxing building development zoning laws is an adequate public policy approach to solving homelessness... well, frankly, that's a little nutty.

But on the whole I've always felt that Australian politics could do with a bit more reflexive libertarianism, if only to defend against the strains of wowserism that tend to affect both major parties as they clamber over each other for the Working Families/Laura Norder/lock-up-the-reffos vote. Any counterweight to the kind of overweening authoritarianism we saw during APEC has got to be a healthy thing. We need people to step up and say: This is crazy.

Besides, it can be quite funny. Witness how the LDP responded to a question about, essentially, their willingness to pander to Christians:

ACL: What are your main priorities if elected for the next term of government? What can you offer to the Christian constituency in particular?

LDP:
- Cut tax.
- Defend individual freedom of choice.
- Reduce the size of government.

Now, I am interested in neither cutting taxes nor reducing the size of government as an abstract concept, but you've gotta love their determination not to get sidetracked by the silliness of the Christian Constituency lead. They explain their reasoning in the full response:

The Liberty & Democracy Party doesn't try to offer special deals to any specific constituency, including the Christian constituency. We believe the government should treat everybody as individuals and leave them to make their own decisions to the maximum degree possible.

Fair enough.

Question after question, the LDP busily promote their own platform, rejecting silly premises left, right and centre, and seem to have quite a good time doing it. Like here:

Q: The Australia Institute and family groups have raised concerns about the premature sexualisation of children through marketing, advertising, music videos and a range of other media. What actions would you take to protect childhood?
A: The Australia Institute is a socialist organisation. Raising a child is the job of parents, not the government.

And does the LDP support the creation of a special visa to help persecuted Christians enter Australia as refugees? "No", says the LDP sternly,

persecuted Christians could apply as refugees, just like any other persecuted group. The LDP supports more immigration, which would allow a greater number of persecuted people to enter Australia.

Take that, you zany theocrats.

By the way, all the responses to the ACL's questionnaire are worth looking at, although probably not in the way the ACL themselves intend. One thing's for sure, James Baker is a climate-change-denying, homophobic white nationalist who needs to be kept out of the Senate at all costs. Queenslanders take note.

Note to Wayne Swan

2007-10-30T13:12:00.000+11:00

Re: The ongoing Great Debate II: Attack of the Treasurers

The slogan "fair and balanced" has already been well and truly discredited. Please stop referring to your industrial relations agenda as such.

Thanks!

A concerned voter

There Is No Pain, You Are Receding...

2007-10-28T17:05:00.000+11:00

Steve Fielding is shocked and appalled that Labor is trading preferences with those devil-children in the Greens. The main problem with this, apparently, is the Greens' immoral and damaging drug policy, which Fielding likes to characterise as "handing out free heroin" or somesuch.

Free heroin for all! It's such a sexy policy, so perfectly radical-left, that I'm surprised nobody but Fielding has picked up on it. Unfortunately for those of us who like our heroin free and our Family First politicians truthful, it's a bit of a strawman. I've been over the Greens' drug policy with a fine-tooth comb and it doesn't appear that Green control of the Senate will get me free drugs. In fact, it all sounds quite sensible. It starts with "The Australian Greens do not support the legalisation of currently illegal drugs" and lists among its principles:

- Imprisonment for personal use of illicit drugs, when not associated with other crimes, is not an appropriate solution to drug dependence.
- Information and education programs should be available to enable informed debate about the effects of all drugs, including prescription, non-prescription, legal and illegal drugs.
- Policy and programs should be adopted that are evidence-based and subject to continuous evaluation.

Evidence-based policy! Get out of here with your drug-fueled radicalism! Not content with this heresy, the Greens then go on to outline their drug policy in quite a bit of detail: bans on political donations from the tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries; education and counselling instead of criminal penalties for users; legalising and regulating medical marijuana; and making drug substitution treatments available on the PBS (also known as "free heroin for all").

So that's the hippy junkie approach to drug policy. What do Family First think?

In the spirit of evidence-based inquiry, I checked the Family First drug policy, and frankly it's a little weird. It's not nearly as comprehensive as the Greens', limiting itself to three actions, but it nevertheless finds room to mention "alternate therapies such as Naltrexone implants" and pin its hopes on an anti-drugs campaign involving celebrities. High-profile people such as sportspeople and singers? Sportspeople like Andrew Johns? Ben Cousins? Singers like Nick Cave? Michael Hutchence, perhaps? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but one would hope the party has a fall-back, just in case the celebs don't quite cut it. But apart from jailing everybody who goes near something resembling a drug, it doesn't seem they have much of a plan B.

On a separate issue altogether, Family First have quite a bit of nerve chiding Labor for trading preferences with the Greens. The Greens have a substantial, entrenched role in Australian politics - at the moment they're polling around 7% of the primary vote. Family First are puny upstarts by comparison. And it's not like they're above a little preference-trading themselves, far from it: Fielding received preferences from all over the political spectrum in 2004, and he's yet to rule out preference-trading with Pauline Hanson's party. This despite the fact that Hanson is an unhinged bigot, whereas Family First, for all their quirks, are quite compassionate when it comes to their policy on asylum-seekers.

I fail to see how Labor trading preferences with the Greens represents any more of a lapse in integrity than Fielding's dealings with Hanson. But given that Family First are currently polling around 1.5%, they need all the preference trading they can get if they want to impose their petrol-tax-cutting, TV-censoring program on the rest of us. Could it be that Fielding's latest tantrum is motivated more by existential anxiety than by steadfast principle?

Keeping the Bastards Honest. No, Really.

2007-10-28T11:59:00.000+11:00

The good folk over at GetUp have developed a nifty new tool - PromiseWatch, an election-promise wiki in which Ordinary Strayans (for which substitute internet activists) can log and look up election promises categorised by policy area and political party. Go on, release your inner election-campaign vigilante!*

Obviously, anything we can do to make politicians accountable for what they say during an election campaign has got to be a healthy thing. But I worry that it might be too little, too late. The credibility gap seems to have grown to a point where playing fast and loose with the truth is accepted, because people think "politicians all lie". Hence the electorate's inability to muster much fury at the revelations of Howard government dishonesty, time and time again. In an ideal world, the children overboard affair would be enough to bring down a government. In Australian political life, too many people don't notice, not enough people get disgusted, the rancorous divide between Howard's battlers and the bleeding heart brigade grows ever deeper, and everyone is poorer for the experience. And a dangerous precedent is set: lie all you want. If people don't find out, it could win you an election, and if they do, they will merely shrug.

So people who want to see more honesty in political life are fighting against the low expectations of the Australian public, cultivated through many years of government mendacity. They are also fighting another, less localised bias: people believe what they want to. The children overboard photos got so much traction because they appeared to confirm what a lot of people were kind of hoping: these queue-jumpers aren't good people, they are amoral opportunists, and our ethical duty to them is adjusted accordingly. Grant them asylum? We should be shooting the bastards.

Likewise, anyone with a passing acquaintance with economics knew in 2004 that Howard could not guarantee that he would keep interest rates low. Some of us - the Reserve Bank, Ross Gittins, various newspaper editorials, and a good chunk of Labor voters - were saying it all along, loudly, but people were not listening. When you're mortgaged to the eyeballs, it's comforting when someone powerful says it's going to be all right. So the battlers voted for Howard on an empty promise, and only now is Howard's recklessness coming back to haunt him. Which looks like a belated victory for truth over lies, except that it took five interest rate rises to drum the message in, when it shouldn't have taken any. Howard never controlled interest rates. People accusing Howard of breaking his promise now are missing the point: the promise was never tenable in the first place.

With this track record, my thinking is there ought to be at least a few promises this time around that are already obvious furphies. Which are they? First correct response gets a new highway over the Great Dividing Range.

************

*Disclaimer: my friend skipped pub trivia last week to code furiously for this, so it had better get some mileage.

Fringe Watch

2007-10-24T11:25:00.000+10:00

From the SMH:

Pauline Hanson... is not faring well in her attempt to recapture attention. Standing under the banner of Pauline's United Australia Party, one poll has her getting just 7.5 per cent support, somewhat short of the 14.3 per cent required to win a Queensland Senate seat.

Good.

Meanwhile some of the men Hanson left behind are marching stoically onwards. The state president of One Nation NSW, Jim Cassidy, said the party would field three Senate candidates and eight lower house candidates.

Without Hanson as a figurehead, it has been difficult for One Nation to get publicity, but in recent weeks the party has tackled the issue of non-indigenous bananas devastating the indigenous crop, and opposed John Howard's Aboriginal referendum proposal on the grounds that it would divide Australia into indigenous and non-indigenous people.

When all else fails, turn to banana populism. An excellent jibe from the Herald, too.

Kyoto Dreaming

2007-10-24T09:44:00.000+10:00

Interesting opinion piece about the Kyoto Protocol by Paul Kelly in today's Australian. His broad political point is one I agree with fully: Howard's stubborn position on Kyoto has damaged him needlessly. When attacked on the matter, Howard likes to remind us that Australia has met the targets Kyoto would've imposed on us. Which is true, and brings us to the question: why, then, can we not ratify it, if only as a symbolic gesture? The idea that ratifying Kyoto would have turned Australia into an economic basket case is patently ridiculous. Our targets under Kyoto were not cumbersome; we have met them anyway; and refusing to ratify the protocol merely makes us look selfish, and provides a sliver of an excuse for the US to go on justifying its own Kyoto-stonewalling.

And domestically, Howard's stance makes no sense whatsoever: it's unpopular, and has allowed Kevin Rudd to paint himself as the climate-change messiah of prime ministerial candidates. Malcolm Turnbull, for one, is said to be furious with Howard's pointless intransigence on the subject, given the delicate environmental sensibilities of the voters in his marginal electorate. Kelly is magnificently clear in pointing out Howard's folly:

Consider Howard's position. Should he ratify a protocol that is vastly popular and whose terms, as they apply to Australia, he is determined to honour and uphold? And his answer: absolutely not.

Typically, Kelly does not let Rudd off lightly, either. Labor's policy on climate change is somewhat amorphous at the moment. Rudd loves the big-picture stuff – sign Kyoto! 60% reduction by 2050! – but is shakier on the finer detail, like interim targets, or the exact form a national emissions trading scheme would take.

And then there's Rudd's claims that he would fully embrace a new protocol that set binding targets for developing countries. Fine, so would we all, but the fact is that the developing world is currently resisting such binding targets, pointing out, with some justification, that it was the Western countries that made the mess in the first place - shouldn't they be responsible for cleaning it up? It's going to take more than Australian acquiescence to shift them on the matter, and meantime Rudd needs a clear policy on how he intends to proceed if binding targets for the developing world continue as a sticking point.

But I still think Kelly is being too hard on Rudd over his answer to the question: "what will signing Kyoto achieve?" Here's Rudd's answer, which Kelly says is "vague and elusive":

it will show we are serious and want to help forge a global solution

So what should Rudd have said? What is the benefit of ratifying Kyoto, Mr Kelly?

Kyoto has a universal standing as a goodwill gesture. It has the perfect image of wanting a better, cleaner world, with its opponents clinging to an older, polluted world. The power of such images cannot be denied.

Showing we want to help forge a global solution versus a goodwill gesture. Seems like a distinction without a difference to me.

The Real Contest: Worm vs the Libs

2007-10-23T13:47:00.000+10:00

That didn't take long. It seems the election campaign, never destined to be an entirely high-minded affair, has already come down with a severe case of the sillies. The substantive issues discussed in Sunday's debate have now been well and truly overshadowed - even internationally - by Wormgate. Censorship or breach of agreement? Liberal Party/Glenn Milne conspiracy? What does it all mean? Could it be that the Worm is ... Union?

It would be one thing if Wormgate and commentary thereon were confined to the understimulated bloggers among us. But it's not, not by a long shot. I understand why the journalists are playing along - the subeditors get a simple binary choice between "Can of Worms" and "The Worm Turns" - but people with actual responsibilities are joining in the fun. Worm favourite Kevin Rudd prudently refused to enter the fray, contenting himself with a jokey "I have not interviewed the worm. I'll leave debate about the worm to others."

But the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, has no such qualms. Loyal to a fault, and incensed at the way the Worm treated his beloved boss, Abbott has being doing his bit to advance the anti-worm agenda. He's not saying the Worm is union, exactly, but there's definitely something suspicious going on:

To me, it is pretty clear that that was an audience that had already made up its mind who it was in favour of, and I wonder how that audience was selected. I don't think the worm was a fair reflection.

Get back to work!

Meanwhile, Howard biographer Peter van Onselen is calling the debate for Howard, although just barely. Fine; but what are we to make of this rationale?

Kevin Rudd ... underperformed. He wants Australians to throw out a largely successful government, whatever disagreements people might have with aspects of their policies.

I beg your pardon. Those "disagreements" are not trivial quibbles. They are exactly why so many of us - not just Rudd - want to throw out Howard's government. Are we to admire the mere fact of Howard's 11 years in government despite believing that much of what he did during that time was immoral and damaging?

That's really what the Libs and their most ardent supporters would have us do. Which, incidentally, is one reason they're still performing so poorly in the polls - people are suddenly sick of "vote for us, you always have before!" Perhaps van Onselen's time would be better employed devising a new strategy for Howard, rather than lamenting the "perception" that Rudd won the debate.

Rudd versus Howard: The Debate Reconsidered

2007-10-22T14:04:00.001+10:00

So that was an interesting experience. It was good this morning having a record of my thought process as I went back and read all the coverage. More thoughts on the debate:

Kevin Rudd kicks

He was sharp, he was mostly positive, he was occasionally jovial, he had a good grasp of finer policy detail, and he didn't allow himself to be derailed by any of Howard's sniping. Most surprisingly, he sounded downright left-wing at times, and the sky didn't fall or anything. I was nervous before the debate, because it seemed like a good chance for some of the Rudd gloss to come off, if he wasn't fully prepared. But Rudd did his homework, like any good schoolboy debater. I am both relieved and impressed.

John Howard has moved left out of desperation

If it turns out Kevin Rudd doesn't get himself elected PM this time around, he will at least have succeeded in forcing Howard to drop the ideological neocon routine in a last-ditch attempt to save his behind. Reconciliation? A national emissions trading scheme? Workers' rights? Recognising the Pakistani Muslim victims of a suicide bombing? Can anyone imagine this happening three years ago? Granted, Rudd spent quite a bit of time defending his credentials as an "economic conservative", but it's striking how much of the policy agenda was Labor's, and how much softer Howard's rhetoric is this time around, his tired-but-forceful anti-unionism notwithstanding.

Paul Kelly is tough

Jeez man, Kevin Rudd is not the one to have fallen desperately behind on climate change. Lighten the hell up! Kevin said he will have his interim targets by June. That's downright rushed for him. Besides, Howard only came around to accepting climate change as an important policy issue this year.

Peter Hartcher is thoughtful

We knew that already. He seemed a bit nervous, but his questions were probably the best-considered, for my money.

Taking on the Worm is one of the worst things Howard could do

Seriously, when the incumbent conservative government manages to get the Nine Network - of all channels! - offside, you have to wonder where their heads are at. The Worm clearly displayed Rudd favouritism, but cutting off Channel Nine's feed was just spiteful. And letting Ray Martin grandstand about free speech is not the kind of distraction Howard needs right now.

There are lots of people with girl-crushes on Annabel Crabb

See Larvatus Prodeo's live-blog

Australians can debate like grownups, occasionally

Okay, there was probably more macroeconomic policy than anyone really needed, but here are some things that never got a mention last night: abortion, gay people, God, the French, stem cell research, clashes of civilisations, torture, bombing Iran. The death penalty came up, but only in the context of how best to make Australia's feelings on it known overseas. There was no Australian flag in sight. The jostling over the OECD report on education funding was the silliest it got, and even that was more like a quibble between two feuding academics than a truly personal stoush. Sometimes I am very grateful to live here.

Live-Blogging the Debate: Howard Versus Rudd

2007-10-21T19:30:00.000+10:00

7:37 Ray Martin introduces before the toss to Canberra. Lays out ground rules, including a snide observation that "everyone's favourite - the worm" is back. JH won the toss and sent Rudd into bat first. I wrote that before the moderator called it "sending Rudd in to bat". Cricket metaphors ahoy.

7.39 We're off - or KR is. Working Family reference #1!

Nice tie. Orthodox right top-> left bottom striping.
Kyoto signing, education revolution, exit Iraq. Federalising hospitals. The worm goes wild.

7.41 JH - we've done so well over the past 10-20 years. Such hide! Eight of those were Labor. The worm didn't seem to approve of the resources boom either.
Fair go reference #1 - much to the worm's relief.

Mr Howard - is there any merit in new leadership?

JH: Only if it's better - good start. Oh man. Don't mention the Lucky Country again Johnny.

KR - hey, I'm an optimist too! Global record levels of growth and low unemployment, not because of the Australian Government. Rise of China, whooo! Worm flatlines at the top. Invest the spoils, don't squander.

7.48 Mr Rudd - why would we vote for you when you're pretty much a Howard clone?

KR - I'm an economic conservative too, (worm looks sceptical) but it goes beyond that. We need to invest! Worm back to the top.

JH - being economic conservative is more than saying you are in a TV ad. Rudd never voted like a economic reformer. Rudd is an election-eve economic conservative. I am the real deal, a jackass who doesn't care whether things are fair or not as long as it's reform. You see?

7.51 Mr Howard - given you are going to hand over to Costello, isn't a vote for you a vote for the unknown?

Uh oh - the Worm does not like Costello very much.

Um, when did economic conservatism become a sexy pre-election sweetener?

7.53 KR oooh, the gloves are off. When Howard Was Treasurer. Nice tactic!

7.54: Unions! Are Labor's frontbenchers out of whack with community standards?

KR - most of the Liberal frontbench are former Liberal Party staffers. (Worm: duh.) But back to unions. We have lots of experience, and a rockstar, plus I speak Mandarin. What more do you want? Also, unions aren't all bad, right? Worm: right!

JH - union members do not join Liberal party. They wouldn't dare. (Damn straight). Checks and balances, State vs Federal: the worm is cautiously approving.

Mr Howard - despite the economy, some people are struggling. T/F?

JH: True, but we have tax breaks. Here's some extra money. You choose how to address your cost-of-living pressures.

KR: There is no such thing as a cost-of-living pressure affecting people making $180k. Laptops and software for working families. (The Worm goes wild.) And I notice Mr Howard didn't answer Alison's question. Hee! Howard stole Rudd's tactic!

Mr Rudd, will your spending initiatives make it hard for the Reserve Bank to keep rates down?

KR: No because we're just saying that before the election, silly. Also, we are investing in infrastructure, which will help productivity. And Mr Howard was irresponsible when he said he'd keep interest rates low. The Reserve Bank is independent, but we can invest in skills to make the Bank's job easier.

JH: Everyone knows that Labor governments equal budget deficits. Liberal governments equal budget surpluses. Hey that's my talking point. I wonder if JH reads this blog. Hi John!

17% interest rate reference.

Mr Howard, will you apologise to home buyers for the five rate rises since the last lesson?

JH: I believe in accountability, which means I don't blame the media or my staff or my shadow ministers. (Howard has a shadow ministry now?)

Mr Howard, don't your tax cuts contribute to rate rises?

JH: My tax cuts are not inflationary, because they are mine, and not commie Rudd-like tax cuts, because I have industrial relations reform too. Long discussion of IR and flow through. Worm retains a bemused flat plane along the middle. I don't think people understand Howard's macroeconomic thesis.

KR: More Howard as Treasurer talk. Four of your five budgets were deficits, dude, so don't come over all high and mighty economic conservative on me. You need to invest in skills and infrastructure, like the RBA says. Also, did I mention broadband? Because I feel I ought to.

8.12 But Mr Rudd, isn't education a poor second priority for you?

KR: Not compared to Howard it's not. The OECD says we have disinvested in universities under Howard. We're taking it in the right direction. And it is an education revolution. I keep saying it, for starters.

JH: Well that report you mentioned does not include technical education. KR is a liar.

KR: Well if you want to say the OECD is lying...

Moderator: Enough, kids. This is pointless.

8.15 [missed the question]

KR: Well, it's tough. But Howard has mentioned unions about 67,000 times this week. But Hawkie was union, and look how he embraced Reaganomics!

Moderator: audience please keep remarks to yourself til the end of the broadcast. This is politics, it's not supposed to be fun.

KR: did you just reprimand the Treasurer?

JH: You're kind of a jackass, Kevin. I don't object to unionists being in Parliament, except they do so tend to be Labor, and I do object to that. Also it's a question of balance.

Mr Howard, are you planning more IR changes? Nick Minchin says you are.

JH: No. We have got the balance right now. The reforms have been good for the economy. (The worm: booo hiss!) WorkChoices has been good for the economy. Why do the Labor party want people to be unemployed? Because unions are more important to them, that's why. The Liberal and National parties are the parties of full employment.

8.21 But Mr Howard, but you always say you don't want further IR reform. Why should we believe you this time?

JH: Because we've gone far enough this time. Promise! We have a higher minimum wage and more protected IR system than just about anywhere in the Western world. (But if you still think that, why should we believe that you won't try to take it further?)

KR: First, I want to talk about interest rates again, and how JH broke his promise five times. Also, WorkChoices is ideological, extreme, right-wing. Costello only wants a minimum wage - that's his whole IR system. And Nick Minchin is scary. Which brings us to Joe Hockey, who is kind of a lightweight if you ask me. So in conclusion, you can't trust them.

Mr Rudd, what is your real plan for reducing carbon emissions? Interim targets?

KR: I don't get why we didn't ratify Kyoto. It's beyond me. Howard won't set a carbon target. We have a clearcut target: 60% cuts by 2050 against 2000 levels. We have someone analysing interim targets and that report will be out by mid-next year. Plus I can wonkishly quote parts per million targets.

Paul Kelly: you can't have a plan until you have a 2020 target.

KR: They will be set in June. Also we should have a carbon trading scheme by now. Heaven knows we tried.

JH: I accept climate change. We have to be responsible. (The worm loves it! JH is beating Rudd on climate change... oh wait, he's getting bogged down in specifics now.) If reelected, we will in 2011 establish a climate change fund with money from auctioning carbon permits. That will help people with the costs, especially pensioners, of which I will probably be one. And Kyoto doesn't cover the US or China. Which is like having a World Cup in cricket without Australia or India.

But Mr Howard, Turnbull says we need binding targets for all major emitters but Bush won't agree to binding targets. Who's right?

JH: Turnbull; he's in my cabinet, and I have a lot of sway with the US and might very possibly be singlehandedly responsibility for China and the US both agreeing to binding targets.

KR: We have a moral responsibility to sign Kyoto, so does the US. One can hardly blame China for not agreeing to anything in the current situation. And we are going to invest in clean energy technology. (The worm LOVES it. )

Mr Howard, are you for real, you think you can change Bush's mind?

JH: I think his attitude is changing, I do. (The worm is at rock bottom. Talking about Bush is not a winning strategy.)

Mr Howard, terrorism and our involvement in Iraq: connection?

JH: The terror problem preceded Iraq. And terrorists hate everyone, not just Australians. Quite a humane reference to the recent terror attacks in Pakistan.

But Mr Howard, has the terror threat increased or decreased since Iraq?

JH: Iraq is getting better. The terrorism threat is still very real, though.

KR: JH didn't answer the question. This is why: we were told before Iraq that it would increase the terrorist threat. Greatest error since Vietnam. I am hardline about terrorism, but we also need to provide economic opportuniies for people so they don't turn to terrorism. Nice response.

8.43 Timetable?

KR: We will calibrate our withdrawals with the Americans.

JH: KR is not fair dinkum against the involvement. Why is he going to leave aircraft there but not troops? Our role is evolving to training and humanitarian.

Mr Rudd, you are a flip-flopper. What won't you do to get elected?

KR: Medicare safety net was a judgment call we made because of financial pressure on working families. Death penalty has always been consistent: global opposition, through the UN where appropriate. I am passionate about Australia's future.

Mr Howard, reconciliation: Why not just say sorry?

JH: I am sorry in the sense of saddened, but not in the sense of taking responsibility. Move on from guilt and blame. Practical and symbolic reconciliation gestures. The worm loves it. Oh whoops he mentioned Joe Hockey, that was a bit of a downer. But he recovered.

KR: We backed the intervention because we were horrified by the child abuse and we care about kids. The apology is about respect, building a bridge. After that, the practical stuff to bridge the gap. Reconciliation is mainly about bridges.

8.55 Enough from the journalists, now to quiz each other

KR: Is it possible for an AWA to strip away redundancy pay despite the fairness test?

JH: My government was the first to bring out redundancy benefits, actually.

JH: If you're so worried about climate change, why did you not talk about it with Bush more?

KR: That conversation was private. But it turns out Bush is kind of a redneck and he didn't want to listen to me. It's a non-issue - I think your debating skillz need some work.

9.00 KR: Why did you increase our troops in Iraq when you said you wouldn't? Why should we believe you this time?

JH: Don't politicise our brave men and women troops. That is up to our field commanders. The troops' role is evolving, is all. Al Qaeda cannot be allowed to win in Iraq, obviously.

JH: When you talk about prices, what are you actually going to do about them?

KR: I don't agree that working Australians have never been better off. I have measures to help working families. Also your petrol inquiry is totally copied off us.

9.05 closing statements

KR: I am just a simple boy from country Queensland trying to become Prime Minister. I am for kids and working families and against the staleness you see opposite. I have plans, and I don't just want to talk about unions. I am an optimist.

JH: Slogans mean nothing without a strong economy. You need to pay for things. Also back to basics in education. Reading and writing and a proper narrative of Australian history. We should be proud of our story.

Thanks to the audience for being so well-behaved!

Ray Martin: something weird about someone not liking the worm, so much for free speech?

Aww. Annabel Crabb!

Result: 29% Howard, 65% Rudd, 6% undecided.

Hey, Those Are OUR Tax Cuts

2007-10-20T17:33:00.000+10:00

Peter Costello is more than a little peeved that Labor has released a tax plan very like the Coalition's. Less than five days after his own moment of tax plan glory, Pete is reduced to whining that Labor had copied "91.5%" of his homework, and throwing in a little union-baiting for good measure. Leaving the unions aside (please?), the man has a point. Basically, Labor's plan is Taxcutpalooza Lite: identical to the Costello plan at the lower end of the tax spectrum, but deferring the cuts for people on $180,000+ in favour of targeted tax rebates for lower income families to spend on educational goods like broadband and textbooks.

It's a clever idea. The ALP is not going to win the battle of who can tax less, even if it did, in fact, promise to tax less, because everyone knows that Labor are the deficit-loving Keynesian tax-and-spenders and the Libs are the laissez-faire Friedmanites. More to the point, it's not a battle Labor should be trying to win. Australians are not allergic to tax-and-spend Big Gummint as a concept, and although everyone does like it when they themselves get a tax cut, recent opinion polls seem to indicate that most people would prefer more spending on services, even though axiomatically that means taxing people more. When it comes to taxation versus spending, people want to have their cake and eat it.

Which is where Labor's plan hits the spot: by saying they're going to defer cutting taxes for the rich - including, as Kevin Rudd pointed out, Rudd himself - and use the money saved to help the poor, Labor is rekindling the sparks of good old-fashioned class warfare - just a little, you understand, nothing to rock the boat, and by the way Julia Gillard is not a communist. Also, directing the money at education is inspired, a soft, cuddly and eminently Labor-voter-friendly twist on the tax-the-rich theme. All this, and tax cuts for us ordinary folk! No wonder it took them four days to release it.

Hopefully, Labor have me-tooed their way out of a depressingly tax-focused campaign and can now go on with things like signing Kyoto and beating up the Coalition over WorkChoices.

Dept of You Should Know This: Rudy Giuliani

2007-10-19T17:12:00.001+10:00

Good News for the Sleeping Giant

2007-10-19T15:42:00.000+10:00

According to the latest Nielsen poll, John Howard has begun closing the gap on Labor, recovering by 2 percentage points in both the two-party preferred (to 46%) and the primary vote (to 42%).

Hardly surprising. This is the first week of the actual election campaign, in which one would expect the Government to gain some ground, as the question "who would you vote for?" gets ever less hypothetical, the attack ads begin, and people remember their mortgages. More specifically, Peter Hartcher points out that the poll comes on the heels of three major Howard announcements: his sudden Aboriginal reconciliation discovery, calling the election, and the tax cuts. These, says Hartcher, have helped Howard cut through to a previously deaf electorate. In fact, Hartcher argues that the Coalition will be disappointed not to have achieved more of a spike, particularly given the profligacy of the tax cuts.

I'm not so sure. As Crikey pointed out on Monday, economic news generally takes a while to sink in. So it was with the budget delivery in May; so we can expect for the tax cuts. It's not that people don't care, exactly, it's more that they need a little while to figure out what they're going to spend their shiny new election dollars on this time around.

As you may have gathered, I'm not convinced by the polls' assurances that the vast majority of Australians will not be swayed by the tax cuts. For starters, the vast majority is not the issue: it won't take many switching back to the Coalition to keep them in office, particularly if the uniform swing isn't replicated in the marginal seats. As such, that mercenary 8% could make all the difference in the world. (Although it's a longstanding hypothesis of mine that you can get 10% of a polling sample to say absolutely anything, no matter how outlandish, so you never know).

But much more importantly: of course people say they aren't going to be swayed by the tax cuts. Admitting that you can be bought off for, say, $20 a week is embarrassingly cheap, especially when the oft-posited alternative is spending on hospitals or schools. But that doesn't mean people can't be bought off. It just means they won't admit it to a pollster. (And rightly so, the tight-arsed bastards.)

**************

On a tangentially related note, I believe we have found proof of the need for more civics education:

Another of Mr Howard's key assertions was that Labor in power federally as well as in every state and territory would remove the checks and balances between the Commonwealth and the states.

On this, 42 per cent agreed and 40 per cent disagreed while 18 per cent did not know.

The Nielsen poll director, John Stirton, said the 18 per cent who did not know suggested Mr Howard's argument was hard to understand.

Really? Because I always thought the idea of voting in different governments Federally and at State level was dear to Australian hearts, not necessarily because everyone has a well-developed sense of the complexities of Australian federalism, but more because people think something along the lines of: "This'll show 'em." I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't understand that voting philosophy.

Following the US is the New Multilateralism

2007-10-18T10:58:00.001+10:00

What with the election and being employed full-time, I haven't been paying much attention to the US/India/Australia uranium dealings. For shame: I missed this important development in the story. Basically, the India-US uranium deal is now on hold, and Australia, never one to be out of lockstep with our great friends across the Pacific, is also reviewing our recently-announced intention to carve out our own uranium trading arrangement with India.

Nuclear power is a complicated issue, and I'm not inclined to indulge in kneejerk leftism on the subject. I don't remember the MAD tensions of the Cold War, and I'm not the kind of greenie who thinks the nuclear power option should be out of the question. But two things seems clear to me: selling uranium to India, which refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was a poor idea from the outset; and not selling uranium to India on the US say-so is an extraordinary admission of our guiding foreign policy principles.

Nuclear proliferation is one of those international policy arenas in which multilateralism is nothing short of vital. By that I mean true multilateralism, of the UN-respecting, treaty-abiding, hippie peacenik variety, rather than multilateralism of you-scratch-India's-back-I'll-scratch-yours variety our leaders seem to prefer. One of the chief offences of the Bush administration – and it's a crowded field – is his trashing of internationalist principles at every opportunity: refusing to ratify Kyoto, invading Iraq without a Security Council mandate, appointing a UN-hating cowboy as the US ambassador to the UN. Each of these was a mistake. And every step of the way – save the Bolton appointment, which wasn't really a replicable act – Deputy Sheriff Howard has been right there behind him.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is, to be sure, an inequitable instrument, entrenching as it does the nuclear weaponry rights of the recognised states while prohibiting other countries from being allowed the same. But it's an inequitable instrument to which we are nevertheless signatory, in much the same way as the UN is a flawed institution of which we are nevertheless part; and whatever we may think of the terms of the NPT, we can surely agree that less nukes are better than more. India's case against the NPT probably has some merit, but the fact of the matter is that an India testing nuclear weapons close to the Pakistani border is not an India that should receive the imprimatur of international recognition for its nuclear program.

Which brings us to the question of respect for international law. The NPT states quite clearly that signatory nations should not supply uranium to non-signatory nations. There are very good reasons for this provision, not least a general interest in the continuation of life on earth. As the World's Only Superpower, the US is acting irresponsibly when it flies in the fact of international institutions. As a small nation with limited capacity to defend itself, Australia is acting stupidly. The US alliance is indisputably important, but the rule of international law is even more so. If the terms of the NPT didn't stop us from wanting to sell uranium to India, stopping because the US has suddenly developed cold feet is just plain embarrassing. It's tantamount to saying that the current policy of the US government is more important than longstanding multilateral treaties. Which would be a terrible precedent, except that it's not new: it's just an extension of the policy the Howard government has been following all along.

So we might not sell uranium to India after all. But we've lost much of the moral suasion that is the basis for multilateral agreements like the NPT, and in doing so, undermined the entire system. It's not like we weren't willing to bend the rules for the sake of making some extra cash - it's just that it didn't turn out to be convenient after all. How willing do you think the non-signatory nations will be to submit to NPT controls now?

How to Get the Questions You Want

2007-10-18T10:43:00.001+10:00

Annabel Crabb Makes the World a Better Place

2007-10-18T10:07:00.001+10:00

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/annabel-crabb/2007/10/17/1192300857029.html

It's beautiful, especially the concluding para. Apparently Nats really do think like that, but you'd think they would keep it to themselves during the election campaign, considering women comprise half the electorate. Mad as cut snakes.

Trouble in Paradise

2007-10-17T09:43:00.000+10:00

This tickled me so much I just had to post it in full.

Divison within NSW parliaments holy ranks
By Nick Ralston, State Political Reporter
AAP: Tuesday, October 16 2007 - 20:08

Never one to simply toe the party line, Christian Democratic MP Gordon Moyes has taken aim at the only other parliamentary member from his party - Fred Nile.
Reverend Nile today moved a motion to establish the inquiry that will look at patient care at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital after Jana Horska miscarried in the emergency department toilets three weeks ago.

Under his proposal, Rev Nile would become the committee chair.

But, as the only other Christian Democratic Party member (CDP) in parliament, Dr Moyes wanted to ensure he had his say on the inquiry, and Rev Nile's self-appointment.
"I wish to congratulate the Rev Fred Nile on proposing this bill to set up the joint select committee with himself as chair, as he has requested me to do so," Rev Moyes told the parliament.

Dr Moyes went on to detail a conversation he supposedly had with the fictitious character Sir Humphrey Appleby, from the British political comedy Yes Minister.
"When the government is on the front page of newspapers for three weeks or more with editorials calling for a minister to resign, Sir Humphrey advises ...," Dr Moyes began.
"...that the government ... call for an inquiry describing it as open, transparent, impartial and wideranging, however the likely findings should generally be known before such an inquiry or commission is established."

Dr Moyes then turned his attention squarely on his parliamentary colleague.
"Sir Humphrey says appoint a parliamentary chair who is `sound'," he said.
"Sir Humphrey reports on several occasions that by sound he means one who can be utterly relied upon to support the initiatives of the government.
"Ensure the proposed chair has adequate allowances and travel expenses to keep him sound."
It is not the first time the two-man CDP parliamentary team have not seen eye-to-eye in the chamber.

News Ltd reported in June that Dr Moyes crossed the floor to vote against legislation giving Mr Nile a plush new title that would push his salary to more than $170,000 a year.
Dr Moyes however towed the party line after Rev Nile spoke with him in the parliament.

Note to Exclusive Brethren

2007-10-16T22:28:00.001+10:00

If you're so desperate to influence conservative politicians, how about lifting your ban on voting?

Just a thought.

Meanwhile, rule of thumb: every time Danna Vale is involved in something, you can pretty much be sure the story is going to be weird. She shares with Pauline Hanson the true nutjob's talent for conflating issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Remember her theory during the Ru-486 debate about how Australians were aborting themselves into a nation of Muslims?

Then there was her climate change denial manifesto, in which she made an interesting appeal to empiricism:

once upon a time, the consensus was that the earth was flat, and nobody ever did any investigation because everybody agreed that the earth was flat. However, that doesn't mean that it was true.

Indeed. The distinction between scientific consensus and flat-earth incuriosity is a fine one, to be sure, and certainly not one I would expect the likes of Danna Vale to grasp right away. Although if she thinks "nobody did any investigation" is an accurate description of climate-change science, she is even less acquainted with reality than I had previously supposed.

So now it turns out that Danna is hobnobbing with the Exclusive Brethren, I couldn't be less surprised. I would say that I hope it discredits her enough to get her thrown out, but it doesn't seem that garden-variety lunacy is much of a barrier to being elected in Hughes, and Vale has a margin of 8.55. But when the likes of Howard and Amanda Vanstone are rushing to dissociate themselves from you because you're giving extremism a bad name, it's probably time to rethink your platform.

Major Policy Difference Alert

2007-10-16T20:23:00.000+10:00

Just when you thought there was nothing to separate 'em, it turns out John Howard is - gasp! - against the worm. Kevin Rudd, suddenly contrarian, is the worm's best friend, just like every other dinky-di Strayan.

Score one for Rudd. The worm is ridiculous, but banning it is more so. Besides, without the worm we're stuck with "science" like Vote-A-Matic. Go on, try it out. I defy you to find something stupider to have come out of this election campaign. So far.

John Howard: 0.25% Out of Touch?

2007-10-16T18:50:00.001+10:00

So John Howard was out by a quarter of a percent on the official cash rate.

Now, my close personal friends and relatives, as well as most of my wider circle of acquaintances, my workmates, all my former uni professors, certain Sydney taxi drivers, and the dude who sells me my Herald on Saturday mornings, know that I am no great defender of Howard's.

But here's the thing. I don't think Howard is unfit to govern because he has demonstrated an insufficient grasp of detail, or because he's not an expert on interest rates, or because he's too old. I don't think any of those things are true. I do think he's unfit to govern because he is dishonest, Machiavellian, possibly racist, demonstrably xenophobic, overly concerned with material wealth, largely impervious to the plight of the needy, bizarrely attached to a romanticised Menzies-era ideal of Australian society, prone to expedient 180 degree shifts in policy, and, embarrassingly, the last great defender of President Bush. Do you see the difference?

I realise that Howard has positioned himself as the interest rate guy. It was all he bloody well talked about in 2004. He is, to an extent, falling on his own sword. So I'm not saying I don't think it's deliciously ironic that Howard slipped up on interest rates of all things. I just don't think it's what we should be talking about.

For one thing, I would rather we weren't talking about interest rates at all. I am tired of the notion that Australians vote for an interest rate, and exasperated that people still don't seem to appreciate the Reserve Bank's independence. Every minute we spend talking about Howard's interest rate gaffe is another minute we spend talking about interest rates. This is both disadvantageous and boring. Monetary policy isn't even a sexy subject by economics standards.

For another thing, it could just as easily have been Rudd - in fact, it was, more or less, a few weeks ago. And it will be again. Just because Rudd is smooth and competent, doesn't mean he's immune to this stuff. Howard is pretty smooth and competent himself, remember. That's one of the reasons he's still here.

And most of all... I just think we can do better than this. I don't want politics to be a competition to see who can store the most arcana. I don't care who knows what about the price of milk, or the name of their contesting candidate in a far-off seat. I don't think it's relevant, and I think by focusing on that kind of thing we are discouraging the kind of big-picture thinking this country needs. You can't look to the stars if you're always worried about tripping on your shoelaces. Besides, I know plenty of people who walk around with all kinds of facts and trivia in their heads. If they are united by one characteristic, it is evident unfitness for any kind of public office.

I'm not naive enough to think we can have election campaign without this stuff. I see that it fits in with Labor's theme of "out-of-touch" (read: senile). And obviously, I'd rather it was Howard slipping up than Rudd. But if we vote Howard out, I want it to be on the merits - or lack thereof.

Then again, it could be I'm just getting greedy - whoops, I mean, aspirational.

Costello Cuts to the Chase

2007-10-15T15:19:00.000+10:00

Peter Costello is never so happy as when he's announcing tax cuts, and here he is again, encouraging the very rich to keep working and buying stuff and hopefully voting Liberal while they're at it. Well, to be fair, there are tax cuts for lower-income earners too. It's a taxcutpalooza.

I don't mean to spoil everyone's fun, but... isn't it a little early for this? The election was announced a mere 24 hours ago, and we're already on tax cuts? I'm not saying I don't want my extra $67 a week - heaven knows I like my weekly manicure-pedicures as much as the next battler - but it's just that there used to be some kind of decorum with these things. The way they're beginning their campaign with tax cuts, it's almost as if Howard/Costello & Co thinks the Australian electorate can be... bought off.

Meanwhile, the resources boom isn't going to last forever, and some of us, over on the communist union-boss side of politics, have an uneasy feeling that there are better things to do with $34 billion than buying more plasma screens. Funding universities, say, or investing in clean energy technology, or even, God forbid, increasing our non-tsunami-related foreign aid budget just a little. But we - at least, our elected representatives - are not going to say it out loud. We have an election to win. Right? Right.

UPDATE, October 16: Over at Crikey, Peter Brent has his own theory about why tax cuts so soon, and predicts a "controversial announcement" the first week in November. Can't hardly wait for that one.

It's On for Young and Old

2007-10-15T13:36:00.000+10:00

... especially young, if yesterday's poll is anything to go by. To the ballot-boxes, fellow 73-percenters!

Commentators will make much of the idea that Rudd's superior online presence is swaying the Yoof Vote in favour of Labor. The YouTube election, etc. Resist this interpretation. For starters, it makes young people sound like imbeciles. "I'm, like, totally voting for Rudd. He has like a blog and everything." Please.

Secondly, there seems to be some confusion about what people use the internet for. Listen: hardly anybody is going online with an open mind and deciding who to vote for based on what they find. It doesn't work like that. The thing about Web 2.0 is that it's diffuse, fragmented, specialised. People look for like-minded content providers and stick with them. We seek out commentators whose views coincide with ours. We join Facebook groups we support. We trade satirical links with our friends. We read blogs we mostly agree with. We might refine our views on the economy or the health system or the environment, but we ain't switching sides because of a YouTube video.

So why are young people 'deserting' Howard? Because he's old, and Rudd is not. Because we worry about the environment, and don't trust Howard to do anything about it. Because we don't remember the fabled 17% interest rates, and quite frankly don't see ourselves getting a mortgage anytime soon anyway. Because, for all the talk of this generation's conservatism, we are still more socially liberal than older generations: more tolerant of homosexuality, less concerned about Muslims, less likely to believe in God. Put simply, we don't really share Howard's vision, such as it is. And if it's taken us til now to realise that, well, forgive us. We've been busy making videos for YouTube.

Shouldn't Steve Fielding be observing the Sabbath?

2007-10-14T09:03:00.000+10:00

I got up just in time to watch Senator Steve Fielding, Family First, on Meet the Press this morning. I still have some residual gratitude for Fielding from the time he made the Government back down from its plan to process asylum seekers offshore. That was probably the Howard Government at its kookiest, and in that instance the system worked: Fielding told the Government to get stuffed, and they went on to devise new and subtler ways of demonising brown people.

But that was then. This morning he was talking about his grand plans for holding the balance of power in the Senate, which I found none too reassuring, although I was quite entertained by his little dig at the Greens for "wanting to give out free heroin". Those sneaky, dirty hippies! Also, he thinks petrol prices are outrageous and wants to cut fuel taxes. I wonder which opinion pol... I mean, carefully researched economic survey he got that idea from.

The highlight of the interview was when Fielding announced his proposal for a $10,000 baby bonus for the third child. Quick as a flash, the News Ltd journo probed: "Would that apply for the children of gay couples?" Fielding avoided the question once, but when it came straight back at him he had to admit that no, it did not apply to gay couples, because Leviticus says homosexuality is a sin and besides, gay people are all rich urbanites, they don't need us subsidising their stainless steel kitchens and cocaine habits. Actually he didn't say any of that, just something vague about doing what's best for the kids, but I heard the subtext loud and clear.

With all the recent hype about the influence of the Christian vote - Rudd banging on about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Howard'n'Costello kissing up to the Exclusive Brethren - it's worth remembering how this man came to be a Senator in the first place. Family First received 56,376 primary votes in Victoria in the 2004 election. If every Victorian who voted for Family First in 2004 formed a group on Facebook, it would have slightly more members than "You were sexy until I saw that cigarette in your hand" , but fewer members than "If You Can't Differentiate Between "Your" and "You're" You Deserve To Die". So why does Steve Fielding get to go on Meet the Press and talk seriously about his legislative agenda? Antony Green, bless his wonky little heart, explains:

Despite polling only 0.13 of a quota, Family First harvest preferences from numerous groups including the Progressive Alliance, the Christian Democrats, the Aged and Disability Pensioners Party, Non-Custodial Parents Party, One Nation, Liberals for Forests, the Australian Democrats, the DLP and the surplus from the Coalition.

You see? It's a goddamn mandate, that's what it is.

One of my more endearing habits is encouraging everyone I ever meet to vote below the line in the Senate. The paragraph above is why. Your vote is far too important to leave in the hands of the political parties.

Q & A with Pauline Hanson

2007-10-12T15:04:00.000+10:00

Q: "By actually acknowledging the Aboriginal people as the traditional owners in our constitution, are we opening up a can of worms then?"

A: No. As inner-city liberals around Australia can attest, recognition of the Aborigines as traditional owners places no obligation on anybody to pay more than cursory attention to the plight of Aborigines. It sure does feel good, though.

Q: "Although it sounds very warm and fuzzy, what is the real implications for Australians and future generations?"

A: I concur. Subject-verb agreement is difficult.

Q: "Does becoming a republic sever not only our sovereignty with the crown but also with the land?

A: No. I am not aware that the proposed republic sought to eliminate property rights. Indeed, many republics around the world, some of them quite famous, still recognise land ownership.

Q: "Will the land revert back to Native Title and where does that leave all Australians who are not of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural background?"

A: The Native Title Act came into force in 1994. Since then, Australians of various cultural backgrounds have displayed a dogged ability to remain in the country, except when they are mentally ill and mistaken for damned foreigners.

Q:"But they've got to stand up on their own two feet and start doing it for themselves as well. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

A: Current scientific consensus is that horses have four feet. Politically correct sensitivities being what they are, it is probably advisable that you avoid further comparisons of the Aboriginal people with any kind of non-human animal species. Also, making Aborigines drink is not widely considered to be the solution to the various problems faced by remote Aboriginal communities.

Mr Fixit

2007-10-11T13:02:00.000+10:00

In a rare instance of early adoption, I have been advocating four-year fixed Federal terms for some time. I don't think it's in our interests that the government can manipulate the electoral cycle to their advantage. I'm all for consolidating all the pork-barreling into one pork season, fixed on the calendar, that we can all anticipate and maybe plan our hospital renovations around. Also, it seems to me like we're forever having elections, and I like politics. God knows how much they must annoy the apolitical among us. So, good on Kevin Rudd for promising to put the matter to the Australian people.

That doesn't mean I expect such a referendum to pass. For starters, it's a referendum. Those things hardly ever pass here. ("Referenda: Just Say No".) Secondly, a cursory glance at the Herald's comments page reveals the kinds of arguments that are going to be deployed in favour of the status quo, namely, scaremongering on how we're, yawn, in danger of becoming America, and one rather intriguing theory that fixed terms are part of the insidious Unions' Agenda and are therefore almost certainly against the interests of Ordinary People.

How the unions managed to become the antithesis of ordinary people I'll never understand, but I do know this kind of thing is exactly what we can expect from the No camp. Also, you can expect the debate to be more bitter than its subject would necessarily indicate. Australian discourse is peculiar in that respect: stem cell research, abortion, euthanasia, these we can debate like grownups. But the tax system, IR laws, heads of state, electoral terms? Forget it. I've noticed the same phenomenon in NSW Question Time: the drier the subject, the more likely it is to descend into name-calling, yelling, and scurrilous accusations. We're a funny bunch.

Miranda's Scoop: Labor for Terrorists, Against Babies

2007-10-11T11:33:00.000+10:00

Call it a personal litmus test: every now and then, against my better judgment, I read one of Miranda Devine's opinion pieces. If this fails to enrage me, I worry that I am sliding down into the abyss of right-wing nuttery.

Today's piece caused no such concerns. Miranda chose to write about the recent furore over the death penalty, namely how McClelland exposed the secret plot to free all the terrorists that would come to be under a Labor regime. (Yes, she said "regime".) I don't really know what I expected; the headline, "Whose human rights come first?", is itself a pretty good indication that Miranda doesn't get it. Human rights are universal, not hierarchical, Miranda. That's actually the whole point.

But the form of her argument was interesting, sort of. Turns out there's a slippery slope all the way from condemning capital punishment to... condemning punitive amputation:

There are plenty of terrible things we don't like that happen elsewhere in the world. Why stop at capital punishment? What about the amputation of the hands and feet of thieves in Saudi Arabia?

Indeed. Why stop at capital punishment? I am against capital punishment, and also against the amputation of the hands and feet of thieves. In fact, I would be greatly disappointed if Labor were against capital punishment but for cutting people's hands off. True, I don't remember reading anything about the endorsement of punitive amputation in the ALP charter, but then perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough.

This is the way it goes for Miranda: she takes the utterly, impeccably consistent Labor policy - not to be confused with the utterly, impeccably expedient words of Kevin Rudd - and somehow twists it to imply that Labor are the ones espousing some kind of inconsistent approach to human rights. What about the Saudis cutting off people's hands? Well actually, Miranda, if I were putting my money on one party to oppose a given form of cruel and unusual punishment, it would be the one with the unequivocal anti-capital punishment stance.

Let's recap: Labor's policy is that it opposes capital punishment, which means that it opposes capital punishment here and overseas. The Libs' policy is that they oppose capital punishment, which means they oppose capital punishment in Australia and for Australians, but not necessarily for foreigner types. Who's inconsistent now?

As for the bizarre swerve into the murky waters of abortion... well, actually, I was relieved to read it. Generally speaking, and to their eternal credit, Australians are not in the habit of politicising abortion, nor of drawing equivalence between a fertilised egg and a sentient human being. Bringing it up was probably the worst thing she could've done for the credibility of her argument - it just reads like she's working her way through a list of conservative talking points. American conservative talking points, at that. She should've just joined the Liberal MPs in their somewhat comic defence of McClelland from the mean, nasty Kevin Rudd. Didn't she get the memo?

****

Incidentally, Annabel Crabb's typically brilliant piece on the McClelland/Rudd/Howard/Downer dustup just about made the whole exercise worthwhile.

Bob Ellis Wants to Make Us Cry

2007-10-10T12:05:00.000+10:00

This is truly depressing. I had just started to get my hopes up for this election, and now Bob Ellis goes and dashes them before the campaign even kicks off. It's a brilliantly, brutally detailed hypothetical of how Howard and co are going to win the election, despite the polls and Workchoices and everything else. And it's awfully plausible.

Highlights/lowlights:

- "Hammer Gillard's private life and toxic socialist history under privilege".
Done! But always time for more of that in Canberra. Reds under the bed! Hey, she's even a redhead. That screams "untrustworthy commie feminist".

- A Senate inquiry into Peter Garrett's history of drug use as a youngster.
Labor seem so desperate not to let Garrett become a liability that they haven't let him be an asset. Never mind that he was a friggin' rock star or that a few months ago government MPs were climbing over themselves to announce their own druggy indiscretions: pot can ruin your life. We saw it in those TV ads. Won't somebody think of the children?

- Turning up in Bali during the election campaign to say: "I know it's in mid-election, but global warming is important, and I'm here to discuss it with China, the worst offender. Kevin Rudd cares so little about it, he's still back in Australia, selfishly campaigning."
If the Kyoto-dissing, global warming Johnny-come-lately Howard manages to convince us that he's a better climate warrior than Kevin Rudd, we deserve everything we, as an electorate, get.

- Bush's prearranged bombing of Iran.
I can totally see the nuanced, cautious Kevin Rudd being painted as an Ahmadinejad apologist, plus a few well-timed bombs over Tehran would freak the hell out of people. Vote conservative, there's a war on!

- Howard calling the election on Melbourne Cup day, when people are too drunk to register to vote
All too believable... and I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad...

I feel like those people who periodically threaten to skip the country if Howard gets elected again.

McClelland Shows Integrity, Is Quickly Reprimanded

2007-10-09T12:38:00.000+10:00

When I checked the news this morning, I was delighted to hear that the Labor Party not only opposes capital punishment - that much, we knew - but was willing to say so this close to the election. Public opinion on the death penalty is decidedly mixed at the best of times. The spoof website Values Australia summed it up as follows:

1. Australians do not support the death penalty.
1.1 At least, not for Australians, especially in other countries.
1.2 However, Australians do support the death penalty for non-Australians in other countries.
1.2.1 After all, they're just ignorant, uncivilised nig-nogs...
1.3 ...although Australians do not support the death penalty for non-Australians within Australia....
1.3.1 ...because that would make us just like the ignorant, uncivilised nig-nogs.

I needn't have been too excited. It was only a matter of hours before the iron fist of Kevin Rudd made itself known: Yes, he opposes the death penalty, but it's insensitive to say so right now. I say he's right. Questions of morality involving life and death should always be considered secondary to people's possible hurt feelings.

Never mind that McClelland made the statement on Monday, in a speech delivered to a human rights group, or that the anniversary of the Bali bombings is not til Friday. In Kevin's sunshiny new world, reiterations of existing ALP policy should never be made within five days of the anniversary of any terror attack. In fact, Rudd went one step further: he now retroactively supports the death penalty of Hussein and Amrozi, and even indulged in a little hypothetical condemnation of Osama bin Laden to the gallows.

In this matter, as in life, Kevin is merely falling in line with his supposed adversary: John Howard has said he doesn't support the reintroduction of the death penalty in Australia. But the rationale for Howard's stance is utterly utilitarian: he doesn't want to see any irreversible miscarriages of justice, at least not on his watch. This allows him to be oddly equivocal about the application of the death penalty; hence his confounding statement, in 2003, that despite not supporting capital punishment in Australia, the matter is really for the states to decide. Hence, also, his ambivalent response to Van Nguyen's hanging in Singapore. And hence his refusal to oppose the death penalty when applied to foreigners in foreign jurisdictions - Amrozi in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. "Different people have different views", says Howard, sometime States' rights advocate and cultural relativist.

Kevin Rudd has no such excuse. His objection to capital punishment is a priori and based on his Christian faith. He's always been consistent in the past, having previously opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein. As he outlined in the Monthly magazine in 2006:

“The Christian belief in the sanctity of life should cause us to conclude that capital punishment is unacceptable in all circumstances and in all jurisdictions.”

In all circumstances except the leadup to an election, that is. Or, as Mr Rudd would have it, in all circumstances except within five days of the Bali bombings anniversary.

I'm Not Sure They're Fully Grasping Her Concern.

2007-10-08T14:31:00.000+10:00

The story: Isla Fisher is challenging the film studios to make more comedies starring women. Fisher says there aren't enough comic opportunities for women in their own right; that women are generally relegated to a 'girlfriend' role.

The headline: "Borat's babe plans Hollywood sex revolution"

Update: The Herald changed its headline quick-smart, no doubt because some pesky female-type person pointed out the irony. However, it stands in its original form here and a similar form here.

Pulp Mill Polling

2007-10-08T10:51:00.000+10:00

The SMH and the Australian have two different takes on the Howard government's fortunes in the polls. The Herald's version is based on its latest Nielsen poll, which shows an "entrenched" lead for Labor in the two-party preferred. Labor's share of the primary vote, however, has dropped two percentage points, although it's still healthy enough at 47% (versus 40% for the Coalition).

The Oz, meanwhile, takes the slightly peculiar tack of headlining internal Liberal polling in Tasmania, which shows the Coalition's figures rising in all but the electorate of Lyons, where the Liberal candidate has been speaking out against the pulp mill. The Australian chose to see the results thus:

Despite widespread opposition to the mill among local residents and businesses in northern Tasmania, the internal Liberal Party polling of 300 voters in Lyons suggests approval for the pulp mill may work in the Coalition's favour. The polling in the days after Mr Quin's public criticism of the mill found the Liberals' primary vote had crashed from 42 per cent at the 2004 election to just 30 per cent, with its two-party-preferred vote slumping from 46 per cent to 35 per cent.

This seems an odd way to spin the Libs' awful poll result in Lyons. Yes, Ben Quin's support fell in the wake of announcing his opposition to the pulp mill, and the Coalition has since approved the mill. But the situation in Lyons is hardly looking up for the Coalition. Quin, apparently a man of some conviction, has quit as the Liberal candidate over his party's support of the mill, and is now considering running as an independent, possibly with the Greens' preferences. The Greens' share of the primary is a not-inconsiderable 11%.

Of course, the seat is currently held by Labor, so it's not like Lyons is a must-win for the Coalition. (Luckily for them.) But nor is it a good example to pick if you're trying to paint a picture of an imminent Coalition resurgence.

Meanwhile, despite the Oz's upbeat headline - "Coalition buoyed by mill" - grave fears for the marginal, Liberal-held seat of Bass are buried deep in the ninth paragraph:

Bass MP Michael Ferguson, who last week expressed fears he could lose the marginal seat over the issue. Polls show he is likely to lose the seat, held by just 2.7 per cent, to Labor's Jodie Campbell.

So, to recap: the polls say Coalition is probably not going to reclaim Lyons, despite approving the pulp mill, and also that it stands to lose Bass, which the candidate says is because of the pulp mill. Nevertheless, the pulp mill "will significantly boost [the Coalition's] chances in the state's key seats".

Enough. The opinion poll thing is getting silly. Please can we have the election already?

Those Poor, Poor Huddled Masses

2007-10-07T12:58:00.000+10:00

Next time you hear someone complain that the Australian election campaign is getting "too American", remind the complainer of one of these stories.

Via Ezra Klein:

With so many candidates for President from both parties ...it might be hard for even dedicated political junkies to know, moment by moment, just how much each candidate is saying about God. Well, thank somebody for Beliefnet and Time, because they've created the God-o-Meter (pronounced "gah-DOM-meter).

With the God-o-Meter, we have a scientific tool that scientifically measures the just how much each candidate is Godding up his or her campaign. For example, Obama, Richardson, Huckabee, Romney and McCain all top the rating at 8 apiece, with Dodd and Giuliani occupying the bottom rung at 3 apiece.

Meanwhile, controversy on the campaign trail: Barack Obama refuses to wear an American flag pin on his lapel, probably because he is a yellow-bellied, America-hating liberal with a suspiciously Muslim-sounding middle name. Naturally, this has spawned all kinds of commentary on which candidate wears what on his or her lapel, as well as a fresh round of why-do-liberals-hate-their-own-country-so handwringing. This particular beatup has been aided immensely - one might say engineered - by Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, which is deeply gratifying to my own inner patriot. AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE.

So you see, we're not quite in land-of-the-free territory yet, Kevin-Oh-Seven t-shirts notwithstanding.

Michelle Grattan: What Was Andrews Thinking?

2007-10-07T11:53:00.001+10:00

The ever-thoughtful Michelle Grattan had an interesting take on the African refugee quota issue in today's Sun Herald. I'm not quite as quick as Grattan to dismiss the "race card" explanation. Yes, pulling the race card in 2007 would be seen as a "cynical tactic" - by the people who are inclined to care about cynical tactics. This is a dishearteningly small proportion of voters, as the repeated reelection of John "Children Overboard" Howard attests.

But I think there's something in Grattan's emphasis on where the Africans Overboard issue would play badly. The Australian electorate can be broken down as follows: a largish minority of voters who abhor the race card in all its forms; a smallish minority of rednecks for whom stories about AIDS-ridden refugees serve as a call-to-arms to defend Straya from the imminent threat of damned foreigners; and the majority, who aren't mobilised either way on questions of race, preferring to vote for, say, whichever government will allow them to buy a bigger plasma screen. The first group would never vote Howard in a million years; the second voted for Hanson, then redirected to Howard when it turned out that Hanson was crazy, not to mention embarrassing; the third group is the one Howard needs to woo if he wants to hold on to government. And as Grattan points out, it's not 2001 anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean these people will see discussion of race as a political ploy, but I think Grattan is right to say they won't be mobilised by it as they were over Tampa. They are too busy wilfully ignoring the Government's plaintive defence of its IR policy.

Incidentally, it seems to me that much of the backlash against Andrews over this has focused on the fact that it isn't true that African immigrants cause more than their fair share of angst. All well and good: I have nothing against what Stephen Colbert calls "fact-based agendas". And it's always nice when you can point out to people that they are just plain wrong. But I haven't seen much objection to the framing of the question, thus: even if African refugees were disproportionately represented in crime, would that absolve us of our ethical duty to provide a home for those who genuinely - and, in the case of the Sudanese, desperately - need it? My strong feeling is no, it would not. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees agrees: quotas for refugees are supposed to be based on need, not on some notion - whether well-supported or not - of who settles most successfully once they're here.

Yeah, But Your Weather Still Sucks

2007-10-07T11:39:00.000+10:00

At the risk of sounding like one of those anti-Europe wingnuts on Fox news, this has me convinced we really are dealing with some kind of European conspiracy. Sworn enemies or not, we should band together with the Kiwis to have the matter investigated.

I wonder if the England-France semi will see any tries scored at all.

With Friends Like These...

2007-10-06T16:28:00.000+10:00

From ABC Online:

Senate candidate Pauline Hanson has congratulated the federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews on a decision to cut the number of African refugees allowed into Australia..."Do you want to see increased crime on our streets? Do you want to see increased violence?" she said. "Do you want to see your daughter or a family member end up with aids or anyone for that matter?"

The People's Princess, Costlier than Ever

2007-10-05T14:31:00.000+10:00

If I were a British taxpayer, this would really piss me off. The government is in the business of subsidising trashy women's mags now? Cos really, they're the only entities that stand to benefit, as far as I can tell.

Since I am not British, though, I am just vaguely embarrassed that we chose to retain as our own head of state such an expensive, anachronistic, dysfunctional relic as the British Royal Family.

Anna Bligh Calls Out Kevin Andrews

2007-10-05T13:26:00.001+10:00

This is what Tony Burke should've been saying. I guess Anna Bligh isn't risking nearly as much political capital, given that she is newly entrenched as Queensland premier, rather than heading into a closely-fought election campaign. Still, when you express yourself with this kind of clarity, I have to believe the electorate is going to listen:

It has been a long time since I have heard such a pure form of racism out of the mouth of any Australian politician. For it to come to come from the Immigration minister is particularly disturbing.

I don't know much about Anna Bligh, or indeed Queensland politics, but I have to say I like what I'm seeing.

Peter Garrett Jilts Bob Brown

2007-10-05T12:24:00.000+10:00

For the most part, I am pleased to have rawk-superstar-turned-shadow-frontbencher Peter Garrett as my local member. For one thing, he is tall, which, as The West Wing's CJ once said, is reassuring. For another, he is bright, passionate, articulate, and, well, famous, in a shadow cabinet that, as Crikey points out, is rather lacking in star power. 2035 pride, baby.

But that was before I realised how deeply he was hurting Bob Brown.

Brown is up in arms over Garrett's support of the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania. Now, don't get me wrong: Garrett has sold out. It's not just the pulp mill - this is, after all, the singer of US Forces who has since announced his support for a new US military base in Western Australia. Hey, don't beat yourself up, Pete. It happens to everyone eventually.

Everyone, that is, except Bob Brown, an authentic true believer in the opinionpollocracy of modern Australian politics. Bob knows what he's about, even if the hoi polloi aren't enlightened enough to see, for example, that ice should be decriminalised.

Which may go some way to explaining Brown's current tone, which is less that of a political adversary than that of a jilted lover.

I can't believe that the Peter I knew - I've been into the forests with him, into the forests of Tasmania... I've got a lot of regard for the guy and I can only imagine that in his soul he must be hurting himself.

Actually, given that Garrett is currently primed for a much-sought-after role in the Federal Cabinet, I think he's probably doing okay right now. But I do hope Bob recovers from this latest betrayal by his former forest-buddy. We could do with many more of his ilk.

Aiding the Junta?

2007-10-05T10:00:00.000+10:00

My immediate reaction to the confirmation that the Australian Federal Police have been training their Burmese counterparts was nausea. Prima facie, this seems like an open-and-shut case of something we shouldn't be involved with. Training the law enforcement officials of a notoriously repressive regime? Pass.

The details of the training that have come to light - the relatively small scale, the assurance that the role of the AFP has been confined to training the Burmese in narcotics and other transnational crime - haven't done much to shift me on this. It's one thing to say Australia, and indeed the western world as a whole, is all but powerless to act in a way that would benefit the Burmese people. I don't really doubt that; the Burmese regime is famously cloistered, and external intervention on behalf of democracy has, shall we say, a spotty history at best. But it seems a disingenuous stance when the Feds are assisting the Burmese establishment, even in a small way.

Found: Gerard Henderson's Heart

2007-10-04T20:02:00.000+10:00

I'm left rather bemused by a recent development in the national conversation: the conservative commentariat has taken to worrying what us bleeding-heart latte-sipping types will do with our letter-writing time in the (seemingly likely) event that Kevin Rudd is elected. Gerard Henderson leads the charge, but the same trope has also cropped up in the letters pages of the SMH and the Daily Tele in recent weeks.

Now, I am not so churlish as to dismiss any expression of fellow-feeling from Mr Henderson offhand, but I can't help thinking that his compassion might be more fruitful if directed at, say, anything else at all. So I say to you, Mr Henderson: fear not for us Howard-haters. We will be just fine.

Equine Influenza

2007-10-04T19:54:00.000+10:00

I'm in two minds about the EI outbreak. On the one hand, the list of people who stand to lose the most from it reads like a who's who of people whose troubles leave me cold: uber-rich racing horse owners, equestrian types, betting agencies, purveyors of high fashion, and people who look good in fascinators. I have a fair amount of sympathy for, in order, the horses themselves and the casual workers who rely on the Spring Carnival to make some extra cash. But then I read stories like this one, about the intrepid Sydney fashionistas who are making the trek all the way to Melbourne to show off their spray tans and one-occasion-only frocks. The spirit of Burke and Wills lives on, folks.

On the other hand, associated nonsense aside, going to the races is a lot of fun, and October just ain't the same without it. I'm not saying I'm about to accompany the brave B-listers south of the border, and I reserve the right to laugh at the ABC for devoting the first half of its news coverage to The Epidemic that Stopped the Nation. (Really.) But I do join all the above-listed groups in hoping for a full and speedy recovery for the horses of NSW. Get well soon, hossies.

The Soft Bigotry of Kevin Andrews

2007-10-04T19:42:00.000+10:00

For most of my adult life, I have pondered one of the most vexing questions in Australian politics: is John Howard really racist, or does he just cynically exploit the racism of the electorate for political gain? I never answered the question one way or another. But the issue is nonetheless resolved in my head: I don't care. Each is precisely as bad as the other.

This came back to me when I was reading Guy Rundle's opinion piece on Kevin Andrews in Crikey today. Guy asks much the same thing of Andrews: racist or cynic? And just as I concluded for Howard, so I say of Andrews: it doesn't matter. The damage his M.O. causes is far more important than the (I suspect) not particularly interesting political philosophy behind it. In his dealings with the Haneef case, Andrews demonstrated that he is willing to do most anything to keep the fear of the other a salient feature of Australian politics, including, but not limited to: grossly misrepresenting the case to the public, ignoring the rulings of the judiciary, and placing such pressure on the Feds that they were unable to handle the case with anything that resembled professionalism or competence.

Now, Andrews is at it again, introducing what appears to be a racial component to the assessment of refugees. Regional quotas already exist, but the traditional rationale for them has been targeting areas of high demand, ie, we take the most refugees from the places that are the most screwed up. Fair enough, I guess, except that Andrews has now taken it upon himself to explain the moratorium on refugees from Africa in failure-to-integrate terms:

...it was clear that settlement wasn’t occurring at the rate that occurred with other refugee and other migrant groups to Australia

Not that Kevin is racist. Anything but:

"We know they've been in war-torn situations; many of these people are much younger than any other group of refugees," he said."So [the] combination of a lower level of education, up to a decade or so in refugee camps and in conflicted situation, these are all issues that are providing us with challenges."

Young, disadvantaged people from war-torn parts of the world. Definitely not the kind of people we should be accepting as refugees*.

It seems Kev's particularly concerned about the Sudanese, who, despite the assurances of such know-nothing sources as the Victorian police that they are not overrepresented in crime statistics, just don't fit in as well . Case in point: the recent murder of a Sudanese refugee, Liep Gony. If the Sudanese community had any real commitment to integration, they would avoid becoming murder victims. It's so obvious.

Meanwhile, Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke says he agrees with Andrews' stance, albeit without the kooky Sudanese murder-victim hook of his Coalition counterpart. Hooray for diversity.

*"A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.." - UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees