The OZ at it again?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/capital-circle/gift-giving-jeweller-pays-attention-to-pms-predilection-for-pearls/story-fn59nqgy-1225911937259

I refer to the news today about attacks on the new member for Hasluck in Western Australia, Mr Ken Wyatt. He is being claimed to be the first indigenous or aboriginal member of the House of Representatives.

He has allegedly received ‘hate mail’ from people who said they would never have voted for him had they known he was indigenous.

I remember years ago hearing Dr Martin Luther King, one of the giant figures of the last century, saying we should judge a man ‘not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character’. I have always enthusiastically embraced this principle.

Having said that, I worry sometimes about the number of people running around  claiming to be ‘indigenous’ when they are no more indigenous than I am. I also worry about people making this claim, or having it made on their behalf, as though it were relevant to their ambition to enter parliament. It’s not relevant, or it shouldn’t be.

The correct approach would be to say, this is Ken Wyatt, he is an Australian citizen, here are his personal qualities that would make him a good member of parliament, or minister, or potentially leader of this country. His ethnic make-up has got nothing to do with it.

It seems the most likely outcome of the recent election is that we will have a minority Liberal-National government, completely dependent for its survival on the loyalty of three independents, and even then only having a 76- 74 majority.

A better idea, though one without precedent in Australia, would be a ‘grand coalition’ of Liberal, National and Labor parties. Mr Abbott and Ms Gillard could take it in turns to be Prime Minister while other ministers could be drawn from both sides of politics on a roughly equal basis.

This could mean that the government of Australia could get on with the job of governing and tackling this country’s many challenges as only a government can, instead of playing politics and point-scoring as has become the recent pattern. The electorate is bored with this and disrespect for politicians is palpable.

There is a recent precedent in other countries – Israel and Germany have both had grand coalition governments formed from the major political groupings, to avoid having a minority government at the mercy of small extreme parties and independents. In Israel a minority of religious ratbags exerts an undue influence over the country.

In Australia we need to avoid the government and its decisions being at the mercy of an uneducated eccentric bible-basher in a cowboy hat.

Election Reflections – Three perspectives – pls read and Contribute to the debate

With the Australian election result ‘on a knife-edge’ there is a need to reflect on what has happened and analyse what went wrong.

In Left Focus today we host three perspectives – one from a Left ALP activist (myself ie: Tristan Ewins), another from AMWU organiser, Don Sutherland, and the last from radical social commentator Tim Anderson – who offers a non-ALP but Left perspective.

Your views welcome in the Comments section of ‘Left Focus’ :))

(so long as they are Left-sympathetic)

for more see: http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2010/08/election-reflections-three-perspectives.html

How to think about the election results ?  Massive message to the government – “Not happy”.  Massive message to the Coalition “And you’re no better”.

And so we now see the unseemly grovelling of the formerly high and mighty – to a tiny bunch of well-meaning “independents” trying to not look like a bloc.  These chaps who will effectively choose the new government for us will set the agenda and draw the lines within which whatever government that gets picked by them, must operate.  So much for democracy.

As a former Labor party member, I know how the rank and file in a branch have no power over who represents the party in their electorate.  So the local candidate may not really represent the local branches, the local branches may not reflect the wishes of the residents of that electorate who might sometimes want to vote for that party, and neither might the alternative contenders for the seat.

And even if, in the remotest of chances one gets the candidate one wants preselected and the candidate is elected (as was my situation living in Anthony Albanese’s Grayndler), in the end, I might be governed by the whim of a master of yokelnomics.

Don’t get me wrong, I think blokes like Tony Windsor are rightfully respected as intelligent and considerate chaps and I suspect that they will deliver unto THEIR constituents the fruits of being the true powerbrokers.  But it goes beyond that.  These chaps have said they won’t block supply and that they won’t support a vote of no confidence (why would they – they risk losing their balance of power)…. UNLESS that vote of no confidence is genuine.

So what might constitute “genuine” ?  The look on John Faulkner’s face when he announced another casualty in Afghanistan this morning looked genuine to me.

And Tony Abbott’s suddenly deeply-held desire for a “kinder and more gentle” parliament …. genuine too ?  Yeah, right.

But if we take a more optimistic view and remember that parliament was not always like this; that there once were men and women of character, intellect and wit who were prepared to go the extra mile to reach an agreed solution as opposed to beating each other over the head and protecting party interests, no protecting factional self-interest.

I want more of the old timers who acknowledge and look after their constituents, but who can also see the big picture – who can see the need for environmental action whatever it might be, who can see that human rights must be protected without having their arms twisted. But I doubt that a bunch of Green urban yuppies with no track record will be wonderful at filling those shoes.

I want people who are not luddites.  I want people who can finally get things going in education and health – especially mental health and disabilities in general.  Putting a few bucketfulls back in the Murray Darling is good, but it is not enough.

There seems to be a kind of collective amnesia about the world economy.  The rest of the world is shitting blue lights that the big crash is still to come.  The US is going nowhere with its internal economy and is still spending an impossible amount on the war.

But if our independents get the broadband up, it’ll be jake.

Yeah, right.

Election 2010 – Final thoughts as Australia heads to the Polls

above: Fibre-Optic technology for the National Broadband Network is crucial to the future of Austrlian culture, and emerging knowledge and information industries….

In this article at progressive blog ‘Left Focus’ the author examines some issues that could be crucial for people still to decide their vote for the August 21 Australian Federal election.

Indeed, there are many issues which have not enjoyed nearly enough attention.

In this article, the author examines many such issues from a progressive perspective.

Your ideas and views are welcome at ‘Left Focus’ too – in response to this article, and any other of our many posts.  (though no flaming or trolling)

see: http://leftfocus.blogspot.com/2010/08/final-thoughts-as-australia-goes-to.html

The Dream or Nightmare?

The issue of population and public transport is again raising its head. There is nothing like a federal election for the most outrageous arguments and promises to do the rounds again. Of course, if all the promises of past governments even had 1% implemented, we would all be living in Nirvana decades ago, instead of in a country that is often seen as ‘mediocre’ in its achievements. We are still lagging behind in infrastructures such as health, especially mental health, education, public transport, our high rates of incarceration, low social security payments with many elderly barely scraping by on miserable pensions, compared with other countries.

Nothing gets the voters more confused than when each party accuses each other of planning to   inflict total economic carnage with Armageddon the only possible outcome for all of us.

 The one item that gets up my gander is the idiotic assumption that Australia is also somehow adding to the worlds over population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our increase in births is being outnumbered by the number of us carking it. The reason for Australia’s increase in people is by our intake of people already on this planet. It is called migration. This is not adding to the world’s population. We might give relief to refugees or satisfy our own need for more skilled people but we do not add to over-population.

The other furphy endlessly promoted by politicians is the promise of better or faster public transport. Accepting that Australia has a highly urbanised population with most of us preferring cities we would be wise to also accept that public transport thrives on density. This is where we divert from most of the world’s cities with good public transport. This is also why Australia will NEVER get a reasonable public transport system. We have the least dense cities in the world. Public transport cannot support populations over areas the size of entire countries. This is why we are forced to use the car.

During this election we keep hearing about how hard it is for us to maintain our ‘dream of home ownership’ and almost on the same breath, how our cities are becoming harder and harder to navigate. Endless queues are being focussed on from overhead helicopters, pointing out the hot-spots of traffic hold ups. A single flat tyre or a car running out of petrol in one of the many city tunnels or dual highways and tens of thousands will be home late again for yet another hour. With luck they will get a few hours sleep before hurling themselves back on a hellish highway once again.

 Is our dream starting to curdle?

Yet, the population of our cities is modest compared with many world cities. It is the land area that our cities occupy which is the problem.  In that regard we have copied America, and like the US we haven’t been able to provide an alternative to the car. Of course the issue of owning own home is not just Australia’s dream. Many people all over the world aspire to have their own home. What we differ in is that this home preferably sits on own individual block of land. We also prefer to have the largest most energy consuming houses in the whole world. In fact, driving around the newer and more outlaying suburbs, the houses are bursting at the seams. They are in proportion to the size of our families. The fewer children we now breed, the bigger the house has to be.

The question that ever hardly gets asked during any election is; how well founded is the notion that a good public transport can be provided around cities that houses its population on areas that are mini farmlets? Many proud home owners often lament that the rural aspect of their surroundings are being spoilt by sub-divisions. They appear to miss the irony that previous subdivisions allowed them to settle there, spoiling previous owners’ enjoyment of rural life in the area.  At the same time, many complain about how much time it now takes to escape from that endless suburbia and how rural Australia is being pushed back further and further into degradation and waste. Not many seem to pick up that the lack of density is the bane of our almost non-existent public transport.  It is our wasteful ‘dream’ that is the problem.

It is ridiculous to suggest we are becoming overpopulated. Shanghai houses the entire Australian population. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Singapore and many other major cities have excellent modes of public transport. People in those cities prefer public transport because it is cheaper, faster and far more ecologically responsible.

The question that someone could also ask; is our mode of housing, with separate blocks of land, fenced off, with obsessive privacy to the exclusion of others, really working?  We will never have a reasonable public transport system based on our present stubborn maintenance of housing ourselves. Another question could be asked; it is estimated that over 25% of us will suffer from mental illness in the future. Could the way of housing ourselves, so far from each other and so utterly isolated, be one of the reasons why so many suffer from feelings of isolation, dread and depression?

 Is our ‘dream’ also not our ‘nightmare?’

When terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre buildings in New York in 2001, their surviving colleagues thought it was a spectacular success. Having both buildings collapse was an unexpected bonus.

More thoughtful heads advised that actually it was a failure, or worse. Though it was traumatic for the citizens of New York and for the friends and relatives of the few thousand people killed, what were a few buildings and a few thousand people to a nation of over 300 million, in which a dozen big buildings are finished every day? The 9/11 attacks did the USA no harm and just made them angry. If you want to kill a snake, strike at the head, don’t just hurt it a bit and make it angry.

But in the longer term, the 9/11 attacks might after all have been a success from a terrorist point of view. The physical damage to the USA at the time was small and repairable, but the anger aroused in the USA was misdirected and self-destructive.

The reckless, impulsive invasion of Iraq was part of that. A year and a half after 9/11 the public mood was still, that someone had to be punished, so that was the pressure on the US administration. So they rushed into Iraq on a flimsy and subsequently discredited excuse, with insufficient troops and no plan for what to do with the place once the short and easy task of toppling the Saddam Hussein regime had been completed.

Seven years, thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars later, the Iraq operation is to be wound down. Osama bin Laden seems still to be alive, and Afghanistan is still not free of the criminal Taliban gang who murder, mutilate and destroy at will. The USA is under a heavy load of debt, its economy is in a long recession and threatened with deflation, and the political system is too polarised and dysfunctional to deal effectively with the nation’s issues.

The USA will perhaps never recover its strength and power and pre-eminent position in the world. One lesson is that if your numbers and resources are small, and you confront a mighty adversary whom you cannot by direct action destroy or even hurt much, then you can get the adversary to use its might self-destructively. Conversely, if you are large and powerful and you are attacked by an entity that seems puny by comparison, your response needs to be carefully thought through, objectively rather than driven by passion and politics.

When did politicians become untouchable? When did they forget that they are there for the people and not there own egos? And why do they think that the childish back and forth arguments that they use are justified and believed by the people? The immature name calling that is used on a national platform, between parties, would mean instant dismissal of an employee of any respectable company in the private sector. They are supposed to be our leaders, setting examples for us to follow. In its place we have a select group of people acting like children and make decisions that affect every single Australians life. 

How can we as Australians change the system? The elections offer a platform for change. But are we not just replacing one for the same again? Will it take riots in the street? That would only bring us down to the political level which leads our country!

I am truly concerned!

Andrew Robb and Tony Smith announced the much-awaited Coalition wasteband policy today, saying that if electrocuted, Tony’s government would install a more modest wasteband than the massively-overcommitted Labor Broadband.

The Co’s wasteband featured :

·         An investment of $8.35 over two years

·         A large ball of wet string and two chopped tomato tins washed and dried.  Mr Robb added that his government was supporting Australian industry and was eschewing La Gina product and going for the Edgell finely-chopped variety.

·         Coalition technology specialists said that the high speed analogue installation was good for no bits per second (unless there was some residual tomato).

·         They added that carbon capture guru Tom Switzer was developing a work-around for rural users facing the threat of the string drying out due to drought conditions in the Barcoo.

Under the Co’s plan, two houses were probably going to be linked, provided that they were neighbours.  Negotiations were well advanced with residents adjacent to Joe Hockey’s place.

Joe Hockey (the Minister for Waisteband) stressed that this was no Labor white elephant, but was less clear in answering the question “Well what kind of elephant are you, Joe ?”.  Shortly after that Mark Latham was ejected from the press conference.

Manne, the Pig’s Arms reporter spotted Julie Bishop with a packet of Gro-plus and a bag of lawn seed on her way to working up the Coalition’s environment policy….. or grassing up Christopher Pyne’s unicorn.