Rudd. 7:30 Report.

pic via crikey

Ruddy's turn tonight.

I'm bummed I missed his press club address today. Oh well.

"The Rudd Government". Has a nice ring to it!

Hawke/Keating paid political price for risks they took. Resulted in forming platform for Australia's economic growth. Points out that under Fraser interest rates were high too, not just under Hawke/Keating. Kerry basically telling him to shut up - covered that last night with J-Ho! Doesn't want audience to fall asleep.

Keeping eye on inflationary pressures is key.

Do you agree the GST was right for Australia? "You can't unscramble the omelette" Huh? "But do you now accept it was right for Australia?" By undoing it, you would cause chaos - only reason for not touching GST. Need simpler ways to comply for business. "Do you believe the GST was bad policy?" Affects lower end of the income spectrum more.

Um. I'm a bit bored. La la la.

Housing! Are you comfortable in allowing the RB to slow the growth of the economy by increasing interest rates? "I accept the independence of the bank." "Very important we take a hard line approach to unnecessary expenditure." If RB says public spending is causing more inflation, would you reassess your spending promises? He's banging on about how they're going to spend less than Howard and save more than Howard. Snore.

"Stop the crazy spend-a-thon."

Points out that all the govt does is spend and bitch (about the ALP) as their campaign. Heh heh.

Oops. Sorry. Spaced out. Something about the ALP historically?

Kevvie loves his metaphors. WorkChoices "dicing" things. Omelettes, dicing. Was he hungry when he did this interview?

"You could drive a Mack truck through that safety net." (Workchoices.)

"Brissy." Go Brissy! Ahem. Sorry.

Blah. Banging on about the union backgrounds of the shadow cabinet. "I will govern in the national interest."

Ooooohhhhh - H R Nicholls Society. You went there! Woo hoo! (Costello was founder).

I love Kerry. He's so good at forcing pollies to get back on track and answering the question asked.

"Genesis of our IR system ... will have as it's core component..." something about wages. Sorry.

Nauru. How quickly would you move to shut down? No advice on that. Have appropriate offshore detention facility (Christmas Is). Why not use it instead? What? Why use it at all??????? You disappoint me, Mr Rudd. "Pacific solution is just wrong...best way is to use Christmas Island." Sigh.

I'm so voting Greens. Yeah, yeah. I know I was anyway. But this reminds me why.

Climate change - Can you continue to responsibly ignore nuclear power? No decent attempt to look into renewable energy. Solar technologies have gone offshore. Solar, wind, geothermal will be looked at. Nuclear? We have large range of alternatives. Responsibilities regarding the export of uranium - repeats that other countries don't have as many options available to them. Didn't really answer the question, but Kerry didn't follow up.

Presidential style? "I believe very much in taking advice...evidence based policy. What works?" So will take advice from cabinet and elsewhere.

And that is it. Hate to admit it, but I got really bored and kinda spaced out. Probably cause his voice remains so calm and he doesn't get rattled. Unlike other people who get all snarky!

Straws. Clutching.

JOHN Howard has warned Australians they risk electing a Labor-Greens alliance that would impose a new national direction and conduct radical experiments with their values and institutions.

[....]

Mr Howard warned that a Labor victory would mean a Labor-Greens Senate majority and an era of social re-engineering, with policy changes on drugs, education, social issues and political correctness in conflict with his social conservatism.

GG

Ohhhhh. Not *gasp* policy changes! On drugs! Social issues! Political correctness (I'm not even sure what that is - maybe LGBT? Since when is that PC? I would have thought common sense.)

Unbelievable.

"There will be a return of political correctness. There will be a softening in relation to things like drugs. You will get a less socially conservative country at the very least.

A less socially conservative country would be good. The conservatism in this country gives me the shits. Not to mention that I believe it is code for racist, sexist, homophobic policies and laws which allow for people to indulge themselves in those kinds of behaviours and beliefs because they know it is acceptable at the highest level of government.

Asked about the future under the Coalition, Mr Howard said Peter Costello "will be elected unopposed" as his successor.

Yeah, "elected unopposed" by the Liberal Party. NOT the Australian people. Sure, you can say people who vote for Howard to continue as PM are giving the green light to Costello. But really, given Howard's previous behaviour, do people really believe that he would step down for Costello? I have no doubt that if he was returned, something dramatic (real or imagined or engineered) would occur and Howard would declare that it is in the best interests of the country for him to remain as leader.

By his own admission, Howard will be using this week to push forward a negative view of the ALP. Be prepared for the next three days to be nothing but bitching and moaning and the government on its knees begging the electorate to ignore WorkChoices, AWB, children overboard, an illegal war, the systematic eroding of the rights of pretty much everyone except business, VSU, and the regular bending over and taking every which way from the US.

Yeah John Howard. You hold the interests of the entire country at heart. Excuse me while I go and ROTFLMAO at this claim.

Entry Poll: First Votes for Labor

Bardi Dancers at Stonehenge 2006

The Bardi Dancers from Western Australia's Ardyaloon (One Arm Point) community, who performed at Stonehenge last year, were among the first Australians to vote in the Federal election. Mobile polling booths visited there and Lombardina/Djarindjin communities on Tuesday.

My entry poll taken while handing out ALP how-to-vote cards at each place, confirmed overwhelming support for Labor. The One Arm Point polling took place in the open air in high 30's temperatures. Hopefully an omen for more open government in the near future. We have to keep trying!

Original Post at: Labor View from Broome

Johnson feels the burn in Ryan

Michael Johnson: waving goodbye to his seat?

Oh good news. I love good news. Our electorate of Ryan is now considered 'marginal' by the Liberals and their sitting member, Michael Johnson, despite it previously being held with a margin larger than 10%. So they're throwing $15 million our way for a sports park. Or something. Who cares?

Member for Ryan Michael Johnson issued a statement in which he welcomed the money.

The "sports park" concept first emerged in a series of leaked emails last month between Mr Johnson and the Prime Minister's office, where Mr Johnson pleaded for help, describing how his Ryan electorate had been "upped to marginal" after recent polling.

In one email he writes: "John and Ian: I need substantial assistance and a commitment here. Both of you know full well that my support for Cameron and the Govt has been absolutely rock solid in the face of overwhelming local political and community pressure. Forget even the personal abuse directed at me.

"I am bleeding on this issue and expect support now. This is a slow burn."

*Happy dance!!!*

No personal animosity to Michael Johnson, but anyone who has supported the Howard government and their destructive, anti-social policies has got to go. I hope he's political dead meat.

Vote 1 Ross Daniels or vote 1 Evan Jones! I don't care, as long as the Libs lose Ryan. I suppose Ross Daniels probably won't find the time to meet with us now, he'll probably be out campaigning his arse off now that Labor seems to think they have a chance in the seat. Sure, the chances are minimal that they'll actually win it, but the fact that there is even the prospect of this occurring is cause for celebration.

*Happy dance!!!*

Save our Senate

The Save our Senate ad that GetUp have produced (and was discussed in the email from them) has been up on YouTube for a while now. Given that we may not really see it on TV, I thought I'd put it up here.



This actually ties in nicely with something I want to post about anyway.

I finished reading Still Not Happy John during the week. I'll post more on it later, but there is something that was in the book that I think people need to be aware of.

As you know, Howard currently has control of the Senate. The election gives you the power to change this. You can ensure that Howard loses control of the Senate. The Senate that voted in WorkChoices. The Senate that has slowly had its accountability eroded by the current government.

Canberra in particular, we're looking at you. Why? Well, let's let Margo explain:

...you have the ability to empower the Senate on your own. You'd have to do something amazing, but it can be done. The ACT elects two senators who, unlike senators representing the states, take their seats immediately, not on 1 July next year. Labor always gets one ACT senator; the Libs the other. But if 9,000 Liberal voters transfer their Senate vote to the Greens or Labor, Howard's Senate control is over.

Margo Kingston, Still Not Happy John, p 438

How many people are aware of that? Not too many, I'm willing to bet.

Something I found out about from TAMS about a month or so ago (and I'm still not sure why I didn't already know), the NSW seat of Eden-Monaro is considered to be the bellwether seat* of the election. For the past 30-odd years, whoever wins Eden-Monaro, generally wins the government. Interesting, huh?

What is also very interesting is that Labor is running Mike Kelly as the candidate in the seat. Mike Kelly is the Colonel who assisted in exposing the corruption that formed the AWB scandal.

Very interesting indeed.

UPDATE: Peter Martin writes about the possibility of the government losing the Senate seat.


*The Poll Bludger did a post about the seat back in June. I swear I found the post after I wrote that it was a bellwether seat (as it is also described by William). It is, after all, the perfect word to describe it.

Really Mr Howard?

The latest ad from the ALP. I've seen it twice today already.

Ross Daniels, Labor candidate for Ryan, happened to be campaigning outside Toowong Village shopping centre when we went there a couple of hours ago. He happily posed for a photo, which one of the ladies with him took using our camera (making sure to get the shopping centre tower in so people could tell where we were!).

We wished him luck -and boy do we ever, even though we'll probably both vote Green- but he'll need more than that to overturn Michael Johnson's massive margin and grab the seat. Too many wealthy Howard-lovers here... in fact, whenever a bitchy, expensively-dressed housewife tries to run us over with a shopping trolley in Coles, Gam and I often look at each other and say "Liberal voter!".

Political smear campaigns

Yesterday, Joe Hockey was busted admitting that the Libs are running a smear campaign, "based" on fact. (See Mikey's post on this - very funny.)

Hockey is also effectively accusing the ALP of running a scare campaign by proxy - because of the ads that the unions are running.

"I don't think the Labor Party is in any position to judge us on the credentials of our advertising campaign, when they've been the beneficiaries of the greatest fear campaign ever run by the union movement in Australia," he said.

A couple of months ago, I received a pdf of a page that had clearly been ripped out of some kind of magazine, outlining the "frightening" details of the union involvement of Rudd's team. I've saved it as a pic and you can take a look below (click to enlarge).

While I don't know the actual document from which the page was ripped, given the choice of colours, and the colours used in the ads being run by the Liberal Party, I can hazard a guess.

(And poor old Peter Garrett. Lumped in with all the "union officials". Because apparently having a life before entering the political fray is enough to incur the wrath of some. Abbott was in a seminary and worked as a journo before joining the Liberal ranks - and let's not forget his early union membership - does that mean that he gets to be lumped in with all the lawyers?)

The point of all this is: there will continue to be either poor or excellent attempts at swaying people's votes, purely based on the fear of what will happen. But the future is never set in stone.

Given that Australians trusted the ALP for so many years before switching to the Libs (and that was because they successfully managed to convince that they were for "battlers"), and they provided the platform for the coalition's economic growth, means that there should be no fear in voting the ALP back into power.

As for the make up of the cabinet? Things are never perfectly proportioned in the real world. Take a look at your friends - are they perfectly representative of the diversity of Australia? Unlikely. So you cannot realistically expect your government to be. You vote for the people you think will do the job best for you. How do you know who will do what is best? You do not base it some information that is presented to you by a biased source, you go and find out the information for yourself. If you want to live in a democracy, you have to be willing to put in a little effort.

Union attacks

Mr Hockey, whose Liberal Party has launched scathing election advertisements highlighting the 70 per cent of Labor frontbenchers with a union background, said it was incredible Labor intended to govern with such a high union representation.

"[The role of unions] is essentially over," Mr Hockey told ABC Radio today.

"That's because we have a system with a strong, independent umpire that is providing protections for workers.

"Because the unions do not cover 80 per cent of the workers out there, we find that people are turning to the Workplace Authority and the Workplace Ombudsman to obtain information and to get protection."

Mr Hockey said workers who were not union members could turn to the Workplace Ombudsman for advice, but the Labor Party wanted to dismantle that office.

He said Australians viewed unions as irrelevant and were choosing not to join them, a trend that started under former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke.

SMH

No, the reasons people aren't joining the unions is because they still have an old-fashioned view of them, and the government scare campaign over many years has wormed its way into the minds of the populace. The unions are not good at positive self-promotion.

Very few unions are as militant as they were. Because over the years they were achieving many of the goals they aimed for. But now, they have a higher profile because the government is systematically eroding their achievements. My grandfather must be rolling over in his grave. (He was heavily involved in unions. Actually even got a mention in a book about them - the name of which escapes me at present.) People started leaving the unions when Hawke was PM because they had yet to catch up with the general feelings of the public. But now they have.

Personally, I don't think much can be achieved nowdays by going on strike. Because unlike in my grandfather's era, there is less of a feeling of community in the population. If people went on strike back then, other people would support them and the reasons for the strike. People wouldn't become scabs because they knew they faced ostracisation, which doesn't happen so much now because big-business has such a foothold in the minds of the public and all people seem to care about is profit over the well-being of the people who help achieve that profit.

The public has become complacent. And now we are facing the consequences.

"I don't think anyone would have thought that in 2007 it would be credible for Kevin Rudd to go to an election with 70 per cent of his frontbench made up of former union officials, and that would be a dramatic increase in the number of union officials that, say, Bob Hawke had," he said.

Irrelevant. I'll keep saying it - you must be a union member to be in the ALP*. So naturally the chances of the bulk of the frontbench being former union officials is high. Being a union official is a politicised position. It is a natural stepping stone for someone in the ALP who wants to make a difference in the government. End of story.

Just because a politician is a former union official it does not mean that they will allow themselves to be unfairly influenced by the unions. They know that come the next election, if people are unhappy with their performance, they will be given the boot - so in a way, their involvement with the union movement can be seen as something that prevents them from making extreme choices.

The ACTU has hit back at a Liberal Party campaign highlighting the union affiliations of Labor's frontbench team, saying it is insulting to working families.

ACTU president Sharan Burrow said a television advertisement released yesterday by the Liberals was wrong to suggest unions were anti-business.

The ad was also insulting to the millions of Australians whose job security and living standards were protected by unions.

"The job of all unions is to protect secure, well-paid employment for Australian working families," she said.

"To achieve this we need profitable businesses that value their workers. (my empahsis)

Workers who are valued are happy. Happy workers are more productive. This means that businesses achieve more.

I'll concede that not all business will use WorkChoices as a means to take advantage of their workers. But there are those that will. And until you can guarantee that no workers will be unfairly treated, you cannot write off the unions. An agency set up by the government should not be relied on as the only organisation that will ensure that worker's rights are protected.

The government scare campaign will continue. You've probably seen the latest bit of propaganda by now. See it here if you've not.



Labor have hit back with Rudd calling out Howard's scare campaign with a "Fresh Ideas" ad.

*apparently this is untrue. As I said in my comment - a number of years ago before I'd gotten around to joining the QPSU, I rang the ALP and was informed I'd need to be a union member. Is this a recent thing? Can anyone enlighten?

But I don't believe that it makes my comments any less valid. Given that the ALP is traditionally aligned with the unions, it is hardly a surprise that most, if not all, of the pollies have union affiliations of some description.

Election fun

Howard's announcement from yesterday:



"...the right leadership is the leadership that delivers the team that knows how to do the job. The right leadership is the leadership that has the experience to further expand the prosperity of the Australian economy and to ensure that everybody gets a fair share of it."

That made me snort. If he thinks that people are currently getting their fair share of it, then he's just having a nice old wank for the cameras.

"The right leadership is the leadership that is willing to take unpopular decisions in the short-term that have a long-term benefit for the Australian community."

Tell me, what unpopular short-term decisions have been made so far that have a long-term benefit? I cannot think of one myself.

This my favourite though:

"The right leadership is a group of men and women who will govern for all Australians and who will not be beholden to a narrow section of the Australian community."

While we know exactly what he thinks he's talking about (those scary, mean unions), lets just sit and think of all the people in the Australian community who have been repeatedly fucked over by the current government. Let's think of the LARGE section of the Australian community who has been.

But then we get right down to it, just in case you were too stupid to realise what he was getting at:

"...70% of whom are former trade union officials."

Hmmmm...wonder what card is going to be played ad nauseam over the next 6 weeks. Jesus christ. Everyone knows the ALP was founded on the backs of the workers! Of course former union officials are going to be high-ranking members! You have to be a member of a union to be in the ALP!

"Is it a government that is offering stability in it's key personnel..."

This from the man who has publicly stated that he will stand down partway through the term should he be re-elected! So, is the PM position not a key position?

He bangs on about balance? Robbing the country of the necessary checks and balances? How about a majority in the Senate Mr Howard? How about the fact that you have used your majority to force through legislation that would never have passed had there been a decent balance in the upper house? What about the concept of the Senate estimates committee? Forgotten about that, haven't we?

I can't talk anymore about his comments. It just makes me want to vomit.


On to Rudd:



"...new leadership with fresh ideas..."

Ideas that have yet to be announced. Far too much metooism in the ALP at the moment.

"...a goverment that's lost touch..."

They never had it to begin with.

He speaks of how the Liberals won't make changes. They will. That's the problem. The changes that they make are never for the better for the majority of people. So their problem isn't that things won't change, it is that things will continue to do so, to the detriment of the country.

What really shits me about both of them (Howard and Rudd) is that they only seem to think that families count in Australia. And by families they mean a married mum and dad and their kids. Not everyone wants kids. Not everyone can have kids. Hell, not everyone can get married!

Anyway, there are the speeches if you didn't get to see them yesterday. Please don't forget that there are other political parties in Australia. Certainly, the PM will end up being from one of the major two parties, but that does not mean that a vote for the Greens or the Democrats is a wasted vote, provided you vote correctly. That's the beauty of the preferential voting system.

Equal rights for all couples

Anyone who reads my regular blog would know that I feel strongly about the issue of gay marriage. The fact that our country doesn't feel the need to legally recognise de facto gay and lesbian relationships is ludicrous, let alone the fact that the government has legislated that marriage is between a man and a woman. Quite frankly, it is disgusting and not something that any Australian should be happy about.

Sadly, the Liberals are supported by the ALP in their belief that marriage should only be between members of the opposite sex, so no matter which major party you vote for, your gay friends and family, should they want to get married, are unable to. They are not afforded the same rights that you and I take for granted. So, no matter who you vote for, to be a member LGBT community means that you are second-class citizens in a supposed democratic country.

Queer Penguin has done a post about the ALP issue, you should check it out.