Saturday, April 30, 2011

will the carbon tax, or refugees kill off Labor first?

A while back I offered my first praise of the Gillard Government see here over her "courage" in arguing for a carbon tax. But since that brief moment of sunshine, not alot has gone right for the Government, and it's all pretty much their own fault.
They're getting killed every day in the media over carbon, but have been completely inept at arguing why we need this tax on carbon so much, and what the benefits will be for all of us. But part of that slow burn has been caused by the lack of detail released which has allowed the dooms dayers to speculate at will at how expensive everything will be, and how many jobs and investment opportunities will be lost etc.
So while even wily commentators like Laurie Oakes have all but written of the Government  read it here , I'm prepared to wait until they release their budget, and release their carbon plan in full before writing their obituary.
But if carbon isn't enough of a bogey man for Labor, their asylum seeker policy is completely up in flames. East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta finally stuck the knife into the whole silly East Timor Processing Centre proposal, an idea that was never going to wash, and only designed to clear the decks for the election.
But Labor really only has itself to blame on this issue, they've been completely spooked by voting suburbia's inherent prejudice to "illegals" since the Tampa incident in 2001. A party with real leadership would argue that asylum seekers are a reality that we need to accept, and as a civilised tolerant country people escaping oppression will want to seek refuge here. And in the great scheme of things it's not really that big of an issue compared with Europe, for example in Greece between 2004 and 2008 the tally of arrested illegal immigrants rose from 44,987 to 146,337, and that's just the ones they caught! But Gillard (and Rudd before her) didn't have the courage to face down the populist chest thumping, and as punishment for their smoke and mirrors routine, they're now well and truly looking down the barrel.
But like I said earlier, I'm prepared to wait a little bit longer before writing them off completely, but to give you an idea of just hard it will be to turn things around, according to Essential Research, 61% of respondents see Labor as out of touch with voters, a devastating figure for a 3 and a half year old Government, and only 28% think Labor is clear on what it stands for. Very ominous numbers indeed.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Melbourne's train shambles continues

I'm actually quite surprised that it has taken 16 months into Metro's franchise contract for running Melbourne's rail network before the you know what has hit the fan. While the previous Labor Government tried to buy some time in its dying last year in office by turfing out Connex and bringing in the Hong Kong operator MTR in a pathetic attempt to show that it was "doing something" after a decade of maladministration (in public transport), the current operator has the dismal record of achieving its monthly punctuality target 3 times in 16 attempts see here .
But what you're seeing now from the operator is a pathetic public relations diversion onto the big bad driver's union as a cover for their own incompetence and poor performance. Behind the scenes my spies tell me that Metro has gone after the union in an attempt to show them who's boss, which is actually a reaction to the perception (and perhaps the reality?) that the unions were running the show in the Connex days.
Metro has apparently referred a huge amount of internal disputes to Fair Work Australia for adjudication as they're not willing to bow to the union's demands. But what Metro is very quickly finding out is that thanks to 50 years of under investment, the network is run entirely on "goodwill". And when you have train drivers who bust a gut trying to run their trains on time by making up the time from a previous delay being questioned and threatened with the sack for doing a few kms over track speed, what do you think that does to morale and future performance? No, this is entirely an issue of the failure of the Metro management team to understand the realities on the ground, and take their people with them on the journey. But instead what you have is the worst of both worlds, a Hong Kong company which combines an autocratic Communist Party Politburo mentality with an executive team made up almost entirely of British managers with a master-servant attitude.
What these people fail to realise is that the drivers union can strangle the entire system by simply advising their members to "work to rule", ie work strictly by the book and don't do anyone ANY favours. The system is that dilapidated that that is all it takes to bring it to a grinding halt.
The British based National Express Group barely lasted 3 years with their master-servant attitude before they packed up shop and headed back to the mother country with their tails between their legs, and so the question being asked now is, will Metro even make it to 3 years?

Monday, April 25, 2011

Lest we forget......the war mongers

While on this sombre day where we remember the Anzacs (and alternate views are not welcome), I personally prefer to remember the war mongers and policy makers who place the selfish geopolitical interests of themselves ahead of the greater human good, and send young men off to their likely deaths. For in fact if we care to at all briefly analyse Australia's past military engagements, we find that (in my view) about the only honourable campaign they have been involved in is WWII, a war where Australia's sovereignty was directly attacked.
In the Boer War Australians helped prop up British colonial might in South Africa, while WWI was a European power play whose result was unlikely to affect Australian sovereignty, but we were obligated to participate for the good of God and Empire.
Probably not much needs to be said about the motivations of America's self interested entry into the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the script pretty much writes itself.
So while the beer swilling yahoos in footy jumpers stagger drunkenly towards the dawn service at Gallipoli in remembrance of the fallen, I'll continue to look at matters of war and peace from a completely different perspective. For I believe we can only truly do justice to the fallen by understanding why they died, and whose interest that served?

Sunday, April 17, 2011

cigarette packaging restrictions

It has been interesting to note while reading the views of the critics of the Federal Government's anti cigarette packaging measures read a typical example here they seem to have focused on two lines of defence;
1) the measures won't reduce smoking
2) the nanny state is imposing on us again
One of the intents of the Bill however is to de-glamorize the effect of pulling out a cigarette from a shiny cigarette packet and smoking with friends, if it's in a drab olive cardboard packet (the theory at least) is that will have an effect on future sales.
And interestingly the other thing that the critics of the bill are yet to pick up on is that if this Bill becomes law, just watch the skyrocket in sales of shiny "glamorous" cigarette cases. Why carry an olive packet around when you can use a cigarette case? Just watch them come back into style.
And while I have some sympathy for the nanny state defence, at the end of the day if the state is going to impose laws on us "for our own good", the cancerous addiction of smoking is not a bad place to start.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Dubai is a disgusting place

I'm so glad to see my prejudices confirmed in relation to my views on that God awful city Dubai read here . A Vanity Fair journalist has apparently written a beautiful polemic against the city of Dubai, and with typical authoritarianism, the authorities have removed the article in the local UAE edition. And with the typical obfuscation that you'd expect from the shifty sheiks that run the country, they're all pleading ignorance.
There's a million things wrong with Dubai, but I think the author sums it up best with this;
"Dubai has been built very fast. The plan was money. The architect was money. The designer was money.... And if you ever wondered what money would look like if it were left to its own devices, it's Dubai".

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

a villains convention?

After reading this piece see here about the upward looking career prospects of right wing columnist Andrew Bolt, it started to make a little more sense as to why he's so "successful" at his craft. For a start billionairess Gina Rinehart is a fan, who is reportedly keen to have a "right-wing Fox News-style show" in her network stable......so I guess they've come to the right guy there?
But if one billionaire as a patron is not enough, then there's also the Scientologist worshiping James Packer, who virtually stepped over dead bodies to (metaphorically, if not literally) embrace Bolt at the (of all places) Alan Jones Tribute Dinner.
And Packer remember is a guy thats failed at everything he's ever dabbled at in business, so perhaps Mr Bolt may wish to be weary of getting too close to that one?
And then of course there's his present employer and patron Saint himself Rupert Murdoch. So indeed, perhaps it's not such a mystery after all as to why Andrew Bolt is so "successful"?

Monday, April 4, 2011

Labor vs the Greens..and the future of progressive politics

There has been alot said in recent times about Labor's attack on the Greens "extremism", and alternatively the conservatives attack on the minority Labor Government being in bed with the Green monster.
While Opposition Leader Abbott's spinning of PM Gillard's attack on the Greens as a faux fight for the cameras is only distracting attention away from the Labor Party's very real concern over their long term ability to shake off the Greens menace on the progressive side of politics.
Gillard's comments that the Greens are "well intentioned", while in the same breath accusing them of not sharing "Australian values" is a transparent attempt to woo back those transient progressive voters who have strayed from the flock back to mother with horror stories of what evil lies beyond the hill. No wonder Bob Brown returned volley on that one.
Labor's real problem is that it is in danger of  perhaps never being able to govern in its own right again? The Greens are the only party standing up for true progressive causes; Palestine, anti war, equal rights, anti discrimination, climate change etc.
With a party membership (Labor) of about 45,000, and with the vast majority of that being inactive (ie stacked) members, you now have no intellectual base coming through with ideas and vision. You're essentially a dying party run by a nomenklatura at party headquarters.
While the inner city seats still rely on Liberal preferences for the Greens to win, its only a matter of time before their vote is strong enough to roll labor. There's now too many educated "elites" who won't fall for Labor's empty branding and sloganeering in those seats. So once you've lost that intellectual base of your Party, who's left? The lower socio-economic class migrant seats with their rusted on voters?
Former Liberal Party Senator Reg Withers once scoffed at the idea when asked that the Liberals may be finished as a major Party, primarily because any Party that regularly polls 40% of the primary vote is only a step away from Government. And this is Labor's problem, their days of breaking 40% may be well and truly over?
So where is Labor to go, "moving forward" (to use their own cringe worthy slogan)? Do they follow the US Democratic Party model of morphing into what were once moderate Republicans, leaving a massive void on the Left which the Greens will gladly accept? You can (maybe) get away with that in the land of "enterprise", but a recipe for disaster in this country.
Former PM Keating pilloried the current Party apparatchiks for not believing in anything, and the next generation of power hungry young men are (believe me) no better!
Perhaps the Labor Party needs to reconnect with its base, and that doesn't mean listening to ambitious union leaders sniffing out a future pre-selection either. But the men and women of the branches, good people with ideas on climate change, human/equal rights, a balanced foreign policy, economics, national identity and a wealth of other important issues which can help define the Labor Party.
But the real danger is that it may already be too late?

The Bolt irony

Currently before the courts is a racial vilification case against News Ltd flame thrower Andrew Bolt see here . As part of his defence, Bolt has argued that "the offending pieces ought in any case to be protected by the implied constitutional right to free speech".
This is marvellously ironic due to the fact that he has been an ardent critic of the Victorian Human Rights Charter, as well as being one of the leading voices who successfully scuttled a federal version being introduced. And as this court action is under federal law, there is no Charter to turn to for protection, instead he's being forced to rely on an "implied" right to free speech.
But he may very well find out that relying on "implied" protections are no substitute in a civilised society against the power of the State, or litigious or wealthy individuals.
Irony indeed.