Dave’s Archives

Hot custard pie is still dribbling off the faces of Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb and Joe Hockey. They offered Andrew Wilkie $1 billion (a sum he himself apparently asked for) and they were rejected. Rejected! Oh the injustice. Clearly bribery isn't having quite the anticipated effect.

Regardless of what you think of Andrew Wilkie's honey pot style of negotiation, it did at least tell us a bit about the Liberals' style of negotiation. Quite simply, the Liberals were more desperate; more willing to give in to arbitrary demands. I have no idea how much money was actually appropriate. The Liberals' offer may well have been better for Wilkie's local constituents, but it probably wasn't better for the country.

Hockey and Robb are outraged, but they only have themselves to blame. The $1 billion was their offer, irrespective of who first suggested it. Wilkie himself pointed out the obvious recklessness, especially when combined with the Liberals' newly-revealed $7-$11 billion worth of "assumptions" that Treasury inexplicably doesn't quite have a handle on.

If Andrew Robb honestly believes now that $1 billion to fix Hobart Hospital is a "wise investment", as he told AM, why wasn't it proposed during the campaign? Why wasn't it proposed before the Liberals' suddenly needed the support of one Tasmanian independent? I'm sure that Wilkie could easily have made a convincing argument for fixing the hospital, but if there really is $1 billion to spend, perhaps we should consider all the potential projects it could fund.

The Liberals' ran their entire campaign (except, of course, for the incoherent ravings about "the boats") on fiscal/budgetary responsibility. I didn't buy into it at the time, and now - more than ever - it looks like a complete charade. It looks like they were prepared to promise anything to anyone, merely to get into power.

In the end, Wilkie's negotiating style may also pay off simply by breaking precedent (or even setting a new one). If negotiation with independents is needed again in future, the major parties may be a little more hesitant about how much money they throw to special interests.

Just as I hoped, we have a hung parliament.

A few days after the event, all I can say is this: Rob Oakeshott, you legend. Oakeshott, one of the three independent kingmakers, has proposed a unity cabient, wherein the two major parties would share power.

Doubtless there is much scepticism to be had over whether this could actually work, but in principle it has great appeal. This was the way the system was always supposed to work. Oakeshott and his colleagues Bob Katter and Tony Windsor are espousing the high-minded ideals of parliamentary democracy, wherein parliament becomes a mechanism of government, not just a rubber stamp for the ruling party.

On the other hand, there is another tempting argument: neither party truly deserves to be in power. As punishment for their vicious, purile and jaw-droppingly narrow-minded political strategising, we should now force them kiss and make up, and more importantly to swallow their poorly-chosen rhetoric. As punishment for their lack of competence and vision, we should force them to pool whatever little talent they do possess and share both the power and the responsibility. No more blaming it on the previous government, or snide armchair governing from the comfort and financial wonderland of opposition.

Of course, there can only be one Prime Minister, but it probably doesn't matter whether it's Julia or Tony so long as both are involved, along with their ministers. Stick Adam Bandt in there somewhere for good measure.

But they hate each other, I hear you cry with horrified incredulity. Why yes - that's largely the point. If they can't get along, they'll make each other miserable. I call it a win-win.

Pity poor Mr Abbott - it's so unfair. Apparently he's expecting the "worm" to turn on him again in the coming debate:

Certainly I know the worm dislikes Liberals, the worm's always hated Liberals, and I suspect that the worm's not going to change its character.

So I'm expecting to see a pretty unenthusiastic worm tomorrow night, but I know that I have good arguments on my side.

The worm, as you might know, is merely the aggregated reactions of a set of randomly-chosen people. Thus, though a little crude, it's not really unfair to substitute the word "people" for "worm". That's essentially the point of the worm, after all. So let's give it a try:

Certainly I know people dislike Liberals, the people have always hated Liberals, and I suspect that the people are not going to change their character.

So I'm expecting to see a pretty unenthusiastic people tomorrow night, but I know that I have good arguments on my side.

Just as well he has those arguments, because apparently we all hate him.

Abbott is, of course, merely trying to inoculate himself against the effects of his own oratory skills, or lack thereof, which I think is somewhat in vain. Personally, I'm not expecting much insight from the worm, or indeed the entire debate. Indeed, political debating is really nothing more than a democratic sheen on crass and adversarial political propaganda. At the end, proponents for both sides claim victory on behalf of the candidates and everybody watching is just a little bit dumber.

This is a counterargument to a previous post, in which I argued the case for switching from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Prime Minister Julia Gillard (or rather, why certain objections were unfounded).

Gillard's rise to power may have restored Labor's popularity for the time being (and certainly at a very opportune moment), but the party has done very little to actually deserve this electoral reward. I also spoke about Gillard and climate change in my last post, but here I'm going to bring Rudd back into the picture.

Gillard's position on climate change is essentially the one that Rudd had announced in April - that nothing would happen prior to 2013. This new policy decision is largely thought to have instigated Rudd's (and Labor's) precipitous fall in popularity in the first place. To rule out both an ETS and a carbon tax for another three years is an act of utter recklessness, as Rudd himself had passionately argued, and is inexplicable both pragmatically and idealistically. Further, it's an insult to our intelligence for Labor to change the unpopular leader but not the unpopular policy.

But it's more than that. The ETS delay was not truly Rudd's policy in the first place. It was the NSW Right faction that pushed Rudd to delay emissions trading, one of the groups that lent its support to Gillard's subsequent coup. Rudd was hamstrung by his own party and then scapegoated for the consequences of that very mistake. An anonymous Labor factional leader gave this assessment:

This crypto-fascist made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll, has deserted him he is gone.

This gives some strong hints as to the extent of Rudd's unpopularity within his own party, but it's hard to argue that this in itself justifies the demise of a sitting Prime Minister. Labor's internal party politics are certainly no substitute for the will of the people, and Rudd's poor showing in opinion polls is hardly unusual for a first-term PM, nor was it even necessarily of his own making. In his press conference on June 23 (on the eve of his dispatch) he gave a glimpse of his views, and foreshadowed Gillard's policy positions:

If I am returned as the leader of the party and the government and as Prime Minister, then I will be very clear about one thing. This party and government will not be lurching to the right on the question of asylum seekers, as some have counselled us to do. Also, on the question of climate change, we'll be moving to a timetable on emissions trading, which is of the government's decision, contrary to the views of some, in terms of when that best occurs.

Contrast the last sentence against Gillard's "citizens' assembly" idea. Rudd seems to be preemptively attacking Gillard's appeal to populism, and so this meme must have been floating around in the party for a while. (I don't even see what political advantage a "citizens' assembly" could really convey. It won't legitimise anything. It may involve "ordinary Australians", but most ordinary Australians will be quite distant from it. The Opposition, not being constrained by reason or evidence, can paint it and its outcomes however they like.)

Gillard's other major policy initiative that clearly distinguishes her from Rudd - offshore refugee processing (also alluded to in the above quote) - was very poorly handled. It was clearly designed to neutralise the Liberals' xenophobic ramblings over boat people, but it sounds awfully like giving in to them. The other problem is that the policy relies entirely on international co-operation that had scarcely even been sought. It's not clear that this co-operation will ever be forthcoming (except from Nauru, which would probably be too humiliating to consider, since it would nail John Howard's colours to Labor's mast), leaving this policy in limbo and playing right into the "failed-policy" mantra of the Liberals. Rudd, the diplomat, clearly wouldn't have made such a fool of himself.

From one point of view, Gillard is an important symbol. Hopefully she can inspire future generations of women to fight their way to the top. Her rise to power may also have helped legitimise non-belief. (By contrast, it seems almost inconceivable that a US politician could openly admit to being a non-believer. Look what happens when one shows signs of doubting the complete literal truth of the Bible.) Neither Rudd nor Abbott, through no fault of their own, can be such a symbol.

Like most senior politicians, I'm sure Gillard does ultimately have what it takes to run the country. Even Abbott does, I'll concede - it's not as though we're dealing with an Aussie version of Sarah Palin, after all. However, unlike Rudd, neither seem to have much vision - much sense of how the country could be made better. Gillard and Abbott play politics like chess, where the only objective is victory over the other; victory for its own sake.

Neither do they seem to have quite the expertise that Rudd possesses. Australia needs a delicate approach to foreign affairs; balancing our interests - and humanitarian interests - with the pragmatic realities of international relations. We probably owe much of our prosperity and security to good relations and carefully-negotiated agreements with other countries. I still trust Labor to handle this better than the Liberal party (mostly because a large part of the Coalition's support these days comes from that section of the community that doesn't understand why other countries even need to exist). However, Rudd was surely the better choice.

Whoever does win the election will have to work hard to prove retrospectively that they deserved it.

How did it come to this? The Greens, supposedly a party of the "far left" (whatever that means), are now the flag bearers for a market-based policy - carbon emissions trading.

Rudd along with three successive opponents - Howard, Nelson and Turnbull — all pledged to introduce or support an ETS. Now the Labor Party has well and truly capitulated. What crumbs Gillard has to offer in lieu of a price on carbon look as bizarre and pitiful as those sprinkled before us by Abbott. Crikey has a good summary of the situation.

The most positive thing you can say about Gillard's position is that it's sufficiently ambiguous to allow some sort of action in the future. That's what we're left with, just six months after both major parties successfully concluded negotiations to pass ETS legislation. I can only gape in astonishment at the magnitude of the bipartisan failure of leadership having occurred in the intervening time. Gillard has just propelled this failure to new hitherto unknown depths of farce by abdicating responsibility to, quite literally, a random assortment of laypeople.

On the merits of its policies (climate change, asylum seekers and Internet filtering), the Labor Party frankly deserves to lose this election, and lose it badly. So, of course, do the Liberals, for many of the same reasons. I'm still of the mind that the Liberals deserve to lose slightly more, mainly because I'd prefer Labor's incompetence over the Liberals' incompetence and poorly-disguised ideological mindset, but it's a close call.

The most positive election result I can imagine now is a hung parliament, with the Greens holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives (presumably as well as in the Senate). I don't care to guess how likely this is, considering the Greens have never won a single seat in the House of Reps before. However, I expect they'll be the beneficiaries of an electoral backlash. They deserve to do very well indeed, in my opinion, simply by holding to a broad policy that used to enjoy bipartisan support — the only climate change policy that even really deserves to be labeled as such. The prospect of a forced coalition with the Greens would surely help drag at least one of the major parties back to the negotiation table.

Gods, where's Malcolm Turnbull when you need him? This is turning out to be a stinker of an election.

Tony Abbott wasted no time in conjuring up the "midnight execution" imagery to describe Julia Gillard's usurpation of power, and a little later trying to explain why this wasn't precisely the same thing that he himself had done to Malcolm Turnbull six months earlier. (He probably had to go all out, because Gillard out-polls him by quite a distance.)

Abbott can argue that his coup was motivated by policy, unlike Gillard's, but the policy in question - Abbott's apparent political raison d'être - hardly serves to exonerate him. That policy was climate change denialism (contrasted against Turnbull's compromise deal with Labor on emissions trading), which is the product of blatant, willful ignorance and hollow ideology, and is precisely the reason Abbott isn't fit to govern. I rather like the idea of our government heeding the advice of experts (in any field); indeed, this would be the principal factor upon which my vote would rest, if only I could see into the heads of politicians. Gillard's coup was at worst motivated by cynical populism, which is still frankly the far lesser of two evils.

Abbott's gloating over having been the instigator of Rudd's downfall is juxtaposed against his apparent outrage over how it happened. But if it was going to happen at all, how could it have happened any better way? Leadership tensions often play out over months and even years, as Peter Costello will attest. Such continuing leadership instability in the Labor Party would have been good for Abbott, but not particularly good for the country. Though the position of Opposition Leader doesn't naturally lend itself to nuanced pontification, it still seems a little silly for Abbott to spend his entire waking life denouncing the Prime Minister only to then bemoan his rapid removal from office. Was a slow political death the only acceptable option, in his professional opinion?

(This seems to be standard practice in politics, though. A deposed leader is no threat, so the other side can suddenly afford to heap on retrospective praise to make it seem as if the change is a step backwards.)

Of course, there is the democratic argument. One side argues that we didn't elect Gillard (at least, not as PM), so what right has she to assume the Prime Ministership? The other side points out that we don't actually elect the Prime Minister but the government as a whole; there is certainly no suggestion that anything unconstitutional has occurred. The first side might retort that, although this is the case in theory, it was the "Rudd" label that won the election for Labor in 2007.

Even the last point is a bit academic though. What happened in 2007 was nearly three years ago, and the polls strongly indicate that people have changed their minds in the mean time. Democracy doesn't just happen every three years - it should be a continuous process. While statistically-sampled polls don't have the same aura of legitimacy as an election, they are based on legitimate scientific methods and do, after a fashion, reflect the will of the people.

Surely democracy is best served by putting forth the best possible candidates for election, as indicated by the electorate itself. There may have been some sort of academic expectation that Rudd would serve out his full term, but nowhere is it written that this is necessary in a healthy democracy. Replacing a leader with a more popular one is how representative democracy works. (That's not to say that replacing the leader ought to be done lightly, because government stability is also an important consideration.)

Some might argue that they wouldn't have voted for Labor if they knew that Gillard would take over, but I wonder. If it was known that Gillard would take over, she would have been more a part of Labor's 2007 election campaign, and she would have been much more in the public eye. She would have had more of an opportunity to cultivate her image - which is what this is really about after all, Abbott himself having argued that Labor's policy approach remains the same. This is little different in principle to any other change in government direction . You can't expect the government to map out precisely what it will do at election time, because events are guaranteed to overtake it (as in the case of the global financial crisis).

In previous elections, the Labor Party itself made much of the idea that John Howard wouldn't serve out his full term, but would hand over the reins to Peter Costello. I've always found this to be a bizarre and unconvincing argument. As politicians are fond of saying, we ought to focus on the policies and not on the people. Unfortunately, this is surprisingly difficult.

Tony Abbott has tried his hand at modelling the economic costs of carbon emissions reduction. The results are a little disturbing. Unless Abbott was being deliberately, deceptively simplistic in order to appeal to the burn-the-elitists demographic of Australian society, he truly doesn't have a clue what he's talking about:

He says given a 5 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will cost Australian taxpayers $120 billion, the cost of the emissions trading scheme's 10-year aim of a 25 per cent reduction will be much greater.

"The Federal Government has never released the modelling," Mr Abbott said.

"Now if there is modelling that shows the costs of a 15 per cent and a 25 per cent emissions reduction, let's see the modelling, let's release the figures.

"I think it's reasonable to assume in the absence of other plausible evidence that five times that reduction, a 25 per cent reduction in emissions, might cost five times the price - half a trillion dollars, 50 per cent of Australia's annual GDP."

I'm no economist, but I suspect the experts might shy away from confidently predicting that 5 times the reduction implies 5 times the cost. We're talking about billions of dollars flowing through all the intricate structures that make up the economy. There are feedback mechanisms, economies of scale, and the little fact that a "5%" reduction in CO2 is relative to 2000 levels but the projected cost is based on 2020 levels (because that's when it's happening). Even a "0%" change from 2000 levels represents a substantial cut in what our 2020 CO2 emissions would have been, but according to Abbott's model this scenario would cost nothing.

Why even have economists if a constant factor is all it takes to convert a percentage CO2 reduction into a dollar amount? If Tony, our alternative Prime Minister, thinks it's "reasonable to assume" such things, perhaps we can get him to try out this approach to economic modelling in a controlled environment where he can't hurt anyone else. Say, in a padded cell with Monopoly money.

Costello is quitting politics, Wilson Tuckey isn't quitting politics, Peter Dutton (the shadow health minister) has had politics quit on him. Turnbull is the voice of (relative) sanity in the Liberal Party, but not many - either in the Party or in the wider population - seem inclined to listen to it.

Some seem to be in the market for a new messiah in Joe Hockey or Tony Abbott, to save them from the horror of endorsing an emissions trading scheme and thus actually doing something constructive for humanity. Perish the thought that the Liberal leadership should be driving at such things. Better bulldoze them aside and continue squabbling over interest rates before anything useful happens. I'm not convinved that Hockey would be any more popular or politically savvy than Turnbull, and Abbott I think would be a disaster.

On a somewhat different track, Howard isn't giving up the ideological game either. On motives for victory in Afghanistan, from an ABC article:

What we've got to ask ourselves is, what is the consequence of failure in Afghanistan? And that would be an enormous blow to American prestige, it would greatly embolden the terrorist cause.

This is predictable Howard rhetoric, and it gives some insight into his mindset. He actually does see American "prestige" as a commodity worth fighting for. Not freedom, democracy, security or any other desirable facet of society, but image, and not even the image of the country of which he was the second-longest serving prime minister. This is a war, not a beauty contest. There are real people dying out there - how many innocent lives is one country's "prestige" worth?

I think there is probably a grain of truth in the idea that a withdrawal from Afghanistan could be used in Al Qaeda propaganda, but an "enormous blow"? Since Obama came to office, the world hasn't seen America in quite the same slight belligerent light. Of course, Obama hasn't actually done that much yet (a rather premature Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding), but even so he has helped redefine America's image. I think that people throughout the world are probably far less inclined now to view the US as a conquering power. Consequently, there is less propaganda value in a US defeat as there would be if the hawks were still running things.

I actually happen to agree that, on balance, the Afghan War is an important one to win, but my argument has more to do with the prospect of the Taliban condemning society (especially women) to live in the dark ages. Yes, it's certainly true that Western military might cannot solve all the world's problems, and in many situations can be a problem in itself. However, it would be encouraging if we could solve just this one, to help Afghan society back from the precipice.

The problem with that argument, from Howard's general nationalistic-conservative point of view, is that it's not our society hovering above the precipice. To argue this case might be to admit that human rights and civil liberties are worth fighting for. If we start saying things like that, where does it end?

The hardliners of the Liberal Party might ask themselves why the election is worth winning. For the prestige of the Party?

Tony Abbott - Mr People Skills himself - is on-message, describing the Rudd government's use of the phrase "temporary deficit" as "Orwellian", on Insiders this morning and elsewhere. One may surmise that Abbott, being entirely honest and reasonable, fears the rise of absolute tyranny and the end of all forms of freedom, with human dignity forever trampled beneath the jackboots of Rudd's front bench. This all begins with the bone-chilling use of political spin by the government, something Abbott would never have contemplated in his entire political career. Nineteen Eighty-Four is indeed right around the corner. And you thought it was just a budget deficit brought on by a recession!

The impending annihilation of liberty aside, Abbott has an intensely irritating manner of speech. He artificially pauses for a split-second every couple of words, as if he's trying to give the impression that he's actually thinking about what he's saying. It's irritating because it completely fails to cover up the sheer inanity of his rhetoric, and in doing so makes it even more inane. That said, I muted the TV after a few seconds, so I suppose it's not that much of a problem.