Former Liberal Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett this morning dumped big time
on the federal LNP, claiming that dislike for Prime Minister Tony
Abbott is a major factor in the Victorian election result that yesterday
brought a resounding victory to the ALP, ousting the Liberal government
in its first term.
Kennett claims the Abbott government is a “shambles,” and Ministers
in the Napthine Government said there was “no question’’ that the
unpopularity of Tony Abbott in Victoria was a factor in their defeat.
The government is in a bind about Tony. If they get rid of him in his
first term they risk being seen as unstable and disloyal, allegations
they levelled unrelentingly while in opposition at the ALP for its
ongoing leadership woes with Kevin Rudd.
An aside on that matter. Now we have a good deal more information
about that debacle, wouldn’t it have been so much better if Gillard had
informed the electorate about the difficulties the government was having
with Rudd, rather than leaving us to wake up one morning and discover
we no longer had the extremely popular Prime Minister who’d led the
Labor party to victory? Pole-axing an electorate in such a fashion and
then going on to be excessively secretive as to the reasons for such
drastic action would seem to be a most unwise strategy, and indeed,
that’s what it proved to be.
The situation with Abbott is very different: while Rudd was still
popular but behind the scenes, dysfunctional, Abbott is openly
dysfunctional and unpopular to boot, so the electorate won’t go into
nearly as much shock and awe if he’s chucked out of the top job in his
first term.
Personally, I’d like to see Abbott stay on as leader as he’s the ALP’s best asset.
The federal government is like a dysfunctional family with a rogue
father at its head. Everyone closes ranks and publicly supports the
patriarch even though he’s bringing ruination down on their collective
heads, because that’s what families do. They stick together in the face
of adversity, and in so doing, enable the maintenance of the
dysfunction. This eventually damages every family member, and the price
for such misguided unity is death, of one kind or another.
There’s little more difficult than dealing with a dysfunctional
leader, be it in politics or the family, and we saw how the ALP crumbled
under the pressure of their Rudd woes.
The precedent for getting rid of first term Prime Ministers has been
set, and there are few among us who would find it shocking the second
time around. However, the LNP are likely far too spooked by the Rudd
saga to risk ousting their dysfunctional leader in his first term. This
could well be their downfall.
Increasingly this government is seeking to subvert due process and impose their agenda in totalitarian fashion.
Regardless of whether you think the increase in fuel excise
is an appropriate measure, the move to introduce it through regulation
rather than legislation is specifically designed to bypass parliament.
The regulations will need to be backed up with proper legislation by the
Senate within 12 months or the money raised will have to be refunded.
As reported in the SMH
“The government believes the ploy will put Labor and Greens senators
in a bind at that time forcing them to choose between keeping the
escalating revenue stream, or voting it down forcing the government to
pay potentially hundreds of millions of dollars collected from motorists
back to oil companies.
While the incremental inflation adjustments will raise an expected
$167 million from motorists by November next year, little-appreciated
new compliance costs for service stations are calculated at $5.06
million according to Treasury estimates.”
So much for cutting red tape to help small businesses. They also
ignore the flowon costs to households as businesses pass on increased
delivery expenses, and the cumulative effect of twice yearly increases.
And it seems they may be trying to introduce the GP co-payment in the same way.
Initially, on Tuesday Peter Dutton said
“There is no capacity to introduce a $7 co-payment through
regulation, the advice from our legal people within the department as
well as with attorneys is the $7 co-payment needs substantive
legislation to support the co-payment.”
But yesterday he changed that message, refusing to rule out the
introduction of the $7 levy by regulation to bypass the need for
legislation.
“I am not going to rule things in or out. I am saying that there are
options that are available to the Government,” Mr Dutton said.
Finding ways around our parliament and our laws is becoming a habit.
After the High Court ruled in June that the federal government could not directly fund religious chaplains
in public schools, Christopher Pyne chose to give the money to the
states with the direction that it could not be used for secular welfare
workers.
So much for their claim that education decisions should not be dictated by Canberra.
In February, a Senate inquiry paved the way for the Parliament to
give Environment Minister Greg Hunt legal immunity against future legal
challenges to his decisions on mining projects. It will protect him
from being challenged over deliberate or negligent decisions that do not
comply with the law.
The Coalition government has now licensed Greg Hunt to avoid compliance with the EPBC Act.
The amendment retrospectively validates ministerial decisions – even if
they did not comply with the EPBC Act when they were made.
We are also losing our right to appeal development decisions.
The Abbott government’s move to establish a single approval process
by passing environmental approval responsibilities onto the states and
territories creates a conflict of interest as they raise revenue from
land sales and mining royalties.
In early 2014 the Queensland government proposed to confine the
objections and notifications process for a mining lease to people owning
land within the proposed lease.
The Coordinator-General is fast becoming an almost supremely powerful
czar for large projects in Queensland, subject only to the political
whims of the state government. He can also prevent any objections to
the environmental authority for a coordinated project from being heard
by the Land Court. When combined with the severe restrictions on
objections to mining leases, very few people can now challenge matters
such as impacts on groundwater of large mines that are declared a
coordinated project.
Under the federal Coalition’s one-stop shop the Coordinator-General
is also proposed to have power to approve projects impacting on matters
protected under federal environmental laws.
And that’s not the only avenue for appeal that is being shut down.
Australians could be left with no appeal rights against government secrecy by the end of this year.
The May budget cut $10.2 million funding for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) which handles Freedom of Information
appeals. The government wants appeals to be handled by the
Administrative Appeals Tribunal instead. This move is being blocked in
the Senate so we will be left with effectively no avenue for appeal.
But perhaps the most blatant disregard for the law is being shown by
Scott Morrison who, in a Napoleonic gesture, has conferred on himself
the power to revoke a person’s citizenship.
The new laws provide the Minister with the power to set aside decisions
of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) concerning character and
identity if it would be in the public interest to do so and confer on
the Minister the power to make legislative instruments.
Morrison has condemned innocent people to indefinite incarceration and washed his hands of any responsibility for their welfare. He has ignored warnings that his actions are in breach of human rights
and is actively outsourcing our responsibilities under the Refugee
Convention at enormous cost to this country. He is now even blocking
refugee applications from people coming through official UNHCR channels.
Journalists have been denied access to detention camps. Even the head of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, was denied access to child asylum seekers
on Nauru on the grounds that the commission’s jurisdiction did not
extend beyond Australia’s borders. The cost of a single-entry media visa to Nauru rose from $200 to $8,000.
And if any of us report on the machinations of this government, our
fate is in the hands of Attorney-General George Brandis who has the
individual power to determine if we should face a possible ten year jail sentence.
So much for free speech, transparency and accountability.
Happy bedfellows. Picture courtesy of The Age. Photo: Alex Ellinhausen
After a disastrous first budget, Joe Hockey looks
to be a man without ideas. So too his dear leader Tony Abbott who, in
what appears to be an act of desperation, has pleaded with the business
community to help him.
In what could be interpreted as a cry for help, Abbott has called on
business leaders and state governments to be the drivers of a new wave
of economic reform. Speaking at a Business Council of Australia dinner, this week, the Prime Minister signalled out taxation as the most urgent of the nation’s woes. Really?
One can rightfully ask if this is analogous to waving the white flag.
As well as the business community, Abbott has included the Labor party
in this invitation and all state governments, “to join Team Australia and to think of our country and not just the next election.” Could it be the Prime Minister is telling us he doesn’t know how to govern the country?
What? These magicians of spin, these production wonder boys, these
wealth creation gurus, these self-proclaimed ‘budget emergency’ busters
who conned so many of the electorate into thinking they were our
economic saviours, are they now giving up?
These
lying, deceitful cretins who supposedly had the answers to all our
problems are now asking members of the former government who saved us
from the GFC to come on board as partners in ‘Team Australia’?
What a pathetic way for a national leader to acknowledge that he and
his treasurer are no longer up to the task. And if that is true, they
should hide their heads in shame and go back to the people.
Abbott’s plaintive call to 400 of the country’s leading executives
came after another week of management failures that covered a range of
areas involving his own stupidity, his Defence Minister’s stupidity, and
the Communication Minister’s stupidity.
It came after a week that included other ministers sending mixed
signals about dumping the $7 GP co-payment, which itself came right on
the heels of some disastrous fiscal projections from the Parliamentary
Budget Office concerning the ever ballooning deficit.
Laura Tingle of the Australian Financial Review notes that “Prime
Minister Tony Abbott finds himself defending the indefensible, or the
already mortally-wounded, on three different fronts”. She is
referring to a now dead budget strategy, the ABC broken promises parody
and Defence Minister, David Johnson’s ‘rhetorical flourish’.
With the government’s Senate option’s now even harder to negotiate,
little wonder Abbott is showing signs of desperation. How humiliating it
must be for him to ask for Labor’s help. Particularly, as Laura Tingle
explains, the markets and the business community now see the budget
impasse as “a disaster of the Coalition’s own making.”
In a quite feeble defence, the government has also called on Labor to say what it would do to ‘fix the budget’. Once again, they seem to forget that they are no longer in Opposition.
And,
seen through their narrow-minded neo-liberal eyes, what a fix it needs.
Just last May, Hockey projected a budget deficit of $29 billion for
2014-15. The report just released by the Canberra-based consultancy
Macroeconomics suggests that on current trends
the deficit will more likely be $47 billion. Worse still, they are
projecting a deficit of $24 billion in 2016-17 against Hockey’s
projected $2.8 billion.
How vindicated must Wayne Swan be feeling right now as he witnesses
these incompetent amateurs stumbling around in the dark desperately
trying to spin their way out of their own ineptness.
Meanwhile the Parliamentary Budget Office has released an analysis
emphasising the “sensitivity” of the economy to the areas of
productivity growth, the labour force participation rate, and the terms
of trade and the likely outcome on revenues if the present targets are
not met. Take a look. It isn’t pretty.
There
are some dark days ahead for Hockey, right up to the next election. But
Abbott’s position is worse. He has all but lost credibility within his
own party. As Laura Tingle puts it, “As
Abbott’s credibility is under deadly assault, and the authority of his
senior ministers is missing in action, the resolve of both Labor and
cross benches to stand their ground only increases.”
They say what goes around, comes around. Surely that Sydney Daily Telegraph front page headline of the 5th August
2013, urging the electorate to “kick this mob out” must certainly be
resonating around the country right now. If asking Labor to help get it
out of its fiscal mess is any guide, perhaps it is also resonating from
within the Coalition.
Tony Abbott - oozing arrogance (image from canberratimes.com.au)
Has this federal government lost its grip on reality, fooled by
its own rhetoric, destined for a grisly political death or do they have a
grand game changer ready to be unleashed?
The Abbott Government seems to be on a mission to systematically
annoy, exploit or degrade as many pockets of the Australian electorate
as they can in one term of government. But for a party that regards the
power of office as an end in itself, they appear to be running a flawed
strategic agenda.
Let’s not kid ourselves, this bunch really do want to get themselves
re-elected. They’re not a squadron of kamikaze neo-con pilots, biting
off the last piece of ideological territory before their poisonous
political movement crashes to its inevitable death. They are not that
stoic.
Who can forget the embarrassing three year tantrum Abbott threw when
Julia Gillard beat him to the punch, negotiating her way to minority
government?
The madness we are witnessing are the actions of a government that thinks it belongs in power.
The men in blue ties hold every hope of being re-elected. They may even
be under the impression that the things they are doing are contributing
to their chances of re-election.
Since coming to office this government has waged vicious attacks on
our most vulnerable, acted as an unabashed lobbyist for our most harmful
and moribund industries, ignored, denied and chastised science, killed
off promising new industries, skipped their way excitedly into a
religious war, ignored a global health emergency, defamed global
leaders, pursued nasty political vendettas, punished its detractors and
nobbled our national broadcaster.
And they’ve done it all without whiff of charisma. The people
inflicting these horrible wounds are not classy, well-spoken, smart
practitioners of the dark arts. No! Our tormentors are a ramshackle
group of misfits: a punch drunk Luddite who struggles from word to word
in every sentence he delivers as he gaffs his way across the domestic
and international stage; a hateful, angry, glutinous, cigar-smoking
leaner; an eighteenth century dandy with a nasty streak wider than the
gap between rich and poor; an extreme Christian zealot who thinks crimes
against humanity are not quite harsh enough; an asbestos defending,
globe-trotting lawyer who rates a mean stare amongst her greatest
attributes; and a smooth talking could-have-been hero of the Australian
centre who lately has taken the strange step of selling his soul on
national television in defence of the man whose job he coverts.
Ramshackle? This mob are an outright circus of evil clowns and it
makes the pain, torment and burden just that much more difficult to
bear.
But bear it we must. And we also must, apparently, tolerate the fact
that all of these crimes against Australia and what we stand for are
committed within an atmosphere of dishonesty and hypocrisy that has
never before plagued our land of sweeping plains. We are served
undergraduate linguistic gymnastics, developed by the Abbott Ministry of
Truth, for which we pay millions, designed to convince us that black is
white, up is down and herpes is good for us.
And yet, be assured, this mob expect to be re-elected next time around.
Can the support they receive from Rupert and his anti-democratic,
anti-truth attack dogs be that reassuring? Is Abbott and his gang of
shifty fiddlers betting the farm on the power of Bolt and friends to
spin their lunar right, IPA-inspired agenda?
Murdoch certainly has been putting his best foot forward when it
comes to his little game of telling people what to think and who to
hate. To give some perspective, Bill Hayden, Whitlam’s last Treasurer, recently told Wayne Swan that Murdoch’s current behaviour was ‘three to four times worse’ than at the time of the dismissal.
That’s heady stuff. But it’s still hard to imagine that our
government of power-hungry, ideological vandals could be so trusting.
Would they really put all their eggs in one basket? Murdoch may have
cranked up the mendacious absurdity, but his readership is declining
rapidly at the same time as the Fifth Estate is gaining competence,
credibility and readers.
Either this government is drunk on hubris, fooled by the ease of
their 2013 election win with misplaced confidence in the support of the
world’s most evil media ‘empire’, hurtling their way towards what the
polls have long suggested will be a landslide loss in 2016. Or they have
one last, grand nasty trick up their sleeve; a devilish plot to
frighten, threaten and corner an under-informed public into voting for
them again.
Let’s hope it’s the former and that the damage done in the meantime
can be reversed, because trying to imagine what that devilish plot might
be is enough to send shivers down your spine.
The ABC and SBS provide tangible
social benefits to Australia and contribute hugely to our cultural and
intellectual life, writes Loz Lawrey. But because they aren’t profit-driven, they don’t fit nicely into conservative ideology.
Does the language used by those who speak for the Abbott government
make you ill? Physically nauseous? Rhetoric can do that. You’re probably
what they call a “leftie”, the term conservative neoliberals use for
people who don’t subscribe to their dog-eat-dog worldview.
Those of us tarred with the “leftie” brush tend to see the world
through a different prism to those on the far right, where belief and
ideology often carry more weight than evidence-based analysis. We tend
to care about our fellow-citizens and demand measured decision-making
based on documented fact. Our aspirations encompass fairness, social
justice and inclusion for all.
These concepts, which we regard as absolute necessities in a healthy
democracy, are often dismissed by the right as cheesy socialist
idealism, the naïve language of dreamers.
On social media platforms, when progressives and conservatives try to
communicate, what begins as civil discussion quickly breaks down and
turns into mutual vilification. This is why we tend to gravitate to
groups of the like-minded, where our views are supported and encouraged.
We like our feathers stroked, not ruffled.
Consensus is an impossible dream as long as those trying to reach it
hold opposing views of the world, or the world they would like to see,
and base their arguments on differing and often contradictory premisses.
It is clear that any debate about the future of our government-owned
media group the ABC and the hybrid-funded SBS is constantly subverted by
diametrically-opposed and irreconcilable views of what these
organisations actually are, what their purpose is and what they should
be doing.
The conservative view is that they are businesses in pitched
competitive battle with other privately-owned media outlets. So the
argument from the right tends to go: “They’re businesses, so the
government should privatise them. It’s not the job of government to run
businesses”.
This very limited vision implies that the ABC and SBS exist solely
for the purpose of making money. Naturally, those running the
privately-owned broadcasting media share this perspective – they see the
taxpayer-owned platforms as stealing their viewers, listeners and
readers. In other words, as their competitors, stealing their income.
The progressive viewpoint is that the ABC and SBS are not businesses
by any definition. They are community service-providers. They are not
profit-driven organisations, but rather were created to serve Australian
society by educating, informing and entertaining our citizens. They
are, and should remain, taxpayer-funded services. The fact that some
taxpayers are disengaged and unappreciative of the benefits of
properly-funded public broadcasting shouldn’t play into this debate.
It’s as simple as this: the ABC and SBS provide tangible social
benefits to Australia by their very existence and contribute hugely to
our cultural and intellectual life.
The social awareness that becomes a possibility when governments
support the arts and the exchange of ideas is an asset to the country as
a whole, whether people choose to avail themselves of that awareness or
not.
This is why all taxpayers should be pleased to contribute to the
funding of healthy independent public broadcasting. It quite simply
makes our country a better place, a place with a raised awareness and
hopefully, a heightened social conscience.
It could be argued that the function of taxpayer-owned or
partly-owned media has nothing to do with profit-making, rather that the
charter of these organisations is to raise the consciousness of the
nation by teaching our children and involving our adult population in an
ongoing national conversation while keeping us informed. In other
words, smartening-up the country and acting as a cultural facilitator.
Making things better, and making Australia a better place to live in for
ALL its residents, bar none.
Profit-driven media share no such lofty aspirations. Here the focus
is on attracting passive viewers to absorb and assimilate the endless
stream of mind-numbing advertising which is commercial media’s bread and
butter.
So here it’s about dumbing-down, not raising up. It’s not about
serving the consumers, it’s about using them to extract financial
profit. People who submit to exposure to privately-owned broadcasting
allow themselves to be mentally herded like sheep, to be manipulated by a
form of social engineering controlled by money-men.
Image by @KieraGorden on twitter.com
It’s true that neoliberal rhetoric tends to reduce every issue to the
level of money: “Does it make a quid?” If it does, it’s seen to be of
value.
So when progressives say “This is a wonderful organisation that
delivers measurable social dividends for the Australian community”, the
conservative response tends to be: “Yes, but does it make a quid?”
The Abbott government sees government itself as a business, hence the
ongoing obsession with budget surpluses. If a surplus is achieved,
money has been made and the “business” has proven itself successful. A
budget deficit implies business failure. In the mind of the Coalition,
“government” means “corporation”.
Opponents of the conservative regime paint a different picture of
what government should be: a system-operating body that exists to serve
the people who installed it by responding to their needs domestically
and representing them fairly and equitably on the world stage.
In this context, what does a little debt matter when good outcomes
are being achieved? Surely good outcomes, not financial gain, are the
objective. Success and failure are measured on a different scale
altogether, a scale which measures social benefits rather than profit
margins. Clearly, in this view government is not a business, rather the
clerical administrator of the nation.
Taking care of the nation’s affairs is not the enterprise of a
business. Sure, the books need to reconcile and balance, but that is not
the end in itself. A nation has no need to turn a financial profit.
It’s not about the economy (although that needs monitoring), it’s about
the people.
The schism between worldviews highlighted by the Abbott government’s
assault on public braodcasting, underpins every argument between the
political right and left and sabotages all attempts to find consensus on
desirable outcomes.
Perhaps we need to revisit our definition of “government”. One
accepted definition is that government is the system by which a state or
community is governed. This means that those “in government” at any
time are there to administer the affairs of the nation by maintaining
law and order, funding infrastructure as needed and serving the needs of
its citizens by acting in the public interest, while upholding social
justice and human and civil rights.
No argument there from either side, you may say. But this is where
perspective comes into play and rhetoric can skew the debate. The two
sides of politics have differing interpretations of what it means to
govern. The perspective of those on the right begins from the premiss
that people are stupid and that to govern means to control the populace,
while those on the left start from the assumption that we’re not stupid
and that to govern means to serve the populace.
With regard to the ABC and SBS, perhaps both sides need to align
their assumptions before engaging in the funding debate. What is
shocking to many ABC supporters is that those who are baying the loudest
for its blood see it as a burden on the taxpayer rather than the iconic
avatar of Australia’s consciousness that it has always been.
I know the person on Twitter who suggested that we could all
crowdfund the ABC to save the 400 jobs and the services that are being
cut by Abbott’s savage ideological slash and burn of our national
broadcaster was just trying to be helpful. But no. Sorry. There will be
no crowdfunding of the national broadcaster. Unless by crowdfunding you
mean paying taxes and seeing the revenue from your paid taxes being
spent on the public broadcaster that we all value. Oh, hang on, I just
realised tax is a form of community crowdfunding. So yes, we
should continue to crowdfund the ABC. And we should continue to be
horrified while Abbott and his merry-wreckers continue to swing their
wrecking ball through public institutions that we, Australian
tax-payers, and generations of Australian tax-payers have, through our
hard work, payment of taxes, and community support, built through the
community act of paying taxes and giving public institutions support.
Because that’s what’s really at the heart of this whole shemozzle,
which is currently called the Abbott government, but in future will be
referred to as the
one-term-blip-resulting-from-the-biggest-mistake-Australia-ever-made. At
the heart of the Abbott government is an ideological war to cut, slash,
burn, decimate, belittle, downsize, nullify, reject, outsource,
kill-off, delegitimise and ultimately wreck the public institutions that
make up the Australian civilisation. Abbott and friends care to ignore
that these institutions, these publically funded, owned by all
Australians, including those who can afford to pay tax and those who
can’t, these valuable assets to our community, are not his to wreck.
It’s not his farm to sell off. It’s not his pool to piss in. It’s not
his hard work that has paid for any of this.
I’m getting mightily fed up with Abbott’s attitude towards our
collective assets. Abbott’s government has sold of Medibank Private.
They’ve smashed the ABC and the CSIRO. The Climate Commission was the
first on the chopping block and has since been generously crowdfunded by
Australians worried about climate change, and is now the Climate
Council. Abbott’s doing his best to turn our Medicare system into a
no-longer-universal-healthcare-system where ‘users pay’ for the
privilege of being cared for when they’re sick. Our higher education
students could soon have free-market interest rates assigned to
deregulated and growing university fees. Our public schools have had
massive funding cuts*. *School chaplains excluded. Our health system has
had massive funding cuts and is becoming the problem of under-funded
State governments who have no choice but to cut services. The renewable
energy sector is disappearing and the manufacturing industry has been
all-but killed off with thousands of jobs with it. Abbott’s slashing and
burning is ripping at the very heart of Australia. He’s ripping at the
very heart of our communities. He’s wrecking the civilisation that we
have all crowdfunded into existence and kept running. Why is he doing
this? Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can. (And he enjoys it
very much).
Let’s have a look at a world where Abbott’s ideological utopia ‘user
pays’ agenda overrides the collective spirit of a social democracy.
Note, Abbott’s predilection for a user pays system extends only to
people outside of his family and close circle of fellow neo-cons.
Frances Abbott doesn’t have to pay for her own education. Abbott doesn’t
have to pay for his private travel to attend campaign events or to
promote his book for private profit. And Abbott’s friends, like Gina
Rinehart, don’t have to pay for the government-funded infrastructure
they need to continue to pillage our national wealth and to resent every
cent of tax they pay for this self-entitled privilege. No, it’s just us
plebs that should be forced to ‘user pay’. So this means every road is a
toll road. Don’t leave for work without your credit-card linked
toll-pass. You can’t get out of your driveway without it! Traffic lights
would also be toll points, as would zebra-crossings for pedestrians.
You won’t step foot in a school or a hospital without individually
paying for every doctor or teacher that you come into contact with. You
can swipe your credit card on the way into the classroom or emergency
surgery suite. Need the police? Before they respond to your emergency,
they’ll check your credit limit, by which stage the intruder may have
already bashed you to death. Is the government intending on sending
Australian troops to war? The war won’t start without at least 10,000
interested funders and everyone who doesn’t fund the war will be put on a
list and excluded from any peacekeeping in the future, and instead used
as human shields. Need to use a toilet? At home or when you’re out and
about? I hope you have your credit card with you. You can’t use the
sewers without it. There’s a nice big open park and playground down the
road. Admittance by booking and credit card only. What about access to
the internet? Yes, I know we already pay ISPs to hook up to their
streams, but whenever you access a wireless network, your credit card
will be charged accordingly to fund vital research work into
technological innovation that used to be done by our national
researcher, CSIRO, but is now done by private firms who will not make
their technology available to anyone who doesn’t pay for it directly.
Oh, and you want democratically elected leaders? One vote equals one
dollar. How many dollars have you got? Doesn’t this sound like a fun
place to live, in Abbott’s utopia? But the good news is, there won’t be
any need to pay for the ATO as there will be no taxes. So all the money
you earn you get to take home (well, whatever is left after funding all
of the above). What’s that? You can’t afford to see a doctor? You’re
unemployed and you’re sick. Well bad luck for you! You were born into
the wrong family! In Abbott’s utopia, only the rich survive. That’s
actually the point. That’s the fucking point of Abbott.
I know we have two years to go, but I’m ready to vote Abbott out
today. Does anyone feel like helping me crowdfund a new government? I’m
sick of watching this one wreck our place.
After a week which saw Tony Abbott’s government berated by both Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt, The Australian has joined the chorus of discontent saying
“Limply, the Prime Minister is losing the battle to define core issues and to explain to voters what he is doing and why.”
What did they expect from a man who counts off his policies on his
fingers as he presents three word slogans that Mark Textor wrote for
him?
What did they expect from a man who said “I have never been as
excited about economics as some of my colleagues; you know, I find
economics is not for nothing known as the dismal science”?
What did they expect from a man who said “I’m no tech head” as he
explained to us why we didn’t need a National Broadband Network?
What did they expect from a man who thinks that “climate change is crap” and that Ebola is due to the carbon tax?
Ok… he may not have directly said that last one but if it wasn’t the
carbon tax then it was the mining tax, or the debt and deficit disaster,
or something Labor did, as Abbott was at pains to point out to the
assembled leaders of the world at the G20.
The truth of the matter is that Tony Abbott has no idea of why they
are doing what they are doing other than to reward their friends, to
wipe any Labor reforms off the books, and to do what lobby and focus
groups tell him to.
Let’s take “stop the boats” as an example.
We were told that we must stop the boats to stop deaths at sea, to
break the people smuggler’s business model, and to stop supposed queue
jumping.
Having achieved success in this at huge cost (reputational, financial
and humanitarian), we are now stopping refugees registered with the
UNHCR from coming – you know, the ones that are in the queue. We have
also closed our doors to anyone coming from West Africa because they
might have germs (fingers crossed no return).
In his campaign launch, Tony Abbott said “we won’t increase the
humanitarian migrant intake until such time as it’s no longer being
filled by people smugglers.”
Far from increasing the intake now that the people smugglers are
apparently out of business, he cut it from 20,000 to 13,750 and
‘resettled’ 29 unaccompanied minors on Nauru. Unfortunately, the locals are beating them up.
And who could forget the high fives when they “axed the taxes”.
Tony warned the carbon and mining taxes would cripple industry and
wipe out investment. In fact, as reported in The Australian Financial
Review, corporate Australia paid out a record $53 billion to shareholders in 2013, despite the carbon and mining taxes, with fund manager Perpetual calculating dividend payments rose 6.1% in 2013 from 2012.
AMP chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said “ the [2013] results have been impressive”.
“So far 55% of companies have exceeded expectations (compared to a
norm of 43%); 73% of companies have seen their profits rise from a year
ago (compared to a norm of 66%); a whopping 78% of companies have
increased their dividends from a year ago (compared to an average of
around 62% in the last two years)… Key themes are a massive turnaround
for the resources stocks (notably Rio), banks doing very well (with
great results from CBA and ANZ), help coming through from the lower $A,
ongoing cost control, improved outlook comments from cyclicals (like
Boral) and soaring dividends.”
In February Tony Abbott said ‘‘We are all mourning the closedown of
the Alcoa plant at Point Henry near Geelong but I regret to say that’s
the carbon tax doing its job’’.
What he failed to mention was that, in the first year of the carbon
price, the industry was eligible for maximum compensation. This meant
94.5 per cent of the industry’s average emissions were paid for by the
government, reducing by 1.3% each year.
Alcoa Inc recorded a $53 million gain in its annual report. That
document, which dealt with the year to December 2013, contained the
following declaration: “… a favorable [sic] change of $53 [million] in
prepaid expenses and other current assets, mostly caused by the sale of excess carbon credits in Australia”. Ironically, removing the carbon tax not only cost the government revenue, it also cost the aluminium industry.
But what can we expect from a Prime Minister who admitted he didn’t
read the company reports that stated the taxing regime in Australia had
nothing to do with their decisions to close mines or smelters?
How can we believe Abbott wants to “cut the waste” when he spends
hundreds of millions on new planes big enough for his press contingent,
or fleets of bomb proof cars, or who decides to live in Kirribilli House
rather than Canberra, or who keeps caucus waiting while he has a photo
shoot to justify claiming overnight accommodation and flights to a
private function, or who spends millions on his ‘‘Strategic Communications Branch’’ to monitor social media?
And I would suggest that Hockey’s upcoming MYEFO will put pay to any
talk of debt and deficit repair. After all, he has a war to pay for and
all the toys that go with it.
The Australian went on to say “Voters are left with the impression
that Mr Hockey’s May budget was a litany of broken promises, designed to
inflict severe pain on low-income workers and the poor, and that the
deficit crisis was not as acute as the Coalition presented it.”
I would suggest that is an accurate appraisal backed up by the figures rather than an impression.
The Australian further suggests that “The Abbott government is doomed
without narrative”, but sooner or later, spin with no substance gets
found out.
So, the much anticipated and touted G20 is upon us.
It will be interesting watching our leaders rubbing shoulders with
other world leaders. Doubtless, each of them will be hoping the
television cameras capture moments that will enhance their own personal
political aims. While the G20 will be little more than a talkfest with
attitude, the expectation from the Coalition government is that it will
place them in a more favourable light with voters and get them a boost
in the polls.
It won’t work.
It is rare for government leaders of any nation to have the
opportunity to meet with so many other leaders in one place in such a
short space of time; a sort of one-stop shopping experience. So, we can
anticipate that there will be some furious back room argy-bargy going on
to enable a succession of meetings to take place.
That means Australia will be competing with the likes of the USA,
Russia, UK, Brazil and China to have time with India, for example.
India, we are told is the next ‘big thing’ and every country that has
something to offer will be knocking on their door.
Brazil will want to chat with Indonesia and put a dent in Australia’s
live animal export market and the bigger issue of climate change, while
embarrassingly absent from the agenda, will also be discussed at these
side meetings.
The
world is changing. The new goals, looking forward, are focused on
renewable energy targets. The announcement in China this week that the
Chinese and the US have reached an agreement on some ambitious,
renewable energy targets makes our 5% reduction on 2005 levels look
pathetic.
Since our government has made it so abundantly clear that they want
to adjust that figure to reflect a recent reduction in coal fired energy
use, no one will be interested in discussing climate change with us. We
will be seen, if not already, to be on the margins when it comes to
renewable energy initiatives. Having reversed the former Labor
government’s direction, the Coalition has no currency on climate change.
So where does this leave us, or more particularly, the Coalition?
Abbott and company will be struggling to find much that is positive for
Australia except a likely free trade agreement with China, one that has
already been upstaged by the China/US climate agreement.
Free
trade agreements, however, are never free. There are always winners and
losers. I can’t think of any benefits that I have experienced courtesy
of our existing FTA with the US. I’m sure there are some, but I can’t
see them and I doubt their real value. I’m sure, however, there are
benefits for the Americans. The government will struggle to convince
Australians that a FTA with China has any lasting benefit for us, but
I’m sure there will be for the Chinese.
So, in the overall coverage, I expect the media will concentrate on the mediocre.
Doubtless they will concoct a few anecdotes about various leaders,
hoping that one or more might make a comic slip up, or pat a Koala Bear,
take a photo with a Kangaroo or something equally benign. There will be
much written and filmed about the security arrangements. But the real
stories about each national leader’s contribution and position on where
the planet is heading, will be ignored largely, because of
their inconsistencies with Australia’s quite backwoods approach.
Can
we therefore surmise that what could have been an event of great pride
for Australia and a boost for the government’s polling, has been lost?
Indeed, it has already been bungled because of Tony Abbott’s inability
to effectively articulate a convincing narrative. His appalling claim to
‘shirtfront’ Vladimir Putin has been turned into a soap opera and a
very poor one at that. The media reaction to Russian warships in the
vicinity of our territorial waters has made them and the government look
childish.
The government have already shot themselves in the foot, firstly by
Abbott’s juvenile approach to Putin and secondly because of the
government’s climate change policies. Any hope or expectation of a poll
boost they thought might occur as a result of the G20 is little more
than a pipe dream. To the Labor party, I say, this should have been your
moment in the sun.
