Hockey for Leader, outsource the Speaker's job to Sunrise

Now that Brendan Nelson has confirmed he is the worst Leader of the Opposition in Australia's history with an illustrious single digit rating in the polls, the commentariat are talking leadership change and Joe Hockey's name is getting a mention.

Well, how slow are they!

Miss Eagle suggested Hockey for the Leader of the Opposition immediately after last year's election. But, displaying great prescience, Miss Eagle also made suggestions about the Speaker's position.

Last Friday, the House of Representatives saw a great display of lawlessness and disobedience on the part of the Opposition. When a member was ordered to leave the House and refused to go, the member was then escorted from the chamber by the Serjeant-at-Arms. Clearly, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker were not up to the job. So perhaps Klever Kevvie - who undoubtedly will have things pulled into gear for the March sittings - might like to take up Miss Eagle's suggestion for the Speakership re-published below.

The Sunrise Family

Then we would have the old team - Joe on one side and Kevin on the other. Well, not quite the old team, eh dear Reader? So, ergo Sunrise and team for Speaker. Who better?

At this point in time, whoever Klevver Kevie nominates as Speaker won't be experienced. But Sunrise is experienced. The Sunrise Team is used to intervening, sorting things out and making people stick to the rules of the game. OK, I know, I know. They all, including Kevvie, got a bit expeditious on the Vietnam expedition. I am sure that Mel and Kochie and Nat and Andrew can sort things out though. And the Speaker-ship might give Kerry Stokes and his meany crew something to focus on instead of The Chaser team.

Grant could tell us which way the wind blows. Mark could lighten proceedings with cricket, football (all codes), and basketball and netball scores.

All in all, I think it would the ultimate in outsourcing: Sunrise for Speaker and bring really serious entertainment to the six o'clock news!

Brendan Nelson stays home and sulks.

It is becoming clear just what sort of people dominate the 2008 manifestation of the Liberal Party. They are the people who just don't get it. They are the deaf who will not hear, the blind who will not see. Miss Eagle presumes that these sensory defective people have the numbers. I do not presume that there are no right-minded people in the Liberal Party. After all Pietro Georgiou, for one, is still there. I haven't heard that sort of voice getting any traction in recent debate on Aboriginal matters.

To-day Brendan Nelson and the Liberals are sulking: sulking so badly that Nelson has refused the bi-partisan offer made by the Prime Minister last week for the Leader of the Opposition to visit Aboriginal communities. The Prime Minister has nominated Friday as a day when Ministers do not have to be present in Question Time and backbenchers have greater freedom to have their say. Can someone explain to me what is wrong with that? I only have a problem with people who live in Northern Australia and the fact that they won't be home in their electorates on Friday nights, if for the weekend at all. But that's another story.


The fact is Brendan Nelson is protesting. He is not protesting about or for people. No, he is protesting about how the business of Parliament is being organised. In the current context, not the greatest item on the Agenda since the Magna Carta. In fact, Parliamentary procedure is never more important than humanity. This appears to have escaped Nelson and Abbott.


Of course, a visit to Walgett may be on the embarrassing side for Nelson - and for Abbott, too, if he were ever to move beyond the Northern Beaches of Sydney. After all, Walgett - like them and their electorates - is in New South Wales.

Now, Miss Eagle is not suggesting that life for Aboriginal people in Walgett has not improved since the Freedom Ride of 1967. Aboriginal kids use the swimming pool which once was out of the question. But Miss Eagle lived in Walgett in 2001-2002 and found it a place whose population had little knowledge of the history and social construct of the three Aboriginal groups who each call Walgett their country.

All but one business had windows covered with wire mesh. Sitting outside the one meshless business and watching was interesting. And it became clear why this one business - with an owner of Chinese ethnicity - had no mesh. This was clearly a place in which Aboriginal people felt comfortable doing business. Clearly, there was mutual trust in this place which was missing elsewhere.

Walgett - which includes the opal town of Lightning Ridge - has difficulties with its own governance. It has been in administration since 2004 and will have fresh elections later this year. The Walgett Shire Council has had an Aboriginal councillor before. Let's hope that this year they can get up more than one representative.

In Miss E's view there is a silent stand-off casting a pall over Walgett. There is the dominating force of local pastoralists - many of whom seem to see themselves as a sort of landed gentry. These are the people to whom owning land is important on many levels not least of which is as an economic base.

I'm not sure that the pastoralists see that this is probably the one great thing - apart from common humanity - that they have in common with Aboriginal people. To Aboriginal people the land is important on many levels not least of which is for sustenance of life.

However, Aboriginal relationship to land is not based, as it is for the whitefella, on "ownership". But then, in fact, many of Walgett Shire's "landed gentry" would not own the land either - at least in the freehold sense. Miss E's guess is that pastoral leasehold would still be the dominant land tensure. Please correct her if she is wrong.

So to-day a Prime Minister comes to the country of the two rivers, the Barwon and the Namoi. These rivers contribute to the major arterial system of our nation - the Murray-Darling system. I hope the visit of Kevin Rudd brings a similar hope, inspiration, and change just as the Freedom Ride did. And I hope Walgett remembers the time when the Anglican minister who had been willing to provide hospitality to the Freedom Riders felt obliged to withdraw his hospitality.

Miss Eagle hopes for the day when doors are truly open to all in Walgett and the mesh can come down from the windows.

The Liberal Party's Federal Front Bench

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has announced his front bench. Miss Eagle posts it for the record and without comment. But you, dear Reader, please feel free to make whatever comment you like.

Julie Bishop: employment, business and workplace relations
Malcolm Turnbull: shadow treasurer
Andrew Robb: foreign affairs
Nick Minchin: defence
Tony Smith: education, apprenticeships and training
Tony Abbott: Indigenous affairs, families, community services and volunteer sector
Ian Macfarlane: trade
Joe Hockey: leader of opposition business; health and ageing
Greg Hunt: climate change, environment and urban water
Bruce Billson: broadband, communication and the digital economy
Christopher Pyne: justice, border protection and citizenship
Bronwyn Bishop: veterans affairs
Stephen Ciobo: small business, the service economy and tourism
Michael Keenan: shadow assistant treasurer
Warren Truss: infrastructure, transport and local government
Nigel Scullion: fisheries, agriculture and forestry
Helen Coonan: human services
Peter Dutton: finance, competition policy and deregulation
Chris Ellison: immigration and citizenship; manager of Opposition business in the Senate
George Brandis: shadow attorney-general
Michael Ronaldson: special minister of state
Sharman Stone: environment, heritage, arts and indigenous affairs
Bob Baldwin: defence science, personnel and assisting shadow defence minister
Sussan Ley: housing, status of women
Pat Farmer: youth and sport

Rudd's ministerial list

Gee, thanks Kev for taking Miss Eagle's advice about that superhero, Senator John. Special Minister for State and Cabinet Secretary - that will keep him at every cabinet meeting. How sweet!

The portfolio distribution looks quite artful with some ministers having plural parliamentary secretaries - is this something like plural marriage and will it require the same amount of juggling?

Here, here and here are the reports of the moment on who will be taking home every night the precious red boxes. More when the official list becomes available.

Here is the full list.

Meanwhile, across on the other side of the trenches, Brendan Nelson has just squeaked it in to the Liberal leadership over Malcolm Turnbull after silly Tony Abbott (where is Costello?) scratched himself and declared himself a future starter all at the same time. And this man wants to be taken seriously? Or doesn't he?

The exquisitely groomed but ideological right-wing Julie Bishop (now I don't think she would tolerate an earring should Nelson resume a former sartorial habit) is deputy. None of this was really surprising. Old conservatives could not vote for Turnbull - and he'd only been there five minutes anyway and his personal fortune could be scary for some.

So Brendan was probably young enough and modern enough for the progressives and sufficiently tolerable for the conservatives especially when tempered with Julie Bishop's dowry of West Australian right wing money!

Andrew Robb's political insider insight would have been handy but AR does not have sufficient flair in spite of the value of his methodical and workmanlike nature. And Christopher Pyne? You are kidding!

Refugee staff from Howard's Government

Word has it that Liberal Party staffers were clearing their desks to-day. When political staffers lose their jobs at elections, dear Reader, they tend to be picked up by their party in another jurisdiction. So a staffer from NSW might end up in Queensland. But now the landscape is Labor across the States, Territories and now the Commonwealth. Where will these people go?

The answer (if it is an answer, dear Reader) is the Brisbane City Council. The BCC is like no other Council in the nation. It is huge and covers the whole of Brisbane. Aldermen/women have large wards and draw the same salary as a State Member of Parliament. BCC runs its own transport system and - but this might have changed - used to run its own electricity system.

The Brisbane City Council has a Liberal Lord Mayor named Campbell Newman. Now, I'm sure that Campbell could take one or two of Howard's refugee staff. But that's the only base. Otherwise it's onto the Sydney Morning Herald's Rivers of Gold.

WHY THE LIBERALS LOST

Maybe someone in the Liberal Party of Australia will do a proper, official report of what went wrong at the Federal Election of 2007 which resulted in a loss of confidence in Liberals and the election of a Labor government.

However, reality seems to be a bit slow to sink in. Now, remember, dear Reader, that this was a government who had been in power for eleven years. They had countless polls delivering the wisdom of the electorate over all that time. There were enough of them to cover the length and breadth of the nation with their ears to the ground to pay attention to what people were saying and thinking.

• One report says that a Liberal staffer has blamed the "f...ing Chinese". Did this person not recall Howard's stance of Asian immigration? Why would anyone from Asia vote for Howard? Of course, there was the rampant, blatant racism of the Liberal Party in the seat of Lindsay supported by staff at NSW Head Office.


• Climate change has done it says Malcolm Turnbull and he says the Libs should have signed Kyoto. Water drying up across the nation and anything that would store water commanding pretty solid prices in the hardware stores and the Liberals expected that everyone was a climate change sceptic?! True, some movement on climate change -but too little, too late and with no conviction nor credibility.


• Work choices was THE issue - and why did the Liberals think it wouldn't be?

Do the Liberals understand how many voting Australians come from the Middle East and Asia? Do the Liberals understand how many tolerant voting Australians there really are? And did they not realise how enthusiastically urban Australians have embraced water saving? Did they not stop to think that such people might have had a positive view of Kyoto? And could they not count heads in the population to comprehend that most of us are not West Australian miners earning thousands of dollars in a week? Did they not hear the discussions on radio of work/life balance and, if they did, did they not consider consider that people for whom work/life balance was an issue might have a view on the impact of Work Choices on the intensification of work and the large amount of unpaid overtime worked by Australians?

So save your time, Liberals, on official reports: these were the reasons that the Liberals lost. Of course, these were not the only reasons. These were just the main, very personal reasons. Others included a lack of ethics, immigration, refugees, AWB corruption, non-core promises inter alia.

Peter Costello has other fish to fry

Tanya and Peter Costello

Here at The Trad Pad, we could never see why Costello would hang around building a career as Liberal Party Leader after the collapse of the Howard Coalition Government yesterday. It would be at least two terms in the normal course of events before he could become Prime Minister. Surely it would be better to go almost straight from the position of Treasurer into the business world: make squillions of dollars, have a good time with the family, and include lots of international travel. Leave the gap too long between yourself and the Treasury and it might not be as influential on the CV.

Now he says that this is what he will do - but will see out his full term in his seat of Higgins.

Well, Miss E wonders if that is what will happen. As was said in the previous post, there could be a number of by-elections. The Libs might chose to group them together for maximum impact and not have a gradual attrition in circumstances too favourable to the Rudd Government. Another factor is that, if some predictions are correct, there could be a Double Dissolution Election in twelve months time because of difficulties in getting legislation through a hostile Liberal controlled/blocking Senate. If that occurred, Costello could have his cake and eat it too. He could honour his pledge to see out his full term but be gone from Parliament into business in quick smart time.

ALL CHICKENS ARE ON THE ROOST: THE MAN OF SHAME HAS CONCEDED DEFEAT

John Howard's chickens have finally come home to roost

This morning a tune keeps coming into my mind. I hum it away but the words are a little different from the original. The tune is "After the Ball" and I apologise to Charles K Harris for the interference with his lyrics:

After the election’s over, after the votes are in,
After the worker’s leaving, after the poster’s gone,
Many a heart’s rejoicing, if you could read them all—
Many the hopes that have heightened after it all.

And here is why:

We don't know yet if John Howard has been defeated in his seat of Bennelong by Maxine McKew. But it appears more than likely. John Howard sought to make it into the history books - by longevity as Australian Prime Minister. He would have like to equalled or surpassed the long period of office of Sir Robert Menzies. He failed. He is second only to Menzies. But he will make it into the record books for another reason which he almost surely did not ever imagine - he would be kicked out by the voters of Bennelong. John Howard did not seek this record - but he will become only the second Prime Minister in Australian history to be voted out of his own seat.

As Miss Eagle's campaign against John Howard's retirement until the chickens come home to roost has shown, John Howard has meted such inhumanity out to so many people that his actions could not go unaddressed by the electorate. This has happened. The chickens have roosted. They are in the henhouse. They sit on their perch - and John Howard has been knocked off his.

John Howard was the Prime Minister for Injustice. The Minister for Injustice, Mal Brough - co-author with John Howard of the military intervention into Aboriginal life and land in the Northern Territory - has been kicked out of his seat of Longman. It is pleasing to know that the ALP has won the seat of Solomon in the Northern Territory. There are only two Federal seats in the sparsely populated NT - one was already held by Centralian stalwart Warren Snowdon for the ALP. Now the other seat has been snatched away by the ALP from the Coalition. The people of the Northern Territory have expressed their views on the military intervention at the ballot box.

Of course, a number of Liberals are in the safest of safe seats but because of their administration of injustice need to go. This raises the question of resignations and by-elections. In this category, Philip Ruddock tops the list. His horrific administration of Immigration followed by his deceptive and devious administration of the Attorney-General's portfolio has meant that he does not deserve membership in the Parliament of Australia - but the electorate of Berowra has decided to return him anyway. We look forward to his resignation from Parliament within the next twelve months.

The current incumbent in the Immigration portfolio is Kevin Andrews who has proved to have only lower-levels of competence and a complete intolerance of the heat in the political kitchen. His report card should read: Consider your future.

Another who needs to consider his future is Tony Abbott. If there is a particular hallmark in the character of Tony Abbott, it is his absolute high-level rudeness. If Tony Abbott is to continue in Parliament, graduation from a reputable charm school should be mandatory. Why should the Australian public have to witness his carry-ons?

And does Alexander Downer consider that he has a future in the Parliament? What heights of power and fame does he think he can now aspire to? Methinks, Alexander is an example of the Peter Principle. He has risen to his level of incompetence. Didn't know about the AWB corruption, Alexander? You must be incompetent then, Alexander. Otherwise, you must be telling porkies, eh?

So onto a new day...

We can't know or say what we are getting with Kevin 07 and his Krew.

We just believe that Howard & Co had to go.

We hope for a just, fair, equitable future for all.

And some of us are determined to keep Kevin and Krew to that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And - for those who might be interested in how it happened in Australian democracy yesterday - here it is

Miss Eagle did her stint at Upper Gully School.
Schools traditionally use Election Day as an opportunity for fundraising

Miss Eagle as Booth Captain was there at 5.30am setting up for Your Rights At Work. YRAW is unique in that it had no candidates of its own but it did have a voting ticket to distribute. Our organisers in La Trobe, Katie and Sam, had provided us with a huge amount of bunting and there was a huge amount of fence to take it. So YRAW won the Fence Competition!
Posters, posters all about!

Booth Workers:

The Greens; ALP, the Officer in Charge of the Polling Booth, Liberal; What Women Want; Liberal.

Within two hours, we had formed a jolly little community of civic minded people.

Election hostilities are put far away on the day.

Australia does not use computerised voting although there have recently been pilot programs for the visually impaired. We use the plain old fashioned method: pencil and paper and placing in a secure box for counting, under scrutiny of all political parties, at the close of voting. Australia does not have the big issues of electoral fraud one hears of in the U.S.A. If there are disputes arising from the polling or the counting, matters can be referred to the Court of Disputed Returns for decision.

On Election Night, there are parties - private, public, and political - so people can gather for drinks, food, and watching telecasts from the National Tally Room in Canberra. Last night, in the seat of La Trobe, Your Rights At Work and Kevin 07 people gathered in a small church hall in Tecoma and watched on the big screen - with more and more and more cheering as the night wore on. Miss Eagle was beyond applause. Euphoria would best describe her condition - sprinkled with a tear of great relief.

Howard conceding defeat - we were beginning to wonder if he every would!

THE DAY OF ROOSTING CHOOKS FOR THE MAN OF SHAME

I am up bright and early as you can see, dear Reader. Booth tables in the station wagon, basket packed with everything from blu-tac to wire cutters and bottles of water. To-day, the final small anonymous actions of myself and thousands of people like me are orchestrated to rid Australia of a shameful and shameless leader.

It seems that Tracee Hutchinson has been eavesdropping. At least, that is what it looks like. Go here to see what I mean. She says it so much better than I but with exactly the same sentiment.

God go with you to-day, dear Reader. Vote for justice remembering all those sad cases of littered humanity strewn in the path of John Howard. Vote against his self-aggrandising meanness which benefited his kind and saw him - our national leader - deserting the Prime Minister's residence in Canberra for the desire of every Sydney-sider, a harbour view. Remove him from the national stage, dear Reader. Remove him from our embarrassment as he cavorted the world stage with George W Bush, and cavorted on television in a tipsy state with the fascist, Silvio Belursconi. And tell him to take his un-Australian values with him.

PS: Go Maxine in Bennelong to make Howard only the second PM to lose his seat.

Subsidies for the political parties - and the rich and enticements for voters

Are you over it, dear Reader? Well and truly over it? Miss Eagle certainly is? Last Saturday - all day - she had one recurring thought: can I vote now, can I, can I? Yes, dear Reader, I know that pre-polling is open, but I wanted desperately for last Saturday to be The Day, Election Day, the day to vote and have my vote counted and, in the best of all possible worlds, John Howard to be chucked out.

In this world of eternal polling, do you notice how we have annual buy-your-vote exercises in each Budget? This has been ably assisted by the S for Services in the GST (Goods and Services Tax). You will recall, dear Reader, that services were never taxed prior to the introduction of the GST by John Howard. This is what gives the Federal Treasurer healthy budget surpluses through which he displays a fake largesse of buying/retaining your vote annually.

You know as well as I don't you, dear Reader, that there is an alternative: salting it away to spend on infrastructure and rainy days as Norway does. Under Howard - as well as some state Labor governments - infrastructure comes a bad last. Miss Eagle does not understand why.

Conservative governments - supposedly keen on free trade and market forces - bleat about lack of subsidies to business which patently is not true. Some years ago, price-fixer Pratt and his company, Visy, received a three million dollar subsidy by the Howard Government when threats were made to take its factory to Vietnam.

It is possible to provide even-handed no-picking-winners-or-champions business subsidy which benefits not only business but the whole community including consumers and workers. This can be done by infrastructure investment. High standard efficient infrastructure - particularly in relation to ports, communications, and education - brings benefits in the form of competitive pricing, quality products, speedy delivery of exports, and jobs.

But, dear Reader, show me where this has been a high priority of the Howard government - which has been hell bent on the politics of exclusion: exclusion of the other - whether they be refugees or the peoples of the First Nations of Australia; exclusion of the majority of workers from the benefits of highly profitable employers through draconian workplace legislation.

Now, we are immersed in what could prove to be the stupidest election campaign in Australia's history because the election has been hostage to the whims of an increasingly ineffective and unpopular Prime Minister who is, arguably, the meanest person ever to lead our nation.

It is time for the common sense of the Australian body politic to intervene and call a halt. How can it do this?

The election campaign begins in earnest when Parliament is prorogued. But then there is the set piece theatre of the the official election campaign launch by the political parties involved. And when do these happen? With less than a fortnight to go, the Liberals held their launch yesterday and Labor will hold theirs to-morrow. Meaningless. Nothing but photo and pork-barrelling opportunities.

This is where some sense is needed - and we can do that by hitting the hip pocket of political parties. We can enforce short, sharp election campaigns by hitting the political purse instead of the taxpayers.

You see, dear Reader, even though Parliament has been prorogued by the Governor-General for the purpose of a general election, taxpayers are funding the campaign. To put it more accurately, taxpayers are underwriting huge amounts of dollars for the two major parties to campaign. And, dear Reader, we are not just talk about printing and mail-outs. We are talking about charter flights and accommodation - not to mention government subsidised advertising. All big ticket items.

Some taxpayers money is going to the minor parties but if they don't have many members of Parliament they are not going to get much money. It is possible for minor party candidates and independent candidates who are not members of Parliament to get some reimbursement of expenditure if they obtain a minimum amount of support at the ballot box. But the political parties have set up campaign regulations so they can milk private contributors for all they are worth - and hide and disguise who contributes to whom - and milk taxpayers at the same time.

For the past month, sitting politicians have been able to campaign the length and breadth of the country - and use the resources of their electorate and ministerial offices and staff - at taxpayers expense. Once there is an official campaign launch, then the parties have to provide all funding themselves. So this is why official campaign launches bear no relationship in time to the real campaign launch after that final sitting of Parliament. Political parties have a vested interest in staging official campaign launches as late in the campaign as possible.

It protects their funds and expends ours.

So consider this, dear Reader. What if we organised a national petition to the Federal Parliament asking that, from the time when Parliament is prorogued for the purposes of a general election, all expenses are born by political parties and candidates?

Now I reckon that would focus the debate no end. Campaigns would be short and sharp and to the point. There would still be the carry on of the election campaign you have when you are not having an election campaign which has been going on all this year. Don't see how that can be avoided. And, from here, I can't see that my suggested changes would increase the effect of that dramatically - but maybe a politician will find a way.

In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no private donations to political parties whatsoever. In fact, donations by corporations and individuals would be illegal and deemed to be corrupt. All candidates would be funded individually on an equitable basis - giving first timers a better go. At the moment, you and I, dear Reader, are funding the entrenchment of the Liberal Party of Australia and the Australian Labor Party as our only end-choices. It is very difficult for independent voices to enter Federal Parliament. And don't the big guys like that!

Howard's Hallmarks

The hallmarks of John Howard's career are a perseverance which sometimes resembles doggedness and cussedness and an unwillingness to include disparate views on the road to his decision-making. He has his own compass, skewed somewhere to the furthest right of True North, and brooks little deflection from the course to which it points.

There is an oft-used Howard quote which illustrates his doggedness, his preparedness to wait: The times will suit me.

The statement was made by Howard in a 1986 interview in Washington DC with Anne Summers. Just over three years ago, Summers revisited that interview in a piece titled: The sad times do suit him; he made them.

At that time, it looked like Howard would demolish Medicare, Australia's form of national medical insurance. The facts are that it is 2007 and we are in the first 24 hours of the Federal Election campaign which will decide who governs Australia for the next three years. Medicare is still with us.

Howard has interfered in Australian workplaces, changed the laws, left people powerless, lowered their wages. Howard's Work Choices has driven voters - it appears - into or back to the Australian Labor Party. The whole thing has left Australians feeling quite dismal.

Miss Eagle has been reminding for some time anyone who will listen that Howard's political imprimatur is neither invincible nor infallible. Medicare is here - and Howard may not be after November 24.

Why is Medicare here? Because it is quite clear that Australians appreciate and want to keep Medicare. They have made this clear year in and year out. Howard will interfere with Medicare at his peril.

This does not mean that in the next triennium, should Howard be re-elected, that he will not try to remove Medicare from the Australian landscape. And he certainly won't make such removal an agenda item at this election or any election.

Remember, dear Reader, that he promised never-ever to introduce a GST. He did. He didn't put his Work Choices legislation before the voters in 2004 - but he did it anyway as any astute political observer always knew he would. So full privatisation of medical services is part of his agenda. All those doctors want it and an awful lot of them tend to be members of, or at least vote for, the Liberal and National Parties.

But, it is clear that, if Australian voters tell the opinion polls and their politicians consistently of their support for Medicare, it will be extremely difficult to eradicate it. Similarly, for any other policy. The guarantee for survival or introduction of good policy is to demonstrate in word and deed support for that policy.

Kevin Rudd and Krew will need such reminders too should they form the next government.

The Election is on...and roosting chickens can be heard in the distance!

It's on! Australia votes on November 24, 2007.

Polls continue to say that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) will win - and by a landslide. Kevin Rudd will Prime Minister.

But...

The polls narrow things down to a two-party preferred vote.

When the results are in there could be vast differences:

1. What are the figures for the minor parties and to whom are their preferences being directed? In blunt terms, is it possible for the Greens to gain their first seat in the House of Representatives and, if so where? Is it possible for new independents to enter the House of Representatives?
2. How will votes translate into seats and how will seats translate into winning and losing?

On the major vote winner for Labor, opposition to John Howard's Work Choices legislation, will voters - when it comes to casting a ballot - accept Kevin Rudd's delay in the abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs)?

This voter won't. Miss Eagle hangs her colours out for all to see. She is in that unofficial voting bloc, Rusted on Labor that Votes Green. Miss Eagle thought that this election would see her giving her No. 1 vote to the ALP like old times were here again. But, at this point in time, no.

Miss Eagle will express her disenchantment with Labor and its Leader by giving the Greens her No. 1 vote and she is helping out in the seat of Aston because Rex, one of her fellow parishioners at St Thom's, is the campaign manager there.

However, Miss Eagle believes that this is an election where anything can happen and probably will. The Liberals have already shown how desperate they are to hang on to government. Rudd has shown how tetchy he is in rebuking his Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Bob Brown's temper hasn't been too even with the goings on around the projected pulp mill in Tasmania. And there's six weeks still to go!

So, dear Voter/Punter, consider your vote carefully. Don't make self-interest your only guide. And keep your vote well away from the mean-spirited...you know who I mean!

Let's hear it for good governance

Parliament House, Perth, Western Australia

Miss Eagle has from time to time posted on the topic of governance. Miss Eagle believes that good governance is conspicuous by its absence at state and federal levels of government in Australia.
Miss Eagle was interested in David Cohen's The Strife of Brian in to-day's The Age which outlines the wreckage in the trail of Brian Burke and Julian Grill. In fact, the Burke and Grill's political and lobbying expedition has been disastrous for good government, particularly ALP government, in The West and has done extensive damage to many political careers and personal lives.

Midas and his Golden Touch are well known. This is a story of legend and myth. The Corrupt Touch, however, is commonplace around the globe. It is accompanied by a unique stench and lays waste to governments, corporations, shareholders and various innocent parties. The following quote is striking in Miss Eagle's view.
None of the CCC revelations have surprised Larry Graham. Graham was a Labor MP from 1989 until he was dumped in a preselection stoush in 1999: he then served as an independent until he retired in 2005.
"This will be a contrarian view, but the problem is not with Burke and Grill: people always get lobbied," he says. "The problem is with the talent pool in WA: it's drained, it's gone."
The combined membership of the Labor and Liberal parties in WA is about half that of the West Coast Eagles, Graham says.
"Between them they don't even have a decent suburban football club." He believes WA MPs are unable to delineate between public affairs and private interests.
"These people took an oath to serve without fear or favour - do they?
"There is no one of substance in the WA Parliament... Here, the influence- peddling and the warping of the system has happened because WA's political system has been so potently inbred for so long," Graham says. "It's impossible to get ahead unless you kowtow to the numbercrunchers."

WA throws up some tough and unusual characters on both sides of the political fence. Let's run through some:

• Peter Walsh, ALP
• Graeme Campbell, ALP
• Wilson Tuckey, Liberal Party
• Ross Lightfoot, Liberal Party
  

This list is not definitive and nor would a complete list be a men only affair.
Larry Graham's points are well made and deserve a hearing. However, if anyone thinks that these flaws are restricted to Western Australia then they should think again. The drive in the political parties for power over values and hard work at community level has led to a race to the bottom at the local level.

Once, in the long, long, ago, the ALP required a minimum three year membership to be eligible for election to major party forums and to be eligible for pre-selection to state and federal parliaments and municipal elections where an official Labor ticket was run. Not any more.

Spend your life making money or a name for yourself. Don't even bother to be an office bearer on the local P&C, as long as you are a top dog local people will be trampled over to give you a seat. And what sort of seat do the top dogs get? Why they receive the golden parachute into safe, iron clad ones of course. Not marginal seats where a well-known name might just give the ALP an edge to get a candidate over the line and take a seat from one of the conservative parties. Miss Eagle congratulates Maxine McKew on her decision to run against the Prime Minister in the seat of Bennelong. This is a good use of her high profile name and her skills.

So there is little future in local people joining a local branch to enhance and/or enrich the candidacy/career of another. Time was when people joined a local branch of a political party as an expression of their personal and community values and they were prepared to assist a candidate who share those values and would promote them in parliament.

To-day, values have gone by the board. Kim Beazley has never given any indication that movement away from Labor values in relation to "boat-people" was a factor contributing to his inability to secure federal government for the ALP. There seemes to be some awareness of the disaster that has been the ALP on immigration by Tony Burke, Labor's Shadow Minister for Immigration, Integration & Citizenship. The latest round of people being herded on to Christmas Island will give Labor and Burke plenty of opportunity to strut their stuff and show how diligent they are in attacking John Howard and the Liberal Party on their draconian immigration policies.

Graham hits the nail on the head when he speaks of there being no delineation between public affairs and private interests.

Look around Australia. The old adage says that a people gets the government it deserves. Perhaps our governments without good and sound governance are a true reflection of the people who elect them. Are we Australians as self-interested as that?

The sound of roosting chickens in the distance?

Is that the sound of roosting chickens in the distance?

Miss Eagle has posted previously (here and here) that she does not want John Howard to resign or leave the political scene until he is visited with the results of his bad decisions and bad policies which have ridden roughshod over the Australian polity and those who seek protection - whether they be citizens or sojourners - from its government.

Could the reports here and here be the first sounds of the death knell of the Howard Government? Are these the first sounds of chickens coming home to roost?

Yesterday or to-morrow, the decision will be made.

Yesterday's headlines

Yesterday's headlines, perhaps. And the news to-day is of the war-mongers of Israel and the internecine warfare of the troublesome Middle East followed by COAG (Council of Australian Governments) which will see grand-standing by State Premiers and general riposte from Howard and Costello. But the story behind the headlines has not and will not go away.

Beattie says that Costello has been taking lessons from General Custer. The boy has not handled the matter well, that's for sure. Keating did it - and with some finesse and success.

Costello clearly doesn't have the numbers or someone would be tapping Howard on the shoulder which is what happened to Hawke. So if Costello does not have the numbers and he has shot himself in both fee this week, will the damage be permanent? Miss Eagle thinks it might. Where are the numbers for Costello to come from? They will only come from those who think an election can be won with him at the helm. At this stage, it would seem that the majority of Liberal Party members of Parliament think they have more of a chance with Howard.

So, when Howard goes and if Costello is permanently impaired, who will win the day - the garrulous Tony Abbott, the show-off Brendan Nelson? Almost certainly it will not be the Suet Pudding, Alexander Downer. Or will someone come out of left field?

One thing is sure, the headlines will return. Howard will go. Someone unattractive will be elected to take over the Liberal Party from someone unattractive.

Iraq - Bring the troops home

Bring Australian troops home now

Australians have been consistent in their opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands marched in the streets across Australia to express their opposition. Polls showed that Australians would only consider armed intervention in Iraq under UN supervision. When Australia eventually became part of the "Coalition of the Willing" and went to Iraq anyway, opposition in the polls diminished. This was more an admission of a fait accompli than wholehearted support of Australia's participation in the American hegemony and the Iraq War. Increasingly, Australians are expressing their opposition to the Iraq War in opinion polls and saying that they want Australian troops brought home.

There are times when the people have a mortgage on wisdom, not their government. Australians proved this in the matter of East Timor when, over 25 years in the face of Labor and Liberal Governments' support of the Indonesian takeover of East Timor, they expressed opposition to the Indonesian takeover of Timor Leste and provided decisive support, finally, for the Australian Government to take armed police/military action to halt the bloodshed caused by the Indonesian military and their bloodthirsty Timorese allies. Australians live in a democracy. Miss Eagle does not believe that Australians are prepared to sacrifice everything to the US-Australian relationship. Perhaps the opinion polls should be including questions based on that proposition.

Danna Valle fights back

Danna Vale is fighting back. "My comments were clumsy" she says. True, you could have said it better, Danna. But you could also have thought things through better and your fight-back piece could be thought through better too. True, you were the victim of media who want only a 30 second grab or a quippy headline. But Danna you are paid for the position you hold and - surely it is not too much to expect this from your ministerial experience - part of the skills of the job is to learn not to get yourself into situations such as this. On the other hand, what happened to you can happen to people with greater skills than you. Costello is getting similar treatment from some quarters over his multiculturalism statements.

I think, Danna, from what I see at a distance, that you have a good heart. However, your expression of your good heart is let down because the intellect does not sustain a good argument or rationale. This can be rectified. It depends on the level of advice you get either through staff or through more informal channels such as knowledgable people to give you sound advice.

I think the nub of your argument is fair comment. In modern Australia when the national birthrate among those of European descent is declining, the birthrate among some groups subscribing towards more traditional/conservative mores remains steady or is increasing. You are right to point out that this is a legitimate concern of government and therefore needs to be considered in government policy. You have also pointed out that some people in Australia are more accustomed to exerting their political and social views with violence rather than through the ballot or through other democratic institutions. Danna, leave behind excuses of political correctness. Even if accusations of 'political correctness' have some validity - which I doubt - you have to work in this situation and get your point across without having to call foul.

Can I draw your attention to a couple of areas relating to the issues you are trying to highlight? Look at the female kangaroo. She controls her fertility to a greater extent than the human female. If drought and bushfires - two constants on the driest continent on earth - leave insufficient sustenance, the kangaroo will not breed. She will defer breeding. I think it is like that with the human female. If she is insecure, she will defer breeding or fail to breed. The options she has include contraception and abortion. In some ancient societies, human females also used infanticide. So how secure are things for the female of breeding age in Australia? Relations between men and women are not good. Commitment and stability in partnerships are difficult to carry out in practice. In many relationship breakdowns, economics plays a significant part. Economic security is declining. Increasing casualisation and underemployment are not the economic foundations for raising children. Workforce discrimination with regard to age and gender has not been eliminated. The cost of higher education for job advancement is increasingly locking Australians out. Public primary and secondary education is underfunded to miserable proportions and private primary and secondary education is unaffordable for large sections of the population. Childcare is difficult and, with the assistance of government subsidies, Australia has bred a globalised corporate childcare provider of monopolistic proportions who is now in the courts trying to avoid the prospect of litigation and foist it back on to the individual employee. If all this is not difficult enough, should you be the parent of a child with special needs the difficulties are magnified. So there's a huge agenda for you, Danna: fair and equitable access for all to education from childcare and pre-school through to university; job security and fair and equitable access to jobs irrespective of age, gender and other discriminatory processes.

Then you might turn to the political processes of this nation. Surely your own experience has shown you that entry to and advancement in the political processes of our democratic institutions are easier if you are a male of European descent. If you are a university educated male, particularly with a law degree, then it is even easier. We have large groups of Australians who are not represented significantly in our national parliament - and certainly excluded from the cabinet table. Aborigines? Muslims? Muslim women? Creatives? Youth? Women are getting there but at an excruciatingly slow rate - and they hit the glass ceiling more often than not - and the men tell us to have three kids including one for Australia. How arrogant and impertinent!

So if you are serious about being taken seriously, Danna, there's your agenda. Security, real security, in daily life - not making us feel terrorised by Muslims one minute and telling us how great things are the next; and giving Australians truly representative government, not just the suits.

God go with you, Danna - and watch your step!