A Tainted View 9.23.07

Posted by Andy Bracken on 09.23.2007

Poll crises, leadership questions and smear attacks- they still haven't set a date, but there's no doubting that the election campaign is in full swing.

Before we get started, a bit of feedback (and not the warm and fuzzy kind)…

From Kathryn Crosby, the Senior Communications Officer of the Uniting Church:

Family First has nothing to do with the Uniting Church. Family First is connected to the Assemblies of God.

And also from the Uniting Church Reverend Andrew Prior:

[Family First] has strong AOG affiliations in South Australia. Has nothing to do with the Uniting Church. You need to correct this, mate.

For those unaware, they are referring to this from my last column:

"…and the Family First Party, which is a socially hyper conservative party that was formed by the Uniting Church before the previous election, and has a single Senator."

Quite a poor effort on my part, to be frank, and an error that has me smacking my head in disbelief. The Uniting Church is one of the VERY few religions that I have no specific problem with- and coming from a person who finds it very easy to find fault with religion (twelve years of religious schooling will do that to you) that is saying something. I certainly couldn't say the same about the Assemblies of God…

The Uniting Church is actually a pretty good blueprint for how to go about religion. Whereas a good majority of religions seem to want to look for the differences in their beliefs and argue about who is right and who is going to hell, the UCA (from what I have seen, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I mess this up) tend to look for common ground and celebrate that instead.

You know, there are a couple of global issues at the moment that could be solved if that attitude was a bit more prevalent.

Also, when an idiot writer screws up, he doesn't have to worry about whack jobs coming to get him (take a wild f-ing guess who I'm talking about) or a few dozen lawyers crawling up his derriere (they don‘t have computers on the Riviera, do they?).

So, to Ms Crosby and the good Reverend (and Bruce Mullen, and Dean Tregenza, and David Reeves, and Mark Patterson, and Aleisha Chen, and Stephen Webb, and the dozen or so others that pointed this error out), please accept my most humble apologies. Bad, BAD Bracken.

To the rest of you, if you are looking for God, go look for Him at a place that preaches a bit of tolerance like the UCA. Don't forget to put in a good word for ol' Bracken if you find Him…

Lesson learned, kiddies. The Uniting Church probably won't be the last religious group to take exception to something I write, but hopefully they'll be the last ones I annoy unintentionally.

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The other feedback I received from the last column concerned my impartiality. Reading the obviously anti-coalition tone of my work, some complained that I lacked "journalistic integrity".

First of all, I don't claim to be a journalist. I am an opinionist, and my goal is to analyse and interpret the news. Like any other opinionist, I have an obvious, ingrained bias favouring my opinion. As it stands now, my opinion is that this country urgently needs a change of government, and the Labor Party (while being far from ideal) is a credible alternative government and therefore the best option available.

Unlike a good many opinion writers, I don't claim otherwise. Also unlike many, my bias won't preclude me from highlighting the errors of the side I support, nor writing about the strengths of those I don't.

So, that covers the last column, and we can move onto new stuff.

The Minor Parties

In the interests of being thorough, I want to run down a few of the Australian minor parties during the run up to the next election. That said, I don't think that this election will be particularly successful for the smaller parties.

Some elections just shape as being an opportunity for the minors to grow their base, especially when the major parties lean too close to each other and become almost indistinguishable- or when both parties have performed so poorly that the electorate is reticent to endorse either. The electorate delivers a protest vote and the smaller parties gleefully accept. Other elections, of which this years' is a clear example, are more clear cut.

I have already stated that I think that the vast majority of votes in this election will be based on one issue: IR. In one camp, you have the people that think the laws have been skewed too far in favour of employers, and that essential workplace rights have been removed. The other prevailing opinion is that the laws are fair and necessary to allow business to grow and the country to prosper. The two major parties are diametrically opposed on an issue that affects almost everyone in a quite pervasive way.

Understanding that, it seems obvious to me that people won't risk their vote not reflecting their opinion on the issue. If you agree with Howard's laws, you will vote Liberal and make sure they stay. If you don't, you will vote Labor and ensure that they are overturned. I would suggest that very few (except, perhaps, the hardcore conservationists who will always vote Greens) would take the chance of "wasting" their only chance to have a say on such a defining issue. Tis a shame, though, because I think that the minor parties have a massive role to play in our political system- their existence is so precarious, electorally speaking, that they are basically forced to reflect community views more than those of some party backroom.

The Greens

The biggest of the minor parties is undoubtedly the Greens Party. The Greens, led by Bob Brown, emerged in the 1980s from a Tasmanian environmentalist lobby called the United Tasmania Group and formed after their failed bid to stop business interests flooding Lake Pedder in southern Tasmania. Based on a coalition of Green parties around the country, the group then started looking toward winning political representation.

Ostensibly an environmentalist platform, the Greens have morphed into a multi-issue party, basing their platform generally on far-Left ideologies.

Obviously, their most visible policy issue concerns climate change and the environment. They support an increase in funding for research into renewable energy sources, as well as the reduction of vehicle, industrial and other greenhouse emissions. They opposed the implementation of nuclear power generation as a solution to greenhouse gas emissions, citing the separate environmental risks involved. Their view is that the cost to business of better environmental practices pales into insignificance when measured against the social and environmental costs of climate change.

The Greens' expansion from a single-issue party into presenting a comprehensive platform brought with it some eye-openers. One policy, while admittedly minor, really had me guffawing- that being the reduction of the voting age to 16, rather than the current 18.

Frankly, there is no way that more than a minute percentage of the 16-18 age group is politically aware enough to be given the right to vote. Maybe it's just me turning into an old fart, but the vast majority in that demographic shouldn't be trusted with deciding what to eat for dinner, let alone deciding the future direction of the country. Given the propensity for peoples' views to graduate towards a more conservative base as they age, I can understand why the party would want to unlock a demographic that would see things their way, though.

(In saying that, I could name plenty of people over 18 who are just as clueless. It is unfortunate that the ignorant get just as valuable a vote as those who take the time to learn what the candidates stand for. Democracy may be the best system available, but it certainly isn't flawless. Besides, if everyone was knowledgeable and informed, political strategists wouldn't have a job.)

Looking through their policy statements shows their extreme-Left leanings. They oppose the mandatory detention of illegal immigrants (which, in he current global security climate, is patently necessary), support "compensation" for the supposed wrongs inflicted on the aboriginal people, as well as recognising aboriginality as mitigation in the justice system (they describe it as "allowing] customary law and other cultural or personal factors to be taken into account by judges in determining sentences") and funding all manner of aboriginal programs, the general gist of which have been tried (and have failed miserably) before. There is plenty more, but you get the idea.

If someone calls you a bleeding-heart-liberal, and you don't take offence, then The Greens are the party for you.

The Democrats

I'll put this simply- the Democrats are on the wane, and they are going to struggle to survive in federal politics for too much longer. They face the reality that they will probably fail to retain any of their four seats in the Senate, and they have only themselves to blame.

The Australian Democrats were formed by the former Liberal Party member Don Chipp from the members of the former Australia Party and the Liberal Movement. Chipp had a simple goal for his party- that being ensuring a strong middle party to protect the interests of the public against the excesses of politicians, or in his words, "Keeping the Bastards Honest".

The Democrats filled a vital niche in Australian politics. They were socially liberal, while retaining a semblance of fiscal conservatism, but didn't veer too far toward the extremes in either case. Even after Chipp retired from politics, the party remained strong, becoming the most visible "third way" party in the federal landscape. Unlike most other parties in the country, Democrats parliamentarians were permitted to vote according to their conscience rather than forcing upon them the party line, and party leaders were elected by the lay party members, rather than the parliamentary representatives themselves. The involvement of the rank and file was a refreshing departure from the powerbroker domination of the major parties.

Unfortunately, things started unravelling in the late 1990s. The party had grown significantly under the leadership of Cheryl Kernot, but was damaged when she decided to defect to the ALP in search of a more influential government role, which led to the appointment of one Meg Lees.

The Meg Lees saga was the real start of the downfall of the party. Her decision to negotiate with the Howard government on the implementation of the GST (which created a huge division between herself and some other party parliamentarians, notably rising star Natasha Stott-Despoja, and a feeling in the electorate that the party had let down the left-wing element of both the party and the public at large.

The shitfight between Lees and Stott-Despoja had suddenly become a public issue, and it was a fight that Lees was never going to win. Stott-Despoja was something on a media darling at the time, with her youthful, light-hearted manner and undeniable photogenic appeal captivating a public that saw her as something as a breath of fresh air.

Lees, on the other hand, had no such appeal. Her strength was her image of stability, which was seriously damaged when she unexpectedly agreed to support the government on the new tax regime. While Lees had support in the party room, the lay party backed Stott-Despoja. It wasn't long before Stott-Despoja assumed the leadership, and Lees left the party to sit as an independent, breaking an agreement that Democrat Senators made with the party to resign their seat in the event that they left the party.

(FYI- when a Senator resigns their seat, the party they represent selects a replacement, retaining the party's elected numbers in the house. Obviously, if the Senator defects from the party without resigning, the party loses a vote in the house. The Democrats stood on a policy of respecting the electoral wishes of the public, so all Democrat Senators were required to agree to resign their seat if the left the party to achieve this.)

Before Lees left, however, the split party started disintegrating. While Stott-Despoja was the party leader, Lees was the head of a faction of the party termed the "gang of four", that disagreed with their leader's Left-leaning policies and supported the former leader. The public grew tired of the constant (and VERY public) internal bickering, and support for the party dried up. The upshot of all this was that Lees quit the party, Stott-Despoja quit the leadership in protest of the lack of support from within, and the party was left with Andrew Bartlett in the role of leader, who lacked any sort of public profile. Matters weren't helped when Bartlett finally made his mark in the media, unfortunately by getting shitfaced-drunk and "assaulting" a female Liberal member on the floor of the Senate.

The fall of the Democrats is a real shame, as they provided a centrist party for disaffected major party voters of both sides. They had a platform that could have led to them becoming a real force, but as is often the case in politics, ego got in the way.

Family First

Let's see if I can get through this without pissing anyone ELSE off, shall we?

Family First is the newest of the three most prominent minor parties, being formed just prior to the 2002 South Australian state elections. Their first parliamentarian was party co-founder (and former Assemblies of God pastor) Andrew Evans.

While they deny it vehemently, the party is continually linked to the Assemblies of God organisation (of which that phenomenally annoying Hillsong group is a part), and reflects the typical far-right conservative ideals while claiming to champion the cause of the family structure.

The party's social platform is pretty much right-wing-by-the-numbers. The party leadership, while not publishing an overt policy statement on the issue, have made little secret of their dislike for increasing gay rights (to the point of redirecting preferences away from candidates that are gay themselves, or those that support gay marriage), are against IVF or adoption by gay parents, believe that internet pornography should be filtered by ISPs, oppose abortion and euthanasia and the like.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election the government (and before the celebrated dickhead Barnaby Joyce was confirmed as the winner of the last Queensland Senate spot) it appeared that John Howard would be one seat short of winning control of the upper house. He wasted no time in courting Family First Senator-elect Steve Fielding, offering to implement FFP's policy of delivering a family impact statement with every major piece of legislation. Obviously, the payoff was to be a sympathetic ear whenever the government had something that they needed to pass.

Unfortunately for FFP, it wasn't long before Joyce was confirmed, and Howard realised that he didn't really need FFP after all. Needless to say, that was the end of the family impact statements. It was a quick lesson for Fielding- get your kisses BEFORE you get f-ed, not after.

While I agree with the concept of a political party that considers the impact of families as a priority, but you will never see me supporting the FFP. Political parties (and individual politicians, for that matter- I'm looking at you, Abbott) that base their policy on religious doctrine rather than the will of the people have no business representing the public. We are a secular country, and any attempt by any church to undermine that in any way undermines the nature of our democracy- to say nothing of promoting short-sighted social conservatism and "family values" as being interchangeable. They certainly don't reflect the values of my family, nor do they reflect any sort of aspirational view of what families should be.

Besides, I don't want that Hillsong douche having any sort of influence on the direction of this country. Fuck him AND his wannabe Creflo Dollar shit.

Fielding still has a few years in his current term, so FFP will have a profile for a few years. Hopefully, they won't add any more Senators to their stable, and hopefully they won't get anywhere near the balance of power. We don't need another Brian Harradine, thank you very MUCH.

That pretty much covers the more relevant minor parties. Obviously, there are dozens more in the mix, but none of them (save, perhaps, for Pauline Hanson's latest attempt to go back to the well), so I won't bother with them. Let's move onto other news.

If You Thought Costello's Smirk Was Annoying Before…

John Howard is in a bit of strife, eh?

During the past few months, opinion polls have consistently shown the government trailing the opposition, with the gap growing each time a poll was published. The reaction of the government has been a priceless lesson in spin, starting with, "We don't govern based on the natural variation in opinion polls- this is nothing more than a honeymoon period for the new opposition leader", through to, "The methodology of the polls are flawed, and obviously not a true representation of the electoral mood- Howard is still the best person to lead", and then on to, "Well, the polls might say otherwise, but we have performed strongly and I'm sure things will change on election day- Howard has come from behind before".

Last week, a new poll came out. The government was trailing the opposition by a whopping 18%. Needless to say, there was a whole new reaction from the government. It went something along the lines of, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!"

For all of the talk about how unified the government has been, the fact is that politicians are a relatively simple breed. Their priorities, in order, are as follows:

1) Get preselected for the safest seat possible.
2) Get elected to parliament, thus scoring a fat pay packet and enough sway to guarantee a good consulting job if you lose your seat.
3) Get re-elected to parliament, ensuring that your pension will be enough to be able to retire when you finally do get turfed out.

And a VERY distant fourth:

4) Support the leader of the day, and the party that got you to the dance.

The buzz leaking from the halls of government has been that Howard was pretty much tapped on the shoulder by his most trusted ministers, and told that his time is up. The fact that he hasn't resigned (as he always maintained, he was only going to stay as long as the party wants him- obviously, that time expired about a week ago) tells me something.

Peter Costello is the only real alternative for the Liberal leadership at he moment. The party has spent the past four years telling the public that he will be the best choice for leader when Howard retires, and to put anyone else into the job now will throw up more questions than it would answer. Any other new leader would have to try and explain exactly why the guy that has made it clear that he craves the job suddenly doesn't want it anymore.

It would tell me that Costello refused to take responsibility for an inevitable election loss. He has seen how Kim Beazley's rep took a battering after losing an election, and how it pretty much ended his chances of ever breaking through for an election win. It would also tell me that by refusing to challenge, he is sending a nice little message to the party room.

When Costello was screwed by Howard over the succession promises, the party room left him out to dry. They saw that Howard had been a big part of keeping their cushy parliamentary jobs, and they decided that self-interest was more important than making Howard accountable. They thought that Howard would lead them to another term.

They were wrong, and now Costello can sit back and settle some scores. Let some of the backbench clowns sweat a bit, and hopefully see a few of them lose their seats.

So, the party is stuck with Howard until the election. Howard runs a huge risk of losing his (undeserved) status as being one of the great Prime Ministers with a huge election loss, and Costello gets to sit back with his ridiculous, wannabe Keating smirk and watch Howard's legacy erode.

Checkmate? Well, maybe not…

Costello Raises, Howard Re-raises

Look, I don't like Howard, but he is a pretty impressive tactician.

After seeing Costello get one up on him (and, more importantly, his party room supporters), Howard wasn't going to sit back and let his pet bitch get away with it. A response was in order, and it didn't take long.

After finding out that he wasn't going to be challenged, he immediately went on the front foot, appearing on the 7.30 Report to address all of the leadership speculation. The interview was your basic, formulaic political interview, right up until the last question. The interviewer asked Howard what his retirement plans would be, should he be re-elected. Over the past few years, Howard has had one standard answer to this question- "I will stay as long as the party wants me to stay." Obviously, with the events of the past week, he couldn't exactly keep on with that nonsense. He responded:

"I would probably certainly form the view, well into my term, that it makes sense for me to retire and in those circumstances I would expect - although it would be a matter for the party to determine - that Peter would take over,"

"Probably certainly"? I'm guessing that this would be a "non-core" promise, then.

So, even though it directly contradicts his stock answer for the past few years, he finally gave a timeframe for his retirement. That isn't the interesting thing, though.

By making this statement now, Howard has basically positioned Costello against a wall. He has effectively made this election about voting for both he AND Costello for Prime Minister. He has linked Costello's personal reputation to the upcoming election- exactly what Costello tried to avoid by refusing to challenge.

Should the poll numbers continue to slide, a good part of the blame will be placed with Costello's personal unpopularity in the electorate. Should they recover and get re-elected, it will only add another chapter to Howard's career. Howard has put himself into a position to be able to not only make a cynical attempt to protect his own legacy, but he has effectively put Costello's future on the line. Either Costello moves heaven and earth to make sure Howard wins, or his chances of becoming PM (or even a long term opposition leader) become almost nil.

Anyway, the polls this week have been pretty kind this week, with the two party preferred gap dropping to 10%. The funny thing is, the government have made no secret of the fact that they were absolutely THRILLED to be ten points behind. Nothing like a bit of perspective, eh?

And on the Other Side of the House

Kevin Rudd must have been pinching himself for the past few weeks.

Since the de facto campaign started really getting into swing a couple of months ago, the opposition has had a dream run at the polls. Regardless of what has been thrown at him by the ever more desperate government, Rudd's numbers have barely taken a hit. Of course, Howard is far from being a rookie at this game, and hasn't let up.

The first tactic was to try and appease the electorate by softening the IR legislation. The government added a "fairness test", as well as dropping the "Workchoices" name (which had gained a massive negative connotation) and making a few token changes. Even though this was coupled with a (publicly funded, of course) blanket advertising campaign, the polls hardly registered a blip.

Then came a nice little stunt with a state owned hospital in Tasmania. The state government was in the midst of a restructuring program with the state's hospitals, and decided to close a regional hospital in order to redirect resources to other hospitals in the region. The federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, jumped in and offered to directly fund the hospital from Canberra, asking the Tasmanians to sell the hospital to the Commonwealth for a token price. It was purely coincidental, of course, that the hospital was in a marginal federal seat. Of course.

Anyway, the Tasmanian government agreed, and the feds tried to use it as an example of their commitment to public healthcare. According to the polls, he issue gained no political traction, and the government gained no ground.

Then there was APEC. Howard thought that he would get a bounce from his "statesman" persona with the world's attention on him. Rudd snookered him with his command of Mandarin, and matched Howard photo-op for photo-op. The polls came back, and Howard found his party preferred by just 41% of the public.

After the events of the past couple of weeks, Rudd only needed to maintain his composure and not mess up. He was asked a seemingly innocuous question at a press conference regarding the current marginal income tax rates. Now realistically, the question is really neither here nor there. Knowing the exact rates and the exact amount of income that attracts them is not exactly vitally important. Still, if he didn't know the answer, Rudd could have flat-batted the question. A little redirection, maybe a quick segue into whatever talking point the wanted to harp on.

Easy, right?

Instead, he fluffed it. He took a stab at the highest tax rate, and got it wrong. The government, with Howard and Costello at the lead, ripped into Rudd about his knowledge of the income tax system, and by extension his economic credentials. Granted, the link between the question and Rudd's economic ability sounds quite tenuous, but for a government that has been bereft of any sort of cohesion, it was a godsend.

The main damage stemming from this gaffe has nothing to do with Rudd and his grasp of economics. Rudd provided an opportunity for the government to regroup and counter attack. He gave them a new message, at the exact moment where the government's wheels were spinning.

Until that mistake, whenever the government wanted to go on the counter-attack, the only bullet they had to fire was the standard, "Rudd is inexperienced" and "Rudd has no policies" lines. Unfortunately for the government, they weren't holding much weight in the electorate.

Even worse, Rudd gave Howard and Costello the opportunity to look like a united force. After the leadership debacle of last week, the Liberals looked fractured and disjointed. On this new issue, the leader and his deputy looked like a well oiled unit. Rudd needs to be smarter than this.

Rudd has been successful because he has been a small target. Personally, I think that the majority of their polling success has been based not on what the Labor Party stands for, but rather because of the fact that the electorate has had enough of the Liberals. Rudd needs to keep this in mind, and stay on his toes. Howard has proven repeatedly that he doesn't waste too many chances.

Strangely enough, the government's attack on Rudd was blunted somewhat by another breaking story. Apparently, some of Rudd's confidential medical files were given to a few news services, detailing a heart operation Rudd went through over a decade ago. Rudd confirmed that the report was correct, and that the surgery was to repair damage cause by a childhood condition. The procedure corrected the condition, and leaves him as good as new.

Generally, this wouldn't be particularly earth-shattering. After the way that Howard has been labelled as being too old for office, news of a dodgy heart could have stopped that avenue the opposition's attack.

Regardless, Rudd latched onto the report as being an example of the government's dirty campaign. He used question time to complain about the Liberal Party's use of private investigators to dredge through the past of the Labor front bench, and decry the grubby politics that it represents. Of course, only the most naïve among us would doubt the existence of "dirt units" on either side of politics, but it still isn't something that either party wants to be made public.

Rudd used the issue to parry attention from his tax rates gaffe. He laid blame for the leak squarely at the feet of the government. In response, the government pointed out the fact that they wouldn't have even THOUGHT about letting Rudd off the hook over his earlier gaffe.

For their part, the media claimed that the leak came from "anti-Labor" sources, but stopped short of confirming or denying whether or not the source was from within government.

For what it's worth- I highly doubt that it was. As Howard said, the government wasn't going to ease up on the tax rate thing until they had the opportunity to really grind Rudd about it. There are plenty of highly-funded lobby groups that are hostile to Labor (think along the lines of the Business Council of Australia, for starters) who could have dug up some dirt. Interestingly enough, they might just have hurt the people they are trying to support. I would put money, though, on the government being in touch with whoever the source is to politely tell them to wait until they are asked next time…

The wash up from all of this is going to be seen early next week when the next round of polls are published. I would expect the numbers to be pretty similar to last week.

And We're Done

Well, that's about enough from me. As promised earlier, next time I'll have a look at some of the personalities involved in the campaign, as well as whatever other news pops up between now and then. Until then, enjoy.

Bracken.