Category: Elections

Australia enters a brave new world

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Australia’s crossbench in history. Chart courtesy of Ben Raue

The reactions to Labor’s somewhat unexpected election win on Saturday night have reflected the about-turns that occur when the political climate changes. As always, there were positive opportunities for some. Sydney University wasted no time congratulating incoming PM Anthony Albanese, an alumni member. It should also be noted that former Prime Ministers who attended Sydney University included Gough Whitlam, John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull. So much for universities being the breeding ground of Marxists.

Former Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull took to social media to wish Albo (as he is known in Aussie shorthand), all success in his new job ‘from one good bloke to another’.

Another former PM, John Howard, was drafted late into the Liberal campaign to mix it up in marginal Sydney seats in an election Howard said was ‘too tight to call’. As far as I can tell, Mr Howard has not had anything to say in the aftermath of Saturday’s poll. Why would he?

The Guardian’s top satirist, First Dog on the Moon, gave a harsh farewell to Scott Morrison’s government: “Good riddance you jabbering ghouls.” At the same time, the cartoonist was sharpening his quill ready to skewer the incoming PM. One dog says “I love Albo, I really do” while the other says Albo is a “gazillionaire landlord with a bunch of properties”. (His register of interests doesn’t indicate this. Ed) It won’t take long for the honeymoon to end.

Fair to say the Labor Party did not win this election – rather, the Liberal Party lost it, giving up seats not only to Labor but the Greens and Independents. The Greens improved their national vote, up 1.9% to 12.3%. This might give you some clue to the voting tendencies of young voters.  As polls had shown, the 18-34 cohort was most worried about climate change. Given that neither of the major parties had bold things to say in the campaign about the climate crisis, it’s not surprising that young people would vote Green.

My favourite pundit accurately predicted the partial disintegration of the major parties vote in favour of independents. Veteran blogger Everald Compton wrote an unequivocal essay detailing why the Liberals would lose seats (and where) and who would gain. He was mostly right.

Top of Everald’s wish list was that we would end up with a Prime Minister who is neither Albo or ScoMo. Well that didn’t quite happen, but as the 90-year-old blogger rightly asked:

“Why have we reached this point where politics is at its lowest ebb of my lifetime. Indeed, a huge percentage of voters rank it as the lowest of the low?

“The cause is that political parties on both right and left are tightly controlled by small groups of power brokers who produce privileges for elite people, while arrogantly insisting that it is all really ultra democratic.”

The mainstream media, represented for the most by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd., is still to fully mount a persuasive argument as to how and why their editorials got it so wrong.

Retired News executive Chris Mitchell came out swinging, blaming journalists, particularly the ABC, for inaccurately portraying Scott Morrison as someone who had a problem with women.

Peta Credlin and others on the conservative channel Sky News had some predictably caustic things to say which lost their sting as a result of the undeniable swing to Labor, Greens and Independents.

Former PM Kevin Rudd, who is leading a campaign for an inquiry into News Corp and the power it wields, posted a telling graph on social media. It showed that in the lead up to the election, News Corp front pages ran 188 pro-Liberal stories, compared with just 38 for Labor and 99 ‘neutral’. Our State newspaper, the Courier-Mail, carried more than a few anti-Labor stories, going hard with an ‘Albo’s S****show’, story based on the Labor leader’s first campaign gaffes, including not knowing the current official interest rate. (By the bye, I didn’t know what it was either).

The media in general will have some dungeon-searching to do, given the extent to which their political writers failed to see the rout coming, particularly Western Australia’s swing against the Liberals.

American broadcaster CNN reported the election result as a clear win for climate action. CNN said the election showed a strong swing towards Greens candidates and Independents who demanded emissions cuts far above the commitments made by the ruling conservative coalition.

CNN said the climate crisis was one of the defining issues of the election, as one of the few points of difference between the Coalition and Labor, and a key concern of voters, according to polls.

Marija Taflaga, lecturer in politics and international relations at the Australian National University, said the swing towards the Greens was remarkable. “I think everyone has been taken by surprise by these results…I think it will mean there will be greater and faster action on climate change more broadly.”

Labor has promised to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050, partly by strengthening the mechanism used to pressure companies to make cuts.

As the Prime Minister-elect headed to Tokyo for talks with the leaders of the US, India and Japan, China made its first official comment on the election win.

As the ABC reported, Beijing showed it is willing to patch things up with the newly elected Albanese government after more than two years of a cool relationship with the former government.

Premier Li Keqiang’s congratulatory message used ‘warm language’ referencing the Whitlam Labor government’s establishment of diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic 50 years ago.

Mr Li said China was “ready to work with the Australian side to review the past, face the future, uphold principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit.”

While vote counting continues (it could take a week or more to decide the close seats), one thing is certain, this government will have the largest cross-bench in our history.

The cross-bench refers to independent politicians who usually vote with the government but can and will cross the floor to vote with the opposition if so moved. Australia has only ever had between three and five cross-benchers.

This time around, there will be 15 and maybe more Green and Independent politicians helping to inform the government of the day.

As Everald Compton said last Friday, this will create a long overdue and stable government that achieves progress and prosperity with justice and compassion.

“The Coalition will be decimated and divided and in need of total reform as they have self-destructed.

“The remnants of the Liberal Party will break up, with the Pentecostals separating from the Moderates. The National Party, having lost seats, will have a bitter leadership turmoil. Their extreme right will join with the Pentecostals.” (Everald was wrong about the National Party losing seats- they were re-elected in all of the seats they held before the election. Otherwise, his predictions are pretty accurate. Ed)

The one big loser from Saturday’s election is the United Australia Party, which reportedly spent $100 million trying to make an impact. UAP won no seats and only improved its vote by 1.7% to 4.1%. By contrast, the Legalise Cannabis Party attracted more than 75,000 Senate votes on a shoe-string budget and may gain a Senate seat, at the expense of perennial campaigner Pauline Hanson.

The shape of things to come may be that Albanese’s Labor government will need support from the cross-bench to introduce new policy. The numbers so far suggest Labor should be able to govern in its own right. Failing that, welcome to a European-style government where Greens and Independents have the final say. It’s not a bad thing.

Democracy Sausage – A Rare Treat

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Parliament House in Canberra, image Simon Yeo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/smjb/9223049760/

When you go to vote tomorrow, be thankful we live in a democracy where we have freedom (up to a point) to choose who leads us.

Think about the 52 nations which are not a democracy. They are run either by a dictator or an autocratic regime. Within the borders of these countries, the general population has no say at all. In almost all those nations there is no free and independent press. Troublesome journalists are murdered or, more commonly, jailed. The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows that journalism is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organisation. RSF keeps a running tally of journalists killed since January this year: (26 journalists and two media workers) and 461 journalists and 18 media workers who are in prison for doing their job.

Safe to say these scribes were just trying to get the word out from one of the 52 nations that don’t have a democracy. They include China, North Korea, Myanmar, Afghanistan, many Middle East Kingdoms and a host of African countries. The 2021 survey by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit says that only 6.6% of the world’s population lives in one of 21 “full democracies”.

Australia operates under the Westminster system of democracy, that is, we’re not a monarchy, but the British monarchy plays a role. Just how much of a role was demonstrated in 1975 when the Governor-General John Kerr sacked the sitting Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

Every Australian citizen  aged 18 and over (with the exception of prisoners serving over 3 years and those of ‘unsound mind’) gets a vote (voting is compulsory in this democracy), and a rigid system of checks and balances aims to stamp out cheating.

The electoral roll closed last month, so these figures are current: 17.793 million eligible voters (96.8%) will go to the polls. If you were wondering, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) estimates there are 564,240 Australian who are eligible to vote but are not on the roll.

Think about that for a moment.

The main advantage of compulsory voting is it allows certainty about the voter turnout and ensures there’s enough of everything to go around. It also means the Democracy Sausage* providers can estimate stock with minimum wastage.

Our election results are muddied by a confusing system of preferential voting. Rather than the first past the post system preferred by the US, UK, New Zealand, Canada and others, voters must number their choices by preference. If you don’t, or otherwise muck up the ballot paper, your vote will not be counted.

This farcical system forces rabid voters of the right and left to apportion part of their vote to a party they wouldn’t point the garden hose at if it were on fire. So rather than choosing the party/politician of your choice, voters must number other candidates in order of preference. When votes are counted, the distribution of preferences can be crucial in a tight contest.

The preferential voting system was introduced in the 1920s by Billy Hughes during the formation of the Country Party. Hughes saw it as a means of avoiding the two conservative parties splitting the vote (to the benefit of Labor).

This example collated by the ABC demonstrates how the preferential system can deliver unexpected outcomes:

“The Corangamite by-election on December 14, 1918 was the first Federal poll conducted under the new system. Previously, voting had been on a first past the post basis.

In a field of five, Labor led on primary votes. Future Labor Prime Minister James Scullin polled 42.5% of the vote. But a tight exchange of preferences between four competing conservative candidates saw Scullin’s vote rise to only 43.7% after preferences. The Victorian Farmers Union candidate came from 26.4% on primaries to win with 56.3% after preferences.”

(Ed and Scribe disagree on this point. Under the ‘first past the post’ system, a person can be elected even though the majority of voters didn’t vote for them Eg say there are five candidates in an electorate. Candidate A gets the most ‘first past the post’ votes with 37% Candidate B gets 35%, C, D and E the remainder. So ‘A’ wins, even though 63% of voters didn’t want that candidate and nearly as many preferred ‘B’. Under the preferential system, the winning candidate will be the one who gains the most first preference votes, combined with the second preferences of the unsuccessful candidates, meaning most people end up with their first or second preference as their representative. If this is clear as mud, you weren’t paying attention in Citizenship Education classes…)

If that seems wrong to you, that is the system we have inherited.

Consider the vote counts for the 2019 election. On a two-party preferred basis (after preferences are distributed), the Liberal National Coalition (LNP) received 7.34 million votes, a 51.33% majority against Labor’s 6.90 million votes (48.7%). It’s not often emphasised, but Australia’s Green party took just over 10% of the popular vote in 2019, amassing some 1.47 million votes. While the Greens still have only one Federal member, the party has nine seats in the Senate.

Australia’s best-known election analyst, Antony Green, said this about preferential voting, apropos the 2019 surprise result (polls had consistently said the LNP would lose):

“For all the talk of preferences deciding elections, in the end who wins depends more on whether Labor or the Coalition have the higher primary vote,” Green said.

“In the last two decades, Labor’s first preference support has trended down largely because of the growth in Green (party) support.”

Earlier this year Mr Green published a graph which illustrates the influence of preferences on election results.

The other factor which sways election results in this geographically vast and relatively under-populated land is electoral boundaries.

Our electorate, Maranoa, is impossibly large – almost 730,000 square kilometres – encompassing 17 Local Government Areas. The electorate is so large we have seen little of the Labor candidate, given that he lives in Barcaldine, about 1,000 kms North-West. The result is academic, apparently, with the seat being held by conservatives since 1943. Federal MP David Littleproud looks set for another term in Parliament, despite having to wrangle an electorate three times the size of Victoria.

Contrary to popular myth, political parties don’t redraw electoral boundaries. This task is carried out by the Australian Electoral Commission to maintain the concept of ‘one vote, one value’. Boundaries are frequently re-drawn in physically large states (Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland) as their populations shift and grow. On a Federal level, the same thing is done to ensure each State and Territory has seats in the House of Representatives in proportion to their population.

The one issue that has had little or no coverage in the election campaign is the apparent desire on both sides of politics for Australia to become a Republic.

Yes, I know we had a referendum in 1999 and the motion was defeated, but successive polls have shown political support for Australia to become a Republic (but not in Queen Elizabeth II’s lifetime).

I’m not suggesting that Bill Shorten’s stance on this topic contributed to his defeat in 2019, but he was on record as saying he would have held a plebiscite if elected in 2019. While Labor and the Greens support Republicanism, there is also support within conservative parties. We should not forget that the 1999 referendum was driven by one Malcolm Turnbull, who 16 years later served one term as Australia’s (Liberal) Prime Minister.

While your imagination is reeling at the thought of President Albanese, President Morrison or President Wong, you could donate a couple of dollars for your Democracy Sausage on the way out of the polling booth.

I’m not sure what happens in other democracies, but down here local community groups like Lions, Rotary, school P&Cs and such run barbeques at polling booths and offer voters a sausage on a bun or a piece of (white) bread.

I’d make two observations about this: 1/ the aim is to donate money to a good cause; 2/ you don’t have to eat it.

But it’s an Aussie tradition, eh, like two-up on Anzac Day and wrapping yourself in a flag on Australia Day. Who am I to put a dampener on that?

#bobforpresident

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Albo in poll position to win election

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Image: Australians casting votes, circa 1940s (who were the flowers for?) Wikimedia CC.

Now there’s a headline that could come back to bite me on the bum – election polling being the unreliable artifice it always has been.

Polling is a mainstay of Australian electioneering. Various polls take the social temperature of a broad cross-section of the community. From this, they distil the information into numbers which they hope will predict who will win the election.

Before we get into that, I consulted my preferred pollster, on-line bookmaker Sportsbet. Labor was and still is a clear favourite at $1.55, but this has eased somewhat from $1.35 a month ago. The LNP has tightened from $3.00 to $2.55 with ‘all others’ at 67-1.

Pollsters meanwhile have the Labor Party holding onto a 53/47 lead (it was 57/46 a few weeks ago) over the Liberal National Party (LNP). But polls are notoriously unreliable. In 2019, most polls were predicting a win by then-Labor leader Bill Shorten, even though Scott Morrison was the preferred leader.

As we now know, Shorten lost to Scott Morrison, with analysts falling over each other in hindsight to explain that ‘the people’ didn’t like Bill’s long and complicated list of fiscal policies.

The first week of the election campaign reminded me of those Three Stooges movies where the so-called comics trip each other up and mash cream pies in each other’s faces. First there was the ‘gotcha’ moment when a journalist asked Labor leader Anthony Albanese if he knew the official interest rate. Albanese said he didn’t, then later gave an incorrect answer to a question about the unemployment rate. The Honest John approach then morphed into a press statement that if he (Anthony) made a mistake, he would fess up to it (not berate his minders for not predicting the obvious).

Albo’s not quick on his feet. He could have dismissed the question as trivial and suggest that the reporter do what we’d all do (look it up on our phones). I never thought I’d agree with John Howard about anything but I admire his coming to Albanese’s defence.

Howard was asked by reporters in Perth if he thought Albanese’s incorrect answer to unemployment rates was unsatisfactory.

“Is that a serious question? Okay, well Anthony Albanese didn’t know the unemployment rate. So what?” Howard said.

Howard himself had a similar pre-election bungle over interest rates in 2007, in an on-air interview with A Current Affair.

It’s time we moved on from the “gotcha’ question, where journalists try to put campaigning politicians on the spot by asking them if they know the price of milk or what the inflation rate is. Who could forget John Hewson’s failure in 1993 to work out the GST on a birthday cake (he was at the time promoting GST as a saviour for the economy). The ‘gotcha’ questions, I suspect, are set by editors of my vintage, who revelled in the black humour of Monty Python.

Why else would they want to promote these pointless public gaffes as front-page news. It’s like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the bridge keeper casts people into the abyss if they cannot answer questions.

As he asks Arthur (King of the Britons):

“What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” (It’s 20.1 miles an hour, apparently).

Arthur thinks about this for a moment and asks: “African or European swallow?”

Bridge keeper: “What? I don’t know that!” (then he is cast into the abyss and Arthur’s convoy proceeds).

Gotcha questions aside, much is made of ‘preferred PM’ polls, the numbers from which will vary depending on whether you read The Guardian and listen to the ABC or read The Australian and watch Sky News.

What is clear about personal polling is that Scott Morrison has blown the 68/32 advantage he had in April 2020 (when he was creating the JobKeeper and JobSeeker schemes and doling out relief payments to all and sundry).

Morrison’s personal popularity has now slipped to 44% or so, but still ahead of Albo at 39%.

The latest two-party preferred polling has Labor slipping from 57% to 53% with the LNP at 47% (up from 43%). Despite Labor slipping in the polls, the party is in front in all six States. Albanese might still be Labor’s best chance of winning government since Kevin Rudd in 2007.

The major problem for both parties is that neither the PM nor the Opposition leader can muster personal support of 50% or more.

This simply means that the voting public are not inspired by either party leader, at least not in the way they responded to Rudd, Hawke, Howard or Whitlam at the peak of their powers.

Bob Hawke’s popularity peaked at 75% in November 1984, Kevin Rudd commanded 74% in March 2009 and John Howard 67% in January 2005. Gough Whitlam, the great reformer, was polling 67% in 1973.

If you don’t trust polling, don’t understand the UAP’s billboards and still have no idea who to vote for, there are several things you can do. The first is to make sure you are on the electoral roll. You need to do it by 8pm on Easter Monday (April 18).  To enrol, complete the online form.

 

If you are confused about who to vote for, the ABC’s Vote Compass will give you a fair idea. I completed mine this morning and was chastened to find that 6/10 was the best I could do for a preferred leader.

My Vote Compass result was identical to 2019 when polling showed Scott Morrison (46%). ahead of Bill Shorten (34%) as preferred Prime Minister. Even though that poll was on the money, polls like these can be decidedly inaccurate.

Paul Keating went into 1992 with a personal approval rating of just 25%, ebbing to 17% just before he won the 1993 election. Other PMs who failed to garner support as preferred leaders (at their lowest point) include Julia Gillard (23%), Tony Abbott (24%) and Malcolm Turnbull (34%). Yet they all prevailed at various points in the political cycle.

I cited the online magazine www.startsat60.com earlier and now remind you of a survey from a 2019 FOMM. The survey asked readers to rank Australian PMs between 1968 and 2018.

John Winston Howard won in a hand-canter with 58.3%; despite saying he’d never say sorry, despite the children overboard mistruths, despite following George Bush Jnr and Tony Blair into an unwinnable and unjustifiable war. Bob Hawke ranked second in the over-60 survey with 17%, just behind Gough Whitlam (15.2%).

The other nine leaders all scored less than 5%. Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd polled equally poorly with 0.6% while with Malcom Fraser and Scott Morrison attracted no votes at all..

This survey is what we would call a ‘straw poll,’ meaning it has no real authority or influence. But it is illuminating to find that this one small segment of the over-60s cohort rated our former leaders so poorly.

We were driving from Melbourne to Warwick this week so will bring you our impressions of Tasmania next week. The election circus can keep rolling on without us, what do you say?

Last week: Wayne Goss lost the Queensland election in 1996, not 1989 (when he broke the Gerrymander and beat Joh Bjelke-Petersen). Thanks to Ted for the alert.

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Pork barrels and billboards ahoy

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Image: Welcome to Queensland – an apolitical billboard

You can tell there is an election looming when the government promises to reduce the price of beer – a classic example of ‘pork barrelling’. The move to halve the excise on draught beer would save beer drinkers 30 cents on the price of a schooner (a New South Wales term for three quarters of a pint of beer).

Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localised projects, usually designed to bring money to a representative’s district.

According to Investopedia, the phrase ‘pork barrelling’ harks back to the 1770s when people who owned slaves gave them pork in barrels as a ‘reward’. Before refrigeration, pork was salted and preserved in large wooden barrels.

But in the cut and thrust of 21st century politics, the phrase now means trying to win votes by appealing to voters’ basest instincts.

Social media, being the untamed beast it is, was quick to condemn the wafer-thin beer excise promise. What about spirits and wine, they asked (not unreasonably). Sexist, said others. DISCRIMINATION, said another post (words in capital letters means shouting).

As pork barrelling goes, 30 cents off a schooner of beer amounts to little more than a head of froth. More to the point, we could use some excise relief on the cost of fuel, don’t you think?

On a five-day round trip towing a 14 ft caravan through New England and back last week, we totted up a $350 fuel bill . The most expensive diesel was sighted at Wallangarra on the Queensland/NSW border ($1.79.9 cents a litre). In Brisbane this week $1.85 seemed to be the going rate.

I’m surprised the government would even risk attracting attention to the $46 billion it earns through excise and custom duty on petroleum, alcohol and tobacco (budget projection for 2021-2022).

Election campaigns are usually fought over relatively lightweight matters such as the cost of beer or fuel. But as we all should know, there are more pressing matters, domestic and global.

Mike Scrafton, writing in Pearls & Irritations, says the media can play a role by simply not repeating the trivial utterances devised by politicians to seduce voters.

“Election campaigns never rise much above budgetary baubles, three-word campaign slogans, pork barrelling, name-calling and personal slurs, and straight-out deceptions. The electorate and the media have been conditioned to expect nothing more profound or visionary from their leaders.”

Scrafton, a former senior bureaucrat in the Victorian Government, was commenting on Scott Morrison’s National Press Club speech, which “typically infantilised voters and kept the focus on economic growth”.

“We’re facing a climate calamity, yet the PM believes Australians are more focused on the next holiday than threats to their children’s future.”

Scrafton says the federal election should be about global warming, increasing wealth inequality, irreversible environmental degradation, widespread species extinction and the seemingly inexorable march to great-power war.

FOMM feels obliged to add to this list the most immediate social issues of our times – housing affordability and our appalling treatment of refugees/asylum seekers.

Pork barrelling aside, even in these early stages, with the election yet to be called, the major parties are throwing out none-too subtle hints about what to expect.

In late January, Labor’s leader Anthony Albanese promised $440 million to help teachers and students navigate the challenges mounted by Covid-19. He is also promising a Royal Commission of Inquiry or similar into the handling of the pandemic. An Albanese government would also tackle Federal reform. At the time, Albanese skilfully scooted around questions about whether this would include an overhaul of the tax system.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will continue to pledge financial support for smart technology, particularly that which can help meet our net zero climate change targets. The big question is can he keep to a 2019 promise to establish a Federal Integrity Commission? Ironically, Morrison was roundly defeated over an election promise he tried hard to deliver.

We can expect some kind of a re-run of the Religious Discrimination Bill, whichever party wins the election. It was Labor’s amendments (protecting the rights of trans students), that saw the bill shelved indefinitely. (Some wag suggested that ‘Scomo’ had suffered splinters from his own wedge. Ed)

Election promises often return to haunt the leaders who made them. The most egregious of broken promises was former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s distinction between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises to explain why they did not materialise.

In 2014, Crikey compiled a list of the worst ‘porkies’, (as opposed to Pork Barrels. Ed) that is, political promises made and not kept. It is worth repeating that in 1995, John Howard said there would “never ever” be a GST then introduced one in 1999. This list makes fascinating reading at a time when we are being asked to trust what politicians tell us. The ‘porkies’ include then Health minister Tony Abbott’s promise before the 2004 election not to change the Medicare ‘safety net’ (This is meant to limit the annual amount a person must spend on medical treatment and medications before paying a subsidised rate- currently about $6 for a prescription.) After the election, the Coalition raised the ‘safety net’, leaving Abbott to say, “I am very sorry that that statement back in October has turned out not to be realised by events.”

Even further back, Bob Hawke’s 1987 pledge – “by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty” didn’t happen and still hasn’t happened.

Crikey’s investigative unit recently compiled a ‘dossier of lies and falsehoods’ – an analysis of 48 statements made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It’s here if you have the time and inclination. There has been no comment from the PM’s office.

As history shows, it is easier to offer voters something they will like, or promise not to do something they will hate, than it is to reveal complex policy ahead of the vote.

Honest politicians who come out with carefully costed plans to introduce necessary but controversial legislation don’t win elections. Remember John Hewson, who as Opposition Leader in 1993 lost the election to Paul Keating, after trying to sell a plan for a GST? Likewise former Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten paid the price in 2019 for campaigning on a long list of complex policies.

I am not expecting Anthony Albanese to fall into the same trap. Thus far, his modus operandi appears to be to criticise and rebut most things the government does or tries to do. The problem with that strategy is that voters don’t really know what he stands for, as this week’s Four Corners programme tried to establish.

While I was trying to escape to the bush and disengage from media, the Canberra protest filtered through via the all-pervasive ABC and social media. It did not surprise to learn that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has hitched its wagon to that loose collective. If you travel through the backblocks of New England, it is hard to miss the yellow and black colours of the UAP on billboards set in paddocks along the highways and byways.

“Freedom…freedom” is the common slogan. I’m pretty sure there is no link between that and the song by Beyonce and rapper Kendrick Lamar (the lyrics of which empower black women).

Nevertheless, the billboards are out there, spreading the gospel as understood by anti-vaxxers, sovereign citizens, religious zealots, conspiracy theory followers, ‘preppers’ and genuine if misguided people whose lives have been severely disrupted by Covid-19 controls and mandates. It falls to me to remind readers that protests like the one in Canberra last week happened simultaneously in places as far removed as Ottawa (Canada), Wellington (NZ) and Paris (France). Van Badham’s overview of the global movement is required reading if this issue troubles you – and it should.

 

 

 

 

 

Our Obsession With U.S. Politics

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Image by Rolf Dobberstein, www.pixabay.com

For reasons attributed to the way my mind works, the 1950s children’s song ‘Nellie the Elephant’ has been in my head for months now.

If the complete domination of the airwaves by the US election is getting you down, just sing this happy refrain:

“Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus, off she went with a trumpety trump – trump, trump, trump.”

Yes, once heard never able to be un-heard.The song (Ralph Butler/Peter Hart) was first released in October 1956 by Mandy Miller and an orchestra conducted by Phil Cardew. (There’s also a 1984 cover by punk band Toy Dolls).

On Wednesday, every TV channel had live (and ongoing) coverage of the US election vote count, interspersed with snippets of local news. The blanket coverage continued yesterday and today. At one point we switched off and went out to sow grass seed and count birds.

This short discourse on our obsession with the US election begins with the obvious observation: “Why the hell should we care?” Surely we have enough problems of our own to solve without being mired in America’s divisive political miasma.

Media coverage of the US election this week (and what seems for a long time now), quickly relegated the triumphant third term return of Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Pałaszczuk to a lesser position. It also relegated our own (small) battles with Covid-19 from top of the news, where it should be.

Covid and the obsession with events in Trumpistan lessened the usual impact of two major Australian sporting events. On Tuesday we had the Melbourne Cup, run without the usual crowd (100,000+); no outlandish hats, frivolity or drunken behaviour. Masked strappers led the horses in to the parade ring, while anyone within coo-ee of a television camera conspicuously wore a mask. This is Victoria, after all. The 2020 Cup was run and won, the day marred by the death of the top weight horse Anthony Van Dyck, which broke a fetlock and had to be euthanased. The other scandal from Cup Day, which added fuel to the ‘Nup to the Cup’ animal rights movement was jockey Kerrin McEvoy’s $50,000 fine for over-use of the whip on second-placed Tiger Moth.

Meanwhile in Adelaide, rugby league players lined up for the first of three State of Origin matches. The matches would normally have been held in May and June but this year, Covid restrictions forced a re-organisation of the classic inter-State contest.

The games are to be staged over three consecutive weeks; next Wednesday in Sydney then the following Wednesday, November 18, 2020, when Brisbane will host the third game and possible decider, depending on whether NSW wins next week.

There were other news stories this week which were not about the US election or Covid-19. Here’s a few you may have missed.

  • Reserve Bank cuts interest rates to 0.10%;
  • China suspends Australian wine imports;
  • Australia Post CEO resigns;
  • Girl, 3, found alive under rubble after Turkey’s earthquake;
  • Parrot saves owner from house fire – “Anton, Anton, wake up”;
  • Diego Maradona is to have brain surgery;
  • Queensland wins State of Origin 1, beating NSW 18-14;
  • The Goodwills release new single after lengthy hiatus.

President Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court is a good example of the extent to which we have become immersed in American politics. The US Supreme Court became topical when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died after a long illness. President Trump, as is his constitutional right, (although going against convention – no surprises there. Ed) recently appointed Justice Barrett, a favourite of conservatives, to replace Justice Ginsberg. Appointments to the US Supreme Court are rare, as Justices are appointed for life.

This issue dominated traditional media and social media alike for weeks, the focus being on the likelihood of Trump appointing a conservative judge before the election (which he did).

Meanwhile in Australia

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announced the appointment of two new Justices to our equivalent forum (the High Court of Australia). Federal Court Judges Jacqueline Gleeson and Simon Steward will replace outgoing Justices Virginia Bell and Geoffrey Nettle. The latter are due to retire at 70. The compulsory retirement age was brought in after a referendum in 1977.

Unlike the politically charged US Supreme Court, Australia’s High Court judges are appointed by the Governor-General in Council (which means he suggests potential candidates to the Attorney- General and then the PM, who makes the appointments).

Mr Morrison thanked the outgoing justices for their work.

“Every justice appointed to the High Court carries a significant burden to uphold the laws of our land,” he said. “I congratulate Justices Steward and Gleeson and I wish them all the best.”

As this ABC report observed, our High Court process stands in stark contrast to that of the United States, where Supreme Court appointments are “fought tooth and nail in a politically charged atmosphere”.

An article in ‘The Conversation’ argued that Australians in general know very little about the workings of the High Court. The Canberra-based court and its panel of seven Justices is the last resort for civil cases which have been through at least one other legal forum.

The High Court’s independence is no better demonstrated by the recently decided case, Hocking v The Director of the National Archives. An academic, Professor Jennifer Hocking had sought access to the correspondence between former Governor-General Sir John Kerr and the Queen during Australia’s constitutional crisis in 1975.

The High Court held that Kerr’s papers were public record and not, as had been previously ruled, his personal correspondence.

The National Archives of Australia spent close to $1 million defending its position, an amount which could double after the High Court ruled that it pay Professor Hocking’s costs.

Even though a Pew Centre research report said 71% of Australians closely follow US news, it serves us better to be informed about domestic news. Start by following the High Court’s upcoming deliberations on Palmer vs State of WA over the ‘hard border’ closure.

The High Court of Australia is completely transparent (cases and judgements are available online). But as senior lecturer in law Joe McIntyre said in The Conversation article: “Whereas appointments to the US Supreme Court are a highly visible festival of political intrigue and showmanship, the process in Australia is a secretive affair occurring strictly behind closed doors.”

As I post this week’s FOMM, US news channels are proclaiming Democrat candidate Joe Biden a narrow winner of the 2020 US election. Whether or not this is confirmed in the days and weeks to come, if you are one of the people who think Trump has to go, keep your spirits up (perhaps for another four years) by humming this ear-worm of a tune:

“Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus, off she went with a trumpety trump – trump, trump trump.”

(Wikipedia says the rhythm and tempo of this song is often used to teach people cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) (100 compressions per minute). 

When Campbell Newman lost his seat

Campbell-Newman-Pre-Polling
Up to 60% of Queensland’s eligible voters will vote early or register a postal vote in the State election.

Queensland heads to the polls tomorrow, four years and nine months after the historic defeat of Campbell Newman and the LNP Coalition. I thought it would be interesting and educational to revisit those restive times, when Campbell Newman became only the second sitting Premier since Federation to lose his seat.

Mr Newman’s seat of Ashgrove was taken by Kate Jones, who ironically is quitting politics in 2020 to pursue other interests. The Tourism Minister’s last hoorah this week was to attack Clive Palmer on national television, saying his claim about a Labor death tax is “bullshit”.

Even with Campbell Newman losing his seat in January 2015, it was a close-run thing. Incoming Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk formed government with the help of one independent, Peter Wellington. The Labor Party increased its majority by four seats in the November 2017 election, despite Mr Wellington deciding to quite politics. So tomorrow’s poll is a contest between two women – Annastacia Palaszczuk, who is attempting to win a third successive term, and Deb Frecklington, in her eighth year in politics, hoping for a promotion from her highest position in the Campbell Newman government (assistant Finance Minister). Whoever wins, we are stuck with them for four years, courtesy of Queensland’s second referendum on fixed terms, which was got a Yes vote in 2016 (after a No in 1991).

In researching this topic, I uncovered a FOMM written in early February 2015, a year which also saw Prime Minister Tony Abbott ousted by Malcolm Turnbull before the former completed his term.

My blog on the Friday after the 2015 Queensland election called for more compassion, in politics and in daily life. It was also an attempt to soothe the “bruised egos and wallets of those who backed the wrong team”.

Flashback:2015

We talked about compassion over the festive season, and how we could all try a bit harder. A few wise people wrote to me at the time and suggested that first you have to give yourself a break. But that week I felt an unlikely pang of compassion for Tony Abbott, under siege from his own party and the media. Just imagine how he might have felt going into the Press Club on the Monday after Queensland voters turned on the LNP.

The PM has a thick hide, obviously, but I imagine he might have had to do some meditation or yoga before he fronted the media pack. While it seems clear that the LNP’s narrow defeat in Queensland, with Premier Campbell Newman losing his seat, was all about that government’s arrogance and can-do-ism, inevitably Tony Abbott got the blame.

In typical style, the PM did not refer to the Queensland election in his prepared comments for the Press Club, although some of his detractors rode that particular elephant into the room. You could hear the knives being sharpened from up here in the mountains. A backbencher got a run on Radio National this week saying he had texted the PM to say he no longer had his support. Whether the inexplicable decision to bestow a knighthood on Prince Philip was the last straw or whether they’ve been keeping a list, we’ll never know. Whatever, I felt a bit sorry for the man. Being PM is an impossible 24/7 job that creates the kind of stress you and I would not want to know about.

“What did Tony Abbott ever do for us?” I hear you say. True, the Abbott government seems to care less about people who struggle financially; the ones to whom a $7 co-payment is a big deal. This (Federal) government scores low on Compassion, as did the former LNP (Queensland Government), which apparently thought it could do what it liked and no-one would take it personally, or be able to do anything about it.

The C-word I’d most like to introduce into contemporary politics is an old-fashioned one – Civility. ‘After you’, and ‘if it’s not too much trouble’, and ‘how has your day been?’. It costs nothing be civil with one another, but from my observations of political life here or in Canberra over the past 20 years or so, there is too much of the ‘us and them’ and ‘let’s get ‘em’. If you’re an Opposition Labor MP you have to vote along party lines, which means you disagree with everything the incumbent government has to say and ditto for the LNP when Labor is in power.

On that basis, the Queensland Parliament will be a shackled institution. The former Premier of Queensland would have us believe that hung parliaments are bad. But just why are they bad? Why not call it Consensus government? Imagine a Queensland parliament with 30 Labor members, 20 Libs, 10 Nats, 10 Greens, 14 independents and five ratbag parties to give us a bit of a giggle and keep the bastards honest. Select the most intelligent and fair-minded member as Speaker and we would indeed live in interesting times, when pollies would have to talk to one another to come up with policies they can all agree upon.

Meanwhile back in 2020

The other election preoccupying not only Australians, but the world in general, is the November 3 US presidential election. Sixty million Americans (about 40% of the expected turnout), have already voted – which may be portentious. Reactions to the polarising President, Donald Trump, have been extreme. Musician Bruce Springsteen, for example, says that if Trump wins, he is moving to Australia.

Bruce has any number of options to work his way through Australia’s migration red tape. As a business migrant he can just headquarter his music business here and tick all the boxes, especially the one that asks how much money he is bringing with him. He could also apply for an ‘exceptional talent’ visa. Above all. he has a very Australian name.

The numbers of American-born people living in Australia has almost doubled since 2001, when the Census identified 60,000. By the 2011 Census, this number had increased to 90,000. Five years later in 2016 it topped 106,000. On the annual growth rate, the numbers of US-born in Australia should now be around 120,000, the sixth-largest American population in the world.

As happens everywhere, people end up living somewhere they went to visit and then met someone (and stayed). But affairs of the heart and family ties is just one part of the puzzle. A 2015 investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald concluded there were economic factors at play. Australia, to a large degree, survived the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which was an attraction for Americans looking to prosper somewhere else in the world that speaks English.

Post-covid and post-Trump, there is every reason to think Australia may again become the magnet for disenfranchised Americans that it was during the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Vietnam war (1955-1975) and after 9/11 and the GFC.

The Trump factor is fairly obvious, as the ABC’s Lee Sales discovered when interviewing former US Secretary of State Richard Armitage (2001-2005), about next week’s election.

When the life-long Republican was asked what would happen if Donald Trump wins, he simply said: “Got any more room in Australia?”

FOMM back pages: Citizen Kang for President

 

 

 

 

Covid Election Wins Could Be Catching

  1. covid-election

Walking the covid election tightrope: Marc Hatot, www.pixabay.com

Election days in New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were carried out last weekend in the Pacific region’s usual civilised fashion. Voters had to run the gauntlet of volunteers handing out how to vote cards, but safe to say no-one carried assault rifles or acted in a menacing way.

Both elections resulted in clear Labor victories, which ought to be a portent for Australia’s Government. Not that Scott Morrison’s Liberal Coalition will be panicking, as the next Federal election will not be held until 2022 – barring ‘incidents and accidents’ as Paul Simon observed in Call Me Al.

Speaking of, did you know that impossible bass riff in the aforesaid song was achieved by playing a conventional bass run backwards? A digression, sure, but pretty important news for bass players, yes?

As I was saying, the next Australian Federal election is at least 18 months away and probably more. That is one of the problems of four-year terms. If you inherit poor, indecisive leadership (Aus), or worse, leadership that seems quite nutty and dangerous (the US), you will have to live with it for what amounts to 17.5% of your conventional life span.

We may not be able to vote in the US election, but many of us are making our feelings known via social media – in short, we’re worried about the future of the world.

We are worried what the higher echelons of the Republican Party might do if Trump loses, calls foul and refuses to leave the White House.

Despite being deemed ‘vigilante groups with no standing in law’, self-styled militia groups have warned they will turn up at polling booths on November 3. I tried to imagine what would happen if two or three armed people wearing para-military gear turned up at a polling booth in, say, Sunnybank (a Brisbane suburb). Safe to say someone would call triple-zero and armed police would arrive in numbers, arresting said people on suspicion. The charge would most like be ‘going armed in public so to cause fear’.

There’s no doubt this will be the most watched election in history, so in view of the complexity of the US system, here’s an interactive guide produced by the BBC.

Next weekend, Queenslanders will go to the polls, to decide whether to support the Labor Government for another four years, or choose the Liberal National Coalition. We are sending in a postal vote as we will be away from home on the day. Incumbent leader, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of the Labor Party, has some hurdles to overcome. Three good ministers have, for one reason or another, decided to resign. Then there are those who opposed the government’s decision to allow the Adani coal mine to go ahead. Opposition leader Deb Frecklington has promised a massive four-lane upgrade of the State’s major highway from Cairns to Gympie (1,513 kms). Colourful independent politician Clive Palmer, who may or may not help the Coalition get elected, mounted an attack campaign just two weeks out, claiming that Labor was planning a ‘death tax’. Labor refuted the claim, made in TV ads and social media posts by Palmer’s United Australia Party.

It might be an over-simplification, but I see 2020 elections being decided almost solely on how well or poorly the incumbent political party managed COVID-19. There can be no doubt that Premiers, Presidents and Prime Ministers are being marked on their response to COVID-19. We could (and should) speculate about what percentage of the close relatives of America’s 216,000 COVID-19 victims, for example, would vote for Donald Trump. Not to mention the close relatives of the 7.89 million Americans who caught the virus.

In New Zealand, PM Jacinda Ardern took a hard line and went straight to a strict lock-down that lasted months. By doing so, the country limited the incidence of the virus to 1,883 cases and 25 deaths.

The ACT also continued to hold the line. On October 16 it said there were no new cases of COVID-19 in the Territory. Official figures show that of the 113 cases since the pandemic began in March, 110 have recovered. There are no COVID-19 patients in Canberra hospitals. The ACT has recorded three deaths.

What is astonishing is that the Territory has tested what amounts to 24% of its 2020 population of 418,800. The number of negative tests recorded in the ACT is now 100,630.

And, despite motions of no confidence and a seemingly relentless campaign of disparagement and criticism of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, that election too is not until November 26, 2022. Andrews has most recently taken to comparing COVID-19 case results in Victoria with the UK, in March and now. The contrast implies that Victoria dodged a bullet, with additional daily cases mainly reduced to single figures.

By contrast, a Pew Centre research report in August found that 39% of Americans know someone who had been hospitalized or died of the virus.

No-one can under-estimate the scale of work involved in testing people in the US (population 331 million). The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) reported that since March 1, 61.12 million specimens have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 by public health laboratories and clinical and commercial laboratories in the US. As of October 16, the weekly result was: 2.61 million specimens tested for diagnostic purposes and 141,317 (5.4%) were positive. In short, 18.5% of the population has been tested.

Compare this data with Queensland’s Covid results (1,184 cases and 6 deaths since March). Sure, it makes the mitigation measures look like over-kill, but look where we are today – 4 cases between October 4 and 19.

As for next week’s Queensland election, Premier Palaszczuk has refused to be swayed to open the border between Queensland and New South Wales prematurely. It’s been an unpopular decision in some quarters and will cost her votes. But the statistics support the border closure (on March 17): 1.19 million tests have been carried out in Queensland since January 2020, with 0.1% returning a positive result.

That’s equivalent to 36% of Queensland’s population being tested. This figure may be unreliable insofar as some of the tests may have been done on people from outside the state. But even so.

So be thankful we do not live in the US or the UK, where the virus has run amok, as it apparently does in densely populated countries. In an understatement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently conceded the UK’s Covid figures are worse than when the country went into lockdown in March. The cumulative tally is 789,000 cases and 44,198 deaths. But the second wave (or is it a third?), took daily new cases from 7,143 on September 29 to 26,687 on October 21. Ironically, given criticism of Johnson’s handling of the crisis, he will not have to face an election until May 3, 2024.

As Paul Simon (or is it Chevy Chase?) sings in this video: “I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.”

Call me Al: https://youtu.be/uq-gYOrU8bA

FOMM back pages

Volunteering and election fatigue

Image: Volunteers for Habitat for Humanity building a new home on Vancouver Island. Photo by Jon Toogood

It’s National Volunteer Week, as good a time as any to encourage people to offer their skills and labour to community organisations and causes they believe in.

For those who donated their time to support a political party or independent candidate, though, battle fatigue has set in.

More than four million Australians voted during the three weeks leading up to last Saturday’s Federal election. This was more than double the pre-poll vote in 2016. Instead of election volunteers concentrating their efforts on just one day, it meant putting in that sort of effort for 17 consecutive days.

University of Sydney senior lecturer Stephen Mills says the pre-polling trend is changing the traditional election campaign in unexpected ways.

“Candidates are spending less time campaigning in the community and more time at pre-polling stations. Parties are announcing their more attractive promises earlier. Party volunteers are being exhausted by long weekday shifts on the hustings. And many voters are casting their votes with incomplete knowledge.”

Mills and co-researcher Martin Drum of the University of Notre Dame Australia found that three weeks of pre-polling stretched the resources of the smaller parties.

“Early voting is not a level playing field, Recruiting and organising volunteers for three weeks is more of a challenge for smaller parties and independents than for the major parties.

“Incumbent MPs are more available to stand at pre-poll centres all day than, say, a minor party candidate with a job and other non-campaign commitments.”

While the long-term trend towards volunteering is down, 5.8 million Australians aged 18 and over carry out volunteer work every year. Volunteering can range from high-risk activities (bush fire brigades, surf lifesaving and State emergency services), to delivering for meals on wheels or selling raffle tickets outside the local Neighbourhood Centre.

My father (and maybe yours as well) would often use a barracks catch-phrase from time serving in WWII – “Never volunteer for anything.” So I can use that as an excuse for rarely volunteering, apart from local fairs, fetes and music festivals.

Big music festivals like Woodford and the National Folk Festival need thousands of volunteers to ensure that they run smoothly. This year in Canberra, the NFF engaged 1,300 volunteers on tasks ranging from MCs and stage managers to garbage detail. Even small festivals, like the re-born Maleny Music Festival, need about 180 volunteers. Music festival volunteers are given weekend tickets in exchange for an agreed number of volunteer hours ranging from 20 (NFF) to 25 (Woodford).

Volunteering for an election campaign is a bit like being one of the 45,000 Australians who held their hand up to help run the Sydney Olympics. It’s a massive job, but once it’s over you won’t have to think about it again for years.

In 2019, tens of thousands volunteered for political parties large and small. The Greens said in an email last week they needed 10,000 people for Election Day alone.

In any one of the 151 electorates, parties needed two to four people to hand out how-to-vote cards in each booth. An average sized electorate with 30 polling booths would need 120 volunteers over a 10-hour period for this one job. Each party also needed volunteers for door knocking and phoning campaigns and then to help staff pre-poll centres for two or three weeks.

It’s not just political parties that need volunteers. Lobby group GetUp said that more than 9,000 volunteers made 712,039 calls to voters and knocked on 36,315 doors. More than 1,800 volunteers put in 5,954 hours on the campaign to elect independent candidate Zali Steggall in Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah.

Even small campaigns need the support of volunteers. Controversial Anglican priest Fr Rod Bower contested a Senate seat for Independents for Climate Action Now. He told me that 50 volunteers worked with him on the campaign. It was a first for Fr Rod, who is best-known for maintaining an ever-changing campaign of political slogans outside his Gosford Parish. It was also a first for ICAN, which gained 18,430 votes in New South Wales (all-up 32,525 votes in a three-state campaign).

Who knows how many of the election volunteers of 2019 will hold their tired heads up again in 2022. Some will probably be part of a trend that began in 2014 when an Australian Bureau of Statistics social survey showed that the rate of volunteering had slipped from 36% in 2010 to 31%. The next ABS social survey can be expected later in 2019.

It may come as a surprise to find that the largest proportion of volunteers is not, as you might think, drawn from the post-retirement age group. As Professor Melanie Oppenheimer, Chair of History at Flinders University, wrote in The Conversation, the highest rates of volunteering are among people aged between 35 and 54, working full-time, with young children.

“Busy people are able to find the time to volunteer, possibly because it is important enough for them to be able to overcome their time limitations.

“The most regularly cited reasons given for not volunteering are ill health, lack of time, and lack of interest.

“With an ageing population, ill health is likely to grow as a barrier, while at the same time (there is) increasing demand for volunteer-provided services such as health or aged care.”

In a separate study, academics from Curtin University and the William Angliss Institute discovered a volunteer crisis unfolding in small rural communities across Western Australia. The researchers surveyed 10,000 people in rural WA, to find that volunteering in that part of the country is a way of life, with participation well above the national average.  However, 35% of those actively involved in volunteering said they were planning to move away from rural areas, with more than half citing a lack of essential services or the cost of accessing these services in larger towns.

Australian volunteer participation is ranked second behind the US as a percentage of the adult population. The UN Volunteers global report found it accounts for the equivalent of 109 million full-time workers. The majority (57%) of this figure are women, while in Australia, the percentage is even higher, with 63% of volunteers being women. Another pattern observed in Australia found organisation-based volunteering rates were higher for the youngest group of people (aged 14 to 24) and people over 65.

ABS data shows that Australia’s volunteers each put in an average of 135 hours a year – 783 million hours of unpaid labour per year. According to Volunteering Australia, they are involved in areas including arts/heritage, business/professional/union, welfare/community, education and training, animal welfare, emergency services, environment, health, parenting, children and youth.  As the global study found, 70% of volunteering is informal and community-based, including ‘spontaneous volunteering’, after floods, bushfires or cyclones have left communities devastated.

Flinders University researcher Lisel O’Dwyer has estimated the economic contribution of volunteering in Australia at $290 billion, surpassing revenue from major sectors including mining and agriculture. (The figures, revised in 2014, take into account the value of lives saved by volunteers such as firefighters, SES crews and life guards.)

Try telling the mining lobby that.