Category Archives: Politics – Australian

Fixing messes

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Quiet diplomacy seems to work. The story deals with issues on two fronts, not just spying but the live cattle trade, both of which had been botched by Labor but are now on the road to being repaired by the Coalition. First the “spying” which is dated, please note, 2009:

INDONESIA has accepted Tony Abbott’s explanation of the 2009 spying scandal but says the bilateral relationship will not fully resume until a new ‘protocol and code of ethical conduct’ is agreed and implemented between the two countries.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono extended the olive branch to Australia last night after a special cabinet meeting, signalling the end of the worst diplomatic crisis between Australia and Indonesia since 1999.

However, Dr Yudhoyono made clear that the relationship would not be fully resumed – including military and police cooperation on people smuggling – until the code of conduct he and the Prime Minister had signed was ‘fully implemented’.

The boats aren’t coming anyway which I can tell because they are never mentioned in The Age or on the ABC. But the story goes onto another front in our relationship with Indonesia:

Indonesia was not considering any reimposition of quotas on Australian live cattle, citing ‘the need to maintain stability of prices’. Indonesia has issued permits for an additional 120,000 head of Australian cattle to be imported during the current quarter, as the government battles to drive down market prices for beef from near-record levels.

Maintaining the stability of prices is another way of saying that Australia is the cheapest and most reliable supplier of beef to the Indonesian economy.

It’s a worry

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I found this in Tony Abbott’s Battlelines which is a quote he took from John Howard:

A conservative is someone who doesn’t think he’s morally superior to his grandfather.

Very nice, very neat and in its own way sums up just how difficult it is to be a conservative these days. Because the sentiment will actually only appeal to a small proportion of the country. Most won’t know what it means and a majority will surely think their morals are superior because none of us live in the moral space of people fifty and a hundred years ago.

Which brings me to the latest polls. Is the Coalition behind? So says The Age, down 48-52. Although not as bad, it is to some degree echoed by The Australian:

TONY Abbott and the Coalition have lost their post-election glow, with voter support for the Prime Minister and the government continuing to fall as Bill Shorten and Labor climb back from the election loss.

I expect people who rise in the political process to know a thing or two about politics but they often don’t know how things look from our here. And the biggest issue from where I sit is the absence of good news stories, how things are being done and Labor is being raked over the coals for the harm the last six years have done. The fact that Julia Gillard feels capable of commenting shows just how little shame Labor feels about the damage they did.

Government is not admin. It is not just fixing things up behind the scenes. It is not only about doing, it is also about explaining. It is about maintaining your support. If you are going to govern against the grain of the zeitgeist, which every conservative government must do, there needs to rhetoric to go with the action.

The only stories I see really being carried in the media have been about rorting travel allowances and a major blue with Indonesia. We already knew about the NBN, the budget black holes, the deficits and the boats. But I worry that the government may think quiet competence will do the job, and people will notice.

If you build a better mousetrap, the reality is the world will not beat a path to your door. Being a better government is not enough. If you do not explain yourself and engage in the rhetoric of politics, if you do not have an agenda of your own but are merely at the mercy of the next revelation by The Age, Guardian or The ABC, you are inviting trouble.

Maybe it’s just nothing, it’s only early days, but I do worry.

Quentin has done us a favour by showing why an elected G-G is a terrible idea

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OK. Professor Julia Gillard, in her retreat by the sea in Adelaide, feels she has something to contribute on our current controversy with Indonesia. She is not only welcome to do so, but as an almost perfect direction finder on policy – do the opposite of what she suggests – she actually does contribute to the debate. Have her out in front, I say. Make sure she remains the most visible member of the Labor Party. Never deprive her of an opportunity to speak whenever she feels the need. I will defend her right to free speech etc etc etc.

However, this is not also the case of Quentin Bryce whose views seem to be as inane as the views of the former Prime Minister but the thing about those personal views is that we are not supposed to know them. She is permitted freedom of opinion, but given the job as Governor-General, she is not free to express them. I again think that by speaking her mind in public, she has actually damaged the causes she favours but that is so far from the point that it is almost not worth mentioning. It’s really this incredible lack of judgment in neither respecting nor understanding her role in a Parliamentary system that is the concern.

Indeed, she almost perfectly underscores why an elected President would cause great harm to the governance of this country. The job of the Governor-General is to hold a series of reserve powers to be applied in those very rare cases of constitutional division and deadlock. In the meantime, it is to be as far from possible from political engagement. If she doesn’t understand that she should by now. And if an apology is owed anywhere by anyone in this country, it is she who owes a private apology to Tony Abbott, and a sincere one.

But if she were an elected President, then she would feel a greater licence to say what she wants in public since she would have the authority of the approximately 50% of the country who had voted for her as President. And rather than commenting here or there on some issue of some kind, the elected Governor-General would feel free to become involved with any and every issue of the day since they would feel they have a constituency of their own.

The Governor-General has done us a favour by giving us just a taste of a world in which our head of state might feel free to enter the political debate. It is why electing the Governor-General would be the worst of all possible constitutional arrangements we might possibly construct.

Never apologise, never explain

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As a fan anyway of our Prime Minister I am still astonished at his sure footed ability to handle our latest controversy with Indonesia. Everybody “spies” on everybody else because in foreign relations it’s important to keep surprises to a minimum. You do want to know what they’re up to and you also are not averse to ensuring they know what you are up to, unless you are up to no good.

There’s politics here and in Indonesia. The Indonesians have to be “outraged”. Their politics demands at least some sense of having been officially offended by the routine use of listening and other devices that they no doubt use themselves. So the politics will play out but should be an absolute nothing one year from today. There are and will be many other things to worry about.

The apology demanded by some, even of the weakest kind, admits fault, and there is nothing some people like better than to exploit weakness and to play the injured party. We would be making a massive mistake to end up with anything resembling an apology. We would never hear the end of it. Toughing it out now means that this should peter out with no permanent harm done.

Burning down the house

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What do they teach them in schools of journalism these days? Reading Andrew Bolt’s posts on the media and Mr Abbott (and here and here and here and here and every day since the election) make it plain there is nothing these people would not do to restore the worst government in our history.

Why that would be is beyond sense. Do they really want these boat arrivals to keep on coming? Do they really want to make Gillard’s prediction come true (or was it Rudd’s?) that trying to stop the boats will lead to war? Do they actually miss the rising debt and the $31 billion NBN? Would they rather have the country bankrupt than see some kind of fiscal balance restored? Are their values so warped and their judgments so impaired that they would rather burn down the house than see this government succeed?

Beyond bizarre. And frightening too.

We are not alone

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From The Guardian, of all places. This is the headline:

Warsaw climate talks: nearly 3 in 10 countries not sending ministers

Australia is not alone in its failure to send a minister to the UN climate negotiations in Poland, reports RTCC

And while the previous government made a fetish about leading the way, it is actually Tony Abbott who is doing the leading. Again from this same story:

Australia recently attracted attention by its refusal to send either its environment minister Greg Hunt or foreign minister Julie Bishop to the negotiations.

Instead, Australia will send along its climate ambassador Justin Lee as its lead negotiator.

As the world’s top climate officials gather to discuss how to stem emissions and mobilise finance, Hunt will instead be based in the Australian parliament, attempting to fulfill Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s election promise to repeal the country’s carbon tax.

We are setting a precedent and others are taking notice.

“A humanitarian disaster as well as an affront to our Australian sovereignty”

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Tony Abbott puts it perfectly, from an interview with the 7:30 Report where he is asked why he refuses to discuss what is happening as it is happening:

I’m interested in stopping the boats; I’m not interested in providing sport for journalists, I’m not interested in starting a fight or provoking an argument; I’m interested in stopping the boats. And why I’m interested in stopping the boats is because this is a humanitarian disaster as well as an affront to our Australian sovereignty. And I know that for political purposes and for entertainment purposes and for media purposes people would love every last tidbit of information, but honestly, I think the public expects us to solve the problem, not to engage in sport for commentators.

In mathematics one solves a problem. In politics, there is the need for engagement and explanation as part of the blood sport of commentary. But here Abbott was perfect.

[Found at Andrew Bolt]

And they’re off

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Question time of the first Parliament of the new government. From The Australian:

TONY Abbott and his ministers used their first question time in government to bludgeon the opposition over its carbon tax, its management of the economy and its record on asylum-boat arrivals.

The opposition sought to highlight the government’s moves to hike the debt limit, lift the deficit, and “hinder” Australia’s relationship with Indonesia.

But, with a solid majority behind him and his chosen speaker in the chair, the Prime Minister said he was doing exactly as he’d promised at the September 7 election.

For myself, I wish they would do more bludgeoning outside Parliament as well. Our locals here in Victoria never made enough of Labor’s massive spending disasters, the MYKI card which they had mates put together for something like more than a million billion and the desalination plant which may never be used for a single day, and may eventually cost three to four billion forged in unbreakable contracts. And now Labor is ahead and it is possibly too late.

I hope the Feds learn from our locals.

Being in government is hard

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Whatever else Tony Abbott may or may not do over the next three years, I doubt that he will go back on any of the promises he made. Politics is politics and running an economy is something else. So where Maurice Newman has written in today’s AFR how the Prime Minister must attend to various economic issues, I fear they will fall on deaf ears. They will fall on deaf ears in part because of what the PM said before the election, and they will fall on deaf ears because aside from paid maternity leave, every one of the policies he took up from the ALP would arrive back in spades if the Labor Party should happen to be returned.

Nevertheless, Newman does have a point:

The federal government’s top business adviser has criticised the cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the school funding reforms, slammed wages as too high and industrial relations as being too rigid, and urged the government to push the envelope in order to ‘repair’ the economy.

In a fiery speech on Monday night, Maurice Newman, the head of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, lamented as ‘hasty’ Tony Abbott’s pre-election promises to quarantine such areas as health and defence from budget cuts and suggested the Prime Minister ‘disturb the comfort zones of many’ to pay down debt and cut the deficit as soon as possible.

Vowing to furnish Mr Abbott with ‘dependable and fearless advice’, Mr Newman said the economy was ‘running on empty’ and, without reforms and fiscal discipline, it was ‘facing the prospect of growth with a zero in front of it’.

‘That will feel like hitting a brick wall,’ he said.

That GDP growth will decline for around a year is just how it is if there is to be a redeployment of resources to where they might actually be used productively. And I wish there was more explicit recognition that the only way for a recovery ever to occur will be if it is driven by the private sector.

But almost everyone only likes market outcomes when it suits them. I can only hope that the politics doesn’t overwhelm economic reform.

No boats have arrived now for a fortnight

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There is a fascinating thread at Andrew Bolt of an ongoing standoff in Indonesian waters over who has responsibility for dealing with a boat with illegal migrants heading for Australia. Andrew’s title is, Standoff as Australia asks Indonesia to take back boat. The story so far shows a genuine seriousness about stopping the flow. This is from today’s briefing on Operation Sovereign Borders quoted in Andrew’s post:

The boat intercepted yesterday first asked for rescue just 43 nautical miles from Indonesia, in Indonesian search and rescue territory. All on board are safe. No further comment will be given by Morrison or Lt Gen Angus Campbell, despite persistent questioning. Morrison says he won’t put an “ongoing operations at risk” by commenting.

10 Iranians have chosen to return to Iran in this past week.

77 people have chosen to go home from off-shore processing centres since the Operation started, double the period before.

There has been a fall in arrivals, and not because of any bad weather.

No boats have arrived now for a fortnight.