Tony Abbott is having an unprecedented good run as Opposition Leader. It's not that he's hitting everything out of the park, because he's not doing that. It's not because his vision for the nation is outshining the Government's, because he doesn't seem to have one. It's unprecedented because Tony Abbott is doing all the things bad Opposition Leaders usually do; things that get them swiftly knifed and consigned to a life of slightly squinty "don't I know you?" looks from the general public; and doing them to public and media acclaim. It appears that talking shit, engaging in needless obstructionism, spreading deliberate misinformation and possessing a paucity of policy is in vogue.
All the negativity, the nay-saying, the fear mongering, and the smug defence of the status quo; all that is backed up by a stained wet piece of paper with nothing written on it. What would a Tony Abbott lead government do? Who the hell knows? There is no basis for knowing.
The only thing approaching a policy position is not even a well outlined one. Abbott's 'Real Action on Climate Change' policy is a non event, a floating turd in a shallow pool of bilge water. The basic gist is that an Abbott Government will pay polluters not to pollute, at a cost of God knows what for God knows how long. In the biggest debate of this term of parliament, the biggest the country has had on a single issue in a long time, the Opposition is coming to the table with a hessian sack full of low quality hot air, and getting away with it.
In all the media Abbott has done trashing the Carbon Tax, he is yet to be truly questioned as to how his policy is better, how it will be less of a financial impost, and how it will result in any reduction in emissions at all. Why are those questions not being asked? Are there even answers to those questions? The subtext of course is that there are none, because under an Abbott government the issue of climate change would float away in haze of self indulgent opulence. The under-lying message is that there is no need for change, so why do it.
Abbott is getting a free, unchallenged run by a media obsessed with gotcha stories and the ratings of their network's respective cooking show.
And the public is lapping it up.
Joe Hockey is another example. On the rare occasion he actually received a tough question about his very shaky budget reply, he accused the journalist of being in collusion with the Government. What? What the fuck are you talking about Joe? Answer the question, or at least pretend to answer it. Isn't that what your job is, pretending to answer questions? Yet you go for "This is a conspiracy. Is it because I is Liberal?" Absolutely pathetic.
Can you imagine what would happen if Julia Gillard or Wayne Swan accused a journo of being fed questions by the Opposition. There would be a shit-storm of epic proportions, they would be a laughing stock. Joe on the other hand got a rebuke in a tweet from the ABC that no one read, and a hanky from News LTD to wipe his bitter tears away.
As I live and breathe…
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
The Centre of Nowhere
Today's poll is an absolute dog for the Government; a rancid fish slap across the countenance. It's a very long time until the next election, more than two years, and just how bad this can get is anyone's guess. This is what a Government gets for crapping out on many of the policies that were central to its last major electoral victory. Only on the economy can it still claim the moral ground, but they can't even claim credit properly. Wayne Swan gets a bullshit question on ABC radio and he drops his water glass. They constantly play defence, and lose, so they play more defence.
This all started when Kevin Rudd shelved the ETS. The bottom fell out of the numbers, and there has been a long slow roll towards the abyss ever since. After the ETS decision was made, the Government has not set the agenda and has been dragged around by the opposition, the polls and its own inaccurate interpretation of what the electorate wants. Sure, when you're in government it helps to have the public onside, but it also helps to be making decisions you actually believe in, and they just aren't. This government is not being the government it wants to be simply because it is scared.
Look at what they're actually doing. Refugees are going to be sent to Malaysia. Malaysia. Why? What made the pacific solution shit was not the fact that it was in the pacific. Gillard seems to think that she can get away with doing essentially the same thing because Malaysia is in a different ocean, therefore avoiding the 'Return to Pacific Solution' headline that would cause the Labor caucus to commit seppuku on the parliamentary lawn. That is just disingenuous bullshit.
They wimped out on the mining tax, environmental policy, and welfare. They dropped the ball on education and rooted their own health reform, all because that can't hack getting bitch-slapped by Kochie on Sunrise.
It's said that to win elections you must win the centre, and this is for the most part is true, but you have to have a base vote on either the left or the right of the spectrum to begin with. Labor has alienated the left, and has no chance of winning the right. All that's left are the mercenary; mortgage saddled swinging voters, who spend the pre-election period totting up the proposed tax benefits of both parties on their iPhones before they decide who to vote for. 30 pieces of silver and a 10% increase to the Family Tax Benefit Part A.
There's almost no way back from this. They've got to stop playing the keeping everybody happy game, because it's obviously not working. Let's just have some proper progressive policy and fuck the polls. If you're going to lose, lose for doing something you believe in, instead meekly having your arse handed to you because you stand for nothing.
This all started when Kevin Rudd shelved the ETS. The bottom fell out of the numbers, and there has been a long slow roll towards the abyss ever since. After the ETS decision was made, the Government has not set the agenda and has been dragged around by the opposition, the polls and its own inaccurate interpretation of what the electorate wants. Sure, when you're in government it helps to have the public onside, but it also helps to be making decisions you actually believe in, and they just aren't. This government is not being the government it wants to be simply because it is scared.
Look at what they're actually doing. Refugees are going to be sent to Malaysia. Malaysia. Why? What made the pacific solution shit was not the fact that it was in the pacific. Gillard seems to think that she can get away with doing essentially the same thing because Malaysia is in a different ocean, therefore avoiding the 'Return to Pacific Solution' headline that would cause the Labor caucus to commit seppuku on the parliamentary lawn. That is just disingenuous bullshit.
They wimped out on the mining tax, environmental policy, and welfare. They dropped the ball on education and rooted their own health reform, all because that can't hack getting bitch-slapped by Kochie on Sunrise.
It's said that to win elections you must win the centre, and this is for the most part is true, but you have to have a base vote on either the left or the right of the spectrum to begin with. Labor has alienated the left, and has no chance of winning the right. All that's left are the mercenary; mortgage saddled swinging voters, who spend the pre-election period totting up the proposed tax benefits of both parties on their iPhones before they decide who to vote for. 30 pieces of silver and a 10% increase to the Family Tax Benefit Part A.
There's almost no way back from this. They've got to stop playing the keeping everybody happy game, because it's obviously not working. Let's just have some proper progressive policy and fuck the polls. If you're going to lose, lose for doing something you believe in, instead meekly having your arse handed to you because you stand for nothing.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Bludget
Budget night used to be pretty simple; what am I paying more for and what am I paying less for? What gets given and what gets taken? For many years we just got stuff, as Peter Costello trod the boards of the parliamentary chamber, tossing tax benefits and franking credits to his beloved serfs. Some people didn't get stuff, but generally they couldn't afford televisions, so they were therefore none the wiser. These days it's harder to pick the winners and losers, give with the right hand, take with the left. A melange of cuts, additions, levies, offsets, delayed programs, new programs and token leftovers leave most at a loss as to where they are in a sea of economic dribble.
The ceremony of the evening has also dissipated, as the week before hand has become a government leak-athon, just so no one can claim to be surprised. In addition to this, some analysts have claimed that MULTIPLE budgets are written just in case one of those strategic leaks dies in the arse. Asides from this being completely demented, it pretty much ignores the principles of what good government should be about, and leaves you with a whole bunch of shitty populist cuts and middle class panders that don’t achieve anything.
Take for example the cutbacks in welfare payments to up to 11000 teenage single mothers. It's obviously been too good for too long, because too many people are honking on to that sweet single mother coin. How much will this deliver? Not much, a piddling amount in truth, but it will make those losers in suburbs happy to know they aren't 'paying' for some teenager to have kids for money. They'll be so happy in fact that they will literally skip to the bank to receive their baby bonus without irony.
As discussed in earlier pieces, the unemployed will also cop it in the name of national morale. The long term unemployed will now be forced to volunteer 11 months of the year as opposed to six. Wait. Forced? Volunteer? Is this like when you get in trouble at school and the teacher makes you 'volunteer' to pick rubbish out of the sandpit? Let's just call it what it is: pointless busy work designed to make people feel so horrible they'll either take the nearest shit-shovelling job on offer or top themselves. Hey, maybe an increase to the suicide rate will save us some money.
I'm sorry if that's a bit extreme but I'm sick to death of people hammering the welfare state once, and only once, they've reached a position of comfort in life. As soon as someone lands a good job, gets a house and whatever else is supposed to make you happy, it's a countdown to when they pay out on the 'bludgers'. The populism of the current political environment has only elevated this trivial bullshit, and it's about time someone got called on it.
So if you've never been unemployed, if you've never taken Austudy, if you've never received a low income tax benefit, if you've never got a baby bonus or family tax benefit parts a or b, if your parents didn't take them either, if you've paid in full for your entire education up front and your parents did the same then by all means look down your nose snootily at those who have taken advantage of the welfare system. By all means sit down tonight with a glass of merlot and decry the bludgers 'living' off 'your' tax dollars. It doesn't change the fact that you are an arsehole, but at least you're coming from a coherent ethical and ideological position.
However, if you have done any of those things then you can cram it with walnuts ugly, because you are the very thing you claim to hate.
The ceremony of the evening has also dissipated, as the week before hand has become a government leak-athon, just so no one can claim to be surprised. In addition to this, some analysts have claimed that MULTIPLE budgets are written just in case one of those strategic leaks dies in the arse. Asides from this being completely demented, it pretty much ignores the principles of what good government should be about, and leaves you with a whole bunch of shitty populist cuts and middle class panders that don’t achieve anything.
Take for example the cutbacks in welfare payments to up to 11000 teenage single mothers. It's obviously been too good for too long, because too many people are honking on to that sweet single mother coin. How much will this deliver? Not much, a piddling amount in truth, but it will make those losers in suburbs happy to know they aren't 'paying' for some teenager to have kids for money. They'll be so happy in fact that they will literally skip to the bank to receive their baby bonus without irony.
As discussed in earlier pieces, the unemployed will also cop it in the name of national morale. The long term unemployed will now be forced to volunteer 11 months of the year as opposed to six. Wait. Forced? Volunteer? Is this like when you get in trouble at school and the teacher makes you 'volunteer' to pick rubbish out of the sandpit? Let's just call it what it is: pointless busy work designed to make people feel so horrible they'll either take the nearest shit-shovelling job on offer or top themselves. Hey, maybe an increase to the suicide rate will save us some money.
I'm sorry if that's a bit extreme but I'm sick to death of people hammering the welfare state once, and only once, they've reached a position of comfort in life. As soon as someone lands a good job, gets a house and whatever else is supposed to make you happy, it's a countdown to when they pay out on the 'bludgers'. The populism of the current political environment has only elevated this trivial bullshit, and it's about time someone got called on it.
So if you've never been unemployed, if you've never taken Austudy, if you've never received a low income tax benefit, if you've never got a baby bonus or family tax benefit parts a or b, if your parents didn't take them either, if you've paid in full for your entire education up front and your parents did the same then by all means look down your nose snootily at those who have taken advantage of the welfare system. By all means sit down tonight with a glass of merlot and decry the bludgers 'living' off 'your' tax dollars. It doesn't change the fact that you are an arsehole, but at least you're coming from a coherent ethical and ideological position.
However, if you have done any of those things then you can cram it with walnuts ugly, because you are the very thing you claim to hate.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Osama's Legacy
Everything Julia Gillard had planned for this week has quietly been taken back to the policy shed for later release. Since all that was planned was to take several hundred more hits over the carbon tax and to make an education announcement involving Peter Garrett, it's probably not a bad thing. The death of Osama bin Laden will rightly dominate the news for at least the rest of the week, and it will give the Government a nice little breather before the Budget next Tuesday, which by all accounts, will be another mishandled shit-storm.
The significance of bin Laden's death for the United States and the western world cannot be underestimated, and certainly there are many who believe that this one event has secured Barack Obama's re-election. Certainly the punchy-ness of the 'Obama got Osama' slogan already scrawled on hundreds of hastily created signs suggests that this is the case. However, it is worth noting how the reaction to the news, late on a Sunday night (US time) was evidence as to how the US has changed in the last 10 years. Changed in a way many find disturbing.
On the evening of September the 11th 2001 I was watching Rove Live. Why I was doing this, I don't know. It's certainly rather embarrassing to admit that now, but watching it I was. Across the bottom of the screen came a news ticker with a line about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Centre towers. This was an unusual direction for Rove I thought, I couldn't see how his audience of bland 18-35 year-olds could cope with this form of world shattering 'gotcha' humour. However, it kept scrolling, and the host seemed completely oblivious; well more completely than he usually was. I began to think about the depth of Rove's new found edginess. How far can he take this? What's the punch line? Certainly "Say hi to your mum for me" would not be an appropriate 'out' for this piece of sophisticated humour. I eventually came to my senses and switched channels and was promptly frozen in front of my television until 3 o'clock in the morning.
I watched what you watched, there's no need to recount it, but there was one image in particular that I remember which for me confirmed that if there was not a war in the Middle East by September 12, there would be one very soon. Late into the night, both of the Towers long collapsed, bin Laden officially blamed, and CNN were talking to Tom Clancy. That's right, Tom Clancy. They cut the interview short to show pictures from Gaza, where in the streets were people. Young people, and they were celebrating. It was not unbridled joy, but it was celebration. It was a show of the 'we like that this happened' variety. Of course, this made a lot of people angry.
Nine years, seven months and 20 days later I saw the same sort of celebration. Young people in the streets of Washington showing not unbridled joy, but saying 'we like that this happened', and it's going to make a lot of people angry.
The similarity of the two images is troubling. Extremism can breed extremism, and the celebration of death, even of one man, is extreme in my view. However, if you have grown up with one individual cited as the bogeyman to end all bogeymen, in a climate of fear and threat, how would you react to the news that he is dead? The answer is troubling, but not surprising.
The significance of bin Laden's death for the United States and the western world cannot be underestimated, and certainly there are many who believe that this one event has secured Barack Obama's re-election. Certainly the punchy-ness of the 'Obama got Osama' slogan already scrawled on hundreds of hastily created signs suggests that this is the case. However, it is worth noting how the reaction to the news, late on a Sunday night (US time) was evidence as to how the US has changed in the last 10 years. Changed in a way many find disturbing.
On the evening of September the 11th 2001 I was watching Rove Live. Why I was doing this, I don't know. It's certainly rather embarrassing to admit that now, but watching it I was. Across the bottom of the screen came a news ticker with a line about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Centre towers. This was an unusual direction for Rove I thought, I couldn't see how his audience of bland 18-35 year-olds could cope with this form of world shattering 'gotcha' humour. However, it kept scrolling, and the host seemed completely oblivious; well more completely than he usually was. I began to think about the depth of Rove's new found edginess. How far can he take this? What's the punch line? Certainly "Say hi to your mum for me" would not be an appropriate 'out' for this piece of sophisticated humour. I eventually came to my senses and switched channels and was promptly frozen in front of my television until 3 o'clock in the morning.
I watched what you watched, there's no need to recount it, but there was one image in particular that I remember which for me confirmed that if there was not a war in the Middle East by September 12, there would be one very soon. Late into the night, both of the Towers long collapsed, bin Laden officially blamed, and CNN were talking to Tom Clancy. That's right, Tom Clancy. They cut the interview short to show pictures from Gaza, where in the streets were people. Young people, and they were celebrating. It was not unbridled joy, but it was celebration. It was a show of the 'we like that this happened' variety. Of course, this made a lot of people angry.
Nine years, seven months and 20 days later I saw the same sort of celebration. Young people in the streets of Washington showing not unbridled joy, but saying 'we like that this happened', and it's going to make a lot of people angry.
The similarity of the two images is troubling. Extremism can breed extremism, and the celebration of death, even of one man, is extreme in my view. However, if you have grown up with one individual cited as the bogeyman to end all bogeymen, in a climate of fear and threat, how would you react to the news that he is dead? The answer is troubling, but not surprising.
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