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July 28, 2010
I have pretty much tuned out from the over-scripted and staged current election campaign, apart from listening to the headlines. I find it mind numbing in terms of its slogans and talking points of stopping the boats, end the waste, the Liberals obsession with deficits and debit, Labor's attempts at greenwash and the debate on population policy. Both sides are driven by their party polling research and that is essentially the same.
Bob Brown should have been a participant in the leaders debate. The Greens are in government in Tasmania and the ACT and they have something to offer on climate change that goes beyond the 'not yet.'
When are the two major parties going to realize that there is a now third force in Australian politics, which will soon exercise its balance of power through the Senate? Underneath all the waffle of the staged sound bites of safety first the political ground is shifting. We are moving beyond the two-party model.
In an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald Ross Gittens makes two good observations about the election campaign. Gittens' first observation is that:
The paradoxical truth is that modern election campaigns are aimed at those who aren't much interested in the topic. Swinging voters are assumed to be completely self-interested and short-sighted, driven by emotion rather than intellect, ill-informed and easily conned by slogans and television ads...Hence all the nonsense we're hearing from both sides.
He says that for those of us who do take an intelligent interest, the best response is to conduct our own debate, ignoring the silliness as much as we can. That's good advice. Gittens' second observation is that:
This election is the battle of the scare campaigns. Pollies are trying to frighten us about big new taxes, the return of Work Choices, the threat from boat people, and deficits and debt. I've written a lot in recent times about why we don't need to be too worried by budget deficits and public debt.
What is needed is investment in urban infrastructure to improve the quality of life in our cities (eg., better public transport, people orientated inner city, better food etc ) and more sustainable.
Sustainable, for someone in southern Australia, means environmental sustainability, and that means doing something about water in the context of climate change. That means harvesting storm water and waste-water reuse as well as desalinisation plants.
What we don't know is how the federal and state governments are planning to make our cities more liveable and sustainable in the context of economic growth being the top priority and climate change. I suspect that there is not much planning.
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re "the threat from boat people"
Bob Eliis nicely unpacks the tacit dog whistle in this comment in his column at the ABC's Unleashed. Referring to Julia Gillard he says:
I love the phrase "filthy Martians coming in ramshackle plague-ridden galleons swarming with rats."
Should Ellis have said Muslims instead of Martians? Or is he implying that western Sydney voters see Muslims as so alien that they are equivalent to being Martians?