October 28, 2012
South Australia: Labor's Right faction
A central problem with the modern Labor Party is not the variety of views contained within the party and among their partners and allies, nor the transfer of Catholic allegiance from Labor to the Liberals at the parliamentary level over the past 50 years. It is the factions of the machine politics getting out of control. A classic example is the current actions of the South Australian Right. The out of control factions are concerned with furthering their own power even if it goes against the interests of the Labor Party.
Senator Don Farrell, the Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, is a powerbroker of the South Australian Right faction. He has form in using his power to dump "left of centre" Senators (eg.,Linda Kirk) and help to overthrow Kevin Rudd. Out of control factions are a destablizing political force.
Farrell's roots are in the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees' Association (SDA), Catholicism, the DLP and Santamaria. The policies, ministerial appointments and pre-selections of a Labor government in South Australia are controlled by the executive of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, a socially conservative, Catholic dominated union.They have the numbers and use it to defend a moral conservatism premised on blocking gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, euthanasia etc.
Catholicism is the backbone of Australian conservatism. They accept the market and economic liberty but desire to use authority to regulate the public in their battle against the forces of modern nihilism, decadence and perversion exemplified by the liberal left and the greens. Order and stability (provided by religion) is the only viable antidote to modern nihilism. It is the Romantic notions of self expression which erode the order and stability of tradition.
This Catholic conservatism has a deep faith in the sanctity of family and traditional male and female roles; by an equally profound hostility to the new social movements – feminism, gay liberationism, environmentalism – and to the forces of “nihilism” and “relativism” that had supposedly taken root among the intellectual class. They see a need to save civilisation by turning back the cultural tide of progressivism.
For Australia conservatism the source of disorder in the world are those individuals who work with ideas and abstract concepts, such as academics, teachers and journalists. The backbone of order and stability are the middle class and lower middle class as these are least affected by the changes of the contemporary world and so have best preserved traditional values.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:03 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
July 21, 2012
Melbourne: Go Greens
Let's hope that the voters of Melbourne decide that the Greens deserve the Victorian seat of Melbourne in the by-election held today.
The by-election has been sucked into the vortex of national politics with the Canberra press gallery journalists indulging in their h overheated rhetoric with its federal implications.The shock waves will be felt in Canberra, Gillard will be further weakened, and the ALP will face an existential crisis.
The end of Gillard Labor is written into the basic structure of the world is the Gallery's basic narrative, and every event that happens is fitted into this frame as they act to fan the flames. So what happens if the ALP narrowly wins the Melbourne by-election?
David Rowe
The Canberra media gallery appears to have forgotten that the Greens came within 2.0% in both 2002 and 2006 before being shot down by Liberal preferences in 2010. So the suggestion that a Green win this time should in and of itself cause “shock waves” is pure media spin. Is this the hand of the NSW Right being played?
My gut feeling is that the Greens will out poll the ALP in primary votes but the ALP will recover the lost ground through preferences from the smaller parties. These mostly favor the ALP, due to it securing the political deals that will probably allow it to scramble over the line. If it wins then it went into the election with very limited policies and comes out as just a political machine to gain and retain power.
If Labor wins narrowly, what does that say about the Canberra Gallery's theory of a big shock wave in Canberra? No doubt the journalists will continue to fan the flames of leadership turmoil for this is the only game in town for them.
The real problem for the ALP is its toxic, corrupt culture ----eg., the HSU scandal and its support for poker machines--- and that is not going away. It is what Labor is. The Greens, in contrast, stand by their principled position on pokies and genuine support for transparency, good governance and fair campaigning.
Update
It looks as if the Greens will have to rely on increasing their primary vote to win the inner city seats in capitol seats, since it looks as if the Labor and Liberal parties will close ranks against them and preference one another. An article in the AFR by Nick Economou says that:
the implication of the byelection result is clearly that the Greens vote has peaked in inner Melbourne. If the best the Greens can muster in inner Melbourne is 37 per cent of the vote, Bandt may not be able to retain his seat at the next election....The byelection tells the Greens that, while their vote may have peaked in inner Melbourne, it certainly is not falling and expectations of upper house success in Victoria and beyond should remain high.
The implication is drawn by an editorial in The Australian--- the by-election confirms Greens' status as a protest party on the fringes, with no serious hope of governing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:43 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
March 25, 2012
and so it ends
Labor now barely exists as a political force in Queensland after the state election. It's the end of an era.It has so few seats---seven or is it six?---that it cannot even be an effective opposition to the triumphant 'can do' Campbell Newman LNP.
The average swing against Labor of 15.8 per cent and the loss of 44 seats will be difficult for the ALP to comprehend. Labor's primary vote across the state was around 26.5 per cent. The defeat claimed most of Labor’s front-bench, as well as the sitting Premier herself.
The constellation of rural and regional conservatives and urban Liberal Party voters is now the dominant majority in Queensland politics. Within that political constellation the urban Liberal Party is now dominate.
You would have to say that Labor has big problems on its hands. It was such a massacre that it could be 12 years before Queensland Labor becomes an effective political opposition. With no upper house Campbell Newman has a blank cheque to do what he likes.
Update
In New Matilda Ben Eltham refers to Queensland Labor's heritage. He says that:
Compared to the Bjelke-Peterson government, therefore, Labor has governed substantially better and more competently, dragging the state into the 21st century. South-east Queensland, in particular, became a more normal place, more like the rest of Australia, with normal problems like traffic congestion, rather than special problems like a compromised police force. In the end, it started to experience more normal politics, too, with voters gradually forgetting the Bjelke-Peterson years, and focusing instead on Labor’s shortcomings.
How much will the conservatives wind the clock back? Will they try?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:34 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
February 20, 2012
ALP: a self-inflicted madness
The Gillard Government is increasingly caught up in some kind of self-inflicted madness. It now looks as if the trajectory is one of self-destruction if Rudd continues his campaign for the leadership. Rudd doesn't have the numbers (around 30-35?) but he is doing everything he can to build momentum. He is causing trouble.
The momentum for an end to the civil war continues to build. Gillard should call a spill and end the speculation, rumours, gossip, whisperings, outbursts, bad mouthings, leaks etc when Parliament resumes next week. Rudd goes to the back bench and Gillard stands on her own.
The strange thing about this is that there is not much policy difference between Rudd and Gillard. Gillard continued with the policies of the Rudd Government and all the indications are that Rudd would continue with Gillard's policies.
Yet the ALP is tearing itself to pieces with its bawling. Over what? Electoral reality? If Gillard is a walking political corpse, facing a massive electoral defeat, then all Rudd can do is try and sell the same policies better. Then what? Electoral defeat?
In his The Labor Leadership: a time of peril and opportunity op-ed at The Drum Malcolm Farnsworth makes a good point:
It's de rigueur now to profess disgust at this turn of events. Serious minds decry the brutality, the ambition, the lack of policy debate. They bemoan a political system that has somehow failed. They proclaim a weariness with politics as usual. But I'm having none of it. These are marvellous times for politics. These are the times when you see how things really work. This IS the system working, not failing. These are the times when character is revealed, when political judgment is on the line, when boldness potentially pays big.
The system for Farnsworth is the factions in the ALP and the way they operate in exercising their power. It is the ALP's political culture that is destroying it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
July 31, 2011
Rann Government: goodby Mike?
The Labor Government in South Australia is trying to renew itself whilst in office. It has internal problems and its standing in the electorate has sunk to an all time low. It is addressing this through removing Kevin Foley, the Treasurer, and Mike Rann, the Premier. The plan is to remove the dead weight, rebuild the Government and the Cabinet, and present a fresh image to the voters.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, graffiti, Port Adelaide, South Australia, 2011
Foley is now the ex-Treasurer, but he is still hanging around in cabinet, whilst Rann, by all accounts, has been told that his time is up. Labor's right faction has informed Rann that he either stands down or is removed.
Though Rann has had 17 years as state Labor leader and 9 as premier, and it's only a question of time before he realizes his time is up, he doesn't plan to go quietly. Even so, he is a dead man walking as the ALP realizes that generational change is necessary.
However, the SA Labor government needs to do more than present a fresh image to the voters for the next state election that is due in March 2014. The current Education Minister Jay Weatherill is to be the ALP's next state leader and SA's new premier. That kind of renewal strategy didn't save the NSW Labor Government. Voters there wanted a change of government not leaders. Is this the case in South Australia?
The SA Labor Government is a a tired, jaded government run by a right wing faction with little talent or policy ideas. There is an infrastructure build happening and the talking up both the defence precinct and a future mining boom that never seems to arrive. They are waiting for BHP-Billiton to give the go-ahead for the Olympic Dam mine expansion. Despite the state's transition from manufacturing to mining the government appears to be directionless.
Secondly, state politics in SA has little philosophical or ideological substance. Labor basically offer: They are the best to manage the state and deliver reasonable services. It's politics as administration coupled with lots of media spin.The politics is buried in the way that the rightwing faction controls the government.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:48 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
February 11, 2010
no need to comment
The Moir cartoon says it all. Rudd Labor's record on the environment has little credibility. There's been enough to evaluate the actions in relation to their rhetoric and to make the judgement:
There is no need to mention the bungled solar rebates and ''green'' loans for households, the failure to act on the River Murray, or the scare campaigns and the fog of misrepresentations.
True, the politics of climate change have changed after the failure of Copenhagen, the IPCC's mistakes and the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia.
However, we need to put a limit on pollution so we reduce emissions over time; we need to make polluters pay, so that pumping carbon into the atmosphere is no longer free; and we need to provide incentives for investment in cleaner technologies.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:36 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack