Taking the moral low ground – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Rudd's inspiration?

image from Wikipedia

What a tawdry fortnight in Federal Parliament as our political leaders scrambled to occupy the moral low ground over asylum seekers heading for Australia in leaky boats.


And how easily those leaders fit Stanley Baldwin's jibe against London tabloid newspaper barons – “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”


It's a grand phrase, although (as pointed out later) it doesn't stand up to too much analysis. It is, however, apposite when we look at the attacks by Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition's immigration shadow minister, Sharman Stone, on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's removal of the more brutal elements of the previous Liberal government's treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat from Asia.


Turnbull and Stone both went for the throat in their attacks on Rudd's policy. Turnbull, as is his practice, took up a glib phrase – Rudd had “rolled out the welcome mat” for “illegal immigrants” – and repeated it ad nauseam. On ABC radio, Dr Stone attacked Kevin Rudd but refused to answer when asked if she would go back to the old rules.


And that, essentially, is the prerogative of the opposition politician through the ages – to attack government policies, to sneer and jeer but refuse to say how they would do better. Power to attack, no responsibility to offer a solution.


More disgraceful was Kevin Rudd's apparent repudiation of the Christian values he espoused so publicly a year ahead of the 2007 Federal election in which he ousted Liberal Prime Minister John Howard.


As Rudd joined the auction for the moral low ground – dog-whistling the message, I'm treating the boat people just as brutally as they would – this angry old journo wanted to shout: “You're a Christian, for Chrissakes.”


Grumpy Old Journo acknowledges Christianity is a broad church, or collection of churches (as demonstrated in the past week when the Catholic church welcomed misogynists and homophobes who want to quit the Anglican communion – a move which should help both churches achieve their goals). Without any insincerity, Christians may adopt very different views across the political spectrum.


But Rudd, in his landmark essay in The Monthly in October 2006, was emphatic in his admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rudd left us believing he sought to emulate the German theologian. In the second paragraph of his long Monthly essay, Rudd wrote:

And above all, he was a man of action who wrote prophetically in 1937 that "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." For Bonhoeffer, whatever the personal cost, there was no moral alternative other than to fight the Nazi state with whatever weapons were at his disposal.

Three weeks before the end of World War II, Bonhoeffer was hanged by the SS because of his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Rudd also said this in his essay:

I argue that a core, continuing principle shaping this engagement [of church and state] should be that Christianity, consistent with Bonhoeffer's critique in the '30s, must always take the side of the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed.

Provided, one assumes, they're not in leaky boats headed for Christmas Island.


One notes, too, from Wikipedia that when the SS raided Abwehr military intelligence and uncovered the Resistance cell plotting to assassinate Hitler, they also found documents proving Bonhoeffer was involved in an Abwehr scheme smuggling German Jews into Switzerland.


A people-smuggler! “Vile”, if we use Rudd's word for people-smugglers.


Is it unworldly, appealing for moral leadership in our top politicians? What use is a politician of moral integrity when voted out of office?


Kevin Rudd is a cautious man. He remembers how John Howard won the 2001 “Tampa election” with his brutal treatment of the 438 asylum seekers rescued from a sinking boat – treatment which attracted votes from some blue-collar Labor and One Nation supporters.


But I believe times have changed, and Rudd could afford to risk a little of his remarkable political domination of Turnbull and accept the new mood.


Although most Australians still want strong border protection, few yearn for a return to the John Howard days. Most Australians now understand that almost all boat people held on Christmas Island are genuine refugees seeking asylum – and as such, it's incorrect to label them illegal immigrants.


Not only that, anyone who reads newspapers knows most illegal immigation problems are with people arriving on commercial airlines, not boat people,  as yesterday's Sydney Sunday Telegraph explained.


Should we abuse the boat people as queue-jumpers, then?


Last April, Grumpy Old Journo argued that we should prefer refugees who “jump the queue” over those who wait passively in refugee camps waiting to go to whatever country they're allotted:

I believe most of those asylum seekers who turn up at Ashmore Reef or Christmas Island on leaky boats, especially those who've brought their families, have shown fitness to live in Australia and eventually become citizens.

As an amusing diversion, you might like to read what the British Journalism Review said about “prerogative of the harlot” a few years ago.

So the famous phrase, grand as it sounds, has no foundation in sense. Its actual author, Rudyard Kipling, clearly had not appreciated the economic and social situation of the average harlot, presumably being unacquainted with them. But when he was needed he was happy enough, as a journalist whose career had started on an Indian newspaper which supported the local government and was supported by government printing contracts, to lend his eloquence to the Prime Minister. Baldwin, after all, was not only his friend but his cousin.

And you may think of Malcolm Turnbull's repetitive phases – “cash splash” comes  to mind – if you press on to read this:

There may be no kinship quite as close as that among the politicians of the present day and the people, paid or voluntary, who help to promote their policies. Nevertheless, the party in government and the parties in opposition can call on large numbers of such people, even if none of them has the facility of Kipling with persuasive words. Their purpose, as we are constantly reminded, is not to explain honestly and completely the problems the politicians face and the logical methods by which they are earnestly striving to solve them. It is to repeat and repeat whichever slogan the politicians want the electors to believe represents the most important issue of the day.

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Were we prescient, or what?

See, I did write about Malcolm Turnbull:

"Alas, it doesn't take long for a respected journalist, lawyer and merchant banker to sink into political life when he's elected to the Federal Parliament."

Okay, I'll come clean. That was posted to Grumpy Old Journo on December 23, 2006. Is that prescient, or what?

In the post, GOJ said:

Alas, it doesn't take long for a respected journalist, lawyer and merchant banker to sink into political life when he's elected to the Federal Parliament. Take Malcolm Turnbull, our new Environment Minister, quoted in this morning's Weekend Australian: “The whole climate change phenomenon has informed and underpinned the policies of the Australian Government for more than a decade.”

The truth, as Malcolm must well know, is that Prime Minister John Howard has denied evidence of climate change for a decade. A stubborn man who overestimates his own intellectual abilities, he
listened only to those scientists who had the Quadrant Seal of Approval.

The result: We lost 10 years in which we could have been looking for ways to deal with the crisis.

It's a pity to see Malcolm Turnbull getting down to their [political spin doctors'] level with such misinformation . . .

But then, he's the Republican who once wrote of Howard: "Whatever else he achieves, history will remember him for only one thing. He was the prime minister who broke a nation's heart. He was the man who made Australia keep a foreign queen."

A politician, unlike a leopard, must change spots to survive in the jungle. But surely, one can stop short of telling porkies.

Sorry Malcolm, you've lost me. Once I thought you'd be a great prime minister.

Australians expect political confrontation to be full-on, with no punches pulled. But they also expect their politicians to tell the truth, and to be sure of their facts when they make serious allegations against opponents, and to have the decency to apologise if they're proven wrong.

Our Federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, did none of those things when he accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of lying to the House of Representatives, and in essence, also accused him of corruption.

That's why the public turned against him so dramatically in the three newspaper opinion polls published this week. The Herald/Nielsen poll revealed the proportion of Australians who disapprove of him had jumped from 47 per cent to 60 per cent, and those who approved dived from 43 per cent to 32 per cent.

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My apologies to readers who looked to Grumpy Old Journo last week for enlightenment on "UteGate", aka the OzCar affair. Two factors kept GOJ silent. First, anything I could say would do little more than repeat the news and commentary splashed across all the newspapers.

Second, I was frantically trying to file the past three years' overdue income tax returns by June 30, hoping to qualify for the Federal Government's $900 tax bonus. That money could pay off the credit card after I spend $645 on compulsory third-party personal injury insurance before re-registering my old motor cycle -- almost twice the cost of our car's "green slip".

In rushing to file those overdue returns, I wasn't alone, as this report shows.

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Rudd's countdown to November – if he decides to go that way

After a lot of shilly-shallying, Federal politics is entering a new period of tension – double dissolution or not? This video clip reports on the possibilities.

It's probably true that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would prefer to serve out his full first term to the end of next year, as he's said a number of times.

But it's also true that he has put his newly envigorated ministry and the Labor machine on notice to be ready from about November in case he calls an early election, as Phillip Coorey reports in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Despite his conservative preference for a full term, a double dissolution must be enormously tempting to Rudd for a reason seldom analysed by commentators – he would sweep away many of those troublesome senators.

At a normal three-yearly Federal election, all members of the lower house must step down. If they want to stay on, they must be re-elected. But senators are elected for six-year terms, and only half must seek re-election at each Federal election.

That why the Senate still contains so many Coalition members – two short of a majority – despite Rudd's convincing win over John Howard at the last elections.

However, after a double dissolution all members of both the Reps and the Senate must face the electors in fresh polls.

Of course, the numbers in a new Senate following a double dissolution cannot be certain, but it would be surprising if the Coalition did not fall sharply. In the current national mood, the Greens could lift numbers.

And Rudd would probably still face a number of loopy independents, such as Family First's Steve Fielding.

As Paul Kelly reported in The Australian last month, a double dissolution must be attractive to Rudd for many other reasons.

. . . his gains from a double dissolution are potentially immense and this is the key to future politics. A double dissolution gets Rudd to the polls before the worst of the downturn, possibly before the jobless rate reaches 8 per cent, maximises his House of Representatives vote, destroys the Coalition's gross over-representation in the Senate and constitutes the new upper house at once rather than on July1, 2011.

Taken together, such advantages pose a mortal threat to the Coalition parties. The paradox, of course, is that only the Coalition creates the conditions for a double dissolution. The test, therefore, for Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull is to persuade his party to avoid a double dissolution election and ensure a full term parliament.

Section 57 of the Australian Constitution says the Prime Minister may ask the Governor-General to dissolve both houses of parliament, the Representatives and the Senate, if:

• The Senate rejects or fails to pass, or passes with amendments which the Reps will not accept, any legislation sent to it by the Reps – which means the Australian Government, with its majority in the Reps.
• At least three months pass, and the Reps again passes the legislation and sends it to the Senate, which again rejects it.

That's when Rudd may make an appointment to see the Governor-General. From the time the G-G dissolves both houses, the Australian Electoral Commission timetable allows between 33 and 68 days till the nation goes to the polls.

See why Rudd wants the troops ready before November?

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Federal politics, media beatups, and other circus acts

Merry picked it straight off. "That picture's been posed". I lean over the breakfast table. "Well, of course it's been posed" – I peer at the tiny credit line in The Australian – "and photographer David Crosling has done it quite nicely."

"No, not that. It's that they're not really bowling. Where's the mat?"

She's right, you know. But I hadn't spotted it because I was still bemused by a story about Matt. Or more specifically, by the third par of this story about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's finding the time to launch an anthology of the late Matt Price's satirical political columns from The Australian.

Just in case you can't read the adjacent image, here what the third par said:

By attending the launch, Mr Rudd showed his affection for Price and The Australian despite the furore over reporting of details of his recent telephone conversation with US President George W. Bush.

". . . affection for . . . The Australian . . . " An interesting choice of word, affection. Is it some sort of coded message?

It's hard to believe the paragraph would have run without the approval of the Oz's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell. Had Mitchell gone further, and "suggested" reporter Nicola Berkovic note Rudd's "affection" for his newspaper?

Unless you've been switched off for the past few weeks, you'll know "the furore" followed a report in The Australian four weeks ago which said Rudd had spoken by phone to soon-to-be-ex-President George W. Bush. Rudd had suggested a proposal for the G20 meeting, and Bush had asked, "What's that?"

What an opportunity! Malcolm Turnbull, exercising the prerogative of the opposition leader through the ages, went for the throat. An insult to our great friend. Putting the US alliance at risk. World leaders will never speak to Rudd again. Diplomatic blunder.

Okay, so your grumpy old blogger has taken some liberties here, and he certainly doesn't suggest Turnbull is a harlot. The phrase – "power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages" – was uttered by British Tory leader Stanley Baldwin, and back in 1931 he was speaking of Fleet Street newspaper proprietors, Lord Beaverbrook in particular. It's said Rudyard Kipling suggested the phrase to Baldwin, his cousin.

And for opposition leaders today, a more apt phrase might be impotence without responsibility. They can jeer, they can pontificate, they can offer bipartisan support – but the skilled media advisers in prime ministerial and state premiers' offices will plot to keep them on the sidelines and irrelevant.

Still, it was great while it lasted. When Rudd retorted that Turnbull should apologise for John Howard's remark that Osama bin Laden would be praying for a victory for Barack Obama, Turnbull seized the opportunity to distance himself from the former prime minister (read on for a little more on that theme).

Turnbull came close to disaster, however, when Family First Senator Steve Fielding said he would move for a Senate inquiry. What a dilemma for Turnbull! If his senators voted against an inquiry, he'd lose credibility. But if they set one up, look at the problems he would face:

• The Senate committee of inquiry could not compel Rudd or his staff to give evidence.
• Surely it would have to call Chris Mitchell, one of the guests at the dinner party in Kirribilli House in Sydney when Rudd spoke with Bush – and if Mitchell knew the source of the "leak" to his reporter, as one would expect, professional ethics would oblige him to refuse to answer. What then? Would the Liberal senators vote to throw the editor-in-chief of The Australian into jail?
• If the senators baulked at jailing Mitchell, how could they require other witnesses to answer?
• On top of that, could Turnbull rein in his more rabid senators – especially as they're from the hard right and don't want him as Opposition Leader anyway. It may be okay to call the Secretary of the Treasury, Dr Ken Henry, a liar. But to do it to the editor-in-chief of The Australian? Unthinkable.

Turnbull was lucky the Green senators refused to support an inquiry. When ABC radio's AM show reported their decision, it said the Greens had thrown Rudd a lifetime. But when you think about it, it must be Turnbull who was glad to receive the lifeline.

At this time, Turnbull seems to be ready to further dissociate himself from John Howard. I've already noted his repudiating Howard's criticism of Barack Obama.

Journalist and political commentator Christian Kerr wrote in The Australian on Friday that "this week Malcolm Turnbull irrevocably started to remake the Liberal Party in his own image."

Turnbull is thinking the same way [as Obama], Kerr wrote. Kerr quoted Turnbull's words and made a telling comment:

"There is no person who can look into the mirror and say 'That is an Australian face' or 'That is an American face'. The United States is a nation of choice, a nation of immigration – just as our nation is. It is in diversity that we find our strength."

You couldn't get much further from John Howard and the white picket fence.

Curiouser and curiouser. This note has been added to GOJ after reading the second editorial in The Weekend Australian , "Digging Up Old News", and subtitled "Media obsession with a mythical dinner party is peculiar".

First, your grumpy old blogger must acknowledge Chris Mitchell's insistence – one assumes he wrote or guided the editorial – that the Kirribilli guests were not at a dinner party. Kevin Rudd was entertaining guests (including Mitchell) in the lounge room, and Rudd was still in the dinner suit he had worn to a business dinner in the city. So we'll get that correction out of the way.

Beyond that, the editorial has one puzzling sub-text overlaid on another and then over another and another. If anyone can understand what it all means, please post a comment to GOJ.

Perhaps it explains Rudd's "affection" for The Australian, like, thanks for not dobbing me in.

In any event, did Chris Mitchell believe the conversation at Kirribilli House came under the Chatham House rule? As the Chatham House website explains (insisting there is only one rule, not rules as commonly written):

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

It's an interesting speculation. When Rudd joined his guests in the lounge room after talking with Bush, did he say Bush had asked "what's that" about the G20? Was it a serious comment (which would confirm most people's belief that the current Leader of the Free World is a simpleton). Or was the comment just some light-hearted banter?

And did Mitchell arrange to steer the story's author, chief political correspondent Matthew Franklin, in the right direction, making sure his newspaper got a great story while he complied with the Chatham House Rule?

Another note, added after reading commentary by political editor Dennis Shanahan in the Weekend Australian's Inquirer section. As Shanahan wrote:

. . . reporting on a political story that involves your boss, your colleague, the Prime Minister, the US President, the press gallery, the Opposition Leader, the Senate and the Australian Federal
Police can be a daunting task . . .

Undaunted, however, Shanahan presses on to deliver his trademark blend of well-informed conservative sources and visceral disdain for non-conservative views.

Rudd has said, and the White House backed him up, that Bush did not make the comment. One assumes that Mitchell, who was present but is not commenting, believes Rudd did make the comment to the guests in his lounge room. If everyone involved is to be trusted, it means Bush did not make the "what's that" comment, and Rudd spoke in jest.

It's all been a great circus act, but like all entertaining acts, there comes a time to wind it up.

Labor supporters cheer Bronwyn's return

Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Bronwyn Bishop?
Answer: Because it saves time

Well, blow me down and lock up the kerosene. Bronwyn's back, and in a shadow portfolio concerning the welfare of generally older people, Veterans Affairs.

I'm pretty sure the quip above came from then-Senator Gareth Evans, although a web search gives a few other, and probably incorrect, attributions -- just one of those problems you face when you seek information on the internet.

As a bit of a leftie, I should be rejoicing. Now I know there's little chance the Coalition will regain government in three years, and unless he stuffs up big-time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should last at least three terms while the Libs thrash about like a dying dinosaur in quicksand.

But as I've written to friends since Rudd's November 24 victory, I'm not rejoicing. Our system of parliamentary democracy requires a strong and credible Opposition. The Libs are going the wrong way.

This grumpy old fella probably won't be around to see it, but he can predict a time when Australian politics will be a tussle between the Labor Conservative Party (preferably without the compassion bypass one now needs to be a Lib) and the Greens on the progressive side.

Listening to politicians for 90 minutes is a bit numbing, but someone has to do it . . .

Kevin Rudd clearly won last night's debate with Prime Minister John Howard. Does it matter?

For Rudd, certainly. A flat performance, or an unwise answer, would have left the Labor Opposition Leader on the back foot right up to the November 24 election.

On Channel Nine – which broadcast the debate with a "worm", defying the PM ("I will decide the manner in which we debate") – a panel of uncommitted voters gave the nod to Rudd at 65 per cent, with only 29 per cent giving it to Howard.

The journalists who put questions to the two leaders also awarded the debate to Rudd, even the moderator, David Speers of Sky News, although he did so with a smaller margin.

And as the ninety-minute debate neared an end, Rudd's body language changed. He knew he'd won. At the same time, Howard's body language suggested he knew he'd been bested.

However, we should remind ourselves that three years ago Mark Latham won a similar debate with Howard, but by the time the election came around Howard had destroyed him (or did Latham destroy himself?).

And let's lay off the "old and tired" description of Howard. After all, your Grumpy Old Journo is almost the same age as the PM. And he would run out of puff trying to keep up with Howard's morning power-walk.

I'm still trying to be fair, and to overcome what may be bias, but to me it seems that Howard's problem in such a debate is his stubbornness. Liberal Party people admire that as a commendable determination, but I see an intellectual rigidity, if intellectual is the right word.

That leaves him unable to think fast on his feet, to keep up with the cut and thrust of a debate which departs from the script or the answers he has rehearsed.

In addition – and this is not a comment critical of Howard – he is handicapped by poor hearing. His rigid and somewhat awkward stance does not necessarily indicate that he has been caught off balance by the argument. Sometimes he may be straining to hear.

Howard also stumbled on industrial relations. He was well rehearsed with assurances that the Coalition, if re-elected, would make no further changes. The IR laws were now just about right.

But, strangely, he appeared unprepared when the questioner followed up: Why should we believe you? After all, you're the one who who kept your industrial relations plans secret until after the election which gave you control of the Senate.

And Howard must have been relieved he was not grilled about his backflip after his shock discovery that WorkChoices was unfair, leading him to reintroduce the no-disadvantage test he had been so determined to discard.

Although both sides argued economic credentials, the debate was unconvincing. At the political level, economic debate has long corrupted into sloganeering, and last night was no different.

On economic reform, Howard stuck to his previous main claim for credit – he had always supported the reforms brought about by Hawke and Keating – and he was unable to put his hand up for much else.

Rudd got off lightly, with little interrogation about his "me-tooism" as he tried to make himself a smaller target for the Liberal Party. Would he reveal more progressive policies if he made it over the line?

For those rusted on to the Liberal Party, Rudd's arguments last night would have lacked substance. Although Rudd spoke with assurance and vigour, he probably made Howard supporters see him as a snake oil salesman.

Now, how many weeks until November 24?

Oh dear, I've uttered a swear word at a Greens Party meeting

A bit over a week ago, I found myself at a Greens Party meeting. And I uttered an obscene word: Realpolitik.

Despite his leftish views, this blogger doesn't usually attend Greens meetings, any more than he joins mobs marching down streets chanting “Waddawe want?” Nice people, and history will show many of their environmental and social justice concerns to have been well founded, but their absolute, unquestioning faith in their credo can be unsettling.

As is their general impotence at advancing their policies in the mainstream of Australian politics.

The invitation had come via our reconciliation group, and it seemed to be for a community meeting to discuss Kevin Andrews's slashing of Australia's intake of Sudanese refugees.

The Immigration Minister's decision disturbed me, especially after he made it clear he had no more than anecdotal evidence about the refugees' propensity to crime and failure to assimilate.

Hullo, I thought, John Howard's playing the xenophobia card but he's getting Andrews to do the deed. Now I think it was all Andrews's work – he's that type of guy.

Anyhow, I'm at what proved to be a Greens meeting and I'm hearing some pretty heavy criticism of Kevin Rudd. It's understandable. The Opposition Leader has repudiated – or failed to endorse – nearly everything dear to the Greens' hearts.

The room is full of good vibes. These few decent, caring people are doing their bit for a better Australia. But there's also a feeling that some would now find it impossible to give Rudd their vote.

Then I pipe up, and utter what, to Greens at least, must be an obscene word. Realpolitik (look it up here, if you wish, or at more length in Wikipedia). I point out that Rudd is tip-toeing through minefields set by one of the most astute and ruthless politicians in our history.

If he speaks out against the way Howard and Mal Brough are going about their “national emergency” intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, Howard and Brough (and Costello and Abbott and Hockey, and all the rest of them) will howl: “See, he doen't care about the sexual abuse of children.”

If he speaks out against the Gunns mill, he risks a repeat of that astonishing scene three years ago when members of Australia's most bloody-minded union packed a Launceston hall and cheered Howard.

I also point out to all these nice people that if the coming election returns the Howard government, the Prime Minister will take it as an endorsement of all his policies – including the slashing of our intake of African immigration. And the only way to stop that is to elect a Rudd Labor government.

Don't believe the polls, I say. This election is going to be much closer than you think. Rudd will have a hard task winning the necessary 16 extra seats.

The Greens' best chance of more political influence is to increase representation in the Senate, where Labor, even if wins in the House of Representatives and forms government, is unlikely to obtain a clear majority. Labor then will have to woo minority parties like the Greens more assiduously than ever.

But whatever you do, give your preferences to Labor.

Well, I've said it. But I think some of these people have cooled towards me. I've marked myself as an outsider, perhaps even a Labor Party plant, although one pleasant young woman chats with me as I walk back to my motor cycle and pull on my jacket.

A day or two later, I feel vindicated when I see the response to Rob McClelland's statement that a Labor government would campaign globally against the death penalty, even for the Bali bombers. Howard and Costello went on the attack immediately.

They say you need a touch of the mongrel to succeed in Australian politics. Rudd has it in spades. He slammed down his shadow foreign minister, even though McClelland only stated Labor policy, and also blamed the unnamed staffers who had cleared the speech. Now that's realpolitik.

The issue of the death penalty troubles me. My opposition is akin to religious belief, but I can't explain why. I even acknowledge that if you offered suicide pills to prisoners in Asian jails – and even to those in the Goulburn Supermax – more than a few would take them.

I had assumed that most Australians shared my belief. But at a meeting of a retired professional and business men's club the other day, the speaker (a retired detective inspector) said he supported the death penalty, and a murmur of approval went around the room.

Of course, one could say: "Only for the most serious crimes." It's hard to argue on behalf of mass murderers, especially when they're Asian Muslim jihadists and you're talking to Australians.

But to me, this is an issue on which you can't be half-pregnant. Let's be blunt about it. Howard and Costello support the death penalty. And now Rudd too?

--ooOOoo--

Note added 18 October: Yesterday at the National Press Club in Canberra, Greens Leader Bob Brown urged voters to vote first for Greens, but to make their preference votes count. Later, on the ABC's 7.30 Report, he answered questions from Kerry O'Brien.

He said a vote for the Greens offered double value – "you send a message to the next government that you prefer the Greens' strong social and environmental policies, and if the Greens is not elected, then that vote goes over as a whole vote to the next party of your choice. It's double value voting."

Kerry had to drag it out of him, but he managed to get Senator Brown to say:

It's time for Australia to have fresh blood, to have new ideas, to come into the 21st century. John Howard can't do that.

Let's hope Kevin Rudd, who says he's a conservative and therefore will need the Greens in there to make his policies on a whole range of social and environmental issues more progressive [there's something missing from that sentence, but that's the online transcript].

Let's hope, though, we do get a change of Government. That's what democracy's about and it will be good for this country.

Don't shout it from the rooftops – but I might just do as Brown suggests. Vote Greens (1) and then give my prefs to Labor. Try to get Rudd in as PM, with a message that many Australians want a more progressive agenda than he has enunciated, and hope to give the Greens (or the Democrats, God bless 'em) a little more clout in the Senate.

And a second note added on 18 October: You may enjoy Emma Tom's The Wry Side column in this morning's Australian. She makes the same points about capital punishment – including the half-pregnant line – as I have, but she's much more fun to read. [My BigPond connection is creaking along so slowly, I can't get up a web address to give you a link.]

A great night out with Col Allan – what a pity Kevin can't remember much

Somebody should have warned Kevin Rudd about Col Allan.

Col, the boy from Dubbo who became editor-in-chief of Rupert Murdoch's Sydney Daily Telegraph and then went on to edit Rupert's New York Post, is both a hard-living and a brilliant journalist in a tradition which still lingers in the Sydney newspaper world.

So Kevin Rudd went to dinner with Col and ended up in a New York strip bar, too legless to remember anything later. Yeah, someone should have warned him.

As journalist Phillip Coorey recalled in The Sydney Morning Herald this morning, a night out with Col Allan always involved drinking your own body weight in alcohol.

Coorey also described Col as generous, going out of his way to show the younger journalist around the “upper and sometimes strange echelons of the city which were usually off-limits to those of us on the lower rungs”.

I also remember Col's generosity. He gave me a softer landing than I deserved when I stuffed up, failing to spot an error when I recast a wire story about News Corporation and credited Rupert with one more son than he actually had. I had some excuse, but I won't bore you with that.

Next day, there's an envelope on my desk – and in it, a fierce, blistering, uncompromising missive from Col, demanding a written explanation, immediately.

I was in trouble. Would I be fed to the ladies in Human Remains for their morning snack? Or, if the Murdochs felt merciful, spend the rest of my career sub-editing weather reports?

Instead of a written report – what could I say, really? – I walked into Col's office, sat in a chair and spread my arms. I'm in despair and I'll cop whatever you decide.

Col began reading a stern reprimand, but as he went on his tone softened and the warning became more like friendly advice. I guess he was able to report to Lachlan – if, indeed, one of Rupert's sons was taking an interest – that he'd handled the matter with severity.

Thanks Col. You may be a larrikin, but you're a gentleman larrikin.

With his back to the wall, our Prime Minister discovers fairness!

In Parliament last night (May 28), Prime Minister Howard goes on the attack against Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd (inset). At the same time, the latest Newspoll showed Rudd gaining ground. Daily Telegraph images

A longish post this time. Industrial relations. It's the issue that won't go away, and perhaps even more than climate change or the abandonment of an Australian citizen in a US hellhole, it's one which is likely to topple the Howard government.

Not that I'd write Prime Minister John Howard off. There's still the chance another Tampa will sail over the horizon, or Pauline Hanson's laughable new party may just take off and deliver votes to Howard again. Or, on the other side, some wild union claims may derail Kevin Rudd's economic cred.

But in Laurie Oakes words, concluding his column in the current Bulletin (dated May 29, the last day it's on sale), “Faith in Howard's ability to perform yet another Houdini act is starting to wane.”

Here's what Oakes said on WorkChoices:

“Howard claims it was never the government's intention that penalty rates and overtime should be traded off without adequate compensation. But if that is the case, why was a safety net not included in the original legislation?

“There were, after all, plenty of warnings about what would happen. Howard ignored them, and the government is paying the political price for his stubbornness.”

Oakes also warns Howard about attacking the Labor Party's opposition to Australian Workplace Agreements in an attempt to undermine Rudd's economic credibility.

“Every time Howard or Costello deploys that argument, it draws more attention to industrial relations changes that were introduced with no electoral mandate and which, according to every opinion poll, are overwhelmingly on the nose.

“The story might be different if Howard and Co. had put forward a seriously argued economic case in support of WorkChoices when the changes were first proposed. But – arrogant at suddenly
finding themselves with a Senate majority they had not expected – they did not bother to prepare the ground properly.”

Blame it on the union:

Perhaps Joann and Don Doolan should complain to their union. The owners of the Lilac City Motor Inn in the NSW regional city of Goulburn have been to hell and back since Labor's deputy leader Julia Gillard waved around in parliament a copy of the AWA they'd required their 15 staff to sign.

As Ms Gillard said, the AWA allowed the Doolans [whom she did not name] to pay the minimum wage of $13.47 an hour with no penalty rates, no overtime, no leave loading – none of the allowances which traditionally formed part of the pay of workers in the industry.

The Doolans received hate emails from as far away as Norway.

Yet it turns out the Doolans are good employers, paying staff above the $13.47 an hour in the AWAs they required employees to sign.

Where they went wrong is they took the advice of their union – the Hotels, Motels and Accommodation Association – which drew up the AWA and rushed it in before Howard's “fairness test” came into effect on May 7.

Okay, so the HMAA is an employers association. But is there an essential difference between a bosses' union and an employees' union, apart from their being on opposite sides of the fence?

Well, there is one difference – John Howard is dedicated to the destruction of one type while encouraging the other to make employers more powerful, and even paying some of them to help implement WorkChoices.

Closer to home:

A member of my family thought he was negotiating on good terms with his employer, a decent fellow who treated his staff well. But when the employer presented the agreement to him, it contained a provision that for every day that wet weather stopped work on contract sites, a day could be deducted from his annual leave.

This employee has a family. Annual leave means something to him. The result – the family member approached another employer, and after a fright when he learned of a no-poaching agreement (is that legal, Mr Howard?), managed to move across to a more challenging and better-paid position.

A few years ago, I'd vetted an individual contract offered by the first employer – back before John Howard shafted the “no disadvantage” test – and noted a line at the bottom that copyright in the form was held by the industry employers association.

The bosses' union, in other words, had drawn up the contract and sent it out to all its members to be imposed on their employees without individual negotiation.

As with the Doolans, a decent employer – who normally found work around the yard for his employees on wet days – was persuaded by his union to offer an AWA which allowed him to screw his workers. Yet it's likely he had no intention of doing so.

Once I was naive:

Years ago, Richard Court, then Liberal premier of Western Australia, required all state public servants to sign individual contracts. At the time, my brother was head of a major department and had the job of carrying out the instruction.

Truly naive, I remarked to him that I would appreciate the opportunity to negotiate individually with my employer.

My brother set me right. There were no individual negotiations. Staff came in one by one and were presented with the contract they were required to sign.

The Court experience was a foretaste of what was to come under Howard. With the ability to screw down the cleaners who wielded the mops, some WA cleaning contractors began to undercut the quotes of those employers who treated their staff fairly. The decent contractors had no choice but to follow.

Would the Doolans have found themselves in the same position, trying to compete with other motels which cut their tariffs after slashing their workers' pay and conditions in accord with the AWAs devised by the motel owners' union?

I've said before that good employers don't need AWAs, and bad employers don't deserve them. You may now see what I meant.

What is fairness?

So John Howard sees the need to legislate for fairness in employment contracts, where once he did not. It would be nice to believe he experienced a road-to-Damascus conversion.

It would be nice to believe in fairies, too.

Newspoll this morning (May 29) shows a further lift for Rudd. The electorate has come to see Howard as mean, tricky and arrogant. Has anything changed with his backflip on fairness? Yeah, facing electoral annihilation – his word – our Prime Minister is less arrogant. Still mean and tricky? The public seem to have made up their minds.

And we're still waiting to see just what fairness is, although we learned last night the Federal government would allocate almost 600 bureaucrats and a $370 million budget to check all AWAs for whatever it is to be.

It seems the fairness test will exempt employers experiencing financial difficulty. Perhaps most staff would support a good boss in such a position, as well as try to save their jobs. But if so, it's essential our insolvency laws are changed to give wages, leave and superannuation benefits owed to staff absolute priority over all other creditors if the employer goes under.

Fairness should also extend to rostering. Lower paid employees often depend on second jobs to achieve a decent living standard, and they need predictable rosters to manage them.

And what about Therese Rein?

So far, most of the politicians have been walking on eggshells with the issue of the multi-million dollar employment business built up independently by Kevin Rudd's wife, Therese Rein. Most people, even Howard's supporters, would admire her achievement and approve of Rudd's support for her as an independent businesswoman.

She should not have to sell her Australian operations to allow Rudd to seek the prime ministership. Although the practical difficulties of not doing so are formidable (the Australian government is overwhelmingly her major client), we should work on ways Therese Rein or anyone else in her position could continue their independent careers.

Rudd went pretty close to the wind when he referred to middle-aged men whose wives were appendages, and his insistence that he was not referring to John and Janette seemed unconvincing. Recall that John Howard has said publicly he doesn't have a partner, he has a wife, as discussed in a post further down in this blog (to read it, go to bottom of this page and click the Older Posts link, then scroll down).

One of Howard's junior ministers seemed to boast that his wife had given up a professional career so he could advance his political career.

But when it turned out all of Rein's employees are on individual contracts, it was too hard to resist and Howard took the risk and went on the attack last night.

However, it seems Rein's employees are on individual common-law contracts, not AWAs. And Labor policy, at least as offered to the mining industry, seems willing to accept common-law contracts to achieve more flexible workplace practices. It's the mining companies which claim common-law contracts are too cumbersome. Rein appears to prove them wrong.

Of course, AWAs with a fairness test for employees earning less than $75,000 base wages – which would cover 90 per cent of Australian workers – may prove superior to common-law contracts. Without the fairness test they were cruelly weighted against lower paid employees.

If mudslinging is such a failure, why is NSW Labor still flinging dirt around?

Should we be surprised that the Federal Labor Party, and its leader Kevin Rudd, are performing so well in the polls despite a week in which Prime Minister John Howard and his senior ministers have flung so much mud at them -- perhaps more than we've seen in any campaign this nation has known, even in the bitter conscription debates of the First World War?

As we know from the reputable ACNielsen poll published in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Rudd and the Labor Party now have the highest approval ratings ever of any Opposition coming into an election. It supports The Australian's Newspoll a week ago, but suggests support for the Labor Party and Rudd is accelerating.

Read the SMH report here.

The poll showing Labor has 61 per cent of the preferred two party vote, against the Liberal-Nationals Coalition's 39 per cent, and Rudd's 53 per cent as preferred Prime Minister to incumbent John Howard's 39 per cent, startled even me.

But I'm not sure that I agree that the public have rejected mud-slinging, as much of this morning's commentary suggested. I think that after more than 10 years in office, the Howard government is suffering from an "It's Time" feeling against it. And I think Howard will claw back at least some ground when he switches his campaign to economic credibility.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that in New South Wales the Labor Party backroom heavies have no compunction about running the most brutally abusive, mud-slinging campaign against Opposition Leader Peter Whatzisname I have ever seen.

It's disgraceful, and I mean that word. Journalists with access to Peter Debnam suggest he is shaken by the vehemence of these attacks, and is depressed about his failure to make inroads against Labor. In that case, one must admire the gutsiness of his fight to the finish for the election on March 24.

So where did the NSW Labor heavies find the model for this vicious television advertising? The answer: They copied the Coalition's ads attacking former Oppositon Leader Mark Latham in the 2004 Federal election, wiped out the name Latham, and inserted Peter Debnam's name in its place.

The story is confirmed by a report in the Australian.

So one might suggest, in the old phrase, the Libs have been hoist on their own petard (that is, blown up by their own bomb -- a petard was an explosive device used to blow in a city wall or a castle gate).

Okay, okay, I do have something to say about Kevin Rudd and Brian Burke

Why hadn't I commented on the political row over Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's meetings with disgraced West Australian lobbyist and ex-Premier Brian Burke?

A couple of the guys at our Probus meeting yesterday asked me just that question, and I wasn't sure of the answers. One might be that last weekend the story was developing so fast, I couldn't keep up. Another is that I felt unable to compete with the excellent newspaper commentary.

Also, I'm trying to focus more on the positive, and there was nothing positive about the mud-slinging of Coalition members as they saw their first opportunity to wing “Saint Kevin.”

I came close to posting some opinion on day one. On the TV, I had watched Peter Costello in full flight, jeering, hooting, smirking, mimicking, sardonic and abusive, as he drove home the attack in the House of Reps. A superb parliamentary performance.

But I wonder if there's a disconnect between most Australians and the antics of their representatives in the Parliament. Do ordinary Aussies really admire Costello's histrionics, or – whether they're Liberal voters or not – do they join in a widespread opinion that all politicians are clowns?

Labor's Deputy Leader Julia Gillard can dish out the scorn too, but she falls well short of “doing a Costello” on the floor of the House. Is that just leftie bias on my part?

But in addition to the clownish antics, Costello also kicked a foolish own goal which blunted Prime Minister John Howard's attack.

The PM can present a sincere gravitas, whether he's explaining that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction make it essential we invade Iraq, or that throwing children overboard made a boatload of refugees too despicable to be given haven.

In his best “we will decide” voice, he drove home a relentless attack on Rudd's explanation of his attending three meetings hosted by Burke. He was doing well, targeting Rudd's claimed inability to remember much of what happened at those meetings.

But then Costello's ill-considered and over-the-top comments tripped him up. From the dispatch box, Costello had declared: “Anyone who deals with Mr Brian Burke is morally and politically compromised.”

Um, yes. Someone tipped off The Weekend Australian that Coalition minister Ian Campbell had attended a 20-minute meeting hosted by Burke, and Campbell conceded it was true. Campbell offered his resignation from Cabinet, and Howard accepted.

Few would say his meeting with Burke was a sacking offence. It was short. Initially it had been called by Burke's partner Julian Grill – who, unlike Burke, is not a “convicted felon” – and it was on a matter of relevance to Campbell's portfolio.

Campbell appeared to show no bitterness at his sacking (okay, resignation), fuelling the widespread belief he'd be back in the Cabinet if Howard won the next election. They say there's no deal, but in these things a wink is as good as a nod.

As an ABC commentator said, Howard had to sacrifice Campbell so he could jump the corpse and continue his attack on Rudd.

But on Monday, The Australian returned with the suggestion that if mining entrepreneur Andrew Forrest – one of Burke's major clients – was so morally and politically compromised, why was he still dining with John Howard on his visits to Canberra?

Oops! By Wednesday, The Australian was able to report: “John Howard has qualified his Government's condemnation of people associating with Brian Burke, defending business figures for hiring the disgraced lobbyist.”

What else could he do? Burke's client list is almost a who's who of West Australian business. And many of them Liberal Party supporters.

To be fair, Burke delivered for his clients. Were they aware of his unscrupulous methods? We should give them the benefit of the doubt.

So where does all that leave us? It may not seem much, but I think Rudd has come through maintaining a quiet dignity. The Liberal-leaning commentator Gerard Henderson believes he will benefit because “Saint Kevin's” halo has been knocked off, and people will accept him better.

I think, however, that Howard has damaged him, although it's debatable whether that will still be so by election time in October or November.

I'm no fan of Costello. As an Australian Treasurer, he's a great union-busting barrister. Dollar Sweets, and all that.

He presents as a buffoon, and I think history will rank him as Australia's most mediocre Treasurer since one John Howard served in that role in the Fraser ministry (we'll go back no further, lest we remember Frank Crean. And was Jim Cairns really Treasurer for a while?) .

By most expectations, Costello will step up as Prime Minister in 2008 or 2009 if Howard wins this year's election. I have my doubts. Costello has shown himself more than somewhat inept in the past week, and Howard has promised to remain as long as the party wants him.

I think the party will want Howard to stay at least until someone better comes along. Howard may even believe he could go another seven years, to top Menzies as Australia's longest serving Prime Minister (La Trobe University professor of politics Judith Brett canvasses the issue in the March edition of The Monthly).

But I believe Howard's retirement is less likely to be delayed till he tops Menzies' record, than until there's a strong successor. It shouldn't be Costello, it mustn't be Tony Abbott, who contemplates intellectual debate by lacing on a bigger pair of Doc Martens boots, and Brendan Nelson would be laughable.

Really, that leaves Malcolm Turnbull, the guy who once said Howard broke a nation's heart when he made sure we retained a foreigner as our head of state. There's a long rapprochement ahead of them, but I think Howard will step down only when he – and the Liberal Party heavies – believe he has a worthy successor. And I think it will be Turnbull.