Small election in Australia, not many interested

Too disgusted to fill in the footnote, or the period on para. 2?

I reckon it was Joh for PM. Abbott might be an ideologue, but he’s not a corrupt police statist.

What? You’re voting Libs? Why?

The politics of almost all “Western” countries seem to be pretty depressing at the moment. I wish the general air of malaise and drift didn’t remind me quite so much of the failures of democracy in the 1920s and early 30s.

Seriously, the Liberals are your lowest preference? You’d prefer One Nation and Family First?

Myles is on the money.

Labor had a legislative strategy for passing the ETS but their political strategy revolved around wedging the Liberals and little else – they didn’t explain the issue or the merits of their specific policy to the public in any depth. This meant that when their legislative pathway collapsed, co-inciding with the stalemate at Copenhagen and climategate the deniers had a field day while Labor didn’t have the confidence in their own messaging to take the ETS to an early election.

This meant that when their legislative pathway collapsed, co-inciding with the stalemate at Copenhagen and climategate the deniers had a field day while Labor didn’t have the confidence in their own messaging to take the ETS to an early election.

Also, I can’t understand for the life of me why so many people were shocked that Copenhagen turned out to be a disaster. Of course Senor Hugo Chavez would commandeer and hijack the whole thing and try to piss off everybody in the West and turn it into a shit-show as much as possible. That’s what he does and that’s what he is. The country he runs also happens to be an oil producer.

How on earth does any sort of half-competent diplomat not foresee the Group of 77 or whatever sad joke that was designed to shut down the conference and prevent any substantive agreement, and forestall it before it got off the ground? This was so blatantly obvious it makes me wonder if everybody had on beer goggles at Copenhagen.

Myles SG, phrases like “party-machine mediocrity” are both sexist and completely ignorant of how the ALP works. Hawke was also a “party-machine” man, was he a mediocrity too?

I am not aware of either “party-machine” or “mediocrity” being words either suggesting or applying exclusively to one gender.

You are operating out of the febrile and ridiculous reaches of your imagination. Were Gillard a man and I would be equally, and no more and no less, contemptuous of him/her.

I do not take my words back, not a little bit.

I didn’t ask you to take your words back. Heaven forbid! But I note you didn’t answer my point about Hawke… and oh, look! It was Hawke introducing her at the launch.

But I suppose that makes him a party-machine mediocrity… wait a minute, that doesn’t work…

Ah, but I see, you have retracted your (puzzling, and amusing) charge of sexism!

In any case, one can be from the party-machine and not be a mediocrity. Or one can be a mediocrity an not be from the party machine. Think of it as a Venn diagram, where one circle is “Party-Machine”, the other circle if “Mediocrities”, and the area where they intersect in the middle is “Party-machine mediocrity.”

Party-machine mediocrity is a type of mediocrity. “Party-machine” works, if you would pardon my killjoy grammatical didacticism, as a modifier, modifying the object in question, which is “mediocrity”. I could easily use another modifier, say, entitled mediocrity, or privileged mediocrity, and unless you wish to be perfectly consistent you would not accuse me of confusing all mediocrities with privilege and entitlement.

Oh, and just for an extra dose of hilarity, check this out: “and oh, look! It was Hawke introducing her at the launch.”

Ah, argument from authority. The best! He introduced her! With his own words! Ipse dixit!

Look on the bright side. Andrew Leigh will probably get in for Labor (one of the Canberra, or at least Federal District (umm, not all that sure about that bit of Oz politics) seats).

Not that his priors are quite my cup of tea but having someone who truly does understand economics (and in at least some of his papers is willing to follow the economics where it leads, even if he finds it politically unpalatable) will be an addition to the governance of the nation, won’t it?

Surprising that John missed out the spectacle of billionaire mine-owners protesting in the streets over the surtax on their profits, and threatening to shut down the mines and bugger off overseas. That was the proximate cause for Rudd’s knifing, not the ETS.

Myles is right about Labor’s overplayed hand following the election of Tony Abbott. If you’re making noises about a double dissolution, then you also need ruthless bastard lessons from Paul Keating.

Gillard isn’t inspiring at all, but judging from the polls, she’s going to save Labor by shoring up the vote in Victoria while getting squeezed in NSW/QLD. It’s a Barassi Line election.

If you’re making noises about a double dissolution, then you also need ruthless bastard lessons from Paul Keating.

Also that a double dissolution for political strategic reasons is, frankly, constitutionally reckless. If I remember my Australian history correctly, the election following Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam resulted in the most spectacular defeat for Labor ever.

Honestly, never mind the fact that Oz Labor seems to have a historical pattern of being disturbing lackadaisical about constitutional restraint, they actually never seem to learn.

Here in the US, some people are trying to sell us your preferential system (under the name “instant runoff voting”)as the magic elixir that will fix our electoral system, pointing to how well it’s “worked” in Australia.

Clearly, the truth is quite different.

I’ll just make one comment, to Factory:

Take a leaf from the Canadian experience in the last decade. Ideologue nutjobs are far more dangerous to both you personally (in terms of your civil liberties) than corrupt statists. Besides, there’s no reason why one can’t simultaneously be the other.

As far as I understand it, had labor held a double dissolution over the ETS or the mining tax it might well have weakened their hand in the senate, rather than strengthened it (due to reduced thresholds); so it’s not so much a question of “ruthless bastard” in this case.

It certainly seems like Rudd wasn’t ruthless enough with the liberals, but I don’t think MylseSG’s interpretation of what happened over the ETS is right. They wanted the ETS to pass without dealing with the greens, so they cut a deal with the liberals; certainly they would have hoped that any deal they did cut would marginalise the climate nay-sayers in the liberal camp; but I don’t think that means they intended to pass the ETS and use it to destroy the libs.

I think their big miscalculation was that they underestimated just how many climate nay-sayers there were, which then left them with the choice of dealing with the Greens or dropping the ETS until after an election – and that’s when their popularity took a nosedive.

What stuns me is the degree of left-wing anger directed at Julia Gillard after she replaced Rudd. It was hard and cold, but this in the ALP par for the course.

MylesSG, “machine man” may be a modifier, but it’s a meaningless modifier when put in front of anything except “mediocrity.” You wouldn’t call Hawke a “machine man genius” would you? The phrase is meant to convey a sense of Gillard as a weak puppet. I think that language (and the general anger at her “betrayal”) is drawing on a deep and sexist well-spring. Particularly since there have been more than a few rumours going around that things weren’t all okay management-wise within Rudd’s world.

Particularly since there have been more than a few rumours going around that things weren’t all okay management-wise within Rudd’s world.

We are supposed to decides who’s right and wrong base on “more than a few rumours,” but we can’t call people you presume virtuous “party-machine mediocrity” when “party-machine mediocrity” seems a heck lot more supported by objective facts than whatever your were trying to demonstrate via “more than a few rumours?”

Dude, WTF? Is there an Oz version of IOKIYAR, for Labor, or something? Because I mean, dude…WTF?

Is calling Martha Coackley “incompetent hack” sexist as well? Your argument is ludicrous and fantastical.

It was the Coalition in 1975 that disregarded constitutional restraint – “lackadaisical” seems a curiously mild expression for what happened!

From Wikipedia: “In April 1974, faced with attempts by the Opposition to obstruct supply (that is, appropriation bills) in the Senate, Whitlam obtained the concurrence of the Governor-General, Sir Paul Hasluck to a double dissolution.[13] Labor was returned at the election on 18 May with a reduced House majority of five seats. The Coalition and Labor each had 29 Senate seats, with the balance of power held by two independents.[14]”

(Senate, post-double dissolution, still does not yield a workable Labor majority. Senate soon proceeds to block supply.)

…”If the Opposition were to allow supply to pass, Whitlam would not advise a half-Senate election until May or June 1976, and the Senate would not convene until 1 July, thus obviating the threat of a possible temporary Labor majority. Whitlam, who was determined to destroy both the Senate’s right to block supply and Fraser’s leadership, refused any compromise.[51]”

…”After the meeting, Fraser proposed a compromise: that the Opposition would concede supply if Whitlam agreed to hold a House of Representatives election at the same time as the half-Senate election.[53] Whitlam rejected the idea.[54]”

If I am reading this correctly, Whitlam tried to pull a half-senate election barely a year after a full double dissolution…without any intention whatsoever to hold a House of Representatives election simultaneously, which is how such elections are supposed to work. From Wikipedia: “The terms of the territory Senators coincide with the duration of the House of Representatives.”

I think Whitlam’s actions could be justifiably described as constitutionally lackadaisical. By the way, the principle of no government remaining absent supply precedes the principle of government remaining in power as long as possessing workable majority in lower house. As the two chambers are essentially co-equal in Australian, Whitlam was going rogue by trying to permanently reduce the Senate’s power without going through a general election. In fact, his attempt to get the Sovereign to dismiss the Governor-General ex post facto is a fairly clear indication that he seems to have gone fully insane in regard to his perception constitutional precedences of power and disposition of reserve and extraordinary powers in Westminster systems (the Governor-General has full latitude to veto his ministers in extraordinary situations).

By the way, Prime Ministers in Westminster systems are explicitly not allowed to override the Governor-General to appeal directly to the Sovereign. It is directly contrary to the doctrines of the Balfour Declaration and the Statute of Westminster. The Governor-General, as the letter from Buckingham Palace stated, can be fully dictator in the event of extraordinary circumstances and constitutional crisis:

“As we understand the situation here, the Australian Constitution firmly places the prerogative powers of the Crown in the hands of the Governor-General as the representative of the Queen of Australia. The only person competent to commission an Australian Prime Minister is the Governor-General, and The Queen has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution.”

The overall campaign has been interesting in a stultifying, expectation-crushing way. By ditching Rudd (something they got lots of admiring “pwhoar, those Aussie really get stuck in!” articles for in certain sections of the UK press) the ALP turned this election into a contest between two opposition leaders, one the experienced oppositionist Abbott was very comfortable with as it denied Labor the benefits of incumbency while allowing him to run against their record almost unchecked.

They’ve since patched this up somewhat by bringing Rudd back into the fold but the systematic ditching large chunks of their first term reform agenda and rapid compromise on immigration and the mining tax has narrowed their ability to differentiate themselves – Abbott will send refugees to Nauru, Gillard to East Timor, etc.

What’s followed has been almost a state election, dominated by service delivery issues, full of targeted micro-policies and largely bereft of debate over broader national agendas. This colonisation of national debate by state issues was underlined two weeks ago when both Abbott and Gillard announced tough anti-gang and knives policy – hallmark Laura Norder fodder but not a federal issue.

Issues like population, foreign policy and the environment have been papered over with vague commitments to further study and lots of “listening to people’s concerns” (Gillard’s Citizens Assembly on Climate Change admirably combining both delay and faux-consultation) when not reduced to STOP LABOR’S DEBT BOATS TAXING YOUR EVERYTHING.

Bleh.

Can I suggest that, for all its merits, Wikipedia is not an adequate guide here, and that your confident assertions are at best debatable, at worst totally wrong. I don’t intend to derail the thread into refighting those debates, so I suggest you leave this topic to people who know what they are talking about.

Your suggestion is heeded.

Surprising that John missed out the spectacle of billionaire mine-owners protesting in the streets over the surtax on their profits, and threatening to shut down the mines and bugger off overseas.

This sounds like the least convincing political threat ever. “If you don’t cut our taxes, we’ll just move our mines to another country!”

@19: Yes, I too had noted the question of Andrew Leigh moving to full-time politics.

Also, I can’t understand for the life of me why so many people were shocked that Copenhagen turned out to be a disaster. Of course Senor Hugo Chavez would commandeer and hijack the whole thing and try to piss off everybody in the West and turn it into a shit-show as much as possible.

Strange, I haven’t heard Chavez even mentioned in that context. You are sure it wasn’t the unwillingness of the biggest polluter nations to do anything whatsoever about cutting GHG that wrecked Copenhagen?

You are sure it wasn’t the unwillingness of the biggest polluter nations to do anything whatsoever about cutting GHG that wrecked Copenhagen?

Google “Group of 77.” They set up some blatantly unrealistic conditions at the conference (while excusing themselves of any need to reduce emissions) to basically wreck it.

And I believe either Mr Chavez or Mr Castro was the leader. Oh, and check this out:

“When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause. When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening…” (This is Mr Chavez)

You know, while the other guys are trying desperately pass cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, among the only systems (both being free market-based) to effectively reduce emissions without severely damaging economies, he’s there putting a fire to the whole barn and wanting to take the whole effort down.

I know there is the temptation to defend Mr Chavez at every opportunity, as his domestic policy goals might be congenial to you, but there’s no question that on the matter of the environment and climate he’s pretty much quite as bad as any right-winger in the West.

I personally don’t subscribe to the paranoid Economist view of Mr Chavez, but it’s clear to me that if one is to make any progress on environmental protection one has to ignore Mr Chavez and regard him as pariah.

Ok, so the US and China were ready to agree on cap-and trade but Chavez was against it? Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.

Nobody in this thread has called Chavez a “climate do-gooder” or suggested that the role he played in Copenhagen was in any way positive.

I took piglet’s comment as an implicit suggestion that his actions were basically irrelevant, since neither the US or China have demonstrated any real willingness to limit carbon emissions, so nothing was going to happen in any case.

Chavez makes for a convenient whipping boy, but if the US had gone in actually wanting progress, and China/India/Brazil were willing to make some small symbolic concessions to appease the haters here, there is no way Chavez could have stopped a good deal. He simply doesn’t have that much power except to the extent that the governments of the larger developing nations find it useful to let him demagogue.

To the extent that the US bargains in good faith, they typically don’t. To the extent that we expect still poor countries to shoulder as much of the burden as we are willing to, they are happy to let Chavez say what they are thinking, but do not wish to say outright, even if he adds a bunch of nonsense along with it.

If you seriously think that Chavez can lead the G-77 where he wants by the force of his own rhetoric, you are insane.

To the extent that the US bargains in good faith, they typically don’t. To the extent that we expect still poor countries to shoulder as much of the burden as we are willing to, they are happy to let Chavez say what they are thinking, but do not wish to say outright, even if he adds a bunch of nonsense along with it.

If you seriously think that Chavez can lead the G-77 where he wants by the force of his own rhetoric, you are insane.

That’s a bit strange. You just said that the G-77 are just as bad as Mr Chavez, but simply a bit more diplomatic about their evil-ness. Mr Chavez doesn’t need to lead the G-77 toward a vandalistic course of action; on proceeding on a destructive and vandalistic and pernicious action they are all of the exact same mind, if not of the exact same figures of speech.

As much as the entire G-77 charade was just a clown factory and no more, there is a certain force of numbers with 77 countries in the group. And if they are bent on vandalism, even 77 tiny, individually impotent countries banded together can do a great deal of damage in ensemble.

I am simply making a point that nothing will be accomplished easier where such clown shows as Mr Chavez and G-77 are given the ability to hijack the stage. Given how precarious and easily wrecked the consensus already was pre-Copenhagen, it was clearly insanity and foolishness for industrial-power leaders to expect anything to have been accomplished at the venue. They would have been better advised to cancel or disregard Copenhagen altogether and proceed through climate change actions through more competent avenues, such as G-20 or other means.

There’s a certain impression of being suckers when your citizens at home are not only expected to support sound but not necessarily popular climate actions, but also to abide by jokers pissing on your leg at the same time everyone is expected to be making sacrifices.

It’s like how the Doha round is making WTO negotiations actively worse.

in this case though the climate actions were popular at home, Myles SG. The ALP’s popularity took a nose-dive as soon as they announced a decision to defer the legislation semi-indefinitely.

Actually Gillard did warm the public’s hearts, and was exceedingly popular in 2007, as were most of the ALP frontbench. And in Australia, this method of selecting a PM is generally considered entirely legitimate, though there were big questions about this particular instance. In fact a lot of piss-taking was reserved for the previous liberal treasurer, Peter Costello, because he never had the nerve to take what his leader offered him and then reneged on (the leadership). This isn’t just a matter of personal judgement of that man – Howard hanging on was partially responsible for the liberal party’s implosion (witness him becoming only the 2nd PM ever to lose his seat and the government), and in addition to that Howard’s stranglehold on the party stifled the emergence of new talent and ideas.

I would go so far as to say that people expect it, especially in the ALP, whose leading lights are known to eat children for breakfast. This event was on the nose for its callousness and timing, not for its essential nature. Had Gillard waited another 3 years and knifed him, he’d just be another sacrifice on the ALP’s road to hell, unremarked and uncared-about.

Which is why those rumours about his management style and relations within the top echelons of the party have been given more credence than usual. People like Gillard don’t take power from people like Rudd on a whim, and in such a chaotic way. Something was going on, and it wasn’t just the polls.

Oh, and there is also that $200 million of mining company ads waiting in the wings. If Rudd was refusing to compromise on the mining tax, and simultaneously going back on a prior election promise not to fund pro-govt advertising, there was potentially a disaster waiting to happen.

Which, incidentally, it’ll be interesting to see the declarations a year from now, and find out just how much money the Liberals received from the mining companies to fund their election campaign…

So the Australian right is led by fruitcakes and the Australian left is led by hacks.

If they’re hacks they’re hacks that managed to get the Australian economy through the global financial crisis without a recession. The unemployment rate in Australia in July 2010 was 5.3%, as opposed to 9.5% in America. Would that the rest of the world had such hacks.

Here’s Joseph Stiglitz on the Australian stimulus:

I did actually study quite a bit the Australian package, and my impression was that it was the best – one of the best-designed of all the advanced industrial countries. When the crisis struck, you have to understand no-one was sure how deep, how long it would be. There was that moment of panic. Rightfully so, because the whole financial system was on the verge of collapse. In that context, what you need to act is decisively. If you don’t act decisively, you could get the collapse. It’s a one-sided risk.

Emma in Sydney let Myles SG opine about Oz politics. John Quiggin lives in Australia and he regularly have something to say about American politics.

leinad, I think you should ride around Sydney on your bike for the next 48 hours straight, without sleeping, telling that to anyone who will listen!

It’s sure to work wonders for democracy and your personal reputation!

I hate to be rude but you’re a pompous tit and you’ve derailed a perfectly good thread enough with your self-obsessed blather so could you please do the decent thing and fuck off now?

Countries being led by hacks are doing better than countries led by men (and women) of magnificent education, aptitude, taste, and discrimination (think the Obama White House and the British Conservative Cabinet). Why is fiscal and monetary policy formulated by Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner less effective than fiscal and monetary formulated by people of much less dazzling accomplishments?

For the obvious reason that the fiscal and monetary policy that they would have liked to implement on the merits of the case couldn’t be gotten through a US Senate liberally stocked with mindlessly oppositionist and/or cowardly and/or opportunistic hacks and liars.

djr @ 72 We are in fairly uncharted territory here, but yes, a Labor/National coalition would be completely unthinkable — the Nationals (formerly the Country Party) have basically been in permanent Coalition with the Liberal (conservative) party for over 60 years, and in Queensland at least, the two parties have merged. Though it is arguable that the Nationals have little in common any more with the free-market tax-hating Liberals, because the Nationals believe in subsidising rural Australia to the hilt. But somehow it’s only the ex-National independents (with whom Labor is negotiating right now) who have actually perceived this. The big news of the election has been a very large swing from Labor to the Greens — reflected in the lower house in only one seat (for reasons that will be obvious to someone from the UK) but doubling their representation in the next Senate. That’s the direct result of Labor abandoning the left — people like JQ and me. John advocated a Green vote on his blog and got a huge thread of commenters basically saying, yep, lifetime Labor voter, but they’ve lost me now, mainly on climate change but also on education, health, communications etc. And the swing came without much help at all from the media, who even now are ignoring that 2/3 of the swing away from Labor went to the Greens and only 1/3 to the Liberals. Interesting times. I hope some of the Labor ‘strategists’ get their heads kicked and some sense prevails. It doesn’t seem likely, however.

piglet, you can get the details at the AEC virtual tally room. The order of votes is:

ALP 39%
Liberal Party 30%
Greens 11%
Liberal National party of queensland 9%
National party 4%

So the workers/greens in total have 50% of the vote share, but the Greens will only win 1 seat in the lower house with 11% of the vote, while the nationals get 7 seats with 4% of the vote. It’s the usual story.

The final two party preferred count at the moment is 50.7% to the ALP, which is after distribution of non-ALP voters second, third etc. preferences. So in the end the 2PP represents that 50% workers/greens vote flowing entirely to the ALP.

The anti-environmentalist right gets 43% of the vote share, and then there’s a bunch of fringe parties who may or may not be left/right/environmentalist.

At the top of that virtual tally room you’ll see there are still some seats in play, in which preferences are being recounted, so on a first pass it looks as if there could be as many as 3 Greens in the lower house, but it won’t happen.

Norwegian Guy @ 76. I would say there’s very little ideological difference between them, and Rudd certainly was no left winger. On the other hand, Norway is held up here as the apex of soaking the international resource companies and putting the oil money by for when it runs out, so maybe our perceptions are just as skewed.

Gillard was backed by powerful factions in the party who were scared by a few falling opinion polls and thought they’d be chucked out in the next election if they stuck with Rudd. As it is, they’ve been almost chucked out in the next election partly because of dumping Rudd. It may yet turn out to be a positive thing, though, because it has been demonstrated that Labor can no longer ignore the Greens to its left, and will have to try and govern for more than opinion polls if it can cobble a coalition together.

John, how will ‘resource nationalism’ fare under likely new governments?