Posts

Showing posts from March, 2007

The New Motherhood Statement

Friday, 30th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   When in doubt, relate it to jobs. Maintaining jobs. Creating jobs. That is the current Prime Ministerial message. John Howard is speaking about jobs everywhere. Yesterday protecting Australian jobs was the reason for not endorsing the views of the visiting British climate change guru Sir Nicholas Stern. The Stern views are clearly too stern for Mr Howard. Some of them "if implemented would do great damage to the economy" and his government was not going to agree to prescriptions "that are going to cost the jobs of Australian miners." Earlier in the week in was Work Choices where Mr Howard brought out jobs as his defensive weapon. At  a Kirribilli doorstop  he rejected criticism of his industrial relations policies in this way: "We're not going to be making any changes of substance to WorkChoices because we believe WorkChoices is a very good policy and we also believe on the first anniversary of WorkChoi

Sending a Chinese Back Home

Wednesday, 28th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   In March last year, according to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the United States State Department, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Nowak reported that Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 66 percent of victims of alleged torture while in Chinese government custody. In its Country Report on Human Rights Practices, the US Bureau gave no judgment as to the truth or otherwise of that allegation but it did have this to say about the way adherents to this rather strange organisation are treated in China: Falun Gong members identified by the government as "core leaders" have been singled out for particularly harsh treatment. More than a dozen Falun Gong members have been sentenced to prison for the crime of "endangering state security," but the great majority of Falun Gong members convicted by the courts since 1999 have been sentenced to prison for "organizing or using a sect to

Finding Kevin Rudd's Patsy

Image
Wednesday, 28th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Doug Cameron - prepared to be Kevin Rudd's patsy. Every Labor Party leader needs a patsy when it comes Federal Conference time. At some stage of the managed debates, the script will call on the top dog to assert himself. An opponent will be allowed to bark out an objection or two before being crushed by a decisive vote in the leader’s favour. For next month’s conference, Doug Cameron, the federal secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, is being prepared for this essential and ritualistic defeat. As a self proclaimed spokesman for the left, Mr Cameron will be allowed, even encouraged, to argue for Labor to return to its past support of protection for manufacturing industry. Delegates will hear him urge the banning of free trade deals and public private partnerships. There will be a call for the removal of tax on superannuation payouts because it weakens the traditional pension safety net for retired workers

He Wants to be But Will He?

Image
Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Greg Combet - Determined to show he was more than a trade union official. Any doubts I had about Greg Combet wanting to be a member of parliament disappeared last November in the Adelaide Town Hall when I heard him deliver the 9th annual Hawke Lecture for the University of South Australia's Hawke Centre. The words were those of a man determined to show he was more than a trade union official with the one track mind dedicated to defeating John Howard's new industrial relations laws. This ACTU boss portraying himself as the man to return Australia to the "shared aspiration for economic prosperity, security from external threat, and the attainment of a fair and just society" that John Howard had undermined. "Our enduring historic consensus", Mr Combet told his audience, "has been overwhelmed by policies that must invite our deepest attention and questioning. Are we truly convinced that economic pr

Big Brother is Getting Closer

Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The ability to discover which street a person walked down five years previously, which pub they stopped at and what they drank is closer than we think. The Royal Academy of Engineering yesterday released its report "Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance - Challenges of Technological Change" noting that digital surveillance means that there is no barrier to storing all CCTV footage indefinitely. Ever-improving means of image-searching, in tandem with developments in face and gait-recognition technologies, allows footage to be searched, said the Academy, for individual people. "This will one day make it possible to 'Google spacetime', to find the location of a specified individual at some particular time and date." As if to reinforce the point that Big Brother is getting closer, Britain’s police chiefs reacted to the report by revealing they wanted to be able to easily download picture data from privatel

Time for a Little Treemail

Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   If Kevin Rudd does become Prime Minister at the end of this year it is a fair bet that from 1 July 2008 he will find himself having to deal with a Senate in which the Greens hold the balance of power. The likelihood of that Senate outcome, in fact, has increased considerably with the decision by the Opposition Leader to back away from the pro-trees policy of his predecessor Mark Latham. Whereas Mr Latham opted to lock up substantial areas of old-growth forests in Tasmania, Mr Rudd, according to this morning’s Australian, supports the existing Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, announced in May 2005 by John Howard. Mr Rudd, writes Steve Lewis, has committed to consulting with unions, industry and the state Government on a "sustainable" forestry plan. Which translated means that the Greens alone will be campaigning this year as the protector of old growth forests. That should enable them to maximise their own Senate v

Political Delusions

Image
Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Peter Debnam The capacity for self delusion among politicians has no limits. That was shown by the reaction of NSW Liberal Leader Peter Debnam on Saturday night when his concession speech sounded like a man who had achieved a great victory. What in fact happened was a Liberal Party disaster. A very modest increase in the Liberal vote was not enough to win even one seat from Labor. How Debnam can even contemplate continuing as Opposition Leader is beyond me. Premier Morris Iemma, by contrast, on Saturday night was admirably restrained. He looks to me like a man who actually believes what he says about having heard the criticisms of a people disillusioned with the way they are governed. He will be a more formidable opponent in four years time and that's another reason why any decision to keep Debnam would be completely foolish.

The Three Way Split in NSW

Tuesday, 27th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   That Australia is moving away from a two party system was displayed in the weekend’s New South Wales election. There is clearly a third force to challenge Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition: the "Anybody but Labor and the Coalition" grouping is supported by almost a third of the electorate. In polling for the lower house the third force received 23.9% of the votes and really showed its strength in the upper house election by reaching 32.7%. No wonder the operatives of the major parties spend so much time trying to make preference deals with the minnows. More than ever before it is the number two on the ballot paper that determines which of Labor or Coalition becomes the government. These days Labor gets a big start in that department because of the emergence of the Greens as the biggest contributor to the third party vote. On Saturday the Greens gained 8.8% in the lower house (up half a percentage point on their

Better Future Plays the Better Now

Image
Friday, 23rd March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   It is no accident that there is an unfunded liability for superannuation payments to be made in the future to public servants. The liability was accumulated as the result of deliberate decisions by past governments. Those decisions reflected two beliefs: that while future generations might be inheriting this government debt they also inherited assets paid for by the taxes of previous generations; ignoring future payments made life easier for a Treasurer. Peter Costello was the Treasurer who decided to break the unfunded tradition and there was some sense to it. He, after all, presided over the sale of the assets that previous governments had notionally counted on as being the other side of the balance sheet. The so-called Future Fund, even though it contains only a small proportion of total asset sales by this Liberal-National Government, stops a fair dinkum unfunded superannuation liability eventuating or at least minimises

Creeping Away with Privacy

Image
Friday, 23rd March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   NSW Senator Kerry Nettle -"ASIS has been mired in controversy in the past about alleged spying on Australians. It now seems the government is formalising ASIS's ability to do so." The Senate yesterday morning was considering what the Government describes as a little technical matter - the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2007 which, among other things, will allow the Australian Security and Intelligence Service (ASIS) to secretly access information held by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. Which is another way of saying that the spooks whose job is meant to be spying for their country in other countries can have a little peak at the financial records here at home of any and all Australians. Why ASIS needs the new power has not been explained during the debate and the Opposition is not objecting. Just mention the words national security these days and Labor ru

Sacrificing Tasmania

Friday, 23rd March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   For the Bob Hawke of 1983, writing off Tasmania was easy enough because there was no state Labor Government to worry about, the prospects of picking up House of Representative seats was negligible and opposing the damming of the Franklin River was a wonderful way of gaining support from the environmentally concerned on the mainland. The strategy worked like a charm and throughout the 1980s Federal Labor courted votes by defending the trees of the island state. Difficulties only started arising when, from the mid 1990s, State Labor was safely back in office. Mark Latham was a victim of the tension between the chop-the-trees down policies of a development minded State party and the protect-the-trees policy which best suited Federal vote getting. Latham dithered around for months and when he finally stuck with what was most likely to win the greatest number of votes outside Tasmania it was too late to gain any benefit from doing so. N

Have the People Stopped Listening?

Image
Thursday, 22nd March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   John Howard gave his underlings a history lesson yesterday – a run down in the party room on when Australian governments changed and why. From the defeat of Chifley Labor in 1949 through to his own magnificent victory over Paul Keating in 1996, via McMahon’s exit in 1972, Whitlam’s loss of 1975 and the Fraser departure of 1983, the PM drew two conclusions: the governments thrown out of power "were not seen as competent or people had stopped listening to them." Now one part of this tale of the failure of governments, Mr Howard explained, did not apply to his team at the moment despite what the opinion polls might be showing. In the history according to Howard "this Government is seen as a competent government." Which leaves the unanswered question: have the people stopped listening? Mr Howard must be hoping they haven’t but his whole thesis is open to questioning. Ben Chifley’s lot became unpopular wi

Handling the Poisoned Chips

Thursday, 22nd March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The environmental bureaucrats in Canberra, and their minister, would have been very pleased with themselves back in 2004 when they concluded an agreement with the Tasmanian Government that would see a Tasmanian enquiry cover the Commonwealth requirements to ensure that a planned pulp mill in the Tamar Valley was environmentally sound. Anything to do with trees and Tasmania is a political horror for federal politicians and fobbing things off to a Resource Planning and Development Commission headed by a respected retired judge was a wonderful way of side stepping problems until the Tasmanian Government decided to get rid of the Commission’s enquiry. The problem is now right back in the lap of the new Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and dealing with it will be a major test of his political skills as well as those of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. Both men will face the very same pressures that were on John Howard and Mark Lat

What, Me Worry?

Image
Tuesday, 20th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Alfred E. Neuman John Howard has become the Alfred E. Neuman of Australian politics. He bounded down the steps of his VIP jet with a cheeky grin as if he did not have a care in the world. The old fellow even carried his own bag and kept the minders out of sight. The image was a Prime Minister capable of doing things on his own; a PM keen to get on with the job of running the country. The fit and sprightly picture was not a new one. Every day we are reminded that age has not wearied him. Australians have got used to their track suited leader striding out every morning. But on this visit to the war zones of the world Mr Howard did give us a new look. A brown leather bomber jacket replaced the sports coat as he mingled with the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not exactly the style of a modern youth but at least an advance to a look of the 70s. Off the plane and in to a television studio with Kerry O’Brien where the smiles c

Back to Basics

Tuesday, 20th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The thesis of ANOP's Rod Cameron that playing the man is turning voters off the Howard Government looks even more plausible after this morning's Newspoll so in Parliament this week we can expect a little less of Tony Abbott's aggro and rather more discussion by Ministers of matters of substance. Prime Minister John Howard will be much better served by the major speech he plans on the future of Iraq and Australia's involvement in that country than sniping at who Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has spent his time meeting. And that is despite the general unpopularity of Australia's involvement in the Middle East. A Prime Minister who keeps plugging away at the disastrous consequences of a collapse or Iraq in to total anarchy might not convince a majority that he is right but he might gain a grudging respect for being a man with the courage of his convictions. So too with his industrial relations changes. Keep describ

What Would Reagan Do?

Friday, 16th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The accuracy or otherwise of the assertion by market researcher Rod Cameron on  ABC Lateline Wednesday night  - that attacks on Kevin Rudd have rebounded on the Coalition and it will soon stop them - will quickly become obvious. According to the man who was such a key contributor to all the Labor victories during the Hawke years, focus groups conducted by his ANOP company have left Australians puzzled. On Lateline Mr Cameron put it this way: Well, they are looking in bewilderment at this mud-slinging issue. They hate mud-slinging. They hate it with a passion. In election campaigns they don't like it because it is negative ads, but at least they get the message. Outside of election campaigns, they can't understand why mud is being slung. They don't understand what the issue is all about and therefore, it is rebounding on John Howard's character. For the last for all of John Howard's political life, they've

The Personal Attacks Go On As Expected

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   If there was any doubt about the Coalition Government continuing to probe away at the personal foibles and supposed failings of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd then the Health Minister Tony Abbott has surely dispelled them. With Labor still crying dirty politics and reports still fresh of polls showing Labor increasing its lead, Mr Abbott used a column in this morning’s Fairfax papers to keep questioning Mr Rudd’s honesty. The basis of this latest attack is Mr Rudd’s recollections of the events surrounding his father’s death when he was an 11 year old child. The Labor Leader recently told a television interviewer that one day he would like to study the inquest documents to see if there was any truth to suggestions that the care dad received in hospital after an accident was not of the highest standard. Others have saved him the trouble with the record being closely examined and Piers Akermann in the Sydney Telegraph concluding "

Howard Makes the Television Advertisements

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Prime Minister John Howard hit the television screens of New South Wales last night urging a vote for the Liberal Party of Peter Debnam. Nothing unusual about that, you might say, but for the fact the advertisements were paid for by the Australian Labor Party. "I’ll do everything I can to help Peter Debnam." says the PM in the ads before arguing that the result of a State Liberal Party win would be the handing over of state industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth. That those powers are already effectively in Canberra for most workers was conveniently forgotten. This 30 seconds interrupting Dancing With the Stars was nothing more than an attempt to link an unpopular Federal Government with a largely unknown State Opposition. What impact, if any, will the strategy have? Owl readers can make their own judgment by entering our NSW State Election Bragging Rights Contest where in the 93 electorates our tipping conte

Howard Focussing on the Economy

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   John Howard is focussing on the economy. He told us so yesterday in Tokyo; five times in three sentences. As he said at his daily doorstop, "I will be focussing, and my colleagues will be focussing very heavily in the weeks and months ahead on the way in which Labor has sought to frustrate the very prosperity they will seek to exploit in their pre-election promises. Their starting point will be the strong economy which they opposed arriving and I will be focussing on that and I will be certainly focussing very heavily on the risk that Labor represents to the Australian economy, particularly in the area of workplace relations where the destruction of our changes will set the economy back, reinstall the unions as the driving force in the management of labour relations in this country and return the spectre of unfair dismissal laws for small business. Now we will be focussing on those things, but we'll continue to hold the L

Thursday, 15th March, 2007 - Richard Farmer The battle of the keywords is now well under way as Labor and the Coalition struggle to damage their opposing leader. For Labor the recent task has been portraying John Howard as one of those clever politicians who are too tricky by half. For the Liberals the emphasis is on the words judgment and inexperience as they search to find a way of turning Labor's superman leader back into a mere political Clark Kent. Treasurer Peter Costello was at the forefront of the attack a month ago – Labor is drawing inspiration for its economic analysis from a Donald Duck magazine. This is the evolutionary cycle of the Labor Party. We have moved from Mark Latham's roosters to Kevin Rudd's ducks. Managing the Australian economy, which is a $1 trillion economy, takes experience and commitment and you do not get your analysis from Donald Duck comics. 11 February 2007. Prime Minister John Howard recently stepped up the description - It does demonstrate a very serious error of judgment, a lack of experience on Mr Rudd's part. 2 March 2007 Joe Hockey showed his ability to follow a party line on the same day as the PM - Kevin is challenging to be Prime Minister. We've got to test his judgment. I mean, we've got to test his experience. 2 March 2007 He's a new opposition leader, he's been in Parliament less time than me, you've got to work hard to be prime minister, it doesn't come to you easily, and judgment is a key part of it. 2 March 2007 Perhaps the real lack of experience was shown when the Opposition Leader was caught using one of the Liberal words about himself. Mr Rudd said he did nothing wrong apart from demonstrating "misplaced judgment". – report on 2 March 2007 Immigration Minister Julie Bishop had clearly read her briefing notes too. Laurie, this is where Mr Rudd is showing great inexperience, there are no grounds for an early election. 4 March 2007 As the Rudd meetings with Brian Burke received greater publicity so did the use of judgment and experience - What I'm wanting is for Mr Rudd to come clean. This is a very serious error of judgment, to behave in a way that you might be indebted to a person like Mr Burke... He has compounded that very big error of judgment by covering up the real circumstances of those meetings... And as each day goes by, he refuses to come clean about what actually did happen he only compounds the original error of judgment. – John Howard 5 March 2007 And the PM again - This is a very serious error of judgment, to behave in a way that you might be indebted to a person like Mr Burke - John Howard , 5 March 2007 Soon even the underlings were at it - It's about judgment and it's about experience, and both (Labor leader) Kevin Rudd and Kelvin Thomson have demonstrated that the Labor Party team doesn't have the judgment or the experience that's needed to run a $1 trillion economy like Australia. - Parliamentary Secretary Christopher Pyne - 9 March 2007 Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews sought to broaden the attack on Labor beyond just Mr Rudd. - What this shows once again is the inexperience of the Labor Party federally and the fact that they simply could not be trusted to govern Australia. - 11 March 2007 Even the Japanese press were introduced to the concept at a Prime Ministerial press conference in Tokyo. JOURNALIST: Do you think that Kelvin Thomson is a grubby sort of character? PRIME MINISTER: I think Kelvin Thomson showed very bad judgment.

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Ask voters anywhere what they think about politicians slinging off at each other and the answer invariably is that they hate it and wish it didn't happen. People always say their representatives should accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. And the politicians keep right on ignoring Johnny Mercer's lyric and continue to make disparaging remarks about each other which pollsters like ACNeilsen in today's Fairfax press find angers and annoys those they question. How can this be? Why do political campaigns ignore such findings as four fifths of people not caring about the Brian Burke affair and carry on attacking? For the very good reason that electoral history has shown the politicians that on election-day, negative campaigning regularly works. The very same people who tell the pollster they abhor person attacks end up being influenced by them So with the headlines after a fortnight of Liberals accusin

A Judgment on Inexperience

Thursday, 15th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The battle of the keywords is now well under way as Labor and the Coalition struggle to damage their opposing leader. For Labor the recent task has been portraying John Howard as one of those clever politicians who are too tricky by half. For the Liberals the emphasis is on the words judgment and inexperience as they search to find a way of turning Labor's superman leader back into a mere political Clark Kent. Treasurer Peter Costello was at the forefront of the attack a month ago – Labor is drawing inspiration for its economic analysis from a Donald Duck magazine. This is the evolutionary cycle of the Labor Party. We have moved from Mark Latham's roosters to Kevin Rudd's ducks. Managing the Australian economy, which is a $1 trillion economy, takes experience  and commitment and you do not get your analysis from Donald Duck comics. 11 February 2007. Prime Minister John Howard recently stepped up the description - It

The Lobbyists Begin Lobbying

Friday, 9th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   There’s nothing like restricting entry to a profession or trade to force the fee level up so it was no surprise this morning that Canberra’s lobbyists have begun lobbying for what they call professional registration to make entry in to their industry harder. Publicly fronting the call in an op-ed piece in The Australian is Andrew Parker, the managing partner of Parker & Partners Public Affairs which in turn is a subsidiary of the Australian division of Ogilvy PR Worldwide in which John Singleton’s STW Group has a significant holding. Parker, with the brilliant personal track record in politics of helping John Hewson lose an unlosable election and then helping Jeff Kennett do the same in Victoria, was prompted to defend lobbying as “a vital part of any democracy” following the odium attached to the word by the exposure of the Brian Burke style of operation. He supports calls for registration of lobbyists and wrote that “this we

No Peerages But Plenty of Perks

Image
Thursday, 8th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Lord Levy claims he was the victim of a smear campaign by unnamed figures. The big attraction of businessmen to politicians is their capacity to deliver the money that enables the politicians to deliver the votes that enables them to run the campaigns that keeps them in a job. And never has this been better demonstrated than in Britain where the sordid influence of fund raising has been exposed by a police investigation that makes any misuse of a printing and postal allowance by an Australian politician seem very small scale indeed. What has been exposed to public view in London is the payment of millions of dollars to political parties in a form that avoided public disclosure and the rewarding of donors by the Labour Government with peerages and other so-called honours. For the Government it has been quite embarrassing with The Guardian, this week publishing an article on its front page accusing Lord Levy, Prime Minister Tony

Moving Along Nicely

Thursday, 8th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   We are in to the second week of the Coalition campaign to remind people that all politicians stink and things are going marvellously well. The spotlight might temporarily be off Kevin Rudd and there are some residual casualties on the Coalition’s own side but the public standing of politicians can rarely have been lower. That is precisely what was needed to take the gloss off the new Labor Leader. Welcome down to the depths with the rest of us Kevin where we can all splash around in the mud until election day. The only winners in this process are the independents who can pretend not to be politicians at all. The one prediction I will make about the coming election is that the combined vote for the Coalition and Labor parties will resume the downward trend of the last 20 years that was interrupted by a slight rise in 2004. It augurs well for the Greens to end up in control of the Senate.

John Howard is a Clever Politician – the Labor Party Tell Us So

Image
Wednesday, 7th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Perhaps there is a clue to what Labor Party researchers are finding about attitudes to John Howard in this collection of recent quotations from Labor Party frontbenchers. When it comes to Mr Howard, as a clever politician, deciding to sack Senator Campbell today, he was deploying standards that were invented on the run in Parliament last Thursday –  Kevin Rudd, 5 March 2007 On the question concerning Senator Campbell, my view is plain that Mr Howard, a clever politician, decided to sack Senator Campbell to gain political advantage…  Kevin Rudd, 5 March 2007 … his objective is not to get in the road of Mr Howard’s political attack right now because Mr Howard, a clever politician, wants to establish a case in the lead-up to the election …  Kevin Rudd, 5 March 2007 He's using his office as prime minister to be a very clever politician but is not using his office of prime minister in the interests of the nation and

When Cheques Replace Checks

Image
Wednesday, 7th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Sir John "Black Jack" McEwen When I entered the wonderful world of the lobbyist nearly 40 years ago, helping the Japanese External Trade Relations Organisation (JETRO) navigate the mire of tariff protection, there was no point in going along and having a chat with the Minister. Sir John "Black Jack" McEwen might have negotiated an Australia-Japan trade agreement but he was a dedicated protectionist when it came to industry policy. If the dreaded Nips wanted a tariff reduced they could fight their own battle through the Tariff Board. Which at least gave JETRO, and its adviser, an occasional sporting chance for the public service back in those 1960s was still an independent and apolitical body. Public servants got their jobs working in bodies like the Tariff Board on merit not on an assessment of the extent to which their administration and policy advice would fit in with the views of their ministerial head. T

Mentally Bright or Superficially Skilful?

Wednesday, 7th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   The Labor Party clearly believes that Australians do not think the word clever has the meaning "mentally bright; having sharp or quick intelligence; able" that my web dictionary list first among four meanings. The policy of calling Prime Minister John Howard a clever fellow, as outlined by the Owl yesterday, clearly refers to definition two: "superficially skillful, witty, or original in character or construction; facile: It was an amusing, clever play, but of no lasting value." So perhaps if Labor continues to apply the clever tag we will see a Liberal Party advertising campaign based on definition number three with the Prime Minister portrayed "showing inventiveness or originality; ingenious: His clever device was the first to solve the problem." Not that definition number four is likely to be given an airing by either side of politics. No one who has seen John Howard bowl could describe him as