I’ve been planning for a while to write a post arguing that the one thing Julia Gillard can do to (at least, potentially) salvage her place in the history books is to secure passage of the carbon price package (and preferably the other outstanding items left over from the Rudd era, such as the mining tax legislation and health reform), then step aside, and let the Labor party choose a new leader. I was going to wait until the package was passed, but for various reasons, I’ve decided it’s time to speak up on this.
I’ve been very critical of Gillard, but I’m probably less hostile to her at this point than the majority of Australians. On the other hand, her success in holding a fragile government together, and in securing agreement on some complex pieces of policy, suggest she is much more appealing in person than her public persona would imply. My limited contacts with people who’ve worked directly with her support this view, as does the clear belief of her supporters that, if only we could see the “real Julia” we would all like her.
Unfortunately, that’s no longer a relevant possibility. After more than a year in office, there seems very little likelihood that the negative view of Gillard, based on her public record, is going to change, no matter how many rebranding exercises she undertakes. Her last chance, a big bounce when the release of the carbon price package showed the spurious nature of Abbott’s scare campaign hasn’t come off. Moreover, despite her contribution to getting the package together, she can never get past her promise that there would be no carbon price under her government. Only with a change of leader can Labor sell the carbon price.
As regards the choice of alternative, my natural inclination is for Rudd, but it seems clear that his colleagues won’t go that way, and he is doing a good job as Foreign Minister. Wayne Swan has been a good Treasurer, but he is too closely tied to the coup against Rudd and the dumping of the CPRS. Greg Combet would be my preferred choice, but Stephen Smith would also be good.
Given a change of leader, and if they aren’t forced to an election early, I think Labor still has a good chance. Abbott is incredibly unpopular, considering the circumstances, and the hostility towards Labor is very much focused on Gillard personally. If the government can survive long enough to see the carbon price in place, Abbott’s scare campaigns will collapse completely.
John Quiggin 
It is a long time until the next election particularly since George Brandis has given his Sinclair Davidson impression.
When that eventuates people will realise the ETS has had little affect on them. Assuming the World doesn’t embrace classical economics then the budget will be well into the black. the NBN will be up and running in many areas.
this is not to say the ALP will win however a shellacking at this stage appears unlikely particularly when people realise thy have been wood-ducked over the implications of the ETS.
however this government possesses no political smarts at all. the dumping of rudd is a classic example of this.
A better one is the economy. Swan has done a very good job. We were little affected by the GFC because of active fiscal policy that worked well. fiscal consolidation has been extraordinarily quick given treasury has yet to benefit from the commodity boom.
During the election anyone with economic nous knew the Opposition were using dodgy numbers and could not be trusted yet despite all this the Opposition is more trusted on the economy than the government. Swan is responsible for this.
Overall the Opposition is desperate for an election BEFORE the introduction of the ETS however as the linked article above shows the Thomson issue is unlikely to generate a by-election.
I am interested to see what happens after next July. It will be interesting.
Phil,your figures are incorrect or at best highly misleading. Average weekly earnings for all employees $50K per year, and while the median would be lower, it’s pulled down by lots of people who aren’t primary income earners. Median household income is over $60K
That’s not a reason for dismissing concerns about low-income earners, but it leads me to take the rest of your claims with a large grain of salt. My own work (reproduced here I think) shows that the great majority of low income earners will be better off. And, as others have pointed out, your claim about “once-off” is wrong. The increase in the income tax threshold, which is the main mode of compensation, will be very hard to reverse once it’s in place.
No worries guvna,
*doffs cap*
I’ll let you wonderful chaps get on with being better than us worthless poor and go back to our squalor. Enjoy yer fridges and teevees and stuff. We can amuse ourselves with the two minute noodles. Knowing there are people who recognise justyhow desperate things are for the working poor in this country helps keep my station wagon warm at Fyshwick at night.
Meanwhile we can vote for Tony Abbott, who might just give a provberbial about our situation, since it’s clearly obvious the left doesn’t.
Pr Q said:
The last par finally gets to the point. Talk about burying the lede!
Leadership changes are overrated as roads to party political success. Party poll numbers tend to be a dependent variable, related to the general fortunes of the government and economy. Keating was less popular than Hewson but more popular than Howard. Yet he beat Hewson and lost to Howard.
I dont know if the ALP can get up off the canvas by changing leaders yet again. Changing leaders before an election is the sign of a party in desperate straits and is not in any case a proven electoral winner (as the Gillard experiment proves). The example of McMahon is not auspicious. OTOH Keating got away with it.
The ALP’s polls started to head south in early 2010, probably the standard mid-office slump, exacerbated by the Rudd-ALP’s inability to get things done (CPRS, MRRT). ALP machine operators panicked and put Gillard in charge in order to clear the decks and execute policy. She has made a certain amount of headway in her policy goals, especially considering adverse political circumstances. Peter Hartcher points out that
Unfortunately the politics of her premiership have let Gillard down, she suffers from a legitimacy deficit. Apologies for self-referential quote 24 JUL 2011
No doubt Gillard’s “no carbon tax” lie has not helped her legitimacy. Although it seems likely that a carbon tax bill will pass in the next year, which will itself be a momentous achievement for Gillard. I predicted that the ALP were “a good bet” in 2013, given that the carbon tax’s bark will be worse than its bite:
So I would not push the eject button on Gillard until the electorate has had a chance to suck the carbon tax and see that its not so bitter. But I guess a leadership spill is worth a shot if the ALP’s numbers don’t bounce back six months after the carbon tax is bedded down – say late 2012? Being a conservative I would back Rudd, he has a proven track record.
Phil Doyle, I think you should also consider the cost of electing an Abbott government. You are whinging that this government will only put $6 compensation in your pocket and are whining about a threefold increase in the tax free threshold. Do the maths on that one-you’ll still be better off.
Here’s the scoop on an Abbott government. Forget an $18,000 tax free threshold, it’ll be back to $6,000 and prices for utilities and food etc will still rise. And then there’s the extra tax he intends to levy on us to give to his mates in the pollution industry. You won’t be spending 3 nights a week in your car, you’ll be living under a bridge.
But I suppose there is an upside to that, you won’t have to worry about increased utilities and food prices. Compensation of a sort.
And a thought for you. My daughter earns under $40,000/annum, pays rent, utilities, petrol, credit card and car and personal loans, tax and still manages to eat well, have the occasional night out, buy clothes and save a few dollars.
Maybe it’s time to ask your boss for a raise.
The Gillard government is never going to get credit for anything while every news report begins with either “Tony Abbott says….” or “The Opposition says…” followed by the opposition lie of the day, which is swallowed wholesale, despite the msm knowing it’s all opposition spin. And the BER and insulation programs still tagged with “debacle” or “fiasco” or “pink batts” despite all evidence to the contrary.
The cynical fiasco of confected outrage in the Craig Thomson affair is a case in point. Holier than thou spin from the opposition, while playing down the fact that one of their members has been charged with shoplifting and assault. And why, because of the opposition’s born to rule obsession.
There must be an enquiry into media ownership in this country and Murdoch’s teeth must be pulled.
Phil, voting is not a waste of time for the working poor, if they make the effort to look beyond the media and not be taken in by the powerful who claim they are acting on their behalf.
Phil Doyle doesn’t understand his own complaint. In the past there have always been organisations for the unemployed in Canberra – Jobless Action, Unemployed Workers Union Committees for Low Cost Accommodation etc.
Jobless Action was destroyed first by the Liberals and then by the Maoists. The modern Left is so gentrified that all it can do is hold politically correct meetings on tertiary campuses.
If you do not organise – there is not much point wingeing from the back seat of some lonely car in the empty streets of Fyshwick.
The facts that minimum wage rates are so low AND that many people only get part-time hours (with casual loading) are despicable and, in the UK, no doubt led to the swathe of riots that swept Britain.
If you can organise a riot – why not a new party or voting block?
you have a car?
you don’t like do-gooders?
you would rather like do badders?
you are treated with scorn?join the club.
he current govenment governs for the ASX top 500 and the wealthy elite?
if you really believe that,check where you information is coming from.
phrases like “suck it up”,”big capital”,”wealthy elite”,”looking down the barrel”,”extraordinarily talented”are thin on the ground outside the USA and being up yourself is generally speaking,not a social asset(outside sinny).
Canberra is pretty good place to be poor(from personal experience)though being on the wallaby is a skill.
if you really want something to complain about you could always swap places with one of the 97 people out of 100 in the world who are worse off that you.
the worst off in Australia are still in the top 3% as far as availability of food,education and health care are concerned.
the worst in Australia can be very bad, the worst in places even like America makes Australia look like a place people would risk their lives and the lives of their families in unsafe,really expensive boats with no life jackets to reach.
maybe you could go west young man apparently the lowest paid FIFO is on around 100,000 PY.(probly before tax)
Canberra might be a good place to be poor but the public transport (from memory) was not the best and it was boring as.
(it was amazingly good roads for bikes)
jeez if i had 500 a week i’d be in clover.
@ CXhris:
We’ve met, about fifteen years ago when I was living in Govt housing. The plight of those organisations you’ve mentioned is a lead on the futility of organising. And besides, I’m not unemployed! If the middle class left don’t kick you in the teeth then the government stooges do through Therese Rein’s Job Network, Centrelink, the cops, tax dept, and then there’s the bikers, teenage thugs, junkies etc, that have to be negotiated in Canberra’s underclass. I’ve been banging my head against this brick wall for twenty years and at some stage you have to give up.
I’d love to organise mate, but that costs dough, and of that I have none. If you float the idea that paying more for stuff is good for you in the circles I move in someone is likely to do you an injury. Everyone looks out for themselves in this day and age, so no point in expecting support from any other body.
I make these points because it may help people understand why Abbot is so popular. In reality there is no difference between the two major parties for the working poor, But at least by voting Liberal you are not rewarding people who portray themselves as supportive of the battler when the opposite is true.
If the middle class left were honest they would protect their class interest and vote Liberal. By pretending to want to help the poor they live a hypocrisy. If they wanted to help the poor they’d use their material wealth to organising resistance amongst the working poor. Anything less is just so much flapping jaw that is of no consequence to anything or anyone except some inflated intellectual egos.
The only mob that I think have a hope of organising are mortgagees. If the household sector gets organised independent of the ALP and the conservatives that might just rattle corporate Australia. This group may just have the demographic and dough to be able to have an impact. No one is interested in the poor except a few godbotherers who like to use the poor and refos and such to make themselves feel better about themselves. Liberal Democracy died in the late nineties and we’ve been living under corporate feudalism – disciplined through credit – ever since. The ballot box is irrelevant. We don’t elect Treasury and we don’t elect the ASX top 500, and they run the show.
@ Jane
I work for a large and ubiquitous corporation. We are employed under a union negotiated EBA. There is no flexibility for ‘raises’. It is crapola maximo, but what do you do? If Abbot gets up we go back to the status quo, which is crap, but the Gillard government is only making things worse. Prices for everything going up all the time. Looking after its big business mates. Telling us whgat we can and can’t do. At least with Abbott we might get cheaper smokes and some pork barrel.
As for the climate? A two degree rise in temperatures would go down quite nicely at the moment. I can’t say I’ll cry to much if the eastern seaboard gets flattened. Why should we care about society’s future when it doesn’t care about our present?
Your post is very depressing John. I read it after reading Peter Van Onselen’s article in the Australian today suggesting Gillard stand aside for Stephen Smith, and yesterday I read Graham Richardson’s article saying there was no hope for Gillard. (Much as I dislike Richardson’s power at all costs approach, he does have very good political attennae). So three very diverse people saying Gillard should stand down. (Richardson did not say that, but it was implied). Are they all wrong?
I’ve decided that I don’t care whether they (and you) are correct. I will not support any change to the leadership, because it would be the wrong thing to do. Damn the consequences of not changing the leader. Labor was wrong to do it to Kevin Rudd and consequences ensued because it was wrong, and it would be wrong to do it to Julia. If there is any justice in the world, then the people of Australia will eventually see that the Gillard government is better than the alternative. And if we do not get a just result at the next election because of the campaigns by News Ltd and superficial journalists of all camps, and because the Australian electorate is sexist, and because Abbott is very good at misleading the public, then that’s the way it is, and we just have to live with it.
We’ve got to draw the line somewhere, otherwise every decision we make about the policies we pursue or the leader we have, will be determined only by the political advantage we expect to accrue.
I understand there is a role for pragmatic calculation in politics. But in this instance I consider it best to take the idealistic stance.
And 2 years is a long time in politics.
Chris Warren
Where can I find some of these organizations for the unemployed?
I’ve been considering starting one of my own.
John Quiggin! What nonsense! And from you! Haven’t you forgotten that this government owes its existence to Julia Gillard’s consultative and negotiation skills? The independents have made that very clear. Their loyalty is conditional upon her leadership. As well, how naive of you to imagine that whoever succeeds her within this term of government could possibly achieve what she has to date and will somehow be magically exempt from the News Ltd. treatment which has destroyed her credibility simply by preventing her strong leadership from shining through.
Salvaging her place in history is not the priority for her, I am sure. But who says it has been trashed? Tony Abbott and News Ltd? The polls? I see plenty of sane comment already in our MSM even today at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/the-substance-hidden-in-the-shadow-20110826-1jea4.html#ixzz1WCMWGmLh acknowleding her Labor government as “now the only political player of substance in the game.”
Her reputation and credibility has been undermined it is true. But to step aside will not restore it, rather it will lend further strength to Tony Abbott’s smear campaign. It will also concede government to the most destructive and dishonest Opposition in our history.
If salvaging of her place in history is a concern of Julia Gillard’s right now I would think her best approach is to stay the course, continue with her already impressive reform program, even if ultimately she goes down fighting. Labor has more to gain than lose from her continuing as Prime Minister. As does Australia.
I doubt anybody would try to reverse it even if the carbon tax got dumped. Offering a higher tax free threshold instead of the low income tax offset (LITO) is a good initiative but it has little impact on revenue or tax paid. To be fair they did lift it by a little more than what they took away in terms of LITO but bracket creep will hand the money back to the government soon enough. Rather than being a significant reform it is a modest, cheap, obvious and overdue reform that need not depend on carbon tax revenue.
PS to my comment above I have been commenting for a long time about News Ltd. and its belittling of the achievements of Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, albeit in a lighter tone.
http://polliepomes.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/why-such-limited-news-of-our-prime-minister/
Who else finds it odd, mysterious,
There’s only limited news, no serious
Comment, on achievements of this woman
In a man they’d say were superhuman.
Abroad, she was acknowledged everywhere
As statesman-like. Here, no one seems to care.
Journos meanwhile with camera and mike
Trail a fitness freak on a racing bike.
Budget Day our Prime Minister is seen,
As PMs should be, on the TV screen.
For two days featured on front page,
The nation’s leader was centre stage,
Praised by bankers and economists,
Businessmen, even some agronomists.
Then a ‘story’ breaks. Will she, or won’t she, wed?
Consensus is, politically, she’s dead.
Meanwhile focus turns, with great fanfare,
To a Budget Reply that wasn’t there.
Last year’s election speech some say was smart.
I’d say, “Rubbish! Re-cycled by a media tart
Who seems to have press so beguiled
That ‘news limited’ to him is all that’s being filed.”
@Chris Warren
Ok, my memory is failing me.
However the achievements of organising in the past were substantial and several large quantities of low cost accommodation still survive (Ainslie village, Havelock, Narellan).
Jobless Action was reviewed and was found to be efficient, but was forcibly closed down.
Organising costs nothing, but the Left is too rich and superannuated to bother much.
Jobless Action was a private initiative by Bob Whan, kicked off at a public meeting at Workers Club.
Unemployed Workers Union was a initiative of 4-6 people, supported by other community groups, but prompted by atttacks by rightwing Liberals such as Fraser, Viner, and Guilfoyle. It used the ballot box pretty well.
Committee for Low Cost Accommodation was an initiative of the Left but grew strength from broader community.
Maybe it will kick off again should Abbott slide his way into government.
The whole ‘f*ck you all’, attitude is making it difficult to maintain any sympathy, Phil. I’m starting to wonder to what extent your situation is self inflicted – assuming you’re not just a concern troll pushing a ‘carbon tax hurts the poor’ meme on behalf of some corporate lobby or other.
Tim, your suggestion is so effing offensive I don ‘t know where to start.
My point is incredible valid. Why should we give a rats when no one cares about our situation? Not the government – who want us to set our alarm clocks earlier; not the unions – who sign off on crapo EBAs and present them for a “vote” as a take-it-or-leave-it fait accompli; not the Liberals – who think of us as sub-human; not the welfare industry – who think of us as helpless automatons who should give up drinking, smoking and rooting (the things that make life worth living). A pox on all of them.
And now we face yet another cost impost coming at us. I think those that think that the price increases would be covered by $6 a week compensation for someone on $500 are, at best, naive. At worst they display a startling ignorance of both the predicament of how their fellow Australians live and how supermarkets work in late 2011.
I’ll give you a challenge Brother Macknay – how about you come and share a week with me in Canberra? July is over, so you shouldn’t have to deal with minus five or minus six, but lets see how you go sleeping in your car and see how you come out of that with anything but contempt for the nation that rudely pressganged you into this neo-liberal nightmare.
Given the left have embraced neo-liberal mechanisms like markets as a tool (and I use the word deliberately in its widest sense) then what is the use of supporting such a bunch of callow pretenders? Indeed neoliberalism was brought into this fair land by the ALP, courtesy of that verminous parasite, one P.J. Keating.
I’m not looking for your sympathy. Indeed, if you met me in real life you would find it difficult to maintain same, especially as I loathe and despise the gormless inefficacy of acadamia and the middle classes. No, I don’t want your sympathy – I want your house, your car and your electrical goods, along with a substantial proportion of your cash. I am reminded of the words of Hunter S. Thompson: “Sometimes you have to give them a punch in the kidneys to remind them that it’s our world too.”
There is no political voice for those of us at the bottom of the pile, something I think may manifest as a rude shock to the comfortable classes in the not too distant future. As a poster above noted, our numbers are increasing and are simultaneously diluted by increasing immigration, use of ABNs as a form of employment, criminality, unstable housing, the usual violence, etc.
On top of all that there shall be no retirement for us Gen Xers and younger caught in this millwheel of work-sleep-death. So why should we care? Why wouldn’t we celebrate if your cloistered world was threatened and you faced becoming one of us? Why should we care about animals and trees? Our more pressing concerns are material, and they are immediate.
In that context labour, small l with an o and a u labour, would be much better under a conservative government, which presents itself as a more obvious physical target than the smarmy marketing of the Hawker Britton ruling class.
@ Chris:
Your examples of organising predate ubiquitous credit, which was sold back to the working class after the productivity phedinkus in the nineties (JQ blogged on that recently). So you’re not just up against the usual suspects – you have to consider that many, many of the working poor have a client relationship with credit providers. That is, they are serfs. They place themselves outside the law if they do not service their debt and it threatens what meagre material wealth they do have. Given the choice most sane people will keep their credit card provider happy ratyher than ferment discord. Selah.
And in such a material existence cash is definitely what is needed to organise. Cash, and lots of it. No one listens to losers who are broke.
Oh, and Ainslie Village is a jungle. To live there is to sign yourself out of society and enter some Hobbesean psychological nightmare. As for the other places, I don’t know. But low income housing tends to look like Claymore before too long. And I’d rather be in gaol than live there. Same people, but better diet and health care.
But anyway, I’ve had enough of this. I can see it’s not getting through to you people. Go and have another cup of tea and sign a petition or move a motion or something. I don’t know. We’re all damned on this earth, only some of us will be cleaning the toilets in this fresh hell.
Charming. ‘Bye now.
@Phil Doyle
Yes – the examples pre-date a lot of stuff.
The current crop of activists are not capable of much. But the same decay or subversion (whatever) has hit many social structures, institutional and contesting, movements and bodies.
In the UK they could not get rid of Thatcher. In the US they could not get rid of Reagan or Bush. So they gave up, and like Abbie Hoffman, took up stock-brokering.
But the medicine stays the same.
No, that was Jerry Rubin.
I find it absolutely infuriating that a centre-left government and the entire progressive agenda has been sacrificed over this dodgy climate change issue.
I was going to vote informal at the last election. The only reason I switched back to Labor was because the government decided to dump the ETS.
Unfortunately, the policy that was kicked out through the front door jumped back in through the window to dominate the agenda again! How about that for a massive disappointment!
The Labor Party discipline prevents MPs and the unions from speaking out against this Carbon Cult Tax, but the floodgates will open once Labor is voted out of the office.
I just cannot wait for the next election so I can vote informal with a note scribbled on the ballot paper for my local member, Anthony Albanese, telling him what an ass he he is for calling me a ‘denier’.
No, sir, I am not a denier. I think AGW exists and I welcome it. I just vehemently disagree with the doomsday cultists that the AGW will prove to be a catastrophe.
And I am damn angry and feel utterly helpless that people more powerful than me think I am good enough to examine the evidence and form an opinion in a murder trial but I am not good enough to do the same for climate change.
Forget about how much compensation we are supposed to get, when Tony Abbot wins the government, thanks to this Carbon Cult Tax, the pensioners, the low-paid workers, the students, the ill and the down-trodden and everyone else who would normally benefit from a progressive government will be thoroughly screwed.
Damn right. You shouldn’t be anywhere near a mruder trial. 😉
*cough* murder trial.
Heh he! Too late. We let him go, and now he is coming to get you. You don’t have to worry about the future of the humanity any more.
Was it or was it not “no carbon tax”, rather than “no carbon price”? The Labor Party always had a policy to introduce an ETS at some time.
But it probably doesn’t make much difference anyway. If Gillard really said “there will be no carbon tax” and then proceded to introduce an ETS, it would have taken Abbott a millisecond to accuse Gillard of misleading and deceiving the electorate.
Pr Q said:
Gillard has a legitimacy problem, in part based on her broken promise about the carbon tax, but mostly because she has brokered an ALP coalition deal with the GRNs in order to rustle up the numbers to form a government. Plus she pinched conservative independents and stabbed her leader in the back.
An ALP-GRN coalition was not something that traditional ALP supporters vote for, indeed they tend to loathe the GRNs. It represents a bigger ideological betrayal than the carbon tax, which was always on the cards.
Gillard realises this and tried to contrive some ideological distance between the ALP and the GRNs a while back. But it fell flat, like all of her market re-branding strategies.
So long as the ALP-GRNs are in a coalition deal the ALP will struggle at the polls. I don’t think that a change in leader can change that adverse perception.
More generally, a Centre-Left government will always improve its chances by making its first order of political business the trashing of the Far-Left – the “Sister Souljah moment”. This allays the fears of moderate voters and takes much of the steam out of the Right. Instead Gillard’s first parliamentary act was to sit down with Brown and write a new coalition agreement with the GRNs.
IMHO the ALP-GRN coalition, far from being “the miracle of democracy” was a death warrant for the Gillard-ALP government.
The GRN-ALP coalition legitimacy problem also explains Gillard’s somewhat puzzling Right-wing stance on gay marriage and assylum-seekers. If she was to give way to Left-liberals on these issues she would (rightly) be seen as nothing more than a pawn of the Far-Left GRNs.
So she must make a point of being conservative on these issues.
I would suggest that Malcolm Turnbull represents a better long-term hope for “progress” on these cultural issues. He could start his term in office with his own “Sister Souljah” moment, poking his finger in the eye of the Right by liberalising assylum seeker regulations, supporting gay marriage and of course passing a carbon cost (price or tax) legislation.
This would allay fears of moderates and make the GRNs pretty much irrelevant.
More generally, democratic competition in median-voter unipolar electorates inevitably turns successful leaders into Machiavellian triangulators or “cross-wirers”. We saw this with Hawke and Clinton, Howard and, of course, Obama. They have to betray their political base early in their first term in order to stay in office.
sHx @ #21 said:
Did those “more powerful than” you recently withdraw your right to vote? No, I didn’t think so.
So your right to form (and voice) an opinion on a murder trial has exactly the same legal footing as your right to “do the same for climate change”.
You will also find that most who post on this site are not “doomsday cultists” who believe that “AGW will prove to be a catastrophe”. Most believe that a combination of mitigation and adaptation will avert catastrophe, provided the US comes to its senses in time.
@Tim Mc, just a little dismissive don’t you think ? You may not like how something is presented but surely you can not ignore the passion and conviction implicit in the message.
I can personally associate with a lot of what Phill Doyle has written, I have been forced to live in very similar situations, all be it on the other side of the country; in many ways I experience exactly what he is on about.
For me the one huge issue is cost of housing and accommodation, what the hell is it so expensive for? Is it because the raft of second/investment homes owned by many must of course service a mortgage debt? Good thing there is an absolutely fair tax system to dispense compensation, NOT.
Either way it is all out of reach for me and as my teenage children tell me, so far out of reach for them as to not even be something they consider. Their focus seems to be on getting out of Australia, to “find someplace that cares about us, the environment and our futures”.
On employment and EBA’s, sorry to tell you but in my personal experience PD is absolutely in the right of it. In point of fact I earn less now than I did 15 years ago, but hey I have access to better work life balance, training, improved OH&S and of course if it all gets too hard, well I can just start my own business with an ABN and sub-contract for the same position.
Sorry to sound like a whinger, when the the topic is really the future of PM Gillard and the labour party. I am the quintessential swinging voter, always basing my vote on the policies and initiatives of each party and representative. The problem now for me at least, is in actually seeing what those policies are. Mr Abbott impresses me only in so far as he is persistent, I have no trust in him what so ever. Certainly Mr Turnbull would be much better. Labour policy at least is a bit easier to follow, but still pretty confusing, I do feel very let down by the main stream media. One reason I come here to this blog and others is to get a clearer, more diverse and seemingly better informed view.
Thanks for the opportunity to have a say.
Tim, you have proven Mr. Turnbull wrong. He makes the proposition that the poor have no access to the internet.
You obviously have internet connection, or at the very least to someone else’s.
Maybe the boss.
You also have unlimited time to write what you wish.
@Jack Strocchi
Sorry, Jack but I am someone who thinks climate change will be a serious catastrophe that will be built on a succession of lesser catastrophes for Australia, especially if we see a realignment of our nation as opposer of domestic policy, underminer of global agreements and unwavering supporters of a fossil fueled future unconstrained by any sense of responsibiltiy for the externalised costs and consequences. Each little catastrophe will – based on rhetoric to date – be spun into excuses for further delay. Phil Doyle’s views reinforce my conclusion that pushing for even a minimal policy response is a Sisyphian exercise. Meanwhile the minimum needed isn’t even on anyone’s agenda, Greens excepted. Unfortunately.
Keeping up current living standards when it’s paid for by eating away at irreplaceable environmental capital and insisting Australians having to pay anything is an absolute line that cannot be crossed only has traction because of the success of campaigning to convince Australians the problem is overstated and/or hijacked by extremist agendas. The Right deliberately chose to frame the issue in those terms for no more than political expediency – which leaves them in the awkward position now of having to alienate a substantial block of voters who bought the line they sold to them in order to bring their policy back to doing the long term best for Australia.
Under Abbott the Coalition has chosen to stick with this dangerously irresponsible position of blaming the loudest voices for emissions being a problem at all and has thoroughly entrenched the ‘overstated and/or too difficult and expensive’ view of the problem and it’s solutions – Turnbull won’t be able to turn that around and is no doubt viewed within the Coalition as disloyal for even attempting to.
I’m not a doomsday cultist and believe that we have the necessary tools – policy and technology – to limit the harm to endurable – but I see well organised, funded and politically supported efforts successfully undermining any public will to put them into practice. Given an Abbott led government here along with a likely new US President with even more ‘sincere’ (delusion based) opposition to limiting emissions than Abbott’s and global efforts can and will falter during the period mainstream climate science clearly indicates will be absolutely crucial.
@Jack Strocchi
This is a rightwing provocation spread by simpletons.
If a government minister promised to visit a town, but in the event could not because a flood cut off transport, would you claim this as a broken promise?
Gillard said there would be no carbon tax (clearly if the ALP won the election). But a flood of independent votes cut off this possibility – contrary to her continuing desires. Gillard did not break a promise – a flood of votes for independents did.
If the ALP had the freedom to avoid a Carbon Tax, as promised, then this would have eventuated.
@sHx
*sigh* it’s always the same. Poke a denialist, and out pops a death threat. Oh, well, not to worry. 😉
@Chris Warren
Well I think it is indeed a broken promise, and one that makes her look very silly indeed. I hope when future Labor strategists look back on this whole saga, they resolve not to take such a stupid, populist, liberal-lite stance again.
@Xevram
Xevram, it depends on what you think the message is. I am in full agreement with the point that current conditions are making things extremely difficult for many people who are working on very low incomes (particularly housing costs, as you point out), and the political parties don’t seem to be interested in addressing this. But Phil Doyle went further than that. He made it clear that he has nothing but contempt for everyone and everything other than himself. It doesn’t matter how tough things are – nothing justifies that attitude.
@Ken Fabos
Indeed. It’s hard not to be pessimistic in the face of the sheer size of the effort devoted to trying to prevent this problem from being solved.
@Catching up
I think you mean Phil Doyle.
Tim, I am sorry, that what you get for popping in and out. I readdress the commnet.
Sorry.
I find the soul-searching over the fate of the repulsive Gillard regime mirth-inducing. After we got rid of the worst regime, morally and intellectually, in our history (so far) in 2007, instead of the healing catharsis necessary to recover from such a prolonged descent into the spiritual sewer, we simply got more of the same. Akin to Blair in the UK, and Obama in the USA, Rudd proved to be exactly the same, ideologically, as his predecessor. Add more hair, an unctuous pretense of moral rectitude, and a personal inauthenticity, that, when the public finally realised that they had been dudded, helped undermine his PMship, and Rudd was a cataclysmic disaster. He was a dab hand at the cynical PR stunt (like saying ‘Sorry’ or signing Kyoto) but policy was unchanged.Yet, when his explusion of a Mossad agent over the stolen passports scandal mobilised the pro-Israel Right in the ALP to get rid of him, he was replaced by an even greater horror, with the unspeakable debacle of an Abbott PMship now a dead cert. The ‘Lucky Country’!!!
We have attained the state of the ideal ‘capitalist democracy’. The ‘democracy’ part is total humbug. The public have NO day-to-day say in governance. The electable parties are ideologically identical, even down to hideous travesties like the vile Northern Territory intervention. Real power is entirely in the hands of business, whose political ‘contributions’ buy politics. The MSM is a sewer of imbecility, lies, and the hardest of hard Right propaganda. The voting public is 50%, at least, clinically pathological, paranoid, ignorant, stupid, arrogant in the Dunning-Kruger fashion and increasingly aggressive and belligerent, egged on by the Rightwing hate and fearmongering industries. We are, on a generous estimate, twenty years from irreversible climate change and ecological collapse, exacerbated by resource depletion, economic collapse and the burgeoning violence and aggression of the moribund West, which has only one strong suit left-murder and violence. A less generous but entirely rational estimate would be that it is too late, already.
Yet action to ameliorate these disasters, ie to avert auto-genocide, is nowhere in sight. Indeed the very opposite is the case, with the denialist Right on the rampage everywhere, led by some of the most amazing examples of the innate irony of the self-appellation ‘sapiens’, imaginable. And we are to go on a search for a better alternative to Gillard, inside the ALP. Oh the horror! I say, conscript Paul Howes, or Joe de Bruyn, and get it over with, quickly. Or perhaps Michael Danby to bring some of that famous Zionist ‘moral clarity’.
Mulga Mumblebrain
August 28th, 2011 at 15:44 | #39
Reply | Quote
I find the soul-searching over the fate of the repulsive Gillard regime mirth-inducing. After we got rid of the worst regime, morally and intellectually, in our ,history (so far) in 2007
So who the hell are we supposed to to vote for?
I’m tending towards the greens. I’ve been a lifelong labor voter and have known my local federal member for 25 years. It’s a big decision for me but I’m not happy where we are going.
One thing that would help is to put Alan Jones, John Laws et al in the Parrot’s chaff sack and do what he suggested.
RE Alan Jones: How many people have forgotten THIS?
Oh, well! You can blame that too on your morbid worldview.
That ‘death threat’ -if you prefer to see it that way- is a million times smaller than your doomsday cult’s “millions of lives under threat” mantra.
And stop winking at me. You are making me feel nervous.
Marisan, if you must waste your time on meaningless gestures and acquiescence to a totally fraudulent ‘democratic’ system, then I’d vote Green, or some sensibly extreme Marxist crew. I, having seen through the charade at an early age, voted but once, and bear no responsibility for the horrors of the last few decades. We must face facts-the global system is dying of its own innate corruption and wickedness and we ought to welcome its demise. To replace it with a system that affirms life, keeps the psychopaths away from power and lives within our earthly means, will be incredibly difficult, but the alternative is self-destruction. To achieve the happy end through ‘democracy’ when the money power rules and the MSM is a toxic sewer of lies and hatred, is pretty much a long-odds shot, I would say.
@Jack Strocchi
I never said I felt powerless because my right to vote has been taken away. I feel powerless because I’ve been duped and I can’t do anything about it.
Let me repeat it with more detail:
I was going to vote INFORMAL at the last election, since I just cannot bring myself to vote for a right wing party. Actually, I voted for the Greens in every election since 2001 until I decided to look at the evidence for climate doomsday for myself and felt thoroughly underwhelmed by it all.
The reason I switched back to Labor -from voting INFORMAL, not from voting the Greens again, BTW- was because it dumped the ETS, and it promised a community consultation of sorts, which would have allowed climate apocalypse skeptic leftists and unionists, like yours truly, to finally come out into the open and have a say.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, we are getting the Carbon Cult Tax anyway and the ETS, the opportunity for the rich to get richer by buying and selling indulgences. Meanwhile, electricity prices are going up and up. The compensation I am supposed to get has already been eaten up by the last two power price rises alone. And there are more price rises to come.
What was a ‘core promise’ by Julia Gillard and the Labor became a ‘non-core promise’ after the election. And there is jack-shit I can do about it. It is not like I can swing back to the Greens or go vote for the far-right Tony Abbott, though he is a climate skeptic like myself.
Do you now realise why I feel so utterly powerless and helpless?
Mulga Mumblebrain
You seem long on sarcasm and short on practicalities.
What do you suggest we do?
@Sam
Of course anyone can “think” whatever suits their purpose.
Clearly the promise could not be kept if the ALP lost the election, and it was obviously made in that context.
So it was a legitimate, policy-driven, promise made in the context of having the power to do so.
There is nothing stupid about this – it is perfectly normal and expected. If it supposedly made her look ‘very silly’, then this would have been apparent before the election. Where is there any evidence of this?
@Chris Warren
I have no purpose, except to clearly see the political situation for what it is. I disagree with your premise, and everything you’ve said in this thread about the politics of the carbon tax. It just sounds like you’re trying to let Labor weasel out of a tight spot.
To me, “No carbon tax under a government I lead” includes minority governments that she leads. She didn’t lose the election. She won it under entirely forseeable circumstances. She’s broken a promise that she never should have made, and that makes her look silly; it’s as simple as that.
Marisan, if you saw ‘sarcasm’ in my comments, believe me, it was purely mistaken. I mean everything I say, literally, there. Our system of governance, our social arrangements and our political processes are anti-life, hence poisonous. They have brought humanity to the brink of self-destruction. To get rid of them seems, to me, impossible, as the beneficiaries, the capitalist psychopaths have no qualms in killing. I favour alien intervention as our last hope. And I’m not being sarcastic, or even flippant.
Chris Warren @ #32 said:
The proposition that Gillard-ALP government has a legitimacy problem may be “right-wing provocation” but that does not make it false. There must be some reason why Gillard-ALP’s poll numbers are at record-breaking lows. The economy is doing alright, no ministerial scandals, so the problem must be with the government itself.
I base it on the fact that Gillard-ALP’s problems seem to stem from political process rather than policy progress.
Gillard-ALP have made substantial policy process. It has passed alot of generally popular legislation and the greenhouse mitigation policy is, in principle, supported by the majority of the population.
Unfortunately its political process has been dodgy from the get-go. Starting with stabbing the popularly elected leader in the back, a questionable deal with conservative rural independents and an un-mandated formal coalition with Far-Left GRNs. The broken promise on carbon tax has not helped.
The electorate obviously wants the government to play by the transparent rules of the game. If or when Gillard-ALP government fails or falls it will be a serious blow to the fans of Machiavellian interpretation of political process ie me. Or possibly Gillard is simply an inept Machiavellian, compared to the Dark Lord of the Black Arts that she succeeded.
On the contrary, it’s clearly obvious that Tony Abbott gives even less of a proverbial about your situation than the ALP and/or ‘the left’.