Judging by the tone of media coverage, Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership has now entered its terminal phase. Everything he does and says is being judged on that basis, with every slipup a potential disaster.
But having just beaten a spill motion, and with at least moderately good news from the polls, he can scarcely be removed immediately. On the other hand, as long as he stays in office, the government is effectively in lame duck mode, with its every decision open to reversal by his successor. To take the most recent example, if Abbott were replaced by Turnbull, the attacks on Gillian Triggs would cease instantly.
The big timing issue relates to the Budget, due in May. It’s obvious that, if Abbott goes, so does Hockey, which would be highly problematic if the removal took place after the budget was delivered but before it got through Parliament. Yet some reports I’ve read suggest that a lot of senior Liberals want to give Abbott & Hockey a chance to make a success of this Budget, then dump them if it fails.
On a side issue, the fact that the Prime Ministership is decided only by the Liberal Party members of the coalition is quite a big deal. Abbott would obviously do better if the two parties merged, or even if the Queensland LNP were part of the federal Liberal party rather than the bizarre camel it is now.
John Quiggin 
Yes, the litany of silly statements and captains calls etc has been a large factor in Tony’s forthcoming downfall
John Quiggin, thanks. I agree to a degree. But I draw peoples’ attention to the daily decisions of this government that make it urgent for Abbott to go and his term is already too fragile anyway:
It should be weighing heavily on the shoulders of our compliant major party MPs and Senators who have allowed this inevitable mission creep on the new War on Iraq without consulting in public in our Parliament or engaging with the community at large. We will have no choice but to resort to electronic graffiti. We will be forced to lift our voices in any forum we can find and will take no responsibility for the intemperate language which will accompany this.
When we consider what we now know about the Abbott government, it is unconscionable for citizens to let this go through unchallenged. The LNP government is founded upon an emotionally unhealthy and juvenile reliance on ‘strong’ leadership based on delusional narcissism. One man and his vacuous three word slogans hijacked our democracy and are wrecking all of its institutions. Not only can we not rely upon the decision-making of this government for simple domestic issues; we cannot rely on decisions of life and death, of making us safe versus putting the nation in danger.
This cannot stand without challenge. Is it not time for that Double Dissolution before further damage?
We found out that Australia might be sending more troops to Iraq in an announcement from the New Zealand Prime Minister. Another example of Good Government.On the question of Iraq Nicholas Stuart in the Canberra times keeps reporting that the Australian Government does not have a Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqi Government – that Australian troops in Iraq have diplomatic passports and that the Air Force is flying missions from somewhere in the Gulf not Iraq.
This is serious but no reporters have raised questions about this. I am assuming Stuart is correct in that no one form the Government has written denying his story and that on Defence issues he seems generally well informed.
abbott will last as long as peta credlin & brian loughnane last, no more, no less.
abbott – who i will say it bluntly is without doubt too stupid to operate in any way independently – exists where he does exclusively in order for peta & brian to run the gov’t through him on behalf of the coterie around alex hawke (*) and the hard christian right who are too toxic to only exercise power openly in their own right.
peta, abbot & brian are the “pointmen” for the hard christian right in this iteration. abbott is simply the candidate the hard christian right set up in order to deny the job to turnbull and control gov’t by proxy through their puppet. i predict they will fall together – it will be a purge.
(*)”Nobody joins the Liberal Party to be left-wing. If you stand for compulsory student unionism, drug-injecting rooms and lowering the [homosexual] age of consent, you can choose the Green, Labor or the Democrats [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/05/17/1116095964742.html ]. -a.v.
Dunno. I’ll ask me mates I.D. GAF and B.T. FOOM. š
Both Turnbull and Bishop have ostentatiously distanced themselves from Abbott in recent days, openly if indirectly questioning his judgement in two separate matters. Plus of course the flood of damaging leaks make it clear some people are determined he has to go. No prime minister worth his salt would tolerate that kind of disloyalty if he was sure of his position, but Abbott has no option but to sit and take it. It’s almost as if the challengers believe if only they can goad him enough, he’ll do something so monumentally stupid that the Party will unanimously tell him to go.
Look: current evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the liberal party federal director has been stealing vast sums of money from the liberal party. Occasionally you run into fiscal control that’s accidentally that bad, so really we can’t say anything with certainty beyond “the hypothesis hasn’t been ruled out”… but, y’know, people of reasonable competence — people competent enough to be given control of a government department — don’t let things get that bad.
We can take it as a given that Brian Loughnane is innocent of any wrongdoing and it’s still a complete condemnation of the elected officials of the liberal party, because they really should have stopped things well before they got to this situation. They don’t let people in intimate relationships have oversight over each other, they don’t sign off on books that have had irregularities until they’ve verified to themselves that everything-but-everything can be justified, and they don’t let people who innocently caused irregularities one year cause irregularities the next, innocently or not.
If they can’t run the liberal party properly — and that’s pretty much indisputably proven at this point — then a fortiori they can’t run the bloody country. And this as true of the rank-and-file, the branch membership and the parliamentary party, as much as the liberal party party-side hierarchy, because they shouldn’t have elected people who couldn’t do their job. And I think that that’s something that’s pretty important in considering the future of Tony Abbott and the liberal leadership.
The B-Team have at least two options, as far as I can see. It all depends on how long a lead up they think they need to win over the electorate once they are installed. So:
Option 1: PM Tony Abbott will be allowed to last just long enough for Turnbull and Bishop to have constructed their Plan-B Budget, and then he’ll be toast. The Plan-B budget will be aimed at fairness and equity, while reducing middle-class welfare where possible to do so, and boosting some marginal tax rates to increase overall revenue. Might even see a slight adjustment to the GST as a sop for Abbott supporters.
Option 2: Actually, I reckon the B-Team in the LNP are hoping Abbott/Hockey can last just up to the next election campaign, to be knocked off cleanly and efficiently. The B-Team then own the idea-scape for shaping the campaign to suit their vision, the A/H vision being relegated to landfill. The way things are going though, Abbott could accidentally bring himself down any time soon, bringing on option 1.
Option 3: Put up with the PM, soldier on, and get their arses handed back to them in a sling, come the next election. This is my preferred option š
@Collin Street
For the “party of business” they seem to be pretty poor at running their own affairs, not to mention Arthur “I don’t recall” Sinodinos.
Tony Abbott now says that someone is clearly leaking “in an attempt to destroy this Government”. Er, sorry, Tony, no, they are out to destroy YOU, which is not the same thing… a distinction you have consistently failed to understand.
As a person who still considers John Howard was a good Prime Minister, I am amazed at how ugly (and dumb) Abbott and a large slab of the Right has become. The attack on Triggs is an appalling display of thin skinned personal animosity from a bunch of male politicians and their media mates using bullying tactics (under cloak of parliamentary privilege in the case of Abbott) with layers of condescension to women thrown in for good measure.
Right wing bloggers like Blair and Bolt have become so routinely dismissive of women (“frightbats”) they don’t know what casual sexism sounds like anymore. But, but , free speech to be a jerk is all the rage in libertarian land at the moment, so use of rudeness and offensive language (formerly mainly found on the immature Left until they grew up a bit) has been elevated to a matter of principle for many on the Right.
As for dumb, I’ll leave climate change out of it for once, but how could a PM with a law degree make such a detailed commentary on evidence for a terrorism charge and not expect it to potentially jeopardise a trial?
And how could he be so dismissive of Triggs finding that indefinite detention of a murderer who has served his time is in fact a breach of human rights and worthy of compensation? Even the Australian published a legal defence of Triggs. Abbott’s political use of this finding is a populist disgrace clearly for other political purposes.
In fact, that’s the key, isn’t it? He just lets (what he thinks is) political advantage to be gained from attack over-rule caution, common sense or good judgement in matters legal or of good governance.
This period of government has already sealed his fate as a historic failure of a Prime Minister; I have written elsewhere that the only way he might be remembered more kindly would be if he were turfed out Fiji style by some General or other. (I suggest locking him up at the top of the Carillion, as the equivalent of a Tower of London.)
But the sooner he goes, by whatever means, the better, for the dignity of the country and its institutions.
@alfred venison
Thanks for the deep analysis. That accords with my knowledge.
@Willy Bach
Since the only person who can call a double dissolution is Tony Abbott himself, it doesn’t seem like a terribly likely outcome.
The sooner the Abbott scourge is removed from the political/media landscape the more civil we all may feel. We may be able to breathe some fresh air. We crave to make sense rather than this tired out of date circus act. And then some small green shoots may appear. In the long run we need renewal – not newness.
I think the problem for the Libs is that their problems aren’t just Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott is a dead man walking (politically speaking), but he is taking the heat for a front bench full of serial under-performers. Ask yourself this. How many of the following do you think have performed well enough to be on the front bench? Abbott, Hockey, Pyne, Brandis, Andrews, Abetz, Cormann, Dutton, Robb. None? Then there is the problem with the Liberal Executive.
Changing PM is one thing, bit is it enough? The Libs need a massive clean out of senior people if they are to convince the population any change is more than just cosmetic.
How long can Abbott last?
Till the next election – just do an Adam Giles (CLP-NT); loose the party room vote, but threaten to burn everything to the ground if you don’t get to keep the job.
@steve from brisbane
I can understand where you are coming from even though I loathed Howard and the Howard years. Tactically and strategically, Howard was very good. He was an excellent advocate of his policies and cleverly populist and manipulative when he needed to be. I detested Howard and what he stood for but I could see he was actually very good at politics.
By comparison Abbott is as you have described him, politically ugly and stupid to the n-th degree. He is a wooden performer and his political instincts (captain’s calls) are always wrong. His very language (“captain’s calls”) illustrates how juvenile he is. I hope he lasts until the next election and continues to do enormous damage to Liberal Party credibilty. It would be his greatest achievement.
Howard had a fair few near death experiences, including losing the popular vote at an election. His tactical nous is overrated, and his rat cunning is underrated. He was no statesman, and anyone who pretends that he was has forgotten a litany of stuff ups and banal evils.
As for Abbott, he’s not fit to lick Howard’s bootlaces. That is not to praise Howard, but to condemn Abbott as the worst prime minister this country has ever had, just as GW Bush was the worst American president ever. That judgement will be cemented for all time if, as I half suspect, Abbott leads the country into its first recession in two and a half decades.
Allowing Abbott and Hockey to last until the budget serves the short term interests of the Liberal faceless men in the sense that it gives time for the Tory faction of Andrews and Abetz to realise there really is no hope, and to rush to Morrison as the only hope for the right of the party. Until that outcome, which I see as most likely, we will continue to be treated to the freakshow.
Is that right?
It is the Governor General that does this. And the G-G can take advice from anywhere.
The Prime Minister (so-called) can be sidelined.
Is that right?
It is the Governor General that does this. And the G-G can take advice from anywhere.
The Prime Minister (so-called) can be sidelined.
@Ikonoclast
But the damage he and his mates are doing to our country is terrible. Medicare, science/research, higher education in particular, but all education really etc, etc.They are governing by division, and although some of the fair go seems to have put damper on some their worst policies, I am afraid of just how much dissension they will be able to sow over the next eighteen plus months. it matters not who sits in the PM’s chair, the ideals of the people within the LNP are truly abhorrent.
thanks, jungney. not sure how deep, but like you (i suspect) i also read the nsw court notices (nudge, nudge) and here’s how i see it today. (1) clearly there are factions within the liberal party – to say otherwise is idiotic or ideological. and (2) clearly abbott has never had the intellectual capacity to be prime minister – he has only ever had the intellectual capacity to become prime minister – the intellectual capacity of a battering ram. i don’t mind being blunt: the man is plainly too stupid to be prime minister on his own. and in my opinion (3) the necessary consequent corollary of this is that he is presently in the job precisely because he is an empty vessel through which his toxic controllers can operate without revealing themselves or their ulterior purpose directly. that abbott shares by instinct many of the prejudices of his controllers does not alter the fact that he is too stupid to operate on his own, and this is why peta is so central: she is (1) a trusted faction insider (read up her biography, & alex hawke & her husband for a start) and she is (2) in a role that plausibly puts her continually by his side so that he need never be left unattended.
the hard christian right tea party emulators are fighting the nativist conservatives for the heart & soul of the australian liberal party. its been going on for some time, but quietly, for the most part, one would have to read nsw law notices to know how bitter the fight has been for control of that state liberal party. the tea party emulators have worked their people into some key positions within the federal party parliamentary wing & the organisational wing from where they exercise influence over the definition of “core” party ideology & candidate preselection & policy policy & parliamentary tactics.
but i think we may be witnessing the unravelling of their attempt to employ the abbott battering ram to take gov’t and drive far ranging ideologically motivated changes in australian society by shock & awe before anyone noticed – to use the australian liberal party in gov’t to effect a “gleichshaltung” of australian society & political culture with what are widely recognised as some of the worst aspects of american society & american politician culture. -a.v.
A good politician should be capable of arguing the merits or demerits of a policy, as if they were each of the different opposition party members, say LNP, ALP, Greens, and sundry indeps (oh, and Pup, if anyone can figure out what they stand for). A good politician can apply a mix of rhetoric and reason to get their points across, robustly and comprehensibly; a good politician can do all this without resorting to attacks upon the professionalism of their opponents, without snide and derisive remarks of no substance, and most definitely without attacking the moral character of an opponent. If the first line of defence is mutually assured destruction, it’s true you didn’t lose, but you didn’t win much either. Our current government consists of drones programmed to shoot at anything that moves, without consideration for the collateral damage.
In the Senate Estimates Committee on Tuesday, Ian MacDonald, after dropping the H-bomb, admitted he hadn’t even read the report on detention of children, because he knew it was biased! As stated in the article:
With logic that inane, why are we paying his salary?
With respect to PM Tony Abbott’s robust defence of his AG, George Brandis (all under parliamentary privilege), he really sank the boot in. It ties his fortunes with that of Brandis. Furthermore, the PM has engaged in an absolutely shameless stacking of boards with compliant LNP believers and/or ex-members. How can a good public service function when lackeys and lickspittles are appointed and good independent public servants tossed to make way? Are you going to get good advice from them, or are they just there to enjoy a pre-retirement retirement at taxpayer’s expense?
I find it immensely difficult to convey the depth of my despair at the behaviour of the current government. Can the GG rise up and do the necessary thing?
@alfred venison
You are starting to out-paranoia me and that takes some doing! But in these matters, paranoia is true perception.
@alfred venison
I think you’ve nailed at #4, and Collin at #7 too, and further at #21 above.
My great fear for my country is that all of those things you describe have a mirror in the ALP (and the Greens, too) – to the same effect.
While tribalists were playing silly diversionary games we have lost our democracy. Any purge will have to run through the entire ALP/LNP/Greens ‘machines’ if we are to get it back.
@Ivor
The G-G can dismiss a prime minister on his own (as per Whitlam) but that isn’t a double dissolution. A double dissolution is when, if the conditions are satisfied (called a trigger), the government of the day can request the Governor-General to dissolve both houses of parliament and call a full election. But this can only take place at the governments request.
What happened in 1975 is the Kerr dismissed Whitlam, and Fraser as caretaker PM requested a DD. But calling a DD itself is something that the PM, and only the PM can do. The G-G cannot do this themselves. So, as it stands, Abbott is the only person who can request a double dissolution.
The Iraq venture could come badly unstuck. Remember that ISIS debates whether the correct punishment for kafir “enemies of Islam” is beheading or crucifixion.
@Jim:
The junior people are even worse: the liberal party draws heavilly from the Young Liberals, and the young liberals are pretty much without exception narcissistic, bitter, and pretty thick.
Steve from Brisbane
While I’ve noted myself that Abbott makes Howard look good you overlook the fact that Howard’s preparatory work laid the foundations for Abbott’s rule. The party that chose Abbott as its standard bearer was shaped for 11 years by Howard.
Howard was amongst the overarching causes of Abbott — perhaps the single-most salient of the quasi-proximal causes, in that he promoted and mentored him throughout his transition to what he is today and debauched the party so that resistance to him was decisively weakened.
There are other predisposing factors of course — some quite distal and others more proximal — but the dark and baleful shadow of Howard looms large over current political discourse.
It’s significant that Abbott is playing to the ‘base’ (an American concept with little applicability in Australia, because we have compulsory
votingattendance at polling stations) by attacking Triggs.The base is all he has left. It’s true that attacking the HRC and especially Triggs appeals to the reptilian part of the base’s collective brain, but that’s a tenuous basis for trying to hang on the keys to the Lodge. Plus the base no longer trusts Abbott because he pragmatically backed away from his amendment to the RDA.
Also, Joe Hockey has been very quiet lately. I wonder if he is in back-channel talks with Turnbull.
@Nathan
Is there even a trigger for a DD (a bill rejected twice by the Senate three month’s apart)?
What can’t be ruled out is that Turnbull rolls Abbott, the coalition surges in popularity and Turnbull asks Sir Peter for a DD (if there is a trigger) because (he says) he wants a mandate from the people.
Plausibly, the coalition wins the election, and wins control of the Senate, Turnbull emerges as a hero of the Liberal Party, and he then has open season to implement whatever he feels like doing.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, Abbott did only get the leadership by the skin of his teeth, though, so I am not sure that you can say that the party room was overwhelmingly convinced by the preparatory work of Howard for an Abbott leadership.
By the way, Howard was not a perfect Prime Minister, but I think that overall he did display modesty and common sense and was not, by comparison with 1/2 of today’s party room, overly ideological. (I’m sure you and many readers will disagree on that, but I still think there is a case to be made, even if he overplayed his hand with Workchoices and did not know when to leave.)
Perhaps the main thing is that he seemed to have a sense of knowing who to listen to.
My take is that half of the Liberals, by their connections with Republican “think tanks” and tacticians, have been infected by American Right wing nonsense, which is ideologically set against evidence in science and economics. That influence I suspect was not as strong during the first part of the Howard reign. It is an influence that has to be removed from the Liberals before they are cohesive and reasonable party again.
@steve from brisbane
Apart from Workchoices, Iraq, children overboard, tax cuts for high income earners, and stacking the ABC Board with Albrechtson et al and privatising Telstra, I think this is right.
@steve from brisbane
The Liberals and indeed Labor under Hawke and Keating all bought into monetarism and economic neoliberalism or “economic rationalism” as it was called in Australia in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Australia’s root problems now come from economic neoliberalism and political neoconservatism; a huge lurch to the right which moved the whole Overton window. What people now think is centrism is actually far right politics (though not yet far right extremism and authoritarianism in Australia). The USA with the patriot act, the secret surveillance state and so on has passed into far right authoritarianism.
It’s a very difficult and dangerous time with the world dividing into major blocs and all blocs are headed by authoritarian governments (USA, China and Russia). These are all trending towards being secret states coupled with corporate capitalist power. Of all the dystopian predictions, Orwell’s 1984 is looking the most prescient overall despite his central mistake about the secret state coalescing around socialism rather than corporatism.
Australia needs to navigate these dangers. The best way for the time being is “bourgeois leftism” of the Green variety. That is to say genuine centrism that only looks left because the Overton window is so far right. We could not go further left than that or the USA would subject us to regime change.
In the long run US power will wane, the climate will change rapidly and deleteriously and the limits to growth will impose themselves harshly on the world economy. These trends will change and destablise everything. Accurate prediction is impossible beyond stating that real problems (not just financial superstructure problems) will be a lot worse. Conflict, resource wars and chaotic de-growth will be the main global picture.
Another future was possible but that future is almost gone. We have left change too late, we have proceeded on the wrong path too long.
@Uncle Milton
It doesn’t have to be a DD though. A normal election would do the same thing, which he could easily call. I’m not even sure if there is an existing trigger for a DD.
Due to the smaller quotas, a post DD senate would probably be even messier than the current one.
@Chris
A normal election would not solve Turnbull’s Senate problem. It might even make it worse, because it would throw the House and Senate terms completely out of alignment.
Occasionally I read something I wish I had written myself. Here is such a short essay. It goes to the crux of our problems now.
Author Eli Maybell
“Limitations of Leftism”
“Despite numerous insights into commodities and the market economy, the left historically has always embraced the industrial, energy-intensive system originally generated by private capitalism as a āprogressive forceā that would lay the basis for a free and abundant society. According to this schema, humanity has always lacked the technological basis for freedom that industrial capitalism, for all its negative aspects, would create. Once that basis was laid, a revolution would usher in communism (or a āpost-scarcityā society) using many of the wonders of technology that were capitalismās āprogressiveā legacy. Presently, capitalism has allegedly outlived its progressive role and now functions as a brake on genuine development. Hence it is the role of the left to rationalize, modernize, and ultimately humanize the industrial environment through socialization, collectivization and participatory management of mass technics. In fact, in societies where the bourgeois class was incapable of creating the basic structures of capitalism ā urban-industrial-energy development, mass production of consumer goods, mass communications, state centralization, etc. ā the left, through national revolution and state-managed economies, fulfilled the historic mission of the bourgeoisie.
In the leftist model (shared by Leninist and social democrat Marxists, as well as by anarcho-syndicalists and social ecologists), the real progressive promise of industrialization and mechanization is being thwarted by private capitalism and state socialism. But under the collective management of the workers, the industrial apparatus and the entire society can be administered safely and democratically. According to this view, present dangers and disasters do not flow from contradictions inherent in mass technics (a view considered to reflect the mistake of ātechnological determinismā), but rather from capitalist greed or bourgeois mismanagement ā not from the āforces of productionā (to use the Marxist terminology) but from the separate ārelations of productionā.
The left, blinded by a focus on what are seen as purely economic relations, challenges only the forms and not the material, cultural and subjective content of modern industrialism. It fails to examine the view ā one it shares with bourgeois liberalism ā that human freedom is based necessarily on a material plentitude of goods and services. Parroting their profit, Marxists argue that the āappropriationā by the workers of the āinstruments of productionā represents āthe development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselvesā. Conquest of the ārealm of necessityā (read: conquest of nature) will usher in the ārealm of freedomā. In this view, the material development of industrial society (āthe productive forcesā) will make possible the abolition of the division of labor; āthe domination of circumstances and chance over individualsā will be replaced by the ādomination of individuals over chance and necessityā. (Marx and Engels, āThe German Ideologyā) Mastery of nature by means of workersā councils and scientific management will put an end to oil spills. Thus, if mass technics confront the workers as an alien power, it is because the apparatus is controlled by the capitalist ruling class, not because such technics are themselves uncontrollable.
This ideology, accompanied usually by fantasies of global computer networks and the complete automation of all onerous tasks (machines making machines making machines to strip mine the coal and drill the oil and manufacture the plastics, etc.), cannot understand either the necessity for strict and vast compartmentalization of tasks and expertise, or the resulting social capacity and stratification and the impossibility of making coherent decisions in such a context. Unforeseen consequences, be they local or global, social or ecological, are discounted along with inevitable errors, miscalculations, and disasters. Technological decisions implying massive intervention into nature are treated as mere logic problems or technological puzzles which workers can solve through their computer networks.
Such a view, rooted in the 19th century technological and scientific optimism that the workersā movement shared with the bourgeois, does not recognize the matrix of forces that has now come to characterize modern civilization ā the convergence of commodity relations, urbanization and mass technics, along with the rise of interlocking, rival nuclear-cybernetic states into a global mega-machine. Technology is not an isolated project, or even an accumulation of technical knowledge, that is determined by a somehow separate and more fundamental sphere of āsocial relationsā. Mass technics have become, in the words of Langdon Winner, āstructures whose conditions of operation demand the restructuring of their environmentsā (Autonomous Technology, 1977) , and thus of the very social relations that brought them about.
Mass technics ā a product of earlier forms and archaic hierarchies ā have now outgrown the conditions that endangered them, taking on an autonomous life (though overlapping with and never completely nullifying these earlier forms). They furnish, or have become, a kind of total environment and social system, both in their general and individual, subjective aspects. For the most part, the left never grasped Marxās acute insight that as human beings express there lives, so they themselves are. When the āmeans of productionā are in actuality interlocking elements of a dangerously complex, interdependent global system, made up not only of technological apparatus and human operatives as working parts in that apparatus, but of forms of culture and communication and even the landscape itself, it makes no sense to speak of ārelations of productionā as a separate sphere.
In such a mechanized pyramid, in which instrumental relations and social relations are one and the same, accidents are endemic. No risk analysis can predict or avoid them all, or their consequences, which will become increasingly great and far-reaching. Workers councils will be no more able to avert accidents than the regulatory reforms proposed by liberal environmentalists and the social-democratic left, unless their central task is to begin immediately to dismantle the machine altogether.
The left also fails to recognize what is in a sense a deeper problem for those desiring revolutionary change, that of the cultural context and content of mass society ā the addiction to capitalist-defined ācomfortsā and a vision of material plenitude that are so destructive ecologically. The result is an incapability to confront not just the ruling class, but the grid itself ā on the land, in society, in the character of each person ā of mass technics, mass mobility, mass pseudo-communications, mass energy-use, mass consumption of mass-produced goods.
As Jacques Ellul writes in āThe Technological Societyā (1980), āit is the technological coherence that now makes up the social coherence… Technology is in itself not only a means, but a universe of means ā in the original sense of Universum: both exclusive and totalā. This universe degrades and colonizes the social and natural world, making their dwindling vestiges ever more perilously dependent on the technological that has supplanted them. The ecological implications are evident. As Ellul argues, āTechnology can become an environment only if the old environment stops being one. But that implies destructuring it to such an extreme that nothing is left of itā. We are obviously reaching that point, as capital begins to pose its ultimate technology, bioengineering and the illusion of total biological control, as the only solution to the ecological crisis it has created. Thus, the important insights that come from a class analysis are incomplete. It wonāt be enough to get rid of the rulers who have turned the earth into a company town; a way of life must end and an entirely new, post-industrial culture must also emerge.”
@Uncle Milton
There are currently two live triggers, which are the unsuccessful attempts to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation [1]. There’s also a whole bunch potential triggers that don’t meet the requirements yet but may later.
[1] Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Abolition) Bill 2013 & Clean Energy (Income Tax Rates and Other Amendments) Bill 2013
Pity that Peter Costelloe is not still on the front bench
then we would have “Abbott and Costelloe”
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@Nathan
It could be awkward for PM Turnbull to call a DD on the basis that the Senate is blocking a bill to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
People misunderstand the purpose of the Abbott “government” It is not there to “govern” in the sense that most people would understand that term, but to wreck.
All that counts is that max damage is done before they are woken up to and thrown out.
@Uncle Milton
Well, on the other hand, he went against his rural constituency on gun control, and is considered a villain for it to this day in the US and the nuttier branches of the Australian blogosphere.
My impression is that he was persuadable on climate change, even if since leaving government he has thrown his hat in with the lukewarmer do-nothings. (His view that looking into nuclear power was warranted partly as a response to climate change was not unreasonable, even if I don’t find a nuclear Australia persuasive now.)
I don’t really class Iraq or “children overboard” as ideologically motivated mistakes as such, but let’s not go there.
As for tax cuts to high income earners – well, the increase in middle class welfare that went with it is not exactly from the purist economic rationalist playbook, is it?
The timing issue is puzzling me somewhat. Given the first spill motion failed, the next obvious time to change leaders is after the Budget. There is a problem that the new leader is then stuck with trying to pass an Abbott/Hockey budget. However there won’t be too many extra nasties in the May budget, so any refreshing of the budget strategy that needs to be done can be done in the MYEFO, and a few budget nasties can be dropped as soon as the new leader ascends as a sort of present for voting for change.
In order to ensure a change after the budget, it seems to me that Turnbull and Bishop just need to give Abbott enough rope to hang himself, but, and this is where I am puzzled, the pace of leaks seems to indicate they want a change as soon as possible. And I don’t see any merit in a change before the budget, as it means the new leadership is stuck with a budget which they will have had very little influence over. Maybe they figure that Abbott and his mates will resist so much, that they consider they need to go full bore with the undermining for the next 2 months.
Or maybe they are trying to avoid the mistake of the Rudd Gillard change where the hatred of the Labor Party for Rudd was mostly kept internal, and so the people were genuinely surprised and felt betrayed by the deposing of Rudd. Its far better to knife a Prime Minister that people loathe than one who is popular, and the deeper the loathing of the individual the better, as then the bad decisions can be blamed on a loathed individual, rather than people realising they were LNP decisions.
Well, the obvious time to roll abbott is around the end of april when he’s out of the country on a long-planned foreign appearance.
But he may not last that long.
On qt Hockey has trumpeted the economic success of the govt and uses MacMillan Shakespeare as an example (MMS is a company that profits from tax avoidance).
Hockey has also used ABS stats showing that av wage in Aust has risen as an indicator of the govts prowess. However it has been observed that this drise has been the lowest annual rate in 17 years. It also does not explain the rise in unemployment.
Uncle, come on, please. You say, “I donāt really class Iraq or āchildren overboardā as ideologically motivated mistakes as such, but letās not go there.” I would classify these actions by Howard (and many others) as ruthless, unprincipled political opportunism. We are still paying for this war crime with at least another decade of violence. Yet, Howard lost no sleep worrying about the people of Iraq, the 4 million who fled as refugees, the possibly 1.3 million who were killed.
His actions most certainly caused harm to people whose lives Howard and all his Ministers, including Abbott, attached little or no value – hardly qualifies for the dismissal you gave this, “…but letās not go there”. The incident called āchildren overboardā was one of Howard’s most unconscionable bastard acts and he will be remembered by historians for this. We will never forget.
@steve from brisbane
“I donāt really class Iraq or āchildren overboardā as ideologically motivated mistakes as such, but letās not go there.”
I note your request “let’s not go there” but I do not understand why you would not want to go there.
If not Ideology, then what?
What was it about him you think that led an apparently intelligent – certainly more able than Tony Abbott who once said he was the love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop – and presumably an honourable man to make such egregious errors?
These are things that do need to be talked about.
Willy I think Uncle was replying to Steve from Brisbane who made this claim that I also noted.
What is the basis of this restriction? Any evidence?
The Prime Minister has this role only out of convention – nothing more.
If a sufficient other reason existed, what would stop a Governor General calling a double dissolution if all the requirements are met.
Where is the Prime minister’s request or approval established as a condition?
Look, I don’t think its a thread that is worth an excursion into neocon theory and Iraq war justifications, but can I offer the simple observation that a Labor British government went into the war too?
@John
Yeah, I’ve never forgiven Costello for killing that dream.