My wife alerted me to this piece by Kristina Keneally at the Drum, and so I ran out a quick response.
Shorter JQ: Keneally is right that voter backlash against privatisation caused NSW and Queensland losses, wrong that the policy was sound and even wronger that Labor (at least in Qld) didn’t try hard enough to sell the idea.
The observation “Prediction is risky, especially about the future”, attributed to US baseball legend Yogi Berra, is true for more reasons than one. The obvious risk is that events may prove you wrong. But there’s a also the risk that your prediction may be misrepresented, a risk that’s particularly severe when you have enemies like the Murdoch Press. I courted this risk by being too cute with my prediction after the 2007 election, which began
The Liberal Party will never again win a federal election.
I followed up immediately with
This isn’t a prediction of unending Labor rule, rather an observation that the Liberal and National parties are in such dire straits that they can’t continue as they are. They haven’t got enough support, parliamentary representation or ideas for one party, let alone two.
The obvious option is a merger
but the damage was done.
The first sentence has been quoted by various rightwing bloggers, and most recently in the Daily Telegraph[1], as a suggestion that the conservatives would never get back in.
So, contrary to the claims of the Tele, the fact that the merged Liberal Nationals won in Queensland is a confirmation the prediction in the post. The post also predicted the defeat of the NSW Labor government in 2011, but I thought it unlikely, unless “things go badly wrong for Rudd or for one of the state governments” that the conservatives would win before then.
In fact, of course things have gone very badly for Rudd, and Labor has made catastrophic mistakes at every level. Nevertheless the prediction wasn’t far off the mark with Labor winning five state and territory elections and (by the narrowest of margins) one federal election, and losing two over the relevant period.
At the federal level, the idea of a merger seems to have died, though the current situation is absurd . The National Party leaders in both the House and Senate are members of the merged LNP in Queensland. Still, it seems likely that this misshapen coalition will win the next Federal election. If that happens, I will gracefully admit that my prediction was wrong. But until then, to use another US sporting catchphrase, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings”.
At around 35k into the cycle leg of today’s Mooloolaba triathlon, with a strong headwind[1] and the seat feeling very hard, I was wondering “why am I doing this”. At the time, the question was more like “why did I get out of bed this morning”, but there’s also a question as to why a middle-aged academic like myself is doing something like this at all.
My own causal account is pretty simple. I gave up my old sport, karate, for a variety of reasons, then started “boot camp” style training (minus silly uniforms and other pseudo-military stuff). to keep fit. As a consequence, I found that, whereas the distance I could comfortably run had been measured in 100s of metres, it was now measured in kilometers. But I still wasn’t particularly fast and my reasoning (captured by a T-shirt I saw today) was, “why suck at one sport when you can suck at three”. And indeed, so it has turned out, but I still enjoy it and keep trying.
So, that’s the purposive agent account. But (while I was not consciously aware of this at the time) triathlons are booming and not just in Australia. So, it seems, there is some general zeitgeist which I (and thousands of others) have somehow been driven by. This is not a unique occurrence
So, I just went and voted (Green) in Indooropilly, a seat held by Labor until the last Parliament[1]. In the entire campaign, I’ve seen no sign of activity on the part of the Labor candidate (a commenter tells me he’s a law student). This continued at the polling booth, where there was no-one handing out Labor how-to-votes, the first time I’ve ever experienced this. I’ve heard from other sources that the party machine has been desperately trying, and failing, to round up volunteers.
This is a disaster worse in many ways than the wipe-outs of the 1970s when at least the party faithful were, well, faithful. The Bligh government’s sellout on asset sales wiped about 10 percent of its support overnight and, except in the immediate aftermath of the floods, that hasn’t changed.
And yet, the ALP is still in denial about the whole thing. Wayne Swan is expressing his hope that Andrew Fraser, the main driver of the asset sales can be saved. And Bligh’s defenders are pushing the line that electors are finally responding to their desire to punish the government for the sins of the Beattie era. The idea that you lose votes by doing something that’s directly opposed to your platform, that you’ve promised not to do, and that voters hate, seems not to compute
I said in my last post that I wasn’t looking forward to two terms of Newman. But unless Labor wakes up to itself, they could be out for a lot longer than that.
fn1. The Labor member, Ronan Lee, defected to the Greens before the 2009 election, which was won by the Liberals.
Barring a miracle, the Queensland Labor government will suffer a defeat tomorrow, comparable in its severity to the Joh-era election of the 1970s, when the caucus was reduced to the size of a cricket team. The great majority of Labor MPs are likely to lose their seats. While I regret the fact that matters have come to this, and like and respect quite a few of those MPs (including, for that matter, Anna Bligh[1]), I will be shedding no tears over this outcome.
Minor update I found a report listing Paul Hoolihan, Jo-Ann Millar, Amanda Johnstone Dean Wells and Lindy Nelson-Carr as members of caucus who opposed the sales. I have met and been impressed by the last two, and I’m sorry that most of this group seem likely to be swept away along with the rest.
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Max Weber once described politics as the slow boring of hard boards, and this is an apt description of the continuing efforts of the advocates of a globalised capitalism to grind down all the obstacles that might be posed by democratic government.
The dominance of global capital has been greatly enhanced by trade agreements such as those establishing the World Trade Organization. But, over time, the WTO has been less and less able to avoid public scrutiny and popular resistance. Moreover, it has an unfortunate tendency to stick to the rules even when US business doesn’t like the outcome. So, we’ve seen a steady shift to bilateral deals, in which the US can dictate the terms.
Behind the Seams has been an innovative project blogging the issues around Coal Seam Gas and the Queensland election. I’ve contributed some text, but the real work has been done by Mark Bahnisch, Pandora Karavan and a few others. They’ve incurred some pretty substantial expenses travelling to areas where farmers are dealing with CSG and spending unpaid time. There’s a final chance to contribute to the costs of the project here.
I’ve just finished revising Zombie Economics for an Australian edition, to be published by Black Inc in May, with an all-new chapter on economic rationalism, the Australia form of Zombie econ. Keep a lookout!
It’s time for another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
A while ago I published a blog post, and later a Fin article, pointing out that the influential Alesina and Ardagna article, Tales of Fiscal Adjustment, that coined the term “expansionary austerity” was riddled with factual and analytical errors in its discussion of Australia. That piece has elicited a string of lengthy replies from the Catallaxy/CIS team, notable for the absence of any substantive content. Sinclair Davidson produced a mammoth post with multiple updates, entirely devoted to refuting a parenthetical snark on my part that the paper wasn’t peer reviewed. Now there’s another one from Steve Kates, who wants to quibble about the chronological relationship between Jean-Baptiste Say and the Mills, father and son.
So, an open challenge. In my original post, I give seven quotes from the Alesina and Ardagna article, all of which I say are wrong or at least misleading. Does anyone want to defend any of these? Special bonus points for anyone who can defend the opening sentence of their Australian section, which reads “In 1985, a single-party left-wing government took office and launched a stabilization plan to correct the internal and external imbalances (the current account deficit was 4.13% of GDP and the total deficit/GDP ratio was above 3% in 1984). ” (emphasis added).
UpdateKates has added a lengthy update to his post, without, AFAICT, defending the erroneous claims in A & A
