Vignettes
February 2004
Page One of three (Courtesy: Bill Leak, The Australian) |
 | To flush
the unflushable turd
Is to dream
the impossible dream | |
(Courtesy: Alan Moir, Sydney Morning Herald) |
Keating wanted super rise to 15 per cent You only have to note the turgid po-faces and whining wet blankets of recent times to know how thoroughly national politics has been turned on its head. All that bumph from the McGuinnesses and the Hendersons and the Shanahans of political punditry. Hewson has Latham pegged to rights. Howard and the apologists meanwhile stumble round burbling on about Latham's "honeymoon", as if all that is happening in national politics since Labor rid itself of Simple Simon is some silly/sick/dangerous creation of the press.
Hewson writes a regular commentary in The Australian Financial Review. His piece of satire yesterday, of a fictional discussion between Beazley and Crean, says more of relevance about the Latham ascension than anything you'll find in three months of sifting the self-important pap of these others. In essence, a very savvy Latham, totally belying his bovver boy image, is shrewdly playing Howard off a break because the Prime Minister (and others) have foolishly wanted to believe him to be little more than a loud-mouthed bully who must come a fearful gutser when the heat goes on over policy. Mistake. Huge mistake. And Howard and company are only just waking up to it, with rising alarm.
As for Keating, he got out of bed on Thursday and by 9am was organising 750 words on what he sees as the gaping hole in the Government's attitude to superannuation: that Costello, in his "work until you die" scheme rushed out on Wednesday, is doing no more than "ratting the larder" Keating and Labor began filling in the 1980s.
The Government is proposing this for no reason other than Howard and Costello, after winning office in 1996, welshed on a campaign promise to honour Keating's pledge to lift compulsory superannuation saving from 9 per cent to 15 per cent of wages and salaries.
Alan Ramsey: PM raiding a larder he didn't stock |
(Courtesy: Alan Moir, Sydney Morning Herald) |
The Passion of Brother Mel, St Peter of the Demographic Destiny, and others It was late into Tuesday night, the second dispatch of pizzas had just arrived from Mario's in Manuka, and still the speechwriters gathered in Peter Costello's Parliament House office had not found the killer phrase to nail home the Treasurer's landmark speech on superannuation and the baby boomers.
"Peter wants a big hit," worried Horrie Brigsnap, the economist on secondment.
"He has to showcase himself as the next PM. But how the hell can you make bloody demography sound sexy?"
Ballpoints scratched. Laptops hummed. Gloom settled upon the gathering until Felicity Murkin, the junior assistant press secretary, jumped to her feet. "Demography is destiny!" she shouted.
The room came alight.
"Alliteration!" cried Brigsnap. "Peter will love it. We'll go with it."
And so he did.
"Demography is destiny," the Treasurer announced unsmirkingly to the nation on Wednesday. Nobody had a clue what it meant, least of all him.
But it sounded fabulous.
Mike Carlton: Arisen from the bread |
(Courtesy: Bill Leak, The Australian) |
What the...? Under a Howard Government plan for a new business partnership against terrorism, top corporate executives will be given high-level briefings by intelligence agencies and the Australian Federal Police.
In a 10-page speech on Wednesday outlining the long-term challenges to this country, John Howard alluded in just one paragraph to the new plan.
Louise Dodson: Why the Government is tying terror to economic security |
FTA: Bush sells tail-wagging Johnny yet another pup John Howard's last-minute free trade deal plea to US President George W. Bush pressed for more beef trade concessions and any concession at all on Australian sugar exports to the US.
The blanket rebuff earlier this month to the Prime Minister's modest requests shocked the negotiating team -- which recommended against accepting the deal -- as well as the business groups assisting them.
Mr Howard asked Mr Bush for market access for an extra 30,000 tonnes of beef in addition to the 70,000 tonnes already agreed on, pressing for total extra access of 100,000 tonnes.
He also asked for a quickening of the phase-in period from 18 to 15 years and any concession at all Mr Bush could offer on Australian sugar exports to the US.
"It would've made the difference between a good deal and a line-ball deal," one source close to the talks said yesterday of Mr Howard's requests. "It caught all of us off-guard that the relationship wasn't worth 30,000 tonnes of beef. If the Yanks weren't prepared to do that, it really soured our view."
Senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials, from the foreign policy rather than the trade side of the department, overrode the negotiators' recommendation that the deal not be signed.
Some negotiators considered resigning over the Government's agreeing to the deal, which includes unprecedented price mechanisms that will cut sharply into the extra US beef market access negotiated in it. Early estimates are that the price mechanisms will kick in on alternate years, negating the extra access benefits on beef.
Australia has resisted accepting similar mechanisms from Japan, and they are considered a serious backward step by experienced trade negotiators.
"We've never agreed to this sort of stuff before," one party to negotiations said last night.
Participants consider political over-optimism the key flaw in the process, as politicians expected good relationships would deliver benefits.Trade Minister Mark Vaile expected his relationship with US counterpart US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to deliver significant farm trade benefits in the end, but he did not.
Further up the line Mr Howard expected the same from Mr Bush and was similarly disappointed.
In the end it was a political call by Mr Howard that a deal should be done at any cost, participants say. Mr Vaile is understood to have left the final decision to Mr Howard.
Christine Wallace: Bush rebuff stunned negotiators, The Australian, 25/2/04 |
Lest we forget: Latham is a working class Tory If Latham has been willing to echo Philip Ruddock on refugees, let the record show that he also has been willing to amplify Richard Alston on the ABC. It's not widely known but a few months before being anointed Opposition Leader, a letter from Latham arrived on the seventh floor at ABC headquarters in Sydney's Ultimo. While the letter is locked in a safe, those who've seen it talk of being surprised, even shocked, by its content.
Apparently it might have been torn from the pages of the conservative Quadrant or the rantings of Melbourne Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. There are familiar rantings about elitism and complaints about public broadcasting being a sheltered workshop for middle-class wankers. In other words, Latham was picking up where Bob Hawke and Paul Keating left off -- making it clear that he despises the ABC and all that, to him, it represents.
Is it true that Latham, like the PM, wants to dismantle the place, brick by brick? If so, it's not simply because Kerry O'Brien has given him a couple of energetic workouts - the letter predates those encounters.
But the view served to remind us that, at heart, Latham is as conservative as the bloke he replaced in December's caucus contest - and the Prime Minister he's targeting.
In the case of the ABC, we may see an escalation of hostility, with Latham trying to do to public broadcasting what Blair wants to do to the Beeb.
Phillip Adams: Danger signs from the Bomb |
Latham kisses sleeping nation awake,
Prime Hobgoblin's spell broken It was as if, with Tampa, the Prime Minister had cast a spell over the Australian body politic and that, with the striking success of Latham's superannuation gambit, at long last the nation had woken from its sleep.
How can this sudden transformation be explained? There is, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, a wonderful line about the nature of politics: "If we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor..." What Shakespeare understood is that very frequently in politics what you have done unto others will eventually be done unto you.
At the time of Tampa, Kim Beazley, in general, offered Howard strong support. He objected only to the initial Border Protection Bill that gave to the Government unprecedentedly sweeping powers. Howard knew the public supported the use of naval power against asylum seeker boats with an almost visceral enthusiasm. He seized on Beazley's principled objection to this single bill. From this moment, until its November 2001 election defeat, Beazley Labor was described on hundreds of occasions as being "soft" on border control. This was probably the most ruthless and effective exercise in populist politics Australia has ever seen.
Robert Manne: Latham storms PM's turf |
(Courtesy: Alan Moir, Sydney Morning Herald) |
Bartlett booze affair blown out of proportion
by Illiberal dirty tricks maestro? The Sydney Morning Herald veteran political commentator Alan Ramsey...questioned Senator Ferris's "supposed outrage". "Bartlett got a bit shickered and made a complete ass of himself," Ramsey wrote. "Next morning he sent a written apology. But she wrote back, claiming not to believe his apology, accusing him of having called her a 'f...ing bitch' several times on the floor of the Senate, of having 'grabbed' her arm, 'bruising it', and suggesting he seek treatment for alcohol abuse. Wondrously, copies of Ferris's letter were given to two newspapers the very day she wrote it. And not, of course, by the stricken Bartlett. So by whom, do we think?"
In the ensuing uproar, Ramsey pointed out, Mark Latham's promotion to leader of the ALP became a secondary story.
Greg Barnes sees a direct tie-in between the leaking of the letter and Bartlett's tireless campaign on behalf of refugees and public questioning of the Government's harsh treatment of asylum seekers.
Barnes says he has heard from well-placed sources, including a government member, that it was the Liberal's controversial Senator Bill Heffernan who leaked a copy of Ferris's letter to journalists. While it is understood that Heffernan hotly denies this, he refused to comment on the record.
Nikki Barrowclough: One false move |
Anti-smokers: Are they driving the world mad? The judgment of Samuel Johnson is as apt now as the day it was uttered: "As smoking is going out of fashion, insanity is growing more frequent."
What self-flagellation was to the cassocked monks of the Middle Ages exercise is to the fitness fetishists of our age.
In the February edition of Vanity Fair, editor Graydon Carter uses his monthly letter to berate New York mayor Michael Bloomberg for anti-smoking bylaws that make it illegal to be in possession of an ashtray, even an empty one, in a country where it is legal to carry a handgun.
I'm reminded of the moment in Black Hawk Down when a bad-arse Mogadishu warlord munching a cigar the size of a weapon of mass destruction (so that's where they are!) asks a captive American GI if he'd like a smoke. Far from being surprised by the rejection, he uses it as an opportunity to flourish an almost Wildean wit: "Since you Americans stopped smoking you all lead long and boring lives."
Luke Slattery: Drawbacks of fitness |
The Slack-Jaw Who Runs The World For most viewers, watching George W. Bush on "Meet the Press" was an hour-long descent into bewilderment and depression, a slack-jawed mental numbness brought on by wondering how such an inarticulate human being could occupy the world's most powerful office. And this time, no one could blame the bad reviews on nasty partisanship. Virtually everyone with a public voice confessed unease and regret over the president's soon-infamous performance.
P. M. Carpenter : High Noon with Dubya Fudd |
Boy trouble: the choice is feminism or barbarism As a supporter of feminism I'm not "furious with Mark Latham's suggestion that we are failing too many of our boys" (Editorial, 20/2). One of the causes of this failure is the persistence of various anti-feminist projects in political and intellectual life.
These have in common the notion that expanding independence for women, and the resultant changes in gender roles and family structures, are either a fad or the result of a conspiracy by federal Labor governments and politically correct academics and bureaucrats.
In its popular form, the message of anti-feminism to young men and boys is that they should not reconcile themselves to relations with the opposite sex based on equality and shared responsibilities, and they need not aspire to a masculinity consistent with egalitarian gender relations.
When young males imbued with this myth collide with the attitudes and expectations of young women, they subjectively experience them as an aberration to be resented and resisted, rather than a reality to accept as part of their adult responsibilities.
Sexual violence and anti-social masculinities are merely the most extreme manifestations of this male anomie.
If we want to help boys and young men past this crisis and empower them to form respectful relationships with women, which can be the basis for egalitarian and secure families, we need to recognise that the choice is not between feminism and traditional family values.
It is between feminism and barbarism.
Paul Norton, letter to The Australian
See also: Tom Morton: Get cracking Mark, the kids are waiting |
(Courtesy: Geoff Pryor, Canberra Times) |
What privatisation means to us mugs Businesses will be forced to foot the bill for the millions of dollars lost due to this week's power bans because Western Power is shielded from all compensation claims, having acted under its emergency powers.
As businesses tried to make up for lost time, Western Australia Chamber of Commerce director of industry policy Bill Sashegyi said members of the business community were extremely frustrated and angry.
"Today they are struggling to make up for the loss of business yesterday. They remain angry about how they got into this circumstance and on their behalf we will be seeking assurances from Western Power that the situation is never repeated."
Mr Sashegyi said the chamber would also be seeking assurances that Western Power would address its strategy for handling future restrictions on power supplies.
A spokesman for Western Power said the emergency systems order, issued under the Energy Corporations (Powers) Act 1979, was intended to protect the electricity system and was only invoked in exceptional circumstances.
"But it also covers our liability in the event that we go into rotating power cuts," he said. "The last thing that we wanted was for the system to collapse."
Karen Brown, Daniel Stacey and Belinda Hickman, The Australian: Companies bear cost of blackout
Victorian Premier Steve Bracks conceded yesterday there was little difference in the cost of running the system privately or publicly, but said continued privatisation would "improve services and provide a better system".
Andrew Heasley: Tram, train subsidy doubles |
(Courtesy: Bill Leak, The Australian) |
This is only the beginning of the Republican smear campaign to keep Bush in power. Most knew it was fake, but the bubbas who have been suckered by Dubya believed it just like they believe in his killer "God" Actual photo of John Kerry, 1971
Doctored photo with Jane Fonda
See: GOP previews upcoming season of Kerry smears |
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