Wednesday 22 February 2012

Drop the dead donkey

It is remarkable living through the current fantasyland under the Gillard government.  Things are turning sour rapidly, people are losing their jobs, the Global Financial crisis is looming yet the government and Labor party are preoccupied by politically correct peripheral symbolism and trendoid nonsense which is of little interest to the public at large.  First it was gay marriage where we saw the issue hijacking the Labor conference last December.  That's all very well, gay marriage does not have a direct impact on the majority and can be easily dismissed as a side issue.  Far more disturbing is the threatened Aboriginal referendum which has the potential - if passed - to trample on the rights of every non-Aboriginal Australian and end up costing millions - if not billions - of dollars.

Let's look at what is proposed.  A new section will be inserted into the constitution saying that Aborigines were the original inhabitants of Australia, that the land is theirs and that all law in Australia is derived from traditional tribal law.  Another section will be inserted outlawing racial discrimination - like the Racial Discrimination Act in miniature - but only protecting Aborigines.  There is pressure from ethnic groups to incorporate the whole Racial Discrimination Act holus bolus into the constitution.

The bright red danger lights should now be flashing furiously.

For a start, this is just a de facto Bill of Rights, the same legislation Labor has been trying to introduce for many years on a state and federal level.  In the ACT the Labor government has actually managed to legislate a Human Rights Act and this has been exploited by savvy lawyers to the hilt.  Last year a magistrate was actually sacked when it was found that he spoke to a juvenile offender too harshly in his sentencing, and that the magistrate violated the childrens' rights of the offender under the Human Rights Act.  The sentence was overturned and the boy walked free.

Just imagine that happening with Aborigines.  They would effectively be immune from all prosecution because of the fear that - under the amendments to the Constitution - any charges would be struck down by Constitutional lawyers in the High Court.  It would be a lawyers' picnic.  And the worst thing about this is that everybody else in the country would not have that same advantage.  Aborigines would become a protected species and everybody else will become second class citizens.  Just imagine Aborigines running wild every day committing crimes willy nilly knowing they couldn't be charged because it is unconstitutional.

Why should the Constitution put Aborigines on a pedestal just because "they were here first"?  It is an abomination and just another form of discrimination.  Reverse discrimination..

The second part about transferring the Racial Discrimination Act into the Constitution - but only applying to Aborigines - is so totally bizarre you have to wonder why this was actually put into the proposal in the first place.  Surely they didn't think the public would wear this?  The Racial Discrimination Act was used by the infamous white gang of Aborigines to try and silence Andrew Bolt in the court action last year.  It almost worked - Bolt shut down his blog temporarily and almost retired from journalism - but was persuaded to keep fighting the good fight by the overwhelming majority of Australians.  Rather than extending the idea of racial discrimination into the Constitution we should be abolishing these laws altogether.

So far the only support for a yes vote in the referendum has come from The Canberra Times, specifically editor-at-large Jack Waterford who has an obsession with Aborigines and is on record as describing himself as a former student radical involved in the protest movement in the 1960s and '70s.  It is largely due to his presence that The Canberra Times has pushed every trendy lefty issue doing the rounds.  The newspaper has even said that if the public votes No to the referendum Australia would be shamed and become the pariah of the world.  The good news is that the public - even in left wing Canberra - is just not buying it.  Even on The Canberra Times's own website - normally a case of preaching to the converted - 60% of respondents to their online poll voted no to the question "Will you be voting yes to the Aboriginal referendum?"

Any possible support for the referendum was shot down in flames with the disgraceful Australia Day riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy.  Just imagine this sort of radical ratbaggery being protected by the Constitution.

This referendum will cost millions of dollars to hold in the first place.  It is now clear that it will be comprehensively defeated, so what is the point of the exercise?  Why go ahead with it?  To make a few feral leftists feel warm and fuzzy?  To parade the PC credentials of the instigators?  To create work for the Aboriginal industry?  A very expensive way to indulge the fantasies and infantile idealism of the Left.

The Gillard government should nip this whole referendum proposal in the bud and stomp on it comprehensively by announcing it will not go ahead.  It represents a direct threat to the rights and liberty of the vast majority and has the potential to cost taxpayers billions of dollars in legal fees and tie up the courts for many years with lawyers being the only beneficiaries.  We don't want it and we definitely don't need it.

"Strong economy" is just a mirage

Labor members are becoming increasingly frustrated at their inability to cut through due to the continuing leadership speculation.  They keep parroting guff to a media - and to the public at large - which long ago lost faith in the Gillard government and can't believe anything they say.

The main message they are trying to push is the so-called "strong economy".  They actually believe that economic management is a plus for the government, and that this is a weapon to use against the opposition.  Are they out of their minds?

Day after day we are hearing reports of massive job losses.  Companies going bust, jobs disappearing or else being relocated overseas, companies pulling up stumps and heading to greener pastures, manufacturing industry closing down, it just goes on and on.  We are seeing those headlines and hearing this terrible news day after day yet the government keeps talking about the "strong economy" as if nothing is happening.  All of this just goes to show how out of touch the government is with reality and the disconnect between Canberra and the real world.  The politicians are being fed a non-stop stream of happy talk from bureaucrats fearful of losing their jobs if they tell their bosses the truth.

All this has eerie similarities to the period between 1989 and 1991 - immediately before the declaration of "the recession we had to have" which extended till 1994.  The Hawke government's Industry and Trade minister, the late John Button said on the ABC's 1993 documentary Labor In Power that during this period business leaders kept approaching him talking about how dire things were.  Costs were going up, business confidence was non-existent and that they would have to make mass sackings.  Button said that he asked the business leaders if they had told Hawke and Keating about this.  "We've tried to but they're just not listening" said Button.

During that pre-recession period (when, in fact, the country was already in recession) Treasurer Paul Keating kept saying there would be "a soft landing".  He had been told over and over by bureaucrats in Treasury that there would be no recession, that the economy was sound and in good shape - just like the Gillard government is now telling the public.  In April 1991 Keating was forced to make his "Recession we had to have" speech when the figures finally caught up with reality and the recession was officially confirmed.

Fast forward to the present day.  The economy is going south at a rate of knots.  Job losses are escalating and the economic legacy of John Howard and Peter Costello - which kept us out of the Global Financial Crisis during the Rudd government - has been squandered.  The spectre of the carbon tax is hanging over the country like a Damocles sword and is destroying the country.

Australia is the only country in the world which has deliberately bought its way into the Global Financial Crisis.

The companies which are shedding jobs and heading into receivership and administration are mostly saying that the carbon tax isn't the reason.  They have to say that, don't they?  The fact is they cannot blame the carbon tax because they are scared of being left out of any industry compensation from the government when the carbon tax comes in.  They are being gagged.  When you have a situation where the government has to keep paying out millions in compensation to the victims of its policies then you have to agree that something is terribly wrong.

All in all, the Labor government has created the terrible mess this country is in and is trying to pull the old smoke and mirrors trick by talking up the economy.  Well, the public is just not buying it.  They know this country has been destroyed by Labor, they know the economy is stuffed and they know that Labor is just a cheap-jack bunch of gratuitious liars and charlatans with the economic expertise of Mickey Mouse.  No amount of happy talk about the so-called "strong economy" will ever change that.

The problem is Labor - not Gillard

It has been a frantic few days in Canberra politically with the Labor leadership issue erupting following the release of the YouTube video showing Kevin Rudd losing it and using a flurry of four letter words whilst PM in 2009.  It has now become clear that the video was posted by a member of Julia Gillard's staff in order to discredit Rudd - the same people who incited the Australia Day riot at the Aboriginal Embassy.  The video was left on a computer hard drive by one of Rudd's staff and - with the haste in which Gillard took over in June 2010 - wasn't wiped before Rudd got the heave-ho.

There has been much speculation about Gillard calling a spill and a vote being taken about the leadership.  One thing is clear.  Gillard has the numbers and will win any leadership ballot easily.  Comparisons have been made with the ascention of Paul Keating as PM - challenge the first time, lose then go to the backbench, white-ant the leader, persuade enough to switch sides then challenge again after six months and win.  This method also worked in 1974 and 1975 when Malcolm Fraser challenged Billy Snedden for the Liberal leadership.  In this case it will be more like Andrew Peacock's challenges to Malcolm Fraser or Peter Costello's desire to be prime minister - it just won't get over the line.

The major fault is that - unlike Keating and Fraser (and Peacock and Costello) - Rudd has already had a term as leader and prime minister and been found wanting.  Badly.  He was just no good in the job whichever way you look at it.  He created such resentment and made so many enemies within the party and general community that the last thing anybody in Labor wants is a return to the nightmare days of Rudd as leader.  He will never win.

Never forget that Rudd did such a poor job that the opinion polls - in an election year - were pointing to an embarrassing and devastating defeat for Rudd and Labor, the first time a government would have been defeated after just one term.  It was especially telling when you consider that Rudd was elected on such a strong mandate and such goodwill having defeated a sitting prime minister in his own seat, only the second time that had ever happened.  The apology to Aborigines at the start of the Rudd government was symbolic in that it marked the beginning of a new era and people really did believe that things had changed - that they would get the strong economic management of the Hawke/Keating era combined with a social concience.  As we all know it didn't quite turn out that way.  Rudd and Labor squandered their mandate and sent the country spiralling downward at a rate of knots.

Rudd was a control freak calling meetings at 2AM, forcing public servants in disparate departments and bodies to deal directly with his office, allowing ministers to push crazy policies and frequently being reported as having tantrums with hairdressers and airline staff.  It wasn't a happy ship at all.

The opinion polls were holding up for more than two years largely due to the Liberals who put up weak and ineffectual leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, but at the end of 2008 Communications minister Stephen Conroy put up the crazy Internet censorship proposal which immediately turned the young and savvy younger generation - the people who voted for Rudd in droves - against him and his government.  This flowed through to the general community.

One of the more fanciful media reports claimed that Rudd lost only one opinion poll as PM.  That simply isn't true.  From mid 2009 each opinion poll showed Labor falling further behind the coalition as Conroy dug in with his Net censorship proposal and poured ever more money into it despite savage opposition in the community.  The rot had set in to such an extent that Gillard became PM and saved Labor from a savage defeat in the 2010 election with the infamous lie claiming that there would be no carbon tax.

The scenario painted by the Rudd backers is that Rudd will get back in and everything will be sweetness and light.  Of course that will not happen and cannot happen.  The problem here is not Gillard or Rudd, the problem is Labor itself.  The party - by its very nature and makeup - is dysfunctional and not suited to government.  The large left wing of the party makes it unmanageable and any leader has to spent too much time pandering to left wing and trade union sectional interests to be able to run an effective government.

It is true that the Hawke and Keating governments were good governments, but Bob Hawke's success was due to him completely neutering the left and running a presidential style government along with Keating and Treasury.  The party conference became nothing but a sideshow and irrelevant debating forum which had nothing to do with influencing the government.  Keating was able to get his beneficial economic reforms through which ultimately resulted in the golden era under the Howard government.  Keating as PM was initially able to keep things on track but was brought down by the incredibly stupid and moronic Aboriginal secret women's business scandal pushed by one of his ministers Robert Tickner, the Net censorship-style disaster of the 1990s.

Many people made the mistake - when voting for Rudd - of thinking that it would be a return to the Hawke era.  How very wrong they were.  It was actually a return to the chaos of the Whitlam era.  The same goes for the Gillard government.  And you cannot blame the influence of The Greens for the crisis we are now in.  The blame lies with Labor.  The party is just not fit for government at any level.  It wouldn't matter if they put in Abraham Lincoln as leader, it is still a Labor government with all its baggage and that is the problem.

At the time of writing, the leadership issue remains unresolved.  No matter what happens it will not matter one iota what they do, they will remain on the slippery slope downwards.  Meanwhile the country suffers as the public sees political incompetence and economic ruin on display for all to see.  It just keeps getting worse.  This is the reality of Labor in government and it isn't pretty.

Thursday 16 February 2012

Gillard just can't take a trick

It is probably a sign of how dire the Gillard government's situation is at the moment when things which are supposed to go her way backfire so badly and become political disasters.

First it was the riot at the Aboriginal tent embassy on Australia Day where filthy radicals stormed a restaurant where heroes were being awarded and put the safety of both Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott at serious risk.  A terrified Gillard was rushed through the feral mob into a waiting car.  That should have evoked sympathy for Gillard and further turned people against the mongrel mob of Aborigines and their supporters.  Instead we found out that one of her own staff as well as Unions ACT head Kim Sattler fabricated a story that Abbott wanted to tear down the embassy and incited the riot by telling the scum he was next door in the restaurant.  So Gillard's mates stabbed her in the back and further harmed her standing after a Christmas/New Year period where her popularity temporarily rose.

If that wasn't enough, we now see her performance on the ABC's Four Corners which can only be described as bizarre.  As the Americans might say "What the sam hill was she thinking?"  Once again her attempts to squirm out of the problem and look for scapegoats has been even more embarrassing.

Gillard tried to dump on the ABC saying she was ambushed.  She claims she was told the show would be about the achievements of her government and that the interview would be a puff piece where she could wax lyrical without being challenged.  As if.

Gillard has been in politics and public life long enough to know that journalism - especially TV journalism - just doesn't work that way.  Sure you might have thousands of PR hacks with or without journalism degrees pumping out your press releases putting a positive spin on yourself and your policies, but the media have to provide the public with a bit more substance and critical analysis simply because the average person can see right through one-sided propaganda and spin.

Did she really expect 45 minutes of pro-government pap in a prime time TV slot?  Not even the ABC was prepared to do that.  She can't claim that she was ambushed by the interviewer because he and the producer of the show have given media interviews stating quite clearly that Gillard was told that the interview would also canvass the government's problems and the leadership question.  So she went ahead with the interview anyway and now that it has all gone pear-shaped she is now shooting the messenger.

The Gillard government is now on death row waiting for the executioner.  The situation is terminal.  Every time her friends and supporters pipe up in the media trying to boost her stocks it harms her politically.  The latest example was Greens leader Bob Brown claiming that criticism of Gillard was "sexist".  That went down like a lead balloon.  The latest Newspoll shows that Labor support fell sharply after the speech and - more telling for Gillard - Tony Abbott has now overtaken her as preferred prime minister, the first time this has happened for three months.  It is even more significant when you consider that the most recent Galaxy poll - taken before Brown's speech - showed Labor fast gaining on the coalition and Gillard comfortably in front as preferred prime minister.  Indeed, the usual suspects were again writing off Abbott and putting up the failed straw man Malcolm Turnbull as a replacement for Abbott as Liberal leader.

Sadly it would appear that the malaise in Canberra will continue for the foreseeable future.  The California system of recall elections where a petition of several thousand people can force a new election seems very attractive indeed.  For the next eighteen months we are stuck with a government which no longer has the support of the vast majority of Australians.