Dirty Tactics But What Do You Expect

Bronwyn Lay

An enjoyable read.

It is like I have said. LNP are classic neoliberal laissez-faire, meaning they like to sit on their hands and let the market take care of everything because the market can do no wrong in their eyes. As such they actually have little relevance. Both parties know that you don't get 'jobs and growth' from an economy without spending money. This election is about who makes the decisions about where to spend the money. LNP policy is to give this decision making function over to the board rooms of big business with their continuing tax cuts for the big end of town. ALP policy is for government to do it's job and spend this money where it is most effective. Rarely has there been a clearer distinction between the effects of our votes.

Jobs and growth will be generated by the construction of and transition to a sustainable economy. The rest of the world, even a rusted-on carbon producer like Shell Oil, recognise this and allocate resources accordingly. The LNP response is to defund the CSIRO and accelerate Coal and CSG production. Whole new industries will need to be created from the ground up involving masses of jobs and sustained growth.

I like the authors' turn of phrase; never heard the term 'Fordist' before but it conveys the meaning intended efficiently, but she sort of misses the significance the w-word. We still have four weeks to go. The LNP played the race card two weeks ago, through Dutton if you recall, something they usually don't do till the last week of elections. Now they drag out the emotive 'war'-word in a roll of the dice in the power game they see politics as. This pathetic little trick is common to conservative strategy and has been used frequently in the past two centuries. You pull out an emotive word like war and apply it to an issue, or in this case, the policies of your opponents. This frightens the voters because war is a frightening threatening thing. You then portray yourself as the only one with policies which will save the poor frightened voter from this emergency situation. Hysterical, yes, but designed to incite hysteria in the voters so that they won't change governments. Hopefully everyone is on to this trick now and it doesn't work but if people just vote the way they've always voted without thinking, the LNP will get back in and if that happens the damage to our society will be irreparable. Four weeks to go and they've already made two of their characteristic strategic plays. Surely a sign of panic.

I hope I am wrong but I think we may have to write the Great Barrier Reef off as a victim of global warming. A laughable attempt was made to put a price on saving it was announced last week with no mention of global warming. As if the bleaching is not being caused by global warming at all but by firtiliser/coal dust run off from the land. We've been an international laughing stock since 2013 so no one takes us seriously. This article highlights this point well. I like to talk about my cringe meter going off scale and my crystal ball blowing a head gasket but that's just a turn of phrase. The state of things is being understated in the mainstream media to avoid panic I fear and when it all hits the fan there will be turmoil.

Campaign Update May 2016

When I can be bothered with the utter inanity, not to mention the manipulative bias, of the mainstream media I can't help but notice a few things. So it came about this week with both leaders toying with this lovely little "spendometer" quote Bill came up with earlier in the week and Mr Originality Silvertail Turnbull tossed around all over the place.

Especially during an election you have to stay focused and keep your eye out for "the old smokescreen trick" whereby one or other of the contenders makes a big noise about something of little consequence so that the voters attention is drawn there and you can sneak one in on them while their attention is blinded. This spendometer circus has many hallmarks of the old smokescreen trick. Allow me to explain.

"Jobs and Growth" is a plank common to both ALP and LNP election platforms. It is a fact of life provable by any source of evidence you choose, that you don't create jobs without spending money, you do not grow the output of the economy without spending money, you do not improve anything without spending money. So all this bickering, name-calling and kerfuffle about spendometers and great big taxes, and tax-and-spend policies is just a smokescreen. So let's clear the air a bit and blow the smoke away.

This election is not about whether or not the money should be spent. If you want jobs and growth you must spend the money. This election is about who will make the decisions about where this money is allocated. Will it be through rational researched decisions by a democratically elected government under universal suffrage and compulsory voting, or will it be through blind faith in the goodwill and wisdom of the 1% financial elite with no rational conscious input from anyone else (an elite who are proven tax-cheats via the Panama papers) via massive tax cuts to big business and the most-wealthy segment of society.  

The Liberal/National Coalition has little relevance in fact. They are a throwback to the Liberal party of England in the second half of the 19th century. The worldview of Benjamin Disraeli and Palmerston. Their approach is laissez-faire trickle down innaction summed up by: "cut taxes to the wealthy, so the poor have to pay for everything so that they are reduced to such a state of retched desperation that they are too busy trying to keep body and soul together to rise up, an do nothing else which would interfere with the market making all your decisions for you." Their tendency is to do nothing. Their promises were all proven to be nonsense last election as they were reneged upon the minute they gained power.

So in reality, this election represents the final scramble for ownership of the last remaining scarce economic resources remaining in this country within the ranks of the 0.1% wealth bracket. Between the TPP and ChiFTA the present government has devided our country up and arranged for it to be sold piecemeal to the countries on the Pacific rim especially China, and their tax cuts for the wealthiest free up the capital to make these purchases. Treasonous whelps like Gina Rhinehardt exploit the 457 visa scheme to import slave-wage-labour in preference to hiring Australian Nationals.

This election is a battle between Big business, represented by the LNP, and Australian Society, represented by every other party, but with the ALP as the only other party capable of forming government.

Finally I would like to put the final nail in the coffin of this absurd myth about the LNP being better managers of the economy than the ALP. I draw your attention to the cold hard facts accumulated by Stephen Koukoulas, Managing Director of Market Economics, a macroeconomic advisory firm. Advisor to Dun & Bradstreet. Research Fellow Per Capita. This government has driven the economy into a deep dark hole from which it may take us a long time to recover. Every economic signpost indicator has gone backward in a big way since the LNP came to power. Policies followed by this government almost the  precise opposite effect they say it will. It's the "We will create jobs by closing down the car-making industry" absurdity. Everything they say is tainted in this way.

We seek that rare personality of unlimited value which is incorruptible to the core; who will laugh in the face of a million dollar bribe and toss the briber physically back out into the slimy gutter they emerged from.

A person of rusted-on integrity and charisma, who feels what is right like having a sixth sense.

A true leader to take us out of our LNP-Imposed NEOLIBERAL NIGHTMARE into the shining light of the Keysian Capitalist Utopia.

Is Tony Windsor such a leader? He does have the integrity, tested under the hellfire of the Gillard Hung Parliament. What of the other traits mentioned above.

Is Bill Shorten such a leader. He shows promise but is somewhat of an unknown quantity as he has not been tested.

Wickedness of Politcal Ambition

Last Friday, out of the blue, for no perceivable reason and disturbingly reminiscent of the beginnings of political disunity witnessed first in the Gillard/Rudd government and now in the Abbott/Turnbull government, headlines in the West Australian blared out the news that the present leader of the state opposition, Mark McGowan, would not be able to win government by defeating the Liberal Western Australian government of Colin Barnett, and would need to be replaced by former Foreign Minister Steven Smith. I said to myself: "really???"

I live in Mark McGowan's electorate and see him regularly in person. He speaks regularly at my branch meeting. So you may be able to understand my consternation at this pretense of news. Rather than take these headlines as a true representation of reality I disallowed any disruption in my perpetual state of inner peace and waited for the truth to come out. Last night this happened.

The Western Australian State Branch of the Australian Labor Party last night vehemently and resounding closed ranks behind Mark McGowan as leader and next Premier of our sandgroper state.
Loud standing ovations greeted Mark at every turn. No doubt at all was left in the room. There will be no challenge. Any opinion to the contrary or that Mark can not win is simply that, an opinion, with no basis in fact unless evidence is produced in support.

Sources for this headline remain mysterious. Steven Smith himself did not come out  and enlighten us until the following Monday. If you are not happy with the leadership of your political party and think its goals are doomed to failure unless someone else you know of within the party becomes leader, then the ethical, harmless, correct and righteous way of bringing about the change you desire is to take your concerns through normal channels and attempt to implement change quietly, not blast it out for all to see in the local media. What this episode has achieved is to project a little hint of disunity in the mind of the voting public. In politics, as has been noted, and displayed grandly at federal level, disunity is death.

We can call it the great political disease of the twenty-first century. Generated by the increasing compression of the news cycle caused by the acceleration in the IT revolution, politicians with ambition take to the media. It's like a need to be noteworthy, if not through fame, then through infamy. It infected Keven07, quickly spread to Gillard, Back to Rudd, and now has mutated to a more virulent strain in Abbot and Turnbull.

The policies WA Labor is taking to the election in 2017 are wide-ranging, right-headed, far-sighted and well thought out. Their implementation, to put it mildly, will make this state a better place for everyone. This is what everyone should want. I'm not sure absolutely everyone does actually desire this outcome, but I look forward to finding out.          

Goodbye 2015, Good Ridance, Hello 2016

So the cycle turns again and here we are at both an end and a beginning. The year 2015 will be remembered for much evil but also much good, as most years are, but should be judged according to what was actually resolved, beyond words and so in deed.

Humanity continues to dance on the existential abyss of a Malthusian moment. How much longer can our cleverness and technology counteract the logic of Malthus? We are going to find out, not next year but soon.

Make no mistake. Climate change is an existential threat that has wiped out species in the past and will continue to do so. Humanity has developed the ability to control small parts of nature, but can still reap the destructive whirlwind of hubris. We recently saw some small signs of hope in Paris, but we must be realistic. A 2C world may not be possible under the time constraints our leaders (if you want to call them that) have left us with, since the problem was first identified back in the early 1960's.

Since the "Industrial Revolution" began to accelerate around 1850, the CO2e concentration in the atmosphere also accelerated. A large part of this extra CO2e concentration remains in the atmosphere for a very long time. This fact seriously constrains the time in which it is physically possible to change it. The time when it was easiest to fix the problem was in the sixties. It was probably still possible by 2000; possible with difficulty by 2010; and now very difficult indeed. Yet we are still in the talk phase. Action cannot come soon enough.

It has been noted https://theconversation.com/weve-got-a-climate-goal-of-1-5-degrees-so-how-do-we-get-there-52413 that, in order to achieve a 2C world, let alone a 1.5C world, CO2e must be physically removed from the atmosphere. The technology required to do this does not yet exist. Our situation at present is akin to a bet on a race. If our technology wins our species continues; if climate change wins our species is annihilated. The actions of the nations of the world on this issue imply a naive trust in the all-conquering supremacy of our technology. This is hubris and can lead to our destruction. There is a chance that it will not and we have implicitly wagered our existence on this chance. The pigs are taking flight as we speak.

Another gamble of note which has come to light this year is this associated concept of a 2C world, by which is meant a mean temperature of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial mean atmospheric temperature. The nature of the gamble is that these are mean temperatures. The arithmetic mean is a measure of central tendency in a large population of measurements. As such, in a world with a mean atmospheric temperature of 2C above preindustrial conditions, there will be an equal number of measurements within the 2C range above this state as below. Since each measurement corresponds to a geographical location, it becomes a lottery as to whether the place where you live is in the former or the latter category. Maybe you will get lucky.

Another thread in the tapestry was the continuing Middle East Saga; Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations.' There was a time when I paid little attention to this issue, forming no opinions and ignoring the suffering because it was in the too hard basket. See what happens when you ignore things? 

        

    




 

If There is But One Iota of Goodness Left in The World

Michael Bradley 

"I cannot escape the conclusion that, in 2015, humankind went backwards."

"The positive has been rare. The small ways in which people displayed their humanity - #illridewithyou; the post-Sydney Siege floral sea in Martin Place; the resilience of Parisians against a double dose of horrific terrorist violence; Melbourne's facing down of the arrant Border Force police-state overreach; some parts of Europe's response to the Syrian exodus - were exclusively reactive, responding to and ameliorating the worst of terrorism, governmental excess or xenophobia."

"In the overwhelming sea of awfulness that people and governments inflicted on each other this year, these green buds of progressive thought and empathic action barely registered beyond the social media ripple. And they didn't impede the carnage or the erosion of human rights one bit."

Perhaps a bit of an overstatement but also perhaps not.

It is a defining characteristic of conservative, ie right wing, governments, that they stand for the status quo so that all stays the same from generation to generation. Electorates also fall back on conservative governments when they feel threatened. Do you detect a hint of oxymoronism here? If you want every thing to stay the same, and the present reality is what is threatening, then electing conservatives is the best way to make certain of the continuing recurrence of this reality.