Gillard's fractious premiership
Tom Switzer 3:02pm
‘The definition of an Independent Member of Parliament, viz., one that could
not be depended upon.’ - Former British prime minister, the Earl of Derby to Queen Victoria.
In the August 21 federal election down under, the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard copped a stunning rebuke from the Australian people. Consider this: Tony Abbott’s centre-right Liberal-National Coalition won nearly half a million more votes than the Australian Labor Party. It secured more seats than the ALP (73 to 72 in the 150-seat House of Representatives). And the Labor administration became the first first-term government since 1931 to lose a parliamentary majority. So how does Labor claim a mandate to govern?
The two rural Independents, on whose support Julia Gillard now depends, represent electorates that are overwhelmingly conservative. All the available evidence -- the senate vote on August 21 and the subsequent opinion polls in the two electorates – indicates that the electors of these Independent seats strongly favour the Coalition over Labor.
And yet, the suddenly famous duo of the 60-year-old Tony Windsor and the 40-year-old Rob Oakeshott sided with this unpopular Labor government whose prime minister, the Lady Macbeth of Australian politics, lacks any real legitimacy.
Why? Simply put, Labor was prepared to bribe the two Independents with an offer of $10 billion of boondoggles and special deals for their electorates and broader regions. Part of that pork includes Labor’s proposed national broadband network. Labor plans to spend $30 billion of tax dollars to deliver 100-odd megabits per second to every household in the next decade. Never mind it requires an unwanted faith in the Nanny State to believe that any government can deliver on time, on budget or at all the promised digital nirvana without the slightest idea of how to pay for it commercially.
If you think all this represents an unfair outcome, you’re right. It hardly represents the will of people, as even Windsor himself conceded at today’s press conference. But as bad as this electoral outcome is, it could even be worse.
Last week Gillard, a former secretary of the Socialist Form (the offspring of the old Australian Communist Party), signed an alliance with the Greens, a far-left so-called environment party. Given that nine Green senators will control the upper house balance of power from next July, this alliance will create the most left-wing government in the Antipodes. That’s quite a mouthful when you ponder the socialist governments that all too often run New Zealand.
And what are the Green policy priorities? Impose a 50 per cent tax on the resources sector, on whose back Australia’s remarkable prosperity rests. Kill the coal industry, on whose back Australia’s energy-intensive based economy rests. And introduce same-sex marriage and adoption as well as death duties. None of which reflects the thoughts and attitudes of Middle Australia where the political gravity remains right of centre in the post-John Howard era.
Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and this one goes like this: Labor is on the verge of a nasty civil war, waged primarily between the Prime Minister’s office and the very factional war lords who knifed Kevin Rudd three months ago but who now blame Gillard for Labor’s poor election campaign. The spectre of Rudd, meanwhile, still haunts parliament: he’s risen from the political grave and haunting his nemesis like Banquo's ghost. Add in that odd mix of legislators – from Green party activists on the left to rural Independents on the right – and Labor’s hold on power in the new hung parliament is about as tight as the Democrats’ control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Get set for more Labor bloodletting in coming months.
Labor’s grip on power, moreover, lies in the hands of any one Government MP. If he or she resigns or dies in office, and if they represent a marginal seat, the game could very well be up any time before the next election is due in 2013. One can’t help but think that if Kevin Rudd, the King Duncan of Australian politics, is not accommodated in the new government – a very real likelihood given the bitterness surrounding his fatal stabbing which sparked a cycle of revenge knifings -- he may well take his bat and ball, go home, declare his innings, and leave in his wake a tough by-election in what is now a marginal Brisbane seat.
As Macbeth put it, the assassination, far from proving the ‘be-all and end-all’ of the act, can ‘return to plague the inventor.’ If Rudd did indeed leave politics during this term, it would amount to the ultimate act of revenge.
Tom Switzer is editor of the Spectator Australia in Sydney.
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Informed Giant
September 7th, 2010 3:19pm Report this commentLess votes, less seats and now green. A loser Government, and now Australians are the loser.
charles hercock
September 7th, 2010 3:38pm Report this commentWhat makes us think of our own Gordon Brown
Although at least she had the courage to the country
Andre
September 7th, 2010 3:45pm Report this commentLosing your country to a Welsh socialist, blimey. A salutary lesson to all who consider the benefits of proportional representation.
Noa
September 7th, 2010 4:06pm Report this commentExcellent knockabout politics!
It just shows that, when one's got the national treasury to rifle, one can buy anyone.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people, except perhaps, their effervescent, coalescent equivalents in the UK.
Funny though, how coalition politics has become more common and how inherently unstable they are. Witness the collapse of coalition talks in Holland with Geert Wilder's walk out as well as the Anglo saxon arranagements in the UK and CoA.
Ed P
September 7th, 2010 4:09pm Report this commentI hope Rudd does pull the plug - this unpleasant mix of vested interests and bribery serves the Australian public very badly. The Green agenda will, if implemented, destroy what is presently a booming economy. The upside is that our own CO2-obsessed nutters may learn a valuable lesson, saving the UK from a similar eco-suicide.
denis cooper
September 7th, 2010 4:20pm Report this commentWhat is meant by the assertion that the Coalition won nearly half a million votes more than Labor?
Firstly, I look at the website of the Australian Electoral Commission and find that the process of checking and counting the ca 15% of votes received after polling day still continues -
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/
"Across Australia 14,088,260 electors enrolled to vote.
Currently 92.79% of the primary vote has been counted.
The two party preferred count is 88.16% complete.
The election results on this website were last updated at 7/09/2010 8:20:46 PM.
This website was last published at 7/09/2010 10:18:15 PM."
Secondly, if you have an AV system you don't stop counting and transferring votes in a constituency until a winner emerges, and then both his pile of ballot papers and that of the runner up will contain papers with first preference votes and lower preference votes, all of which are counted.
Incidentally, unlike the variant proposed for the UK (and that used for by-elections in Ireland) voters in Australia must rank all the candidates on the ballot paper, which rather defeats the object of giving the voter greater freedom in the way he votes.
Tankus
September 7th, 2010 4:24pm Report this commentIt could have been worse .!.
Imagine the aussies getting someone like Gordon Brown , then they too could have a national debit like ours.
But then maybe they are not as stupid as us to let some treasonous git like that to get into any position of power .. above warden of london zoo monkey house !
Best of luck to them !
Vulture
September 7th, 2010 4:43pm Report this commentThis is actually a good result for Conservatives. Labor and the Greens will inevitably implode within a year or two and the subsequent election will return a healthy right-wing majority.
#Chins up, cobbers!
David Lindsay
September 7th, 2010 5:05pm Report this commentRob Oakeshott's membership of the National Party was always rather baffling, but a Labor Government acceptable to Tony Windsor is going to be even more acceptable to Bob Katter, Tony Abbott's acceptability to whom indicates how great and merciful a break with the Howard years Abbott represents.
Gillard and Abbott have both been endorsed by politicians, Windsor and (especially) Katter, with agenda of big government to regenerate rural Australia, and with none of your rubbish about climate change hysteria, or abolishing the monarchy, or departing from the traditional definition of marriage, or importing a new working class in order to undercut the old one.
Roll on AV in Britain.
Dr Tchok
September 7th, 2010 5:06pm Report this commentSorry, can we get this straight: is Kevin Rudd Duncan or Banquo?
strapworld
September 7th, 2010 5:14pm Report this commentNever forget that Rudd resigned. He did not fight on and he should have done. Also she has said that the Queen will be the last for Australia.
I loved the colourful newsppaer reviewer on SkyNews at 8am this morning, an Australian who said that she would be a disaster and 'She is not an Aussie'!! of course had it been our general election his remarks would have been reported to the Race body!
DavidDP
September 7th, 2010 6:41pm Report this comment"introduce same-sex marriage and adoption"
At least they'll do two good things, then.
Fergus Pickering
September 7th, 2010 6:59pm Report this commentCripes! These Welsh Wizards! Wow!
DavidDP
September 7th, 2010 9:41pm Report this comment"Simply put, Labor was prepared to bribe the two Independents"
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/voters-want-independent-mps-to-side-with-labor-says-poll-20100903-14ufc.html
"Mr Robb and other Coalition frontbenchers attacked Mr Wilkie yesterday for citing as a reason to join Labor a $1 billion offer from Mr Abbott to build a new hospital in Hobart. Mr Wilkie had wanted a new hospital but thought Mr Abbott's offer was unethical compared with Ms Gillard's offer to source funding though existing mechanisms."
Presumably this is something other than a bribe......
gareth
September 8th, 2010 12:33am Report this commentLucky Australians - if only our election had just tipped left, we could be experiencing the fruit of New Labs policies in FULL and that could only mean an eventual return to reality in FULL, instead of the half-hearted Fannie-Freddie social-justice Portillo-Abbott nowhere-land we are now in and will be for decades.
Even Tony Blair has realised it's simple to just re-write history in today's uncritical climate.
At least the coming fiasco in Australia could be for their benefit in the long run.
Major Plonquer 1
September 8th, 2010 7:05am Report this commentThis woman makes Harriet Harman look like Margaret Thatcher. She's even further to the Left than Gladys Kinnock and her husband Penis.
The truth is that for some time now Australia has been the new New Zealand. Luckily, under the current government, New Zealand has been the new Australia. So there's still some hope down that end of the world.
Incidentally all of us here in Beijing send our best to Bob Parker (Mayor), his good lady wife and all the people of Christchurch. Now there's a politician to keep an eye on for the future.
Nicholas
September 8th, 2010 7:21am Report this comment"Imagine the aussies getting someone like Gordon Brown"
They have haven't they? A female version with the same clone-like Celtic chip on the shoulder and socialist credentials.
Yuk!
Norman Dee
September 8th, 2010 10:14am Report this commentSorry you chose to drop my comment, maybe I did come on a bit strong, but why are you protecting the KInnocks ?
anne allan
September 8th, 2010 10:22am Report this commentTankus - the bribes to two MPs will cost the Australian taxpayer the thick end of 6 billion Oz dollars. The Welsh emigree will be as pricy as Gordon Brown. Poor Australia; on the plus side, they don't have to look over their shoulders at the EU whenever they wish to take decisive action.
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