Undoing Howards legacy

Paul Kelly, in the Australian, has an interesting article explaining what Kevin Rudd plans to do with the public service if he gets elected. The article is here.


As he explains, John Howard has tried to intimidate and control the public service while he's been in office. He doesn't want impartial or independent advice - he just wants the public servants to do exactly what he wants without question or dissent. This makes for bad policy, and Paul Kelly identifies this as a blunder. I agree. The public service should be free to give impartial and independent advice to the government. Obviously, it should also impartially and competently implement government policies after they've been passed by Parliament, but that's not what John Howard has asked for. It looks to me like he's tried to turn the Australian public service into another arm of the Liberal Party, with the aim of keeping the Liberal Party in power. That's just an abuse of our system of government, in my opinion.

According to the article, Kevin Rudd wants to restore the independence of the public service while also lifting its standards. That's a great aim, and if he can pull it off that will be fantastic. It'll be interesting to see if he can do it, though. A compliant public service would undoubtedly make life easier for any government, even if it means public policy suffers. But I think its a good idea, and I hope he gets a chance to do it. John Howards legacy of abuse towards our system of government and democracy needs to be undone, and this is one step towards doing that.

And on that note, here's another article over at The Road to Surfdom on a similar topic - the abuses of power committed by the Howard Government.

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The lost plot

Here are two more stories that show how badly John Howard and his government have lost the plot on all things climate change.

The first is about solar power and the second is on the future of Australia as global warming kicks in.


The story about solar power is interesting, and frustrating, and a good example of lost opportunities. The Australian company couldn't find support for its Australian product in Australia, so does the sensible thing and moves offshore. Then it gets picked up by an American company, lands a huge contract providing clean renewable energy on a huge scale.

I've always thought that Australia is the logical place for solar power to take off. We've got a large amount of space, and lots of sunny weather. It should be an obvious combination. But we've got a government that talks about solar power being inefficient, expensive and unable to provide baseload power, and so they've not invested in it or provided any significant subsidies for research and development. And now, an Australian company is going to provide all those things to the Americans. I guess that'd be a shock to John Howard and friends, although they'll probably waffle on about how it's still not in production and there's a lot of risks etc etc. And in the meantime, our country loses out on the benefits of the project, and we waste our money on trying to develop clean coal technology that will take at least as long as solar power to provide any decent returns or environmental benefits.

The second story shows what this could cost us. While we're basically refusing to take any serious action on climate change or reducing our emmissions, our country is going to get hotter and dryer and the seas will continue to rise. That's bad news all around, and yet our government has continued to deny there's a problem. Until recently, that is, when they realised they might actually lose this election. Now we've got some token acknowledgement of the problem for them but their only action seems to be more political spin. As in dressing up already existing schemes and presenting it as something new. Anyway... bring on the election, lets get a new government!

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Life in the alternative universe

That would be politics, of course - it seems to bear little resemblance to real life, and yet people take it all so very seriously. A couple of interesting statements have been made this week. Andrew Bartlett picks up on one, made by Julia Gillard.


She made a statement saying that Labor would expect the Senate to pass their new IR laws almost immediately, if they were elected. She said that in that case Labor would have a mandate to pass its IR package, and so the Senate should just pass it - just rubber-stamp it, in effect.

This means, I guess, that Labor has learnt nothing from the example of John Howard. Over the last few years the coalition has had the numbers in the Senate, and have used them to rubber-stamp all sorts of awful legislation. WorkChoices is the one causing all the political grief at the moment, but others include the anti-terror laws, and the land-snatch currently underway in the Northern Territory. They've cut debates short, refused to consider amendments, given virtually no notice of upcoming debates or legislation and have guillotined bills through. It's been a disgraceful abuse of the Senate and Parliament.

As I said in my comment on Andrew Bartlett's blog (comment #11 in the linked post), I think this will be John Howards lasting legacy. His government will be remembered as a case study in what happens when a government has total control. (The other example would be Queensland, where there is only one house of parliament) Hopefully that will be a warning to voters, who will never let this situation happen again. Because the Senate has acted as a rubber stamp for the Howard government, lots of dodgy legislation has passed into law without proper review. That means a lot of work will have to be done in the future to undo the damage.

Unfortunately, from Julia Gillards comment, it appears that Labor doesn't see the problem. They would happily use the Senate as a rubber stamp if they had the numbers. The instinct for power would be too hard to resist. As much as I agree that WorkChoices should go, and I hope Labor wins government, they should be willing to work with the Senate rather than insisting that their version of IR laws be forced through untouched. It would show that they take our democracy seriously, and that they have respect for our style of government - a respect that has been lacking in the current Howard government. But I'm cynical, so I don't expect Labor would be any better. They'll bluster, and if they have the numbers they will use them, just like Howard has. The only way to ensure they don't is to make sure neither major party has the numbers in the Senate.

I'm hoping that the balance of power will rest with the Democrats, independents, Greens and any other minor parties elected. That sort of grouping would ensure proper debates, review and compromise - giving a much better chance at a balanced outcome. I just hope enough people have learnt the lesson from Howards abuses and vote Democrat/independent/Green in the Senate...

In other news, Malcolm Turnbull has delayed his decision on the Gunns pulp mill for thirty days. That should put it nicely into the whole election time frame - providing a wedge opportunity, maybe? Hmmm...

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But it's a non-core promise!

John Howard and his government do it again. That is, they force a major piece of legislation through Parliament with virtually no debate. See Crikey for more info. I'm sure I remember John Howard promising to be humble when it came to using his Senate majority after the 2004 election. Guess that was a non-core promise after all...


I'm not surprised anymore. After all, they've done this many times now. WorkChoices, for example. There's no way on earth that they'd have been able to pass that legislation if they hadn't had a Senate majority in their own right. The same goes for the anti-terrorism laws, although I guess that's debatable. The Labor party doesn't seem too concerned about those ones, so those laws might have passed anyway.

But even if they had, I'm sure there would have been a much more detailed debate. At the moment, the government is just not allowing debate, let alone amendments. They don't have to, so they don't. That is not being humble, it's not respecting parliament, or democracy. In my opinion, this government has abused it's power and isn't sorry for doing so.

Between WorkChoices, anti-terror laws and now this, we've been given a perfect example of a government that's out of control and obsessed with it's own power. This should become the classic case-study of why we, as voters, should never, never, give the government of the day control of the Senate. All of these pieces of legislation should be seriously looked at again, and amended, when John Howard and the Liberals finally loses government.

Other things to look at would be: closisng the electoral rolls the day the election is called, the raised disclosure limits on political donations, and probably a review of every other piece of legislation passed since the 2004 election.

On that note, in the Senate I'll be voting for the Democrats, then Greens/Independent before either of the major parties.

Links : Andrew Bartlett, Crikey, The Age.

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Good news of the day...?

Todays headlines : We've killed the dolphins! The Yangtze river dolphin was declared extinct today. Really sad news, and I hope it's not true. But just like the Tassie tiger, I'm guessing it's gone.

Interest rates go up, again! I haven't heard from the bank yet, but it's probably only a matter of minutes before they put my mortgage rate up again. Great... But John Howard seems to have apologised for the rate rise, even though he's blaming someone else. So he's sorry for something he says he didn't do? In what world does that make sense?

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Howards Hospitals

So - John Howard announces that he'll take over a Tasmanian hospital. Why?

Well, it's an election year, it's a marginal electorate that he's trying to save, and it's an issue where the state Labor government has made an unpopular decision. The perfect opportunity for John Howard to gain some votes just where he needs them.

Good politcs, yes. Good policy? Probably not. But who cares about good policy in an election year?

Other links: John Quiggin, Blogocracy, Crikey

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The Doctor is free

So - the charges against Dr Haneef have been dropped. They probably shouldn't have been brought against him in the first place, since the evidence has now turned out to be slim to non-existent. But that's what happens when politics get in the way of justice - i think it's pretty obvious that there was political interference in this case. I think that's incredibly sad, though, that the government would interfere in a case like this. I'd love to be able to trust the government to do the right thing, to let the justice system work, to uphold the law. But after seeing the way John Howard and friends have operated over the last few years I just can't believe anything they say anymore.

Anyway - the case started out well enough. Dr Haneef was linked to the terrorists in the UK, so questioning and investigating him had to be done. It would have been irresponsible not to take him in for investigation.

The investigation did drag on for a while, but that's reasonable too. Sometimes it is hard to work out what's going on, and the process was overseen by a magistrate.

It all went wrong, though, when charges were brought and Kevin Andrews canceled his visa. Canceling his visa would have been fine, if he was found guilty. But to cancel his visa just because he's been charged is crazy. At that point, politics trumped justice. That's when I started to really think that this case was more about political advantage than facts and justice. Kevin Andrews was a bit of an idiot canceling Dr Haneefs visa before he was found guilty of anything.

And now Andrews and the whole government look like a bunch of idiots. The charges have been dropped. But they haven't apologised to Dr Haneef, or reinstated his visa.

I don't think the police really need to apologise over this case. They were just doing their job, although they should probably explain why the investigation seems to have been bungled. The prosecutors should explain why charges were brought on such flimsy evidence that they had to be dropped. And if they can't offer a good explanation, then they should apologise. But the government has the most explaining to do. The decision to cancel the doctors visa seems to have been purely political. They need to explain in detail why that was done, and apologise. For conducting a trial by media, if nothing else. The way this whole situation was handled by the government was just wrong. Again, politics trumps justice.

I don't actually expect them to do this, though. They'll just keep maintaining that they have "secret evidence" that justifies canceling Dr Haneefs visa. I hate the thought that we now have a system that relies on secret evidence and suspicion for making decisions; decisions that we can't check for ourselves. The government keeps asking us to trust them, on so many things, but they've proved themselves untrustworthy time after time. And in any case, I don't think they know that the word sorry even exists.

Other links - Barista, Larvatus Prodeo, Blogocracy.

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Forest Fights

Yesterday Kevin Rudd was in Tassie (my home state, even though I live in QLD now). He was talking about forests, of course. Tasmanian politics has largely been about forest management for a long time now. Old growth logging, plantations, pulp mills, wood chipping - all have been on the agenda. It was another pulp mill proposal, back in the early 1990s (? I think ?) that gave the Greens their first entry into the Tasmanian parliament, and set up Bob Browns political career. And now Kevin Rudd has been in Tassie announcing his forest policy for the state.

I guess that makes sense. Mark Lathams' policy at the last election cost him quite a lot, and gave John Howard some wonderful photo opportunities with union members. Labors policy (see here) seems to be exactly the same as John Howards from that election. Although - I don't think that policy was ever implemented by the government? I'll have to check that out, but I think it was another non-core promise once the election was won. Anyway...

Personally, I don't like the way that Tassies forests are being managed. Turning our old growth forests into wood chips and shipping them to Japan seems almost criminal to me. I think the forests are worth much more than what we can get for them as wood chips.

Also - if the Japanese can turn these woodchips into pulp and paper and make a profit, then why can't we do it? But the whole pulp mill story is a saga in itself... some other time.

Is it a good policy? Well, it'll probably win him some votes back in northern tassie. The Greens dont like it, but that was pretty much guaranteed, no matter what he announced. So it's probably good politics.

Is it good for the forests and Tassie in general? Probably not, in the long term. I think we should have a plan to stop clear felling old growth or native forests completely. That should be the aim. Clearfelling plantations, of course, isn't a problem since they were specifically grown for that purpose. But native forests should be managed in such a way that they are not clear felled, but selectively logged for high value timbers. I don't know how practical or economic that would be, but it should be something to look into. As always - to be really informed I need to get a lot more information... oh well...

Other links to this subject.
Blogocracy, The Mercury, Tasmanian Times

More to be added later...

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Lets start with some good news

This story is great. Its a real feel-good story, that makes me just smile when I read it.

Hope you like it.

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