ALP publicly-funded political advertising is wrong, too

Okay, Bracksie. Thank you very much for introducing me to the bitter sensation of being forced to agree with the righties on something. Specifically, their complaints about your current raft of publicly-funded political advertisements.

Tonight I saw your "CrimeSmart" and EastLink advertisements for the first time.

Look, I can accept a public-interest announcement about how to avoid crime. Fair enough, I suppose. (Although, still, hardly the best way to spend the money.) But "we've hired thousands of extra police" is not a public-interest announcement. It can't be defended as a public-interest announcement. It serves no purpose other than to try to persuade people to vote for you.

And the EastLink advertisement doesn't have any public information component at all. What is it asking us to do? What is it telling us we need to know? All it is telling us, at our expense, is how wonderful it all is.

Now, you have - as have we - been critical of Howard's despicable squandering of $55 million on advertising for legislation which hadn't even been released in draft form. That was indeed a new low. And perhaps you have figured, "well, if he can get away with it, why can't we?"

Why can't you? Because it's still WRONG. It is profoundly undemocratic. The more governments can spend public money shoring up their own vote, the less opportunity non-government parties have to get elected. And, beyond that, it is a huge - and, unless checked, ever-increasing - waste of public money. We pay taxes for the provision of basic services. Government advertising is not one of them.

And for your, what, million dollars' worth of advertising, you know what else you do? You give the Liberals a come-back for when we criticise their MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE IR CAMPAIGN. You let them say "well, you guys do it too".

Thanks a smegging lot.

And you know what? It will cost you at the polls. I'm not going to switch my vote to Doyle, of course (and it's not as if he's come out promising to end party-political government advertising - or even as if he's criticised the federal Liberals' IR effort; he's only, hypocritically, criticising yours). But I can certainly vote for another party before the ALP, and will. This will cost you funding. It will also, hopefully, cost you seats. And you know what? I'm the least of your worries. This sort of crap will turn other people towards actually voting for Doyle.

And if that happens, we'll know just whom to thank.

You're in government. If you won't implement some kind of limits to this sort of political squandering of the public purse - if you can't legislate some enforceable rules governing the use of public funds in government advertising, and stick to them - then how can we expect any more from the Liberals?

I Can't Recall

Lachlan Murdoch, whose tragic memory loss problem has now made him virtually unemployable by all but close family members, today launched his autobiography -

LACHLAN MURDOCH: MY LIFE (AS MUCH OF IT AS I CAN RECALL)

Fourteen chapters of rivetting chapter headings with blank pages, the first print run sold out quickly.

Early reviews were positive:

"Autobiographies with actual text are so 2004," wrote Age reviewer Jenny Hocking. "After the furore surrounding Mark Latham's revelations earlier in the year, subjects are now being careful to make sure that their revelations don't get them excluded from dinner parties. Lachlan Murdoch cleverly avoids risking offending anyone, by not saying anything at all."

David Nason, from The Australian, similarly praised the book. "When I next go to prepare a hatchet-job character assassination, As Much As I Can Recall will be an extremely useful resource. I'll be able to use it as a blank notebook."

At the publisher's launch, Lachlan Murdoch thanked everyone for the interest shown in his new venture.

"I'm thrilled and excited that so many of you have come," he said.

Then he looked puzzled. "Actually, who are you people, and what am I doing here?"

Why the PM is not worried about IR opposition

Democrat Senator Andrew Murray in the Senate Committee report into the IR legislation:

The Coalition Government can rely on most Australians not grasping what is happening until long after it has happened. Evidence to the Committee made it clear that the full effects of the legislation will not be felt until after the next election in late 2007. Not only will 25 to 30% of all workers remain under state systems until then, but the transitional arrangements and the continuing validity of many existing agreements that only expire in 2008, means that for large numbers of Australians the effects will only be after the next election. That is what Mr Howard is counting on – that, and the expectation that they will remain in effective control of the Senate for two more elections, after which it will be very difficult for these changes to be reversed…

This is of course why Howard has in the last week been exaggerating opponents' claims about the legislation - "they're claiming the sky will fall in, so when you walk outside to vote in 2007 and you see that the sky's still up there, you should vote for us!"

This is our greatest difficulty - getting punters who don't pay much attention to politics to realise that, even if they haven't personally been affected yet by the changes (and part of the whole point of the legislation is preventing them from hearing about other people being affected), they will be. Theeey wiilll beee. (Yoda.) The legislation is manifestly in the interests of only a minority of wealthy Australians. For the rest of us, it will push us into a US system with a more marked gap between rich and poor than we've previously experienced.

But like all legislation, its effects will take a while to be felt.

By which stage - if Labor doesn't get in and doesn't repeal it - it'll be too late.

I hadn't thought about the Senate problem - that even if the ALP is elected in the HoR, it's going to have a tough time repealing the laws unless it also gains control of the Senate. It's a grim thought.

What do we need to do in the meantime? Keep people focused on just what is being done (because the corporate media are deliberately ignoring it as much as possible), but not play into the conservatives' hands by making doomsday claims whose failure to eventuate by 2007 will be held against us.

He's a wily bastard, our Prime Monster.

Something geeky

Apparently there's a good reason for regional towns waking their visitors up with air raid sirens, so let's move on to something else. Something geeky!

Space.com has posted a list of their top ten "space movies" of all time:

1. Star Wars V: Empire Strikes Back
   
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
   
3. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
   
4. Apollo 13
   
5. Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan
   
6. Star Trek 8: First Contact
   
7. Alien
   
8. Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
   
9. The Right Stuff
   
10. Contact

CONTACT?!?!! THE ALIEN WAS HER FRICKING FATHER. Biggest. Let-down. Ever.

I'll agree with 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8. And Apollo 13 was okay, I guess - but I still don't get why geeks love Wrath of Khan. It's just not a good movie! Space earwigs indeed. First Contact, yes, that was both exciting and inspiring, but Khan, nup. Star Trek 6: Undiscovered Country was a hell of a lot better. "If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it." Damn right.

Meanwhile, where's Aliens? And what about the sequel to 2001, 2010? That was pretty good. I can accept that they left out The Last Starfighter, because, well, it was a bit silly. Galaxy Quest was quite good though.

Any thoughts?

Echuca

As part of my new profession as a Leyland brother young barrister, I find myself travelling all over the Victorian countryside. Yesterday I was in Geelong. On Friday I was up in Echuca. Tomorrow I may be in Morwell (or I may not: a brief hasn't actually arrived for tomorrow yet. And I gather there's a court conference on Thursday and Friday, so it might be quiet until next week).

Anyway, fun Echuca fact for the day.

Echuca's fire brigade has set upon an innovative technique for ensuring that the townspeople value its work. Can you guess what it is? Is it an education campaign? Is it the regular saving of lives/property? Well, I wasn't there long enough to check those two, but I know what the main one is:

They set off an air raid siren in the centre of town every time they go out on a job.

It'll be, say, hypothetically, 11pm on, say, hypothetically, a Thursday night and suddenly a huge bellowing noise will envelop the town. For about five minutes. Then a CFA truck will barrel off down the street and when it's far enough away the town siren will be turned off.

In my sleep-addled state I thought that perhaps Australia was being invaded. By cunning invaders who recognise some strategic value in taking Echuca first. "Once we hold Echuca, our victory over the rest of the continent is assured! Mwoohahahaha!" And we will crumble - "Without Echuca, our will to fight is gone! We may as well surrender now."

But, fortunately, it turned out to be only non-invasion-related firefighting. So that's alright then.

UPDATE: Okay, so it's been pointed out in the comments that there's a good reason for all this: because Telstra's so crap in the bush, they've got to rely on loud noises to call up volunteer firefighters. So, surprisigly, it turns out that I know bugger-all about how the CFA works. I apologise.

Good Eatin'

Right, today I'm going to post about something very close to my heart - my stomach. Oh my god what an incredibly witty pun/have you noticed that this whole strikeout thing seems to be a bit overdone at the moment?

And when I say "my stomach", I mean "people who make things I can enjoy putting in my stomach". And by "things I can enjoy putting in my stomach" I mean "food", even though it's only one category of thing really.

I want to talk about favourite restaurants. And by "restaurants", I mean "places which make take-away food". Possibly even "places which make take-away food which MrLefty could order when he's too lazy to get up off the couch, walk over to the refrigerator, defrost some meat, turn on the stove, prepare some kind of spices and... actually, I'm exhausted typing out that much". I don't mean "place which has its own website".

My favourite used to be the Carlton Curry House on Rathdowne St, which made a spectacular chicken vindaloo (or alternatively, if you were a wuss, a lamb sashi). The curries ran from the normal vindaloo (which was pretty hot) to the +13 (which was a WMD), depending on how many of whatever makes curry hot they'd put in. If you finished a whole +13, your name was posthumously added to a board of honour.

They also made delicious puri (fluffy hollow bread) and raita (that yoghurty accompaniment). My mouth waters remembering them.

Sadly, the CCH shut down a few years ago and its proprietor fled the state moved to Sydney for perfectly respectable reasons. But I would give anything/fifteen dollars to taste that precious vindaloo again. Sweet, sweet vindaloo (that isn't in any way "sweet-tasting").



So, like a spurned harlot with a liking for spicy food, I have turned my affections to a new slightly dodgy suburban venue, Mitcham Thai. It's just a shopfront on the Maroondah Highway with a kitchen out the back, but they make this delicious dish called "chicken pad prig". "Chicken", because it's got chicken in it, and "pad prig" because it's padded with prig. It is kind of difficult to describe. You have it on rice, and it's quite spicy (particularly if you bite on the chillis). The sauce the meat's been marinated in is... also delicious. (You know, I've suddenly figured out why I'm not a food critic.)

Anyway, strongly recommended has MrLefty sold out/how can we get some of this sweet advertising for ourselves.

However, I've been having it once a week recently and I think my horizons/stomach need/s expanding somewhat. So - any suggestions? What's your favourite slack-night-in standby?

BCA steps up to the (tectonic) plate

Fortunately, the Libs seem to have stopped spending public money on their IR advertising campaign. This is either because they suddenly felt a sense of shame at how much they'd squandered... or because it wasn't working at all. (Anyone putting any money on option one?)

Their new strategy is to shut up about it and hope everyone will have forgotten when the next election rolls around in 2007 - and be concentrating on more electorally-palatable things, like tenuous claims about the strength of the economy, and even more tenuous claims about HORDES OF NASTY TERRORISTS JUST WAITING TO BLOW US ALL UP. In case you'd forgotten about it. HEY, WE CAUGHT ONE DOWN AT YOUR LOCAL SHOPS THIS MORNING!!!

But the Business Council of Australia, the corporate lobby group that wanted the changes in the first place, isn't entirely confident that they can rely on voters' short-term memories. (I hope they're right.)

So they're still going, with full-page ads in the newspapers today. Their new line is:



THE OPPOSITE! Yes, massive geological changes will take place if employers are prevented from cutting wages and firing workers capriciously. The country will stop expanding, and will start to shrink. Soon, we'll all be crammed into a small billabong in that nasty hot deserty bit in the centre of the continent.

DAMN YOU, UNIONS/PLATE TECTONICS!

The BCA even has a handy little chart about just what some bullshit in-house economic modeling says will DEFINITELY happen in the next twenty years if we don't go back to a nineteenth-century industrial model:



WE'LL BE BEHIND BELGIUM AND FRANCE!

Do YOU want Australia to lose to Belgium and France? Well, do you? You want to be laughed at by Froggy le Peu and ... well, whatever the national stereotype is for Belgium? You want the Canadians to be laughing "abooot" us? We're Australians! We should be winning this thing! And the way to win it is to stop being so cynical about our demands and just let us get on with it.

Sure, many of the countries that Access Economics thinks will be doing better than we will in 2025 "without reform" are countries which have even more lefty industrial relations policies than we do. Like France and the Netherlands. Sweden. In fact, Norway is number 3 on their list now (we're number 8) - and you can hardly call Norway a bastion of conservative economic policy.

But don't think about that. Think about how nice it'll be not having to worry about seeing your kids on the weekends any more...

The rest of the ad is full of big cheerful claims like "REFORM HAS CREATED MORE JOBS" (hundreds of thousands of low-paid one-day a week casual jobs) and "WITHOUT FURTHER REFORM WE'LL FALL BEHIND" (...CEOs in other countries who are making even more than we are).

And it ends with this cheerful slogan: "Locked in or Losing Prosperity: Australia's Choice". Do YOU want to lose prosperity? DO YOU? WELL THE BIG PROSPERITY-STEALING MONSTER IS COMING TO TAKE AWAY ALL YOUR PROSPERITY!!! (No, no, not your boss, thicky.)

Unless you lock in our magnificent changes, of course. Truussst Ussss...

It's not my fault

Sorry guys, nothing leaps out at me today. This is probably because I'm more worried about my first two briefs this week, neither of which I've yet received and one of which is in an area with which I'm largely unfamiliar. And is on at 9.15.

What've we got? Michelle Leslie is free, after pretending becoming a muslim. There's some cynicism about her conversion, as if someone would do such a thing just to escape twenty years in an Indonesian prison (what are the odds). Death-row prisoner Tuong Van Nguyen has been "blown away"... that John Howard went to visit his mother (awww).

Nothing hugely inspiring though. I wonder what's happening with the IR bill?

UPDATE: Umm-ahh. Ms Leslie is already in trouble with her new religion:

Federation of Islamic Councils president Dr Ameer Ali today said that if Leslie resumed work as an underwear model, she must admit that her claim she had converted to Islam almost two years ago was a stunt.

"She can't have it both ways," Dr Ali told Sky News. "If she wants to be a Muslim, she has to be very modest in her dress sense, modest in her language, modest in the way that she looks - everything. But if she wants to carry on with the way that she was living before she must come out clearly and say 'look this was a stunt I used and I am not a Muslim anymore'."

A stunt? To avoid twenty years' imprisonment for a petty drug offence? Gosh. How evil. I'm sure none of us would consider doing such a thing if we were ever charged by the Indonesian police with drug smuggling... "Sure, it might save my life, but dammit, it's wrong to pretend to change religions just to save my own skin." Inconceivable.

This was an interesting contrast with the Age's original story, which had another muslim leader saying -

Islamic Council of Victoria executive Sherene Hassan said she was "taken aback" when she first saw Leslie in the head dress and by speculation she might have been trying to win favour with the Balinese judges.

"There is only a small Muslim population in Bali and … their face would usually be uncovered," Ms Hassan said. "The majority of Islamic scholars don't perceive there is an Islamic requirement for covering the face."

Ms Hassan said Leslie's return to Western clothes did not necessarily cast doubt over her claim to follow Islam, since many Muslim women did not adhere to the Islamic dress code.

Not that you can't count on some roars of approval for "toughness" from the Laura Norder crowd. In Friday's Hun voteline poll, 53.2% of 1922 Hun readers voted "yes" to "Should Singapore execute Tuong Van Nguyen for drug trafficking?". And Bill Muehlenberg, cranky old crackpot that he is, thought Michelle got off lightly:

"There is a good reason we have drug laws -- drugs kill, and it is just wrong for people like her to make money out of it. The whole case is confusing for young people, but one thing is clear -- she is not a great role model."

If I were a Herald-Sun journalist, I'd have Bill's number on speed-dial. You can always enliven a story with a Muehlenberg rant.

Singapore Apologises

Singapore's Prime Minister, having definitely decided to execute 25 year-old Van Nguyen for smuggling 400g of heroin in 2002, has apologised to the Australian Prime Minister...

...for not telling him about it when they met.

PRIORITIES.

We don't want to offend the Australians by being seen to be secretive ABOUT BRUTALLY EXECUTING PEOPLE FOR COMPARATIVELY MINOR NON-VIOLENT OFFENCES. Being secretive about MEDIEVAL JUSTICE would be horribly, horribly wrong.

Meanwhile -

Nguyen's lawyer, Lex Lasry QC, has expressed outrage that Singapore sent the letter announcing the execution date via Australia Post.

Mr Lasry says Australian authorities should have been informed first so the news could be broken gently to Ngyuen's mother.

Either that, or they could have sent the news tastefully by fatogram.

Honestly, I turn my back for a moment and...

It's the old, old story. You leave a blog alone for a day or two and EVERYONE STARTS KUNG-FU FIGHTING IN THE COMMENTS.

Over at BoltWatch last week, I posted a response to Andy's column on Friday about winners and losers. Did it spark off a debate or WHAT!

...About vibrators. And who uses them.

Eventually it degenerated (further) into plaintive complaints that the blog administrator (ie, me) wasn't discharging his (my) administering duties "rigorously" enough. I think they want me to spend my day obsessively checking BoltWatch every two minutes to see if someone's visited. And if I don't, dammit, it's my DUTY to go through deleting the offending comments. Jesus Christ, have you tried deleting individual comments with blogger? It takes far more time than I'm prepared to give it, anyway.

So instead I'm going to turn into an Andrea Harris*-style Nazi and start not only deleting offending posts, but banning people too. (Note: not really like an Andrea Harris-style Nazi, because I won't be banning people simply for disagreeing with me.)

Meanwhile, on the comment thread to my post the other day about cameramen outside the Magistrates' Court, Caz and The Hack from The Spin Starts Here have been getting quite cranky. Caz thinks I don't respect Hack or believe that he's employed, and Hack thinks I want to give terrorists ice-cream. Hack thinks I was once fired for blogging, and Caz thinks I'm going to sue him for saying so.

(I still think Hack has a secret crush on me, because he follows me about the blogs like a little lovesick puppy. A little lovesick puppy FILLED WITH VENOMOUS HATE, but a little lovesick puppy nonetheless. Awwww.)

Meanwhile, Caz and The Hack were so frustrated by my lack of responses over the past few days (I've been busy at Court) that they took the spat back to their place. It never ends! Admittedly, I'm making it worse by posting about it here, but this is the last one, I promise. (Probably.)

Oh, why can't we all just get along?**

* Andrea Harris was/is (who knows, I don't visit there any more) the administrator of Tim Blair's blog, and took great delight in deleting and banning any lefties who dared take part in a "discussion". Not for being abusive, but for disagreeing.

** I have a theory, but childish name-calling is hardly going to calm things down now, is it?

Accomplished Nothing, says The Australian

Were you appropriately chastened by the editorial in Murdoch's Australian yesterday? (And you thought I was being cynical.)

Old-fashioned unionism accomplished nothing yesterday

THAT the workers, united, can never be defeated may be true, but you would not know it from yesterday's union action against the Howard Government's workplace relations reforms. Because the vast majority of Australia's workers were not united in protest. They ignored the strike and kept on working. Certainly some hundreds of thousands of people around the country turned out to denounce the changes. Unquestionably the proposed laws are unpopular in the community, due in no small part to the appalling job Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has done in selling them. But what we heard yesterday was not the voice of the people. Rather, traditional trade unionists from militant areas of the private economy turned out to support a system that suits them. And they were joined by public servants, such as teachers and nurses, some of whom seem to think that they, rather than the communities they serve, are the clients of the health and education systems. This was industrial action by the shock troops of unionism but while they made a great deal of noise, their message did not mean much to the 75 per cent plus Australian workers who are not union members.

Well-attended protests, eh? Better wheel out the dog-whistle-powered SPIN MASTER 3000.

OLD-FASHIONED. ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING. IGNORED BY REAL AUSTRALIANS. MILITANT SHOCK TROOPS! NOISY BUT MEANINGLESS.

(Sure, we have to concede that hundreds of thousands of Australian workers did go to the protest, but don't worry, we can bury that admission in a thick paragraph of spin.)

What was the real effect of the protests? No, no, you'll never guess:

Apart of course from those inconvenienced by protests they wanted no part of. Such as the parents who found the school day disrupted because teachers were protesting. Or the Sydney commuters delayed when unionists blocked a freeway. And everybody who saw some premiers and state ministers, Labor men and woman all, act on their allegiance to their union leader comrades. When Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said the disruption in Melbourne yesterday was justified by the importance of the issue he sent a clear signal supporting union power to stop his city. When ACT Chief Minister John Stanhope gave public servants permission to attend protest rallies on the Territory's time he advanced the interests of public sector union officials, not his own administration. And when NSW Industrial Relations Minister John Della Bosca called Canberra's proposals "fascistic" he argued the agenda of its union allies.

PROTESTING IS UN-AUSTRALIAN! Accepting what you're told by your boss is what is truly Australian.

(Honestly, how many times do we have to keep telling them this? They're taking a very long time to get the message.)

Yesterday's protest was a blast from the past when union leaders used industrial action to support their own agendas. And it was nothing to be nostalgic about.

Yes, if you weren't there, we're certainly not going to tell you about all the people who showed up who weren't union members and who had never been to a rally in their lives. No, we'll just show you photos of the most scary and militant-looking protesters and let you draw your own conclusions...

Sure, the government is pushing these changes through on a claimed mandate despite never having mentioned its plans before the election, and sure it only won the election by a fraction of the number of people who came to the protests, but - LOOK WE WON A PLACE IN THE WORLD CUP!!! (Shhh about the other thing.)

Forty-seven protesters inconvenience hundreds of thousands of motorists!

Well, we trotted along to the IR protests today to see what all the fuss was about.

As the Herald Sun predicted, only forty seven people turned up to the protest in Federation Square:


Still, somehow they managed to block the entire city for several hours, causing enormous inconvenience to traffic, such as this truck, which some poor unsuspecting soul had inadvertently parked right across Swanston St before the tiny horde of communists tried marching past.



Yes, they were all committed anarchists and terrorist-sympathisers, many of them carrying little red books and singing the Internationale.

And the dishonesty!

The crowning glory came when they showed their little television programme on the big screens at Federation Square. That nice Mr Murdoch had generously leant them the SkyTV network for the morning, and what did they do? They mocked the Prime Minister. They even dishonestly had some "comedian" named John Clarke or something pretend to be him. Even in character, though, the comedian had to sound a little like nice Mr Howard in order to trick the proles into thinking he was really the Prime Minister. And a lot of what he said made perfect sense - like how the country would be better if people could be easily fired for getting a bit lippy.

But apparently the crowd didn't get it, because they were laughing at him as if he were joking.

Weirdos.

Anyway, eventually the proles wandered off up Swanston St - all together, if you'll believe it. It was just one huge number - well, 47 people - all joining in a group and marching as one. Sheep. Maybe they all live in Carlton and it was the easiest way home.

Still, as that stunningly charismatic Minister, Kevin Andrews, pointed out, 95 percent of workers stayed on the job: "It's always predictable that people are out on the streets," he said.

Exactly! So what if five percent of working Australians showed up to the protests, which they didn't, but if they had, what are they going to do? Resist our changes and vote us out in two years? Them and what army?



Anyway, it doesn't matter. We conservatives control the entire Parliament now, and it's two years until the next election. And we know how to buy elections and get the punters to concentrate on what we want them to concentrate on. Look, a terrorist!

Don't worry about us, we'll be fine.