Trains, Trams and Dual Carriageways: An open letter to Mike Rann

I live in Norwood and I voted for Vini, Mr Rann. And it wasn’t a difficult choice. I and many other young South Australians have benefitted from your premiership – and I want to see Labor continue to govern.

So, since you’ve generously offered to listen to the people of South Australia through the internet, I offer the following as my suggestions on what you might do to retain government come 2014.

• Expedite the timetable for the Northern Connector. It will make the emergence of the north-south corridor impossible for people to ignore.
• Extend the Tonsley train line to Flinders University.
• Extend the tram to one (or all) of the following destinations: North Adelaide, the Airport, or Norwood (perhaps even Magill UniSA). The latter might get Vini’s seat back. The trams are wildly popular and well-patronised – consider the people riding the trams, not those writing about them in the Advertiser.
• Try and find somewhere else to build the R.A.H. The existing site is certainly not suitable. My contribution to the debate: what about the site of Australia Post on Grote St?
• Increase Disability funding. It’s a real sore point for some.
• Bite the bullet, and make the Adelaide-Victor Harbor Road a dual carriageway. It will give the incessant naggers in the R.A.A. one less thing to whine about.
• Give up on opposing an ICAC. A Commonwealth ICAC would be great, but Rudd doesn’t support it – and relying on the election of an Abbott Government to give us one at the federal level is dangerous.
• When the inevitable brawl with the Adelaide City Council arises over the Oval redevelopment, don’t override their authority. Doing so would perpetuate the view that the government is arrogant and out-of-touch. Consider a new site for the stadium.
• Do not, under any circumstances, let one of your Ministers sue someone. It looks petty. Take criticisms on the chin, give the appearance of ‘being men.’
• Ensure that every single one of your existing election commitments is fulfilled or, where broken, matched by equivalent spending on a similar project. I used to live in Croydon, and people are still baffled by the fate of the Grange-Port Road tunnels for South Road.

And above all don’t be afraid of the ‘back-flip.’ The popular view of the back-flip is that it indicates weakness. It doesn’t. It indicates strength of character and responsiveness to popular demands – and you need people to have that perception of you.

Good luck Mr Rann. You’re going to need it. But I and many others will fight for you if adhere to the plans you've announced, but with new ones that demonstrate the same dynamism you've shown us you can.

Caretaker Mode

I am, as Sir Humphrey would have it, a "humble functionary" of the public service.

Out of respect for the conventions of our Westminster System of Government,
and in the hope of continuing, gainful employment for the author come ALP or Liberal victory on Saturday, Dazed Perspicacity is now in "Caretaker Mode"

A central tenet of Australian democracy and the separation of powers is the neutrality of the public service. I respect and honour that neutrality now.

For those of you who do know me, please understand that any opinions I have made concerning South Australian state politics, now or at any other time, in no way represent the views of the Department, Division, or Unit for which I work.

Eight in every hundred of you is a moron.

Assuming that today's Galaxy Poll, mentioned in the esteemed bastion of balanced journalism that is the Advertiser, is correct there has been an 8 percent swing against the government since the last election. In other words, eight in every hundred South Australians have changed their vote in comparison to the last election.

Let's look at major developments since the last election:

- We now have the lowest unemployment rate IN THE COUNTRY.
- We have a new multi-million dollar hospital development.
- We have an annual Fringe Festival that is bigger than Edinburgh's.
- We have a brilliant plan for public transport development, including plans for electrified trains, an extended O-Bahn, and an extended tram network.
- Plans were recently announced for works that will continue the process of making South Road a non-stop thoroughfare.
- We will soon have a redeveloped Adelaide Oval for AFL and Cricket.
- Our premier may have fucked a woman who is clearly mentally unstable.

Now, since only one of those could possibly be considered entirely negative, it is safe to assume that the majority of people changing their minds are doing so because of Michelle Chantelois - a lunatic of a woman. Regardless of whether or not you believe Rann, do these people changing their votes honestly believe that it is an issue that should decide who governs this state?

If the answer is yes, then eight in every hundred of you are morons.

Time for a Pop Quiz (and why the National Hospital Plan needs to fail)

The relevance will become apparent, I promise.

Which Australian city has the largest population?
Which Australian city has the most electorates?
The governing party has, at every election since Federation, held a majority of seats in which Australian state?
Which state has the worst performing public hospital system in the land?

And now, to continue…

Rudd wants control of the hospitals and, although he’s conveniently forgotten, so too did Tony Abbott at one stage. I’m prepared to accept that were the Commonwealth to take control of the nation’s hospitals, there would be a substantial increase in hospital funding. The question is, “where will it be spent?”

The answer lies in the pop quiz. It will be in the state with the largest city, the most electorates, the one most important to any party’s chances to forming government and, coincidentally, with the greatest need. New South Wales.

The Founding Fathers were very clever in one respect, at least. They emulated the United States’ Senate to ensure that the smaller, less-populated states still had the same voice in our Federation as New South Wales, Victoria and, ever-increasingly, Queensland. They recognised that were the smaller states to be allocated representation based on population-share in both houses of the Parliament, the larger states would receive the lion’s share of the Commonwealth’s attention and, consequently, of the funds at its disposal.

The Senate’s role as a “States’ House” has diminished somewhat since then: not every Senator is a Harradine or a Xenophon, and party discipline more than parochial allegiance governs how our Senators will vote. We cannot count on that safeguard.

We rely on the annual dash-for-cash, when the state Premiers and territorian Chief-Ministers converge, kicking and screaming on Canberra, begging the Treasurer to loosen the purse strings and send a little more dosh their way.

And we know that when they come home, and hand the majority of the money they’ve just received to the Minister for Health, that it will be spent on our hospitals, clinics, dentists, physiotherapists, etc.


But imagine if it were Nicola Roxon (whom I have to admit I love and adore) deciding where that money went. Would it be on one of the four major hospitals in the Adelaide metropolitan area, where there’s a measly two-marginal seats that they have a hope of wrestling from the Libs? Or would it be in Sydney and Melbourne where combined there are more than 10 seats with a less than 5% margin?

South Australia, Western Australia, Tassie and the Territories cannot afford the National Hospital Plan.

For although I love Nicola Roxon, I’m betting that one of her skills as a politician is being good at maths.

Water, water everywhere... nor any drop to drink

Water, polls consistently show, is the key issue in the South Australian election. And it is important.

But there is a disturbing contradiction in public discourse on the issue and, I’m afraid, nobody (except perhaps for the Greens) seems to be talking sense realise that we as a state cannot have our cake and eat it, too.

The issue’s biggest champion, and also the most frequent self-contradictor: the Advertiser. Scroll through the Advertiser’s reporting on the issue and you’ll find that every emotive piece that trash-rag has written contains photographs or comments about one of two groups disadvantaged by the water crisis. The first are Riverland farmers. The second are people living on or around the Lower Lakes. Both want more water, but for different reasons.

Riverlanders cannot water their citrus trees and grapevines and, consequently, some of the crops are beginning to die. The issue for them is about irrigation rights; the right to use River Murray water for agriculture.

Lower Lakers are perturbed about the ecological impact that flooding the lakes with saltwater might have; whining all the time in blissful ignorance of the area’s estuarine history.

We’ve already run cap-in-hand to New South Wales and Queensland begging for more water. And we scowl at them for not sending greater flows down the River. And we scowl at Mike Rann and Karlene Maywald for not doing more. But water rights are, whether we like it or not, the constitutional domain of the states and states upstream will never be as cooperative as we might hope.

And why, I ask, should the eastern states accommodate our water needs if we’re simply going to hand it over to grape and orange farmers in Renmark and Berri? NSW and Queensland have farmers of their own to protect and, while the merit of the geographical location of our state borders is, in actuality, purely a reflection of the kinds of stupid, arbitrary determinations made about this land in a colonial era in which we did not respect its ecological fragility, states do and should protect the interests of their citizens.

But the environment, the land, and the birds, fish, animals and plants that depend on the River belong to all Australians.

So if we want environmental flows to restore the health of a dying, ailing ecosystem, then South Australia has a valid, moral point from which to argue its case. If we want to pipe even a tenth of that water into irrigation canals in the Riverland, forget it. It’s more logical, more sensible and more morally justifiable to have and use that water in states with a natural comparative advantage, rather than irrigate scrub and desert.

I am no longer in charge of my own destiny

“I am no longer in charge of my own destiny.”

So said Isobel Redmond in what all media outlets unanimously agreed was the first major public relations gaffe of the 2010 election campaign. It was a reference to her inability to release (or not as the case may be) her party’s funding commitments for the duplication of the Southern Expressway,* when prompted by an ABC journalist during a morning interview.

This caused me to scratch my head at the time; quite furiously, in fact. Indeed, even recalling her bizarre ejaculation now causes me much discombobulation.

Why would any leader of any political party with even a modicum of intellectual capacity hand their opposition such a perfect sound grab. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen in more ALP advertising material, because the images conjured up by the statement are simply too precious: the odd-looking woman with her curious mop of curly (and presumably fake) blonde hair, standing, advisors crowded round, being prompted on what to say, what to do and what to think.

To my dismay, the only plausible explanation is that she had actually meant what she had said. This was, in fact, a woman not in charge of her own destiny. This was a woman being dictated to by shadowy forces within the Liberal Party of Australia, South Australia Branch.

Move over Kristina Kerscher Keneally,# you’re not the only marionette in Australian politics.

Are the people of South Australia so naïve as to believe that (1) this woman, plucked from relative electoral obscurity rose to the leadership of the Liberal Party without more than a little factional support from old cronies, hidden away in some dark, dank recess on Greenhill Road? That (2) she does, in fact, control party policy when she owes these cronies big time? That (3) she would still have refused to release the costings for a centrepiece policy in her party’s electoral platform, if she had actually been aware of them? Give me a break.

And more curiously and worryingly, the Labor Party, Greens, et. al. have permitted her and her motley crew of conservatives to run the line “Redmond is Ready” from Day 1, without so much of a hint of the most obvious rejoinder: how can a woman no longer in charge of her own destiny be ready for government?

I promise a more detailed, policy-driven critique of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the days to come. I feel guilt at having been so quiet until now.

But then again, would it matter to South Australians, 50% of whom, if today’s Newspoll is to be believed, would prefer to have a woman not in charge of her own destiny be in charge of theirs.

* For those non-South Australians reading this blog, I feel I have to clarify. One of this state’s more embarrassing features is a one-way highway that permits traffic to flow in one direction for half of the day, and in the other direction for the other half. Very, very odd. But then again, so were the whole Brown-Olsen Premierships, in my humble opinion.
# Never noticed her initials were KKK before. Spooky, huh?

Qantas Hates Vegetarians

I went to Canberra for work yesterday.

I had had suspicions, but now I am firmly of the opinion that Qantas hates vegetarians.

The carnivores among you might not be familiar with the usual vegetarian flight experience. It is true that we get our meals first, but often we are denied a similar amount of food to the amount you would receive. Similarly, they often forget to ask us if we would like a beverage, and then we usually get ignored if and when we have the opportunity to ask them for one while they take the meat meals around.

And the stewardesses on this flight did as they would usually do and brought the vegetarian meals out first. They did not deliver mine.

I thought it might be an accident, and that I would have the chance to rectify the situation later. So I waited. Just before she was about to dump a slab of chicken breast in front of me, I inquired “sorry, is there no vegetarian meal in my name?” “I don’t think so, Sir…” came her reply, “but I’ll go check.” She checked. There was none.

This in itself did not constitute cause for drama. People and computers make mistakes. Perhaps my name had been lost, or my meal sent on a flight to Cairns. The drama arose from the hostesses’ ‘innovative’ solution.

Twenty minutes after everybody had finished eating, one of Qantas’ lovely dragons (they all, it would seem, look like dragons these days – that is, wrinkled skin with far too much makeup) approached bearing two trays.

The first, I was informed, contained the standard meal everybody else on the plane had received with the tender chicken lovingly and equally tenderly “picked out.” The second were “salads that the business class passengers had left on their plates.”

That’s where they lost me.

I promptly snatched the bread roll off one tray, a miniature Toblerone off the other, and politely requested a white wine. She wandered off, positively baffled that I had declined her delectable offerings. I should have considered myself, I was informed, “the luckiest vegetarian on the plane” because I was “privileged” to be getting business class food.

Thankfully she didn’t seem as baffled by my request for wine.

Second-hand food: this is Qantas’ way of turning what I would gladly have dismissed as an accident had they promptly and simply apologised. But instead, they insult me by offering me either second-hand food or food covered by a sauce that was cooked with and probably still contained meat.

Epic Fail, Qantas.