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.

Where have I gone?

I had promised to put up some of my usual cutting, incisive political commentary some time in the new year.

But I am travelling, which calls for a blog of a different kind. So visit here if you'd like to see where I am and what I am doing.

You can't eat trees.

That line came from the mouth of Nationals Senator Fiona Nash yesterday.

She was arguing for the notion that existing vegetation on farmland should be protected, preferring instead a regime which permits farmers to clear vegetation on their land for crops or grazing.

Carbon sinks appear to me to be a good idea. Individuals and businesses would be able to invest in such carbon sinks to offset their carbon emissions, the more they emit, the more trees planted on their behalf to suck the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

The Nationals, as evidenced by the comments of Senator Nash and others, don’t like this. They seem to believe that farmers should be allowed to clear their land at whim for cows and sheep and wheat. Barnaby Joyce is travelling today to country New South Wales to visit a farmer who is hunger-striking until such time as he is permitted to clear his land. Food security is, according to Fiona, the most pressing issue facing Australia.

Perhaps, Senator Nash. But part of the reason your farmer constituents find it so difficult to maintain the same levels of food production these days is because it doesn’t rain as much.

It doesn’t rain as much because of el Niño’s increased ferocity and frequency due to global warming.

And a big part of the global warming problem is that we’ve felled far too many trees, compounding the carbon dioxide problem. We’re pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than ever before, while at the same time removing the gas’ most reliable filter.

I grant you Senator, that trees cannot be eaten.

But neither, Senator, can we ‘breathe’ this much carbon dioxide.

Charlie and the Bonnie Planet

I will always be a staunch republican - but Charles' speech to the Copenhagen conference was inspiring, and is testament to the fact that while the notion of a monarchy is morally bankrupt, those who occupy its offices aren't all bad.

Read the full text here.

It is difficult not to have respect for the man's long-standing commitment to the environment, and the world is going to need many more leaders like him if this empassioned plea, and many others, continue to be ignored by delegates to Cop15.

What a load of [CENSORED]

Trekkie Monster of Avenue Q loves the internet. Specifcally internet porn. Pursuing his passion could be a little less straightforward after today’s announcement from Senator Conroy that the federal government will proceed with the establishment of a mandatory internet censorship regime in Australia.

I have no qualm with government agencies taking the fight to the denizens of cyberland, to would-be terrorists and kiddy fiddlers. Fair enough, the planning or incitement of such acts is and should be a crime.

But such a system is simply far too powerful a tool to rest with bureaucrats in fluorescent-lit basements, glued to their monitors, trawling the internet for content that might infringe any one point on a hastily cobbled-together, subjectively-determined register of possible moral, ethical and legal violations. Aside from that, I'm going to leave aside philosophical discussion on free speech, since in the absence of a constitutional guarantee for it, free speech means little in the Australian context.

Additionally, we have to wonder: would such a system be open to abuse? What safeguards against abuse would exist?

I am certainly not suggesting that a pernicious, incumbent government in Australia would be so brazen or so bold to ban the websites of its main political rivals. But what of smaller, fringe parties like, for example, One Nation? The government of the day seemed pretty insistent that the wider public simply stop listening to Pauline. What if in 1996 John Howard had decided that we oughtn’t to listen to red-headed xenophobes with whom, however rightly or wrongly, a significant proportion of the electorate identified. It is a slippery slope.

Already this government has blacklisted a site that displayed a list of the sites it intended to ban… doesn’t sound like a government that tolerates dissent.

What of governments with hardline moral agenda? An Abbott-led Coalition government would not, I imagine, be too keen on gay rights. Indeed many in the Coalition have expressed the view that the issue of homosexuality should not be discussed in the classroom. And while we’re doing that in the classroom, they might argue, then why not ‘protect’ children in the virtual world too?

What of desperate governments? Administrations of both a Labor and Liberal persuasion that have found themselves dependent on the votes of lunatic religious senators have demonstrated themselves capable of playing with all sorts of unanticipated bargaining chips. Might a resurrected Harradine request a ban on Islamic websites?

What about cloudy moral issues? Euthanasia has widespread support in the community, but is illegal. Will campaigners be unable to further their cause on the World Wide Web?

But most importantly of all: the filtering software Conroy intends to employ simply doesn’t work. It’s been found to inadvertently ban certain Wikipedia articles, perfectly legal gambling sites, perfectly legal pornographic material, a substantial swathe of YouTube clips and, most oddly, the site of a Queensland dentist.

Surely it would make more sense to pour the resources from this scheme into tracking down paedophiles and terrorists rather than destroying Queenslanders' hopes for better dentition.

The wowserism’s gone far enough. [CENSORED] off Conroy, and [CENSORED] off, Rudd. As Trekkie Monster would doubtless say the internet is for porn.

And Wikipedia, gambling, YouTube and dentists.

Just when I thought he couldn't get any stupider

This gem comes from Senator Joyce, on AM this morning, on the subject of the likely (in his mind) scenario in which a cash-strapped US government defaults on its loans.

Well I suppose you have to look at what will be the fallout in Australia with a, you know, if that event was to occur. I mean why are they having a conference in Copenhagen on the contingencies of climate change yet there are other issues that are around such as, in the economic paradigm,* which are probably just as concerning which we're not really engaged in.

Dumbass.

That paragraph makes no sense. Pauline Hanson made more sense. Even Wilson Tuckey usually makes more sense.

But I’ll give Joycey the benefit of the doubt. I think what he’s trying to question is the need for nations to conference on the issue of climate change when there are pressing economic issues we should be addressing, but aren’t.

Why Copenhagen Barnaby? Because everybody but you, Minchin, a few crackpot Republicans, and those who believe in Super Jesus, thinks that preserving economic growth while the planet burns, isn’t a noble goal. They believe, and rightly so, that the health of our planet is fundamental to our existence, let alone our economic welfare. Having a wallet full of cash is not "just as concerning" to sane people as say, having food to eat. Or polar icecaps.

Regardless, Barnaby: if you picked up a newspaper once in a while, you’d’ve noticed that world leaders have spent considerable time this year and last discussing and dealing with issues in economics, finance and trade . And they will continue to do so. (Interestingly enough only you and the same crackpot Republicans are the only people entertaining the notion of a US loan default, by the way.)

You’re a shadow minister now Barnaby. You’re playing with the big boys now. And while you and your staffers might not be intelligent enough to grasp the concept of multitasking, governments are.



* Am I the only one who thinks he put the word paradigm in here to sound intelligent? It's so totally out of context here. Honestly, Fielding has better luck with big words.

Hire Monkeys, Get Bananas.

Unlike the media and whosoever happens to be in Opposition at the time, I don’t believe in the idea that there is an implicit social contract between the Government, the RBA and banks on the one hand, and those with mortgages to repay on the other, to keep rates low.

There are people (self-funded retirees, for example) in the economy whose lives and livelihoods depend on good economic management and, sometimes, good economic management means having higher interest rates. Hopefully, those who take out home loans are aware of the concept of the market, and are aware that their interest rates will not remain stagnant forever. If they’re not, they shouldn’t have loans. (I do have a few centre-right opinions!)

That said, I understand that changes in interest rates can result in big (though hopefully manageable) changes to the budget of an individual or family and consequently the issue should be treated with sensitivity and care.

Which is why this video, sent via email to Westpac customers, is so surprising.



I get Westpac’s point. I sympathise with them. And I understand their frustration at being the scapegoat for public and governmental vitriol every time interest rates rise.

But seriously, which bright spark in PR department thought a banana smoothie stand was a good analogy? The use of bananas cheapens their argument, and makes a mockery of any claim the bank might lay to being an understanding and caring institution.

The saying used to be “pay peanuts, get monkeys.” It seems that for the Western Pacific Banking Corporation, it should be “Hire monkeys, get bananas.”

Commies and Nazis

New Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott has likened the Copenhagen Conference to the Munich Agreement negotiated in the prelude to World War Two. Just in case you don’t remember that Agreement was marked, of course, by “weak leaders caving in to Adolf Hitler.” (Abbott’s words and interpretation)

According to this analogy (and clearly in Liberals’ minds) climate change activists are clandestine Nazis. I’m glad he’s cleared that up for me: when Copenhagen was but a twinkle in Ban Ki Moon’s eye I was already riven with angst; nervous that Hu, Obama and Merkel might cede their industrial Sudetenlands for rape and pillage by eco-Nazis, while polluting capitalists were herded together for ‘re-education’ in special camps. It’s good to see someone keeping on eye on things.

But wait a minute…

Two weeks ago, didn’t Abbott’s trusty lieutenant (puppeteer?) Senator Nick Minchin explicate that the global warming ‘myth’ was the invention of left wing radicals opining for the good ol’ days of the Soviet Union? Copenhagen, Kyoto, et. al. were patently, he told us, nought more than vehicles through which pinkos could and would further their insidious, internationalist goal of “de-industrialising the western world.”

I believed Senator Minchin, Tony, and now I want to believe you. But I’m obviously a bit confused, and I need some help to answer a few questions about global warming’s foes:

Is Obama actually a fascist? Where one might expect Hu Jintao to keep a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book is there actually a copy of Mein Kampf?

Or are the free-market champions like Merkel and Sarkozy actually minions of a resurgent, red preponderance to the east, led by a Medvedev who hums bars from Trotsky’s Lament sub rosa? Is Queen Elizabeth II going to head their New World Order?

And since you are a staunch Catholic Mr Abbott, I thought you might be able to ask Cardinal Pell for me: Benedict XVI, Commy or Nazi?

A Government-in-Exile

Has anyone else noticed something odd about the new Opposition frontbench?

At a time when the need for renewal within the Liberal Party is almost universally proclaimed, Abbott has chosen to reinstate the frontbench positions of three Howard era Ministers: Bronwyn ‘bathe me in kerosene’ Bishop, Kevin ‘deport me without cause’ Andrews and Philip ‘they threw children overboard’ Ruddock.

Rather than constructing an effective opposition, it seems Abbott has decided to set up a “government-in-exile” that has a collective amnesia for the period on and around 24 November 2007.

Odd: but certainly proof of the adage that “everything old is new again.”

And is anyone else concerned that the exceedingly important shadow Health portfolio is vested in a man who still doesn’t appear to have a seat come the next election?

It's really scary what you hear on the radio.

I heard an interesting quote this morning from a man the ABC described as a ‘leading’ climate change sceptic.

“…voters will not tolerate the largest tax increase in the history of humankind in the name of saving a planet which was successfully saved two thousand years ago and does not need to be saved again.”

Presumably, that was a reference to the Christian Messiah.

So those on the left are accused of religious zealotry in their opposition to continued carbon pollution, while those on the nutty right are permitted to use fairytales to justify their cause.

But I will play their game, for a minute, and attempt to apply cosmic logic to the creation and workings of the Judeo-Christian Almighty. I reckon that when She created Venus, gave it a 96.5% carbon dioxide atmosphere, allowed its atmosphere to reach temperatures of more than 400 degrees, and placed it closer to Earth than any other planet, that She was actually leaving us with a giant, cosmic warning buoy. And you know if I pray hard enough, I can hear Her echo across the sky every time I watch our fiery yellow sister traversing the sky… “Emulate this planet at your peril.”

But out of fairytale land, and back to reality. The man I originally quoted is a delegate to the Copenhagen Conference. And if there are other people like him there, hindering progress on a global agreement on climate change we will, in fact, need Super Jesus.

Thanks, Helen.

There aren’t too many Liberals for whom I have affection. But Helen Coonan is one of them. She has just announced her resignation from the Shadow Ministry. Barnaby is her likely replacement. Shame. Senator Coonan was a moderate, a Republican, and a woman of conviction. As the only woman to have occupied a treasury portfolio, she was an unheralded trailblazer; her success despite her sex under misogynistic Mr Howard a testament to her talent.

Her major fault: her bottle blonde hair.

Good luck in your future endeavours, Senator Coonan.

As for her likely successor in the finance portfolio… I watched Barnaby Joyce on Insiders on Sunday. I have been firm in my conviction for some time now that the man is a crackpot. Now, I think he is a stupid crackpot. What Barnaby says, if you listen closely enough, makes no sense.

I don’t just mean from a policy perspective: after listening to a good ten minutes of ranting and raving, I realised that I could only discern meaning in about 10% of what he said. His sentences often make no sense. Some appear to make sense but then, in a heartbeat, the entire focus of the sentence (let alone the tense, subject and object) changes. He never finishes thoughts, and speaks in clichés.

And if being a minister means that he will be “concentrating on the file in front of him” as he claims he will now do, one wonders what he’s been doing until now...

NSW: The Soap Opera State.

I do not claim to know much about New South Wales’ politics. But I know I have at least two readers there. This one’s for you, kids.

You might be forgiven for thinking that after watching the implosion of the Liberal Party earlier in the week, and seeing the scorn heaped upon them by media and public alike, that NSW Labor might have recognised the importance of party unity.

Apparently not.

Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid (characters of whose existence I am only aware due to their recent sacking as ministers, and their association with every leadership tussle in NSW politics from Rees’ elevation onwards) seem intent on ditching the Premier, and installing a more amenable, acquiescent leader.

Tripodi and Obeid are treacherous fellows, doubtless motivated at least in part by a desire for revenge after their recent dismissal. But the fifteen others they’ve managed to cajole into supporting their spill are, news reports suggest, motivated by a desire to stem the sustained haemorrhaging of electoral support for the government.

After the disaster that was the Iemma premiership, Labor was never going to win the next election. But the magnitude of the now inevitable loss is exacerbated by the petty, internecine struggles that now characterise NSW Labor. It has forgotten about the business of government and forgotten about the people of New South Wales. Rees, on the other hand, seems genuinely distressed by the current plight of his state.

The malcontents don’t need a leadership spill to find the solution to their problem, they need a mirror.

Curiouser and Curiouser

There is much to be said about the election of Tony Abbott to the leadership of the Liberal Party. But for now I just want everyone to think about this:

The rabble that is the Liberal Party now finds itself in the curious position of offering the Australian people the “best solution” to a problem which its leader doesn’t actually believe exists.

If you understand how this is an improvement in policy (and remember it was policy, not leadership, that supposedly brought this tussle on) let me know. And while you’re at it, you might want to flick off an email to Liberal HQ, too.

Abbott/Bishop Combination: Liberals show their true colours.