Have we seen a swan song? Television can be a cruel medium and never more so than when it captured the lengthy silence as Wayne Swan yesterday struggled to find in his notes the Treasury’s new projections for inflation. It was painful to look at a politician who appeared so completely out of his depth. The rumour mill already is well and truly off and running with the suggestion that there will not be another Swan budget. To survive in the job the Treasurer needs to concern himself less with learning his glib one liners and more on mastering his brief and appearing stern and serious.
Saturday mornings just won’t be the same. For years reading Alan Ramsey in the Sydney Morning Herald has been a highlight of many people’s Saturday morning’s, mine included. His political commentary inspired both loving and loathing on occasions – sometimes within the same piece – but it was never a dull read. Alas in the mail this week I received an invitation to attend a dinner to mark his retirement.
A tieless speaker. It’s not that many years ago that speakers in Australian Parliaments dressed themselves up in fancy dress and wore wigs but the Australian Capital Territory has well and truly cast that tradition aside. The local Legislative Assembly yesterday chose a speaker who was not even wearing a tie in the chamber. The appointment of Shane Rattenbury as presiding officer brings the Greens into a position of parliamentary influence for the first time and suggests that the party will not be shy about using its balance of power position with four members to the governing Labor Party’s seven to get its own way. Yesterday’s support by Labor for the Green appointment came only after Labor Chief Minister John Stanhope was told the Greens would vote for a Liberal as speaker if they were not supported by Labor for the post.
Defeats for gay rights activists. An interesting sidelight to yesterday’s American elections was the referendum vote in three states declaring that same sex marriages should be illegal. California, Florida and Arizona all voted in favour of the ban. The California Supreme Court earlier this year had declared same sex marriages to be legal.
And a no to affirmative action? One of those votes where the result is still too close to call is in Colorado where voters were asked to decide whether to ban race- and gender-based affirmative action. The vote in favour of the ban was narrowly behind with 91% of precincts reported. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, the voters have now outlawed greyhound racing.
Sad news about Alan Ramsey retiring-love or loathe him, he was required reading and brought us a unique view from Canberra. With his going and the sacking of Mike Carlton, both no doubt replaced by lightweights, Saturday’s SMH must have a death wish.
Rudd must now bite the bullett and promote Lindsay Tanner to the Treasurers position. He gave Swan a chance and while there was an improvement in his performance it was slight. Wayne Swan is probably a decent nice enough bloke, but he just doesnt have it in him to go for the jugular and kick the bastards in the slats. Nice blokes dont usually make for successful pollies, Kim Beasley came close but his nice guy, warm personality beat him finally. Tanner has the mongrel in him and a nice sense of humour to boot, Swanee sadly a comedian is not. The longer Rudd takes to make a change, the more the Opposition will score off the Treasurer. 2010 looked to be a cakewalk for the Government, it could be a lot tougher given the change in playing surface. The PM is not making life any easier for his leading Ministers by continually playing the heavy, he just can’t help himself with a comment here, an announcement there, let them get on with it Kev, noone likes a one man band. If the PM must supervise and beat the drum he should start with banging Communication Minister Conroys tom toms. His communication skills have nothing in common with his portfolio.
Alan Ramsay was often worth reading and equally could be a tiresome old curmudgeon. He lost a lot of credibility when he backed Mark Latham so strongly. He let his wholly understandable disdain for John Howard get the better of him and lead him into an unbalanced idealisation of Labor’s most spectacular failure.
I wish you could induce both Alan Ramsay and Mark Carlton to write occasionally for Crikey. These two used to make my Saturday reading really worthwhile.