March or July — does it really matter? Nick Xenophon clearly is enjoying his last few months of fame as he milks for all it’s worth the “will-he won’t-he” suspense about the planned Queensland flood tax. The South Australian Senator wants the Commonwealth to make the states take out disaster insurance rather than rely on federal funding for repairs caused by natural disasters. “I’m still in discussions with the government,” he said this morning. “The government knows my position, it’s important that we get this right. If there is going to be a flood levy this needs to be the last disaster levy Australian taxpayers need to pay for.”
Given that the result of the Senator Xenophon insure-at-all-costs approach would mean higher total cost to taxpayers than the current government self-insurance system, it is time to call the man’s bluff when it comes to a vote in the Senate. If he wants to defeat the tax/levy that is to raise $1.8 billion, let him. Then reintroduce it when changes to the numbers in the Senate make him an irrelevance.
Meaningless rhetoric from Andrew Robb. I have no idea whether Australia will end up with a carbon tax. What I do know is that if we do, it will be well nigh impossible to scrap it. The promise by Liberal Finance spokesman Andrew Robb that after the next election “if we get in we will scrap it” qualifies at least for one of the “probable lie” stickers I wrote about on Friday and probably deserves the “certain lie” categorisation. Only under the most extraordinary of circumstances will a Liberal-National coalition government have the numbers in the Senate after the next election to guarantee anything.
Words of truth from Ireland. Some words of truth for Australia from the Irish election aftermath “Fine Gael is tipped to end up with about 78 seats [84 are needed for a majority]. But Michael Noonan, a former party leader and the Fine Gael spokesman on finance, said he was not inclined to do business with independents “because they are high maintenance”. And wouldn’t the ALP and Julia Gillard agree with that.
Labor’s risk on multiculturalism. The findings of a major public opinion survey in the United Kingdom should be concerning to the Australian Labor Party now that it has courageously decided to come out as an unashamed supporter of multiculturalism. If Australia is anything like the UK, the finding that there is an appetite for a new right-wing political party that has none of the fascist trappings of the British National Party or the violence of the English Defence League suggests that the climate is right for a more sophisticated form of One Nation. Or, more frighteningly for Labor, that the Liberal Party will totally embrace the Scott Morrison view of racial and religious politics.
Searchlight Educational Trust commissioned the polling organisation Populus to explore the issues of English identity, faith and race.
It concludes that there is not a progressive majority in society and it reveals that there is a deep resentment to immigration, as well as scepticism towards multiculturalism. There is a widespread fear of the “Other”, particularly Muslims. With a clear correlation between economic pessimism and negative views to immigration, the situation is likely to get worse, says the Searchlight report, over the next few years.
Of course attitudes and identity are fluid, and multilayered. Attitudes held today may not be held tomorrow. There are also many positive findings from the report. Young people are more hopeful about the future and more open to living in an ethnically diverse society. The vast majority of people reject political violence and view white anti-Muslim extremists as bad as Muslim extremists and there is overwhelming support for a positive campaign against extremism.
A detailed report of the Populus/Searchlight survey will not be available on the web until Tuesday morning (Australian time) but there is a summary of the findings on Crikey’s The Stump website.
A quote about business that should be applied to politics too. I have been quite surprised by the comments of many readers to a little piece I wrote for Crikey’s The Stump blog expressing my disappointment that Julia Gillard so wilfully decided that there was nothing wrong about breaking a pre-election promise. Clearly there are many people who think that because the other team acts dishonestly it is quite permissible for our lot to do the same.
For my part I prefer the advice that Warren Buffett gave to the managing directors of the companies controlled by his Berkshire Hathaway in his last biennial memo:
Sometimes your associates will say “Everybody else is doing it.” This rationale is almost always a bad one if it is the main justification for a business action. It is totally unacceptable when evaluating a moral decision. Whenever somebody offers that phrase as a rationale, in effect they are saying that they can’t come up with a good reason. If anyone gives this explanation, tell them to try using it with a reporter or a judge and see how far it gets them.
Cut down on those TLAs. Kevin Rudd would be in trouble at the British Ministry of Defence. Rules brought in since the start of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government include a ban on rhetorical questions in official submissions. But the style instruction I liked best among those contained in a weekend survey by the Sunday Telegraph is staff at the Department for Communities and Local Government, being told to cut down on their use of TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations).
I always thought that TLA was ‘Three Letter Acronym”…
Mr Farmer really needs to check his prejudices at the door.
One the one hand he is saying that once Xenophon is out, the Government can do what it likes, on the other he is saying that Robb is wrong in saying what amounts to ‘when we are in power we will do what we want’.
Perhaps the opportunity for the Libs / Nats to push things through the upper house will be limited, however the poll numbers for the Carbon Tax sure don’t look like a winner so far and will only get worse, and I can imagine the campaigns run against the Greens in the Senate at the next election, on just that basis.
A little consistency and a little less partisanship would be nice.
Few seem to understand why it is that Europeans tend to resent immigration. None of them are ‘immigration nations’ like Australia, Canada and the USA (not that those three share the same attitudes either). They have influx of people by default – esp if they had colonies – British and French especially have been obliged to ‘welcome’ people from Africa, the sub-continent and the Caribbean ever since WW2 and since the EU spread its boundaries from Eastern Europe. Australia built its wealth and strength from planned migration (and despite the squeamishness of selfish environmentalists will probably have to continue growth by migration) so multi-cultural-ism here grew out of genuine need, whereas in European countries with deep rooted class antagonism have had it thrust upon them. Frankly there is little comparison, but that won’t stop Australian extremists (and political opportunists who value any old vote) borrowing racist attitudes and rhetoric to express their pathological self-pity as class and race hatred
@BAAL – I think you are correct. If you listen to talk-back radio (ABC in my case), the most blatant rascist twaddle often comes with an English accent. All this does is make me angry – as a 5th generation Aussie, I resent these people migrating to our country, then telling the rest of us what to do. I love multiculturalism and our particular brand of the “melting pot” – you always meet interesting people from all over the world.
And Richard – didn’t Crikey publish a twelve year survey on racism (and other things) in Australia, just last week? According to that research, we had a few ratbags (probably English!!), but the rest of us were quite accepting of our current population mix I thought.
Also, I don’t agree with MICHAEL J…(above) – I thought you were stating the bleeding obvious! There is no way the Greens will lose their advantage in the Senate at the next election. Bob Brown said on 7.30 Report last night, that the Greens would not support any attempt by the Coalition to dismantle the CPRS, once it is up and running.
And since I come from the same state as Senator X, I can tell you that not all of us here think he is JC revisited – just another annoying politician.
The first boat people arrived at Botany Bay in 1788. No doubt with racsists on board. No doubt with colour-blind people on board. That’s the way it has been ever since.
If 80 years of the White Australia Policy couldn’t change the mix, nothing else will. Maybe it’s un-Australian to try.