Baby with the Bathwater?

The next round of soul-searching and recriminations has begun for those on the right side of Australian politics.

Gerard Henderson had an entire column in the SMH last week devoted to eulogising the Libs entitled "No strangers to crisis, the Libs will pull through". For me all Gerard's desire to trumpet the fact that the Libs weren't utterly destroyed really did was serve to reinforce how truly screwed up they actually are. He points to their lack of "political depth" for example, reminding us just how reliant on the cult of personality that surrounded Howard and his closest cronies, Downer, Costello, Abbott, the party actually was. Is anyone else thinking that Turnbull is kicking himself for signing up with the wrong team?

Mr Henderson also points out that the good Dr certainly has some room for improvement in the leadership department. He highlights his rather odd vacillations around those "I have never voted Liberal in my life" comments (yes true believers I think Mr H is reading this blog too). In fact Mr H goes so far as to come up with a plausible but equally suspect story about all of that. Never fear, the good Dr is still a liar no matter which way you spin it. Mr H also takes issue with his inability to answer satisfactorily a question regarding his commitment to social justice as a member of the Howard government.

Right.... social justice and the Howard Government... isn't that like a google search that would turn up no responses? It is a total oxymoron.

But wait!

Apparently all Mr H needed from the good Dr was a mention of the lowering of unemployment and the government's commitment to families with dependent children. Yes folks in the world of the rabid right THAT is social justice. Notwithstanding that lowering of unemployment in and of itself means very little (even if you can believe the stats and in this case we can't seeing as word on the street has it that the stats included people on the dole involved in the welfare to work scheme for example). Simply saying that more people are working (not a bad thing mind) without taking into consideration wages and cost of living, housing stress and other important bits and pieces, tell us precisely nothing about the social conditions, or someone's commitment to social justice.

Secondly, the Howard government's commitment to families with dependent children amounted to well what exactly... family tax benefits? A welfare to work scheme for parenting payments (15 hours a week work volunteer or paid that can include studying, even at postgrad level, but that also includes a direction from the minister to lie to applicants and tell them their masters or PhD doesn't count?!), and Costello's immortal comment to have one for the country. Awesome.

No mention of refugees, Indigenous people, the poor, housing prices, war, same sex marriage rights, discrimination, sexism. But hey, all that falls outside of the Henderson view of social justice I suppose.

Mr H also has academics in his sights... not unsurprisingly, they are a fairly safe target for the rabid right. He writes:

When the Liberals go into opposition, some academics step forward to proclaim the end of the party. In July 1993 Judith Brett declared that "the Liberal Party in the 1990s seems doomed". But it was back in office within three years. Last January Norman Abjorensen wrote that a "Coalition defeat in 2007 will almost certainly herald a major realignment of the non-Labor side of politics, but it is problematic whether the Liberal Party, as now constituted, will survive".

Stuff and nonsense according to Gerard. The Libs will survive as they have always done.

Perhaps someone should tell them that.

Currently the night of the long knives (weeks of the long knives?) have now come down to this.... should the conservative parties merge and be done with it? No academics here, this is Chris Pyne and others in the party calling for a branding change so the party can, in the words of Queensland Liberal Peter Slipper, "like a Phoenix [rise] from the ashes" (no really.... that's a quote, someone get that man some media training stat!).

It's okay to laugh... I am.

Yes the post-election hysteria has reached fever pitch and now everyone is surveying the options on the table and deciding whether a new marketing approach will save conservative politics. I note that the good Dr is very quiet on this subject. Mr Abbott was the cautious Liberal voice of the day (things are certainly getting increasingly weird over there). There seems to be serious talk about creating an entirely new party.

I do not deny the Libs need an image change. But think about the way that government was identified, usually as the Howard Government, rarely as the Coalition. The parties weren't the brand at all, either unified or individually, Howard was. And god knows a little distance from him and some of the policies associated with him (you know, all the ones responsible for destroying social justice...okay so their entire policy platform), will not any conservative any harm.

I think they are all taking this Menzies thing a little too literally. I know the man lost an election (well Gerard says he was trounced actually), formed a new party and went on the lead the country for forever, but honestly the good Dr is not Menzies and this is not the 1950s and if they don't stop running around like headless chickens what little faith people have in them really will be gone!

What will save the Liberals is less of this endless navel gazing, soul searching and finger pointing and a little more of being in opposition (although Dr Nelson has already signalled his antipathy to that course of action). In fact I suspect that Howard's final act of hubris and stupidity was calling the election a little to early or a little too late. There is not much business to be done at the moment so all the political hacks have to do is endlessly disect the election... The Libs really need to leave them to it.

At any rate I can only say the less likelyhood there is of a conservative government the happier I am, but a word to the wise. Don't throw the baby out with bathwater... sure no one likes a loser but people might warm to a battler, to the underdog. Goodness knows no one will ever warm to a snivelling, cowering, whinger.

So.... Suck it up Liberals and get ready for the next round or you may in fact find you are out for the count.

Spare a Thought for Janette

Imagine the conversation at Kirribili house on the morning after the night before. In my mind it runs like a Your Rights at Work advertisement... it goes a little something like this:

John: They've taken away my job, my seat, my houses, my cars... they've taken everything!

Janette: Can they do that?

John: They have...and what worse, the Commonwealth says its okay. Apparently elections pass the fairness test.

I mean really, talk about a tough day at the office, a popularity test where retrenchment is the prize for the runner up.

But I ask who is the real loser in all of this? It has to be Janette. The long suffering wife who for years has stood by her man. She has no job, the kids are all grown up and now she has to move back to Woolstonecraft at Christmas! All the while watching that Queensland upstart and his working wife and Asian son in law prepare to move into the Lodge, while banning fundraising at Kirribilli House.... oh the humanity!

And, unlike the rest of us, she can't even mitigate her personal trauma by gloating about the change in government. Can you see her in a Kevin07 tshirt?

Perhaps that is why she is encouraging JW to get out of the house. The SMH dutifully informed us that our former intrepid leader was getting back to normal life by playing a few rounds of golf (and anyone who has ever seen footage of JW attempt to play anything involving a ball and basic handeye coordination is right to find the concept of him playing golf innately amusing). The article also mentioned that he was playing his round of golf alone bar two security personnel.

Hmmm am I right in thinking that 30 odd years in politics with at least 11.5 of them spent as an utter dickhead leaves you friendless and alone, playing 18 holes of golf with rentacops? Either that or being on the wrong side of a landslide makes you want to shorten the odds and play a game you know you can win.

How apt....How delicious!

Of course JW's golfing excursion further serves to reinforce how out of touch he is with the common person, or rich wanky golf lover for that matter (and aren't they after all the Lib's core constituents?).

This week the SMH also felt compelled to share with us the revolution in golf hitting a Sydney club near you. Nine hole, kinda the one day cricket of the fairway. Apparently we are all too time poor in Sydney to play the game properly and if the mountain won't come to Mohammed the golf clubs will halve the length of the game and come to you! I wonder if the golfing world has ever considered that maybe people just don't like golf.

So JW is starting his ordinary life playing a sport that most ordinary people can't play (this gives me faith in people's sanity broadly speaking) because they are working too hard to pay off the dreams JW cynically sold them for the last decade or so while he stripped away all their rights, devauled their infrastructure and disinvested in everything from welfare to education (except the armed forces of course), privatised telstra and generally made a big f***ing deal of spending any of our own money on us.

Despite this I say spare a thought for Janette.

After all she has him for life!

Ignorance is bliss (at least for the ignorant)

Perhaps unsurprisingly we were Tony-less when the Libs went to the party room to thrash out their differences.

I suspect someone had a work with him, gently reminding him of some of the differences between reality and his view of the world. I do love that he seems to be holding out hopes of a revival. He is absolutely unaware that he is about to be rendered completely obsolete. I wish I had said this first, but at least he knows he can always get another job.

Today on ABC's Insiders, I saw Nelson for the first time as leader of the opposition. Not that that is what he thinks he is, no the Good Doctor seems to think he the leader of the "alternative government".

Huh?

Wait did I miss something? Have we moved to a parallel multi-government universe? Was there a coup? Are the libs in exile rather than the wasteland?

Sorry Dr you have caught Abottitis (the blissful but damaging tendency to live entirely in a political world of ones own making) and I suspect it may be incurable. The prognosis for your political career is not looking good...

In about 3 days or so he has already made himself a flipflopper or at the very least the ff's poor cousin, the backpeddlar. I think he should just be quiet until the Libs actually have some policy positions instead of spouting off at every opportunity. Although come to think of it, perhaps he is still getting used to the fact that people actually listen to him now.

Dr Nelson has done well in the Libs seeing as he was, for a large portion of his life, a Labor man like his Dad and (shock horror) also the leader of a Union. He has switched sides and I must confess I reckon it is because he thought he'd be more likely to lead the party in the blue camp than the red (plus I'm pretty sure he hates Paul Keating).

But he fits well, at least in the old mould.
Dr N's cred:
A liar: see footage of the good doctor in 1993, swearing loudly, into a bullhorn, while being recorded on camera (smart huh?), that he has never and would never vote Liberal. Then remember that he has also said that he voted Lib prior to making that speech;

A hypocrite: he supports gay equality but still maintains that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and forms the foundation of our society;

Racist: yes he actually and with a straight face called the Stolen Generation the "Separated Generation" on TV today... what, do you think they got weekend visitation Dr?

An appalling, self-centred and arrogant minister: yes I am talking VSU and those planes that only exist on paper, that are more expensive and predicted to perform worse than the forty year old planes we already have and the planes of Indonesia (our most significant neighbour) uses, and that no-one, including the armed forces (you know, the air force) actually wanted Australia to buy... He took money away from infrastructure like education for that.

All in all a good, solid, Howard style conservative.

So he has his way, he is the leader of the OPPOSITION (suck it up Dr) but he will never lead the nation.

Abbotitis will make sure of that.