Another convenient snapshot into Australian Politics as at 28 July 2018: “A plague o’ both your houses”.

Posted on by August 2, 2018

Last Saturday the 28 July five by-elections for vacant parliamentary seats (some very marginal) were held and from opposite ends of the country. The ruling Liberal Party was thrashed in that in two of its former seats where polls and circumstance seemed to favour it were both lost decisively. The overall vote was pathetic and a mere continuation of the declining trends shown in the earlier summary on this voting preference issue. As former ALP leader – and absolute Outsider for all the major parties – Mark Lathan summed up, the voting results for the major parties was completely toxic going on Australian standards.

That was the major conclusion to be drawn from the results. The political, Insider and media class can cling onto their power, but a move is taking place which might mirror some of the characteristics of overseas trends seen in the USA, Brexit Britain and Europe.

Now that some time has passed to allow for the political class to attack each other and, with their media friends analyse-to-death the result, it should be noted that in the two of the seats mentioned above (Longman in Queensland and Braddon in Tasmania) the two major parties spent a lot of time and money campaigning and they were also ones where polls and media commentary indicated that the Liberal Party government could capture the both of them.

In Braddon in Tasmania the former member was standing again for the Liberal Party and when he lost it narrowly in July 2016, Getup, the political action group for Greens and the Labor party founded by former operatives for the America left group Move-On. org, had spent a lot of time and money specifically targeting Braddon and some other seats in that State. Without that extra effort this time, perhaps it levelled the playing field a bit. In Longman in Queensland, a long-time Liberal party seat, very narrowly lost in 2016 when it had a member who seemed to spend much time out of the area.
Peculiar characteristics of this multiple seat campaign were notable. The major 3rd party candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had a late setback when Pauline Hanson herself, the major drawcard, absented herself in the last week and went on a pre-paid/pre-arranged cruise in the Irish Sea. On top of that (& the usual political media attack on her and her party over it), the media also well-publicised the fact that a former official was convicted of a rape from some time before. It was very well timed and so much stress was placed on those setbacks it could have affected the turnout for the One Nation party.

A stage was set where the series of opinion polls about leadership, policy and voting preference could be tested by actual votes (and from areas scattered all over the country).

The results were interesting to say the least. The Liberal party wasn’t even standing in some of the other seats (the two seats in Western Australian didn’t even have a Pauline Hanson party candidate) yet it resulted in comfortable ALP wins but the vote numbers showed over 30% did not vote (in a compulsory voting system) did not vote. The only signposted voting trend was a larger than normal shunning of major party candidates. In South Australia an independent went up against a Liberal party candidate and won by a landslide. There were a lot of ALP votes for her I suspect, seeing the ALP primary vote was below 10%.

The results for the Liberal National Party were stark. They were rejected by the public. The ALP leader Shorten was in Longman a lot, and there was a strong union effort on its behalf as usual, but it in no way could the ALP victory be attributed to their presence although it obviously helped. No, it’s quite clear that whatever that left effort was, with the usual Getup and union tactics of medi scare (again), the fact that Bill Shorten is the nationally most unpopular leader of an opposition on record didn’t hold the party back and it took the seat comfortably in the end.
The biggest factor in the loss, without any doubt, was the 15% vote gained by the much-attacked Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party candidate. The votes were taken from the LNP and half of their preferences went straight to the ALP, even though Pauline Hanson herself had often said to put the ALP last. After many months of constant media attacks on the Hanson party (including during the campaign) and universal hared of it expressed by every party hack from the ALP or Greens and including their stooges, the vote obtained in Queensland alone was startling. All parties know that if maintained, a constant representation of two Senators from Queensland is assured for the party. In Braddon it was the same story but without the One Nation excuse. Another independent candidate (who was attacked by the Liberal party) gained nearly 11% of the vote and his preferences went to Labor.

RESULTS INDICATE AGAIN THAT MALCOLM TURNBULL IS A POOR CAMPAIGNER.

The biggest takeout is that the 37 polls lost in a row by Malcolm Turnbull is no blip in figures to be changed when a “real election” comes about. This was it. It also shows the lie pushed by the supine political media when they slavishly boost Turnbull in every poll loss and rant about the “popularity for PM” difference between Turnbull and Shorten when these by-elections showed that these differences are meaningless if the policy is terrible. The media know this, of course, but you can see them do it time after time to cover for their favourite Turnbull and to help stop their deadly enemy, Tony Abbott, getting any encouragement by indicating the stark facts of a losing poll number.

Malcolm Turnbull is the dud candidate from hell. He has zero political instinct and when there is a lapse and he goes the wrong way, makes the wrong call it just reiterates his weakness. In the July 2016 election campaign, it was widely noted that he was a lazy campaigner (or non-campaigner) usually working at one event for a few hours in the morning and then calling a halt for the day. The problem was, again, his usual lack of cut-through on policy. In 2016 it was his nothing mantra of “jobs and growth” yet ignoring the industrial relations campaign his double dissolution was about, and ignoring completely the stopping the boats and carbon tax issues which were so damaging when Tony Abbott was campaigning in 2013.

This time the energy issue was also on the table but Turnbull couldn’t campaign on the factor of coal fired power because he was stuck on his terrible National Energy Guarantee policy which will mandate continuation of huge subsidies for renewables at the expense of coal power. Not only that but it allows (as Tony Abbott has pointed out) that the acceptance of the policy is dictated by the veto power of the state ALP governments.

Multiple Political Problems, Multiple Voices are Analysing Them

Posted on by July 25, 2018

During an enforced hiatus of this site so much has been happening in Australia and the world that it will take some time and multiple posts to present some analysis of it to anyone who wants to see another view rather than the mainstream media outlook from the self-appointed gatekeepers. As will be generally known and as I intend to point out in forthcoming posts, these gatekeepers can be totally off centre, not only about Australian attitudes but, woefully so, also about America, Brexit, and the EU.

There is a long and complex history of decline of our democracies, mainly due to the entrenchment of a political class that operates regardless of the will of the people expressed at elections. In fact, the arrogance of that class is such that it seems increasingly obvious that the presence of voters is a nuisance to them and that over decades they have grown determined to rule without the voters being too involved.

Detailed analysis of this new Ruling Class will be made in forthcoming posts, but reading of the superb 2010 work by Angelo Codevilla about it is a perfect place to start. There is a very necessary urgency to discuss what is happening in the US and Australia because our very future as a democratic country is at stake unless the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a few is not exposed, understood and challenged in a meaningful way.

There are commonalities in these changes to the political rule of many countries and these countries are all in a dangerous period of their history. Australia is not least at risk, with two often-lookalike major parties, a supine, monolithic political media producing a single-Narrative. More worrying is that there are current (and increasing) attempts to censor opposing views, even by utilising government powers to do so. Only a relative few columnists and social media voices provide alternatives to the prevailing narratives.

So far the internet has allowed independent voices and investigators to break free from the information straight jacket which organised legacy media and the political class have deemed necessary for us. However, as many now know and can see, the political forces behind the major media utilities, Google, Facebook, Youtube etc are under pressure from an uneasy political class to see the internet made to conform to the old legacy media model which they have controlled for decades. Recent moves to cramp the freedom on the internet, whether it be by straight censorship of social media voices, to denying publication to “non-permitted” narratives or having a media braying the same political message in unison risk recreating new versions of the rigid ”gatekeepers” they once were.

Never was the shallow response more obvious than with respect to all things Trump.

Nothing like this has been happening in the United States, not just in our lifetimes, but for over 100 years. Not seen since the first “Progressive” era (culminating in the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson presidencies) turned US politics upside down, has its elitist core modern day twin become wedded to the progressive idea of superior classes. Seemingly anchored in the early 20th century version of “populism” the elitism of that day did not cause anything like the massive upheaval we see today. We have – thankfully – not seen the blatant “superior races” theme common in those days (The KKK factor in Democratic Party politics and American culture – the Birth of a Nation aka The Clansman era or the re-segregation of the US civil service).

Trump, as we all thought we knew him, is not the ideal person we could ever see taking over as a US president. Not just that he was a person from business who had a mixed-success personal and business life (and that’s a polite way of putting it), but also because he would be the only person ever to achieve the presidency without ever having held public office or to be a senior military officer.

What with Hillary Clinton being the other candidate, the “choice” seemed terrible to non-partisans. The rough diamond newcomer with a chequered personal and business life, making sometimes outlandish claims against both his Republican opponents and the Democratic Party opposition, making edgy statements about immigration which bordered on prejudicial in that they made sweeping claims about them as a class. The only saving grace was the idea amongst some that they were for effect during the campaign and that they would never be carried out in practice.

Then there was Hillary Clinton, a severely-polarising figure anyway but, with husband Bill, had been accused of every sort of financial wrong doing from their days in Arkansas and the Bill Clinton stint in the white house, campaign cash allegations etc. Hillary had become a polarising figure, a hero to many women and had the strength of the Clinton political machine and its control over the Democratic Party behind her, but a target of seemingly each and every Republican. With her stint at the State Department and allegations of conflict between her role there and Bill Clinton’s highly-paid speeches amongst the countries the US was dealing with, it was bound to lead to severe political attacks. The farce about the disaster at Benghazi where Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed and a video was blamed, caused severe polarisation but when it was also found that she had, for years, been using an unauthorised computer server while  Secretary of State, all hell broke loose. Much more to be said on that 2015/6 electoral race.

Taking a snapshot of today, the mass Trump-based hysteria of the political classes in the United States, mirrored in Australia and Europe/UK, is a matter of huge seriousness, with Trump as the target of many who have the loudest voices. After wall-to-wall allegations of Russia collusion and an attack on the American democratic processes and institutions to “stop Trump” was first aired, the Russia Collusion narrative is now faltering. As news fades, the angst and fear of the perpetrators of the opposition to Trump becomes more loud, even shrill, as time goes by.

The depths of this conflict and the reasons for it will be explored in later posts. Suffice it to say that the closer it all comes to total exposure, it seems to some that the very future of the constitutional republic known as the USA is at risk.
Serious future topics will include the following:-

* American and Australian media and their interpretation of all things Trump.
* Does Trump have reason to doubt the 2016 Campaign integrity of his intelligence services or the FBI?
* Was the Alexander Downer involvement by chance or does it carry any implication of similarity to the now-suspected involvement of British security services? Was Downer the only Australian government official involved in the anti-Trump investigation and was the Australian government at all times unknowing of his involvement?
* The Clinton family and its Clinton Foundation’s connection to the Australian political class and the continual transfers of multiple $millions of Australian taxpayers money to sometimes questionable Clinton-linked campaigns.

New media resources of value are also necessary for study and analysis of US Politics

Posted on by March 18, 2018

For the existence of this blog in its role in studying and analyzing US Politics and media, we recognise that too much has changed in the past 30 years to ever consider relying exclusively on the legacy media as some form of reliable Gatekeeper of worthwhile political news and analysis. If anyone still thought that the “traditional” media comprised all the possible information sources deemed necessary to know what was happening in politics and the flow-on effects, think again.

If any proof of this was wanted in the study of US politics, just wait for a little while until the report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General’s Report into the Dept of Justice and FBI is published. Originally requested by Democrats, the various releases of information during the compilation of the report has been the material which has opened up the top echelon of the FBI to immense scrutiny. It has been the catalyst for the move or reassignment of most of the top people involved in the actions to investigate Hillary Clinton emails and also investigate candidate Trump. This included obtaining the FISA warrant and dealing with the opposition research company FusionGPS. It has culminated with the dismissal of the FBI No2 being based on discoveries of the IG investigation and the recommendation of the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility. If the US media is still deserving of any shred of balance, then we will see voluminous and fair reporting based on the findings of this independent report.

Don’t hold your breath though. Unless I am mistaken, there will be a media response along the same lines which have been followed from the time Trump first got elected: publishing The Narrative and censoring out the opposite view, trashing informants and not following old-fashioned investigative journalism techniques of actual research, credibility of informants  and corroboration of information.

Since at least the beginning of the Bush dynasty in 1988, through the advent of the Clinton political machine to the Obama era (and now Trump), any rose-colored glasses view of the media as honest brokers for political integrity in reporting should be treated with caution now.

Competition from the newer cable news channels, the internet and mass circulation syndicated political radio broadcasters, vastly extended the reach and broadened the variety of sources for political news. Conservative Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh went national with his talk show from New York in 1988.  Cable news channel CNN had been in operation since 1980 as the only 24-hour news channel but it took the advent of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, created by Roger Ailes as a conservative 24-hour news channel in 1996 for the political media landscape to take a radically different turn.

By targeting a conservative audience demographic, it discovered what Charles Krauthammer once said was “a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people”.

From the political polarisation of the Bill and Hillary Clinton presidential era to the huge political fight-to- the-death over the 2000 election and the “hanging chads”, what was left of the old decorum in political discourse was dead. Every step of the way the political media came along and fully participated. Come 911, the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq a Rubicon seemed to have been crossed and the old media would never be the same again.

The Obama area started badly, with an email list of journalists getting together to try and control the Narrative during the 2008 campaign as it related to Barrack Obama (the JournOlist ), interfering with bad news and boosting Obama, diminishing Hillary Clinton etc. The Obama era did not exactly see anything like robust criticism of his mistakes. In fact the media were able to be treated with contempt, Obama aide Ben Rhodes made quite clear his views about the American political media.

Later, with the whole 2016 campaign and abuse of the institutions of state, where a candidate was spied upon in controversial circumstances, when a series of anti-terrorist measures were used to unmask and note the conversations of virtually a whole campaign team, only the claimed “Russia Collusion” itself could ever excuse it. If collusion died there was nothing left.

If not, a political scandal of even greater scale than Watergate was possibly uncovered. If so, it can be argued that unless the IG Report gains fair coverage, the traditional hope that in a crisis of US institutions, politicians and media would all come together to reset the institutions back on an even keel, will have been dashed.

Why new media?

Old-fashioned principles of caution, research, checking and credibility of sources used must be attached to anything seen purporting to “report” on these political actions and actors. With the increasing polarisation of the people and legacy media itself, the growth of the internet was the catalyst for new media, blogs etc offering alternate sources of information. Over the years they have had either missed it or had, but declined to recognise (or even to suppress it) as in Lewinsky, Dan Rather forgery etc. However, innate caution must be used as there are now so many social media investigative claims, some purporting to be “citizen journalists” that, luckily, we can see by the often-conflicting declarations of “fact” that this caution is never misplaced – ever. To see groups and sites getting many things right (and often main stream reports follow these revelations completely) but then going on to claim that Susan Rice is/isn’t cooperating with Trump, that Mueller is the “creature of the Deep State” or a “white hat” busily preparing to bury the anti-Trump “conspirators and so on.

Media of particular value.

Post the Trump election and the collapse of certain media into part of the #Resist movement, other media which have kept some balance have come to the fore. Outside of the usual lists of mass media which can be said to be firmly in one camp or another and about which their facts seem to include some points of view and ignore others completely, a phrase such as “liberal-leaning” or “conservative-leaning” shouldn’t exclude any such media from consideration. By using rational powers of observation, and looking for corroboration and verification of some seemingly extreme view of Trump or the FBI leadership means that we can build up a picture of the credibility of the reporters and even the channel itself.

This blog reads widely from sources and mentions some not-so-well-known media which deserve further views. Value has been found in using some quality investigative blogs and web sites, and two in particular have been prominent in investigating and breaking news of importance. In each of the Conservative Tree House and True Pundit  web sites, when mainstream media outlets pick up on their research breakthroughs, their work has been given a boost for being of merit. As always, those “checks and balances” should be uppermost in minds before reliance on their work.

Web sites with quality investigative blogs

TheLastRefuge     (“Sundance”) @TheLastRefuge2

web site:                    theconservativetreehouse.com

True Pundit              @true_pundit                      )

Thomas Paine         @Thomas1774Paine          )

web site:                    truepundit.com                   )

Trump Tariff increases – Time for some clear thinking and less panic

Posted on by March 14, 2018

The Australian political and media class were panicking about the Trump steel and aluminium tariff announcement, so it seemed time that somebody else laid out some ideas about what Trump is doing, who he is doing it with and why. Ongoing trade tensions related to the differential levying of tariffs and other costs on American goods and services are all part of the world trade tensions Trump seeks to alter. Anti-dumping actions plus the transshipping of products and raw materials from country to country to avoid trade rules are in particular focus.

Donald Trump announced on 2 March, his long-foreshadowed plans to impose tariffs on certain named “unfair” competitors by declaring a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium products.

Mexico and Canada are the two US partners of the US in the North American Free Trade Area, and associated with the Trump tariff push, NAFTA plays into the mix. NAFTA was long on the Trump radar for either radical reform or destruction and it is inextricably linked to the Trump plan to deal with the tariff issue. Only by taking account of NAFTA and the way Mexico and Canada can be bases for manufacture of goods which then enter the United States duty-free, can a proper understanding be had of the complementary nature of the tariff and NAFTA-Reform moves.

Australian media response was uniformly negative from political editors proclaiming on tariffs such as Paul Kelly of the Australian This is Trump’s Most Dangerous Step Yet to first rate economic journalists such as Adam Creighton having a go Donald Trump’s Trade War will Make America Poor Again and ending up being uniformly negative also.

I could argue the points of Adam Creighton as they relate to what others have shown to be the implications from various tariff regimes, but suffice it for this post to limit my response to what was my purpose for thinking that such an article as this was necessary (and overdue).

While there was gnashing of Australian teeth at first, the Trump announcement was followed by political euphoria once Trump moved to the next stage of granting exemptions for special trade partners (which included Australia). Leaving aside the political backslapping by PM Turnbull and his team, some truths about what really matters to Trump and his team about the whole unfinished tariff and NAFTA issues are important in order to predict the future for these decisions.

It is a fact that whilever Trump is the sole concentration of all media and political response, the quality and input of his advisers seem to be overlooked. Many people were seemingly ignorant of the position held by Gary Cohn in the administration as the globalist, Jared and Ivanka friend, Pro-Paris Agreement, Goldman Sacks man in the administration. They seemed to think that he was a solid, “mainstay” of the teams rather than a part, often at odds with those who were totally different financial voices in the administration. Because most administration staff are incessantly the butt of rumours of being ousted or resigning from the administration, there was no excuse to see the Cohn departure as a huge moment.

This was also overlooked, at the time, by American media, where initial reports seemed to sow (or be meant to sow) discord by claiming that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were against the tariff decision also. Not only was this not the case, but it showed how out of touch were the commentators playing this decision as some crude Trumpish way of bludgeoning through a disastrous policy which had not been thought through. This led to claims that panicked congressmen were to pass bills to override the Trump decision. Only Senator Jeff Flake, an avowed Trump, opponent has done so.

We shall see how it all plays out but it is a good idea that everyone who is not blinded by some anti-Trump malaise should spend some little time examining what the advisers (and Trump himself) have actually said about it, about what they are trying to do. Disagree or not, at least those who have done so would have fulfilled more of what the media usually claim they set out to do: see the argument for the other side.

EARLY in 2018 the Trump administration had announced tariffs on imported washing machines (20%) and solar panels (30%). It affected some NAFTA partners also and caused various mutterings about payback, trade wars and so on. However, the World Economic Forum  was meeting at Davos in Switzerland that month and the American President Donald trump had decided to attend.

A convenient start to disabusing someone of thinking the steel and aluminum tariff rises was a rushed, necessarily ill-thought out decision, some in-depth analysis shown by the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at Davos is a good starting point. In a discussion with a number of others zeroing-in on US trade policy post washing machine/solar panels tariffs, the hour is dominated by Ross.

All of the Wilbur Ross contribution is very important to understand what Trump is doing. Ross is quite clear on a number of points and gets no disagreement from the group. Specifically, China is superb at free trade rhetoric and equally superb in protectionist behavior; China is directly targeted as a US objection to the practice of forcing foreign companies to manufacture locally, force a joint venture and the joint venture partner then forces technology transfer.

Real bite in the talk comes in the Q and A session when Ross lays it out that China is flooding the world with steel, using subsidies to export its oversupply unemployment problem to be an unemployment problem for other countries, particularly the USA.

Most importantly, the issue of countries using transshipping to move products to 3rd countries and then to enter the US or other trading nations via trade agreements with those 3rd countries is seen as a subterfuge to avoid trade rules. Blanket tariffs were a method to block rogue nations and companies moving manufacture around from country to country outpacing trade actions against them. It was to stop that that blanket tariffs were put onto washing machines and that is a template for other failures in the dumping rules.

ONE FINAL POINT when calling for some caution in analysing these moves, there is a persistent media and political drum beat that this is all a shock from both an “incompetent” Trump or his advisers. While we would hope that careful observers would listen and read to what people like Ross and Mnuchin actually say and believe, Donald Trump isn’t exactly an unknown quantity. A speech by Trump in Las Vegas in April, 2011 is worthwhile viewing.

It has a lot in it, including China, tariffs unfair competition, coal, the media and a prediction – in April 2011 – that Iran would dominate Iraq.

Australia in March 2018 – a mess economically and politically

Posted on by March 11, 2018

Australia is in political chaos and economic uncertainty right now. All self-inflicted. The seeds of economic deterioration are everywhere, aided and assisted by terrible political policy collapse While the economy could be seen as going well and the country as prosperous – on the surface – the political ruling class have laid the seeds of its future troubles.

A commodities-dependent nation and world price-taker which, with the agreement of the dominant political class, has willingly sabotaged its cheap energy riches, has not only adopted climate alarmism as the State policy by adopting the Paris Agreement but preceded it by taking multiple steps to sabotage all its energy advantages. With virtually limitless supplies of metallurgical and thermal coal (the nation’s biggest export) and with massive gas available plus almost 1/3 of the world reserves of uranium Australia has been let down by its political class in being seduced by climate alarmism. It has gone from one of the cheapest energy suppliers in the world to one of the most expensive.

That result is just one fact coming from years of economic and general policy blunders which had the effect of badly damaging the Australian economy or its budget/national debt. From profligate spending in the good times to huge, late (& extremely wasteful) deficit spending after the global financial crisis, to squandering money on the black hole which was the Clinton Foundation, a debt-free country in December 2007 was, by the change of government in September 2013, 300 $Billion in debt.

Major and Ongoing Political Changes

Politically, Australia is ruled in a rigid two-party system where the historical conservative/centre/left divide governing in turn for over 100 years has taken a sharp turn away from the historical groupings. The main parties are turning noticeably left.

A virtual two-party monopoly for over 80 years with the left Australian Labor Party and once-centrist/conservative Liberal Party formerly sharing over 85% of the(compulsory) vote between them, it now sees them struggling to reach 38% each in some cases. Greens and other minor/micro parties and localised “independent” causes take most of the rest. As said, having a Senate modeled on that of the USA, a proportional representation system has now built-in virtual permanent gridlock, with the small groupings holding the governing parties to ransom over pet (& often rent-seeking) causes. Not assisted by an historic electoral system which sees the weakest state, Tasmania, having the same Senate representation as New South Wales (which has a population 12 times the size). Smaller states always had disproportional leverage due to their different representations but the upper house gridlock has been caused by the public being willing to vote for minor or fringe candidates from outside the main two parties.

It all starts with energy and willful neglect of a built-in advantage

From 2007 when the Australian Labor Party (ALP) took office under leader Kevin Rudd (who claimed that the climate challenge was “the greatest moral challenge of our time”), both parties of that time went out to turn Australia – which never provided more than 1.5% of the worlds carbon emissions – away from its cheap energy life blood and sacrifice it to the then-“global warming” movement.

Australia got a reprieve in 2009 when conservatives in the then-opposition Liberal Party overthrew its leader Malcolm Turnbull and replaced him with a climate skeptic Tony Abbott. But while the planned surrender to the climate alarmists didn’t take place at that time (& Abbott and the party with him opposed any such carbon tax and other commodity-destroying policies) the ALP government of Australia under both Rudd and later Julia Gillard pushed for them as hard as they possibly could. On this, they were aided by their partners in ideology (and in actual coalition agreement) the Australian Greens and brought in a form of carbon tax which did its damage after the 2010 elections.

With a Greens/ALP political partnership giving climate alarmists the ability to govern in their own right, the $Billions of subsidy dollars started to flow to the renewable energy causes, massively subsidising the uneconomic (compared to coal) wind and solar. Bringing in renewable energy certificates to be granted to solar and wind etc and forcing coal-fired power providers to purchase them, policy artificially  made efficient coal power to become uneconomic by virtually transferring billions directly from their shareholders to the favoured (comparatively inefficient) green energy/ solar/wind providers. Needless to say, this has made investors loathe to commit to funding them in view of the governmental sabotage. This lack of new investment has naturally been made much use of in the propaganda of the renewable energy sector.

Australia had some respite when Tony Abbott actually took government in September 2013 on policies to repeal carbon taxes and reverse many subsidies. A recalcitrant Senate stopped many moves for reform and only the actual carbon taxes themselves were finally stopped. Internal party opposition to Abbott, however, often based on belief in climate alarmism, never stopped working against him, including the man Abbott had beaten for the leadership in 2009, Malcolm Turnbull. Constant leaking, use of Wick r-type untraceable communication networks, the conspirators worked away for a long time through their creatures in the media (Canberra Press Gallery) and a never-ending stream of leaks, true and false, were constantly in the press.

While some poor political choices were made by the government led by Abbott (eg a foolish antipodean knighthood system, a proposed $20 billion medical research fund at a time when the country needed to save and pay off massive debts inherited from the Rudd/Gillard governments), they never had any clean air with all the undermining and sabotage from within, not to mention an almost unheard-of media mass-attack.

 

One additional, possibly a major factor in losing support from a section of his own State Liberal party machine, what Abbott did from the very first days in office, banning any lobbyists from access to the government if they held any official position in his own Liberal Party. This had been a key issue for a long time and while some had mentioned it before, particularly Liberal Party leaders, none had done anything about it until Abbott became PM. Perhaps it was coincidental that the major lobbyist player controlling the ruling faction in the NSW party of Abbott (& supporter of Malcolm Turnbull) happened to be a leading organiser for votes against Abbott when a coup ousted him as leader for Turnbull in September 2015.

Turnbull and Co announced for the Paris climate agreement in December 2015 and after retaining government in July 2016 by a single seat, announced for it again. Donald Trump had declared all through his campaign that he was against the Paris agreement and was for steel, for coal, fossil fuels, oil, gas and all forms of US energy production and use, the Australian government under Turnbull ratified the Paris agreement after Donald Trump had gained office as President of the United States!

It took a joint political effort to get the economy to this

It isn’t just the present, nominal centrist, trending leftist government sending the economy into an uncertain future. The opposition ALP party is worse, far worse in energy sabotage. Not content with the present government policy increasingly putting electricity prices out of the reach of the poor whilst enriching their renewable energy favourites, (all this while trying to reduce emissions by less than 30%), the ALP want to sink the energy marker altogether by going to 50 % in a few decades.

The ALP has other flaws, not least being an unhealthy connection by some if its senior officials and ex-political office holders with the government of China and the Chinese subsidiary organisations projecting so-called “soft power” active in Australia. More for another day.

To conclude for the moment, Australia could not be in much worse of a position, what with the world being so volatile at the moment. There is so much happening in the United States, where a massive investigation and assessment of its whole Obama-era use and relationships with once-world famous institutions, CIA, FBI the IRS and others.

That will be dealt with in numerous future posts.

MARCH 2018 REVIEW

Posted on by March 6, 2018

What an appropriate time to resume this website publishing opinion and analysis. After an enforced absence due to personal reasons and some overseas family commitments, being in Australia in March 2018 sees the world in absolute turmoil. In fact the context of drift and uncertainty with foreign policy generally, US domestic policy, European cohesion (& lack of democracy), Britain and its Brexit challenge, plus the chaos/farce to which Australian politics has descended, demands as many voices as possible and not just the tired Old Media which has presided over this with hardly even calling out the changes.

Overview

AUSTRALIA is in political and economic chaos, a commodities-dependent nation which, with the agreement of the dominant political class, willingly sabotaged its cheap energy riches; the limitless supplies of coal (also close to or as the biggest export for years), gas and uranium. From a virtual two-party monopoly for over 80 years with the left and conservatives once sharing over 85% of the (compulsory) vote between them, now sees them struggling to reach 35% in either case. Greens and other minor/micro parties plus tempoirary “independent” causes taking the rest. With a Senate modelled on that of the USA, but with a proportional representation voting system, is in virtual permanent gridlock, with the small groupings holding governing parties to ransom over pet (& often rent-seeking) causes.

The UNITED STATES, one year post-Obama is still hung over on his administration; Obama loyalists and a huge proportion of the US media can’t cope with his replacement by Donald Trump.
At the end of the Obama era, the middle east was (and is) still dealing with the aftermath of Obama policies in the region. Those policies, which had resulted in major changes, including ominous side effects, ones of leaving Russia with much more power in the region, more than it ever had since expulsion from Egypt by President Sadat in 1974. Due to Obama weakness in policy across the whole middle east, including eager fostering of the unfortunately-named Arab Spring of early 1911, Iran was left the increasingly dominant regional power, to the alarm of erstwhile Arab friends of the west in the region. With Russia as its ally, Iran quickly filled the vacuum left when Obama pulled US forces from Iraq in 2011. By the US deserting Iraq in 2011 and through US weakness in Syria, Iran was an invaluable savior for both regimes and has aided Russia in dominating the two countries.
Other changes resulted from the Obama foreign policy in Europe, allowing Russia a much freer hand. As soon as he got into power Obama reversed Bush-era plans for defensive US missile shields in Poland and the Czech republic and later his failed Hillary Clinton “Reset” and the Obama “give me more flexibility after the election” to the Putin stand-in Medvedev in 2012 seemed to set the tone. There is a lot more detail showing the weakening of all American foreign policy in Europe and the middle east during the Obama term, culminating in the notorious Iran nuclear deal. There is so much to be covered on that, its side focus to avoid conflicts with Iran on other (drug) fronts, the fragile position of Israel during Obama’s term including much money being spent on siding with one party in opposition to PM Netanyahu.

Domestically, the Obama era was of historic low-growth, with recovery from the global financial crisis slower than in any recovery since the Great Depression. Obama started with a filibuster-proof Congress but in his first 2 years carried only Obamacare of note. From the time of the Tea Party rise on the basis of the Obama administration’s spending, controversy was obvious, culminating with his first mid-terms in 2010 where The Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and, until his leaving power in early 2017 they never again had a majority there. In his post-2010 era of using a “phone and a pen” instead, Obama empowered his Environmental Protection Agency to emasculate the coal and coal-fired power industry, paid billions to subsidise green energy etc and the IRS cooperated with the FBI to target Tea Party-affiliated groups and ,many other conservative groups to deny them tax-free status, demanded to know their donor’s names etc. It is appropriate that many of these issues will be recalled as the history of the “Obama Era” is laid out over time
With Donald TRUMP, as we now seem to know from what has been discovered since his inauguration of Donald Trump, the FBI was hopelessly compromised at the highest levels before and after the election date of November 8 2016. Doubts about the actual roles of the leadership of both the CIA and the National Security Agency have been raised also.
Since the demise of Obama, Trump has been subject to domestic obstruction by Democrats at incredible levels and nothing has been seen in living memory of such a combined politician/media/ political class revolt against a president elected by the people of the United States.
An important part of this website going forward will concentrate on the United States and the Trump administration, the massive Democratic/media backlash and even the highly-unusual Republican “establishment”/Never Trumper attacks plus alliances with Democrats against Trump.

EUROPE is in trouble, the EU is broken at present, worried sick about Brexit and the possibility of Britain’s leaving being the catalyst for the breakup of an endangered Union. It had survived the self-inflicted crisis involving Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS nations), particularly Greece and Italy, by using all its undemocratic power to bear on Greece and Italy, forcing the Greeks to suffer and pay out all the money lent to it from German and French banks, money shoveled at them when Germany was getting rich on the back of exports to the cheap-money states (PIIGS).
The EU seems split between the de facto “rulers”, Germany & France and the rest of those who make up the EU itself. While most of the countries’ Europe bureaucrats seem to be rallying around the unelected European Council rulers in their efforts to bring Britain and others countries to heel, the fear of the people in many of the EU countries is palpable, plebiscites treated as hostile.
Now, by Angela Merkel having demonstrated the flaw in the supposed “union”, ie that Germany actually runs it and the others are mere vassal states to it, she invited a huge amount of supposed refugees from the middle east and Africa. When over a million arrived within a year, Germany exposed to the world her dominance of all other nations in the EU by attempting to force unwilling nations to take quotas of her invited “refugees”. Many of the states didn’t want to and four, the now-rebel Visegrád nations, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, resisted and are resisting the EU dictats on sharing German-directed immigration quotas. Far more needs to be said on that and Brexit but it can be dealt with later.

In all this, BRITAIN is split internally too. The Brexit vote to leave the EU was strongly carried in a voluntary vote at record levels in June 2016, with many working class areas strongly in favour, as were areas of Wales and elsewhere in England, but London, Scotland and Northern Ireland were against leaving. Not content with carrying out the voter’s wish, the vested interests in Britain have never stopped trying to overturn the original vote and denying the will of the people. The EU has also played its (usual) part, never accepting any such thing as an internal “people’s vote” on anything which the EU rulers deem necessary for their own good. Far more is yet to be done on this in Britain and between it and the EU, but it seems obvious from March, 2018 that direct opposition to Brexit against the will of the people is alive and well.

In summary, this is just a tip of the iceberg for all of us. The world is so interconnected that nothing happening any of these areas of conflict and human affairs can be isolated in it’s effects from anywhere else. I have yet to even hint at China and the rest of Asia. Being from Australia and China bearing such a large influence with and over Australia, that can wait until other web pages are published.

Tony Abbott MP did have a personal triumph in driving Liberal Party democratisation push

Posted on by July 24, 2017

The ex- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott gets plenty of attention in sections of the Australian media, most of it critical, as it has been for decades now. The personal nature of a lot of it and even unprofessional abuse (“oaf” just one of many pointed attacks on Mr Abbott by a particular senior journalist), and another showed such bias that she has written up to 60 articles highly critical  of him since January 2015. On my estimation, she never once disclosed that her husband was a close insider/employee with his successor Malcolm Turnbull but that is par for the course these days.

The saga of the Australian Canberra press gallery pack with respect to the years of attacks on Tony Abbott deserves a number of articles but for now, these comments on his recent triumph need to be made.

The NSW branch of the Liberal Party of Australia has been undemocratic for many years. Various factions of all kinds strictly prevented mere members from having much of a direct say in voting for pre-selections to parliament as Senators or virtually any other position. For years there have been embarrassing examples of branch stacking, physical confrontations and police being called to their meetings.

A number of people had tried to reform this party state branch and all had failed. Even people with the prestige of Australia’s second longest serving prime Minister, John Howard, couldn’t fight this inequity. Howard was against the closed system and wanted it reformed but, for whatever reason, never pushed it to the limit. I suppose a stonewalling “no” stopped him, as this also happens in the Australian Labor Party also (eg when Simon Crean wanted to change the union representation in the ALP).

A NSW premier, Barry O’Farrell didn’t do it either and while people of all positions of power in NSW Liberals stated – sometimes very publicly, but in official reports also – that they wanted democratic change and plebiscites or some other method to allow members a vote, nothing was done.

Until Tony Abbott, that is.

There had been years of comments about lobbyists being involved as senior members of the party (and thus with influence over pre-selections); there were corruption allegations proved against Liberal members on the Central Coast and the rigid factional system resulted in  poor candidates, they to be easily beaten at elections. Tony Abbott fought these from the time he became leader in 2009 and took the party from a hopeless position with Malcolm Turnbull as leader to within a hair’s breadth of victory in the 2010 election. His landslide victory was attained n September 2013

In that election of 2010, an actual election year, the incompetent NSW branch did not even have a candidate selected for a very marginal seat, that of Lindsay in western Sydney and then selected a factional non-entity for another seat, also in western Sydney.

With no action on reform and not much practical assistance to Abbott in his early years as opposition leader, he acted immediately.when he finally became Prime Minister of Australia in September 2013,

It took only a single week after his election in 2013 for him to ban lobbyists from being party officials.He banned anyone who was a senior office holder in the party from being recognised as a lobbyist with his government and the NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell quickly copied him in the State, something O’Farrell had not done since his own election 2 and a half years earlier. As the faction bosses then opted for their lobbying business rather than party position, they showed their priorities.

Tony Abbott never stopped advocating for these changes to the processes of the party. By November 2013, a mere two months after his election, he had commissioned former PM John Howard to lead a group towards producing suggestions on it and the 2 year membership plebiscite was what Howard produced in 2014, the very model Abbott presented through his Warringah motion on 23 July 2017. In the Howard Report, spurious claims such as the fear of  “branch stacking” were rejected out of hand by Howard himself and the 2-year waiting period was said to be enough to eliminate that as a risk.

With all the smears thrown at Abbott in the past few months – everything was to topple Turnbull as PM, the motion was just him and an effort to disrupt the people on other factions, conveniently forgetting – on purpose – his fights with all factions to get candidates into winnable seats whether they be “his” faction or not. In the seat of Robertson the case of Lucy Wicks – a Hawke/Morrison creature – seems to be a fine case in point as was him arguing against endorsing a supposed conservative candidate in Greenway Jaymes Diaz. Abbott was very fortunate to have with him – actually beside him – Major General Jim Molan, MP Craig Kelly and MP Angus Taylor, amongst others. All three of them made their commitment to the democratisation of the party even though their own future careers were therefore put at risk of revenge from the factional bosses. Angus Taylor, in particular, is at great risk from them, precisely when he is the long-term future of the Liberal Party in parliament  and Craig Kelly is the solid rock that the party needs. Jim Molan is a massive gain for the party and it would be a real loss for Australia if any of these three were to be lost to parliament. That is what they put on the line. Everything.

That’s what it takes to change, to inspire.

With the usual anti-Abbott media going all out on anything to do with only Abbott (and nearly all of it critical), the meeting to democratise the Liberal Party came to be on and over 1,000 people were there and, in an overwhelming vote, 60/40 backed the Abbott proposal. To see the crowd giving Tony Abbott and Jim Molan an old fashioned three cheers, meant a lot but signified a huge amount.

Tony Abbott showed what  he has to offer and not only was it the achievement unattainable by others, he brought magnificent people with him as his partners for change and the party members were inspired by his example as the response to him indicates.

While the factions are still in their holes at present, they will creep out again. They have too much to lose in so many ways. It is to stop this being in the worst possible way that they must still fight, What is on their side (and this seems to be recognised by the media too) is that opposition to the progress of the Abbott motion will probably destroy the party.

 

Australian politicians obscuring a tax dodging truth about some family trusts

Posted on by July 24, 2017

While it will probably die a quick and painless death, the Australian Labor Party’s leader (and alternate Prime Minister) Bill Shorten got 24 hours of free publicity as a fighter for the “underdog” and a fighter against the discretionary/family trust.

Mr Shorten said Labor would target the “whole different set of rules for people with the financial wherewithal to mine the plethora of choices for aggressively minimising their tax”.

Also, according to the Green Party-associated think tank The Australia Institute,trusts don’t pay enough tax on the basis that because high wealth individuals get the most tax benefits from them, they had to be “looked at”.

The announcement caused an immediate outcry from all the usual suspects, especially those for whom a trust carries a personal or political benefit. In fact they are prevalent enough amongst the high-earning and heavily-investing political class and their constituents that one might think it was dead the moment the idea was raised (and this could have been the reason it was raised – for political effect, no real ”harm” being intended). After all, the Green party and Australian Labor Party members aren’t allergic to wealth, large personal land holdings, negatively-geared investments and…yes…family trusts. Their original working class base had their connection weakened years ago.

The discretionary or family trust, can be described as a legal association between people where the owner of a legal interest in property has to hold his or her interest not for exclusive personal benefit, but also for the benefit of a number of persons listed as being amongst the potential beneficiaries determined by the trust deed. It is an ancient legal mechanism and over centuries has been subject to many changes to correct various evils seen in its operation (and abuse) as a legal entity.

Some of the political outcry now is on behalf of agriculture/ farmers and small business people. For many years they have been allowed to use the trust structure when dealing with family businesses and farms so as to avoid legal and tax ramifications where a mere ownership change due to a death would trigger regular disruption to the continuity of those functioning businesses. Hearing ALP politicians immediately back off on farms and small business trust arrangements, you can safely assume that they are not now in the sights of anyone. There is an election to be won and nobody wants to alienate large segments that easily.

However, it must be noted the incomplete explanation of some of the political heavyweights from the ruling Liberal/National coalition government, namely the Treasurer Scott Morrison and the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce from the rural-based National Party.

Mr Morrison said he had a dormant family trust previously used when he owned a business in 2006 and 2007.

“It’s not something I’ve really particularly used, but I do know it’s used widely by small businesses, by rural small family businesses, by farmers,” he said.

Barnaby Joyce naturally stressed his farmer/agriculture constituency and the continuity it allowed for asset inheritance, but these further comments are highly misleading, to say the least. Especially so from a man who was an accountant prior to entering parliament:

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said family trusts …were devised for efficient asset protection and distribution of income.

“The way a trust works, a trust doesn’t pay tax unless money is left in the trust, in which case it pays tax at the highest level,” the former accountant said.

“What a trust does, it’s like a partnership, it distributes the money down to the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries pay the tax. It’s not a new concept.

Yes, any income left undistributed to beneficiaries at the end of a financial year attracts tax at the highest marginal rate. No explanation, however, from the Deputy PM that a common operation (in reality: purpose) of such discretionary/family trusts is to fully expend every cent of it, but to allocate it to those family members with the lowest taxable income and thus attract lower tax than those of the family with much higher income and thus higher tax rates. The manipulation of trusts, over time, for tax in Australia is well known. Taxpayers once had large amounts ‘distributed” to young children until parliament had to limit it to income of $460 before it attracted top tax rates for such trusts. When tax avoiders create dozens of $460 trusts in the name of the same child, this had to be outlawed also. So the risk of trusts being used for rampant tax avoidance should never be ignored by politicians, let alone a Treasurer or Deputy Prime Minister.

Trusts have been a very handy vehicle for higher wealth individuals to minimise tax, something which is unavailable to those of lower income and hardly available to the working class. Well may people say that tax minimisation is lawful, but that would be meaningless if the minimisation itself was available only to a few. Due to this inherent skewing towards certain high wealth individuals, the arbitrary allocation of income to a family member with lower/lowest non-trust income creates the differentiation with other taxpayers.

The widespread use of trusts and partnerships is a nice little earner for the higher income earners of this society. Take any medical practitioner, dentist, etc and you can assume until proven otherwise that even if they own the building in which they practice, even if husband and wife, it is the trust/partnership that has the building in its name  (and that trust/partnership comprises the dentists/doctors) and they pay rent to that partnership etc. On distribution, they could pay the income to the non-doctor member of the family (it is at the discretion of the trustee ie doctor) and thus minimize tax. Entirely legal, I  might add, but something not many people want to talk about to those who can’t take part in this trust device.

Use of discretionary trusts generally could be thought of as being equivalent to tax avoidance, and their use unfair, in my opinion, simply because it allocates as income cash/benefits to a person who has often had no part in earning it and artificially reduces taxable income of a person who has taken a major part in earning it. If it wasn’t for that very sleight of hand there is a simple solution:

If it is fair, demand that all trust income be divided equally amongst every single beneficiary.

Who is going to put that to the test?

In short, it’s all too hard. I don’t think many politicians (nor any financially-advantaged sector of the community) are too keen on having the spotlight put on their own advantages.

Let us wait and see how many days this goes before it is never mentioned again

The ongoing smearing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Anatomy of a simple tweet shows how easy it is for her enemies

Posted on by July 22, 2017

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a hero to many. A former Muslim and outspoken critic of Islam, in 2004 in Holland she collaborated with Theo Van Gogh to produce a film critical of Islam called Submission. When Van Gogh was assassinated by an Islamist later that year, leaving a note saying that Ayaan was next to die, her life has been in grave danger and she has virtually been under armed protection ever since. As a well-known speaker and author on Islam, Ms Ali has attracted much hate from the Islamist lobby but also from the class which hunts down supposed “Islamophobia” and which targets any clear voice expressing facts tending to obstruct their cause of protecting Islam from criticism.

Ayaan Ali has so many Islamist and their fellow travelers attacking her that nothing said or done against her will amaze any unbiased observer. The apologists for Islamism, the self-loathing brigade and most others determined to silence dissenting voices (as we have seen), and have incessantly attacked her. Repeating the various “standard” references, smearing Ayaan and many others who take up this fight against extremist ideology and terrorism-apologia, it always amazes how these “facts” get repeated or tweeted all over and not many seem to do anything about checking them. Certainly no person seems to answer it when it is put in as part of an attack. Perhaps it is the internet, nobody having time to go and check (and they probably rely on that). However, when a person lives her life under armed guard and psychos are out there, some of whom have already acted on false hate posted online by irresponsible or hate groups, something must be done to call them on their lies.

Supported Anders Breivik

One that demanded investigation was this amazing claim about Ayaan Hirsi Ali actually supporting Anders Breivik, the mass murderer who, in his manifesto quoted critics of Islam, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and various right-wing groups. He also quoted historical figures (Richard the Lionheart) and others, such as former Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, hardly in the extreme-right class.

In any case it is a serious charge to make against any human rights campaigner let alone one with such a huge reputation all over the world as Ms Ali has. No wonder it would be used by multiple enemies – if true. The vicious propagandists on behalf of Islamism, terrorism apologists and radical hard left would use it, right OR wrong so someone should look at it.

A New York Muslim favourite of the left and co-sponsor of the anti-Trump Womens March 2017 one Linda Sarsour had quite aggressively targeted Ayaan Ali and another Islam critic Brigitte Gabriel with an offensive February Twitter smear:

Sarsour had had quite the publicity spotlight going for her this past 6 months now, despite severe criticism for her supposed anti semitism and apologia for Islamism and Islamist terrorism, a recent attack on Trump and calls for Muslims to commit Jihad on him set her back a bit, but it was in the course of a Twitter series with Jake Tapper of CNN that the Breivik reference was put in to try and silence Tapper.

This tweet by an Arab/American  journalist Sulome Anderson ( (who doesn’t seem to have followed on and looked into the quote but perhaps she did). Her judgement, if that happened, would be tested by the actual words she saw fit to favour for her response to Jake Tapper in that tweet. Her intervention led to the first Vox reference which refers to the Breivik smear where, in a series of “examples” by a Muslim writer and activist Wardah Khalid. In her Vox article she attacks “anti-Islam Muslims” & demands to know why they should be treated as “experts” (usually meaning “ex-Muslims, it seems to me) On Ayaan Ali it is she who highlights the Breivik smear and for the second time regarding this Vox article, journalists and/or activists do not seem to have done anything to research and analyse the quote but just to quote it and move on after including the killer quote and assisting the furtherance  of a most terrible smear as one could imagine:

She demanded a Western-led war on the religion and was cited as a source of inspiration in the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Breivik, the right-wing shooter who killed 77 people and injured 319 in Norway. Hirsi Ali later sympathized with Breivik’s argument that he “had no other choice but to use violence.”

This activist linked solely to a web site which used quotes from an acceptance speech for a prize in Germany. In the quotes about Breivik it was a nonsense to even think that the words sympathized with Breivik could be used. Only a fool or a total fraud would do that.

In her acceptance speech, Ali expressed her sympathy for terrorist murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Her writings were included in Breivik’s manifesto and she took the opportunity of the speech to try and distance herself from his actions while squarely putting the blame for Breivik’s massacre on his targets.

[T]hat one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.” (my emphasis added)

The usual hangers-on could swallow that I suppose and not bother to even try to get to the source but to merely repeat it ad infinitum, furthering the smear. I don’t suppose Ayaan Ali would care as most thinkers know of the propaganda war being fought against her by the Islamist sympathisers, social justice warriors and some fellow travelers.

Whilst this never-ending campaign to denigrate Ms Ali and others is on. it is up to honest thinkers to keep setting the record straight. Hopefully, if honest and open-minded people see these smears they will follow them to their source and thus show the lie to everyone else. This was but a basic example to be exposed with a few clicks of a mouse.

The Australian party political system of government is tearing itself apart Part 2

Posted on by July 9, 2017

The Australian Labor Party, as the second of the two major political parties in Australia, is in nearly as bad a position internally as is the rival Liberal Party. It is just as riven by factional battles sometimes fought to bitter winner-take-all conclusions, yet often the factions come to “arrangements” which usually involve power sharing. Input from members in many aspects of its operation is minimal. In NSW some of the faction leaders or their lieutenants have gone to gaol for corruption and the effort to counter such a threat illustrates the fights Tony Abbott started in the Liberal party to stop such potential conflicts. These were concentrated on faction leaders having business interests  and when their decisions helped determine the selection of the parliamentary MPs who would make decisions relating to those business interests.

Above all the ALP has, for years now, been a party under virtual control by trade unions.  While nominal control is not new in itself, its historical formation from the bitter industrial battles in the 1890s has grown much tighter from the late 20th century. Now, thanks to their dominating internal voting and financial power, the union control of the party is almost unbreakable.

The union control of the ALP was relatively benign at one time and the parliamentarians retained a balance between their loyalty to unions and the integrity of governing. In the 1940’s ALP clashes with militant communists led a Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley to send troops into coal mines to break a strike, but in more recent years, such actions have continued. Bob Hawke who was PM from 1983 until 1991 broke the airline Pilots union over a strike in 1989 but also De-registered the militant Builders Labourers Federation a construction union. In NSW a Labor Premier, Barry Unsworth (who had also been head of the state union body, the Labour Council of NSW) broke the power of the militant train drivers union.

Union control of ALP membership preselections for parliament in Australia had grown rapidly. Rodney Cavalier, a former ALP NSW education minister stated in 2005 “even though its formal representation at Conference is 50 per cent, union control of the administration and the preselection oversight bodies is 100 per cent.

Parliamentary ALP governments, state and federal, now typify that administrative control Cavalier spoke of, except that it has often extended to actual parliamentary control too. Very tight union control of the party through the union-dominated factions always will get more and more detailed attention as it chokes the remnants of the Old Party. However, there can be no greater comparison with the ALP of the past than to show the leftward move to combat the Greens party which, while comprising its original green environmental element, that section is competing openly now with its militant hard left which includes former communists and which is seemingly concentrated in its NSW Branch.

From the time of the 2010 federal election, the Greens have been in serious competition for the same demographic and, have been competing fiercely for the old “Labor Heartland” seats. They now virtually own the federal seat of Melbourne and are competing very well in similar inner-city seats in a number of States. The Greens are even competing solidly in some Liberal seats which hold a presence of high-income residents who will vote on green issues rather than their old financially-based votes to the Liberal Party. The ALP has increasingly concentrated attention on challenging Greens which it seems to see as major opposition. Thus we see the inner city of wealthy middle class and many of the self-proclaimed elites has been their (Green) focus and then have given less attention to their traditional working class areas except, perhaps, with the now-common ALP policy of “free stuff” (becoming a world trend in the west, it seems). Whether these potential Greens voters also encompass the voters it favours now as “base” ALP, it could go a way to explain how their traditional working class base has become semi-divorced from the ALP from time to time.

It was because Tony Abbott had hived off a large number of seats from the Gillard Labor government at the 2010 election,  that the ALP decided to sign a formal agreement with the Greens to help ensure power with a majority of one over Abbott and his Nationals allies. It showed the inherent weakness of the ALP of that time and perhaps the weakness of its leaders, or maybe even the “green’ nature of the new section of the voter base.

Once in government with the written agreement, the Greens leader Bob Brown virtually took over to set the political agenda. The carbon tax which was supposedly “never” going to happen under Gillard (after her predecessor was overthrown because of it and the attacks on it by Abbott) was forced on, thus re-creating the greatest weapon the then opposition leader Abbott had (and which probably was enough to take him to government in 2013). More than that, Brown of the Greens even took over the parliamentary agenda, with same sex marriage and voluntary euthanasia as high priority issues for the new parliament and which had never been on anyone’s priority radar apart from the Greens. It set the pattern and, as this is but an introduction to lead you to the ALP of today, the Green tinge to the ALP policies has never faded. In fact, with a massive target of 50% renewable energy by 2050 and Labor states talking about the same by 2030, one gets an idea of the power of the green left in Labor. An ALP elders group once recommended going further to attract “progressives”. It happened anyway.

By not focusing on the old working class base and the new tradesmen/women, the party seemed to abandon a solid-core part of their old base, a part which is in play and has been for some years. The “New Labor” left voters/members have long been antagonistic towards parts of this base. They were the racists, the “dog whistlers”, the not-rusted on “Howards Battlers” and “Tony’s Tradies” who voted Liberals into traditional Labor Party seats. Only Tony Abbott seemed to make the attempt to win it over to the Liberals semi-permanently and while he did win a number of the old fashioned  ALP seats in these outer suburbs, his party (and perhaps he himself) could make the leap with some policies, but could not jettison/fine tune enough of the policies which didn’t cater for that group. Most of these seats were immediately surrendered when the progressive New Liberals under Turnbull took over. Now no major party seems to be attempting to cater to it directly, perhaps only by generalised handouts. In fact many of the ALP elites of today treat that old trade/working class with modern Green-Left-Progressive contempt.

With unions now being dominant in the ALP for leadership and preselection contests, one can see how persons and organisations external to the ALP that might have no direct connection to the individual MP, can direct how ALP representatives must vote. The evidence of this is startling and deeply concerning, especially when parts of governing appear to be delegated to union whim, a union power which was never voted on by the public. That is mainly the state of play in the State Labor governments and a new post must be the vehicle for such exposure.

Under the former Rudd/ Gillard/ Rudd ALP federal government from 2007 to 2013 did many favours for unions but it must at once re recognised that with an unholy alliance between employers and unions, it hardly created “market forces”. In fact many of the cartel-like practices allied to union-employer agreements needed no input from government at all.

That said, the direct and damaging moves to favour unions were serious and had serious repercussions for the taxpayer. Industrial chaos in the construction industry had (and has) cost Australian taxpayers many billions in excess costs on nearly every large infrastructure project, costing far more than in Europe and the ALP government destroyed the “construction watchdog” the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC). This was the body challenging alleged union sabotage of jobs, illegal strikes etc and in a number of instances attempting to force certain companies out of the industry by secondary boycotts, One company against which a union attempted to force a secondary boycott it allegedly pressured other companies to not accept its concrete supplies. That company has sued a number of times and in one case received a $9 million settlement. The new industrial relations system brought in by PM Gillard was terribly weak and loaded with appointments from ALP-only people.

More damaging actions by the ALP to favour unions are for another post.as is the crude delegation of state power to unions in Queensland, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory where ALP governments have shown little fight against union demands.

Further posts are necessary to highlight the highly damaged workings of both the Liberal Party and the Australian Labor Party. In addition, the new parties and the Australian media, especially the Canberra Press Gallery which is supposed to cover federal politics professionally must be held to account. Their actions over years will be put to the test and placed on the record here.

Warwick