Elections

Welcome to The Punch’s Biggest Moments of 2011. Each day until the Friday before Christmas, we’ll be counting the events which marked 2011. Our list contains moments from politics, popular culture, tragedy, sport and more. Some are frivolous. Others are deadly serious. These are the moments which had us talking in 2011. More to the point, they’re the moments that had YOU talking.

What happened
Fiona Byrne, the mayor of Marrickville in inner Sydney, backed a motion to support the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. This basically meant that no Israeli products would be sold within the boundaries of Marrickville Council. Tough luck, bagel-lovers. Good news for Vietnamese pork roll sellers.

What happened next
All hell broke loose. Some argued that councils should stick to local services like rubbish collection. Others pointed out that in a region which has nearly 200 ethnicities living cheek to jowl, there were plenty of evil repressive regimes much more worthy of attention than a democratic state fighting for its right to exist – even considering the ongoing claims for Palestinian statehood.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #23 Marrickville invades Israel" »

In his personal review of his legacy to South Australia, Premier Rann had two main regrets. The first was his inability to abolish the Legislative Council.

This has been a key aim of the Labor party for over a hundred years.

The passion flows from the fact that Labor has never won a majority of the seats in the Council.

Continue reading "Keep the Upper House until they fix the Lower House" »

It is time Parliaments joined Governments to ensure all professional lobbyists are registered. All lobbyists should be required to adhere to a code of conduct. And interest groups and think tanks should be required to disclose who their members and donors are.

Recent developments in the debate about plain packaging of tobacco and carbon pricing have in turn kicked off a debate about the role of lobbyists, interest groups and think tanks. In particular, who influences the influencers?

Political parties have for many years been required to disclose significant donors. The current debate is about the threshold at which donations should be disclosed.

Continue reading "Lifting the lid on lobbyists" »

I never thought I would fail to cast a vote in a Federal election, and I never thought I’d be relieved that I didn’t. But I did, and I am.

In my defence, I was somewhere in the boondocks of Turkey when the election was under way, and had pretty much dropped the ball on sorting out my postal vote.

It may or may not say something about the administration of our electoral system that I’ve never been queried on this failure to exercise my franchise, but I’ve got to say, not having to make a decision has relieved me of the burden of responsibility for doing so.

Continue reading "I can’t believe I almost voted for The Greens" »

In this cynical age of focus groups and poll-driven policy, America has at last unearthed a presidential candidate who will not blow with the political wind, or any wind for that matter. A candidate who will hold true to his principles through thick and thicker.

Meet Donald Trump’s hair, the frontrunner for next year’s republican nomination. While notoriously unreliable sources like The New York Times have mistakenly suggested that it is Mr Trump himself who will run for the White House, The Punch can exclusively reveal the candidate is in fact the rug atop his head.

“I will comb over the thinning budget and plug any gaps,” the perfectly coiffed hairpiece told The Punch overnight. “And if you don’t like my policies, you’re fired.”

Continue reading "Exclusive: Donald Trump’s hair to run for president" »

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh called it ``the New South Wales disease’’ where the leadership of the ALP, even in office, became a revolving door decided by faceless factional heavies.

Last Saturday, the NSW branch of the party, the source of that ``disease’’ and the biggest single brick in the Labor wall, crashed to the ground. The 16-year-old government, led defiantly by Kristina Keneally, was not merely defeated, it was humiliated. The backlash was unprecedented in its ferocity with voters dishing out the worst defeat of any government in Australian electoral history.

Facing a state election within a year, Anna Bligh, of course, is desperate to stop the rot at the Tweed River. But she may not be able to hold back the tide. Fear in Labor ranks is now giving way to panic just as conservatives are rubbing their hands. In a world of diminished party loyalty, instant information, social media, and a borderless 24-hour media cycle, Labor’s hardheads worry that the old boundaries between states, and even between levels of government are blurring.

Continue reading "Will Bligh be the next domino to fall?" »

Arriving at the Randwick Labor Club for Saturday night’s ALP election function, the staff at the desk were joking about having voted Liberal. This was obviously going to be a bad night for the Labor Party. 

Like residents waiting for a massive cyclone, the Labor faithful knew when it was coming and where from; the only thing for it now was to buckle down together and wait. Needless to say, it was weird.

One benefit of this particular bunker was the open bar, which was probably the most useful bit of campaign spending the NSW ALP had made in the last six weeks.

Continue reading "The Party at the End of the Party" »

The season’s latest campaign ads follow the same old tired plot of black and white attack hysteria, gloomy (or comical) music and an authoritative male voiceover reviling the failings of a tired old Government.

The latest from the NSW Liberals opens with a black and white scene of our lead character (the embattled NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally) admitting her failing only to be ear ambushed with a chorus of our ad’s tag line “same old Labor, same old tricks”. But we’re not left wondering for long what the plot is.

Our storyline of the sorry tale of NSW Labor’s leadership’s mistakes and failures becomes glaring apparent with the TV interview vox pops of our supporting characters Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees. And in case we didn’t get the ad’s message, we’re treated to a catchy jingle of “same old Labor, same old failure” on nauseous rhyming repeat. 

Continue reading "Political ads: the good, the bad, and the really bad" »

Sometimes it is difficult to work out what is going on inside people’s brains. Tony Abbott has copped plenty of deserved flak over his ludicrous defence of the Liberal Party’s decision to solicit donations not for flood victims but so that the party can run a campaign against the government’s flood tax.

If his judgment has been found wanting, more questionable is the judgment of anyone who would dip into their hard-earned for a political party, when there are much important things to spend money on, such as children’s books or beer.

Abbott had the easiest of outs on this issue, and messed it up completely. He could and should have said that the Liberal Party had issued the appeal for donations under its own steam and that he had spoken to the people involved and ordered them, as leader, to set aside any money raised to be handed directly and entirely to the Queensland Flood Appeal.

Continue reading "Let’s just get rid of all political donations" »

Julia Gillard says she for one was not surprised by the closeness of the August federal election result, maintaining with an `I-told-you-so’ tone that she’d always argued it would be close. But why? Had the Government not successfully steered Australia around a massive global crisis, keeping people in jobs and businesses trading?

Her ready resignation to a cliff-hanger result at best raises fundamental questions: What’s gone so wrong with the Australian Labor Party that voters are deserting it in droves. Why is that even competent governments (the pink batts fiasco notwithstanding) cannot seem to muster enough support and enthusiasm to form a majority?

Take the federal poll about which Ms Gillard proved correct. Despite the leadership change, (or perhaps because of it) Labor fell well short of the 76 seat minimum needed to govern in its own right.

Continue reading "Gillard’s long-term bid to overcome a damaged brand" »

Elections are an expensive business. The last federal poll cost $170 million. That’s a lot of school books and hospital supplies. But if the cost of elections troubles you, despair not as relief is at hand.

Who needs elections anyway when you’ve got the Australian Workers Union?

For the second time in six months this union is kindly offering to step in on behalf of the voters – or more accurately, instead of the voters – to take over the hiring and firing a democratically elected government leader.

Continue reading "Who needs elections when you’ve got the AWU?" »

It is tempting to see parallels between federal Labor’s flat-lining election result and the drubbing Barack Obama’s Democratic Party received at this week’s mid-term elections.

But much of the skin Obama lost came from doing difficult things in his first two years whereas Labor’s collapse came from ducking them.

The Democratic Party lost 52 seats in Bill Clinton’s first term. The Republicans went backwards by 26 House seats under Ronald Reagan; by eight under George H W Bush (the father); and by 30 in George W’s second term. But all of these were dwarfed by the shellacking handed out to Democrats under presidents FDR and Harry S Truman who lost seats at the rate of 71 in his middle term (he had three of them) and 45 respectively. All were re-elected.

Continue reading "Obama copped it for too much, Gillard for too little" »

PRINCETON University Professor Harry Frankfurt in 1986 wrote the highly praised thesis On Bulls—t.

It’s long, pompous - a fine example of what it’s trying to define, but I’ve taken to re-reading it during this election campaign.

The origins of the word are unclear. Some say it came from the mocking of 15th-century papal edicts called ``bulls’‘. Others believe it’s a reference to Obadiah Bull, a famously waffly Irish lawyer in the time of Henry VII.

Continue reading "Reflections on bulls**t at election time" »

There are some things that can’t be measured. Like one vote one value; a government of the people, by the people, for the people. And the audacity, idiocy and hypocrisy of Mark Latham.

The former Labor Leader should face charges for using his platform on 60 Minutes to incite Australians to forgo their democratic right.

In Burma, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest, fighting for her people to have a say in their future. In Iran, Neda Agha-Soltan died protesting against the fraudulent election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The ongoing struggle for democracy across Africa – from Nigeria to Zimbabwe – has claimed millions of lives.  Aside from the Eureka Stockade, which some historians consider the birthplace of Australian democracy, we’ve never had to risk our lives for freedom.

Continue reading "Embittered Latham takes our democracy for granted" »

IF you happened to be walking through the Eastland shopping centre in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs on Friday morning, you might have witnessed a bit of old school political campaigning.

Eastland is at the heart of Ringwood and Ringwood is at the heart of Deakin, the second most marginal seat in Victoria, currently held by a sharpish young bloke from the Labor party, Mike Symon.

Friday was a big day for Mike. He opened his new campaign digs, inflated several hundred balloons bearing his name and handed out ham and cheese sandwiches with a grin. And for just a short while, he got to bask in the tanning salon kissed glow of a Labor big gun, on loan to kick things along in a seat looking a bit shaky.

Continue reading "The hitchhikers guide to the election campaign" »

Walking through the streets of Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most vibrant capitals, it is easy to get caught up in the cosmopolitan nature of the city. Being World Cup time, the city is not only awash in Dutch flags, but an array of other nationalities hang their national banners alongside the recognisable orange of the Dutch team.

The backpackers, tour groups, sightseers and locals politely wrestle for space in the crowded streets and bars, while cars with engines smaller than 50cc and motor scooters share bike lanes. On the bikes, no one wears a helmet, people smoke, talk on their phones and sometimes can be spotted drinking beer. Here, everyone rides: from the men and women in expensive suits, to girls dressed in glamorous outfits on their way out to club, as well as families of four on various sized bikes, and young Muslim women wearing hijabs.

I sit in a café (as distinct from the famous Amsterdam ‘coffee shops’) and speak to various politically active young people. Telling them that I am slowly falling in love with their city and pointing to Geert Mak’s fascinating historical account of Amsterdam, we turn to the political landscape of the Netherlands and the rest Europe.

Continue reading "Fear, change, and the rise of the right as the world shrinks" »

We’re now entering a Twilight Zone on our electoral calendar.

The bizarre formulation of federal three year terms will force the Federal Government go to the polls before the NSW Iemma/Rees/Keneally Governments, despite the fact this triumvirate have given the people of NSW one of the worst governments in the state’s history.

Kevin Rudd was elected six months after Morris Iemma and will have to face the electorate at least six months before Kristina Keneally, despite being a federal government with greater responsibility and a more complex agenda, the black comedy of Macquarie Street has been heritage listed till next March.

Continue reading "It’s Time - to scrap three year terms" »

“It is,” P.G. Wodehouse once wrote, “never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

It was impossible not to think of that sentence this week as I watched Gordon Brown confronting a discontented voter in the Northern English town of Rochdale and then being caught on mic unloading on his aides.

Brown, of course, is struggling, third in the polls, personally unpopular and with the millstone around his neck of a massive budget deficit and a national debt it will take decades to repay.

Continue reading "Poor Gordon, plainly a victim of the Scottish play" »

There’s a high-risk derivative of the time-honoured “Secret Santa” that has become quite popular in recent years.  All the carefully (and not so carefully) selected gifts are pooled and one by one participants get to select and open a present.  They then face a choice: keep the present they’ve just opened or forfeit it and go for another, the contents of which are unknown but with which they will be stuck.

Ornately wrapped, carefully presented gift boxes adorned with bows and baubles are, unsurprisingly, first picks.  But they don’t often yield the best results.

However, it’s human to be tempted by the promise of something better, to be lured by the illusion of a grander prize.

Continue reading "Beware the electoral Santa bearing gifts" »

Can our politicians win elections based on good old-fashioned debate and sound policy, or will they continue their crass cash contests of aggressive marketing campaigns bank-rolled by the wealthy?

And once in office, how can we prevent politicians coming under undue influence from donors at the expense of the interests of their constituents and the broader public?

Until recently, reforming the system of political funding has been the elephant in the room for our esteemed elected representatives. They’ve been acutely aware there is a problem, but reluctant to talk about it.

Continue reading "We all pay the price of buying access in a democracy" »

Liberal MP Peter Dutton should have known better than to whinge about support from the good people of Dickson – he could’ve asked his predecessor Cheryl Kernot about that one.

On election night 1998 - when it looked like her attempt to go from Democrat leader in the Senate to a Labor MP was going to end in spectacular failure - Kernot had a famous dummy spit live on the ABC about the quality of seat she had been given by the Labor Party :

“Well, I’ll just say this—Mary Delahunty is in Parliament,” referring to the fact that the Victorian MP had been given a safe seat when entering politics earlier that year. Of course, Kernot did end up pulling ahead that night and serving one term as the member for Dickson but got rolled three years later by none other than current opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton.

Continue reading "Who’d want to be the member for Dickson?" »

So, “butter would not melt in his mouth”, Kevin apparently has a robust vocabulary when it comes to privately berating his factional colleagues including females.

Last week he and his cohorts used question time to plead the higher moral ground when it comes to allowing women parliamentarians to speak.

They complained mightily when the Leader of Opposition Business moved that “the speaker be no longer heard” when a female minister was droning on.  But no such criticism for Kevin’s letting fly with the F word with female factional foes that had the temerity to disagree with his point of view.

Continue reading "Our potty-mouthed PM" »

Call me naïve if you will, but I believe the Prime Minister when he says he doesn’t want a double dissolution election.

“I have not the slightest intention of going to an early poll. I don’t think people like that. I think they want you to serve the term that you’ve been elected for,” he told 3aw’s Neil Mitchell yesterday.

The prospect of using the recent rejection of the ETS legislation in the Senate is being talked up as a double dissolution trigger among us trigger happy media folk but, strange as it might sound, a double dissolution election would be an unnecessary risk for a Government in cruise control.

Continue reading "Why Kevin Rudd doesn’t want a double d" »

“Democracy is not cheap.” That’s what the former NSW President of the Australian Hotels Association John Thorpe had to say about our political system. He was of course referring to the fact that his industry, in the nine years to 2007, had donated a jaw dropping $3.5 million to the NSW Labor Party. And he’s just one of hundreds of big donors out to buy our democracy.

Yesterday the National Audit Office released its report into the ‘Utegate’ debacle. While it found no wrongdoing by our politicians this doesn’t take away from the fact that the scandal left a sour taste in the mouths of many Australians.

Continue reading "The emails may be fake but the donations aren’t" »

Finally the secret is out – no one wants the current practice of political donations and campaign fundraising to continue.

Business became sick of it long before the GFC cut their lobbying budgets. Most realised that donating became more of a risk than an advantage and most influential business people realised they could get a meeting regardless of donations. Some have even worked out that you don’t need to pay $10,000 a month for a lobbyist to get you the appointment.
Politicians have grown to resent the drain on their most precious commodity – time. Time to think, time to work on policy and speeches, time to meet people without the unspoken pressure of donations and most importantly the precious remaining time to spend with family and friends.

Continue reading "Time for a truce in political donations arms race" »

Some twenty years ago the clamour among reformers of our democratic institutions was for fixed parliamentary terms, the argument going that they would provide greater certainty and prevent the expedient manipulation of the political process.

What has happened instead is that fixed terms have become a protection order for mediocrity and incompetence, where dud governments have been shielded from the voters‘ wrath, premierships have been passed on like a baton with no direct and immediate input from voters, and policy cynicism has been entrenched as the political cycle is loaded at the front with harsh decisions and back-ended with decadent cash splurges and reckless pork-barrelling.

NSW is the most compelling case study - a dysfunctional basket case, the state that by rights should be the powerhouse of federation, now resembling some kind of anarcho-syndicalist commune whereby the elected representatives on both sides of the chamber are so incapable of achieving anything that the Speaker recently lost control of the House and had to ring a long bell to shut the joint down, saving a government which, if it were a dog, would have been taken down the back of the yard and shot some time ago.

Continue reading "Scrap fixed terms and give the voters a mercy rule" »

I appreciate that our attention is elsewhere as we wait to see, to paraphrase Mal Farr, whether the Treasurer takes a Swan dive off the back of Kev’s ute. But as all of this was going on a report into the conduct of the last election was tabled in the parliament last night.

Nelson Mandela said there is no easy walk to freedom. Those in Iran, Iraq, Burma and Zimbabwe and any number of others striving to join the league of truly democratic nations would agree.

As one of the oldest democracies in the world, I wonder whether our passion for this most prized of personal freedoms is growing cold and whether what Richard Dreyfuss has to say in the video about democracy lost in the US (see video www.tinyurl.com/democracylost) reflects our own challenges.

Continue reading "Bring me your tired, your complacent and your lazy" »