Wilde's Evenings: the rewards of Citizen Journalism

This article was first published in Media Culture Journal Vol 10/11 Issue 6/1 April 2008

According to Oscar Wilde, the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Wilde’s aphorism alludes to a major issue that bedevils all attempts to influence the public sphere: the fact that public activities encroach unduly on citizens’ valuable time. In the 21st century, the dilemma of how to deal with “too many evenings” is one that many citizen journalists face as they give their own time to public pursuits. This paper will look at the development of the public citizen and what it means to be a citizen journalist with reference to some of the writer’s own experiences in the field. The paper will conclude with an examination of future possibilities. While large media companies change their change their focus from traditional news values, citizen journalism can play a stronger role in public life as long as it grasps some of the opportunities that are available. There are substantial compensations available to citizen journalists for the problems presented by Wilde’s evenings.

The quote from Wilde is borrowed from Albert Hirschman’s Shifting Involvements, which among other things, is an examination of the disappointments of public action. Hirschman noted how it was a common experience for beginners who engage in public action to find that takes up more time than expected (96). As public activity encroaches not only on time devoted to private consumption but also on to the time devoted to the production of income, it can become a costly pursuit which may cause a sharp reaction against the “practice of citizenship” (Hirschman 97). Yet the more stimuli about politics people receive, the greater the likelihood is they will participate in politics and the greater the depth of their participation (Milbrath & Goel 35). People with a positive attraction to politics are more likely to receive stimuli about politics and participate more (Milbrath & Goel 36). Active citizenship, it seems, has its own feedback loops.

An active citizenry is not a new idea. The concepts of citizen and citizenship emerged from the sophisticated polity established in the Greek city states about 2,500 years ago. The status of a citizen signified that the individual had the right to full membership of, and participation in, an independent political society (Batrouney & Goldlust 24). In later eras that society could be defined as a kingdom, an empire, or a nation state. The conditions for a bourgeois public sphere were created in the 13th century as capitalists in European city states created a traffic in commodities and news (Habermas 15). A true public sphere emerged in the 17th century with the rise of the English coffee houses and French salons where people had the freedom to express opinions regardless of their social status (Habermas 36). In 1848, France held the first election under universal direct suffrage (for males) and the contemporary slogan was that “universal suffrage closes the era of revolutions” (Hirschman 113). Out of this heady optimism, the late 19th century ushered in the era of the “informed citizen” as voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right – a civic obligation enforceable only by private conscience (Schudson). These concepts live on in the modern idea that the model voter is considered to be a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice (Menand 1).

The internet is a new knowledge space which offers an alternative reading of the citizen. In Pierre Lévy’s vision of cyberculture, identity is no longer a function of belonging, it is “distributed and nomadic” (Ross & Nightingale 149). The Internet has diffused widely and is increasingly central to everyday life as a place where people go to get information (Dutton 10). Journalism initially prospered on an information scarcity factor however the technology of the Internet has created an information rich society (Tapsall & Varley 18). But research suggests that online discussions do not promote consensus, are short-lived with little impact and end up turning into “dialogues of the deaf” (Nguyen 148). The easy online publishing environment is a fertile ground for rumours, hoaxes and cheating games to circulate which risk turning the public sphere into a chaotic and anarchic space (Nguyen 148). The stereotypical blogger is pejoratively dismissed as “pajama-clad” (Papandrea 516) connoting a sense of disrespect for the proper transmission of ideas. Nevertheless the Internet offers powerful tools for collaboration that is opening up many everyday institutions to greater social accountability (Dutton 3).

Recent research by the 2007 Digital Futures project shows 65 percent of respondents consider the Internet “to be a very important or extremely important source of information” (Cowden 76). By 2006, Roy Morgan was reporting that three million Australians were visiting online news site each month (Cowden.76). Crikey.com.au, Australia’s first online-only news outlet, has become a significant independent player in the Australia mediascape claiming over 5,000 subscribers by 2005 with three times as many non-paying “squatters” reading its daily email (Devine 50). Online Opinion has a similar number of subscribers and was receiving 750,000 page views a month by 2005 (National Forum).

Both Crikey.com.au and Online Opinion have made moves towards public journalism in an attempt to provide ordinary people access to the public sphere. As professional journalists lose their connection with the public, bloggers are able to fill the public journalism niche (Simons, Content Makers 208). At their best, blogs can offer a “more broad-based, democratic involvement of citizens in the issues that matter to them” (Bruns 7). The research of University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer showed that cities and towns with public journalism-oriented newspapers led to a better educated local public (Simons, Content Makers 211). Meyer’s idea of good public journalism has six defining elements: a) the need to define a community’s sense of itself b) devotion of time to issues that demand community attention c) devotion of depth to the issues d) more attention to the middle ground e) a preference for substance over tactics and f) encouraging reciprocal understanding (Meyer 1). The objective of public journalism is to foster a greater sense of connection between the community and the media. It can mean journalists using ordinary people as sources and also ordinary people acting as journalists.

Jay Rosen proposed a new model based on journalism as conversation (Simons, Content Makers 209). He believes the technology has now overtaken the public journalism movement (Simons, Content Makers 213). His own experiments at pro-am Internet open at assignment.net have had mixed results. His conclusion was that it wasn’t easy for people working voluntarily on the Internet to report on big stories together nor had they “unlocked” the secret of successful pro-am methods (Rosen). Nevertheless, the people formerly known as the audience, as Rosen called them, have seized the agenda. The barriers to entry into journalism have disappeared. Blogging has made Web publishing easy and the social networks are even more user friendly. The problem today is not getting published but finding an audience. And as the audience fragments, the issue will become finding a niche.

One such niche is local political activism. The 2007 Australian federal election saw many online sites actively promoting citizen journalism. Most prominent was Youdecide2007 at Queensland University of Technology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in partnership with SBS, Online Opinion and the Brisbane Institute. Site co-editor Graham Young said the site’s aim was to use citizen journalists to report on their own electorates to fill the gap left by fewer journalists on the ground, especially in less populated areas (Young). While the site’s stated aim was to provide a forum for a seat-by-seat coverage and provide “a new perspective on national politics” (Youdecide2007), the end result was significantly skewed by the fact that the professional editorial team was based in Brisbane. Youdecide2007 published 96 articles in its news archive of which 59 could be identified as having a state-based focus. Figure 1 shows 62.7% of these state-based stories were about Queensland.

Figure 1: Youdecide2007 news stories identifiable by state (note: national stories are omitted from this table):

State Total no. of stories %age
Qld 37 62.7
NSW 8 13.6
Vic 6 10.2
WA 3 5.1
Tas 2 3.4
ACT 2 3.4
SA 1 1.6

Modern election campaigns are characterised by a complex and increasingly fragmented news environment and the new media are rapidly adding another layer of complexity to the mix (Norris et al. 11-12). The slick management of national campaigns are is counter-productive to useful citizen journalism. According to Matthew Clayfield from the citizen journalism site electionTracker.net, “there are very few open events which ordinary people could cover in a way that could be described as citizen journalism” (qtd. in Hills 2007). Similar to other systems, the Australian campaign communication empowers the political leaders and media owners at the expense of ordinary party members and citizens (Warhurst 135). However the slick modern national “on message” campaign has not totally replaced old-style local activity. Although the national campaign has superimposed upon the local one and displaced it from the focus of attention, local candidates must still communicate their party policies in the electorate (Warhurst 113). Citizen journalists are ideally placed to harness this local communication. A grassroots approach is encapsulated in the words of Dan Gillmor who said “every reporter should realise that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about” (qtd. in Quinn & Quinn-Allan 66).

With this in mind, I set out my own stall in citizen journalism for the 2007 Australian federal election with two personal goals: to interview all my local federal Lower House candidates and to attend as many public election meetings as possible. As a result, I wrote 19 election articles in the two months prior to the election. This consisted of 9 news items, 6 candidate interviews and 4 reports of public meetings. All the local candidates except one agreed to be interviewed. The local Liberal candidate refused to be interviewed despite repeated requests. There was no reason offered, just a continual ignoring of requests. Liberal candidates were also noticeably absent from most candidate forums I attended. This pattern of non-communicative behaviour was observed elsewhere (Bartlett, Wilson). I tried to turn this to my advantage by turning their refusal to talk into a story itself.

For those that were prepared to talk, I set the expectation that the entire interview would be on the record and would be edited and published on my blog site. As a result, all candidates asked for a list of questions in advance which I supplied. Because politicians devote considerable energy and financial resources to ensure the information they impart to citizens has an appropriate ‘spin’ on it, (Negrine 10) I reserved the right to ask follow-up questions on any of their answers that required clarification. For the interviews themselves, I followed the advice of Spradley’s principle by starting with a conscious attitude of near-total ignorance, not writing the story in advance, and attempting to be descriptive, incisive, investigative and critical (Alia 100). After I posted the results of the interview, I sent a link to each of the respondents offering them a chance to clarify or correct any inaccuracies in the interview statements. Defamation skirts the boundary between free speech and reputation (Pearson 159) and a good working knowledge of the way defamation law affects journalists (citizen or otherwise) is crucial, particularly in dealing with public figures. This was an important consideration for some of the lesser known candidates as Google searches on their names brought my articles up within the top 20 results for each of the Democrat, Green and Liberal Democratic Party candidates I interviewed.

None of the public meetings I attended were covered in the mainstream media. These meetings are the type of news Jan Schaffer of University of Maryland’s J-Lab saw as an ecological niche for citizen journalists to “create opportunities for citizens to get informed and inform others about micro-news that falls under the radar of news organisations who don’t have the resources” (Schaffer in Glaser). As Mark Bahnisch points out, Brisbane had three daily newspapers and a daily state based 7.30 Report twenty years ago which contrasts with the situation now where there’s no effective state parliamentary press gallery and little coverage of local politics at all (“State of Political Blogging”). Brisbane’s situation is not unique and the gaps are there to be exploited by new players.

While the high cost of market entry renders the “central square” of the public sphere inaccessible to new players (Curran 128) the ease of Web access has given the citizen journalists the chance to roam its back alleys. However even if they fill the voids left by departing news organisations, there will still be a large hole in the mediascape. No one will be doing the hardhitting investigative journalism. This gritty work requires great resources and often years of time. The final product of investigative journalism is often complicated to read, unentertaining and inconclusive (Bower in Negrine 13). Margaret Simons says that journalism is a skill that involves the ability to find things out. She says the challenge of the future will be to marry the strengths of the newsroom and the dirty work of investigative journalism with the power of the conversation of blogs (“Politics and the Internet”). One possibility is raised by the Danish project Scoop. They offer financial support to individual journalists who have good ideas for investigative journalism. Founded by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism and funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, Scoop supports media projects across the world with the only proviso being that a journalist has to have an agreement with an editor to publish the resulting story (ABC Media Report).

But even without financial support, citizens have the ability to perform rudimentary investigative journalism. The primary tool of investigative journalism is the interview (McIlwane & Bowman 260). While an interview can be arranged by anyone with access to a telephone or e-mail, it should not be underestimated how difficult a skill interviewing is. According to American journalist John Brady, the science of journalistic interviewing aims to gain two things, trust and information (Brady in White 75). In the interviews I did with politicians during the federal election, I found that getting past the “spin” of the party line to get genuine information was the toughest part of the task.

There is also a considerable amount of information in the public domain which is rarely explored by reporters (Negrine 23). Knowing how to make use of this information will become a critical success factor for citizen journalists. Corporate journalists use databases such as Lexis/Nexis and Factiva to gain background information, a facility unavailable to most citizen journalists unless they are either have access through a learning institution or are prepared to pay a premium for the information. While large corporate vendors supply highly specialised information, amateurs can play a greater role in the creation and transmission of local news. According to G. Stuart Adam, journalism contains four basic elements: reporting, judging, a public voice and the here and now (13). Citizen journalism is capable of meeting all four criteria. The likelihood is that the future of communications will belong to the centralised corporations on one hand and the unsupervised amateur on the other (Bird 36).

Whether the motive to continue is payment or empowerment, the challenge for citizen journalists is to advance beyond the initial success of tactical actions towards the establishment as a serious political and media alternative (Bruns 19). Nguyen et al.’s uses and gratification research project suggests there is a still a long way to go in Australia. While they found widespread diffusion of online news, the vast majority of users (78%) were still getting their news from newspaper Websites (Nguyen et al. 13). The research corroborates Mark Bahnisch’s view that “most Australians have not heard of blogs and only a tiny minority reads them (quoted in Simons, Content Makers 219). The Australian blogosphere still waits for its defining Swiftboat incident or Rathergate to announce its arrival. But Bahnisch doesn’t necessarily believe this is a good evolutionary strategy anyway. Here it is becoming more a conversation than a platform “with its own niche and its own value” (Bahnisch, “This Is Not America”).

As far as my own experiments go, the citizen journalism reports I wrote gave me no financial reward but plenty of other compensations that made the experience richly rewarding. It was important to bring otherwise neglected ideas, stories and personalities into the public domain and the reports helped me make valuable connections with public-minded members of my local community. They were also useful practice to hone interview techniques and political writing skills. Finally the exercise raised my own public profile as several of my entries were picked up or hyperlinked by other citizen journalism sites and blogs. Some day, and probably soon, a model will be worked out which will make citizen journalism a worthwhile economic endeavour. In the meantime, we rely on active citizens of the blogosphere to give their evenings freely for the betterment of the public sphere.

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4 Corners: Howard’s End

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard excused himself in Nigeria while his former party colleagues forensically dissected his election defeat on ABC’s Four Corners last night. Howard launched his career on the international speaker circuit at Nigeria's biggest awards ceremony in the capital, Lagos, at the weekend. Howard steered clear of Australian domestic politics and instead spoke about Nigerian economic reform and its need to seek more foreign investment. It is likely Howard was paid in the region of $40,000 for this new and blander version of the Nigerian phishing scam.

While his speech content was uncontentious, the same could not be said for the swag of senior Liberals who bared their souls about their defeat on national television last night. The program entitled “Howard’s End” attracted 1.15 million viewers to the national broadcaster. The program featured significant interviews from key players such as Arthur Sinodinos, Nick Minchin, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer, John Abbott, Joe Hockey but not from Howard himself who has not spoken to an Australian media outlet since his defeat.

The program began with how Howard ascended to the leadership in 1994. Alexander Downer was opposition leader with Costello as his deputy. Downer was in freefall as leader and Liberal powerbroker Ian McLachlan set up a secret meeting to replace him. In the meeting were three people, McLachlan, Costello and John Howard. In this meeting Howard asked Costello not to nominate so Howard could be elected unopposed. Both McLachlan and Costello say Howard committed to serving only one and half terms. A reluctant Costello agreed knowing he did not have the numbers to win anyway. Costello asked McLachlan to document the undertaking about “one and half terms” on a piece of paper.

Eight weeks later in early 1995, Howard ascended to the leadership unopposed with Costello continuing as deputy. This would be the team that would vanquish Paul Keating in 1996 and go on to win four successive elections. By 2006 Howard was in power for ten years and was the second longest ever Australian leader behind Robert Menzies. Howard is at the peak of his power and the “one and half terms” idea has seemingly been forgotten. The one time Howard had obliquely mentioned retirement was in 2000 on his 61st birthday when he said nothing lasts forever and he would consider his position on his 64th birthday.

He turned 64 in June 2003 and decided to stay on despite Costello’s prompting. By 2006 Howard was now 67 and talk of change was in the air. Chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos said the speculation grew as the 10th anniversary approached. But Andrew Robb said it was not the sort of thing people would raise when talking to the PM. Senate leader Nick Minchin knew that Howard’s time was nearly up and he got Sinodinos and foreign minister Alexander Downer to sound out the retirement on the 10th anniversary which, Minchin thought, was the ideal time for Howard to go out on top. Costello was aware of Minchin’s plan. Both men conveyed their views but Howard never followed the matter up with Minchin and there the matter died.

Sinodinos said Howard’s attitude was he wanted to think it through. However he said that process was truncated by the McLachlan affair. In July 2006 McLachlan finally released the contents of the “one and half terms” piece of paper to the media. The note mentioned that a voluntary “undertaking” had been given. Howard and Costello subsequently gave differing accounts of the meeting, with the obvious imputation that at least one of them was lying. Minchin said the impact of the public spat was “devastating”.

Two days later Howard told the media “it was the will of the party” that was paramount. In July he announced he was staying on until after the next election. Costello told Four Corners that the McLachlan affair was irrelevant and that Howard never intended in standing down. But Downer said that had 1996 been a controversy free year, Howard would have retired. Costello said the impression he had was quite the opposite. But in any case Costello faced the same problem he always had – Howard had the party numbers. Costello conceded defeat and publicly proclaimed his loyalty to the team. He said the problem was the number of MPs that had been elected since 1996 who only knew Howard as leader. To them, said Costello, the Liberal Party WAS Howard. Liberal Senator Judith Troeth said Costello’s problem was that never cultivated the party backbench which made him arrogant and unpopular.

In December 2006, the Liberals had new problem: Kevin Rudd. Rudd came to the Labor leadership with a mandate for new leadership. The Liberals didn’t panic, they had seen off Mark Latham in 2004 and felt they could see off the new boy. But from the time Rudd became leader, there were 50 polls all of which pointed to a Labor victory. John Abbott said the Liberals could not counter this “fresh face” strategy; Costello was too associated with Howard, who anyway, according to Abbott, was the Libs best asset.

Labor homed in on the unpopular Government workplace relations law with the unions running effective scare ads. Joe Hockey was appointed Workplace Relations Minister with a mandate to fix the problem. In the most remarkable admission of the program, Hockey told Four Corners that “many ministers in cabinet” were not aware that people could be worse off under WorkChoices. Hockey moved to bring in the Fairness Test. Robb said this failure was proof the government were no long listening to “the Howard battlers, the people who put us there in the first place”.

Failure to sign Kyoto was another disaster for the government in 2007. Costello said the government should have ratified it “many years earlier”. Abbott said Howard’s rigid position on the “totemic issue” of Kyoto didn’t help the party. In September, Howard hosted the APEC summit in Sydney. On the eve of the summit, a newspoll showed an 18 per cent 2PP lead to Labor. This was a devastating poll that made the leadership “jumpy”. While Howard was busy hosting international presidents, he began to finally believe he would lose the election.

Howard asked Downer to sound out the opinion of the other cabinet members whether they would be better off changing leaders. Downer invited eight cabinet colleagues to discuss the matter: Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop, Philip Ruddock, Chris Ellison, Ian Macfarlane, Kevin Andrews and Joe Hockey. Most were unaware of Howard’s thoughts. Hockey said he thought the leadership had been sorted a year ago and he was stunned Howard himself was re-opening it. The view of the meeting was that if Howard didn’t think he could win, he should step aside.

The following morning, Downer reported back to Howard about the pessimistic mood of the meeting and the view of the majority was that Howard should quit. Later Downer told Costello he should get ready for leadership. Downer then told the cabinet that anyone who thought Howard should go, should tell the PM. Joe Hockey told Four Corners he rang Howard to tell him he should quit. Howard said he appreciated Hockey’s honesty but made no commitments. Downer then told Howard he should leave voluntarily. But Howard took the view he would only leave if told to do so by his colleagues. But those colleagues in the main felt doing that would be an electoral disaster.

For Andrew Robb, it was unfortunate Howard wasn’t told he should go. But for Hockey, a “knifing” of John Howard would have meant the Liberals would have been reduced to a small rump in parliament. Because the conditions were not agreed, Howard decided to stay on and contest the 2007 election. Something Costello thought he always was going to do anyway. Howard went on A Current Affair to say he had talked the matter through with his family and said “they want me to continue”. Hockey said he was disappointed that Howard had earlier said he would always stay as long as the party wanted him and “now the formula had changed”.

According to Downer, Howard did not want to look like a coward, and besides, had higher personal approval ratings than Costello. Two months later, Howard announced the election and the entire team got behind him. Nothing changed during the six week campaign and Howard was voted out of office both as PM and MP on 24 November. Costello refused the opposition leadership the following day. The Liberals would never find out what changing the leadership would have meant. According to Costello supporter Christopher Pyne “the public gave Labor the biggest swing they had ever had into government and that was the final say on who was right about that”. According to Four Corners, Howard loved the job too much to quit.

Australian Election 2007: Kevin at the rudder

If Kevin Rudd’s election victory speech is to be believed, he has already fortified himself with a “strong cup of tea and an iced vovo biscuit”. He quickly and smoothly assumed the reigns of power today in his first media conference as Australia’s Prime Minister elect. While the rest of the country grapples with the likely sea change that the Labor victory will bring, Rudd laid out his immediate 100 day plan.

Rudd said he “wanted to hit the ground running” and he wants to impose change with Whitlamesque speed. In a wide ranging speech, he reiterated his support for the US alliance, announced he will attend the Bali leaders’ climate change meeting next week, promised to ratify Kyoto by Christmas, hold a premiers' meeting to discuss health issues by March, and called for tenders for the rollout of high-speed broadband and computers into schools. Beyond that he plans to commit to an emissions trading regime by mid next year and will enforce a uniform mandatory renewable energy target by end 2008.

There was little gloating about his extraordinary overnight success or the reasons for it, but there is little doubt that his home state of Queensland was instrumental in the convincing margin (Labor is likely to have an overall 24 or 26 seat majority). Earlier this year Labor strategists believed that that the local man could take 8 Queensland seats from the Coalition. After the state government-based debacle of compulsory council amalgamation, Labor predictions dropped to 4 or 5. In the end, they needn’t have worried. When Premier Peter Beattie quit, the amalgamation issue faded away. Instead Queensland gleefully embraced the prospect of having their own PM (their first since Andrew Fisher in 1907) and Labor picked up an incredible 10 seats to demolish Howard in the Sunshine State.

Seven more seats fell in NSW. Between them, the two rugby league states delivered victory to Rudd. The outgoing Prime Minister was himself a victim of the carnage though still hasn’t formally conceded defeat in his seat of Bennelong. The margin was narrower in the southern states and WA swung against the trend. But the wealth of the west was not enough to save Howard's career. Nor Peter Costello’s. The outgoing Treasurer bowed to realpolitik today and refused the “poisoned chalice” nomination of the Liberal Party leadership. This was despite the endorsements of John Howard and foreign minister Alexander Downer. Costello cited the desire to spend more time with his family as the reason why he would not stand. The more likely reason is that he knows the election was in many ways a referendum on the Howard/Costello team and his own leadership would have been fatally handicapped by that association.

While Labor had been licking their lips at having to deal with Costello as opposition leader, the situation has now changed dramatically. Maverick Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce described it as a a likely “Melbourne Cup” field of candidates ready to step up to the job. Malcolm Turnbull (one of the few Liberals outside of WA to record a favourable swing) is slight favourite and was first to declare his candidacy. However he is likely to face challenges from the likes of Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop, Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and possibly even Alexander Downer if he believes the memories of his failed 1994 run have faded.

Surprisingly, given their disarray in the lower house, the Liberals faired much better in the Senate matching Labor’s 18 seats this time round. But they will lose their overall majority on 30 June 2008. The balance of power will switch to a diverse crew of 5 Greens, 1 Family First (Steve Fielding) and newcomer independent Nick Xenophon from South Australia. While the views of the Greens and FF are well documented, the position of the aptly named Mr X is far less certain. Xenophon is a single issues campaigner who made his name in state politics with a ‘no pokies’ platform. Now he says his focus will be water issues.

A couple of sad notes to finish on. Firstly there was the loss of Andrew Bartlett’s seat in the Queensland Senate. While the Australian Democrats have been a rabble for several years, Senator Bartlett bucked the trend and was a credit to the parliament with his honesty, integrity and sense of social justice. His blog has been a wonderful advertisement for open access politics and a fascinating insider’s guide to parliament. A couple of weeks ago Bartlett wrote “Just think how bad it would be for the political credibility of blogging if the only politician who’d been doing it seriously for the last three years lost his seat!” Bartlett is right. This is bad news. Unless someone new takes up the cudgels, the blogosphere will lose its only window on Canberra on 1 July 2008.

Lastly but not least is the sad news today of the death of journalist Matt Price of a brain tumour. Just 46, he was a parliamentary reporter in Canberra for The Australian and painted wonderful vignettes of political life. I also enjoyed his regular ruminations about his favourite AFL club, the usually woeful Fremantle Dockers. His work beautifully evoked the rueful passions of those who bear the cross of supporting rubbish teams in any sporting code. He’ll be sadly missed.

Welcome to the New Government: Labor wins Australian election

Labor has won. The analysts are arguing over the margins and WA is not yet in but the only question is by how much. Howard has not yet conceded, yet he is presiding not just over a defeat, but is also relying on postal votes to avoid the humiliating loss of his own seat. Labor have a guaranteed 82 seats so far needing 76 to form government. They are also leading in most of the undeclared seats. The swing is 5.7 per cent. Neither leader has emerged yet to either concede or claim victory. But there is no doubt that Kevin Rudd has replaced John Howard as Australia’s Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd’s name is almost astonishingly absent from the commentator’s lips at the moment but this represents a huge victory for the Queenslander who has turned around 2004’s massacre of Mark Latham in resounding fashion. It is also a personal defeat for John Howard who hoped to seal his legacy with a fifth straight election victory.

Not since the Wall St Crash era of 1929, has an Australian prime minister lost his seat. In that election Stanley Melbourne Bruce of the defunct United Australia Party went down with his ship. John Howard is in deep trouble behind on preferences this time round and is relying on a large postal vote to avoid defeat. Maxine McKew is on screen as I write, saying it was “still on a knifeedge”. But she is probably being coy. And even if McKew does not win Bennelong from John Howard tonight, there is little doubt she will win it comfortably in a by-election to follow in the next month.

ABC and Sky News were calling the result around 8.30pm Sydney time. Among the print media, the Daily Telegraph was an early on-line entry around the same time saying "Labour” were claiming the win. While the British daily may not realise the ALP use the US spelling of “Labor” they have correctly called the election.

Little word from the Senate yet but it likely the Coalition’s current majority there will disappear by 1 July 2008 when current terms end (there was a small chance it could end tonight if the second ACT seat falls to the Greens). In the lower house Labor needed a national swing of 4.7 to win and looks to have exceeded that comfortably. Needing 16 seats to change hands to claim government, it has picked up 20 definites so far. They are 7 seats in NSW, 6 in Queensland, 3 in South Australia, 2 in Victoria, and 2 in Tasmania (getting a clean sweep of the apple isle in the process). Several others seats including Howard’s remain in doubt.

But the champagne is already out in the Labor campaign offices and the Labor fans, Chaser boys and TV network wannabees are running amok in the tally room leading a chant of “Julia, Julia”. The queue to get into the room is massive. Inside they are feting the new deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard in the ABC tally room studio. Their loud whooping is causing much annoyance to ABC election presenter Kerry O’Brien. But Labor’s exultation is understandable, the party has not won government from opposition since 1983.

The mood for change was obvious out in the electorate. At the Catholic school where I voted, there was a queue of 30 people outside waiting to vote. The Liberal placards warned of “wall to wall Labor” while Labor’s called for “New Leadership”. I voted in the safe Labor seat of likely Treasurer-to-be Wayne Swan. I met fellow blogger Sam Clifford the sole Greens rep handing out how-to-vote cards. Theirs was a call to “Take action, Take Green action in the Senate”. Sam was zinced up with a full day ahead of him on the hustings. A man in a Kevin07 t-shirt was explaining the voting process to two women.“Swan is in the lower house, that’s where you are voting for the Prime Minister. The guys in the Senate you won’t have even heard of.”

As I entered the school building, there was a poster on the wall. It was a face of Jesus which was broken up into hundreds of people’s faces. Underneath was an injunction from the Gospel of Matthew 25:40 “truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me”. I’m not sure if this was a coded illegal how-to-vote message inside the election room directed at the minor parties.

Or maybe it was directed at Labor after all. Julia Gillard has just called Maxine McKew “a miracle worker”. The tally is now 81 to Labor. Sometime in the next hour John Howard will concede defeat. Then the man who amazingly no-one on TV still dares name, will emerge to claim victory. And he will say “My name is Kevin, I’m from Queensland and I’m here to help”.

An Interview with Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett

This evening Woolly Days met with Andrew Bartlett at his electoral office in The Valley. Bartlett has been a Senator for Queensland since 1997 filling the casual vacancy left by Cheryl Kernot’s defection to Labor. He was re-elected in 2001. A former party leader, Bartlett is now probably the highest profile Democrat standing and the one with the best chance of retaining his seat. However this election is Bartlett’s greatest challenge and the latest Galaxy Senate poll released today gives him an “outside chance” of being re-elected.

Andrew Bartlett himself remains optimistic about his chances with barely two days left in the campaign. He is heartened by the fact that historically Queensland is the Democrats second most successful state. Bartlett is holding up well after a long and tiring six week campaign. He said it has been a long election year. He didn’t think it would be called this late in the year and compared the campaign to a marathon. With election now in sight, Bartlett admitted he was looking forward to Sunday. He said that at times the campaign bordered on “delirium”. “I’m doing all I can to get every last Senate vote,” he said. “But the Senate [result] is hard to predict.”

He admitted the gruelling campaign made family life difficult especially for his six year old daughter Lillith. Bartlett said he was able to stay at home because he mostly campaigned in South East Queensland. However he said that in some respects that was harder than being away on parliamentary business in Canberra. “I leave home in the morning before my daughter gets up, and she’s asleep by the time I get home,” he said.

Andrew Bartlett could never imagine what lay ahead when joined the Democrats in 1989. He said he was inspired by then leader Janine Haines. Bartlett said he liked that Haines "said what she thought rather than play it safe". He was also attracted to Democrat ideals such as the conscience vote, its strong pro-environment stance, and its sense of social justice. At the time, he didn’t conscientiously seek political office but he said, “I joined lots of organisations and got involved in lots of issues I found useful or interesting”.

In 1990, Bartlett joined the staff of Senator Cheryl Kernot as a fill-in. However the person he temporarily replaced never came back and Bartlett kept the role. He described the situation as ‘serendipitous’. Bartlett said Kernot was "a fascinating mix". He praised her contribution to parliament saying she played a pivotal role in the landmark changes to superannuation laws during the Labor Government era. “She had charisma, charm, and was highly articulate and focussed,” he said. “She was also a control freak and very hard to work for”. Bartlett and Kernot eventually fell out and he went to work for Senator John Woodley until 1997.

Bartlett’s life change dramatically after Kernot’s shock defection to Labor that year. He was chosen to fill the casual vacancy. Bartlett said no-one had an inkling that Kernot was about to leave the party. He decided to take on the role in an effort to “keep things together”. “It was an extraordinary situation,” he said. “It was a monumental crisis for the party, particularly in Queensland”.

Once elected, Bartlett quickly got across the various policy areas and got onto inquiries and committees. He said that one of the best things about being a Democrat senator is the chance to get across several portfolios. He compared that with the single-minded silo mentality of the major parties. “You cover so much, you can never get into things in the detail you’d like,” he said. But by looking after several portfolios, “you can see how different things connect.”

By 2001 the Democrats were in internal crisis with the party split over the fallout over the GST which was supported by former leader Meg Lees. The presidential campaign of new leader Natasha Stott Despoja was criticised by the Lees faction within the party. However Alison Rogers, Stott Despoja's press secretary, says she (Stott Despoja) saved the party from annihilation that election. Bartlett agrees. “Natasha kept us in a job,” he said. Bartlett was one of 4 Democrats who kept his seat at that election despite many predictions he would lose. Bartlett was a close supporter of Stott Despoja and inherited her job as leader after she was forced out in 2002 when the internal conflicts grew too great.

Bartlett was never comfortable as leader. He didn’t see himself as charismatic. “The ten second sound byte was never my forte,” he admitted candidly. Party founder Don Chipp said of Bartlett that he was “unbelievably self-effacing” and said his shy nature was not a great quality for a party leader. Bartlett said his role as leader was a “necessity of circumstance”. He said he would “hopefully hand it back to her [Stott Despoja] but of course, that didn’t happen”.

Bartlett resigned the leadership after the 2004 election when the Democrats lost three seats including one in Queensland. “I was brought in to stop the destabilisation, but it never translated into electoral success,” he said. Since then Bartlett has thrown himself back into his policy work and expanded into the social media with his thought-provoking blog at The Bartlett Diaries. He said the blog was just another avenue of communication and a way of de-mystifying politics. He said he didn’t want it to turn into an insider's diary and said it was “less exciting than it could have been”.

Bartlett said indigenous affairs was by far the most important policy area that was being ignored by the mainstream media. He described the plight of Aboriginal Australia as the country's “biggest unresolved problem”. Bartlett wants to push for action on delivering restitution for Stolen Wages and compensation for the Stolen Generation. He doubted if a new government would repeal the new NT intervention legislation though they may not act on the “massive powers” the minister now has.

Bartlett said he has found his time in the senate “fascinating”. When pressed to name the legislation he was most proud of, he nominated the 1999 environment protection and biodiversity conservation act. He said that at the time, the act was criticised by the Greens because it did not go far enough but he said this was “very significant legislation” and could be used, in time, to stop the Traveston Dam. He said environmental groups have not properly used the legislation. Bartlett said that a weakness of the Democrats was that they were “hopeless at promoting their own legacy”. He said they needed a better balance of self-promotion and hard work. There is no doubt that Andrew Bartlett demonstrates plenty of the latter quality, it is up to the Queensland voters on Saturday to see whether he has got the balance right with the self-promotion.

Election 2007: healing of a bipolar nation?

With just two days left of a bloated six week election campaign, Australia is are witnessing the final messy moments of the John Howard era. The $60 million advertising campaign ends tonight with the compulsory 48 hour blackout before Saturday’s ballot. The Prime Minister remains bewildered to the last why the nation is deserting him during a resources boom and a 33 year low in unemployment.

Appearing on ABC’s 7.30 Report last night, he clung to his two main themes of economic prosperity and national security credentials as reasons why voters should continue to trust him to run the country. He said the country was flirting with “change for change’s sake” and warned the country would be different. Not for the first time he launched into a scare campaign about the consequences of victory for Labor by comparing a change of government to an unwanted pet. “It's not like a Christmas present you didn't want,” he said. “You can take it back at the Boxing Day sale, it's not like that.”

Howard’s comment is an insulting indictment of the Australian electorate who are only all too aware that the term is three years, almost half of which is spent is spent campaigning for the next term. In his essay “Bipolar Nation: How to win the 2007 Election” (extract at New Matilda) written earlier this year, Sydney Morning Herald political reporter Peter Hartcher examines the contradictions that lie at the heart of Australian politics. Hatcher shows how Kevin Rudd has drawn away Howard’s core constituencies and undermined his fundamental arguments. Hartcher’s thesis is that Australians are economically secure and yet anxious about the future. He explores these themes under the banners of The Lucky Country and The Frightened Country.

The Lucky Country was Donald Horne's 1964 book about the complacency and mediocrity he saw in Australia’s ruling class. “Australia is a lucky country,” he wrote, “run mainly by second-rate people that share its luck.” The book was intended as a critique of a derivative society hostile to originality and expertise. The book’s title became misunderstood as praise for the country not a warning. But Horne was prophetic. Australia’s luck did run out in the seventies and eighties. Between 1970 and 1990 the country’s average income dropped from fourth in the world to fifteenth. Australia was well on the way to becoming what Lee Kuan Yew called “the poor white trash of Asia”.

But when Lee visited Australia in 2007, he said his comment was aimed at the discriminatory immigration policies which ended in the 1960s. He admitted Australia had changed for the better since then (Ruddock's policies notwithstanding). When interviewed by Hartcher, Horne too agreed Australia was now a different place. He hailed the economic reform program of the Hawke-Keating government as the “threshold moment” for Australia and one which arrest the country’s slide down the ranking of wealthy countries.

In 1983, the new Labor government slashed the tariff walls that protected the economy from competition. Labor’s industry minister John Button described manufacturing as an “industrial museum” while finance minister John Dawkins said the country had “first class living standards with a third class industrial structure”. With the tariffs gone, Paul Keating released the tightly controlled finance system and liberalised the wage structure. It was as necessary as it was unpopular. His courageous acts left him with few friends even within the Labor movement. “Not that one has a check list, but you do get around to offending everybody,” he told Hartcher. "But somebody has to give the country a break."

After a recession “we had to have”, Australia’s boom began in 1991. It is still humming along 16 years later. It comfortably survived the Asian economic crisis of 1997. But Keating didn’t. By then a vengeful electorate had tired of his “big visions”, high interest rates and fatal hubristic streak. The people gave John Howard’s Liberals a landslide win in 1996. The time lag between implementation and success meant it would be John Howard who would reap the benefit of Keating’s revolution. While the Coalition have added Reserve Bank independence, the GST and budget transparency, it is the Keating reforms that remain at the heart of Australian prosperity.

Howard successfully claimed ownership of the boom because Labor deserted the field. Because of Keating’s unpopularity, they never trumpeted their own success. Labor retreated into its traditional preoccupation, how to redistribute wealth not how to create it. Not until 2005 was Keating was rehabilitated and it took another year for Labor to fight back on economic credentials. In August 2006, Wayne Swan reminded (hansard pdf) John Howard that interest rates reached 21 per cent under his time at Treasury, 4 points higher than the Keating record.

Incredibly, it was the first time the Opposition used this tactic since Howard became Prime Minister. After a decade, Labor has finally re-entered the economic argument and started to take credit for its own accomplishments. With a self-styled “economic conservative” now at the helm, feted by the last three Labor PMs at his conference, Labor may finally be able wrest economic credibility back from the government. At his campaign launch speech last week he finally outflanked Howard on the economy. “I have no intention today of repeating Mr Howard’s irresponsible spending spree.” The Labor faithful, the press gallery, and probably the electorate, all lapped it up.

However, economic credibility is only half the battle. In his 7.30 Report interview last night, Howard reminded the viewers that “national security is being looked after”. Howard is aware that a fearfulness sits at the heart of Australia’s relationship with the outside world and has long capitalised on this fact. This is theory of The Frightened Country, that occupies the second half of Hartcher’s essay. The Frightened Country is also the title of a book by former diplomat Alan Renouf.

Renouf argues that Australia’s irrational fear of its neighbours is central to the national psyche. The country has always been a follower, either of Britain or of the US and rarely ventures into its own international policy making. There have been a succession of foreign ‘bogeymen’ such as the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Soviets, and in more recent times the Indonesians. Australia relies inordinately on the Anzus Treaty signed in 1951 but the wishy-washy text of the treaty declares the parties would only act “to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes”. Howard and his foreign minister Alexander Downer love to talk about the treaty but they never mention the fact that those inconvenient “constitutional processes” remove the sense of obligation.

Nor do they talk about the time in 1964 when Australia, which was worried about the Indonesia Reformasi crisis, invoked the treaty for the first and so far only time. The US refused to help. Nor did Howard enjoy the reaction of Clinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who, when asked to support an international military coalition in East Timor, testily compared Australia’s problem to his daughter’s messy apartment.

Nevertheless Howard is a deft handler of the fear factor. According to Hartcher, Howard first prods them so people are aware of their fears. Then he offers reassurance. He has used this double strategy to keep troops in Iraq. His argument is if we remove them it would be a propaganda coup for terrorism and increase the number of terrorists in Indonesia. Implicit is the argument that Howard’s putative terrorists would be a threat to Australia. Despite the polls saying Iraq was an unpopular war, Howard’s appeal to fear resonated far stronger in the electorate than Latham’s 2004 promise to bring the troops home by Christmas.

However the elevation of the former shadow foreign minister to the Labor leadership has changed this ballgame too. Rudd was an unapologetic supporter of the Iraq war. Rudd was unable to seize this agenda and has remained remarkably quiet about it in the election campaign. He has relied on the Prime Minister to concede the running with a bad mistake. Howard made just such a blunder when he criticised Barack Obama’s call for total US withdrawal from Iraq equating it support for Al Qaeda. Obama underlined the flaw in Howard’s argument when he noted Australia’s small contingent in Iraq. He suggested Howard “calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.” That was the end of the argument. John Howard was never prepared to put the bodies of the Frightened Country on the line.

In the endgame, it is the emperor who has lost his clothes. The bogeymen and the bipolar nation have moved on. Neutralised on security and outflanked on economic credibility, the Liberals have failed to gain any traction in the opinion polls and the main topic of political debate is now the margin of Labor’s win. Former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson is today predicting a Labor landslide and a swing of six to seven percent (it needs 4.88 per cent to win). "I think people have just stopped listening to John Howard,” he said “He just stayed too long."

Wentworth A-Go-Go: The Overington Affair

The intriguing battle for Australia’s smallest and wealthiest seat has rarely left the news since the election was declared. The inner eastern Sydney suburb seat of Wentworth contains the wealth and razzle of Darling Point, Double Bay, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Bondi Junction and Kings Cross. Its sitting Liberal MP and Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a serious contender for the next Liberal leadership contest. But he is in great danger of losing his seat if the likely Labor landslide materialises. He is defending new boundaries on a slender margin of 2.5 per cent and his campaign has been bedevilled by the Tasmanian Pulp Mill decision. Labor candidate George Newhouse is a good chance to win aided by his former girlfriend Danielle Ecuyer. She is standing as an independent anti-mill candidate and is likely to direct her preference flow to her estranged boyfriend.

The complexity of this seat was turned up a another couple of notches this week. One issue was the legality of Newhouse’s candidacy which was challenged on a technicality. Under electoral law, a candidate must not be receiving payment from any government office for at least 24 hours before the formal declaration of a nomination. This morning the ABC reported NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney saying she did not receive Newhouse's resignation until 2 November, the day of the nomination. The Liberals wanted this investigated. Later today Burney offered a correction saying she had accepted his nomination on 22 October though the letter was stamped 2 November. Allegations of 'smear tactics' have begun.

However for farce this could not compare with the story which was partially revealed by ABC’s Media Watch on Monday. It reported the extraordinary intervention of The Australian’s journalist Caroline Overington into Wentworth’s campaign. Overington had written several articles about the campaign commenting on the Ecuyer-Newhouse relationship as “the crashing of their feelings on the rocks of a federal election campaign” which “has become the talk of the white-hot electorate of Wentworth”. Overington also suggested the reason for the pair’s break-up may have been differences over the pulp mill decision. Overington had an ongoing email correspondence with Ecuyer throughout the campaign. In late October she emailed Ecuyer asking her who she was going to preference in the election. Ecuyer responded saying it was too early to tell.

Then Overington replied again to Ecuyer reminding her she had only four weeks to decide. Overington then asked her to redirect her preferences away from Newhouse and towards Turnbull. According to the email, Overington said “he’d [Turnbull] be a loss to the parliament and George – forgive me – no gain” signing off with a smiley emoticon. Ecuyer was not happy about the email and wrote to ABC's Media Watch saying she was “disgusted to have been lobbied by a journalist from The Australian for my preferences”. Ecuyer also said Overington offered her front page coverage if she gave her preferences to the Liberals.

Overington strongly denied she was trying to influence preferences and said the email was a running joke between her and Ecuyer. Ecuyer has failed to see the funny side and said yesterday she may make a complaint to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) According to yesterday’s rival Fairfax publication the Melbourne Age, Overington also said it was part of The Australian's "king-maker campaign" to play a role in the election of both Coalition and ALP candidates.

Today the Fairfax newspapers released more of Overington’s emails including ones to the Labor candidate George Newhouse. These emails showed Overington flirting with the Labor man saying “now you are single, I might even make a pass at you.” Newhouse cautiously responded that she had previously criticised him as "short, dark and Jewish" and besides, she was married. Overington upped the ante by replying “Not married, me. Separated five months ago. I might like short, dark and Jewish, you never know”. Later the exchange turns a bit more aggressive as Overington desperately sought an interview ending with “We're out the front of your house, and your office, just so you know”.

Overington's home newspaper, The Australian, quoted Malcolm Turnbull saying Overington was entitled to her opinion. "She's not part of my campaign team obviously," he said. Meanwhile writing in today’s Crikey, media commentator Margaret Simons found the whole affair “icky”. In Crikey Simons said there was “no excuse for her behaviour” and it was “out of line, and unethical”. When contacted by Woolly Days, Simons expanded on what she meant. “Although the correspondence with Ecuyer was the most legally significant,” she said, “I find the Newhouse e-mails more disturbing because of the use of sexual come-ons in the context of a relationship of power”.

Nevertheless Simons is a fan of Overington’s work. In Simons’ influential new book about the Australia media, “The Content Makers”, she wrote a substantial piece entitled "speaking truth to power", which praised Overington’s penetrative series of articles to expose the AWB Iraqi kickbacks scandal. “In 2005,” Simons wrote, “Caroline Overington held the government to account”. Overington went on to win an investigative journalism Walkley award in 2006 for her AWB stories. Now it is Overington’s turn to be held to account. Simons told Woolly Days “it gives me absolutely no pleasure to criticise her”. Despite the criticism, The Australian said it has no plans to stop Overington from writing articles about Wentworth. A News Ltd newspaper knows a good thing when it sees it: the seat of Wentworth is likely to remain a perpetual story-machine until election day.

Politics in the Pub – Brisbane electorate candidates meeting

Woolly Days attended the Politics in the Pub session tonight at the Brunswick Hotel, New Farm. Organised by the Community Action Network and New Farm Neighbourhood Centre, the session was attended by the candidates of the Brisbane electorate with the one notable exception. Yet again, a Liberal candidate absented himself from a community forum. This time, it was the turn of Ted O’Brien who failed to make the event and "offered his apologies".

The seat of Brisbane has been held by Arch Bevis since 1990 and he won in 2004 with a margin of 3.9 per cent. Bevis is a Labor front bencher and Shadow Minister for both Homeland Security and Justice and Customs and he was one of six speakers who did attend, the others representing Family First, Socialist Alliance, the Greens, Australian Democrats and the CEC. The session was chaired by Jason Wilson of Youdecide2007.

Family First (FF) candidate Mark White was first to speak. White started off by saying a passionate society began with a passionate community. White said democracy is precious and pointed out how lucky we were compared the problems in Pakistan and Burma. He said FF protected some of the less-privileged members of our society such as those on disability pensions, those affected by Workchoices and new arrivals. He said immigrants “need our compassion” and FF does not see them as “economic commodities”. He also said the party supports an increase in foreign aid. He found it “offensive” when people portrayed FF as extremist. He said the party had acted strongly on policies such as tax deductions for first-time home buyers, child care choices, reductions in the fuel levy and is in favour of imposing a carbon tax which does not disadvantage low income earners. He said the Senate contest was crucial this time round and endorsed Jeff Buchanan as a “sensible and committed” candidate to join Steve Fielding in the Upper House. He pointed out that FF voted with the government on 110 bills out of 197 which was a 55:45 split that showed the party's dedication to balance.

Arch Bevis was the second speaker. Bevis is seeking his seventh straight term as the member for Brisbane. He began by talking about climate change which he said was the “major national issue” dominating his thinking. He said Australia had “dropped the ball” on climate change in the last decade. He said under the Keating Government Australia was a major world player in global warming discussions and the lead up to Kyoto. By the time Kyoto was signed in 1997, John Howard was in power and he argued for a rise in Australian emissions which Bevis said was “an odd thing to do”. The Prime Minister then failed to ratify the Protocol. Ten years later and Australia does not have a seat with full voting rights for Kyoto 2. Bevis pledged that Labor would immediately ratify the Protocol and pledged a 20 percent reduction in energy targets by 2020.

In health, Bevis reiterated Kevin Rudd’s provision of $2.5 billion in funding and lauded Rudd’s promise that “the buck stopped with him”. He went on to discuss Workchoices which he denounced as “unfair and unAustralian”. He said that workers in the US have better rights than here, which he said “would have been laughed at 10 years ago”. Bevis said he was a union official and appears in those anti-union Liberal ads. But he said he was proud of the work he did as a union official. He warned that the government intervention in IR law was not yet complete. He quoted Senator Minchin whom he called “one of the Liberal hardheads” as saying the government would abolish the award safety net after the election if it won. “If after 25 November John Howard is still Prime Minister,” he said, “don’t think you’ll see the end of reforms”.

The third speaker was Ewan Saunders from Socialist Alliance. He began by saying this election was historic for “lots of people he knew” that only knew a Howard Government in power. He said Rudd’s Labor were not a real opposition and “not much of an alternative” to the government. He said the Socialist Alliance was founded in 2001 as a “desperate need” for a party to stand for workers’ rights. He said they would “tear up” all of workchoices, as opposed to Rudd’s “Workchoices Lite”. He said they would also deal with climate change “the issue of the century” by reducing 60 per cent of emissions by 2020 and 90 per cent by 2030. “Tomorrow is too late to act” he said. He also said the Socialist Alliance was opposed to such measures as nuclear power, the NT intervention, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the anti-terror laws. He said Socialist Alliance was an activist party that takes grassroots action for working people in Australia and around the world.

Elizabeth Guthrie from the Greens spoke next. Guthrie runs her own Interior Design business where she provides her clients with economically achievable and ethically sound design choices. Guthrie began with an allegory of a fire in the forest where all the large animals argued on the best way to put it out. Meanwhile while the arguments raged, a hummingbird was taking tiny drops of water from the lake to the forest to put on the fire. Guthrie said she was like the hummingbird “doing all I can” by standing as a candidate for election. She said she was unlikely to win in “a safe Labor seat” but was determined to “speak for the people in my electorate”. Guthrie said the Greens had “well rounded policies” but preferred to speak about the underlying values. “People want to be represented by an accountable, responsible government,” she said. “I’m prepared to stand up and fight for what I believe”. She finished by saying this election was “your chance to take a drop of water to the fire”.

Don Sinnamon from the Democrats spoke next. Sinnamon said that although “John Howard does not know what an apology is”, he did and proceeded to say he was sorry for the sufferings of indigenous people. He said people “were sick of the election” and the media had turned it into a litany of false choices such as Howard v Rudd and Howard v Costello. He said the election was a chance to “make our voices heard”. He decried much of the government agenda including its castigation of the hundreds of thousands of marchers against the Iraq war as “a mob”, the unfair treatment of the unemployed, asylum seekers and those in same-sex relationships. He said the silence of the ALP on these issues was “disgraceful”. He said Australia needed a Bill of Rights, citizen initiated referenda and direct democracy. He finished by saying the country “needed democracy, not a dictatorship of special interests”.

The final speaker was Nick Contario of the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC). He said that there was a looming global meltdown of financial systems due to the sub prime mortgage crisis in the US. He said Australia’s large public debt left it vulnerable and there are 1.8 million people who are ‘mortgage stressed’. He said the country was “living beyond our means because we have destroyed our means”. He said the CEC would reinstitute a government owned national bank and would restore “essential economic infrastructure” that would turn Australia into a “truly sovereign nation state not just a quarry”.

An interview with Aubrey Clark – LDP candidate for Lilley

In the latest of an ongoing series of candidate interviews for the federal seat of Lilley, Aubrey Clark of the Liberty and Democratic Party (LDP) spoke to Woolly Days yesterday. The LDP is a new entry on the Australian political stage. Founded by economist and libertarian John Humphreys in 2001, this is the first federal election it is contesting. Humphreys leads the party’s Queensland Senate ticket and the party are contesting 12 of Queensland’s 26 lower house seats including Aubrey Clark in Lilley.

Aubrey Clark is 21 years old, a former overseas volunteer and student and is currently studying economic and maths at the University of Queensland. He lives in St Lucia but is contesting Lilley as a “marginal seat”. Clark says he became interested in politics a couple of years ago when he met a group of friends with a libertarian perspective who successfully changed his left-wing views. He says he is not a political person but feels strongly about the way in which social and economic liberties are being taken away from citizens.

He defined the LDP as a “moderate libertarian party” as opposed to extremists, the anarchists who see no place for government at all. Clark believes there is a legitimate role for governments to “help hold society together” but he strongly supports the “small state” principle with low taxes, the right to take drugs, gay marriage and freedom of association. Clark acknowledges that legalisation of marijuana is one of the LDP’s more controversial policies. He does not advocate its use but merely states that drug use is “people’s own affair”. He said people should have the freedom to “do what they like with their own bodies”. In the area of gay marriages, Clark believes government should not have any role in what he called “private contracts between individuals”.

Clark also believes in economic freedoms. People were free, he said, to employ, or work for, whoever they wish and do what they like with their own property. He believes in free trade and says the LDP would abolish government interference in work relations. He said there was no role for government in private contracts and also believed there should be no anti-discrimination laws. “The Government shouldn’t force people to be tolerant”, he said. Clark believed that pubs, clubs and restaurants should be free to set their own smoking or non-smoking policies and there should be no laws governing prostitution. “If people want to sell their own bodies,” he said “government has no place to regulate or restrict it.”

Clark praised the economic policy of the party founder and personal friend John Humphreys. Humphreys’ policy is outlined in his document “Reform 30/30: Rebuilding Australia’s Tax and Welfare Systems” (pdf). Clark said the policy proposes a flat 30 per cent tax rate on all income above $30,000 with a negative income tax of 30 per cent paid to any one earning below that threshold. He said the proposal was revenue neutral and had excited lots of interest from both major parties and groups such as the CIS. He admitted the policy would be difficult to sell because of the way people took advantage of existing tax rules and tax breaks such as negative gearing.

Clark saw the three biggest issues in the election as tax, social freedoms and economic freedoms. He believed that human induced climate change was a reality and something needed to be done. He said the LDP would soon release a white paper on global warming that advocated carbon taxes but he was against a carbon trading system which had failed wherever it was tried. Clark believed there was no great difference between the two major parties and said the LDP had split their preferences equally to both parties across the country.

When asked about the media, Clark said it was free to do whatever it liked. Once again, he saw no role for government in this area and was not worried that a company such as News Ltd would monopolise information. He said “everyone I know gets their information from blogs”. He said he reads The Economist (a choice he shares with the Lilley Democrat candidate Jennifer Cluse) and had faith in the fact that people will choose what they like the best. Clark finished by saying he acknowledged that some of society’s rules were necessary. “People should not be allowed to kill or steal or break a contract,” he said. “Those rules are needed to hold society together”.

Media Coalition releases damning Free Speech Report

Earlier this week the Right to Know Coalition released their report on the state of free speech in Australia. The report is a damning indictment of state and federal government policies which deny public access to a plethora of information through stifling legal provisions. The report says “free speech and media freedom[s] are being whittled away” by 335 acts of parliaments, more than 500 legal provisions and over a thousand court suppression orders.

The Independent Audit of the State of Free Speech in Australia (pdf) chaired by former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss was presented to the Right to Know Coalition on 31 October. Its broad conclusion was that media freedom was diminishing gradually and imperceptibly. The report claimed that many of Australia’s democratic mechanisms were “flawed” and “wearing thin”. It cited poor support for whistleblowers, the lack of journalist shield laws, secrecy provisions in legislation, the “culture of secrecy” in many government agencies and numerous examples of failed or significantly delayed Freedom of Information (FOI) applications.

The report made three key recommendations. It stated the Prime Minister and Premiers should immediately issue a directive to their staff to take the laws seriously, it said that after the election the new government (of either party) should implement the Law Reform commission recommendation to eliminate the insidious use of "conclusive certificates" (pdf) to restrict access, and lastly the government should ask the Law Reform commission to redesign the 1982 FOI Law to bring it into the information age.

The media Coalition have released the document now for maximum electoral impact. The report contained several damning FOI examples such as an April 2005 request for the Defence Department to release documents on Australia’s position on rendition (not yet actioned), the results of opinion polls assessing the success of the workchoices legislation (delayed until after the election on the flimsy excuse that the government wanted to release all its opinion survey data together) and a 1993 application to the Queensland Treasurer for information about Jupiter’s Casino which took 12 years to answer. The high cost of FOI is another failure factor. The Herald Sun recently abandoned its two year campaign to seek federal politicians’ travel information after it was quoted a fee of $1.25 million – 32 person years of work, apparently.

Australia’s Right to Know is a broad-based media coalition formed in May 2007. Its members include most of the power players in Australia’s mediascape. The initial members included News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC, Channel Seven, SBS, Austereo, AAP and Sky News. The group is chaired by News Ltd Australian CEO John Hartigan. The group released a joint statement in May which began by saying the parties had grouped together because they were “deeply troubled” by the state of free speech in Australia. They were careful to say this was not a party political issue and said all parties needed to embrace urgent reform. Their first priority was to audit the state of free speech in the country. They were concerned by the 2006 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index which ranked Australia 35th in the world.

Since the initial statement, Reporters Without Borders have released their 2007 index with Australia ranked a more healthy 12th best. Yet their annual report for Australia did not ascribe any reason for the improvement. Instead it condemned the 2005 anti-terror laws and the 2006 law on interception of communications which increased the risks of the anti-terror legislation being used abusively against the media. The report also remarked on the September 2006 High Court’s refusal to allow a journalist access to documents on the Australian government’s tax policy. It quoted the Australian Press Council condemnation of the decision which it said would give the authorities a “fresh impetus to suppress information that is embarrassing or politically inconvenient”.

The Press Council was a party to that case. The case was The Australian’s FOI editor Michael McKinnon's appeal against Treasurer Peter Costello's refusal to grant access to information on the first home buyer's scheme and bracket creep. The Council stated that in finding that the tribunal did not err, the Court failed to give adequate weight to the aims of the FoI Act, to "extend as far as possible the right of the Australian community to access to information in the possession of the Government of the Commonwealth". It said the true losers were Australian voters and taxpayers.

The case was a major spur to the setting up of the 'Australia's Right to Know' Coalition. Lucinda Duckett, a News Ltd executive and one of the driving forces behind the coalition, told ABC’s Media Report in May why they were taking action. She said that while she didn’t believe any of the imposed laws were deliberately done out of malice that the 500 legal prohibitions (now confirmed by the audit) on what can be published “form a very dangerous picture for Australia”. She said some of the biggest problems occur at state level. “Because the states are not united on many of their restrictions, and while state borders exist, they don't exist for broadcasters or for publishers, or for the Internet,” she said. “The difficulties we have as journalists, in reporting things that can only go so far and then have to suddenly stop.”

So far, neither the Howard Government nor the Rudd Opposition have made any election comment on the newly released report.

An interview with the Democrat candidate for Lilley – Jennifer Cluse

As part of a continuing exercise in interviewing all candidates for the Queensland Federal seat of Lilley, this time it is the turn of the Australian Democrats. The Democrats stronghold is the Senate where they hope Andrew Bartlett will retain the seat he has held since 1997. However they are also contesting every House of Representative seat in Queensland. In 2004, the Democrats took one 1.5 percent of the vote in Lilley and the candidate this time round is Jennifer Cluse. Woolly Days interviewed Jennifer Cluse yesterday.

By her own admission, Jennifer Cluse is not a politician. She is a retiree who worked in the air force as a radio technician and then as a commercial pilot. She is a mother of two sons and lives in Chermside where her dream is to make her home completely carbon neutral. Cluse said she was compelled to put her name forward as a political candidate after John Howard won control of the Senate in 2004. Since then she has seen “appalling legislation” pushed through such as workchoices and the anti-terror laws passed almost without debate. She compared the current situation to when the Democrats had the balance of power. “We checked every line and queried every problematic bit of drafting,” she said.

Cluse said she was the classic swing voter and had elected the government in the lower house in every election for the last 40 years, except in the last one. She said she voted Democrat each time in the Senate. “Don Chipp rang all my bells and pushed my buttons,” she said. She denied that the Democrats were a spent force. “[The media] were saying we were finished after Cheryl Kernot left,” she said. “They were wrong then and they are wrong now”.

Cluse praised the Democrat Senate candidate Andrew Bartlett as an “amazingly stable, patient, and listening politician”. She said most politicians only want to talk at you but Bartlett was a great listener and he has the gift of finding a way of precisely expressing what he has heard. If Cluse had one minor criticism of him, it was that his voice modulation tends to be even and there were “no oratory flourishes”. Cluse said he was “an honourable politician”.

I then asked what she was hearing from the electorate out on the hustings. She said there was “universal agreement we’ve got to get control of the Senate back”. She hoped that people would vote Democrat, or else the Greens. She said she was not happy with the way Labor was going. “I’m starting to worry that Garrett WAS joking,” she said. She said John Howard had done “admirable things” in the past such as changing the gun laws in the wake of Port Arthur and restructuring the superannuation scheme. But against that, she said he had caused anguish for refugees, denied the problems of global warming and promoted selfishness in Australia.

She said that while the Greens were on the right path, they were not yet ‘good enough’. Cluse heard Larissa Waters speak recently where she (Waters) said they ‘had 40 policies’ now. “That was the problem", said Cluse. “They have too narrow a focus.” She said that Family First were a sinister party associated with a Church that practiced manipulation on the young people that joined it. “They are too extreme,” she said. “Balance is what we need.”

Cluse said that the environment was the single most important issue of the election. She said that she knows from her radio technician days how a runaway positive feedback situation can have dire consequences. "This is happening with CO2 emissions NOW," she said. "Electronics can control runaway positive feedback with a fuse which blows. The earth has NO fuse.". She believes we have a maximum until 2018 to stabilise our emissions though she notes that CSIRO are now saying we only have until 2015. She believed the message about this “desperate situation” was not getting through to people because of selfishness. She heard it best put in the phrase that goes “the economy is me, the environment is us”.

Cluse was depressed by the role of the local media in the election. She said she had stopped buying all local newspapers and subscribed only to The Economist. She said it was the only publication not to give the name of its reporters. The local media was all about opinion pieces, grabs, sound bytes, and was lacking in in-depth reporting. She blamed the journalism schools at universities who were commercially driven to produce what employers want. She concluded by saying that Howard had slashed education budgets and deliberately created a “dumbed down society”.