Julia Gillard's Day Zero

No one seems to accept this as a possibility yet but Labor may well have won the next election today. Everyone does agree the Federal Government has been through the most extraordinary two weeks of bloodletting – not so much airing its dirty linen in public as proudly wearing it at a fancy dress party. From Simon Crean’s early promptings, to the mysterious airing of Rudd’s sweary video, the revelations of the Four Corners program of what Gillard did and did not know, Rudd’s overseas midnight resignation, the ferocious response of Government Ministers and Gillard’s ultimate triumph today, it has been gifted wrapped coverage for our media. Hundreds of journalists were in Canberra today for the vote which was a foregone conclusion. Yet not one of them picked up in advance the biggest story of the day – the resignation of Mark Arbib. It was this action as much as anything that shows the length Labor may be prepared to go to kill the leadership debate and end what Gilard herself called the political drama.

Along with fellow minister Bill Shorten, Arbib was behind that drama. He was the ultimate face of the faceless men who deposed Rudd in 2010. With senior minister Nicola Roxon admitting on the weekend she was unaware of the impending coup, it was Arbib and Shorten who Rudd would have considered the backstabbers-in-chief. Given he has not forgiven the party for his sacking, it is not beyond the possibility Rudd demanded a faceless head as his price for supporting Gillard post ballot. Certainly Arbib’s confusing resignation statement hinted there was something a lot stronger at issue than the “family reasons” offered as the main cause. And as a Senator he could leave without Labor facing a by-election.

Meanwhile Kevin Rudd seemed at ease after the ballot today. Perhaps he has exorcised some of the demons of his 2010 defeat which occurred without a ballot. The initial reports were he had just 29 supporters in caucus but it was soon revised to 71-31. This was a margin that seem to please everyone in Government. Gillard was handsomely re-elected with over a two to one majority. Meanwhile Rudd was not disgraced (those two missing votes getting him into the respectable thirties) without getting the 40 or so votes he needed for the legitimacy of a second challenge. His speech afterwards was both valedictory and apologetic. He stood up for a belief in his achievements but acknowledged others saw it differently. Most importantly he saw the need to commit to Gillard for the life of her Government, effectively ending his leadership challenge until either she resigns or is beaten at the polls.

This was also a coded message to the media: he was off the drip. With no other senior minister with a serious axe to grind, there should be few further leaks of the kind that has destabilised the Gillard regime from the moment it took office. The media will keep Rudd on the preferred prime minister poll question as they do Malcolm Turnbull. But just as they do now with Turnbull, Rudd leadership stories will run short of juice without a quote from a “Senior Government Minister”.

The similarities with Turnbull extend beyond this. Both men are brilliant intellectuals but brittle and difficult to work with. Both have probably burned their bridges with their caucus colleagues and may have to set up a third (or fourth) party if they are to ever re-establish their leadership credentials. Rudd in particular is damaged goods. The Australian hailed him as Labor’s best hope to defeat the Coalition in 2013, but his clear lead in the preferred prime minister stakes was in stark contrast to the respect in which he was held by the vast majority of caucus members.

It is the difference between having to vote for him and having to work for him. Rudd has mastered a media image of the socially incompetent nerd. It doesn’t appear to matter to voters he hasn’t a shred of genuineness in him as long as he is there with that smile to crash or crash through any awkwardness. Behind the scenes, other parts of his personality were free to do their ugly work far from public prying. 24 x 7’s Kevin’s obsessive desire for control, glass jaw and an enormous untrammelled ego led to an unhealthy work environment that any self-respecting OH&S officer would complain about.

While the self-styled “K Rudd” now sits chastened on the naughty back bench, Prime Minister Gillard seemed positively ebullient post-ballot. The all-out attack strategy was risky but necessary to kill off her challenger. She has given Abbott his election ads but they will probably be lost anyway in a bland stew of negative messages. She also fended off Abbott’s Question Time attack today with ease making him look like a carping yesterday’s man while she was the forward looking leader. Such decisiveness may not last but it at least she can now attack without having to protect her flanks.

These two weeks told us where the corpses are buried but so far the public is not bothered by the macabre spectacle. Indeed Labor got its best result in 12 months in the latest Newspoll today. The two party preferred is 53-47 to the Coalition which is in the margin of error for 50-50. It seems the punters don’t seem to mind the blood-bath when they can see exactly who is throwing the punches. It is also a reminder of the old mantra when it comes to a vote “It’s The Economy, Stupid”. The Coalition remains all over the place in its economic policy in a time when Australia is in a relatively good position. Abbott's policy-free zone was a safe bet only as long as Labor people continued killing each other. Gillard's win may not yet have given her clear air, but the fog of war just got a little less dense.

A Very Australian Coup

Julia Gillard has been Australian Prime Minister now for almost two weeks and the mutterings have begun about whether she is the right person for the job based on her mining compromise and her apparent willingness to sacrifice refugees on the barbecue of marginal outer Sydney electorates.

But few people in Australia have questioned her right to be Prime Minister. Despite the very presidential style of modern elections, it is MPs and Senators that people vote for and it is MPs and Senators who decide who leads them, and therefore the country. The media, so wrapped up in the exciting specifics of the overthrow, accepted the legitimacy of the practice without a murmur as “the Westminster system”.

In her first media conference as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard acknowledged she had not been elected Prime Minister by the Australian people. “And in coming months I will ask the Governor-General to call for a general election," she said, "so that the Australian people can exercise their birthright to choose their Prime Minister.”

Despite the media narrative of her need to get a “mandate”, Gillard never once mentioned the word in any of her early statements. Merrion Webster defines the word mandate in this context as “an authorisation to act given to a representative”. According to that definition Gillard has all the mandate she needs despite the birthright, having been elected unopposed by her party with the backing of powerful union bosses.

If the Australian media are mostly sanguine about this turn of events, voices are more uneasy overseas where the Westminster system has less sway. US papers called it a party revolt and a mutiny. Craig McMurtrie from the ABC’s Washington bureau said a Washington Post columnist though it looked disturbingly like a coup d’etat. The Americans are right, of course. Sure, there was no blood spilled or tanks on the lawn. Nevertheless, Gillard’s ascension shares this in common with coups more common to South America, Asia and Africa: it was ruthless overthrow of a country’s elected leader without the consent of the people who elected him.

Australians have been blinded to this fact by its commonness at State level where many premiers, most recently Kristina Keneally have been elevated into office by the backdoor. It is also common for the Federal Opposition with both Labor and the Liberals changing their leaders many times in the last 50 years when out of power. But it is surprisingly rare at the highest level of Government. Only twice has an Australian Prime Minister ever been dumped by their own party while in office – Gorton for McMahon in 1971 and Hawke for Keating in 1991. The 20 year symmetry wasn’t quite there for Kevin Rudd but the brutal machinations of backroom party politics were reminiscent of past coups. Even Gillard’s own Party has not yet caught up. The Australian Labor website still goes by the name of www.kevin07.com.au.

Meanwhile Opposition Leader Tony Abbott came out with a curious denunciation of the coup. He called it a political assassination (though Rudd may yet rise from that particular death) and an “ugly process” and said “Prime Ministers should not be treated in this way.” Presumably Abbott must think it is ok for Opposition leaders to be treated that way.

Though he probably has no intention of doing anything about it, Abbott is correct in his criticism. Prime Ministers should not be appointed out of backroom deals and there is no reason it cannot be changed. The Australian Constitution is silent on the matter of Prime Ministers and what exists are conventions that supposedly “assist the smooth operation of the legislature.”

Smooth doesn’t begin to describe the operation to depose Rudd. It is easier to describe the shock, distaste and a sense of powerlessness among the wider public (despite goodwill to towards Gillard) about the ugly process of succession. That is not good for democracy. It is time for people power to assert itself and insist the Prime Minister they elected is only removed when they say so.

Being Julia Gillard: Understanding Australia's new prime minister

In Jacqueline Kent’s book The Making of Julia Gillard, Gillard herself tells a story of an event that took place in Hopper’s Crossing outside Melbourne, Victoria. She was at a shopping centre standing next to a board with a photo of her. "This old guy comes out of the supermarket, looks at me, looks at the photo, then turns back at me and says ‘Taken on a good day wasn’t it, love?’. I said 'And you’d be bloody Robert Redford, would you mate?'”

Gillard’s self-deprecating sense of humour is one of the crucial skills she will need to have at her disposal after her stunning accession to the Prime Minister of Australia this morning. Most people believed that Gillard was destined to become the country’s first female Prime Minister but until a few days ago no one would have believed it could happen in 2010.

But with Kevin Rudd in disarray in recent weeks and private party polling clearly telling powerbrokers they were heading to defeat in a number of key marginal seats, it was suddenly time to up the tempo. Unlike Rudd and his opposite number Tony Abbott, Gillard had kept her personal popularity in the recent political upheavals. The time was right for the kingmakers to dust off the guillotine and depose the incumbent. Rudd realised overnight he no longer had the numbers and resigned without a fight this morning.

That outcome is the best possible given that the leadership spill happened. Labor has panicked unnecessarily and would have won the next election under Rudd but by terminating his leadership they have handed an unexpected fillip to the opposition. At least the clean nature of the execution means there is no residual leadership tension that could further undermine Labor. Indeed given Rudd’s stated intention to stay on, it is not beyond the realms of possibility he could be restored as Foreign Minister under Gillard after the election.

The focus is now on the new leader. Gillard was born in the South Welsh coal port town of Barry in 1961. Her father was a brilliant student but being one of seven children in a poor family he was forced to end his education early and work in the mines. When the four year old Julia was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia, a doctor advised her parents to move to a warmer climate. The family (including elder daughter Alison then aged 7) moved to Adelaide in 1966 where Julia’s father worked as a psychiatric nurse.

Gillard said she left the value of hard work from her father. In her Adelaide University years she was an organiser with the Australian union of students and then involved with the Melbourne-based Socialist Forum. Political views were heavily skewed in the ultra-left scene of 1970s student politics. Gillard told Australian Story that being a Labor student “you were viewed as a right-winger, I mean, we didn't really have that many sort of Liberals who were active in it to create that right-wing pole so most of student politics thought the Labor students were the enemy for being too right-wing.”

Gillard graduated from the University of Melbourne with an arts and law degree. She worked her way up to a partnership in Melbourne legal firm Slater & Gordon before several protracted and unsuccessful attempts to secure Labor preselection during the 1990s. She gained crucial government experience in her role as chief of staff to John Brumby when he was state opposition leader in Victoria during the Kennett years and she was finally elected to federal parliament in 1998.

ABC Radio National’s Peter Mares said that Gillard’s membership of the Victorian left of the ALP was “more organisational than ideological.” She is keen to promote social inclusion but wary of government heavy-handedness in social policy. “Gillard supports approaches that combine state and non-state actors in service delivery, encourage competition and individual initiative, yet maintain a safety net for those who fall,” Mares said.

Biographer Christine Wallace agrees Gillard is “no lefty” and said she is factional only so far as it is useful. Wallace described her as “transfactional” and said Gillard elicits an “intense, visceral response from voters, journalists and fellow political players.” Her talent was nurtured by Brumby, Simon Crean and Mark Latham. Gillard was one of the few Labor heavies not to suffer a tongue-lashing in the Latham Diaries and in return she is one of the few leaders not to twist the knife in Latham. By the time Rudd took over, Gillard was the obvious choice of deputy and since the election victory in 2007 she has revelled in the difficult twin roles of education and employment minister.

Wallace said what distinguishes Gillard from many female politicians is a genuine love of power. “Possessing it acts as a big political multiplier for her: the more power she gets, the better she performs and the more she accumulates as a result,” said Wallace. Gillard has now hit the jackpot when it comes to accumulation of power.

Her immediate task is consolidation to ensure it doesn’t just last a few months. But assuming she wins the 2010 election, we may see a new style of leader never before witnessed in Australia. Her policy record is mixed, but her native intelligence, a driving will to succeed and her indefatigable sense of humour will prove major allies in the fierce battles to come.

2010 election: Much ado about nothing

Sometime later year Australia will go to the polls to elect a federal government. Following previous precedents, the incumbent Labor administration will be returned to office with a similar majority it gained in 2007 or slightly less. Both sides of politics will portray this is a victory. For Kevin Rudd, there is the obvious success of being returned as Prime Minister a second time at an election – a feat only ever achieved by three Labor leaders (Andrew Fisher, Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke). Meanwhile the Coalition will paint a narrow defeat as a success for their strategy of appealing to the right-wing base when it handed Tony Abbott the leadership in a three-way ballot on 1 December last year.

But first to Rudd, for whom the result will be the end product of three years of communications discipline and dedication to the task. This is something he learned from his predecessor John Howard, an equally ruthless electioneerer. Nothing else – be it the GFC, climate change, or reform in education and industrial relations - has come remotely close in Rudd’s everyday calculations. Ever since 25 November 2007, Rudd’s Government has been devoted to one task: how to stay in office in 2010.

Rigid control of communications is the key and Rudd’s closest acolytes are in his PR machine and kitchen cabinet (Gillard, Swan and Tanner). The downside of such a tightly-run communication strategy is that it has left Rudd looking inflexible, remote, humourless and without charisma. Having personally seen Rudd in action at one of the community cabinets in 2008, I can confirm that he is flexible, engaging, and humorous though he is never quite charismatic. But Rudd has been perfectly willing to sacrifice these attributes when dealing with the medium that still most decides elections: television.

His Government deserves credit too for mastering the strategy. With the possible exception of Peter Garrett (whose previous life allows him frequent gaffe credit points which he continues to spend at an inordinate rate), they have been a superbly efficient team that has also managed to successfully communicate the message du jour. And despite the fact that Rudd is a somewhat isolated figure within the party and not attached to any of the factions, they have offered resolute and unquestioning support for his leadership.

It is the matter of leadership which has been the Achilles Heel of the Opposition and a direct consequence of Peter Costello’s refusal to go down with the ship in 2007. Brendan Nelson was a lightweight who offered only comic value as leader. Malcolm Turnbull was a brilliant mind but too out of touch with the zeitgeist of the party and too arrogant to even see there was a problem. Joe Hockey ruled himself out with his ETS conscience vote (though I happen to agree with him that voting on climate change ought to be a primary matter of conscience) and fell between the two precarious stools of the party room.

That left Tony Abbott as last man standing. So far he has enjoyed a good run in the media which is keen to run with his pitch as a virile outdoorsy leader standing in stark contrast to the nerdy PM. It is a risky strategy that could alienate as much as it attracts but so far it is working well. Each photo op of Abbott's pre-dawn lycra excursions or weekend “budgie smuggling” manages to exude an air of virility that was lacking in previous Liberal leadership teams. It also acts as a distraction to the fact that the extreme right has taken over the party and he is surrounded by a bunch of ageing has-beens that looked tired in the Howard era and doesn't look any more inviting five years later.

Abbott is the same age as Rudd so will feel he has plenty of mileage ahead of him. It is unlikely he will want to stand aside as leader in defeat and if he manages to keep the majority of his comrades in office he will be regarded with affection by sitting MPs who thought they were heading to the slaughterhouse as recently as six months ago. But the net result of Abbott retaining power in the party is to make a Coalition victory in 2013 more unlikely. Though the 2010 political narrative has been about the success of Abbott’s aggressive “opposition to everything” approach, it cannot be sustained in the longer run and will make the party seem obstructionist and negative. No one will be listening to him in 2012 if he is still spouting on about a “great, big tax”.

Of course on one level, Abbott is on the money: an Emissions Trading System is indeed a “great, big tax”. But working properly, that is what it is designed to do. It is designed to make traditional means of creating power more expensive so that we move away to non-carbon alternatives. If he was really serious about tackling this problem, Abbott could go further and attack Labor’s hypocrisy over nuclear energy it is prepared to sell but not use. But Abbott is heart a populist without the stomach for a campaign against the large NIMBY opposition it would attract.

Make no mistake, if Australia is to have any chance of getting to 2050 with 80 percent emissions reductions it has to go nuclear - and soon, given the long lead times to build power stations. It may only be a temporary measure for 20 to 30 years while the technology to convert solar or wind energy for mass baseload is ironed out. But that doesn’t make it any less urgent. Or unfortunately any more likely. Rudd is perfectly aware of nuclear possibilities but his dedicated eye to election mechanics stops him from looking too closely at it. The Greens are also too blinded by their environmental purity to actually do anything concrete to solve the problem (witness how they dealt themselves out of the ETS debate last year). And so when scholars of the future look back on the 2010 election, all they will see is squandered opportunity and rank political hypocrisy across the spectrum. Happy voting.

Lumumba Di-Aping: the Third World's Hero of Copenhagen

Lumumba Di-Aping has made the brave call that no Australian politician has been game to make and called Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a climate sceptic. The key negotiator at Copenhagen on behalf of the G777-China group told the ABC Rudd’s message to his own people was a fabrication which “does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action.” Di-Aping was pointing out the disparity between Rudd’s sayings and actions on climate change. “It's puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change,” Di-Aping said. “And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he start acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism.” (photo credit: Reuters - Jens Norgaard Larsen)

Di-Aping is essentially correct. For all Rudd’s moralising about climate change as the world’s greatest problem, he has offered very little by way of Australian action to solve it. And Lumumba Di-Aping is the right person to remind him of his responsibilities. The Sudanese diplomat is the chief negotiator for the 130 nation bloc confusingly known as the G77-China group at the Copenhagen climate change talks. He was chosen because Sudan is the current chair of the G77. Despite (or perhaps because of) Sudan’s poor international reputation since Darfur, Di-Aping is proving to be a formidable opponent of vested western interests.

It was Di-Aping who led the criticism of the Danish Text which Rudd is also intimately associated with. The draft of the text which emerged at the start of the conference last week proposed a solution to stop global temperature rises at two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UN tried to play down the document as an “informal paper” put forward by the Danish Prime Minister. Di-Aping was having none of it and slammed the proposal. "It's an incredibly imbalanced text intended to subvert, absolutely and completely, two years of negotiations," he said. “It does not recognise the proposals and the voice of developing countries".

Once again Di-Aping had a very good point. The Danish Text was leaked to The Guardian who described it as a departure from the Kyoto Protocol principle that developed nations should bear the brunt of climate change. The Guardian said the draft handed control of climate change finance to the World Bank. More importantly it would abandon the Kyoto protocol which remains the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions. Lastly it would make funding to poor countries trying to adapt to climate change contingent on a range of actions.

But what infuriated the developing countries most about the Text was the fact it was prepared without their knowledge. It smacked of colonialism. On the first Monday of the climate change talks, Di-Aping addressed an ad hoc meeting of 100 African civil representatives and a few African parliamentarian. He began dramatically by crying, putting his head in his hands and saying “We have been asked to sign a suicide pact.” Di-Aping may well have been milking the drama but once again his analysis was spot on. He said a global temperature increase of 2 degrees meant 3.5 degrees for much of Africa. This was “certain death for Africa”, and a type of “climate fascism” imposed on the continent by high carbon emitters. He said Africa was being asked to sign on to an agreement that would allow this warming in exchange for $10 billion, and that Africa was also being asked to “celebrate” this deal. “I am absolutely convinced that what Western governments are doing is NOT acceptable to Western civil society,” he said.

On Thursday, Di-Aping made a direct call for action from US President Obama. He said it would be embarrassing for the US not to be part of a solution “to save humanity”. Di-Aping reminded his audience that the US is the world's largest emitter historically and per capita. He asked the US to join the Kyoto Protocol and take on its commitments as a developed nation. “This is a challenge that President Barack Obama needs to rise to as a Nobel Prize winner and as an advocate of a multilateral global society,” Di-Aping said. “We know he is proud to be a part of that community through his family relations in Africa.”

Frustrated by the lack of action from American and other Western negotiators, Di-Aping led the biggest gamble yet when he led the walk out of the G77-China group conference. Di-Aping explained his rationale for the walk-out with BBC Radio Four. He said it had become clear the Danish presidency was undemocratically advancing the interests of developed countries at the expense of the obligations it had to developing countries. "The mistake they are doing now has reached levels that cannot be acceptable from a president who is supposed to be acting and shepherding the process on behalf of all parties,” he said.

The Western media were becoming furious at the way the conference was being “hijacked” by an uppity nobody from the Third World. The Australian dismissed him as "hyperbole prone". Toronto’s The Globe and Mail went further and called him “an ill chosen voice from Khartoum”. The headline was meant to damn him by association with long term Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir. But this comparison is false. Di-Aping does not represent Sudan at the conference. He represents 130 nations who are not creating climate change, but who will suffer the most from it. Lumumba Di-Aping is a hero and one who should shame the West into hearing the truth of climate change as seen from the perspective of the poor.

Politics and the media: Searching for narratives with Jesus

Today’s little joke story in the Courier-Mail was lifted (with attribution) straight out of Associated Press. The headline “Jesus Christ kicked off jury for asking too many questions” simply demanded to be read further. Unsurprisingly the story was pure fruitbat Americana - in prim NSW it is unacceptable to change your name by deed poll to Jesus Christ (or Ned Kelly for that matter). This particular Jesus Christ was from Birmingham, Alabama and was born Dorothy Lola Killingworth. As AP and the Courier-Mail told the story, Christ was apparently tossed off a jury for being disruptive and “asking questions instead of answering them.”

Leaving aside why jurors are asking or answering questions when their role is simply to listen, it seems that the focus of the story changed as it travelled. AP’s point was how funny someone called Jesus didn’t seem to be acting Christian. But as originally told to The Birmingham News, the newsworthy element was simply that someone called Jesus was called for jury service. The Alabama paper confirmed the disruptiveness and her questions. And while their “efforts to reach Christ” were in vain, they did reach Court administrator Sandra Turner who stood up for her. Unlike some Jefferson County residents, said Turner, Christ did not try to get out of jury duty. "She was perfectly happy to serve," she said.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story here is other than to always interrogate the moral of the story. Certainly those who love narratives will have a difficult task in prising apart of the moral of this week’s dizzyingly confusing story of Australian federal politics and the media. The last December before an election year is traditionally the killing fields for a tottering leader and so it proved again this year. A fierce and very public battle for the soul of the Liberal Party ended when arch-republican Malcolm Turnbull was rolled in a complex three-way ballot by arch-monarchist Tony Abbott. In truth, the monarchy/republic dyad had little to do with Abbott’s success but it was one of the many emblems that made the choice look quite stark and the twists and turns were enjoyable to follow from a distance.

While the fight was very public, much of the real decision making took place behind the scenes. The partyroom doors were firmly closed during the voting and this was one of the few times in the week the nation was not ruled by Tweet. One of the other critical moves of the week was the calculated decision to feature Tony Abbott photographed in the wonderfully named “budgie smugglers” at a Sydney swimming carnival. It signified common-man vigour and sexual dynamism that contrasted with the snobbish intellectual air of Turnbull and the jovial butchery of Joe Hockey.

The result was a shock for most commentators and an instantaneous defeat for Labor’s CPRS legislation. When Abbott appeared after his victory surrounded by Bronwyn Bishop, Sophie Mirabella and Wilson Tuckey, it was clear this was a win for the hard right of the party. Barnaby Joyce was brought in to cabinet fold. Somewhere out of sight, Nick Minchin was probably pulling strings. Loyal puppie Julie Bishop was kept on as a harmless deputy and a sop/mop to the narrowly defeated dripping wet side of the party. Senators Troeth and Boyes crossed the floor and Turnbull rattled the cage in the background but otherwise the liberal Liberals have taken defeat on the chin.

The commentariat quickly assumed their respective positions. The left spluttered their disbelief and assumed the Liberals had just handed the 2010 election to Kevin Rudd on a plate. Many commented on his failure to convince women. As former Health Minister he was in charge of many health decisions that were affected by his deep Catholic beliefs. New ABC appointee Annabel Crabb showed how this was an open source and a brilliant post by Kerryn Goldsworthy showed how Abbott duly ignored the question under the cover of the imfamous budgie smugglers. Goldsworthy’s conclusion is that Abbott in power would be dangerous “where biology meets the budget or the law”.

But Abbott’s media supporters were quick to emerge too. Within hours of the spill results, The Australian’s Miranda Devine had coined the term “Abbott haters” to describe the majority of journalists who immediate wrote off his chances in the next election. Devine’s point is that journalists are elitists who turn people off with their prognostications into the arms of those they criticise. The irascible Piers Akerman said Abbott’s duty was “to expose the CPRS as a nation-destroying fraud”. In the Punch David Penberthy also warned Labor about underestimating their new opponent and talked up his “potential electoral appeal”.

But the fact remains that the regardless of leader (as NSW Labor will also find out in 2011), opinion polls suggest the Liberal party is heading for a shattering loss in 2010. The outlier 53-47 poll since his election since Abbott's election may give him hope. His negative politics on the CPRS and interest rate rises might save a few seats but every urban seat margin under five percent is vulnerable. And these seats are mostly held by the Turnbull wing. After the Liberals will be left as a skewed right-wing party that will have even less incentive to change its ways in order to regain power. At 52, Tony Abbott is the same age as Kevin Rudd. Both men may lead their parties for a long time to come. And like Jesus Christ (and they both do), they will be happy to serve. But only one will ever be Prime Minister.

Rudd’s robust language is not the problem

Two weeks ago Kevin Rudd got angry with a group of Labor parliamentarians who were complaining about a drop in salary. They represented a considerable interest group who were unhappy with the latest cut delivered by the government’s much feared “Razor Gang”’. Lower house members were to have their printing allowance cut from $100,000 to $75,000 (a $3,750,000 saving over 150 members) and while senators went down from $16,667 to $12,500 (saving $316, 692 across 76 members). The grand total is a $4 million saving which will go a little to servicing a $58b debt. (photo by Derek Barry)

But the rebels, who mostly represented marginal seats, didn’t see it that way and sent a cross section of aggrieved interests to visit Rudd. In attendance were Don Farrell, Bernie Ripoll, David Feeney and Michael Forshaw from the Party’s right, and Carol Brown, Maria Vamvakinou and Sharryn Jackson from the left. Parliamentary secretary Maxine McKew warned the outcome for the rebels in advance of the meeting. "To anyone who thinks they can't sell a message on $75,000 a year more than many people earn - then they should go out and argue the case on the 7.30 Report tonight.”

Having had a deputy soften them up, Rudd moved in for the kill when they met. He was in no mood to accede to the delegation’s demands and dismissed them with an imperious “I don’t care what you fuckers think”. The Age’s Misha Schubert reported reported the meeting though she coyly translated Rudd’s words as "I don't care what you think, this is going to be done."

The muckraking (but usually well-informed) Andrew Landeryou then reported that his language was much more colourful than in Schubert’s account. Landeryou quotes one attendee who said Rudd’s performance was “Mount Vesuvius meets Tourette’s Syndrome”. Landeryou thought there was nothing wrong with roughing up the troops a bit when they are straying from the cause of righteousness, but said it made for very ugly listening.

Landeryou got the ball rolling, but it would take the Poison Dwarf of Australian journalism to ensure Rudd’s swearing got the widest audience. In his Sunday Herald-Sun column this week Glenn Milne highlighted it as the most important part of his story about the meeting in his first sentence: “KEVIN Rudd has launched another expletive-laden tirade -- this time directed at Labor's factional bosses, including three female MPs,!” Milne’s news value on a two-week old event was based on the dubious facts Rudd’s audience was mixed and were “shocked” despite being “hardened operatives”.

It is always dangerous to rely on Milne’s litany of unnamed sources – he is not averse to making things up. But amid the manufactured outrage, he does add one fact that Senator David Feeney was at the meeting and it was his question which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After telling all present they were fuckers whose opinion did not count, Rudd singled out Feeney for personal attention telling him "you can get fucked" and asking, "Don't you fucking understand?"

Feeney would not confirm or deny his understanding. But Crikey’s Guy Rundle (link is unfortunately paywalled) says it is credible. Rundle called Feeney the Cartman of Labor politics “bumptious, spherical, and obsessively concerned with the management of his Victorian right-wing microfaction.” Any encounter with Feeney for longer than 15 minutes, he says “would have most people praising the PM’s Christ-like restraint in sticking to verbal abuse and not stabbing him through the eyes with a biro, so as to better mash his frontal lobes.”

Rundle may not think highly of Feeney, but his question is valid: why does a micro-faction running number three Senator needs a huge mail allowance? However this point was lost in the scrabble to report the f-bombs. A quick check of Google News has found 437 stories (and growing) pontificating about Rudd’s coarse language and what it means for society.

Perhaps the attention is richly deserved given the freakish nature of his own micro-media management. And yet for a man given to opaqueness, Rudd made his own views “absolutely clear” on this matter: “that is that these entitlements needed to be cut back, and I make no apology for either the content of my conversation or the robustness with which I expressed my views." He is right, the robustness is fine - the real problem lies elsewhere in Rudd’s use of English.

It is the sentences where he is entirely devoid of meaning we should watch. At the Major Economic Forum earlier this year, a journalist asked him a question whether there would be any climate change action coming out of the meeting. The response was classic Rudd: “It is highly unlikely that anything will emerge from the MEF in terms of detailed programmatic specificity”. Of course you can’t afford to be seen attacking the futility of the forum so you retreated to your Yes Minister training to disguise it with gobbledegook.

Rudd is a technocrat so providing mannerism fodder for a generation of comics is a small price to pay for commanding the message. But here is where the problem begins: the real message gets lost in the subterfuge and his ego is too big notice it. Perhaps, like the media, he needs reminding about the two inconvenient facts that are the real major news stories at the moment: The people he leads are the world’s biggest-carbon polluters and his neighbours in the Pacific Islands are drowning.

Instead of these inconvenient truths, we hear him leaking low expectations to the hosts about the December climate summit in Copenhagen. But Copenhagen can’t just be pointless like the Major Economic Forum was – it’s time to hear about some detailed specified programs to save the planet. Rudd is talking down the prospect of a victory for renewable energy because he has been captured by carbon storage. Australia remains locked in high carbon solutions after 20 years of climate change talks. That’s not good enough, Mr Rudd, and if you can’t support Kyoto II, then get out of the way of those who will, just like Howard did. Otherwise we’ll all be as fucked as Senator Feeney.

Nine More Deaths

(Memorial Brigade Hill, Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea by Arthur Chapman)

Parliament was hushed today as Malcolm Turnbull asked PM Kevin Rudd today about the fate of nine Australians among 13 people to die in a plane crash in PNG. While my deepest sympathies go out to the bereaved families concerned, I have to ask why this Dorothy Dixer question was addressed to, and answered by, the Prime Minister of Australia? I appreciate that the proximity of so many deaths to the Kokoda Trail where Australians troops repelled Japan in 1942 gave the crash a hallowed feel. I am also sympathetic to Malcolm Turnbull’s genuine grief around his own father’s similar death. Yet I am not convinced the crash was the question of such national importance it was afforded today. Stephen Smith’s foreign affairs department could have handled this adequately.

If that seems harsh, consider whether Turnbull (or any other parliamentarian) would ever open Question Time calling for a nation to mourn when the next nine people die on Australian roads. He or she wouldn't have to wait long. As the average of almost five deaths a day shows, nine people will probably die in the 48 hours following tomorrow’s likely defeat of the federal government's emissions trading scheme in the Senate.

And unlike the fickle fate that ended the lives of the 13 people in foggy mountains short of a PNG runway, a discussion of the meaning of Australian road statistics is absolutely relevant to what Turnbull and Rudd were supposed to be discussing today. Car driving habits are one of the main reasons Australia’s carbon emissions are 4.5 times the global average, just behind the US. And car deaths are the result of car habits.

This is the selfishness at the heart of our behaviour that our government and opposition seem incapable of addressing. And so while Liberals and Labor alike are noble and bi-partisan in the grief of an overseas accident, neither seem interested in forging an agreement over a coherent and comprehensive response to climate change ahead of the December Copenhagen conference.

There is no point in waiting for that conference to act. As Rudd was (probably deliberately) overheard telling the Danish PM a few weeks ago, Copenhagen won’t change anything. It is likely the Chinese and Indians won’t agree to 50 percent targets by 2050 and can point to the selfish behaviour of western countries like Australia in defence of their own actions. The best Australia can do is take a carbon reduction policy to the table. Such a policy may not be perfect and will likely need fine tuning over the years to come. But it will be a start and it will get companies thinking seriously about the externalities of their actions.

That campaign eventually needs to focus on people as well as companies. There is overwhelming endorsement for action - roughly three out of every four Australians want their politicians to take more action about it. But these people need to be shown they can do something about it too.

According to the ABS, over 80 percent of all Australians journeys are made by car. Australian roads are so crowded it is a miracle that only five people die in accidents every day. It is this culture that Turnbull and Rudd need to change if Australia is to ever get serious about climate change action. In 2005, the transport sector accounted for about 14 per cent of Australia's net greenhouse gas emissions. This means more than just agreeing on a pollution permits scheme (and god knows that is difficult enough) but a concerted campaign to change the way Australians live their stratified lives.

A ban on car ads on television would be a good starting point. Every corporately-funded TV station (including SBS) shows at least one carmaker ad every commercial break seductively selling its wares and these are supplemented by ads for oil companies, tyre makers, and various car accessories. While all these activities are correctly legal (as is smoking) they should be banned from mass media ads as they promote a lifestyle that is increasing bad for people, and bad for the planet. It is also an increasingly arrogant practice. New AAMI research has found that 83 per cent of drivers believe yelling, swearing and gesturing rudely are justifiable responses to traffic indiscretions by other road users. Most drivers blame congestion for blowing their top. The human toll is growing - it is time driving was reined in. How many deaths will it take for Turnbull and Rudd to be bi-partisan about tackling this problem?

Reclaiming Uluru from the Climb: This is Tjukurpa

Creative Commons Photo by Philipp Roth

“You shouldn’t climb. It’s not the real thing about this place. The real thing is listening to everything” Kunmanara, Traditional Owner.

Life might not be about choices but moments often are. I was at Uluru in 2002 and I had the choice to climb up or walk around. I made the decision to go up because I knew I could walk around any time. I did this despite knowing that Uluru is sacred to the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples. They do not want people to climb it as plenty of signs around the base advise. The rock has spiritual significance as the traditional route of the ancestral Mala men on their arrival at Uluru. But they left the ultimate decision to me, the tourist, and expected me to make an informed decision. They asked me - out of education and understanding – to choose to respect their law and culture by not climbing. But despite my education and understanding, I flouted the owners’ wishes and climbed the damn thing anyway. I did it because I could. What happens when the owner of anything says to you “I don’t want you to do this but I won’t stop you”? Maybe you think what are the consequences if you do it. And if the consequences don’t seem bad you’ll do it.

So I did it. The climb is dangerous. But you cannot say you haven’t been warned. It is a long and strenuous climb that requires much patience and care especially on the way down when gravity does not work in your favour. The hardest part is right at the end when the chains run out and there is still (or was at least in 2002) ten to twenty metres to get to the bottom. The distance is big enough that if you fell, you probably survive but you’d be a mess. 30 people have died over the years. You had to inch out your way down by picking out each carved out rock. You were watching out for wind gusts. But not for a minute, did I expect the owners to make it any safer. If I did die, it would be entirely my own fault. The worst thing was I’d be making things hard on the Anangu. They have a traditional duty to safeguard visitors to their land and feel great sadness when a person dies or is hurt. The view of Centralia from the top was great but not sensational enough to have earned it.

Now I’ve done it I’ve no intention of ever doing it again. But it is not like the Haj, something you have to do once in your life. Let’s assume I didn’t have the choice in the first place. I might be pissed off a little I couldn’t climb but would not break the rules to do it. Others too might grumble, but I don’t think many people would break the law to climb it. The few that did would simply prove the efficacy of the law. It certainly wouldn’t have stopped many from coming out here to admire this astonishing monolith. There is also a good environmental case to be made that erosion from tourist damage is changing the face of the rock. Uluru is made from sedimentary rock called arkose sandstone which has been eroding for 300 million years. So that means it is bloody resistant. But yet again human impact, this time through weathering and urine, is starting to take its toll.

Given that the law to ban outright seems useful on a number of levels, the question is what would be lost if no-one could climb Uluru? Would people stop coming? More than 300,000 people visit Uluru national park each year. It is the prospect of collapse in these numbers that saw the Prime Minister fall short of supporting the move to ban climbing. The land formerly known as Ayers Rock has been owned by the Pitjantjatjara people since the Hawke Government gave it back in 1985. But the sneaky colonials put in a Hong Kong clause and insisted they give a 99 lease back to the National Parks and Wildlife agency.

The agency combines with the Uluru–Kata Tjuta Board of Management to run the national park that combines Uluru and Kata Tjuta (formerly the Olgas). Two thirds of the board are Anangu and the other third are government. The government has the last word. Last week, a draft management plan for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park issued in both the names of the National Parks and board issued its vision for Uluru and Kata Tjuta for the next ten years. They explained what cultural behaviour was driving the changes. “The Uluru–Kata Tjuta landscape is and will always be a significant place of knowledge and learning. All the plants, animals, rocks, and waterholes contain important information about life and living here now and for all time. Anangu grandparents and grandchildren will always gain their knowledge from this landscape. They will live in it in the proper way. This is Tjukurpa.”

The Anangu phrase Tjukurpa includes many complex but complementary concepts including those of time, religion, morality, the environment and knowledge. There is no single word in English that adequately conveys the complexity of that meaning. It has been distilled over thousands of years into an intimate relationship with the land and its features. It is not the 'Dreamtime' - there is no such word in Anangu language.

(Photo by Michael Pickard) It is Tjukurpa that drives the development and interpretation of Park policy. Tjukurpa prescribes the nature of the relationships between those responsible for the associated landscape, their obligations, and the obligations of those who visit that land. The Draft Plan for 2009-2019 tackled a swag of issues that currently or might affect the National Park. The issues would be informed by the Tjukurpa notions of integrity, respect, honesty, trust, sharing, learning, and working together as equals.

The most contentious item was the suggestion to shut down the climb before the plan expired. A survey of visitors showed that although one in three make the climb, the vast majority of visitors (98 per cent) would return even if it was banned. The Director of National Parks Peter Cochrane said the Uluru area was confronting the impacts of climate change and invasive species. But he was also interested in tourists. “We also need to think beyond the global economic crisis to longer term visitor travel patterns - who are our next generation of visitors? What experiences are they are seeking and what can we offer?” he asked. So the question for Cochrane was if they do close the climb for safety, environmental and cultural reasons what alternative experiences should we offer. He asked for feedback to the plan by 4 September.

The problem was that the proposal immediately became politicised. When Federal Minister Peter Garrett supported it, the Opposition rushed out to condemn it. On Wednesday Garrett’s shadow Greg Hunt issued a media release saying “Rudd must not close Uluru climb." Visitors from around Australia and the world would be stopped from "completing the majestic and exhilarating journey,” said Hunt. And why was that a problem, necessarily? Because it comes at a time, he said, when “Australia’s tourism industry is facing massive challenges from the global financial crisis”. Hunt made a ludicrous claim: “Big Brother was coming to Uluru to slam the gate closed on an Australian tourism icon, the climb.”

Hunt recovered enough dignity to call Uluru an Indigenous treasure but said the climb was a matter of enabling “informed consent”. The Shadow Minister got his own consent with a Government climbdown two days later. On Friday he was able to gleefully report this as “Rudd Over-Rules (sic) Garrett on Uluru Climb”. Hunt is wrong about Uluru as is Rudd in rising to the bait. Consent to climb relies precisely on being ill-informed.

The simplest solution is to ban it. Not only would culture, safety and environmental issues disappear in an instance, but the economic issue is also furphy - the recession has nothing to do with it. Given the survey results and creative talents of the Australian tourism industry, it should be possible to answer “will 300,000 still keep coming?” in the positive without the lure of the climb. Don’t make us wait till 2084 for Tjukurpa. The tourist industry has ten years to work out a plan. Get cracking.

Forgetting Papua New Guinea

There is a common presumption often mentioned around Anzac Day that the Japanese did not invade Australia in World War II. This is not entirely true. Japanese troops landed in Buna-Gona on 21 July 1942 with the intention of taking Port Moresby. Buna-Gona, Port Moresby and Kokoda, where they were stopped by Australian soldiers and local stretcher bearers known as fuzzy wuzzy angels, have been part of the independent nation of Papua New Guinea since 1975. But in 1942, they was still part of a colony administrated by civil servants sent there by Canberra. The northern part where the Japanese landed was formerly German New Guinea which Billy Hughes won for Australia in the 1919 Versailles talks. The lower half was British New Guinea which was re-named Papua in 1904. But many still forget that Australia was the de facto ruler of Papua and New Guinea for much of the 20th century.

Forgetfulness is a common response to Australia’s closest neighbour. Few Australians go there and the country rarely gets a run in the Australian media. So it was when the country’s Prime Minister Michael Somare appeared in Canberra yesterday to talk to the local metropolitan power, he was mostly ignored. According to Richard Farmer at Crikey, the ABC did not even mention Somare's name when Rudd was giving a military award to the fuzzy wuzzy angels. And he was treated worse last time when he was asked to remove his shoes for an airport security check.

At least this time he did speak to the Prime Minister. Kevin Rudd does not ignore PNG and Port Moresby was one of his earliest overseas stops as PM in March 2008. Yet even Rudd still felt the need to play big brother and tell Somare yesterday that he was not spending Australian aid money wisely. Australia supplies 20 per cent of the nation’s budget worth over $300 million a year.

While Somare defended current practice saying no one starved in his country, Rudd said too much aid was “consumed by consultants” and not enough given to teachers, builders and health workers in villages across the country. But Rudd too, was forgetting something. As Somare told him, Papua New Guinea is a village society. “When one village is poor, the other village helps,” he said. The majority of Papua New Guinea's population is still dependent on agriculture. While PNG makes a lot of money from mineral deposits like oil, gold, and copper, it remains reliant on World Bank aid and support from Australia to survive.

But the indelible influence of Australia on PNG is more than just monetary, it has also left its cultural mark over the decades. Back when PNG was still a colony, Australia was responsible for the census. In the 1950s, the census takers found the hill tribes were changing under Australian influence. They saw that cloth clothing was replacing bark skirts and sporrans and young male initiation no longer involved braiding bark strips in their hair and smearing their bodies with pig grease. Nose piercing with cassowary bones and ritualised cannibalism was also on the way out.

And while Papua New Guinea remains today the most linguistically complex country in the world with 860 languages, many of them are endangered. English is one of only three official languages (the creole languages tok pisin and motu are the others) and the only language of government and the education system. It also has many imported western problems such as car-jacking, firearms offences, robbery, violence, rape and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS is central to one of the new initiatives announced in Canberra yesterday. Rugby league is the nation’s biggest sport and one of PNG’s biggest uniting factors. Rudd gave Somare $20 million for a national rugby league competition. Somare wanted league development to boost school attendance and help with HIV/AIDS awareness. The long-term view would also be to integrate the competition into Australia's rugby league.

Somare continued his visit to Australia today mostly away from the media glare. AAP reported he toured Victoria's firefighting nerve centre during a visit to Melbourne. Victorians owe a debt of graitude to Somare who donated $1 million to the Victorian bushfire appeal on behalf of his country. He said PNG did not experience fires on that scale, but wanted to show its support anyway. “We thought it was a gesture to support the Australian people because they normally, in our bad times, they always come for our support,” he said. Even if most of the time Australians forget they do.

Nation building and cash in a cart: Rudd sells his stimulus package

Kevin Rudd began the hard sell of his economic stimulus package yesterday by inviting political and business leaders to Canberra over the next few days to work through his timetable. The plan will also face a tricky time through the Senate as Malcolm Turnbull announced that the Coalition will vote against the mix of cash handouts and capital proposals. The Australian Treasury predicts that the $42 billion stimulus package will increase growth by 0.5 per cent this year and 0.75 next year.

The Age’s economic correspondent Peter Martin prefers to call it a mini-budget rather than a stimulus package. Martin says the term mini-budget fell out of favour after it acquired a pejorative meaning and became associated with crisis during the Whitlam government. Malcolm Turnbull has attempted to resurrect the label Whitlamite in his criticism of the proposal. It was a theme picked up by Stephen Mayne in Crikey today (the article is unfortunately behind Crikey’s paywall). He says Rudd is imperilling his government “by embarking on an extraordinarily reckless policy prescription which appears to be motivated by the base political considerations of wedging Malcolm Turnbull.”

Rudd has already been very active in selling (and in the case of his article in The Monthly, pre-selling) his package. He struck a sombre note in his address to the nation yesterday as he offered a “stark choice” for Australia: Act now to reduce the impact on the economy, families and jobs. Or fold your arms and allow the free market to run its course.” But the choices were not as stark as the Prime Minister makes them out to be. And there are worse longer-term problems to face than a recession that might last a year or two. But where was the address to the nation when the Garnaut Report was released? Where was the multi-billion dollar package to do serious R&D into non-carbon based energy solutions?

These are rhetorical questions, of course. Governments are just elected for three years and electability is all about what attractive policies you can place in front of your constituency. Large scale environmental action is not yet considered a compulsory part of nation building. Even the Greens acknowledge this when they say they will work with the government and take a “constructive approach” to the legislation. They warn however, it won’t get a straightforward tick of approval. “It would be abrogating of the Senate's responsibility to taxpayers if it were to pass $42 billion worth of legislation with little more than a day's scrutiny,” said the Greens statement today.

But most of the commentariat seemed to accept the package with reservations. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher said the state is taking over the task of generating economic growth “while capitalism recuperates”. Michelle Grattan in The Age calls the package ‘a diverse mix of so called "nation-building" and cash tossed out of the cart.’ She also said the new package makes the October $10 billion stimulus look modest. But that did have consumer spending effect. Analysis from Hitwise suggests that the winners from October’s package were those in the electronics sector which saw a huge growth in web traffic in Christmas 2008 compared to a year earlier.

The big winner this time round is the insulation industry. The insulation grant was one of the surprising aspects taking out the 10 percent of the total package ($3.7 billion). While on face value, this sounds an environmental friendly scheme. Joshua Gans finds several flaws with the detail of the proposal. Firstly, he believes that high prices in an uncompetitive market will mean most households will reach the $1,600 cap per home. Secondly, the $200 energy saving per year will be marginal, and thirdly the emissions savings may have the opposite effect of relaxing the Emissions Trading Scheme cap. Because it is policy, Gans writes, the social benefit might not actually be realised if emissions increase elsewhere. “So there is more work to be done here to guarantee that this is a socially effective policy intervention,” he concludes. It is certainly effective for the insulation industry itself. CSR’s share price went up 10 percent overnight as they expect a spike in demand for its Bradford batts business.

One of the few commentators to question the responsibility of the package on consumption grounds was Graham Young (interestingly, an avowed climate change sceptic). At Ambit Gambit, Young argues that the whole economic debate is centred on a number of fallacies. Not only are recession and unemployment unavoidable, but Young also questions whether consumer spending is actually a good thing. Young believes that the era of conspicuous consumption must end and the stimulus package merely continues the binge. “We have larger houses, and they are filled with more and better furniture than ever before, with more and better cars sitting in the driveway for their owners to use when they aren't on holidays,” he said. “The government pretends this can continue when it can't.”

But perhaps Young is wrong about where the money is going. The financial market expects gambling companies to do well from the spree with Tabcorp rising 28c to $4.26 and Crown up 13c to $5.57. No one is quite so prepared to put money on whether Rudd’s own gamble will be successful.

Why I'll be watching the senate

This article of mine was originally posted at Getup's new and sexy Project Democracy. Kudos to Jason Wilson for his terrific work on the site.

+++

When parliament resumes in the new term, the television cameras will be trained to the Lower House dispatch box to capture the ten second grabs of wisdom emerging from the mouths of Kevin Rudd and Brendan Nelson (or whoever replaces that Dead Man Walking). Yet the real drama of the next parliamentary session will be happening in the purple chamber where a changing of the guard gives the new Senate an unpredictable make-up.

As of 1 July, the Coalition finally tipped over the poisoned chalice of its majority, the Democrats lost all their seats, and Labor will now be relying on a rainbow coalition of Greens, social conservatives and single-issue independents to push through their legislation. Fraught with hazard as the need to negotiate is, even John Howard might now admit it is no bad thing.

As Harry Evans wrote, only in a non-Government controlled Senate are the classic parliamentary functions of legislation, inquiry, and accountability exercised to any great extent. But from 2004 to 2007 the Upper House was merely an echo chamber. The Liberals used their majority to throttle debate to the extent that in their final year, the Senate passed less than one percent of all non-Government amendments. Their untrammelled power brought about hubris, and eventually their own demise. Kevin Rudd will have watched and learned.

Already, he is speaking in code to the new South Australian maverick Nick Xenophon by launching an independent water audit of the Murray-Darling Basin. Rudd;s own social conservatism may also yet find a sympathetic soul mate in Family First's Steve Fielding. And the Greens, while likely to grumble about the speed of Labor's reform, won't seriously tamper with the core direction.

The minor parties may also serve the useful function of bringing down some of Labor's more fanciful election promises, such as the oversold Fuel Watch, without the accompanying problem of having to justify why it won't be implemented. It also means Labor will need to negotiate every scrap of their agenda with the independents including some unpalatable amendments along the way. Some might complain about the Senate's "unrepresentative swill" ignoring a "mandate to govern" but this is parliamentary procedure as it should be. In any case, Rudd's favourable opinion polls gives him a big stick of a double dissolution threat if too many carrots of vested interests stick in his throat.

2020 Summit wraps up: the closing speeches

Kevin Rudd has ended the 2020 Summit final plenary session with a call for action after confessing he didn’t want the “angst” of waking up in 2020 having not done enough to change the country. He will hope that the initial report he was presented with this afternoon will give him a good night’s sleep in the years to come. Tax overhaul, a bill of rights, streamlining state-federal regulations, incentives for renewable industries and a dusting off of the republic referendum were some of the key ideas that emerged in the summit’s report. Rudd said the summit was about “energising democracy” and it was characterised by good humour, mutual respect and Australian directness.

Certainly delegate James Houston showed that directness when he briefly invaded the main stage this morning before being ejected. Houston complained his ideas at the rural session were not treated seriously yesterday. But today Rudd said the summit had lived up to the three tasks he set for it. It produces plans for the long term, generated new ideas and directions, and explored new approaches to governance.

Despite Houston’s antics, the defining image of the summit may well be the one of Rudd photographed through a sea of legs, seated on the floor of the economics session and listening intently. The Australian Financial Review’s chief political writer Laura Tingle told ABC2 it was great to have the Prime Minister listening to all these ideas. “And him sitting on the floor - you never saw John Howard do that” she said. She said the great thing about this summit was that it “wasn’t just about men in suits” before apologising to her suited ABC male interviewer.

The interviewer wasn’t the only troubled media personage at the summit. Co-chair Glyn Davis introduced the closing session with a lament from the media about their challenge to convey to their audiences that the summit was worthwhile. One media executive complained to Davis and asked him “can’t you get them to move around or something…they’re just sitting there talking.” But of course that was what it was all about, and while it was never riveting television, it was very useful policy work and has generated a number of new ideas while polishing up old ones that the Rudd administration can now work with. The initial report is now available in either word or pdf format.

The closing session featured a brief rundown from the ten stream leads and their political counterparts. The first to speak were the leaders of the productivity agenda, Warwick Smith and Julia Gillard. Smith said that the Prime Minister’s idea of opening "one-stop-shops" for children where immunisations, child care and other services could be delivered had plenty of merit. He called it the “parents and children’s centre”. Their other big ideas included “learning for life” lifetime accounts, and promoting the idea of “golden gurus” using the skills and capacities of older Australians. Smith concluded by saying that one national curriculum would be “major achievement”. Gillard briefly noted that education can change the nation’s life. “It isn’t an optional extra,” she said. “It isn’t something we should do its something we must do”.

Next to speak were the Indigenous challenges chairs, Jackie Huggins and Jenny Macklin. Huggins said she was buoyed by the national apology and now wanted to see formal recognition so they could go on to have parity with other Australians. She wanted a new bipartisan dialogue, a new independent organisation with “accountability and service delivery for government” and a focus on education especially in early childhood. Macklin agreed that early childhood learning was crucial. She supported alternative schooling arrangements such as hostels and boarding schools. She wanted an Aboriginal healing fund that “recognised the horror of alcohol and drug abuse”.

David Morgan and Wayne Swan then spoke for the economics session. Morgan said Australia needed to create a national economy supported by seamless regulation. He said we needed to change the 19th century federal model and he proposed a federal-state compact with reformed regulation. There would be the first holistic review of taxation for fairness in 25 years. He said there needed to be more streamlined regulations and a reduction of the patchwork of overlapping administrations. He proposed a commission to drive federal reforms, a harmonised and progressive tax system. Swan said that as a country economy we must “get the fundamentals right to create wealth”.

Then Michael Good and Nicola Roxon spoke for Health. Good said their aspirations were to close the infant mortality gap, structure the industry around individuals, more focus on prevention, become a world leader in R&D and promote a unified health system. The session's big ideas included a health equality commission for all groups but focussing on indigenous health, creating a national prevention health agency focussing on alcohol, cigarettes and junk food. There would also be an Asia Pacific regional health partnership to tackle infectious diseases, a plan to make healthy food choices easy using traffic light rating on food. One contentious item was to bank junk food ads and introduce “fast fruit” into schools. Good also promoted the idea of a “bionic eye” (2020 vision by 2020) and an internet “healthbook” modelled on Facebook to share info with trusted people such as doctors, dentists, family and friends. Roxon added they also wanted to introduce the idea of a wellness footprint similar to carbon footprinting to measure impact of lifestyle on health. She also wanted first aid training to all children by volunteers by 2020, an opt-out system for organ donation, health impact statements from other government portfolios and a mandatory half-hour activity in every sedentary job.

Future security and prosperity was then discussed by Michael Wesley and Stephen Smith. Wesley’s ambitions were to foster Australia’s reputation as a effective global citizen, reinvigorate relations in the Asia Pacific region and make the regions major languages and culture familiar to mainstream Australia. Their ideas included a regional literacy program, closer relations with the Pacific microstates and developing energy security forums the major regional economies, and examining emerging security threats such as pandemics, climate change and transnational crime. Smith said he was optimistic Australia could do more as a nation state in the world and could be “effective as a global player, a good international citizen, more engaged in international institutions, [and] observe the international rule of law”.

Roger Beale and Penny Wong presented the ideas for sustainability and climate change. Beale said their brief was to act now to safeguard future prosperity and the ecological environment. We needed to decrease ecological footprint while grow economically. We have Enormous assets, he said, to turn to the challenge of climate change. He wanted the agenda to look a ‘whole of government’ policy, with results backed by audit. We need a national sustainable cities program driving water efficiencies (with pay per use) and supporting public transport and we need to transform our footprint while supporting lower income households. He wanted all new buildings by 2020 to be carbon neutral. Wong said there was an overriding sense of urgency we must act now. There was a brief window of opportunity as a nation to respond, she said.

The future of governance in Australia was presented by John Hartigan and Maxine McKew. To huge applause, Hartigan said their first idea was an Australian republic with a two-phase plebiscite. There would be a new online portal to search for government information and interact with powerbrokers which he called “ourgov.com.” (New Mexico already has the rights to the domain!) Hartigan recommended a bill or charter of rights and open and accountable government. He wanted to strengthen FOI laws and reduce time to release government records. McKew reiterated all this with a vision of what parliament might look like to a new member of Bennelong or “Hartigan” in 2020.

Tim Costello and Tanya Plibersek presented the Strengthening Communities findings. Costello said economies exist for communities not the other way around. He wanted to see an inclusive society that was accessible, supportive, and embraced indigenous social inclusion which he called a “linchpin to a buoyant society”. He wanted a human rights charter or national action plan for social inclusion with key measures he described as a “national development index” which the news could report on the same way as they report the financial news today. He wanted Community hubs and a national co-ordination body for communities. He said we could run the Treasury but “a Costello running treasury might not be such as good idea”. He wanted to fix homelessness by 2020. There would be a voluntary taxing of alcohol to treat services. Plibersek said there needed to be a partnership between government, the community and business to “make us a better nation”.

The rural communities session chairs Tim Fischer and Tony Burke spoke next. Fischer’s rather rambling speech mentioned the need to foster food security in remote and rural regions. He said we needed harmonised regulations to remove wrinkles that add to cost burden to all Australians. There needed to be a response to climate change problems and we need to “chase the water in the north”. There should be updated soil and hydrology studies. Infrastructure must be approached from a national perspective and he recommended people take their holidays in Australia rather than abroad. Burke said we needed to understand the climate change challenges, the export opportunities and be part of a global response to the world food shortages.

The creative Australia session chairs Cate Blanchett, Julianne Schultz and Peter Garrett spoke next. The luminous Blanchett said it was a “dense and galvanising two days”. She said that by 2002 creativity should be central to the nation. She wanted double the creative output by 2020 with a sustainable creative sector, and integration between indigenous and settler perspectives. Schultz praised Blanchett’s ability to be there at all barely days after giving birth. She said Australia needed to boost creativity capability create lifelong learning and commit to new investment models. The industry need financial viability. Creativity in art, she said, was no longer the icing on cake but a key ingredient. She said we needed to bring art into schools, expand mentoring programs, bring visual and performance arts into the national curriculum and create a National Endowment for the Arts. Garrett said it was inconceivable to think of a world without music literacy and the arts and they all build cohesiveness in the community.

Finally Glyn Davis presented the initial 38 page report to the Prime Minister who responded by calling the summit an “extraordinary event”. He categorised the weekend as a “very Australian gathering” filled with “overwhelming optimism”. He cautioned for the need to take command of the future and said the federation needed to be fixed. There needed to be more open government and he highlighted climate change as the “overarching challenge. But as Summit cynic Glenn Milne said today, Rudd’s most immediate challenge will be to cut the “ideas monster” down to size. Nonetheless it was hard not to feel the weekend was useful and if nothing other than to create networks with a thousand of the country’s most talented, it can be judged an immediate success. Whether it has any bearing on the long road to 2020 remains to be seen. But as a rare effort to at least engender some longer term thinking, it must be applauded.

Rudd goes the wrong way on opium

Australian PM Kevin Rudd has failed in his bid to get NATO support for a firm timetable on his Afghan opium eradication strategy. Rudd had called for benchmarking at next year’s summit for the eradication of Afghanistan’s $4 billion opium crop but NATO has not agreed to his timing. At the Bucharest summit NATO had pledged to "continue to support Afghan-led efforts to tackle the narcotics problem". Rudd wanted a more specific outcome and said Britain had backed his call for the elimination strategy to be subjected to annual performance measures analysed each year. During the debate Rudd said that if efforts to reduce opium were not to be subject to measurement, "then I will have something further to say on that".

Rudd will now have his chance to say more as the European NATO leaders rebuffed his specific timetable. The Sydney Morning Herald accuses Rudd of “opiaphobia” and says Rudd should concentrate on “bigger issues”. The SMH defines opiaphobia as the irrational fear of opiate drugs particularly favoured by US politicians, and attributes the term to John Morgan, a professor of pharmacology at the City University of New York. US efforts to reduce the crop have been ineffective and opium production has increased 30 per cent in last 12 months. Opium accounts for half of Afghanistan’s $6 billion GDP and the country produces 93 percent of the world’s opium.

The opium crop had almost eliminated under the rule of the Taliban. But corruption in the post 9/11 administration and the distraction of the continued fighting has seen it come back with a vengeance. About half of the crop is grown in Uruzgan province, where Australia has its troops. Much of Uruzgan is classified by the United Nations as “Extreme Risk / Hostile Environment.” The Taliban effectively controls four-fifths of the province. There the Taliban has now done an about-turn on poppy growing and imposes a 25 per cent tax on the estimated US$1 billion earned by farmers to finance their military campaign.

Because of the dangers on the ground, the US is advocating aerial spraying from the air using chemicals to kill the crop. Washington is now pressuring the Afghan government to agree to aerial spraying of opium crops with the weedkiller glyphosate. But this is no smart bombing exercise. Glyphosate destroys all crops and leaves two million farmers without income. Harvard professor Robert Rotberg says the US is hell-bent on eradication regardless of its disastrous consequences elsewhere. “They claim it worked in Colombia and so will work in Afghanistan,” he said “It is not clear to anyone it worked in Colombia.”

Now the London Senlis Council has promoted an alternative to eradication. It is advocating the use of poppies for medicine. It wants to converts poppies into morphine for the global south. There is a worldwide shortage of morphine. Poppy for Medicine’s strategy involves licensing the controlled cultivation of poppy to produce essential poppy-based medicines such as morphine, and unlicensed poppy cultivation remains a criminal activity. It was established in Turkey in the 1970s as a means of breaking farmers’ ties with the heroin market without resorting to forced poppy crop eradication. Within just four years, this strategy successfully brought the country’s illegal poppy crisis under control.

This could solve Afghanistan’s problem too. Its dilemma is that this crop is vital to the Afghan economy but is at the same time destroying thousands of lives elsewhere. Destroying the crop only makes the situation worse, so the solution is to buy the opium crop from them. Currently there are only four nations in the world allowed to grow opium for morphine production (France, Spain, Turkey & India). 80 percent of the world’s supply is used by just six percent of the world’s population If Afghanistan was added to the list the price of morphine would fall dramatically and end the shortage. It could also end the opiaphobic solutions preferred by Rudd and the Americans.