Rudd and climate change

From somewhere in today's SMH:

Climate change. The first thing Rudd did was sign the Kyoto Protocol. Great symbolism. Then he went to the Bali conference on climate change and promptly reverted to the substance of the Howard position.

I don't want to be the one to say 'I told you so'. And I won't be, either, because I didn't say so. But it doesn't surprise me in the least.

Rudd has that canny combination of knowing what to promise and knowing when to be careful with words and say nothing, while appearing to say something. It will eventually annoy people in the same way that it did with Howard. But not for a little while.

This non-commitment at Bali was undoubtedly a sensible thing, giving Rudd time to decide what he's actually going to do—or not, as the case may be.

Who knows, by 2009 I'm sure the icecaps will have melted anyway—so the experts tell me—and that will be one less policy issue for Big Kev to deal with.

Here's the article. Pretty sensible really (code for: I agree with it).

Paul Sheehan on the Greens

Here. He writes

I would have voted Green in a heartbeat if it was a truly environmental party. Instead, it is a sly party which uses the green brand to expend the bulk of its political capital on George Bush, East Timor, West Papua, gays' rights, drug laws, refugees and numerous issues that have little to do with climate change, global warming and water shortages.

Not to mention euthanasia. What's green about that?

Why the Liberals lost

Ross Gittins thinks it was Work Choices.

When there is close to full employment, individual contracts are likely to be favourable to workers and even better than award. When unemployment increases, the workers are over a barrel in negotiation. Howard recognized this and responded too late with a fairness test—so the voters punished the government accordingly.

Other questions of honesty and decency in public life are also addressed in Gittins' article. I agree with him when he says this:

I believe standards of honesty and decency fell under Howard. They were hardly very high under his Labor predecessors, but they declined further under a man who, to all outward appearance, radiated respectability. He was a tricky man, leaving you with a certain impression but then later protesting that you had failed to read his lawyerly words carefully enough.

How many times were we misled? There were the non-core promises, the children overboard, the Tampa (which, for all Howard's ministers knew, may have been carrying terrorists), the weapons of mass destruction and the probably illegal invasion of Iraq, the AWB scandal (which no minister had any knowledge of) and the promise to keep interest rates at record lows.

Howard was never told and so was never responsible. The buck always stopped elsewhere. As to decency, we had the brutal treatment of asylum seekers, the trampling of the legal rights of David Hicks and others, the shameful treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef.

The Howard Government ruled by fear and behind-the-scenes bullying of bureaucrats, journalists, business economists and business people. It raised the abuse of incumbency to new heights, especially taxpayer-funded market research and political advertising.

In all these things, it had two standard defences: first, you may care but the electorate does not and, second, our Labor predecessors did it, too.

I would like to believe this election shows that, in the end, the electorate does care about declining standards of public morality.

Another immigration bungle

This time, a man was wrongfully detained for five-and-a-half years (The Melbourne Age has a fuller version of the same story here). I saw the story of this on Lateline last night, and it was heartbreaking. The man, Tony Tran, was shunted around four different immigration centres over the period while his marriage broke up and his son was placed into foster care. The immigration department at one stage tried to get the son out of Australia and placed into the Korean welfare system. It was just bungle after bungle.

And Mr Tran still doesn't have permanent residency, so could be deported at any time.

I hear many stories that involve similar bungling and hard-heartedness on the part of Immigration and they make me very angry about our current policy and treatment of asylum seekers. To then see election slogans around like 'A strong economy is the centre of everything' makes me less likely rather than more to support a government that comes up with such a mantra while treating weak people in the way it does.

Costello vs Rudd

That's what it is now really.

Peter Costello may give a better account of himself under the spotlight than he has as the man in the photos as a smirking sidekick. His debating skills and his command of detail and policy are impressive.

Bennelong

And the really big thing is that the Prime Minister won't even win Bennelong.

From this report:

Sucking on a cigar, Downer presided. The Foreign Minister opened by saying the Prime Minister had asked him to get their opinions. He told the group that Howard had concerns about whether he could win the forthcoming federal election, and concerns about whether he could hold his seat of Bennelong. The Prime Minister wanted the matter resolved as soon as possible, said Downer, according to participants.

The meeting ran for about two hours but this opening statement struck the group's collective confidence with the force of an incoming howitzer shell.

The polling in this area (I'm in Bennelong) has shown him to be behind Maxine McKew for months.

One of my personal worries: What is Rudd's policy on mandatory detention of asylum seekers? I'm not aware that it's any different from the government's. But perhaps the next immigration minister will be able to bring in something more humane.

John Howard resigns

No. But he should have. The election is unwinnable and he is just prolonging the pain.

Howard said that he would go when the party told him it was time to go. So he asked, and they told him, and now he's still here.

Seems this is another 'non-core' promise. But people don't like being lied to, and this really is the end. Howard will be gone by the end of the year.