Beattie will give a press conference at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time. I’ll do a post after I’ve heard it with some preliminary analysis. Will be interesting to see how the public wears an election being called right in the middle of their summer holiday. On the assumption that nothing will really start properly in the campaign until after the Australia Day holiday that leaves an incredibly short campaign of one and a half weeks.
I’ll have to admit this caught me more or less by surprise, but at least one candidate seems to have known (apart from the Premier). Liberal Bruce Flegg advised his campaign supporters of the date yesterday!

As I announced here , BCC Councillor Margaret de Wit withdrew as a candidate in the Ryan preselection. It was reported in the Courier Mail this morning.
The interesting part of the Courier Mail report was its second last paragraph “Cr Catalbiano rejected Cr de Wit’s accusations about unfair delays, saying the preselection ballot could be held only after the list of eligible voters in that electorate had been prepared”. The problem for Caltabiano is that the Queensland Electoral Act 1992 and the Liberal Party’s constitution require that the list be prepared before the date for close of preselection nominations, not after.
The Queensland Liberal Party has a long record of incompetence in managing its own affairs in accordance with the laws, having in recent years lost a number of court cases. The height of this incompetence actually occurred most recently with the preselection for Moggill when the Party President wanted to take himself and the State Council to court to see whether they had acted properly. He successfully convinced the State Council to pass a motion to this effect. On this occasion he was saved from himself by the intervention of State Parliamentary Leader Bob Quinn who convened a further State Council meeting to overturn the original decision, but Caltabiano persisted.
This matter did get to court when the unsuccessful candidate, Russell Galt, filed a suit and the party funded him. In a bizarre departure from the usual order of things, Galt sued the successful candidate, Bruce Flegg, even though Flegg had nothing to do with the decision that Galt was contesting. This is akin to one tennis player suing another tennis player for a linesman’s call. So, in a roundabout way, the party did indeed sue itself.
In another twist, Galt’s case partly rested on the ineligibility of one of the delegates. She had not been a member of the party long enough to qualify to participate in the preselection (you have to be a member for 12 months Cl 136). He had good reason to know about this voter because she had been driven to the meeting specifically to vote for him. This has led others in the party to question the integrity of HQ records, afterall, they were the basis in the first palce for allowing the woman to vote.
The Ryan preselection will intensify those questions. Caltabiano’s response to the Courier implies that he cannot produce a list not just of current party members, but of those who were members twelve months ago. What sort of records does he maintain and what sort of Party? New State Director Geoff Green seems to have a lot of house keeping in front of him.

Michael Johnson can enjoy his holidays a little more this Christmas. Councillor Margaret de Wit has today announced that she is withdrawing from the preselection contest for Ryan. As per my previous post that means that Steven Huang is the only challenger to sitting member Johnson.
de Wit pulled out after being threatened that if she persisted with her challenge she would be disendorsed. The Liberal Party State Council can cancel the endorsement of a candidate if “in the opinion of State Council such cancellation…is desirable in the interests of the Party.” Clause 143. To do so they need 75% of those attending the meeting voting in favour with a minimum quorum of 50% plus one of members entitled to attend. The Sicilian faction probably has the numbers to do this. And if they did, they would almost certainly use a “Special Preselection” and the “Vetting Committee” to ensure that de Wit could not reapply for her position as well as disenfranchising her local branch members by ensuring that they couldn’t vote for her.
That is the theory. But having the power is one thing, doing it is another. If they had disendorsed de Wit it would have destroyed the Brisbane City Council campaign. She would still be the candidate, and would still have contested the election. This would have meant that at an election where the Liberals have their best chance for 17 years of wresting the council from Labor they would be seen to be divided and squabbling and unfit to govern. They would also have liberated de Wit to run as an independent Liberal candidate against Johnson when the election came around. This is a position from which she would have been more likely to defeat him than at a preselection. Although one must assume that Johnson’s preselection was not assured, or none of this pressure would have been applied to de Wit in the first place, it would have been an even bigger risk for the ruling faction to proceed with a disendorsement. The threat was therefore most likely a bluff.
Which brings me back to Steven Huang. Huang is less likely to beat Johnson than de Wit and both he and de Wit really needed the other in the running to maximize the attendance at the preselection and minimize Johnson’s first preference vote. At this stage I do not think he can win, although I will put the ryder on it that it is hard to tell how well entrenched Johnson is as the hierarchy is illegally restricting access to actual membership figures.
de Wit’s withdrawal has unfortunate repercussions in internal and external Liberal Party politics. Whether or not she was a factional candidate, her withdrawal will be seen as a reversal for the Tucker Carroll alliance and a huge boost for the Sicilian faction. It will also accentuate the view in the community that the Liberal Party is a moribund organization only concerned with sharing up the spoils between themselves of an increasing spoilt cake.
It also draws attention northwards toward Fisher and the contested preselection of Peter Slipper. And even further north where Peter Lindsay faces a challenge in Herbert which is widely believed to be a strike by the Sicilians in retaliation against the Ryan and Fisher challenges to their boys.

The outstanding success so far of Democrat presidential hopeful and Governor of Vermont Howard Dean has been the biggest story in US politics since the rise of the new conservative push that put Ronald Reagan into office. Indeed, in a way it was that development – which the Democrats have been slow to respond to – that caused Dean’s success.
Dean is of course not yet the Democrat candidate, but it looks now like only Gephardt or Clarke could stop him. Richard Gephardt, a long-standing congressman who ran for president sixteen years ago, is the best chance for the Democrat establishment, while Wesley Clarke is an ex-general who can’t quite make up his mind what he is politically.
Dean has flummoxed everyone by his radical approach. Although hardly leftwing, his staunch and early opposition to the war in Iraq identified him as being outside the usual parameters of political debate in the US. Furthermore, he has created a new form of fund-raising based on the Internet which negated the power of the Democrat Party to discipline him through withholding funds. As a by-product of this new fundraising system Dean brings ordinary supporters into his campaign in an active way, so they feel like they ‘own’ his campaign.
The thing is that as Dean has emerged as the front runner the Democrats have repositioned themselves to take on Dean in an ‘anyone but Dean’ solidarity. This is so destructive of what looks likely to be the Democrat candidate that many people have wondered whether the Democrats would rather have Bush than Dean as president.
Which brings us to the whole question of political parties in the US. America, mostly, has historically had only two major parties that basically fight for the government, and there have been real differences between them in the past. But if the two parties are now so aligned that one would sabotage the chances of its own radical candidate, is that really a two-party system, or a national political management apparatus? If this is the case, then the two-party political system is essentially a con against the electorate.
It should be said that Pat Buchanan made similar charges against the Republican Party during his various campaigns. In particular there have been claims that the Republican leaders have tried hard to keep the radical Christian right out of power in the GOP.
Dean’s campaign and his success are largely a result of the conservative/right project began under Ronald Reagan, continued on by Bush I and, after a hiatus while Clinton was (a very conservative) president, by Bush II. Bush II is the most divisive US President in modern times, and he has generated a big backlash. The people who form the core of this backlash found no effective representation in the centre/right candidates that the Democrat establishment wanted to foist on them, and so they have got behind Dean.
For various reasons, the Republicans and the conservative/right generally face real problems in the US. For instance, they have not been able to install a new global governance regime based on US military power, which looked so possible after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even Iraq, fatally wounded after Gulf Wars I and II, has been a much bigger bite to swallow than the Neo-cons thought. Then there is climate change, which must be addressed sooner or later by global cooperation, and which will greatly affect the US energy sector which mostly (unlike its European counterpart) has not shifted to a new strategy mindful of global warming, and which sits at the heart of the Republican corporate base. And finally, the basic demographics of the US are changing as ethnic minorities, in particular Latin-Americans, are greatly expanding in number and influence.
So the future could well belong to the Democrats. But will it be a relatively left/progressive Democrat party, or one slightly to the left of an increasingly conservative/right Republican Party? Dean’s progress may well say a lot about how things will go. Indeed, if the Democrat establishment does stymie such a popular candidate, it might bring on the creation of an entirely new left/progressive party in the US.

Every government and opposition needs its Lilleys and Thompsons. Hawke had men like Keating and Walsh, Howard had Reith and now Abbott, Latham has Wayne Swan. These are people who can create mayhem by the way they bowl issues up to the opposition. Sometimes they have to be able to create them when they don’t exist in the first place. They can be devastating, but only when they are on target.
Swan’s latest effort has gained him a lot of media exposure, but it is more likely to add to the Howard run-score than take wickets. I’ve tried hard to find the original press release anywhere on the web, but I’ve failed. (Memo to Wayne, you need to update your website). In fact, looking at the number of issues he has covered, I suspect that there are a number of press releases. So what I am about to write is reconstructed from what I’ve heard and read over the weekend, but without necessarily having the direct quotes, and I’m just going to concentrate on a few of the things he’s raised. For those wanting a more complete feel for what Swan has said you might want to click here , here and here.
The gist of the Swan argument is that Australians were worse off under Howard in the year 2001/2002 to the tune of $150 to $430 per annum and this is due to the Howard government’s tax and welfare policies, including the GST. He was lucky that the original batsman at the crease was Kay Patterson, who just prodded at the ball. Other Ministers (such as Nick Minchin) are lining up to try Swan’s line and length, and it is unlikely to work for him.
Here are four reasons why he shouldn’t bowl these deliveries:

• When the government gave Australian families a tax cut of $3 to $10 Swan and others ridiculed it as being too small to make any difference (helped by Amanda Vanstone’s crack about the price of a hamburger). Note how closely the figure Swan is talking about equates to the tax cut. Either $3 to $10 a week is a significant figure or it isn’t.
• Labor’s record in increasing real incomes is woeful. Under the Hawke Keating accord real wages actually stagnated. Pay conditions of ordinary Australians were essentially sacrificed to beat inflation, to redistribute “the cake” to company profits, and maintain the hegemony of the ACTU and the major trade unions. That’s one reason Keating was tossed so decisively from office in 1996. It might be 8 years ago, but it will still have a resonance with a large portion of the electorate and confirm them in their 1996 voting pattern.
• This is a selective use of figures, choosing the time frame that best suits Swan. This invites someone to look at the whole of the period of office of John Howard and start an argument about “lies, damned lies and statistics”. As long as people are feeling happy (and strong real estate markets and consumer demand suggest that they are) you can’t win an argument like this, only reinforce existing prejudices. The existing prejudice is that Labor governments aren’t good economic managers.
• GST. One of my favourite examples of a slick non-sequitur used as an effective political slogan is “Jobs not GST”. I’ve always understood that Wayne Swan came up with this phrase. Even if he didn’t he used it relentlessly throughout 1992 and 1993, and it was successful. But Wayne, that’s 10 years ago. Life has moved on. We have had a GST since July 2000 and most of us don’t think about it any more, and certainly no-one believes that any government, Liberal or Labor, will repeal it.

It might be tempting to exploit the lack of competing news stories at this time of the year to score some easy mentions in the newspapers, but only if you have your longer-term strategy worked out. Otherwise you risk setting bad and damaging precedents for the rest of the year as well as giving your opponents some easy runs. Labor needs to set the scene for its conference at the end of this month, and negotiate the right results through it. It’s not yet the right time to be breasting up to the Government. In fact, as Labor is going to have to reconcile factions pushing for more government expenditure on services on one hand and bigger tax cuts on the other, this innings probably needs a spin bowler rather than a fast one.

Let us be unequivocal about this: the millions of people who marched against the war in Iraq were right. There probably never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after Gulf War II, Iraq did not threaten the US or any other nation, and Saddam Hussein had no real connections with El Quaida.
The invasion of Iraq was at best a distraction from the fight against international terrorism and has in fact created a new cause and operational location for terrorists. Just as ‘terrorists’, including Osama Bin Laden, flocked to Afghanistan to kill Russians, now they go to Iraq to kill Americans. And young American men and women – too many of them poor, black and Chicano – pay the price, along with Iraqi men, women and children.
Of course the world is better off without Saddam in power, but the US and Britain should not have helped put him there in the first place and then materially supported his bellicosity – conveniently directed at Iran for a while. Furthermore, there should be in place a global governance system to deal with dangers like WMD proliferation under rules that are consistent and fair.
Oh, and a question for John Howard, who says Australians have ‘moved on’ from the war. Will we have a moving memorial for all those killed and wounded in the Iraqi war, just like we did for the victims of the Bali bombing from which we did not hurriedly ‘move on’?
This is not just a matter of left or right, or even right or wrong, it is a simple matter of truth and lies. No modern society can continue to function if the level of deceit by authorities gets too high. If Howard, Bush and Blair continue in office after the lies they have told, it says volumes about where the nations they lead are headed.

At last some real cricket again! I mean, what kind of game goes on uninterrupted for a whole working week without a result?
And what a great contest it was at the MCG last night. These are two well-matched sides (and Zimbabwe is just here to make up the numbers). India has a great batting line up, a good pace attack and a very good spinner while Australia has a very good batting line up, a good pace attack, and, after decades of having none (if you exclude Healey and Gilchrist, two pretty handy keeper-batsmen), suddenly two class all-rounders in Symonds and Harvey .
With McGrath and Warne out of the side it becomes clear how much Australia’s one day and test success has been built on team balance. Without them, the Indians’ batting is a real strength, placing the Australian batting under much more pressure.
One day cricket is a decidedly more frenetic game and perfectly suited to athletes like Andrew Symonds who seems to have worked out his limitations but plays with the same energy. Young Michael Clarke looks to be a fantastic prospect, at least as good as Ricky Ponting was a decade ago. He bats and fields as well as Ponting did, bowls a bit and the ball follows him around in the field. He’s also as cute as a bunny, and knows it, so I just hope he remembers it’s about the game. He’ll be subject to enormous pressures from the media.
The media love these one day games. They are cheap, exciting spectacles (thanks largely to the huge, noisy crowds, who pay to get in) and ideal for TV. Of course, the level of advertising is extreme. At one point, in addition to the between-overs ads and ubiquitous sponsorship logos, there were ads between each ball. But these were Channel 9 promotions, which I don’t think they think are ads at all. Ha! Just because the ads are spoken by Richie Benaud in his driest tones doesn’t mean they’re not ads.
Speaking of Richie – who resembles more and more a puppet from “The Thunderbirds” – his comments are becoming increasingly oblique. They usually centre on the need for more ‘discipline’, just as Ian Chappell’s are usually concerned with the need for a display of what the Mexicans call ‘cojones’. It’s often hard to see quite how these exhortations relate to how players bat, bowl and field. Fortunately, the new generation of commentators, especially Mark Taylor and Ian Healey, tend to focus more on the cricket itself.
But back to the ads. The one I did like was the ‘fessing up by Which Bank, thanks to a court order, over misrepresentations in it advertising. Nooooo – it can’t be true! This came as a terrible shock to me and has left me utterly distraught. If you can’t trust a bank, who can you trust?

This direct email (Word Doc 80 kb) from the Clark 04 Campaign came across my email intray today. It’s Madonna “rooting” (caution, US English language usage here) for General Wesley Clark, who is one of the front-runners in the Democratic Primaries.
This is not a gambit I’d recommend here in Australia, or at least not the way it is executed in this instance, and I’m unsure how well it would really work in the US. In principle, using the Internet to send out material promoting your candidate is a good idea, but just as with any other communication, if it isn’t properly designed and targetted, it’s a waste of time. On the ‘net it’s not as much a waste of money as it is when you send a direct mail piece, but it’s a waste of valuable personal capital.
Madonna’s message has a design problem. Many email systems, even in large companies and the government sector, cannot cope with html, and all these photos chew up bandwidth, which is a problem for those who use dial-up modems (i.e. 95% or so of your target market).
Then there are the message problems. For starters, what demographic is Clark targetting? With an endorsement from Madonna you could presumably say good-bye to any family values campaigning. Then there is the cognitive dissonance involved in “The Material Girl” saying “They [our current government] suffer from the ‘what’s in it for me?’ syndrome.” So Madonna’s renounced selfish living?
And what exactly does she mean when she says “I want my children to grow up with the same opportunities that I had”? Is Wes Clark guaranteeing every US adolescent the right to sleazy photo shoots and bedding Warren Beatty? No, apparently the opportunities are “to know and understand what’s going on in the world and to travel that world safely and with pride.” If these are core campaign messages, I think Clark could be in trouble – I can’t think that too many focus group participants spontaneously mention them as key issues in determining their vote. But then I should have known that when I saw the slogan in the top left corner “New American Patriotism”. Sounds a bit like “New Coke”. (And I’ll tell you a funny story about that one day).
The piece could also do with a decent editor. The language is vaguely antique. When was the last time you heard someone say “is it not”? It also uses the wrong word at least once. “Our greatest risk is a lack of leadership, a lack of honesty and a complete lack of consciousness.” “Consciousness”? Ronald Reagan might have Alzheimers but he’s no longer in the White House, or are they inferring that George W is back on the turps? Surely they meant “conscience”.
The final reason it wouldn’t work in Australia is encapsulated in this sentence: “Not only as a ‘celebrity’, but as an American citizen and as a mother.” Celebrity endorsements don’t work here. One of the reasons the Republican Movement lost the referendum campaign was because they ran a celebrity campaign. And they will work even worse if the celebrities are so under-confident that they feel the need not only to point out that they are celebrities, but that they might have some characteristics (US citizen and mom in this case) which actually qualify them to comment.
If you think Clark should be the Democrat nominee, send him some money. He obviously doesn’t have enough to hire good campaign advice.

Christine Wallace is a good journalist, but she must have hit a ditch in her circadian rhythms when she wrote a piece in The Australian on the 31st December, 2003. It was about preselection challenges to three sitting Liberal members in Queensland.
The article is written up as though there was something unique about these challenges without one mention of Malcolm Turnbull challenging Peter King in Wenworth which surely sets the benchmark. And how could Wallace have let one of the challengees, Michael Johnson, the Member for Ryan, get away with this howler?
“It’s an entirely appalling and disappointing state of affairs,” Mr Johnson said yesterday.
“I hope that people in positions of authority are able to encourage her to realise that standing against a sitting member is inimical to the re-election of the Howard Government.”
Mr Johnson said it was the right of any branch member to run for preselection, but added that it set a “dangerous precedent”, and sent a bad signal to voters as well as party members, for a preselected local councillor to run against a sitting MP.
This is the same Michael Johnson who mounted a preselection challenge to the former member for this seat, John Moore, at the time when Moore was Defence Minister and overseeing the Army’s engagement in East Timor. As it turned out, Moore resigned before the preselection eventuated, forcing a byelection, but Johnson didn’t appear too worried about the effects of his endeavours on the Howard Government at the time.
Johnson initially contested the preselection, but had to withdraw when it was discovered that he was not an Australian citizen and was therefore ineligible to be elected to the Commonwealth Parliament. While Johnson had known this for weeks, it only came out on the day of the preselection. In the meantime his antics in signing up supporters was degrading the Liberal Party vote in Queensland. Prominent Chinese were quoted in the media saying that they were supporting Johnson’s bid because they wanted to get a Chinese Australian into Parliament and that the Liberal Party had been targeted because its rules were the easiest of the major parties to manipulate.
The Liberal Party constitution allowed anyone anywhere in the world to become a member of the party and vote in any of the Federal, State or Local Government preselections in the Federal electorate where their branch was. This allowed Kitty from Hong Kong to fly in for the preselection, although she was not an Australian citizen and had no idea about Australian politics. Greg Roberts, then with the SMH managed to interview her, so we know about her, but who knows how many others there were?
Another loophole was that the Party has a concessional membership fee for pensioners, effectively allowing a discount for branch stacking if done with members who meet this criteria. Johnson signed up around 70 of these, including his now Chief of Staff Bernie Mack, and his now wife. When Mack was confronted on the issue he said he was a “self-funded retiree”, and therefore entitled to the rate.
As a result of Johnson’s withdrawal, former Liberal Party president and local resident Bob Tucker won the preselection, but this was to be the poisoned chalice for Tucker. At the time of his preselection win the Liberal Party had polling which said that they would definitely lose the seat with Johnson but might win it with Tucker. In the event Tucker just lost, with a 10% swing or so against the Party. Some of this swing can be attributed to the performance at the time of the Howard Government (it was recording the lowest primary vote in its history, according to Roy Morgan), an incompetent campaign (my analysis at the time is here), and the antics of Johnson.
As a result of the loss Johnson had another chance at becoming the Liberal candidate. He became and Australian citizen, signed up even more people and won the next preselection. However, one thing needs to be noted here. While Tucker did recontest the preselection, and didn’t win, this was mostly because the Bob Carroll faction threw its weight behind Johnson. That weight doesn’t rest there anymore. The two Bobs – Tucker and Carroll – are now involved in what has been dubbed the “Coalition of the Unwilling”, and this coalition doesn’t support Johnson. Not only have the factional alliances changed, but there are a lot of reservations about Johnson both within the Liberal Party, and the community.
That has led to Johnson being challenged by two serious contenders. The first is Margaret de Wit, the popular Councillor for the ultra-safe ward of Pullenvale. Second is Steven Huang, a Chinese Australian who has run for the Liberal Party twice previously. In 1995 he was the candidate for the state seat of Sunnybank. In 1998 Huang was the only Liberal Party state candidate to take on the party hierarchy over its disastrous One Nation preference strategy when he was the candidate for Mt Gravatt.
At first glance this looks like a perfect pincer movement. Huang will presumably command some support from Johnson’s Chinese branch members as well as broader support. Not only is his family well-respected in the Taiwanese community, but he is 100% ethnically Chinese. Johnson is New Guinea Chinese, and has a European father. While these might seem fairly abstract distinctions to those of us in the multi-cultural Australian mainstream, they actually count with the sort of people who are currently supporting Johnson and who are trying to carve out an ethnically based niche in their new country.
At the same time de Wit should be able to bring together a lot of the ethnically European vote, who are feeling a little like strangers in their own land. She also doesn’t carry the sort of factional baggage that Tucker did, making it possible for her to get broad-ranging support.
de Wit does have some disadvantages. There is a council election in March this year, and applying for the Federal seat might make her look as though she is not committed to the council. This is only a problem if the voters think it is. Feedback from on the ground in Ryan suggests that there is a strong body of belief amongst ordinary voters that unless the Liberal Party can deal with problems like Johnson, it is not worth voting for. If their councilor is the only one prepared to fix the problem, then she seems to have their support, whatever needs to be done. It seems that this move by de Wit actually increases her support and the Liberal Party’s.
This should have spill-on effects for the Council campaign. The Lord Mayor of Brisbane is elected at large by all electors in Brisbane, which means that votes have to be maximized in each ward. So de Wit’s move, by increasing the generic party vote, increases the chances of Liberal Party Lord Mayoral Candidate, Campbell Newman. It gives him a broader base on which to weld any personal vote he can attract. The problem is Newman apparently doesn’t see it that way and has given her an ultimatum to withdraw.
This suits the current party hierarchy because they want to ensure that Johnson retains the seat for reasons that have nothing to do with winning Ryan, and everything to do with controlling the Liberal Party. The factional balance in the Queensland Liberal Party is extremely fine. If Johnson, and his 400 or so supporters disappear, the Santoro/Caltabiano (Sicilian) faction can’t be guaranteed of maintaining control. As a result they are doing all they can to ensure that their ally stays.
They must be very concerned about the two challengers. Not only has de Wit been threatened with loss of her endorsement as a Councillor, but they have leaned on Huang as well. They are also blatantly disregarding the Liberal Party Constitution and attempting to manipulate things so as to make life more difficult for the challengers.
Nominations were called in December, which would have led most to believe that the preselections would probably be held in January. There is likely to be a state election in February, then a council election in March, meaning that the next feasible date for a preselection after January is April sometime. A January preselection would have let de Wit and her electors know where they stood right from the beginning, and also allowed the Liberals to preselect and field a replacement for de Wit if they so desired in time for the council election. But no, the latest proposal is to hold the preselection for Ryan during the Council election campaign.
There are likely to be two reasons for this. One is to put additional pressure on de Wit and Newman. The other is that a later preselection might allow more Johnson supporters to become eligible to vote.
As well, the constitution requires the party hierarchy to provide membership lists to candidates for preselection within twenty-four hours of their nomination. This has not been done with a variety of excuses offered as to why it cannot happen. It means that the membership of branches where the office bearers are friendly to either side are in a position to protect their branch members from lobbying from less-favoured contestants. This particularly disadvantages Huang. de Wit would presumably have access to her ward branch memberships as their Councillor, but Huang holds no office at all, and the success of his campaign hinges on winning a large share of the Chinese vote which is congregated in branches controlled by Johnson.
There are rumours that de Wit will bow to pressure and the manipulation of circumstances and withdraw. This would be a disaster for the Liberal Party. Not only would it signal to the electorate that the party is unwilling to do anything about Johnson, but it would signal to those unhappy with the “Sicilian” faction that there is no point looking to anyone else. If they aren’t prepared to follow through on this one, what will they be prepared to follow through on?
Next post I will look at the “Fandango in Fisher” where MP Peter Slipper is under challenge.

The Christmas road toll was one of the worst in years. I have commented before about how glibly we accept this price for automotive mobility, especially as it tends to kill and maim a disproportionate number of young people. Apparently the long-term trend is less bad accidents, due mainly to improvements in automobile design, but there are some other worrying trends.
Frankly, I’m always amazed there are not more accidents when I see the things people do on the roads. This is especially true in the country where bad roads and high speed become much more important factors. And the all too common sight of roadkill reminds me that it is not just humans that pay the price for careless and reckless driving.
One trend that does bother me is the growing number of people who drive with genuine aggression, as if any constraint on their intentions to get where they are going as fast as possible is a personal affront. Young males are still the worst examples, but it is an increasing attitude across age, gender and class that leads to more accidents and worse nerves.
Technology is complicating things. Faster cars give some drivers the capacity to drive aggressively, alternately tailgating and then braking hard, giving other drivers little leeway for safety. And mobile phones have added that element of extra danger as drivers concentrate on their calls and not the road.
I think much of this aggressive attitude is a spin off from the selfish individualism that has accompanied the rise of globalisation and its economic rationalist ideology. This metaparadigm says that virtually all social institutions – with their values of mutual consideration and compromise – are redundant and old fashioned, and all that counts is the individual acting in the market place through access to capital. You succeed or fail – no in-betweens – through your own efforts, and the only criteria for success or failure is accumulation of money. The T-shirt slogan that says “The one who dies with the most money wins” sums it up.
Cars, of course, are perhaps the second most important expression of personal wealth and self esteem. Indeed, because we travel about in them they are perhaps even more important than our houses in terms of public image. And we can see by the way people pay extraordinary amounts of money for vehicles with only marginal benefits over standard ones that some people take all this very seriously indeed. So they get in their fast cars with their mobile phones and they don’t want to be distracted from their own immediate purpose.
In the US there has been a sustained debate about SUVs (4WDs to us) as embodying this new individualistic attitude on the road. The top selling model in the US now is a pickup truck. They are of course environmental disasters, especially as regards petrol consumption: the case has been made that ultimately Iraq was invaded because Americans want to drive SUVs (look no further than that famous Hummer driver, the new Governor of California).
Unfortunately for these hyper-individualists there are fairly strict road rules, enforced by relatively incorruptible police. So, not withstanding the road toll, mostly the result of these drivers’ actions is general bad nerves.
This new individualistic aggression is even more apparent on footpaths cum cycle-paths where the rules are much less clear. Pedestrians stroll along thoughtless of the needs of cyclists and cyclists whiz past pedestrians and slower cyclists, refusing to slow down no matter what. If there is a rule about dangerous cyclists it is probably to watch out for the ones with the most expensive gear.
Living near the Swan River, I use the riverside paths as a pedestrian, jogger and cyclist on a daily basis. It is a genuinely scenic environment. But I increasingly keep to the grass to avoid the other users who seem less and less willing to show any consideration for others. I have witnessed joggers deliberately running into walkers to make a point and countless accidents and near accidents as walkers, joggers, roller-bladers and cyclists assert their right to behave as if no one else existed.
A few years ago two cyclists slammed into each other head-on going around a bend on the riverfront. Both were taken to hospital and it was a major news story. There was an outcry about safety and the relevant council spent thousands of dollars of ratepayers’ money on painting lines and arrows and putting up signs. But the fact was that one of the cyclists, or perhaps both, had been asserting their presumed right to behave as if no one else mattered. There was no other way the collision could have occurred. Just a little common sense – which is ultimately what consideration for others comes down to – would have been enough to avoid that particular ‘accident’.
This increased aggression is of course partly a function of increased population density, but this material reality of more people should only make us more aware of the need to watch out for others. It is clear to me that we are in fact heading the other way: that if there are no serious legal sanctions – and even then if you are a wealthy ‘winner’, you just pay the fines – the only rule is survival of the fastest.