Brendan Nelson’s address-in-reply to the budget shows just how far away from finding the range on the government the Opposition is. While reducing fuel excise may be politically popular, it is short-sighted and will be wiped out by just a small increase in the price of oil.
A more logical, and ultimately more politically productive, response to higher petrol prices might be a co-ordinated plan to encourage people into smaller cars faster. Afterall, if the mileage figures on the Peugeot 308 are right, buying one of those would cut my fuel-bill by two-thirds, an effective fuel reduction of $1 per litre on what I’m paying for diesel at the moment!
I’m not even sure that opposing the tax on alcopops is politically popular. There is obvious public concern about binge drinking, and while you can be sceptical, as I am, about whether there is in fact an epidemic, putting a tax on alcopops is just the sort of externalisation of guilt that a parent who supplies their kids’ parties with alcohol might be looking for! “Don’t blame me, they wouldn’t drink so much if it wasn’t so cheap”.
You couldn’t expect logic from the Opposition on the alcopops tax, because the logical position is that all alcoholic drinks ought to be taxed on their alcoholic content irrespective of how they are marketed or what they are made of. The problem with that is that wine is relatively lightly taxed, and you’d be able to hear the screams on my balcony at Coorparoo all the way from the Barossa, and Margaret River, as well as the Riverlands if you raised it to parity. Good economics, but bad politics from opposition. Looks like the wine cask may be making a comeback as the drink of choice for oblivion!
If there is a case against the government that the opposition should be making at the moment it is that much that they said was a problem in opposition is being perpetuated by them. Nelson had a good line about watching the fuel price doing nothing to keep it down, but he didn’t persevere with the theme of a do-nothing government, pleased with itself to be in government. He could have moved on to Wayne Swan’s productiivty theory of inflation.
During the election campaign we were told that Labor’s spending wasn’t a problem because they would address the productivity bottle-necks in the economy, which were the real cause of inflation. That being the case, why are we putting money aside for tomorrow in infrastructure and and education future funds rather than spending it now? If productivity is the problem with inflation, then it should be fixed now, not later.
In fact, what the government has put in place is designed to ensure its second term by having spending co-incide with the next election. This will be at a time when we will have passed through the dip in economic activity that we are having at the moment and when the spending will most certainly add to inflation!
The opposition has to accept that they can’t expect to hit any home runs this year and that what they should be doing is laying down a platform that will resonate at the next election. Cheap, economically illiterate populism is not the way to do that.

Queensland Shadow Treasurer Bruce Flegg weighed into the merger debated this morning sending this letter out to members of the Liberal Party. This is a significant split in the parliamentary party, and an indication of just how fraught attempts to railroad Liberal Party members into the amalgamation deal could be. This amalgamation proposal could create three parties rather than just one, with a rump National and Liberal Party continuing in existence.
Here is the letter. If you’re a Liberal Party member and not on Flegg’s distribution list you will have a special interest in reading it.

Yesterday a letter from the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the parliamentary wing of the Liberal Party was circulated to Party members.
This letter called on State Council to yet again postpone the Party’s convention.
Firstly, I want to make it plain that, despite being a member of the parliamentary team, I was not consulted about the decision to write the letter nor was I even informed that it had been circulated, being left to find out from Party members who had received it.
Secondly and most importantly, the Liberal Party is a Party of principle and a long held principle of this Party is the separation between the elected members of the parliamentary wing and the organisation of the Party.
This latest attempt by some members of the parliamentary wing to manipulate Party members and the organisation is wrong and flouts very important traditions of our Party.
Members were denied their annual opportunity to choose their organisational leadership with the cancellation of the 2007 convention altogether.
The proposition being put that convention should again be cancelled from the set date and moved to a later date, would again rob Party members of one of their most important rights and obligations. The Party is at an important turning point and the membership is being denied the choice of leadership they believe would be best to move that process forward.
It is even more vital at such a critical juncture in the Party that the membership is given their constitutional right to choose the best organisational face and the best leadership in their eyes. Members should have a say about who they believe will act in the best interest of the party and the best interest of Queenslanders.
I do not believe that right should be taken from them yet again.
Over recent days despite events within the party that I find very disturbing, I have refrained from public and media comment. I have concentrated on very big issues in my electorate of Moggill and my portfolio of Shadow Treasury.
I only write on this occasion reluctantly because I feel duty bound to correct the misleading impression created by the letter circulated by the party leadership that somehow the party room or the members of the party endorse their action. I do not.
The issue raised about potential costs of attending a subsequent State constitutional convention is spurious at best. Proper process sometimes has a cost.
In my view state councillors should consider the principles of this Party and its constitution and the rights of membership to choose at a convention. Members have a right to choose the best leadership in their view to take this matter forward. To do otherwise and deny them that right for the second time would, in my view, be a great breach of faith. One of State Council’s most important roles is to protect the rights of members under the constitution.
I am disappointed that I found it necessary to write under these circumstances but the party and its integrity are important to me and I felt compelled to write.

In a rare show of cross party charity Southport Labor MP Peter Lawlor urged the National Party to be careful with their due diligence on the Queensland Liberals. Lawlor’s immediate concern was the $1 million debt that the Liberal Party carries, which he thinks was amassed losing the last Gold Coast City Council election. That was this morning.
This afternoon the Liberal Party Parliamentary leadership is adding to the due diligence pitfalls as it tries to convince the Liberals’ State Council to illegally cancel their annual convention. Their excuse for this is, unsurprisingly in an entity which appears to be trading insolvently, the cost of holding two conventions. You can read the McArdle/Nicholls epistle here. The real reasons appear to be a little more complex.
The National Party should try to dissuade the Liberals State Council from a cancellation. The whole amalgamation is legally enough fraught as it is, without introducing matters which could easily be challenged by disgrunteld current members of the Liberal Party.
Under its constitution, the Liberal Party is obliged to have an Annual Convention in each calendar year. It failed to hold one last year. The result of that is that thirteen members of the State Council are probably not entitled to hold office as they are required to be elected annually, or at Convention. This includes the President and Vice-Presidents. Any decision of State Council in which they participated could be tainted, even if they abstained from voting.
The annual convention is also the supreme governing body of the party, and 80 days notice must be given of its meeting. I doubt that an inferior body, the State Council, can defer the meeting of state convention once notices have been sent out, and even if it could, it would need to give 80 days notice of a fresh annual convention, making it impossible to meet the deadlines set out in the McArdle/Nicholls document.
So why would two lawyers put their names to such a request? The only argument that appears to make sense is that this is a move by the Santoro faction to forestall the membership from taking control of the party and replacing Spence with Brough. It can’t be related to the merger. Not only were the Santoro forces branding Brough as pro-amalgamation when he first announced he would run for president, and they were opposed to it, but there is no sign that Brough is particularly opposed to it at the moment. His arguments appear to be with the lack of due process.
This would also explain two days of fiery rows in the Liberal Party room with first Ray Stevens, and today Bruce Flegg, having heated arguments with Mark McArdle and storming out.
McArdle also appears to have been operating unilaterally, with his colleagues reliant on the media to keep them informed. A number apparently found out about the revised merger proposals when he stumbled into a press scrum at Parliament House last Saturday morning.
Why would the National Party want to buy into this mess? Proper due diligence might well suggest that rather than taking the Liberal Party over they should put it into quarantine. Closer association with this mob could be worse for their constituents than horse flu and chicken flu all together.

Courtesy of our friends at MPTV we have some audio of the treasurer’s speech available.
Budget Speech
If you missed out on it the first time around, or want to here it again, just click on the link. If like me you prefer to read these things, the text can be downloaded from here.

Just as well the Queensland National Party is well-heeled. Knowledgeable insiders say that the Queensland Liberal Party has a debt of $1 million which will need to be extinguished as part of any amalgamation. So dire is the situation that it is said that the party has instructed debt collectors to visit a number of former federal candidates to recover pledges.
On the other side, the briefing notes provided by Lawrence Springborg suggest that rather than a reverse takeover of the Liberal Party by the National Party, there will be a new party, but that it will continue to have two sets of organisational DNA. Key Point number 6 says that “The new party preserves the existing relationships that each organsiation currently has with its federal arm.” So while the two parties will be in bed together in Queensland, they’re free to cohabit with their former organisations federally, and this is reflected in the arrangements for federal members of parliament.
So what of newly elected federal members and senators? Do they get to choose who they sit with, or will there be a third caucus? For how long will the fusion party maintain a system of internal apartheid? And how will federal policy be determined by the Liberal and National Parties? Will the new party’s office bearers sit on the administrative and policy apparatus of both? Stay tuned for more emerging complexity and a possible lesson in chaos theory.

Liberal Party interim president Gary Spence has been accused of dishonestly misrepresenting the views of members of the party’s state council, of fabrication and flagrant misrepresentation.
One of the mysteries of reports of last Friday’s Liberal Party State Council was that only one person was said to have voted against an amalgamation. The explanation could be that a motion to approve an amalgamation was never put. This appears to be the implication of a letter sent to Spence by Liberal Party Vice-President John Caris.
Caris, who unsuccessfully contested the presidency against Spence at the April State Council meeting, has circulated the letter widely within the Liberal Party. Here is the full text:

Dear Gary
I am writing to you today to express my extreme disappointment and dismay in what I can only describe as the dishonest manner in which you have portrayed through the media, the view of many members of State Council.
At no time at the State Council meeting on the evening of Friday, May 9th did we vote on the merits of the draft proposal you presented for amalgamation with the National Party. Any inference that we approved such an amalgamation is a fabrication and flagrant misrepresentation of mine and many others positions.
Disapproval of your public statements has been expressed to me by several Vice Presidents, FEC Chairmen and members of State Council. I ask you to immediately cease all statements that seek to misrepresent our position in this matter.

This episode shows the clear dangers of the extreme secretiveness under which the Liberal Party has been governing itself. If you expel anyone caught talking to the press, and use the resulting information monopoly to spread disinformation, sooner or later the pressure that builds up will be released explosively, and you’ll get more publicity than you could ever have dreamed of.
That’s what’s happening here. National Party members should be starting to ask themselves why they would want to buy into this mess. And Liberal members should be asking themselves just how Gary Spence got foisted onto them.
It’s not too late for both to rectify the situation. The Nats can withdraw, and the Liberals can elect Mal Brough as their new president at their convention later this month.
Brough risked expulsion to go on radio this afternoon to call the Liberal Party to order.
Whenever I talk to city types about an amalgamated party they’re in favour. Then I ask them about Mal Brough as Liberal Party President, and they are wildly enthusiastic. Of course the two are mutually exclusive propositions.
As has been noted by a number of bloggers, including Andrew Bartlett, Lawrence Springborg claims to be the future of Queensland. But in the public mind the person in the non-Labor parties who the public recognise has the most to offer the future, is Mal Brough. If the Liberal Party could settle down under Brough, and the Coalition just settle down, the election after next, Labor might really have something to worry about.
If they keep going the way they are, then their future will never arrive, and my children will never ever see a non-Labor government in Queensland again.

Lawrence Springborg has been spruiking a new conservative party for most of this year, but when we get to look at his bride, she’s actually not new, she’s 63 years old and calls herself the Liberal Party. She will have to change her name to Liberal National Party, but as she will be part of the Liberal Party of Australia, nothing much will have changed. Or will it?
This sounds awfully like the last almost merger which failed because the National Party membership wouldn’t accept becoming a part of the Liberal Party. The history of that effort is traced on this blog, starting here.
It’s hard to be certain about what is proposed, because in a demonstration of the high levels of trust and transparency in the Liberal Party, virtually no-one has a copy of the draft merger document, not even the vice-presidents, but there has to be more to this proposal than a name change and membership influx.
The clue that there is comes from the fact that both parties will need to hold a constitutional convention to agree to this proposal. So what are the Liberals giving up this time that they didn’t last?
I’ve been promised a full briefing, but the one thing that I have been told is that the party will be split into 10 regions, only two of which will be in the south-east corner of the state where the people live, effectively giving the Nationals control of the new entity, and reducing existing Liberals to impotence. I am told that this is an organisational variation on the gerrymander which used to rule Queensland politics where the areas with fewest voters got proportionately more votes than the areas where people lived.
So the Liberals lose control of their own party, and this seems to be confirmed by the deals that have been done by various people. George Brandis was at the Brendan Nelson lunch and told me quite definitely that he was opposed to any merger. He also said that the Liberal Party membership was overwhelmingly opposed to any merger. He’s quiet this morning, because he is said to have done a deal that the Liberals will maintain the top three positions on the Senate ticket (with him at the apex) and the Nationals Barnaby Joyce will be number four. You only do a deal like this if you know you won’t have control of your preselection in the future.
(Lest any feel sympathy for Joyce being relegated to the least winnable spot, a further twist is that if he does lose, Ron Boswell will retire and he will fill the casual vacancy).
Geoff Greene, the Liberal Party’s “campaign maestro” who has led the party to devastating losses each time he’s been in control, has also dealt himself into the directorship of the new entity.
Presumably interim president Spence has also hammered out a deal for himself.
All of which is ironic. While the Nationals have been promoting “The Borg” as the answer to everything in Queensland state politics, the one person who really does have the potential to change things is Mal Brough, and the effect of these manoueverings is to tend to marginalise Brough and give power to the people who have failed at every election for the last 10 years.
Just when the Liberals were about to do some serious spring cleaning and set the coalition on the path to winning some time in the not so indeterminate future, their president has decided to call in the wrecking ball.