Alex White » current events

Election Diary, Day 1

Alex — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 06:21:58 +0000

When I got up this morning, instead of cartoons on Channel Nine, there was live coverage of Julia Gillard’s trip to the Governor General’s resident at Yarralumla.

The election was being called. All this week, I’ve heard “insiders” say it would be called today, so I’m sure they’ll be gratified that they’ve been proven right.

This is the first entry of my election diary. It will be an occasional post about the election, commentary, or update on what what I’m doing

The first thing I’m commenting on is the new Tony Abbott Revealed site I’ve set up. It’s really an experiment to see how many people (if any) I can interest and engage, using the various social media tools that I’ve picked up and written about.

A particular feature is the wiki – an easily editable section of the website that anyone can change and update.

With the Twitter-sphere going wild this morning, and things only looking like they’ll heat up over the next four to five weeks, this should be an interesting experiment indeed.

UPDATE:

Hmmm… my comment didn’t get published yesterday on The Punch.

Thanks to everyone who’s replied to my comment.

Given that I’ve written about my involvement with TonyAbbottRevealed.org.au on my blog: I hardly think it’s a secret.

The union I work for is not affiliated to any political party, and certainly is not affiliated to the ALP. The site is not paid for by any political party, but from my own pocket.

All the site does it put Tony Abbott’s own words on the internet. Visitors such as your good selves are free to make up your own mind.

Dog whistles

Alex — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:06:02 +0000

There’s a bit of discussion around the traps to do with dog whistling. The idea is that Tony Abbott is dog whistling to the electorate on the issue of refugees by talking about “being tough on boat people” (one of his 12 point plan is “Enforce strict border security and control”). Similarly, Abbott’s ad showing the “threat” of Australia being swamped by asylum seekers, showing big red arrows attacking Australia has been presented as masterful dog whistle politics.

However, in my view, this is just an example of the Liberals and Tony Abbott sharpening their racist framing openly.

Dog whistle politics is about saying something that is interpreted by a certain section of the population differently to the rest of it. Howard’s statement that “we will decide who comes to Australia and the circumstances in which they come” is a dog whistle because for Australians who are anti-immigration and anti-foreigner, Howard is telling them “we’ll keep the foreigners out”. For the rest of Australia, it sounds like a simple border security issue without overt anti-foreigner overtones.

The red arrows and anti-boat people rhetoric from Tony Abbott and his immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison in comparison are just out and out courting the substrata of racist voters. There’s no dog whistle. It’s just a plain whistle that everyone can hear.

The Liberals have decided to try to legitimise anti-refugee, anti-boat people rhetoric in the public domain – much as Pauline Hanson did. While Howard was never out and out racist, because he courted the centre of Australian politics, Tony Abbott is all about agitating and exciting his ultra-conservative “base”. Because Rudd and Gillard have captured the centre, Abbott is adopting US-style Tea Party tactics.

Gillard and the Labor leadership

Alex — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:47:39 +0000

Gillard makes history as Australia’s first woman prime-minister. Today marks an important historical milestone for Australian politics and civil society.

Julia Gillard is without a doubt Labor’s best political operative and most effective communicator. She has shown she can cut through. Ultimately, this is what sealed Kevin Rudd’s fate. Rudd was only able to communicate during campaign set-pieces – like the health debate with Abbott or during the election campaign. For the last two years he has mostly sounded like a technocrat – and Australia stopped listening.

While I welcome Julia’s prime ministership, I am deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding her ascendancy.

The New South Wales Right faction demonstrated its dangerous level of clout. Sick of being ignored, they turned on the man they installed over Beasley. They have shown a remarkable tendancy to quickly do in the leaders that do not treat them with almost slavish attention – Nathan Rees, Morris Iemma and now Kevin Rudd. Rudd largely ignored the factions – now they have strongly reasserted themselves as central to the exercise of power in the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.

The fact that the parliamentary leadership of the Labor Party is determined by the vote of only Members of Parliament is now shown to be open to the manipulation of powerful, unaccountable factional forces. The destabilisation of Simon Crean in 2003-04 is also testament to this, as was the dumping of Bob Hawke. Rudd’s downfall is testament to the fact that leaders can too easily be destabilised.

Australian Labor needs to broaden the pool of people involved in the election of the leader.

The UK Labour Party has a vote of Parliamentarians, union affiliates and members. Not only do MPs vote, but (of course) their Members of European Parliament vote, as do local “constituency” Labor Parties and affiliated socialist societies. A third of the vote goes to MPs and MEPs, individual party members and affiliated organisations.

This seems to me to be a far better system, ensuring a far greater mandate for the elected leader, as well as ensuring greater stability.

Federal Labor has had some terrible leadership tensions in the past (thankfully avoided in this current very quick leadership change).

Fundamentally Labor needs to modernise so as to become more resilient to the arbitrary exercise of power by a sole group within the Parliamentary Party.

Gillard is the right choice for Labor leader. She will lead Labor to victory. It is just as well that the NSW Right has made the correct decision in this case. But they will not always do so, and Labor as an organisation must secure itself against the possibility of future bad decisions.

“Carefully scripted remarks” scandal is great news for Tony Abbott

Alex — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:18:10 +0000

You know when your remarks are reported by a major overseas news agency as “editor’s pick” that you’re on a winner.

Tony Abbott has been getting great press recent after he told Kerry O’Brien from the 7:30 Report that voters they should only believe his “carefully prepared scripted remarks” and not his off-the-cuff comments.

Anthony Albanese writes on the issue at The Punch:

Tony Abbott said “The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks”. This extraordinary concession from ‘Phoney Tony’ was followed by ten minutes of evasion and confusion.

We know that Phoney Tony has been receiving acting lessons but quite clearly he’s acting coach forgot to tell him how important it was to stay ‘in character’.We know that Tony Abbott has extreme views on Work Choices, on social policy, on the public sector, and climate change scepticism but he has been trying to keep that in check. We now know from his own mouth that whenever he speaks it will be unclear whether it is ‘gospel truth Tony’ or ‘heat of the moment Tony’.

Tony Abbott has blown his own credibility out of the water and any Australian who was in any doubt over whether he was trustworthy now must take Tony at his word that he is not. Perhaps Tony Abbott will now drop the act for good and expose his extreme out of touch views for all to see.

I suspect though, Tony Abbott will continue to say anything and do anything in his search for power regardless of whether he believes his statements to be true or not.

This was the key exchange:

Abbott: “Kerry, all of us when we are in the heat of verbal combat so to speak will sometimes say things that go a little bit further.”

O’Brien: “Mr Abbott, we are not all leaders of major political parties.”

Abbott: “Politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely, uh, calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. Which is one of the reasons why, the, the the statements that need to be taken absolutely, as, as gospel truth is those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.”

The entire transcript is here.

UPDATE:

Karl Bitar just tweeted the link to the latest ALP ad on Abbott’s admission.

Creative Unions’ First Birthday

Alex — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:17:34 +0000

Creative Unions is having its very first ever birthday to celebrate a year of promoting and showcasing the very best of the international trade union movement’s campaigns, design and communications.

Since we’ve started we’ve showcased over 100 union campaigns, designs and communication tools. Over 600 people from around the world have become fans on Facebook and over 400 people follow us on Twitter. Hundreds of people have subscribed to our monthly newsletter. Over 15,000 people have visited our site.

Click on the button below, or go here, to register. It’s at Fad Gallery on Thurs 27 May, and it’s free!

#NoCleanFeed campaign starts to focus messaging

Alex — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:26:01 +0000

The #NoCleanFeed movement is not an organised campaign, but rather a loose connection of disparate groups including ISPs and civil liberties organisations.

For a while, I’ve been arguing that the #NoCleanFeed campaign should drop the focus on censorship:

I suggest avoiding commenting on the refused classification – most Australians aren’t going to be sympathetic to an argument that wants to allow free access to Jihadist propaganda, fetish images or advice on euthanasia. The civil liberties line sounds a lot like “geeks are complaining about not being able to download freaky p-rn as fast”.

Instead they should talk about how the filter won’t actually catch, stop or prevent a single pedophile:

Real cyber safety: The filter won’t stop or catch a single pedophile, whereas the $44 million spent on the filter could hire up to 300 new Federal Police who will actively hunt down and stop child s-x offenders.

Today, in what I hope is not an April Fools Day joke, I read that Internode is now going on with the “real cyber safety” line.

But Mark Newton, an engineer with ISP internode, said: “Censorship will not catch a single pedophile, will not cause a single image to disappear from the internet, will not protect a single child.”

(My emphasis.)

This is a good step forward for the #NoCleanFeed campaign, and although they’ve used the “censorship” line, they’re pointing out the inherent flaw in the justification of the filter.

The Democrats will be victims to incumbency

Alex — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:16:09 +0000

There’s been some discussion about whether the Democrats will be victim to the over-cooked expectations of Obama supporters and energised conservative Republicans:

First, the background: the party of the president in office essentially always loses seats in the mid-term elections (2002 was a post-9/11 one-off), a tendency likely to be reinforced in 2010 by the fact that so many Democrats rode the Obama wave to win marginal districts in ’08. Plus, this year many progressive activists are turned off by what they perceive to be a failed healthcare reform bill, while others oppose Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Add into the mix on the other side a fired-up movement of Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin fans and you have what looks like the recipe for a massive Democratic defeat in eleven months.

My view is that, given the still-parlous state of the US economy, the Democrats will be a victim of incumbency. This is certainly my analysis of the victory by Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell – who beat the incumbent Democrat.

This is not a resurgence of the Republicans, but a reaction against the failing body-politic of the USA. Disenfranchised Americans will try to punish whichever party is in power – not just the Democrats. The Obama campaign, while lauded as a “digital revolution” and a shining example of grass-roots, bottom-up empowerment, has not translated into decentralisation of decision-making. Normal people are still locked out of the policy making process in Washintgon and in their home states.

The ten percent unemployment (much higher in many areas) doesn’t help.

I also agree with Colin Delany from TechPresident that the Tea Party movement won’t necessarily equate to success for the Republicans. The Tea Party movement is largely an astro-turf movement, but even where there is a real ground swell, the Republicans are still an integral part of the broken system that the Tea Party-ers are rallying against:

…the Tea Partiers may have energy, but they primarily seem to employ itÂ against other Republicans, particularly those in the party establishment,Â even when they’re not squabbling amongst themselves. Many mainstream Republicans will face ideological primary challenges in 2010, forcing them to spend scarce resources early on and to take positions that could box them into a corner in the Fall. And with the RNC short on cash, individual candidates can’t count on the party bailing them out even if they do manage to shrug off the rightwing rabble.

The Democrat’s biggest problem will be to turn out their disheartened supporters, and to convince Americans that they should retain control of the Congress.

More on the Senate by-election at Larvatus Prodeo.

Not helping

Alex — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:39:58 +0000

The online tech-head community can often be its own worst enemy, with underground geek/hacker site 4Chan targeting Youtube with p-rn today:

For mysterious, probably awkward reasons, the Anonymous (as they are dubbed) hordes are protesting the YouTube banishment of a young Lukeywes1234. The video site nixed little Lukey when 4Chan found his channel and started subscribing en masse. The surge of popularity raised red flags and got his account suspended, and, amid Lukey Tribute Videos, the board has decided to extract revenge. The above image is the disseminated directive, and with the site’s past success enacting denial-of-service attacks, we suggest the YouTube-going public be very cautious.

With the debate around internet filtering spluttering on, and anti-filter campaigners having to defend themselves against accusations that they’re a bunch of pervs and p-rno freaks, this action doesn’t help us here in Australia.

I noticed today that a video of John Prescott from Go Fourth had suggestions of p-rnographic videos at the end. My suggestion: avoid YouTube for the next few days.

No slowdown in warming

Alex — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:00:53 +0000

As Tony Abbott spreads the “global cooling” conspiracy, more evidence demonstrates that temperatures are going up and up.

A report by the World Meteorological Organization says that recent years are on track to be the hottest on record:

The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record, dating back 150 years, according to a provisional summary of climate conditions near the end of 2009, the organization said.

The period from 2000 through 2009 has been â€œwarmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,â€ said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen.

Meanwhile, an opinion piece by Tim Flannery puts to bed the insulting and deliberately deceptive statement by Abbott last night that the Australian of the Year winner “accepts” the “global cooling” conspiracy.

The Glenn Beck story: the tail end

Alex — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:13:01 +0000

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the Glenn Beck story, where an internet prankster satirised ultra-conservative US pundit Glenn Beck (a kind of super-Bolt). The prankster, Isaac Eiland-Hall, registered a website, which called on Beck to prove that he did not sexually assault and murder a young girl in 1990. The site was a satire on Beck’s own propensity to make outrageous and risible claims and demand his guests to refute them.

The case blew up when Glenn Beck’s lawyers tried to get the World Intellectual Property Organization to turn the site’s domain over to Beck on the basis that it breached his trade mark (i.e., his name). Needless to say, this turned the website into an internet phenomenon, with several other sites springing up, and loads of Twitter chatter.

The story is now drawing to a close, as reported on Ars Technica (and elsewhere):

While agreeing that the site included Beck’s trademark, the arbiter noted that “even a ‘moron in a hurry’ would not likely conclude that Complainant sponsored, endorsed, or was affiliated with the website addressed by the disputed domain name.”

But the bigger question was whether Beck’s trademark was being used in a legitimate way, or whether it had been registered in bad faith. (The decision cites, as an example of bad faith, a case in which an auto parts company targeted its competition with a [competitor]sucks.com website that sent traffic to the first company.)

“Respondent appears to the Panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that Respondent appears genuinely to believe is employed by Complainant in the provision of political commentary,” says the decision, “and for that reason Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate noncommercial use of Complainant’s mark.”

While WIPO refused to turn over the domain name to Beck, the arbiter did note that he was taking no position on whether the domain name or the site contents might be “defamation.” That decision can only be made by a US court, though Beck’s lawyers have not so far sought to push the question.

After winning the WIPO dispute, Eiland-Hall decided to poke the beehive one last time. He issued a public letter (PDF) to Glenn Beck which opens by noting that “I have prevailed in the WIPO action that you filed against me. I write now to voluntarily relinquish the disputed domain to you, even though you did not win the case.”

This draws pretty much to a close the Glenn Beck tale. As I noted, it is an (extreme) example of conservative pundits being called out for their despicable tactics. I wonder how much the Beck saga will influence future actions and campaigns.

We need to Save the VCA

Alex — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:24:15 +0000

Photo: By Atosha McCaw (www.mortartown.com)

The University of Melbourne’s corporate PR department has gone into over drive recently, after their proposed changes to the Victorian College of the Arts blew up in their faces.

Their latest tactic, after locking down media appearances by gaff-a-tron Sharman Pretty (VCA Dean), has been to misdirect and confuse. For example, rather than addressing the main issues of funding and practice-based training (as opposed to research-focused arts teaching), the University of Melbourne has been talking about mergers and the Melbourne Model.

I’ve been pretty heavily involved in the Save VCA campaign (and have written about it earlier here), and was so incensed by a recent article that I wrote in to The Age to set the record straight. My letter was published on Saturday:

VCA smokescreen

KRISTY Edmunds’ comments yesterday (“Give merger a chance”, The Age, 3/9) sideswipe the community’s concerns about changes made to the VCA. Even a cursory glance at the Save VCA campaign’s website shows that it is focusing on the lack of funding that is driving staffing and subject cuts, a preservation of the practical training elements of VCA’s teaching, and genuine consultation with staff, students and the arts community on future changes.

No one in the campaign is calling for the merger between VCA and the University of Melbourne to be undone. Furthermore, no one in the campaign is suggesting that the curriculum be frozen in time. These claims are just a smokescreen to distract the community from the real issues. Given the complex nature of what is at stake, it is no wonder the university wants to make it a debate about non-issues.

Alex White, Footscray

You can read more about the Save VCA campaign here, and join the Save VCA Facebook page here.

I also encourage you to print out and sign the Save VCA petition here (pdf).

Republicans struggling, near bottom

Alex — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:04:10 +0000

I have previously written that the US Republicans are cannibalising themselves, that they are struggling to find a leader, and that they have no clear strategy for combating Obama and the Democrat machine.

Now, with the Democrats hammering the Republicans over Rush Limbaugh, some Republican representatives are acknowledging that they nearly as low as they can get:

“You think you hit bottom, and it can always go lower,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who said his party’s best hope is that President Barack Obama overreaches. “The Republicans just entered the wilderness – we’re going to wander around there for a little while before coming back stronger than ever.

“I have no idea where the bottom is just like I have no idea where the bottom is on the stock market,” he said.

“It probably gets worse before it gets better, though I’m not sure how much worse it could get,” said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican leader and former state attorney general. “The first chance at redemption is 18, 19 months away, and we’re going to have to gut it out here for a while.”

Another party wise man, Fred Malek, told POLITICO the party now sits at its “nadir” – though he, like others, said its best hope is to wait for the economy to tarnish Obama.

“Our leaders’ arguments are falling on deaf ears today, but they are sound. It’s just a matter of time before this becomes Obama’s recession,” he said.

Karl Rove, who has written on this problem, has a different view:

KarlRove It’s Dem strategy – misdirection — Dems don’t want debate on stimulus, omnibus, budget, pork, so trying to argue with Rush.

His view is that the Democrats are using Rush as a straw man to draw attention away from Obama’s spin.

With no clear Republican leader to attack, the Democrats are forced to target the conservative shock-jock:

Richard Viguerie, the direct mail pioneer who helped create the modern conservative movement, was more scathing in a press release Wednesday.

“The ‘Rushification’ of the GOP is the natural and inevitable result of the fact that those who are supposed to provide leadership — Republican elected officials and party officers — are doing little to bring the party back,” he said. “Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum in nature as empty as the leadership of the Republican Party today.”