Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Traveston – Village of the Dammed
by Paul Walter

What could have knocked the fierce debate about asylum-seekers off the front pages?

Why, an intractable internal party feud in the coalition and within the liberals, revealed in its squalor from last Friday when Minchin astonishingly recommenced his irrational climate change attack on Malcolm Turnbull at the very time when Turnbull appeared to be making a dent in Rudd's fortunes, concerning the current sad asylum seeker events.

The following Monday, Four Corners presented a report so damning of the coalition having a collective and self induced nervous breakdown, as the neo con climate denialists completed their sabotage of the moderates attempts to draw their confrateres into the real world from a fantasy world constructed of delusional ideology largely imported from the contrarian bible belt of the American mid west.

We can see now why Rudd took the hardline approach with the asylum-seekers: all he had to do was endure a little longer and the coalition would self-destruct, leaving him a clear field for consolidation with right wing voters in strategic mortgage belt seats.

The latest piece of this developing diabolical reverse-Tampa wedge ironically applied largely by the coalition itself, to itself, must be the "the sweetest victory" for Labor.

Which brings us to a separate issue, yet one with tentative connections to the one mentioned above – the spectacular dumping of the contentious Traveston mega-dam in south east Queensland, which represents a belated day in the sun for the long-maligned Peter Garrett and more eclipse for Labor's cover-girl of such a short time ago, Anna Bligh.

An interesting decision by Garrett, when you consider his Queensland bosses, like Rudd himself, have been talking up this ambit claim for much higher population, which depends to some extent surely, on water and land availability.

Also, because of Labor hostility to ecological sustainability, as exemplified in Tasmanian rainforests.

Clearly, the refugee issues have led to an opening out of an issue developers, construction companies and some unionists and party political brokers had hoped was silenced- economic rationalist "growth at any cost" as relates to our infrastructural unpreparedness for rapid population growth.

In other words a wider population/ecology issue further complicated, as intended, by the Carbon Trading issue so self-destructively raised by the right of the liberal party.

It may be that, if Rudd has finally succeeded in seeing off the coalition for a while, that he might then loosen up a bit both as to both asylum seekers and in a quieter moment re-examine this obsessive "growth at any cost" mantra that so threatens to create monumental downstream costs for future generations, in so many ways (also more generous humanitarian aid instead of military aid to third world clients?).

In the meantime, Rudd can thank his lucky stars that the opposition is feral; quite barking mad, at the moment.

The reality is, Rudd has been on "training wheels" to a degree, as has Turnbull, and thanks to Minchin, gets a second chance a good opposition might have denied him.