Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

It is beyond disgusting. Why don't they just do away with the Australian Constitution entirely and set themselves up as the benevolent dictatorship they seem to be aspiring to...

ed Kerri: Hi S Marker, welcome aboard.

How astonishing. The biggest act of sabotage and betrayal in political history and all that's going on here is a focus on dead issues! Let's face it, Margo was pushing Latham as were most of the people who contribute to this forum. What does this say about your collective judgement? If everyone knew Latham was a flake surely the real problem with democracy is that no reporter reported it. The real story is that the Press gallery and the Labor party were in collusion to deceive the Australian public.

Forget Telstra, it has been sold. Remember the press, for they have sold out.

The people voted and we have been vindicated.

Well, any hopes that Barnaby Joyce might well prove a right/populist rallying-point definitely end here. And, thus, the (entirely justified) electoral decline of the National party will continue to gather steam. Interested to hear what one Bob Katter has to say about this ... and, let us (all) hope that the loose collective of rural right independents FINALLY gets its act together sometime soon, to hasten said decline.

Meanwhile, my (other) hope on this issue is that the underwriters - assuming they are the same as handled previous issues - get totally screwed by the market's response. After all, 'the market' is ALWAYS right, now ... isn't it?

Because many small shareholders - such as my (retired) parents, who bought Telstra shares for the dividends alone - are going to be very unimpressed by developments of late. So hang onto your hats, cause this one may well sink the Government yet.

Meanwhile, I'd be curious to hear from any defenders of the way this legislation was so quickly rammed-though, since Andrew Bartlett's description/analysis above is both fair and historically accurate. Just exactly why were such extraordinary measures necessary, please?

Hi Senator. I bought The lyre of Orpheus last week and haven't stopped playing it. It's more an astonishing movement forward from Cave's earlier work, as well as being in tune with the distinct mood of the times. I've had songs like "Abbatoir blues" and "O Children" on repeat. The language you use here, of guillotines and assaults, reminds me of Cave and his repeat invocation of butchery and cannibalism on this album.

I feel lessened by these people and their savagery. I think Barnaby Joyce is dining with the Cannibals here.

I'm glad you never did. Thank you for retaining your integrity.

See A lengthy wait to determine the sale outcome by Grattan the Great:

In forcing the Telstra legislation through this week, the Government has shown how it will treat the Senate when it wants to get important bills passed quickly. Committee hearings will be minimal; debate will be gagged.

Government leaders after the election made all sorts of high-flown promises not to abuse the new Senate power. But on the first big test that is just what they have done. They have shown disdain for parliamentary niceties...

And see Secco at Whipped and gagged: the pleasures of a Senate debate:

They were gagged and cruelly whipped. And they screamed all the way to guillotine. It sounds like a plot from the French Revolution, but it was actually the plot to the last day of the Telstra sale debate.

The guillotine, in Senate parlance, is a mechanism by which the Government can declare legislation "urgent" and truncate debate. It was used yesterday; the Government determined an 11.30am cut-off for second reading speeches about the Telstra bills. This meant that lots of senators did not get a chance to speak...

What, if any, was the justification for the "urgency"? The real reason is to get it done before Joyce (or anyone else) can change their mind, and before there's any more nasty news about Telstra. But what did they say was the reason?

I listened to some of the debate yesterday. The anger in Stott Despoja's voice was something to hear!

It is a shameful day. Today I am really embarrassed and upset to be a legislator in this place. But I know the tide will turn, because the Australian people are going to want a check on executive power after they see the way the mandate, so-called, has been abused and used in this place today. It is shocking. To those new senators who are culpable: I really hope that you will hang your heads in shame, because this place is supposed to be where we cherish and nurture democracy, not where we abuse it, erode it and undermine it. I seek leave to incorporate my speech.

And Barnaby sounded like ministerial material - in the Eric Abetz mould, but with a more pleasant voice.

Yesterday's Senate Hansard is here (1.2MB pdf).

Jay White, I've noticed here that you (totally) failed to engage with Andrew Bartlett's original piece - something that I feel has marked many of your posts in this forum as a whole.

So stop 'blaming' people like Bracks for (unspecified) abuses and please address the actual issue at hand.

As any DECENT conservative would realise - and acknowledge - governance is partly defined by unspoken/unwritten ethical codes (see Edmund Burke) on many crucial issues, so the flouting of same (as pointed-out by Bartlett) should be a KEY issue for all citizens, irrespective of their political bias.

Please stop hiding behind the damn Constitution - which, understandably, wasn't even mentioned by Bartlett - and address the real issue, which was:

EXACTLY why did these bills merit the over-riding of several long-standing conventions and the (severe) gagging of parliamentary debate?

I am very curious to see if you 'bother' to answer said question, or if you (merely) resort to labelling me a 'loony leftist' to avoid the issue. Because, as a lifelong anti-Marxist, I will INSIST on taking said defamation personally (albeit not legally) and will still await some sensible answer to my - eminently sensible - query.

You have been warned!

S Marker "It is beyond disgusting. Why don't they just do away with the Australian Constitution entirely and set themselves up as the benevolent dictatorship they seem to be aspiring to"

Why would they (Government) wish to be rid of the Australian Constitution? What exactly in the Constitution is not being adhered too?

This is exactly the type of meaningless babble that I find myself reading day in and day out by so many people of a left bent. Why is it that I never read a leftwing or a rightwing person for that matter complaining about the Bracks Government and their Senate majority? How about Queensland not even having a Senate?

The election of the Howard Government was free and fair. It was undertaken following the rules outlined by the Australian electoral commission. These rules apply the same for every political participant.

Both Labor and the Greens had ample opportunity to get their respective messages out. That they failed to do so or people simply did not like the message or simply preferred the Howard Government message is not something the Government should feel any shame over.

The people through their vote have made their postion clear. The Government is now going about their job of carrying out those wishes. The rules should not be changed after the event because you do not like the outcome.

The election of the Howard Government was free and fair. It was undertaken following the rules outlined by the Australian electoral commission.

Thus spaketh Jay White.

No mention in the election campaign of IR "reform," Jay.

How about I sell you my car Jay and then tell you after you have handed over the cash that I have filled the gearbox full of sawdust and the sump full of sugar?

Caveat Emptor now applies to the Australian Electoral process?

What I am sick of Jay is Howard fan boys constantly excusing his deceitfulness.

Yes, Howard is a stickler for the "rules." Pity his moral position is far less admirable.

Margo: Hi Stephen! Thanks for returning to Club Chaos. I missed you.

Yelloe !
You also backed the Swans for the quinella.
The moment of truth is only hours away.
Carna Saints!
Good luck though

God help us until the next election. This lot will obviously ram anything and everything through the Senate and stifle debate at their whim. Does anyone one else find it disturbing that the President of the Senate (Paul Calvert) bought 100,000 Telstra shares on 1st September?

Barnaby Joyce, just like my cake baking, it rises nicely to prominence all fluffy and cute, then it falls into a heap and ends up being thrown out with the garbage.

Stephen Callaghan. It is good to see you back. I told you St George would win the Grand final! Two weeks left to prove me wrong.

I sure know one thing, the Labor party will not be doing it.

A funeral service was held for Democracy and Consitutional Goverment in the Senate on the evening of the 14th of September 2005.

Jay White, the election of a particular party/coalition to power does not mean that anything that they do thereafter is automatically justified.

I too would like to hear your rationalisation for the truncation of debate on this issue. And on a broader issue, I'd like your views on the increase in power of the executive and the diminution of the Westminster System's principle of ministerial responsibility since John Howard came to power.

I find it quite paradoxical that so many conservatives in this country are apparently so relaxed and comfortable about the disintegration of some of the fundamental traditions of our political system. It hardly seems "conservative" to me.

So, we had the debate gagged after 11.30am on Wednesday, and of all people, Barnaby Joyce demanded to have speech despite not even being on the list. The Senate President rules in a slavishly partisan manner as he shamefully always does. What a dreadful display of dysfunctional government practice.

It is of great concern as the Senate has picked up many an error of legislation in the recent past and passed much needed amendments. That is their role as a scutineer of legislation and further approval as representatives of the states. To deny this role denies proper functioning of government.

Is it ideology? Is it arrogance? Why this display?

Why the need to rush it through this sitting, especially when it is not meant to be sold until 2006?

Already the Labor party noticed the farcical method used to set up funds - Telstra shares, not actual money, and Barnaby had to humiliatingly back pedal and sort that out. (How firmly is the new Queensland Nat president in the job? What lies have been coming out describing it as $3.1 billion to be spent when it is $1.1 billion plus the INTEREST on the $2 billion.

The Farmers Federation had a flip flop. Why? There is nothing there on the table for them, is it something else? Farming is rapidly becoming a multinational field as small freeholds fall out of the business. This is seen in the hoohah over the Grain Board ownership last week.

Today, again guillotining the debate in the Lower House. Why? Is there urgent other business coming up? Or is this just a flexing of arrogant muscles, a taste of what is to come and the making of the Lower and Senate redundant?

This is not how to run our country and is ominous in the hands of such a deceitful group of people with no integrity, just plenty of tainted loyalty stooges for ambasadorial and trough-swilling board posts.

And before the usual trolls label all who complain as "lefties", as if that is some insult - to justify somehow that the worry is just partisan - be aware that I had been a Liberal voter and a rabid right-winger through ignorance until the Iraq war lies for all my life. Foolish neglect. Now Jefferson is my prophet.

Margaret Morgan (15/09/2005 10:26:13 PM), asking Jay White about his apparent confusion of democracy with elective tyranny: “I find it quite paradoxical that so many conservatives in this country are apparently so relaxed and comfortable about the disintegration of some of the fundamental traditions of our political system. It hardly seems ‘conservative’ to me.”

That is because it is not conservative, Margaret. Removal of checks, balances and accountability from government is radical. Suppression of intelligible debate by use of the word ‘conservative’ to mean ‘radical’ is classic Orwellian Newspeak, which is also not conservative.

The author Phillip Pullman presented an excellent election-winning strategy for the British Conservative Party in the Guardian on Wednesday (14 Sept). He clearly restates a lot of genuine conservative values, which may be compared with those espoused by Rodentists.

Note Pullman’s emphasis on Noblesse oblige. Solomon Wakeling (‘Dress nice for Howard, please...’ 15/09/2005 3:17:30 PM) has it totally wrong when he writes “Read This Side of Paradise? Noblesse Oblige derives from rich, frat-boy princely culture.”

The very fact that we use the French term ought to suggest to him that this phrase goes back to the days when the English court spoke French (ie, 1300’s or earlier). It is nothing to do with American fratboys in the Flapper Era. The idea was that the power base of feudal lords depended on the stability of their societies, the fitness of all members to play their fixed, allotted roles, and the recognition that this placed responsibilities on everyone, not just those at the bottom. Serfs had no choice but to work the fields for their lord. Soldiers had no choice but to fight for him. But the lord also had obligations to ensure that his people were fed and equipped well enough to be up to their tasks. He could not afford to neglect anyone. Otherwise, even in the absence of internal revolt, they would not be able to defend him against the competition.

Transfer upwards of power from barons to more remote kings, the industrial revolution and automation, and more lately, blockheaded managerialism have all had the effect of obscuring the fact that those at the top do not stay there by their own efforts alone, but are carried by the efforts of many, and that the continued well-being of those at the top requires the well-being of the many. The increase in social mobility since the days of feudalism is welcome, but some of those who have risen up the ladder are winner-takes-all types who are overly anxious to differentiate themselves from those they have left behind. I find it entirely expected that Margaret Thatcher and John Howard are both first-generation arrivals in the professional class. I find it disgusting that they let themselves become as socially divisive as they did.

We have slipped into a vicious circle where boosting short-term profits by laying workers off, making them less secure and paying them less will, if it goes further, ultimately reduce profits by eliminating the corresponding customer base. Part-time casuals working antisocial hours on poverty wages make really bad consumers. Unfortunately, the current prevailing insanity is to write these people off as additions to the ever-growing underclass whose potential is already being wasted.

Return to the application of Noblesse oblige could save us all from that.

There are still places that inculcate something similar. I attended an academically excellent private school, on a scholarship, through years 8-12. The idea was drummed in again and again that we were privileged to be there and to have the opportunities that we had to develop our skills, and that we had a duty to apply those skills in the greater community. A majority of boys opted out of the cadets after the compulsory year, and for the next 3 years took up one of the “conscientious objector” community service options instead. An afternoon a week doing anything from weed-clearing in the local rivers and nature reserves to visiting old folks at home for a chat and help with the shopping and cleaning. A disproportionate number of old boys tended to continue the service ethic after graduating from university, taking positions in the civil service, politics, education and medicine. I don’t think that many of us would be able to adopt without extreme embarrassment the attitude of I’m-alright-so-stuff-you that seems so prevalent today.

Practical Noblesse oblige should be on any national curriculum that eventuates. One day, we’ll educate people who go into politics to serve the 80% of the population who don’t want T3, rather than to accumulate power for themselves while wrecking the society around them.

Jay, I never really went away. Just lurking for a while. Good to see you still stick to your guns. Tell me honestly, as a fervent Howard supporter is there any feeling that the Libs are perhaps trying to push the envelope too far? Or are you very happy with all the proposed changes (welfare, Telstra, IR etc?) Can they do no wrong?

The Saints to win? I concede they have a very good shot. My call however is that their coach will let them down. Too young, too inexperienced. It may well be Mr Grumpy (B Smith) at the Eels who sees the culmination of his 15-year plan this October.

As I am a Knights supporter the season is well and truly over for me (BTW Margo, pity your Cowboys self destructed last week!) but I shall barrack for the Saints Jay, just to show you that even a rabid leftie like me can support the interests of someone from the other end of the political spectrum.

Go the Saints! (But not the Saints in tonight’s game. C'arn the Swannies!)

Andy, I had no doubt that it also derived from somewhere previous in history and your description is precisely how I understood what it meant. Bringing up Fitzgerald was less for the sake of noblesse oblige, than for his views on glamour, materialism and selfishness which I think are uniquely relevant these days. I'm still forming a piece in my mind that might do some justice to him; that was just in preparation. His philosophy was in fact a very different idea to the kind you describe and any references or traces of noblesse oblige are recorded only because he was a social historian.

What you're describing is very much a class-based aristocratic society. Whilst I can see that such an attitude would solve many problems, so would a commitment to world-wide happiness. My initial response is that any system with entrenched privileged classes is wrong, no matter how compassionate they are. It sounds burdensome, more than anything else, to have to concern myself with the troubles of others. Slavery to the masses.

Margo, good to see your site up and running and is a improvement on the old one.

Well, what does one say about the events of this week and last Friday, where time restraints were imposed on a committee of the Senate.

This week, where the Government has had a win, the next battles will be, Industrial Relations, Welfare to Work reforms. We know that many Australians remain opposed to the sale.

Are we going to see phone charges increase, less staff in Telstra, increasing faults? Just some that I have concerns.

The tactics of the Government in the Senate is another issue that I could comment on.

Ed Hamish: G'day David. Please provide a full name next time or no post. See the guidelines.

There was one other fact that become more clear during the limited debate on the Telstra Bills which I didn't mention because it didn't relate to past practices and precedent. However, it is a further very instructive example of just how flagrantly slippery and dishonest this Government is prepared to be.

Before the last election, the Prime Minister promised Family First that Family Impact Statements would be produced on relevant key peices of legislation. Following various comments and questions about this, it became clear that not only would the public not get to see such a statement, but not even the Family First Senator would! Any impact statement produced might be shown to Cabinet, but Cabinet documents are confidential.

Needless to say, the Family First Senator is displeased about this. You can hardly blame then for assuming that, when the Prime Minister promised to prepare such statements, it would go without saying that they would also be made available for people to see.

An early lesson for them (and yet another example for the rest of us) of how this Prime Minister operates to a different set of rules and values to the rest of us.

Stephen Callaghan: "Tell me honestly, as a fervent Howard supporter is there any feeling that the Libs are perhaps trying to push the envelope too far? Or are you very happy with all the proposed changes (welfare, Telstra, IR etc?) Can they do no wrong?"

Telstra is not a problem to me at all. I think it should have been in whole. Just catching up with unfinished business is how I see it. The greatest drama now will be the price the Government receives for it. This may just save it from privatisation although the taxpayer should not celebrate this as a victory.

IR reform is hard to speak about. I don't think at the moment anybody knows what the reform actually will be. I believe reform is a must and long over due. Until the detail is made available however it is imposssible to judge.

One thing is for certain; if it is as bad as many would like to think John Howard and the rest of the Coalition for that matter should begin looking for new jobs. I personally do not think John Howard is that stupid.

PS Go the Swannies. One down one more to go.

John Henry Calvinist (at 15/09/2005 5:09:44 PM) has a good point. John Howard deliberately restricted the parcel size of the set-price T1 shares in order to maximise the number of buyers. No doubt also, he maximised the political effect of the sale. In future years, 'mums and dads' by the million would find tears coming to their eyes as they sat by their firesides in retirement thinking of the modest but steady contribution to their incomes their Telstra shares had brought, and how it was all down to that nice Mr Howard.

Instead, he has about 1.6 million 'mums and dads' with very good reason to be hopping mad, having seen the value of their T2 investment just about halved, and T1 close to the price they paid for it. Hitting voters in the hip pocket on an individual basis is not a good political strategy. So while there is a discernible popular groundswell against Howard, there is none against Sol Trujillo and his three caballeros, who were attacked by Howard for telling the truth about the company they worked for. Had they been public servants, he would have had them sacked.

The Senate can pass all the legislation it likes, but T3 will be a non-event until Telstra has an unchained heart. (Remember Unchain My Heart?)

Howard was shrewd enough to realise that there was no point fighting Mark Latham on the pollies' superannuation scheme. He has little choice but to remove the regulatory shackles from Telstra along the lines proposed by Trujillo & Co, lest the rage of the 'mums and dads' be likewise unchained in the next election. 1.6 million angry voters is rather a lot.

But then, if he does unchain Telstra, what happens to telecommunications in all those highly strategic electorates in the bush?

Not easy, John.

Solomon Wakeling (16/09/2005 3:53:29 PM): "Andy, I had no doubt that it also derived from somewhere previous in history and your description is precisely how I understood what it meant."

Sorry, Solomon: I must have misparsed what you wrote.

"What you're describing is very much a class-based aristocratic society."

We live in one. You may find a few isolated villages in Borneo somewhere that are genuinely egalitarian anarcho-syndicalist, but most communities of a 100 and any bigger society develop entrenched hierarchies. Some people are driven to acquire power, and many others like to be led, and hopefully, protected from threats.

The problems arise when social divisions are rigid, with little or no interchange between classes, and Noblesse oblige is not there to maintain social cohesion and protect the vulnerable. The powerful become a closed, detached group of inbred hereditary aristocrats and corrupt cronies. They see themselves as intrinsically different from everyone else rather than part of the whole, and the slight hint of nurturing of the rest provided under Noblesse is replaced by total exploitation...

That's where we are now.

"Whilst I can see that such an attitude would solve many problems, so would a commitment to world-wide happiness."

They are in the same ballpark, but Noblesse was actually achieved and did actually work.

"My initial response is that any system with entrenched privileged classes is wrong, no matter how compassionate they are."

It can be as wrong as you like, but its unavoidable. You can't stop the driven ones from accumulating wealth and power without setting bigger bastards upon them. If they are going to rise to the top anyway, there might at least be an acknowledgement that if they do not remain nice about it, the system will become too unstable to keep them there.

" It sounds burdensome, more than anything else, to have to concern myself with the troubles of others. Slavery to the masses."

Why do you not think that you are one of "the masses"?

The ramming of the Telstra legislation through the Senate is a marker of more to come - next the welfare to work proposals followed by the IR changes. Australians clearly do not want a House of review - rather a House of the rubber stamp.

Solomon: "Something like noblesse oblige is princely and is the kind of treatment that the people wanted from Princess Di and which they are now getting from Princess Mary. Far from class jealousy, people like to spoil the cute ones and give them everything they want."

I think they like the fairy tale, but not the reality of monarchy. The reason Princesses Di and Mary are held in esteem is that they are/were basically us. Not born to it. They just happened to win the Romantic Lottery. The ones that are born to it - those of the 'class' are not adored at all. They're largely held in contempt, particularly when they fail to demonstrate their worth in terms of work. It's not class envy. It's an abhorrence of class privilege.

"I fully expect that [the Australian people] would also vote 'No' to a Bill of Rights. They will vote on personalities, but will avoid structural changes."

I agree. I so wish it weren't so, but while the breaches of rights are being inflicted on the 'others', it will never become a mainstream issue.

Thanks for your post, Andy Christie. Good thoughts. (And if I hadn't done a google site search, I wouldn't have seen it! Margo, oh Margo, please please please when you finalise the new site, make sure there's an 'unread posts addressed to me' function!)

Love the Pullman piece (actually, I love all his books too). I remember my first husband, a Brit, saying of the then UK PM, Thatcher... "This isn't Toryism. Toryism is making sure the animals and the servants are well fed before you close the gates at night."

I heard about Fielding and his 'Family Impact statements'. I find it amusing that the Government has decided simply to ignore them. The poor lamb is being taught how much influence he truly has.

Why should families have any more representation than single people? What about orphans? It reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Milhouse's Dad gets divorced.

"You're firing me?"

"This is a family organisation. Maybe single people eat crackers. We don't know. Frankly, we don't want to know."

Andy, I don't think you misplaced it, it was only a throw-away sentence, communicating nothing. I'm still forming my views here and trying to find a way to articulate them. And yes, you're right, I believe that we are living in a society of classes and in fact, those on the 'lower' rungs actually support this structure. Something like noblesse oblige is princely and is the kind of treatment that the people wanted from Princess Di and which they are now getting from Princess Mary. Far from class jealousy, people like to spoil the cute ones and give them everything they want.

I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that Australia voted 'No' to a Republic. I fully expect that they would also vote 'No' to a Bill of Rights. They will vote on personalities, but will avoid structural changes.

Ok, noblesse oblige certainly would make for a real change, beyond brute selfishness. It would have to move throughout the political and corporate culture. You're also correct of course, when you suggest that hereditary privilege simply can't be fully eradicated, at least not any time soon. A right-wing fembot like Ayn Rand, used to argue that this element should simply be removed, however it is totally impractical and few of the rich would tolerate it, given that their motivation often appears to be to hand over their dynasty to their children.

Whilst I most certainly am just another dot amongst the masses, I think it would be a hassle to devote my life to assisting them, unless I actually enjoyed doing so. I'm not ruling out such a possibility - that's the gauntlet I'm throwing down. How to make altruism attractive and enjoyable.

If nothing else is achieved, we must, as a result of this apalling experience, focus our minds on the urgent task of removing the Howard Government by no later than 2007.

We have to start now, in order to make sure that, this time, his Government is fully held to account for all the harm that his policies have caused to the public interest.

If this results in the election of yet another far from satisfactory Labor government, then let's cross that bridge when we get there.

At the moment, there is simply no other path through which we can travel if we are ever to achieve the kind of Government that Australia deserves and desperately needs.

Those who pretend otherwise are, wittingly or unwittingly, only helping to perpertuate the reign of the abysmally incompetent and ill-intentioned Howard Government, which, rightly, should have ended no later than 1998.

James Sinnamon are you serious when you say “If this results in the election of yet another far from satisfactory Labor government, then let's cross that bridge when we get there? You then go on to imply that “the kind of Government that Australia deserves and desperately needs is a bad Labor government”.

Hang in there James, because the present Labor Party could not win a chook raffle.

Sean, the biggest problem with our electoral system is that the population as a whole does not understand the way it works and are apathetic about the ramifications of political events. Watch how oblivious they are going to be to the implications of the 'anti-terrorist' (actually anti-dissenter) legislation which Howard is trying to push through. They are really going to believe it is just all about terrorists.

There is possible mileage to be had from the IR legislation provided Howard doesn't pull one of his distractors out of the hat. This legislation is close to his heart and if you saw how uncomfortable he was with Sally Neighbour's questions and how a robot-like Kevin Andrews could so easily be thrown by the right sort of confrontation, there is a golden opportunity there to weaken the Coalition... but don't put your hopes on Barnaby Joyce. I am beginning to think he's actually one of Howard's distractors.

Best advice for the Opposition is to go for the jugular. Everything points to the proposed IR changes as a potential embarrasment to this Government, enshrining as they do hazardous workplaces and discriminatory and unethical employers as the preferred model.

In fact you will probably still find that migrants and former refugees were/are by far the best informed voters, having survived war, dictatorships and unstable governments in their own countries. They assiduously do their homework and have been somewhat bemused at how Anglo Australians could have accepted such events as Whitlam's dismissal. In the past they were puzzled at the unthinking embrace of the British monarchy as part of the apparatus of government; today they are equally puzzled at how Australians could unthinkingly embrace such an unequal alliance with the US and its foreign adventures, with no foreseeable collateral gain for Australia.

We do not have a shambolic and borderline-corrupt voting system as was revealed in the last two US Presidential elections, but the existence of Senate ballot papers as large as bathtowels, replete often with candidates of suspicious provenance, and ambiguous wording for the actual process of voting (the same could be said with respect to the NSW Upper House ballots) acts to deliberately confuse the process. Also the actual mathematics of preferential voting is beyond even knowledgeable voters - most take refuge in party how-to-vote tickets.

Unless Labor and the small opposition parties can keep the cavalcade of lies and deceit of the Howard Government fresh in the minds of voters, unless they can politically capitalise on the negative effects of what is still to come, unless they can continually highlight the deep divisions in the Coalition parties, unless they can predict, uncover and dispose of all the wedge issues which are going to surface in the next two years then you are going to cement that apathy.