Tag Archives: australian election

You give me fever

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When you have a fever your perception of the world gets distorted, your brain cells manipulated by virus and high temperature to see all kinds of things that are not there.

Chemotherapy is similar. After you have it you are left not knowing what changes to your body are the result of the illness, which are the result of the treatment, which are just ordinary everyday ailments that you normally would have ignored.

The media is having the effect of fever or vencristin on the body politic. Reading, seeing, hearing the news now I have no idea whether the events being described are real or fake, meaningful or meaningless, deserving of outrage or approbation. Video and photographic images may (or may not) be faked; descriptions of events true or false; reporters may (or more likely may not) be anywhere near the scene they are apparently describing; both witnesses and reporters may (or may not) have a vested interest (or an ideological purpose) in presenting a story in a certain way; politicians and soldiers and economists may be telling the truth or lying.

Bodies may or may not have been buried, shots may or may not have been fired, money may or may not have been stolen, people may or may not be terrorists or freedom fighters, heroes or villains. Conversely the Earth is warming, the poor are getting poorer, religion is damaging society, taxes are too low, science is essential to society, in spite of narratives that pretend these things are debatable.

The media were once meant to fling open the curtains of the sick room, let the light in, diagnose the symptoms of society, treat ills. Now they bring new and virulent diseases, raise temperatures, manipulate our brains, create illusions, prevent us perceiving the real world.

How do we cure that?

Downhill Racers

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, the presidential race is on again in America (astonishing that it takes well over a year to find out which of the few people rich enough to try is going to be “elected” to serve the corporations) and the Republicans have once again scraped together a motley crew of nutters, ideologues and religious maniacs from whom to choose their candidate.

The whole process of course is utterly alien to those of us in this simple bucolic political world of Australia with its primitive and platonic ideas of democracy. The candidates seem like creatures from another planet, or an alien society in which chanting shamans analyse the entrails of goats to decide their leader and policies. So let me translate what the race is currently about.

Imaginary being’s preferences
Candidate 1 – “god likes me more than he does you”; C2 “oh no he doesn’t he likes me best”; C3 “no, he wants ME to win, told me”; C4 “he was talking to me you moron, I am god’s chosen president”.

Living in shoebox
C1- All children will live in poverty in shoeboxes by 2013. Not rich children, obviously; C2 All children living in poverty and parents sold into slavery; C3 All children in poverty, slave parents, grandparents allowed to starve to death; C4 All children in poverty, slave parents, starving grandparents, no medical care for anyone. Except the rich, obviously.

Furriners (1)
C1 – I will build a brick wall 1000km long and 20m high along Mexican border to stop asylum seekers; C2 Build a wall, patrol with helicopters with machine guns with orders to kill; C3 Wall, helicopters, drones on Mexican side to shoot rockets at anyone walking towards wall; C4 Wall, helicopters, drones, and scorched earth for 100km on Mexican side of border.

Furriners (2)
C1 – Will bomb any country that has any terrorists; C2 Bomb any country with terrorists and who won’t sell resources to America; C3 Bomb any country with terrorists that won’t give resources to America; C4 Bomb any country with or without terrorists that won’t give resources to America.

This land is our land
C1 – More oil wells – offshore, onshore, north, south, national parks, everywhere; C2 More oil wells and remove all environmental protection laws; C3 More oil, no laws, ensure cheap disposal of toxic wastes in rivers, oceans, air; C4 more oil, no laws, toxic disposal, compulsory increase of CO2 production from all sources.

Guns
C1 – More guns; C2 A lot more guns; C3 Compulsory guns for every adult; C4 compulsory multiple guns for every citizen from birth.

Schools
C1 – No teaching evolution in schools; C2 No teaching evolution or environment; C3 No teaching evolution environment ethnic studies; C4 No evolution, environment, ethnics – only classes in religion permitted

Unions
C1 – All union leaders arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay; C2 Ditto; C3 Ditto; C4 Ditto.

Hmm, on second thoughts, is this really that much different to the process by which we got Tony Abbott as future Prime Minister?

Unsuitable suggestion

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by politics • Tags: , , , ,

Had an odd thought this week as I looked at the grim-faced Republicans sitting on their hands through Obama’s speech; the waving hands and anger across the chamber of the House of Commons; the government-wrecking activities in Australia. Suits are the problem.

Well, just one of the problems, clearly, but you have to start somewhere. Picture those male politicians, all round the world, in the dress uniform of dark suits (sometimes light for the young at heart), white business shirts, subdued ties. It’s the kind of uniform that pitches armies against each other. It is formal, and uncomfortable, and dehumanising, you can’t relax and think, and it gets red-faced men in suits shouting at other red-faced men in suits. Can’t tell them apart, they are just opposition suits (or indeed suits from opposing countries).

But more than that the suits set the politicians into the dominant paradigm of society. They are adopting the uniform of big business, of the rich and powerful. See the politicians at a meeting of one of the business unions (they don’t call them that of course, it’s all “groups” and “associations”, but they are unions), try to work out who is who. Are these people who work with their hands? Sleep on streets? Get stuck in low paid jobs and then get sacked when a company moves offshore? Of course they are not.

Nor are they women. Oh the women do their best with pant suits or tailored jackets and skirts (and will get hammered by the media whatever they choose, and in whatever colour), but see them in a group photo of a new cabinet, or at an international conference of the leaders of countries, they stick out like sore thumbs, civilians in a uniformed world.

It’s all quite different when politicians take part in some kind of community event and wear casual clothes. Can’t tell the difference between men and women then (well, you can, but you know what I mean). Two politicians from opposing parties in jeans and tee shirts can happily cook sausages side by side. Politicians can go to football matches or agricultural shows, mix invisibly with, talk to, all the people wearing footy jumpers, or board shorts, buy hot dogs for children. After disasters politicians help clean up flooded houses, take food to bushfire victims, put rubbish in trucks after cyclones.

Well, you can see where I am going with this. A complete ban on suits for politicians. Casual clothes at all times in parliament, in the office, in the street. Any who don’t like it are obviously unsuited to the job.

Oh it won’t be easy. Remember the fuss when Obama was filmed not long after his election on a weekend in the oval office, without a jacket and tie, sleeves rolled up ready for a lot of work. Outcry that he was “demeaning the office of President” ignoring, hypocritically (it was the start of 2 years of astonishing hypocrisy) all of the other presidents who had been photographed in casual clothes in the office.

So there will be opposition, especially from the ruling classes in business and media, concerned that the politicians will no longer be clearly identified as part of their team. But as the public sees better behaviour in parliament, feels more comfortable talking to politicians, sees leader of countries in conflict settling differences over a beer on the beach, and as women feel more comfortable entering the boy’s club, they will quickly wonder how we ever put up with besuited politicians.

On second thoughts perhaps the other problems in our politics will just sort themselves out.

Eyes … Left

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

It is one of my many half-remembered things (there are also things I remember well, and some I don’t remember at all). A movie, or a book perhaps, a squad of soldiers disguised in enemy uniform. Were they British commandos in German uniforms in occupied France? Americans in Japanese uniforms in the Pacific? A Hornblower crew in the garb of the Frenchies? Never mind.

All I can really remember is that at some point things go wrong, the enemy identify them as imposters, and they are trapped with backs to the wall, last cartridges in the breach, drum playing. The Sergeant, Captain, Lootenant, whoever, says bravely “To hell with this men, if we must die here we will die in our own uniforms”. There is a cheer, the men strip off the outer disguise, revealing their true colours beneath, and set about to do or die, inspired by their gallant leader and their glorious uniforms. Did they win? Of course they did, though I can’t be certain of the fate of the little drummer boy.

Well, you can see where this is going – the Australian Labor Party, American Democratic Party, and British Labour Party have all spent many years, behind enemy lines, wearing the uniform of their opponents so as to remain undetected and occasionally win elections as pseudoneoconservatives.

But in Australia at least the ruse is discovered, and the enemy of all three raiding parties, the Murdoch Press Gang, is closing in, guns blazing, backing our intrepid infiltrators into a dead end alley, blocked off, as we speak, by a great big tank.

So time for Julia Gillard to make the patriotic speech, fling off the uniform of the oppressors and vow to die, one for all and all for one, in the thin red line of true believers, band of brothers and sisters, the socialist army of Australia. Would they escape the trap? Possibly not, but at least they would die with their clogs on, remembering who they really were, what they were fighting for.

Wouldn’t work in America or Britain, there the “progressives” would fling off the disguise only to find an identical conservative uniform underneath (Obama is clearly a conservative in the disguise of a conservative). Wouldn’t save them from the final massacre, wouldn’t make sense of the sacrifice.

But just a slim chance, still, that in Australia Gillard’s Gang hasn’t been behind enemy lines so long that they have forgotten who they are, forgotten what their own uniform looks like.

Come on Julia, make the speech “once more unto the breach”.

Shades of the prison house

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by politics • Tags: , , , , ,

Yee Haw (spelling?!) – after 6 months, my final treatment today. Still some nasty tests at end of September, but I hope no one will mention the bone marrow in the meantime – three weeks with no medical procedures, first weeks since February, and I intend to enjoy it. With all due respect to the lovely nurses, treatment is not dissimilar (I’m guessing) to being in prison.

Didn’t manage to post today (I am not a left-handed poster sadly) but did do some tweeting.

However I was thinking about David Hicks (one of only 2 Australians held in Guantanamo Bay). There were Ruddock and Downer, again, sneering at Hicks, and defending, again, the Australian govt helping the Americans keep him there, and happy with the military tribunal system where Hicks in desperation after 7 years pleaded guilty to a nonsense retrospective charge, to get released.

But why, I wondered, yet again, were our conservatives so determined to severely punish Hicks, why did they hate him so much?

Think for a moment about their treatment of refugees. The most fundamental principle was that these people must remain anonymous, unseen, unheard, not individuals. The media and the public were kept away, in order for the government to keep treating them inhumanely they had to be perceived as non-human, an anonymous faceless mass of threats to the country.

Conversely when they were hot to trot on following cowboy George into Afghanistan and Iraq, and hype up the terrorist threat to keep people scared and voting conservative they needed not just a faceless enemy (though also useful) but an identified one. Who was the enemy in “1984″, Emmanuel something? Same idea, here was David Hicks, ordinary Aussie from Adelaide, a TERRORIST (he wasn’t), must be, in Guantanamo Bay, therefore must be. So anyone could be, we were all under threat, doubt it, there was picture of Hicks with rocket launcher, still in a terrorist prison, be afraid, very afraid.

And it worked, kept re-electing Howard, silly young Hicks, without even knowing it. If he hadn’t existed it would have been necessary to invent him. Which they did.

Makes me ashamed to be Australian. And sad.

Top chef in the baker’s dozen

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

In the last 70 years Australia has had 13 prime ministers (excluding the temporary Mr Forde, Mr McEwan) just as both the US and UK have had 13 leaders each. You would have to say by any objective measure, and ignoring sniping by people like me, we have been very lucky and very well served by our baker’s dozen. We have avoided having any real dunces (unlike the US with Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush) or crooks (Nixon). Our 13 also exceed the average quality of 13 British PMs (who avoid the US highs and lows) over that period.

I have, in the past, tried to separate out tops and bottoms. But this would be invidious among a continuous spectrum, and besides I find my opinion alters over time (Fraser up and Keating down for example). So let’s try to assess them over a range of qualities (not including IQ which I reckon averages high and pretty even).

OK, how might we judge the best of these thirteen? Lack of ideology; flexibility of mind; ability to relate to people; difficulty of political circumstances faced; ability to work with colleagues; concern for ordinary people; concern for minorities and the powerless; awareness of the big picture; ability to embody some aspect of the country; hard working; willingness to take expert advice; someone I can imagine having an intelligent conversation with; someone I could imagine having a beer with; someone who can achieve outcomes; someone who can stand up to vested interests.

What have I missed?

Even if I have missed something big, I think applying those filters quickly begins to whittle down the big thirteen. McMahon, Holt, Rudd, Howard, Keating all go out in the first round. Then it gets hard (and depends greatly on how you weight different abilities against each other, and how you assess unpalatable party policies against prime ministerial abilities). Probably Fraser, Whitlam, Gorton and Chifley are reluctantly eliminated in the second round.

Which leaves just four in the grand final of Australia’s Got Prime Ministerial Talent – Curtin, Menzies, Hawke and Gillard. Now any of those would be a Winner you could argue for, give a standing ovation to, and I reckon you, my fellow judges, might easily disagree with me.

But, drumroll, my Winner is, on the basis of consistent performance overall – Julia Gillard. Yes, I know, I was surprised too. I fed all the data back into my PM “Difference Engine” (the very latest from Mr Babbage), and waited while the cogs whirred and spun, differences calculated, levers pushed for carries. Yes, it was still Julia by a nose. Do the calculations yourself (and get Ms Lovelace to double check, be analytical) I am sure you will agree.

Now I know it is only a short stay in the Lodge so far and they have been tumultuous times faced with a Tea Party inspired opposition, but, like good red wine, she can only get better.

So, best PM in 70 years, but there is another unique feature that distinguishes Ms Gillard from all her predecessors. No, not the size of her ear lobes. Give in? She has been subject to more personal abuse, vilification, hatred, death threats, than all of her predecessors put together. Wonder if those two unique features might be related, the Opposition determined to de-legitimise her before the public can grow accustomed to her abilities. Surely not.

If they succeed, and I reckon the chances are they will, then the baker’s dozen will end with her, a unique sequence come to an end. If Tony Abbott seizes the top job, then we will have not only taken on Tea Party politics from America, but the roller coaster leadership sequence in which some excellent, or at least above average, Presidents, can be succeeded by real dickheads, people who struggle to read a children’s book about pet goats. Mind you the US is about to plunge again too, and Abbott and Bachmann should get on very well.

Anyway, over to you. Have I gilded the lily, overegged the pudding? Even if I have, something to ponder on while Tony tries to work out whether a tonne of CO2 or a bust of Mr Monckton would fall faster from the roof of the House of Lords.

Home on the ocean wave

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

The other day, as evidence of News International’s unconscionable behaviour towards ordinary people emerged, followed by growing public anger about the corruption of judicial processes, the links between journalists and police, and the involvement of Murdoch and friends and family in the political world, questions about possible similar activities in Australia were raised. It was noted, by the parties of the left, to provide context, that News Limited outlets had been systematically and viciously attacking them for decades. This didn’t come as shock to any sentient human being or sentient drover’s dog. So the critics suggested (emboldened by the sudden acquisition of backbones in British politicians, some of whom said they were as mad as hell and weren’t going to take it any more) that there might be a little bit of enquiry into the toxic effect of the media on Australian society and politics. Outrage!

No, sorry, not outrage from the public, but from the media owners and their employees the professional journalists, now apparently very sad as a result of these unfounded attacks on their integrity. So they trotted out John Howard (you remember, prime minister during the 100 year war on terror). The ghost of Xmas past, exasperated as always that people were asking questions about truths he held to be self-evident, performed as required.

The press biased against the Left? “Harumph” said Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, quoting Teddy Roosevelt, “if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.”

So, end of discussion, good old John, always calls a spade a bloody shovel, no nonsense, tells it like it is. Politicians just don’t like it up em as Jonesy (no, not him, the other one) would say. Media just doing its job, fifth estate and all that, fair and balanced, turning the white hot heat of investigative journalism (just like whatsisname and whosimacallit) without fear or favour on Left and Right alike. The Left can’t take it, that’s all, bunch of ladymen and, um, ladies.

I hadn’t seen Mr Howard for a while. He had aged and bore the look, white hair and ruddy face, of the old seadog, now retired. The sort of chap who might have sailed with Magellan, or Cook, or taken a small boat to Dunkirk. His very appearance was a living metaphor. Politics, his red cheeks said, was like sailing the stormy seas. The storms were whipped up by the media and it took a steady hand at the wheel to drive the ship onwards and safely back into harbour. The Left, said his driven-snow locks, don’t have steady hands, whinge about the weather instead of steering a steady course.

Trouble is, to be seduced by the metaphor, convinced by the angry retort, you would have to have less sense of history than a goldfish. The good ship SS Neocon, Captain Howard, First Mate Costello, sailed calm seas with gentle following breezes. MV Social Democrat, with constant turnover of officers on the bridge, sailed a different route, where gale force winds blew in their face, reefs threatened their keel, icebergs threatened their bows, and tsunamis erupted at every turn.

Far from being the fifth estate the media acts as a fifth column whenever the ship of state is in the hands of commies. Call up the storms, pull out the bilge plug, drive holes in the sides, sabotage the pumps.

May just be my uncertain memory, but I can’t remember when it was decided that the Australian media got to determine who the government could be, and to correct any mistakes unaccountably made by the voting public. Perhaps an inquiry would help me remember.

Motherless child

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by Climate Change, Economics, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Gillard government’s carbon price scheme is like a tiny new-born infant. Carefully delivered, wrapped up in swaddling clothes, rushed into an incubator, carefully protected. It is tiny, hardly of any impact whatsoever, a barely noticeable blip on the day-to-day fluctuations of economy, prices, jobs. But if it can survive it has potential, and therefore it is already the subject of a massive campaign by the media (including the ABC) on their own behalf and on behalf of the ideology and financial interests of their corporate friends.

To see why let us step back a moment, to the scurrilous campaign by the tobacco industry against plain packaging of cigarettes. May not impact much on their global profits when there is a reduction in consumption in Australia. Small change really. But it is the example that has to be smashed. If Australia succeeds in doing this the other countries will take notice, follow suit, and suddenly we are talking big money. When the Right complains about Australia “taking the lead” they are not concerned that we might find ourselves in the front of the pack developing a renewable energy economy because of worries about the battlers, but because we would become an example of what could be done.

So the carbon price approach has to be smashed, and the media (as well as the political representatives of the corporations) were on the job immediately the announcement was finalised (had been on the job even earlier in fact). We watched on the first full day after the announcement as Oz media set about destroying carbon tax, with constant repeat of the “PM is a liar” refrain so well put in place beforehand. Watched as interview after interview finds “battlers” who “don’t believe” they will be better off. Read phony polls. Marvelled as “industry leaders” are given endless interviews in which to repeat, unchallenged, the “Australia is rooned” refrain. Enjoyed the hypocrisy as the talking heads said government had to “sell the tax” while unleashing a total media war to prevent them doing so.

Listened in shock and awe to the misleading introductory “headlines”, the push poll type questions in an abrasive style for government members, the soft and helpful questions for opposition members. The vested interests interviewed as experts, their interests undeclared, their statements unchallenged (one for example suggesting that a $3.50 increase in airfares would ruin the aviation industry!). The average joe off the street asked for a view given the same weight as any number of expert enquiries and cabinet considerations.

Finally listened in amazed disgust as first Tony Abbott, after visiting an open cut coal mine in a devastated landscape said that he “didn’t see anyone” among the miners who was into damaging the environment; then Joe Hockey, asked a question at a public meeting about whether the Liberal Party was going to stop the public “taking up arms against the government” merely said he “understood” the questioner’s anger.

Trouble is, I don’t think either Gillard’s advisers, or the Greens think tank, have got any idea of what they are up against here. They both seem to think that by setting out facts calmly and rationally the people will be won over in the end. They have no idea of the campaign being waged against this move on greenhouse gases. The foundations have been carefully laid by the likes of Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt with the help of Christopher Monckton and Ian Plimer, and now full coal-fired steam ahead with every media outlet building on those foundations.

We are only a day onto this, but my gut tells me the battle, and the war, are already lost. The baby won’t be coming out of the incubator.

PS I was going to end this with some helpful ideas. For example it seems to me that in areas like the Latrobe and Hunter Valleys you could set in motion the development of major renewable energy facilities for every mine facing closure or reduced output, and training schemes for miners to get into renewables. Could undertake land reclamation, revegetation and soil carbon building measures, maybe plantation timber projects. And perhaps a scheme to encourage tourism development of such regions. But I don’t think anything is going to be able to overcome this media campaign (one talking head Monday morning for example said the compensation scheme was “so generous it was suspicious”). With that media mindset nothing is going to matter.

Punch and Judy

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , ,

The News of the World scandal is major news everywhere except in the pages of the rest of the Murdoch press. Fair enough, I mean I think it comes under the heading of “dog bites man” “News Limited behaves unethically towards little people”, but I suppose having direct evidence that NOTW (and certainly others) were willing to damage the lives of families of murdered schoolgirls, terrorism victims, dead soldier’s families, all in the name of profit makes it a bit more newsworthy.

Also much has been made of the effect this affair will have on Murdoch’s bids for massively increasing his tv influence in Britain (BSkyB) and Australia (Australia TV, where astonishingly the govt is considering awarding him the contract to project Australia’s image abroad over the claims of its own national broadcaster the ABC). And much has been made of his direct influence on the political life of the UK through contacts with politicians, and the former NOTW editor being Cameron’s press secretary for example. Much has been noted about his use of newspapers to attack those who did not toe the Murdoch line, and to push for things he wanted (the Iraq War) and against those he does not (climate change). Consequently he has had a major, the major, influence on politics in the US, UK and Australia for a generation. With all due respect to the unpleasant press lords of the past, no one has ever had the obvious overt influence that Murdoch has had.

As bad as all that is, and it is very bad indeed, it seems, like phone hacking, to be only the small visible part of the iceberg. And it is the rest of the iceberg that is going to go on floating in the political shipping lanes, whatever the outcomes of turning NOTW into the Sun on Sunday, and the bids for BSkyB and OZTV.

A gangster moving into a patch has a template for how to proceed. You simply make an example, brutally, of some existing drug dealer, pimp, loan shark, protection racketeer, in order to encourage the others. From the time the mangled body is found your wish is their command as you take over the joint.

In Australia in 1972 the Murdoch Press, tiny as it then was, threw its support behind Gough Whitlam to see the first left-wing government elected in Australia in 23 years. The rest of the media had continued to resist (the Fairfax Press for example has famously never ever supported electing a left-wing government in its 200 years of publication) and it was Murdoch who had achieved the impossible. That was the first part of the lesson. Two years later the Murdoch Press turned on the Whitlam government, and its unrelenting and ferocious attacks led to an early election, where Whitlam just hung on, and then to the unprecedented and previously unthinkable event when the governor-general dismissed the government re-elected just a year earlier and appointed the Opposition leader into the highly advantageous caretaker position for the subsequent election. During that period the Murdoch Press attacks intensified in ferocity and the 1975 election saw a big win for the conservatives. All subsequent Labor leaders had been given a clear message – I can make you or, more likely, I can break you.

As a result they have all, either covertly or overtly (for example Kevin Rudd in 2007) sought Murdoch’s approval before seeking the approval of the voters. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a fly on the wall (a wall, perhaps, with a large photo of Whitlam on parliament house steps while the proclamation of his dismissal was read) during those agonising encounters where the small tribal chiefs met the Roman Emperor, I think I would have been so noisily sick as to attract attention and a fly swat. But I reckon the pattern would have been endlessly repeated. Murdoch telling the Labor leader what he would and wouldn’t permit from the items in the party policy document, the Labor leader ostentatiously crossing things out with a big red pen. Most times there wouldn’t have been as much left in as in a letter home from a British soldier in World War 1.

After a year or two of this, just as the newspaper editors instinctively knew what was wanted and didn’t need direct instruction, the Labor Party had removed so much that Murdoch didn’t like that they had become indistinguishable from the conservatives. Job done. Job also done in America and Britain. Oh there might be a few rough edges, new issues that arose, where a quick phone call, or a little chat behind closed doors, would quickly set out the new marching orders. But mostly it became true that no matter what party was in power in the three countries of greatest Murdoch influence the policies would match the ultraconservative neoconservative procorporate, antienvironment antiunion, antiregulation drown-government-in-bathtub views of Rupert.

No matter what happens on the surface in the next few weeks, this behind-the-scenes operation of the political puppets will continue. No matter what the people want (and those wants have in any case been carefully massaged by Murdoch over the last 50 years) the script of the political process always plays out the same way.

You thought Punch and Judy had free will?

My enemy’s enemy

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Political truism – the hatred one party holds for another is directly proportional to how close they are in their political philosophy.

Communists hate trotskyists hate socialists hate social democrats hate liberal democrats hate liberals hate tories hate fascists. Come a revolution and it’s the guys nominally on your side who get put against the wall first and shot – social democrats, mild-mannered and well-meaning, looking stunned as the communists set up the firing squad. “No no, not us, those are the bad guys” they protest, pointing at the fascists, but all to no avail.

The pattern is repeated right up to the present. In America the so-called “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrats hate the liberal Democrats who hate the Naderites; while on the other mountain the standard Republicans loath the tea party nutters while both in turn are held in contempt by the Libertarians.

In the UK the ill-feeling between Lib-Dems and their most obviously close rival the Labor Party was so strong that the Lib-Dems formed an alliance with the Tories, a coalition that has not done well, Mr Clegg apparently not having a long enough spoon.

Similarly in Australia The Nationals hate the One Nation crazies almost as much as they hate the Liberals with whom they have been forming coalitions for over half a century. On the other side the hatred between the old Democrats and Labor was so great that the former facilitated the work of the Liberal government (much as Clegg has done in the UK but less formally), a decision that was to see the destruction of the party. Both Labor and Democrats hated Greens with a passion far exceeding anything they felt for the ultra-conservative Howard government. And so it goes.

You would think, on the face of it that these hatreds would balance out, leave a level playing field between left and right, but in practice they don’t. The Right seems to be much better at working together, issuing joint statements through gritted teeth, getting on with the business of seizing power and then retaining it for as long as possible. The difference, I guess, is that the Right are strongly united by their simple desires to make the rich richer and control the behaviour of the poor, whereas the Left tend to have this quaint old-fashioned view that policy is best determined by research, analysis and discussion.

So, the Left needs to get much much better at working together on its own side of the political spectrum, or, in America, Britain and Australia, we are staring down the barrel of endless conservative rule.

Starting now. There are elements of difference along the lines of whether to open the pointy or round end of eggs; or the debate between religious sects on the meaning of a single partial word on a torn manuscript from 2500 years ago, but with good will those differences could be turned around into questions of priority, of timing of implementation, and extent, like all political compromises. In Australia it is not impossible to see Labor and Green sitting down, accepting the commonalities in their policy documents, and working their way through the differences.

But, and this is a big but, the difficulty in working together is not so much related to policy as to party structure. One party has too much of a top down approach for its own good, the other has too much grass-roots control for its own good. Neither Bob Brown nor Julia Gillard could sit down at a table and make a firm agreement to compromise on policy platforms in order to reach a common platform. The Labor Party is rigidly ruled by faction bosses and the solidarity of caucus; the Greens are rigidly ruled by the individual votes of every single member in every single branch. In both cases the leaders would have to go to their parties to be given freedom to debate and compromise, probably within some defined limits. I don’t imagine for a moment that would be easy to obtain – the Greens have a great fear of hierarchy, Labor has a great fear of anarchy – but being faced with an Abbott government lasting longer than that of John Howard might concentrate some minds wonderfully. And those that don’t (like Michael Danby last week suggesting an agreement with the Liberals to keep preferences away from Greens in the seats of Melbourne and Melbourne Ports, a classic example of being happier working with an actual enemy than a potential friend) might have a political riot act read to them,

Whether similar Grande Detentes of the Left could be attempted in America and the UK I am not sure, given my lack of familiarity with the details of party structures and membership, but similar shudders at the prospect of a reborn Thatcherite rule, or a Tea Party dominated government, might just prompt some serious reflections on how well the antagonisms of the past have worked out.

Am I optimistic or pessimistic?

Born optimist, had pessimism beaten into me. Might be time to reverse that process.

If you have phone numbers for Bob or Julia give ‘em a call. Can’t hurt.