Red Rag

Ross from Rockingham has posted some interesting historical information about malapportionment in WA.

Fuck. James Russell has quit blogging. It’s a shame, but if you’re bored you’re bored and what’s the point? Still, I hope he does start a photoblog soon.

John Howard says he hopes Mark Latham finds a publisher for his book because “I believe in open government and open opposition”, even where openness involves gratuitously slagging off one’s colleagues. I guess the PM is a big fan of Barnaby Joyce, then, eh?

Last night was the annual law school dinner. This is what I got up to:

• Fumed as the Dean of Law opened proceedings with an Irish joke. It wasn’t even funny.

• Yawned through Julie Bishop’s speech, in which she insisted that people should not become politicians unless they have personally fired someone. We also learned that Julie could see things from the battlers’ perspective because of her background as the daughter of an establishment political family, a partner in a commercial law firm, and a student at Harvard Business School — you know, typical bogan stuff.

• Caught up with a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years; managed to stay awake as they regaled me with tales of the exciting life of the articled clerk.

• Laughed when the title “Beau of the Ball” was conferred on a mate who was so drunk he couldn’t walk, and whose shirt was smeared with his own blood when he arrived to claim the prize.

• Complained about how sweaty mature-aged students can be when they decide to punch on. I had to prise this bastard off some young whippersnapper — twice — before they decided to take it outside. Then the hotel ended the night early because they weren’t in the mood for a brawl.

So yeah, it was interesting.

Update: Manas has some photos.

We now have details about Jim McGinty’s “creative solution” to the one vote one value impasse. Two new seats will be created, which will allow five seats to remain in the Mining and Pastoral Region, instead of four.

The West has found an angle that it thinks will hurt Labor (p4):

Opposition Leader Matt Birney will be looking for a new seat to contest at the next election after a deal between the Government and the Greens on one vote, one value legislation carved the seat of Kalgoorlie off the WA electoral map.

The implication is that there was some kind of plot to unseat Birney. The Liberals joined in, saying “Labor is obviously targeting Mr Birney.”

What a load of twaddle — the redrawing of Kalgoorlie’s boundaries is inevitable. It covers just 67 km² and is surrounded by the 1 232 356 km² electorate of Murchison-Eyre. It is truly absurd, as a quick glance at the map will confirm.

Equally absurd is the fact that the Opposition Leader represents just 13 414 electors, while the Premier represents 25 903. Next time around, Birney might need to convince more than his extended family to vote for him. The West’s Robert Taylor notes (p23) that the “surrounding areas [are] populated by miners and Aboriginals,” and wonders whether Birney would rather shift to a safe metropolitan seat.

But while the new legislation is a step in the right direction, we ought to remember that it will not actually deliver democracy, and who is in the way of its achievement — the Greens.

I’m battling with EndNote at the moment, and I’ve just about had it. The database structure is rubbish, and its formatting rules are inflexible and counter-intuitive. Although I get a free license to use EndNote while I’m a student, if someone can point to a better alternative, I’d be happy to pay for it.

I’m fed up to the back teeth with people defending Joh Bjelke-Petersen by asking us to “sit down and look at the balance of the ledger”. That’s like looking at a wife-beater and saying, “Well, sure he knocked her around a bit, but you’ve got to remember — he put a roof over her head and food on the table, and he bought her some nice jewellery now and then. She just didn’t know what was good for her.”

A while ago, reader David Miles pointed me towards this interview with Barnaby Joyce. I intended to post about it at the time, but for some reason it slipped my mind. Anyway, here’s the interesting part:

Helen [Coonan] is so typical of that Liberal elite from Sydney’s eastern suburbs whose main view of the world is the harbour. Just completely out of touch with working rural Australia.

I picked up the phone the other day and this very superior sounding woman from Helen’s office told me that “Senator Coonan will be on the Sunshine Coast at the weekend” and would I like to pop down and see her.

Well, no, I couldn’t just “pop” down. It’s a nine-hour drive from here to the Sunshine Coast. Did she think I had nothing to do for the next three days?

Coonan has the ministerial jet, she is on the public purse, and she wants my vote on Telstra — I don’t want anything from her — and yet here she is between sessions at the opera and her beloved French restaurants telling me to drop everything to rush to see her. The arrogance is breathtaking.

Ouch. Now Joyce has apologised — not because it’s untrue, but because John Anderson asked him to.

One vote one value sounds like it’s a step closer to passing the Legislative Council. Although this morning the Greens said they would “hold the line that the five seats special guarantee is taken out,” by this afternoon they were happier with the “creative” proposal put forward by the Government.

The Greens have also reconsidered their attitude to gagging debate, which is a clear sign that they are serious about getting the legislation through. The price for their support is likely to be a larger upper house and therefore a lower quota. Since they’ve proven incapable of increasing their vote, it’s the only way the Greens will increase their representation.

At this stage, the details of the “creative solution” have not yet been announced, but my guess is that it will be a slight variation on the previous “large district variation” proposal — which will quite literally give land a vote. It’s by no means a perfect situation, and Gallop should never have made his gerrymander promise, but this will be a big step in the right direction.

The other missing ingredient is Alan Cadby. His support will be necessary to get the package through Parliament. I’m sure he’ll come through, but in the meantime, have a look at his fascinating speech about the Liberal Party’s so-called Northern Alliance — it’s a tale of “lies, corruption, persuasion, strongarm tactics, branch stacking and the like.”

Over at Larvatus Prodeo, debate about the Papacy has segued into a far more interesting discussion about beer. It reminded me about the beer map (via) published by the Malt Shovel Brewery:

I prefer to wander around the western side of the map, with occasional forays into the more densely populated eastern regions.

Where do you live?

Nick Evans has put together a potted history of the Popes Benedict. And with the End of Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza fast approaching, perhaps Spicey will celebrate with eggs Benedict on New Norcia bread?

While I’m on the subject of industrial relations, I notice Kevin Andrews is trumpeting the success of a Building Industry Taskforce prosecution that won a whopping $6000 from construction company Barclay Mowlem. An outstanding result, to be sure, but what else has the BIT been up to?

Andrew Ferguson provided a neat overview of its performance in the most recent issue of the NSW Labor Left’s Challenge magazine:

The Building Industry Taskforce has been eagerly seeking prosecutions to justify the more than $13 million of taxpayer money that it has swallowed up thus far. Yet a recent series of judgments have declared their cases “hopeless”, “undemocratic” and “authoritarian.”

In February … Justice Wilcox [of the Federal Court] said, “Even on the view of the facts propounded by the applicants, their case was hopeless. It was instituted without reasonable cause.”

[…]

In another case before the Federal Court, Justice Marshall rejected the Taskforce’s request to access the bank records of Multiplex employees suspected of receiving strike pay because of the Taskforce’s refusal to indicate why they wished to receive the information.

Justice Marshall stated that not only was such an action “foreign to the workplace relations of civilised societies”, but to allow such an action was “tantamount to saying that an inspector may target an employer or employee or any other person, and fish through that person’s records to see what may be extracted for some still further unstated purpose.”

And finally, my favourite example:

In a third case before the NSW District Court, a taskforce inspector was criticised for giving evidence and then returning to reverse his statements, seeking to match them up with the evidence provided by another witness.

Judge Allan Hughes said the “most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in six years on the bench was a person giving evidence under oath, sitting the whole day through the evidence of another witness and then coming back wishing to make his evidence match that of the second witness.

“How could I accept his word? I mean, was he right the first time or was he right the second time?”

In the last case, Hughes J found that the CFMEU had not filed some paperwork in accordance with the Workplace Relations Act, and fined them $2000. But at the same time he dismissed 35 other charges. Farcically, Kevin Andrews considers this to be one of “10 successful prosecutions.”

Pressing hopeless prosecutions, breaching employees’ privacy, and making up evidence in court? That’s what $13 million of taxpayers’ money buys — it’ll take a hell of a lot more than ten $6000 fines to justify that expense.

Update: For the benefit of international readers, I should explain that the Cole Royal Commission was set up by the Howard Government to smash the unions in the building and construction industry. The Building Industry Taskforce was established to follow up the Commission’s findings.

Earlier hints that the WA Liberals might reject a Commonwealth takeover of industrial relations have been confirmed by their new leader, Matt Birney, in a speech to the 500 Club on Friday:

I got myself a full briefing from the federal minister’s office, I spoke to Kevin Andrews on a couple of occasions on the telephone. I just can’t support it. I mean, I’m a Western Australian first, I’ve got to tell you, and I’m also concerned that this might end up being the thin edge of the wedge. I mean, I’m worried that State Governments might become irrelevant, and that would be a retrograde step.

The South Australian Liberals were quick to support Birney’s stand, saying that the smaller states had most to lose:

Well, I’m arguing that it’s not necessarily in the smaller States’ best interests. I can understand why New South Wales and Victoria might want that. … There are more politicians out of Sydney and Victoria, out of New South Wales and Victoria, therefore the system that will be delivered long term over a 10 or 15 year period will be a New South Wales and Victoria driven system.

By Friday afternoon, the Queensland Opposition had joined the chorus:

Our concern is that if this model goes too far, it could completely derail the state industrial relations system, which could have very, very negative impact on the capacity of State Governments to be able to run their affairs, particularly on IR matters, of which they have a very significant and direct responsibility.

It is unrealistic to expect any of the State conservative parties to vocally oppose the Government’s agenda, but they will try to sit on the fence. That means they will occasionally make noises about States’ rights, but won’t expend much energy actually fighting the proposals.

Still, these statements could significantly weaken the Government’s propaganda campaign, on two fronts. The first is the idea that IR needs to be rescued from the State Labor Governments; for example, Howard claimed in his Menzies Centre speech that we have “seen Labor States gum up workplaces with regulation in recent years”. But the State Liberals are warning people that Labor will, at some stage, win power at the national level (in three years, fingers crossed), and a unitary IR system would allow them to gum things up more effectively.

The second is the claim that “Victoria referred most of its IR powers to the commonwealth in the early ’90s and the sky didn’t fall in.” The State Liberals’ comments, especially those of South Australia’s Iain Evans, cast the debate not as a battle between the States and the Commonwealth, but as a battle between Victoria and New South Wales on one side, and everybody else on the other. That’s far more likely to catch people’s attention — everyone’s numb to the ritual of State/Federal buck-passing, but people in the smaller States have a strong sense that Canberra generally ignores their interests.

It will be interesting to see how the Liberals handle this split in the next couple of months. They will try very hard to keep their heads down, but Labor will try just as hard to trap them into repeating their concerns.

Excellent news:

Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison says the Government will pull out all stops for any Australian facing capital punishment.

Indonesian police are yet to reveal whether any of the nine Australians arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling in Bali will face charges which attract the death penalty.

Senator Ellison has already been to Indonesia recently to ask his counterpart to urge prosecutors in the Schapelle Corby case not to ask for the death penalty.

This week prosecutors recommended a life sentence and a fine.

Senator Ellison says it is too early to pre-empt what may happen to the nine Australians arrested this week, but he says the Government will object if they face capital punishment.

He has also welcomed comments from Australian Cardinal George Pell, who has said he will plead for clemency if the nine end up facing the death penalty.

The problem for the Government is that they didn’t speak out against the death penalty when, for example, the Bali bombers were on trial. If we are opposed to the death penalty in principle, then we should say so and not pick and choose between those we deem worthy of support and those whose lives are worthless to us.

There are several other Australians facing barbaric penalties around the world. I hope we’re not just speaking up on the Indonesian group because Schappelle Corby made it impossible to ignore them.

I wish I had time to write a decent post about the death penalty; then again, there’s probably no need because I agree with every single word of Andrew Bartlett’s post. George Pell’s stand is also commendable.