Auspol Archives - Page 2 of 2

Bleeding Heart Lefty: Verb The Noun – #Auspol

It’s been very hard to concentrate on cars the last week, so it’s time to blow out a few of the week’s cobwebs….

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From 2007 to 2013, Australia was governed by a leftist government – the Labor Party. The leader for much of this time, Kevin Rudd, was very popular with the electorate but his leadership style was loathed within his own party. The solution: they ousted him in his first term of government and replaced him with Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

An election followed that delivered a hung parliament but Gillard won the day by successfully negotiating with the cross benches. The cost was a deal with the Green party that saw a carbon tax introduced in stark contrast with Gillard’s pre-election statement that “there would be no carbon tax under a government that I lead”.

The hung parliament, while remarkably successful in passing legislation, was a public relations disaster and the carbon tax was a giant albatross around Gillard’s neck. So the party decided to kick her out, replacing her with her predecessor – Kevin Rudd.

In September 2013, the Australian people were sick to death of the in-fighting and more than sick to death of the hung parliament, so they voted in quite possibly the man considered the most unelectable candidate of them all, a guy named Tony Abbott.

Abbott had two great strengths working for him in the election campaign (aside from his relentless negativity, which some saw as a strength when his primary job as opposition leader was, of course, to oppose).

The first strength was his chief of staff and her political strategist husband, who instilled a clever set of three-word-slogans – stop the boats, axe the tax, fix the budget, verb the noun ad inifinitum – as well as iron-fisted discipline that provided a stable contrast to the instability of the Labor party.

His second great strength was that regardless of his own considerable personal stench, he wasn’t the other mob. It didn’t really matter what the alternative was, the other mob HAD to go.

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Last week, the government’s Commission of Audit report was made public. The government has made sure that the line “this is not a report of government, but a report to government” was repeated quite a lot. Repetitive catchphrases are a sure sign that they’ve got something to sell. That something is that they want to distance themselves from the ideology behind the report.

Of course, that’s a load of crap.

The panel behind Commission of Audit was stacked with people that were specifically selected for their big business background and/or small government philosophy. The panel were given specific guidelines by the government as to what they could and couldn’t look at. They were specifically told not to look at the biggest fiscal problem Australia faces – falling government receipts. Their job was to look only at expenditure and see what could be reduced, cut completely, or privatised.

The result? I think Ben Eltham from the Guardian summed it up best:

The prescriptions advocated by the Audit are stock-standard 1980s-era neoliberalism. Privatise government assets. Cut red tape. Abolish or amalgamate government agencies. Charge citizens more for government services, like visits to the doctor. Slash government benefits, especially for the most vulnerable. Make students pay more for their education. Reduce foreign aid. Abolish national protections, like a national minimum wage. Halt Commonwealth support for the homeless.

This is a recipe for a poorer, nastier and more brutish Australia. If implemented, it would mark the beginning of the end of the Australian fair go.

Yes, some people do abuse the offerings of government and some of the conditions for those offerings should be tightened. Yes, there is some red tape that needs to be cut.

Ben Eltham’s analysis and conclusion are generally fair, however; this Commission of Audit report, framed deliberately by the terms of reference dictated by the government, is their ideological dream. It’s a dream that would sacrifice the Australian notion of “a fair go” and even the general social idea of mateship on the conservative high-altar of economic rationalism – and the use of that very 1990’s term is quite deliberate. The financial rot was set in motion by decisions made by the Australian Prime Minister whose shadow began it’s lurk in the back half of that decade: John Howard.

The Green’s Richard De Natale correctly stated in response to the Commission of Audit that the government seems hell bent on turning Australia into a Little America, into a dog-eat-dog society that removes our traditional safety net and exposes the most vulnerable in our community to greater social and financial isolation. Australia has a proud tradition of mateship, of figuring out what we can do for one another in times of need, which is a stark contrast to figuring out how we can screw one another in times of need.

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I wonder how long it will be before Marketing degrees and Political Science degrees will be taught together as part of one course?

As mentioned earlier, the government was elected primarily because it wasn’t the other mob. But the government also made a big point of telling people exactly what they wanted to hear, which is Marketing 101 (unity ticket on Gonski funding, anyone?). Tony Abbott has already confessed that “it’s sometimes better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission”. He duped his own colleagues that way when he announced his overly-generous Paid Parental Leave policy without consulting them first.

During the election campaign, Abbott made all sorts of promises that he will inevitably have to break. Of course, the objective was to get into power. The cost didn’t matter because he can always break his promises, blame the previous government and seek the forgiveness of the electorate prior to the next election.

During his four years as opposition leader, Abbott made a great deal of mileage on his criticism of Australia’s budget deficits. If the government of the day had proposed a post-GFC tax levy to reduce those deficits – even a temporary tax levy – the Abbott-led opposition would have torn the roof off Parliament House.

And yet, along with the Commission of Audit report last week, we also got news of a proposed ‘deficit reduction levy’ that would be applied to middle- and high-income earners. As you would expect, the opposition is opposing this measure.

Such is the farce of Australian politics in 2014 – you have a deeply conservative government proposing a tax on the wealthy and you have a leftist opposition saying it’s not a good idea!

Personally speaking, I don’t mind the idea, although I strongly object to the lying manner in which it’s being proposed. I’m not opposed to tax as long as it’s used responsibly. I don’t trust this government to use it responsibly, but that’s another issue all together.

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What interests me is whether or not people are willing to give the Abbott government a pass on this. There are plenty of people – I’m quite convinced – who did not vote FOR an Abbott-led Coalition government. They voted AGAINST Labor as punishment for their leadership troubles and as a reaction to the hung parliament. Abbott was merely the result.

I don’t think they voted for this new tax. I don’t think they voted for austerity measures as a response to a fabricated “budget crisis” (a crisis that even the defacto Coalition newsletter – The Australian – admitted last week does not exist). I don’t think they voted for the idea of ripping the guts out of the Medicare system or making higher education less accessible or less affordable. I don’t think they voted to have the Science ministry in the government abolished. I don’t think they voted for the mass cutting of government agency or had any remote idea that the government might consider changes to our model of federalism. I don’t think they agree with the government’s proposition that “people have the right to be bigots”. I don’t think they voted to have Knights and Dames reintroduced.

A very small proportion of them voted for up to $75,000 in paid parental leave, I guess. Money talks.

I don’t think too many of those swinging voters realised the potential change that could happen to the fabric of this country if Abbott and his mob have their way.

Hopefully Clive Palmer will pardon the pun, but I think Australian voters were sold a pup at the last election. The former independent MP, Tony Windsor, spoke in the last parliament of Tony Abbott’s willingness to sell everything except his arse to get into power when the 2010 election ended with a hung parliament. The speech is worth watching if you haven’t seen it. Tony Windsor wasn’t convinced in 2010, but the Australian people were in 2013.

Tony Abbott will seek forgiveness for the damage he does in the next few years, but hopefully the Australian people will realise what they did in 2010 and maybe they’ll resolve to do it again – kick this mob out.

And hopefully there’ll be an alternative government that’s actually ready to govern and initiate the national conversation we need to have about the role of government in this country, but in an honest, up-front and compassionate way.

Bleeding Heart Lefty

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A non-automotive post. Attempt #4. Yes, I’ve been trying to write this one for a while.

I am a bleeding heart lefty.

I didn’t grow up political at all. I first noticed my political interest around the turn of the century, at 30 years of age, while observing the campaign for the 2000 US Presidential election. We’ve always had plenty of US news here in Australia, even before the internet age. I grew up in the 1980’s with Reagan and Gorby arguing over nukes. I largely ignored the first Bush Presidency, had fun with Slick Willie but was ultimately disturbed in 2000 when the US elected a President that preferred to mosey rather than walk.

I watched this President take a truly sad occasion in 9/11, make a fully justifiable decision to chase the perpetrators in Afghanistan and then make a totally unjustifiable decision to follow that with a conflict in Iraq that wasted nearly criminal amounts of time, money and lives. That was my first real exposure to the conservative ‘hawk’ view of defence and I thought it was irrational.

Four years before George W. Bush was elected, Australia chose to end the era of possibly the greatest Prime Minister of my lifetime, Paul Keating (if you don’t admire him for his reform work, at least admit he was the most entertaining PM we’ve had). They replaced him with a conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, who wasn’t universally liked on a personal level but who did more than just one or two things that were worthy of commendation (gun laws, Bali bombing response, GST implementation).

On the bad side, however, he also noticed the raw nerve touched by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and (after he’d eradicated her) capitalised on it by starting the modern hard-line policy on immigration that still divides Australia today. Moreover, he used some questionable tactics (Tampa, and Children Overboard) to try and push his case and create fear in the community. The legacy is ongoing.

The Howard era also saw a lot of government owned assets and businesses sold off to private enterprise. Some of those asset sales were fair. Others became businesses that IMHO provide worse service than what they did when they didn’t have a shareholder profit motive.

Gifted with a majority in both houses in his final term, he went after worker’s rights in a big way with a labour package called Workchoices, which started the three-year decline that eventually saw him kicked out of power.

It’s those last few points that really irk me and perhaps gave best impetus to my own individual stance.

I come from a working class family that managed to work its way up to the middle class by virtue of both my parents working full-time in an era when having a full-time working mother was unusual. We never felt deprived of anything and my parents worked hard enough to send me to a private school for my secondary education. But from the kids I met there, I knew we weren’t rich.

One of my generation, an older cousin, was the first person in our family ever to attend university. Prior to that, it was simply never thought of as a realistic career path for us. My parents’ generation within my family were all manual workers and/or tradespeople. Their friends, their siblings and their kids – my cousins – were nearly all workers. Few worked for themselves. Most worked for someone else, therefore having to take the wages and conditions that were offered to them.

I applaud people who can start their own business. I applaud them for having the drive to establish the business, the people skills to befriend and serve their customers and the smarts to build it in such away as to make it profitable.

That’s not everyone, though. The world’s full of all sorts of people.

Some people have amazing skills in a certain area but no promotional skills to market them. They don’t have the ‘connections’ because they didn’t go to the right school, or they have awkward social skills and find it hard to build those connections.

Some people have little, or no, access to capital.

Some people don’t have any particular skills but are willing and capable workers.

Some people don’t have any particular skill except congeniality (and maybe an inheritance to go with it). They seem to make it regardless of their lack of skills simply because they have connections, and they know how to get along.

And yes, some people are slack arses and do little to help themselves.

When you come from a working class background, those roots tend to stay with you regardless of any success you’ve had in your own life. I was fortunate enough that my working class parents sent me to a private school. I eventually went to university and then got a post-grad qualification in my field. I worked a few different jobs before starting with my current employer, where I’ve had a few promotions and a near-doubling of my salary over my 10 years with them.

I’ve never felt secure in my employment, however, despite doing a good job working for what is supposedly the most secure employer in Tasmania. I still feel that same vulnerability that I’m sure other members of my family have felt during their lifetime. My job is a prime candidate for outsourcing. I know from having done this job in both private enterprise and public service that outsourcing my position won’t lead to a quality result for the clients I service. And yet I know that outsourcing is a real possibility purely out of political philosophy and the perceived need to improve a budget bottom line (which will be a false improvement because the outsourcing will still cost a lot and the service will be a lot worse as a result).

People tend to do a much better job, they tend to be much more productive, when good work is recognised and not threatened by what amounts to nothing more than pure ideology.

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I believe that we’re stronger as a country if the most vulnerable among us have a safety net that provides them with a position to launch from. I believe in competition and the basic tenets of the capitalist economic system, but I don’t believe in a dog-eat-dog competitive society.

I believe in hard work and reward for those who can do great things. I believe in incentive. I also believe in support and society agreeing on the right base-level start that we can give kids through education so that they can build the skills they need to do great things.

I believe parents should take responsibility for their kids. I get frustrated when I see that the fastest growing area of a school is its breakfast program.

I believe in strong state institutions – where appropriate – where the people have a collective say over the preservation of the commons. My approach as a car enthusiast who buys and sells a bit is that we never really own a car. We simply buy the right to enjoy it and preserve it for the next owner. We should take the same approach with the planet we live on because we have to hand it over to someone else, someone that we supposedly love. It should be in the best condition possible.

I don’t believe in privatising everything. Sometimes the market doesn’t get it right. We should preserve public enterprises that provide essential services (and sometimes even goods) to more remote areas. We should be wary of building mega-cities simply in order to preserve market viability. That might support a few fat bank accounts, but it doesn’t necessarily support people’s lives.

I believe that tax isn’t the bad thing that many people make it out to be. I think the misuse of tax is a bad thing. I believe that those who are crazy rich can bear a bigger proportional burden without losing their incentive to work – as long as taxes are used wisely.

I believe we need a proper, no-holds barred conversation about taxation. Hopefully someone will have the political courage to advance that in the next few years.

I believe in the enriching, healing, community-building power of the arts.

I believe in climate change and man’s contribution to it. I believe that first-world countries should play a major role in tackling it and that a market mechanism is the best way to do this. We should have a price on carbon. In my opinion, our current government’s non-stance on this issue is best summed up here – it’s shameful, it’s selfish, it’s impractical and if it’s promoted around the world then it’s going to make the world a much tougher place for future generations.

I agree that we need to stop people trying to take dangerous journeys by sea to get to Australia and seek asylum. I don’t have a solution, but I don’t believe that we’re handling it properly at the moment.

I believe in the benefits of a multi-cultural society and I think we should increase our migrant intake with the dual goal of accepting more skilled migrants, as well as assisting more people in hardship to improve their lives (eg. those asylum seekers).

I believe that employees should have the right to organise and bargain collectively for their pay and conditions. I firmly believe that the union movement shouldn’t shoot it’s people in the foot by making outrageous claims or abusing its position, but the victories won by the union movement are a big part of why societies and economies even have a middle class to fire the engines up in the first place.

I believe that our future lies with Asia, not with the US, despite our friendship and cultural similarities. All relationships are important, so don’t shit on the ones that will count the most in the future. I don’t think we should bug the governments of tiny nations in order to cheat them on resource deals and I don’t think we should break into the offices of their lawyers and steal their confidential documents.

I believe in transparent, accountable government. Our current government’s silence on some issues and armour-plated spin on others is not only a broken promise, it’s also anti-democratic.

I love the ABC, our government-funded, non-commercial broadcaster. The ABC enriches the lives of all Australians from kids to their parents and grandparents. It provides fearless, honest coverage including news and opinion on events both here and abroad. The ABC is not and should not be a cheerleader for anyone.

I’ve written before about our Mushroom Democracy and the media has a large part to play in this. The ABC is more important now than ever because of the dominance of Rupert Murdoch’s news outlets in this country, and Murdoch’s single-minded agenda to support the conservative line on every single issue. Murdoch’s news assets, both in print and on digital platforms, have succeeded in turning a large part of the Australian population into goldfish when it comes to matters of social importance. The shorter our attention span, the better. The more hysterical the confected outrage, the better.

I’m happy to support the ABC with my taxes, I support Fairfax Media with a digital subscription and I’m pleased as punch that the Guardian has an Australian service now, too. If the only place you look for news is in your capital city’s NewsCorp paper, please continue to read that (I read Rupert’s The Australian, too, because I believe in balance), but please also lift your eyes beyond those pages and expand your reading to other places.

Our current federal government, elected late in 2013, spent several years in opposition building a very successful obsession over debt and deficit. They screamed at the top of their lungs about governments producing an economic surplus (right up to the point when they won the election and were given responsibility for delivering one).

What got lost in the screaming match – and the Labor party (the left) can blame themselves for this one – is that there are times when it’s economically irresponsible to pursue a surplus. Maintaining balance over the long term is, indeed, very important. But “living within your means” in times of economic crisis doesn’t necessarily mean revenue > expenditure for the current fiscal year. It means living within your capacity to repay debt as and when it falls due. If you can improve the economic outcome for your country by borrowing within your capacity to repay, then it’s irresponsible to forego this in pursuit of a surplus at any cost. Sadly, because of that goldfish mentality we’re developing, more people tend to respond to the shock headline over borrowing instead of considering the real, long term position.

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I’m a big fan of team sport. I’d rather watch a game of football than a game of golf or tennis – any day of the week. I value individual skill and marvel at what some individuals can do, but I’ve always thought that the best achievements are those achieved by teams (and let’s face it, even supremely talented individual athletes in the modern age need a team of coaches and doctors around them in order to succeed).

I place the highest value on individual freedom, on freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to enjoy one’s own religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, etc. I place the highest possible value on the principles of democracy, even though sometimes I think the majority get it wrong.

But I believe we’re all better off when those individuals are capable of coming together and achieving something as a team. I think more people care about team achievements than individual achievements and I’m quite sure that they celebrate them harder. I think people support each other better in teams. They care about each other more. They care about being successful together.

There’s room for stars within teams and those stars should be recognised and rewarded accordingly. But even those stars will know that they couldn’t do everything on their own. For every Michael Jordan, there’s a Scotty Pippen and a John Paxson. For every LeBron James there’s a Chris Bosh, a Dwayne Wade and a Shane Battier.

Doing more by doing things together isn’t communism. It’s common sense. It doesn’t impinge on anyone’s freedom because people are free to join the team or to toil on their own. I just think we’re better off if we have a team mentality and for me, the values of the left provide that mentality.

I’m a bleeding heart lefty. That might irk some of my friends and family members, but I’m OK with that. There’s a good chance I think you’re an idiot, too 🙂

I still love you, though.

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#Auspol – Going, Going, Gonski

Never forget this quote:

It is always better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission

That was our new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, after he announced his paid parental leave scheme, a scheme that even most of his own coalition didn’t like.

Here’s a few other quotes for you, this first one from the Liberal Party newsletter, otherwise known at The Australian:

Just over a week before the September election, Mr Pyne promised: “You can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.”

And today, from the same article:

Mr Pyne, who claimed to be on a “unity ticket” with Labor on school funding before the election, today said the Gonski model was a “shambles” and “unimplementable”.

“The change of government means that the new government will implement its policies in the future,” he said.

But wait a minute….. the new government’s policy was the same as the old government’s policy, right?

Again, Tony Abbott, before the election:

“There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding,” the Opposition Leader said at an independent school in Melbourne.

“We will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into. We will match the offers that Labor has made. We will make sure that no school is worse off.

Basically, if you’ve got kids that’ll be school-aged in the next 4 years, don’t count on your school having the boosted resources that you thought it might have. Your school would have had those resources under the Gonski plan for school funding and the Libs even backflipped their policy from early this year and promised that they would honour the Gonski funding model for the next four years.

Today, they backflipped on their backflip.

Australia, you’ve been lied to in the most blatant fashion since Julia Gillard’s Carbon Tax quote. The big difference is that at least the Carbon Tax had honourable intentions and an unexpected partner putting on the clamps.

This is just flat-out penny pinching lies that will see funds diverted to more Lib-friendly areas from 2015 onwards.

If the Libs’ promise to match Labor on Gonski was the tipping point for your vote, then I have to ask: how are you feeling now?

You’ve been sold a dud. A complete, utter pup. I think we can unequivocally say that this is not the government that people voted for back on September 9. Yes, it’s a Lib/Nat coalition and yes, Labor didn’t deserve to govern given the state they were in. But few people expected this, typified by today’s brazen backflip on school funding reform, an area where the Libs went out of their way to announce their unanimity with Labor’s policy.

You’ve elected a government that’s going to take no meaningful action on climate change, one that pays lip service to the science but can’t even send an elected representative to a conference on the issue.

You’ve elected a government that’s going to take away the safety net $500 Superannuation co-contribution for low income earners.

You’ve elected a government that claimed a budget crisis for 12+ months prior to the election and then gifted an unwanted $8billion to the Reserve Bank, money it neither asked for or needed.

You’ve elected a government that cried foul over debt and deficit for years and then immediately asked for a 66% rise in the nation’s debt ceiling.

You’ve elected a government that doesn’t tell you anything about what it’s doing, whether it be the way it’s treating aspiring immigrants from war-torn countries or our nation’s changed attitude and vote towards Israeli settlements in the occupied territories (a silent move that’s put us in line with just half a dozen countries and hurt the peace process in the Middle East – good work, Aussie).

In short, you are being treated like idiots.

As I mentioned last time I wrote on Auspol, Australia is becoming a mushroom democracy where we’re kept in the dark, fed bullshit and expected to just go along for the ride. Your government wants to be out of sight and out of mind.

Meanwhile, we’re going to fall behind the world in setting ourselves up for a carbon economy, our relationships with neighbours are getting worse, Gina Rinehart going to keep getting fatter on super-profits that will never spread to the people who own the land she digs up, the nation’s kids are not going to have the education we all thought they might have and the people already doing it tough can just keep on doing it tougher.

Speaking of Gina Rinehart, if Fairfax’s largest shareholder – in both respects – gets her way then Fairfax will either be a mining missive or it’ll be on its way out the door. When that happens, the only physical newspapers you’ll be able to buy will be based on the aforementioned Liberal Party newsletter. You’ll have to go online to get real independent news about what your Mushroom Government is doing. I guess it’s no wonder, then, that Malcolm Turnbull wants to roll out a sub-standard National Broadband Network.

But fret not, you’ll be asked to forgive them all in three years time and chances are, by then, that a few of you will.

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Australia – The Mushroom Democracy

A non-automotive post.

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It’s been 2 months now since Labor lost the federal election in Australia – and I describe it that way quite deliberately.

I am convinced that Tony Abbott and his Liberal/National coalition did not win this election because they offered attractive policies or solid personnel. Rather, Labor lost the election because of their ongoing leadership farce, their unnecessary overcommitment to an uncalled-for budget surplus, their stumbling actions on climate change and an inability to cut through and sell their economic credentials.

It should be an unambiguous sign to the Labor Party about just how screwed up they were from 2009 to 2013 that this Coalition government, led by the seemingly unelectable Tony Abbott, looked like a good option. Hell, even Clive Palmer managed to convince enough people to vote for him to get a seat in parliament (which is probably a bigger blow to Tony Abbott than it is to Labor, but electing a clown like Palmer is all the evidence you need that the electorate was desperate for change of some sort).

We’re 8 weeks on from the election and what have we got?

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Well, the things we don’t have include a Climate Commission, a science minister, a proper commitment to long-term education funding (aka the full Gonski), plans for an international standard national broadband network, an agency to administer our foreign aid program (let alone a foreign aid program that meets the international commitment we made), a dozen different and very cost-effective expert panels to advise government in varying areas of social importance and of course, we still don’t have a budget emergency. We never did.

What we do have is a government that has decided to try and take Canberra out of the news cycle. Tony Abbott’s opposition did so much active, fever-pitch opposing between 2010 and 2013 that they ensured people would be sick to death of hearing about the government. And it worked. People did get sick of the relentless procession of politicians on their televisions and in their newspapers.

(Labor didn’t help, of course, with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard setting up a 9-month election campaign by announcing a September election date in January.)

The Coalition’s election campaign in opposition followed a small target strategy of keeping the focus on the government’s problems and personalities whilst offering little more than three-word slogans themselves. Stop The Boats. The Budget Emergency. Cut Red Tape. Jobs Jobs Jobs. Build Build Build.

The Coalition has tried to carry that small target strategy into government by closing the windows on transperancy. The Prime Minister himself has barely done one press engagement per week and any penetrating questions asked ‘on the run’ are fended off by minders as the PM moves from ribbon-cutting to his Comcar.

That’s almost understandable. Tony Abbott himself has said that people shouldn’t count on anything he says on the run; only his carefully scripted remarks should be taken as reliable (that’s video of him saying so in an interview, but I’m not sure if it was scripted or not so maybe it’s unreliable).

But even the Coalition ministry, many members of which are capable of saying sensible things without rehearsal, is not allowed to give impromptu press conferences or even interviews to local radio outlets without clearance from the PM’s office. Questions to ministers now often go unanswered.

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One of the Coalition’s key policies was immigration and border control. Instead of real-time information on this issue of national importance – as provided by previous governments – the Coalition does one press update per week. And at that press conference, they stonewall on key questions, hiding behind the skirts of it being “a military operation”.

Here’s the phrase that journalists have hot-keyed on their laptops when reporting from Scott Morrison’s press conferences: “We don’t provide information on operational matters”. The result they’re trying to achieve, of course, is a situation where the lack of negative information means that the average Aussie punter has nothing to complain about. The hope is that there won’t be many who care enough to be bothered by the lack of information.

This is Mushroom Democracy at its finest. Keep the people in the dark and feed them the occasional bit of bullshit. Take the government out of the news cycle and hope the people forget it exists.

It worked for a few weeks, but the press gallery is starting to make the government’s relative silence an issue in itself. Laurie Oakes, Canberra’s most respected political penman, has noted it, putting government transparency right back on the agenda.

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You have to hand it to the Coalition’s strategists. The hung parliament of 2010-13 presented it with a rare opportunity to create a genuine problem (unceasing political rancour) and offer itself as the quiet, stable, reliable solution.

The substance of that solution is only now being seen.

Where we were accustomed to the press gallery keeping our government accountable, we now get only occasional 10 minute press conferences with minimal opportunities for questions – and those are when the government is feeling generous with its time. Many events of importance such as the backdown on asylum seeker policy that occurred just yesterday, are announced only via press release.

Where we had a budget emergency under Labor with debt and deficit a twice-per-week headline, we now have a treasurer adding 8 billion to the budget deficit by giving the Reserve Bank a slush fund it never asked for and doesn’t need. And that’s on top his slugging low-income earners’ superannuation accounts while giving a free pass to those with millions in their nest eggs.

Where we once had nearly 70% of the population agreeing that climate change was an important issue, that number went down to 36% (now rising again to 40%) because the Coalition managed to get people more concerned about the short term hit to their hip pockets than about long-term ramifications of climate science (it doesn’t help that we’re a fickle bunch, dependent on events such as long term drought to get us to take notice). The Coalition pays lip service to the issue to woo the swinging voter but have a policy that’s been described as an environmental figleaf from within their own party and they’re not even sending an elected representative to the upcoming UN climate conference in Warsaw next week.

These are but a few examples. If you want more, there’s the impending closure of Australia’s car industry, the complete dismantling of AusAid and the quiet re-jigging of the National ~~Fraud~~Broadband Network rollout map, just to name a few.

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The media, particularly the Murdoch press, played a huge role in the 2013 election campaign.

Now more than ever, Australia needs an independent, diligent and robust fourth estate to keep the government accountable to the people. It’s good to see they’re already making efforts to do so but it must continue.

Australians should be vigilant about the media they consume and support good quality, independent journalism from a variety of sources. I fear that a lot of the population are happy to take whatever they’re spoon fed but I hope that’s not the case.

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