aussievoter

11:30 pm: Commonwealth Action on Indigenous Child Sex Abuse report
I think I'm with the program now. I just got to jot a few things down In note form.

1a. Nothing promotes the innocence of childhood, quite like a compulsory intrusive medical examination by a stranger for evidence of sexual abuse.

1b. Such medical examinations are not humiliating; not invasive of privacy; and do not infer anything about individual circumstances, because all children in the community will be subject to them.

2. In order to promote the interests of a community, it is a good idea, nay inevitable, to ride rough-shod over existing laws.

3. Existing laws, are in the final analysis, 'constitutional niceties'.

4. 60 coppers seconded from the states will solve all problems in a territory 1.4 million square kilometrs in size. (That's two and a third thousands square km each.)

Got it.

P.S. Pure coincidence that the anouncement of Commonwealth action on indigenous sex abuse was made on the day a report of legislative discrimination against same sex relationships was released by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. You have to choose carefully how you dispense your benefice.

Tags: government stunt, indigenous child sex abuse report, tantrum, wedge

01:16 pm: Keating’s right. The Rudd Labor team are a timid lot.
Let’s assess what is likely to happen before the election and some available wisdom on the issue. In fact let’s start with the wisdom first: if the result of the election is a narrow win, it will be Coalition’s; if it is a landslide, it will be Labor’s.

What has kept Labor in play these last few months? OK, other than the Teflon coating on Rudd?

Environment. We will need to see how the Damascene conversion of John Howard on this issue in the last two weeks is received. If the public likes it, than no amount of harping about Howard being a Johnny-come-lately from Rudd or Garrett is going to keep this issue alive for Labor. And why? Because Howard is going to table environment as an issue at APEC in Sydney this September and it’s going to loo large in any Sydney Declaration.

Education. Both the Education Revolution and the Education Budget fell flat. Australia continues to have a highly equivocal relationship with higher education. Higher education does not make the electorate feel good about themselves, no matter how much banging on about the clever country there is. And for as long as innovation is seen as primarily an export product, this will continue to be the case. Secondary education? All debate on secondary education are sooner or later bogged down in the private v public system, with important but secondary arguments in terms of whether boys and girls should be taught together. The public v private debate is endemic, because it is not about education per se, but perception of privilege. As hard as education administrators may wish to prod the focus of the public on education outcomes, it is not as attractive an argument as the pull of the prestigious schools on parents. Let’s not even start on curriculum reform. Gouging money from secondary education (threatened, actual or imagined) over the past decade had only served to make the differences between state curricula and within states the systemic/government curricula more apparent. Primary education? Has anyone heard anything about primary education since Beazley, in his last budget reply speech warned that the separation of primary and secondary schools meant only “the dreaded double drop-off” for parents. What was that about. And pre-school childcare? So the feds decide to increase the childcare rebate by 11 per cent as of 1 July. What can they do to have the childcare sector simply raise their prices by a commensurate amount? Squat all. And the appeal by the Human Services Minister this week (and isn’t there something galling about that title?) to the sector, muttering of unspecified consequences, simply confirms that.

Broadband. I’m waiting for someone to try the moral argument on this one. “Look, data files, such as your spreadsheets, lawfully purchased music downloads and Acrobat files are doing perfectly well on your average 256K connection. The call for faster downloads is coming from pirates and perverts. This is all about illegal downloads and pornography.” Now, the argument will fly because this is true. It’s certainly a great deal more compelling than talk of remote-medicine (code for “the government will never fund rural medicine”) and tele-conferencing (code for “death of the business traveller market is nigh”. And surely, any sensible phone company will want to limit the growth of internet telephony. And lo, both Telstra and G9 are in the position to do so.

Industrial Relations. Unchain my job security. Here too, Keating was especially prescient. Both can use the corporations power in the constitution. No need for additional instruments, like any sort of IR Commission. Redundant. Perhaps the single most innovative result of the whole WorkChoices debacle. Legislate the minimum standards, have the Department of Employment determine the mechanism for periodic review of wages growth and set on auto-pilot. No, Labor is not going to do that. Instead, stand by for new industry specific deals, on how exactly WorkChoices is to be torn up. And doesn’t that resemble country-wide industry awards?

Bler. Appears to be more than enough for a narrow victory for the Coalition: Costello factor or not. Unless of course Labor grows some pronto and stops clobbering its own.

Now, where are those Australian Democrats? I remember seeing them somewhere…

Tags: costello, election, howard, keating, rudd

01:48 pm: Visions of the Future: Resist at your Peril
Australian politicians, at least those that reached the top job at either the state or federal level, are blessed with longevity. They seem to routinely skate past the point average life expectancy, especially for their respective generation. This could be reflective of the agreeable retirement plans afforded to this country’s leaders: a point worth musing on, but at issue here.

What stirred aussievoter out of his recent slumber, after the NSW state election (what a bloody anti climax that was), is the conjunction of the Labor national conference in Sydney, the Victorian State Liberal Party conference and the latter’s curtain raiser: the Prime Minister’s Australia Rising speech. Wary as I am of historical comparisons where leaders proclaim their nation ascendant, this speech was primarily for domestic audience, so no such comparison is called for.

At issue here is Howard’s accounts of the past and the future, in the context of the question that is only now being asked in this point of the unofficial election campaign. Howard is now 67. Should he win and serve out a full term (an outcome nobody appears to be entertaining seriously, though that depends on his so far splendid ability master party room discipline), he will be 70, or potentially 71. What he has been discussing is his vision of Australia, circa 2020 “a time when today’s children will be young adults, and a time not so remote as to be something Australians could not relate to” [verbatim]. If Australia ventures down the nuclear option, the first nuclear power stations are due to come on line shortly after that, according to the Switkoswki ex-cathedra bull.

To help Australians identify with 2020, Howard chose to go for a sore spot, sure to provoke anxiety: the war on terror will yet to be settled. Got that? David Marr on ABC’s The Insiders today, questioned what it was that we were doing wrong now, that this conflict cannot be settled in 13 years. And who in February 1985, for example, could have predicted the world politics of 1998? And that’s the span of the chasm before us. Historically speaking, it’s at least two US presidencies away (presidencies that are more than likely to be from both sides of their politics); at least 3 UK prime ministerships, and five Australian federal parliamentary terms, under current arrangements. Howard will then have started on his ninth decade. He will not be in office and he will not be around to cop any flack from the effects of his rhetoric in late April 2007.

As I wrote that line, I weighed the proposition that Howard may lead Australia until then. I can’t dismiss it out of hand. Nor can I with any certainty rule out that he may lose and make a comeback during this period: there is ample to do both. Palace coups are few and far between in this wide brown land and the treasury benches do not immediately suggest any credible alternatives. Here I don’t just mean an alternative prime minister, for there are plenty of those; but an alterative disciplinarian, tactician and spinner: now that’s hard to come by.

In his speech to the Victorian Liberal Party conference, Howard made the point, and it is a point that Labor has not run with yet, that the historical performance of a party, in government and in opposition matters. That the Liberal Party supported the economic reform of the Labor party from opposition in the 1980s; and as such are more credible than today’s Labor party, which has opposed such reform in the past 11 years, whilst in opposition. He then proceeded to a series of rhetorical flourishes, one of which was whether it was “out of touch” (the current curse de jour) of him to lead a government, which had, for example interest rates at the present level, around 8 per cent, compared with 17 per cent (average over the Labor years). He had neglected to draw the comparison further still, to the average when he was Treasurer, and the interest rates averaged 23 per cent. Other of his indicators, when so extended, would compare well to the Labor period in office, and extraordinarily, compared to Howard’s time as treasurer.

It is Howard’s ongoing appearances on the political stage that remind me, that “Lazarus with a triple by pass” should never be written off. Not whilst he remains in sound mind and body.

Having said that, let’s assume that by his early 80s he gives the game away. His rhetoric of late April 2007, is just that. Other than the fact the he is unlikely to be around to be scrutinised and brought to account on this or that point, the other, more insidious quality in relation to Howard’s vision speeches is language of delivery.

There is nothing especially wrong with vision statements: they are now pervasive across the organisational world. Comprising just so much well-meaning, fuzzy waffle as the writer can get away with, their only enduring function is a kind of a Hippocratic prophylactic: they no harm.

Political vision statements are generally the most benign and meaningless of all vision statements. Produced as they are, often by someone who is trying to ingratiate their candidature with the voting public, they are going to be neither too definite, not too detailed.

Once in government, vision statements of a leader still indulging in them tend to take on an apocalyptic quality, associated with their political alternative. In these cases any kind of ‘other’, and kind of opponent will do. It’s easy in essentially two-party parliamentary democracy to find that other: in Westminster-type chambers he is the guy in front of you. The extent to which leaders pepper their declarations of long-term visions, visions more often dreams than reality, with emotive, overtly or implicitly apocalyptic language, proportionally mirrors their desire to remain in power at the cost of the common good.

If you are too vituperative toward the ‘other’ in your speech, no mistake can be made as to your motives. You are a buffoon. You may believe what you are saying passionately, but you are a buffoon. If you carefully work on creating discomfort and suspicion about the ‘other’, in a sustained and thorough way for a year or so before an election, you are a masterly tactician. Your opponents aren’t witches, or heretics, or traitors, they are however an ‘unknown quantity’, that should make the voters ‘stop and think’, may be ‘become concerned’, may be become concerned enough to cause anxiety. Once they are anxious, they are yours: for better the devil you know. If you are a supporter of this tactician, you are unperturbed anyway; and if you feel screwed, at least you have the benefit of knowing what it feels like that far in. You are then likely to receive the support of your followers and those that don’t wish to screwed any other way.

The only drawback to this is that the buffoon lives a happier life than the tactician. Infusing your rhetoric with subtle amounts of anxiety, uncertainty and malefic interpretations of facts may at first be part of a plan. Act it out too long, the behaviour becomes routine; after a while you are so habituated to that kind of response, to structuring your public persona in such a way, so to appear consistently concerned, consistently worried, it does not only become true and prohibits any alternative.

Howard’s vision of the future is of key importance, for what it reveals of Howard’s vision of his own future; of his own state of mind. When most people, asked to imagine themselves, would want to feel relieved of their burdens (whatever those burdens may be), he forecasts for himself anxiety and toil. Toil unrelieved by achievement that allows a lightening of the burden; and anxiety about the other, that has since traded vigilance for paranoia.

Would you care to accept this kind invitation to 2020? At least we know what it will feel like… And our leader is in touch enough to make sure it continues to feel that way.

Tags: alp national conference, australia rising, australian labor party, david marr, howard, in touch, labor, liberal, liberal party of australia, rudd, the insiders, victorian division conference april 2007, vision speech

09:17 am: Vote early. vote often
The 2003 NSW election was remarkable by its net outcome: no chance. Labor picked up two seats from the opposition (Camden from Liberals and Monaro from Nationals), while in return the Nationals took Clarence from Labor and Liberals, South Coast. As things stand now, Labor had 55 seats, Liberal 20, Nationals 12 and Independents of various colours, 6.

In 2003, Labor did increase the overall margin on their seats. The most marginal ALP seat is Tweed, with 4.1 per cent. The Coalition have five seats with a lower margin: Terrigal, Murray-Darling, South Coast, Lane Cove and Baulkham Hills. The tightest margin is in Terrigal, at just 0.6 per cent. It is in the realm of possibility that the Coalition will lose all these seats, though not necessarily to Labor.

Let’ not discount the likelihood of a hung Parliament, with a raft of independents, causing the kind of strife that minority governments in South Australia have known and those in Italy and Israel have elevated to an art form. With a loss of seven seats, Labor will lose majority, but will hold government, as it is quite unlikely that the Coalition will be able to make a binding agreement over anything with the group of likely Independents.

What would be quite enjoyable is some moderate cutting down to size. In the new bloated seat of Marrickville, once the immutable empire of Andrew Refshauge (remember him?), the Greens had managed to take him to preferences last time. Sure, the margin ow is 10.0 per cent, but Mrs Albanese, Carmel Tebbutt is not uniformly secure. Despite the omnipresence of her placards, she does not exude the slogan of her propaganda literature “Caring and Committed”. She will be helped by the fact that her closest rival is substantially less charismatic. None the less, Tebutt’s loss would be a token chastisement, quite appropriately meted out.

And then, there is the empress of Bligh-Sydney, Clover Moore. She is used to taking the seat on primary vote (and at 15 per cent margin, who would blame her). Rout Moore, and the unusal experiment of simultaneous representation of the geographical area (give or take a small margin) at the Local and State level, will end. The longer she maintains this position, the more evident is the farce of the three tiers of legislators in Australia. Arthur Chesterfield-Evans and others will have you believe that States are quite useless entities and need be abolished. I think, it is the local governments that should be abolished in favour of the states taking control of professional micro-vote stackers, garbage collection and planning. It’s a fact in the ACT, why not in the states?

Then, state government might rediscover their electorates again. And wouldn’t that be a fine thing?

07:13 am: There would be a few houses in Sydney that don’t have a crack or two. Ground has been shifting under the city all through the drought and walls old and recent alike bear the consequences. My house has a fair number of hairline cracks here and there. Nothing like the inch gaps in masonry that my previous house had. This place is also a terrace and with its mates in a row, draws collective strength from their unity.

The Federal government is a little like a row of Sydney terraces: some better kept than others, to be sure, but all with respectable facades; painted in different colours and each finished somewhat differently, they face the street as a row; perhaps crowned by a tablet a proud sponsor would have added to his buildings. These are the Howard Buildings, c1996.

Now each terrace boasts an internet connection, a couple with marble water features, the centre one with charming dark green period features. In a couple of cases it is only the façade that is left from the original construction (sensitive development guidelines, you see) and just behind the brick fabric is a concrete and glass box you can find anywhere else. None the less: the Howard terrace stand close and united: the pride of the street.

No 32 is recently vacant, though; and 26, although apparently occupied, is in such an advanced state of decrepitude, it may as well have been abandoned.

I can go on teasing out this metaphor, although to be honest, I think it had served its purpose. I was otherwise engaged for a few days. As I sat down to write, the landscape (or indeed the streetscape) is looking somewhat different,

Howard is down another Minister (that’s now two: the official carelessness threshold has been breached), through a series of 72 inadvertances.

Those three Queensland MPs are still under investigation.

The Minister of Immigration waxes fanatical about the Sri Lankan boat people and instead of being met with knowing nods, he is being made answer all sorts of uncomfortable questions about the cost of processing boat arrivals in Nauru and whether there is any point to it, seeing that the previous parties have all been found to be genuine asylum-seekers and resettled onto the Australian mainland.

The Federal court has thrown the Government’s objections against proceeding to hear suit, alleging that it was negligent in its duty of care to its citizens by abandoning Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.

And now the Senate enquiry quizzically titled Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 [Provisions] sent the Access Card bill to the drawing board. And the government took it back, within two hours of the report being released.

Of course Fraser is right. Labor may yet talk its way out of an election victory.

And there’s nothing whatever to say about the New South Wales Election. If Howard has his terraces, Iemma should have his train. This one was not a figment of my imagination. There really was a train stuck on the Harbour bridge for almost three hours, because of maintenance error. Of course this breakdown was not Iemma’s fault and Iemma’s apology for it and a promise that it would never happen again was both fallacious and flaccid. No-one really expects him to climb aboard trains to check workmanship, or push stuck trains off the tracks. However this could have been something else: a venting of considerable hot air about service delivery. The electorate would have felt validated that the government got a knock on the head and the opposition could have made an issue out of it. Instead, a compliant and dejected Peter Debham fronted the cameras yesterday and ran up the white flag.

Tags: andrews, debham, fraser, howard, iemma, santoro

12:05 am: Is the savaging of the Leader of the Greens by the Emperor Parrot on radio, really is the only show in NSW? Personally, I don’t know how Lee Rhiannon kept her composure at the delicious irony of the Emperor Parrot calling the Greens "a pink outfit”. Maybe the Greens are devoid of irony? But I depress myself.

Alas, apparently. Fresh out of cozzies, the Debnam of the Liberal Party is waving the red flag… I did not know that kind of thing was allowed among the refined liberals… And I’m not sure if the “you want more Labor? Have more Labor” slogan is doing much for his campaign. It is a kind of a slogan that federal Labor tried for a few campaigns in a row… to their own chagrin. Not afraid of any ultimatum that sounds like a tantrum, Australians far and wide voted for the Coalition federally.

And our erstwhile Premier? No, I do beg your pardon, the Labor Candidate for Lakemba, who would put his name forward for Party Leadership, should his party win government. Morris confessed a one-time mod haircut and a moderate acquaintance of “The Jets, not The Who”.

Heavens to Betsy, Pru Goward, did you really sign up for this?

Tags: debnam, emperor parrot, goward, iemma, rhiannon

07:02 pm: "Alexander Downer is a big boy and he can look after himself"
quoth PM, this day.

Tags: downer, howard

09:25 pm: A by-election, anyone?
Or two? Or four?

Hands up all those who knew you could just ring up a politician’s office (out of the blue) and confidently ask for a reference. I should have known better. Some elections ago, I used to live in the federal electorate of Bradfield. ‘Brendan, mate,’ I could have gushed down the phone. ‘Can I have a reference? I’m having some trouble finding a job/getting a development application through the council/getting a loan. I gather you can write me a reference. Would 3 o’clock tomorrow be a convenient time to pick it up? I’m of good character and such’ Now, if we are to believe the Member for Wills (ALP. Victoria), the conversation would continue with ‘Sure, mate. I’m going to have warn you: it’s going to be quite restrained. Might border on the pro-forma. Is that ok?’

I don’t know if I’d last as far as the ‘write me reference’ in the real world. But if I had appropriate lawyers, I gather it could be done.

What utter twaddle! Bugger it, and the defence ‘my staff did not know who this man was’ that asked for a reference, but I wrote anyway… Not on. I remember there was the net back then, Sure, no Google, but even the esteemed WebWombat could have turned up something. Or maybe, being a member of parliament, one may have had access to a more comprehensive means of character analysis.

Callow me.

Well, writing references for colourful figures now at Her Majesty’s pleasure, is one thing. Ironic coming from the shadow Attorney-General, but none the less, elegant, although poor form. Fiddling with your own printing allowance, which the Commonwealth bestows on you as an MP, to communicate to your constituents - and leaving a paper trail behind – that’s just the kind of we love hear from Queensland. The former, Labor scandal, is a result of a tip-off to Rudd’s office; the latter is the dirty laundry exercise, involving raids on MP’s offices from the Federal Police.

The FP mentioned they would be raiding the offices of the three Government MPs from Queensland (including the one of the Member for Bowman) for the night before the PM started the attack about nothing in particular and sundry past dinners that Kevin Rudd may have had with Burke.

Immaculately coincidental, n’est pas?

Tags: laming, thomson

08:31 pm: Nil by politics
Events. A politician’s greatest enemy and a pundit’s bain. Crises, like the crash of the Indonesian airliner with Australian citizens on board, break the news cycle and give the ruling party a chance to be statesmanlike and impartial.

Another government Senator (Lightfoot, WA) was embroiled in the scandal about nothing to do with Western Australia, but you would have been hard pressed to hear anyone talk about it. Federal politics being a write-off today, an opportunity presents itself to look around what is happening at the state level. I would need to look hard, because… nothing of any consequence or impact transpired.

The choice is dispiriting.

It transpired today that the accounts showing negative growth in the September quarter could be written off as a wobbly. If the December quarter, with its Christmas sales was found to have produced negative growth as well, New South Wales would have been declared as being in recession. Not the best news for the incumbents. It turns out, consumers spent just enough to suggest miniscule growth. In broad terms, the state is nowhere near out of the woods yet. The current and following quarters, which do not contain a festive consumer splurge may present a different picture. The state will probably continue to titter along the precipice for a bit more.

Both sides vying to form government in New South Wales welcomed the economic news and scurried away again. Local marsupials are not fond of bright lights either. I don’t actually know what happened on the campaign trail today. Country Labor launched their campaign. Somewhere. The state’s news have been dominated by sport. Forgettable.

11:29 pm: Another day, another set of fiddlesticks
Allow me to go walk through the explanation. I think it is rather artful. It is fine, we are now told my the Prime Minister, for a person, nay a politician, nay a member of the government Coalition to have met Brian Burke, as long as it was not in an official capacity. Kevin Rudd, then, must have been in an official capacity going to this dinner. What ’official capacity’? Is this a kind of ‘official capacity’, which you can sometimes have and sometimes not; and sometimes be found in, despite thinking you are not in one.

Like the newly promoted Senator for WA (Heavens, the coincidence!) David Johnston, now of Justice and Customs. We know he met Julian Grill, a man Brian Burke lobbies with. More than three times, quite possibly. Grill and Senator Johnston were partners in a legal firm. He may have even met… pssst! (we can’t let him hear us), you know, Brian Burke.

But, it’s ok: having considered the “various links” carefully, Grill has been found by the Prime Minister as being beyond reproach.

Proceeding from it: if one of devil’s minions is your colleague; and you are a lawyer (which is not an ‘official capacity’), you can be appointed to the Ministry. If you are the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, and you have supped with the devil thrice (at what must have been an Official Breakfast, an Official Dinner; and, an Official Latte), then… I can see clearly now, condemned you are.

Whilst the Federal Government is performing these pirouettes of logic (and weirdly, the Opposition appears to let them), the New South Wales campaign had a stoush about protocol today.

So neither Labor nor the Coalition ask nicely, twice, about use of venues for their publicity stunts. That’s news from the election trail. Any chance of one side organising a chook raffle? At least it would be a point of difference! So back to Canberra, for now at least. The logic may have gone into the metaphysical, but at least there is a sense of action.

Tags: 'official capacity', fiddletsicks, howard, rudd

08:31 pm: Two references stuck in my head all day. The first is a musical one, and has Brian Burke as Commendatore, from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, as the most dangerous dinner guest bar none, appearing to Federal Government ministers in their nightmares and dragging them off to hell. I thank Tony Abbott, for the graphic references for ‘supping with the devil’. The fear of Brian Burke as a sign of impending divine political retribution, appears to be a malady peculiarly suffered by senior Coalition members to the exclusion of all others. The media seems bemused by their insistence that Rudd has something to confess. And insistent they must be. Let’s face it, if Rudd has nothing to confess, then considerable egg will be besplattered all over the Cabinet and Senator Campbell, lately of Human Services.

The other reference that stayed with me all day has been from Miller’s play The Crucible. The first act, I think, ends with the witch trial, in which frightened teenage girls, overcome by collective hysteria, scream out their witness of witchcraft and satan worship. ‘I saw goodie Rudd compact with the devil’, I hear them squawk. A curtain falls and the stage lights dim and the audience piles out of the hall for an intermission with an easy feeling that John Proctor has been framed. This episode too shall dim, but not before startling the onlookers with the crassness of it all. The uneasy feeling is encouraged not by the sudden invocation of Beelzebub, but by the likelihood that the suggestion of Beelzebub walks the earth, and dines with the Leader of the Opposition may resonate.

Who knows. One thing is likely. Bringing up the Prince of the Flies so early on, in fact as the first sustained attack, rather leaves the Government short for metaphors in future character assassination attempts on Rudd.

As for Kevin Rudd, it is time for him declare this over pending any evidence-based questions that may arise. For now, the media and the public have nothing to ask about that dinner. So, a deep breath, and a new line, to be delivered at a measured pace.

And just by the way, where has the Shadow Cabinet been all this time? Ten points and a koala stamp to Stephen Smith for a fine innings on the ABC’s The Insiders on Sunday, sure. Where is the cavalry to diffuse, counter-attack, insinuate and generally yabber? Where are the pointed rhetoricals about West Australian government MPs? Anyone can organise a fishing expedition...

Tags: brian burke dinner controversy, rudd, smith

12:58 am: Much ado about supper
What a complete non-issue this is turning to be. As the days wear on, the exact point of the attack on Rudd over his interactions with Burke becomes more and more vague.

If I recall right, then to meet with Burke is to compromise your political judgment.

This really is indefensible. In this scenario, Burke is one of any number of dinner guests a person in public office should avoid at their table. It may be so. How many others fit this bill? How many pollies come in contact with corrupt officials, dodgy donors or miscellaneous tax cheats in a course of a year’s work? Are all lobbyists vetted for their connections and character? Would your expect every politician to vouch for all the hands shaken over their career; all public appearances; all photographs posed for? Of course, not: it is a matter of degree. And a dinner with thirty guests does not, of itself, a transgression make.

What do those attending remember of the evening? Surely anything really juicy, like power-sharing deals or hearty renditions of sea shanties, or anything else the diners may have enjoyed, would have surfaced shortly after the dinner in question? Or, over the last four days? No? Must have been one hell of dinner.

Why did the Minister for Human Services, Senator Campbell resign for his twenty minute meeting with Burke? Ah yes, because ‘to meet with Burke is to compromise your political judgment’. Leaving aside the rights of citizens to meet with their representatives; when did Senator Campbell realise his compromise? We are givent to believe it was after the Treasurer announced the same dictum on Thursday in the House of Reps? And how was the Senator’s conscience until then? Faring well, by all accounts. And now, a ministerial career is in ruins, and the ruined man confirms it is so that the attacks over Rudd’s dinner with Burke can continue.

Using the Senator’s resignation as an ethical standard may have been intended to set the Government in contrast to the Labor opposition, but that is in danger of backfiring, for all the reasons mentioned earlier.

On one hand, the Senator has not been repudiated (why should he be? after all, he met Burke in his a capacity as a Government minister, on a specific matter) and offered a future government role by the PM. Hardly an unambiguous response to someone who just admitted having compromised his political judgment. On the other hand, who else from the Government benches may have met (or ‘supped’) with one devil or another over the past eleven years? The question begs to be put.

Happy anniversary, Prime Minister! Surely there must be a less costly way of affecting the momentum of the new Leader of the Opposition in an election year, then volunteering a Minister for sacrifice? Whatever happened to using the opponent’s momentum against them… worked so well before.

Tags: brian burke dinner controversy, campbell, rudd