Support lost

Brendan Nelson: Mister 9 percent.

I’ve never really understood these polls that come out only a handful of months after an election. The incoming (or incumbent) Government would usually still be riding the same kind of victory high they had at the election due to not really being there long enough to annoy everybody, and the Opposition usually needs the best part of 12 months to rebuild themselves to a proper alternative Government (if they get there at all).

So what these polls are really saying is “If an election were held at the weekend, we’d have the same result as we had 3 months ago.”

The electorate is fickle, but not that fickle.

Wrong way looked

A fairly ‘nothing’ story has popped up on News Limited websites this morning:

ACTING Prime Minister Julia Gillard says sitting on the government benches in Parliament this week has been confusing.

[...]

“It can get confusing,” Ms Gillard said on ABC Radio today.

“You have a natural tendency to turn your head the other way to look at the Speaker so you find yourself looking towards the clock instead of looking towards (Speaker) Harry Jenkins.

Yeah, whatever. Who cares. Although I love the headline:

Gillard ‘confused’ by new power

Bureaucrats bollocked

Former Queensland Emergency Services Minister Pat Purcell has been in a bit of hot water lately, and quite rightly so. In July 2007, he was accused of striking two top bureaucrats in the Queensland Department of Emergency Services after some kind of dispute.

He released a statement yesterday, emphasis mine:

On the 2nd of July 2007, during a post-cabinet meeting with two officers from the Dept of Emergency Services, I struck both men in a manner which was unprovoked and inappropriate. Comments made by me in the media shortly after the incident, if construed as a suggestion that I did not strike the men were incorrect. In no way did I ever intend to infer anything other than that both officers had always acted appropriately in discharge of their public duties.

Helpfully, the Courier-Mail has this morning re-published his comments from soon after the incident:

July 6, 2007:
‘I gave them a verbal bollocking but that’s it . . . I don’t bloody go around belting people. I would be more inclined to give someone a hug than anything else’

Yep. If taken at face value, one would have a difficult time construing that Purcell did not strike these bureaucrats. At least he’s set the record straight now. Over 6 months later. Under the cloud of legal action if he didn’t come out with the truth.

For some reason, if you’re in public life and you do something unforgivably stupid — like get busted with drugs or slap a few bureaucrats around — you can just say sorry and get off the hook. Playing the Beattie Defence, if you will. Too bad it doesn’t work for punters like you and me.

One final thing to bear in mind is something that Anna Bligh said recently when she fronted the Crime and Misconduct Commission inquiry into the Gordon Nuttall corruption affair:

“These days … Queenslanders can be very proud that they’ve got a system that operates without fear or favour where it doesn’t matter who you are, you are not above the law.”

Seems that way if you’re a Labor MP in the Queensland Government. Purcell must be sacked.

UPDATE: Purcell will not contest his seat of Bulimba at the next election. He’s a lucky boy — after he slapped the two guys, he continued to deny he did it, even pleading not guilty in court. He continued to deny he hit anybody, until after some out of court mediation he made a public admission and apology that he did in fact hit them. But now he denies he has lied about the situation.

Just as well he’s leaving politics; Purcell is a disgrace and an insult to his constituents.

Floodgates opened

As we all know, former Prime Minister John Howard refused to say sorry to Aboriginals for two main reasons. The first being that current generations, and indeed current governments, cannot be held liable for the injustices of past generations or governments. Secondly, he believed that it would open the Government to the liability of compensation claims. So instead, he moved a motion of “deep regret” in Parliament. Of course, this being John Howard, he was still derided as a racist scumbag and the moving of this motion has been glossed over ever since. Ask any left-wing political science student, or human rights activist and it’s as if he didn’t do anything at all.

Come November 24, 2007, Howard is tossed out of Government and Kevin Rudd and his dullard front bench are thrown into Government. Fast forward to January 2008, and Rudd says that on the first day of Parliament, he will say sorry to the Aboriginies. Uh, but there’d be no compo. None. Zip. Zilch.

Regardless of this, before and after Rudd’s apology to indigenous Australians, the calls for compensation have been loud and frequent. But, whether he likes it or not, State and Territory Governments — who have all said sorry in the past — are going to be the ones wearing the claims. And it’s only a matter of time before the Federal Government caves in to pressure, what with Jenny Macklin and her wet lettuce leaf of a spine as the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

I do not dare suggest that Howard was right (what with the bile and hatred that would inevitably be spewed in my general direction), but I’m certainly thinking it loudly.

Back in business

Hi everybody.

It’s been over a year since I last updated my blog, and I can now come clean about why I suddenly disappeared! You see, it wasn’t so much because I lost interest in blogging (which is perhaps what many of you would consider the most likely reason), but instead because I scored a job working for a Federal MP.

Now, given that on a regular basis I was writing about politics at both a Federal and State level, this would present a potential conflict of interest. Not so much in the good sense — you know, the kind that I would gain financial advantage out of — but because of the fact that it would no longer be ethical to write about (or, more accurately, throw shit at) Federal and/or State politicians given that I work for one.

Given my quite obvious political leanings, I feel kind of dirty to admit that I was overcome by the limp-wristed, pooncy, wet-tissue notion of ethics, but I simply didn’t feel comfortable writing about the sphere that I worked in. Yes, I probably could have gotten away with it if I was careful about what and who I wrote about. But I’m more the kind of person who thinks about that after the damage is done. So in a rare moment of sensibility, I decided to quietly back away from here… Much to the disappointment of my valued reader, I’m sure.

I have recently stopped working for said Federal MP, so you can probably expect me to bust out the phrase “as a former political hack…” from time to time. Try not to hold it against me… I was only a hack for a year. And I’m still alive now…

So there you have it. I’m back now, and while I can’t guarantee regular posting until I get back into the habit of regular writing, I aim to offer the same half-arsed, semi-researched and vaguely-defined opinions that I’ve had on offer since 2003.

C’mon, it’s worth getting excited about.