Big day for Australia today

I have just gone and voted in Australia's Federal election. My local polling place was VERY well-staffed and well managed. I was in and out in 10 minutes -- unlike the way many Americans have had to line up for hours in their previous Federal elections. And because all votes are on paper, recounts are fairly easy and disputes about the results are rare.

We have separate ballot papers for the Senate and the lower house and the fact that the two ballot papers are very different in size means that it is almost impossible to get the two mixed up. Nonetheless there was a lady standing by the ballot boxes to see that everybody put their paper in the right box. Very good for absent-minded people like me!

I gave my Senate vote to Pauline, of course. Her policy of restricting Muslim immigration is the only sensible one for any Western nation, in my opinion.





This election gets weirder and weirder

Andrew Bolt comments on some of the odd policy alignments of the two major parties

KEVIN Rudd looks like winning and there shouldn't be much left to surprise us as Labor's Light on the Hill somehow becomes the Light on the Till. How strange this election is. It's not just that voters seem ready to sack a government that's left them richer than ever. That's weird enough. But want weirder? Then pick which leader - John Howard or Kevin Rudd - glared through his glasses and said this at his campaign launch:

"I don't stand before you with a bagful of irresponsible promises ... I am saying loud and clear that this sort of reckless spending must stop."

Now pick which leader - Howard or Rudd - said this at his launch:

"I want to be prime minister ... so that we can achieve a lasting recognition in our constitution of the first Australians, the indigenous people of this country."

The story of this election is in those two quotes. So is the story of why Howard is in a trouble he never saw coming. It was Rudd, of course, who promised an end to reckless spending, to roars of applause from a Labor audience including, believe it or not, Gough Whitlam. Even Whitlam? Clapping with his greedy hands a promise to spend less? Live long enough and you'll see even this.

That was the quote that might well steal Labor this election. And Rudd has since gone even further, promising this week to slash government spending programs by $10 billion and even take "the meat axe" to a public service that has been "bloating".

It's just spin, you'll say. These promises to slash the public service, for instance, come from the same whatever-you-want-me-to-say candidate from Focus Group Central who's also promising 81 new bureaucracies and 119 review committees. Indeed, so keen is this former public servant on bureaucracy that a group of his staffers worked even on an answer to the question Rove McManus put on television on Sunday: who would Rudd go gay for?

So Rudd will cut bureaucracy? Cut spending? Yeah, and my name's Joan Kirner. Yet that is indeed what he's promising, firmly, and in words John Howard would be proud to utter if he dared to himself. Sure, you can complain that Rudd's new Tightwad Party is just some PR flim-flam. You can protest that Rudd in Opposition actually opposed most of the Government's spending cuts and economic reforms, and even in this campaign has matched Howard's spending almost dollar for dollar. And you can warn that Rudd's plan to wind back the workplace reforms that have helped make us richer will also make a lot of people a little poorer. It's the dole for them.

I worry about all that, too, even though I feel Rudd at least hopes to be as fiscally tight as Labor premiers now tend to be. But Rudd's failings are still to be seen in practice, while Howard's failings, real and mostly hyped, are already in full view. And a key failing is this: that Rudd can pose as Scrooge because Howard can't.

Does anyone think Howard is not a spendthrift? Seen all the Government advertising? Your money, folks. Added up his election promises? That's $50 billion right there. In fact, over the next four years the Government will spend $1 trillion in all. Of course, Howard has good excuses. As in: his biggest promise is to give you back $34 billion in tax money that government would otherwise spend for you. As in: we're spending big because, under the Liberals' management, we're earning big, too. As in: Labor will spend that same fortune - provided, that is, it lets us keep earning it. All true, even if too often overlooked or taken for granted after 14 years of growth.

But with all this money coming in - and Howard shovelling it out - Rudd got the chance he's now snatched. Can anyone really say that, compared to Howard, Rudd looks like Whitlam? He looks rather like the bank clerk querying the number of zeros on Howard's withdrawal slip. In playing that role he's rubbed out some of that big question mark always hanging over Labor - can it be trusted with our cash? As a Sydney paper put it, forget Light on the Hill; will it be Light on the Till?

It's not just the scale of Howard's spending that has helped Rudd to pose as a conservative by contrast. It's also the way Howard has spent it, seeming to buy off interest groups, one after the other, like the clever politician Rudd keeps calling him. The Liberals need votes in Tasmanian marginal seats? Then take over a state hospital there and tip in a few million. The Liberals need more votes in a New South Wales seat? Then bung it $1 million for some wild plan for an ethanol plant, that never ends up getting built. For years this has worked well ... until now. Look at the Liberals' string of election giveaways to one lot of must-have voters after another. Is there a pattern to them, a philosophy, a story? Or does it just look too much like more tacky dosh for votes?

Which brings me to that campaign promise of Howard's -- to put to a referendum a change to our Constitution to recognise Aborigines are our "first people". Did anyone buy that line? To the Left, this was just Howard offering to do something he should have done years ago. Like his late alleged conversion to the global warming faith, it was more a confession of past failure than a promise of a new dawn. Like his big dollar bribes, it was a promise that seemed made only to keep sweet one more bloc of votes. Howard's adoption of the (Not Quite) Sorry agenda did little for conservatives, either. It seemed just one more cultural surrender, just one more sign Howard may indeed have stayed on too long. Here was an exhausted Howard giving in to what he'd been so right to resist for so long -- a symbolic gesture that would entrench the New Racism, and make it even harder to smash the victimhood that has made victims of many Aboriginal children.

I shouldn't be too hard on him, though. Howard still has the fine instincts that make him on his guard against the New Age faiths and their bogus preachers who'd beggar us. Only Howard, not Rudd, would have dared intervene in troubled Aboriginal communities, risking the fury of city romantics who prefer their blacks to be quaintly tribal and tethered to handouts.

Rudd, in contrast, blows with whatever wind will puff the giant sails of his ambition. Even many of the keenest Labor voters seem to sense that he stands for little but himself. That he'd have been in favour of the Iraq war had the polls been different, just as he backed the booting out of the innocent Dr Mohamed Haneef. No wonder there is no excitement about his campaign - other than the thrill of probable victory.

Even a Labor booster as keen as Professor Robert Manne is left to only hope there's more to Rudd than he's letting on: "I think that we will only know what the Rudd government will do in three or four years' time because at the moment the Rudd government is avoiding the kind of polemical stoushes with Howard because it knows it can't win ... When he gets into government then we'll begin to see the differences again." Or, um, not.

How far this is from the campaigns of Whitlam in 1972 or Bob Hawke in 1983, who led Labor to victory in tides of idealism and hope. I remember the emotional pull of Hawke's great campaign promise: "Bringing Australians Together." I remember the hairs standing on the back of my (naive) head as Hawke led politicians, unionists, business giants and academics into his great summit of consensus at the old Parliament House, to work out the Big Deal. History seemed on the hoof, and I leapt on, working bright-eyed on Hawke's next two election campaigns.

What was different was that Hawke had a purpose -- to bring us together. Rudd offers only administration -- "New Leadership". New leadership? But to do what, exactly? Rudd hasn't said, other than promise he'll be just like Howard, but less old. Less old, yes, but also less experienced, less calm, less decisive, less predictable, less competent and -- on past performance -- less honest. But what policy differences is he offering? A few more computers in schools? Hardly the "education revolution" he promised. Less spending? A billion a year less in a $250 billion budget won't even be noticed.

No, the difference boils down to Rudd's three big symbolic promises, each of which is wrong in principle, and bogus in delivery -- to cut greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent by 2050; to pull out combat troops from Iraq; and to "scrap" WorkChoices. The first is a promise to make cuts that won't work in ways Rudd won't detail at a cost he can't reveal to reduce temperatures that won't budge -- and to do all this by a deadline he won't be around to see. The second is to pull out troops from a war largely won, signalling a defeat we haven't suffered, to send them to where they're not wanted, while actually leaving twice as many still in Iraq. And the third - well, a leader's got to give unions some return for the $30 or $50 million they've put into Labor's campaign, even if some workers then find they've suddenly become too expensive or risky to hire.

For someone who worked for Labor, this agenda does not thrill. It hurts the people I'd hoped to help. And as a conservative, I fret. Rudd represents a lurch into the irrational and faddishly impractical. Yet he looks like winning. Weird, but I guess when Whitlam cheers a Labor leader for promising to be even more Howard than Howard, there shouldn't be much left to surprise us. Except, perhaps, the result.

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Freedom of information coming?

It's probably the most broken promise in politics so wait and see. The Leftist writer below seems to think it will happen though. Typical of the poor reality contact among Leftists. With governments of both Left and Right there is normally an initial opening up followed by a gradual closing up again

Matthew Moore argues today that, despite the government successfully suppressing information this week about their earlier plans for Workchoices, some good came out of the decision:

Although [Channel 7 journalist] McKinnon lost, there were some important victories in the fine print. The Government won because the tribunal upheld one argument against release. But most of the other arguments were demolished by the deputy president, Stephanie Forgie. ...Ms Forgie turned on its head the claim that public servants have a reasonable expectation the documents they prepared would remain confidential, and said it really meant this: "If the work they did as Australian Public Service officers were revealed they would not in future do the work required of them as APS officers holding senior positions ... whichever way the claim is stated, it cannot be said to have a rational basis." There is much more of this uncharacteristically blunt language, but you get the drift.

He says that the only reason the government ended up winning the case was because of the use of so-called "conclusive certificates", the ruling that in the opinion of the government, releasing the material would not be in the national interest. This very flexible tool has been used constantly by the government to block FoI access.

But, as Moore points out, Labor has promised to abolish these certificates. If they happen to win tomorrow, the abolition of the certificates will greatly improve public access to government information, which is a good thing. But that promise is one of many against which the credibility of a new government would be held to account and for which there will be no wiggle room. As I've said before, I wonder if Kevin Rudd (if his party happens to win) realises the extent to which people will expect such standards to have changed.

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Black activist slams Leftists

Kevin Rudd has betrayed aboriginal people after abandoning a promise to pursue a constitutional referendum on reconciliation if he is elected Prime Minister, Noel Pearson said today. The director of the Cape York Institute said he "dreaded a Rudd Prime Ministership" who he branded "innately contemptuous of indigenous people" after The Australian reported that the ALP would not pursue a reconciliation preamble to the Constitution. "Mr Rudd's (support for the referendum) has been thrown into the dustbin two days before he hopes to become Australia's prime minister," Mr Pearson said. "Mr Rudd has now reneged on the commitment.. it shows a flagrant contempt for indigenous policy."

Despite the ALP committing to a referendum on reconciliation in October, Mr Rudd said that while he understood the proposal for an Aboriginal reconciliation preamble to the Constitution was a big change for Mr Howard, but he did not feel the need to pursue it. "From my point of view, the key thing is closing the gap (between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal living standards) and the key to this also is to introduce policies that give effect to closing the gap,'' Mr Rudd said. "I am concerned about making advances on the practical front first. Let's take other things subsequent to that.''

Mr Pearson said Mr Rudd, who he once worked with in Brisbane, had "innately contemptuous view of indigenous people". "From this betrayal I dread a Rudd prime ministership," Mr Pearson said.

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Crowding in public hospitals kills people

NSW emergency departments are so overcrowded that the situation is contributing to deaths and will continue to do so until more beds are opened, a leading academic has said. New figures, to be released at an emergency medicine conference next week, show that, nationwide, the number of emergency patients waiting to be seen increased by 32 per cent between June and September. Associate Professor Drew Richardson, from the Australian National University medical school, said yesterday the September 3 snapshot of emergency departments also showed a continuing upward trend in patients waiting for a bed since the last snapshot, on June 18, at the same time of 10am.

The new data backs up concerns of emergency staff that chronic overcrowding is affecting patient care, highlighted by Jana Horska's miscarriage in a toilet at Royal North Shore Hospital two months ago. "I believe that mortality is higher in Australian hospitals than it should be because people are being delayed in the emergency department," said Professor Richardson, chairman of road trauma and emergency medicine at Australian National University. "It's about available beds - there's no other way of looking at it . The assumption I make is that hospital overcrowding is contributing to deaths in the Australian community and that until we decide we're going to work our hospitals on the basis of efficiency rather than utilisation, this will continue to happen."

Most of Sydney's major hospitals operate well above 85 per cent capacity - the recognised safe benchmark - to up to 5 per cent over capacity. Professor Richardson will tell the annual scientific meeting of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine on Tuesday that emergency departments are frequently grinding to a halt - a trend that has been worsening over the past 10 years - because patients are waiting for beds. He said the September survey of 71 hospitals showed a 6 per cent nationwide increase in the number of emergency patients waiting for a ward bed and a 3 per cent increase in those waiting for more than eight hours, known as access block, since the June survey.

NSW had only a 4 per cent increase in patients waiting due to access block but a 20 per cent increase in patients waiting for treatment. However, he said the figures were significantly skewed downwards because the September snapshot was taken in the APEC week in which NSW hospitals cut back services. "NSW deserves a modicum of praise for being better than they used to be, whereas the other states are not, but nationally we have a huge problem," he said.

Professor Richardson said research published in the international journal Critical Care Medicine in June showed that if a patient spent more than six hours in emergency waiting to go to the intensive care unit, their in-hospital mortality rate was 17.4 per cent, compared with 12.9 per cent if there was no delay. He said similar studies in the ACT and Western Australia, published in the Medical Journal of Australia last year, showed emergency department overcrowding was associated with increased mortality.

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