Tim Blair cherry-picks for cheap point-scoring

It would now appear to be okay for conservative and right-wing pundits to cite the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project as a realistic tally of Iraqi war dead. At least, that’s the impression one might take from a post at Tim Blair’s blog, in which he favourably cites IBC figures.

Then again, it may simply be a case of Blair cherry-picking a convenient number in order to score a cheap political point off one of his perennial hate-objects, Kevin Rudd, for “his repeated support for the bogus Lancet figure.”

Blair has, of course, consistently held the Lancet (Johns Hopkins) study on Iraq war mortality to be “bogus”. But if the Lancet figure is bogus, what might Blair make of Iraq Body Count’s tally, given the IBC people themselves openly concede:

Iraq Body Count (IBC) compiles data from news reports to provide a baseline number of confirmed fatalities, but it should be noted that many deaths will likely go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media.

IBC’s tally, then, will understate the death toll virtually as a design effect of their methodology. It may also be noted that IBC, unlike the Johns Hopkins study, does not attempt to capture ‘excess deaths’ from flow-on health effects of the war.

So, maybe Rudd’s support for the Lancet study is not so wide of the mark after all.

Further, perhaps it’s Blair himself who “needs a correction.” Being opinion editor for a major daily newspaper, he should at least have some competence on the topic over which he’s dissing on a public figure.

But let’s face it, such considerations are decidedly off Blair’s radar. It’s fairly evident by now that he couldn’t give a rat’s arse what the actual Iraq war civilian toll might be.

Blair’s blogging activity has always been heavily reliant on name-calling and schadenfreude. ‘Disinformation’ is, however, perhaps too strong a word for what Blair actually does, since no-one with any sense would trust in the veracity of someone who notoriously has no interest in fairness.

And anyway, from his readers’ perspective, his function has always been to pad out a ‘conservative’ narrative with a kind of quasi-cool schtik. It’s a vaudeville, more than anything else.

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The Aussies that Andrew Bolt wanted Rudd to throw to the dogs

Over the last week or so Andrew Bolt has repeatedly savaged Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd for his reluctance to publicly condemn and call for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to stand down.

In a typical rant, Bolt ridiculed “in their miserable entirety [Rudd’s] comments today on human rights in Egypt”, selectively quoting some of Rudd’s remarks in an interview on Sky News.

But by glaring omission, Bolt failed to give any weight to a crucial consideration in Rudd’s approach to the Egyptian crisis.

Part of what Rudd said, but what Bolt did not report, was the following:

Well my more immediate concern is to the well being of Australians in Cairo... we are in a difficult security situation and our first and foremost concern is the well being of Australians in the country.

The title Bolt gave to his post was: “Why won’t Rudd condemn Mubarak? Still chasing your UN votes, Kevin?”

Well, if Bolt chooses to see, he may find his answer in the following:

Australia has protested to Egypt over the targeting of foreigners, including its diplomats and journalists, by pro-government protesters in the capital Cairo.

Attacks and raids on journalists and a confrontation involving Australian diplomats came as the Mubarak regime tries to stifle international scrutiny of political upheavals across the country. ...

Mr Rudd said he had protested to Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit this morning about the treatment of foreigners in the country.

“I raised the problems that we have seen with the maltreatment of journalists on the ground from networks around the world,” he said.

“This is not acceptable and that message was delivered very clearly.”

One has to ask how clearly that message might have been delivered had Rudd stuck the boot into the Mubarak regime with the reckless abandon Bolt had been demanding. Does Bolt suppose the regime would have been at all receptive to our diplomacy?

In his hate-driven frenzies, Bolt tears apart anything to hand that represents restraint, order or the related discipline of reason.

UPDATE: Bolt in his latest post quotes from the same news item above, and wonders: “Were our people attacked on the orders of the Mubarak regime?” And he notes that “it’s getting ugly for our own.”

Will the penny ever ƒυςќing drop?

Probably not so far as his readers are concerned, since Bolt has chosen not to quote the part about Rudd’s efforts at diplomacy.

I’ve submitted a comment summarising my concerns as set out above. I conclude with the suggestion that he “try doing some journalism before it's too late for you.” The latter may tend to further limit its chances of getting by moderation, but hey, that’s life.

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Wikipissing in the Murdoch media

For all its trilling about the “irresponsible” publication of “sensitive” documents by Wikileaks, it has to be said that the Murdoch media doesn’t hesitate to use those documents to serve its own ‘editorial’ purposes.

For instance, while Andrew Bolt — our own Doctor Easychair — has not been shy about condemning  Wikileaks and its chief Julian Assange, he’s been equally quick to expropriate Wikileaks material when it supports his views on perennial hate-object Kevin Rudd.

So too with an unattributed op-ed piece today in The Australian, which takes the leaked cables about Rudd as vindicating — and indeed confirming the rectitude of — the paper’s long-time critical stance against the former Rudd Government.

The narrative of Mr Rudd’s chaotic government would be familiar to readers of The Australian, which began reporting on the emerging problems of the Rudd administration in mid-2008. Our sources, named and un-named, included senior public servants, politicians and diplomats. More than five months after the caucus revolt that brought an end to a regime Mr Rudd’s deputy argued had lost its way, these facts were finally reported yesterday on the front pages of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which gleaned its information from US diplomatic cables dropped by WikiLeaks.

Though not wholly unexpected, it’s unfortunate that the writer of this piece has conflated purported “facts” with what are, after all, opinions based on subjective assessments.

Whether the assessments are those of “sources, named and un-named,” or of hapless de-cloaked US diplomats — and whether one agrees or disagrees with those assessments — they remain as opinions, not facts. Not withstanding that assessments and opinions, when repeated often and loudly enough, can reify to become factoids.

For my own assessment of The Oz’s self-serving and self-aggrandising piece here, I can only conclude the paper has enlisted our friend Doctor Easychair to help write its op-eds.

As for our good Doctor, one might wonder whether he’s half-expecting a smoking-gun revelation that “Kevin Rudd gave aid to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe” in the next tranche of Wikileaks.

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‘F’ word at last emptied of meaning

An unidentified senior federal Labor figure, variously described as a “powerbroker” and “factional leader,” has said of fallen PM Kevin Rudd:

“This crypto-fascist made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll, has deserted him he is gone.”

 
UPDATE 28 June:  Oh dear, seems there was nothing ‘crypto’ about Kevin after all...

Kevin Rudd's Downfall - Watch more top selected videos about: Kevin_rudds_downfall

(via Antony Loewenstein)

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Worse and worser

Senator Eric Abetz holds forth on the Rudd Government’s taxpayer-funded advertising blitz to sell its super resources tax:

“They have now done worse than we have done by setting aside their own guidelines.”

True, the government’s actions in this are quite troubling, but is it really ‘worse’ than having no guidelines at all? The Howard Government had an abysmal record of hitting on the taxpayer to advertise their policies. And the government’s “setting aside their own guidelines” is redolent of Howard’s ministerial code of conduct, and how meaningless that became.

More than anything, however, this all seems to be about Kevin Rudd. His government will become paralysed if it can’t neutralise the ‘KRudd’ factor... or jettison it.

 
UPDATE 30 MAY: ABC TV’s Insiders program this morning aired video footage of Kevin Rudd campaigning in 2007 in which he emphatically states he would resign if, as Prime Minister, he failed to honour his promise to clean up taxpayer-funded government advertising.

Kevin Rudd therefore should now do the honourable thing and fall on his sword — unless he can successfully take the ‘Abbott defence’, on the grounds that his off-the-cuff statement in 2007 was not a “carefully prepared, scripted remark.”

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Efficiency, revenue, efficiency...

Kevin Rudd:

"Improving the structure of the tax system by replacing inefficient taxes with more efficient ones and streamlining governments and administrations reduces complexity and makes the Australian economy more productive.

"Australia needs to respond, to remain an attractive place to invest and to do business.

"That's the reason the government's aspiration is to reduce the level of tax faced by the vast majority of Australians."

Sooo… taxes which are "inefficient" will be replaced by taxes which are "efficient". One can therefore expect that taxes which "inefficiently" collect revenues will be replaced by those that will collect revenue very efficiently. All the while Kev "will reduce the level of tax faced by the vast majority of Australians." But not the amount. The level which we face might change but never the revenue (amount). That will simply be collected far more efficiently.

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Rudd's Industrial Apocalypse

Fair Work legislation restores many trade union privileges abolished under Howard's Work Choices legislation.

So Gerard Henderson in today’s SMH. Henderson clearly implies that, under the government’s IR laws, the union movement is about to barge back through the door so to speak. The largely unregulated and, by implication in the comparison, more responsible WorkChoices will have all its good work undone. Australia’s economy will suffer and jobs will, of course, be lost.

This is to believe that Australia’s economic performance (specifically the unemployment rate) over the last several years is a result of the visionary deregulation of “Howard’s Work Choices legislation”. That the ability of organisations to erode work and pay conditions – by the use of that labour market and economic panacea the AWA – and to terminate “at will” under the removal of “unfair dismissal” protection has been a driver of employment and economic activity.

Whilst there is little doubt that the intent of the AWA was to provide the mechanism for such undermining of conditions, the take up was always limited and then, when used, serially abused (as the - at the time - ever hard to lay hands on statistics indicate). Recall that Howard wanted no safety net built into this system.

In respect to unfair dismissal, the ability to terminate has never equated to the propensity to employ. In any case many “small businesses” employed under common law contracts and, in the “industrial” arena (distribution for example) under the casual and limited tenure contract arrangements permitted under awards and agreements.

Henderson clearly believes that under Fair Work Australia the above “flexibility” enjoyed under Work Choices will be replaced by the straightjacket of union “privileges”.

Two of Rudd's labour market initiatives are capable of being quite counterproductive in this time of economic downturn. Reintroduction of unfair dismissal laws on small business is a real disincentive for employers to take on staff. And the Government's call for Fair Work Australia to modernise awards in the retail sector - which employs many part-time and casual staff - could raise penalty rates and, consequently, significantly increase the cost of employment. Both initiatives would be of concern at the best of economic times.

Really? Mr Henderson hasn’t been keeping up with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and its ongoing process of award modernisation. The object of this process is to pare down the great number of industrial awards in this country and, in the process, remove much union “demarcation” producing fewer “Modern Awards”. Modern Awards, according to the legislation, “must be simple to understand and easy to apply, and must reduce the regulatory burden on business”. As well, these awards will include a “flexibility clause” which clause, in summary, “will enable an employer and an individual employee to agree on arrangements to meet the genuine individual needs of the employer and the employee”.

As one can well imagine, the union movement has had much to say on these matters. Individual unions and the ACTU have made many submissions on the forms of these new awards and, more importantly, the flexibility clause. In the main the AIRC has dismissed such submissions as not complying with the intent of the legislation – particularly with respect to the flexibility clause. In this regard unions have suggested that agreements made under this clause be able to apply collectively. The Commission roundly rejected this:

The use of terms such as “individual employee” and “individual needs” and “the individual employee” leave no room for doubt on the issue. For this reason the model clause should not provide for agreements between an employer and a majority of employees.

But back to Henderson’s fretting over Modern Awards and the assertion that they “could raise penalty rates and, consequently, significantly increase the cost of employment”. Whilst that is a possibility, the AIRC has, to date, refused to alter such provisions which already apply in this regard. Indeed it is rolling these into “industry sector” awards and leaving such matters to the relevant tribunals. Perversely, for Henderson, the Modern Award Flexibility Clause can allow for a reduction in these matters.

The purpose of a model flexibility provision is to permit a reduction in one or more minimum award entitlements as part of an agreement which meets the genuine individual needs of the employer and the employee without disadvantaging the individual employee.

The specific clauses that this provision can vary are listed in clause one of the Commission’s “Model Clause”:

An employer and an individual employee may agree to vary the application of certain terms of this award to meet the genuine individual needs of the employer and the individual employee. The terms the employer and the individual employee may agree to vary the application of are those concerning:

(a) arrangements for when work is performed;
(b) overtime rates;
(c) penalty rates;
(d) allowances; and
(e) leave loading.

Looky there! The very matters Henderson mentions.

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That girl...

Crabb. She's done it again. Caz has Annabel Crabb's piece on the soaring "oratory" of our Kevvie in response to Obama's election. As good as that was the girls has outdone it today. In a piece today, about the predilection of Kevvie and Howard to "diss" their speechwriters in favour of their own "off-the-cuff" rhetorical prowess, she neatly nails the current and former PM with their mediocre meanderings. A snippet:

Another similarity between Howard and Rudd is their shared reluctance to submit to the black arts of the speechwriter.

Both of them believe themselves - incorrectly - to be better at speaking off-the-cuff than using a prepared speech...

The PM's suspicion of speechwriters is understandable. Just like John Howard, Rudd built himself up through sheer persistence and willpower, making speeches ceaselessly and doggedly and - probably, at the very beginning - reluctantly, training himself over years to feel comfortable in front of a crowd.

For such people, it is very difficult to understand that it is when they reach the summit of ambition that they most need help. The delegation of speechwriting seems like an abandonment of control.

And we all know how Kevin Rudd feels about not being in control.

Being a speechwriter for Kevin Rudd would be tough; imagine being Christian Lacroix putting the final stitches in a magical frock in the knowledge that your customer is probably going to team it with Ugh boots and wear it to Bunnings.

Or being Amy Winehouse's wardrobe consultant, or Shane Warne's minder; the worst bit would be knowing that there are millions of people out there who simply assume you don't exist at all.

Delicious. Perfectly skewered.

And, just before heading off to see the Wallabies push the English scrum around (yes, that likely means I'm going to bed), back to the piece highlighted by Caz:

I wrote a column in Tuesday's paper observing that Rudd's speech to Parliament acknowledging the election of the US's first black president-elect sounded "as though he was reading aloud from the agenda for the National Association of Metallurgists' annual general meeting".

By sundown, I'd heard from the chief executive of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He wasn't angry - he just wanted it known that their AGMs are much more interesting than a Rudd speech.

That, in no way, surprises me.

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Award-winning loser

Former Australian prime minister John Howard has given his first public speech since his stunning defeat at the polls last November.

Former prime minister John Howard has hit out at several of the Rudd Government’s policies while giving a major speech in the United States.

Mr Howard has given an address at a gala dinner for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, where he received the Irving Kristol Award.

He has told the audience that scrapping the WorkChoices laws is the first time in 25 years that a major economic reform has been reversed. ...

And he has described his disappointment at the moves to bring Australian troops home from Iraq.

Undoubtedly Mr Howard would’ve had the rapt AEI crowd nodding synchronously, but let’s just consider the two examples evinced here.

Both are attempts to implement long-standing policy positions of the Australian Labor Party, which formed the basis of firm commitments the ALP took to the polls.

Ahah... Keeping election commitments!!

I think we can now see Mr Howard’s problem with the new Rudd Government’s actions.

On reflection, I now see that Tim Dunlop’s approach to Mr Howard’s speech was the correct one.

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Rudd continues to mindƒυcќ the Coalition

The issue of an apology for the Stolen Generations is causing grief for the New Opposition:

“It is incumbent on the Government to stop playing political tricks and to produce the words as soon as possible.”

• Julian McGauran, Victorian Senator

“We’re not going to allow ourselves to be wedged by this new Government.”

• Patrick Secker, South Australian backbencher

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McKew not a Howard-hater

Almost three weeks after the federal election, Maxine McKew has finally claimed victory in Bennelong over the vanquished John Howard.

Refreshingly, McKew chose not to run a negative campaign for the seat:

McKew was anxious from the start not to align herself with “Howard haters”.

She politely declined the assistance of the “Not Happy, John” squad, for instance.

“‘Not happy, John’ did not begin to sum up my views of the neglect of the Howard government. It was negative. It was also a protest campaign,” she says.

“I wanted to be very careful that I was dealing with people who weren’t driven simply by a kind of vicious animus towards Mr Howard; I find that quite destructive, to tell you the truth.” Instead, she developed a pitch of her own.

“I went after Liberal voters. I knew I could only win them over if I could present them with a better set of arguments. I knew I had to present a positive case.”

Yep, McKew is arguably no Howard-hater. But she’s quite possibly a Kevin-cuddler:

“I could not have done what I’ve done in Bennelong without the clarity of the leadership that Kevin’s provided.”

Meanwhile this blogger is still adjusting to our country’s brave new federal politics scene. Every time I see a headline referring to “the PM”, I still think it’s referring to Mr Howard. Pinch me...

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Poker face

With the sky not falling in, but in fact rather expanding rapidly skywards following the electoral victory of Rudd Labor, surprising admissions continue to emerge from employer unions groups.

Employers attacked the former [Howard] government for keeping secret its analysis of Australian Workplace Agreements, declaring the Coalition’s lack of transparency had made it difficult for business to defend the workplace laws.

Gee guys, there’s nothing there that hasn’t been said for a long time by the then Labor Opposition, labour unions, academics and others in the general community. Neither is the following any great revelation to most Australians:

Business said it struggled to sell Work Choices to apprehensive workers and that the laws had become cumbersome and overly bureaucratic, particularly since the introduction of the Fairness Test in May.

Such admissions from employer unions groups may lead one to speculate around at least two possibilities. Either...

1. Employer unions groups really didn’t know, prior to the election, that the Howard Government was “keeping secret its analysis of Australian Workplace Agreements”, and weren’t aware of “the Coalition’s lack of transparency” on IR policy. This forced them unwittingly to “defend the workplace laws” and with “difficulty” to plough millions of their dollars, at the Government’s behest, into the anti-Labor advertising blitz.

Or

2. Employer unions groups really did know all that, but were playing their cards close to their chest in the hope that their man would pull that rabbit out of the hat and, upon re-election, pay out some more on their wishlist.

Call me a cynic, but I’d tend to go with (2) above as the more likely scenario.

Clearly, the gambit failed, but their reserve gambit of courting the “incredibly positive” Rudd Labor Government is surely unfolding, even as we ordinary peons, with bleary eyes, adjust to the brave new post-Howard world.

By the way, it would seem Mr Howard and his gang were so right with their dire predictions that the unions would rampantly exercise undue influence over a Rudd Labor Government. Mr Rudd hasn’t even been sworn in, and yet the business unions groups are already falling over themselves to get in for their chop.

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Sky fails to fall in

Dire predictions of the sky falling in, should the Coalition be dumped in favour of Our New Labor Government, have against all the odds failed to come true.

In fact, according to the some of the formerly gloomiest Doomsayers-in-Chief, the sky now seems to be gravitating outwards at warp speed, presenting glorious new vistas:

Business in Australia has welcomed the election of a Rudd Labor Government as a new chance for significant reform, particularly in improving the dysfunctional condition of federal-state relations.

The new head of the Business Council of Australia, Greig Gailey, said the BCA wanted to work closely with Labor in helping to lay the foundations for the future.

“Many of the items on the BCA agenda have been flagged by the incoming Government as immediate priorities ... that is incredibly positive,” he said.

Oh, goody!! Meanwhile, the consensus among our glittering cognoscenti is that the Rudd Era has begun. Alan Ramsey trumpets jubilantly,

“We have our country back.”

Get it? We are back!!

We all know who the we and the us are in this country, in contradistinction to the them. And we are back — presumably from our self-imposed exile in New Zealand, waiting out the exceptionally long Howard Interregnum.

Whether the Labor victory turns out to be merely the Rudd Interregnum (as this blogger will foolishly begin predicting right about now) is not even on the horizon in Cognoscenti Land.

But meanwhile, and inevitably, wet-blankets like Paul Sheehan have already begun to cloud the horizon with negative vibes:

Ideology is dead in Australia. The electorate made sure of that at the weekend. Australia now has a new leader as conservative as the one the public has just cast aside.

Oh Paul, now get this: Australia has “voted for change.” And we don’t need people like you telling us that we voted for the status quo, okay. Please.

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Correction

I’d tipped more or less a repeat of the ’98 election result, i.e., the Howard Government returned with under 50% of popular vote thanks to strong performance in key marginals, etc.

Oops. Bummer. How could I have been so wrong??!!!

Guilty. I sentence myself to a minimum 3 years of daily being reminded of my monumental error.

Forgive me, Kevin, for my lack of faith... for not believing.

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Mutiny on the Beas - or - Relentlessly partisan

I shall have others who will need no compulsion to follow their leader. If you wish to turn back now, you are at liberty to do so – and you may tell your people that you deserted your leader in the midst of his enemies.

The PM speaking to Alexander Downer back during the September showdown at the OPEC corral? Not quite. Replace “leader” with “king” and you have Alexander of Macedon addressing his troops at the Beas River, somewhere near to modern Lahore, Pakistan, 325 BCE. His troops, now ten years down the track from the Macedonia they’d left, had finally woken up to the fact that this bloke was going on forever and were going no further unless it was in a direction of their choosing.

The similarities, war aside, are strong. Alexander got his way and his troops went homewards – via some dozen more peoples as yet unconquered. Howard got his way too: he followed his troops’ wishes and caved to a “succession”. He, though it must surely have galled him, acknowledged it publicly. And he will lead his troops into another battle.

The point of difference being that where as Alexander went on to visit his frightful pique upon the Indian cities unfortunate enough to be on his “path home”, occasioning massacres and murder, Howard will march on, hubristic hat in place and take his troops to a hiding. And, should the ALP only just get there – seventeen to twenty seats – a hiding it will still be. Howard will have, in a period of three years, converted a large and – in conventional thinking – unassailable majority, within a single term, into a spanking loss.

The poisoned chalice of a Senate majority is, in large part, what will haunt this government to the tally room next Saturday night. Howard was first to declare that such a majority would not be wielded with hubris. He was, surely, also the first to recognise the unparalleled opportunity that had been presented to him: no negotiations, no Dems to dialogue with, what I can get the party room to stomach is law. Within weeks the long cherished industrial relations agenda was taking shape. It bore no resemblance to the pie in the sky nebulous statements of the campaign platform document. It bore no relationship to the claims of the PM during the campaign that no extension of the WorkChoices legislation was planned.

By November of 2005 it was done and dusted. The new WorkChoices would be in place by March 2006. Like it or lump it. It transpired that large swathes of the electorate wanted to lump it then as they do now. Hubris? None at all if the PM bombastically declaring that there would be no changes to his legislation, no further negotiation and no addition of any unneeded safety-nets ranks as self-effacing, humble language.

The was no need for any “further” safety net – further than those award conditions left standing. The safety net – enforced on the government by a “hung” Senate in 1996 – was summarily removed by the new legislation.

Not even Howard realised how badly it made the government smell. Further, he failed to realise that such behaviour had become rather the modus operandi of his government. The image of high handed rule coupled with a seeming absolute lack of accountability in ministerial behaviour painted a picture of arrogance. An arrogance heightened by a listless and abysmal opposition.

In 2006 Howard again passed up the opportunity of “generational change” and rebuffed his deputy. He was going nowhere and largely did not care how this played in the public arena as come 2007 there’d be Kim waiting to be done over…again.

Throughout the back-end of 2006 the ACTU trial ran its anti WorkChoices campaign. It bit and continues to bite. The Howard government, led by the PM, declared it to be totally partisan and utterly misleading. Howard continued to insist throughout the later part of the year that no changes were needed to his legislation and nor would they be.

That all began to change after the ALP dumped Kim for RevKev, the “revolution” candidate. By the close of the first quarter of 2007, trailing hopelessly in the polls, the stench of WorkChoices had made its way into the executive offices of Parliament House. Come May Howard, likely as galled (if not more) as he would be in September, announced that he’d discovered the requirement for a “fairness test” in his legislation. Too late. Far too late.

The PM is in a pickle entirely of his own making. He had no intention of “listening” to “the people” until it was shoved down his hearing aid by poll after interminable poll. The internal party polling will only have shoved it further.

His ego and hubris has left him open to what, eighteen months ago, would have been considered nigh impossible: a flogging. His government, stripped of its mojo and poll numbers, looking for all the world like the US fleet limping out of Tassafaronga Strait in 1942, has lurched through this election year and this campaign largely stumped. Nothing it has done has altered the consistent numbers running against it. The government’s primary vote is as consistently poor as the ALP’s is strong in every poll taken this last year. It does not indicate a “soft vote” for the ALP. That path is thinking along the lines of the electorate exercising some "Australian humour".

Three years ago the electorate looked longingly, for a period, at what it thought to be a credible alternative. It wasn't but that should have sounded alarm bells. This time the poll numbers and their consistency suggest the electorate's found it.

Should the poll numbers prove correct on election day, the stench of WorkChoices and the arrogance of the government that pushed it will become the stench of the government's corpse. The Liberal Party can look back on their Senate majority and ponder how wisely they used it. Then they can look at their defeated leader, the beligerent barnacle that refused to move aside “for the good of the party”; that preferred instead to arrogantly stare down his “shoulder tappers” and call for blood on the floor.

The coterie of Liberal tresantes (Spartan for "tremblers", those who disgraced themselves in the phalanx ranks) proved exactly that in September: they blinked. Barring a huge shift in voter sentiment, there appear to be few tresantes in the electoral phalanx bearing down upon the government forces and the Prime Ministerial guards.

Perhaps back in September he again echoed Alexander. Perhaps when Downer likely informed him that he’d lost the support of a substantial section of the party room and that if Downer were Howard he’d step aside for the good of the party, Howard replied “I would too, were I Alexander Downer”.

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The magic of Alex dazzles again

Australia’s certainly clever Head Prefect Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has again put opposition leader Kevin Rudd in his box.

During a debate with his opposition counterpart, Robert McLelland, Mr Downer was invited to demonstrate his linguistic talents, as an answer to Mr Rudd’s girlie swot performance speaking Mandarin with Chinese President Hu.

“In life you come across some boys who are show-offs, I’m more self-confident than that,” he said.

Mr Downer gave a brief demonstration of his French speaking skills in which he mentioned his knowledge of the language but how he spoke English as an Australian.

He received an applause from the audience.

The report doesn’t identify the polite individual who was the source of the applause, but the self-effacing Mr Downer was having none of it anyway:

“That doesn’t deserve applause, that is not clever,” he said.

QED — Alex trumps Kevni in the mediocrity stakes. Those National Press Clubbers must have been so glad they came.

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The magic of Alex continues

Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has admonished Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd for “showing off” with his foreign language skills.

Kevin Rudd this morning gave an interview in Mandarin to a Chinese television station.

Oh, the little show-off...! ...talking in Mandarin, to a Chinese television audience, no less. Needless to say...

... Mr Downer is far from impressed.

“Well, I think he should focus on speaking to the Australian people not trying to show off that he can speak a foreign language,” he said.

Yep, and Alex would be quite within his mandate to point out that Kevni is just a little girlie swot who eats his own earwax.

So there... nyah.

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Howard stuffs big, fat, pregnant cat back in bag

“Some people will believe us, some people won’t, that always applies in election campaigns, but we do not have any plans to further change the industrial relations system.”

• Prime Minister John Howard

One wonders if those who “will believe” will be the same people who believed the PM’s non-pledge in the 2004 campaign not to introduce a further wave of industrial relations “reforms” that became known as WorkChoices.

Or maybe those who “will believe” will be the same people who believed the PM would act “in the national interest”, regardless of election non-pledges, by introducing a further wave of industrial relations reforms that became known as WorkChoices.

When Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin told the H.R. Nicholls Society last year that a further wave of IR reforms — beyond WorkChoices — was needed, this was excused by Government spinmeisters as “a personal view” that was not necessarily representative of the Government’s thinking. That Minchin expressed “his” view as a prominent government front-bencher was apparently neither here nor there.

So, in the game of Alice-in-Wonderland croquet that is contemporary Australian politics, maybe Labor could “get away with” excusing Peter Garrett’s change-it-all gaffe — or non-gaffe, as the case may be — as merely expressing a “personal view” that was not necessarily representative of the Government-in-waiting’s thinking: “We are a broad church,” etc.

Incidentally... if Labor is “anti-jobs” because it opposes (or, at least, says it does) the Government’s IR platform, then is the Government “anti-jobs” because it introduced a “Fairness Test” as an antidote to the electoral poison of Australian Workplace Agreements?

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The first (and last) time I ate my earwax

In the wake of the political scandal of Kevin Rudd eating his own earwax in Parliament, I thought I’d disclose a personal anecdote, which may or may not illumine this apparently shocking incident.

A long time ago when I was a young adult — okay, a long, long time ago — I was sitting reading a book, when I was suddenly irritated by an infuriating itch inside my ear.

I gingerly probed my ear hole with my little finger to soothe the source of the itch, then noticed that the nail of this little finger actually had an overly sharp edge that threatened to break the skin where I was scratching.

Absent-mindedly I then took that little finger to my mouth with a view to filing the edge off of it with my teeth — as one does, with no scissors or other specialist implements within convenient reach.

Ble-e-ecchhh!! I realised with deep revulsion that a trace of earwax had hitched a ride on that finger into my mouth, and its acrid flavour overwhelmed me with nausea.

Quite seriously, I can’t believe that anyone would habitually eat that stuff out of their own (or anyone else’s) ear.

Having only seen the incriminating Rudd footage once, I really can’t remember whether the expression on his face was a surprised grimace, or one of a furtive, stolen, secret pleasure. My own experience would suggest the former.

One day I may review that shocking footage, but for the moment my mind is occupied with more pressing political questions — such as, whether I should wait until election night to chill a much anticipated bottle of vintage champagne.

You see, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, I bought a bottle of bubbly on the eve of the 1998 election, with which I had planned to toast the lower-lip tremors of a single-term Prime Minister.

Nine years down the track, and not only have I “never had it so good”, but the Howard Era has yielded me a really fine bottle of vintage champagne!

But one can’t have one’s vintage and drink it too, so I really feel It’s Time! for the incumbent Prime Minister to give up the electoral ghost, so to speak, and let me enjoy my bubbly, at long last.

I do have other arguments, but at this time I find the above to be the most compelling.

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