---

Julie Bishop coughs up loose change for climate in Peru; taunts China, USA to show her the money.

Global warming may well increase rather than diminish the chill experienced by Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister at the UN Climate Change Convention’s Meeting in Lima, today. Lima is the planning session before serious national commitments to curb global carbon emissions are made in Paris next year and Bishop, one of Australia’s most ambitious yet least successful foreign ministers in the nation’s chequered history, has just incurred further icy disdain after presenting her paper justifying Australia’s position on not paying less than its fair share amount into the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Bishop’s paper also rationalises other obstructive and unhelpful Abbott government actions calculated to lower the cooling climate of world opinion towards itself and Australia’s status as a global citizen.

In her typically abrasive and ill-considered manner, Bishop has further stunned delegates and observers from the 194 nations attending the talks by suggesting China’s commitment to cap its emissions before 2030 is a sham, stating that China’s commitment amounts ‘to nothing more than business as usual.’

The Minister’s condemnation, which is markedly less well-researched, substantiated or well-measured as one might expect, or, indeed, require from a Foreign Minister has already quickly been refuted as a baseless slur:

“If implementing carbon pricing, seeing a peak in coal consumption around 2020, and building renewable energy capacity the size of its current coal capacity is business as usual for China, Australia should be reconsidering its own business as usual path,” the Climate Institute’s Erwin Jackson said.

Yet not all of Bishop’s speech was directly offensive. In a rapid change of heart, or in a concession to pressure from other nations as voiced by China, Bishop did make a surprise announcement that Australia will pay $250 million into UN Green Climate Fund but experts have already described this as substantially below the nation’s fair share of the load. Aimed at raising $100 billion a year in government and private finance, the UN fund is seen as vital to gain agreement between developed and developing countries. China’s lead negotiator Su Wei last week criticised Australia’s decision as “disappointing”.

But if Australia’s change of heart is to silence China, the amount is not designed to mollify.

For Climate Institute’s Erwin Jackson the total amount is “modest” given it “falls short of the $350 million per year [we] suggest is the minimum fair contribution to climate financing from Australia. Yet others are worrying where the money is coming from.

Has the Minister had to dip into her own ministerial budget? Some commentators, including Greens Christine Milne, note the sum is coming out of an already cash-strapped foreign aid programme and protest that it is ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul.’

Revealingly, the diversion of funds from foreign aid into climate change betokens a weather-change from Bishop or, indeed, another broken promise from her government. Bishop was adamant in an ABC interview in 2012, when in opposition, that climate change funding should not be “disguised as foreign aid funding,” adding: “We would certainly not spend our foreign aid budget on climate change programs.”

It is not hard, in the end, to detect an unseemly haste as befits her beleaguered government’s increasing adhockery: Bishop’s gesture has been made quickly, without any clear plan or properly funded strategy. Did she do it off her own bat and out of her own portfolio, knowing there would be other source of funds? If so, is she being penalised by PM Abbott for her initiative; punished for her quick thinking?

What is clear is that Australia was forced into this decision. It comes at the end of weeks of censure after the Abbott government tried to bump the fund off a G20 communique and after Australia snubbed other world leaders by refusing to attend a Berlin conference designed to raise an initial $10 billion for the Green Fund. Yet this has not prevented Greg Hunt from spinning a different scenario, albeit a fantastically implausible scenario. Speaking on ABC Radio News this afternoon, Hunt surprise informed listeners with the line that Lima was ‘the conference’ where it was always going to happen. What he meant was that Australia always planned to contribute. If this were the case, why then was Abbott planning to send no delegates at all? Why was there no budget for this planned contribution? As always with his government’s attempts to explain its erratic decisions, even an inconvenient lie is its preferred option.

We know, too from the interview she gave with the AFR, that Julie Bishop practically had to head-butt Peta Credlin and to call a meeting of cabinet to be permitted to attend Lima and even then her paranoid PM insisted she be chaperoned by climate change sceptic Andrew Robb. The ad-hoc nature of her attendance will not have gone unnoticed by other governments all around the world.

Although she has managed to offend a good many nations including China, The United States and Indonesia, Bishop’s cold shoulder is not completely personal,: the rest of the world is getting heartily sick of Australia’s unhelpful denialist attitude, its lack of good faith and its bad global citizenship which includes the advocacy of fossil fuels, the promotion of Direct Action, an untried, unworkable, specious plan to curb emissions by paying polluters to clean up their act, and its senior Ministers’ denial of climate change.

Other snubs and slights have been keenly felt by UN members. In a calculated pattern of offensives, Australia has until now refused climate finance, rubbished the actions of China and the US, the two most powerful nations attending, cut funding to a key UN body, distanced itself from a group of progressive nations, joined with others to delete text that would require a review of its pre-2020 commitment, and despatched climate sceptic Trade Minister Andrew Robb to accompany Bishop at the talks.

Recently, as G20 meeting host nation, in Brisbane, Australia won no hearts and had many world leaders scratching heads when Canute-style it vainly and foolishly attempted to keep climate change off the agenda, despite climate’s rightful primacy over any mere economic or financial discussion and despite its being in other ways also the most pressing issue facing all nations.

Australia’s recalcitrance dates from the 2010 Copenhagen Accord on global warming and climate change, and has helped spur Barack Obama and China to chide the nation it for its dereliction of duty of care towards the planet and towards its own world heritage site, The Great Barrier Reef. Bishop and Abbott may be seething about Obama upstaging their G20, but truth be known, it was bound to happen; it was something their own attitudes invited.

The Abbott government which originally planned to show its hand by boycotting the Lima meeting and which openly advocates the burning of coal to generate electricity has now run to wilful obstruction. Australia’s latest transparent ploy is to stymie any effective international action on climate change by proposing that Paris targets be legally binding.

So far, the reaction from the French, who are committed to making the Paris conference succeed, has been to contemplate not inviting PM Abbott, or indeed any other government leaders, at all but rather, in the spirit of practicality confining attendance to those lower-ranking delegates who would create less obstruction and who would actually do the work required to reach agreement. The world would be grateful. In the interim, Julie Bishop will continue to spread Christmas cheer by sneering at other governments’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions and join with Minister Hunt in promoting Australia as a paragon of climate responsibility because of its small total of emissions, even if per capita it remains one of the world’s worst polluters.

Australia continues to rapidly alienate the rest of the world because of its global delinquency. Is it any wonder that it finds itself increasingly isolated, meeting by meeting, day by day and that it will soon find itself a total pariah, backward looking and ignorant, spurned by all as an unwelcome brake on the efforts of responsible progressive governments to achieve consensus in combating global warming, the biggest challenge faced by all nations to our continued existence; a cause above petty rivalries, self-interest and wilful ignorance.

Abbott and Credlin decide to send Robb to keep an eye on Bishop at Lima. Greg Hunt, Environment Minister not considered fit for purpose.

---

Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop went bananas last week. No, it was not Carmen Miranda bananas nor a Josephine Baker dance routine but a most un-mellow yellow. On learning by letter that Trade Minister, and aspiring banana republican, Andrew Robb would be accompanying her to Lima, Foreign Minister, Bishop flew into a rage. It was, she fumed, just too much monkey business all round, from control-freak Top Banana Peta Credlin, aka ‘P Who Must Be Obeyed’. To say nothing of what it implied in lack of trust, respect and gratitude for her own distinguished service which, everyone agreed, was far and above the best thing going for a government which was on the rocks. Demoted to Robb’s second banana; really it was the last straw!

Bishop boiled with anger and self-righteous indignation. Already the rug had been pulled from under her, when Abbott and Credlin decided it would be a pointedly token visit: the UN Framework Convention Lima Climate Change Conference in Lima actually began 1 December.

But they could not just leave the matter there. It was not enough to just cut down Bishop’s presence, and capacity for mischief, the duumvirate had decided that the Foreign Minister, who could be trusted to host the UN Security Council all by herself, needed a minder on this occasion, and that minder had to be notorious climate sceptic and melancholic Andrew Robb, a man whose seat, the ambitious Credlin is said to be chasing, when he retires soon. Bishop’s pitch was queered.

Abbott had treated her badly. Part of Bishop’s meltdown arose, she maintained, from the insulting, cowardly, high-handed, indirect and abrupt way the decision was communicated to her, or at least those are some of the words she used when she rounded on him in his office, flourishing his ‘disgusting’ page of correspondence.

Bishop had received a terse letter signed Tony Abbott from Peta Credlin’s office last Thursday. Andrew Robb got the same letter, too, only with his name on it, at the same time, although he chose to quickly speak to reporters, claiming that playing duenna to the Foreign Minister in Lima, would not have been his choice of the top ten ways to start his parliamentary break, but he’d do it anyway – thereby clumsily adding insult to injury for both Credlin and Bishop camps.

If he were upset by his indirect and impersonal letter from the PM, it did not show but then Robb is more practised at dealing with pathological behaviour including PM’s advisors and other egotistical, vindictive, paranoid, micro-managing control-freaks and he could use a few more frequent flyer points.

Yet Bishop has a point. Abbott can threaten to shirtfront Putin but struggles with the personal stuff when it comes to consulting his own foreign minister. This frailty is alarming and it is especially rich coming from the man who has been taunting Bill Shorten as weak in parliament recently, a process which has, nonetheless, found some favour with Speaker Bronwyn ‘Kerosene Bath’ Bishop.

Bishop is the most partisan and least competent speaker in the history of the House whose smile has more teeth than a basking shark’s and whose end of term valedictory remarks included a professed fondness for running a disorderly house, a comment which has supporters of democracy and justice on both sides of the house scratching their heads. Her attempt last week, in her closing address, to put a positive gloss on the degeneration of debate since 2010, a lowering and an abuse of parliament which will be Tony Abbott’s single greatest legacy continues the farce that is her attempt to fairly regulate parliamentary debate and is in effect an endorsement of the aggression and petty point-scoring abuse that displaces any reasoned examination, discussion or dispute.

A larger part of Julie Bishop’s banana routine was learning that her PM did not trust her. He’s wise there, and he has unequivocal support both in and out of political life. Bernie Banton’s wife and children, for example, would totally concur, along with all other families of asbestosis sufferers who died while their case for compensation was stalled by Ms Bishop in her former real job as a heartless, ruthless, unscrupulous, corporate lawyer, a profession widely held to provide the requisite training for some many political aspirants.

What Abbott was toey about, no doubt, was that the Princess Mesothelioma would commit us to some real target in reducing carbon emissions. We can’t have that. Abbott has recently gone into spin over how we have to be mindful of our economic prosperity thus bravely contradicting his soon to be sacked failed Treasurer Joe Hockey who told Australian viewers of the G20 circus that economic activity and global warming were unrelated.

Many questions are raised by this final piece of political theatre from the Abbott government, a government quite unlike any other in its determination to deny reality and to deny climate change and should the occasion present itself denying its denials.

Bishop of course issued a statement denying that she was miffed and that the bananas report was totally without foundation. She was delighted to be paired up with Andrew Robb and looked forward to a lambada and a Latin foxtrot with him at one or two of the après-conference functions. So much better on his feet than that clumsy Hunt. A deal taller, too. He knows the hospitality trade inside out. Why they might even hit a late-night alpaca tapas bar, the meat is so good for you, and partake of a few tax-payer funded palate-cleansing Pisco sours together.

Party animal Andrew Robb owns one or two restaurants himself and has shares in some others including Sydney’s Boathouse Palm Beach, showcased on Tourism Australia’s “Restaurant Australia” website, just launched this May, as the “ultimate day trip destination.” So he’ll be keen to pick up tips about tourism, eating and its promotion. Hell, they might even tour the catacombs together after that; in Lima, after all, political corpses still enjoy a type of public life, a richly attractive theme to pursue later over drinks with both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey and just the type of thing the whole party might well take lively interest in.

Had diplomatic protocols permitted, Bishop could also have thanked bag-man Robb for his heavy lifting on her behalf when he attacked Barack Obama over his concern for the Great Barrier. According to Abbott government lickspittle, The Australian, Robb gave Obama quite a serve.

“Obama’s speech on climate change and its effect on the Great Barrier Reef were unnecessary, misinformed and wrong. He found the content and the timing of the speech were not appropriate. He believed that the American president was not informed enough before talking about Australia‘s achievements in climate change and environmental transformation. Obama had apparently defied the advice of the U.S. embassy on the matter. The embassy reportedly asked him not to place his comments on climate change in such a manner that the Australian government found it disobliging.”

So Robb has done some dirty work for the Foreign Minister, despite sources close to the dirt preferring for the time being to remain unsullied by volunteering names or anything else quite so naff. Robb’s dirty work has nothing, however, on Ms Bishop’s agenda, who having been slighted or sprung – or both – climbing over anything in her way to supplant Tony as top banana, is now working the predictive text on her iPhone feverishly as she plots to get him back and to do Credlin down.

One other type of prediction is in order: the bananas incident will go down in history as Abbott’s biggest slip. He’s got his arch-rival off-side, his back-bench, already baying for Peta Credlin’s blood will be emboldened by finding a rising if somewhat temperamental star in Julie Bishop to hitch their wagons to and if they can’t quite manage insurrection, will whinge and bicker off the record enough to seriously upset his canoe. Mortal damage, moreover, is also likely to be done to the Abbott government’s reputation and credibility on the world stage.

Trade Minister Andrew Robb, who now finds himself travelling to Lima for climate talks and all the alpaca you can eat, will be looking forward to meeting his guru at the conference —Abbot’s favourite charlatan, the apologist for inaction on climate change Bjorn Lomborg who will be speaking at an event sponsored by big coal company Peabody Energy. Robb is, of course, on the record as a big coaler and like his PM happy to consign the world to oblivion in return for the certain expectation of reward from the big polluters.

Sending Robb to Lima, apart from to keep an eye on Julie Bishop’s ambitions has all international observers puzzled. He will be prominent, it is certain: no other nation is sending a trade minister.

Closer to home it puzzles even the best Abbott government experts because it is yet another flip-flop, a disconcerting change of direction.

Why are we suddenly sending Robb an “economics” minister to a “climate” event? The Abbott government refused to talk about climate at the G20 claiming that it was all about economics and it refused to talk about climate at the free trade agreement negotiations with China, claiming that the two were quite separate.

Robb may well be detailed to expound the Abbott government’s position, which is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. Settle down, he will say, Australia believes climate change is no pressing issue. There is no emergency, no case for urgency. There is no rush, indeed before we deploy expensive new technologies such as solar and wind shouldn’t we do some more research? In the meantime let’s sell more coal: our bigger priority is to sell coal to poor countries to alleviate “energy poverty”.

And Julie Bishop will be able to say her piece about nuclear energy and how it is now back on the table as an option for Australia.  In brief, we are all right, Jack. Bugger the rest of you, stop worrying and believing scientists, everything will be OK. Especially if you buy our coal – and our uranium.

---

Joe Hockey has been criticised lately, but I tell you what, I think Joe is going to be one of the great treasurers because he’s someone who bounces back and that’s what he’s doing now.

Tony Abbott ‘telling Leigh Sales, what’ …  ABC, 7:30 4/12/2014

Joe Hockey is the little boy who cried wolf. He cried wolf about Labor’s economic management on the hustings. He cried wolf when he had just been sworn in: ‘Labor’s debt and deficit disaster’ big, bad, wolf had devoured the goodies in the nation’s picnic basket of prosperity. He cried wolf when confecting his budget crisis and emergency.

Now, Hockey wants us to believe there really is a big, bad, wolf out there, this time. Really, truly. Wednesday’s lupine national account figures prove it – with big teeth. It could be the end of the good times for quite some time he is saying today along with some other blinding insights about complacency and doing nothing, both apparently, in the Treasurer’s mind legitimate options by implication.

“These national accounts confirm that when it comes to the future of Australian economy, complacency is our enemy,” he said.

“Doing nothing on economic reform is not an option for our country.”

Disposable income has dropped for two quarters in a row.

Asked whether parts of the economy now appeared to be in recession, Mr Hockey said: “No.”

“Fundamentally we are endeavouring to stabilise the rise in unemployment,” he said.

“Importantly, we are seeing strong export growth.” What he didn’t bore us with is what we already know. Export growth is nothing to brag about when commodity prices are in free fall.

Mr Hockey said he was taking advice from Treasury on the benefits of the three free trade agreements signed with China, Japan and Korea, indicating a refreshing willingness to seek expert advice but puzzling his listeners as to why it had taken so long. Does Hockeynomics mean you get the free trade deal first, fingers-crossed and then ask around Treasury later if it is any good for anything?

“I have no doubt 2015 will be better and beyond will be better than that,” he said, sounding as if he were channelling a fortune cookie.

The downturn in mining-related construction highlighted the importance of the government’s infrastructure plans, Mr Hockey said with a straight face knowing in his heart that he really had nothing on the go in terms of infrastructure and would have to suck up to Daniel Andrews after all.

Of course none of it is his fault. No-one expects the treasurer to admit any responsibility for the state of the economy when things are going south, but the consensus is that Mr Hockey won’t be dancing to Best Day of My Life in his office any time in the near future.

His PM was on ABC 7:30 tonight damning him with faint praise. Abbott said that Hockey will still turn out to be a great treasurer. Great to hear on national television that your boss clearly needs to tell us that he knows you still have your P plates on. Time perhaps Hockey cut his own quick remix, Best Day of the Rest of My Life. There are going to be a lot of bad days from here on in for the beleaguered boy who cried wolf too often. David Johnston and Christopher Pyne could join in the chorus. But the evasion is wearing painfully thin with the electorate who are suffering Federal Treasurer excuse and evasion fatigue and in pensioner’s cases about to see it in their reduced income courtesy of an indexation ‘saving’ which was due to be put through at the last possible moment today.

Yesterday afternoon in parliament, accomplished and highly-credentialed Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen linked the budget and the national accounts data. He asked Joe Hockey when he might “acknowledge that the budget has hurt the economy”.

Bowen was, typically, right on the money. It was too close for comfort for the Treasurer. Tellingly, all Hockey could do was rubbish Bowen’s intellectual capacity and tell him off for drawing attention to the truth. It was a fine evasion of ministerial responsibility.

The Treasurer told Mr Bowen that he “just doesn’t understand”.

“It’s so irresponsible for the member for McMahon to talk like that.”

Mr Hockey, get a grip. If it’s not your fault, it’s hard to see who else is responsible. You need to face the music.  You and your budget have buggered business and consumer confidence. The economy is flat-lining. Even Santa’s got the jitters: retail spending is down in the lead up to Christmas.

When you make cuts and when you kill confidence, you don’t take so much tax, Mr Hockey. So you have another round of revenue write downs on income tax and company tax. Then there is the cost of humanitarian aid and training in Iraq and the national terror wind-up. You spent up big on national security and military action. Then there’s those Senate deals you negotiated to secure support for the government’s legislative agenda. They cost a bundle. Admit it, your poor decisions and your lack of any intelligent economic strategy has been a national calamity. Couldn’t you just fess up?

Of course, it’s clear that you have been minded, recently, Mr Hockey. You did promise that there will be no more big cuts. Did some little red riding hood in PM&C whisper in your ear that cuts could take us into a real recession? It’s true. And you have got the message about the need for infrastructure spending. That’s why it’s encouraging to see you talking sense about letting Andrews have the East West Link money for public transport in Victoria. Bugger your boss. The economy needs that investment spent, despite the PM’s threats during the election as he tried to hold Victorians to ransom by threatening to take the money back unless the East West link went ahead.

So a word of advice about this line you’re running about the Senate, Mr Hockey. Give it away. You want it to approve more cuts? Seriously? You are going to repeat the same mistakes but expect different results? It is too late, there is already a whisper from Julie Bishop, aka Princess Mesothelioma that foreign aid will be cut again. She’s cut because she just found out Abbott doesn’t trust her at Lima alone, so he is sending party animal and most reluctant chaperone Andrew Robb to keep an eye on her in case she does something rash like commit Australia to some real emissions targets.

This time, Bishop is threatening to ‘hang it around Tanya Plibersek’s neck. Every day.’ That’s what she said yesterday, at least, in vindictive fury. You wouldn’t want to cross her. Hell hath no fury like a princess upstaged. You can see why she’s a natural when it comes to diplomatic relations. Only it will be your neck, Mr Hockey and your government’s neck that the albatross of another failed measure will be swinging from. That is if there’s room. There’s a fair bit of dead albatross already there, what with the GP co-payment, the fuel excise, cuts to higher education and so on.

If only those bastards in the Senate would support your economic plan? Mr Hockey, Labor has already supported ‘savings’ of $20 billion. So let’s get this straight about the cuts. You really want to inflict even more of the same damage that’s helped the Australian economy tank towards recession? Bag the opposition; blame it all on them.  It’s the only script you know. How’s that working for you, Mr Hockey It’s Labor’s fault for opposing your bad policy, your bad legislative proposals. It’s Labor’s fault for not coming up with alternatives. It’s Labor’s fault.

Mr Hockey, you should be grateful that someone in Canberra has some sense. Make that sense, experience, qualifications, international esteem and a record of success handling the GFC. Stop bagging them, get your head out of volume two of your biography and try to learn something about economics, especially macroeconomics. A nation’s budget is not like a household budget, Mr Hockey. And for God’s sake, Mr Flip-flop, decide on a message and stick to it.

Your inconsistency does not help your credibility problem.  Mr Hockey, I heard you on ABC RN Breakfast just two days ago telling listeners it was all quiet on the wolf front. It was all lambs, sunshine and green meadows. You wanted us to believe that the economy was powering along.

In fact, you even had a bit of sook when Fran Kelly queried your lie that business and consumer confidence were up. It’s not what the latest NAB report says, Joe and your listeners knew it. You waffled about solid achievement and read out some of your talking points which pretend that you have got 75% of your legislation through the parliament.

The fact is that the only bits you have got through have been the ones undoing Labor legislation, the carbon tax, the mining tax and so on. There is no record of achievement whatsoever, and you know it, Mr Hockey however hard you choose to spin it. You have no credibility. Your government is stuffed. You and Abbott are lower than a snake’s belly in the polls.

And you need that albatross off your neck for the New Year. Cut loose your own real debt and deficit disaster.

One sure way to fix all this, Mr Hockey. You and Tony get together with Peta and Michael and call the GG over the holiday break. Forget debt and deficit disaster. Go for a double dissolution. It’s not only richly alliterative. It’s your only option.

---

The most important thing is not that you have the best university in the world but the best university system in the world. You don’t want to have one Rolls-Royce and 12 clapped-out Commodores.

Greg Craven, ACU and personal friend of Tony Abbott

Education Minister ‘mincing poodle’ Christopher Pyne was yapping all over the airwaves this morning over the failure of his so-called higher education ‘refahhrms’ as he somehow manages to pronounce the word reforms. He sounded fractious, almost shaping to hit Chris Uhlmann with his man-bag this morning on RN AM. And he was downright bitchy later, twitting Uhlmann when pressed on his illogicality in insisting that the Senate were obstructive whilst congratulating his party on getting 75% of its legislation passed.

“I thought you were referring to my higher education bill. In fact you said that most of it hadn’t gotten through by the end of the year and I was correcting you.”

To hear Pyne, this morning, he was the only one making any sense. He was a great hard-working minister, even if he said so himself. Everyone else including the slackers tuning in had merely been twiddling their thumbs in wilful idleness. Why he had been feverishly working his little fingers to the bone to make sure even Lazarus was fully texted.

The universities were all on board, the diligent minister pointed out, neglecting to mention the 20% funding cut and the hints of more to come he had applied along with the lure of being able to charge what they liked when the Bill got through, to bring them into line. But everyone else was out of line, especially those obstructionists and vandals in the senate. It was enough to make a man weep into his Rolodex.

But he was not a quitter, he reassured himself and anyone else listening before misquoting Churchill in the hope of building an image of heroic, nation-saving resolve. Instead he sounded as if he couldn’t even get a famous quote right, let alone any reform. What he meant to say was:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

It is the ending of Pyne. But he’s only got himself to blame. He didn’t do his homework and he didn’t prepare his case. He hasn’t really put a coherent case. There isn’t one. But that didn’t stop him plunging ahead with his scheme to scrap what was working well and fairly for massive, unregulated fee hikes that would make a lot of money for banks and other money lenders, price ordinary people out of the market and put the others into debt for much of their working lives.

Not making a case while making cuts, has been another blunder, another shot in the Gucci leather boot. Now, thanks to his ineptitude, instead of being converted to any cause, the public is totally off-side and confused. To the public it looks as if the government is arguing that deregulation is needed because the Abbott government is committed to taking 20% of funding out of the tertiary education sector. That’s what happens when governments present us with a solution to a non-existent problem. Yet there was a token attempt to consult.

To be fair to Pyne, although the facts do him absolutely no credit, he did go through the motions. There was very limited, unconvincing attempt at a “Clayton’s consultation” before deregulation of tertiary education was dropped on an unsuspecting public in the May budget. When it landed, it looked like a turkey; it looked ideological rather than sensible, workable or necessary. It still looks that way.

Of course, Pyne had cobbled together a Mickey Mouse ‘review’ comprising two right wing yesterday’s men and nobody else. Former Howard Education Minister David Kemp and his adviser Andrew Norton were paid well to barrack for complete deregulation, the solution which, amazingly, like the commission of audit’s “solutions”, was the very answer the government wanted (even though it has never been able to say why.) It was also the same answer that they had come up with in Howard’s time and one that voters had rejected in 1993 in the “unlosable election.”  Pyne appears to have not bothered with any homework. He was in too much of a hurry to impress. It was rush, rush, rush.

The public was given four weeks to respond.  Only two of the eighty responses were from student organisations. The Abbott government produced no evidence that the changes would produce any of the results claimed. No tangible outcomes. Nothing. And it had no model to show what a deregulated system would look like in future. That’s because no-one knows what will happen when you throw caution (and the system) to the winds of an unregulated market.

Pyne made a big deal of university support:

But they asked the Senate to pass the bill. They asked the crossbenchers to pass the bill. Every single university representative organisation did. So you’d have to say on balance they must be pretty supportive of the Government.

In fact, Mr Pyne all your listeners would say on balance is that Universities were happy to be allowed to set their own fees. They were agreeing to a scheme which would allow them to charge what the market would bear. Your 20% cuts may also have helped them in their thinking. Nothing like a loaded gun to the head to induce clear reason.

The proposed changes will make it harder for the average person to obtain tertiary education but will assist greatly with its restriction to a better class of person. If you hate the idea of an open, equal society and if you will do everything you can to further the interests of wealth and privilege in an age where all measures show that inequality is steadily increasing in all western economies, then you will back Christopher Pyne as he takes a punt with our children’s futures. He’s got nothing to lose.

Pyne’s ‘reforms’ are nothing but an ideologically-driven gamble, that will lock up educational opportunity, whilst introducing a climate of competition that will see the wealthy and prestigious universities doing very well while all the rest suffer badly.

The Abbott government’s higher education reforms are toxic. They were not popular the first time they were tried. Pyne’s pickle is no surprise to anyone, really, except the coalition, and a few rusted-on neo-cons, because the ‘reforms are a solution in search of a problem. They won’t work. They will benefit no-one, apart from banks and other money lenders and University bursars. And, of course Christopher Pyne. Perhaps we should leave the last word to him. This morning in true Abbott-government fashion, the current failure of this ill-conceived, ill-prepared, badly managed dog of a policy, was a temporary setback to the Minister, and, verified by the highest authority in the land, the Murdoch press, all the fault of that nasty Senate:

No. The Senate is what it is. We have to negotiate with the crossbenchers. There was a Telegraph poll about two weeks ago which said that 66 per cent of the Australian public believe that the Senate was being obstructionist, not constructive. That makes it very difficult for the Government.

Diddums. Feel sorry for yourself, Mr Pyne, we don’t feel sorry for you. You mean, you have to deal with an Opposition? You mean it’s hard work being democratic? Difficult? Go drown in your self-pity. The rest of Australia is saying thank God for the Opposition.

---

Tony Abbott, one of the best things that you could do right now is pick up the phone and congratulate Victorian State Premier-elect Daniel Andrews. No good going on telly and pretending you have spoken with him. You look knackered. And no-one believes a word you say anymore. No good repeating the falsehoods about what he’ll have to pay to get out of the East West link contract. Or that CFMEU slogan. Not sure why you would even try. Your pants are on fire so often the CFA has a truck permanently parked outside your office.

And it was really dumb to ask Dan Andrews to start breaking his promise. The man’s not even sworn in yet. Did you think about the message it would send about you? The PM who is pathologically incapable of making any promise he intends to honour. The PM who sees promises as made to be broken. Do you really need to make that signal any clearer?

We understand if you feel a bit shook up right now. Get Peta to dial the number. She’s good at that type of thing. So is your new head of PMC, that blast from the Howard past, former adviser to the man of steel himself, Michael Thawley, but this can’t wait until he’s on deck. He only started today. Besides, he will be busy doing Joe’s job. Very busy. That’s why you hired him. And your obsession with the Howard era, a time when conservatives where lucky rather than successful. (You sure know where to get them, Mr Abbott.)

Hope he gets on with Peta. Joe won’t like him. Or the way you have by-passed him. OK, there is the small thing of his political ineptitude and almost total lack of any basic numeracy. But he’s a mate, isn’t he?

Well, no. Expect Joe to throw a tantrum and sook for weeks. Odds on it will be hate at first sight. You will have to choose between them. That means, somehow, you will have to be decisive. Like now. Or you will be further up shit creek than dead man walking David Johnston.

It’s better late than never even if it won’t look terribly sincere. Not that looking insincere has ever troubled you in the past. Sincerity is the most important thing in politics. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made. Look at it this way. The nation will see it is the right thing to do. Even if you have a bit of trouble with that type of thing.

Congratulate Dan. He will thank you for it. But he won’t work for you, Tony. With you, not for you. He hates everything you stand for. Especially the lying. And the insincerity. And the way you take cheap shots at unions. OK, your callous indifference to the rest of humanity grates with him, too. And your lack of decency is opposed to everything he stands for.

Unlike you, Dan means what he says. He will walk away from the East West link project which was never going to relieve congestion anyway, despite its dividends for your financial backers. Public transport is the go. The 3 billion you gave Victoria for that purpose can go back to its original hypothecation. Love that word, don’t you. Don’t pretend you can take it back. You don’t want to add “Indian-giver” to your long list of demerit points. Victorians need public transport. There are 65,000 more out of work than when the conservatives came into power down here. They are living proof your policies don’t work and that the cuts you’ve made and the bad decisions you have taken have had a massive impact. But they need to be able to get around. You don’t want to make them any unhappier. They hate you as it is.

Look at Dan as a mate, not as the enemy. After all, in a way, you are his benefactor, a sort of fairy godfather if you will forgive the image. Your unfair Budget, your sneaky fuel excise and your whopping lies about ABC cuts helped Dan to defeat the Napthine government. That and the fact that he had the people behind him. Ordinary people. People who have to work for a living. If they can find work.

Ordinary people are dead-set hostile about the GP co-payment. 46% of those surveyed in an exit poll on Saturday instanced their dislike of your government as influencing their vote. So you won’t be intruding. You are already in the frame, so to speak. So why the delay?  Is it an ego thing? You see yourself as the big cheese and Dan just a little Babybel? You are having a sook because you were told you were not wanted during the campaign? You were told you were toxic many times by many people? Get used to it. It is only going to get a lot worse before the end of your government in two years.

And get over it. You don’t have a minute to waste. The truth, Mr Abbott, is that you are in denial. It is well known that you are a climate change denier. What is less well broadcast is that you and your parliamentary party are all reality deniers. It’s what you stand for. That’s what conservatives do, isn’t it? You deny the reality of countless challenges to our survival in favour of a complacent expectation that things will always be the same. You’ve had it easy all your life. You want to keep it easy. No nasty jolts from reality. Slippers by the fire, dinner in the oven, wife in the kitchen, children in bed, investment dividends in the bank and superannuation millions piling up by the minute. That’s your comfort zone. You have already got a comfortable life and you want to keep it, don’t you? Hang on to what you have; bugger the have-nots, they don’t deserve wasting time over. It’s their fault if they’ve stuffed up their lives. Handouts only weaken their resilience and initiative.

Don’t waste time whinging about being misunderstood – about the need to get your message out. You have got your message out.  It’s in your unfair budget. It’s in the fact that you can spend billions on the things of war and nothing on the people; spend billions on war craft but you can’t give a pay rise to the armed forces; the people who staff your war games. It’s in your promotion of coal and your services to miners. It’s in your ignorance and stupidity on climate change and renewable energy. The more you get your message out, the more you it nails you down. You are yesterday. Your defeat is inevitable. Yet you still cling to the delusion that you can explain yourself; explain everything away. So rather than face the music you send out your explain it away troops, your reality-denialists Andrew Robb, and, spare us, Julie Bishop.

Andrew Robb waffled about inevitability on Insiders on ABC Sunday TV. Watch that one. Claimed that if your popularity is shithouse from the start, there’s not much you can do about it. Is he trying to send you a message? He’s wrong of course. But you are in trouble if he’s right. Two more years of negative popularity and declining support and you are history, one term or not. His denial is worth noting because it condenses much of the denialism intrinsic to your terminal condition.

“I don’t accept that we had a big influence, of course we’ll be realistic, we’ll have a look at the implications but clearly from my experience and my observations, this was a state election overwhelmingly fought on state issues,” he said.

“I spent a lot of time yesterday going around the booths … there wasn’t a word of Abbott, not a word,” Mr Robb said.

All this means is that Victorians were too polite to tell you, Mr Robb, not that you are much of a listener anyway. And when he says he will have a look at the implications he already shows he has a closed mind. Other MPs had a different experience. One federal Labor MP Anthony Byrne relayed this message to Abbott from a voter who had voted for the Coalition in 2013.

“God I wish today was the federal election, when is it? I am counting the days until I can get rid of the f—ing bastard”.

Julie Bishop was despatched to do what you couldn’t, Mr Abbott. But she didn’t do a lot of good. OK you have all got talking points about the achievements of your government but it’s not playing that well in Victoria. Or any other state, really. Bishop then got confused with the attention she was getting and started spruiking nuclear energy. Hose her down, Tony. No votes in nuclear. Renewables are cheaper. Better for you, too. And the environment.

No. Call your dogs home. Call off everything. Gather your troops around you. Explain to them that you have wasted too much of the nation’s time and money, cruelled too many futures to count. Call Dan and be the first to tell him that you admire him for his win and his integrity and that as soon as you can you will be calling a double dissolution. The writing is on the wall.

---

Victorian State Election, yawn! That’s how TV, our medium of choice, packages the campaign. It’s how it packages our participation in our future. ‘Journalists’ jostle with each other to deplore the lack of anything interesting in the Victorian election. That’s how most see their role. It’s a derivative, generic and seductive interpretation. But does it do any of us a real service? Or is it self-fulfilling?

“Media commentators” mimic the judges’ panel on reality TV singing, dancing or cooking shows. Must be a whole cross-over thing going on. They scold candidates, obsess over performance and appearance, skim over substance then bag the whole shebang for not entertaining us. ‘Lighten up’ is the ever present subtext. Sex it up is another. Depth, detail, or even accuracy are for party-poopers. In an era of contracting worldwide attention spans, the trivial is king.

Sheesh! Listen up candidates. WOTF? What is wrong with you? Don’t you know you are in show business? Show business for ugly people? Like the commentariat, itself, only less powerful, less prolific and harder to photograph? Get your act together! Entertain us. For God’s sake don’t challenge us, make us think or expect us to do or know anything.

It’s a disturbing trend. And it is widespread. Is this how we kid ourselves our apathy is OK? Is this how we assuage our guilt for our lack of attention, interest or involvement? Are we really so ignorant or so confused that we believe that politics, our chance to have some say in our increasingly more powerful and intrusive government, is really only a form of show business?

Whatever the case, the results are bad news for democracy. It’s the kiss of death to reporting and it’s the kiss of death to effective representation. Yet we must not over-simplify causality. In the end, we get the politicians we deserve. That’s how it works. Almost. We get by with a little help from our friends. Participation in politics is mediated and massaged by an ever expanding, ever-present digital media. And, for a decreasing few, by an endangered popular press.

Print media is in extremis, an increasingly unprofitable atavism in an era where consumers have been colonised by the Digital Empire. Our major papers have, perhaps, two years’ life before they, too are forced to fold, driven into extinction by their digital competitors. Internet killed the video star and then went on to massacre print media. The first step was to rip its heart out.

A beleaguered media, is increasingly side-tracked into distraction and diversion instead of investigating and reporting facts. Murdoch media goes a stage further towards complete surrender. It combines diversion and distraction with dutiful distortion; abandoning objective investigation or reporting for brazen partisan support; a cheer squad for the interests of the Murdoch empire. Or something more sinister.

In the 2013 election of the Abbott government, the Murdoch Press became a death squad for its opponents, the Labor Government(s) of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. Given its dwindling circulation and rising unprofitability, it was probably its last gasp effort. But you don’t have to be openly partisan or in print to offer another kiss of death, the kiss of irrelevancy.

Josie Taylor, last night on local ABC 7:30 report, a show which will be axed as part of Abbott’s ‘efficiency dividend’, asked a random grab of light-weights for some superficial election eve fluff. They obliged with a consensus that the campaign had been dull and boring. Josie commiserated: “I thought that’s what you would say.”

The subtext was motivational in a way. Well, we have to vote. These clowns are forcing us to do something we resent. So let’s save face by dismissing them. We know diddly-squat about the campaign because we haven’t been paying attention. But, hey, that’s all their fault for being boring. Their fault for being politicians.

The morphing of information into infotainment with a fair dollop of ridicule is aided by choosing crossover commentators. Waleed Aly is an intelligent, scholarly, thoughtful and perceptive person. His choice of stand-up comedian, Claire Hooper on his election eve ABC radio show may have been to redress listeners’ boredom. His station’s attempt to lighten up may also be enlightened. Commentators can come from any walk of life. But the exercise is fraught with peril when it panders to our prejudices and reinforces our rejection of politics in the guise of light entertainment.

A night ago, called to give her views on the state election, Ms Hooper replied with an anecdote to the effect that a mate of hers didn’t even know the Labor candidate’s name. Came up, she said, with “Dennis Andrews”, an amalgam of both Dennis Napthine and Andrew Daniels. On one level this says a lot about what’s in the popular mind about State Politics. Boring! Like a Maths lesson. On the other hand its relentless negativity reinforces and legitimises our own abdication of responsibility.

Deploring dullness in politics may be an excuse for opting out of something we vaguely sense we ought to take an interest in. Ceding the field of participation in politics to entertainment; to show business is, however, no solution. Unless, of course we relish having clowns in politics. 

 

 

---

Tony Abbott, catapulted by fate into an unexpected and totally undeserved captaincy, continues to confound critics and supporters alike by leading his government from crisis to catastrophe. Confirming all initial fears about his total unsuitability as Prime Minister, in the space of just one year, Abbott jerks and twitches frenetically across the political stage like some manic over-charged Energiser Bunny, a battery operated suicide bomber.

Feverishly, assiduously, the little manikin continues to wreck his own career, Australia’s international reputation and any prospects of a Liberal re-election.  A loose-lipped, loose cannon who is ever fast and loose with the truth, Abbott is an accomplished one-man wrecking machine who has cleared the decks of HMS Team Australia of any last vestige of optimism.

Newspoll’s latest result has Labor leading 55% to Coalition 45%. If an election were to be held now the Coalition would be wiped out.  On balance it would be a good outcome. Both at home and overseas, the Abbott government has lost all credibility and the capacity to act like a government let alone a world citizen. His G20 debacle made Abbott look like an international pariah on climate change and a narrow, inward-looking self-serving politician with nothing to offer on an international or intellectual plane, further lowering his stocks both at home and abroad. So on the nose, is Abbott that his own party have called it electoral suicide to be seen out with him in public in Victoria. “Eyebrows”, John Howard, seventy-five and not out, is a former Liberal Prime Minister and respected authority on Australian cricket, whose appearance and stagey, manic manufactured bonhomie resemble a demented garden gnome, has been wheeled out to press the startled flesh in the Victorian State Election on behalf of lost-cause Liberal party pretender Denis Napthine. Napthine, whose ineffectual efforts so far and his cronyism towards powerful local supporters suggest that we would all be safer and better off when he goes back to Warrnambool to resume his career as a well-connected country vet with a naturally long reach. The nearest “Nappers”, or “Kermit” as he is sometimes known, will get to help from Abbott’s Cabinet will be this evening when Julie schmoozes the Mount Macedon landed gentry, rubbing along at sunset in the light of the Rock, sipping bubbly and swapping stories about pony ownership, the cost of good domestic service and the importance of choosing the right investment broker.

As the parliamentary year shudders to a halt, with less than nothing significant or praise-worthy accomplished, the government’s paltry achievements amount to an unparalleled deficit in every dimension, be it moral, intellectual, political, diplomatic or fiscal.   Joe Hockey has blown out the budget deficit by over 50 billion dollars; Julie Bishop’s grandstanding, demanding and attention seeking at the cost of any useful diplomacy has blown off just about every world leader who matters; Hunt, Minister for Environmental denial, Ever Begging to Differ and Direct Action Fairies at the bottom of the garden, has blown all credibility while raising serious questions as to his sanity with his rabid, irrational babbling.

Exhausting all reason in promoting an untried, unproven, unbelievable, direct action scam which pays polluters out of the public purse, Hunt is also a future-wrecker whose breathtaking arrogance and intransigence in interviews is made of the very stuff which has brought his leader down.

Lies about ABC cuts have been the latest to bring Abbott’s credibility lower. Lies are this government’s lingua franca, yet when Defence Minister David Johnston chose to tell the truth about the ASC, very publicly not trusting it to build a canoe, he was immediately put in the naughty corner and made to apologise. It won’t help any future sale of the ASC but then, neither has the government’s clear predilection for favouring Japanese tenders in any future submarine building contracts.

HMS Team Australia, the ill-fated, unseaworthy, ship of shame which plies its wretched human trade under a range of foreign flags, has been on a disaster course since its commission. It is now holed up on liar’s reef, leaking badly and under attack from all former backers including Murdoch’s phone-tapping hacks, and other sundry, craven, self-promoters who daily deal death and misery in international business and finance as they seek to increase their capacity to run the world purely and simply for their own profit. Even Abbott hagiographers have gone on the offensive. The Daily Telegraph recently observed of Tony Abbott:

He is fast proving to be the least conservative leader the conservative side of politics has ever seen.

Now the weather is turning increasingly foul and a cruel sea is rising. The scurvy crew is either drunk or off its face on other substances. And there’s been frigging in the rigging. Narcissists, Morrison and Bishop, totally power-besotted, drunk on self-importance, vainglorious omnipotence and the sadistic excitement of deciding whose chances they can cruel next, have been caught paying a fortune on special Google-me staff whose sole job is to search all media to find mention of themselves.

HMS Team Australia, a ship of shame, has been further disgraced by its captain’s blatant attempt to re-write United Nations Conventions on Refugees so that Australia can perfect its translation of foreign policy into an instrument of torture, locking up the world’s most vulnerable and needy, including the indefinite detention of children.

Throwing cabin boy Hunt out of their double bunk, Abbott kicks ship’s cat, Christopher Pyne. Pyne dashes caterwauling up the rigging. Abbott hears him promising to the winds that he will door-knock every door in his electorate. He will personally let voters know how being indebted for life is in fact a liberating form of servitude for all those who aspire to a university education. Voters will be dancing in the streets with joy, when I get the message out there, he howls into a mounting storm. Yet even that dead albatross around Hockey’s neck could tell any one of them that it’s not about getting the message out. This government has made bad decisions, bad policies, bad choices. More spin won’t help a bit. HMS Team Australia is too badly damaged to put about or limp back to port.

“Lash me to the wheel, Hunt”, Abbott rasps desperately, knowing no other course.