Posts by Charles Mabbett
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that should be "less absent minded".
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Actually, during the early years of his prime mnistership, John Howard was frequently called Mr Magoo. There definitely was a physical resemblance but Howard for all his faults proved to be less than absent minded and much shrewder than his cartoon counterpart.
BTW - This in the SMH from Rudd: "We will say sorry."
KEVIN Rudd has vowed to act quickly after he is sworn in as prime minister to make a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians on behalf of the nation.
At last!
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Great stuff!
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BTW - just to set the record straight, I was wrong in saying earlier that Howard was running for his fourth term. He was in fact running for his FIFTH term, something that would have made him the country's longest running PM, exceeding the current record holder Robert Menzies in the 50s and 60s. Howard obviously fancied himselfas the Don Bradman of Aussie politics.
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Ha ha! That's terrific. The Chaser guys have no shame.
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Actually I suspect that the Greens would do better under MMP. Watching the results come in on Saturday night, it was noticeable that the Greens were polling well but in third place in most electorates which means they will have no elected MPs in the House of Representatives.
It appears they have polled around 7.6 percent of the total vote and it is only in the Senate that their percentage of the vote will be translated into the number of Green Party Senators. It is confusing but it essentially means that polling healthily but finishing third in electorate seats doesn't get you more representatives in the House. The Senate is a kind of compensation for that.
But there is no doubt that Labor's strong endorsement of climate change policies and the Kyoto Protocol have cost the Greens support.
Interestingly one in five Tasmanians voted Green because there's a local pulp mill issue there that really energised the environment vote.
I have some sympathy for Bob Brown the Greens leader who is a little upset because his party has not yet recieved any acknowledgement from Kevin Rudd for assisting in Labor's win. I think the Green vote played a key part in throwing the Coalition out.
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Under the Single Transferable Vote system the Greens would be -generally speaking, being on the left of the political spectrum - be urging their voters to place Labor above the Liberal Party in their list of preferences on the ballot paper.
Commentators on election night made the point repeatedly that Green voters in seats where the Green candidate would not win would in all probability indicate that their vote should go to Labor above the Liberals. In fact I'm sure that the Green Party would be instructing their voters to do so. It is usual for parties to advise their voters who should be the next preference if their candidate isn't one of the two top polling candidates in a particular electorate.
It probably isn't very clear but it is kind of simple. Just hard to explain.
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The Howard/Costello dynamic has been intriguing. I have been wondering if Howard had heeded concerns within his own party about his leadership going into this election and stepped aside, if Costello would have made a difference and the conclusion I've come to is that it wouldn't have. The Coalition would still have lost.
Howard was gambling on his leadership as being the brand that voters would identify with in returning the Coalition to office. He might have made the call that Costello's leadership would almost certainly have meant the election would be lost. We know now that he gambled wrongly.
It would have been a really tough ask to change leaders two months out from a general election and win. So perhaps with hindsight, if the Coalition were to have had a chance of winning, Howard should have stepped aside with about a year ago.
However much has been made of the fact that he is a bit of an armchair historian and I think he became seduced by his own view of his place in Australian political history. By going again this time, he must have wanted to become the country's longest running PM but he made a huge miscalculation. In thinking too hard about his legacy, he lost sight of the evident public mood.
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These are the two cases in particular I'm thinking of - Cornelia Rau, a German born Australian who was mistakenly imprisoned as a suspected illegal immigrant and another Australian, Vivian Alvarez Solon, who was mistakenly deported, wheelchair-bound, to the Philippines.
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Ditto, Kyle. Well said.
Also there's been the years of incarceration in detention centres in places like Curtin and Nauru. Remember that these have included children.
And lately there have been a few cases unearthed of Australian citizens being mistakenly held in detention centres for years.
Off topic but as one of the many that walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2000, I sincerely hope that finally, Australia's first peoples will get an official apology from the government. Now that's Bennelong, long time coming.