James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

If you, like me, have been bemoaning the general publics complete lack of knowledge about how the government works, then rejoice. For the hung parliament has made everyone sit up and say "huh?" At which point the edumacation starts.

The result from Saturdays election really has thrown everyone for a loop hasn't it. Instead of the predicted close call (let's face it, everyone thought that the Coalition would scrape it in by the skin of their teeth) we now have the prospect of a government cobbled together from either one of the major parties with the support of four, possibly five, relatively unknown men.

Exciting isn't it :)

What has been interesting has been the reaction to the idea of a true Coalition government (not the Liberal/National coalition, which lets face it, is essentially the Liberal party with a couple of Nationals hanging on for dear life). The media has gone completely ape poo over the idea. Predicting doom and disaster with great wailings and gnashing of teeths, while those that I've spoken to "on the street" seem to be loving it. Watching Gillard and Abbott have to completely change tack and start running what is essentially a mini-election has given people hope that the system isn't irretrievably broken.

I do find it kind of amusing to read and hear those who declare that because Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rod Oakshot are ex-nationals and so called "conservative" politicians that their only moral move would be to join the Coalition in government. This after all three have copped any amount of political crap from the Coalition in the past, especially from the Nationals. They seem to be forgetting that Katter, Windsor and Oakshot represent a Country Party that has long died off elsewhere, and indeed they represent a type of MP that is in very short supply, a true local representative.

Well, it's ten to seven in the morning, and I'm on the train to Sydney so I thought I would put some thoughts down.

Ding dong the witch is dead, or is she?

Last week, the Coalition finally announced their position on the Labor party's mandatory ISP filter, stating that they would oppose it or scrap it depending on whether they won or lost the election. This caused much celebration and crowing on the twitters, with many declaring the filter proposal dead, buried and cremated. "Huzzah!" they declared, "the witch is dead!".

Except of course the witch isn't dead yet.

All of those celebrating today seem to have forgotten their recent history. The filter proposal that the Labor party took to the 2007 election was an opt-in model with a much tighter purview, it was only after the election that it expanded to the beast we see today. Given that the Coalition  is the party that brought the phrase "Non-core promise" to the national language, what insurance do we have that the Coalition won't change their mind after the election? 

I'm going to hold off on the dancing in the streets.

Mark Latham - This elections WTF

Seriously, channel 9, do you even care about being taken seriously anymore?

There was an excellent question in last nights Q and A to Julia Gillard:

"How big a tool do you think that Mark Latham is?"

To which Julia Gillard answered reasonably well:

"There are some things that just can't be measured"

If 9 had any journalistic integrity left whatsoever they would be giving Latham the bums rush as soon as possible.

Family First - A tale of two candidates

Okay, it's Sunday morning, I have a coffee in hand and I haven't had a chance to blog lately, so here we go:

This election has officially jumped the shark

That's it, this election is officially a joke. Neither party is offering significantly different policies, the media seems to be more concerned about the Days of Our Lives that is the Labor leadership squabble, and now we have channel 9 bringing Mark bloody Latham into the mix as a "guest journalist"

The only real spark of interest has been watching the twitter stream when people start to have a go at the journo's for being more concerned about Rudd and Gillard than the policies the parties are putting out. I've read many complaints about how much each party is controlling their various media packs, however it takes two to tango. The media is meant to be there to hold the parties up to the light, not help them keep mushrooming the populace.

Waving Away

I've already written about this on my wave blog, however I'll mention it here as well: If Google doesn't feel it can support the development of the Wave and associated technologies then it needs to hive them off into something similar to the Apache Foundation.

The Island of Doctor Nauru

Are we so seriously damaged as a country that we can actually think that prison camps on an island as far from anywhere as possible is an acceptable solution for such a small problem as boat borne asylum seekers? Did we learn nothing from the last time this was attempted? Yeesh.

Oh and Labor you're not getting out of this one scott free. East Timor?!? If you want to help out the East Timorese economy why not give a bit on the whole oil and gas fields thing. You know, something that might actually create jobs and build an economy?

I live in the federal seat of Throsby, which encompasses a fair chunk of the Wollongong and Shellharbour LGA's and reaches into the Southern Highlands. Created in 1984, it has only had two representatives in the 36 years of its existance, both Labor. It is what could be called the stereotypical safe seat with Labor sitting on a 16.5% margin and a very large rusted on voting base.

Politically this means that Throsby tends to be used to parachute in Labor candidates, is usually at the back of the line when it comes to election sweeteners and generally gets put waaaay down the priority list for the other parties.

Just a quick aside - I'm sooo not a fan of the head office selecting candidates model that the ALP and others use. While Jennie George has proven herself to be a good representative for the region and the Labor Candidate Stephen Jones is proving that he's treating the campaign seriously, the idea that the rank and file should be overridden so easily just doesn't sit right with me.

Anyway, back onto topic.

Part of what makes Throsby a safe Labor seat is the attitude of the other parties to trying to capture it. It's a vicious circle - it's a safe Labor seat so we won't waste money on trying to capture it, so it continues to be a safe Labor seat. Oh they'll put up candidates, because they can't be seen to be dropping the seat altogether, but the campaigns are usually limp to non-existent, leaving most people to wonder who the hell it is that is looking out at them from the ballot paper.

Take for example the Nationals candidate for Throsby, Alan Hay. The only information I could find on him came from the nationals own website (he's listed under NSW candidates). From what it looks like there isn't even a brochure site for him, hell, he doesn't even rate his own page on the Nationals website.

So I'm on the train heading to Sydney and I thought I would put down some thoughts on the election campaign so far.

• First off, what the hell happened to running an election based on the idealogical differences between the parties? Right now we have a choice between a party that is hesitant about doing anything to tackle climate change, is happy to play on peoples ill informed fears of a miniscule group of people and is happy to simply follow the polls, and a party that is hesitant to do anything to tackle climate change, plays on peoples fears of a miniscule group of people and is happy to play to the polls.
• Please tell me I'm not the only one who's sick of being treated like a moron by the parties? Are we, as a country so backwards that we can't be trusted with big words and actual explanations of policies?
• On that note, does anyone expect the proposed Leaders debate to be an actual debate or just talking points at ten paces. If it's going to be the latter then I think I'll switch off. I'm pretty sure that the debate between Jimmy Smits and Alan Aldas characters on West Wing has spoiled all real life political debates for me.
• Enforced preference deals truly suck. Parties should not be in a position where they get to direct your preferences. The senate voting system should be changed to remove the need for above/below the line voting and optional preferencing should be introduced.

Well that's my thoughts from the train for this morning.

 Two months ago I wrote a post entitled "The Bidding has begun" At the time it was about the fact that the Government had suspended the processing of Sri Lankan/Tamil and Afghani asylum seekers, due to "improvements in the home countries" and Tony Abbotts predictable response.

Well today our new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard decided that she was going step into the bidding war.

Today Gillard announced the following proposal:

• A "Regional Processing Centre" to be established in Dili
• All arrivals by boat to be sent to Dili for processing, thus ensuring that no boat arrival is processed on Australian soil

There was no announcement of what would happen to the asylum seekers if they are found to be genuine, how they would be housed in Dili (I'm assuming Australia is going to be spending up big to build the sort of infrastructure that's going to be required) and if they would be allowed freedom of movement in Dili or whether it would just be moving the facilities at Christmas Island to another country.

So now we have a choice of off shoring policies for asylum seekers, either we vote for Labor and off shore them to Dili or we vote for the Coalition and off shore them to somewhere else.

Sigh.

The thing that has annoyed me the most about this whole sordid piece has been the fact that Gillard has leapt with both feet into the "asylum seekers are scary" camp. Rather than take the time to explain that Boat arrivals account for less than squat in our immigration scheme, that they are outnumbered by at least 25 to 1 by known visa overstayers, she has decided that it is politically more expedient to play to the fears.

People keep forgetting to add that last bit on when describing Julia Gillard. I've seen the first three mentioned on the twitters any number of time since she got the job, and this sense of "wow, it's all going to change" has been building amongst certain parts of the community. Except it's not, not one bit.

Gillard may represent a number of firsts for Australia, but what she isn't is Australias's first Labor Prime Minister, and she sure as hell doesn't want to be the last.

She's already decided that the "fears of western sydney" regarding boat people need to be validated rather than managed and dealt with in any in depth manner. The ETS remains dead (sorry, postponed until 2013 - notice that's after the next election, not just this one), and the government will be negotiating with the Miners until after the coming election. These are not the actions of a social reformer, rather a political player trying to damp down the fires of discontent in the electorate so she can clear the way for the election.

Oh yes, she's also declared that she's going to continue the Labor Party policy of denying gay couples the right to marry. She has declared this as her personal belief, so don't expect any movement on that any time soon.

Labor has been moving steadily to the right for a number of years now. I do not see Gillard arresting that move, particularly as she owes her position to the Right of the Party. If you want socially progressive policies then you're going to have to look to the Greens (who have their own issues).

 So Australia has its first woman Prime Minister, it's very historical and all that but I'm just not feeling the "I was there when it happened" type vibe.

Perhaps it's because with two female Premiers currently serving, and any number of female politicians (Wollongong and its surrounds are almost exclusively represented by women), a woman PM seems to have been just a matter of time rather than some giant hurdle that we had to be fighting to overcome.

Whatever the reason I'm more concerned with seeing where PM Gillard takes the party and the country.

She is not a clean skin when it comes to the Governments policies up until now. She, as the Deputy Prime Minister has been neck deep in policy development, and in fact was instrumental in convincing Rudd to drop the Emissions Trading Scheme (this I think is the moment when the slide to oblivion for Rudd started). So once the "First Female PM" gloss wears off, she's going to have to work hard to convince the people that she's something different.

I think she's going to go to an early election (possibly August/September). Her commitment to not live in the Lodge until her leadership has been validated by an election (Yes I know she doesn't get elected as PM, but the party leader affects the vote), plus the move to cut off the mining tax as an issue would seem to indicate that she'll be clearing the decks and aiming for her own mandate.

Well the election campaign is starting to heat up, you can tell, because the opposition is actually starting to release policies instead of just doing the usual "We oppose it cos we can!".

You can also tell the election campaign is starting to get real when the parties start to get into the "I'm tougher than the other guy is" competitions.

This started earlier this year when the Government in it's poll driven wisdom decided to make Asylum seekers a real issue at the election by "suspending" the processing of Asylum seekers from either Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, purportedly based on "information received" that apparently led them to believe that everything was fine now and that the ponies and unicorns were looking after everyone. 

Of course the Opposition had to respond, they couldn't let the Government own their ground like that, so today Tony Abbott announced that, indeed, he could be a tougher person than Rudd. 

To summarise:

• Pacific solution to return
• Will turn the boats back (cos it's better if they drown in Indonesian waters?)
• The return of Temporary Protection Visas
• Refugees on TPV's will need to work for their support payments (slightly less than AusStudy). This is a nice double "get tough" touch for Abbott. Tough on refugees and tough on dole bludgers at the same time.

So basically we're going to return to the days where people were held in detention camps, run by the lowest bidder, on pacific islands you could spit across, until their claims are assessed and they are proven to be genuine. Once that happens of course they're going to be treated as second class people under the TPV's.

So now that the Opposition has upped the ante, will the Government wake up or will they continue the game of "Liberal Light"?

Google has just announced that as of right now, they have ceased providing a specially filtered search service for the Chinese mainland, rather they are redirecting each request for google.cn to google.com.hk, where the requirement for filtering doesn't exist (AFAIK).

This is a big step for Google and it's going to have repercussions for other nations that seek to censor their internet feeds, such as Australia.

Think about it. If Google is ready to ditch a 35% share of the search market in China over filtering, the chance that they are going to meekly follow government directives in other, smaller markets is quite small, especially if all they need to do is redirect users to other search facilities in nations with more open internet regimes.

This should give Conroy and Co pause for thought. They've already admitted that their plan isn't actually going to be useful by any meaningful measure (it won't reduce the distribution of child pornography, it is trivially circumventable and there is massive public disquiet over the concept of a hidden list of sites and urls). Having Google (the company that everyone goes to for search) turn around and say "ya boo sucks to you" is just going to leave a whole heap more egg on the face.

You may not be a fan of Google, and they certainly didn't win any friends when they announced that they were going to censor the feed into china, this move is certainly a step in the right direction back towards the "Don't be evil" ideal that is often attributed to them.

[UPDATE]

The government has released the submissions into its consultation on "measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material".