It's 24 March and I am stuck in Perth (as a result of the Press Council visit to this burg) while the NSW people are voting for a new government. As you are aware I am a committed pseph (I've given up on the -ologist because I don't think that study is any longer required), I regret not being able to follow the count except over the web. I should premise for our American mates that there is no annual voting day. Generally, rather than voting occurring on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the federal, state and territory elections are mostly held at the whim of incumbent government - as long as they do not exceed their term limit (three or four years). NSW has introduced a term limit of four years and a mandated election date (the fourth Saturday in March). And Australian elections are always held on a Saturday to facilitate maximum voting. It's 1700 (Perth time) and the polls on the other side of the country closed an hour ago and I am interested as to whether the state and territory Tory parties losing streak - twenty successive elections before today's poll - will continue or whether the Libs can win their first non-federal election this millennium. This is an election that should not have been close. The Labor government has been on the nose: there were many areas of weakness in its administration with transport (public transport and roads in the city and roads in the bush) and a listless state economy being particularly difficult issues for the Dilemma team, not to mention a series of scandals - some pretty ordinary corruption and incompetence involving several ministers, as well as extraordinary child-sex-related charges against one minister. So, until recent opinion polls indicated otherwise, I was convinced that the streak was over and that the conservatives would finally get a result.
Twenty-one today ...
1810 (2010 in Sydney): it might be too early to say it but it looks like the streak continues. It definitely looks like Labor will lose two seats - one to an independent local mayor in Lake Macquarie (in the lower Hunter region) and one to the Nats on the north coast (it had already 'lost' the far west seat of Murray-Darling by dint of the redistribution that had made it a notional National seat). The Libs will definitely gain two - both from independents who formerly held the seats on the northern beaches of Sydney and may gain Port Stephens (also in the Hunter region where the ALP has suffered its worst setbacks). The National Party will gain the one north coast seat (and Murray-Darling, I suppose) and the independents will lose the two but likely gain one from the ALP. With 3-4 seats still in doubt, it looks like Labor will have 52-53 seats (out of 93) in the Assembly, rather than the 55 it formerly had (after the notional loss of Murray-Darling). On a personal note, Garry Dalrymple, running for the Democrats in Premier Dilemma's seat of Lakemba, scored around 370 votes, about 1 per cent of the formal votes cast. This compares with the 1.5 per cent of the votes the Democrats have won state-wide in the Legislative Council (the Upper House/Senate equivalent) which will not be enough for them to retain their only seat. They continue to go out backwards. Meanwhile the Greens have again increased their overall vote, although only slightly, to over 8 per cent (all but guaranteeing them two more seats in the Upper House - four in total - and the balance of power because Labor will hold 19 seats in the 42 seat Council).
All told the Liberals have made little gain in the election, although they are now slightly better placed to win in March 2011, needing an uniform swing of perhaps 5-6 per cent, rather than the 9-10 per cent required tonight.
The post mortems will be interesting because this was an election that they should not have lost. And would have won had they not white-anted their former leader, John Brogden. The Libs have been punished for their failure adequately to exploit the government's weaknesses and for the perception that the religiously motivated radical right has taken over the party. Howard's deeply unpopular industrial relations laws are also a factor, although there's always doubt about the impact of federal issues on state elections. The campaign lived down to my worst expectations. The ALP dominated the electronic ads for the first couple of weeks of the campaign, running a series of largely negative ads, reminiscent of the federal Lib attacks on Latham in 2004. They pointed out the alleged inadequacies in Dednam Walking's personal and business history, alerted voters to the dangers in his public service job cuts proposals, and tied him to the unpopular federal IR laws. Every so often, about 1 ad in 5, Dilemma hosted a positive ad about how he had redirected his government so, while there were problems in NSW, it was now heading in the right direction. The Libs blitzed the electronic media in the last two weeks of the campaign - but with only one message: re-electing Dilemma meant getting Costa, Sartor and Tripodi (the three least popular ministers in the government). This was scarily reminiscent of Labor's failed attempt in 2004 to oust Howard by pointing out the possibility of a Costello succession. Unlike Labor in 2004, the Libs offered not one positive ad, or one indication of what its policy would be. Like the 2004 Labor effort, the negative campaign had no success and allowed Dilemma, who has been seen as a nice bloke and a real trier, to escape any criticism.
Another 'highlight' of the campaign was the occasional appearance by Dednam Walking at waterfront photo ops, clothed only in budgie smugglers. The sight of him emerging from Botany Bay, very unlike the classical portrayal of Venus rising from the waters, was enough to inspire five weeks of comedy routines, cartoons and shock jock references. I cannot see that tactic being repeated - certainly not by Ned Rudd.
In all I probably didn't miss all that much by being out of town for the occasion - it was an election that nobody deserved the win and, in a race between Dilemma and Dednam Walking, the election of a nobody was the preordained result.
(A few days later) As you would expect, the first fall-out of the Lib loss (apart from all the usual suspects who want to tell you what the election result suggests for the decline and fall of the Howard gang - a speculation that may take the results further than they can be stretched) is that Barry O'Farrell (when he was 50 kilos heavier, and had a beard, his nickname was "Fatty O'Barrell", one of the more inventive near-spoonerisms of politics; now he's a more svelte Flatty O'Barrell), Debnam's deputy, has challenged for the Opposition Leader's job. It wouldn't be a state election without a conservative leadership challenge coming at the end. Dednam represents the nasty religious right end of the Libs, while Flatty is seen as a wet. The right - which has pretty tight control of the party apparatus at the moment - threatened dire consequences if O'Barrell was elected a few years ago, and he stepped aside. It was major step on the road to election defeat. Now, it will be interesting to see if he can stand up to the Uglies, and move the party back towards the centre.
(A few more days later) By the close of counting on Friday, Labor had taken the lead over the independent in Lake Macquarie by 22 votes, two-party preferred, after the notional distribution of preferences. The fight in Port Stephens is even closer: the Liberal Baumann is ahead by 19 votes. In both cases, there will be a recount and a distribution of all preferences, but the indications are that both seats could be quite close. (Monday update: Lake Mascqaurie has oscilalted all day today. First the independent retook the lead by 44 votes, before a large batch of absent votes (cast in other electorates on the day) put the ALP ahead again by 65.) If they break as the present indications suggest (I suspect that the Independent will win Lake Macquarie), Labor will end up with 52 seats and the Libs will have gained three (two from independents and Port Stephens from Labor) to 22 and the Nats two (Murray-Darling and Tweed, both from Labor) to 13 and there will be 6 independents. In the end that's not much movement in an election where the swings away from Labor should have been much stronger.
Guilt by incarceration
The "I-told-you-so" brigade has been out in force this week to point out that David Hicks has pleaded guilty to the charge of aiding terrorism. Hicks is the Adelaide boy who went seriously Muslim and ended up in Afghanistan. Having trained with the Taliban (and possibly Al Qaeda) he left Afghanistan, only to return after 11/9/2001. There he was captured by the Northern Alliance (the warlords fighting the then Taliban government as proxies for the Yanks). The warlords sold him to the Yanks who sent him off to Gitmo where he has been held without charge and without access to civilised amenities for 5 years. The rationale was that he was "an enemy combatant" and thus a POW-equivalent (the fact that his accommodation did not meet Geneva Convention standards and was not subject to Red Cross inspections was ignored for the sake of this argument) but he was captured by the Northern Alliance while fighting for the government of Afghanistan, and not while fighting for terrorists against the Yanks, Brits, or Aussies. Given that the Howard Gang did nothing to free him - as the Brits had done for their citizens held in Camp X-Ray - it's not surprising that the Yanks were able to get away with what they got away with. He has been now subjected to the new, improved Military Commission - a kangaroo court that makes the Star Chamber look like a democratic institution. Given the possibility that a guilty plea would end the case and he might be sent back to Australia to complete his term, his lawyers advised him to cop a plea. The question of guilt or innocence - or whether the charge is a legitimate one and the process legal - hardly enters into it.
It seems that someone in the US Department of Justice (an Orwellian concept at best) has been reading up on medieval ecclesiastic law processes. The Church, which enforced religious law in the Middle Ages, refined the way in which they treated those accused of breaches of ecclesiastic law. They were subjected to isolation and torture and confronted with a stark choice: confess and cleanse the soul, or die outside the state of grace. By the time the accused were dragged before the Grand Inquisitor, or whatever other High Panjandrum was assigned to the case, there was no doubt about guilt and only about how convincing the confession could be. Gitmo replicates this process efficiently. Five years of isolation, physical and emotional torture and no advice about the charges facing him and then Hicks is confronted with a choice: you're going to be found guilty, whether you're guilty or not, so you can confess and throw yourself on the court's mercy, or you can fight and get a much worse result. He took the plea bargain, only for the commission to demonstrate how well it has absorbed the lessons of the Inquisition. Not only does Hicks have to plead guilty, he has to show the court he is really guilty by making sure he confesses in the most showy way possible and outline all his sins - rather like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before him. What a farce! Hicks' confession may be genuine and he may indeed have abetted Al Qaeda in its terrorist activities, although I note that the prosecution has downgraded almost every accusation originally made against Hicks, so that "the worst of the worst" looks silly rather than evil as a result. But it seems more likely that the confession is a desperate attempt by an unbalanced young man to get out of an intolerable situation by doing whatever is required.
The piece of resistance was the sentence and the twelve-month gag order. Hicks has to spend only another nine months behind bars, in an Australian prison. Coincidentally that (and the gag order) will insure that he is neither seen nor heard before the 2007 federal election. You have to wonder at the affrontery of the prime miniature in his assertion that the Australian government had no part in the determination of Hicks' fate.
Another interesting sideight to the Hicks case is the double-think involved in those who have described the statements of the Tehran 15 (the British tars kidnapped by the Iranians in the Persian Gulf) as "confessions", with an emphasis on the quotation marks, but have been quite happy to describe Hicks' comments as a confession, with no modification required.
Speaking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: so comprehensive has been his confession to just about every high crime and misdemeanor imaginable, from 11/9/2001 on, that we now have a much better idea of who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and who framed Roger Rabbit. I want to know whether he was on a grassy knoll in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
First written: April 2007
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