Labor's power squabble an empty show

Another week has come and gone and I have failed to produce something specific for this blog. I'd hang my head in shame, if I couldn't account for my all my evenings: basically, pub; pub; pub; pub; pub; Conehead's going away party (bastard is escaping to Melbourne); collapse in front of Midsomer Murders. Or something like that, I could *just possibly* be exaggerating, but it is a bit of a blur.

Regardless, this is the piece I wrote for last'week's "Carlo's Corner" column for Green Left Weekly. It is sadly, pathetically even more relevant now than when I wrote it over a week ago.


* * *

Carlo's corner: Labor’s power squabble an empty show

Now that both Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry's marriages are over, and things seem quiet on the Brangelina front, the corporate media have been reduced to feverish speculation over another B-Grade celebrity circus: who will lead the seemingly doomed Labor government?

Will the skittish Labor caucus, freaked by polling data, stick with Julia Gillard or execute a dramatic reverse coup and bring back Kevin Rudd? Or will it be Wayne Swan or maybe that Simon someone-or-other who looks kinda familiar?

Strangely, the media appear to be ignoring the big question in all of this: what is Paul Howes doing? The Australian Workers Union national secretary, the least faceless of faceless men, the highest profile politician who sits in no parliament, the man with his hand on the knife in Rudd's back two years ago — he has been unusually absent from the media amid the latest frenzy.

Has Howes been kidnapped? Or is he quietly sharpening his knife and waiting for another call from Bill Shorten?

The most noticeable feature of the Labor leadership spectacle is how empty the whole show is. Given that it centres on a political party, it is hard not to notice that it is totally devoid of any politics.

The entire thing centres on the fluctuating polling data of the key personalities. No issues of policy or principle are raised by anyone involved. It is about how to hold power for power’s sake.

And yet, the coup against Rudd in 2010 was political. It was Labor capitulating to the powerful mining corporations campaigning against Rudd’s proposed “super tax” on their profits. Gillard immediately moved to water down the already very mild proposal.

But there is no hint that reverting to Rudd would mean seeking to impose a modicum of social responsibility on these huge corporations.

Nor is there any discussion of Rudd's statement, after he was dumped, that he would resist a “race to the right” over the treatment of asylum seekers (despite, as PM, having raced as far to the right as he could).

The only thing that matters is which individual is less likely to lose the next election — and which one will best serve which section of the power-hungry blocs within the party.

The irony is that this has a lot to do with Labor’s polling woes in the first place. It is hard to get excited about a party that stands for nothing.

If racist populism is your thing, the Coalition is your best bet. Labor is giving it a fair crack, but it just can’t compete with Tony Abbott’s natural flair for it.

On the other hand, if you want more humane treatment for asylum seekers, more public spending on health and education, or greater environmental protection, the Greens provide an electoral alternative.

(Of course, The Greens are also filled with wacko extremists and KGB agents — one of the few questions on which I agree with the Murdoch press. As soon as I read their proposal for a universal dental scheme, I realised the spirit of Stalin was alive and well. If history has taught us one thing, it is first decent dental care, then gulags.)

With no principle but power, Labor can’t please anyone. Worst of all, it can’t even satisfy the real power in the land — the big corporations. It is not that it doesn’t try, but whatever it gives, the corporations want more.

Labor won government on the back of anti-Work Choices campaign, and so was obliged to appear to kill it off. Labor’s replacement, the Fair Work Act, is Work Choices with some minor trimmings cut away, and still the bosses whine it is unfair.

Labor’s industrial relations laws are so rigged against workers that it allowed Qantas, legally, to lock-out its entire workforce without warning, stranding thousands of passengers, and then forced unions to end low-level industrial action meant to secure safety, job security and a wage deal that didn’t go backwards.

The big corporations are profit junkies — more is never enough. Labor is in no way threatening their supply, but the Liberals offer a purer cut.

I mean, two years ago Labor offered Kevin Rudd's head on a platter to the mining giants and how do they repay the favour? They get caught on film meeting with climate denier Lord Monckton plotting to further their control over the media to drag politics even further to the right.

Labor’s climate trading scheme doesn’t threaten their profits, but even admitting climate change is real is a step too far for those raking in record profits from industries destroying the planet.

Greater media power in the hands of mining giants is a truly frightening thought when you consider this is already a media in which Andrew Bolt has a column in a major paper and his own TV show.

The mining corporations' influence over the media is so great it even extends to altering the English language. The mainstream media, seemingly caring not a jot for dictionaries, refer, repeatedly, to the owners of these giant corporations as “miners”.

I am sorry, but Gina Rinehart is not a miner. I don't believe Twiggy Forrest actually mines. I am pretty sure they have people to do that for them.

Have you seen Mineralogy owner and “billionaire miner” Clive Palmer? I don't think he could even fit down a mine. It is a pretty safe bet the only thing Clive Palmer has ever fossicked for in his life was a hors d'oeuvre that fell under the table at a cocktail party.

It seems even the power to alter language is not enough.

Without any guiding principles but power, all Labor can do is keep caving in only to discover, every time, the interests that actually run the country still want more. In the meantime, pleasing no one, Labor is left to squabble over who sits at the front of a train that looks headed straight into the side of a mountain.




'Did you hear there's a natural order? The most deserving will end up with the most. That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top. Well, I say -- shit floats.' Whoever wins the sordid power squabble in the Labor Party...

Songs for Kevin (or: let's save money and just let Clive Palmer elect our leaders)

“I've never seen a night so long, when time goes crawling by ... The silence of a falling star, lights up a purple sky ... And I'm so lonesome I could cry.” Seasick Steve gives his rendition of the Hank Williams' classic, looking just like our fallen PM will after a decade of drinkin' to forget, with a chaser to kill the pain.


Christ, it was a sad sight that press conference. Kevin Rudd in tears after getting dumped as Dear Leader before his first term even finished after enjoying record approval ratings for almost the whole time since we threw out that other fascist Johnny Someone.

It was hard not to feel sorry for the little guy. He got brutally knifed by a political machine uglier than a local council-commissioned public sculpture on the theme of “Harmony”, and more brutal than a Mafia gang that’s just discovered a snitch who not only ratted to the Feds but also claimed the Don’s breath smelt.

Then I remembered that not only did Mr Rudd utterly fail to confront the somewhat urgent threat of runaway climate change, despite calling it the “greatest moral challenge of our time” and the mounting evidence of impending catastrophe.

No, much worse — he also declared war on booze.

The little fucking weasel.

Now I don’t like to boast, but I gotta say: Carlo Sands called it.

Hell, I called this one two years ago with an insightful, razor-sharp comment piece entitled Rudd’s honeymoon over? Let’s ask Tex Perkins.

Now, it goes without saying that Carlo Sands is never wrong. Sometimes, however, I am ahead of my time.

Some may argue that my call that Rudd’s “honeymoon” with the Australian people was over, coming more than a year-and-a-half before his record-levels of popular support began to seriously erode, was a little hasty.

I, however, prefer to call it prescient.

So what went wrong? How did Rudd go from record popularity to being the first Labor PM ever dumped by his own party before his first term even ended?

I think the history books will clearly record the seeds of Rudd’s destruction lay in the ill-fated decision in his first year in office to run a campaign declaring four standards drinks (that’s less than three stubbies!) to be “binge drinking”.

This alienated him from both the public at large and the Labor party machine. I mean, have you seen how much those factional headkickers drink? No wonder they knifed him with such glee.

But there were clearly some other, if secondary, factors at work.

Rudd basically continued the same policies as the former Howard government in all key areas. But most of all, his failures on climate change cost him big.

The serious slide in Rudd’s popularity coincided with his government’s decision to dump its proposed “emissions trading scheme”, which it had been touting as the solution to the threat of total eco-destruction.

Environmentalists actually pointed out the ETS itself was just political window dressing that not only would not reduce carbon emissions, but would actually make the problem worse.

But that is neither here nor there. The decision to dump it as soon as it became a “hard sell” revealed Rudd for the unprincipled, power-hungry weasel he is. It made him look cynical, hypocritical and totally untrustworthy.

Plus, the climate issue is kinda urgent.

But worse was to come for our wowser PM.

Desperate to make up lost ground and searching for an issue that would prove popular and make him seem like he actually stood for something more than his own career, Rudd made the ill-fated decision to seek to impose a quite modest “supertax” on the extremely wealthy large mining corporations currently enjoying record profits.

The 40% tax only kicked in once the profit rate exceed 6%, was bound up with continuing subsidies to the sector, was full of loopholes and was going to be used to cut the corporate tax rate overall from 32% to 28%.

But my god did the billionaire shriek like a three-year-old whose favourite teddy got washed down a sewer.

These principled men, who like to whine about “economic blackmail” should any of their workforce dare engage in industrial action, immediately threatened to bring the country to its knees with a coordinated “capital strike”.

They went on telly to deliver their snarling threat: Dump the mining tax or thousands of jobs get it!

They immediately embarked on a well-funded media campaign, with attack ads promising all life on Earth would come to a screeching halt if Rudd wasn’t stopped.

Seeing a chance to get the Liberals back in, the Murdoch media and shock jocks jumped on the bandwagon.

Suddenly it was 1951 all over again and the Communists were coming to eat our babies.

Rudd, weakened by his “binge drinking” and climate disasters, was in no position to withstand the assault.

Even if the multi-national corporations failed to exactly win public sympathy for their plight, they caused enough unease and fear to ensure Rudd’s poll slide worsened.

With an election just months away, the Labor machine didn’t need to be told twice. Rudd was dumped and the mining shares rose at once. Gillard’s first move was to sue for peace.

As the saying goes, it's all fun and games until someone tries to tax the mining giants.

I must admit, it does make me wonder whether all the effort of getting 20 million people to vote is just an inefficient waste of our time and hard-earned taxpayers money.

Surely it would be much cheaper and time-efficient to just get the Business Council of Australia to hold a straw poll on who should hold the keys to the Lodge. Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt could be granted a vote at the council when the question arises, just so all key stakeholders have a say.

That way, the rest of us wont lose an hour of valuable drinking time one Saturday every three years and the good businessfolk can ensure the corporate tax rate is set at the responsible, investor-friendly level of -75%.

In the end, Rudd managed to alienate both his own social base and the extremely powerful forces that actually govern this godforsaken country. The generals moved in for the kill and the coup was quick — if disappointingly bloodless.

It is a shame the our new Dear leader wants to suck up to the Evil Forces Threatened All Life on Earth (known as “miners” in the press for some inexplicable reason, despite never having fossicked for anything more than a hors d’oeuvre that fell under the table at a cocktail party to celebrate another record breaking profit return).

But, to date, she is yet to announce her policy on booze. Therefore, Carlo Sands withholds his judgment.

As for Mr Rudd, all that’s left for him is to redeem himself in true country music style. He must now take his guidance from Merle Haggard.



“I got swingin' doors, a jukebox and a bar stool. My new home has a flashin' neon sign. Stop by and see me anytime you want to, coz I'm, always here at home till closing time...”

If Kevin Rudd had any dignity or self-respect, this is how he would spend his declining years.