Volition

I agree completely and thought exactly the same thing about the specific, but naturally (or obviously) undisclosable nature of the threat. I can't believe that anyone still takes Howard at his word, but I suppose people will continue to think the worst as long as it suits.

Posted by: Adrian on November 3, 2005 07:03 AM

the little snippet of info that i really like is that, despite there suddenly appearing a 'real and specific terror threat' the Australian Government department of National Security is yet to elevate the national terror threat from 'medium.'

incidentally, medium is the second lowest level of threat and only means that 'a terrorist attack could occur.' which is exactly the same level of alert that we've had since the whole bloody system was introduced in June 2003.

http://nationalsecurity.ag.gov.au/

i'm not sure who pisses me off more: john howard or the ignorant, apathetic dickheads who vote for him...

Posted by: jess on November 3, 2005 12:39 PM

ahhh Suffering in our Jocks all round then.
did anyone catch mike rann's statement about being unable to 'confirm nor deny' that the terrorist threat might concern Our Home State? dreamy!
But come now children, the governments never lied before to win an election have they??? cough coughchildren cough coughoverboard cough cough.

Posted by: adrian'ssister/matrine on November 6, 2005 04:49 PM

"It all seems terribly convenient."

Funnily enough, in spite of the urgentt, national-security-threatening emergencies requiring the legislation, several days after it's been passed it hasn't been used.

It amazes me the stupid things that people will protest about, yet when our freedoms are threatened in a significant way (such as in this instance or earlier this year when the South Australian ALP decided it might be convenient to just suspend parliamentary privilege) people do nothing. *Nothing*. The thing is - where do we go from here? None of us are yet prepared for political careers. And even if we were - in the old days you used to be able to count on the Liberal Party to defend the constitution, its conventions and the foundations of the Westminister system [1]. That's certainly not the case now. And thus there's actually now no straightforward way for individuals to be politically active in a way that strengthens the interests of political freedom. The only realistic option is to pick a major party and then slog to cut out a constiuency - either inside the organisation via position and policy or by winning preselection for a seat and then winning the seat. They're both staggeringly long, painful grinds to contemplate. And as I say - I'd be concerned about doing it too young.

--
[1] Assuming there are any readers they may be tempted to cry 'foul' over this and point to the constitutional crisis that led up to The Dismissal as a contradition. I'm not yet decided one way of the other, but I am definitely unhappy with Paul Kelly's analysis (haven't read Oakes yet). I've known the ins and outs of it fairly well for a decade but some of the new material in yesterday's The Australian (some genuinely new and some probably just new to me) has me captivated. I spent several hours reading up on it yesterday and am now well into a long essay to work out what I think when I should have been doing productive things. I'm settled on the role of Whitlam and Kerr but Fraser's is far far less straightforward. One option I'm considering is that in practical terms his hands were tied the moment Bjelke-Pederson severely abused convention and appointed Albert Field to fill a casual vacancy for Qld instead of the the ALP's candidate (who - funnilly enough - was the much-loved Mal Colston).

Posted by: Craig Turner on November 6, 2005 09:39 PM

what particularly erks you about Kelly's perspective? the obvious criticism would be that it was overly sympathetic to the left's ideology, (which would not necessarily be incorrect) but i'm not sure you'd find this remedied by Oakes...

Posted by: jess on November 6, 2005 10:59 PM

> what particularly erks you about Kelly's perspective?

Without wanting to recreate my writing here in full, a couple of things. 1) He makes reference to the UK Parliament Act 1911 and then applies conclusions from that in summing up the actions of players in Australia 1975 - what happened in the UK in 1911 is irrelevent because our constitution was forked in 1900. 2) More significantly - in his article in the magazine he writes:

"Two enduring lessons have been learnt - the Oppositions should not use the Senate to block supply and that governors-general should not sack the prime minister without warning. The 1975 crisis is a study in the misuse of powers."

I disagree with this as a conclusion. The root of the problem and single most enduring lesson is that if a Prime Minister is unable to govern then they have a responsibility to call an election. You can spend pages discussing how the constitutional problems came about - the evils of Bjelke-Peterson; what ethical legitimacy Fraser had to act as he did; Barwick's role; whether Martin Cameron or others could have been convinced to vote with the goverment had there been more time - all this is irrelevent to the key point. Whitlam was unable to govern and thought he could get away with not calling an election because he'd put an old mate who into Yarallumba (which is a black mark to start with - the gg is supposed to be a safeguard against the PM, not his mate). Kelly is just on another planet to sum up this situation without reference to the fact that Whitlam could have resolved the conflict at any time during the crisis and things got so bad that he had to be thrown out by a mate.

Regarding Oakes, one interesting thing that I'm trying to come to grips with is this (from Smith in the oz):
"So far as I am aware, only Laurie Oakes seems to have acknowledged that "Whitlam forced the timing on [governor-general John] Kerr by deciding that day to recommend a half-Senate election" (The Bulletin, 1995)."

Er - what? Is that saying that on the day that he was dismissed Whitlam asked to call a half-senate election? If so, then that is news to me (and points to a signif. gap in my knowledge..). It hasn't happened for decades but there used to be elections of just half the senate and none of the lower house - is this what's meant by a half-senate election, or is the implication that Whitlam requested a lower house election as well? Just putting half the senate to election would indeed have forced the g's hand because it would not have offered likely resolution to the situation and would have cost time. A likely outcome would have been an increased non-labor presence in the house (five senators per state not six as there are now and the ALP was very low in the polls). It will be interesting to work out when the supply block would have become critical causing the government to run out of money, and whether this would have preceeded the outcome of a half-senate election.

Posted by: Craig Turner on November 7, 2005 06:49 AM

Was thinking about this in the car and am unhappy with part of what I wrote. This is the downside of writing things in blogs.. if they're technical and you haven't thought through them properly you end up spending as long apologising for what you've written as you would if you'd just polished it and submitted it... No more comment beyond this until I've worked out exactly where I stand.

In analysing what Kelly says I *can* see that his argument contributes to his "enduring lessons". However, I can't see any reason for his omission of the onus of responsibility on the PM to ensure stability. That strikes me as being a blindingly obvious responsibility and all the commentary I read muddies the water with compicating factors and yet seems to ignore the blindingly obvious in this point (I haven't looked at it for five years but seem to remember Parkin, Woodward Summers text taking a similar direction). Which may be what I'm subconsciously trying to do with the Fraser situation as well. I don't know yet. I'm interested in other people's thoughts though, *particularly* if they feel they're from the left tradition.

Posted by: Craig Turner on November 7, 2005 08:37 AM

Craig: Actually, I'm planning on running in the next state elections again (maybe for a seat in the Legislative Council). My platform will be centred on having a clue about things like privacy, freedom and technology.

Want to be my campaign manager?

Posted by: Mike on November 17, 2005 04:08 PM

Funnily enough I only came back here to complete the thread or I would have missed your final message (I don't put my email in because I worry about spam searches).

So - to conclude the thinking I expressed in earlier messages: with some help from Shaun I realised that I'd been thinking about this too much. In fact the conclusion is simple and runs like this:
1) Whitlam is a bastard
2) Kerr is a bastard
3) Fraser is a bastard
4) So are the rest of them

There is no complex consideration about it. Only now do I remember a trick one of my professors showed me - shrug your shoulders, laugh at all those people who take themselves too seriously, move along, move along.

I just read this on a friend's blog about a BBQ that was on today (and which I didn't go to):
"""
Yay for going out followed by BBQ
--
A good feeling today... went out last nite (alcohol, dancing); went out today (friend's BBQ in the park) and Life Is Good. Mr xxx turned the big three zero. He had a great bbq with heaps of friends and a large amount of charred food. It was good. What was interesting was the group of Young Liberals (that's the youth branch of a political party in Australia) who stood/sat over off to one side and whose only mingling activity was to play cricket (very seriously) and then to disappear, while making comments comparing certain efforts in the cricket game to political figures.

Go figure.

Must be something in the water. I'm not really convinced that you can be so involved in politics that you can entirely live your life around it. Each to ther own, I guess.

:D
"""
*shudder*

A fine summary of the affliction of people of any persuasion who operate in that arena.

Mike - with regard to your question - thank you. I'm flattered you've asked, wish you well and will help you out with technical details as much as I can, but for my sanity need to keep a distance away from it all. Good luck in not taking yourself too seriously.

Posted by: C on November 20, 2005 10:17 PM