Blog's from the Bush

The Liberal Party/Coalition is still polling badly with the Australian Electorate despite what could arguably be called the biggest vote buying budget in decades. Despite the Labour Party's position that WorkChoices is the reason for their record breaking improvement in the polls, or the massive advertising campaign by the Unions pushing a similar stance - I don't think WorkChoices is the reason.

Even with new polls (almost daily) showing a worsening position, the Prime Minister still believes that things will improve and people will "turn away from Labour" as more of Labours details are confirmed. Although that could take a while given the flip flops that Kevin Rudd & Labour have been exhibiting lately.

While its still possible for Labour to give the upcoming election away and make John Howards predictions come true, I don't think the PM has it right either. I think its more like "the straw that broke the camels back" - after more than a decade of the Howard Government people have just had enough and that's what they have to address. In no particular order here's some of the straw that's been accumulating on that camel's back...

Looking after Australian's abroad - David Hicks - should have been brought back to Australia, just like the Brit's did with their terrorists...

This has been slowly burying the Howard Governments reputation, simply put the year or two they could have gotten away with leaving David Hicks in US hands but after that people start to realise that John Howard put's the US before the Australians he's been elected to represent. Some polls even put the figure as high as two thirds of Australia believe Hicks should've been brought home to rather than left to languish in a prison setup that would have been illegal in Australia. The fact that a deal was done in the end that made the majority of Australians believe the US had no case, no cause and not a real legal leg to stand on well its just another straw on the back of that poor old camel.

Telstra and the death of Internet in Australia

The whole Testra deal is just appalling, when average Joe's in the street start complaining about how much better the internet experience is on their recent holidays in Bali/Hong Kong/US or when the Howard Government lets Telstra make them look like the reason that we don't have national broadband it's never good. So, when you're heading into an election it's just another straw on the back when Telstra starts taking out full page ads slaming you...

WorkChoices mistakes - not persuing abuses by employers in a more vigorous and public manner

WorkChoices is without a doubt the most extreme form of IR reform Australia has seen since Federation - I'm not going to come down on the "its bad" or "its good" side - but Howards Government has made peoples perception of it worse than it should be. Once you've made such a radical change and defended it by saying "No Australian will be worse off under WorkChoices" it's bad form to recant - people remember this sort of stuff. Perhaps a better approach would be to vigorously persue people that blatantly abuse employees under the umbrella of the new legislation... as its stand this is more straw for that poor old camel.

Global Warming

Why in the name of all that is Electable would you ignore something that has so actively taken hold in all aspects of the community? Why when you have such huge budgetry excesses (A$10b left over this year after the budget) wouldn't you put incentives in place? - Try putting a worlds best practice in place eg. Germany's policy of requiring suppliers to buy Green energy from consumers... or some other consumer orientated measure that wouldn't upset big business? Why when we have limited power production already wouldn't this make sense?

Water Crisis

The Water Crisis - fund water tanks to the point of break even for householders in 2 years - how hard is this? The benefits are obvious to blind Freddy at the pub before and after a few schooners so when a recent study made national headlines people thought "ahh... this is something worthwhile for the budget" - but no - just another kick in the green butt. If putting tanks in homes is cheaper and more effective than building dams/desalination plants then what is the problem? When you have a A$10 billion Water Plan that doesn't show any real results after 6 months - when you can't get the states to agree and when the FOI requests about the Water Plan are denied on "National Security" grounds its just another bale of straw for that poor old camel...

Lies, damm lies and politics...

Nuclear Power, AWB, Children Over Board, etc or put another way "straw, Straw and more STRAW!" it all adds up