If a group of “holier-than-thou psychiatrists” can’t get a handle on the country’s most dangerous and subversive comedian, who is also an observant son of Judaism, then those who cast the first stone don’t stand a chance – particularly if they are in his audience.

Austen Tayshus (aka Isaac Cox) is Sandy Gutman’s stage name and Merchant of Menace, by Ross Fitzgerald and journalist Rick Murphy, reveals Gutman’s chaotic life and Austen Tayshus’s remarkable ability to be vulgar, crude, loud, angry, confident, outrageous and pointed.

Recognised in mainstream media as the man who delivered the smash hit Australiana (penned with fellow comedian Billy Birmingham), Austen Tayshus berates and delivers on many political, sociological and cultural levels.

Click here for the full review (PDF format)

Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace. Review by John Andrewartha from the ‘Sunday Tasmanian’, 31 July 2011

As this insightful and racy memoir makes clear, not only was Murdoch a hands-on proprietor but he was, for a time, quite radical and reformist in his views – promulgated in The Daily Mirror – about apartheid South Africa and in some ways about the parlous situation of Aborigines in Australia.

Armed with a flattering letter of support from Murdoch, who had launched the first national daily, The Australian, in 1964, Mitchell arrived in England on the SS Oronsay in March 1967. He gained part-time work on the London Daily Mirror and then a full-time job at The Sunday Times.

In Fleet Street he became an investigative reporter, taking part in exposes of Soviet double agent Kim Philby; corrupt publisher Robert Maxwell (widely known as “the bouncing Czech”); L. Ron Hubbard’s so-called Church of Scientology; and international offshore funds swindler Bernie Cornfield. After The Sunday Times, Mitchell worked on Granada Television’s weekly program World in Action, where he was the first Western reporter to interview president Idi Amin, “the man who stole Uganda”, after his coup in January 1971.

In England, Mitchell was radicalised politically, becoming a militant Trotskyite. This meant Mitchell took to heart Karl Marx’s 1845 injunction: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Utterly disillusioned with the politics of the British Labour Party and social democratic parties elsewhere but also with the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain, Mitchell became an avid follower of Leon Trotsky, who had been assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 on Stalin’s orders. Influenced by Gerry Healy, a pugnacious Marxist-Leninist theoretician and activist, Mitchell accepted Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” and his notion of uncompromising internationalism.

Before long, Mitchell became affiliated with the Trotskyist Fourth International. Healy drummed into him the fundamental Leninist lesson: “Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, no revolutionary action.”

Indeed, for 15 years, Mitchell worked as a reporter, then editor, of the daily newspaper of the militant Socialist Labour League, later the Workers Revolutionary Party, whose members included British actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave. Workers Press and then News Line were radical papers of high quality. It was only after his hero, Healy, was expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party, which imploded and split, that in 1986 Mitchell, with partner Judith White, returned to Sydney. He started work for the Fairfax-owned Sun-Herald, although this period is not covered in any detail.

Come the Revolution is, in the main, a compelling read. However, it is rather too long. Mitchell seems intent on including every last detail of his professional and personal life until his return to mainstream journalism in Australia.

For this reviewer at least, Mitchell’s memoirs may have been much better by half.

Review of Alex Mitchell, COME THE REVOLUTION, NewSouth Books, 536pp, $39.95
Review by Ross Fitzgerald, Sydney Morning Herald, January 28-29, 2012 SPECTRUM p 33.

Researching his subjects, MacCallum has leaned heavily on The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Prime Ministers, edited by Michelle Grattan, and Colin Hughes’s much earlier book Mr Prime Minister. He has filled in the gaps, often via news reports and what he loosely terms as “anecdotes”, of which he has a stash.

Since Australia became a nation in 1901, we have had 27 prime ministers and for the general reader there is much to enliven and entertain in this group biography of our leaders. It is illuminating to know that our second PM, Alfred Deakin, was an ardent spiritualist and that our first, Edmund Barton, had such a severe drinking problem he was widely known as “Tosspot Toby”. Deakin claimed he received direct instruction from the ghosts of Sophocles, John Knox, Lord Macaulay, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill. As MacCallum puts it, although “rather out of place in such exalted company”, Deakin was also spoken to by Richard Heales, a former Victorian chief secretary.

During his time as PM, Deakin provided an anonymous account of the workings of his government: first for the London Morning Post and then for the London National Review. Deakin’s columns were witty, comprehensive and, refreshingly, often highly critical of himself.

Barton’s alcohol consumption was so out of control that the proprietor of Truth, John Norton, himself a huge imbiber, wrote of the PM: “I charge you with being very frequently under the influence of drink ever since the [first] meeting of the federal parliament . . . Quite recently you came into [the] chamber so drunk you were scarcely able to stand. On another occasion, seeing your drunken, helpless state, the Speaker generously put an end to the painful scene!”

It is useful to remember that while Chris Watson’s four-month ministry was the first national Labor government in the world, it boasted in its ranks the future Labor prime minister Andrew Fisher as well as the world’s first Labor premier. The latter was Anderson Dawson from the dual electorate of Charters Towers. Dawson’s Queensland colonial government, which had lasted less than a week in December 1899, had contained within its ranks the Scottish-born Fisher who had worked in Queensland as a miner and journalist before entering politics.

Among the prime-ministerial also-rans, MacCallum deals briskly with the Queenslander Frank Forde who served for eight days; Earle Christmas Grafton Page, after whom the city of Grafton was named, who enjoyed 19 days in power; the long-serving Country Party treasurer, Arthur Fadden, another Queenslander who was PM for 40 days and 40 nights; and John “Black Jack” McEwen, who held the top job for 23 days when he was aged 67.

Unfortunately MacCallum badly underestimates Tasmanian Catholic PM Joe Lyons, who is dismissed as a Labor “rat”. MacCallum would have benefited immensely had he had the chance of reading the excellent recent biographies – both written by Anne Henderson – of Lyons and of his wife Dame Enid, with whom he had 11 children.

However MacCallum is on the money when he regards William McMahon – a Liberal and notorious leaker to the press – as a prime minister whom it was difficult to take seriously, even by his increasingly disillusioned colleagues. McMahon’s self-pitying prime-ministerial lament to the party room that “I sometimes think I must be my own worst enemy” provoked Jim Killen, who had been ousted from the Navy portfolio, to reply: “Not while I’m alive.”

It is useful to be reminded that when John Howard was swept from office, he became only the second PM in history to also lose his seat (that of Bennelong) in the same election. That humiliation had occurred 68 years earlier to the conservative Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a politician more English than the English, who was best known for wearing plus fours and spats.

Although some pundits would plump for Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam or Bob Hawke, perhaps our most fascinating prime minister is Billy Hughes, widely known as the “Little Digger”, who suffered throughout his political career from chronic dyspepsia and deafness. A member of parliament for 58 years, 51 of them in the federal sphere, Hughes who began as a Laborite, was the leader of five political parties, a minister in four, and ratted on three. As MacCallum justly concludes, “this is a political record unlikely to be beaten”.

When asked why he had joined every major political party in Australia with the exception of the Country Party, Hughes famously replied: “I had to draw the line somewhere!”

The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia’s Prime Ministers, By Mungo MacCallum, Black Inc, 213pp, $29.95

Ross Fitzgerald is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University and the author of 35 books. The Weekend Australian January 28-29, 2012

The ALRC has come up with 44 proposals to reform classification and official censorship in Australia. Chief among these is a new Classification of Media Content Act. The main thrust of the commission’s proposals is that the online media environment has fundamentally changed the way that people access media and that soon it will be possible that all media will be available on one screen. Therefore the nature of the delivery platform, as a part of the censorship equation, has become irrelevant. At this point in the development of online technology, content becomes the overriding criterion for classification and it needs to be judged similarly whether it turns up on a mobile phone, DVD or computer, or in a book.

Most of what the ALRC has suggested makes a lot of sense, including the addition of new classification categories of C for Children, PG 8+ and T 13+ for teens. Dropping the M for Mature category also makes sense, as would removing the legal requirement to enforce age on the MA15+ classification. This is because trying to regulate age requirements on people accessing MA15+ material on a website would be impossible to enforce online.

What doesn’t make sense is the suggestion that Australia’s restricted publications (Category 1 and 2) both become X-rated. The last time I looked, the X rating was banned in most states. So why is the ALRC suggesting the modern day equivalent of book-burning for anything nude and rude on paper? Why would the federal government, in Section 9 of the report, seek to ban categories of books and magazines that have been around for 30 years?

It is also somewhat disturbing to see that, while the ALRC was being bold and brave about suggesting all these new classifications, when it came to the X classification they went weak at the knees and stated in Section 6: “If the Australian government decided to keep the X classification … ” Why would they not make a recommendation about this category as they have for many others? The fact is, they advised the federal government to introduce a new C for Children and T for Teen category. So why not recommend that X be legal in all jurisdictions as well, so they can achieve the truly uniform and consistent national scheme they say they want?

Let’s be clear about this. Unless there is agreement from the states to relinquish their enforcement powers on classification, the new act could end up being plagued with the same old problems that has beset the current one. If the federal government adopts the major recommendations of the inquiry and the states still insist on denying their citizens the right to have legal X18+ films, then the two-tiered system of censorship will still exist. Queensland will want to keep its bans on adult publications, WA will back away from R-rated games, and the states will fragment into little enclaves of censorship without being uniform.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is on record as saying that X18+ material will not be made illegal online. But how can we have a product legal on one platform (the internet) and at one level of government, while remaining illegal on another platform (DVD) and at another level of government? If this is the upshot of a million-dollar inquiry into modernising our classification system then it will have been a waste of time and taxpayer money. This is because as soon as one classification is allowed to stand outside the uniform classification system, others will follow, and further fragmentation occur.

There are issues here for both state and federal governments. Under the Trade Practices Act it may be illegal for a government to make a product legal on one platform but illegal on another, and the National Competition Commission has already stated its concern about this aspect of classification policy.

WA Attorney-General Christian Porter has already sent a submission of his own to the inquiry, stating categorically that he will not rescind his bans on the X classification no matter what the ALRC recommends.

Frankly, I believe that politicians who are in positions of influence regarding the issues being inquired about should not be allowed to comment or make submissions until after the final recommendations have been delivered. The potential for Porter’s comments to unduly affect both the ALRC final recommendations as well as members of the public sending in their own submissions is not insignificant.

The final document that the ALRC places in front of federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon will, if enacted, oversee Australia’s classification and censorship agenda until at least 2030. The fact that she has young children will inevitably form part of her personal response to the inquiry’s recommendations. Paul Keating’s response to his children’s viewing habits formed part of changes to the Classification Act; no doubt many other politicians of childbearing age use their own family morality meters to guide their moral compass when helping run the ship of state. However, as much as they want to protect children, the easily offended and the very religious, they also need to come to terms with the fact that most adults believe that sexual depictions are part of our media diet and are here to stay. Sexual media will always be the tail that wags the dog in any discussion or inquiry into media and entertainment.

It’s always complaints about sex, not violence, that spark inquiries in this area. It says a lot about our politicians that, while they have commissioned community standards reviews of all other classifications in Australia, they have never commissioned one on the sexual categories. Such a survey would be a useful starting point for Roxon and the states to understand the popularity of sexual media in this country.

Indeed, it could help persuade the states to come on board with a new scheme or suffer the death by a thousand cuts to their censorship laws at the hands of Conroy.

Under the Constitution, the commonwealth has the head of power relating to national communications, while the states hold the head of power concerning regulation of goods and services. If the states say no to the ALRC’s suggestion to have them relinquish their classification enforcement powers so that a truly uniform national scheme can emerge, then the federal government, using its communication powers, may well act to undermine state laws and allow the internet sale of X-rated material in all our states.

Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University, Ross Fitzgerald’s most recent book is the co-authored sexual/ political satire ‘Fools’ Paradise: Life in an Altered State’, published in Melbourne by Australian Scholarly Publishing.

The Weekend Australian, January 28-29, 2012

In terms of long-term abstinence from alcohol and other drugs, AA has the numbers. Even so, not all alcoholics remain receptive to AA’s simple message that, for an alcoholic, it is the first drink that does the damage. No matter how long they are sober, alcoholics are only given a reprieve from active alcoholism if they know that they need help.

It is not easy for alcoholics to stop drinking and to stay stopped. It is also often extremely difficult for alcoholics to negotiate the internal and external world with nothing in their blood but blood (that is, free of alcohol and all other drugs) and without damaging themselves in other ways. This is in part because many alcoholics, no matter how they might seem on the outside, are often extremely vulnerable in the first few years of not drinking. Often other addictions go hand in hand with active alcoholism.

Achieving stable abstinence is, for an alcoholic, a difficult and tricky business. One of the founders of AA in Australia, Sydney-based psychiatrist Dr Sylvester Minogue, used to say he had never seen an alcoholic get anywhere near emotionally and mentally together under three to five years.

My experience is that this applies to many, if not most, recovering alcoholics.

One of the many fallacies about AA is the claim that to be a member one has to be a Christian. This is just not true. Many members are atheists or agnostics.Although fundamentalist religions of all sorts do so much damage, one of my favourite Bible quotes is: “The Lord’s house has many mansions.”

This means that in AA there is room for us all – atheists, agnostics, god-botherers, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. As one wag puts it, AA is comprised of those who believe in God, those who don’t believe in God, and those who think they are God!

In AA I have always been an atheist. Yet on Australia Day, I was 42 years free of alcohol and other drugs – which is wonderful, but what really matters is what I am going to do from now on. And the great reality for me, as for all other members of the AA movement, is that from this specific place and time, I need never drink alcohol or take other drugs again.

When I say that I am an atheist I mean that I am not a theist. But in AA’s language I do believe in a “power greater than myself” – if only the AA group to which I belong, the other groups I attend, and indeed the AA movement as a whole.

I don’t believe that I am sober because of an isolated exercise of the will. In contrast, I believe that I am only sober because I realise, in the words of AA’s first suggested step of recovery, that, on my own, I am “powerless over alcohol” and that I need to surrender to that crucial fact, each and every day.

If I am to remain sober, I believe that I need to regularly attend AA meetings and to consciously do what I can about AA’s program of recovery.

That is to say, I am only free of alcohol and other drugs, not because I am smart or wilful or clever, but because I have accepted a key of AA lore.

In the words of one AA stalwart, the late Australian boxing champion Bobbie Delaney: “I’m not a retired alcoholic. I’m a defeated one.”

I like that way of putting it. I’m not fighting alcohol and other drugs. I’ve thrown in the towel, and accepted defeat. But in my opinion I need to surrender every day. Otherwise I would forget where I came from and start to drink again. Then, very soon, I would be back where I was when I finished drinking – which was at the gates of insanity and death.

Hence I strongly believe that, for me, to drink is to die.

This doesn’t mean that other things don’t matter at all but that everything else is contingent on my sobriety and my good relations in AA. This fundamental fact places everything else in its true perspective.

Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 35 books, including his memoir My Name Is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey, published by NewSouth Books, Sydney

The Daily Telegraph, January 27, 2012

Intriguingly, unlike Barry Humphries’s hugely successful and ever-evolving creation, in My Life in Shorts the real person behind the comic character doesn’t crack a mention. This is consistent with the character but also a bit frustrating.

Never mind. As for the veracity of it all, does it really matter? As the late British playwright Harold Pinter wrote in Old Times: ”There are things I remember which never have happened, but as I recall them so they take place.” Approaching this fairy story of a 1950s and ’60s Barossa childhood in a similar vein and with a more or less willing suspension of disbelief, this reviewer was soon sucked into the savagely raucous account of what H.G. calls his ”growing pains and painful growths”. This is despite whether the story is ”true” or not.

Beginning to root around to uncover his early ”life in shorts”, H.G. claims to have ”put the Holden ute into reverse and backed the wheels down the tree-lined driveway and on to the road of memory”. He can’t quite control the car but the results are highly entertaining.

A retired cemetery worker offered H.G. the soundest advice about how best to construct this account of his early life history. According to Tony (”Junior”) McTillet, now in his 90s, the past is like a ”bloody big outdoor screen that you see at open-air rock concerts or royal weddings”. On to this screen is projected our visions of the past. It is, ”Junior” said, ”a moving picture that borrows from our fears, disappointments and aspirations. If you made it all up, who’d know the difference?” Well, some of the people involved might but readers would be none the wiser.

My Life in Shorts is a rollicking tale of how a very different Australia from the one we now experience shaped a country boy who was to become one of this nation’s foremost sporting commentators. Once an aspiring footballer, boxer and overweight apprentice jockey riding horses saved from the abattoir, H.G. confides he still keeps in shape – just in case one of our top sporting teams urgently needs someone to fill a gap.

A rather slow student and awkwardly aspiring Aussie rules footballer for the Penrice Quolls and later the Moculta Parrots, H.G. also writes about his many siblings.

His brother Trevor, who loved being loose with the truth, talked through his hat and his arse at the same time. According to H.G., Trevor’s hat-and-arse conversations ”often made more sense and were more interesting than anything else he said”. His beloved brother could ”rhubarb on for hours at a time”. Eventually the Nelson family would shout in unison: ”Trevor, shut up! Just shut up!” Yet as H.G. records, ”this never slowed the flow of [Trevor's] blithering piffle”.

Early on in this energetic and captivating ”memoir”, H.G. claims that the past ”haunts everyone alive today”.

Indeed, that is what the past does best and Australia’s most outrageously over-the-top sports guru, social observer and loud-mouthed heckler is no different.

The past casts ”an unsettling shadow” over his subsequent years, at least until March 1984 when, at the Dapto Dogs one Thursday night, his soon-to-be co-worker and outlandish broadcasting colleague on radio and TV, ”Rampaging” Roy Slaven, kicked H.G. up the bum.

Don’t be surprised if, in the next instalment of his fictional autobiography, the bold H.G.’s search for lost time – and his cleverly constructed remembrances of an innocent life that has not yet evaporated – begins with their legendary meeting.

MY LIFE IN SHORTS, H.G. Nelson, Macmillan, 269pp, $34.99. Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 2012, Spectrum p. 39

This important committee has been working overtime to ensure the Tony Abbott-led opposition will go to the next federal election with a policy platform that adds up politically, philosophically and fiscally. Systematically but unobtrusively and in the main under the political radar, Robb and Smith have been dotting their policy i’s and crossing their costing t’s.

After the 2010 federal election, the Opposition Leader was determined to ensure the Coalition embarked on a comprehensive policy development process. Given the tenuous nature of Julia Gillard’s hold on minority government, Abbott wanted to ensure the Coalition would be ready to go in an early election. As well, there was quiet recognition that the Coalition’s development of policy before the 2010 election needed improvement.

It wasn’t so much the policies themselves that needed work but the development process had been handicapped by the instability that had plagued the Coalition during its first term in opposition. A quick succession of leaders – Nelson, Turnbull and Abbott – within 18 months caused political upheaval and procedural destabilisation.

The policy development committee went through a succession of chairs – first Julie Bishop under Nelson, then Kevin Andrews under Turnbull, and finally Robb. In such a tumultuous atmosphere, a policy development process could be neither efficient nor seamless.

Hence Abbott was determined to ensure that the Coalition’s second – and hopefully final – term in opposition would not only be better, but the best it could be. He reappointed Robb to chair the policy development committee and appointed the talented Smith as deputy.

Early last year, Robb and Smith initiated a series of meetings, reviews and stress-test sessions for draft policies that continued throughout the year.

Along with key staff from the leader’s office, they worked hard to assist shadow ministers to develop a strong policy base in the event of an early election. And these policies have been adjusted and updated where necessary to accommodate changing circumstances and events. The result is an opposition policy development process that is one of the most comprehensive and advanced in recent political history.

Robb and Smith are not taking input only from the Coalition frontbench: every Liberal and Nationals backbencher has been afforded the opportunity to throw their ideas into the mix. Hence every Tuesday evening of each sitting week last year, at his own initiative, Smith allocated a few hours to meet with any colleague who wished to run an idea through the policy development process.

Along with key members of Abbott’s staff – Mark Roberts and Andrew Stone – they met individually with almost every member of the Coalition party room. And many of these backbenchers came with well-researched and well-conceived proposals that derived from their unique local experience and personal expertise. A highly credible source informs me that the controversial, former Liberal Party MP now Speaker, Peter Slipper, was one of the very few backbenchers not to take up this opportunity.

Some of the ideas emanating from Coalition backbenchers have produced policy gold, with Robb and Smith marking them for further development.

Abbott himself has been keeping a keen eye on who has shown enough interest to make a contribution and noted that some of the least-known backbenchers have produced the most thorough and dynamic work. Indeed some of these backbenchers have been given research tasks to support possible policy initiatives.

Throughout this process, the policy development team has been well aware of the fiscal constraints a Coalition government will face if it were to win the next federal election. Not only have the Rudd and Gillard governments squandered the $45 billion nest egg left by John Howard and Peter Costello, but Labor has driven the commonwealth more than $100bn into debt.

So any policy initiatives will have to be tempered by the over-riding imperative that the federal budget be restored to surplus ASAP. Moreover, Robb and Smith have worked hard to ensure that Coalition policy will reflect the small-government principles that are at the core of their Liberal world view.

As a result of all this hard work and as yet unknown to many, the Coalition is going into this year with a quiver full of policy arrows. Thus, even in the unlikely event of the federal election coming early, the Abbott-led opposition will be positioned on solid policy ground to take the fight to a dysfunctional Gillard government.

Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University Ross Fitzgerald’s latest book is the co-authored political satire Fools’ Paradise, published in Melbourne by Arcadia and Australian Scholarly Publishing. The Weekend Australian January 14 -15, 2012.

Every day we see media reports from around the globe painting a picture of instability. Whether it is financial and political upheaval in Greece and Italy, the Occupy protest movement, instability throughout the Middle East, or the possibilities of worldwide earthquakes, floods and tsunamis, we are facing an ever more uncertain world in 2012.

Few doubt that Australia is a fortunate country. We are blessed with an enviable way of life, great weather, abundant natural resources, a spirit of enterprise and a willingness to have a go. We also have a track record of stable and sound policy-making, where business and investors have a high degree of certainty that they will not be subject to inconsistent and changing policy decisions. This is something we must not take for granted.

Consumers are not unlike businesses and investors in their desire for stability and certainty – to know the field on which they are playing and a game where the rules are not changing day by day. After four years of federal Labor government they are not getting that. Decisions are moving too quickly, and there is much more focus on the next headline or photo opportunity than getting the right outcome for the nation. This has led to a sense of reform fatigue and uncertainty.

Investors and consumers are now increasingly cautious. As one long-time observer of federal politics remarked to me recently: “They are looking for a safe pair of hands to guide them through the uncertainty that lies ahead and they have no confidence that the Julia Gillard government is up to it.” Confidence has been eroded by a series of policy changes and backflips.

Take for example the carbon tax. Just five days before the 2010 election the Prime Minister made an iron-clad promise that there would be no carbon tax. Then six months later she retreated. The mining tax has also left business and the public confused.

But for many it was the ban, and then reversal of the ban, on live cattle exports that sums up the Gillard government’s approach to policy making. Faced with a bad media story one night on television, the government moved to ban all exports of live cattle to Indonesia, without warning and without negotiation. It left an entire industry in the lurch and unfairly maligned. Then the penny dropped and within weeks the ban was lifted, leaving our nearest neighbours scratching their heads over whether Australia remained a reliable place to do business. This has certainly contributed to significantly fewer Indonesian orders for Australian cattle in 2012 and beyond.

For four years now Australia has witnessed waste on a grand scale. The Building the Education Revolution wasting up to $8 billion; about $2.4 billion wasted on pink batts in roofs, laptops in schools, the solar homes program, and $300 million in green loans before the program was scrapped. And all that before the $50 billion on the NBN without a business case, and those $900 cheques to dead people and people living overseas. Then, just 48 hours after the government had appeared to get the message in its slash and burn mini-budget, our federal politicians were at it again, being awarded big future pay rises that could make Ms Gillard’s salary higher than that of the US president.

Australians are looking for more from their national government. We are willing to listen to the message that now it is time to tighten our belts, but only if the government leads from the front and does the same itself. This is the overwhelming lesson from the current turmoil in Europe – that governments must live within their means. Most governments are net borrowers of money and, just like any citizen with a home loan, this comes with responsibilities. Lenders will be tolerant and patient to a point, but there comes a time when the debt will be called in. Some European nations notably failed to heed the warnings and were spending well beyond their means – with catastrophic results. Australia must not be allowed to take the same path.

While Australia is relatively well positioned to ride out the increased global uncertainty that almost certainly will come our way, we could be in better shape. Recently, much of the political debate in Australia has been focused on the economy. The opposition has been demanding the government commit to its promise of returning the budget to surplus. Some economists disagree with this, arguing that, in light of the economic and fiscal crisis in Europe and slowing growth in China and the US, running a deficit at this time would be acceptable. But there is no way the Coalition will give Labor a leave pass on the surplus or indeed that federal Labor would find a deficit next year in any way acceptable.

It is clear the state of the economy will be central to the next federal election, with both sides battling to seize the mantle as better economic manager. Despite Treasurer Wayne Swan’s solid work, this is an argument the Coalition seems to be winning, recently extending its lead over Labor as the preferred economic manager. The Coalition’s message is simple – “Tax cuts without a carbon tax” – and it is resonating with voters. Joe Hockey leads the Coalition’s economic team, and along with opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb, upcoming West Australian Senator Mathias Cormann, and former Peter Costello adviser Tony Smith, is keeping the heat on the Gillard government. But Hockey in particular needs to keep upping the ante to counteract the essentially unfair perception that he does not work hard enough. This is important because, apart from the Employment, Workplace Relations, Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten and Defence Minister Stephen Smith, increasingly the ALP’s most reliable foot soldier seems to be Swan himself.

The Coalition will use every available opportunity to remind voters of its economic record – repaying Labor’s $96 billion debt and running surpluses in 10 out of 12 budgets that helped deliver real tax cuts. Tony Abbott and Hockey will continue to remind voters that, just four years ago, we had no debt. In fact there was $45 billion in the bank and the budget was in surplus. Net debt has now soared to more than $130 billion. There have been four consecutive budget deficits and citizens are starting to wonder whether Labor will actually be able to deliver a surplus and start paying down Australia’s credit card. And this at a time when most ordinary citizens saw the Labor Party’s national conference dominated by what many considered fringe issues, especially gay marriage and uranium sales to India.

The government must get back to core business. Australians are facing ever increasing cost-of-living pressures and, while the cut to interest rates is certainly welcome, the cost of food, electricity, schoolbooks and clothes, petrol and health care continues to weigh down the family budget. As international economic storm clouds strengthen, and with even Labor signaling that unemployment in Australia is on the way up, workers and families are beginning to feel increasingly uneasy over their futures.

Twelve months ago some commentators had written off Gillard suggesting she may not see out 2011 as Prime Minister. Labor has been floundering in the polls since the carbon tax promise was broken in February, but despite many predicting a leadership challenge, a defection of one of the independents, or the resignation of Craig Thomson bringing down her government, Gillard is still standing. But at what cost?

The challenge for Labor is to re-engage with the electorate. However some astute watchers maintain that it is too late for that. The ALP’s primary vote has flatlined in most major opinion polls and Gillard’s approval rating remains largely negative among voters who appear to be unforgiving of the way she dispatched Kevin Rudd 18 months ago and also of her carbon tax lie.

That is not to say all is lost for Labor. Many remember the perilous situation the federal Coalition faced at the start of 2001. First in the West Australian and Queensland state elections and then the Ryan by-election in Brisbane, the Liberals were annihilated. The Coalition’s stocks looked so low that few opinion leaders were prepared to entertain the prospect of Howard winning the election due later that year. But history shows how, once he re-engaged with the electorate, the voters started listening again. Soon after, the opinion polls swung back Howard’s way.

Gillard and federal Labor should take a lesson from this. The electorate can change its views, but first this government must get the political, economic and fiscal fundamentals right. At the very least, Labor must resolve, one way or another, what Abbott rightly terms the poisonous dysfunction between Gillard and Foreign Minister Rudd, who the PM should have sacked in her recent ministerial reshuffle.

It also needs to sideline the MP who remains its weakest link in the revamped Labor cabinet, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. This is because Conroy has overseen both the national broadband debacle and the very dubious deal that gave the $223 million Australian Network contract to the ABC instead of preferred tender Sky News.

Above all, the federal Labor government must restore confidence to consumers and to business. There must be an end to the chaotic policy approach that delivers little but instability and uncertainty. Australians want, and rightfully deserve, a government that will restore trust and confidence. Not to do so poses too great a risk as a great many Australians face this new year more than somewhat anxious and uncomfortable about the future.

Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University.
The Daily Telegraph, January 06, 2012, pp 30-31

The blunt reality is that Bligh’s government is one of the worst in Queensland history. Neither the Premier nor her government is up to the job. Its defeat will be primarily because of its incompetence. It is little wonder that eight key members of the Bligh team, including six former ministers, are retiring at the state election. They have simply given up on Bligh and Queensland Labor.

The theft of $16 million of public funds by a Queensland Health employee is the last straw in a history of incompetence that ranges from the health payroll debacle to poor financial mismanagement that led to the loss of Queensland’s cherished AAA credit rating. There are now 16 million more reasons for Queenslanders to vote against Bligh. Many senior Labor figures find the Bligh government so embarrassing that they are distancing themselves from it at an alarming rate.

When former premier Peter Beattie handed over to his deputy, Bligh, in September 2007, the popular Labor government enjoyed a two-party preferred vote of 59 per cent and a primary vote of 50 per cent. The transition followed years of Beattie promoting Bligh over other ministers into tough portfolios to enhance her experience. At the time it was regarded as an ideal transition.

Bligh enjoyed strong public support until her policies and performance showed a rapid decline to the point where today the Liberal National Party under Campbell Newman enjoys at least 59 per cent two-party preferred support and is on track to give Labor an absolute hiding whenever Bligh goes to the polls.

It was a serious error of judgment on Beattie’s part to promote Bligh when there were more talented choices available, including John Mickel and Rod Welford. It seems Beattie was more interested in putting Queensland’s first female premier into office than promoting the best candidate.

State Labor’s problems started when Bligh became more focused on image than on performance. Her promotion of inexperienced supporters into cabinet at the expense of senior colleagues (such as Mickel, who is now Speaker; former police minister Judy Spence; former attorney-general Kerry Shine; and former ministers Lindy Nelson-Carr, Robert Schwarten and Margaret Keech) was designed to make her government look good but took its toll in poor administration in transport, health, infrastructure delivery and water, and in the cost of electricity.

Bligh’s failure to sack former health minister and close friend Paul Lucas over the health department’s payroll fiasco showed personal loyalty had precedence over performance. There also was not enough focus on detail. Instead, Bligh concentrated on managing the latest political disaster. The damage from this crisis management soon became irreparable.

Also, many members of Bligh’s cabinet are lazy. Government ministers are rarely seen at business events in Brisbane or in key regional centres and LNP frontbenchers are being openly courted as future ministers. The Bligh government has lost the links with business vigorously developed by Wayne Goss and Beattie. It is a pale imitation of past Labor governments.

The fat bureaucratic structure of super departments was so cumbersome that one director-general was responsible to several ministers, making the public service process-driven rather than outcome-focused.

Besides, the quality of directors-general slipped as Bligh appointed favourites or ideological fellow travellers over quality candidates.

This resulted in a failure to properly oversee projects such as the desalination plant on the Gold Coast and the water grid; cost overruns on infrastructure; the protection of farmland from the expansion of the gas industry until it was too late; failure to build cyclone-proof infrastructure along the coast before last summer’s cyclone season; and accepting without question the recommended electricity price hikes from the regulator. The government also blindly followed Treasury’s line to abolish the fuel subsidy, which means Queenslanders now pay more for fuel.

The government ran away from tough decisions on matters such as the 10 per cent mandatory level of ethanol in fuel; taking the fight to Kevin Rudd’s federal government over the building of the Traveston dam; and the use of recycled water. Crucially, it caved in to union demands for budget-breaking enterprise bargaining deals that helped drive the state over the financial brink. This was the underlying reason for the state’s loss of its AAA credit rating.

The only tough decision the Bligh government made was on the sale of government assets such as railways to fund the budget shortfall. But even here Bligh made a hash of its implementation by not putting the issue to the people in the 2009 state election, thus costing her valuable credibility. The deal also meant Queensland sold off the most profitable parts of Queensland Rail and kept the unprofitable parts. On election night, Labor seats will fall to the LNP throughout the regions because of how the QR sale was handled. The Bligh government is guilty of 4 1/2 years of dysfunctional administration and Queenslanders know it.

Deputies are often promoted beyond their abilities into the top job. Bligh was such a deputy and state Labor will pay a price. It is normally foolhardy to predict the outcome of an election with two or three months to go, but all published research confirms Queenslanders have reached the view that Newman and the LNP couldn’t possibly do a worse job than Bligh and state Labor. Premier Newman will have a substantial majority.

When Labor examines why it lost the 2012 Queensland election it should start with Beattie’s ill-advised decision to promote Bligh as his successor.

Ross Fitzgerald, emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University, is the co-author, most recently, of the political satire Fools’ Paradise.

The Weekend Australian, December 31, 2011