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Jumat, 11 Februari 2011

The NBN Will Be Scrapped When the Coalition Wins Government

Will Australia ever have a National Broadband Network? It seems it will only be partially completed before the Coalition wins the next election and puts a red line through it all. Telstra will remain the controlling body when NBN.com takes over. Not much will change in Australia's communication sector. Those who miss out will be terribly bitter about the mish-mash of a system we are left with. Just why the Coalition hates the NBN is hard to clarify. Why don't they want the nation to move forward with a world-class Internet network?

Telstra is being criticized for being too competitive in price cutting. There is not much profit left for small telcos. Surely, this is the way of the market, but is Telstra trying to "grab" the market before it gains control over a market that will be opened up again with a coalition win?

Telstra will survive a re-adjustment when smaller firms will fail. The Labor Government sees the deal "done" and a majority of the population believes this to be the case. It is certain however, that a new government will bring a stop it all - bloody minded or not. The NBN company will be dissolved. Australian right wing parties are dead against formation of the new national body. After all, they sold off Telstra.

Only one thing will stop this happening: that is Labor, The Greens and Independents could retain control of the upper house. Perhaps the Coalition will not need the upper house in order to scrap it?

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Kamis, 23 September 2010

Tony Abbott Will Not Hurt Labor

Ferocity won't win anything. We now have a conciliatory government. Despite hopes by Tony Abbott to end the governing coalition, this shall not happen. Withdrawing from a legally drawn up agreement to pair speaker and deputy speaker votes shows he is an opportunist. When he thought he would gain government with support of the independents he was all for the agreement. Now he hopes to derail the Government at its first step. If one of the governing independents votes with the opposition on an issue that particular legislation will not get through. That is all it means. Julia Gillard has already given warning that some things will not pass.

A loss by one vote is the same as a loss by fifty votes. During the last government the Opposition with the help of the Greens knocked back the Emissions Trading Scheme. The Government didn't change however. Now the Greens want an EMS at the first opportunity. It's no wonder when they realized how silly it was to end the first scheme. Any scheme is better than none.

The bets are on that Tony Abbott will lose his cool during the first term of government when things do not go his way. How he has held himself together so far is a miracle. He is bound to insult the independents with a personal remark. The independents have a point to prove - this government is theirs and they know it. Tony Abbott will not gain much by insulting Labor parliamentarians. They do not have the real power. With all the compromises Labor will make this will disarm the Opposition. In reality it must attack the independents. This is the only hope of bringing the Government down. The independents will not want this to happen, at just about any cost. They have already thrown away the electorate support they had from nominal Opposition voters.

Tony Abbott will follow in Peter Costello's footsteps and be a prime ministerial contender who could not make the final step. It will be a long time before the next election. With the ongoing frustration other Opposition members could spit the dummy as well. Christopher Pyne was ranting with enjoyment when the Debate was turned down. He was notably drawn and quiet when the election result became clear. And the lady who put the knife in Malcolm Turnbull's back is still there spinning her web - nasty as ever. When Tony Abbot was first made leader and jokes were made in the House about his flirtations with Julia Gillard she did mouth something quite objectionable.

The real mystery is will mister nice guy Joe Hockey ever by prime minister. Now there is someone every mother would like as a son, and probably vote for.

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Rabu, 08 September 2010

We Have the Government We Deserve

Well we have a government. There could be shaky times ahead but it seems the independents did the rational thing. Supporting the coalition would have given them only a one vote working majority. It was assumed all three independents would go one way. With the two independents Labor has two votes in hand under the new agreed system with Bob Katter voting against the government. Bob Katter is a real National Party person - no ifs no buts. He would have known what the others were going to do. For all his talking his electorate got nothing. He obviously knew which way he would fall all along. It was all show.

Ironically, the Coalition has given Labor an extra vote by having a member of the opposition as deputy speaker with no voting power. Tony Abbott was not thinking clearly when he made that decision. Not giving in to this could have swung the two independents the other way. The Western Australian National must have had an effect. He said he would not block supply for the Coalition. His decision to sit on the cross bench gave the impression that he was not fully supportive though.

After the treasury analysed the Coalition election promises, throwing more money at the independents had no effect. A brand new hospital was clearly far too much for the Tasmanian representative. It seems Tony Abbott had lost credibility. His behavior in the election came back to haunt him. Something fishy was about when his promises were not costed initially.

The real "swinger" was the National Broadband Network. If the Coalition had just said it would review the NBN it would have won office without this fiasco. You can sometimes be too stubborn for your own good. Many have said if labor had not brought the mining tax in the coalition would have done so. It was like the GST - a Labor idea adopted by the coalition. Pity Tony Abbott was not more like John Howard who saw some good in Labor concepts.

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Jumat, 03 September 2010

Australian Voters Were Not Ambivalent

During the election Bob Katter said the best thing that could happen would be a hung parliament. He got what he wanted. Time will tell if he backs a Labor government which is the rational thing to do considering support from the "independent" trio would give Labor a working majority of three. Holding up a Coalition government would give only a one vote majority for them. Note the Speaker for the most part does not actually vote. A one vote majority will not hold the course for long. If the independents have not been putting on a show, with their minds already made up from the beginning, then they have no real choice but to back Labor. Choosing the Coalition will show them to be false prophets.

Some pundits have said that Australian voters were ambivalent about both parties. Labor's mismanagement of the economic stimulus, however, was the major factor in the present deadlock. Most Australians want the National Broadband Network. They did not want Labor to lose outright. The mining tax was really a non-factor. People could take it or leave it. All the other issues pushed voters this way and that but did not affect the outcome.

A lack of vision is also put forward by some pundits. Visionaries like Bob Hawke held power mainly due to their strong personality not to great visionary change. Indeed, voters do not like too much change too quickly. The two leaders do not have strong personalities but not having a vision was irrelevant. Green candidates benefitted most from the protest vote. They should bask in their glory, because the vote for them will not be as high as it was ever again.

Campaigning in marginal electorates was to be expected due to the close polling results in the election. Safe electorates were not promised much so it was also said that consumer-driven voting was the main factor. This is only a new term for old fashioned hip-pocket voting. Labor still supports the working "man" and the conservative parties still lean toward big business. Tony Abbot's pet project, maternity leave, not supported by hardly any of his colleges was an oddity of the campaign.

Overall, Labor's campaign did have vision. A great new tax and national "medicare" were bold new ideas. In summary two things were important: Labors mismanagement and the NBN. To a degree they cancelled each other out.

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Selasa, 24 Agustus 2010

The NBN Will Remain an Issue into the Next Election

The NBN will live on. Despite the Coalition winning government with the ex-National Party Independents support, the National Broadband Network will remain with Labor at the next election. Indeed, they will win and put Australia on a path to a better future. There is no way the Australian people will accept "the private sector will provide" because it certainly won't. Telstra is only interested in market share. Hope lies in Telstra investing heavily and freezing out small telcos. This is its long term plan. Faster broadband is needed now, however, for medicine, education and scientific endeavours.

As a voter said in Bob Katter's electorate, God help Bob if he supports a Labor government. He will try to keep broadband. Tony Abbot will refuse and Bob will give in to his own deep conservative emotions. Like the Green who has already said he will support Labor. Eighty percent of Green voters used to vote for Labor. Even Bob Brown the Green leader openly prefers Labor over the Coalition. He has already warned that not much will get through the upper house.

The Coalition has not faced a hostile Senate before. It will be tough going for Tony Abbot. He is not a man for compromise. He has his own opinions and he wants his own way. The maternity leave issue is a case in point. Hardly any Coalition members want this. They don't want a heavier burden placed on business. The mining tax is not over yet either. It will be almost impossible for any government to balance the books without savage cuts much like the cuts in the UK. Like the problem government in the UK which will see the Liberal Democrats blamed for "sleeping with the enemy" and slaughtered at the next election, so the Independents here who go in with either party will face termination at the future poll in Australia.

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