Leadershit

According to the experts, the political contest this September is between Julia Gillard and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) on the one side and Tony Abbott and a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party (LNP) on the other.

With a host of small parties fighting for the scraps.  Incidentaly this is where the real contest will be - watch the Senate.  And independents will shine everywhere ;-)

The current polls show that the voters are seriously in favour of the LNP coalition - and that the ALP - our current government will be decimated come election day.  I have no reason to doubt them.

I had my political knowledge enhanced yesterday about what the Australian voter is up to.  Have they "parked" their vote with Tony until they can make a real decision about who to vote for closer to the election?

And have they done this because the Labor Party is in turmoil over its leadershit?  Recall that Kevin Rudd was leader until 2010 when he was deposed by the faceless men who installed Julia Gillard in the top job.  But she has failed to impress and the people have stopped listening to her - hence the poor polls.  Apparently the "parked" voters are awaiting a Rudd resurrection.

Now the political assassination of Rudd has never been properly explained but it was essentially a "coup" by the right wing unions to re-take control of the ALP.  Rudd was never a union chap and the bovver boys couldn't tolerate an "outsider" leading "their" party - especially when he showed some independence - so they boned him and installed Gillard.  The ALP was once a broad based party - including "progressives, moderates, social democrats and unionists".  Now it is  run by and for the unions.

Of course no-one knows any of that because it hasn't been advertised - and it won't be because they still want to hang onto as many of those "progressive, moderate and social democratic" votes as they can get at the coming election.  Remember that votes equal money paid by you and me.

All of which is why the leadershit is just that.  Those who now control the ALP will never let Rudd back into the top job.  They will keep Gillard because she is one of them.  They intend to go to the election with Gillard leading the charge - because when they come out the other side all those pesky "progressives, moderates and social democrats" will have been purged.  And the right wing unions will then have their beloved ALP all to themselves.

Won't that be fun Virginia?

Boganistas

For more than 40 years Australian's have been "conditioned" by an ugly right wing media that promotes racist, sexist and other bogan behaviour as being "normal".  Uncle Rupert's little empire is responsible for much of it but all of our media participate - because it was once a profitable game for them.

But some people are starting to rebel - in the past week we have seen the head of Army vent at the most recent military sex outrage and others express their disgust at the treatment dished out to PM Gillard by shockjock Howard Sattler.

Of course, none of this is new.  It might be that the volume has been turned up a bit because it is an election year - but frankly and embarrassingly - it's been part of Australian culture for decades.  It was certainly there when I was in the Army 40 years ago.

The really sad thing is that few Australians want to discuss it - we pretend that it doesn't exist.  And that's the real problem.

But now we have a new and even more disturbing element that helps fan the flames of bogan behaviour.  Our so-called leaders.

Once upon a time our political leaders recognised their responsibility to not incite fear and hatred.  Every political leader up to and including Kevin Rudd knew about this unwritten rule.

But since the Liberal party installed Abbott and adopted the US Republican party play book back in 2009 - things have gotten worse.  A lot worse.

For four years Abbott has been lying to the Australian people and stirring up enormous fear and hatred.  His non-stop chanting of the word "illegal" around asylum seekers has cruelled any sympathy that we have for their plight.  He has used the Nazi Goebbels fear and hatred techniques to demonise asylum seekers, berate the carbon price, beat up the unemployed, talk down the economy, pick on the prime minister and her ministers and generally shit stir.  And he has been aided and abetted by other nasty bastards on his front bench.

And that was always the plan.  Rupert and friends have spent a lifetime "conditioning" us - Abbott is now supposed to be reaping the benefits.  The puppeteer did all the work - and now the puppet is supposed to get him a result.

And it seems to be working a treat - because the Liberals have a commanding lead in the polls and most pundits expect them to form the next Australian government after we vote in mid September.

A large part of their polling success is driven by bogans who have supposedly risen up in a booze fuelled outrage.  Much of the time they sit in their undies in front of the TV or the PC and vent at it using the remote - or a beer can ;-)

But since 2009 their spiritual leader Abbott has shown that he is prepared to say what he thinks in public - and that is the signal for them to follow suit.

So now we have every half-arsed bogan saying what they think in public - and it aint a good look.

At least Murdoch and Abbott have a plan - few of their followers have a clue.

My List

Here is my personal list of reasons why I won't be voting for Ms Gillard and the ALP in the coming election.

* US Military Bases - here and here
* Prism - here
* James Clapper OA - here
* Suppressing dole payment - here
* Demonising unemployed - here and here and here and here
* Asylum seeker nightmare - here and here
* US suck up - here and here
* Foreign policy - here and here
* Fiscal austerity - here and here
* Industry policy - here and here and here
* Iraq war inquiry - here and here
* Fuel subsidy to miners - here
* Julian Assange - here and here
* Faulkner reforms - here

And Mr Abbott and the LNP are worse, I can't be bothered making a list for them - it would take weeks.

The ALP have become the political arm of the right wing union movement and the LNP are busy re-creating the mad hatter's tea party.  Neither offer anything of interest to me.

I haven't yet decided who to vote for but it will likely be an Independent or a small party - an individual and/or an organisation that is concerned for the national interest - not their own personal interest or even the interest of a belligerent foreign power.

I will let you know who I choose.

Politician - your use-by date has expired

Professor Bill Mitchell is a prolific writer and always has some valuable insight about what is going on behind the scenes - I have pinched the following quote from this post.

"In Australia, the Treasury tell the government to engage in fiscal austerity, which kills growth and forces the central bank to then lower interest rates to salvage the situation".

"But the relative effectiveness of the two arms of policy are different (fiscal policy is more effective) and so growth still suffers. The government strategy has the logical conclusion – that RBA rates go to zero and the economy enters recession – and then their tax base collapses (even more than now) and they fail to achieve their surplus anyway. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs".

How could this be good for the nation?

The reason why the Labor government is doing it is to keep some bragging rights when next they are in opposition.  Plus they think they will trap the current opposition - which is likely to be our government - when the nation enters recession in 2014.

They think that Messrs Abbott, Hockey and Robb will be so locked into their crazy ideology that they won't be able to respond adequately - (and they're not the only ones).  And if they did respond then they would have to abandon the cult of austerity that now defines them.  An interesting dilemma and quite a clever political strategy - except we the people have become the pawns.

When the political contest resumes after the coming election, Labor will loudly declare - that they were the "lowest spending government since blah" and that "interest rates were lower under their watch - and other blah and faux bullshit".

And the worst thing is that many of us will believe it to be a good thing - because we want to believe it.  Never mind the thousands of unemployed.

Seriously, "How is it good for the nation for the government of the day to slash government spending - in pursuit of a magical surplus - thus forcing the RBA to lower interest rates to keep the place growing" - all to salvage some bragging rights and to trap the opposition?  And to try to appeal to the vast numbers of stupid people who have bought into the "government debt is bad" myth?

When did this become the main game, Virginia?

If our polity has become so bad that our government has to revert to myths, games and other bullshit - all to *appear* to be good economic managers - then it is time we ditched it and found an alternative.

Red vs Blue

The problems of Ford and Labor are eerily similar.

Ford has demonstrated poor management and a business as usual mindset while admitting that they haven't been paying attention as their customers needs changed.

Their failure is mostly a result of an inability to re-invent themselves as their markets evolved.  All compounded by the fact that headquarters was in another country, another hemisphere and another timezone - with the bosses there more concerned with dealing with bigger problems.  If Ford AU had a local management team and some autonomy then things *might* have been different.

But this is actually a very common problem with Australian companies and is the main reason why you won't find much creativity or innovation happening here.  Even our locally owned and managed corporations don't innovate - because they don't need to when their competition is operating like Ford.

It's why we have a corporate class that has evolved into rent-seekers.  It pains me to say it but our corporate management is pretty much a joke.

So what is Labor's excuse?

They have also demonstrated poor management and a business as usual mindset while admitting that they haven't been paying attention as their customers needs changed.

Their failure is also because they haven't been able to re-invent themselves.  They thought that voters wouldn't evolve and the same-old "Red vs Blue" contest would last forever.  They wasted the decade they had in opposition and didn't bother to renew.  Now they are facing another decade in the wilderness.  I suspect that the very few thinkers left in the Labor party have worked it out - but the bulk of them won't until after September 14th.

There are lots of failures - but the one that demonstrates for me the head in the sand attitude that got them into the current mess is their failure to properly deal with the Henry Tax review.  The rot set in when they mistook their own interests for the national interest - without properly understanding either.

And now they will pay the price.

Who is responsible?

Given that Tony and his team of Howard has-beens and tea-party apprentices will likely romp it in later this year - I am curious about who is responsible for the distorted and lop-sided nature of our politics.  Who created this mess - and who owns it?

* Is it our Labor politicians who seem unable to engage and communicate effectively?

* Is it our Coalition politicians who's fantasy and imagination might sometimes appear believable?

* Is it our "world class media" - who think that stroking the right wingers while "making shit up" will keep them relevant?

* Or is it the actual voters themselves?

Well it might even be a combination of all these things - but in my view the biggest culprit is us.  As Julia once famously said - "We are Us" ;-)

Yes we the voters are so remote, so disengaged, so uninformed and so uncurious about what is going on with our polity that we are likely to make some very poor choices when next we push a pencil in a polling booth.

Howard taught us to go for greed when he expanded middle class welfare - all funded by windfall revenues from the first act of the mining boom.  The only thing that mattered during his period in office was how much we could personally extract from these programmes.  The "baby bonus" symbolises how out of control this was - a $5000 lump sum paid to anyone who managed to produce a baby - just surreal!  The nation now has a fleet of 4wd's on the never-never, roaming around carrying mums and their babies as a result.  Unintended consequences - not very many ;-)

The beneficiaries of this largesse now have great difficulty in understanding the "National Interest".  For a decade the only thing that mattered was their "Personal Interest" and they knew that it was closely aligned with the Coalition and little Johnny.  Naturally they are leaning toward Tony and the Coalition in 2013.  They don't much like him but they think he will resurrect the handouts that rusted them on to his predecessor.  Little do they know.

All of which is why the Labor government has had a difficult time over the past 5 years.  The "National Interest" is a foreign concept to many voters -  and important challenges like climate change are just not things that they worry about.

We know this because Tony has become brave enough to stand up on national television and promise to abolish the "carbon tax" when he becomes PM.  It says a lot about Australians that they will happily vote for a man who puts their short term personal interests ahead of the biggest and most dangerous threat to humanity ever.

His ignorance of the climate threat and his resulting inability to deal with it is the main reason why he should never be allowed near the levers.

And it seems like I am not the only one who thinks he is unsuitable for office.

It's Not Often

It's not very often that a big technology opportunity presents itself - but there is one right in front of our noses.

Over nearly 40 years Microsoft has grown from a small, focussed and innovative company to a huge technology monopoly.  And like all such beasts it has become arrogant and uncaring.  The "Windows" and "Office" franchises are cash cows that Ballmer and friends seem intent on milking to death.

And in my view that death isn't very far away.  If you doubt me then you haven't been paying attention to what is going on with Windows 8.  It is basically just another layer of complexity on top of an already unnecessarily complex system.

And it has become unusable.

But there's more - it's not just Windows that is a mangy dog - our friends at Intel have been fiddling with the BIOS (basic input output system) that every PC uses to manage the boot process.  They have introduced a thing called UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface).  And Microsoft have added a thing called Secure Boot - which can secure the boot process by preventing the loading of drivers or OS loaders that are not signed with an "acceptable" digital signature.

Sounds good doesn't it.  Extensible Firmware Interface and Secure Boot - these things are there to protect us right?  Or they would be if their implementations weren't broken, buggy and flawed - and if those bugs and flaws weren't exploited by the folks at Redmond and elsewhere to keep their competition at bay.

Which is what has happened.  I bought a new low-end notebook recently that came pre-installed with Windows 8.  It took 2 days of seemingly non-stop disk activity to update itself.  When I got sick of that and tried to install Linux - I soon realised the folly of UEFI and Secure Boot - which *almost* thwarted my every move.  Fortunately I know some people ;-)

And now I have a small, lightweight notebook running Linux (Kubuntu) and it is fantastic.  At least ten times more responsive than the monolithic Windows 8 and no incessant disk thrashing.

So what's the opportunity?

Well there are two actually - the first is to build some clever software tools to diagnose and deal with the craziness of UEFI and Secure Boot - because these things are going to become much more widespread.  Eventually all new PC's will have them - and that will effectively stop you and me from installing our operating system of choice.  Perhaps this is worth a look?

And the second is to help the folks at Wine - and in particular Winelib - so we can run our existing windows applications (that we have already paid the Microsoft tax on) on our non Microsoft operating system of choice.

Of course these opportunities assume that we do still have some technology skills in the nation and that we have enough curious people to exploit them.  Do we?