Four Thoughts on Last Thursday

So last week happened, and almost everything that I have read regarding the anti-climactic spill that occurred on Thursday has been either analysing the pathologies of Rudd and Gillard that led to this bizarre spectacle or simply re-iterating the now overwhelming narrative that the ALP is doomed for electoral oblivion come September. I want to broaden the discussion somewhat so I wanted to share four thoughts I had on the whole business.

1. The way we elect leaders in this country is fundamentally broken.
Nobody who watched what unfolded on Thursday could possibly defend our current model of electing parliamentary leaders in the ALP. The comparisons made to the TV show Game of Thrones are spot on, in that Thursday looked like something that would be more likely to occur in Westeros than a modern parliamentary democracy. And don't even get me started on people who smugly tweeted along the lines of 'well we elect a party not a leader etc' and accuse the baffled of 'not understanding the Westminster system'; the way elections in Australia now operate are thoroughly presidential and even the country that created the Westminster system has developed an actually democratic way of electing its parliamentary leaders. The ALP needs to open up voting for its parliamentary leaders to all party members like most other social democratic parties around the world. It's not even a debate anymore.

2. The fault lines in the Rudd/Gillard conflict are psychological.
Any coverage of the Labor party's mechanisms have a tendency to blame its ills on the opaque and bizarre world of factions within the party, and a lot of the time that is quite reasonable. In this case however, these criticisms do not reflect the reality, as the Rudd/Gillard divide is bizarrely unfactional. Nor is the division ideological, any cause that unites Joel Fitzgibbon and Doug Cameron (both Rudd backers who represent the full ideological breadth of the party) cannot be. No, the Rudd/Gillard divide in the caucus is pure psychodrama, where each individual MP responds to the guilt, shame and terror of Labor's current electoral position in unique and often illogical ways. Nothing expresses this more clearly than the fall of Kim Carr, the Victorian Left powerbroker who actually oversaw Julia Gillard's rise to power, only to become a key Rudd supporter from almost the moment that she took over from Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. What psychological forces could possibly have forced such a drastic change in his mind, I do not know. But at least let's not pretend that this is factional.

3. The Labor Party's approach to the coming election is increasingly existential.
At the risk of sounding like too much of a wanker, Camus would have had a lot to say about the Labor Party in its current state. There is an oppressive sense of despair within the party about the coming election and really about the movement itself, and it creates the kind of environment that lets events like Thursday occur without really surprising anyone. Labor, throughout its history, has lost a great many elections, and often they have been far more painful than this (1975 strikes me as the most devastating), and I do not agree with those who see the polls as entirely catastrophic. The polls do point to a loss, and a big loss, but certainly not the kind of electoral wipeout that has occurred to the ALP in Queensland or NSW in the past few years. But the prospect of losing this one comes at a time when the party sees itself as being in a state of crisis as a movement and against a resurgent Liberal party represented by Tony Abbott, and the result is that it feels as if the very notion of the centre-left government is in question. The fact that this election will be fought and (probably) lost in Western Sydney cannot be overstated, its almost a geographic enactment of Labor's identity crisis.

4. The Labor Party needs to sell something BIG.
The real problem with Thursday, and indeed all of this leadership business is that it looks petty. And it is, it is the sum of each caucus member's personal response to both leaders and the situation the party is in, and that is what has been dominating the media instead of what this government has actually achieved. This government has, in extraordinary circumstances, actually passed some incredibly important pieces of legislation, far more than they achieved under Kevin Rudd. The NDIS stands out as an exemplary piece of centre-left policy that extends the welfare state to people who need it the most. The problem, however, is that the Labor has compartmentalised their reforms and has not drawn a common arc between them to counteract the Liberal Party's false narrative of 'incompetence'. They need to sell a vision of Australia that encompasses all their reforms and they need to place their period in government in the context of the broader Labor narrative of creating a better society. The only way to defeat the cheap populism of the modern Liberal party is to talk to the Australian public like adults and reassure them as to why they periodically elect Labor governments to power. This strategy might not win the election, but it will at least unite the party and offer the media an alternative to talking about whether Kevin Rudd is a nice guy or not.

I'm just going to end on an endorsement of Mark Latham's Quarterly Essay on the Labor Party. There were parts that I disagreed with to the point of anger, but it is a stark and sober discussion on what the Labor party should be and anyone who considers these matters to be of importance should give it a read.

On Qanda

QandA returns to TV today, and I think its worth taking some time to talk about this show divorced from the specifics of a single episode. I'm not going to lie, I missed it pretty hard; there was a point in January where I started rereading my QandA tweets from last year to try and recreate episodes that I have seen.

Everyone has a favourite QandA moment and mine is definitely this.

This clip encapsulates so much about what I love about QandA. For all the discussion of marriage equality in this country there has been surprisingly little direct conflict between the two sides. One side talks about rights and equality, the other tradition and 'family'. They hold events and press conferences and obliquely answer similar questions.

But right there, on national TV, the two sides of this generation's civil rights struggle were in direct conflict, and Penny Wong used it to reveal the fundamental cruelty of opposing marriage equality and the indignity of seeing the love between two gay people as lesser. For all the posturing and speeches and even regardless of the motion voted down by parliament, to my mind this was the epicentre of the marriage equality debate in this country.

Moments like these justify my compulsive QandA watching. But the truly brilliant moments of QandA only come every so often, I genuinely think the show is great for a number of reasons.

For one, it is also wholly participatory; the ability of the general public to watch and ask questions of the panel gives it an accessibility that I think is the secret of its success. I also am of the opinion that the fact that it is live as well gives it an electrifying feel to it and I simply cannot watch it on repeat.

The Twitter feed is important too, though my grandmother hates it with a passion and only checks it to see if I got a tweet on. I tweet heavily for the show because it has a respect for the medium of Twitter, and an understanding that a larger and larger part of our political discourse is happening online. Where on other shows the twitter feed seems superfluous and self-indulgent, on QandA it adds to the experience of watching it, it doesn't feel like a passive activity at all.

I think the main reason that I watch, though, is because it is important. QandA is the beating heart of Australian politics. In the course of an hour it manages to not only reflect, but to truly represent the political discourse of that particular week. It is a space that allows a diversity of views and opinions to comment on the society that we live with and engage with the contested ideas of the state of our country and what it should be. It is everything that question time was envisaged to be, but with an ability to comment upon broader issues within Australian society.

There is a reason that being on the show gives a panellist a certain level of gravity in the political dimension; to be picked means that you represent a voice in Australia that deserves to be heard. There is a reason that both major political parties send their best performers every week, they are always the MPs who are most calmly able to articulate their parties' positions and policies. There is a reason that I think that it is significant that Tony Abbott has not been on QandA for several years.

Whereas the prime minister goes on the program roughly once a year, Abbott has not been on the program since 2010 despite the fact that there has been a standing invitation ever since. This reluctance to engage in the epicentre of Australian political discourse is unfortunate and it should be scrutinised. Every press conference should include a question asking when he will appear. The Labor party should be making hay of this, every time a member of the government goes on there should be an acknowledgement that Tony Abbott is not there. Anthony Albanese should have a pithy little line that gets on the news about it. There should be hashtags. There should be memes.

Tony Abbott should not be able to go to an election without having made at least one appearance on the show that embodies political debate in this country. If there's one thing that I want out of QandA this year it is the sight of Tony Abbott answering directly the questions of the Australian people.

As for what else is discussed, we'll have to wait and see. I believe that is all I have time for, see you next week (or whenever I next feel like writing something).

ICAC Inquiry Drinking Game

Are you a member of the NSW Labor party? Have you been following the current ICAC inquiry into Obeid, MacDonald and their cohort? Well now you have an excuse to drink heavily whilst doing so, which seems to be the only rational way to respond to it.


You Will Need

1 x bottle of spirits (preferably hard and miserable)
1 x shot glass per player
1 x ALP membership ticket to sadly reflect upon as you play the game (optional)


The Rules


One shot for every laboured attempt to use the -gate suffix.

One shot for every mention of the term 'slush fund'.

One shot for prostitutes.

Two shots for rent-boys*.

One shot for any comment that connects the number of QC's representing the Obeid family to the $800 million that Obeid allegedly** made out of this.

One shot for every MP suspended from the party.

Two shots for every expulsion from the party.

One shot for every pissweak party reform idea that Sam Dastyari proposes.

One shot for every attempt by the Liberal Party to blame the unions for this.

Two shots for every time the Liberal Party mentions Peter Debnam.

Three shots for every time the Liberal Party mentions Nick Greiner.

One shot for every picture of Obeid's mansion on the evening news.

One shot if any defendant cites 'human weakness' as their justification.

Two shots if any defendant cites 'YOLO' as their justification.

One shot if anybody thinks that 'The Terrigals' were a band that was played a couple of times on Triple J in the 90's.


Special Rules


The Thommo- At the first mention of Craig Thompson in the actual inquiry itself (because he has to be in there somewhere) all participants must shout 'A Wild Craig Thompson Appears' and take a shot. The last participant to do so has to go and purchase another bottle of spirits, preferably on a union credit card.

The Plot Twist- At the beginning of the game, all participants must decide what the crazy 'Homeland'-style plot twist in all of this is going to be and write them on a slip of paper that is then collected in a hat. Some suggestions include:
-It was all a dream
-Eddie Obeid clicked one of those 'You Have Won $800 Million' spam emails and that's how it all occurred. 
-Eric Roozendaal is carrying Joe Tripodi's baby.
-Ian MacDonald was an accomplice to that bomb collar guy.
-The Terrigals WERE a band that got some rotation on Triple J in the 90's
The entries are read out, and if that person's plot twist comes true then that person gets immediately elected head of the NSW parliamentary Labor Party.






*Not trying to be hetero-normative here, just passing comment that considering that almost all of the figures involved in this are professedly straight men with wives and children the addition of male prostitutes to this scandal would be a rather salacious twist.

**Please do not sue me. I used the word allegedly, surely that has placated you and your very expensive legal team, Mr Obeid.

In Defence of Our Bodily Fluids

Courtesy of @AnthonyChisolm

I’m glad to hear that there is still a political party whose members are willing to talk about the REAL issues, the Queensland LNP.

I wonder if the honourable member became aware of this during the physical act of love?