These Were The Days

The Blog That Never Sleeps has been using the festering season as an opportunity to shift office. I am making room for my legal counsel to move in - he is taking over the office and the office has moved into the salubrious surrounds of the art-deco loungeroom here at Sleepless Central. It also moves me further from the Balcony Of Death and the ever present threat of death by pigeon. In the process I am going through piles of files assembled over the last fifteen years or so; they are very revealing about certain people that have shot to prominence in one way or another in recent times. Take the following quote:

The financial markets are populated by a lot of immature, younger-type people who play with their computers and drive home in their Porsches, and who have no understanding of the of the human or economic discussions of unemployment

Who is this rabid Trotskyite? None other than Wayne Swan, now Federal Treasurer, but said in 1994 when he was chairman of the ALP Caucus Economics Committee.

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Ho Bloody Ho

A vision of things to come was provided for us in New Zealand this week, with the Singaporean Government using security guards to belt a few union organisers in Palmerston North. The union folk were trying to get a better redundancy deal for some call centre workers whose jobs are flying off to Manila for the duration. When the ACTU described call centres as the "sweat shops of the 21st Century" they weren't kidding. In a time honoured fashion plod has decided to charge the union organiser for repeatedly headbutting a security guard's fist. A fan of this sort of harmonious social interaction between labour and capital, Mr Peter Hendy, has packed his comb-over and left the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry - where he did such a sterling job defending WorkChoices with such success at the recent elections - and has gone onto the staff of the obviously doomed Dr Brendan Nelson. The good Doctor appears intent on surrounding himself with intellectual and social winners in much the same way that General George Custer surrounded himself with the 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn. Why Nelson would plumb for such a Capital L Loser as his chief of staff is anyone's guess - perhaps no one else wanted such a poisoned chalice. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we slouch towards Bethlehem and K Mart as the annual festival of consumption rattles apace. I am avoiding Sydney until this whole thing blows over as I have reports of how that whited sepulchre is descending into a hell hole of third world proportions. It appears, from reports, to be suffering from an epidemic of 'Freedman's Disease' - a condition named after the frontman for the band The Whitlams - symptoms include a vastly exaggerated sense of self importance, a propensity for impotent violence, and a vacuous worshipping of of middle class banality. A town where creativity is competition and the nearest thing to a soul is on the bottom of your shoe is best avoided. After all, the next big thing planned is the post Christmas sales, where mild mannered people claw and scratch at each other to get hold of 'stuff'. It makes cargo cult riots in Papua New Guinea seem mild by comparison. We live in dark days indeed. The one redeeming feature was confirmation this week of something I had hitherto suspected for some time - this report from the delectable Annalee Newitz reveals that humans are not much smarter than dogs or monkeys. I believe that monkeys are probably, and dogs certainly, a lot smarter; as any witnessing of a post Christmas sale will evidence. The blog that never sleeps will be continuing to spew forth right through the festering season. These are the last days, and someone needs to keep these clowns accountable.

Tool Of The Week - Gerard Henderson

The increasingly erratic Gerard Henderson took time out from being paddled by his chums down at the Sydney Institute this week to fulminate against people being paid a living wage.

This will not do, thundered Henderson, who continues to believe that only good looking chaps from decent schools should be allowed to speak in public.

Henderson was railing against the Harvester Judgement, the one piece of social policy that stopped Australia from becoming another Argentina.

This deranged sociopath was foaming at the mouth in the Sydney Morning Herald this week because someone dared celebrate the foresight in a bloke called Higgins deciding a hundred years ago that people were born to live, not just to make rich men richer.

Not that we’d expect Henderson to grasp this, the bastard has never done a day’s work in his life. Preferring to fellate any nutjob roaming the land with a baseball bat looking for working people of an independent bent to belt.

He sucked up to Howard as if that grubby little rodent was capable of doing anything more than fixing his own breakfast.

He cheered for WorkChoices so that bottom feeders could pay teenagers $3 an hour legally under Howard’s laws.

He doesn’t like Harvester because he believes that Government’s should pick up the tab if people aren’t being paid enough to live. Yet this is the same pea brained onanist who believes in that miserable piece of government-sanctioned thuggery, welfare to work, which is doing exactly the opposite.

It is also curious that this dalek-like acolyte of the market sees the state as picking up the bill that his tight a#se huddle of degenerate losers down at the club aren’t prepared to pay. He is obviously a frustrated socialist.

This creep likes to paint himself as an academic, but in reality he has all the intellect and social utility of a broken sewer main, but is not nearly as pleasant. He is an intellectual coward - the sort of insecure martinet that likes to think he can bully people into believing his rather bizarre worldview.

This soaring Tool Of The Week, like his toilet trading pal Tony Abbott, believes it is better if you and I get treated like a shovel than be treated with dignity. He believes it is better that we get paid three-fifths of naff all rather than the poor employer be forced to pull their son out of Riverview.

Henderson is one of those useless loops that think employers should only have to pay what they can afford to pay. Let’s take this logic to its conclusion. I, as a consumer, have only $58 for groceries this week. So how about I load up my trolley with over $200 worth of goodies and when I get to the checkout say, “Well, I only have the capacity to pay $58 so, taking the advice of Gerard Henderson, I am only going to pay that”.

Quite rightly I’d be marched out of the store by a security guard, as Hendo should be marched out of Australia's consciousness.

Jerks like Henderson need to wake up to the fact that we live in a society made up of people, not businesses, and that if democracy is to mean anything it needs to serve the interests of human beings first and that narrow section of society called the business community second.

And he needs to stop it, or he will go blind.

Polling is Bullshit: Here's Why

Phrase the question right (or wrong) and you can get a poll to pretty much say whatever you want it to say - as Peter Lewis from Essential Media Communication knows. The following appeared on the Sydney Morning herald breaking news wire last night at 11.42pm:

Americans more positive, poll finds

Two minutes later the following headline appeared in the same media outlet:

Americans expecting recession: poll

Now, either Americans like recessions, or polls are bullshit - we report, you decide. Of course mobs like Essential Research (who just billed the working people of NSW for research that shows that electricity privatisation isn't popular, like derr) well say that their methodology is far superior, and it probably is. No doubt the polls mentioned in their story above actually paid their shit-kicking pollsters a better proportion of the final bill than Lewis' outfit ever would. How do you spell 'bottom-feeding carpet bagging scum'?

Back In Business

I received the following missive from a friend at the Police Association this (yesterday) evening:

Unions NSW and power industry delegates today launched their campaign to 'Stop the Sell Off' of the state's electricity industry proposed by the NSW Government. The plan is bad for NSW and will lead to: - higher power prices - jobs being sent offshore - and foreign companies taking control of NSW power. As part of this campaign we have developed a website which allows the public to 'shock' the Premier, see his hair stand on end and send a direct message to Morris Iemma asking him to pull the plug on the sell off. All members of the community can have their say by logging onto http://www.stoptheselloff.org.au and hitting the 'Shock a Pollie' button. Matt Thistlethwaite Power Industry Campaign Director

Electricity privatisation has been a disaster for workers, consumers and power generation in every jurisdiction it has been implemented. From Adelaide to Los Angeles it has delivered poorer services, higher bills, less jobs and has solely operated to make merchant bankers richer. We know from the Your Rights At Work campaign that communities, working together, can move mountains. And that's exactly what we are going to do. Electricity privatisation can and will be stopped. 'PeoplePower, worth campaigning for' This slogan can unite people around a positive campaign, that steals from Michael Costa's only plus - that he is doing something positive about protecting power generation capability. This slogan reminds us of who actually owns the power now, the people, and is a reminder of the message from a successful and effective campaign, hinting at the idea - Worth fighting and voting for. I think it would be interesting to road test it with 'PeoplePower, worth fighting for'

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Core Business

More foaming at the mouth from our Tool Of The Week Michael Costa, who has suggested that unions should get out of the way of his plan to sell us all down the river regarding power privatisation. In a unique take on logic and consistency Costa has suggested that unions should concentrate on their 'core business', which he describes as looking after wages and conditions. Well, if protecting the livelihoods and working standards of everyone who uses 240 volts in their day-to-day lives isn't core union business then I give up. And this advice is a bit rich coming from the bloke who decided that, when he ran the union movement, it's core businesses should include property development, financial management, think tanks, hiring useless spin-doctors like the North Shore carpetbagger Peter Lewis* or selling out public sector workers and even the public transport industry itself. Costa is worse than a clown, he's an incompetent clown, whose legacy to this state is abysmal. And if Curly thinks that putting everyone in the state's sensitive nether regions in a G Clamp is either smart or of economic use to anyone then the man is more deranged than we first thought. When will the state of New South Wales stop having to pay for the fact that poor little Michaerl Coista was picked on in the playground in Newcastle all those years ago. * - Another stunning contribution from that impotent carpetbagger, Peter Lewis, who has managed to shake down working people across NSW through his McCampoign vehicle Essential Research, who have found out what visually impaired Freddy could have told them for free - people think electricity privatisation stinks like five day old fish. Nice one Pete. What's your next trick? You gonna find out what direction the sun comes up in morning?

The Invisible Australians

One of the great vehicles for taking the workforce backwards is, of course, the Job Network - the beast that allowed Kev Rudd's missus, Therese Rein, to snaffle millions and millions off the back of the most marginalised people in this country - the unemployed. Whilst in the short term this blogger faces homelessness and a pretty acute version of poverty, I'll be doing some research on the noble institution that is turning the lives of the most underprivileged in Australia into a living nightmare, and hopefully shine a bit of light on some of the wonderful architects of this Orwellian disaster. Feel free share your anecdotes about this profit-from-misery exercise. I will be writing more as information is compiled.

WorkChoices Is Dead; Long Live WorkChoices

In what is looming to be a tactical victory for the Rudd Government, with accidental benefits for working Australians, Kevin Rudd has made dismantling WorkChoices a "priority". The announcement came out of Yesterday's (December 18) Cabinet meeting, where the reality of the Your Rights At Work campaign must have been laid bare for even the technocrats to understand. The Liberals are, of course, all over the place on the issue. Wets like Chris Pyne are glad to see the back of it, while Joe Hockey has declared it "dead" -meanwhile The Dead Rev, Kevin Andrews, has sprung out of his coffin to declare that it's all the way with WorkChoices still. "[Is] what we believed was for the good of Australia is no longer the case," was The Dead Kevs rhetorical question, to which this blogger poses the rhetorical answer "was WorkChoices good for any country?". The answer, of course, being no. The wrong Kevin will discover that the people have spoken if he only refers to a copy of any newspaper dated on or after November 25. It's a brilliant bit of work by Rudd & Coy. The Libs will either be wedged and forever known as the party that backs paying 16 year olds $3 an hour, or they roll over and let his, admittedly limited, roll-back go through the senate. The Libs best bet is to refer it to a senate committee in the hope that some sections of the union movement use that as an opportunity to embarrass Rudd and Coy. and expose just how many problems for working people they are leaving on the statute books. The crux of the issue is that there is a great deal of WorkChoices that will remain - the prohibition on union right of entry being the most glaring one - while many other areas; such as unfair dismissal laws, prohibited award content and the Gestapo-like Building and Construction Commission; will receive a partial, limited and delayed roll-back, if at all. We won't be going back to the lifestyle our parents enjoyed. So the inexorable trudge towards a third world lifestyle continues apace. In twenty five years of employment I've had one paid vacation, and this will become the norm for my generation and those that come after. It's pretty obvious we're going backwards. While the Liberal Party wanted to kill organised labour it appears the modern ALP is happy to watch us die by the death of a thousand prohibitive sub-clauses. Wouldn't it be great if the unions got together and formed a party to act in the interests of working people? Oh, I see we've already tried that. Well, plan B anyone?

Tool Of The Week: Costa The Crazy Trot

Tool Of The Week and economic whiz kid, Michael Costa, culminated a long career of nutjob politics with a masterpiece this week - a privatisation proposal that reads like a suicide note.

The Privatisation of power in NSW is obviously Michael Costa’s cry for help.

Here is an incredibly disturbed man, wandering freely through corridors of power, bent only on self-destruction - and this time he’s taking us all with him.

The Privatisation of NSW Power assets - going by the guide of, say, every other jurisdiction in Australia or the known world - will be an unmitigated pain-in-the-sit-down-apparatus, if not regional scale disaster, for most, if not all, sentient beings. It will torpedo any chance of New South Wales maintaining a first world electricity system.

This act of public policy self-immolation crowns the public life of a man who has been obviously mad since he was sprouting Socialist Workers Party gibberish back in High School.

Of course, the Privatisation is just a ruse, a kind of brandishing of the weapon in the public space - it throws many into fear, if not panic, but he hasn’t started shooting yet.

The problem with Michael Costa is that he needs a hug.

But this hard-arsed Cypriot ever had time for hugs; he was too busy being a ‘tough bloke’.

He was a tough bloke when he dropped out of his scary-bourgeoisie university life and entered his homo-erotic fantasy world at Garden Island, working as a rigger and helping the logs over at the Federated Ironworkers Association talk themselves into irrelevance or the Australian Workers Union (which is pretty much the same thing).

He carried that tough bloke persona right through his days in the eighties as a trainee Train Driver - when he never did quite get to understand how to drive a train, or living in Emu Plains - but managed to nobble the militant leadership of the train drivers union in his ‘spare time’.

From the train driver’s union to his rise to be secretary of the Worker’s Parliament, the Labor Council, his record is an outstanding one. One of qualification, fixing, nobbling, deal making, haranguing of rank-and-file, and sausage fingered diplomacy.

If his job was to marginalise and prostitute organised labour in NSW he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

He appointed such star performers as Michael Gadiel (who marries for a living) and contracting out ‘communications’ to that unctuous, wannabe lad carpetbagger, Peter Lewis.

John Robertson changed more about the union movement in NSW than the name when he picked up the pieces afterwards.

While Unions NSW goes from strength to strength, our Tool of the Week prides himself on posturing his small minded, dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers, try-hard red-neckery as a type of anti-politician. Unfortunately it delivers the sort of policy outcomes that leave the very people purports to speak for bent over the bonnet with their pants around their ankles.

His ‘elevation’ to the NSW Ministry is a fine example of the Peter Principle in full flight.

This incompetent log enjoyed election day baiting a female greens booth worker with former NRL Player Mark Sargent as muscle.

Real brave, pal.

But the man who put ‘maniac’ into ‘megalomaniac’ left no doubt where his political sympathies lay come the recent Federal Election, bragging that:

“I struck up a reasonable relationship with people from [Liberal MP] Bob Baldwin's office; we got on very well. We were offering each other water and other benefits but I will not tell members what they were.”

Here is a trot who has gone on a political trajectory in life that started in the hard left, moved through the labour movement and is now off having a pipe with right-wing nutters like the Liberal MHR for Paterson, Bob Baldwin. The only problem being that Curly got stuck in the NSW Cabinet on his way through, and decided he liked the Living Away From Home Allowance. You’ll need a crowbar to shift this log now.

The thing about Costa is that he’s stuck in an eighties tribal siege mindset of those members of the NSW Right that were never too bright to begin with anyway.

While he likes to spin the smart spiv smartarse persona, the reality is he’s an insecure little joker, way out of his depth, that thinks that he has to keep being a bastard to have any sense of meaning in his life.

After all, he’s a big fan of cars, and we all know about men who like fast cars.

The outshot is that, unless he gets a size nine in the sit-down apparatus from some more decently minded people around the labour movement - and soon, then our creaking power infrastructure is going to unravel remarkable quickly and inconveniently in the midterm. The good news is it's not too late.

The bad news is that all Fatty O’Barrell has to do to be the next Premier of NSW is put his pants on right way round each morning for the next two and a half years

And as for our Tool Of The Week, well, I hear they’re still looking for train drivers in NSW.

I Feel Like A...

The following is completely unpublishable, but suitable for the Public Record. A good source assures that the following is true:

• Many, many years ago, a leading Australian journalist at the time, fancied a colleague, a fellow female journalist, and proposed they consummate his feelings towards her. Deadlines being deadlines, the fellow journalist rejected his solicitations, and continued pounding away at the typewriter; whereupon Lothario suggested that he would be happy to consummate this act whilst she continued writing, as long as she adopted a conducive position for such amity. The amended request was also refused.
• At another occasion the same household name launched himself, with the aid of a few drinks, onto a table at a well frequented establishment in Canberra, and announced with vigour: "Who wants to fuck the smallest dick in Australia!"
• Despite these imputations, it is further alleged this wordsmith, who shares this lifestyle with a marriage, has managed to conduct the World Rooting Championships in his hotel room, as at least one Sydney Morning Herald cadet can attest.

My inscrutable sources provide a wonderful insight into the upstanding character imbued in those who chose to keep their integrity from the light of day.

The idea of North

The North Melbourne football club has always been an interloper into League football. They came in late, in the twenties with Hawthorn, after Essendon had been sprung throwing games, and the AFL needed to restore it's image. So why the hell should an expansion team become an expansion team? It is indeed a 'branding backtrack'. North Melbourne have done well by dumping this ridiculous excursion into eponymous monikers for football teams. The AFL must learn that with every cheapening of the spectacle that has occurred since they shot that mad aunt of Australian football, Fitzroy, that their brand has been forever tarnished. It's hardly vale capitalism, but it's a start! In the mountains we have begun our own journey towards having a football team. And we'd hope our Kangaroo spirit proves as strong as North Melbourne's.

Shocked and Apalled

I have been shocked and appalled at developments this week. I have just escaped the clutches of the local council, a schooner of beer, a major retail outlet store manager, several women and a ravenous cricket club. Several interesting posts to follow in the next hour or so.

The Balcony Scene

Lots to move through this evening as we peruse the wreckage of what will forever be known as the Black Weekend Of Horror, and it's only 9.30 Sunday night.

Balconies and fireworks' factories don't normally rub shoulders, but they did this weekend when there were too many shoulders a-rubbin.

The carnage started when a shop awning collapsed in a torrential storm at Balgowlah, killing an unsuspecting Craig Taylor, 53, who was described by his family as a "fantastic human being".

AAP reports that 'investigators' will examine if the weight of pigeon droppings left after years of roosting in the hollow awning contributed to its fatal collapse.

Blame also fell upon the continuing ferocious weather that has led to the SES receiving 359 calls for assistance across the state.

I find this rather scary as I live about a metre from a pigeon infested balcony. Hang in there building, I need this place. My fire inspection scheduled for Tuesday is scary enough. As an anarchist I'm wary about such things.

I mean, it can't be for my benefit, as society is full of entrapments designed to kill me off, from MSG to mobile phones.

Well, at least according to the fine print.

Then on Saturday night in Surry Hills someone was having a house party - never heard of that before - when, whooshka bang, and seven people are carted off in meat wagon to St Vincent's and the RPA for their sins after a balcony gave way and crashed to the ground.

Someone probably put on Plastic Bertrand. That'd make sense. All those cokehead yuppies would be smashed by 10.30pm.

According to AAP (again) about 50 people were at the party on Saturday night in Smith St, in Surry Hills, when the balcony collapsed at the back of the premises around. Their injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to a broken arm, a broken ankle and back injuries.

Then the carnage got weird - on Saturday seven people were injured - three seriously - when a balcony collapsed at a house in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne.

Luckily all this carnage is good business. Archicentre - the building advisory arm of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) - took the opportunity to issue a warning about unsafe balconies and decks.

Further Whooshka bang happened closer to this blogs' abode when Wallerawang got the sort of entertainment reserved for Harbour Bridges on New Years Eve.

The police bomb squad attended the scene at Wallerawang, near Lithgow, and thjough the cause remains a mystery it hasn't stopped the media howling that there were "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the impromptu cracker night.

The company? Howard and Sons.

Mr Howard explains.

"These fireworks, they're professional fireworks and they're not deemed to be extremely sensitive in that capacity," he said.

"[They] really require ignition or an ignition source, or a fire or sparks of some nature, to set them off."

Well, that's a relief. I'd never have thought of that about firecrackers, would you? This man is an expert.

When the Dane pondered Man as "How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, how like a god in apprehension" he wasn't referring to this guy.

Amidst all this architectural mendacity a slimy banking monster decided to rise from the deep

Westpac Banking Corporation's boss David Morgan said exposure to competition from foreign banks was good for Australian banks.

For competition, read buying up one of the big four. You heard it here first - the banks are selling up and getting out. That's a vote of confidence in our economic future if ever I've seen one.

My advice is to gather together everything of value and keep it secreted in a good strongbox buried very deep.

David Morgan is set to retire - as should I if I continue to peddle this tripe as news - the difference being Mr Morgan will have considerably more digits in his bank account when he joins John Howard and pulls on the plus fours.

"This country has given me unbelievable opportunity and I want to give back to this country and to people who are starting life or going through life without the same extraordinary good fortune that I have."

We know it has - that's the problem.

Luckily Doonesbury is in fine fettle, and keeping things in perspective in the forthcoming presidential primary race - which is descending into who is going to wrestle the fiddle off Nero.

The one beacon of hope that emerged all weekend was a stirring performance by the Katoomba Krushers fourth grade cricket side, where we rallied after being dismissed for 36 in our first innings to skittle Gentlemen of Hazelbrook relatively cheaply, and yours truly managed to bat out the day for over 90 minutes and put us in a reasonable position to go for the outright.

As a batsman with an average that looks like the half life of Khomeinium, it was no mean feat. I cannot continue my not out innings next week as I am attending the wedding of This Man.

We do wonderful things for our friends.

The ACTU agrees, they've decided to agree with me and have told the ostriches how it is.

They said voters last month had rejected the former government's election advertisements against unionists.

"What we'll be doing is talking to the government and those people who are responsible (for workplace relations)," Jeff Lawrence, who is numba wan union pela these days - said today. Which isn't much - but it's something.

Things are looking up for our heroes amidst the carnage

Power To The People

Posts have been a bit awry this week as the wave of blackouts continues apace. In this context the idea that we should privatise the electricity service in NSW is one of the more loony suggestions doing the rounds. Does anyone with their pants on the right way around really think that we'd be getting services restored in the time frame we have if this service was run by, say, Sol Trujillo? At the moment my electricity provider, Integral Energy, is focussed towards the customer. If it was focussed towards shareholders I can't see them ensuring that we have the maintenance crews on stand-by to deal with emergencies like the wave of storms we've experienced this week. Needless to say, the parasites from the Merchant Banks are circling like Vikings outside a monastery. I just don't get it - if we lynched these bludgers somehow we'd be the bad guys. That can't be right, after all, it's our oxygen they're stealing.

Tool Of The Week: The Nutty Professor

Paul Gollan is one of those bottom feeding caricatures of a human being spewed out by the classical school of economics.

He has an opinion piece in the Canberra Times this week pleading for his beloved WorkChoices to be saved in all but name in the spirit of 'compromise'.

Well, if economics is the dismal science then Gollan is downright murky.

This bottom feeder tearfully asks that employers keep the right to pay kids three dollars an hour.

Now Gollan might think child abuse is OK - and given his many contributions on the subject he has probably already sold his own kids for medical experiments on the basis of maximising rent on labour.

Gollan agrees that WorkChoices was the single biggest issue that led to Howard's defeat (no argument there) but that this only "arguably" gives Rudd a mandate to do anything about it.

Instead the Gollan warns that Rudd risks anger from the business community (read his kiddy fiddling mates), as if they live on a separate planet from the community we live, breathe, work, sleep and play in.

His solution is WorkChoices Lite - WorkChoices in all but name. Expect to hear more bottom feeders like our Nutty Professor start to sell this "solution". All backed up with the garbage economics that equates human life with all the hope, sense of purpose and dignity of a shovel.

Gollan and his shirt-tucked-in-the-underpants mates simply don't "get it".

The underpinning of the Australian way of life has been - until the greed driven layabouts from the corporate sector got their way - that wages and conditions are determined collectively. We either all go forward together or society fragments as it has under Howard, with some people getting ahead at the expense of the vast majority of the rest of us that have watched our standard of living head south for the last ten years.

Until eggheads like the Gollan get it into their heads that markets reduce human life to something nasty, brutish and short we will still have this voodoo economics shoved in our faces.

Of course you're going to create jobs if you destroy collective agreements that regulate things like shift rosters and apprenticeships and allow people to be paid three dollars an hour - that's just great for everyone except for the person with the job, their landlord, the small businesses they're supposed to buy from, the welfare agencies that have to support them, the utilities that expect them to pay bills and the kids that have to grow up in these households made up of Gollan's working poor.

If lunatic theorists like Gollan were forced to, say, clean toilets for a living they might just get a perspective on life that would stop them dribbling this inane garbage.

ALP Boss: It Was WorkChoices What Won It

ALP National campaign director Tim Gartrell's rather illuminating address to the National Press Club this week was remarkable for both what he said and what was illustrated by what he omitted. It wasn't a searingly frank assessment of the ALP campaign and I doubt anyone expected such from this 'disciplined' electoral machine. But he did mention, and go on to re-mention nine times, the WorkChoices laws. It was obviously central to the defeat of the Howard government, ranking above any other policy area he mentioned. It was the only distinct area of policy he identified apart from Interest Rates. The general thrust of his analysis is best summed up when he said "WorkChoices were attracting very large numbers of voters in the 45-65 age band who had previously voted for the Coalition", and "Labor’s messages about WorkChoices and industrial relations and ending the blame game in health crossed all demographic boundaries", or "Labor won seats with a high proportions of labourers - seats like Blair, Braddon, Flynn, Page and Wakefield but also in seats with high proportions of blue collar workers, including technicians and trades people, machinery operators and drivers". And why?

They were under financial pressure. They were worried about WorkChoices. They were worried about their kids’ future.

He also explodes another myth that can best be described as "what economic boom?"

What the Government didn’t understand was what Kevin Rudd knew – that people are doing it tough; particularly in outer-metropolitan and regional areas where our feedback was that family finances were tightening significantly.

This is where Gartrell's analysis gets interesting. Was it the ALP that led the community opposition to WorkChoices? Did the ALP run a two-year marginal seat campaign highlighting the impact of workchoices? Did the ALP create the groundswell of unease out there in the community that shifted votes? Of course not. That role was played by the community driven Your Rights At Work campaign, which Tim forgot to mention. He did mention that the ALP committed to getting rid of WorkChoices - except for unfair dismissal laws, prohibited content, comprehensive awards, union right of entry, etc. etc. I don't think Tim is an ostrich in the sense that so many of the media from another planet are. I think he knows damn well where and how that election was won, and it certainly wasn't from Centenary House. As he mentions in his concluding statements, this election was won because the ALP stood on the shoulders of others. Those 'others' where the thousands of people in the community who organised around the Your Rights At Work Campaign. Tim did a good job of explaining the trees to us - he just couldn't see the forest.

Iran Learns How To Be Evil

A very funny, if dark, running commentary of George Bush's Tuesday press conference by the Rude Pundit. Live blogging at it's best...

"if you're a Bush fan, you gotta hope that Iran is super-secret gonna try to get some kind of knowledge that'll lead it to build nukes so we can bomb the fuck out of another country. And thus you are insane, too.

"I know how I'm voting"

An interesting comment in Crikey this week from Shay Gordon-Brown, alluding to matters psephological.

Shay remarked on the large number of people who refused to take a how to vote flyer from any of the volunteers handing out for all the parties and the Rights Art Work campaign, insisting that they "know how they are voting".

It was remarkable and the first time I had seen this phenomena in 27 years of working on polling booths. The only thing I can put it down to is the extraordinary long campaign - effectively close to 18 months - meant many people had already made up their minds well in advance, as was pointed out by many commentators and pollsters prior to the election.

In any event one would expect a rise in the informal vote with many people not having a how-to-vote card and the difference between the recent election and the State Election a few months back, where voters could use optional preferential voting and just mark one box.

Well, as Shay points out, the informal vote actually fell approximately 25% on the previous result; 2007 approx 3.84%, 2004 5.18%, 2001 4.81%. Shay used the seat of Dickson - where he was a volunteer - but his statements rang very true, so I thought I'd have a look on the local front.

Lo and behold if the informal vote in Lindsay didn't drop a whopping 2.4%, something like the margin intellectual powerhouse Jackie Kelly held it by. It can't have been the ALP candidate, as the same candidate ran last time as well.

Was it the much gibbered about Latham factor? That would seem likely, as it's hard to think of how 2.5% of the vote could change accidentally. Maybe people who couldn't bring themselves to back the ALP last time finally cracked this time under the joint pressures of mortgage stress and WorkChoices?

But then again, in neighbouring Macquarie the informal vote dropped less than half a percent to be very close to the national average, which would make you think that the situation in Lindsay was candidate related. Bradbury did run a better campaign this time it must be admitted.

As usual, this sort of real world insight has been completely ignored by the psephological commentariat. Clowns like Malcolm Mackerras - who reminds me of the nutjob muttering to himself outside Coles on a Saturday Morning.

In the meantime Shay Gordon-Brown concludes with a telling observation:

I’ve pretty much worked the same booths for the past 10 years and the difference in this election to the previous federal and state campaigns was significant in terms of people demonstrating their intent both in public and in private. From a numbers game it seems to me that 1% of the population is a pretty significant number considering the swing required to change government was only 5%.

The Full Nelson

If ever you wanted confirmation that the ALP is prepared to play both sides of the fence over the Your Rights At Work v WorkChoices battle then check out nelsonfacts.com It's an attack website put together by the national secretariat of the ALP. The site pretty much spends its entire energy ripping into new Liberal Leader and current Tool Of The Week Brendan Nelson for his support of the WorkChoices laws. The site is Authorised by ALP National Secretary Tim Gartrell, who was fellated in a nauseating piece in the SMH over the weekend as if he personally was responsible for getting rid of the Howard Government, rather than the thousands of ordinary Australians in the Your Rights At Work campaign who actually DID make a difference. I mean, after all, all Tim had to do was turn up on election night - the heavy lifting had been done out in the marginals for him. Left to his own devices he would have given us a repeat of his brilliant performance in the 2004 campaign, where he succeeded in making the Liberal Party look attractive enough for them to get control of the senate. If the laws are as bad as Mr Gartrell and the Federal secretariat of the ALP say they are, then why is the ALP government sitting on their hands whistling Dixie as if WorkChoices isn't a very real problem faced by working people STILL. And the very modest changes they are proposing (that won't take effect for half a year at the earliest) do nothing to help people who:

• Are forced to sign an AWA to get a job in the next six months
• Want the union to visit their workplace to help organise co-workers
• Work in the building industry and wish to keep union matters confidential (gaolable offence if they refuse)
• Work in the building industry and want to promote their union at work
• Want to include content now prohibited in collective agreements, such as union training.
• Have the conditions Tim Gartrell is so keen to promote ripped out of their work agreements

In the meantime don't speak up - you can still be sacked under Howard's laws for at least another six months, probably longer if we take the word of Julia Gillard. What we are seeing here is a grade one, first class exercise in hypocrisy. The ALP was quite happy to hide behind the Your Rights At Work campaign to get into office - now they are there they are not exactly exerting themselves to protect Australians who are under the gun with these new laws. It's a cynical, gutless exercise that will blow up in their face if they're not careful.

The Weather Deteriorates

Blackouts again swept the mountains today - they've been a constant pattern for over the last week now, lending a third-world feel to the place - that mildewy post-colonial tropical hell hole feel.

With more of the same forecast for the rest of the week local businesses must be spewing. The only place that's still open when the power goes up here is Coles - they have their own generator.

I thought it was trade unionists in braces that switched the power off in small businesses? Who'd a thunk that the biggest risk lay from an increasingly erratic weather system.

What's driving that?

I lost an afternoon's work to the blackouts. We've all been there. One of those I-want-to-kill-my-computer moments. But that's just the juvenile frustration we never honestly grow out of. Besides, it's hardly my computer's fault if God lays a direct hit on a substation.

My thoughts go the Integral Energy blokes who have to work in this mayhem. You'd need more than money to get me to stand next to a transformer during an electrical storm.

To cap it all off my 6pm appointment cancelled, which came as something of a relief, so I went for a walk to celebrate.

The storms that have lashed Katoomba over the last week or so have been wilder than I thought.

The picture above shows where a tree, looking like it has been struck by lightening, has crashed through a guard rail. The force that these buggers come down with can be measured by the fact that it has bent the galvanised steel pole like it was cardboard.

This was just part of the same tree that was spread-eagled across about 20 square metres of bush adjacent to the top cataract of Katoomba Falls.

The Falls themselves where in fine mettle, as this YouTube clip shows:



A short distance away on the escarpment, at Cliff View Lookout, I captured the Jamison Valley after the storm, with the weather clearing, if a little bit unstable, to the west.

"When we said we'd rip up WorkChoices, what we really meant was..."

On the Monday prior to the recent election John Howard said he was happy for the 2007 poll to be a referendum on WorkChoices. It was good that he was happy, because that is exactly what it had become by then anyway. The Your Rights At Work campaign showed that community campaigns do work; if the community is engaged. Just over 12,500 people across NSW got involved in the campaign. These were people, separate from the ALP, who came from all walks of life - many who had never been involved in a political campaign in their lives - who took the fight for rights at work to the streets, shopping centres, train stations, festivals and community events of our nation. If you weren't engaged at some stage by the Your Rights At Work campaign you simply weren't living in Australia for the last 18 months. It was a brand that was everywhere. And what carried that brand? Ordinary people. And many of these people had borne the brunt of WorkChoices - they'd had their incomes slashed, been sacked unfairly, had their rosters go all over the place and been bullied and intimidated by employers that took Howard's laws as a green light for bastadry. If you want examples I have heaps and am happy to share them. Which is what makes Julia Gillard's statements about not being in a rush and being "careful and measured" so sickening. Those same employers will read this gutlessness as a further green light to continue to treat human beings like shovels to be picked up and put down when needed. We are seeing this already, most notably with Telstra. What part of the phrase 'rip up WorkChoices' doesn't the Rudd-Gillard government understand?

• A credible survey has shown that WorkChoices was the reason why 5.6 percent of voters shifted their vote to the ALP
• It is highly unlikely that Kevin Rudd would be Prime Minister now if it wasn't for the Your Rights At Work campaign.
• Neither Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard or any other ALP politician has mentioned the Your Rights At Work campaign in any report since the election, let alone thank and acknowledge both the people and the community campaign that worked incredibly hard put them where they are today.

This is, of course, being aided and abetted by the ignorant ostriches in our pathetic media, who must live in some parallel universe where the Your Rights At Work campaign never happened. The Your Rights At Work campaign WILL continue. We are not going away just so that Krudd and Gillard can schmooze the Australian business community - the community we live in comes first.

General Rain

Cricket in Katoomba was washed out again on Saturday. Which meant my Katoomba Cricket Club fourth grade side missed out on a game. It had fined up by Sunday enough for our Third Grade side to play; unfortunately they lost. The Katoomba Cricket Club is a great little club, but I'm biased, being the secretary and all. It's a real battling club, being reformed in season 2003-2004 Our fourth grade side is known as the Krushers, taking it's name for the original name for Katoomba. I like the name 'The Crushers' - it sort of captures what Katoomba does to the human spirit. We have had 375mm - or 15 inches in the old money - of rain in November, nearly four times the monthly average. On top of that the rain has been coming with the sort of humid storms we associate with February. This sort of thing prompts a lot of chin rubbing and "hasn't the weather been strange lately" type comments. It certainly isn't the sort of weather traditionally associated with November. One of the offshoots of this global warming phenomenon is the resultant increase in the flies. They've been astonishing in their fecundity. And the rain surge is not helping our cricket. And the forecast? More of the same apparently.