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Newly-elected Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie is basing his quest for power on ethical conduct. There’s nothing new about politicians talking about doing the right thing. Wilkie’s point of difference is that he quickly follows his words with action.
The Australian Jewish News has condemned the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) for calling on Australians to boycott Israeli goods made in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. The NCCA is supporting a campaign of groups determined to act where western political leaders have failed. Leaders including Barack Obama, Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott refuse to acknowledge what they are backing when they declare they are ‘pro-Israel’.
Many of us value our participation in the election and have been excited by the resulting hung parliament. But some adult citizens cannot be placed on the roll at all, with a significant number of Australians with intellectual disabilities or mental illness disenfranchised.
The Australian public is being delivered a profoundly misleading subliminal message that, because the Taliban are active in the region, they are tied up in providing relief for flood victims. We need to forget politics for a while and think about the part we can play in helping Pakistanis through their crisis.
Though the Independents are raising expectations about a 'new politics', the forces behind the status quo are strong and the public is fickle. If they fail to deliver they might eventually suffer a backlash, like Kevin Rudd and the Democrats before them.
The churches, with their tradition of recognising the deeper values in human beings and society, can play an important part in generating a richer vision of Australian society. They'll need to cooperate with other groups who decry the self-interested focus in Australian politics.
Since both major parties wasted their chance to secure a clear mandate, the Independents have been treated by the media as opportunists and vengeful egotists. By making Parliament complex, the rise of Independents complicates the lives of political hacks.
Hundreds of Timorese men and boys served alongide Australian fighters in an amazing guerilla campaign throughout 1942 that tied up several thousand Japanese troops while the battle for New Guinea was underway. Australia has made at best half-hearted efforts to acknowledge this debt.
Kevin Rudd's failure to embrace the Timor legend with more imagination and substance was a missed opportunity to connect with Labor's Second World War legacy. Wartime Prime Minister John Curtin saw the guerilla war in Timor as a unique and significant part of turning back the Japanese tide.
There was a massive loss of confidence in Labor's policies. The Australian electorate saw through the triviality of what both major parties were offering. Gillard would deserve her party's full support in leading a Labor Government in a hung parliament. This may be the making of her as a great prime minister.
The result suggests some fascinating questions. Prime among them is whether Labor panicked and threw away this election when it deposed Kevin Rudd and replaced him with Julia Gillard in June. Would Rudd have done better? The answer is probably yes.
We are wrong to assume our involvement in the political process ends with the casting of votes. If the experience of a fetid election campaign, of leadership abdicated and of a hung parliament leads us to offer more modest local forms of participation and leadership, all Australians will gain.
1969-1980 out of 3005 results.
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