I generally don’t republish something from our archives but with this piece I come across yesterday – Some reasons why the Libs don’t want you to vote for the Greens – I make an exception.

First published prior to the 2013 federal election it provided a window into what to expect from the Coalition if they won power. Or more precisely, what not to expect. The article was based on a Coalition document which spelled out, in an indirect way, that there would be no social changes during tenure.

Given that some of the issues – such as same sex-marriage, and detention centres – are topical today, the document reminds us that the government stated their position and despite recent public pressure, in my opinion the government has stamped them ‘not negotiable’.

They told us this before the election.

Indeed, some governments do change their course on social issues after taking office but I consider the Abbott government to be more ideologically driven than any government I care to remember. And as such they will never change.

Anyway, have a read (re-read) of the article and be reminded that this is what Australia voted in favour of. Don’t expect the Coalition to change their mind now, regardless of any swings in public mood. It will never be ‘what the public wants’, it will always be ‘what we (the Coalition) want’.

* * * * *

If anybody wants to know what the Coalition plan to do in Government then they need look no further than the Coalition Speakers notes 1 July 2012 for an insight of the frightening world they would hope to thrust upon us. It looks at all the topical issues including Border Protection, Communications and Broadband, Employment and Workplace Relations, Foreign Affairs, Heath Higher Education, Indigenous Australians, Multiculturalism, Population, Superannuation and Youth.

But typical of any Coalition document it focuses more on attacking the other major parties than how and what should be done. The ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ are nothing more than a bit of chest thumping. There is much more passion in their criticisms of both the Government and the Greens than there is in beating their own drum. Just the usual scare tactics, you might say.

What struck me the most about the document was their rabid hatred for everything the Greens stand for. The Greens are not my party of choice, but after reading the document I’m convinced that they stand for much more than I gave them any credit for. And if anything, I’m more determined to vote against a party that opposes – or condemns – what the Greens want for our society.

I’ve made a list of some of the reasons why the Libs don’t want you to vote for the Greens. Upon reading them, you might also ponder how much the Liberals must be out of touch with the modern, progressive Australian. Here’s the list of what the Coalition fear:

The Greens believe in legalising same sex marriages.

The Greens believe in reintroduction of voluntary euthanasia laws in the NT & ACT.

The Greens support holding a plebiscite for an Australian Republic. The Greens will legalise the use of cannabis for specified medical purposes.

The Greens moved a private members bill entitled Anti-Terrorism Reform Bill 2009 to relax terrorism laws and calls for amendments to the Criminal Code and Crimes Act.

The Bill calls for greater freedom of expression and association, freedom from arbitrary detention, legal due process and privacy.

The Greens will repeal the sedition laws and will repeal mandatory sentencing legislation.

The Greens will prohibit the use of electroshock weapons and Tasers.

The Greens want an open door refugee and asylum seeker policy. They have said that they want to increase the number of refugees and asylum seekers Australia takes, but they haven’t said by how much; they also want to decrease the number of skilled migrants and increase the number of family reunion migrants.

Abolition of mandatory detention of illegal immigrants.

Restore Australia’s migration zone to match Australia’s territory and accept responsibility for processing all asylum seekers who seek protection in that zone.

Allow illegal immigrants unrestricted movement in and about reception centres.

Immediately grant illegal immigrants an asylum application visa (AAV) and move them into community reception centres after medical and security checks are satisfied or after 14 days.

Allow illegal immigrants with AAVs the right to work, travel, income support and access to ongoing educational and medical services anywhere in Australia while their claims are being assessed.

Ensure that refusal of an AAV is reviewable by the Administration Appeals Tribunal and that the illegal immigrant is housed in a facility close to an urban area.

Closing Australian ports and territorial waters to nuclear powered vessels and create nuclear free zones, municipalities and ports;

Prohibit mineral exploration, mining, extraction of petroleum and gas in terrestrial and marine nature conservation reserves.

Ban the exploration, mining and export of uranium and the storage of low-grade domestic nuclear waste in a remote location in Australia.

The Greens want a commonly agreed national benchmark to measure poverty and reform the social security system to ensure an adequate income for all.

The Greens will increase the number of marine reserves and implement a national framework for managing recreational and charter fishing.

The Greens will introduce an Oceans Act and establish a statutory National Oceans Authority to coordinate the sustainability of ocean uses. The Authority will report to the Parliament and enforce cosystem-based regional management plans and targets.

The Greens have called for a treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that recognises prior occupation and have sovereignty enshrined into the constitution.

The Greens will pursue the conclusion of a multilateral convention based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and enact its provisions into Australian Law.

The Greens believe in the full restoration of the Racial Discrimination Act in the NT and ending the federal intervention into indigenous communities regardless of any consequences.

The Greens will repeal amendments to the NT’s land Rights Act as they believe the amendments disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Want to abolish SES funding for private schools, which would discourage private investment in education and create more dependency on taxpayer funding to fund school education. Impose new federal controls on where new non-government schools can be built or how many students they could enrol, which would severely limit parental choice.

Want Commonwealth funding for private schools kept at 2003/04 levels, which would see many schools be forced to close or sack teachers in order to stay open. Oppose performance payments for teachers.

Believe that education unions are the appropriate industrial representatives in all educational matters.

And finally …

Will increase Youth Allowance to the level of a living wage, irrespective of the cost to taxpayers.

Refurbishment of the prime minister’s official Canberra residence will cost taxpayers more than $8.8 million – at least $5 million more than originally expected.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the Liberal Party was complaining (via a booklet, of course) that $66,000 was spent on The Lodge for then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

In November 2012 they proudly released a publication called The little book of big Labor waste, and if the money was to be spent for the benefit of a Labor Prime Minister then in their eyes it certainly constituted a waste and therefore earned inclusion into their little booklet.

It was a sloppy publication, by the way, which I wrote about here.

It’s worth taking a look back at this article because with the passage of time their claims look even more ludicrous and above all, it shines a very bright light on their breathtaking hypocrisy.

You will be gobsmacked when you consider what they now do themselves in office. The same things, on a grander scale, they criticised Labor for in their glossy publication.

Please enjoy . . .

I am grateful to Jason W for exposing how sloppy it really was and allowing me to publish his responses to the claims made. It’s a bit of a read, but hard to put down. I’ve also added a few comments, which are highlighted in blue. Let’s start:

Claim: “The Rudd-Gillard Government has been the most financially reckless government in Australian history”.

Response: Really? Then why is it, that an IMF paper is reporting that Howard was far more profligate in his spending, and had made more decisions worth over a billion dollars than the Labor government, in his budget?

“In 2007, Labor inherited a government with net worth totaling $70 billion. All that has now been squandered – all gone”.

Howard achieved a surplus by reckless selling of public assets and with huge cuts. Labor had to face the Global Financial Crisis and had to stimulate the economy with spending that created the deficit.

Thanks to Labor, Australia now has a government $147.3 billion of net debt – the biggest debt in Australian history! We are now paying almost $20 million a day in interest to service that debt.

What? The biggest debt, as a percentage of the GDP, was in the Hawke-Keating debt. Half of which was inherited from Malcolm Fraser!

In fact, under the leadership of Julia Gillard, the list of waste and mismanagement is increasing at an alarming rate. From the multiple billion dollar blow outs in the immigration portfolio to gold plated coffee machines for bureaucrats, the litany of waste is staggering.

Gold plated coffee machines? This already reeks of sensationalism.

What Labor does best is rack-up debt through waste and mismanagement – it’s in their DNA. The only way to stop Labor’s waste and pay back the debt is to change the government.

I worked in government long enough to know how they operate.

Nothing is an accident.

Everything is planned or stage-managed.

It is especially so before a new, and particularly controversial initiative is to be announced. It’s always good for the government to get a ‘feel’ of how the announcement will be received. Conversely, if there are indications that the announcement would be in the face of public disapproval then it’s just as good for the government to say and do nothing. “It was just all speculation”. “It will blow over and soon be forgotten”.

And so it was when yesterday we learned that:

A national wind farm commissioner to investigate complaints about wind turbines will be appointed by the Abbott government as anti-wind energy senators move to curb the industry’s growth.

This government knows just who to turn to.

Talk around the water cooler suggests that most people see this as a swift response inspired by Tony Abbott’s much public complaint to Alan Jones that wind farms could represent health risks, and of course, his much-lampooned comment about them being noisy:

“Well Alan look, I do take your point about the potential health impact of these things,” Mr Abbott said.

“When I’ve been up close to these wind farms, there’s no doubt, not only are they visually awful, they make a lot of noise.

I beg to differ to the water cooler consensus. Experience in government tells me it was the other way around.

The government wants to appoint a national wind farm commissioner and was dangling its toe in the pool of public opinion first.

That’s where Alan Jones steps in – who else?

It was all stage-managed.

Conveniently Jones wanted to talk about wind farms and instead of being met with Tony Abbott’s customary responses that are littered with hesitant words the Prime Minister spoke quite fluently. It was not the Tony Abbott who is always lost for words when confronted with an off-the-cuff question.

Everything fell into place. Let’s run through them:

• The government wants to appoint a national wind farm commissioner. It is a controversial decision given the world’s move towards cleaner energy.
• The government ’employs’ Alan Jones to interview the Prime Minister about – among other things – wind farms.
• The Prime Minister puts it out there that there are potential health concerns with wind farms, and of course they look ugly and are noisy.
• The Murdoch media publish stories that support the Prime Minister. Public support has been mustered.
• Bingo, government announces (conveniently through a leaked letter) that it wants to appoint a national wind farm commissioner.

The wind farm debate was no accident.

There are times when Tony Abbott knows exactly what he is doing.

By Jennifer Wilson

In December 2014, then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison made this alarming lunge for sole power over citizenship decisions without recourse to judicial review:

The DIBP submission to a Senate committee argues that an elected member of parliament and minister of the Crown has gained a particular insight into the community’s standards and values. This particular insight therefore qualifies Morrison to overrule AAT decisions. It is the bill’s intention to grant a minister, in this case Morrison, the power to determine an individual’s “good character” or otherwise, regardless of any ruling made by the AAT. Morrison’s decision will be unchallengeable.

Peter Dutton has now replaced Morrison as Minister for Immigration and is in the process of attempting a similar grab for sole power over the stripping of citizenship from those he alone deems unsuitable to retain it.

No citizen can have confidence in a government or an opposition that supports one politician being granted absolute power over such decisions. It is absolutely contrary to all democratic instincts and practices. The question we must ask is why is it thought necessary to invest one politician with this much power? The answer is obviously that the government cannot risk internal debate, and is determined to avoid that democratic process. The Minister is answerable to no one within his party, let alone outside of it. It is only a matter of time before more Ministers are granted similar authority over who knows what circumstances, and anyone who believes or trusts otherwise has their head in a sack. The government has no mandate to invest a Minister with absolute power, not even within its own ranks.

∫ ∫ ∫ ∫ ∫ ∫ ∫

There are currently so many disturbing events initiated by the Abbott government it’s difficult to triage, however, surely one of the more alarming is the decision to imprison for up to two years doctors, nurses and teachers who disclose adverse conditions at asylum seeker detention centres on Manus and Nauru.

In spite of the border protection rhetoric that surrounds this decision, it’s apparent to anyone with a brain that the only interests served by imposing these draconian restrictions on professionals who, in Australia, are mandated to report abuses they become aware of in the course of their work, are the interests of the Abbott government, supported by the Labor opposition.

Neither major party wants us or the rest of the world to know what goes on in the off-shore detention centres. Knowledge of abuses inflicted upon the detained cannot possibly be a threat to our national security, and if that is what the major parties continue to insist, they need to explain exactly how they justify that claim.

Indeed, if there was any logic to the government’s argument the ill-treatment of asylum seekers ought to be trumpeted from the rooftops as a deterrence to anyone else attempting to come here by boat. Not only will you never be resettled in Australia, you and your children will be subjected to inhumane treatment and conditions in tropical hell holes as well.

As head of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs so eloquently pointed out, we are currently being subjected to an erosion of rights that ought to have us taking to the streets in protest at the over-reach of executive power by the Abbott government. It is not far-fetched to imagine that a government prepared to imprison professionals for doing their jobs in off-shore detention centres will extend that threat to professionals doing their jobs in the homeland, should it serve their interests. There’s certainly no future in entreating the ALP to take a stand, indeed, the ALP seems more than happy for Abbott to do this dirty work.

Jennifer also writes on her own blog: No Place For Sheep