The Mythologies of Musk

By James Moore Living in the Rio Grande Valley in the mid-70s was…

The Perils of Political Capture

The Perils of Political Capture: When Vested Interests Hijack Progress By Sue Barrett In…

Australia’s coming Dutton-deluge of nuclear propaganda

By Noel Wauchope There's something dramatically splendid about King Louis XV of France's…

Climate Change: Why Your Voice Matters More Than…

By Denis Hay Description: Climate Change Discover how young Australians can reshape climate change…

Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide

It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza, and increasingly…

"When Labor Run Out Of Money, They Come…

“You understand, he said to me, the ability and the art of…

The ABC goes to Hungary: the culture war…

Some of the most dangerous people in the world right now are…

Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy equals soaring power bills

Solutions for Climate Australia Media Release Solutions for Climate Australia today called out…

«
»
Facebook

Sir, he copied my homework

The last week of the Senate sittings for 2024 was ‘hectic’, ‘confused’, ‘a shambles’ or ‘getting it done’, depending on who you want to believe. The thing is that Prime Minister Albanese’s ALP Government got most of what they wanted out of the legislative logjam in the Senate and converted it into actual legislation. Again, depending who who you want to believe, they worked co-operatively with other political parties and independents to get the job done, or ran roughshod over the process and practice of the Senate to clear the decks for an election in the first quarter of 2025. It really doesn’t matter in the end how it was done, what does matter is that a lot of ALP policy is law (after ‘consideration of some amendments’ by the House of Representatives where the ALP does have a majority).

The apparently shambolic process where Albanese cut deals with whoever he needed to in an effort to get legislation passed is similar to his role in the Gillard Government around 15 years ago. Its also similar to the standard practice in a large number of democratic countries around the world where the leader of the country would give almost anything to be the leader of a majority government. Even across the Tasman, when Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party achieved majority status in 2020, it was the first majority government in New Zealand since the mid 1990s and reported worldwide including the BBC.

In fact when you think about it every Coalition Government in Australia has been a joint effort by two of more political parties, neither of which could form government in their own right. So it’s a bit rich for various disaffected political leaders in Australia to be claiming that doing deals and then taking the legislation to the vote is the end of civilisation as we know it. The Greens’ Adam Bandt claimed victory for a number of initiatives last Friday afternoon while also claiming Albanese’s ALP will steal some Greens policies in time for the 2025 election, allegedly copying what happened before the 2024 Queensland election. He also observed that it was important to keep (Opposition Leader Peter) Dutton out of power at the forthcoming election. The holding back until the last possible moment strategy might be clever in Bandt and the Greens collective minds, but it doesn’t bear any scrutiny.

Depending on who you believe, there is somewhere between two and six months until the net election. If Bandt wasn’t playing politics for politics sake his party would have passed a number of pieces of legislation earlier than the final day rush. This would have given time for the legislation to be embedded into the system well before the election. Following on from this, voters in Australia would have some time to assess the benefits and compare them to Dutton’s Coalition and their empty thought bubbles. As there is little if any granular detail behind any of Dutton’s announcements over the past two years publicly available there is no evidence of thought, planning or implementation strategy. Bandt playing hard ball until the bitter end and then effectively caving in with no or minimal change demonstrates two things. First, the ALP policies really aren’t that bad and second, that politicians in general need to realise that their party isn’t the only one that can come up with a good idea.

Which brings us to Bandt’s claim that the ALP will steal Greens policy for the 2025 election. Who knows, they might if there is something worth stealing. The Greens claim they ‘invented’ the current Queensland 50cent public transport fare policy that the former Miles ALP Government implemented in its dying days after they forced the then LNP Opposition to also support it if they won government. Regardless the policy is popular and has increased ridership on public transport across Queensland. The point is that good ideas should be recognised as such and are worth stealing. If there is a policy brought up in the election campaign that is popular and brings benefit to the community it should be implemented by whoever forms the next government.

The implementation of a good idea with altruistic intent isn’t only practiced by government. In 1958 Nils Bohlin, an engineer working for Volvo, invented the three point (‘lap-sash’) seatbelt. The three point seatbelt is a significant advance over the two point seatbelts that were designed to be placed across the hips of passengers in vehicles. Volvo went down the usual path and patented the invention, tested it and introduced it in their vehicles.

Volvo patented the designs; standard industrial practice, to protect their investment from copy-cats. Good patents offer you a defensible advantage over rivals – twenty years of monopoly rights in the U.S., for example. Having claimed this prize, Volvo were in a position to charge significant license fees to rivals, or indeed, to promote their cars as the safest on the road, by retaining exclusivity.

Remarkably, however, Volvo did neither, but made Bohlin’s patent immediately available to all. Having sponsored the R&D, they gifted their designs to competitors, to encourage mass adoption and to save lives.

The Forbes article quoted above also suggests that if Volvo had licenced the patent rather than making it available at no cost, by 1978 (the final year of exclusivity in the USA) Volvo could easily have been making USD400 million from this particular safety device. They don’t estimate how many lives have been saved. As a matter of interest, Tesla developed and shared at no cost an EV charger cable connector design widely used in the USA.

If Bandt is correct and other political parties are stealing Greens policies, maybe rather than complaining about who is copying his homework, he should be looking at the bigger picture as Volvo did. Volvo wanted vehicle drivers to be safer and making that decision cost considerable revenue. If Bandt was to work with others to help implement policy rather than stand on the sidelines throwing mud until the last second, it would go a long way to demonstrating pragmatism in politics. It would also show how the Greens could be a positive influence years before they might be able to get enough seats in Parliament to call one of their own Prime Minister.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

5 comments

Login here Register here
  1. Lyndal

    The Greens are forever a disappointment. If the governing party is informed by Green proposals, and does the real work involved in drafting a policy that can be presented to Parliament, and implemented, surely that in itself is a win for the Greens. I would have thought the Greens would be principled about getting environmental work done, but apparently they are more interested in having power instead of contributing to and supporting good legislation brought in by others.

  2. paul walter

    People blame the Greens when others are far worse.

    The Greens ethos and program remainconsistent and reality based as ever, hence unpopular with the Duopoly and Big Business.

    In fact, Greens attempts to improve legislation is crushed for window dressing impotent legislation sought by big business, with the Greens left to an ongoing smear campaign from tabloid media and its wealthy operators.

    I once admired Labor, now I look for other options after the cringingly embarrassing last two years,

  3. wam

    Drivel, the greens attempts are are ‘not go far enough’ and loonie to gain seats when the bandit thinks his blackmail will win seats he will risk a DD until then he will trump ies his appearances with plausible bullshit. Labor needs to regain Melbourne by sinking the crook.

  4. Harry Lime

    Maybe Albanese needs to trade his dud advisors for Volvo advisors,that’s if he actually takes advice,which on the evidence so far, doesn’t look likely.Of course Labor hate the Greens,because they are losing votes to them since they turned into another neoliberal party.Minority government, with the Teals (where the old Liberals used to be), and the Greens (where the old Labor Party used to be),if they don’t keep shooting themselves down.The alternative, a bald headed autocratic racist,who’s basically a Hansonite without the hair, in league with an unrepresentative National Party,led by a dill and owned by the mining lobby. The choice is clear,unless we want to turn fully into another State of the US,and we’re already halfway there with the AUKUS bullshit and the B52 bases….endorsed by Albanese.
    Agree with paul walter.

  5. John Boyd

    I have a real problem with this carping criticism of Labor as some sort of LNP-lite. They inherited an economy that had been trashed by 10 years of government for vested interests, and have had to cope with a non-stop attack from all the MSM, including the ABC. They have passed about 60 pieces of legislation, all of which are based on a real Labor agenda. Of course there are some aspects of it all about which people have legitimate concerns, so let’s focus on specifics instead of sweeping generalisations. And don’t forget that AUKUS is a binding agreement, signed, sealed and delivered by Morrison in total secret from Labor. It is going to take a major effort to turn around, which will be made harder for a government hanging on by a thread.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 2 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here

Return to home page