The uncertainty immediately following last Saturday’s election is cause for celebration ... and concern.
THERE were two significant outcomes of election 2010 – one welcome, another not so, since it’s a portent of possible danger ahead.
Firstly, the welcome one, the fact that neither of the major party contenders – Labor and the Liberal/Nation coalition – gained the traditional absolute seat majority in their own right.
At long last those in command of both majors will see that their grip on assured parliamentary dominance has probably ended.
Rather than voters fearing this, something the term ‘hung parliament’ is designed to instil, this is a desirable development.
Desirable because both the Labor and Liberal parties have for too long been under the sway of tiny cliques of so-called power brokers in each state, and to a great extent nationally.
In other words, both have been managed, if that’s the appropriate word, more like medieval fiefdoms where small cliques reign supreme and designated dissidents are discounted.
State Scene could give several detailed blow-by-blow examples of how such cliques have operated in Western Australia in both parties over the past 40 years at least.
But it’s a temptation that must be resisted, since most of those involved in the shenanigans are still alive.
For that reason let’s look further afield, to New South Wales, where Labor’s once – I’m referring here to the 1950s – admirable right, which ensured that party never fell under the control of pro-Moscow Communists, is today a tiny rag bag of puppet masters.
It was NSW’s right that effectively removed Morris Iemma from the premiership, for its own reasons, which had a lot to do with that state’s needs for a major overhaul of its power generating and transport sectors.
This was quickly followed by a similar political execution of his secretly chosen successor, Nathan Rees, so as to install current premier, Kristina Keneally.
Earlier this tight clique had politically executed Labor leader Kim Beazley and the same group, with some help from a few outsiders, repeated that by removing Kevin Rudd as prime minister.
But those are only the celebrated cases. That state’s pre-selection of candidates for state and federal parliamentary seats are basically worked out behind closed doors by a tiny band of operatives.
At all times this feudal model of candidate pre-selection, elevation and the dumping of leaders is conducted with close to zero regard for local communities and voters.
Although State Scene isn’t expecting a sudden turn-around in such now traditional goings-on, last Saturday’s shock to both party hierarchies will hopefully strengthen the hand of those within their ranks who desire a broadening of candidate pre-selection via processes that, say, resemble American-style open primaries.
State Scene knows from contacts both in Perth and interstate that a group of reform-minded individuals looks to abolishing their respective party’s medieval-style power broker cliques so as to pull back the curtains for wider elector involvement in candidate pre-selection and policy development.
Hopefully the possibility of greater inroads by minority parties and independents will hasten such a reformist trend, if it gets off the ground.
The one thing such farsighted reformers can now argue is that, if both majors don’t reform from within they’ll face the prospect of more so-called ‘hung parliaments’.
Now for the second; Saturday’s unwelcomed outcome – the long-expected good showing by the Bob Brown-led Greens, the party he claimed on election night would bring about a “much happier and much more loving” Australia.
Really, senator?
The Greens have risen to such heights largely because of the incompetence and flights of fantasy of the leadership of the Labor and Liberal parties over the past few years.
No-one has done more for the Greens’ primary cause – combating alleged global warming – than sacked Labor and Liberal leaders, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.
Both became Australia’s leading climate hoax crusaders and virtually de facto Greens members, a major reason why neither now leads.
Moreover, neither has ever produced a single skerrick of irrefutable evidence showing so-called climate warming was a reality.
Nor could either ever show that carbon dioxide was the alleged bogy they interminably carped about.
They just keep claiming they’d combat climate change by taxing.
Both multi-millionaires kept proselytising the Greens-promoted environmental Armageddon myth, which they’d initially called global warming, then rebadged as climate change, which has been going on since planet earth was formed.
By promoting such unsubstantiated alarmism, they irresponsibly and foolishly pushed thousands of gullible voters, especially younger ones, towards the Greens camp, which, incidentally, is now Australia’s wealthiest voting bloc.
According to former Queensland Labor senator John Black: “Some of them still haunt uni campuses, churning out more Greens arts graduates, but increasingly now the Greens comprise a well-heeled professional group.
“Most are inner-urban dwellers in their 20s and 30s, sending their one rather indulged child to a private school.
“In their 40s and 50s they adjourn to nice spots such as Noosa or a pretty little tax deductible farming property.
“In their dotage they move back to the outer suburbs, with worm farms and backyard chook pens, tending their raised vegetable beds according to the Peter Cundall weekly gardening guide.”
The question Australians must ask is what the Greens are ultimately seeking from their obsessive warning against non-existent so-called global warming.
State Scene offers a concise answer given by the late American sociologist, Aaron Wildavsky.
“Global warming is the mother of environmental scares,” he wrote.
“In the scope of its consequences for life on planet earth and the immense size of its remedies, global warming dwarfs all the environmental and safety scares of our time put together.
“Warming (and warming alone), through the primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realising the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favour of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.” (Introduction to The Heated Debate, by Robert Balling, San Francisco, 1992.)
They are words truly worthy of deep contemplation since that’s precisely Senator Brown’s and his crusading Canberra disciples’ desire for all Australians.
Unless and until both major party blocs stop appeasing the Greens and instead confront them, Australia’s future is bleak.
Less of everything – less production, less and more regulated consumption, and ever-higher energy (liquid fuels and electricity) costs.
And don’t discount the possibility of power blackouts due to over-reliance on subsidised taxpayer solar rooftop panels and costly and unreliable subsidised wind farms owned by wealthy investors.
What type of Australia is likely to result?
State Scene’s guess is that rather than being a net importer of migrants, we’ll slip into reverse.
Or as one State Scene contact said: “The trouble for Australia is we’re getting ever more pie eaters and ever fewer pie producers; it can’t go on forever; something’s gotta give.”
The more ambitious, more enterprising, and more adventurous – the ‘pie producers’ - will simply move to other corners of mother earth as standards of living here firstly steadily, then rapidly, slump into permanent depression.
That bleak medieval-style future is, quite frankly, terrifying.
