The election
Wow. That’s not what I expected. A hung parliament.
(Love the way the ABC Morph character MPs are in different poses, including some having their legs crossed.)
A few thoughts (some of which I was going to post last week before other events intruded)…
The results
Who knows what’ll happen now. Just have to wait and see I suppose.
One of my beefs was the lack of a sound GHG emissions reduction plan from Labor over the past term. I’d be hoping the strong Green vote and large number of Greens senators would force whoever forms government to finally take some real action.
Perhaps this and other issues was why most of the swing appeared to go from Labor (down 5.4%) to Green (up 3.7%), and not so much to the Coalition (up 1.8%).
It’s only a three months until the Victorian state poll. The major state parties must be wondering how strong the Green vote will be this time round.
The popular vote
Abbott is claiming more people voted for the Coalition than for Labor, so they won the popular vote, and have more of a right to form a government than Labor.
The primary vote figures (as of last night, via the ABC web site):
- Labor: 4,000,155 (38.5%)
- Liberal + LNP + National (Coalition): 4,483,037 (43.2%)
I think Abbott’s argument would hold a lot more weight if their primary vote had been over 50%. After all, Labor plus the Greens come out at 49.9%, for example, which is well over the Coalition’s 43.2%.
Gillard is claiming the two-party preferred vote was higher for Labor than the Coalition, so they have more of a right to form a government.
Those figures (as of last night, via the Electoral Commission):
- Labor: 5,041,399 (50.67%)
- Liberal/National Coalition: 4,908,094 (49.33%)
The Independents
Of course ultimately it depends which side can convince enough Independents and Greens to work with them. It probably didn’t help that Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce from the Nationals both apparently had a go at two of the Independents on television on Saturday night.
Given the three Independents identified so far are all in regional areas, it also sounds like the National Broadband Network will be way more important than one might have thought just a week ago. I’m coming around to the idea of an NBN, as a kind of complete rebuild of the existing copper wire network. Still very expensive of course.
Campaign launches
Turns out that until each party has its official campaign launch, us lowly taxpayers foot the bill for their gallivanting around the country:
Additionally, a loophole in Department of Finance policy means the sizeable daily travel allowances for politicians and staffers are paid out of the public purse until the day of the respective political parties’ campaign launch.
Here’s the timeline:
- Announcement of the election: Saturday 17th July
- Writs issued: Monday 19th July
- Greens campaign launch: Sunday 1st August
- Liberal/National campaign launch: Sunday 8th August
- Labor campaign launch: Monday 16th August
- Election day: Saturday 21st August
Ridiculous. I think it’s time for the rules to change so that the parties themselves start paying as soon as the writs are issued.
Which party will propose it?
And how about other reforms, such as the proposed Parliamentary Budget Office, which might give us a more meaningful campaign next time by avoiding the sniping over costings?
Or a more formal protocol for leaders’ debates during the campaign?
The polling place
Where we voted, the lines were relatively short and moved quickly. And the sausage sizzle was well-supplied and tasty.
Sadly some voters queued for ages and then couldn’t get a sausage.
Perhaps it’s time the polling place guides included annotations for (s) sausage sizzle, (c) cake stall, (t) trash and treasure stand, and so on.
The funeral
Yesterday was a hard day, but a good day.
Thank you to my sister (siblings help so much at times like these), Reverend Johnsan David (and helpers) at St David’s Anglican Church in Moorabbin for accommodating us, Brian at Mannings Funerals, Laura and the others at South Eastern Private Hospital, all the others who helped this week and attended yesterday, and everyone else for your thoughts this week.
Here are my eulogy notes (with the ad hoc changes I recall), but of course they won’t be word for word…
Thank you for coming today. I especially want to thank Uncle Frank, dad’s younger brother, who has travelled from Brisbane to be here.
Some of you have known Dad since well before my sister and I were born. Many old friends of his from around Australia have been in touch over the last few days, and we are learning more about his incredibly diverse life every day. It’s not that he kept his past life a secret, but clearly there was a lot more to him than he talked about.
As a young man, Dad had a teaching scholarship taken from him when the authorities discovered he was of Chinese heritage. He felt strongly about this and it lead him to fight against the establishment for what he believed was right.
While editing Semper Floreat, the student newspaper at the University of Queensland, Dad was very vocal, including railing against the mainstream media. I always meant to ask him what he thought of today’s impending downfall of the mainstream media due to advances in technology.
Dad’s intellect was amazing. His interests ranged across theology, philosophy, history, literature, politics. He was a remarkable reader, dedicated to ideas, with an incredible memory and breadth of understanding.
* * *
When Susannah and I were growing up, Dad didn’t live with us. But he was never far away. When we lived in East St Kilda, he lived just down the road. When we moved to Elwood, and later to Elsternwick, he moved nearby. I doubt that was a coincidence.
For myself, family and personal relationships aside, the two biggest things in my life today are the technology I use at work and at home, and my advocacy of public transport. And Dad helped me find both those things.
When I first got interested in computers, he bought one for me. He may not have understood computers, but he could see it was important to me. I’d found my calling: it took me through university and into the workforce, and for my “day job” I still work with computers.
At some stage I decided I liked train travel. So he took my sister and I on trips; one day we rode all the way to Hurstbridge and back just for the ride. He showed me magazines he’d got from some mob of troublemakers, then called the Train Travellers Association… they sparked my interest, and you’ll know how that turned out.
* * *
Here are some thoughts from my sister Susannah:
I hope Dad has found himself in heaven. I hope his heaven is a huge library, with books and magazines and journals from theology, history, politics, literature, and a special focus on 1950s culture, and well read people to argue and debate with.
* * *
Susannah also recalls two things Dad said to her that stuck in her mind:
He said “I used to think if someone had an Arts degree I could have a conversation with them. Lately I’ve thought it needs to be a Literature degree”
And when he asked for some Sassoon poetry, and she couldn’t find any and brought him Wilfrid Owen instead – she said she was sorry it’s not what he wanted but she thought he’d like Owen. And he said “of course I like Owen, who doesn’t?” – Susannah likes his vision of the world where everyone likes good poetry.
* * *
Dad’s friend Christopher Koch wrote a well known book “The Year of Living Dangerously”. Dad used to say the Chinese-Australian photographer in the book, Billy Kwan, was partly based on him. I’m not sure I really believed it until I read it.
The character in the book calls everybody “Old man” — Dad used to call me that.
And the book describes the character:
Kwan was one of those people who rarely answer questions directly, and who start conversations in the middle.
That was very Dad.
* * *
Another long term friend, David Malouf, has offered to write a memoir of Dad. That would have meant a lot to him, and it will mean a lot to us in helping us remember him.
In the last year or so, Dad had a helper to get him to medical appointments and to the library. My sister and I would sincerely like to thank Karen, who made such a difference these past twelve months.
[Words from Karen]
* * *
Dad had had a difficult time of late. Ten years ago or so, an accident with a cyclist triggered a series of hospital visits, and sent him on a downhill slope.
It was a blow for him when his dear friend, Louis Green, passed away in 2008. Thank you Louise, for coming.
But in the past few months, with Karen’s help, he’d regained an interest in reading, and whenever I saw him we’d chat a bit about politics. I’m sure he’d have been interested to see tomorrow’s election result.
I’ll finish with some words from Christopher Koch:
[John] was a remarkable man, as I’m sure you know. He had a first-rate intellect, and a vital mind which often stimulated me when we were young. His tragedy was – and I’m sure you won’t mind my saying this – that some inner divisions stopped him from realising his full potential. I’m sure, though, that he’ll remain a vivid memory to all his friends. There was no-one else like him.
Tags: Dad, funerals
11 comments
Dad
My dad turned 79 the week before last.
He got sick and went into hospital on Thursday. Pneumonia.
Over the weekend he was very unwell, and yesterday he expressed the view that he would like to go soon.
Tonight he got his wish, and slipped peacefully away.
RIP JQ. 7/8/1931 — 16/8/2010.
Update Tuesday 8:40am:
Thank you all for your thoughts.
I thought I’d just highlight a post from 2008 where I noted one of the influences my dad had on me: My dad and the trains
The other one was computers. He didn’t understand them, but he could see it was important to enable me to pursue my interests, and thus he helped fund my first three: the Vic 20, the Commodore 64, and the BBC Micro.
Here’s also a link to some text about him from the biography of Lillian Roxon, the legendary rock music critic.
And I thought I’d repost this fantastic old passport photo of him from 1969.
Tags: Dad
52 comments
Apple iSad
Uh oh. My sister’s iPad got the Blue Screen of Death.
Who knew they suffered from that? I thought Steve Jobs, being all-powerful, would have abolished them.
It happened while playing Rocket Bird.
We resurrected it by doing a hard reset.
Tags: Apple, Blue Screen of Death, iPad
4 comments
It was twenty years ago today
Exactly twenty years ago today, on the 12th of August 1990, I posted my first online writing — under the distinctly odd title the Toxic Custard Workshop Files. Being well before the Web, it went to a handful of people at uni via email.
As I later wrote (in 1997):
Well, back in them days of ’90, I was in the second year of my course, a Bachelor of Pretending Cobol Is Structured, failing Photocopying 215, and me and me mates had just discovered the Internet. We suddenly realised that there was more to computer networks than just using Phone and Talk to annoy people in the next room, or sending Mail to tell people to meet you for lunch and Tetris at the corner shop.
I was messing around with my mate Bw.. err Brian Smith. Hi Brian, if you’re reading. And another pal of ours, Ray Chan, who was in an Electronics, Robotics And Other High-Tech Stuff course, came up with an idea for an electronic magazine, called “The Serial Saga”. Hi Ray, if you’re reading. We thought this was great, and immediately mugged him in the corridor and stole his idea. Ray never actually wrote anything, but did manage to create a monster robot which went berserk the next semester, and killed 5 lecturers due to a faulty diode in its corduroy detection circuits.
Ray actually vanished completely, at least from where I’m sitting. I’m still in regular contact with Brian, though he went crazy and emigrated to the USA about ten years ago.
The wacky title dated back to my last year of high school in 1988, when Mark Bainbridge and David Holicek and I planned to do an amateur comic sketch video show. It never actually happened.
My early writing drew on inspirations from uni, as well as some recycled material from high school, with a good dose absurdist Pythonesque influence. Some of it was fairly juvenile. As was I.
The Internet as we know it today — an unparalleled worldwide high-technology time-wasting device — was in its infancy. I recall frequently having to explain to people the concept of this new-fangled “email”.
Over the years my writing slowly matured and moved from the surreal into the real world, the humour that was deliberately infused into everything was gradually toned-down, and now the blog has taken over just about completely.
I dabbled in a lot of technologies as they came along — never the first, but often early: the web site came along in April 1995, and shortly after that the first diary/blog entries. Tried what is now known as podcasting in 1997. Blogged the 1996 election. Issued an official screensaver in 1998. Online video? 1999… originally in RealVideo format, which probably nobody can play anymore, so here it is on YouTube:
Most (all in fact, I think) of my old pre-blog absurdist writing is still online.
And even now, I occasionally meet people who tell me they used to read the Toxic Custard list, or Usenet posts, back in the 90s.
Some of my favourite Toxic Custard highlights:
- Shakespeare — kicked off with Romeo and Juliet in October 1990, which made it into rec.humor.funny, the best postings from Usenet group rec.humor
- History of the World — based on a condensed world history I found in a 50s era compendium, from June 1994
- Ron and Jeff — inspired by Bottom, from March 1994. I still chuckle at my Red Shield Appeal gag.
- Doctor Who: Revenge of the Unrealistatrons — my Doctor Who spoof from May 1993, based heavily on the 1984 DW story Warriors of the Deep.
- The Year 2031 — an attempted sci-fi story, from January 1998.
- VCR destruction — in August 2001, Josh, Cathy and I went and systematically destroyed a troublesome old Sharp VCR of mine, by putting food and detergent into it, letting kids use it as a skateboard, smashing it with hammers, dipping it into a lake, attacking it with an axe and a crowbar, running over it with a car, and finally blowing it up. And yes, there is video.
And also:
- Your taxes are paying for this: This blog, archived at the National Library — “World Wide Web diary/weblog of: Daniel Bowen, a computer programmer in Melbourne. His web diary is a straightforward account of his daily life. The website includes numerous photographs, information about the author and links to his home page and to the weblogs of other diarists. It also includes an archive of the diary from its inception in 1994. Recent entries feature the comments of readers.”
- An early Usenet post (TCWF 6, 5th September 1990. The man referred to at the start, Ewen G MacPerson, was based on a lecturer, Ewen D McPherson.)
- Debate over whether Toxic Custard should have its own newsgroup (January 1991)
The twenty-year-old email list still exists, by the way, mostly as a weekly compilation of my blog posts here and at geekrant.org.
So, happy birthday, Toxic Custard.
Federal issues
I would hope that everyone is actually considering what issues matter to them, and deciding how to vote on that basis, rather than just blindly voting for one side or the other.
Of course, it’s not just a matter of chosing Labor or Coalition, particularly in the upper house. It may well be that The Greens get close to having the balance of power in the Senate.
Here are some quick and not-necessarily very well thought out notes on a few Federal election issues.
The economy, the budget and the GFC
Seems to me that the Australian economy didn’t suffer as much in the GFC due to the management of past governments of both sides, going back a decade or more.
The relatively well-regulated banking sector (compared to places like the US), put in by Hawke/Keating and maintained by Howard ensured the financial institutions didn’t collapse as they did in some countries. Howard handed over a healthy surplus to Rudd.
Yes, the government’s in debt now, due to stimulus spending which appeared to work in terms of keeping unemployment levels down.
The schools stimulus? People are complaining, and there were definitely problems with the implementation, but my kids’ current and past schools both benefited from new buildings, so it’s not like it didn’t have its plusses… and only 2.7% of schools complained. Ditto the home insulation scheme (see below).
To draw a possibly shaky analogy, the stimulus spending is a bit like Y2K — people complained that the effort expended wasn’t worth it because they didn’t see big problems eventuate. When Y2K happened, I saw small problems, and it was pretty obvious to me that if the work hadn’t been done, there would have been HUGE problems.
To quote Joseph Stiglitz (some guy who’s won a Nobel Prize for economics):
If you hadn’t spent the money, there would have been waste. The waste would have been the fact that the economy would have been weak, there would have been a gap between what the economy could have produced and what it actually produced – that’s waste. You would have had high unemployment, you would have had capital assets not fully utilised – that’s waste. So your choice was one form of waste verses another form of waste. And so it’s a judgment of what is the way to minimise the waste. No perfection here. And what your government did was exactly right. So, Australia had the shortest and shallowest of the downturns of the advanced industrial countries.
Both sides claim they’ll get the budget back into surplus within a few years, so I don’t see a major problem here. Again, it’s not like we’re in the deep hole the US or Greece or plenty of others are in. I don’t at all have a problem with borrowing to make worthwhile investments. Heck, most of us do it.
As for claims the coalition are better economic managers, it seems Joe Hockey keeps making mistakes in his statements on the matter.
Emissions and environment
This is my major problem with both major parties: they don’t have a coherent plan to cut emissions; just vague and/or not-very-impressive goals.
Labor’s insultation insulation scheme was a great idea — it hit the buttons of stimulus spending to help employment, and real action to reduce energy use and emissions. (Someone should publish a study on how much energy it’s saving this winter.) But it was terribly badly implemented, with cowboy operators taking advantage, resulting in unsafe work, numerous fires and the tragic deaths of installers.
The Coalition say they’ll meet their emissions reduction target. But their target of 5% reduction (from 1990 levels) by 2020 is pathetic.
Population and immigration
Demographer Peter McDonald warns that we are blaming migrants for our failure to plan cities properly. I couldn’t agree more.
If we choose to do it and manage it well, Melbourne could become bigger in population, without PT becoming unusable, and without sacrificing livability. Other cities have managed it. Whether that’s what we want is the question; not where the people come from.
Given such a tiny proportion of immigration is refugees arriving by boat, neither party is really addressing the real issues here. And any promise to cut migration is pretty empty, given it’s already dropping rapidly.
National Broadband Network
The distorted, out of sync video of Julia Gillard’s press conference via a broadband connection from Cairns shown on ABC News 24 on the 4th of August was evidence that some parts of the country are missing out on the biggest benefits of high-speed broadband.
Maybe it’s not a problem if the Real Julia is out-of-sync and suffering from MPEG compression artefacts, or if the kids in the outback can’t watch HD Youtube of someone’s cat. It might be a problem if it were a connection set up between a patient and a medical specialist though. And it may well hold back development of high-tech industry (and more importantly, high-tech assisting other industries) in some parts of the country.
But while I’m convinced of the benefits of a high-quality high-speed broadband network, I’m in two minds about whether $43 billion of public money should be paying for it, since in the next decade, wouldn’t the major telecommunications companies be able and willing to provide the type of service proposed, at least in urban areas where it’s likely to be profitable?
Perhaps the point is to leapfrog anything what could be provided by the private sector, and trigger high-tech economic growth, as well as essentially replace the current (degrading) copper network. Evidently the implementation study shows it would be worthwhile.
I suppose (at first glance) the Coalition are proposing something a lot less impressive, aimed at getting more of the country up to the current standards (ADSL2+ and similar), rather than a bold new super-fast Fibre-To-The-Premises-type future. Certainly it seems to be getting flak for proposing too much reliance on wireless, as well as older technology including copper wire, and not providing fast enough speeds.
The Net filter
I think the whole idea of the filter is flawed, like some kind of luddites destroying looms. And the proposed implementation — with a secret list — wasn’t going to work.
The emphasis should be on providing opt-in tools and education (such as: parents not placing computers in kids’ bedrooms, but in public parts of the house), and taking down the publishers of dodgy material.
As such, the Coalition announcing they wouldn’t implement it is a positive move, and credit to them for it.
High-speed rail
If Melbourne to Sydney is the 4th (or 3rd, depending on who you ask) busiest air-corridor in the world, there must be an opportunity here. Get the trip to less than 4 hours (but preferably closer to 3), and it’d be competitive with air. (The poster-boy for this is, of course, London to Paris.)
Of course, it should go via Canberra — in fact Sydney to Canberra should probably be the first stage, to relieve Sydney airport. (In fact maybe if trains between the two ran every 15 minutes and the trip was about an hour, Canberra should become Sydney’s second airport?). But Canberra to Melbourne presents big problems (a lot of extra cost) with mountains getting in the way, unless you take a big detour.
Interesting that after a push from the Greens, Labor has announced they’ll do a feasibility study if elected. But they appear to be talking about Sydney to Canberra in 2.5 hours, not one. And Sydney to Melbourne in 6 hours, not 4. Hmmmmm.
(If I ran the world, airlines would be convinced to invest in high-speed rail so they could keep moving people and making money but avoid emissions taxes.)
Other PT funding
Labor announced they would fund Brisbane’s Petrie to Redcliffe railway; the Coalition matched it.
Things have obviously changed since the days when the Coalition refused to fund urban public transport, which is good to see. The Rudd government funded most of Victoria’s Regional Rail Link. Whether either side will pledge more projects remains to be seen. Doing so in a targetted manner might well provide them with the kind of direct action against climate change that they seem to want to fund.
Update 7:55am. Labor have just announced they will fund Sydney’s Parramatta to Epping rail link.
Other stuff
Check this great piece by Annabel Crabb on how the campaigning works.
That’s all I have so far. Thoughts?
Tags: economics, emissions, Global Financial Crisis, Internet filter, National Broadband Network, politics, population, public transport
12 comments
Trolleys
Some supermarkets require a deposit (usually a $1 or $2 coin) to get a trolley. Some don’t.
Personally I wouldn’t object if deposits were required universally, given the number of (almost always non-deposit) trolleys that get wheeled away, and end up in stupid places.
Hopefully it’d mean less trolleys get a wheel broken and are thus rendered unsteerable in what should be their natural habitat, supermarket aisles.
Tags: supermarkets
11 comments
The toy of the movie of the game
Spotted in K-Mart: Lego Prince of Persia.
So let me get this straight… this is the toy of the movie of the video game.
I wonder if there’ll be (as there was with Star Wars and others) a Lego video game of it. That would be the game of the toy of the movie of the game.
(I remember playing the original Prince of Persia game in my uni days. Despite being a fan of the platform genre, I don’t think I’ve played any of the sequels. The Wikipedia article notes the author got the distinctive animation done by video-taping his younger brother, and links to one of the original videos. Very cool.)
