2007 in review

We appear to have come to the end of another year. As is the tradition at this time of year, I shall now provide my own summary of my favoured events, in chronological order.

January: 5-0

Revenge was sweet, as Australia scored an Ashes whitewash for the first time in 86 years or so. The greatest bowler in the history of the universe, Glenn McGrath, retired from the game in style, and the poms were sent home with nothing. Except for the Ashes, that is. They’re such bad sports that they won’t even let us keep the trophy.

January: Tool

This was the second time I have seen Tool. Awesome.

July: Cadel Evans

In the closest ever top three finish, Cadel Evans became the greatest ever Australian cyclist, finishing just 23 seconds away from the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. This is despite having one of the weaker support teams. Next year for sure!

August: The Farm

This was the seventh (?) trip to the farm, and with the biggest fire yet, it was certainly one of the best. Highlights include drinking, cooking dead animals, and lighting stuff on fire. Oh, and my successful comeback to the exciting sport of postie bike riding. This time, without the crashing into tree part.

September: The Combat Wombats

For the first time since 2005, we put together a Futsal team. Despite our final position on the table (10 games, 0 wins, 0 draws) we had a fantastic season and I’m confident that we can only go up in 2008.

November: Dani Ecuyer Dummy Spit

It was a bumpy road for Dani Ecuyer. Running for the seat of Wentworth against her ex-boyfriend George Newhouse, and sitting MP Malcolm Turnbull, she caused a bit of a stir in the media.

A satirical piece on this site was the final straw for Dani, who believed that Miranda Devine was really calling her a left-wing harlot. This response was posted on votedani.com:

Miranda Devine, Caroline Overington and Climate Change

Well well well, it seems the sisterhood only works in theory. It’s official I am having a real impact on the incumbents and I have now been called a ‘harlot’ by Miranda Devine.’ So I work on Climate Change and the pulp mill. Two super hot issues in election 2007, especially in the Environment Minister, Mr Turnbull’s electorate. Now I am a ’stiletto thumping femme fatale’ and a harlot to boot. Amused, well I can assure you I am not amused in the slightest. I am running on real issues and have two websites to prove it, not to mention a serious career in investment banking.

And it went on… Of course, this post was removed from her site shortly afterwards. Obviously a friend let her in on the joke.

Thank you Dani, for brightening up an otherwise grey campaign.

November: Maxine’s victory

I would like to say that the Labor victory in November was one of the highlights of the year. However, as I believe that Kevin Rudd is the spawn of the devil, I shall only pause to commemorate Maxine McKew’s victory over a populist PM who had it coming for a long time.

My grandmother once recounted how she had believed that “Honest John”, as he was known back in the 90s, was going to be great for the country, and we were going to have sunshine and roses every day.

Eleven years later, even the staunchest Liberal voter would have to admit that Johnny had lost his sheen long ago, and that the lies had always been justified by the electorate’s hip pocket. Thankfully, no longer will this be the case.

December: The Wedding

Yes, on December the 15th I married my bride, Sarah. This signalled the end of the first stage of my life, as I settled down and became a responsible member of society.

That’s what I told Sarah, anyway.

To the pub!

Well, that about sums up all the important events of 2007. I’m off to Tasmania for the honeymoon, and will be back at the end of January. Bon voyage!

Postlude: I would like to wish a quick congratulations to Mr Nicholas J. Broadbent, and his magnificent fiancée Mel. Nice one!

Election analysis - courtesy of Centrebet

Australians love to have a punt, and what better even to throw our money on than a federal election? Going on the assumption that the favourite always wins, let’s have a look at how the election will unfold, as predicted by the good people at Centrebet.

And there you have it - Labor to win nineteen seats, three more than they need to form government in their own right. Interestingly, Centrebet predicts that Howard and Turnbull will both retain their seats, despite the slim margins they are clinging on to.

Get your bets in now!

Howrudd - caught on film!

Mr Jokin Howrudd - the next PM of Australia.

Newhouse stuffup

The ABC is reporting this morning that Labor candidate George Newhouse may be constitutionally ineligible to run for the seat of Wentworth. His former boss is refusing to release his undated resignation letter, which would seem to indicate that Georgie has stuffed up and forgotten to resign more than 24 hours before nominations were announced.

Wentworth is the 9th seat that Labor requires to win this election, and is likely to be one of the closer fought battles. Should Newhouse win, this little oversight could see the seat of Wentworth (and possibly the outcome of the entire election) decided in the courts, US style.

All this uncertainty can only provide relief for Malcolm Turnbull, a man who entered politics for only one reason: to become PM. Labor’s poll lead still looks to me rather tenuous - 16 seats is a big ask, especially if you’re screwing up the technicalities along the way.

Stand by for more mediocrity to come. Ten days to go until the election, and unless this is cleared up, it could be months before a result. Oh, the pain!

Mr Howrudd

Still one and a half weeks to go before we usher in a new era of Australian politics. Whichever shade of grey comes out on top of this election, two things are certain:

1. The Australian Democrats are no more.

   I like to attribute this fact mainly to Meg Lees, who sold her soul for the 10% we like to call GST. From what I can see, the GST is basically an excuse to send NSW’s money to the states that are making a mint from the mining boom, aka Queensland and WA. Cheryl Kernot’s defection to Labor in the late 90s didn’t help, nor did the downfall of Natasha’s leadership. All in all, it’s probably best that the Democrats are put to death at this election - it could be embarrasing for one senator to hold onto their seat, only to play a backseat role to the Greens for the next six years.

2. Democracy will be restored to the Australian political system

   No party should ever have control of the senate. That is the beauty of proportional representation - it’s basically impossible to garner the required votes to be able to push through whatever legislation you please. Three years ago, Queenslanders (and, to some extent, Victorians) allowed this to happen, and we have paid dearly for it with all manner of cutbacks on civil rights (disguised as anti-terror legislation), as well as the obvious IR reforms which a large portion of the community seem to be unhappy about. We’re lucky that the Howard government required either Barnaby Joyce or Steve Fielding to pass their legislation, or it could have been a lot worse.
   Please note that Labor control of the senate would probably be just as bad. The senate is there to review government legislation, make amendments as required, and pass bills that benefit the whole of Australia. Giving control to one party is always going to be disastrous, no matter who is wearing the President’s hat.

Meanwhile the main campaign gets more and more boring, as Rudd argues that his $9,999,999 worth of promises are far less inflationary than Howard’s $10,000,000 worth of promises. I say we should surgically splice the two of them together, and then we can all vote for Mr Howrudd, remove any confusion the electorate may have, and go back to watching Dancing With The Stars. Goodnight, Australia.

Clean Coal

Most of middle Australia is probably under the impression that climate change was only invented in the last 5 years or so. Strangely, people of my generation will recall learning about global warming in primary school, 15-20 years ago. Furthermore, back in those days we were also concerned about this wonderful problem known as non-renewable energy.

Non-renewable energy is energy that is produced by using up a resource that you can’t get back. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, global warming or Al Gore. The simple premise is this: if we burn all our coal/oil/gas, we’re screwed.

In these days of mass hot-air generation, the non-renewable problem seems to have been forgotten, now that we have this wonderful new technology called clean coal. If it’s clean, it must be good for the environment, so let’s spend shitloads of money on developing it.

Except… fossil fuel reserves are running out. You can sequestrate all the greenhouse gases you want, but once we’ve got nothing to burn, we’re going to have to start thinking about some form of renewable energy.

Or do we? Why is everyone so obsessed with this thing we call a growth economy? I hate to state the obvious, and I know it’s certainly not politically correct to draw attention to this fact, but a growth economy is fundamentally unsustainable.

Try winning an election with that line.

A growth economy depends largely on one thing: growth. Seeing as though, even in these days of mass-acceptance of climate change, the very concept of a growth economy is unquestioned, we can safely assume that it’s going to stay that way for a while. No politician is ever going to stand up and argue the case that maybe we should be going in into a controlled recession, slowing down industry, returning to our roots, and just generally hanging out and having a good time instead of running around like crazed rodents in business suits.

Who exactly does this magical growth economy serve? Are we better off for it? The world is still in a pretty bad state. Much of Australia is suffering from some form of credit/rent/mortgage stress, even though we’ve supposedly never been better off. What if there was no credit, no Australian Idol, and no pulp mills? Maybe we can just wind back and live on the land, trading with our neighbours and generally having a good time?

Sorry, you’d better scrap that. What would all the management consultants do?

Senator On-Line

Now here’s a dangerous concept. Senator On-Line is a political party which, if elected, will run a web poll for every piece of legislation passing through the senate. The elected senator will then vote according to the result of said web poll.

Now, putting to one side the small issue that (if elected) one lucky person will be paid $127,060 plus expenses per annum to sit on their arse in Canberra contributing (presumably) nothing to the parliamentary process other than their vote (decided by the poll), let’s look at the implications of the aforementioned system.

39 seats are required for a majority in the senate. The Coalition would need 20 seats, and Labor 25, to fulfill this quota. Unlikely. Therefore the balance of power will be held by the Greens, Family First, and any other minor parties who happen to scrape through (No Pokies for example). In the highly unlikely situation that Senator On-Line (SOL) was to win a seat, they would share in this balance of power.

Readers may recall that in these tight senate situations, just one vote can be enough to swing the balance and pass government legislation (and subsequently destroy an entire political party… Meg Lees anyone?). In the situation where SOL was elected, legislation could then come down to an online poll. Assuming this on-line polling system is robust enough that they can enforce their policy of one vote per person (unlikely), we could start to see massive grass-roots political campaigns running all year around.

The long and short of it? Increased government spending on advertising, and a barrage of union officials knocking at your door 365 days per year. And that’s not even the scary bit.

With a democratically elected senator actually giving their electorate the chance to vote on policy, we would start to see some semblance of democracy being introduced to the parliamentary process. This is clearly dangerous, and should be prevented at all costs. Canberra is no place for democracy - let’s keep that stuff to Australian Idol where it belongs.

Worryingly, with the increased internetisation (yes, it’s kind of a real word) of the younger generations, it’s only a matter of time before this SOL senator becomes a reality - maybe not now, or 2010, but certainly within 15 years. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Abbott reveals all

I’ve just had breakfast with 60 drug dealers… the Prime Minister willingly associates with dodgy characters.

Tony Abbott leapt to the defence of his beloved PM after Porn mogul Scott Phillips had allegedly asked Mr Howard to star in his upcoming film, Breasty Bureaucrats #7. “Scott Phillips may be a violent pornographer and a convicted criminal, but at least he’s not from WA,” Mr Abbott stated. “This is a completely different situation to that of the flithy, lying leader of the opposition.”

Had Mr Howard agreed to star in the porno, he would have been following in the footsteps of his former boss Malcolm Fraser, who famously removed his pants during the filming of Phillips’ earlier work, Misused Ministers of Memphis.

Scott Phillips has vowed to continue his quest to sway politicians to the pornography industry. “I hear than Amanda is quite interested, now that she’s been boned by Howard,” he stated. “I’m hoping to get her boned a few times on tape later in the year.”

With any luck, she’ll do us all a favour and refuse.

Polls, schmolls

Another round of Newspolls proclaiming Rudd as the new messiah have just been released. The media has gone into its usual hype circus mode. The question has to be asked: how accurate are these polls?

Everyone knows that when it comes to politics, the most important thing is to get people talking about you. Why else does Mr Howard bother committing a handful of extra troops to Iraq? To polarise the community and stimulate debate, obviously. Of course, the media is always happy to play along - after all, it’s how they make money.

But who is really winning in the political discussion stakes? Thanks to our good friends at Technorati, we can now get a live, up-to-the-minute idea of what people are blogging about, which is, at least, some indication of how well the pollies are getting their faces splashed across the country. Let’s check the stats of Mr Howard vs Mr Rudd.

Mr Howard

Mr Rudd

Mr Howard is clearly ahead by a long way - and this is where Mr Rudd needs to make up a lot of ground. Incumbency is a powerful thing, especially in a nation burdened with plasma tv-related debt, and controlled by the conservative empires of Murdoch and Packer. Also, to be fair, the actor John Howard could also be contributing to Mr Howard’s tally.

It’s not all bad news though, Mr Rudd is still outperforming Damien Leith, winner of the 2006 Australian Idol competition.

Damien Leith

The great education slippery-dip

The media is really ramping up the coverage of sub-standard university graduates. The SMH places the blame on university administrators, Sky News follow suit, and I had to go all the way to the Korean Times to find someone who would even think of mentioning the real reason behind the decline in education standards.

But is it any great wonder that these asian students (yes, it is only asian students, not all foreign students, who struggle) cannot speak the language? In my beloved undergraduate degree, population 50, there were about 20-30 international (asian) students in each class. Most of them were quiet, studious types, so they tended to keep to themselves and in general had no need to converse with the boorish, drunken local engineering students. Groupwork was a problem, but they usually solved that by plaguarising entire assignments from such reputable and well-researched sources as Wikipedia, and relied on the poor bastard of a group leader who had to edit their work so it was up to scratch before handing it in.

I copped this job several times in the first couple of years of my course, and the students in question passed every time. So, when I was placed in a group consisting of me and four chinese students who didn’t speak a word of English, I tried the same trick on them - dumping the group leader with a whole pile of irrelevant garbage the day before the assignment was due. Needless to say, I failed the course.

Some media outlets have been suggesting that being unable to speak English is a major disadvantage when it comes to lectures, however, I couldn’t disagree more. The percentage of lectures in my degree who had a decent grasp of the English language was about one quarter. Some were so bad, it actually took a couple of minutes to translate their quiz questions from chinglish and work out what the hell I was supposed to be answering.

Virginia Trioli, in all her wisdom, suggested recently on her morning show that perhaps speaking English wasn’t a real big requirement of the courses that are popular with international students - computer science, engineering and architecture. I can’t speak for the other two degrees, but there is a hell of a lot of report writing in engineering, and without proper communication skills, little things like OH&S can easily get passed over.

It’s about time for this government to step up and reinvest in our education system. Recent ABC headlines say it all about the government’s attitude:

Rudd promises education overhaul

Versus:

Govt rejects Rudd’s ‘education revolution’

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is deluded if she thinks that our education system is anywhere near world standards. Maybe third world standards, Ms Bishop. Last time I checked, Harvard Business School wasn’t in Australia.

Mr Rudd has it right this time. Stop politicising our future.