Tool Of The Week: Have We Got Principles!

"Those are my principals, if you don't like them, I have others." - Groucho Marx.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the Liberal Party along comes Doctor Brendan Nelson – ex Union Boss, ex ALP Member, ex progressive, in fact it’s probably just best if we think of him as our ex.

The quantum leap in faith taken by the Liberal Party is best summed up by another front-runner for this week’s Tool Of The Week, Tony Abbott, who saw the rise of the good Doctor as an opportunity to announce his own future plans to pick up the pieces after the inevitable train wreck we can all see coming.

Dr Nelson has taken up some very reasonable positions in the past; about gay rights, Aboriginal land rights and education, opposition to mandatory sentencing laws, supporting safe injecting rooms and telling it how it is on the Iraq war (it’s about the oil, stupid).

Indeed, Dr Nelson is a man of principal, but if you don’t like those principals he has others.

Think we’re exaggerating? Sydney University’s vice-chancellor, Professor Gavin Brown, described Dr Nelson as “an example of ambition overriding principal”.

The new leader of the Liberal Party is someone who said that he would feel “comfortable” in the Labor Right.

He has come a long way since Arch-conservative former Treasury secretary John Stone described him as “a political hermaphrodite”; while Greg Barns, former staffer to John Fahey when he was Federal Finance Minister, who described Dr McNelson as “totally manufactured”.

Chris Bonner, President of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, gave an insight into the intellectual colossus that is the good Doctor when he said that the then Education Minister, criticised practices there was no evidence of, and came up with policy solutions already being carried out.

He voted for the Iraq war, which we were told at the time were because of WMD’s and Saddam Hussein’s cruelty, then it was only this year he made international headlines ‘fessing up it was about the oil.

He also told us earlier this year that there was “no such thing as victory in Iraq”.

Sydney Lawyer and former Liberal Party member Ifran Yussuf, who was intimate with Dr Nelson’s preselection in 1995, said “Nelson had the kind of flexibility that enabled him to both support and oppose identical policy proposals and still sound completely credible. Issues didn’t matter. What mattered was who was listening and how many votes they could swing.”

Mr Yussuf also revealed he had conversations with Dr Nelson where the doctor presumably read something into Mr Yussef’s name and slammed Israel for its ongoing occupation of the West Bank.

Current NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell recalled to the Sydney Morning Herald in December 2005 that when he was state Liberal party director and Dr Nelson was looking to go into politics, the doctor was really only interested in a safe seat.

Mr O’Farrell also predicted Dr Nelson was “capable of going the whole way in politics”.

What qualities make someone capable of going the whole way in politics, Mr O’Farrell did not say, but the ability to change one’s fundamentally held beliefs in the pursuit of power might be one.

It’s pretty obvious that the dedicated follower of fashion has done a deal with the “uglies” in the ultra-right wing of the NSW Liberal Party, re-branding himself as McNelson - the man who will do whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole of power.

And what a fine bunch he has decided to throw his lot in with.

The secretive cult, the Exclusive Brethren was caught out in February giving thanks for Dr Nelson’s support. A report in the Age newspaper revealed a conversation between Brethren figures, including cult chief Bruce Hales, about a meeting with Dr Nelson which resulted in “unexpected recognition” and favourable treatment.

In this case it was an exemption from testing of computer literacy for students in Brethren schools. Given the written threats the Brethren peddled around during the recent election campaign it looks like he gave the god-botherers an exemption from written literacy as well.

Aside from the nut job religious right, Dr McNelson is also making the right noises for the Party’s free-market ideologues.

Despite admitting the electorate had roundly rejected WorkChoices, he says unfair dismissal laws should not be brought back.

Nelson may have presided over cuts to education, supported nuclear power, voted for the Iraq war, screwed up a multi-billion dollar defence purchase and may be back-pedalling furiously on the ALP’s mandate to rip up WorkChoices, but hey, maybe he doesn’t believe any of this stuff.

After all, a man whose principles can bend like a garden hose on a hot day probably doesn’t believe in anything. Maybe he is taking the free-market mantra of ‘flexibility’ and applying it to facts, beliefs and ideas?

It certainly looks that way.

Look forward to an opposition that will show all the backbone of a garden slug, but with none of the attractiveness.

And with lunatic number one, Tony Abbott, waiting in the wings, the good Doctor’s reign is likely to provide much needed comic relief in the Federal sphere before he takes the Liberal Party right off the rails.

Las Sus Derechas En El Trabajo

If anyone doubted the depth and reach of the Your Rights At Work campaign then prepare to be enlightened.

Here's a good friend, Tanya, at Machu Picchu in Peru, continuing a thousand year tradition of Inca rights at work.

We are the people Milton Freidman warned you about and we are everywhere.

Thanks to reader Steve, for sending in the pic!

Which gets me to thinking - why not send in your own Your Rights At Work pictures from weird and wonderful places, and we'll put them up here on the blog.

We are not a marketing exercise - this machine is made of people!

Another Ostrich

Peter Hartcher joins the queue of the clueless in today's Sydney Morning Herald, flailing around as to why we kicked Howard out because of the myth that this is a 'booming' economy. The economy is NOT booming for most of us - we are just getting deeper in debt. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has pointed out that one in five households earns less than $20,000 a year, with half earning less than $37,000. What sort of economic boom do you celebrate when half the country is on $700 a week or less? It was the Your Rights At Work Campaign stupid: When 12,500 people mobilise on an issue they will change a government, as the Your Rights At Work Campaign did. Now, can all the commentators take a deep breath and stop trying to rewrite history; and can journalists be forced to spend some time in the real world please?

How To Build An Imbecile III

The astonishing thing about Graham Young is not that he's the chief editor of Online Opinion, or that he's vice-president of Queensland Liberal Party, or even that he's wrap up of the election was published in the satirical newspaper, TheAustralian; no the really astonishing thing is that this bloke has enough brain cells to remember how to breathe. Here's another Ostrich, with his head in the sand, ignoring the unpalatable truth that the Your Rights At Work Campaign is a machine made of people, thousands of 'em. Young is another dill peddling the spin doctor's myths. Just how dissolute this reaction is can be measured by the fact that even the Washington Post gets it, 14,000 kilometres away from the end of Graham Young's nose, as this excellent piece from E.J. Dionne Jnr (now that's a Septic handle if ever I heard one) explains.

How To Build An Imbecile II

The rewriting of history continues apace this week with the latest theory given oxygen being Christian Kerr's assertion over at Crikey that it was all the Lindsay fake-flyer business what won it for Rudd. Yeah, that makes sense. A campaign involving 180,000 ordinary Australians shifts 5.6 percent of the vote, but really it was just a crazed Dentist from Penrith. Christian likes to think he's ever so witty, with the occasional bon-mot sprinkled amid the whacky myths he likes to popularise, but usually he's about as funny as a dead baby's doll - and another good example of how even alternative journalism is riddled with the same pretentious plummy prats that clog up the mainstream media. Unaccountable, unreliable, self-serving and - as this instance shows - often just plain wrong. For those that came in late, it was the Your Rights At Work campaign that won it - along with the thousands of ordinary Australians that got off their arses and did something about WorkChoices. But the politics industry can't be seen to thank them, there's no billable hours in that.

How To Build An Imbecile

Miranda Devine, who gets on in life because her dad was drunken incompetent newspaper hack Frank Devine, really shows just how much the Australian neo-conservatives are lost at sea following Howard's loss last Saturday. Her column in today's Sydney Morning Herald is part attempt to rewrite history, part attempt to airbrush the failings of the Liberal party and mostly just the sort of inane dribble that can only occur if one spends large amount of time with one's head squeezed inside John Howard's fundament. The idea that Howard's vicious pandering to narrow minded racism is some kind of an 'achievement' is one of the more bizarre reads of recent history. Well, Miranda lost, and she can join the queue marked Irrelevant Jibberers right behind Gerard Henderson.

Good News

The best news since 8.12pm Saturday night comes hot off the wires with sacked construction worker Barry Hemsworth getting his gig back at Botany Cranes after a 441 day picket! Read about it here This is the most promising development since the election and hopefully a positive sign of things to come. I particularly like the manager claiming it had nothing to do with the election result, just that the timing was a "coincidence". Yeah mate, sure.

A New Conservative Party? Step forward ALP...

Interesting piece over at the Sydney Morning Herald website from the excellently named Steve BiddulPH. The Liberal Party set to tank as a result of a combination of peak oil, environmental catastrophe and the US economy disappearing off the radar - with the ALP replacing them as the party of conservatism and the Greens the official opposition. Sounds like a fantasy from Friends of the Earth, but there are some constraints on this outcome. The Libs will quickly attract support from those affected by what is obviously a looming economic crisis ("Whaddya mean I can't afford to drive my HSV Commodore!"). The Libs will be shamelessly populist from here on in. The ALP is very much a party of big business, but it is also an industrial party through it's trade union affiliations, as well as being a party of smooth operators, time serving logs, branch stackers and stackees and wild eyed idealists - more like a Peronist party than one with anything approaching an ideology (I mean, a party that can contain Bob Gould, Virginia Judge and Greg Combet is little more than a convenient electoral machine to start with). Could such a party morph into the party of a 'one-party state'? Possibly, but unlikely considering that Ivan Milat would stand a reasonable chance against Morris Iemma at the next state elections that are in...oh, 2010! Locally the Greens have been a very conservative influence on politics - hardly the radical leftists portrayed as the 'Watermelon' party by the Brethren. They are still not taken seriously by the mainstream despite being the only party that has consistently got it right on the issue that Biddulph points out will be THE issue over the next three years, the environment. These will be interesting times indeed. Biddulph ponders what happened to the 'economic miracle' touted by those two hucksters Howard and Costello. For my money he's pretty much nailed it:

We pissed it all away on tax giveaways and consumer goods. On bloated homes that we will not be able to cool or heat, or sell, and cars we won't be able to afford to drive. A party based on self interest may evaporate along with our rivers and lakes, and have no role to play in a world where we co-operate or die.

Given the track record of the Australian media in conveying important messages to an increasingly jaded and cynical populace - and from my experience of Australian supermarket queues - If Biddulph is right then I think our society is probably going to die. "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper" - T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

What Have The Unions Ever Done For Us?

From the people that brought you the weekend comes...

Silence Speaks Volumes

The ongoing silence from the new powers that be doesn't auger well for working stiffs, as Rick Kuhn points out in today's Canberra Times. If it can be pointed out in a Rural Press flagship then the ongoing triumphalism of the spin doctors bobbing up in pieces like this one from Andrew West in the SMH can be even more depressing for the footsoldiers in the Your Rights At Work army. Focus groups are all well in good in fashioning your message - and it is a lucrative way to fill the carpet bag - but it all counts for nothing if you can't then get that message out. This is where the tens of thousands of word-of-mouth activists came in. Focussed on 24 marginal seats they, as I pointed out on Monday, won 22 with one still in doubt. And they did this as volunteers - giving up hundreds and thousands of hours for free, reaching into parts of society where the ALP's message couldn't go - at least not in that one-on-one sense that proved so valuable. This campaign had it's TV ads and T shirts - make no mistake they made a difference - but at its core was thousands of conversations between ordinary Australians, where Your Rights At Work activists went one on one with neighbours, family, friends and strangers alike to ensure the message sunk in. For the first time in a long time the union movement started speaking out into the community. As a result the campaign attracted many non-union members as supporters - concerned about the impact of these laws on their families and communities. It's a good time for the Labour Movement as a whole to realise that it's great strength is not a few spin doctors, operators and policy wonks - but it is actually a far more powerful group - thousands of ordinary people organised into a cohesive and effective voice. It's little wonder that those so seduced by power would be reluctant to acknowledge such a strong force even if it put them where they are today. A force like that could really derail the gravy train if they, quite rightfully, demanded the government address their concerns. No, better to pretend they didn't exist - or if they did then play down their role. Remind them of what power they do have and they might start to use it. In the end Kuhn may be right - and we may all discover that Rudd is nothing but a four letter word* * An idea courtesy of Tog's Place

If you can't beat 'em

...join 'em. Despite being very cynical about the worth of a citizen journalism, my even greater cynicism about my chances of getting published in this lifetime have led me to join the blogocracy. http://distressedasset.blogspot.com/ I am concerned about where this Rudd business might lead, and whether or not he will act in our immediate best interests. I'm also considering giving a running commentary on the usefulness, or otherwise, in giving a fat rat's clacker about Anyone who says they are here to govern for all Australians has a very charitable view about Piers Ackerman and Ivan Milat. It's also a good opportunity to resurrect that great Friday evening tradition - the Tool Of The Week. Enjoy it - for what it's worth - and pop back as often as you're up for an entertaining inventory of the inspiring cesspool that is Australian politics.

Rewriting History

"It's time for a new page to be written in our nation's history." Kevin Rudd, November 24, 2007.

In the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election tens of thousands of ordinary Australians mobilised into a concerted campaign to change a government. These people re-wrote Australian history.

Yet, as soon as that victory was achieved, their efforts were all but ignored by, not just vast swathes of the media, but also by the ultimate beneficiaries, the incoming government.

The strength of the Your Rights At Work campaign comes from its acknowledgement by the defeated Liberal Party - federal director, Brian Loughnane, told media on the Sunday after the election that Work Choices had cost the Coalition key support, a statement echoed by Liberal MP and campaign spokesman, Andrew Robb.

ALP campaign director Tim Gartrell described WorkChoices as “the most important issue of the campaign”.

“It would have been more difficult to win without it.”

"I mean look at these young guys at the gate - you'd have been dragging them in here to vote last time,” said Graham Perrett, ALP Candidate for Moreton, while visiting a polling booth on election day. "This time they're here handing out cards on the rights at work issue.”

In the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro big swings were recorded in communities west of the great divide where WorkChoices was seen as a threat.

Polling done for the ACTU showed a 5.7% shift from Howard to Labor motivated by industrial relations as the key issue.

None of this would have happened without a concerted grass roots campaign - this was no astroturfing exercise - that saw the ACTU gather an email database of 180,000 addresses, from which a popular localised word of mouth campaign spread.

For over two years the Your Rights At Work campaign has been beavering away, under the radar, in 24 targeted coalition held seats.

Whether leafleting, letterboxing, doorknocking, forwarding emails, holding a street stall or collecting signatures, an army of campaigners braved everything from Darwin’s tropical storms to the snows of the Great Dividing Range to make sure that the impact of WorkChoices became issue number one across a vast swathe of middle Australians in marginal seats.

The Your Rights at Work bumper stickers, T-shirts and later house signs, became eponymous. These people were shifting voter sentiment where it mattered. Some media dismissed it as a cynical Trade Union scare campaign or stunt at best. The rest ignored it.

But the people involved in the campaign came from an extraordinary array of union and non-union backgrounds. There were the usual suspects, but there were more, many more, that became involved in a community campaign for the first time in their lives.

Many of these people took to it with a gusto lacking in the rank and file of both major parties. This is a newly politicised group of Australians, and they threw up some amazing champions.

One such example was Jo Jacobson, an articulate and savvy health worker who became the public face of the opposition to WorkChoices in the Penrith based seat of Lindsay long before the ALP had even settled on a candidate.

Many campaigners took to one-on-one conversations with their peers. In marginal Macquarie a ripped off hotel worker named Steve Eisenberger made a habit of wearing his Your Rights At Work T-shirt around his blue-collar mates - winning over a small coterie who had previously backed Howard over what are euphemistically referred to as ‘security’ issues.

There were thousands of Steve Eisenburgers operating across all sorts of groups - social, sporting, civic and cultural - to get the message out.

The word of mouth message cut through to an increasing number of Australians while Howard and Barbara Bennett remained as background white noise, drowned out by the wise words of their Your Rights At Work neighbour and their own experiences.

The community campaign was backed up by a shoestring (compared to the Federal Government’s) advertising campaign that re-enforced the word-of-mouth message.

Despite (or possibly because of) widespread support, many Your Rights At Work signs were stolen or defaced, as well as threats and acts of vandalism aimed at Your Rights At Work activists.

Still, the thousands of volunteers didn’t complain - instead they handed out their own How To Vote card on election day, separate from the major parties - in the rain, the sun, the heat, the wind. They made sure that WorkChoices was on the forefront of voter’s minds where it mattered.

Of the 24 targeted coalition held seats, the ALP won 20 and 3 are currently too close to call.

It’s an extraordinary achievement in anyone’s reckoning - so where is the acknowledgement to these Australians by either the media or the man holding the trophy, Kevin Rudd?

There was no direct mention of either WorkChoices or the Your Rights At Work campaign in the Hawker-Brittonesque pfaff that passed as Rudd’s acceptance speech.

Not much of a run in the media either. A bit of a go over at the SMAge, with Andrew West providing a bit of background in the SMH and a puff piece on the ACTU’s spin-doctors in the Age, while Mark Bahnisch and Wayne Errington in Crikey both nominated WorkChoices as a killer issue for the Coalition.

The last time a Prime Minister lost his seat - Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 - it was to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall in a foretaste of the Your Rights At Work Campaign.

One of the key issues in 1929 was Bruce’s dream of smashing the union movement and regulated working arrangements based on fairness.

Australia said no to individual contracts in droves, and there was a landslide win to Labor. The depression hit and two years later Scullin’s Labor Government dissolved into dissent, panic and scandal.

The Rudd Government will now be faced with a plethora of conflicting policy objectives - one of which will be to screw down the price of labour. We all know that this will be borne by those least able to afford a cut in their living standards.

As early as the Sunday morning after the election Australian Business Council head Greg Bailey dismissed “fears” the union movement may hold sway over a Rudd government.

“If you listened to Kevin Rudd last night that is not an impression you would have got,” Bailey told the ABC, while over at Forbes Magazine CommSec chief equities economist Craig James said the Australian business community had been prepared for a Labor victory.

“In terms of economic policy, nothing really changes too much,” said James, in an observation that would have been news last week.

Rudd was on the 7.30 report blaming the Liberals “from day one” for threatening to be obstructive over repealing WorkChoices. They’ve already set up the fall guy and an alibi - the Senate.

Labor is said to be keen to recall Parliament to introduce its legislation to change the Howard Government's Work Choices laws, but just how keen remains to be seen.

"I hate to say it, but Costello was right when he said the new government will start rewriting history," Unions NSW secretary John Robertson told the SMH on Monday. "It's already begun and Rudd and company are out there saying it was health or education or climate change. Sure, it was a bit of all those, but the biggest issue was Work Choices."

I got a nice email from Sharan Burrow and Jeff Lawrence at the ACTU for my support for the Your Rights At Work campaign.

”Well done,” they said. “You have helped make history.”

Just like those who took on Stanley Melbourne Bruce did nearly eighty years ago.

Yes, Kevin Rudd - and the media - appears to want to write a new page in Australia’s History - a page where it is as if the tens of thousands of ordinary hard working Australians, who banded together as the Your Rights At Work Campaign and changed a government, never existed.

But after the success of our campaign so far, we are highly unlikely to go away.