Secret ballot the answer to Labor's secret files

Yesterday's revelations in The Age that the Brumby Government is keeping secret files on citizens should be at the forefront of voters' minds when they go to the polls on Saturday. The secret files - also apparently kept by the Coalition - have no purpose in serving the public interest, but are there to protect the interests of the major political parties.

In the case of Labor, the files should be seen in the context of a Government that has already made deals to provide personal details to large corporations. It is also a Government already under fire for its dirt unit tactics against political opponents. The combination of Labor's propensity for dirty campaigning and its gathering of personal information should be distressing to anyone concerned with open, accountable democracy.

In Northcote, we have already seen smear tactics employed against a local climate campaigner by Northcote MP, Fiona Richardson, who is on Labor's campaign committee.

I would be curious to see if the campaigner recently smeared by Richardson in the Melbourne Times Weekly appears on the ALP's secret database, but we may never know.

There's a simple antidote to Labor's secret files - it's called a secret ballot, and it's coming up on Saturday.

Higgins not so great for Libs, ALP

Update: This post has been updated to reflect final AEC figures.

On Sunday, Josh Gordon at The Age saw the federal by-election results as good for Tony Abbott, but, looking at Higgins, the Liberal primary vote increased from last time by only 0.82% (with an increase in 2CP of about 2%). With Labor not running, this could even be explained by a small migration of right-wing Labor voters to the Liberals.

In Bradfield, the Liberals did worse, with swing in the primary vote against them of 3.4%, albeit with an increase of less than 1% in the 2CP.

In addition, there was a poor turn-out in both by-elections. In Higgins 75.32% cf 93.7% (AEC 2009, 2007), and in Bradfield 74.24% cf 94.03% (AEC 2009, 2007).

In the absence of Labor, a substantial proportion of both electorates (32.54% primary in Higgins, and 25.9% primary in Bradfield) were quite willing to vote Green. How many might still be comfortable to do so even given a Labor candidate on the ballot?

This unknown surely can't be making Lindsay Tanner more comfortable in Melbourne. It seems there's plenty of scope for Rudd to lose quite a slab of ALP votes to the Greens, so it's far from a poor result for the most climate progressive party, and particularly for Clive Hamilton. It's also noteworthy that the climate sceptic candidate did very poorly in Higgins.

Chin up, Greens! Well done!

Priya Carey interview at YouDecide2007

Last weekend I interviewed Priya Carey, Greens candidate for Batman in the 2007 Federal election. I began with the challenge of running against Martin Ferguson in the safest ALP seat in Australia...

Priya Carey has the toughest gig of any Greens candidate running against an ALP incumbent this election. Martin Ferguson, the Labor MHR for Batman, holds the seat with a 21.3 per cent margin (two-party-preferred) from the 2004 election, making Batman the safest ALP federal seat in Australia. The Greens' hopes for the seat were challenged on this very basis by a local journalist when Bob Brown spoke on the Tasmanian pulp mill at the Northcote Town Hall back in July. I therefore began my interview by asking Carey what claim to relevance the Greens could have in such a safe seat.

Read the full interview at YouDecide2007

'Sticky John' a double-standard distraction for Batman

Here I take a look at local media coverage of the federal contest for Batman. This is the original version of a piece that was published on the YouDecide2007 site yesterday.

It can be an interesting exercise to look at the local media's election coverage. With a circulation of more than 24,000 in the Victorian seat of Batman, last week's edition of The Northcote Leader offered a telling glimpse of the substantial reach but narrow focus of some local election reporting.

With only three editions to go before polling day, the election didn't make the front page this time around, though the previous week saw some glancing coverage identifying climate change as a big issue with Batman voters in the safest ALP-held federal seat in Australia.

Make it to page five and we get a Q and A of the candidates' 'favourite local hangouts, from restaurants to parklands'. But it's on page seven that cynical amusement could begin to creep in. 'Sticky John riles Rudd' reads the headline above a large colour pic of a Northcote resident (one Cathy Rudd) holding her Martin Ferguson placard besmirched with a glued-on, photo-copied portrait of a smiling PM with a 'Howard 07' caption – Ferguson the victim of a hideous head transplant.

Martin Ferguson, MHR for Batman and the ALP's safest bet, declares the vandalism of the frontyard promotion 'beyond a joke', describing the admittedly silly act as 'clearly thought-out and orchestrated'. Curiously, he then expresses doubt that the Liberals are behind the prank.

Obvious but unanswered questions are who he thinks might have hatched the devious masterplan and what political mileage is in it for them. This Batman mystery is not Murder on the Orient Express – with only six candidates, the political suspects are limited; one – the Liberals – apparently already ruled out.

If I were more optimistic, I'd be pleased to see Ferguson take this stand, because voters could read it as a rejection of the kind of tactics the ALP itself used in a misleading propaganda campaign against the Greens in the contest for Northcote at the November 2006 Victorian State election. Of course one could argue that it's an entirely different ballgame, except for the fact that back in November 2006 Ferguson was spruiking on the steps of Northcote Town Hall for then ALP candidate and later Northcote MP, Fiona Richardson. It was Richardson's husband, ALP State Secretary Stephen Newnham, who authorised the so-called 'Gotcha' campaign against the Greens.

So this time, if he is sincere, Ferguson seems to be signalling that we'll see no unbranded but ALP-authorised flyers appropriating the Greens logo and featuring the heads of prominent Liberals at its centre. Transplanted heads? Is Ferguson insinuating some kind of ham-fisted Greens payback in the current stunt? That, of course, is the less optimistic view: Ferguson's cryptic comments in the 'Sticky John' report could signal just the kind of stupidity that besieged our letterboxes last November.

Of course, this is all somewhat complicated by the preference deal that now seems to have been sealed between the Greens and Labor. How do you falsely insinuate a deal between the Greens and other parties when you've done a deal with them yourself? Maybe you insinuate questionable campaign tactics instead.

While we'll have to wait and see if a misleading ALP campaign becomes a feature of the federal contest for Batman, the trouble with this kind of beat-up masquerading as election coverage is that it displaces real issues and fails to engage in actual debate.

The previous week's edition of the paper devoted a tiny paragraph to the key issues for Batman as identified by Roy Morgan research – improving health services and hospitals (39 per cent of responses); improving education (25 per cent); and fair workplace and employment regulations (23 per cent). Fast-forward to last week's 'Sticky John' edition and two of these issues are implicated in a worthy commentary piece ('Stomach it?', p.6) by Heather Gallagher, who was admitted to the emergency department of a local hospital during the recent Victorian nurses' dispute.

Unfortunately, the issues covered in the article were not followed through in the paper's election coverage, so we were given little indication of where the candidates stand on issues that clearly concern many Batman voters. Given recent events, however, a closer analysis would have challenged the major parties, with the Victorian Labor Government having invoked WorkChoices in its attempt to break the nurses' dispute, and the Federal Government badly embarrassed by the seeming failure of its pork-barrelling takeover of Tasmania's Mersey hospital.

While it would be easy to frame serious questions around these events to bring out the positions of all the candidates, it seems the best we can hope for in the coverage is trivial shenanigans that distract us from the issues. In Ferguson's case, it's a distraction based on a double-standard regarding appropriate campaign tactics. Let's see if some substantial issues emerge in this week's edition of the paper.

All comments welcome, but, in the case of the ALP, that might risk addressing the real issues – don't you think, Martin?

Labor at it again with Greens 'deal' campaign

There's an interesting article by Simon Kidd in today's edition of The Melbourne Times. It describes the ALP's accusations of a deal between the Greens and the Liberal Party that first surfaced in the lead-up to last November's State election. The campaign has hotted up with the election of three Upper House Greens MPs – Colleen Hartland, Greg Barber and Sue Pennicuik – and, of course, with the approaching Federal election.

Among the issues currently contested is the Greens Upper House vote against a Bill supporting a plebiscite should the Federal Government attempt to foist a nuclear power station on Victorians. TMT reports the Greens response as rejecting the plebiscite Bill because the Resources Minister and not the Parliament would have the final say on the wording of the question put to voters about whether they wanted nuclear power in their State.

My view is that we should look carefully at the ALP's allegations on this and other issues, asking whether they are accurate in terms of how the Greens have argued in the Upper House and, secondly, whether the allegations sit sensibly with what we know are the fundamental principles and stated policies of the Greens.

I haven't got to Hansard on the plebiscite Bill as yet, but the insinuation of the ALP's charge is that the Greens are somehow closet supporters of nuclear power. This has as much credibility as Martin Ferguson's claim (letters, same issue of the TMT) that he isn't pro-nuclear, despite being his party's most ardent supporter of the expansion of uranium mining and the change of the Labor Party's three-mines policy at last April's ALP National Conference.

The challenge for the Greens is to squarely meet the ALP's claims, showing why parliamentary disagreements with the ALP are principled, and do not amount to collusion with the enemy.

At the last State election, while the Greens addressed Labor's misinformation about a preference deal with the Liberals, they were unable to do so with sufficient vigour in the short time available before polling day. Running as an independent in Northcote, I saw the number of people on election day who approached the Greens campaigners quizzing them about the deal. The ALP's strategy hit home, but the Greens should have challenged the Northcote result in court because the ALP's victory was built on misleading campaign material that arguably influenced the outcome.

Whatever the prospects of success of such a challenge on legal grounds, such a move would have ensured a clear airing of the issues and a thorough testing of the ALP's claims. The risk is that the current ALP campaign will gain impetus from the Greens' inadequate response.

Back in November, some of (now Northcote MLA) Fiona Richardson's ALP-branded campaign material was authorised by the same person who authorised unbranded and otherwise unattributed material alleging a preference deal between the Liberals and the Greens. One such item was authorised by Stephen Newnham, Richardson's husband. Newnham also authorised the letter to Northcote constituents from Peter Garrett, again alleging the deal.

Now he is authorising the website set up to promote the ALP's so-called 'Gotcha' campaign, which criticises how the Greens vote in the Victorian Upper House and suggests an ongoing relationship with the Liberals.

Instead of peddling propaganda, Labor would do better to heed principled disagreements with its policies; it will otherwise continue the drift away from its own core values and weaken its chances of removing John Howard at the Federal election. On the other hand, working with progressives will only strengthen its electoral fortunes among voters who have not forgotten the Left.

Coverage of ALP Northcote election tactics

It's good to see The Melbourne Times publishing a selection of letters in this week's edition about the misleading campaign carried on by the ALP in Northcote against the Greens leading up to the 25 November State election. Among them was an edited version of my contribution, given here in full:

I was pleased to see Fiona Richardson repeat claims about a Green preference deal with the Liberals, as Northcote voters now have documented evidence that she was deeply implicated in this false allegation, also shamefully advanced by Peter Garrett and the Premier himself in letters to all Northcote electors before the election. And that's in addition to Labor's nocturnal letterboxing of flyers showing the Greens emblem with a picture of Ted Baillieu at its centre.

On election day, as I stood on the steps of Northcote Town Hall with Fiona Richardson and the Labor luminaries turned lackeys for the day, I saw in the questions of concerned voters to the Greens campaigners that these grubby tactics had hit home. For every voter who asked a question, there were doubtless others who voted Labor, improbably fearing that the so-called 'deal' might overturn Labor's 28-seat advantage in the Lower House.

I call on Fiona Richardson to declare the basis on which she argues that the deal existed, to reveal the role of her husband, Stephen Newnham, in her campaign, and to make public the extent of funding devoted to misleading Northcote voters. I want people to know that in this campaign the Labor Party was reading from the Tampa book of election strategy, and should be ashamed for having done so.

As for Richardson's performance as a mere place-holder for the ALP, I note from VEC figures that the Party's first-preference votes dropped by nearly 3,500 from Delahunty's 2002 tally, that there were nearly 6,000 fewer formal votes, and informal votes were also up substantially. In the context of such a dirty campaign, these figures are hardly cause for the arrogance now dripping from our new MP.

There was also coverage in this week's edition of The Northcote Leader on page 5, 'Brown sees red over Green preference claims', the headline referring to the intervention in the issue of Greens Senator, Bob Brown. Let us hope that the Greens pursue their legal challenge over the campaign, and that the ALP's tactics continue to receive the scrutiny they deserve.