In the City of Sails
I am writing from Auckland on a mild and clear evening...... Did almost nothing today after sleeping thru most of the morning.
My flight (Air New Zealand) was originally scheduled for 9.30am yesterday - and I spent the whole night before packing and watching the tennis. I had prepared for not getting any sleep that night. But when I got to the airport and checked in, fog prevented my flight by running and everyone had to go back into the entry section with our luggage returned when my flight was cancelled and I had to spend three hours queuing to rebook for the evening flight, which was scheduled at 6.30pm and which eventuated an hour late. The service was amongst the most shabby I have ever experienced - a quarter-size portion of bland cold pasta and a pittance of pork was what amounted to dinner after starving for more than an hour after the attendants announced that our meal was about to be served. So I didn't get in to Aotearoa until one in the morning.
I'm travelling by train to the capital tomorrow where I'm meant to have tea with some Young Labour personalities here. NZ is a unicameral parliament of 120 MPs elected on a modified proportional representation - more on that later. Basically seats are allocated on the proportion of votes cast, not by the number of electorates or ridings won.
While at the airport yesterday I was unable to get a copy of Latham's vindictive book, but I was able to get a few snippets in the media. I believe that Latham was unelectable for the beginning; the day where he was chosen as Labor leader was one of the most depressing days of my life. He had no excuse to not make a statement about the tsunami when he was ill: in my first eight weeks of school this year I saw dozens of people with life-threatening pancreatitis. Now he retorts by saying "do you expect me to reverse the waves?". Wanker. And now he seeks to do as much damage to what remains of the ALP as possible. We are lucky that he is gone, even if Sleazeby hasn't done as much as we would like.
As you probably know the dark forces gain control of the Senate tomorrow and it was very good to see 100000+ people march on the streets of Melbourne against the proposed industrial relations "reforms".
In better news, the Canadian parliament has passed legislation to legalize same sex marriages (although already permitted in eight of ten provincs), although the Conservative Party has vowed to use this issue during the next election.
Get the Met over the Town!!!!!
In the last few days, Kim Beazley reshuffled his front bench, a move that has been long overdue. The key moves are the demotion of Immigration Spokesperson Laurie Ferguson who handled the disunity within the enemy and the Peter Qasim case with suboptimal performance, and the return of my local member Lindsay Tanner. Overall, I was reasonably satisfied with the new shadow cabinet. As the dark forces get control of the Senate on July 1, Labor needs real policy differentiation and vigilance in holding the regime to account.
Today I attended a Public Transport forum organized by the North Fitzroy Branch of the ALP, held at Fitzroy High School, the spot where I once learned the program "Logo" and drew polygons when I was in third grade. Keynote speakers included Professor Brian Russell chair of the Transport Forum and union secretary Trevor Dobbyn. I was surprised and disappointed to find that Victoria had the second-worst performance in terms of innovation and investment in public transport over the last 20 years of all the states. Whilst Perth, Sydney and Brisbane have all seen the construction of new rail lines, Melbourne's rail network has seen no improvement since the opening of the City Loop in '82 and the Altona-Laverton link in '85.
I believe that the south-east, and especially the outer regions of new suburbs, needs to be the focus for improving public transport. In many new development areas where a lot of lower-middle income families live (the so-called "Howard Battlers"), public transport is next to non-existent. Often only three or four bus services are available all day that go to the nearest train station. Average transit times to Melbourne are longer than from Ballarat or Bendigo. Moreover, bus-train times are often seemingly deliberately designed to non-connect, causing long layovers at the train station. The Frankston and Dandenong lines are chronically mismanaged with an unacceptably high rate of cancellations and delays. I catch the Frankston Line to and from work, and have had to wait up to 90 minutes on occasions following three consective cancelled trains and when one finally came it resembled a Shanghai bus.
In these areas, public transport frequency needs to be greatly improved and co-ordinated to existing trains into the city. More express limited-stop services from Dandenong and Frankston are also a good idea, perhaps only stopping at Clayton/Huntingdale and Caulfield.
It is a crying shame that if these areas had a viable PT system, commuters would save huge amounts of money for not needing to buy two cars and in terms of fuel costs in comparison to rail fares. The amounts saved would amount to infinitely more than the measly $6pw tax cuts offered by the Howard Government which will be more than obliterated by petrol price increases due to oil.
And these areas just happen to be in the marginal seats the ALP need to win, both in state and federal elections! It would be a political goldmine wasted.
I hope all my comrades are having an enjoyable time at Ed Conference in Perth.
On Wednesday, I head to Auckland for two days from where I will make my way to Wellington to see some New Zealand YL figures before starting next week in the Wairarapa.
Detention centre "concessions"
On Friday last, the Prime Minister was forced to accept a number of "concessions" in response to demands from Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou and a few of his colleagues. In return, they would agree to withdraw their proposed private members' bills.
These concessions included giving the Immigration Minister discretion to release families from detention centres into "community detention" (effectively indefinite house arrest without charge), the processing of all TPV (Temporary Protection Visa) holders by October 31 and reviewing all long-term detainees (2 years or more) every six months.
It should be noted that were it not for activism in the community these Liberal backbenchers would never have demanded these changes. Also, these concessions amount to little more than window-dressing. Amanda Vanstone is one of the most uncaring individuals in the present regime and there is nothing to compel her to release families from detention centres, only the discretion is there for her to do so now. Even two years is far, far too long and more than enough time for people to lose their minds - permanently. These "changes" amount to, in effect, nothing more than a carefully orchestrated attempt to gain electoral leverage. Sadly, Kim Beazley's response to the whole issue has been sloppy-to-nonexistent. Therefore, the ruling regime seems to have wedged Labor on this issue again, and, playing both government and opposition, the ALP were excluded from the debate. Eventually, the dissidents can always be punished by sidelining them when it comes to pre-selection time.
Yesterday I attended a rally on World Refugee Day where I was pleased to see several of my comrades turn up. What was disappointing though, was that most of the marchers seemed to be from a rag-tag of nominally "ultra-left" groups who were unwilling to consider the ideas of the wider community and hence do more harm than good in the quest to bring immigration matters more transparently into the general public. The turnout amongst ordinary community members was disappointingly small, even in the demographically liberal area in which this was held.
I believe that while regrettably, the majority of Australians still support mandatory detention, there is some change in sentiment in the community. A recent SkyNews poll showed 47% believed the present system is too punitive. Asylum seekers face risks to their physical and mental health whilst in detention and, when freed, have no access to public health services or legal employment and face prolonged poverty. The progressives of this country need to engage the general community more with the facts of the matter and understand that it will take much more than the abolition of mandatory detention, mostly in terms of social, health services and a cultural change within the immigration service, to achieve positive outcomes for these oppressed people who genuinely seek refuge here and are willing to contribute to their new nation.
Holidays
Last Friday, I had my one and only written exam for the semester. Even though I did much less study than I had intended, the paper was surprisingly easy. And although I have to admit that I made some stupid slip-ups, I'll be all right. So there you have it. Another two and a half years and I'll be at your nearest hospital screwing up your stitches and disfiguring you - at taxpayers' expense.
I received a pleasant surprise when I heard that a prominent Magic player who has had a personal vendetta against me for the past six years got banned for at least two years for cheating. Perhaps that's why he's dominated the scene for so long. Good riddance. I won't be playing as much Magic this year though because I want to concentrate on Magic and politics.
My plans for the break: work for the first week and a half to improve from my state of near insolvency, and then head to Aotearoa in what seems like an increasingly bitter and ugly election campaign. I shall be working in the seat of Wairarapa, an hour north of the national capital Wellington where the sitting member Georgina Beyer, the world's first transsexual MP, is retiring from her electorate seat to sit as a List (proportional) representative. More on the niceties and nuances of Aotearoa politics later.
What a great result for the two hundred thousand residents of the Northern Territory: in yesterday's elections Labor has secured 17 of 25 seats and the Country Liberal Party reduced to a rag-tag rump with its leader Denis Burke losing his job. Thanks to affirmative action and Emily's List, the NT now has an array of female indigenous people to represent the interests of women and the Aboriginal community. The swing of +12% certainly exceeded my own expectations and those of my comrades.
I'll have more to say about the Government flop on refugees tomorrow.
