While observing this election campaign, and what went on before, a few things have stood out amongst the noise:
- How the press has generally been doing an awful job of dissecting the policies and offering valid unbiased opinions based on facts (or at least as many facts as available)
- How certain politicians have been relentlessly vomiting out slogans and mis-truths (no party is innocent of this but the award this time around is being vastly won by the Liberals)
- And how, unfortunately, a vast majority of Australians are actually so blinkered by either a pre-disposition to any particular party, or are just plain stupid as to believe everything they hear, without checking the salient facts.
I am not (nor ever will be) be a follower of any particular party. I think any reasonably intelligent person can see that within politics, there is no clear left/middle/right any more (as there probably was many many years ago). I believe that each individual has to look closely at all the policies and history of each party involved, and the people those party intend to be in charge.
No-one is perfect. Not you. Not me. No-one you know. No party or politician is perfect. No policy is perfect, and you can't keep all the people happy, all of the time. Common sense should be the ultimate judge.
While I have not exactly been a fan of some of the Labor party over the last three years, and think some of their future policies don't go far enough, I have to say that overall they have been successful, especially for a government in it's first term, and facing up to the GFC. While not perfect in any sense, they have done pretty well. If they were being given a report card, they would probably get a B, with the comment of 'must try harder to live up to their potential'.
I don't believe much of what politicians say. I don't know them. They are not personal friends, and have all been trained to deflect, minimise damage, and lie (but in a way they can always back out of the lie).
The press is actually worse. Most have their own agenda's (such as Rupert Murdoch who owns most of the popular national press, such as the Australian, news.com.au, Sky, etc). Sometimes it has seemed like they have all been paid to spin Liberal party propoganda. The ABC, while mostly reasonably unbiased, has also been victim to this, with even it's own journalists.
That's why, every one of us has the responsibility to take everthing the press and politicians say, with a huge grain of salt. We need to take note of what they all say, then do our own investigations into as many unbiased sources of information as possible. Easier said than done.
Which is why I`ve found that it is much easier to discover the blatant lies, than try and ferret out the truth.
Take the BER for example. According to the liberals, this is the main area of Labor "waste waste waste", and they wanted the interim report to come out and back up their slogans and headlines. The interim report comes out, and it says that the policy is a successful one, with 2.7% of complaints, with 56% of those 2.7% actually being complaints about the money side of things. So that's less than 1.5% complaints about wasted money (which were contractors over-charging between 5% - 12%. Hardly the Billions of waste the Liberals have been claiming (which how would they, or anyone, know before the interim report was out). Of course, if the interim report was damning of the scheme, then the govt would probably have found some way to bury it until after the election.... but in this case it just showed up Liberal lies and spin. And yet, the papers and Liberals still wildly take elements out of context and blow it up into more anti-Labor waste mantra's.
All Liberal credibility on this issue is gone. Which raised the question about what else have they been super
Here is a good article on the interim report, and the program as a whole:
A salute to a very successful BER
And others:
who needs BER
analyzing craig maynes claims
The NBN:
- Labor are rolling out a fibre optic network, to 97% of the population, offering peak speeds of 100Mbps, and will cost (all up, including private funding), up to $43 Billion.
- Liberals want to upgrade the back-haul exchanges to fibre-optic, while leaving the rest as a copper and wireless network, with speeds of at least 12Mbps, and leaving the rollout to the market, with government incentives. It will cost around $6 Billion.
Liberals are touting their network as a great future for broadband in Australia. The only problem is, it's not really any better than what we already have. Fibre at the network isn't going to make our copper to home much faster... it still has the same constraints. More importantly, Telstra will still be in control, and we've seen how well that has been working out. I really don't think many companies will expand in many area's because their main interest is obviously commercial, and if it isn't commercially viable for them to connect to somewhere, then they won't, no matter the short-term government incentive. Telstra have had many many years to get decent broadband out to outer metro. To me, this is going nowhere fast.
I didn't like the cost of the Labor initiative, but when you look into it, not all the money is coming from the taxpayer, and the increased benefits and productivity etc of this network will actually recoup the investment within 10 years. I like one person's analogy of the Liberal government wanting to not spend any money on the house for 100 years, except a little to patch up some paintwork, while the walls and roof cave in.
I think someone like Paul Budd, a communications specialist, has the best educated insight:
where is the oppositions broadband vision
reviving opel
where the hell did we get the 12mbps from/
Liberals have lost all credibility on telecommunications.
I think the Liberal policy on mental health is excellent, and long overdue. I have concerns about their funding of it though, as it basically takes money away from other health area's which are also good idea's (GP super clinics etc).
Initially I thought the Liberal policy on asylum seekers was the marginally better one. Then I looked into it further and realised that the reason the govt were wanting East Timor, is because they are a UN asylum seeker signatory, whereas Nauru is not. This is why 90% of the asylum seekers that Howard sent to Nauru, had to come to Australia anyway. Apparently the govt is trying to help Nauru apply to be a signatory, so that they have the option to use them as well.... but until they can become a member, East Timor is the better solution.
What many fail to realise though, is that many more illegal immigrants arrive by plane than boat. This really is a minor issue, and it's a shame both parties are making a big deal of it. To be fair though, Julia Gillard said on QandA the other night, that it would take 10 years for the boat-people to fill the MCG, so it's not as important an issue and needs to be put into perspective. Personally, I think we should be tougher on all illegal immigrants, as nearly all of them are economic migrants, not asylum seekers. You don't travel half-way across the world, going past many other safe countries and UN refugee centres, unless you are just interested in Australia for economic reasons. These people make a mockery of the real asylum seekers.
Next time, we will look more into the health and economic debates.
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