Lying with the truth: the state of Australian Labor

What on earth is Labor doing to itself? I thought the idea of a long lead time to the next federal election was to give Tony Abbott, whose approval ratings and preferred prime minister score remain a real obstacle to electoral success, lots of rope. And here they are tearing themselves apart with this bizarre attempt by former leader Simon Crean to unseat the prime minister in favour of former unseated prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Then again, is it purely Labor pushing in this direction?

Don’t you love the Murdoch media spin on this where they routinely do not report the bit where Rudd says he would not contest the leadership unless it’s vacant and focus on the bit where he says he will only contest it with overwhelming support, making him look cowardly rather than principled? Of course it’s not terribly hard when their competition supports their spin.

And there’s the routine Newspoll (also a Murdoch company) strategy of asking Labor supporters for preferred prime minister options including Rudd, whereas for the Liberals, they only ask about Abbott, no matter how low his positives.

Lying with the truth. Why didn’t us academics think of this? Imagine how many more papers we could write.

I don’t much like the Labor Party. What they stand for is not too bad, but they have become a party of expediency rather than principle. The opposing Coalition has this in a big way too: both will do whatever it takes to win, which is why I generally support the Greens when I get involved in Australian politics. But what I really dislike is dishonest news media that play the game rather than report it and deliberately misinform the public.

A local by-election in Walter Taylor: should I support the Greens?

On 23 October, residents of the Brisbane city ward of Walter Taylor will be voting for a councillor to replace Jane Prentice, who was elected to the federal parliament.

While thinking through issues for the campaign, I ran into Brisbane city council’s document, Our shared vision Living in Brisbane 2026, which contains this interesting snippet:

Green and active transport
In 2026, Brisbane will have a network of ‘greenways’ – safe laneways, walkways and bikeways for pedestrians, cyclists, wheel chairs, prams and micro-electric vehicles – linking neighbourhoods to key destinations throughout the city. Our public transport will excel in service, amenity, frequency, routing, information, affordability and safety. Our target for 2026 is to complete Brisbane’s estimated 1700-kilometre bikeways network and that 41% of travelling in the morning peak period will be by walking, cycling or using public transport.

Well, I wondered, why should anyone vote for the Greens when the city already has it right?

Then I woke up and realised where I was: a city spending billions on tunnels and bridges to support car-based commuting. Given that we are in a city where nearly 80% of all trips are made using private cars, you can understand the pressures to keep it that way. But if we want to turn that around in a big way in little more than a decade and a half, we need to rethink that mindset.

Nope, still supporting the Greens. Tim Dangerfield has my vote.