Higgins is regarded as a conservative area.  It has always voted that way.  Its settled affluence, extremely high education levels and orderly dignity suggests Tory.

In moving around the electorate campaigning over the last few weeks, the error of such assumptions has been dramatically proven.

On climate change – seemingly, the cause of the Left – Higgins citizens have been highly outspoken, expressing to me their horror at the Liberal Party’s denial/sceptic line.

If I can synthesize the comments of many, they say such slogans might play well to the self-interest of blue collar conservatives, but here, where people know how to think for themselves, it is seen as the politics of shallow cads.

They welcome the prospect of a low-carbon and low-pollution future.  They always viewed air pollution as a wasteful and dangerous abuse, but never had the science to support their observations.

Electric cars?  Bring it on!

A number said they hold shares in major companies but saw no difficulty in sacrificing earnings and dividends for a few years to migrate to an environmentally sound economy.

Voters made it very clear to me they accept the need to alter course on climate change and expect government to act quickly and decisively.

The real eye-opener came on Monday, with the election of Tony Abbott as Liberal leader.

The genteel voters of Higgins do not like this man, and while maintaining their decorum, were very rude about him.

They regard him as an interloper from the DLP, with his intrusive moralizing about what other people should and shouldn’t do.

Higgins voters reject his reactionary opinions: the free and open society in which we live has been hard fought for; we do not want to go backward.

The women in particular loathe his anti-abortion views.  All seemed to have a niece – always a niece – whose life would have been ruined but for the help of an understanding surgeon.

I wonder whether their evident dissatisfaction will change their votes?  We shall see on Saturday.

To the many Higgins voters who were kind enough to spare a moment for the Australian Democrats candidate, many thanks for your frankness and patience.

Liberal senators Sue Boyce and Judith Troeth voted with the government,  but this support was far short of a Senate majority.  The Mad Monk Tony Abbott, practicing as he does the “withdrawal method” when it comes to all things not conservative, forced the rest of the Liberals to vote NO despite minister Wong’s previous efforts to negotiate the bill’s passage.

The Greens voted NO – as is their custom on every piece of legislation before the house and the rest on the cross benches followed suit. Their eternal purity makes them politically irrelevant and a parliamentary menace.  But politics isn’t about holiness, it is about securing the best possible outcomes, something the Democrats never, never forgot.

But what would the Democrats have done?

The ETS is not an ideal piece of legislation.  The Democrats would have negotiated for improvements in line with our own policies.  Fairer more equitable solutions, while not appealing to major polluters,  would reduce the impact any climate change mitigation legislation would have on the overall economy and on the poor.  Our view differs from The Greens’ “Put the oxy torch to all industries emitting a kilogram of CO2, dude!” economic vandalism.

We would have worked, as we always have, with the elected government to secure the best deal possible for the Australian people with a bill that, while limited, is  a step forward.  A step the Rudd government, despite having a fresh and clear mandate for it, will not now take.

That was role of the  Democrat for 30 years in the Senate – negotiating.   Ensuring the elected government functions, keeps its word and doesn’t cave in to sectional interests.  That we are needed to do this line-by-line work is demonstrated by the failure of the ETS.  A serious piece of legislation about a serious subject, one that ensures Australia’s future – from economy to environment –  has been flagrantly reduced to petty party-based squabbling.  John Howard must be laughing behind his hand as he eggs on the newly-anointed High Priest of Climate Denial – Tony Abbott.

Bob Brown is likewise congratulating the troops on a job well screwed with the rest of the cross benches looking for a pat on the head – from somebody or anybody!

Well done all!  You’ve succeeded in reducing our federal Parliament to a circus.  A national joke; a joke on the heads of the Australian people.  Thanks a bunch!

I urge those entitled to vote in the Higgins by-election to send a message to Canberra.  Use your ballot paper and the preferential system to its fullest.  Vote 1 Australian Democrats – David Collyer, and if you’re a Liberal voter and feel so compelled then (and only then) send your second preference to those who have failed you: the Liberal Party of Australia.

Scott Kane

Tony Abbott is an intelligent and articulate man.  But the hard-line Catholic conservative beliefs he articulates are poison to middle Australia – where governments are made and lost.

Were he to become Prime Minister, our country would be a centre of commerce, not a civilization.  He would enact a huge increase in economic inequality:

• Further tax cuts for high earners while ‘bracket creep’ raises taxes on middle incomes
• Major cuts to social security that help the poorest and weakest
• The emasculation of trade unions – a la Work Choices
• A counter-revolution in education where opportunity at all levels must be bought

In the dark days at the end of World War Two, Robert Menzies dusted off the famous essay ‘The Forgotten Man’ by William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)[1] and declared himself the champion of middle Australia.

His rationale was the workers were protected by the union movement and the wealthy could bloody well look after themselves.  His ‘Forgotten Man’ speeches galvanized the country after the suffering of war and put the Liberal Party in power for an entire generation.

By current standards, Menzies sounds like a conservative though he wasn’t – he was a liberal who oversaw the greatest lift in living standards in our history.  He embraced the economics of John Maynard Keynes and the small ‘L’ liberal credo that recognized government must do what individuals and business cannot do themselves, and that some activities, notably education, are too important to be decided solely by market prices.

The Liberal Party’s core constituents are business leaders and blue-collar conservatives, whose tenuous existence makes them fear change. Menzies used his stature to stare down their insistent demands for monopoly rights and social repression and instead provided the measured progress middle Australia requires of government.

The Emissions Trading Scheme that destroyed the Liberal leadership requires both these groups to change by  pricing carbon emissions.  For business this introduces an era of creative destruction as we replace our industrial kit with less damaging alternatives.  And blue-collar conservatives see only hard-to-evade costs, for benefits they cannot see, imagine or touch.

Malcolm Turnbull was leading his party down this path of measured progress.  Instead, they have plotted a different course and consigned themselves to oblivion.

The ALP will delightedly invite voters to kick the Liberal rump.  And we will.

David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,

Last week the Familes against Climate Change hosted The “Climate Change Candidate Debates” for the Higgins by-election candidates, a highlight of  recent elections.  Unsurprisingly, Liberal Party candidate Kelly O’Dwyer was a no-show, despite repeated offers to set a date that suited her.

Rather than give a blow by blow account of the evening, read this by Paul Kavanagh, lifted directly from The Tally Room, an authoritative high-level psephology site:

“Extraordinary scene at the Climate Change candidates forum in Glen Iris last night (Nov 18).

Dr Hamilton was unimpressive. His disconnection with the audience and, it seemed, with the nitty-gritty of climate change politics itself, reached its low point when he insisted that he had never heared of the Climate Change Coalition, much less why they favoured the Democrats in 2007.

At least he attended this rare candidates event, unlike the Liberal candidate who wasn’t available, even though organisers offered to schedule the event to suit her.

David Collyer of the Democrats was the outstanding candidate on the platform. His talk and response to audience questioning showed concern about climate change and he presented the Democrats practical measures to address it. He was annimated when condemning the negotiated exemption for the agriculture industry.

The Sex Party’s Fiona Patten continued to impress, acknowledging her limitations of policy details.

While the DLP did not attend, One Nation participated with humour. Dr Toscano was entertaining and suitably radical for an anarchist.

Independents took policy positions ranging from climate change sceptics to … I was not really sure what.

Paul Kavanagh”

Thanks Paul!

And the Monash Journal agreed:

Heat on candidates to tackle some big issues

A review of the evening by the Higgins local press can be read here:

“David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,”

The barometer and the thermometer are peaking out to red.  The forecast – FAIL.

Suburban Melbourne faces the first SEVERE fire weather warning on Thursday under the new system.  We follow the Weather Bureau’s predictions with our hearts in our mouths.

From Canberra, the news is even more serious.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Australian Greens are campaigning on Climate Change in the Higgins by-election while steadfastly refusing to negotiate with the Federal government in or out of the Senate chamber.
  Five (5) Australian Greens Senators in the Senate.  Five!
  Negotiation?  Discussion?  Nil, Nix, Nada, Zero, Zilch.
  What a waste of activist energy and tax payers money The Greens experiment is proving to be!

EPIC FAIL!

• The federal Labor government knows if they don’t get the Liberal/National Coalition on side their ETS bill will earn a “Catastrophic” forecast too.  The ETS faces the same future as PM Rudd’s Grocery Watch scheme.  Will we once again have politicians hiding behind “core” and “non core” election promises – as famously coined by John Howard?  “Not happy Jan!”

EPIC FAIL!

• The Liberal/National Coalition, currently undergoing the worst ignominy a conservative political party can endure – opposition – are  lurking in dark party corners with razor sharp knives for the ritual Seppuku of their leader Malcolm Turnbull.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Coalition opposition are flipping and flopping with contradictory statements of victory in respect of negotiating amendments to the ETS while simultaneously trying to torpedo it.

Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has reportedly said:

“…the exclusion of agriculture from the ETS shows negotiations between the government and the opposition have been productive.”

He’s kidding right?  Has Heffernan  a future career as a stand up comic at the Melbourne Comedy Festival?  He must, because on the same day Senator Nick Minchin states:

“…the exclusion of agriculture alone would not be sufficient grounds for the coalition to back the ETS.”

“We’ll take significantly more concessions from the government before the coalition party room, I think, would be prepared to consider supporting this bill,” Senator Minchin told ABC Radio on Monday, adding that Labor needs to consider a “whole range” of other coalition amendments.”

A  “whole range of other coalition amendments”?  Reads like “Our way or the highway” to me.  This is not a process of negotiation – it is politcal castration being performed by an absurd and out-to-lunch far left (The Australian Greens) and a medley of Climate Change deniers within the Liberal/National Coalition.

EPIC FAIL!

• The Labor government’s Senator Wong meanwhile takes the fine art of saying nothing while implying new heights, when asked if the Federal government would be “willing to dump other sectors from the ETS to appease the coalition.”

“This is about getting majority support through the parliament for a piece of legislation that is in Australia’s national interest.”

Is that a yes, a maybe or are you just being contrite Senator?

EPIC FAIL!

And it’s not even Summer yet.

Scott Kane