Higgins voters aghast! Campaign Notes on Climate Change and Tony Abbott.

posted by David Collyer on Friday, December 4th 2009

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.

Senate Rejects ETS – Would The Democrats Have Improved and Passed this Law?

posted by Scott Kane on Wednesday, December 2nd 2009

The dogs have been barking for some time – the Senate has now rejected the Rudd government ETS legislation.  This sets in place, should the Rudd government choose to take it, a double dissolution trigger.  Rudd can call a general election for the House of Representatives and all the Senate.  Pundits are calling this for early March, others for August.  In reality, it could be just six weeks away.

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

Abbott writes ‘Kick Here’ on the Liberal rump. The ALP and Voters will take him at his word

posted by David Collyer on Tuesday, December 1st 2009

In making Tony Abbott their leader, the Liberal Party have declared themselves unelectable and destroyed their future.

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,

Four Wheels Good; Two Wheels Bad – Police Association demonizes motorcycles, bikie gangs and minorites

posted by David Collyer on Thursday, November 26th 2009

The Australian Democrats condemn in the strongest possible terms agitation by the police officers trade union for new Victorian laws that criminalize motorcycle riders.  Such laws would breach many of the fundamental civil liberties enjoyed by all, oppress an innocent minority and foster a culture of intolerance.

“We want none of this,” the Democrats Higgins by-election candidate David Collyer said today.

“Motorcyclists are entitled to equal treatment under the law in all circumstances. They may be scruffy, and people may be affronted when bikes noisily zoom past their cars, but this does not make them criminals.

“Tyrannizing a minority will not make the majority safer; it merely opens a window for further discrimination and is an incitement to violence – both official and civil.

“And since when do trade unions get to re-write our criminal law?  Police Association Secretary Greg Davies would be well advised to focus on the pay and conditions of his members, not in trying to overturn a thousand years weighty precedents by appealing to people’s thoughtless instincts.

“It may be superficially attractive to call for ‘strong laws’ – whatever that might mean – but it does nothing to advance us as a civilization and as a community.

“There are criminals in the bikie groups, this is known.  But that does not give license to condemn all group members, and by implication all motorcycle riders.

Victoria’s Chief Police Commissioner Simon Overland is quoted today saying the state’s organised crime laws are tough enough to deal with any criminal gangs that try to operate here.  Equally, there have been no calls for legal changes from the judiciary.

“If the Police Commissioner is satisfied, and our Judges are content with their tools, that ought be the end of the matter.

“If citizens have any doubts about the Democrats’ unflinching stance on this matter, just substitute ‘Jew’ or ‘Arab’ or ‘Hippy’ where you see ‘Bikie Gang’ in a sentence.  The intolerance and bigotry on display will quickly become clear.

“I know this is a state issue and that I am a candidate for federal office but nonsense like this has to be resisted in all forums, at all times and with great energy.

“This is a matter of the highest principle,” Collyer concluded.

Media contact – David Collyer 0413 248 193

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,

Dont take my word for it: Climate Change Debated in Higgins, Collyer led.

posted by David Collyer on Tuesday, November 24th 2009

“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,”

Media Release – Exempt Left-Handed From Climate Change

posted by David Collyer on Sunday, November 15th 2009

Today’s announcement by Climate Change minister Penny Wong excluding the agricultural sector from the costs of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme under proposed new compromise legislation is ridiculous and mistaken, say the Australian Democrats, and opens the door wider to further lobbying and rent-seeking by major polluters.

“If minister Wong is willing to destroy the effectiveness and universal consequence of the CPRS with this attempt to buy the support of the conservatives, I would advocate also exempting left-handed people,” the Australian Democrats candidate for the Higgins by-election David Collyer said.  “After all, they only produce one twentieth of our pollution, are very nice people and are equally deserving of assistance.

“This proposal is no sillier that minister Wong’s nonsense.

Recent scientific studies suggest farm animals, notably ruminants, are major contributors to climate change through the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with significantly larger impacts than carbon dioxide.

“These studies need to be repeated, refined and enlarged, but without an environmental ‘all clear’, exempting agriculture from the CPRS is a grave error and probably irreversible.

“Many members of the Liberal/National Coalition are Climate Change skeptics, who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change and are unmoved by the now-extensive scientific literature.

“Minister Wong is desperately trying to placate the implacable. The Opposition are laughing behind their hands at her weakness and impotence.

“Australia’s farmers are now well into their second decade of drought.  They know change is needed.  And while shifting adjustment costs to others is an old political game, accurately targeting the source of emissions for actions to change behavior is in the interest of all.

Exempting any polluter – let alone an entire sector – means the cost of adjustment must fall more heavily on the rest.  The Garnaut Report gave this matter great emphasis and sternly warned against permitting ‘business as usual’ anywhere.

“If minister Wong is so willing to riddle this crucial legislation with exemptions and concessions, then by her measure the left-handed are entitled to a free ride too,” Collyer concluded.

Media contact – David Collyer 0413 248 193

“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,”