AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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You know the working year has begun when parliament starts sitting. Pollies returned in force to Canberra last week, and the theatrics quickly began - Rudd v. Abbott, Gillard v. the teachers' unions, Barnaby Joyce v. informed policy. With a federal election due before the end of the year, and a NSW poll little more than 12 months off, here are my predictions for what will be an action-packed political cycle.
1. Kevin Rudd will win the next election. Governments have to be very incompetent to lose an election after one term in office. People complain that change is slow in Canberra under Rudd, but Australia will re-elect his government for its 'steady as she goes' approach, and for escaping the worst of the GFC (even if the policy settings were established by Peter Costello).
2. Although defeated, the Coalition will reward Tony Abbott with another term as Opposition Leader. This year, he will take the fight right up to the government with his straight-talking political style. Abbott is also a true Conservative with many supporters in Canberra. They love it.
3. Climate change will further polarise the political agenda. But the debate will acquire a more 'human' face with greater emphasis on communities and the potential impact of doing nothing, both here and in the developing world.
4. State Labor will look like they could win the March 2010 election. Amazing, but true. Kristina Keneally has made State Labor look like a new government and she is very likeable. More critically, the NSW Libs are running so dead they could end up in an electoral grave of their own making. All Kenneally needs to do in 2010 is lay 100m of train or light rail track anywhere in Sydney (to show she has started fixing Sydney's transport problems), and pass responsibility for the health system to the Federal Government.
5. Malcolm Turnbull will move to NSW State Parliament. The NSW Liberal Party is dominated by small 'l' liberals closer to his own political beliefs. He will be at home there. Drum roll, please.
6. The Charter of Human Rights is a dead duck. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said as much in a recent interview with the Financial Review. We will get a beefed-up parliamentary committee (or committees) to oversee our human rights obligations. (For a pdf document of Sydney Diocese position on human rights, click here ) Likewise, the Federal Freedom of Religious Belief Project will go nowhere. What is happening in Britain under a strident 'rights' agenda is so scary that even moderates in Australia won't want to go there. (For a pdf document of the Sydney Diocese FRB submission, click here)
7. There will be a broad national conversation about the effects of sexual freedom. This will range from the consequences of binge drinking, the sexualisation of teenagers, the moderation of male sexual behaviour, to lowering abortion rates. Footballers started this discussion over the course of 2008-9 by their appalling behaviour, and Tony Abbott kicked it off in 2010 with his recent remarks about virginity. Dear reader, this is water-cooler stuff and Christians need the courage to discuss it.
Hi Karin, I am surprised that you have not made a more detailed comment about Joyce's attack on foreign aid given the Christian community's interest in this subject.
Although I strongly disagree with Joyce, I can see his view having popular appeal on the street. Or do you think his comments are too silly to be taken seriously?
As you know Karin, I highly doubt this assessment. NSW Labor are just too far behind in the polls. The polls would suggest that the libs are the closest thing to a certainty. The electorate have already made up their mind about NSW Labor's 'narrative' of incompetence. Any mistakes (not matter how minor) under Kenneally will feed back into this assumption.
Thanks Karin. That's a helpful assessment of an important issue for Christians.
Thanks for this. I do think Barnaby Joyce's comments on foreign aid are too silly to deserve further debate. Joyce will be an on-going problem for Abbott but will continue to play well in the bush. Abbott needs Joyce to deliver a re-invigorated National Party vote in country seats.
On NSW Labor, under Rees there is no question that Labor was in terminal decline. I still don't think Labor can win in March 2010, but under Keneally they sure look a whole lot better. What concerns me is that the NSW Libs seem to be just waiting for victory to fall into their laps but they made that mistake at the last election. A healthy political system needs a rigorous Opposition and some alternative ideas.
But I think we in the West (& those in the developing world with middle class aspirations) are way too profligate in consumption - of food, of water, of energy. Many conservatives might agree with that.
At the community level you mention, I wonder if there's more progress to be made at the practical end of living simply, less wastefully, being cautious about the rate of use of resources like water and energy.
Maybe there is more common ground here than climate change debates, which really require more omniscience than we possess to resolve?
On the other hand, my doctrine of human sinfulness means I am pessimistic about reining in greed and galloping consumption.
One other thought. I think the population debate is only going to increase in Australia. It is fed by the environmental pressures argument. It is fed by immigration fears of some. It is fed by development pressures on creaking infrastructure.
Personally I want us to be a nation welcoming refugees and other migrants in a sensible way. And I hate talk like we've heard recently saying we should all have small families. Christians welcome people, babies and so on!
So again, I think consuming less is a better solution to advocate than rejecting migration or pushing for small families who still live in big houses!
This one certainly does. It would be an amazing thing for one of the major party leaders to start preaching moderation in consumption. I can't see it happening.
Have you been reading my drafts folder? ;-) More on this topic tommorrow...
Re climate change - it has been a terrible 3 months for the IPCC, climate change alarmists, including green lobby, though I'm not so sure there will be further polarisation of the political agenda.
Hopefully a duly mortified IPCC will review its processes for AR5, due in 2014, and be prepared to seriously consider the alternative less alarmist/alternative views now appearing in peer researched journals (and this trend will only continue and probably accelerate especially with respect to results of more sophistocated modelling including disaster forecasting). The fact of the ongoing hiatus in global warming should accommodate this process.
NSW is welcome to Malcolm Turnbull.
I agree there does need to be a broad national conversation about the effects of sexual freedom and the churches need to get on the front foot speaking/acting into the public domain but also working within the churches as well. Big, big topic, thanks for raising it.
I think that there's a risk in your comment that I'm totally in favour of increased foreign aid, but the type of people to whom Barnaby Joyce appeals often come from small rural communities which have seen decreased government services over the past generation. (For example, see this story from where I grew up). They want to know why such funds are being sent overseas, while they as Australians get less and see their towns wither.
If we don’t give them the dignity of listening to them and giving them a serious response, then the message they hear is that while all animals are equal, some are more equal than others. The perception from sections of the community that their views weren’t being heard or treated seriously helped create, I believe, both One Nation and the Cronulla riots. If we want to avoid such incidents in the future, then we need to hear them, fossick out the truth from the prejudice, and show them why a public policy such as foreign aid is both good for Australia, and good for them.
This is exactly why Joyce's comments will play well in the bush. But yes governments do need to listen and respond to needs by ensuring that regional and rural communities have the services they need. This does not mean abandoning our international obligations.
On the question of materialism, this is an interesting thread. Few politicians talk about it, except the Greens in the context of consuming less for the sake of the environment. Some years ago Amanda Vanstone ventured into this territory (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200209/s684612.htm) linking fertility to materialism; her comments were greeted with astonishment. Then the Government threw money at women having babies in the form of the baby bonus and we have had a mini baby boom ever since! Go figure.
This aside, Sandy, Craig and Mark are right - it is a difficult subject to raise in the political arena as our economy is built on maintaining consumption levels. So the task of developing national discussion falls to others - e.g. churches, community groups, and families. We talk about the evils of materialism in our churches, but do we practise what we preach? How many of us have replaced perfectly good cathode ray TVs in the last year for a new flat-screen TV? Or upgraded the mobile phone? Perhaps this is a discussion for another day.
As does Nick Minchin, it must be said, & it's truly disturbing that a key power-broker of one of our major political parties can have such bizarre views.
(It's also odd that right-wing communist conspiracy theorists actually seem to agree with the real communists on climate change. Why is that?)
All the while the science on climate change will get better & better -- the beauty of the scientific process is that mistakes are corrected & it becomes more rigorous over time.
And we'll see the world do very little -- China & India wont act, therefore the US wont act (especially now Obama doesn't have 60 seats in the senate), therefore tiny players like ourselves wont have much impetus to act.
The vacuum created by the lack of action will be filled by more climate change scepticism along the lines of 'See, it's not so bad!' & the issue will become background noise.
The poor will eventually cop it in vulnerable countries, but when have we cared about that anyway?
It is a little strange, to European eyes, that in climate change, Australia stands to lose more than other parts of the developed world (esp Europe). Such as northern Australia, as it gets hotter and more and more people move to Queensland, things like skin cancer rates will get even worse - quite a sobering map from the UNEP website showing world skin cancer rates over time, with Australia becoming the worst place to live even more for melanomas as the century progresses.
As to Karin's quote: "what is happening in Britain under a strident ‘rights’ agenda is so scary that even moderates in Australia won’t want to go there", its true that us in Britain are 10 or 20 years ahead of Australia on the 'equality' agenda, but it has to be remembered, a huge amount of equality laws enacted in the UK (and the rest of Europe - much UK legislation is EU laws) have been beneficial, especially the disability acts, that have revolutionised access rights in building requirements etc for disabled people, for instance.
It sounds to me like you are totally oblivious to the police state that has been constructed in the United Kingdom over the last eight years or more with millions of surveillance cameras in operation and 4,289 activities being made illegal since 1997:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7050044/Labour-invents-33-new-crimes-every-month.html
Regarding Karin's article:
1. Kevin Rudd will lose the next election because he has been exposed as pursuing a fraudulent agenda in carbon dioxide-driven climate change.
2. Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister of Australia.
3. Carbon dioxide-driven climate change will continue to be shown to be a fraud.
4. Kristina Keneally cannot possibly win the next NSW election because she has an American accent, having been born in the USA. Those in NSW do not want an American governing them, nor do they want to endorse Labor incompetence by voting Labor back in for the umpteenth time.
5. Malcolm Turnbull will not move to NSW State Parliament because it will highlight the fact that he failed in the Federal Parliament, something he is not happy about. (That's what you get for pursuing the fraudulent agenda of carbon dioxide-driven climate change.)
Its election time here in the UK, so its interesting times for all this!
I commend to Luke and Duncan and other posters this paper from Jerome Ravetz – this guy is not a climate change denier, but someone at the heart of the science establishment.. He is associated with the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at Oxford University, not someone to be airily, disdainfully, or arrogantly dismissed.
And please don't dismiss him because he chose to post on WUWT - his choice.
Roger Pielke Jr says of Ravetz, "(he is) a giant among scholars in the history and philosophy of science", adding, "Jerry's article is thoughtful and worth your time. Jerry sends another strong message as well with his choice of venues where he chose to publish the essay".
I'm sorry David, that paper was awful. Wildly fanciful speculation in dreary acaedemic-ese from a philosopher of science does not good reading make. Nor does it make for science -- where are the scientists anyway? Oh that's right, they're all part of the conspiracy. The paper doesn't even make for a comment on reality -- either considerable ignorance or willful misrepresentation of the 'climategate' facts is not compelling evidence for anything, frankly.
Honestly, why does the sceptic movement cling so tenaciously to these crackpots and philosophical nobodies?
It's such a strange political monster -- and a political monster it is; only in the West is this a right v left issue (or a looney-right v everyone else), the global debate is rich v poor, with communist China on the denial side, and rich Western capitalists on the AGW side!
Why do you agree with communists, David? Do I sense a vast communist-conservative conspiracy designed to make the heads of reasonable people everywhere explode as they try and work it out?
Just in case anyone hasn't read Ravetz's article and is at all tempted to take @Luke#17 on trust, it is worth noting the acknowledgement which concludes Ravetz's paper.
My thanks to numerous friends and colleagues for their loyal assistance through all the drafts of this essay. The final review at a seminar at the Institute of Science, Innovation and Society at Oxford University was very valuable, particularly the intervention from ‘the man in the bus queue’.
Not a platform usually afforded a philosophical nobody :)
Post #17: I really think you have lost the plot.
Ravetz is a million miles from a vast socialist conspiracy. Wild talk does not enhance your position if you really do believe in anthropomorphic climate change.
I think you need to withdraw this statement:
Honestly, why does the sceptic movement cling so tenaciously to these crackpots and philosophical nobodies?
It does you no credit.
I now solemnly swear to abide by the views of the WUWT commenters, such as this gem:
Astrophysicists! I always knew it was those darn, dirty astrophysicists! Will they stop at nothing?!
Thankfully we have the sensible communists to stop any real action being taken.
It does you no credit.
I think we should wrap the discussion of Ravetz up there.
Its not doing this site any credit :)
Feel free to discuss the other issues raised by Karin.
John Sandeman is seeking to set up a debate in another forum between myself and John Cook whilst I'm also going to engage Byron Smith on his blog and who I must say is the epitomy of intelligent civility.