Comments on: Fixing politics: Business-as-usual on petrol makes us all losers

By: Suresh Pathy

Suresh Pathy — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

It is hard to believe, but it looks like Rudd had achieved what seemed impossible six months ago: the real possibility for the Liberals to regain governement in one term.
Let’s look ahead 3 years from now to a fairly probable scenario. Real interest rates remain high, the world economy in the gutter with Australia bearing at least some of the pain, unemployment becoming a real threat again, house prices dropping and no bottom in site, at least one bank has failed due to the fallout of the global financial crisis gutting B and B and possibly fatally injuring Mac Bank, add your own crisis.

In the meantime the issues that existed prior to the Rudd government continue unabated: climate change has knackered our food and water supply. Fires have raged through the previous summers, the ski season is a thing of the past. Fuel prices have remained at over $2 per litre and look like going higher.

The voters are not totally stupid. If the current regime does not provide a raison de etre, nor show that all this pain has some gain then they will replace them with someone else, the Liberals: especially if Peter Costello is the leader.

We can only hope that Julia Gillard is awake to this and realize that the only way she is going to become PM is to replace Rudd soon. The back benchers had better realize that they will only be remembered as being part of a party that was given an opportunity to do some good and turned back at the first hurdle. They made a great start with the apology but nothing since then. They will be remembered as the gutless wonders that did not take control back from a bullying control freak who was afraid to stand up to the current powers that be (coal, oil, woodchippers etc) and give the power to someone who would do something.

By: tony lovell

tony lovell — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

A good decision is one that will work in high-priced times and also in low-priced times. In the case of oil prices, just using less is always a good decision. If all US cars got the same average mileage as those made by Honda, demand for fuel would reduce by the same amount that the massively-subsidised and market distorting ethanol industry is trying to produce.
If the avearge American used as little oil as the average European, the world would just about be awash in oil, despite the predicted increased consumption in China and India.
The problem with all reduced use solutions is that they are not sexy and don’t make any money for the vested interests. What is sexy and profitable for the current players are new ways to keep the status quo going for a little longer. Sexy solutions are just band-aids - they cover up the problem but don’t really do anything to solve it.

By: Dr Harvey M Tarvydas

Dr Harvey M Tarvydas — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

A succinct excellent overview by Mr Keane. These important issues and subjects would take weeks of writing about to demonstrate a profound awareness of all the relevant detail and significant links and contradictions, compromises begging and complications from actions beckoning. Keane does some significant sellable cutting through in a page.
The bleating negative commentaries seem equipped with understanding and education exclusively derived from the superficial malevolent tabloid writings which we see with all their might being deliberately destructive of any chance for a smart future by getting the dodo’s to howl down the new kid on the block for not fixing the worlds problems by the time he finishes his first breakfast. There’s a lot to do and it takes TIME so your ideas with friendly support and positive advice for consideration with valuable critique would help get it done, but that’s not a description of malevolence is it.

By: Dr Harvey M Tarvydas #2

Dr Harvey M Tarvydas #2 — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Advise to John Newton (not a relative of ‘the Newton” ?)
The un-initiated in ‘enlightenment’ or those that will never understand it are rightly enthralled with passion and mission when it hits them. Their mistake is not to recognise their enlightenment as special and think that simply sharing their understanding will make it the common norm.
You have to work the special ingredients into the dough of the common understanding with loving care overtime and bake it to a whole new thing of nourishing pleasure. Nothing bakes well when staring at a growling face, ask any chef. Carping is dumb whether aimed at a child or the nation, remember you’re enlightened. Its against the rules for you to be dumb.

By: John T

John T — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Yes, Suresh P, what hope has a process-obsessed PM and Cabinet of forgetting the compouters for schools, tinkering with marginal taxes, propping up hopeless manufacturing industries, providing today's amazing headline, and banning plastic bags - to get hold of the core issues for national and global survival - water, food, energy, transportation, trade and economy, and the civilizing educational and health and welfare services, and mainstreaming of Aboriginal lives..

Action in almost all of those domains requires unusually cohesive work by federal and state governments, an election promise we do need to see realised.

No sign of much real visionary and strategic policy or action in most (even in the commendable NT intervention, although supported) despite periodic promises. If KR is not able to rise above detail and micro control, can we please let an able team of ministers from the key portfolios get the running for our futures and survival policies - running such a team for such a vital purpose might just be what JG was put into parliament for.

By: John Newton

John Newton — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Greens absurdly unrealistic? I’d be interested in Bernard Keane elaborating on this. As the only party willing to raise the two shibboleths in Oz politics (we have to work out ways of avoiding using fossil fuels and other non-renewables and - this is really scary - we can’t keep growing the economy at 3 per cent per annum it’s simply unsustainable) - how so absurdly unrealistic? Absurdly unrealistic is crowing about economic growth and qubbling over five or ten cents off the fuel subsidy