Mayne: Wilkie and Gillard should put the band back together
Sometimes in politics, less is more.
Andrew Wilkie refused to give media interviews yesterday and instead directly engaged with Tony Abbott’s chief-of-staff and government ministers on the question of resurrecting meaningful pokies reform. The result: a truckload of coverage in today’s media with pokies reform again front and centre in the political debate.
Julia Gillard’s calculated decision last December to trade her allegiance with Andrew Wilkie for a sordid pact with Peter Slipper is arguably the biggest mistake she has made as Prime Minister. And it can’t be blamed on bad luck or bad staff.
As factional strongman Stephen Conroy blurted out during the Kevin Rudd leadership challenge, Gillard was concerned that Rudd was building numbers by promising NSW and Queensland MPs that he would ditch pokies reform. This is what Conroy told AM on February 23:
STEPHEN CONROY: Well let’s be very clear about this. What’s been revealed last night on television and over the weekend with Andrew Wilkie is a complete and utter fraud by Kevin Rudd. He has been pretending that he supported the pre-commitment technology, pretending he supported reform in this area, but his key numbers man just happened to have two meetings and tell Clubs Australia that he would kill it. And we all know last year, late last year Kevin Rudd’s supporters …
TONY EASTLEY: But if I can bring you back, Alan Griffin denies that.
STEPHEN CONROY: Yeah well you’d have to believe in Santa Claus that a Victorian backbencher who happens to be Kevin Rudd’s key numbers man happens to suddenly take an interest. I mean Clubs Australia have been absolutely clear that they believe what everybody else in the caucus was being told. Kevin Rudd’s supporters — just go back and check the record — Kevin Rudd’s supporters were walking around caucus saying “look, dump Wilkie, I’ll make this go away. Kevin doesn’t need Andrew Wilkie in Parliament. He can get Bob Katter”.
The Australian public needs to know what’s been going on here. And this has been a long fuse, you’ve all heard that phrase they’ve been using, the Rudd supporters, this is a long fuse to destabilise the Prime Minister.
As we now know, the destabilisation all ended with Gillard’s crushing 71-31 defeat of Kevin Rudd. Such was the belting dished out, Gillard could quite easily ditch Slipper and embrace meaningful pokies reform again without the risk of being knocked off by her chief rival.
Given the public’s hatred of political rorting — plus homophobic elements in Labor’s blue-collar case and the importance of taking s-xual abuse claims seriously — it is simply not viable for Gillard to remain in partnership with Slipper, who is copping the full symphony from the Murdoch media machine.
All Slipper does is make Gillard look untrustworthy and unethical. And this is precisely what the public thought when she ditched Wilkie, turning her back on some of the most vulnerable people — pokies addicts and their families — in the community.
What Gillard underestimated was the strength of the language that Wilkie would use in tearing up his agreement — especially the focus on trust.
She also underestimated the level of community support for pokies reform, something re-affirmed today by research released by the Stop The Loss Coalition, which involves everyone from Tim Costello to Neil Lawrence, Sue Cato, Paul Bendat and, of course, Nick Xenophon.
Despite considerable support in Coalition ranks, including from Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott’ chief-of-staff Peta Credlin again rejected the idea of embracing $1 maximum bets during her meeting with Wilkie yesterday. This was a strange decision given Abbott will need the vote of Slipper and Wilkie to trigger an early election.
First, Abbott needs to get Slipper to resign as speaker or be sacked by the parliament, something that can happen immediately with a majority vote on the floor of the house. If Labor votes against such a measure but the independents and Coalition push it through, it’s a fair bet that Slipper will sit on the crossbenches and prop up the Gillard government. Under these circumstances, the parliament will probably go full term.
Therefore, Abbott needs Gillard herself to engineer the Slipper departure — but she can only do this and stay in government by re-aligning with Wilkie.
Faced with a choice of $1 pokies bets or the stench of Slipper, surely a principled position tackling the world record $12 billion a year in pokies loss is the way to go. After all, who wants to end up looking like Anna Bligh?
As usual one can rely on Steve Mayne to deliver the VILLAGE IDIOT”S point of view.
Labor barely has 28% support, can you imagine what happens if the Clubs start to rally against Labor again?
See there’s the problem for Labor, it listens to morons like Mayne who barely have the intelligence to pay the rent on their home, let alone advise a political party. But by all means, listen to Steve and head for the cliff.
Truly poker machines are sh*te.
I went on a little tour of The Star casino complex the other day, and was impressed by the upbeat vibe, modernistic style, and counter intuitively, low key gambling floor humming with happy tourist vegemites of all generations of it seems majority Asian origin. With bets as low as $5 a pop. Good affordable food options. Open plan. Not a dingy smoky wet carpet tragedy in sight - at least at 7.00 pm on a weekday.
And then there was the phalanx of poker machines which still looked like sh*te.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve studiously ignored the casino in Sydney for a decade or more but thought I better see what the scene of the latest big HR state political news scandal looked like.
I don’t like gambling on principle but somehow people relating to other people over cards or roulette somehow just seemed less wicked than getting filleted by cold machines and disembodied electrons.
Who are you Tom, a PR rep for The Star? Shut the hell up with your infomercial dickhead
I think Julia Gillard made a huge mistake over the pokies horror. It was an opportunity for labor to do something concrete about the hideous toll that this sort of gambling causes. I don’t know what her caucus colleagues were thinking of. A cap of $1 games on all poker machines seems to be a good place to start, and probably cost effective too. A large majority of people in Australia want something done with this industry that is responsible for misery and deaths.
I can’t even remember the last time I played a poker machine. I find them noisy and boring, but I know some people have some harmless fun and can walk away. It’s the others who concern me! It’s very sad! WA have the right idea - very smart! The other states are addicted to the monies received tax etc.
Maybe it was a mistake by Gillard to ditch Wilkie, however, given the orchestrated clubs and pubs campaign against her, it was simply not a viable option to continue down that road. Gillard isn’t just wedded to the pokie machine tax, she has much bigger fish to fry e.g. aged & disabilities reform and she has her ministers and back bench re-election to consider. I believe that Wilkie is being opportunistic by going to Abbott. Wilkie is nothing more than a one term politician. He won’t get another chance to have this much power again. So will he throw that all away by going to an early election, if he walks away from labor. I doubt it!
If Wilke does that, I’ll be disgusted. While the pokies are so dangerous to too many people, there are other areas of concern that deserve at least equal attention. The funding of schools; aged care; people with disabilities need urgent national funding - too many have aged parents and what will happen when those parents die. There are also too many young people in aged care premises when they should be with people their own age. Sadly, too many families have no choice. We’re a rich country - we can look after these people; there just needs to be political will coupled with funds. We can do it! The Conservatives won’t! We know that from the almost 12 yrs of Howard. They believe in the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality! Only the rich will survive their so-called policies! Any of them!
If Julia Gillard had made an Address to the Nation sort of educational program, she could’ve counteracted the million dollar/s campaign of the Clubs and pubs. she should’ve gone out ‘on the front foot’ and taken the initiative. She should’ve done the same with the mining tax and the tax on pollution, also asylum seekers policy. Just cut through the crap with facts!
I don’t know why she doesn’t do this - in an engaging speaking manner, not the ‘artificial’ one she uses so frequently! I’m sure she doesn’t speak to her friends like this. I think the media has given her such a bad time, that she’s defensive and so careful with every word she says! It’s a shame! As if Abbott’s manner of speaking isn’t annoying? Drives me nuts!
Labor didn’t stand up to the Clubs in the same way they didn’t stand up to the Mining Industry.
Nobody there seems to know that there are are some fights worth winning, and if you show a bit of backbone you might just find the silent majority are in fvour of your reforms. Apart from the undoubted cacophony from the Clubs, there has always been a feeling that the support for unlimited pokies was never there. How many unconflicted people were running around demanding the right to play pokies at whatever amount they liked until their children starved.
It was a fight that Labor should have got on board with. It was a fight that Labor should have been champion of instead of being dragged to the table by Wilkie. It was a classic left issue, big companies ripping off basically the not very wealthy side of the ledger with dark satanic machines.
But instead they chose to get in bed with Peter Slipper. Good tactical decision that one.
I think they might just get pragmatic again and go back to Wilkie and it will all blow over, those who think the govt corrupt will continue to think so and those who think the government tactically and strategically bereft while continue to think so.
Good government by an impossibly politically bereft party. Again.
Wilkie is never going to have anything to do with an early election. Why would he? He’s never had it so good and he never will again.
Wilkie is nothing if not genuine in his desire to get these reforms through, and he is a canny enough politician to do so. I agree that Gillard should get on board, if for no other reason than to get some cred for an honourable deed. Being tarnished by the Slipper brush is just one more reason to do so. Getting it past her backbench seems to be the greatest obstacle to me. If she showed the backbone to push this through together with a change to the marriage act she could go to the next election standing on the high moral ground. It’s not as if these reforms wouldn’t be popular and that on top of extra money in peoples’ pockets curtesy of the lift in the tax ree threshold and carbon tax compensation could be enough to swing it. At least they’d have a good story to sell.
She is going to be hammered by the press anyway
KEARY SAM: nothing to say???……then keep your idle comments to yourself…
Labor have again gone to water because they are driven by the media perception of their actions, not the reality that voters live with. Just ban the bloody pokies, free the refugees, make construction sites safe and do some other stuff that Labor parties are supposed to do.
@MICHAEL CROOK - Amen! Oops, my catholic upbringing! I agree with you.
Re the construction sites? I worked in a school as a teachers aide, and unknown to me, acquired RSI (repetition strain injury). My employer was the Ed Dept, and I was refused light duties. It’s ridiculous for govts to assert the importance of people going back to work, when their own utilities won’t employ or re-employ them. Other employers are too scared of employing injured people in case their injury/disease is aggravated and they in turn end up in court! The workers are always the ones to be demonised. I’ll celebrate the day a govt has the guts to state that they’ll take action against employers who do NOT provide a safe workplace. 28 years later, I’m still in chronic sometimes acute pain in both arms, neck, shoulders etc. And employers are still ignorant! And successive govts solution is to make life even more difficult for those who are injured, in pain, disabled or all three!
DAVIDK - I agree with you. I hope sanity prevails and Julia Gillard and her Cabinet members do the right thing on several fronts. This is an opportunity as you and others have said. The trouble is, that the Murdoch press is so hateful, that she’s let the media drive her instead of what’s the right thing to do! Morally and politically!
Despite the fact that the gaming industry is the absolute elephant in the room the Australian public has been successfully hoodwinked by the line that the doddering oldies can only make friends at/in the gaming machines; that there’s a certain camaraderie to be found in these cesspits; that the old dears find comfort in these machines. Even if this was remotely true I fail to see why the taxpayer should have to foot the bill to give the old dears a neat social life.
Why does the electorate have to fork out money to support congenital idiots? Or, in case someone hasn’t picked up my subtext, why does the electorate have to pay a fortune to the gaming industry; the cigarette industry; the mining industry, the car industry, and any other industry that sponges on the taxpayer? Silly me, I thought a mild form of socialism was to help those people in the community less able to cope with life. Not for one minute did I imagine all that money was destined to help the richest people in Australia.
If Julia Gillard cured cancer, brought about peace in the Middle East and discovered a substitute for oil that cost 10 cents a litre without greenhouse emissions she and her Government would be ” …copping the full symphony from the Murdoch media machine” and other vested interests who want a more friendly government. In fact even if inflation were under 2% and our economic growth, debt and unemployment were close to the best in the developed world she would be copping it - wait - in fact, they all are and she is.
There is too much spin, too much wheeling and dealing and too much being too clever by half. Forget Murdoch, forget the vested interests - they’ll be against you whatever you do. Just grow some backbone and do what is right. Stare down opponents and the vested interests. You probably still won’t win but you’ll gain more respect at least it will be an honourable defeat.
Apart from troll KS, I agree with virtually all of the above. Having tried every other shameful, despicable & gutless tactic, the current (tick, tick…) should try being a Labor government. It may still lose but would have a decent legacy to leave behind an Abbott-proof fence. Who knows, people might just be impressed enough to vote for ALP.
The way it is going it is not just going to lose but be obliterated, deservedly.
Poker machine addiction wreaks as much havoc as drug addiction - yet one form of pushing is legal, the other not.
Whether he gets another term or not, and I think he will, Wilkie is onto an issue that, like smoking, will not go away. The clubs can run whatever populist campaign they like, pokies are so destructive that reform is inevitable.
Which makes Gillard’s behaviour all the more mystifying. I would like to see Labor do something, anything, that comes from conviction about what is right rather than some short term political trick.
Gillard is beholden to her caucus, which contains any number of jelly-backed hacks who spook at every headline and jump at every threat from vested interests. Despite appearances, Gillard is leading them slowly forward inch by inch. She has that rope over her shoulder and she is pulling the heavy caucus boat down the volga river. What a weight this woman is carrying, in addition to pushing legislation through a hung parliament, with a rancid misogynist opposition, a scandalous speaker, and indies jumping all over the place like blue-arsed flies. Onward to July, Julia!
Wilkie won’t trust dishonest Gillard ever again. He is a man of principal
@Michael Crook. Absolutely. I mean, look at it this way - what has Labor got to lose by showing some integrity and actually being a Labor party. It can’t lost the election by doing so - it’s already lost the election by being #*&$^%ing Tories. They might even get some votes back.
As for the Pubs and Clubs campain, the government needs to show some spine otherwise governments will just back down every time a well funded ad campaign comes their way. That is NOT democracy. For my part when I walk into a Pub and see one of those dumb ads, it makes me want to change my mind and vote Labor again.
There’s a word to describe exactly what our political parties don’t have. It’s called ‘dignity’.
Coalition has the dignity to stand bye and see Labor destroy itself. For the 70% of our nation waiting with baseball bats to change this vile, deseased political landscape it will be a matter of patience.
@ Michael
“Coalition has the dignity to stand bye and see Labor destroy itself. For the 70% of our nation waiting with baseball bats to change this vile, deseased political landscape it will be a matter of patience.”
Michael, I think the baseball bats would be upgraded to chain saws.