Month: December 2003

I have to wonder at the value of CHOGM and the Commonwealth in general. What does it do? What does it achieve and how does it help smaller countries in need?

The recent CHOGM meeting in Abuja ended up being a committee meeting on Mugabe with some black African nations supporting Mugabe and blaming the whole problem on us white guys.

Howard, trying to do the right thing by having Zimbabwe banned until Mugabe mends his ways, is attacked by the African chaps for his hardline stance.

I mean, does anyone consider Mugabe redeamable? He’s not going to change and Zimbabwe will simply sink deeper into the cesspit until someone knocks him off. African precendence will have the next guy doing the same thing.

Africans, black and white, get slaughtered and CHOGM discusses the problem. Too many tinpot African countries lead by tinpot men have a vote at CHOGM and at the other toothless tiger, the UN.

The death toll in Africa underlines Democracy’s weak points – another thousand poor bastards dead – lets have a committee meeting! The chair calls for a show of hands – I think the No’s have it!

Warning! The feint hearted, the politically correct, the Democrats (both of ’em), the Greens and assorted dreamers should click the back button – racist statement coming.

The whole African continent has fallen to shit since the white guy got kicked out. There is no other word for it. History teachers are busy indoctrinating kids with the killings and arrogance of colonialsm while the Hutus in Rwanda slaughter 800,000 Tutsis and the UN takes seven years to set up an investigation.

Yeah, I know – old stuff. But are we going to lay back and accept that this will happen again?

What I’d like to see. A team of ‘suits’, some camouflaged, arrives in Zimbabwe and walk into Mugabe’s office.

Mr Mugabe, the millions you have stolen from your people has been withdrawn from your Swiss Accounts and deposited in Zimbabwe’s National Bank. You are leaving on a plane tonight to Nigeria where we have set up a small cottage for you to eke out the rest of your life. You may take two buffalos, one wife and all your children. Let’s go!

Administrators then manage the economy until local elections, monitored by soldiers, elects a government. Subsequent to the elected representatives being educated and attaining degrees in economics and government the Administrators hand over the reigns but maintain a small presence of advisors, backed by the aforesaid gentlemen wearing camouflaged suits.

Yeah, I know, won’t happen this side of hell freezing over. In the meantime people knock on my door and harrass me on TV with visions of starving African children. Starving because the warlords confiscate donated money and goods and sell them to their tribe. The other tribes can starve.

And we set up another committee!

If ever anyone ever wished Qantas had lost his baggage it has to be Latham. Three days as leader and he’s still trying to get rid of the baggage he brings with him to his new position. Intemperate language, quick-change policies and calling the leader of our major ally ‘the most dangerous…..etc must be trying on his stress levels.

His fans are busy saying he says what he stands for; he has clear non-coalition policies while Latham is busy proving them wrong. Three days ago the Left were thrilled. Here’s a new leader and he hates the US, Bush and Howard just like we do…he has our vote. Today he stands in front of the US flag and says ‘forgive me…I was young an impressionable and only a politician. Now I’m the leader of the Opposition and I see things more clearly now and the US is good.

Another bag he could lose is Whitlam sitting in the gallery cheering him on. The ‘Maintain the rage’ crew will be happy while the vast majority of Australian voters will be remembering strange days and everytime Whitlam says ‘what a wonderful chap’ people will remember more.

Abbott attacks him over his marital baggage and Latham and friends call ‘not fair’ yet it was OK for Latham to attack Abbott over the child he had adopted out during his Uni days.

Sorry, that’s unfair. Latham is more mature now he is the leader of the Opposition and wouldn’t dream of personally attacking a member of the house.

Howard calls for a stop to the personal attacks with the obvious aim of setting a standard of debate that he thinks Latham will never meet.

We’ll see.

Like many before him Latham only fixes half the problem. Tales of having to walk to meetings in the absence of local transport were common enough twenty years ago. So to were the ?Crash through or crash? remedies.

Mike Steketee mentions Latham’s first foray into political leadership;

After becoming Liverpool’s first popularly elected mayor at age 30, he did his best to correct the imbalance, embarking on an extensive building program that included two libraries, a heated swimming pool, a recreation centre and a revamped arts facility.

Noble sentiment but who?s going to pay for the fix?

It was one sign of the Latham style translated into action. A conventional mayor would have proceeded more cautiously. Latham’s legacy was $36million worth of new facilities but a deficit that prompted an expression of concern from the auditors and required the council to seek special permission to breach the annual rate ceiling of 2.7 per cent and hike rates by 8.1 per cent.

Australia will never recover from Whitlam’s excesses and the poor old rate payers of Liverpool have a similar problem.

He promises to tone down his language. He shouldn’t have spoken the way he did in the first place. The bridges are burnt and don’t think US Ambassador Schieffer?s public utterings of ‘…looking forward to working with’…reflect US thoughts on the matter. Schieffer is being diplomatic but the Yanks will be concerned.

Many commentators reflect on Latham’s right wing tendencies.

Frank Devine muses;

… I was nudged towards Latham in the lead-up to yesterday’s caucus by, paradoxically, Robert Manne writing in The Age that if Latham were the man, Labor would “abandon interest in Aboriginal reconciliation” and “demonstrate a growing contempt for what Latham calls the left-wing ‘rights agenda’.” Splendid news, I thought.

I found his violent excesses from the frontbench…uncharacteristically gauche;

and

However, the member for Werriwa strode off in an encouraging direction on his leadership debut yesterday. “I am in favour of upward mobility through hard work,” he declared at his first press conference. In 10 words he gave Labor a philosophy the party has been unable to articulate for a decade.

If Latham can put this into practice, he will have demolished the politics of envy and effortless entitlement with which the lesser middle class has infected Labor.

Some problems.

The Left are going to hate him and this is potentially destabilizing. Watch Carmen (I can’t remember) Lawrence at the ALP conference in January. Carmen and her warriors, all with sword in their left hands, will be attacking and trying to turn the ALP further left. Latham has to steer down the middle or veer a little right to have an impact on the electorate.

I don’t believe he has a good grasp of economics. I see a tendency to balance the inequalities of life with cash deposits when the system itself needs repair.

Give a man some fish or teach him how to fish doesn’t seem to register with Latham. His time as Liverpool Mayor reflects this and his time with his hero and most everyone else?s fool, Whitlam, will have reinforced the mantra of ‘spend the money, fix the problem and let the Conservatives pick up the huge bills.

Given the above, watch his minders spend time and money on remaking his image. Remove the intemperate language. Only quote policies that have been thought out by Caucus (that will be hard) and lets see what transpires.

Latham by two votes (47 to 45)

If Martin Luther King had a dream, I have nightmare. Latham leading Australia to insignifience via embarrassment. I accept youth , vigour and aggression but the subject has to be house trained first.