A Clash of Symbols

Full story here

Hmm. Sounds ominous.

Oh dear. I take it that this will shortly lead to the downfall of the O'Farrell government? NSW politics in crisis. Elekshun nao?

Maybe not.

Fred Nile sits in the Upper House along with fellow Christian Democrat Paul Green. Much like in the Federal Senate, the status of the Upper House has no direct relation to the stability of the government itself. O'Farrell does not have an outright majority in the Upper House with or without the CDP, and he doesn't need one.

He has no (public) written agreement with the two conservative minor parties (the CDP and the Shooters and Fishers). That's not just because he doesn't need one - he promised he wouldn't before the election. As Labor put it in their glossy brochure that I wrote about previously:

Moreover, the Coalition hardly has the CDP votes in the bag. One would expect the CDP to support most O'Farrell bills (both being from the same wing of politics), but one would also expect them to extract their pound of flesh from time to time.

Such is the major party/minor party relationship. Twas ever thus.

Why is it, exactly, that Nile is in such a frenzy? It's this:

See the story here

As I've explained before, it makes no (direct) difference what anyone in the NSW government says or thinks about the gay marriage debate. O'Farrell's position is a purely symbolic one - something he has said for the headline.

That's fine. If journalists are willing to publish a few positive pieces about O'Farrell being in favour of gay marriage, then good luck to him.

Nile's little tantrum is not quite as obvious. For all his flaws, Nile is not an idiot. He knows that O'Farrell's words make no difference to anything. Homosexual people will not be able to marry their partners until Federal Labor supports it outright or until the Federal Coalition makes it (at least) a conscience vote - and neither of those things will happen until it is electorally expedient (if even then).

So why is Nile throwing his toys? Simple.

Can you imagine the calls Nile must have been getting over the last few days? His star is hitched to the Coalition wagon - and I think it is safe to assume that his supporters are absolutely ropeable at O'Farrell. And they are surely letting Nile know about it.

So he has to kick up a bit of a stink. Once the fuss dies down, Nile will continue to support most of the Coalition's legislative agenda, and will continue to demand concessions as and when it suits him.

Two flagrantly symbolic and utterly irrelevant acts. Can you tell the two Houses aren't sitting at the moment?

Abort!

I don't think that anyone would be surprised to hear that Fred Nile is anti-abortion.

After all, he heads a Christian political party, and such parties are nothing if not right wing, As the refrain goes, right wing parties are big on liberty except where it comes to sexual liberty or medical issues.

This trend has become endemic in the United States, where ones position on (in particular) abortion can define whether you are elected or whether you are made a judge.

On one hand, that makes some sense. If you believe that abortion is always, always, ALWAYS murder, then I suppose someone who even countenances allowing abortion must be stopped.

Of course, that ignores the fact that no one can say definitively that abortion is murder, or that is not. Pro-choice campaigners can use terms like "a bunch of cells" and pro-life campaigners can use terms like "an unborn human" all they like, but no one is going to win the argument.

Not that that stops people trying to force their views on each other. But I digress.

In the US, where Roe v Wade rules the roost, many Republican states have enacted measures that quite are transparently designed to make abortion as difficult and as unpleasant as possible for women.

The theory seems to be based on the presumption that if you make abortion more unpleasant for women, then they will desist. This would work, of course, only if women regarded abortion as being no more than a minor inconvenience  This sits thoroughly at odds with the innumerable accounts given by women about the sheer agony of the choice they are making.

I felt lucky to be over 10 000 km away from this foolishness - that was, until this appeared in my vision:

Full story in the SMH

Look, let's set aside whatever it is that you, dear reader, think about abortion.  It is legal in NSW (as long as you meet a few very broad criteria).

What exactly is this proposed bill meant to accomplish? In short, it is quite obviously designed to make the entire abortion process as unpleasant, distressing and traumatising as possible for the woman. It does so in the face of a law that makes abortion, in the aforementioned specific circumstances, legal.

It is, put simply, a cruel and vindictive bill. If there was any evidence that it actually reduced the rate of abortion, then it at least would make sense, given that I feel safe in assuming that Fred Nile views abortion as murder.

If that was the case, however, then Fred Nile and the Christian Democrats should introduce a bill banning abortion. If it is defeated (as I feel safe in assuming it would) then the CDP should leave the issue alone.

I just hope that the Coalition has the sense to recognize this bill for the vile piece of legislation it is, and dismiss it forthwith.

The Head of the Nile

Ethics classes.  It looks like the battle may finally have been won.

As I have written about previously, the Labor government introduced Ethics Classes to run in parallel with formal religious education. The Coalition initially said that they opposed the classes and would get rid of them if elected, and then backflipped to support the changes.

When I last wrote on this issue, Fred Nile (head of the Christian Democrats) was making thinly veiled threats to the O'Farrell government.  These threats appear to have been hollow.  

No surprises there.

Also unsurprisingly, Fred Nile's campaign against Ethics Classes has not abated.  His vehement opposition was pretty obvious during the speech he gave on the second reading of the bill.  It can be found here and is too long to extract here in full.  Here, however, are a few highlights:

Since then, Nile has continued his campaign against the classes.  Whether his opposition is out of a firmly held personal belief or simply pandering to his base is impossible to know for sure, but his enthusiasm cannot be doubted.

He has also persisted with the pretty offensive suggestion that the Ethics Classes preached Secular Humanism, which he insists on linking to the Nazi's. Clearly he has never heard of Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Previously, Nile has had in his corner most of the major Christian denominations.

In recent months, however, this support has slowly evaporated.  This is no doubt in part due to the churches seeing that this particular battle was lost, but may also be because the churches have realised that the "catastrophic" effects on scripture that were predicted have not really eventuated.

What may prove to the final nail in the debate was hammered in today by the Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools.  Jo Tovey wrote this piece in the Herald.

The Commission apparently "represents 80 per cent of groups that provide special religious education (SRE)." Their website can be found here. Their website defines their membership as follows:

In August 2010 the Commission released this report:

The important part of the report is below:

It appears that in the interim their view has changed, because the deputy commissioner was today quoted as follows:

I'm going to look past the rather bizarre assertion that "No government repeals legislation" and rather focus on the comment that the fight has been fought and lost.

There is little to no chance that the O'Farrell government will agree to repeal the legislation.  Certainly Labor and the Greens are not going to be interested.  Nile needs to keep his base happy (assuming, of course, that this is what his base wants) but he risks isolating himself on this issue.

It's good and well to make a stand on things you believe in, but there is also a time to concede defeat and focus on things that you are able to achieve,  This is what the Commission has done, and Nile may just do well to consider that start seeking realistic outcomes.

The CDP is a minor party, and people do expect them to fight for their core issues.   But Nile risks becoming a sort of parody of a party if he keeps flogging a dead horse

Political Ethics

Before the 2011 election, O'Farrell seemed untouchable.


Everyone knew he was going to be elected, and this meant he could run a "safe campaign". As I have said on multiple occasions since, all O'Farrell needs to do to win at least 8 years is to not piss too many people off - and he started making sure he followed this edict well before the election.


The campaign was overwhelmingly a "safe" one, with policies calculated to keep people either happy or indifferent.


Of course it was obvious to anyone paying attention that this was what he was doing, but it was the Coalition's compensation for 16 years in the wilderness - people were so sick of Labor that they were willing to vote for just about anyone else.


This all made the kerfuffle about ethics classes so surprising - it was entirely of the Coalition's making.


In some ways, it was not dissimilar to the solar feed-in tariff drama - it could have been easily avoided had the Coalition managed it better.


Ethics classes are a touchy issue.  It lies at the point where religion, politics and children intersect.


Church groups have long been permitted access to school by way of religious education.  At present, children have a choice whether they wish to attend religious education.


However, if they choose not to attend, then they are not offered any alternative instruction or (often) even supervision.


The St James Ethics Centre has for years been agitating for these children to be given instruction in Ethics.  The classes have been offered on a trial basis for some time now.

Predictably, churches have vigorously opposed the mooted changes, presumably thinking that these classes will reduce interest in the religious education.


For me, this position has never really made sense. I'm young enough that I remember school, and I know that given the chance to be in a class or goof around in a library, we would have chosen the library every day of the week.


I would have thought if the kids not attending religious education were rather forced to attend ethics classes, then there might be a newfound interest in the religious education.  


But maybe that's just me.


In September 2010, as opposition leader, O'Farrell said "I don't favour ethics classes being an alternative to special religious education classes."  In November, the Coalition announced that their policy was that the classes would not be retained.


In February, after a sustained campaign in support of the classes, the Coalition announced that the classes would stay after all. The excuse given for the backdown was that the Coalition did not believe that it would have the numbers in the upper house to make the changes.


Unsurprisingly Fred Nile was "disappointed" by the backdown, but said that he agreed that the "left" was likely to hold the balance of power in the upper house.


Of course, as it happens, the CDP and the Shooters and Fishers hold the balance of power, and since the election the trial of the ethics classes has continued unabated. 


A rumour began to spread on twitter yesterday that Fred Nile, leader of the Christian Democrats, was only going to back O'Farrell's IR changes if ethics classes were dumped.

The rumour was confirmed today when Nile released this statement.


This part is the most telling:

This is a dangerous game for Nile to be playing.


On one hand, he is entirely right about the make-up of the upper house.  There is no doubt the Coalition has the numbers to end the classes.


Having said that, no one seriously believes that the reason that the Coalition did not persist with the changes was that they lacked the numbers,  The policy had become politically inconvenient, and was dumped.


To now revive it, and to change their position again, is going to make the Coalition look indecisive.


This is particularly a danger when Labor and the Greens are turning on the heat re the Coalition's relationship with the minor parties.  A change in position at the direct, public command of one of those minor parties is going to be thrown back in the Coalition's face for years to come.


Fred Nile is, however, nothing if not a canny politician, and he may well suspect that whilst threatening to vote down the IR changes would make him look bad, it would get the IR changes back on the front pages for a few days, which would no doubt cause O'Farrell all sorts of trouble.


However, my view is that by making the threat so publicly, he is backing O'Farrell into a corner.  


With this threat being made in the open, my view is that O'Farrell cannot relent, or else he risks this government being permanently labelled as being at the beck and call of the minor parties, much as Gillard is currently regarded by many as being controlled by Bob Brown.


On the other hand, O'Farrell is clearly committed to the IR changes, and has already spent a large amount of political capital getting them this far down the path to enactment.


It seems to me that the Coalition has to call Nile's bluff.  Ideologically, there is no reason for the CDP to vote against the changes.  Further, on 2 June, Nile gave a speech in the Upper House supporting the IR changes.


If he now votes against the changes, he will be described by the Coalition (and, in all likelihood, by certain sections of the media) as being a shameless opportunist, voting based on spite rather than policy.


The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there must be a third solution that Nile is pushing behind the scenes. Perhaps he has now communicated privately that he will agree to vote for the IR changes if some change is made to the Ethics classes, such as allowing the classes but saying that they should be run at a separate time to Religious Education.


The IR bill is to be voted on on 2 August, but every day this threat stays out there is another day of IR being in the papers, and another day of unions building outrage and campaigning against the changes.

No doubt the Coalition will be hoping that Nile can be placated over the ethics classes without making the Coalition look weak, or else the image of the CDP running the state will be difficult to shake.

Thirst for Power

The sale of New South Wales' power assets by the Labor government is, to say the least puzzling. The way in which it has been handled is even stranger, especially in light of present circumstances.


I think it is safe to assume that Labor as a whole has given up on any sort of meaningful victory on 26 March and is firmly focussed on preventing an absolute annihilation. If they manage to avoid an awful result then there is a chance of winning government back in 4 years time.


Given that, it seems incredibly odd that the government is rushing through the sale of these power assets at this time. It's more than a little hard to work out what they are trying to achieve.


The sale was always going to be unpopular. We all remember the chaos in 2008 when Costa and Iemma tried to force the sale through.


So, what are Labor doing? We know they expected trouble - that's why Keneally prorogued parliament on 22 December 2010.


Now the Upper House's report into the sale has come down more than a month before the election, and suffice to say it delivers a massive slap to the Labor government.


According to Rev Fred Nile, who chaired the committee, NSW could expect to receive, instead of the $5.3 billion figure that has been bandied about, only $600 to $700 million. The value for money is so bad that the report recommends that parts of the contract be rescinded to "allow the incoming government to reassess the future of the electricity industry in NSW."


The deal is due to be finalised on 1 March, exactly 3 days before the caretaker provisions kick in.


There can be little doubt that this deal will be raked over incessantly by the Coalition, and the media will quite rightly continue to write story after story about it - hammering home the perception that Labor are too stupid or too corrupt to run a state properly.


So, I come back to my original point - what are Labor playing at?


One theory is that perhaps there is some vested interest they are seeking to fulfil - a donor to satisfy. I've heard no such suggestion, and i presume that if some of the major players were donors we would have heard all about it.


Another theory is that Roozendaal is seeking to improve his chances of a cushy private sector job after the election. He qualifies for the parliamentary pension on 24 June 2011 and many expect him to quit not long after. Perhaps he sees completing this sale as a audition of sorts for the private sector.


On the other hand, maybe it's legacy. Someone near the top of NSW Labor sees this sale as being good for NSW and wants to make this sale the good thing that this government is remembered for.


Finally, maybe the idea is to give Labor the opportunity to attack O'Farrell on his prevarication about further privatisation - making the sale starts the conversation, and any time O'Farrell attacks on this point it reminds people that a Coalition government will probably sell of further assets. That said, it is difficult to see why it why it was necessary to make this sale to start that conversation.


When it's looked at holistically, it is very difficult to see how pushing this sale through has in any way improved Labor's position with the electorate. The unions are upset because they foresee job losses. The public have seen Labor mess up yet another major project. And O'Farrell has yet another bat to whack Labor around the head with (as if he needed another).


And all for what gain exactly? When the sale could simply have been delayed and left to O'Farrell to sort out?


It's all awfully odd.