buggery.org

Jim, commenting on an earlier post, asks about the electoral system in Australia. He doesn’t know this, but he’s opening a can of worms.

Eh, maybe it’s me, but I’ve always found the parliamentary system better than the strange brew we have in the States.

Here’s my ignorance: UK has a five-year maximum term, and I think Canada’s is five years also. What is it in Australia?

Federal terms are a maximum three years in Oz, but there’s an ongoing debate about whether fixed four-year terms would be a better option. Some states (eg. NSW) have made this change.

That answers your question, but you know I can’t resist the opportunity to discourse about the Australian electoral system at length. Continue reading →

Howard arrives in Gunnedah last night (ABC Photo)

The Scrafton allegations continue to dominate federal politics. Scrafton has now undergone a lie detector test which he reckons vindicates his claims, and he’s challenged Howard to do the same.

Howard, not surprisingly, isn’t coming to the polygraph party.

“I will submit myself to the great lie detector test in Australian politics and that is the collective judgment of my fellow Australians,” he said.

OK, fine, but when? Get on with it, you grub, so your “fellow Australians” can have their say.

The Labor Party ought to be having a field day with these allegations. After all, Howard lied his way back into office three years ago – what does that do for (a) his credibility and (b) the legitimacy of the last three years? Howard’s in deep shit: he knows it, we know it, presumably the Labor Party knows it, but what are they doing? Humming and hawing about a new Senate inquiry.

Someone needs to write Latham some angry soundbytes. He needs to call the Prime Minister for what he is – a desperate, double-dealing grub. He lied his way into office in 2001 and he’ll do it again. He should resign. He won’t, of course.

How about this for a political gambit, Mr L? If, after he leaves office, Howard is shown to have deliberately misled the Australian people, Labor will pass special legislation to strip him of his pension, or at least the part of it he earned, illegitimately, in the last three years. If it’s good enough for Richard Butler, it’s good enough for Howard.

That should scare the shit out of Howard and it will be immensely popular with the punters.

Update: There’s excellent op-ed pieces in all the morning papers, and all have pulled out their respective big guns: Michelle Grattan in The Age, Paul Kelly in the Oz and Alan Ramsey in the SMH.

The Prime Minister faces a new assault on his integrity as inconsistencies emerge in his defence against claims that he deliberately misled the public over the “children overboard” affair. [SMH today]

Ken Parish points out that blogger Robert Corr was the first to expose the rampant inconsistencies in Howard’s explanation of events.

The punditry seems united now in predicting, given recent lousy polls for Howard and the shit now starting to stick, that we won’t have an election soon after all. Despite his three years being up in December, Howard could theoretically hang on as long as April next year before having to go to the polls. The ABC’s Antony Green has produced a useful guide to the possible dates.

(Those of you visiting from non-Westminster countries will undoubtedly find all this argy-bargy about election dates rather opaque and quaint, but it’s true: in Australia (and the UK, Canada, New Zealand, etc.) the Prime Minister decides the day of his/her own execution. Many people, me included, would prefer fixed terms, but you have to admit it gives the pundits material to work with.)

Back to the matter at hand, it appears there were four witnesses to at least one of the phone conversations between Scrafton and Howard: Mrs Howard, the PM’s Chief of Staff (Arthur Sinodinos), his press secretary (Tony O’Leary), and a senior adviser (Tony Nutt). According to the Herald:

Last night, two of those witnesses backed Mr Howard’s account. However, they said no notes were taken and none of the calls were taped.

So now they’re a pack of liars.

File this under “remarkable, but hardly surprising”:

Mike Scrafton, a former adviser to then defence minister Peter Reith, says he had three telephone conversations with the Prime Minister on November 7, 2001, telling him that the government claims that children were thrown into the sea by asylum seekers were false.

Mr Scrafton says he told the Prime Minister that a tape of the incident “certainly didn’t support the proposition that the event had occurred”.

He says he told Mr Howard “that no-one in defence that I had dealt with on the matter still believed any children were thrown overboard”. The adviser says he also told the PM that photographs released during the debate were not of children thrown into the water.

“I spoke to him again telling him that we didn’t believe the event actually happened,” Mr Scrafton said.

The day after Mr Scrafton says he briefed Mr Howard, the Prime Minister continued to say it did happen.

Howard is a filthy lying bastard. If there’s anyone left in this country who doesn’t believe that Howard is a small-minded racist opportunist who will do anything, trample over anyone, use any opportunity, to perpetuate his desperate grip on power, this report should disabuse them of the notion.

Howard lied. He lied to you and he lied to me. He used these poor desperate people’s lives for his own political advantage. He is the worst leader this country ever had. Ever.