Roll out the barrel (again)

The Hobart Mercury 24 May 2011


Many years ago, on a (very) quiet afternoon I sat down with a crayon and a large sheet of paper and thought my way through Tasmania’s Hare-Clark voting system. I mostly get it, it’s quite clever and as approximations of the will of the people go, it does a better job than most.

Where it gets a little tricky is with a by-election. With a multi-member electorate the idea is that rather than have another election to elect everyone again, you just recount the votes that got the departing member in. It’s a bit like holding another ballot but only inviting the people who got it right (or in fact as events will have demonstrated, wrong) the first time.

I kind of vaguely see how maybe those voters whose horse fell over should be the only ones to get a say in the replacement, but it does tend to result in the election of someone who might end up saying “Don’t you know who I am?” rather a lot.

Happy rapture day

unpublished rough


Have a great rapture, people! Or if by some chance you’re not one of the Chosen, possibly due to an administrative oversight or maybe you’re just plain evil or even just a little bit crap, then make sure you’ve checked your insurance policy. Prudence is next to godliness, or as close as you’re going to get anyway, sinner.

If a tree falls in a forest can you hear it over the chainsaws?

The Australian 18 May 2011


It seems The Wilderness Society has finally worked out that “peace in Tasmania’s forests” is code for taxpayers propping up the forestry industry (again) so that it can be business as usual with the added bonus of the pulp mill. The only real surprise is that it’s taken them this long.

Looks like the state and federal governments are going to actually have to do their jobs and try and sort something out, which on their respective track records does not look terribly promising.

Planking the budget

The Australian 17 May 2011


Apparently the PM is going to be making a mighty effort to get out and sell us the budget this week on the grounds that there has been less dancing in the streets than expected.

The budget strikes me as mostly reasonable. It’s kind of nice that there’s at least some sort of idea that perhaps households on $150,000 a year shouldn’t be mucking about with Centrelink on the grounds that, well, they just shouldn’t be needing to, and we’ll see how the tough-love getting people back to work thing goes over time. It seems potentially a bit mean, but Australians do seem to like to see the underdog getting a good kicking these days.

Top marks for finally slinging some money to mental health, rather poorer marks for slinging more money at godbotherers in state schools, and the whole pissing contest about who’s going to get us back into surplus fastest no matter how much services get buggered up is pretty embarrassing, but that’s either the fault of the media, the politicians, the general public or some combination depending on which one/s you aren’t. Getting back to surplus involves digging stuff up and selling it to China, so it’s not like we’re really in that big a hurry because we do have boundless plains to dig up, though I hope some people are kicking themselves for squibbing the mining super profits tax which would have sped things up marvellously. You know who you are.

Like I said, the budget seems mostly reasonable in the half-arsed, mildly disappointing sort of way we all knew it would, and Tony Abbott’s constant shrieking about pretty much everything all the time is starting to grate a bit, so rather than try and compete with that and hard-sell everybody something they’re buying whether they like it or not, Julia’s probably better off just getting on with the job in a dignified working kind or way and trying something a bit more ambitious next time around, hung parliament willing. I have a sneaking suspicion that people are more bored with the bullshitting than anything else.

If she really wants to do a stunt, a quick plank on the budget papers would get her on the news, it’s cheap, quick and most likely quite good for toning the abs.