POLITICS: Australian politics needs to be dragged from the gutter

There was a time when Aussies wondered about the political immaturity of our relatives across the ditch. Your obsession with the sex lives of your politicians was making you, our soft, cuddly Kiwi cousins, more resemble scratching koalas wounding the fur on each other's faces.

It got to a point when, in September 2006, your then-Prime Minister Helen Clark was point-blank asked by a reporter whether her husband was having an affair. Her response seemed to end the matter.

"I've been married for 25 years. I have a happy marriage. I've always had better things to do with my hard-earned money than waste it pursuing smut-mongers."

Ho ho ho, we laughed like a bunch of bloated sun-drenched Santas. Things in Australia could never get so bad.

Fast-forward almost seven years and it is time for you, my Kiwistani brethren, to have a laugh. I wish I could say the last laugh, but it probably won't be, given how damned sexist we ditch-dwellers are.

Ever since Julia Gillard kicked her predecessor Kevin Rudd in the proverbials and took over the top job, all kinds of things have been said about her anatomy, her sexuality and that of her partner of many years.

Where do we start? Perhaps with Ms Gillard's refusal to become Mrs Tim Mathieson and make babies. As far back as May 2007, Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan issued this fatwa: "I mean, anyone who chooses to remain deliberately barren - they've got no idea what life's about." This was followed up by Liberal Senator George Brandis who declared: "She has chosen not to be a parent; she is very much a one-dimensional person."

But obsession with Ms Gillard's private parts goes further. At a recent Liberal Party fundraiser, the menu included the following items that were thankfully not served: "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs & A Big Red Box." And in the last few days, Liberal MP Don Randall tried to inject some industrial policy into the mix by claiming: "The problem is that the mining industry is being pussy-whipped by Julia Gillard."

I'm not sure what happened to that journalist who asked Helen Clark about her husband's sexuality. But Howard Sattler, Fairfax Radio shock jock from Perth, didn't last long after a lengthy exchange with the Prime Minister during a recent interview. Apparently before the interview, Sattler had cleared with the PM and her staff that it would be a frank exchange that would include aspects of her personal life. Ms Gillard agreed.

What she wasn't expecting (and no doubt what Sattler's listeners also weren't expecting) was to answer suggestions that her partner Tim Mathieson was gay because he had worked as a hairdresser. The shock jock's spirited on-air defence of his line of questioning consisted of: "But you hear it. He must be gay ... You've heard it. It's not me saying it, it's what people say."

This happened this month. This week, the publicly funded youth station Triple J was also caught out when one of its regular commentators suggested that the PM showed way too much up top in Parliament.

And no, columnist Grace Collier wasn't suggesting that Ms Gillard don a burqa.

"I don't think it's appropriate for a Prime Minister to be showing her cleavage in Parliament. It's not something I want to see. In my opinion as an industrial relations consultant, it is inappropriate to be in Parliament, it is disrespectful to yourself and to the Australian community and to the Parliament to present yourself in a manner that is unprofessional."

In response (and perhaps as a slap in the chest to South Asian men like myself), feminist Eva Cox declared: "Men don't have breasts to show."

Opposition leader Tony Abbott, on the other hand, is quite happy to show his breasts and much more on the beach in his role as a surf lifesaver. As an avid bike rider, Mr Abbott's bike shorts are also quite revealing to anyone who cares to look.

With an election due in September, Australian voters can only hope that there is much less talk about sexuality and nether-regions and more about policy.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, author and former Liberal Party candidate. This column was first published in the NZ Herald on Tuesday 25 June 2013.

COMMENT: Watching the election in boganville ...

I have my computer with me at McDonalds in Mackay city, taking advantage of their free internet connection. I'm surrounded by alien and ugly looking creatures with tattoos running up and down their arms. But I needn't worry about them reading what I type. It's likely they cannot read.

OK that's a little slack. 95% of them cannot read. And their English vocabulary is generally limited to words consisting of no more than four letters.

A large number of these people would have voted for the Liberal National Party (LNP). You have to wonder about people who would vote for a party whose name makes it sound more like a New Zealand soft drink than a serious political choice.

I'm told such people don't by any means represent the majority of people in this fine city. I won't be staying here long enough to find out if this is true.

But what of the ALP? Ever since Julia Gillard decided that irrational hatreds and fears of boat people is the way to survive in politics, the wingnuts in the Coalition have had even more reason to scream "STOP THE BOATS". Including those who themselves own at least one boat.

Anyway, as at 10pm, it's almost impossible to tell who is going to win. Or even whether there will be a winner.

If the Greens win both Grayndler (unlikely) and Melbourne (almost a certainty), can the ALP work with them in government? And what is Andrew Wilkie wins Denison in Tasmania (which I think he already has), what kind of minority government would the ALP form?

Then there is the issue of the three independents (Tony Windsor, Bob Katter Rob Oakeshott) who both have histories in conservative politics. Windsor has worked with a Labor government when he was a State MP. Would he work with Gillard and deny Abbott the Prime Ministership?

But let's give credit where credit is due. Tony Abbott has brought back the conservatives from the political wilderness. He worked hard. He showed discipline, far more so than his political opponents. He was always out there. He travelled the length and breadth of the country.

For sheer hard work, if anyone deserves to be PM, it is Tony Abbott. But I hope he doesn't become PM. Why?

Because he is surrounded by wingnuts who want to turn the Coalition into the Australian chapter of the Tea Party. Tony is a good decent man surrounded by an assortment of morons, bigots, racists, homophobes, muslimphobes, commonsensephobes refugeephobes, Sinophobes, Asiaphobes and closet anti-Semites.

For the sake of the country, let's hope Julia remains PM.



Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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OPINION: ALP can mine marginal seats

Julia Gillard has impeccable working class credentials. Her parents were one of many “ten-pound Poms” migrating to Australia in 1966. Her first speech, delivered on Remembrance Day 1998, referred to her identifying with local communities of families on low incomes and possessing a fighting spirit.

Gillard's own father was a coalminer. He must have had many a tale of hard work, sacrifice and danger in the mines. And of terrible working conditions and poor remuneration.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Gillard's grandfather was injured in a mining accident.

My father was one of seven kids in a coal-mining village and their father was injured in a mining accident, which means he could only do surface work, which was not as well paid.

Mining seats are crucial for Labor to retain or win if Gillard is to be elected and remain Prime Minister. One such seat is the very marginal central Queensland seat of Dawson, currently held by retiring Labor MP James Bidgood.

The seat takes in Mackay, a large coastal city, as well as the popular tourist destination of the Whitsundays. While there are no coalmines within the seat, Mackay and other cities are home to a large number of people employed by mining companies or their contractors.

One cannot overestimate the importance of mining in providing jobs and livelihood to the people of Mackay and the rest of Dawson. During the past decade, Mackay has become the location of choice for many mining service companies supplying and consulting to mine operators.

The fighting spirit of many mining families isn't the same as that referred to in Gillard's maiden speech. Fly into Mackay and you might find some of the same issues miners have always dealt with. The airport walls are strewn with advertisements for personal injury solicitors, many specialising in industrial accidents. The Daily Mercury, the local newspaper, regularly prints front page stories of industrial accidents and fatalities.

But living dangerously is also very lucrative. Mining is no longer a working class game. John and Moira Gillard would not have had it so tough had they found themselves in central Queensland today. In Sydney or Melbourne, an auto- electrician can earn $60,000 per annum. In the Bowen Basin coal reserve in central Queensland, the same tradesman earns more than double this amount.

For a Sydney-slicker like myself, landing in Mackay felt like landing on another planet. I'm used to working in a snobbish, highbrow place where the number of figures on your paypacket is almost always determined by how many letters you have after your name. A perusal of the MyCareer jobs website showed advertisements for a maintenance supervisor ($115,000 per annum), a drill and blast crew member ($140,000) and a production supervisor ($150,000). These jobs are all based in Mackay, the largest city in the seat of Dawson.

In Mackay's city centre you'll find shopfronts for RBS Morgans and Bell Potter Securities. Parked outside are hotted-up utes and trucks, the luxury vehicle of choice in this part of Australia. With even contract dump truck operators earning $60 per hour, it's little wonder the stockbroking firms are doing a steady business here.

In his maiden speech on March 17, 2008, Dawson MP Bidgood said:

The Labor Party is the miner's friend always has been and always will be. The coal industry has a true friend in the Labor Party, a true friend that will not give up on the industry. Dawson's economy relies on a sustainable coal industry ...

Mining companies would have you believe that a super profits tax could lead to the sky falling down on communities such as Mackay. To what extent has this campaign worked?

One would expect that miners and contractors might feel shocked to learn just what small proportion of mining company profits is taxed. But anecdotal evidence shows that miners have little concern for how much tax their employers pay. They know they’re on a good wicket, and arguments about limited resources aren’t going to help.

What could help the ALP's chances is offering to pour money into infrastructure in these areas. The sad reality is that multinational mining companies see local resources and communities as fodder. Regional councils such as Isaacs, Mackay and Whitsunday are struggling to provide sufficient infrastructure to keep up with the growth in economic activity arising from the mining boom.

The nature of mining work has its social costs. Miners work long shifts, spending between four and seven days away on site or underground followed by a roughly equivalent period of time at home. The resulting strain this places on marriages and relationships (especially on children and youth) is then picked up by poorly paid community sector workers.

Politics is all about numbers. Key seats like Dawson need to be factored into the equation. At the heart of this is the mining tax. Mining companies need to pay their fair share, and they have often failed to contribute to the infrastructure and social mess their operations leave in our regional areas.

If Gillard cannot create a wedge between mining workers and their bosses over tax, she can at the very least sell to workers the idea that mining company dollars are desperately needed to improve the quality of life for residents and to properly resource services desperately needed.

In other words, any tax must be directly linked to improved services in mining communities. Perhaps mining companies could be granted tax concessions if they could show substantial investment in community projects beyond what little is already done. Perhaps some kind of community development fund could be established. This will not only be smart marginal seats politics. It will also be sound policy.

Most importantly, it will show that mining companies are being slugged not just to pay nebulous public sector debt but rather to benefit the communities that benefit them.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author currently based in Mackay. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 2 July 2010




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