The truth is ... Abbott is polarising

Ever since Tony Abbott was elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, I've found myself feeling a need to defend him increasing.

Why is this feeling occurring? If I was a Federal Liberal Parliamentarian, there is every chance I wouldn't have voted for him, and certainly wouldn't have voted for him if there was a more palatable moderate alternative to Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey.

Yesterday I joined the "Tony Abbott for PM" Facebook group. This immediately drew derision. My explanation that the choice was between Rudd and Abbott, so I choose Abbott, appeared to be fairly satisfactory.

However, it is clear that a solid constituency of people in the Australian electorate firmly believe that if elected Prime Minister, Tony Abbott will begin to work to create TraditionalCatholicistan. That he will immediately go to work to restrict the rights of women to such things as abortion, IVF, no-fault divorce, contraception, and other items that are synonymous with women's rights.

It is also clear that, no matter how many times Tony Abbott says he will not do what is described above, that these people don't believe him. They will not take him at his word.

Whether you think this is because of Abbott's alleged dishonesty, or his flip-floppery, or if it is just a stronger-than-usual manifestation of the electorate's distrust of their elected officials, doesn't really matter. I get the feeling Abbott could promise free condoms for everyone and he wouldn't be believed.

Abbott doesn't do himself any favours with women with little slip-ups like calling Julie Bishop a "loyal girl" or promising to avoid flirting with the Deputy Prime Minister. However, he also gets in trouble for some of his more substantive, sincerely held views on important issues.

He is on the record as stating that "100,000 abortions a year in Australia ... is a tragedy". Well, isn't it? He knows, as well as I (and we have both stated it publicly) that the solution isn't a ban on abortions. The solution lays elsewhere, but this statistic is tragic.

If you believe in the sanctity of life, and part of that belief is that life begins at conception, then chances are you are going to believe IVF technology as less than perfect. I'm certainly not a fan of the extreme wastage of embryos that is central to successful IVF treatment. But that doesn't mean either Abbott, or I if I was King for a day, would legislate to prohibit it. And Abbott has said as much, just yesterday.

The only affect the attacks on Abbott will have on someone like me, is that we'll feel compelled to defend him (his sincerely held religious beliefs also make me feel this compulsion), and we'll end up moving to the right in order to do that.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, many people who had received the raw end of globalisation and free trade heard a (completely bonkers) fish-and-chip proprietor from Queensland, and felt that she made some sense in some areas. She was immediately attacked and given attention she clearly didn't deserve. Only one political leader of any stature believed that the best way to deal with someone like Pauline Hanson was to ignore her, just as you would an annoying child in Art Class at Primary School. Hanson flamed out pretty quickly, out of Federal Parliament after just two-and-a-half years partly due to her insanity, but mainly due to her nutty policies, like a 2% flat tax.

I know a lot of women are afraid of what Tony Abbott may do. Remember that chances are he is not going to win the next election, or ever become Prime Minister. Maybe the best thing you can do is ignore him.

Liberals ... and younger people

I've been reading. As you may know, I read widely. The links down the right hand side of the page are from sources as wide as left-wing unreformed socialists to conservative, gay, HIV-positive, ex-pat Brits living in Washington to right-wing ideologues, to the Sports Guy.

Over at Crikey, the website that started out as a small-l liberal insurgency and now operates as a social democratic hate fest, Possum Pollytics was having his own two-bobs worth. You can read his poll focussed prattlings here.

Today, Possum has suggested that Abbott's move away from the now blocked Emissions Trading Scheme means that "he risks alienating a group -- the under 40s", that will prove vital to any future election result.

Hey, Possum, here's some news for you: they were already alienated.

For many young people today, the Liberal Party is thought of as an organisation full of old, nasty people wanting to take away your rights and enslave you for the rest of eternity, at the same time as pillaging the planet and ripping money away from the arts. Large, evil, old men in suits.

How on Earth did young people get this idea?

Firstly, the Liberals have made some blunders. WorkChoices was a bridge too far for many people, especially the ACTU who sold the family china to ensure it was consigned to history. Many hold the Liberal Party personally responsible for ending the TV life of "The Glasshouse".

Apart from that, you won't hear too much praise for the Liberal Party from the group of people to whom our younger generation look to for their entertainment. While in the USA a man like Arnold Schwarzenneger can become Republican Governor of California, it is inconceivable that an Australian actor could become a leader of a political party whose identity lay right of centre.

That's not to mention our musos. I wouldn't even be surprised if Delta Goodrem voted Labor.

However, the largest issue, I believe, is our government-operated education system. I can remember my school days back at Elwood Primary School and Elwood College, and my memories are mostly fond. I can remember great sparring sessions with fellow classmates about all manner of things. One particularly keen memory is debating a GST in a Year 7 Ceramics class. I was twelve.

I was certainly on my own in that environment, a young advocate of right-of-centre ideas in a left-of-centre world. If anything, I am more left now than I was then, which is contrary to the accepted wisdom of how people's political beliefs move during the course of their lives.

One of the main reasons I was on my own was the pervading disgust and disapproval that the teaching staff felt towards the Kennett Government of the time. This had started even before Kennett was elected, when my Year 6 teacher put on her car a "Kennett: Nightmare on Spring St" bumper sticker. It would later be joined by a hilarious "Was that the truth, or did you read it in the Herald-Sun" bumper sticker. These political statements were clear for all the pre-pubescent kids to see on her car parked right outside the school's main entrance.

Teachers, and my extension their professional organisations, would like to see more teachers. For unions, this means more members, so the nexus between the two is easy to identify. For other teachers, it means smaller class sizes and less pressure.

Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily mean better education, and that is why successive Liberal governments have been reluctant to simply "hire more teachers". I have long been an advocate for significantly fewer but significantly better paid teachers. The generation running the world right now grew up being educated in classrooms with 30-40 kids in the room. Such a move would also recognise that teachers are not parents, and responsibility for parenting must lay with parents.

But I digress. The truth is it is almost impossible for a child to emerge from the government-operated education system without a large dose of loathing for the Liberal Party.

So, instead of changing what Liberals believe in to satisfy the whims of the young, not yet forged at the trials and tribulations of extensive experience in adult life, maybe we should look at why government-operated schools have become, among other things, assembly lines for 18 year old Labor voters. Time to level the playing field.

A clear, unmitigated mess

I am not about to wax lyrical about whether it should have been Malcolm or Tony or Joe. It's Tony - for now.

However, the circumstances could hardly have been worse.

Firstly, the number of votes cast for the spill was different to the number of votes cast in the first leadership ballot, and both of these were again different to the number of votes cast for the second leadership ballot between Turnbull and Abbott. An informal vote of "NO" was, in the end, the deciding non-vote that confirmed the leadership for Abbott by a 1966 Grand Final like margin of 42 votes to 41.

Fran Bailey, the Member for McEwen (not unfamiliar with close finishes herself), was absent from Canberra today as she recovers in a Victorian hospital from a ear infection. She was unable to fly, and therefore did not attend. All the sources I have read are certain she would have been a vote for Turnbull. Bailey apparently asked to cast a vote via a proxy, but this is currently not permissible under Parliamentary Liberal Party Standing Orders.

Furthermore, there will be two by-elections this weekend for seats currently held by the Liberal Party. It has been suggested that the Liberal candidates would have represented two more votes for Malcolm. Add those three, and Malcolm Turnbull would win the balloting 44-43, after assuming the "NO" vote went to Tony Abbott.

I can already see some of the noise in cyberspace from people I know in the party indicating that at least in our little inner-city hamlet of Melbourne Ports, Abbott's elevation to the Liberal Party leadership will not play all that well.

However, because of the circumstances detailed above, he may not get that long to make his mark. Could the Liberal Party possibly go through four leadership changes in the space of one Parliamentary term? What a mess.

A few points to clear up...

Firstly, despite no comments on my blog, there was a pretty strong reaction to my open letter to Andrew Bolt on Facebook, where I automatically upload my blog entries as notes. As a result of this, I feel I need to clear some things up.

1. I have, and remain, emphatically on the left of the party I am a member of. Overall, I consider my political views moderate, and reject any suggestion I am an ideologue. My political heroes still remain Robert Kennedy and Jeff Kennett.
2. I have never considered myself a supporter of the Republican Party in the United States, and cringe whenever I hear anyone refer to the Republican Party as the "sister party" of the Liberal Party, even if it is more true than it used to be.
   
3. I consider myself a social liberal, demonstrated by my belief in state-sanctioned same-sex civil unions, the abolition of the reading of the Lord's Prayer at Australian parliaments, and my well-documented difficulty with dealing on legislation that governs abortions.
4. I still remain a Catholic, although a much-poorer one since my parish changed priests, and my grandmother died. Having said that, the thing that disappoints me most about my church is it's practical obsession with being more of a non-profit organisation than a church. All of this has nothing to do with my political attitude, and nor it should be, as a strong supporter of the demarcation between church and state.
5. Finally, in many ways I am the same person I was when I was 17, but in other ways, I am very, very different.

On a few meat and potato issues:

1. I think the CPRS as negotiated by McFarlane and Wong on behalf of Turnbull and Rudd is a dog of a piece of legislation.
2. Any legislation passed before knowing what the rest of the world will commit to (or won't commit to) in Copenhagen is foolish.
3. If Malcolm and a few of his moderate mates in the Liberal Party split off and formed their own party, my joining it would be predicated on limited, and I mean very limited, amounts of focus spent on the issue of an Australian Republic. This is not an important issue, and should not be given time and money which could be spent on other issues that can actually affect people's lives.
4. All of this is only relevant to the size of the next election result, and not the result itself. Rudd is going to win, and it was always thus.

Finally, I'd like to say that I firmly believe in the old adage, "Decisions are made by those who show up". That is why I entered into political debates with sons of future members of parliament when I was twelve, and attended conventions in my teens, and joined a political party when I was barely old enough to vote.

I live in the best country in the world, and I care deeply about it's future, and that is why I'm not going anywhere. Decisions are made by those who show up.

An open letter to Andrew Bolt

Dear Andrew,

In your capacity as self-appointed leader of the socially conservative silent majority in this country, I thought I should right this to you at this time, when the political party I have been a member of since I was 18 is threatening to split quicker than a pair of aces at a $50 blackjack table at Crown.

Look, I know where you are coming from. It is hard to support a man feels the strong urge to call a press conference to publicly defend Bill Henson. It is a problem you also have with Ted Baillieu.

Malcolm Turnbull's problems are legion. He's convinced of his own mental superiority, has major issues suffering fools, and desperately wants to drag his party back to the middle after 25 years of influence from the self-confessed "most conservative leader in the history of the Liberal Party".

However, we've never really had a successful government in this country not governing from slightly to the left or slightly to the right of centre, and the electorate know this. They also know (unlike nearly the entire Parliamentary Liberal Party) that no matter what happens, Kevin Rudd is going to win the next Federal Election.

That is why the Liberal Party must not lurch to the right in such a fashion as they would with Tony Abbott as leader, a man I have much personal affection for, but a man who would be electorally unpalatable for many women and socially liberal men. They would send their votes away from Abbott because of values, and we would suddenly be entering a American-style political landscape, where policy development gives way to emotive moral issues best left out of the sphere of political discourse.

Look at the history of right-wing Liberal leaders. The ALP New South Wales government can owe their incredible re-election in 2007 not to Morris Iemma's "kavorka"-like charisma, but to the fact that he was running against an Opposition Leader who made Genghis Khan look like Mahatma Gandhi. By any objective measure the Iemma Government deserved to lose that election, but they didn't.

Lawrence Springborg has lost twice in Queensland Elections, mainly because as a populist, reactionary creation of the Queensland National Party, he is completely unacceptable to people living in Brisbane.

A close friend of yours, Robert Doyle, represented the right-wing of his party when he lead the Liberal Party to their worst election result ever in Victorian in 2002, a state which was once "the jewel in the Liberal Crown". From there, things got even worse before he finally saw the writing on the wall.

So, in conclusion, while I respect your sincerely held beliefs and will continue to read your blog as long as Uncle Rupert considers you worthy of a salary, I ask you very respectfully to calm down on the future of the Liberal Party. Despite differences, those like Abbott and Minchin, and those like Turnbull and Hockey, have more in common than not. We need a functioning opposition in this country, and you're not helping.

We also need to have a functioning and broadly representative right-of-centre political party in Australia. That position at right-of-centre shouldn't be too right.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Lewis

West Indies Series Preview

Australia will win 3-0.

It's that simple.

The real issue as we start this summer which promises little but will probably over-deliver is the ridiculous schedule that has been adopted ever since Australian Cricket authorities gave the one-day Tri-Series the flick.

The West Indies will play Test Matches in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth between tomorrow and December 20. They will then go home.

The Pakistanis will come for three more Tests, renewing their love affair with Bellerive in mid-January after Boxing Day in Melbourne and New Years in Sydney. They then play ODIs in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and two (?) in Perth, before a Twenty20 in Melbourne. This will all occur before the first week of February ends, or traditionally when the International summer used to finish during the time of the Tri-Series.

Then back come the West Indies for ODIs in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne (again), before two Twenty20s in Hobart and Sydney. Remember than Australia have never lost an international Twenty20 match on home soil.

The International summer will finish on February 23.

First of all, the Test Matches should start the weekend after the Melbourne Cup, or at the latest the weekend after that. This year we are starting three weekends after the Melbourne Cup.

That would give the program an opportunity to play three Test Matches (say for 2009, Nov 12-16, Nov 20-24 and Dec 3-7) before a series of ODIs and Twenty20s before Christmas (Dec 11, 13, 16, 18 & 20 with a Twenty20 on Dec 22).

Then the Boxing Day and New Years Tests would proceed as usual, followed by a Third Test at the same time it is in 09/10 (January 14-18). The ODI/Twenty20 fixture would also be the same for this second series, meaning the International summer would finish in the first week of February, meaning that interest and crowds (especially in a place like Melbourne, where AFL interest really kicks in mid-February) wouldn't peter off. Have you ever been to a ODI in Melbourne in February or March (like in 07/08)? It's like a chore just to attend.

Moving Tests earlier in November would also ensure that cricket fills a sporting void after the Spring Carnival that is currently being filled by speculation about Luke Ball. Anything would be better than that.

Touring teams would also come and go, rather than come and go and come again and go again.

Anyway, here's hoping the Aussies bat tomorrow, Punter makes a 100, and all this stuff is soon forgotten.

The trouble with cricket

Apparently, cricket is in trouble. Shane Warne is in today's stable of News Limited newspapers articulating, if you can call it that, his panacea for all things ill in today's game.

For my part, I must state first and foremost that I love Test Cricket, enjoy One-Day cricket and pay to attend ODIs, and tolerate Twenty20 matches, while vowing never to pay money to attend one in person.

Recently it has been asserted Test Cricket is more popular than ever in places like Australia, England and India. James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia, said as much on Offsiders on Sunday morning.

That isn't entirely true. In Australia, Test Cricket is popular in Melbourne and Sydney. Attendances are really good in Adelaide, but many of the attendees are tourists from other states. Attendances are poor in Brisbane and Perth, but the GABBA Test survives because of tradition and inability for states that lay to the south to host a Test Match in mid-November, and the WACA Test survives because the last session of each day screens into the Eastern States in primetime.

In India, while Test Cricket may be at an all-time high of popularity, that doesn't mean it is popular. A recent poll indicated that 9% of Indians consider Test Cricket to be their favourite form of the game.

It is clear that Australian cricketers still consider Test Cricket to be far and away the pinnacle for any cricketer. However, the lack of enthusiasm for this form of the game in other countries, and the lack of quality cricketers, means that Australia may have to endure more summers like the one about to occur, when Australia will host the pathetic West Indies and the nomadic Pakistan.

The money being offered for Twenty20 cricket in India will provide another problem for administrators. If the ICC would create a two month period for this form of cricket each year, then that would be advantageous to other forms of the game.

Also, no more One-Day series of more than five games, unless the World Cup is up for grabs. And it is difficult to see a reason for retaining the Champions Trophy, despite the fact Australia have won the last two.

Cricket also needs to think about innovative solutions, and stop being so married to traditions of the past. Ninety overs in six hours of cricket per day in 2009 is almost impossible, as captains, rightfully, spend significant periods of time on field placings and bowling changes. Give teams an extra half hour at the start and the end of the day.

It is nowhere near too late for Test Cricket, and the game overall is growing. But a few small changes could make plenty of difference.