It held out the promise of busting the legislative gridlock, providing stability and certainty to the minority government and heralding a new era of progress on our most pressing policy challenges. None of this eventuated. Apart from the poorly conceived imagery, where five Greens were present alongside just two Labor MPs, what it revealed was that Julia Gillard's naked pursuit of political power would trump the need to protect her party's brand and uphold its principles. It demonstrated Labor's inherent weakness in being unable to govern in its own right. As The Australian's Paul Kelly declared: "The once great Labor Party passes into history with this deal to ride into government." Labor's pandering to the fringelands of politics not only surrendered much of its identity, but also yielded little in government other than policy and political grief. It left Labor ensnared by a political enemy who does not share its values and one day hopes to supplant it as the major party of the centre-left.
The reality of these wretched problems for Labor has now been recognised, perhaps belatedly, by NSW Labor's secretary Sam Dastyari who, as Peter van Onselen reports today, has broken ranks with the Prime Minister to declare the Greens are Labor's enemy and that the party should consider preferencing them last at the next election.
The significance of these comments should not be underestimated. This is an unprecedented attack by a party on its partner in government. It leaves Ms Gillard in the difficult position of being a signatory to an agreement that her party's largest branch says should effectively be torn up and never revisited. As Mr Dastyari understands, Labor must govern in the vital centre of politics and give voice to the mainstream values, beliefs and aspirations of everyday Australians. This was Labor's challenge after the last election. But instead of moving to the centre Labor has been lured left by the Greens. The mining tax and the carbon tax were compromised by deals that further eroded their already little credibility. On industry protectionism, immigration policy, industrial relations, gay marriage, live exports and environmental policy, Labor has edged closer to the Greens. On a critical issue of asylum-seeker policy, the Greens were no use to Labor, as they were the only party unable to compromise from their typically moralising posture. When Labor and the Greens signed the agreement, we argued "Labor will end up paying the price of losing touch with middle Australia".
This is what Mr Dastyari understands. His challenge is to follow the inflated rhetoric by formally ending Labor's collaborative relationship with the Greens. The challenge for the Prime Minister, who once said the Greens did not share "the values of everyday Australians", is to craft and communicate a policy agenda that resonates with mainstream Australians. That will be achieved only by redefining the relationship with the Greens, as Mr Dastyari advocates.
Government divides media
As a paper unashamedly devoted to market economics and an open-minded contest of ideas, The Australian is happy to see a wide range of rational and, shall we say, less rational publications on offer in this country. May it ever be thus. But we would never acquiesce as politicians seek to have editorial content controlled by government -- certainly any more than already occurs under the laws of defamation, vilification and contempt.
Television and radio are subject to more regulation, understandably, because they rely on the government-controlled bandwidth that is a public asset. Yet aside from existing legal constraints, they too should not be subject to additional regulation of content. It is public taste that will dictate what is successful and what is not, what is acceptable and what prompts complaint, and what enhances a media organisation's reputation and what detracts from it.
Printed media does not rely on public assets. Anyone is free to establish a newspaper or magazine, print it and sell it. On one hand, economies of scale and costs of distribution make this prohibitive for most. Yet some of the publications mentioned above prove that this can be done to promulgate any particular viewpoint, at least to a niche market. On the other hand, in this digital age it has never been easier to disperse content to every corner of the globe. Online publications, with very low start-up costs, already have had an impact on traditional media. It has never been easier to access or publish an almost infinite variety of information, analysis and opinion.
Yet with the Gillard government attempting to exert greater control over editorial content through a publicly funded news media council, some media has fallen into the trap. By seeking to blame News Limited (publisher of The Australian) for creating the media intervention problem, Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood has given an air of legitimacy to an unnecessary and regressively authoritarian policy. Mr Hywood seems to be saying that if only all media were more compliant, we wouldn't face the ogre of government intervention. Sadly, this demonstrates that even just the threat of regulation may have the desired effect.
Carbon debate needs less hot air
Yesterday's front-page revelation that the Gillard government is consulting with the Greens about the proposed floor price of $15 a tonne to apply when the tax reverts to an emissions trading scheme in 2015 is
an acknowledgement that the proposed floor price, which is yet to be legislated, is too high in view of the current European trading price of about $9.80 a tonne.
After moving too fast to saddle the economy with a $23-a-tonne carbon tax at a time when China and the US have shelved plans to tax carbon, Australia needs to minimise the impact of the measure. At this stage, a rational debate about the potential economic benefits of moving to a cap-and-trade system sooner rather than later, without a floor price, would be worthwhile. While carbon trading is the most efficient system for reducing emissions, there was no need to put Australia at a disadvantage by starting the scheme so soon or setting a price that is so much higher than that imposed by other nations. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key's decision to postpone emissions trading across the Tasman because he is "not prepared to sacrifice jobs in a weak international environment" is further evidence that Australia is too far out on a limb.
The Opposition Leader is correct when he says that Environment Minister Greg Combet is seeking to renegotiate the floor price because the current policy is flawed. But Mr Abbott must shed light on when and how much government compensation to low income earners and pensioners to offset the carbon tax would be abolished under a Coalition government. More importantly, Mr Abbott, who has endorsed the same emissions reduction target as the government -- 5 per cent by 2020 -- has provided scant information to business and taxpayers about the costs of his "direct action" policy. In view of the exorbitant costs of renewable energy schemes and the hazards of governments trying to "pick winners" among schemes to cut emissions, he owes it to the public to set out detailed proposals that will also need thorough debate.
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