Rudd - Lost in Translation

When the poo hits the proverbial policy fan, it might be a plus that no one understands what you’re saying. On Tuesday, Rudd was the only government voice on the whys and wherefores of the ETS and its colossal dumping. But because it was only Rudd — and no massaged release or the relevant minister doing the interpreting — journos, the public and even his own office were all left a little lost in translation.

At yet another tiresome hospital visit, Rudd tried to explain the intentions of the government on the twice rejected CPRS. The obvious question of the day was: is the ETS ever coming back or is it dead in the water? Well, according to Rudd it’s ‘‘implementation’’ was currently being ‘‘extended’’ but the government remained firmly committed to the ‘‘challenge of climate change.’’ Well yes Kevin, but is it coming back? Rudd extrapolated as only he can that the CPRS will be "be extended until after the conclusion of the current Kyoto commitment period, which finishes at the end of 2012."

So not really extended but to translate into English "put on hold" until 2012. And then what PM will happen in the latter half of 2012? Then the government would be in a better position "to assess the level of global action on climate change prior to the implementation of a CPRS in Australia." Oh, so you’re not sure if you’ll bring it back, it depends on other countries and what they do right? But at the same time you remain "committed" to its "implementation"? This was enough to make the best of us to reach for the panadol.

In fact even the PM’s office were not entirely across the matter, they too were busy trying to decode the PM’s rhetoric to find a kernel of information gold. Of course this isn’t new, often you have to wade through the message to get some kind of answer to a straight forward question, but with Rudd the message becomes so mixed up with the usual rambling it becomes impossible to actually understand.

Wednesday, it seemed the government was going to give the message another go and coordinated a bit more of an answer to the immediate question - what is happening to the ETS? Penny Wong went on ABC radio and confirmed yes, it was being shelved but it was all because of those nasty Liberals and their obstructionism, gosh darn them. Of course, Rudd burbled on about this being the Liberals fault as well, but none of that got through as everyone tried to figure out the rest of what he was saying.

Rudd’s special talent in all of this must be recognised. Despite rambling 90 per cent of the time, he does somewhat look like he’s talking sense; big words, lots of "in relation to", and "in terms of", lots of nominalisation, firstly, secondly, thirdly etc. This is not plain English but it impresses upon us his particular Ruddy image - a bureaucrat crossed with maybe (as Edna Everage described him) a dentist? Rudd’s natural ability to confuse while remaining smooth on the surface is somewhat admirable. You would never see Rudd completely mumbling look like a skit on British comedy The Thick of It that satirises the inner workings of modern British government.

No doubt slipperiness of language is often useful, political bread and butter if you will, but there’s a difference between it and absolute nonsensical gibberish. There was so much implication in the PM’s presser, it would have been hard to even get a ten second grab out of the PM’s press conference with any explicit message totally lost. Not that I’m saying everything should be reduced to a ten second grab but knowing the answer to the fundamental question of the day - is the ETS on hold or simply the dead dodo of the Labor 2007 election policy platform? Surely that’s important stuff.

Is God a conservative?

Sitting in the atmosphere-thick environs of Parliament House during COAG, the thunder and rain came with a bang just as negotiations heated up in the capital. One passing passenger on the COAG train mentioned that the claps of thunder may be a sign of the proceedings happening underneath it - the tensions of the negotiations reflected in the skies. Clearly this was a comment in passing not really to be believed, but on that same day others across the globe made similar observations between nature and human happenings on earth and decided God was pissed.

In Iran, a cleric warned that Iran's earthquake problem was the fault of under-dressed women (not the many fault lines underneath the country); in the US, right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh said that the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano causing flight chaos in Europe was God's reply to the Obama health care legislation. While most of us sit back and laugh, if not cringe at this kind of theorising about God and his politics, it seems many out there, even in the Year of Our Lord 2010, still believe that God reflects, Old Testament style, his will through nature. But if God indeed does control nature for that purpose, is he really showing us his politics in the process? Indeed is God a conservative?

To know I guess we have to look at the self-declared experts in this matter - people who claim to know God's intentions and what natural disaster relates to which political or moral misdemeanour on earth. If we follow the specious reasoning of the aforementioned cleric and many like him, God is clearly socially conservative. He gives us earthquakes unless women dress more modestly or even if we watch too much cable TV.

In the right in America, the experts on this demonstrate the US God continues to stay on the conservative side. Most recently, Rush Limbaugh said he thought God may have replied to Obama's health care legislation because ''the earth has opened up'' with the volcano in Iceland. God clearly is not a fan of universal health care or anything approaching it. But if we go back further we find out more. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina was blamed on multiple immoral happenings, including legalised abortions according to Pat Robertson and others, Bush's support for withdrawal of Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip, and just a general God punishment on the sinful city of New Orleans.

There was even a spoof news item that ran with the idea that Pat Robertson blamed the Hurricane on Ellen Degeneres. This was not true but so believable that it got a run as actual news. God apparently is reasonably cool with Ellen. But in Australia, He was even involved with the bushfires in Australia. Pastor Danny Nalliah from Catch the Fire Ministries blamed the Black Saturday fires on God's anger about Victorian liberal abortion laws.

If all these experts in the area of God's wrath are to be believed, he doesn't like abortions, doesn't like too many women showing their hair line (but this seems okay in the US where God is not so worried about it) and he doesn't like universal health care. But what does he like? Does he have to punish all the time with natural disasters? And why does he lean towards conservatism?

It would be novel I suppose to see some soft pinko lefties blaming a really sunny day on the fact the middle class are buying more solar roofs. Couldn't that be proof of God's happiness at them doing something for the planet. Maybe God is an environmentalist and will punish us all when we don't have a price on carbon? But no, all the experts in this matter point to God being a conservative, angry with a modern corrupt world that has lost its way. Why God can't be a bleeding heart leftie for a while, instead of a hard-arsed, no one is allowed to have any fun conservative, I don't know.

Battle of the political wives: pushing the spouse into the spotlight?

BELLA COUNIHAN April 15, 2010

The UK election is heating up - policies announced, campaign trails blazed and naturally... toe inspections. We're not even looking at the toes of a candidate here, but in fact a candidate's wife. Mrs Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was apparently at a Hindu temple in North West London and, in accordance with the rules, removed her shoes and revealed as one English tabloid dubbed it an ''unsightly'' toe.
This toe was newsworthy stuff as it apparently put her ''in second place behind the Tory leader's wife''. The UK press are taking the competition between Mrs Brown and Samantha Cameron, wife of Tory candidate David Cameron, to new heights, or lows depending how you see it. But would we ever inspect Therese Rein or Margie Abbott's toes in quite the same way? Indeed, silly as this story is, nestling between tabloid gold like ''Twincredible; meet the British mother who gave birth to two sets of twins in 12 months'' and ''Smith: I dropped a dress size on soup diet'', Sarah's funny looking toes do point to something more serious - why we care at all about the wives of candidates, especially it seems during election campaigns.
It seems to have started in the US; there is something oddly presidential about a good ''battle of the wives''. As elections in Australia become more ''presidential'' - more about the candidate and less about the parties - personalities of candidates are the focus. The easiest way to look wholesome and good in front of the cameras is to push the spouse out into the limelight so voters can take a good look.
In the UK, SamCam, as she is described in the tabloids, and Sarah Brown have both become essential parts of the campaign, their behaviour and fashion in particular analysed to within an inch of sense. Political campaigners for all candidates have privately acknowledged that it would be much easier to ''sell'' the wives than the candidates themselves. SamCam's recent pregnancy even prompted one journo to upgrade Mrs Cameron from ''the Tories' secret weapon'' to their ''nuclear weapon''. It's almost as though wives of candidates are used in the same way as a good baby kissing picture opportunity in a supermarket or a visit around a hospital - it doesn't really mean anything about what the candidates will do in office but us voters all come away with the warm fuzzies.
In Oz, often the wives (not yet any husbands on the campaign trail, although who knows with a Mr Gillard potentially in 2013?) are seen as off limits although they are more and more pushed out in front of us. Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs writer for The Australian, declared on Q and A that it is a universal rule in Australia that the partners of pollies are much nicer than the politicians themselves. Therese Rein, Rudd's wife, has been one of the most high profile spouses thus far, becoming an essential part of Rudd's image to the public during the '07 campaign and beyond - there's even a "meet Therese Rein" bio section on the Prime Minister's website. It's no Hillary and Bill Clinton campaigning package but I suppose it's as close as it comes in Australian politics. In contrast Abbott's wife, Margie couldn't be more irrelevant to Abbott's politicking. One of the few times she's been involved in anything media or politics related was Abbott's interview with The Women's Weekly earlier this year where she confirmed that she wanted politics out of sight and out of mind.
A partner used to be a nice campaigning trinket, showing the pollie as family oriented but now from the UK example, we could see them as possible weapons of mass political destruction, capable of blowing the competition away. In campaigns here, wives have always been around and about, but there is still a line of privacy where feathers ruffle whenever it is crossed. Although Therese is probably our most public ''first lady'' yet, for now at least, one can't imagine the PM's missus toes being cross examined in quite the same way.

Turnbull - the first Qwitter? BELLA COUNIHAN April 7, 2010

Yesterday when Malcolm Turnbull announced his resignation from parliament first via Twitter he was not the first Qwitter to have ever tweeted a resignation.

US chief executive Jonathan Schwartz' infamous resignation from Sun Microsystems was announced not only via Twitter but in Haiku form.

The tweet read -

Financial crisis
Stalled too many customers
CEO no more

Perhaps if Turnbull had gone for the Twitter Haiku option it would have read something like -

Rejected by Monk
Have fun Wentworth Liberals
with no ETS

Turnbull's actual non-Haiku tweet was simple enough, "I have announced I will not recontest Wentworth at the election this year." All you need to say really, but does Australia's first political twitter resignation indicate a trend for the future? Is this how it's going to be from now on, the end of long serving careers or even their beginnings announced just like that in less than 140 characters?

Nearly as exciting for pundits as the former Opposition leader leaving after long speculation about his future within the party, was the fact that it was announced it on Twitter. The excitement was such that it in fact crashed Turnbull's site, where the full announcement was on display under his latest news section. Twitter itself was alive with instant comment on the former leader's announcement, hypotheticals around a Wentworth by-election and what potential jobs were available for Turnbull in the future. Turnbull for premier? A Rudd appointment to London perhaps? Even a fake Alex Hawke suggested Alan Jones for the seat of Wentworth. The silliness of it all was let loose.

But on top of all that there was also plenty of questions about whether this was in fact a Twitter first. As the haiku resignation above shows it is certainly not the first twitter resignation but first twitter Australian political resignation? Looks likely. In the end I suppose Twitter was the only way the tech savvy Turnbull could have gone. He was well known for his addiction to his Blackberry and permanent electronic communication; compared to most pollies understanding of social media he was practically futuristic.

His resignation tweet linked to a full media release on Turnbull.com (yes, that's right he had his own domain) explaining in more than the 140 characters allowed on Twitter his reasons for the departure, noting in particular his achievements in the Howard government and his disappointment around the ETS. He said that despite encouragement from his colleagues and constituents to run again he had chosen not to recontest, adding that "a decision like this is a very personal and heartfelt one which can only be made by me and my family''.

One certainly can't imagine Howard going out that way, maybe Rudd if he's in a particular "down with the kids" kind of mood. But maybe increasingly with the tech prone gen Xs and Ys coming into the parliament in the coming years this may well be par for the course. Increasingly it seems social media is how big announcements, both political and personal ones are made and there are more and more social media firsts all the time.

There was the first live tweeted birth, the first live tweetedsurgery and even the first live tweeted abortion. There was a famous case of a couple updating their relationship status on Facebook right at the altar as they were exchanging vows. A candidate for governor of Wisconsin announced his candidacyon twitter with only a casual 10 words.

Deaths, marriages and births once relegated to a phone call or an ad in the paper is done with a click, a status update or a tweet. As social media is more and more the way we monitor information and indeed one another I suppose the future we will reach for the mouse before we reach for the phone. After all, we've had the first political Qwitter, the firsts will surely just keep coming.