I agree
with Jason Soon
, this
is political reprisal
. A healthy democracy requires three things at the bare minimum; a secret ballot, the ability to vote against the incumbent and finally, that the winners won't use the power of the state to punish the losers. The Howard government is failing in the third instance by attempting to remove, or intimidate those that would criticise them on the internet.
The Tasmanian Senator,
Eric Abetz
carries an Orwellian title in the Howard Government. He is "Special Minister of State". The
engrish
translation of this is the "Super-happy Motivated Minister for Government Hooray Activities". A quick google on Abetz shows him to be authoritarian, more interested in factional entrenchment than anything else. He is no friend of liberal democracy.
Disenfranchising The Politically Weak
Before the 2004 elections Abetz sought to have
people in jail removed from the electoral roll
. Said Senator Abetz;
Special Minister of State Eric Abetz told The Sunday Age he wanted to overturn the rule that allowed prisoners serving a term of less than five years to cast a vote in a federal election.This is an attempt at malapportionment. Any disenfranchisement of a citizen through legislation should be treated as a criminal offence in my opinion. It is an underhand manner with which the major factions attempt to entrench themselves and weight the electoral system to their advantage. Abetz also sought to disenfranchise those that enrolled just before the election or who changed their details just prior to the rolls closing. Again this is an attempt to disenfranchise young voters;
"It seems strange that we say you are not a fit and proper person to walk the streets of your community but you are a fit and proper person to have a say over the future government of your country," Senator Abetz said. "As soon as you are out of jail, you ought to be entitled to vote again."
But Senator Abetz wants the roll closed for new voters on the day election writs are issued (typically the day the Prime Minister announces the poll) and to give people wanting to change details only three days.Unfounded being a polite way of saying, "A lie". God Bless Tasmania Greg Barns has an article on onlineopinion.com.au which discusses the 2002 Tasmanian election. From the article;
Senator Abetz said the Electoral Commission was "flooded with applications" and senior electoral officials had told him that the information was not checked. "It makes cross-checking (for) the Electoral Commission simply impossible and so throws into doubt the integrity of the roll."
The Electoral Commission said there had never been proof that an election result had been corrupted by this and a parliamentary committee also found such claims were unfounded.
The responsibility for the decrepit state of the Liberal's organisational wing must lie with John Howard's Special Minister of State, Eric Abetz. Senator Abetz has sought to emulate his South Australian counterpart, Finance Minister Nick Minchin, in seeking to control who climbs up the ladder in Tasmanian Liberal politics and who does not.In his article, Barns' paints a picture of Abetz as an authoritarian meddler. Incapable of accepting a contrary point of view. Is this the person we want running the Australian Electoral Commission? The AEC being one of the most important institutions in a democracy that must remain above politicians seeking to punish the politically weak or out-numbered. I think not. Do As I Say, But Not As I Do It also appears that there is one rule for us and one rule for them. It is ironic that Abetz is calling for the regulation of political speech on the internet when he is unable to follow his own guidelines to protect against electoral corruption;
Senator Abetz is not one to tolerate dissent or a vision of liberalism that differs from his own. A former Australian Liberal Students Federation apparatchik in the era of former Victorian Liberal President Michael Kroger, Senator Abetz' meddling in the State Parliamentary Party's affairs - something he has been at at least since the time when Ray Groom was Premier in the early 1990's - has provoked strong negative responses from individuals in the Party but no one individual or group has been prepared to curtail that influence.
Senator Abetz' other Senate colleagues are either disinclined to counsel their colleague on the damage that his meddling has done to the Liberal Party over the last decade or they sanction it.
The two government senators in charge of guidelines that ban the printing of party political newsletters had breached their own rules, a parliamentary Budget estimates committee was told today.A good political favourite - the abuse of entitlements. This is why an Independent Commission Against Corruption is needed at the Federal level. To catch these abuses and have them investigated to determine corruption in Commonwealth Government. The Vehicle Of State Is For Entrenchment From a troppo article referencing the Sunday Telegraph .
Senate President Paul Calvert and Special Minister of State Eric Abetz, who manage the rules governing parliament's printing of senators' newsletters, were among coalition and Labor senators who breached rules in the past 15 months.
Under the rules, senators cannot use their newsletters - which cost around $800,000 a year to produce - for party political or electioneering purposes.
On Wednesday, Special Minister of State Eric Abetz tried to slip the printing allowance increase through the Senate with a bunch of other regulations governing MPs' perks. Most of the perks involved raising Opposition entitlements, such as mobile-phone use and charter travel, to a parity with government perks.This paints a picture of Eric Abetz as a politician more interested in entrenching the Liberals as the majority faction; as a politician uninterested in fairness or equity, uninterested in democracy, and instead devoted to electoral malapportionment and disenfranchisement. Eric Abetz is a man unfit to head an independent body as important to our democracy as the Australian Electoral Commission. This is a man unfit to oversee the use of taxpayer funds. This is a man unfit for public office. If there were an ICAC at the federal level, or a genuinely independent media in Australia, then I seriously doubt Eric Abetz would be able to maintain his position as Senator of Tasmania. In such an environment, it is possible his political career would end in disgrace. cam
Initially, Labor was not prepared to 'cherry pick' the amendments for fear of robbing itself or resources.
But Greens Senator Bob Brown produced an amendment targeting only the $25,000 increase in printing.
For reasons too complicated to explain, Brown was only able to do this because Abetz, in Labor Senator Robert Ray's words, 'fell asleep at the wheel' during debate.
While Abetz was napping, Brown's disallowance motion was given the all clear. Now that the printing increase was isolated, all non-Government parties jumped to support Brown's motion.
Abetz was furious and threatened to expose Opposition MPs and senators otherwise-secret mobile-phone and photocopying tabs.
He also tried to amend Brown's motion to deprive minor parties of other agreed perks. But this ploy failed.
Brown's disallowance motion was put to a vote and passed through the Senate. It saves taxpayers roughly $4 million a year, which might otherwise have been wasted on political pamphlets and junk mail.
Still, don't throw out your recycling bins. During a three-year term of government, MPs can still spend roughly $60 million on printing, the bulk of that back-ended for use in the run up to an election.
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