Some thoughts on Geoff Gallop's recent decision to spend $1.75 million to get kids into the Royal Show for free, plus thoughts on election advertising.
Gallop's Royal Show vote-buyer

Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop announced this week that children under 15 will get into this year's Perth Royal Show for free, funded by taxpayers. This is supposedly to celebrate the state's 175th anniversary and the Royal Show's 100th. I don't think there are many people around who think this is a good use of $1.75 million while the health and education systems are desparate for more cash.

Gallop attacked over Show handout
Gallop shouts under-16s day at show

The money is being paid directly to the show organisers, the Royal Agricultural Society. Yet despite being taxpayer funded, kiddies will need a coupon from the Sunday Times to get in for free. I'm sure Murdoch will appreciate the extra sales.

I won't be going to the Royal Show this year to protest. I'm a man of principle! Since my tax dollars have been redirected to Royal Show admissions, I refuse to pay a further $15 to get in. That will show them.

Election advertising

Political advertising is now in full swing. Two of my favourites feature the Labor Party promoting themselves as a champion of state issues. The first has Kim Beazley talking about how much he cares about Western Australia and how important state issues are to him and Mark Latham. The other has Latham reiterating the same thing, plus talking about how his wife is from Perth. It was actually strangely reminiscent of our new managing director at work. Latham talked further about introducing a coast guard service to protect our vast coastline and ensuring the WA gets its fair share of federal government money. I would be curious to know how the major parties are directing their advertising to regional issues in other parts of Australia. Are they promising everyone a fair share?

The Libs were the first to get personal this time around. I think the ads are reasonable though. There are a couple of ads on TV that focus on Latham's time in local government, and how poor he was at managing their budget. If Mark Latham can't manage a local council, how can he manage Australia's economy?

Labor's counter-attack was directed at Howard's handling of the children overboard affair. They highlight some of Howard's excuses about not knowing what was going on. If Howard isn't aware, that's terrible. If he is, that's worse. Mainstream Australia seems to have forgotten the whole thing, so I don't think this ad will have much impact.

Another Labor advertisement is an "election scratchy", with Howard's face being scratched off to reveal Costello underneath. It's a bit of a scare about who will be in charge. The funniest part is Tony Abbott trying to explain the situation: You may have one year of Howard and two years of Costello, or one year of Costello and one year of Howard and two years of Costello .

There have even been a couple of ads that focus on actual issues, but they're far less interesting. One has Howard promising to be strong in protecting Australia, including the new air warfare destroyers. Another has Labor promising to reduce/abolish full fee places at universities, and encouraging doctors to bulk bill. But as I said, they're not particularly interesting and I haven't taken much notice.

Meta-comment

Cam, is there any way to get diaries linked from the front page? It took me ages to realise that they're not there anymore. And when I did I had a bit of catching up to do.
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Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.

Comments
  • cam . # .
    States, Defence and Meta:
    that children under 15 will get into this year\'s Perth Royal Show for free, funded by taxpayers.

    There is going to be a tax backlash in Australia sometime soon. Politicians are treating tax-payer money as electoral bribes more openly and nakedly than I can recall in the past. In bigger numbers too. Howard and Latham have been competing over how much money they can spend. Yay for small-government.

    The first has Kim Beazley talking about how much he cares about Western Australia and how important state issues are to him and Mark Latham.

    Yeh, state issues as long as it is the Federal government making the decisions and funding it. It was the Labor party that have done the most trampling on states rights and respsonsibilities. Curtin was the one that got the feds first bite at the income tax so states lost that revenue. Whitlam also had a constitutional policy of \"crash through or crash\".

    Howard has been equally as bad, his $6 billion schools policy where parents and teachers can get money directly from the federal government has put the states on notice that the feds will be taking education from them soon. It is part of the anti-federalism that Canberra has adopted as orthodox policy.

    One has Howard promising to be strong in protecting Australia, including the new air warfare destroyers.

    This is totally at odds with reality. Howard has defrayed Australian capability and long-term structurally he will leave Australia less capable of defending its geographically vulnerable areas. The loss of the F111 will mean a drop in projection power, and nothing is replacing it at this stage.

    In the 1930\'s Scullin and Menzies left Australia in a similar state with a Navy that was not independent and poorly equipped. It was disastrous, it left Australia open in 1941/1942. it was the USN that bailed us out of that one. Howard is putting Australia in the same position with structural inequities that could last as long as 40 years.

    It leaves Australia vulnerable and is poor defence policy. I dont think Howard understands defence policy.

    Cam, is there any way to get diaries linked from the front page?

    What do you mean? The diaries box that used to be on the left hand side? Diaries get dumped to front page now along with articles. So if you enter by the front page you will a mix of diaries and articles.

    I will add a diaries box under the articles box on the right hand side (under user menu and poll). \\

    cam
  • sven . # .
    Defence and foreign policy: It seems that defence and foreign policy is an area in which there\'s a large philosophical difference between the two parties. While Labor is talking about making some tweaks to education and Medicare, they\'re also proposing a major rethink of our relationship with the United States. Kevin Rudd, speaking on Triple J, spoke about a change in our way of thinking:
    Though Labour supports the alliance with the United States, we\'ve never seen it as meaning automatic compliance with everything the United States administration may dictate at any time.
    He gives the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court as specific examples. Everything else that Rudd says in the interview makes a lot of sense to me. It\'s available in MP3 format (2.8M).

    Howard, on the other hand, is just promising more of the same with regards to defence, security, and Iraq. It\'s a reasonably devisive issue, and I\'m sure he\'ll find both opposition and support for his status quo policy.
    What do you mean? The diaries box that used to be on the left hand side? Diaries get dumped to front page now along with articles. So if you enter by the front page you will a mix of diaries and articles.
    I see what\'s happening now - a while back I set my front page to Everything, which doesn\'t include diaries. I\'ve changed it back to Front Page and everything\'s sweet. But I like having the diaries down the side as well, it makes it quicker to access older stories. One other problem I\'ve noticed is that the time is out by fifteen hours. I have my timezone set to WAST/GMT+8, I posted the diary at 20:33, and it shows up as 11:33 tomorrow. Do you have control over the time on the server?
  • cam . # .
    Rudd: In defence the Liberal are \"expeditionists\" and Labor are regionalists. In foreign policy the Libs are all for the \"great and powerful friends\" and Labor is for \"Asian Engagement\". I find Labor foreign policy light years ahead of the Liberals. Labor despite its regionalists viewpoint in defence procures similarly to the Liberals. So structurally there isnt that much difference in defence.

    Rudd also seems light years ahead of Downer as well.

    On the meta stuff, I have put the diaries box on the front page on the right hand side under the user box, admin box and articles box.

    Sorry about screwing up the front page for you. I have been mucking around trying to set the site up right for the volume of diaries and articles it has. I have been screwing around in the source too, so probably have broken some symmetries around the place too.

    The server is sitting in my basement, I would take a happy snap of it, but our digital camera is busted. IIRC I set it to Sydney time. According to date on the server and timeanddate.com for Sydney the server is only off from Sydney time by 1 minute.

    Is Perth 8 hours out from Sydney time?

    cam
  • cam . # .
    btw a site to compare party policies: http://www.comparepolicies.com.au/

    There is so much wisdom in people. We are fortunate the internet gives these people an outlet to reach a wide audience.

    cam
  • sven . # .
    Downer and meta: I actually think that Downer hasn\'t done a bad job, especially compared with how hopeless he used to be in the treasury. But Rudd can definitely do a lot better in pushing Australian foreign policy into the 21st century rather than maintaining the status quo.

    I have no idea what\'s going on with the time. A bit of brief experimentation:

    • I posted this diary at 20:33 WAST Sep 28.
    • When I select WAST, it shows up as 11:33 Sep 29.
    • When I select EAST, it shows up as 14:33 Sep 29.
    • When I select GMT or UTC, it shows up as 04:33 Sep 29.

    It seems all wrong. I think scoop needs to know what timezone it\'s in - are scoop and the server itself set consistently?

    From the times above, it seems that the WAST timezone is incorrect. It should be two hours behind EAST and eight ahead of GMT, instead it\'s -3 and +7 respectively. K5 used to have a problem with WAST being out by an hour, so maybe it\'s a scoop thing. I complained a few times but nobody was listening.
  • cam . # .
    EST vs EAST: I set the time_zone variable in scoop to EAST (it was EST which is US eastern standard time).

    Rudd\'s foreign policy isnt new, Hawke, Keating and Evans practiced the same philophy when they were in. With each siccessive Labor government it will get harder and harder for the Liberal party to go back to the \"great and powerful friends\" doctrine. Howard is a bit of a throwback anyway whose time has passed.

    cam