The new government

Yesterday I got a text message from Marcus, saying, 'Christop for PM, Jesus for treasurer.' It turned out he'd sent it to just about everyone. I asked him today why that was, and he said that because he's (apparently) semi-famous he gets all these people asking who he's voting for, and he gets a bit sick of it. So he sent that around to everyone.

I'm pretty pleased with the election results. I think Rudd will be a fair bit less bad than Howard - especially with a more balanced Senate. It seemed like Howard was relieved not to have to do the job anymore.

Zero tolerance

A re-elected Coalition government would take control of the welfare payments of people convicted of offences involving hard drugs, Prime Minister John Howard announced today.
Mr Howard said welfare recipients convicted of offences involving heroin, cocaine or amphetamines would have their payments quarantined for an initial one-year period which could be extended in some circumstances.
(Read the whole article here.)

Sounds like a good idea.
Except it's not going to stop people from using drugs. It probably means that people will have to make more money illegally (eg. theft, drug dealing, prostitution) in order to support their addictions.
Zero tolerance doesn't stop people from using drugs. And it actually increases the harm caused by drugs. For example, if heroin was decriminalised, it wouldn't cost much, therefore not many people would have break the law in order to maintain their habit. It would also be much safer to use heroin, because people could actually know the purity of what they were using, and not have to worry about whether they're also injecting talcum powder or Special K. People would be able to inject in safe, clean places, rather than having to do it secretly in dirty laneways and squats.
I expect most voters wouldn't agree with me though. What do you think?
There is more about harm minimisation here.

'The Rudd identity'

One of the central issues in this election campaign is what Kevin Rudd would be like as prime minister. Much of John Howard's campaigning is directed towards convincing us that, once he'd won, Rudd's me-tooing would stop and the real man would be revealed.
But here's the funny thing: what Liberal supporters fear, many Labor supporters hope for. They hope that once he'd won, Rudd's me-tooing would stop and the closet socialist — any kind of socialist — would be revealed.

(Read Ross Gittin's whole article from The Age here.)
It does seem really stupid that people are supporting Kevin 007 because they think he's going to be something that he's currently pretending not to be.

Hiphop Howard vs Rapping Rudd

John Howard and the death penalty

I wouldn't have expected John Howard to support the death penalty. But this is what he said regarding the Bali bombers:

"The idea that we would plead for the deferral of executions of people who murdered 88 Australians is distasteful to the entire community," Mr Howard said.
"I find it impossible myself as an Australian, as Prime Minister, and as an individual, to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women."
'PM slams Rudd over death penalty' - The Age

(The Labor Party's foreign affairs spokesperson, Robert McClelland, has promised that a Labor government will campaign against capital punishment in south-east Asia.)

I think this story from ABC News is worth a read: 'Bali bomber now campaigns to stop terrorism'

Clean coal?

While John Howard's been recommending nuclear energy as a solution to climate change, Kevin Rudd's been spruiking 'clean coal'. The thing with 'clean coal' though, is that it is a nonexistant technology, and I'm pretty skeptical about predicitions that we'll manage to invent it within a certain timeframe.

'The Economy of God'

Cookie (currently in Aotearoa/New Zealand)'s done a post on his blog at The Age about how the Kingdom (or economy) of God differs from our globalised economy:

Whenever church clergy in Australia speak up on issues of politics or economics, the standard response from the likes of Prime Minister John Howard is that religious leaders should stay out of politics and get back into the realm of the spiritual where they belong.
Often the message from politicians is that Christian faith is only relevant to the realm of the personal and is separate from all other aspects of society - leave politics and economics to the "experts" who understand such things.
It's a reflection of a culture that has individualised and commodified spirituality, separating the "sacred" from the "secular" and ignoring the implications of Christian faith for all of human life, particularly economics.

Read the whole thing here.

We don't have a racism problem!

John Howard said yesterday 'I do not accept that there is underlying racism in this country.'. Lucky he said that, otherwise I would've had the wool pulled over my eyes, good and proper.
In case you're in a different country and haven't heard about it, the weekend before last some Australians, who looked Middle-Eastern, bashed some lifeguards at Cronulla beach, in Sydney.
During the week text messages were sent between Australians of Caucasian ancestry, telling each other to take revenge against 'Lebs and Wogs'.
At least 5000 Caucasians turned up at the beach on Sunday. Various white-supremacist organisations were present, including the Patriotic Youth League. Many had t-shirts saying things like 'Wog Free Zone' and 'Ethnic Cleansing Unit'.
They assaulted several people who looked Middle-Eastern or Southern-European. They also attacked police and ambulance officers who were trying to get Australians of Middle-Eastern and Southern-European appearance out of the area safely.
Luke Connors from the Patriotic Youth League said, 'I have had people calling me all through yesterday, and today, and all through the night, just asking me when Melbourne is going to erupt in riots because they want to go and join in.'
And all this time they've been trying to get us worried about terrorists of Middle-Eastern origin.
But I'm glad the PM has cleared everything up. I was worried for a moment.