Ding dong the witch is dead...

... and now the new beginning.

Last night I felt like singing, dancing, and running around the lounge room with my shirt pulled over my head. I restrained myself, content to say to Dad “guess who won?” It was smug, I admit, but I was so overjoyed at the unceremonious ousting of ol’ Johnny. Dad didn’t ask who, he just waited silently for an answer. “Rudd”, I said triumphantly, adding “and it looks like Howard will loose his seat. And Bartlett [our local MP] lost his too”. I grinned. He replied “Well that’s it, we’re fucked now”.

I have to admit, while I am overjoyed at Howard’s defeat, I am totally underwhelmed by Rudd in general. My parents both voted for the coalition because of its economic policies; I voted against them because of their social policies. Rudd got my vote only because he was the lesser of the two evils available to me on election day.

It will be really interesting to see what happens now in terms of Rudd’s election promises and their coming to fruition. What he neglected to remind voters, during his election campaign, is that to pass new laws (or amend current ones) the legislation must be passed by the senate. The Howard government enjoyed having a coalition controlled senate from 1 July 2005. It was having control of both houses that allowed the coalition to push Workchoices legislation through both houses with little public consultation. The current senate will continue to sit until 30 June 2008, at which time the new senate will take over, so I think it’s unlikely he will be able to do anything too dramatic before that time.

As well as promising to roll back workchoices, Rudd has vowed to remove legalised discrimination against same-sex couples. Well, sort of. I was listening to an interview with Julia Gillard on Triple J’s current affairs show, Hack. The woman is, without doubt, a savvy politician, yet for me she is one of the most tedious people in politics, if only because of her total inability to actually answer a simple question. Instead she opted to recite party lines, confuse issues, annoy the reporter, and avoid answering the question in any way, shape or form. She was asked at one point about removing legalised discrimination against same-sex couples. She stated, in a roundabout way, that the Labor party is committed to removing all discrimination against homosexual couples, and as such it will amend the federal laws listed in the HREOC report, “Same-sex: same entitlements”.

However, it is well known that the Labor party doesn’t support gay marriage, civil unions, or formal partnership recognition of any kind, despite sanctimoniously trumpeting its abhorrence of discrimination on the basis of sexuality and avowing to remove all legal discriminations. I’m sure I’m not alone in seeing the contradiction. Kate O’Toole, the reporter, pushed the issue, asking Ms Gillard to comment on the fact that the party is essentially saying “all discrimination is unacceptable, except for this one act [the Marriage Act] where it’s ok to discriminate on the basis of sexuality”. Ms Gillard was asked if that was not the case. She couldn’t answer yes or no, rather sticking to the old “we see marriage as a union between a man and a woman” shtick. It was, in short, one of the most tedious interviews I’ve heard in a long time with one of the most tedious people in politics.

So ultimately, the point I’m trying to make here is that with a coalition controlled senate, at least for the present term (ending 30 June 2008), Rudd is going to have to work very hard to get changes to industrial relations laws passed, as well has amending the 58 laws that discriminate against same-sex couples (oops, I mean 57, since the Marriage Act will remain untouched as things presently stand).

One last thing. In Australia, as many of my American readers may have realised by now, we follow the British spelling system. This means, among other things, that many words that end in “or” in the US (such as harbor, neighbor and color) are spelt “our” in Australia. The word “labour” fits this category, yet the Australian Labor Party insists on misspelling its own name.

I hope that they make better governors than proof-readers.


UPDATE (in response to Drew's comment):
Oh I totally agree... baby steps, especially after the last 11.5 "dark years" lol.

I'm just saying, don't think that the Labor party is going to be our salvation. Because it just isn't.

Fifty-seven out of 58 is a great start... once we have them signed, sealed and delivered, will be the time to push on and start lobbying for that last one.

As for holding Rudd accountable, I agree, but it will be interesting to see if the senate co-operates, and how Rudd spins it... the new senate appears to be more balanced, but there is still a coalition majority at this stage but the counting takes weeks to finish, and besides which, it won't take effect until 1 July 2008.

State civil unions are all very well, but they will never count in federally legislated areas (tax, super, work, etc) so while they're great for finally being allowed a recognised ceremony, they don't do much in the legal arena.