The Carnival is over

I do apologise to The Seekers for using their song in this context.  Even though one of their members was a Liberal politician I would be surprised if he is a fan of Tony Abbott.

It now seems that the results of the recent Federal Election are known and it is about as bad as could be expected.  My support for our local Member, Mike Kelly, has had the usual result for people I work for: they lose.

Some aspects of the likely future have been foreshadowed in a recent blogpost by my friend Ian Fraser.  In commenting on that I suggested that "... in 10 years time there will be a popular game of picking the worst decision by the Abbott hegemony.".  In the first week since the Gang of 40 (ie 10 times as bad as the final days of Maoist rule in China) were sworn in - rather than sworn at - there have been a number of omens of what is to come which might be contenders for that title:

• The decisions about secrecy on asylum seeker boat arrivals;
• Sacking the Secretaries of 3 Departments (possibly 4 if the announced future resignation of the Secretary to the Treasury was really a form of "gardening leave") and abolishing a number of other bodies;
• A set of decisions about tertiary education; and
• Pushing the exploitation of Coal Seam gas in NSW (Queensland needs no encouragement). 

I have commented a couple of time recently about fracking up the country for CSG.  In my post about our voyage to the Southern Highlands I concluded with:

Obviously the local landowners share the views of the Council.  Unfortunately the State Government (and the new, unimproved Federal Government) are unsympathetic.  I suspect Hume Coal, POSCO and the other frackers will be putting their better bottles of bubbly in the fridge.

I reckon I got that one right.  In one of my posts about our July trip to the UK I also commented on the attempts of the frackers and their Tory mates to spoil the view from the Temple of the Winds.

To quote from the Gruen Planet series "What would Putin do?" .  The answer is simple: APPLAUD.

Against this background what are the Greens doing?  A suggestion was made in a media column somewhere that what they should be doing was following the Don Chip example of "keeping the bastards honest".  It seems however that they have skipped that section of the Australian Democrats playbook and gone directly to the B&B (bickering and backstabbing) phase.  

IMHO, instead of worrying about the electorate 'blaming them for aligning with Labour" which seems to be their explanation of their poor performance I suggest there are a few other areas they could look at.

• The performance during the last Parliament of their lead Senate candidate for South Australia.  The way I squirmed every time she opened her mouth  I suspect she turned off masses of voters.
• The focus of the party on protecting, without question, the rights of anyone that appeared to claim to be downtrodden went well beyond the bounds of social conscience into the territory of OCD; and 
• Their allocation of preferences.  Two examples spring to mind.  
• In NSW they allocated a very high preference to the Wikileaks Party.  Supporting the Party of Julian Assange must indicate a strange set of priorities.  
• In South Australia they preference the theocratic Family First Party above the group of Nick Xenophon.  If they are interested in a social conscience why not support the one politician in Australia who has got one?

The next three years are not going to be pleasant.  When Johnn Howard was in charge it was thought he was trying to drag Australia back to the glory days of Menzies in the 1950s.  I suspect Abbott is aiming a little further back.

I started with a reference to a past glory of Australian entertainment.  I will finish with another "Australia you're standing in it."