Tag: federal politics (Page 4 of 6)

Western Australian Senate Election 2014

March 28, 2014 / Catherine / 2 Comments

Normally, I wouldn’t cover an election I can’t vote in. This is not because I don’t love my interstate friends as much as my local ones, it’s a simple matter of time. With so many political parties to read about at every election, and so many policies for each party (I must confess to a sneaking appreciation for single-issue parties – so quick to read and write about!), there just isn’t time to cover everyone else’s elections, too. Arguably, between full-time work, part-time study, and far more time-consuming hobbies than any sane person should have, there isn’t time to cover my own elections.

However, this election is a bit special. For one thing, it’s essentially the sequel to the 2013 Election (Senate Election Part 2: Attack of the Drones). Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is, in fact, a continuation of the same event. The extra, final chapter that the author directed to be read only three years after her death. The Secret of Hanging Parliament, as it were. And boy, am I betraying my age as a child of the 80s…

The other interesting thing about this election, of course, is that because it’s part of the Federal Election, its results are going to effect everyone in Australia in a way that your standard election interstate would never do. Which is kind of fascinating and appalling. You have the power, my Western friends. Use it wisely! And to make it more fun, the Western Australian electorate gets to vote after they’ve already seen what the new government is doing. There is a sort of surreal aptness to this. I’ve heard friends from WA complain about the fact that, due to timezone differences, they can still be casting their ballots at a point when votes from the Eastern States have already decided the election.

Well, Western Australia, here’s where you get your own back! We Easterners may have thought that we had decided the election, but it turns out that you get the final say after all. And maybe, just maybe, you will change the entire face of politics in Australia for the next three years. Which is a pretty cool superpower to have, really.

Anyway, in honour of this unique situation, I am going to undertake a more modest version of my usual tiny party policy-reading madness. Looking at the Western Australian ballot, I can see thirty-three groups, plus two un-grouped Independents. Most of these parties, of course, contested the Federal Senate Election last year, and had representatives in Victoria. Given that it’s only been about six months, I’m not going to analyse all these parties again. I can’t – I’m in the final throes of rehearsal for a big concert next weekend and will be out rehearsing virtually every night next week.

Instead, I will list all the parties who contested the last election below, with links to my commentaries on them, and will write new posts about the six parties and two independents that were not on the Victorian Senate ticket last year (new parties bolded). If I have time, I will try to go back and quickly analyse group voting tickets for this election, to see if anything has changed, but honestly, I think that’s pretty unlikely to happen. Not enough hours in the day.

Good luck, Western Australians – read up on your exciting smorgasbord of political parties, and use your vote wisely! Australia is watching you…

Politics: Julia Gillard, Feminism and That Speech

October 9, 2012 / Catherine / 0 Comments

So Tony Abbott has suddenly decided that he is a feminist! Really! And he is shocked – shocked! – that the Labor Government can countenance as Speaker a man who sent sexist and unpleasant text messages.

Now, if this was the first time I’d ever heard Tony Abbott open his mouth, I would be mildly pleased to hear this. And it is certainly both interesting and pleasing to note that the head of our more right-wing major party feels the need to portray himself as a feminist if he’s going to get the votes out.

The trouble is, of course, that our dear Opposition Leader’s own statements have not been without their sexist moments. Or hours. Which are all duly recorded in Hansard, incidentally. And this does make his statements about Peter Slipper – who was, until recently, a member of his own party – just a tad hypocritical.

But that wasn’t enough. Oh, no. A mere week after the whole blow-up about Alan Jones claiming that Gillard’s father died of shame because of his daughter’s lies (yep, we have radio personalities with no sense of decency in Australia, too), Abbott commented that the entire Labor Government should already have died of shame because of Slipper’s actions.

Oh, no you don’t… Continue reading

Politics: Research Funding in the cross-hairs again…

October 2, 2012 / Catherine / 0 Comments

So apparently the government is worried about not getting into surplus in time for next year, and one of their bright ideas is delaying funding of successful NHMRC and ARC grants by six months or a year.

This may sound good in theory, but the thing is, people live grant to grant for their salaries – if you delay funding for a year or even six months, when you do finally get around to funding people a lot of them won’t be around to fund, because they will have gone and found jobs which they might actually get paid for. And no, Universities and Research Institutes do not have huge sums of money lying around just waiting to be used on salaries – most of the money they get is already being used for infrastructure (not much science gets done without electricity – or without mouse technicians – or even without admin people like me, though in all honesty, I suspect I’m only really useful because the paperwork from everything else is insane), or has restrictions on how it can be spent.

So yeah. This would be very bad for medical research, much as we all explained last year when the government suggested cutting NHMRC funding entirely. You can’t do good research on stop-start funding – you need continuity of people and of projects, and three years (the usual length of a grant) is not, in general, going to get a project from concept to in vitro studies to mouse studies to clinical trials. Usually, you are looking at decades for that progression. And you need at least some of the same people around for most of that time.

Anyway, please consider signing the petition below. And maybe writing to an MP or two. It’s bad enough having everyone needing to re-apply for funding every couple of years, having to campaign against silly policy on an annual basis is really not helpful. And, oddly enough, my colleagues would much rather be doing science.

http://adambandt-melbourne.nationbuilder.com/science_petition

Parliamentary Democracy: An (opinionated) post for non-Australians

February 24, 2012 / Catherine / 0 Comments

It occurs to me that the more politically-minded among my USA-based friends might have actually gone looking for newspaper articles on Australian politics to try to work out what I was talking about yesterday, and the odds are that you wouldn’t have got very far (the Brits might do better, since we inherited most of our political system from you in the first place).

So, for the curious among you, a short explanation not so much on what is going on just now but on how and why it can go on in the first place.

Politics: Turnbull for Labor PM? An opinionated political post

February 23, 2012 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Where do I even start? I’ve been contemplating a post over the last few days about how terrifying and depressing I find US politics… but now Australian politics has descended into farce, which would be a lot funnier if the punchline didn’t look an awful lot like getting the mad monk for PM. And while he isn’t quite as insane as the GOP seems to be on the subject of women generally, he certainly leans in that direction.

Politics: Why we need feminism

September 6, 2011 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Do you know what really bugs me about politics at the moment? I mean, apart from the hideous leap to the Right on every possible occasion, and the general existence of Tony Abbott?

It’s Julia Gillard. I really wanted to like her. More than that, I really wanted her to succeed, even if I didn’t like her. Deeply frustrated as I am by Labor’s determination to reach out to the right and abandon those of us on the left, if they had at least managed to do so *competently* I’d be happier than I am now. (And I acknowledge that the Gillard government has had a particularly difficult, and possibly impossible, task, given the configuration of the Lower House.)

If Rudd or Swan or any of the other men in the Labor Party had been Prime Minister and failed at the task of getting their agenda across, nobody would even pause to consider whether this might be evidence that men should not lead political parties. But I can pretty much guarantee you that unless Gillard makes a spectacular recovery, she’s going to become ‘proof’ that women can’t lead a country properly.

If a man fails, then it reflects on him. If a woman fails, it reflects on all women.*

This, incidentally, is why we need feminism.

* Of course, the same rule applies to people of colour, Aboriginals, gay people, Muslims, Jews, and, I’m sure, dozens and dozens and dozens of other groups I haven’t mentioned or thought of. Which is why we need the various -isms attached to viewing people in these groups as people first and people-who-are-members-of-a-particular-g

roup second. But since Ms Gillard is female, I’m sticking to feminism for the purposes of this post.

Politics: A visit to my local Member

September 6, 2011 / Catherine / 0 Comments

So the High Court of Australia has told the government that they can’t send asylum seekers to Malaysia, because Malaysia’s human rights record isn’t good and it would contravene Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.

And apparently some voices in the government, rather than saying, oops, OK then, we’d better not do that, have instead decided that the problem is our approach to human rights (which is certainly problematic, though not in the way they seem to think) and our obligations under the said UN convention. Tony Abbott is kindly suggesting that we return to the Liberal Party’s Pacific Solution, and Labor is not ruling this out.

Of course, this would require that we cease to be signatories to the UN Convention, but that’s alright, because it’s outdated anyway (drat, I had a truly blood-pressure-raising article for this, but now I can’t find it). And stopping people smugglers is far more important than protecting people’s human rights.

This makes me livid.

Getup is encouraging people to ring their politicians, which is a step I’ve never taken before – and with the acoustics in my workplace, I’m reluctant to do so. But my local member has his office on my street, so I dropped in this morning before work to say hello and let him know some of my thoughts on the matter. The poor man probably knows my thoughts on this and several other matters quite well by now, since I am an inveterate emailer and writer of letters. Still, I’m told that phone calls and visits are more powerful than letters and emails, and I find this whole situation distressing beyond belief (I also find Labor’s current tendency to let the Liberal party set its agenda baffling and deeply unwise, quite aside from the ethics of this situation).

Visits are much more scary than letters. I’m quite good at communicating via the written word, after all. I can make sure I’ve made all my points, and I can put them neatly in order with the right words around them and send them off in a tidy, coherent letter. Walking into someone’s office and saying “Hello, my name is Catherine and I live in this electorate and I’d like to speak to the MP about asylum seekers” is a different thing entirely.

The MP was, of course, unavailable. I think he might be in Canberra, actually. But that was OK – I figured I’d be talking to one of his staff members. It’s still very, very disconcerting to stand there explaining my political opinions to a complete stranger, as he earnestly takes notes and assures me that the MP will certainly call me back. I explained briefly that my father’s family were immigrants and economic refugees, that my maternal grandmother’s family had been refugees to Britain from Nazi Austria, and that I felt very strongly that we should be treating our immigrants and asylum seekers better. I said that the Liberal Party’s treatment of asylum seekers under Howard was one of the reasons that Labor had won the 2007 election (it even broke my grandmother’s 30+ year streak of voting Liberal), and that the Labor Party needs to demonstrate that they are different from the Liberal Party. I said that Australia is a country of immigrants, that most Australians do in fact feel we should process asylum seekers in Australia and allow genuine refugees to stay. I did not say that even if most Australians didn’t feel that way it was the right thing to do and the government should show some moral leadership, but I thought it very loudly.

I said all this very politely and hesitantly because while I do believe every word about it, it’s very difficult to be vehement and sure of oneself while standing behind a tall counter in a very quiet, neat, official-looking office and speaking to an intimidatingly well-groomed stranger in an expensive suit, and I felt like a right twit, to be honest. Though I was informed that the MP does appreciate hearing from people in person and on the phone.

Altogether, it was excruciating. Letters are much easier… but that’s probably why they carry less weight. Actually, public speaking is easier, too, at least for me. You don’t *have* to look anyone in the eye for that. I’m sort of hoping the MP does not get around to returning my call. One act outside my comfort zone is enough for today. But if he does, I’ll say it all again, and hopefully I’ll say it better.

I have no idea whether I will ever do this again. I have no idea whether it will be less scary next time. I still prefer letters. But I really can’t bear for us to go back to the Howard era – and under Labor no less.

If you’re Australian and feel strongly about this, please consider ringing or visiting your local MP. I promise you, you can’t possibly feel like more of an idiot than I did today. I’d say you’d have a 99% chance of being more coherent than me, too. And if you do turn into a shy, stammering idiot like me, at least you get to be a shy, stammering idiot who is trying to fix things…

Politics: Save Our Scientists # 2

April 12, 2011 / Catherine / 0 Comments

There will be a rallies around Australia today, asking the Government to protect medical research. (Hopefully, the Melbourne one will not be an underwater rally. I am officially on umbrella duty – holding umbrellas over speakers and towelling off the stage so people don’t fall over.)

Remember, a surplus may be a pleasing thing, but the reason governments tax us is so that they can do useful things with the money, not to build up a nice little pile of coins. Yes, we are in deficit. Yes, we should be aiming to get out of deficit. But we don’t need to do this all in one year, and especially not in a year when many people have already found themselves cash-strapped due to natural disasters.

Reducing medical research funding is short sighted – medical research is like a relay race; the big clinical trial that I helped set up in 2004 to see if we could prevent type 1 diabetes in at risk children is based on work done in the 70s and 80s and even earlier – work that showed what the immune cells were doing, work that investigated immune pathways in mice with and without autoimmune diseases, studies that figured out which children were at risk of diabetes in the first place, and trials that demonstrated that intranasal insulin was safe. That’s forty years to get from concept to a clinical trial, and it will be another ten or so before the treatment goes on the market, if it does.

There are, in fact, some researchers who were starting out in the 1970s as young PhD students and who are still involved in this research as 60+-year olds. They will probably still be seeing things through into the clinic as 70-year-olds, because researchers don’t tend to retire. It’s quite literally a lifetime of work.

But, actually, those PhD students in the 1970s couldn’t have started their PhDs if researchers in the 1950s hadn’t started figuring out things about autoimmunity. And if researchers around the turn of the century hadn’t figured out how to isolate insulin and use it to keep people with diabetes alive in the first place. And nobody’s research career is that long.

We need young researchers to enter the field now, so that they will be there to take up the baton and carry forward the research of those who are nearing the end of their careers. But these are the researchers who are going to be disproportionately affected by funding cuts.

Protect research. Come to the rally today, even if it is pouring with rain. Write to your politicians – tell them your story and how medical research has helped you. Blog about it, tweet about it, and above all don’t let up the pressure until the budget is through and research is still in it.

Politics: Save Our Scientists (an opinionated post)

March 15, 2011 / Catherine / 0 Comments

As you may know, I herd medical researchers for a living. Currently, I’m herding cancer researchers (principally leukemia, lymphoma, and breast cancers), but in the past I’ve also herded diabetes researchers (both types), arthritis researchers, and researchers into coeliac disease.

One of the things that is a constant in all forms of medical research is the endless quest for funding. This tends to go in cycles – labs will get a nice Program Grant from somewhere and a bunch of fellowships and have enough money to support lots of researchers and do all sorts of useful things – from working out exactly which genes switch on or off a cell’s ability to die when it has been damaged by disease or radiation (which may sound very theoretical but is in fact the basis for a number of cancer therapeutics), to setting up entire clinical trials to test a vaccine that might prevent type 1 diabetes.

And then the grant comes to an end, and we have a problem. We start spending a lot of our research time applying for more grants, which we may or may not get. Less established researchers start applying for fellowships – and also for jobs in other Institutes where someone has a nice, large Program grant which will help support them. If we’re lucky, we get our funding renewed and everything continues. If we are less lucky, the junior scientists don’t get their fellowships, the senior researchers get enough funding for their own salaries and projects but not enough to support postdocs who should, at least in theory, have their own fellowships anyway, and the junior scientists disappear to other institutes or countries or out of science entirely.

The Australian Government is currently looking for places to cut funds in their upcoming budget, and one area they are considering is research funding, including medical research funding. This may be a short-term measure, or a longer-term one. Either way, the effects will be fairly mild in the short-term (which is, I suppose, what makes it appealing), but disastrous in the long term.

Politics: Update on Seena

February 21, 2011 / Catherine / 0 Comments

I got an email from my local MP this morning:

Dear Ms McLean,

Thank you for your email expressing concern about children in detention.

I am very sympathetic to the difficult circumstances facing the family members of the people tragically killed at Christmas Island on 15 December last year, especially the children.

We have a duty of care to ensure the health and well-being of all children in the care of the Immigration Department very seriously, particularly in relation to mental health issues.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship is currently finalising arrangements and advice to enable Minister Bowen to make a decision to accommodate Sina, the 9 year old orphan who travelled to Sydney for the funerals, and his family, in community detention arrangements, along with accommodation options for the other two orphans and their family members.

Sina and the other two children along with their families are expected to be living in the community by the end of next week.

I hope this information is of assistance to you. Should you feel I can be of further assistance in this or any other matter in future, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

Yours sincerely,

Kelvin Thomson MP

Member for Wills

Letters do make a difference, if enough people write them. Now we just have to get the other 700+ children out of detention…