Tell us something we don’t already know

Anyone who has ever read anything on here or follows me on Twitter knows I was an ALP apparatchik. I worked as a media adviser to five Ministers and a Premier of NSW. For the better part of the last decade, I had a peanut gallery view of what is now known as, ‘the NSW disease’.

Following the #NSWisconsin disgrace, I was considering becoming a financial member of the ALP again, despite the fact that I can’t abide what I see as policy missteps and the inability to articulate a message – any message – consistently, thoughtfully and while keeping our hands still.

I was very close to giving Sussex Street my money again because at last, here was an enemy without. Premier Barry O’Farrell had given me a reason to say, ‘this is wrong, and I am willing to swallow every bit of bile and help pay, through my membership dues, for a sustained campaign against this law.’ I was so close until I read this. It’s easy to demonise Joe Tripodi. I can’t stand him for two reasons: he’s really smart, but didn’t use his brains to make good public policy. Instead, he dragged behind former Minister and MLC, Eddie Obeid, preferring to cultivate patronage and influence, all for the title of ‘kingmaker’. Secondly, I’ve seen him smile and stab people in the back. Most of them, his close ‘mates’, some, ‘enemies’ he helped ascend to the dizzying heights of Governor Macquarie Tower. So when I read that he would stay on the rules committee, my heart sank and I left my money in the bank, because it reminded me how much I hate the generally unelected, largely unaccountable ‘factional’ players who make it their mission in life to build up and then tear down elected leaders; fill Caucus with people you would not ask to make a bed, let alone Cabinet; a recipe which reads, ‘hey voters, we’re the ALP and we are not fit to govern the state / country’. The list is long. It is filled with names that, unless they are from NSW, I’m largely familiar with. What I am familiar with, is their modus operandi. I’m sure I could swap Joe de Bruyn and Don Farrell for Russ Collison and Mark Arbib and come out with the same answer.

I read the entirety of Senator John Faulkner’s Wran Lecture last night with great interest. The patrician Faulkner looks like the anti-Tripodi. Furiously intelligent (never go to a Faulkner trivia night and challenge an answer); ‘prime ministerial confidante’; ‘respected elder’; statesman. Last night, I read the speech and called him ‘a giant’. I highly recommend his 2005 Henry Parkes Oration, which takes a much broader swipe at the malaise affecting Australian politics. The faintest whiff that the ALP is about to set its hair on fire is enough to make the news. When John Faulkner launches a stinging rebuke / critique / attack, it sets the news agenda for the day. Pretty much everyone loves it because it fits the narrative that the Prime Minister is the Socialist Left’s Lucrezia Borgia and the shoguns (tired of warlords) all look like Paul Howes. Actually, Paul Howes doesn’t look much like Paul Howes these days. I digress: I agree with a great deal of what Senator Faulkner says: the party desperately needs reform; there should be debate at state and national conferences; branch membership requires revitalisation and those who are joining – especially through Young Labor – are doing so because they want to duel with ideas, not numbers; to serve the Party, not some jumped up bag of wind parading as a false liege.

That said I am going to call Senator Faulkner on a few points. By your own admission, you, Senator, are a bloody hypocrite. You have been a NSW Senator for 23 years. What did you do before the Party – not the people – sent you down the Hume Highway for so long? You were Assistant General Secretary of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party and worked for NSW Minister for Sport and Recreation, Ken Booth MP, following two years spent as a special education teacher. Your official bio is a little light on the detail provided in your Wikipedia entry, Senator, you define factional warlord and apparatchik as much as Joe Tripodi does. Tripodi worked as an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia for as long as you taught. He then went to the Labor Council and into the Bear Pit. You both entered the party as teenagers; you both went through the party machine before entering Parliament. One difference: Joe was elected by the people of Fairfield. Your name was put on a ticket and sent to the printers. As I said, I can’t stand Joe, but don’t hover somewhere above the fray like a bespectacled Moses when you have supped from the same cup and exerted more influence over a longer time.

Lead, don’t follow, public opinion, you say? Yet the longevity of Australian political leaders such as Bob Hawke and John Howard is in large part due to their uncanny ability to read the mood of the electorate. It is a rare talent that radiates, ‘the leader knows what they are doing and it is what I want’, both within the party and outside it. It is not something they dialled-a-mate for. In my opinion, the perception that Howard had outstayed his welcome – that he had lost ‘touch’ – played a big role in his defeat. Hawke? Well, Keating simply had what Costello did not: the internal fortitude to want the leadership so badly he risked wrecking it to obtain it. Listen to members, supporters and MPs, you say? Yet when Kevin Rudd ran government through a kitchen cabinet of four; when he established innumerate committees, endlessly consulted and produced white papers and nothing happened; that was when the polls went to the wall and the faceless men got on the phones. There was plenty of listening, plenty of dithering and nothing happening. You were in that Caucus meeting, where the elected leader of the nation was replaced without a vote of MPs, you miserable, gormless bunch. @KRuddPM knew he didn’t have the numbers, addressed the Caucus one final time as leader, and emerged @KRuddMP.

Let MPs speak their minds in the name of diversity. Fine. I don’t think there are many people in the party who would be terribly pleased with the clusterfuck that is the Government’s … what … it’s not even a policy … the clusterfuck that is the Government’s latest idea about how asylum seekers should be processed, and yet, with the exception of Fremantle MP Melissa Parke, none has stated their dissent. But here’s the thing: brave, dissenting Melissa had not even spoken to the Minister for Immigration when she went public. It beggars belief. Let MPs say what they want? Amen. Get them five minutes with the Minister at the same time so they can have a chat first. On second thought, if you can’t be bothered having the discussion internally, if you have not grabbed Chris Bowen after a division and said, ‘look, I’m not happy about this, I need to speak to you’; if you have not had the gumption to even attempt to piss inside the tent, why should I listen to you piss on it from outside?

Senator Faulkner wants vigorous debate at party conferences and in the branches. He also advocates a say for ‘progressive-minded’ people, who are falling into the arms of third party organisations. Who are they? The ALP is not Get Up. It’s a political party. You can’t just put your name to one online petition, or even draft one, and ignore the other 30 issues of the day because you don’t care about them as much. Well, you can – you’re a citizen and you can do that if you like. But have to give a damn about stuff you’re not interested in when you’re a member of a party. Did I care when I door-knocked suburbs during the 2007 NSW election that the issues raised by voters were almost always council-related? No. Because the candidate needed to know about the cracked pavement, so that when they were elected they could pressure council to get it fixed, and if they didn’t, you could talk to concerned residents, go to the local paper – do something! I am sure people would flock to ALP branches, line-up to get the best seats at conference and participate in full-throated, exciting debates. About the things they’re interested in. Then when it’s time to talk about the not so interesting to them stuff – see you later? Supporters of the ALP? We exist. We’re called voters. Here’s what I want. I want a Caucus where backbenchers get as much time with Ministers and the PM as independents do. If they can’t get a hearing, or are fobbed off by the apparatchiks, then have an almighty spray. After all, the government is only one heart attack away from an election – now is the best time to speak your mind. Senator Faulkner just has – again,

Senator, you are there. You are a powerful figure – so powerful your speech has dominated the news agenda today. You’ve been talking about reforming the party for years. We have review, after review, after review. You co-authored the last one, so act! Stop telling us something we don’t already know.

NSWisconsin

In previous posts on the state on NSW politics, I largely focused on what I knew best – the decade I had spent as a Labor staffer.

Today, I turn my attention to the O’Farrell government, because today, my worst fears about the crushing victory Premier Barry O’Farrell secured in March 2011 have been realised.

For the first time since the early 1900s, a NSW Government has used a guillotine motion to effectively gag debate in the Legislative Council (Upper House) on its reforms to public sector wage increases.

The Premier claims, in a facile, lazy way that he is being allowed to get away with by all in the press gallery, bar the ABC’s Quentin Dempster, that he is simply following Labor’s public sector wages policy. This is not true.

While my former boss, then-Premier Morris Iemma, signed a memorandum in 2007 to set wage increases at 2.5 per cent, at no time did Labor seek the extraordinary powers now at Premier O’Farrell’s disposal.

Firstly, the new laws remove judicial discretion. The NSW Industrial Relations Commission, led by Boland J. was not consulted on the intent of the legislation, which effectively strips the IRC of interpretation of the law when disputes come before it. Rather than weighing up the totality of the case, the IRC will now simply dispatch the law. It is no longer judging a wages case on its merits but rubber stamping the O’Farrell Government’s policy. The question must be asked: whither the IRC? Why bother preserving an institution which has been gutted.

Secondly, the Premier’s assertion that he is just following on from what his Labor predecessors intended is a furphy. As the NSW Public Sector Wages Policy 2007 makes plain, while the Government intended to maintain real wage increases at 2.5 per cent per annum, at no stage were challenges to the policy, through the independent umpire (the IRC), or even the Executive Branch of Government, banned. If Ministers could demonstrate, via the Public Sector Workforce Office and NSW Treasury, that departments and State Owned Corporations within their purview, had a case for an increase above the 2.5 per cent, they could take that to Budget Committee for consideration. The only caveat on this was that no offer was to be made until this process had been adhered to.

Thirdly, nothing prevented a public sector union from going to the IRC and seeking an increase above the 2.5 per cent. The IRC had the power to say no, but it reserved the right to say yes. The IRC, not the Government of the day, was entitled to consider a case on its merits. Now, the IRC doesn’t even have the powers of FairWork Australia to settle a dispute. It is no longer an umpire. It is merely the scoreboard.

Perhaps the great triumph for the O’Farrell Government has been to divide & conquer public sector workers. In a message delivered at 4.01pm via Twitter yesterday, the Police Association of NSW stated:

Sending good vibes to those members of the Upper House who believe in a fair and just IR system for police and all others

By the 5pm news, it became clear that the O’Farrell Government was not going to take on the police. They would be exempt from the 2.5 per cent rule. This was a move straight out of the Wisconsin, USA playbook, where Governor Scott Walker took on the unions, effectively delivering an 8 per cent pay cut through attacks on benefits. Police were exempted from the legislation. This is plain divide and conquer by Premier O’Farrell. The Police Association hurriedly tweeted:

Rest assured police will continue to stand beside all other public sector workers to fight this unfair IR legislation.

I personally pleaded with the Police Association not to be swayed by the clear political machinations being dealt their way. I do not wish our police ill; far from it. I do believe in solidarity, particularly when it comes to our frontline workers such as the fire brigades, ambulance staff, nurses and teachers. The message I sent was clear:

Premier O’Farrell plays ‘divide & conquer’, excluding police from #nswisconsin. @PoliceAssocNSW, pls stand w/ nurses, teachers, say no!

Obviously, the Police Association is charged with doing the best thing by its members, & that would not entail knocking back the Government’s offer. Sadly, they are the expedient pawns in a political stunt. Public servants working in offices go on strike – what a bunch of whingers. Teachers go on strike, they are a bloody nuisance. Nurses have a stop work meeting – inconvenient but manageable. Fire fighters do the same – they’re hardly going to let a house burn down; but if the police went out, the population of NSW (excuse the pun) wouldn’t cop it. The Government would be blamed, & punished.

As the Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU)’s Jim Casey tweeted the Police Association:

Police stand by the rest of public sector. I’ve had my share of bad days with the coppers, but this isn’t one of them. #nswisconsin #solidarity

There is a march against the new laws at 12,30pm, outside NSW Parliament on Macquarie Street, Sydney. I am going to my former place of employment to say no to political chicanery, to say I do not accept an unwarranted attack on the Industrial Relations Commission as an arbiter of the law, to say ‘damn you’, Premier O’Farrell.

Welcome to your world, NSW.

Dear Nellie …

Nellie of Penrith Posted at 5:54 PM October 17, 2010:

… as for Kristina Keneally allowing her husband and sons appear in a family photo and allowing the stillbirth of her daughter to be used as brownee points for politics. She should be ashamed, I know any respect I had for her has gone, gone, gone.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/spin-out-of-control/story-e6freuy9-1225939672167

Dear Nellie,

My name is Kimberley. I have one brother, and three sisters. I was born a huge (9lb, 11 ounces, 23 inches long!), healthy baby girl at 1.18am on 6 December 1971. I am my parents’ second child; their oldest surviving one. I am the younger sister of Kelly Margaret, who was born, and died, in 1969. In all of our birth notices, my parents celebrated their healthy babies’ arrival with the words, ‘sister / brother of Kelly, in heaven’. I cannot begin to tell you how much I respect my Mother, who quietly, but factually explained to us as children that she went into labour with her daughter’s heart beating; a heart which stopped beating before Kelly was born.

As the member of a family with first-hand experience of stillbirth, I find your comments, which I believe relate to this story (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/kristina-keneallys-sad-memories-of-a-stillbirth-10-years-ago/story-e6freuzi-1225939374867), abhorrent. If you click on this link, (http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/125), you’ll see that the story relates to the Premier’s decision to become patron of Stillbirth Foundation Australia.

As an adult, I look at my parents in awe to think that they could even attempt to turn what must be unspeakable pain into a part of our lives; just as Ben & Kristina Keneally have done for their sons. I am proud that the Premier has shared her love for her daughter, and her very real place in her family’s heart, since she entered public life. You may not know, but Caroline Keneally’s name is in the NSW Parliament Hansard, in her mother’s maiden speech, along with the rest of her family. Like the Keneallys – and too many families – mine has an angel in heaven as well.

Yours sincerely

Kimberley Ramplin

PS: You can help make a difference to this parent-run charity by visiting http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/95. The five-year Little Feet lunch raised more than $50,000 for research into why so many stillborn babies’ babies’ deaths remain unexplained.

DISCLAIMER: I work in NSW politics, as a ministerial adviser. I disclose this on my Twitter account and in the ‘about’ section of this blog. While this post isn’t about politics per se, it was sparked by the ‘anonymous, vicious, troll’ debate. I actually agree with the, ‘yes to anonymous, vicious, trolls’ argument, but I have been obsessing over it today because it instantly brought to mind this pseudonymous online comment – almost one month later. If you think I didn’t cry when I read it, or cried again when I started typing tonight, think again.

The Gitmo Archipelago, or how I learned to stop worrying and fell out of love with Barack Obama (Part I)

“I’m sorry, Kimberley, but I’m an American. I don’t vote for the President of the world. I vote for the President of the United States of America. I’m from Chicago. Barack Obama is NOT what he represents himself to be. You don’t get in, or out of Chicago politics, as squeaky clean as people think this guy is. I’m for freedom, not socialism. I don’t want to be told what doctor I can see, or have my taxes support people who want to have five kids on welfare and never work. You bet I’ll vote for Sarah Palin if she runs in 2012.”

I’m sitting next to ‘Tom’, a businessman from Illinois, at a great restaurant in the West Village, New York City. It’s my last night here, and the antipathy towards President Obama is troubling me. I understand part of his argument: the US economy is up shit creek, and for many people, the paddle is out of reach. Every second ad on cable TV is for bankruptcy specialists. What I do not understand is why President Obama is not kicking against the pricks. I know you can’t blame the other side for everything, but President Bush rode his horse out of town with nary a bad word said against his economic record; the obsession with tax cuts while running a parallel, war-fuelled deficit defies belief; but he did it. It is four months before the midterm elections. Unemployment is running at almost 11 per cent. I walk around the financial district & it is though nothing, bar September 11, has hit the place. The investment houses, bailed out by the taxpayer, have returned to profitability. I feel sick that Australians, in general, do not understand how a combination of sound regulation of the financial industry and measured (though highly criticised) stimulus spending saved our country from this pain, and I am staying in one of the best neighbourhoods in New York. Poverty is not immediately evident, but former Mayor Rudy Giuliani did a good job of sweeping out the homeless. I may not agree with Tom, but he is considered, measured and engaged in the political process, and we agree to disagree, which is my default position on almost everything.

“Tom, I’m sorry – You’re the only superpower left. With that position comes responsibility. I’m not asking you to vote for Barack Obama because he’s a Democrat. Give me an intelligent, moderate Republican and go for your lives – but Sarah Palin? Sarah Palin negotiating Middle East peace talks? My country is at war because our then-government followed you. Socialised medicine? How many daughters did you say you have, Tom? Two? What are your daughters going to do if, god forbid, you’re in an accident and can’t work for six months. What if they have a genetic test, and they find out that they have the ‘breast cancer gene’? Will they be covered under your insurance? Will it be considered a pre-existing condition? What use is it to have the greatest pharmaceutical companies in the world if you cannot afford to buy medicine? How is access to a doctor ’socialism’?”

We buy each other a drink. It’s hot, and a hot New York is not where Tom wants to be. He blames Barack Obama for almost everything, from the state of the economy to single mothers with five kids sucking the marrow out of his tax dollar to healthcare reform. If he thought big government controlled the weather, he would blame the President for that as well. 

The next day, I leave the Village for Penn Station and the Acela Express to Washington, D.C. – meeting my best friend from high school, who I haven’t seen for 15 years. She married an American she met in Sydney, and become a citizen in time to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. I page her, she pages me, and I am mortified when a ‘red cap’ (Amtrak porter) grabs my bags as we squeal and hug. “I’ve got these, Ma’am. Don’t worry, you’re with me now,” he says, but it’s a struggle. I’m used to it – my rule is that if I can’t carry it all, I can’t buy anymore. The red cap won’t hear of it, and my friend keeps walking and talking. I tip him $10 as we board the train, mostly from sheer embarrassment. My friend berates me as she juggles a handbag, laptop, iPhone & squeals at her business partner in an accent that is neither that of her birth, or home. She lectures me on tipping etiquette. I hold firm with my own tipping regime. I tipped $1 in Williamsburg on Sunday for $2 beers! How is that fair to a guy in his 50s hauling 30 kilos of shoes, handbags and cosmetics while we squawk like battery hens? Well, in this economy, she says, people are lucky to be working. I voted for Obama and now, I don’t know. We don’t see him enough. I mean, what’s he doing? You’re in politics, surely you think it’s not good that we don’t see him? I look at the gadgets and listen to the conversations about crazy clients she’s firing. Yes. In this economy. Maybe the President is working, I muse aloud; he was dealt a pretty crap hand. That said, if I was his comms director, I would have him do more Presidential press conferences – he’s done fewer than Dubya. That part I do understand. As a candidate, Barack Obama travelled overseas and was feted in the capitals of Europe. My friend voted for hope, audacity and change; for a candidate whose oratory captivated the world.  Now my friend has a President, and rarely hears his voice. He’s not a candidate; he’s not leader of a movement – he’s the POTUS. You need to kick arse when circumstances warrant it. People and pundits talk about consensus politics, reaching bipartisan solutions to national problems. It’s bullshit. Politics is adversarial. In a few short months, the Democrat majority in Congress is going to be put to the test and NO ONE does nasty adversarial politics better than the Republican Party. The GOP in full flight is a sight to behold. President Obama is being hit from the left and the right, and he’s doing a pretty good, Ali-style ‘ rope-a-dope’, taking a metaphysical pounding from George Foreman in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, round after round. President Obama is well into round two. He and the Democrat machine need to start bloodying the nose of the right. It’s July, 2010 and New York City feels as steamy as 1974 Zaire.

To be continued …

Yisra’el and the Zeal of Islam

Sometimes, Referrals, I think hard about things. I’m not extraordinarily bright, but I’m interested in things, places and people beyond my understanding. That’s why I went back to university in 2009, and did a Master of Arts (International Relations). Because I remember, as a child – a very strange child – Anwar Sadat’s assassination, and asking my mother if the world was going to end. I’ve always been interested in the Middle East, and when I went on my grand tour in the mid 1990s, it was one of the first regions I visited. This post is an edited version of an essay I wrote for my degree last year so it is dated, but the resumption of Israeli settlement building in the last week has been playing on my mind; and when serious issues occupy my head instead of prancing unicorns, I don’t sleep. At all. And when I think about the reasons for the rise of groups like Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood, my mind fairly trembles at the thought of what ‘surrogate service providers’ may achieve in Pakistan if the millions of people left homeless and without livelihoods feel they are not being assisted by their government, or the international community.

I was very fortunate to have Dr Anthony Billingsley as my Middle East politics lecturer. Anthony Billingsley is everything someone who wants to learn could want from a teacher: good-humoured, ferociously bright, generous with his knowledge. He has contributed to The Drum (see this post on Australia’s U.N. candidacy: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2378066.htm) and I’ve also heard him interviewed on the wireless. He has a touch of the Ian Flemings about him (he’s not a Bond), as this interview explores: http://www.newspaper.unsw.edu.au/archive/2009/09_11_13/text/fivemin.htm. The man’s got pages of googledom, so I’m not going to list every article he’s given his two cents’ worth to. Back to me and my thinking. Or attempt at thinking about why I can’t see a two-state solution for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As I said, it’s an edited version of a full paper which also examined the 2006 war in Lebanon. For the record, I passed. Here goes:

Perhaps the greatest problem for Israel is its statehood. Bound and constrained by a complex, inflexible regime of institutions, ideas, relationships and practices, nation-states can render themselves incapable of identifying and ably responding to threats that transcend or subvert territorial boundaries. In Hamas, Israel is engaged with a force which is neither a conventional army, nor global Jihadist. Regardless of Syrian / Iranian surrogacy, Hamas is not regarded as a surrogate by the people; instead, it is accepted and welcomed as an indigenous, multi-faceted and highly organised service providers.

It is not a guerrilla movement as traditionally understood – a small organisation that uses its mobility as a weapon and feeds off its host population, depending on it for shelter and survival. Instead, Hamas participates in local politics, provides local services and can be bargained with. Because Hamas refuses to mark ‘X’ as military targets, civilian losses are almost certainly guaranteed to be higher than Western democracies can stomach. While it may be a surrogate of Syria and Iran, it is ‘of’ the people; an indivisible power. This philosophy is reflected in its military tactics and strikes at the heart of Israeli identity – while it is unlikely to defeat Israel by firing rockets at its citizens, Israel’s mighty army cannot prevent them from being fired. Israelis are supposed to be tough; the name for an Israeli-born Jew, sabra, comes from the Hebrew for cactus – Sa’bar; but how long can Israelis continue to manifest their insecurity in a highly-weaponised military when it does not keep them safe?

Of all of the actors central to the conflict, one force has demonstrated an uncanny ability to exploit these tectonic plates of Middle Eastern geopolitics for its own purposes: Iran. Neither Arab nor Sunni, Iran supports Islamist groups, both Sunni and Shi`a, using the Arab-Israeli conflict to bridge the sectarian and national gap. It could be argued that there is nothing Iran would like more than to see the Palestinian question remain unanswered. The continued ostracism of Hamas, despite it being the democratically-elected government of Gaza, means it has ‘nowhere to go but deeper into the embrace of Iran’. Iran is able to use the anniversary of al-Nakba to mobilise support for its Islamist proxies. The relative strategic impacts on any form of rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas are immense. Could youmfitna al-tawil , destroy the two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians? How can a two-state solution be found when in reality, there are three states operating? Without a zaïm since Arafat’s death, Palestine has splintered geographically and politically between Hamas, controlling Gaza, and Fatah in the West Bank stronghold of Ramallah; all on the watch of an increasingly hard-line Israel.

The 2006 attack on Lebanon changed Israel’s political landscape irrevocably. It was a major factor in the downfall of Ehud Olmert and the Kadima Party government. Governed by Binyamin Netanyahu and a coalition of his Likud Party, the remnants of the once-dominant Labour Party (with its former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak agreeing to be Netanyahu’s Defence Minister); and Yisra’el Beitenu with the latter’s leader Avigdor Lieberman, a former nightclub bouncer from Moldova, taking the role of Foreign Minister, leaving Kadima, founded by Ariel Sharon and led by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, as the moderate opposition. Despite its domestic political shake-up, Israel repeated many of the mistakes it made in Lebanon in 2006 when it attacked Gaza in the last few days of December 2008. If the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome, then repeating these failures against Hamas almost defies belief – another entrenched grassroots movement; a Sunni Arab ally of Iran; the democratically elected (but isolated) government; with militants firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Israel’s timing was cynical (in the interregnum between the US Presidential election and inauguration); it seems to have approached the fighting, and the Arab world, from a strategic perspective that will increase instability in the region and ultimately weaken Israel‘s security’. Attacking United Nations’ installations and using white phosphorus coalesced international opinion against it; destroying Gaza’s already inadequate infrastructure (just as it had done in Lebanon); all the while ignoring the strategic impact of the horrendous images of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis conflict. Israel has experienced consistent shelling from the Gaza strip since its withdrawal in August 2005. The reality for Israel and Palestine is that the folly of 2009 has made the blockade and ghettoisation of Gaza worse. The schism between the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas has fractured the domestic constituency to an extent where one possible outcome is renewed factional fighting. Weakening Hamas by isolating it has not worked; it has not given Mahmoud Abbas and the PA a foothold in Gaza. Unifying the territories and their political and security apparatuses seems increasingly unlikely – so a one-state solution is likely to prevail. How can there be a two-state solution when there are, effectively, three states, territories, turfs – whatever you want to call them – three entities in play in that tiny strip of land: Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian Territories are not just separated by ideology, they are physically asunder. In any event, Netanyahu is unlikely to seek a political settlement for fear of looking weaker than Olmert to his insecure citizenry.

The expectation gap that appears to be crushing the Obama administration is a leading indicator of the possible strategic impact of US foreign policy in the Middle East and one which has its roots in the 2006 Israeli-Hizbollah conflict, namely negotiations with Syria. Obama simply cannot afford to spend political and economic capital on the unflinching support of Israel of his predecessors – his strained talks with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu indicate he has no intention of doing so; as does his commitment to a two-state solution and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s repeated calls for an end to the spread of Israeli settlements. The possibilities of taking Syria out of the equation by giving both Israel and Syria what they had come close to agreeing to are of immense strategic value: agreement between the two countries would wound Hizbollah materially, and curb the ‘Shi`a Crescent’ that stretches from Iran through Syria to Lebanon and on to Gaza. It would also ameliorate Israeli insecurities stemming from two-pronged attacks and possibly revive ‘Annapolis’ – the aim of which, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel be the end of 2008, a goal which was never reached. However, the attack on Gaza made the Pax Syriana more difficult to realise. It strained relations between Turkey and Israel. Loosening Damascus’ ties with Tehran by restoring the Golan Heights and with it, Syria’s territorial integrity would also have weakened Hizbollah. However, both conflicts reinforced the Israeli public’s sense of insecurity. Why should Israel withdraw from more land when pulling out of Lebanon and dissembling settlements in Gaza has prompted hot wars?

In the end, the most likely strategic impact of Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon and 2009 attack on Gaza may have nothing to do with bombs, but babies: as Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University wrote in The Boston Globe on 8 January 2009, ‘demography rather than weaponry is likely to determine the conflict’s ultimate outcome: that the Palestinian and Arab Israeli birthrate far exceeds the birthrate among Jewish Israelis is a fact with enormous strategic implications’*; and one that cannot be solved with talks, roadmaps or rockets.

To read Bacevich’s full article, follow this link: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/01/08/the_lessons_of_gaza/

From the archives: Heavy Kevvy, Complete with Bevvy

Saturday, July 07, 2007  Heavy Kevvy, Complete with bevvy

From the ‘Further Adventures in Unexpected Company’ file (or how I scored Kevin Rudd’s beer): Went to the Gaslight last night (not so surprising) with my wingman Greg, both jukeboxes out of action in the preferred dark of downstairs. Ventured to the upstairs bar, saw a few ex-colleagues and journos … and Kevin Rudd. Yep, the next PM. Heavy Kevvy, complete with bevvy.

Having developed a rapport with Joe Hildebrand, a journalist on Sydney’s Daily Telegraph during his ‘Fork in the Road’ tour, and at a loose end after his tour of duty on the USS Kitty Hawk (call signal: Rudder), Kevin decided to drop into said journo’s birthday celebrations. At the Gaslight Inn, with its mix of Nicole Ritchie (pre-pregnancy, although how could you tell) wannabees and and under-employed 30-faux year olds. Not exactly tea on the lawn of Kirribilli House.

Ditching my wingman (sorry mate), I threaded my way through and scored an intro. The Leader was most gracious, even when I asked in all stupidity, “What’s a girl gotta do to get one of those little medals you scored off the Admiral of the Kitty Hawk?” (a question I hope to resolve tonight, given there are 7,000 sailors in port).

Beer in hand, he mixed with the punters, played a bit of pool (one poor shot, but sank one off the break when invited back to open the next game). Posed for pix (incl. one with me, see it in the gallery of fame and shame) and debated the merits of Queensland’s two shot rule; I agreed, having attended university in Bathurst, that you deserve a penalty if you screw up on the black. He seemed to enjoy himself, but the clock was wearing down, and he’d had another beer thrust into his hand. My mind kicked into political adviser mode – it never quite leaves you, like a red wine stain on berber carpet.

“Leader,” I said, quietly indicating that leaving a full beer in a Surry Hills pub would lose him some of the votes he’d not had to work too hard to win, “I’ll take that for you.” And so that is how I ended up with Heavy Kevvy’s bevvy – and drank it, despite an initial desire to flog it on e-Bay.

Endgame: drifted back to the welcome dark and dinginess of the downstairs bar, only to find Nick Seymour of Crowded House sitting at my normal spot. He didn’t pull as big a crowd as Kevin, a fact that probably pleased them both. Plugged in my iPod and walked home, smiling all the way.