It’s been a hectic week in global politics, even as in Australian Politics Parliament takes a week off before its final week of the sitting year. Overseas you have had an election in Netherlands which particularly caught the interest of political pundits, you had the continued fallout of the NZ Election where a deal was finally struck between the Nationals, ACT and NZ First to form a coalition government. Lastly, in UK Politics you had the Autumn Statement, which is essentially a budget update that is a long hour policy update by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, you also had the continued fallout of Suella Bravermann resigning and her vindictive nature since doing so. Then in Australia Politics you had the Climate Change and Energy Minister release information about the latest scheme to encourage renewable energy in the country, it comes as the argy bargy over Nuclear Power continues in earnest. In this blog I will start with international Politics before moving onto the Australian Politics.
So we will start with the Netherlands Election which caused a seismic reaction from the Political Pundits. The far right Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders “won” the election by winning the most seats with 37 seats. I use win in inverted commas because though he won the most seats forming a coalition government when he is under halfway to the majority number of seats needed to form majority government. This is particularly the case because Geert Wilders an avowed far right wing politically and is unashamedly anti-Islam has pretty much had every other major party say they would not form a coalition government with the Far right Party for Freedom group. It was not a good start for the far right party as the first scout to negotiate the forming of a coalition government had to resign in disgrace after facing alleged fraud charges. Onto NZ Politics and with the Port Waikato By-Election having been comfortably won by the Conservative Nationals Party it was another feather in the cap for the government which finally came to a Coalition agreement with NZ First and ACT Far Right Party. It will be an interesting marriage between the far right populist party ACT, the Populist protectionist party NZ First and the Conservative NZ Nationals Party. The agreement included the sharing of Deputy PM between the leaders of the NZ First and ACT Party. The new government started controversially in its first week with the change of repealing the smoking ban for a generation that gradually outlaws people born after 2008 from taking up smoking. The reason given for this was the declined Budget conditions of the country but health advocates rightfully smashed the decision saying it would decline health condition for New Zealanders which would end up costing the health budget more in the long run. Lastly, on the International front and UK Politics heated up again this week with the Autumn Statement to the House by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As I said earlier the Autumn Statement is essentially a Budget Update and an opportunity for Jeremy Hunt in this case to outline sweeteners to the public that will hopefully save a woeful vote for the Tories that is currently being polled. As for the Autumn Statement itself, I thought it was a plea from the Tory leadership to the base, Tax Cuts for the income earners and for small, medium and larger businesses was a sweetener to try and get Tories who have been miserable and thinking about not voting for the last few years to actually turn up and vote at the next election. As with every budget there are controversial measures though and there were two noticed by me here. Firstly, there is the effective cut to the public service in year 4 of the forward estimates of the budget where public service spending is meant to flat-line, that will push the UK back into Austerity which while popular with the base will probably not be so appreciated by the general voting populace. Secondly there was the move to stop giving welfare benefits to those who could work but refused to engage with job service providers. This is controversial because it is up to the government who is fit to work and if they have made a mistake then that’s a problem because people may end up losing benefits who shouldn’t be. Again a popular move with the base, less so with the general population me thinks. Meanwhile, in UK Politics the fallout from Suella Bravermann getting sacked as Home Affairs Secretary continued this week in a distraction that is not needed for this Tory government. This time it was the supposed deal set up to deal with the Rwanda Asylum Seekers situation where there was apparently a deal in place to get around the High Court challenge, this is denied by the Leadership of the PM but again is a messy distraction for a government taking on water. On the polling the Labour Party still hold a commanding high teens lead on average over the Conservatives and if repeated at a General Election would lead to a Tory wipeout and Labour Landslide win. As I keep saying there’s a lot of Tony Blair about Sir Keir Starmer and while that may not be popular with the far left base of the party, too implement change you actually need to be in power something that Sir Keir Starmer understands and the base seemingly does not.
Now onto Australian Politics and sigh climate wars is back in the news this week as Chris Bowen announced a scheme to further encourage investment into Renewables. The Coalition were surprise, surprise opposed to this and continued with their grandstanding sideshow spruiking the benefits of Nuclear Power. This on Sunday was ruled out by Chris Bowen as a fantasy wrapped up in political delusion which was not taken so well by some Labor backbenchers who are like, hang on a minute should we be so routinely ruling something out that may yet be needed as a transitioned stop gap measure as we transition to full reliance on Renewable Energy. So onto Chris Bowen’s Climate Scheme that the Opposition have labelled as a Ponzi scheme and essentially it seeks to phase coal out and underwrite investment into renewable energy by getting taxpayers to fund the transition from coal to Renewables. Ted O’Brien was immediate against the idea because you know that locks us into one method of transition which from the governments point of view is kinda the point. Ted O’Brien is still smoking the Nuclear train which this week took a hit because the Nats Leader David Littleproud said it would take more than ten years to implement Nuclear into the energy mix but that was okay because we don’t have to act on Energy until 2050, for a party slammed as doing little on Climate Policy in the last 10 years, that was not a good look I thought. The fact of the matter is, while there’s the obvious question of how much money taxpayers will have to pay on this scheme, which the Energy Minister has said is Confidential in Policy, something needed to happen because investment in Renewables had significantly slowed to the point where Australia may not meet its Climate Renewables target. I want to take a brief detour onto Nuclear for a second here, and I am broadly positive about the use of Nuclear Energy as part of our transition to Renewable Energy. Yes, there’s the huge capital required to build the reactors but Interest Rates are still relatively low and if we all stopped this obsession with getting a National Surplus we could actually invest in shit that will change the lives of our future for the better long term. The other argument against Small Modular Nuclear Reactors is that there’s limited information about how effective they are at reducing emissions but again we can be a global leader at this, get the job done and be the case test to using this. The last opposition to this move is purely political and that is the obvious scare campaign to oppose Nuclear Power Plants because of Fukushima and the impacts of Nuclear Reactor Meltdowns and that’s a scare campaign, really there’s risks with most sources of energy and if we want to get this done then we can, this opposition is frankly political and should be called out as such.
Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned next week for my blog summing up the last sitting week of the Parliamentary year in Australia.
Political Musings from the Man Down Under 