The Big Brother Politics of Australia - The Recent Labor Leadership Spill

Ok the bloodbath is over. It was quite a frantic week in the Australian politics. There was yet another leadership spill and finally after several attempts Julia Gillard was removed and Kevin Rudd was reinstated. Watching this whole saga unfolding was like watching some bad reality series of six seasons – there is nothing left to exploit with the characters, so please move on to the finale already.

Although it feels like a cliff hanger on the day of the saga, it was of little surprise that Julia was finally replaced by Kevin.  Labor has been really bad in polls. As bullish as they wanted to be, they all know, well we all know, well the whole world knows that as long as the Liberals are willing to attend the party, the government is ready there at the buffet table in September. It is only a matter of how many dishes they could consume. So replacing Julia with Kevin is a desperate move at a desperate time for the Labor party.  The question now is how long would Kevin last? The thing is I don’t think Kevin is very popular still inside the Labor Party but he has become the necessary evil for the party to stay in power. What could happen is a year or two down the road they might try to replace him again. However, this would risk the Labor losing the remaining trust of the Australian public in them, and it would take a long time for them to recover from that (and this would be bad news for Bill Shorten).

As for Julia, she probably would “retire” and enjoy her latte (does she drink latte? Or would she prefer mocha or flat white?) for a little while with her 200K per year life pension before going back into her high paying legal profession or starting a consultation business for private companies. Either way, she is better off both financially and personally for life. A lot of people still think that Julia got removed because she is a woman. Seriously, this might play a part but then at the same time the truth is she never recovered from the “backstabber” image when she replaced Kevin 3 years ago. With this ghoul on her back, it would be hard for her to recover in any sense. And as much as a lot of people want to deny it, Australian politics has become a reality TV series and who wins the competition is based on image and popularity. Also Julia, as much as she wanted to do good the fact that we got one new tax after another after being promised with no new taxes at the last election just further cemented her image as a “liar” (although I personally did not agree with how certain media or media personalities treated her in this aspect).

So what are we, as Australians left with? Well, Tony Abbott now has a new A game to play against. And as a B game player, he would need to work much harder to get the job he desperately and unshamingly wants. In the past few years, he has been resolving to two roles only – producer of the series “Julia Gillard as a liar” and the producer of the B grade horror series “I Don’t Know What You Did Today and Ever After But It Is Scary Anyway”. Now with Kevin at the helm of the “New Labor” and he being the expert of those roles (we have already seen this from his “acceptance” speech), Tony Abbott needs to find new tactics to deal with this “new opponent”. The thing is Tony was never tested against Kevin. While Tony, despite his lack of intelligence speeches one after another, was seen as an easy win against Julia in the past few months. However, this last minute switch over immediately rings the alarm bell for the Liberals. Polls already showed a surge of support to Kevin Rudd against Tony Abbott. And for Kevin to stay in this honeymoon popularity, he only needs to continue exercising his charm and cashing in the last bit of sympathy from the Australian public. But for Tony Abbott, he really needs to step up with his intelligence and stop saying silly things such as “Malcolm Turnbull virtually invented the Internet in Australia” in the public (could you imagine him saying that when meeting other international heads of state?).  This is because Kevin Rudd would not hesitate to exploit all these silliness and further paints him as an idiot to the public. If Kevin Rudd is good with anything, he is a master of the reality show. He knows where he could solicit public support and let his opponents to undo themselves and go under.

Without a doubt the reality series of the Australian politics has got a dramatic turn last week. But how long would this sustain the public’s interest is still yet to be seen. The next few months would be crucial as I could see that the Liberals would not hesitate to play dirty (as they always do) while the Labors would be taking every opportunity to milk any mishaps from the opposing camps. As for the Australian public, unfortunately they would have no choice but continue to follow this reality series for as long as it lasts.

The Fight of 457 Visa

The recent debate about the change of the 457 Visa requirements has sparked debates on whether it is a racist policy in the public arena. For readers overseas, the 457 Visa allows employers to sponsor overseas workers to Australia to “fill certain skill gaps”. However, after the repeal of requirement in 2001 by the Liberal Howard Government to mean test the skill set shortage to do so, it has been regarded as a means for some employers to just freely import foreign workers at a lower cost. This puts the local Australian workforce at risk as they are competing at a lower wage with foreign workers who might have similar skill sets. The situation is similar to bringing manufacturing outsourcing at a lower cost into the country.

The Labor Party is keen to change it to reinstate the requirement for skill mean testing so the system would not be, according them, “rotted”. While the Unions are very welcoming about this policy change, it is not so much with employers who claimed that it would make employing foreign workers harder and “does not meet the labour market needs”. As missiles were shot all over the place, especially with Don Randall, a Liberal MP said the policy as racist, I can’t help but think, is that so?

As a migrant myself, I look at the situation from a different point of view. While the 457 Visa gives foreign workers are way to come to Australia, are we doing it in the right way? Certainly, there might be skill sets and expertise that are not available, especially when we talk about high level positions or highly specialised professions, but for example, is it really that hard to find, for example a baker for a bakery that operates by Mr Randall? I don’t want to sound sarcastic or anything, but with hundreds of people trying out Masterchef every year, and now a new reality series just about baking, is it really that hard to find a local baker to do the baking for Mr Randall? Or is it actually just cheaper to hire one from Vietnam (as he did) and lower the overhead? Is Mr Randall really passionate about the diversity of the Australian society or he is more passionate about more bread at a lower cost?

What really bugs me about Mr Randall’s comment is his using of racism as an attack to the bill. I mean seriously? Certainly now even in the Parliament there is a reflection of cultural diversity with Penny Wong becoming the sore in the eyes for a lot of Liberal MPs, so how is a policy that helps the ethnically diversed Australian workforce racist? The thing is, in case Mr Randall does not know, Australia, I mean modern Australia, not the one Mr Randall might have grown up in, is made up by a huge diversity of ethnicities. So can I ask Mr Randall how in the world that a policy aiming to protect this huge diversity of people in Australia be considered as racist? I am Australian and I don’t think it is racist. If Mr Randall thinks that by throwing this out he is doing his "White Man Duty" to protect the minorities, maybe it is a bit 20 years too late.

As some said the policy is xenophobic, maybe it is from a certain angle, but then the policy change is not about shutting out people from Australia but to ensure that employers source for suitable candidates within the country first before going external. This applies to a lot of companies that usually open up new positions internally first before going out to external recruitment when a candidate for the position could not be found. So from this angle, I don’t see how the policy is xenophobic. With projected unemployment rate hitting 6% in Australia soon, isn’t it the Government’s duty to protect the Australian workforce? If you look at other countries in the world, you might understand that working overseas, for example in the States is not as easy as you think either. So why should Australia give employers who only want to import cheap workers a free ride?

How the whole saga would unfold is still yet to be seen but I personally do think that if a policy is about promoting fairness to the people that a Government is responsible for, then people should put away their personal agenda, be it to just say no to a cabinet he doesn’t like or just felt that he would be gravely affected, to support that is something generally good for the Australian society. Then again, as I usually do, do these politicians actually care about the Australian public? Or they care more about their own jobs and financial security?

Forget Me Not? - June 4 1989

I have been avoiding writing a piece about the June 4 Incident around that time to avoid getting too emotional and not objective enough. It is more than a week after that day so I think I could start writing now.

On 4 June 1989 the Chinese government mobilised its army to “clear the venue” of protestors. The event was termed differently in different countries. While in Hong Kong we termed it as the June 4 Incident, in most parts of the western world it was regarded as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre”. That night a lot of people died, more people’s souls did too.

Fast forward to present, nearly 25 years after that fateful night, the Chinese community in Hong Kong is still commemorating this day; and for the west, probably less so. However, this year in Hong Kong, for the first time there were people saying that we should forget about the June 4 Incident and move forward. These suggestions ignited another series of debates across the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Hong Kong had undergone a lot of changes. Whenever people knew that I was originally from Hong Kong they are interested to know whether Hong Kong has changed since the hand over in 1997. I would tell them change is expected so of course there are changes. While changes are structural and political, core values seemed to be remaining quite intact. Hong Kong is still a “work hard and live a good life” kind of place. However, as the wheel of time continues to turn, ideologies in Hong Kong have evolved too. I remember earlier this year when I was back for a family affair, I saw a TV forum discussing about what does it mean to be a person who loves his country – referring to China. The slogan of “Loving China, Loving Hong Kong” has been around for ages since the hand over, but the meaning differs to different groups of people. At the forum there was a girl representing the “China came first” camp. As I watched the debate unfolded, I was astonished by the bullying attitude she had whenever the discussion did not go her way. She would point her finger and tell people off in an authoritative way and also trying to shut people up by talking over them. My jaws dropped as I had never seen anything like that on Hong Kong TV before. TV forums are known to be civilised and rational, until that night.

At that time I thought “Yeah Hong Kong really has changed” and didn’t think about it much further. However, the recent comment from some people about forgetting June 4 really triggered a nerve in me. I was disappointed – how could you forget an incident when so many people lost their lives in one night? Not matter what your take is on this event, it is still in our history and forgetting this part of the history is not something that anyone should do. Does that mean we don’t need to learn anything about this anymore? Does that mean that lives lost are no longer valuable anymore? Or we are just applying the “Winner takes it all” principle to this pivotal historical incident in the Chinese history? Surely time had moved on and so does life, but then when we talk about June 4, it is not just something that should be taken lightly. China certainly doesn’t when you see how they usually tighten security in Tiananmen Square every year around this date. So if the Chinese government has not forgotten about this date (surely they learnt something out of this disregarding the outcome) should the people of Hong Kong be doing so? If Hong Kong no longer cares about what it stands for in Chinese history, is there still a role for Hong Kong being a Special Administrative Region in China? These were the questions I had in my head at that time.

Certainly, I don’t want to get too emotional or worked up about this whole thing, but then I did feel that if one wants to erase the June 4 Incident, they are no different from  people who wanted to erase the fact that Japan did invade China during the World War II. If they want to remember the latter, they have to remember the former – one cannot be so double standard about history, especially history involving the loss of lives. In my opinion, any suggestion to discount something of such importance is a step to the dark side of humanity – and that would bring no good to anyone.