Everything’s going so well!

You know what - at the moment Rudd’s being a pretty damned good Prime Minister. This site will resume if and when that stops. In the meantime, I’m greatly enjoying the sensation of not being constantly and horribly disappointed by everything our national leader does.

And so it begins

UPDATE The below is wrong. In stark contrast to what the Liberal Party used to do, the cost of these booklets was invoiced to the ALP, not the public purse. And that was in the original article, if I’d read it more carefully.

“And so it begins”? If this is how it begins, it’s actually a pretty good start!

Oh, god, Kevin. You’re not going to follow in your predecessor’s footsteps and shamelessly squander public money promoting your own party, are you?

Apparently, yes.

The Federal Government has produced a 55-page booklet outlining what it has done in the three months since the election.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will have been in office for 100 days next week.

We voted out the other bastards for doing this sort of thing, Kev. It’s not okay for you to do it either! And you’re giving them an excuse to be even worse next time they get in, too - or have you forgotten how they’d throw Keating’s political advertising back at you every time you complained about Howard’s?

As Ken at Road to Surfdom notes:

If they’re happy to squander money on political advertising this early in the election cycle I shudder to think what they’ll be doing in 2010.

Stop it. Stop it now.

Rudd’s Labor now censoring the whole Internet - FOR THE CHILDREN (whether you’ve got children or not)

Thoroughly disturbing “more conservative than the conservatives” move from the new Government, as it steps beyond internet filtering to make it compulsory unless you actively opt-out. Because if you want access to the uncensored internet, then obviously you’re just looking for child pornography.

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

Filthy, child-hating (or is that child-LOVING) civil libertarians. If you don’t want the government telling you what you can and can’t watch, then obviously you’re a sick pervert on whom we should be keeping a closer eye. If that’s what you’re going to do with your freedom, then we’ll TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU. So there.

If you’ve got nothing to hide, etc, etc.

Thank god we kicked out the other conservative party, eh?

Further commentary at An Onymous Lefty.

Accountable/Democratic score: -1 (sneaking this out during the New Year break to avoid people hearing about it is beneath contempt)
TOTAL -1
Progressive policy score: -2 (Jesus, you’re making the libertarians’ warnings about scary big government come true! Also, a massive waste of public money.)
TOTAL -4

PM does something about Japanese whaling

The PM is taking the preliminary steps in doing something about Japan’s cruel and unsustainable insistence on continuing whaling:

THE Rudd Government is set to dramatically escalate Australia’s efforts to stop Japanese whalers, sending a ship and an aircraft to gather evidence against them in the Southern Ocean, and organising a coalition of nations to campaign against the practice.

An excellent start.

Proof’s in the pudding depending on what they do once they have that evidence, but it’s a good start.

And Japan - no-one’s buying your “research” argument, so give it up. What are you “researching”, anyway, and how is it a vital part of said research that the whales you capture are sold for a profit as food etc? It’s fairly well established already that whales are edible.

Seriously, stop insulting us.

Accountable/Democratic score: N/A
TOTAL Still 0
Progressive policy score: A step in the right direction - +1
TOTAL -2

Rudd no better on Hicks than Howard was

From Tuesday’s Crikey:

Rudd takes the cowardly way out on Hicks control order

Greg Barns writes:

Some of us have long predicted that when it comes to using anti-terrorism laws for political purposes, the Rudd government would be no better than the Howard government. It’s early days but it looks as though that is the case. What other possible explanation could there be for newly minted Attorney-General Robert McClelland backing the Australian Federal Police’s move to impose a control order on former Guantanamo Bay detainee, David Hicks?

Mr Hicks is today a broken man, and he was probably always harmless. He was used as a political plaything of the Howard government for five years and when he returned to Australia, the South Australian Labor government’s chief head kicker (and apparently the man responsible for the stellar career of failed federal Labor candidate Nicole Cornes) Kevin Foley was ready with a kybosh to beat Mr Hicks around even more.

Let us remember that it is doubtful if David Hicks’ actually broke any anti-terror laws either here or in the US, despite his plea agreement with the US authorities. This is because the Guantanamo Bay regime of interrogation and detention is to put it simply, corrupt.

Over the past two weeks the CIA has admitted that it destroyed video tapes of interrogations of detainees, despite a US Federal Judge order in 2005 to “preserve and maintain all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

The severe restrictions on detainees’ access to legal advice has been criticised by a number of US courts, and its proposed method of trial has been thrown out by the US Supreme Court – a conservative-dominated body. Prisoners are shackled and kept in solitary confinement in many cases for up to 23 hours a day.

In other words, why would anyone believe anything other than that the only reason Mr Hicks struck a plea bargain that saw him serve his last few months of imprisonment in Adelaide was because he wanted to escape life in hell?

This is why a control order is unnecessary in David Hicks’ case. He is as about as likely to go near anything associated with terrorism as he is to fly to the moon at Christmas.

So why are Mr McClelland and the Rudd government letting it happen? Because it’s good politics. This government, which supported the Howard government’s anti-terror laws when in Opposition, wants to be seen as tough on terrorism even if it means treading on a few individuals’ rights along the way.

The Rudd government seems to be conveniently forgetting that the reason John Howard cut a back room deal with US Vice-President Dick Cheney early this year to return David Hicks to Australia was because the Australian community thought Mr Hicks’ had suffered enough torture for one person.

If the Rudd government was seriously committed to human rights responsibilities then it would oppose efforts to shackle David Hicks with an order requiring him to be a captive in his own community. What a pity it has taken the cowardly way out. Plus ca change…!

It was contemptible when Howard did it, it remains contemptible when Rudd does it. There is no part of the Hicks situation which justifies him having served the time he’s already served, let alone having further orders placed on him. It’s a farce and a travesty of justice. HE LIKED ISLAM! HE WENT TO AFGHANISTAN! LET’S LOCK HIM UP FOREVER!

Accountable/Democratic score: Paranoia of the majority trumps the basic civil rights of individuals? Still doesn’t quite fit under this category. N/A
TOTAL Still 0
Progressive policy score: Outrageously authoritarian. -2
TOTAL -3

Minister for IR, Education, Whatever You Like

Er, what? How are education and industrial relations in any way the same portfolio?

Julia Gillard’s going to be very busy indeed.

I can’t help but feeling a little TOO busy, and that, since reforming the industrial relations system from John Howard’s “reforms” is going to be a major job, this indicates a downgrading of priority for education in the new government. Which is particularly odd given all the lip-service before and after the election to “an education revolution”…

Accountable/Democratic score: Not clear; could be negative if it undermines accountability for either issue
TOTAL Still 0
Progressive policy score: Not clear; could be negative if it undermines attention for either issue
TOTAL Still -1

Refugees on Christmas Island

Another 16 refugees have been interred on Christmas Island.

Rudd, it is expected, will not be changing John Howard’s ludicrously harsh immigration laws. (Not on his own, anyway. The only way that’s likely to happen is if ALP voters vote Green in 2010.) On the other hand, obviously he hasn’t had much opportunity to respond to this issue yet, so for now we just have to judge him on his pre-election rhetoric.

The story ought not disappear beneath the radar in the post-election honeymoon, however.

Democratic score: NA
Progressive score: -1*

*provisional - can (HAPPILY) be changed to +1 if he actually does something about it.

Welcome to Kevin Rudd Watch

Welcome to Kevin Rudd Watch.

This is a site created by a progressive blogger (I also run An Onymous Lefty and BoltWatch), to keep track of Kevin Rudd’s time as Prime Minister.

We have just got rid of one of the (if not the) most divisive and corrupt Prime Ministers this nation has ever endured. A man who would sink so low as to change the enrollment rules to try to cut young people and poorer people from being able to vote, just because they were likely to vote against him. A man who spent untold millions of taxpayers’ dollars advertising himself and his regime.

A man who set the standards of political office so low that I fear subsequent Prime Ministers will, far from reverting to pre-Howard days, simply take advantage of them. To the detriment of democratic and open government in Australia.

I hope I’m wrong. This site is preparation in case I’m not.

That’s the first focus of the site - standards of open government, and whether Kevin improves them, leaves them at John Howard levels, or continues the slide Howard spent 11 years implementing.

The second focus is whether Kevin Rudd turns out to be a conservative or not. Many progressive voters voted for Rudd on the basis that he would implement more progressive policies than John Howard. This site will be keeping track of whether he does or not - not because being progressive is “wrong” or “right”, but because progressive voters might like to have a handy reference at the 2010 election of Rudd’s record, conservative or progressive as the case may be.

There will thus be two running scores at the end of most posts: Democratic (+1 if good, open, honest government, -1 if dodgy) and Progressive (+1 if progressive, -1 if conservative).

I intend this to be a group blog. If you are interested in taking part, please email me at mrlefty AT gmail.com.

Suggestions for items to be included in Kevin Rudd Watch are welcome in the comments.

NOTE: This is not a general political discussion blog. It is a blog about holding the feet of Kevin Rudd, as a Labor leader, to the fires of democratic accountability and progressive policy.

Comments which advocate in favour of conservatism will simply be deleted as being off-topic.