The Dreyfus Files - The Age
When a man who previously dressed as a beer bottle in a publicity stunt criticises your publicity stunt for going too far, it should be a fairly good indication that yes, you have indeed gone too far.
In one of Senator Steve Fielding's final acts before he left Parliament this week he rejected Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's Great Big Plebiscite Plan, describing it as a political stunt, and waste of $80 million of taxpayers' money.
And a costly stunt it was.
At the start of this week, Tony Abbott proclaimed in the nation's tabloid newspapers that he would introduce a bill, in both the Senate and the House of Representatives at 10am on Monday, to authorise conduct of a plebiscite on a carbon tax.
The problems with this stunt were many.
First, the House did not actually meet until 2.30pm on Monday, and then was due to meet for a joint sitting of both Houses to hear an address by the NZ Prime Minister, John Key. Mr Abbott knew this.
Second, Mr Abbott had not actually secured the votes of the cross benchers necessary to actually pass the plebiscite Bill in either House. And third, and indicating the full ridiculousness of the proposal, Tony Abbott admitted he would press on with opposing the carbon tax even if a majority of the Australian people voted in favour of a tax in the plebiscite.
While Mr Abbott sought to claim this plan was about democracy, he actually doesn't accept the result of our democratic election held in August last year.
And he doesn't accept the way our democracy has functioned, in the 110 years since Federation, with peaceful and orderly transitions of power and expressions of popular will through regular elections that produce representative government.
Mr Abbott's hero, Prime Minister John Howard, was eloquent in support of our long established democratic system, speaking on ABC radio in Perth on September 17, 1998:
". . . unless you report to a method of having plebiscites on referendums on each individual issue. And I think the Australian public would get very angry and tired about that. They would say: what's wrong with you fellas, we elected you for three years, you go away and take all the decisions you want on individual issues and then when those decisions have been taken at the end of your three-year period if we don't like you we'll vote you out. I don't think you can run it any other way."
For once I agree with John Howard. But Tony Abbott does not.
Mr Abbott knows that in a few months, the members of Parliament elected by Australians in August 2010, including him and me, will vote on the government's plans for a price on carbon. He also knows, but wants to wreck it if he can, that that's the way our democracy works.
With this week's dumb stunt, Mr Abbott has again demonstrated that he might know how to get on the front page of the tabloids but he is utterly unfit to lead our great country.
By the end of the week, the Great Big Abbott Plebiscite Plan, which would have spent $80 million (described by Mr Abbott as an "insignificant" cost) on forcing every Australian elector to a voting booth, was forgotten by the tabloids.
There is no plebiscite. There was never going to be a plebiscite. But at the start of the week Mr Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and Nick Minchin were breathlessly excited about this non-event.
Next time Mr Abbott tells the Parliament, or the nation, about another Great Big Abbott Plan, let's remember the Great Big Abbott Plebiscite fiasco of 20 June 2011. Let's remember it for what it shows about Mr Abbott: a man all puff, no policy ideas, with no respect for our democratic institutions, no willingness to answer real questions, and a man who would tear up tradition and crush convention in his bitter desperation to ignore the result of the last election.
We will continue working responsibly to put a price on carbon, to move Australia to a clean energy future because we strongly believe that it is the right thing to do.
At the election in 2013, to paraphrase John Howard, if Australians don't like us they will have the opportunity to vote us out.
I am confident that once the carbon price starts on July 1, 2012 Australians will soon see that Mr Abbott's mad and fearful predictions were as groundless as the Great Big Abbott Plebiscite Fiasco.
