Didn’t miss much election chatter while meandering across the South — and Northwest — Pacific ocean last month. That was mainly because the Australians are having a bit of a national dust-up on the hustings, too. Although they don’t get to vote until September, the battle lines are already being clearly defined — and guess what the major issues are? Health care, pensions and “aging care,” and the rapid development of a liquefied natural gas industry to fund those big-ticket items.
A bit like home to read that major LNG projects, five in Western Australia, three in Queensland, are being fiercely challenged by environmental groups. The language being used on both sides of the debate is an echo of the B.C. debate on the same LNG issue. Anti-development forces refer to “firestorm resistance” and “immense floods of anger” while the pro-development supporters point to the creation of 18,000 full-time jobs and billion-dollar revenues in state taxes.
In Australia, development supporters claim that if all projects go ahead, that country will replace Qatar as the prime exporter of LNG. In Canada last week, the Financial Post was reporting a Scotiabank claim that “if B.C., Alberta and the federal government play their cards right, Canada could become the new Qatar in LNG.”
Down Under and in northwest B.C. and Alberta, would-be LNG exporters face the common problem of “fracking” — the hydraulic fracturing of deep seams to extract gas. Producers claim it has never been a proven hazard. Environmentalists claim fracking creates major hazards and threatens potable water supplies.
And the government of Qatar loves every minute of the fight.
On the lighter side of political problems was the revelation that Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Welsh-born, red-haired firebrand whose family emigrated to Australia in 1966 when she was five years old, had existing export problems.
Just as Christy Clark and all B.C. premiers before her are criticized for allowing raw logs to be exported, Gillard was being hammered for allowing raw meat to be shipped overseas.
That’s raw meat on the hoof. Apparently, Australia has a lucrative arrangement with Egypt to ship freighterloads of Aussie-born steers to that country for slaughtering and processing. Animal-rights groups checked the slaughterhouse process, claimed the beasts were being dispatched in a cruel, non-Australian way and demanded an investigation. They added it was also wrong for Australia to be exporting meat on the hoof when it could be doing value-added business by canning the steers before shipping them overseas.
Logs, steers. Same argument. Create jobs at home by processing before shipping. And the same, year-after-year response from political leaders: “We shall look into it.”
Our provincial Prime Minister Christy Clark (and yes, it is a proper title, should she ever deign to use it) will get her major report card from the electorate on Tuesday, so it is too late to offer her campaign advice from Gillard. She was elected PM in 2010 and doesn’t get her and her Labor Party report-card marks until September, but she’s already served notice that tax increases are in the works.
Two weeks ago, she announced increases in taxes to pay for increased benefits for people with disabilities. And made no apologies for the increase. In fact, she stated up front and clearly that even if her future budget showed a surplus, the National Disability Insurance Scheme would still receive its extra funding. “It is fair to say to Australians that you will be asked for a little bit more in order to fund something that we all benefit from.”
I wonder if Premier Clark would ever be so bold? And maybe more important, I wonder how British Columbians would react to a one per cent increase in the PST to fund even better health care and what the Aussies call “aging care.” I fear our response would be a knee-jerk “no tax increases — not even to fund something we all benefit from.”
And, who knows, maybe the Aussie voters will say the same in September and send Gillard — who shares her life with a male partner but boasts “I am an atheist, single and childless” — packing.
My general impression of the difference between Australian and Canadian politics? Apart from minor tweaks in procedures, there isn’t any. Same problems, same responses and far from perfect. But not at all bad in a world so fraught with danger and despair.
And, yes, as always, it’s good to be home.
