Long live the Grand Final Replay

Many people think we should decide drawn Grand Finals with extra time. It’s ridiculous, they say, to have no winner on the day. Replays are inconvenient and exasperating and if we can avoid this week of not-knowing we should. But I disagree. Drawn Grand Finals are as rare as solar eclipses. This is a special event and we should keep it as such.

I know the players are exhausted and it’s asking a lot of them to go through another week of preparation and another Grand Final as well. The supporters are exhausted too and have to go through it all again. It’s very inconvenient for those who were going overseas or getting married or who had organised cycling races and other events for next weekend. My sympathy is with these people but I hope that we always replay a drawn Grand Final.

Firstly we have always done it this way and twice before we’ve had a draw and a replay. And a great part of our game is tradition. If there aren’t great reasons to change things we should keep them the way they are.

But the main reason why we should hold on to the replay is that a drawn match acknowledges the efforts of both teams. In the end there can only be one winner of the Grand Final but if, after 100 minutes of giving it their all there is nothing to separate the teams then so be it. They have played a draw and they deserve to have this marked as such. It would be easier for some if it were decided with extra time. But would the losers then say “Well I’m glad it’s over. We lost but it’s better than having drawn and having to replay next week”? I don’t think so.

And because a draw is so rare it stamps itself on our memory. I barely followed football in 1977 and we didn’t have a television but I can still hear the commentator calling out “It’s a draw! It’s a draw!” And my Dad, a North Melbourne supporter, was laughing with exasperation. And I vividly remember the one drawn game I’ve been to, between Essendon and Richmond at the ‘G in 1995. Which was also the year that Essendon played Collingwood in the first Anzac Day match in front of 90 000 people and they played a memorable draw as well.

And the other great thing about a draw is that it unites us as lovers of the game in a way that no other result can. Everyone feels the same after the siren goes and the scores are level. There is shock and amazement and a deep searching. “How does this feel?” we ask ourselves. “We haven’t won but we haven’t lost. Is our glass half-full or half-empty?”

I loved the look on everyone’s faces after the siren. Like one of those philosophical riddles – what is the sound of one hand clapping? – a drawn Grand Final takes us to an unfamiliar place where nothing is what we expected it to be. Neither up nor down, neither good nor bad. And this unity of feeling among supporters and this Zen-like experience is priceless and we should treasure it.

The push to decide a Grand Final with extra time will be forceful. The momentum of the modern world with its crowded calendar is right behind it. Just as it is in a hospital when a baby is “overdue” and pressure is brought to bear to induce labour or subject the poor woman to a caesarean. But sometimes we just have to wait. Some special events should not be rushed.

And if any game in history deserves this special status of the Drawn Grand Final surely it was last Saturday’s effort. It was so tense that I can’t even say I enjoyed it. I had to leave the house to look for missing children at the start of the last quarter and I was relieved to get away from the maelstrom on the telly. The kids were found but I missed the first two goals of that incredible last quarter. I’ll watch it some other time, no doubt.

So bring on the replay and let’s stick with being old-fashioned. Let’s continue to respect both teams who slog it out and can’t be separated. It’s the least we can do. But maybe we could do a little more with the draw than we do. We could start with a Drawn Theme Song. Any suggestions?

Hopes of the nation

My friend Chris, a true Saint, sent me this text last night:

"We carry the hopes of the nation and we wear it lightly. A day for true believers. C'mon Sainters!"

Please let it be so.

Deserve's got nothing to do with it

It was Footy Day at my work today and there was face-painting and handball and goal-kicking competitions and people dressed in their team colours. And one of the organisers of the day is an Essendon supporter and so we had the 2000 Grand Final to watch on DVD.

Now there have been some awful Grand Finals over the years but this was surely hard to beat for pure badness. It was a triumph for thuggery and it was a thumping for the Demons who didn’t deserve it. And I’d seen Long’s assault on Simmons before but ten years on it looked much worse than I remembered. He charged into the young man who had his head over the ball and it was clear Long had no intention other than to hurt his opponent. And while he might have hit him front-on he instead twisted his body in his last step so that his hip hit Simmons in the head. Or was it the neck? Either way Simmons was knocked unconscious and was lucky not to have a broken spine.

Classy Essendon, really classy. But they were a frightened, nervous team. They’d been a great side, apparently, for while and hadn’t landed a flag yet and they just had to get this one, whatever it cost. Serve them right for getting one lousy flag in three “great” seasons. But a shame it came at the expense of the Demons.

Now for tomorrow. The Pies and the Saints have played sixteen Grand Finals between them in the last fifty years for a total of two Premierships. So it’s really a clash of the tragics. You could say that neither club deserves to lose tomorrow, that both deserve to win.

Except it’s not true. Collingwood don’t deserve anything! Go Saints!

We need a grown-up to lead the opposition

Tony Abbott wrote in the Sunday Age (19^th September 2010)

With more seats and more primary votes than Labor, the Liberal and National parties won the election but couldn’t quite form a government.

Is there anything worse than a sore loser? In what sense did the Liberal and National Parties “win” the election? Surely elections in our system are won by the party that can from a government afterwards. And that wasn’t Abbott and his Coalition was it?

But fair enough, if you want to claim that this government is illegitimate because Labor received fewer primary votes than the Coalition you are entitled to. But first you need to say something like this:

Our electoral system is deeply flawed because the number of seats a party wins in the lower house has little to do with how many votes it gets. It is to my party’s everlasting shame that we have repeatedly won government illegitimately when the Labor opposition outpolled us. This happened in 1954, 1961, 1969 and 1998. In 1998 we compounded our shame by claiming a mandate for the Goods & Services Tax which had clearly been rejected by the Australian people.

From now on the Liberal and National parties support a proportional representation system for voting for members of the House of Representatives. If we had such a system at the last election we would have gotten a result something like this:

Party	% votes	seats
Labor	37.99	57
Green	11.76	18
Liberal	30.46	46
Lib-Nat QLD	9.12	15
National	3.73	7
Family First	2.25	3
Independent	2.52	4

It is only now, having felt personally the injustice of our electoral system that I am spurred to action. I apologise for having done nothing when previous elections threw up unjust results. And I hereby revoke my admiration for previous Coalition Governments, some of whom I belonged to and others I merely looked up to. Most of these governments were illegitimate. They were formed despite the express wishes of the Australian people who time and time again gave more primary votes to Labor than to us.

Now if Abbott says something like this we should start listening to him. But if he keeps crying about having “won” this election we should tell him to go home and get his nappy changed.

Speak English Please!

Labor is making a meal of the asylum-seeker issue once more. It might help them if they used plain English words to explain things as this would make it easier to argue the case for compassion.

In the first place they should always call asylum-seekers “asylum-seekers” because that’s what they are. They should always fight against those who dare to call them “illegals.” It is not illegal to seek asylum and this must be repeated until people understand it.

Secondly when they refer to a place where people are locked up they should call it what it is. It’s a prison. It’s not a “detention centre,” or a “processing facility.” And the people locked up then become “prisoners” not “detainees.”

This then makes it much easier to argue in favour of processing people quickly so they are not locked up, at the taxpayer’s expense, while they acquire a range of otherwise-preventable mental illnesses.

“We will not imprison men, women and children who have done nothing wrong,” the Prime Minister will explain. “These people have come here asking for our help. We will help them if we can and if we can’t we will send them home. But we will not punish, without trial, thousands of people who are doing what anyone would do – fleeing the Taliban or getting their families out of a war zone.”

By using the language of “detention centre” and “illegals” the government concedes too much ground to the right. It is time to reclaim the moral high ground on this issue so we can start debating things that really matter.

Our duty to home-buyers

In yesterday’s Herald-Sun the front page screams about the Victorian Government taking too much money in stamp duty on the sale of homes. If only the stamp duty was less, they say, then houses would be more affordable. The paper is mounting a campaign and encouraging its readers to ring up or write in and put pressure on the government to cut this tax.

What rubbish. House prices in Melbourne have trebled in the last ten years. Is this because stamp duty is now half a million per house? No it’s not. It’s because there is too much money chasing too few houses. And the policies that would reduce the amount of money which drives up these prices are policies that the Herald-Sun would run a mile from. Abolishing negative gearing for rental properties would put home-buyers on a level with investors. At the moment investors – those who already own a house and are looking to buy another – have a huge tax advantage. They also benefit from the Howard government’s cut to Capital Gains tax. Get rid of these two tax breaks and the housing market would cool down. And the government would have more money for social housing and other worthy causes.

But reduce or abolish stamp duty and all you are doing is putting more money into the hands of people who are buying a house. So they can bid up the price a bit more and make houses just as unaffordable as they are now.

Still, I’m impressed with the Herald-Sun. The Age’s front page yesterday was about how the head of BHP, the world’s largest mining company, has called for a carbon tax. Now just how does this fit in with Global Warming being the greatest conspiracy of all time? I can see why the Herald Sun wouldn’t run it on their front page.

Money well-spent

What would you think of a family down the road who threw out their still-working colour television and spent three grand on a two-metre plasma while their kids suffered from rotten teeth? “We need to take the kids to the dentist,” they tell you, “but we just can’t afford it.”

We have a state government like this. They are spending $30 million of our money on an “upgrade” of the Great Southern Stand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This stand is all of twenty years old, you see, and apparently it needs an upgrade. You’ll have noticed how football supporters are staying away from it in droves. You’ll have heard people complaining about how old and substandard it is. You’ll have read the endless letters to the newspaper decrying its decrepitude.

Oh, you haven’t? Indeed. According to AFL boss Andrew Demetriou 2.7 million people have attended AFL matches at the MCG this season. So what are they spending all the money on? The upgrade will actually cost $55 million and the Melbourne Cricket Club is spending $20 million of their members’ money to make up the difference. They will be improving:

• food and beverage areas, concourses and toilets;
• entry points to the stadium, ensuring a more streamlined ticketing process;
• function rooms and sports bars to provide improved viewing areas, similar to those offered in the Northern Stand; and
• audio visual equipment, including installation of plasma screens.

Now how exactly do you spend so much money on so little? And while Demetriou insists that the works will be a “boost” for fans, wouldn’t the fans appreciate something a little simpler? Such as cheaper tickets? Or the right to go along to a game and sing and shout and create their own atmosphere without the corporate tyranny of blaring advertisements and inane announcements?

Much of this money – our money – will be spent on “function rooms” – that is, corporate boxes. Why should my hard-earned be spent here? Corporate boxes are a complete drain on the atmosphere of a football match. Face it, if we all watched the footy behind a glass window there would be no atmosphere at all.

This football fan would be happier if a fraction of the money was spent ripping out the corporate boxes and replacing them with seats for people to sit in. If you want to watch the football without going outside then stay at home.

But it would be even better if the money were spent on something that we actually needed. Such as homes for disabled people. For the sum in question the government could provide homes for several hundred disabled adults who are now living with their ageing parents. There is a great shortage of supported accommodation, so that older carers feel pressured to keep their grown-up children at home. In desperation they sometimes get their adult children into respite care and leave them. Consequently, respite beds are in short supply too.

Don’t people like this deserve our money just a teeny bit more than a grandstand that was built, brand new, only 20 years ago? A stand that people flock to in their tens of thousands, week after week?

Or are we just like those people with the big new plasma who can’t afford to take their kids to the dentist?

Getting the facts right

Clive Palmer on Q&A (ABC 1, 9.30 pm) on Monday night made the claim a couple of times that “Tony Abbott received a record swing for an Opposition Leader at this election.” I’ve heard similar claims before and they are made with the idea that this somehow gives Abbott the right to claim victory.

But what record swing? According to the Electoral Commission the Coalition received a swing of 2.6% on the two-party preferred vote. Now I’m not some kind of elections nerd and I’m not going to go back through every single federal poll to find out when this “record swing” was exceeded, but…for the record an Opposition party received a bigger swing than this in 2007, 1998, 1983, 1980, 1975 and 1969. I’ll stop there. I won’t mention 1961 and 1954…

A Cracking Parliament

Well, at last we know. We've got a minority Labor government in our first hung parliament in Canberra for 70 years. And haven't the conservative side of politics taken it well? The new government has as much legitimacy, according to Senator George Brandis (Liberal-National, QLD) as the Pakistani cricket team. There is outrage that it has come to this. Isn't it obvious, the right-wingers moan, that the people didn't want a Labor government?

Commentators like Bolt and Harcher have seized on Tony Windsor's comments to say that we have been forced to endure a government which the Australian people don't want. Windsor said that one of the reasons he backed Labor was that he thought they were less likely to rush back to the polls. If he'd backed Abbott, Windsor thought, he'd be likely to call an early election because he believed he might win. But what does this amount to? A subversion of democracy? Hardly.

What it amounts to is that many of the people who are paid vast sums to write about Australian politics haven't a clue about the fundamentals of parliamentary democracy. But in the spirit of fair play and the free exchange of information I will help them out.

Firstly, our system of government is called responsible government. This means that the executive is at all times (in theory) responsible to the parliament. It follows that we have elections not for an executive government but for a parliament. Governments are formed not through elections but in the parliament. A government that loses the confidence of the lower house of parliament must resign. If another party or group of parties can form a government that does have the confidence of the lower house then that government can be sworn in and can remain in office for as long as it keeps the confidence of the house or until the parliamentary term runs out.

This is not actually top secret information. I learned it at school and all the books are still available in the local library. But it seems some professional political writers have never read them.

So we had an election for the Australian parliament and no one party won a majority in the lower house. It followed that until this was sorted out the caretaker phase of the Gillard government would continue. And now after two and a half weeks we learn that with the support of the Green and three independents Labor will have a majority of two in the house of reps. This is twice the size of Robert Menzies' majority in 1961 and I've never heard a conservative commentator describe this second last government of his as illegitimate.

Funny I should mention 1961 because this was the second time in seven years that Labor beat the Coalition in the two-party preferred vote (2PP) and yet failed to win enough seats to win office. It would happen again to Labor in 1969 (the Don's Party election) and again in 1998. It also happened to the Coalition in 1990. That's just the way it goes with our electoral system. It isn't perfect and the number of seats a party wins in the lower house does not reflect accurately the number of votes it has won.

If we had a proportional representation system like we do in the Senate or as they have in Tasmania then it would be different. But in that case the Greens and Labor in this last election would have won 75 seats between them. I don't see any pro-Coalition commentators supporting this idea.

Yet there has been no shortage of such commentators arguing that the Coalition has won the two-party preferred vote this time and that this accords it some right to govern. Apart from the fact that they haven't and it doesn't. The two-party preferred count is continuing to this day and today Labor is winning and will probably finish in front by a whisker. But whether they or the Coalition win the count is irrelevant in constitutional terms.

What we are left with will be, as Rob Oakeshot called it, "a cracking parliament." The government cannot do whatever it likes whenever it likes and this is a great thing. For the life of this parliament ideas will have to be debated on their merits and I actually think this parliament will do more and get more done than a majority Labor government would have achieved. Let's face it, Labor had a majority last time and went to sleep even on "the greatest moral challenge of our time." I don't see Bandt, Wilkie, Windsor and Oakeshot letting it get away with such lethargy this time.

Oh, and another thing. We are told that Oakeshot and Windsor have "betrayed" their conservative electorates by supporting a Labor government. Apart from the emptiness of the terms "right" and "left" in this day and age, has it occurred to anyone who spouts this crap that the voters of Lyne and New England had a choice, as we all did, as to who they voted for. If they'd wanted a Liberal or a National member of parliament they could have voted for one. Hell, they could even vote Labor or Green if they wanted to. But they didn't. They voted for an Independent. Yes, a bloke who didn't belong to a political party. A man who would make up his own mind! God forbid.

Let me give the final word to the father of modern conservative thought, Edmund Burke who opposed the idea that a member of parliament was a mere delegate whose actions must always reflect the will of the voters:

But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp. 446-8.