Australian Federal Elections

It was a rocky year for Australian politics with three Prime Ministers serving over the course of the year.

As the year dawned, Julia Gillard was beginning her third year as PM of Australia. Unfortunately for Gillard her popularity was rapidly declining, along with that of her Labor Party. It also didn’t help that there was massive frustration with her leadership within the party. After surviving one leadership contest in March of this year she was faced with another contest just three months later. In this vote she was defeated by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Incidentally Gillard became PM by defeating Rudd in a leadership contest back in 2010.

The main opposition to the Labor Party is the Coalition. Currently there are four parties in the coalition; the Liberal, Liberal National, National, and Country Liberal parties. By far the largest of the four parties is the Liberal Party, which is led by Tony Abbott. What may confuse a lot of non-Australians is that the coalition is not centre-left! You would be forgiven for thinking it would be as three of the parties have the word liberal in their name. So why are liberal parties in Australia not actually liberal? Well that’s because they aren’t talking about modern liberalism, but rather classical liberalism. Classical liberalism dates back to the 19^th Century and refers to people who believe in government non-interference in markets.

So heading into the September elections you have the left wing Labor Party and the right wing Coalition squaring off. You also have several smaller parties such as the Greens.

The results of the election turned out to be a defeat for the Labor Party, but not exactly devastating. It wasn’t like Britain 1997 or America 2008 when the ruling party got trounced. The swing was only a measly 3.69% and already polls are showing that Labor has more support than the Coalition. That would suggest to me that Australians are fed up with establishment politicians. Australia wants a fresh faced populist, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they are from.

Although Tony Abbott will form a new government and has a majority of 14 in the House of Representatives, he will need the help of at least six opposition Senators to get legislation through the Senate.

Results:

House of Representatives (150 up for election, 76 for a majority)
Party	Seats	Change from 2010	Percentage won	Swing
Liberal Party	58	+14	32%	+1.56%
Liberal National	22	+1	8.92%	-0.2%
National Party	9	+2	4.29%	+0.56%
Country Liberal	1	0	0.32%	+0.01%
Labor Party	55	-17	33.38%	-4.61%
Greens	1		8.65%	-3.11%
Others

Senate (40 of 76 up for election, 39 for a majority)
Party	Seats	Change from 2010	Percentage won	swing
Coalition	33	-1	37.7%	-0.59%
Labor	25	-6	30.11%	-5.02%
Greens	10	+1	8.65%	-4.46%
Others	8	+6

The new Prime Minister of Australia
source: heraldsun.com.au

The Destructive Force of Mother Nature

The horrors of Mother Nature were very clear this year as many places were blasted by the weather.

The US was hit with a number of destructive storms. Oklahoma was hit on the 31^st of May by a massive tornado. Named the Moore Tornado after the small city it had obliterated. The storm unfortunately claimed 24 lives. What made the Moore Tornado so horrifying was its sheer size, at a width of 4.2km (2.6 miles) it is the widest tornado ever recorded.

Source: Guardian

Unfortunately for America the Moore, Oklahoma tornado wasn’t the only natural disaster to hit the country. California was hit by particularly bad wildfires this year, several people died as a result. Yet it was Australia that received the most damage thanks to wildfires. Unseasonably high temperatures resulted in much of Australia being consumed by fire in October. Although fires raged only 70km west of Sydney, the highly populated city was spared any damage. The Australian wildfires did produce this photo of a family sheltering under a jetty. The image went viral as soon as it was released to the press.

India was hit unfortunately, by the largest Cyclone in over a decade. Cyclone Pailan struck India in October 2013 and affected the lives of over 13 million people. Considering how populated the area is, it is lucky that ‘only’ 45 people died.

The biggest loser in 2013 was the Philippines. On the 15^th of October (what is it with October?) an earthquake struck the middle of the Philippines and resulted in 222 people being reported dead. To make matters worse, the most destructive Typhoon in the history of the Philippines made landfall. It had one-minute sustained winds at 315km/h (196mph), which would make it the strongest typhoon ever recorded. With that in mind it is easy to see how it could claim the lives of 6,155 and cost $1.5 billion in damage.

The destructive force of Typhoon Haiyan
source: BBC

Now let’s talk about global warming. The planet is getting warmer and storms are becoming more destructive. Humans are the primary cause of it. This is not my opinion. I am not a global warming scientist and I am by no means an expert. So I defer to the scientific community to evaluate the situation. 99.9% of scientists who have studied the facts have come to the conclusion that there is man-made climate change.

Yet despite the scientific community’s so certain that global warming is real, the world has been slow to react. In the short run making your country greener is very expensive. Countries that are in the process of industrialising think that it is hypocritical of already industrialised countries to ask them to stop polluting. Especially after the industrialised countries have been doing it for up to 250 years!

We need to tackle global warming now. 2013 did not go well, let’s make 2014 the greenest year ever! 

Gay Rights - The Bad News

Unfortunately the news surrounding gay rights has not been entirely rosy. The West did appear to move forward together, the same cannot be said of other countries. The biggest anti-gay news came out of Russia and India which seriously disappointed gay rights activists. Africa and the Middle East continued their terrible reputation with gay rights.

Gay Rights – Russia

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 the new Russia seemed eager to show its progressive side on social issues. In 1993 gay sex was legalised, four years later transgender people could legally change their gender and in 1999 homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness. Then came Vladimir Putin, he rose to Prime Minister in 1999 and after only a few months became President following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. Originally he did nothing to gay rights, but as the years progressed he began to ally himself with the homophobic Russian Orthodox Church. To help cement the support of the religious right, he (and his United Russia party) began hacking away at gay rights. Although homosexuality is still legal in Russia, a law was passed last year that made ‘homosexual propaganda’ illegal.

The law itself is truly terrible and stops any sort of gay pride event or meeting in which homosexuality is discussed positively. In Russia if you break the law as an ordinary citizen you are fined 5,000 Russian roubles (£93/$153/€110). For public officials the fine is 50,000 roubles (£932/$1,525/€1,102), the maximum fine for organisations is 1 million roubles (£18,631/$30,500/€22,037) and they must halt activity for up to 90 days. If you try and ‘promote homosexuality’ over the internet you can get fined 100,000 roubles (£1,863/$3,050/€2,204)! If you are a foreigner you can expect to get detained for 15 days before being deported, after paying your 100,000 rouble fine of course.

The disgraceful treatment of gays has resulted in people calling for a boycott of the Winter Olympics, which are to be held in Sochi, Russia later this year. Particularly vocal have been George Takei, an American actor, and Stephen Fry, a veteran British broadcaster. Both are openly gay and have drawn on their substantial fan base to call for a boycott of the games. In Fry’s letter to Prime Minister David Cameron he compared Putin’s treatment of gays to Hitler’s treatment of Jews in 1936, when the Olympic Games were held in Berlin. It is worth noting that Fry is of Jewish descent and had relatives die in the Holocaust.

 

Russian gay rights supporters being beaten by police
source: the Guardian

Gay Rights Elsewhere

India was the only other country to produce major anti-gay news. In 2009 the Delhi High Court ruled that Section 377 was unconstitutional and that all prohibitions on consenting sexual activities between adults that did not involve a commercial transaction were also unconstitutional. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was passed in 1860 by the ruling British government. Unfortunately the Supreme Court of India decided in December that the colonial era law was actually constitutional. This meant that gay sex was once again illegal in India.

It is a bit ironic when you think about it: When this law was passed in 1860, Britain was highly homophobic whereas India was not. Fast forward 160 years and you find a homophobic India and Britain leading the pro-gay rights charge!

Uganda has been at the centre of attention for several years now in relation to gay rights. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, being found guilty of it could result in up to seven years of imprisonment. Yet for some that is not enough! In 2009 MP David Bahati introduced a bill that would call for the death penalty for people who had gay sex on multiple occasions. It was dubbed the ‘kill the gays bill’ and got immediate international attention, which resulted in it failing. Then last year the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, introduced a new bill that was not quite as harsh as the original bill, but still demanded the death penalty for ‘aggravated’ homosexuality. That bill passed Parliament last month and new awaits President Yoweri Museveni’s signature.

More minor bad news for gay rights came out of Croatia, Zimbabwe and Australia. In Zimbabwe a referendum was held at the same time as other elections that banned same-sex marriage constitutionally. Considering Zimbabwe was never going to legalise same-sex marriage, this has little affect. Similarly Croatia had a referendum in which marriage was defined as being between one man and one woman. The result was 66% against marriage equality. It wasn’t entirely bad news though as the government immediately announced that it would try and pass a civil union bill this year. In Australia the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra) became the first Australian jurisdiction to legalise same-sex marriage! Hurray! Not so fast, unfortunately the federal government challenged the constitutionality of the same-sex marriage law, the court unfortunately ruled in the government’s favour. This means that gay marriage will not be becoming legal any time soon in Australia.  

Same-sex Marriage Makes Huge Progress

There has been a flurry of activity lately when it comes to same-sex marriage. Last month New Jersey became the 14^th state to legalise same-sex marriage following a court ruling. On the 23^rd of October the New Mexico Supreme Court heard arguments around whether or not same-sex marriage was legal in the state. The court has said that it will rule I the coming months. Great news came out of Illinois and Hawaii as both states are on track to legalise same-sex marriage. Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois has said that he’ll sign a same-sex marriage bill into law on the 20^th of November. Governor Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii said he will sign the corresponding Hawaiian bill after the state senate votes on it a second time. In Oregon the gay rights movement only needs 6,286 more signatures to put same-sex marriage on the ballot in November in 2014. Ohio also has a petition to legalise same-sex marriage but unfortunately they have no revealed how many signatures they have gotten. In Michigan a district court judge has agreed to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban in February 2014. Suits have also been filed in Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas and Pennsylvania. Following their success at defeating the same-sex marriage ban in California, the American Foundation for Equal Rights has stated that its next target will be Virginia.

In Australia, the Australian Capital Territory (aka Canberra) became the first Australian jurisdiction to legalise same-sex marriage. Unfortunately the conservative government has said it will try and block the legislation. More good news came out of Ireland where the government announced that a referendum would be held in 2015 on the issue of same-sex marriage. It is almost certain to pass, when this happens Ireland will become the first country to legalise same-sex marriage through a referendum. Ireland is one of only two European Atlantic Coast countries to not have legal same-sex marriage (the other being Germany), although several sub-national jurisdictions have also not legalised it.

In the Scottish Parliament the bill to legalise same-sex marriage passed through the Equal Opportunities Committee very easily and now awaits a vote by the main parliament. It will have to go through three more votes before it actually becomes law.

Brief: The Assange Case

The plot of the Julian Assange affair is a complex one, it involves many countries and different alliances. Assange is an Australian who lives in the United Kingdom. He was the head of Wikileaks, an organisation that embarrassed many nations by releasing diplomatic cables and other sensitive information, most of the information was related to the United States which infuriated the government. Previously he was accused to sexually assaulting two women in Sweden, the charges had been dropped but since Wikileaks and Assange became famous the two women have taken them up. This has led to many people believing that they only did so under pressure from American authorities. Since Assange currently resides in London he must be extradited to Sweden so the police can question him, he has been fighting extradition for months but has been unsuccessful in doing so. Eventually he broke police bail and asked for asylum from Ecuador and took residence in their London Embassy. The primary reason that Mr Assange does not wish to go to Sweden is not because of the charges, it is because of the fear that he will then be extradited to the United States.

I find this last point the weirdest as he currently lives in America's closest ally: the United Kingdom, so why going to Sweden would put him more at risk I don't understand.

It is a very complex case as it involves five nations and four continents. Although he has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, the British government have told police that if he leaves the embassy to go to the airport that they must arrest him. The issue is not looking likely to disappear any time soon, Assange was only granted asylum last Saturday and the British government refuses to back down. No doubt Argentina will support Ecuador.

Mother Nature

It was a rather devastating year thanks to mother nature. In Japan one of the largest recorded earthquakes ever occurred off its north eastern coast. Although the earthquake itself did little damage, it was the massive tsunami that followed that wreaked the devastation. Over 15,000 people were killed in a matter of minutes. The Fukushima Nuclear reactor nearly went into meltdown, which would have caused a Chernobyl-scale disaster according to experts. Thankfully, due to the bravery of a few men, the problem was solved. Yet this event raised the issue over the safety of nuclear power. As a reaction to the tsunami many nuclear reactors in Japan are being shut down and programs across the world have been suspended or cancelled. Unfortunately Japan was not the only country to experience earthquakes, New Zealand and Turkey both experienced two earthquakes in the same area of their countries.

Floods tore through many nations, Brazil had flooding in Rio de Janeiro and 500 lives were lost in the torrents. Floods also returned to Pakistan for the second year and although not as devastating as 2010, they still destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people. Australia and the Philippines also experienced devastating floods.

Statistics show that over the past few decades the cost of natural disasters has been, for the most part, rising. One of the problems is the world’s expanding population. Countries are becoming more overcrowded and people are being forced to live on flood plains and other places often subjected to natural disasters. This will inevitably cause a rise in the cost of natural disasters and will pose difficult tasks for the years ahead.

The Japanese tsunami as it came ashore.