Steve Bracks Quits as Vic Premier
Not that I care too much for Victorian politics but Steve Bracks has just quit politics after 8 years as Premier. Kudos to the ABC News site for being the first out with the news here. Bracks apparently cites personal reasons for his resignation, which probably includes his son’s recent drink driving adventure. I admire Bracks for recently sticking it to the Howard Government over control of the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly when it seems the that he and Malcolm Turnball were close to negotiating a solution, which the Prime Minister overruled just to score some political points. It seems the attempts at Federalism by Howard et al will leave them with egg on their face, even if the High Court was to uphold the Commonwealth’s position because it will leave no one with total control of water in the Basin. It will be divided between the States and the Commonwealth which is just as bad as it is now.
Anyway, good luck to Bracks in his new life outside the political sphere. I wonder how long until he is consulting for Macquaire Bank or similar, like another former Labor state Premier.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
It’s probably a good thing. Bracks’ politicing over the water plan had brought the most important development in management of the Murray Darling Basin in the past 100 years to the brink of collapse.
Even the Victorian Farmer’s Federation have changed their tune, saying they now think the plan is a good thing. So hopefully now the unified management of the MDB can now go ahead without high court challenges and other messy delays.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
You are right. It cuts both ways. I agree that a unified plan for the management of the MDB is the way to go. The thing that irritates me is that Bracks and Turnbull were very close to reaching an agreement, and then Howard comes in over the top of Turnbull, undoing all the good work from those negotiations and issuing Victoria with an ultimatum and insisting they agree to the legislation proposed originally (and not that which resulted from the negotiations between Bracks and Turnbull).
I’m also a bit cynical about the timing. I wonder what piece of bad news the government was trying to hide. I think back to the announcement about the national emergency in indigenous communities which happened on the same day that a very damming report was released about how maintenance failures in Defence led to the SeaHawk crash in Nias.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I don’t think the water plan was timed to hide anything. It was very much an appropriate response to the ongoing drought crisis, which has not gone away. Sometimes even John Howard does the right thing for the right reasons!
While the state politicians fiddle, the salinity in the Murray increases. At Morgan (where Adelaide gets its water from) the alinity has doubled in recent months.