Blog Day 87: Thursday 18 June 2020

Yesterday I went into the city for the first time in probably three months.  Given how the suburbs and shopping centres have come back to life I was amazed at how quiet the city was.  I caught a peak hour train (8.45am) from Caulfield to Flagstaff station and the train was nearly empty.  Probably no more than a dozen passengers in the carriage that I was in and all other carriages were similar.  It was the same for the return journey at 5.30 that afternoon.  Hardly anybody on the trains were wearing face masks.  (Remember that sometimes in normal times I can't even get on these trains due to overcrowding).

At 8.15am the city streets were almost deserted of both traffic and people.  I was expecting more activity around the place but it wasn't to be.  It was the same when I went out at lunchtime and even looking up and down William & Bourke streets from our 30th floor office through the day they were empty, almost to the point of being spooky.

I am back at work 3 days a week for a few weeks from next Monday so the blog will be occasional but hopefully still informative, educational and amusing.

One of my regular readers posted the following comment on Tuesday's blog, so I thought that I would respond here so that you would all get the benefit of my wisdom.  I will use his initials to protect his anonymity:

AP: "So I was thinking about this branch stacking thing and wondering if or just why I would care about this. I just can't really work up the interest on this one. You have any thoughts as to why I should care".

There are a number of reasons why AP should care about the traditional Labor habit of branch stacking.  The main reason is that it means that the democratic process is corrupted by the branch stackers.  Just think that you are a new member of parliament who got preselection for your seat by way of a preselection ballot in a heavily stacked Labor branch.  The party heavy who got you preselected didn't do so cause he or she liked the cut of your jib, they did it so that they would have influence over you. The stackers have boasted about having people removed from their seat even to the point of claiming to control who the premier of the state is, if that doesn't worry you it should.

Just imagine if the stacker is mates with a political lobbyist (and they would be) who wants to get a particular bill through parliament, and you have been elected with the support of the stacker, The stacker comes to you and suggests you vote a certain way, or goodbye cushy seat in parliament at the next election, what do you do??  AP, that should worry you.

And of course we have to understand how the stacking and the funding of the stacking works.  One of the issues to come out these investigations is the use of taxpayer funded parliamentary staff to run the stacking process.  It is labour intensive with hundreds of party enrolment forms to be completed, funding organized, branch meetings held etc.  This is the same issue that came up with the Red Shirts scandal when the Labor party had to repay $380,000 for using taxpayer funded staff for party political purposes.  It is a Labor party rule that members have to pay their own membership fees, of course this is not happening.  Most of the new members don't even know that they have joined the party let alone paid their own membership fees.  So where does the money come from for these membership fee?  Union slush funds maybe, the proceeds of other parliamentary rorts (printing costs for example).  So this leaves open opportunity for massive corruption not only of the democratic process but financially as well.

So AP do you care now???

Updated virus stats as below.  Victoria reported 18 new infections in the previous 24 hours.  Six of these are returned travelers, 8 found in routine testing and 3 community transmissions.  One of the new ones attended the rally here a couple of weeks ago but probably wasn't infectious at the time of the rally.

That will do for the day, as they used to say at the Richmond council elections "vote early and vote often", see ya.

Corona Virus Daily Stats: Day 164

Vic: 1,762 infected (+22 from 16/6) - 19 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 7,372 infected (+25 from 16/6) - 102 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 6,870 recovered - current hospital 16 (-1) - current ICU 3 (-1)

World: 8,015,502 infected - 443,685 deaths (increase of 7,366 from 16/6)