NSW premier Kristina Keneally has finally achieved what her two more electorally successful predecessors couldn’t do, and privatised the NSW electricity grid.

I was a political reporter in Macquarie Street on the night in 1997 when the then premier Bob Carr tried to jam through a 25 billion dollar electricity sell-off in what would’ve been the country’s biggest privatisation. It was a night of intrigue and political long knives from some sections of Labor who thought Carr was trying to  dupe them by rushing though the privatisation bill. They were especially miffed that notice of the privatisation agenda was stuffed under their parliamentary doors late in the evening after they had gone home. Unfortunately for Carr, one member of the Labor Left was working late that night and screamed bloody murder to those of us still working in the media gallery.

Those screams were loud and long, and in the end Carr’s tactics failed, undone by those left members who alerted the unions, and it was Goodnight Vienna. In a strange bedfellows alliance, Carr’s only ally was the privatisation-friendly Opposition. To this day, the failure to privatise electricity was Bob Carr’s greatest regret from his decade as premier.

Ten years later his successor, Morris Iemma, brought himself undone by trying to on a more modest version of the electricity sell-off. Iemma had neither Carr’s command of his party nor Carr’s ability for left hook politics. As a result he was left in a heap, losing the party leadership and decimating the electorate’s respect for the ALP. While Carr’s package would’ve retired all NSW state debt, paid for state superannuation and left some money left over for infrastructure spending and an election fighting fund, Iemma’s gains from a sell-off (15 billion) would’ve achieved a fraction of this. Keneally’s 5 billion in today’s terms will give her some money for the election and not much else.

I suppose Kristina Keneally has nothing to lose politically. The privatisation has been a plank of the conservative side of her party for years now, and in greasing the sell-off she has appeased the power-brokers and given herself a handy grab-bag of dosh to help sell herself to the NSW public.

Of course, every poll says that she is going to lose the next election, which is still three months away, and yes it will be very hard to convince the public to allow Labor to rule in NSW for what will be 20 years by the next mandated election. If she does manage to win it, it will be probably the greatest electoral comeback in Australian history. But history tells us that history is written anew with every election campaign. All it takes for Kristina Keneally and Labor to be returned is a big blunder by Barry O’Farrell’s Opposition, a team that come election time, will not have not known government for sixteen years. After this ridiculously long time out of government, amateur blunders tend to happen, especially with the less experienced members of the Opposition feeling a win is in the bag.

It isn’t, and for Kristina Keneally, the privatisation coup is an essential first step to placing her own stamp on the campaign. It isn’t enough to get her close to winning, but a few more decisive steps from her and you might just start to see the swinging voters of NSW doubting their certainty that it is time for Labor to go.

Even with the release of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last week, the mood has been cautious. That’s because the junta that has been running the land for fifty years has just won an election. All but the most optimistic would call the election a sham, but the junta is calling a win a win and probably feels pretty self-righteous right now.

This doesn’t mean the junta doesn’t have a glass jaw, as the bizarre episode I’m about tell you about might prove.

There’s a sporting magazine in Burma called First Eleven. It focusses on sport around the world, including the world game, soccer. Last week, on the day of Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, the magazine published an issue that had a splash graphic on the front page of a striker going for goal as the opposing team moves in to block him. Underneath are the headlines:

“Sunderland freeze Chelsea”

“United stunned by Villa & Arsenal advances to grab their hope.”

These are pretty innocuous words. The teams in the headlines did do as the headlines suggested. Sunderland beat title favourites Chelsea 3-0; ManU were held to a 2-2 draw by Aston Villa and Arsenal beat Everton, a win that really does boost Arsenal’s hopes.

But the paper did something that to some might be hilarious, but to others in Burma is just dumb. They changed the colour of some of the letters, a subtle change that spelled out a cryptic message. That message is: 

“SUnderland FREEze Chelsea”

“UNITEd stunned by Villa & Arsenal ADVANCEs TO GRAB THEir HOPE.”

Which makes it: “SU free. Unite and advance to grab the hope.”

When the junta found out about it, it suspended the paper for two weeks which, given the history of the Burma junta, was a pretty light reaction. Remember it was only last year that Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested and charged after someone unknown to her swam to her home. She knew nothing about the man’s intention, but the junta stopped her from being a candidate in the recent election because of his actions. We are not talking about a fair bunch of honchos.

Nevertheless, many in Burma will get some heart from the actions of First Eleven. It shows that humour is still alive in Burma, and by their own actions, the military leaders in Burma have put themselves into the the realm of the ridiculous. People will not laugh out loud at the rulers, or perhaps not even risk a private joke at their expense, but there is certainly the sound of inward chuckling across the land. There’s been far too little of that in the last half century.

That’s because visiting dignitaries are careful not to say anything that could be offensive to their hosts, or embarrassing to their own leader back home.

That’s why we get so many photos of smiling visiting politicians shaking hands with equally ebullient local leaders. It’s a Photo Op that screams that the local leader has a view view, and is a friend of other big guns. It’s a giant ‘take that’ to the Opposition.

This latest trip by Hillary Clinton though has had one questionable diplomatic moment. That was when the U.S. Secretary of State came out with some extraordinary statements yesterday.

They started well enough. Mrs Clinton said that the Australia-U.S. relationship is a core partnership, the two countries sharing core values.

Okay. A positive statement of the kind that you would expect from somone in Hillary Clinton’s position: a reaffirmation of the ties that have bound us since John Curtin asked the U.S. for help during World War Two.

Then Mrs Clinton turned her views towards China. She said that China faced an uncertain future, and that China had a long way to go to become a responsible power. Here she could’ve been talking human rights or economic decision-making (think here the artificial yuan).

Whatever the reason behind the statement, China’s infamous glass jaw is going to hate it.

The question here is over the timing and the place where she made the comments. Australia has been rightly critical of human rights abuses in China. Australia did not accede to China’s request to refuse entry to China dissident Rebiya Kadeer; nor did Australia ban the movie about Kadeer’s life. The Dalai Lama has been welcome here for years, despite China labelling him ‘a wolf in monk’s clothing’ over his support for an independent Tibet. When the Australian media hears of human rights abuses in China, we report them and our government condemns them.

That’s free speech. Maybe Hillary Clinton is exercising her free speech, telling it as it is. If the U.S. can’t stand up to the human rights isues in China, then who can? She could’ve been just shooting from the hip, in the classic American parlance.

I don’t think this was an unconsidered statement. Hillary Clinton is a careful politician. I find it hard to believe she does anything without thinking it through.

But choosing Australia as the venue for her rebuttal, putting us in the middle of her criticism of one of our major trading partners could look just a trifle oopsy. I would bet that Julia Gillard would be thinking of it in slightly stronger terms.

They might not win, but they can try.

That’s what’s happened with the new ban on Cluster Bombs.

Cluster bombs are particularly nasty weapons. They are a kind of weapon within a weapon. When they are detonated, they let off many smaller bombs, spreading the range and effect of the bombs over a wide area. While many people might think that they are a relatively new invention, their use dates back to the war in Vietnam.

They are are also a sleeper issue. We keep hearing plenty about unexploded ordinances like landmines continuing to kill and maim as people tread on them thirty years after hostilities ceased. With cluster bombs the nature of these weapons means that each weapon spreads lots of smaller bombs. In Laos alone, 300 people are still being killed every year by the remnants of these bombs.

In what aid groups are calling a big victory, 107 countries have signed a Convention on Cluster Munitions. It bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions, and calls for the destruction of stockpiles in 8 years and the clearance of cluster munition land in 10 years. It comes into effect on August 1.

The signatories include some of the worst-affected countries, like Laos, Lebanon and Iraq, and many other countries from across the planet, including the U.K.,Canada, France, Germany and most of the countries on the African continent and South America. But two countries who did not sign on for the ban include Russia and the United States.

Which brings it all back home. If the countries that are the users of these weapons have refused to sign the treaty, you might ask what value of the ban has.

According to the Australian Red Cross, there is plenty of value. They told me today that while non-signatories might still produce and use these weapons, the Convention will push forward the cleansing of countries that have seen cluster bombs used. Consider this: 270 million cluster bombs were dropped on Laos in the 1970s. And here we are only talking about the bombs themselves. Each bomb contains those clusters of smaller bombs, so there have been potentially billions of these smaller bombs lying around.  By pushing forward with setting an 8 year deadline for cleaning up places like Laos and Lebanon, perhaps we can see the cleaning up keeping ahead of the new drops.

We can only hope so.

We spoke to the University of Queensland’s Justin Marshall, the lead researcher Great Barrier Reef project. He says the project was aiming to uncover new species. They’ve definitely done that.

Follow the link below and have a look at the photos. You seriously won’t believe that we share the planet with such fabulous creatures.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/#id=2955520&num=0