Not Happy, John

Maybe I've been living under a rock for the last few weeks but I'd never heard of the "Not Happy, John" campaign when Crikey mentioned it. In The Age there's also a nice roundup of some similar fringe revolutionaries . Seems John's made at least three (conservative) people so angry they've left their jobs to see that he (or Downer in one case) does not survive October 9th.

"Not Happy, John" is the brainchild of John Valder a member of the Liberal party but significantly to the left of Howard. He isn't even standing against him, he's just doing everything he can to ensure Howard doesn't get in and someone else does.

Valder’s new political epiphany occurred when he saw 500 people turn up on a Friday night for a refugee forum in Howard’s own seat of Bennelong.

Valder actually wants to see a Liberal government, just not one with Howard as any part of it. It seems the lies and the callous use of asylum seekers as political footballs has ripped a hole in the very centre of the Liberals - keep in mind Valder is an ex-president of the Liberal party .

Valder moves in Liberal circles but apparently hasn't seen a lot of flak from what he's doing and it's a curious point; Phillip Adams wrote earlier in the year in the Herald that the Liberal party was disturbingly lacking in dissent. He said that while party meetings for Labour were full of debate and contention, nobody in the Liberal party breathed without permission from John Howard. He went on to point out that it had been Howard's strategy to make the most progressive party members do the most conservative and unpopular jobs - thus Phillip Ruddock, considered a progressive in Liberal circles, was forced to be the one who made mandatory detention of asylum seekers what it is today. We may be seeing the cracks in Howard's dictatorship here, and it can only be good for the Liberal party in the end, though it will help lose them the election.

And Valder insists his goal is 'doable':

John Howard holds the seat of Bennelong by a relatively small margin of 7.7%. Whilst it has only happened once before in 1929, when Prime Minister Stanley Bruce was swept from power in the seat of Flinders, the potential for John Howard to lose his seat on this occasion is significant.

Valder refuses to endorse any specific candidate, preferring anyone but Howard. However, Andrew Wilkie - the whistleblower who tore open "children overboard" three years after Howard manipulated it to win the last election - gets an honourable mention on Valder's site and is running as a Green in Bennelong, Howard's seat.

Apparently it's sparked a slew of unsolicited mail in Bennelong from Howard's office which, in the context of the debacle with his son's spam emailing outfit, could actually backfire. At least it's drawing resources, and Howard's attention, away from the national campaign.

It's going to be an interesting election and let's hope it's history making.

<rant>
It's not enough to remove the Liberal party from government this election: every extra vote against them, every Senate seat lost, every margin squeezed will make the message louder that Australians will not be lied to, used and made to look like pathetic hangers-on to an arrogant and ignorant US. A crushing defeat of the Liberal party would send a message that Australians don't believe in jailing foreign children because they're different and we're scared of them, that we will not accept an illegal war premised on lies for the sole benefit of US oil conglomerates. That's what's on the line this time round.
</rant>

The moral of the story:

“John Howard has done us a public service by making us look at our values,” Richard Neville said in his closing comments [at the launch of the "Not Happy, John" campaign] today.

Of course, ideally the Liberals will be losing their seats to independents - not an all too timidly similar Labour drop-in replacement. Remember, mandatory detention was their idea...

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