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June 30, 2005
political truth telling
In launching Bernie Lagan's Loner: Inside A Labor Tragedy yesterday John Faulkner made some truthful comments about the culture of the ALP, its demons and the party's ability to face them.
On what he calls the gladiatorial NSW culture Faulkner says:
In NSW, a combative organisational culture has at times turned toxic. When maintaining factional power is put ahead of civility, decency, honesty, humanity or even legality, then bullying and thuggery become lazy substitutes for debate. Behaviour unacceptable outside NSW Labor is all too often rewarded within it....As an active member of the NSW Labor tribe, I know how hard it can be to draw a clear distinction between the ritualised conflict of Party forums and the real world.
And, by putting Mark Latham's leadership into the right political context, Faulkner critcizes those in the ALP and the press who lay the blame for the ALP's 2004 defeat at the door of a flawed Mark Latham alone:
Both Mark Latham and the Party he led were hurt by our own culture. And both the Party and the Leader were hurt by Labor's desire for a messiah to save us - to save us from ourselves as much as from outside forces. This is a burden that proved too great for Mark, as it would perhaps have proved too great for anyone...Mark was a bold politician, passionate about the future Australia he imagined. Part of his tragedy is that he became leader of the Labor Party at a time when his boldness and his passion were not enough.
It requires political courage to say this when many in the ALP (such as Bill Shorten, the Australian Workers Union chief,) are determined to make Latham equivalent to a poison, in order to avoid confronting the demons of their political culture.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:15 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Lobbyists and Democracy
Carmen Lawrence gives us a good description of the importance of lobbyists in the political life of federal Parliament. I have commented about it at philosophy.com in relation to public reason and the work of Carl Schmitt.
Carmen decribes the impact of lobbyist within Parliament House:
One of the most obvious features of national political life is the steady stream of lobbyists - individuals and organisations - who turn up in the corridors of Parliament seeking to influence the policies and decisions of their representatives. Some are motivated by their own or their shareholders' interests; others by a desire to achieve particular outcomes which they believe will be of benefit to the society or some more narrowly defined sectional interest. Most people would regard such contact as a legitimate and basic right in any democracy.
Well, as a political advisor to a federal Senator (Meg Lees), I often sat down and listened to briefings from a variety of lobbyistsas part of my job. I found many of them to be very informative and helpful in the legislative side of work an in terms of their understanding of issues. After my holidays I will become one.
Carmen,like myself, is uneasy about the inequalities within this aspect of liberal parliamentary democracy due to the resources and access. She says:
...it disturbs me - as it should all citizens - that there are some who are more equal than others. This is, in part, due to the fact that some - mainly business - groups are able to devote substantial resources to the task. They wine and dine MPs and provide them with "corporate hospitality" as part of carefully crafted lobbying built on personal contact and expensive "information" campaigns. And no public record is kept of these proceedings.
The implication of this inequality is that it:
.... gives rise to the not unreasonable suspicion that this hospitality and the large campaign donations made by the same players may help to open doors. It's almost certain that they do.The Liberal Party now charges big bucks for access to Ministers at a variety of its events. A lot of groups (ngo's) are thereby excluded. So there is corporate lobbying and lobbying. This tendency is only goingto intensify after July I when the Coalition is incontrol of both houses of Parliament.
Lawrence points out the significance of the corporate lobbying behind closed doors. :
...we are aware of only a small proportion of the lobbying that goes on, there is a reasonable suspicion that a great many more decisions are being shaped without our knowledge and without the interest groups having to face public scrutiny of their claims and arguments.
So democracy is undermined by both the access that money can buy and because we are in the dark as we don't know how much is being spent to inform, persuade and cajole our decision makers.
The Australian Parliament is not serious about the need for MPs and ministers to be transparent about who is knocking on their doors. There needs to be accountability, public scrutiny transparency and regulation of this persuasion industy.
How should this be done?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
there's bile and there's bile
Like many in the ALP the Canberra Press Gallery has really turned against Latham. The Australian's front-page frenzy on Monday comes to mind. Why this kind of attack when there is a lot of truth in what Latham is saying about the current state of play for the ALP?
Is not the current ALP a very conservative institution, run by conservative machine men from all factions? Is not the inner workings of the ALP ruled by machine politics? Has not the ALP become a machine political party, with each little union and each state and territory having its own little powerbrokers and machine representatives in federal caucus? This gives the appearance that far from the ALP being a viable, electable political outfit, it is a mess.
Latham's plain speaking is what is needed. The forthcoming Latham diaries are going to be a great read.
Presumably, the Press Gallery do not like the way the truth is said--its the bile. They reduce it all to character and say the man is sick: roughly he's a depressed, tortured soul overcome with bitterness and anger.
What is wrong with a bit of biff and blowtorch to the belly. That's standard ALP politics isn't it? You know, if the heat in the kitchen is too much for the right to bear, then.....?
There are different kinds of bile. One kind is the response from the conservative right factions of the ALP (eg.,NSW & Queensland) over the last couple of days, which blames the leader, not the party, for their election loss. Whose living with the delusions here? Shouldn't they be reflecting on their own hysteria and angst---recall the use of "a Labor rat" and being lower than a dog?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
Israel: settlers rebel
The news reports are carrying stories of clashes between Israeli troops and settlers in the Gaza settlements, as some abandoned beachfront buildings (known by the settlers as Shirat Hayam) were demolished by the Israeli Defence Forces.
Is this refusal a foretaste of what is to come as the Israeli excauvation Gaza begins in August?
This kind of settler action is different from the traditional settler violence against Palestinian civilians and their property, which has long been a feature of the landscape of the occupied territories.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
dumbing down higher education?
The comment below by Professor Allan Luke, the former Queensland University dean and now based at Singapore's National Institute of Education, accord with my own experience of working in Australia's universities as an academic in the 1990s.
My judgement is that with the decrease in federal funding universities stay afloat financially from the cash generated by the international students paying big dollars for their up front, full fee paying courses. It is called export-led growth.
Luke says that Australian universities are facing a tough future:
They've been cut and they've been cut and they've been cut. And as they've been cut they've been told to go get the money in the creation of the multi-billion-dollar Asian student export business----to go get the money from elsewhere... what that's done is, that in instances, some of the bottom-end players have sacrificed quality. That has had somewhat of a detrimental effect to the reputation of Australian education more generally.
It's ironic isn't it. As the universities are pushed by the liberal state into the business world to hunt for the cash they need to survive, some students are now paying more for less.
That kind of deal is the market for you. The market works against or disadvantages the newer gum tree public universities that have little prestige. These cannot generate much income by way of student fees so they are forced by the logic of being businesses in the education market to keep on cutting costs and reducing services. And, as they may well be in the process of losing access to research funding in a commercially-driven educational world, they will become cut down teaching institutions offering budget services.
The future of the gum trees?
Stagger from financial crisis to financial crisis. To be taken over? Or to disappear? Become degree factories that generate a cash flow for the university and turn a blind eye to falling standards?
What does that scenario say about Australia as the clever country? The ever alert Evans Jones has an answer.
Update: 28th June
I've read the transcript of the ABC 4 Corners The Degree Factorythis afternoon at work. It argues that univeristies are dependent upon vocationally-oriented courses funded by foreign student enrollments, and that the managerial administrators are turning their backs on an increasingly decrepit Australian system. Dr. Simon Cooper expressed it thus:
The fear is that, if Gippsland becomes a teaching only institution, the teaching won't be teaching as it relates to some idea of education; it'll be a factory model of teaching. You'll get low-paid academics who simply are churning out material that students will pay for and consume, in a sense.
I would argue that this is already happening.
Andrew Norton over at Catallaxy has a critical perspective on the social democratic conception of public universities expressed by Tickey Fullerton on the ABC 4 Corners The Degree Factory. Andrew says that:
Realistically, since the government is not going to fund the whole system at much higher rates or create elite institutions, the only way to avoid this (partially, at least) is to abolish central control of student places and fees.
That free market approach or pathway is understandable from David Kemp's advisor, when Kemp was education minister in the first Howard ministry. A university education should be commodified and consumers should pay above the full cost of delivery the course. As it is a business let us do way with centralized control of the conservatives.
One point that I disagree with Andrew on is around the mode of governance of the Howard Government. Their neo-liberal mode of governance uses the market as an instrument to ensure, and support, elite institutions (the G5-or G8) and to re-work the old institutional divide to create elite and bottom end universities. You will pay a lot more to be educated by the former. That is the whole idea: you get what you pay for.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
rhetorical flourishes
The Bush administration usually puts on a good rhetorical show around foreign policy. It's central theme is that it has a manifest destiny to bring democracy and freedom to the rest of the world. It then lectures the Arab states in the Middle East about how bad they are, and how they need to fundamentally lift their game.
The continuing military occupation of Iraq, Washington's unwillingness to win greater concessions from Israel on the West Bank settlements, the ugly practices of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of Muslims at Guantanamo Bay undercuts the message.
This feeds the deep anti-US resentment in the Middle East. So does the traditional US policy in Middle East that favours stability at the expense so democracy.
Then we have this kind of partianship shown by Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's two presidential campaigns and now White House deputy chief of staff, expressed in these in recent comments about 9/11:
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
I heard on the news this morning that the Bush administration was now talking to the insurgent Sunni rebels in Iraq.
The military are trying to find a way for the US to extract itself from the Iraq quagmire now that US public opinion has turned against the occupation of Iraq.
The success of the Iraqi forces is the linchpin of the US exit strategy from Iraq. That means that Iraqi forces, not foreign troops, would have to defeat the insurgency. Consequently, Iraq will slip into a civil war if the US withdraws large numbers of troops before Iraqi forces are ready to take over. This situation looks more and more like the Vietnam one to me.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:53 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 26, 2005
Europe: modernize or die
Britain will gain the presidency of the EU in the near future. Tony Blair is using this platform to demand that the European Union. The time has come for fundamental change.
Modernise or die is the message from New Labour to Europe: the European Social Model has failed with 20 million unemployed; policies that maintain old jobs and do not create new ones; large subsidies (£3.5 billion) from the European Common Agricultural Policy doled out to agribusiness behind the tariff walls of Europe.
Tony Blair is the new strongman of Europe:
Will Tony Blair, as the new strong man, confront George Bush at next month's G8 Summit in Gleneagles over global warming? The US Administration continues to undermine the science of climate change; its opposition to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions has hardened; and it has little commitment to limit the pumping out of fossil fuel emissions. The Bush administration still refuses to admit, in public, that global warming is caused by human activity.
Australia has no national emission cutback plan and it is doing very little to examine alternative energy sources and ways to improve energy efficiency. What is increasingly being presented by the nuclear power advocates is the "killer argument" that there is no alternative to nuclear power as a sustainable response to the looming scarcities of oil.
Interestingly, the Liberal Party is slowly becoming the party of nuclear power and the uranium industry.
What is ignored by the "killer" argument is that nuclear power is expensive; that without a hefty government subsidy it offers little potenttial for profit; that it leaks low-level carcinogenic waste into the air and water; and that it seldom meets the high-level of treatment and storage for the high-level radioactive waste it produces. Few of the advocates of the "killer" argument talk about this.
The Liberal party is going to lumbered with an dead weight.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 25, 2005
Is the ALP big on hope?
I've been reading Media Tarts by Julia Baird on the plane whilst doing the recent Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide trip. It is about how the media frames female politicians in terms of a reworking of the classic goddess/whore duality and the old gender double-standard being alive and well.
The best chapter is the tragic one of Cheryl Kernot as the leader of the Australian Democrats, her transition from the Democrats to the ALP, her affair with Gareth Evans, and her eventual departure from politics and Australia. In this chapter Kernot is quoted as saying:
I knew that what affected my performance as a shadow minister was Labor's unwillingness to include me in anything that mattered...I considered myself as an ideas person, I went into politics for ideas, and as soon as I went to the ALP I had no intellectual respect...and that damaged me a great deal.
That passage caught my eye because it is the ideas that have been lacking in the ALP of late. There is something about the culture of the ALP that is disturbing. Is it being backward looking? Or lost in the policies of the past?
From where I sit the ALP is not putting out much in the way of new policies, and it appears to be in a period of policy drift. It seems to have fallen back into its old pattern of awaiting on the Howard Government's stride to falter (an arrogant and incompetent government); for the economy to go bad; or for the voters to become enlightened about the Howard Government's mass deceptions spun over Tampa, Iraq and interest rates with the help of a compliant and biased media.
Let's face it. The ALP is now a bystander in some of the current policy debates. The changes in mandatory detention system made that very clear. This status will be reinforced during the sale of Telstra as it is the Nationals who are the effective opposition.
Now the core strategy of senior right-wing ALP leadership, led by the glimmer twins, Wayne Swan and Stephen Smith, is that the Howard Government is pushing Australia down the low-wage low-skill road, and that the ALP stands for greater investment in skills and training, knowledge nation and infrastructure rebuilding. This implies an acceptance of the global economy, the new enterprise culture and a high skilled middle class with its individualist ethos.
Yet this core strategy was effectively undermined by the parliamentary tactics of the poorly-performing, glimmer twins of blocking of the tax cuts. The ALP was seen to be saying that the more highly-skilled middle class should pay more tax, whilst defending the genuine need for the low skilled battlers to have much greater tax cuts.
Maybe the ALP Right are hoping that the slash and burn tactics of industrial relations reforms being pushed by Kevin Andrews, the Workplace Relations Minister, will give them the momentum they need to stop, and reverse, the current downward spiral? It is about all they have going for them at the moment.
Yet the defence of the unions means that the ALP is seen to stand for strong unions, centralized wage bargaining and fixation, higher taxes, tough regulation and a large public sector. This tactic undermines the defence of an open global economy, market competition and the self-employed and independent contractors.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
Canberra observed #3
My weekly Canberra observed post was yesterday, but this Moir cartoon invites another post on the same topic:
The Australian Democrats have lost their party status to the Nationals, and it is hard to see the Democrats regaining this status in the near future. The Democrats imploded and they are now just a bunch of four independent senators with no balance of power. They can do a bit of committee work and sit and watch the legislation roll through the Senate.
What the new Senate signifies is a generational shift in the political landscape with the disappearance of the centre and the shift to the right (Family First and Nationals) and to the left (The Greens).
This shift will not ease the long term decline of the Nationals as their percentage of the electoral vote continues to decrease due to them being unable to connect to the retired/seachange urban voters in the eastern coastal electorates. The traditional National electorates are under intense pressure from Independents and the party could continue to lose a number of seats as they have failed to differentiate themselves from the dominant Liberals in the Coalition Government.
The judgement on the ALP is best expressed by Laura Tingle in her weekly Canbera observed column the Australian Financial Review:
...the bitterness inside the ALP is deep, a legacy of factional hatreds and grudges from leadership challenges in the past, reminescent of the paralyzing divisions that plagued the Liberal Party during its long years in opposition.
Is this some form of renewal?
Moir's cartoon says nothing about the Australian Greens. They continue with their strategy of giving moral lectures about the ethical shortcomings of everybody else---we fail to live up to the moral law---- and being morally pure. The Greens failed to give any valedictory speeches to the 14 Senators who are leaving on June 30; or even to pay tribute to work their fellow Tasmanian Senators did to make Tasmania a better place.
I considered that a moral shortcoming. It suggests how the Senate is being used by the Greens as a platform to lecture the rest of us on our ethical failings.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 23, 2005
a question mark over the ALP
This is my last day in the Senate working as a political advisor to Senator Meg Lees. The Canberra office is nearly cleaned out and I return to Adelaide tonight to help clean out the electoral office during next week. Then I take a break for several weeks before I move to my new job.
For those who care about things I did not attend the Press Galley Winter Ball.
Whilst finishing up my work in Canberra I've been watching the ALP's performance in Parliament and in the new media. They are just going through the motions of being an opposition. There is little enthusiasm on the front bench, no fire in their belly, their eyes look glazed, their bodies sag. There is little by way of policy being put forward, and very little on new thinking on mandatory detention or on disability and work-to-welfare. The ALP's aura is one of despair.
Costello is right. There is a hollowness in the current performance of the ALP front bench. Hence this kind of reporting. (Was this a leak from the ALP Right?) And we have the ongoing battle over parliamentary tactics in the Labor caucus and the continual surfacing in the media of the internal bitterness.
The ALP response to the Costello hollowness charge has been given by Wayne Swan. He says:
Who has any idea what Peter Costello stands for, apart from a record tax take heavily redistributed towards very high-income earners? While he surfs the gains of Labor's economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s what big new ideas has he contributed to the economic or political debate in this country?"
Swan presumes that Costello is hollow as he has contributed nothing by way of policy ideas.
Swan seems to be unaware of the demographics of health opened up by the Treasury's Intergenerational Report 2003-4 and the way that this kind of work (as it is being developed by the Productivity Commission) underpins the Government's fourth term agenda.
Swan simply ignores this and he seems top be unaware that the ALP is losing the battle of policy ideas. That is a little example of what is going wrong with the strategy of the senior leadership of ALP.
The significance of this is that the government is given a free run, as the ALP just fluffs its feathers and huffs and puffs about being tough. Yesterday it was tax. Today it is foreign debt. Minchin was ready--private companies are borrowing the overseas money and investment is booming. The attack was deflected.
Tomorrow the issue the ALP will decide to be tough on will be?
Whilst packing the crates I listened to the Senate at Question Time. I did not hear all that much from the ALP on the connection between to foreign debt and the trade deficit, weak exports, big imports, a bubble in housing prices and households going into debt to finance their consumption. Or that Australia's economic growth has been mainly driven by the housing industry.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
media diversity?
Alan Mitchell has an op. ed. in the Australian Financial Review on media ownership laws. Suprisingly, there is much in it that I agree with. Mitchell, who is the economics editor of the AFR, says:
The history of media regulation is a litany of anti-competitive deals between media and politicians. For example, the Hawke and Keating governments delayed (and then heavily regulated) the introduction of pay-TV in order to protect the profits of the free-to-air telecasters. As a result Australia was one of the last industrialised countries to get pay-TV.
The Howard Government is no different:
The Howard government has managed the introduction of digital technology for precisely the same reason. For the free-to air television oligopoly, the most threatening feature of digital TV technology is its economical use of the spectrum: it allows more TV station and, therefore, more competition....But like Hawke and Keating before him, Howard has twisted and turned his policy every way to preserve the profits of the incumbent television stations.
So Australian governments are protecting the profits of their friends not the public interest.They are managing the development of the media in a way that favours a few established media producers.
The policy response? More competition, more media diversity and more consumer choice, says Mitchell. I agree with him. The market should be given a far greater role in this area.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
yes minister
The Leak cartoon refers to a revolt within the Employment and Workplace Relations department, with some staff claiming they have been coerced into signing non-union individual employment contracts.
For the past nine months, the Workplace Relations department has been locked in a battle with half its 3000 staff, who are holding out against the Government's preferred course that they sign AWAs.
Though it is the Department's official policy that all new staff are only employed on AWAs, the Department current staff on fixed-term contracts have been pressured to sign AWAs if they wanted permanent positions.
Apparently this transgresson was a mistake according to the department's spin.
Hmmm.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
nuclear power
As the price of oil continues to rise (now nearing $US 60-per-barrel) I noticed an item in the Australian Financial Review reporting that Dennis Jensen, a West Australian MP and former CSIRO scientist, is helping to drive a campaign that addresses the culture of fear which surrounds the debate on nuclear energy.
Under the guise of opening up the debate Jensen is advocating for nuclear energy:
"There will come a time where demand will outstrip supply and the most viable alternative energy source is nuclear energy. Wind, tidal and solar power are economically unviable and unsustainable for the amount of energy we need to produce."
Jensen does not consider the possibilities of a decentralized power grid. He just assumes that big centralized power is the way to go.
But why should Eyre Peninsula draw its power needs via old transmission lines from a nuclear power plant in Sydney, when it can draw enough power from wind and solar from its own region, and even export power back to the main grid to power Adelaide or even the eastern states.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:51 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
over the top
Sophie Panopoulos, the Victorian Liberal MP, called the mandatory detention rebels led by Victorian Liberal Petro Georgiou, "political terrorists". How strange:
Terrorists? The rebels actually achieved some reforms: that children aren't detained and will get families out of detention; most or all the present long-term detainees will be released into the community; what the immigration minister does about long-term detainees will be the scrutinized and investigated by the Ombudsman, whose recommendations about these cases will be tabled in Parliament.
It was the political risk posed by Georgiou's plan to introduce private member's bills challenging the mandatory detention system that forced the beginnings of a culture change.
Few trust the Immigration Department these days. It has developed a culture of rewarding those bureaucrats who say no to all asylum seekers and who devise clever ways to treat those in mandatory detention as badly as possible.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:33 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
checking back in
I'm back from several days conferencing and networking in Darling Harbour, Sydney, which has become the capital of Australia. I'm trying to reconnect with what's been happening in the political world whilst I've been out of circulation.
This cartoon captures Australia's traditional relationship with rich and powerful friends. Traditional means that it has been going for the last century. First the British Empire then the US.
Now in the 21st century it is China, despite this. We go into a security tizz over asylum seekers but turn a blind eye to Chinese spies operating within our national territory. It is called doing business.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
water reform
The rains have come but:
Asa Wahlquist, writing in The Australian, highlights a point that I've often made about the governance of water: that the state water utilites are a major problem. She says:
Spending on water infrastructure has plummeted in the past two decades as state governments have plundered the profits of water utilities and failed to reinvest in the sector.
She says that twenty years ago, Australia's infrastructure spending was about 4per cent of gross domestic product, against an OECD average closer to 3per cent. But the latest figures, from 2002, show Australia spent only about 0.5per cent of GDP on infrastructure, or one-seventh of the OECD average of 3.5 per cent.
She quotes Paul Perkins, the head of the Barton Group, who says that the finger can be pointed at the state Treasury's:
We so-called reformed our utilities, but the money went straight into Treasury and decisions on investment started to be made by Treasuries.
The state water utilites have become water corporations who are now more interested in making a profit, than ensuring a more sustainable use of water in the cities.
This represents a failure to apply the national competition policy to water in our urban areas.
Update: 20 June 2005
The winter rains have come in Adelaide and Canberra this last week, but not so Sydney. I was in Sydney from Thursday 16th to Sunday 19th and only a few drops of rain fell early on Sunday morning. The rest of the time was clear blue skies and losts of sparkling sunshine.
I caught a program on the NSW Statewide on Friday night before I went out to dinner
about water levels at Warragamba Dam and the low levels. The Sydney Water offical did not mention climate change once and exuded heaps of optimism about the future.
Crisis? What crisis? It was just a matter of waiting for the rains to come we were informed. The graphs of history showed they would come he said.
Update: 22 June 2005
They are a little more sensible in Melbourne. There they recognize the significance of climate change:
Global warming will stretch Melbourne's water resources to their limit, forcing the city to find new sources of supply, a report by the nation's top science agency has revealed... the CSIRO report, outlines a worst-case scenario for Melbourne, in which the city would lose 35 per cent of water flowing to dams by 2050. Under expected climate change, Melbourne will lose water due to less rainfall and higher temperatures says the report, commissioned by Melbourne Water. The scientists' "mid-range" scenarios project an 8 per cent loss of average flows by 2020, rising to a loss of 20 per cent by 2050.
That does even factor in the increased demand for water due to the increase of population. They are talking in terms of permanent water-saving rules to conserve water and recycling water as well as seeking new supplies.
Sydney by contrast is continuing to say that as recycling's not a key to Sydney's water shortage, ans desalinisation is the key, so all the storm water and treated sewerage can continue to flow into the sea.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:17 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
one step forward and...
I'm in Canberra listening to fragments of the political debates swirling around me about the Budget tax cuts. Inbetween I heard a new Senator from NSW gave her first speech praising individual liberty, family values, patriotism, assimilation and social cohesion, mixed up with a populist attack on the elites and advocating volunteerism as the backbone of civil society. The speech touched all the right conservative buttons and signifies the new conservative face of the Howard Senate.
There is nothing wrong with the tax cuts per se. Most of us need them, but they should be equitable, and those who are most vulnerable need to be given a fair go.
Louise Dodson in the Sydney Morning Herald observes that:
Beazley tries to demonstrate that he has "muscled up" to fight John Howard and Peter Costello, eschewing his "small target" strategy for which he was criticised when he was Opposition leader fighting the 2001 election. He does look tougher, the differences between the Coalition and Labor have been sharpened, but has he picked the right policy to demonstrate his new pugnacious political persona?
The answer is no. The judgement is that the message was confused, the ALP found itself in heavy weather, and the shadow Treasurer did a poor job in selling it. Using the tax cuts as a fightback platform misfired:
So a new issue has to be found to establish economic creditbility. Is it the economy? The economic news is not good. The current account deficit is in excess of 7.2% of GDP; the net international investment position is at -64% of GDP; economic growth is slowing to an annual growth rate of 1.9 per cent; the housing bubble is deflating and the credit cards are maxed.
Beazley's 'Securing the Economy' speech to the the NSW ALP State Conference suggests that it is.
He says:
I believe John Howard and Peter Costello are taking us to the edge of the debt cliff. I fear Australia's credit card is nearly maxed out. John Howard and Peter Costello have made Australia vulnerable to economic damage with potentially dire long term consequences. Over the long term no economy can sustain a mix of spiralling debt and slowing growth. And our country cannot sustain this whilst Government drives us down the low skills road.
This is Knowedge Nation revised. The argument is that the Howard Costello Government is driving us down the low skills road, whilst the ALP would take the high skills road.
Will it provide fightback platform required?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
unbecoming human
I'm off to Canberra in an hour so for the last two weeks of the June sittings. Then the Howard Government gains control of the Senate. So this post needs to be quick.
We often talk of people as animals becoming human beings who then become political animals in the polis. So speaks the classical political tradition that has its roots in the texts of Aristotle.
Could we not also talk in terms of human beings becoming animals?
We can give weight to that insight by saying we can cease to be human in some situations.
Are there not some situations where that happens? The bare life in the camps erected in the name of mandatory detention for instance?
Can the camps be regarded as experiments in easing the classic distinction between the human and the inhuman? Is this what we need to grasp?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 12, 2005
what's the problem
Trade and political asylum are two separate and distinct areas the Howard Government keeps telling us troubled citizens. So why do they get all tied up in knots about giving appropriate protection to the former Chinese government official Chen Yonglin?
It is a pretty open and shut case. Is not China a politically repressive regime that detests the formation of democratic opinion? As Andrew Bartlett observes Chinese people continue to seek asylum in Australia. Is it not a matter of standing up for democracy and against persecution. What is so difficult about that?
Why the stonewalling on this? Is this why?
Michelle Grattan in The Age has a go at answering these questions. More commentary by John Quiggin. Excellent commentary and lots of links can be found over at DogsfightAtBankstown. Saint says that "all that [government] obfuscation was really just to avoid upsetting China."
That stonewalling----the application will be treated on its merits, in the normal way, individually---means that diplomat Chen Yonglin and the policeman Hao Fengjun are in hiding, due to fears for their safety after both said China was operating a spy ring in Australia and was persecuting members of the Falun Gong spiritual group.
It's a bloody disgrace. There is no other way of putting it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 11, 2005
politics of climate change
Gerard Henderson is a favourite of Oz bloggers---see DogsfightAtBankstown for the background on the one way adverserial relationship. And deservedly so because his commentary was pretty boring, repetitive and low grade.
Recently Henderson wrote:
I have long held the view that The Age is the most left-wing newspaper in Australia---in a sense, its culture is set by Michael Leunig .... In my view, turning The Age into "The Guardian on the Yarra" is bad for the political debate in Australia. It is also a counter-productive commercial decision---since contemporary Australia's capital cities are too small to sustain a left-wing broadsheet like The Guardian---or, indeed, a conservative broadsheet like The Telegraph in London.
Would it be bad for political debate in Australia? Let us take a look at the Guardian:
Bell's cartoon seems pretty accurate to me, given the way the Bush administration plays the politics of climate change by downplaying the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming to hide the effect of man-made emissions on the heating the planet.
The rightwing/conservative politics of climate change in Australia disguises the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change by saying the lack of rain and warm temperatures is due to natural causes. The dry autumn and lack of water in south-eastern and western Australia is caused by the drought, and this will soon ease when the rains come. So there is nothing to worry about.
What we need is more hard critical commentary that questions the view that the states can go ahead building more coal-fired power stations to power their industrial machines; that there is no need to recycle storm and waste water; that there is no need to have solar power on household rooftops to run airconditioners and feed power back to the grid.. etc etc.
Is that not a useful role for a liberal newspaper such as The Age? It can also open its pages to critical conservative commentary to help foster the formation of public opinion through deliberation and dialogue. The Age can help foster this dialogue by requiring their columnists to avoid the tone of 'only we know all the political stuff.' As Tim Dunlop says:
I'd like to see some doubt creep into their pontificating, see them inject a bit of originality into their phrase turning, and for them to recognise that their priviledged position obliges them to challenge authority, whether it be political, economic or cultural.
That might help foster public dialogue once the Senate is captured by the conservatives.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
Canberra observed#2
Laura Tingle's weekly 'Canberra Observed' column in the Australian Financial Review addresses the situation after July 1. The features of the landscape include the Coalition's control of the Senate, the industrial relations reforms becoming law, Telstra being sold, changes in media ownership, and the ALP under siege, and subject to the daily humiliation and whipping in the House of Representatives.
In the light of this Tingle usefully asks:
What will Labor stand for, as far as voters are concerned, in this new world?
It is a good question and needs to be asked because we are entering into a new political landscape. Tingle says that as far as votes are concerned the question can be answered in the negative:--the ALP is not the government and Beazley is not Howard. She states that the negative is not enough.
Tis a fair point. These are dark days for the ALP. It has been in opposition for nigh on a decade, it probably faces another six years in opposition, its party membership is ageing and diminishing, its branches are collapsing, the undemocratic factions rule, and most of its experienced staffers left last year. Canberra this winter is going to be very depressing indeed.
Moreover, the ALP's glimmer twins (Swan and Smith) have not been very effective in taking on Costello on the economy, even though growth is slowing, property prices are falling, consumer debt is high, consumer confidence is low, and the trade deficit is very bad.
Despite the bad press of late, it is the dissident liberals led by Victorian Liberal MP Petro Georgiou, not the ALP, who are the effective opposition around immigrationadn n mandatory detention. It is the Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, not Beazley, who presents as the conviction politician on asylum issues (eg., the attempted defection of diplomat Chen Yonglin) and who highlights the confusion within John Howard's team and their shabby treatment of Chen.
So far the ALP has not been very good at making the Coalition accountible in the House of Representatives. That was the key strategy for the next three years was it not? So the ALP does need to stand for something positive and alternative to Howard's political agenda, otherwise it is going to become irrelevant in the new landscape.
Tingle's inference from this is:
The change in Senate numbers means Labor must embark on the most profound remaking of itself possibly in its history.
So what does Labor have to build on? Tingle does acknowedge that Beazley's defining line in the sand stands for greater public investment in infrastructure renewal and skills training. That is not enough. It is just plugging the gaps left by the Coalition.
Where is all the action on the impact of climate change on water and energy? You cannot continue to pretedt that it is just the drought and the rains will come and the problems will go away.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:15 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 9, 2005
the new radical centre?
As we continue the clean up the electoral office in Adelaide I come across old material that I glance through before tossing into the wheely bin. Some catch my eye enough to read. An example is the 1998 The Sydney Papers from the Sydney Institute. Therein I found a speech by one Mark Latham entitled 'New Radical Centre.'
The new radical centre--it's a yesterday term. You rarely hear it spoken today now that the centre of the old Senate has gone. Presumably, we still have the centre between social democracy's concern for the welfare state and the libertarian concern for individual liberty has gone.
So what did Latham mean by the 'new radical centre'? He says:
The new radical centere seeks to overcome the inadeuacies of the old politics through a process of triangulation. This means moving to the centre of the political spectrum and, most critically, lifting above the old Left/Right divide through the creation of new and radical values.
The new radical centre, says Latham, is more interested in what works in public policy, rather than things that necessarily fit the old ideological mould."What matters is what works."
That could mean anything couldn't it. What it means for Latham can be seen in welfare to work reform. He says:
"...there can only be two purposes to the public provision of welfare: to move people back into work, plus develop their skills and stauis. This approach gives the government an important role on both sides of the new labour market---stengthenign the demand for work through its role as an employer of last resort at a local level whole, on the supply side, embracing the value of lifelong learning."
Latham adds that welfare needs to be equated with well-being--and well-being in our society comes primarily from employment and education.
Latham lamblasts the Howard Government in good ALP style: it is a continuation of the tradition of the lucky country run by second-rate people. He adds that Australia deserves better than a second-rate government running a second rate policy agenda.
A second rate policy agenda? The radical centre's ideas on work-to- welfare reform are pretty much those of the Howard government today. Where are the differences? In the details?
Now I'm not having a go at Latham. I have a lot of sympathy for him given the way he was treated by his colleagues after the federal election, and respect the way that tossed in new ideas to foster the public policy debate beyond the usual media stunts, seven-second TV grabs and party conformity.
What struck about his blast from the past is the way conservatism has captured the radical policy centre, just as it had captured the Hasonite resistance to economic rationalism in the 1990s.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
work, work, work
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald Ross Gittens makes the following confession:
IT WAS written all over last month's federal budget, but nobody could see it. I missed it myself. And it wouldn't surprise me if the very authors of the budget missed its significance. Why did everyone miss it? Because it's become so commonplace. It's just what you'd expect economists and politicians to be on about.
Gittens then asks, what was it?
Work. Work and more work. The budget was obsessed by work. Those who aren't working, should be. Those who are working, aren't working hard enough. And those considering retirement should resist the temptation.
Well I saw it. The emphasis on work and increased productivity at work was seen as a solution to the future fiscal blowout. This blowout was outlined in the federal Treasury's Intergeneration Report 2002-03 and the Productivity Commission's Economic Implications of an Ageing Australia Report. Both reports argued that the fiscal blowout around 2014 is due to health costs arising from people living longer.
Having woken up Gittens clicks to what is going on here. He asks:
So why this relatively recent obsession with work? Because of the ageing of the population. Because the politicians and their econocrat advisers are terribly concerned that the inevitable slower growth in the workforce will mean slower growth in the economy's production of goods and services.To them, the obvious answer is to get a lot more work out of those people who are still of working age.
Gittens misses a crucial point.It is not the ageing that is a problem as living longer is a good thing. It is the economics of health (rising hospital and PBS drug costs) that is the problem.
Gittins is critical of this obsession with work as it means putting the maximisation of production ahead of enjoyment of the fruits of production---time to enjoy the stuff we buy, time for leisure and recuperation, time for relationships with family and friends.
What Gittens misses is that the work, work, work policy approach is seen as a solution to the increasing costs of a health problems arising from an ageing Australia. The more people work the less money spent on the disability pension and the greater the income to deal with the costs of healthcare. Another approach to addressing the problems of rising health costs is to help keep people well and so prevent them from getting chronically ill and ending up being chronically ill in our hospitals.
That is a sensible approach is it not?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 7, 2005
SA's corruption trial
South Australia's first political corruption trial has begun in the District Court in Adelaide. Randall Ashbourne, the former senior adviser to South Australian Premier Mike Rann, is charged with misusing his position as advisor to secure or facilitate a benefit for Mr Clarke. Ashbourne has pleaded not guilty to using his power or influence in such a manner.
It is alleged Ashbourne negotiated with the former Labor MP, Ralph Clark, in late 2002 to drop legal action against Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. He did so by allegedly offering Mr Clark a position on a number of government boards.
Ashbourne, a former political reporter for Channel 7, was the one who struck the deal with Independent MP Peter Lewis that gave Mike Rann the numbers to form government after the 2002 state election resulted in a hung parliament.
Srikes me that Ashbourne is the fall guy for the problem faced by spin-obsessed Rann Government that was living on a political knife edge and anxious to avoid any bad media.
Update: 10 June
Did Ashbourne broker a deal to have a defamation suit dropped by an MP in return for a board position?
Michael Atkinson, the Attorney General, says he was never told of such a deal Mr Atkinson's political adviser, George Karzis, says that the Attorney General was informed of the deal at a meeting in September or October last year.
Update: June 30th
The state's first political corruption trial fizzed---Ashbourne was found not guilty of abuse of public office---and the Rann Government has been cornered into having an inquiry into the Ashbourne-Atkinson affair. Before the trial Premier Mike Rann promised an independent inquiry but that promise was quickly scrapped as non-core.
The Rann Government is now fighting ruthlessly to avoid having that inquiry in public.It wants a Star Chamber because the Government has been found to be heavying the DDP's office yet again.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
media politics: burying liberalism
It's odd isn't it.
The existence of detention camps in liberal democracies and the incarceration of Australian citizens is pretty much accepted by many sections of the Australia media. It whips up a storm over the innocence or otherwise of a women who was found to be smuggling drugs into Indonesia, until that campaign clashed with commercial interest.
Funny how the conservative media accepts concentration camps with hardly a murmur. As does Gerard Henderson and many in the Liberal Party.
The media does not appear to question its feeling of being relaxed and comfortable, despite the connections and similarities of the camps of mandatory detention to the camps in totalitarian states, such as Fascist Germany and Soviet Russia. Last time I checked Australia still had a commitment to individual liberty that this commitment is at odds with incarcerating innocent people fleeing persecution and oppression and then treating them cruelly in the camp.
I guess the conservative media would say that the fundamental rights of liberalism are for burning. It is only utility and patriotism that matters, after all. Power rules.
That is probably not quite fair. We can say that Australia has the right to maintain the integrity of our borders. Since Australia is a sovereign nation, it is acceptable that our elected government makes laws concerning who can enter Australia and who can stay in the country. However, border protection is quite a different issue from asylum seeker protection.
Can conservatives see and accept the difference?
Maybe. Gerard Henderson is now saying that the lock and key approach towards asylum seekers needs a cultural shake-up. That says no more than the Minister of Immigration
And the liberals in the misnamed Liberal Party who have a commitment to individual liberty. What of them? AS far as I can make out they are in the process of becoming politically homeless.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 6, 2005
looking the other way
I keep watching the Carr Government's shift away from ecological economics. It had good creditionals from increasing the size of NSW's national parks, a green Olympics in 2000 and Bob Carr's good policy talk on salinisation of the Murray-Darling Basin, the threat of global warming to snowfields, over-development of the coastline and destruction of old-growth forests before 1995.
A green Pemier leading a green government? Not likely.
Carr's recent actions indicate a green wash. He avoids investing in long-term water reuse and recycling schemes to ease the pressure on increasingly stressed rivers and dams; talks about building new coal fired power stations that will increase global warming; turns 15-year water access licences into perpetual water rights thereby handing over $6.8billion in water licences to irrigators and agribusinesses, whilst reducing the environmental flows back to rivers amount to 3 per cent of total flows, despite an undertaking by to return 10 per cent.
Has the Carr Government has been captured by the big energy and agricultural industries?
Sydney is running out of water, the reduced rainfall is looking to be the normal state of affairs, and the city has little groundwater and few other options for increasing its water supply.
Yet the Carr Government proposes to build more coal fired stations that use lots of water in the production of energy, which produce greenhouses that cause global warming, climate change and reduced rainfall over Sydney. It's a neat circle.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
and so it starts
Jason Koutsoukis, writing in The Age, reports that the Howard Government is going to flex the Government's muscle in the Senate to wind back the accountability mechanisms in the Senate. Jason says:
The Howard Government is moving to weaken the Senate committee system ...one of its deepest sources of embarrassment and the Parliament's most effective means of scrutiny.....The Senate estimates process - described by the Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, as one of the best government accountability mechanisms in the world - also faces emasculation.
The most likely outcome will be a cut in the number of estimates rounds from three to two, limits on the time allowed to ask questions and the power to rule unwanted questions out.
Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate, says that:
The worry is that what might be called the loyalists in the Government party - who are just totally loyal to the Prime Minister and who regard that as their main role - will start dismantling accountability.The great danger is they will decide to nobble the system.
I reckon those fears are well grounded. Democracy is going to nobbled, no doubt about it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 5, 2005
Canberra observed by Laura Tingle
I appreciate that Lara Tingle in the Australian Financial Review reckoned that the Howard Government is all at sea, and that recent events indicate that things are getting bad for the Coalition:
Matt Golding.
What Tingle said was this:
The Howard Government doesn't make public policy, a close if slightly jaded observer noted recently, it does issue management.
She then listed a number of crisis management issues ---Schapelle Corby, drought relief, slowing economy, infrastructure, mandatory detention--that indicate "the signs of a bad administration being caught out."
I'm not convinced apart, from the fraying around mandatory detention, since most of the other stuff is newspaper headlines.
Let me respond:
The Howard Government continues to make public policy, a close if slightly wearied observer noted recently, even as it is caught up in issue management.
We have Costello's Intergenerational Report work on the economic impacts of aging (a fiscal blowout), the National Water Initiative, industrial relations, the CoAG agreements on health reform, the various Free Trade agreements etc etc.
Me thinks our senior journalists do not read, nor are they interested in, public policy. Their conception of politics is media headlines. What they observe is the media observing Canberra.
Tis a world of distorting mirrors.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 4, 2005
is the game being played?
The ALP continually suprises me in terms of its oh so clever parliamentary tactics and its bad long term strategy. The classic example is the way it handed control of the Senate to the Coalition by directing its preferences to Family First. One presumes that as the ALP did not want to lose control of the Senate to its enemies, so the clever tactic backfired.
Tactics have priority over strategy. Presumably it did not occur to the smart political operators to consider what the political landscape would be like for the ALP with John Howard controlling the Senate for a decade. That should have been the possibility to prevent at all costs. Alas, as the political operators in the party machine did not see beyond the horizons of their short term tactics, they handed their enemy dominating power on a platter.
This oh so clever way of political operating continues, as we rapidly move towards a new political order where John Howard will control both houses of parliament:
Now it's not just Beazley. It's the inner circle that runs the ALP these days. I presume the clever 'block the tax cuts in the Senate' tactic was devised by that smart political operator Wayne Swan, the shadow Treasurer, with help from Stephen Smith. Smith went public with the rationale for the tactic.
A similar situation has happened with mandatory detention. Remember it is the Liberal dissidents who are trying to soften the hard edges of mandatory detention, and to limit the time people spend in carceration, not the ALP. The ALP says that the policies advocated by Liberal dissdents, such as Petro Georgiou and Judy Moylan, are in line with its own policies. So openly supporting the Liberal dissidents would increase the pressure on Howard, and it help to keep the momentum up for the much needed changes to mandatory detention.
That is good long term strategy as the mandatory detention camp has become the heart of our political life.
Did the ALP provide support for the Liberal dissident's private members bills?
No. The ALP is being low key: it is asking few questions in parliament on the issue and, as the Opposition, it has not bothered to put up its own legislation to force the pace of change.
The ALP's parliamentary tactics last week were designed to attempt to embarrass the Coalition by highlighting the divisions within its ranks. Changing the mandatory detention system was the instrument used to play the short-term parliamentary tactics game.
That means the short term tactics have priority over strategy.it is normal operating procedure of the ALP's political culture. That means the ALP doesn't really care about changing the mandatory detention system.
Good policy is sacrificed for parliamentary stunts. That is the judgement we citizens make. We also judge that the ALP's political culture needs changing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 3, 2005
where's the media critique?
I've been watching the reaction to the One Nation conservatives over-the-top populist response to the Corby case in Indonesia, and the way that a questionable Indonesian justice system has been roundly condemned.
It is a questionable system because Corby (an Australian) gets 20 years for importing marijuana, while those in the Indonesian military (the TNI) who orchestrated the militia's to commit mass murder and terror in East Timor in 1999 are rarely prosecuted, or they receive no punishment for their crimes.
Leunig
Suprisingly, few seem to address the way the Murdoch and Packer media stirred this drug issue up into an emotional outrage, until the word was given to rein in the rednecks. Crikey is the notable exception.
Hugh Martin, talks about media hype in his media blog at The Age but he does not engage in a critique of the right wing xenophobic politics of the tabloid media. That campaign of playing to the (right and left) populist suspicion of Indonesia was more than media hype. It's a populist politics that turned Indonesian culture and society into the (inferior) Other.
Update: June 4th
What is refracted through the media kaleidoscope is postcolonial Australia's deep ambivalence towards Asia and 'hybrid' identities within Australia; or to put it another way, Australia's version of the orientalism described by Edward Said. We should qualify this and say Anglo-Australia's Orientalist cultural discourse that underpins Australian border protection mentality.
Australia's culture should not be treated as a singular entity, as there are diverse ways by which Australians have dealt with their own ambivalences and insecurities towards Asia.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:09 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
June 2, 2005
Deep Throat
The identity of Deep Throat is one of modern journalism's greatest unsolved mysteries. He helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post pursued the hidden truths of Nixon's Watergate.
Watergate signified the way that Nixon's campaign of political espionage involved eavesdropping on the Democrat opposition's crafting of strategies for political victory in the Presidential election.
That cartoon captures the differences between then and now. The mediascape has radically changed towards infotainment and we read Deep Throat as a 1970's porn movie staring Linda Lovelace.
The Vanity Fair article for those interested.
Watergate is important because it also signifies the frustrations the conservatives suffered for thirty years: it stands for conservative angst, resentment, fear and hate and their battle over interpretations of history with the Hollywood mythmaking around films such as All the President's Men. These conservatives see Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-charge, who came out as Deep Throat as a self-serving rat (traitor) who was a big danger to liberal democracy. Deep Throat, for them, signifies the political gutter of betrayal.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
health reform
Health reform will be on the agenda of a stormy CoAG meeting this Friday along with infrastructure bottlenecks, industrial relations and skill shortages. We can expect the usual set piece stoush and outraged politics.
Health reform is needed as the national health system is creaking and groaning under the strain. As John Dwyer, chairman of the Australian Healthcare Reform Alliance, observes:
About the only consensus to be found among those grappling with the need for reform of Australia's healthcare system is that the status quo is intolerable....the existing costly dysfunction must be corrected...the problems are a byproduct of the wretched jurisdictional inefficiencies that make state and federal governments responsible for different sections of our healthcare system.
Basically, the feds are responsible for primary health care whilst the states provide us with hospitals. Will there be a confrontation on health reform at CoAG, or will there be a search for common ground?
Dwyer reckons that Australia has reached a crossroads:
"Down one path lies the continuance and strenghtening of a system dedicated to providing quality care in a timely manner to all Australians, based on need, not the ability to pay--we all share the burden. The other road leads to a two tiered system characterised by a "user pays" approach, while the government cares for the truely disadvantaged."
Health care reform has continually been placed in the too hard basket.
My bet is that it is likely the Howard Government's first step, now that it has control of the Senate, is to require those who can afford it to leave the public system and be treated privately. Everyone else would remain in the public health system.
Jeffry Braithwaite argues against a two tier health system on the grounds that a American-style health system delivers worse health outcomes than a public one.
Dwyer calls for a public debate in health reform four main areas: primary care,training of our our health professsionals, inefficencies associated with the jurisdictional divide,an an electronic national health record. It is good to see the reformers moving beyond an efficient federalism and public hospitals. We need soem working parties sorting this outto find a pathway forward.
However, we have yet to see a shift to wellness as opposed to treating disease.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 1, 2005
confrontational reform
If you think of Australia as a federal nation-state then a unitary nation wide system of industrial relations makes good sense. It rationalizes the differences between the state based systems. Such a system could work well and the states could support it from a productivity and efficiency point of view and retain their own system. That, from what I can make out, is the view of Victoria, with the Brack Government is quite happy working within the federal system.
Yet the Howard Government's proposed IR legislation is so confrontational that the ALP states and unions are resisting it; and they look like resisting all the way to the High Court. And, as Andrew Murray points out, in an op.ed in The Australian Financial Review:
The constitutional powers that will be used to take over the state systems will probably reach only 85 per cent of employees, leaving most small businesses uncovered because they are not constitutional corporations. Fifteen per cent of employees will remain under state systems.
Ross Gittens, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says that "Howard's introduction of a single national industrial relations system will be a big improvement."
The question needs to be posed again: 'why the decision to be so confrontational?'
Gittens gives something of an answer. He says:
"...the changes are intended to swing the balance of industrial power decisively in favour of employers.The changes constitute a grand experiment, testing the conviction of almost all economists that the way to make the economy a better place is to give employers everything they could dream of. Admittedly, the changes are too one-sided to be called fair in any conventional sense."
However the onesidedness makes economic sense:
"...just about every economist believes that the lower you make the minimum wage relative to other wages, the more unskilled workers will be hired.So the test of the experiment's success will be whether the unemployment rate falls much below 5 per cent.It's tough on people on the minimum wage who already have a job, of course, but the economists aren't worried about that."
That means the confrontational element in the proposed reforms will not be toned down.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack