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October 31, 2005
a bit of a pickle--sedition
I watched some of the debates in the House of Representatives tonight on the PBS and nuclear dump legisation to try and get a feel for how the ALP is travelling these days. They are in a bit of mess.
They were outraged and scathing in terms of the PBS and nuclear dump legisation. The Government Ministers (Christopher Pyne) just smiled and kept the taunts flowing despite the excellent work by the women on the ALP left--Jenny Macklin and Julia Gillard.
The ALP is kinda trapped by the politics of poilarization. Now it is not making the mistake of downplaying national security, and changing the subject to domestic issues such as health care, education, and job security. Yet, in looking tough, it is muted about preventative detention, control orders, judiical overview and sedition.
Still we do not hear much anti-terrorism and multiculturalism. Australia has not witnessed a terrorist attack on its territory by one or more of its multicultural citizens. Australia's multiculturalism has worked. So where is the terrorist threat? Why the rush to undermine the rule of law? Why the secrecy? Is this an insght into the way the national security state works? That iIt seeks to override the constitutional separation of powers and avoids any public debate in a a liberal democratic society? Everything is taking place behind closed doors.
Why not a proper, robust and bipartisan parliamentary inquiry to improve the legislation? There is no proper debate. Yet Australia is still a democracy. So where is the debate and the effective parliamentary review of the legislation?
The federal ALP is largely rattling the bars of the cage, with a little bit of help from the ALP premiers on the national secuirty state's anti-terrorism laws. These include broad clauses about carrying out, advocating or encouraging seditious intention. From all accounts the draft legislation sedition includes urging disaffection by any means whatsoever against the constitution and the Commonwealth Government. Does that include the work of writers, directors, producers, actors, singers, painters, editors, publishers, distributors and broadcasters because their work could been seen to "urge" sedition by way of analogy, dramatisation, imagery or other creative devices.
Where are the safeguards against this? Why this brroadening? What is wrong with the current laws? We don't have the equivalent of the IRA fight ing the federal government. in Australia. There is no demonstrated need re terrorist violence for these laws. Don't we already have a lot of anti-terrorism already on the books?
There is so little talk about human rights and civil liberties with these very tough counter terrorism laws. We need some human rights act or bill of rights as a template. Why isn't the ALP advocating for this to counter balance the anti-terrorism legislation.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2005
Bush on the ropes
In contrast Australia, where John Howard is still travelling well, President Bush is ensnarred in a political crisis and he is looking weak and on the defensive as becomes ever more mired in the swamp of scandal and investigations.
Rupert Murdock's Weekly Standard is trying to spin the host of domestic political crises into good news. William Kristol says:
This does not mean, of course, that the Bush White House and its supporters should heave a sigh of relief and relax. It does mean that the administration and its allies have a chance now to go on the offensive: to make the tax cuts permanent, to look for occasions to insist on spending restraint, to make progress in restoring constitutional jurisprudence, and above all to make strides toward winning the war in Iraq, and the broader war on terror.
No doubt this kind of conservative spin will be recycled through The Australian in the next few days from the partisan GOP hacks who fancy themselves as "the keepers of the conservative flame" who are eager for another big battle in the culture war directed by Karl Rove.
Have the Republicans mentally moved on from Bush and started to think about Congress elections in 2006 and Presidential elections in 2008?
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October 29, 2005
and so it begins
Well it has happened. Scotter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff andand national security adviser, handed in his resignation, because he was indicted on criminal charges. He is charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of giving false statements and two counts of perjury. Libby was charged with lying about how he had discovered that Ms Plame worked for the CIA. If convicted of all charges, he could face up to 70 years' jail.
Friday's indictment shows how the White House used Plame's identity as part of a campaign to discredit critics of the war in Iraq. It is a consequence of the Bush administration's policy of taking critics and enemies down — not just rebutted — to ensure that their credibility is destroyed.
The transcript of the speech of Pat Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor. It is interesting isn't it, the way the American Congress has created the independent counsel law. It was created in 1978 because Congress felt the executive branch could not be trusted to investigate itself in cases of alleged abuse and corruption. This iresulted in nation book-length multi-volume reports — eg., Lawrence E. Walsh's 1993 report into the Iran-Contra affair and Kenneth W. Starr 's report about President Clinton's relations with a former intern.
But Congress in 1999 chose not to renew the law authorizing them, out of concern that they had been used to pursue partisan witch hunts. Fitzgerald, by contrast, is a special prosecutor, charged with bringing violations of the law to court, rather than information to the court of public opinion.
We could do with one of these in Australia. The Senate is emasculated and the executive branch cannot be trusted to investigate itself in cases of alleged abuse and corruption.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 28, 2005
exiting Iraq
Owen Harris says that the Bush Doctrine was the :
....product of three interacting conditions: American hegemony, American exceptionalism and American outrage. The first encouraged the belief that anything the United States willed was achievable. The second insisted that what should be willed was the remaking of the world in America's own image. The third created an enormously powerful pressure for immediate and drastic action.
Bush, in giving this doctrine authoritative voice, reduced the complexity of the international situation to the simple and dangerous Manichean terms of either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
Hence this:
This is the result of linking the promotion of freedom and democracy to the active use of American military might and imperial overreach. Failure.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 27, 2005
media criticism
Media criticism in Australia very rarely touches on the politics media nexus to show how it works.The politicians condemn the media (lack of diversity) whilst the media condemn the politicians (corruption). What falls between the two is the nexus or link. Mark Latham was the only person to lift the lid on this and it was quickly slammed down by both sides.
Here is one account that explores the nexus:
News Limited is digging its heels in regarding Freedom Of Information laws and it is supportive of two journalists who are under threat of gaol for not revealing their sources over a leaked government document.
What the cartoon ignores is the way the politicians feed the media and manage the news and have many journalists in their pockets. John Doyle in the Andrew Olle Media Lecture says:
To state a truism politicians and journalists need each other, feed each other and form marriages of convenience. I remember working with a high profile journalist on a commercial network a few years ago who stated that his ambition was to work as Peter Costello’s press secretary when he assumes the Prime Ministership. His newspaper column has been nothing but full of praise for the Treasurer ever since.
The culture critics argue that the media is a business, and going tabloid and low sells and highlight how News Ltd in running with this, avoids elite opinion and expresses populist opinion that fuels a jingoistic nationalism.
Is this not in accord with the conservative movement and its attempt to establish a cultural and poiltical hegemony?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 26, 2005
some call it contempt
The argument of the national security state is that the new anti-terror laws are urgently required by changed circumstances signified by the war on terror. So we need to curtail civil liberties (the rights to liberty and fair trial) to win the war. This is then bolstered by the Howard government's scaremongering campaign.
Leunig
Associated with this scaremongering is the Howard Government's strategy --- like that of the previous Keating Government --- to increase the power of the executive at the expense of the Parliament, exemplied by Howard trying to minimise the scrutiny of legislation in parliamentary committees.
Another example. Next Tuesday, about 90 minutes after the Melbourne Cup, the government's anti-terror bill, which allows suspects to be detained for up to a fortnight without charge, will be introduced to parliament. The government will force an immediate debate on the legislation, giving the opposition only 10 minutes to examine the bill rather than the usual fortnight. By refusing to give details of the terror legislation Howard is minimising scrutiny of his methods and panic legislation.
Why the hurry? What exactly is the terror threat? Should we be worried by the legislation? Absolutely.
Jose Borghino of New Matilda asks a dam good question:
Will anyone from the ALP stand up in the House of Representatives next Tuesday and oppose the Bill or suggest amendments? And a week later, when it's the Senate's turn, will the ALP (and at least one member of the Coalition) muster sufficient guts to slow the passage of these laws through Parliament for (hey, let's go crazy!) an extra day?
Will they? I appreciate that Kim Beazley and federal Labor have been “wedged” by their state Alp as well as by Howard. Will they--the federal ALP, not the compliant state ALP premiers --- find the political courage to take the legislation to the High Court on the grounds that it is unconstitutional? Will the federal ALP affirm the principles of federalism: a separation of the functions of the Parliament, the Executive (the Government) and the Judiciary that ensure that no one arm had absolute power and so power is split between the three so that 'checks and balances' applied to each.
Or will they huff and puff for the media headlines then buckle under like their state colleagues who have turned their backs on looking after a liberal democratic society so tbhney can look hairy chested on law and order?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2005
how partisan spin works
Washington is abuzz with rumors about what Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may do once his investigation into the coordinated Republican effort to discredit Valerie Plume's husband finishes. The nuances and details of the Plame Affair ----ie the outing or leaking Plame's identity and CIA affiliation----are beyond me.
The overall picture though is clear:
Rove's pointing was part of the "get Joe Wilson" campaign. Joe Wilson had to be got because he criticized the Bush administration's nuclear justifications for the disastrous Iraq war: that Iraq had acquired significant quantities of uranium from Africa. This was one strand of hyping the WMD threat posed by Iraq.
The question is: did Karl Rove, Scooter Libby or any other government official deliberately use classified information as a weapon to retaliate against a critic--one who broke no laws and violated no secrecy agreement by speaking out against the Bush administration?
That is what Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, is looking into. The grand jury expiring on October 28, 2005.
It does look as if the Bush administration used the national security powers of the U.S. government against its own citizens for purely political purposes.
Will Fitzgerald walk away? Will he extend the grand jury for whatever time he needs? Or will he hand down the indictments? Hence the inside-the-Beltway tension. A good assesment.
Still, the White House sure does look beleaguered these days.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2005
criticizing the media
In his recently delivered Henry Parkes Lecture, Senator John Faulkner made these critical comments about the culture of the corporate media in Australia:
Today's media is far more immediate. Rapid turnover leads to the constant search for the latest scoop, however flimsy the connection to the public interest. News comes packaged, enhanced with manipulative sound and image. Stories that don't suit simplistic illustrations are dropped. Stories about scandals boost circulation and take priority over complex discussions on policy.
That doesn't get to the heart of it does it? Tim Dunlop over at Road to Surfdom has described the media culture of the Canberra Press Gallery in terms of it being 'insider, smug, self-satisfied and lazy political commentary.'
Isn't the heart the matter the collusion between politician and journalist? This has led to effective news management and a wall of secrecy constructed around cabinet, the ministry and the bureaucracy. Max Suich describes this media governance in terms of a:
"... strategy of manipulating the structure of the media --- the drip to favoured reporters, the tightly constrained photo opportunity for the TV cameras, the one-on-one and often soft interviews with radio presenters and the constant use of the transcripts of these interviews and similar TV interviews to set a limited, rigid and effective agenda, and run a handful of propaganda lines."
What Faulkner does not say is that we have a largely deferential press. The Canberra press gallery have used the passivity of the ALP---their tacit alliance with Howard on many issues--- to justify their own passivity. This passivity works to keep the Howard regime afloat and, by refusing to ask tough questions with even tougher follow-ups, they help the Howard Government to retain its extensive political leverage.
The flip side of the media just passively running government spin is partisanship. They are partisan and they help to construct the spin. The conservative media are the attack dogs, shock troops, or publicists who are quite willing to use rumors, fictions and lies. And the editors encourage this style in the service of far-right agendas.
It used to be the case that the job of the journalist was to "monitor and interrogate the centres of power" by acting as the watchdogs for democracy demanding truth. It is now clear that the media are also a "centre of power" and they often abuse that power by speaking untruths and fictions.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 23, 2005
Iraq--slide into partition?
It was an odd sort of referendum wasn't it?
The weekend’s referendum on the Iraqi Constitution, was about a Constitution (written by the Shi’a and Kurds) resulted in it being passed over the objections of many Sunnis. What does that say about the nation of Iraq? And does that say about the Bush administration, which has in effect, backed fundamentalist Shiite parties and a federalism based on ethnicity and sect?
Stavro,Iraq Referendum, 2005
The democratic processes in Iraq do not seem to have convinced a disaffected, well-armed, but divided Sunni minority to quit fighting against the Iraqi government and the U.S. occupation that props it up. Will the insurgency continue and intensify?
Will the United States to continue to adopt policies that will make the situation in Iraq worse. Will the US continue to intimidate the Sunni Muslim or nationalist forces threatening it and its Muslim allies? Will this strategy halt Iraq's slide into civil war and partition?
Will the US expand the theater of war? Against Iran or Syria? Or will the US quietly withdraw from Iraq?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 22, 2005
hard times ahead?
We never had it so good. It is as good as it gets. Saviour the moment of wealth. They are in Canberra, which has become a one-party town, where the Howard Government is becoming very accustomed to controlling its political circumstances.
The pot of gold does lie at the end of the rainbow. Look
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 21, 2005
Two cheers for Malcolm Fraser
At long last the ALP state Premiers have found a bit of backbone in saying the Howard Government's new anti-terrorism legislation has gone too far with the proposed shoot to kill powers for the police.
It's only a bit of backbone mind you, given the principle of the Premier's opposition. For instance, Mike Rann, the South Australian Premier, said that he was committed to what he agreed to at COAG but, "I won't commit to things that I haven't seen and I won't commit to things that have been put in that I didn't agree to". There is no mention of needing to defend the principle of the civil liberties of citizens. Rann doesn't care about the latter principle.
The premier's new backbone expresses little more than the management of a damaged image in being taken for a ride by the federal government. John Stanhope, the ACT Chief Minister, is the exception. He opened up the debate by publishing the draft legislation and legal opinion on his website.
Instead of a falling over themselves to prove they are tough on terror, the state premiers should really be using their political power to resist the way the Howard Government is trading-off democratic rights for political and economic security. Instead they've have been gungho about the counter-terrorism legislation to fgiht the enemy within. They are quite happy for the police to be able to detain suspects for up to 14 days without evidence they had committed a crime, even though Australia has not experienced a significant terrorist incident from the "enemy within", nor is there any evidence of such a threat.
Malcolm Fraser is spot on:
In Australia, any of us can be detained merely because authorities believe we might know something that we don't even know we know. The authorities do not have to believe we are guilty of any crime, or are planning any crime, or have consorted with any suspicious persons. How could such a law be drafted by the Government and supported by the Labor opposition?
How indeed. The state premiers are quite happy that citizens can be detained for one week, but then on a new warrant, another and another and another week, and that you are not allowed to contact your family or lawyer.
Fraser highlights another nasty provision:
If a journalist heard that you had been detained and sought to report it, he would go to jail for five years. If a detained person were released and talked to anyone about his or her experiences, subject to prosecution, five years in jail.
As Fraser notes the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the presumption that all people should have access to "due process" in a properly constituted legal system is no longer valid in Australia.
It is constitutional liberalism that is being sidelined by the national security state. The state premiers have accepted Leviathan's claim that it is not possible to fight terrorism and adhere to the basic principles of justice and emocracy.They are blind to the contradiction of their position: Australia must throw basic civil rights overboard to defend those same rights.
Murdoch's Australian has given up any pretence of defending these rights. Its editorial says:
Opponents of the proposed anti-terror legislation should get a grip, because the debate on how to protect Australia against attack is being lost in hyperbole and hysteria.In reality, Australia faces the risk that terrorists, who believe Australia is an enemy of Islam, will kill as many of us as they can. The threat is real and we need laws to detain and watch people who wish us harm. We can enact them now, or run the risk of having to act after a terror bombing in a city street or suburban shopping mall.
The mask of Leviathan is the national security state.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 20, 2005
health: pressure points or system failure?
Well you can see the pressure points in the health care system. Here and here. Public hospitals and mental health.
The Queensland health system is widely seen as "unsustainable" without dramatic changes, and that would cost an estimated $1.5 billion a year to fix. Even though Canberra has reduced health funding to the states for years, Queensland have been under funding their mismanaged public hospital system for years.
Premier Beattie was on Radio National Breakfast this morning, and in the media throughout the day, doing his usual spin covering up the lack of inverstment in health; why patients will now make a contribution for minor elective surgery, adult dental health care, glasses and specialist outpatient services; and why it was no big deal to dump the basic principle behind Medicare--universal health care.
It did not occur to him, nor did anyone ask him, why adult dental health care or optical care (glasses) are being dealt with by public hospitals. Isn't that preventative medicine or primary health care that is treated in clinics outside public hospitals? Isn't Queensland meant to be the smart state?
The report into mental health Not For Service, was prepared by the Mental Health Council of Australia, the Mind and Brain Institute and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and it is based on data collected across the country from 2003 to 2005. It is littered with personal stories of loss and despair and describes how system and service failures resulted in worsening illness and, too often, death.
Immediately the states and commonwealth go at one another's throats to shift the blame. I'm with Commonwealth on this one. The drive for national mental health reform in Australia in the early 1990s (de-institutionalization) has hit a brick wall, largely because of the state's dismal record of funding reform (better community services that kept people out of hospital) and placing the emphasis on law and order. For instance, Tthe report dams SA:
Despite repeated inquiries and multiple government commitments, there has been little evidence of substantial mental health reform in South Australia. It remains the State with the greatest emphasis on institutional forms of care. While a great deal of community, media and professional criticism has been expressed about proposed changes to the mix of hospital and community care, there is also a clear desire for real reform. Reform will need to be backed by genuine resource investment as well as real leadership.
However, the Commonwealth's solution ---the Commonwwealth taking over mental health in order to provide enough psychiatric beds in public hospitals --is flawed, as it turns the clock back to institutions and away from the community.
Federalism is not the problem. Does it matter who delivers the mental health services? Couldn't the Commonwealth bypass the states and directly fund ngo's that deliver mental health services if the states don't lift their game. The indication is that they won't given the negative response by NSW Health Minister, John Hatzistergos: the reports methodology was questionable and its recommendations flawed. Yet in NSW, though money is spent on acute mental health facilities within hospitals, this is at the expense of community mental health centres which are being cut back.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2005
Gittens on economics & the iron cage
Ross Gittens is writing some interesting op.eds in the Sydney Morning Herald at the moment. The latest one is on neo-liberalism, call centres and industrial relations reform.
Gittens starts the op. ed. like this:
The thing that worries me about economic rationalists --- and the business people who put the rationalists' policies into practice --- is....that they keep getting muddled between means and ends. They're so obsessed by means that they end up converting ends into means... The result is that we keep getting richer without getting better off. Indeed, in some respects we're getting worse off.
Aah, Gittens has put his finger on something important.
What we have is a value neutral economic rationality, which is an instrumental reason. This became hegemonic conception of reason once the process of rationalization in modernity has defeated tradition. Good start huh. It's not often that you see this kind of intellectual oomph in the corporate media.
And it just gets better. Gittens spots the mechanist metaphysics that underpins neo-classical economicsconcepion of the market:
If you think of the economy --- that is, the aspect of our lives concerned with production and consumption -- as a motor car, economists are the mechanics. They're experts on how the economic car works.If there's something wrong with the car---if it's running rough --- those best equipped to get it ticking over nicely are the economists. If we'd like to improve the car's performance, economists are the people whose advice we should seek out and follow.
Gittens has an acute eye. He also spots a key problem with instrumental reason of economics.
This problem arises because all the years economists have spent with their heads under the bonnet have narrowed their vision:
Because they're so specialised on the efficiency with which cars work, they've fallen into the assumption that efficiency is pretty much all that matters. They've forgotten that, while their customers like having a car that's efficient, their primary interest is using the car to get from A to B.
the economists have bracketed any conception of the ends of policy. They are only concerned with the means. As Gittens puts it were 'you to follow such advice, you'd be abandoning ends to improve means and, in the process, making the car your master rather than your servant. In the simple case of a car, few of us would be so silly.'
Does anything on this means supplanting ends? A lot for me. For Gittens though?
Yes. He illustrates the consequences with the proposed industrial relations reform that make it easier for workers to "cash out" their meal breaks, public holidays, penalty and overtime rates, and two weeks of annual leave:
Now, there's no doubt that keeping our factories, offices and shops open for longer - ideally, 24 hours a day - will raise their productivity. That might not be profitable, of course, if the longer hours were a lot more expensive in terms of penalty rates. But get rid of the penalties and the increased productivity will assuredly lead most of us to higher incomes. So we have much income to gain by continuing down the road of getting rid of nine-to-five days, overtime payments, weekends and public holidays, and paring back annual leave to a fortnight.
And Gittens spots the iron cage of modernity:
Trouble is, doing so puts means ahead of ends. It focuses on the income, forgetting why we want it. It makes us the servants of factories and offices, rather than their masters. It robs us of our humanity, taking away our leisure and making us more like robots. The thing about robots, of course, is that they don't have families and don't need relationships to keep them satisfied with life.
The trouble of course, as Gittens points out, is that:
Humans don't just need leisure time, they need time off work at the same time as their spouse and while their children aren't at school...Why do we need to impoverish ourselves by giving up leisure time, phasing out the weekend and seeing even less of our families?
Hence we have the rattling of the iron cage. On one account of this rattling the radical struggle for freedom and individuality degenerates into an affirmation of irrational life forces against the routine and drab predictability of a bureaucratic order. Weber's option was to call for an ethics of responsibility.
Gittens, in contrast, implies a return to the ethical rationality embodied in everyday life and counterposes that ethical life to the dystopia of instrumental reason.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 18, 2005
Treasury on public policy
In a speech given to the Lowy Institute in September, Peter Costello, the federal Treasurer outlined the parameters of long-term public policy as it is understood by the mandarins in Treasury.
Costello describes it thus:
Three years ago Australia’s first Intergenerational Report provided a framework for thinking about the economic challenges Australia will face over the next 40 years.The Report looked at domestic demographic developments and how they might impact on Australia over the long term. It highlighted the effects of declining fertility rates over the last 40 years and how that, together with increased life expectancy, will contribute to the ageing of our population. The Report detailed how an ageing population will subdue economic growth but increase fiscal pressures.
So how does Treasury propose that we deal with this issue? Costello is quite clear. He outlines 'the framework for thinking about the components of long-term economic growth --- known by shorthand as the 3 “Ps”---Population, Participation and Productivity'--- thus:
An increasing population (on consistent participation and productivity) will build the size of an economy. A stable population with a declining participation rate caused by population ageing will, other things being equal, slow the growth of an economy. And, everything else being equal, an economy where productivity is increasing will generate a larger economy.Over the long term, a country’s economic prospects derive from the level of its population, the engagement of the population in the workforce and the level of their output. These factors will shape and influence Australia’s future, but so too, will they shape the countries around us.
Note the lack of health or wellbeing as a component of long-term economic growth in this response. Suprising isn't it? It is not very rational to try to grow the Australian economy with a sick population is it?
Increasing the productivity of the workforce which underpins 'the engagement of the population in the workforce and the level of their output'---presupposes a healthy workforce, not a sick one. Yet health, it would seem, is a blind spot of the econocrats.
In the Intergenerational Report of 2002-3, which assessed the long-term sustainability of government finances in detail, Treasuy had argued that the ends of economic policy were the wellbeing of the populatlion, not economic growth per se. In this Report it is stated that:
“The overarching objective of the Government’s economic policy is to improve the wellbeing of Australians in a way that can be sustained over time. This is related to both the current generation of Australian and future generations. The Government’s policy framework aims to ensure that economic, social and environmental policies compliment each other to bring about sustainable improvements in wellbeing.” (p.13.)
So what has happened? Has Treasury backtracked? Has it lost its nerve? Or is Costello uneasy about the wellbeing because of its close association with happiness? Or is wellbeing and happiness too close to ethics and the utilitarian neo-liberal econocrats are uncomfortable/uneasy with ethics?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2005
addressing global imbalances
Stephen Grenville, a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute, addresses the issue of global imbalances in this article, which was published in the Australian Financial Review's Review section on Friday.
Grenville is more concerned about global economic imbalances than the Reserve Bank of Australia and, unlike the RBA, he is willing to acknowledge that the current global imbalances may not be sustainable. The RBA appears to have convinced itself that the current situation is sustainable.
Grenville begins by saying:
The IMF's latest World Economic Outlook has triggered another round of concern about large international payments imbalances, with a special focus on the sustainability of the US current account deficit, now at 6 per cent of national income and growing inexorably. What, if anything, should be done?....There are various possible triggers for adjustment, but two examples will suffice: a change in US saving; and a change in the funding of the US external deficit.
Grenville says that the former issue---the US budget deficit---could be addresed, if the US reformed its prodigal ways and saved more. This is constrained by 'a low-taxing president and civic reconstruction now added to the demands of the Iraq war' and hence 'large budget deficits are likely to remain.'
However, the other unusual element of the US savings performance, 'the households which have in recent years decided to save nothing, and to fund their consumption from "equity extraction" (borrowing against the newly inflated prices of their homes)' can be addressed. Grenville says that 'even US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who is usually ready to let the market sort things out, is now worrying about the extent of this borrowing'.
Though household consumption needs to be tightened---to reduce the housing price bubble--this is not enough to cause a smaller US current account deficit. That requires either an increase in world demand for US exports and/or a cut in US imports.
Is that on the cards? The two mechanisms are increased US international competitiveness (from a lower dollar or higher productivity) and increased protectionism driven by US Congress beholden to the lobby pressures from an uncompetitive US industry. Here at public opinion we give greater weight to the protectionism mechanism under the current Bush administration. The Bushies have a preference for the bad option.
Grenville says that the US's current account deficit is currently being financed by 'the lenders of last resort, the central banks of China and Japan, which are now funding 60 per cent of the US deficit by buying low-interest US government securities.' He adds that:
In doing this, they are in a real bind. Neither country wants to see its exchange rate appreciate much. But investing in low-return securities denominated in a currency which is likely to go down (perhaps sharply) doesn't seem all that rational. The penalty may be high — a 20 per cent change in the yuan-dollar parity would give China a loss on its reserves of close to 10 per cent of GDP. This would be a huge blow to the balance sheet of the central bank, as holder of the reserves. Restructuring reserves to reduce the weight of the dollar is tricky: the Chinese have only the yen and the euro to choose from. For Japan the choice of reserve currency is more limited still. In short, while China and Japan will be reluctant to run down their US reserves, it may not be sustainable for them to go on building ever-larger reserves, and their search among the unpalatable alternatives would remove one of the supports of the present situation.
The adjustments mechanisms here are those of the market itself, which works in a slow, jerky, convoluted and drawn out; or encouraging more private capital flows to the US or to non-Chinese Asia or the revival of productive investment in Japan and Germany.
These kind of adjustments are certainly preferrable the current US policy of blaming China but how likely are they? The US has blocked private capital infliows from China as it finds Chinese ownership of its companies unpalatable.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 15, 2005
IR: the battle for the hearts and minds
I left a fog-bound Canberra early Friday morning burdened with the Canberra flu bug. AS I was very feverish and had a splitting headache, so I was barely able to read the giveaway Canberra Times I had picked up as I was boarding the plane for Adelaide.
But I do remember seeing this Pryor cartoon about workplace reform:
Pryor
Good eh. It shows what is at stake to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Australian citizens.
And I vaguely remember an op. ed .by John Warhurst about the Howard Government has been forced to openly side with the bosses to counter the effective union campaign supported by the ALP. Instead of governing for all of us the Howard Government is now openly seen as the party of capital fighting the party of labour.
Who said that class has disappeared or no longer mattered? What has happened to the moral middle class ? Or the conservative myth of the all powerful liberal elites and liberal media?
That means the struggle about IR is about increasing the profits for business at the expense fo labour not increasing productivity of labour.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 13, 2005
Keating says it well
Paul Keating, the former Primer Minister of Australia, has an op ed in todays Sydney Morning Herald on the industrial relations reforms proposed by John Howard. The shift to individual contracrs works well for highly skilled workers in a booming market with skill shortages. These workers are in a strong negotiating position vis-a-vis their boss, so individual contracts make sense.
What about those workers with lower skills? How will they---Howard's battler's-- fare? Keating addresses this, and he puts his finger on the fear felt by many Australians. Keating says that Howard's target are:
Those protected by the second half of the Keating government's reform, those within the safety net, those without sufficient bargaining power in the labour market to secure an enterprise bargain. In the main, women and young people: women in retail and ancillary jobs, or the young who make up the bulk of casual employment.For these people, there is only one guarantee of protection and wage justice, and that is the minimum award rates under the safety net. These are the kids getting $12 an hour who Howard wants to push back to $8 and $9, and the working women, particularly casuals, who will go from something like $15 an hour to $10.. Howard says he will legislate against this but this outcome is the very point of his change. Gradually, real wages will slip back.
And his argument is that cheaper rates produce more jobs. But if you can only score $10 an hour it does not matter how many jobs there are. Forty hours at $10 means you can only earn a maximum of $400 a week - not enough to accommodate and feed yourself.
Markets bust as well as boom. A flexible labour market in a downturn wil reduce wages and conditions quickly. that may well mean lower pay rates than $10 an hour and worse working conditions.
It is for these kind of situations that we need safety nets. They help to protect the vulnerable. That was the lesson socail democracy learned from the Great Depression.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 12, 2005
corruption in high places
As the Crikey Daily observed 'Bob Carr's decision to join Macquarie Bank so soon after retiring as NSW Premier is a disgrace.' Rightly judged.
Bill Leak
Crikey comments that 'you can't blame the suits for trying to maximise their position. The problem lies with the money-hungry politicians who are members of a political duopoly that seemingly adopts an anything goes approach.' That is so. Often you get the impression that the government ministers are busy working for the suits when they are in office. And that corruption of public office goes for their staff as well. The payoff is the good job afterwards.
There another form of corruption. This is the corporate greed associated with tollways such as the Cross City Tunnel with an initial toll of $3.53 for a cross-city journey. $7.00 return. $35 a weekfor commuters. That is to be achieved by force traffic to use the Cross City Tunnel by intentionally increasing congestion on the routes on which congestion was to be relieved, thereby blighting urban life in the congested streets.
Paul Sheehan states:
Apparently the [state] Government, the RTA [Roads and Traffic Authority], the Lord Mayor and the developers believed the punters could be forced into paying twice what they think is fair by having all their options closed or choked. That's why this is social engineering, not traffic engineering. Did the issue of public fairness never occur to them?The officials who signed off on this vision of building the tunnel and blocking the major artery of William Street and other streets in and around the CBD have all moved on - the former premier Bob Carr, the former lord mayor Frank Sartor, and the former transport minister Carl Scully - leaving the public to pay for this tunnel, one way or another.
Social engineering? Why not call it by its right name. Corrruption?
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October 11, 2005
oh no, not roll back again
This Petty cartoon misses the way the federal ALP is distinquishing itself from the Howard Government. The strategy is to roll back the proposed Industrial Relations legislation at a time when the Howard Government is further entrenching its hold on the levers of power.
Rollback marks the difference. That recalls the GST. The ALP blew up a storm on that one, year in and year out, and then quietly accepted it. We had the same blanket confrontation strategy with opposing the Budget tax cuts in June.
Now why would you roll back the shift to from state based system to a unitary national system? Why rollback the simplification of a complex award system? Why not develop a strategy of keeping the good bits of Howard's IR reforms and doing away with the bad bits?
That is not the ALP style these days. Their strategists go for the short term headline politics. As a result the ALP gets backed into a corner. They are there now. Labor is now tied more closely with its industrial wing, which covers less than 20 per cent of workers. That is not a strategy for re-election. It is an election strategy to irrelevancy. Or is the ALP calculating that the Howard battlers, who are not in a strong bargaining position over their wages and conditions, will desert the Government over the IR reforms and return to the ALP?
Should not the ALP say good things about AWA's- since they do work for some workers. So why not address their concerns---those contractors that Mark Latham expressed in terms of "the aspirational voter" who needed to be helped up "the ladder of opportunity" in an enterprise culture that favours greater self-responsibility and empowerment? Why not address the concerns of those who are employed on a part time basis who want flexibility and tailored working arrangement?
Why not talk in terms of modernising the industrial relations system and including AWA's within it for those who desire one? Why not also argue for reform rathering than being boxed into a corner that says no to reform? Did not the Keating Government introduce an enterprise -based bargaining stream in 1993? Why not build on that?
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October 10, 2005
a never ending race
In selling his IR legislation, in which Canberra will take over responsibility for industrial relations under a single national system, John Howard, the Prime Minister, said that the country's long boom and record low unemployment were not evidence of the success of the current system, but of the need for constant reform and change. The PM said:
It's like participating in a race towards an ever-receding finishing line.You have to keep going, not because you think you will ever reach that finishing line - frustratingly you won't - but if you don't keep going the other people in the race … will run past you.
The race is called international competitveness. What is required for Australia to keep being left behind in this kind of race? A suggestion:
Keeping up in terms of being internationally competitive means freeing up the labour market, reducing or abolishing minimum pay and constraining the power of unions.
Under the proposed legislation employers will find it much easier to take damages action against militant unions in court, the Government will severely limit the right of all unions to enter worksites, and the Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews, will be handed an "essential services" power, enabling him to declare strikes illegal if considered a threat to public welfare or to the economy.
The freeing up the labour market involves breaking down the century-old system of collective bargaining, and a reduction in the working conditions of employees. The latter will be achieved through an emphasis on individual agreements, outside workplace awards, in which individual workers will have to bargain with bosses for conditions.
There has been backtrack and compromise. The 38-hour ordinary week, annual leave, sick leave, personal leave and carers' leave will be protected by law, conditions such as public holidays, rest and meal breaks, incentive and bonus payments, annual leave loadings and penalty rates will be up for negotiation in the contracts. However, employers could still wipe out these safety-net award conditions by including "specific provisions" in individual contracts under non-award agreements.
The rhetoric is that the IR reforms will increase the growth of the Australian economy by perhaps one half of one percent and allow at least a further 1% fall in the rate of unemployment. How the reforms will increase productivity is unclear.
The strategic aim of the reforms is to lower the cost of wages:
Bill Leak
Many are saying the reforms do not go far enough. Des Moore, for instance, says that:
'...the changes are basically shuffling job protectionist measures. The retention of a large regulatory and judicial framework will be a feast for industrial lawyers and the many pro-unionist figures on tribunal and judicial benches....The saddest part of the new system is the retention of a minimum wage to be determined as "fair pay'"...The 550,000 unemployed, the 550,000 under-employed and the 800,000 unofficially unemployed, most of whom are unskilled, face a bleak future unless the new body is brave enough to reduce the employment-deterring level of the minimum wage.'
That means--and the power relationships in the economy determine this--that you take lower conditions and wages to get a leg into the job market.
Legislation to implement the changes to Australia's industrial system will most likely be passed by the Coalition Senate majority by the end of the year. What does that passage mean for the ALP? It's back is to the wall, is it not?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 9, 2005
Canberra observed: global imbalances
Mark Davis, in an op ed. in Frday's Australian Financial Review, addresses the politics of the economy, foreign debt and the current account deficit. He says that:
Labor wants to rerun the early 1990s debate about external imbalances...So its strategy has been to argue that beneath the apparently untroubled surface of the economy lie imbalances--- underinvestment in infrastructure, shortages of skilled labour and excessive foreign debt--putting future propersity at risk.
He argues that the foreign debt element of this alternative Labor story turns out to be questionable on economic and political grounds. The debt is owed by the public sector not the public sector and the borrowers have predominently been households. So 'when Beazley worries about the shadow cast by foreign debt, his argument really boils down to a call for households to rein in their borrowing and spending.'
In so arguing Davis glosses over the large current account deficit ($1.64 billion in August, and close to 6% of GDP) by saying nothing about the large trade deficits fuelled by domestic demand for imports and the failure of exports to recover despite the growth in the world economy and the resources boom. Was not the resources boom of Quarry Australia meant to resolve the current account deficit? Quarry Australia was the solution not the shift to a high tech or knowledge economy?
Shouldn't we be worried that Australia's current account deficit remains stuck at 6% of GDP? Is not Australia near the top of the deficit ladder? These sort of imbalances cannot grow without limit.
Maybe the complacency expressed by Davis here reflects this upbeat speech by Ian Macfarlane, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia about the global market working fine. In this speech McFarlane says that:
... the Asian surplus [from exports] has to be invested in the rest of the world, and it will tend to flow to those regions which offer the highest return on capital. While foreign investment flows both ways, in net terms it has flowed from Asia mainly to the United States and has underpinned the level of the US dollar, despite the US current account deficit, and provided easy access to finance for US borrowers in the business, household and government sectors.
For the econocrats we need not worry about the global imbalances between China and the US, nor the hugh US budget deficit either. Does that 'no worries' mean that the US can continue to run large trade deficits indefinitely?The US policy makers seem to think that extra debt from pumping up the deficit comes with no strings attached.
As Brad Setser observes China is important. Whilst the rest of Asia's current account surplus is shrinking, and its reserve accumulation is falling, China's current account surplus is rising, as is its reserve accumulation.
Does that not mean that China is financing the US by adding to their portfolio of Treasuries. China, as a developing country, is a creditor of the US, a developed country. Isn't that rather strange? The reverse of what it should be? Does it make sense for developing countries with large current account surpluses to tie their currencies tightly to the currency of the world's largest debtor? How long can this carry on?
Maybe the greenback ought to be depreciated? The other option-- greater fiscal discipline-- is not even a consideration with Bash administration: it spend up big without providing for tax increases to pay for the increased spending.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 8, 2005
flouting the law of the land
Another day and another report critical of the culture of Department of Immigration and Multicultural Indigenous Affairs (DIMA). And another denial of ministerial responsibility by the former and current Immigration Ministers Philip Ruddock and Senator Amanda Vanstone:
Mandatory detention stays despite the wrongful deportation of an Australian citizen (Viven Alvarez Solon was deported to the Philipines) by an Australian government department, which knew what it was doing and attempted to cover its tracks.
A convention of the Westminster system was that, 'in theory, ministers were responsible for the actions of their departments. Even though government departments can be huge bureaucracies with powerful senior staff, the ministers in charge of departments would be held accountable for mistakes of their organizations, even if they were not directly involved.' This convention of ministerial responsibility is now ignored as ministers are now forced to resign only when they become such an embarrassment to their government that they are too much of a political liability to leave in their post.
That means that, though DIMA abuses its power by acting unlawfully, the Minister is not personally liable for the consequences of DIMA officials flouting the law of the land. It is a strange scenario isn't it: government resources have been exploited to sabotage the operation of law. Doesn't that amount to lawlessness in the Canberra buraucracy and the executive?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 7, 2005
a numbing fear
Could we interpret the national security state (Fortress Australia) as a national insecurity state that is based on a numbing fear amongst the population?
Does this cultivation of insecurity make Australians more conservative and ever more fearful?
The sense of insecurity is everywhere these days, is it not? So is the talk about "protecting and defending".
Is not the spin from Canberra these days all about danger being everywhere, and that it can never be eliminated? So our best hope lies in a government strong enough and pugnacious enough to keep us safe and secure. Peace through strength is the message.
This elevation of terrorism into the biggest threat to civilisation does rely on a script written in terms of the politics of fear. This is an old script: in the post-Second World War era there was a continuous promotion of fear of the 'other side'. The fear of communism underpinned Cold War ideology, and this was associated with a fear of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction. Since the 1990s we have been living with political campaigns structured around the fear of crime and fear of immigrants. Fear is everywhere in Fortress Australia.
Today the narrative of fear has become so widely assimilated in Australia that it is now self-consciously expressed in a personalised and privatised way. This politics of fear captures a sensibility towards life in general; one that expresses a diffuse sense of powerlessness before threats; threats that can pop up anywhere and everywhere in our everyday existence; threats that evoke the spectre of violent death, our death.
What happens to us in this climate of fear? Does a numbing fear meant that we withdraw into our shell? We have become more conservative. Do we become fearful of change? We have become more distrustful. Do we lose our self-esteem?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:51 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 6, 2005
health care reform: a suggestion
Ross Gitten's op. ed. in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald is about health care reform and the Productivity's Commission position paper on the health workforce. It is unusual because there is little commentary on health care reform in the media. What we have is a health poltics based on newspaper headlines about huge hospital queues. not health policy.
Gittens starts his op. ed. on health policy by noting the significance of health care reform:
If you want to see the future, think health care. Report after report tells us the health industry's likely to be one of the fastest growing parts of the economy and the factor putting most upward pressure on the taxes we pay. Now we learn that health care's likely to be one of the areas of most pressing labour shortages.
Health care reform is big --it is much bigger than the much heralded waterfront reform of the 1990s. But you would not know that from the media.
Gittens grasps a key problem of health care as it is analysed by economists. He states that spending on health care will continue to rise as demand increases, and outruns supply of the services provided by the health care workforce. This disequlibrium will deepen because the shortages of the health workforce will get worse. Gittens says:
So, if we're almost certain the health system's present shortages are set to get a lot worse, what should we be doing?The obvious answer is spending a lot more money on extra training places...But it's equally obvious that such a response won't be adequate... merely throwing more money at problems quickly gets to be too demanding on the pockets of the taxpayers supplying the money. So the Productivity Commission's main message is that we should be doing a lot more to raise the efficiency with which people are trained and used in health care - which would, of course, raise their personal productivity.
What does efficiency and productivity mean?
Gittens addresses this by pointing to the direction in which health care reform needs to go: --that we ought to be investing a lot more of our effort on health promotion and preventive medicine. The health care focus needs to shift from acute illness and hospitals to good primary care. That shift is a big reform. Very big.
Will it happen?
Gittens grasps the central blockage to this pathway of reform: the patch protection by doctors and specialists. He gives a classic example:
Then there's the way doctors try to hog all the tasks (and the income that goes with them) - always in the name of preserving the quality of treatment and the safety of patients, naturally. Take the celebrated attempt to have properly trained "nurse practitioners" take over some of the more routine tasks performed by doctors. Doctors have resisted this all the way, and still are. From the initial investigation of the concept in the early 1990s, there are still only a handful of nurse practitioners in Australia.
There are plenty of other examples: the resistance to midwives, the GP's refusal to refer patients with muscloskeletal conditions to chiropractors, and the denigration of allied health care professionals by orthodox medicine. Efficiency means removing these blockages.
Gittens notes the way that the Medical Benefits Scheme reinforces "medical dominance ", as it is premised on doctors doing things that less trained (and less expensive) health professionals could do just as well:
Because most services provided by other health professionals and nurses are excluded from a Medicare rebate under the scheme, many patients prefer to have the service provided by a doctor. Doctors should be able to delegate routine tasks to other professionals - possibly working for the doctor - but, if they do, no one gets a rebate.
Thus we have the wasteful allocation of scarce resources. So you can see why Treasury and the Productivity Commission are interested in, and are driving, health care reform in the name of efficiency and productivity.
What Gittens does not address is the different pathways of primary health care. Not every allied health professional wants to be deskilled by working in a GP practice. Health care reform would recognize, and accept, that allied health care professionals can provide a different primary care pathway to that of the GP's. Gittens, by remaining too doctor focused, does not see the big consumer shift to a lifestyle or wellness conception of primary health care. It is this conception of primary health care that will lead to big productivity gains within the health workforce.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:21 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
October 5, 2005
something strange is happening
There is a disconnect between the Bali bombings, Iraq and the clash of civilizations, is there not?
The common discourse is that Islamic terrorism in London or Bali nothing to do with Iraq, or whathe Coalition is doing in Iraq. Jihadist Islam is evil ideology. The terrorsts are against our society. They are against our democracy. They are against our freedoms. They are against Australia. It is a clash of good and evil. The war against terror will never end.
Iraq has faded away from the media headlines and we no longer connect with what is happening there. Yet it is unclear what the Coalition in Iraq is fighting for now in the civil war that is destroying the country and its people. It seems that the Americans are fighting to prop up a client regime in Iraq.; or more accurately U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.
As Robert Fisk observed: on Lateline:
I notice every time I raise the issue of the Middle East with you, we come back to Indonesia again. But there are connections between Indonesia and the Middle East - with Indonesia and Libya, actually as well. There are direct connections between al-Qaeda and Indonesia. You've said that on your program. We need the talk about the Middle East and we will not do so, and even you on this program - and with much respect, we're talking as journalists together - you don't want to make that connection, and that connection exists and unless we make it, we are in danger.
I'm not sure why we don't make the connection any more. History has become discontinuous.
One response is to say the the Left's understanding of the terrorism is flawed. This understanding pretty much blames Britain, Australia and the United States for bringing the attacks upon themselves. While the bombers and their agenda are denounced this position holds that we should get out of Iraq, bring home the troops from all points east, curtail support for Israel, develop a more sensible, and non-oil-based energy policy.
Sasha Abramsky holds that this is a truncated analysis that leads to a blindspot: It assumes:
"...that groups like al-Qaida are almost entirely reactive, responding to western policies and actions, rather than being pro-active creatures with a virulent homegrown agenda, one not just of defence but of conquest, destruction of rivals, and, ultimately and at its most megalomaniacal, absolute subjugation."
She says that goups like al-Qaida--- and we can add JI ---are seeking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own. That is the Left's blindspot.
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October 4, 2005
holidays, bombs, suffering
Another year, more Bali bombings. More Australian vitriol; more publicity for a hardline security approach; more op.eds. about Islam being an armed doctrine religion; and more international pressure on the Indonesian government to increase state repression.
Within Indonesia there is a conflict between the anti-modern conservatives against the modernisers, with the former trying to disrupt capital flows (tourism) in Bali, as the public culture of Indonesia becomes increasingly Islamic.
Indonesia should be supported in the efforts it has made in countering its homegrown terrorism, rather than just calling for a banning or outlawing of a fractured Jemaah Islamiyah and more talk about JI setting up an Islamic superstate across South-east Asia. If the JI style terrrorism is homegrown, then it may well be that Australia is not the primary target. The JI bombings have more to do with key conflicts inside Indonesia and the role of jihadist Islam in Indonesia.
Despite that, the pressure will be on in Australia to see a potential terrorist on the street of our suburbs and to cultivate a climate of excessive fear and hair-raising scenarios. These will then be used by conservatives to justify the further undermining of our democratic freedoms so as to protect our lives from shadowy threats.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 3, 2005
China-US relations
In a recent speech to the National Committee on US China Relations Robert Zoellick, the Deputy Secretary of State, was critical of China----many Americans worry that the Chinese dragon will prove to be a fire-breather. China is an emerging new power and some American Republicans are more than uneasy.
Zoellick said that the templates of the past do not apply to US China relations these days:
If the Cold War analogy does not apply, neither does the distant balance-of-power politics of 19th Century Europe. The global economy of the 21st Century is a tightly woven fabric. We are too interconnected to try to hold China at arm’s length, hoping to promote other powers in Asia at its expense. Nor would the other powers hold China at bay, initiating and terminating ties based on an old model of drawing-room diplomacy. The United States seeks constructive relations with all countries that do not threaten peace and security. So if the templates of the past do not fit, how should we view China at the dawn of the 21st Century?
His response was in terms of there being a cauldron of anxiety about China in the US. Zoellick referred to mercantalism, Chinese competitiveness, which is devastating US industry (textiles and machine tools), its military buildup, and its rise as a military power in its own region. China, he says, needs to act as a responsible major global player.
Zoellick then added that:
The United States will not be able to sustain an open international economic system ---or domestic U.S. support for such a system –---without greater cooperation from China, as a stakeholder that shares responsibility on international economic issues.
That's a shot across the bows.
Tony Walker, the Australian Financial Review's Washington correspondent, comments that Zoellick did not refer to the US not acting responsibly when it erroneously blames China for America's ballooning trade and current account deficits. Walker rightly says that a larger revaluation of China's currency within realistic parameters would not make the slightest bit of difference.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 2, 2005
poor old river Murray
Although the SA Rann Government keeps sending out mesages that things are improving with respect to the health of the River Murray, the Chowilla floodplain and the Corrong wetlands, I decided that little would happen over the next few years when I was looking for a new job after June 30th.
The environment, I judged at that point, had been closed down by the Howard Government, and little would happen, apart from a lot of talk and spin. The Nationals were in control, and they are about exploiting natural resources not environmental flows.
So even though the Coorong was in crisis, little would be done about the lack of environmental flows in the River Murray, rising salinity, or deterioriating biodiversity and habitat. Consequently, the Coorong would lose its status as a wetland of international importance whilst the various state Ministers would put out press releases about recent rainfalls increasing flows in the River Murray.
So I took a job in the health.area. Health was more cutting edge in a policy reform sense.
This judgement has been confirmed by Peter Cullen in his op. ed in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday (29 September, 2005, subscription required). In this article, entitled, 'Murray doomed by lack of will', Cullen refers to the 500 gigalitres of water due to be returned to the River Murray by 2009 as environmental flows. He says that the 500 gigalitres:
"..was to be a first step in repairing the health of the Murray, but governments so far have been able to identify infrastructure projects to save only 240 gl of water at a cost of about $280 million...The State agencies do not seem able to identify further projects to return flows to the Murray and there seems little chance of the 500 gl commitment being meet by 2009. Indeed, approved projects won't even get us halfway there. ...There appears to be no further cost-effective infrastructure proposals to create water savings by the state agencies."
All that we get is squabbling around the CoAG table, even though the ground and river waters of the Murray-Darling Basin are overallocated, the state governments have not effectively capped the groundwater extraction that flows into the river, and old river gums across the parched floodplains die in their thousands.
As Cullen points out the environmental damage continues even as irrigators are not even bothering to pick crops of grapes and oranges grown with River Murray water. It's irrational.
Update: 4 Oct. 2005
Another option to make up the difference between the 240 gigalitres promised and the target 500 gigalitre is to buy the difference on the open market. Suprise suprise. Such a move would meet with resistance from the Murray Valley Community of Water Users (in NSW?) They argue that no government should enter the market to buy water entitlements until a comprehensive study on the social and economic consequences of such a move has been done.
And another suprise. Peter McGauran, the federal Minister for Agriculture, is reported as also resisting any such moves to buy up water. He reckons the difference can be found through infrastructure and efficiency measures. Which are? He doesn't say.
So it was no suprise that CoAG did next to nothing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 1, 2005
Canberra observed
I was suprised by the ease in which the state premiers embraced the new counter- terrorism laws that override the basic legal rights of citizens and the lack of concern about this amongst the Canberra Press Gallery. I still am.
Mike Rann, the tub thumbing law and order Premier of South Australia, even talked in terms of the 'enemy within' with all its 1950s McCarthyite resonances. Who are the 'enemy within'? Which citizens do the premiers have in mind?
The justification for these proposed laws were confidential security briefings by security agencies with a very poor track record in threat assessment. We citizens have been given no reason to change this judgement--all we have are some press releases that identifed the 'enemy within' with those citizens with extreme views. So the threat to our security and safetyfrom bombs going off in our midst can only be judged as vague and shadowy at the very best.
Vagueness covers over what is happening ---a state of exception or emergency--is being turned into the normal. Detecting, disrupting, and preventing terrrorist attacks is now the norm.
The mandarins--those elite Canberra bureaucrats who keep democracy at bay---hold that the traditional ideas of individual civil rights are no longer appropriate in the age of terrorism and in a more dangerous world. The mandarins speak the Leviathan language of Thomas Hobbes, as they diligently work to shift power to the state and to exempt the actions of its coercive arrm from the rule of law.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack