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May 31, 2007
global warming + AFR
An example of global warming---not climate change-- in action.
Chinese Academy of Sciences and Greenpeace, The Rongbuk glacier on Mount Everest's northern slopes. The photo above was taken in 1968 and the one below was taken this year (2007).
The first photograph shows a long valley filled with ice towers as high as 20 metres that form the Rongbuk glacier, the biggest glacier on Mount Everest's northern slopes. The second photograph taken on April 29 this year (early spring here), shows that the ice forest has retreated dramatically.
The melting glacier has created many new lakes but the extra water has been more than offset by less rainfall and hotter temperatures. A similar kind of scenario in Australia --less rainfall and hotter temperatures is the reason for the need to cut carbon emissions, and to make it illegal to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere without a permit, to set a cap on emissions and to ensure that the cap bites deeply into emissions.
Alan Mitchell, the economics editor of the Australian Financial Review, has an op-ed in the AFR on emissions trading as a way of dealing with the effects of global warming. It's offered as a quick primer on some of the basic choices still to be made on climate policy. Mitchell says:
The most basic choice is whether to believe the warnings about global warming. Governments are reacting not because they know the true extent of the threat but because their believe in risk management. They key to good risk management is flexibility so that policy can adjust as scientific knowledge improves.
It's furphy. We are way past the choice to believe the warnings about global warming.Global warming is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. It's a reality we now live. Mitchell is way behind policy circles on this, whilst the debate in scientific circles is structured around the tipping point scenario.
Mitchell goes on to say that the next choice is between regulation and market-based policies. He rightly acknowledges that federal and state governments have mandated renewable energy targets.
But, as the game gets serious, governments are turning to market-based policies that allow businesses and consumers to find the lowest cost way to curb emissions. That means the market should decide which emission abatement technologies are used. So beware the special pleas of the nuclear industry, the windmill makers, the ethanol brigade and other rent seekers.
What no mention of the special pleas of the coal industry and the intensive energy users and their greenhouse mafia? Surely Mitchell's free market economics is not a cover for protecting the coal industry? Note the emphasis on 'emission abatement technologies' whilst no mention is made of moving to a carbon free economy in the form of solar and geo-thermal power? Is Mitchell's free market economics a cover for the Australian economy being a carbon based one?
If Mitchell is not an ideologue then it is lack of knowledge and understanding that shines through this quick primer.He is struggling to move beyond the old duality of economics versus environment that many neo-liberal economists have been ensnared in for so long. What they offer as policy is often little more than rightwing politics that traditionally has had a deep detestation of, and hostility towards, environmentalism.
What comes through Mitchell's "primer" is a strategy of doing little now because of new technology being available in 20-30 years time and generous quotas that impose little cost of polluters to give them time to adjust. It's a primer that is structured to favour the coal industry. No mention is made of needing to design an emissions trading scheme to prevent the global warming tipping point; in fact there is no mention of a tipping point ---the delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
May 30, 2007
Gittens on water
Ross Gittens has a good op-ed on water policy in the Sydney Morning Herald. He identifies the problem succinctly:
The nation's water problem comes in two parts. There's the destruction of our inland river systems because of over-irrigation, and there's the acute shortages of water in the capital cities - shortages that may just be the temporary consequence of a severe drought or may be a harbinger of the climate change to come.Irrigation accounts for about 70 per cent of all water use in Australia. Households take only about 10 per cent, sewerage and drainage takes another 10 per cent and mainly city-based industry takes the rest About 85 per cent of irrigation takes place in the Murray-Darling basin. City water prices are about 10 times the price of (admittedly, untreated) water for irrigation.
He adds that the obvious way to alleviate the cities' problems would be to allow them to buy some of the irrigators' water allocations. Many irrigators would make more money from selling water to the city than from using it to produce low value-added crops. For the cities, buying rural water would be a lot more economic than spending a fortune on recycling and desalination plants.
But Howard's plan doesn't contemplate such sales. Why not? It's contrary to National Party policy. The Nats don't want to see any decline in irrigation activity, no matter how ecologically damaging or uneconomic it may be. The Coalition is beholden to the Nationals.
What has been rejected is a water policy would concentrate on making sure water - city and rural - was correctly priced to reflect its scarcity and on maximising the opportunity for water to be traded in markets so it finds its most valuable use.
Gittens then addresses Howard's big plan in terms of rural water users and the irrigation industry:
The plan has two main elements and both are ill-considered and wasteful. The first is to spend almost $6 billion providing irrigators with modernised infrastructure, mainly lining or piping for their major water channels.The Commonwealth would pay $4 for every $1 the farmer paid. In return, the Commonwealth would get half the water "saved" for return to the river and the farmer would get the other half. Not a bad deal, eh? Especially when you remember that much of the water "saved" through reduction of seepage and run-off would have found its way back into the river, anyway
This is the Government subsidising improvements that irrigators hadn't considered worth making themselves - mainly because their water's so cheap they don't mind wasting it. This is the Government picking a single, infrastructure solution to the farmers' problems and, in the process, trying to keep irrigators right where they are.
It ignores the Productivity Commission's findings that "'saving' water via major infrastructure works is often costly compared with other options" and "subsidies that seek to improve the uptake of particular technologies or practices solely to increase the productivity of water use are likely to be ineffective".
Gittens then says that:
The plan's second element is to spend $3 billion buying back from farmers the grossly excessive (and hence often unfilled) water entitlements given to them by state National Party ministers, particularly in NSW. Not bad if you can get it. Trouble is, the Howard Government's tender to buy back entitlements under an earlier scheme has just collapsed because the price the farmers demanded was too high. They think they're sitting on a goldmine - why wouldn't they?
Th plan is a giant subsidy to the irrigation industry. So much for good economic rationality.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:43 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
Barry Jones on education
Barry Jones has an op-ed in The Age, which is from an edited text of his dean's lecture for the faculty of education at the University of Melbourne last night. That lecture, which is not online, was entitled 'Education: Creativity, values, equity and changes in society'. The lecture should be online. What is wrong with our universities?
John Spooner
The extract makes interesting reading in the light of the poorly educated unskilled being rusted on Coalition supporters for its educational policies. I'm unsure why that is so.
Jones says that:
The age of the information revolution — which should have been an instrument of personal liberation and an explosion of creativity — has seen public policy dominated by managerialism, the "public good" replaced by "private benefit", the decline of sustained critical debate on issues, leading to gross oversimplification, the relentless dumbing down of mass media (linked with the cult of celebrity), substance abuse, the rise of fundamentalism and an assault on reason.The "knowledge revolution" ought to have been a countervailing force: in practice it has been the vector of change.
Succinct and sharp. But he takes it no further. That's the disappointment. It is also unclear what is meant by the "knowledge revolution" as distinct from the information revolution.
Jones goes on to say that many liberals in the social democratic tradition:
believed, and still continue to hope, that public education would be an instrument for personal and societal transformation. But education often seems to entrench or reinforce existing abilities, or disabilities, advantages or disadvantages.
Maybe the social democrats were asking too much of a free public eduction-- that would also be an education for personal responsibility-- as a driver of progressive social change. Jones could have explored how the internet and personal computers have transformed education in terms of making students both more autonomous and more connected to the public issues of the day. They have enabled an education outside of the school.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 29, 2007
a free ride for energy pollutors?
It appears that John Howard, who has resisted an nationwide emissions trading scheme, will agree to one when the PM's emissions task group recommends one next week. That policy reversal is what the leaks are saying, even if the PM is on the record as regarding climate change as an irritant. The spin is interesting to watch: denialist, sceptic, realist. Realist means protecting jobs and economic growth.
But what kind of emissions trading scheme will be recommended? Will it be one that recommends big exemptions for energy intensive industries, such as steeling making and aluminum? One that gives exemptions to the biggest pollutors? Now that would be a strange way to reduce greenhouse emissions. So would one in which permits to pollute are given away rather than being bought, through auctioning. The aim is for price to be used to encourage companies to reduce their emissions.
in his op-ed in the Canberra Times Peter Martin says asks, 'surely that couldn't happen to emissions trading? His response:
It is exactly what is being proposed. Polluter after polluter that has made a submission to the Prime Minister's taskforce on emissions trading has said that while it supports the idea of a trading scheme, it wants the price of the permit set low and it wants to be given enough permits gratis to cover most of the pollution it already does. As Australia's most venerable economic modeller and one of the signatories to the economist's letter, Professor Peter Dixon, of Monash, University told me, "It's the same as putting a tax on carbon pollution and then instead of doing something useful with the proceeds like cutting another tax giving it to the shareholders of the polluting companies."
Martin adds that it is even better than that for the polluting companies. If they get given for free permits that a would-be competitor would need to buy, they get given a built-in cost advantage. Their would-be competitors might not bother! No wonder they like the idea.
Setting the price low --say about $10 per tonne emitted----would be another indication that climate change is not being taken seriously to cut emissions from electricity generators. In Question Time in Parliament Howard indicated that he would go light on targets. Targets are not good. It looks as if Howard just wants to be seen to tackle problems. He isn't interested in trying to fix problem. Rather he wants to just be seen trying. Since he is in the appearance business he can a make grand gesture while the problem is a concern of the electorate's mind. He did the same thing with water in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Update: 30 May
I see that Michelle Grattin in The Age agrees with me about Howard's performance on climate change in Question Time yesterday. She also saysthat:
yesterday's lashing out [by Howard] at Sir Nicholas Stern will do him little good. This is a big issue and the PM has a challenging fight ahead to convince people that the Government is fair dinkum about it. Yesterday's performance would give his troops little confidence that he's up to winning on this issue.
Spot on. He has to convince the broader business community he is serious, not just play the protection line for the intensive energy industry.
Bob Brown, in an an op-ed in the Canberra Times, addresses Howard's politics of appearance on climate change:
Politically he [Howard] needs to appear to take climate change seriously (thus his change from "climate-sceptic" to "climate-realist") and appear to act urgently (thus the creation of the emissions trading task group). John Howard doesn't need an emissions trading scheme to work that would upset the mining industry it just needs to neutralise the argument that the Prime Minister has no plan for addressing climate change at this year's election.
Brown says that Good climate change policy makes the polluters pay, raising billions of dollars in revenue and creating a real incentive to reduce emissions. Bad climate change policy pays the polluters, using taxpayers' money to fund ineffective policies. So far the Government has chosen bad policy. Some $10 billion from taxpayers goes each year to subsidise polluters in the fossil fuel industries in tax breaks or payments. As Brown says:
For a decade Howard has delayed action, refused to set targets, relied on voluntary action, blamed other countries and said they should act first, subsidised the polluting fossil fuel industries, and strangled funding for the cleaner alternatives like solar and solar-thermal and energy efficiency.
Will that end?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 28, 2007
some questions
I'm wondering if we have approached an 'its time' moment in the forthcoming federal election. Are we approaching and election that comes down to a simple choice: change or more of the same? Is this what is happening? So what do Australians really want right now? Change? Or more of the same?
Do Australians want more of the old white guys currently running the Howard Government? Or do they want something new and refreshing and more in tune with a modern liberal Australia? Are they tired of Howard's Australia? Do they want to say goodbye to the politics of fear? Do they yearn for, and desire to embrace, Rudd's Australia--conservative, Christian and progressive? Is this a safe change?
John Spooner
My judgment is that there is a mood for change and that the ALP is now competitive, finally. So things are finely balanced: the electorate is giving Rudd a bit of a look over whilst Howard is carrying a lot of baggage.
Rod Cameron on Lateline observed that it is finely balanced:
50-50, Virginia [Trioli ] but that 50 per cent… I've never had Labor at 50 50. I've got them up to 50 50 now... That's not confident, that is 50 50. But two months ago I was 35, 40 per cent chance for Labor. I think it's 50-50.
Cameron then gives a pen picture of the person who he reckons is going to determine the next election:
This is oversimplifying it but it's not distorting it. The person who will decide the election is going to be living in the outer suburbs of Sydney, or Brisbane or Perth, or a regional centre right throughout the country. He will be a skilled blue collar worker, or a contractor, or subcontractor or self employed. She will be a part time worker, clerical or sales assistant. They'll have a couple of kids who are going to low fee independent schools, they'll vote Labor at a State election, they had voted Labor federally in the past but haven't for a decade. They're telling opinion pollsters they're going to be voting Labor federally, but will they if Rudd is seen to be too close to the unions? This, I think, will be the actual key point.
Michael Kroger reckoned that Cameron had the first 80 per cent right.
Rod Cameron identified I think the symbolism is correct that those people have mortgages and they all have jobs with 4.5 per cent unemployment. They've all got jobs, got quite big mortgages and they've also probably bought or owned a property for some years, they've had increased equity in the property, they value of that property has gone up and they've made money, capital gains, tax-free. They've got money put away for holidays, for kids' schooling, for healthcare, et cetera, et cetera.
Kroger doesn't think the big issue will be whether or not Kevin Rudd is seen as too close to the unions. He reckoned that people have got a view Labor is heavily union-influenced. I think they've worked that out, and that will scare some and won't scare others. He says:
The big question is, are people, when it comes to polling day, when their finger, hand goes over the ballot box, are people going to risk Howard and Costello for Rudd and Wayne Swan? And I think this is the big issue which Labor yet, which we haven't seen in this campaign. It's been all about industrial relations. When it moves away from that onto the Coalition's main ground, I think that's when you're going to see a change in the polls.
So there you have it. IR or economic management are the decisive issues.Kroger is basically arguing that the economic fundamentals of low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and rising wages will turn the tide in the Government's favour as we approach the election. Cameron highlights the significance of a negative campaign depicting Labor's industrial relations platform as harassing and belittling small businesses and reinstating union power.
Note how climate change does not figure. It should, as it is not a beltway issue.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:24 PM | Comments (45) | TrackBack
Indigenous health
A report by the AMA on indigenous health suggests that institutional racism contributes to Indigenous people having lower life expectancy than whites---the difference is 17 years. The institutional racism means that Aboriginal people receive inferior health treatment that reinforces the limited health services in remote and regional Australia.
Bruce Petty
Helen Hughes, in her Lands of Shame, argues that the social dysfunction in Indigenous communities, can be traced to the socialist homeland model, that favoured exceptionalist and separatist indigenous policies. It advocated the return of those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who had remained relatively untouched by education to tribal settlements and outstations in the remote lands being returned to them under native title legislation. There they could live traditional lives as hunter-gatherers uncontaminated by modern Australia, away from mission stations and government camps. She argues that these traditional Aboriginal cultures should have been dismantled through economic assimilation.
There are two responses to this argument. First, there is a desire in Aboriginal communities for traditional identities, legal protection for inherited rights to land and the transformation of some aspects of traditional culture in the process of seeking jobs, training, and education as a way out of material poverty.
Secondly, the poor health of Indigenous communities is partly due to public health spending being heavily weighted toward treatment in public hospitals --the end of the line in health care--and not in primary health care.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:20 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
May 27, 2007
drugs in sport: another miscue
How come the Howard Government has decided to pick a fight with the AFL over drugs in sport? Senior government ministers, such as Christopher Pyne and Peter Costello, have done so by accusing it of being soft on drugs because players can only be sanctioned on the third positive test and demanding that it adopt the government's zero tolerance policy?
The AFL and NRL are the only sporting bodies in Australia which test players for illicit drugs out of competition in addition to the World Anti-Doping Agency anti-doping policy, which focuses on testing for performance-enhancing drugs. The AFL has a three strikes policy under which clubs are told only if a player has failed a test for illicit drugs for a third time.
That means a player can fail a test for illicit drugs and still take to the ground. The AFL's policy seeks to work with players who have used recreational and other drugs before taking steps that would adversely affect their careers, while also protecting players' privacy. This treats illicit drug use as a medical matter that puts the wellbeing of the illicit drug user first.
So why decide to beat-up the AFL, as opposed to the government demanding out-of-competition testing from the 88 other sporting bodies? Is Canberra's "Tough on Drugs" policy to be the only approach? Is it because it is an election year and the drums on law and order need to be sounded? So AFL players found to be using illicit drugs should face immediate suspension, the matter be referred to the police and the player/ users seen as criminals.
As Christopher Scanlon observed in The Age a week or so ago:
The AFL's approach, on the other hand, has allowed [Ben] Cousins to get the help he needs, while leaving open the possibility of him resuming his career. Contrary to what the Treasurer thinks, the message that has been sent out to children is that drugs can jeopardise your health and end a promising and lucrative career. The pity of this approach is that similar high-quality rehabilitation services that have helped Cousins aren't available to every drug user who needs help.
Isn't this a more productive approach to the treatment of those who have problems with illicit drugs?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 26, 2007
miscue
Whatever has happened to Bill Leak? He's lost the plot on the IR issue-- and consistently.
Bill Leak
Is he trying to express the sentiments of a blokey patriarchal culture? One that is in favour of the stay-at-home woman. I see that the Coalition's strident hitters are trying to run the line that Rudd is attacking stay-at-home mothers and wives!
Surely, Therese Rain would support Kevin Rudd not John Howard. There were no AWA 's used by her companies, the underpayments appear a genuine oversight carried over from the previous owners that, most importantly, were corrected by Ms Rein when they were discovered. And this happened long before the issue hit the national headlines. So why would she support Howard and Costello in the boxing match?
We have stepped into the realm of the imagination or the conservative political unconscious.
Leak is representing strong, independent professional woman as bossy and aggressive. That's the blokey culture bit. Presumably, the blokes have spent so much time secretly surfing the net for porn at night that they need a women to sort the AWA thingy out for them.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:20 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack
May 25, 2007
carbon trading
The Prime Ministerial taskforce on greenhouse emissions will deliver its report next week, against a background of the price of electricity going up ---wholesale electricity users are being quoted price increases of between 30% and 120% when renewing contracts. The reason is that there's not enough water to help generate the electricity from conventional coal-fired power plants. If the existing disconnect between the water supply and demand continues, we have power cuts.
This disconnect is happening in South East Queensland, where two of the largest coal fired power plants are running at 80 per cent capacity at the moment simply because there's no water to cool the plants and generate the steam that is needed to drive the turbines. So the Queensland Government's putting in a $1.7 billion pipeline to take recycled water to the coal fired power plants to keep generating electricity. Isn't that a public subsidy?
It's just the drought the state politicians say. What if it were the effects of global warming as well? What if we are getting a glimpse of our future? If so, shouldn't the money be better spent differently? Some say--the Nationals-- we need to build more dams and build more coal-fired power stations. I reckon its farewell to cheap electricity, no matter what.
The task force is expected to recommend the establishment of an Australian marketplace for trading carbon emissions. Will this start a much needed revolution in Australia's energy sector? Or will it be just a tentative toe in the water?
A carbon trading scheme would work by placing a cap on Australia's total greenhouse emissions, set lower than our current rate of pollution. Just as governments now issue permits for fishing to limit the number of fish pulled out of the water, polluters like power stations would be given permits which would limit how much they're allowed to pollute. The permits could be traded. Those who couldn't cut their emissions enough could buy permits from green power companies.
So there's a certain amount coal fired power stations allowed to pollute and then they have to pay a price. The price is the dollar amount that they pay for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit into the atmosphere after they have exceeded their cap. That's the point at which your penalties begin. What level should the cap be set and kind of penalties are the issues?
Tim Flannery argues that what is needed is a significant cap on greenhouse gas emissions that will force electricity suppliers to go to renewable energy sources and natural gas in order to source quite a substantial amount of the electricity they sell. A cap that will begin the transition to a carbon-free economy. Consequently, the politics will be around the extent of the cap---whether it is set at $20 per tonne of carbon emissions or $40-$50 per tonne of carbon emissions.
Flannery says the latter figure is what is required:
I think it probably should be around $50 per tonne. Working group three of the intergovernmental panel on climate change did modelling and $50 a tonne gets you significant reductions and that would equate to about a doubling of the wholesale price which would be about maybe 30 per cent of the retail price. So the bill that you and I pay might go up 30 per cent which sounds like a lot but when you think about it if you can't make 30 per cent efficiency gains in your house I don't know, there's something wrong. We all waste a lot of electricity and I think there's no doubt that most of us can make those sorts of cuts.
Will the PM's taskforce recommend that the level of the cap be driven by considerations of reaching the threshold of dangerous climate change? Don't we need to do that to avoid overshooting the threshold and propelling us into a much warmer world? Or will it make major concessions to the energy intensive companies?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:59 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
tricky political moments
I saw the full Rudd interview on Sky News yesterday afternoon against the backdrop of government decay. Rudd handled himself well video He came across as a human being in difficult situation dealing with it as best as he could. Mistakes were made he said but they were rectified. He acknowledged that the situation with his wife's businesses and him trying to become PM was a difficult one for him.
Rocco Fazzari
Therese Rein's business --Ingeus -------takes unemployable people and makes them employable, and it does it on government contracts. So if Rudd were to become prime minister, then this would present an acute conflict of interest. So should Rein sell her life's work for his ambition?
Rudd's response was that this was:
...It's a tough call on a marriage. I am proud of my wife. She has built up her business from scratch. This is the age of professional women who run their own companies, who run their own lives, who aren't simply appendages of middle-aged men. I love my wife dearly.It is a very hard decision to say to someone prior to an election – and we don't know who is going to win the election – offload the businesed
Rudd presents him and his wife as a modern marriage--the partners live in "two different spheres" and had "separate lives" as far as their careers were concerned--- facing a contemporary dilemma. It is one for which they have no ready answer and needed to take advice. You cannot do better than that can you? So different from a Mark Latham blowing his fuse.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:44 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
May 24, 2007
health care: ALP slips up
Mike Steketee's op-ed, ' Evidence of illness not a private matter', in The Australian is important as it addresses the politics of health, which is rarely mentioned these days as a hot button issue. He says that Health Minister Tony Abbott's favourite way of taunting Labor is to say the Howard Government is "the best friend Medicare has ever had".
This is actually chanted in Parliament by the Coalition MP's during Question Time at the end of Abbott's reply to a dorothy dixer. Abbott leads the chant. The ALP rarely asks questions on health these days, let alone searching ones. Abbott has done his job well--negated the ALP's ownership of health.
Steketee says that this kind of taunting by Abbott:
.. hurts because Medicare was the Hawke government's proudest social policy initiative, but the Coalition has had great success appropriating it for its own purposes. In 1993, when Paul Keating had an unexpected election win not only by campaigning against the GST but also against the Coalition's anti-Medicare stance, voters preferred Labor over the Coalition on health policy by a margin of almost 25 per cent, according to the Australian Election Survey, a detailed opinion poll conducted by academics after each election. By 2001, this gap had narrowed to 13 per cent and in the 2004 election it shrank further to 6 per cent.
Abbott rubbed the sore hard last week by saying that Kevin Rudd had not even mentioned health in his budget reply speech, and he then trumpeted the Government's budget measures.
Steketee is dead right on this. Abbott runs circles around the ALP on health. And the ALP allows him to. They just sit there and squirm. Federal Labor realize that they've dropped the ball, that Abbott has it, and that they are not doing much to get he ball back. Maybe they are hoping that it will slip from Abbott's hands?
The ALP has let this issue slip even though the Government has used the cover of Medicare to engineer a large shift of health resources from the public to the private sector. The shift to private health has induced higher health costs since doctors are able to charge more for private patients, and private health funds are less able to control costs than a single national insurer. Yet the ALP has let the issue slide to the backburner.
Steketee says that Labor has been holding its fire on health announcements but it has no appetite for picking a fight with the private sector. In terms of healthcare reform, it cannot go back to the fully fledged welfare state and it must live with the mixture of public and private health when it addresses the rising costs of health care as well as as quality, access, efficiency and equity.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:24 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
May 23, 2007
the penny's dropped
The penny had to drop sometime didn't it. Along with mining booms and prosperity goes the economic insecurity caused by high mortgages, Work Choices and global warming. Another advertising campaign to rebrand Work Choices into a goody goody brand to make us feel safe and comfortable in the Lucky Country isn't going to cut it.
Matt Golding
The realization is that its more than an ALP honeymoon. Something has shifted in public opinion at a deep level. Despite at the lack of overt antagonism to the Coalition unease is now working its way through the Coalition ranks as the clock ticks. The Coalition is looking embattled.
Standing on their economic credentials for a decade of sustained prosperity is not going to be enough. Nor will the fear campaign -'Rudd the destroyer' will tear down our Mcmansions and send us all to the workhouse --- bite deeply.
People must be concerned that federal funding for private schools will increase from $5.8 billion to $7.5 billion over the next five years, whilst funding to public schools will only rise from $3.1 billion to $3.4 billion over the next five years. After all 70 per cent of parents still send their children to government schools. As Ross Gittens points out in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Today, the budget shows public schools getting 31 per cent of the money while the private schools get 69 per cent. But public schools still have two-thirds of the enrolments. Mainly because of Commonwealth grants, funding for non-government schools is growing at three times the rate of spending on public schools, which is far in excess of the growth in the private sector's share of enrolments....Get this: the minimum grant per student paid to private schools ranked as the least needy is now far higher than the grant per student paid to public schools.
The education revolution is one where the commonwealth is quietly moving to a position where they look after the private schools and leaving the public schools to the states. It is a substantial public subsidy to private schools, who continue to charge big fees.
I presume that the anti-public pro-private prejudice of the members of the Coalition is such that it holds public schools are for losers whilst private schools are for winners. Just like public transport.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:33 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
May 22, 2007
a political solution in Iraq
The political solution in Iraq, as opposed to the military one, was for some sort of political deal amongst Shi'ites and Sunnis and Kurds to form some sort of coalition. That does not seem to be possible. The Shi'ites do not look as if they are going to relinquish any power and the Kurds are looking out for themselves and unwilling to compromise with the Sunni Arabs. So the Sunni insurgency continues.
In this interview Ali A. Allawi by Juan Cole at the Chronicle of Higher Education it is stated by Allawi that the coalition presence in Iraq is an occupation, that stabilization in Baghdad is working in favor of the [predominantly Shiite] United Iraqi Alliance-led government, the presence of foreign troops that have done nothing to stem the violence and mayhem in the country and Shia-led alliance is well on its way to dominating essential parts of the state apparatus, with the US trying to thwart that eventuality. The American war had called forth a genie that the Pax Americana did not like: a Shia-led Iraq. The Bush administration recoiled from the verdict of its own war.
Allawi, a member of the Iraqi government and author of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, says that a US withdrawal will not have a material effect on the level of violence:
I do not think that a civil war, which presumes a rough equivalence between the groups inside Iraq, would break out more virulently than it already has. The insurgents will not be able to overwhelm the state. The fact remains that unless there is wide foreign (Arab) intervention on behalf of the Sunni Arabs, there is a power and resource imbalance between the Shia and the Sunni Arabs. The Shia demographic majority, their control over the government apparatus, and their access to resources ensure that this imbalance will continue to their advantage.
He says that a gradual retreat by the central Shiite government from its claim of power over Sunni Arab areas can pave the way for a regional solution to the crisis.
Allawi says that what the Sunni Arab insurgents can do is to make the country, or at least those parts that they can reach, insecure and violent, and difficult to govern. They can also block any attempts of the government to extend its control into their territory, or at least make it extremely costly for it to do so. So the future, from Allawi's insider's view of the ongoing crisis in Iraq, currently looks to be one of a Shia-dominated Iraqi state, a quasi-independent Kurdish region attached to it, and the Sunni Arabs in varying conditions of discontent.
The Occupation of Iraq is a complex book----as this excellent review indicates; but one based in an historical understanding of Iraq.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:00 PM | TrackBack
Global warming increasing
Media reports indicate that recent research to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the jump in global greenhouse emissions since 2000, whilst CSIRO research that Australia's emissions from fossil fuels---the principal driver of climate change---are increasing faster than the global average. The increasing emissions mean that average global temperatures are now on track to rise by more than four degrees this century - enough to thaw vast areas of arctic permafrost.
The international study shows that growth rate of global carbon dioxide emissions has almost tripled since the 1990s, from 1.1 per cent a year to 3.1 per cent in the 2000s.This is faster than in the highest of the scenarios developed by the IPCC. Dr Raupach, a co-chairman of the Global Carbon Project, based at the CSIRO in Canberra, observed in relation to this research that:
Emissions are increasing faster than we thought, which means the impacts of climate change will also happen even sooner than expected. What this really highlights is the urgency of cutting emissions. It won't be easy, but we know that we have solutions available to us now to do that and that it can be done at a relatively small cost to the economy.
Australia is considered to be one of the most vulnerable developed countries to climate change. The IPCC recently warned that global warming was now causing "increasing stresses on water supply and agriculture, changed natural ecosystems (and) reduced seasonal snow cover" in Australia.
Despite this, Australia has achieved less than the US or Europe in improving the carbon intensity of its economy. Australia is the world's second worst carbon polluter per capita, producing 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels alone each year, just behind the US, with 20 tonnes a year. The global average is 4.3 tonnes per person. Australia is also less efficient in producing energy from the fossil fuels it burns than Japan or Europe.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:04 AM | TrackBack
May 21, 2007
Australia's foreign debt
I read that Dr John Edwards, the chief economist of HSBC bank, has prepared a paper for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on Australia's export growth and foreign debt. It says that export growth has slowed between 2001 to 2006, whilst over the last decade foreign debt has blow out from $193 billion to about $540 billion now. That is not a good scenario given the resources boom.
Since the paper---Export Weakness, Investment Strength: The changing pattern of Australia's integration into the global economy----is not online we need to rely on the media. According to Kenneth Davidson in The Age Edwards argues that :
.... if Australia wants to stabilise net foreign liabilities at 100 per cent of GDP, it must permanently limit the current account deficit to a maximum of 5 per cent of GDP, and it must do so by running a trade surplus of 1 per cent of GDP. This doesn't look too much of an ask, but given that in recent years Australia has been running a trade deficit of 3 per cent of GDP, Edwards points out: "The move to a surplus of 1 per cent of GDP means that exports have to increase by 4 per cent of GDP or imports cut by 4 per cent of GDP, or some mix of the two."
Australia is running a current account deficit that is forecast to rise from $58 billion in 2006-07 to $66 billion in 2007-08, or 6 per cent of gross domestic product according to the budget papers. Australia's accumulated foreign debt is now well over 50 per cent of GDP.The implication is that the additional debt has to be serviced by Australia.
Does this mean the eventual fall in relative living standards? Perhaps. Since Australia has rarely been able to run a permanent trade surplus, i tis going to be difficult to achieve this.
Yet none of the two major political parties are concerned about this state of affairs. The key issue---will additional investment generate the foreign exchange through increased experts to service the debt liability-- is rarely raised by them or by the media. In an earlier op ed in The Age Kenneth Davidson argues that if commodity prices slipped back to around their long-term average, Australia's current account deficit would be likely to blow out to about 8 to 10 per cent of GDP, depending on how long it would take to adjust domestic demand in order to cut imports of goods and services. Yet the 2007 budget papers remain upbeat about economic prospects both nationally and internationally in the year ahead, despite Australia's growing external imbalance.
Edwards points out that "about half the increased investment in the last decade has been in the construction of houses". Unfortunately, there is only a tenuous link between the quality and cost of the housing stock, and a nation's capacity to export and thus service debt. On the other hand, Edward's argues that part of the offshore borrowing must have been used to sustain the existing capital stock, household consumption and house building ie., it is the household sector that is helping to run the big deficits and building debt.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:22 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
May 20, 2007
troubles in Gaza
The media reports in Australia represent the fighting in Gaza as Hamas versus Fatah forces or security personnel “loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas”, and this suggest that it is a catastrophic civil war.There is no light at the end of the tunnel as the tunnel itself, as far as Gaza is concerned, has been destroyed. Gaza is being turned into a Mogadishu.
What is ignored in these kind of accounts is the continued absence of a strong, central, and sovereign authority, is the hand of those running the White House Middle East policy. Elliot Abrams is the architect of US policy in the Middle East.
Ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, US policy under Abrams has attempted to "undermine Hamas by imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population so that the Palestinians could be forced into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership in Palestine. That is also a leadership acceptable to Israel. Both have opposed a national unity government under Hamas and Fatah initiated by the Saudi's, and they have sought to "undermine it.
So the civil war is a frontal assault on the national unity government, with the finger being pointed at Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who appears to be Washington’s favorite to play the client role of a Palestinian strong man.
Meanwhile Israel talks about peace but accelerates the pace of building settlements, Israeli-only roads, walls and so forth, bulldozing Palestinian orchards and homes etc. Yet Israel's political system is also in quasi-perpetual crisis as it tries to deal with the new political terrain opened up by Hamas's rise, Iran's ascent, and Hezbollah's war that exposed confront the limits of Israeli power.
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley open their important article in the New York Review of Books thus:
The idea that negotiations conducted bilaterally between Israelis and Palestinians somehow can produce a final agreement is dead. The world, slowly, is coming to this realization. Its fate was sealed in part because neither side has the ability, on its own, to close the gaps between the positions they have taken. The two parties also lack any sense of trust, but that, too, is not an overriding explanation. If bilateral negotiations have become a fast track to a dead end it is because today neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli political system possesses the requisite degree of coherence and cohesion.
Sobering. Hence the possibility of multilateral negotiations under the umbrella of the Arab initiative.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:05 PM | TrackBack
May 19, 2007
end of an era?
The pages of history are closing on those who waged war on Iraq---Bush, Blair and Howard--and then stood shoulder to shoulder with Republican America against Europe on Iraq. Blair has gone, wounded and despised, whilst Howard is looking at the writing on the wall. Bush is now a lame duck president and a political paralysis now grips the Bush administration in Washington.
Their rhetoric within the Republican FOX News framing--- about bringing democracy to Iraq and turning it into a model for the rest of the Arab world---trades on illusions given the on-the-ground realities: chronic instability, an incipient civil war, endemic violence and anarchy, an upsurge of terrorist activity of every kind, and a national insurgency to which the Anglo-American allies have no answer. Iraq in becoming a failed state, is the new heart of darkness. Even Riverbend, who wrote Baghdad Burning, is leaving Iraq, thereby joining 2 million of her compatriots.
I appreciate that Blair talks about God being his judge over the Iraq war, and that Bush, as an imperial president, reckons God is by his side in his imperialist war to ensure US hegemony in the Middle East. What then are to make of the abject failure of Congress to perform its constitutional duty of oversight? Do we presume that the devil is on the side of those Americans who want to rebuild the constitutional system and subject the government once again to the discipline of checks and balances? Does God talk in terms of Republican FOX Newspeak and talking points?
No doubt history will pass a harsh judgment on Blair and Bush's intervention in Iraq. The United States military has made little secret of its view that the bloodshed in Iraq can now only be contained, rather than stamped out and that's the best call. Rumsfeld, Bolton, Wolfowitz are gone ; Kagan 's surge plan is failing, Gonzales, as Attorney General is facing no confidence moves, Karl Rove is under seige, President Bush 's polls are at their lowest levels ever, and the British have had enough. Only the Australian conservatives are left waving the flag for Commander Codpiece.
We should not forget that the US currently maintains 737 military bases (by official Pentagon count) in more than 130 foreign countries on every continent except Antarctica. Blair supported Bush's belligerent unilateralism toward other countries and he went along with the imperial presidency's contempt for international law. So did Howard. For both regional US hegemony in the US should not be challenged. It is deemed to be right. Both Blair and Howard sycophantic relationship with the hard neo-con power in Washington meant that they accepted the apocalyptic discourse of the “war of civilizations”, where in black and white terms they see the forces of Good (the West) confronting the forces of Evil (Islamic “terrorism”).
Unlike the Europeans, Blair and Howard have tacitly accepted the current US strategy to turn Afghanistan into a client state under a NATO flag from where US power projection into the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and South Asia and Central Asia would become possible. However, it does not look as if it is possible for US to accomplish its objective of creating a vibrant Afghanistan to consolidate its presence in Central Asia as a part of a traditional realpolitik strategy.
Will the US pursuit of a tactical annihilation of the Taliban came at the strategic cost of radically destabilizing Pakistan? Currently, the US's strategic position in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a defensive one---retaining a long-term strategic foothold as the Taliban, captures the odd town and approaches Kabul's city gates.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:44 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
May 18, 2007
US leaving Iraq
Marc Lynch is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University and the Elliott School of International Affairs who runs the Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark was interviewed by Ken Silverstein at Harpers Magazine about Iraq and the American occupation.
Lynch, who is the author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today, says:
The United States should commit to a withdrawal, not tomorrow but with a clear endpoint – benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them. The insurgents have made it pretty clear in a series of public statements and private communications that they’re willing to start talking and dampen down the violence if the United States commits to withdrawing from Iraq. We’re at a moment where there’s actually a chance for positive developments, because we have a common interest with the insurgents in defeating Al Qaeda and they are putting out clear signals that they are willing to make a deal. But everything hinges on the United States making a commitment to withdraw – politically, they can’t and won’t get in the political game without that because it would destroy their credibility and because, frankly, getting the United States out really matters to them.
That's not likely with Bush and Cheney in the White House fighting off the Democrats in Congress.
On Al Qaeda Lynch says that:
the paradox is that even as Al Qaeda repels people with its actions, its core ideas are becoming more widely accepted, and that’s really troubling, and a real indictment of American public diplomacy. That’s also why the situation in Iraq is so devastating at the wider regional and global level. Killing people in Morocco and Algeria triggers a negative reaction, but fighting Americans in Iraq resonates with a much wider part of the Arab population.
Al Qaeda is remarkably successful in spreading its jihadist world view, the notion of a fundamental clash of civilizations and the idea that Islam is under threat, in the Arab world. At the same time, neither Al Qaeda as an organization nor bin Laden as an individual, is commanding a great deal of respect or support.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:44 AM | TrackBack
water woes
It is what I had feared. It is not just the dams (Hume and Dartmouth) along the river system are at just 5.7% of capacity, and are in real danger of running dry, or the continuation of the low record of inflows into the system this year. Significant rains and inflow are needed in June.
There is less water (stream flows) flowing into the Murray-Darling Basin that has been previously estimated because surface water and ground water have been regarded as separate systems and so allocated as separate sources, when they are interconnected and around 40% of the inflow into the Murray-Darling comes from ground water.
According to the AFR today (subscription required, p. 8) hydrologist Richard Evans states that ‘if (groundwater) extractions continue to grow, by 2050 the loss to the River Murray will be around 711 gigalitres’. Such a loss is equivalent to half the water that needs to be put back in the River Murray to restore its health.
John Quiggin has more on this, as does Harry Clarke.
So there is less water for agriculture and urban use (including Adelaide) than estimated and greater pressure for cut backs in water allocation licences. The Nationals, who oppose any cut backs, are being pushed into a corner. As are the downstream irrigators who rely on the unregulated use of ground water, and state governments who have allowed the unregulated use, and mismanagement, of ground water when the cap was placed on water taken from rivers. If you pump out a lot of the groundwater, then there isn't much left for the river.
Will this overcome the current denial about the extent of the country's water crisis and its long term implications? The Nationals argue that water should be returned to the environment through efficiency gains rather than buying back licences and that the state should fund the improvements in infrastructure to achieve the efficiency gains.
At the moment the Government is doing very little about water on the ground, whilst Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister of Environment, is being pretty flaky on water. He dismisses the ground water issue, downplays the commitment to buying back water allocations on a voluntary basis, waffles on about the reasons for postponing the implementation of the hastily prepared $10 billion water plan, and refuses to release information and reports supporting the water plan. Presumably the Nationals are blocking. Eventually the Nationals will be forced to back down on their opposition to cutting back the overallocation of water licences.
What will also need to change is the water restrictions policy whereby urban consumers make relatively small cuts in their water use, as this is not a sustainable way to plan for the country's future water supply. Recycled storm and wastewater is a better approach. So is repairing leaky ageing infrastructure. State governments governments have resisted calls for more spending on the nation's dilapidated water infrastructure. They continue to strip $1 billion from the profits of their publicly owned water bodies, with most of the money being redirected by the states for spending in areas unrelated to water.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:44 AM | TrackBack
May 17, 2007
What's good for Telstra is not good...
A much unloved Telstra plays hardball in furthering its interests. It continues to doing so with its public campaign against the federal Government and its market regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, over broadbanding the nation.
Telstra's strategy is to pressure federal Communications Minister Helen Coonan to override Graeme Samuel and the ACCC on the price at which Telstra's competitors can access its proposed fibre-to-node broadband network. It is endeavouring to take of advantage of the election to cut a backroom deal with Coonan at the expense of consumers.
Alan Moir
Telstra's proposed price is pretty steep---between $80-95 dollars per month are the figures being mentioned. That is way above (30% more) than what currently I pay for ADSL2+. If Graeme Samuel and the ACCC represent the public interest, then Telstra is acting for its own interests as a private company. It is not just concerned with looking after shareholders wealth: it is trying to entrench its market dominance at the expense of real competition or genuine choice for consumers.
As is well known, this situation is the consequence of poor policy by the Howard Government: it refused to split the retail and distribution arms of Telstra prior to it being privatisation. The Howard Government was only concerned with selling Telstra, and not concerned with ensuring competition in the telecommunications industry, establishing high speed broadband infrastructure or a proper regulatory regime.
If the Howard Government's mantra is that the state has no role to play in broadbanding the nation because this is job for private companies to do, then it fails badly for not ensuring that the fundamentals are in place to ensure genuine competition. We cannot say, as the Australian Financial Review does in its editorial on the 16th May that it should be left up to the commercial decisions of investors and users, operating within a sensible regulatory environment.' That is wishful free market thinking---market fundamentalism if you like---as we do not have a sensible regulatory environment in the telecommunications industry. The ACCC is currently trying to build one against a background of poor policy decisions by the Howard Government.
Currently, we do not even have an open discussion of the Telstra or G9 fibre plans. Nor have either of the plans been made public so that we can see what is being proposed. The G9 promises its plan next week. Telstra is content to complain with great bitterness about the regulator because it cannot get its way to change the rules of the game.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:43 AM | TrackBack
May 16, 2007
simplistic media rhetoric
This Pray for Rain animated cartoon by Nicholson is much more witty and complex than this one dimensional effort:
Bill Leak
I presume the "house" refers to economic credibility whilst Julie Gillard as a union luvvie comes straight out of Janet Albrechtson, who writes:
As far back as December, we’ve been giving Rudd some gentle advice that he needs to pick the Labor Party up by the scruff of the neck and shake off the union ticks and fleas. In short, Kevin Rudd needs to do a Tony Blair. Since then Rudd has failed to heed the advice, outsourcing IR policy to the ACTU and union luvvie and IR spokeswoman, Julia Gillard.
Albrechtson also depicts Gillard as the redback spider of the union movement spinning its web to trap honest workers.
Yet the ALP is traveling well in the polls, it is countering the attack by big business on its industrial relations policy, whilst the campaign against Work Choices has legs and resonates in the electorate. The Work Choices laws remain an issue despite their softening to include fairness. Hence the media campaign with its simple message: The ALP is trying to live in the house of economic credibility while opposing every economic reform and running "slick advertising slogans" to win public support.
Of course, as is well known, The Australian is doing its bit in this media campaign. Rather than it being the watchdog for democracy, we have the continual bagging of Labor by columnists Piers Akerman in the Sydney Daily Telegraph and Andrew Bolt in the Melbourne Herald Sun, and the news coverage of the two biggest selling tabloids in the country promoting the Coalition cause. Murdoch's papers call 'balance ' 'fairness' and 'objectivity' as running an explicit anti-Labor campaign.
So what happens if Labor win"? What does that say about the media power that is ruthlessly being deployed? I wonder what News Corp makes of the poor poll results that must be sending sent shockwaves through the Federal Government ministry and causing much unease in backbench?
What is more interesting is what is happening around global warming, the water shortage in the Murray-Darling Basin, or in marginal seats such as Tasmania. Note how these are all environmental/economic issues. They do not necessarily work to the Coaltiion's advantage.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:36 AM | TrackBack
May 15, 2007
ground zero politics
The legacy of Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, is a strengthening of the centre of government, through the creation of a department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, as in Australia, to push through reform. This is not just command and control, as Blair is also associated with a quasi-market approach that works by putting users in the driving seat in education and health whilst ensuring that equity is protected through state regulation. That approach also requires central lead to create quasi markets and regulation.
In his farewell speech Tony Blair looked back to when he was elected in 1997 and said:
So 1997 was a moment for a new beginning; for sweeping away all the detritus of the past. Expectations were so high. Too high. Too high in a way for either of us. Now in 2007, you can easily point to the challenges, the things that are wrong, the grievances that fester. But go back to 1997. Think back. No, really, think back. Think about your own living standards then in May 1997 and now. Visit your local school, any of them round here, or anywhere in modern Britain. Ask when you last had to wait a year or more on a hospital waiting list, or heard of pensioners freezing to death in the winter unable to heat their homes.
It is that phrase..."1997 was a moment for a new beginning - the sweeping away of all the detritus of the past" .. that disturbs, especially when the social, economic and political past continues in the present. The past is what is changed it is not liquidated.
The historic inheritance and structure of British politics cannot be "swept away" like so much rubbish in the morning. It is structural. What would replace those political structure of parliament? A "new beginning", like some ground zero that leveled everything into debris? Blair never did anything like that at all. He actually fell back on the old centres of imperial power" such as rule from above, glorification of "hard" power, imperial ambition, corruption.
Liquidation of history is a trait of neo-liberalism isn' t it. Raze the past and start again. It reminds of Descartes who claimed at the beginning of the Meditations that we can destroy everything that came before us and build philosophy anew from the foundations. It's a desire to be found in a lot of philosophers, a desire to get rid of everything and start again. This metaphysics of destruction is a version of modernity and modernism; one that basically says we can destroy and start again.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:54 PM | TrackBack
education mantras
John Howard in his speech to the Centre of Independent Studies made an interesting comment when countering Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's call for an "education revolution in the second of his 'Australia Rising' speeches . Howard condemned Labor for an excessively economically based approach. Labor's mantra pressed education "into an almost soulless and narrow form of national economic service. Invariably, this ends up producing not just bad education policy but even worse economic policy."
Huh? That sounds like a Hayekian attack on the grand plan, state coercion and crushing uniformity doesn't it? Julie Bishop on Lateline did decode 'souless and national economic service' in terms of numbers. The ALP only thinks in terms of numbers (eg., increasing school retention rates so that Year 12 retention rates are 90 per cent by 2020) whereas the Coalition thinks in terms of the individual and values such as quality, choice and opportunity.
So what does quality mean? It pretty much means a back-to-basics education traditionalism: basic academic standards, competitive examinations, teacher-directed lessons based on traditional disciplines, clear and readable curriculum material and strong but fair policies on school discipline. Anything progressive--eg., 'no exams--is seen as soulless national economic service. Its not very convincing argument, given the decade of neglect of public schooling by the Coalition in favour of private schooling and its neo-liberal mode of governance.
Educational conservatives hold that English lessons should teach grammar, history is History, not Society and the Environment or Time, Continuity and Change, that geography is Geography, not Place and Space. They are not in favour of diversity of courses or educational approaches.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:24 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
May 14, 2007
Bastard Boys
I watched the ABC's Bastard Boys last night. Looking back at these events from Work Choices we can see that this dispute over waterfront reform in 1997 involving the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was both the beginning of the attack on the unions by the Howard Government, and the decline of union power. A new era is dawning. The unionists involved come to understand that the labour movement's historical role of being an integral part of Australia's national identity is lessening rapidly.
So what are we being offered? A documentary or drama (fiction). It is unclear. Though each of the main protagonists tell their side of the battle of the waterfront, the drama's perspective is weighted towards the union case about the events leading up to the mass sacking of Patrick's entire unionised workforce.
Corrigan gets his say about the low productivity and archaic work practices on the waterfront, the intransigence of the union and the financial precipice on which he stood at the end of the secon episode tonight.
The historical events are the stuff of great historical drama, as the struggle was bitter and the political and moral questions go deep. It is best to interpret Anne Davies' script as a traditional character drama based around a holistic literary narrative rather than a visual one. It reminded me of social realism in its representation of the world view of a traditional working class. A documentary it is not, nor should it claim to be.
The character acting--- apart from Josh Bornstein, the union lawyer--was wooden and one dimensional, especially for the former Marxist Greg Combet of the ACTU and neo-liberal Chris Corrigan of Patrick Stevedoring. Bill Kelty, the former ACTU secretary, looked an idiot. Was that fright wig and sour face meant to signifiy a caricature?
Because of the poor visuals--apart from the opening scene of balaclavas and Rottweilers---character had to carrying the historical story in terms of appearance and its essence, and it had do so with little by way of character development as the historical events unfolded through confrontation.
I found the drama--- not the dialogue--- disappointing and boring. It was the significance of that historical issue that kept me watching, not the conservative dramatic representation that endeavoured to represent a totality.The first episode lacked depth, and it was not persuasive that right was on the union side. It looked less history and more partisan in its perspective, even though it represented the conflict within the union between the old ways of brawn and the new ways of brain, and the inevitable passing of a traditional working-class trade union culture.
Of course, conservatives are going to decry the partisan union perspective of class warfare. Has not the ABC critic and Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells already said that the drama "smacks of another example of wasteful spending by the ABC, being used to drive an anti-government, pro-left agenda, conveniently timed to appear during an election year". The drama does downplay the role of the Howard Government---Peter Reith, the then workplace relations minister, makes a cameo appearance--- in favour of concentrating on the dramatic conflict on the docks and in the courts.
Update
I've just watched the second episode that is centred around the fight in the courts and the rule of law. It is true, as Robert Manne observes in The Age, that:
"Chris Corrigan" is Bastard Boys' most complex creation. He is ruthless and unscrupulous but also gentle and protective of his family. He is determined to win at any cost but also amused about, and somewhat distant from, the drama he has unleashed. Ideologically he is committed to the cause of business, but contemptuous of the gutlessness of his corporate friends when the going gets tough. He is implacably hostile to his trade union enemies and their supposedly neanderthal values, but capable of admiring their firmness of character and unanticipated combat skills.
This means, says Manne, that by its end Bastard Boys has become a far more complex political drama than might have led us to believe.
Complex yes. But we never really see Corrigan planning his political strategies to run the docks more efficiently with a labour force half the size. This failure undercuts Manne's conclusion that by the conclusion of the drama, 'through intellectual rigour, the historically accurate and politically fair-minded balance has been achieved. Nope, its hardly a fair minded balance. '
Why would you want that false kind of objectivity anyhow. Balance is not appropriate--it's the way the issues are dealt with that is important, plus the depth of the analysis.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 13, 2007
blogging and pro journalists
I tried to join the National Press Club in Canberra as a citizen blogger a while ago. They laughed.
Their view was that as a blogger I cannot be a serious media person since all I do is sit at home and mouth off at whatever takes my fancy. I said my reason for applying for membership as a blogger, rather than a country member, was that I was deeply dissatisfied with the the prevailing political and media power centers. Being an entrepreneurial sort of chap I had created my own online publishing instruments for expressing and activating that dissatisfaction.
The tone in the room turned cold. Hostility was the reaction that accompanied the tight smile. I pressed on: there is not enough real adversarial and investigative reporting by the Canberra Press Gallery I offered as a conciliatory gesture. An overweight middle aged journalist heard the exchange and opined that I must be one of those left-wing blogger types who act as parasites on the reporting by the professionals in the gallery who work for first-rate media organizations.
I decided to cut my loses and join the Press Club as a country member.
However, I could not resist keeping the conversation going. Doesn't the Canberra Press Gallery engage in punditry as well as reporting I asked? How is that not mouthing off at work?
The reply was swift. The Canberra Press Gallery are in touch with the common sense of most Americans and understand how they live and how they think about their government. Moreover the careers of the Canberra Press Gallery require access and information, which in turn requires networking with politicians and their staffers, and the media corporations for which they work. That's why we are professionals in contrast to you amateurs. The national Press Gallery is for professionals.
My response was that the Canberra Press Gallery was a source of the problem. The Canberra media are not outsiders looking in on the Canberra power system, for they are eager participants within it, and so cannot they perform the adversarial and watchdog functions that our political press says it performs and upholds. Moreover, the Canberra media are not representative of the Australian heartland or mainstream since they largely attribute their own views to what ordinary Australians believe. So we need to ask what, if anything, does it mean to be a professional journalist?
As you can see the conversation was going nowhere. A divide was looming. Time to move on.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:04 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
May 12, 2007
fiscal conservatism?
I missed Round 2. I was reading about hedge funds and private equity and so I'm not even sure what Round 2 was about. Rudd's response to the Costello Budget? Round 3 is definitely about economic credibility, which is deemed to be the foundation stone of political credibility. Economic credibility, apparently depends on being a fiscal conservative.
So what does a fiscal conservative mean these days? Running budget surpluses? Continuing the transformation of the Australian economy from an inwood-looking manufacturing based one to an an outward -looking services dominated one? Enhancing market competition, deregulating the economy as well as an open economy? That is more neo-liberalism isn't it?
How about reducing government taxation, no government debt and reducing government expenditure? Small government, in other words. That's quite different from Howard's big government conservatism. isn't John Howard a fiscal conservative? But John Howard doesn't fight for spending cuts. He stands for spending as much money as he can---a Big Spender. Aren't Howard and Costello taxing and spending Australia's economic prosperity from the mining boom?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:12 PM | TrackBack
May 11, 2007
Blair's long goodbye
Steve Bell on drawing Tony Blair.
Blair promised a new start of progressive politics after the 18 horror years of Thatcher's hard-edged authoritarianism. New Labour, which came in to power on 179-seat landslide, stood for a new dawn. In the beginning Britain was about to enter a new, better age, and it looked as if it might come true: a decade of economic stability and prosperity, public institutions - schools, hospitals, local libraries; new democratic institutions.
It was the love affair with war that bought it all unstuck. Blair walked along with the American neo-conservatives, in step with them. I remember Blair for the allegations of exaggerating the intelligence or taking Britain to war on a lie. The outcome was starvation, refugees' movements, burning oilfields, torture, ethnic cleansing, civil war. Iraq became the millstone around Blair's neck. Blair was devoured by Iraq. Iraq is a mockery of liberal interventionism.
Blair ended up no longer being trusted by the British electorate and he ended up painfully alone.
What happened? Why the error in judgement? Why the full on embrace of the US neo-conservative project? Why did he continue to stay close to Bush when the closeness was destroying him--the absence of any WMD, the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib? Why allow himself to be seen as a poodle of a reviled American president?
That's the puzzle isn't it. How did a good man go so wrong but still believe he did right?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:40 PM | TrackBack
Rudd: equality as skills training?
One of the effects of the global market flows is increased inequality. This is most obvious in the most globalised industry of all---the flows of finance capital. How then do you increase equality in 21st century Australia within a neo-liberal mode of governance that celebrates private equity capital as entrepreneurial heroes? Poverty today is not just caused by inadequate income and income support--poor education, poor health, gambling, substance abuse and a breakdown in social relationships also lead to poverty.
Getting a job is all that is necessary for fairness is the consistent Howard/Costello line. No matter that it was low skilled or part time--that was a matter of choice by the worker who was looking for flexibility. AWA's ensured flexibility by reducing working conditions and wages for the low skilled, but ensured $150,000 a year for a trades person in the mining industry in WA. However, slowing down any growth in the minimum wage, without major changes to the tax and welfare systems, will only reduce the incentive to move from welfare to work by reducing the rewards from working.
The ALP answer is to boost the incomes of the low skilled workers through greater school retention rates and vocational training so that they have more marketable skills. Can you design an education system that improves the skills of the bottom 40% of workers and improves fairness in the workplace?
Well Kevin Rudd gave a good indication in his budget reply speech. Pour the money into developing trades centres in public secondary schools. That is to the way to increase the productive capacity of the economy. Will it work? I have no idea. But it is an example of "fresh thinking" --far more so than lifting the cap on domestic full fee places in universities; it is a thinking about how working Australians can aspire to the accumulation of wealth.
And it gets the ALP a foot back into the economic debate that it has, by and large, excluded itself for a decade or so. Is this the way to recast Labor as a modern, progressive political party; a signpost as to how modernised Australian Labor would seek to develop new ideas for 21st century Australia? Maybe. It has to do some fresh thinking because in Question time since the budget has been dominated but by the Government taunting Labor over its industrial relations policy, and not by Labor attacks on the Government.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:20 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 10, 2007
higher education, market freedom, CoAG
I'm rather suprised by the lack of scepticism and critical analysis around the education funding and policy in the Costello budget. If education was the centrepiece of the budget, then this is from a government that has been hostile to universities and neglected them for over a decade. The $5 billion endowment fund will only provide around $300 million a year for 38 universities with around $1.2 billion in deferred maintenance backlog.That's less than $10 million each as Kevin Rudd points out, for capital works and research facilities.
Presumably some universities will gain and some will lose. As will also happen with the cap on the number of full -fee paying domestic students being lifted, even though a publicly supported HECS-paying students remains the core of the higher education system. I presume that student loans will increasingly become the dominant form of student contribution.
This means that the gap between the sandstone and big research universities---the prestigious universities ---will only grow wider, since more market freedom allows the older universities to exploit their market power and to become more elite.
Where does the ALP stand on the increasing shift to a more market mode of governance now? It can no longer go back to the world of fully funded funded university places. How will they respond?
One way open is for Rudd to reject Costello's hostility to the state and his refusal to link his education proposals to CoAG's human capital reform agenda that aims to boost productivity. Rudd can say that federal Labor will work with the states in the name of co-operative federalism to implement the broader CoAG reform agenda on health and education.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 9, 2007
Costello's 2007 Budget
So it was a politics style budget as expected, the centre piece of which was the higher education endowment to help the long-term funding of tertiary education. That's good politics, as it cuts the ground from under the Rudd-ALP focus on an education "revolution".
The tax cuts for Howard's battlers, and spending up big over a range of portfolios, such as the environment, child care, transport and fighter plans, which cover the black spots where the ALP has some traction, land another punch on the ALP.
It was a cleverly crafted budget. Costello even gave the impression of more spending to come to ease the political pressure points, such as those around climate change. So is smirks all round the Coalition ranks judging from Question Time, the Coalition has the cash to fill the policy gaps identified by Labour.
The ALP is going to struggle to attack the package. Obvious gaps were structural reform to improve productivity or address the causes of climate change. Or broadband, for that matter. Or tax reform? Or export growth to address the current account deficit. Costello could have used the huge increases in revenue to do something to address these in a significant way and link them to CoAG's National Reform Agenda. But he didn't.
Take the much heralded water initiative. The Budget avoids the tough issue of buying back water licences. Only 30% of the $3.1 billion allocated to the buy back will be spend in the next four years. The National's stand in the way of reform, as they refuse to acknowledge the reality of the overallocation of water licences by state governments. Costello's budget does nothing to change that, as there is just $27 million for buying back overallocated rights in 2006-7.
And energy? Well, all that has changed is that Costello has restored a programme that had been cutback in 2006---doubling the rebate for solar panels for households. Big deal. Especially after spending a decade denying the existence of global warming.
However, the political reality is that the ALP needs to win 16 seats to govern in his own right. That’s still a big ask. Queensland needs to turn to do it. The Coalition has yet to sniff defeat. Will water and climate change help turn an election? Maybe in the marginal seats of South Australia? Will they do so in Queensland? How many seats there are swinging to the ALP. I heard 8 had at a meeting in Canberra yesterday. No doubt the ALP has lost some in WA.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:53 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
May 8, 2007
heath: cost containment of PBS?
Dr Lesley Russell, a former health policy adviser to the ALP, has an op-ed in the The Age about the forthcoming legislative package introduced into Parliament by Tony Abbott, the commonwealth Health Minister This legislation will implement changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) scheme that build on the 12.5 per cent generic price reduction policy introduced in August 2005. Behind this sits the Intergenerational Report and the need to contain health care costs, especially the projected growth in the expenditure of the PBS.
The op-ed gives an insight into neo-liberal mode of health governance. Russell says that:
That policy has proved a bonanza for the Treasury coffers, but costly for consumers. The mid-year economic and fiscal outlook showed that for the first half of this financial year, PBS savings were $270 million more than expected and more than covered the $225 million spent on newly listed medicines. But patients' out-of-pocket costs for their essential medicines continue to rise due to premiums added by manufacturers and fees added by pharmacists that do not count towards the PBS safety net, the threshold for which has also increased.There is nothing in this new legislation that will guarantee that consumers will pay less for their PBS prescriptions, and there is every reason to believe that they will pay more.
She says that a major flaw in the Government's package is that it does nothing to build and support a domestic generic pharmaceutical industry so that it can provide real competition leading to the sort of price reductions the introduction of generics brings in other developed countries.
Russell adds that:
In the guise of protecting the sustainability of the PBS, the Government has increased co-payments by 21 per cent, increased the safety net thresholds, and allowed brand premiums and special patient contributions to be applied to one in six medicines listed with no attempt to measure the impact on the health-care system and on health outcomes in the population. The huge savings are not reinvested in health care, despite the growing need for programs to tackle prevention and better management of chronic illness.
What we have with the Howard Government is a focus on costs and budgets rather than health outcomes. Government is seen as a corporate entity with an obsession about debt and finance. So the neo-liberal strategy is for costs to be moved off budget through user pays and onto the community. Through cost shifting the community comes to bear an ever greater part of the growth in outlays.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Israel: Australia as cheerleader
Ross Burns, a former Australian ambassador to a number of Middle East countries (Israel, Lebanon, Syria), has some interesting comments to make in The Australian about Australia's support for Israel's foreign policy in the light of the Winograd report into the conduct of the Olmert Israeli Government in the 2006 Lebanon war.
Burns says:
The question for Australia, though, is what do we achieve by a cheerleading posture that takes no account of rights and wrongs, let alone the practicalities of Israel's capacity to achieve its objectives? The "he (Hezbollah) hit me (Israel) first" line not only lacks sophistication in such a high-stakes theatre as the Middle East but as Winograd has shown, it is beside the point.
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, in taking his cues from Republican Washington, has become a stalking horse for the Rightwing Likud position; one that is based on the continued existence of the settlements in the occupied territories, a united Jerusalem and only one state west of the Jordan.
Australia's current policy on the Middle East is not based on Australia's national interests. Burns adds that:
The other lesson for distant Australia is that the conflict brought into the open the extent of Australia's uncritical stance on wider Middle East issues......Fortunately, Israel has a more robust capacity to encourage deep self-criticism and policy reappraisal. But it won't be well-served by its friends if they maintain a policy of cheerleading for reckless ventures that are only likely to inflict on the Middle East a new wave of extremism. If Israel can have a vigorous debate on its options, Australia can have one on its policy. Our relations with the Middle East, for example, should have many dimensions. The Government's belief that it can say anything in relation to Israel and ignore the consequences for our profile in the Arab and wider Islamic world is not a healthy assumption.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 7, 2007
Private equity: scouring the world for deals
The international capital flows of the global economy currently appear in the form of hedge funds and consortium's of off-shore private equity firms engaged in buyouts or takeovers of well established public corporations. We have seen their play with the Seven and Network, these (involved the two leading US private equity firms, CVC and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) with Qantas by Airline Partners Australia (which had been put together by Macquarie Bank). We may yet see a play with respect to Telstra.
A private equity firm will control the management of a company they’ve invested in, and will often bring in new management whose job is to make the company more valuable for a three-to-five year exit, usually a tradesale (a flip) or a re-listing. In many cases these private equity deals work by loading up the acquired company with debt, splitting the parts up, reducing costs and acquiring the cash flow to repay the debt, then repackaging the company, and selling if off for a higher price. Up to 90 percent of the cost of takeovers (also referred to as "leveraged buyouts") is funded by debt.
You get the distinct impression that the banks are falling over themselves to provide the debt finance for the deal, whilst the private equity firms are very cashed up and are scouring the world looking for deals. This kind of freewheeling market capitalism is where the excitement is, and we should not underestimate its significance.
In an essay for the Harvard Business Review (October 1989) Michael Jensen wrote that:
“The publicly held corporation, the main engine of economic progress in the United States for a century, has outlived its usefulness in many sectors of the economy and is being eclipsed. Takeovers, corporate breakups, divisional spin-offs, leveraged buyouts and going-private transactions are the most visible manifestations of a massive organizational change in the economy. Despite the protests, this organizational innovation should be encouraged. By resolving the central weakness of the large public corporation – the conflict between owners and managers over the control and use of corporate resources – these new organizations are making remarkable gains in operating efficiency, employee productivity, and shareholder value.”
Presumably, the regulatory governance regime needs to be lightened to allow the private equity firms to make their play, as they don't have to give out very much information about their activities. After all this is capitalism, and the people that the private equity firms should be accountable to are just the people who have invested.The private equity firms should be able make a great deal of their money from the fees they're charging from the 'deal flow' (the various deals turned over).
What holds up the PE deal making are low interest rates, creative financial engineering, affordable capital and a leveraged bet on rising stock markets – temporary market conditions? The possibilities of debt, distress and default associated with excessive gearing loom with a change in market conditions. If the market changes, you get caught.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
seducing middle Australia
It's budget week. Christmas time for voters who are disgruntled and battling. That's the appearance of the budget's strategic assaults on a Rudd-led ALP. If what counts in politics is winning, then Howard and Costello will spend big dollars to buy their way out of the Coalition's current position of trailing a resurgent Labor Party. They have around $10 billion and $15 billion to play with. Will the Howard Government act as if the resources boom will last forever?
Bill Leak
No doubt the message will be simple: a raft of election-year goodies in one hand ; in the other hand an argument that Labor cannot be trusted with the keys to the Treasury. The 2007 budget's wooing the electorate (low and middle income earners) will not succeed in re-electing the Howard Government by itself: it is but one brick in the repositioning. The recent changes to Work Choices are another brick.
No doubt the budget will be sold as 'investing in Australia's economy for the future' through the spending on infrastructure. Does that mean addressing climate change other than in the form of government advertising or subsidies to the coal industry? Will it begin to take action or continue to do nothing?
What limits the big spend is that an expansionary fiscal policy (lots of tax cuts) puts upward pressure on prices, interest rates and the Australian dollar. Australia's unemployment rate is very close to being as low as it can go without wages growth beginning to accelerate. Australia is also as close to the full employment of its resources of land and labour and capital as it has been in 30 years. So major spending could overheat an economy operating at full capacity.
What we have developing is workforce constraints: the growth of the work force as a whole will slow as the number of young workers entering the work force dwindles to barely match the number of older employees leaving it.That will limit economic growth. Will Costello address that situation in the 2007 Budget? Or the failure to make the shift from domestic drivers of growth to export demand. Export growth has been low--- around 2.5%, even with a resources boom.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:52 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
May 6, 2007
the politics of wellbeing
If material wealth is not the same as well-being, then a cultural shift around working time - a normalisation of shorter hours is necessary so that both men and women can work, care and live flourishing lives. If that is what a politics of wellbeing is about, then happiness requires good health, nourishing relationships, meaningful activities and autonomy.
Will either political party move to reshape the working time required to ease the oppressive strain of an outdated work culture (built on the assumption of a stay-at-home wife) on today's typical two-earner family. The longer the hours a man works, the more he leaves his partner to pick up the domestic responsibilities, thus crippling her capacity to work.
It is hard to tell what is happening policy wise behind the carefully managed media images and reflections as to how they think whether, and how, governments should act explicitly to enhance well-being in a neo-liberal world:
Matt Davidson
However, it does not appear as if the wellbeing debate is central. The politicians are tacitly saying that working 60 hours a week is vital for business competitiveness and individual choice".
Yet the use of "individual choice" stands opposed to Labor's history, which it has always been understood that employment conditions are very rarely a matter of individual choice - isn't that the whole rationale of trade unionism? Few politicians are arguing that Australia has become far too competitive and oriented to personal success, or question the way we increasing rely on drugs to ensure relief from crippling depression and anxiety conditions.
We have a work/family structure where long-hours culture generates a twin-track labour market which dovetails neatly with employers' interests: well-paid jobs with long hours at the top, and poorly paid jobs with short hours at the bottom. Childless professional women will crash through the glass ceilings, but those with caring responsibilities (mostly women), who get trapped at the bottom with a big pay gap. Doesn't his work/family structure cause depression and anxiety?
We need to find ways of continuing, deepening and broadening the debate around the politics of wellbeing.Tilting the balance back from economy friendly families to family friendly economies would be a start.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:59 AM | TrackBack
May 5, 2007
IR: softening the market's hard edges
John Howard has spent more than a year playing down the extent of voter unease over his workplace laws with a scare campaign about union bosses running the country. Howard, however, knew the unfairness of Workchoices was a major problem for the Coalition in voterland, and that it was losing traction to the ALP on the issue. The ACTU's advertising campaign was effective in tapping into the sense of disquiet over the erosion of working standards.
Geoff Pryor
That disquiet is grounded in the data that shows that 45% of individual agreements stripped away all the award conditions that the Howard Government promised would be protected by law. So Howard had to do something to counter the momentum of the Rudd/Gillard/Combet wagon and ease public anxiety.
He has backed down and introduced a fairness test for new AWA's. If a worker is worse off--as many lower income workers are --then they receive compensation, broadly defined. Will the "fine-tuning" as it is called be enough to ease the anxiety and keep the battler's locked inside the Coalition's tent?
Of course, neo-liberals interpret fairness as a market concept and g for the Australian Financial Review that means having an opportunity to have a job. The expansion of the last five years has been from the resources (China) boom and this has translated into a jobs boom without the crash and burn of inflation, a credit squeeze, a recession and a jobs crash. So the goal of social justice is displaced by the goal of wealth generation.
Hayek argued, social justice is a mirage because to try and promote a just distribution of economic rewards is utterly misguided. As Stephen Macedo says in Hayek's Liberal Legacy:
The reason is that economic rewards are part of a vast unplanned system .No person or entity distributes awards. The pattern of rewards that results from market exchanges is the consequence of innumerable individual decisions, and these results are often quite arbitrary. Success or failure in the market may depend partly on effort, skill, and merit, but they often depend crucially on luck and unforeseeable events, and the actions of other people in far-flung corners of the globe.... No one is responsible for the overall pattern of distribution that the market produces. We must accept the outcome of the market order, moreover, or else risk upsetting a system that on the whole provides the best chance of satisfying people’s expectations overall.
Hayek insists that we must accept and live with the contingency of market outcomes in order to garner the benefits of the market. This acceptance is deeply at odds with the social democratic traditions in Australia, which holds that we can collectively intervene if we choose to do so, through democratic means. These interventions need not, take the form of central socialist planning, but may take the form of more modest efforts to promote universal access to certain basic benefits (such as health care, education, unemployment insurance, housing) and to provide a basic safety net.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:15 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 4, 2007
bureaucrats redesigning the health workforce?
I attended the national Health Workforce forum in Melbourne yesterday. The forum is designed to help implement the National Health Workforce Strategic Framework, which addresses health workforce shortages and maldistribution against a background of demographic change, new technologies and empowered consumers.
This policy reform is concerned less with the continuation of the status quo with ever larger numbers of doctors and health care professionals and workers,which seems to be the position of many state premiers, and more about future changes in the kind of health workforce in Australia. For instance, the Health Workforce Strategic Framework recognizes that the more difficult issue will be that:
the types of healthcare workers may change and that these changes will be deeply impacted by technology. So ensuring the right practitioner mix will be crucially important and this is likely to involve a mixture of new disciplines and new roles for old disciplines. Boundaries and established professional roles will need to evolve; and new knowledge and skills be acquired, maintained and expanded. In turn, all this will place a greater focus on the length of education and training and the content of education and training programs.
So what we have is decade-long state planning in a neo-liberal world. The mixture of planning and market forces undermines the conventional view that the struggle against socialist planning in a social democratic Australia is over.
Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman, of course, would have regarded this kind of planning as presupposing the elitist belief that naive rationalist bureaucrats can be trusted to advance the public good and denounced this planning as socialism by the centralized state as interference of the state in the life of the individual. If cutting taxes is often advocated as a way of constraining the centralized, planning state, then the critique would be directed at the knowledge presupposed by the planners.
Contemporary neo-liberals would, no doubt, follow Hayek in firing their well directed arrows at the fatal conceit of the bureaucrats--their undue faith in the power of a 'constructivist rationalism' to subject society to control through planning, and so ignores the fact that civil society is a "spontaneous order".
However, the current situation more complicated than that, since the rational bureaucrats know that the impetus or driver of major reforms to make the health system more responsive to patient needs, and more focused on preventative primary care , will come from consumer pressure----ie., Friedman's consumer sovereignty. Consumer pressure will motivate the reform-fatigued politicians to continue with ongoing reform of the health care system.
Of course, the neo-liberal heirs of Hayek and Friedman interpret consumer sovereignty in terms of the egoistic drives of possessive individuals pursuing their desires and so focused on finding happiness in financial wealth and consumption. However, the health consumers are not short-term utility maximizers of neo-classical economics as they are concerned about health, and preventing themselves from becoming sick and and wellbeing. What we have is a new politics of well being.
In Australia the politics of wellbeing, that is based on policies of time and care, is argued for by Clive Hamilton at the Australia Institute, and the way it understands wellbeing can be seen from The Wellbeing Manifesto.
However, it is true that in a neo-liberal mode of governing health financing is the major driving force behind reforms. Whereas equity was the dominant issue of earlier decades, the 1990s saw it displaced by the issue of financing and expenditure. Tjis is more than cost containment, as there are changes in the underlying principles of the health system, since health care becomes a 'commodity' and care recipients 'consumers'. Greater emphasis is placed on goals such as increased outputs for decreased inputs, performance and efficacy, quality assurance and financial accountability, and evidence-based evaluation.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 3, 2007
a dominate executive
I've generally interpreted the Bush administration in terms of it being an imperial presidency by which I mean a strong executive that overides and ignores the rule of law. Those who defend this position say that an executive subordinated to the rule of law is in danger of being subordinate to the legislature. Thus Harvey C. Mansfield states:
One should not believe that a strong executive is needed only for quick action in emergencies, though that is the function mentioned first. A strong executive is requisite to oppose majority faction produced by temporary delusions in the people. For the Federalist, a strong executive must exercise his strength especially against the people, not showing them "servile pliancy." Tocqueville shared this view. Today we think that a strong president is one who leads the people, that is, one who takes them where they want to go
Mansfeld is pretty much for one-man rule. Only a strong president can be a great president.
So the American President has the power to act as a Prince and override the rule of law when circumstances supposedly justify that.That's President Bush since 9/11 isn't it. The endless War Bush claims justifies and compels the vesting of unlimited power in the President -- "unlimited" by Congress, the courts, American public opinion and the rule of law.
What works for quiet times is not appropriate in stormy times says Mansfield. And we live in stormy times.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 2, 2007
netroots: are they forming in Australia?
An interesting essay by Jonathan Chait in the New Republic that has some relevance to Australia. Entitled 'How the netroots became the most important mass movement in U.S. politics' it discusses the rise of the Democratic machine in response to the much admired Republican one, which claims that it won the war of ideas or the culture wars. Chait says:
The most significant fact of American political life over the last three decades is that there is a conservative movement and there has not been a liberal movement. Liberalism, to be sure, has all the component parts that conservatism has: think tanks, lobbying groups, grassroots activists, and public intellectuals. But those individual components, unlike their counterparts on the conservative side, do not see one another as formal allies and don't consciously act in concert. If you asked a Heritage Foundation fellow or an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal how his work fits into the movement, he would immediately understand that you meant the conservative movement. If you asked the same question of a Brookings Institute fellow or a New York Times editorial writer, he would have no idea what you were talking about.
A similar situation exists in Australia. The netroots have begun to change all that in the US with the politically activist blogs, such as Daily Kos, Eschaton, and FireDogLake that are allied to liberal bloggers such as Talking Points Memo and Washington Monthly. A movement, and its partisan ethos and party-line sensibi is developing, and it is one dedicated to the cause of Democratic victory. Political punditry is not a form of intellectual discourse but of political battle.
Is something similar happening here in Australia? Do we have homegrown Labor Party netroots that see politics as a battlefield and understand a the effectiveness of an idea in terms of its rhetorical effectiveness, not its truth?
Chait describes the shift that place with the netroots:
The notion that political punditry ought to, or even can, be constrained by intellectual honesty is deeply alien to the netroots. They have absorbed essentially the same critique of the intelligentsia that the right has been making for decades. In the conservative imagination, journalists, academics, and technocrats are liberal ideologues masquerading as dispassionate professionals. Those who claim to be detached from the political struggle are unaware of their biases, or hiding them.
Any sense of detachment from the partisan fray is impossible as we are caught up in a political war. So the netroot bloggers are a message machine.
What has formed during the '90s and the Howard years is a shift in the media landscape: a large mainstream media, with a social liberal bias mostly working in terms of liberal objectivity and profesional neutrality and a wildly is there an audience for in raw partisan liberal attacks? Will the Internet Left blogs grow in response to this demand for raw meat?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:41 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
IR, ALP + corporate backlash
It's been building so quickly hasn't it---the negative reaction to the Rudd/Gillard IR policy by the big end of town. The corporate backlash to Labor's new industrial relations policy was to be expected, as was the overheated rhetoric about unions leaders being akin to crime bosses from the Liberal Party's corporate mouth pieces.
John Howard's Workchoices legislation is unfair as it basically tilt too far in allowing business to abuse worker's rights (eg., reducing penalty rates, overtime, redundancy pay and holiday pay) so Rudd and Gillard have corrected that excess. But the situation for federal Labor starts to get serious when Alan Carpenter, the WA premier, joins the corporate Greek chorus in criticizing a core ALP policy in an election. Just politics?
Well, Rudd and Gillard have found themselves placed in the position of needing to limit the fallout by making some sort of adjustment.
'Rudd threatens to strangle the booming resources industry' is the message now circulating throughout the media from the Greek chorus. Since this is the wealth creating sector of the economy, Federal Labor needs to deal with the criticisms in order to avoid having them converted into evidence of the ALP's inability to manage the economy. Howard is waiting to pounce after rushing out a a $1.4 billion business support package.
There is room for Rudd and Gillard to move in their 'work in progress'. Firstly, federal Labor's promise to abolish AWA's makes no distinction between AWA's at the top end of the market and AWA's at the bottom end of the market. It is the latter that the ALP should be concerned about ---as these are being used as an instrument to cut wages and working conditions of working families. But that is not the case at the top end of the market. So why not design a "fairer" system of individual employment contracts, rather than abolish AWAs altogether?
Secondly, the proposed one stop shop--Fair Work Australia as a regulatory and advisory body-- wears too many hats. It is policeman, prosecutor and judge. Isn't a seperate judicial authority needed? It is becoming clearer that Fair Work Australia exercising judicial functions could well fall foul of the High Court's strict requirements for judicial independence, and for judges to have judicial tenure as is required by chapter three of the constitution?
Thirdly, it would appear that business groups are particularly critical of the new policy for allowing unions to regain control by automatically opening collective bargaining arrangements if a majority of workers in a workplace want a collective agreement. Have Rudd and Gillard swung too far the other way in sacrificing flexibility for fairness? I guess it's the detail here that is crucial, but having things buried in the detail rather than upfront and open makes people suspicious.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:36 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
May 1, 2007
The ABC's selling of Downer
As we know the world of the media is changing rapidly. So, out of interest, I watched the ABC's Australian Story on Alexander Downer last night. I find this programme walks a fine line between a new kind of journalism--people telling their own stories--- and marketing a goody image of specific people. It was also about the relationship between the media and government and party political politics.
Apart from showing the Foreign Minister dealing the recent plane crash incident in Indonesia Australian Story came across as a selling of Alexander Downer during an election year. He was presented as a nice likeable chap doing a stressful job well, despite the obvious personal toll. Suprisingly, the programme also included attacks on Kevin Rudd, and it ended with a clip of Downer defending the occupation of Iraq and going on about the ALP running the white flag line with its call for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
This programme was not a personal story of dealing with tragedy. So what is Australian Story up to? Can we call it media corruption in the form of the drip feed?
The political reality is that Downer, along with The Australian, Fox News, Weekly Standard etc, lives in fantasy land about 'progress in Iraq'; and he is out of touch with Australians being overwhelmingly in favor a legislated, forced withdrawal on a date certain. Apart from a refusal to recognize reality Downer, as a neoconservative, bears some responsiblity for some of the worst falsehoods and most egregious errors leading to the disaster in Iraq.
This 'selling of Downer' kind of programme raises questions about the state of the media in Australia. The media is becoming an infotainment industrial complex that is cutting free from the old culture and civic mission of journalism that considered itself a part of civic democracy. If the Australian Story programme was political and about the relationship between the press and the Howard government, then it ought to have made some reference to the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions.
This reference is one that would mention the role played by the Australia media in enabling the Howard Government and its warmonger spinners and publicists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. Alexander Downer, as Foreign Minister, was and still is, a central figure in the Howard Government's strategy to deceive the country into accepting a war based on a whole set of false claims -- and the Canberra Pres Gallery nation's media outlets acted as a conduit of this mass deception of citizens. Yet the media still reckon they did a great job as professional journalists.
Isn't that arguably the most significant political story of the last decade? Not the job of Australian Story?
Then what is it doing providing a platform for partisan political attack in an election year? What is most disturbing about Australian story is that it doesn't think that it is doing anything wrong. They see no need to be accountable for providing such a platform.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:27 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack