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September 30, 2007
the media is a business
In Goodbye to Newspapers? in the New York Review of Books Russell Baker says that it is on the ownership and management side that the gravest problems for mainstreaam newspapers exist. He quotes from a recent speech given by John S. Carroll, a former editor of the Los Angeles Times, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who states that in the post-corporate phase of ownership:
we have seen a narrowing of the purpose of the newspaper in the eyes of its owner. Under the old local owners, a newspaper's capacity for making money was only part of its value. Today, it is everything. Gone is the notion that a newspaper should lead, that it has an obligation to its community, that it is beholden to the public....
Someday, I suspect, when we look back on these forty years, we will wonder how we allowed the public good to be so deeply subordinated to private gain....What do the current owners want from their newspapers?—the answer could not be simpler: Money. That's it.
Baker says that the Wall Street theory is that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product. The relentless demands for improved stock performance has resulted in a policy of slash-and-burn cost-cutting that has left the media landscape littered with frail, failing newspapers which are increasingly useless to any reader who cares about what is happening in the world, the country, and the local community.
The implication is that the new-style corporate owners are indifferent to, and often puzzled by, their editors and reporters making the traditional argument that journalism's business is to provide a public service by supplying the information the citizenry needs for democracy to work. Maybe this democratic function is more than the press can bear, whilst a lazy Canberra Press Gallery, like its Washington counterparts, has tacitly given up its obligation to keep the public informed without fear or prejudice because of their tendency to defer excessively to political power.
So we have the tendency to repeat the narrative of government as the powerful tell it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:04 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
September 29, 2007
political cartooning
I've missed Pryor's cartoons. For some reason the Canberra Times doesn't put them online these days . That's a pity because Pryor's work has a bite that is often missing from the work of the other Australian cartoonists.
Pryor
It certainly makes makes some of the Canberra Press Gallery look like fluff pieces. Some of the political press at the right-wing noise machine----News Ltd---are saying that Rudd had another bad week, making it two in row; that Rudd is under pressure as his day of reckoning approaches; and that the political wobbles are caused by the Coalition targeting Rudd's glass jaw. So says Clinton Porteous in the Courier Mail. The coalition is catching up to Rudd as his lead narrows.
Give me Pryor any day to that kind of "political journalism" with its mind-numbing obsession with "horse race" analysis. The prose of the sophisticated insider political types is to prattle on in a speculative and gossipy manner about whether Howard and Rudd are winning and losing.
Have you noticed that these kind of pundits believe that they are representative of, and express, what most "ordinary Australians " believe? These pundits support the Howard agenda, the Canberra power system and the Canberra power brokers. In feeding off Canberra year after year these political journalists become appendages of it and vigorous defenders of nothing other than the Canberra system.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:01 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
enough already
It's hard to imagine what this year must have been like for people living in marginal electorates. And it can only get worse.
Last night on Lateline Ian Kortlang and Michael Costello agreed that the million dollar a day government adformation campaign is a wast of money. Unless the point is to annoy people, in which case it's working a treat. For those of us living outside magical marginal land it's bad enough, but it must be hellish for the folk in swinging seats.
What the rest of us think should happen has largely been established by successive polls, but the ones who don't think anything yet, and may in fact never get around to thinking about their vote, will eventually decide who will be doing the deciding for the next little while. For politicians these people have targets painted on their foreheads.
If media coverage is any indication these people can't answer the door or the phone, walk down the street, drop the kids at school or go shopping without having some pollster quizzing them or some political message shoved down their throats.
Michael Costello figures Howard should put off calling the election while there's still hope that some major event happens along to rescue him. Ian Kortlang thinks it should be called soon on the basis of the circuit breaker theory.
I imagine the swingers in the marginals would probably agree with Kortlang, if not for the same reasons.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:52 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
September 28, 2007
good governance
Whilst I was at the Australian Psychological Society's annual conference in Brisbane this week, I noticed that Joe Hockey, the federal Minister for Employment, was giving an address athe Brisbane Press Club in the Brisbane Exhibition and Convention Centre where the conference was being held. I didn't attend, and so I don't know what Hockey said but this op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald can stand in its place.
In it Hockey argues that:
Good governments should be in the business of building opportunity, not imposing its views on others through overt regulation.....And the best foundation upon which to build opportunity - whether it be social, environmental or individual - is a strong economy....Significant government polices do not operate in isolation. Indeed, a government bolstered by a strong economy is better able to implement them. Tackling problems such as the water crisis or climate change is not cheap.
Wilcox
Shouldn't governments be concerned about a healthy population. Providing an opportunity is a means to wellbeing not the end of government policy. Hocky implies that a strong economy is the end of governance, and this can be reinterpreted to meaan prosperity. So Hocky understands wellbeing as prosperity.
Being wealthy equals quality of life, in other words. This view is contested by Lindsay Tanner,the Opposition finance spokesman, who argues that:
time is the currency of relationships. We use money to buy goods and services, but we use time to build and sustain relationships.The pressures of modern life are eating into our time and making it harder to lead a balanced, fulfilling life. Everywhere you look, you will see battles about time at the heart of contemporary political controversies. ...In contemporary politics, relationships are an afterthought. Everything revolves around measures of material wellbeing. The health of our relationships is just as important, but it's harder to measure. So it's usually ignored.
He adds that material wellbeing is at the centre of Labor and Liberal traditions and that it has taken decades for environmental sustainability to come to prominence. It has with climate change.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:29 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
September 27, 2007
climate change not drought
I see that the Howard Government is providing money for farmers to walk off the land. Many will take it up as they have used up their equity and have no income. People----especially the National Farmers Federation----continue to talk in terms of "the drought"---ie.,exceptional circumstances--- in this area even though 1,000 families or more are expected to take the package and leave the land. The "exceptional circumstances" have become normal.
Does the farming talk avoid climate change in favour of the plight of drought-ravaged farmers because that would mean no more subsidies?
Tandberg
When people talk about future bush fires they talk in terms of global warming----that the catastrophes we've seen so far are just a glimpse into a frightening future.
It's a schizophrenic discourse.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:43 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
September 26, 2007
economic smoke and mirrors
Lets be honest. The Australian Treasurer doesn't run the Australian economy. Global markets do. Governments adapt. For instance, the Treasurer has little control or little say over China's economic growth and its demand for raw materials from a resource-rich Australia. The Treasurer helps to ease a few constraints in supply.
Peter Martin has an op ed on this issue in the Canberra Times . So does Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald. Have a read and a think.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:36 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 25, 2007
education gone missing: OECD Report
The OECD's Education at a Glance indicates that the Australia is doing poorly on early childhood education and public funding of tertiary education. The Report excludes childcare from early childhood education because childcare services neither embody mandatory learning programs nor are staffed by trained teachers.
Wilcox
Although most countries are increasing private investment in education the OECD notes that private investment is normally used to compliment public investment not replace it. Except in Australia, where public funding is decreasing and private investment is increasing, whilst total funding per student has increased only marginally.
From the perspective of a knowledge economy the funding of higher education looks bad---that strengthens the ALP's "education has been neglected" narrative. As the
OECD Report says:
Human capital has long been identified as a key factor in driving economic growth and improving economic outcomes for individuals, while evidence is growing of its influence on non-economic outcomes including health and social inclusion.
In a global economy people face growing pressures to go on developing skills and knowledge over their working life-time as job mobility increases and job tasks become more complex. It is the US, which is commonly seen as the number one knowledge economy in the world. Hence all the policy talk from the ALP about how education contributes to the knowledge economy and its stress on the critical role that education plays in making Australia and its citizens economically competitive.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:42 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 24, 2007
Howard's backflip on energy
The newspaper headlines say that John Howard has gone green on climate change. He has outlined a scheme to generate between 15%-20% of Australia's energy from low emission sources by 2010, including renewables (solar and wind) and new technology gas-fired power stations.
Hang a mo. Wasn't Howard opposed to setting targets around climate change? Hasn't Howard been arguing that the ALP is an economic wrecker because it has committed to a greenhouse reduction target ? Wasn't that the core of his attack on the ALP over climate change?
Oh I see, what is being offered is an amalgam of a series of existing state and federal energy programs into a single national regime. It's a rationalization to cut red tape, as the scheme's target is simply the sum total of existing and planned targets under the Commonwealth and states' energy target schemes.
Oh, I see the reason why the scheme's low emission source 'includes' renewables and gas fired power station is because it also includes clean coal technology--coal fired stations equipped with carbon capture and storage. I'm sure the scheme is open to nuclear power.
So we have been offered little more than a bit of housekeeping by Turnbull and Howard. Why now? Of course, Al Gore is in the country arguing for the ratification of Kyoto, the Howard Government will end the mandatory renewable scheme, and the United Nations has a summit that aims to break a deadlock in efforts to craft a global treaty on greenhouse gases.
So Howard has to be seen to be doing something, doesn't he. Newspaper headlines indicate he is doing something in terms of policy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:25 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
September 23, 2007
Will the US dollar decline?
Are the central banks of some nation states starting to liquidate their dollar holdings? What is the possibility of a sharp fall in the dollar? We have a big picture here; one that needs to be placed in the context of liquidity crisis in the global financial system.
The crisis needs to be put into the context of the the fault lines in American economy:—an overvalued housing market, high consumer debt and a huge trade deficit. Paul Krugman argues that the U.S. trade deficit is, fundamentally, not sustainable in the long run, which means that sooner or later the dollar has to decline a lot. But international investors have been buying U.S. bonds at real interest rates barely higher than those offered in euros or yen - in effect, they've been betting that the dollar won't ever decline.
Has the Federal Reserve's big interest rate cut sparked a flight from the US dollar and US assets generally that threatens to unravel the recycling of Asian and petrodollar surpluses that finance the gaping US budget and trade deficits? Are the Asian and Middle Eastern monetary authorities facing pressure to break their currency ties to the US dollar because of the greenback's weakness?
I don't know. I had always understood China to be the key because of the vastness of its dollar holdings arising from its trade surpluses.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:20 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
adverse events in Victorian hospitals
I have referred to adverse events in Australia's public hospitals before as well as the culture of denial that exists within the medical administration and profession. We have another example from emergency care in Victorian hospitals.
Dr Andrew Buck, of the Monash Medical Centre, alleges that the shamefully chaotic state of Melbourne's hospital emergency departments is jeopardising patient safety, compromising doctors' mental health and leaving health-care agencies exposed to negligence law suits. He is actign as a whistle blower despite a regime of open disclosure being put in place in Victoria.
In a letter to the state's top health officials — sent to Health Minister Daniel Andrews and leaked to The Sunday Age — Dr Buck, a senior emergency registrar at Southern Health, says despite Monash Medical Centre buckling under record numbers of patients during the recent flu and gastro outbreaks, no extra staff were put on to help manage the crisis. Buck says:
When I came to work on Monday night all cubicles were full and there were 14 'likely admission' patients waiting to be seen and seven 'likely discharge' patients waiting, and some of these had been waiting up to eight hours to be seen.That night, even when an elderly woman suffered a cardiac arrest and died in the emergency department, there were "no extra staff put on to cope with the workload, and there was still no communication from my superiors … about risk management or bypass procedure".It left me with a real sense of hopelessness about any chance for improvement in our working conditions. If this didn't trigger action on behalf of management what would? A death in the waiting room? Multiple deaths? I was appalled that patients' lives are being put at risk, my workload and stress levels, and risk of negligence claims are allowed to escalate unchecked purely so that the hospital can receive a funding bonus.
Dr Buck said that while he could comment only on his experiences of overcrowding and under-resourcing at Southern Health, he was "positive that this situation is being replicated" across town.
According to this Senate Report in 2000 by the Senate Community Affairs Committee there is little data on adverse events in Australia. The Report states that in 1994 the Quality in Australian Health Care Study (QAHCS) was commissioned by the then Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health to determine the proportion of admissions associated with an adverse event (AE) in Australian hospitals. This was the first published study in Australia that attempted to identify quality of care problems in Australian hospitals and the Senate Report states that:
The QAHCS study found that 16.6 per cent of hospital admissions were associated with an adverse event and 51 per cent of the adverse events were considered preventable....While in 77.1 per cent of cases the disability had resolved within 12 months, in 13.7 per cent the disability was permanent and in 4.9 per cent the patient died. For the two categories of ‘death’ and ‘greater than 50 per cent permanent disability’, the proportion of high preventability were 70 per cent and 58 per cent respectively.
The Senate Committee considered the extent of adverse events disturbing. The implications in terms of preventable adverse outcomes and the use of health care resources are substantial, especially as the Quality in Australian Health Care study suggests that in up to half of all adverse events practical strategies may be available to prevent them.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 22, 2007
Adelaide: water crisis
There has been little rain in Adelaide this winter. Consequently, the city is facing shrinking supplies, exacerbated by declining flows into the Murray River. The river still supplies 40 per cent of the city's water in an average year. However, inflows are at record low levels in the Murray Darling Basin, and the likelihood of permanent plantings like grapevines and orchards being lost has increased.
Experts have warned that Adelaide, which is under advanced Level 3 restrictions, could run out of water by the summer of 2008-09. Adelaide's current predicament is that this is not an average year, and so the city is currently sourcing 90 per cent of its water from dwindling Murray River supplies.
Atchison
The city's reservoirs are a buffer against further deterioration of water quality (increased salinity) in the River Murray. Currently filled to about 80per cent of capacity, they provide eight months' water supply for Adelaide and will operate as a final emergency tank if supplies from the Murray run out.
Current water management under the Rann Government is restriction on demand. The "temporary" ban on domestic outdoor watering through September to help conserve water for summer continues. Level 3 water restrictions relate to nurseries, car washing, pools, spas, fountains and ponds remain the same and there is a ban on the use of household sprinklers, hoses and irrigation systems. However, drippers will be allowed after October 1, due to political pressure.
Adelaide is on long-term water restrictions as the key solution to managing our water requirements. We citizens are being increasingly told that urban water scarcity is inevitable, and we must learn to use less water to survive – buy low-use shower fittings, only water our lawns at night and wash our cars with buckets.The current policy is to deal with water scarcity by accepting another summer of water restrictions.
Although water restrictions have a part to play, they do not address the fundamental cause of our urban water scarcity – which is a lack of investment in new water supplies to meet the demands of growing populations and to cope better in the drier conditions of global warming.
Extra water is needed for Adelaide. The SA Government is planning to build a desalination plant to shore up Adelaide's water supply, but that won't be operational for another five years at least. Until then the water should be cut from irrigated agriculture. Total agriculture in the Murray-Darling area takes about 13,000 gigalitres per year, and the total income from that agricultural activity, without deducting any of the expenses like environmental degradation, the river degradation and so forth, is $2 billion a year. That's pretty expensive water, which really means that all this agricultural activity is very strongly subsidised indirectly by this water.
Time to cut the subsidies.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:07 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
September 21, 2007
possible possibles
Regardless of who wins this election the perceived likelihood of a Labor win has opened up a window of possibility. As French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it,
"The political field...tends to produce an effect of closure by tacitly presenting the universe of realised possibles as the universe of possible possibles, thus delimiting the universe of the politically thinkable".
Howard's non-binding, possibly non-core, perhaps prevaricating announcement of aspirational retirement is provisionally on the table. We may get Rudd, we may get Costello. Whatever happens, the politically thinkable is no longer delimited by Howard's version of the possible, but the Costello and Rudd versions are still largely known unknowns.
In response to Andrew Leigh's suggestion that we should forget about the polls and start talking about what we want to become, commenter Mercurius wrote:
- An Australia in which our leaders seek constructive solutions instead of reflexively looking for a victim group to blame for our problems.
- An Australia in which our taxes pay for healthcare and infrastructure, instead of subsidising companies that use our taxes to profit from the provision of essential human services.
- An Australia in which people look first to what their co-citizens can contribute to the society, instead of focusing on how their co-citizens worship, what they wear, what languages they speak or their ethnic background.
- An Australia in which the public education system enjoys the confidence and respect of the entire community, so that people don't feel the need to opt-out and exercise a Hobson's 'choice' to unnecessarily pay tens of thousands of dollars for a good education they can get for free.
- An Australia in which newspapers report news instead of peddling opinion.
- An Australia in which we are immune to moral panics about whatever group of people are the demons-du-jour.
- An Australia that is excited to be engaged with the wider world, and especially our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region.
- An Australia that fosters strength through diversity. A strength built from harnessing the diverse talents, interests, ideas, cultures, skills and expertise of everybody in the community.
- An Australia that is economically prosperous, and which makes wise and sustainable use of our scarce resources.
- An Australia that faces the future with hope instead of suspicion and fear.
For the past decade this wishlist has been politically thinkable, but not possible.
Last night on Difference of Opinion (transcript's not up yet) John Hewson demonstrated that such things are thinkable for the Liberal Party. Just not the John Howard Liberal Party. For starters, it's politically unthinkable for Howard's party to be in broad agreement with Eva Cox.
This interminable election campaign has been a good thing. We've had a long period of uncertainty about what we'll be doing this time next year, a decent interval to imagine possibilities other than the limited set of the past decade. I wonder whether it would be politically thinkable for Hewson to throw a few ideas Rudd's way?
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 11:48 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
September 20, 2007
cheering on financial capitalism?
It is pretty clear by now that the US is caught up in a severe credit crunch caused by the fundamental insolvencies and distress of many over-leveraged households, mortgage lenders, home builders, some financial institutions and even parts of the corporate sector.
The US Federal Reserve kept on arguing that the housing recession in the US would "bottom out", that its spillovers to other sectors and to private consumption would be "modest", and that the subprime problem was a "niche" and "contained" problem. So there was no need to worry.
Satoshi Kambayashi
Well, the Federal Reserve has just changed tack. It has attempted to resolve these insolvencies in the financial markets with some monetary policy cutting the Fed Funds rate by 50bps rather than the 25bps that most market participants were expecting. The stock market cheered and continued with their irrational exuberance.
Does that mean that the Federal Reserve was mugged by the economic reality of a credit problem in the U.S?
Does that mean an unclogging of the credit markets and solving the problem of illiquidity in parts of the financial system where the clogging exist?
It is also clear that the crisis in financial markets, due to junk mortgages in the US that are ironically termed securitization, is a global one. Witness the way Northern Rock--a British mortgage bank in the UK---is in the throes of an old-fashioned bank run, with depositors queuing up to withdraw funds. Similar fears and panics about less liquidity and credit and a tightening of financial conditions recently swirled around the Adelaide Bank in Australia.
Because of securitization and globalization, the credit or illiquidity problem pops up one day in Australia, next in Germany, France, in Asia, and so on.So central banks in different nation states are effectively providing liquidity to the banks, and then relying on the banks to provide liquidity to those in the unregulated parts of the financial market who really need it---the hedge funds and the investment banks.
David G. Klein
In Australia loose credits and easy money have led to a credit bubble in home prices and home demand, and then it started going downhill last year. So we have home prices falling in the western part of Sydney and mortgage defaults. How long will the decline in use prices action continue? What impact is it having? Nouriel Roubini in an IMF seminar says:
the U.S. consumer has borrowed a lot in the last few years and has negative savings, and as long as home prices were going up it made rational sense to use your home as your ATM machine and just borrow against the rising home wealth and spend more than your income, so that is exactly what happened. Now that the reverse is happening, there is already a meaningful slowdown in consumption growth.
The Australian consumer borrowed similarly--- debt was going to consumption. A credit crunch in the housing market means reduced consumer spending. That means reduced investment as inventories stockpile---a glut of autos and a glut of consumer durables.
Peter Costello says no worries. We have job creation and income generation due to prosperous economy managed by those, like myself, who know what they are doing, and so these other negative things do not matter. There is little evidence of a economic slowdown, and a recession will only happen if there is a fall in income generation, due to employment falling. That scenario will only happen if the ALP becomes the government, so be very afraid. Under the Coalition's sure hands the good times are here to stay. Boom times will continue.
I don't hear Costello saying much about the policy solutions, or the regulatory ones of transparency and accountability for the global financial system. He should, since the party of low interest rate regime in Australia is over and a spike in mortgage rates is sure to be the needle that will prick right through this big speculative bubble.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:02 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Speaker on the nose
I've re-interpreted the Leak cartoon so make the figure on the throne the Speaker of the House of representatives demanding obedience from the ALP. The reference is to the Speakers biased rulings yesterday--a disgraceful performance. The Speaker ruled on Tuesday yesterday that it was acceptable for the Prime Minister to describe Kevin Rudd "lying through his teeth", but ruled on Wednesday that it was not acceptable for two Labor members to do so.
BillLeak
They were thrown out of Parliament for refusing to obey the instructions of the Speaker. The rulings appear inconsistent at least, do they not? The Speaker also keeps on throwing ALP members out, but rarely government members despite the constant barrage and noise coming from the Government ranks.
What we have s a majority Government able to orchestrate proceedings pretty much at will, with the Speaker seeming to back them on that? The low grade corruption saw Question Time turn into the ALP tightly making the Speaker the issue, and it then degenerated into a shambles . So much for parliament being the clearing house of ideas. Few ideas are being discussed.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:24 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
September 19, 2007
political passion
Catherine Deveny has an op-ed in The Age in which she argues that voters are becoming politically engaged---there's ' a real feeling that it's time for a new direction.'
Leunig
Deveny says that people are wanting blood on the floor:
The angry and disillusioned are hoping for a grudge match come election night. It's not enough for the Howard Administration to be voted out. People want to see blood. They want to see Howard cockily strutting into the election claiming smugly, "We are the underdog" — a sure-fire sign that a party thinks they've got it in the bag — only for it to go horribly wrong as the votes come in.
Not everyone is angry and disillusioned. I saw a lot of people doing very nicely when I was in cosmopolitan Melbourne, holidaying these last three days. Why would they change?
Sure, it was the Brack's Government, not Howard + Co, who transformed Melbourne into a great and prosperous city. by building on Kennett's reforms. Sure that transformation has taken place within the context of national boom of the 1990s. So there is a lot of money of circulating through Melbourne city thanks to the Howard Liberals.
Are the people who live in, and by, the market wanting a bit of blood? They may see politics as a blood sport, but many would want just Howard to go and Costello to take over and for the modernized Liberals to reign forever. They see Costello conservatism to be different from Howard conservatism--it's softer, more modern and has more of a touch of liberalism.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:29 AM | Comments (57) | TrackBack
September 17, 2007
picking on Julia
Just for the hell of it, I've been trying to find an explanation for the irrational hatred and apoplectic rage some white Anglo males of a certain age feel for Julia Gillard, other than the obvious feminist ones.
The weekend edition of the local Gold Coast Bulletin looked like a promising source of ideas. The front page was covered in women. Three sisters whose genetic inheritance gives them a much worse than average chance of developing breast cancer, the "Gold Coast's greatest modelling export, Kristy Hinze" and Maddison Gabriel who, at the criminal age of 13, is "the face of Gold Coast Fashion Week". Her mum and the Bulletin are on her side, but commenters are divided. As far as I can tell nobody of any political news value said anything about the breast cancer story.
Anna Bligh is the big topic beyond the cover, but columnist Sue Lappeman thinks the worst thing about Bligh is that she says 'arks' when she means 'ask'. Our Anna has doled out responsibilities in unusual and impractical clusters, but she's sort that out eventually. There's a shot of Bligh surrounded by five other female members of the Queensland Parliament. It's part of a three page feature written by Robyn Wuth on women in politics who, globally, appear to be popping up in plague proportions. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe Gillard is just another one of too many women?
Our local old school columnist Peter Cameron is upset there are no Gold Coast MPs in the Bligh cabinet, but he's furious to the point of spontaneous combustion that the tourism portfolio has gone to a woman. An "old duck". From Cairns. This decision clearly demonstrates that Bligh couldn't give a toss about the Gold Coast or Queensland tourism, even though she's a Queenslander from the Gold Coast. Though he doesn't mention that bit.
Cameron makes his living out of being a white Anglo male of a certain age, so his attitude comes as no surprise. He's one of the eastiest targets you could hope to find from a feminist perspective. A 13 year old fashion model could make mincemeat of him. Surely there's something more challenging to all of this?
But wait. As well as a handbag full of steak knives we can now offer a new angle from neuroscience. Social neuroscientist David Amodio spends his days looking for biological explanations for social attitudes. A recent study has found that the conservative brain isn't terribly good at dealing with change. Those with liberal political leanings are quicker to adapt their behaviour when something new and unexpected comes along. Does Julia Gillard count as something new and unexpected?
It's an interesting proposition. For one thing it suggests that some white Anglo males of a certain age can't be held entirely responsible for their attitudes. Maybe they can't help it. Instead of condemning their attitudes maybe the liberal minded should be offering sympathy and organising 12 step programmes. Surely a reluctant anterior cingulate cortex counts as a handicap.
But there's something else going on here. These stereotypical white Anglo males of a certain age are happy to accommodate all the change on offer when it comes to free trade, liberating the market and the apparently necessary change in industrial relations. Change of that kind is not startling in the least but, on the contrary, a logical necessity in our new global environment. There's a whole new world out there and we need to change to keep up with it.
Back in May when Bill Heffernan made his "barren" comment and Joe Hockey thought Julia Gillard had better approval ratings than him because she was prettier, Jocelynne Scutt argued that sexism in politics is a red herring. Comments like these are strategic devices for drawing attention away from more weighty concerns like unpopular IR laws. We're so accustomed to thinking politics is sexist we don't even stop to consider possible alternative explanations, so it works every time.
The problem with Julia Gillard is not that she's a woman or redhead or pretty or barren, but that she's the opposition spokesperson on one of the government's weak spots. And white Anglo males of a certain age are the logical pawns in this game, since they're just conforming to stereotype. It sounds like a viable explanation to me.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:35 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
media: adaptingt to change
Paul Chadwick, the director of editorial policies at the ABC, has an op ed in The Age on the media needing to change. He quotes from a talk that Alan Rusbridger, editor of the London Guardian, gave to the annual conference of the Organisation of Newspaper Ombudsmen:
Journalism becomes a never-ending organic business of placing material in the public domain … Everything we do will be more contestable, more open to challenge and alternative interpretation … When we publish something that's wrong, is it better invisibly to mend it so that the mistake is removed from the permanent record, or is it more important to record or capture the fact of the untrue publication as well as the correction or clarification?These are enormous conceptual shifts in what we do.
The op-ed is an edited version of recent speech Chadwick gave to the Melbourne Press Club. He says that for those who came to journalistic maturity under the old, more opaque systems of self-regulation, the new transparency and accountability may be hard to adapt to.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 16, 2007
Alan Greenspan on global capitalism
Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and darling of the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, has written a memoir entitled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. His perspective is that of a libertarian Republican who believes in fiscally conservative government and free markets, and so he looks favourably on world of a global capitalist--he admires the flexibility, openness resilience, self-directing, and fast-changing. His capitalism is no wrecking ball.
Some comments and quotes from Greenspan's text are found in Bob Woodward's review in the Washington Post. Woodward says that Greenspan has nothing but praise for hedge funds, which he describes as:
"a vibrant trillion-dollar industry dominated by U.S. firms." He claims that hedge funds help eliminate inefficiency in the markets. "They are essentially free of government regulation, and I hope they will remain so." He scoffs at proposals to regulate them, declaring, "Why do we wish to inhibit the pollinating bees of Wall Street?"
Why indeed. Isn't it interesting how the free market crowd think of globalism capitalism in terms of nature. I guess it's designed to stop any contestation of the claims being made.
Woodward saysthat Greenspan argues that an advanced economy hinges on property rights, the rule of law, a culture of trust, contracts, debt, reputation, self-interest and "creative destruction" -- the scrapping of old technologies and processes:
He argues, for example, that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States -- from the steel, automobile and textile industries to computers and telecommunications -- "is a plus, not a minus, to the American standard of living." He maintains that immigration reform, "by opening up the United States to the world's very large and growing pool of skilled workers," will help reduce the inequality of incomes.
At least Greenspan has the honesty to acknowledge that the Bush and Cheney conservatives had little to do with advancing the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets. He says that little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences, and they veered off in the opposite direction, down the pathway to dysfunctional governance. His judgement is that the Bush administration swapped principle for power and ended up with neither.
Greenspan's legacy is one of the housing bubble and bust, that was fueled by low interest rates and risky sub-prime mortgages in the last six years. That's another process of eliminating inefficiency in the market I guess. Or maybe the housing bubble can be blamed on the fall of communism?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 15, 2007
from patient to consumer
In Who Owns our Health? Medical Professionalism, Law and Leadership in the Age of the Market State Thomas Faunce explores the consequences for our medical profession as global health care and pharmaceutical corporations progressively implement a strategy to fully privatise health service delivery and access to medical systems in Australia. He says:
At present universal public health systems based on taxpayer-funded equality of access still have great popular support. The majority of citizens in most developed nations appear to view high tax rates as reasonable if the payback is greater security and peace of mind as they collectively age and exposed to greater risk of illness.Yet despite this widespread popular support, many governments are still producing health polices that lack any any consistent commitment to such public goods.
A major pressure on the doctor-patient relationship is the way that corporate strategists and lobbyists have facilitated the designation of patients as consumers.
'Consumer' in a market state does equate health care with purchasing commodities such as a house, food or soap powder. This market talk misses the way that illness creates vulnerability and ignores the trust that those suffering illness have in doctors to help them become well.
Update
Peter Saunders, director of social policy for the Centre for Independent Studies, attacks the very idea of the welfare state. He says that the original welfare state operated like Robin Hood, taking money from the rich and using it to help the poor.
But the modern welfare state operates more like a giant piggy bank, taking money from ordinary people and then giving it back again. So people today pay high taxes only to get much or all of their money back as government payments and services. He says that:
we are used to a political model which makes the constant assumption that every problem can be solved by more government funding. We have to reverse that thinking. Take an area like health: what if we treated health the way we treat aged care, where we have transformed the pension system through compulsory superannuation? We could get ahead of the game on health by giving people the choice to set up personal medical savings accounts. The amount they put in is deducted from their tax bill and out of that account they fund their health care. But we don't hear about that because politicians reason that if they can give money to people, they can buy patronage. But think about it: you pay tax and the government gives you a lot of that money back in various forms of welfare payments. Why not just tax us less in the first place?
That effectively replaces taxpayer-funded universal health care with the market model where most people manage their own affairs without having to rely heavily on government to provide them with what they need.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Meta Cartoon and Quote
1920 Cartoon from the Brooklyn Eagle depicting the hard wall of public opinion. |
A quote from James Madison:
The issue is legitimacy. Deviate too far from public opinion and legitimacy is lost. Dictate rather than influence public opinion, and again legitimacy is lost. The cartoon on the left is ironic as one of the areas where the national government deviated from public opinion and then tried to dictate rather than influence/debate/deliberate a policy was industrial relations. The result was a loss of legitimacy. |
Posted by cam at 1:27 AM | Comments (3)
September 14, 2007
Canberra watch: it's a shambles
I was in Brisbane yesterday so I was able to escape the chaos of the Canberra hothouse, Question Time and the current spin of a 'joint leadership team' from the Howard camp to cover over the ever deepening cracks that reveal a deepening leadership crisis:
Bill Leak
The events of this horror week in Canberra, which disclosed existential terror, enframed the PM as a man of the past with a limited future. From the perspective of modern Brisbane of Beattie, Bligh and Rudd, the Coalition looks to stand for the status quo and the Australia of the past. Iraq comes to mind and so does climate change and energy.
Howard lives to fight another day and another election. Remember that Howard played these cards--call it the Tony Blair hand. Howard actually raised the leadership during APEC himself. Why so? What advantage is to be gained from going to the edge? Gaining publicity? To raise the stakes? To gain sympathy for being in the corner and on the ropes? To look Churchillian? To gain a few more years with his hand on the levers of power? It was all he had left?
All the PM then has to do is to give people a good reason to give him a couple more years before Costello steps up to take over and run the show forever. Realistic? John Hewson in The AFR reckons some of it is. He proposes that Howard can give a good reason for staying on by stealing the policy initiative and policy detail ,since Rudd 's strategy is to play small target. With 20 seats that are contestable, a good campaign by Howard and a poorer performance by Rudd gives Howard the chance he needs.
Maybe. Simon Jackman questions this. He argues in The Bulletin that:
...part of the reason the Coalition is faring poorly in the polls is precisely because voters are weighing up a Labor/Rudd versus a Coalition/Costello future, and prefer the former to the latter.As they say in the financial markets, a Costello prime ministership is "already priced in" to the poll numbers we're seeing.
It's about the future isn't it? The message is simple. Howard is leaving. His main achievements are behind him no matter how much the street fighter wrestles the demons and his enemies to hang onto power.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:52 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
September 13, 2007
the evil Rudd
The level of emotion invested in John Howard is amazing, at both ends of the spectrum. Hate is a strong word, but Howard Hater is an appropriate label for some. On the other hand, Howard Hugger is barely adequate considering some of the deifying tendencies around the place.
Howard's a walking representation of the divisions he's relied on over the years which has involved some pretty extreme stuff, so it's not all that surprising if generates extreme feelings in people. Back in May that famous Howard hater Phillip Adams wondered what he would do with himself if Howard lost and he had nobody to hate anymore. What will Howard worshippers do without him? Will they just invest the same intensity of emotion in hating Rudd?
Some Howard devotees have already begun their period of mourning. Some are convinced Rudd is worth hating on his own merits because, no matter how much he resembles Howard, he isn't Howard. Some will hate him simply for beating Howard. Others will transfer their adoration to whoever replaces Howard without a qualm, if Andrew Bolt is any indication.
And then there are the ones who seem to genuinely fear Rudd. The prophets of doom who anticipate packs of union bullies prowling our neighbourhoods and frightening the elderly, economic collapse on a scale beyond imagination, Mandarin speaking children unable to communicate with their English speaking parents.
This article has to be seen to be believed. It's not the first of its kind at Online Opinion, but it's the most extreme so far. It extends fear and loathing beyond Rudd and the Labor Party to include the apparently idiotic public thinking of voting for him and, of all people, Janet Albrechtson. Some of the commenters see this election as a battle between the forces of good and evil.
How will such people manage to bear the thought of their own countrymen, let alone rubbing shoulders with them in public, if Howard loses?
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:29 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
The Australian: red in tooth and claw
The Australian maybe going soft on John Howard these days, but it is still is one of our nation's most stalwart and courageous warrior organizations resolutely defending the nation against the assault on our freedom by Islamofascism. The Australian's warriors argue that one of the main reasons Australia wages endless, glorious war in the Middle East -- not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan and maybe soon in Iran as it is one of Israel's enemies. -- is that the Islamofascists pose a threat to our freedoms (which Muslims hate). Their hatred for our freedoms is proven by their attempts to suppress ideas and commentaries which are offensive to their religion.
And then there is the Leftist Islamo-loving tyranny in our nation's universities who betray our country. These Leftists are full of hate for Howard and Bush and America. These anti -American leftists continue to work out of the anti-war movement playbook of the Vietnam era. The ALP has been the party of retreat and surrender. Those who condemn Howard's are helping Australia's terrorist enemies. It's obvious isn't it: those who think that the U.S. should stop invading and bombing other countries could only think such a thing because they hate America.
That is the conservative warrior discourse isn't it? Accusing the Left of being unpatriotic, anti-American and betraying the country has been a mainstream staple of the political rhetoric from our country's pro-war Right hasn't it? In running this line The Australian is basically recycling US Republican rhetoric that is forcefully expressed on Fox News.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:28 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 12, 2007
The media strikes
It's going to be the story of the day--- leadership destabilisation in the Liberal Party. The story has legs and it will be everywhere in Canberra, no matter how much the senior Liberals--Downer, Abbott and Minchin-- dutifully try to manage it by declaring their undying love for the greatest Australian Prime Minister since Menzies; or how they will stand by their man.
The media love this stuff--- 'kill the emperor' is their narrative. They own it and they will be squeezing their political sources for the good juice and the latest gossip to keep the destablizing narrative going. The body language will be analyzed as they probe a situation in which the Prime Minister limps on to the election too wounded to win, but too strong yet to remove.
It will be interesting to watch how the media in the Canberra hothouse cover this unfolding tragedy of the blinded, wounded emperor that signifies the end of an era. The media will become the story as the Canberra Press Gallery talk to one another on Sky News and on the radio about what they have written and trade insights.The media story is the main political event.
Sky News is geared up to air all the different angles and it will be the raw material for the other media organizations. As Mark Day observes:
...a 24-hour news channel can go live to the event and deliver on the promise of a full coverage, including every press conference from start to finish. There are two main audiences for this coverage: the political cognoscenti who participate in the process or demand to observe every nuance, and the rest of the media. To them, Sky News is a valuable resource, an instant transcript in every newsroom across the nation. Politicians know this.
The wounded leader scenario will be hosed down, but the recriminations and damage will linger and surface ensuring the LiIberals themselves remain the main story.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:18 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
September 11, 2007
selling the Iraq war in Washington
The Washington Post reports that David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress today that the military objectives of the Bush administration's troop increase strategy in Iraq "are in large measure being met," and he forecast a reduction of U.S. forces in coming months without jeopardizing gains.
Spooner
Is this limited withdrawal the beginning of the end? The US is occupying Iraq, and therefore will never really have the allegiance of the people.So what we have in Washington is a selling of progress to the American people in the context of political theatre in the form of a full-scale media spectacle.
Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Irag, told the committees that "it is possible for the United States to see its goals realized in Iraq" and that Iraqis are capable of governing themselves. He said Iraq's political trajectory generally "is upwards," although "the slope of that line is not steep."
This account of the situation in Iraq by Leila Fadel speaks differently. She says that interviews with Iraqis, statistics on violence gathered independently by McClatchy Newspapers and a review of developments in the country since the U.S. began increasing troop strength last February provide little reason for optimism. For instance:
Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors. Services haven't improved across most of the capital — the international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003 — and tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month in search of safety.
Civilian deaths haven't decreased in any significant way across the country, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. Fadel adds that:
The only sign of progress is in the homogenous Sunni Arab province of Anbar, where tribes have turned on al Qaida in Iraq and established relative security in a once violent area. But that success has little to do with the 4,000 U.S. troops who were sent to Anbar as part of the surge of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq. Instead, it began more than four months earlier, with the formation last September of the Anbar Salvation Council to fight the escalating terror of Sunni extremists. Officials agree that the anti-Islamist coalition in Anbar has yet to ally itself with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and a recent National Intelligence Estimate warned that it might even threaten it.
Fadel provides an counter discourse to that of American triumphalism.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 10, 2007
the nongs
There's a perverse sort of joy to be had watching the media pundits go belly up this year. The great unwashed Australian public has flatly refused to cooperate with all sorts of accepted widsoms, including the ones about the influence of opinion columnists. Damn shame, that.
We have accepted wisdoms about the economy, national security, incumbency, advertising, all sorts of things. The assumption common to all of them is that people care enough to pay attention. In order to vote for either Howard or Rudd for any of these reasons you first have to know who they are and what job they're applying for. But a lot of people don't.
Mungo MacCallum's comment in The Monthly (not online) is about the increasing influence of polling on both the elections and policy. The permanent election is upon us and according to MacCallum, the nation's political future lies in the hands of nongs - swinging voters with no interest in politics whatsoever.
The focus groups we've heard so much about are not random samples but gatherings of the clueless:
"It used to be thought that the swingers were the smart ones: people unmoved by family or group allegiances who followed the political debate, carefully weighed the campaign promises and then made up their minds on the merits of the arguments - leavened, of course, by a touch of enlightened self-interest.But when the pollsters actually interview the swingers, it turns out that the reverse is the case. Most of them have no idea about politics. They barely know the names of the leaders of the major parties, and they couldn't identify their local member in a police line-up."
You do get the odd person who changes their usual voting pattern, but it's usually for a considered reason. It's a serious business this voting thing. Foundation of our democratic way of life.
"A lot of swingers resent having to vote at all, and when they do it is often as a result of a prejudice or a whim: the colour of a candidate's tie can be far more influential than the reams of unread policy pamphlets he has personally delivered for consideration. Swingers are, by and large, nongs. But there can be no denying that they decide most elections, or that their numbers, like those of the cane toad, are on the increase."
Your new democracy. Enjoy.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:29 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack
debating health care?
A recent Age poll shows that health is one of the core election issues with many people, who are discontented with how the "system" is run by state and commonwealth governments. Both are to blame for the poor services because the current federal division of funding and service provision responsibilities means that the state and territory governments are responsible for hospital services, whilst the federal government is responsible for funding GPs and aged care services.
How are the commentators interpreting this concern? Is there a health debate forming in the media? Does the ALP own the health issue?
Fiona Armstrong in this op-ed in On Line Opinion points to the concerns about the sustainability of resources in the health sector. She says:
our ageing population puts pressure on a diminishing and ageing workforce. Ballooning costs associated with rising demand, as well as unprecedented use of technology, are placing huge pressure on health care budgets, while workforce shortages are creating unsustainable workloads for those delivering services. Given the quantum of funds involved (about $80 billion annually) and the inescapable pressures on the health budget, it is vital to ensure funding is delivered by the most effective, cost effective, and equitable means.
Armstrong argues that the separation of funding streams between state and commonwealth governments is a big problem and that it needs addressing as part of the reform of the health "system".
The reason given by Armstrong is that the separation of funding streams leads to:
cost-shifting, fragmentation of services, duplication of services and massive investments in administration in an effort to try to co-ordinate it all, much of which could be reduced and quality of care improved if the system was reformed.
The reform favoured by Armstrong involves shifting to the creation of a single fundholder responsible for financing all of the health services provided to a patient. She says that:
The arguments for a single funder are that it would have the effect of reducing much of the administrative inefficiency, making services more cost-effective, and ensuring a seamless transition between all of the services provided to a single individual. (A single funder does not mean a single supplier - services are generally best provided closest to the patient.)
Mentioned as advocates of this view are John Menadue of New Matilda and the Centre for Policy Development; and Jeff Richardson, economist at the Monash Centre of Health Economics and former chair of the recent review into the Tasmanian health system
Presumably, this single fundholder position implies that the commonwealth is the single funder, as explicitly advocated by Andrew Podger, who favours a full Commonwealth takeover of the financial responsibility of the health system. This is not likely to happen in a federal system of governance. Co-operative federalism is more likely politically speaking, and that would mean some sort of pooled funding arrangement. How would this happen? What steps are required to bring about a single funder? What sort of strategy needs to be developed? Who would do that?
My judgement is that funding is a big issue that no one really wants to tackle as it involves federalism. It has to be tackled around the edges.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
After APEC--what?
So Howard is in a position to spuik the APEC' s success: aspirational goals for climate change, promise to revive global trade talks, modest progress on regional economic reform and a declaration that they would tackle regional security. Australia was a successful host and the conflict management was skilfull.
APEC is more than a talkshop, photo opportunity and new headline announceables, such as this years 'Sydney declaration on climate change':
Bruce Petty
But APEC fails to deliver as an effective trans-Pacific regional organization that results in significant regional trade integration or reducing the behind -the-border barriers to trade. Trade is still the core of APEC's business but it devotes little resources to fostering trade in the region.
Will there be an APEC bounce? If Howard came across as statesman, and not just a salesman pushing gas and uranium in bilateral deals, then can APEC be spruiked as a springboard summit? For the Liberal Party sure needs an APEC bounce as it is now back to the hard reality of two weeks of Parliament, poor election polls, leadership speculation and media talk about an early election as a circuit breaker.
Sharpe
There is very little happening in terms of normal governance and administration in Canberra. As the editorial in Canberra Times acidly observes:
The Government has been in election mode all year, though there have been a few distractions, including the APEC conference, to give an impression (a false one) of steady management going on regardless. In fact, the processes of routine government are at a virtual standstill. With APEC over, for what glory in Howard's memoirs can only be imagined, the election should be called as soon as possible. The people, and the economy, simply cannot stand for much longer the hiatus from normal administration and proper government.
Behind the false impression of steady management, normal governance and legislative processes lies panic at the grim prospect of electoral defeat. Hence the leadership confusion that is surfacing publicly. The Howard era is over.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:25 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
September 9, 2007
Hillary Clinton: interactivity or falseness?
ln the context of declining public interest in politics, the increasing use of the internet and the interactive conversations on the political blogs in Australia, Margaret Simons argues in favour of
a big difference between blogs found in the wild and those that have been captured by the mainstream. When the mainstream’s prestige is threatened, the bloggers they have hired will get censored, and this is the case whether they are light hearted spoofs or attempts at serious commentary and analysis. The mainstream media can afford to imitate the bloggers only to a point.That means, of course, that independent blogs will continue to exist and prosper in all their batty variety. This will be a very mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.
It is increasingly accepted in Australia that the best bloggers often provide more in depth comment and analysis than the mainstream media, and that they also exert new accountability on the media. There things currently stand in Australia, with little by way of exploration of the interactivity dimension that is in formation.
Is Hilary Clinton is shifting this familiar ground with her video conversations with America? Below is the second in the series that begins with health care:
The first in the series and the third in the series.
Is this kind of political conversation breaking new ground? Can you imagine a senior politician discussing issues with bloggers in Australia about how to change Australia? Or is it clever marketing, one more technique in an advanced political strategy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 8, 2007
Workchoices: street advert
Well I know where I stand. WorkChoices is a big turn off as it impacts too heavily on the poorly paid and so is unfair and inequitable. It works in favour of the more highly paid and skilled.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, William Street, Melbourne, 2007
The big business advert campaign made no difference to where I stand. It reinforced my stand if anything. My mind is made up. Howard has gone too far in the name of flexibility.
That response to the advert indicates the failure of the Government's advertising blitz.
I note that an survey of the Government's and Big Business Work Choices advertising conducted for the ACTU indicates this advertising has been largely ineffectual: Only they had either made no difference to their views(44%) or made them feel less favourable (33%). Only 17% of respondents said the adverts had made them more favourable to the government's industrial relations laws.
That is significant as the use of taxpayer funded advertising by the government has failed to deliver votes –even though that advertising is probably the greatest electoral benefit of incumbency, especially with the current government. They used it to great effect in the last two elections. Today however, the advertising blitz works in Labor's favour as they own the issue. When the PM , Hockey or big business talk about Workchoices, they simply reinforce existing voter views that are detrimental to the Coalitions electoral prospects. That’s been reflected in the polls.
The attempt to demonise trade unions and their leaders falls flat. Union leaders whom Howard likes to characterise always as "bosses" are actually elected by their members and accountable to them, quite unlike the real bosses in the workplace who exercise real power that is sometimes absolute, seldom accountable and never democratic.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:39 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 7, 2007
Howard: tide's flowing out
So APEC offered Howard, as the man of steel, the big chance to define himself on foreign policy and climate change and find points on which to land some good punches on Rudd and ring him him to knees. Would this save Howard?
Leak
The domestic narrative has shifted. The Coalition is no longer just 'in trouble.' It is now looking as if it 'might lose.' The body language has changed, along with the framing, as the shift a shift in opinion away from the coalition continues. Morale and momentum within Liberal ranks are disintegrating in the face of persistent poor polling.
In his opinion piece in yesterday’s Australian Paul Kelly stated that:
The Howard Government faces the prospect of political annihilation and the most serious defeat since the Liberal Party was created by Robert Menzies... The sense of frustration within sections of the Howard Government is undisguised as senior ministers confront their likely obliteration while convinced that they remain a good government ... That Howard faces a more serious defeat than Billy McMahon or Malcolm Fraser is a sobering prospect, once seen as impossible.
Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian writes that Howard must go. She says:
It may not be rational. It may not be fair. It's not about Howard's age. He is fit, capable and, like that Energizer bunny, he could stay on to fight another fight. But voters appear to have turned off Howard. They appear to have stopped listening. Each new initiative that was meant to deliver a electoral bounce has failed to do so. The Howard factor is there. Where once it meant success, now it presages defeat. A defeat that perhaps can only be avoided if Howard steps aside. What makes it so depressing is that so many conservatives and senior Liberals remain in denial. The last rabbit Howard should pull out of the hat is Peter Costello... the coronation of Australia's longstanding heir apparent could represent the best chance the Coalition has of staying in power, too....The appeal of a young and fresh Costello could change the media narrative and work wonders for a tiring Government that is seen as out of touch...having the highest respect for Howard means providing fearless opinions. It's time to hang up the pads.
The Coalition is haunted by the spectre of defeat. The authoritarian conservatives are sounding desperate. The Wilson Tucky option is up and running, even though Costello is soiled goods.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:09 PM | Comments (41) | TrackBack
September 6, 2007
President Bush in Australia
As we expected, APEC is being used to lift the fortunes of an embattled Australian PM. President Bush is doing his bit and he has delivered in spades:
Tandberg
Bush is also using Sydney as a stage to speak to Washington about supporting his war in Iraq. Things are on the up and up is the Bush message. So the surge is working is the Republican talking point. The forthcoming official report by General David Petraeus will almost certainly be upbeat. ush is showbiz along with his 2 jumbo jets, a bunch of blast-proof heavily armoured vehicles, helicopters and a moving cone of mobile phone silence and security personnel that require a no go security zone in the heart of Sydney's CBD.
The reality is that Bush has entered the dead zone, where the bodies pile high and victory never appears.
A report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released in Washington yesterday, shows how little political headway has been made. It says the Iraqi Government has met just one of eight legislative benchmarks: the one establishing the rights of minority political parties. It has failed to act on goals such as greater Sunni participation in the government, sharing oil revenue and disarming the militia. Of the total of 18 legislative, security and economic benchmarks, the GAO scored success on three and partial success on four.
As Tom Engelhardt points out:
This administration's primary fundamentalism has been that of born-again militarists, of believers in the efficacy of force as embodied in the most awe-inspiring, high-tech military on the planet. This was the idol at which its top officials worshipped when it came to foreign policy. They were in awe of the idea that they had at their command the best equipped, most powerful military the world had ever seen, armed to the teeth with techno-toys; already garrisoning much of the globe (and about to garrison more of it); already on the receiving end of vast inflows of taxpayer dollars (and about to receive staggeringly more of the same); already embedded in a sprawling network of corporate interests (and about to be significantly privatized into the hands of even more such corporations); already having divided most of the globe into military "commands" that were essentially viceroy-ships (and about to finish the job by creating a command for the "homeland," NORTHCOM, and for the previously forgotten, suddenly energy-hot continent of Africa, AFRICOM.
Meanwhile the real power in APEC is China, who is now Australia's largest trading partner.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:27 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
September 5, 2007
Adelaide + water shortages
There is a danger that Adelaide could run out of water by the summer of 2008-09 after disappointing rains this winter failed to recharge the city's main supply from the Murray River. Little rain means little runoff. The possibility of the South Australian capital forced to rely on emergency supplies of water from January 2009 can be averted only by well-above-average rainfall next winter in the Murray-Darling Basin.
However, the chances of the city's estimated eight months of storage being replenished before next winter are fading because the likelihood of above-average rain over the next three months is low.
Bateup
The implication is that we are now running the system on inflows without any dams. Where is the water going to come from in the future? How come Adelaide has not planned for alternative water supplies, including desalination, water recycling and stormwater harvesting?
The Rann Government has been hot on publicizing climate change but has done no planning for water apart from restricting demand for water in the form of a bucket-only watering policy. This is in such a contrast to Western Australia, which is approaching the water scarcity problem with a long-term solution in mind Perth has a desalination plant that has been operating since November and has the capacity to deliver 45GL/annum. By 2011 another plant there will deliver an additional 50GL/annum with possible upgrade to 100GL/annum. That 95GL is equivalent to about half what SA Water delivers to Adelaide each year.
Why not Adelaide? Why is a taskforce just looking at this? Where are the plans for storm water retention and recycling? Why isn't the Rann Government being pro-active to take advantage of the opportunity to become a world leader in water management and then export our expertise and solutions across the world?
Update:6 September
Darryl Gobbett, an economist writing an op-ed in The Advertiser says:
Adelaide needs to turn off its Murray tap and leave this valued water resource to our state's irrigators and rehabilitation of the river. We must look more closely at desalination plants and place more focus on harvesting the city's rainfall, recycling, making our water distribution more efficient as well as getting the right price structures in place. Adelaide should be securing its own core independent water supply and possibly building three or four water desalination plants over the next five years, harnessing stormwater and increasing recycling.
Gobbett rightly points the finger at the Rann state government. He says that the State Government's blinkered focus on cutting water consumption by merely turning off the taps is hampering SA's long-term ability to solve the water crisis, and:
The State needs to adopt a new mindset to solve its water crisis. By putting all our eggs in the Murray basket, we are closing our minds to market-based and technological solutions on our doorstep. There is also no certainty the other states will continue to let the water flow even if it rains heavily. We should be under no illusions – they will look after their own businesses, farms and householders first for power and water.Already water restrictions in the eastern states have reduced their electricity generation. We need an independent solution.
What we have is an incompetent Government that is unable to plan long term for water infrastructure investment . The State Government's long-term strategy for the state's water supply has been to pray for rain while tinkering around the edges. This has resulted in the imposition of harsh water restrictions as a means of conserving existing supplies.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:02 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
APEC's relevance
The cartoonists are having a field day with the over the top security lockdown for APEC:
Clement
Will APEC agree that climate change is as important issue as free trade, trade regulation and impediments to investment? Trade and investment liberalisation was where APEC started in 1989, and its exclusion of other regional economic issues. Or is APEC largely irrelevant, despite the media hype?
Will APEC be able to revive the World Trade Organization Doha round ? Unlikely. Will APEC negotiate an Asia-Pacific free-trade area? Unlikely. Will APEC see regional co-operation to effectively deal with climate change? Unlikely.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:40 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 4, 2007
Bush's surge
Bush surges into Australia tonight to have a pow wow with APEC leaders as the British retreat from Basra Palace in the city centre to relocate to the airbase outside the city and the Iraqi flag is hoisted over Basra Palace. The end of the occupation of Iraq has begun, as the militias will now say that they chased the British out of Basra with their tail between their legs.
The Americans are still talking about staying till the job is done. Bush, the imperial President, is reduced to show biz: making a six-hour visit to the heavily fortified US airfield in Anbar to bolster support in Congress for the administration's war strategy, only days before a crucial report frpm the US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, on the success of the American troop "surge".
Any any sense of withdrawal--or retreat---is politically charged at a time when the Bush administration is seeking to justify its policy of the "surge" and to persuade others that the 160,000 troops are getting the job done.
Remember the spin in 2003--- Donald Rumsfeld thought the GIs could march up to Baghdad, kick out Saddam and the bad guys, leaving the good guys to take over, and Johnny could to come marching home. Oh lets not forget the flowers from all the pretty girls who saw the GIs as long legged gods. So sang the neo cons---Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Karl Rove. Only they understood the full picture, so so they say.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:57 PM | TrackBack
what a difference a poll makes
Denis Shanahan's response to a new poll has come to resemble the worm of a certain section of the electorate. This week there's a big dip in his worm response, but he's still managed to discover the ultimate strategy, the big campaign move that could get Howard over the line.
Shanahan thinks Howard should call an election.
So there you go. The one thing that's guaranteed to bring Rudd to his nerdy little knees is the realisation among Australians everywhere that this is no rehearsal, we're not pretending anymore. Apparently standing in the polling booth, pencil stub in hand, we will all consider how swimmingly things have been going for the past decade, how wealthy and secure we all feel, and we'll vote coalition. At crunch time we'll be completely rational about this.
As much as it's become standard practice to check how Shanahan's spinning things each fortnight, it's also become standard practice for commenters to analyse his analysis. Robster of Brisbane says "It looks like the bandwagon effect is beginning to kick in. Voters have got used to the idea of a change and are now starting to welcome it."
Some are more welcoming than others. Our adversarial political system spills way beyond parliament. But the idea that voters have become used to the idea of change is becoming observable now.
Over at Blogocracy andre of Adelaide says "There must be a lot of ex Liberal voters out there. If they are anything like me their voting intentions are set and everything is perceived through that prism."
Bearing in mind that there are a few political staffers posing as common or garden commenters, these two suggest that there's a sense of inevitability about this election. We've given up waiting for Rudd to stuff up and now we're waiting for Howard to put us out of our misery.
The notion that everything, including the campaign proper (will we be able to tell when it starts?) is perceived through the prism of fixed intentions is an interesting one. Assuming we're also perceiving the polls through that prism they're more than just a vague indication of voter intention a long way out from an election. They're more like a quantification of the national mood that reinforces that mood every time they're released.
In other words, if you intend to vote Labor you can be comforted by the knowledge that you're far from alone. You must be doing the right thing if so many others are doing it.
Comments from the coalition side of the opinion fence also have that air of inevitability about them. On the whole they're a little less shrill, a little more resigned and starting to refocus on 2010. Speculation is moving from who might replace Howard, to who will raplace him, and that's not a happy conversation among coalition devotees.
For an outlier result this poll has had an amazing impact. One more like this and Mr Howard should perhaps stop listening to Mr Textor and heed Mr Shanahan. It's unlikely to happen, but at least an earlier election might arrest some of the momentum and preserve the senate majority.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:02 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
ALP shifts health focus to primary care
The ALP has taken another step to shifting the focus of the health system from crisis care in hospitals to primary care and prevention. It indicates that a Rudd Labor government will continue the process of the reform of the health "system" that the Coalition sees no need for.
Rudd states that a Labor government will spend $220 million to establish "GP super clinics" in regional and outer metropolitan regions. Incentive payments are to be offered to encourage doctors and allied health professionals to bring a broad range of health services under one roof. The purpose of these one-stop shops is to provide local communities with enhanced preventive and multidisciplinary care, particularly for patients suffering chronic conditions. The goal is to improve public health outcomes, create a less expensive health system, and take the pressure off public hospitals.
Labor 's argument is that the new super clinics will provide bulk-billed services in underserviced locations with high levels of need, and that this will prevent non-urgent patients clogging up hospital emergency departments.
Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, that Labor's argument misses the point:
...the problems in public hospitals are not caused by lack of bulk-billing. (New figures show GP bulk-billing rates have increased to just over 78 per cent.) Research conducted for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine in 2004 found that non-urgent patients do not significantly add to emergency department workloads and are not the cause of hospital overcrowding. The real cause of delayed admission and long waiting times is high occupancy. The unavailability of acute and elective beds is exacerbated by the number of elderly patients who remain in hospital due to the shortage of ''high-care'' places in residential nursing homes.
This is true. Hence the need to develop residential nursing homes. However, that is not an argument against shifting the focus from hospitals to primary care and prevention, so as to slow the numbers of people entering the hospitals. Sammut acknowledges this as he says:
Labor's plan to address the twin challenges of population ageing and rising incidence of lifestyle disease is to reorientate the health system away from high-cost curative care in hospital towards lower cost primary care in the community. Once diagnosed with a chronic condition such as diabetes, chances are that some patients will work with their doctors to manage their illness and avoid the real risk of acute episodes.
He agrees that good management may well prevent expensive secondary medical interventions, but asks 'do we really need super clinics to provide the stock standard medical care that is delivered every day in doctors' surgeries throughout Australia?' This misses the medical workforce shortage issue and the need to use non-medical health professionals to deliver health care services.
This leaves us with the primary care argument. Sammut's response is a sceptical one:
Advocates of preventive medicine also talk of education as the key to prevention. Of course, health professionals can give commonsense advice about good diet and regular exercise. But I doubt that many people in high- risk categories will modify their lifestyles while the risk of harm remains relatively remote. Investing in primary care to keep people out of hospital sounds like a good idea. But spending more taxpayers' money on preventive medicine is unlikely to prevent lifestyle disease as promised.
Sammut doesn't seem to like the idea of spending money on public health. Is this because CIS is opposed to the public health care funded out of taxation.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 3, 2007
APEC, Howard's vision, climate change
John Howard is touting the 2007 APEC summit as the most important international meeting to discuss climate change since the 1992 Rio Conference.
Bill Leak
Okay, Rio gave birth to the Kyoto Protocol and binding targets. What does APEC give birth to? A promise by the member nation-states to cut greenhouse emissions? Isn't that what is on the table? A flexible regime is the key word; a regime based on talking down binding targets and talking up technology, free markets and prosperity through trade.
So where is India? Why isn't India a member of APEC? APEC without India makes little sense as a regional grouping.
The flexible approach to climate change is being spun as Howard's vision for a post 2012 -Kyoto international agreement and policy regime. It's a long way from an international emissions market. Howard wants the end of the Kyoto approach to international action on climate change. Not that the final communique will say this.
I guess the importance of APEC for Australia is a symbolic one --its a recognition that Australia's place is in the Asia-Pacific region, and that its economic future as a vibrant multicultural nation-state lies in Asia. So it offers a chance to set Australia on the right course and to help shape the issues for the region
Will Howard be able to use APEC to drink from the wellsprings of partisan feelings? Will he be able to tell emotionally compelling stories about who they are and what they believe in to use it to run on who he is and what he genuinely cares about, and to show that he knows hisr constituents well enough to know where he shares their values and where they don’t. Can be speak at the level of principled stands and provide emotionally compelling examples of the ways he would govern, and to use this as a signature issue that illustrates his principles and fosters identification.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:00 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 2, 2007
alien reptiles at APEC
Apparently George W Bush is one of a number of alien reptiles, or shapeshifters, engaged in the nefarious business of ensalving human kind. So says David Icke, conspiracy theorist par excellence. And Brandon Corey has bravely sacrificed a few fingers to bring us the genuine footage to prove it. The White House is swarming with these creatures, in constant contact with a network of powerful figures around the globe.
How else can you explain the Bush presidency? After all, it began with an alien reptile judge overriding the greatest democracy in the world, and getting away with it. Everything that's happened since is just more evidence, from 9/11 to the massive security operation and secrecy surrounding APEC. What's the real reason Laura won't be attending? Is she shedding at the moment?
Conspiracy theories have been around forever. Some of them turn out to be true, but most just seem to explain the otherwise inexplicable. JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King, Princess Di and 9/11 were all deeply traumatising events with very little in the way of explanatory narrative. People needed certainty, and none was forthcoming. Speculation becomes conspiracy theory and the next thing you know, the alien reptiles organised it.
There's another way of understanding it though. When you combine cynicism in politics with wide distrust of the media you end up with a public that can never be sure of what's going on. We expect our media to keep producing Watergates, but they give us Children Overboard headlines and skewed interpretations of opinion polls. So much of it turns out to be untrue. Who could possibly believe that the government knew nothing about the AWB shenanigans? Authority cannot be trusted. Least of all the highest authority of all, the President of the United States.
It's one thing to be sceptical about whose interests are served by our political leaders, it's another thing altogether when the only viable explanation for the behaviour of the Leader of the Free World is that he's an alien reptile.
There are plenty of alternative explanations. He could be serving business interests, family connections with the bin Laden family, pandering to Christian religious extremists longing for Armaggedon, he might be mad, or perhaps none too bright. He could be a quite intelligent person who sincerely has the best interests of the world at heart and is just widely, globally in fact, misunderstood.
There are a disturbing number of copies of the DVD The Brandon Corey Story circulating here in South East Queensland. Corey claims to have managed to get into some CIA bunker and witnessed shapeshifting among other X File-type weirdness. I know quite a few people who either believe it, or are sorely tempted to in the absence of a more believable explanation for George W Bush. You can make yourself quite unpopular by suggesting he's just an unfortunate outcome of the democratic process. It's hard to believe that democracy could get things so wrong.
They will not be surprised when Bush openly endorses Howard. Rudd has resisted so far, but if he meets with Bush and caves in on Iraq then we'll know he's become one of them through a process involving blood, I think. It could have something to do with DNA, but the details are fuzzy. Aren't all details these days?
Meanwhile, Sydney will be virtually shut down and meetings between the APEC leaders will be shrouded in secrecy. We will not be told what is said and even if they do tell us something, it won't be the truth. There may, however, be a bright spot for Peter Costello in all of this. George will have a private evening with John and Janette at Kirribili, but Pete is once again, not invited. Perhaps he knows something?
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
APEC: going green?
So President Bush flies into an APEC spectacle this week. Sydney is locked down with what sounds like a Berlin Wall erected around the APEC centre in and around the CBD of the global city including the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Exhibition & Convention Centre and Government House. So much for leveraging the "feel good" factor.
I could not resist this Peter Brookes cartoon about a haunted Present Bush:
In the meantime Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, is doing media interviews saying that Iraq's future depends on Australia keeping its few troops in Iraq until they get the job done.
It's unclear what "getting the job done" actually means these days.
Or how Iraq is a part of the "war on terror" that is now being fought on more than one front. What we are offered is a warning against any defeatism whilst continuing to proclaim impending victory in Iraq.
APEC, however, is not about the "war on terror." It is being sold by the Government ministers as doing business, sorting out the financial architecture for the region, and offering a viable way with climate change thanks to the stirling efforts of the Howard Government. So what will happen?
A bit of a chat amongst the leaders of the various nation-states and a few aspirational targets being set. This is to be expected as APEC understands itself to be an inter-governmental forum facilitating economic growth and prosperity, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region, and operates on the basis of non-binding commitments, open dialogue and equal respect for the views of all participants regardless of the size of their economy.
Australia will contribute $50 million to the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (bringing its total contribution to $150 million) with the funding being used in various projects to develop and deploy cleaner, more efficient technologies. Presumably, that refers to the coal fired power stations.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 1, 2007
personal ambition
It's sad to watch Peter Garrett become 'pulp mill Pete', but then he made the decision. Garrett wanted political power--to be Environment Minister--and he was willing to sacrifice his passion and environmental principles to do so. He knew what the ALP would do to him and he understood that the ALP Right had little time for his ecological politics. He was willing to pay the price.
Leak
Still, it is sad to watch the process of destruction under the guise of 'we support the pulp mill if it is world's best environmental standards' whilst refusing to say what these best standards are.
As Bob Brown observed: "I warned Peter that when he went into the ALP they would eat him up and spit him out and that's just what's happening."Many others did the same. Power is very seductive. Garrett is now required by the ALP to attack the Greens, embrace the three-mines policy, accept US bases, defend the forest industry: thereby renouncing, one after another, the distinctive positions upon which his career was built.
Secondly, 'Peter the myth' is different from Peter the person: after all, as a fundamentalist Christian Garrett voted against stem cell research.So he is a part of the NSW Right.
Public opinion is, if anything, supporting issues on the environment which are far to the left of the ALP. Garrett is now at odds with public opinion in Tasmania.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:39 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack