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October 31, 2007
climate change : ALP blinks
So Labor blinked on climate change after being verballed on the issue earlier this week. Somehow an emissions trading scheme has slipped in the background in the political debate around climate change, in which Howard has been punching away at the ALP's credentials.
Alan Moir
We do not hear anything about the level of emissions being capped at declining levels to enable investment decisions or the temperature increase tipping point. What we do hear about is Australia's post Kyoto position, which is way in the future. What will Australia do if the developing countries refuse to sign up? Will Australia sign up? Or will it refuse until the developing countries are on board. The ALP ducked and weaved and retreated under pressure.
John Howard has jammed Kevin Rudd into retreating from Peter Garrett's pledge that a Labor government would ratify the Kyoto Protocol, even if there were no firm commitments for greenhouse gas emission reductions from China and India. This indicates that Howard is going to continue trying to wear Rudd down with his punches, unsettle him, and hope that he cracks under pressure.
As Peter Tucker observes at Tasmanian Politics though climate change is definitely a big Labor issue with a strong public resonance under Garrett they are not maximising their return. Howard has escape from the corner.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:26 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
October 30, 2007
Walter Lippman on media corruption
As we know the standards of objective journalism,which were adopted as ideal goals by major news organizations in the mid 20th century, have long since been undermined, trampled, and trashed. Hence we have a narrative of the steady degeneration of the media s over the past few decades.
Walter Lippman on the early stages of this historical process in his Liberty and the News (1920), which has just been reissued:
Just as the most poisonous form of disorder is the mob incited from high places, the most immoral act the immorality of a government, so the most destructive form of untruth is sophistry and propaganda by those whose profession it is to report the news. The news columns are common carriers. When those who control them arrogate to themselves the right to determine by their own consciences what shall be reported and for what purpose, democracy is unworkable. Public opinion is blockaded. For when a people can no longer confidently repair "to the best foundations for their information," then anyone's guess and anyone's rumor, each man's hope and each man's whim becomes the basis of government. All that the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true, if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster, must come to any people which is denied an assured access to the facts. No one can manage anything on pap. Neither can a people.
We have the "manufacture of consent"---public opinion is channeled and shaped by the managers of news--that damages democracy. For Lippmann the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis of journalism.
Lippmann's argument that you can hardly have a real democracy without a functioning press or media as we say today, is spot on.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:16 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 29, 2007
electoral horrors
Rising inflation changes undercuts the Coalition's tactics of policy announcements speaking of job creation and sharing the spoils of prosperity from the economic boom, coupled to its rhetoric being overwhelmingly negative.
The negatives are the 70 per cent of former trade union officials on Labor's front bench every time he opens his mouth; and recession under Labor because Rudd's industrial relations policy will bring back centralised wage fixing and cause inflation to explode.
Bruce Petty
The inflation scenario places an unpopular Government on the back foot, and it appears to be concerned with the past instead of emphasizing the future? The more Howard and Costello boast about their "going for growth" economy (loaded with tax cuts and giveaways) the Reserve Bank's response is to impose discipline via higher interest rates.
Howard and Costello are caught in a trap of their own making: the sustained strength of the economy, the inflationary pressures generated by capacity shortages, the failure to co-ordinate fiscal and monetary policy and the momentum of rising rates. Hence the bad dream.
It's only going to get worse. The media are becoming vultures circling the body of the wounded Coalition.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:11 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
October 28, 2007
nuclear power
The Indo-US nuclear deal, which seeks to allow India access to civilian nuclear power technology without having to adhere to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, appears to have faltered. New Delhi's right to conduct another nuclear arms test without the US breaking civilian relations and India's right to reprocess spent fuel and be assured of permanent fuel supplies.
The diplomatic talk uses phrases such as "nearly there," "fusion of ideas" and a promise to "square the circle" to realistic phrases like "U.S. frustrated," "some hard work still needs to be done," "still have some distance to travel" and "both sides must compromise in order to close the gaps."
The pact was seen by both nations as a new milestone in the rapidly growing United States-India relationship and also as a pillar of 21st century international security. Besides being a strategic partner, Washington sees India as a rising Asian superpower and the deal was to end India's global nuclear isolation by allowing other nations to sell their nuclear fuel and equipment to New Delhi.
Australia was part of that deal, as it was going to sell uranium to India, thereby assurng New Delhi assured of permanent fuel supplies. Australia 's decision to sell uranium to India is contingent on the US-India deal passing the US Congress and the IAEA agreeing to a set of safeguards for its oversight of India's peaceful nuclear plants.
There is a contradiction between the two goals of U.S. foreign policy — building India up as a counter to China and upholding the non-proliferation regime — but some optimists say the circle can be squared.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 27, 2007
Costello's Tsunami
Armageddon is on the horizon.
Bill Leak
We have gone from sunny days in a booming economy under world's best economic management to market apocalypse in a couple of days. Does anyone take this seriously when it was only a day or so ago that Costello was painting the inflation figures as the best ever?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:01 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
October 26, 2007
conservative eh?
There's a smidgeon of hypocrisy going on when a publication devoted to guarding the free market from the ravages of communism relies on funding other than profit from sales for its continued survival. Unlike that hotbed of postmodern, self-loathing, communist, Labor-voting maniacs bunkered down at The Monthly, Quadrant magazine is not entirely subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Be that as it may, Guy Rundle at Crikey thinks that the appointment of Keith Windschuttle as Editor heralds the dementia years for the grand old girl. Gold-leafed erections aside, the bigger story is the death throes of the culture wars. Windschuttle is just too, well, Windschuttle to sustain any pretence at reasonable.
Greg Sheridan has been lamenting the demise of the conservative worldview before the body's even cold, blaming Howard for failing to sufficiently squish the ABC, pulverise the public service or cut those infamous elitists in our universities off at the knees.
So after 12 years of Howard Government, the Australia Day committee gives us a rank agitator such as Tim Flannery as Australian of the Year.
Traitors.
The Left is full of energy. The most lively small publication is the left-wing magazine The Monthly.
Damn their eyes. Even the lethal combination of common sense and market forces can't prevent the relentless march of polluting progressive thought. We'll all be rooned.
Griffith Review is apparently yet another example of putrescence seeping unchecked across our glorious land of bounty, fortitude and convention. Chipping away at the conservative mothballs valiantly repelling voracious and wanton leftist moths from our green and gold cardigans.
It keeps popping up around here, but the Australian Election Study [pdf] gathers a bunch of interesting things about 'we the people' into one place. Contrary to what we've been told about ourselves for what seems like several lifetimes, Australia is not conservative in the culture wars sense. If any. We know plenty of stuff about ourselves that our representatives in politics and media don't seem ready to accept.
We don't automatically equate abortion with murder, we don't think euthanasia is abomination regardless of circumstances and we got used to the idea of same-sex couples way back in the 1970s when Don and Dudley on Number 96 led lives as ordinary as the rest of us. Taxpayers are taxpayers after all. Somewhere along the line the spokespeople of our society seem to have got us mixed up with some other country.
Bill Bowtell brings some of this into a political perspective. We're not as conservative as our election results over the past century suggest because our system doesn't reflect majority opinion.
This absurd contraption of single member electorates locks up and effectively disenfranchises millions of Australians in safe electorates, while showering largesse on a small number of voters in marginal seats.Over time, this has created a massively distorted imbalance in the national distribution of services and subsidies.
This has counted against safe seat voters on both sides of the political spectrum – and especially voters in most rural and regional seats and the inner cities.
The historical dominance of conservative government has more to do with arbitrary distribution than representativeness. Small comfort for the time being, but it's nice to know we're not as backward a nation as Windschuttle, Sheridan and our electoral system would have us believe.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 8:23 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
bling
Graham Young suspects that the greatest economic managers the country has ever seen have run out of funds. The big tax bang was wheeled out in the first week of the campaign to knock Labor off their feet and narrow that pesky gap in the polls. Morale was supposed to improve and donations would come pouring in which would get them through the rest of the campaign. Or not.
Andrew Bartlett has been attending public meetings at every opportunity, as candidates do. He regularly runs into other candidates, but the Liberals rarely turn up. It's accepted wisdom that Queensland is pretty important, so you'd think it would be worthwhile dropping by for tea and lamingtons with the locals. Apparently not.
One of the interesting things Judith Brett and Anthony Moran wrote about in their study of Ordinary People's Politics is the wide variety of ways people engage with politics. The ideal campaign engages in as many ways as possible. Policy and good governance for the serious, the personal appeal of the presidential campaign and pure pop for entertainment's sake.
With no cash for gimmicks or flash advertising and a non-existent grassroots campain there's no option for the Liberals other than buying voters with vast sums of their own money. Labor have the sort of money it costs to run the presidential and pop-style campaign we've been seing. We already know more about Rudd's background than we've ever known of Howard's. Smiling people everywhere are sporting Kevin07 t-shirts and bumber stickers. Happy people vote Labor.
The Liberals are stuck with the dull business of policy and governance - the economy, pensioners and roads. If they'd been as bothered with their own finances as they say they've been with ours, if they'd mucked in with the hoi polloi from time to time, and if they weren't always so down in the mouth they'd be a more attractive proposition. As things stand, they lack bling.
As proponents of the free market keep telling us, it's a cruel world. There's no such thing as a free lunch, it's every man for himself and the market can be trusted to take care of everything. Unfortunately, it looks as though these Liberal champions of the free market have fallen foul of the free market in party donations. I wonder if they're happy to see the system working so well?
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 8:36 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
oil and war
Jack Miles in Oil: The sovereignty showdown in Iraq in Asia Times says:
In the 21st century's version of the "Great Game" of 19th century imperialism, the Bush administration made a colossal gamble that Iraq could become a kind of West Germany or South Korea on the Persian Gulf - a federal republic with a robust, oil-exporting economy, a rising standard of living, and a set of US bases that would guarantee lasting American domination of the most resource-strategic region on the planet.
The political half of that gamble has already been lost, but the Bush administration has proven adamantly unwilling to accept the loss of the economic half, the oil half, without a desperate fight.
Alan Moir
The Maliki government of Iraq enjoys international legal recognition and is not without resources when it comes to asserting Iraqi sovereignty over American autonomy within Iraq's borders.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 25, 2007
the weight of public opinion
How do you match the election rhetoric (and negative advertising) with underlying public opinion during a political campaign? Health for instance is a big public issue, but it is on the backburner. Was it explicitly addressed on the Big Debate, with its set positions and packaged answers? How are citizens reading and interpreting the campaign rhetoric? As citizens? Or as self-interested consumers weighing up competing market brands?
Sharpe
John Warhurst's op-ed in the Canberra Times has a go at matching election rhetoric with underlying public opinion. He links the Big Debate to Professor Ian McAllister's Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2004; a handbook that reports on the results of surveys conducted at the time of the past seven elections, together with earlier surveys.
Warhurst starts from Paul Kelly criticising Rudd for not being bolder by devoting much more of the tax cuts to services at leaders debate. Warhurst says that this this question of tax cuts versus increased services goes to the heart of the individualist/collectivist divide. He comments:
Those in the health, education and welfare sectors argue Australians are unselfish and actually put the public interest ahead of their private interests. But Australians might just flirt with this notion to make themselves feel good. The old saying is that elections are decided by the hip pocket nerve not altruism.
Warhust says that McAllister and his study colleagues confront this question directly. They ask voters whether they prefer less tax or more spending on social services:
When the question was first asked in 1987 during the Hawke-Keating period, 65 per cent favoured less tax and only 15 per cent favoured more spending on social services. By 2004, the gap had been eliminated. Thirty-seven per cent wanted more spending on social services and only 36 per cent wanted less tax.(Trends, p.28) The community is evenly balanced.
Why the imbalance in election promises towards tax cuts? Warhurst addresses this by asking whether Howard (and by implication Rudd) got it wrong by putting so many of his eggs in the tax cuts basket? Or is the electorate just kidding? He suggests that Howard and Rudd might be reading the electorate better when considering what voters do in the privacy of the ballot box.
It's an odd argument. Trust the polls in terms of voting intentions but dismiss them on surveys about policy options. Why not accept what the surveys show---public opinion is divided by the trend is towards better services. You would expect Howard and Costello to favour tax cuts --it's core Liberal philosophy. The question is why is the ALP doing the same, given the strong preference for redistribution of wealth noted by McAllister (51% to 20%). The ALP were trapped by Howard and Costello. The election has its own dynamic in terms of agenda setting.
Isn't that a better argument than saying citizens are deceitful and dishonest, in that they really are self-seeking (hip pocket) but are ashamed to admit that this is their nature? Why not question rational choice theory?
Why not think in terms of citizens as possessor of rights, entitlements, opportunities and resources that are the result of a process in the form of enfranchisement, consisting in the increasing liberty of the individual, the growth of the idea that individuals have rights and claims, and that they can assert themselves against the constituted authority of the land.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:46 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
an inflation nail in Lib's coffin
Recall the RBA's oft expressed fears that the Australian economy was being pressured by greater than expected price pressures. This was fear was based on their judgement that the economy was operating at full capacity constraint---strong employment levels, strong economic growth and rising investment levels. Yesterday, in an op-ed in the Canberra Times, Peter Martin informed us what the release of today’s inflation figure would mean:
If the quarterly trimmed mean comes in at 1.0 per cent, an interest rate hike in November is certain. If it comes in at 0.9 per cent a hike is highly likely. Only a rate of 0.7 per cent or less will calm the board, and there are few signs of one.
He said that trimmed means discarding those prices that have moved up the most and those that have moved up the least, examining only the middle 70 per cent. As their movements are unlikely to be unusual so they represent underlying trends.
Well the figures are out. The headline CPI rose 0.7 per cent in the September quarter, for an annual rate of 1.9 per cent. The so-call trimmed mean CPI rose 0.9 per cent in the quarter, for an annual growth rate of 2.9 per cent.The weighted median CPI rose 1.0 per cent in the September quarter, with an annual rise of 3.1 per cent.
Bill Leak
Expect to see the Treasurer and the Prime Minister latch onto headline CPI because it will seem to show that inflation is safely within the Reserve Bank's target band of 2 to 3 per cent. They will seize on this raft to argue that there is no case for raising interest rates in the next month.
However, the real question is whether price inflation of the trimmed mean CPI would persuade the Reserve to act to raise rates? The answer is yes. The underlying inflation is above expectations, and bumping hard up against the 3 per cent trigger for Reserve Bank action. Glenn Stevens, the RBA Governor, has assured us that the political cycle is no longer a consideration. Stevens told the House of Representatives Economics Committee in August in response to a question from ALP member, Craig Emerson, about an election campaign rate rise:
If it is clear that something needs to be done, I do not know what explanation we could offer the Australian public for not doing it, regardless of when the election might be due. I do not think that there is any case for the Reserve Bank board to cease doing its work for a month, in the month that the election is going to be. I doubt very much that members of the public would regard that as appropriate. So, should that data, or other data for that matter, make a clear case, I feel we have no choice; nor should we have any choice.
So a rate rise will probably be announced by the RBA the day after the Melbourne Cup. That places Howard and Costello on the ropes. The panic deepens. Can they still argue that the Coalition are the better economic managers? Will there be a number of rate rises?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:33 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
an "enduring relationship"
Spencer Ackerman In Iraq Forever in American Prospect argues that the construction of permanent U.S. bases along with long-term plans for troop presence continues apace:
The war in Iraq can sometimes feel like a military commitment in search of a rationale. Yet there has never been any doubt among insiders that the Bush administration intended Iraq to become an outpost of U.S. power projection throughout the Middle East.....The assumption made by advocates of an enduring U.S. presence in Iraq is that the U.S. can improve security to the point where a reduced American presence would no longer be provocative to Iraqis.
It is similar to the British in Egypt says John B. Judis. The Bush Republican Washington view is that Iraqi leaders who owe their positions to the U.S. occupation want the Americans to stay indefinitely, and Bush is ready to oblige them, albeit with a smaller force. What Bush has done in Iraq, rather than what he says he has done, is to revive an imperialist foreign policy, reminiscent of the British and French in the Middle East. It's called an enduring relationship.
Judis says that:
Indeed, this brand of imperialism, as practiced by the Bush administration, is remarkably similar to the older European variety. Its outward veneer is optimistic and even triumphalist, when articulated by a neo-conservative like Max Boot or William Kristol, and is usually accompanied by a vision of global moral-religious-social transformation. The British boasted of bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathens; America's neo-conservatives trumpet the virtues of free-market capitalism and democracy. And like the older imperialism, Bush's policy toward Iraq and the Middle East has been driven by a fear of losing out on scarce natural resources. Ultimately, his policy is as much a product of the relative decline of American power brought about by the increasingly fierce international competition for resources and markets as it is of America's "unipolar moment."
Even if waging a imperial war in the post-imperial age is self-defeating, Bush and Cheney continue to beat the drums of war with Iran ever louder. An all-out attack against Iran's nuclear sites is what I assume Bush and Cheney are after. Hence all the chest-thumping and belligerent bellowing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
Climate change: rhetoric+reality
Jim Douglas, writing in the Canberra Times on climate change, says that:
You get the feeling, under these circumstances, of being in a luxury car accelerating towards a sheer drop, as its demented driver ignores your shouts of alarm and regales you with enthusiastic details of what a wonderful vehicle it is, and how well he has maintained it.
That's what the Liberal's "Go for Growth "campaign slogan signifies. It means more of the same kind of growth with the economy machine being run with energy produced by dirty coal power.
Pat
Some reality is dawning. The Liberals are backtracking on nuclear power as the key solution, due to the unpopularity of nuclear power plants in the electorate. Clean coal is the key. But that's ten years down the track, if not more. In the meantime?
What is lacking is an acknowledgment that any plan for deep cuts in greenhouse emissions entails a major roll-out of renewable energy technologies and the introduction of ambitious renewable energy targets to reduce emissions and to secure Australia’s share in the boom in renewable energy occurring globally. The danger is that Australia is becoming a renewable technology importer and it's losing the chance to move to a clean energy economy.
If the Liberal's "Go for Growth" campaign slogan was modified to read "Go for Sustainable Growth", then I'd start listening to them. So far they give every indication that they do not understand the significance of an increase of 2 degrees in temperature.---its impact on the Great Barrier Reef, the melting of the Arctic sea ice, prolonged drought and less water. They talk incessantly about the costs of an emissions trading scheme on economic growth but never about the costs of acting too late.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:16 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
October 22, 2007
an education revolution?
Education featured in the Big Debate.The PM said that his "education revolution" was one of restoring basic standards (reading, writing and arithmetic), bringing back a trades education, and establishing a proper narrative of Australian history. This did not sound very modern or forward looking in the context of a global information economy. In contrast, Rudd sounds modern or forward looking.
Bill Leak
However, as Brian Toohey points out in the AFR, Rudd 's promise of an "education revolution" to make Australian education the word's best sounds modern and forward looking. Rudd's promise is underfunded. Lifting public spending to the average of the OECD would require $8 billion. Rudd promises $4 billion. He has promised $450 million on early childhood education, but an extra $4.5 billion is required to meet the OECD average. Has there been any money to improve universities and TAFE? I haven't seen any. Maybe that comes latter. There's been lots of money committed to private schools, given Rudd's 'me-tooism 'on the Coalition's' school funding formula until 2012.
So where does Toohey's analysis leave us in terms of an "education revolution"?
First, given the size of Rudd's tax cuts how are Rudd and Swan going to find the resources to fund the "education revolution", so that public spending exceeds the OECD average? Get Lindsay Tanner, as Finance Minister, to do a bit of slash and burn? So which services are going to be cut? Defence? Will they be able to shift the distribution of federal spending priorities away from excessive defense and "corporate welfare" spending and toward public investment?
Secondly, you can't give first priority to huge tax cuts and investing in infrastructure and subsidizing education and training and providing incentives for corporate investment in manufacturing. Something has to give.
Rudd's economic team will have to be smart, and right, and lucky if they are to make Australia a progressive nation again.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:13 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 21, 2007
oil or gas exploration in Antarctica
Britain plans to claim sovereignty over a vast tract of the seabed off the coast of Antarctica with the Foreign Office contemplating possible oil, gas and mineral exploration in the region.the Foreign Office was preparing to submit a rights claim to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf (CLCS) for 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) of seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory.
This threatens the stability of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial disputes on the world's least explored continent, and to which Britain is a signatory. Apparently, Australia and New Zealand had already lodged CLCS claims for Antarctic seabed.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:56 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
October 20, 2007
after one week
For those with an abiding interest in an assessment of how things are going in the election campaign--ie., who work in the hose race frame of won the first week of the election--- could do no worse than start here with the judgements of two old and experienced hands, made on the ABC's Lateline.
ROD CAMERON: Well Howard won week one. Five to go. Rudd would still be favourite. This campaign will be won and lost... this campaign will win or lose the election for one of the parties. If I had to make... if I had to stick my neck out, I'd say Rudd's got his neck in front but it's still anybody's game.
VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Michael Kroger?
ROD CAMERON: I think Rod got that right. Rudd's clearly in front but whereas a week ago John Howard was in a lot of trouble, he's now back in the game.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:06 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
public hospitals in crisis
The Sydney Morning Herald reports another adverse event at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital---a patient with a serious spinal injury could not be operated on for five days due to a lack of staff and no available intensive care bed.
Alan Moir
Associate Professor Bill Sears said that it was a frequent occurrence that patients needing vital surgery were put at risk because they were made to wait due to a lack of intensive care beds. "It's a crisis. The hospital is a basket case"
Sears added that:
People just don't understand how seriously run-down Royal North Shore is. It's terrible. I've worked there for 20 years and it's been heartbreaking to see it decline as it has. It's just the complete lack of resources. There's just no intensive care beds.. ...It's just tragic how the hospital has changed over this time and everybody has been … getting pressure to try and keep the operating theatres closed. I guess it's money. I can't think of any other reason....They shut wards all over the hospital and put offices in there. The hospital has become fuller and fuller of administration management and fewer beds.Obviously they're not getting enough money but they're employing more and more management to decide what they're going to do with the little money they're given, and it's not going through to the patients."
There's the effects of neo-liberalism strategy of starving the public health system of funds. The shortage of beds causes access blockage in the emergency department. Overcrowded ands overstretched emergency departments suggest that some people are turning up at causality departments because they cannot afford or access care provided by GPs.
So governments are crisis managing--putting out spot fires.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:59 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 19, 2007
generation shmeneration
Yuppies were an undifferentiated mass of twenty something urbanites who, during the lavish '80s colonised the previously salt of the earth working class postcodes clustered around major city centres. They bought up cottages and terrace houses which they restored complete with geranium filled window boxes and plaster ducks flying up hallway walls.
Harley Davidsons and particular breeds of dog were among their fashion accessories of choice and their mobile phones were not much smaller than their cast iron, claw footed bath tubs. These white collar, urbane young professionals were the original latte set. They're in their forties now and re-defined as being on the cusp of the baby boomer and gen x categories which are, apparently, as readily identifiable as Harley Davidsons and Vespers.
Yuppies were the first beneficiaries of our then new global economy and the technology that came with it. When they loaded their 5.25 inch MS DOS startup discs into the floppy drive, the gen Y babies on their laps were being introduced to the latest version of life as we know it. Now in their 20s, gen Y are as familiar with life under federal Labor as they are with the aesthetics of the bakelite telephone. That is to say, not at all.
Of course, not everyone was a yuppie back then any more than gen Y are uniformly predictable. Except politically where 73% of them support Labor.
Gen Y member Garth Williams puts this down to a combination of Rudd's future focus and the disproportionate effect of WorkChoices on young people. Climate change and housing affordability also get a mention, as do Facebook and MySpace where vast networks of youngsters are thought to be "whipping up support for various election issues".
At the other end of the age spectrum, David Barnett is gracious enough to concede that it's gen Y's turn, but he doesn't like their politics. Of his own age group, "We will vote for a return of the coalition government, despite the atrocities that John Howard and his ministers have perpetrated down through the years." The young just don't understand what they're getting themselves into.
Sally Breen and Alasdair Duncan beg to differ. Life as they know it is just not life as David Barnett has known it. 'Social' doesn't mean what it used to and there's a whole other moral structure at work. Gen Y don't care for the level of greed and pillage they see in older generations and they resent being left to clean up the mess.
If the comments are any indication, one of the things they really hate is being classified as an undifferentiated mass. Can't blame them really. Back in the day, we yuppies didn't like it either.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 8:50 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
October 18, 2007
eavesdropping
One of the reasons I'm wary of the return of the Coalition is my fear that it would set a low threshold for the executive branch to commence monitoring citizens. By that I mean eavesdropping on citizens with few oversight or restrictions of any kind. Is this a realistic fear? I don't know.
But I'm wary of the national security state and the way it has defined small roving bands of stateless and army-less Islamic Terrorists as having changed the world forever.
They also provide the greatest threat to national security and to everything we held dear.
Why, they are even worse than the Communists of yesteryear who used to hide under our beds and were bent on world domination. They used to be the real bad guys, but not any more.
Conservatism is not just successful but also fashionable. The modern "conservative" movement, if it retains its ascendency, would push for the lessening of restrictions on the executive's power to eavesdrop on our international calls and the removal of protections when the Commonwealth Government monitor's our communications.
The conservative's line of reasoning is that Islamofascist Terrorists are so cunning, and so fanatical--- so evil-- that we must change the very nature of our country. Constitutional and other restrictions on government power are obsolete in the war on terrorism. They hold that since the early days of the War on Terror, the Labor Party has undermined national security by siding with civil-liberties extremists on questions of intelligence collection from Australian citizens. These civil-liberties extremists--- leftists who think the American government is more dangerous than radical Islam--promise to revolt if surveillance restrictions are eased.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:16 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Dirty tricks?
Andrew Fraser in the Canberra Times reports that the Australian Electoral Commissioner (AEC) Ian Campbell has confirmed 143,000 voters (including more than 3000 in Canberra) have been removed from the electoral roll in the six months leading up to this year's election. That's a potential boost to the Howard Government's chances of being re-elected isn't it.
Bill Leak
The Howard Government's tough new legislation on voting entitlement-- tighter voter eligibility and shorter closing time for the rolls--- is widely seen as disenfranchising mainly young people, who polls show are more likely to vote Labor.
The best that we can hope for is that the AEC has put an effort into encouraging people to be enrolled and has made every effort to ensure that this political education this happens. Political education is the key.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 17, 2007
economic prosperity + anxiety
Alan Woods argues in The Australian that if we are looking for an economic explanation for why the Government is facing defeat in a buoyant economy, then market reform is the area where we should start.
More than two decades of economic reforms and globalisation have created a new, more flexible economy, with upward mobility, rising aspirations, dramatically changed industrial and institutional structures, shifting patterns of employment and family life, dramatically changed family finances and greater individual responsibility. Economic reform and globalisation have been overwhelmingly beneficial, as our economic prosperity attests, but they have also created unease, uncertainty and insecurity, as rapid change always does.
So there is fear and anxiety as many Australians have high debt and they fear the effects of a rise in interest rates.
Alan Moir
Economic explanations are not everything , but Woods is right about this. The tax cuts lauded by the neoliberal economists---such as Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson---won't really help to ease the underlying anxiety caused by rapid economic change.
Ours is a time of low inflation, low interest rates and rising asset prices, which have encouraged a huge rise in household gearing and debt. Wood says that so far this debt isn't a problem, because debt is concentrated in households best able to service it, and households are benefiting from rising asset prices.
Fair enough as far as it goes. But, as we live in a climate of rising interest rates, our unease increases. It becomes a general anxiety about economic management and the future.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:09 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
October 16, 2007
Howard haters + Monica Dux
Is this some kind of joke? Or plain confusion? Political bankruptcy? Ignorance? Lack of intellectual grunt? More evidence of the declining quality of the Fairfax Press? Does it disclose the poisons in our political culture? The political impoverishment of the left literary culture. Here's the case.
I'm referring to Monica Dux's op-ed in The Age entitled There must be more than just hating Howard. She basically argues that the left needs to, and should, stand for more than just wanting Howard out---vengeance. I was taken back by this as I thought that some on the left actually did stand for more than wanting Howard out: -water, climate change, forests, multiculturalism, better education, reformed health care. etc etc,. come to mind. So which Left is Dux referring to?
Alan Moir
Dux makes reference to her generation of left-leaning thirtysomethings as Howard haters. My critical response is that she conflates this group with the left in general. One can be on the Left and not accept her description of what "the Left" stands for: Howard hating left-leaning thirtysomethings in Melbourne.
She characterizes her generation of left-leaning thirtysomethings thus :
My friends and I are classic Howard-haters — the latte-dependent, over-educated, bleeding hearts that you've read so much about. The PM recently acknowledged that many people hate him. Not just his politics but him, personally. And when it comes to the so-called educated elites, the reason for our venom is simple. There have been many decisions by the Howard Government, from its handling of the Tampa incident to jackbooted indigenous intervention that we regarded as more than simply politically distasteful. These were moral questions. But as deep as our disgust with the Prime Minister runs, we latte-sippers are essentially an impotent bunch.
She also implies that this Howard hating left-leaning thirtysomethings are becoming intoxicated by this blood lust and forgetting what really matters.
Well, I'm one of the so-called educated elites. However, I don't see myself as overeducated, nor am I'm seething with venom or disgust, nor intoxicated by bloodlust. I don't hate Howard at all. I respect Howard as a conservative politician, even though I deeply oppose a lot of what he stands for.
At least Dux has the self-awareness to see her friends as self-righteous, chardonnay-soaked and moralising and acknowledge their self-proclaimed position as the moral voice of the nation. She is also troubled by the lack of ALP policies, but she acknowledges political reality: that Rudd's reluctance to challenge the Liberal Party is really just a clever way of dodging Howard's "rabbits", and that it's the vote of "ordinary people" that will get the ALP over the line.
She states that us "prosperous, professional 'elites' have stopped caring who or what we vote for, as long as Howard loses, and adds:
If you don't believe that this is really happening then try this experiment: ask any self-identified Howard-hater why they're excited about the election. Will they reply with a list of the ALP's initiatives and policies, or will they simply say: "It looks like Howard's finally going to get it." Mandarin may or may not be mentioned.
Sure it's time for Howard to go. It is not a question of mandarin, though. It's more about reform. The Coalition has blocked developing and manufacturing solar power technology to protect the coal industry, even though solar technology is an Australian invention. The Coalition has done little to broadband the nation as it was too caught up privatising Telstra. It has done little to address climate change, and it has allowed the Nationals to block water reform.
update:17 October
So what does that case mean in terms of the original questions asked at the beginning of the post?
I'm inclined towards the poisons argument myself. What are those poisons? Are they hate, venom and being consumed with the bloodlust of die, Howard, die? That is very strong passionate language, taking us to somewhere other than the sunny side of the social liberal Enlightenment.
Is that somewhere else the dark, violent side of the liberal Enlightenment? To an incomprehensible “other,” inspiring terror in the eyes of the beholder (Dux and her thirtysomethings)? What then is the
incomprehensible “other”? The sheer violence of John Howard's regime?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:40 AM | Comments (47) | TrackBack
October 15, 2007
Budget--ooops tax cuts
The Federal Government has offered $34 billion in tax cuts as part of a five-year plan, throwing down the gauntlet on tax policy on day one of the election campaign.Howard and Costello chose the first day of the election campaign to release early the mid-year budget review and said the money to cover the cuts would come from significantly improved growth forecasts and employment growth.
A fist-full of tax dollars is an opening shot in the election and a significant shift in their 'go for growth' brand that has previously relied on porkbarrelling in Tasmania and elsewhere. Politically, it has got the jump on Labor in a big way. as Rudd hasn’t released a tax policy yet. Howard and Costello must be desperate to get some traction going by attempting to shift and reframe the media narrative forms (annihilation) at the start of the campaign.
Costello released the mid-year budget review today, upgrading growth forecasts and employment growth from previous forecasts, that will generate revenue which will pay for the tax cuts....The 30 per cent threshold will increase from $30,001 to $34,001; and the 40 per cent threshold will increase to $80,001 and the 45 per cent threshold will increase to $180,001, as announced in the 2007-08 Budget.
From 1 July 2009 the effective tax free threshold for low income earners rises to 15,000 and the 30 per cent threshold to $35,001. From 1 July 2010 the 30 per cent threshold will increase to $37,001.
One good aspect is that it encourages the welfare to work shift by reducing their effective tax-free threshold and particularly by lifting the threshold up until which you pay 15 cents in the dollar, is boosting the number of people joining Australia's workforce.
On the other hand, 4.25% growth represents an economy pushing the limits of its capacity. So pouring tax cuts into such an economy must risk the chance of overheating. And overheating means inflation, and inflation means rising interest rates.that's how the Reserve Bank of Australia would see it.
Why not better services or infrastructure to lower taxes? Where's competition reform in energy and water? Or human capital improvements?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:44 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
October 14, 2007
media + politics
It's English imagery but change the faces of the politicians in the image and it applies to Australia. Or does it? It's a key question now that the election has been called on cue.
Will Murdoch support his old political friend, a scrappy Coalition and the conservative ascendancy? Or will he embrace political realism, betray his old friends and pump for Rudd and the conservative ALP? What will Murdoch do about the growing sense of grievance in the electorate? Ignore it? He's not known for his support forr furthering democracy is he?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:25 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
October 13, 2007
Captain Whacky?
Has he become Captain Whacky` as Annable Crabbe contends in the Sydney Morning Herald? As opposed to being the fastest gun in the West; the one with a lucky streak still married to his childhood sweetheart?
Bill Leak
He's turning up everywhere with his bottomless bucket of money and pledges millions, sometimes billions, for something or other.Every time he turns up these days he has reinvented himself.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:21 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
October 12, 2007
History 101
I guess that this is John Howard's way of embracing the future as the past. Or is it the past in the future? It's unclear isn't it. The conservative frame is 'the Left is in retreat'---ie., left wing voices have simply lost their relevance in an increasingly conservative cultural landscape.
Bill Leak
I notice that Howard is willing to overturn a decade of opposition to reconciliation and symbolic politics---remember all that stuff about a guilt ridden nation ashamed of its past? Now Howard is talking about referendums to formally recognize indigenous Australians in the preamble to the Australian constitution.
Isn't this the man who was not for turning on this issue? Maybe the 'sorry' word will yet be spoken. Does this indicate that conservatives are losing the culture wars?
My goodness, what are all the rusted on, well educated, conservatives at Quadrant going to say and do? You know, the eminent ones who hate difference, land rights, reconciliation and so on. The brilliant ones of renown with a distaste for low company and who deny the colonial wars, dispossession and the stolen generation. Were they not in love with the image of Howard as a man stuck in the 1950s, firm in his dog-whistling racist opposition to Aboriginal land rights and deeply anxious to bury Nugget Coomb's self-determination as separatism.
All decently said, of course. And well argued and based on fine scholarship arguing the case for integration, practical reconciliation and national social l cohesion.
You know these conservatives. Those like Tom Switzer, the opinion page editor of the Australian, who reckon that the conservatives are winning the culture wars, and who argue the public culture has improved during the past decade as a result.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:45 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 11, 2007
caretaker mode
Ever wondered what the rules are during the caretaker period between the calling of an election and the outcome? There aren't any really. There are conventions and guidelines and a fair bit of uncertainty. There are gentlemen's agreements like the ones Monopoly players make over what happens when you land on Free Parking, but no specific rules about whether it's ok to nick another player's cash or move their iron, boot, car or whatever while they're not looking.
None that could lose you your job anyway.
The running of the state, or country, is nominally handed over to the public service for the duration and if anything important comes up, both sides are supposed to be in on the decision making process since neither is technically running things. There is no parliamentary oversight and so the impartial advice of the public service crucial.
This monograph from Anne Tiernan and Jennifer Menzies via ANU E Press looks at the sorts of trickery public servants had to deal with during the 2004 Queensland State and Howard/Latham Federal elections.
I've only read the intro so far, but during the 2004 campaign Howard and so on did four ungentlemanly things:
-Posted ministerial press releases and transcripts on departmental websites [which technically weren't theirs to be posting on],
-Failed to brief or consult with Latham over a decision that needed making [which was dismissed on the grounds that a prime minister can't be expected to spend all his time explaining things to the opposition],
-Continued pork barrelling [even though technically they had no control over the money] and, you'll be ever so pleased to hear,
-Kept up some government ad campaigns [because the people needed to be alert but not alarmed election or not].
As we've often been told, Rudd is not Latham. He's highly unlikely to sprain Howard's wrist during a handshake given a chance encounter in front of TV cameras. It's difficult to imagine him getting entangled in his own tie doing the Macarena hand movements of the ladder of opportunity, although he does risk that rakish, tie-over-the-shoulder look if he's not careful with his out-the-back-door gesture.
He won't be wedged or whistled regardless of principle or policy. We'll see how he goes with the conventions and guidelines of caretaker mode. He's already dealing with the ad campaign one which, if comments from media commentators and blogworld are any indication, have well and truly sunk in. Seeking briefs has been part and parcel of wedge-avoidance.
It will be interesting to see how far Howard is prepared to push it and how much violation of convention Rudd is prepared to take. If he gets through it all without blowing a gasket he'll deserve a medal for extraordinary personal discipline.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:45 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
that old chestnut
Having failed to impress the electorate with everything else he's tried, Howard has returned to that perennial favourite, the history wars. He's going ahead with the plan for compulsory, uniform history as a stand alone subject in years 9 and 10. State education funding will be linked to their adoption of the history plan as envisaged.
The states aren't showing too much enthusiasm so far which is pretty much what you'd expect. No reports yet on what year 9 and 10 kids think, and it's probably best not to hold our breath waiting for them to be consulted.
Howard's on much safer ground with this than with health. Maybe.
He knows his lines, he's got backup from a reliable stock of talking heads - some with plausible claims to authority, the committees have sat, the reports are in, the costing's been done and the corporate speak package is ready to go.
Education is Labor territory but history is Howard's. He's experienced at talking about the future through the lens of the past, which gives him an opportunity to get genuinely misty eyed about current issues from a safely historical perspective. He can do nationalism with a straight face.
Julie Bishop's not the best salesperson you could hope for, but Howard can do this one by himself blindfolded with his hands tied behind is back. People don't seem to be terribly bothered when state funding is tied in with various schemes, so what could possibly go wrong?
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Friedman, AWA's, economic freedom
The Australia@Work report by the WorkPlace Research Centre argues that AWAs reduce wages of unskilled workers and increase their working hours – in short that AWAs decrease their hourly wage rate.
The response by Sinclair Davidson and Alex Robson to The Australians at Work report is from the perspective of Milton Friedman, who opposed the New Deal, stood against Keynesianism, and deemed economic freedom to be superior to political freedom. Friedman, Davidson and Robson say, argued that unions raise the wages of their members at the expense of the unemployed and that higher union wages price workers out of the labour market and force those lucky enough to have a job to work longer (unpaid) hours.
Davidson and Robson's interpretation of The Australia@Work report is that it suggests Friedman was right. The report's headline statistics state that workers on collective agreements (aided by unions) enjoy higher wages. This is deemed to be a bad thing. Lower wages are good. Since AWA's produce lower wages for less skilled workers, then they are good. It is bad to employ low skilled workers on high wages that exceed their low productivity, as this will generate unemployment.
Dead simple really. What is really needed is further labour market reform---more deregulation and flexibility --- to reduce the minimum wage and allow for the quick shredding of workers in economic downturns. Harry Clarke outlines the rationale:
The wage system should pay workers their worth in terms of production. With enough competition firms are forced to do this because workers will otherwise quit and accept bargains that benefit both employers and themselves elsewhere. This competition increases the more workers are employed – with higher unemployment, because wages are too high, it becomes harder for unemployed workers to get a job and harder for employed workers to shift out of a job they don’t like. If firms have to pay more than the opportunity cost of labour, perhaps because of trade union activity, then fewer workers will be employed. Minimally prescribed pay and conditions do simply create unemployment.
Labour market reforms keep costs in line with productivity. Social justice is not the concern. The minimum wage is an obstacle to full employment.Obstacles to full employment should be removed. As Friedman argued there is no meaningful content to the "ideas" of common good, public interest, or social justice.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:30 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
October 10, 2007
Afghanistan: six years on
The political narrative in Australia is that Iraq is the bad war whilst Afghanistan is the good war. If the Coalition and the ALP are at odds over the invasion of Iraq, then they are united over intervention in Afghanistan. The Taliban regime overthrown in 2001. So why is Australia still in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, and so caught up in a civil war between the Karzai regime in Kabul and the Taliban?
The official rational is that the Taliban insurgents have links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban can only be beaten by force. This is part of the war against Islam terrorism. If so what is the exit strategy? Or is the NATO-led war endless?
It's all so vague and tenuous is it not? It's very unclear when Taliban militias are now avoiding open conflict with coalition forces and moving instead toward the more frequent use of roadside-bombs and suicide-attacks. Should not Taliban be involved in the peace process because the are not going away. That they are not going away is pretty obvious, since it is their country they are fighting in, with half of the fighters being locals who believe they are defending their livelihoods.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:18 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
wither the Liberals?
If Liberals have a political philosophy that centres on the primacy of individual, individual freedom, and small government, then why all the emphasis on a strong leader who is marketed as a president? Why do they have a strong and ruthless leader who concentrates all power in his office with a powerless backbench?
Bill Leak
Does this turn to the autocratic Man of Steel mean that the Liberals are no longer small l-liberal. That they have become Conservatives?
Mungo MacCallum outlines and explores the strong leadership theme in The Monthly along the lines of Thatcher's advice: never admit you are wrong and give you enemies nothing. This gives rise to the purge of moderates --small-l liberals---in the Liberal Party and the turn to autocracy. MacCallum then argues that the Man of Steel is going into the election as lameduck--the Leader can no longer lead.
He has no interest in the shifts in political philosophy embodied in Nation, economy and strategic national interest ; or to what extent the Howard Liberals have embraced conservatism or what kind of conservatism: a Burkean one; a one nation British-centric version of Australian nationalism one ; or one based on the authority of the state?
What appears to happen in the political discourse by the commentariat is that the differences are minimized in favour of similarity, even though John Howard, as an ideologically driven prime minister, has fostered and facilitated a combative Right based on the politics of conflict and division as well as fear and loathing.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:45 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
October 9, 2007
democracy vs ?
Apparently Australians are not as politically disengaged as we’re often led to believe. This is the conclusion reached by Ian McAllister from ANU and Juliet Clark from Deakin Uni using data mostly from the Australian Election Study.*
Voters have noticed there’s not all that much difference between the two parties, we’re not as enamoured of personality politics as media seems to think, and are overall unimpressed with the way any of them go about the business of politics.
Despite being unhappy with the state of the much vaunted (by those with a stake in it, or steak, a few oysters and a decent quaff, whatever) public sphere we’re still happy with democracy. The big message in all of this is that deep down in our little Aussie hearts we’re a thoroughly democratic people let down by politics. That is to say, the way politics is conducted.
While politicians, parties and the media have been enjoying urinating in one another’s pockets, the public are increasingly getting our recommended daily intake of democracy from the internet where the less sanitized and more human version of events gets an airing. McAllister writes:
“The message of 40 years’ worth of academic surveys is that Australian voters remain interested in politics and highly adaptive. It seems that politicians, and the parties that they represent, are less effective in providing what voters want.”
The Australian Election Survey started up in 1987, but some of the data from this study goes as far back as the 1960s. This is not so much about policies, leaders or fashionable theories about how to run economies as it is about our version of democracy and how it should work. Stick that in your citizenship test.
And speaking of citizenship tests, you only have to take a quick squiz at the graphs at the end of this report to realise why politicians and media are so disappointing. Our social attitudes are way more progressive than either of them would have us believe. Our ‘democracy’ is effectively being run by a small handful of people swayed by every moral panic on offer.
And why is health such an important issue this election? Could it possibly be because the ALP also has access to this stuff? At the last election, which you might recall revolved around interest rates, we were actually more interested in health. Unfortunately, we think the ALP is better at health than the coalition, so we had the election on interest rates instead.
So far that switch from what concerns the public to what suits the incumbents hasn’t worked this election, so we’re seeing the incumbents struggling with a bunch of issues that concern the people, but don’t work so well for the incumbents. Health, the environment, education, generally Labor kinds of things.
Finding out what people think is important then doing something about it seems like a decent and democratic way to run a country and legitimately stay in power. It also seems like a partial solution to the gulf between politics and our culturally valued version of democracy.
Basically, we the people have been living in a whole other country than the one our media and politicians have been living in, for much longer than a mere decade. The first party/leader/media configuration to realise this will be entitled to lecture us about our values.
*Anyone can access this wonderful resource. It takes a bit of figuring out but once you’ve worked out how to use it you can learn all kinds of things about who we are, what we actually believe and who among us believe what. 'Mainstream' will never look the same again.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 7:53 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Paul Kelly blasts intellectuals
Paul Kelly has a go at Australia's academics and public intellectuals in The Australian Literary Review in a piece called Time For a Rethink His argument is simple: the moral vanity of Australia's intellectual class has led it into a political dead end. Thus:
it is hard to categorise Australia's intellectual class because, in essence, it defies categorisation. What is easier to categorise, however, is that distinct group of public intellectuals who write for a wide audience, aspire to shape public opinion, attack Howard for his sins and lament the collapsing standards and morality of our political leaders... The critique is notable for its moral fervour, weak analysis and alienation from the nation's heartland....Contempt for Howard becomes a contempt for the people and for the democracy that elected him.
The argument is hooked on David Marr's recent Quarterly Essay, titled His Master's Voice: The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard, where Marr argued that Howard has led a conservative party political assault on Australia's liberal culture.
Kelly conception of public intellectuals is very narrow -he includes Raimond Gaita and Julian Burnside---and he claims that they have become moralists.Buy this he means that
their main task is to make moral judgments about politicians and to identity the source of their evil. There is almost no limit to their self-righteousness and pomposity...It demonstrates, above all, the role of the public intellectual: as passionate moralist, as opposed to enlightened analyst, as polemicist as distinct from scholar.
Kelly's response to this is to acknowledge that truth in politics is a valuable public good and that the role of intellectuals and media is to expose lies and promote truth. He adds that if this critique is to be effective then it demands a recognition of the nature of politics, the foundational point being that personal morality and political morality are overlapping yet different concepts.
Okay, so let us grant this distinction and put the issue of 'going to war Iraq on the table, as this concerns political morality in a democracy. What does Kelly say?:
The lesson from Iraq is that Howard did not lie but lost the trust of the public. This is an instance of a seriously defective decision. The evidence is that this war was misconceived, its justification was false, its implementation was disastrous while its consequences have been counter-productive. The breach of trust is fundamental. But did Howard lie? It remains an important question. Either he knew or suspected Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and lied to the public, or he was sincere. The evidence, contrary to many claims from public intellectuals, is that he was sincere. But sincerity does not forgive strategic folly or disastrous misjudgment about the nature of the war.
The truth in politics was that the evidence was not there. What was there was sexed up by the politicians and when this was eventually discovered Howard pointed the finger at the intelligence agencies. Kelly is an apologist for the deceit, deception or the con by the Howard Government.
Despite this Kelly persists in talking about 'the dysfunction of the intellectuals' and to claim that Howard has not corrupted our governance or brought our democracy to despair. There is no mention of the corruption of Senate.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:57 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
October 8, 2007
health reform: John Dwyer on
Public opinion polls consistently place health at, or near, the top of any list of public issues important to voters. It has taken them a while, but each of the major parties has broached the topic of health.They have done so in a way that leaves much to be desired since electoral politics overrules health care reform, given the present dysfunctional "system" is constituted by a series of fiefdoms and is characterized by a large number of adverse events.
The real reform need is to reduce the emphasis on hospital care and shift the focus on primary care so as top lessen the number of people going to hospital. That understanding of health policy is not rocket science, is it? Public hospitals have major problems because of ever-increasing demand, under-funding and shortages of health professionals.
John Dwyer, University of NSW professor of medicine and founder of the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance says:
It is madness that states get more money from the commonwealth if they have more overnight admissions to hospitals It costs $750 a day to lie in a hospital bed before you get your first aspirin and much, much more in an intensive care unit or an emergency department. We need better community care. Seventy per cent of the hospital admissions of older Australians who are in very poor condition could be avoided if there was effective community intervention.
We need to swing the healthcare system around to prevention and maintaining wellness and early diagnosis. Half the diabetics in Australia don't know they have diabetes. (Most) people who are going to have a heart attack don't know they have high blood pressure. Countries like New Zealand and Canada have markedly reduced the demand on hospital services by investing in better primary care. It is intolerable in Australia that you are five times more likely to die prematurely from a preventable illness if you live in Sydney's outer west than on the north shore.The continuum of care that should link primary, community and hospital services is made all but impossible because of the inefficiencies associated with the great divide, and the political buck passing, between the Commonwealth and the states.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:36 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 7, 2007
dog whistling
Kevin Andrews, the Immigration Minister is a crude politician. Dog whistle politics require subtlety. You imply, infer, suggest, so that your conservative kind of people know what you mean by excluding African refugees. You are talking about a white Anglo-Saxon monoculture where citizens are readily identifiable in a homogeneous Australian society.
Bill Leak
Multiculturalism doesn't work is the other message. It causes social division, ethnic ghettos and leads to events such as the Cronulla riots of December 2005 .The locals had to defend their beach under the Australian flag from people of Middle Eastern appearance----all evidence of an underlying ethnic racism in a multicultural Australian society.
That is the game Kevin Andrews is playing is it not?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:10 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
October 5, 2007
Gunns pulp mill
As we'd all expected the Gunns' pulp mill in the Tamar Valley has been given the okay by Minister Turnbull with extra conditions attached. And the ALP has no objections---once again what we'd expected. The Coalition is delivering jobs ----good economic management----and who is Labor to disagree. They just mirrored Coalition policy.
The only legitimate talk is about jobs and economic growth in Tasmania's northeast. And the impact on the impact on Tasmanian old growth native forests? Not to be mentioned. All that would be mentioned by the ALP was the flaws in the process.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:42 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
October 4, 2007
AWA's unfair
If Australia@Work report from the Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney is accurate, then the figures quoted should be a true reflection of the state of play in Australian workplaces. With more than 8300 survey participants, it is the largest study into workers and their attitudes ever undertaken.
It shows that low-skilled employees, like childcare workers, call centre workers labourers or shop assistants, are earning less on Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) than those on collective arrangements. On average those on AWAs, according to the report, are earning $100 a week less. This kind of unfairness is what we suspected. We also know that Work Choices has significantly reduced the legal protections of job security for Australian workers and boosted the power of employers to “hire and fire.”
There is now an imbalance between the competing objectives of managerial freedom and employment security.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:46 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Climate Change report
The CSIRO's report on Australia's climate future builds on the work of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report as gave these limited detail .on Australian climate change, particularly when it comes to regional climate change projections
The projections focus on the years 2030, 2050 and 2070 for various greenhouse gas emission scenarios. One of the projections in the CSIRO's report---the worse-case scenario---is that just 60 years from now Australia could be up to five degrees hotter and 40 to 80 per cent drier.The new projections are for a range of warming narrower than determined in 2001 – for 2070, 1 to 5 ºC compared with 1 ºC to 6 ºC. The narrower range is partly due to improved consistency between models.
Spooner
The Report predicts that decreases in annual average rainfall are likely in southern Australia - rainfall is likely to decrease in southern areas during winter, in southern and eastern areas during spring, and along the west coast during autumn.
The case for sustainability is pretty clear: Our lower Murray wine industry is facing collapse, Adelaide is our most water-stressed capital, and if the water crisis continues into this summer the region faces a full-blown disaster. Where will the water will come from?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:18 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
October 3, 2007
Gittins takes a punt
Ross Gittins has had a good go in the Sydney Morning Herald at explaining why the electoral tide continues to flow towards the ALP despite a booming economy. Given the good times, why is electoral support for the Coalition soft?
Gittins op-ed--- When the economy gets personal--- picks up on The Relationships Forum's recent report, Stating the obvious? The case of integrated public policy. This Report opens up a good line of critique of neo-liberal economics from a social democratic perspective.
Gittins says that if Labor wins it will owe much of its success to a shift in the public's preferences, with more weight being given to environmental and social concerns. He argues thus:
If Labor does win this election, two issues will have contributed greatly to that victory. First, rising public concern about global warming - the evidence of which we believe we can see mounting weekly.... Second, worries about Work Choices...... it's easy to see how making it easier for employers to require people to work on weekends, public holidays and at other unsociable hours - not to mention making it easier for bosses to change rosters at the last minute - could leave parents worried about juggling family responsibilities and others wondering how much they'll get to see of their friends.
The Howard Government has relied too heavily on the advice of economists ands paid too little attention to the environmental and social implications of their decisions.
The economy, the environment and the social are kept in separate boxes.The environmental and social consequences are left out of the economists' basic model, and they're dealt with later and separately at best and, at worst, only after they reach crisis point.
The general response by the free market or neo-liberal economists to this critique is to basically argue that it costs big money to fix environmental and social problems, and that only by giving priority to economic efficiency and competition will we be able to afford the cost of the improvements to the quality of life.
Despite the importance of efficiency and competition to ensure a growing economy, this neo-liberal response wrongly assumes that the economy exists outside of, and separate from, the natural environment and from the social lives of the people who active in the economy on a daily basis. As Gittins points out:
In truth, the economy exists within the environment. It's human activity - most of it economic - that wrecks river systems and causes excessive greenhouse gas emissions. And while the economy can damage the environment, we're now seeing the feedback flowing the other way as shortages of water and adverse changes in the weather damage the economy.
Similarly with the social:
Similarly, the economic dimension of our lives - our need to earn income from production and spend it on consumption - can't sensibly be divorced from the social dimension of our lives.Few of us live and work just for the joy of owning stuff. The deeper meaning in our lives comes from our social relationships with parents and siblings, spouses and children, co-workers, neighbours and friends.
Gittins concludes thus: 'to say we should ignore this collateral damage so that, becoming richer, we can more easily afford to fix the problems we've made worse, is muddle-headed. It's saying we must destroy the village to save it.'
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
October 2, 2007
the electoral politics of health
The politics of health continue. Health Minister Tony Abbott has foreshadowed a solution to a dogs breakfast health "system". The next five-year commonwealth-state health agreement would require each hospital to have a chief executive accountable to a local board. The measures would follow the model established by the Federal Government when it intervened to prop up the Mersey hospital in northern Tasmania, which will be funded by the Commonwealth but managed locally.
Clements
The justification? Apparently the ALP is engaged in a federal takeover of hospitals so the Coalition is going local. The ALP is actually talking about a single funding for hospitals, not actually running state public hospitals from Canberra.
This shift to placing power in the hands of local communities by the Coalition effectively cuts out the states, and it is at odds with the plans of some States (eg., SA) to do away with local hospital boards as they modernize their health system so that work in terms of a co-ordinated clusters of hospitals, primary care clinics and aged care facilities in a particular region.
It is also ignores the workforce shortages and the lack of resources at the heart of the health systems that necessitates the shift to clusters and co-ordinated and the transformation of some regional hospitals to aged care and rehabilitation facilities.
Update: I October
The crisis in the hospital "system" surfaces most dramatically in the adverse events in cash-strapped public hospitals and with patient complaints. The Age has an editorial on the topic. It says:
Both parties in this hospital war — or is it just a phoney war, a blame game being waged by political adversaries with no definite, clearly articulated policies to fix the system? — need to focus on issues that get to the heart of the problems in health-care delivery, not tactical manoeuvres that just meddle at the fringes without committing themselves to a real and necessary increase in resources that would go a long way to tackling the system's failures. The Australian public has little interest in the minutiae of hospital funding but knows that more is needed, given that the Government's private health initiatives, and a concomitant decline in realistically indexed federal funding over the past 10 years, have clearly done little to ease pressure on public hospitals. Also, it is more than aware that with growing pressure on hospital beds, the imperative for an early, and sometimes premature, discharge has increased.
The Age's editorial says that rather than pointing the finger at the states and threatening federal takeovers, the Government, or should it win office the Labor Party, needs to deal with the implications of an ageing population — for example, by boosting the number of nursing home places, which will free hospital beds for those who are ill, not just old. More beds means more doctors and nurses to attend them, and the next Government must ensure there are enough university places available to train them.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:33 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
Rudd+centralization of power
In the Sydney Morning Herald Tim Colebatch asks 'And assuming Labor wins, how much will it be a Labor government, drawing on the strengths of the many, and how much a Rudd government, reliant on the skills of The Leader?'
Spooner
Colebatch's answer?
Rudd's reform....would only increase his own power. And putting more power in the hands of rulers is not modernisation....But the power he seeks is power Howard already has. Does anyone seriously think the PM has used it "to select the best, most talented team available"? He has rewarded mediocrities who caught his fancy, while keeping out talented nonconformists such as former Victorian Liberal Party director Petro Georgiou. That's how all leaders operate when given total power. Rudd would do the same...Ask yourselves: do you think the risk is that Rudd as PM will have too little power, or that he will have too much? The answer is obvious.
I concur. Rudd is a centralizer and he will build on Howard's centralization of power in Prime Minister and Cabinet. All the signs indicate that.
That means executive dominance in the House of Representatives is controlled by Rudd. That only leaves the Senate standing against executive dominance as a form of countervailing power.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:15 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
October 1, 2007
Myanmar: popular revolt is economic
The "crimson revolution" in Myanmar---- thousands of monks chanting "democracy, democracy"---with its internet counterpart has an economic undertow that goes deeper than the withdrawal of public subsidies for fuel. According to this article in Asia Times Online the military junta has successfully melded Myanmar's economy into one that is dependent and focused on the export of resources.
However, it appears that the junta has little economic-planning experience, and its priorities lie in the promotion of military power. It has produced a situation in which little value is added to any natural resources, whether it be copper, timber or energy, producing an economy dependent on imports and exposed to the volatility of global resource prices.
Kathy Wilcox
The extraordinarily high budget deficits carried by the ruling junta are typically addressed by printing more money, producing the significant inflationary pressures seen today. It is the populace that has the most to lose from rampant inflation and evaporating savings, but it faces an incredibly resilient, sometimes violent and increasingly isolated military that has kept a stranglehold on power since 1962.
Pepe Escobar says in Asian Times Online:
It's virtually impossible that the collective leadership in Beijing will let one of its neighbors, a key pawn in the 21st-century energy wars, be swamped by non-violent Buddhists and pro-democracy students - as this would constitute a daring precedent for the aspirations of Tibetans, the Uighurs in Xinjiang and, most of all, Falungong militants all over China, the embryo of a true rainbow-revolution push defying the monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack