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December 31, 2007
the imperial presidency revisited
Sidney Blumenthal at Open Democracy has an interesting long view perspective on the 2008 US Presidential campaign, that is different from that of Paul Krugman.
Blumenthal says that this campaign pits two parties running on diametrically opposite ideas of the presidency and the constitution. There has not been such a sharp divergence on the foundation of the federal system since perhaps the election of 1860. Two models of the presidency are at odds, one whose founding father was George Washington, the other whose founding father was Richard Nixon.
The former model is limited presidential power within a system of checks and balances within constitutional government. The latter model is one of unlimited executive power. The Republican Party's interpretation of this model is the imperial presidency.
Blumenthal says:
In ways that Nixon did not achieve, Bush has reduced the entire presidency and its functions to the commander-in-chief in wartime. And in order to sustain this role he has projected a never-ending war against a distant, faceless foe, ubiquitous and lethal. Fear and panic became the chief motifs substituting for democratic persuasion to engineer the consent of the governed.... The imperial president must by definition be an infallible leader. Only he can determine what is a mistake because he is infallible....Projecting violence against accused terrorists in an endless war is a deep political strategy to forge and fortify a new regime.
Bush's presidency is now accepted as the only acceptable version for major Republican candidates who aspire to succeed him. All of them have pledged to extend its arbitrary powers. Their embrace of the imperial presidency makes the 2008 election a turning-point in constitutional government.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:26 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 30, 2007
tidy town
There's some wild and woolly weather going on at the Gold Coast at the moment. It's making the place untidy, which is something we don't tolerate around these parts. You can think the ugliest of thoughts, behave as badly as you like, beat the crap out of your family and anyone else you don't like, and amass several fortunes ripping off first home buyers and other innocents. Just don't let your lawn get out of hand. The front lawn - we don't care about the back unless it can be seen from the street.
And no overt signs of poverty either, thanks. We don't do poverty here. It's untidy.
We've even got a nifty dobbing system that works along the lines of name and shame. If you notice someone's lawn getting a bit unkempt you can email On Our Watch at the Gold Coast Bulletin (News Ltd, who else?) and they'll publish the details with a photo if it's untidy enough, along with the name and address of the perpetrator where possible. It's a successful campaign. The paper devotes a whole page to a parade of horror.
For the past two weeks we've been scandalised by "the notorious A-frame house of Hope Island". Hope Island is a developing cluster of new canal and golf course estates being built on old farm land. It's certainly no place for a timber A-frame. Thank goodness "finally the unwanted landmark is being dismantled".
There's nothing organic or human about the way the Gold Coast is growing. Developers buy chunks of land and cram as many houses onto it as possible. There could be as many as four designs potential owners can choose from. They come landscaped, tidy and new and they're apparently supposed to stay that way.
Anything over 10 years old is advertised in real estate brochures as quaint, renovator's dream or land plus free house. Brand new is good. New is OK. Newish is borderline and established is overdue for demolition. Bunnings is the place to be seen if you're not promenading around the tourist strip or playing a round of golf. They have lovely big trolleys at Bunnings.
Which is another problem according to On Our Watch. "Shopping trolleys mar our suburban streets". "Surely someone must be responsible for gathering the abandoned shopping trolleys marring our suburbs at the moment". Somebody might mistake all that marring for evidence of human life.
There's a "rising tide of rubbish" in our canals and our bus stops are looking "a bit scruffy" because the council doesn't pick up the garbage we throw in the water, or install bike stands at bus stops. The whole place is going to hell in a handcart.
Our well manicured, brand new and spotlessness is being overrun by a plague of unsightly messiness. Thank goodness for the vigilance of On Our Watch, fearlessly exposing the unacceptable and monstrous. Appearance is everything.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:04 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Canberra watch: new directions?
If the Liberals are in the land of oblivion desperately trying to create a future for themselves on liberal principles, then the ALP's intellectuals are saying that the Howard legacy has disappeared and will not return. Consequently, we can expect new directions from the Rudd Government:

Barry Jones argues that the new directions will involve greater accountability and transparency in government; respect for the rule of law; a more independent foreign policy; international leadership in reducing the impact of greenhouse gas emissions; a national apology for Aboriginal dispossession; depoliticization of the public service and the return of frank and fearless advice; co-operative federalism.
Its a 'change the government change the country' style argument that Jones is mounting. I'm not persuaded that it is as clear cut as Jones makes out. There is too much overlap with the Howard legacy: budget surpluses;deregulation and expansion of the economy; entrenching choice of school and health care provider; enhancing the enterprise society of small firms; even industrial relations reform.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:57 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
December 29, 2007
total strangers
Yesterday marked a year since the death of Ron Calcutt, a minor celebrity in the recreational fishing and boating scenes, and my father. Back in the '60s he started up the first magazine devoted to your average fisho and made a series of short films which were broadcast on the ABC. He helped launch the careers of most of the bigger names in the now well-established niche market, mainly by nurturing their writing and photography skills. Good anglers are not necessarily good writers or photographers.
It's hard to imagine such a thing happening now - a bunch of amateurs keeping such a thing afloat, let alone making a success of it, without selling their souls to advertisers in the process. These days the soul-selling is well underway before anyone puts pen to paper. It's necessary, but very ugly.
I had to speak at his funeral representing my three fishing brothers and my non-fishing self. It wasn't an easy thing to write so I Googled around for some inspiration, something I could say that meant something but wouldn't choke me up in the process. I found some discussion forums which sent me back 30 or 40 years to family outings when we were kids.
Hours waiting around a boat ramp while Dad conversed with some total stranger. Hanging around mud flats with a bucketful of warming yabbies while Dad talked to some total stranger. Baking in the car waiting for Dad to finish chatting with some total stranger. It happened all the time. And there they were, decades later, some of those total strangers writing their recollections of the day they met Ron Calcutt and he took the time to talk to them, just like a normal bloke.
It was a weird thing, feeling like a selfish brat for all the complaining I'd done as a kid about waiting for total strangers. The other thing was the changed shape of grief. The intensity didn't reduce, but knowing it was widely shared spread it further, shared it around, which helped somehow.
I talked about the forums in the speech and quoted one of the total stranger's comments. The words weren't earth shattering. The point was that they'd been written at all. Later I put a post about it up on the forum with thanks and acknowledgement, but it's hard to put sincere gratitude into the right words. How do you explain to a bunch of human beings that their pixels sometimes matter more than sentiments expressed in the flesh?
So much of our face to face interaction is formulaic. How are you? Have a nice day. How about this weather? Sorry to hear about (insert event here). It's hard to gauge the level of sincerity sometimes. The people on that forum had no reason to say what they did beyond wanting to say it. I don't doubt the sincerity of all the things I heard said the day of the funeral, but my brothers and I felt something along the lines of solidarity with those spontaneously typing total strangers.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Pakistan: more turmoil
Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan have done what they vowed to do--assassinate the Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, the only Pakistani leader who regularly spoke against al-Qaeda. Her death will further destabilize Pakistan.

The fallout from Bhutto's death will make it more difficult for Pakistan to return to democracy after eight years of military rule under Musharraf. It also being interpreted in terms of Pakistan being in the frontline in the "war on terrorism". But it is more a Pakistani problem: the conflict between Islamist militants in the madrassas and those who stand for a secular, liberal democratic Pakistan.
The military intelligence of the military junta almost single-handedly catapulted the Taliban to power in 1994, and they are now using similar tactics in Pakistan itself to destroy any members of the opposition who confront the army's secular dictatorship. Bhutto represented a leader who could organize united opposition to the military's regime.Military rule, which was designed to preserve order and did so for a few years, does so no longer.
Bhutto's assassination is an indication of Islam's often uneasy relations with what passes for "modernity" across the rest of the globe: separation of church and state, equality for women, acceptance of an independent status for other religions (other than as prefiguring Islam), a secular legal system.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:28 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
December 28, 2007
let the good times roll
The odds of an increase in interest rates in February have shortened after the sold-out sales over Xmas. The emphasis has been on the big ticket items---game consoles navigation devices, LCD and plasma TVs, digitial cameras were racing out the door in Sydney and Melbourne.
My PC at Victor Harbor, which ran Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003, died just before Xmas. I've decided not to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007 for my personal use. I'm shifting over to an Apple Macbook, display screen, i-pod and photographic software. But I am going to pay off one of my credit cards before I spend up big.

The Xmas sales indicate that the household debt level and the current interest rates are not too restrictive for Australian households. The resources boom continues, house prices continue to rise the field of investment dreams grows ever more expansive, there is easy money is too be made and the Liberals have been swept into history. The future is ours.
The public mood is rather different in the US. House prices continue to fall and consumers are underspending. it's enough to cause jitters on Wall Street that is finding it rather hard to spin the huge loses incurred by the global banks and brokerages (eg. Merrill Lynch) from the sub-prime mortgages as good news. The US is headed towards a hard landing in 2008. Nouriel Roubini, over at Project Syndicate, spells this out. He says:
The US is now headed towards recession, regardless of what the Fed does. The build-up of real and financial problems – the worst US housing recession ever, oil at $90 a barrel or above, a severe credit crunch, falling investment by the corporate sector, and savings-less and debt-burdened consumers buffeted by multiple negative shocks – make a recession unavoidable. Other economies will also be pulled down as the US contagion spreads.
Robert Schiller has an article at Project Syndicate, which explores our images of economic disaster entitled Imagining Recession. He says that:
Popular images of past disasters are part of our folklore, often buried in the dim reaches of our memory, but re-emerging to trouble us from time to time. Like traditional myths, such graphic, shared images embody fears that are deeply entrenched in our psyche. The images that have accompanied past episodes of market turmoil are largely absent today.
However, there is an image that does exist in the US :
The images that are uppermost in our minds are of a housing crisis. We imagine residential streets with one “for sale” sign after another. Worse, there are images of foreclosures, of families being evicted from their homes, their furniture and belongings on the street. If home prices continue to decline in the United States and possibly elsewhere, there could be many more vivid images. You may yet be presented with the image of your child’s playmate moving away because his parents were thrown out in a foreclosure. You may see a house down the street trashed by an angry owner who was foreclosed. Such images become part of your sense of reality, and could disturb your sense of confidence and reduce your willingness to spend and support the economy.
This is what is happening in the US now, though not Australia. The good times are rolling along courtesy of the resources boom.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:44 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 27, 2007
suburban happiness
After Xmas:

My test is struggling to make computers work as they should. I would have thought that Mum and daughter would have been at the Boxing Day sales stocking up on electronics, towels, linen, shoes, clothes, whitegoods and Christmas decorations.This is the time when households traditionally stock up on sheets and towels for the year and even significant household purchases such as whitegoods like fridges and ovens. And the handbags?
It's an assertive style of shopping that's required to obtain what's desired.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:48 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
December 26, 2007
US Republicanism, fascism and executive dominance
I know little about Rudolph Giuliani, one of the current Republican candidates, apart from him having been the very successful mayor of New York City. He appears to be the frontrunner to be the next Republican presidential nominee. He's a social liberal in a socially conservative Republican Party and he appears to have surrounded himself the extremist foreign policy team with an unquenchable quest for "Forever War."
Giuliani is seen by the old American Right as a fascist and the image cover of the current issue is a pretty controversial one. I find it hard to see how Giuliani being a liberal Republican---“I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-gay rights”--makes him a fascist.

The American Conservative represents the traditionalist, anti-war and paleoconservative voice against the dominance of what it sees as a neoconservative media establishment. So it is opposed to President Bush's interventionist foreign policy as well as his immigration and trade policies.
Paleoconservatism refers to an anti-communist and anti-authoritarian right wing movement based in the United States that stresses tradition, civil society and classical federalism, along with familial, religious, regional, national and Western identity.It is critical of social democracy, which is often referred to as the therapeutic managerial state.
Why then is Giuliani seen as a fascist?
Tom Piatak's article in the magazine is of little help. Pitak says:
By demonstrating how unimportant social conservatives had become to the GOP, Giuliani’s nomination could well transform American politics. Millions of Americans vote Republican in spite of the party’s economic views, not because of them. There is no doubt a Giuliani candidacy would alienate many of these voters, pushing some to their ancestral Democratic home, some to a possible pro-life third party, and some to stay home on election day. Those who remain in the GOP would be part of a party that viewed the war on terror as the premier social issue, as Jonah Goldberg has argued it now is. Quite a descent from 1980.
That may be so, but fascism it does not make. However, Glenn Greenward's article in the magazine does. It refers to Giuliani as the authoritarian mayor with the ultimate challenge to impose order on New York city that was widely assumed to be ungovernable. Greenwald says that America in 2008 presents an authoritarian president with the ultimate fantasy: the ability to wield more power than any other human being in the world, with the fewest real limits in modern American history. He then adds:
A President Giuliani would inherit an office bestowed with such dark powers as indefinite detention, interrogation methods widely considered to be torture, vast warrantless surveillance authority, and an impenetrable wall of secrecy secured by multiple executive and judicial instruments. Set all of that next to a submissive and impotent Congress and an equally supine media—to say nothing of the prospect of another terrorist attack to exacerbate every one of those factors—and it is hard to imagine a more toxic combination than Rudy Giuliani and the Oval Office.
Greenwald's argument is that the US political landscape has now tilted so heavily in favor of unchecked presidential prerogatives that a newly elected, shrewd, and inherently aggressive Giuliani, whose certainty about his own rightness is matched only by his contempt for those who disagree, could easily run roughshod over any attempts to constrain his actions.
He adds that during the nomination campaign Giuliani has enthusiastically endorsed virtually every one of the most controversial Bush/Cheney assertions of presidential power. He wants to keep Guantanamo open and mocks concerns over the use of torture, even derisively comparing sleep deprivation to the strain of his own campaign. He not only defends Bush’s warrantless surveillance, but does not recognize the legitimacy of any concerns relating to unchecked government power.Giuliani has confirmed that he believes that the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, and detain them with no review of any kind.
So the fascist image is warranted is it not?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:03 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
December 25, 2007
Xmas day
An Xmas post:

Enjoy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:00 PM | TrackBack
December 24, 2007
Religion, public life, postmodern shopfest
Since Xmas is upon now is a good time to reflect on the role of religion in public life. A good place to start is Tina Beattie's The end of postmodernism: the “new atheists” and democracy in Open Democracy on the conflict between science and religion in postmodernity. I quote two passages that describe Beattie's understanding of the current postmodern condition in liberal democracy:
religious zealotry can be interpreted as the other face of the metropolitan fancy-dress parade which constitutes the consumerist lifestyles of postmodern urban elites, reflecting as they do the banality and homogeneity of a global market which is no respecter of boundaries, cultures and traditions. Instead of freedom we have choice, and instead of values we have labels and lifestyles. We citizens of the western democracies have become solipsistic consumers indifferent to the squandering of our hard-won freedoms and rights by governments for which terrorism has become a byword for ever-more draconian strategies of surveillance and control. As democracy withers and the political forum is colonised by the suave-speaking mediocrities of the soundbite era, as blatant self-interest on the part of the world's most powerful nations becomes an excuse for every kind of collusion in the politics of corruption and violence, we in whose names the battles are being fought have allowed our horizons to shrink so that we see no further than the nearest shopping-mall.
This ignores the ethical life that we live whilst inhabiting a consumer culture and the way this shapes our ethical judgements about right and wrong beyond the shopping mall. But it is Beattie's narrative.
Beattie describes that the counter religious response thus:
For many others, it is religion - particularly in its more dogmatic forms - that offers a potent alternative; those drawn to it include people both disenfranchised from the beginning because they are too poor or too oppressed to participate in the postmodern shop-fest, and people who are afraid of what they perceive as the moral meltdown of modern western culture. In these forms of religion, people can find certainty instead of confusion, clear rules instead of ambiguity, tight-knit communities instead of shifting and transient relationships; and all this is presided over by a wrathful male God who hates all the things they hate - particularly gays, feminists and libertarians of every description - and who sanctions violence in order to keep His values safe from corruption.
Beattie says that the most pressing question confronting us lies here: how to respond to the slow death of democracy, and adds:
The recent confrontation between religion and science is in this context a smokescreen which is distracting us from much more urgent political and intellectual issues. It allows the secular intelligentsia to hide behind a convenient and inflated - where not fabricated - myth of religious extremism which masks from us our own complicity in the murder and mayhem by which western global supremacy and our own privileged status within that are now maintained.
I agree that the recent replay of the confrontation between religion and science is a smokescreen which is distracting us from much more urgent political and intellectual issues. All that cultural wars stuff about needing to return to religion to get some ethics is blowing in the wind. Modernity has its secular ethics--rights based and utilitarianism--and, as Nietzsche pointed out , it is the highest values of Christianity that are being devalued.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 23, 2007
Sunday cartoon
I'm testing to see whether things are working on thoughtfactory after the Movable Type upgrade. I've been having problems uploading images on junk for code. So I thought that I'd try uploading an image here as a test.

Whales have been in the news a lot in Australia. So I thought that I'd publish Golding's comment.
Kumi Kato in The Age says:
The claim by the Japanese Government that whale meat is part of Japanese culture is true in that it existed in this small-scale, community-based coastal whaling similar to the hunts of indigenous groups such as the Makah and Inuit, but this is, in my opinion, clearly separate from the large-scale industrial whaling conducted on the high seas.If the Government is seriously committed to the maintenance of cultural tradition, the priority would be on the sustainable livelihood practices of coastal community fisheries, which may include a very limited number of whale hunts. It is human arrogance to assume harvest of any natural resource as a right but, if an inherent cultural right is to be granted to anyone, it would be the coastal communities.
Another argument Japan makes in favour of whaling is that it is for scientific research. Simply, if research destroys a species it should not be carried out, and if research is necessary to improve the ecological wellbeing of a species every effort must be made to minimise the impact of the research.Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:21 AM | TrackBack
December 22, 2007
US Presidential campaign
I've started trying to follow the US presidential campaign to see where things stand. From what I can make out the media's version is a story of five candidates and two rivalries. On the Democratic side, it is Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill with suggestions of a Clinton-Obama ticket. On the Republican side it is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.
This narrative makes former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), former Sen. John Edwards (D) underdog candidates. I know little about Ron Paul, another underdog, other than he is a free market capitalist man who opposes "big government and defends constitutional freedoms.
Glenn Greenwald says that the centerpiece of the Edwards campaign:
is a critique that is a full frontal assault on our political establishment. His argument is not merely that the political system needs reform, but that it is corrupt at its core -- "rigged" in favor of large corporate interests and their lobbyists, who literally write our laws and control the Congress. Anyone paying even casual attention to the extraordinary bipartisan effort on behalf of telecom immunity, and so many other issues driven almost exclusively by lobbyists, cannot reasonably dispute this critique.
Greenwald adds that argument indicts the same Beltway culture of which our political journalists are an integral part, and further attacks the system's power brokers who are the friends, sources, and peers of those journalists, they instinctively react with confusion, scorn and hostility towards Edwards' campaign.Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:11 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
December 21, 2007
An Xmas card
This was the image that I used for my electronic Xmas card:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Block Arcade, Melbourne, 2007Seasons greetings everyone.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:14 PM | TrackBack
CoAG: the workhorse of the nation?
The first COAG, co-operative federalism style, has been and gone. It was peace and goodwill all round, with a promise of a new way of doing business. And a photo opportunity. All the right noises were made. Everyone was happy that John Howard was not there. Everybody was rolling up their sleeves and willing to put their shoulders to the wheel---and so on.
CoAG did establish working groups to drive reform in seven key areas--health and ageing; education, skills and early childhood development; climate change and water; infrastructure; business regulation; housing; and indigenous affairs. These will be driven by the relevant federal and state minsters who will not pass the buck.
The states and territories will share an extra $50 million next year — in addition to the $100 million he announced during last month's election campaign — to reduce elective surgery waiting lists by 25,000. Is that a down payment on hospital reform? Or a sign of good will?
The policy shift to preventive health care can be found in the Commonwealth/State Implementation Plans to be delivered to the March 2008 COAG Meeting to tackling elective surgery waiting times; investing in aged care, especially in transition care; invest in public dental programs; preventative health care and GP superclinics.
So who will get what from Canberra? Who will miss out? Which states are willing to get things done? What sort of incentive payments will there be? That's for next year. At this stage the blame game has been put into the historical rubbish bin containing Liberal bodies.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 20, 2007
choking on our own prosperity?
One of the centre pieces of the ALP's election campaign was a tax package that will add a lot more to demand than they do to the supply of labour. And the Reserve Bank lets it be known that it would have put up interest rates again in December if it were not for the credit crunch in international financial markets. Treasury is talking in terms of the likelihood of further pressure on the underlying inflation rate over the next 18 months given the economy's lack of spare capacity.
PryorAccess Economics says delivering on the tax commitments will push up interest rates unless there are extra spending cuts. It says adding another tax cut to an economy already at full stretch does not boost the size of the economy and create more jobs. Instead it brings a bigger import bill and higher prices. So more spending cuts are required.
This kind of response needs to be put into the context of what is f happening in international financial markets. Does not the credit crunch crisis there represent the first crisis of financial globalization? The clogg up in the international money markets increasingly appears to be the most severe financial turmoil hitting advanced economies in the last twenty years. Nouriel Roubini says that we should be wary of the international central bankers as their understanding of this crisis has a history of being flawed:
...the central banks – the Fed in particular – have been behind the curve for over a year now. The Fed totally underestimated the housing recession arguing – like most market folks – that this was a temporary slump that would bottom out by the end of 2006 (sic!); it kept on saying throughout the winter of 2006 that the sub-prime problem was a niche and contained problem when it was not just sub-prime mortgages but also near prime and prime and excessive and reckless lending and leverage across the entire financial system; it kept on arguing that the housing slump would not affect other sectors and would not lead to a more severe economic slowdown that is in full swing now; it underestimated the risk of broader contagion to the financial system and ended up being literally surprised when the liquidity and credit crunch hit in the summer time; it then it deluded itself in believing that this crunch was temporary and that Fed easing would resolve it; and it was then surprised (as Kohn admitted in its last speech) when the crunch got worse rather than better in the fall and has now gotten much worse than in August. So, the Fed has been persistently wrong for over a year now in its assessment of the economy and of financial markets.
The housing downturn in the US is entering its third year and the Federal Reserve's actions to contain the fallout have largely ineffective. The hard landing that the US is now experiencing and a severe global economic slowdown are the consequences for the credit excesses, the asset bubbles, the reckless leverage, the lack of minimal appropriate supervision and regulation of financial markets of the last few years. The central bankers are saying very little about the medium terms issues of reforming the architecture and governance of the international financial system.Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:39 AM | TrackBack
December 19, 2007
tall poppies
Kevin won the election and Natalie won Idol, settling two of our most pressing questions. We'll follow their careers for a while, but sooner or later we'll get bored and start looking around for the next nobody we can elevate to celebrity. If they stay nice and ordinary they'll be allowed to fade into a dignified obscurity, and we'll be pleased and curious when they turn up on one of those Whatever Happened To? shows. But if they start getting arrogant, a bit full of themselves, or taking things for granted, they'll get the ritual public slaying we reserve for those we deem up themselves. We'll crucify them and sneer at their pathetic comeback attempts.
It's all just part of the contemporary fusion, or confusion, between celebrity and democracy. Graeme Turner from UQ calls it the 'demotic turn', pointing out there's nothing truly democratic about the way seemingly ordinary people seem to achieve celebrity via what seems to be popular recognition of merit. Building them up is the entertainment industry's business, but cutting them down is the business of respectable, baseball bat-wielding, egalitarian Aussies doing what comes naturally.
For good or ill, tall poppy syndrome is an Australian tradition. It's a social mechanism we use to preserve the ordinary, egalitarian, mainstream, middle class battler and other words conservative opinion columnists are so fond of. It was central to the successful conduct of the culture wars, where the conservatives accused everyone from truly elitist snobs to baffled Arts undergraduates of arrogance. The entire Left was painted as so far up itself it couldn't see daylight, let alone share the concerns of ordinary people.
The possibility that their own pedestals might come under scrutiny, that their own attitudes might come up for consideration, seems not to have occurred to them. Despite their apparent reverence for the Aussie way of life, the worst of them have made arrogance a personal trademark. Christopher Pearson, Janet Albrechtson and David Flint are stand outs for their sense of entitlement. Their attempts to justify their continued tenure on the grounds that democracy needs dissenting voices miss the point. The presumption that they represent anything other than their own privilege is almost offensive.
Their political and social conservatism is not the problem - it's their clear violation of egalitarian civility codes. As the guardians of tradition and professional spotters of the unAustralian you'd think they'd recognise that, but like many a celebrity before them and many an innocent bystander they've demonised into submission, they seem unable to comprehend their own loss of fabulousness.
It's got nothing to do with a triumph of the Left or silencing dissent or threatening our way of life. On the contrary, calls for them to bugger off or suffer public contempt are upholding a cultural tradition we've successfully incorporated into our new demotic turn. It's a natural consequence of our celebration of the ordinary that can, and often does, happen to the best of us.
They were incredibly good at what they did. Trouble is, they knew it.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:22 PM | TrackBack
CoAG + health reform
The first Council of Australian Government's (CoAG) meeting under the new Rudd Government will be held this week in Melbourne on December 20. It will be the first CoAG meeting in which wall-to-wall Labor governments have sat down to hammer out a national reform agenda that died in the final years of the Howard Government.
It comes amid promises from the ALP that a new federal-state compact will be forged, leading to fundamental changes in the way Canberra and the states deliver services. Will this happen?
Alan MoirThe December CoAG meeting agenda focuses on health, education, climate change, housing , infrastructure and indigenous affairs. It promises to usher in an era of co-operative federalism. Co-operative federalism aims to to end what the ALP has called “the blame game” between the federal and provincial levels of government around health care. Can it be delivered?
It aims to do this through implementing Labor's election commitments on elective surgery waiting lists, the provision of aged care beds and a public dental program. These would constitute agenda item one for the commonwealth and the states and territories. However the states could not agree on an agenda and it has been entirely set by the Prime Minister.
I have not seen the point by point negotiating strategy contained in the high level policy papers, but the following information is in the public domain. It is stated that this COAG meeting will be more of a strategic discussion to outline a program of work for 2008, rather than aim to produce a policy agreement in these areas on day one.
Health care is the no I priority and it is understand thus:
1. The most immediate task is spend $100 million to remove the entire backlog of about 25,000 peoople who have spend longer on elective surgery waiting lists than the clinically recommended time.
Two strategies have been proposed to deal do this. First, surgical staff would be paid to conduct more operations outside normal hours---such as at night and over the weekend. And second, private hospitals would be contracted to help clear the backlog. Workforce problems are envisaged.
2. CoAG also needs to agree on how to implement the $300 million four year plan to provide competition policy-style dividend payments to the states to reward them for completing surgery within the clinically recommended time.
3. Another of CoAG's tasks is to set up the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. This body will set guidelines on how the performance of public hospitals can be judged.In the election Labor promised performance benchmarks for state and territory hospitals, and that if there is not improvement with 18 months, Rudd would propose constitutional referendum in 2010 giving the federal Government control of the nation’s 758 public hospitals.
4. The other issues are spending more on aged care, boosting dental programs and preventative care, as well as cutting out duplication. It is not clear what spending more on aged care and boosting preventative care means.
The latter seems to involve GP Super Clinics in different suburbs. Labor's GP Super Clinic funding means that GPs will be co-located with other primary care services to provide more convenient and accessible health care services. They are expected to include privately practising GPs, a range of allied health services such as physiotherapy and podiatry, mental health services including counselling; and dental services.
Ken Baxter, writing in the AFR, says that a key problem in delivering the reform agenda is the lack of capacity of the state ministers and their supporting departmental officials in key areas to lead the policy debates rather than protect the status quo. Victoria is the exception to the state's public services being depleted of rigorous policy people or becoming highly politicized. It is the commonwealth's public service that has retained the intellectual rigor that has declined in the states.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:44 AM | TrackBack
December 18, 2007
'winning' in Iraq means....
Joel Fitzgibbon, Australia's new defense minister, recently warned U.S. and NATO allies that they risk losing the war in Afghanistan without a sharp shift in military and reconstruction efforts there. So how are things in Iraq these days?
The British have pulled out of Basra claiming that things there went pretty much according to plan. A recent article in The Guardian entitled UK has left behind murder and chaos gives a blunt assessment of what 'winning' in Iraq actually amounts to,
Whilst the British military are saying that they have achieved victory in Basra The Guardian article says:
As British forces finally handed over security in Basra province, marking the end of 4½ years of control in southern Iraq, Major General Jalil Khalaf, the new [Iraqi] police commander, said the occupation had left him with a situation close to mayhem. "They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world".
Khalaf lists a catalogue of failings made by the British, who told everybody that, unlike the Americans, they knew what they were doing in terms of winning hearts and minds.
He says:
· Basra has become so lawless that in the last three months 45 women have been killed for being "immoral" because they were not fully covered or because they may have given birth outside wedlock;The British unintentionally rearmed Shia militias by failing to recognise that Iraqi troops were loyal to more than one authority; Shia militia are better armed than his men and control Iraq's main port.
The main problem the Iraqi security forces now faced was the struggle to wrest control back from the militia. Weren't the British supposed to be fighting Islamic fundamentalism to establish a unified nation state aligned with the west?If Basra is a success story , then what of the embattled city of Fallujah, which is still completely closed and surrounded by US military checkpoints to make it look like an isolated island. Those who are not genuine residents of the city are not granted the biometric identification badge from the US Marines, and are thus not allowed to enter the city. This is liberation--neo-con US style:
Water and electricity services are at a minimum in the city. An Oxfam International report released in July found that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to safe drinking water. Since the November 2004 siege, entire neighborhoods remain totally destroyed, and with no water or electricity. Most of the businesses in Fallujah remain closed.
Three years of war---the great surge leading to victory--has turned Fallujah into a wreck of a city.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:11 AM | TrackBack
December 17, 2007
an economic healing process?
The global crisis in financial markets arising from the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US continues to unfold in good dialectical fashion. Last week we had an emergency action plan-- a bail out?-- by the US Federal Reserve and four other central banks (Banks of England and Canada, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank) that injected lots of liquidity ($70 billion) into global financial markets.
Is it a case of too little too late? Is the current turmoil in the US just a liquidity crisis? A “temporary” credit crunch, as it were? Or is it something more?
This bailout, it was argued, would help banks to continue borrow to fund their activities. The Central Bankers big fear is that the US housing problems will drag its economy into recession and damage worldwide economic growth. There is now a serious risk of a global economic downturn in 2008 as the US inevitably heads towards a recession, and this recession leads to economic recoupling across the globe.
The signs are not good: banks in America are warning that their write downs will be greater than predicted; Britain's house price bubble looks to burst because of the credit crunch; the interbank system is not working very well; the regulatory systems in Asian countries are vulnerable to the forces flowing through global markets; the U.S. current account is in bad shape; inflation is becoming more of a threat in Australia, Europe and Asia. Moreover, the US dollar continues to weaken and, as it is the major currency for trade, its continuous depreciation will push up prices of oil and gold and reduce the wealth of dollar-holding nations (eg. China, America's creditor). Or is this a case of a dirty float?
That's a dollar crisis on top of a credit crunch, poor governance and a weakening economy. That's a lot of friction and anxiety being generated within the political economy of the world of nations, and the rippling effects can be felt everywhere.
What if the events unfolding in the US represent a debt or a insolvency crisis among a variety of borrowers that over-borrowed excessively during the boom phase of the latest credit bubble? What if the end process of the economic flows are insolvent and bankrupt households, mortgage lenders, home builders, leveraged hedge funds and asset managers? What if we have a liquidity crisis that signals a more fundamental debt, credit and insolvency crisis among many economic agents in the US and global economy?
If so does that not require more than liquid injections to deal with the causes of the credit crunch? Paul Krugman says:
In past financial crises — the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia’s default in 1998 — the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic isn’t working. Why not? Because the problem with the markets isn’t just a lack of liquidity — there’s also a fundamental problem of solvency.
This is a world of bad debts and falling equity. As Krugman observes there’s a lot of bad debt out there in the US and you just don’t know how much of that bad debt is held by the guy who wants to borrow your money.That's a serious case of lack of transparency and thus a regulatory issue.The global bailout addresses the issue of the interbank system not working very well (the banks don't trust one another), but not the other issues. Nor will the monetary easing through interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in the US prevent the unavoidable hard landing in that nation's economy. At best it will only postpone the necessary restructuring after a reckless credit-boom driven asset bubble. Liquidity injections by themselves do not resolve the deep insolvency problems of many overstretched borrowers--households, financial institutions, corporates-- in the US.
A possible scenario is that a US hard landing followed by a global slowdown will seriously reduce the current inflationary forces, as these will lessen once the US hard landing is in full swing. If so, then we need to ask: why do central banks allow credit bubbles to grow and burst? Why don't the central banks work to bring about regulatory reform of the global financial markets? Why aren't there moves to bring non-bank financial institutions into the regulatory framework? Why is there a lack of movement to create a sounder and more transparent global financial system?
Update
The rippling effects of the credit crunch continue to bite in Australia. RAMS Home Loans was unable to refinance some of its loans. Now the Centro Group, a management and property group of companies, has revealed that it has been unable to negotiate a package to refinance $1.3 billion and unable to roll over $3.9 billion in short term loans that expire on February 15, 2008. There’s an additional $3.4 billion that falls due within 12 months and the remaining $10.6 billion expires some time after that. Shares in Centro Properties Group collapsed today.The banks have become more risk averse and various bankers have basically pulled back from lending to property assets. This has led to hefty increases in the cost of capital for other borrowers. Centro, which manages $26.6 billion in property and specializes in the ownership, management and development of shopping centres, had borrowed heavily to finance a rapid expansion in the US where it had acquired relatively low value assets. Consequently, a debt-laden Centro,was faced with higher borrowing costs and the need to make major asset sales to reduce its debt. It is now tottering on the point of collapse, with its fate in the hands of its bankers.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:24 AM | TrackBack
December 16, 2007
climate change: after Bali
Well something was signed at Bali to reduce greenhouse emissions, but I'm not sure what. I know that Australia is one of the developed countries most at risk from climate change. I also know that the UN negotiations did not go as far as specify any targets for cutting the emissions causing global warming.
But what was actually achieved? Does the deal open the way to real negotiations on effective measures to protect the climate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? A road map was delivered. Was the Bali meeting a failure, even though it has been declared a success.
Matt GoldingThe talks appeared to get somewhere---the world is now committed to launching negotiations that will produce a new global agreement by 2009 to battle climate change---thereby keeping alive hope that we can still get ourselves out of the mess we have created. However, there is still the fact that US obstructionism threatens chances of a post-Kyoto protocol deal by 2009.
The US's intransigence at the Bali conference is no longer accompanied by a denial of the basic science as the US now accepts that the world faces catastrophe. But it still refuses to take its share of the pain needed to avert it. Al Gore was right about the US---it is the United States that is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali.
The science that was prepared by the world's top climate experts was relegated to a footnote. The focus on the lowest emission scenario assessed to be able to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change-- a two-degree global warming requiring greenhouse gas emissions to be stabilised in the next 10 to 15 years---seems to have been lost. The language of the road map reduced emissions reduction targets to "guidelines. Still the crucial figures - the emissions reduction range of 25-40 per cent by 2020 for industrialised countries - remain.
The US's efforts to forge a deal outside the UN are likely to go nowhere as many in Europe and the developing world decide to wait out the Republican White House and target their efforts towards the Democrats. So the US had little option other than to agree to support the Bali roadmap for a future climate change deal - a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
Update: 17 December
The industrialised countries, including Australia, are doing too little now to actually reduce emissions. Global emissions are still rising, not falling, now. Bali was a small step in the right direction. Thus we have this interpretation of the Bali road map to 2009:
Alan MoirThe road map means that Australia, like the other developed countries, will work towards their national targets with a Garnaut-like process. The road map says that developing countries do not need to commit to quantified targets, but will be required to take measurable and verifiable actions that are "in the context of sustainable development, supported by technology and enabled by financing and capacity-building". Thus developing nations have recognised the need to tackle climate change and, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, will now be part of the next global pact.
Although Bali fell well short of what was required, the next two years remain critical. The next talks take place in Copenhagen in 2008. Even a deal on emissions in 2009 would not in itself mean that action will be taken. It would only impose a duty on countries, which many will ignore, if the example of Kyoto is repeated. Until the developed world cuts emissions in a manner that will change the way people live, there is little prospect of the developing world following suit.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:08 PM | TrackBack
December 15, 2007
neo-con tales out of season
Remember in the days of the former Howard Government the Washington Republican tales about the Iranians will produce a bomb that threatens Israel's very existence, and that the Iranians had to be stopped at all cost by the US because Iran is one of the greatest threats in the world today. This was the justification the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war against Iran, the building of an an international consensus, led by the US and the UN Security Council decreeing sanctions against Tehran.
Well, there has been a U-turn in American intelligence.The American intelligence community, comprising 16 different agencies, has reached an unanimous verdict in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran: already in 2003, the Iranians terminated their efforts to produce a nuclear bomb, and they have not resumed them since. Even if they change their mind in the future, they will need at least five years to achieve their aim.
It may be the case that Tehran was no longer developing nuclear weapons, but that hasn't changed the views of Bush and Cheney towards Iran; or Israel for that matter. Yet the possibility of an independent Israeli military strike against Iran has vanished and Israel cannot wage war without the unreserved backing of the US. And that backing is no longer guaranteed by Washington.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:00 AM | TrackBack
December 14, 2007
checks and balances revisited
The more things change the more they remain the same. The Senate stands in the way as a check on the executive Government. Only this time it is a Liberal Senate and a ALP Government, and the issue is industrial relations with the latter claiming a mandate to undo the Coalition's unpopular WorkChoices package.
So we have Rudd and Gillard's campaign no-negotiation rhetoric of staring down the Senate majority; the continuation of a polarizing politics based around partisan strategies:
Pat
That was the campaign. What now? A bruised, divided Coalition is definitely on the defensive on IR, and it has few resources and has swung to the hard edge right rather than move to the centre. Are we going to have a continuation of confrontation and partisanship in which one party imposes its will over the bitter resistance of the other or the polarised parties fighting to a stalemate.
Andrew Fraser explores the issue in the Canberra Times by picking up on observations by Andrew Murray, the Democrats Senator, in post-election speech to Sixth Annual Industrial Relations Workforce Conference. Murray observed that the Whitlamesque strategy of staring down the Senate majority until it passes Labor's deal unchanged has the advantage of leaving the Coalition wedded to its unpopular package, but would mean that Gillard would be unable to implement ALP's program immediately.
Since a double dissolution on the issue is out--- it would certainly risk a reduced majority--- the next option is the minor-amendment strategy, which gets the Coalition properly into play, yielding ground, and which can be implemented either before or after July 1. Murray told the Industrial Relations Workforce Conference:
"The question is: what amendments? The Coalition would presumably want to be mollified with some backdown on individual agreements and unfair dismissals.That's not easy for Labor to stomach, given its constituency, but it won't be bad for them in the business community. And politically it would give them a three-year stick to beat the Coalition with."
Murray thinks this is the course most likely to be taken by Rudd and Gillard. If so, then the Democrats can only operate as an "honest broker" during the next six months because, they only matter up until 30 June. Come July 1, the Democrats are gone, and the Greens become pivotal along with Independent Nick Xenophon and Family First's Steve Fielding.My guess is that the Liberals have decided on a partisan strategy that continues to divide Canberra and the country into hostile, even irreconcilable camps. They will not be satisfied with politics as the give and take of deal making.They are still caught up in their game plane of transforming the country.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:08 AM | TrackBack
December 13, 2007
conflicting messages
Michael Richardson in an op-ed in the Canberra Times addresses the problem posed by coal for global warming. He says that:
Because coal is cheap and relatively abundant, it accounted for 25 per cent of the world's commercial energy supply last year, second only to oil. But due to its high carbon content, coal was responsible for about 40 per cent of the carbon dioxide or CO2 released from fossil fuels, despite supplying only 32 per cent of fossil fuel energy. CO2 accounts for about 80 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. It is the monster of global warming.
To prosper we need energy security but if we persist in using fossil-fuels with current technologies, our prosperity will founder. The world's current climate policies are simply too weak to stem the onrushing tide of emissions that is melting the Arctic ice at the North Pole melted at a record rate in the northern summer. This latest sign that climate change has accelerated, indicates that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.
Canberra TimesMy understanding is that the Australia delegation at Bali has been all over the place--going from supporting the isolated Canada, Japan, US position of no specific targets to reduced greenhouse emissions for themselves and absolute emission reductions by all major emitters.
That hardline position is a surefire way to ensure deadlock. Then the Australian delegation latter supports the European position of a 2020 target---cuts of 25-40%. Now we hear that the Australian delegation does not support the European position of a 2020 target of specific cuts of 25-40%.
Conflicting messages.
The UN talk at Bali is to forget talk of targets in Bali and keep our eyes on launching a process that would culminate in a final agreement in 2009. The Bali Conference is talks about talk--a climate-negotiating process as it were. 2009 becomes the deadline.
The indications are that Australia could reduce its emissions by 30% by 2020 mainly through energy efficiency without damaging the economy. So why cannot Australia point the finger at the US and offer to help developing countries with technology and investment? So it is possible for Australia to commit to specific targets and endorse the 2009 deadline for deciding each nation's cuts to carbon emissions.
Update: 14 December
Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald observes that:
The Howard government, as a courtier to the Bush Administration's intransigence on global warming, put Australia on the wrong side of history. Kevin Rudd has acted swiftly to put the country on the right side. He is working to make Australia a part of the solution, rather than part of the problem...Rudd has already pledged to cut Australian emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.And this week he has committed to an interim target too. But he has declined to specify what this might be. Rudd is awaiting the report he has commissioned from the eminent economist Professor Ross Garnaut.
The Liberals, on the other the hand, appear to be locked into just saying that it's absolutely essential that we don't end up exporting jobs and industries from Australia to other parts of the world. So how does that deal with the destruction of the great Barrier Reef and the loss of tourism and jobs. Or the negative impact on Kakadu National Park and rainforests, the drying up of our rivers and more frequent and ferocious bushfires.Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:58 AM | TrackBack
December 12, 2007
justice in Queensland
I've just returned from my brief holiday in Wilsons Promontory to find that the comments function has been closed by my hosting company because of heavy comment spam. They are being battered and so I will have to upgrade the MT publishing system this week.
Whilst away I was stunned to read that nine males who gang-raped a 10-year-old girl in the Cape York Indigenous community of Aurukun escaped without serving jail time. Crown prosecutor Steve Carter did not seek jail terms for the offenders, and in his sentencing submission to the judge he said the 10-year-old victim knew what was going on. He said in court that:
They're very naughty for doing what they're doing but it's really, in this case, it was a form of childish experimentation rather than one child being prevailed upon by another. Although as I said, although she was very young, she knew what was going on, and she had agreed to meet the children at this particular place and it was all by arrangement.
Rape is experimentation? Really? Childish experimentation on a skinny 10-year-old by males aged 25? Since when have a 26-year-old, 18-year-old, 17-year old and six other teenagers been considered a group of children? What kind of legal world is this?
Bill LeakCarter made his comments in his sentencing submission to Cairns District Court Judge Sarah Bradley in October. He recommended the six offenders aged under 17 receive supervision orders involving education or counselling and suggested the three older men (over 25) receive suspended sentences or parole. So what has happened to Aboriginal women and girls having formal equality and protection through the criminal justice system.
Judge Bradley could have used her discretion and sentenced the men and teenagers to jail terms, she eventually accepted the Crown prosecutor's recommendations. Instead she allowed nine males who pleaded guilty to gang-raping a 10-year-old girl at the Aurukun Aboriginal community on Cape York to escape jail terms, saying the child victim "was not forced and probably agreed" to sex.
The conduct of Cairns-based District Court judge Sarah Bradley is provocative. A 10-year-old can't consent to sex: the law is unequivocal, and the broader community expects courts to protect children from predators. What we have with this suspension of the state's laws when dealing with Aboriginal offenders is a continuation of a situation in which the rape of a little black girl becomes less of a crime than the rape of a white one.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:26 AM | TrackBack
December 11, 2007
beyond tomorrow
The economy is running red hot. These inflationary pressures is what the ALP has inherited along with a housing affordability crisis, a global credit crunch, a large current account deficit, surging consumer spending fueled by tax cuts and the effects of climate change. Oh, I forgot the slowing productivity and rising wages and prices. Some call it the challenges of ‘managing prosperity’.
But it is more than a red hot economy requiring a couple of increases in interest rates and conservative fiscal management:
Bruce PettySome say that the international cost of credit that is forcing local financial institutions to raise interest rates on their mortgages and loans may do the squeeze that is required to take the heat out of the red-hot economy. Others, such as the OECD, advise that the RBA will need to lift interest rates early next year. And it looks as if there will be need for budget restraint from the Rudd Government—Tanner’s razor gang—given the commitment to deliver on the promised tax cuts.
The longer term is dominated by climate change. The right wing biased Coalition under Brendon Nelson is already playing around with a fear campaign about the costs to business and households over greenhouse emission cuts before 2020. They are highlighting—nay exploiting the gap between the rhetoric and the real politick of what cutting emissions actually means---increased electricity costs. Plus lots of nuclear power plants scattered around the country?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:11 AM | TrackBack
December 10, 2007
Nauru
And so it ends. Or begins, depending on your point of view. The Pacific Solution sounded like the title of a Hollywood blockbuster and was introduced with all the appropriate fanfare. Tough men with big guns protecting our borders from incursions by displaced riff-raff. Global detritus trying to pass themselves off as a handful of the harmless homeless. Queue jumping opportunists travelling through several countries leaving shredded documentation and drowning children in their wake.
It was all very dramatic and Cecil B DeMille heroic at the time, and it certainly put Nauru on the map. So why are we not seething with outrage now that it's being dismantled? Where are the editorials warning of dire consequences like imminent hordes of wringing wet pretenders seething and flooding like a human tide over our northern borders with all sorts of nefarious intentions?
Why is this not front page news? Will a bleeding heart Rudd government close mainland detention centres? Will we see investigations of Tampa, Children Overboard or SIEV X?
Somehow I doubt it. As disappointing as it may be for some of us, it's more likely that asylum seeker issues will be dealt with quickly and quietly, as they should have been all along.
It takes a very, ahem, special mindset to blatantly make political capital out of human misery. Fortunately it's not all that common. Unfortunately, the success of the anti-refugee campaign lay not in discouraging further arrivals, but in its appeal to the fearful. Anyone wanting to repair our international reputation and still get elected would be best advised not to make a big deal out of it.
Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 10:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 9, 2007
Modern Labor
Modern Labor? What does it stand for in terms of social democracy? Something that lies beyond the resources boom and skills crisis, that’s for sure. But what lies beyond that horizon? Reform, clearly. What kind of reform though? After all, the Liberals were into reform—eg., welfare to work.
Old Labor was strong on social policy, such as public health and education, the welfare state and a strong interventionist state that addressed the negative consequences of capitalism. It’s perspective was the massive unemployment of the Great Depression.
And the reformers in modern Labor?
Modern Labor is out productivity:----the productivity of the nation arising from providing people with the skills for high paying jobs in the knowledge economy that is connected to the growth hubs in the Asia-pacific region. How are those high skilled jobs to be delivered? Through early childhood education and child care, schooling, training, universities, social inclusion. What is called investment in human capital.
Boosting the productive capacity of the economy is the main game for the modern reformers in the Australian ALP. This is their version of the commonwealth Treasury’s Three P’s (productivity, participation and population).
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Agriculture and Climate Change
The latest ABARE report on commodities should bring home to everyone the potential realities of climate change setting out as it does the likely impact of climate change on various agricultural commodities.The only good thing I noticed is the 14%reduction itemised for sugar. Can we extrapolate a reduction in obesity?
For the sceptical, and there are plenty about, a reduction in our home grown food supply would be a real wake up call. Climate change is having an affect on prices right now. With a production drop of 13% to 18% for basic foods we will really notice price increases?.
As I understand the science we can look forward to lower production and increasing prices for the next 30 years. If we are sucessfull things might then improve.
At least with CSIRO and the Bureauof Meteorology joining forces we may get better rainfall predictions!
Posted by Gratton Wilson at 11:34 AM | TrackBack
December 7, 2007
education crunch
I'm currently at Foster, a small town in south eastern Victoria just outside Wilson's Promontory. This is dairy country and the dairy farmers are doing it hard. There is little money in this kind of farming these days, and climate change is beginning to have a negative impact in terms of lack of water.
Tourism is beginning to provide some kind of alternative. The tourists are competing for internet access at the community centre, because it has high speed broadband.
Bill LeakSo the kids need an education that provides them with an alternative to farming. Rudd's computer on every school desk is a start, but who is going to teach the kids to be part of the creative industries--webdesigners, musicians photographers, programmers and computer game designers? How do the school kids develop the skills to become part of the information economy?
Though the primary and secondary schools teach computer skills many of the kids families don't have broadband at home--only dialup. The telephone lines are hopeless, Telstra's not upgrading them, and little of the Howard Government's broadband connect money made its way into the area. So many in the area, especially on the farms outside of the city, are still on dialup. Hence we have infrastructure bottlenecks.
Times are changing. The old low skilled jobs in the call centres and manufacturing are going overseas; whilst the costs of keeping the jobs in old industries--- such as mining, cotton farming, forestry and dairy farming---are rising cos of the lack of water in a warmed up world. Are the short-term gains (local jobs) in mining worth the long term costs (lack of sustainability)? Should local communities such as Orange provide free water to mining and forestry companies to ensure local jobs when this means that they need to sacrifice their drinking water or water for other industries (food processing plants) to do so?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:21 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 6, 2007
adapting to climate change
I managed to scan the newspapers in a newsagent in Foster, Victoria, which is just out of Wilson's Promontory, today. I saw that big industry is saying that the Rudd Government needs to take time to get climate change right. So says the Australian Financial Review, and it adds that any missteps at Bali could pitch Australia into a significant slowdown and create a governance crisis against a backdrop of rising global insecurity.
DysonThe AFR does recognize that Australia faces severe environmental and social impacts if world leaders fail to adequately manage the task of bringing down polluting emissions. The implication is that "business as usual" is not longer an option.
Surely we can move on from the debates and polemics of the past. They seem so out of date now. As does the option of free pollution permits for heavy energy intensive industries and those who want to keep the old coal fired power stations going.
Update
I see that Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) has come out with a a stark assessment of Australia's vulnerability to a heating planet, a key research agency has predicted that production of wheat, beef, dairy items and sugar will fall by about 10% by 2020 as temperatures rise and rainfall declines.By 2050, it warns the nation's total economic output could have been shaved by as much as 5% as key agricultural exports are slashed by between 15% and 79% — placing Australia among the nations worst affected by climate change.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 5, 2007
Post Election Blues
Fortunately our computing system has been down for about ten days so I have missed the chit chat about the who and why of the election. I have been back over the entries in Public Opinion and Crikey in particular. Its more than 20 years since I lived in an urban area, I thought we had moved on from categorising the population by "Brand Names".
We are a fairly homogenized community with a variety of views about most things.Those holding similar views seem to find ways of coming together. In Eden/Monaro many came together about Rights at Work and Climate Change.
Over the years of the Howard Government smaller groups had come together over Reconciliation, the war in Iraq, detention centres. Ministerial behaviour, health services ,shortages of health workers, the cost of living, interest rates, abuse of the Senate, Parliamentry behaviour, lies, evasions and non-core promises, David Hicks were reflected in Letters to Editors and talk back programs.
These issues were comprehended by and concerns of people from all walks of life. Many of these people had always voted Liberal . It took them 11 years to realise their accumulated concerns could no longer put aside. The result was a new Local Member.
Now Gerard Henderson [SMH 4.12.2007] is telling us how disappointed and disruptive various ''Brand Names"will be because their particular desires may not be fulfilled by a Government that wants to govern for all and wants to implement its election policies and promises. It would be better to progessively comment on what unfolds. .Being an optimist I predict we will move towards a fairer and more just Australia. Maybe we will all be satisfied.
Posted by Gratton Wilson at 3:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 4, 2007
Treachery defined
Managed to find a wireless network. This is what I reckon will happen to the Liberal Party, if we go by their history.
Alan MoirIt's how they Liberals understand trust in a political sense.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:09 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
December 3, 2007
scary things
Back in 1964 Donald Horne wrote "several generations of Australians were taught to venerate not lions or eagles or other aggressive symbols of nationalism; they were taught to venerate sheep". The waratah is probably the most vicious of our national symbols, but if it's a sign of sheer aggression we're after perhaps our coat of arms should feature a worthy citizen thumbing away at a mobile phone.
Three fifths of a page of the Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin is devoted to what is optimistically titled Chatroom. The column publishes an assortment of comments submitted by thumb tribe citizens eager to share their thoughts with fellow Bulletin readers.
To the bloke in the blue ute & trailer burleigh town, lets just say it was your lucky day.It's doubtful this was a congratulatory note following said bloke's purchase of a winning Lotto ticket.
If the system wont bring young thugs into line, the people will. The good men will stand back no longer.In recent weeks the page has hosted some political commentary in among the calls for vigilante group action against everything from troubled youth to slow drivers and single mothers.
It's hilarious reading all the Howard believers sobbing txts. You are in the minority, get over it. No more Aust being run by a semi-literate moron in the White House.and
To all the people complaining about the election, spit out the lemon and come along for the ride! It'll be great fun!This may be the first time we've been on a first name basis with our prime minister, but anyone anticipating great fun is more than likely in for a disappointment. It's early days yet but Kevin doesn't strike me as the adventurous type. Or terribly inspirational either. And if he doesn't find himself a good speech writer soon he runs the risk of boring us to death. After a year of anxious anticipation his victory speech was woeful. Therese outshone him without opening her mouth.
He could do a lot worse than recruit Don Watson to write the apology to Aborigines. But for a bloke whose most threatening feature is his tendency to mix metaphors, Kevin has managed to strike terror into the hearts of some.
Fuel prices under lib max 1.30 first week under labor start at 1.36. Watch it rise under labor. Sure labor 4 good 4 the economy.In the past week I've met one person who believes we woke up on the 25th November a communist country, and another who fears a terrorist attack on the Gold Coast. Labor are terrorist sympathisers and the Gold Coast voted Liberal. They're both too young to remember life under a federal Labor government and both get their information from their parents. The interesting thing is the different things that different people fear, with or without reasonable grounds.
Life with Howard was pretty bleak. The terrorism laws were scary until the Haneef affair exposed the weakness that is over-zealous but incompetent enforcement. The APEC security was truly frightening until the Chaser stunt. We were supposed to fear and comply, not despair then ridicule.
Still, how anyone can genuinely fear Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard more than John Howard and Smiling Phil Ruddock is beyond me. Dull oratory just doesn't compare with the collapse of infrastructure and a cavalier attitude towards all things nuclear. Newspapers publishing calls for vigilante groups bother me more than union bosses. And some jokes.
Kevin rudd was at a birthday party and when asked would he like some cake, said no thanks but i will have a few of those candles if nobody else is going to eat them.Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 9:06 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
UN conference now under way in Bali
I'm off for holidays for a week or so at Wilson's Promontory in the south eastern corner of Victoria. I'll try and post if I can find internet access at a public library or internet cafe as I doubt if there will be free wireless near the Promontory.
The big news for me whilst I'm away in the wilderness is the UN conference now under way in Bali. Will it represents a watershed in the history of climate negotiations? Australia's credibility as an international negotiator will turn on the extent to which the Rudd Government is prepared to move Australia towards a low carbon economy.
Bill LeakThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warns that global emissions must peak by 2015 and then decline if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. The successor to the Kyoto Protocol is the main game and it will have to be concluded by the end of 2009 if the new treaty is to come into force after the expiry of the Kyoto commitment period in 2012. Robyn Eckersley, writing in The Australian, says:
Two central challenges face the Bali negotiators. The first is to persuade developed countries to move towards robust targets in the next commitment period, such as the European Union's proposed 30 per cent cut below a 1990 baseline. The second is to engage the emerging big emitters from the developing world, such as China and India, in serious mitigation efforts. Whatever the outcome, it will build on the architecture of the Kyoto Protocol.
Will Australia commit to robust targets in the next commitment period, such as the European Union's proposed 30 per cent cut below a 1990 baseline?
So what will Australia do it if stands by its campaign backflip that it would only commit to a post-2012 agreement if both developed and developing countries accept binding commitments, when it is clear that it neither the US nor China will agree to mandatory targets in the second commitment period?
Eckersley says that a Rudd Government faces two choices.
The first choice is to accept that developing countries should not be asked to adopt binding targets in the second commitment period. This will require supporting strong targets for developed countries of at least 30 per cent. It will also require engaging big emerging emitters such as China and India on voluntary but effective mitigation measures.
The second choice is for Australia to insists on targets for all. Eckersley says that if so, then Australia: shouldsupport an equitable formula for allocating differentiated emission targets that takes account of historical responsibility and capacity. One such model is EcoEquity's Greenhouse Development Rights. This model provides a threshold for graduation to Annex B that safeguards the rights of those living in poverty to reach a dignified level of sustainable human development. On this model, Singapore and South Korea would be expected to graduate to Annex B, while other developing countries would remain exempt until they reached the trigger. The targets of Annex B countries would be scaled according to responsibility and capacity.Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 2, 2007
remembrance
Iraq and Afghanistan are not talked about much in Australia these days are they. The 'glorious dead' are celebrated as heroes, but few citizens are questioning the need to be Afghanistan now that some of the troops are going ar eto be bought home by the Rudd Government.
It is the civilian deaths in both countries that are not remembered in the West. It is only our dead that re remembered. Their dead does not even count, even though we are foreigners in their country.That's the trouble with all the patriotic nationalism of the One Nation --they only remember their dead.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 1, 2007
meetings, more meetings
More all day meetings. Sydney yesterday, Melbourne today. I hope that we have an end to the commonwealth government rewriting out history books in order to produce an official history and to shape the school curriculum.
Alan MoirRudd has form on this issue. He was part of the Goss Government's rejection in 1994 of interpreting 1788 as an invasion in favour of the traditional Eurocentric perspective of settlement. ie., the white British people came out here and settled. It is held that this interpretation accurately describes the event and subsequent actions.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:05 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack