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January 31, 2008

donnelly and the dog

Two stomach turning surprises in one day.

The first one happened when the dog returned from an illicit exploration of the neighbourhood smelling like Essence of Death. She was coated in some hellish, grey, greasy substance. Washing it off was an exercise that brought tears to the eyes and breakfast back to the just-swallowed stage.

The second one happened when I found myself agreeing with Kevin Donnelly and Tony Smith on education. I'm still not sure which surprise was the nastier.

Donnelly objects to the appointment of Barry McGaw as head of the National Curriculum Board on the grounds that he's part of the "establishment" (showing your age there Kev) and doesn't qualify as a curriculum expert. But Donnelly was always going to criticise anyone who got the job who wasn't him.

Moving along, Donnelly argues that past attempts at national curriculum implementation have fallen over because they failed to involve input from practicing educators, and they haven't allowed schools the flexibility to take local community needs into account.

The failure to consult with people practicing in the classroom during the initial stages is a pretty basic error, although consultation comes with its own problems. Freeing up active teachers means finding and paying for temporary replacements, which isn't easy or cheap and students bear the brunt of disruption. Good teachers, who are presumably the ones you'd want to contribute, work much longer hours than commonly thought, and it's unreasonable to expect them to continue teaching and contribute during non-existent spare time.

Tony Smith points out that teacher shortages are already a problem, though he conveniently neglects to mention his own side's role in that shortage, instead indulging in a fit of state bashing. By now we're all aware that we face shortages in plenty of skills, largely thanks to the previous government's attitude towards education generally. If it didn't involve a flag and a helpful instruction manual on social conservatism it didn't count as education. But that's another story, and hopefully one which can safely be filed in the Golden Age of Howard archives.

Teachers generally get involved in curriculum development at the pilot stage, when plans and materials have already been developed at enormous cost. Their feedback can, and sometimes does, lead to improvements, but the process creates other problems along the way. Inadequate training, lack of time for record keeping, lack of both technical and collegial support, and the fact that they and their students are lab rats for someone else's experiment are just some of the problems faced in the past.

Donnelly's second reason, that "schools had little, if any, flexibility to fashion what was taught to their local needs", and that they need the "freedom to shape a curriculum that best suits their unique communities" is also a good point, thought I doubt Donnelly would agree with me on why.

Donnelly spends a great deal of time trying to ensure that disadvantage of various kinds is no barrier to every Australian child rote learning the complete works of Shakespeare. The idea that a school curriculum should support student engagement with communities, histories and vernacular stuff like local linguistic practices amounts to pomo postcode relativism in Donnelly World.

However, in the context of this single article I find I agree with Donnelly. A reversal of the experience of my dog turning my stomach, but similarly disconcerting.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:43 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

hospital care: pinpointing the problems

A report on government services by the Productivity Commission reveals that state and territory spending on healthcare grew by an average of 6.2 per cent annually in the decade to 2005-06, whilst commonwealth spending grew by an average of only 4.9 per cent.

And while the states have directed increased funding to public hospitals, the commission says a "significant factor" in the commonwealth's extra spending has been its support for the private system, via the 30 per cent rebate on private health insurance premiums. As a result, while overall government spending on public hospitals grew by an average of 7.9per cent annually in the decade to 2005-06, average spending on private hospitals grew by 25 per cent. Another indication of the development of a two tiered health system?

The figures confirm a report released last October by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that showed the federal government share of public hospital funding fell from 45 per cent to 41 per cent between 1995-96 and 2005-06, while the states' share rose from 46 per cent to 51 per cent.

However, we still have no way to compare hospitals or hospital systems in, and between, the states. So it is difficult to pinpoint what is working and what isn't working. So there needs to be a single set of data for private and public hospitals to pinpoint the problems.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:11 AM | TrackBack

January 30, 2008

US Presidential Campaign: Florida

The general consensus based on the polls is that Florida (the Sunshine State) will deliver for Clinton on the Democrat side and for McCain on the Republican. The demographics in Florida are skewed heavily to the elderly and so favour Clinton. As there are no delegates at stake for the Democrats the interest lies in the demographics. As one pundit put it:

If Obama wins his ethnic vote but cannot compete well with whites, Latinos and other minorities then he has clearly got some serious weaknesses to deal with, especially for Super Tuesday. If Clinton cannot hold together her coalition between Latinos, white women and lower economic class/educated Dems then she has shown some real weaknesses going forward and that the Obama camp has done her more damage than her camp believes to be the case.

The interest on the Republican side is, firstly, what happens to former New York mayor Rudolph W.Giuliani? His campaign is built around terrorism – even though terrorism is not high on the voters’ priorities in Florida, yet almost half of the voters in Florida’s Republican primary consider the economy the most important issue and almost two-thirds describe the nation’s economy in negative terms. Is Guiliani toast? Secondly, what happens to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has not been travelling well since he failed to take South Carolina.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Gitten's on the economic troubles

Ross Gittens argues in the Sydney Morning Herald that it's not at all clear that, if the US drops into recession this year, it will drag us down with it. He says that though it's true that globalisation has made us more susceptible to developments in the rest of the world, but that's truer of developments in Asia than in the US and Europe. He acknowledges that:

The US is still the biggest economy in the world. If it goes into recession and so cuts back its imports, that does have a dampening effect on the countries that trade with it, including us. But the old saying that if America sneezes we catch a cold is simply wrong. It didn't hold in 2001 and won't hold now.That's because such a high proportion of our exports now go to Asia, particularly China and increasingly to India. The rapid development of these "emerging economies" gives them a momentum all their own.

However, isn't China's economic growth very export orientated? Won't a recession in the US lessen the demand for Chinese exports? Won't reduced growth mean less Chinese demand for our minerals?

Gittens tackles this argument head on.

It's true that a quarter or more of China's exports go to the US. But much of any decline in China's exports is likely to be offset by increased domestic consumption and, more particularly, increased investment in factories, housing and public infrastructure. Whichever way the Chinese jump, they'll require our coal and iron ore.

The real problem for Australia, says Gittens is the booming economy and inflation. That is why the Reserve Bank is trying to engineer a slowdown in the economy that would probably involve a slight worsening in unemployment. This is true. The looming US recession is not going to curb inflation in Australia in the near future. But these inflationary pressures are being overlaid by changes in the global market in which Australia does business.

Gittens is agreeing with Swan and Rudd that the booming Chinese economy will insulate Australia from the worst of the global financial meltdown. China's export strength should carry Australia's economic growth. We are the Lucky Country. However, things are changing. The Chinese, for instance can see an economic slowdown in China being caused by the problems in the US. It is in the long term interest of China and perhaps the global economy for China to begin absorbing its own products.

However, Gittens is also assuming that the Chinese can "decouple" from the US hard landing. Can they? To what extent? Steven Roach says says that the decouple assumption is questionable:

There's no region of the world that is more externally driven than developing Asia, which is where I live now. Exports represent 42 to 43 percent of pan-regional GDP, a record high. Private consumption represents 48 percent, a record low. So how is this region going to decouple? Advocates of decoupling would point to all the young consumers in China and India. But consider that the U.S. consumer last year spent $9.5 trillion. Chinese consumers spent about $1 trillion, and Indians about $650 billion. The power of the American consumer is still six times that of this new "Chindian" consumer. It's mathematically impossible to see a major decrease in U.S. consumption being made up by the Chinese and Indians. And there will be a meaningful decrease in U.S. consumer spending.

And Brad Sester says that the recent surge in Chinese growth hasn't come from a surge in domestic demand since domestic demand is actually weaker than it was in 2003 and 2004. Rather it stems from a bigger contribution from net exports.he adds:

Asia has been a huge source of demand for commodities. But when it comes to manufactured goods, Asian demand hasn't kept pace with Asian supply. That implies ongoing growth in Asia's surplus with the US and, now perhaps even more so, in Asia's surplus with Europe. China has decoupled to a degree from the US over the past two years. The US hasn't been the engine of demand growth globally over the past two years.... Europe, by contrast, has emerged as an engine of demand -- growing more rapidly than the US. That has meant that China has shifted from relying on US demand to relying on European demand. Up until now, China has offset the slowdown in the pace of growth in its exports to the US with strong growth in its exports to other parts of the world.

So the question is: to what extent will the E.U. be hit should the recession in the U.S. be mild to severe?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:29 AM | TrackBack

January 29, 2008

Bush: State of Union 2008

Bush's lameduck status can be seen in his 2008 and final State of Union speech. Bush is part of the backdrop of American politics now, eclipsed by the primaries in South Carolina and Florida. If most of the speech was taken up with the economy, then Bush is struggling for airtime even in the foreign policy field.

He has little new to say It's the same tired simplistic narrative about the enemy ( evil men who despise freedom, despise America) still being dangerous, more work remains, the surge is working, Al-Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated. Freedom advances in the Middle East, but the Iranian regime is there to oppose it.

Alan Moir

So what did Bush says about peace and freedom in the Gaza Strip, given that the US is seen as supporting and paying for Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories?

The narrative from Bush is this:

In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. That is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom.

Didn't the Palestinians determine their destiny by voting for Hamas in democratic elections? For Bush all that matter is that Hamas, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is an arm of Iran. So they are terrorists who oppose the march of freedom in the Middle East.

Bush's simplistic narrative about the Middle East--the noble "war on terrorism"-- has turned out to include keeping a million and a half people locked up indefinitely in an open air prison and denying them their freedom. The Washington Post editorial is an eyeopener: it talks in terms of a "humanitarian crisis" in scare quotes, scolded Gazans for "blowing up international borders," and concluded by demanding that they stop making trouble and wait for the "peace process" to go forward.

So the Palestinians have to go back to jail and suffer under a brutal occupation for another few decades. There is more critical thinking happening inside Israel.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 28, 2008

Gaza: a prison

Is the blowing up of the wall between Gaza and Egypt a circuit breaker to the circle of violence between Palestinians and Israel?

The UN considers Israel's blockade of Gaza to be an illegal act of "collective punishment". The Palestinian violence is interpreted as a reaction to the relentless brutality and provocation of Israeli forces.

Sharpe

The blowing up the wall busts open the Israeli attempt to try and turn Gaza into a gulag in the name of national security. An attempt based in large part on the illegal occupation, the airstrikes, the sniper fire and the overarching control over Palestinian lives through checkpoints and curfews.

Will Israel begin to seriously consider the argument that ending the occupation can end the conflict? Or will
Israel continue to illegally annexing further land in the name of security?

Israeli's unilateral 'withdrawal' in September 2005 from Gaza that left Israel still largely in charge of access to Gaza, its airspace and access to the sea. Israel provided two-thirds of Gaza's electricity, policed the land routes into which fuel, medicines and raw materials must pass, and controlled access of Palestinians to labour markets - Gaza's population was in effect imprisoned and Gaza is occupied territory because Israel has effective control over the Palestinians there. It controls the population register as well as Gaza's sea space and air space, prevents large-scale use of the harbour and any use of Gaza's one airport, conducts frequent military operations in Gaza and controls all crossings into Israel.

The rise in rocket attacks led Israel to impose a complete closure on the Gaza Strip - relenting later to allow in some fuel and humanitarian supplies amid international horror at what was being done to Gaza as a whole. The closure is a blockade.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 27, 2008

US Presidential campaign: South Carolina

It is the Democrats’ turn to pick a presidential nominee in South Carolina, a state with a large black population-- about half the electorate was black. The contest that has been marked by racial polarization and bitter personality clashes between Obama and Clinton in the past week, and Obama is expected to win.

It's really a two-person race between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, except that the Clinton camp is really a double team, as Hillary has Bill doing the bad cop routine as well as doing the town-hall-style events with their mini lectures on public affairs. If Obama is about the 'new politics'--transcendence, reconciliation and unity---then Hillary is in danger of falling back into Bill's shadow.


Mike Thompson

Will the Clintons succeed in painting Obama as "the black candidate"? The Clinton camp has tried to create low performance expectations for Hillary while simultaneously framing an expected Obama win as a referendum on his race. Is the US ready for a black president?

John Edwards is still unable to shake off his distant third status. Will Edwards be able to hang in long enough to play a kingmaker role, if neither Obama nor Clinton wins more than 50% of the Democratic delegates? He cannot get airtime before Super Tuesday.

Recent state polls Edwards, the often forgotten Democratic candidate in the race, within four or five percentage points of Clinton for second place. A third-place finish could look bad for Clinton. That is not realistic possibility. However, the Clintons as retro--1992---is.

Update
I'm trying the Brave New Films Network's attempt at a live feed the primary by the Young Turks.

The sound has just gone at my end. Dunno what's happening there. Still you have the link for the live feed if you want to log in.

I notice that the Christain campaign from the Obama camp signifies to South Carolina's many Christian voters that Obama is one of them and therefore should have their vote for President. He's been called by God to bring change. Oh my.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 26, 2008

Australia Day

It's Australia day. I cannot celebrate the 220th anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet in Sydney Cove. That also means British colonization, brutal destruction of indigenous people and the racism of settler capitalism. Freedom based on dispossession and the historical refusal by many Australians who denied the right of Aboriginal people to co-exist with white settler society.

This image is by Kathleen Petyarre, and it is entitled My Country (Sandhills Utopia) Bush Seed 2004, (Acrylic on linen".

This painting is what I celebrate as it signifies the rebirth of indigenous people from their hell.

Murdock's Australian celebrates Australian values for a free market economy amongst others.

But this newspaper does not celebrate the resilience, creativity, enterprise and hard work necessary to become a successful artist who represents her country in images.

If you are going to celebrate Glenn and Jane McGrath in their successful fight against Jane's cancer, then why not celebrate Aboriginal artists making good paintings in spite of the huge odds stacked against them.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:20 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

January 25, 2008

hole in the wall

It's probably impossible to be objective about the Israel/Arab stand off and next to impossible to understand the various contributing bits of the problem. The more it's debated the more complex historical grievances are aired, the longer the debate goes on, the more historical grievances get piled on, the worse and more complex the problems get.

Still, it has to be one of the more miraculous historical events around when half of an entire population pops next door to do some shopping. Of course it's not seemly to be so flip about what's going on, but in the middle of a catastrophe that's so hard to comprehend the footage of Gazans doing the same thing a lot of Australians did on Boxing Day is something you can get your head around.

Israel hasn't gone out of its way to endear itself to it's neighbours or the rest of the world, so punishing a whole country for going shopping is hardly a good PR move.

"President Shimon Peres has rejected accusations the blockade is designed to punish ordinary people.

"We wouldn't want to see the people suffer," he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"All these stories about collective punishment is nonsense. For us, children are children whether they are Palestinians or others. We would like to see them living in peace.

"The problem is really Hamas... They want to destroy. There must be an all-embracing effort to prevent them from doing it. They are making the Gazan people suffer, totally unnecessarily and totally without hope." "

Maybe it is Hamas, but that's not what it looks like from here. From here it looks as though one country nicked up the road for a bag of groceries and another country punished them for it by shutting down their power supply. Israel has said it's sick of the whole thing and would like Egypt to take care of Gaza.

You couldn't have picked a worse moment to reintroduce Wolfowitz, but then, it's hard to be objective about the Israel/Arab stand off.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:05 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

a world class education for all?

If an education revolution is to be more than election headlines presupposes a link between education and the labour market. The education bit minimally means computers and trades in schools whilst the IR bit is rolling back workchoices. The link, presumably, is more skilled workers who will help ease the inflationary pressures arising from workforce shortages.

Do the key problems of education readily link in with the Government's IR agenda? Aren't most of the problems---whether at preschool, primary or secondary level, at private or public level, or at university or tertiary vocational level---about resources and how they are to be allocated? Doesn't this involve problems of federalism, particularly between needs for more uniformity and national standards on the one hand, and needs for greater autonomy, individual choice and adaptation to local demand on the other?

Bill Leak

Yet the ALP continues the Howard Government's funding of private schools that doesn't take into account the resources for the schools and the inequality of opportunity in the name of certainty. The ALP is going to build a world class education and quality school for everyone. That's a big investment ---a 2005 report by a ministerial council on education concluded that government (public) schools needed an extra $2.4 billion to meet minimum national resourcing standards. Will that happen with a razor gang in full flight with a brief to cut back spending and ensure greater efficiency?

As Jack Waterford observes in the Canberra Times that Gillard cannot:

be comfortable that the reforms and the reinvestment, education needs can be safely deferred until a second Swan budget, after the immediate pressure on government spending is alleviated. No one (especially Defence) should be immune from close expenditure review committee scrutiny, but the focus should not be only on costs and the bottom line, but on priorities, political and administrative effectiveness and better outcomes for the public. One has only to read old Labor press statements to know how acute some of the needs are, and how mere marking time will not be enough.

A lot of those refer to the need to a greater investment in universities to make up for the declining public investment during the Howard regime.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 24, 2008

inflation woes + Goldilocks

Inflation in Australia burst through the Reserve Bank's safety zone to hit 3.6 per cent yesterday. The RBA now faces the dilemma of managing inflation while the global economy faced a slowdown as the US approaches a recession. However, the inflation result makes an interest rate rise next month a near certainty, with more to come.

Bill Leak

Not to worry though. Wayne Swan is reassuring us that the Australian economy is still strong and in a great position to withstand international shocks. Why so? The Reserve Bank and Treasury Secretary Ken Henry have reassured the Treasurer that Australia's reliance on Asia, particularly China, would absorb external world economic shocks. This is the Goldilocks' scenario.

Goldilocks says that the US will avoid a hard landing and that the rest of the world--including Australia--- could decouple from such hard landing if it happened. Those who think otherwise are just worry warts. The Goldilocks have a particular vision of globalization, one best described by Brad Sester as:

The new vision of globalization that emerged in the first part of the 2000s [is that] globalization offered the US cheap imports and cheap bond financing, a combination that proponents argued offered big benefits to the US, even if it hurt workers who had to compete with cheap imports. That vision is now coming under question: Chinese goods aren’t quite as cheap as they used to be, imported oil certainly isn't cheap and the emerging world no longer seems all that inclined to accept US bonds in exchange for its exports.

The boom in China and its demand for our natural resources depends on the American consumer buying cheap Chinese exports. Will they continue do so with falling house prices, rising petrol prices and increasing unemployment? Or is the debt burdened US consumer on the ropes and faltering?

Can China decouple from a US slowdown or recession? Will the latter mean a slow down in global economic growth? Is it still the case that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches the cold? What if the US does more than sneeze? It catches a big cold that develops into the flu?

The answer to these questions are not clear, nor is the Treasury's and RB's Goldilocks scenario the only one. If there is a recession in the US then who replaces the US consumer as the engine for world economic growth. The Chinese or Indian consumers? That borders on fantasy land. Will Europe be the dynamic engine of the world? Few are suggesting that? So Treasury and the RBA are either banking on a slowdown in the US not a recession or they hold to the decoupling thesis.

Why do they not make their argument public? Why keep it behind closed doors?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:16 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 23, 2008

explaining the crisis in financial markets

Martin Wolf, in an op-ed in the Financial Times asks the question: "So how did the world economy fall into its predicament?" He gives three answers. The first view is that this crisis is a product of a fundamentally defective financial system. The second view is that US monetary policy was too loose for too long after the collapse of the Wall Street bubble in 2000 and the terrorist outrage of September 11 2001.

The third view, which I ascribe to, is that the crisis:

is the consequence neither of financial fragility nor of mistakes by important central banks. It is the result of global macroeconomic disorder, particularly the massive flows of surplus capital from Asian emerging economies (notably China), oil exporters and a few high-income countries and, in addition, the financial surpluses of the corporate sectors of many countries.In this perspective, central banks and so financial markets were merely reacting to the global economic environment. Surplus savings meant not only low real interest rates, but a need to generate high levels of offsetting demand in capital-importing countries, of which the US was much the most important.

On this account ( the Fed could have avoided pursuing what seem like excessively expansionary monetary policies only if it had been willing to accept a prolonged recession, possibly a slump. But it had neither the desire nor, indeed, the mandate to allow any such thing.

Wolf adds that the Fed’s dilemma then was that the only way to sustain domestic demand at levels high enough to offset the capital inflow (both private and official) was via a credit boom. This generated excessively high asset prices, particularly in housing. It has left, as a painful legacy, stretched balance sheets in both the non-financial and financial sectors: debt deflation.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Dr. Pangloss genuflects to the free market

Here is Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, in May 2007, speaking at the FBA of Chicago annual conference on bank structure and competition when the subprime problems were spooking the markets:

Given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers to the rest of the financial system. Markets can overshoot, but, ultimately, market forces also work to rein in excess. For some, the self-correcting pullback may seem too late ad too severe. But I believe that, in the long run, markets are better than regulators in allocating credit

So we have the FR chairman (the regulator) assuming the role Dr Pangloss genuflecting to the markets. What about the deceptive banking practices that misled consumers? What about the poorly structured and supervised derivative conduits in the financial markets? An isolated event that would have limited fallout? The current stock markets bloodbath is a good way to regulate?

The sub-prime mortgage crisis is only threatening the battered and bruised American banking system itself, the wider economy and global markets. What we have today is a growing sense of crisis in world financial markets and a judgment that Bernanke and the FR have been asleep at the regulatory wheel (regulation-lite) and have made a last minute response to the crisis.

There cannot be 'recession talk' by the FR can there? We cannot spook the markets, can we? We must keep their confidence up. We must talk up markets. We must defend capitalism Wall Street style and Republican style regulation. As David Leonhardt says in the New York Times:

Until a few months ago, it was accepted wisdom that the American economy functioned far more smoothly than in the past. Economic expansions lasted longer, and recessions were both shorter and milder. Inflation had been tamed. The spreading of financial risk, across institutions and around the world, had reduced the odds of a crisis.Back in 2004, Ben Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve governor, borrowed a phrase from an academic research paper to give these happy developments a name: “the great moderation.”These days, though, the great moderation isn’t looking quite so great — or so moderate.

It's been a poor performance by Bernanke--worse than even Greenspan's easy going monetary policy and regulation that contributed to the housing bubble.

The reality is that the sub-prime mess is a disaster, the US will not have a soft landing, the Federal Reserve will not be being able to ease and avoid the hard landing, and the rest of the world is not decoupling from the US hard landing.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:55 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

January 22, 2008

a two tiered health system?

A key question in health policy is whether Australia's public health system can deliver safe and good hospital service given the current hospital structure and imposed budget constraints? Bundaberg, with its deaths and injuries, implies no. The Labor governments, state and federal, say yes, despite the shortages of hospital beds, shortages of doctors and nurses, the lack of funding for primary care. Public health, they say is now commonwealth as well as a state issue and co-operative federalism will ensure adequate patient health and safety.

It is a good question to ask in the light of the forthcoming Australian health care agreements. As Geoff Davies pointed out in an op-ed in The Australian on January 16 ('Patients risk death in our sick hospitals') these agreements:

are based on the assumption that all all Australians, irrespective of wealth, are entitled to free hospital care and treatment, including operative treatment; not just emergency care and treatment, but also elective procedures. What has not been considered, and what politicians have so far been reluctant to consider, is whether that assumption is a realistic one.

The quick and dirty response is that under a neo-liberal mode of governance, it is not a realistic assumption. A two tiered health system will develop as it has happened in education with its dual private and public systems. We already have a public and private health care system with the public one starved of funds under the Howard regime.

Geoff Davies acknowledges this possibility:

It is possible that, in the end, the only realistic choice may be between, on the one hand, a system that provides can provide free hospital care and treatment of all kinds to all people, but only inadequately seriously risking patient health and safety; and, on the other hand, one which can provide a safe and adequate system but not to all categories of people or not to of all services presently promised. But the possibility of that choice is open that politicians have, so far refused to confront.

Have they? Haven't we by default actually got the former kind of health system? The services are limited and rationed, and as adverse events in our public hospitals is the norm, this health care is unsafe and inadequate. What hasn't happened is politicians publicly admitting that the system cannot provide free health care delivered safely and adequately, and that they have failed to provided the resources to ensure a safe and adequate free public hospital system.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:02 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

national broadband strategy.,

Increasingly our digital lives are premised upon infrastructure, the networks through which we shape what we do, fashion the meanings of our customs and practices, and exchange signs with others. It is the privatization of communications infrastructure, which is hastening the closure of this zone of ‘public’ interest and community ‘needs’, that underlies the current political economy of networks and networked culture. So the citizen is recast as consumer and customer.

Under a neo-liberal mode of governance Australia is in the process of a steady dismantling of the posts-telegraph-telephone model of the monopoly carrier for each nation that dominated the twentieth century, with its deep colonial foundations. The privatization of Telstra is the dismantling; the current policy fight is to establish competitive markets in high speed broadband; and the rhetoric is about Australia needing high speed broad for its economy to remain internationally competitive.

And that is national strategy on broadband. I cannot see that the Rudd Government has added to this or broken new ground.

The reality is that our communications networks are not information superhighways, that metaphor from an older technology, is not appropriate. Nor are they a single ‘public’ switched telecommunications network, like those presided over by the post-telegraph-telephone monopolies of old. And nation-building technology, in the wake of globalisation, is rarely undertaken despite all the rhetoric.

Like roads themselves, or the nascent postal system of the sixteenth century, broadband is a patchwork quilt that provides a variety of different kinds of services.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 21, 2008

war on inflation

Gee now we have a war on inflation along with a war on drugs. What's happened to the war on refugees and the war on Iraq. Are they still going? The war on inflation is based on a five-point plan according to Mr Prudence and Mr Stability.

Rudd (Mr. Prudence) says that the central plank of the plan will involve setting a new budget surplus of 1.5 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product, giving the Government a surplus of about $18 billion; it will examine all options to provide real incentives to encourage private savings; unfolding federal Labor's plan for tackling the chronic skills shortages in the economy; providing national leadership to tackle infrastructure bottlenecks and providing practical ways of helping people re-enter the workforce. There is no detail as to the content of these 5 points.

Do you remember Swan/Rudd's old election rhetoric about Howard and Costello squandering the fruits of the resources boom through irresponsible vote buying and failing to invest in capacity-boosting reforms for the future? Now Swan (Mr Stability) is saying that the Australian economy is well placed to withstand the global economic turbulence. Australia being 'well placed' cannot be the work of Prudence and Stability, as they haven't done anything yet--other than announce a war on inflation, lecture the Big Banks on raising interest rates too much, and saying that the US economic slow down will only have a moderate impact on the global economy and on Australia.

Swan is repeating the views of Treasury and the RBA who say that in terms of risk management fighting inflation has a higher priority than slowing global economic growth. So maybe we all should pack our bags--leave the health and education systems, do a quick trades course (outside TAFE) and go and work in the sunshine states of WA and Queensland for $150, 000 with bonuses.

We mobile patriotic workers would be doing our bit in fighting the enemy of inflation, would we not?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:30 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Is the Australian mainstream socially conservative?

Noel McCoy, president of the NSW Young Liberals, argues in The Australian that Howard's amalgam of economic liberalism and social conservatism is the best path for the Liberal Party to move forward and regain power. He refers to the way that Howard opposed the liberal-progressive values of the Left.

Slashing personal income tax rates, erasing $96billion of government debt, opening up the workplace to competitive market pressures and the introduction of private health care incentives are just a few examples of Howard's voracious appetite for economic reform. But in virtually the same breath, the Howard government reaffirmed marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, pursued a "tough on drugs" strategy, rejected indigenous apologism and replaced multiculturalism with integration.

This argument, which aims to influence the meeting of Liberal leaders in Melbourne to devise strategy and tactics, forgets to mention the neo-con foreign policy. What is more questionable is McCoy's claim that Howard's formula of blending free-market economic policy and socially mainstream values --note the slide from socially conservative to socially mainstream--- is an expression of Australian mainstream.

McCory says that the recent ALP's shift to the left---eg., apology to the stolen generations, an Australian bill of rights and allowing civil unions between homosexuals in the ACT---provides:

an opportunity for the conservative side of politics to take back ground and reassert its place as true representatives of the Australian mainstream. To take advantage of this opportunity, blending social conservatism and economic reform will be the key not only to electoral success of the Liberal Party, but to locking in Australia's long-term prosperity for future generations.

So we have the slide from social conservative values to mainstream social values to Australian mainstream. Is the Australian mainstream is socially conservative?

Howard's reflex Burkean conservatism is the right wing populist reaction to the effects of globalization on Australian social life. It's a one nation conservatism built around a pre-modern Christianity that is hostile to liberalism, and on the absolute authority of the national security state.

Update
Howard has gone. So where do the pale-blue liberal moderates go in McCory's account? Are they to be banished? They had experienced the very long night of teeth grinding bitterness under Howard, even though they stood in the Deakinite/ Menzies wing of the Liberal party. What is the future of the moderate liberals (the ones who support a republic, reconciliation and refugees) with conservatives such as Downer and Minchin still calling the shots in the Liberal party. Yet more exclusion, if McCory's account is anything to go by. That's the message being sent out.

So will Rudd seduce the moderate liberals, as he increasingly loses leftwing support when dealing with climate change with his pale green governance, and the Liberal party swings further to the right?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:18 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

January 20, 2008

Fox + Forkum adieu

Fox + Forkum sign off from doing editorial cartoons together:

Fox and Forkum

From my perspective they were very good righwing cartoonists---this is what is lacking in Australia. They set my teeth on edge with some of their stuff as their viewpoint was utterly opposed to mine. But they were good, very good.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:51 PM | TrackBack

January 19, 2008

saturation point

Next weekend the Gold Coast will enjoy a 'wet weekend'. The spillway at the local dam is doing what spillways are supposed to do, spill, for the first time in ages. If we get very much more rain before the pipeline between here and Brisbane is finished the overflow could threaten to flood some areas. Poorer ones. The golf course flood plain has had a wall built around it that would make Israel proud. This bit of the story wasn't mentioned in the local paper though. Instead there was celebration in anticipation of a weekend when Gold Coasters will be allowed to wash their cars, houses and driveways. Lord knows the driveways need a good hose down after weeks of rain.

The fresh water showers at beaches will be turned back on until further notice. Hooray. We can have a dip, traipse back up the beach in the rain, then have a nice fresh water shower. And so can all the tourists.

We've got local council elections coming up so every story that can possibly be politicised through that lens is politicised to a stupid degree. I'm sure readers of the Gold Coast Bulletin were vastly impressed with the huge pic of their mayor in a bath, in a suit and tie, with no less than six rubber ducks and a floral shower cap. We don't do humiliation around here.

Celebrity gold medalist and mayor Ron Clarke and half a dozen Labor MPs are credited with winning these concessions from the wicked Queensland Water Commission which wanted to keep us on level 10,000 water restrictions regardless. It's not our fault the dam that supplies Brisbane was built in the wrong place. And besides, we've been better at reducing household water use than Brisbane.

Meanwhile, another Qld dam where the spillway was starting to look like a sick joke has runneth over. There are teenaged kids in the area who've never seen this in their lives.

When we're talking about a commodity that's essential for life, surely we can organise its management in some non-partisan way? Don't hold your breath. The furiously conservative population of the Gold Coast has been disciplined and blessed with rain, and the profligate Labor government in Broncos supporting Brisbane wants to tell us what to do with all our hard earned wetness. And there are people who have lived through several changes of government at local, state and federal levels with no experience of why a spillway is called a spillway.
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its more than a slowdown folks

Tim Colebatch in the Age says that gllomy predictions based on the write-offs of $US80 billion of losses by the Wall Street firms---Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehmann Brothers and Bear Stearns-----could:

turn out to be too bleak, and Wall Street quickly recovers its footing, and this crisis turns out to be just another blip in this long global boom. Or it could be that, with stockmarket values in the US and Australia now down by roughly 15% since the crisis began, we might be entering a serious financial meltdown, that ends the global boom and remakes the financial world into a new order.

He says that it is just too early for any of us to know the answers. Well, the always optimistic bulls are in retreat on the economy and on the stock market, as they can see that it will be an ugly year for equities in the US and across the world.

What is looming in the US is a severe recession, and the massive and growing financial losses for financial institutions, households and the corporate sector will have a big effect on the financial markets and on the US and global stock markets. That is why President Bush is calling for a $150 billion tax cut stimulus.

Bruce Petty

Colebatch then asks: Is the world's largest economy headed for recession? If so, how severe would it be? Would it spell the end of the extraordinary boom that has seen global output expand by about 4% a year on average through this decade? And what would it mean for Australia, a major beneficiary of that boom, and — like the US — a nation that has grown heavily dependent on spending the savings of others?

One judgement, that of Glenn Stevens of the RBA, is that while global growth is likely to slow sharply this year, the odds are that the slowdown will be concentrated in the US and Europe, with Asia experiencing only the spillover effects of reduced US demand for its exports. Nouriel Roubini says that it is more than 'slowdown' in the US:

The United States has now effectively entered into a serious and painful recession. The debate is not anymore on whether the economy will experience a soft landing or a hard landing; it is rather on how hard the hard landing recession will be. The factors that make the recession inevitable include the nation's worst-ever housing recession, which is still getting worse; a severe liquidity and credit crunch in financial markets that is getting worse than when it started last summer; high oil and gasoline prices; falling capital spending by the corporate sector; a slackening labor market where few jobs are being created and the unemployment rate is sharply up; and shopped-out, savings-less and debt-burdened American consumers who — thanks to falling home prices — can no longer use their homes as ATM machines to allow them to spend more than their income.

He adds that on top of this recession there are now serious risks of a systemic financial crisis in the US as the financial losses are spreading from subprime to near prime and prime mortgages, consumer debt (credit cards, auto loans, student loans), commercial real estate loans, leveraged loans and postponed/restructured/cancelled LBO and, soon enough, sharply rising default rates on corporate bonds that will lead to a second round of large losses in credit default swaps. The total of all of these financial losses could be above $1 trillion thus triggering a massive credit crunch and a systemic financial sector crisis.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:13 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 18, 2008

offline

I guess this is the reality in the class room.

Alan Moir

Why do you need the teachers to teach the kids to learn how to use computers? Why cannot the kids help one another. Why cannot they teach themselves through play and experiment? Surely the days of rote learning have gone now the conservatives have been banished from power everywhere. What is needed by the school is high speed broadband and plenty of download capacity.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:46 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 17, 2008

bogeymen and fairy tales

We often hear about the European bogeyman from the free marketeers and The Australian newspaper. Bogeyman stands for Big Government that crushes freedom in the name of equality welfare state style. Big Government strangles the economy and creates a culture of dependency is their message. So the welfare state needs to be rolled back and replaced by individual initiative and self-help. Things are best left to the markets is the battle cry. We need to create an opportunity society.

Paul Krugman in The New York Times says:

According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much U.S. political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we’re told, and the economy will shrivel up — the same way it supposedly has in Europe. But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

My favourite free market scenario is the privatization of highways. This is a classic libertarian fantasy: government auctions off the land, private enterprise pays for construction and maintenance, tolls cover the cost, competing routes keep it all efficient. So what about the intersections? What happens there? Another company owns them. And the traffic lights? Same? So how are the customers on the different roads treated fairly or equitable? Why through incentives to the companies of course.

So what happens when market failures are substantial enough to overcome any fear of countervailing government inefficiency--eg., global warming or cancer caused by Big Tobacco?

There is a difference between between using market forces and leaving something to the market. Governments can intervene to use market forces to our advantage rather than hoping the market corrects itself.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

US Presidential campaign: Michigan

So the Republican slugfest between Mitt Romney and John McCain in Michigan was resolved in favour of Romney, with Huckabee a distant third. But then it was Romney's home state. Do the Republicans like McCain? The mainstream press sure does.

The race on the Republican side is wide open, as Romney, McCain and Huckabee have now each won a significant primary, and there are no signs that any of them have established a lasting advantage in national polls. Does Romney have the Big Mo? Or are the Republicans heading to a brokered convention?

Mike Thompson

The focus shifts to South Carolina, where a tough three-way contest is expected in the first Southern state to vote this primary season. This was the state that in 2000 effectively ended McCain's battle against George Bush. Immigration is the big issue here. Stop the illegals is the Republican battle cry.

Huckabee is going for the evangelical vote. Consider this:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

It's hard for me take this seriously---constitutional amendments outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage spelt out in starkly religious terms. I find this Christian fundamentalism quite scary, yet Huckabee's a candidate for the President of the US! This is cockroach territory. I need a drink.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

crunch time at Citigroup

The New York Times reports that Citigroup is writing down $22.2 billion because of soured mortgage-related investments and bad loans. The bank is also cutting its dividend by 41 percent, obtaining a $12.5 billion cash infusion to strengthen its balance sheet, and cutting 20,000 jobs.

Citigroup’s capital levels have been severely depleted in the fallout from the continuing credit crisis and worsening downturn in the housing market. Even with the $12.5 billion capital injection, analysts think that the bank may need even more money to shore up its balance sheet if economic conditions worsen.

On his Global EconoMonitor blog Nouriel Roubini makes the following points in a presentation that provides his views on the US and global economic outlook for 2008 and the implications of this outlook for all the major financial markets and asset classes:

• The US will experience a hard landing (recession) that will be severe and protracted rather than mild

• The liquidity and credit crunch will get worse and the risk of a systemic financial crisis is rising

• The Fed easing will be “too little too late” and it will not prevent a recession

• The rest of the world will not decouple; it will rather recouple with the US hard landing leading to a global economic slowdown

That is not good news for Australia, facing strong inflationary pressures.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 15, 2008

are we there yet?

Via Nicholas Gruen at Club Troppo
Guy Rundle adds yet another take on the Australian culture wars at Arena magazine. It's a long essay but worth a read for a version of this ongoing stoush tracing it back long before Howard weighed in and confused everything by getting Australia mixed up with America.

There are quite a few versions of how it all came to this, mostly focused on politicians trying to force cultural change from the top down. Or in Pauline Hanson's case, from the bottom to somewhere even further down.

Rundle gives a clear explanation of the role Murdoch, and The Australian in particular, played in all of this from a longer term view than we are normally offered. He has a go at holding the Murdoch conservatives responsible for political disengagement and it's an interesting argument. What passes for public debate these days is a series of ongoing brawls between a select few in small magazines and The Australian op ed pages. The people who write them don't generally spend a lot of time sinking beers and shooting the breeze with the 'mainstream, ordinary, pragmatic, salt of the earth' people they claim to represent.

I think there's an equally strong case for arguing that it has always been thus, with engagement coming and going depending on what's at stake at any given time, or the introduction of a new novelty. Whatever. We can still enjoy speculating.

Anyhoo, this is Rundle's response to Paul Kelly's spew we discussed a while back.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:08 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

some environmental initiatives

So our celebrity Environment Minister has made a big move as he is considering banning (or placing a levy) plastic bags. Given this cutting edge green policy by a courageous Minister in a warmed up world, then what is the federal government going to do to address the supply of electricity in the face of increasing demand at peak periods? Leave it to the market to decide?

Andrew Weldon

There is talk about building more coal-fired power stations in Queensland (eg., Kogan Creek) to meet increased energy demand and prevent the blackouts. What isn't being seriously considered in Queensland is meeting the future growth in energy demand via gas and renewable energy sources and greater energy efficiency measures.

Leslie Kemeny, the publicist for the nuclear industry who puts "renewables" in scare quotes and is nostalgic for the atomic age, is back in the AFR spruiking nuclear power as the greenest option. He is talking in terms of greenhouse friendly uranium fuel for energy security and safe and efficient nuclear power for value adding resource industries. The hook for Kemeny this time round is the decision by the Brown Labour government to put nuclear energy at the heart of the UK energy industry.

Steve Bell

As is usual Kemeny doesn't mention is that nuclear power will not survive on its own in the market place. Public subsidies, deals, sweeteners and rigging the market are needed to make nuclear power cost competitive. His mode of reasoning is to say that he has enlightening reason on his side whilst his critics are irrational. An example:

By far the largest contribution to global energy security ad greenhouse gas abatement made by Australia thus far is the "carbon offset" created by the nations uranium exports to 13 of its trading partners , which operate nuclear power plants. The greatest act of environmental vandalism and economic folly any Australian government could perpetrate is to reject nuclear power and a national involvement in a global nuclear fuel cycle industry. Nuclear power is only "too slow" or "too expensive" if perceived through the eyes of pseudo-science or political prejudice.

I expect Luddite will be used next time in this ""no alternatives" rhetoric pushed through the AFR by the nuclear lobby publicists in the guise of an op-ed.

What Kemeny doesn't say is that nuclear companies in the UK want to cap their liabilities and leave the taxpayer picking up the liabilities for waste disposal and plant decommissioning. But then Kemeny wants Australia to be the global repository for nuclear waste. It's what being a part of the global nuclear fuel cycle means. All that's necessary is for the Rudd government to rig the market and provide lots of sweeteners.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:06 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

January 14, 2008

things look bad in the US

David Uren in The Australian acknowledges the reality of what is happening in the US economy:

The fallout from the financial economy into the general economy is becoming more intense. Foreclosures are forcing housing sales into a falling market. There is no longer demand for housing from people without good credit histories. The tightening of finance is also starting to spill into the commercial property industry, where developers are finding it harder to obtain or roll over debt. The fall in housing prices and now the fall in shares are eroding household wealth. The American consumer, who keeps the great flywheel of the US economy spinning, is pulling back.

Have rising exports, due to to the weak dollar, helped the US to avoid slipping into recession, despite the decline of the US manufacturing base? Paul Krugman argued so on his blog late last year. He is now having second thoughts. As US imports continue to rise the US trade deficit continues to increase.

Despite rising unemployment, slowing economic growth, declining consumers confidence, inflationary pressures a deepening housing crisis (rising foreclosures and falling house prices) and a panicky stockmarket, the Bush administration is saying that economic fundamentals are sound. No wonder the Democratic presidential candidates are attacking the Republicans on the economy and bringing forward multi billion economic packages involving relief and stimulus measures.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:56 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 13, 2008

River Murray turning toxic

Rick Wallace in The Australian reports that stretches of the Murray River are turning into the corrosive equivalent of battery acid, in further evidence the devastating drought is causing more harm to the nation's iconic watercourse He says:

Scientists are warning that acid sulphate soils are turning river banks and billabongs into death traps for fish and birds and hazards for humans. It is impossible for animals to survive NSW's Bottle Bend lagoon, which now has a pH -- or acidity -- level dropping as low as 1.8 -- equivalent to the sulphuric acid found in car batteries. And it is corrosive to the touch.

Bottle Bend lagoon is upstream from Mildura. The problem has been found in large stretches of the river in South Australia around Renmark, Blanchetown and Murray Bridge, as well as in lakes Albert and Alexandrina, near the mouth.

The acid-sulphate problem, which is caused by nutrient-rich submerged banks being exposed to air for the first time in decades, is already rivalling salinity, overextraction and blue-green algae as threats to the river. The sulphuric acid is produced when naturally occurring iron pyrite in the river bank -- a by-product of decaying organic matter -- reacts with oxygen.

The problem can be prevented by raising the water level to reinundate banks. But there is no water to do this.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 12, 2008

Bush to the rescue

Though the presence of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory stands at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, Israel has consistently refused to rule out further settlement building in East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank and the new expropriation of Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

Steve Bell

Doesn't the US "road map" calls on Israel to freeze "all settlement activity"and a two state solution? The continuation of that illegal settlement activity lessens the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Bush explicitly called for an end to the Israeli occupation, an end to Israeli settlement expansion and for the Palestinians to confront terrorism. He said the question of Palestinian refugees should be solved by compensation and the chance for them to live in a future Palestinian state. However, this is at odds with Bush's acceptance of major settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Bush has not used Washington's enormous leverage over Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He has not even applied pressure for an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements or the dismantling of the spider's web of roadblocks that make normal life for Palestinians impossible.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:35 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 11, 2008

Post Election Action

There has been some conjecture on these pages as to what the Rudd Government might actually achieve over the next three years.There is an essay on ABC on Line by John Langmore, a former Labor MP who has spent time at the UN and recently taken up a Professorial Fellowship at Melbourne University.The essay is based on his recent book "To Firmer Ground: Restoring Hope in Australia".

He outlines 11 proposals that he considers need urgent government attention.I suspect most are covered by the government's agenda. They cover, Climate Change, Education, Employment, the Work Place, Health, Housing, Justice for Indigenous Australians, Reinvigorated Multiculturalism, Investing in The Future, Global Security and Justice and Enhancing Democracy. I think his views are well worth digesting and debating.

Of interest are the Comments. While Liberal MPs appear to have reversed their views on many issues over the last few weeks, it seems as though many in the community are well and truly rust welded onto the Howard mantra. I wonder what that means for the Liberals in the immediate future.

Posted by Gratton Wilson at 3:25 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

consequences

Govt rejects anger over dead man unnoticed for 1yr.

A neighbour called the police "concerned because the man's letterbox was overflowing"

The man was a public housing tenant.

Neighbours are angry because the NSW Housing Department didn't check up on the man. Apparently the department had promised to check up on tenants every six months after three other elderly public housing tenants had died unnoticed in 2006.

It's no surprise that elderly people reduced to public housing don't get regular visits from family, friends and neighbours. The foreseeable consequence is that people will die on their own and sometimes it will take a while for anyone to notice.

Without any other details available, let's assume these are pensioners whose payments are conveniently deposited into accounts somewhere in the enormous banking industry. Nobody would notice small sums accumulating. We can also assume that rent is automatically deducted and deposited wherever public housing rental payments go. Nobody notices regular payments.

After a few months, let alone a year, the junk mail alone would fill a wheelie bin. But let's assume polite neighbours don't like to directly approach one another about aesthetic misdemeanours or clear one another's letterboxes without permission.

Neighbours and the opposition are cranky because the housing department should routinely check its tenants. The minister quite rightly points out that tenants are entitled to privacy. If they don't respond to a phone call, letter or note left under the door, that's their business.

Isn't this what we wanted? We don't have to take care of our elderly, we have convenient money transfer systems, neighbours don't interfere, we have public housing and we have privacy. And when something goes wrong we have governments we can hold responsible.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:09 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

celebrity and fluoride

A letter to the editor in a Gold Coast newspaper registers objection to the proposed fluoridation of drinking water. It quotes in full another letter to the editor printed in the Malibu Times objecting to the fluoridation of tap water there. The letter within the letter is signed Martin and Janet Sheen.

"Yes, that's him" writes the Gold Coast resident. "Martin Sheen of Apocalypse Now and more recently West Wing fame".

So there you go. Fluoride must be bad if President Bartlet says so. Does that make Julie Andrews an expert on childcare? Should William Shatner be running NASA?

Sheen may very well know about fluoride. He may even have learned about it while preparing to pretend to be the president. He probably knows the difference between himself and the role he played, and might very well expect readers of his letter to know the difference as well. But I wonder whether his letter would be quoted by an Australian if he was, say, Frank Burns from MASH? Or Donny Osmond, Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson?

President Bartlet would know all about fluoride. President Bartlet is a good guy who would know what to do with Queensland water. Apparently.

The stage managed, constructed nature of politics is a central theme of The West Wing. Spin is carefully constructed and fed to the public via a compliant media. The news cycle is central to the conduct of business at the White House. In one episode a serious investigative journalist is miffed at being assigned to political reporting where he is effectively reduced to gossip columnist. Nobody challenges his argument.

This is the world we live in. Anna Bligh says we're getting fluoride and the local paper publishes an objecting letter citing an actor as an authority, whose legitimacy comes from his role in a show clearly depicting the illusion that is politics.

We can't show you this man's face, because he's a dentist. But we can show you this other man's face because he's an actor pretending to be a dentist. He will now proceed to sell you a toothbrush.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 11:47 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

the limits of political power

So the Treasurer cannot do very much in dealing with the credit crunch in global financial markets. That much is obvious. He can just appear to be doing something.

Alan Moir

We know know that Australia's four big banks have $1 billion direct exposure to the US subprime mortgage market whilst the debt market volatility appears to be a problem for Wesfarmers, which borrowed $10 billion to buy Coles and needs to refinance around $4 billion in short term debt.

This playing off the executive of the nation-state against the global economic flows does have its conceptual limits, as indicated by this post on philosophy.com. Neverthless, Swan can do very little.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:49 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

January 10, 2008

Bush in the Middle East

The lameduck President is concerned about his legacy and he reckons that a quick visit to the Middle East will nudge along the peace process even though Hezbollah will be excluded, Bush is Israel's best friend, Iran is defined as the enemy, and Bush's Roadmap requires Mahmoud Abbas to dismantle Hamas. No worries, Bush's very presence is enough, apparently, to shift things along:

Alan Moir

Israel has premised its actions on the assumption of U.S. primacy. So what happens withe slow demise of Pax Americana? The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is a blow to the Israeli leadership,as it argued that Iran terminated their efforts to produce a nuclear bomb, and they have not resumed them since.

Israel has been using the “Iran threat” as a political organizing principle at home and abroad. Even when the Bush Administration makes feeble attempts to put the Israeli-Palestinian question on the agenda, the Israelis make sure that it all takes place in the context of a conversation about Iran as an “existential threat” to Israel. However, Washington no longer has the capacity to take the steps required to stabilize the region.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:40 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 9, 2008

Stiglitz on the global economy

Most of the op-eds in the back page of AFR are usually in the free market vein with strong warnings about the dangers of government intervention, union control, and picking winners (yes, you guessed it, renewables). Reform is generally coded as economic reform, and it means more deregulation, less tax and greater privatization of public utilities. On many ocassions we have had spin and publicity for the nuclear industry disguised as an op.-ed. The quality of these pieces varies; many of them not that high, even when they are downloaded from the US.

So it is with some relief that we find an op-ed written by Joseph Stiglitz, that has been downloaded from Project Syndicate on the global economy and economic governance. Two passages stand out:

the good times may be ending. There have been worries for years about the global imbalances caused by America’s huge overseas borrowing. America, in turn, said that the world should be thankful: by living beyond its means, it helped keep the global economy going, especially given high savings rates in Asia, which accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves. But it was always recognized that America’s growth under President George W. Bush was not sustainable. Now the day of reckoning looms.

He then goes through the reasons: China is facing inflationary pressure; the prospects for the US consumption binge continuing are weak; and it is not clear that workers will continue to wear declining standards in the name of uneven globalization.

Stiglitz adds that the one positive note is that the sources of global growth today are more diverse than they were a decade ago. The real engines of global growth in recent years have been developing countries. However:

slower growth – or possibly a recession – in the world’s largest economy inevitably has global consequences. There will be a global slowdown. If monetary authorities respond appropriately to growing inflationary pressure – recognizing that much of it is imported, and not a result of excess domestic demand – we may be able to manage our way through it. But if they raise interest rates relentlessly to meet inflation targets, we should prepare for the worst: another episode of stagflation.

He finishes on a sobering note: If central banks go down this path, they will no doubt eventually succeed in wringing inflation out of the system. But the cost – in lost jobs, lost wages, and lost homes – will be enormous.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 8, 2008

US Presidential campaign: New Hampshire

The Clintons are sure doing it tough in their comeback to take the Whitehouse for the Democrats. The opportunity is there but Hillary Clinton is going backwards in the New Hampshire polls as Obama soars on the wave of the Big Mo. It looks as if Clinton will finish in second place in the New Hampshire primary. She is not expected to do well in South Carolina.

But more than Mark Penn's bad campaign strategy imploding is going on, as the negative media passions run deep about Hillary Clinton, as this Moreland cartoon in The Times indicates:
Clinton is seen as a Washington insider or a career politician who is somehow unhuman: if not a machine then a bitch or a wicked witch.
It's not just the Republicans--her political foes--- there is also a hefty media antagonism towards her. Many see her in terms of either the icy feminist harridan of popular mythology or as the regal uberbitch that the press makes her out to be.

Obama regularly uses euphemisms such as "traditional Washington politics" to convey the message that he represents a fresh start, in contrast to Clinton who, the implication goes, epitomises the old Democrat guard who would ignite the culture wars and continue the destructive confrontationism of the recent past. Even if Bill and Hillary are being positioned as part of the problem, not part of the solution, Clinton still leads the national surveys.

Update
Here's the Clinton video that is creating a buzz---Clinton tears up in a New Hampshire coffeeshop:

Hillary's tears were genuine and a change from policy prescription and the image of the cold-hearted, ruthless, and dishonest woman engaging in the politics of fear and despair. John Edwards response to the "Hillary moment" is that big boys don't cry:

I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business.

Now where's that southern charm? His prospects are not that good in New Hampshire. He is widely predicted to come in third.

The US media is enamoured of the Obama narrative and juggernaut, despite Clinton now saying that she really is a change agent, despite Mark Penn's diva strategy (Hilary running as pseudo incumbent) and the poll-tested small bites of policy. Her campaign is in trouble, as she is not liked, and has allowed herself to become presented as a political product whose sell-by date has passed.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:16 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Senate

One significant result of the federal election was the Greens gaining seats in Western Australia and South Australia, giving them 5 seats and therefore party status in the Senate.

So we have a shift from the Democrats to the Greens sitting to the left of the ALP, with Nick Xenophon (Independent, SA) and Steve Fielding (Family First) holding the balance of power. It is expected that the Xenophon will act in a similar fashion to Brian Harradine, the Tasmanian Independent when he held the balance of power.

So who is going to do all the legislative grunt work in the Senate? The House of Representatives is the world of political theatre, whilst it is the Senate that decides on which legislation passes through and how that legislation should be amended. The Democrats used to do the grunt work .

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:02 AM | TrackBack

January 7, 2008

industry handout?

I see that the car industry in Australia is asking for more help, either in the form of an extension of the import tariff of 10% beyond 2010, or financial assistance to improve its productivity and innovation. Apparently, the car manufacturers (Mitsubishi, Toyota, Holden, Ford) are under pressure from a high dollar, changing consumers tastes in favour of fuel-efficient and hybrid models, increased imports and pressure from the parent companies to become more cost competitive.

Apparently, the viability of two of the four (Mitsubishi, Ford?) is threatened without more government assistance in some form. The Victorian and SA state government have called for a freeze on tariff cuts in 2010---the proposed reduction from 10% to 5% shouldn't go ahead.

Isn't the solution for a viable car manufacturing industry in Australia one of exporting more cars that consumers actually want--hybrid and flexible fuel cars? So where is the innovation to make a green car?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:42 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

January 6, 2008

Washington reneges

These days the economic establishment seems to offer the same answer to every question: let markets decide. Those policymakers and thinkers who suggest alternatives--some form of intervention by governments are shrugged off as leftist dinosaurs fighting yesterday’s battles. Consequently, most economists don't generally dare to buck conventional economic "wisdom" and policy makers generally talk up the economy, often insisting in the face of contrary evidence that the outlook is positive, the fundamentals are sound, and the good times will continue to roll.

A classic example is the US President---George Bush continues to strike an upbeat note despite despite a worsening housing crisis; continuing turmoil in credit markets and the evidence pointing to a hard landing (recession) for the US economy. But the Washington Republicans are being mugged by economic reality and Bush is talking in terms of government intervention:-- stimulus package may be required to nudge the market to what it should do--an adjustment/cathartic process that sorts things out. Despite the market being the natural order of things the hand of man is required in Washington to do something about the slowing American economy.

Just a little stimulus mind you---a little something for the housing construction industry, which has become caught up in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. That means the market can no longer prevent the US economy from getting into a bad shape. A little crack in the neo-liberal edifice.

In America’s Houses of Cards at Project Syndicate Joseph E. Stiglitz says that there is a macro-story and a micro-story here:

The macro-story is simple, but dramatic. Some, observing the crash of the sub-prime mortgage market, say, “Don’t worry, it is only a problem in the real estate sector.” But this overlooks the key role that the housing sector has played in the US economy recently, with direct investment in real estate and money taken out of houses through refinancing mortgages accounting for two-thirds to three-quarters of growth over the last six years.

With higher interest rates depressing housing prices, the game is over. As aggregate demand weakens so will the economy. He says:

The micro-story is more dramatic. Record-low interest rates in 2001, 2002 and 2003 did not lead Americans to invest more – there was already excess capacity. Instead, easy money stimulated the economy by inducing households to refinance their mortgages, and to spend some of their capital.
It is one thing to borrow to make an investment, which strengthens balance sheets; it is another thing to borrow to finance a vacation or a consumption binge. But this is what Alan Greenspan encouraged Americans to do. When normal mortgages did not prime the pump enough, he encouraged them to take out variable-rate mortgages – at a time when interest rates had nowhere to go but up.

Now reality has hit: newspapers report cases of borrowers whose mortgage payments exceed their entire income. Globalization implies that America’s mortgage problem has worldwide repercussions.

What happened? Why the free marketeers went very quiet on all their stuff about moral hazard and ran to their respective governments demanding a bail out for America’s bad lending practices. Will that lead to greater financial sector regulation, especially better protection against predatory lending, and more transparency in financial markets?

Nope. The market is best left to do its thing say the financial free marketeers. Government intervention is not required. It has negative consequences and strangles economic growth. It's a mantra isn't it?; one told by those who need to sustain their faith in the natural workings of the free market.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 5, 2008

the new reformers

There has been lots of ALP spin in the Fairfax media since Xmas about how wonderful the new individual ministers in the Rudd Government are, how they have got their portfolios down pat already, and how they are already hard at work. I've seen the selling of Roxon, Smith and Crean and I haven't even been looking. Is this a sign of Blair-style spin doctoring?

Alan Moir

The big sell is that the Rudd ALP is the party of reform. What sort of reform though? Reform implies more than being managers modeled on CEOs of the big end of town. Or being agents of change.

Is it smoothing the rough edges of capitalism a la Sussex Street in NSW? Making things easier--more efficient---for big business? Fostering technocratic capitalism? Deepening social democracy? Reforming society to liberalize and deregulate the market? Revitalising the welfare state? Is the ALP the party of social democracy? If so, in what way? Will they continue to question the ideology that the market is always right, that things are inevitable, that there is a natural balance in the self-regulating market etc etc.

Whatever reform the ALP has in mind we know that is not a deepening or broadening liberal democracy that is on the agenda. Government equals bureaucracy, and democracy is pushed into the background and no longer really matters as a mode of governance concerned with the shrinking of the public good. So how will a Rudd Government address the growing economic inequality in a prosperous nation that is growing richer in a globalised world? Through the market?

update
If the Rudd ALP are economic rationalists and think that globalisation is a good thing, then doesn't that mean they need to reform the public education system to ensure, in the words of John Ralston Saul that Australian:

students who are coming out of schools and universities who spoke two or three or four languages, who had an intimate knowledge of history, philosophy, language etc, who knew the religions of China, [India] and so on, so that they could go into meeting rooms around the world and negotiate things and make money without making fools of themselves and losing the contract.

This means, as Ralston points out, a public education system of the highest possible quality, as this is the only way that Australians would be able to educate themselves in order to be able to engage as workers and citizens in a global world. Or should Australians pay for this kind of education through private school and user pays university fees?

Australia does seem to be drifting to an American type society in which the gap between the very rich and the very poor widens each year. Doesn't this concentration of economic power amongst a small transnational group have big implications for our public health and education systems, given the under-investment in this social infrastructure over the past two decades?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:32 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

January 4, 2008

US Presidential campaign: Iowa

The Democrat white folks of Iowa have voted for a black man (Barack Obama) over a white women (Hillary Clinton) to be their presidential candidate. They say they voted for change. Edwards looks doomed now, since he just doesn't have the money to overcome this loss in New Hampshire.

Clinton, the favourite, looks damaged --despite all that money, expertise, support and skill she came in third. Moreover, she stands for experience not change.Even though it's not all that clear what sort of needed change Obama is advocating---beyond legislative "gridlock" and "the status quo"--- he does have the Big Mo (political momentum). The young (men and women) voted for him in a big way. If Obama beats Clinton in New Hampshire, he will almost certainly win South Carolina. Do the Democrats need Hillary Clinton? The Clintons stand for the past.

The Republican folks in Iowa, in voting for a Evangelical Christian (Mike Huckabee)---a Baptist minister who dismisses Darwin and makes dubious comments about AIDS --- have signaled the fracturing of the Reagan conservative coalition.

The Club for Growth (neo-liberal) faction of the Republican party have explicitly rejected Mike Huckabee and his big-government and populist policies, dubbing him to be the John Edwards of the Republican Party. As Robert G. Kaiser observes in his live analysis:

Reagan brought together evangelicals, old-fashioned country-club Republicans, southern middle-class voters and the group that became known as "Reagan Democrats." Huckabee wins Iowa without bringing together any broad coalition at all; he got evangelicals and a few others, it looks like. Other Republicans fractured in many directions.I agree with the now-common commentary that there is no heir to Reagan now, or even to President Bush.

Huckabee is opposed by almost the entire establishment of his own party. That means the GOP "party elders" have to figure out a way to stop Huckabee, and they can no longer plan to run against Clinton. Who do they have left? Romney? Cain?

Is the United States entering an era of change? The 24/7 news culture had a Clinton and Romney scenario locked in place as definite.

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Noel Pearson's reform plan

Noel Pearson's reform plan in indigenous Cape York Peninsula rejects the existing artificial economy of unconditional welfare. It is paying for abusive lifestyles that compromise the protection of indigenous children and families.

The reform makes welfare payments conditional on four basic expectations: ensure your children attend school; fulfill your responsibilities to keep your children free from abuse and neglect; abide by the laws concerning violence, alcohol and drugs; abide by your public housing tenancy conditions. A family responsibilities commission comprising a magistrate and eminent representatives of the community is to be be created In Queensland to mandate these obligations.

Pearson argues that though these policies have a conservative flavour - a rebuilding of social norms - the other two building blocks of his agenda have a distinctly liberal and social-democratic flavour: realignment of incentives and increased government investment in capability development (that is in developing the capabilities of individuals).

This increased government investment in capability development builds on the work of Amartya Sen, and the argument is that poverty and disadvantage are to a large extent capability deprivation. The key is Indigenous capability development not development purely in terms of GNP growth with poverty seen purely as income-deprivation.

This capability development approach represents a significant policy shift, as the emphasis is not only on how human beings actually function but on them having the capability, which is a practical choice, to function in important ways if they so wish. The emphasis is based on well being and not utility and so it provides a framework for indigenous capability development.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:49 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 3, 2008

Peggy Noonan's junk commentary

I've often thought that the op-eds in the Australian mainstream media were pretty poor. The Fairfax op-eds increasingly drift towards lifestyle infotainment, whilst those in the Australian are written through the prism of the culture wars. Sometimes the recycled overseas op-eds in all our media are even worse.

A good example is Peggy Noonan's 'Let truth and common sense reign in Iowa' in The Australian, which is downloaded from her Wall St Journal column.This is not intelligent commentary by any stretch. It's so bad that one questions the judgements of the Australian's editorial crowd. Partisanship rules therein.

Noonan, who claims to speak for thousands, millions, states what she desires:

This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. That is my hope, what I ask Iowa to produce, and I claim here to speak for thousands, millions. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.

Then she makes a checklist of which presidential candidates are "reasonable" and which ones aren't. Reasonable is not defined. We are offered examples of what reasonable means in political life---Senator Joe Biden a long term United States senator, who has read a raw threat file or two, has experience, sophistication, the long view, and knows how it works. 'Reasonable' for grown-ups refers to "knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."

Noonan then makes this judgment:

Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson are all reasonable: mature, accomplished, nonradical. Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column. John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't. I forgot Rudy Giuliani. That must say something. He is reasonable but not desirable. If he wins somewhere, I'll explain.

Why is Edwards populist agenda re health insurance companies and universal health care intemperate and insincere? Edwards is disqualified because four years ago, he was caught brushing his hair before a television appearance -- "poofing," in Noonan's words, which signifies a male homosexual. So he is not masculine. Not a real man like President Bush. So he can't possibly be President. Only real men can be the President of the US, not faggots.

Oh, by the way Hillary Clinton is not reasonable either. No, its not because she is not a man:

Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.

Isn't President Bush polarizing? Barack Obama just squeezes through the reasonable door, though he's too young and inexperienced to be President. No problems with the Republican candidates though, apart from Mike Huckabee, the Prairie populist.

And this kind of junk represents intelligent commentary by the political and media elite in a national newspaper. We are meant to take this junk seriously? Who is kidding who.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:16 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

January 2, 2008

US: political realities

Matthew Yglesias in an article inThe Guardian says that a year after the Democrats gaining control of Congress has not achieved much.

The hoped-for dramatic expansion of the child health insurance programme S-Chip? Didn't happen. Transformation of American energy policy? Didn't happen. The "carried interest" loophole that lets private equity billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries? Still open. No Child Left Behind? Unchanged, despite the hubbub. Surveillance? Same as ever. And, of course, the war in Iraq continues despite its steady unpopularity.

Others agree with the not much judgement. The reason Yglesias puts forward for this is that the combination of George Bush's veto pen and the Republican party's unprecedented use of the filibuster has made it essentially impossible to pass much of anything that's worthwhile. The Republicans are playing movement loyalty.

Yglesias adds that this kind of Republican resistance is:

something worth keeping in mind as we look at the presidential race. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama are all running on substantively similar domestic policy platforms, and primarily arguing about who has the best chance of getting things through. Looking back on 2007, one important thing to keep in mind is that tactics and "theories of change" can't overcome basic math - you either have the votes to pass your bills or you don't, and with all three candidates promising much, much, much more than the Democratic Congress ever did, there's real reason to doubt that the votes will be there.

Rather sobering isn't it. What I currently find most troubling about the US is the religious absolutism of a fundamentalist, and anti-intellectual Protestantism that is pitted against, and out to destroy, liberal modernity. Bush and Rove used this sectarianism to deepen the culture war, to Republican advantage. Consequently, I have little time for a Huckabee or a Romney.

Will the Democrats change this? In an interesting article in the New Atlantic Andrew Sullivan says yes, but only Barack Obama, as he alone is capable of bridging the religious secular divide:

You cannot confront the complex challenges of domestic or foreign policy today unless you understand this gulf and its seriousness. You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps. This, surely, is where Bush has failed most profoundly. By aligning himself with the most extreme and basic of religious orientations, he has lost many moderate believers and alienated the secular and agnostic in the West. If you cannot bring the agnostics along in a campaign against religious terrorism, you have a problem. Here again, Obama, by virtue of generation and accident, bridges this deepening divide.

Obama has the capacity to uphold religious conviction without disturbing or alienating the secular voters, especially on the left.

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January 1, 2008

New Years Eve/Day

We spent the early part of the evening on the beach, as the cloud cover had come in, the warm north wind had died, and there was a cooling of the overheated temperature. I took some photos.

Then we came home, had champagne and a baby octopus salad on the balcony at Victor Harbor, and watched the few fire works in the distance.They were nothing like this Reuters image of New Years Eve in Sydney:

On New Years day we drove to Goolwa on the River Murray for a coffee and to look at the state of the Murray River just up from the Goolwa barrages, near the Hindmarsh Island bridge. I was shocked by the low level of water near the cafe.

Gary Sauer-Thompson, Goowla Cafe Pier, 2007

Six months ago boats would pull up at the pier and the boaties would have alighted for a quick cup of coffee before returning to cruising the river with friends. But no more:

Gary Sauer-Thompson, Goolwa Aquatic Club, 2007

You could actually walk out to the middle of the river and thew water is still mid-waist.This part of the river is evaporating as there is no flow from upstream or the sea. It's a lake that is becoming a mudflat during the summer due to lack of rain the Murray-Darling Basin during the winter. The effects (less rain) from the relatively small temperature increases we have already seen are happening more quickly than they had expected.

Pity about all the Hindmarsh Island resort style housing based around the canals with their boats parked out the back door. That whole development depended on continual river flows down the River Murray.

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