Public Opinion

« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »

March 31, 2008

SA's expansion of Olympic Dam

SA is anxiously awaiting for the copper and uranium mining boom to happen so that it can join the high speed economies of WA and Queensland in Australia's two speed economy. SA is in a state of suspended longing as it stands on the verge of a boom, despite government concerns that BHP is backing away from value-adding processing in favour of exporting all expanded production as copper ore concentrate rather than smelting into metal, as it does currently. Such a move would reduce BHP Billiton's capital spending.

Digging up the rocks will be undertaken by BHP Billiton over the next decade. This expansion of Olympic Dam will require a desalination plant on the coast of the Upper Spencer Gulf to provide the extra 120Ml/day of additional water. The water will then be pumped 320 km north to Olympic Dam, which is 600km north of Adelaide.

That expansion will need to be powered by electricity. South Australia has been an importer of electricity for several years and its power distribution network was stretched to capacity to meed the demand during the heatwave. Yet BHP Billiton will need nearly half of South Australia's current electricity supply to power its copper and uranium mining at Olympic Dam. It will require 690 megawatts to run the operation with 60 megawatts needed to run the desalination plant. BHP Billiton currently uses 120 megawatts.

So where is that extra 570 megawatts of power going to come from?

The Rann Government, which routinely lectures the rest of the nation on climate change and the need to increasingly source energy from renewable energy has not imposed any mandatory requirements on BHP Billiton to source renewable energy.

The technology to source base-load renewable energy from "hot rocks" geothermal sources in the north of the state is not proven; whilst gas-fired power stations take three years to build if the option is to pipe gas from Queensland. Does that leave coal-fired power stations supplying the vast amount of base-load power Olympic Dam requires?

Does that mean SA becomes a greenhouse pariah as BHP Billiton turns to coal-fired power stations at a time when Ross Garnaut's report argues that power generators not be compensated in a carbon trading scheme?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

River Murray and political spin

Glenn Milne argues in The Australian that the $1 billion paid to the Victorian Government to bring it to the table is neither new nor extra money---it is simply part of Howard's original $10 billion national water funding with the irrigation upgrades in northern Victoria being one of the projects to be considered under the $10 billion. All the rhetoric about that extra $1 billion was spin by the Brumby Government that was tacitly supported by Rudd + Co.

Spooner

So we have this kind of spin rather than a serious attempt to find extra water for a dying Murray River by buying back the over allocated water licences issued by the basin states beholden to the irrigation industry.There is not much water water in the lower lakes---Alexandrina and Albert---and what is there is too salty for stock to tolerate and is not even suitable to use on olive trees.

The River Murray will remain in crisis until a sustainable regime of water management can be put in place. Under the Memorandum of Understanding signed at CoAG in Adelaide the Commonwealth Minister will have the power to determine the cap. However, the as-yet- unspecified cap on water extraction from the river system for irrigation will not become fully operational for more than a decade. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will not produce a plan until 2011. The state's existing water resource plans will remain in place until they expire . For SA this is 2012, 2014 for NSW and Queensland and 2019 for Victoria. Under the agreement the states maintain control of the water in their territory.

Though the Commonwealth is committed to spending $50 million on buying back irrigated water allocations this is a fraction of what is required to improve the River Murray. Little is being said about increasing this by any Government ministers, even though it has been known since 1997 that too much water was being taken out of the river. That is why a basin cap was put in place, yet Queensland is still refusing to put a cap in place for its rivers.

I am not convinced that Howard's basin plan that Rudd has now put in place is the right one---too much emphasis is placed on subsidizing irrigators. There is not enough emphasis placed on buying back the over-allocated water entitlements and on winding back irrigation in unsuitable areas---those with unsuitable soils, have rising or saline ground water---and practices---flood irrigation for cotton, rice and dairy farms.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:03 AM | Comments (44) | TrackBack

March 30, 2008

China's heavy Tibetan hand?

China's heavy handed repression of Tibetan desires for greater autonomy and cultural independence includes imprisoning those who engage in peaceful demonstration as well as rioters, whilst attacking t the Western media, the Dalai Lama and all those taking part in the protests in language that is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.

Martin Rowson

No doubt Rudd will say little about this, even if he is aware of the history of the region. Will he make the distinction as to whether the crackdown was merely oppressive (hundreds of thousands of troops pouring in) or repressive as well (protestors fired on, protesters killed, monks and lay people taken away and beaten). Economics will ensure that Rudd says little.

So Rudd will go along with China's strong armed attempts to control Tibet and its welcoming the world to a peaceful, orderly and more open China for the Games. Will he challenge the widespread view that the events in Tibet represent just another Tiananmen?

Will Rudd argue that the citizens of Τibet, as with those in the rest of China and the world, should be free to speak and write and criticize without fear of censorship or government suppression, and to demonstrate peaceably if necessary? Will Rudd argue that the citizens of Τibet should be able to worship and participate in cultural practices as they see fit, to be educated in the language of their choice, and to be able to pursue these rights in free, unbiased, and independent courts?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:03 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

March 29, 2008

Mr Rudd goes to Washington

So Australia is off to play its dutiful respects to the imperial Presidency. It's a bit like the old Roman Empire days is it not? Rudd has reaffirmed the commitment to Afghanistan, promised other means of support for Iraq, and helped the US by ramping up the pressure on NATO for the Europeans to do more of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan.

Alan Moir

At least there won't be a echo of the paranoid sound bites from the White House about fighting the Islamic terrorists in Iraq until the last man in order to defend Anglo-Saxon civilization so that we don't have to fight the Islamo-fascists on our beaches. It was only six months ago that John Howard and the Liberals were warning that Labor's Iraq policy would be the end of the free world as we knew it because it would send the wrong signal to terrorists everywhere.

As for Australia withdrawing its troops from Iraq, why even the US is doing so because Iraq has been such a success. The reality is that Iraq is already lost and that current US military strategy is failing to reach a workable political settlement.

What else can Australian PM's say when they are in Washington visiting the imperial Presidency, other than US and Australia foreign policy interests are aligned and there are shared goals? Rudd will add that Australia would continue to stay and fight in Afghanistan.

Rudd probably knows that Bush will "stay the course" in Iraq, hand off the mess to president Obama, and then, when Obama has to make the necessary choices for withdrawal (which could usher in a period of increased violence) the right-wing will blame Obama for "losing Iraq."

Hopefully Rudd will argue the benefits of multilateralism in Washington as well as trying to restore Australia as an activist middle power that would agitate for global good through such bodies as the United Nations.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:28 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

March 28, 2008

Williams on federalism

George Williams has an op--ed in the Canberra Times on repairing Australian federalism. Rather opportune after the recent CoAG meeting that celebrated a co-operative federalism. He says:

There is a stark choice: to continue to pay extra tax for second-rate services, or to accept the challenge and opportunity of reform and fix the system of government by a proper allocation of tax revenue and a more appropriate division of power over areas of responsibility. The answer is not to abolish the Australian territories and states. That would be unrealistic and bad policy. Few local problems can be solved by unilateral action from a national government. At least one lower tier of government is needed to help develop regional solutions and deliver services.

He says that while Australia's federal system of government is broken, the answer is to fix that system, not to jettison it. We should focus on pragmatic, achievable change that lowers taxes and improves the quality of government services.

Is the federal system of governance broken? Or is it just creaky? Maybe it is in need of some repairs, as it were? A bit of tender love and care. It's not clear why the GST doesn't provide the income for the states. It doesn't come with strings attached. What is wrong with it, apart from it being not enough? No independence?

Williamsgoes on to say:

In the short term, there are many things that can be done to improve how our federal system works, like facilitating cooperation and re-examining finances. COAG has made an important start on this.In the longer term, the text of the Australian Constitution will also need to change. If the rules are not reformed, bad habits will resurface and blockages re-emerge. There is a need for a revised set of rules to accommodate the changes of the past century and to prepare for the next. This needs to be part of a new deal for Australia's federal system.

What are the new rules that are required if co-operation is working these days? Rules as to finances? What sort of rules? Increased financial independence for the states?

Williams doesn't say.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

blog to book

Speaking of convergence culture, Christian Lander of Stuff White People Like has landed a book deal based on the stuff he blogs. I'm impressed.

Lander's posts sending up the white middle class lifestyle get mixed responses. Some people get it, some don't. Some white people are a bit sensitive, although some of the entries have made me a bit uncomfortable. Still, it was a brilliant idea for a blog. Some of our op-ed columnists would get a real kick out of it.

You can get a fair idea of what he's on about from the Full List of Stuff White People Like:

Dinner parties
Having gay friends
Hating corporations
Bottles of water
Gentrification
Knowing what's best for poor people
Arts degrees
Being an expert on YOUR culture

White people are pretty conflicted about their culture. On one hand, they are proud of the art, literature, and film produced by white culture. But at the same time, they are very ashamed of all the bad things in white culture: the KKK, colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow laws, feudalism, and the treatment of native americans.

Arts degrees?

These degrees enable white people to spend four yeas of their lives reading books, writing papers and feeling great about themselves. It is a known fact that Arts students firmly believe that they are doing you/society a favor by not getting a job and reading Proust. They use this to protest for reduced tuition, more money for the arts, and special reduced student rates on things like bus passes.

...

So why would white people spend all that time studying and working to get into college if they are just going to read books that they might have read in their free time? Because white people have it made. They can take that degree and easily parlay it into a non profit job, an art gallery job, or work in publishing. If the pay is low, no problem, their parents will happily help out with rent until they magically start making six figures or non-magically turn 40.

Ouch.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 11:10 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

March 27, 2008

stealing things

Apparently ISP Exetel agreed to take the big stick to customers they catch illegally downloading content off the net. Offenders will get warning notices but if they're caught doing it again they'll be restricted to email "until they resolve the issue with the issuer of the infringement notice". Is this approach likely to be any more successful than the last one which targeted distributors? Probably not.

Self-described fan Professor Henry Jenkins has been following arguments from both sides of the debate over content control since typewriter times and argues this kind of move is a mistake on the corporations' part. In this (very long) essay he argues that the corporation's charges of theft are equally matched by consumer accusations of exploitation, and it's about time media producers took a good look at the thing from the consumer point of view (and vice versa). For many and varied reasons the bigger hammer solutions to their copyright and profit guarding problems do them more harm than good.

The entertainment media landscape is changing and the big end of town is refusing to catch up, regardless of how much it costs them. Nielson Online's study of consumer generated media in Australian and New Zealand has consumers happily entertaining themselves with content they create and circulate for free. The masses of material posted on YouTube represents a different kind of economy to the one which accumulated wealth and power to Time Warner.

You'd think that somewhere in these enormous hubs of corporatised creativity there'd be someone sufficiently imaginative to come up with better solutions than bullying their own audience. The big producers don't like people 'stealing' their property in the form of illegal downloads, and they also don't like people 'stealing' their property and mashing it up into something else, which adds an interesting extenstion to the problem. In the former case the consumer argument goes 'you've been ripping us off for years', but in the latter case, 'and spending our money to make stuff we don't particularly like'.

One of Jenkins' suggestions is that big producers incorporate consumer generated media into their own range, which sounds like a reasonable solution. Especially when cheap technology gives so many access to the means of production. If they could get that right, reduce their own production costs and make use of already existing distribution channels, they could go some way towards recovering the loss from illegal downloads.

They could punish illegal downloaders by forcing them to dance to the music they pinch on camera, and distribute that as entertainment. It couldn't be any worse than what's already on television.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:46 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Evaluating CoAG reforms

So what do we make of CoAG's Adelaide agreements on health? Is it historic? Hardly. Public hospitals will receive an extra $1 billion after state governments warned Rudd they could not they could not meet his challenge to lift their health performance on current funding levels.

That extra interim funding of $1billion - $500 million in new money and another $500 million over last year's funding levels to match rising inflation---restores some of the reduction in funding under the Howard regime.What had been for years had been a 50-50 funding deal between states and commonwealth had turned into a 60-40 deal under Howard.

However, the new money will not be subject to strict performance reporting levels promised by the Prime Minister to improve hospital efficiency by making states more accountable for how they spend public money. So it is just more money for the states with no strings attached. The states only agreed to work creating performance benchmarks across all areas in which they receive common wealth grants. Why not performance benchmarks for state health funding as well? The states appear to interested in wanting to get as much money out of the Commonwealth as possible and not in a fundamental redesign of Australia’s health "system".

Will this kind of accountability be argued for by the newly created National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission? We will have to wait and see. The Commission has wide terms of reference though.

Is the Adelaide health agreement a step in the reform process that was blocked by the previous Howard Government ?

The National Registration and Accreditation scheme went through, despite the AMA's objections. The details are unclear. That reform has been a long time coming and it is long overdue. But it's no great reform shift. It is even unclear how far the movement from self-regulation has been or how it is connected to other reforms.

The workforce plan to create 50,000 health training places for enrolled nurses, dental health workers, allied health professionals, ambulance officers and Aboriginal health workers was agreed to Such a contrast to the Howard Government focus on solely creating more doctors, and it is a belated response to health workforce crisis that has been building since the 1990s.

Will there be problem filling the training places? Are people attracted to this kind of work? Will the states boost the wages of nurses in the public health system to attract the nurses? Unlikely. We seem to have disjointed incrementalism, a process where policy initiatives are made in isolation rather than against a background of a broad strategic vision for the system.

The implication is that this CoAG meeting did not have a reform agenda that actually delivers better health outcomes. Maybe the Rudd Government is awaiting the work of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission key issues of chronic disease, ageing of the population and rising health costs).These will require solutions based on workforce reform and restructure, including clinical role substitution and a greater focus on multi-disciplinary care, the exclusion of experts from the non-medical health professions.

Will the Commission find ways to overcome the power barrier to the identification of innovative approaches that don't place doctors at the centre of the health system?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 26, 2008

CoAG + water: limits of co-operative federalism

The word coming from the Rudd Government is that CoAG means business. It will be the reform workhorse of the nation and it will deliver on the reform promises made in December. Just watch this exciting space of co-operative federalism with everybody working together and in such wonderful harmony.

I am watching this space on water and the governance of the Murray-Darling Basin. I do not like what I am seeing, given our history of having taken too much water out of our rivers for too long. I see very little movement towards putting water back into the river soon. That history continues to shape the present.

Nicholson

What I am hearing is that Victoria is refusing to sign to any deal that would disadvantage Victorian irrigators. Since any deal is going to involve cutting back on irrigator's entitlements to water due to reduced flows into the Murray, all I see is that Victoria only willing to play ball if it gets its own way. Yet the Brumby Government is willing to take water from its irrigators to ensure that Melbourne's water supply continues.

Oh, I understand that high level talks are taking place amongst senior bureaucrats and ministers and that progress is being made according to Penny Wong, the Federal Water Minister. The progress? States would retain their powers to set yearly water allocations within their borders. So how does that square with the basin wide need for major reductions in water allocations?

It would seem that water and sharing river flows discloses the limits of co-operative federalism have been reached, inspite of all the spin about a deal being close to breaking the Murray deadlock.

Update
Well, a deal has been struck. Victoria keeps control of 50% of its Murray allocations, with current water plans for the state to remain in force until 2019. Victoria will also secure $1 billion in federal funds for the Food Bowl modernisation project across the north of the state.The federal $1 billion would come on top of $1 billion already pledged by the State Government, with water savings from the ambitious scheme to be split equally between Melbourne, farmers and the environment.Victoria would also have a seat at the table of a new body set up to manage the river in the decades to come.

Nicholson

If Victoria has the best and most irrigation system in the nation then why does it need $1 billion to upgrade irrigation in the Goulburn and Murray valleys to prevent leakage from leaks evaporation and other inefficiencies. They held the nation to ransom to get commonwealth money to modernize their ramshackle irrigation system. It's a patchup job that refurbishes old systems that may never meet the demands of modern agriculture in a basin that now averages 37% of its long term average inflows.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:17 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

March 25, 2008

CoAG + health reform

CoAG meets in Adelaide tomorrow and it appears that the Rudd Government is using this as a way of governing the country and pushing the modernizing agenda --to make CoAG a reform workhorse. The suggestion to widen the CoAG agenda to include financial regulation of margin lending, mortgage brokering and non-bank lending indicates that. It's about time that kind of national financial regulation happened.

Is CoAG picking up on the older National Reform Agenda on which little progress had been made under the Howard Regime? Is the older strategy of incentive payments pioneered under National Competition Policy going to be used?

Health will also be on the agenda. The signs indicate that the commonwealth's emphasis will be for more accountability from the states on health, insisting they accept tough performance reporting requirements to demonstrate efficiency in spending commonwealth money. No doubt the NSW Lemma Government will continue to resist with spurious arguments.

The signs are there that here will be a push of a national registration and accreditation scheme. The AMA has come out in opposition as is expected. They have a history of opposing major reform that undercuts their power as the gatekeepers of the health system. That power must be defended at all costs. It is a totemic political issue.

Some of the proposed reforms are long overdue such as paying the states to clear the nation's hospital wards of 2000 elderly people who are occupying valuable bed-space but who should be in nursing homes and nationally harmonized occupational health and safety legislation.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:49 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 24, 2008

hedge fund love in

So the freedom loving financial markets who that that the market is always right and government regulation is always bad are clamouring for public funds to rescue the U.S.and UK financial system. Of course, whilst they hold their hand out they continue to say that market flexibility and open competition are the most reliable safeguards against cumulative economic failure.

Steve Bell

In this column in the New York Times Paul Krugman argues that:

Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a “shadow banking system” that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.

He says that as the years went by, the shadow banking system took over more and more of the banking business, because the unregulated players in this system seemed to offer better deals than conventional banks.

And adds:

The financial crisis currently under way is basically an updated version of the wave of bank runs that swept the nation three generations ago. People aren’t pulling cash out of banks to put it in their mattresses — but they’re doing the modern equivalent, pulling their money out of the shadow banking system and putting it into Treasury bills. And the result, now as then, is a vicious circle of financial contraction.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:27 PM | TrackBack

March 23, 2008

Rudd Labor: thin policy?

One interpretation can be found here on philosophy.com. David Burchell argues in the affirmative using the example of education. His argument is that there is little integrated policy substance or sense of direction.

John Spooner

Is it too early to make a judgment --eg., climate change, broadband or health reform? The indications on these issues suggest a modernizing Labor; bringing Australia into the 21st century. But what does that mean over and above growing the productive base of the economy?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:11 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

March 22, 2008

Garnaut: addressing climate change

Ross Garnaut's key idea to address climate change is simple. The easiest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was to set a cap, create a limited number of permits for those who wish to emit, which would decrease over time, and auction them off, letting the market determine their value. The funds generated would be spent on structural adjustment or returned to the community to ensure that government didn't grow in size.

Garnaut's view of greenhouse policy under the Howard regime is clear and hard headed:

John Howard's scheme was designed by the big emitters.They thought the most important thing was that they didn't change at all,so they had to get all the free allocations, and a lot of the other complexities emerged from the complicated starting point.

This states what we tacitly knew. The opposition to a cap and trade scheme comes from power generators, who are acting as the vested interests applying pressure to the policy-making process to block reform.
Why should we give the power generators a free ride? The European trading scheme showed that giving power generators free permits worth millions of dollars didn't stop them putting up their prices. Nor should we go along with the NSW government and compensate the power industry or losing billions of dollars in the value of its coal-fired power stations as they are scrapped years ahead of their use-by date.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 21, 2008

a sobering thought

The crucial policy question is whether the Federal Reserve and other policy officials can prevent the scenario of a systemic financial crisis. The Anglo-Saxon financial system is in a severe crisis, of that there is no doubt. Reforming this system is necessary to restore confidence in the financial system and to reduce the risks of boom and busts in asset prices and credit that are becoming increasingly self-destructive.

Steve Bell

Nouriel Roubini reckons not but he acknowledges that after being behind the curve in its assessment of the economic and financial risks, the Federal Reserve now gets it and is worried about a serious systemic financial crisis.

For over a year the Fed assessment of the risks to the economy and to the financial markets was flatly wrong. The Fed argued that the housing “slump” would bottom out over a year ago; instead the housing recession got deeper and is nowhere near bottoming out; Bernanke argued repeatedly that the subprime problem would be a niche and contained problem; instead we have observed a severe liquidity and credit crunch that has spread to the entire financial system; the Fed argued that the housing recession would have no significant spillovers to the other sectors of the economy in spite of the importance of housing and in spite of the fact that housing is the main assets of most households; instead we are now observing an economy wide-recession. So to put it simply the Fed – as well as most macro analysts and forecasters - got it totally wrong in its assessment of the risks to the economy and to financial markets.

Sobering isn't it. Roubini says that the financial policy authorities are now fully aware of the risks of this scenario and they are starting to take some of the appropriate policy actions in the monetary and financial spheres.

However, he addsa realistic assessment of the risks in the real economy and in the financial system suggests that it will be very hard to avoid a severe economic recession and the financial fallout of such a recession.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:30 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 20, 2008

where have all the good times gone

Does this particular credit crunch financial meltdown, with its centre in New York, signify that the good times are over for the US, as Rupert Cornwell argues? By all accounts the crisis---market turbulence or volality some sharp elbows call the market crashes, mortgage failures and liquidity freezes----still has some way to run and to spread to areas beyond mortgages.

Mike Thompson

A financial crash means that survival is the priority not bargains in this bear market. Even though the hedge funds may fade away, it looks as if Goldman Sachs and Lehmann Brothers are still okay.

However, as Thomas I Palley notes:

stopping a financial crash does not get the US economy out of the woods. There remains the underlying residential mortgage debt crisis, and many risky mortgages will go bad as will the mortgage backed securities in which they are embedded. There is also the problem of recession, which calls for reviving aggregate demand and getting the economy growing again. Both the mortgage debt crisis and the recession need their own tailored policy responses. However, if the Fed fails to prevent a crash, the mortgage crisis will be deeper and a recession far more severe.

As Cornwell says a backlash against the moguls of Wall Street so greedy in good times, so quick to plead for the state's safety net in bad ones is already starting. The tide of deregulation will be reversed, and government, so often branded the enemy, will again be regarded as a friend.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:02 PM | TrackBack

March 19, 2008

Albrechtson's wilful confusions

Australian conservatives work in terms of dualities that are either or and very black and white. An example is the way they use the duality of reason versus emotion. It is an old duality in western culture and often used as a weapon in the culture wars.

Take Janet Albrechtson's latest op-ed in The Australian, where her thesis is that so many on the Left are obsessed with how they feel about something:

Think about it. So many issues the Left is consumed by are about raw emotion, not intellectual analysis. They will ask you how you feel - not what you think - about some gripping issue. And that’s why Mamet changed his views. He started thinking about issues, engaging his head. So many on the Left take the shortcut, letting their gut reaction dictate their response. Of course, even before Mamet’s political conversion it was easy to work out that left-wing politics is essentially emotional, not logical. With only rare exceptions, poets, playwrights, actors, directors and artistes generally are overwhelmingly political bleeding hearts. If your daily occupation is to emote as effusively as possible and your aim is making your audience feel some emotion or another, then rational analysis is simply not your strong point.

Funny, I thought that the left tradition historically took its bearings from Marx's Capital rather than Rousseau's Emile's. That classic text was hardly a romantic text that emoted as effusively as possible. That tradition then divided into socialism and social democracy around the way the contradictions of capitalism were understood.

Albrechtson's attempts to identify conservatism with reason and the Enlightenment tradition and the left with romanticism ignores the way that it was the left that carried on the Enlightenment project to build a better world for the working class whilst the Conservatives turned against the Enlightenment and became the counter revolution. They celebrated the authority of the state wielding the sword and commonsense as prejudice, superstition and ignorance in the name of tradition.

This is recycled by The Australian conservatives in terms of the commonsense of the sturdy patriotic people versuses the arrogant Utopian reason of the inner city cosmopolitans.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:11 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

Heat wave + water

Temperatures in Adelaide hit 40.5 degrees yesterday, the 15th straight day they have soared above 35 degrees. It's a record and an indication of what climate change may well mean for southern Australia in the near future: hotter, drier, and less rain.

The heat wave has had a devastating effect on South Australia's farming sector and raised serious doubts about the sustainability of irrigation in the lower Murray River. The situation is at its most severe in the final reaches of the Murray River, including Lake Alexandrina, where water levels are so low even farmers with irrigation rights are finding their pumps left high and dry. Associated with the low levels is salinity, and many irrigators are carting in water because it's too salty for stock and plants.

I find it interesting that John Langmore's summary of the key issues confronting Australia, and proposals for addressing them which are both politically and economically feasible does not address water. Astonishing, given that Langmore claims that addressing these issues would enable Australia to gradually become a more secure, sustainable, socially just and vibrant society. How can Australia become a sustainable society without addressing water?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:44 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 17, 2008

The Australian's hypocrisy

The Australian is well known for its mixture of news and opinion, attack dog polemics in the culture wars and being the partisan media voice for the Howard government. Yet, here it is defending the very opposite with its "Detachment Matters" editorial. The editorial agrees with John Hewson's complaint in the Australian Financial Review about journalists becoming players on the political stage rather than mere observers. As the editorial says:

Journalists are outsiders, not political players....Commentary and opinion are important elements of the political discourse and enhance the democratic process. A detached and independent mindset, however, is always important, especially for those paid to scrutinise politicians. Journalists need to guard against becoming too close to those they write about. Relying on a "drip feed" of press releases or strategic "leaks", at the expense of probing and independent analysis, demeans their profession and sells the public short. It can lead to a conflict of interest tempting journalists to turn a blind eye to the mistakes of those on whom they rely as sources.

So what are we to make of an editorial defending the very opposite of what The Australian actually does:--- its hacks (well-trained house dogs) work as insiders rather than outsiders. Shanahan, Milne and Albrechtson are well known examples.

Since there is no self-criticism is the editorial another example of the schizophrenia or split personality in the conservative camp?

To answer this we need to turn to John Hewson's op-ed in the AFR that the editorial was riffing off on. That op-ed was a defence of Brendon Nelson, the Liberal leader, from intensive media criticism. In making his Hewson remarked that we now see politics as a game, and observed that:

... perhaps, more than any time in our history, the media now are, and see themselves as, significant players in that game. In the run up to the last election a significant number of journalists nailed their flags to the Rudd mast, either by urging Howard to go, or simply overtly supporting the new "messiah"...Rudd knows this He cleverly crafts his spin to feed them with each and every of his policy initiatives --in some cases mere stunts.

Hewson laments the media becoming significant players in the political game, even though he recognizes that this is now the norm for the Canberra Press Gallery print and television media.

Murdoch's Australian has been doing the player routine for some time, as has his Fox News in the US. Since they view politics as a game in which they would say or do anything to win, the real cause of the Australian's complaint must be the way that the Canberra Press Gallery has sided with Rudd Labor and knocks down the Liberal party.

If political partisanship is the Australian editorial's raison d' etre, then being partisan for the conservative movement means that the Australian will defend detachment, rational debate and fostering the national conversation. These are just useful tactics in the current situation of having to shed some of its conservative skin to regain some political credibility now that Australia has new leadership in Canberra and issues like climate change dominate the business and political agenda.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:10 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

China's rule in Tibet

China's image in the media is not just that of the booming capitalist economy needing lots of resources from Australia to fuel its expansion. This image is Australia's economic saviour. Nor is it the China dragon face, that appears with the Australian Government helping BHP-Billiton, which is playing the economic nationalist card, to prevent an "aggressive China" from gaining control of some of Australia's most valuable and strategic natural resources through the state owned Chinalco acquiring a 9% stake in Rio Tinto.

China's other media face is the totalitarian face of repression exemplified in the current cackdown on dissidence in Tibet. China's 57-year rule of Tibet has been marked by a heavy hand ever since China sent troops into Tibet in 1950 to "liberate" the region and officially annexed it a year later.

Moir

The anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising sparked an outpouring of frustration at decades of brutal Chinese rule that refuses to allow peaceful resistance to Chinese rule in favour of greater cultural autonomy and an end to repression in Tibet. This is China's human rights face.

Foreign journalists are being restricted from traveling to Lhasa, and the precise death toll remains unknown.But we do know that protests have spread into different Tibetan regions of China, and they have been with heavy violent hand, and that the Chinese government has attempted to manage the news flow out of Tibet, releasing extensive footage of the violent protests on official television, but none of the authorities’ brutal response.

Far from being grateful to Beijing for the benefits of modernisation and economic development, many Tibetans bitterly resent the government and the Han Chinese migrants who have flooded into Tibet and who dominate commerce. China has imposed its rule harshly and refused to yield to Tibetans the autonomy, especially in matters of religion, that they theoretically now enjoy.

Few Tibetans or their allies – are calling for full independence from China. Like the Dalai Lama, all the important foreign powers acknowledge Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but want China to respect the human rights and the unique culture of its Tibetan population.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:49 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 16, 2008

the charms of Wikipedia

An interesting article on Wikipedia in the New York Times Review of Books by Nicholson Baker. I don’t contribute to Wikipedia at all, but I use it regularly and see it as a continual dialogue on contentious issues.

Baker says that Wikipedia is an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge, and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. This gigantic encyclopedia isn't a commercial product. It was constructed, in less than eight years, by strangers who disagreed about all kinds of things but who were drawn to a shared, not-for-profit purpose.

Baker adds that:

Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball.Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals—up to a point—the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context. If Wikipedia were rendered entirely chaotic and obscene, there would be no joy in, for example, replacing some of the article on Archimedes with [nonsense]

This is growing knowledge in the public domain and Wikipedia, which is a self-organizing, self-correcting, ever-expanding, and thoroughly addictive encyclopedia, is proof that open-source, creative commons and web2.0 works. It shows that the collective knowledge of the public (common knowledge) and user-generated content could be an asset.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:31 PM | TrackBack

March 15, 2008

voting

We had a curious addition to the voting process for the Gold Coast council election this year. A few weeks ago we received letters from the Electoral Commission.

Dear Voter,

"On Saturday 15 March 2008 voters in Queensland will vote to elect their Local Mayoral and Councillor representatives. We want to ensure that you can have your say quickly and easily on the day. We recommend you REMOVE THE PERFORATED SECTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS LETTER AND BRING IT WITH YOU WEN YOU VOTE. Polling staff will use this card to find your name on the electoral roll." [bold caps in original]

The rest of the letter detailed voting instructions and the locations of polling booths.

During a conversation with similarly curious, or perhaps paranoid, friends a decision was taken to experiment with this card-presenting business, just to see what would happen. We devised various strategies - pretending to have left it at home but realising we had it at the last minute, tearing the card itself, I pointed out my name while fishing around for it in my bag. Being a bunch of cowards, none of us were game enough to front up without it.

We all had similar experiences. No ballot papers were handed over until the card was presented, and a pen stroke through the card.

It was an odd experience. In previous elections I imagine casting multiple votes would have been a simple matter of fronting up to multiple booths, or the same one over and over as long as a different person marked you off a different roll. Duh. Nevertheless, this card presenting and crossing business carries the inference that we can't be trusted which isn't pleasant, especially coming from bureaucrats and politicians. It's been a while since I've had to front up at Centrelink, but the feeling that cheat is the default position on the public is similar.

The other curious thing was the lack of people handing out Liberal HTV fliers. For weeks the place has been swarming with mobile billboards, posters, sandwich boards and all of the other election paraphernalia featuring Team Tate and gushing promises of a fabulous new Gold Coast. Yet there were three people handing out HTVs for one of the independents to a single Tate Liberal one.

Maybe Team Tate figured they had the whole thing wrapped up by lunch time and had all gone home before I got there around 2.00. We'll see I guess. Antony Green is blogging the Brisbane one, but like the masses of people who didn't turn up to watch the debates, and the Liberal HTV hander outerers, I can't be bothered. In the current political climate there's more at stake here for the Liberal Party than anyone else, Campbell Newman being the most senior Liberal in power and all.

Dean Vegas the Elvis impersonator is the most exciting thing about Gold Coast Council elections, but since he's not running (I think he forgot to register or something) we don't even get that small entertainment.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:25 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

economic push and pull

Jennifer Hewett, writing in The Australian begins to trace the impact of the global financial crisis on Australia. She says:

that the global credit crunch is paralysing the financial system, rampaging through the Australian stock market, forcing up the cost of doing business and creating havoc with everything from individuals' superannuation accounts to the availability of bank credit. This is not only an issue for a few corporate whiz kids who thought the use of ever-increasing debt would be a permanent magic pudding. Problems in the market turn out to be dangerously infectious.

She adds that the confusion comes because no one can be sure of the result, particularly given most of the experts seem to have been spectacularly wrong about how all this would play out. The argument was that Australia was supposed to be insulated from the economic debacle unfolding in the US thanks to the resources boom powering on regardless, courtesy of China.

She observes that this decoupling theory still has plenty of advocates despite the growing number of sceptics who point to the obvious global contagion of the past six months.

What we have is the impact of two economic forces: the China boom (boosting demand) and global financial conditions (dampening demand). Will the latter ultimately overwhelm the former? Martin Wolf in the Financial Times outlines the common features of financial crises:

They begin with capital inflows from foreigners seduced by tales of an economic El Dorado. This generates low real interest rates and a widening current account deficit. Domestic borrowing and spending surge, particularly investment in property. Asset prices soar, borrowing increases and the capital inflow grows. Finally, the bubble bursts, capital floods out and the banking system, burdened with mountains of bad debt, implodes.When bubbles burst, asset prices decline, net worth of non-financial borrowers shrinks and both illiquidity and insolvency emerge in the financial system. Credit growth slows, or even goes negative, and spending, particularly on investment, weakens.

My guess is that the two speed economy scenario still holds in Australia. Parts of the economy will turn sour during the next year, with rising unemployment, falling house prices, and foreclosure in parts of the economy. The effects of constraining inflation and the credit crunch will come together. Step one is a housing recession--falling house prices that will reduce household wealth; step two is further corporate losses from the credit crunch flowing from more losses in US subprime mortgages; step three is the “credit crunch” spreading from mortgages to a wide range of consumer credit; step four is the downgrading of some financial institutions as too risky.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

Finance capital's crisis

Will the estimated $400bn of mortgage-related losses in the US cause a credit contraction resulting in a $1 trillion fallout for the real economy? Would this translate into a 1.3% reduction in GDP growth? Is this a worst case scenario?

Certainly the connection between the bursting of the housing bubble in the US and the fragility of the global financial system has created huge dangers and risks for financial markets and the US economy.

Leunig

The situation is one of a vicious interaction between falling asset prices, financial stress and spending.Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business, argues that there is a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome. The characteristics of this scenario are a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.”

His scenario is given in 12 steps and points to the need to consider the fiscal costs of a bailout of the financial system in what some call a “worst case scenario”.

The government would have to mount a rescue. Up to now the Federal Reserve has been rushing money to the banks, who were having trouble attracting funds. But that hasn't stopped the financial panics. The black hole is that the whole financial system is facing demands to come up with cash it doesn’t have.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:01 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

March 13, 2008

immigration + national security

Anthony Burke, writing in the Canberra Times, argues that there needs to be a shift in Australia's security thinking away from Fortress Australia, though he does not use this term. He says:

When the Howard government sent SAS commandos to board the MV Tampa in the last week of August 2001, something profound and disturbing happened to Australia's national security policy. Rather than being focused on threats from other states, nuclear proliferation or terrorism, Australia was now seeking security from vulnerable people fleeing abusive regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, while putting its own security and wellbeing at risk. As they were placed in long-term detention in the Pacific, and other asylum-seekers were incarcerated at Woomera, Port Hedland and Villawood, naval and air force units were tasked to patrol our northern approaches, and preventing "illegal immigration" became a core mission of our defence forces.

What the Howard conservatives call illegal immigration is deemed to be an issue of national security. I've always seen this in similar terms to the US Republicans wanting the build a wall across the southern US to keep out illegal immigrants. The detention camps are part and parcel of Fortress Australia obsessed with national security. Australia was bunkering down in a hostile and threatening world. The One Nation Conservative's dog whistle equation was asylum seekers = terrorists.

This approach continues under Rudd Labor. Despite softening the previous government's harsh approach to detaining asylum-seekers, it is still building a big detention centre at Christmas Island. What will the new defence white paper and a broad reassessment of Australia's national security strategy do about this issue of Fortress Australia?

Update
Hugh White, writing in The Australian, says:

It is much likelier that within 10 years the West will have withdrawn from Afghanistan, leaving it much as it has always been. In the meantime it makes sense for Australia to make a modest contribution to the Western coalition, as a demonstration of support for the US. Such symbolic deployments have been part of the fabric of Australia's approach to alliance management for decades. As such they can be a cost-effective form of policy. But they are cost-effective only where the costs and risks are low. The more troops we send, and the more risks they face, the less effective the policy becomes.

It's the old insurance policy argument.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:11 AM | Comments (36) | TrackBack

March 12, 2008

gc scooterererers

Something of a reprieve from the current panics around young people, internet porn and binge drinking.

Over the past few years the Gold Coast City Council has built a network of skate parks with a view to giving kids something to do and keeping them out of other public places. Very successfully too, although for 'kids' read 'boys'.

With anything like this the provision of the thing isn't anywhere near as interesting as what people do with it. Over time different cultures have developed at different parks, and some kids will skate, ride, be driven past several to get to the right one. Some things though, are common to most, if not all of them.

Where teenage boys congregate you'd reasonably expect teenage girls to follow, but they don't. My occasionally reliable sources can't explain this. At the one I'm most familiar with some bright spark placed the rubbish bins miles away, so council employees are kept busy picking up rubbish, but they're generally fairly clean places, in contrast with your average youthful bedroom for example.

The most striking thing though, is the level of cooperation among these kids and a general air of goodwill in the absence of supervision. Kids who threaten to spontaneously combust if they can't have the newest touch screen mobile phone right now become monuments to patience. They wait their turn through beginners and aces alike. This remarkable phenomenon is one of the subjects of a collaborative research project between Griffith University and the council. The website notes "plans to upgrade and extend facilities", some of which is already happening.

According to my occasionally reliable, scootering, main source, his own haunt is about to get a shade shelter and a foam pit. That's a big foam-filled hole designed to prevent injuries to people learning new tricks. He also tells me that the only tensions occur between different species - BMXers and scooterers apparently don't share well. The council wants to grow the facilities and include other activities, but the occasionally reliable source thinks mixing even more species would be a mistake.

Like anything else generation dot com does, this is all documented on YouTube. I'm not inclined to spend hours sifting through the clips for footage illustrating their remarkable commitment to cooperation, so this offering is the choice of my occasionally reliable source who is more interested in spreading images of himself as far as possible.

We're raising a bunch of death defiers who are incidentally learning a variety of skills associated with film making and marketing. There are two logics here - get your head on the internet, and get sponsorship. The production of these clips is a collaborative process aimed at perfecting the production in an effort to attract corporate attention. Sales and marketing people occasionally turn up at the parks and hand out stickers, which fires up their hopes of sponsorship. The ultimate aim is something along the lines of this, put together by the sponsored dude who features.

Lagettie is a minor deity who does everything apart from perform in the soundtrack. He's admired for falling off in public, so his status derives partly from a hairy masculinity, partly from tech savvy and partly from ordinary vulnerability. A pro who makes scootering for a living seem achievable.

The reality is that the scene is more likely to produce a Peter Weir than a pro scooterer, but in the meantime there's much to be gained from watching what these kids actually do, as opposed to worrying about what they might do left to their own devices with an internet connection.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 10:51 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

about economists

It's a low blow, but a witty one. What it does indicate is that the old cliche about economics being the dismal science is no longer the case. Economics is the language is public policy and there is a close connection between economics and politics.

The pro-market argument assumes that the goal of economic activity is basically democratic, i.e., to deliver to the public the goods and services it wants, not build pyramids for the Pharaoh. The market theorist would argue that the best indication of how strongly people really want something is how much they are willing to pay for it, and this is reflected in the market price.

Spooner

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state.

Update
These foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:58 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

The Three Trillion Dollar War

Some time in 2005, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion.

Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper and discovered that Bush's Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. That is what is argued by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in their Three Trillion Dollar War book.

They argue that the Bush administration actively obfuscated actual costs, and circumvented Congressional scrutiny by the continued use of emergency powers.The core of this book's argument is that the cash accounting process the administration uses is a cheat: it counts what's being spent now, but keeps promissory notes off the books.

What have been the benefits for the five years of war? Are there any? Was the war the best way of obtaining national security? Focusing on weapons of mass destruction that did not exist in Iraq? Is this money spent intelligently?

Remember that Iraq war - whatever you think about the political casus belli - was presented to the American public as a free lunch. Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey said the war could cost $200 billion and "would be good for the economy". Donald Rumsfeld dismissed this as "baloney" and estimated $50 to $60 billion. Andrew Natsios of the Agency for International Development promised the construction of a democratic Iraq would at most cost the US taxpayer $1.7 billion. Paul Wolfowitz thought the whole shebang would pay for itself.

In economics there is no such thing as a free lunch. The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

In this interview at Democracy Now Stiglitz says that the American economy

is almost surely heading into a recession. I was at the American Economic Association meetings. In the past, the probability of going into recession was fifty-fifty. The general consensus is now 75 percent probability of going into recession. But whether we go into recession or not, the real fact is that it is a major slowdown. It’s going to be one of the—I think clearly the deepest downturn in the last quarter-century. The loss of output, the difference between the actual output and our potential output, will be at least one-and-a-half trillion dollars, and that’s not money we’re talking about in this Three Trillion Dollar War. This is a serious problem. And I think at the core of this is the war. You know, in the election campaign, people said there are two big issues: the economy and the war. I think there’s one big issue, and that’s the war, because the war has been directly and indirectly having a very negative effect on the economy.

There was the enormous borrowing that occurred to finance the war at the same time that the President Bush put through tax cuts and the deficits are being financed by borrowing from abroad. The war is being run on the never never, and there is a transferring of hundreds of billions of dollars from American consumers, businesses, to the oil exporters in the Middle East, where pools of wealth are being created.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:47 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

March 10, 2008

Rudd Labor, health reform, modernization

Nicola Roxon, the federal health Minister, talks in terms of root and branch reform of health care. Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, talks in terms of a hefty injection of federal money and a set of selective federal performance targets bringing the state's performance of their public hospitals up to a level where they are out of the headlines. The inference from Rudd is that he is not embarking on a basic structural reform.

Since Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, and Lindsay Tanner, the Finance Minister, talk nonstop about cutting back the federal budget and government spending to fight the inflation monster, I cannot see how that fiscal conservatism will lead to the 'root and branch' reform that Roxon is talking about. From what I can judge there is not going to be much 'root and branch' reform to provide better health care services in the first term of office.

So what then of Rudd Labor's reforming, modernising programme? What does it consist in? What is it trying to achieve? Are there dominant and subaltern elements of Rudd Labor's reforming, modernizing programme. Is the conflict between the two going to be managed by spin?

Will the modernising centre-right cause Rudd Labor to become the 'great moving right show' that pre-empts any substantive move of the government in a leftward direction. The left's old welfare state positions have been marginalised.The traditional left binary, antagonistic vision of an alternative future based on public health (modelled on the NHS) that is opposed to private health and the market has little credibility, and its appeal is now residual, a demand for recognition of what seems to be a social force in decline.

On the other hand the strategy by the right to ‘roll back’ these gains (via ‘modernisation’, ‘flexibilisation’, and ‘reform’) continue to make up the main agenda of democratic politics in Australia; but this remains stalemated after the last election when the Australia electorates do not vote for a worsening of their own conditions of life.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:08 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 9, 2008

medical self-regulation has failed

It bothers me that state governments do little about Medical Boards that fail to regulate the medical profession to ensure public safety and quality of care. The regulatory medical boards are simply not doing enough to protect patients from the adverse events caused by incompetent, predatory, drug-dependent and unstable doctors.

So we have the well known cases of Dr. Death at Bundaberg Base Hospital in Queensland, the "butcher of Bega"--Graeme Stephen Reeves---in NSW; and in Victoria, and the dermatologist Dr David Wee Kin Tong. In all three, the regulatory medical boards, 'the watchdogs', have failed dismally in their duty to protect the public, and they have evaded their responsibility to ensure public safety.

Greg Roberts

Self regulation has long been argued by the medical profession in particular as being the preferred method of maintaining standards of care. In the case of the medical profession, this has largely been achieved through the learned medical colleges. The above examples are recent examples of the failure of medical self regulation

There is a convention in the medical culture that the medical regulatory authorities, professional colleagues and administrators overlook adverse events medical mistakes and complaints that medical practitioners were acting outside the bounds of appropriate professional conduct.The medical mistakes remain a professional matter and the medical disasters are covered them up.

As The Age editorial says in relation to the Reeves ruining the lives of scores of women by mutilating their genital organs with surgical procedures that were usually botched and often unnecessary:

But even worse than the actions of one criminally careless and dangerously deluded doctor is the fact that a brotherhood of fellow practitioners failed to stop him. In fact, it seems that the quaint, cosy system of self-regulation Australian doctors enjoy actually helped to bury the truth about the damage Reeves inflicted on women placed in his care.Other surgeons called in to attempt to repair Reeves' botched operations knew who was responsible but it appears that they — and other hospital staff — preferred to observe a code of silence of the sort usually associated with organised crime: an appalling silence that is completely at odds with the Hippocratic oath doctors swear but which too many of them seem to regard as a relic.

The editorial ends by saying that it is vital that a fearless, independent regulator has the power to investigate doctors who abuse patients' trust. On this, physicians cannot be expected to heal themselves. Governments must act.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:49 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

a hard landing acoming?

Will the latest interest rate rises by both the Reserve Bank to restrain booming spending and by the commercial banks to restore their profit margins cause a hard landing in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia? No gain without pain, as the utilitarians would say? This is a scenario of rising bad debts, foreclosures, falling property prices and fire sales; investment , hedge fund and corporate company collapse from margin calls as the credit crunch from the subprime crisis deepens; lower growth and rising unemployment.

Matt Golding

The Reserve Bank takes a largely benign view of the unfolding credit crisis, believing China's growth will insulate us from its worst consequences. The RBA does not have a good history of managing soft landings. Will we hear the snap as distinct from sounds of the steady decline or slowdown? Where is the tipping point in terms of interest rate increases?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:50 AM | TrackBack

March 8, 2008

political sleaze

The Liberals are not looking too good at the moment are they?

All the Liberals need to do, says Kevin Andrews, is to hold their conservative philosophical ground, not allow Rudd to entrench himself in the Centre and hope that Rudd will shift or be forced to shift from the Centre and adopt more progressive policies.

Alan Moir

For conservatives such as Dennis Shanahan, writing in the Conservative's noise machine, the Rudd Government's reputation is in tatters as economic reality is mugging its social democratic rhetoric. So there is no need to repudiate the past.

The strategic argument is that the union movement will push Rudd away from his centrist, me-too position leaving the Liberals occupying the centrist ground. The extent of Rudd's movement away under pressure will define how much space the Liberals have to move in. They infer that there will be lots of room.

The Conservatives appear to hold that the principles of social and fiscal conservatism of John Howard is the political centre in Australia. The political centre? That's wish fulfilment. It doesn't stop Christopher Pearson from arguing that

Unless Wayne Swan's management of the economy is unusually deft, its [the Rudd Government's] survival at the next election may well depend on how assiduously Rudd cultivates the Christian vote in the meantime.

The crucial defining issues, says Pearson, are cloning, the law governing stem cell research generally, euthanasia, the elements that constitute a properly informed decision to abort or children's unrestricted access to internet pornography.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:02 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

March 7, 2008

Gaza matters

The "ballistic intifada" of rocket fire continues, as do Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip and its raids and air attacks inside the enclave. The appalling situation of the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza strip has led a group of development and human-rights agencies - comprising Amnesty International UK, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Trócaire, Care International, Médecins du Monde UK, Cafod and Save the Children UK ---- to call for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of the blockade imposed by the Israeli government.

Steve Bell

The report says that the situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967.

It goes on to say:

The current situation in Gaza is man-made, completely avoidable and, with the necessary political will, can also be reversed. Gaza has suffered from a long-term pattern of economic stagnation and plummeting development indicators.The severity of the situation has increased exponentially since Israel imposed extreme restrictions on the movement of goods and people in response to the Hamas take over of Gaza and to indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israel.

It says that the blockade has effectively dismantled the economy and impoverished the population of Gaza and that:

Israel’s policy affects the civilian population of Gaza indiscriminately and constitutes a collective punishment against ordinary men, women and children. The measures taken are illegal under international humanitarian law.

It suggests that international efforts should be directed towards securing a swift end to the blockade of Gaza.

Update
Colin Rubenstein, of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, has an op-ed in The Age in which he writes in that the Palestinian terrorist attack, which killed eight Jewish students and wounded 11 others from ha hail of bullets inside a religious school in Jerusalem, illustrates that:

wanton terrorism remains the key obstacle to achieving the two-state solution that Israel and most others desire...After months of such stepped-up attacks by Hamas, last week Israel launched a brief incursion into Gaza aimed at stopping the incessant rocket fire. This offensive followed Israel's efforts to bring an end to the rocket fire through non-military means - negotiating peace with Abbas while isolating Hamas - and highly targeted military strikes against individual terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.

That ignores the little matter of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, the illegal settlements and the indiscriminate civilian deaths caused by Israel's highly targeted military strikes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 6, 2008

a voice from the past

By the time I noticed this it had been up at the ABC site for an hour. By then it had accumulated almost a hundred comments, and comments were closed.

Howard slams Rudd on IR, Iraq

Well I guess somebody has to.

Just about anything that can be said about Howard, the speech, the venue, the practice among ex-prime ministers of providing running commentary on new ones, and anything else related, has already been said in the comments. Except that by dumping on Rudd on IR and Iraq he's also dumping on his own party. But it's pretty clear by now that Howard had lost interest in the Liberal Party long ago.

On the bright side, it will make a lot of opinion columnists very happy.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:02 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Latham on Rudd Government

Mark Latham has an op-ed in todays AFR evaluating the Rudd Government's 100 days in office. The title, 'Reform a casuality of spin' sums the argument up. This Labor government, in contrast to Whitlam and the Hawke's 100 days, lacks policy substance. Under Rudd the ALP has become the party of review.

Latham says:

Even Rudd's strongest backers concede that he lacks a reform agenda. At best, they say, he will change 10 per cent of the programs of the Howard Government. This is the problem with the ALP as an instrument of reform. It wants to change marginally the way in which government agencies operate when the big challenge, for people committed to social justice and equality, is to transform the way society functions.

This is not just Rudd Labor. It's a general condition of Labor Governments around the world that claim to be embody the social democratic heritage. The current state Labour governments in Australia are a good example of this.

Latham says that the beef---bold plans and concrete policies---is missing:

When it comes to big ideas, policies to alter the destiny of the nation, the Labor movement is an exhausted volcano. The great debates that animated left-of-centre politics postwar have been resolved. Around the world Labor governments have become a curious hybrid of conservatism and media spin. They are conservative because they have run out of reformist ideas. Yet to retain power, they need to spin a different story to their constituency:they are not , in fact, as timid as they look.

So the 100 days have seen the Rudd Government primarily engage in symbolic initiatives.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:39 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

opposition

On one hand, Wilson Tuckey's timing could have been better. On the other, does it really matter? With numbers like 63/37 TPP and 7%, does it really matter all that much if the opposition are actually not there, seeing as how they're statistically not there?

Technically there are supposed to be a representative number of elected bottoms warming the designated benches opposite, and technically they're supposed to keep the government of the day accountable. And opposed. But therein lies a problem.

The other half of the unpopular Nelson story is the popular Rudd one. Getting stuck into Rudd would be as sensible as getting stuck into home ownership or parenthood. Getting stuck into Swan is ok as far as it goes, but that's Turnbull's job, and Turnbull just reminds everyone of the temporary nature of the current Liberal leadership.

Even if they dropped Nelson today and installed Turbull, the Liberals would still be in the awkward position of either attacking a popular Rudd, or agreeing with him and diluting their own relevance. Further. They might as well go to lunch, golf, the Middle East or China.

For the time being the opposition consists of Murdoch opinion columnists. But they're not doing a brilliant job either. It's one thing to be partisan, another thing to be constructively so.

Maybe it would be better for conservatives all round if the rump went to work for the sympathetic media and think tanks. They could oppose all they want without the constraint of public opinion while the Coalition get their act together. Otherwise, at this rate we're going to have to come up with an alternative system. Or admit that we currently have one.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 12:55 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

March 5, 2008

US Presidential Primaries: Ohio/Texas

With the GOP presidential primary all but resolved in favor of John McCain, Mr Straight talk, the political interest is with the Democrats. Ohio is where Hilary Clinton, the New York senator, will be making her stand amongst the blue-collar, ethnic Roosevelt Democrats. It is the Clinton's big attempt to try and hold back, if not negate, the movement momentum of Obama in Texas, with its unique coalition of young folks, African-Americans, and independents. Economic concerns are the dominant issue for Democratic voters in Ohio and Texas.

The Peter Brookes cartoon captures the current political situation:

Clinton's last stand will not be negate the momentum.

Even if Clinton wins Ohio, and gains more than a dozen delegates in the overall primary race, that still leaves her behind in the race by roughly 100 delegates.

This is Clinton only shot at the presidency. She had the early led in the polls in Texas but it is now neck and neck. The media have decided, in their collective wisdom, that Clinton is finished. So she has to fight hard and dirty. Will it be her Last Waltz?

If Clinton doesn't win both states she'll face heavy pressure to pull out of the race. Will Clinton hold on by the skin of her teeth? Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo comments that:

We've run the numbers, and even assuming a very big night for Clinton, she seems unlikely to make more than a small dent in Obama's lead of roughly 150 pledged delegates. Indeed, she could actually do quite well on the popular vote side and end up falling behind a bit further on pledged delegates. The upshot is that the Clinton campaign may come out of tonight with a major shot in the arm and a round of good press and yet still be in no more realistic a position to win the nomination based on the stubborn tally of delegates.

This question, along with others, is explored in 8 Questions that could be answered by today's primaries" piece in the Washington Post. If there is no clear result tonight--Obama wins, Clinton wins--then the Dems face a grim prospect of six weeks of uncertainty until Pennsylvania on April 22.

Update
I mentioned Clinton playing dirty in order to hurt Obama. The politics of fear works:

This is her way of highlighting experience over change. She is selling experience by heightening fear, and so shifting public opinion towards solutions that emphasize guns and bombs over diplomacy and cooperation.

When will the Clintons start arguing that America is just too racist for Obama, and that fear is always a surer bet than hope? When they try to block the drift of the superdelegates to Obama?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:33 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Ken Henry on water

Currently we don't have have well-functioning water markets; not in cities, or the irrigation areas in regional Australia.Instead, we have administered prices, legal protections on restraint of trade and, as a consequence, rationing. The states have really made a mess of water. They used cheap subsidized water to foster development in rural Australia, and they done little to deal with the negative consequences of their incompetent management. It's a mess.

Ken Henry argues that the state should allow the market to allocate water resources instead of the state governments rationing demand through regulation. Henry says:

About 2 1/2 years ago, I identified energy, water and land transport as three key candidates for the development of national markets, arguing that the case for governments facilitating the development of highly efficient national markets for key business inputs in a country as remote and geographically fragmented as ours is overwhelming. Our achievements to date have fallen well short of that goal. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the only significant business inputs for which we do have national markets are financial capital, post, telecommunications and aviation.

Rationing is not a long term solution when there is a long term reduction in water supply due to global warming. Of course, the irrigation lobby talks in terms of a drought not climate change and puts its hand out for ever more subsidies to help it get through the "temporary" difficulties.

So why the deep resisitance to reform? Is it because of the National Party--those agrarian socialists---blocking the government buying back water entitlements as I have argued? Henry takes a broader perspective

The central explanation for slow progress in these areas is an aversion to the logic of markets. That aversion seems to be based on a fear of distributional consequences. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for governments to be concerned about the distributional consequences of markets. But Australian governments have numerous policy instruments available to them to ameliorate distributional consequences.And they have not been afraid to use them.

He says that though transfer payments are not without their problems, including adverse effects on work and saving incentives, but they generally achieve more transparent distributional - as well as more efficient - outcomes than interference in markets through administered prices and rationing.

In this article in The Canberra Tines Henry argues that:

If we had a well-functioning market in water, all users would pay a price that reflected the amortised costs of water storage and reticulation infrastructure, and also its scarcity value. Moreover, while water wouldn't have the same price everywhere, arbitrage would ensure that any difference in water prices between any two places and/or two points in time would be no larger than could be explained by the costs of transport and storage.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:35 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 4, 2008

inflation woes

According to the logic of the market, if things get too tough in western Sydney due to the shocks and pressures created by the Reserve Bank raising interest rates, then it is best to sell up, pack your bags, kiss the Emerald City goodbye, head west to Perth and make your fortune quicktime.

Martin Sharpe

It's boom time there, the Chinese are our friends, and there will be little dislocation or alienation as the corrupt Labor Party culture will help foster the relaxed and comfortable feeling. And all your friends, being rational economic agents operating in terms of self-interest, will all follow suit. Only the irrational ones will continue to satisfy their desires in the low growth world of an expensive Sydney.

The purpose of any further interest rate hike in March will be to dampen domestic demand and push unemployment back towards 5 per cent. In the Canberra Times Peter Martin observes that:

The inflation we do have right now is fuelled by climate change (higher energy and water prices), a worldwide food shortage (higher grocery prices), higher oil prices, higher rents and the mining boom.Higher interest rates will dent none of these. But they will crunch the economy and push people out of work.

That makes it difficult to keep up the mortgage in western Sydney. More foreclosures will then happen when the Reserve Bank increases interest rates.

Update
The Reserve has increased interest rates by .25% to contain inflation, whilst using language of a ''substantial'' tightening in financial conditions and ''tentative'' signs of a cooling in demand:

There is tentative evidence that some moderation in household demand is beginning to occur with business and consumer sentiment softer recently and household credit demand slowing somewhat. The extent of that moderation is uncertain however.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:48 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

March 3, 2008

Burchell's Rubicon

David Burchell is now singing the conservative line of The Australian and doing the bog standard attack on intellectuals in politics. He reaches back to the French Revolution to do so:

Intellectuals are famous for their poetical and metaphorical conceptions of public debate. Yet, being on the whole cloistered types, they tend to shape these metaphors out of the material of their own quiet, logical and ordered existences.When the intellectuals of the French revolutionary era dreamed up the notions of public opinion and the public sphere, they had in the back of their minds the kinds of arguments carried on in books and letters by leisured but discontented folks such as themselves. In short, the public was them, or at least an imaginary entity conceived on an analogy with themselves.

And so with Australian intellectuals today:

Likewise, when intellectuals today talk of resuming a conversation between themselves and government, they usually have at the back of their minds a scholarly conference, complete with ritual niceties and polite jousting over airy theoretical differences. Yet relations between government and intellectuals, even those who like to style themselves public intellectuals (another elusive but gratifying term), have never worked remotely like this...Academic debate about policy-making moves far slower than does policy-making itself. And despite their self-image, intellectuals nowadays are more often found in the baggage-train of history than the advance guard.

Governing, he says, owes very little to the prognostications of critical intellectuals who, on the whole, are inveterate ideologists. The latter is bad because they are not concerned with the solution of practical problems of social and economic policy; rather they represent a loose assemblage of perennially grumpy cultural critics who imagine themselves to be the true intelligentsia.

And with that op-ed Burchell has crossed to the Rubicon to being a conservative ideologist attacking the left whilst posing as one who adopts an essentially empirical approach to public policy. Posing because he never talks about the specific issues of public policy in his various op-eds for The Australian over the last year.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:43 AM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

March 2, 2008

monetary policy as a sledgehammer

Martin Leet writes in the Brisbane Line, the online magazine of the Brisbane Institute, that:

In essence, the history of monetary policy in Australia is really a history of the bludgeoning of the economy. It kills off economic activity. Even now, as interest rates rise, commentators note that the inflationary problem will not be addressed. Higher interest rates will not stop China from demanding our natural resources. And asking people for wage restraint in the context of a strong labour market is a bit like asking China to stop growing. It’s not going to happen.

That's pretty true. It does appear that Australia, like Europe, is diverging from a recession slide in the US and that the inflation in Australia will not be lessened by the backwash from the US. Does that mean the monetary sledgehammer?

It does mean another interest rate rise very soon. Leet has an interesting argument. He says that:

Successive governments, of both political persuasions, have eroded a key policy instrument they could have been used to bring the inflationary problem under control: a centralised wage system. Now, politicians are reduced to ‘asking’ for wage restraint, and to ‘setting an example’. In addition, the obsession with budget surpluses has meant that much investment in public infrastructure has been neglected, creating the kind of ‘production constraints’ with which we are now faced. And yet calls to cut expenditure are as strong as ever.

As before many people will suffer from high and rising interest rates. This time round on the boom /bust rollercoaster people will suffer much more than in the past since the economic good times of the last fifteen years have encouraged people to borrow far beyond their means for their homes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:42 PM | TrackBack

March 1, 2008

corruption, NSW style

Now, why are we not surprised:

Alan Moir

Property development, corruption and local government go together in NSW. It's part and parcel of what's called Labor's political culture. Wollongong is the latest example and the ICAC's ongoing dirty sex money inquiry shows that it has everything: sleazy property developers, corrupt councillors, friendships with Government ministers, and a fallen blonde town planner (Beth Morgan) who gives up family, friends and job, for love, only to be betrayed, humiliated and stood over by developer Frank Vellar.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:34 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack