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April 30, 2008

Cardinal Pell on human rights

Cardinal Pell was doing the conservative attack on human rights at the Brisbane Institute, last night. Even though he argues for absolute moral truths against liberals and relativists Pell argued that rights are best determined by common law and parliaments according to the mood and flavour of the time.

This relativist argument was underpinned by an appeal to parliamentary sovereignty, which was justified by the following argument:

The push for a charter of rights springs from a suspicion of majority rule, a preference for judicial decision-making on fundamental questions, the imperatives of the particular social and political agenda that a charter of rights serves, and the elitism of privileged reformers — not all of whom are lawyers. And the problems with such a charter are increased by the inability of contemporary law and philosophy to agree on a secure foundation for human rights, freedom and truth.

A bill or even a charter of rights will help to provoke a culture war says Pell with a straight face.

The rejoinder to this conservative argument is the implication of parliament sovereignty in terms of the power of executive dominance. Jack Waterford states it well in the Canberra Times. He says that he has been sceptical of the need for a charter of rights, but he is changing his mind again, because our politicians are not showing themselves great instinctive protectors of rights, just when they are needed. Certainly not Carr or Hatzistergos. Or previously John Howard and Philip Ruddock, in actions scarcely criticised by those who have now succeeded them He adds:

The risks are being aggravated by the ever-outreaching power of executive government, by the supine position into which legislatures have been put by modern executives, and by the coordination of incumbency and spin to overwhelm popular criticism. It's not parliamentary rule we ought to fear, but increasingly arbitrary and unaccountable rule by executive government.Proponents of a Bill of Rights do not have to put too much faith, or hope, in judges, activist or not. They have only to argue that a Bill might be a desirable further check and balance on government yet another field of tussle between the executive, the parliament and the judiciary.

It a defense against an authoritarian style government favoured by neo-conservatiism

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 29, 2008

Murray-Darling Basin: buy-back

Maybe there is some movement on water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin under the Rudd Government. I see that Penny Wong, the Water Minister, holds to the view that we have been taking too much water out of the basin for far too long, that we have overdrawn the Murray and that we now need to restore the balance. The Rudd Government is going to address this by both spending $3 billion to buy back water rights in the Murray-Darling Basin, and saying that there will be no cuts to existing programs.

This only matches the amount committed by the former Howard government. The chance to spend more on buybacks has been passed by. So we still have ratio of $6 billion allocated to water infrastructure and just $3 billion for water buybacks.

What is new is the $1.5 billion in new spending to honour Labor election commitments: including $1 billion for urban water programs, including desalination, $250 million for water supplies in towns with a population of fewer than 50,000, and $250 million on improving the use of rainwater and grey water.

What is on the table is a 10-year, $12.9 billion plan entitled Water for the Future which Wong will release at the Australian Water Summit----the flagship forum for Australia’s $90 billion water industry--in Sydney.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:04 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Alcopop tax + health prevention

I see that the Rudd Government has placed a heavy tax on alcopops, the ready mix alcoholic drink that tastes like soft drink and is primarily marketed to teenage women. The excise on pre-mixed drinks, or alcopops, almost doubled on Saturday, from $39 a litre of pure alcohol to $67. The change means the price of alcopops such as Bacardi Breezers and Vodka Cruisers will increase by between 30c and $1.30 a bottle, depending on the alcohol content.

This kind of policy is in the tradition of taxing cigarettes to help reduce their consumption. No doubt the libertarians will mutter about the nanny state and individual freedom and teenagers will shift their alcohol consumption back to beer and wine. No doubt the AFR will do its populist sneer routine whilst going about competition, productivity, infrastructure and tax reform.

Bill Leak

The justification for the tax rise is that a "significant proportion" of the revenue would be directed to the new black in health funding, preventative health programs. So something has come out of the 2020 Summit, in which each section had to come up with one big idea, and three policy ideas, including one that came at no cost.

This does help to shift the debate away from the medical model and hospitals to health and prevention. What we don't want is the money being spent on chronic diseases in public hospitals as the aim is to keep people out of hospitals by keeping them well.

Will junk food be next? We do need to make healthy food choices easy and this could include having a single food labelling system and food component labelling system; having healthy food choices at child care settings, schools, sporting venues and workplaces;regulating food marketing to children (banning junk food advertising and marketing through internet sites).

Update: 30 April
This cartoon represents the two aspects of the tax on alcopops. Most of the libertarian emphasis is on the tax /revenue raising side withe the public good of health prevention being pushed into the background.

Moir

The libertarians in Australia are primarily consequentionalists about individual liberty ----liberty is conducive to good consequences. A morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. Since the tax is an imposition on individual liberty, it is bad. Limited government is good as it gives more space to sovereign individuals to exercise their liberty. The nanny state is bad because it impinges on individual liberty.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:17 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

April 28, 2008

stuffed

If it's true that Australian universities are in on the conspiracy to overturn western civilisation and turn us all into terrorists, then recent developments suggest that we're totally stuffed. Nobody can save us now.

That worthy outfit known as the Australian Federal Police, the Keystone Kops, Keelty's mob and various other titles were reportedly routed in their attempts to nail a terrorist when Kevin Andrews spoiled it all by cancelling Haneef's visa. A wonderful opportunity for trying their surveillance techniques was disappointingly ruined for political reasons. Why any coalition source would think now would be a good time to leak this is anybody's guess. Maybe they're trying to get it out of the way while things are as bad as they can get.

Or maybe someone at Keelty's end is responsible.

As it happens, security and terrorism are popular themes today, Monday, big day in the media cycle. Coincidentally hot on the heels of the MTV Australia awards, where the Chaser's APEC stunt won Best Television Moment.

Oh, and the charges against the team were dropped because you can't reasonably charge somebody with going into a high security zone unauthorised when police waved them in.

It's unclear at the moment whether the terrorists have won, or the Chaser mob, or Kevin Andrews, or The Australian, or the Saudis, or perhaps Brian Burke. The only certainty is that the terrorists are coming, as they have been since time immemorial, and we're totally unprepared for them.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:25 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 27, 2008

media narratives

A simple image but it does show how reportage in the mass media is embedded in narrative. That narrative is the media's own, and it indicates how the media engages in politics as a player. Of course, the media deny this as they hide behind the old liberal "fair and balanced", "neutrality" ethos or the positivist one of "reporting the facts" as distinct from commentary.

Sharpe

No one outside the media is fooled by the hollow pipe interpretation even if they unconditionally reject the conduit metaphor of the Old Left. If communicative media were hollow pipes there would be little purpose in analyzing their narrative potential; any kind of narrative could be fitted into the pipe and restored to its prior shape at the end of the transfer. The news or reportage is a form of story telling.

Once we move beyond seeing reportage and television programmes as transparent representations of the world we need to consider some of the ways in which media texts mediate the world to us. One of the most important of these is through the codes and conventions of narrative. Narratives rely on the presentation of an initial state of order which is in some way disturbed, order and disequilibrium, in relation to a on a particular problem or set of problems. Narratives, in short, have to be about change, disturbance, disorder.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 26, 2008

swimming alone

Apparently leader Brendan Nelson's future is "in his own hands", according to the Liberal Party drip feed to Shaun Carney at The Age. I'm attracted by the Spooner image of "in his own hands" because I've been visiting so many wild rivers in New Zealand recently:


Spooner

You would have to be pessimistic about Nelson's chances of surviving--despondent if you were a Liberal. Nelson's public profile-- persona--- is that he rides a motorbike, had his ear pierced and can play the electric guitar. The guy was rock'n'roll. He has the street cred, you see. But policies? What does he stand for? What does the Liberal brand mean these days under Nelson and Bishop? Are they waiting for the Budget?

Maybe Nelson could take up tax reform as his big thing--take up big business's call for a complete review of the taxation system? Or call for a total overhaul of the federalism? Nelson would then be associated with a reconstruction of the entire machinery of government, and would then stand for something policy wise. He stands for reform at a time when federalism is having a lot of bad press.

Hell. the Liberals are even talking about--touting-- Costello as Nelson's replacement. What's up with these guys? At least Turnbull is trying to do something. He is arguing that the recession in the US will impact on Australia and that the condition of the global economy is gloomier than the sunshine boys are making out here in Australia. Therefore, Swan shouldn't go too hard on the budget cuts as he might increase the downward pressure coming from the global economy and just make things worse. It's a good story.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:13 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 25, 2008

Anzac day

Anzac Day has no meaning on the international tourist circuit. It's just another day to do touristy things. Meanwhile elsewhere in New Zealand:

Slane

This mentality is especially the case in Westland-- the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. This regional economy still has the settler ethos associated with mining and dairy farming, and the international tourism is concentrated around the glaciers.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 24, 2008

edited

Just in case anybody has been following the 'Griffith Uni promotes terrorism' stories that monument to honest reporting The Australian has been running lately, relax. The heartbeat of the nation is just doing what it does best. Beat. Up, that is.

On Tuesday:

A PROMINENT Australian university practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3million, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that Griffith University - described by vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor as the "university of choice" for Saudis - offered the embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit during its campaign to get some "extra noughts" added to Saudi cheques.

James Cook University's Mervyn Bendle, a senior lecturer in the history of terrorism, yesterday attacked Griffith University for accepting the money and accused the Saudi embassy of wanting to promote hardline Islam.

On Wednesday:

A JUDGE has likened Griffith University to hardline Islamic "madrassas" in Pakistan - notorious for breeding radicals - and accused the Queensland institution of promoting a Muslim ideology espoused by Osama bin Laden.

Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall also accused Griffith of becoming an "agent" through which the Saudi Arabian embassy was propagating extreme Islam.

Today they published Vice-Chancellor Ian O'Connor's response, except a whole three pars at the start somehow got misplaced. The intro was a line of the fourth par in the original:

THE aim of Griffith University's Islamic research unit, established in 2005, is to promote a balanced and contextualised understanding of Islam and Muslims.

Thanks to the miracle that is email, here's the missing three pars:

Universities have a long history of being caught up in religious
controversy. A signal start was made by the German monk and
university professor Martin Luther posting his Ninety-Five Theses on
the Power of Indulgences on the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church
on 31 October 1517. That catalyst for the Protestant Reformation was
to embroil universities, monarchs and other institutions in Christian
sectarian strife over four centuries and several continents.

The bitter and at times bloody dispute between Catholics and
Protestants reached Australia and affected the foundation of our
earliest universities. The Acts founding Australia’s two oldest
universities, the University of Sydney in 1850 and the University of
Melbourne in 1853, proscribe the administration of any religious
test. This is not because the universities’ founders were
irreligious – quite the contrary. It was to prevent the universities
being captured by any Christian sect and thus become inhospitable to
other Christians. Similar troubles in Ireland at the same time led
to the establishment in Dublin in 1851 of that noble failure the
Catholic University of Ireland, whose ideals were famously described
by its founding rector John Henry Cardinal Newman in his series of
lectures entitled The idea of a university.

Christian sectarian disputes faded to invisibility in the late
twentieth century in Australia, and so did our skill in managing
religious controversy. It is therefore no surprise that we should
struggle when another religious contest is imported from overseas,
this time between Christianity and Islam. Griffith University has
unfortunately become caught in the crossfire, with protagonists
trying to claim that the university has either actively or
inadvertently supported the ‘wrong’ side.

I bet somebody at The Australian is in a lot of trouble today for misplacing the entire context section of the piece.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:51 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

Australia in a globalized world

Australia's future? Or national paranoia? China was once ranked the number one destination for foreign domestic investment. Now the cash flow could reverse from an inward-bound journey to an outward-bound one including investment in Australian companies.

Sharpe

Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued in the London-based Financial Times' "Economists" forum during the summer of 2007 that "The logic of the capitalist system depends on shareholders causing companies to act so as to maximize the value of their shares. It is far from obvious that this will over time be the only motivation of governments as shareholders."

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 23, 2008

the turn back to coal

This is not good news---Europe returns to coal which produces more carbon dioxide than oil or natural gas; a return driven by demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy. That's the logic of the free market.

In Australia Alan Wood of The Australian defends the turn to coal thus by saying that climate changers argue that:

Australia, with its abundant, high quality coal, should stop mining, exporting and using coal forthwith while we wait for carbon capture and storage (CCS in global warming jargon) technology to emerge. When might that be? ..... in the meantime the coalminers, coal companies and their shareholders, coal exporters, Australians generally - who have seen their incomes boosted by rising coal prices - and users of Australian coal in China and elsewhere can just sit on their hands.

He says that the resurgence of coal is driven mainly by booming power sector demand in China and India, with higher oil and gas prices making coal more competitive for baseload power generation. New coal-fired power stations with no CCS are being built apace in these two countries. They are also being built in those paragons of self-proclaimed climate change virtue, Britain and Germany, and being planned for NSW and Victoria.

Wood asks: 'Shall we stop all this, Prime Minister?' Of course, not is the implication. Economic growth is paramount not emissions trading. An emissions trading scheme doesn't stop the growth. It just makes coal pay for the externalities of the greenhouse gases it produces by using market mechanism.That requires government intervention.

Wood, and The Australian, thus becomes a defender of a coal industry that is opposed to change and wants the public to pay for its pollution. An old and familiar story.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 22, 2008

no tech

There are some good reasons to approach Richard Florida's Creative Class with caution, especially when it comes to methodology. Still, even if he did have to make up his own indices, he pretty much nails the importance of knowledge workers in the global economy, whether you think it's post industrial or late capitalism or whatever. This appeared to be the logic behind the laptop for every child idea - that the as yet unknown jobs of the future would be tangled up with the digital world. Better to create a well-prepared nation of digital natives than face global redundancy.

Either our brightest creative types haven't read Florida or they were so suspicious of his methods they chucked the whole thing. Reports emerging from the Creative Australia stream of the summit are disappointing, if not annoying. Stuart Cunningham's piece at New Matilda suggests that our creative types' creativity is limited to imagining what already exists, only better funded. I guess they're stuck in the 'industries' bit of 'creative industries', much like Bill Gates' information superhighway, which was supposed to see us all compiling assortments of our favourites from the Guggenheim collection rather than making anything new.

Ben Eltham extends the argument with reference to reports of the procedings, but the bit that really gets up my nose is the dotpoint section suggesting linking creativity and education.

• Bring art into our schools by introducing ‘practitioners in residence’ via a national mentoring plan funded by philanthropic funds and tax incentives

Eltham doesn't mind this bit, but I do. If by art practitioners they mean people whose imagination stops at digitising museum collections, they'll be laughed out of the classroom. I'm not knocking art for art's sake, more power to it in fact, but the only practitioner in resident the kids I know would pay attention to is the one who can teach them how to better incorporate bits from The Simpsons into the videos they post at YouTube. If the plan is for a resident oil painter at every school they'll successfully engage about 1.5 percent of the student body.

• Mandate creative, visual and performing arts subjects in national curricula with appropriate reporting requirements for schools. Explore new opportunities for extension and development such as Creativity Summer Schools, pre-service and in-service training for teachers

Yep, go for it, as long as the creative, visual and performings arts in question somehow contribute to their knowledge of the technologies that go with those arts. If they come out knowing the minutiae of how Shrek was produced you will have accomplished something.

• Digitise the collections of major national institutions by 2020

And make sure kids look at it? Fab. Will they be allowed to Photoshop our national treasures as well? You could start an interesting annual Archibald Photoshopped competition. Not sufficiently respectful maybe.

• Make creativity a national research priority with funding access to R&D, ARC and similar funding

This is my favourite. You could get high school kids to workshop the ARC funding application process. That could keep them busy through years 9 to 12 at least. And nobody would ever have to worry about truancy or kids dropping out ever again.

'Make creativity a national research priority' is a joke. Ask Richard Florida. Or any of the other contributors to the vast body of already existing literature on creativity. Creativity and autism, creativity and giftedness, creativity and crime recidivism, creativity and mental health, creativity and early learning through play, managing creativity (talk about an oxymoron), collective creativity, creativity and multiple intelligences, creativity and the kitchen sink. It's all sitting around gathering dust while school kids are exploring the possibilities of digital media for themselves in their own time, because why? Perhaps because Cate Blanchett's baby is the only kid these people have ever met?

If this is the best they could do Julia might as well cancel that laptop order and reintroduce the cane. And maybe the slate. Or perhaps the hammer, chisel, and stone tablet.

Now I feel better.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:03 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

April 21, 2008

Can she?

Can Clinton overturn Barack Obama’s lead in the contest for the Democratic nomination? It doesn't look possible. The odds are stacked against her.

Bromley, Financial Times

Clinton's best possible scenario is a big win. Victory in the race for elected delegates is out of reach. She has to sway uncommitted superdelegates by winning the aggregate Democratic popular Democratic popular vote, or by sowing serious doubts about Mr Obama’s electability in November.

Is that possible?

The Democrats are being asked to make a difficult choice

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:55 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

April 20, 2008

2020 Summit: health

A tax on junk food, alcohol and tobacco to fund a national preventative health agency and programs to keep people healthy is the big idea of the by health experts at the 2020 summit. They stressed the need for a major boost in the share of the health dollar spent on keeping people out of hospitals, but to make the idea cost neutral, they opted to pass on the cost to consumers of products that unduly added to the burden of obesity, cancer, diabetes and injury – drink, fatty foods and cigarettes.

Spooner

Is that an illustration that the summit was about more about symbolism, less about substance? Or an example that the gathering was dominated by inner-city dwellers, many of whom have had a public platform to sprout their ideas “either in academic journals, parliament or newspaper columns. Was this an example of the ideas that indicated that the Summit was a gathering of the inexpert, the unqualified and the inexperienced?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:09 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 19, 2008

2020 Summit

It is hard for me to judge the 2020 Summit from the wilderness of NZ's South Island. I'm aware, from reading Crikey that The Australian, has swung around from its initial support for the summit as a worthy successor to its own new policy agenda for prosperity to calling it a "gabfest" and muttering about the chattering classes and Howard-haters.

Leak

I just don't have the time on the internet to be able to read the submissions or to comment on them. So I cannot evaluate how they address the way the Rudd Government has linked its values of equity and community to the country's economic problem of falling productivity and the Government's long-term priority of investing in our kids.

Will they address the coal industry's shameful history of climate change denial and obstruction of abatement efforts to fight climate change. Will they question the enhanced respectability to the coal lobby by the commonwealth government?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:20 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

April 18, 2008

Friday humour

It happens slowly----the effects of globalization. Thus two of New Zealand's best-known firms, Fisher & Paykel Appliances and ANZ, are moving jobs to other countries. It's a familiar story, one that reverberates in the US presidential primaries and Australia.

Leunig

The NZers cannot expect manufacturing or call centres to remain. The South Island economy is dependent on the old pastoralism and the new international tourism and the latter will grow if it develops high quality services. Otherwise it will fall into a black hole.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:48 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

April 17, 2008

Roman Catholics + sex

The Roman Catholics have problems with sex. Big problems over and above the decades-old problem of pedophile priests. They don't really like sex. It's a sin for them outside marriage. They see sex outside of marriage as symptomatic of the breakdown of values in a liberal society.

Leak

The breakdown of the values of society is signified by pornography and violence and these are attributed to liberalism, not the capitalist market economy. The next step in the argument is to place the sexual abuse of priests in the context of the breakdowm of values and to use 'breakdown' as a causal explanation for the sexual abuse.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:42 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

biscuits

Haven't the fun police got anything better to do?

Apparently balloons are way too light and airy for some occasions. Or some, on some occasions:

The RSL says hot air ballooning should not be allowed on Anzac Day morning in Canberra.

The National Balloon Autumn Spectacular begins this weekend and runs for nine days.

Balloons are scheduled to take off next Friday, an hour after the dawn service, only 2 kilometres away from the Australian War Memorial.

RSL national president Bill Crews says commercial activities such as ballooning should be restricted on Anzac Day morning.

"It's disrespectful. Why do we have to go ballooning on Anzac Day morning? There's 365 other days of the year, bearing in mind the weather's not always that generous," he said.

"But I think we can give it away on Anzac Day morning surely and certainly not a Government organised activity, that really distresses me.

364 other days actually, but that's being picky.

Maybe people want to balloon on Anzac Day in order to better appreciate the country all those dead soldiers gave their lives to protect? Maybe they're all descendants of soldiers who were ballooning enthusiasts? Maybe they want a good view of all the mourners, paraders and two up piss up street parties? Maybe they plan to spend their entire balloon rides standing to attention, saluting, waving flags and blowing bugles.

And of course,

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has also described the event as disrespectful.

Thanks ABC news for providing so much balance. Balance must have seemed such a good idea before Brendan. How long will it be before conservatives start accusing the ABC of ridiculing the right by over exposing Nelson?

But the ACT Government has dismissed the accusations.

The ACT Government's director of special events, Jeremy Lasek, says pipers will attend the balloon launch as a mark of respect for Anzac Day.

"We have been in contact with the Memorial and the organisers of the dawn service and the feedback actually has been generally very positive. The dawn service finishes just a few minutes after 6:00am, the balloons won't be launched until around about 7:00am," he said.

"The feeling generally was that perhaps this was a nice thing that could happen on the day."

Well the feeling was wrong, wasn't it? The whole nation has a moral duty to be as miserable as possible until lunchtime, whether the dead in question might have preferred a celebration instead or not.

Stuart Robert MP, my local federal member, has been thoughtful enough to post shiny, expensive looking Anzac Day pamphlets to the electorate. Among all the grainy images of the injured, the busy and dutiful, there's a casual shot of a dozen diggers clowning around for the camera. They seem to be enjoying joy - smiling, laughing and perhaps looking forward to their next hot air balloon ride. I wonder how they'd feel about being responsible for so much gravity and indignation? Would they be happier about the biscuits than the way we choose to observe the day?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:24 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 16, 2008

developers

There's been plenty of news coverage of what happens when developers are allowed to influence decision making, most recently in Wollongong, but you don't hear much about what happens when they don't get a foot in the door.

The big money was behind Liberal and Labor candidates at the recent Gold Coast elections, and nobody bothered much with Ron Clarke. He was supposed to lose. Big business, which around here means real estate and developers, couldn't wait to be rid of him so no way were they going to help fund his campaign. And now they're quite cross.

Clarke won and so did a bunch of other independents, which was supposed to make Clarke's job a lot easier. Supposed to. Ever since the result was announced the local media has been devoting itself to airing the grievances of poor, hard done by developers who only have Gold Coast residents' best interests at heart.

Local newspapers devote wads of space to hard luck stories about developers having to comply with the red tape of environmental standards, approvals, and green and recreational space requirements. Residents in new estates at the northern end of the coast go without services, but developers spit lava over not being able to build enormous shopping centres next to other enormous shopping centres. And more residential developments next to other residential developments, with nothing but road in between.

An ongoing spat over a proposed rapid transport system is typical of your average response to Clarke. Offered a range of options including light rail, everyone and their dog knows residents chose buses. Funding agreements between the Council and State government ground to a halt mainly because vested interests wanted to keep the options open. Rarely did those interests consider the feasibility of whacking light rail through the middle of Surfers Paradise which, despite the impression of lovely wide roads you might get watching Indy, offers all the elbow room of your average inner city street.

Given population growth and changing distributions of population density, it seems reasonable to stick with systems that offer route flexibility. Residents are also under the impression that the whole thing is for the benefit of tourists anyway, and they're not inclined to support funky transport/theme park crossbreeds just to keep tour operators and holiday package deal types amused. But the 'debate' continues anyway, as if all the public consultation never happened.

This story is typical of the way these things play out in media. You can't trust Clarke to give you the story, local studies aren't good enough and in these circumstances you can't rely on the decisions that have been made. Stuff what residents think. We'll continue to argue over which southern route from Helensvale we should have and forget about anybody further north, presumably because there's nothing to go to there other than acres of nothing but houses. And vacant land that will eventually become more acres of nothing but houses when pressure eventually forces stinky Clarke and his smelly mob to stop insisting on more diverse land use.

Wildlife corridors. Green recreational space. Youth precincts. Sustainability. Services and local employment. Whoever heard of such nonsense.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

global economic crisis

Tim Colebatch in The Age says The important point s that the IMF knows that the global economic crisis is the most dangerous the world has faced in the postwar years — and it still believes it's not going to put much of a dent in the real world global economy. Yes, the United States will go into recession, and Europe and Japan will see their growth halved. But the world can grow without them — and that is what the IMF predicts it will do.

Spooner

He says that:

The conventional view used to be that the fast-growing developing countries needed growth in the US to generate pace. Either the US consumer was buying their goods, or she bought the goods that enabled others to buy them. Now the IMF believes that's no longer true. India's growth has little to do with exporting to the US, or with exports at all, but is essentially generated domestically. China has relied heavily on exports to generate growth, but its leaders have made it clear that if export growth falters, they can and will throw the switch to generate more domestic growth.

Well, I've assumed the conventional view about he US being the consumer market for rthe world. Maye I have got it wrong. I suspect, however, that what is being presented is the decoupling . I cannot see India replacing the US not can I se ethsat it is h just a case of 'throwing the switch.'. This is IMF dreaming.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:22 AM | TrackBack

April 15, 2008

NZ: climate change

I'm not sure how climate change is affecting New Zealand. I noticed one of the rivers not flowing as i flew over the Canterbury plains to Christchurch. Then we have story this about falling levels at Lake Taupo, which feeds the Waikato River hydro system in the North Island. I'm not sure about the South Island.

They--the authorities and press---are talking in terms of drought not climate change though. I would have thought that climate change means that New Zealand is likely to experience more frequent droughts and floods.

Slane, NZ Herald

They should be worried because their electricity is based on hydro power and the level of water in their hydro lakes is falling.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:05 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 14, 2008

the blinding obvious

This is the image I have as I leave Australia for two weeks in NZ. Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, sure has changed his tune. After months of planglossianisms he is now incorporating into his talk of tough budget and a protracted period of high interest rates the IMFs language of an 'unstable international outlook and inflation'; and that Australia would not be immune from the financial crisis.

Why Swan is even saying that no one at the IMF meetings in Washington he is attending believed that Asia was somehow de-coupled from the financial turmoil that began late last year with the subprime mortgage crisis in the US.

Spooner

Well, that sure contradicts all the rhetoric about China's economic growth and demand for Australia's resources acting as a firewall against an 'unstable international outlook and inflation'. It looks as if Swan needed the authority of the IMF to say the obvious.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 13, 2008

going to NZ

I leave Adelaide for NZ via Melbourne late today for two weeks holiday in the South Island. So I thought that I'd begin to dip into NZ politics.I don't know know how often that I can post as it will depend on access to internet or cyber cafes.

It's election time and Winston Peters leader of the NZ First Party and the Foreign Affairs Minister, is campaigning on his opposition to trade with foreigners, his opposition to Asian foreigners being able to live here, and his opposition to people being able to sell property or shares to foreigners.

Slane, NZ Herald

Labor are trailing, NZ is trying to sign a Free Trade Agreement with China and Winston opposes the FTA in the name of economic nationalism. There are calls for Peters to be sacked as Foreign Minister as the FTA is central to the Clarke Government’s foreign policy and Peters had to represent that. However under the “agree to disagree” clause in the agreements with Labour Peters may criticise the government in areas not related to his portfolios.

Helen Clark 's Labour party has been in government eight and a half years and they must be running out of puff and ideas. Are they compromising good Government on the Peters issue just to keep the numbers together? What has happened to collective responsibility Trade policy is a subset of foreign policy for Clarke Labor and the China free-trade deal is one of their highest foreign policy goals.

John Armstrong, writing in the NZ Herald, says that under the deal:

Peters is bound by collective ministerial responsibility when he talks about issues within his foreign affairs portfolio. He speaks for the Government and "as part of the Government" when he wears that hat.When he speaks about matters outside his portfolio, however, he speaks as a leader of a political party or an ordinary MP, rather than as a minister. With one caveat, he is essentially free to say what he likes. The exception is when he is overseas. Then, as the Government's representative, he is required to speak for the Government "on all issues" discussed with international counterparts.

It can be argued that trade policy is a subset of foreign policy for Clarke Labor and the China free-trade deal is one of their highest foreign policy goals.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:07 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

April 12, 2008

2020 Summit: future thinking

There are suggestions that the background paper for the health forum in the 2020 Summit is conservative in its approach to reform and attempts to avoid focus on sensitive issues for Labor such as health insurance, non-medical health practitioners and patient costs. Its approach to reform is narrowly framed.

In an op-ed in The Canberra Times on the 2020 Summit Brett Peppler says that, though the Summit will promote a feast of ideas, it is primarily designed to generate ideas able to be shaped into concrete policy options during the second half of 2008. He then warns:

But as T.S. Eliot reminds us, between the idea and reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow. Policy developed in haste, so typical of the Howard years, often is still-born. In Australia, good policy development at the federal level may require three to five years to design, implement, gain traction, and precipitate desired outcomes. The real challenge lies beyond the Summit, in navigating Eliot's shadow.

He says that good policy development needs to be infused with a sense of the future, and that the expansion of our capacities for thinking about and planning for the future is necessary to move beyond the dominant planning paradigm, which perceives the future as a place, not as a rich variety of prospects.

To achieve this future perspective, other more sophisticated approaches such as strategic foresight are needed in government. Not as a separate, special and merely "episodic" occurrence but as a permanent, continuous and natural part of harvesting and harnessing the fruits of the Summit. Peppler says:

The debate about the Summit should move from idea generation to more usefully focus on the modalities for transforming those worthwhile ideas into aspiration and action. How might this shift from generation to transformation be achieved? A first step is to acknowledge the limits of traditional strategic planning, which is strongly analytical, logical, deductive and pragmatic in order to ensure things stay "on track". Strategic foresight, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity to formulate an integrated perspective or vision of where we should be heading.

He adds that strategic foresight involves three broad transformative mechanisms to more powerfully pull Australia into the future, and in the process use the Summit's energy to generate more light than heat. The transformative mechanisms include: "projections" to envision desirable future states; "alternatives" to develop knowledge, assess risks and determine trade-offs about alternate plausible future states; and "pathways" to develop a more detailed understanding of sequential processes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:57 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 11, 2008

Iraq: the surge falters

Has Washington's bubble of optimism about the United States' progress in Iraq been punctured? The signs were there when General David Petraeus, announced a 45-day halt to troop withdrawals from July during highly charged hearings in the Senate in which he faced questions from all three contenders to replace Bush: John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The halt indicates that US strategy was not successful in gaining some sort of military victory.

The hearings showed the deep divide on Iraq between McCain, who favours keeping troops in Iraq until security is established, and the two Democrats (Obama and Clinton) who have sought early withdrawal.

Steve Bell

Lets call the situation for what it is . Bush's long war on terror is a lost cause. As the war heads towards its second decade, American security policy is in disarray, the Iraq War is a disaster, Afghanistan is deeply insecure and the al-Qaida and Taliban movements remains as potent as ever with new generations of leaders coming to the fore. The New American Century is off to a bad start.

Since the 9/11 attacks, many Western governments have assumed terrorism to be the greatest threat the western nation states face. In response, their policies attempt to maintain control and keep the status quo by using overwhelming military force. The US is the central power and nation states like the UK and Australia fall into line and march the military march.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:00 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

the coming economic downturn

In its latest World Economic Outlook the International Monetary Fund says that a recession in the United States is now inevitable and that there is a 25 per cent chance of a global recession. The IMF estimates total global losses from the deterioration of credit as of March at $945bn, and it says that the global economy is caught between the twin perils of a sharp slowdown in activity and rising inflation

A global recession is a change of tune from the usual boosterism from the IMF.Doesn't that make a mockery of the recent stock market bounce and the notion of global economic decoupling? A big U.S. recession will certainly drag down growth in China. Will things going pear shaped cause commodity prices to slide---- by 20% to 30 say--- and so hit Australia along with Canada? Is this possible?

Bruce Petty

I see that Treasurer Wayne Swan has changed his tune. He is now saying that a recession in the US would affect Australia and that it could well have a fundamental impact on Australia's two fastest-growing customers, China and India. The decoupling thesis is being revised.

So what does a big U.S. recession mean? For the IMF it will be a mild recession. But they have a record of turning a blind eye to the systemic flows in the US economy and financial system, have been missing in action for some time and are trying to gain some credibility as the right body to co-ordinate the global response to the current crisis.

Do Swan, the Australian Treasury and the RBA follow the IMF? What will Swan say after visiting Washington? Or will the economic troika adopt the perspective of a short, sharp downturn with a speedy recovery in the US as part of their 'China's economic boom protects Australia' line. They are part of the set who were last year telling us that all was enduringly rosy, and who have have tended to move towards the short sharp interpretation of the forthcoming downturn in the US. Wall Street will shred lots of jobs and the investment crowd will be driving New York cabs etc etc.

The issue is: how severe will the recession in the US be?

Nouriel Roubini, who argues that the US is experiencing its most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, says in this post that:

My view is that a protracted economic stagnation – bordering on an economic depression – is unlikely in the case of the US as the policy response of the US is already more aggressive than the one of Japan. Japan waited almost two years after the bursting of its bubble to ease monetary policy; and it waited two years before providing fiscal stimulus. In the US, instead, both monetary and fiscal stimulus have started in earnest early on. Also Japanese postponed the necessary corporate and banking restructuring for years keeping alive zombie firms and zombie banks via inappropriate forms of forbearance. In the US both private and especially public efforts to restructure the impaired assets and firms will start faster and more aggressively. Thus the risk of a decade-long economic stagnation is quite limited so far.

Roubini's scenario, which is a severe recession lasting 12 to 18 months, a severe financial crisis and credit crunch, is not your typical run-of-the-mill recession.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 10, 2008

the classic politics of the Murray

Kenneth Davidson in The Age puts his finger on the Brack/Brumby Government's long resistance to the national Murray-Darling Basin plan. In doing so he discloses the way that the politics of the River Murray continues to be about protecting the irrigation industry at the expense of the environment.

He states the reality that Adelaide and South Australia's main provincial towns depend on the Murray for most of their water ( a proposed desalination plant will lessen this dependence for Adelaide) and then adds:

Without flushing rains or 200 gigalitres from the Dartmouth Dam on the upper Murray, the water that Adelaide pipes from the Murray below Murray Bridge will be undrinkable. But if the water that is available from Dartmouth is allocated to the environment, it won't be available to irrigators further up the Murray.This explains why the Brumby Government delayed for 15 months signing up to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, which is supposed to give ultimate authority for allocation of the water to federal Water Minister Penny Wong. Either the system must get well above average rainfall during the coming winter, sufficient to flush out the lower reaches of the Murray, supply Adelaide and keep irrigators alive or Wong will have to choose between Mildura and Adelaide as to who gets the 200 gigalitres of water held in reserve in the Dartmouth dam.

There you have it.The irrigation industry is fighting to to retain use of all rural water in the name of development, without getting smart and thinking about ways to do more with less. The Brumby government is captured by its irrigation industry, which requires substantial subsidies and protection to survive.

Davidson says that there is no real choice. If the southern river Murray system dies, Mildura and the other irrigators along the southern Murray will die as well. If salt and sulphuric acid damage is limited to Lake Alexandrina, the irrigators and the towns along the southern Murray can be kept on life support until there is a permanent increase in the flow of water into the Murray system.

As Davidson points out the irrigator's argument is that extra water can be be found by spending federal and state billions upgrading irrigation infrastructure to reduce leakage and evaporation, with the irrigators taking half of the water saved. Even the figures that are bandied about for water for the river look dubious. Since the water leakages find their way into the river system, fixing leaks is classic robbing the river to save the irrigators. That is the classic politics of the Murray.

The only money the authority should spend is on the compulsory acquisition of licences within the framework of a sustainable cap on water extraction to restore environmental flows.

Editorials in the AFR continually go about the policy of slugging viable industries to prop up unviable or marginal ones---but they usually mean industry assistance to the manufacturing industry (eg. for green cars) not irrigated agriculture. Yet irrigated agriculture is a classic example of the lack of the reform momentum they go about. What we have here by the Rudd Government is much talk about the talk on reform but little by way of walking the walk.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:51 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 9, 2008

Rudd's diplomatic talk

Rudd's big overseas trip is different from that of Howard. The style is that of a diplomat who has a grasp of foreign policy issues, who thinks beyond the role of lap dog to the US and the conservative scenarios of a future face-off between Australia and an Asian (Chinese) juggernaut, and doesn't act as the US 's stalking horse in the Middle East.

Alan Moir

There is an element of smoke and mirrors in all of this diplomatic discussion. The classic example is the talk about NATO when the alliance is bleeding itself white in Afghanistan. NATO has big problems there--- international terrorism, unchecked increase in drug trafficking, building a strong state and the economy-- and its military approach is going to solve these. How NATO is going to be able to extricate itself from the colossal muddle in Afghanistan is an open question. No one is talking about an exit strategy.

Rudd's talk about a more coherent strategy in the war in Afghanistan---eg., addressing the unchecked increase in drug trafficking----fell on stoney ground, despite the boom in opium-poppy cultivation and Afghanistan now suppliing 93% of the world total, the bulk of it grown in Helmand and other southern provinces that are most under the influence of the Taliban.

Rudd wasn't willing to address the realistic view that NATO is losing the war through backing the Kabul regime of of Hamid Karzai. The Taliban are not a spent force consisting of a bunch of naive young lads with no credible leader left. The government of Hamid Karzai controls barely 30% of the country. Most of the country is in the hands of warlords and other local leaders, with a tenth under the sway of the Taliban. A transformative victory by NATO is not at hand.

As Paul Rogers observes at Open Democracy

The term "occupying" and "occupation" are not in the vocabulary of the White House or 10 Downing Street: from their perspective what is happening is a major security operation to win the war on terror while bringing two key countries [Afghanistan and Iraq] safely into the western orbit. Krauthammer's "benign imperium" may look a little tattered around the edges but it remains the basis for coalition action

He argues that the reality is that the United States cannot continue - militarily, financially, or politically - to occupy countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come. The occupation of countries in the middle east and southwest Asia by western military forces is no longer politically feasible. The starting-point for any new policy will have to be complete withdrawal.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:02 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

April 8, 2008

nine

Nine is located somewhere between 7 and 10, and it's an awful long way from 73. Poor Brendan. On the bright side, that leaves 18 percent who could well be swayed by the listening tour.

Two party preferred is 59 to 41. And this despite valiant efforts in some parts of the media to turn the salute into the crime of the century. Even Janet defended Rudd on that, although that's not terribly surprising since it was directed at Bush. Personally, the fuss reminded me of the tabloid response when Keating touched Her Royal Majesty. Except that was funny. The salute frenzy was just pathetic.

What now, then, for our two party system? Will Brough re-enter the fray via Queensland? Will Costello step up until the rump limp off to retirement and Malcolm's destiny becomes reality? Will Kennett come to the rescue? It's a pretty sad state of affairs when your best option is raising the dead, but what's the alternative?

Meanwhile the organised opposition consists of Andrew Bolt and Glen Milne, and Milne doesn't even oppose properly. He just makes stuff up.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:51 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

homeless

Leak captures the historical shift quite well. For all the security connections to NATO around Afghanistan Australia is really a part of Asia not Europe. This shift does not make Australia homeless, as the Sydney conservative Anglo-Britons claimed in opposing Paul Keating's Asia Pacific Rim engagement in the early 1990s.

It is China that has enabled Australia's ten years of economic growth, and India will continue to fuel this growth. Britain represents the past as Asia is where Australia's future lies. Out home is the Indian/Pacific:

Bill Leak

And yet, despite the long boom, each night in Australia, around 100,000 people are homeless. Some are “couch-surfing”, some are accommodated in the homelessness service system, and others sleep rough. This sort of homeless does not excite the white picket fence conservatives much, as they tend to represent homeless people as losers, (family breakdown) despite their rhetoric about the family being the bedrock of a market society.

This Way Forward report states that:

Almost as many women as men experience homelessness. One of the largest causes of women’s homelessness is domestic violence. One in five people who used a homeless service last year was a women escaping domestic violence. Half of all people who are homeless are under 25. Many of these are young people running away from homes characterised by violence, substance abuse and poverty. Nationwide, one in every 57 girls aged 15-19 used a homeless service last year.

Family breakup is a key cause. Many people in society write off the homeless ---and street kids--- as scum and welfare parasites but often they are far more victims than perpetrators.

So there needs to be some form of intervention to try and prevent the breakup; intervention in the form of counseling or mediation. The core reason why welfare services for the homeless have failed to keep pace with growing demand at a time when Australia has never been more prosperous is because the Commonwealth has cut its investment in public housing the states and territories have declined to make up the deficit; and funding for services targeted specifically at the homeless, such as the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program, has remained piteously small and susceptible to inflationary erosion. That underfunding has meant most of these homelessness programs are small scale and ad hoc in their outlook and strategy.

Thus Reconnect, a larger program targeted at homeless young people, or those at risk of homelessness, cost the Commonwealth just $20million in 2006, while Home Advice, another prevention initiative aimed at helping about 400 families, cost taxpayers just $2.6 million. Even the Howard government's flagship National Homelessness Strategy, established in 1999 to develop "approaches for the prevention and reduction of homelessness and broken new ground in integrated service delivery to people who are vulnerable to homelessness" received only $10million over four years in the 2005-06 budget.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:14 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

April 7, 2008

pirates

Loosely related to discussion of democratic participation via the internet, Lynne Spender has an interesting piece over at On Line Opinion. An entire political party, the Swedish piratpartiet (pirate party) formed on the internet and remains largely based there. The party is a political response to media industries' attitudes towards consumers' slack observance of copyright law.

Born digital and focused on the possibilities for an information society which is both open and diverse, the Pirate Party epitomises all of the characteristics of digital culture. It is Internet based with policies and principles developed collaboratively through discussion and debate on its website. Information can be uploaded, downloaded, edited and shared via the website; meetings take place online (there are no offices or “headquarters”) and its several well-attended public rallies have been arranged through the website, mobile phones and “social networking”.

The Pirate Party aims to gain the balance of power and overturn law which is increasingly out of whack with the expectations and values of ordinary folk, particularly the young. The possibilities of democratic participation on a government blog seems kind of pale next to the formation of an entire wiki party.

I've always thought that the utopian view of the internet as some kind of liberating force for the supressed masses was overblown. It's true that the odd group here and there has enjoyed some degree of success organising whatever it is they want to do through the internet. The Scientology pestering group Anonymous is currently enjoying the spotlight having managed to annoy the 'church' online and off. But in the wider world not much has changed. The cultures of access and participation which drive internet space don't seem to be rubbing off on supermarkets or schools and it's hard to imagine they ever will.

Still, the Pirate Party is an interesting departure point for thinking about where democracy might go should people start setting their sights a bit higher. So far we've limited ourselves to being Kevin's MySpace friend and bitching about the media on blogs. Not that there's anything wrong with that - the pseph bloggers performed an important public service during the poll wars and stand as an important example of why the media needs to be bitched about. But I suspect that Australian aspirations have been largely moulded by American blogs which was bound to disappoint. Another reminder that Australia is not America.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see where the Pirate Party goes. If the Greens can transform themselves from a single issue party the Pirates could too. If the Swedish blogosphere is anything like the Ozblogosphere there's enough spare talent lying around to put policy together on just about everything.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 10:45 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

regulating global financial markets

As we know Treasury chief Hank Paulson says he doesn’t blame the current regulatory structure for current market turmoil. If it was not the non-regulatory structure that the US has now, then how do we explain the housing bubble and the credit meltdown and the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street? Paulson's plan is to overhaul” Wall Street by deregulating it, not by disciplining financial markets for their own mistakes.

In contrast, Tony Curzon Price in New Democracy recognizes that will be new regulation of finance. He states:

All the proposals to overhaul the regulation of banking are aimed at [trying] to stop banks and bankers behaving like the gatecrashers at a teenage party, happy to enjoy and wreck the common environment until the reckoning comes. Banking regulation is a good thing to be doing, but it is only half the story. The Fed and other central banks put on the party in the first place, and never switched the lights out. These are administrative arms of democratic states, and the question we should ask is: "what is it in our politics that allows democracy to be so irresponsible?''

Irresponsible for me means that there aren't any regulations for investment banks, hedge funds, and other currently unregulated financial institutions to hold capital assets proportional to the risks they’re taking on. This has helped to contribute to a dysfunctional global financial system.

Kevin Rudd is merely talking about a new system of global scrutiny in the form of domestic regulators reporting the weakness of any banks and finance companies to the IMF. It's an early warning system with a new role for the IMF, rather than a new regulatory regime. It has to be minimal because the IMF does not the capacity to act as an international regulator.

Rudd does recognize that the financial markets have changed as it no longer just includes the core institutions (the Banks) protected by the central bank acting a lender of last resort, prudential legislation, and explicit deposit insurance. We now non bank institutions such as hedge funds and securitised markets and the traditional regulatory regime had great difficulty in governing this new world, that underwent a systemic crisis. It was the central banks, as lenders of last resort, that acted with their chequebooks to ensure overall stability of the financial markets.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:00 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

April 6, 2008

industry protection + innovation

I'm not sure that it's a black and white issue of tariff and protection versus free trade any more now that the Australian economy has been integrated with the global one. Mitsubishi's closure in Australia showed that manufacturing needs to get smart and export to survive and ensure global competitiveness and innovative capacity.

There seemed little point in going back to protecting industries, behind tariff barriers to "save" Mitsubishi. As this shows protectionism may lead to short-term gains, it ultimately leads to longer term pain, reducing firm competitiveness, global outlook and innovative capacity. The reduction in tariffs under Paul Keating's prime ministership continues to one of Labor's approach to economic reform.

Yet the debate is still being framed in terms of protection versus free trade or open markets with the finger often pointed at neo-liberalism:

Spooner

The common criticism is that neo-liberals see manufacturing as an industry in decline; or that Australian manufacturing is fundamentally uncompetitive with the vast manufacturing capacity and low cost structures of China, India and others. Thus Mitsubishi.

Australia has few distinct comparative advantages in the motor vehicle industry. Its domestic market is small, it is a long way from major markets and the fundamental industry structure remains based on assembly and distribution to the domestic market, notwithstanding some excellent performance, albeit on a minuscule scale by global standards, in export markets.

Does this overlooks the possibility of ‘new manufacturing’ within the global economic environment that is based on new forms of innovation, new opportunities for internationalisation and new ways of capturing the productivity advantages.

I presume that building globally-oriented businesses is an objective in the industry development policy of the Rudd government. An example is the $2 Billion Green Car Partnership, which involves investing $500 million in a “Green Car Innovation Fund” designed to generate $2 billion in investment to support innovation in vehicle technology which reduces emissions.

However, it is not clear that this technology-push initiative approach can stem the decline in the underlying comparative advantage of a motor vehicle industries in developed nations. Is it Is it subsidising "green" technology development for the motor industry?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 5, 2008

2020 Summit: democracy

My understanding is that the Rudd Government is using the 2020 Summit to examine ways in which Australians can increasingly deliberate in the making of government policy through a range of mechanisms, including community cabinets, as a part of a commitment to contemporary democracy. On the margins of this scenario is creating alternative spaces for citizens to debate and discuss the public issues of the day. This changes the nature of political engagement.

Canberra Times

The critics say that the Summit is an elitist event, a love-in for the luvvies on the left, "just a talk fest", and a calculated gesture because "nothing disarms a critic like a cocktail party". The topics look to be serious and important. One is the future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

The Hawke Centre at Uni of SA has contacted its members seeking ideas on this issue on behalf of Elizabeth Ho, who has been invited to the 2020 Summit. Their blurb says that the Australia 2020 Summit will examine:

How best to implement an effective an agenda of open government which best balances the legitimate requirements of the media and the confidentiality requirements of cabinet government in the Westminster system;

How best to engage the community in government decision making;

What forms of Federation reform are appropriate for the future to maximise outcomes for the economy and the community;

How to ensure the future viability of local government operations and infrastructure provision.

That made me depressed. It was so much about administration at the expense of democracy. Sure the role of the media is a key point in liberal democracy. Media power is already dangerously concentrated in Australia and it has moved away from being watchdogs for democracy to partisanship, fighting culture wars and infotainment. Yes, there are signs of hope, not least in some of the ways which people are finding to use the internet; but that, including political blogging, is still not taken seriously in Australia.

I also notice that the rights and responsibilities of citizens has disappeared from the Hawke Centre's specific issues to discuss. Has it been reduced to open government or community? The debate of ideas is very narrow and confined in Australia with the same stuff endlessly repeated.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:14 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

April 4, 2008

NSW: opposing reform on climate change

It increasingly looks as if the NSW Lemma Government is increasingly at odds with the reform thrust of the Rudd Government. It has been captured by property developers, appears to be corrupt, and it just doing what is needed to stay in power.

Alan Moir

t dragging its heels on water reform, opposes performance targets for its public hospitals and is now talking about climate change in terms of the approach of the true believers within the Rudd Government mugging the economy and scaring away foreign investors.

The latter is argued by NSW Treasurer Michael Costa, a climate change sceptic, who articulates the views of the NSW Labor Right. He argues that the burden imposed on the coal-fired power electricity sector and big power users through addressing climate change with emissions trading is too great and would result in a capital flight by overseas investors.

Costa is trying to protect the value of NSW's state owned generators that are to be privatised in the next 18 months and is doing so by pushing the commonwealth to compensate NSW generators with free permits.

The problem with Costa's proposal for carbon freebies--free emission permits as a form of compensation for his energy friends --- is that there would be nothing to curb the demand for fossil fuel-fired electricity under the proposed emissions trading scheme. So we have naked self-interest masquerading as public policy.

Why not use the money raised by the auction of future emission permits be redistributed to households and regions and communities adversely affected by the policy?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:46 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 3, 2008

telecommunications: twists and turns

Infrastructure is crucially important for the development of user generated content of Web 2 and the shift to the knowledge economy, yet Australia's telecommunications infrastructure is middling to poor. Consider the implications of the Rudd Government's cancellation of the Opel contract, which was designed by the Howard Government to deliver broadband to regional and rural Australia.

Conroy's cancellation effectively closes down competition, entrenches the power of Telstra, and that leaves us with the fibre-to-the-node broadband network subsequently proposed by Conroy in his magic pudding mode. All those conduits lead to Telstra and it makes it more difficult for the Group of 9 companies in their effort to develop an FTTN plan in competition with Telstra's own FTTN plan.

Opel was created by the Howard government, in part, to politically neutralise Labor's own $4.7 billion plan for a national FTTN broadband network. Even though Opel was flawed and politically driven, it did promise real benefit and competition to regional Australia as it offered broadband for those regions Telstra had no interest in.

So all the Government's eggs are now in the FTTN basket, and Telstra looks as if it is now the only party that can deliver the network. Telstra is the logical builder of FTTN, which is not a new network but an extension of its existing national fibre network. What is still being rejected by Conroy is the long-term answer---fibre-to-the-home.

Conroy's decision leaves us with a Telstra that behaves as if it has a God-given right to taxpayer money and to screw both competitors and customers for everything it can get. Telstra is already insisting on capital investment returns at a level that only near-monopolies get.

WiMax can work but the issue is the cost. For instance, Internode's Coorong and Yorke Peninsula network projects were strongly backed by the Coorong District Council and District Council of Yorke Peninsula, underpinned by the SA State Government’s Broadband Development Fund, and subsidised by the Australian Broadband Guarantee. This has enabled Internode to bring metro comparable broadband to several parts of South Australia. Internode have publicly stated that Telstra backhaul is a major limiting factor to further deployments.

One sign of hope is that Internode states that wireless broadband would continue to play an important roll in delivering rural broadband services alongside the Government's planned Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network.

Posted by Anon at 12:59 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

China's intellectual life

Mark Leonard has an interesting article in Prospect on intellectual life in China. He says that he had imagined that China's intellectual life consisted of a few unbending ideologues in the back rooms of the Communist party or the country's top universities. Instead, he stumbled on a hidden world of intellectuals, think-tankers and activists, all engaged in intense debate about the future of their country.

Inside China—in party forums, but also in universities, in semi-independent think tanks, in journals and on the internet—debate rages about the direction of the country: "new left" economists argue with the "new right" about inequality; political theorists argue about the relative importance of elections and the rule of law; and in the foreign policy realm, China's neocons argue with liberal internationalists about grand strategy. Chinese thinkers are trying to reconcile competing goals, exploring how they can enjoy the benefits of global markets while protecting China from the creative destruction they could unleash in its political and economic system. Some others are trying to challenge the flat world of US globalisation with a "walled world" Chinese version.

He says that paradoxically, the power of the Chinese intellectual is amplified by China's repressive political system, where there are no opposition parties, no independent trade unions, no public disagreements between politicians and a media that exists to underpin social control rather than promote political accountability. Intellectual debate in this world can become a surrogate for politics—if only because it is more personal, aggressive and emotive than anything that formal politics can muster.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:27 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 2, 2008

no worries mate

The economic pundits at the New Agenda for Prosperity were saying that Australia's economy is booming, will continue to boom, and that China and India's demand for minerals will see Australia through the recession in the US and the downturn in the global economy. This is the decoupling thesis and it is strongly held amongst Australian economists.

Australia's problems are held to be primarily inflationary ones. The short-term policy agenda is dampening demand, whilst the long-term policy agenda is Treasury's scenario of addressing of productivity, participation and population growth to make the economy more productive, efficient and internationally competitive.

This national discourse does not address the way the most severe and still ongoing –financial crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression highlights the need to reform the financial architecture of the global economy. The U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson's proposals for the reform of the financial system compare with the principles and ideas for optimal financial regulation and supervision represent a step forward.

However, they overemphasize the role of self-regulation, market discipline and reliance on principles rather than rules that have miserably failed to deliver an appropriate regulation and supervision of the financial system.

We have the biggest financial crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression and the US Treasury is talking in terms of Wall Street self-regulating. Wall Street claims that too-harsh regulation would leave them hamstrung against countries with lighter-touch regulatory regimes. So the US Treasury protects Wall Street from ia reinvigorated London market and the emerging centres of financial power in Asia. The ancien regime re-emerges more or less intact.Great.

What the decoupling thesis ignores is that a recession in the US with its waves of firms collapsing, declining corporate profits, redunancies, and spillovers into consumer markets is less demand for Chinese exports amongst US consumers shopping at Wal-Mart That means closed production lines in China, despite the growing internal demand. That means less demand for Australia's raw resources.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:11 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 1, 2008

digital economy and innovation

I see that the digital economy bit of the 2020 Summit has disappeared. So where are we on this? Anyone have any ideas? What is the connection to the creative economy and social networking and the innovation system in the changing media landscape? How do we begin to connect these diverse flows together? Is it through an information or knowledge society?

Let's begin with David Frith, who writes Doubleclick in The Australian. Those, like The Australian, who claim to have their pulse on the nation should have some ideas, shouldn't they? Firth has a post that considers and questions the telco's view of the infrastructure underpinning the digital economy:

WiFi hotspots - now spreading through cities worldwide like a virus - will become as irrelevant as telephone booths... WiFi is doomed because: (a) more and more people are switching to mobile third-generation (3G) phone services such as Telstra's Next G, and (b) support for high-speed packet access (HSPA) networks such as Next G is being built into more laptops.With a little 3G gizmo plugged into the USB port on our Apple MacBook, and an external antenna plugged into the module, we can log on to the internet wirelessly at very fast speeds just about anywhere in Australia, even in moving trains.Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison offer similar services, although without the geographic spread at this stage.

Well I have one of these 3G gizmo's for my Toshiba laptop and it works fine in metropolitan Australia--eg., when I was in Perth last week. I do not need to use a phone to blog, nor do I want to. Even Apple's iPhone, which connects to the internet via WiFi, probably won't change the fact that it is the laptop which is my mobile toolbox, not the phone. It was what I could do with the technology that was important.

Frith, who is arguing against the telco view of the digital economy, goes on to say:

Now it's true that if you have a 3G mobile broadband connection, you're unlikely to use an airport WiFi hotspot; simply because the airport monopolies charge mightily for WiFi, but there are a lot more WiFi users than 3G mobile broadband users, and we can't see the hotspots becoming the equivalent of unused telephone boxes for years to come.

The WiFi hotspots are free in most Australian airports in the capital cities --apart from Sydney. I've been heavily reliant on them in the past. What is noticeable is the lack of WiFi hotspots in our cities which is what drove me to get a 3G connection.

Firth's argument for WiFi amounts to this:

There are WiFi and 3G connections, a web browser and GPS navigation maps. So WiFi is far from dying, or even indisposed, but there's no doubt 3G mobile broadband is an up-and-comer that will make inroads in its market.

He has no argument. There is no mention of what Internode's Regional WiMax Network is achieving; what Internode is doing in Adelaide with hotspots, or how viable the strategy of building a series of hot spots into a wireless network is. Nor does Firth consider what Australians might do with their digital capability once they’ve got it, or how we will acquire the skills and motivations required to benefit fully from this new technological mode of being. As John Hartley points out:

The physical ICT infrastructure that has developed since the 1990s has not been matched by a concomitant investment in education – public or private – to promote creative uptake of digital technologies by entire populations. Usage across different demographics is patchy to say the least, continuing to reproduce the class and demographic divides inherited from the industrial era. The scaling up of digital literacy is left largely to entertainment providers and those who want users for their proprietary software applications. In other words, the market.

He adds that for the most part the education system has responded to the digital era by prohibiting school-based access to digital environments, apart from walled gardens under strict teacher control. From this, kids also learn that formal education’s top priority is not to make them digitally literate but to “protect” them from “inappropriate” content and online predators. Although schools and universities certainly teach “ICT skills” and even “creative practice,” so far they have not proven to be adept at enabling demand-driven and distributed learning networks for imaginative rather than instrumental purposes.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:28 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack