Public Opinion

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May 31, 2008

a balance sheet of sorts

The upside is that the final report of the 2020 Summit has been released. It is the result of public debate. The downside is the failure of the Rudd Government to address the anti-Muslim sentiments expressed at Camden over the Islamic school. Why so?

What we also have is the PM telling an disillusioned public service to worker even harder---long hours to meet increased job demands--- is what? At least it is a contradiction to the Rudd Government's rhetoric about balancing work and family and bringing fairness into the workplace as he expected them to work even harder.

Karen Middleton in in an op-ed in The Canberra Times says that:

Rudd has begun undermining his own arguments. He has always said he is governing for the ''long term''. But what is long-term about a short-term solution? And what about the flagship fight against climate change? Is that assisted by lowering the pump price of fossil fuels? It hardly encourages the search for or use of alternatives.

The upside is that the Rudd Government has moved to end discrimination against same-sex couples. New laws to overhaul superannuation rules for gays and lesbians have been introduced into the House of Representatives

On the upside five years a after the coalition invasion began, Australia's combat role in Iraq is over. Thank goodness That was a deceitful war. Support for withdrawal, or “cutting and running” as it used to be called, by the Coalition and its media cheerleaders, was deemed to be evidence of being soft on terrorism and anti-American.Now, the withdrawal – an implementation of ithe ALP's election commitmen---attracts only momentary attention.

The key question of whether petrol will be included in the Government’s emissions trading scheme is what will test the Rudd Government's courage. This was a government, remember, elected on a promise of real action on climate change

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:26 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 30, 2008

From Cronulla to Camden

This is the voice of white conservative Australia that resolutely rejects a multicultural Australia in the name of Australia. Christian schools are okay not Islamic ones is the message:

They look and sound like xenophobes and rednecks to me. But then the Muslim leadership in Australia strikes me as bunch of conservative men with poor English language who have little in common with the younger Australian born Muslim-Australians in a multicultural Australia.

Camden Mayor Chris Patterson rejected claims the decision was made on religious or racial grounds, saying it was based on concerns about traffic flow and the loss of agricultural land. The loss of agricultural land? That happens all the time as cities expand. Traffic flows on the suburban fringe? Presumably, judging by the comments of the locals if it was a Catholic, Anglican or Jewish school there would be no objection.

The reason? Muslims were incompatible with the local community.There speaks One Nation conservatism.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:19 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

money 2.0

It looks as if all those creepy dweebs who hang around on the internet are planning some kind of world domination.

They've kidnapped our kids with MySpace and Nitto, wrecked the film industry with YouTube, sent book retailers to the wall with Amazon, threatened the garage sale with eBay, stuffed the music industry with LimeWire and made Dennis Shanahan unhappy. But is that enough for them? No, apparently not.

Now they're banking with each other.

Laurel Papworth has been watching developments in peer-to-peer lending and is delighted at the idea. In this post she finds a third Australian setup and links to previous posts. The established iGrin is here with a simple graphic of the system.

It works a bit like eBay with the bidding and reputation systems and according to Laurel it's not making the banks very happy at all. A single setup fee? No death threats for defaulters? No charges for anything under any pretext whatsoever except the agreed interest? No database sharing with junk mailers? Whoever heard of such things?

Laurel reckons Australians will be reluctant to expose their money to the high risk, but I don't know about that. Weigh up risking $100 on a fellow human being against donating it to a nasty bank in the form of fees. In the former case you might get ripped off, in the latter you definitely will.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 29, 2008

being consistent

If you live on the Gold Coast you either know a Corby or know someone who knows a Corby. You're obliged to know for sure whether they're a drug dealing family or not regardless of whether you're interested in either drugs or the Corby family. I've never met an actual Corby and have doubts about the claims of many people who say they have, but I'm on Mercedes' side here. Channel Seven has been found guilty of defamation for claiming she was a drug dealer on that monument to journalistic integrity, Today Tonight. Go, the Supreme Court.

ANZ has officially pulled out of the Gunns Pulp Mill deal. They're not saying why, but it would be nice to think that even contemplating funding the thing brought such bad publicity that a bank was afraid of the public backlash. No Lennon, no ANZ, no public credibility and hopefully no mill. Go, public opinion. Even if that wasn't what made the bank think twice, it should have been.

But wait, there's more.

The Irwin family does about as much for me as the Corby one, but I hope they win this. Federal government money went towards buying this whopping great chunk of virgin dirt supposedly in the interests of keeping it virgin, like an innocent pubescent girl. But like pretty much any other government gift, it comes with strings attached. In this case the big bad wolf, or arty photographer (same thing), takes the form of a mining company, which changes everything where appropriateness is concerned. Where's the public outrage when a bit of virgin land is getting perved at and clearly in for a good ravishing? Have we so quickly forgotten the great, self sacrificing Australian that was Steve Irwin who dedicated his life to saving us all from the culturally incompatible bauxite miners? Come on Land Council, you can do it.

And those other self sacrificing Australians the Australian Federal Police. What about them. Don't we care? After they've gone to so much trouble over publicity and all, you'd think we'd be more grateful. "It's very hard to present what we actually do" says Keelty, contemplating a promotional video and delighting Australian YouTubers. I don't know about that. We saw what you do with the Haneef thing. And the magnificent security setup for the APEC OPEC meeting. And when you went out of your way to protect Australians with the Bali Nine event. When it comes to terrorism you've given us a fair idea of who and what we should be terrified of.

Justice is a funny old thing. It's relative really, when you think about it.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 7:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

disillusioned

The Rudd Government's response Bill Henson scandal confirms what I'd suspected before the election. This is a right wing socially conservative Labour; one that had appealed to the intellectuals by going on about the Brutopia of the free market that was arising from those awful Hayekian policies of the free market think tanks. The intellectuals fell into line. A new day was dawning with Rudd Labor.

Alan Moir

Now we have police raids on Sydney galleries, artists in the dock, attacks on contemporary art as the thin blue line goes searching for the dirt and filth under the bedclothes of art. Art is sexualising our children, harming the young, fostering paedophiles intone the various Labour MInisters, whilst accepting the sexualization of kids in advertising, television, beauty pageants and talent shows as entirely normal.

This, remember, is from a political party that has defended the sexual offenders in its own ranks. Remember how they closed ranks around Milton Orkopoulos in Sydney and Bill D'Arcy in Queensland? Isn't that revolting? Condemning public erotica in the form of art as offensive and harmful, accepting it in advertising, and spinning the secrecy masked as decency in its own ranks.

It's the hypocrisy of the social/moral conservatism in federal and state Labor that I find so galling, not the social conservatism per se. This is concerned with the problems of moral disintegration in the context of the breakdown of the binding structures of the traditional order and it sees these traditional moral meanings as the guarantors of social cohesion in the nation-state.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:17 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

May 28, 2008

another step to emissions trading

Matthew Warren in The Australian draws attention to a key piece of the emissions-trading scheme jigsaw having fallen into place. He says that yesterday's announcement of privately funded gas-fired baseload electricity in NSW sets a floor price for carbon under the impending emissions-trading scheme of $20 a tonne. He says:

If there is a new coal baseload station, it will be built using clean-coal technology; at $20 a tonne for emissions, conventional coal-fired stations will be too expensive. Gas industry sources have privately calculated $20 a tonne is the minimum price needed under an emissions-trading scheme to invest in new baseload power stations. At that price, Queensland Gas's new combined-cycle power station will be able to compete with the existing stock of cheaper coal-fired plants. Any lower and they will not be able to proceed.

If this is the case, then a soft start to emissions trading; one that translates to a $200-a-year rise in household power bills and a 5.6c-a-litre jump in petrol. Warren adds that This soft start will mean the Government's mandatory renewable energy target of 20per cent by 2020 will drive most of the new energy investment in Australia. Without it, new wind power and other renewables would need a carbon price of $40 a tonne to enter the market.

A carbon price of $40 a tonne does not to be politically acceptable a the moment. But we kinda suspected that didn't we.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:56 AM | TrackBack

May 27, 2008

peak oil folks

The atmospherics around the politics of petrol prices in Australia is increasing by the day as the realization dawns that cheap oil, which was arguably, the most important driver of prosperity in the industrial world during the 20th century, is coming to an end. Expensive energy will be the only significant driver of the economic development in the 21st century.

Hovering in the background is the date when global production of oil peaks. How would we know? One possibility being canvassed is 2017. Others argue that oil production and supplies will steadily decline by 2 percent annually for the time being. However, it is hard to take the political debate about cutting excise on petrol seriously:

Worst Wing

A key factor is the growth in demand in emerging markets such as China and India. This implies that worldwide demand for oil will out pace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will continue to increase.

What we do know is that to a large extent it depends on the Saudi’s. Political peaking it occurs if they decide to no longer increase production. Geological peaking occurs when they cannot increase production.

Ingram Pinn

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times says that it would be a mistake to focus in shock only on the short-term jump in prices since the bigger issues are longer term:

Here are three facts about oil: it is a finite resource; it drives the global transport system; and if emerging economies consumed oil as Europeans do, world consumption would jump by 150 per cent. What is happening today is an early warning of this stark reality. It is tempting to blame the prices on speculators and big bad oil companies. The reality is different.

It looks increasingly hard to expand supply by the annual amount of about 1.4m barrels a day needed to meet demand. This means an extra Saudi Arabia every seven years. What is sobering is that we cannot burn oil that does not exist. We are no longer living in an age of abundant natural resources.

What we have in Australia is a debased standards political debate concerned with the petty point-scoring between the Opposition and the Government about easing the burden of petrol prices. This political debate seems to have reached a new low, one pushed down by the road lobbyists. Would the Rudd Government cut the GST on petrol while continuing to impose the GST on rail, tram and bus fares?

The Rudd Government is not set up for this kind of policy. Two weeks ago, the Government committed in the Budget to $3.2b worth of transport infrastructure projects. Of that, $192m was going to rail - primarily rail freight. The rest was for roads. It did also announce $75m for a joint Commonwealth-State process to study projects to relieve urban congestion, although a number of those are roads projects. This is not long term policy thinking. That would begin with a shift in the funding for roads to be reallocated to include all transport, with half going towards public transport. This should support the installation of high quality, high-speed passenger rail links between the major centres in a city.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:51 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

May 26, 2008

goodbye Paul Lennon

So Paul Lennon is no longer the Premier of Tasmania. He has resigned. He had little choice as political paralysis gripped his government and it was doing badly in the polls. Although Lennon did introduce groundbreaking social legislation including protection for victims of domestic violence and compensation for abused wards of the state and the Stolen Generations (an Australian first), he will be remembered for his damaging pursuit of the pulp mill in Tasmania, which caused him to allegedly lean on a former judge, bypass established planning bodies and alienate at least half the population.

Will the tradition of corrupt corporatist governance that he inherited from Jim Bacon continue under David Bartlett and Lara Giddings? Or will the new Labor Government begin to make the transition to open and accountable government to remove the stench of corruption and political death?

Lindsay Tuffin, editor of the Tasmanian Times, writes:

It will suit many to claim all this [corruption] was the creation of Paul Lennon. But that would be untrue to political history. Paul Lennon’s greatest failing was that he had neither the political courage nor vision to break from the political culture and practice of his predecessor Jim Bacon....But the question for the Labor Party and for Tasmania is: Can it purge itself not just of Paul Lennon but the communal cancer of cowardice, thuggery and lies that benefited them all for a decade.To share power is after all to share guilt for the crimes of power.

It--the poisioned chalice --- goes back beyond to the Liberals---to John Gray's Government. Of course for the conservative side of Tasmanian politics the desperate state of Labor is due to the Greens, not the politicians working for corporate interests.

What then of the Gunn's pulp mill? Will it go ahead? The ANZ Bank has pulled ou from financing the mill. Gunns is searching for a replacement to lead the syndicate of bankers that ANZ had been putting together for the project. However, Gunn's is heavily subsidised and may be in financial difficulty, given the credit crisis. Does this open a space for the state to have a future that moves away from dependence on logging old-growth forests or a government-subsidised pulp mill?

Bartlett will not seek to stop the mill, planned for the Tamar Valley north of Launceston. However, unlike Lennon he is not close to Gay, the timber union or the logging industry. He will come under intense pressure to toe the line on forestry and the mill. Bartlett says he wants to ease divisions in Tasmania, including over Matthew Denholm, The Australian's Tasmania correspondent, says that

Bartlett will not seek to stop the mill, planned for the Tamar Valley north of Launceston. However, unlike Lennon he is not close to Gay, the timber union or the logging industry. He will come under intense pressure to toe the line on forestry and the mill. Bartlett says he wants to ease divisions in Tasmania, including over the logging of old-growth forests. However, at his first press conference as Premier yesterday, he refused to rule out ending old-growth logging or at least protecting further forests from logging. Asked about whether he would back Lennon's idea of subsidising pipelines for the mill, he said whether the project succeeded depended solely on Gunns and its financiers. It remains to be seen if Lennon's would-be legacy is as dead as the political career from which it was born and on which it inflicted so much strife.

The state government under Bartlett is saying that the pulp mill is on track. Their position is one of trying to talk up the pulp mill in the face of increased public opposition which they steadfastly refused to recognize.

So more cultural jamming will be required. Gunns, in the meantime, will be looking for a way to refinance their pulp mill. How will they do this in a world where credit is tight and they need extensive state subsidies?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:34 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

May 25, 2008

yuk

Hillary Clinton is fading away from the Presidential nomination primaries, as is the dream of a woman as US President. But do we need this kind of misogyny?

Steve Bell

Whatever you make of Clinton she has embodied the dreams and struggles of woman in the 1960's, 1970s and 1980s, to be be treated as equals and to accepted as capable of running the show. But she has been judged by the younger women----their daughters?--- not to the right person for the job in current circumstances.

Is Clinton losing it with her suggestion that she is staying in the race because of a possibility of assassination? Is that the full stop on her campaign? Or just a case of her remarks about Bobby Kennedy being taken out of context? Clinton has had several months to get used to the idea that she lost and Obama has won. The only way Clinton can win the nomination, baring some genuine catastrophe such as an assassination is for the superdelegates to decide to give her the nomination. Why would they do so after Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates and is probably within 100 delegates of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. It is even less likely that the superdelegates to decide to give her the nomination.after the assassination gaffe.

Deep political rifts have been created in the Democrat Party as a result of the charges of racism and sexism through out Presidential primaries and Clinton putting individual ambition over party solidarity.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:49 PM | TrackBack

May 24, 2008

Bill Henson: conservatism as farce

I'm a bit stunned by the reaction of Sydney conservatives and others to the photographic work of Bill Henson that was to have be shown at the Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery in Sydney. Stunned because some of the populist conservatives are even saying that it is wrong to have pictures of naked children both in an exhibition in art gallery and on the gallery's website; and that the parent who gave consent to the kids modelling for Henson should be disciplined. It's weird.

Bill Leak

The critics say that the offensive photos constitute a crime and so we will have another obscenity trial with lawyers abound in Australia. The position of the moral conservatives implies that Henson's intention was to create pornography not art, even though the work was hung in a commercial art gallery, and that the parents colluded.

Does not the existence of the exhibition show that the photographs had been produced and used for a genuine artistic purpose. How else are you going to judge intent?

It's a farce What would be truly awful or obscene is that photographs are deemed obscene---ie., a jury or magistrate---decides that they are pornography, and the photographs are then destroyed.

I notice that The Australian, that bastion and defender of Australian conservatism, is sitting on the fence:

Many, including Kevin Rudd, find the images offensive. Sadly, they could already have been viewed by internet pedophiles. Others are not offended and would point to the works' undoubted artistic merit and to equally explicit images of emerging teenage sexuality in classical art. Either opinion is valid. But the row raises questions about when individuals should be restricted from viewing material of their choice. Child safety is paramount, and striking the proper balance between prudent protection and repressive panic is a fine line.

Either opinion is valid, the editorial says. That claim implies that the judgements that the works are porn or art are both valid. I thought that The Australian was absolutely opposed to this kind moral relativism? Didn't it belt up the Left over its alleged moral relativism in the culture wars for over a decade on this issue? It's a farce.

Update: May 25
Kevin Donnelly says in The Sunday Age that:

Presenting young girls in such a vulnerable and voyeuristic way is especially wrong given the way children's sexuality is being commodified and exploited in advertising, marketing and popular culture....While I have not seen the photographs in question, a number have been reproduced in the print media. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most viewers, I think, would agree that images of naked, under-age girls, silhouetted and standing provocatively are unacceptable.

Note the slide from art to advertising. How is this work wrong if it is a critique of the way that children's sexuality is being commodified and exploited in advertising, marketing and popular culture? Shouldn't this interpretation be considered given modern art's strong tradition as a critique of the values of the capitalist market?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:18 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

May 23, 2008

petrol + suburban realities

Paul Krugman has an interesting column in The New York Times on ways to deal with rising petrol prices. He notes that we live in a world where high petrol prices and peak oil are increasingly a part of everyday life. From this perspective we can see that the outer suburban fringe of our capital cities have been built on the assumption of cheap realities and car transport. That assumption is increasingly unrealistic. Hence the title of his column--'stranded in suburbia.'

He says that:

Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world. If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.Notice that I said that cars should be fuel-efficient — not that people should do without cars altogether.

That means more fuel efficient cars and driving less. The latter requires us to rethink the way that we live in our cities.

What is needed, Krugman says, are more:

pleasant, middle-class neighborhoods consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping. It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

Or Australia for that matter. Our cities are dominated, and choked, by cars with inadequate and run down public transport. All the car lobby wants is cheaper petrol and more freeways. State governments across the nation continue with outer suburban expansion, more free ways and minimal investment in public transport.

Last night on the ABC's Question and Answer programme Kevin Rudd, the Prime MInister, said his infrastructure fund would fix all this as he has a plan to invest in big infrastructure projects. There was little about the content--infrastructure appears to mean roads and ports to keep goods moving to sell to yet more minerals to China and India. Rudd was very flowery on making cities more sustainable as modes of life.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:42 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Friday humor

Just a light and witty note about the reading habits of the readers of the mainstream media:

Leunig

Presumably we are we entertaining ourselves rather than informing ourselves. What Leunig doesn't show is that the mass media market is fragmenting into different markets. We desire short, sexy and showy ideas. But not too sexy or young as that causes a conservative backlash-- one driven by the desire to keep the conservative movement in a state of moral outrage and panic.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:38 AM | TrackBack

May 22, 2008

why subsidise private health insurance

One washup of the Swan budget is the health debate arising out of the changes to the Medicare Levy surcharge, which in effect reduced the tax on citizens that was then used to prop up the private health insurance industry. The Liberal Party's rhetoric is that reducing this tax is being done because the ALP hates private health insurance in the same deep way that they hate private education.

As pointed out in an "earlier post this debate is being framed by the vested interests of private health insurance as an issue about the public health system to avoid the question of subsidy of the private health funds. It also carefully avoids the significance of primary health care outside hospitals and the issue of whether the way we fund and organise primary care needs a major overhaul.

In his second post on changes to the Medicare levy threshold Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy says that he is very interested to hear some fact-based discussion about why the system of subsidy for private cover should—as the AMA, the Opposition and the health industry argue—remain pretty much unchanged. Facts are in short supply at this stage in the debate, but we can look at the arguments for why the private health industry needs to subsidised so heavily when a neo-liberal mode of governance is deeply opposed to government intervention in the market, celebrates lower taxes, and opposes subsidies and protection.

As Tim Dunlop says this is an industry that calls on the public purse in order to maintain their own profitability. Mike Steketee concurs in his op-ed in The Australian. The health funds, he says are propped up by so many government supports that their product is more accurately described as semi-private health insurance:

No other industry receives a 30 per cent government subsidy on the prices it charges: make that 35 per cent for premiums for members between 65 and 69 and 40 per cent for those 70 and over. The tax surcharge continues for income earners above the higher thresholds set in the budget, with the aim of pushing them into private insurance. There is the government-mandated 2 per cent a year increase in premiums for every year people delay taking out insurance after they turn 30. Then there is the discounted payment the health funds make for private patients treated in public hospitals. Finally, a tight web of regulation means competition between the funds is limited.

He then asks the right question: 'why in the name of rational economics should we be pouring vast amounts of taxpayers' money into an industry that is uncompetitive and provides a more expensive service?'

Steketee then lists the arguments in support of the subsidies. The first argument that he mentions is this

The argument goes that we need a vibrant private health sector because it offers choice to patients and keeps the public sector on its toes. But who is to say the ideal level of private health insurance is about 45 per cent of the population, as at present, rather than the 30 per cent it might fall to without enormous government subsidies?

The reason is that at 30 per cent the private health industry is not viable. It needs a certain mass and that is around 40%. So why do need to keep the industry viable? Shouldn't that be about offering good health products to attract consumers to buy the product in the marketplace. Why is this exception made to the way the market works?

This is where the second argument cuts in, and it is not an infant industry argument. Steketee says:

Private health insurance, say its supporters, takes pressure off public hospitals. But to the extent that is true, it comes at a cost. Doctors charge higher fees for private patients, who also are more likely to undergo more procedures and more expensive ones. This would not necessarily matter if the quality of medical care was better but the evidence on this is ambiguous. Nor would it matter if it did not involve large buckets of government money to private insurance. The 30 to 40 per cent rebate alone cost the federal budget $3.5 billion last financial year. In terms of its impact on health, much of it is wasted because it goes to people who had private health cover before the rebate was introduced and would keep it whether or not it was subsidised.

Steketee says that a much better use of the money would be to spend it on public hospitals or, for that matter, private hospitals. Steketee, like the other commentators, ignores the better option of investing money into revamping primary health care to keep people well and out of hospital. They debate is being conducted as if the network of diverse (medical and non-medical) primary care practices don't exist. It is this absence that gives an air of unreality to the debate about health care.

These are the only two arguments that Steketee mentions. The other argument is competition: the private health industry provides competition to the public health system and keeps the latter on its toes as well as offering choice. The problem here, as Alan Mitchell pointed out in yesterdays AFR, cost containment is the weak spot of Australia's private health insurance and fee-for-service medicine, and little is done to strengthen the discipline on costs. Inflation is actually built into the private health care system.

Steketee rightly points out that a major explanation for why the private funds struggle to keep their members is because they offer a poor product:

Out-of-pocket costs are the main reason people cite for giving up their membership. Understandably, they resent being rewarded for buying insurance by having to fork out extra money when they actually claim benefits. There has been a reduction in the number of private patients facing gap payments but after at least 15 years of trying to sort out this issue, more than 15 per cent of hospital services still involve a gap payment and one that is increasing.

They have no incentive for cost containment as they can keep increasing their premiums year by year above the inflation rate. Steketee says that The funds are not to blame: they are well aware of the damage gap payments cause to their business. But they often lack the clout to force doctors [specialists?] into agreements that guarantee no gaps and when they do succeed, the doctors [specialists?] can extract a hefty price.

Surely the larger funds with market power could extract more favourable deals from private hospitals and specialists? Secondly, the Rudd Government can put pressure on the private health funds by increasing the competitiveness of the public system by ensuring a cut in queues and increasing the quality of services. Thirdly, rather than providing ever more subsidies the Rudd Government should require the private health funds demand performance by cost containment by the use of case-mix funding by the services they private hospitals provide. This would put pressure on private hospitals with above average costs and encourage the private hospitals to specialize where they have cost advantage.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:43 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

A good question

it is well known that subsidies, support and spin have gone the coal industry's way and that our entire society is geared towards burning fossil fuels in order to power our homes and economy. It is also well known that this way of providing energy causes greenhouse emissions and global warming.

It is also well known that the Liberals, when in power, did very little about it. The current leadership continues to backpedal on this issue as they seek to 'cut through' by taking the economic populist turn of cheap petrol for everyone. The exception is rebate of $8000 for installing solar panels on households by Howard, which dramatically shifted the goalposts shifted in solar's favour, aimed to reduce carbon dioxide, not give middle-class welfare.

Alan Moir

Malcolm Turnbull in his address at the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday was able to articulate some of the uneasy questions raised by last week's Swan budget. A key question is: 'How can a government on one hand claim that climate change is our greatest challenge, then on the other hand remain silent about the budgetary impact of an emissions trading scheme, while simultaneously penalising the solar energy industry?'

The story being spun is that the coal-fired electricity generation can continue to be the major contributor to global electricity generation and the world can still restrict carbon dioxide emissions to a level constant with holding climate warming below 2 degrees. Kenneth Davidson in The Age says that the main benefit of the investment in geosequestration is that its promise, no matter how nebulous, provides an excuse for "business as usual" for the highly profitable coal industry. He adds:

Based on recent reductions in the cost of renewable energy and industry forecasts, it is expected that the cost of renewable generation — particularly from solar and hot rocks — is likely to be competitive with fossil-fuel generation with the carbon price of $20 to $30 per tonne already being anticipated by the market.
There is a genuine "infant industry" argument for assistance to renewable electricity generation. An expanding market for solar energy will drive down costs through research, innovation and economies of scale. It was an industry in which Australia had a genuinely competitive advantage up until the mid-'90s when the previous federal government thought it was better to cut government debt than finance developments in this industry, either directly or indirectly through research projects in universities and CSIRO.

Nothing much has changed, except the rhetoric.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:11 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 21, 2008

Reserve Bank uneasy

I see that the Reserve Bank has some doubts that it has done enough to constrain inflationary pressures and expectations and to ease wage and price rises. The increases in interest rates may not be enough to do the job. during a golden age of demand for its basic commodities, such as coal and iron ore). The Reserve Bank argues thus:

Looking ahead, members could see powerful opposing forces affecting the Australian economy. On the one hand, the slowdown in the developed economies, the ongoing strains in world financial markets and tight domestic financial conditions were working to slow demand and activity. Working in the other direction was the larger-than-expected stimulus to domestic incomes from the rising terms of trade that would flow from the very large recent increases in bulk commodity contract prices. Members acknowledged that the net effect of these forces on the prospects for growth and inflation was highly uncertain.Board members noted the importance of reducing inflation if Australia was to avoid a prolonged period of economic difficulty.

The staff forecast was that inflation would return to the target band by the end of the forecast period in 2010, if the recent slowing in demand was sustained. And then there is this:

The question therefore remained whether the setting of monetary policy was sufficiently restrictive to secure low inflation over time. Members spent considerable time discussing the case for a further rise in the cash rate. But on balance, given the substantial tightening in financial conditions since mid 2007, and the extent of uncertainty surrounding the outlook, the Board decided that it was appropriate to allow the current setting of monetary policy more time to work. However, should demand not slow as expected or should expectations of high ongoing inflation begin to affect wage and price setting, the outlook, and the stance of policy, would need to be reviewed. The Board would need to evaluate prospects for economic activity and inflation in the light of incoming information.

They are sitting on a tightrope. But they fear that they may have to increase interest rates in the future if inflationary pressures don't ease. in the short-term. That makes Malcolm Turnbull's job---working out an alternative economic narrative--- a lot harder doesn't it, especially when Treasury stands by the Reserve bank's mandate to target inflation.

In an address to the Australian Business Economists in Sydney Ken Henry, the Secretary to the Treasury, says:

there has been some questioning in recent times of the appropriateness of the inflation targeting regime for monetary policy that was adopted by the Reserve Bank in the early 1990s; that is, the policy rule that targets inflation of two to three per cent on average over the cycle. Given the significant contribution that the conduct of monetary policy has made to our relatively strong macroeconomic performance in the period since the adoption of that particular monetary policy framework, the fact of this questioning is quite peculiar. And today I want to explain why it is seriously misguided.

That won't help to boost the Liberals credibility as economic managers. That has been tarnished by them squandering the revenue from the resources boom on new spending and tax cuts when in government. They allowed the revenue from the mining boom to feed into the strong economic cycle and bequeathed the misery of resource-fueled inflationary bubble that inevitably led to an interest rate crunch.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 20, 2008

tuesday

Another day, another series of calamitous events for the Federal Opposition. It's like a soap opera where nothing nice ever happens.

The Newspoll which was supposed to give Nelson a bounce didn't. Despite all those semi-naked pensioners' threats and complaints, opinion was fairly evenly divided between those who liked the budget, those who didn't, and those who couldn't care less which, in reality, probably goes for a reasonable chunk of those who said they did or didn't like it, but, confronted with the question, came up with an answer.

As usual the real action is going on in the opposition sandpit, where Brendan has ruled out sacking Malcolm (which means somebody suggested he should by asking the question), Julie ruled out a career move to WA (apparently Malcolm's suggestion), Joe ruled out a career move to NSW (also apparently at Malcolm's suggestion), Alexander ruled out retiring (after Nick told everybody he was going to), and worst of all possible worsts, Brendan declared he has Malcolm's full support (which means he doesn't, he knows it, and doesn't expect anybody to believe he does).

Alexander is cross with them all, saying they need some steely, steely discipline if they want to win the next election, but Alexander seems only half convinced that they lost the last one and he's no longer in his old portfolio. He says military intervention is warranted in cases like Burma and the security council should have a long, hard think about that. Who is the Opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs anyway? And would whoever it is mind Alexander telling the world what the Australian Opposition thinks it should do?

Back when they lost, at least they had an electable prospect in Turnbull, but that's been cruelled mostly by Turnbull himself. None too bright. You have to wonder what Minchin's been thinking, or whether he's been thinking. Or whether most of this is the sacrifice the rump are prepared to make to get rid of Turnbull and keep the Queen.

Meanwhile, all of their high profile people are being damaged, being forced to say things that can be held against them should they try for leader in the future. As if being part of Howardism wasn't bad enough by itself. Crap politics but great theatre. Pass the popcorn.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:40 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

nasty

There's been quite a bit of nastiness going on in the intertubes over the past few days. Great, long comments threads full of insults, name calling, defaming, bullying, bitch slapping, hair pulling, all the kind of stuff you can reasonably expect when people start discussing the weather.

"Hi, nice to see you. Isn't it a lovely day for this time of year?"

"Quit it with the hysterical global warming fantasy, you Stalinist hippy nazi."

See? You're better off sticking with harmless topics like politics and religion.

Graham Young got upset with the ABC because he didn't like the way Robyn Williams introduced Don Aitken on Ockham's Razor. Aitken doesn't believe in anthropogenic global warming. Young also had a go at John Quiggin, Clive Hamilton and Tim Lambert. AGW believers are apparently bullies. The article isn't as interesting as the comments thread which gets quite nasty, despite the fact that Aitken weighs in to say he wasn't bothered by Williams' intro.

Lambert chimes in and the language turns decidedly blue. I don't know what he's supposed to have done, but Lambert seems to have upset some people to an alarming degree. Daggers at three paces and so much for rational debate.

John Quiggin dusts off Godwin's Law, which says that the minute you accuse someone of being a nazi you lose the argument by default. Young called him a brownshirt, which counts. The weather seems to be the last remaining topic where the language and ideas of the culture wars survives, although anything to do with evolution vs creationism gets a fair run at On Line Opinion, which seems to have attracted more than its fair share of Christian fundamentalists for some reason.

Geoff Davies had a go at changing the subject, via Aitken's piece, from brawls over whether climate change is caused by human activity, to the unsustainability of our indulgent lifestyles. It's pretty obvious by now that spats between believers and skeptics are obfuscating the main game, but commenters don't want a bar of it. It's Bolt versus Flannery or bust regardless of how it's approached.

Clive Hamilton also has a dig at Aitken in New Matilda, in one of the longest pieces I've seen published there. Hamilton argues that Aitken ignorned the science in favour of promo pieces distributed by fossil fuel industries and their less savoury connections with the tobacco industry and conspiracy theorists. Not a good idea Don, to side with the environmental equivalent of the Klu Klux Klan.

The arguments over ABC bias, parts per million and the rigour of peer review don't do much for me, rather it's the ways a big topic can gain momentum, develop and shift distributions on the internet. What are the social functions involved here? What do people get out of it?

Compare these brawls among a few high profile figures, where expertise is guarded with complexity and specialist terminologies, and the amazing collective intelligence at the psephological blogs before the election where both sides of politics left with more than they arrived with. People who just wanted to know who was going to win came out of it understanding some pretty sophisticated stuff about stats, demographics and strategy, and they could join in and learn even more from one another. The whole became more than the sum of its parts.

If it's true that the denialist side comes down to an organised campaign from corporate interests they're doing a damn fine job of it. The whole thing, peak oil, unsustainable consumption, environmental damage and the associated costs get sidelined in favour of bickerings over science very few of us can understand. It starts as a brawl between experts, so there's no space for anything or anyone else. It's not at all constructive. It insists people take sides and locates all usefulness in obscure expertise. Bloody great waste of time.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:52 PM | Comments (27) | TrackBack

scaremongering on health care

There has been some debate in the media about the extent of the numbers dropping private health insurance as a result of the Rudd Government raising the threshold at which the Medicare surcharge levy cuts in ( now $100, 000 for singles and $150,000 for families). The threshold surcharge was introduced by the Howard government to push people into taking out private health insurance as they would have to pay the higher Medicare levy if they remained in the public system.

The private system has been supported by three policy props introduced in the 1990s by the Howard Government to stop the decline in private health insurance membership. These props were a tax surcharge of 1 per cent on top of the Medicare levy for those who do not have private health insurance, a 30 per cent government rebate of premiums for those who do, and age rating that progressively increases private health insurance premiums for those who enter the system after age 30.

The numbers leaving private health insurance would have been run by the computers in Finance, Treasury and Health and Ageing (in this case Treasury) as part of the budget process. That analysis is not for the public, or even opposition Senators, but the leaked figure from Treasury is 480,000 dropping out, with some projected government savings(estimated at $230 million) in terms of the 30 per cent government rebate. The leak from the work of Crosby-Textor to the Australian Health Insurance Association (AHIA) says that around 425,000 would leave. I don’t know any other modeling or references that have been done on this. These figures are much lower than the 900,000 quoted by the Australian Health Insurance Association based on the private work of Pricewaterhousecoopers.

I don’t buy the argument that dropping out of the private health insurance necessarily leads to increased queues at public hospitals causing collapse etc. Most of those dropping out ----cos it’s a bad and expensive product---are young and healthy and so it will not make much difference to the public health system. Those dropping out will turn to primary care practices in order to stay well and out of hospital.

Those arguing the big increase in public hospitals that are on their knees (the increased strain on the public health system will be a huge burden on the rest of the population, reducing our public health system to a third world one) reduce health to hospitals and ignore the significant role played by primary care in keeping people out of hospital. They cover this flaw with their talk about the ALP's ideology. Its all ideology for ideology's sake. No mention is made that it raising the threshold at which the Medicare surcharge levy cuts in is a tax cut that empowers consumers and enables them to decide how they spend their money on health.

Sure, private health premiums will rise (health funds will lose profits from drop in the numbers of fit and healthy singles). The estimate is around 5%. That means the private health funds need to find ways to increase their membership. They could, for instance, develop wellness packages (chiro, gym, nutritionist, physio, massage, psychologist) etc to entice consumer singles to buy their product, rather than relying on state coercion and big subsidies to keep them viable and profitable. This is the marketplace after all, and that means value for money.

What we are currently witnessing is scaremongering.---bully boys pressing the fear button etc----by the Australian Health Insurance Association. No doubt the private health industry will also try to get its hands on of the Rudd Government's flagship $10 billion health infrastructure fund, as these funds will go towards hospital wards as well as medical facilities, technology and projects. That money should be for public hospitals not private ones.

Update: 21 May
The conflict over numbers leaving the private health system as a result of the Rudd Government raising the threshold at which the Medicare surcharge levy cuts in continues with the AMA now weighing into the debate. A report commissioned by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) from Access Economics says that to achieve Treasury's projected savings of $230 million 800,000 people would have to abandon private cover by July. Why start there? Maybe Treasury's estimate of the savings is wrong?

The AMA is spelling out how people will leave---slowly----and it is warning of increased pressure on public hospital bringing them to their knees. The AMA can't argue that it is young people that will be pulling out of health insurance making it more expensive, and argue that those same people are the ones that will overburden our public hospitals.How come the singles won't be visiting their local friendly GP instead of going to the emergency department of the public hospital? Doesn't the GP provide high quality health care?

So the AMA is defending a public subsidy of private health insurance through a special tax on consumers. The specialists in the private hospital system (for whom the AMA speaks) want a special tax to keep their money rolling. Amazing. What ever happened to the principle of the Liberal and free market types that lower taxes are good and higher taxes are bad? Conveniently forgotten when it comes to the private health industry it would seem.

This is yet another indication that the AMA is opposing health reform that addresses equity issues.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:56 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

May 19, 2008

solar suburbs

Matthew Warren is expecting a backlash against Rudd Labor after the dismal budget performance on renewable energy.

Labor went to the election saying it would means-test the Coalition's solar hot water rebate, limiting it to households earning less than $100,000 as part of a broader economic platform to rein in middle-class welfare.

It seemed logical for the Government to extend that to the solar panel rebate, while increasing the number of rebates available. But perhaps they should have consulted the industry first.

Most households who are paying a mortgage and can spare $5000 for solar panels are earning more than $100,000 a year. In the following three days solar installers reported up to 70 per cent of their orders had been cancelled. The hostile reaction on talkback radio revealed outrage from a community that appeared to take vicarious ownership of the generous scheme, even if only a handful actually signed up.

Note vicarious ownership. Warren goes on to argue that other developing renewable industries now have uncertain futures as well. But on the subject of solar panels...

As Robert Merkel points out, the market for solar panels is pretty small at the moment, so the means test will only hit a small number of people. Hardly a backlash. It's also a bit silly to target households when there are so many other much larger vacant rooftops out there. A private home can't compete with what Westfield can offer.

Warren makes the same point:

Solar hot water systems are a cost-effective energy-saving technology for many Australian homes, but rooftop solar panels that generate electricity are still one of the more expensive solutions to climate change. Because of their tangibility and visibility, they have political cachet far in excess of their real value.

Still, I'd argue that in the greater scheme of things, vicarious ownership, tangibility and visibility are important.

Do you want people to feel they have to rely on the government to solve our energy problems, or do you want to give them some sense of ownership? Is it not a good thing in itself for people to feel they can make an active contribution, even if it is only a small one?

The value of household solar panels may lie in their tangibility and visibility, and they may only be tangible and visible in wealthier suburbs, but wouldn't you want them to be desirable? If solar panels become a signifier of success the aspirationals are inevitably going to want them. Wouldn't it be a good thing if people thought about spending their baby bonus on solar panels instead of giant flat screens?

I think means testing the rebate was a mistake from this point of view. The aspirationals point of view. Their rooftops may be individually small and insignificant, but aggregated they're enormous. So is their economic and political clout.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 2:42 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

mental health

In an op-ed in The Australian Ross Fitzgerald says that:

For those concerned about mental health, the Rudd-Swan federal budget is a huge disappointment. The only new measure is the allocation of $2.4 million over three years to establish a national advisory council on mental health to co-ordinate commonwealth, state and territory services to people with a mental illness, but there are no new funds for this or other services.

Yet although about 20 per cent of the population have significant mental health problems, about half do not receive adequate treatment. This especially applies to those with a dual diagnosis.

Dual-diagnosis patients have a psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia, serious depression or bipolar disorders, coupled with a major problem with substance abuse. These patients are often the most difficult to treat because substance abuse interferes with psychological and pharmacological treatments. Specialists in the field estimate that, in the wider community, 50 per cent to 60 per cent of those using chronic and acute mental health services in Australia have substance abuse disorders as well.

The public health system is poorly resourced to treat these people, due to the emphasis on quick turnaround in our public hospitals. During the last years of the Howard government, there was increased access to psychologists and social workers through Medicare and the provision of mental health nurses for psychiatrists and general practitioners.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:30 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 18, 2008

Israel

Avi Shlaim at Open Democracy gives us an interesting history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict on the occasion of it being 60 years since the establishment of Israel. He concludes thus:

Sixty years on, Israel is not fighting for its security or survival but to retain some of the territories it conquered in the course of the war of June 1967. Israel within the "green line" is completely legitimate; the Zionist colonial project beyond that line is not. The war that Israel is currently waging against the Palestinian people on their land is a colonial war. Like all other colonial wars, it is savage, senseless, directed mainly against civilians, and doomed to failure in the long run.

This is what the US's unstinting pro-Israel stance tacitly defends. And:

An independent Palestinian state is bound to emerge sooner or later over the whole of Gaza, most of the West Bank, and with a capital city in East Jerusalem. It would be weak, crowded, burdened with refugees, economically dependent, and insignificant as a military force. The choice facing Israel is between accepting the inevitable with as much grace as it can muster and continuing to resist, restrict, and frustrate the emergent Palestinian state.

What complicates this is Iran.Israel's leaders holds that Iran cannot be stopped in its nuclear pursuits by diplomatic or economic means alone. Iran as a rising power with nuclear potential is just not acceptable.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 17, 2008

US policy in Middle East

Is US power and influence are at low ebb in the Middle East? Is the balance of power in the Gulf and the wider region moving against Washington and its allies there? It sure looks as if Americans can do little to dislodge or weaken Hizballah in Lebanon just as they cannot weaken the Sadrists in Iraq or Hamas in Gaza. Asking these kinds of questions means asking another one:' Is Tehran is on a roll'? It seems like it.

Steve Bell

US policy in the Middle East is structured around containment and it basically postulates that the way to deal with recalcitrant states in the Persian Gulf (i.e. states that are unsympathetic to U.S. interests and objectives) is to isolate them and “contain” them, relying on sanctions and superior military power. The implication is that emphasizing threats and sanctions is placed above even the most minimal engagement.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:58 PM | TrackBack

May 16, 2008

Canberra watch

I watched Brendon Nelson's Budget reply. His performance was okay (passionate populist outrage) but the content was pretty thin. The Coalition doesn't have many cards to deal with, given their recent talk about Rudd's budget as an irresponsible big spend high tax one ( despite the huge tax cuts) that soaks the rich (tax on luxury cars) and doesn't make enough cuts to government spending to constrain inflation that isn't a problem.

Leak

In contrast, the Coalition presents itself as a low tax party (so, in an overheated economy they would fuel inflation and increase interest rates, grocery prices and increase unemployment). As their fiscal policy is at odds with the RBA's monetary policy rather than working together, so their economic management credibility looks tacky and fractured. Their claim that they do not support higher taxes and higher spending is at odds with their record as a government.

Nelson's performance was probably enough to protect his leadership in the short term. The Coalition will block the tax on alcopops (its just a tax grab) the Medicare levy (defend private health insurance) and budget changes to income tests for the Commonwealth Seniors card in the Senate (formal equality). They will reduce the excise on petrol by 5 cents to make it cheaper (so much for enabling the shift to a carbon economy) whilst giving a high priority to dealing with the environmental challenge.

The Coalition's decision to oppose the tax on premixed spirit drinks (alcopops) on the same basis as spirits in general looks to me to be akin to political suicide. This is a preventative health measure designed to discourage excessive drinking among young people, particularly young women. All the tax does is tax the pre-mixed spirit drinks on the same basis as unmixed spirit drinks.

Julie Bishop on Lateline tried to justify the Coalition's opposition to scrapping the changes to private health insurance (increasing the threshold to pay the Medicare levy surcharge) as forcing people into a NHS socialist medicine model. Yet this is a tax cut that eases the penalties put in place by the Howard government to subsidise the private health insurance industry and shift people into conuming private health services. The language of choice--consumers can choose to purchase the products offered by the private health insurance---is now dumped in order to prop up the private insurance industry.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:45 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 15, 2008

sex slavery in Australia?

Thai contract girls in Australia's sex industry? Wasn't human trafficking something that happened in Eastern Europe or Asia? Are there cases of one person treating another as his or her sexual property in Australia? Yes, for sure, as can be seen from this Parliamentary inquiry in 2004 by the House of Representatives Joint Committee on the Crime Commission.

Anne Gallagher says in The Age that sex slavery exists in Australia. Individual girls are brought over here from Thailand, Korea, China and other countries to meet Australia's growing demand for commercial and "exotic" sex. When the "contract girls" arrive in Australia they:

...owe a debt of between $35,000 to $50,000, an amount that is often inflated to cover employer "costs" such as medical tests and food. They are required to engage in sex work, without any payment, for as long as it takes to discharge that debt. "Contract girls" are not stupid and most end up understanding the nature of their exploitation very well. Many decide not to fight. They accept their fate and try to make the best of the period of their debt bondage — waiting for a time that they will be free to work normally or to go home. Others try to resist and escape. Physical violence, forced detention, withholding of identity documents and intimidation are used to control recalcitrant individuals.

Recently in Victoria, Judge Michael McInerney handed down a guilty finding to Wei Tang, ex-licensee of Club 417 in Brunswick Street, who kept five Thai women as slaves in the Melbourne brothel to "service" up to 900 men each over a period of months to pay off "debts" of up to $45,000.These women earned nothing in cash during the period of their "contract," while Wei Tang earned up to $43,000 per woman with each woman's "owner," including Tang, earning as much as $75,000.

In Sydney, a similar trial is currently underway involving the case of a 19-year-old Thai woman who was allegedly put to work in a Sydney brothel against her will.

Gallagher says that:

There is considerable room for improving Australia’s current legislative framework. While component offences are more or less covered, existing legislation only addresses certain of the possible exploitative outcomes of trafficking and even these in an extremely limited way.xv It does not criminalize trafficking per se and in fact does not even recognize the “movement” aspects such as recruitment, transportation and transfer. It also does not recognize aspects of migration fraud associated with trafficking. In summary, and as recognized by the Government’s own enquiry, existing criminal laws do not adequately reflect the realities of the trafficking tradexvi and fall far short of international standards.

Given the important distinctions between people smuggling and trafficking, can trafficking, forced prostitution and forced labour be legally linked to slavery? Is it slavery? Gallagher says that this linking is one of the main questions for the High Court in Queen v Wei Tang. Australia has strong laws against slavery, and they are based on and give effect to Australia's acceptance of one of the oldest of all international rules: the absolute prohibition of slavery. The High Court is being asked to look at this prohibition. What does it mean? Which practices does it cover and which does it exclude?

Update: May 17
We know more about the Wei Tang case. It all began in a brothel in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, where the licensed owner, a Chinese immigrant named Wei Tang, had five Thai women working for her as prostitutes. They arrived in 2002 and 2003 on visas that were fraudulently obtained and worked for her under conditions that prosecutors would later allege amounted to slavery. The women had all worked in the Thai sex industry and knew they were to work as prostitutes here. Four of the women were "purchased" from Thai recruiters for about $20,000 each (one woman was bought from a "Sydney owner").

Upon arrival in Australia, they had little if any money or English and knew no one. They were told they were "contract girls" who owed a "debt" of between $40,000 and $45,000 that they had to work off (a figure much higher than they had been led to expect). This would involve providing sexual services for no payment for up to 900 men. They were housed in bedrooms in which they slept up to four at a time on mattresses on the floor. Their passports and return tickets were taken from them and locked away and their freedom of movement was restricted. They worked 10-to-12-hour shifts six nights a week just to reduce their "debt", and if they worked a seventh night could keep that money for themselves.

UIpdate 2

The history is this:

AUGUST 1998 Wei Tang granted prostitution service provider's licence to operate a brothel and escort agency business in Fitzroy (Club 417).

JUNE 2002 Paul Pick approved as manager of Club 417 under the Prostitution Control Act.

2002-2003 Five Thai women voluntarily agree to come to Australia to work as prostitutes. Thai recruiters were paid a sum of money, generally $20,000, as a purchase price for each woman. Women are told they must work off a total debt of up to $45,000.

JANUARY 2003 Tang, Pick and an associate, Thai national Donporn Srimonthan, arrested and charged. Srimonthan pleads guilty to three slave-trading offences and is jailed.

MAY 2005 Pick found not guilty of eight counts; the jury is hung in relation to other counts against him and all counts against Tang.

JUNE 2006 Tang is re-tried alone and convicted of five counts of possessing a slave and five counts of exercising over a slave a power attaching to the right of ownership, namely, the power to use. Sentenced to 10 years' jail with a non-parole period of six years.

FROM JULY 2007 Victoria's Court of Appeal quashes Tang's convictions and orders another re-trial. Tang is freed on bail. Federal prosecutors appeal to the High Court against the quashing of the convictions. Wei Tang cross-appeals to the High Court. Case began before the full bench this week.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:59 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

May 14, 2008

rhetoric + reality

Will the tightening of fiscal policy make a difference to squeezing inflation? Will inflation stay above the Reserve Bank's target band? Will most of the work have to be done by the Reserve Bank as high continuing inflation flows through into higher wages and prices? Spending has been cut but not by enough to offset the $7 billion in tax cuts.

Moir

The snip and tuck pruning of the Howard government excess is the downside side of the Swan budget. The upside is the nation building--- investment in health, infrastructure and education, and a more constructive relationship with state governments. Defence spending is up university spending is down. So what happened to the education revolution? Where is the military threat to Australia's security? Why not cut the increase in defence spending and put the money into universities?

I'm yet to read the budget papers about the implications of climate change and emissions trading. Since nobody is saying anything I presume that the budget papers do not address these issues. They are postponed to the future. The amount being set aside( $2.3 billion) looks inadequate. The spending has been announced before and some of it has been pushed back.

As Anna Rose observes in New Matilda Rudd and Swan missed this opportunity to make historic shift in Australia's economy by not investing enough in climate solutions to start the shift to a low carbon economy, cutting back on subsidies that encourage us to pollute and using the money to encourage emission reductions is essential.

Consequently, the proof of the Government’s commitment will become apparent when it delivers on its promise of an emissions trading system and, crucially, the target it sets in the medium term

On the other side, after the Liberal years of economic policy that drove greater demand and consumption in the short term, we have an ALP starting to make productive investments needed to underpin longer term economic growth.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:55 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 13, 2008

Roxon's health budget

I didn't see Wayne Swan's budget speech. I was in a health budget lockup in Woden in Canberra and I only saw the beginning of Swan's flat and nervous speech at the end of the tedious briefing. I decided that doing a bit of networking was more important than listening to Swan's baptism as Treasurer helping us deal with uncertain economic times. I'd heard too much from the Rudd Government media management machine "behind the scenes" that produces all those leaks and spin. The budget speech was a non-event.

The health section of the budget suggested that the reform is going to be modest---cautious reform step by cautious reform step. Nothing to rock the boat--- no major redirection under a new government. The centrepiece of the health budget is the $10 billion dollars from the huge Budget surplus ($21 billion) being ploughed back into Australia's health infrastructure under a new fund. This fund, which builds on Costello's ideas, was forgotten by Jane Hailton, the Health Department Secretary, and only recalled at the last minute. Instead we got minutiae in the presentation from the various departmental secretaries that downplayed the cuts in spending in mental health especially, without any narrative of what the health budget was trying to do. I just cannot see the Department of Health and Ageing driving reform.

The Health and Hospital Fund is to be to be managed by the Future Fund. No mention was made of a COAG Reform Fund, which will also be set up to channel reform-related payments to the States.The establishment of the health and hospital funds,(along with infrastructure, education funds) gives a good sense of the nation-building intent over the course of several Parliamentary terms.

There was a push towards preventative care (alcohol, smoking and drugs) and cuts to programs without wielding the meataxe---there's a sense of the Razor Gang going line by line through the spending inherited from the Howard Government----and it meet all its election commitments in this Budget in terms of increased funding for hospitals and GP Superclinics. There was the updating of the Medicare surcharge levy:---raising the threshold ($100,0000 for individuals and $150 000 for families) for people who choose not to take out private health insurance. Is that an indication of reform intent re the public/private health mix.

The health budget indicates that Tanner and Swan have cut spending but not so savagely that the budget will not continue to grow slightly in real terms. The savage attack on spending promised by the Government over summer to fight out of control inflation was rhetoric. What has been done----a reduction in real spending growth to 1.1% from the 5%+ growth of Costello’s last Budget---- is probably enough to keep the Reserve Bank from increasing interest rates. The Finance Minister has found $2 billion more in savings than Swan and Rudd are spending.

Swan and Tanner reconcile the need for fiscal restraint to fight inflation while fulfilling the Government’s election promises and not crunching the economy so hard that it risks exacerbating the coming slowdown. So it is politically astute.

I saw Peter Dutton, the Opposition Finance spokesperson, on Lateline saying that this is a true Labor budget because there's high spending, there is high taxation. He gave every impression of not knowing what he was talking about as he tried to spin a line----the Rudd Government is socialist! The implication was "politics of envy"--- soaking the rich to give to the poor. The budget's big tax cuts-- copied from the Liberals during the election--- does not support that interpretation at all.

What Dutton didn't, or couldn't, say was that the tax cuts ($31billion) are clearly inflationary in an economy that is still at full stretch. Much of them will be spent. They are the centrepiece of the Budget, and in the last couple of months of Government decision making the Razor Gang been running trying to undo the effect of those tax cuts by cutting government spending. Chris Richardson from Access Economics says:

I fear that inflation will be worse than Treasury hopes. Remember, an absolute torrent of money is about to be dropped on Australia's economy. It's not just the commodity boom's continuing, it is accelerating, and this is the biggest set of risks we've had in this inflation challenge so far. The Budget helps, but whether it's helped enough, not clear.

He says that though all the headlines are about US recession, market meltdown, highest interest rates. The biggest thing happening to the Australian economy is the massive jump in coal and iron ore revenue.

There's a good position for the Coalition to argue from. Much better than Turnbull's "what inflation?" rhetoric that is at adds with the analyses of the Reserve Bank and Treasury; or is his subsequent defence of big centralized government with his repeated warnings against substantial spending cuts --wielding the machete and inflicting lots of pain ---at a time of a global economic downturn.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:31 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

disaster

With the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Burma there were suggestions that China could do something to influence the military junta and let some aid agencies in to do what they do. The other, much stickier question is whether some kind of forced intervention is called for in circumstances like these. The mess that is the Iraq war has pretty much cruelled those kinds of possibilities for the time being, so the world is left with diplomacy, which in the case of Burma means China.

Then before any political pressure on China had a chance to build, China suffered its own disaster in the form of an earthquake which, at the moment, seems to have killed at least ten thousand people in the Sichuan province. Tim Costello reckons it will be much easier to help in China since aid agencies already have bases there, and he doesn't seem to anticipate any political interference.

The media coverage of these events doesn't see any of our Asian neighbours falling over themselves to lend a hand. Everything is about the UN, George and Laura Bush hand-wringing despite their own failures after Katrina, and of course Australian contributions. Perhaps we need to have a re-think about where we stand in these international pickles. Do we offer our help as an Asian neighbour or as a Western nation with dubious links?

Meanwhile, horrendous things are happening to stupid numbers of people and these kinds of events are likely to become more frequent as the plate that hosts Australia inches north. I thought geological time was supposed to be bigger than this? Maybe increased exposure to these kinds of things will generate compassion fatigue and we'll become inured to footage of dead people lying in the streets and floating in the waterways of our nearest neighbours?

At the moment, we can't know since media coverage is too limited to get the kind of public response we saw with the tsunami, when the extent of Australians' generosity surprised everyone. For a country like Burma where the population exists to serve the military it's self-defeating to let the population die, and self-defeating to let foreigners dole out the goodies. We've yet to see whether China faces the same dilemma. It could very well prove to be a bridge for the whole region, Tibet notwithstanding.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Some things blogs can do

In consideration of the the Victorian blogging debacle, in the context of the budget, bearing in mind the state of the Liberals everywhere, in relation to Brendan Nelson, and from the perspective of a political expert, Christian Kerr had a little dig at the blogosphere yesterday.

The headline (probably not Kerr's idea) reads:

Blogs help Libs divide and conquer themselves

Powerful things, blogs. Andrew Landeryou, blogger, who seems to have broken the story, expects much worse to come since it looks as though very few Victorian Liberals didn't know what was going on. Perhaps the Victorian Liberal Party bloggers can claim to be the first Australian bloggers to claim a political scalp. Does it still count if the scalps in question are their own?

It hardly matters since, as Kerr observes:

Real political professionals know that the Australian blog world is insular, often ignorant and has virtually no influence on mainstream debate.

Jeez, I don't know about that Christian. The bloggers in this case were real political professionals, as pathetic as their levels of professionalism may have been.

When you said the Australian blog world is insular, were you aware that you were blogging? Did you mean to infer that the many commenters on your blog are all part of this insular Australian blogdom of which you are a part?

Often ignorant. If you're talking about particular blogs or bloggers that may be true, sometimes, but as an interactive network it's far from ignorant. In fact I'd argue that the sometimes scary levels of expertise are part of the reason the blogosphere is so small.

As for having virtually no influence on mainstream debate, I'll assume you're not using the term 'mainstream' in the Janet Albrechtson sense, in which the mainstream doesn't really exist. That mainstream is too busy watching Australia's Funniest Home Videos to debate about the Victorian Liberals. You must be talking about politics in news media, in which case 'mainstream debate' refers to infighting among the commentariat.

Or perhaps influence is supposed to be the big idea here. If that's the case, I'd suggest that Victorian Liberal Party bloggers currently have an enormous influence. Big enough to help the Libs divide and conquer themselves, in fact. And ruin the budget for the whole Nelson-led party in the view of political experts. Experts who get published in mainstream media.

Maybe debating mainstreamers everywhere will be tempted to take time out from Australia's Funniest Home Videos to find out what this blog thing which brings down oppositions is all about? Or will they explore the Ozblogosphere only to be disappointed at its insularity, ignorance and lack of influence? In which case they'll have to settle for reading about how a blog can wreck a party in the newspapers. And on telly. And the radio.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:05 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

2020 Summit, deliberative democracy, media

I have found it very difficult to find out what actually happened in the exercise of deliberative democracy that was the 2020 Summit. I knew that prevention was discussed in the health stream, but the initial official report was very bland, whilst the media's talkfest interpretation was less than helpful in informing us citizens about the discussions that actually took place. We are promised a more detailed report by May 30.

Stephen Leader makes an interesting point about the media coverage of the Summit in the Centre of Policy Development's coverage of this exercise in deliberative democracy. He says that:

The media coverage of the Summit has been vintage colour-me-cynical Australian-beige. Virtually none has addressed the Summit as instrument of democratic life. Instead, the dull uniformity of articles and clips asserting that no good thing can come from the Summit has been depressing. That we have a prime minister capable of scholarly reflection and grasp, at ease discussing ideas rather than sending them off-shore to an island quarantine station, has largely escaped their attention. Only a fragment of the Summit material has thus far been published and it will be weeks before it all becomes available, but most media have already closed the books.

I concur. As I was holidaying in NZ at the time of the Summit I could only find out about the deliberations by reading what happened through the media's prism. That prism implied that little happened at the talkfest in terms of the process of deliberative democracy generating new ideas.

The mainstream media said very little about linking 'talkfest' to deliberative democracy's ideas about active citizenship and more public involvement by citizens. The effect of their narrow view of democracy made me depressed, as the media gave the impression that the same old ideas were being recycled- yet again; and that there was little practical point in transgressing the horizons or limits of the liberal democratic present.

If democracy is based on a set of power relations and we are tangled up in power and knowledge relations that both constrain and enable the possibilities of citizenship, then we subjected to power and subjects in our own right. So we need to develop strategies for governing through citizenship.

From this perspective we can interpret the media discourse as a critique of deliberative democrats as nostalgic romantics. The media's discourse is that the stress on the positive values of political participation and the limits of negative freedom of a utilitarian based political culture, should be dismissed as unrealistic. It's pie in the sky stuff, despite the democratic deficit.

Stephen Leader questions this media critique by stressing the significance of the ideas that arose from the citizen deliberations in the health stream. He says that the single most interesting idea in the Health Strategy Stream related to prevention: to the government having a conversation with the major urban developers, food manufacturers and retailers in order to make it easier for people to choose goods that do not screw up their health.

Rudd could convene such a meeting as a follow-up to the Summit, in the spirit of the Summit. Seated around the table in this forum would be:

....the CEOs of companies that build our cities, design our parks and cycle ways, determine the style of new buildings, decide upon the walkability of a new suburbs, choose what food will be retailed, advertise it, run our commercial gyms and more.[The] PM could say "Ladies and Gentlemen: we have a problem and its called obesity. What are we going to do about it?" Small changes by CEOs ripple into waves - slowly reducing salt, fat and sugar in processed foods, designing mandatory park spaces so that people use them rather than avoid them, developing coherent walkability plans for cities and so forth could all be done at low cost through the combination of commercial, community and political will.

Such a forum was recommended. This kind of deliberation opens up spaces for us as subjects in our own right to be able to care for ourselves so as to keep us well.

We citizens need to actively involved in the deliberation and debate surrounding the laws that govern us, rather than seeing these laws simply as instruments externally provided to protect individual pursuits.The 2020 Summit was a step in this direction.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:11 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

May 12, 2008

Budget blues, 2008

The ethos is no longer one of 'If you've got it, flaunt it', is it? It is all about the dark clouds on the economic horizon: a global economic downturn, a credit crunch due to fallout from the sub-prime mortgages in the US, rising inflation, increased interest rates, budget cuts, fiscal responsibility, sharing the burden and so on.

Bill Leak

The economy is slowing down. But that was the goal of economic governance, wasn't it. Are we going to have some good old fashioned therapeutic politics along the lines of ' I feel your pain' as well? A sharing of the tears as it were in the form of economic populism.

Is the key to tax reform broadening the base to ensure international competitiveness? Or should it minimize the concessions and distortions to make it more efficient? Or should the tax system become more progressive and equitable? It would appear that the GST and some aspects of superannuation have been excluded from consideration.

No doubt those on high incomes and free marketeers will applaud the attack on middle class welfare and deploy the postponement of tax relief for high income earners---the rich. Why so? Their argument is that doing well from hard work is being punished rather than rewarded. It is the politics of envy for those who have done better than the working families during the boom times. Reduce the tax on luxury cars! Increasing the tax on luxury cars is inefficient, as it distorts decision making and rewards the wrong kind of innovation. A progressive tax system is the wrong way to go. It smells of Karl Marx.

Update:13 May
The strategically placed "leaks" about the "tough as hell" budget have been freely flowing the last few days. This media management can be seen in the leaks about the rise in luxury car taxes, the increase in Medicare surcharge levels, the climate change package, the collapse in revenue, the cuts in taxation expenditure, aged care funding etc etc.

The ghostly pale Liberal Opposition appears to have gone into hiding as the voice of their leader and shadow ministers are nowhere to be heard in the media. What is heard is distant Liberal voices attacking themselves.So who questions the Rudd/Swan spin about them being economically responsible, delivering on its election commitments, responding to the inflationary pressures inherited from the irresponsible Coalition, and investing in the long term future of the country. The media? Are they going to show us the extent of the rise in unemployment as economic growth is slowed?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:24 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 11, 2008

House of Clinton

Why would a smart woman like Hillary Clinton continue her campaign when the odds are against her? Does Clinton's doggedness in fighting on reflect a hope on her part that she wants to add expected wins in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico to her grand total, and then extract political favours from Obama, which could include the vice-presidential slot? Will Clinton be able to force her way onto the ticket?

Peter Brookes

Americans are probably witnessing a changing of the guard, the final days of the House of Clinton, after 16 years of dominance. Yet a large part of the Democratic electorate, – especially white, blue-collar and the elderly – remain passionately loyal to the Clintons, and openly hostile to Obama.

Clinton's heritage, as Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times, is a Democrat party that looks to be deeply divided along race and class lines.

Update: 12 May
African-American voters have broken for Obama in margins that make Hillary Clinton look about as popular in the neighborhood as Rudy Giuliani. So much for Hillary Clinton's alleged roots in the black community. Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Nation says that:

so much of what's been said about Barack Obama and African-Americans has been so shockingly wrong. Intellectuals examining Obama are trapped in an ancient dynamic--one that even in its heyday was overstated--in which white and black America are constantly at each other's throats, and agree on nothing. The either/or fallacy is their default setting.....Obama has redefined blackness for white America, has served notice that wherever we are, we are. What he is positing is blackness as a valid ethnic identity with its own particular folkways and yet still existing within the broader American continuum.

The shift is in focus from white racism to black culture, which Coates explores in this article on Bill Cosby in The Atlantic.

Now that it's clear Hillary's presidential campaign is all but over, the right is proceeding apace with their attempt to attack Michelle Obama as radical, unfeminine, unpatriotic. One of the most basic rhetorical tropes in the Republican and Right's tactic book is that all Democrats are radicals who hate America, that all female Democrats are ball-busting bitches and all male Democrats are girly-men (Barack Obama is an effete latte-sipping snob). Then the racism will be poured on. Read Kathy-G's post on this at The G Spot.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:42 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

May 10, 2008

Canberra: economic narratives

What is the economic narrative of the Rudd Government? It used to be investing in new infrastructure, increased productivity and broad reform. Their argument was that the Howard Government had squandered the proceeds of the boom in mineral exports instead of investing in infrastructure and education and health to enhance and expand the capacity of the economy to generate economic growth. That is their big picture.

Yet that has been undercut by the alternative narrative of addressing inflation through big budget cuts and substantial surpluses so as to help the Reserve Bank's use of monetary policy to squeeze inflation. And yet this alternative narrative is undercut by the big personal income tax cuts that are in opposition to the use of interest rates to squeeze inflationary pressures in the economy and reduce economic growth.

So which is the economic narrative? Do these different narratives cohere in a broader big picture? If so, what is that big picture? It is not clear. Are the conflicting tendencies being thought through? It is not clear.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:52 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

cyclone-hit Myanmar

Washington likes to call Myanmar an "outpost of tyranny". Presumably, the curbs by cyclone-hit Myanmar on overseas help for its devastated population by the military dictatorship is done to protect their hold on power and its illegitimate misrule. International aid to allowed to trickle into the country.The regime continues to resist US and UN disaster relief and food aid personnel from entering the country.

This is despite 100,000 dead with tens of thousands still missing, whole villages and townships wiped off the map, a complete loss of physical and communication infrastructure and 1 million of Myanmar's citizens left bedraggled, homeless and susceptible to water-borne diseases by Cyclone Nagris.

Moir

Zao Noam in Asia Times Online says that:

The Myanmar government has yet to offer any assistance to those devastated by the cyclone, despite the vast number of sufferers and the area's vital importance to the national economy. Yangon is the center of business for the country, and the delta region provides the nation's rice.

Noam says that communities came together and cleaned up their homes and streets as best they could but community action remains limited in the face of such a catastrophe.

The junta's refusal to issue visas to aid workers "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:27 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 9, 2008

informed

Jason at Gatewatching advises a new report on Press Freedom in Australia is out and apparently there has been some headway. I haven't read it yet, but according to Jason the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance are looking forward to improvements in freedom of information over the next year.

The alert among us will have noticed that vital information has already begun to circulate more freely. I, for one, feel far more informed about grave issues than at any time since 9/11. Take this for example:

"Grave-robbers 'used skull as bong'"

Authorities in Texas have filed corpse-abuse charges against two men who allegedly removed a skull from a grave and used it as a bong.
One of the men allegedly told police they dug up a grave in an abandoned cemetery in the woods, removed a head from a body and smoked marijuana using the skull as a bong.

These guys should have been in the creativity stream at the 2020 summit.

The big news of the day though is Burma, where freedom of information is a problem and media has apparently had trouble getting in.

Undaunted by some measly military junta, some brave journo has nevertheless gone straight to the source.

"Rambo takes aim at Burma's junta"

Sylvester Stallone, whose latest Rambo film takes him to fight baddies in Burma, has ripped into the junta's handling of a devastating cyclone.

"As a result of Rambo and the cyclone, world attention is increasingly turned toward Myanmar [Burma]. I hope that the situation will improve and am honoured if I could be of any help."

So there you go. With a little help from a cyclone Sly has saved the world again. So much for those who think celebrities are a waste of space.

Amazing how easily reality is confounded with entertainment to the point where somebody who spends their time pretending to be other people can be confused with an authority on a topic because they once pretended to be somebody in a vaguely similar situation. Still, it's nice to know our media has the freedom to obtain and share this information with us. We'd be so much the poorer without it.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:52 PM | TrackBack

the limits of health prevention

Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, has an op-ed in The Australian on health prevention, lifestyle illness and wellness tha tis based on his recent monographThe False Promise of GP Super Clinics, Part 1: Preventive Care He says that Australian governments have told us to quit smoking, eat moderately and exercise regularly, most memorably through the Life! Be In It campaign. We have listened, up to a point at least, and the easy prevention work has now been accomplished. He adds:

Many middle-class people are converts to the wellness cult: they have stopped smoking, improved their diet and started to exercise. But many others, particularly those on lower incomes, prefer to live for the day and have ignored the healthy lifestyle message. Recent reports on public health policy in Britain and Australia found that despite decades of spending on prevention programs, levels of physical activity have not increased and obesity levels have shot up. Obesity-related chronic disease already puts pressure on the health system and it will accentuate the challenges we face as the population ages.

Prevention hasn't worked, he says, because however intensively the health lifestyle message is pushed, it comes down to individuals to have the will, self-discipline and impulse control to change longstanding behaviours that are often pleasurable. As international studies have found, the main reason anti-obesity initiatives have failed is that many people find it difficult to sustain lifestyle modifications for long periods.

Okay, that is pretty right. So where to next? What policy options do we have to address this?

Sammut rejects government intervention as it is paternalistic and an example of the nanny state. He argues that the Rudd Government holds that it is the government, rather than the individual, that the experts deem responsible for obesity, because it has not done enough to force people to drop their hamburgers and get off the couch. Their argument is interpreted thus:

Obesity has been redefined as an epidemic, as if victims passively contract it (infected, of course, by wicked and coercive fast-food advertising). As the victims of this epidemic are concentrated in lower-income groups, obesity has also been classified as health inequality, which makes it a social problem. The failure to curb obesity demonstrates is how the system failed to provide help to turn knowledge into practice. So-called ordinary Australians therefore need Medicare-funded preventive health care, of course, because unless the government was prepared to help them, how could they be expected to take care of their own health.

He says that cheered on by the experts, the Rudd Government is determined to unfurl a new range of preventive policies to try to contain the future cost of Medicare.

The word 'force' is misleading in this context given that the health prevention has been one of persuasion. So is the idea of liberal subjects seen as passive victims of an evil fast food industry. No mention is made of fast food being an unhealthy product.

What is the alternative? Sammut turns to the individual:

But the evidence suggests the Government's policies won't work. It should let ordinary Australians be and help ordinary taxpayers instead. Millions of taxpayers' dollars are already wasted every year preaching the virtues of brown bread, wheatgrass juice and jogging to those who won't be converted.

Letting them be rather than helping them is deemed a good policy, even though they are unwell and seeking help in clinics? "Converted' is the wrong word. This implies that wellness in the form of healthy functioning is a religious cult and not a form of primary care.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:49 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 8, 2008

social catastrophe in the 'Pit' Lands

Ted Mullighan's Report on sexual abuse in the Pitjantjatjara Lands in the north west of South Australia. Most of the sexual abuse of young children documented by Mullighan appears to have been carried out by indigenous people, principally men and older boys. His report will make unsettling reading for the APY communities that invited the inquiry on to their lands and co-operated to the extent that the fear of retribution allowed people to speak to Mullighan's investigators.

Girls exchanged sex for food, grog and marijuana. Social dysfunction caused by despondency, alcohol, drugs, petrol sniffing and gambling has already destroyed countless lives. Parents do not know how to care for and protect their children or have become unable to do so. There has been a failure of government agencies in South Australia who were responsible for children being left vulnerable to sex abuse in indigenous communities. The Rann Government has been negligent in providing the numbers of police and child-protection workers on the APY lands.

Mullighan proposed an interactive approach, including stationing more police in the communities, and boosting the over-stretched ranks of welfare workers. Night patrols, backed by police, should be re-instigated and access to pornography strenuously restricted, a measure that has overtones of the territory intervention.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 7, 2008

Obama's Race Speech

This is Barak Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech delivered at the Constitution Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in March 18, 2008. The text is here. It was a major speech.---more than the soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations about change and transformation.

He focused on an uncomfortable topic that most Americans would rather leave unspoken. He turned the topic over and examined it from several different angles and made it personal, and sparked a conversation about race relations that doesn't invoke the spectre that haunts America: racial violence.

Hilary Clinton, in contrast, has gone from supporting the civil rights movement and weeping for Martin Luther King to racial dog whistling in her Rambo-style appeal to the redneck blue collar Democrat working class. The Rambo stuff is about the world ganging up on America and she is going to go and sort them out.quick fast. She is the tough guy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Gittens on economic growth

Ross Gittens has an interesting op-ed on economic growth in the Sydney Morning Herald. He says that for nearly all economists, business people and politicians the need to maximise the growth of the economy is a self-evident truth and should not be questioned. Those who do so, eg., Clive Hamilton, are treated with scorn by economic rationalists and libertarians, even though economic growth is commonly seen as a means to achieve the good life, rather than an end in itself.In short, there's more to life than money, and the more than is usually understood in terms of wellbeing.

Surprisingly, the 2020 Summit failed to question economic growth as an end in itself. One of their new ideas was to try harder to maximise economic growth---to increase "gross domestic product per capita so that Australia is among the top five countries in the world on this measure, with strong, stable economic growth."
How strange. I presume that it hasn't occured to them that one could have wealth but live a damaged life. A
damaged life in the sense of a loss of the full experiential richness of life at the hands of the “technological, schematized modes of human thought and power relations which dominate neo-liberal capitalist modernity.

The economic section of the final report of the 2020 Summit has the following ambitions:

Australia should be the best place in the world to live and do business. This will require urgent action to increase economic capacity through the creation of a truly national, efficient, sustainable and inclusive economy supported by seamless regulation. We should set national goals for Australian prosperity in which all Australians share:
• Increasing GDP per capita so that Australia is among the top 5 countries in the world on this measure, with strong, stable economic growth; and
• Inflation between 2% and 3%.

Nothing about wellbeing there. The target is given and the emphasis is placed on the implication for meeting the target for economic growth in the coming decades--- world-class infrastructure.

Is the failure to question this growth fetish in terms of the wellbeing of the population a failure of intellectual nerve?

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

May 6, 2008

Telstra rules?

As Mark Pesce observes that the cities we live in are no longer streets and buildings, but flows of people and information, each invisibly connected through pervasive wireless networks. Our world is already a wirelessed world and we use it to maintain our social networks, business and entertainment.

Free wireless in Sydney, which would have enabled a broad participation in the electronic life of the city by all participants, has been dumped by the NSW Government. So we are left the tariffed telco and IP networks and a few free wirelessed broadband hotspots.

With the latter, it increasingly looks as if the proposed fibre to node (FTTN) broadband network will be one with competition at the services level, but little competition at the infrastructure level. The national broadband infrastructure will be provided by Telstra, as it looks uneconomic to provide a duplicated infrastructure.

If Telstra is the only option for building the national broadband network (NBN), then it does not appear likely that Telstra will be structurally separated into a wholesale business and a retail business to prevent monopoly behaviour. It also looks as if the private investment in broadband will be for the metro areas, with the national government required to subsidize broadband for rural and regional Australia.

The implication of these political and economic realities is that national retail broadband prices will probably rise should Telstra construct a monopoly-owned FTTN network. Telstra will act to feather its own nest. The market logic is clear: a privatised Telstra would pursue its shareholders interests, the goal of which would be to maximise its monopolistic position in the market to ensure a good return on its investment.

Tasmania shows how it is done in terms of transmission costs across Bass Strait when broadband backhaul capacity across Bass Strait is limited to a monopoly supplier. This highlights the incompetence of the Lennon state government in ensuring that broadband infrastructure underpins Tasmania’s social and economic future. So Tasmania remains a digital backwater.

Given these realities there is a need to develop a regulatory regime aimed at reining Telstra in. How can this be done to ensure that in seven years we are not in an identical situation to today?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:04 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 5, 2008

US Presidential primaries: Indiana

Will Obama deliver the knockout blow to Clinton in the forthcoming primaries in North Carolina and Indiana? Obama is expected to take North Carolina. If he can pick off Indiana - and its precious white working-class vote - then he could finally land Clinton a mortal blow.

Can he do so in the context of the media love affair with him being over, the fallout from pastor Jeremiah Wright in the media and the race tinged edge of the contest.

Moir

What will probably happen is that the US mainstream media will continue its degradation of the political discourse with personality smears, trash talk spun to them by political operatives and gossipy chatter about non-issues (eg., John Edward's haircut).

Clinton is engaging in China bashing- blaming China for the loss of manufacturing and blue collar industry jobs--- to shore up her conservative white working class (Reagan Democrats?) support in North Carolina and Indiana. The economic context isn America is the recessed economy with the consumer overstretched by falling real wages, job losses and plunging house prices.

Clinton stands for protecting working class jobs in dying industries in a globalised world, even though the Clinton administration passed NAFTA, accelerated trade with China and India, focused on knocking down various protectionist barriers, etc. It is the fear card being played, as Clinton blames China for taking away manufacturing jobs from the American workers and manipulating the US currency. America needs to get tough on China etc etc.

The reality is that manufacturing is in a transition between its past glory as the provider of good, upwardly mobile, blue-collar jobs that formed the backbone of a vibrant middle class, and its future as a smaller, high-skills, high-tech industry.

Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times says that the only way Hillary can now win is by tearing down the Obama candidacy even further — a candidacy that has brought more new voters, more money and more enthusiasm into Democratic ranks than at any time since 1992. If she were somehow to persuade the superdelegates to pick her over the obvious favourite of primary voters, she would provoke an implosion in the party, brutal payback from young, black and independent Obama fans, and a real crisis at the Democratic convention. He asks:

So what is she up to and what is Obama to do about it? There are three main theories behind Clinton's refusal to acquiesce to mathematics: she simply cannot tolerate losing a nomination she believes she has a dynastic right to; she is trying to ensure that Obama loses in 2008 in order to run again herself in 2012; or she wants to be offered the vice-presidential spot on an Obama-led ticket. I'm beginning to suspect the last option is the most plausible, and it gives Obama a potential opening: why not give her what she wants? An Obama-Clinton ticket would certainly give the Democrats a massive sigh of relief — and perhaps some euphoria.

Is this feasible in a deeply divided Democrat Party? Perhaps, though unlikely.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:58 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Iemma strikes out alone

Has the Iemma government left it too late to privatise its electricity assets (generators and retailers)? Though Costa and Iemma suffered a humiliating 702-107 vote against privatisation at Labor's state conference on the weekend, they are determined to proceed with the sale despite entrenched union opposition.

Will the government and the unions keep talking? If they do, the only realistic position is the compromise of some kind of public-private partnership in charge of the industry along with guarantees on jobs and future pricing.

Moir

Is this standoff a sign that the unions traditional influence over the parliamentary wing, with conference as the supreme policy-making body, is becoming history. What does business require in order to invest in new electricity generation--two new base load power stations and retro fit the old power stations--- under an emissions tradiing scheme?

No doubt we are going to hear a lot from the conservatives about bullying thuggish unions and minority interest groups running the state, along with other clichés such as the ALP conference looking like a rabble. The reality is that the Iemma Govt is a bad and incompetent government that deserves to be dumped. It hasn't because the Liberal Opposition is not politically credible and is even more incompetent.

The other reality is that the traditional form of the ALP is changing as its membership fall, the union's base shrink and it becomes ever more managerial in its ethos.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:57 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

May 4, 2008

nations, incest, psychoanalysis

Can you psychoanalyze a nation and its people? Many are tempted to give "definitive" readings of a national character obsessed with masks, betrayals, violent penetrations, unconscious fears and death. They continue to think in terms of what the trauma means for our national psyche.

And so it is with Austria, incest and the case of Josef Fritzl, who had seven children by his daughter, whom he had confined to a cellar for 24 years:

Peter Brookes

What we usually end up with its myth from attempts to psychoanalyze a nation as an individual in order to bring its problems into the foreground or consciousness. We could say that conservative Austria suffers from a psychological disorder because it has not confronted its Nazi past.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:16 PM | TrackBack

May 3, 2008

a note on Black Liberation theology

Poverty and racism are a problem in the United States and it is addressed by Black Liberation theologians and the black church as part of a critique of the white Christian church:

Steve Bell

Black Liberation theology, as expressed by Reverend Wright, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, is based on classic Christian principles:

Luke 4:18 -- "Preach the Gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, set the captives free, offer sight to the blind and liberate those who are oppressed" is one verse that is central to the black theology of liberation. Another one is Matthew 25:40 -- "As you have done unto the least of these, you have done it unto me."

Black Liberation theology is both an attempt to interpret Scripture through the plight of the poor--- to eradicate poverty and to bring about freedom and liberation for the oppressed---and an aggressive approach to eradicating racism---black people's troubles are a result of racism that still exists in America.

Black liberation theology has its roots in 1960s civil-rights activism and draws inspiration from both the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and is a theology that sees God as concerned with the poor and the weak. In in a white-dominated society, in which black has been defined as evil, the mission is to make the gospel relevant to the life and struggles of American blacks.

These views are forcibly expressed by James Cone the black liberation theologian here:

James Cone begin with the person of Jesus, and specifically the Jesus revealed in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke's gospel, Jesus has a concern for the oppressed that does not always come through in the other gospels.

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May 2, 2008

The Pentagon’s hidden media hand

David Barstow in the New York Times disclosed how the Pentagon information apparatus has used friendly military analysts in a publicity campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. This group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated.

David Barstow offered an unparalleled look inside a sophisticated Pentagon campaign, spearheaded by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in which at least 75 retired generals and other high military officers, almost all closely tied to Pentagon contractors, were recruited as "surrogates." They were to take Pentagon "talking points" (aka "themes and messages") about the President's War on Terror and war in Iraq into every part of the media -- cable news, the television and radio networks, the major newspapers -- as their own expert "opinions."

These military analysts made tens of thousands of media appearances and also wrote copiously for op-ed pages (often with the aid of the Pentagon) as part of an unparalleled, five-plus year covert propaganda onslaught on the American people that lasted from 2002 until now.

Update: 3 May
Glenn Greenward at Salon is one of the few to address this issue explicitly. He says

In general, the establishment media almost completely excludes critiques of their own behavior, and discussions of the role the media plays in bolstering deceitful narratives is missing almost entirely from media-controlled discourse. One of the most significant political stories of this decade, if not this generation -- the media's full-scale complicity with the Government in the run-up to the Iraq war -- has never been meaningfully discussed or examined on any establishment television network, including cable shows.

He says that no fundamental critique of the role the media plays, the influence of its corporate ownership, its incestuous relationship with and dependence on government power -- among the most influential factors driving our political life -- are ever heard in the mainstream media. Greenwald adds:

Media companies simply freeze out -- try to render invisible -- any matters that reflect negatively on what they really do, what their true function is. They propagandize most vigilantly when it comes to stories revealing the true role they play in our political culture.

The mainstream media pretend that they are watchdogs for democracy when they are the lapdogs of the government and well-connected corporate interests.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:27 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

economic troubles

The official story from the economic policy elite used to be that China ensured that Australia was firewalled against bad times in the global economy, and that working families (Howard 's battlers rebadged ) would be okay. The good times would continue and the commonwealth government was looking after working families. All was well in the world. Not so any more:

Moir

The political talk is now "sharing the burden" of economic slowdown and rising inflation and those people on modest incomes are entitled to a fair go.

If there is a policy it is a move away from Howard government pressing on the accelerator with new spending and the Reserve Bank pressing on the brake by raising interest rates. The Rudd Government's talk, in contrast, is about helping the Reserve Bank in its fight to prevent inflation becoming entrenched in the economy by cutting spending.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:18 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 1, 2008

national security

Paul Dibb makes a good point in an op-ed Sydney Morning Herald about national security:

National security is a greatly abused concept. Threats to our national security should be restricted in definition to events that could seriously undermine our territorial sovereignty, democratic freedoms and rule of law, and basic economic prosperity. It is not good enough to invoke generalised threats that could inconvenience us, such as illegal people movements or transnational crime, or challenges that could erode our standard of living such as climate change

We do not live in a flat world with no nation states. Nation states are still the building blocks of the international system, despite globalisation and terrorism Their national security means looking after their national and regional interests.

It is argued by conservatives that "national security'' requires Australia to send troops to Afghanistan to join the the United States and NATO in a "long struggle" in against a "very resilient enemy" intent on bringing the resurgent Taliban back to power. The tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, are Taliban controlled and a sanctuary or safe haven for al-Qaeda. Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terror, Pakistan is the key to this conflict,as the Taliban i spretty much governed by oPakistan's ISI secret service, working as a state-within-a-state. The Taliban are not a spent force and the Karzai regime in Kabul looks rattled. President Karzai is effectively the mayor of Kabul.

This is a US war. It's an endless war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and the proxy war in Somalia. The Bush administration sees the Afghanistan-Pakistan border--not Iraq---as a place from which attacks on the US can be initiated from a "rouge "state. to its imperial interests. The al-Qaedan /Taliban "threat" is a bogeymen used by the Bush administration to scare Americans who might favor withdrawal. The U.S. cannot win, but nor can it accept the consequences of retreat.

You cannot help but judge that the longer NATO remains in Afghanistan, the worse it will be for them. How NATO is going to be able to extricate itself from the colossal muddle in Afghanistan is a now a key question.
If the the Iraq story has fallen off the newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, then today we are currently seeing is a selling of the Afghanistan war on the home front with words like 'progress' and 'optimism' being used.

So why is Afghanistan a strategically important country for the US? It has no oil.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack