Public Opinion

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June 30, 2008

car dominated cities

Australia has a strong history of car centric transport planning, where the overwhelming majority of transport funds are allocated to car based infrastructure. Transport planning has resulted in car dominated cities, rising levels of traffic congestion and transport pollution being the world's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

If transport planning has mostly concerned itself with facilitating the movement of vehicles (more and better roads), rather than walking, cycling or public transport, then the consequence of the planners historical preference for car centric planning has reduced the quality of urban life. Market forces and financial considerations ruled.

There was little recognition of the importance of good planning for transport and urban form in the last Federal election campaign or 2020 Australia. Indeed the word ‘livability cities' was barely mentioned outside of more investment in transport infrastructure for cars and trucks. There was little talk about sustainable Australian cities needing to be developed around integrated land use and sustainable transport planning.

Those in favour of suburban sprawl argue that sprawl has brought ‘privacy, mobility and choice', all of which are consistent with a climate, culture and ideology of individualism and predicated on mobility by private car. If privacy is socially desirable what about its flipside, social isolation? If sprawl is low density, then the implication is that the distance between homes, workplaces, schools and parks will be long. As it is not possible to disconnect suburban sprawl from car-dependence (i.e. land use from transport planning), so low density suburban development does contribute to global warming.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:16 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 29, 2008

a hot political potato

Clearly petrol is becoming a politically volatile issue in big-party politics of the Rudd Government's first term. Where there's debate about climate change there is also angst about petrol. And that is creating difficulties for the Government, as Brendon Nelson plays his 'I feel your pain' politics.

Matt Golding

Emissions trading is due to begin in less than two years. It will cause far, far greater economic upheaval than introducing a goods and services tax, and it is already a hot potato, politically speaking already. As Nelson has clearly flagged that the Liberal /National Coalition will confront the Rudd Government on climate change, so it is not likely that Australia will become a "cleantech hub" in the Asia Pacific region. Australia will remain a technology consumer rather than become a technology producer.

The 6.1% swing against the ALP in the Gippsland byelection was a big sign of discontent with Rudd as, there was unanimous agreement that petrol and the cost of living in general were key issues. Rudd never actually promised to lower these costs but people are so angry that they believe he did and will not hear otherwise.

The Coalition, under Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, see rising fuel prices as their ticket back into government and they are going to ride them as far as they can. The Coalition oppose the Rudd Government's blueprint to tackle global warming. The Coalition stands for lower taxes, protecting people on petrol and electricity, and in making sure that jobs and industries don't leave the country.

Geoff Evans says in a paper at the Centre of Policy Development that:

as the global warming threat grows, many Australian political leaders remain under the spell of the coal industry and its ‘greenhouse mafia'. Indeed, despite the obvious risks some are still advocating new coal-fired power stations and a massive increase in coal-exports. The federal and state governments are gambling that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies will save the industry, even as growing numbers of experts note that this technology is likely to be too little, too late and too risky to be commercialised and installed widely enough to make a difference in the short window of opportunity needed for action. They are throwing billions of dollars in subsidies towards CCS and the mythical ‘clean coal' at the behest of the industry.

Meanwhile investment and incentives for markets for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies in which Australia could be a world leader are being seriously frustrated.

Update: 30 June
It looks likely that the global "cleantech" hub will happen in the Middle East, as Masdar PV, an arm of the Abu Dhabi government-backed clean energy initiative, will build the world's first zero emissions city in the next decade. There's a game changer or milestone. Masdar, Abu Dhabi's $15bn future energy initiative, is a significant step toward making Abu Dhabi the global centre for future energy.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:30 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

June 28, 2008

decapitating Mugabe?

I don't hear many calls for an invasion by a coalition of Western powers of Zimbabwe to chop off Mugabe's head, despite the widespread fear, dread and resignation across the country. Decapitating Mugabe would achieve little, as the reign of terror is that of an entrenched regime that pockets the wealth of the country.

Moreland

The next move after victory will be to move to crush or nullify the Movement for Democratic Change's 12-seat majority in parliament. With democracy gone, we have authoritarian rule, or fascism, African style. Fascism is a better word that thuggery.

Was British colonial rule that much better? Britain in its colony of 'Rhodesia' never demonstrated any respect for the principles of freedom and human rights.

What I find strange is the way that Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president, has supported Mugabe, even to the point of denying that Zimbabwe is in crisis. Rather odd, given the economic collapse, Mugabe's many human rights abuses and a regime that long ago having lost any shred of democratic legitimacy. This is national liberation gone bad.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 27, 2008

the farce begins

The polls have opened in Zimbabwe. The result is no mystery, but the process is likely to be quite unpleasant.

Tsvangirai's name will be on the ballot, which is one question answered, but he's apparently telling supporters not to vote. And according to the ABC's report the statement he made in the Guardian asking for military intervention wasn't him at all, which is one of the problems we face trying to understand what's going on here - how can we know what's really going on with so much disinformation circulating?

I don't understand the history of this mess, or why Zimbabwe's neighbours do nothing, or why it's the Left's fault, or Malcolm Frazer's fault, or how it's possible for inflation to run at billions of percents, or how it's China's fault, or how come Zimbabwean diplomats are still sitting around in embassies around the joint, or how anyone can still have further sactions to think about imposing at this point, or what the ramifications for the region might be, or why Mugabe bothers having a poll at all, or why this doesn't count in the otherwise ubiquitous warr on terrorr.

The only thing I do understand is that this is not right. It is not OK for a leader to use a veneer of democracy in this way. Be a dictatorship or a monarchy or a pope or a feudal lord or a terminal liar if you want, but don't use democracy as a cover for something else.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 5:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

spruiking nuclear power

It didn't take long for the nuclear power lobby to restart up their campaign to sell nuclear as the green solution to greenhouse gas emissions. This time round their voice is Paul Kelly in The Australian, who says that the pro-green Bob Carr and Paul Howes, from the Australian Workers Union, are far more strident about the need for nuclear power than Howard was before last year’s election. Kelly is articulating the view of the NSW Labor Right. He adds:

While few people champion the nuclear option, this obscures the real point - mounting alarm from the unions, business and politicians about the design and consequences of an emissions trading scheme.The corridors of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue were infected this week with multiple sources of this alarm. The unease is profound. It is as though Australia is sleepwalking into the biggest restructuring of its economy for a generation, with a popular culture that thinks climate change solutions are about light bulbs and carbon-free concerts. The community is utterly unprepared for the harsh application of climate change mitigation - if the Rudd Government has the will to impose it.

Sleepwalking? Utterly unprepared? Thinks climate change solutions are about light bulbs and carbon-free concerts. Why then are people putting solar power on their roof, buying smaller more fuel efficient cars, catching public transport, and making their homes more energy efficient? The Australian public voted in a political party that stood for doing something about climate change as opposed to one that refused because it had been captured by Big Energy.

Surely Kelly has things around the wrong way. It's the people who make up the Australian American Leadership Dialogue -- who are unprepared. These--particularly the corporate conservatives amongst the foreign policy/national security mob--are the ones who have traditionally resisted climate change. They are the ones whose fears are contradictory and confusing.

We don't know the internal conversations in the various sessions of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue because they are not leaked. Presumably Kelly is not spilling the beans either. So he is the voice of the campaign against emissions tradiing given his talk about Australian industry and jobs being the losers, that any Australian action will be environmentally insignificant as China’s economy advances undeterred, and that nuclear power must be assessed as a commercial option and not banned.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:41 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

June 26, 2008

Liberal's double talk on emissions trading?

Can anyone make any sense of the Liberal's position on the proposed emissions trading scheme?

They are against it and they are for it. They are fully for emissions trading it, but they oppose the inclusion of petrol in the scheme. I've listened to Greg Hunt resolve the contradiction and what he says makes no sense. He says that he is fully in favour of the scheme but he spends most of his time talking about protecting families from petrol increases:

Leunig

The ALP appears to be standing firm on including the transport issue despite the mantra from Penny Wong, the Climate Change Minister, that is designed to skirt the petrol issue. At least there is no double talk from Wong as there is from the Liberals

All I can see is the Liberals adopting a short-term strategy of political pandering. They are thinking in terms a short-term problem with energy , climate change and the oil market. They have turned away from seeing this as a fundamental and permanent change in our energy economy, are refusing to see it that way, and unwilling to come up with policies on the scale of the problem. Is that a fair judgment?

The only way that I can make sense of what is happening is that the political debate about transport emissions is evolving into whether mandatory vehicle regulations or increases in fuel prices due to emissions trading will be more effective in reducing vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. Currently, there are no mandatory regulations regarding fuel consumption in Australia. Greg Hunt is arguing that increases in petrol prices due to the introduction of a carbon trading emissions scheme will have little effect on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions due to the low elasticity between fuel prices and fuel consumption.

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

June 25, 2008

Are GP gatekeepers a historical relic?

In an earlier post I raised the issue of the GP as the gatekeeper of primary health care. It was posed by stating the AMA's position, which is:

General practice is the gateway to allow patients enhanced access to other health professionals - including general practice nurses and allied health service providers such as physiotherapists and dieticians

I then asked why should the GP be the gateway to the health system for those consumers whose preference is to see a dietician, psychologist or a chiropractor? Why cannot we consumers see the latter health professionals direct? Isn't this a reasonable position when there is a shortage of GP's, especially in the outer suburbs of the metropolitan centres and regional Australia? Australia’s health 2008 showed that the overall supply of GPs decreased by 9 per cent between 1997 and 2005.

The GP as gatekeeper has been one of the stumbling blocks upon which health reform has been resisted. The Rudd Government is trying to move this stumbling block to one side in order to make room to tackle the national GP shortage, which makes it difficult for Australians to access primary care. The aim is to give allied health health professionals (nurses and physiotherapists) access to funding under Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The response by the AMA is direct: patient care would be compromised if anyone without the all round expertise were made the first point of contact in the health system. In her National Press Club address Dr Capolingua, the President of the AMA, ridiculed the ALP's proposal for a "one-stop shop" health centre as a "myth", and said that this would result in the fragmentation of care. She spoke of a scenario where a patient has a brain tumour undiagnosed after going to a super clinic with a weight problem and being referred to a dietician and psychologist. She has also warned that the GP superclinics would put private GP's out of business.

Only 31 GP superclinics are proposed, they offer integrated multidisciplinary care, and are located in areas where it is difficult for families to access their local GP, and so they end up in their local hospital. So it is good health policy to turn to allied health professionals for primary care.

On the AMA's account GPs are the gatekeepers holding the gate open to facilitate access to the most appropriate specialist or allied health provider for each individual patient, and coordinating that care. Since GP's do not have expertise in non-drug care nor in mental health why should they coordinate that care as opposed to the suitably qualified non-medical health professional.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:11 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

June 24, 2008

climate change: costs

At last some truth about climate change and the costs of change, which highlights how much the politicians have been overacting, especially those on the conservative side of politics.

A joint CSIRO-Climate Institute study made public yesterday predicted low-income households would need between $50 and $185 a year in compensation in the short term, rising to as much as $500 a year by 2025, and petrol prices would rise by 10 per cent to 50 per cent. This has forced the Rudd Government to start addressing the issue, not evading it has in the past, even though Ross Garnaut has said that monies raised from selling the emission permits would be used to compensate households.

In Australia the debate still works in terms of how do you ensure that the legal limits on greenhouse emissions do not put "local" firms at disadvantage to their foreign competitors in China or India. Or how do you protect jobs in the intensive energy industries (eg., aluminum or steel) from going offshore. The debate is conducted in terms of shrill protectionist rhetoric by those (most notably the aluminum industry) wanting the subsidies that ensure cheap electricity to continue.

Their lobby groups (the greenhouse mafia) paint a scenario of Armageddon.

This scenario, often taken at face value in Australia, is challenged by a recent report Levelling the Carbon Playing Field from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. This argues that the damage would be small since most manufacturers do not use much energy and so would not suffer big costs. Even some energy intensive industries (power generators) have no foreign competition and would pass their costs onto customers.

So we are talking about a few industries--metals, paper, chemicals cement. The question to ask is how much do they contribute to Australia's national output , what is their share of jobs, and what percentage of their costs is energy? Probably a small percentage.So would the fall in output. Secondly, these energy-intensive industries are faced with increasing demand for their products that keep their manufacturing profitable in the face of rising energy costs. Thirdly, a cap and trade emissions scheme would bring new forms of manufacturing in solar energy (windmills, solar panels, hot rocks).

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:16 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 23, 2008

poor Oz

Somebody appears to be missing their teddy.

Let's see if we can get through this without any direct links. As commenter Gandhi quite rightly points out on this thread at Possum's (new and excellent) Box, links direct traffic and you don't want to encourage them, although advertisers are increasingly demanding click through evidence to justify their outlay these days, which could change everything. The fortnightly ritual rush to Dennis Shanahan's "analysis" of Newspoll may not be generating the kind of ad revenue it used to. Even advertisers are capable of rational thought, after a fashion. Anyhoo, back on topic..

Trevor Cook has done a pretty good job of rounding up links to The Australian's and hangers on intrepid efforts at upholding their place in the Habermasian public sphere over the weekend, where various "journalists" did their level best to level the most popular Prime Minister since Bob Hawke. Only time will tell if the attempted re-labelling of 'Chaotic Kevin' will catch on, but I wouldn't go to the expense of printing up bumper stickers and t-shirts just yet.

Apparently the first Prime Minister with whom we are on a first name basis, Kevin, is a control freak who runs a sloppy ship and isn't as nice as he should be to the Canberra press gallery. Why ever not? After all, they're so impartial.

Tim Dunlop seems undecided over whether it's a good thing to have a hostile gallery, or whether they're just readjusting after 12 years of drip feed, but does point out following Rod Cameron, that the public seems to be capable of independent thought on matters Ruddian. Be mindful of the fact that The Australian is a broadsheet, which limits its audience, and that it has a specific political bent, which further limits its audience, and that it's a newspaper, which also limits its audience. Half of those who buy it do so because they enjoy thinking it's crap.

This assault was quickly followed by a Burchillian outburst over the lamentable state of the blogosphere, which is exactly the sort of thing you'd do if your purpose was to get up the noses of bloggers. Kim quite rightly wonders whether trolling has made its way into the MSM toolkit. Why else would Planet Janet publish yet another diatribe against "balanced" reporting unless it's the ABC? [Find that one yourself if you're so inclined, or just take my word for it].

At the approach of the online age, is trolling and being stupendously outrageous the best they can do in the race to attract eyeballs? Is that truly the extent of the capabilities of our revered institutions of democracy?

Seemingly unrelated, Laurel Papworth notes the latest in an unhealthy trend among the attention seeking toward gaining bloggers' focus through means that totally misunderstand blogging culture. The assumptions here, that women who blog are women after all, and will therefore find the opportunity to discuss menstrual matters, vacuum cleaner bags and cosmetics irresistable regardless of the nature of the forum, resemble The Australian's sad attempts at gaining attention and shaping discourse.

The world is changing, and the new one doesn't work the same way the old one used to. The old assumptions, that a passive audience sat around consuming whatever was fed to them and buying whatever was advertised in the process, doesn't cut it any more.

The dot.com bubble burst ages ago. Why are they all, moguls and advertisers alike, still working with the 1990's model where publicity meant influence? Surely if that was the case Corey whatever his name is and Schapelle Corby would be running the country by now.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 6:08 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

Burchell's attack on political blogs

David Burchell's transition to conservative political commentator in The Australian is now complete. His latest op-ed is an attack on political blogs in Australia, which he defines as representing the dark side of the internet. This implies that The Australian and its op-ed pages stand for the side of light--the Enlightenment, as it were--- against the darkness of unreason or irrationality--the Counter-Enlightenment.

Burchell says that the political blogs are often marked by imposture, akin to those students who always seem to have read everything even though you never actually saw them reading a book. But they are more than this as:

..the chief purpose of the political blog isn't the production of argument, but rather the staging of ceremonies of degradation and purification. The blogger's goal is to solidify a tribe of acolytes around them, and to ritually degrade those who are seen as renegades from the cause... This vast outpouring of pseudo-expertise and vituperation serves mainly as a testament to Western societies' tendency for producing self-important, opinionated folks far in excess of our capacity to employ them.

He says that we should leave the splenetically challenged Western bloggers to mud-wrestle among themselves, since their aspiration for freedom is just a pose or a lifestyle choice.

Since Burchell's universal Western bloggers would include Australian ones he is targeting the Oz blogosphere as being self-important, opinionated folks staging ceremonies of degradation and purification.

Note what is going on here. There is no attempt by Burchell to engage with any Australian political blogger. All are condemned and tossed into the waste bin without any argument. Burchell's position is one in which the bloggers reasoned arguments of Australian political bloggers on public issues is characterised by pseudo-expertise and vituperation whilst the rants and raves of the News tabloid bloggers are marked by expertise and reason. So what Burchell offers is a rant in the form of an op-ed marked by resentment.

Burchell, in so reversing the actual state of affairs, has shown himself to be a Murdoch hack running the Australian's party line against the independent media. The credibility of the latter must be destroyed to save that of the journalists at News Ltd. It is an attack to shore up the authority of News Ltd and its journalists who must argue their case rather than pronounce from on high.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:34 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Israeli moves

The ceasefire agreed between Hamas and the Jewish state that took effect this week was for Gaza and not the West Bank.

Petty

Ali Abunimah at Rays of hope from the Gaza ceasefire at The Electronic Intifada says:

Israel's massacres in Gaza were never about stopping rocket fire; as Israeli leaders repeatedly stated, they were intended to break the will of the civilian population and force it to turn against the resistance factions and towards the US and Israeli-backed Ramallah Authority. If Israel had wanted to stop the rockets the easy way to do that would have been to accept any one of the truce offers repeatedly proffered by Hamas.

He adds that Hamas by refusing to buckle under has shown that force is the only language Israel understands. Hamas has achieved a mutual ceasefire and negotiations with Israel are under way to reopen Gaza crossings and exchange prisoners.

Hamas has achieved a mutual ceasefire and negotiations with Israel are under way to reopen Gaza crossings and exchange prisoners.The ceasefire also suggests that -- at least for now -- Hamas has managed to achieve some measure of tactical deterrence.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:28 AM | TrackBack

June 22, 2008

Bush's legacy

Bush's legacy centres around Iraq. Will America ever leave? In Iraq and Afghanistan the Americans have been trying to establish a government of convenience—friendly to the West, moderate in politics, predictable in business, open to peace with Israel, hostile to Islamic fundamentalists. The United States has been trying to establish such governments in the Middle East for sixty years.

Steve Bell

The US has abandoned talk (diplomacy) for force. Its means are now military, since the United States has sent its army to remake the social and political landscape of Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps of their neighbors as well. A long-simmering political struggle for hegemony in the Middle East has been abruptly transformed into a military conflict.

Bush's legacy is that for years, the US has tried to divide the region into US-backed "moderates" (Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states, Abbas' Palestinian Authority and the Fouad Siniora government in Lebanon) in an alliance anchored by Israel and Saudi Arabia, and arrayed against so-called "extremists" (including Hamas, Hizballah and Syria) whom the US alleged were mere pawns of Iran. The US banned its clients from having any dealings with "extremists," even though this brought Palestine and Lebanon to the brink of civil war.

The shadow that hangs over the region is the US and Israeli escalation towards Iran. For while Arab states have backed away from confrontation, and other adversaries are talking to each other, the US continues to threaten another war.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:49 PM | TrackBack

school bully

Most of us can remember one teacher from our school years who stands out as being the one all the others should have been like. They're not always the nicest or the least strict. Mine was Mr Duffy in sixth grade who inspired a standard which got me into a selective high school. My daughter's third grade teacher, Mrs Smart, was another one who could spot exactly what would inspire each kid to learn. She even managed to get the class elective mute to speak.

Most of us can also remember one teacher whose sole purpose in life was bullying students. They'd appear out of nowhere and make some dreadful comment with the kind of contempt that withers and belittles the victim in front of their peers. We feared their arbitrary punishments and had nightmares about them. Roger Waters wrote about them for Pink Floyd's The Wall:

When we grew up and went to school There were certain teachers who would Hurt the children any way they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids But in the town it was well known When they got home at night, their fat and Psychopathic wives would thrash them Within inches of their lives.

The Happiest Days of Our Lives - Roger Waters - 1979

Anecdotal evidence suggests there is one of these at every school. Maybe they're compulsory.

Back in November last year boy child was doing his level best to join the ranks of the 'at risk'. Skipping school, not doing his work when he did go and practicing what educators call passive resistance. His family, some of his teachers and the school counsellor put a lot of effort into turning things around. Eventually it was his friends who convinced him to stay at school and over the past few months he's been gradually taking his work more seriously.

Right now is not the ideal time for the Freddy Kruger of teachers to turn his gaze upon the boy. But as Waters noted, the Mr Krugers of this world have an uncanny knack when it comes to sniffing out the vulnerable.

It turns out that Mr Kruger has a substantial reputation accumulated over years. There are people, ex-students now in their early and mid-twenties, whose faces still whiten and collapse at the mention of his name. Other teachers sympathise with his victims. A few years ago when he was teaching Italian, students of that language flocked to sign up for Japanese. Now he teaches English.

This is how we solve the problem of Mr Kruger's empty classroom - we make him compulsory.

Mr Kruger is the result of many contributing factors, rather like the continued existence of inept surgeons or corrupt police. His personal foibles are the most obvious, but the other factors are systemic. The notion of bullying for instance, assumes students bullying one another. Other school staff know he's a problem, but don't speak out. It's entirely possible that they're as intimidated by him as the kids.

His behaviour violates sections of the Code of Conduct, but the complaints procedure pits a single complainant against a whole system. And it's not going to make his victims' lives any easier when Mr Kruger finds out they've complained.

We need some kind of eBay reputation solution here, where people can remain anonymous but collectively rate teachers. Universities routinely gather course feedback from students including opinions on teaching staff. Why do schools not do the same?

Eventually, and inevitably, kids will put their MSN, MySpace, text messaging, YouTube, twittering networks to use and the whole world will have access to sound and vision of Mr Kruger in action. Mr Kruger may be cruel and scary, but he's got nothing on a pack of angry kids with video recording mobile phones and internet access.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 3:11 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 21, 2008

Indigenous Affairs: emergency intervention

Nicolas Rothwell has an op-ed in The Australian on the emergency intervention in indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory to break the old welfare and administration trap under the umbrella of moral outrage abouthe sexual abuse of children. Rothwell says that:

The intervention was a piece of human engineering on the grand scale. And over the past 12 months, in the 73 remote communities targeted by the emergency taskforce, there has indeed been a frenetic amount of activity: almost 9000 child health checks have been performed, 50 business managers are running affairs in the remote communities and more than 12,000 indigenous territorians are under income management, with half their welfare payments quarantined. This strict regime now applies across the board in seven town camps and 49 communities.

He then asks to what effect? It's a good question as the critics have argued that the intervention's many detractors point to its duplication of existing programs, to its stigmatisation of entire communities as sex abusers, and to the hardships and injustices caused by the blanket quarantining process. Rothwell response is that the early signals suggest intriguing short-term gains:

large rises are being recorded in school attendances in central Australia and select northern communities, among them the big township of Wadeye. There are drops in gambling, drinking and drug taking. School nutrition programs are in place, with impressive effects on child health. An extra 50 police are stationed in the communities, and ambitious plans for expanded school facilities and new housing are being rolled out. ...But beyond its immediate effects, positive or negative, the emergency response has served as a phase change: an established order, based on near-universal pension payments, has been called into question.

Undoubtedly this is true. All the signs are that will be no rollback, no return to the way things were before under Rudd and Macklin.

Rothwell argues that Macklin has quietly modified the Howard-Brough intervention by reimposing access permits for outsiders to visit NT communities, restoring the part-time work programs of the community development employment projects and picking apart the 99-year lease model that had stood at the heart of the conservative economic vision for indigenous remote Australia. Macklin is revising the Howard-Brough i intervention's more contentious mechanisms while maintaining its role as trigger for deep-reaching social reform.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:51 PM | TrackBack

June 20, 2008

Canberra watch

CoAG recently agreed to the development of a “Basin Plan, which will include a sustainable cap on surface and groundwater diversions across the Basin.” CoAG’s intention is to try to fix Murray Darling Basin problems by putting a sustainable management regime in place.

It is probably too late given the Sustainable Rivers Audit released by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission.

Moir

The best that can be done is put a sustainable system in place and cross one's fingers so that when the rains come in the net decade or so, the river and its ecology will receive their fair share before the irrigators try and take the lot for themselves.

Such a sustainable system will need to be one that is able to not only cope with extreme climatic variation, and long dry periods but shift to a drier climate as well. Is CoAG up to the task?

Thee Sustainable Rivers Audit showed that of the Murray-Darling's 23 rivers, only the Paroo, flowing from Queensland into northern NSW, was rated as having a good level of ecological health. Two more rivers, also in Queensland, were rated moderate, seven as poor and 13 as very poor. You cannot blame that on the drought. Presumably irrigators now realize that poor river system health means poor community well being. Their community well being means restoring ecological health rather than letting it die. Now is a good time for SA to cuts its dependence on River Murray water and invest in more waste water recycling and desalination.

Some will argue that ‘water reform’ within the Murray Darling Basin has been on the national agenda since federation and that much progress has been made. They would cite the salinity and drainage strategy of 1988, imposition of a national cap on extractions in 1995, an inquiry into the restoration of flows to the Snowy in 1998 and in June 2004 the Howard government announced a new ‘National Water Initiative’ and then in January 2007 a ‘National Plan for Water Security’.Lots of plans but little water restored to the river to ensure its health.

The Australian Conservation Foundation has suggested the governments look at the feasibility of the following:

â– Reducing allocations to irrigators in the Barwon-Darling Rivers (upstream of the Coorong) who now have 300% of their entitlements.

â– Releasing some of the 1200 billion litres (three times Melbourne's annual water

use) that is stored in private dams in northern NSW.

â– Releasing water from the Menindee Lakes storages on the Darling River.

â– Irrigation industries lending water to the environment.

â– Reducing irrigation allocations by a small percentage at the start of the season.

These are options because Victoria refuses to buy back water entitlements from irrigators for the Murray River even though the Federal Government has set aside $1.2 billion over the next four years to buy back water and return it to the river.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:40 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

June 19, 2008

green energy equals jobs

The insight that the transitioning from a carbon-intensive economy into a new, clean energy economy and society could be seen as an opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other green-collar and green-professional industries appears to be missing from policy circles in Australia.

Anna Rose in theCanberra Times observes that:

Germany under chancellor Helmut Kohl set up ''feed-in'' tariffs to support the fledgling renewable energy sector in 1991. Feed-in laws mean that homes and businesses which produce a green energy surplus can feed back energy into the grid and be paid for it. When Angela Merkel took power in Germany, she kept the scheme because of the remarkable levels of job creation. More than 250,000 Germans are now employed in the renewables sector, and a booming export market has been created. Fourteen per cent of all German energy is now green. The new scheme has proven especially successful for German farmers who can convert parts of their properties to earn money for clean energy as a sideline. Victoria, South Australia, Queensland (and soon the ACT) have introduced these laws but they are very weak and the incentives will need to be strengthened to make them effective.

Rose says that other creative strategies could be pursued. So instead of the two coal-powered power stations being built in Western Australia, how about trying energy efficiency and a solar energy plant? Instead of a pulp mill in Tasmania, why not consider a silicon plant to produce silicon for solar panels?

Why not indeed? The political talk is about the big significance of climate change for Australia whilst the action is minimal. They let Australian innovation on solar power go overseas to California and Nevada and then, a couple of years latter, visit the plant and come back spruiking solar plant for their state. The classic example is the new Las Vegas factory for Ausra — the solar thermal technology company founded by former Sydney University professor Dr David Mills.

So why not foster green production in Australia? Treasury rejects the infant industry argument? The coal industry is still calling the shots? They are sitting back sit back and waiting for the market to fix things? They have bought the job loses argument from the intensive energy users.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 18, 2008

Murray-Darling Basin woes

The rains in the lower Murray-Darling Basin have been modest, irrigators are on a drip feed, the wetlands are dying and the lower Lakes near the Murray's Mouth continue to dry out.

Tandberg

Drought and climate change have forced south western Australians to realise we cannot take our water for granted. The basin is an arid one. We have traditionally relied on dams for our water supply. But dam-building in this country has all but ceased. With the decrease in rainfall, flows into dams have declined markedly because we can no longer rely on rainfall to fill our dams.

Asa Wahlquist in a feature article in The Australian draws out one implication of this changed situation:

irrigation needs a radical overhaul. Most of the watering systems were built and allocated during the wet decades of the 1950s to '80s. They were government-driven, subsidised and based on old beliefs - such as greening the desert - rather than on science or sound economic principles. The irrigation infrastructure in some parts of the country is old and not financially sound, wastes far too much water and earns far too little. Such systems do not have the resilience to survive climate change. Because governments set them up, governments - and that means all of us - must become involved in the solution. Some irrigation districts will have to be retired, which is no easy act when the channels' drying up means the end of local communities.

As the country dries out further and we continue to extract more and more water, so we will lose plants, trees and fauna before we realise we had them.

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

AMA makes its stand

I see that the AMA has come out fighting against the proposed extension by the Rudd Government of Medicare to nurses and allied health professionals (such as psychologists and physiotherapists) in response to the shortage of GPs. It is another plank in their resistance to reform as can be seen in campaigning against the government's GP Super Clinics and the doubling of the Medicare surcharge levy threshold.

The core bit in their latest media release, in association with other doctor organizations, states that the Government’s proposed National Primary Care Strategy should ensure that:

• Australians continue to have access to high-quality general practice services;


• General practices are given additional support to allow them to deliver more preventative health care services and tackle the growing burden of chronic disease;


• General practice is the gateway to allow patients enhanced access to other health professionals - including general practice nurses and allied health service providers such as physiotherapists and dieticians;


• Primary health care services in workforce shortage areas such as rural Australia are improved through incentives and assistance to get more general practitioners and primary health care teams in these parts of the country;


• General practice training opportunities and incentives are enhanced so that many of the new medical school graduates choose to enter general practice over the next few years.

Australians, it says, have confidence in their general practitioners having overall responsibility for their primary care needs and that the future of primary health care in Australia should build on this system not undermine it.

I've listed these points in the media release to show how much the AMA is in flight from reality. Two points show this. First, the AMA 's only solution to the lack of GP's in rural and regional Australia is for the commonwealth and state Government to provide incentives and assistance to GP's to get more general practitioners and primary health care teams in these parts of the country. But here already are health professionals there delivering primary care. So why not utilize them? Why not extend Medicare in these parts of Australia to help those who are sick and unwell. Why cannot patients be able to access Medicare-subsidised care without a referral from a GP?

So what does the AMA say in response?:

Reforms that do not support the important role of general practice will progressively erode the health system’s function, patients will experience more fragmented and uncoordinated health care, and primary health system costs will inexorably rise.

Note the phrase--'erode the health systems function'. It has already has been eroded. The reforms are addressing it.

Secondly, the AMA says:

General practice is the gateway to allow patients enhanced access to other health professionals - including general practice nurses and allied health service providers such as physiotherapists and dieticians

Why should the GP be the gateway for a consumer to see a dietician, psychologist or a chiropractor? Why cannot we see them direct?

These two points highlight how the AMA is simply protecting its turf --a demarcation dispute hidden by the rhetoric of public safety and quality health care.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:49 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

June 17, 2008

NSW: state of crisis

So the Iemma Government’s power privatisation legislation is looking rather shaky from around 14 rebels within Labor's own ranks. He lacks the numbers so he has to negotiate with the rag tag Liberal Opposition who wil await the Auditor-General’s report and the rural and regional impact survey before deciding how to vote.

Moir

It does look as if the Iemma Government has become a hostage to the Coalition on the issue. No doubt the latter, if smart, can ensure Iemma and Costa swing in the wind for as long as possible.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 16, 2008

mr popularity

Brendan Nelson has given Rudd a tremendous thumping and is bound to romp it home in the next federal election. Apparently. Just you watch. This week we'll see much more on petrol prices and he's also got Neal on the run over the reptile thing. His prefered PM rating should be up around 90 by this time next week.

Tim Dunlop has a few sensible things to say about the latest Neilson poll:

Ask people do they want cheaper petrol and we receive the amazing insight that they do.

And naturally they want the government to do something about it. It's the Australian way. I wish the government would do something about how fast the lawn's been growing.

Tim also reckons that Nelson has successfully undermined Turnbull's chances and cemented himself in place as leader. Way to go Brendan, and I hope the Libs are very happy with their choice. Never you mind that the electorate might think otherwise.

Forget about health, education, global warming, infrastructure and everything else. Just keep hammering on about petrol for the next few years and you'll be right.

From Michelle Grattan:

Despite some pick-up in Dr Nelson's performance, almost 37% would prefer Mr Costello as opposition leader, compared with 29% who wanted Mr Turnbull and 19% who nominated Dr Nelson. This coincided with some backbench cam- paigning for Mr Costello to stay in Parliament. He has so far not clarified his intentions, despite earlier indicating he was likely to quit.

Among Coalition voters, Mr Costello was preferred by 47%, with 28% preferring Mr Turnbull and only 17% opting for Dr Nelson. Among intending Labor voters, 31% preferred Mr Turnbull, 30% Mr Costello and 21% Dr Nelson.

Labor's primary vote was down two points to 44%, which was not statistically significant, and the Coalition was steady on 38%.

Mr Rudd's approval had fallen two points to 67%; Dr Nelson's approval was up four points to 38%. Mr Rudd led Dr Nelson as preferred prime minister by 68% to 20%.

A week of belting Kevin Rudd around the head with Ms Neal should fix that. It looks as though we can look forward to another week of question time footage devoted to serious issues of governance.

Shock development

Shanahan didn't even try to spin the Newspoll results. What can this mean?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:18 PM | Comments (24) | TrackBack

Google, thinking, writing

Andrew Sullivan in this post for the Sunday Times explores the impact Google is having on the way way we think and write. He asks the following questions about the white noise of the ever-faster information highway:

Are we fast losing the capacity to think deeply, calmly and seriously? Have we all succumbed to internet attention-deficit disorder? Or, to put it more directly: if you’re looking at a monitor right now, are you still reading this, or are you about to click on another link?

I'm still capable of reading a column in a newspaper and keeping an eye on the argument. I don't read many books these days though. Is that due to Google or to lack of time? My immediate response would be the latter. Sullivan, however, argues differently. He describes the changes Google has had on the way he works:

In researching a topic, or just browsing through the blogosphere, the mind leaps and jumps and vaults from one source to another. The mental multitasking – a factoid here, a YouTube there, a link over there, an e-mail, an instant message, a new PDF – is both mind-boggling when you look at it from a distance and yet perfectly natural when you’re in mid-blog.

That's a good description of the new mode of working as a blogger. Sullivan's thesis is says that what we may be losing is quietness and depth in our literary and intellectual and spiritual lives, and in arguing thus---Google gives us pondskater minds-- Sullivan is working off Nicholas Carr.

I accept Nicholas Carr's argument in The Atlantic that technology changes the way we think and write:

media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Working on the internet is more a different kind of reading and writing; one that still works with interpreting texts, as opposed to reading as decoding information. For instance, you cannot write about the global economy and economics without interpreting ambiguous texts, even if some see the search engine Google as a form of artificial intelligence.

One account of a different way of working.

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Bush's farewell to Europe

I guess that many Europeans in Berlin, Paris and London can't wait for lame duck George Bush to go. Who cares if this anti-intellectual President, who insist that virtue is ignorance, has regrets about the macho language he used to win support for the war, such as "bring 'em on" and "dead or alive" and preemptive strike. Life after Bush is what we yearn for. He is bad news.

Steve Bell

His presidency has been a disaster in terms of climate change, Middle East, ,Afghanistan, Iran. His administration continues to both talk about bombing Iran and support Israel's decision to escalate the threat levels against Iran, even though Iran has not breached its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, Isn't this a continuation of warmongering policies based on the realism of empire realpolitik?

What else is the US attempt to impose a "security pact" on Iraq that would allow upwards of 50 or 60 US military bases in Iraq, together with the judicial immunity of US personnel, no time limit on access to Iraqi bases nor any restrictions on the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security?

Why else talk in terms of an ''irrational'' and thus untrustworthy Iranian regime? Doesn't that imply that the Bush administration can't trust isrrational regime because they are not deterred by threat of annihilation. Therefore, extraordinary actions such as pre-emptive attack might be not only justified but necessary. Isn't that the Bush Doctrine?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:21 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 15, 2008

AMA/Rudd biffo?

It could turn out to be nothing at all, but the dynamics between the AMA and the Rudd Government seem to have taken a rather nasty turn since the announcements on the private health care rebate and the proposal that perhaps Medicare should be more widely accessible to other health care professionals. The AMA takes a rather dim view of both, as you'd reasonably expect from those with vested interests.

The AMA is, after all, a union by another name representing the collective interests of a particular industry. It's the AMA's job to protect its members' interests regardless of the interests of anyone else, including the anyone elses who don't conform to their idea of what a proper medical practitioner is, and the anyone elses who happen to be the general public.

Any decent government worthy of the name has considered union busting a priority of the highest order since, well, yeah. But unions can be notoriously difficult to bust. They tend to do stuff that makes you wish you could just call in the storm troopers and rottweilers and be done with it.

Not saying it's directly related to the aforementioned decisions, but the AMA has decided to pull out of the Northern Territory intervention.

The Australian Medical Association's (AMA) head, Rosanna Capolingua, says the group wants no further involvement in recruiting doctors for the Northern Territory intervention.

She says working with the Government during the first stage has been fraught with problems and too costly.

"Unfortunately the spin that this Government has put on the AMA's activity is something that has made us very wary of engaging directly with government under a contract to deliver services for them," she said.

Hmmm. The spin this Government has put on the AMA's activity eh? What spin would that be? What activity exactly?

Rudd's response:

After arriving back in the country from an Asian tour, Mr Rudd said the Government would look for other organisations to recruit medical personnel.

"The AMA will make up its own decisions on this, that is a matter for them," he said.

"Our objective is to deliver the services that are needed in Indigenous communities and we'll work with whomever is available to do that."

Well whomever is available probably won't include professionals who would help if they had access to Medicare. Maybe the Rudd Government could get busy recruiting a bit of scab labour, and a few security guards with big dogs?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 6:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Babcock and Brown

The credit crunch was supposed to all over and things were getting back to normal. So how come Babcock and Brown, Australia's second-biggest investment bank and one time darling of the market boom, has fallen from grace so fast? A few weeks ago the bank was worth about $15 a share - this weekend it's worth a third of that at $5.25 after falling more than 50% in recent days. The stock was worth $34.60 a year ago.

Hedge fund attack say the economic commentators in the Australian Financial Review. The debt -driven business model, deals based on big debt and rising asset prices, is out of favour, the hedge funds are targeting leveraged corporations, and Babcock and Brown are now under pressure to sell their assets.

As Robert Gottliebsen says in his 'Babcock's Deal Addiction' in Business Spectator, the hedge funds knew the market capitalisation (or share price) trigger point ($7.50) and they start short selling the stock.

The process creates panic and down the stock goes and it does not stop until the lending clause has been triggered. Undoubtedly, a gradual liquidation of assets will probably now take place by Babcock and Brown to repay banks as their loans fall due. It will be very difficult to keep this process orderly while at the same time dealing with the hedge funds

Can we trace this situation back to the easy money and low interest rates in the 1980s and 1990s in the US, when laissez-faire mentality amongst the monetary authorities ruled? How did the monetary auhorrities ---central banks, financial regulators and governments-- allow speculative fever in housing and financial markets to become so intense--the credit bubble-- that it turned into a bust. If we remember, debt had been growing faster than incomes in most corners of the English-speaking world.

Our economic high priests (economists) claimed there was nothing to fear. Sure, there was more debt around, but the architecture of the financial system was more robust and could bear more strain. Then last summer, the great edifice of credit started to collapse. In this review of Charles Morris's The Trillion Dollar Meltdown in the Sunday Times Edward Chancellor says that the fact that the subprime mortgages had little prospect of being repaid bothered no one:

Everyone in the credit system (the home appraisers, mortgage brokers, lending banks, Wall Street firms that acquired bundles of mortgages and sold them on, ratings agencies that stamped these securities with their investment-grade imprimatur, as well as the hedge funds that snapped up the riskiest slices of debt) was primarily concerned with fees. This encouraged reckless and predatory lending. Morris points out that the new credit system actually favoured riskier loans because they meant higher rates and produced more “spread” for market participants to play with.

The $1 trillion refers to the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble, Bubbles lead to busts. Busts lead to panics. And panics can lead to long, deep economic downturns,

The current crisis--and its impact on Bacock and Brown-- discloses the limits of the free-market ideology that has held sway since the early 1980s.The growth model - as applied by Macquarie and B&B---worked in a bull market. Now asset prices are falling. The banks have stopped lending. So there are precious few buyers for any major assets at all. This is a bear market. B&B is a group that has relied on doing huge one-off deals for income.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:18 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Obamaworld

The people at North Coast Voices learn all sorts of odd things about the Obama campaign. ClarenceGirl's cat even signed up for the Obama email newsletter.

This piece from Clarrie Rivers follows up a story the Sydney Morning Herald borrowed from the London Telegraph on a bit of the Pew Institute's research.

Bit of a detour here, but in a globalised world it seems logical to start doing global opinion polls. The original Pew project was supposed to research the Russian and European public's response to developments since the end of the Cold War. On 10 September 2001 the organisers, including Madeleine Albright, sat around a big table in New York and finalised the plans for the study. Of course, the next day was 9/11, which changed everything. They ended up surveying global opinion to try and answer the Why do they hate us? question. That research ended up in book form about the time Americans began to understand that it wasn't just Middle Easterners and French toffs who found their foreign policies objectionable.

The new Pew poll finds that a lot of the world understands that the American economy has an impact on their own, and some of the world takes a more favourable view of the United States with the impending end of the Bush presidency. Whether this is a good thing for Obama or not is debatable, but:

People around the world who have been paying attention to the American election express more confidence in Barack Obama than in John McCain to do the right thing regarding world affairs. McCain is rated lower than Obama in every country surveyed, except for the United States where his rating matches Obama's, as well as in Jordan and Pakistan where few people have confidence in either candidate.

Recall the horror that reverberated around the globe at the results of the last presidential election? From memory it was a British newspaper which published the headline "How could (insert very big number) Americans be so dumb?"

I wonder whether the Democrats nomination outcome would have been the same if the rest of the world had had a say?

It's interesting to ponder what the world would look like if countries directly affected by the United States had some say in who they'd like making decisions like whether to invade them, bomb them, 'negotiate' FTAs with them, 'share' intelligence and so on. What if each nation had a delegate? Clearly the rest of the world is of the opinion that their chances would be better with Obama than McCain. 80% of Australians are.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 4:07 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 14, 2008

Rudd's car

Rudd would be taken more seriously if he also started talking in terms of improving public transport to help deal with the impact of higher petrol prices from the emissions trading scheme. Isn't expanding public transport networks a high priority in Australia?

Leak

What we have is Rudd attacking Asian petrol price subsidies in a bid to curb regional demand and bring pump prices down for Australian motorists and is pushing to get them to abolish their petrol subsidies and price caps in the name of free trade. Higher petrol prices are bad in Australia but good in India and, China and Indonesia?

This strategy, like demanding that OPEC increase oil production, seems to be for domestic consumption--the Rudd Government has to be seen to be doing something so as to block the political pain. However, the demand from fuel users for help to cope with the pain from soaring fuel costs jars with the Rudd Government's advocacy of measures to discourage the use of fossil fuels and cutting greenhouse emissions.

For years, public transport advocates have argued for federal funding for public transport infrastructure. Roads got all the money, we argued, and we were right. Do we now we have a Prime Minister who wants to give major federal bucks to public transport projects?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

the ugly face of SA Labor

It is the NSW Right that usually gives the ALP a bad look. Well the Labor Right in SA also has an ugly face. South Australian Treasurer Kevin Foley has said that the state Government could not "care less" about prison overcrowding, and was willing to "rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em" in the cells. And Michael Atkinson,South Australia's Attorney-General, has denounced the state's second-most senior magistrate as "daft" and "delusional" for calling for prison overcrowding to be factored into criminal sentencing and taking exception to Foley's statements.

The authoritarian elements of the law and order Labor Right with its harsher approaches to law and order ---illustrated by bikie gangs as the pathological stranger and the consistent attacks on the legal profession ---is a distinctive feature of the Rann Government. What next ? Attacks on single mothers, pensioners and the unemployed?

The Rann Government is on safe grounds. Large sections of the media and vocal elements of the community will readily endorse such authoritarian sentiments that focuses on the exploitation of community anxiety and resentment and is only interested in short-term solutions.

In the Rann Foley Atkinson view crime is presented as a permanent, escalating threat which can only be met by increasingly punitive measures to control and suppress it. Their commonsense rhetoric holds that problems associated with crime are capable of resolution by criminal justice agencies but that these agencies (primarily the police) are hindered through lack of powers, resources and the proliferation of due process safeguards which benefit the offender. Thus characterised, it is a simple step to propose that there be more powers, more police and fewer safeguards. This is a familiar and powerful mantra which has dominated debate on law and order

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 13, 2008

Pacific Rim: strategic alliances

Hugh White has a good op-ed in The Australian about the strategic balance of power in the Asia Pacific Rim. He says that Tokyo's vision of is a regional alliance to constrain China. The Japanese, he says:

... are deeply anxious that China will use its growing regional influence to push Japan into a permanently subordinate place under China's strategic thumb....they seem to expect that as China's power dilutes and perhaps eventually eclipses US primacy in Asia, China will exercise some kind of hegemony over Japan. No one in Japan could accept that. That is why Japan is keen to build, with America, a coalition in Asia to resist China's challenge to American primacy. It very much wants Australia to be part of this coalition...Terrified that better Sino-US relations may leave them unprotected, Japan now believes that its security depends on suspicion and hostility between Washington and Beijing.

Australia's strategic interest lies in a vibrant, strategic relationship with a strong and active Japan and the same kind of relationship with China. White argues that Rudd missed an opportunity to start a serious conversation with Japan about our future relationship, to address the differences over the shape of the new Asia, and how Tokyo's vision of a regional alliance to constrain China carries immense risks for the region.

White argues that there is no alternative but to work towards a new political and strategic order in Asia based on the maximum convergence between Washington and Beijing as well as providing a substantial and secure place for Japan.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:17 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 12, 2008

medical politics

As we know health is back on the reform agenda --in terms of private health insurance and primary care in the context of an ageing population, the increasing incidence of chronic disease, national workforce shortages and ageing infrastructure.

Private health insurance continues to churn away under the surface as it irritates many because it props up the private health insurance industry. Kenneth Davidson in The Age addresses the issue of private health insurance. He says that the unstated policy of the Howard government was designed to prop up private health insurance and maximise the incomes of doctors at the expense of the public health system but not, as far as he is aware, the policy of the Rudd Government. He says:

But one thing is incontrovertible. The carrots and sticks didn't take the pressure off Medicare. In the situation where there is a shortage of GPs, specialists and nurses, a shift in funding away from public to private provision of health services will lead to a similar shift in health professionals.It follows that if the imposition of the 1% Medicare levy surcharge (and the 30% health insurance rebate) didn't take the pressure off Medicare and the public hospital system, reversing the surcharge (and the 30% rebate) won't cause a mass exit from private health insurance as has been predicted by the AMA and the private health insurance industry

Charles Livingstone, senior lecturer in the Department of Health Science at Monash University, says that what private health insurance does is help people jump the queue, as Howard government advertising highlighted. It does this by paying practitioners more in the private system, and exploiting the differential created between public sector rates of remuneration and those on offer in the private sector

What Davidson misses is that hospital care is not everything. Primary care is crucial, even if it is usually overrlooked. In primary care there is a shift towards opening up Medicare to nurses allied health professionals working in a team headed by a GP.That basically means the patient does not need to see the GP for health care. This way of addressing a chronic shortage of general practitioners will be opposed by the Australian Medical Association which has long-campaigned to maintain the monopoly of GPs in delivering primary health services in the name of quality and safety.

The proposed reforms does not mean that allied health professionals are accepted as primary care practitioners in their own right, even though people do see them independently of the GP. They can be seen as a step in this direction. We have a long way to go to break the monopoly of GP's in delivering primary health care services to allow allied health professionals to deliver primary health care.

Update
Davidson also misses the way health services in rural and regional Australia are being reformed with due to the pressures resulting from ageing population, the increasing incidence of chronic disease, national workforce shortages and ageing infrastructure. There is a greater shift to the hubs (hospitals) and spokes (primary care) model, greater co-ordination, better greater integration of services and an increased focus on community need. This means that the role of hospitals will change with an emphasis on upgrading several acute care regional general hospitals with the smaller country hospitals acting as feeders. The smaller hospitals will provide palliative care, primary health care, community based mental health, overnight and day surgery, rehabilitation etc.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:29 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

June 11, 2008

backpedalling?

We are still waiting for clear direction from the Rudd Government on its plans to drive the Australian economy to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The signs so far aren't good. Various Ministers evade publicly even saying that an emissions trading scheme will cause petrol and electricity prices to rise. Why not come clean? Then outline the options?

Pat

The Rudd Government is backpedaling (eg., solar panels on households) even though a price on carbon is coming, and soon. How come the back pedalling? Why not start a public debate about the way that households can make the energy shift in terms of their cars and houses?

As Anthony Burke says in The Canberra Times:

The only relief consumers can rightly expect is that existing excises are replaced by a carbon price. Such ''relief'' will be short-lived: within a decade, as stringent new global emissions-reduction targets are agreed, petrol prices will go much higher. We need to move to more fuel-efficient vehicles fast, and be able to use them less. What the Government has failed to recognise is that we need help to do so with affordable hybrid vehicles and better public transport.

I guess the hybrid needs to be encouraged because it opens a pathway to ultimately breaking with liquid fuels. But it is not just cars is it? It is also investing in public transport to carry people to work from the suburbs to the city. State governments have failed, and continue to fail big time, to invest in urban transport infrastructure.

Public transport infrastructure such as underground and surface light rail systems are expensive, requiring state authorities to borrow large amounts of capital to construct.

SA, for once, is beginning to think in terms of long term strategic urban planning to develop high density housing along rail corridors of a rejuvenated public transport system. From these hubs--- such as Port Adelaide, West Lakes and Bowden-- people will be able to take a quick light rail ride to the city rather than clog streets with cars. It is beginning to think otherwise to a car dominated city centred around jobs in the CBD.

That means not just getting people into the city from the outer suburbs by rail and trams but enabling people to get around the city easily without needing to use cars. That means less cars in the city, better public transport in the city (bikes in Adelaide, for instance) and making the city much more people friendly. The city as a city has been dominated by engineers and traffic flows for too long.

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

federalism today: a note

The original meaning of federalism was a system meant to guarantee local autonomy and self-determination, within a context in which some limited prerogatives are allotted to a central government created specifically to deal with common problems.

Today, in Australia, federalism refers primarily to the centralization of power. A system devised specifically to guarantee the cultural particularity of the political units constituting the federation has been turned into its
opposite, where the central government increasingly regards the various units as nothing more than transmission belts to implement the center’s mandates.

This reversal of meaning is a perfect example of how the New Class exercises its hegemony in order to redefine reality in its own image.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:43 AM | TrackBack

June 10, 2008

higher oil prices are normality

Nouriel Roubini argued over 18 months ago that three ugly bears – the worst housing recession in decades in the US, a severe credit crunch and financial crisis, and sharply rising oil prices – will stop the economic growth in the US (and the world economy) and that this crunch would lead to a severe recession in the US.

In contrast to those on Wall Street who say the worst is over and the sunshine will return, Roubini says that:

this economic contraction started on the weight of the first two bearish factors; but now with oil well above $130 the final thick nail on the coffin of the US economic expansion has been hammered. The US faces a contracting economy via jobs and a stagflationary shock via oil prices. The sharply rising oil prices mostly swamped the effects of Bush's recent tax rebate and while the rebate is temporary the effects of permanently higher oil prices – let alone further rising ones – are severe.

The rising oil price indicates that Peak Oil is coming, very likely sometime in the next 20 years. Geology ultimately rules, and this will force a major transition in the global economy due to the dramatically higher prices. True, oil price shocks and supply constraints can often be mitigated by temporary decreases in consumption; however, long term price increases resulting from oil peaking will cause more serious impacts. The mitigation of oil shortages (eg., hybrids, increased fuel efficiency, enhanced oil recovery processes, unconventional oil, substitute liquid fuels) will be difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

In this report Robert L. Hirsch says that:

Higher oil prices result in increased costs for the production of goods and services, as well as inflation, unemployment, reduced demand for products other than oil, and lower capital investment. Tax revenues decline and budget deficits increase, driving up interest rates. These effects will be greater the more abrupt and severe the oil price increase and will be exacerbated by the impact on consumer and business confidence. Government policies cannot eliminate the adverse impacts of sudden, severe oil disruptions, but they can minimize them. On the other hand, contradictory monetary and fiscal policies to control inflation can exacerbate recessionary income and unemployment effects.

You can see why the politicians are running scared. Oil is becoming politically hot. Some are even talking in terms of an oil bubble, implying that the bubble will burst and prices will return to normal. Or that the speculators are responsible for the higher oil prices, not the forces of supply and demand. Or that China and India are the problem because of their use of subsidies.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:36 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

June 9, 2008

conservatism, teenage bodies, sexuality

The Bill Henson affair witnessed the transference of the conservative's concern over the sexualization of teenagers in consumer culture onto art, and this raises some interesting issues about conservative culture, teenage sexuality and human sexuality. In a paper entitled Teenage Sexuality, Body Politics and the Pedagogy of Display Henry A. Giroux says:

Representations of youth in popular culture have a long and complex history and habitually serve as signposts through which American society registers its own crisis of meaning, vision, and community. Youth as a complex, shifting, and contradictory category is rarely narrated in the dominant public sphere through the diverse voices of the young. Prohibited from speaking as moral and political agents, youth become an empty category inhabited by the desires, fantasies, and interests of the adult world. This is not to suggest that youth don't speak, they are simply restricted from speaking in those spheres where public conversation shapes social policy and refused the power to make knowledge consequential with respect to their own individual and collective needs

He adds that while pushed to the margins of political power within society, youth nonetheless become a central focus of adult fascination, desire, and authority. Increasingly denied opportunities for self-definition and political interaction, youth are transfigured by discourses and practices that subordinate and contain the language of individual freedom, social power, and critical agency.

When the models who have worked for Henson have spoken they have been ignored by conservatives, who proceed to go on about their fears and anxieties as if youth had not spoken. What the models had to say was deemed to be of no consequence and they were ignored.

Strangely those conservatives who rally around the sanctity of family values while attempting to enact anti-pornography legislation, rarely said anything about the way that advertising and fashion privilege market values over human value:--- in the sense that human needs are subordinated to the laws of the free market with its endless drive to accumulate profit.

They were also silent about the way that young models are presented in advertising to sell jeans and clothes in various stages of undress, poised to offer both sensual pleasure and the phantasy of sexual availability.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:43 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

June 8, 2008

an ALP ascendency?

A central core of the Rudd Government's reforms is to use the $500 million green car initiative to reshape the domestic car industry and make it more economically sustainable and environmentally friendly. I've puzzled about this willingness to prop up the local car industry in a global market.

Spooner, car industry

Why even more subsidies for the car industry given the indifference to solar energy and building up a solar manufacturing base? Why this kind of industry policy when the car industry makes a bad product in a global market place that looks back to the past of cheap petrol and the solar industry is the future form of energy in a world of climate change?

Shaun Carney offers us a political reason in the Sunday Age. He says that the central tension for contemporary Labor is the need to weave together its disparate supporting tribes and Rudd's car plan, which co-opts concern about climate change to underpin the ALP's more traditional working class base, tells us how he wants to do it.

Carney says:

The challenge for a modern Labor administration is clear. Only by establishing a new settlement between the old blue-collar Labor constituency of manufacturing and the new white-collar pro-environment constituency can Rudd hope to govern effectively.

Carney adds that when Labor was last in power, under Paul Keating, it managed to hold on to most of its white-collar support base but lost office when parts of its blue-collar base, pummelled by the effects of economic deregulation, concluded it had lost touch. Since then, the white-collar left has coalesced more solidly around the Greens - an effect that has been turbo-charged by the death of the more moderate Democrats.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:24 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

June 7, 2008

SA Budget

The Rann Government's 2008 Budget was notable for the shift away from the neo-liberal emphasis on debt reduction and balanced budgets to investment in infrastructure through the use of debt.

The infrastructure investment is headlined by upgrading (electrifying) the rail network to the outer suburbs (Noarlunga then Outer Harbor). There is no extension to the rail network (eg., Victor Habor to Noarlunga). There are minor extensions to the very small tram network, a desalinisation plant to address water shortages and some hospital upgrades.

The Rann Government's spin is that a boom is going to happen any time soon. The big future hope is that the planned expansion of the Olympic Dam uranium and base metals mine will enable the economic good times to continue to roll.

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June 6, 2008

bossy technology

The automated home used to seem like a such a nice idea.

Our new washing machine initially appeared to be your standard appliance. It washes pretty much like any self respecting washing machine does, but it's a dreadful nagger. Faced with an unbalanced load the old machines used to walk across the laundry floor until the opposite wall or an unplugging forced them to finish what they were doing or stop. This one stops what it's doing and starts beeping if a pair of socks is unevenly distributed during a spin cycle.

If it does manage to get through a load it beeps to let you know it's finished. Fine. If left unattended it beeps again. And again. And again. I haven't timed it but it feels like these beeps are repeated at about 15 second intervals and they only stop when you lift the lid. At first I obediently hung out the wash, but I've taken to lifting the lid and walking away just to annoy it. There's a toilet seat analogy in there somewhere.

For the most part technology serves us well, but at what point did the master/servant roles get reversed? Was it the Microsoft paperclip demanding to know whether we were planning to write a letter, what the hell did we want with that file anyway, and are we absolutely certain we've finished what we're doing? Where's the trust?

Having been advised by some database somewhere that a liquidity loan was a good idea, my pensioner mother now owns the newest car in the family. It nags incessantly. "The door is open." "Someone hasn't plugged in their seatbelt properly." "The keys are in the ignition." "You forgot your cardigan." "Surely you're not going out dressed like that?"

We've already modified a lot of our behaviour to meet the demands of our technological conveniences. We're slaves to email and always on thanks to our mobiles. We've been trained to recharge or perish and developed muscles we might never have used if it wasn't for all things hand held. We've encouraged ads and scams that depend on our habitual clicking on certain boxes, and developed sensitivity to beeping noises.

It's not surveillance exactly, but eventually our washing machines will have access to the internet. While it will be convenient to be able to pop on a wash via our mobiles during the daily commute, what will happen when our machines start telling everyone in our contact lists that we've left the laundry to moulder? Will they tell our MySpace friends that a bra underwire has escaped and made its way into the pump? Will they gossip with the fridge about the rubbish food we're letting the kids eat? Do we really want to give beer and bar fridges the ability to communicate with the outside world?

I don't want my car telling the police I failed to indicate on exiting a roundabout even though there was nobody around to indicate to. I don't want my mobile to tell the police I'm texting death threats to my son if he's late home. I don't want the dog's chip reporting me to the RSPCA for missing walks. But would we even notice these things slowly, incrementally happening? We're already accustomed to CCTV and traffic cameras. Ten years from now, will we even care if the remote control has the capacity to report us for recording movies off television?

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:56 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

avoiding henson

Is anyone else beginning to think the ABC has hired a tabloid writer to compose their headlines?

Henson avoids charges over National Gallery photos

What do they mean by "avoids" exactly? Henson doesn't appear to have done anything other than sit around waiting to see what the authorities would turn up. If anything, it was the AFP who avoided laying charges.

Then:

Rudd sticks with Henson assessment

So what? That's about as relevant as "Rudd brushes hair" or "Rudd wears shirt, tie".

The actual story is that the Classification Board rated the photographs PG and the AFP had a look at them and decided there was nothing to fuss over. In view of the magnitude of the issue you'd think that these developments would be treated seriously, but no - instead we get Henson is a big, fat avoider and Rudd has a personal opinion.

With all their swan diving into the digital age the ABC should know better than to credit its now interactive audience with so little intelligence.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 1:27 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack

June 5, 2008

Obama's Democratic Nomination Victory Speech

Just to make sure that there is no doubt. Barack Obama is speaking from the Xcel Center in Minnesota, the very arena where the Republican convention will be held:

Obama has the numbers. Clinton lost It was an epic victory. Now for McCain and the Republicans, with McCain increasingly becoming an advocate of lower taxes for the rich and corporations, a privatizer and shredder of the safety net.

A black man might just be president. it was only 50 years ago that African Americans often couldn't vote, and dozens died in the fight to ensure them their right.

Paul Krugman asks a good question about the celebrity-journalism style of campaign reporting in the US, which concentrates on political persona and ignores the policies of the candidates:

But now the general election begins, and there are stark differences on issues between the candidates. Will those issues be the focus of the coverage? Or will it be more of the same?

More of the same no doubt.

Geoffrey Garrett observes in the SMH that Clinton's best argument for staying in the contest to the end - Obama's poor showing in key swing states [eg., Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania ]- is the big story behind the celebrations. Democrats thought the road to the White House would be a cakewalk. Now it looks like a dogfight.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

health workforce

I was at a Health workforce forum in Sydney yesterday. It was early start late finish cos of planes and battling Sydney's gridlocked traffic in the wet.

The forum was run by reform minded bureaucrats under the auspices of CoAG. The political problem faced is this: the new investment in health workforce will not be enough to replace the baby boomer health workers. This shortage in supply is made worse by the increased demand on health services by an ageing population. Crunch time. State and federal budget budgets blow out from health care.

So what is to be done.That's what the various committees have been set up to future out and advise state and federal ministers. The forum was the bureaucrats reporting back to the various stakeholders on what had been achieved by them and obtaining feed back to what they were up to.

Public health services are in a very bad way in NSW because the previous Carr/Egan regime was obsessed by debt reduction and so they did not invest in health care --along with a lot of other infrastructure--for far too long. Now the Iemma/Costa regime is trying to buy its way out of trouble and they will go into debt to fund the infrastructure spending.

Hence the talk about co-operative federalism. How far Iemma + co support structural change iand system reform in the health system is unclear. The Health MInister talks in terms of innovation in service delivery and traditional responsibilities not being allowed to stand in the way but it is unclear what this means at a political level in NSW.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 3, 2008

the whacking

The voters of Australia have given Kevin a serious beating about the head according to the latest Newspoll, which reports no movement worth mentioning on either primary or TPP. With a margin of error of 3, Kevvie is down 4 points to 66 and Brendo is up 5 points to 17.

The ABC reports that

The Prime Minister's prediction he would take a 'whacking' over fuel policy has been proved correct in the latest opinion polls.

I'd be willing to bet Antony Green didn't write that.

Has something gone wrong with the commentariat or have they always been this bad? According to Mumble

Some journos are adding together Rudd's approval rating drop and his rise in disapproval to give a "14 point turnaround!" Neat trick.

Wha? Why, when you're already looking stupid, would you go out of your way to make yourself look even stupider? On that note, Dennis here.

People do think Rudd promised to do something about petrol prices, but it doesn't seem to matter all that much, contrary to expectations. Maybe they understand that not much can be done about it. Maybe they think FuelWatch will fix it. Maybe they're complacent. Maybe they don't read opinion columns.

..

Mark reckons Nelson's performance on petrol last week was all about shoring up support from within, staving off Turnbull for a while longer. That makes sense, because his excise proposal was in no way serious. He also reckons Julia Gillard skewered Tony Jones on the wisdom of the commentators. I wish I'd stayed up late enough to see that.

Posted by Lyn Calcutt at 9:48 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

US Presidential primaries: end game

The end of the primary session comes with the contests in South Dakota and Montana. In the last week or so Obama and McCain have behaved as if the Democratic race has been won as they have focused their attacks on one another, ignoring Clinton. So when will Hillary Clinton exit?


Peter Brookes

Despite winning Puerto Rico Clinton is dead in the water. The Democratic nominating process just ends.

However her campaign lives in an alternate universe. Clinton's strategy (or one of them) for the last few weeks has been to argue that the candidate who receives the most votes in the primaries represents the considered choice of the rank and file of the party and that superdelegates should thus cast their vote with that candidate.

However, the Democratic presidential nomination is decided by delegates, not the popular vote. Granted there's a good argument to be made that it should be decided by the popular vote but for now, it isn't. The primary process is not set up to measure the popular vote. It's set up to measure delegates.

The question of Michigan and Florida's delegations was finally settled. Both states -- which defied DNC Rules and moved their primaries forward -- will see their delegations sliced in half. Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, will be split 69-59 Hillary. And at the end of the day, Clinton will receive a net gain of 24 delegates, leaving her trailing by 176, and effectively ending her candidacy.Obama is effectively 46 delegates away from clinching the Democratic nomination. It's hard to see how Clinton could keep such a fight going all Summer long -- it's more likely that her own super-delegates would start switching to Obama in order to send a clear message that the race is over.

What is the point of Clinton continuing the race after Obama reaches the magic number of 2,118 delegates? Numbers are numbers.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:53 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 2, 2008

froth and substance

John McDonnell in an op-ed in The Australian makes an interesting point:

the Rudd Government is really a government of substantial reform. The Howard government took the view that the private sector generated wealth and the states delivered services. The role of the commonwealth was to collect revenue and distribute it and to maintain national security. The Rudd view is that John Howard was negligently passive and that the commonwealth should be active and ubiquitous, including having a major role in service delivery.

That seems to be not right with respect to the Howard Government. How about the GST? Or the reform to the labour market? Why aren't these considered to be reforms?Is this revisionist history?

There is also a question mark over the Rudd Government being big on structural reforms. What we have seen in the last six months is there being lots of activity that captures the 24-hour media cycle through tight news cycle management but which ultimately amounted to not much in policy terms. Oh, there is lots of talk about reform.

Spooner

Is this revisionist history an attempt to avoid The Rudd Government being seen as, and becoming akin to, the Carr, Beattie, Rann and Bracks state Labor Governments? These were-- and are--electorally successful over successive polls, but they cannot be considered to be seriously reformist governments. On the evidence so far the Rudd Government increasingly looks to be in the Beattie/Bracks tradition rather than that of the Hawke/Keating (market-driven modernisers) or Whitlam (socially progressive) reformist one.

Certainly Rudd Labor, on the evidence so far, is socially conservative rather socially progressive. So that leaves the option of being market-driven moderniser. Is this likely?

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

June 1, 2008

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Is there no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? After sixty years of occupation and illegal settlement it does appear that Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created. Are we then back to:a situation of two populations inhabiting one piece of land?

Stavro

A report published last summer by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that almost 40 percent of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure -- roads, settlements, military bases and so on -- largely off-limits to Palestinians. Israel has methodically broken the remainder of the territory into dozens of enclaves separated from each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls (including, at last count, 612 checkpoints and roadblocks).

Saree Makdisi says:

Moreover, according to the report, the Jewish settler population in the occupied territories, already approaching half a million, not only continues to grow but is growing at a rate three times greater than the rate of Israel's population increase. If the current rate continues, the settler population will double to almost one million people in just 12 years. Many are heavily armed and ideologically driven, unlikely to walk away voluntarily from the land they have declared to be their God-given home

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:58 PM | TrackBack