February 5, 2009
The news from corporate Australia is bad profits are slumping and job cuts deepening. It's a battening down the hatches as they struggle to address their debt burden during a credit squeeze and slow global growth. The economic reality is that a small open economy with low savings cannot grow faster than its trading partners. Another economic reality is that the global economic recession is beyond the ability of central n banks and national governments to fix.
Eric Johnston in The Age says:
For business, the speed of the downturn underscores the limited ability of regulators to insulate Australia from a global crisis that is rapidly spreading beyond the banking system and is starting to take hold across almost every sector of the economy.
It's not a question of insulating Australia with its open economy in a global world. It's more a cushioning of the national economy from the negative effects of the international crisis:
Calling it an economic 'downtown', as some commentators do, fails to acknowledge that this is no ordinary business cycle recession. The storm-tossed seas of current global recession may well give rise to a deep and lasting global depression. It is to the US that the world looks for a solution, however unrealistic that hope may be----the crisis is a product of the global economy and it cannot be cured by the US alone.
So why not use the crisis to start doing something about our choked up, unhealthy cities with their ever expanding suburbs? Start redesigning them for the new times ahead. John Whitelegg, from Eco-logico, indicates in the Canberra Times the issues that need to be addressed. He says:
A clear metropolitan strategy that will reduce fossil fuel use and greenhouse gases. This would cover transport, renewable energy and energy use in buildings.
A clear transport plan that focuses on active travel and the greatest possible increase in walking and cycling. A minimum of 500km of segregated cycle paths is needed in each city.
A thorough re-engineering of urban space so that pedestrian pavements are widened and pedestrian journeys rewarded with waiting times at crossing points reduced by at least half.
A comprehensive organisational re-engineering of rail, bus and ferry systems so that total integration of all kinds is hard-wired into the system.
A large-scale local food project based on no more loss of agricultural land, the doubling of food production by 2012 and de-coupling food-growing from oil dependence.
We don't think in terms of making our cities better ( in a social justice + sustainability sense) as a response to a global crisis. They are seen as containers in which things happen. The container itself is not addressed. Nor are the creative industries seen as a way of creating employment in hard times in a digital world.
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The Coalition would say that this proposal would plunge the country even more into debt The Rudd Government is already reckless, as it drives the country so far into debt that it would bankrupt it. Labor takes the country into debt and never gets it out. It took the Coalition a decade to pay back Labor's previous debt
Julie Bishop on Radio National Breakfast this morning playing the politics of fear game.