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October 31, 2013
It's not that hard to understand
The politics of climate change continues its slow burn through the body politic in a multitude of ways.
Even though we know that there will be mounting costs as the temperature rise goes beyond 2°-----and a rise of at least that much seems, at this point, almost impossible to avoid-----the Abbott Government is moving to repeal laws requiring big business to pay for the right to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
The basic climate science isn't that hard to understand and its spelt out by Paul Krugman. By burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, we have greatly increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and will almost surely increase it much more in the next few decades. The problem is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (as are several other gases also released as a consequence of industrialization): it traps heat, raising the planet’s temperature.
Warming, in turn, has a number of consequences going beyond a simple rise in temperatures. Sea levels will rise, both from the expansion of the water itself and from melting ice. Hurricanes will become more intense, because they are fed by warm water. Local climates may shift drastically, e.g., with wet areas becoming even wetter or going dry. The oceans will become more acidic.
David Rowe
It's also not that hard to understand how to deal with--stop burning coal to generate electricity. Emissions of greenhouse gases are just a kind of pollution. We initially deal with this by putting a price on emissions and/or issuing a limited number of licenses to pollute, and let people buy and sell those pollution permits—a so-called cap-and-trade system. Carbon pricing is standard textbook economics to deal with negative externalities such as pollution as it provides individuals and firms have a financial incentive to cut back.
So why the slow burn and the angst? Well there's real corporate power behind the opposition to any kind of climate action; corporate power defending naked self-interest as it means severely limiting our use of coal to generate electricity. Then there's the strand of modern Australian conservatism that rejects not just climate science, but the scientific method in general. Even though an emissions trading scheme is a market based mechanism the ideology of the free market crowd, such as the IPA, rejects any government intervention into the free market by the environmental state.
Their strategy has been to block action by warping the political debate by both denying climate science and by exaggerating the costs of pollution abatement. They use their power and wealth to gain political power and to break the back of the ALP. They now govern the country in their own interests.
It's not that hard to understand.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:29 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
October 30, 2013
mass-surveillance programmes
Since 9/11 the NSA in the US has been spying on allies (Brazil, Spain, Mexico, France and Germany), the citizens of those nation states as well as its own citizens in the name of fighting the war on terror. The NSA is resisting any limitations on its powers of surveillance as a result of the diplomatic fallout, and it misleading the Senate on its industrial style domestic surveillance. "Everyone spies! " is their defense.
David Rowe
This is a ubiquitous, suspicionless spying that is the sole province of the US and its four English-speaking surveillance allies (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). This massive bulk-spying system that operates in the dark is no longer about terrorism.
For the Five Eyes' spooks --- NSA and it spook Anglo allies (eg.,GCHQ in the UK and the signals intelligence agencies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand) ---the problem is the media's publication of information from Edward Snowden (it could damage national security is their reason) not the lack of public oversight and scrutiny of their mass surveillance. They, and their conservative allies reckon the newspapers who published the leaked information should be prosecuted, even though much of what the NSA and GCHQ (virtually one organisation) are up to with their electronic harvest treatment has nothing to do with terrorism or security at all.
We are moving towards a democratic society where the mass digital surveillance of citizens is normal---in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic wellbeing of the country, the prevention of disorder or crime, the protection of health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. That covers a lot of ground. The people with access to our secrets can see, hear, intercept and monitor everything.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:55 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 29, 2013
neo-liberalism + universities
In Sold Out in the London Review of Books Stefan Collini evaluates the recent changes to higher education in the UK ( in the autumn of 2010) to largely to replace public funding of teaching with student fees. The root of these changes are the financial problems faced by UK higher education which date back to the underfunding of university expansion in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Collini says:
Anyone who thinks the change in 2010 was merely a rise in fees, and that things have settled down and will now carry on much as usual, simply hasn’t been paying attention. This government’s whole strategy for higher education is, in the cliché it so loves to use, to create a level playing field that will enable private providers to compete on equal terms with public universities.
The justification from the conservative Cameron government is that the most powerful driver of reform is to let new providers into the system. Collini adds:
Note that word ‘reform’: the implication is that there is something wrong with the present arrangements that these changes will put right. And the logic of such reform is to reclassify people as consumers, thereby reducing them to economic agents in a market....The assumption behind the 2010 Browne Report and all subsequent government rhetoric is that giving financial clout to consumer demand through the fee system will force universities to change....the rhetorical pressure has been uniformly directed at insinuating that universities obstruct student wishes, obstruct the legitimate demands of employers, obstruct efficient management of the sector and generally just, well, obstruct. But being forced to swallow a good dose of private equity, it is claimed, will soon unblock the system. The metaphor all too accurately indicates what will thereby be produced.
The replacement of public funding by fees is the vehicle for remaking universities in the image of consumer-oriented retailers, so it is also the Trojan horse which allows private capital to make a profit out of higher education. The value of a university education is the income it enables the economic agent to earn minus the cost of acquiring that education.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:35 AM | TrackBack
October 25, 2013
Abbott's climate change denialism
It is interesting isn't the way public debate shifts its ground. For three years, Abbott dominated the public climate debate with a relentless negative campaign on Labor’s carbon tax. The ground has shifted with the NSW bush fires and climate change.
The link between the two is that climate change is increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days. It is making hot days hotter, and heatwaves more frequent and severe. Although Australia has always had bushfires climate change is increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days and is lengthening the fire season. Climate change will mean that conditions conducive to dangerous bushfires (high temperatures and dry bushland) are more likely in south-east Australia.
David Pope
The conservatives are no long defining the issue. They are on the back foot--denying the link---and in doing so making their climate change denialism ever more explicit. Consider Tony Abbott. He has said that UN climate chief Christiana Figueres was talking through her hat when she stated the above link and claimed that these fires are certainly not a function of climate change - they’re just a function of life in Australia”.
Since then Abbott has dismissed the link between climate change and the New South Wales bush fires as "complete hogwash" and said that those linking the fires to global warming "are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause".
When you put those remarks to the conservative base audience in the context of his previous remarks---“that the science isn’t settled”, is “highly contentious” and “not yet proven”, that “it’s cooling” and “it hasn’t warmed since 1998″ and there’s “no correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature”, and "climate change is crap"---- then Abbott's climate denialism is both consistent, explicit and long standing.
This is an important issue because altered fire regimes will have potentially far-reaching implications for life in Australia. The Climate Council warns of increasing days of extreme fire danger in future across south-eastern Australia:
While Australia has always experienced bushfires, climate change is increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days,. Climate change is making hot days hotter, and heatwaves more frequent and severe. Last summer, Australia experienced the hottest summer on record, and now has just had the hottest September on record.'South-eastern Australia is experiencing a long-term drying trend. In NSW, soil moisture levels have been at record low levels now for a number of months. More intense and frequent hot weather, as well as dry conditions, increases the likelihood of extreme fire weather days
Yet the issue has been politicised by the denialists in the Coalition. They have made opposition to it a defining characteristic of Australian conservatism. To downplay the existence of altered fire regimes on the ground that it is a greenie/left issue that has to be opposed is to make the politics of anti-environment advocacy protect corporate, not the public, interests of the safety of the people.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:05 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
October 24, 2013
solar: a disruptive technology
Solar PV – along with battery storage and energy efficiency – is emerging as the defining issue for the electricity industry. Solar PV has led to falling demand from the grid, reduced wholesale electricity prices, and the mothballing of nearly a similar amount of coal-fired generation as a consequence.
Stephen King spells out the concept of a death spiral with respect to the national electricity market that has emerged with the development of rooftop solar power (photovoltaic or PV systems) and more energy efficient buildings and appliances. King says the idea of a death spiral is simple:
The cost of the electricity network – the wires and poles that bring power to our homes and workplaces – is pretty much fixed. It depends on peak demand, not on the everyday electricity load. The network is built to meet a specified level of reliability so that our power doesn’t go out (too often) on exceptionally hot days in the middle of summer when we all turn on our air conditioning. So most of the time the network costs are just a fixed cost of delivering electricity that doesn’t depend on the amount of electricity that consumers buy.
However, to pay for the network, consumers pay a charge based on electricity consumption. As individuals, if we use more electricity, then we pay more of the network cost. If we use less electricity, we pay less.
When consumers install PV systems on their roofs, their demand for traditional electricity (from coal fired power stations connected to a centralized grid) falls:
These consumers reduce the amount they ‘use’ the network. But the fixed network costs do not change. So these fixed costs are spread over a smaller volume of electricity. And this means that the price of that electricity has to rise for everyone else.Of course the rise in price encourages more consumers to adopt power-saving technologies and to install PV systems. So these consumers also reduce their consumption of traditional power. But the network costs are still fixed. So the price of electricity has to rise for everyone else.
This lead to a group of haves and have-nots. The well-off, who can afford to install PV systems and buy power saving appliances will avoid much of the high power prices. Those who cannot afford solar systems and new energy efficient appliances will pay a high electricity price.
He adds the obvious solution is to fix the pricing. The problem is created because a fixed cost has been turned into a variable price. If the network charges are turned back into fixed charges that can only be avoided by disconnecting from the electricity grid, then the problem disappears.
.. when you generate your own power you do not pay for the power that you no longer use. But if you are still connected to the electricity grid, and have the option of using that grid, you do pay for the grid.
Fixed costs need fixed charges. Network tariffs need to be reframed, but the problem is that increased fixed charges will simply remove the incentive to conserve energy, be efficient and will just encourage more people to leave the grid.
Utilities in Australia, faced with whose market share decline, are relying on regulatory protection, supported by the degree of regulatory capture to protect their old business models. They are trying to make the uptake of solar less attractive by refusing solar connections, or forcing solar users to change tariffs.
The industry has problems because the combined effects of global climate action, renewables growth, economic decline and pollution reduction have worked to dampen growth and undercut investor confidence in the fossil fuel industry. This includes power stations and coal terminals.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 23, 2013
The pathway to prosperity?
According to Joe Hockey raising the debt ceiling was a sign of economic mismanagement of the Gillard Government. It was akin to maxing out the “credit card”. It was a sign that the Gillard Government could not achieve a budget surplus, that the Labor government was profligate spenders, and hooked on debt addiction. The rhetoric for the last the three years was: "Don’t keep spending too much money. Don’t accrue that debt”. It was a sovereign risk issue.
Hockey, now Treasurer in an Abbott government, is increasing the debt ceiling from $300bn to $500bn. The mantra of "Don’t keep spending too much money. Don’t accrue that debt. Keep the budget in surplus" has been quietly shelved and forgotten.
It has to be cos Hockey is going to increase the budget deficit--eg., more subsidies to the old fossil fuel industries, funding the paid parental leave scheme and infrastructure, and making a massive increase in defence spending. But the budget deficit is all Labor's fault. The excesses and waste always are. Hockey's hands are clean. His plan for more spending than savings is not wasteful spending.
Andrew Dyson
Australia is to have a commission of audit to find ways to pay down debt to counter balance Hockey's profligate spending, and to achieve the Abbott Government's stated aims of reducing the deficit, achieving a budget surplus and paying down debt. Fiscal austerity is the order of the day.
However, any tax increases have already been ruled out in advance. Faced with declining government revenue caused the recession fallout from the global financial crisis-which never happened according to the Coalition-- that leaves the following options: privatization (eg., Medibank Private), cutting spending, cutting services and charging more for government services. Or shrinking the size of the federal government by handing over responsibilities to the states and charities.
What's more cutting subsidies (eg., private health insurance), cutting services and charging more for government services for the middle class --that is to reining in the growth of welfare payments to middle-class families-- is “class warfare” and “the politics of envy”.
So that leaves fiscal austerity to target the working poor and those on welfare. The justification? The Labor government has been living beyond its means and it cannot continue. It's Labor's fault. It always is. The Coalition have to clean up the mess created by excessive government spending.
Welcome to the politics of austerity. The pathway to prosperity. That Liberal Party's pathway to prosperity is to lower the wealthy's taxes, deregulate the activities of business, and privatize government production of goods and services. Their program for the future is always: free the private capitalist system from (Labor) government intervention, and you will get "prosperity" and growth.
Economic problems are always reduced, by them, to pesky and unwarranted government tampering in the free market because they assume that capitalism is a fully self-healing system. The best solution for capitalism's problems, they insist, is to let the system function and correct them. Anything else will just make matters worse.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 22, 2013
a new bush fire regime?
We need to listen to what the firefighters are saying about the NSW bushfires in the Blue Mountains and earlier.
The former rural fire services commissioner Phil Koperberg says this kind of fire emergency in October is unprecedented:
It's not the worst, but it is the earliest. We have never had this in October. This is a feature of slowly evolving climate. We have always had fires, but not of this nature, and not at this time of year, and not accompanied by the record-breaking heat we've had
They are saying that these are the most sudden, rapidly spreading and ferocious fires they have encountered. They are saying that we are beginning to see the earlier onset of severe fire weather in the fire seasons and longer fire seasons.
Alan Moir
In contrast, the conservatives are saying that the prevalence of fires is not out of the ordinary, that fire activity in recent years is within the bounds of normal. They are basically denying that the behaviour of the NSW fires and the one in Dunalley Tasmania is different from the ordinary bushfire. Their suggestion to stop fires is for more cutting down the trees around houses, more hazard reduction burning and fuel-load management, and allowing grazing leases on crown lands and national parks.
Though no specific incident like the NSW fires can be unequivocally attributed to climate change we can’t just consider severe fires as one-offs that happen every few decades. Climate science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe, and Australia; that these will continue; that they will continue in their intensity and in their frequency. The inference is that climate change will make disastrous events like the NSW fires more likely. It's the new normal.
If they’re becoming a systemic part of our environment, then we have to consider this really seriously and accept that the standard response of prepare and rebuild belongs to the older fire regime. Australia is vulnerable to climate change.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:49 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
October 20, 2013
fiddling away
It's been going on for 3 weeks now.
The revelations that MPs, including Abbott, have used their entitlements to pay their way to weddings, for sporting events, large libraries, book tours and multiple copies of Guinness World Records. They say little about their improper conduct and quietly repay the money. That's that.
Alan Moir
The examples of dodgy expense claims is a case of MP's---mostly Coalition ones-- having their snouts in the public trough. The appearance is one of MP's fiddling the books rather than making honest mistakes. It looks systematic.
At the very minimum there needs to be an inquiry into the entitlements system, or some clarification of the current guidelines. The minimum because the spin has been that it's the rules themselves that are to blame, not the politicians who have abused them. We need to go further than this because millions of dollars in expense claims by federal politicians are shielded from public scrutiny, as both major parties passed a law blocking access to information from both houses of parliament in May this year.
It took just 10 minutes for the Coalition and Labor parties to agree to pass legislation that blocked three crucial government departments – the Department of the House, Department of the Senate and Department of Parliamentary Services – from freedom of information (FoI) laws.
Peter Martin points out that the rules are clear:
Ordinary members of Parliament can claim travel for only four purposes - meetings of their parliamentary party, ''electorate business'', ''parliamentary business'', such as representing Parliament or sitting on committees, and ''official business'', defined as properly constituted meetings of government advisory bodies or functions representing a minister or presiding officer. That's it. Anything else - certainly a wedding, a ski trip or a trip interstate to take possession of a rental property - is off limits.
So what we have here with these expense claims is an example of how power corrupts. The MP's can see nothing with cheating as long as they can get away with it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:30 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 17, 2013
The Republican Party is not conservative enough!
The Tea Party Republicans have lost their game of brinkmanship in spite of driving the US to the precipice of a new financial crisis. The hardline Republican tactics had left them empty-handed with respect to their attempts to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act whilst the polls showed that voters overwhelmingly blamed the Republican party for the crisis.
Nothing remained of the Republican party's multiple demands for spending cuts, tax reform and environmental concessions after shutting down the federal government for 15 days, costing $24 billion in economic losses, and bringing the nation to the brink of an unprecedented default.
David Rowe
Instead the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, had to rely on the minority Democrats to reach the 217 votes he needed – plus 87 Republicans--even though the can has only been kicked down the roads. Under the deal, the debt ceiling raise will only last until 7 February next year. The government will reopen, but will only be funded through until 15 January next year – so we could see a repeat of all of this extortion and brinkmanship in three months.
The Tea Party Republicans and their backers--eg., the Koch brothers, Heritage Action etc ----continue to argue that it is Washington and mainstream Republicans who are dysfunctional, not them. They are even more angry than before. Their threat is that if you’re a Republican politician, watch out, because when primary time comes, there will be blood. They will be threatening a grass-roots war against any weak-kneed Republican who doesn’t vote their chosen way. They are trying to remake the Republican Party in their image.
The Tea Party Republicans view any attempt to blame them for the shutdown, and not the president, as media bias in concentrate. This shutdown proved them right in their eyes, and they’ll carry that knowledge into the budget battle. They stood up and fought the right fight. They reckon they will win if Republicans don't compromise their values—if they stay the course.
The Republican base thinks they are losing politically and losing control of the country.Their starting reaction is “worried,” “discouraged,” “scared,” and “concerned” about the direction of the country. They feel a little powerless to change course,and the Republican Party is failing to stop him. So they shut government down.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 16, 2013
feeding the chooks
Abbott and Hunt have no intention at all of going for a double dissolution over the current Senate's rejection their legislation to repeal carbon pricing. Double dissolutions are mechanisms for governments to overcome obstructionist senates and the Abbott government doesn't face one after July 1 2014.
So they posturing for their base and feeding the chooks in the Canberra Press Gallery. It's political showbiz.
David Pope
Sadly, the chooks do what they do best-----recycle and spin the conservatives politician's messages whilst pretending that they are analysing political events as savvy insiders; ones who really understand what the Abbott Government means when its various Ministers says that it has gotten on with "working rather than talking".
Those on the centre-right would probably say that this is another example of what Chris Berg has succinctly analysed as the left habitually complaining about Tony Abbott's favourable run in the mainstream press. Berg says:
Left intellectuals have spent the past six years obsessing over the wickedness of Australia's press corps. First we were told the press didn't care about policy, then that the press was speculating about leadership tensions that didn't exist, then how it was trying to secure government for Tony Abbott. At its most lucid, the obsession with the media was displaced frustration with Labor's hapless performance turned into anger about Rupert Murdoch.
Not quite. It's about the intellectual impoverishment of the Canberra Press Gallery that finds clear expression in their churnalism". Little of what they write has much to do with the democratic theory and citizenship rhetoric favoured by journalism scholars and commentators and by many journalists themselves.
They have become partisan hacks and party political publicists.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 15, 2013
the limits of doublespeak
The doublespeak doesn't really matter does it?
One reason is that the incoming Senate crossbench is unlikely to present a serious obstacle to the implementation of much the Abbott Government’s policy agenda. Since a government which controls both Houses can pretty well do as it pleases as the opposition has no leverage over it, so Labor has very little leverage over the Abbott government.
Since Labor has very little room to move in, they could devote their energies to developing some decent policies, instead of ensuring that their personal bile and political factional subterfuge helps sell the mainstream newspapers.
Alan Moir
Hugh White points out in The Age that Abbott's doublespeak---his saying opposite things to different audiences----won't work too well in the international sphere. This is because what Abbott says at home will be heard abroad and what Abbott says abroad will be heard at home. This is especially so with respect to Indonesia and China. They will keep an sharp eye on what Abbott says to different audiences about the issues that are important to them.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:38 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
October 13, 2013
consequence-free politics
Elizabeth Drew's The Stranglehold on our Politics in the New York Review of Books argues that the consequence-free politics is now bedeviling the US system of government, due to the radicalization of the Republican Party.
She says:
As a result of the centrifugal forces that have taken over our politics, we have ended up with warring political blocs, not with the federal system envisioned by the Founders. Instead of cooperative interaction among the states and the federal government, we have a series of struggles between them. Federal laws are blocked or degraded in many of the states, and state obligations are unmet....The new turbulence between the federal government and the states and between the president and Congress has been exacerbated by midterm elections. The turbulence has been spreading across our governing institutions—putting the very workability of the American political system in jeopardy.
Defeat of Obama became became the opposition Republican Party’s explicit governing principle. Drews adds:
If that meant blocking measures to improve the economy, or preventing the filling of important federal offices to keep the government running, so be it. Wrecking became the order of the day. Confrontation became the goal in itself. Now the rightward trend in Republican politics is feeding on itself, becoming even more extreme
This was the tactics used by the Abbott Coalition in Australia. His strategy was not to give the Gillard government a thing. Abbott fought in day in day out. He was strident, be angry, be unreasonable. His tactic was to apply maximum pressure and see what cracks and dam the consequences. Winning was all that mattered.
The Tea Party Republicans --the default enthusiasts----reckon that the government of the USA defaulting on its debt for the first time in history is not a big deal. The shutdown is doing no harm and should continue for months, with all tax revenues going to pay off the interest payments on debt. This would avoid damage to the financial system, and that this means that everything will be OK.
Just paying the interest payments on the debt means the whole burden of the cash shortage fell on other things. The government will (a) still go into default on obligations to vendors, Social Security recipients, and so on (b) be forced into spending cuts so large as to guarantee a recession if the standoff lasts any length of time. That would worsening the economic downturn, reducing receipts even more, and so on.
That suggests the default deniers don’t care about the debt and never did, they only pretended to as an excuse to slash social insurance programs. What they want is less spending on social welfare programs and more benefits going to the ultra rich and big corporations. The former will pay for the latter.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 11, 2013
The new Senate
The result of the 2013 federal election is a conservative Senate. Though the Greens retained their Senate numbers, they have been politically marginalized, and are unable to thwart environmental policy rollbacks favoured by the business side of politics. The balance of power has shifted to PUP
David Rowe
A conservative federal government will do what conservative state governments have done--- dismantle environmental policy around the country,such as undo environmental regulations, cut “green tape”, reduce third party planning appeals, not “lock up” any mining regions or forests. An Abbott Government, with the support of the Senate will, in effect, support the old extractive and fossil fuel industries whilst remaining indifferent to the increasing frequency of heat waves across much of the Australian continent.
This is a backward looking conservatism not ordinary conservatism. The latter conservatism:
---in the classical sense — wishes to preserve a stable society. Of course, this includes stable institutions and observing the rule of law. For these reasons (and several more), a conservative prefers evolutionary, more incremental change to revolutionary change: revolutionary change threatens the stability conservatives seek to conserve. Hence, conservatives reluctantly accept change — so long as it isn’t revolutionary. They do so for the sake of stability and order. Moreover, for the sake of order and stability, real conservatives are amenable to political compromise with their opponents.
The backward -looking conservatism, in contrast,i s generally fearful of losing their way of life in a wave of social change. To preserve their group’s social status, they’re willing to undermine long-established norms and institutions — including the law. They see political differences as a war of good versus evil in which their opponents are their enemies. For them, compromise is commensurate with defeat — not political expediency.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:07 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 10, 2013
drawing the wagons
Australia has a very concentrated media ownership, and the Canberra Press Gallery have lost most of their credibility in a digital world. After the last four years they are no longer seen to be speaking truth to power. They are no longer the fourth estate. They are partisans and entertainers. Their columns are rarely taken seriously in the digital era.
What now exists are fragments of credibility of the journalist as investigator, verifier, or as interpreter, since the old model of the all-seeing all-knowing journalists, delivering words from on high for readers to take in has collapsed in a world. In this world post the old broadcast model of production and delivery we are all flooded with information,in spite of the pay-walls being erected by the big, old media companies to protect their business model.
The response by many of the Gallery's members to the digital disruption and shift in power is to barricade themselves in, building higher walls than ever. They are defending their traditions, their titles, their access, their status--ie., their gatekeeping in the democratic space of the open web. This is a world of the drain of talent and experience from newsrooms, the rolling 24/7 cycle, and the turn to celebrity tattle for click bait.
Katherine Murphy in The Guardian has reflected on these structural adjustments and Jonathon Green's critique of the Gallery journalism as coverage of politics by commentators who were undeclared players and shallow updates by conflict addicts.
Murphy says about the loathed scribes of the parliamentary press gallery:
Politics has not covered itself in glory. We who cover it have not covered ourselves in glory either. I’m not afraid of the blunt force of Green's critique and I think if the response to it is reflexively defensive, then we only serve to reinforce the general contention that we are trapped inside the hubris bubble – a bubble that will not only fundamentally fail the readers we serve, but serve as the enduring emblem of our unhinging.
Murphy says that the gallery journalists are filing too much and not adding enough value.
At our worst, we are captured, manipulated, shallow, partisan, skittish, clubbish, transactional. We’ve been mugged by the politicians we are supposed to be keeping in check, conforming to their stupid rules of engagement, regurgitating their silly talking points, passing off spoon feeding as “scoops”, frightened by the now incredibly rapid and irreversible diminution of our influence, chasing the old certainties that are long since gone. Our collective pomposity is the only remaining artifact of a time where we controlled the discourse, and had the grace to share our "wisdom" with the audience. In the epic battle in political journalism between independence and access, access too often wins.
The journalists haven't simply been mugged by the politicians. They have got into bed with them, become political players and partisans in an increasingly divided political world, and see their job to be spin merchants and publicists for their political friends. They are a part of the public relations industry that seeks political influence.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 8, 2013
"it's only a mistake"
The Coalition are moral hypocrites. They have campaigned on the line that they want to control government expenditure'' and at the same time they've been wasting taxpayers' money on their personal lives.
They also politically destroyed Peter Slipper over his abuse of expense claims with respect to taxis whilst they've been doing the same;--in this case using taxpayers money to go to weddings. Their defence for being discovered with their snouts in the public trough is that weddings are work (official business in the form of networking), or when that didn't wash, that people make mistakes, or that it is a lapse in judgement.
David Rowe
The defensive spin doesn't wash, especially when the wedding is that of a shock jock, or a colleague. The perception is one of Coalition MP's rorting the expense system for their own benefit. Joyce tried to cover it by saying that his one day Malaysian stop-over was a "study tour".
Paying the expenses back when found out is clearly insufficient. The entitlement rules need to be tightened up and penalties applied to cynical wrong doing in order to curb the self-interest that takes the form of greed.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:34 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
October 5, 2013
Indonesia must fall into line?
For Australian conservatives an Australian government should put Australians first.
By this they mean that Australia is not going to kowtow to Indonesia. Boats will be turned back, and if Indonesia doesn't fall into line, all foreign aid should immediately be stopped as well. Australia needs to tell Indonesia that it is not going to accept boats from their country full of illegal immigrants. Indonesia must fall into line.
Bruce Petty
The above views are an expression of imperialism: that is, Australia's interests dominate those of its nation state's neighbours because it is the superior power; a superiority that incorporates nationalism and the old style racism--eg., the 'yellow hordes' of Asia--- and one that is premised on the hope of securing American backing for Australia's own interests in the Asia-Pacific region and to keep strong nation states at bay. Hence the Howard idea of the Australia's role as the deputy sheriff of the US.
The Australian imperialists are faced with the quandary: for the first time in its history, Australia's biggest trading partner, China. is also a threat to the military arrangements that have secured its growth over the past century. Sooner or later the rise of China and the determination of the US to hang onto its dominant position is going to lead to more military tensions. Australian conservatives are completely committed to the US strategy of containing China and defending US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.
Update
The racist undercurrent has shifted away from old style racism --natural racial hierarchy of some form plus beliefs akin to racial supremacy and racial separatism--and xenophobia. The newer racisms operate more through stereotypes regarding cultural traits of groups, or on notions of ‘alienness ’, 'outsider groups' and ‘otherness ’ to the national space of citizenship, nationality, and belonging.
A widely held assumption is that Anglo- Celtic Australians should have an unfettered right to express hostility to non-Whites, and to make statements on who should be allowed into the national space, and who should be recognised (culturally and legally) as a citizen. This gives rise to some cultural or ethnic groups being seen as not fitting into Australian society.--eg., Muslims, as well as Australians of Middle- Eastern origin.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:11 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
October 4, 2013
eating humble pie
The Canberra Press Gallery is singing the praises of Abbott's Indonesian trip. Abbott is a statesman says Paul Kelly in The Australian, adding that Abbott the unilateralist is gone, replaced by Abbott as Indonesia's trusting partner. A diplomatic breakthrough enthuses Barrie Cassidy at The Drum.
Alan Moir
The political reality is that Abbott has dumped his stop the boats policy and eaten humble pie by saying that he now respects Indonesia's sovereignty and that the Coalition badly handled the issue in the past. The Coalition is going to quietly drop the towback policy now. He has to if he wants Indonesia's co-operation on the issue and better economic relations.
The strange thing is the way the Canberra Press Gallery is acting as the publicist for the Abbott Government. Its as if they don't care about their credibility as part of the Fourth Estate.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 3, 2013
a bad economic idea returns
Free-market fundamentalists are back and it looks as if they will dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever, despite of the Global Financial Crisis and the subsequent recession in Europe and the US. We should let the market’s work, even when they fail because they will fail when government is involved distorting something. They hold this even though the banks and Wall Street were bailed out on such a massive scale by governments.
Their neo-liberal talk, which dominated public policy for more than three decade, revolves around the following ideas: that government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high; that all government debt is bad; that inflation is just around the corner; that austerity creates growth; that tax-cuts to the rich boost the economy through the trickle down effect; that financial markets are efficient because the prices generated by financial markets represent the best possible estimate of the value of any investment, and so there is no need for regulation of the financial system; that the boom bust business cycle has been overcome with stability now the norm; and that privatization is good because any a function now undertaken by government could be done better by private firms.
The result of neo-liberalism in public policy has been a form of economic growth has been a growing inequality because most of the benefits of Australia's economic growth went to those in the top percentile of the income distribution. One good reason why neo-liberal ideas continue to guide the thinking of many, if not most, policymakers and commentators is because these ideas are useful to rich and powerful interest groups.
What we now see returning under an Abbott Government is calls for industrial relations reform to be far more flexible; and the idea that growth in productivity needs to increase and the best way to do this is for employees to work harder, for longer hours and lower wages. For many neo-liberals productivity growth is simply code for working harder not for educating the workforce to take account of improvements in technology.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack