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January 30, 2014
and so it begins
It didn't take long for the Abbott Coalition and its conservative supporters to launch the attacks on the ABC in order to prepare the ground to cut its budget and its wings (ie., strip the ABC of its international broadcasting service).
The ABC is being cast as the enemy within because it is seen to be supporting the Snowden leaks about Australian spying (Snowden is deemed to be a traitor), and airing the allegations against the Australian navy by asylum seekers. The ABC is taking sides and in doing so it is un-Australian.
David Rowe
The rhetoric makes little sense. Thus Tony Abbott says that the ABC "appears to take everybody's side but our own''; that it lacks ''at least some basic affection for the home team'' and that the ABC should confine itself to being a ''straight news gathering and news reporting organisation.
There's a contradiction right there The ABC cannot confine itself to being a straight news gathering and news reporting organisation'', whilst simultaneously displaying its affection ''for the home side''. The latter implies being more more patriotic and therefore telling untruths if the home side has done wrong.
The sense that it does make is that News Corp will be rewarded for its service in helping the Coalition gain power. News Corp wants the ABC out of digital publishing (its cannibalising the local media landscape in the sense that its ongoing digital expansion threatens News Corps' business) and out of international broadcasting (ie.,delivering the Australia Network to the Asia-Pacific region). It's payback time. That's the politics.
In attacking the most trusted news organisation in the country, Abbott has chosen to ally himself with the least trusted. So we can infer from this that the Coalition have no interest in a journalism that is centred around journalists being truth-tellers, sense-makers and explainers.
This is important because we know realize that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies like News Corp. It's a web-first future now--a good example is the Guardian Media Group which has had a digital-first strategy for two years (this means that GMG takes resources away from print and invests them in digital); and it is in the second year of its five-year transformation programme to put Guardian News and Media on a more sustainable financial footing.
The Guardian Media Group see the decline of print as inexorable –ie., (circulation and advertising revenues in print continue to fall throughout the sector as readers and advertisers embrace new technologies and digital platforms). In contrast, digital revenue and readership is growing.A digital-first strategy is interpreted by the Guardian Media Group commitment to an 'open' journalism model, which sees the newspaper networked and linked with the rest of the web. Open journalism for them means editorial content which is collaborative, linked into and networked with the rest of the web.
So the ABC is never going to vacate the digital space. Nor will it be privatised. As Jack Waterford states Abbott's attack on the ABC is at odds with those:
Millions of Coalition voters [who] listen to the ABC and many of them, rural, regional, urban and inner urban, are passionate about it. But the civilised world view of the typical ABC listener is increasingly at odds with the angry and resentful ''anti-elitist'' and pseudo-nationalistic neo-liberal view of the world being heavily promoted by New Newscorp newspapers and the shock jocks, and adopted by many, but far from all figures in the government. There is an increasing divergence between the generally tolerant, humane, liberal and civilised culture of the classic ABC listener and the strident, cranky and increasingly anti-intellectual constituency to which some in the Coalition is pitching itself.
This constitiuency has been persuaded by the Murdoch press that they has been missing out or ignored in the ''national conversation''; a press that is e promoting a model of a divided, atomised and divisive society.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:52 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 29, 2014
the booze culture
The tabloid-driven moral panic over alcohol fuelled violence on the streets, which is designed to create fear and anxiety amongst the public,usually results in more law and order: minimum mandatory sentencing, greater powers for the police, special licence conditions and lockouts and closures.
What is so noticeable is the silence around Australia's booze culture: it's costs due to its effects of alcohol abuse on individual and public health, traffic accidents, relationships and workplace productivity.
Andrew Dyson
There appears to be a culture of denial at play here and an acceptance of the promotion of this drug (eg., around sport) when other drugs are banned. It's almost as if excessive drinking is an integral part of our national identity and culture. Australian society has normalised and legitimised heavy drinking. It's a ritual of manhood and male solidarity with the focus just on individual 'abuses' rather than the use or uses of alcohol in the society--a boozy culture.
What is often missing is the cultural history of alcohol and excessive drinking being a cultural problem.
There is a general public awareness of the need to curb tobacco use and obesity from a public health perspective but not alcohol use. The alcohol and hotel industry, which has enormous political and business clout, ensures that the lid is kept on alcohol-related harm. You just need to learn how to hold your grog.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 27, 2014
in fact, it's hard to keep up
Tom Engelhardt's interpretation of the emerging media in a digital age is that it represents a golden age of the reader, a time when all the words you could ever have needed were freely offered up for you to curate as you wish.
There has, in fact, never been a DIY moment like this when it comes to journalism and coverage of the world. Period. For the first time in history, you and I have been put in the position of the newspaper editor. We’re no longer simply passive readers at the mercy of someone else’s idea of how to “cover” or organize this planet and its many moving parts. To one degree or another, to the extent that any of us have the time, curiosity, or energy, all of us can have a hand in shaping, reimagining, and understanding our world in new ways.
He adds:
Yes, it is a journalistic universe from hell, a genuine nightmare; and yet, for a reader, it’s also an experimental world, something thrillingly, unexpectedly new under the sun. For that reader, a strangely democratic and egalitarian Era of the Word has emerged. It’s chaotic; it’s too much; and make no mistake, it’s also an unstable brew likely to morph into god knows what.
It's all out that there for the reader. Most of the major dailies and magazines of the globe, trade publications, propaganda outfits, Pentagon handouts, the voiciest of blogs, specialist websites, the websites of individual experts with a great deal to say, websites, in fact, for just about anyone from historians, theologians, and philosophers to techies, book lovers, and yes, those fascinated with journalism.
So it's not all opinion and blowhard deception; or the media going into full stonewall mode whenever they're the ones a story is about;or conservative urban legend; or the tabloid media going gangbusters when a shiny new scandal erupts to drive media narratives; media with partisan axes to grind; or mainstream media creating moral panics over alcohol-fuelled violence in the cities to scare the public. There are different voices now.
It is the sunny side of the internet to the dark one of the NSA style system of surveillance whose basic ground rule is that no one is exempt from surveillance.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 24, 2014
Adelaide is changing
Adelaide is changing.
Well the CBD area bounded by the parklands is, though not most of the inner suburbs bordering the outer rim of the parklands. The change is less noticeable with the commercial buildings and more with the higher rise apartments. That means more people living in the city, and the city is small enough --compact--for people to walk, bike or catch a tram to get around.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, apartments, Adelaide CBD
The effects of more people living as well as working in the city are starting to appear. The change in the licensing laws allows the small bars to emerge. The laneways are being cleaned up; street art is sanctioned by the Adelaide City Council; small streets are being closed to cars to enable people to sit and eat outside without the car fumes and noise. The city is becoming a more pleasant place to live.
These change should not be exaggerated, as they are early small steps and they could be easily reversed by a conservative state government and city council who just see the city as a place for business to make a profit not for people to live in. For them people commute to the CBD from the outer suburbs in their cars to work and shop. People live in the suburbs because the city is seen to be polluted, dirty, noisy, congested, dangerous, lonely and drab. And you are not able to send your kids out to play in the yard in the city centre.
This conception has deep roots as Adelaide, with its green belt, was designed as a 'green' response to British cities, and its designers envisioned its new inhabitants living harmonious and prosperous lives. It was to be a 'wholesome' city in contrast to those English cities where the effects of the industrial revolution had polluted the "water, earth, and air. The expansion of suburbia after 1945 was another stage in the green or garden city.
Unfortunately, the whole garden city idea, which promises leafy suburbs and a quality of life of a bygone age is not relevant to the way we live today, because it depends upon ever increasing urban sprawl. We don’t need to build new outer suburbs with limited infrastructure because we have need to fix what we already have by increasing density in areas that already have the infrastructure. These urban ideas are not popular in Australia with conservatives.
The other major change which is more noticeable and enduring is that the people living in the city are young people, and many of them are non Anglo-Saxon (mostly Asian). Unlike most of the suburbs the the city centre is multicultural. Adelaide is finally throwing off its Anglo character inherited from the British Empire days.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:02 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
January 23, 2014
noble lies
The slogans of the Abbott Government are well known and include from i an earlier time when the Coalition was in opposition, such as " stop the boats", "cut the waste", and "dump the tax". those To these we can now add "Australia is open for business" and " goodies and baddies".
David Pope
The last one is designed to provide a guide to, and to make sense of, Australia's foreign policy under the conservatives. The US is a goodie so China must be a baddie. Japan is a goodie because it is aligned with, and a friend of, the US and so is against China. Similarly with Australia. It is a goodie. Edward Snowden, because he is exposed the way the US has been spying on the world, and hurt its interests is a baddie--a traitor. Obviously, spying, when done by goodies, is okay, but it is terrible when done by baddies. If Australia is a goodie, then Indonesia is a baddie. Clearly the Australian navy is a goodie and asylum seekers are baddies.
The limits to sloganistic thinking can be seen in the Middle East. Israel is a goodie so the Arab states and people opposed to Israel are baddies --such as Iran and the Palestinian people. The Assad regime in Syria is a baddie and those seeking to over throw it are goodies. However, the opposition includes Al Qaeda but they are a baddies because we fought the long war in Irag and Afghanistan to cut the head off Al Qaeda's head. So goodies can be baddies. I'm sure yesterday's baddies can become today's goodies--Germany and Japan for instance. It becomes all very confusing.
I used to think that these slogans were political messaging and that the degree of calculation was all pervasive. It was the very dogged, daily repetition that was significant. It indicated that these noble lies had been crafted and premeditated and discussed, focus-grouped and weighed through other sieves of qualitative reasoning, before being determined to be an essential part of the Coalition's strategy.
But what if the noble lie was more than myths needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? What if the untruths were also the way the conservatives thought about things? They actually believed the noble lie. They do believe, for instance, that the removal of carbon pricing will reduce electricity charges and restore the competitiveness of Australian companies; or that green regulation, designed to protect Australia's environment from being trashed by global companies now that Australia is open for business, is bad.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 21, 2014
A responsible audit?
Whilst Peter Reith continues to bang the labor market reform drum in the Fairfax Press the politics of austerity is slowly being put into place. We really wont know much until Budget time 2014. Presumably this is the best way to build the trust and confidence between government, business, non- government organisations and the community that are required for major reform.
From what we can gather so far is that he Coalition's template to address the structural budget and economic issues facing Australia is pretty much the agenda of the Business Council of Australia. The official line is that the Commission was “not ruling anything in or out”, and that it was up to the government to decide how to act on its recommendations. Well, not quite. The Commission’s brief is to focus on cost-cutting because ways to increasing revenue are not on the table. They are not part of the Commission's brief.
Alan Moir
So it is austerity not long term economic reform--eg., a comprehensive and coherent national energy policy. The Business Council of Australia's position is that Australia's competitiveness has declined and our chances of maintaining the rates of economic growth that we need are far less certain:
we are staring down the barrel of almost a decade of deficits. This is the result of not having lived within our means, of not spending taxpayers’ money wisely in ways that boost national productivity and competitiveness, and committing to new long-term programs without a matching source of new revenue.....unless future governments reprioritise spending, and reduce the size and scope of government, they will have virtually no discretion to respond to the priorities of the day, let alone deal with the emerging and well-known pressures on the budget.The only way to get the budget back in order for the long term is to go back to basics with an audit of the scope, size and efficiency of government spending together with a disciplined approach to any proposals for new spending.
We can expect recommendations for a privatisation of government assets, the outsourcing in the form of the externalisation of services to commercial organisations, the reduction in unproductive regulation (ie., red and green tape), more flexibility and productivity in our workplaces, investment in the right infrastructure to ensure a productive economy (ie., to help business) and greater application of user pays.
What will be excluded is government subsidies to Big Business--Big Mining, the private health industry, the fossil fuel industry, trade-exposed industries etc. because this does not form part of the Business Council of Australia's overarching vision of securing enduring prosperity for all Australians.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:44 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 20, 2014
reigniting the culture and literacy wars
The rewrite of the national curriculum by the Abbott Coalition to bring it in line with the values of the conservative tradition was to be expected. The Coalition had explicitly promised as much, given Pyne's repeated characterization of it as leftist ideology, dumbed-down content and falling standards; and their rejection of critical literacy, whole-language and a child-centred model of pedagogy.
Bruce Petty
Conservatives in the Coalition ---- which has become the institutional face of the conservative movement --- have always been in favour of a more traditional approach to teaching: that is, one where teachers teach, students learn and there is an agreed body of knowledge, understanding and skills that need to be addressed at each year level. They are deeply opposed to the expressive or social liberalism of the 1968ers and they adhere to the principle of ordered liberty.
The 'ordered ' is crucial here as conservatives hold that the integrity of the social fabric must be ensured even when this conflicts with individual liberty. The paramount value for conservatism, then, tends to be a principle of authority.
This conservatism stands for the state having a duty to maintain order and promote virtue. Politics in this tradition is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. They endeavour to reunite the disparate conservative factions ----traditional conservatives appalled by the secular mass society surrounding them; libertarians repelled by a Leviathan state that threatened free enterprise and individualism; and those alarmed by the rise of the Green-Left----by focusing their attention on the dangers of liberalism--or the Green Left (code for Marxism) and social conservatives.
Australian conservatism aims to fuse the basic ideas of traditional conservatism and libertarianism. The primary goal of education is to familiarize students with an existing body of truth, of which Christianity and free enterprise are the foundation. For them, the principles on which the conservative political position is base are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation.
Australian conservatism is not classical liberalism, which conservatives see had been significantly weakened by utilitarianism and secularism. Most classical liberals are seemingly unable to distinguish between “the authoritarianism” of the state, which suppresses human freedom, and the authority of God and truth. Conservatives see themselves as trying to save the Christian understanding of the nature and destiny of man.
The problem these conservatives have is their increasing dependence on an electorate that is largely rural, based in WA and Queensland and white. This gives rise to an entrenched strain of political paranoia; the identification of their own values with the country as a whole; and an undercurrent of racism. Pyne gives voice to this by saying that he review includes history, which, in the now familiar conservative talking point, contains too much Asia and Aborigines and not enough Anzac Day and business success stories. White colonial Australia needs to be foregrounded.
Kevin Donnelly, one of the reviewers and an educational conservative, adds to this talking point in his articles in the mainstream press, which are primarily about how the education system is getting wrecked by left wing teachers bent on undermining traditional Australian society and its Judeo-Christian values.
The conservatives increasing dependence on a largely white rural, based electorate in WA and Queensland means that this undercurrent in their base has a strand of racial distrust and an angry, bitter exclusionism in which those with different preferences and values become almost definitionally “un-Australian.”
And so we have the replay of the culture and literacy wars around the review of the national schools curriculum.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:54 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 17, 2014
economic ideology
Gary Humphries, a former ACT Liberal Senator, runs a cute party political line based on the rhetoric of household economics. He says:
There is now a fairly predictable rhythm in Australian politics: Labor governments pump up deficit spending and debt, Coalition governments pay down debt and foster surpluses. There have been few departures from this pattern, at federal or state level, in the past two decades.
It's an old political narrative this one, and it's the well worn one of "living within your means" and "needing to tighten our belts" of fiscal conservatism and fiscal restraint. The subtext of the narrative is that, because of The Deficit that is coming to strangle our grandchildren in their beds, sacrifices have to be made.
David Rowe
Humphries makes his case thus:
Labor was a spending junkie, even more addicted to spending at the end of its life than at the beginning. It comprehensively failed every restraint-based ambition it set itself; for example, despite solemnly committing in its final budget to limit real spending growth to 2 per cent, it actually increased spending by 8.6 per cent, one of the biggest annual splurges since the Whitlam government.Its most diabolical legacy to the Liberal Party, however, is not runaway deficits. It has complicated the task of attaining surpluses by embedding a string of commitments that will be eye-wateringly costly to deliver in full: the national disability scheme, the national broadband network and school funding reforms in particular.
The Abbott government, says, Humphries, is attacking this roadblock with vigour. Instead of relying heavily on the lazy device of levying efficiency dividends, it has begun to identify and defund programs and agencies it simply does not believe, on first principles, are affordable any longer.
There is no need for me to deconstruct this black and white narrative--eg., a mining boom coinciding with the Howard government achieving the rare trifecta of restoring surpluses, boosting growth and paying off debt; a global financial crisis coinciding with the Rudd Labor government; or the reduced government revenue due to the end of the mining boom and a recession in the post GFC global economy. None of this is mentioned by Humphries. It would complicate his assumptions underpinning his household economics ideology.
There is no need because Humphries undercuts his own narrative:
there are practical and political limits to how far the Coalition can travel down this road[ of cutting and pruning government expenditure]. Although there are some areas of government where excess and featherbedding are still evident, in others bureaucratic capacity has withered significantly as a result of Labor's cuts, with implications for the delivery of the government of the day's agenda.
Labor, under Gillard and Swan, had been cutting and pruning not just being a spending junkie.
Humphries also undercuts his own narrative by implying the Coalition is spending (ie., income tax cuts and increasing middle class welfare) and not just cutting and pruning beyond the lazy device of levying efficiency dividends. He says:
I believe the gap between what we expect to pay for as a nation and what we can afford will be the unbridgeable gap of this generation. And that must lead to consideration of expanding the tax base....this [Coalition] government will need to approach the same issue sooner or later. The obvious candidate is increasing the goods and services tax to 15 per cent, but the execution of this must be light years from the style of recent attempts.
So we scape the mining tax and the carbon "tax" and raise the GST to pay for the Coalition's spending for its own conservative base.
Humphries' black and white narrative has been effectively undercut and dumped. What we have is political rhetoric that is devoid of any genuine economic analysis; or an understanding that an analysis of the economics of an nation state's economy in a global world s quite different from the ideology of household economics.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:50 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 15, 2014
SA State election
Two state election are due in March 15, 2014 in Tasmania and SA.
The most recent EMRS opinion poll in Tasmania showed the ALP with just 22 per cent backing, compared to the Greens' 19 per cent, and the Liberals' 49 per cent. Tasmania Labor has decided to go it alone -- it has dumped the coalition with the Greens (Giddings sacked the Greens from cabinet). It is going to fight for the old toxic Gunns' pulp and paper mill. Tasmania Labor is desperate, and it appears to have little interest or commitment to driving the transition to a new economy. Their mantra, like that of the Liberals, will be jobs in the mining and forestry industries.
David Pope
SA, which has one of the 3 Labor state governments still in power, has seen the electoral tide seemingly running against a Labor Government in SA, which has been in power for 14 years---a Newspoll just before Christmas had Labor at 33 per cent and the Liberal Party at 40 per cent). The Labor Party's strategy is sandbagging.
To govern in its own right, the Liberal Party needs to pick up six seats, after a 7.7 per cent swing delivered them four seats in 2010. The conservatives won the majority of the popular vote last time and still wasn’t enough to return them to government. The ALP successfully sandbagged its marginal seats in 2010. It must do it again, as it is not likely that it will gain many seats from the Liberal Party.
The ALP is not popular due to its recent planning changes aimed at increasing urban density in the city and inner rim. These have ignited a storm of controversy, with residents groups mobilizing in opposition, suburban-rim mayors holding crisis meetings, and the Local Government Association recently saying they’d lost faith in the planning process.
This is largely a resistance to a revitalized Adelaide becoming a small city good at innovation, new technology and commercial development and research outcomes. The revitalization is slow but the introduction of new laws finally make it easier for people to start small bars in the CBD whilst the modernization of Adelaide is clearly visible in the CBD's west.
A big shadow of over the state is the closure of General Motors Holden and it is unclear how this will play out in party political terms. with respect to how the will state recover, from this ongoing process of de-industrialization.
As John Spoehr maps it this way:
The 2900 jobs lost from Holden is the tip of the jobs iceberg. Surrounding the automaker is a complex web of suppliers, more than 700 in South Australia. Around 30 of these are major suppliers and many are highly dependent on Holden. In other words, they are very likely to fall over.Nationwide, Holden’s presence in Australia stimulates around $4 billion per year of economic activity and more than 60,000 jobs. In South Australia, that translates into around $1.2 billion per year and 13,000 jobs. Alternative manufacturing jobs are not likely to be an option for those who are retrenched – we have lost nearly 30,000 of them since the Global Financial Crisis in South Australia and many more are likely to go so long as trading conditions remain as hostile to manufacturing as they currently are.
Publicly funded Investment in infrastructure appears to be the general policy response on the grounds that if you don't invest you stagnate. Economic stagnation would be the result with business-as-usual.
Update
I cannot see Gidding's Labor in Tasmania embracing a new economy in the form of ICT and the digital economy, the creative economy, tourism, agriculture based on our priceless clean green brand, fine food, quality wines and beverage at the macro and micro level, science, aged care and international education. They remain focused on the past--just like the Liberals.
The neo-liberal Right, meanwhile, want Tasmania to stop being a leech on the mainland, to base GST payments to the states on their population, and to reduce the State’s minimum wage. Taking this kind of axe to federal support for Tasmania means that Tasmania’s GST transfers from the federal government would be cut by $650 million per year. That amount is the equivalent of half of the state's entire Education expenditure or more than its Housing, Agriculture and Transport expenditure combined.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 14, 2014
Fairfax + a bunch of deniers
I see that the Fairfax media continue to open their pages to those climate change denialists who advance the agenda of the International Climate Science Coalition Thus John McLaren asserts that the IPCC is in effect little more than a UN-sponsored lobby group, created specifically to investigate and push the ''man-made warming'' line. The other assertion is that the IPCC hasn't produced credible evidence to support the UN's claim that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are causing significant and dangerous climate change.
The ICSC’s primary agenda includes discrediting authoritative science on climate change, opposing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and “educating” the public on the “dangerous impacts” involved in trying to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar power.
John Spooner
We can see how the deniers in Australia play their part from Tom Switzer, the editor of the Spectator, Australia. He is given space in the SMH to assert that there is a global trend of the anti-carbon agenda being found wanting, and that the climate-change Cassandras are increasingly marginalised in Australia and abroad.
Even though the science has been well and truly settled Fairfax continues to try to cloud the issue with publishing this kind of "journalism" from the denialists premised in the absurdity of the pro climate change ship being stuck in thick ice in the Antarctic in recent weeks. This is standard conservative cultural war line and it is supposed to disprove the science of human-caused climate change conclusively.
The question is why isn't Fairfax Media questioning its sources when what they write is a series of assertions from the Heartland Institute funded ICSC. Why are they giving a platform to series of unsubstantiated allegations with no attempt to support these allegations with evidence.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 13, 2014
liberating the economy from its straight jacket?
I see that business groups (eg., Australian Chamber of Commerce and the Australian Industry Group) have been calling for any minimum wage increase to be deferred this year. Members of these groups paint Australia as a “high wage/ low competition” economy. For them, the royal path to Australia’s competitiveness in a global market can only be found in blocking minimum wage increases. Their real position is that the best way to stimulate the Australian economy post the Global Financial Crisis is by eliminating the minimum wage altogether.
Their position one of achieving competitiveness through lower wages leads, which invariably to a decrease in the wages of the lower paid. The aim is to weaken the strong safety net that is designed to prevent an underclass of working poor. Minimum wage laws were invented in Australia and New Zealand with the purpose of guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for unskilled workers. So we have another example of the recent tendency for private interests to outweigh the public interest in policy discussion and choice.
Neo-liberals hold that Australian wage rates are very high by international standards, and our industrial system is dogged by rigidities and that the Coalition Government should liberate the economy from its straight jacket. They argue that:
increasing the minimum wage is a bad way to help the poor (since most recipients are from middle-income households) and it destroys jobs. That means more families caught in the welfare system and more children growing up in homes with no working parents....The minimum wage is bad policy. If it cannot be removed, then it should at least be frozen for several years so that it becomes functionally irrelevant...If the government and their union cheerleaders actually want to help workers, then the best way forward is to increase our national productivity. The government needs to revisit the Henry recommendations for corporate tax cuts and they need to find ways to lighten the regulatory burden, especially on small business.
Does increasing minimum wages invariably led to employment losses as assumed here?
For those workers in the low-wage sector with dependent children, minimum wages in Australia are only marginally higher, after tax, than the social welfare benefits paid to unemployed or disabled workers. Hence, a reduction in the minimum wage could create or intensify “poverty traps.” Advocates of substantial reductions in minimum wages have generally favored “reform” of the social welfare system to reduce welfare dependency.
So inequality would increased due to the Australian economy becoming a dual economy, delivering great benefits to the top 20 per cent of the population, moderate growth for the middle class and very little for those at the bottom.
These business groups, whilst arguing that a substantial reduction in Australian cost levels relative to other countries is required in order to maintain employment and economic growth, never mention the need for a large depreciation of the real exchange rate. Yet the real exchange rate by early 2013 was at levels that rendered uncompetitive virtually all internationally traded economic activity outside the great mines. Yet, after the Global Financial Crisis the way to ensure ongoing economic growth is through the restoration of investment and output in trade-exposed industries beyond resources-- minimally, education, tourism and other services, high quality foodstuffs, and specialised manufactures based on innovation.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 10, 2014
Blaming the sun
Let's face it. The Abbott Coalition Govt and its advisers is composed of conservative white males many of whom are climate change deniers. They routinely dismiss the entire body of climate change science as a left-wing conspiracy to earn money as well as attack wind farms on the grounds that they are a danger to human health.
Environmentalism, for them, is a cover story for socialists to "de-industrialise the western world". They are part of the concerted efforts to deny climate science and halt climate policy, which had began in the early 1990s by the fossil fuel industry. These politicians and advisers have an anti-environmental agenda that includes rolling back environmental legislation, blocking clean energy development at every stage, and waging war against environmental institutions and scientists.
David Pope
The climate change deniers have no scientific credibility. The climate denial machine has its roots in Exxon’s funding of front groups, and it used the tobacco industry’s playbook and an extensive arsenal of lobbyists and “experts” for hire in order to manufacture disinformation designed to confuse the public and stifle action to address climate change.
The energy company backed lobbyists, shrills, and politicians are attempting to industry-backed lawsuits and politicians attempted to undermine the entire scientific community because the energy companies want to be allowed to continue to pollute and protect their profits. Their talking point, and that of the shadow lobbying organizations, is that there’s no consensus among scientists on the causes and effects of global warming – plus, the very idea of consensus is “authoritarian and anti-scientific” anyway.
The evidence that humans are the dominant cause of the current global warming is overwhelming (which is the reason behind the 97 percent expert consensus), and continues to grow. And while the media has lately tended to focus on the few papers that suggest climate sensitivity is relatively low, there is a growing body of evidence based on cloud observations that it's actually on the high end, above 3°C warming in response to doubled CO2, which under business as usual would lead to more than 4°C warming by 2100 – a potentially catastrophic scenario.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 9, 2014
a cynical political exercise?
The Abbott Coalition Government's military-style operation known as Operation Sovereign Borders now involves turning back asylum seeker boats to Indonesian waters and ensuring that these actions are shrouded under a veil of secrecy, disinformation and deception.
It's like a replay of the Howard Government's border control policies around SIEV-4, Tampa and children overboard that involved an abuse of power . The Coalition is definitely not the champion of information freedom in a liberal democracy.
Alan Moir
We can rest assured, says Scott Morrison, because the right policies on our borders are now in the right hands and these are consistently getting the right results. Fortress Australia is safe because a strong government is treating asylum seekers as queue jumpers, illegal immigrants and potential terrorists. Australia is facing a crisis, a veritable invasion by aliens. So the xenophobic fear and loathing is only to be expected.
Morrison's position conveniently ignores the Indonesia side of the relationship with respect to the complexities of refugee flows. Their position is that pushing back the boats is not seen to be a solution and the Indonesian Government rejects the push-back policy. So what is the impact on Indonesia by Australia towing the boats back?
Morrison's shrouding the operational matters of Operation Sovereign Borders under a veil of secrecy and muzzling the press is undemocratic. As Lenore Taylor points out:
Policy questions lead to "mischief-making". Public discussion of major issues is an unnecessary "sport". Asking basic questions can lead to unwarranted "micro-detailed discussions". The policy goals justify silence about the means. And for that reason the government, which believes so fervently in free speech, thinks it is reasonable to withhold basic information from the national policy conversation.
However, there is little need to feel much sympathy for the Canberra Gallery. The press gallery's abrogations of fourth-estate responsibilities is well known, they have become unable to evaluate public policy, and they do not - and cannot - tell us what we need to know to keep us citizens informed on public issues. The journosphere is all about the polls and the horse race.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:18 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
January 6, 2014
the Asian Ascendancy
As we know the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and 2009 that had its roots in the subprime crisis in the US and the use of collateralised debt obligations or CDOs, undermined “neo-classical” economic policies, which had replaced Keynesian policies as the global economic orthodox. Neo-classical” or neo-liberal economic policies had been hegemonic for around thirty years.
Neo-classical policies are grounded in the view that economic systems tended naturally towards equilibrium, where markets cleared and all resources were fully utilised. What was required were free markets, private enterprise and minimal government intervention. The various strands of neo-classical economic policy essentially reflected a faith in laissez-faire economic management in the pursuit of long-run growth.
Bruce Petty
The problem, as we saw with Wall Street, is that that enlightened self-interest does not always operate in the public interest and that when the private sector has problems ---those particular financial instruments CDOs became impossible to value – and therefore impossible to sell when confidence in them eroded---and can’t fix itself up, the only alternative is the public sector.
Thus Wall Street had to be bailed out to protect the global financial system, and the state has to pump the economy to prevent an ongoing and deepening recession in the global economy.
Australia survived the Global Financial Crisis only to be hit by the ongoing and deepening recession in the global economy. Demand for Chinese goods contracted in a depressed Europe and US, China's economic growth slowed, its demand for Australia's raw materials declined, the mining boom came to an end, and Australia started experiencing the inevitable downturn. So East Asia's rapid economic development and industrialisation that had transformed the region to Australia's north that had relied on Australia s resource riches came to an end.
Looking back we can see that the windfall gains of Australia’s resource wealth was not locked away in a sovereign wealth fund for future generations-- to help overcome the bust, ease structural adjustment, and climate-change mitigation. Instead we have the emergence of stage-managed public outrage and abuse organized by powerful political forces----a hostile political opposition and powerful vested interests-- to contest expert opinion as part of the Australian political process.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:20 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack